Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Runx2, A multifunctional transcription factor in skeletal development

The identification of Runx2 (runt‐related protein 2) function has greatly advanced the understanding of skeletal development over the last 5 years. Runx2 is regulated transcriptionally and post‐translationally through the activity of many identified factors, although, the physiological significance of each remains to be demonstrated. The interaction of Runx2 with other transcription factors and cofactors has been shown to be important in Runx2‐dependent gene regulation. Runx2 plays important roles in multiple steps of skeletal development. Runx2 determines the lineage of osteoblasts from multipotent mesenchymal cells, enhances osteoblast differentiation at an early stage, and inhibits osteoblast differentiation at a late stage. Runx2 plays crucial roles in chondrocyte maturation and in the specification of cartilage phenotypes. Furthermore, Runx2 is involved in vascular invasion into cartilage and osteoclastogenesis. Therefore, the determination of Runx2 function and the investigation of the cascades of Runx2‐dependent gene regulation are important in the elucidation of skeletal biology. J. Cell. Biochem. 87: 1–8, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
EBDA: An Effective Bottom-up Discretization Algorithm for Continuous Attributes

Discretization algorithms have played an important role in many areas such as artificial intelligence, data mining and machine learning. In this paper, we propose an effective bottom-up discretization algorithm, namely EBDA. Firstly, we present a novel merging criterion which not only considers the effect of variance on degrees of freedom in the two merged intervals but also the effect of variance on interval difference and data distribution. In addition, we present a new stopping criterion with the aim to control the degree of misclassification and to merge intervals as many as possible. Detailed analysis shows that this algorithm can bring higher accuracy to the discretization process. Empirical experiments on 16 real data sets show that our proposed algorithm generates a better discretization scheme which significantly improves the accuracy of classification than existing algorithms by running C4.5.
The determinants of the step frequency in running, trotting and hopping in man and other vertebrates.

1. During each step of running, trotting or hopping part of the gravitational and kinetic energy of the body is absorbed and successively restored by the muscles as in an elastic rebound. In this study we analysed the vertical motion of the centre of gravity of the body during this rebound and defined the relationship between the apparent natural frequency of the bouncing system and the step frequency at the different speeds. 2. The step period and the vertical oscillation of the centre of gravity during the step were divided into two parts: a part taking place when the vertical force exerted on the ground is greater than body weight (lower part of the oscillation) and a part taking place when this force is smaller than body weight (upper part of the oscillation). This analysis was made on running humans and birds; trotting dogs, monkeys and rams; and hopping kangaroos and springhares. 3. During trotting and low‐speed running the rebound is symmetric, i.e. the duration and the amplitude of the lower part of the vertical oscillation of the centre of gravity are about equal to those of the upper part. In this case, the step frequency equals the frequency of the bouncing system. 4. At high speeds of running and in hopping the rebound is asymmetric, i.e. the duration and the amplitude of the upper part of the oscillation are greater than those of the lower part, and the step frequency is lower than the frequency of the system. 5. The asymmetry is due to a relative increase in the vertical push. At a given speed, the asymmetric bounce requires a greater power to maintain the motion of the centre of gravity of the body, Wext, than the symmetric bounce. A reduction of the push would decrease Wext but the resulting greater step frequency would increase the power required to accelerate the limbs relative to the centre of gravity, Wint. It is concluded that the asymmetric rebound is adopted in order to minimize the total power, Wext + Wint.
Sensor Network Security: Elliptic Curve Cryptography on SunSPOTs

Security is critical for wireless sensor networks. While several security mechanisms and protocols have been developed in the context of the Internet, many new challenges arise due to the characteristics of power-constrained wireless sensor networks. In this work, we focus on the Javaprogrammable SunSPOT device and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). We present an analysis of run times and energy consumption. For our studies, we have developed our own implementation based on published pseudocode and Sun's BigInteger class. Our point multiplication on elliptic curves in prime finite fields is faster than that of Bouncy Castle, an open source ECC implementation. We investigate the impact of various parameters including key size, nonadjacent form, and prime versus binary fields. We believe such investigations to be an important step towards addressing the challenges of energy efficient security for Java-based sensor networks.
CD of six different conformational rearrangements of poly[d(A-G).d(C-T)] induced by low pH.

On the basis of circular dichroism (CD) data, we have now identified six different conformational states (other than the duplex) of poly[d(A-G). d(C-T)] at pH values between 8 and 2.5 (at 0.01M Na+; 20 degrees C). Three of these structural rearrangements were observed as the pH was lowered from 8 to 2.5, and three additional rearrangements were observed as the pH was raised from 2.5 back to neutral pH. The major components of the six conformational states were defined using appropriate combinations of the CD spectra of the duplex, triplex, and denatured forms of this polymer, as well as the CD spectra of the individual single strands and their respective acid-induced self-complexes. Our results show that the acid-induced rearrangements of poly[d(A-G). d(C-T)] include not only the poly[d(C+-T). d(A-G). d(C-T)] triplex, but also include the poly[d(C-T)] loop-out structure and a self-complexed form of the poly[d(A-G)] strand that is pH-dependent.
The patterns of care outcome study for cancer of the uterine cervix results of the second national practice survey

This report summarizes the outcome results of the Patterns of Care Study (PCS) of cancer of the uterine cervix from 565 patients treated in 1978. the 5‐year survival with no evidence of disease was: Stage I, 74%; Stage II, 56%; and Stage III, 33%. the 5‐year local in‐field failure rate was: Stage I, 12%; Stage II, 27%; and Stage III, 51%. Extent of parametrial involvement, unilateral versus bilateral, may be important in determining survival and local failure. the four‐year actuarial survival was 58% for unilateral involvement versus 47% for bilateral (P = 0.06), and the local failure rate was 32% for unilateral versus 45% for bilateral (P < 0.05). When analyzed by stage, patients with Stage IIb disease with unilateral parametrial involvement showed a trend toward improved survival and decreased local failure compared with those with bilateral Stage IIb cancers (P = 0.1). the use of intracavitary irradiation significantly improved survival and reduced local failures. Furthermore, the number of intracavitary applications was important. When two or more intracavitary applications were used compared with one application, local in‐field failure was significantly reduced, 29% versus 17% at 4 years (P < 0.001), and four‐year survival was improved, 60% versus 73% (P = 0.01). the four‐year actuarial rate of major complications depended on the stage: Stage I, 8%; Stage II, 15%; and Stage III, 13%. There was a statistically significant increase in major complications in patients undergoing laparotomy for staging versus no laparotomy 23% versus 11% at 4 years (P < 0.01) and a trend toward increased major complications in patients who were thin or had prior abdominal surgery. This study confirmed the stage‐dependent outcome of treatment of cancer of the uterine cervix with radiation and indicated that further division of Stage IIb to indicate prognostic significance of unilateral or bilateral parametrial involvement may be warranted. This study also confirmed the importance of intracavitary radiation in optimizing control established by the 1973 PCS. It further suggests that where possible, two intracavitary insertions may yield better results than one insertion.
Nonverbal Communication of Affective Information

With the advent of clinical interest in family systems theories (Jackson, 1957; Bateson, 1961; Haley, 1962; Sonne, 1967; and Speer, 1970), communication theory (Bateson et al., 1956; Jackson and Weakland, 1959; and Satir, 1964), and cybernetic theories of the family (Watzlawick et al., 1967; and Brody, 1967), there has been an increasing interest in the feedback processes whereby one person conveys information about the state of himself to another person within that social system. Any effort to view any group within the framework of a systems or cybernetic model quickly leads to an examination of feedback processes-the communication of information from one component of a system to another component, which causes the latter to modify some aspect of the operations of the system. Satir ( 1964) and Jourard (1964), among others, have spelled out the functions and the importance of adequate feedback within interpersonal systems. Following the systems-cybernetic model, feedback here refers to the communication of any kind of information about the state of or &dquo;what’s going on inside&dquo; a personcomponent of a social system. This information may be
COGNITIVE REALITY MONITORING IN ADULTHOOD

This experiment assessed adult age differences for cognitive reality monitoring (attributing a memory to either an internal or external source) as a function of whether the terminal position in a sentence was completed with an externally presented or internally generated word. Older adults (mean age – 72.3 years) made slightly more accurate attributions than younger adults (mean age — 18.5 years) even though the younger adults accurately recognized a higher proportion of target words than older adults. Subjects were able to discriminate either type of target from distractor, but when an attribution error was made, it was made in favor of external origin. In this experiment, older adults' common complaints about memory source confusions seem without firm basis. Results suggest that the manner in which younger and older adults process and discriminate between sources of information is invariant across the life span.
Using Wizard-of-Oz simulations to bootstrap Reinforcement - Learning based dialog management systems

This paper describes a method for “bootstrapping” a Reinforcement Learningbased dialog manager using a Wizard-ofOz trial. The state space and action set are discovered through the annotation, and an initial policy is generated using a Supervised Learning algorithm. The method is tested and shown to create an initial policy which performs significantly better and with less effort than a handcrafted policy, and can be generated using a small number of dialogs.
Tissue regeneration as next-generation therapy for COPD – potential applications

COPD is a major cause of chronic morbidity and mortality worldwide, and there is a need to develop more effective therapeutic strategies to replace specialized treatment such as lung transplantation. Recent studies suggest that recognition of apoptotic lung epithelial or endothelial cells may result in growth factors to stimulate cell replacement, and defects in these processes may contribute to the pathogenesis of COPD. Furthermore, recent animal and human studies have revealed that tissue-specific stem cells and bone marrow-derived cells contribute to lung tissue regeneration and protection, and thus administration of exogenous stem/progenitor cells or humoral factors responsible for activation of endogenous stem/progenitor cells may be a potent next-generation therapy for COPD.
Impact of Atrial Fibrillation on Healthcare Utilization in the Community: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study

Background Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with increased risk of hospitalization. Little is known about the impact of AF on utilization of noninpatient health care or about sex or race differences in AF‐related utilization. We examined rates of inpatient and outpatient utilization by AF status in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study. Methods and Results Participants with incident AF enrolled in fee‐for‐service Medicare for at least 12 continuous months between 1991 and 2009 (n=932) were matched on age, sex, race and field center with up to 3 participants without AF (n=2729). Healthcare utilization was ascertained from Medicare claims and classified by primary International Classification of Diseases, ninth revision code. The average annual numbers of days hospitalized were 13.2 (95% CI 11.6 to 15.0) and 2.8 (95% CI 2.5 to 3.1) for those with and without AF, respectively. The corresponding numbers of annual outpatient claims were 53.3 (95% CI 50.5 to 56.3) and 22.9 (95% CI 22.1 to 23.8) for those with and without AF, respectively. Most utilization among AF patients was attributable to non‐AF conditions. The adjusted rate ratio for annual days hospitalized for other cardiovascular disease–related reasons was 4.58 (95% CI: 3.41 to 6.16) for those with AF versus those without AF. The association between AF and healthcare utilization was similar among men and women and among white and black participants. Conclusions Participants with AF had considerably greater healthcare utilization, and the difference in utilization for other cardiovascular disease–related reasons was substantial. In addition to rate or rhythm treatment, AF management should focus on the accompanying cardiovascular comorbidities.
Camera-based vehicle localization at intersections using detailed digital maps

In recent years, a special research focus of the automotive industry was set on vehicle positioning. Though the accuracy of current simple positioning systems is sufficient for navigation devices, future technologies will be much more demanding. Examples for this future technologies are cooperative systems or enhanced map based assistance systems. All positioning system which will be elaborated always have to fulfill the requirements accuracy, reliability, and affordability. This time, there is a wide variety of approaches to reach the goal of higher accuracy without using expensive high-performance sensors. The algorithm presented in this paper utilizes image landmarks in combination with a low-cost Global Navigation Satellite System receiver, a detailed digital map, and vehicle odometry. In contrast to other approaches in the literature, which usually try to extract features from camera images and match those features with map information, the algorithm presented in this work moves this matching step from feature level to sensor data level. This means that map data is used to create an image of map features as the camera would sense it. The evaluation of this image prediction utilizes the coherency value, which is calculated from the structure tensor. By predicting a whole image, there is no more the need for a probabilistic description of extracted landmarks, i.e. it is also no decision about the existence of particular features necessary. Furthermore, any geometry including area landmarks can be used as landmarks. The paper describes a way to model area landmarks for efficient transformation to the predicted image. In the presented algorithm, the likelihood models used for the evaluation of the predicted coherency image are derived from real, manually labeled data. We show promising results of a test drive in an area with complex intersections. Those results are compared to ground truth data.
Response to “Comment on ‘In Vitro Effects of Bisphenol A β-D-Glucuronide (BPA-G) on Adipogenesis in Human and Murine Preadipocytes’”

Our paper was designed to investigate the possibility that the main metabolite of bisphenol A (BPA), BPA β-D-glucuronide (BPA-G), has biological activity distinct from estrogenic activity. Our results clearly show there are effects at the cellular level in human and mouse preadipocytes starting at a concentration of 0.01 µM and peaking at 10 µM (see Figures 1 and 3). The concentrations used in this study are often used in vitro for evaluation of estrogenic activity (Matthews et al. 2001), and concentrations in the range of the ones where we saw significant effects in human preadipocytes (0.05 µM; see Figure 3) were reported in human samples. The measurement 11.5 µM was a typo and should be 11.5 nM. We apologize for the error, which has been corrected in the final article. We agree that concentrations of plasma, not urine, are to be considered. However, the methodology to accurately assess BPA-G in serum or other bodily fluids is still developing (Kosarac et al. 2012), and to measure the intracellular concentrations is beyond our laboratory’s capabilities. Nevertheless, this paper was not designed to answer the question of whether urine concentrations are correlated to plasma or serum concentrations, but rather to assess the basic question of whether BPA-G has biological activity in our in vitro models. The answer was yes and at nanomolar concentration in human preadipocytes. However, it is extremely difficult to correlate in vitro concentrations to the in vivo situation. We feel, though, that Gayrard et al. have seriously misinterpreted our article and its message. We did not find, nor did we claim, that BPA-G has estrogenic activity. As a matter of fact, we could not show direct estrogenic activity in ERE-luciferase assays when the cells were treated with BPA-G. That was the case in Cos-7 cells (see Figure 4) and 3T3L1 cells (data not shown) after 48 hours of BPA-G treatment. However when the same cells, in the same experiment, were treated with free BPA, we could readily detect estrogenic activity at concentrations as low as 10 nM. If the conjugation had been reversed intracellularly, one would have expected to see some estrogenic activity when the cells were treated with BPA-G; however, we detected no such activity in any of the cells. In addition, even if the cells and the adipose tissue could deconjugate BPA-G into free BPA, the implication is the same—that BPA-G has biological activity.
Nonlinear state prediction by separation approach for continuous-discrete stochastic systems

The paper deals with a filter design for nonlinear continuous stochastic systems with discrete-time measurements. The general recursive solution is given by the Fokker-Planck equation (FPE) and by the Bayesian rule. The stress is laid on the computation of the predictive conditional probability density function from the FPE. The solution of the FPE and its integration into the estimation algorithm is the cornerstone for the whole recursive computation. A new usable numerical scheme for the FPE is designed. In the scheme, the separation technique based on the upwind volume method and the finite difference method for hyperbolic and parabolic part of the FPE is used. It is supposed that separation of the FPE and choice of a suitable numerical method for each part can achieve better estimation quality comparing to application of a single numerical method to the unseparated FPE. The approach is illustrated in some numerical examples.
Towards a Semantics of X-Bar Theory

Grammar encodes meaning. X-Bar Theory captures an important grammatical generalization. What is missing is a semantics of X-Bar Theory. This paper is a step towards providing such a semantics. In the process of providing a semantics for X-Bar Theory, certain modifications to X-Bar Theory are proposed to bring it into closer alignment with that semantics. Referential and relational meaning are two key dimensions of meaning that get grammatically encoded. It is argued here that the relationship between a specifier and a head is essentially referential in nature—with the specifier determining the referential status of the overall expression. It is likewise argued that the relationship between a head and its complement(s) is essentially relational, and that only relational heads (e.g. verbs, prepositions, adjectives, but not nouns) take complements. Grammar Encodes Meaning I take it as axiomatic that grammar encodes meaning. This position is consistent with Langacker’s claim (1987, p. 12) that “Grammar is simply the structuring and symbolization of semantic content. ” I also take seriously Jackendoff’s Grammatical Constraint (1983, pp. 13-14) “. one should prefer a semantic theory that explains otherwise arbitrary generalizations about the syntax and the lexicon.a theory’s deviations from efficient encoding must be vigorously justified, for what appears to be an irregular relationship between syntax and semantics may turn out merely to be a bad theory of one or the other. ” X-Bar Theory is an important element of a larger theory of Universal Grammar. The basic claim is that humans are born with linguistic knowledge like that captured in X-Bar Theory. Heretofore, X-Bar Theory has been investigated in largely structural terms with little consideration of its underlying semantic basis. This paper is an attempt to provide a semantic basis for X-Bar Theory and to bring syntactic theory into closer alignment with semantic theory. Two key dimensions of meaning that get grammatically encoded are referential meaning and relational meaning. As will be shown, X-Bar Theory, with some modification, can be explicated in terms of the encoding of these two dimensions of meaning. In particular, it is argued here that the relationship between a specifier and a head is essentially referential in nature—with the specifier determining the referential status of the overall expression. It is likewise argued that the relationship between a head and its complement(s) is essentially relational, and that only relational heads (e.g. verbs, prepositions, adjectives, but not nouns) take complements.
Role Models and Psychosocial Outcomes Among African American Adolescents

The authors examined who 679 African American ninth-graders from urban environments look up to and how their role model choices relate to substance use, delinquency, academic engagement, and psychological well-being. Male adolescents without male role models and females identifying brothers as role models reported the most problem behavior. Adolescents with paternal male role models had the most positive school outcomes, no differences were found in psychological well-being among adolescents in terms of their male role models. The presence of female role models, in contrast, was associated with psychological well-being such that adolescents with maternal role models reported the least distress. Adolescents without female role models had the lowest grades and most negative school attitudes. These findings remained when parental support, family conflict, and father presence in the household were controlled, suggesting role model effects are separate from parenting effects. Our findings support and expand on the notion that having someone to look up to is critical for African American youths’ development.