Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coordinated Gene Networks Regulating Arabidopsis Plant Metabolism in Response to Various Stresses and Nutritional Cues[W]

This work introduces a bioinformatics approach that identifies positive and negative coordination of gene expression between sets of genes, or entire gene networks, in response to environmental or developmental cues. The approach is illustrated by a case study that identifies distinct expression behavior of the energy-associated gene network in response to different biotic and abiotic stresses. The expression pattern of any pair of genes may be negatively correlated, positively correlated, or not correlated at all in response to different stresses and even different progression stages of the stress. This makes it difficult to identify such relationships by classical statistical tools such as the Pearson correlation coefficient. Hence, dedicated bioinformatics approaches that are able to identify groups of cues in which there is a positive or negative expression correlation between pairs or groups of genes are called for. We herein introduce and discuss a bioinformatics approach, termed Gene Coordination, that is devoted to the identification of specific or multiple cues in which there is a positive or negative coordination between pairs of genes and can further incorporate additional coordinated genes to form large coordinated gene networks. We demonstrate the utility of this approach by providing a case study in which we were able to discover distinct expression behavior of the energy-associated gene network in response to distinct biotic and abiotic stresses. This bioinformatics approach is suitable to a broad range of studies that compare treatments versus controls, such as effects of various cues, or expression changes between a mutant and the control wild-type genotype.
Necessary and sufficient conditions for robust global asymptotic stabilization of discrete-time systems

We give Lyapunov-like conditions for non-uniform in time output stabilization of discrete-time systems. Particularly, it is proved that for a discrete-time control system there exists a (continuous) output stabilizing feedback if and only if there exists a (strong) output control Lyapunov function (OCLF). Moreover, strategies for the construction of continuous robust feedback stabilizers are presented.
Wilms' tumour 1 (WT1) in development, homeostasis and disease

ABSTRACT The study of genes mutated in human disease often leads to new insights into biology as well as disease mechanisms. One such gene is Wilms’ tumour 1 (WT1), which plays multiple roles in development, tissue homeostasis and disease. In this Primer, I summarise how this multifaceted gene functions in various mammalian tissues and organs, including the kidney, gonads, heart and nervous system. This is followed by a discussion of our current understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which WT1 and its two major isoforms regulate these processes at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. Summary: This Primer summarises our current understanding of the diversity of WT1 functions in mammalian tissues and organs and how WT1 mutations can lead to disease.
A “Radical” Approach to Reading Development in Chinese: The Role of Semantic Radicals and Phonetic Radicals

Two studies investigating the significance of radical knowledge in Chinese reading development are reported in this paper. Study 1 examined the semantic radical knowledge of 20 Grade 1, 20 Grade 3, and 20 Grade 5 Chinese children in Hong Kong. It was found that various types of semantic radical knowledge, including the position and semantic category of semantic radicals, correlated significantly with Chinese word reading and sentence comprehension. Study 2 examined phonetic radical knowledge with another three groups of 20 Chinese children in Grades 1, 3, and 5 respectively. It was found that various measures of phonetic radical knowledge, including the function and sound value of phonetic radicals, correlated significantly with Chinese word reading. These studies found that, developmentally, the children started acquiring the knowledge of character structure, position, semantic category, and sound value of radicals from about Grade 1. However, they did not understand that the function of semantic radicals is to provide meaning cues in reading until Grade 3. The authors concluded that the radical is an important orthographic processing unit in reading development in Chinese.
HOW DEHUMANIZATION OF TERRORISTS REFLECTS ON THE INEFFABILITY OF AL-QAEDA PHENOMENON: a philosophical Investigation

Ten years after September 11, terrorism is a still an open question for philosophy: the difficulty to define it remains a challenging issue , since Derrida has underlined the relation between the invisibility and the ineffability of th e phenomenon. I’ll argue that this intuition is plausible, at least from a phenomenological and metaphysical perspective, but my aim is to move further. In the first part of the paper I’l l show that terrorists, by assuming the negative ideology of Al Qaeda network, loose something of their personal being; this lack is at the root of their evildoing and originates di sordered, unlimited actions. My inquiry moves from the concept of sensing explored by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae (Quaestio 15; Ia-IIae Pars), as the ingredient of w illing, an act that inclines and orients one’s conduct. When a terrorist takes voluntary the distance from the world of life, by joining the subversive group, the process of dehuma nization begins. It has nothing to do with a brainwashing, but the symptom of an extreme ordinariness has something in common with the void experimented by people affected by mental diseases: in both cases this intimate dryness comes from a distorted relati on with the world of life, voluntary in the case of evildoers, not deliberately chosen, on the other hand. If we accept these premises, we conclude that something really gets lost in the process of deliberate dehumanization. In conclusion: terrorism is a main task to come to ter m with the ineffable not because of the incapacity of the mind to think of it (as Derrida a rgued or as it happens in the experiences of time and suffering, for instance) but because of the impoverishment of the personal Self of the evildoers that reflects on the phenomenon in itself. On a logical ground, we face a
Epithelial neoplasia in Drosophila entails switch to primitive cell states

Significance Not all cell types in a lineage hierarchy succumb to cancer in the face of an oncogenic lesion. What turns only select cells within an organ into “cells-of-origin” in cancer is an enduring riddle of cancer biology. Here we show that in epithelial primordia of adult wings and eyes of Drosophila, oncogenically mutated cells lose their developmental commitments and, instead, switch to a primitive or progenitor-like cell state. Switch-to-a-primitive-cell-state could thus be a prevalent mechanism of epithelial carcinogenesis and, possibly, an essential characteristic of cancer cells-of-origin. Only select cell types in an organ display neoplasia when targeted oncogenically. How developmental lineage hierarchies of these cells prefigure their neoplastic propensities is not yet well-understood. Here we show that neoplastic Drosophila epithelial cells reverse their developmental commitments and switch to primitive cell states. In a context of alleviated tissue surveillance, for example, loss of Lethal giant larvae (Lgl) tumor suppressor in the wing primordium induced epithelial neoplasia in its Homothorax (Hth)-expressing proximal domain. Transcriptional profile of proximally transformed mosaic wing epithelium and functional tests revealed tumor cooperation by multiple signaling pathways. In contrast, lgl− clones in the Vestigial (Vg)-expressing distal wing epithelium were eliminated by cell death. Distal lgl− clones, however, could transform when both tissue surveillance and cell death were compromised genetically and, alternatively, when the transcription cofactor of Hippo signaling pathway, Yorkie (Yki), was activated, or when Ras/EGFR signaling was up-regulated. Furthermore, transforming distal lgl− clones displayed loss of Vg, suggesting reversal of their terminal cell fate commitment. In contrast, reinforcing a distal (wing) cell fate commitment in lgl− clones by gaining Vg arrested their neoplasia and induced cell death. We also show that neoplasia in both distal and proximal lgl− clones could progress in the absence of Hth, revealing Hth-independent wing epithelial neoplasia. Likewise, neoplasia in the eye primordium resulted in loss of Elav, a retinal cell marker; these, however, switched to an Hth-dependent primitive cell state. These results suggest a general characteristic of “cells-of-origin” in epithelial cancers, namely their propensity for switch to primitive cell states.
Agile Wheeled Mobile Robots for Service in Natural Environment

Although the wheeled locomotion proved to be very efficient on smooth grounds, it still encounters great difficulties in natural environments, where the ground is subject to wide variations in term of geometry (irregular surface, presence of obstacles.) and material properties (cohesion, grip condition.). This chapter presents recent developments and original systems that allow to model and improve the capacities of wheeled mobile service robots on natural ground. First is considered the case of low speed motion. Section 2 presents recent results on reconfigurable suspensions that have two states and can decrease lateral friction and energy consumption during turns for skid-steering vehicles. Section 3 presents an original hybrid kinematics that combines wheels with an articulated frame for creating a mobile wheeled robot with high obstacle-climbing capacities, using only one supplemental actuator. Other advances deals with high speed motion. Section 4 describes a new device dedicated to vehicle dynamic stability, which improves lateral stability on fast mobile robots during turns and contributes to rollover prevention. Finally, Section 5 introduces innovative suspensions with two DOF for fast obstacle crossing. They damp vertical shocks, such as ordinary suspensions, but also horizontal ones, contributing to tip-over prevention on irregular grounds that feature many steep obstacles.
A pattern tree-based approach to learning URL normalization rules

Duplicate URLs have brought serious troubles to the whole pipeline of a search engine, from crawling, indexing, to result serving. URL normalization is to transform duplicate URLs to a canonical form using a set of rewrite rules. Nowadays URL normalization has attracted significant attention as it is lightweight and can be flexibly integrated into both the online (e.g. crawling) and the offline (e.g. index compression) parts of a search engine. To deal with a large scale of websites, automatic approaches are highly desired to learn rewrite rules for various kinds of duplicate URLs. In this paper, we rethink the problem of URL normalization from a global perspective and propose a pattern tree-based approach, which is remarkably different from existing approaches. Most current approaches learn rewrite rules by iteratively inducing local duplicate pairs to more general forms, and inevitably suffer from noisy training data and are practically inefficient. Given a training set of URLs partitioned into duplicate clusters for a targeted website, we develop a simple yet efficient algorithm to automatically construct a URL pattern tree. With the pattern tree, the statistical information from all the training samples is leveraged to make the learning process more robust and reliable. The learning process is also accelerated as rules are directly summarized based on pattern tree nodes. In addition, from an engineering perspective, the pattern tree helps select deployable rules by removing conflicts and redundancies. An evaluation on more than 70 million duplicate URLs from 200 websites showed that the proposed approach achieves very promising performance, in terms of both de-duping effectiveness and computational efficiency.
Exploring Dynamic Brain Functional Networks Using Continuous “State-Related” Functional MRI

We applied a “temporal decomposition” method, which decomposed a single brain functional network into several “modes”; each of them dominated a short temporal period, on a continuous, “state-” related, “finger-force feedback” functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment. With the hypothesis that attention and internal/external information processing interaction could be manipulated by different (real and sham) feedback conditions, we investigated functional network dynamics of the “default mode,” “executive control,” and sensorimotor networks. They were decomposed into several modes. During real feedback, the occurrence of “default mode-executive control competition-related” mode was higher than that during sham feedback (P = 0.0003); the “default mode-visual facilitation-related” mode more frequently appeared during sham than real feedback (P = 0.0004). However, the dynamics of the sensorimotor network did not change significantly between two conditions (P > 0.05). Our results indicated that the visual-guided motor feedback involves higher cognitive functional networks rather than primary motor network. The dynamics monitoring of inner and outside environment and multisensory integration could be the mechanisms. This study is an extension of our previous region-specific and static-styled study of our brain functional architecture.
The effects of botulinum toxin on the pattern of innervation of skeletal muscle in the mouse.

Sublethal quantities of botulinum toxin were injected into the gastrocnemius and hamstring muscles of one leg in mice. Local paralysis and atrophy occurred and persisted for a few weeks. Histological examination showed no degeneration of nerve fibres or of motor nerve endings. Silver impregnations showed that during the period of muscle paralysis there was growth of motor nerve fibres from the terminal arborizations. Nerve fibre overgrowth was accompanied by elongation and abnormal configuration of sites of cholinesterase activity. As muscle function recovered the nerve fibre overgrowth receded and well-formed though still abnormally shaped subneural apparatuses were seen. Nine months after the injection of the toxin, the pattern of innervation of the muscle was still abnormal. The growth of motor nerve fibres after the injection of botulinum toxin appears to be a response to the failure of neuromuscular transmission and is not analogous to regeneration of nerve fibres after trauma.
The Effect of Minimum Legal Drinking Age on the Incidence of First Pregnancy and Its Outcome

The minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) requirements can affect teen fertility rates through changes in alcohol-induced risky sexual behavior. The direction of the effect can vary depending on changes in alcohol consumption context and intensity. Using micro-level data, I find that a decrease in the MLDA increases the probability of unwanted first pregnancy among 15-20 year-old blacks and poor whites. The effect on non-poor whites is not statistically significant. I find some evidence that the individual eligibility status at the time of first pregnancy rather than the state MLDA might affect fertility among non-poor whites.
Parallel program execution on a heterogeneous PC cluster using task duplication

We propose to use a duplication based approach in scheduling tasks for a heterogeneous cluster of PCs. In duplication based scheduling, critical tasks are redundantly scheduled to more than one machine in order to reduce the number of inter-task communication operations. The start times of the succeeding tasks are also reduced. The task duplication process is guided given the system heterogeneity in that the critical tasks are scheduled or replicated in faster machines. The algorithm has been implemented in our prototype program parallelization tool for generating MPI code executable on a cluster of Pentium PCs. Our experiments using three applications have indicated that the heterogeneity of a PC cluster, being an inevitable feature, is indeed useful for optimizing the execution of parallel programs.
[Correlation between expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-2, TIMP-1 and metastasis of neuroblastoma].

OBJECTIVE To study MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-2 and TIMP-1 expression, and their association to invasion and metastasis of neuroblastoma (NB). METHODS The staining status was compared of MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-2 and TIMP-1 in cryostat sections of tumor tissue in 35 NB patients by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS Strong expression of MMP-2 was detected only in 2 patients with early stage NB (group A without metastasis), but in 9 and 10 respectively with advanced stage NB (group B with local metastasis and group C with distant metastasis) (compared to group A, P < 0.01). Strong MMP-9 staining was found in 4, 8 and 11 patients for group A, B and C patients (group A vs group C, P < 0.05). The expression of TIMP-2 was the strongest in 4 group A patients, but it decreased with progression of the disease. There was no statistical difference in TIMP-1 expression among the three groups of patients. CONCLUSION MMP-2, MMP-9 expression may be related to metastasis and progression of neuroblastoma, while TIMP-2 may have an inhibitory effect.
The role of the ECO in the context of the international charter on space and major disasters

The operation flow chart of the Charter is presented on Figure 1. To activate the Charter, an Authorized User needs to prepare a User Request Form providing details on the event. This request is received by the On-Duty Operator (the ODO), located in ESA's offices in Frascati, Italy. The ODO then contacts the Emergency On-Call Officer (the ECO) who is a representative of one of the Participating Agencies. The ECO 24-hour a day support task rotates from one agency to the other on a weekly basis. The ECO has a thorough knowledge of the technology made available by the Participating Agencies and of the requirements for the various classes of disasters. The ECO then has to task the appropriate sensors according to the type of events in the shortest delays. Meanwhile, the Executive Secretariat of the Charter has to look for a Project Manager (PM), an application specialist who is an expert knowledgeable of the area and of the type of disaster and who can take over the project until its conclusion. Once the PM is confirmed, the ECO passes over the Dossier and the responsibilities of the project. The PM has to interact with the various Space Agencies, the Authorized User and the Value Added Reseller to provide the most appropriate, timely and relevant information products to the End User. Depending on the type of event, the Space Operators may provide real-time and archive data from some or all of the available sensors. CSA will provide processed RADARSAT-1 SAR imagery from the most relevant mode; ESA will provide processed SAR imagery from ERS and ENVISAT; CNES is offering imagery from its SPOT series of sensors; NOAA makes available imagery data from POES (AVHRR, TOVS) IB and DMSP (SSM/I, SSM/T, SST/T2) TDR, SDR and EDR data; ISRO provide imagery data from the IRS-1C/1D/P4 series of satellite and finally; CONAE is offering optical data from their SAC-C sensor. The Charter is the first multi-agency, multi-mission, multi-sensor operational service available to the international community. The members participate on a voluntary basis with no exchange of funds.
Resting state networks in temporal lobe epilepsy

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is typically described as a neurologic disorder affecting a cerebral network comprising the hippocampus proper and several anatomically related extrahippocampal regions. A new level of complexity was recently added to the study of this disorder by the evidence that TLE also appears to chronically alter the activity of several brain‐wide neural networks involved in the control of higher order brain functions and not traditionally linked to epilepsy. Recently developed brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis of resting state connectivity, have greatly contributed to these observations by allowing the precise characterization of several brain networks with distinct functional signatures in the resting brain, and therefore also known as “resting state networks. ” These significant advances in imaging represent an opportunity to investigate the still elusive origins of the disabling cognitive and psychiatric manifestations of TLE, and could have important implications for its pathophysiology and, perhaps, its therapy. Herein we review recent studies in this field by focusing on resting state networks that have been implicated in the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders and cognitive impairment in patients with epilepsy: the default mode network, the attention network, and the reward/emotion network.
Nuevas oportunidades como experiencia. Jóvenes y desigualdad en el caso del Plan FinEs2 en el Gran La Plata

This article aims to address the articulation of three dimensions of social inequality –urban segregation, segregated education and labor-market segmentation- that shape the unequal positions of young students in Plan FinEs2 in the social space. At the same time we want to draw some lines of analysis for addressing the impact of this experience in the trajectories of young people. To do this, from a qualitative perspective, we work with interviews to young students and teachers in FinEs2 Plan in Greater La Plata between 2013 and 2014. As a result, we observed that urban segregation has deep near inequalities in the labor market and the education system. These dimensions of inequality are linked, combined and enhanced in a process where the disadvantages accumulate becoming signs of inequality and its reproduction. However, we noticed four movements that enable travel experience: positions at learning situations; awareness of the possibility of supplementing employment and training activities; changes in their family dynamic positions, work spaces and meanings around the secondary qualifications
Oil effect in freshly spiked marine sediment on Vibrio fischeri, Corophium volutator, and Echinocardium cordatum

The purpose of this study was to provide data to be used in The Netherlands for development of ecotoxicologically based quality criteria for oil‐contaminated sediments and dredged material. In addition, the relation of toxicity to specific oil boiling‐point fraction ranges was explored. Natural marine sediment, with a moisture, organic carbon, and silt content of approximately 80, 1.8, and 33% of the dry weight, respectively, was artificially spiked using a spiking method developed in this project. Aliquots of one part of the sediment were spiked to several concentrations of Gulf distillate marine grade A (DMA) gasoil (containing 64% C10–19) and aliquots of the other part to several concentrations of Gulf high viscosity grade 46 (HV46) hydraulic oil (containing 99.2% C19–40). Thus, for each individual oil type, a concentration series was created. Vibrio fischeri (endpoint: bioluminescence inhibition), Corophium volutator (endpoint:mortality), and Echinocardium cordatum (endpoint:mortality) were exposed to these spiked sediments for 10 min, 10 d and 14 d, respectively. Based on the test results, the effective concentration on 50% of the test animals was statistically estimated. For DMA gasoil and HV46 hydraulic oil, respectively, the effective concentrations were 43.7 and 2,682 mg/kg dry weight for V. fischeri, 100 and 9,138 mg/kg dry weight for C. volutator, 190, and 1064 mg/kg dry weight for E. cordatum. This study shows that the toxicity is strongly correlated with the lower boiling‐point fractions and especially to those within the C10–C19 range.