Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cofilin nuclear–cytoplasmic shuttling affects cofilin–actin rod formation during stress

Summary Cofilin protein is involved in regulating the actin cytoskeleton during typical steady state conditions, as well as during cell stress conditions where cofilin saturates F-actin, forming cofilin–actin rods. Cofilin can enter the nucleus through an active nuclear localization signal (NLS), accumulating in nuclear actin rods during stress. Here, we characterize the active nuclear export of cofilin through a leptomycin-B-sensitive, CRM1-dependent, nuclear export signal (NES). We also redefine the NLS of cofilin as a bipartite NLS, with an additional basic epitope required for nuclear localization. Using fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) and Förster resonant energy transfer (FRET) between cofilin moieties and actin, as well as automated image analysis in live cells, we have defined subtle mutations in the cofilin NLS that allow cofilin to bind actin in vivo and affect cofilin dynamics during stress. We further define the requirement of cofilin–actin rod formation in a system of cell stress by temporal live-cell imaging. We propose that cofilin nuclear shuttling is critical for the cofilin–actin rod stress response with cofilin dynamically communicating between the nucleus and cytoplasm during cell stress.
Combination Therapy for Ulcerative Colitis: Orally Targeted Nanoparticles Prevent Mucosal Damage and Relieve Inflammation

Combination therapy is an emerging strategy that is under intensive preclinical investigation for the treatment of various diseases. CD98 is highly overexpressed on the surfaces of epithelial cells and macrophages in the colon tissue with ulcerative colitis (UC), which is usually associated with mucosal damage and inflammation. We previously proved that CD98 siRNA (siCD98)-induced down-regulation of CD98 in colitis tissue decreased the severity of UC to a certain extent. In an effort to further improve the therapeutic efficacy, we aim to simultaneously deliver siCD98 in combination with a potent anti-inflammatory agent, curcumin (CUR), using hyaluronic acid (HA)-functionalized polymeric nanoparticles (NPs). The resultant spherical HA-siCD98/CUR-NPs are featured by a desirable particle size (∼246 nm) and slightly negative zeta potential (∼-14 mV). The NPs functionalized with HA are able to guide the co-delivery of drugs to the targeted cells related to UC therapy (colonic epithelial cells and macrophages). Compared to either siCD98- or CUR-based monotherapy, co-delivery of siCD98 and CUR by HA-functionalized NPs can exert combinational effects against UC by protecting the mucosal layer and alleviating inflammation both in vitro and in vivo. This study shows the promising capability of the co-delivered siCD98 and CUR for boosting the conventional monotherapy via this novel nanotherapeutic agent, which offers a structurally simple platform for orally administered delivery of drugs to target cells in UC therapy.
ERDraw: An XML-based ER-diagram Drawing and Translation Tool

The Entity-Relationship (ER) model is one of the most popular methodologies for designing relational databases. Several commercial products have been developed to support drawing ER-diagrams in a graphical fashion. Their architectures and implementation details, however, are not available in public. Inspired by these products and recent developments in XML technology and semantic drawing framework Drawlet, we have developed an educational prototype ERDraw that supports drawing ERdiagrams visually and translating them to relational database schemas automatically. In this paper, we describe the architecture of ERDraw and its implementation details to illustrate how such a tool can be developed.
Prioritizing multiple-use landscapes for conservation: methods for large multi-species planning problems

Across large parts of the world, wildlife has to coexist with human activity in highly modified and fragmented landscapes. Combining concepts from population viability analysis and spatial reserve design, this study develops efficient quantitative methods for identifying conservation core areas at large, even national or continental scales. The proposed methods emphasize long-term population persistence, are applicable to both fragmented and natural landscape structures, and produce a hierarchical zonation of regional conservation priority. The methods are applied to both observational data for threatened butterflies at the scale of Britain and modelled probability of occurrence surfaces for indicator species in part of Australia. In both cases, priority landscapes important for conservation management are identified.
Nonlinear magnetic diffusion in single-domain YBCO cylinders under pulsed field conditions

A step-function increase in magnetic field has been applied to various single-domain Y-Ba-Cu-O rings and disks at 77 K. The magnetic field in the center of these structures exhibits an exponential approach to an equilibrium value, as predicted by simple diffusion theory. The measured time constants are in the millisecond range and show nonlinear behavior, as predicted in recently advanced theories of magnetic diffusion under flux flow conditions. Measurements of trapped magnetic field, critical current density, and current-voltage (I-V) characteristics are compared to results obtained by measurement of magnetic diffusion. The single-domain structures are intended for use in penetration-type fault current limiters, an application where the magnetic diffusion time constants have a strong influence on device design.
An combined sentiment classification system for SIGHAN-8

This paper describes our system (MSIIP THU) used for Topic-Based Chinese Message Polarity Classification Task in SIGHAN-8. In our system, a lexiconbased classifier and a statistical machine learning-based classifier are built up, followed by a linear combination of these two models. The overall performance of the proposed framework ranks in the middle of all terms participating in the task.
Higher geometric prequantum theory and The Brane

Higher brane GS-WZW actions and Noether super Lie n-algebras from higher super-orbispaces Contents 1 Motivation: The localized WZW σ-model 2 2 Example I: Some super p-brane σ-models 3 3 Boundary field theory and L ∞-algebra extensions 4 4 Example II: The Brane Bouquet 5 5 Higher geometric prequantum theory 6 6 ∞-WZW models 7 7 Application: Higher Noether current super L ∞-algebras 8 1 1 Motivation: The localized WZW σ-model The WZW σ-model field theory describing a bosonic string on a simple Lie group G is all controled by the canonical Lie algebra 3-cocycle, which we may write as θ, [θ, θ] : g / / B 2 R. This σ-model famously has an affine Lie current algebra of Noether currents. This is the symmetry algebra of the transgression of the theory to loop space [S 1 , G]: affine Lie algebra Heisenberg Lie algebra of prequantum geometry on [S 1 , G]. This in turn is the infinitesimal approximation to the smooth group of global symmetries: Kac-Moody loop group Heisenberg Lie group of prequantum geometry on [S 1 , G] (the geometric loop representation theory of Pressley-Segal). But the WZW is a local field theory. It is not defined just on loop space. Its transgression to loop space loses information. Therefore we want to • " de-transgress " or " localize " from [S 1 , G] to [ * , G] G. In [9] the following is made precise and proven (we come back to this below): String Lie 2-algebra Noether current Lie 2-algebra of L WZW Heisenberg Lie 2-algebra of prequantum 2-geometry (G, θ ∧ [θ ∧ θ]) Here the String Lie 2-algebra is the homotopy fiber of L ∞-algebras of the curvature of the WZW term:
Coronary artery stretch versus deep injury in the development of in-stent neointima

Objective: To investigate the relative importance of stent induced arterial stretch and deep injury to the development of in-stent neointima. Setting: Normal porcine coronary arteries Methods: 30 BiodivYsio stents (Biocompatibles) were deployed at a stent to artery ratio of 1.25:1 (a moderate injury) and harvested at 28 days. Multiple serial cross sections were analysed morphometrically and the neointimal areas were correlated with the type and degree of injury. Results: Arterial stretch occurred in 78% of struts (77% of sections) and produced moderate neointimal growth (neointimal area 1.93 (0.13) mm2). Deep injury (rupture of the internal elastic lamina) occurred in 20% of struts (23% of sections) and produced a 1.7-fold increase in neointimal area (3.33 (0.41) mm2) compared with stretch only (p = 0.0002). With even deeper injury (rupture of the external elastic lamina), there was a 2.6-fold increase in neointimal area (5.01 (0.48) mm2) compared with stretch only (p = 0.02). A new injury score, incorporating both stretch and deep injury, correlated with neointimal area (r = 0.60, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Stretch of the coronary artery in a stent is common, and a major contributor to neointima formation, even in the absence of deep injury. Deep injury is, however, a more potent stimulus to neointima formation than stretch. Greater degrees of stretch are associated with thicker neointima. Where neither deep injury nor stretch are seen, the stent has no effect upon the development of neointima.
On the problems with evolving Egemin's software product line

Egemin, an industrial manufacturer of logistic systems is adopting a Software Product Line (SPL) approach to manage the development of their product portfolio. However, due to the intrinsic complexity of the logistic systems and lack of explicitly documented architectural knowledge evolution of the products is error-prone. Faulty updates increase maintenance costs and harm the company's reputation. Therefore, Egemin searches for a systematic solution that can improve their SPL evolution strategy.
Reflections on Almost Two Decades of Research into Stream Processing: Tutorial

Ever since the need for new approaches and systems to handle data streams was identified in early 2000s, stream processing has been an active area of research, resulting in a large body of work with significant impact. This tutorial reflects on this research history by highlighting a number of trends and best practices that can be identified in hindsight. It also enumerates a list of directions for future research in stream processing.
Fast and efficient prediction unit size selection for HEVC intra prediction

In this paper, a fast learning-based Coding Unit (CU) size selection method is presented for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) intra prediction. Our analysis shows that non-normalized histogram of oriented gradient (n-HOG) can be used to select CU size. For each size of CU, n-HOGs of training sequences are clustered to construct a codebook offline. The optimum CU sizes are determined by comparing its n-HOG with the codebook. Experimental results show that the fast intra prediction CU selection scheme speeds up intra coding significantly with negligible increment of Bjontegaard Delta rate.
How do Users Perceive Information: Analyzing User Feedback while Annotating Textual Units

We describe an initial study of how participants perceive information when they categorize highlighted textual units within a document marked for a given information need. Our investigation explores how users look at different parts of the document and classify textual units within retrieved documents on 4-levels of relevance and importance. We compare how users classify different textual units within a document, and report mean and variance for different users across different topics. Further, we analyze and categorise the reasons provided by users while rating textual units within retrieved documents. This research shows some interesting observations regarding why some parts of the document are regarded as more relevant than others (e.g. it provides contextual information, contains background information) and which kind of information seems to be effective for satisfying the end users (e.g showing examples, providing facts) in a search task. This work is a part of our ongoing investigation into generation of effective surrogates and document summaries based on search topics and user interactions with information.
Calendar Agents on the Semantic Web

pages in HTML quickly captured public interest, and it evolved at a phenomenal rate into a vast knowledge base. During this growth, however, Web pages' information structure , which is crucial to making the information machine understandable, was sacrificed in favor of presentation and physical design. However, this lack of structure has not deterred agents from using information on the Web. Many agent systems track users' navigation habits as they click throughout the Web so they can suggest new, potentially interesting Web pages to them; others automate access to information sites, replicating human-oriented queries and parsing the resulting pages. Agents have also harvested tax-onomies that guide human navigation toward clustered topics of interest. However, in each case, these agents have had to use bespoke parsers (code written specifically to parse a given Web page, such as Yahoo's restaurant information), and content scrapers (languages for defining rules used to extract information from and manipulate Web pages) to pull out the text before using keyword recognition or natural language recognition techniques to understand the content. 1 The emergence of the Semantic Web 2 has simplified and improved knowledge reuse on the Web. Agents can parse Semantic Web pages to elicit relevant information. They can now understand and reason about information and use it to meet users' needs and provide assistance through reference to ontologies, axioms, and languages such as DARPA Agent Markup Language. 3 The emerging symbio-sis of knowledge about users' desires, preferences, and habits with information garnered from the Semantic Web results in superior agent-based assistance than that provided by existing agents. In Technology Review's " A Smarter Web, " 4 Tim Berners-Lee describes a travel scenario in which a user instructs an agent to organize a trip to a conference. To achieve this, the agent requires knowledge about the user's flight preferences , current schedule, and details such as credit card information. The agent obtains the conference's dates and locations from the semantic markup at the conference Web site. After booking a flight, the agent then stores the resulting itinerary in the user's calendar and cancels or reschedules pending meetings while the user is away. It highlights conference presentations and sessions that might interest the user and sets reminders to notify him or her (through PDA or phone, for example) of an impending talk. RCAL To address many of these tasks, we've developed the RETSINA (Reusable Environment for Task-Structured Intelligent …
Neural network processing of natural language: I. Sensitivity to serial, temporal and abstract structure of language in the infant

Well before their first birthday, babies can acquire knowledge of serial order relations (Saffran et al., 1996a), as well as knowledge of more abstract rule-based structural relations (Marcus et al., 1999) between neighbouring speech sounds within 2 minutes of exposure. These early learners can likewise acquire knowledge of rhythmic or temporal structure of a new language within 5-10 minutes of exposure (Nazzi et al., 1998). All three of these types of knowledge likely play invaluable roles in "bootstrapping" language acquisition. Two important open questions that remain include: What are the mechanisms that provide this rapid learning ability, and how do they depend on pre-exposure to the environment? Here we show that a neurophysiologically validated temporal recurrent network simulates babies' capabilities to learn serial order and rhythmic structure. Indeed the recurrent network is capable of representing serial and temporal structure with no pre-exposure, and through exposure these internal representations can become bound to behavioural responses. In contrast, babies' performance in extracting abstract structure can only be simulated by a modified version of the model. We thus demonstrate how innate representational capabilities for serial and temporal structure of language could arise from a common neural architecture, distinct from that required for the representation of abstract structure, and we provide a predictive testable model of at least these aspects of the initial computational state of the language learner.
T-Independent Activation-Induced Cytidine Deaminase Expression, Class-Switch Recombination, and Antibody Production by Immature/Transitional 1 B Cells1

Inflammation elicits a splenic lymphopoiesis of unknown physiologic significance but one that juxtaposes developing B cells and exogenous Ag. We show that immature and transitional 1 (immature/T1) B cells constitutively express activation-induced cytidine deaminase and B lymphocyte-induced maturation protein 1 in amounts that support accelerated plasmacytic differentiation and limited class-switch recombination. In vivo, activation of immature/T1 B cells by TLR ligands or bacterial vaccine rapidly induces T1 cells to divide, proliferate, and secrete IgM, IgG, or IgA Ab; in vitro, proliferation and differentiation are substantially enhanced by B cell-activating factor. We propose that inflammation-induced extramedullary lymphopoiesis represents a specialized mechanism for innate Ab responses to microbial pathogens.
Theory building and cheap talk about legitimation: reply to Baum and Powell

Les AA. repondent a la critique de J. A C. Baum et W. W. Powell sur les processus de legitimation qu'ils avaient etudies a partir de travaux sur l'industrie automobile europeenne. Ils affirment avoir pris en compte le caractere multidimensionnel du phenomene dans leurs analyses socio-politique, economique, financiere. Ils defendent l'utilisation du modele de « densite-dependance » en montrant que ces critiques ne proposent pas d'analyse alternative rigoureusse tout en reconnaissant que, du fait de sa complexite, on peut aborder le phenomene sous d'autres angles
Call admission control with resource reservation for multi-service OFDM networks

In OFDM wireless networks, the radio resources are assigned to the users based on their quality of service needs and depending on their channel quality. Thus, during a call session, the bandwidth requirements and needed radio resources may increase from negotiated call setup resources. In this study, we propose a call admission control reservation algorithm that takes such resource fluctuations into consideration. We consider two types of applications denoted by wide-band and narrow band. The performance of the algorithm is modeled through a queuing theory approach and its main performance measures are compared with a conventional algorithm through simulation. The results show that such a reservation scheme improves the call admission performance significantly in terms of QoS maintenance, especially when the network is highly congested.
Combined Effects of Noise and Reverberation on Speech Recognition Performance of Normal-Hearing Children and Adults

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to determine how combinations of noise levels and reverberation typical of ranges found in current classrooms will affect speech recognition performance of typically developing children with normal speech, language, and hearing and to compare their performance with that of adults with normal hearing. Speech recognition performance was measured using the Bamford-Kowal-Bench Speech in Noise test. A virtual test paradigm represented the signal reaching a student seated in the back of a classroom with a volume of 228 m3 and with varied reverberation time (0.3, 0.6, and 0.8 sec). The signal to noise ratios required for 50% performance (SNR-50) and for 95% performance were determined for groups of children aged 6 to 12 yrs and a group of young adults with normal hearing. Design: This is a cross-sectional developmental study incorporating a repeated measures design. Experimental variables included age and reverberation time. A total of 63 children with normal hearing and typically developing speech and language and nine adults with normal hearing were tested. Nine children were included in each age group (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 yrs). Results: The SNR-50 increased significantly with increased reverberation and decreased significantly with increasing age. On average, children required positive SNRs for 50% performance, whereas thresholds for adults were close to 0 dB or <0 dB for the conditions tested. When reverberant SNR-50 was compared with adult SNR-50 without reverberation, adults did not exhibit an SNR loss, but children aged 6 to 8 yrs exhibited a moderate SNR loss and children aged 9 to 12 yrs exhibited a mild SNR loss. To obtain average speech recognition scores of 95% at the back of the classroom, an SNR ≥10 dB is required for all children at the lowest reverberation time, of ≥12 dB for children up to age 11 yrs at the 0.6-sec reverberant condition, and of ≥15 dB for children aged 7 to 11 yrs at the 0.8-sec condition. The youngest children require even higher SNRs in the 0.8-sec condition. Conclusions: Results highlight changes in speech recognition performance with age in elementary school children listening to speech in noisy, reverberant classrooms. The more reverberant the environment, the better the SNR required. The younger the child, the better the SNR required. Results support the importance of attention to classroom acoustics and emphasize the need for maximizing SNR in classrooms, especially in classrooms designed for early childhood grades.
Hope and quality of life, two central issues for cancer patients: a theoretical analysis

During the past years, the number of people diagnosed with cancer has increased. Cancer can be a threat to life itself, as well as to the individual's perception of the quality of life. The question of what contributes a clinically significant change or difference in perceived quality of life remains unanswered. Hope is frequently referred to as important for coping with a disease such as cancer. Hope enables people to cope with difficult and stressful situations and suffering. Nevertheless, hope is seldom stressed in definitions of the quality of life. This article shows the importance of both hope and quality of life for cancer patients and discusses the relationship between hope and quality of life. Coping is of importance for the experience of quality of life, and hope can be regarded as a coping strategy. From existing theory, hope can be seen as a variable that positively contributes to the experience of quality of life. Future research should empirically explore to what extent hope contributes to the adaptive process that maintains the quality of life at an acceptable level despite having cancer.
IP Watermarking Using Incremental Technology Mapping at Logic Synthesis Level

This paper proposes an adaptive watermarking technique by modulating some closed cones in an originally optimized logic network (master design) for technology mapping. The headroom of each disjoint closed cone is evaluated based on its slack and slack sustainability. The notion of slack sustainability in conjunction with an embedding threshold enables closed cones in the critical path to be qualified as watermark hosts if their slacks can be better preserved upon remapping. The watermark is embedded by remapping only qualified disjoint closed cones randomly selected and templates constrained by the signature. This parametric formulation provides a means to capitalize on the headroom of a design to increase the signature length or strengthen the watermark resilience. With the master design, the watermarked design can be authenticated as in nonoblivious media watermarking. Experimental results show that the design can be efficiently marked by our method with low overhead.