Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Germline and somatic mutation analyses in the DNA mismatch repair gene MLH3: Evidence for somatic mutation in colorectal cancers

DNA mismatch repair is of considerable scientific and medical importance because of its essential role in maintaining genomic integrity, and its association with hereditary non‐polyposis colon cancer (HNPCC). Germline mutations in five mismatch repair genes (MLH1, MSH2, PMS1, PMS2, and MSH6) have been associated with HNPCC susceptibility. Our laboratory recently identified MLH3, a novel DNA mismatch repair gene. We screened the MLH3 coding sequence in 60 probands with increased genetic risk factors for colorectal cancer susceptibility and no mutations in the other candidate genes. No definite MLH3 germline mutations were found. We subsequently screened 36 colon tumors, and discovered an appreciable frequency of somatic MLH3 coding mutations in MSI‐H tumors (25%). In four of six tumors, evidence of biallelic inactivation was noted. Furthermore, MLH3 nonsense mutations were identified in two of 12 microsatellite stable (MSS) tumors with 14q24 loss of heterozygosity. While our analyses do not exclude the existence of germline MLH3 mutations in patients with increased genetic risk factors for colorectal cancer susceptibility, they suggest such mutations are uncommon in this patient population. The finding of an appreciable frequency of somatic MLH3 mutations is consistent with a possible role for this gene in the progression of colorectal cancer tumorigenesis. Hum Mutat 17:389–396, 2001. Published 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
CD34 Promotes Satellite Cell Motility and Entry into Proliferation to Facilitate Efficient Skeletal Muscle Regeneration

Expression of the cell surface sialomucin CD34 is common to many adult stem cell types, including muscle satellite cells. However, no clear stem cell or regeneration‐related phenotype has ever been reported in mice lacking CD34, and its function on these cells remains poorly understood. Here, we assess the functional role of CD34 on satellite cell‐mediated muscle regeneration. We show that Cd34−/− mice, which have no obvious developmental phenotype, display a defect in muscle regeneration when challenged with either acute or chronic muscle injury. This regenerative defect is caused by impaired entry into proliferation and delayed myogenic progression. Consistent with the reported antiadhesive function of CD34, knockout satellite cells also show decreased motility along their host myofiber. Altogether, our results identify a role for CD34 in the poorly understood early steps of satellite cell activation and provide the first evidence that beyond being a stem cell marker, CD34 may play an important function in modulating stem cell activity. STEM Cells 2011;29:2030–2041.
In vitro investigations of a pH- and ionic-strength-responsive polyelectrolytic hydrogel using a piezoresistive microsensor

Environmentally responsive or smart hydrogels show a volume phase transition due to changes of external stimuli such as pH or ionic strength of an ambient solution. Thus, they are able to convert reversibly chemical energy into mechanical energy and therefore they are suitable as sensitive material to be integrated in biochemical microsensors and MEMS devices. In this work, micro fabricated silicon pressure sensor chips with integrated piezoresistors were used as transducers for the conversion of mechanical work into an appropriate electrical output signal due to the deflection of a thin silicon bending plate. Within this work two different sensor designs have been studied. The biocompatible poly(hydroxypropyl methacrylate-N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate-tetra-ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate) (HPMADMA- TEGDMA) was used as an environmental-sensitive element in piezoresistive biochemical sensors. This polyelectrolytic hydrogel shows a very sharp volume phase transition at pH values below about 7.4 which is in the range of the physiological pH. The sensor's characteristic response was measured in-vitro for changes in pH of PBS buffer solution at fixed ionic strength. The experimental data was applied to the Hill equation and the sensor sensitivity as a function of pH was calculated out of it. The time-dependent sensor response was measured for small changes in pH, whereas different time constants have been observed. The same sensor principal was used for sensing the ionic strength. The time-dependent electrical output signal of both sensors was measured for variations in ionic strength at fixed pH value using PBS buffer solution. Both sensor types showed an asymmetric swelling behavior between the swelling and the deswelling cycle as well as different time constants, which was attributed to the different nature of mechanical hydrogel confinement inside the sensor.
La política social y la participación ciudadana desde la óptica de la antropología social. La irreductibilidad de la política

LOS PROCESOS DE PARTICIPACION han sido historicamente, a traves de la historia de las diversas sociedades, un pasaje social comun para todos los miembros de la comunidad a lo largo de su vida. Esto integra y consagra al individuo con sus deberes y obligaciones y permite el acceso de este, cuando su rol dentro de la comunidad asi lo permite a los diversos estados sociales, productivos, economicos, religiosos y rituales como un miembro mas de la comunidad. En tiempos modernos este desarrollo personal a traves de la consecucion de deberes y derechos y su participacion en la comunidad, construye lo que se entiende por ciudadania. Esta ultima se ha visto afectada en su construccion debido a la enorme desestructuracion de las redes sociales que aseguraban la participacion de todos los miembros de la comunidad, lo que se constituye hoy dia en un cuello de botella para las politicas estatales que demandan la participacion de un determinado colectivo o
Core Promoter Structure in the Oomycete Phytophthora infestans

ABSTRACT We have investigated the core promoter structure of the oomycete Phytophthora infestans. The transcriptional start sites (TSS) of three previously characterized P. infestans genes, Piexo1, Piexo3, and Piendo1, were determined by primer extension analyses. The TSS regions were homologous to a previously identified 16-nucleotide (nt) core sequence that overlaps the TSS in most oomycete genes. The core promoter regions of Piexo1 and Piendo1 were investigated by using a transient protoplast expression assay and the reporter gene β-glucuronidase. Mutational analyses of the promoters of Piexo1 and Piendo1 showed that there is a putative core promoter element encompassing the TSS (−2 to + 5) that has high sequence and functional homology to a known core promoter element present in other eukaryotes, the initiator element (Inr). Downstream and flanking the Inr is a highly conserved oomycete promoter region (+7 to + 15), hereafter referred to as FPR (flanking promoter region), which is also important for promoter function. The importance of the 19-nt core promoter region (Inr and FPR) in Piexo1 and Piendo1 was further investigated through electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA). The EMSA studies showed that (i) both core promoters were able to specifically bind a protein or protein complex in a P. infestans whole-cell protein extract and (ii) the same mutations that reduced binding of the EMSA complex also reduced β-glucuronidase (GUS) levels in transient expression assays. The consistency of results obtained using two different assays (GUS transient assays [in vivo] and EMSA studies [in vitro]) supports a convergence of inference about the relative importance of specific nucleotides within the 19-nt core promoter region.
A modalidade escrita do português como L2 para alunos surdos: análise de abordagem em classe de inclusão no ensino médio

Neste artigo buscamos analisar a abordagem de ensinar Lingua Portuguesa em modalidade escrita numa classe inclusiva composta de alunos com surdez profunda e alunos ouvintes a partir da filmagem de uma aula de producao de texto com o intuito de interpretar evidencias de adequacao do insumo oferecido e co-construido em sala e de permeabilidade do filtro socio-afetivo. Registrou-se uma abordagem formal textualista pouco voltada para a verdadeira insercao do surdo na escola regular dos ouvintes.
Hybrid Tracking for Augmented Reality

A disposable pathogen barrier of a material which is highly elastic and stretchable, yet tear-resistant, and capable of being placed in proximate contact and covering an entirety of a variety of elongated, tubular-shaped intra-oral medical or dental tools or implements which emit lightwaves in pre-determined ranges without distorting, interrupting or shifting the wavelength of the emitted light, or the receiving of reflected light, by the use of, in a first embodiment, an optically transmissive end and, in a second embodiment, an optically clear film to provide the required range of transmissivity of light.
Is bariatric surgery really inefficient in hypothalamic obesity?

to tamoxifen alone. The inhibitory effect of androgens on breast cells appears to occur in a dose-dependant manner. Although confounded by the use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue therapy, histological data derived from mastectomies from female-to-male transsexuals exposed to high-dose androgens have demonstrated reduction in glandular tissue in up to 93% of cases. Our case provides clinical evidence that pathologically high levels of androgens cannot only reduce proliferation, but may inhibit normal breast development, despite appropriate pubertal levels of oestrogen and an apparently mature hypothalamic– pituitary–gonadal axis. Thus, it appears that the elevated androgens were having a direct inhibitory effect on the breast tissue. Moreover, the rapid progression of breast development (15 months to attain Tanner 5 breasts, compared with average progression from Tanner 2–4 over 36 months) provides further evidence that removal of the source of the elevated androgens allowed breast development to proceed. Although androgens have been associated with both endometrial atrophy and proliferation, our case provides evidence that high-dose androgens can inhibit endometrial maturation. While at initial presentation, there was no endometrial stripe on ultrasound, postoperatively, with resolution of the hyperandrogenism, regular menses commenced within 2 months. High androstenedione levels have been shown to be a risk factor for primary amenorrhoea and thinner endometrial lining in girls with polycystic ovarian syndrome, supporting the hypothesis that significantly elevated androgens can inhibit the endometrium. In conclusion, our patient, presenting with discordant biochemical and physical signs of puberty, provides unique insight into the potential inhibitory effects of significantly elevated androgens on breast and endometrial maturation.
Comparative study of different MPPT techniques for a stand-alone PV system

The (P-V) photovoltaic panel's characteristic is nonlinear and highly depended on solar irradiation and temperature cell variations. For that reason, a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) algorithm is essential so that it is possible to draw peak power from the photovoltaic panel to obtain the maximized produced energy. The main purpose of MPPT technique is to make sure that the solar panel is producing the maximum power. This extracts the maximum amount of power at any given time. To figure out which MPPT technique has the best performances, this paper introduces six different MPPT algorithms existing in literature. In particular, these techniques are tested while the temperature cell was randomly varied. The simulation results are evaluated using Matlab-Simulink.
“One size fits all” database architectures do not work for DSS

The current state of internal database technology today is a " One Size Fits All " approach, Whether the database is being used to solve an OLTP problem or a DSS problem. all of the leading database manufacturers believe they have the right solution. This would be correct if the needs of an OLTP application resembled those of a DSS application. But in fact. their needs are very different, The physical database internal architecture designed to optimize for OLTP is very different from one designed to optimize for DSS, Not only would these two architectures be different, they would also be opposing. An architecture that optimized for DSS will degrade OLTP. and vice versa. We can say that OLTP and DSS have " Opposing Laws of Database Physics " There is also a relationship between the volume of data and the ability of a gwen optimized approach to work well. When the amount of data a database has is small, the difference in performance between an OLTP-based database architecture and a DS-based architecture is not very important, As the volume of data increases. the need for and the ability for one approach to stand out above another becomes more apparent The current database manufactures have designed database architectures optimized for their main business, OLTP. They have attempted to use their existing OLTP architectures to address the DSS side of the business, The performance of even simple user questions, such as " How many of my female customers in Mass. bought product A? " , can take hours to run. This has created a problem: " TOO Much Data, Not Enough Information ". I believe that over the next several years both the traditional database manufactures and others will develop internal database architectures optimized for DSS, New and immature examples exist today with products like Interactive Query Accelerator from Sybase, Redbrick, and OMNIDEX from DISC, The future may bring separate products or substantial add-ens to the traditional database providers' existing product suites. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copyin is by permission of the Association of Computing ? Machinery.
Cellular immunity to hepatitis C virus core protein and the response to interferon in patients with chronic hepatitis C

To investigate the involvement of T‐cell response against hepatitis C virus (HCV) antigens in viral clearance after interferon therapy, we measured interleukin‐2 (IL‐2) production by peripheral mononuclear cells in response to HCV core in patients with chronic hepatitis C. In a cohort of 43 patients, we investigated the frequency of circulating core‐specific T‐helper (Th) cell precursors by the limiting‐dilution assay, and in a second cohort of 60 patients, we analyzed the response to specific core epitopes using 52 synthetic 15‐mer overlapping peptides. We observed that the frequency of core‐specific Th cell precursors was significantly higher in patients with sustained biochemical and virological response (SR) after interferon (IFN) therapy (median, 1/55,736) than in untreated patients (1/274,023) or that in patients who remained viremic after completion of the treatment—nonresponders (NR) plus transient responders (TR) (1/1,909,972). Patients who failed to respond to IFN (NR) and those who relapsed after IFN discontinuation (TR) had a similarly low number of precursors. The number of core peptides recognized by SR, TR, NR, UT, and healthy controls was 8.2 ± 1.5, 6.5 ± 1.2, 2.0 ± 0.5, 2.7 ± 0.9, and 0.3 ± 0.2, respectively. In SR, the intensity of the proliferative response to core peptides as estimated by the summation of stimulation indexes (ΣSI) was significantly higher than in NR and than in UT, but not different from that of TR. Our results indicate that both expansion of HCV‐specific Th cell precursors and Th cell recognition of multiple core epitopes seem to be important in the elimination of HCV after IFN therapy.
Erratum to "Dominance-Based Multiobjective Simulated Annealing"

For original paper see Z. Tu et al., ibid., vol. 8, no.5, p.456-70, (2004). We have recently discovered an error in the programming of the stochastic genetic algorithm (StGA). The main program was written in C++ except for a subroutine which was coded in MATLAB. This particular subroutine was used to generate the NS number of stochastic children for a chromosome. The NS stochastic children were stored in an array S (NS x N), where N is the dimension of a function. The array S was called into the main program in the form of a vector s with entries being taken column-wise from S (i.e., s[(j - 1) x NS + i] = S[i][j]). In the implementation of the local selection, the vector was supposed to be converted back to S in exactly the reverse manner. But unfortunately the statement was mistakenly written as S[i][j] = s[(i - 1) x N + j]. This error causes a distortion in the variable arrangement such that a typical stochastic child tends to have segments of similar values for different dimensions. Incidentally, for most of the 20 test functions, which have also been used by other researchers in a previous publication, the global optimum is at a position where all variables are equal. As a result, the StGA exhibited a false accelerated convergence speed in a surprisingly consistent manner in all the test cases. After the correction of the above programming error, the StGA as presented in the paper exhibits very different performance and in many cases could not achieve as satisfactory results.
“Indirect” High-Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy: Aberration Measurement and Wavefunction Reconstruction

Improvements in instrumentation and image processing techniques mean that methods involving reconstruction of focal or beam-tilt series of images are now realizing the promise they have long offered. This indirect approach recovers both the phase and the modulus of the specimen exit plane wave function and can extend the interpretable resolution. However, such reconstructions require the a posteriori determination of the objective lens aberrations, including the actual beam tilt, defocus, and twofold and threefold astigmatism. In this review, we outline the theory behind exit plane wavefunction reconstruction and describe methods for the accurate and automated determination of the required coefficients of the wave aberration function. Finally, recent applications of indirect reconstruction in the structural analysis of complex oxides are presented.
Inversion of massive surface wave data sets: Model construction and resolution assessment

[1] A new scheme is proposed for the inversion of surface waves using a continuous formulation of the inverse problem and the least squares criterion. Like some earlier schemes a Gaussian a priori covariance function controls the horizontal degree of smoothing in the inverted model, which minimizes some artifacts observed with spherical harmonic parameterizations. Unlike earlier schemes the new approach incorporates some sophisticated geometrical algorithms which dramatically increase computational efficiency and render possible the inversion of several tens of thousands of seismograms in few hours on a typical workstation. The new algorithm is also highly suited to parallelization which makes practical the inversion of data sets with more than 50,000 ray paths. The constraint on structural and anisotropic parameters is assessed using a new geometric approach based on Voronoi diagrams, polygonal cells covering the Earth's surface. The size of the Voronoi cells is used to give an indication of the length scale of the structures that can be resolved, while their shape provides information on the variation of azimuthal resolution. The efficiency of the scheme is illustrated with realistic uneven ray path configurations. A preliminary global tomographic model has been built for SV wave heterogeneities and azimuthal variations through the inversion of 24,124 fundamental and higher-mode Rayleigh waveforms. Our results suggest that the use of relatively short paths (<10,000 km) in a global inversion should minimize multipathing, or focusing/defocusing effects and provide lateral resolution of a few hundred kilometers across the globe.
Cavernous Transformation of the Portal Vein Complicating Pregnancy

BACKGROUND: Cavernous transformation of the portal vein, associated with varices and thrombocytopenia, rarely complicates pregnancy. CASE: A 20-year-old primigravida with cavernous transformation of the portal vein underwent wireless video esophageal capsule endoscopy at 28 weeks of gestation, which ruled out esophageal and gastric varices and the need for prophylactic sclerotherapy. Magnetic resonance angiography at 32 weeks of gestation showed no abdominal wall varices or abnormally dilated lumbar or extradural veins, which ensured a safe surgical approach for cesarean and preserved the patient’s ability to receive regional anesthesia. CONCLUSION: New noninvasive imaging modalities aided evaluation and management of the gravida with cavernous transformation of the portal vein.
Gerlof Bouma and Jonas Kuhn: On the split nature of the Dutch laten-causative

We present a discussion of the laten-perception-causative construction in Dutch, formed by combining laten ‘let’ and a non-volitional perception/cognition verb like zien ‘see’. On the basis of partly novel argument alternation and binding data, we show that these causatives cannot be captured by a standard raising analysis. This sets these data apart from other uses of causative laten. The laten-perception-causative is best analyzed as a complex predicate. Interestingly, although its behaviour cannot be explained from the syntactic combinatory rules, the observed argument alternations and binding effects are predictable from Dutch syntax if we were to assume that the latenperception-causative is a complex member of a semantically coherent group of communication verbs. After having introduced the monoclausal complex predicate analysis, we approach the question of how the intermediate status of laten-perceptioncausatives between idiomatic constructions and transparent phrasal combinations could be formally captured in an extension of the LFG architecture. We believe that the construction sheds some interesting light on long-standing issues from the complex predicate formation debate, especially when viewed from the perspective of recent considerations about the use of a template hierarchy as a theoretically motivated device in LFG.
A simple and fast color-based human face detection scheme for content-based indexing and retrieval

The objective of this work is to provide a simple and efficient method to detect human faces in the compressed domain. We separate skin regions from non-skin regions using the Bayesian decision rule with a Gaussian mixture model (GMM). Next, we detect the location of a face using a deformable template that considers shape and orientation of the face. Then, face candidates are verified by using the second moments computed directly from the DCT coefficients in the face region. In particular, the coefficients are manipulated differently according to the orientation of the face. Good results have been obtained for a large variety of video sequences. This algorithm can be applied to JPEG images as well, without any modification.