Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Movement of Potato Spindle Tuber Viroid Reveals Regulatory Points of Phloem-Mediated RNA Traffic1

Increasing evidence indicates that the phloem mediates traffic of selective RNAs within a plant. How an RNA enters, moves in, and exits the phloem is poorly understood. Potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd) is a pathogenic RNA that does not encode proteins and is not encapsidated, and yet it replicates autonomously and traffics systemically within an infected plant. The viroid RNA genome must interact directly with cellular factors to accomplish these functions and is, therefore, an excellent probe to study mechanisms that regulate RNA traffic. Our analyses of PSTVd traffic in Nicotiana benthamianayielded evidence that PSTVd movement within sieve tubes does not simply follow mass flow from source to sink organs. Rather, this RNA is transported into selective sink organs. Furthermore, two PSTVd mutants can enter the phloem to spread systemically but cannot exit the phloem in systemic leaves of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). A viroid most likely has evolved structural motifs that mimic endogenous plant RNA motifs so that they are recognized by cellular factors for traffic. Thus, analysis of PSTVd traffic functions may provide insights about endogenous mechanisms that control phloem entry, transport, and exit of RNAs.
Expression of CTGF and Cyr61 in colorectal cancer

Background The CCN genes encode secreted extracellular matrix proteins cysteine rich-61 (Cyr61), connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) and nephroblastoma overexpressed (Nov). They are involved in diverse cellular functions. Expression of these factors in tumours has produced conflicting results. More recently, research has focused on molecular biomarkers to indicate progression of a disease or the susceptibility of the disease to a given treatment. Aims The purpose of this study was to determine the expression of CTGF and Cyr61 genes and proteins in colorectal cancer. Expression was compared with various clinicopathological parameters including Dukes' stage and TNM stage. We determined the in vitro effects of hypoxia on Cyr61 and CTGF expression in colorectal cancer cell lines. Results Hypoxia significantly reduced CTGF mRNA expression (p<0.01) in HT29 and Caco-2 cell lines. Cyr61 was induced (p<0.01) in HT29 cell lines but significantly reduced (p<0.01) in Caco-2 cell lines under hypoxic conditions. High levels of CTGF and Cyr61 mRNA were found in colorectal cancer compared with normal colon (p<0.05). Expression was reduced in more advanced cancers (Dukes' C vs Dukes' A and B). There was a significant association between CTGF protein expression and advancing Dukes' stage (p<0.01), T stage (p<0.01) and lymph-node involvement (p<0.05), but there was no significant association between Cyr61 expression and clinicopathological parameters. Conclusion Upregulation of Cyr61 and CTGF gene expression in colorectal cancer suggests they have a role in tumour initiation or development. However, the genes are not as highly expressed in advanced stages of colorectal cancer, suggesting their role may be important at an early stage of tumour development. These genes maybe used as early biomarkers to risk-stratify patients. Hypoxia alters the expression of these genes in colorectal cancer cell lines. Further studies are needed to determine whether targeting these genes would be useful in future therapy.
Avoiding virtual link attacks in wireless ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc network is made of a collection of nodes connected through a wireless medium and form a wireless multihop network with possible changing topologies. The widely accepted existing routing protocols designed to accommodate the needs of such self-organized networks do not address possible threats or attacks aiming at the disruption of the protocol itself. The widely assumed trusted environment is not really the environment that can be realistically expected in reality. In this paper, we describe a new attack against routing protocols which we call virtual link attack, where a misbehaving node tries to relay any Hello message originated from its neighbors aiming to create fake symmetric links in the network. We show that this attack can severely compromise any routing protocol and may lead to large data packets loss. We specifically analyze this attack under the optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol in detail and devise a symmetric neighbor verification protocol (SNVP) to alleviate its impact and severity.
A Gateway to Social Studies through Topical History

o many students and adults, history is, as Henry Ford said, “one damn event after another. ” Even after many years as a centerpiece of the curriculum, U.S. history often is seen as a trivia contest of facts, events, battles, and personalities arranged chronologically. Around this history hub, social science courses are often offered as electives that counselors use to fill gaps in student schedules. Few connections and almost no integration of cultural knowledge exist in this intellectual area that has immense importance to people’s lives in a democratic republic and market-driven economy.
A Model of Autonomous Motion in Ad Hoc Networks to Maximise Area Coverage

Ad hoc networks are self-configuring networks of mobile nodes, connected by wireless links. Suppose each mobile node can make observations within a circular area of radius robs centred on its own location. The area coverage of the network is defined as the total area observed by the mobile nodes. We investigate a distributed scalable method based on local interactions with minimal sensing and low computational cost whereby the nodes move autonomously (self-deployment) in order to maximise the coverage of the network, while at the same time ensuring that the mobile nodes do not move so far away from each other (thus trivially maximising the coverage) that they become disconnected. Certain nodes may be instructed to move to specified locations. These guide nodes induce a correlated movement of groups of nodes which follow the guide nodes and establish maximal coverage in the specified locations. Simulation results demonstrate the coverage achieved by a group of 100 nodes when moving on an unbounded plane (optional guide nodes induce a collective motion to areas of interest) and when moving on a bounded plane with barriers or hills.
Gender Differences in Motor Performance of 50- to 79-Year-Old Adults

This study was conducted to assess gender and age differences among 73 men and women (50—59, 60—69, and 70—79 yr.) on five motor tasks (balance, standing long jump, sit and reach, hand grip, and Softball throw). Differences between men and women on the standing long jump, hand grip, and the Softball throw favored men. The men had better performance scores than the women on each of these tasks. An interaction of gender by age was noted on the balance task. Women 50—59 yr. old balanced significantly longer than the men of that age group. Age differences were found for the standing long jump, hand grip, and Softball throw. The 50—59 age group performed significantly better than the 60—69 and the 70—79 age groups Performance decreased on each task across age groups. These findings suggest gender differences in motor performance of older adults as has been noted for children.
Development of Novel Single-Stranded Nucleic Acid Aptamers against the Pro-Angiogenic and Metastatic Enzyme Heparanase (HPSE1)

Heparanase is an enzyme involved in extracellular matrix remodelling and heparan sulphate proteoglycan catabolism. It is secreted by metastatic tumour cells, allowing them to penetrate the endothelial cell layer and basement membrane to invade target organs. The release of growth factors at the site of cleaved heparan sulphate chains further enhance the potential of the tumour by encouraging the process of angiogenesis. This leads to increased survival and further proliferation of the tumour. Aptamers are single or double stranded oligonucleotides that recognise specific small molecules, peptides, proteins, or even cells or tissues and have shown great potential over the years as diagnostic and therapeutic agents in anticancer treatment. For the first time, single stranded DNA aptamers were successfully generated against the active heterodimer form of heparanase using a modified SELEX protocol, and eluted based on increasing affinity for the target. Sandwich ELISA assays showed recognition of heparanase by the aptamers at a site distinct from that of a polyclonal HPSE1 antibody. The binding affinities of aptamer to immobilised enzyme were high (7×107 to 8×107 M−1) as measured by fluorescence spectroscopy. Immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence studies demonstrated that the aptamers were able to recognise heparanase with staining comparable or in some cases superior to that of the HPSE1 antibody control. Finally, matrigel assay demonstrated that aptamers were able to inhibit heparanase. This study provides clear proof of principle concept that nucleic acid aptamers can be generated against heparanase. These reagents may serve as useful tools to explore the functional role of the enzyme and in the future development of diagnostic assays or therapeutic reagents.
Cognitive and emotional dimensions of perceived risk characteristics, genre-specific media effects, and risk perceptions: the case of H1N1 influenza in South Korea

This study explicates the mechanism underlying the process through which news and entertainment media shape people's personal- and societal-level risk perceptions. It combines the psychometric paradigm with the impersonal- and differential-impact hypotheses, highlighting the roles that cognitive and emotional dimensions of risk characteristics play in risk perceptions. Analysis of an online survey among 384 adults from the general population of South Korea in the context of H1N1 flu yields three major findings: (1) exposure to news media is positively correlated with the cognitive dimension of risk characteristics, while exposure to entertainment media is positively correlated with both the cognitive and the emotional dimensions of risk characteristics; (2) the emotional but not the cognitive dimension of risk characteristics is positively related to both personal- and societal-level risk perceptions; and (3) exposure to entertainment media affects personal-level risk perceptions – not directly but indirectly through the emotional dimension of risk characteristics. Theoretically, this study expands the impersonal- and differential-impact hypotheses by explicating their underlying mechanisms and incorporating arguments from the psychometric paradigm. It also adds new knowledge to the psychometric paradigm by highlighting the differential roles of the cognitive and emotional dimensions of people's perceived risk characteristics in risk perceptions. For risk communicators, this study highlights the importance of using entertainment media for shaping risk perceptions and educating the public about risk issues.
Oxidative Stress Biomarkers and Incidence of Postoperative Atrial Fibrillation in the Omega-3 Fatty Acids for Prevention of Postoperative Atrial Fibrillation (OPERA) Trial

Background Animal study results point to oxidative stress as a key mechanism triggering postoperative atrial fibrillation (PoAF), yet the extent to which specific biomarkers of oxidative stress might relate to PoAF risk in humans remains speculative. Methods and Results We assessed the association of validated, fatty acid–derived oxidative stress biomarkers (F2-isoprostanes, isofurans, and F3-isoprostanes) in plasma and urine, with incident PoAF among 551 cardiac surgery patients. Biomarkers were measured at enrollment, the end of surgery, and postoperative day 2. PoAF lasting ≥30 seconds was confirmed with rhythm strip or electrocardiography and centrally adjudicated. Outcomes were assessed until hospital discharge or postoperative day 10, whichever occurred first. Urine level of each oxidative stress biomarker rose at the end of surgery (2- to 3-fold over baseline, P<0.001) and subsequently declined to concentrations comparable to baseline by postoperative day 2. In contrast, plasma concentrations remained relatively stable throughout the perioperative course. Urine F2-isoprostanes and isofurans at the end of surgery were 20% and 50% higher in subjects who developed PoAF (P≤0.009). While baseline biomarker levels did not associate significantly with PoAF, end of surgery and postoperative day 2 isoprostanes and isofurans demonstrated relatively linear associations with PoAF. For example, the end of surgery extreme quartile multivariate adjusted OR (95% CI) for urine isofurans and F3-isoprostanes were 1.95 (1.05 to 3.62; P for trend=0.01) and 2.10 (1.04 to 2.25, P for trend=0.04), respectively. The associations of biomarkers with PoAF varied little by demographics, surgery type, and medication use (P≥0.29 for each). Conclusions These novel results add to accumulating evidence supporting the likely key pathogenic role of elevated oxidative stress in PoAF. Clinical Trial Registration URL: Clinicaltrials.gov Unique identifier: NCT00970489.
Experimental investigation of joint decoding in overloaded MIMO-OFDM system

This paper presents a joint decoding scheme for an overloaded multiple input multiple output (MIMO) -orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. In the overloaded MIMO system the number of receive antenna elements is less than that of transmit antenna elements. It has been shown that under the overloaded condition the performance of joint detection deteriorates while diversity reduces the amount of performance degradation caused by signal multiplexing. Thus, this paper proposes a maximum likelihood joint decoding scheme of block coded signals in the overloaded MIMO-OFDM system. The performance of joint decoding over Rayleigh fading channels is evaluated through the experiments. It is shown that the diversity through block coding realizes a limited amount of performance degradation in joint decoding of 2 Hamming coded signal streams.
Exploring an English Language Learner's Literacy Learning Opportunities

This investigation is an ethnographic case study of the literacy learning opportunities of a fifth-grade Hmong child (pseudonym Deng) who came to the United States from Laos via Thailand at the very end of his third-grade year in school. Deng was one of 25 students in a mainstream urban classroom in the Midwest during his fifth grade in school when this investigation took place. Because Deng had only been in the United States for a little more than a year at the time this investigation began and because English was a relatively new language for him, I was concerned about his opportunities for literacy learning in a classroom where English was the medium of instruction. Deng and I worked collaboratively to explore his literacy learning opportunities in the context of a trade book unit pertaining to the text Maniac Magee.
Formal Linguistic Approaches to L3/Ln Acquisition: A Focus on Morphosyntactic Transfer in Adult Multilingualism

The goal of this article is to introduce the reader to contemporary adult multilingual acquisition research within generative linguistics. In much the same way as monolingual and bilingual acquisition studies are approached within this paradigm, generative multilingual research focuses primarily on the psycholinguistic and cognitive aspects of the acquisition process. Herein, we critically present a panoramic view of the research questions and empirical work that have dominated this nascent field, taking the reader through several interrelated epistemological discussions that are at the vanguard of contemporary multilingual morphosyntax work. We finish this article with some thoughts looking towards the near future of adult multilingual acquisition studies.
Animacy in the adjunction of Spanish RCs to complex NPs

The present paper focuses on the role of animacy in the processing of relative clauses (RCs) after complex NPs. We follow research by the Desmet et al. team on Dutch in exploring the role of animacy in Spanish RCs. We present data from a corpus study and two self-paced experiments and we compare the three studies and the Dutch and Spanish results. Our main objective is to fill important gaps in past research on the processing of adjunction ties in Spanish and to offer a more detailed exploration of grain effects in exposure-based accounts. In particular, we have sought both to analyse the match between corpus studies and online processing in Spanish much more closely than it has been until now and to see whether animacy could revert the well-established tendency of Spanish RCs to attach high inside the complex noun phrase.
Laser processes and optical nonlinearities in ZnSe heterostructures.

Supported by the recent progress in epitaxial growth and doping of II-VI semiconductors, ZnSe-based heterostructures have become highly promising material systems for a commercial fabrication of laser diodes or other optoelectronic devices operating in the blue spectral range. Our interest in this field is concerning the identification of the microscopic origins of the optical gain and other nonlinear optical effects in these heterostructures with a focus on the role of excitons. Information about the underlying recombination process is drawn from a combination of different spectroscopic techniques. Gain spectra are determined from the variable stripe-length method and by pump and probe measurements, which simultaneously provide the nonlinear absorption changes in the spectral regime of the excitonic resonances. A lineshape analysis on the experimental data of the gain and of the luminescence is then performed according to theoretical models for the relevant processes. Furthermore, the redshifts of the stimulated emission at threshold and of the excitonic absorption lines with increasing lattice temperature are compared.
Incremental learning of action models as HMMs over qualitative trajectory representations

In this paper we present an incremental approach to learning generative models of object manipulation actions as HMMs over qualitative relations between two objects. We compare the incremental approach against a traditional batch training baseline and show that the resulting qualitative action models are capable of one-shot learning after just one seen example while displaying good generalization behavior as more data becomes available.
Efficient Bounded Adaptive Tessellation of Displacement Maps

Displacement mapping is a technique for applying fine geometric detail to a simpler base surface. The displacement is often specified as a scalar function which makes it relatively easy to increase visual complexity without the difficulties inherent in more general modeling techniques. We would like to use displacement mapping in real-time applications. Ideally, a graphics accelerator should create a polygonal tessellation of the displaced surface on the fly to avoid storage and host bandwidth overheads. We present an online, adaptive, crack-free tessellation scheme for real-time displacement mapping that uses only local information for each triangle to perform a view-dependent tessellation. The tessellation works in homogeneous coordinates and avoids retransformation of displaced points, making it suitable for high-performance hardware implementation. The use of interval analysis produces meshes with good error bounds that converge quickly to the true surface.
Single-molecule tracking of tau reveals fast kiss-and-hop interaction with microtubules in living neurons

This is the first study in which the interaction of a microtubule-associated protein has been evaluated by direct single-molecule observations in living neurons. The data imply a novel kiss-and-hop mechanism of tau–microtubule interaction, rationalizing how tau can regulate microtubule dynamics without interfering with axonal transport.
Carotid Bifurcation Atherosclerosis: Quantitative Correlation of Plaque Localization with Flow Velocity Profiles and Wall Shear Stress

The distribution of nonstenosing, asymptomatic intimal plaques in 12 adult human carotid bifurcations obtained at autopsy was compared with the distribution of flow streamline patterns, flow velocity profiles, and shear stresses in corresponding scale models. The postmortem specimens were fixed while distended to restore normal in vivo length, diameter, and configura- tion. Angiograms were used to measure branch angles and diameters, and transverse histological sections were studied at five standard sampling levels. Intimal thickness was determined at 15° intervals around the circumference of the vessel sections from contour tracings of images projected onto a digitizing plate. In the models, laser-Doppler anemometry was used to determine flow velocity profiles and shear stresses at levels corresponding to the standard specimen sampling sites under conditions of steady flow at Reynolds numbers of 400, 800, and 1200, and flow patterns were visualized by hydrogen bubble and dye-washout techniques. Intimal thickening was greatest and consistently eccentric in the carotid sinus. With the center of the flow divider as the 0° index point, mid-sinus sections showed minimum intimal thickness (0.05 ± 0.02 mm) within 15° of the index point, while maximum thickness (0.9 ± 0.1 mm) occurred at 161 ± 16°, i.e., on the outer wall opposite the flow divider. Where the intima was thinnest, along the inner wall, flow streamlines in the model remain axially aligned and unidirectional, with velocity maxima shifted toward the flow divider apex. Wall shear stress along the inner wall ranged from 31 to 600 dynes/cm2 depending on the Reynolds number. Where the intima was thickest, along the outer wall opposite the flow divider apex, the pattern of flow was complex and included a region of separation and reversal of axial flow as well as the development of counter-rotating helical trajectories. Wall shear stress along the outer wall ranged from 0 to —6 dynes/cm2. Intimal thickening at the common carotid and distal internal carotid levels of section was minimal and was distributed uniformly about the circumference. We conclude that in the human carotid bifurcation, regions of moderate to high shear stress, where flow remains unidirectional and axially aligned, are relatively spared of intimal thickening. Intimal thickening and atherosclerosis develop largely in regions of relatively low wall shear stress, flow separation, and departure from axially aligned, unidirectional flow. Similar quantitative evaluations of other atherosclerosis-prone locations and corresponding flow profile studies in geometrically accurate models may reveal which of these hemodynamic conditions are most consistently associated with the development of intimal disease.
Quasi-linear viscoelastic properties of costal cartilage using atomic force microscopy

Costal cartilage (CC) is one of the load-bearing tissues of the rib cage. Literature on material characterisation of the CC is limited. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been extremely successful in characterising the elastic properties of soft biomaterials such as articular cartilage and hydrogels, which are often the material of choice for cartilage models. But AFM data on CC are absent in the literature. In this study, AFM indentations using spherical beaded tips were performed on human CC to isolate the mechanical properties. A novel method was developed for modelling the relaxation indentation experiments based on Fung's quasi-linear viscoelasticity and a continuous relaxation spectrum. This particular model has been popular for uniaxial compression test data analysis. Using the model, the mean Young's modulus of CC was found to be about 2.17, 4.11 and 5.49 MPa for three specimens. A large variation of modulus was observed over the tissue. Also, the modulus values decreased with distance from the costochondral junction.