Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Growth factors induce nuclear translocation of MAP kinases (p42mapk and p44mapk) but not of their activator MAP kinase kinase (p45mapkk) in fibroblasts

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (p42mapk and p44mapk) are serine/threonine kinases that are activated rapidly in cells stimulated with various extracellular signals. This activation is mediated via MAP kinase kinase (p45mapkk), a dual specificity kinase which phosphorylates two key regulatory threonine and tyrosine residues of MAP kinases. We reported previously that the persistent phase of MAP kinase activation is essential for mitogenically stimulated cells to pass the "restriction point" of the cell cycle. Here, using specific polyclonal antibodies and transfection of epitope-tagged recombinant MAP kinases we demonstrate that these signaling protein kinases undergo distinct spatio-temporal localization in growth factor-stimulated cells. In G0-arrested hamster fibroblasts the activator p45mapkk and MAP kinases (p42mapk, p44mapk) are mainly cytoplasmic. Subsequent to mitogenic stimulation by serum or alpha-thrombin both MAP kinase isoforms translocate into the nucleus. This translocation is rapid (seen in 15 min), persistent (at least during the entire G1 period up to 6 h), reversible (by removal of the mitogenic stimulus) and apparently 'coupled' to the mitogenic potential; it does not occur in response to nonmitogenic agents such as alpha-thrombin-receptor synthetic peptides and phorbol esters that fail to activate MAP kinases persistently. When p42mapk and p44mapk are expressed stably at high levels, they are found in the nucleus of resting cells; this nuclear localization is also apparent with kinase-deficient mutants (p44mapk T192A or Y194F). In marked contrast the p45mapkk activator remains cytoplasmic even during prolonged growth factor stimulation and even after high expression levels achieved by transfection. We propose that the rapid and persistent nuclear transfer of p42mapk and p44mapk during the entire G0-G1 period is crucial for the function of these kinases in mediating the growth response.
An Analysis of Factors Used in Search Engine Ranking

This paper investigates the influence of different page features on the ranking of search engine results. We use Google (via its API) as our testbed and analyze the result rankings for several queries of different categories using statistical methods. We reformulate the problem of learning the underlying, hidden scores as a binary classification problem. To this problem we then apply both linear and non-linear methods. In all cases, we split the data into a training set and a test set to obtain a meaningful, unbiased estimator for the quality of our predictor. Although our results clearly show that the scoring function cannot be approximated well using only the observed features, we do obtain many interesting insights along the way and discuss ways of obtaining a better estimate and main limitations in trying to do so.
Sustaining surveillance: Evaluating syndromic surveillance in the Pacific

Prior to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) had agreed to develop a standardised, simple syndromic surveillance system to ensure compliance with International Health Regulations requirements (rapid outbreak detection, information sharing and response to outbreaks). In October 2010, the new system was introduced and over the next 12 months implemented in 20 of 22 PICTs. An evaluation was conducted to identify strengths and weaknesses of the system, ease of use and possible points for improvement. An in-country quantitative and qualitative evaluation in five PICTs identified that the most important determinants of the system's success were: simplicity of the system; support from all levels of government; clearly defined roles and responsibilities; feedback to those who collect the data; harmonisation of case definitions; integration of data collection tools into existing health information systems; and availability of clinical and epidemiological advice from external agencies such as the World Health Organization and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community. Regional reporting of alerts, outbreaks and outbreak updates has dramatically increased since implementation of the system. This syndromic system will assist PICTs to detect future influenza pandemics and other emerging infectious diseases and to rapidly contain outbreaks in the Pacific.
Territories of Concern: Vacant Housing and Perceived Disorder on Three Suburban Blocks

Social context affects the way disorder is understood, but research is inconclusive about how it does so. Survey analysis highlights the role of neighborhood level conditions, while ethnographic work points toward processes of collective identity construction and out–group stigmatization that typically take place at a smaller scale. This study adopts a comparative approach, investigating reactions to increases in vacant housing on three blocks that varied in median income, racial composition, and other contextual variables of interest to scholars of disorder. Drawing upon 69 semi–structured interviews and qualitative fieldwork undertaken in 2010 and 2011, I identify two types of interpretive frames that emerge from block–level social interaction and influence perceptions of disorder. By directing attention toward specific areas of the block, active neighbors and institutions construct territories of concern that shape definitions of social and physical disorder. By attributing disorder to a morally problematic out–group, residents on all blocks construct disorderly collectivities that frame modes of civic response in terms of collective identity and culpability. Territorios de Preocupación: Viviendas Vacantes y Percepción de Desorden en Tres Manzanas Suburbanas (Mike Owen Benediktsson) Resumen La investigación es concluyente sobre cómo el contexto social afecta la forma en que se entiende el desorden. Investigación en base a encuestas resalta el rol del nivel de las condiciones del barrio, mientras que el trabajo etnográfico se dirige hacia procesos de construcción de identidad colectiva y la estigmatización de parte de grupos externos los que típicamente ocurren a una escala menor. Este estudio adopta una aproximación comparativa, investigando reacciones a incrementos en casas vacantes en tres manzanas que varían en ingreso medio, composición racial y otras variables contextuales de interés para los investigadores del desorden. En base a 69 entrevistas semi–estructuradas y trabajo cualitativo llevados a cabo en el 2010 y 2011, identifico dos tipos de marcos interpretativos que emergen de interacciones sociales a nivel manzana y que influyen en percepciones del desorden. Al dirigir la atención hacia áreas específicas de la manzana, los vecinos e instituciones construyen territorios de preocupación que forman definiciones de desorden social y físico. Al atribuir el desorden a un grupo externo moralmente problemático, los residentes construyen colectividades desordenadas que enmarcan modos de respuesta cívica.
Cerebral Metabolic Differences Associated with Cognitive Impairment in Parkinson’s Disease

Purpose To characterize cerebral glucose metabolism associated with different cognitive states in Parkinson’s disease (PD) using 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET). Methods Three groups of patients were recruited in this study including PD patients with dementia (PDD; n = 10), with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI; n = 20), and with no cognitive impairment (PD-NC; n = 30). The groups were matched for age, sex, education, disease duration, motor disability, levodopa equivalent dose and Geriatric Depression Rating Scale (GDS) score. All subjects underwent a FDG-PET study. Maps of regional metabolism in the three groups were compared using statistical parametric mapping (SPM5). Results PD-MCI patients exhibited limited areas of hypometabolism in the frontal, temporal and parahippocampal gyrus compared with the PD-NC patients (p < 0.01). PDD patients had bilateral areas of hypometabolism in the frontal and posterior parietal-occipital lobes compared with PD-MCI patients (p < 0.01), and exhibited greater metabolic reductions in comparison with PD-NC patients (p < 0.01). Conclusions Compared with PD-NC patients, hypometabolism was much higher in the PDD patients than in PD-MCI patients, mainly in the posterior cortical areas. The result might suggest an association between posterior cortical hypometabolism and more severe cognitive impairment. PD-MCI might be important for early targeted therapeutic intervention and disease modification.
Simplified Pan-species Real-time PCR-based Detection of Plasmodium Spp. in Blood Smear

Background: We aimed to quicken and simplify the detection of Plasmodium in blood samples by developing and testing a pan-Plasmodium real-time PCR for accurate screening of individuals suspected of malaria. Methods: A single primer/probe set for pan-species Plasmodium-specific real time PCR targeting a conserved region of the small subunit 18S ribosomal DNA was designed and evaluated for rapid diagnosis and screening of malaria infections using dried blood smears. FTA cards were used for rapid and simple DNA extraction. Results: The primers and probes showed a positive response with the DNA extracted from bloods infected with P. falciparum and P. vivax but not with DNA extracted from various smears from uninfected blood samples. Seven positive cases positive by both microscopy and nested PCR were found among 280 blood samples taken from in South and Southeast Iran. Five samples were identified as positive for P. vivax and two as positive for P. falciparum. All positive samples were positive by real-time PCR. Furthermore, all 38-blood samples positive by microscopy were positive by real-time PCR. No microscopy-negative samples were positive by real-time PCR. Conclusion: By using a simple FTA card for DNA extraction and by application of the real-time PCR developed in this study, sensitivity similar to nested-PCR and microscopy was achieved. This format simplifies the detection of Plasmodium in large numbers of samples.
Design-ing the Dialogue Component in a Speech Transla-tion System-a Corpus Based Approach

New and challenging requirements arise for the dialogue processing component in the speech-to-speech translation system Verbmobilcomponent. It has to cope with both unexpected and vague input as well as gaps in the input. The design is based on a large corpus of transliterated dialogues which provide the data to start from. A careful analysis of this corpus and of the requirements from other components of verbmobil resulted in a hybrid approach consisting of both knowledge based as well as statistic based processing. In this paper, we present the design process and the resulting architecture. Using the corpus, we made various experiments to evaluate the rst design of the component. the framework of the verbmobil Project under Grant 01IV101K/1. The responsibility for the contents of this study lies with the authors.
Learning Skills from Human Demonstrations Initial Attempt on a Pouring Task

Many robots are designed for use in domestic environments where robots will be engaged in household chores. The robots need to learn ways to do the household chores that humans are now doing. We are taking a learning from demonstration (LfD) approach to this problem [1]. In terms of the household chores, a number of tasks are developed so far; for example, bringing a beer bottle from a refrigerator to a human, making pancakes [2], and folding towels [3]. However, a key issue for robots to do household chores is how to treat different versions of each task. Consider an opening task. There are a number of ways to open a container: rotating a cap on a plastic bottle, pulling a hinge cap of a ketchup bottle, pulling a poptab of a beer can, tearing a bag of potato chips, and so on. In addition, when opening a tight jar, we will use a different way to open it, like holding a cap with a wet towel. We call these methods skills. Learning these skills is essential for robots to fully handle tasks. In this research, we treat a pouring task to study skill learning; its purpose is to move material. Humans use many skills to pour, such as shaking a bottle to pour viscous liquid like ketchup, tapping a bottle to pour a little amount of coffee powder, squeezing a shampoo bottle, and pushing a soap pump. Thus, the pouring task is a good example for robots to learn skills. The goal of this research is making a general pouring behavior model from human demonstrations with which the robot can pour a wide variety of materials from a wide variety of containers. This problem is decomposed into three sub-problems:
Differences between Dorsal and Ventral Striatum in Drd1a Dopamine Receptor Coupling of Dopamine- and cAMP-Regulated Phosphoprotein-32 to Activation of Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase

Dopamine receptor signaling exhibits prominent plasticity that is important for the pathogenesis of both addictive and movement disorders. Psychoactive stimulants that activate the dopamine D1 receptor (Drd1a) induce the rapid phosphorylation and activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) in neurons of the nucleus accumbens and ventral striatum. This response is known to be dependent on the phosphatase inhibitor dopamine- and cAMP-regulated phosphoprotein-32 (DARPP-32) and appears critical for the sensitization of Drd1a responses that contributes to addiction. Loss of dopamine input to the striatum, as in models of Parkinson's disease (PD), also results in a sensitization of responses to dopamine agonists that is manifest by increased activation of ERK1/2 in the dorsal striatum. Here, we test whether DARPP-32 is required for sensitization of Drd1a responses in a PD model. In the normal dorsal striatum, there is minimal Drd1a-mediated activation of ERK1/2; however, in the PD model there is robust Drd1a-mediated activation of ERK1/2. In both wild-type and DARPP-32 knock-out mice, Drd1a robustly induces pERK1/2 throughout the dopamine-depleted striatum. These findings indicate that Drd1a sensitization relevant for PD occurs by a novel mechanism that does not require DARPP-32.
Evaluation of Selection Bias in an Internet-based Study of Pregnancy Planners

Selection bias is a potential concern in all epidemiologic studies, but it is usually difficult to assess. Recently, concerns have been raised that internet-based prospective cohort studies may be particularly prone to selection bias. Although use of the internet is efficient and facilitates recruitment of subjects that are otherwise difficult to enroll, any compromise in internal validity would be of great concern. Few studies have evaluated selection bias in internet-based prospective cohort studies. Using data from the Danish Medical Birth Registry from 2008 to 2012, we compared six well-known perinatal associations (e.g., smoking and birth weight) in an internet-based preconception cohort (Snart Gravid n = 4,801) with the total population of singleton live births in the registry (n = 239,791). We used log-binomial models to estimate risk ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for each association. We found that most results in both populations were very similar. For example, maternal obesity was associated with an increased risk of delivering a macrosomic infant in Snart Gravid (RR = 1.5; 95% CI: 1.2, 1.7) and the total population (RR = 1.5; 95% CI: 1.45, 1.53), and maternal smoking of >10 cigarettes per day was associated with a higher risk of low birth weight (RR = 2.7; 95% CI: 1.2, 5.9 vs. RR = 2.9; 95% CI: 2.6, 3.1) in Snart Gravid and the total population, respectively. We cannot be certain that our results would apply to other associations or different populations. Nevertheless, our results suggest that recruitment of reproductive aged women via the internet may be no more prone to selection bias than traditional methods of recruitment.
New placement prediction and mitigation techniques for local routing congestion

Local routing congestion is becoming increasingly important as complex design rules make local pin access the bottleneck for modern designs and routers. Since congestion analysis based on global routing does not model these effects, routability-driven placement and physical synthesis fail to alleviate local congestion. This work models routing congestion at the placement level in order to apply local congestion mitigation. We propose a local congestion metric that computes a “routing-difficulty” score for every cell in the design library. To disperse local congestion, we apply a suite of detailed placement techniques called MILOR (Movement, cell Inflation and Legalization, and Optimization within a Row). Experimental results show that our techniques can significantly improve routing quality on real industry designs from 65, 45, and 32 nanometer technologies.
Pelvic floor trauma following vaginal delivery

Purpose of review Recent years have seen a steady increase in the information available regarding pelvic floor trauma in childbirth. A review of this information is timely in view of the ongoing discussion concerning elective caesarean section. Recent findings In addition to older evidence regarding pudendal nerve injury, it has recently been shown that inferior aspects of the levator ani and fascial pelvic organ supports such as the rectovaginal septum can be disrupted in childbirth. Such trauma is associated with pelvic organ prolapse, bowel dysfunction, and urinary incontinence. Elective caesarean section seems to have a limited protective effect that appears to weaken with time. Older age at first delivery may be associated with a higher likelihood of trauma and subsequent symptoms. Summary Pelvic floor trauma is a reality, not a myth. It is currently not possible, however, to advise patients as to whether avoidance of potential intrapartum pelvic floor trauma is worth the risk, cost, and effort of elective caesarean section. In some women this may well be the case. The identification of women at high risk for delivery-related pelvic floor trauma should be a priority for future research in this field.
Abstract— Extracting Clinical Information from One Single

measurement represents a step forward in the assessment of the respiratory muscle function. This attracting idea entails the reduction of the instrumentation and fosters to develop new medical integrated technologies. We present the use of the fixed sample entropy (fSampEn) as a more direct method to non-invasively derive the breathing activity from the diaphragm electromyographic (EMGdi) signal, and thus to extract the respiratory rate, an important vital sign which is cumbersome and time-consuming to be measured by clinicians. fSampEn is a method to evaluate the EMGdi activity that is less sensitive to the cardiac activity (ECG) and its application has proven to be useful to evaluate the load of the respiratory muscles. The behavior of the proposed method was tested in signals from two subjects that performed an inspiratory load protocol, which consists of increments in the inspiratory mouth pressure (P mouth). Two respiratory signals were derived and compared to the P mouth signal: the ECG-derived respiration (EDR) signal from the lead-I configuration, and the EMG-derived respiration (EMGDR) signal by applying the fSampEn method over the EMGdi signal. The similitude and the lag between signals were calculated through the cross-correlation between each derived respiratory signal and the P mouth. The EMGDR signal showed higher correlation and lower lag values (≥ 0.91 and ≤ 0.70 s, respectively) than the EDR signal (≥ 0.83 and ≤ 0.99 s, respectively). Additionally, the respiratory rate was estimated with the P mouth , EDR and EMGDR signals showing very similar values. The results from this preliminary work suggest that the fSampEn method can be used to derive the respiration waveform from the respiratory muscle electrical activity.
Primary Virus Envelope Cross-Reactivity of the Broadening Neutralizing Antibody Response during Early Chronic Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection

ABSTRACT To test the hypothesis that changing neutralizing antibody responses against human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) during chronic infection were a response to emergence of neutralization escape mutants, we cloned expressed and characterized envelope clones from patients in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS). Pseudotyped HIV-1 envelope clones obtained from differing time points were assessed for sensitivity to neutralization by using sera from different times from the same and different patients. Clones from early and late time points during chronic infection had similar neutralization sensitivity, and neutralizing antibody responses cross-reacted with early, late, and heterologous envelopes. The potential for broadly effective HIV-1 immunization is supported.
A model for fluid stiction of quickly separating circular plates

Fluid stiction is a force which is created by the average pressure difference between a fluid-filled, narrow, quickly opening gap and the surrounding pressure. It plays a negative role in compressor valve technology and in fast switching valves, since it hinders an immediate response of the valves to a changing driving force situation. In this paper, the axisymmetric fluid stiction problem is studied by analytical mathematical models and experiments performed on a specific test rig. The study shows that the stiction force in narrow gaps is dominated by the viscous flow as described by the Reynolds equation for lubricating gaps and by cavitation which occurs in a centre region if the gap opening speed exceeds a critical value. The cavitation zone first extends and then shrinks and, finally, gives rise to complex oscillation phenomena due to the impact of the fluid when the cavitation zone collapses. It was found experimentally that fluids can create negative pressure for very short time. Measures to limit the stiction force are a large initial gap height or additional fluid supply channels from the surrounding to the gap.
Dynamic Periodic Event-Triggered Control for Linear Systems

In event-triggered control systems, events are typically generated when a static function of the output (or state) of the system exceeds a given threshold. Recently, event-generators have been proposed that generate events based on an additional dynamic variable, with dynamics that depend on the output of the system. It is shown that these dynamic event-generators are able to guarantee the same performance as their static counterparts, while typically generating significantly fewer events. However, all dynamic event-generators available in literature require continuous measuring of the output of the plant, which is difficult to realize on digital platforms. In this paper, we propose new dynamic event-generators for linear systems, which require only periodic sampling of the output, and are therefore easy to implement on digital platforms. Based on hybrid modelling techniques combined with constructive designs of Lyapunov/storage functions for the resulting hybrid models, it is shown that these (dynamic periodic) event-generators lead to closed-loop systems which are globally exponentially stable (GES) with a guaranteed decay rate and MC L2-stable with a guaranteed L2-gain. The benefits of these new event-generators are also demonstrated via a numerical example.