Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Letter Position Coding with Fred Astaire: Inversion of Letter Position Substitution Effects in Reverse Spelled Words

ABSTRACT The effects of letter substitutions have been linked to their position within a word (letter position effects). The current study expanded upon previous research by examining letter-position effects for letter substitutions using forward- and reverse-spelled word primes. Often substituting a letter on one side of a word will have a stronger impact on performance than substituting a letter on the other side of a word. In three experiments it was revealed that the letter-position effects of substitutions changed places when words were spelled backwards. This occurred when both the target and prime were spelled backwards. This was evidence of a congruency effect of letter-position priming. The ramifications of these results for word recognition and transfer are discussed. However, the need for future research should focus on the possibility of an inversion process/mechanism.
Improving the Predictive Value of Preclinical Studies in Support of Radiotherapy Clinical Trials

There is an urgent need to improve reproducibility and translatability of preclinical data to fully exploit opportunities for molecular therapeutics involving radiation and radiochemotherapy. For in vitro research, the clonogenic assay remains the current state-of-the-art of preclinical assays, whereas newer moderate and high-throughput assays offer the potential for rapid initial screening. Studies of radiation response modification by molecularly targeted agents can be improved using more physiologic 3D culture models. Elucidating effects on the cancer stem cells (CSC, and CSC-like) and developing biomarkers for defining targets and measuring responses are also important. In vivo studies are necessary to confirm in vitro findings, further define mechanism of action, and address immunomodulation and treatment-induced modification of the microenvironment. Newer in vivo models include genetically engineered and patient-derived xenograft mouse models and spontaneously occurring cancers in domesticated animals. Selection of appropriate endpoints is important for in vivo studies; for example, regrowth delay measures bulk tumor killing, whereas local tumor control assesses effects on CSCs. The reliability of individual assays requires standardization of procedures and cross-laboratory validation. Radiation modifiers must be tested as part of clinical standard of care, which includes radiochemotherapy for most tumors. Radiation models are compatible with but also differ from those used for drug screening. Furthermore, the mechanism of a drug as a chemotherapeutic agent may be different from its interaction with radiation and/or radiochemotherapy. This provides an opportunity to expand the use of molecular-targeted agents. Clin Cancer Res; 22(13); 3138–47. ©2016 AACR.
Collection of mRNA-like non-coding RNAs

In last few years much data has accumulated which shows that in different cells various RNA transcripts are synthesized. They lack protein coding capacity and do not produce mature protein. It seems that they work mainly or exclusively on the RNA level. Their function and mechanism of action is poorly understood. In this paper we have collected all known RNA transcript and prepared a database for further structural and functional studies. This is the first collection of the nucleotide sequences of RNAs of this kind. The data can be accessed via WWW at: http://www.man. poznan.pl/5SData/ncRNA/inde x.html
Challenges in the Etiology and Diagnosis of Acute Febrile Illness in Children in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Abstract Acute febrile illness is a common cause of hospital admission, and its associated infectious causes contribute to substantial morbidity and death among children worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Declining transmission of malaria in many regions, combined with the increasing use of rapid diagnostic tests for malaria, has led to the increasing recognition of leptospirosis, rickettsioses, respiratory viruses, and arboviruses as etiologic agents of fevers. However, clinical discrimination between these etiologies can be difficult. Overtreatment with antimalarial drugs is common, even in the setting of a negative test result, as is overtreatment with empiric antibacterial drugs. Viral etiologies remain underrecognized and poorly investigated. More-sensitive diagnostics have led to additional dilemmas in discriminating whether a positive test result reflects a causative pathogen. Here, we review and summarize the current epidemiology and focus particularly on children and the challenges for future research.
Evaluating Mobile Search with Height-Biased Gain

Mobile search engine result pages (SERPs) are becoming highly visual and heterogenous. Unlike the traditional ten-blue-link SERPs for desktop search, different verticals and cards occupy different amounts of space within the small screen. Hence, traditional retrieval measures that regard the SERP as a ranked list of homogeneous items are not adequate for evaluating the overall quality of mobile SERPs. Specifically, we address the following new problems in mobile search evaluation: (1) Different retrieved items have different heights within the scrollable SERP, unlike a ten-blue-link SERP in which results have similar heights with each other. Therefore, the traditional rank-based decaying functions are not adequate for mobile search metrics. (2) For some types of verticals and cards, the information that the user seeks is already embedded in the snippet, which makes clicking on those items to access the landing page unnecessary. (3) For some results with complex sub-components (and usually a large height), the total gain of the results cannot be obtained if users only read part of their contents. The benefit brought by the result is affected by user's reading behavior and the internal gain distribution (over the height) should be modeled to get a more accurate estimation. To tackle these problems, we conduct a lab-based user study to construct suitable user behavior model for mobile search evaluation. From the results, we find that the geometric heights of user's browsing trails can be adopted as a good signal of user effort. Based on these findings, we propose a new evaluation metric, Height-Biased Gain, which is calculated by summing up the product of gain distribution and discount factors that are both modeled in terms of result height. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed metric, we compare the agreement of evaluation metrics with side-by-side user preferences on a test collection composed of four mobile search engines. Experimental results show that HBG agrees with user preferences 85.33% of the time, which is better than all existing metrics.
Discrimination of membrane antigen affinity by B cells requires dominance of kinetic proofreading over serial triggering (112.10)

B cells receptor (BCR) signaling in response to membrane-bound antigen increases with antigen affinity, a process known as affinity discrimination. However, if BCR molecules become signaling-capable immediately upon binding antigen, the decrease in serial engagement as affinity increases results in weaker signaling as affinity increases. We use computational modeling to show that a threshold time (kinetic proofreading) for antigen to stay bound to BCR before the latter becomes signaling-capable is needed to overcome the decrease in serial engagement with increasing antigen affinity, and replicate the monotonic increase in B cell signaling with affinity observed in experiments. This finding matches well with the experimentally observed timescale (~20 seconds) of antigen-mediated conformational changes to BCR that lead to Src-family kinase recruitment. The physical basis of the threshold time of antigen binding may lie in the formation timescale of BCR dimers. The latter decreases with increasing affinity, resulting in shorter threshold antigen binding times as affinity increases. Such an affinity-dependent kinetic proofreading requirement results in affinity discrimination very similar to that observed in experiments. We also develop a measure to characterize affinity discrimination in a quantitative manner. B cell affinity discrimination is critical to the process of affinity maturation, and thus our results have important implications in applications such as vaccine design.
Safety and immunogenicity of multiple and higher doses of an inactivated influenza A/H5N1 vaccine.

BACKGROUND H5N1 avian influenza represents an episodic zoonotic disease with the potential to cause a pandemic, and antiviral resistance is of considerable concern. We sought to generate high-titer H5N1 antibodies in healthy volunteers for the purpose of developing hyperimmune intravenous immunoglobulin. METHODS We conducted a dose-escalating, unblinded clinical trial involving 75 subjects aged 18-59 years. Three cohorts of twenty-five subjects were enrolled sequentially and received 90, 120, or 180 microg of H5N1 A/Vietnam/1203/04 vaccine in 4 doses administered approximately 28 days apart. RESULTS No statistically significant dose-related increases in the geometric mean titers (GMTs) of serum hemagglutination inhibition antibody were observed when the 90-microg, 120-microg, and 180-microg cohorts were compared. When the cohorts were analyzed together to determine the effect of additional vaccinations, the GMTs of hemagglutination inhibition antibody after the first, second, third, and fourth vaccinations were 1:15.7, 1:22.2, 1:36.0, and 1:32.0, respectively (first vaccination vs. baseline, P<.001; second vs. first vaccination, P=.02; and third vs. second vaccination, P<.001). The microneutralization GMTs after the first, second, third, and fourth vaccinations were 1:17.5, 1:33.1, 1:55.7, and 1:68.4, respectively (P<.001 for all comparisons). CONCLUSION The results of our study suggest that a third and fourth dose of the H5N1 A/Vietnam/1203/04 vaccine may result in higher hemagglutination inhibition and microneutralization GMTs, compared with the GMTs resulting from fewer doses. There was no benefit to increasing the dose of the vaccine. TRIAL REGISTRATION Clinical Trials.gov identifier: NCT00383071.
Association of the Aldose Reductase-106TT Genotype with Increased Risk for Diabetic Retinopathy in the Chinese Han Population: An Updated Meta-Analysis

ABSTRACT Purpose: A meta-analysis was conducted to assess the effects of the aldose reductase (ALR) C-106T polymorphism on the risk for development of diabetic retinopathy (DR) in the Chinese population. Materials and methods: Relevant studies were identified using PubMed, Springer Link, Ovid, Chinese Wanfang Data Knowledge Service Platform, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Chinese Biology Medicine (CBM) through 21 March 2015. Pooled odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to assess the strength of the associations. Results: This meta-analysis identified 11 studies, including 1386 DR cases, 1594 diabetes mellitus (DM) control cases, and 472 healthy control cases. In the overall analysis, a non-significant association between the ALR C(-106)T polymorphism and DR was found in the Chinese population. In subgroups stratified by ethnicity, significantly increased risks for DR in association with ALR C(-106)T variants were found in the Chinese Han population. When compared with healthy controls, we found the following associations: T versus C (OR, 1.63; 95%CI, 1.23–2.17), TT versus CC (OR, 2.04; 95%CI, 1.03–4.02), and TT + CT versus CC (OR, 1.82; 95%CI, 1.28–2.57). Conclusions: Our meta-analysis showed that ALR C-106T variants appear to influence the risk for DR in Chinese Han persons. Studies with larger sample sizes and wider population spectra are warranted to verify this finding.
A Synthetic Biology Approach Reveals a CXCR4-G13-Rho Signaling Axis Driving Transendothelial Migration of Metastatic Breast Cancer Cells

Interfering with a specific G protein–coupled receptor pathway may provide a therapeutic approach to blocking metastasis of some forms of breast cancer. Blocking Malignant Spread Most deaths from cancer arise from the metastatic spread of malignant cells rather than from growth of the primary tumor itself. Thus, identifying the mechanisms whereby metastasis occurs—and thereby potential approaches to blocking it—represents a crucial element of cancer research. Noting that the chemokine receptor CXCR4 [chemokine (C-X-C motif) receptor 4], which mediates trafficking of hematopoietic cells, has been implicated in breast cancer metastasis, Yagi et al. explored the underlying mechanisms. They found that the CXCR4-mediated migration toward chemokine of a therapy-resistant class of breast cancer cell, unlike its mobilization of hematopoietic stem cells, depended on signaling through Gα13 of the Gα12/13 family of G proteins and of the small guanosine triphosphatase Rho. Moreover, fasudil, a Rho inhibitor now used to treat vasospasm and pulmonary hypertension, limited breast cancer metastasis from lymph nodes in a mouse model system. Thus, interfering with CXCR4-Gα13-Rho signaling may provide a therapeutic approach to blocking metastasis of this class of breast cancer without untoward side effects on the mobilization and migration of hematopoietic cells. Tumor cells can co-opt the promigratory activity of chemokines and their cognate G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) to metastasize to regional lymph nodes or distant organs. Indeed, the migration toward SDF-1 (stromal cell–derived factor 1) of tumor cells bearing CXCR4 [chemokine (C-X-C motif) receptor 4] has been implicated in the lymphatic and organ-specific metastasis of various human malignancies. Here, we used chimeric G proteins and GPCRs activated solely by artificial ligands to selectively activate the signaling pathways downstream of specific G proteins and showed that CXCR4-mediated chemotaxis and transendothelial migration of metastatic basal-like breast cancer cells required activation of Gα13, a member of the Gα12/13 G protein family, and of the small guanosine triphosphatase Rho. Multiple complementary experimental strategies, including synthetic biology approaches, indicated that signaling-selective inhibition of the CXCR4-Gα13-Rho axis prevents the metastatic spread of basal-like breast cancer cells.
A study of thinking styles of tertiary students

The study was undertaken to ascertain the differences in thinking styles of tertiary students based on sex, course type and residence area. The sample comprised 203 subjects (males and females) belonging to professional and non-professional courses and rural-urban areas. It was drawn by cluster random sampling from three institutions of Solan and Shimla (H.P.). Thinking Style Inventory By Sternberg and Wagner (1992) was employed to assess thinking styles. Data analysis through t' tests of independent samples yielded that there was significant effect of sex, course type and area on certain thinking styles of tertiary students.
Interchangeability of Themis1 and Themis2 in Thymocyte Development Reveals Two Related Proteins with Conserved Molecular Function

Themis1, a recently identified T cell protein, has a critical function in the generation of mature CD4+CD8− and CD4−CD8+ (CD4 and CD8 single-positive [SP]) thymocytes and T cells. Although Themis1 has been shown to bind to the adaptor proteins LAT and Grb2, previous studies have yielded conflicting results regarding whether thymocytes from Themis1−/− mice exhibit TCR-mediated signaling defects. In this study, we demonstrate that, in the absence of Themis1, TCR-mediated signaling is selectively impaired in CD4 SP and CD8 SP thymocytes but is not affected in CD4+CD8+ double-positive thymocytes despite high expression of Themis1 in double-positive thymocytes. Like Themis1, Themis2, a related member of the Themis family, which is expressed in B cells and macrophages, contains two conserved cysteine-based domains, a proline-rich region, and a nuclear localization signal. To determine whether Themis1 and Themis2 can perform similar functions in vivo, we analyzed T cell development and TCR-mediated signaling in Themis1−/− mice reconstituted with either Themis1 or Themis2 transgenes. Notably, Themis1 and Themis2 exhibited the same potential to restore T cell development and TCR-mediated signaling in Themis1−/− mice. Both proteins were tyrosine phosphorylated and were recruited within Grb2 signaling complexes to LAT following TCR engagement. These results suggest that conserved molecular features of the Themis1 and Themis2 proteins are important for their biological activity and predict that Themis1 and Themis2 may perform similar functions in T and B cells, respectively.
Using nonhuman primates to model HIV transmission

Purpose of reviewOne of the major obstacles in fully understanding HIV transmission comes from the impracticality of studying transmission in humans. Because of this encumbrance, the early phases of HIV transmission and systemic dissemination are poorly understood. In order to fully comprehend these critical steps in HIV infection, animal models must be devised to accurately reflect HIV's mode of action. This review seeks to highlight the essential nature of modelling HIV transmission in nonhuman primates (NHPs). Recent findingsRecently, it was discovered that HIV infection is established in newly infected recipients by a single or few transmitted/founder variants. This has reshaped how animal modelling is conducted with researchers currently recapitulating a physiologically relevant, low-titre infection. Pertinent animal models have been established for the most common routes of infection, including rectal, vaginal and penile transmission; models for intravenous and oral transmission are still in developmental stages. SummaryThese limited dose models now accurately reflect HIV transmission in humans and provide a realistic experimental platform for vaccine development and other intervention strategies that can be used to inform vaccine development in humans. Using information obtained in NHP and human trials, it is conceivable to envision effective prevention modalities in the near future.
Title Outcome Predictors of Pediatric Extracorporeal Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Permalink

Extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) allows clinicians to potentially rescue pediatric patients unresponsive to traditional cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Clinical and laboratory variables predictive of survival to hospital discharge are beginning to emerge. In this retrospective, historical cohort case series, clinical, and laboratory data from 31 pediatric patients (\21 years of age) receiving ECPR from March 2000 to April 2006 at our university-affiliated, tertiary-care children’s hospital were statistically analyzed in an attempt to identify variables predictive of survival to hospital discharge. Seven patients survived to hospital discharge (23%), and 24 patients died. Survival was independent of gender, age, and CPR duration. ECPR survival was, however, associated with a lower pre-ECPR phosphorus concentration (P = 0.002) and a lower pre-ECPR creatinine concentration (P = 0.05). A classification tree analysis, using, in part, a pre-ECPR phosphorus concentration threshold and a CPR ABG base excess concentration threshold, yielded a 96% nominal accuracy of predicting survival to hospital discharge or death. A large, multicenter, prospective cohort study aimed at validating these predictive variables is needed to guide appropriate ECPR patient selection. This study reveals the potential survival benefit of ECPR for pediatric patients, regardless of CPR duration prior to ECPR cannulation.
Analysis on ECG Data Compression Using Wavelet Transform Technique

Although digital storage media is not expensive and computational power has exponentially increased in past few years, the possibility of electrocardiogram (ECG) compression still attracts the attention, due to the huge amount of data that has to be stored and transmitted. ECG compression methods can be classified into two categories; direct method and transform method. A wide range of compression techniques were based on different transformation techniques. In this work, transform based signal compression is proposed. This method is used to exploit the redundancy in the signal. Wavelet based compression is evaluated to find an optimal compression strategy for ECG data compression. The algorithm for the one-dimensional case is modified and it is applied to compress ECG data. A wavelet ECG data code based on Run-length encoding compression algorithm is proposed in this research. Wavelet based compression algorithms for one-dimensional signals are presented along with the results of compression ECG data. Firstly, ECG signals are decomposed by discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The decomposed signals are compressed using thresholding and run-length encoding. Global and local thresholding are employed in the research. Different types of wavelets such as daubechies, haar, coiflets and symlets are applied for decomposition. Finally the compressed signal is reconstructed. Different types of wavelets are applied and their performances are evaluated in terms of compression ratio (CR), percent root mean square difference (PRD). Compression using HAAR wavelet and local thresholding are found to be optimal in terms of compression ratio.
Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Some Pentacyclic Lupane Triterpenoid Esters

IULIA PINZARU1, CRISTINA TRANDAFIRESCU1, ZOLTAN SZABADAI1, MARIUS MIOC1, IONUT LEDETI1, DORINA CORICOVAC1, SORINA CIURLEA1*, ROXANA MARIA GHIULAI1, ZORIN CRAINICEANU2, GEORGETA SIMU1 1Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Victor Babes”, 2 Eftimie Murgu Sq. , 300041, Timisoara, Romania 2Faculty of Medicine, University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Victor Babes”, 2Eftimie Murgu Sq. , 300041, Timisoara, Romania
Collaborative Search Log Sanitization: Toward Differential Privacy and Boosted Utility

Severe privacy leakage in the AOL search log incident has attracted considerable worldwide attention. However, all the web users' daily search intents and behavior are collected in such data, which can be invaluable for researchers, data analysts and law enforcement personnel to conduct social behavior study [14], criminal investigation [5] and epidemics detection [10]. Thus, an important and challenging research problem is how to sanitize search logs with strong privacy guarantee and sufficiently retained utility. Existing approaches in search log sanitization are capable of only protecting the privacy under a rigorous standard [24] or maintaining good output utility [25] . To the best of our knowledge, there is little work that has perfectly resolved such tradeoff in the context of search logs, meeting a high standard of both requirements. In this paper, we propose a sanitization framework to tackle the above issue in a distributed manner. More specifically, our framework enables different parties to collaboratively generate search logs with boosted utility while satisfying Differential Privacy. In this scenario, two privacy-preserving objectives arise: first, the collaborative sanitization should satisfy differential privacy; second, the collaborative parties cannot learn any private information from each other. We present an efficient protocol -Collaborative sEarch Log Sanitization (CELS) to meet both privacy requirements. Besides security/privacy and cost analysis, we demonstrate the utility and efficiency of our approach with real data sets.