Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AKT-dependent HspB1 (Hsp27) Activity in Epidermal Differentiation*

AKT activity has been reported in the epidermis associated with keratinocyte survival and differentiation. We show in developing skin that Akt activity associates first with post-proliferative, para-basal keratinocytes and later with terminally differentiated keratinocytes that are forming the fetal stratum corneum. In adult epidermis the dominant Akt activity is in these highly differentiated granular keratinocytes, involved in stratum corneum assembly. Stratum corneum is crucial for protective barrier activity, and its formation involves complex and poorly understood processes such as nuclear dissolution, keratin filament aggregation, and assembly of a multiprotein cell cornified envelope. A key protein in these processes is filaggrin. We show that one target of Akt in granular keratinocytes is HspB1 (heat shock protein 27). Loss of epidermal HspB1 caused hyperkeratinization and misprocessing of filaggrin. Akt-mediated HspB1 phosphorylation promotes a transient interaction with filaggrin and intracellular redistribution of HspB1. This is the first demonstration of a specific interaction between HspB1 and a stratum corneum protein and indicates that HspB1 has chaperone activity during stratum corneum formation. This work demonstrates a new role for Akt in epidermis.
FDI and economic growth: empirical evidence from Pakistan

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between FDI and economic growth. Two models have been used to analyse the time series data on Pakistan from 1970 to 2012. This paper contributes to the existing literature by examining the different empirical methods to estimate the relationship between FDI and economic growth. The vector error correction model (VECM) results suggest that FDI depends on the economic growth but this relationship is not true vice versa. The second model showed that FDI, human capital and exports are important factors of economic growth. However, the negative relationship between interactive variables (FDI and human capital) and economic growth indicates that low level of human capital affect the economic growth of Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach - – Used time series data (1970-2012) for empirical analysis. Findings - – The VECM results suggest that FDI depends on the economic growth but this relationship is not true vice versa. The second model showed that FDI, human capital and exports are important factors of economic growth. However, the negative relationship between interactive variables (FDI and human capital) and economic growth indicates that low level of human capital affect the economic growth of Pakistan. Research limitations/implications - – The limitations of this empirical paper are as follows: it would be better to use secondary school enrolment (per cent) to measure human capital instead adult literacy rate. Similarly, the non-availability of R & - D data on Pakistan limited the scope of the paper to measure the role of absorptive capacity of domestic and its relationship with FDI. The results of this paper are specifically related to Pakistan and cannot be generalized to other countries. Practical implications - – This empirical study implies that Pakistan should improve its economic growth. The robust policies are required to increase the literacy rate of the country. Higher human capital will attract more FDI into the economy and may reduce the unemployment. This would increase the national output of the country and their national income level. Presently, Pakistan is going through war on terror and foreign firms are reluctant to invest. A stable and secure business environment will ultimately inject foreign direct investment into Pakistan. Originality/value - – This paper is first time analyse the time series data to explore the relationship between FDI and economic growth. A new approach has been used called VECM.
Ensembling as a Defense Against Adversarial Examples

Adversarial attacks on machine learning systems take two main flavors. First, there are trainingtime attacks, which involve compromising the training data that the system is trained on. Unsurprisingly, machines can misclassify examples, if they are trained on malicious data. Second, there are test-time attacks, which involve crafting an adversarial example, which a human would easily classify as some class A, whereas the system erroneously classifies it as some different class B [1]. For example, both images in Figure 1 are easily classified by humans to be a stop sign. In the adversarial setting, some classifier may misclassify the image on the right to be a speed limit 45 sign instead.
In Silico Investigations of Silk Fibroin Peptides Highlight their Therapeutic Values towards Wound Healing

This work validates an in vitro observation that silk peptides derived from the α-chymotrypsin digestion of fibroin heavy chain promote wound healing properties. A molecular level evidence of binding of these peptide fragments to growth factors, their receptors and the corresponding ligand-receptor complexes has been provided. The strengths of interactions and possible conformational changes caused by binding of the select three fibroin peptide fragments to various (fifteen) target combinations have been evaluated. The analysis indicates that a number of target residues have been found to be involved in forming convincing hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions with the three fibroin peptides, thus facilitating the wound healing process. Though very few of them were also involved in interactions with the amino acids at the ligand-ligand, receptor-receptor and ligand-receptor interfaces, it is proposed that the binding does not hinder the ligand-receptor interactions. In the first two peptides, the polar amino acids play a significant role in interacting with the targets. However, in case of the third peptide, due to its higher non-polar composition, the overall interactions are stabilized by hydrophobic interactions. This molecular level appreciation strengthens the fact that silk fibroin peptides could be exploited towards creating medicaments for wound healing and cosmetic surgeries.
The mechanical interaction between three geometric types of nylon core suture and a running epitenon suture in repair of porcine flexor tendons

The effect of core suture geometry on the mechanical interaction with the epitenon suture in terms of gap prevention, failure strength and mode of failure was investigated in a flexor tendon repair model. A total of 48 porcine flexor tendons were repaired using three techniques with distinct core suture geometry: single Kessler; double Kessler; and cruciate repair. Cyclic linear testing was carried out with and without a simple running epitenon suture. At failure load the epitenon suture reduced gapping by 87% in the double Kessler, 42% in the single Kessler and 15% in cruciate repairs. It increased the strengths of the repairs by 58%, 33% and 24%, respectively. Kessler repairs failed mainly by suture rupture, with and without epitenon suture, but cruciate repairs failed mainly by suture pull-out. The epitenon suture did not have a significant mechanical effect on the three repairs. Rather, its effect varied with the core suture geometry. The greatest effect occurred with double Kessler repairs.
Racial/ethnic identity, community-oriented media initiatives, and transmedia storytelling

ABSTRACT This study focuses on how racial minorities are actively adapting, resisting, and challenging the practices of mainstream media in a convergence era. Through collaborative, community-based, transmedia storytelling initiatives, racial minority groups are fostering new critical media literacies and active digital citizenship. This article focuses on two such initiatives: a fictional Web-based drama series (East Los High) and a transmedia participatory art initiative (Question Bridge). The analysis shows how racial minorities use transmedia projects to create alternative forms of mediated storytelling that are more inclusive and participatory.
Infliximab in the Treatment of Severe, Steroid-Refractory Ulcerative Colitis: A Pilot Study

We report the experience of 11 patients (of 60 planned patients) enrolled in a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of infliximab in patients with severe, active steroid-refractory ulcerative colitis. The study was terminated prematurely because of slow enrollment. Patients having active disease for at least 2 weeks and receiving at least 5 days of intravenous corticosteroids were eligible to receive a single intravenous infusion of infliximab at 5, 10, or 20 mg/kg body weight. The primary endpoint used in this study was treatment failure at 2 weeks after infusion. Treatment failure was defined as 1) unachieved clinical response as defined by a modified Truelove and Witts severity score, 2) increase in corticosteroid dosage, 3) addition of immunosuppressants, 4) colectomy, or 5) death. Safety evaluations included physical examination, clinical chemistry and hematology laboratory tests, and occurrence of adverse experiences. Four of 8 patients (50%) who received infliximab were considered treatment successes at 2 weeks, compared with none of 3 patients who received placebo. Improvement in erythrocyte sedimentation rates and serum concentrations of C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 correlated with the clinical response observed in patients receiving infliximab. Infusion with infliximab produced no significant adverse events. Infliximab was well tolerated and may provide clinical benefit for some patients with steroid-refractory ulcerative colitis.
Outline of Alignment Algorithm 3 . 2 Chunk Identifying of English Sentence

In this paper, a method for the word alignment of English-Chinese corpus based on chunks is proposed. The chunks of English sentences are identified firstly. Then the chunk boundaries of Chinese sentences are predicted by the translations of English chunks and heuristic information. The ambiguities of Chinese chunk boundaries are resolved by the coterminous words in English chunks. With the chunk aligned bilingual corpus, a translation relation probability is proposed to align words. Finally, we evaluate our system by real corpus and present the experiment results.
Metabolomics of drugs of abuse: a more realistic view of the toxicological complexity.

Metabolomics (also known as metabolic profiling or metabonomics) is a relatively new field of ‘omics’ technology, representing genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics other approaches. Metabolomics is primarily concerned with the ‘global’ qualitative and quantitative characterization of small molecule metabolites of 100 samples/day is possible). In this regard, LC-MS has short history in metabolomics comparatively to GC-MS, but has becoming increasingly popular since it is able to analyze nonvolatile, temperaturesensitive and polar metabolites without the need of a derivatization step [4]. As a result, virtually all compounds can be analyzed by LC-MS. Besides the analytical technique, metabolomics also use multivariate statistical methods (e.g., principal component analysis, partial least-squares discriminate analysis, orthogonal partial least-squares discriminate analysis, clustering) to examine patterns in the data (without bias) that exhibit the maximum variance. Metabolomics entered in the area of toxicology for about 10–12 years ago, later showing a rapid growth aiming the comprehensive analysis of the urine, plasma and tissue extracts metabolome [5]. Recently, it has been attracted the interest of many clinical and forensic toxicology researchers for studying the all ‘picture’ of drugs of abuse, since it is an effective approach to examine xenobiotic metabolism as well as the associated metabolic effects. Overall, this editorial aims to highlight that mapping the biochemical changes after drugs of abuse exposure, can complement traditional approaches by revealing potential biomarkers of organ toxicity, discovering new metabolites in timeand dose-dependent manner and different pharmacodynamic targets, as well as by giving insights about the pathways implicated in the mechanism of action, adverse effects and variability of Metabolomics of drugs of abuse: a more realistic view of the toxicological complexity
The Ameliorating Effect of Lactobacillus gasseri OLL2716 on Functional Dyspepsia in Helicobacter pylori-Uninfected Individuals: A Randomized Controlled Study

Background/Aims: Probiotics appear to improve Helicobacter pylori-associated dyspepsia via an inhibitory effect on H. pylori; however, uncertainty exists regarding their effects in H. pylori-uninfected individuals. We evaluated the efficacy of Lactobacillus gasseri OLL2716 (L. gasseri OLL2716) on H. pylori-uninfected individuals with functional dyspepsia (FD). Methods: A double-blind, parallel-group, placebo-controlled, randomized, controlled trial was performed. Participants were randomly assigned to ingest L. gasseri OLL2716-containing yogurt (L. gasseri OLL2716 group) or L. gasseri OLL2716-free yogurt (placebo group) for 12 weeks. Participants completed questionnaires that dealt with a global assessment as well as symptom severity. The per-protocol (PP) population was evaluated for efficacy in accordance with a plan prepared beforehand. Results: Randomization was performed on 116 individuals; the PP population consisted of 106 individuals (mean age 42.8 ± 9.0). The impressions regarding the overall effect on gastric symptoms were more positive in the L. gasseri OLL2716 group compared to that in the placebo group (statistical trend; p = 0.073). The elimination rate for major FD symptoms was 17.3 and 35.3% in the placebo and L. gasseri OLL2716 groups respectively (p = 0.048). Conclusion:L. gasseri OLL2716 has beneficial effects on FD without H. pylori involvement.
Progressive parkinsonism in mice with respiratory-chain-deficient dopamine neurons

Mitochondrial dysfunction is implicated in the pathophysiology of Parkinson′s disease (PD), a common age-associated neurodegenerative disease characterized by intraneuronal inclusions (Lewy bodies) and progressive degeneration of the nigrostriatal dopamine (DA) system. It has recently been demonstrated that midbrain DA neurons of PD patients and elderly humans contain high levels of somatic mtDNA mutations, which may impair respiratory chain function. However, clinical studies have not established whether the respiratory chain deficiency is a primary abnormality leading to inclusion formation and DA neuron death, or whether generalized metabolic abnormalities within the degenerating DA neurons cause secondary damage to mitochondria. We have used a reverse genetic approach to investigate this question and created conditional knockout mice (termed MitoPark mice), with disruption of the gene for mitochondrial transcription factor A (Tfam) in DA neurons. The knockout mice have reduced mtDNA expression and respiratory chain deficiency in midbrain DA neurons, which, in turn, leads to a parkinsonism phenotype with adult onset of slowly progressive impairment of motor function accompanied by formation of intraneuronal inclusions and dopamine nerve cell death. Confocal and electron microscopy show that the inclusions contain both mitochondrial protein and membrane components. These experiments demonstrate that respiratory chain dysfunction in DA neurons may be of pathophysiological importance in PD.
Influence of contiguity on seismic velocities of partially molten aggregates

[1] The microstructure of partially molten rocks plays a key role in determining their physical properties. The area fraction of intergranular contact, contiguity, governs the establishment of a skeletal framework of solid grains and controls the effective elastic moduli of the aggregate. This work presents a theoretical calculation of steady state grain shape, contiguity, effective elastic moduli, and S and P wave velocities for a partially molten aggregate containing an approximate melt volume fraction of 0.09. The steady state microstructure is controlled by surface tension gradients arising from interaction among adjacent grains in a close-packed aggregate. The ratio of viscosity between the grains and the melt, as well as the capillary number, strongly influence the contiguity. For an aggregate with a high viscosity ratio, surface tension-driven faceting is suppressed due to the large viscous resistance of the grains, leading to a small contiguity. Both VS and VP decrease in a nonlinear fashion with an increasing viscosity ratio for all capillary numbers. When extrapolated to the conditions similar to the core-mantle boundary, a 3:1 ratio of shear to P wave velocity reduction can be explained by a melt volume fraction of 0.15.
4D reconstruction of the past

One of the main characteristics of the Internet era we are living in, is the free and online availability of a huge amount of data. This data is of varied reliability and accuracy and exists in various forms and formats. Often, it is cross-referenced and linked to other data, forming a nexus of text, images, animation and audio enabled by hypertext and, recently, by the Web3.0 standard. Search engines can search text for keywords using algorithms of varied intelligence and with limited success. Searching images is a much more complex and computationally intensive task but some initial steps have already been made in this direction, mainly in face recognition. This paper aims to describe our proposed pipeline for integrating data available on Internet repositories and social media, such as photographs, animation and text to produce 3D models of archaeological monuments as well as enriching multimedia of cultural / archaeological interest with metadata and harvesting the end products to EUROPEANA. Our main goal is to enable historians, architects, archaeologists, urban planners and affiliated professionals to reconstruct views of historical monuments from thousands of images floating around the web.
First-Principles Study of Ni Adatom Adsorption on Graphene for Ni-Catalyzed Carbonization of Wood as Electromagnetic Shielding (EMS) Materials

The functionalization and electric properties of graphene by the addition of transition metal atom of Ni to its surface had been investigated computationally using density functional theory with the generalized gradient approximation. The stable geometry adsorption position, binding energy, band gap, density of states, charge transfer of Ni adsorbed on graphene at two different coverages were calculated. The hollow site was the most stable adsorption site with the largest binding energy. The local density of states showed that carbon 2p orbital (Â? bonded states) hybridized strongly with the 3d orbital of the Ni atom. Mulliken population showed the net charge (e) transferred from the Ni metal atom to the graphene was 0.87 of the (2A2) supercell and 1.05 of the (4A4) supercell respectively. All these changes of electric properties resulted in the band gap getting smaller and showing stranger conductivity after Ni adsorbed on the graphene.
Choice of Evaluation Criteria in a Clinical Trial

The choice of proper evaluation criteria is a key aspect of any clinical trial. The efficacy, tolerance and safety of symptomatic treatments can be evaluated by assessing clinical symptoms and/ or signs (vital functions). For life-threatening diseases, the relevant evaluation criterion is morbi-mortality. However, this criterion is rarely chosen because it requires very long-term studies and a large number of patients. Then, a biomarker or other intermediary criteria can be used as a substitute endpoint. The intermediary criterion should correlate well with morbi-mortality (clinical criterion). In these last years, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been publishing scientific guidelines defining efficacy and safety evaluation criteria for the phase I and II “proof of concept” Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs) and the phase III “pivotal trials” which are required for marketing authorization. The present paper describes the rationale underlying the choice of evaluation criteria, together with the advantages and limitations of their application in some selected therapeutic indications.
A modified group vector quantization algorithm for speaker identification

In this paper, a modification to the group vector quantization (GVQ) discriminative training algorithm is proposed to train VQ codebooks for closed set speaker identification. The proposed algorithm, referred to as modified GVQ (MGVQ), shifts the decision surfaces between speakers smoothly toward the Bayes limits. This is achieved by varying the learning rate during training iterations. The proposed MGVQ algorithm achieves higher speaker identification rate compared to the standard GVQ
Nuclear PTEN tumor-suppressor functions through maintaining heterochromatin structure

The tumor suppressor, PTEN, is one of the most commonly mutated genes in cancer. Recently, PTEN has been shown to localize in the nucleus and is required to maintain genomic stability. Here, we show that nuclear PTEN, independent of its phosphatase activity, is essential for maintaining heterochromatin structure. Depletion of PTEN leads to loss of heterochromatic foci, decreased chromatin compaction, overexpression of heterochromatic genes, and reduced protein stability of heterochromatin protein 1 α. We found that the C-terminus of PTEN is required to maintain heterochromatin structure. Additionally, cancer-associated PTEN mutants lost their tumor-suppressor function when their heterochromatin structure was compromised. We propose that this novel role of PTEN accounts for its function in guarding genomic stability and suppressing tumor development.
Beat‐to‐Beat Repolarization Variability in LQTS Patients with the SCN5A Sodium Channel Gene Mutation

Current techniques evaluating beat‐to‐beat variability of repolarization rely on accurate determination of T wave endpoints. This study proposes a T wave endpoint‐independent method to quantify repolarization variability in a standard 12‐lead ECG using a wavelet transformation. Our method was used to identify repolarization variability in long QT syndrome patients (LQTS) with the SCN5A sodium channel gene mutation. Using wavelet transformations based on the second Gaussian derivative, we evaluated repolarization variability in 11 LQTS patients with the mutation, 13 noncarrier family members, and 28 unrelated healthy subjects. Time‐domain repolarization variability parameters (SDRTo, SDRTm) and wavelet parameters describing temporal (beat‐to‐beat) variability of repolarization in time (TVT) and in amplitude (TVA) were analyzed. Reproducibility of wavelet parameters and relationship of wavelet‐based variability with heart rate and preceding RR interval were investigated. The wavelet‐based method quantified beat‐to‐beat variability of the entire repolarization segment (regardless of QT interval identification) providing insight into variability in repolarization morphology. Our method showed that SCN5A carriers have significantly increased repolarization variability in amplitude (23%± 14% vs 8 ± 4%, P < 0.001) and in time (14 ± 17 ms vs 3 ± 2 ms, P < 0.004) compared to noncarriers. Variability of repolarization amplitude was found to be heart rate dependent with variability decreasing with increasing heart rate. Relative error describing reproducibility of TVA and TVT was ± 5% and ± 10%, respectively. Our method quantifies repolarization variability in amplitude and in time without the need to identify T or U wave endpoints. Wavelet‐detected repolarization variability contributes to phenotypic identification of SCN5A carriers, with more pronounced beat‐to‐beat variability in repolarization amplitude than in time.
Radar based automatic target system

This paper describes the novel application of both dual tone CW and ISAR techniques to measure the position of a small high velocity projectile as it passes through a defined sensory virtual plane, so forming the basis of an automatic targeting system for live fire training. Simulation and initial experimental results are presented, as well as a general description of the system.