Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efflux Protein Expression in Human Stem Cell-Derived Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cells

Retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells in the back of the eye nourish photoreceptor cells and form a selective barrier that influences drug transport from the blood to the photoreceptor cells. At the molecular level, ATP-dependent efflux transporters have a major role in drug delivery in human RPE. In this study, we assessed the relative expression of several ATP-dependent efflux transporter genes (MRP1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, p-gp, and BCRP), the protein expression and localization of MRP1, MRP4, and MRP5, and the functionality of MRP1 efflux pumps at different maturation stages of undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells (hESC) and RPE derived from the hESC (hESC-RPE). Our findings revealed that the gene expression of ATP-dependent efflux transporters MRP1, -3, -4, -5, and p-gp fluctuated during hESC-RPE maturation from undifferentiated hESC to fusiform, epithelioid, and finally to cobblestone hESC-RPE. Epithelioid hESC-RPE had the highest expression of MRP1, -3, -4, and P-gp, whereas the most mature cobblestone hESC-RPE had the highest expression of MRP5 and MRP6. These findings indicate that a similar efflux protein profile is shared between hESC-RPE and the human RPE cell line, ARPE-19, and suggest that hESC-RPE cells are suitable in vitro RPE models for drug transport studies. Embryonic stem cell model might provide a novel tool to study retinal cell differentiation, mechanisms of RPE -derived diseases, drug testing and targeted drug therapy.
Fine-grained Entity Set Refinement with User Feedback

State of the art semi-supervised entity set expansion algorithms produce noisy results, which need to be refined manually. Sets expanded for intended fine-grained concepts are especially noisy because these concepts are not well represented by the limited number of seeds. Such sets are usually incorrectly expanded to contain elements of a more general concept. We show that fine-grained control is necessary for refining such sets and propose an algorithm which uses both positive and negative user feedback for iterative refinement. Experimental results show that it improves the quality of fine-grained sets significantly.
Teachers Are in Great Demand in the Digital Age

It is claimed that technology in the digital age can shoulder the responsibility of teaching and that teachers are no longer needed. Rejecting this claim, this study that employs argumentation as a method and makes much use of the author’s experience as a teacher comprises an original work devoted to demonstrating that teachers are in great demand in this age. The reason for this contention is that teachers inspire students to be lifelong learners, motivate them ,nurture passion and creativity, and create a culture of excellence. This means that teachers are facilitators and innovators who can facilitate using and integrating technology into education. This integration is necessary not only for learning and teaching purposes but also reforming today’s worthless education based on rote learning . This study recommends that video games be incorporated into English classes to equip learners with the life skills they badly need for survival in this world marked by competition and everlasting change.
Anwendungen pluripotenter Stammzellen in der psychiatrischen Forschung

Zusammenfassung Ausgangslage: Die Entwicklung von Technologien zur Herstellung sogenannter induzierter pluripotenter Stammzellen (iPSCs) und prinzipiell jeden Zelltyps von Patienten und gesunden Personen ermöglicht eine Vielzahl bislang nicht vorstellbarer Forschungsansätze im Bereich psychiatrischer Erkrankungen. Es können jetzt aussagekräftige zelluläre Systeme auch für genetisch komplexe Erkrankungen entwickelt werden, die auf Ebene des einzelnen Patienten und unter Erhalt der individuellen genetischen Information Analysen mit dramatisch erhöhter sogenannter „construct validity“ erlauben. Sowohl die genetische als auch die phänotypische Komplexität lässt allerdings vermuten, dass die meisten psychiatrischen Erkrankungen eher als syndromische Gruppen denn als definierte Einzelerkrankungen anzusehen sind. Deshalb ist es vermutlich von entscheidender Bedeutung, Patienten vor der Auswahl zur Reprogrammierung, durch genetische, molekulare und/oder phänotypische Profile, in repräsentative Subgruppen zu unterteilen. Diese Vorauswahl ist wegen der zu Grunde liegenden komplexen biologischen Veränderungen, aber insbesondere auch wegen des hohen experimentellen Aufwands, bei der Etablierung und Charakterisierung patienten-abgeleiteter Zellsysteme wichtig. Ausblick: Wir nehmen an, dass der Fokus auf subgruppen-repräsentative Zellsysteme entscheidend dazu beitragen wird, die prädiktive Aussagekraft dieses innovativen Forschungsansatzes im Bereich psychiatrischer Erkrankungen zu erhöhen. Summary Background: The development of technologies to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and virtually any cell-type from patients offers several research options for application in psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. For the first time, relevant cellular systems with substantially increased construct validity are available to study complex genetic diseases while keeping the individual genetic background. The genetic and phenotypic complexity of many psychiatric disorders suggests that they might represent rather a collection of syndromes than unique diseases. Therefore, in order to develop meaningful cellular systems it might be important to first stratify patients based on genetic, molecular and/or phenotypic profiles to select subgroup representatives for reprogramming. Such a pre-selection of patients is essential given the underlying complex biology and also because the effort to develop fully characterized patient-derived cell systems is much higher e.g. compared to analyses of blood samples. Prospective: We propose that a focus on representative cell systems may help to improve the predictive validity of this innovative branch of preclinical research on psychiatric diseases.
Effectiveness of a treatment approach for comorbid panic disorder, major depressive disorder, and alcohol dependence: a case study

Vera Biryukova EFFECTIVENESS OF A TREATMENT APPROACH FOR COMORBID PANIC DISORDER, MAJOR DEPRESSIVE DISORDER, AND ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE: A CASE STUDY 2004/2004 Dr. James A. Haugh Master of Arts in Mental Health Counseling This case study evaluates the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy with a focus on therapeutic relationship in the treatment of an adult female who underwent treatment in a community mental health agency. The client was diagnosed with comorbid panic disorder, major depressive disorder, and alcohol dependence. In addition, the client experienced a variety of psychosocial stressors. The client's psychosocial assessment is presented, and the empirical treatment literature related to the client's diagnoses is reviewed. A variety of outcome measures were used. Results indicated that the treatment was effective: the client experienced a significant reduction in the severity of symptoms. However, further treatment is needed to extend the improvement in symptoms and to reduce the risk of future relapse. A comparison between the client's current treatment and what might be considered "best" treatment is presented. Suggestions for treatment improvement are made.
Stateless Data Flow Approach with Void Avoidance for Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a void avoidance algorithm for the stateless weight routing (SWR) algorithm which was developed stateless geographical routing protocol for wireless sensor and ad hoc networks. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of the method we started with the illustration of transmission coverage of relay nodes during the course of routing in the SWR protocol. The threshold value to retransmit a packet defined in the SWR may be used for several purposes including elimination of the void problem. It can be shown that the threshold value provides a tool to balance the tradeoff between energy consumption and reliability. A number of scenario has been considered to test the performance of the void avoidance (recovery! ) algorithm. The initial simulation results indicates the proposed algorithm works with the SWR and providing it with an additional feature of adaptivity for wireless ad hoc and sensor networks.
Regulation of pyr Gene Expression in Mycobacterium smegmatis by PyrR-Dependent Translational Repression

ABSTRACT Regulation of pyrimidine biosynthetic (pyr) genes by a transcription attenuation mechanism that is mediated by the PyrR mRNA-binding regulatory protein has been demonstrated for numerous gram-positive bacteria. Mycobacterial genomes specify pyrR genes and contain obvious PyrR-binding sequences in the initially transcribed regions of their pyr operons, but transcription antiterminator and attenuation terminator sequences are absent from their pyr 5′ leader regions. This work demonstrates that repression of pyr operon expression in Mycobacterium smegmatis by exogenous uracil requires the pyrR gene and the pyr leader RNA sequence for binding of PyrR. Plasmids containing the M. smegmatis pyr promoter-leader region translationally fused to lacZ also displayed pyrR-dependent repression, but transcriptional fusions of the same sequences to a lacZ gene that retained the lacZ ribosome-binding site were not regulated by PyrR plus uracil. We propose that PyrR regulates pyr expression in M. smegmatis, other mycobacteria, and probably in numerous other bacteria by a translational repression mechanism in which nucleotide-regulated binding of PyrR occludes the first ribosome-binding site of the pyr operon.
A method for determining customer and utility harmonic contributions at the point of common coupling

A new method is proposed in this paper to determine the harmonic contributions of a customer at the point of common coupling. The method can quantify customer and utility responsibilities for limit violations caused by either harmonic source changes or harmonic impedance changes. It can be implemented in current power quality monitors and digital revenue meters. The method makes it possible to develop fair and consistent billing schemes for harmonic distortion control.
Modeling of Human-Like Reaching Movements in the Manipulation of Flexible Objects

The paper presents an analysis of human reaching movements in the manipulation of flexible objects. Two models, the minimum hand jerk and the minimum driving force-change, are derived and their basic features are analyzed. It is shown that the first model features two-phased hand velocity profiles, while in the second models there are multiple phases. The analysis of the phase transitions for the models considered is done in the analytical form. The results of this analysis can be helpful in the design of experimental scenarios for the verification of the theoretical models. Finally, we present some initial experimental results and analyze the applicability of the models developed in this paper
Impact of Overseas Immersion Homestay Experience on Linguistic Confidence and Intercultural Communication Strategies

This paper attempts to use Clements’ linguistic confidence theory (Clement, 1980) to explore the relationship between students' intercultural communication strategies, and their linguistic confidence in their second language (L2) both before and during immersion programmes, particularly in the context of the homestay experience. Questionnaire and student interviews were conducted before and after the immersion programmes to investigate levels of anxiety and linguistic confidence which in turn affected the intercultural communication strategies employed. With the results found in this study, this paper also attempts to modify and elaborate Clement’s (1980) linguistic confidence theory. Results indicated increased L2 linguistic confidence and lower anxiety levels after students interacted with their host families. Intercultural communication strategies employed at the pre-immersion stage and during immersion differed. The intercultural communication strategies employed in the pre-immersion stage were decidedly passive which directly affected students’ linguistic confidence, but students became less anxious as they interacted directly with host families which in turn led to stronger linguistic confidence.
Quantitative data graphics in 3D desktop-based virtual environments – an evaluation

3D desktop-based virtual environments provide a means for displaying quantitative data in context. Data that are inherently spatial in three dimensions may benefit from visual exploration and analysis in relation to the environment in which they were collected and to which they relate. We empirically evaluate how effectively and efficiently such data can be visually analyzed in relation to location and landform in 3D versus 2D visualizations. In two experiments, participants performed visual analysis tasks in 2D and 3D visualizations and reported insights and their confidence in them. The results showed only small differences between the 2D and 3D visualizations in the performance measures that we evaluated: task completion time, confidence, complexity, and insight plausibility. However, we found differences for different datasets and settings suggesting that 3D visualizations or 2D representations, respectively, may be more or less useful for particular datasets and contexts.
Behavior-driven video analytics system for critical infrastructure protection

The convergence of a security aware environment with the proliferation of inexpensive high quality video imaging devices has led to the deployment of cameras at a high number of critical infrastructure sites. As many cameras are needed to keep all key access points under continuous observation, an operator of the surveillance system may become distracted from the many video feeds, possibly missing key events, such as suspicious individuals leaving an object behind or approaching a door. By providing an automated system for monitoring these types of events within a video feed, some of the burden placed on the operator is alleviated, thereby increasing the overall reliability and performance of the monitoring system, as well as providing archival capability for future investigations. In this paper, we propose a solution that uses a background subtraction based segmentation method to determine objects within the scene. An artificial neural network classifier is then employed to determine the class of each object detected in each frame, which is then temporally filtered using Bayesian inference to minimize the effect of occasional misclassifications. The behavior of the object is then determined based on its classification and spatio-temporal properties, and if the object is considered of interest, feedback is provided to the background subtraction segmentation technique for background fading prevention reasons.
Molecular Pathogenesis of B-Cell Posttransplant Lymphoproliferative Disorder: What Do We Know So Far?

Posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorder (PTLD) is a potentially fatal disease that arises in 2%–10% of solid organ and hematopoietic stem cell transplants and is most frequently of B-cell origin. This very heterogeneous disorder ranges from benign lymphoproliferations to malignant lymphomas, and despite the clear association with Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) infection, its etiology is still obscure. Although a number of risk factors have been identified (EBV serostatus, graft type, and immunosuppressive regimen), it is currently not possible to predict which transplant patient will eventually develop PTLD. Genetic studies have linked translocations (involving C-MYC, IGH, BCL-2), various copy number variations, DNA mutations (PIM1, PAX5, C-MYC, RhoH/TTF), and polymorphisms in both the host (IFN-gamma, IL-10, TGF-beta, HLA) and the EBV genome to B-cell PTLD development. Furthermore, the tumor microenvironment seems to play an important role in the course of disease representing a local niche that can allow antitumor immune responses even in an immunocompromised host. Taken together, B-cell PTLD pathogenesis is very complex due to the interplay of many different (patient-dependent) factors and requires thorough molecular analysis for the development of novel tailored therapies. This review aims at giving a global overview of the currently known parameters that contribute to the development of B-cell PTLD.
dentical sequence patterns in the ends of exons and introns of human rotein-coding genes

Intron splicing is one of the most important steps involved in the maturation process of a pre-mRNA. Although the sequence profiles around the splice sites have been studied extensively, the levels of sequence identity between the exonic sequences preceding the donor sites and the intronic sequences preceding the acceptor sites has not been examined as thoroughly. In this study we investigated identity patterns between the last 15 nucleotides of the exonic sequence preceding the 5′ splice site and the ′ ioinformatics enome equence analysis intronic sequence preceding the 3 splice site in a set of human protein-coding genes that do not exhibit intron retention. We found that almost 60% of consecutive exons and introns in human protein-coding genes share at least two identical nucleotides at their 3′ ends and, on average, the sequence identity length is 2.47 nucleotides. Based on our findings we conclude that the 3′ ends of exons and introns tend to have longer identical sequences within a gene than when being taken from different genes. Our results hold even if the pairs are non-consecutive in the transcription order.
Weighted Rough Clustering on categorical data

Clustering is an unsupervised machine learning framework which is attracted much attention recently. Current clustering algorithms mainly focus on samples with real-value attributes, while there is little work on samples represented (partly) by categorical attributes. The difficulty of processing categorical attributes is that the similarity between such samples can't be evaluated by Euclidean distance directly, as much real-value based methods do. We try to tackle this problem by adopting rough set theory. Rough similarity is used to define similarity between samples. Each attribute is assigned a weight to indicate its importance for clustering and an adaptive update process based on information gain is performed to find optimal solution of both weights and clusters. The benefit of the proposed method is: it can deal with categorical data naturally; it is not sensitive to input sequence of samples to be clustered; it optimizes both importance of attributes and number of clusters simultaneously. Experiments on UCI benchmark data set show the effectiveness with comparison to some previous famous methods.
Methods and Findings

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Copyright: Ó 2008 Krieger et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Background Debates exist as to whether, as overall population health improves, the absolute and relative magnitude of income-and race/ethnicity-related health disparities necessarily increase—or derease. We accordingly decided to test the hypothesis that health inequities widen—or shrink—in a context of declining mortality rates, by examining annual US mortality data over a 42 year period. Using US county mortality data from 1960–2002 and county median family income data from the 1960–2000 decennial censuses, we analyzed the rates of premature mortality (deaths among persons under age 65) and infant death (deaths among persons under age 1) by quintiles of county median family income weighted by county population size. Between 1960 and 2002, as US premature mortality and infant death rates declined in all county income quintiles, socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequities in premature mortality and infant death (both relative and absolute) shrank between 1966 and 1980, especially for US populations of color; thereafter, the relative health inequities widened and the absolute differences barely changed in magnitude. Had all persons experienced the same yearly age-specific premature mortality rates as the white population living in the highest income quintile, between 1960 and 2002, 14% of the white premature deaths and 30% of the premature deaths among populations of color would not have occurred. Conclusions The observed trends refute arguments that health inequities inevitably widen—or shrink—as population health improves. Instead, the magnitude of health inequalities can fall or rise; it is our job to understand why.
Incentives for Market Research : Preemption and Learning Effects ∗

This paper is about the optimal entry strategy in a new product market. Some firms enter new markets by committing the sunk cost up-front and immediately investing at full scale. Other companies start out more cautiously by undertaking market research first (e.g. based on a pilot launch). In the latter case, the idea is to gain information on the demand for the offered product. One of the indirect costs of such a strategy is that it can disclose the true demand curve to the firm’s competitor(s). This paper provides a theoretical investigation of the incentives to start costly market research before entering a new market. In particular, we analyze the role of uncertainty and the cost of entry in determining the willingness to carry out the market research.
Altered intrinsic functional organization of the brain in idiopathic generalized epilepsy

A robust and reproducible anticorrelation ship between the two synchronized low-frequency fluctuation networks of blood oxygen level dependent (i.e. the task positive network and the task negative network), was showed in subjects at the resting state and when performing cognitively demanding tasks. Using the resting-state fMRI, this study explored the antagonism of the two networks between the control group and the patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE). Compared with the control group, the patient group revealed a significant decrease in functional connectivity in both networks and an attenuated pattern of antagonism between networks. These findings showed deficits related to epileptic neuropathology or cognitive alteration in the networks. Furthermore, they revealed unevenness and imbalance in the functional interaction between the networks.
Mercury induced the Accumulation of Amyloid Beta (Aβ) in PC12 Cells: The Role of Production and Degradation of Aβ

Extracellular accumulation of amyloid beta protein (Aβ) plays a central role in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Some metals, such as copper, lead, and aluminum can affect the Aβ accumulation in the brain. However, the effect of mercury on Aβ accumulation in the brain is not clear. Thus, this study was proposed to estimate whether mercury concentration affects Aβ accumulation in PC12 cells. We treated 10, 100, and 1000 nM HgCl_2 (Hg) or CH_3HgCl_2 (MeHg) for 48 hr in PC12 cells. After treatment, Aβ_40 in culture medium increased in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Hg and MeHg increased amyloid precursor protein (APP), which is related to Aβ production. Neprilysin (NEP) levels in PC12 cells were decreased by Hg and MeHg treatment. These results suggested that Hg induced Aβ accumulation through APP overproduction and reduction of NEP.