Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Topic Modeling on Rule-Based Persian Metaphor Classification and its Frequency Estimation

The impact of several topic modeling techniques have been well established in many various aspects of Persian language processing. In this paper, we choose to investigate the influence of Latent Dirichlet Allocation technique in the metaphor processing aspect and show this technique helps measure metaphor frequency effectively. In the first step, we apply LDA on Persian or so-called Bijankhan corpus to extract classes containing the words which share the most natural semantic proximity. Then, we develop a rule-based classifier for identifying natural and metaphorical sentences. The underlying assumption is that the classifier allocates a topic for each word in a sentence. If the overall topic of the sentence diverges from the topic of one of the words in the sentence, metaphoricity is detected. We run the classifier on whole the corpus and observed that roughly at least two and at most four sentence in the corpus carries metaphoricity. This classifier with an f-measure of 68.17% in a randomly 100 selected sentences promises that a LDA-based metaphoricty analysis seems efficient for Persian language processing.
The major outer sheath protein of Treponema denticola inhibits the binding step of collagen phagocytosis in fibroblasts

Bacterial infections contribfute to the chronicity of connective tissue lesions in part by perturbing extracellular matrix remodelling processes. We examined a novel mechanism by which the major outer sheath protein (Msp) of the spirochaete Treponema denticola disrupts matrix remodelling mediated by intracellular digestion of collagen. The initial collagen‐binding step of phagocytosis was examined in human gingival fibroblasts and Rat‐2 fibroblasts. Cells were pretreated with Msp or vehicle, and binding of collagen‐coated beads was measured by flow cytometry. Exposure to Msp induced a dose‐ and time‐dependent decrease in cells that bound collagen beads; the inhibition of binding was reversed by absorption with anti‐Msp antibodies. Msp‐treated fibroblasts remained viable but underwent actin reorganization, including the assembly of a dense meshwork of subcortical actin filaments. Shear force assays showed that Msp abrogated collagen‐binding interactions in the minimal affinity range required for stable adhesion. Fluorescence microscopy and immunoblotting showed equivalent amounts of β1 integrin associated with collagen beads bound to Msp‐ and vehicle‐treated cells. Photobleaching experiments found a similar percentage mobile fraction of β1 integrins recovered in bleached areas of the plasma membrane. In contrast, Msp‐induced inhibition of collagen binding was reversed by β1 integrin affinity‐activating antibodies and by latrunculin B, which prevented subcortical actin assembly. We conclude that native Msp of T. denticola inhibits the binding step of collagen phagocytosis in fibroblasts by inducing subcortical actin filament assembly and restricting affinity modulation of β1 integrins. We suggest that, like Msp, bacterial toxins that target the cytoskeleton may also perturb the signalling networks required for cellular engagement of matrix ligands.
RAS/MAPK pathway hyperactivation determines poor prognosis in undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcomas

Undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS) constitutes the most common subtype of soft tissue sarcoma. However, UPS is clinically and molecularly poorly understood, in great extent due to its intrinsic phenotypic and cytogenetic complexity, which in turn results in the absence of specific prognostic or predictive biomarkers. The RAS/mitogen‐activated protein kinases (MAPK) and phosphoinositide 3‐kinase inhibitor (PI3K)/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathways are considered to be 2 major mechanisms for sarcoma proliferation and survival and to the authors' knowledge their role in UPS remains unclear. The objective of the current study was to investigate whether the RAS/MAPK and PI3K/mTOR pathways are activated in UPS, and whether pathway activation is associated with outcome.
Transcriptional response of Choristoneura fumiferana to sublethal exposure of Cry1Ab protoxin from Bacillus thuringiensis

Bacillus thuringiensis is a microbial control agent active against Choristoneura fumiferana, a lepidopteran defoliator of North American forests. Although the B. thuringiensis insecticidal crystal protoxins have a relatively narrow host range, there is concern about their impact on non‐target species where intoxication effects may not be overt. Larval toxicity effects can be assessed at the molecular level by determining altered transcriptional profiles in response to sublethal protoxin exposure in sensitive insects. Subtraction hybridization libraries were created using two larval populations, control and protoxin‐fed and were characterized by sequencing 1091 clones. Differential mRNA expression of selected clones, as measured by quantitative polymerase chain reaction, identified a number of metabolic and stress‐related genes that were either transcriptionally enhanced or repressed after protoxin exposure.
Low-Voltage Low-Power CMOS Oscillator with Low Temperature and Process Sensitivity

The design of an on-chip RC-based oscillator, implemented in a standard 0.35 mum CMOS process, without any external component, is presented. The proposed oscillator provides a clock signal at a frequency of about 80 KHz with a temperature coefficient smaller than 842 ppm/degC over a temperature range from 0 to 80 7degC and a standard deviation due to process variations smaller than 4%, without any external trimming. The proposed oscillator operates with a supply voltage of 1 V and has a power consumption of about 1 muW at room temperature. The chip area is 0.24 mm2.
The Brn‐3b POU family transcription factor represses plakoglobin gene expression in human breast cancer cells

The Brn‐3b transcription factor has been shown to be overexpressed in human breast cancer cells and contributes toward cell growth regulation. Using micro‐arrays, more than 50 cancer‐related genes regulated by Brn‐3b in human breast cancer cells have been identified. For example, Brn‐3b activates the cell cycle regulator CDK4 that provides a mechanism by which Brn‐3b controls the growth of breast cancer cells. Here, we show that Brn‐3b regulates plakoglobin (γ‐catenin), a member of the catenin family involved in cell‐cell adhesion and signal transduction. Brn‐3b expression inversely correlates with plakoglobin expression at both mRNA and protein levels in breast cancer cell lines and human breast biopsies. In contrast, no significant correlation was observed between Brn‐3b expression and β‐catenin, or between Brn‐3b expression and E‐cadherin expression. Brn‐3b represses the plakoglobin promoter via a Brn‐3 consensus binding site contained within the region −965 to −593 relative to the transcriptional start site. Both repression of the promoter and binding of Brn‐3b are lost when this site is mutated. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a Brn‐3b POU family transcription factor has been shown to regulate a member of the catenin family, which provides insight into the molecular mechanisms by which Brn‐3b expression may favour breast cancer progression and tumor invasion. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Innovation Goals in Software Development for Business Applications

Having been in touch with technical side of many companies in various sectors, we know industry is facing a period of unprecedented change. We have compiled a list of common technological challenges in the sector that companies are facing in adapting to the change. The purpose of this contribution is to discuss and communicate areas where technological challenges in the Software Development Sector lie. We see this kind of inventory beneficial to the academic community as it provides an account of industry challenges. The analysis would be necessary to really assist players in the sector in being better prepared for formalizing and documenting their learning and know-how development. Beside knowledge management benefits, the analysis also would help in taking advantage of research and development funding and attracting investors; both academic and industrial organizations can take advantage of this aspect. We are calling this type of analysis “capabilities analysis”. A single company might not solve the world’s technical problems, but just being aware of them and measuring steps taken to advance, even slightly, in the direction of solving the problems presented in this analysis would make the company stand out. When data is formulated this way, strong evidence is created that the project goes beyond standard engineering by distinguishing risk that can be eliminated through experiment from standard engineering risk. The main contribution of this work is classification of problems and approaches to solve them in this field.
Development of a simplified single-apheresis approach for peripheral-blood progenitor-cell transplantation in previously treated patients with lymphoma.

PURPOSE The aims of this study were to develop a simplified, safe, and cost-effective peripheral-blood progenitor-cell (PBPC) mobilization protocol. PATIENTS AND METHODS Twenty-six patients with relapsed or resistant lymphomas were entered onto a sequential cohort study in which schedules of various granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) were administered after cyclophosphamide 1.5 g/m2. Hematologic recovery after high-dose carmustine (BCNU) etoposide, cytarabine, and melphalan (BEAM) chemotherapy was compared with that of 46 patients who received autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) without growth factors and 28 patients who received ABMT followed by G-CSF. RESULTS When G-CSF (10 micrograms/kg/d) was administered from the day after the cyclophosphamide, neutropenia developed on day 8 followed by an abrupt increase in the WBC count. The optimal time for PBPC harvesting was the day on which the postnadir WBC count was greater than 8.0 x 10(9)/L, as shown by CD34+ cell counts and granulocytic-macrophage colony-forming cell (GM-CFC) assays. The reproducibility of the response was such that routine monitoring of CD34+ cell counts and GM-CFC was not necessary. A single leukapheresis on this day was adequate for prompt hematologic engraftment, and posttransplant G-CSF made little further impact on the rapid recovery. Compared with both control groups, the use of PBPC led to more rapid neutrophil recovery, markedly accelerated platelet recovery, less use of antimicrobial agents and parenteral nutrition, and more than 10 days earlier discharge from hospital. All of these differences were highly significant (P < .01). CONCLUSION A simplified mobilization protocol is described that requires only one apheresis to achieve rapid hematologic engraftment.
Molecular analysis and test of linkage between the FMR-1 gene and infantile autism in multiplex families.

Approximately 2%-5% of autistic children show cytogenetic evidence of the fragile X syndrome. This report tests whether infantile autism in multiplex autism families arises from an unusual manifestion of the fragile X syndrome. This could arise either by expansion of the (CGG)n trinucleotide repeat in FMR-1 or from a mutation elsewhere in the gene. We studied 35 families that met stringent criteria for multiplex autism. Amplification of the trinucleotide repeat and analysis of methylation status were performed in 79 autistic children and in 31 of their unaffected siblings, by Southern blot analysis. No examples of amplified repeats were seen in the autistic or control children or in their parents or grandparents. We next examined the hypothesis that there was a mutation elsewhere in the FMR-1 gene, by linkage analysis in 32 of these families. We tested four different dominant models and a recessive model. Linkage to FMR-1 could be excluded (lod score between -24 and -62) in all models by using probes DXS548, FRAXAC1, and FRAXAC2 and the CGG repeat itself. Tests for heterogeneity in this sample were negative, and the occurrence of positive lod scores in this data set could be attributed to chance. Analysis of the data by the affected-sib method also did not show evidence for linkage of any marker to autism. These results enable us to reject the hypothesis that multiplex autism arises from expansion of the (CGG)n trinucleotide repeat in FMR-1. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Detecting the direction of arrival and time of arrival of impulsive transient signals

The ability to detect the direction of arrival and time of arrival (DoA-ToA) of propagating signals generated by underwater sources using array of sensors is crucial for passive sensing. This is a challenging task especially for transient and impulsive signals which have similar acoustic signature. We consider these signals, received by each sensor in a sensor array over an observation period. We assume that only a small number of these signals exist in the observation window, and that they have distinct direction of arrival (DoA) and time of arrival (DoA). The sensor array data of these signals can be transformed into a DoA-ToA space and we should expect this to be sparse. We show that this transformation can be written as an underdetermined linear system. We suggest robust methods to recover the DoA-ToA of the signals by enforcing sparsity in the DoA-ToA space. Through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, we show in numerical simulations that our methods outperform conventional practices such as cross-correlation-based time difference of arrival (TDoA) and beamforming. We present a scatter plot of the detected DoA-ToA based on the acoustic pressure sensor array recording in Singapore waters to show that the sparse DoA-ToA technique is robust and produces imaging results that match the known underwater man-made structures at the experimental site.
Impact of absorption depth on the characteristics of pulses generated by a Ti:Sapphire femtosecond laser

A modified model of fast saturable absorption for approximating the Kerr-lens effect in Ti:Sapphire crystals is introduced and the model performance is compared with that of a one-dimensional temporal model previously proposed by Sander. The model is then used to extract the dynamics of the pulses generated by a typical Ti:Sapphire femtosecond laser. Among the crucial parameters affecting the pulse characteristics, the modulation depth of the approximated saturable absorber, which can be controlled by fabrication process of Ti:Sapphire crystals, is investigated in this work.
Bis(2-chloro-1,10-phenanthroline-κ2 N,N′)(thiocyanato-κN)zinc (2-chloro-1,10-phenanthroline-κ2 N,N′)tris(thiocyanato-κN)zincate

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, [Zn(NCS)(C12H7ClN2)2][Zn(NCS)3(C12H7ClN2)], contains two cations and two anions. In the cations, the ZnII ions have distorted trigonal–bipyramidal environments formed by four N atoms from two 2-chloro-1,10-phenanthroline (cphen) ligands and one N atom from a thiocyanate ligand. The ZnII atoms in the complex anions also have distorted trigonal–bipyramidal environments, formed by two N atoms from a cphen ligand and three N atoms from three thiocyanato ligands. The crystal packing exhibits π–π interactions between the rings of the cphen ligands [shortest centroid–centroid distance = 3.586 (5) Å] and short intermolecular S⋯Cl [3.395 (5) Å] and S⋯S [3.440 (4) Å] contacts.
Partial-Year Insurance Coverage and the Health Care Utilization of Children

A large literature examines the effects of health insurance on the health care utilization of children; however, most existing studies conceptualize coverage as a point-in-time measure rather than as a dynamic phenomenon. The major contribution of this article is its provision of estimates on the relationship between the duration of coverage over the course of a calendar year and health care utilization among children. Using child-level fixed-effects regression, we find that an incremental uninsured month is associated with a 0.7 percentage point decline in the probability of receiving a visit over the course of a year and a 3% decrease in the number of visits received. Children with intrayear coverage losses are more likely than those with continuous coverage to lose their usual source of care, which serves as a potential mechanism through which short gaps in coverage may lead to longer-term decrements in utilization.
Detection and Recognition in Natural Scene Images

Text detection and recognition in natural scene images has applications in computer vision systems such as license plate detection, automatic street sign translation, image retrieval and help for visually impaired people. Scene text, however, has complex background, image blur, partially occluded text, variations in font-styles, image noise and varying illumination. Hence scene text recognition is a challenging computer vision problem. This work addresses the problem of dictionary driven end-to-end scene text recognition, which is divided into a text detection problem and a text recognition problem. For text detection an AdaBoost sliding window classifier is used to detect text in multiple scales. The effectiveness of several feature-sets for this classifier are compared and evaluated. A modified Local Ternary Pattern (LTP) feature-set is found as most effective for text detection. In a post-processing stage Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) are detected and labeled as text or non-text. Text regions are grouped to textlines. Textlines are split into words by a word-splitting method build upon k-means and linear Support Vector Machines (SVM). For text recognition a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) trained with backpropagation is used as one-dimensional sliding window classifier. To avoid overfitting the network is regularized by Dropout. Recognition-responses are used in a Viterbi-style algorithm to find the most plausible word in a dictionary. The influence of training set size and size of convolutional layers is evaluated. The system presented outperforms state of the art methods on the ICDAR 2003 and 2011 dataset in the text-detection (F-Score: 74.2% / 76.7%), dictionary-driven cropped-word recognition (F-Score: 87.1% / 87.1%) and dictionary-driven end-to-end recognition (F-Score: 72.6%) tasks.
Microtubule-targeted antitumor drugs : chemistry , mechanisms and nanoparticle formulations

Teni Boulikas1,2*, Ioannis Tsogas3 Regulon, Inc. 715 North Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View, California 94043, USA Regulon AE, Afxentiou 7, Alimos, Athens 17455, Greece Dendrigen AE, Afxentiou 3, Alimos, Athens 17455, Greece __________________________________________________________________________________ *Correspondence: Teni Boulikas, Ph.D., Regulon AE, Afxentiou 7, Alimos, Athens 17455, Greece; Tel: +30-210-9858454; Fax: +30210-9858453; e-mail: teni@regulon.org
Design and development of stacked die technology solutions for memory packages

With the demand in increased functionality for consumer electronics and the need for form factor reduction, stacked die packages have gained its popularity over the recent years. The most efficient way to increase a memory package's capacity without increasing its size is to adopt a die stacking structure. This paper presents three innovative package technologies for DRAM memory packages, with the option of die stacking structures of D2i/D2-wCSP (window chip scale package), D2-FBGA and 2DD2-wCSP. Upfront design considerations such as package structure, electrical performance and board level reliability are discussed. Customised assembly processes are developed for each package type, with full package level reliability qualification. Each package design demonstrated its unique advantages and careful selection of a packaging solution is necessary in meeting individual customer's specific requirements
A robust DOA estimation algorithm for uniform linear array in the presence of mutual coupling

It is well known that the mutual coupling between array elements is inversely related to their separation and may be negligible for elements separated by a few wavelengths, and at the same time the coupling between any two equally spaced sensors is approximately the same. Moreover, following the principle of reciprocity, the mutual coupling can always be expressed by a symmetric matrix. Consequently, a banded symmetric Toeplitz matrix provides a satisfactory model for the mutual coupling of ULA (Uniform linear array). In this paper, a robust subspace-based direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm in the presence of mutual coupling is proposed for ULA. Based on the banded symmetric Toeplitz matrix model for the mutual coupling of ULA, the new algorithm provides a favorable DOA estimates and exploits no knowledge of the sensor mutual couplings. More importantly, an accurate estimate of mutual coupling matrix can also be achieved simultaneously for array calibration.
Nurse Practitioners’ Comfort in Treating Work-Related Injuries in Adolescents

This study examined nurse practitioners’ (NPs) previous experiences and comfort levels in treating adolescents with work-related injuries in two states where NPs have statutory authority to treat work-related injuries. The authors surveyed all actively licensed NPs in Washington and Oregon (N = 4,849). Factors associated with NPs’ previous experiences and comfort in treating adolescents with work-related injuries were identified using modified Poisson regression. Less than a quarter of respondents (21.1%, n = 225) reported having ever treated an adolescent for a work-related injury. Nearly half (43.6%) of respondents reported being uncomfortable or very uncomfortable in treating adolescents with work-related injuries. Previous experience and male gender were associated with greater likelihood of feeling comfortable (p < .01). Nurse practitioners serve as primary care providers for adolescents who may experience work-related injuries. This study documents the need for developing educational and outreach efforts to better prepare NPs to treat adolescents’ work-related injuries.
An efficient decoding algorithm for block turbo codes

An efficient soft-input soft-output iterative decoding algorithm for block turbo codes (BTCs) is proposed. The proposed algorithm utilizes Kaneko's (1994) decoding algorithm for soft-input hard-output decoding. These hard outputs are converted to soft-decisions using reliability calculations. Three different schemes for reliability calculations incorporating different levels of approximation are suggested. The algorithm proposed here presents a major advantage over existing decoding algorithms for BTCs by providing ample flexibility in terms of performance-complexity tradeoff. This makes the algorithm well suited for wireless multimedia applications. The algorithm can be used for optimal as well as suboptimal decoding. The suboptimal versions of the algorithm can be developed by changing a single parameter (the number of error patterns to be generated). For any performance, the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is less than the computational complexity of similar existing algorithms. Simulation results for the decoding algorithm for different two-dimensional BTCs over an additive white Gaussian noise channel are shown. A performance comparison of the proposed algorithm with similar existing algorithms is also presented.