Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bax Mediates the Apoptosis-Sensitizing Effect of Maspin

Maspin, a serine protease inhibitor (serpin), can suppress tumor growth and metastasis in vivo and tumor cell motility and invasion in vitro. This may occur through maspin-mediated inhibition of pericellular proteolysis. In a recent report, we provided evidence that maspin may also suppress tumor progression by enhancing cellular sensitivity to apoptotic stimuli. To our knowledge, maspin is the only proapoptotic serpin among all of the serpins implicated thus far in apoptosis regulation. The goal of the present study is to identify the specific target molecule(s), the modification of which by maspin renders tumor cells sensitive to chemotherapeutic agents. Our cellular, molecular, and biochemical studies demonstrate an essential role of Bax in the proapoptotic effect of maspin. First, Bax was up-regulated in maspin-transfected prostate and breast tumor cells, whereas the levels of other Bcl-2 family members including Bcl-2, Bcl-xl, and Bak remained unchanged. Second, on apoptosis induction, a greater amount of Bax was translocated from cytosol to mitochondria in maspin-transfected cells. After treatment with a Bax-silencing small interfering RNA, maspin-transfected cells became significantly more resistant to drug-induced apoptosis. Consistently, the release of cytochrome c and Smac/DIABLO from mitochondria was more responsive to apoptosis stimuli in maspin-transfected cells than in the mock-transfected cells. Third, the apoptosis induction of maspin-transfected cells was associated with increased activation of both caspase-8 and caspase-9. However, a caspase-9-specific inhibitor blocked the sensitization effect of maspin in a dose-dependent and time-dependent manner, demonstrating a rate-limiting role for caspase-9. In line with the central role of the Bax-mediated mitochondrial apoptotic pathway, maspin sensitized the apoptotic response of breast and prostate carcinoma cells to various drugs, ranging from death ligands to endoplasmic reticulum stress. The link between maspin and Bax up-regulation explains the loss of maspin-expressing tumor cells in invasive breast and prostate carcinomas. Our data reveal a novel mechanism for tumor suppressive maspin and suggest that maspin may be used as a modifier for apoptosis-based cancer therapy.
Multidimensional born inversion with a wide-band plane-wave source

The inverse scattering problem for an acoustic medium is considered within the homogeneous background Born approximation. A constant-density acoustic medium is probed by a wide-band plane-wave source. The scattered field is observed along a receiver array located outside the medium. Two methods for partial reconstruction of the medium velocities are presented. In the first method (the slant-stack method), the projections of the velocity potential at a range of angles are obtained from the plane-wave components of the scattered field. The range of available projection angles is determined by the receiver array aperture and the incidence direction of the probing plane wave. The medium velocities are, then, partially reconstructed from available projections via well-known methods of straight-line tomography. In the second method (the imaging-filtering method), the observed traces are filtered, back-propagated into the medium, and imaged at the source traveltimes, in the same way as in migration. The resulting image is, then, filtered by a linear space-invariant filter to obtain a partial reconstruction of the medium velocities. Both reconstruction methods are illustrated by some synthetic examples for several receiver geometries.
Cranial Osteology of a Juvenile Specimen of Tarbosaurus bataar (Theropoda, Tyrannosauridae) from the Nemegt Formation (Upper Cretaceous) of Bugin Tsav, Mongolia

ABSTRACT A juvenile skull of the tyrannosaurid Tarbosaurus bataar found in the Bugjn Tsav locality in the Mongolian Gobi Desert is described. With a total length of 290 mm, the present specimen represents one of the smallest skulls known for this species. Not surprisingly, it shows various characteristics common to juvenile tyrannosaurids, such as the rostral margin of the maxillary fenestra not reaching that of the external antorbital fenestra and the postorbital lacking the cornual process. The nasal bears a small lacrimal process, which disappears in adults. Lacking some of the morphological characteristics that are adapted for bearing great feeding forces in adult individuals, this juvenile specimen suggests that T. bataar would have changed its dietary niches during ontogeny. The numbers of alveoli in the maxilla (13) and dentary (14 and 15) are the same as those in adults, suggesting that they do not change onto genetically in T. bataar and thus are not consistent with the hypothesis that the numbers of alveoli decreases ontogenetically in tyrannosaurids.
Automatic Detection of Intra-Word Code-Switching

Many people are multilingual and they may draw from multiple language varieties when writing their messages. This paper is a first step towards analyzing and detecting code-switching within words. We first segment words into smaller units. Then, words are identified that are composed of sequences of subunits associated with different languages. We demonstrate our method on Twitter data in which both Dutch and dialect varieties labeled as Limburgish, a minority language, are used.
Validating real-time constraints in embedded systems

There is a growing demand for software tools that can assist in designing, analyzing and validating embedded real-time system applications. ESTEREL, a synchronous language, is widely used in the development of embedded systems and hardware/software codesign. We describe a method that uses timed annotations for ESTEREL programs that makes it possible to predict the timing constraints required to be satisfied by the embedded system. Using the specified annotations and the programming environment of ESTEREL, we describe a method and a tool for validating the concrete realization relative to time-annotated ESTEREL specifications. Also, the method derives time constraints to be satisfied by the concrete architectures for realizing the logical specification. We illustrate the technique with examples as well as the structure of the tool implemented.
Semantic retrieval and automatic annotation: linear transformations, correlation, and semantic spaces

This paper proposes a new technique for auto-annotation and semantic retrieval based upon the idea of linearly mapping an image feature space to a keyword space. The new technique is compared to several related techniques, and a number of salient points about each of the techniques are discussed and contrasted. The paper also discusses how these techniques might actually scale to a real-world retrieval problem, and demonstrates this though a case study of a semantic retrieval technique being used on a real-world data-set (with a mix of annotated and unannotated images) from a picture library.
A pattern-based modeling framework for simulating human-like pedestrian steering behaviors

In this paper, we propose a new approach to modeling natural steering behaviors of virtual humans. We suspect that a small number of steering strategies are sufficient for generating typical pedestrian behaviors observed in daily-life situations. Through these limited strategies we show that complex steering behaviors are generated by executing appropriate steering strategies at the appropriate time. In our model, decisions on the selection, scheduling and execution of steering strategies in a given situation are based on the matching results between the currently perceived spatial-temporal patterns and the prototypical cases in an agent's experience base. From a modeler's point of view, our approach is intuitive to use. Our model is carefully evaluated through a three-stage validation process, using experimental studies on basic test scenarios, model comparisons under standard but more complex test scenarios, and sensitivity analysis on key model parameters. Experimental results show that our model is able to generate results that reflect the collective efficiency of crowd dynamics and is in agreement with existing literature on pedestrian studies.
Phylogeography of the Chinese Beard Eel, Cirrhimuraena chinensis Kaup, Inferred from Mitochondrial DNA: A Range Expansion after the Last Glacial Maximum

The Chinese beard eel (Cirrhimuraena chinensis Kaup) is an intertidal fish and a model organism for the study of impacts caused by topological fluctuations during the Pleistocene and current intricate hydrological conditions on fauna living in the coastal areas of China. In this study, we examined the phylogeographical pattern, population genetic profile and demographical history of C. chinensis using mitochondrial DNA (cytochrome b (cyt b) and control region (CR)) from 266 individuals sampled in seven localities across the coastal area of southeastern China. The combined data indicated high levels of haplotype diversity and low levels of nucleotide diversity. Analyses of molecular variance (AMOVA) and FST statistics suggested the absence of a significant population structure across the Chinese coast. Neutrality tests, mismatch distributions and Bayesian skyline plots uniformly indicated a recent population expansion. The phylogeographic structure of C. chinensis may be attributed to past population expansion and long-distance pelagic larval dispersal facilitated by present-day ocean currents.
MD1003 (high-dose biotin) for the treatment of progressive multiple sclerosis: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study

Background: Treatment with MD1003 (high-dose biotin) showed promising results in progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) in a pilot open-label study. Objective: To confirm the efficacy and safety of MD1003 in progressive MS in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Methods: Patients (n = 154) with a baseline Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score of 4.5–7 and evidence of disease worsening within the previous 2 years were randomised to 12-month MD1003 (100 mg biotin) or placebo thrice daily, followed by 12-month MD1003 for all patients. The primary endpoint was the proportion of patients with disability reversal at month 9, confirmed at month 12, defined as an EDSS decrease of ⩾1 point (⩾0.5 for EDSS 6–7) or a ⩾20% decrease in timed 25-foot walk time compared with the best baseline among screening or randomisation visits. Results: A total of 13 (12.6%) MD1003-treated patients achieved the primary endpoint versus none of the placebo-treated patients (p = 0.005). MD1003 treatment also reduced EDSS progression and improved clinical impression of change compared with placebo. Efficacy was maintained over follow-up, and the safety profile of MD1003 was similar to that of placebo. Conclusion: MD1003 achieves sustained reversal of MS-related disability in a subset of patients with progressive MS and is well tolerated.
Chapter 16 ENCODING SYNTACTIC ANNOTATION

There is a widely recognized need for a general framework for linguistic annotation that is flexible and extensible enough to accommodate different annotation types and different theoretical and practical approaches, while at the same time enabling their representation in a “pivot” format that can serve as the basis for comparative evaluation, merging, and the development of reusable editing and processing tools. To address this need, we have developed a framework composed of an abstract model for a variety of different annotation types (e.g., morpho-syntactic tagging, syntactic annotation, coreference annotation, etc.), which can be instantiated in different ways depending on the annotator’s approach and goals. The results have been incorporated into XCES (Ide et al., 2000), the XML instantiation of the Corpus Encoding Standard (Ide 1998a,b), which provides a ready-made, standard encoding format together with a data architecture designed specifically for linguistically annotated corpora.
A Hybrid Authentication and Key Establishment Scheme for WBAN

Wireless body area network (WBAN) is an emerging research field particularly in the area of remote health monitoring. For the simple reason that health data are private and sensitive information, securing access and data transmission within a WBAN becomes a critical need. Using certificates requires deploying Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Certification Authorities (CA) and their management (control the generation, transmission and revocation) is a cumbersome task unlike identity-based cryptography concept. Considering the heterogeneity between participating tiers in the network, we propose in this paper a hybrid authentication and key agreement scheme where symmetric cryptography is used in sensor/actuator nodes while identity-based cryptography concept is used between smartphone (MN) and the storage site (SS). We present two protocols to authenticate and establish pairwise and group keys between all tiers and to provide a public and private keys for MNs.
COMPARISONS OF THE CLIMATES OF THE TWO HABITATS OF HAMILTON ' S FROG ( LEIOPELMA HAMILTONI ( McCULLOCH ) )

Comparisons of climate data from the two known habitats of Leiopelma hamiltoni (a small deforested rock tumble near the summit of Stephens Island called the "frog bank" and a forest remnant on Maud Island) show that the two are remarkably similar, apart from greater extremes of temperature and humidity occurring at the open rock surface of the frog bank than on the surface of the Maud Island habitat. Furthermore, the air space between the rocks of the frog bank is significantly cooler, more humid and subject to less temperature fluctuation than the surface. The frogs, being nocturnal, shelter under these rocks during the day. This habit and the climate of the frog bank are the major factors permitting the survival of the frog on Stephens Island since the frog bank lost its forest cover. Climate data from a nearby remnant of the original forest suggest that the Stephens Island habitat would have been more suitable for frogs in its original forested form than in its present state. Although grasses and Muehlenbeckia vines are encroaching onto the frog bank and creating a more favourable micro-climate at the habitat's surface, such cover may eventually restrict the access of frogs to sheltering rock crevices.
Employee Stock Options

Our stock option plans are part of a broad-based, long-term retention program that is intended to attract and retain talented employees and directors and align stockholder and employee interests. stockholders approved an amendment to increase the share reserve of the 2001 Plan by 32 million shares. Options granted under the 1991 Plan remain outstanding until exercised or cancelled. Pursuant to the 2001 Plan, the Board of Directors may grant options to selected employees, directors and consultants to purchase shares of our common stock at a price not less than the fair market value of the stock at the date of grant. The 2001 Plan provides for the grant of both incentive stock options and non-qualified stock options. Generally, options outstanding vest over periods not exceeding six years and are exercisable for up to ten years from the grant date. Plan remain outstanding until exercised or cancelled. The 2001 Directors' Plan provides for non-qualified stock options to be granted to non-employee directors at an exercise price of not less than fair market value, vesting over periods not exceeding five years and exercisable for up to ten years from the grant date. The Board of Directors may terminate the 2001 Plan and/or the 2001 Directors' Plan at any time though it must nevertheless honor any stock options previously granted pursuant to the plans. Information about employee and executive stock option grants from fiscal 2001 through the first six months of fiscal 2004 are as follows (number of shares in millions): Total options granted 9 17 27 16 Less options cancelled (1) (4) (3) (3) Net options granted 8 13 24 13 Net grants during the period as % of outstanding shares (1)
A Model for Multivariate Non-Negative Valued Processes in Financial Econometrics

The Multiplicative Error Model introduced by Engle (2002) for non-negative valued processes is specified as the product of a (conditionally autoregressive) scale factor and an innovation process with positive support. In this paper we propose a multivariate extension of such a model, by taking into consideration the possibility that the vector innovation process be contemporaneously correlated. The estimation procedure is hindered by the lack of probability density functions for multivariate non-negative valued random variables. We suggest the use of copula functions to jointly estimate the parameters of the scale factors and of the correlations of the innovation processes. We illustrate the feasibility of the procedure and the gains over the equation by equation approach using a four variable fully interdependent model with different volatility measures.
Differentially Expressed Genes in Hirudo medicinalis Ganglia after Acetyl-L-Carnitine Treatment

Acetyl-l-carnitine (ALC) is a naturally occurring substance that, when administered at supra-physiological concentration, is neuroprotective. It is involved in membrane stabilization and in enhancement of mitochondrial functions. It is a molecule of considerable interest for its clinical application in various neural disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and painful neuropathies. ALC is known to improve the cognitive capability of aged animals chronically treated with the drug and, recently, it has been reported that it impairs forms of non-associative learning in the leech. In the present study the effects of ALC on gene expression have been analyzed in the leech Hirudo medicinalis. The suppression subtractive hybridisation methodology was used for the generation of subtracted cDNA libraries and the subsequent identification of differentially expressed transcripts in the leech nervous system after ALC treatment. The method detects differentially but also little expressed transcripts of genes whose sequence or identity is still unknown. We report that a single administration of ALC is able to modulate positively the expression of genes coding for functions that reveal a lasting effect of ALC on the invertebrate, and confirm the neuroprotective and neuromodulative role of the substance. In addition an important finding is the modulation of genes of vegetal origin. This might be considered an instance of ectosymbiotic mutualism.
Quantifying spatiotemporal dynamics of twitter replies to news feeds

Social network analysis can be used to assess the impact of information published on the web. The spatiotemporal impact of a certain web source on a social network can be of particular interest. We contribute a novel statistical learning algorithm for spatiotemporal impact analysis. To demonstrate our approach we analyze Twitter replies to individual news article along with their geospatial and temporal information. We then compute the multivariate spatiotemporal response pattern of all Twitter replies to information published on a given web source. This quantitative result can be interpreted with respect to a) how much impact a certain web source has on the Twitter-sphere b) where and c) when it reaches it maximal impact. We also show that the proposed approach predicts the dynamics of the social network activity better than classical trend detection methods.
Linear regression for bivariate censored data via multiple imputation.

Bivariate survival data arise, for example, in twin studies and studies of both eyes or ears of the same individual. Often it is of interest to regress the survival times on a set of predictors. In this paper we extend Wei and Tanner's multiple imputation approach for linear regression with univariate censored data to bivariate censored data. We formulate a class of censored bivariate linear regression methods by iterating between the following two steps: 1. the data is augmented by imputing survival times for censored observations; 2. a linear model is fit to the imputed complete data. We consider three different methods to implement these two steps. In particular, the marginal (independence) approach ignores the possible correlation between two survival times when estimating the regression coefficient. To improve the efficiency, we propose two methods that account for the correlation between the survival times. First, we improve the efficiency by using generalized least squares regression in step 2. Second, instead of generating data from an estimate of the marginal distribution we generate data from a bivariate log-spline density estimate in step 1. Through simulation studies we find that the performance of the two methods that take the dependence into account is close and that they are both more efficient than the marginal approach. The methods are applied to a data set from an otitis media clinical trial.
Ballbot : A Low-Cost , Open-Source , Open-Design Robot for Tennis Ball Retrieval

In this paper we present an open robotic platform which is targeted to perform the task of a tennis ball boy. Our platform can localize itself and navigate on a tennis court. It can also localize tennis balls lying on the court. It is self-contained with on-board sensing and computation, uses only cost-effective off-the-shelf components, and was designed with an eye for robustness and repeatability in real-world environments. This paper describes our system, presents our first set of experimental results, and discusses some of the challenges faced.
Learning the parameters of periodic traffic based on network measurements

The configuration of real-time networks is one of the most challenging demands of the Real-Time Internet-of-Things trend, where the network has to be deterministic and yet flexible enough to adapt to changes through its life-cycle. To achieve this we have outlined an approach that learns the necessary configuration parameters from network measurements, that way providing a continuous configuration service for the network. First, the network is monitored to obtain traffic measurements. Then traffic parameters are derived from those measurements. Finally, a new time-triggered schedule is produced with which the network will be reconfigured. In this paper we propose an analysis based on measurements to obtain the specific traffic parameters and we evaluate it through network simulations. The results show that the configuration parameters can be learned from the measurements with enough accuracy and that those measurements can be easily obtained through network monitoring.
The city and the urban as spaces of capital and social struggle: notes on Henri Lefebvre’s enduring contributions

Abstract The argument of this essay is that Lefebvre’s writings contain relevant contributions to understand the contemporary phenomenon of neoliberal urbanism and, at the same time, his politics of the possible can contribute to explain the restless urban struggles and spatial practices of social movements. We value the author’s contribution from a comprehensive perspective, avoiding the usual fragmented way it has been used in the fields of public administration, organization and urban studies. Our reading follows Gadamer’s notion of “the horizon of the question”, which indicates that “we can understand a text only when we have understood the question to which it is an answer”. Accordingly, the question posed asks for the contribution of Lefebvre’s oeuvre to understand contemporary urban processes and to make visible possible futures objectively implied in processes of social struggles.