Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exosomes as Novel Regulators of Adult Neurogenic Niches

Adult neurogenesis has been convincingly demonstrated in two regions of the mammalian brain: the sub-granular zone (SGZ) of the dentate gyrus (DG) in the hippocampus, and the sub-ventricular zone (SVZ) of the lateral ventricles (LV). SGZ newborn neurons are destined to the granular cell layer (GCL) of the DG, while new neurons from the SVZ neurons migrate rostrally into the olfactory bulb (OB). The process of adult neurogenesis persists throughout life and is supported by a pool of neural stem cells (NSCs), which reside in a unique and specialized microenvironment known as “neurogenic niche”. Neurogenic niches are structured by a complex organization of different cell types, including the NSC-neuron lineage, glial cells and vascular cells. Thus, cell-to-cell communication plays a key role in the dynamic modulation of homeostasis and plasticity of the adult neurogenic process. Specific cell-cell contacts and extracellular signals originated locally provide the necessary support and regulate the balance between self-renewal and differentiation of NSCs. Furthermore, extracellular signals originated at distant locations, including other brain regions or systemic organs, may reach the niche through the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) or the vasculature and influence its nature. The role of several secreted molecules, such as cytokines, growth factors, neurotransmitters, and hormones, in the biology of adult NSCs, has been systematically addressed. Interestingly, in addition to these well-recognized signals, a novel type of intercellular messengers has been identified recently: the extracellular vesicles (EVs). EVs, and particularly exosomes, are implicated in the transfer of mRNAs, microRNAs (miRNAs), proteins and lipids between cells and thus are able to modify the function of recipient cells. Exosomes appear to play a significant role in different stem cell niches such as the mesenchymal stem cell niche, cancer stem cell niche and pre-metastatic niche; however, their roles in adult neurogenic niches remain virtually unexplored. This review focuses on the current knowledge regarding the functional relationship between cellular and extracellular components of the adult SVZ and SGZ neurogenic niches, and the growing evidence that supports the potential role of exosomes in the physiology and pathology of adult neurogenesis.
Immigration Labor and Workplace Safety

Using standard as well as recently developed univariate and bivariate count data models, this paper analyzes the determinants of workplace accidents using a firm data set for Germany. Given the tight system of public workplace safety regulation, introduced partly as early as in 1869, and the important role of foreign labor in manufacturing, the focus is on the impact of work organization and interdependence between native and foreign workers. The empirical results indicate that there are no significant differences between natives and foreign workers regarding technological determinants of workplace accidents. However, the employment of guestworkers has a strong positive effect on the job safety of natives. The estimates imply that a 1 percent increase in the employment of guestworkers is associated with a 1.7 percent decrease of less severe accidents and a 1.3 percent decrease of severe accidents of natives. The empirical results also indicate that foreigners= representation in the work council is an important factor for increasing workplace safety for guestworkers.
The political Supreme Court

There are two parties in the United States, most decidedly opposed to each other as to the rights, powers and province of the judiciary. One party almost claims infallibility for the judges, and would hedge them round about in such a manner that they cannot be reached by popular opinion at all, and . the other would subject them to the vacillations of popular prejudice and seemingly require it of them to define and administer the law, and interpret the Constitution, according to the real or apparent expediency of things. —NILES’ WEEKLY REGISTER (1822)
The presence of the adenovirus E3 region improves the oncolytic potency of conditionally replicative adenoviruses.

PURPOSE The initial development of conditionally replicative adenoviruses (CRAds) for cancer treatment has aimed at achieving selective replication in and killing of malignant cells. Other aspects such as the potentiation of the cytolytic capacity have also been investigated but still require new endeavors. As an extension of our prior work, we analyzed the effect of the E3 region, which includes the adenovirus death protein, in the context of CRAd oncolytic potency. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We constructed E3-positive (E3+) and E3-negative (E3-) variants of the previously characterized CRAd, Ad5-Delta 24, and its infectivity enhanced version, Ad5-Delta 24RGD, and compared their oncolytic effect in human cancer cell lines infected with 0.01 viral particle/cell and in s.c. xenografts of A549 human lung cancer cells injected intratumorally with a single dose of 10(7) adenoviral particles in immunodeficient mice. RESULTS The in vitro experiments showed that the E3+ viruses kill tumor cells 1.6-20 times more effectively in different cell lines. As well, the in vivo study demonstrated that the administration of E3+ CRAds resulted in a more potent oncolytic effect compared with the same dose of their E3- counterparts 35 days after virus administration. Moreover, a time course study of virus replication within the tumor xenografts established a correlation between higher in situ propagation of E3+ CRAds and tumor growth inhibition compared with E3- viruses. CONCLUSIONS These results indicate that the presence of E3 can enhance the antitumor potency of CRAds over and above the levels conferred by the enhancement of infectivity via Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD).
A Hybrid Spatio‐Temporal Data Model and Structure (HST‐DMS) for Efficient Storage and Retrieval of Land Use Information

While the incorporation of geographical and environmental modeling with GIS requires software support for storage and retrieval of spatial information that changes over time, it continues to be an unresolved issue with modern GIS software. Two complementary approaches have been used to manage the spatial and temporal heterogeneity within datasets that use a field‐based representation of the world. Some researchers have proposed new data models that partition space into discrete elements on an as‐needed basis following each temporal event, while others have focused on eliminating duplication of repeated data elements present in spatio‐temporal information. It is proposed in this paper that both approaches have merit and can be combined to create a Hybrid Spatio‐Temporal Data Model and Structure (HST‐DMS) that efficiently supports spatio‐temporal data storage and querying. Specifically, Peuquet and Duan's (1995) Event‐based Spatio‐Temporal Data Model (ESTDM) and the Overlapping R‐tree (Guttman 1984, Tzourmanis et al. 2000) are utilized to create a prototype used to store information about urban expansion for the town of Carbondale, Illinois.
An Efficient Attribute Reduction in Decision Information Systems

An important issue of knowledge discovery and data mining is the attribute reduction. In this paper, a novel method based on positive region in rough set is proposed for attribute reduction in decision information systems. Compared with the classical positive region calculating algorithm, the new algorithm deletes the compared objects timely and cuts down the combinations of object pairs for next computing. Experiments show that the new algorithm is more efficient on attribute reduction in decision information system.
Exploring the origins of binding specificity through the computational redesign of calmodulin

Calmodulin (CaM) is a second messenger protein that has evolved to bind tightly to a variety of targets and, as such, exhibits low binding specificity. We redesigned CaM by using a computational protein design algorithm to improve its binding specificity for one of its targets, smooth muscle myosin light chain kinase (smMLCK). Residues in or near the CaM/smMLCK binding interface were optimized; CaM interactions with alternative targets were not directly considered in the optimization. The predicted CaM sequences were constructed and tested for binding to a set of eight targets including smMLCK. The best CaM variant, obtained from a calculation that emphasized intermolecular interactions, showed up to a 155-fold increase in binding specificity. The increase in binding specificity was not due to improved binding to smMLCK, but due to decreased binding to the alternative targets. This finding is consistent with the fact that the sequence of wild-type CaM is nearly optimal for interactions with numerous targets.
Somatic instability of the CTG repeat in mice transgenic for the myotonic dystrophy region is age dependent but not correlated to the relative intertissue transcription levels and proliferative capacities.

A (CTG)nexpansion in the 3'-untranslated region (UTR) of the DM protein kinase gene ( DMPK ) is responsible for causing myotonic dystrophy (DM). Major instability, with very large expansions between generations and high levels of somatic mosaicism, is observed in patients. There is a good correlation between repeat size (at least in leucocytes), clinical severity and age of onset. The trinucleotide repeat instability mechanisms involved in DM and other human genetic diseases are unknown. We studied somatic instability by measuring the CTG repeat length at several ages in various tissues of transgenic mice carrying a (CTG)55expansion surrounded by 45 kb of the human DM region, using small-pool PCR. These mice have been shown to reproduce the intergenerational and somatic instability of the 55 CTG repeat suggesting that surrounding sequences and the chromatin environment are involved in instability mechanisms. As observed in some of the tissues of DM patients, there is a tendency for repeat length and somatic mosaicism to increase with the age of the mouse. Furthermore, we observed no correlation between the somatic mutation rate and tissue proliferation capacity. The somatic mutation rates in different tissues were also not correlated to the relative inter-tissue difference in transcriptional levels of the three genes (DMAHP , DMPK and 59) surrounding the repeat.
An evaluation of endpoint detection measures for malay speech recognition of an isolated words

This paper presents the endpoint detection approaches specifically for an isolated word uses Malay spoken speeches from Malaysian Parliamentary session. Currently, there are 34,466 vocabularies of utterances in the database collection and for the purpose of this study; the vocabulary is limited to 25 words which are most frequently spoken selected from ten speakers. Endpoint detection, which aims to distinguish the speech and non-speech segments of digital speech signal, is considered as one of the key preprocessing steps in speech recognition system. Proper estimation of the start and end of the speech (versus silence or background noise) avoids the waste of speech recognition evaluations on preceding or ensuing silence. In this study, the endpoint detection and speech segmentation task is achieved by using the three different algorithms, namely combination between Short-time Energy (STE) and Zero Crossing Rate (ZCR) measures, frame-based Teager's Energy (FTE), and Energy-Entropy feature (EEF). Three experiments were conducted separately to investigate the overall recognition rate obtained with a Discrete-Hidden Markov Model (DHMM) classifier approach on the testing data set that consists of 1250 utterances. The results show that EEF algorithm performs quite satisfactory and acceptable where average recognition rate is 80.76% if compared with other two algorithms. Each of the algorithms have the advantages and disadvantages and there are still misdetection of word boundaries for the words with weak fricative, plosive and nasal sounds and not robust enough to implement in Malaysian Parliamentary speech data. However, improvement is still possible to increase the performance of these algorithms.
Stabilising the Indian business cycle

2 Stabilisation through monetary policy 6 2.1 The monetary policy transmission (or lack thereof) . 6 2.2 Implications of a large informal sector . 7 2.3 Exchange rate flexibility : a tool for stabilisation . 7 2.4 Short term strategy . 9 2.5 Medium-term strategy . 9
Optimisation et modélisation du graphe des systèmes autonomes d ’ Internet ( AS graph )

Nous proposons dans cet article un nouveau modèle pour le graphe des systèmes autonomes d’Internet, basé sur le concept d’optimisation mutli-critères gloutonne coût/efficacité introduit à l’origine par Fabrikant, Koutsoupias et Papadimitriou [4] pour construire un arbre aléatoire. Nous proposons ici une généralisation de cette approche engendrant un graphe général candidat à représenter Internet. Nous y présentons les résultats de simulations et une analyse des mesures prises sur notre modèle par rapport à celles du graphe physique réel d’Internet.
Retinal fibers alter tectal positional markers during the expansion of the half retinal projection in goldfish

Although widely accepted, the theory, that neurones carry immutable cytochemical markers which specify their synaptic connections, is not consistent with plastic reorganizations. Half retinal fish were therefore tested for changed markers following expansion. Optic nerve crush at the time of the half retinal ablation resulted in regeneration of a normal, restricted projection; but nerve crush following expansion (many months later) resulted in reestablishment of the expanded projection, assessed both by electrophysiological mapping and by radioautography. Since this implied changed markers, the half retina and tectum were tested independently using the ipsilateral tectum and eye as controls. In normal fish, removal of one tectum and deflection of the corresponding optic tract toward the remaining tectum resulted in regeneration of a positionally normal but ipsilateral map. In experimental fish, after the half retina had expanded its projection to the contralateral tectum, its optic tract was deflected to the control tectum. After 40 days it had regenerated a normal, restricted map indicating that the retinal markers had not changed. Such restricted projections did not expand in the presence of the normal projection even after a year or more. Similarly, the optic tract from the normal eye was deflected to cause innervation of the tectum containing the expanded half retinal projection. After 40 days, the projection regenerated from the normal eye was similar to the expanded half retinal projection. Areas of the normal retina corresponding to the missing areas of the half retina were not represented. Tectal markers had been altered by the half retinal fibers. In a final group, tecta were denervated and tested at various intervals by innervation from ipsilateral half retinal eyes. After five months of denervation, the regenerating fibers were no longer restricted to the rostral tectum but formed an expanded projection initially. Apparently tectal markers are induced by the retinal fibers, changed during expansion, and disappear during long‐term denervation.
Entity- and relation extraction from biomedical text corpora

This thesis addresses the problem of named entity recognition and the problem of relation extraction from biomedical text corpora. Named entity recognition (NER) and relation extraction (RE) are two important subtasks of information extraction. The problem of entity identification from biomedical text corpora has been found to be much harder than the identification of entities in areas such as economics or news wire service. NER is the first step towards relation extraction. RE, as a second step, deals with the problem of finding associations and roles between entities within a text phrase. Only little work for biomedical relation extraction exists so far and almost all of the methods focus on cooccurrence approaches or try to learn rules to extract relations. This thesis, in contrast, focuses on methods from the machine learning approach. We tackle the named entity recognition problem by using a single probabilistic model called Conditional Random Fields (CRFs), recently introduced by Lafferty et al. [2001]. In particular, we did not want to use any application specific preor post-processing and therefore wanted to focus on the suitability for performance relevant applications. We conduct our experiments on recognizing several biomedical entities and also made an analysis for the CRF approach on a non biomedical domain (newswire domain) to test the generalizability of the approach. It is concluded that Conditional Random Fields are a suitable probabilistic model for named entity recognition for various domains and different languages without using any post-processing. Furthermore, the experiments have all been conducted with the same type of features. We chose protein-protein interaction extraction as use case for the relation extraction problem. This use case is very interesting, since the number of protein interactions reported in literature is substantial and growing rapidly. Additionally, the study of protein-protein interactions is a significant technique for studying protein functions, one major challenge in molecular biology nowadays. We consider the problem of relation extraction from a supervised point of view and approach the problem with the help of Support Vector Machines (SVMs), introduced by Vapnik [1998]. We use a rich set of features from text and combine them with external knowledge features (ontology features) available for the protein entities. In addition, we use different views of describing a relation, an idea recently motivated by Xu et al. [2006]. Again, we can conclude that supervised methods are a suitable choice for the RE task. The use of ontology features can improve recall, though the use of entity features could not help to boost performance significantly in these experiments. Most of the methods and demos developed in the thesis are developed in the objectoriented programming language Java, which may be used for extended analyses in this area.
NewsVAT: an interactive visual analytics tool for news exploration

News articles have become an important data source for the general public and researchers. We have developed an interactive visual analytics tool for news exploration (NewsVAT). It includes four main components: preprocessing, analysis, visualization engine and an interface for news exploration. NewsVAT takes news articles as input, and outputs animations reflecting the content of these documents. It provides time series visualization, spatial visualization, co-occurrence network, etc. Rich, flexible and interactive visualization is the prominent feature. In order to test the effectiveness of NewsVAT, a case study was conducted which partly proves the system is effective in news exploration and a helpful aid to research work. Further development includes refining the interactive visualization and improving the accuracy of automatic extraction.
Prestroke physical activity and early functional status after stroke

Background: The importance of physical activity as a modifiable risk factor for stroke in particular and cardiovascular disease in general is well documented. The effect of exercise on stroke severity and stroke outcomes is less clear. This study aimed to assess that effect. Methods: Data collected for patients enrolled in the Ischemic Stroke Genetics Study were reviewed for prestroke self-reported levels of activity and four measures of stroke outcome assessed at enrolment and approximately 3 months after enrolment. Logistic regression was used to assess the association between physical activity and stroke outcomes, unadjusted and adjusted for patient characteristics. Results: A total of 673 patients were enrolled; 50.5% reported aerobic physical activity less than once a week, 28.5% reported aerobic physical activity one to three times weekly, and 21% reported aerobic physical activity four times a week or more. Patients with moderate and high levels of physical activity were more likely to have higher Barthel Index (BI) scores at enrolment. A similar association was detected for exercise and good outcomes for the Oxford Handicap Scale (OHS). After 3 months of follow-up, moderate activity was still associated with a high BI score. No significant association was detected for activity and the OHS or Glasgow Outcome Scale at follow-up after adjustment for patient characteristics. Conclusions: Higher levels of self-reported prestroke physical activity may be associated with functional advantages after stroke. Our findings should be seen as exploratory, requiring confirmation, ideally in a longitudinal study of exercise in an older population.
A Chandra X-Ray Study of NGC 1068. I. Observations of Extended Emission

We report subarcsecond-resolution X-ray imaging spectroscopy of the archetypal type 2 Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068 with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The observations reveal the detailed structure and spectra of the 13 kpc extent nebulosity previously imaged at lower resolution with ROSAT. The Chandra image shows a bright, compact source coincident with the brightest radio and optical emission; this source is extended by ≃1. ″5 (165 pc) in the same direction as the nuclear optical line and radio continuum emission. Bright X-ray emission extends ≃5'' (550 pc) to the northeast and coincides with the northeast radio lobe and gas in the narrow-line region. The large-scale emission shows trailing spiral arms and other structures. Numerous point sources associated with NGC 1068 are seen. There is a very strong correlation between the X-ray emission and the high-excitation ionized gas seen in Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based [O III] λ5007 images. The X-rays to the northeast of the nucleus are absorbed by only the Galactic column density and thus originate from the near side of the disk of NGC 1068. In contrast, the X-rays to the southwest are more highly absorbed and must come from gas in the disk or on the far side of it. This geometry is similar to that inferred for the narrow-line region and radio lobes. Spectra have been obtained for the nucleus, the bright region ≃4'' to the northeast, and eight areas in the extended emission. The spectra are inconsistent with hot plasma models, the best approximations requiring implausibly low abundances (≲0.1 Z☉). Models involving two smooth continua (either a bremsstrahlung plus a power law or two bremsstrahlungs) plus emission lines provide excellent descriptions of the spectra. The emission lines cannot be uniquely identified with the present spectral resolution (~110-190 eV), but are consistent with the brighter lines seen in the XMM-Newton reflection grating spectrometer (RGS) spectrum below 2 keV. Hard X-ray (above 2 keV) emission, including an iron line, is seen extending ≃20'' (2.2 kpc) northeast and southwest of the nucleus. Lower surface brightness, hard X-ray emission, with a tentatively detected iron line, extends 50'' (5.5 kpc) to the west and south. Our results, when taken together with the XMM-Newton RGS spectrum, suggest photoionization and fluorescence of gas by radiation from the Seyfert nucleus to several kpc from it. The facts that (1) the large-scale (arcminute) and small-scale (few arcseconds) X-ray emissions align well and (2) the morphology of the large-scale emission does not correlate well with the starburst suggests that the starburst is not the dominant source of the extended X-rays.