Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cancer-specific toxicity of apoptin is independent of death receptors but involves the loss of mitochondrial membrane potential and the release of mitochondrial cell-death mediators by a Nur77-dependent pathway

Apoptin, a small proline-rich protein derived from the chicken anaemia virus, induces cell death selectively in cancer cells. The signalling pathways of apoptin-induced, cancer cell-selective apoptosis are not well understood. Here, we demonstrate that apoptin triggers apoptosis by activating the mitochondrial/intrinsic pathway, and that it acts independently of the death receptor/extrinsic pathway. Jurkat cells deficient in either FADD or caspase-8 (which are both necessary for the extrinsic pathway) were equally as sensitive to apoptin as their parental clones. This demonstrates that apoptin is likely to act through the mitochondrial death pathway. Apoptin treatment causes a loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, and release of the mitochondrial proteins cytochrome c and apoptosis-inducing factor. Apoptin-induced cell death is counteracted by the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family members, Bcl-2 itself and Bcl-XL, as shown in Jurkat leukaemia cells. In addition, we describe the processing and activation of caspase-3. By contrast, cleavage of caspase-8, which is predominantly triggered by the death receptor pathway, is not observed. Furthermore, apoptin triggers the cytoplasmic translocation of Nur77, and the inhibition of Nur77 expression by siRNA significantly protects MCF7 cells from apoptin-triggered cell death. Thus, our data indicate that the apoptin death signal(s) ultimately converges at the mitochondria, and that it acts independently of the death receptor pathway.
Cost effective approach on feature selection using genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic for diabetes diagnosis

A way to enhance the performance of a model that combines genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic for feature selection and classification is proposed. Early diagnosis of any disease with less cost is preferable. Diabetes is one such disease. Diabetes has become the fourth leading cause of death in developed countries and there is substantial evidence that it is reaching epidemic proportions in many developing and newly industrialized nations. In medical diagnosis, patterns consist of observable symptoms along with the results of diagnostic tests. These tests have various associated costs and risks. In the automated design of pattern classification, the proposed system solves the feature subset selection problem. It is a task of identifying and selecting a useful subset of pattern-representing features from a larger set of features. Using fuzzy rule-based classification system, the proposed system proves to improve the classification accuracy.
Fetuin-A and extraosseous calcification in uremia

Purpose of reviewIt has become increasingly clear that vascular calcification, as part of accelerated uremic atherosclerosis, may powerfully predict mortality in the dialysis population. Secondary hyperparathyroidism and its consequences explain part of this phenomenon; however, serum concentrations of calcium and phosphate ions exceed their solubility product in an aqueous solution and must be prevented from precipitation by additional mechanisms. Fetuin-A is an inflammation-related calcium-regulatory glycoprotein acting as a systemic calcification inhibitor. The emerging role of fetuin-A deficiency as a risk factor in dialysis patients was documented in a cross-sectional study demonstrating a significant correlation with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. Recent findingsIn-vitro studies in vascular smooth muscle cells revealed that fetuin-A interacts directly with matrix vesicle release and may thus modulate vascular calcification processes locally and at early stages. Accordingly, prominent fetuin-A staining of calcified vessel segments obtained from uremic patients, in the absence of local expression, emphasizes its potential role as a circulating defense against overwhelming calcification. While increased fetuin-A levels positively correlated with vascular calcification in patients with diabetes and mild to moderate renal impairment, an inverse relationship was observed in dialysis patients. Both chronic inflammation and uremia may thus contribute to exhausting fetuin-A release in the late stages of kidney disease. Specific polymorphisms of the fetuin-A gene may be additional determinants of fetuin-A deficiency. SummaryDeficiencies of calcification inhibitors such as fetuin-A are relevant pathomechanisms in the progression of uncontrolled vascular calcification and may offer potential for future therapeutic approaches.
Generation of a nicking enzyme that stimulates site-specific gene conversion from the I-AniI LAGLIDADG homing endonuclease

Homing endonucleases stimulate gene conversion by generating site-specific DNA double-strand breaks that are repaired by homologous recombination. These enzymes are potentially valuable tools for targeted gene correction and genome engineering. We have engineered a variant of the I-AniI homing endonuclease that nicks its cognate target site. This variant contains a mutation of a basic residue essential for proton transfer and solvent activation in one active site. The cleavage mechanism, DNA-binding affinity, and substrate specificity profile of the nickase are similar to the wild-type enzyme. I-AniI nickase stimulates targeted gene correction in human cells, in cis and in trans, at ≈1/4 the efficiency of the wild-type enzyme. The development of sequence-specific nicking enzymes like the I-AniI nickase will facilitate comparative analyses of DNA repair and mutagenesis induced by single- or double-strand breaks.
Scheduling selfish jobs on multidimensional parallel machines

We study the multidimensional vector scheduling problem with selfish jobs, both in non-cooperative and in cooperative versions. We show existence of assignments that are Nash, strong Nash, weakly and strictly Pareto optimal Nash equilibria in these settings. We improve upon the previous bounds on the price of anarchy for the non-cooperative case, and find tight bounds for every number of machines and dimension. For the cooperative case we provide tight bounds on the strong prices of anarchy and stability, as well as tight bounds on weakly and strictly Pareto optimal prices of anarchy and stability, for every number of machines and dimension.
Structural Correspondence Learning for Dependency Parsing

Following (Blitzer et al., 2006), we present an application of structural correspondence learning to non-projective dependency parsing (McDonald et al., 2005). To induce the correspondences among dependency edges from different domains, we looked at every two tokens in a sentence and examined whether or not there is a preposition, a determiner or a helping verb between them. Three binary linear classifiers were trained to predict the existence of a preposition, etc, on unlabeled data and we used singular value decomposition to induce new features. During the training, the parser was trained with these additional features in addition to these described in (McDonald et al., 2005). We discriminatively trained our parser in an on-line fashion using a variant of the voted perceptron (Collins, 2002; Collins and Roark, 2004; Crammer and Singer, 2003).
Media segmentation using self-similarity decomposition

We present a framework for analyzing the structure of digital media streams. Though our methods work for video, text, and audio, we concentrate on detecting the structure of digital music files. In the first step, spectral data is used to construct a similarity matrix calculated from inter-frame spectral similarity.The digital audio can be robustly segmented by correlating a kernel along the diagonal of the similarity matrix. Once segmented, spectral statistics of each segment are computed. In the second step,segments are clustered based on the self-similarity of their statistics. This reveals the structure of the digital music in a set of segment boundaries and labels. Finally, the music is summarized by selecting clusters with repeated segments throughout the piece. The summaries can be customized for various applications based on the structure of the original music.
Perceptions of Complexions: Consciousness and Self-Identification Among Dark-Skinned Blacks

iv Introduction 1 Review of the Literature 3 Origin of Colorism 4 Duality 9 Contemporary Studies 11 Theory 14 Self-esteem, Self-efficacy, and Self-Identification 20 Data and Method 22 Limitations 23 Sample 23 Measures 25 Analysis 28 Results 29 Interview Results 36 Discussion 39 References 43 Appendices 47 Vita 50
CFIT prevention using synthetic vision

In commercial aviation, over 30 percent of all fatal accidents worldwide are categorized as Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) accidents where a fully functioning airplane is inadvertently flown into the ground, water, or an obstacle. An experiment was conducted at NASA Langley Research Center investigating the presentation of a synthetic terrain database scene to the pilot on a Primary Flight Display (PFD). The major hypothesis for the experiment is that a synthetic vision system (SVS) will improve the pilot's ability to detect and avoid a potential CFIT compared to conventional flight instrumentation. All display conditions, including the baseline, contained a Terrain Awareness and Warning System (TAWS) and Vertical Situation Display (VSD) enhanced Navigation Display (ND). Sixteen pilots each flew 22 approach / departure maneuvers in Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) to the terrain challenged Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE) in Colorado. For the final run, the flight guidance cues were altered such that the departure path went into the terrain. All pilots with a SVS enhanced PFD (12 of 16 pilots) noticed and avoided the potential CFIT situation. All of the pilots who flew the anomaly with the baseline display configuration (which included a TAWS and VSD enhanced ND) had a CFIT event.
Mineral absorption feature extraction in vegetation covered region based on reference spectral background removal

Diagnostic absorption feature has the potential to be the key factor of mineral information extraction in vegetation-covered region. Reference Spectral Background Removal (RSBR) could simulate the background curve based on the reference spectral background, and eliminate the influence through the background removal process. In this paper, RSBR was introduced into to mineral absorption feature extraction from high vegetation density area. Experiments on simulated data validated its great potential in mineral exploration in vegetation-covered region.
A Membrane-Bound NAC Transcription Factor Regulates Cell Division in Arabidopsis[W]

Controlled release of membrane-tethered, dormant precursors is an intriguing activation mechanism that regulates diverse cellular functions in eukaryotes. An exquisite example is the proteolytic activation of membrane-bound transcription factors. The proteolytic cleavage liberates active transcription factors from the membranes that can enter the nucleus and evokes rapid transcriptional responses to incoming stimuli. Here, we show that a membrane-bound NAC (for NAM, ATAF1/2, CUC2) transcription factor, designated NTM1 (for NAC with transmembrane motif1), is activated by proteolytic cleavage through regulated intramembrane proteolysis and mediates cytokinin signaling during cell division in Arabidopsis thaliana. Cell proliferation was greatly reduced in an Arabidopsis mutant with retarded growth and serrated leaves in which a transcriptionally active NTM1 form was constitutively expressed. Accordingly, a subset of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitor genes (the KIP-related proteins) was induced in this mutant with a significant reduction in histone H4 gene expression and in CDK activity. Consistent with a role for NTM1 in cell cycling, a Ds element insertional mutant was morphologically normal but displayed enhanced hypocotyl growth with accelerated cell division. Interestingly, cytokinins were found to regulate NTM1 activity by controlling its stability. These results indicate that the membrane-mediated activation of NTM1 defines a molecular mechanism by which cytokinin signaling is tightly regulated during cell cycling.
Distinct modes of floor plate induction in the chick embryo

To begin to reconcile models of floor plate formation in the vertebrate neural tube, we have performed experiments aimed at understanding the development of the early floor plate in the chick embryo. Using real-time analyses of cell behaviour, we provide evidence that the principal contributor to the early neural midline, the future anterior floor plate, exists as a separate population of floor plate precursor cells in the epiblast of the gastrula stage embryo, and does not share a lineage with axial mesoderm. Analysis of the tissue interactions associated with differentiation of these cells to a floor plate fate reveals a role for the nascent prechordal mesoderm, indicating that more than one inductive event is associated with floor plate formation along the length of the neuraxis. We show that Nr1, a chick nodal homologue, is expressed in the nascent prechordal mesoderm and we provide evidence that Nodal signalling can cooperate with Shh to induce the epiblast precursors to a floor-plate fate. These results indicate that a shared lineage with axial mesoderm cells is not a pre-requisite for floor plate differentiation and suggest parallels between the development of the floor plate in amniote and anamniote embryos.
Signed distance computation using the angle weighted pseudonormal

The normals of closed, smooth surfaces have long been used to determine whether a point is inside or outside such a surface. It is tempting to also use this method for polyhedra represented as triangle meshes. Unfortunately, this is not possible since, at the vertices and edges of a triangle mesh, the surface is not C/sup 1/ continuous, hence, the normal is undefined at these loci. In this paper, we undertake to show that the angle weighted pseudonormal (originally proposed by Thurmer and Wuthrich and independently by Sequin) has the important property that it allows us to discriminate between points that are inside and points that are outside a mesh, regardless of whether a mesh vertex, edge, or face is the closest feature. This inside-outside information is usually represented as the sign in the signed distance to the mesh. In effect, our result shows that this sign can be computed as an integral part of the distance computation. Moreover, it provides an additional argument in favor of the angle weighted pseudonormals being the natural extension of the face normals. Apart from the theoretical results, we also propose a simple and efficient algorithm for computing the signed distance to a closed C/sup 0/ mesh. Experiments indicate that the sign computation overhead when running this algorithm is almost negligible.
Associations of Functional and Dysfunctional Impulsivity to Smoking Characteristics

Objectives:Although the relation between impulsivity and smoking is well-documented, one model of impulsivity that has received little attention in the addiction literature separates impulsivity into 2 dimensions: functional impulsivity (tendency to make quick effective decisions) and dysfunctional impulsivity (tendency to make quick ineffective decisions). Methods:This cross-sectional study examined relations of functional and dysfunctional impulsivity to smoking characteristics in 212 non–treatment-seeking daily smokers (M = 15 cigarettes per day, M age = 24 years, 53% women). Results:Dysfunctional impulsivity exhibited small- to medium-sized positive associations with difficulty refraining from smoking in forbidden places, craving, and smoking without awareness. Functional impulsivity was inversely associated with a measure of cigarette craving. Other suggestive associations were found; however, these were not statistically significant after type I error correction. Conclusions:Although the overall predictive validity of these impulsivity constructs for explaining variance in smoking characteristics was relatively modest, the results suggest that conceptualizing impulsivity as a unitary construct indicative of a tendency to make quick decisions may mask heterogeneity within the impulsivity-smoking relationship. These findings suggest that high-dysfunctional impulsivity smokers may perhaps require more intensive interventions to dampen motivation to smoke. They also highlight the possibility that certain manifestations of impulsivity are not related with increased smoking behavior and may actually associate with reduced drive to smoke.
Genome Wide Association (GWA) Study for Early Onset Extreme Obesity Supports the Role of Fat Mass and Obesity Associated Gene (FTO) Variants

Background Obesity is a major health problem. Although heritability is substantial, genetic mechanisms predisposing to obesity are not very well understood. We have performed a genome wide association study (GWA) for early onset (extreme) obesity. Methodology/Principal Findings a) GWA (Genome-Wide Human SNP Array 5.0 comprising 440,794 single nucleotide polymorphisms) for early onset extreme obesity based on 487 extremely obese young German individuals and 442 healthy lean German controls; b) confirmatory analyses on 644 independent families with at least one obese offspring and both parents. We aimed to identify and subsequently confirm the 15 SNPs (minor allele frequency ≥10%) with the lowest p-values of the GWA by four genetic models: additive, recessive, dominant and allelic. Six single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in FTO (fat mass and obesity associated gene) within one linkage disequilibrium (LD) block including the GWA SNP rendering the lowest p-value (rs1121980; log-additive model: nominal p = 1.13×10−7, corrected p = 0.0494; odds ratio (OR)CT 1.67, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.22–2.27; ORTT 2.76, 95% CI 1.88–4.03) belonged to the 15 SNPs showing the strongest evidence for association with obesity. For confirmation we genotyped 11 of these in the 644 independent families (of the six FTO SNPs we chose only two representing the LD bock). For both FTO SNPs the initial association was confirmed (both Bonferroni corrected p<0.01). However, none of the nine non-FTO SNPs revealed significant transmission disequilibrium. Conclusions/Significance Our GWA for extreme early onset obesity substantiates that variation in FTO strongly contributes to early onset obesity. This is a further proof of concept for GWA to detect genes relevant for highly complex phenotypes. We concurrently show that nine additional SNPs with initially low p-values in the GWA were not confirmed in our family study, thus suggesting that of the best 15 SNPs in the GWA only the FTO SNPs represent true positive findings.
Opus: University of Bath Online Publication Store Fpga-aware Techniques for Rapid Generation of Profitable Custom Instructions

(2013) FPGA-aware techniques for rapid generation of profitable custom instructions. NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Microprocessors and Microsystems. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Microprocessors and This version is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. ABSTRACT Instruction set extension of FPGA based reconfigurable processors provides an effective means to meet the increasingly strict design constraints of embedded systems. We have shown in our previous works [20][21] that the usage of FPGA architectural constraints for pruning the design space during enumeration of custom instructions/patterns not only leads to notable reduction in the time taken to identify custom instructions but can also result in the selection of profitable custom instructions when the area is highly constrained. However when area constraint is relaxed, the previously proposed methods failed to perform better than traditional methods. In this paper, we propose a heuristic to identify profitable custom instructions for designs with arbitrary area constraints. The proposed heuristic relies on a new pruning criterion to enumerate patterns with high size-to-hardware-area ratio. We also proposed a suitable algorithm to select profitable custom instructions from the enumerated patterns. The proposed template selection algorithm takes advantage of the FPGA area-time measures of the enumerated patterns, which can be easily inferred from the FPGA-aware enumeration strategy. Experimental results show that the proposed methods in this paper result in custom instructions that achieve an average performance gain of 76.23 % over current state-of-the-art approaches.
Non-violent Males in Violent Settings

This study analyzes the factors associated with being non-violent and constructing a non-violent, prosocial masculine identity among adolescent males in two low-income Chicago (USA) neighborhoods where boys are generally socialized to be violent. Subjects were 25 African-American and Hispanic males ages 15-20; six of the males were adolescent fathers. Results confirmed that the males' life trajectories were characterized by family stresses, exposure to violence and gang involvement. Several factors were associated with being non-violent, including the ability to draw lessons from past traumatic experiences, having a recognized skill or meaningful connection to a mainstream institution, belonging to an alternative peer group that promoted non-violence and finding a purpose of life in being a father. Implications for youth-serving agencies are offered, including the suggestion of offering activities in which young men reflect about their life histories.
Catching the Trend: A Framework for Clustering Concept-Drifting Categorical Data

Sampling has been recognized as an important technique to improve the efficiency of clustering. However, with sampling applied, those points that are not sampled will not have their labels after the normal process. Although there is a straightforward approach in the numerical domain, the problem of how to allocate those unlabeled data points into proper clusters remains as a challenging issue in the categorical domain. In this paper, a mechanism named MAximal Resemblance Data Labeling (abbreviated as MARDL) is proposed to allocate each unlabeled data point into the corresponding appropriate cluster based on the novel categorical clustering representative, namely, N-Nodeset Importance Representative (abbreviated as NNIR), which represents clusters by the importance of the combinations of attribute values. MARDL has two advantages: (1) MARDL exhibits high execution efficiency, and (2) MARDL can achieve high intracluster similarity and low intercluster similarity, which are regarded as the most important properties of clusters, thus benefiting the analysis of cluster behaviors. MARDL is empirically validated on real and synthetic data sets and is shown to be significantly more efficient than prior works while attaining results of high quality.
Efficient Large-scale Road Inspection Routing

Gaist Solutions Ltd. carries out large scale surveys for UK road inspection. To estimate the total distance that vehicles travel, we model routing as a Chinese Postman Problem. We propose a novel graph reduction approach that dramatically speeds up the calculation of the Chinese Postman Tour for large-scale road networks. Because the analysis of large road-network graphs is now possible, planners can explore the effects of changes to traditional inspection techniques and scheduling. Case studies of road networks from six UK cities and the county of Norfolk are tested. The graph reduction process is also analysed on ten randomly generated road networks with different characteristics, to show its ability and give advice for suitable use.