Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A bounded statistical approach for model checking of unbounded until properties

We study the problem of statistical model checking of probabilistic systems for PCTL unbounded until property PJoinp(Æ1UÆ2) (where Join |X| {<, d, >, e}) using the computation of P d 0(Æ1UÆ2). The approach is first proposed by Sen et al. in CAV'05 but their approach suffers from two drawbacks. Firstly, the computation of Pd0Æ1UÆ2) requires for its validity, a user-specified input parameter ´2 which the user is unlikely to correctly provide. Secondly, the validity of computation of Pd0Æ1UÆ2) is limited only to probabilistic models that do not contain loops. We present a new technique which addresses both problems described above. Essentially our technique transforms the hypothesis test for the unbounded until property in the original model into a new equivalent hypothesis test for bounded until property in our modified model. We empirically show the effectiveness of our technique and compare our results with those using the method proposed by Sen et al.
Recruitment of histone deacetylases HDAC1 and HDAC2 by the transcriptional repressor ZEB1 downregulates E-cadherin expression in pancreatic cancer

Objective Pancreatic cancer is characterised by invasive tumour spread and early metastasis formation. During epithelial–mesenchymal transition, loss of the cell adhesion molecule E-cadherin is frequent and can be caused by genetic or epigenetic modifications, recruitment of transcriptional activators/repressors or post-translational modifications. A study was undertaken to investigate how E-cadherin expression in human pancreatic adenocarcinoma and pancreatic cancer cell lines is regulated. Methods In 25 human pancreatic cancer resection specimens, the coding region of the E-cadherin gene (CDH1) was sequenced for somatic mutations. The tumour samples and 11 established human pancreatic cancer cell lines were analysed by immunohistochemistry, western blot analysis, chromatin immunoprecipitation and methylation-specific PCR. The role of specific histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) on pancreatic tumour cell migration and proliferation was studied in vitro. Results Neither somatic mutations nor CDH1 promoter hypermethylation were found to be responsible for downregulation of E-cadherin in pancreatic cancer. In the transcriptionally active CDH1 promoter, acetylation of histones H3 and H4 was detected whereas HDAC1 and HDAC2 were found attached only to a silent promoter. Expression of ZEB1, a transcription factor known to recruit HDACs, was seen in E-cadherin-deficient cell lines in which ZEB1/HDAC complexes were found attached to the CDH1 promoter. Moreover, knockdown of ZEB1 prevented HDAC from binding to the CDH1 promoter, resulting in histone acetylation and expression of E-cadherin. HDACi treatment attenuated tumour cell migration and proliferation. Conclusions These findings imply an important role for histone deacetylation in the downregulation of E-cadherin in human pancreatic cancer. Recruitment of HDACs to the CDH1 promoter is regulated by the transcription factor ZEB1, and inhibition of HDACs may be a promising antitumour therapy for pancreatic cancer.
The range and variability of ophthalmological parameters in normal children aged 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 years.

BACKGROUND Some standards for childhood ophthalmological variables exist. However, for most parameters, the range of variation found in normal children remains poorly defined. METHODS We have determined the range of normal function for a number of commonly measured ophthalmological variables in 162 children, classified normal by Gold Standard ophthalmological examination. This group is representative of almost 12,000 normal children aged 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 in Nova Scotia. RESULTS In 56.8% of eyes the visual acuity was 6/4.5. The use of a chart with crowding bars was more discriminating between differences in higher levels of acuity and highlighted differences in acuity between the two eyes. Randot stereoacuity showed a uniform, non-Gaussian distribution of scores. Cycloplegic refractive errors were distributed about a modal value of between +0.5 and +1.0 diopter. Forty percent of eyes had no detectable astigmatism. Ninety-seven percent of subjects had no heterophoria. Fusional vergence data are presented. CONCLUSION Our results document the complete normal range for selected ophthalmological parameters in normal preschoolers. The values obtained were in general better than expected.
Turkish LVCSR: towards better speech recognition for agglutinative languages

The Turkish language belongs to the Turkic family. All members of this family are close to one another in terms of linguistic structure. Typological similarities are vowel harmony, verb-final word order and agglutinative morphology. This latter property causes a very fast vocabulary growth resulting in a large number of out-of-vocabulary words. In this paper we describe our first experiments in a speaker independent LVCSR engine for Modern Standard Turkish. First results on our Turkish speech recognition system are presented. The currently best system shows very promising results achieving 16.9% word error rate. To overcome the OOV-problem we propose a morphem-based and the Hypothesis Driven Lexical Adaptation approach. The final Turkish system is integrated into the multilingual recognition engine of the GlobalPhone project.
Notch signaling controls liver development by regulating biliary differentiation

In the mammalian liver, bile is transported to the intestine through an intricate network of bile ducts. Notch signaling is required for normal duct formation, but its mode of action has been unclear. Here, we show in mice that bile ducts arise through a novel mechanism of tubulogenesis involving sequential radial differentiation. Notch signaling is activated in a subset of liver progenitor cells fated to become ductal cells, and pathway activation is necessary for biliary fate. Notch signals are also required for bile duct morphogenesis, and activation of Notch signaling in the hepatic lobule promotes ectopic biliary differentiation and tubule formation in a dose-dependent manner. Remarkably, activation of Notch signaling in postnatal hepatocytes causes them to adopt a biliary fate through a process of reprogramming that recapitulates normal bile duct development. These results reconcile previous conflicting reports about the role of Notch during liver development and suggest that Notch acts by coordinating biliary differentiation and morphogenesis.
anthocyanin1 of Petunia Encodes a Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Protein That Directly Activates Transcription of Structural Anthocyanin Genes

The petunia loci anthocyanin1 (an1), an2, an4, and an11 are required for the transcription of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes in floral organs. The an2 and an11 loci were recently cloned and shown to encode a MYB-domain transcriptional activator and a cytosolic WD40 protein, respectively. Here, we report the isolation of an1 by transposon tagging. an1 encodes a new member of the basic helix-loop-helix family of transcription factors that is functionally and evolutionarily distinct from JAF13, the apparent petunia ortholog of maize RED1 and snapdragon DELILA. We provide genetic evidence that the transcription factors encoded by an1, an2, and an4 operate in an unexpectedly complex regulatory hierarchy. In leaves, ectopic expression of AN2 induces an1 expression, whereas in anthers, an1 expression depends on an4, encoding (or controlling) a MYB protein that is paralogous to AN2. Experiments with transgenic plants expressing a post-translationally controlled AN1–GLUCOCORTICOID RECEPTOR fusion protein indicated that independent of protein synthesis, AN1 directly activates the expression of the dfrA gene encoding the enzyme dihydroflavonol 4-reductase and of Pmyb27 encoding a MYB-domain protein of unknown function.
Advances in Digital Video Content Protection by EUGENE T. LIN and AHMET M. ESKICIOGLU and REGINALD L. LAGENDIJK and EDWARD J. DELP

Invited Paper The use of digital video offers immense opportunities for creators; however, the ability for anyone to make perfect copies and the ease by which those copies can be distributed also facilitate misuse, illegal copying and distribution (" piracy "), plagiarism, and misappropriation. Popular Internet software based on a peer-to-peer architecture has been used to share copyrighted movies, music, software, and other materials. Concerned about the consequences of illegal copying and distribution on a massive scale, content owners are interested in digital rights management (DRM) systems which can protect their rights and preserve the economic value of digital video. A DRM system protects and enforces the rights associated with the use of digital content. Unfortunately, the technical challenges for securing digital content are formidable and previous approaches have not succeeded. We overview the concepts and approaches for video DRM and describe methods for providing security, including the roles of encryption and video watermarking. Current efforts and issues are described in encryption, watermarking, and key management. Lastly, we identify challenges and directions for further investigation in video DRM.
Perception Is Movement, Movement Is Perception

In this paper, the function of receptive and processing neurons is distinguished from that of neuronal circuits. The former, which are inside the circuits, collect and elaborate sensorial information to build “objects” which are spatially and temporally well-structured and vary in intensity. These objects are the modal components of sensory systems: hot/cold, smooth/rough, green, table, sound, etc. motionless or in motion. On the other hand, perceptual and motor neuronal circuits have the function of positioning the “objects” in space and time in an orderly way. This process of positioning, being regularly repeated in space and/or time, determines groupings and fillings which give rise to “blocks”, that is, significant constructs of objects grouped in space and/or time and then stored. These blocks are divided into maps, stored in the posterior areas of the cerebral cortex, and dynamisms, stored in the anterior areas of the cerebral cortex. One of the functions of dynamisms is selection. Positioning is fulfilled through four distinct processes: anticipation, programming, execution and verification. Maps are divided into anticipation (or modal) maps and programming (or spatio-temporal) maps. Damage to modal maps generates impairments in the identification of stimuli, associative agnosia, ideational apraxia, Wernicke’s aphasia; damage to spatiotemporal maps generates impairments in the perception of stimuli, apperceptive agnosia, ideomotor apraxia and parietal disorders related to language. Anticipation consists of two functions: 1) the unconscious pre-activation of stored data generated by conscious perception; 2) the selection of one of the pre-activated data. Pre-activation pertains to “maps” and “objects”. Selection can be performed on maps (movement and perception) or objects (mental representation). The memory of a circuit where maps are selected is called “procedural memory”. After the initial positioning, the same process (metapositioning) can be repeated. This allows linguistic correlations, spatial and temporal relations, and classifications to be made.
Once More With Feeling: Ethnographic Reflections on the Mediation of Tension in a Small Team of Call Centre Workers

This article explores the labour process of a team of call-centre workers based in a multi-client call centre in the West Midlands. Founded on the basis of a 13-month ethnographic study into workplace resistance in call-centre environments, this article provides insights into control in call centres, focusing on sexuality, internal team dynamics and discipline. It is argued that control is exerted through management and information technology but it is crucially exerted laterally in the team and sexuality is an important medium of such control. This article focuses specifically on how worker sexuality is deployed to regulate the tension between contradictory imperatives faced by workers. The article then considers the emotional content of the call-centre labour process, arguing that the apparent resolution of potentially contradictory logic, in fact, depends upon the development by call-centre workers, encouraged by more senior employees, of informal, pseudo-sexualized client relations at the point of production. Crucially however the fieldwork reveals that the demands placed upon customer service representatives are subtly gendered.
Aspects of the prosody of Kuot, a language where intonation ignores stress

Abstract This article describes the basic system of intonation and lexical stress in Kuot, a non-Austronesian language of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Kuot employs pitch (F0 variation) primarily to express structural information about the clause. Some intonation contours express functions that are commonly expressed by intonation crosslinguistically, such as final vs. nonfinal clauses and parts of clauses, and yes / no questions. In addition, Kuot has particular contours (or tunes) for question-word questions and negated sentences. Word stress, on the other hand, does not interact with intonation in terms of its encoding. It displays a very stable correlation with duration but no association with F0; in other words, there is no consistent marking of stress by means of F0 in Kuot. The position of Kuot word stress is lexically determined, yielding minimal stress pairs. In this article, we present a description of Kuot intonation on the basis of pitch extractions made from spontaneous speech. The results reveal that intonation in Kuot is anchored only at the boundaries of intonational phrases. A phonetic analysis of minimal stress pairs recorded in controlled environments demonstrates that lexically stressed syllables do not correlate with pitch. The findings are discussed against a background of prosodic typology.
Characterization of human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1) particles that express protease-reverse transcriptase fusion proteins.

We have selectively mutagenized specific residues at the junction between the protease (PR) and reverse transcriptase (RT) genes of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) to study the effects of PR-RT fusion proteins in the context of a full-length, infectious proviral construct. Mutant viruses derived from COS-7 cells transfected with this construct were analyzed in regard to each of viral replication, maturation, and infectivity. Immunoblot analysis revealed that the mutation prevented cleavage between the PR and RT proteins and that both existed as a PR-RT fusion protein in each of cellular and viral lysates. Interestingly, intracellular PR that existed within the PR-RT fusion protein remained functionally active, whereby HIV-1 precursor proteins were processed efficiently. Furthermore, the RT component of the fusion protein also retained its enzymatic activity as shown in RT assays. Electron microscopy revealed that the mutant viruses containing the PR-RT fusion protein possessed wild-type morphology. These viruses also displayed wild-type sensitivities to inhibitors of each of the HIV-1 PR and RT activities. However, viruses containing the PR-RT fusion protein were 20 times less infectious than wild-type viruses. This defect was further pronounced when mutated Gag-Pol proteins were overexpressed as a consequence of an additional mutation that interfered with frameshifting. Thus, unlike cleavage site mutations at the N terminus of PR, a cleavage site mutation between PR and RT did not affect the enzymatic activities of either PR or RT and viruses containing PR-RT fusion proteins were viable.
[Presence of a peripheral type benzodiazepine binding site on the macrophage; its possible role in immunomodulation].

Saturable binding site for 3H-flunitrazepam (KD = 43 +/- 7 nM, Bmax = 391 +/- 58 fmoles/cell, i.e. 250,000 sites/cell) is characterized on Mouse peritoneal inflammatory macrophages. The affinity for different ligands (PK 11195 greater than Ro 5-4864 greater than diazepam greater than flunitrazepam greater than clonazepam greater than Ro 15-1788) shows that this site is of peripheral type. In vivo the humoral response in Mice to Sheep red blood cells was stimulated by administration of 1 mg/kg of PK 11195 (+85%), Ro 5-4864 (+80%) and diazepam (+58%). Clonazepam and Ro 15-1788 are devoid of activity. This suggests that molecules which show affinity for the "peripheral type" benzodiazepine binding site might modulate the immune response.
Anterior ischemic optic neuropathy in eyes with optic disc drusen.

BACKGROUND There have been anecdotal reports of anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (AION) occurring in eyes with optic disc drusen (ODD), but the clinical features of this condition have not been well characterized. OBJECTIVES To better describe the clinical features of AION associated with ODD and to compare the clinical features of this condition with those of "garden variety" nonarteritic AION. METHODS We reviewed the medical records of 20 patients who experienced an episode of AION in an eye with ODD. In 4 patients, both eyes were affected; thus, 24 eyes were studied. The diagnosis of ODD was made by ophthalmoscopic identification, orbital ultrasonography, or computed tomographic scanning. We recorded age, sex, vascular risk factors, symptoms, visual acuity, visual fields, and results of the follow-up examination in all patients. These findings were compared with data from previously reported series of patients with nonarteritic AION. RESULTS Our 20 patients included 14 men and 6 women (age range, 18-69 years; mean, 49.4 years). Vascular risk factors were identified in 10 patients (50%). Three patients reported episodes of transient visual loss before their fixed deficit. The visual acuity at the initial examination was 20/60 or better in 15 (62%) of the 24 eyes; 8 had a visual acuity of 20/20. The predominant pattern of visual field loss was an altitudinal or arcuate defect in 19 (79%) and a centrocecal scotoma in 5 (21%) of the 24 eyes. There was subjective worsening of vision before the initial neuro-ophthalmic examination in 11 eyes (46%) and objective documentation of progression in 7 eyes (29%). The final visual acuity was 20/40 or better in 13 (62%) of 21 eyes and 20/200 or worse in 3 (14%) of 21 eyes. CONCLUSIONS Our patients were strikingly similar to those with nonarteritic AION unassociated with drusen in regard to prevalence of vascular risk factors, pattern of visual field loss, and occurrence of a subsequent similar event in the fellow eye. In contrast, however, patients with ODD-AION were younger than those with nonarteritic AION, were more likely to report preceding episodes of transient visual obscuration, and enjoyed a more favorable visual outcome.
Mass Spectrometry Based Glycoproteomics—From a Proteomics Perspective*

Glycosylation is one of the most important and common forms of protein post-translational modification that is involved in many physiological functions and biological pathways. Altered glycosylation has been associated with a variety of diseases, including cancer, inflammatory and degenerative diseases. Glycoproteins are becoming important targets for the development of biomarkers for disease diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic response to drugs. The emerging technology of glycoproteomics, which focuses on glycoproteome analysis, is increasingly becoming an important tool for biomarker discovery. An in-depth, comprehensive identification of aberrant glycoproteins, and further, quantitative detection of specific glycosylation abnormalities in a complex environment require a concerted approach drawing from a variety of techniques. This report provides an overview of the recent advances in mass spectrometry based glycoproteomic methods and technology, in the context of biomarker discovery and clinical application.
Arginine Methylation by PRMT5 at a Naturally Occurring Mutation Site Is Critical for Liver Metabolic Regulation by Small Heterodimer Partner

ABSTRACT Small Heterodimer Partner (SHP) inhibits numerous transcription factors that are involved in diverse biological processes, including lipid and glucose metabolism. In response to increased hepatic bile acids, SHP gene expression is induced and the SHP protein is stabilized. We now show that the activity of SHP is also increased by posttranslational methylation at Arg-57 by protein arginine methyltransferase 5 (PRMT5). Adenovirus-mediated hepatic depletion of PRMT5 decreased SHP methylation and reversed the suppression of metabolic genes by SHP. Mutation of Arg-57 decreased SHP interaction with its known cofactors, Brm, mSin3A, and histone deacetylase 1 (HDAC1), but not with G9a, and decreased their recruitment to SHP target genes in mice. Hepatic overexpression of SHP inhibited metabolic target genes, decreased bile acid and hepatic triglyceride levels, and increased glucose tolerance. In contrast, mutation of Arg-57 selectively reversed the inhibition of SHP target genes and metabolic outcomes. The importance of Arg-57 methylation for the repression activity of SHP provides a molecular basis for the observation that a natural mutation of Arg-57 in humans is associated with the metabolic syndrome. Targeting posttranslational modifications of SHP may be an effective therapeutic strategy by controlling selected groups of genes to treat SHP-related human diseases, such as metabolic syndrome, cancer, and infertility.
Large Systematic Deviations in Visual Parallelism

The visual environment is distorted with respect to the physical environment. Luneburg [1947, Mathematical Analysis of Binocular Vision (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press)] assumed that visual space could be described by a Riemannian space of constant curvature. Such a space is described by a metric which defines the distance between any two points. It is uncertain, however, whether such a metric description is valid. Two experiments are reported in which subjects were asked to set two bars parallel to each other in a horizontal plane. The backdrop consisted of wrinkled black plastic sheeting, and the floor and ceiling were hidden by means of a horizontal aperture restricting the visual field of the subject vertically to 10 deg. We found that large deviations (of up to 40°) occur and that the deviations are proportional to the separation angle: on average, the proportion is 30%. These deviations occur for 30°, 60°, 120°, and 150° reference orientations, but not for 0° and 90° reference orientations; there the deviation is approximately 0° for most subjects. A Riemannian space of constant curvature, therefore, cannot be an adequate description. If it were, then the deviation between the orientation of the test and the reference bar would be independent of the reference orientation. Furthermore, we found that the results are independent of the distance of the bars from the subject, which suggests either that visual space has a zero mean curvature, or that the parallelity task is essentially a monocular task. The fact that the deviations vanish for a 0° and 90° orientation is reminiscent of the oblique effect reported in the literature. However, the ‘oblique effect’ reported here takes place in a horizontal plane at eye height, not in a frontoparallel plane.
Eastern University's MBA in Economic Development

Evangelical Christian development organizations have long realized that mission effectiveness is largely contingent on the skills and abilities possessed by their human capital. A crucial way to create that human capital is through development-oriented academic programs, especially those focused on developing skills required by grassroots personnel and their support organizations. A review of Eastern University's MBA in economic development, celebrating its 25th anniversary, provides six conclusions and recommendations for implementing and assessing effective NGO management educational programs.