Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Receptor-Recognized α2-Macroglobulin Binds to Cell Surface-Associated GRP78 and Activates mTORC1 and mTORC2 Signaling in Prostate Cancer Cells

Objective Tetrameric α2-macroglobulin (α2M), a plasma panproteinase inhibitor, is activated upon interaction with a proteinase, and undergoes a major conformational change exposing a receptor recognition site in each of its subunits. Activated α2M (α2M*) binds to cancer cell surface GRP78 and triggers proliferative and antiapoptotic signaling. We have studied the role of α2M* in the regulation of mTORC1 and TORC2 signaling in the growth of human prostate cancer cells. Methods Employing immunoprecipitation techniques and Western blotting as well as kinase assays, activation of the mTORC1 and mTORC2 complexes, as well as down stream targets were studied. RNAi was also employed to silence expression of Raptor, Rictor, or GRP78 in parallel studies. Results Stimulation of cells with α2M* promotes phosphorylation of mTOR, TSC2, S6-Kinase, 4EBP, AktT308, and AktS473 in a concentration and time-dependent manner. Rheb, Raptor, and Rictor also increased. α2M* treatment of cells elevated mTORC1 kinase activity as determined by kinase assays of mTOR or Raptor immunoprecipitates. mTORC1 activity was sensitive to LY294002 and rapamycin or transfection of cells with GRP78 dsRNA. Down regulation of Raptor expression by RNAi significantly reduced α2M*-induced S6-Kinase phosphorylation at T389 and kinase activity in Raptor immunoprecipitates. α2M*-treated cells demonstrate about a twofold increase in mTORC2 kinase activity as determined by kinase assay of AktS473 phosphorylation and levels of p-AktS473 in mTOR and Rictor immunoprecipitates. mTORC2 activity was sensitive to LY294002 and transfection of cells with GRP78 dsRNA, but insensitive to rapamycin. Down regulation of Rictor expression by RNAi significantly reduces α2M*-induced phosphorylation of AktS473 phosphorylation in Rictor immunoprecipitates. Conclusion Binding of α2M* to prostate cancer cell surface GRP78 upregulates mTORC1 and mTORC2 activation and promotes protein synthesis in the prostate cancer cells.
Understanding Users' Requirements for Data Protection in Smartphones

Securing smartphones' data is a new and growing concern, especially when this data represents valuable or sensitive information. Even though there are many data protection solutions for smartphones, there are no studies that investigate users' requirements for such solutions. In this paper, we approach smartphones' data protection problem in a user-centric way, and analyze the requirements of data protection systems from users' perspectives. We elicit the data types that users desire to protect, investigate current users' practices in protecting such data, and show how security requirements vary for different data types. We report the results of an exploratory user study, where we interviewed 22 participants. Overall, we found that users would like to secure their smartphone data, but find it inconvenient to do so in practice using solutions available today.
Research Note - Music Blogging, Online Sampling, and the Long Tail

Online social media such as blogs are transforming how consumers make consumption decisions, and the music industry is at the forefront of this revolution. Based on data from a leading music blog aggregator, we analyze the relationship between music blogging and full-track sampling, drawing on theories of online social interaction. Our results suggest that intensity of music sampling is positively associated with the popularity of a blog among previous consumers and that this association is stronger in the tail than in the body of music sales distribution. At the same time, the incremental effect of music popularity on sampling is also stronger in the tail relative to the body. In the last part of the paper, we discuss the implications of our results for music sales and potential long-tailing of music sampling and sales. Put together, our analysis sheds new light on how social media are reshaping music sharing and consumption.
Estimation of the blood velocity spectrum using a recursive lattice filter

In medical ultrasound the blood velocity distribution in a vessel can be found by emitting a pulsed field into the patient. The field is then scattered by the tissues and the red blood cells, and a single complex sample set is acquired at the depth of interest for each pulse emitted. The signals acquired for showing the blood velocity distribution are inherently non-stationary, due to the pulsatility of the flow. All current signal processing schemes assume that the signal is stationary within the window of analysis, although this is an approximation. In this paper a recursive least-squares lattice filter is used for finding a parametric model for the velocity distribution. A new set of complex coefficients is calculated for each point in time, and it is thus possible to track the non-stationary properties of the stochastic velocity signal. The dynamic characteristics of the non-stationarity are incorporated through an exponential decay factor, that sets the exponential horizon of the filter. A factor close to 1 gives a long horizon with low variance estimates, but can not track a highly non-stationary flow. Setting the factor is therefore a compromise between estimate variance and the filter's dynamic adaptation. Using a lattice filter gives a structure that is easy and robust, when implemented with fixed point arithmetic. The procedure has been tested on both simulated and in-vivo data, and gives spectral estimates quite different from the normal FFT approach. Synthetic data were generated based on the measured time evolution of the spatial mean velocity in the femoral artery. The smooth theoretical velocity distribution is then known and can be compared to the estimated distribution. Using 8 parameters a very smooth estimate of the velocity distribution is seen, more in line with the actual distributions that always will be smooth. Setting the exponential decay factor to 0.99 gives satisfactory results for in-vivo data from the carotid artery. The filter can easily be implemented using a standard fixed-point signal processing chip for real-time processing.
A Simple Explanation for the Formation of Reversals in a Cotton Fiber

, ---_ 3. Lipson. :B1. and Blc1’ltrc. J. R. 7-u.rtr/c~ l~c~s. J. 28, 67<)-686 (1 <) 5R ) . 4. Nlitchelt, L. E. and ~’1’illi;uu~, A. Paper clclivrrccl at Apri) 10. 195R meetingof American Chemical Society, at San Francisco. California. 5. Red&dquo;ton. J. 1’. 4»1. 17~~cstrr~j‘ l~c/~tr. 48, Xo. h, 4V-57 < 11)51» . V. A. Williams Division of Textile Industry C.S. I.R. O. Wool Research Laboratories Geelong, Victoria, Australia
LoPy as a building block for Internet of Things in coastal marine applications

Introducing a LoPy device we have threefold goals: the first is to increase transmission range decreasing power consumption; the second is to decrease cost, size and power consumption of the drifter's electronic devices; the third is to have ability to control deployed surface drifters. The use of the LoPy device in 868 MHz band performing sea level Line-of-Sight radio propagation measurements was tested. These measurements confirm the usefulness of LoPy for the use in coastal marine applications.
Effects of Continuous Tomato Monoculture on Soil Microbial Properties and Enzyme Activities in a Solar Greenhouse

Soil-related obstacles resulting from continuous monoculture have limited the sustainable development of the tomato industry in China. An experiment on tomatoes with seven continuous monoculture treatments (the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th crops, respectively) was conducted in a solar greenhouse, to investigate the influence of monoculture on soil quality. Most soil quality indicators first increased and then decreased with increasing continuous monoculture crops, and significant differences among crops were observed. Indicators at the 13th crop were significantly lower than those at the other crops in terms of average well color development (AWCD), substrate richness (S), the Shannon diversity index (H), and the McIntosh index (U) of the soil microbial community (SMC), soil urease (UR), and neutral phosphatase (N-PHO) activities, and available nitrogen (AN) and potassium (AK). However, fungal abundance (FUN) at the 13th crop was significantly higher than that at the other crops. As principal component analysis (PCA) revealed, SMC functional diversity at the 1st, 11th, and 13th crops were similar, and were obviously distinguished from those at the other crops. Moreover, the tomato yield was significantly and positively correlated with soil-available potassium and SMC functional diversity indexes. Our findings indicated that short-term continuous monoculture, e.g., for fewer than seven or nine crops, was beneficial for soil quality improvement. However, continuous monoculture for greater than 11 crops had adverse effects on soil enzyme activities, soil microbial abundances, soil chemical properties, soil SMC functional diversity, and the tomato yield, particularly at the 13th crop.
Power Electronic Semiconductor Materials for Automotive and Energy Saving Applications – SiC, GaN, Ga2O3, and Diamond

Power electronics belongs to the future key technologies in order to increase system efficiency as well as performance in automotive and energy saving applications. Silicon is the major material for electronic switches since decades. Advanced fabrication processes and sophisticated electronic device designs have optimized the silicon electronic device performance almost to their theoretical limit. Therefore, to increase the system performance, new materials that exhibit physical and chemical properties beyond silicon need to be explored. A number of wide bandgap semiconductors like silicon carbide, gallium nitride, gallium oxide, and diamond exhibit outstanding characteristics that may pave the way to new performance levels. The review will introduce these materials by (i) highlighting their properties, (ii) introducing the challenges in materials growth, and (iii) outlining limits that need innovation steps in materials processing to outperform current technologies.
Apolipoprotein E genotyping on agarose gels.

DNA analysis on previously collected routine specimens should facilitate retrospective studies of genetic pethgrees or infectious agents, postmortem and forensic studies, and should obviate the need to recollect specimens from patients. We thank Victoria Yang for her advice and assistance in this project. DNA isolation by a rapid method from human blood samples: effects of MgC12, EDTA, storage time, and temperature on DNA yield and quality. Apolipoprotein E (ape E), one of the major proteins of very-low-, intermediate-, and high-density lipoprotein particles, can be present as three isoforms (ape E2, E3, and E4) in human plasma, each with a different affinity for the apo-B/E receptor. By serving as a ligand for the uptake of lipoproteins from the circulation by the liver, apo E protein plays a significant role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis (1); recently, a strong association between the ape E4 allele and late-onset Alzheimer disease was also demonstrated (2-7). The demand for ape E genotype analysis will therefore increase, making a fast, reliable assay for ape E genotyping essential. Formerly, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (8) or isoelectric focusing (9) were commonly used for apo E phenotyping in laboratory medicine. Another approach is to determine ape E genotypes by amplilying the area around the polymorphic sites in the ape E gene by using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), followed by hybridiza-tion with allele-specific probes or digestion with restriction enzymes (10-13). Ape E phenotyping does not always identify changes at the molecular level, especially when a nucleotide substitution does not result in an alteration of protein charge. Thus, phenotyping can be erroneous in comparison with DNA-based ape E genotyping. However, the genotyping described by Hixson and Vernier (12) is not favored by most laboratories because acrylamide is a neurotoxic substance and only a few samples can be analyzed in 1 day. To improve the ape E genotype assay for routine use, we modified the method by elongating the 3'-primer with a 23-nucleotide AT-tail, which obviates the use of dimethyl sulfoxide and acrylamide and allows genotyping of-300 samples on agarose gels by one technician in one working day.
Downregulation of the antigen presenting cell function(s) of pulmonary dendritic cells in vivo by resident alveolar macrophages

Class II major histocompatibility complex (Ia)-bearing dendritic cells (DC) from airway epithelium and lung parenchyma express low-moderate antigen presenting cell (APC) activity when freshly isolated. However, this function is markedly upregulated during overnight culture in a manner analogous to epidermal Langerhans cells. The in vitro "maturation" process is inhibited by coculture with pulmonary alveolar macrophages (PAM) across a semipermeable membrane, and the degree of inhibition achieved can be markedly increased by the presence of tumor necrosis factor alpha. In addition, PAM-mediated suppression of DC function is abrogated via inhibition of the nitric oxide synthetase pathway. Functional maturation of the DC is accompanied by increased expression of surface Ia, which is also inhibited in the presence of PAM. Prior elimination of PAM from DC donors via intratracheal administration of the cytotoxic drug dichloromethylene diphosphonate in liposomes, 24-72 h before lung DC preparation, achieves a comparable upregulation of APC activity, suggesting that (consistent with the in vitro data) the resident PAM population actively suppresses the APC function of lung DC in situ. In support of the feasibility of such a regulatory mechanism, electron microscopic examination of normal lung fixed by intravascular perfusion in the inflated state (which optimally preserves PAM in situ), revealed that the majority are preferentially localized in recesses at the alveolar septal junctions. In this position, the PAM are in intimate association with the alveolar epithelial surface, and are effectively separated by as little as 0.2 microns from underlying interstitial spaces which contain the peripheral lung DC population. A similar juxtaposition of airway intraepithelial DC is demonstrated with underlying submucosal tissue macrophages, where the separation between the two cell populations is effectively the width of the basal lamina.
A Low-Overhead Asynchronous Interconnection Network for GALS Chip Multiprocessors

A new asynchronous interconnection network is introduced for globally-asynchronous locally-synchronous (GALS) chip multiprocessors. The network eliminates the need for global clock distribution, and can interface multiple synchronous timing domains operating at unrelated clock rates. In particular, two new highly-concurrent asynchronous components are introduced which provide simple routing and arbitration/merge functions. Post-layout simulations in identical commercial 90 nm technology indicate that comparable recent synchronous router nodes have 5.6-10.7 more energy per packet and 2.8-6.4 greater area than the new asynchronous nodes. Under random traffic, the network provides significantly lower latency and identical throughput over the entire operating range of the 800 MHz network and through mid-range traffic rates for the 1.36 GHz network, but with degradation at higher traffic rates. Preliminary evaluations are also presented for a mixed-timing (GALS) network in a shared-memory parallel architecture, running both random traffic and parallel benchmark kernels, as well as directions for further improvement.
The Relation between Geometry and Time in Mental Actions

Mental imagery is a cognitive tool that helps humans take decisions by simulating past and future events. The hypothesis has been advanced that there is a functional equivalence between actual and mental movements. Yet, we do not know whether there are any limitations to its validity even in terms of some fundamental features of actual movements, such as the relationship between space and time. Although it is impossible to directly measure the spatiotemporal features of mental actions, an indirect investigation can be conducted by taking advantage of the constraints existing in planar drawing movements and described by the two-thirds power law (2/3PL). This kinematic law describes one of the most impressive regularities observed in biological movements: movement speed decreases when curvature increases. Here, we compared the duration of identical actual and mental arm movements by changing the constraints imposed by the 2/3PL. In the first two experiments, the length of the trajectory remained constant, while its curvature (Experiment 1) or its number of inflexions (Experiment 2) was manipulated. The results showed that curvature, but not the number of inflexions, proportionally and similarly affected actual and mental movement duration, as expected from the 2/3PL. Two other control experiments confirmed that the results of Experiment 1 were not attributable to eye movements (Experiment 3) or to the perceived length of the displayed trajectory (Experiment 4). Altogether, our findings suggest that mental movement simulation is tuned to the kinematic laws characterizing actions and that kinematics of actual and mental movements is completely specified by the representation of their geometry.
Ascending midbrain dopaminergic axons require descending GAD65 axon fascicles for normal pathfinding

The Nigrostriatal pathway (NSP) is formed by dopaminergic axons that project from the ventral midbrain to the dorsolateral striatum as part of the medial forebrain bundle. Previous studies have implicated chemotropic proteins in the formation of the NSP during development but little is known of the role of substrate-anchored signals in this process. We observed in mouse and rat embryos that midbrain dopaminergic axons ascend in close apposition to descending GAD65-positive axon bundles throughout their trajectory to the striatum. To test whether such interaction is important for dopaminergic axon pathfinding, we analyzed transgenic mouse embryos in which the GAD65 axon bundle was reduced by the conditional expression of the diphtheria toxin. In these embryos we observed dopaminergic misprojection into the hypothalamic region and abnormal projection in the striatum. In addition, analysis of Robo1/2 and Slit1/2 knockout embryos revealed that the previously described dopaminergic misprojection in these embryos is accompanied by severe alterations in the GAD65 axon scaffold. Additional studies with cultured dopaminergic neurons and whole embryos suggest that NCAM and Robo proteins are involved in the interaction of GAD65 and dopaminergic axons. These results indicate that the fasciculation between descending GAD65 axon bundles and ascending dopaminergic axons is required for the stereotypical NSP formation during brain development and that known guidance cues may determine this projection indirectly by instructing the pathfinding of the axons that are part of the GAD65 axon scaffold.
Self-Organizing Biopsychosocial Dynamics and the Patient-Healer Relationship

The patient-healer relationship has an increasing area of interest for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) researchers. This focus on the interpersonal context of treatment is not surprising as dismantling studies, clinical trials and other linear research designs continually point toward the critical role of context and the broadband biopsychosocial nature of therapeutic responses to CAM. Unfortunately, the same traditional research models and methods that fail to find simple and specific treatment-outcome relations are similarly failing to find simple and specific mechanisms to explain how interpersonal processes influence patient outcomes. This paper presents an overview of some of the key models and methods from nonlinear dynamical systems that are better equipped for empirical testing of CAM outcomes on broadband biopsychosocial processes. Suggestions are made for CAM researchers to assist in modeling the interactions among key process dynamics interacting across biopsychosocial scales: empathy, intra-psychic conflict, physiological arousal, and leukocyte telomerase activity. Finally, some speculations are made regarding the possibility for deeper cross-scale information exchange involving quantum temporal nonlocality.
Looking for weak-boson compositeness via form factors.

We examine the possibility that the composite structure of weak gauge bosons may first reveal itself through form-factor-like effects. We consider modifying the propagators and gauge-boson self-couplings with a simple parametrization of these composite-structure form factors, and examine a large number of processes where deviations from the standard model may be observed. Present data indicate the W, Z composite scale . lambda. > or approx. =0.1 TeV but future data from CERN LEP II may push . lambda. >1 TeV. We find the process most sensitive to these form factors resulting from compositeness to be the reaction e/sup +/e/sup -/. -->. W/sup +/W/sup -/ because of the unique cancellations which take place in gauge theories.
Development and evaluation of low density polyethylene-based antimicrobial food packaging films containing natural agents

Antimicrobial (AM) films containing naturally-derived AM agents, thymol or carvacrol, were developed. These agents were incorporated into a low-density polyethylene (LDPE) substrate using the techniques of both compression moulding and extrusion film blowing. Different film formulations containing additive polymers, ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) and polyethylene glycol (PEG), were investigated for their potential to enhance the retention and to control the release of the AM agents from the films. The physical and mechanical properties of the films were evaluated in order to assess the effect that the addition of AM agent has on the ultimate properties of the film. The extruded films were also studied for AM agent release and retention during storage. Films were tested for AM activity in-vitro enabling the optimum concentrations for AM activity to be obtained and the effect of AM films on the bacterial inhibition in liquid media to be successfully modelled. The effects of combined AM systems in LDPE/EVA-based films were also studied. Having identified the AM activity in laboratory media, the films were then used to package Cheddar cheese in order to assess the usefulness of AM films in the enhancement of food preservation. The AM films had a positive effect on the microbial and physio-chemical attributes of Cheddar cheese under actual storage conditions. The addition of higher concentrations of AM agents clearly imparted a noticeable odour to Cheddar cheese during storage. The shelf life extension of Cheddar cheese by AM films was affected by the type and concentration of the AM agent.