Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Achieving efficient delivery of morpholino oligos in cultured cells

Summary: One of the many features that make morpholino oligos unique among the antisense structural types is an uncharged backbone. While this feature eliminates the nonspecific interactions of traditional S‐oligos, it also renders the morpholino undeliverable via the traditional lipid‐based delivery systems. This article describes a highly efficient method of delivering morpholino oligos into adherent and nonadherent cultured cells. In this system, a nonionic morpholino oligo is paired to a complementary DNA “carrier. ” The DNA is then bound electrostatically to a partially ionized, weakly‐basic ethoxylated polyethylenimine (EPEI). This morpholino/DNA/EPEI complex is efficiently endocytosed, and when the pH drops within the endosome, the EPEI more fully ionizes, resulting in permeabilization of the endosomal membrane and release of the morpholino into the cytosol. This article describes optimization of delivery in HeLa cells and provides the basis for delivery in any cultured endocytic cell type. genesis 30:94–102, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Adaptable Filter Graphs - Towards Highly-Configurable Query Visualizations

Systems for browsing and finding information in the vast amount of data available on the web keep growing in complexity. To alleviate this complexity for queries, various visualization techniques have been developed in the past. We have examined the filter/flow concept. This paper presents a transformation schema for filter/flow graphs to make them even more intuitively usable and to support distributed collaborative use. For that schema, several possibilities for transformating the visualization and various factors that may influence that transformation are discussed. Finally, the schema is further explained based on a trip planning example scenario.
Characterizing the sample complexity of private learners

In 2008, Kasiviswanathan el al. defined private learning as a combination of PAC learning and differential privacy [16]. Informally, a private learner is applied to a collection of labeled individual information and outputs a hypothesis while preserving the privacy of each individual. Kasiviswanathan et al. gave a generic construction of private learners for (finite) concept classes, with sample complexity logarithmic in the size of the concept class. This sample complexity is higher than what is needed for non-private learners, hence leaving open the possibility that the sample complexity of private learning may be sometimes significantly higher than that of non-private learning. We give a combinatorial characterization of the sample size sufficient and necessary to privately learn a class of concepts. This characterization is analogous to the well known characterization of the sample complexity of non-private learning in terms of the VC dimension of the concept class. We introduce the notion of probabilistic representation of a concept class, and our new complexity measure RepDim corresponds to the size of the smallest probabilistic representation of the concept class. We show that any private learning algorithm for a concept class C with sample complexity m implies RepDim(C) = O(m), and that there exists a private learning algorithm with sample complexity m = O(RepDim(C)). We further demonstrate that a similar characterization holds for the database size needed for privately computing a large class of optimization problems and also for the well studied problem of private data release.
Social action with youth: Interventions, evaluation, and psychopolitical validity

We describe two interventions designed to encourage community action with youth in a school and a community service setting. The school intervention took place with a Year 10 class, while the communitybased intervention took place with a group of same-sex attracted youth. Using a participatory action research framework, youth in both settings devised a series of community projects to promote personal, group, and community wellness. Projects included drama presentations addressing homophobia, designing an aboriginal public garden, children’s activities in a cultural festival for refugees, a drug-free underage dance party, a community theatre group, and a student battle of the bands. We evaluated the various community projects using self-reports, videotapes, and ethnographic data. While goals of personal and group wellness were meaningfully met, wellness at the community level was harder to achieve. Introducing a tool for the evaluation of psychopolitical validity, we examined the degree of both epistemic and transformational validity present in the interventions. Our assessment indicates that (a) psychological changes are easier to achieve than political transformations, (b) epistemic validity is easier to accomplish than transformational validity, and (c) changes at the personal and group levels are easier to achieve than changes at the community level. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Cross-National Differences in Managers' Willingness to Justify Ethically Suspect Behaviors: A Test of Institutional Anomie Theory

With globalization, understanding unethical conduct from a cross-national perspective is becoming more important. We used institutional anomie theory to develop hypotheses relating four national culture variables (achievement, individualism, universalism, and pecuniary materialism) and social institutions (economy, polity, family, and education) to managers' willingness to justify behaviors generally considered ethically suspect. Data from 3,450 managers from 28 countries support our hypotheses for universalism, pecuniary materialism, economy, family, and education. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
Changes in social support for professional development and retirement preparation as a function of age

Social factors, particularly age norms, are cited as a major influence on retirement and late career decisions; yet research has focused primarily on one feature of norms: shared beliefs. A sample of finance and accounting professionals between the ages of 22 and 70 is used to examine whether support for career development differs as a function of age. The levels of support for professional development, retirement preparation, and personal growth from five sources (family, co-workers, colleagues in other organizations, supervisor, and friends) are examined. Age is not a major factor in the amount of support reported. Support is associated with career-related intentions and beliefs (maintaining professional contacts, hours spent in training, career insight, expected development, and perceived organization support). Family support influences career development. These effects hold regardless of age. The results suggest emphasizing the informational role of social networks rather than the normative role with respect to age.
High Performance Controllers for Speed and Position Induction Motor Drive using New Reaching Law

This paper present new approach in robust indirect rotor field oriented (IRFOC) induction motor (IM) control. The introduction of new exponential reaching law (ERL) based sliding mode control (SMC) improve significantly the performances compared to the conventional SMC which are well known susceptible to the annoying chattering phenomenon, so, the elimination of the chattering is achieved while simplicity and high performance speed and position tracking are maintained. Simulation results are given to discuss the performances of the proposed control method.
Robust model-based vasculature detection in noisy biomedical images

This paper presents a set of algorithms for robust detection of vasculature in noisy retinal video images. Three methods are studied for effective handling of outliers. The first method is based on Huber's censored likelihood ratio test. The second is based on the use of a /spl alpha/ -trimmed test statistic. The third is based on robust model selection algorithms. All of these algorithms rely on a mathematical model for the vasculature that accounts for the expected variations in intensity/texture profile, width, orientation, scale, and imaging noise. These unknown parameters are estimated implicitly within a robust detection and estimation framework. The proposed algorithms are also useful as nonlinear vessel enhancement filters. The proposed algorithms were evaluated over carefully constructed phantom images, where the ground truth is known a priori, as well as clinically recorded images for which the ground truth was manually compiled. A comparative evaluation of the proposed approaches is presented. Collectively, these methods outperformed prior approaches based on Chaudhuri et al. (1989) matched filtering, as well as the verification methods used by prior exploratory tracing algorithms, such as the work of Can et al. (1999). The Huber censored likelihood test yielded the best overall improvement, with a 145.7% improvement over the exploratory tracing algorithm, and a 43.7% improvement in detection rates over the matched filter.
Changes in the transition to adulthood in the UK and Canada: the role of structure and agency in emerging adulthood

This paper picks up from Bynner's recent critique of the current formulation of emerging adulthood as presented in his recent exchange with Arnett in the Journal of Youth Studies (2005, volume 8(4) and 2006, volume 9(1)). It pays particular attention to the exclusion processes in education and the workplace that prevent young people in some socio-economic contexts from experiencing the developmental processes presumed to be of benefit to all ‘emerging adults’. In addition, an alternative to Arnett's psychological, free-choice model of emerging adulthood is offered that identifies the social and economic conditions that have produced the prolonged transition to adulthood. We argue that this hiatus in the life-course, which is increasingly referred to as emerging adulthood, can be better explained in terms of changing economic conditions leading to a lowering of the social status of the young that is contributing to increasingly precarious trajectories, and in terms of the decline in the social markers of adulthood associated with the individualization process. When these structural conditions are examined, it appears that Arnett's model ‘begs the question’ about emerging adulthood (i.e. takes for granted the very thing under contention), and mistakes the coping mechanisms of many young people for freely chosen options to delay their entry into adulthood.
Experiencing ‘continuity’: A qualitative investigation of waking life in dreams.

Continuity between waking life and dreaming has typically been studied via the quantitative analysis of dream reports, which has illustrated that dreaming reflects waking-life experiences, thoughts, and emotions. However, there are currently no reliable methods of analyzing dreams for the more subjective aspects of dreams, such as those dreams that are metaphorically related to the dreamer’s waking life, which require dreamer input. We conducted a qualitative study involving in-depth semistructured interviews with 4 participants. The interview schedules were based on Schredl’s (2010) dream group technique. Using thematic analysis we developed 3 themes that describe continuity between waking life and dreams: “experiential continuity” (between waking-life experiences/thoughts and dreams), “emotional continuity” (between waking-life emotions and dreams), and “representative continuity” (metaphorical and generic representations of waking life in dreams). Rather than being dichotomous, participants experienced continuity in gradations. A fourth theme (“attitudes toward continuity”) explored how attitudes toward continuity influenced continuity experiences.
Detecting Multiword Verbs in the English Sublanguage of MEDLINE Abstracts

In this paper, we investigate the multiword verbs in the English sublanguage of MEDLINE abstracts. Based on the integration of the domain-specific named entity knowledge and syntactic as well as statistical information, this work mainly focuses on how to evaluate a proper multiword verb candidate. Our results present a sound balance between the low- and high-frequency multiword verb candidates in the sublanguage corpus. We get a F-measure of 0.753, when tested on a manual sample subset consisting of multiword candidates with both low- and high-frequencies.
A Strategy Oriented, Machine Learning Approach to Automatic Quality Assessment of Wikipedia Articles

A Strategy Oriented, Machine Learning Approach to Automatic Quality Assessment of Wikipedia Articles Gabriel De La Calzada This work discusses an approach to modeling and measuring information quality of Wikipedia articles. The approach is based on the idea that the quality of Wikipedia articles with distinctly different profiles needs to be measured using different information quality models. To implement this approach, a software framework written in the Java language was developed to collect and analyze information of Wikipedia articles. We report on our initial study, which involved two categories of Wikipedia articles: ”stabilized” (those, whose content has not undergone major changes for a significant period of time) and ”controversial” (articles that have undergone vandalism, revert wars, or whose content is subject to internal discussions between Wikipedia editors). In addition, we present simple information quality models and compare their performance on a subset of Wikipedia articles with the information quality evaluations provided by human users. Our experiment shows that using special-purpose models for information quality captures user sentiment about Wikipedia articles better than using a single model for both categories of articles.
The influence of lexical familiarity on ERP responses during sentence comprehension in language learners

Previous research on event-related potentials (ERPs) on second language processing has revealed a great degree of plasticity in brain mechanisms of adult language learners. Studies with natural and artificial languages show that the N400 as well as the P600 component appear in learners after sufficient training. The present experiment tests if and which ERP components in response to syntactic and thematic processes generalize to unfamiliar lexical material in adult language learners. Learners of a miniature version of Japanese were presented with correct and incorrect sentences, half of which contained an unfamiliar word in the crucial sentence position. Incorrect sentences were either case-marking violations or word category violations. When all words were familiar, case-marking violations elicited a biphasic N400—P600 pattern and word category violations led to an early negativity that was followed by a P600. When the case violation occurred on an unfamiliar noun, only a P600 was seen. Word category violations that involved unknown verbs led to an early negativity and only to a reduced P600. The results suggest a high degree of nativelikeness for the learners during processing of familiar sentences. Unfamiliar words seem to entail additional processing costs and specifically lead to difficulties in the domain of case processing.
The effectiveness of an outpatient Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Group programme for a transdiagnostic population

Background: Although a growing number of studies have demonstrated the efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for the treatment of psychological disorders, the effectiveness of transdiagnostic group ACT programmes in an applied clinical setting requires further evaluation. Methods: The current study examined the effectiveness of a 10-week ACT transdiagnostic group programme delivered in a private psychiatric hospital. Pre- and post-treatment outcomes were measured in 55 adults presenting with various psychiatric diagnoses. Treatment processes were also analysed. Results: At post-intervention, participants demonstrated significantly greater valued living, cognitive defusion, and acceptance. No significant differences were evident in participants' mindfulness. Significant improvements were also evident on depression, anxiety, stress, functional disability, satisfaction with life, and personal well-being. Reliable change indices were also calculated and revealed reliable improvements in a range of outcomes for 27% to 46% of participants. Participant attendance rates, clinician adherence to the manualised ACT content, and patient satisfaction were all high. Conclusions: Collectively, results provided support for the effectiveness of ACT in increasing psychological flexibility and improving psychological symptoms in a transdiagnostic population. However, the current study also showed that many patients did not respond to the intervention and further research is recommended to ascertain predictors of treatment response.
Reemployment on a Poorer Job after a Plant Closing

This study, involving 61 former Canadian Admiral employees who were employed 16 mo. after the plant closing, examined the effects of reemployment on a poorer job. Admiral jobs and present jobs were compared in two ways, hourly wages and a 10-item index of job characteristics (working conditions, supervision, nearness to home, union representation, etc.). Employees working on poorer jobs reported less life satisfaction, more psychosomatic symptoms, and greater alcohol consumption. Objective differences in hourly wages produced stronger negative effects than did differences in job characteristics.
Low-Complexity Receiver for Multi-Level Polar Coded Modulation in Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes have been proved to increase the multiple-access achievable rate with respect to orthogonal multiple access (OMA). In this paper we propose a novel communication system that combines multi-level coded modulation and polar codes in a NOMA scenario. Computational complexity decreases with the proposed scheme with respect to state-of-the-art solutions. We also highlight the trade-off between error rate performance and computational complexity.
A glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-negative phenotype produced in Leishmania major by GPI phospholipase C from Trypanosoma brucei: topography of two GPI pathways

The major surface macromolecules of the protozoan parasite Leishmania major, gp63 (a metalloprotease), and lipophosphoglycan (a polysaccharide), are glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchored. We expressed a cytoplasmic glycosylphosphatidylinositol phospholipase C (GPI-PLC) in L. major in order to examine the topography of the protein- GPI and polysaccharide-GPI pathways. In L. major cells expressing GPI- PLC, cell-associated gp63 could not be detected in immunoblots. Pulse- chase analysis revealed that gp63 was secreted into the culture medium with a half-time of 5.5 h. Secreted gp63 lacked anti-cross reacting determinant epitopes, and was not metabolically labeled with [3H]ethanolamine, indicating that it never received a GPI anchor. Further, the quantity of putative protein-GPI intermediates decreased approximately 10-fold. In striking contrast, lipophosphoglycan levels were unaltered. However, GPI-PLC cleaved polysaccharide-GPI intermediates (glycoinositol phospholipids) in vitro. Thus, reactions specific to the polysaccharide-GPI pathway are compartmentalized in vivo within the endoplasmic reticulum, thereby sequestering polysaccharide-GPI intermediates from GPI-PLC cleavage. On the contrary, protein-GPI synthesis at least up to production of Man(1 alpha 6)Man(1 alpha 4)GlcN-(1 alpha 6)-myo-inositol-1-phospholipid is cytosolic. To our knowledge this represents the first use of a catabolic enzyme in vivo to elucidate the topography of biosynthetic pathways. GPI-PLC causes a protein-GPI-negative phenotype in L. major, even when genes for GPI biosynthesis are functional. This phenotype is remarkably similar to that of some GPI mutants of mammalian cells: implications for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria and Thy-1-negative T-lymphoma are discussed.
Learning-based Neuroimage Registration

Neuroimage registration has been a crucial area of research in medical image analysis for many years. Aligning brain images of different subjects in such a way that same anatomical structures correspond spatially is required in many different applications, including neuroimage classification, computer aided diagnosis, statistical quantification of human brains and neuroimage segmentation. We combine statistical learning, computer vision and medical image analysis to propose a multiresolution framework for learning-based neuroimage registration. Our approach has four distinct characteristics not present in other registration methods. First, instead of subjectively choosing which features to use for registration, we employ feature selection at different image scales to learn an appropriate subset of features for registering a specific pair of neuroimages. Second, we use interesting-voxel selection to identify image voxels that have the most distinct image feature vectors. These voxels are then used to estimate the deformation field for registration. Third, we iteratively improve our choice of features and interesting voxels during registration process. Fourth, we create and take advantage of a statistical model containing information on image feature distributions in each anatomical location. This work is supported in part by NIH grants AG05133 and DA015900-01
New Convex Relaxations for Quadratic Assignment Problems

Quadratic assignment problems (QAPs) are known to be among the hardest discrete optimization problems. Recent study shows that even obtaining a strong lower bound for QAPs is a computational challenge. In this paper, we first discuss how to construct new simple convex relaxations of QAPs based on various matrix splitting schemes. Then we introduce the so-called symmetric mappings that can be used to derive strong cuts for the proposed relaxation model. We show that the bounds based on the new models are comparable to the strongest bounds in the literature. Promising experimental results based on the new relaxations will be reported.
Trace elements and electrolytes in human resting mixed saliva after exercise.

OBJECTIVES: Exercise is known to cause changes in the concentration of salivary components such as amylase, Na, and Cl. The aim of this investigation was to evaluate the effect of physical exercise on the levels of trace elements and electrolytes in whole (mixed) saliva. METHODS: Forty subjects performed a maximal exercise test on a cycle ergometer. Samples of saliva were obtained before and immediately after the exercise test. Sample concentrations of Fe, Mg, Sc, Cr, Mn, Co, Cu, Zn, Se, Sr, Ag, Sb, Cs, and Hg were determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and concentrations of Ca and Na by atomic absorption spectrometry. RESULTS: After exercise, Mg and Na levels showed a significant increase (p < 0.05) while Mn levels fell (p < 0.05). Zn/Cu molar ratios were unaffected by exercise. CONCLUSIONS: Intense physical exercise induced changes in the concentrations of only three (Na, Mg, and Mn) of the 16 elements analysed in the saliva samples. Further research is needed to assess the clinical implications of these findings.