Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chromomycins A2 and A3 from Marine Actinomycetes with TRAIL Resistance-Overcoming and Wnt Signal Inhibitory Activities

A biological screening study of an actinomycetes strain assembly was conducted using a cell-based cytotoxicity assay. The CKK1019 strain was isolated from a sea sand sample. Cytotoxicity-guided fractionation of the CKK1019 strain culture broth, which exhibited cytotoxicity, led to the isolation of chromomycins A2 (1) and A3 (2). 1 and 2 showed potent cytotoxicity against the human gastric adenocarcinoma (AGS) cell line (IC50 1; 1.7 and 2; 22.1 nM), as well as strong inhibitory effects against TCF/β-catenin transcription (IC50 1; 1.8 and 2; 15.9 nM). 2 showed the ability to overcome tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) resistance. To the best of our knowledge, the effects of chromomycins A2 (1) and A3 (2) on TRAIL resistance-overcoming activity, and on the Wnt signaling pathway, have not been reported previously. Thus, 1 and 2 warrant potential drug lead studies in relation to TRAIL-resistant and Wnt signal-related diseases and offer potentially useful chemical probes for investigating TRAIL resistance and the Wnt signaling pathway.
Human CD4+CD25+ Regulatory, Contact-dependent T Cells Induce Interleukin 10–producing, Contact-independent Type 1-like Regulatory T Cells

It has been recently demonstrated that regulatory CD4+CD25+ CD45RO+ T cells are present in the peripheral blood of healthy adults and exert regulatory function similar to their rodent counterparts. It remains difficult to understand how the small fraction of these T cells that regulate via direct cell-to-cell contact and not via secretion of immunosuppressive cytokines could mediate strong immune suppression. Here we show that human CD4+CD25+ T cells induce long-lasting anergy and production of interleukin (IL)-10 in CD4+CD25− T cells. These anergized CD4+CD25− T cells then suppress proliferation of syngenic CD4+ T cells via IL-10 but independent of direct cell contact, similar to the so-called type 1 regulatory T (Tr1) cells. This ‘catalytic’ function of CD4+CD25+ T cells to induce Tr1-like cells helps to explain their central role for the maintenance of immune homeostasis.
CLASSIFIER SYSTEMS LEARNING IN DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT

1.1. Simple classifier system According to Holland [1], a non-learning classifier system consists of four principal components: 1. List of classifiers (population of classifiers) 2. List of messages that plays the role of a message board for communications and short term memory 3. Input interface (detector) that represents the environment state 4. Output interface (effector) that ensures interaction with the environment or its change.
Construction of Optimal Prediction Intervals for Load Forecasting Problems

Short-term load forecasting is fundamental for the reliable and efficient operation of power systems. Despite its importance, accurate prediction of loads is problematic and far remote. Often uncertainties significantly degrade performance of load forecasting models. Besides, there is no index available indicating reliability of predicted values. The objective of this study is to construct prediction intervals for future loads instead of forecasting their exact values. The delta technique is applied for constructing prediction intervals for outcomes of neural network models. Some statistical measures are developed for quantitative and comprehensive evaluation of prediction intervals. According to these measures, a new cost function is designed for shortening length of prediction intervals without compromising their coverage probability. Simulated annealing is used for minimization of this cost function and adjustment of neural network parameters. Demonstrated results clearly show that the proposed methods for constructing prediction interval outperforms the traditional delta technique. Besides, it yields prediction intervals that are practically more reliable and useful than exact point predictions.
Contextual Observables and Quantum Information

In this short paper we present the main features of a new quantum programming language proposed recently by Peter Selinger which gives a good idea about the difficulties of constructing a scalable quantum computer. We show how some of these difficulties are related to the contextuality of quantum observables and to the abstract and statistical character of quantun theory (QT). We discuss also, in some detail, the statistical interpretation (SI) of QT and the contextuality of observables indicating the importance of these concepts for the whole domain of quantum information.
A new Retrieval Function for Ontology-Based Complex Case Descriptions

This work focuses on case-based reasoning in domains where cases have complex structures with relationships to an arbitrary number of other (potentially complex and structured) entities and where case characterisations (queries) are potentially incomplete. We summarise the requirements for such domains in terms of case representation and retrieval functions. We then analyse properties of existing similarity measures used in CBR – above all symmetry – and argue that some of these properties are not desirable. By exploiting analogies with retrieval functions in the area of information retrieval – where similar functions have been replaced by new ones not exhibiting the aforementioned undesired properties – we derive a new asymmetric ranking function for case retrieval. On a generated test-bed, we show that indeed the new function results in different ranking of cases – and use testbed examples to illustrate why this is desirable from a user’s perspective.
An IPTG Inducible Conditional Expression System for Mycobacteria

Conditional expression strains serve as a valuable tool to study the essentiality and to establish the vulnerability of a target under investigation in a drug discovery program. While essentiality implies an absolute requirement of a target function, vulnerability provides valuable information on the extent to which a target function needs to be depleted to achieve bacterial growth inhibition followed by cell death. The critical feature of an ideal conditional expression system is its ability to tightly regulate gene expression to achieve the full spectrum spanning from a high level of expression in order to support growth and near zero level of expression to mimic conditions of gene knockout. A number of bacterial conditional expression systems have been reported for use in mycobacteria. The utility of an isopropylthiogalactoside (IPTG) inducible system in mycobacteria has been reported for protein overexpression and anti-sense gene expression from a replicating multi-copy plasmid. Herein, we report the development of a versatile set of non-replicating IPTG inducible vectors for mycobacteria which can be used for generation of conditional expression strains through homologous recombination. The role of a single lac operator versus a double lac operator to regulate gene expression was evaluated by monitoring the expression levels of β-galactosidase in Mycobacterium smegmatis. These studies indicated a significant level of leaky expression from the vector with a single lac operator but none from the vector with double lac operator. The significance of the double lac operator vector for target validation was established by monitoring the growth kinetics of an inhA, a rpoB and a ftsZ conditional expression strain grown in the presence of different concentrations of IPTG. The utility of this inducible system in identifying target specific inhibitors was established by screening a focussed library of small molecules using an inhA and a rpoB conditional expression strain.
Evaluation of affective intervention process in development of affect-aware educational video games

In this paper initial experiences are presented on implementing specific methodology of affective intervention design (AFFINT) for development of affect-aware educational video games. In the described experiment, 10 student teams are to develop affect-aware educational video games using AFFINT to formalize the whole process. Although all projects are still in progress, first observations and conclusions may already be presented.
ASCA Observation of a Long-Duration X-Ray Flare from the W UMa-Type Binary VW Cephei

We analyze X-ray archive data of the W UMa-type binary VW Cephei taken with ASCA on 1993 November 5-6. By analyzing the light curve, we find a long-duration flare of ≈ 7.5 hr with a peak luminosity of 1.2 × 1030 ergs s-1 (0.4-3.0 keV) for the assumed distance of 23.2 pc. A flux dip is detected in the light curve at the orbital phase of ~0.5, and it is identified as an eclipse by the secondary star. We determine the timescale of the eclipse egress to be ~30 minutes from a model fit to the light curve. With this timescale, we estimate that the linear size of the flaring region is ≈ 5.5 × 1010 cm, regardless of the flare models. From the spectral analysis of the data, we find that the spectrum can be well reproduced by the variable-abundance plasma model with a combination of two different temperatures, kT = 0.64 and kT = 1.91 keV. The hotter component is considered to be associated with the flare. The results are interpreted in terms of a two-ribbon flare model, in which we also discuss the possible enhancement of element abundances.
Learning Sparse Gaussian Graphical Models with Overlapping Blocks

We present a novel framework, called GRAB (GRaphical models with overlApping Blocks), to capture densely connected components in a network estimate. GRAB takes as input a data matrix of p variables and n samples, and jointly learns both a network among p variables and densely connected groups of variables (called `blocks'). GRAB has four major novelties as compared to existing network estimation methods: 1) It does not require the blocks to be given a priori. 2) Blocks can overlap. 3) It can jointly learn a network structure and overlapping blocks. 4) It solves a joint optimization problem with the block coordinate descent method that is convex in each step. We show that GRAB reveals the underlying network structure substantially better than four state-of-the-art competitors on synthetic data. When applied to cancer gene expression data, GRAB outperforms its competitors in revealing known functional gene sets and potentially novel genes that drive cancer.
Silver Impairs Neurodevelopment: Studies in PC12 Cells

Background Exposure to silver is increasing because of silver nanoparticles in consumer products. Objectives and methods Many biological effects of silver entail actions of Ag+ (monovalent silver ions), so we used neuronotypic PC12 cells to evaluate the potential for silver to act as a developmental neurotoxicant, using chlorpyrifos (CPF), a pesticide known to evoke developmental neurotoxicity, as a positive control for comparison. Results In undifferentiated cells, a 1-hr exposure to 10 μM Ag+ inhibited DNA synthesis more potently than did 50 μM CPF; it also impaired protein synthesis but to a lesser extent than its effect on DNA synthesis, indicating a preferential effect on cell replication. Longer exposures led to oxidative stress, loss of viability, and reduced numbers of cells. With the onset of cell differentiation, exposure to 10 μM Ag+ evoked even greater inhibition of DNA synthesis and more oxidative stress, selectively impaired neurite formation without suppressing overall cell growth, and preferentially suppressed development into the acetylcholine phenotype in favor of the dopamine phenotype. Lowering the exposure to 1 μM Ag+ reduced the net effect on undifferentiated cells. However, in differentiating cells, the lower concentration produced an entirely different pattern, enhancing cell numbers by suppressing ongoing cell death and impairing differentiation in parallel for both neurotransmitter phenotypes. Conclusions Our results show that silver has the potential to evoke developmental neurotoxicity even more potently than known neurotoxicants, such as CPF, and that the spectrum of effects is likely to be substantially different at lower exposures that do not show signs of outright toxicity.
Effects of even-order terms on behavior models in predistortion linearization

Power amplifier (PA) is indispensable in wireless communication systems and is nonlinear inherently. Many mathematical model and analytical approach has been used to analysis the nonlinear character of PA and to construct the model of predistorter. However, most of the models contain only odd order terms to analysis PA nonlinearity. Some researches show that only odd-order polynomial terms in the PA nonlinearity impact a bandpass communication signal. Few researches have attempted to study the behavior of odd-even terms in nonlinear modeling and how it impacts the system performance. Researches on odd-even terms behavior and the nature of their influence are very significant. Therefore, we evaluated the effects of adding even-order terms from mathematical view to prove their effectiveness. The theoretical analysis shows that odd-even polynomial terms contain infinite number of odd-order components. The simulation results verify the validity of this conclusion.
Continuum model for polymers with finite thickness

We consider the continuum limit of a recently-introduced model for discretized thick polymers, or tubes. We address both analytically and numerically how the polymer thickness influences the decay of tangent-tangent correlations and find how the persistence length scales with the thickness and the torsional rigidity of the tube centerline. At variance with the worm-like chain model, the phase diagram that we obtain for a continuous tube is richer; in particular, for a given polymer thickness there exists a threshold value for the centerline torsional rigidity separating a simple exponential decay of the tangent-tangent correlation from an oscillatory one.
Development of a Multi-Channel Concentric Tube Robotic System With Active Vision for Transnasal Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Procedures

Minimally invasive surgery-based nasopharyngeal cancer treatment is promising, but currently, it is not a common treatment choice because of the absence of suitable tools. In this letter, a multi-channel concentric tube robot is proposed for the treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer based on natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery. The proposed system has three channels, i.e., two manipulation channels and one vision channel, and all the three channels are confined by a 10 mm active sheath. The robot is controlled by human-in-the-loop bimanual teleoperation under active endoscopic guidance. The reduced sheath diameter and the steerable vision channel improve the functionality of the system and distinguish our design from the prior art. The feasibility of the system has been evaluated through a series of simulations and experiments. Results show that the proposed system is capable to conduct cooperative tasks in a confined space and the miniaturized manipulator is suitable for transnasal procedures. Besides, comparisons with other types of flexible surgical robots are discussed to further demonstrate the superiority of the proposed system in the target clinical applications.
Gene Transposition Causing Natural Variation for Growth in Arabidopsis thaliana

A major challenge in biology is to identify molecular polymorphisms responsible for variation in complex traits of evolutionary and agricultural interest. Using the advantages of Arabidopsis thaliana as a model species, we sought to identify new genes and genetic mechanisms underlying natural variation for shoot growth using quantitative genetic strategies. More quantitative trait loci (QTL) still need be resolved to draw a general picture as to how and where in the pathways adaptation is shaping natural variation and the type of molecular variation involved. Phenotypic variation for shoot growth in the Bur-0 × Col-0 recombinant inbred line set was decomposed into several QTLs. Nearly-isogenic lines generated from the residual heterozygosity segregating among lines revealed an even more complex picture, with major variation controlled by opposite linked loci and masked by the segregation bias due to the defective phenotype of SG3 (Shoot Growth-3), as well as epistasis with SG3i (SG3-interactor). Using principally a fine-mapping strategy, we have identified the underlying gene causing phenotypic variation at SG3: At4g30720 codes for a new chloroplast-located protein essential to ensure a correct electron flow through the photosynthetic chain and, hence, photosynthesis efficiency and normal growth. The SG3/SG3i interaction is the result of a structural polymorphism originating from the duplication of the gene followed by divergent paralogue's loss between parental accessions. Species-wide, our results illustrate the very dynamic rate of duplication/transposition, even over short periods of time, resulting in several divergent—but still functional—combinations of alleles fixed in different backgrounds. In predominantly selfing species like Arabidopsis, this variation remains hidden in wild populations but is potentially revealed when divergent individuals outcross. This work highlights the need for improved tools and algorithms to resolve structural variation polymorphisms using high-throughput sequencing, because it remains challenging to distinguish allelic from paralogous variation at this scale.
Comprehensive Evaluation of Packet Flow Control Methods for a Ring Nework of Processors on Chip

A Current design of a system-on-chip (SoC) technology is constructing under increasing demand for high performance, small size and energy-efficient design. To fulfill these demands, it is required to consider a suitable design for on chip interconnection network. In this paper, we design a prototype of communications unit (CU) for a network-on-chip (NoC) architecture based on ring processors interconnection whose structure is simple to provide a SoC model with small size, low-cost and low energy consumption solutions for designing SoC system. Three types of packet flow control methods, such as, store-and-forward (SF), virtual cut-through (VCT) and wormhole routing (WH) have been implemented and compared in view of designing a hardware-efficient SoC architecture. Furthermore, computer based simulations with a clock cycle level of a CPU in the CU were preformed and transmission latency, throughput, and capability for load balancing were analyzed and compared. From the results that have been obtained show that VCT gives better performances, while SF and WH are more economical in memory consumption for short and long packet length, respectively.
Migration en Algérie : nouvelles tendances

Algerian emigration has seen a gradual diversification in terms of destinations, though France remains the preferred option. Family reunification is today the main motivation pushing Algerians to France, while labor migration has only a marginal role. Both the implicit recognition of dual citizenship and the new Code on Algerian Nationality have tended to increase the size of the expat Algerian community, though this is not evident in the statistics. In terms of economic integration, the evolution of unemployment and of labor market participation in the destination country reflects the faster integration of Algerian women than of Algerian men, probably because of the large initial gap between the two sexes. The recent measures put in place by the Algerian authorities may show the start of a new policy attitude towards migration which gives more relevance to the contribution of the expat Algerian community in terms of economic development at home. Meanwhile, Algerian policies for the fight against undocumented outward and inward migration have been strengthened by the adoption of new civil and penal law arrangements.
Randomness and non-uniformity

In the first part, we introduce randomized algorithms as a new notion of efficient algorithms for decision problems. We classify randomized algorithms according to their error probabilities, and define appropriate complexity classes. (RP, coRP, ZPP, BPP, PP). We discuss which classes are realistic proposals for design of probabilistic algorithms. We cover the implementation of randomized algorithms using different non-ideal random sources. We introduce the concept of derandomization and the “hardness vs. randomness“ paradigm. Second, we illustrate non-uniform complexity in terms of Boolean circuits and Turing machines that take advice. We demonstrate the power of non-uniform complexity classes. We show the relevance of nonuniform polynomial time for complexity theory, especially the P ? = NP question.
Continuous-time LMS adaptive recursive filters

An approach for implementing continuous-time adaptive recursive filters is presented. The resulting filters should be capable of operating on much higher signal frequencies than their digital counterparts since no sampling is required. With respect to implementation problems, the effects of DC offsets are investigated and formulas derived so that these effects can be estimated and reduced. It is shown that the DC offset performance is strongly affected by the choice of structure for the adaptive filter. Experimental results from a discrete prototype are given where accurate adaption is observed and DC offset effects are compared to theoretical predictions. >
Foxg1 Confines Cajal-Retzius Neuronogenesis and Hippocampal Morphogenesis to the Dorsomedial Pallium

It has been suggested that cerebral cortex arealization relies on positional values imparted to early cortical neuroblasts by transcription factor genes expressed within the pallial field in graded ways. Foxg1, encoding for one of these factors, previously was reported to be necessary for basal ganglia morphogenesis, proper tuning of cortical neuronal differentiation rates, and the switching of cortical neuroblasts from early generation of primordial plexiform layer to late production of cortical plate. Being expressed along a rostral/lateralhigh- to-caudal/mediallow gradient, Foxg1, moreover, could contribute to shaping the cortical areal profile as a repressor of caudomedial fates. We tested this prediction by a variety of approaches and found that it was correct. We found that overproduction of Cajal-Retzius neurons characterizing Foxg1-/- mutants does not arise specifically from blockage of laminar histogenetic progression of neocortical neuroblasts, as reported previously, but rather reflects lateral-to-medial repatterning of their cortical primordium. Even if lacking a neocortical plate, Foxg1-/- embryos give rise to structures, which, for molecular properties and birthdating profile, are highly reminiscent of hippocampal plate and dentate blade. Remarkably, in the absence of Foxg1, additional inactivation of the medial fates promoter Emx2, although not suppressing cortical specification, conversely rescues overproduction of Reelinon neurons.