Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Segregation of Gangliosides GM1 and GD3 on Cell Membranes, Isolated Membrane Rafts, and Defined Supported Lipid Monolayers

Abstract Lateral assemblies of sphingolipids, glycosphingolipids and cholesterol, termed rafts, are postulated to be present in biological membranes and to function in important cellular phenomena. We probed whether rafts are heterogeneous by determining the relative distribution of two gangliosides, GM1 and GD3, in artificial supported monolayers, in intact rat primary cerebellar granule neurones, and in membrane rafts isolated from rat cerebellum. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) using fluorophore labelled cholera toxin B subunit (which binds GM1) and mAb R24 (which binds GD3) revealed that GM1 spontaneously selfassociates but does not cocluster with GD3 in supported monolayers and on intact neurones. Cholera toxin and immunocytochemical labelling of isolated membrane rafts from rat cerebellum further demonstrated that GM1 does not colocalise with GD3. Furthermore, whereas the membrane raft resident proteins Lyn and caveolin both colocalise with GD3 in isolated membrane rafts, GM1 appears in separate and distinct aggregates. These data support prior reports that membrane rafts are heterogeneous, although the mechanisms for establishing and maintaining such heterogeneity remain to be determined.
Haloperidol and Cerebral Metabolism in the Conscious Rat: Relation to Pharmacokinetics

Abstract: The time course and distribution of alterations in cerebral metabolic activity after haloperidol administration were evaluated in relation to the pharmacokinetics of haloperidol and the topography of the dopaminergic system in the brain. Local cerebral glucose utilization was measured, using the 2‐deoxyglucose technique, in awake rats after i.p. administration of the dopamine antagonist haloperidol (0.5 or 1 mg/kg). Haloperidol significantly reduced glucose utilization in 60% of 59 brain regions examined, but produced a large increase in the lateral habenula. The regional distribution of changes in glucose utilization was not closely related to the known anatomy of the brain dopaminergic system. The time course of the effect of haloperidol on cerebral metabolism was different for the two doses studied (0.5 and 1 mg/kg), and was not simply related to estimated brain concentrations of haloperidol. However, a linear relation between the metabolic effect and the time‐integrated brain concentration was demonstrated. These results show that haloperidol has an effect on CNS metabolic activity that is more widespread than would be predicted from the topography of the dopaminergic system; this may be due to indirect propagation of the primary effects of haloperidol. The metabolic response to haloperidol depends on brain concentration and duration of exposure to the drug.
Fibroscan® practice improvement with a real-time assistance ultrasound tool: a premiminary study

Vibration-controlled transient elastography (VCTE¿) based on the Fibroscan® device (Echosens, Paris, France) is used to assess non invasively liver stiffness which is correlated to hepatic fibrosis. Currently, operators need to be trained to conduct successful examinations with the Fibroscan®. The liver is visually localized via TM and Ascan modes. Furthermore, the use of an ultrasound scanner is recommended to localize the liver on obese patients, and to identify the optimal measurement window. To facilitate the examination, we propose in this paper new indicators derived from the ultrasound signal to enable automated liver localization.
Strategies of Iranian nurses to overcome professional discrimination: An explorative qualitative study

Background: Discrimination is a situation in which individuals receive unequal social benefits in return for equal roles they play. They react to such a situation in different ways. Objective: This study aims at identifying the strategies used by Iranian nurses to overcome professional discrimination. Research design: This qualitative study was conducted with the participation of 23 nurses who worked in hospitals in the cities of Tehran, Tabriz, and Ilam. They were selected based on purposive sampling. Data were collected using deep and unstructured interviews in a period of time between May 2013 and June 2014. Interviews were simultaneously analyzed using conventional content analysis method after being transcribed. Ethical consideration: This study was approved by the Regional Committee of Medical Research Ethics. Also, voluntary participation, anonymity, and confidentiality were considered. Finding: “Presenting a positive image of oneself,” “objection,” and “expectation” were three themes extracted through data analysis. Discussion: Organizational discrimination puts nurses under stress and pressure. Nurses react to unfair behavior in different ways. These reactions are harmful to an organization and lead to negative consequences. Conclusion: Professional discrimination has made nurses adopt strategies which would lead to such consequences, which in turn influences their performance as nurses.
Quantification of Regional Cerebral Metabolic Rate of Oxygen Consumption in the Middle Cerebral Artery Territory

Introduction: The human brain predominantly relies on the aerobic metabolism of glucose to meet its enormous energy requirements [1]. A robust method for quantifying regional cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption (rCMRO2) would be of significant clinical utility in the workup of numerous vascular pathologies affecting the brain. For example, such a paradigm could be extended to identify patients with vascular territorial comprise at risk for ischemia or stroke. The few available MR based methods for absolute rCMRO2 estimation are hampered by long scan times and complex signal models with several underlying assumptions [2]. Alternate imaging methods such as positron emission tomography (PET) are limited in their use due to invasiveness and expense [3]. Here, as an extension to the recently reported method for determining global CMRO2 [4], we demonstrate the feasibility of determining lateralized rCMRO2 corresponding to the middle cerebral artery (MCA) territory by measuring regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in the MCA and regional venous oxygen saturation (rSvO2) in the largest superficial cortical vein draining into the superior sagittal sinus (SSS) corresponding to the MCA vascular territory.
SPIN : a User-centric Security Extension for In-home Networks

We present our ongoing work on a system to curb the security risks that the Internet of Things (IoT) is widely expected to introduce in smart homes, such as exposing large numbers of vulnerable IoT devices that can be misused for massive DDoS attacks on core Internet systems. Our system for Security and Privacy for Inhome Networks (SPIN) extends a user’s home network with network-level functions that monitor the security of IoT devices and automatically block their traffic in case of vulnerabilities or compromises. SPIN takes a unique user-centric approach in that it (1) allows users to easily deploy the system through one or more pluggable SPIN devices, (2) protects users’ privacy by keeping all processing and threat handling within the home, (3) allows users to configure the system with their security preferences, for instance in terms of traffic blocking behavior. SPIN is also unique because it embraces collaborative security by design by enabling the security community to provide malicious traffic patterns. The contribution of our work is the design of the SPIN system and a first implementation that enables users to block traffic from their IoT devices for privacy protection purposes.
An investigation of formant frequencies for cognitive load classification

The cognitive load experienced by a person can be used as an index to monitor task performance. Hence, the ability to measure the cognitive load of a person using speech can potentially be very useful, especially in areas such as air trafﬁc con-trol systems. Current research on cognitive load does not provide enough insight into how cognitive load affects the speech spectrum, or the speech production system. Since formants are closely related to the underlying vocal tract conﬁguration, this work aims to study the effect of cognitive load on vowel formant frequencies, and hence proposes the effective application of formant features to cognitive load classiﬁcation. Results from classiﬁcation performed on the Stroop test database show that formant features not only have lower dimensionality, but dynamic formant features can outperform conventionally used MFCC-based features by a relative improvement of 12%.
Design of Thin Cladding BIF Using Cutoff Wavelength Shortening Effect

We experimentally investigate the cutoff wavelength shortening effect that occurs when the cladding diameter is reduced. The influence of coating thickness, and thus, cladding diameter, on the transmission loss is also discussed. We derive an empirical model of cutoff wavelength and transmission loss as a function of the cladding diameter and coating thickness. The empirical model reveals that a further reduction in the cladding diameter of step index type bending-loss insensitive fiber (BIF) is possible. The validity of the proposed BIF design is confirmed using a 70-μm cladding diameter BIF and jumper cords. This BIF enables us to construct optical fiber networks with higher reliability.
Construction and evaluation of event graphs

Abstract Events play an important role in natural language processing and information retrieval due to numerous event-oriented texts and information needs. Many natural language processing and information retrieval applications could benefit from a structured event-oriented document representation. In this paper, we propose event graphs as a novel way of structuring event-based information from text. Nodes in event graphs represent the individual mentions of events, whereas edges represent the temporal and coreference relations between mentions. Contrary to previous natural language processing research, which has mainly focused on individual event extraction tasks, we describe a complete end-to-end system for event graph extraction from text. Our system is a three-stage pipeline that performs anchor extraction, argument extraction, and relation extraction (temporal relation extraction and event coreference resolution), each at a performance level comparable with the state of the art. We present EvExtra, a large newspaper corpus annotated with event mentions and event graphs, on which we train and evaluate our models. To measure the overall quality of the constructed event graphs, we propose two metrics based on the tensor product between automatically and manually constructed graphs. Finally, we evaluate the overall quality of event graphs with the proposed evaluation metrics and perform a headroom analysis of the system.
Automated Asset Discovery in Industrial Control Systems - Exploring the Problem

Vulnerabilities within Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) represent a significant safety, ecological and economical risk to owners, operators and nation states. Numerous examples from recent years are available to demonstrate that these vulnerabilities are being exploited by threat actors. One of the first steps required when securing legacy infrastructures is to obtain a complete asset (device) inventory, as is it impossible to protect a system without first understanding its content and connectivity. ICS environments offer significant challenges to the automated and safe discovery of network connected devices. Legacy ICS-based network services are often very fragile and networks are often sensitive to increased traffic, latency or interference, precluding the use of active scanning technologies. The decentralised nature of ICS traffic flows alongside the lack of capability of legacy network equipment make the use of standard passive scanning technologies difficult. This paper presents an overview and understanding of passive ICS discovery and provides the results of an experiment to show how existing passive scanning tools fare in an ICS environment in which port mirroring technologies are not ubiquitously supported.
Cost comparison between 3D and 2.5D integration

3D integration has been identified as a viable solution for maintaining the growth potential of integrated circuits both in transistor count and system functionality. At the same time the requirements for embedded system functionalities promote 2.5D integration solutions where interposers are used as large carriers to provide dense interconnections among chips. Using the cost model developed at imec, the cost of different 3D system integration approaches is analyzed. In addition the impact on the system cost of interposer testing strategies prior to stacking is investigated.
A Divide-and-Conquer Algorithm for the Symmetric Tridiagonal Eigenproblem

The authors present a stable and efficient divide-and-conquer algorithm for computing the spectral decomposition of an $N \times N$ symmetric tridiagonal matrix. The key elements are a new, stable method for finding the spectral decomposition of a symmetric arrowhead matrix and a new implementation of deflation. Numerical results show that this algorithm is competitive with bisection with inverse iteration, Cuppen's divide-and-conquer algorithm, and the QR algorithm for solving the symmetric tridiagonal eigenproblem.
Enhanced Cooperative Multi-agent Learning Algorithms (ECMLA) using Reinforcement Learning

Cooperation in agent learning (CL) is understood in a multiagent environment. The agents are competent for learning from both other agents' knowledge and expertise and their own experience. This paper proposes a new move toward Enhanced Cooperative Multi-agent Learning Algorithms (ECMLA) using reinforcement learning methods. The paper shows the performance comparison between multi-agent learning algorithms and enhanced cooperative multi-agent learning algorithms using reinforcement learning methods. We explore a new approach for dynamic products availability in a three retailer shops in the market. Retailers can cooperate with each other and can get benefit from cooperative information by their own policies that accurately represent their goals and interests. The retailers are the learning agents in the problem and use reinforcement learning to learn cooperatively from the environment. By making considerable theory on the seller's inventory policy, refill period, and the arrival procedure of the customers, the problem turn out to be Markov decision process model thus facilitating to apply learning algorithms. The novelty of this approach lies in the enhanced implementation of the reinforcement learning by means of Sarsa learning and Sarsa(λ) learning algorithms. The paper shows implementation results and performance comparison between multi-agent learning algorithms i.e. Strategy Sharing and Joint Reward algorithm and proposed cooperative multi-agent learning algorithms using reinforcement learning methods.
Tree communities rapidly alter soil microbial resistance and resilience to drought

Summary The ability of soil microbial communities to withstand and recover from disturbance or stress is important for the functional stability of forest ecosystems. However, the relationship between the community responses of soil microbes and variation in tree mixtures vs functional composition remains poorly understood. We investigated soil biochemical properties and soil microbial resistance and resilience to drought in three 4-year-old tree monocultures (Acer saccharum Marsh, Larix laricina (Duroi) K. Koch and Pinus strobus L. ) and two tree species combinations (L. laricina/A. saccharum and L. laricina/P. strobus) planted in a high-density tree field experiment located in southern Quebec, Canada. The experimentally imposed drought stress consisted of maintaining soil material for 30 days at 25% of water-holding capacity (WHC). Microbial biomass was assessed immediately after the water stress (resistance) and 15 and 30 days following drought (resilience). Results showed that tree communities influenced soil chemistry, soil respirometry properties and microbial resistance and resilience. We measured significant non-additive (i.e. both synergistic and antagonistic) effects of mixing tree species in some of the soil biochemical properties measured, mostly in the L. laricina/A. saccharum mixture. However, we did not find non-additive effects of tree mixtures on microbial resistance and resilience. A structural equation modelling analysis revealed that resistance and resilience were mostly modulated by direct effects of community-weighted means (CWM) of leaf litter lignin content and mineralizable N, and by indirect links from tree density and CWM of leaf litter N content via mineralizable N. This study suggests that tree species identity surpassed species mixtures as a key driver of soil microbial resistance and resilience. We showed a trade-off between microbial resistance and resilience in soil food webs, which is consistent with ecological theory. Our results indicate that differences in functional traits between tree species may rapidly be reflected in divergent soil biochemical properties and that these differences can in turn drive soil microbial resistance and resilience to drought.
A common surface antigen in influenza viruses from human and avian sources.

Summary Serological cross-reactions were detected between four avian influenza viruses and a human A 2/57 virus and between an avian (turkey/canada/63) and an equine (equi 2/miami/63) strain. The reactions were detected by strain-specific complement fixation tests and neuraminidase inhibition but not by haemagglutination-inhibition. Specific antiserum to the neuraminidase of an A 2/57 virus also reacted with the four avian viruses showing that it was the neuraminidase antigen on the avian and human A 2 virus that were antigenically closely related. The possibility that these viruses may have arisen by recombination between human and avian influenza viruses in nature is discussed.
Impact of Technological Innovation Capabilities on the Market Value of Firms

In the era of globalisation and with the advent of knowledge economies, organisational innovation has assumed a critical role in enhancing economic performance of firms. Proponents of the Resource Based View of the firm and its more recent extensions such as the Knowledge Based View and Dynamic Capabilities Theory have suggested that generation, diffusion and application of organisational knowledge could be the source of sustained competitive advantage and superior performance of firms. While there is near unanimity in accepting the vital role of innovation in a firm's performance, consensus on what constitutes organisational innovation and how to measure it has proven to be elusive so far. Most previous research in this area has conceptualised innovation through one or more dimensions of a firm's innovative capability using R&D of a firm only. The measurement of the construct has thus reflected this narrow conceptualisation with a single measure of R&D expenditure being the most often used proxy. This study utilises a broader definition of organisational innovation capabilities that includes the generation, dissemination and strength of innovative activity in a firm. The unique features of this study is that it uses multiple indicators of a firm's innovation profile along with lagged measures of market value using fixed effects panel data analysis.
Chemical shift‐based water/fat separation in the presence of susceptibility‐induced fat resonance shift

Chemical shift‐based water/fat separation methods have been emerging due to the growing clinical need for fat quantification in different body organs. Accurate quantification of proton‐density fat fraction requires the assessment of many confounding factors, including the need of modeling the presence of multiple peaks in the fat spectrum. Most recent quantitative chemical shift‐based water/fat separation approaches rely on a multipeak fat spectrum with precalibrated peak locations and precalibrated or self‐calibrated peak relative amplitudes. However, water/fat susceptibility differences can induce fat spectrum resonance shifts depending on the shape and orientation of the fatty inclusions. The effect is of particular interest in the skeletal muscle due to the anisotropic arrangement of extracellular lipids. In this work, the effect of susceptibility‐induced fat resonance shift on the fat fraction is characterized in a conventional complex‐based chemical shift‐based water/fat separation approach that does not model the susceptibility‐induced fat resonance shift. A novel algorithm is then proposed to quantify the resonance shift in a complex‐based chemical shift‐based water/fat separation approach that considers the fat resonance shift in the signal model, aiming to extract information about the orientation/geometry of lipids. The technique is validated in a phantom and preliminary in vivo results are shown in the calf musculature of healthy and diabetic subjects. Magn Reson Med, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Distinct roles and differential expression levels of Wnt5a mRNA isoforms in colorectal cancer cells

The canonical Wnt/β-catenin pathway is constitutively activated in more than 90% of colorectal cancer (CRC) cases in which β-catenin contributes to CRC cell growth and survival. In contrast to the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, the non-canonical Wnt pathway can antagonize functions of the canonical Wnt/β-catenin pathway. Wnt5a is a key factor in the non-canonical Wnt pathway, and it plays diverse roles in different types of cancers. It was shown that reintroducing Wnt5a into CRC cells resulted in inhibited cell proliferation and impaired cell motility. However, contradictory results were reported describing increased Wnt5a expression being associated with a poor prognosis of CRC patients. Recently, it was shown that the diverse roles of Wnt5a are due to two distinct roles of Wnt5a isoforms. However, the exact roles and functions of the Wnt5a isoforms in CRC remain largely unclear. The present study for the first time showed the ambiguous role of Wnt5a in CRC was due to the encoding of distinct roles of the various Wnt5a mRNA isoforms. A relatively high expression level of the Wnt5a-short (S) isoform transcript and a low expression level of the Wnt5a-long (L) isoform transcript were detected in CRC cell lines and specimens. In addition, high expression levels of the Wnt5a-S mRNA isoform and low expression levels of the Wnt5a-L mRNA isoform were significantly positively correlated with tumor depth of CRC patients. Furthermore, knockdown of the endogenous expression of the Wnt5a-S mRNA isoform in HCT116 cells drastically inhibited their growth ability by inducing apoptosis through induction of FASLG expression and reduction of TNFRSF11B expression. Moreover, reactivation of methylation inactivation of the Wnt5a-L mRNA isoform by treatment with 5-azacytidine (5-Aza) enhanced the siWnt5a-S isoform's ability to induce apoptosis. Finally, we showed that the simultaneous reactivation of Wnt5a-L mRNA isoform and knockdown of Wnt5a-S mRNA isoform expression enhanced siWnt5a-S isoform-induced apoptosis and siWnt5a-L isoform-regulated suppression of β-catenin expression in vitro. High expression levels of the Wnt5a-S mRNA isoform and low expression levels of the Wnt5a-L mRNA isoform were significantly positively correlated with high mRNA levels of β-catenin detection in vivo. Altogether, our study showed that, for the first time, different Wnt5a mRNA isoforms play distinct roles in CRC and can be used as novel prognostic markers for CRC in the future.