Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disease-Specific Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Modeling: Insights into the Pathophysiology of Valosin Containing Protein (VCP) Disease

Valosin Containing Protein (VCP) disease is an autosomal dominant disorder caused by mutations in the VCP gene and is associated with progressive muscle weakness and atrophy. Affected individuals exhibit striking scapular winging due to shoulder girdle weakness. Currently, there are no treatments available and patients are dying early from cardiac and respiratory failure, typically in their 40’s and 50’s. The generation of disease-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) offers a novel platform to investigate mechanisms of VCP disease and potential treatments similar to other disease models including Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Best Disease (BD), and type I juvenile diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Herein, we report the generation and characterization of a human iPSC line to examine the cellular and molecular processes underlying VCP disease. The VCP iPSC line expressed specific pluripotency markers NANOG, SSEA4, OCT-4, TRA-1-81 and exhibited characteristic morphology. We differentiated the human iPSC cell line into a neuronal lineage confirmed by TUJ-1 staining, a neuronal class III β-tubulin marker. We detected higher protein expression levels of ubiquitin (Ub), TAR DNA binding protein-43 (TDP-43), Light Chain 3-I/II (LC3), p62/SQSTM1, and optineurin (OPN) in the iPSC neural lineage compared to the control neural line. Collectively, our results demonstrate that patient-specific iPSC technology may provide useful disease modeling for understanding the complex mechanisms and for novel treatments of VCP and related disorders.
'Arranged' Marriage, Co-Residence and Female Schooling: A Model with Evidence from India

We model the consequences of parental control over choice of wives for sons, for parental incentives to educate daughters, when the marriage market exhibits competitive dowry payments and altruistic but paternalistic parents benefit from having married sons live with them. By choosing uneducated brides, some parents can prevent costly household partition. Paternalistic self-interest consequently generates low levels of female schooling in the steady state equilibrium. State payments to parents for educating daughters fail to raise female schooling levels. Policies (such as housing subsidies) that promote nuclear families, interventions against early marriages, and state support to couples who marry against parental wishes, are however all likely to improve female schooling. We offer evidence from India consistent with our theoretical analysis.
Factors Contributing to Student Retention in Online Learning and Recommended Strategies for Improvement: A Systematic Literature Review

Aim/Purpose: This systematic literature review investigates the underlying factors that influence the gap between the popularity of online learning and its completion rate. The review scope within this paper includes an observation of possible causal aspects within the non-ideal completion rates in online learning environments and an identification of recommended strategies to increase retention rates. Background: While online learning is increasingly popular, and the number of online students is steadily growing, student retention rates are significantly lower than those in the traditional environment. Despite the multitude of studies, many institutions are still searching for solutions for this matter. Methodology: A systematic literature review was conducted on 40 studies published between 2010 and 2018. We established a set of criteria to guide the selection of eligible articles including topic relevance (aligned with the research questions), empirical studies, and publication time frame. Further steps were performed through a major database searching, abstract screening, full-text analysis, and synthesis process. Contribution: This study adds to expanding literature regarding student retention and strategies in online learning environments within the higher education setting. Findings: Revealed factors include institutional support, the level difficulty of the programs, promotion of a sense of belonging, facilitation of learning, course design, student behavioral characteristics, and demographic variables along with other personal variables. The recommended strategies identified for improving student retention are early interventions, at-all-times supports for students, effective communication, support for faculty teaching online classes, high-quality instructional feedback and strategies, guidance to foster positive behavioral characteristics, and collaboration among stakeholders to support online students. Recommendations for Practitioners: Since factors within the open systems of online learning are interrelated, we recommend a collective effort from multiple stakeholders when addressing retention issues in online learning. Recommendation for Researchers: We recommend that fellow scholars consider focusing on each influential factor and recommendation in regard to student retention in online learning environments as synthesized in this study. Findings will further enrich the literature on student retention in online learning environments. Future Research: Future research may investigate various data-mining and analytics techniques pertaining to detection and prediction of at-risk students, the efficacy of student support and faculty support programs, and ways to encourage struggling students to adopt effective strategies that potentially engender positive learning behaviors.
Enabling telecare assessment with pervasive sensing and Android OS smartphone

Measurements of vital signs and behavioral patterns can be translated into accurate predictors of health risk, even at an early stage, and can be combined with alarm-triggering systems in order to initiate the appropriate actions. The paper presents the design and implementation of a mobile TeleCare system based on a smart wrist-worn device with a non-obtrusive sensing module for cardiac, respiratory and motor activity, a microcontroller platform for primary processing of the data from the sensors and wireless communication using Bluetooth protocol. Advanced data processing, data management, human computing interfacing and data communication are implemented using a smartphone running Android operating system (OS). A Web based health TeleCare information system was implemented being characterized by the following functionalities: data synchronization with the smartphone, advanced data processing and data presentation assuring a comprehensive data analysis and evidence based health management as well as for remote assistance of the patients by doctors and nurses. Experimental results associated with vital signs sensing and the software implementation are included in the paper.
Potent mutagens have positive and negative effects on viral fitness of Reovirus in vitro

Altman, Jennie, "Potent mutagens have positive and negative effects on viral fitness of Reovirus in vitro" (2013). Honors Theses. Paper 22. Due to the inherently error-prone nature of RNA replication, mutations to genomes of RNA viruses occur frequently and accumulate. We hypothesized that RNA versions of nucleoside analogues that increase mutation rates in DNA could cause increases in the mutation rate of a model RNA virus, Reovirus, and decrease the fitness of the virus in vitro due to the accumulation of deleterious mutations. After conducting multiple passages of Reovirus in mouse L929 cells in the presence of these potential RNA mutagens in four separate trials, there were not only virus samples with the expected decreased infectivity, but surprisingly, samples with marked increases in infectivity. The life histories of these Reoviruses under mutagenesis may clarify likely consequences of mutagenic antiviral therapy.
An Exploration of Group and Ring Signatures

Group signatures are a modern cryptographic primitive that allow a member of a specic group (e.g., \the White House sta" or \employees of Corporation X that publish press releases") to sign messages on behalf of the group as a whole; i.e., without revealing their individual identities and thus providing them with a certain degree of anonymity and privacy. They have quite a number of potential applications (and in fact have been incorporated into the latest version of the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM), and are still an active area of research. In this work, we explore group signatures and the many variations that have been considered since their original
Morphology and histochemistry of the glandular trichomes of Lippia scaberrima (Verbenaceae).

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Lippia scaberrima, an aromatic indigenous South African plant, with medicinal application, potentially has economic value. The production of essential oil from this plant has not been optimized, and this study of the chemico-morphological characteristics was aimed at determining the location of oil production within the plant. Furthermore, the locality of other secondary metabolites important in medicinal applications needed to be ascertained. This information would be useful in deciding the protocol required for isolation of such compounds. METHODS The morphology of the glandular trichomes was investigated using a combination of scanning electron and light microscopy. Concurrently, the chemical content was studied by applying various chemical reagents and fluorescence microscopy. KEY RESULTS Three types of trichomes were distinguished on the material investigated. Large, bulbous peltate glands containing compounds of terpenoid nature are probably the main site of essential oil accumulation. Small glands were found to be both peltate and capitate and fluorescent stain indicated the possible presence of phenolic compounds. The third type was a slender tapered seta with an ornamented surface and uniseriate base, and evidently secretory in nature. CONCLUSIONS This study linking the chemical content and morphology of the glandular trichomes of L. scaberrima has contributed to the knowledge and understanding of secretory structures of Lippia spp. in general.
Self-identity disclosure in TV Fandom : Analysing the comments posted by Spanish female fans and community managers

textabstractDigital age brings to television fiction viewers a variety of spaces where they can disclose their self-identity and emotions generated by the texts consumed. Methodology. This article analyses 7,849 comments posted by female fans and community managers on 122 sites (forums and social networks) dedicated to the Spanish TV fiction. The 22,301 items generated from the comments analysed explore the emotions aroused by television fiction, such as joy, enthusiasm, sadness, anger, disappointment and nostalgia. Conclusions and discussion. The research confirms the potential of TV fiction to encourage self-reflection on the self-identity of fans. It also identifies forums as the platforms that encourage deeper debates about TV series, despite the popularity of social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Finally, community managers’ comments, which focus on the promotion of TV programmes, disregard the strengthening of the feeling of collective identity.
Practice Guidelines for Acute Pain Management in the Perioperative Setting: An Updated Report by the American Society of Anesthesiologists Task Force on Acute Pain Management

P RACTICE Guidelines are systematically developed recommendations that assist the practitioner and patient in making decisions about health care. These recommendations may be adopted, modified, or rejected according to clinical needs and constraints and are not intended to replace local institutional policies. In addition, Practice Guidelines developed by the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) are not intended as standards or absolute requirements, and their use cannot guarantee any specific outcome. Practice Guidelines are subject to revision as warranted by the evolution of medical knowledge, technology, and practice. They provide basic recommendations that are supported by a synthesis and analysis of
Tactile Sensing: New Directions, New Challenges

Over the past three decades, tactile sensing has developed into a sophisticated technology. There has been a longstanding and widely held expectation that tactile sensors would have a major impact on industrial robotics and automation. However, this promise has not been realized, and few, if any, tactile sensors can be found in factory-based applications. Has this technology failed to deliver its expected benefits to robotics applications, or have other factors influenced the development of the field? In this paper, I report on the state of the art and show that tactile sensing has undergone a major change of direction. I revisit the original predictions and expectations, examine the implications of recent reviews, and show how the field has altered course. From current activities and recent trends, I determine the nature of new application areas and pressing developments that hold much promise for the future. There is evidence that tactile sensing will soon play a major role in unstructured environments, particularly in areas such as medicine and surgery, health-care and service robotics, and automated natural product handling.
Disproportional Decrease in Office Blood Pressure Compared With 24-Hour Ambulatory Blood Pressure With Antihypertensive Treatment: Dependency on Pretreatment Blood Pressure Levels

The long-term relationship between 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) and office BP in patients on therapy is not well documented. From a registry we included all patients in whom antihypertensive therapy needed to be uptitrated. Drug treatment included the direct renin inhibitor aliskiren or an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor/angiotensin receptor blocker or drugs not blocking the renin–angiotensin system, alone or on top of an existing drug regimen. In all patients, office BP and 24-hour ABP were obtained at baseline and after 1 year with validated devices. In the study population of 2722 patients, there was a good correlation between the change in office BP and 24-hour ABP (systolic: r=0.39; P<0.001; diastolic: r=0.34; P<0.001). However, the numeric decrease in office BP did not correspond to the decrease in ABP in a 1:1 fashion, for example, a decrease of 10, 20, and 30 mm Hg corresponded to a decrease of ≈7.2, 10.5, and 13.9 mm Hg in systolic ABP, respectively. The disproportionally greater decrease in systolic office BP compared with ABP was dependent on the level of the pretreatment BP, which was consistently higher for office BP than ABP. The white coat effect (difference between office BP and ABP) was on average 10/5 mm Hg lower 1 year after intensifying treatment and the magnitude of that was also dependent on pretreatment BP. There was a disproportionally greater decrease in systolic office BP than in ABP, which for both office BP and ABP seemed to depend on the pretreatment BP level.
Street-level Geolocation from Natural Language Descriptions

In this article, we describe the TEGUS system for mining geospatial path data from natural language descriptions. TEGUS uses natural language processing and geospa- tial databases to recover path coordinates from user descriptions of paths at street level. We also describe the PURSUIT Corpus — an annotated corpus of geospatial path descriptions in spoken natural language. PURSUIT includes the spoken path descriptions along with a syn- chronized GPS track of the path actually taken. Finally, we describe the performance of several variations of TEGUS (based on graph reasoning, particle filtering, and dialog) on PURSUIT. RESUME. Dans cet article, nous decrivons le systeme TEGUS destine a la fouille de donnees sur des trajectoires geospatiales, a partir de descriptions en langage naturel. TEGUS utilise des techniques de Traitement Automatique des Langues et des bases de donnees geospatiales pour retrouver les coordonnees de trajectoires a partir des descriptions faites par des utilisa- teurs de leur chemins au niveau des rues. Nous decrivons egalement le corpus PURSUIT, un corpus annote de descriptions de chemins geospatiaux en langage parle. PURSUIT inclut les descriptions de chemins avec la trace GPS du chemin effectivement suivi. Enfin, nous decrivons les performances de plusieurs variations de TEGUS (avec raisonnement sur des graphes, filtre de particules, gestion de dialogue) sur le corpus PURSUIT.
Relating Production and Perception of L2 Tone

Research on production/perception relationship in a second language (L2) has focused chiefly on segmental contrasts. In the domain of lexical tone, studies of how production and perception are related at the level of the individual are rare. This paper considers the relation between production and perception of L2 tone in speakers of Kiên Giang Khmer, a non-tonal language, who are also fluent to varying degrees in Southern Vietnamese, a language with 5 lexical tones. In addition to directly comparing L2 to L1 performance in tonal production and perception, we explore how perception might be related to the internal organization of a speaker’s own production system by comparing distances between f0 curves to accuracy in a speeded AX discrimination task. Relative to native speakers of Southern Vietnamese, we found considerable individual variation among speakers of Kiên Giang Khmer with L2 knowledge of Vietnamese in the degree to which they approximated Vietnamese tonal targets. Production accuracy was most strongly related to age, while discrimination performance correlated best with education. In addition, we observed a weak correlation between the acoustic distance of a Khmer speaker’s production of tone T to the native Vietnamese production of T, and the ability to discriminate tone T from other tones. However, speakers who acoustically separated two tones in their own productions were also more accurate at discriminating those tones in perception, regardless of how well those productions approximated native speaker targets. In Wayland, R. (ed.), Second language speech learning: Theoretical and empirical progress, chapter 9 (pp. 249-272). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108886901.010
Upper limits on gravitational-wave signals based on loudest events

Searches for gravitational-wave bursts have often focused on the loudest event(s) in searching for detections and in determining upper limits on astrophysical populations. Typical upper limits have been reported on event rates and event amplitudes which can then be translated into constraints on astrophysical populations. We describe the mathematical construction of such upper limits.
An improved interference mitigation scheme based on interference subspace alignment

This paper proposes an improved interference sub-space alignment scheme for the K-user interference channels, which combines the conventional interference subspace alignment algorithm and the power allocation algorithm between data streams. More specifically, in the proposed scheme a power allocation scheme is developed to mitigate the leftover interference from the conventional interference subspace alignment algorithm, achieving a performance improvement in terms of sum rate. The advantage of the proposed scheme is confirmed by computer simulation results.
Tertiary Structural and Functional Analyses of a Viroid RNA Motif by Isostericity Matrix and Mutagenesis Reveal Its Essential Role in Replication

ABSTRACT RNA-templated RNA replication is essential for viral or viroid infection, as well as for regulation of cellular gene expression. Specific RNA motifs likely regulate various aspects of this replication. Viroids of the Pospiviroidae family, as represented by the Potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd), replicate in the nucleus by utilizing DNA-dependent RNA polymerase II. We investigated the role of the loop E (sarcin/ricin) motif of the PSTVd genomic RNA in replication. A tertiary-structural model of this motif, inferred by comparative sequence analysis and comparison with nuclear magnetic resonance and X-ray crystal structures of loop E motifs in other RNAs, is presented in which core non-Watson-Crick base pairs are precisely specified. Isostericity matrix analysis of these base pairs showed that the model accounts for the reported natural sequence variations and viable experimental mutations in loop E motifs of PSTVd and other viroids. Furthermore, isostericity matrix analysis allowed us to design disruptive, as well as compensatory, mutations of PSTVd loop E. Functional analyses of such mutants by in vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrated that loop E structural integrity is crucial for replication, specifically during transcription. Our results suggest that the PSTVd loop E motif exists and functions in vivo and provide loss-of-function genetic evidence for the essential role of a viroid RNA three-dimensional motif in rolling-circle replication. The use of isostericity matrix analysis of non-Watson-Crick base pairing to rationalize mutagenesis of tertiary motifs and systematic in vitro and in vivo functional assays of mutants offers a novel, comprehensive approach to elucidate the tertiary-structure-function relationships for RNA motifs of general biological significance.
A Texture-Based Image Processing Approach for the Description of Human Oocyte Cytoplasm

The purpose of this paper is to develop a diagnostic tool that can analyze light microscope images of human oocytes and derive a description of the oocyte cytoplasm that is useful for quality assessment in assisted insemination. The proposed approach includes three main phases: 1) segmentation; 2) feature extraction; and 3) clustering. In the segmentation phase, a region of interest inside the cytoplasm is extracted through morphological operators and the Hough transform. In the second phase, regions that result from segmentation are processed through a multiresolution texture analysis to extract a set of features that describe different levels of cytoplasm granularity. To this aim, we evaluate some statistics in the Haar wavelet transform domain. Finally, the extracted features are used to cluster oocytes according to different levels of granularity. This approach is made by fuzzy clustering. Experimental results on a collection of microscope images of oocytes are reported to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In addition, comparison with alternative methods for feature extraction and clustering is performed.