Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tumor targeting with radiolabeled alpha(v)beta(3) integrin binding peptides in a nude mouse model.

The alpha(v)beta(3) integrin is expressed on proliferating endothelial cells such as those present in growing tumors, as well as on tumor cells of various origin. Tumor-induced angiogenesis can be blocked in vivo by antagonizing the alpha(v)beta(3) integrin with small peptides containing the Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) amino acid sequence. This tripeptidic sequence, naturally present in extracellular matrix proteins, is the primary binding site of the alpha(v)beta(3) integrin. Because of selective expression of alpha(v)beta(3) integrin in tumors, radiolabeled RGD peptides are attractive candidates for alpha(v)beta(3) integrin targeting in tumors. We studied the in vivo behavior of the radiolabeled dimeric RGD peptide E-[c(RGDfK)](2) in the NIH:OVCAR-3 s.c. ovarian carcinoma xenograft model in BALB/c nude mice. Conjugation of the 1,4,7,10-tetraazadodecane-N,N',N",N"'-tetraacetic acid (DOTA) and hydrazinonicotinamide (HYNIC) chelators enabled efficient radiolabeling with (111)In/(90)Y and (99m)Tc, respectively. The radiolabeled peptide was rapidly excreted renally. Uptake in nontarget organs such as liver and spleen was considerable. Tumor uptake peaked at 7.5% injected dose (ID)/g ((111)In-DOTA-E-[c(RGDfK)](2)) or 6.0%ID/g ((99m)Tc-HYNIC-E-[c(RGDfK)](2)) at 2 and 1 h postinjection, respectively. Integrin alpha(v)beta(3) receptor binding specificity was demonstrated by reduced tumor uptake after injection of the scrambled control peptide (111)In-DOTA-E-[c(RDKfD)](2) (0.28%ID/g at 2 h p.i.) and after coinjection of excess nonradioactive (115)In-DOTA-E-[c(RGDfK)](2) (0.22%ID/g at 2 h p.i.). A single injection of (90)Y-DOTA-E-[c(RGDfK)](2) at the maximum-tolerated dose (37 MBq) in mice with small s.c. tumors caused a significant growth delay as compared with mice treated with 37 MBq (90)Y-labeled scrambled peptide or untreated mice (median survival of 54 versus 33.5 versus 19 days, respectively). In conclusion, the radiolabeled RGD peptides (111)In-DOTA-E-[c(RGDfK)](2) and (99m)Tc-HYNIC-E-[c(RGDfK)](2) demonstrated high and specific tumor uptake in a human tumor xenograft. Injection of (90)Y-DOTA-E-[c(RGDfK)](2) induced a significant delay in tumor growth. Potentially, these peptides can be used for peptide receptor radionuclide imaging as well as therapy.
A Novel TGFβ Modulator that Uncouples R-Smad/I-Smad-Mediated Negative Feedback from R-Smad/Ligand-Driven Positive Feedback

As some of the most widely utilised intercellular signalling molecules, transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) superfamily members play critical roles in normal development and become disrupted in human disease. Establishing appropriate levels of TGFβ signalling involves positive and negative feedback, which are coupled and driven by the same signal transduction components (R-Smad transcription factor complexes), but whether and how the regulation of the two can be distinguished are unknown. Genome-wide comparison of published ChIP-seq datasets suggests that LIM domain binding proteins (Ldbs) co-localise with R-Smads at a substantial subset of R-Smad target genes including the locus of inhibitory Smad7 (I-Smad7), which mediates negative feedback for TGFβ signalling. We present evidence suggesting that zebrafish Ldb2a binds and directly activates the I-Smad7 gene, whereas it binds and represses the ligand gene, Squint (Sqt), which drives positive feedback. Thus, the fine tuning of TGFβ signalling derives from positive and negative control by Ldb2a. Expression of ldb2a is itself activated by TGFβ signals, suggesting potential feed-forward loops that might delay the negative input of Ldb2a to the positive feedback, as well as the positive input of Ldb2a to the negative feedback. In this way, precise gene expression control by Ldb2a enables an initial build-up of signalling via a fully active positive feedback in the absence of buffering by the negative feedback. In Ldb2a-deficient zebrafish embryos, homeostasis of TGFβ signalling is perturbed and signalling is stably enhanced, giving rise to excess mesoderm and endoderm, an effect that can be rescued by reducing signalling by the TGFβ family members, Nodal and BMP. Thus, Ldb2a is critical to the homeostatic control of TGFβ signalling and thereby embryonic patterning.
Spatial organization of the extracellular matrix regulates cell–cell junction positioning

The organization of cells into epithelium depends on cell interaction with both the extracellular matrix (ECM) and adjacent cells. The role of cell–cell adhesion in the regulation of epithelial topology is well-described. ECM is better known to promote cell migration and provide a structural scaffold for cell anchoring, but its contribution to multicellular morphogenesis is less well-understood. We developed a minimal model system to investigate how ECM affects the spatial organization of intercellular junctions. Fibronectin micropatterns were used to constrain the location of cell–ECM adhesion. We found that ECM affects the degree of stability of intercellular junction positioning and the magnitude of intra- and intercellular forces. Intercellular junctions were permanently displaced, and experienced large perpendicular tensional forces as long as they were positioned close to ECM. They remained stable solely in regions deprived of ECM, where they were submitted to lower tensional forces. The heterogeneity of the spatial organization of ECM induced anisotropic distribution of mechanical constraints in cells, which seemed to adapt their position to minimize both intra- and intercellular forces. These results uncover a morphogenetic role for ECM in the mechanical regulation of cells and intercellular junction positioning.
Absorbable implants versus metal implants for the treatment of ankle fractures: A meta-analysis

This meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the efficiency and the safety of absorbable implants. Five major electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, SinoMed and Wanfang Data) were systematically searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from their establishment to November 2012. Studies on absorbable implants and metal implants for ankle fractures were selected. The meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.1. Ten studies with 762 patients were included and analyzed. Compared with metal implants, absorbable implants used for the internal fixation of ankle fractures produce similar radiographic and functional outcomes (P= 0.52). Normally, removal of the internal fixation is unnecessary (P<0.0001) and the incidence of palpable implants is lower (P=0.02) for absorbable implants. No statistically significant difference was observed between the two groups with regard to foreign body reactions (P=0.07), infection (P= 0.69), osteoarthritis (P= 0.39), pain (P= 0.06), refracture (P=0.67), skin necrosis (P=0.99), deep vein thrombosis (P=0.21) and nerve injury (P=0.94). Absorbable implants used in ankle fractures rarely require reoperation and result in similar functional outcomes and complications compared with metal implants. These characteristics make them efficient and reasonably safe for the treatment of ankle fractures.
Critical power slope: understanding the runtime effects of frequency scaling

Energy efficiency is becoming an increasingly important feature for both mobile and high-performance server systems. Most processors designed today include power management features that provide processor operating points which can be used in power management algorithms. However, existing power management algorithms implicitly assume that lower performance points are more energy efficient than higher performance points. Our empirical observations indicate that for many systems, this assumption is not valid.We introduce a new concept called critical power slope to explain and capture the power-performance characteristics of systems with power management features. We evaluate three systems - a clock throttled Pentium laptop, a frequency scaled PowerPC platform, and a voltage scaled system to demonstrate the benefits of our approach. Our evaluation is based on empirical measurements of the first two systems, and publicly available data for the third. Using critical power slope, we explain why on the Pentium-based system, it is energy efficient to run only at the highest frequency, while on the PowerPC-based system, it is energy efficient to run at the lowest frequency point. We confirm our results by measuring the behavior of a web serving benchmark. Furthermore, we extend the critical power slope concept to understand the benefits of voltage scaling when combined with frequency scaling. We show that in some cases, it may be energy efficient not to reduce voltage below a certain point.
Efficient Placement and Dispatch of Sensors in a Wireless Sensor Network

Sensor deployment is a critical issue because it affects the cost and detection capability of a wireless sensor network. In this work, we consider two related deployment problems: sensor placement and sensor dispatch. The former asks how to place the least number of sensors in a field to achieve sensing coverage and network connectivity, and the latter asks how to determine from a set of mobile sensors a subset of sensors to be moved to an area of interest with certain objective functions such that the coverage and connectivity properties are satisfied. This work is targeted toward planned deployment. Our solution to the placement problem allows an arbitrary-shaped sensing field possibly with arbitrary-shaped obstacles and an arbitrary relationship between the communication distance and sensing distance of sensors and, thus, significantly relaxes the limitations of existing results. Our solutions to the dispatch problem include a centralized one and a distributed one. The centralized one is based on adopting the former placement results and converting the problem to the maximum-weight maximum-matching problem with the objective of minimizing the total energy consumption to move sensors or maximizing the average remaining energy of sensors after movement. Designed in a similar way, the distributed one allows sensors to determine their moving directions in an autonomous manner.
The Fiction of No Friction: A User Skills Approach to Cognitive Lock-In

Consumer Studies (www.iocs.org), and Allaire Corporation. This research also benefited from a Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award and a Nova Corporation Faculty Fellowship, awarded to Gerald Haubl, as well as from the Poole PhD Endowment Fellowship, the University of Alberta School of Business PhD Fellowship, and the Province of Alberta Graduate Fellowship awarded to Kyle Murray. The authors wish to thank Terry Elrod for his valuable comments. Correspondence should be addressed to the first author. The Fiction of No Friction: A User Skills Approach to Cognitive Lock-In
Application of STBC in MIMO Atmosphere Laser Communication

STBC (space-time block code) is a new technology, which MIMO (multiple input multiple output system) can be achieved through array antenna. The technology can set off fading effectively and increase frequency spectrum efficiency. Firstly, the theory of STBC is described in this paper. And STBC is ameliorated to adapt to optical communication. Secondly, the technique is combined with QPPM modulation and be used in atmosphere laser communication. Lastly, the system channel capacity and error rate are analyzed, and then their change is compared by STBC system and no STBC system using emulation experiment. As a result, the error code performance of system coded STBC is improved effectively, and the channel capacity is drop off.
Semi-supervised learning for spoken language understanding semantic role labeling

In a goal-oriented spoken dialog system, the major aim of language understanding is to classify utterances into one or more of the pre-defined intents and extract the associated named entities. Typically, the intents are designed by a human expert according to the application domain. Furthermore, these systems are trained using large amounts of data manually labeled using an already prepared labeling guide. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised spoken language understanding approach based on the task-independent semantic role labeling of the utterances. The goal is to extract the predicates and the associated arguments from spoken language by using semantic role labeling and determine the intents based on these predicate/argument pairs. We propose an iterative approach using the automatically labeled utterances with semantic roles as the seed training data for intent classification. We have evaluated this understanding approach using two AT&T spoken dialog system applications used for customer care. We have shown that the semantic parses obtained without using any syntactically or semantically labeled in-domain data can represent the semantic intents without a need for manual intent and labeling guide design and labeling phases. Using this approach on automatic speech recognizer transcriptions, for both applications, we have achieved the 86.5% of the performance of a classification model trained with thousands of labeled utterances
The Evolution of LTE Physical Layer Control Channels

Physical layer control signals in cellular communications serve the purpose of delivering physical layer control messages in a timely fashion to support cell radio resource management and data transmissions between the network and the mobile users. This article describes the evolution of 3GPP LTE in control channel design. The legacy LTE control channels (Release 8) have proven to be well-designed robust channels for signaling physical layer messages. However, emerging wireless communication transmission technologies continue to challenge the traditional design of LTE control channels. We have reached a point where a totally new design of the control channels has to be provided in order for the new transmission features to be introduced into LTE. In this article we first give an overview of the legacy LTE control channel, and present the new challenges. We then describe in depth the new solutions provided by LTE (Release 11). Finally, we address the limitations of the new design, which are recently identified in certain newly-emerging applications, in particular, the machine-type communications. A new round of evolution is hence imperative. New solutions provided by next release of LTE (Release 13) are presented.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Newborn Brain: Automatic Segmentation of Brain Images into 50 Anatomical Regions

We studied methods for the automatic segmentation of neonatal and developing brain images into 50 anatomical regions, utilizing a new set of manually segmented magnetic resonance (MR) images from 5 term-born and 15 preterm infants imaged at term corrected age called ALBERTs. Two methods were compared: individual registrations with label propagation and fusion; and template based registration with propagation of a maximum probability neonatal ALBERT (MPNA). In both cases we evaluated the performance of different neonatal atlases and MPNA, and the approaches were compared with the manual segmentations by means of the Dice overlap coefficient. Dice values, averaged across regions, were 0.81±0.02 using label propagation and fusion for the preterm population, and 0.81±0.02 using the single registration of a MPNA for the term population. Segmentations of 36 further unsegmented target images of developing brains yielded visibly high-quality results. This registration approach allows the rapid construction of automatically labeled age-specific brain atlases for neonates and the developing brain.
A Comprehensive Study on Mobility Issues in AODV

Ad-hoc network plays an important role in wireless networks as they are self-configured and can be operated independently with limited resources. The critical issue is to assess the performance of routing protocols in Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) due to the frequent changes in network topology. Here the Ad-hoc On demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol, which is quite susceptible to node mobility is taken into consideration, as it determine the end to end route discovery in dynamic manner; the identified problem is it leads to extra time and energy consuming. Driven by this issue, it is necessary to examine the scalability of AODV protocol by varying the number of Wi-Fi nodesâ and its mobility degree. Performance of AODV is addressed in this study; by calculating aggregated throughput, Packet Loss Ratio (PLR) and end to end delay. Also, extensive simulations are carried out to exactly capture its Quality of Service (QoS) parameters in sparse and dense network scenarios.
Comparison of Simple Eudragit Microparticles Loaded with Prednisolone and Eudragit-Coated Chitosan-Succinyl-Prednisolone Conjugate Microparticles: Part II. In Vivo Evaluation of Efficacy, Toxicity, and Biodisposition Characteristics

We previously prepared and evaluated simple Eudragit S100 microparticles loaded with prednisolone (ES-MP) and Eudragit S100-coated chitosan-succinyl-prednisolone conjugate microparticles (Ch-MP/ES) in vitro. In this work, the effectiveness, toxic side effects (5 mg prednisolone (PD) eq/kg × 3 d, 10 mg PD eq/kg × 3 d), and pharmacokinetic characteristics (5 mg PD eq/kg) were examined using rats with colitis induced through 2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid. ES-MP did not change the efficacy or toxic side effects of PD, and this was attributed to incomplete delivery to the target site and prolonged systemic drug absorption by ES-MP. On the other hand, Ch-MP/ES promoted the efficacy of PD and ameliorated its toxic side effects due to better delivery to the target site, very slow drug release and the strong suppression of drug absorption. Only Ch-MP/ES, which markedly changed drug release characteristics, improved the in vivo features of PD.
LinesRecognition of EBV-Transformed B Cell Cytotoxic T Cell + LMP-Specific CD4 and 2 as Immunotherapeutic Targets: EBV Latent Membrane Proteins (LMPs) 1

The EBV-latent membrane proteins (LMPs) 1 and 2 are among only three viral proteins expressed in EBV-associated Hodgkin’s lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Since these tumors are HLA class I and class II-positive, the LMPs could serve as both CD8 (cid:1) and CD4 (cid:1) T cell targets. In contrast to CD8 responses, very little is known about CD4 responses to LMPs. In this study, we describe CD4 (cid:1) T cell clones deﬁning four LMP1- and three LMP2-derived peptide epitopes and their restricting alleles. All clones produced Th1-like cytokines in response to peptide and most killed peptide-loaded target cells by perforin-mediated lysis. Although clones to different epitopes showed different functional avidities in peptide titration assays, avidity per se was a poor predictor of the ability to recognize naturally infected B lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) expressing LMPs at physiologic levels. Some epitopes, particularly within LMP1, consistently mediated strong LCL recognition detectable in cytokine release, cytotoxicity, and outgrowth inhibition assays. Using cyclosporin A to selectively block cytokine release, we found that CD4 (cid:1) T cell cytotoxicity is the key effector of LCL outgrowth control. We therefore infer that cytotoxic CD4 (cid:1) T cells to a subset of LMP epitopes could have therapeutic potential against LMP-expressing tumors. The Journal of Immunology, 2008, 180: 1643–1654.
Antidepressant Effect of Optogenetic Stimulation of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Brain stimulation and imaging studies in humans have highlighted a key role for the prefrontal cortex in clinical depression; however, it remains unknown whether excitation or inhibition of prefrontal cortical neuronal activity is associated with antidepressant responses. Here, we examined cellular indicators of functional activity, including the immediate early genes (IEGs) zif268 (egr1), c-fos, and arc, in the prefrontal cortex of clinically depressed humans obtained postmortem. We also examined these genes in the ventral portion of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of mice after chronic social defeat stress, a mouse model of depression. In addition, we used viral vectors to overexpress channel rhodopsin 2 (a light-activated cation channel) in mouse mPFC to optogenetically drive “burst” patterns of cortical firing in vivo and examine the behavioral consequences. Prefrontal cortical tissue derived from clinically depressed humans displayed significant reductions in IEG expression, consistent with a deficit in neuronal activity within this brain region. Mice subjected to chronic social defeat stress exhibited similar reductions in levels of IEG expression in mPFC. Interestingly, some of these changes were not observed in defeated mice that escape the deleterious consequences of the stress, i.e., resilient animals. In those mice that expressed a strong depressive-like phenotype, i.e., susceptible animals, optogenetic stimulation of mPFC exerted potent antidepressant-like effects, without affecting general locomotor activity, anxiety-like behaviors, or social memory. These results indicate that the activity of the mPFC is a key determinant of depression-like behavior, as well as antidepressant responses.
Are Thai Manufacturing Exports and Imports of Capital Goods Related?

This paper examines the relationship between manufacturing exports and imports of capital goods in Thailand using monthly data from January 2000 to July 2011. The results from bounds testing for cointegration show that there exists long-run equilibrium relationship between exports and imports of capital goods in manufacturing sector. In addition, the positive relationship between the growth rate of imports of capital goods and the growth rate of manufacturing exports is observed. The results support the notion that foreign capital is essential in the process of industrialization, and thus economic growth. A decline in imports of capital goods will reduce manufacturing exports and impedes economic growth in the future. It is also likely that exports of manufactured products are the main source of foreign exchanges to finance imports of capital goods which cannot be produced in the country due to comparative disadvantage.
EPDL: A Logic for Causal Reasoning

This paper presents an extended system EPDL of propositional dynamic logic by allowing a proposition as a modality for representing and specifying direct and indirect effects of actions in a unified logical structure. A set of causal logics based on the framework are proposed to model causal propagations through logical relevancy and iterated effects of causation. It is shown that these logics capture the basic properties of causal reasoning.