Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fibrinogen binding potentiates FGF‐2 but not VEGF induced expression of u‐PA, u‐PAR, and PAI‐1 in endothelial cells

Summary. Endothelial cell responses at sites of injury occur in a fibrin matrix and are regulated by growth factors including those of the FGF and VEGF families. The pericellular proteolytic balance is important in these responses, and FGF‐2 and VEGF up‐regulate endothelial cell u‐PA, u‐PAR and PAI‐1. Because both VEGF and FGF‐2 bind to fibrinogen, we have examined the capacity of fibrinogen to modulate the up‐regulation of these proteins by FGF‐2 and VEGF. Confluent cultures of endothelial cells were exposed to FGF‐2, VEGF, and fibrinogen or to combinations of growth factors with fibrinogen. Changes in mRNA levels of u‐PA, u‐PAR and PAI‐1 were measured by Northern blot. FGF‐2 increased u‐PA, u‐PAR, and PAI‐1 mRNA, but there was a significantly greater induction when fibrinogen was added to FGF‐2 at all concentrations. The potentiation by fibrinogen was particularly evident at an FGF‐2 concentration of 0.1 ng mL−1, which resulted in non‐significant change in transcript levels by itself, but significantly increased up to 2.6‐fold with fibrinogen. VEGF also increased endothelial cell expression of u‐PA, u‐PAR and PAI‐1, but this effect was not potentiated by fibrinogen. Addition of LM609, a monoclonal antibody to αVβ3, significantly inhibited induction of u‐PA mRNA and activity by fibrinogen–bound FGF‐2 compared to FGF‐2. A monoclonal antibody to FGFR1 also inhibited u‐PA mRNA expression induced by fibrinogen‐bound FGF‐2. We conclude that fibrinogen increases the capacity of FGF‐2, but not of VEGF, to up‐regulate u‐PA, u‐PAR, and PAI‐1 in endothelial cells and that fibrinogen‐bound FGF‐2 requires αVβ3 binding to up‐regulate endothelial cell u‐PA.
Response of caudate neurons to stimulation of intrinsic and peripheral afferents in normal, symptomatic, and recovered MPTP-treated cats

Cat caudate nucleus (CD) neurons were tested for changes in spontaneous activity, response to peripheral sensory stimuli (tactile, auditory, and visual), and electrical stimulation of monosynaptic afferents (pericruciate cortex and nucleus centralis lateralis) in normal cats and in the same cats after induction of and spontaneous recovery from parkinsonism induced by 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP). After normal baseline data were collected, cats were given MPTP (7.5 mg/kg, 5–7 d) to induce a parkinsonian syndrome consisting of rigidity, akinesia, and decreased orienting to sensory stimuli. During this symptomatic period, the mean spontaneous activity of CD units increased (6.20 spikes/sec vs 2.25 spikes/sec in normal cats). In these same animals, the percentage of units responding to peripheral sensory stimulation was significantly decreased (compared to normal) while the percentage of units responding to electrical stimulation of monosynaptic afferents increased. By 6 weeks after MPTP administration, cats had recovered gross motor and sensorimotor function and CD unit recordings were reinitiated. In functionally recovered animals, all electrophysiological measures returned to levels resembling those seen in normal animals. These data suggest that the processing of peripheral sensory information is an important part of basal ganglia function and that the sensory responsiveness of the CD may reflect the overall motor condition of the animal. The changes observed in the responsiveness of CD neurons to direct electrical stimulation of monosynaptic afferents may indicate that the defect in the processing of polysynaptic sensory information observed in the striatum in parkinsonian animals may be occurring, at least in part, extrastriatally.
Novel mutations in the ZEB1 gene identified in Czech and British patients with posterior polymorphous corneal dystrophy

We describe the search for mutations in six unrelated Czech and four unrelated British families with posterior polymorphous corneal dystrophy (PPCD); a relatively rare eye disorder. Coding exons and intron/exon boundaries of all three genes (VSX1, COL8A2, and ZEB1/TCF8) previously reported to be implicated in the pathogenesis of this disorder were screened by DNA sequencing. Four novel pathogenic mutations were identified in four families; two deletions, one nonsense, and one duplication within exon 7 in the ZEB1 gene located at 10p11.2. We also genotyped the Czech patients to test for a founder haplotype and lack of disease segregation with the 20p11.2 locus we previously described. Although a systematic clinical examination was not performed, our investigation does not support an association between ZEB1 changes and self reported non‐ocular anomalies. In the remaining six families no disease causing mutations were identified thereby indicating that as yet unidentified gene(s) are likely to be responsible for PPCD. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Design of an Artificial Neural Network to Detect Obstacles on Highways through the Flight of an UAV

Due to several risks that involve travelling in highways, such as vehicle collision, natural disasters and other obstacles, the need of implementing an early warning system which detects obstacles to provide security has been growing in the last years. Artificial neural networks based systems have been successfully applied in obstacle detection through image processing and recognition. To address this issue, a Multilayer Feed-forward Network (MFN) was designed to detect obstacles in highways from a zenith perspective. Backpropagation algorithm is used to supervise the training of the proposed neural network by minimizing the square error function via descending gradient criteria. Performance analysis was performed by using binarized, grayscale and RGB images with constant size and considering several contexts. The proposed neural network was trained and tested offline. In a next stage of the project, this neural network will be implemented into the on-board computer of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) as an early warning platform.
Analysis on tradeoff between frequency diversity and inter-code interference considering fading correlation in forward link for VSF-OFCDM wireless access

This paper investigates the frequency diversity and inter-code interference tradeoff relationship in variable spreading factor-orthogonal frequency and code division multiplexing (VSF-OFCDM) wireless access in a frequency-selective (multipath) fading channel. In the paper, we establish the tradeoff relationship based on a numerical analysis considering that different subcarriers experience a correlated flat fading channel depending on the spreading factor and delay spread for coherent maximum ratio combining (MRC) and minimum mean squared error combining (MMSEC). We derive the instantaneous output signal-to-interference plus noise power ratio (SINR) and compute the average bit error rate (BER) by using the approach for M-array data modulation such as M-QAM as well as QPSK modulation. We compute the average BER for QPSK and 16QAM numerically and verify the analytical results by computer simulation. Using the average BER, we then numerically investigate the diversity-interference tradeoff relationship for both combiners with respect to different radio parameters such as the spreading factor, channel load, modulation scheme, and different channel conditions such as the delay spread.
Computational Identification of a New Binding Site in Influenza Virus Hemagglutinin for Membrane Fusion Inhibitors

The influenza virus hemagglutinin is a potential drug target for antivirus treatment. A variety of membrane fusion inhibitors targeting hemagglutinin have been discovered, but the binding sites and modes, important for understanding membrane fusion and rational drug design, have not yet been elucidated. In this article, we investigated the possible hemagglutinin binding sites for the current membrane fusion inhibitors. Four possible binding pockets (Pocket A, B, C, and D) at the stalk region of hemagglutinin were detected and defined using the CAVITY program. Most of the current membrane fusion inhibitors were reported to bind to Pocket C by amino acid mutation experiments and molecular modeling simulation. However, our binding site prediction suggested that Pocket A is the best ligand binding site other than Pocket C. Using a specific computational protocol combining molecular docking, three‐dimensional QSAR, and receptor mimicking, we further found that Pocket A is the putative binding site for a series of membrane fusion inhibitors (1‐phenyl‐cycloalkane carbamides). This is further proven by the antiviral spectrum of the inhibitors. This protocol for the identification of ligand binding sites in influenza hemagglutinin is also applicable for the analysis of other protein targets with no explicit binding information.
Privacy Preserving Computations for Viral Marketing: The Case of Rational Players

Viral marketing is a methodology which is based on exploiting a pre-existing social network in order to increase brand awareness or product sales through selfreplicating viral processes. An essential computational task towards setting up an effective viral marketing campaign is to estimate social influence. Such estimates are usually done by analyzing user activity data. The data analysis and sharing that is needed to estimate social influence raises important privacy issues that may jeopardize the legal, ethical and societal acceptability of such practice, and in turn, the concrete applicability of viral marketing in the real world. Tassa and Bonchi (EDBT 2014) devised secure multi-party protocols that allow a group of service providers and a social networking platform to jointly compute social influence in a privacy preserving manner. They assumed that the players are semi-honest, i.e., that they follow the protocol correctly, but at the same time they examine their view of the protocol in order to extract information on inputs provided by their peers. In this paper we discuss the case of selfish rational players, such players participate in the protocol and follow it correctly only if it is in their best interest and maximizes their utility. We enhance the protocol of Tassa and Bonchi by incorporating into it mechanisms that incentivize the players to participate in the protocol truthfully.
Multi-User Non-Interactive Verifiable Computation

Gennaro et al. (Crypto 2010) introduced the notion of verifiable computation, which allows a computationally weak client to outsource the computation of a function F on dynamically chosen inputs x1, . , x` to a more powerful but untrusted server. Following a pre-processing phase (that is only carried out once), the client can send some representation of its input xi to the server; the server returns an answer that allows the client to recover the correct result yi = F (xi), accompanied by a proof of correctness that prevents the server from convincing the client to accept an incorrect result. The crucial property of the scheme is that the work done by the client in preparing its input and verifying the server’s proof is less than the time required for the client to compute F on its own. In this paper we extend the notion of verifiable computation to the multi-client setting, where N computationally weak clients wish to outsource to an untrusted server the computation of a function F over their joint inputs x1, . , xN without communicating with each other. We present the first construction for (noninteractive) multi-client verifiable computation based on fully homomorphic encryption, Yao’s garbled-circuit construction, and any identity-based encryption scheme. Potential applications for the proposed functionality include secure outsourcing of computation in heterogenous military networks, which may require secure and verifiable computation on input jointly provided by several resource-constrained nodes.
A novel frequency reused based ID generation circuit for chipless RFID applications

In this paper, a novel fully passive ID generation circuit for radio frequency identification (RFID) applications is presented. The circuit encodes data in frequency domain, however, it reuses the frequency band to yield more bits compared to existing spectral signature based tags. The circuit comprises of two multiresonating circuits and one broadband power divider. The circuit is interrogated with a short duration Ultra-Wideband (UWB) pulse. The specific ID generated by the circuit is retrieved by analyzing the retransmitted UWB pulses. When combined with compact planar UWB antennas, the ID generation circuit has potential for ultra-low cost item tagging.
Cost of diarrhea-associated hospitalizations and outpatient visits in an insured population of young children in the United States.

OBJECTIVE To assess the financial and clinical burden of diarrhea- and rotavirus-associated disease among a population of privately insured US children. METHODS For the period 1993 through 1996, we analyzed medical claims data from a large, administrative database containing information on approximately 300,000 children <5 years of age to examine trends in, and costs associated, with hospitalizations and outpatient visits for diarrhea. RESULTS An annual average of 1,186 diarrhea-associated hospitalizations (35 per 10,000 children <5 years) and 33 386 outpatient visits (943 per 10,000 children <5 years) were reported, accounting for 4% of all hospitalizations and 2% of all outpatient visits among children <5 years of age. Diarrhea-associated hospitalizations and outpatient visits showed a distinct winter-spring peak consistent with that of rotavirus infection. The excess of diarrhea-associated events occurring during the winter-spring peak accounted for an average of 50% of all diarrhea-associated hospitalizations and 18% of all diarrhea-associated outpatient visits. The median cost (in 1998 constant dollars) of a diarrhea-associated hospitalization was $2,307, and that for a rotavirus-associated hospitalization was $2,303. Median costs of diarrhea- and rotavirus-associated outpatient visits were $47 and $57, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Diarrhea is an important cause of morbidity in this insured population of young children. The epidemiologic features of diarrhea-associated events suggest that rotavirus is an important contributor to the overall morbidity from diarrhea. These disease burden and cost estimates should provide useful information with which to assess the costs and benefits of future interventions for rotavirus-associated illness.
Managerial Empire Building and Firm Disclosure

ABSTRACT This study tests the agency cost hypothesis in the context of geographic earnings disclosures. The agency cost hypothesis predicts that managers, when not monitored by shareholders, make self-maximizing decisions that may not necessarily be in the best interest of shareholders. These decisions include aggressively growing the firm, which reduces profitability and destroys firm value. Geographic earnings disclosures provide an interesting context to examine this issue. Beginning with Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 131 (SFAS 131), most U.S. multinational firms are no longer required to disclose earnings by geographic area (e.g., net income in Mexico or net income in East Asia). Such nondisclosure potentially reduces the ability of shareholders to monitor managers' decisions related to foreign operations. Using a sample of U.S. multinationals with substantial foreign operations, we find that nondisclosing firms, relative to firms that continue to disclose geographic earnings, experience greater expansion of foreign sales, produce lower foreign profit margins, and have lower firm value in the post-SFAS 131 period. Our conclusions are strengthened by the fact that these differences do not exist in the pre-SFAS 131 period and do not relate to domestic operations. We find differences in the predicted direction only for foreign operations and only after adoption of SFAS 131. Our results are robust to the inclusion of an extensive set of control variables related to alternative corporate governance mechanisms, operating performance, and the firm's information environment. Overall, the results are consistent with the agency cost hypothesis and the important role of financial disclosures in monitoring managers. Copyright (c)University of Chicago on behalf of the Institute of Professional Accounting, 2008.
Analgesia in clinically relevant rodent models of sepsis

Postoperative analgesia in rodent sepsis models has been considerably neglected in the past. However, intentions to model clinical practice, increasing awareness of animal ethics, efforts to apply the 3Rs (replacement, reduction, refinement), and stricter legislation argue for a change in this respect. In this review, we describe different concepts of analgesia in rodent models of sepsis focusing on opioid agonists as well as non-opioid analgesics. Advantages and pitfalls in study design and side-effects are discussed. Score sheets should be used to adapt analgesia or to terminate experiments using humane endpoints. Further research is needed to differentiate behavioral changes caused by sepsis and pain or as a consequence of analgesia. Information on the efficacy of analgesia in sepsis models is scarce. Hence, studies are needed to identify the best ways to reduce suffering of research animals and thereby optimize the clinically relevant rodent models of sepsis.
Spontaneous Osteonecrosis of the Knee: A Retrospective Analysis by Using MRI and DEXA

Objective: Although there are many etiology and prediction for prognosis of spontaneous osteonecrosis of the knee (SONK) by using radiological examinations, these issue have not been clarified yet. Furthermore, most of the studies evaluated them by only radiological examination such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), bone mineral density (BMD) in dual-energy X-ray abosorptiometry (DEXA) or plain X-ray. Therefore, we focused our investigation on the measurements of the affected área in MRI and BMD in DEXA, and whether these results were conected with the cause and prognosis of SONK or not. Method: A consecutive case series of two groups composed of ten osteoporotic patients who were suffering from SONK was considered. Based on the severity or duration of pain, one group was treated with surgical procedure which was unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA), the other received conservative treatment. Both groups underwent DEXA in their distal fêmur and próximal tíbia and all patients who took MRI measured the affected lesion in low and high intensity área on T2 weighted images. This data was analyzed from these areas and units. Results: Significant decrease in regional boné density of the affected femoral condyle compared to the unaffected side was observed. However, the boné mineral density in the affected side was similar in the non-operative and surgical group. The área of the lesion which showed in both low and high intensity indicated that the operation group was significantly larger than the conservative group on T2 weighted images. Conclusion: The cause and prognosis of SONK have a close relationship with the size of the affected lesion and decreased boné mineral density
Automatic Post-Editing based on SMT and its selective application by Sentence-Level Automatic Quality Evaluation

In the computing assisted translation process with machine translation (MT), postediting costs time and efforts on the part of human. To solve this problem, some have attempted to automate post editing. Post-editing isn’t always necessary, however, when MT outputs are of adequate quality for human. This means that we need to be able to estimate the translation quality of each translated sentence to determine whether post-editing should be performed. While conventional automatic metrics such as BLEU, NIST and METEOR, require the golden standards (references), for wider applications we need to establish methods that can estimate the quality of translations without references. This paper presents a sentence-level automatic quality evaluator, composed of an SMT phrase-based automatic post-editing (APE) module and a confidence estimator characterized by PLS (Partial Least Squares) regression analysis. It is known that this model is a better model for predicting output variable than a normal multiple regression analysis when the multicollinearity exists between the input variables. Experiments with Japanese to English patent translations show the validity of the proposed methods.
Robust feature selection for object recognition using uncertain 2D image data

The use of a small set of features is recurrent in the object recognition literature. If the image data is perfect with no sensor uncertainty and there are not incorrect feature correspondences between the model and the image, then the pose of the object can be computed with no error using these few correspondences. However, in most real cases the noise in the data will propagate into the pose. Moreover, the extent of the effect of the uncertainty will depend on the selection of the correspondences used to compute it. In this paper we address the problem of how to select these correspondences so that the effect of the data uncertainty on the pose estimation is minimized. <<ETX>>
Generic distribution support for programming systems

This dissertation provides constructive proof, through the implementation of a middleware, that distribution transparency is practical, generic, and extensible. Fault tolerant distributed services can be developed by using the failure detection abilities of the middleware. By generic we mean that the middleware can be used for many different programming languages and paradigms. Distribution for each kind of language entity is done in terms of consistency protocols, which guarantee that the semantics of the entities are preserved in a distributed setting. The middleware allows new consistency protocols to be added easily. The efficiency of the middleware and the ease of integration are shown by coupling the middleware to a programming system, which encompasses the object oriented, the functional, and the concurrent-declarative programming paradigms. Our measurements show that the distribution middleware is competitive with the most popular distributed programming systems (JavaRMI, .NET, IBM CORBA).
LUKe and MIKe: learning from user knowledge and managing interactive knowledge extraction

Semantic recognition and annotation of unqiue enities and their relations is a key in understanding the essence contained in large text corpora. It typically requires a combination of efficient automatic methods and manual verification. Usually, both parts are seen as consecutive steps. In this demo we present MIKE, a user interface enabling the integration of user feedback into an iterative extraction process. We show how an extraction system can directly learn from such integrated user supervision. In general, this setup allows for stepwise training of the extraction system to a particular domain, while using user feedback early in the iterative extraction process improves extraction quality and reduces the overall human effort needed.
The effects of smoking self-identity and quitting self-identity on attempts to quit smoking.

OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of two types of self-identity on attempts to quit smoking: self-identity in terms of smoking and self-identity in terms of quitting. DESIGN A prospective survey among an initial sample of 3,411 smokers. Smoking history variables and psychosocial variables from the theory of planned behavior are also measured. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Intention to quit smoking and smoking cessation attempts 4 months later. RESULTS Both smoking identity and quitting identity matter, but they appear to play different roles in explaining intention to quit and in predicting actual attempts to quit. Quitting identity is particularly important for intention to quit, whereas both quitting identity and smoking identity are important for actually trying to quit. Recent attempts to quit slightly attenuate the negative effect of smoking identity on attempts to quit. CONCLUSION A broader interpretation of self-identity in terms of both current and aspired behavior offers a better understanding of when people might change health-relevant behavior.