Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MITF and PAX3 Play Distinct Roles in Melanoma Cell Migration; Outline of a “Genetic Switch” Theory Involving MITF and PAX3 in Proliferative and Invasive Phenotypes of Melanoma

Melanoma is a very aggressive neoplasm with a propensity to undergo progression and invasion early in its evolution. The molecular pathways underpinning invasion in melanoma are now just beginning to be elucidated, but a clear understanding of the transition from non-invasive to invasive melanoma cells remains elusive. Microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF), is thought to be a central player in melanoma biology, and it controls many aspects of the phenotypic expression of the melanocytic lineage. However, recently the paired box transcription factor PAX3 was shown to transcriptionally activate POU3F2/BRN2, leading to direct repression of MITF expression. Here we present a theory to explain melanoma phenotype switching and discuss the predictions that this theory makes. One prediction is that independent and opposing roles for MITF and PAX3 in melanoma would be expected, and we present empirical evidence supporting this: in melanoma tissues PAX3 expression occurs independently of MITF, and PAX3 does not play a key role in melanoma cell proliferation. Furthermore, we show that knockdown of PAX3 inhibits cell migration in a group of “lower MITF” melanoma cell lines, while knockdown of MITF promotes cell migration in a complementary “higher MITF” group of melanoma cell lines. Moreover, the morphological effects of knocking down PAX3 versus MITF in melanoma cells were found to differ. While these data support the notion of independent roles for MITF and PAX3, additional experiments are required to provide robust examination of the proposed genetic switch theory. Only upon clear delineation of the mechanisms associated with progression and invasion of melanoma cells will successful treatments for invasive melanoma be developed.
Melanosomal Dynamics Assessed with a Live-Cell Fluorescent Melanosomal Marker

Melanocytes present in skin and other organs synthesize and store melanin pigment within membrane-delimited organelles called melanosomes. Exposure of human skin to ultraviolet radiation (UV) stimulates melanin production in melanosomes, followed by transfer of melanosomes from melanocytes to neighboring keratinocytes. Melanosomal function is critical for protecting skin against UV radiation, but the mechanisms underlying melanosomal movement and transfer are not well understood. Here we report a novel fluorescent melanosomal marker, which we used to measure real-time melanosomal dynamics in live human epidermal melanocytes (HEMs) and transfer in melanocyte-keratinocyte co-cultures. A fluorescent fusion protein of Ocular Albinism 1 (OA1) localized to melanosomes in both B16-F1 cells and HEMs, and its expression did not significantly alter melanosomal distribution. Live-cell tracking of OA1-GFP-tagged melanosomes revealed a bimodal kinetic profile, with melanosomes exhibiting combinations of slow and fast movement. We also found that exposure to UV radiation increased the fraction of melanosomes exhibiting fast versus slow movement. In addition, using OA1-GFP in live co-cultures, we monitored melanosomal transfer using time-lapse microscopy. These results highlight OA1-GFP as a specific and effective melanosomal marker for live-cell studies, reveal new aspects of melanosomal dynamics and transfer, and are relevant to understanding the skin’s physiological response to UV radiation.
Image enhancement with symmetric Daubechies wavelets

It is shown that analyses based on Symmetric Daubechies Wavelets (SDW) lead to a multiresolution form of the Laplacian operator. This property, which is related to the complex values of the SDWs, gives a way to new methods of image enhancement applications. After a brief recall of the construction and main properties of the SDW, we propose a representation of the sharpening operator at different scales and we discuss the `importance of the phase' of the complex wavelet coefficients.
Effect of methohexitone, diazepam and sodium 4-hydroxybutyrate on short-term memory.

Short-term memory following the intravenous injection of methohexitone (0.15 mg/kg), diazepam (0.05 mg/kg) and sodium 4-hydroxybutyrate (10 mg/kg) has been examined by means of a visually presented digit retention test with intervals of 4 and 20 seconds before recall. No significant change was found with the 4-second interval; statistically significant impairment was found with the 20-second interval. It is postulated that the effect of these drugs is to accelerate decay of the memory trace, thus impairing its consolidation and producing anterograde amnesia. A versatile computerized test of short-term memory is described.
Bone Morphogenetic Protein-6 Is a Marker of Serous Acinar Cell Differentiation in Normal and Neoplastic Human Salivary Gland 1

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP-6, also known as vegetal-pale-generelated and decaplentaplegic-vegetal-related) is a member of the transforming growth factorb superfamily of multifunctional signaling molecules. BMP-6 appears to play various biological roles in developing tissues, including regulation of epithelial differentiation. To study the possible involvement of BMP-6 in normal and neoplastic human salivary glands, we compared its mRNA and protein expression in 4 fetal and 15 adult salivary glands and in 22 benign and 32 malignant salivary gland tumors. In situ hybridization and Northern blot analysis indicated that BMP-6 transcripts are expressed at low levels in acinar cells of adult submandibular glands but not in ductal or stromal cells. BMP-6 was immunolocated specifically in serous acini of parotid and submandibular glands. None was found in primitive fetal acini or any other types of cell in adult salivary glands, including mucous acini and epithelial cells of intercalated, striated, and excretory ducts. All 16 cases of acinic cell carcinoma consistently exhibited cytoplasmic BMP-6 staining in the acinar tumor cells. Other cell types in these tumors, including intercalated duct-like cells, clear, vacuolated cells, and nonspecific glandular cells, exhibited no cytoplasmic BMP-6 staining. Other benign and malignant salivary gland tumors lacked BMP-6 immunoreactivity, except in areas of squamous differentiation. The results indicate that in salivary glands, BMP-6 expression is uniquely associated with acinar cell differentiation and suggest that BMP-6 may play a role in salivary gland function. More importantly, our experience of differential diagnostic problems related to salivary gland tumors suggests that the demonstration of consistent and specific BMP-6 immunoreactivity in acinic cell carcinoma is likely to be of clinical value.
Central diabetes insipidus associated with impaired renal aquaporin-1 expression in mice lacking liver X receptor β

The present study demonstrates a key role for the oxysterol receptor liver X receptor β (LXRβ) in the etiology of diabetes insipidus (DI). Given free access to water, LXRβ−/− but not LXRα−/− mice exhibited polyuria (abnormal daily excretion of highly diluted urine) and polydipsia (increased water intake), both features of diabetes insipidus. LXRβ−/− mice responded to 24-h dehydration with a decreased urine volume and increased urine osmolality. To determine whether the DI was of central or nephrogenic origin, we examined the responsiveness of the kidney to arginine vasopressin (AVP). An i.p. injection of AVP to LXRβ−/− mice revealed a partial kidney response: There was no effect on urine volume, but there was a significant increase of urine osmolality, suggesting that DI may be caused by a defect in central production of AVP. In the brain of WT mice LXRβ was expressed in the nuclei of magnocellular neurons in the supraoptic and paraventricular nuclei of the hypothalamus. In LXRβ−/− mice the expression of AVP was markedly decreased in the magnocellular neurons as well as in urine collected over a 24-h period. The persistent high urine volume after AVP administration was traced to a reduction in aquaporin-1 expression in the kidney of LXRβ−/− mice. The LXR agonist (GW3965) in WT mice elicited an increase in urine osmolality, suggesting that LXRβ is a key receptor in controlling water balance with targets in both the brain and kidney, and it could be a therapeutic target in disorders of water balance.
Word Lattice Reranking for Chinese Word Segmentation and Part-of-Speech Tagging

In this paper, we describe a new reranking strategy named word lattice reranking, for the task of joint Chinese word segmentation and part-of-speech (POS) tagging. As a derivation of the forest reranking for parsing (Huang, 2008), this strategy reranks on the pruned word lattice, which potentially contains much more candidates while using less storage, compared with the traditional n-best list reranking. With a perceptron classifier trained with local features as the baseline, word lattice reranking performs reranking with non-local features that can't be easily incorporated into the perceptron baseline. Experimental results show that, this strategy achieves improvement on both segmentation and POS tagging, above the perceptron baseline and the n-best list reranking.
System Architecture and Operational Concept Validation through Modeling and Simulation

System and software architectures are the foundation on which network centric communications platforms are constructed and must be defined early in the design process. If flaws lurk in these architectures well into a project, costly and time consuming redesign may be necessary. The capability to perform system and software architecture modeling and verification is enabled by incorporating recently available model driven design tools into the system development process. These tools provide standard based UML modeling capabilities that allow for software and system architecture design, as well as DoDAF modeling capabilities for documenting system architecture and verifying operational scenarios. Once created, these models are executed to evaluate system operation for scenarios of interest. This paper describes the use of model driven design tools to verify system and software architecture and operational concepts early in the project design process
A chemometric approach to the estimation of the absorption spectra of dye probe merocyanine 540 in aqueous and phospholipid environments.

Merocyanine 540 (MC540) is a widely used dye probe for membranous environments. However, fundamental knowledge of the spectral features of this dye in aqueous and hydrophobic environments is still lacking. Such knowledge is important because biomembranes involve a hydrophobic environment surrounded by a hydrophilic environment. Because many investigations so far have been performed based on indistinct spectral estimations, the interpretation of the data obtained using this dye as a fluorescent transmembrane probe remains controversial. In order to determine the exact spectra in both aqueous and hydrophobic environments, we adopted principal factor analysis (PFA), a method of multivariate analysis. The PFA method can also determine the number of molecular species present in the reaction mixture, which is three in pure water and two in phospholipid suspension. Two of the species in both water and phospholipid suspension were the monomer and dimer. The third species in water was the trimer, but its amount was so small at 10 microM MC540 solution that the spectral data in water can be approximated neglecting this molecular species. The monomer spectrum changed its form markedly with a bathochromic shift when transferred from the water to phospholipid environment, whereas the dimer remained similar in its shape except for a remarkable red shift. In water, the dissociation constants, K(1) and K(2), for the assumed stacking-model reactions, M+M <--> M(2) and M+M(2) <--> M(3), were 3.1 x 10(-4) M and 5.7 x 10(-4) M, respectively. In the phospholipid environment, the dissociation constant K* for the assumed stacking-model reaction, M(*)+M(*) <--> *M(2), was 1.9x10(-5)M. The fluorescent intensities of MC540 were also measured in both water and phospholipid environments. A comparison based on the absorption and fluorescence spectra suggested that the temporal increase in the amount of the monomer on the excitable membrane contributes to the fluorescent intensity change observed in the transmembrane potential change.
A high-gain planar dual reflector antenna

A high-gain planar antenna model is proposed in this article. The dual reflector function is attained by using metalized via-holes as the reflector with the shape of hyperbola and parabola. The antenna is fed with the, Η-horn of SIW. Simulation in CST shows good impedance matching realized from 32.7 to 37.6 GHz with the maximum gain over 16 dBi throughout the entire band. This antenna can be widely used in millimeter radar or communication system.
An evaluation of parallel simulated annealing strategies with application to standard cell placement

Simulated annealing, a methodology for solving combinatorial optimization problems, is a very computationally expensive algorithm and, as such, numerous researchers have undertaken efforts to parallelize it. In this paper, we investigate three of these parallel simulated annealing strategies when applied to standard cell placement, specifically the TimberWolfSC placement tool. We have examined a parallel moves strategy, as well as two new approaches to parallel cell placement-multiple Markov chains and speculative computation. These algorithms have been implemented in ProperPLACE, our parallel cell placement application, as part of the ProperCAD II project. We have constructed ProperPLACE so that it is portable across a wide range of parallel architectures. Our parallel moves algorithm uses novel approaches to dynamic message sizing, message prioritization, and error control. We show that parallel moves and multiple Markov chains are effective approaches to parallel simulated annealing when applied to TimberWolfSC, yet speculative computation is wholly inadequate.
A novel, signal model based approach to lane detection for use in intersection assistance

Detection of marked intersections poses challenging demands on the quality of a lane marking detection. Therefore, a novel approach to single lane marking segment detection is proposed that enforces the detected objects to be of rectangular shape. Two algorithms are given to incorporate this knowledge into the detection process. The first algorithm minimizes the squared error between the grey value image and a two dimensional grey value model of the lane marking segment. The second algorithm adaptively binarizes image portions and then fits a total least squares line to the pixel positions in the world. Test results on real imagery are presented. It is found that the integration of this knowledge considerably improves detection results, when compared with a generic edge detector
A Comprehensive Ontology for Knowledge Representation in the Internet of Things

Semantic modeling for the Internet of Things has become fundamental to resolve the problem of interoperability given the distributed and heterogeneous nature of the "Things". Most of the current research has primarily focused on devices and resources modeling while paid less attention on access and utilisation of the information generated by the things. The idea that things are able to expose standard service interfaces coincides with the service oriented computing and more importantly, represents a scalable means for business services and applications that need context awareness and intelligence to access and consume the physical world information. We present the design of a comprehensive description ontology for knowledge representation in the domain of Internet of Things and discuss how it can be used to support tasks such as service discovery, testing and dynamic composition.
Autonomous driving at Ulm University: A modular, robust, and sensor-independent fusion approach

The project “Autonomous Driving” at Ulm University aims at advancing highly-automated driving with close-to-market sensors while ensuring easy exchangeability of the particular components. In this contribution, the experimental vehicle that was realized during the project is presented along with its software modules. To achieve the mentioned goals, a sophisticated fusion approach for robust environment perception is essential. Apart from the necessary motion planning algorithms, this paper thus focuses on the sensor-independent fusion scheme. It allows for an efficient sensor replacement and realizes redundancy by using probabilistic and generic interfaces. Redundancy is ensured by utilizing multiple sensors of different types in crucial modules like grid mapping, localization and tracking. Furthermore, the combination of the module outputs to a consistent environment model is achieved by employing their probabilistic representation. The performance of the vehicle is discussed using the experience from numerous autonomous driving tests on public roads.
Parametric Templates: A New Enzyme Active-Site Prediction Algorithm

It is an important problem to find functionally analogous enzymes based on the local structures of active-sites. Conventional methods predict active-sites by computing the deviations from the local-structure templates with no statistical parameters. We present a new statistical algorithm that uses parametric templates to compute the deviations of local sites. The parameters of the templates are determined automatically from a set of known active-sites. In this work, promising experimental results are shown through comparison of parametric templates with conventional templates.
Criminalization and Off-Street Sex Work in Canada

La recherche présentée dans cet article se penche sur les perceptions qu’ont les femmes des lois criminelles relatives à la prostitution et leur incidence sur les activités liées à l’industrie du sexe en lieu clos au Canada. Les résultats d’entrevues menées auprès de 10 femmes révèlent que la criminalisation de la prostitution a de nombreuses répercussions sur la santé et la sécurité des travailleuses du sexe, qui exercent leur métier en lieu clos : celles-ci peuvent moins compter sur la protection policière; elles sont souvent mal informées de leurs droits au Canada; elles doivent faire face aux conséquences personnelles, juridiques et sociales qui découlent de leur association à une activité criminalisée leur capacité d’atténuer les risques est grandement limitée en raison de la criminalisation d’activités connexes à la prostitution; leur santé est directement affectée en raison de leur isolement, du stress qu’elles vivent et de l’information limitée dont elles disposent relativement à la gestion de leur santé sexuelle. Les femmes interviewées formulent certains conseils relatifs à la réglementation future de l’industrie du sexe au Canada et recommandent ardemment que le commerce du sexe entre adultes consentants ne soit plus criminalisé au Canada.
Efficient Monte Carlo Image Analysis for the Location of Vascular Entity

Tubular shaped networks appear not only in medical images like X-ray-, time-of-flight MRI- or CT-angiograms but also in microscopic images of neuronal networks. We present EMILOVE (Efficient Monte-Carlo Image-analysis for the Location Of Vascular Entity), a novel modeling algorithm for tubular networks in biomedical images. The model is constructed using tablet shaped particles and edges connecting them. The particles encode the intrinsic information of tubular structure, including position, scale and orientation. The edges connecting the particles determine the topology of the networks. For simulated data, EMILOVE was able to accurately extract the tubular network. EMILOVE showed high performance in real data as well; it successfully modeled vascular networks in real cerebral X-ray and time-of-flight MRI angiograms. We also show some promising, preliminary results on microscopic images of neurons.
Heat-Assisted Batch Settling of Mineral Suspensions in Inclined Containers

In mineral processing, the common requirement for progressively finer milling due to the decreasing of ore grades implies the need for more challenging water recovery conditions in thickeners. Several mining operations exist in arid areas, where water recovery becomes critical. The present paper explores the process of particle separation in batch inclined settlers where the downward facing wall is subject to heating. To this purpose, two-dimensional numerical simulations using a mixture model have been run for a number of combinations of temperature jumps at the downward facing fall, particle diameters, and concentrations. Results show that, for particle sizes on the order of 10 µm, heating has a significant effect on the particle settling velocity at the bottom, but it also promotes particle resuspension, affecting the particle concentration at the supernatant layer. The initial concentration also affects settling: for the concentration range tested (8%–15% by volume), when re-normalized by the average concentration, particle accumulation rates at the bottom were found to be lower for higher average concentrations, thus suggesting that the separation process is more efficient at lower concentrations.
The BERT2 infrastructure: An integrated system for the study of human-robot interaction

Bristol Elumotion Robot Torso Version 2 (BERT2) is a humanoid robot currently in development at Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL). In this paper we present the current state of development and demonstrate how the integration of several advanced subsystems (of commercial and non-commercial nature) within a heterogeneous computing infrastructure enables us to construct a unique platform ideally suited to investigate complex human-robot interaction (HRI). We particularly focus on two important domains of non-verbal communication, namely gaze and pointing gestures in a real-world 3D setting and outline our thinking in terms of safety, ambiguities and further experimental work.
Brain Structural Alterations in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Patients with Autogenous and Reactive Obsessions

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a clinically heterogeneous condition. Although structural brain alterations have been consistently reported in OCD, their interaction with particular clinical subtypes deserves further examination. Among other approaches, a two-group classification in patients with autogenous and reactive obsessions has been proposed. The purpose of the present study was to assess, by means of a voxel-based morphometry analysis, the putative brain structural correlates of this classification scheme in OCD patients. Ninety-five OCD patients and 95 healthy controls were recruited. Patients were divided into autogenous (n = 30) and reactive (n = 65) sub-groups. A structural magnetic resonance image was acquired for each participant and pre-processed with SPM8 software to obtain a volume-modulated gray matter map. Whole-brain and voxel-wise comparisons between the study groups were then performed. In comparison to the autogenous group, reactive patients showed larger gray matter volumes in the right Rolandic operculum. When compared to healthy controls, reactive patients showed larger volumes in the putamen (bilaterally), while autogenous patients showed a smaller left anterior temporal lobe. Also in comparison to healthy controls, the right middle temporal gyrus was smaller in both patient subgroups. Our results suggest that autogenous and reactive obsessions depend on partially dissimilar neural substrates. Our findings provide some neurobiological support for this classification scheme and contribute to unraveling the neurobiological basis of clinical heterogeneity in OCD.