Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gender Inequality in the Life Course: Social Change and Stability in West Germany, 1975-1995

How do women fare in a society that is characterized by a set of institutions that promote income stability over the life course and thereby maintain and even amplify status difference? Using recently issued public files of social security records with longitudinal earnings data of well over half a million persons, this book describes gender inequality in earnings and labour market participation in Germany between 1975 and 1995. Because of the advanced industrial base of Germany, its relevance to other nations at the high end of production and consumer indices becomes apparent.
BIST Design For Static Neighbourhood Pattern Sensitive Fault Test

Traditional tests for memories are based on conventional fault models, involving the address decoder, individual memory cells and a limited coupling between them. Built-in self-test (BIST) solutions for testing memories today incorporate hardware for test pattern generation and application for a variety of the algorithms. The NPSF fault model is recognized as a high quality fault model for memory arrays, the excessive test algorithm time cost associated with it, compared to other fault models, restricts its adoption for memory testing. These faults are of different classes and types. More specifically, active, passive and static faults for distance 1 and 2 neighborhoods, of types 1 and 2, are considered. This paper presents a BIST implementation using cellular automata (CA) for detection of static neighborhood pattern sensitive faults (SNPSFs) in random access memories (RAMs).
Reducing Synchronization Overhead Using Hardware Transactional Memory

Transactional Memory (TM) is a high-level abstraction for synchronizing access to shared data that allows programmers to easily group shared data accesses into atomic blocks. Intel’s latest processor generation, Haswell, provides support for the Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX), an extension to the x86 instruction set that provides TM functionality. We modify LevelDB, a write optimized persistent key-value store, to use TSX for synchronization. A comparison of the TSX-augmented LevelDB with the original LevelDB is performed to assess the performance tradeoffs of TSX under various workloads. Our modified LevelDB exhibits increased performance on write-intensive simulated workloads, as well as 25% improvement in write throughput on the standard LevelDB benchmark suite.
Lumican – Derived Peptides Inhibit Melanoma Cell Growth and Migration

Lumican, a small leucine-rich proteoglycan of the extracellular matrix, presents potent anti-tumor properties. Previous works from our group showed that lumican inhibited melanoma cell migration and tumor growth in vitro and in vivo. Melanoma cells adhered to lumican, resulting in a remodeling of their actin cytoskeleton and preventing their migration. In addition, we identified a sequence of 17 amino acids within the lumican core protein, named lumcorin, which was able to inhibit cell chemotaxis and reproduce anti-migratory effect of lumican in vitro. The aim of the present study was to characterize the anti-tumor mechanism of action of lumcorin. Lumcorin significantly decreased the growth in monolayer and in soft agar of two melanoma cell lines – mice B16F1 and human SK-MEL-28 cells – in comparison to controls. Addition of lumcorin to serum free medium significantly inhibited spontaneous motility of these two melanoma cell lines. To characterize the mechanisms involved in the inhibition of cell migration by lumcorin, the status of the phosphorylation/dephosphorylation of proteins was examined. Inhibition of focal adhesion kinase phosphorylation was observed in presence of lumcorin. Since cancer cells have been shown to migrate and to invade by mechanisms that involve matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), the expression and activity of MMPs were analyzed. Lumcorin induced an accumulation of an intermediate form of MMP-14 (~59kDa), and inhibited MMP-14 activity. Additionally, we identified a short, 10 amino acids peptide within lumcorin sequence, which was able to reproduce its anti-tumor effect on melanoma cells. This peptide may have potential pharmacological applications.
Small protein B upregulates sensor kinase bvgS expression in Aeromonas veronii

Earlier studies reveal that Small protein B (SmpB), a class of well-conserved tmRNA-binding proteins, is essential for the trans-translation process, which functions as a system for translation surveillance and ribosome rescue. Here, we report a previously unrecognized mechanism by which SmpB alone positively regulates the expression of a sensor kinase, BvgS, in Aeromonas veronii. A reporter plasmid was constructed in which the promoter of bvgS was used to control the expression of the enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) gene. When the reporter plasmid was co-transformed with a SmpB expression construct into E. coli, the relative fluorescence intensity increased about threefold. Transformation with a truncated form of smpB gene showed that the C-terminus had little effect, while N-terminus unexpectedly increased eGFP production. Next, a series of SmpB mutants were generated by site-directed mutagenesis. When the mutants SmpB (G11S) or SmpB (E32AG) was used in the experiment, eGFP expression dropped significantly compared with that of wild type SmpB. Further, purified SmpB was shown to bind the promoter regions of bvgS in the agarose gel retardation assay. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis showed that eGFP transcript levels increased approximately 25-fold in the presence of SmpB. Likewise, smpB knockout decreased bvgS transcripts significantly in A. veronii, and also displayed a reduced capability in salt tolerance. Collectively, the data presented here will facilitate a deeper understanding of SmpB-mediated regulatory circuits as a transcriptional factor in A. veronii.
Cross-domain sentiment classification with word embeddings and canonical correlation analysis

A common approach for automatic sentiment classification is using classifiers trained on labeled text data (reviews, blog posts etc.) to predict the sentiment polarity of new data. Because people express sentiment differently in different domains, this approach requires annotated corpora for each domain. However, annotating data for every domain of interest is laborious and impractical. In this paper, we address the domain adaptation problem for sentiment classification. We explore the effect of generic methods for feature learning and feature subspace mapping, namely word embeddings and canonical correlation analysis (CCA), on cross-domain sentiment classifiers. We show that by using only such rather generic methods, it is possible to get results very competitive with those of sophisticated methods specially developed for the considered problem. An advantage of using word embeddings and CCA is their availability out-of-the-box, which is important for the applicability of the proposed method. Experiments on a widely used benchmark dataset shows that both word embeddings and CCA contribute to accuracy improvement and their combination provides the best results.
Periodic 17β-Estradiol Pretreatment Protects Rat Brain from Cerebral Ischemic Damage via Estrogen Receptor-β

Although chronic 17β-estradiol (E2) has been shown to be a cognition-preserving and neuroprotective agent in animal brain injury models, concern regarding its safety was raised by the failed translation of this phenomenon to the clinic. Previously, we demonstrated that a single bolus of E2 48 hr prior to ischemia protected the hippocampus from damage in ovariectomized rats via phosphorylation of cyclic-AMP response element binding protein, which requires activation of estrogen receptor subtype beta (ER-β). The current study tests the hypothesis that long-term periodic E2-treatment improves cognition and reduces post-ischemic hippocampal injury by means of ER-β activation. Ovariectomized rats were given ten injections of E2 at 48 hr intervals for 21 days. Hippocampal-dependent learning, memory and ischemic neuronal loss were monitored. Results demonstrated that periodic E2 treatments improved spatial learning, memory and ischemic neuronal survival in ovariectomized rats. Additionally, periodic ER-β agonist treatments every 48 hr improved post-ischemic cognition. Silencing of hippocampal ER-β attenuated E2-mediated ischemic protection suggesting that ER-β plays a key role in mediating the beneficial effects of periodic E2 treatments. This study emphasizes the need to investigate a periodic estrogen replacement regimen to reduce cognitive decline and cerebral ischemia incidents/impact in post-menopausal women.
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America

outspoken anger—these just some of the stereotypes black women face in contemporary American life. In Sister Citizen, Melissa HarrisPerry examines black women’s political and emotional responses to pervasive negative race and gender images. Sister Citizen instead explores how African American women understand themselves as citizens and what they expect from political organizing. Harris-Perry shows that the shared struggle to preserve an authentic self and secure recognition as a citizen links together black women in America.
Adaptive tuning of sparse matrix-vector multiplication on Cell architecture

Sparse matrix-vector multiplication is a kernel which is widely used in scientific applications. The sparse-data is usually stored in the compressed row storage format, which introduces the irregular reference pattern. It's a problem for the software cache on Cell architecture because the software cache line is always set to a specific size in traditional software cache strategies, which limits cache utilization and increases memory bandwidth overhead. In this paper, we propose an adaptive cache line strategy which continuously adjusts cache line size during SpMV multiplication execution. Therefore, the transferred data size and the execution time are significantly decreased. Moreover, a prefetching scheme is proposed to further improve performance. The evaluation indicates that our adaptive cache line scheme achieves a speedup factor from 2.11 to 3.57 compared to the traditional software cache approach. And the prefetching approach translates into speedup factor up to 3.2 for the SpMV multiplications.
Detection of candidate tumor driver genes using a fully integrated Bayesian approach

DNA copy number alterations (CNAs), including amplifications and deletions, can result in significant changes in gene expression and are closely related to the development and progression of many diseases, especially cancer. For example, CNA‐associated expression changes in certain genes (called candidate tumor driver genes) can alter the expression levels of many downstream genes through transcription regulation and cause cancer. Identification of such candidate tumor driver genes leads to discovery of novel therapeutic targets for personalized treatment of cancers. Several approaches have been developed for this purpose by using both copy number and gene expression data. In this study, we propose a Bayesian approach to identify candidate tumor driver genes, in which the copy number and gene expression data are modeled together, and the dependency between the two data types is modeled through conditional probabilities. The proposed joint modeling approach can identify CNA and differentially expressed genes simultaneously, leading to improved detection of candidate tumor driver genes and comprehensive understanding of underlying biological processes. We evaluated the proposed method in simulation studies, and then applied to a head and neck squamous cell carcinoma data set. Both simulation studies and data application show that the joint modeling approach can significantly improve the performance in identifying candidate tumor driver genes, when compared with other existing approaches. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Postmating Reproductive isolation between strains of Drosophila willistoni

ABSTRACT Speciation can occur through the presence of reproductive isolation barriers that impede mating, restrict cross-fertilization, or render inviable/sterile hybrid progeny. The D. willistoni subgroup is ideally suited for studies of speciation, with examples of both allopatry and sympatry, a range of isolation barriers, and the availability of one species complete genome sequence to facilitate genetic studies of divergence. D. w. willistoni has the largest geographic distribution among members of the Drosophila willistoni subgroup, spanning from Argentina to the southern United States, including the Caribbean islands. A subspecies of D. w. willistoni, D. w. quechua, is geographically separated by the Andes mountain range and has evolved unidirectional sterility, in that only male offspring of D. w. quechua females × D. w. willistoni males are sterile. Whether D. w. willistoni flies residing east of the Andes belong to one or more D. willistoni subspecies remains unresolved. Here we perform fecundity assays and show that F1 hybrid males produced from crosses between different strains found in Central America, North America, and northern Caribbean islands are reproductively isolated from South American and southern Caribbean island strains as a result of unidirectional hybrid male sterility. Our results show the existence of a reproductive isolation barrier between the northern and southern strains and suggest a subdivision of the previously identified D. willistoni willistoni species into 2 new subspecies.
Mechanoreceptors in the Cuticle of the Honey Bee : Fine Structure and Stimulus Mechanism

The distal nerve process of hair plate sensilla and campaniform sensilla contains a special terminal structure in the form of a bundle of tubules herein designated the "tubular body. " Physiological and morphological results indicate that compression at the site of this body probably acts as the stimulus at the cellular level. A ciliary structure separates an outer segment of the distal nerve process from the remaining distal fiber. Recent investigations show that the hair plates of insects function as position receptors in the joints and in this way can act as gravitation receptors (1, 2). An electrophysiological and microscopic study of the single receptor elements brought results which related to the mechanism of stimulation in the nerve endings (3). In the study reported here the morphological basis of the primary receptor processes was investigated by electron microscopy. The objects studied were the cervical hair plates of the honey bee (2, 3) and, for comparison, the campaniform sensilla of the head. The sensilla of the hair plates and the campaniform sensilla each contain only one receptor cell of the bipolar type. The distal process of the cell enters through a canal in the cuticle and connects with the joint membrane in the hair plate sensillum, and with the cap membrane in the campaniform sensillum (Fig. 1). These cuticular structures probably consist of the rubber-like protein resilin (4), as indicated by their special staining properties, by their extraordinary deformability in the joint membrane, by their stress-birefringence, and by their digestability by pepsin. Both types of sensillum have a nearly bilaterally symmetrical form: the hairs in their resting position lean against an overhang of the cuticle at one side and can be freely pivoted only in the opposite direction; the campaniform sensilla have an elliptic form, when observed from
Translation of EEG Spatial Filters from Resting to Motor Imagery Using Independent Component Analysis

Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) often use spatial filters to improve signal-to-noise ratio of task-related EEG activities. To obtain robust spatial filters, large amounts of labeled data, which are often expensive and labor-intensive to obtain, need to be collected in a training procedure before online BCI control. Several studies have recently developed zero-training methods using a session-to-session scenario in order to alleviate this problem. To our knowledge, a state-to-state translation, which applies spatial filters derived from one state to another, has never been reported. This study proposes a state-to-state, zero-training method to construct spatial filters for extracting EEG changes induced by motor imagery. Independent component analysis (ICA) was separately applied to the multi-channel EEG in the resting and the motor imagery states to obtain motor-related spatial filters. The resultant spatial filters were then applied to single-trial EEG to differentiate left- and right-hand imagery movements. On a motor imagery dataset collected from nine subjects, comparable classification accuracies were obtained by using ICA-based spatial filters derived from the two states (motor imagery: 87.0%, resting: 85.9%), which were both significantly higher than the accuracy achieved by using monopolar scalp EEG data (80.4%). The proposed method considerably increases the practicality of BCI systems in real-world environments because it is less sensitive to electrode misalignment across different sessions or days and does not require annotated pilot data to derive spatial filters.
PKC-Mediated ZYG1 Phosphorylation Induces Fusion of Myoblasts as well as of Dictyostelium Cells

We have previously demonstrated that a novel protein ZYG1 induces sexual cell fusion (zygote formation) of Dictyostelium cells. In the process of cell fusion, involvements of signal transduction pathways via Ca2+ and PKC (protein kinase C) have been suggested because zygote formation is greatly enhanced by PKC activators. In fact, there are several deduced sites phosphorylated by PKC in ZYG1 protein. Thereupon, we designed the present work to examine whether or not ZYG1 is actually phosphorylated by PKC and localized at the regions of cell-cell contacts where cell fusion occurs. These were ascertained, suggesting that ZYG1 might be the target protein for PKC. A humanized version of zyg1 cDNA (mzyg1) was introduced into myoblasts to know if ZYG1 is also effective in cell fusion of myoblasts. Quite interestingly, enforced expression of ZYG1 in myoblasts was found to induce markedly their cell fusion, thus strongly suggesting the existence of a common signaling pathway for cell fusion beyond the difference of species.
Isotropic Fractionator: A Simple, Rapid Method for the Quantification of Total Cell and Neuron Numbers in the Brain

Stereological techniques that estimate cell numbers must be restricted to well defined structures of isotropic architecture and therefore do not apply to the whole brain or to large neural regions. We developed a novel, fast, and inexpensive method to quantify total numbers of neuronal and non-neuronal cells in the brain or any dissectable regions thereof. It consists of transforming highly anisotropic brain structures into homogeneous, isotropic suspensions of cell nuclei, which can be counted and identified immunocytochemically as neuronal or non-neuronal. Estimates of total cell, neuronal, and non-neuronal numbers can be obtained in 24 h and vary by <10% among animals. Because the estimates obtained are independent of brain volume, they can be used in comparative studies of brain-volume variation among species and in studies of phylogenesis, development, adult neurogenesis, and pathology. Applying this method to the adult rat brain, we show, for example, that it contains ∼330 million cells, of which 200 million are neurons, and almost 70% of these are located in the cerebellum alone. Moreover, contrary to what is commonly assumed in the literature, we show that glial cells are not the majority in the rat brain.
Transdirectional Coupled-Line Couplers Implemented by Periodical Shunt Capacitors

Transdirectional coupled-line couplers have the benefit of perfect input/output isolation. However, for a coupled-line coupler to operate in transdirectional mode, both phase- and impedance-coupling are required, which is difficult to meet by traditional coupled lines. To overcome this problem, this paper presents a novel transdirectional coupled-line coupler implemented by periodically loaded coupled lines. Two 3-dB 90° hybrids are designed and built to verify this concept. The first one was built on FR-4 substrates and operated at 3.6 GHz. The second one was built on Roger RT/Duroid 5870 substrates with length reduced and operated at 3.6 GHz. A good agreement with simulated results is reached.
A soft decoding scheme for vector quantization over a CDMA channel

The optimal decoding of vector quantization (VQ) over a code-division multiple-access (CDMA) channel is too complicated for systems with a medium-to-large number of users. This paper presents a low-complexity, suboptimal decoder for VQ over a CDMA channel. The proposed decoder is built from a soft-output multiuser detector, a soft bit estimator, and the optimal soft VQ decoding of an individual user. Simulation results obtained over both additive white Gaussian noise and flat Rayleigh fading channels show that with a lower complexity and good performance, the proposed decoding scheme is an attractive alternative to the more complicated optimal decoder.
Associative priming in a masked perceptual identification task: Evidence for automatic processes

Two experiments investigated the influence of automatic and strategic processes on associative priming effects in a perceptual identification task in which prime-target pairs are briefly presented and masked. In this paradigm, priming is defined as a higher percentage of correctly identified targets for related pairs than for unrelated pairs. In Experiment 1, priming was obtained for mediated word pairs. This mediated priming effect was affected neither by the presence of direct associations nor by the presentation time of the primes, indicating that automatic priming effects play a role in perceptual identification. Experiment 2 showed that the priming effect was not affected by the proportion (.90 vs.10) of related pairs if primes were presented briefly to prevent their identification. However, a large proportion effect was found when primes were presented for 1000 ms so that they were clearly visible. These results indicate that priming in a masked perceptual identification task is the result of automatic processes and is not affected by strategies. The present paradigm provides a valuable alternative to more commonly used tasks such as lexical decision.
Hierarchical Binary Vector Quantisation Classiiers for Handwritten Character Recognition Hierarchical Binary Vector Quantisation Classiiers for Handwritten Character Recognition

We report on a hierarchical nearest-neighbor classiier algorithm which we conceived for the recognition of handwritten characters. Distances to all classes are used both as a decision criterion in the classiication hierarchy and for generating class membership coeecients. These likelihood values can be easily integrated in a multi-agent cognitive environment. We introduce a new completely binary version of the k-means cluster algorithm and explain how a highly eecient implementation can be achieved using binary patterns. Performances for large character databases are presented.
Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology 1-1 , Asahidai , Nomi , Ishikawa , 923-1292

In this paper, we present a Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) framework for the Clause Splitting problem. We adapt the CRFs model to this problem in order to use a very large sets of arbitrary, overlapping and non-independent features. In addition, we propose the use of rich linguistic information along with a new bottomup dynamic algorithm for decoding to split a sentence into clauses. The experiments show that our result are competitive with the previous results.