Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Genomic Imprinting Defect in Mice Traced to a Single Gene

Mammalian androgenones have two paternally or sperm-derived genomes. In mice (Mus musculus) they die at peri-implantation due to the misexpression of imprinted genes—the genes that are expressed monoallelically according to the parent of origin. The misexpressions involved are poorly defined. To gain further insight, we examined the causes of midgestation death of embryos with paternal duplication (PatDp) of distal chromosome 7 (dist7), a region replete with imprinted genes. PatDp(dist7) embryos have a similar phenotype to mice with a knockout of a maternally expressed imprinted gene, Ascl2 [achaete-scute complex homolog-like 2 (Drosophila)], and their death at midgestation could result from two inactive paternal copies of this gene. However, other dist7 misexpressions could duplicate this phenotype, and the potential epistatic load is undefined. We show that an Ascl2 transgene is able to promote the development of PatDp(dist7) embryos to term, providing strong evidence that Ascl2 is the only imprinted gene in the genome for which PatDp results in early embryonic death. While some of the defects in perinatal transgenic PatDp(dist7) fetuses were consistent with known misexpressions of dist7 imprinted genes, the overall phenotype indicates a role for additional undefined misexpressions of imprinted genes. This study provides implications for the human imprinting-related fetal overgrowth disorder, Beckwith–Wiedemann syndrome.
An integrated content and metadata based retrieval system for art

A new approach to image retrieval is presented in the domain of museum and gallery image collections. Specialist algorithms, developed to address specific retrieval tasks, are combined with more conventional content and metadata retrieval approaches, and implemented within a distributed architecture to provide cross-collection searching and navigation in a seamless way. External systems can access the different collections using interoperability protocols and open standards, which were extended to accommodate content based as well as text based retrieval paradigms. After a brief overview of the complete system, we describe the novel design and evaluation of some of the specialist image analysis algorithms, including a method for image retrieval based on sub-image queries, retrievals based on very low quality images and retrieval using canvas crack patterns. We show how effective retrieval results can be achieved by real end-users consisting of major museums and galleries, accessing the distributed, but integrated, digital collections.
Physical activity profile in heart failure patients from a Brazilian tertiary cardiology hospital.

BACKGROUND Physical activity (PA) has proven benefits in the primary prevention of heart diseases such as heart failure (HF). Although it is well known, HF PA habits and physicians' advice have been poorly described. The aim of this study was to investigate if physicians were advising HF patients to exercise and to quantify patients' exercise profiles in a complex cardiology hospital. METHODS All 131 HF patients (80 male, average age 53 +/- 10 years, NYHA class I-V, left ventricular ejection fraction 35 +/- 11%, 35 ischemic, 35 idiopatic, 32 hypertensive and 29 with Chagas disease) went to the hospital for a HF routine check-up. On this occasion, after seeing the physician , we asked the patients if the physician had advised them about PA. Then, we asked them to fill in the international physical activity questionnaire (IPQA) Short Form to classify their PA level. RESULTS Our data showed a significant difference between patients who had received any kind of PA advice from physicians (36%) and those who had not (64%, p<0.0001). Using the IPAQ criteria, of the 36% of patients who had received advice, 12.4% were classified as low and 23.6% as moderate. Of the 64% of patients who did not receive advice, 26.8% were classified as low and 37.2% as moderate. Etiology (except Chagas), functional class, ejection fraction, sex and age did not influence the PA profile. CONCLUSIONS Physicians at a tertiary cardiology hospital were not giving patients satisfactory advice as to PA. Our data supports the need to strengthen exercise encouragement by physicians and for complementary studies on this area.
New Findings Regarding Return Autocorrelation Anomalies and the Importance of Non-Trading Periods

In this paper, differences in return autocorrelation across weekdays have been investigated. Our research provides strong evidence of the importance on non-trading periods, not only weekends and holidays but also overnight closings, to explain return autocorrelation anomalies. While stock returns are highly autocorrelated, specially on Mondays, when daily returns are computed on a open-to-close basis, they do not exhibit any significant level of autocorrelation. Our results are compatible with the information processing hypotheses as an explanation of the weekend effect.
Factors influencing technology integration in teaching: a Taiwanese perspective

Although the use of computer technology in classrooms is an innovative approach to teaching, teachers with creativity might not use technology as intensively as they use other creative strategies in the classroom. Eight teachers who won an award for creative teaching were interviewed in order to identify the factors affecting their use of technology in creative teaching. Teachers’ perceptions about technology use were studied. Two major issues were explored. First, we studied how teachers integrated technology into creative teaching; we then identified the factors that influenced teachers’ use of technology in teaching. The identified factors were classified into four categories: environmental, personal, social and curricular issues.
Pivot tracing

Monitoring and troubleshooting distributed systems are notoriously difficult; potential problems are complex, varied, and unpredictable. The monitoring and diagnosis tools commonly used today---logs, counters, and metrics---have two important limitations: what gets recorded is defined a priori, and the information is recorded in a component- or machine-centric way, making it extremely hard to correlate events that cross these boundaries. This paper presents Pivot Tracing, a monitoring framework for distributed systems that addresses both limitations by combining dynamic instrumentation with a novel relational operator: the happened-before join. Pivot Tracing gives users, at runtime, the ability to define arbitrary metrics at one point of the system, while being able to select, filter, and group by events meaningful at other parts of the system, even when crossing component or machine boundaries. Pivot Tracing does not correlate cross-component events using expensive global aggregations, nor does it perform offline analysis. Instead, Pivot Tracing directly correlates events as they happen by piggybacking metadata alongside requests as they execute. This gives Pivot Tracing low runtime overhead---less than 1% for many cross-component monitoring queries.
Off-Line Handwritten Character Recognition of Devnagari Script

In this paper we present a system towards the recognition of off-line handwritten characters of Devnagari, the most popular script in India. The features used for recognition purpose are mainly based on directional information obtained from the arc tangent of the gradient. To get the feature, at first, a 2times2 mean filtering is applied 4 times on the gray level image and a non-linear size normalization is done on the image. The normalized image is then segmented to 49times49 blocks and a Roberts filter is applied to obtain gradient image. Next, the arc tangent of the gradient (direction of gradient) is initially quantized into 32 directions and the strength of the gradient is accumulated with each of the quantized direction. Finally, the blocks and the directions are down sampled using Gaussian filter to get 392 dimensional feature vector. A modified quadratic classifier is applied on these features for recognition. We used 36172 handwritten data for testing our system and obtained 94.24% accuracy using 5-fold cross-validation scheme.
Aryl hydrocarbon receptor deficiency in T cells suppresses the development of collagen-induced arthritis

The contributions of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (Ahr) to the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis have not been elucidated. Here, we show that Ahr deficiency ameliorated collagen-induced arthritis, a mouse model of RA. Collagen-immunized Ahr KO mice showed decreased serum levels of such proinflammatory cytokines as IL-1β and IL-6. The Th17 and Th1 cell populations in lymph nodes from these mice decreased and increased, respectively, whereas the percentage of regulatory T cells was unchanged. Interestingly, a lack of Ahr specifically in T cells significantly suppressed collagen-induced arthritis development, whereas Ahr deficiency in macrophages had no effect. These finding indicate that the development of experimental autoimmune arthritis depends on the presence of Ahr in T cells, and that Th1/Th17 balance may be particularly important for this process.
Vaccinia Virus Penetration Requires Cholesterol and Results in Specific Viral Envelope Proteins Associated with Lipid Rafts

ABSTRACT Vaccinia virus infects a wide variety of mammalian cells from different hosts, but the mechanism of virus entry is not clearly defined. The mature intracellular vaccinia virus contains several envelope proteins mediating virion adsorption to cell surface glycosaminoglycans; however, it is not known how the bound virions initiate virion penetration into cells. For this study, we investigated the importance of plasma membrane lipid rafts in the mature intracellular vaccinia virus infection process by using biochemical and fluorescence imaging techniques. A raft-disrupting drug, methyl-β-cyclodextrin, inhibited vaccinia virus uncoating without affecting virion attachment, indicating that cholesterol-containing lipid rafts are essential for virion penetration into mammalian cells. To provide direct evidence of a virus and lipid raft association, we isolated detergent-insoluble glycolipid-enriched membranes from cells immediately after virus infection and demonstrated that several viral envelope proteins, A14, A17L, and D8L, were present in the cell membrane lipid raft fractions, whereas the envelope H3L protein was not. Such an association did not occur after virions attached to cells at 4°C and was only observed when virion penetration occurred at 37°C. Immunofluorescence microscopy also revealed that cell surface staining of viral envelope proteins was colocalized with GM1, a lipid raft marker on the plasma membrane, consistent with biochemical analyses. Finally, mutant viruses lacking the H3L, D8L, or A27L protein remained associated with lipid rafts, indicating that the initial attachment of vaccinia virions through glycosaminoglycans is not required for lipid raft formation.
Development and validity testing of an IPF-specific version of the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire

Rationale The St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) is often applied to assess health-related quality of life in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Some SGRQ items will inevitably have weaker measurement properties than others when applied to this population. This study was conducted to develop an IPF-specific version of the SGRQ. Methods Data from a recently completed trial that enrolled subjects with IPF (n=158) who completed the SGRQ and other measures were analysed at baseline and 6 months. There were four phases to the study: (1) removing items with missing responses and using Rasch analysis on retained items to identify fit and refine item response categories; (2) development of a new scoring scheme; (3) testing agreement between original and revised versions and testing construct validity of the revised SGRQ; and (4) rewording to finalise the IPF-specific version (SGRQ-I). Results Items were removed due to missing responses (6 items) and misfit to the Rasch model (10 items); 34 items from the original 50 were retained. For certain items, disordered response thresholds were identified and corrected by collapsing response categories. A scoring algorithm was developed to place SGRQ-I scores on a scale with SGRQ scores. For any given outcome measure (eg, forced vital capacity (% predicted) and lung carbon monoxide transfer factor (% predicted), 6-min walk distance and patient-reported questionnaires), Pearson correlations were similar between pairs that included original SGRQ scores and corresponding pairs that included SGRQ-I scores. Internal reliability (Cronbach α) for each SGRQ-I component was comparable to the original SGRQ (Symptoms 0.62; Activities 0.80; Impacts 0.85). Conclusions The SGRQ-I contains items from the original SGRQ that are the most reliable for measuring health-related quality of life in patients with IPF.
Can Nonoffending Mothers of Sexually Abused Children Be Both Ambivalent and Supportive?

Some nonoffending parents experience ambivalence in feelings, belief, and behavior toward their children after their children's disclosure of sexual abuse. Traditionally, it has been assumed that ambivalent nonoffending parents are not adequately supportive of their children after disclosure. In contrast, this study of 29 nonoffending mothers whose resident partners sexually abused their children tests a theoretical model of postdisclosure responses of nonoffending parents in which it is hypothesized that parental support and ambivalence can coexist. In a partial least squares analysis of this model, no relationship between postdisclosure support and ambivalence is found after controlling for variables related to ambivalence. These findings lend preliminary support to the hypothetical theoretical model, supporting a need for continuing research on the constructs of ambivalence and parental support.
A Learning-Based Approach to Caching in Heterogenous Small Cell Networks

A heterogenous network with base stations (BSs), small base stations (SBSs), and users distributed according to independent Poisson point processes is considered. SBS nodes are assumed to possess high storage capacity and to form a distributed caching network. Popular files are stored in local caches of SBSs, so that a user can download the desired files from one of the SBSs in its vicinity. The offloading-loss is captured via a cost function that depends on the random caching strategy proposed here. The popularity profile of cached content is unknown and estimated using instantaneous demands from users within a specified time interval. An estimate of the cost function is obtained from which an optimal random caching strategy is devised. The training time to achieve an ∈ > 0 difference between the achieved and optimal costs is finite provided the user density is greater than a predefined threshold, and scales as N2, where N is the support of the popularity profile. A transfer learning-based approach to improve this estimate is proposed. The training time is reduced when the popularity profile is modeled using a parametric family of distributions; the delay is independent of N and scales linearly with the dimension of the distribution parameter.
A kinect-aided method to estimate the fundus camera extrinsic parameters for three-dimensional reconstruction of retinal blood vessels

This paper deals with the estimation of intrinsic and extrinsic parameters in a fundus camera system. These parameters are fundamental to retrieve three-dimensional reconstruction of eye's structure, in our case, retinal blood vessels. In this paper we used the Zhang's algorithm to estimate the intrinsic parameters of the optical system. Besides, an alternative method to estimate the extrinsic parameters is proposed based on the kinect one sensor. These modifications provide an easy way to characterise the whole fundus camera system. Experimental validation was carried out to verify the accuracy of the proposed method. A cylindrical known object was reconstructed having and average error of 3.96%. A real eye's structure was also reconstructed from a fundus image pair.
Low-Income Women Mediation and Moderation of the Association Between Cynical Hostility and Systolic Blood Pressure in

Hostility may be related to risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), such as blood pressure. However, the process by which hostility affects blood pressure is not fully understood. The current study sought to evaluate abdominal obesity (waist-to-hip ratio [WHR]) as a potential mediator and modifier of the relationship between cynical hostility and systolic blood pressure (SBP) in a group of disadvantaged women. Path analysis and multiple regression models were used to identify mediating and moderating pathways in the relationship between cynical hostility and SBP. Results indicate a significant interaction between WHR and cynical hostility. WHR was a partial mediator and significant moderator of the association between hostility and blood pressure. These findings highlight the potential importance of examining abdominal obesity and psychosocial factors as conjunctive determinants of CVD and risk factors for related metabolic conditions.
Distributed data management in workflow environments

Most existing workflow management systems (WFMSs) are based on a client/server architecture. This architecture simplifies the overall design but it does not match the distributed nature of workflow applications and imposes severe limitations in terms of scalability and reliability. Moreover workflow engines are not very sophisticated in terms of data management. Forgetting the fact that workflow is, to a great extent, data flow. In this paper we propose a novel architecture to address the issue of data management in a WFMS. This architecture is based on a fully distributed workflow engine for control flow, plus a set of loosely synchronized replicated databases for dataflow. The resulting system offers greater robustness and reliability as well as much better data handling capabilities than existing approaches. To better illustrate this novel architecture and its implications, two commercial systems are employed in this paper: FlowMark, as the workflow engine, and the replication capabilities of Lotus Notes, as the support system for distributed data management.
Synthesis and Anticonvulsant Activity of 6‐Alkoxy‐[1,2,4]Triazolo[3,4‐a]Phthalazines

A new series of 6‐alkoxy‐[1,2,4]triazolo[3,4‐a]phthalazines (3a–3v) were synthesized and their anticonvulsant activity and neurotoxicity were evaluated by the maximal electroshock test and the rotarod test respectively. Significant anticonvulsant activity was displayed by a number of compounds. The most promising compounds 6‐(4‐chlorobenzyloxy)‐[1,2,4]triazolo[3,4‐a]phthalazine (3f) and 6‐heptyloxy‐[1,2,4]triazolo[3,4‐a]phthalazine (3s) showed a median effective dose of 7.1 and 11.0 mg/kg, and had protective index value of 5.2 and 8.0 respectively. The two compounds were further found to have potent activity against seizures induced by pentylenetetrazole, isoniazid, thiosemicarbazide, 3‐mercaptopropionic acid but not seizures induced by strychnine, indicating that the two compounds might function by enhancing gamma‐aminobutyric acid neurotransmission.
Discrete bit-loading for OFDMA downlink with QoS consideration

Performance optimization of practical communication networks should be performed by considering some practical constraints such as limitation of maximum transmitted power, discrete bit allocation to carriers and users, and quality of service (QoS) requirements for different users. In this paper, we provide the optimum resource allocation solution for an OFDMA downlink in which subcarriers are loaded with discrete number of bits. Using minimum data rate with a certain BER as the criterion for the QoS, the optimization makes sure that the QoS of all users are satisfied. We analyze the complexity of this solution and propose a sub-optimum solution with much less complexity. These solutions are compared with existing methods using simulation results.
Improving the Reliability of Bootstrap Confidence Intervals by Russell Davidson

This paper investigates the relation between hypothesis testing and the construction of confidence intervals, with particular regard to bootstrap tests. In practice, confidence intervals are almost always based on Wald tests, and consequently are not invariant under nonlinear reparametrisations. Bootstrap percentile-t confidence intervals are an instance of this. However, the (asymptotically) pivotal functions of data and parameters on which likelihood ratio (LR) and Lagrange multiplier (LM) tests depend can be used to construct parametrisation-invariant confidence intervals. We show that, whenever an artificial regression can be used to find the restricted estimates needed for LR and LM tests, the nonlinear equations that define the limits of a confidence interval can be solved by an algorithm based on the same artificial regression. The algorithm involves roughly as much computation for each interval limit as is needed to find the restricted estimates. Bootstrap tests are often more reliable when the bootstrap DGP is based on restricted estimates. Inverting such tests to find a confidence interval is computationally intensive, since many bootstrap samples must be generated for every set of restricted estimates considered. We show how to combine artificial regression based bootstrap testing with the algorithm for finding limits of confidence intervals. This research was supported, in part, by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
The Role of Palmitoylation in Signalling, Cellular Trafficking and Plasma Membrane Localization of Protease-Activated Receptor-2

Protease-activated receptor-2 (PAR2) is a G protein coupled receptor (GPCR) activated by proteolytic cleavage of its amino terminal domain by trypsin-like serine proteases. This irreversible activation mechanism leads to rapid receptor desensitization by internalisation and degradation. We have explored the role of palmitoylation, the post-translational addition of palmitate, in PAR2 signalling, trafficking, cell surface expression and desensitization. Experiments using the palmitoylation inhibitor 2-bromopalmitate indicated that palmitate addition is important in trafficking of PAR2 endogenously expressed by prostate cancer cell lines. This was supported by palmitate labelling using two approaches, which showed that PAR2 stably expressed by CHO-K1 cells is palmitoylated and that palmitoylation occurs on cysteine 361. Palmitoylation is required for optimal PAR2 signalling as Ca2+ flux assays indicated that in response to trypsin agonism, palmitoylation deficient PAR2 is ∼9 fold less potent than wildtype receptor with a reduction of about 33% in the maximum signal induced via the mutant receptor. Confocal microscopy, flow cytometry and cell surface biotinylation analyses demonstrated that palmitoylation is required for efficient cell surface expression of PAR2. We also show that receptor palmitoylation occurs within the Golgi apparatus and is required for efficient agonist-induced rab11a-mediated trafficking of PAR2 to the cell surface. Palmitoylation is also required for receptor desensitization, as agonist-induced β-arrestin recruitment and receptor endocytosis and degradation were markedly reduced in CHO-PAR2-C361A cells compared with CHO-PAR2 cells. These data provide new insights on the life cycle of PAR2 and demonstrate that palmitoylation is critical for efficient signalling, trafficking, cell surface localization and degradation of this receptor.