Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Linguistic Discrimination in Minimal Groups

In line with recent evidence of linguistic discrimination within minimal groups, the present experiment examines the effects of asymmetries of status between minimal groups on linguistic discrimination. Equal-, high-, and low-status groups were created by modifying the standard minimal group condition. Linguistic data were obtained by asking participants to describe a choice (parity vs. in-group favoritism vs. out-group favoritism) made by either an in-group or an out-group member in allocating negative outcomes (i.e., seconds of noise to be listened via earphones). Results showed that high- and low-status groups described the out-group in a more biased fashion than did equal-status groups, suggesting that asymmetries of status enhance out-group derogation. This study contributes to evidence of linguistic discrimination in the realm of minimal groups when groups differ in their relative social position.
Complex pattern of alternative splicing generates unusual diversity in the leader sequence of the chicken link protein mRNA.

We report here the isolation of the 5' end and the promoter region of the gene for chicken cartilage link protein, and demonstrate extensive heterogeneity of the leader sequence arising from differential utilization of multiple splice sites within the 5'-most exon. The 500-base pairs (bp) exon 1 consists of solely untranslated sequence and is followed by an intron >33 kilobase pairs (kb). Together, the five exons predict a gene size longer than 100 kb. Multiple transcription initiation sites were mapped 34, 46, 56, 66 and 76 bp downstream of a TATA-like motif. Sequence analysis revealed that in addition to the nonspliced variant, multiple mRNA species were generated by alternative splicing resulting in the exclusion of 92, 166, 170, 174 and 263 nucleotides (nt), respectively, from exon 1. Polymerase chain reaction confirmed the existence of various splice forms, and showed cell typeand developmental stage-specific expression for one group of them. Secondary structure predictions indicated that the leaders of the splice forms could form stable hairpin structures with different free energies of formation (up to AG = 1 10 kcal/mol), suggesting translational control. The splice variant detected in the largest amount had the least stable predicted hairpin (AG = 31.7 kcal/mol).
Comprehensive non-functional analysis of combinational circuits vulnerability to single event transients

The progressive shrinking of device sizes in advanced technologies leads to miniaturization and performance improvements. However, ultra-deep sub-micron technologies are more vulnerable to different types of uncertainties, parametric variations, and interference. In this paper, we propose a methodology to model and analyze the behavior of a system in the presence of Single Event Transients (SETs). The problem of SET propagation was modeled as a satisfiability problem using different satisfiability modulo theories. The SET width and timing constraints are formulated as a difference logic constraint satisfaction formulation. This formulation utilizes concepts from static timing analysis to efficiently evaluate the required time and width for the SET to be latched. Next, the proposed model is analyzed using efficient SMT solvers for a set of nonfunctional assertions to investigate SETs propagation. Based on the results of this analysis, new fault observability estimates are computed. These values are then used to compute the soft error rate. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed SMT approach provides better runtime then contemporary techniques.
Experimental approaches to evaluate activities of cytochromes P450 3A

Experimental approaches to evaluate activities of cytochromes P450 3A Cytochrome P450 (CYP) is a heme protein oxidizing various xenobiotics, as well as endogenous substrates. Understanding which CYP enzymes are involved in metabolic activation and/or detoxication of different compounds is important in the assessment of an individual's susceptibility to the toxic action of these substances. Therefore, investigation which of several in vitro experimental models are appropriate to mimic metabolism of xenobiotics in organisms is the major challenge for research of many laboratories. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of different in vitro systems containing individual enzymes of the mixed-function monooxygenase system to oxidize two model substrates of CYP3A enzymes, exogenous and endogenous compounds, α-naphtoflavone (α-NF) and testosterone, respectively. Several different enzymatic systems containing CYP3A enzymes were utilized in the study: (i) human hepatic microsomes rich in CYP3A4, (ii) hepatic microsomes of rabbits treated with a CYP3A6 inducer, rifampicine, (iii) microsomes of Baculovirus transfected insect cells containing recombinant human CYP3A4 and NADPH:CYP reductase with or without cytochrome b5 (Supersomes™), (iv) membranes isolated from of Escherichia coli, containing recombinant human CYP3A4 and cytochrome b5, and (v) purified human CYP3A4 or rabbit CYP3A6 reconstituted with NADPH:CYP reductase with or without cytochrome b5 in liposomes. The most efficient systems oxidizing both compounds were Supersomes™ containing human CYP3A4 and cytochrome b5. The results presented in this study demonstrate the suitability of the supersomal CYP3A4 systems for studies investigating oxidation of testosterone and α-NF in vitro.
Gesture Facilitates the Syntactic Analysis of Speech

Recent research suggests that the brain routinely binds together information from gesture and speech. However, most of this research focused on the integration of representational gestures with the semantic content of speech. Much less is known about how other aspects of gesture, such as emphasis, influence the interpretation of the syntactic relations in a spoken message. Here, we investigated whether beat gestures alter which syntactic structure is assigned to ambiguous spoken German sentences. The P600 component of the Event Related Brain Potential indicated that the more complex syntactic structure is easier to process when the speaker emphasizes the subject of a sentence with a beat. Thus, a simple flick of the hand can change our interpretation of who has been doing what to whom in a spoken sentence. We conclude that gestures and speech are integrated systems. Unlike previous studies, which have shown that the brain effortlessly integrates semantic information from gesture and speech, our study is the first to demonstrate that this integration also occurs for syntactic information. Moreover, the effect appears to be gesture-specific and was not found for other stimuli that draw attention to certain parts of speech, including prosodic emphasis, or a moving visual stimulus with the same trajectory as the gesture. This suggests that only visual emphasis produced with a communicative intention in mind (that is, beat gestures) influences language comprehension, but not a simple visual movement lacking such an intention.
Random mutagenesis of two complementarity determining region amino acids yields an unexpectedly high frequency of antibodies with increased affinity for both cognate antigen and autoantigen

To gain insight into the mechanism and limitations of antibody affinity maturation leading to memory B cell formation, we generated a phage display library of random mutants at heavy chain variable (V) complementarity determining region 2 positions 58 and 59 of an anti-p- azophenylarsonate (Ars) Fab. Single amino acid substitutions at these positions resulting from somatic hypermutation are recurrent products of affinity maturation in vivo. Most of the ex vivo mutants retained specificity for Ars. Among the many mutants displaying high Ars-binding activity, only one contained a position 58 and 59 amino acid combination that has been previously observed among the monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) derived from Ars-immunized mice. Affinity measurements on 14 of the ex vivo mutants with high Ars-binding activity showed that 11 had higher intrinsic affinities for Ars that the wild-type V region. However, nine of these Fabs also bound strongly to denatured DNA, a property neither displayed by the wild-type V region nor observed among the mutants characteristic of in vivo affinity maturation. These data suggest that ex vivo enhancement of mAb affinity via site-directed and random mutagenesis approaches may often lead to a reduction in antibody specificity that could complicate the use of the resulting mAbs for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Moreover, the data are compatible with a hypothesis proposing that increased specificity for antigen, rather than affinity per se, is the driving force for formation of the memory B cell compartment.
cplm : Compound Poisson Linear Models

The Tweedie compound Poisson distribution is a mixture of a degenerate distribution at the origin and a continuous distribution on the positive real line. It has been applied in a wide range of fields in which continuous data with exact zeros regularly arise. Nevertheless, statistical inference based on full likelihood and Bayesian methods is not available in most statistical software, largely because the distribution has an intractable density function and numerical methods that allow fast and accurate evaluation of the density did not appear until fairly recently. The cplm package provides likelihood-based and Bayesian procedures for fitting common Tweedie compound Poisson linear models. In particular, models with hierarchical structures or extra zero inflation can be handled. Further, the package implements the Gini index based on an ordered version of the Lorenz curve as a robust model comparison tool involving zero-inflated and highly skewed distributions.
Identification of Sensitive Serum microRNA Biomarkers for Radiation Biodosimetry

Exposure to ionizing radiation through environmental, occupational or a nuclear reactor accident such as the recent Fukushima Daiichi incident often results in major consequences to human health. The injury caused by radiation can manifest as acute radiation syndromes within weeks in organs with proliferating cells such as hematopoietic and gastrointestinal systems. Cancers, fibrosis and degenerative diseases are also reported in organs with differentiated cells, months or years later. Studies conducted on atom bomb survivors, nuclear reactor workers and animal models have shown a direct correlation of these effects with the absorbed dose. Physical dosimeters and the available radio-responsive biologics in body fluids, whose responses are rather indirect, have limitations to accurately evaluate the extent of post exposure damage. We have used an amplification-free, hybridization based quantitative assay utilizing the nCounter multiplex platform developed by nanoString Technologies to compare the levels of over 600 miRNAs in serum from mice irradiated at a range of 1 to 12 Gy at 24 and 48 hr time points. Development of a novel normalization strategy using multiple spike-in oligonucleotides allowed accurate measurement of radiation dose and time dependent changes in serum miRNAs. The response of several evolutionarily conserved miRNAs abundant in serum, were found to be robust and sensitive in the dose range relevant for medical triage and in patients who receive total body radiation as preparative regimen for bone marrow transplantation. Notably, miRNA-150, abundant in lymphocytes, exhibited a dose and time dependent decrease in serum, which we propose as a sensitive marker indicative of lymphocyte depletion and bone marrow damage. Our study has identified several markers useful for evaluation of an individual’s response by minimally invasive methods, relevant to triage in case of a radiation accident and evaluation of toxicity and response during and after therapeutic radiation.
A Scalable and Resilient Layer-2 Network With Ethernet Compatibility

We present the architecture and protocols of ROME, a layer-2 network designed to be backwards-compatible with Ethernet and scalable to tens of thousands of switches and millions of end-hosts. Such large-scale networks are needed for emerging applications including data center networks, wide area networks, and metro Ethernet. ROME is based upon a recently developed greedy routing protocol, greedy distance vector (GDV). Protocol design innovations in ROME include a stateless multicast protocol, a Delaunay distributed hash table (DHT), as well as routing and host discovery protocols for a hierarchical network. ROME protocols do not use broadcast and provide both control-plane and data-plane scalability. Extensive experimental results from a packet-level event-driven simulator, in which ROME protocols are implemented in detail, show that ROME protocols are efficient and scalable to metropolitan size. Furthermore, ROME protocols are highly resilient to network dynamics. The routing latency of ROME is only slightly higher than shortest-path latency. To demonstrate scalability, we provide simulation performance results for ROME networks with up to 25 000 switches and 1.25 million hosts.
Multi-Classification for Malicious URL Based on Improved Semi-Supervised Algorithm

Web attacks are increasing and the scale of malicious URL continues to expand with the rapid development of the Internet, so that the network security situation is increasingly grim. In this case, this paper studies the URL multi-classification problem, which is a continuation of the reference [1] and follows the data sets and most of feature selection methods in it. Firstly, different types of URL structure is analyzed and features which have obvious directivity to the attack type are increased based on the original features. Secondly, an improved semi-supervised algorithm is proposed to train the URL multi-classification model. Finally, the effect of the multi-classification model is verified by using the data set with different labeling rate, which shows the improved algorithm has good classification performance compared to the previous algorithm.
PIModel: A Pragmatic ITS Model Based on Instructional Automata Theory

It is a vital and challenging issue in AI community to get the “Right Information” to the “Right People” in the “Right Language” in the “Right Timeframe” in the “Right Level of Granularity”. More and more researchers recognized that a well-designed instructional plan in intelligent tutoring systems will open up new possibilities of genuinely intelligent knowledge delivery for future education society. This paper proposes a novel three-layer student-state model and discusses the core elements in the architecture of a practical ITS model based on the theory of instructional automata. The main advantages of instruction automata theory lie in that it can not only generate, regulate, update and implement instructional plans for individualized learner in the efficient and effective way, but also provide a uniform and extensible domain-independent environment for ITS designers and engineers.
Metabolomic Research on Newborn Infants With Intrauterine Growth Restriction

AbstractTo compare differences in metabolites between newborns with intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and those who are appropriate for gestational age (AGA) in order to understand the changes in metabolites of newborns with IUGR and to explore the possible metabolic mechanism of tissue and organ damages in patients with IUGR, with the ultimate goal of providing the basis for clinical intervention.A total of 60 newborns with IUGR and 60 AGA newborns who were hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit of our hospital between January 2011 and December 2015 and who underwent metabolic disease screening were enrolled in this study. The differences in 21 amino acids and 55 carnitines in peripheral blood, as well as changes in the ratios of free carnitine and acylcarnitine to total carnitine, were compared.Metabolites, particularly alanine, homocysteine, leucine, methionine, ornithine, serine, tyrosine, isovaleryl carnitine, and eicosenoyl carnitine, differed according to newborns’ birth weight (<3rd percentile, 3rd–5th percentiles, 5th–10th percentiles, and 10th–90th percentiles), with those with lower birth weight showing the greater difference (P < 0.05). Metabolites also differed by gestational age, and the differences observed were mainly as follows: preterm and full-term newborns showed differences in metabolites, mainly in alanine, proline, cerotoyl carnitine, and tetradecanedioyl carnitine (P < 0.05); preterm and full-term AGA newborns showed differences in metabolites, mainly in alanine, glutamine, homocysteine, pipecolic acid, proline, heptanoyl carnitine, and sebacoyl carnitine (P < 0.05); and preterm and full-term newborns with IUGR showed differences in metabolites, mainly in arginine, glutamic acid, homocysteine, histidine, leucine, isoleucine, ornithine, serine, threonine, tryptophan, valine, heptanoyl carnitine, decanoyl carnitine, linoleyl carnitine, methylmalonyl carnitine, glutarylcarnitine, sebacoyl carnitine, hydroxyacetyl carnitine, and hydroxyhexadecancenyl carnitine (P < 0.05). Among newborns with IUGR, metabolites differed among males and females, mainly in aspartic acid, glutamic acid, and hexacosenoic acid (P < 0.05). Birth weight had no significant effects on free carnitine concentration or on the ratios of free carnitine and acylcarnitine to total carnitine (P < 0.05). IUGR infants exhibit significant abnormalities in amino acid and acylcarnitine metabolism, especially those with birth weight below the third percentile. With increasing birth weight, amino acids and acylcarnitines showed compensatory increases or reductions, and when birth weight reached the 10th percentile, the newborns with IUGR resembled the AGA newborns.
Ambiguity, Ambivalence, and Apprehensions of Taking HIV-1 Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis among Male Couples in San Francisco: A Mixed Methods Study

Objective We conducted a mixed-methods study to examine serodiscordant and seroconcordant (HIV-positive/HIV-positive) male couples' PrEP awareness, concerns regarding health care providers offering PrEP to the community, and correlates of PrEP uptake by the HIV-negative member of the couple. Design Qualitative sub-study included one-on-one interviews to gain a deeper understanding of participants' awareness of and experiences with PrEP and concerns regarding health care providers offering PrEP to men who have sex with men (MSM). Quantitative analyses consisted of a cross-sectional study in which participants were asked about the likelihood of PrEP uptake by the HIV-negative member of the couple and level of agreement with health care providers offering PrEP to anyone requesting it. Methods We used multivariable regression to examine associations between PrEP questions and covariates of interest and employed an inductive approach to identify key qualitative themes. Results Among 328 men (164 couples), 62% had heard about PrEP, but approximately one-quarter were mistaking it with post-exposure prophylaxis. The majority of participants had low endorsement of PrEP uptake and 40% were uncertain if health care providers should offer PrEP to anyone requesting it. Qualitative interviews with 32 men suggest that this uncertainty likely stems from concerns regarding increased risk compensation. Likelihood of future PrEP uptake by the HIV-negative member of the couple was positively associated with unprotected insertive anal intercourse but negatively correlated with unprotected receptive anal intercourse. Conclusions Findings suggest that those at greatest risk may not be receptive of PrEP. Those who engage in moderate risk express more interest in PrEP; however, many voice concerns of increased risk behavior in tandem with PrEP use. Results indicate a need for further education of MSM communities and the need to determine appropriate populations in which PrEP can have the highest impact.
P4P: Practical Large-Scale Privacy-Preserving Distributed Computation Robust against Malicious Users

In this paper we introduce a framework for privacy-preserving distributed computation that is practical for many real-world applications. The framework is called Peers for Privacy (P4P) and features a novel heterogeneous architecture and a number of efficient tools for performing private computation and ensuring security at large scale. It maintains the following properties: (1) Provably strong privacy; (2) Adequate efficiency at reasonably large scale; and (3) Robustness against realistic adversaries. The framework gains its practicality by decomposing data mining algorithms into a sequence of vector addition steps that can be privately evaluated using a new verifiable secret sharing (VSS) scheme over small field (e.g., 32 or 64 bits), which has the same cost as regular, non-private arithmetic. This paradigm supports a large number of statistical learning algorithms including SVD, PCA, k-means, ID3, EM-based machine learning algorithms, etc., and all algorithms in the statistical query model [36]. As a concrete example, we show how singular value decomposition (SVD), which is an extremely useful algorithm and the core of many data mining tasks, can be done efficiently with privacy in P4P. Using real-world data and actual implementation we demonstrate that P4P is orders of magnitude faster than existing solutions.
Observability analysis for heterogeneous passive sensors exploiting signal propagation velocities

Different signal propagation velocities can be advantageous for passive tracking. For example, electronic and acoustic sensors can be used in conjunction to localize objects emitting electromagnetic waves and sound. In a heterogeneous passive sensor setup involving electromagnetic detection and acoustic bearing sensors, observability is studied, even for the case that the signals are not emitted simultaneously. It is shown that observability can be established and target maneuvers are not necessary. Finally, a numerical analysis of the Cramer-Rao lower bound is performed to verify the results.
Changes in Cytokine Production In Vitro during the Early Phase of Birch‐Pollen Immunotherapy

The kinetics of the immunological mechanisms during allergen‐specific immunotherapy (IT) has not been thoroughly evaluated. In this investigation we study the changes in T‐cell responses during the early phase of IT. Ten patients (IT group) with birch‐pollen allergy were treated with conventional IT. Blood samples were collected at regular intervals for specific immunoglobulin (Ig)E measurements and preparation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). Seven allergic control patients (AC group) were included during the subsequent birch‐pollen season. The PBMC were stimulated with birch‐pollen extract or tetanus toxoid (TT) and mitogens. After a short decrease, probably owing to seasonal variation, the birch‐pollen‐specific proliferation and the interleukin (IL)‐4, IL‐5, and IL‐10 production significantly increased when reaching the maintenance dose and during the subsequent pollen season. The increase in IL‐4 correlated with a temporary increased serum level of birch‐pollen‐specific IgE. Interestingly, also the TT‐specific response was affected by IT, resulting in weaker, but in time similar, changes in proliferation and cytokine production as in the birch‐pollen‐specific response. We speculate that the early phase of IT might lead to systemic changes in the capacity of Th2‐like cytokine production, and that the early increase in allergen‐specific IgE is a consequence of enhanced IL‐4 production.