Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Managing Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma: A Special Focus in MicroRNA Gene Therapy

Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive disease and the fourth most lethal cancer in developed countries. Despite all progress in medicine and in understanding the molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis, pancreatic cancer still has a poor prognosis, the median survival after diagnosis being around 3 to 6 months and the survival rate of 5 years being less than 4%. For pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which represents more than 90% of new pancreatic cancer cases, the prognosis is worse than for the other cancers with a patient mortality of approximately 99%. Therefore, there is a pressing need for developing new and efficient therapeutic strategies for pancreatic cancer. In this regard, microRNAs not only have been seen as potential diagnostic and prognostic molecular markers but also as promising therapeutic agents. In this context, this review provides an examination of the most frequently deregulated microRNAs (miRNAs) in PDAC and their putative molecular targets involved in the signaling pathways of pancreatic carcinogenesis. Additionally, it is presented a summary of gene therapy clinical trials involving miRNAs and it is illustrated the therapeutic potential associated to these small non-coding RNAs, for PDAC treatment. The facts presented here constitute a strong evidence of the remarkable opportunity associated to the application of microRNA-based therapeutic strategies as a novel approach for cancer therapy.
Models of Inflection

Contents: Roy Fabri, Models of Inflection. - Geert Booij, The demarcation of inflection. - Philippe Segeral/Tobias Scheer, A generalized theory of Ablaut: the case of Modern German Strong Verbs. - Albert Ortmann, The Role of [+/-animate] in Inflection. - Teresa Parodi, Aspects of clitic doubling and clitic clusters in Spanish. - Birgit Gerlach, Mediopassive in Greek and the hierarchy of functional categories. - Ilse Zimmermann, Das dativische pronominale Klitikum in der DP-Struktur des Bulgarischen. - Hilke Elsen, The Acquisition of Past Participles: One or Two Mechanisms? - Katrin Lindner, Overgeneralization revisited: the case of German past participles. - Conxita Lleo, Proto-articles in the acquisition of Spanish: Interface between Phonology and Morphology. - Dunstan Brown, Stem Indexing and Morphonological Selection in the Russian Verb: a Network Morphology Account. - Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel, Drei Ebenen der Struktur von Flexionsparadigmen. - Martin Neef, The Reduced Syllable Plural in German. - Damaris Nubling, Wann werden die deutschen Prapositionen flektieren? Grammatisierungswege zur Flexion.
R2Fix: Automatically Generating Bug Fixes from Bug Reports

Many bugs, even those that are known and documented in bug reports, remain in mature software for a long time due to the lack of the development resources to fix them. We propose a general approach, R2Fix, to automatically generate bug-fixing patches from free-form bug reports. R2Fix combines past fix patterns, machine learning techniques, and semantic patch generation techniques to fix bugs automatically. We evaluate R2Fix on three projects, i.e., the Linux kernel, Mozilla, and Apache, for three important types of bugs: buffer overflows, null pointer bugs, and memory leaks. R2Fix generates 57 patches correctly, 5 of which are new patches for bugs that have not been fixed by developers yet. We reported all 5 new patches to the developers; 4 have already been accepted and committed to the code repositories. The 57 correct patches generated by R2Fix could have shortened and saved up to an average of 63 days of bug diagnosis and patch generation time.
Positive display polarity is advantageous for both younger and older adults

The effect of display polarity on visual acuity and proofreading performance was investigated for younger and older adults. An advantage of positive polarity (dark characters on light background) over negative polarity (light characters on dark background) was expected for younger adults, but the effects on older adults were ambiguous. Light scatter due to residues in the senescent lens and vitreous humour could reverse the typical advantage of positive polarity. However, age-related changes lead to a decline in retinal illuminance. Brighter positive polarity displays should help to compensate for this decline and, accordingly, lead to better performance than darker negative polarity displays. Participants conducted a visual acuity test with black optotypes on white background or white optotypes on black background and performed a proofreading task in the same polarity. A positive polarity advantage was found for both age groups. The presentation in positive polarity is recommended for all ages. Practitioner summary: In an ageing society, age-related vision changes need to be considered when designing digital displays. Visual acuity testing and a proofreading task revealed a positive polarity advantage for younger and older adults. Dark characters on light background lead to better legibility and are strongly recommended independent of observer's age.
Text-Independent Speaker Recognition Using Gaussian Mixture Models Final Term Paper Proposal

The proposed project is an implementation of speaker recognition systems, both identification and verification. The systems are built using Gaussian Mixture Models, as proposed in several papers from Douglas A. Reynolds. The use of Fractional Covariance Matrix is studied as an possible increase for the traditional recognition systems. keywords: speaker recognition; Gaussian Mixture Models; likelihood ratio test; Universal Background Model; Fractional Covariance Matrix.
Orbital order and fluctuations in Mott insulators

Basic mechanisms controlling orbital order and orbital fluctuations in transition metal oxides are discussed. The lattice driven classical orbital picture, e.g. like in manganites LaMnO$_3$, is contrasted to the quantum behavior of orbitals in frustrated superexchange models as realised in pseudocubic titanites ATiO$_3$ and vanadates AVO$_3$. In YVO$_3$, the lattice and superexchange effects strongly compete -- this explains the extreme sensitivity of magnetic states to temperature and doping. Lifting the $t_{2g}$ orbital degeneracy by a relativistic spin-orbital coupling is considered on example of the layered cobaltates. We find that the spin-orbital mixing of low-energy states leads to unusual magnetic correlations in a triangular lattice of the CoO$_2$ parent compound. Finally, the magnetism of sodium-rich compounds Na$_{1-x}$CoO$_2$ is discussed in terms of a spin/orbital polaronic liquid.
Media representation of Muslims and Islam from 2000 to 2015: A meta-analysis

This article reports a meta-analysis of 345 published studies to examine the media’s role in construction of a Muslim and Islamic identity. A quantitative analysis highlights the geographical focus, methods, theories, authorship, media types, and time frames of published studies. A qualitative analysis investigated the most prominent researched themes. Our findings suggest that a large majority of studies covered Western countries, while Muslim countries and Muslim media have been neglected. We also identified an evident lack of comparative research, a neglect of visuals, and a dearth of research on online media. We found that most studies investigated the themes of ‘migration’, ‘terrorism’, and ‘war’. Moreover, our meta-study shows that Muslims tend to be negatively framed, while Islam is dominantly portrayed as a violent religion. Implications of these findings are discussed.
MR and clinical follow-up of diffusion-weighted cerebral lesions after carotid artery stenting.

PURPOSE The purpose of this prospective study was to determine the outcome of postprocedural cerebral diffusion-weighted (DW) MR lesions after carotid artery stent placement (CAS) and the incidence of new cerebral MR lesions 6 months after the procedure. MATERIALS AND METHODS DW and T2-weighted MR imaging of the brain and neurologic examinations were performed in 105 patients before and 24 hours and 6 months after CAS. In addition, a selective control angiography of the treated artery was performed after 6 months. RESULTS In 22 (21%) of 105 patients, DW MR images 24 hours after CAS showed 64 new neurologically silent lesions; 2 (3.1%) of these 64 lesions were also visible in T2-weighted MR images. The latter ones were still visible after 6 months. In the remaining 62 lesions, there were no abnormalities visible in DW and T2-weighted imaging at follow-up. In 2 (1.9%) of the 105 patients, new cerebral lesions were seen in T2-weighted images after 6 months; one patient was neurologically symptomatic. All others patients were neurologically unremarkable at 6-month follow-up. CONCLUSIONS Most postprocedural DW lesions showed no manifestations at 6-month MR follow-up and were clinically silent. This indicates that these lesions are potentially reversible and of no major neurologic sequelae. In addition, follow-up 6 months after CAS showed a very low incidence of new cerebral lesions and neurologic events.
TWO -STAGE AUTHENTICA TION FOR WIRELESS NETWORKS USING DUAL SIGNATURE AND SYMMETRIC KEY PROTOCOL

Wired networks differ from wireless networks in that they can support computationally intensive security protocols, have high bandwidth and offer high reliability. Strong authentication schemes can be applied to wired networks. Wireless networks on the other hand suffer from packet losses and bit errors, often have low bandwidth and have resource constraints such as computation overhead and storage. In the present work, we present a two-stage authentication scheme for wireless networks that uses a computationally intensive but highly secure strong authentication in Stage 1 and a lightweight symmetric key based protocol in Stage 2. The cost of the strong authentication adopted in Stage 1 is amortized over N sessions thus reducing the overall cost of the scheme. We adapt the Dualsignature based IKE authentication that we proposed in our earlier work and employ it as Stage 1 authentication. The Symmetric key protocol in Stage 2 authentication that we propose uses the symmetric keys that are generated in Stage1.
Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind

In this ground-breaking work, philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark turns a common view of the human mind upside down. In stark opposition to familiar models of human cognition, Surfing Uncertainty explores exciting new theories in neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence that reveal minds like ours to be prediction machines—devices that have evolved to anticipate the incoming streams of sensory stimulation before they arrive. This keeps minds like ours a few steps ahead of the game, poised to respond rapidly and apparently effortlessly to threats and opportunities as (and sometimes even before) they arise. Creatures thus equipped are more than simple response machines. They are knowing agents deep in the business of understanding their worlds. Such agents cope with changing and uncertain worlds by combining sensory evidence with informed prediction. Remarkably, the learning that makes neural prediction possible can itself be accomplished by the ceaseless effort to make better and better predictions. A single fundamental trick (the trick of trying to predict your own sensory inputs) thus enables learning, empowers moment-by-moment perception, and installs a rich understanding of the surrounding world. Action itself now appears in a new and revealing light. For action is not so much a 'response to an input' as a neat and efficient way of selecting the next 'input'. As mobile embodied agents we are forever intervening, actively bringing about the very streams of sensory information that our brains are simultaneously trying to predict. This binds perception and action in a delicate dance, a virtuous circle in which neural circuits animate, and are animated by, the movements of our own bodies. Some of our actions, in turn, structure the physical, social, and technological worlds around us. This moves the goalposts by altering the very things we need to engage and predict. Surfing Uncertainty brings work on the predictive brain into full and satisfying contact with work on the embodied and culturally situated mind. What emerges is a bold new vision of what brains do that places circular causal flows and the active structuring of the environment, center-stage. In place of cognitive couch potatoes idly awaiting the next sensory inputs, Clark's journey reveals us as proactive predictavores, skilfully surfing the waves of sensory stimulation.
An Approach for Incremental Semi-supervised SVM

In this paper we propose an approach for incremental learning of semi-supervised SVM. The proposed approach makes use of the locality of radial basis function kernels to do local and incremental training of semi-supervised support vector machines. The algorithm introduces a se- quential minimal optimization based implementation of the branch and bound technique for training semi-supervised SVM problems. The novelty of our approach lies in the
Life on the edge: supporting collaboration in location-based experiences

We study a collaborative location-based game in which groups of 'lions' hunt together on a virtual savannah that is overlaid on an open playing field. The game implements a straight-forward approach to location-based triggering in which players must be in the same spatial locale in order to share information and act together. Comparison of video recordings of physical play with system recordings of game events reveals subtle and complex interactions between highly dynamic player behavior and the underlying technology. While players exhibit a fluid approach to group formation, the system embodies a more rigid view, leading to difficulties with sharing context and coordinating actions, most notably when groups of players span virtual locale boundaries or initiate actions while on the move. We propose techniques for extending locales to support more flexible grouping and also discuss the broader implications of our findings for location-based applications in general.
Risk factors for severe respiratory syncytial virus infection leading to hospital admission in children in the Western Region of The Gambia.

BACKGROUND Acute lower respiratory tract infections (ALRI) are the major cause of mortality and morbidity in young children worldwide. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection is the most important viral cause of severe ALRI but only a small proportion of children infected with this virus develop severe disease. To identify possible risk factors for severe RSV infection leading to hospital admission we have carried out a case-control study of Gambian children with RSV infection admitted to hospital. METHODS In all, 277 children admitted to three hospitals in the Western Region of The Gambia with lower respiratory tract infection due to RSV were compared with 364 control children matched for age and location of residence who had not been admitted to hospital with an ALRI during the RSV season. A detailed questionnaire covering a wide range of potential social, environmental and nutritional risk factors was administered to the child's guardian. RESULTS Cases came from larger or more crowded compounds than controls; increased risk was particularly associated with greater numbers of children in the age group 3-5 years living in the compound (odds ratio [OR] for > or =2 children in the age group 3-5 years = 9.1, 95% CI: 3.7-28). Cases were more likely to have a sibling who had died (OR = 3.4, 95% CI: 1.7-7). Controls were more likely to have been exposed to smoke from cooking fires (OR for the mother of cases cooking at least once daily = 0.31, 95% CI: 0.14-0.7). Other protective factors were father's nationality and some professions. Vegetables were included in the diet of controls more frequently than in that of cases (OR = 0.16, 95% CI: 0.06-0.46). Mothers of cases complained of asthma more frequently than mothers of controls, but the number of asthmatic mothers was small (4.2 versus 0.5%, P = 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Risk factors for severe RSV infection identified in this study are not amenable to public health interventions. Prevention of severe infection is likely to require the development of an effective vaccine.
A New Switching Strategy for Different Transfer Mode in Multi-antenna Systems

Due to the problem that the capacity, bit ratio error and other performance index of MIMO system will deteriorate if antenna has stronger correlation, a feasible algorithm based on power control strategy is proposed. The new algorithm analyzes the influence of correlation on system capacity, then uses signal strength as switch strategy between MIMO and SISO system. This makes the system more stable even though in the stronger correlation situation. Simulation proves that the new algorithm is feasible and valid.
Improvement of dispersion induced radio power fading for MB-OFDM UWB-over-fiber systems

In this paper, a concept of optical double-sideband (ODSB) phase compensation is used to overcome dispersion induced power fading. The ODSB phase compensation is analyzed in simulation and experiment to compare with optical single-sideband (OSSB) and general ODSB modulation. Moreover, we verify this experimentally for multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing ultra-wideband (MB-OFDM UWB) signals, and analyzing the effect on different fiber transmission distances, RF frequencies, transmission rates, wireless transmission distances and modulation index. To realize radio-over-fiber technique is based on MB-OFDM UWB transmission systems.
The English Project's History of English Punctuation

The mission of the English Project (www.englishproject.org) is to explore and explain the English language in order to educate and entertain the English speaker, and 2015 was the year of punctuation for the Project because 6 February 2015 was the 500th anniversary of the death of Aldus Manutius. Aldus was a Venetian printer who shaped the comma, invented the semicolon and created italic fonts. He may have been the greatest punctuator of all time. We ‘punctuated’ the year by looking in turn at the full stop, the semicolon, the colon, the comma, the slash, the hyphen, the parenthesis, the exclamation, the apostrophe, the quotation mark and the question mark. Those twelve provide the fundamentals of English language punctuation, and all of them do more than one job. If we had a complete and unambiguous set of punctuation marks, we might need as many as 50, but the writing world does not want the trouble of such precision. In just same way, the writing world has never accepted the need for 44 separate letters to match the 44 separate sounds of the English language. Providing a separate grapheme (letter) for every phoneme (sound) is the linguist's business. Punctuation marks are ambiguous therefore. They suggest rather than define. They rely on context and the quick wittedness of the reader. If precision is needed, there are proofreader's marks. Merriam-Webster lists 42 of them, but proofreading is a special practice. Punctuation marks are a special set of symbols, and of symbols and signs there is no end. Punctuation marks are regularly appropriated by the devisers of computer languages. Punctuation marks can become logotypes – ‘a single piece of type that prints a word’. The exclamation mark can be made to work like &, $, or @. There are fuzzy edges to the subject of punctuation.
Coordinated gene expression of Th17- and Treg-associated molecules correlated with resolution of the monophasic experimental autoimmune uveitis

Purpose To investigate the role of T-cell-mediated immune response in a monophasic experimental autoimmune uveitis (EAU). Methods A monophasic EAU was induced in Lewis rats by immunization with interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein peptide. Optimized quantitative real-time RT–PCR was used for consecutive measurement of the relative expression of Th17-associated molecules, including interleukin 6 (IL-6), transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), interleukin 23p19 (IL-23p19), interleukin 23p40 (IL-23p40), CD4, CD8, major histocompatibility complex I (MHC I), major histocompatibility complex II (MHC II), interleukin 17 (IL-17), interleukin 17F (IL-17F), interleukin 17 receptor A (IL-17RA), retinoic acid-related orphan receptor γt (RORγt) and Chemokine receptor 6 (CCR6), in addition to Treg-related forkhead box P3 (Foxp3), C-X-C chemokine receptor type 5 (CXCR5), and cluster of differentiation 25 (CD25) at the initiation, effector, and resolution phases of EAU and compared with those at 14 days post-immunization of control animals. Immunohistochemisty was used to examine IL-17 expression in retinas. Glial fibrillary acidic protein retinal astrocytes, Neuronal class III β-Tubulin(Tuj1+)retinal ganglion cells, and infiltrating CD11b+ microglia were analyzed by fluorescent microscopy in a kinetic manner. Results Our results indicated well organized T-cell activity, measured by relative expression of multiple T-cell-related factors at the mRNA level, synchronized with the initiation of autoimmune inflammation, and thereafter resolution of the monophasic EAU. Immune balance was achieved several times through coordinated expression of Th17- and Treg-related factors. The expression pattern of these factors and results from immunochemistry with an IL-17 antibody indicated that there may be intensive crosstalk between infiltrating immune cells and the resident neural cells, which were significantly activated during the course of disease. Conclusions T-cell-mediated immune response played a positive role in resolution of the monophasic EAU.
Axonal targeting of Caspr2 in hippocampal neurons via selective somatodendritic endocytosis

Contactin-associated protein 2 (Caspr2) is a neuronal membrane protein that is mutated in autism and related disorders. Although it is highly enriched at juxtaparanodes of Ranvier where it is essential for Shaker-type K+ channel clustering, little is known about its function and regulation. In the present study, we examined the polarized expression of Caspr2 in hippocampal neurons using extracellular hemagglutinin (HA)-tagged Caspr2 constructs. We found that Caspr2 was targeted to the axonal surface, but colocalized with early endosomes in the somatodendritic compartment. The inhibition of endocytosis using a Dynamin-1 mutant or treatment with Dynasore prevented Caspr2 internalization from the dendrites and cell body. We identified a short sequence included into the 4.1B-binding domain that is required for the endocytosis of Caspr2. This sequence contains a protein kinase C (PKC) substrate motif on Thr1292, and point mutation of this residue or treatment with a PKC inhibitor prevented the somatodendritic internalization of Caspr2. Thus, the PKC-dependent trafficking of Caspr2 underlies its polarized expression in hippocampal neurons.