Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transcription Factor NFAT5 Promotes Migration and Invasion of Rheumatoid Synoviocytes via Coagulation Factor III and CCL2

Fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLSs) play a key role in the progression of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as a primary component of invasive hypertrophied pannus. FLSs of RA patients (RA-FLSs) exhibit cancer-like features, including promigratory and proinvasive activities that largely contribute to joint cartilage and bone destruction. In this study, we hypothesized that the NF of activated T cell 5 (NFAT5), a transcription factor involving tumor invasiveness, would control the migration and invasion of RA-FLSs. Analyses of transcriptomes demonstrated the significant involvement of NFAT5 in locomotion of RA-FLSs and that tissue factor (TF; also known as coagulation factor III) and CCL2 were the major downstream target genes of NFAT5 involving FLS migration and invasion. In cultured RA-FLSs, IL-1β and TGF-β increased TF and CCL2 expression by upregulating NFAT5 expression via p38 MAPK. Functional assays demonstrated that NFAT5- or TF-deficient RA-FLSs displayed decreased lamellipodia formation, cell migration, and invasion under IL-1β– or TGF-β–stimulated conditions. Conversely, factor VIIa, a specific activator of TF, increased migration of RA-FLSs, which was blocked by NFAT5 knockdown. Recombinant CCL2 partially restored the decrease in migration and invasion of NFAT5-deficient RA-FLSs stimulated with IL-1β. NFAT5-knockout mouse FLSs also showed decreased expressions of TF and CCL2 and reduced cell migration. Moreover, KRN2, a specific inhibitor of NFAT5, suppressed migration of FLSs stimulated with TGF-β. Conclusively, to our knowledge, this is the first study to provide evidence of a functional link between osmoprotective NFAT5 and TF in the migration and invasion of RA-FLSs and supports a role for NFAT5 blockade in the treatment of RA.
Study of Impossible Differential Cryptanalysis on Block Ciphers

—Impossible Differential Cryptanalysis (IDC) is a powerful attack that has been successfully applied to several block ciphers in encryption schemes such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). To explore and create new attack variants using IDC, a simple 48-bit Substitution Permutation Network (SPN) cipher called SmallCipher was created, with the novel method of using double distinguishers for the IDC attack. This new attack achieves a time complexity of 2 29 . 587 chosen plaintexts, as compared to 2 29 . 733 6-round encryptions with a single-distinguisher. It is theorised that more signiﬁcant improvements in optimal time complexity would be observed for 96-bit SmallCipher, between 2 64 . 001 and 2 90 . 830 for the single-distinguisher attack, and between 2 54 . 438 and 2 90 . 830 for the double-distinguisher attack. Furthermore, the double- distinguisher attack is theorised to converge more quickly to the optimal time complexity as the number of plaintext-ciphertext pairs used increases. Our methods of searching for 6-round distinguishers presented in this paper and newly discovered attack variants can be extended to other SPN ciphers such as AES.
Quantitative analysis of hemodynamic variables of the aorta by 4 D flow MRI

Objective: Hemodynamic parameters are critical to perform a proper diagnosis. However, due to the large number of variables that can be obtained, overall analysis may represent a complex task. To facilitate this, we propose to create a model for classifying different hemodynamic variables belonging to both healthy individuals and pathological patients. For this purpose, we employed data mining techniques to identify relationships among various aortic hemodynamic parameters obtained through multi-dimensional (4D flow) MR imaging. Method: A 4D-flow sequence of whole heart and great vessels was acquired using MRI in 19 healthy volunteers and 2 patients (one with aortic coarctation and one with repaired coarctation of the aorta). Retrospectively, data was reformatted along the aorta; three MRI acquisitions were performed for volunteers and 30 sequences for each patient. In each slice the aorta was segmented and various parameters were quantified: area, maximum velocity, minimum velocity, flow and volume, with following values being calculated for last four parameters: maximum, average, standard deviation, kurtosis, bias, proportion of time to reach the maximum value, among others. A total of 26 variables for each acquisition were obtained. In order to classify data, the CART Technique (Classification and Regression Trees) was applied. To validate the model, two extra projections were generated per each volunteer and 20 slices per each patient. Results: By using only 7 variables, the CART technique allows discrimination between images performed either on volunteers or patients with an error rate of 14.1%, a sensitivity of 82.5%, and a specificity of 89.4%. Conclusions: 4D-flow MR imaging provides a wealth of hemodynamic data that can be difficult to analyze. In this paper we demonstrate that by using data mining techniques it is possible to classify images from relevant hemodynamic parameters and their relationships in order to support the diagnosis of cardiovascular disorders.
Mitochondrial Delivery of Phenol Substructure Triggers Mitochondrial Depolarization and Apoptosis of Cancer Cells

Antitumor chemotherapy remains one of the most important challenge of the medicinal chemistry. Emerging research in chemotherapy is focused on exploiting the biochemical differences between cancer cell and normal cell metabolism in order to reduce the side effects and increase antitumor therapy efficacy. The higher mitochondrial transmembrane potential of cancer cells compared to not-transformed cells favors the intra-mitochondrial accumulation of cationic drugs in the former. This feature could be exploited to allow selective delivery of antineoplastic drugs to the cancer cells. In this work we designed and synthetized phenol derivatives joined to the triphenylphosphonium (TPP) cation, a well-known vector for mitochondrial targeting. Two designed phenol TPP-derivatives 1 and 2 show remarkable cytotoxic activity against different cancer cell lines, but were less toxic against normal cells. The differential cytotoxicity relied on the higher mitochondrial biogenesis and oxidative-phosphorylation metabolism of the former. By reducing mitochondrial mass and energetic metabolism, and increasing at the same time the levels of intra-mitochondrial reactive oxygen species, phenol TPP-derivatives 1 and 2 induced mitochondria depolarization and triggered a caspase 9/3-mediated apoptosis, limited to cancer cells. This work provides the rationale to further develop phenol TPP-derivatives targeting mitochondria as new and selective anticancer tools.
Comparison of population genetic structures of the plant Silene stellata and its obligate pollinating seed predator moth Hadena ectypa

Background and Aims Population genetic structures and patterns of gene flow of interacting species provide important insights into the spatial scale of their interactions and the potential for local co-adaptation. We analysed the genetic structures of the plant Silene stellata and the nocturnal moth Hadena ectypa. Hadena ectypa acts as one of the important pollinators of S. stellata as well as being an obligate seed parasite on the plant. Although H. ectypa provides a substantial pollination service to S. stellata, this system is largely considered parasitic due to the severe seed predation by the Hadena larvae. Previous research on this system has found variable interaction outcomes across space, indicating the potential for a geographical selection mosaic. Methods Using 11 microsatellite markers for S. stellata and nine markers for H. ectypa, we analysed the population genetic structure and the patterns and intensity of gene flow within and among three local populations in the Appalachians. Key Results We found no spatial genetic structure in the moth populations, while significant differentiation was detected among the local plant populations. Additionally, we observed that gene flow rates among H. ectypa populations were more uniform and that the mean gene flow rate in H. ectypa was twice as large as that in S. stellata. Conclusions Our results suggest that although the moths move frequently among populations, long-distance pollen carryover only happens occasionally. The difference in gene flow rates between S. stellata and H. ectypa could prevent strict local co-adaptation. Furthermore, higher gene flow rates in H. ectypa could also increase resistance of the local S. stellata populations to the parasitic effect of H. ectypa and therefore help to stabilize the Silene-Hadena interaction dynamics.
SyntNN at SemEval-2018 Task 2: is Syntax Useful for Emoji Prediction? Embedding Syntactic Trees in Multi Layer Perceptrons

In this paper, we present SyntNN as a way to include traditional syntactic models in multilayer neural networks used in the task of Semeval Task 2 of emoji prediction. The model builds on the distributed tree embedder also known as distributed tree kernel. Initial results are extremely encouraging but additional analysis is needed to overcome the problem of overfitting.
Determining Critical Care Nurses ' Alarm Fatigue : Developing Alarm Management Guideline

Alarm fatigue occurs when care providers become overwhelmed or overloaded by excessive numbers of alarms leading to sensory overburden in such a way that important critical alarms are ignored or missed. Aim: The present study aims to determine if critical care nurses are suffering from alarm fatigue or not and to develop alarm management guideline. Setting: the study was conducted in all Critical Care Units in 4 hospitals located in El Behira Governorate, namely; Damanhour General Chest hospital, Abu-Hummus General Hospital, Kafr el Dawar General hospital and Damanhour National Medical Institute. Subjects: The study subjects included all nurses (n= 150) working in critical care units of the previously mentioned hospitals and accepted to participate in the study. Tools: the researchers developed a self-administered questionnaire which was designed to assess the nurses’ alarm fatigue and how they manage different types of alarms and if there are any alarm management guidelines in their hospitals. Results: alarm fatigue dimension received the highest mean percent score (66.92%) while the lowest mean percent score (33.47%) was given for the alarm management guideline. As for the alarm fatigue dimension, Damanhour national medical institute’s nurses received the highest mean score (69.90±10.56) and the lowest (61.67 ± 11.18) was for Abu Hummus General hospital. (p=0.002). Also, nurses’ years of experience differed in Alarm fatigue dimension significantly (p= 0.006) where nurses with less than 1 year of experience scored the highest mean percent (75.44 ± 8.44) while the lowest mean percent (55.56 ± 6.36) was for nurses having 10 or more years of experience. Recommendations:the current study recommends to develop alarm management guidelines to help nurses deal with the recurrent nuisance alarms and to increase nurses' awareness to the presence of alarm fatigue while dealing with it with the minimum losses.
MEASURING THE EFFECTS OF POLLINATORS AND HERBIVORES: EVIDENCE FOR NON-ADDITIVITY IN A PERENNIAL HERB

Using an experimental approach, this study addresses the following two questions for the perennial herb Paeonia broteroi(Paeoniaceae) at a location in southeastern Spain. (1) What are the relative magnitudes of the effects of pollinators and herbivores (invertebrates and vertebrates feeding on flowers and developing fruits) on maternal fe- cundity (total seed production per plant)? (2) Are the effects of pollinators and herbivores on fecundity additive, or is there some significant interaction between them? A two-factor (''Pollinators'' and ''Herbivores,'' each with two levels, ''present'' and ''excluded'') ex- perimental design was used, with individual plants being treated as experimental units and maternal fecundity as the response variable. On average, the effects of pollinators and herbivores were of opposite sign and roughly similar absolute magnitude ( ;7.5 seeds per plant), thus approximately canceling each other. A significant interaction (non-additivity) between factors did exist, with plants exposed to pollinators experiencing a disproportion- ately higher incidence of herbivores than those from which pollinators had been excluded. This was mainly due to mammals browsing only on the larger fruits from flowers that had been exposed to pollinators. Only in the absence of herbivores did pollinators account for a significant amount of between-plant variance in maternal fecundity. It is concluded that the interaction between pollinators and herbivores will lead to variable, herbivore-dependent ''opportunity for selection'' (sensu Arnold and Wade 1984) on P. broteroi by its pollinators. Regional variation in herbivore incidence experienced by P. broteroi populations will pre- sumably generate local variation in the degree of adaptedness of the plant to its pollinators.
Araştırma Makalesi Visual Perception Skills Among Children of Different Socioeconomic Status

Hatice ABAOĞLU, Babak KASHEFIMEHR, Gülfer KATIRCIBAŞI, Esra, AKI PT, Ph.D., Faculty of Health Sciences, Occupational Therapy Department, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey OT, Ph.D., Faculty of Rehabilitation, Occupational Therapy Department, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran. PT, MSc, Ministry of Health Ankara Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey Ph.D. Prof, Faculty of Health Sciences, Occupational Therapy Department, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.
Astraea: A Decentralized Blockchain Oracle

The public blockchain was originally conceived to process monetary transactions in a peer-to-peer network while preventing double-spending. It has since been extended to numerous other applications including execution of programs that exist on the blockchain called “smart contracts. ” Smart contracts have a major limitation, namely they only operate on data that is on the blockchain. Trusted entities called oracles attest to external data in order to bring it onto the blockchain but they do so without the robust security guarantees that blockchains generally provide. This has the potential to turn oracles into centralized points-of-failure. To address this concern, this paper introduces Astraea, a decentralized oracle based on a voting game that decides the truth or falsity of propositions. Players fall into two roles: voters and certifiers. Voters play a low-risk/low-reward role that is resistant to adversarial manipulation while certifiers play a high-risk/high-reward role so they are required to play with a high degree of accuracy. This paper also presents a formal analysis of the parameters behind the system to measure the probability of an adversary with bounded funds being able to successfully manipulate the oracle's decision, that shows that the same parameters can be set to make manipulation arbitrarily difficult-a desirable feature for the system. Further, this analysis demonstrates that under those conditions a Nash equilibrium exists where all rational players are forced to behave honestly.
Improving Topic Model Visualization via Multi-Dimensional Scaling and Cliques

We propose representing high-dimensional data in 2dimensions using cliques mapped onto several planes. Currently, Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) projects every point onto an R-space medium. However, this may not produce the most ideal result some relations between points may exhibit higher stress than others. We propose utilizing cliques to extract a complete subset of points into separate facets in order to convey the most accurate distance representation as possible therefore achieving low stress in each instance.
Effects of visual noise on depth perception in landscape images

The phenomenon that the response of a nonlinear system to a weak input signal is optimized by the presence of a nonzero level of noise that occurs in the visual part of our brain. In this study, our purpose is to reveal whether depth perception of photographs increases with visual noise. We conducted an experiment to evaluate the depth perception of photographs with or without visual noise. We prepared two types of visual noises with three levels of amplitude. Results show that stimuli with visual noise were more frequently selected than those without noise, while the most effective noise depended on the photograph. It was suggested that depth perception was improved by appropriate noise of appropriate strength. The most effective noise might depend on the dominant depth clues in the photographs.
Glycolate Induces Redox Tuning Of Photosystem II in Vivo: Study of a Photorespiration Mutant1

Glycolate accumulated in a photorespiration mutant replaces the bicarbonate on the acceptor-side iron of PSII, lowering the yield of singlet oxygen by redox tuning the primary quinone. Bicarbonate removal from the nonheme iron at the acceptor side of photosystem II (PSII) was shown recently to shift the midpoint potential of the primary quinone acceptor QA to a more positive potential and lowers the yield of singlet oxygen (1O2) production. The presence of QA− results in weaker binding of bicarbonate, suggesting a redox-based regulatory and protective mechanism where loss of bicarbonate or exchange of bicarbonate by other small carboxylic acids may protect PSII against 1O2 in vivo under photorespiratory conditions. Here, we compared the properties of QA in the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) photorespiration mutant deficient in peroxisomal HYDROXYPYRUVATE REDUCTASE1 (hpr1-1), which accumulates glycolate in leaves, with the wild type. Photosynthetic electron transport was affected in the mutant, and chlorophyll fluorescence showed slower electron transport between QA and QB in the mutant. Glycolate induced an increase in the temperature maximum of thermoluminescence emission, indicating a shift of the midpoint potential of QA to a more positive value. The yield of 1O2 production was lowered in thylakoid membranes isolated from hpr1-1 compared with the wild type, consistent with a higher potential of QA/QA−. In addition, electron donation to photosystem I was affected in hpr1-1 at higher light intensities, consistent with diminished electron transfer out of PSII. This study indicates that replacement of bicarbonate at the nonheme iron by a small carboxylate anion occurs in plants in vivo. These findings suggested that replacement of the bicarbonate on the nonheme iron by glycolate may represent a regulatory mechanism that protects PSII against photooxidative stress under low-CO2 conditions.
INGEOTEC at SemEval-2018 Task 1: EvoMSA and μTC for Sentiment Analysis

This paper describes our participation in Affective Tweets task for emotional intensity and sentiment intensity subtasks for English, Spanish, and Arabic languages. We used two approaches, μTC and EvoMSA. The first one is a generic text categorization and regression system; and the second one, a two-stage architecture for Sentiment Analysis. Both approaches are multilingual and domain independent.
Unifying and Testing Models of Sexual Selection

Sexual reproduction is associated with the evolution of anisogamy and sperm-producing males and egg-laying females. The ensuing competition for mates has led to sexual selection and coevolution of the sexes. Mathematical models are extensively used to test the plausibility of different complicated scenarios for the evolution of sexual traits. Unfortunately, the diversity of models is now itself equally bewildering. Here we clarify some of the current debate by reviewing evolutionary explanations for the relationship between anisogamy, potential reproductive rates, parental care, sex roles, and mate choice. We review the benefits females might gain by mating with certain males rather than others. We also consider other forms of selection that can make females mate nonrandomly. One way empiricists can contribute to resolving theoretical disputes is to quantify the cost of expressing mating biases in the appropriate life-history currency.
Toxicity, silver accumulation and metallothionein induction in freshwater rainbow trout during exposure to different silver salts

Static-renewal 168-h toxicity tests of silver nitrate (AgNO{sub 3}), silver chloride (AgCl{sub n}), and silver thiosulfate (Ag(S{sub 2}O{sub 3}){sub n}) with juvenile rainbow trout (Oncorhyncus mykiss) were performed by standard methods. Because of low solubility of AgCl(s), bioassays for AgCl{sub n} were performed in two separate ways. In one test series, AgCl(s) was added to freshwater and in another, AgCl{sub n}(aq) was generated by adding AgNO{sub 3} to freshwater supplemented with 50 mM NaCl. Concentrations of Ag and metallothionein (MT) were analyzed in gills and livers of fish that survived the exposures. Although Ag added as AgNO{sub 3} was found to be highly toxic to rainbow trout (168-h LC50 = 9.1 {micro}g Ag L{sup {minus}1}), the toxicities of the other Ag salts were low. The 168-h LC50 for Ag(S{sub 2}O{sub 3}){sub n} was 137,000 {micro}g Ag L{sup {minus}1} and no mortality was observed in AgCl{sub n} (100,000 {micro}g Ag L{sup {minus}1}). Exposure to AgNO{sub 3}, Ag(S{sub 2}O{sub 3}){sub n}, or AgCl{sub n} caused accumulation of Ag and induction of MT. Highest Ag levels were found in livers of trout exposed to 164,000 {micro}g Ag L{sup {minus}1} as Ag(S{sub 2}O{sub 3}){sub n}. In these fish, the hepatic Ag concentration was increasedmore » 335 times from the control value. The MT levels in gills and liver increased with the water Ag concentration and the highest level of MT was found in liver of fish exposed to Ag(S{sub 2}O{sub 3}){sub n}. « less
Stackelberg Game Approaches for Anti-Jamming Defence in Wireless Networks

This article investigates the anti-jamming communications problem in wireless networks from a Stackelberg game perspective. By exploring and analyzing the inherent characteristics of the anti-jamming problem, we present and discuss some technical challenges and fundamental requirements to address them. To be specific, the adversarial characteristic, incomplete information constraints, dynamics, uncertainty, dense deployment, and heterogeneous feature bring technical challenges to anti-jamming communications in wireless networks. Then, for the purpose of improving system performance, four requirements for anti-jamming communications are presented and discussed. Following the advantages of the Stackelberg game model in the anti-jamming field, we formulate an anti-jamming decision-making framework based on the Stackelberg game for anti-jamming defence in wireless networks. Moreover, two preliminary case studies are presented and discussed for better understanding of the anti-jamming Stackelberg game problem. Finally, some future research directions are also provided.