Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving Weighted Least Squares Inference

These days, it is common practice to base inference about the coefficients in a hetoskedastic linear model on the ordinary least squares estimator in conjunction with using heteroskedasticity consistent standard errors. Even when the true form of heteroskedasticity is unknown, heteroskedasticity consistent standard errors can also used to base valid inference on a weighted least squares estimator and using such an estimator can provide large gains in efficiency over the ordinary least squares estimator. However, intervals based on asymptotic approximations with plug-in standard errors often have coverage that is below the nominal level, especially for small sample sizes. Similarly, tests can have null rejection probabilities that are above the nominal level. In this paper, it is shown that under unknown hereroskedasticy, a bootstrap approximation to the sampling distribution of the weighted least squares estimator is valid, which allows for inference with improved finite-sample properties. For testing linear constraints, permutations tests are proposed which are exact when the error distribution is symmetric and is asymptotically valid otherwise. Another concern that has discouraged the use of weighting is that the weighted least squares estimator may be less efficient than the ordinary least squares estimator when the model used to estimate the unknown form of the heteroskedasticity is misspecified. To address this problem, a new estimator is proposed that is asymptotically at least as efficient as both the ordinary and the weighted least squares estimator. Simulation studies demonstrate the attractive finite-sample properties of this new estimator as well as the improvements in performance realized by bootstrap confidence intervals.
Inactivation of Bradykinin in the Pulmonary Vascular Bed of Newborn and Fetal Lambs

Bradykinin is largely inactivated in one passage through the pulmonary vascular bed of adult animals. We studied pulmonary inactivation of bradykinin in newborn lambs, fetal lambs at term, fetal lambs preterm, and adult ewes by comparing the systemic pressure response to infusions proximal to the pulmonary vascular bed with the response to infusions distal to the pulmonary vascular bed. A high degree of inactivation was confirmed in mature ewes (93 ± 1.2%); newborn lambs showed significantly less pulmonary inactivation (68 ± 5.2%) and fetal lambs at term showed only 46 ± 4.8% inactivation. In the preterm fetuses (gestational age 110–128 days), no inactivation could be demonstrated in the pulmonary vascular bed. The return to base-line diastolic pressure after the infusion was discontinued was much slower in the fetus than it was in the newborn and the adult animal, indicating a prolonged effect of bradykinin. The results suggest that inactivation of bradykinin is a pulmonary function that develops late in fetal life and is still less than adult levels at birth. This finding could be of particular interest if bradykinin participates in mediating the circulatory changes occurring at birth.
Robust Motion-Compensated Orthogonal Video Coding Using EBCOT

This paper proposes a rate-distortion control for motion-compensated orthogonal video coding schemes and evaluates its robustness to packet loss as faced in, e.g., IP networks. The robustness of standard hybrid video coding is extensively studied in the literature. In contrast, motion-compensated orthogonal sub bands offer important advantages and new features for robust video transmission. In this work, we utilize so-called unidirectional motion-compensated orthogonal transforms in combination with entropy coding similar to EBCOT known from JPEG2000. The approach provides a flexible embedded structure and allows flexible rate-distortion optimization. Moreover, it may even permit separate encoding and rate control. The proposed rate-distortion control takes channel coding into account and obtains a preemptively protected representation. Our implementation is based on repetition codes, adapted to the channel condition, and improves the PSNR significantly. The optimization requires an estimate of the packet loss rate at the encoder and shows moderate sensitivity to estimation errors.
A novel hybrid approach for link prediction problem in social network

Link prediction in dynamic social network is an inherent challenging task to find out the intrinsic associations among the objects. This association can be discovered with the help of pattern of connection in already linked objects. This paper addresses the three novel hybrid feature extraction methodologies that leverage the significant insight of existing model available for link prediction. The proposed technique offers better agreement of causal link to be happened between pair of objects in future. The conventional link prediction models are applying features which are typically grounded on the node cardinality. These predictor models are common neighbour predictor, Adamic/Adar, Jaccard's coefficient, preferential attachment, friends measures. So, hybrid feature extraction techniques based on principle of feature ensemble is introduced to generate predictive model to be learned for link prediction. Jacccard's coefficient and preferential attachment (JCPA) model, Jaccard's coefficient and Adamic/Adar (JCAA) model and preferential attachment and Adamic/Adar (PAAA) model are generated with the context of ascertaining more accuracy in the performance of link prediction classifier. The probabilistic model based on Naive Bayes classifier is used as a base classier. Experimental results shows that we have achieved more accuracy in classifier performance which also been verified using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.
The Swedish WAIS-R Factor Structure and Cognitive Profiles for Adults with Dyslexia

Factor analysis of the Swedish version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised (WAIS-R) on a group of 88 adult individuals with dyslexia showed a three-factor structure with a verbal comprehension (VC) factor, a perceptual organization (PO) factor, and a freedom from distractibility (FD) factor. The results of this factor analysis support earlier findings from factor analyses of adults in the original U.S. normative sample and in different clinical groups. The profile of scores for the sample of individuals with dyslexia showed the expected pattern, with PO highest and FD lowest. The predicted pattern was also observed using Bannatyne's recategorization of WAIS-R subtests. As has been true for other typical and exceptional samples, women scored significantly higher than men on the Digit Symbol subtest. Related to this gender difference, Digit Symbol scores proved to be sensitive to problems associated with dyslexia only for men with dyslexia. Also, education level was shown to be related to verbal (V)—performance (P) IQ discrepancy, with larger P > V differences observed for participants with fewer years of formal schooling. Regardless of these gender and education differences, the characteristic factor score and Bannatyne patterns were identified for both men and women and for three different subsamples categorized by educational level.
Joint transmitter-receiver optimization in synchronous multiuser communications over multipath channels

Transmitter optimization, in addition to receiver optimization, contributes significantly to efficient interference suppression in multiple access and multipath channels. The system design is based on the joint optimization of the transmitter and the receiver in a synchronous multiuser channel characterized by multipath propagation. Joint optimization is represented by a linear transformation of the transmitted signals at the transmitter and a linear transformation of received signals at each receiving site that minimize the effect of multiple access and multipath interference. The minimum mean squared error between the true bit value and its estimate at the output of the receiver is taken as the cost function, subject to average and peak transmit power constraints. It is shown that joint transmitter-receiver optimization outperforms significantly either transmitter optimization or receiver-based techniques. The crucial assumption, in the case of multipath channels, is that the transmitter knows the multipath characteristics of all channels and that the channel dynamics are sufficiently slow so that multipath profiles remain essentially constant over a block of preceded bits. The practical applications can be found in indoor and cellular communications, satellite communications, or military communications where nonorthogonal signature waveforms are employed.
Differential Tumor Necrosis Factor Production by Human Monocyte Subsets

The human monocyte (MØ) subset rosetting with anti RH‐coated human erythrocytes via high‐affinity, 72 kD receptors (FcRI+), contains the PGE2‐producing immunosuppressive subpopulation, while the non‐rosetting MØ subset (FcRI‐) is the major plasminogen activator‐producing and antigen‐presenting MØ. This study gives additional evidence for the functional disparity of the FcRI‐ and FcRI+ MØ subsets. We are demonstrating that the normal human MØ subset isolated by rosetting via the FcRI receptor (FcRI+) produces greater quantities of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) than the non‐rosetting (FcRI‐) MØ. TNF production by the FcRI+ MØ subset is greater than that of the FcRI‐ MØ subset whether secreted (P < .001) or cell‐associated (P < .001) TNF is assessed. The rosetting MØ subset that expresses high densities of FcRI (FcRI+) produced the majority of normal human peripheral blood MØ TNF whether the stimulation was an interferon gamma (IFNγ) prime followed by MDP or followed by interleukin‐2 (IL‐2). The Fc rosetting technique itself resulted in some TNF induction in the FcRI+ MØ subset accounting for some of the increased TNF production of this subset. However, increasing the stimulation level of the FcRI very‐low‐density (FcRI‐) MØ subset did not induce it to produce TNF levels equivalent to the moderately stimulated FcRI+ MØ subset. These data, therefore, imply that only stimulation through the type I Fcγ receptor can augment or induce TNF activity. The difference in the MØ subset's TNF response remained even after the FcRI‐ MØ subset received a 2.5‐fold increase in stimulation with the classical MØ induction regimen of IFNγ plus bacterial cell wall product. Although stimulation of the FcRI+ MØ subset via crosslinking of their FcRI receptors might represent a unique TNF stimulation pathway, this stimulation does not occur in the low‐density FcRI (FcRI‐) MØ subset, again indicating functional disparity between these subsets. Greater TNF production by the FcRI+ MØ subset was induced concomitant to elevation of its prostaglandin E2 production. Since both TNF and PGE2 are increased in some patient groups, a pathological shift in the FcRI+ versus FcRI‐ MØ ratio in these patients coupled to the functional differences in FcRI+ and FcRI+ MØ subsets could be one mechanism for the development of immunoincompetence.
Expression, purification, and MALDI analysis of RPE65.

PURPOSE RPE65 is preferentially expressed in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and is essential for retinal function. The purpose of the study was to develop methods for the expression of the protein, determine the accurate molecular weight of this expressed protein, and quantitate the amount of RPE65 in the bovine RPE. METHODS Human RPE65 was expressed in Sf9 cells using the baculovirus system. The subcellular localization was determined by Western blot analysis and immunocytochemistry. An ELISA was developed for RPE65 and used to measure levels in bovine RPE. Recombinant and native RPE65 were purified by affinity chromatography. Molecular mass was determined by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry. RESULTS Recombinant human (rH)RPE65 was expressed as a major protein associated with cell membrane in Sf9 cells. The recombinant protein was purified to apparent homogeneity from both the membrane and nonmembrane fractions. The identity of the purified protein was confirmed by Western blot analysis and by partial peptide sequencing. rHRPE65 from the nonmembrane fraction has a mass of 64,867 +/- 80 which is close to the calculated molecular weight from the amino acid sequence including the His-tag (64,663), whereas the membrane-associated rHRPE65 has a molecular mass of 65,380 +/- 150, which is significantly higher than that of the non-membrane-associated form and the calculated molecular weight, suggesting posttranslational modifications. Similarly, native RPE65 was detected in the cytosolic and microsomal fractions of the bovine RPE, with an average level of 3.8 +/- 1.3 and 7.2 +/- 0.4 microg RPE65 per eye, respectively. The cytosolic form had a molecular mass of 61,161 +/- 60, which is close to the calculated value (60,944), whereas that of the microsomal form was 61,961 +/- 170. CONCLUSIONS RPE65 is expressed in two forms, one of which is membrane associated and contains significant posttranslational modifications, similar to the native membrane-associated form.
Fast Visual Tracking using Memory Gradient Pursuit Algorithm

Sparse representation scheme is very influential in visual tracking field. These L1 trackers obtain robustness by finding the target with the minimum reconstruction error via L1 norm minimization problem. However, the high computational burden of L1 minimization and absence of effective model for appearance changes may hamper its application in real world sceneries. In this research, we present a fast and robust tracking method that exploits a fast memory gradient pursuit algorithm (FMGP) with sparse representation scheme in a Bayesian framework to accelerate the L1 minimization process. For tracking, our approach adopts a non-overlapping covariance descriptor and uses a new similarity metric with scaled unscented transform. In order to reduce the problem of drift tracking, we construct a different template dictionary including benchmark template with different scales, adaptive background templates and stable templates. We test the proposed tracking method on the challenging image sequences. Both quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate the excellent performances of the proposed algorithm compared with several state of the art tracking algorithms.
Molecular Mechanisms of Microcystin Toxicity in Animal Cells

Microcystins (MC) are potent hepatotoxins produced by the cyanobacteria of the genera Planktothrix, Microcystis, Aphanizomenon, Nostoc and Anabaena. These cyclic heptapeptides have strong affinity to serine/threonine protein phosphatases (PPs) thereby acting as an inhibitor of this group of enzymes. Through this interaction a cascade of events responsible for the MC cytotoxic and genotoxic effects in animal cells may take place. Moreover MC induces oxidative stress in animal cells and together with the inhibition of PPs, this pathway is considered to be one of the main mechanisms of MC toxicity. In recent years new insights on the key enzymes involved in the signal-transduction and toxicity have been reported demonstrating the complexity of the interaction of these toxins with animal cells. Key proteins involved in MC up-take, biotransformation and excretion have been identified, demonstrating the ability of aquatic animals to metabolize and excrete the toxin. MC have shown to interact with the mitochondria. The consequences are the dysfunction of the organelle, induction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and cell apoptosis. MC activity leads to the differential expression/activity of transcriptional factors and protein kinases involved in the pathways of cellular differentiation, proliferation and tumor promotion activity. This activity may result from the direct inhibition of the protein phosphatases PP1 and PP2A. This review aims to summarize the increasing data regarding the molecular mechanisms of MC toxicity in animal systems, reporting for direct MC interacting proteins and key enzymes in the process of toxicity biotransformation/excretion of these cyclic peptides.
Multilingual MRASTA features for low-resource keyword search and speech recognition systems

This paper investigates the application of hierarchical MRASTA bottleneck (BN) features for under-resourced languages within the IARPA Babel project. Through multilingual training of Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) BN features on five languages (Cantonese, Pashto, Tagalog, Turkish, and Vietnamese), we could end up in a single feature stream which is more beneficial to all languages than the unilingual features. In the case of balanced corpus sizes, the multilingual BN features improve the automatic speech recognition (ASR) performance by 3-5% and the keyword search (KWS) by 3-10% relative for both limited (LLP) and full language packs (FLP). Borrowing orders of magnitude more data from non-target FLPs, the recognition error rate is reduced by 8-10%, and the spoken term detection is improved by over 40% relative on Vietnamese and Pashto LLP. Aiming at the fast development of acoustic models, cross-lingual transfer of multilingually ”pretrained” BN features for a new language is also investigated. Without the need of any MLP training on the new language, the ported BN features performed similarly to the unilingual features on FLP and significantly better on LLP. Results also show that a simple fine-tuning step on the new language is enough to achieve comparable KWS and ASR performance to that system where the target language is also involved in the time-consuming multilingual training.
The reinvigoration of the Southern Ocean carbon sink

Uptake uptick Has global warming slowed the uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the Southern Ocean? Landschützer et al. say no (see the Perspective by Fletcher). Previous work suggested that the strength of the Southern Ocean carbon sink fell during the 1990s. This raised concerns that such a decline would exacerbate the rise of atmospheric CO2 and thereby increase global surface air temperatures and ocean acidity. The newer data show that the Southern Ocean carbon sink strengthened again over the past decade, which illustrates the dynamic nature of the process and alleviates some of the anxiety about its earlier weakening trend. Science, this issue p. 1221; see also p. 1165 Carbon uptake by the Southern Ocean has increased again after its slowdown in the 1990s. [Also see Perspective by Fletcher] Several studies have suggested that the carbon sink in the Southern Ocean—the ocean’s strongest region for the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 —has weakened in recent decades. We demonstrated, on the basis of multidecadal analyses of surface ocean CO2 observations, that this weakening trend stopped around 2002, and by 2012, the Southern Ocean had regained its expected strength based on the growth of atmospheric CO2. All three Southern Ocean sectors have contributed to this reinvigoration of the carbon sink, yet differences in the processes between sectors exist, related to a tendency toward a zonally more asymmetric atmospheric circulation. The large decadal variations in the Southern Ocean carbon sink suggest a rather dynamic ocean carbon cycle that varies more in time than previously recognized.
Glutathione S-transferase phenotypes in relation to genetic variation and fruit and vegetable consumption in an endoscopy-based population.

High glutathione S-transferase (GST) activity may contribute to colorectal cancer prevention. Functional polymorphisms are known in the GSTM1, GSTT1, GSTA1 and GSTP1 genes. The influence of these GST polymorphisms and recent fruit and vegetable consumption on GST levels and activity has not been investigated simultaneously in a human population. Also, it is not clear if blood GST activity reflects rectal GST activity. Therefore, we determined GST polymorphisms in 94 patients scheduled for sigmoidoscopy. Rectal GST isoenzyme levels (GSTM1, GSTM2, GSTT1, GSTA and GSTP1) were measured by quantitative western blotting, and rectal and white blood cell total GST activities were measured spectrophotometrically using 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (CDNB) as a substrate. Vegetable and fruit consumption was assessed by dietary record. As expected, the GSTM1 and GSTT1 deletion polymorphisms, and the GSTA1 g. -69C-->T polymorphism significantly affected the respective isoenzyme levels. Also, rectal GST isoenzyme levels differed between those with and without recent consumption of Alliaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Apiaceae and citrus fruit. Rectal GST activity, however, was not clearly influenced by fruit and vegetable consumption. It was most significantly determined by the GSTP1 c.313A-->G polymorphism; compared with the 313AA genotypes, the 313AG and 313GG genotypes showed 36 and 67 nmol/min/mg protein (P < 0.001) lower GST activity, respectively. The correlation between rectal and white blood cell GST activities was low (r = 0.40, P < 0.001), and the relevance of the various genetic and dietary factors appeared to differ between the two tissues. In conclusion, this study indicates that the GST enzyme system is influenced by both GST polymorphisms and consumption of fruits and vegetables. The latter appeared more important for individual rectal GST isoenzyme levels than for total GST activity, which could affect detoxification of isoenzyme-specific substrates. The study results do no support the use of white blood cell GST activity as a surrogate measure for rectal GST activity.
Expression of interleukin-22 in rheumatoid arthritis: potential role as a proinflammatory cytokine.

OBJECTIVE Interleukin-22 (IL-22) is a novel cytokine of the IL-10 family. Although its pathophysiologic function is largely unknown, induction of acute-phase responses by IL-22 has suggested proinflammatory properties. In this study, we sought to examine whether IL-22 plays a role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Expression of IL-22 and IL-22 receptor 1 (IL-22R1) was examined by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), Western blot, and immunohistochemical analysis. The effects of recombinant IL-22 (rIL-22) on cultured synovial fibroblasts derived from RA patients (RASF), with regard to the proliferation of synovial fibroblasts and production of monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1), were examined by alamer blue assay and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, respectively. RESULTS IL-22 messenger RNA was detected by RT-PCR in RA synovial tissues and mononuclear cells isolated from RA synovial fluid samples. High levels of IL-22 were expressed both in the lining and the sublining layers of RA synovial tissues. Staining for vimentin and CD68, as markers of synovial fibroblasts and macrophages, respectively, showed that the majority of IL-22-positive cells were synovial fibroblasts and macrophages. IL-22R1 was also expressed in both the lining and the sublining layers of RA synovial tissues. The majority of cells expressing IL-22R1 were positive for vimentin, but not for CD68. Expression of IL-22 and IL-22R1 in RASF was confirmed by RT-PCR and Western blot analysis. In vitro, rIL-22 significantly increased proliferation of RASF and production of MCP-1 by RASF above the value of medium controls. Moreover, MAPK activation was induced in RASF in response to IL-22 stimulation. CONCLUSION These data suggest that IL-22, produced by synovial fibroblasts and macrophages, promotes inflammatory responses in RA synovial tissues by inducing the proliferation and chemokine production of synovial fibroblasts.