Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrin αvβ6-specific therapy for pancreatic cancer developed from foot-and-mouth-disease virus

Goals of investigation: The 5-year survival rate for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has remained at <5% for decades because no effective therapies have been identified. Integrin αvβ6 is overexpressed in most PDAC and represents a promising therapeutic target. Thus, we attempted to develop an αvβ6-specific peptide-drug conjugate (PDC) for therapy of PDAC. Methodology: We conjugated the DNA-binding pyrrolobenzodiazepine (PBD)-based payload SG3249 (tesirine) to an αvβ6-specific 20mer peptide from the VP1 coat protein of foot-and-mouth-disease virus (FMDV) (forming conjugate SG3299) or to a non-targeting peptide (forming conjugate SG3511). PDCs were tested for specificity and toxicity on αvβ6-negative versus-positive PDAC cells, patient-derived cell lines from tumor xenografts, and on two different in vivo models of PDAC. Immunohistochemical analyses were performed to establish therapeutic mechanism. Results: The αvβ6-targeted PDC SG3299 was significantly more toxic (up to 78-fold) for αvβ6-expressing versus αvβ6-negative PDAC cell lines in vitro, and achieved significantly higher toxicity at equal dose than the non-targeted PDC SG3511 (up to 15-fold better). Moreover, SG3299 eliminated established (100mm3) Capan-1 PDAC human xenografts, extending the lifespan of mice significantly (P=0.005). Immunohistochemistry revealed SG3299 induced DNA damage and apoptosis (increased γH2AX and cleaved caspase 3, respectively) associated with significant reductions in proliferation (Ki67), β6 expression and PDAC tumour growth. Conclusions: The FMDV-peptide drug conjugate SG3299 showed αvβ6-selectivity in vitro and in vivo and can specifically eliminate αvβ6-positive cancers, providing a promising new molecular- specific therapy for pancreatic cancer.
MOTIVATIONAL POTENTIAL OF THE PERSONNEL IN THE PERIOD OF PREPARING AN INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE TO THE DECOMMISSIONING

Knowing characteristics of the motivational potential of the personnel allows an optimal approach to the human resources when dealing with such personnel problems as designing system of stimulation and involving the stuff into the labour activity; evaluation of the occupational and personal competencies of the specialists enrolled in the activities going through harsh conditions or lack of information, when state of cognitive dissonance frequently emerges (Sheridan, 1987; Anokhin, 2000; Bodrov, 2006). The existing content, personality and process theories of motivation in psychology and management offer a thorough explanation of the personnel labour behaviour (Madsen, 1959; Locke, 1968; Weiner, 1972; McClelland, 1971, 1987; Milne, 2007; Hezberg, 2003; Ilyin, 2008). At the same time such sphere as the characteristics of the motivational potential of the staff of an industrial enterprise in the period of preparing it to the decommissioning due to depletion of the technological resource remains little-studied. The article contains the results of the studying motivational potential of the personnel in the period of preparing a nuclear power station to the decommissioning. 87% of the employees have taken part in the survey. All the structural departments of the enterprise are represented in the research sample.
Error-correction and the binary Golay code

Linear algebra and, in particular, the theory of vector spaces over ﬁnite ﬁelds has provided a rich source of error-correcting codes which enable the receiver of a corrupted message to deduce what was originally sent. Although more eﬃcient codes have been devised in recent years, the 12-dimensional binary Golay code remains one of the most mathematically fascinating such codes: not only has it been used to send messages back to earth from the Voyager space probes, but it is also involved in many of the most extraordinary and beautiful algebraic structures. This article describes how the code can be obtained in two elementary ways
Land use classification and land use change analysis using satellite images in Lojing, Kelantan.

53 eISSN Number: 2462-2389 © 2019 UMK Publisher. All rights reserved. Land use classification and land use change analysis using satellite images in Lojing, Kelantan Jacqueline John Hiew 1, Amal Najihah M. Nor1*, Nur Hairunnisa Rafaai2, Nur Hanisah Abdul Malek1, Hasifah Abdul Aziz1, Nor Fadhilah Ibrahim3 and Rohazaini Muhammad Jamil1 1Faculty of Earth Science, University Malaysia Kelantan, Jeli Campus, 17600, Jeli, Kelantan, Malaysia 2Institute of Environment and Development, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi Selangor 3Faculty of Bioengineering and Technology, University Malaysia Kelantan, Jeli Campus, 17600, Jeli, Kelantan, Malaysia
E icient Non-Sampling Factorization Machines for Optimal Context-Aware Recommendation

To provide more accurate recommendation, it is a trending topic to go beyond modeling user-item interactions and take context features into account. Factorization Machines (FM) with negative sampling is a popular solution for context-aware recommendation. However, it is not robust as sampling may lost important information and usually leads to non-optimal performances in practical. Several recent e orts have enhanced FM with deep learning architectures for modelling high-order feature interactions. While they either focus on rating prediction task only, or typically adopt the negative sampling strategy for optimizing the ranking performance. Due to the dramatic uctuation of sampling, it is reasonable to argue that these sampling-based FM methods are still suboptimal for context-aware recommendation. In this paper, we propose to learn FM without sampling for ranking tasks that helps context-aware recommendation particularly. Despite e ectiveness, such a non-sampling strategy presents strong challenge in learning e ciency of the model. Accordingly, we further design a new ideal framework named E cient Non-Sampling Factorization Machines (ENSFM). ENSFM not only seamlessly connects the relationship between FM and Matrix Factorization (MF), but also resolves the challenging e ciency issue via novel memo-rization strategies. Through extensive experiments on three real-world public datasets, we show that 1) the proposed ENSFM consistently and signi cantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on context-aware Top-K recommendation, and 2) ENSFM achieves signi cant advantages in training e ciency, which makes it more applicable to real-world large-scale systems. Moreover, the empirical results indicate that a proper learning method is even more important than advanced neural network structures for Top-K recommendation task. Our implementation has been released 1 to facilitate further developments on e cient non-sampling methods.
Asset Pricing and Decarbonization: Diversification versus Climate Action

Asset pricing and climate policy are analyzed in a global economy where consumption goods are produced by both a green and a carbon-intensive (dirty) sector. We allow for endogenous growth and three types of damages from global warming. It is shown that, initially, the desire to diversify assets in the portfolio complements the attempt to mitigate economic damages from climate change. In the long run, however, there is a trade-off between diversification and climate action. Therefore, in general, the carbon-intensive sector is not shut down completely. We derive the optimal carbon price, the equilibrium risk-free rate, and the risk premium of both assets. The risk-free rate is negatively affected by temperature, while the effect of temperature on the risk premiums depends on the type of damage specification. Climate disasters with an uncertain timing that rises with on temperature leads to a significant effect of climate change on asset prices.
A recommender system for investing in early-stage enterprises

Selecting the appropriate enterprise to invest in can become a difficult task for prospective investors, particularly in the case of startups where limited information is available. In this work, we design, implement, and evaluate a system that makes recommendations for investing in early-stage enterprises. We first perform a qualitative and quantitative study involving prominent investors to explore their decision-making process and set out the requirements for a recommender system. Then, we consider various recommendation approaches that best convey the results of our requirements analysis. To evaluate the different methods, we simulate an offline experiment, placing real investors in a hypothetical investment decision scenario.
Learning Relation Entailment with Structured and Textual Information

Relations among words and entities are important for semantic understanding of text, but previous work has largely not considered relations between relations , or meta-relations . In this paper, we speciﬁcally examine relation entailment , where the existence of one relation can entail the existence of another relation. Relation entailment allows us to construct relation hierarchies, enabling applications in representation learning, question answering, relation extraction, and summarization. To this end, we formally deﬁne the new task of predicting relation entailment and construct a dataset by expanding the existing Wikidata relation hierarchy without expensive human intervention. We propose several methods that incorporate both structured and textual information to represent relations for this task. Experiments and analysis demonstrate that this task is challenging, and we provide insights into task characteristics that may form a basis for future work. The dataset and code have been released at https://github.com/jzbjyb/RelEnt.
Formal and Efficient Synthesis for Continuous-Time Linear Stochastic Hybrid Processes

Stochastic processes are expressive mathematical tools for modeling real-world systems that are subject to uncertainty. It is hence crucial to be able to formally analyze the behavior of these processes, especially in safety-critical applications. Most of the existing formal methods are not designed for continuous-time processes, and those that are typically suffering from state explosion in practice. This article introduces a theoretical framework and a scalable computational method for formal analysis and control synthesis for switched diffusions, a class of stochastic models with linear dynamics that are continuous in both time and space domains; the focus is on safety with possible extensions to other properties. The proposed framework first constructs a finite abstraction in the form of an uncertain Markov process through discretization of both time and space domains. The errors caused by the discretization in each domain are formally characterized and cast into the abstraction model. Then, a strategy that maximizes the probability of the safety property and is robust against the errors is synthesized over the abstraction model. Finally, this robust strategy is mapped to a switching strategy for the stochastic processes that guarantees the safety property. The framework is demonstrated in three case studies, including one that illustrates the tradeoff of the error contribution by the time and space discretization parameters.
Towards intra-operative dosimetry for prostate brachytherapy : improved seed detection and registration to ultrasound using needle detection

Errors in seed placement during low dose rate prostate brachytherapy c an result in over-treating healthy tissue and/or under-treating cancer cells. In a sta ndard treatment procedure, seeds are implanted according to a planned seed dis tribution. This pre-operative plan (pre-plan) is created using an ultrasound volu me scan taken about two weeks earlier. Errors in seed placement can occur due to cha nges in prostate structure during those two weeks, and from seed displacement d uring and after the actual operation. This thesis presents methods of seed localization that are suitable for both po stoperative and intra-operative use. The techniques can be applied to the imaging modalities used in the current operation setup to implement a method of intraoperative planning. This involves using Transrectal Ultrasound (TRUS ) and C-arm X-ray Fluoroscopy (fluoro) data to monitor the seed positions relative to the curr nt target volume during an operation. Towards this goal, an automatic method of assigning seeds to their correspon ding insertion needle tracks has been developed to match seeds between moda lities so that seed displacements can be computed. This method can be applied to measure intra-operative misplacement, by comparing the desired positions to th e actual positions computed from fluoro data, or post-implant movement, compar ing the fluoro seed positions to those from post-implant Computed Tomography (C T) data. For the intra-operative and post-implant data, 99.31% and 99.41% of the seeds were correctly assigned, respectively. An average intra-ope tive seed displacement of 4.94 ±2.42 mm and a further 2.97 ±1.81 mm of post-implant movement is measured. This information reveals several directional trends and can be used to preemptively correct the pre-operative plan (pre-plan).
Entomopathogenic fungi isolated from agro-ecosystem soil in South Sulawesi, Indonesia

Entomopathogenic fungi have been proved controlling plant pests, and most of the entomopathogenic fungi isolated from the agroecosystem. The research was carried out to characterize the entomopathogenic fungi diversity associated with different agroecosystem on a different location in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Fungi of rice field ecosystems were found more diverse than on dryland ecosystems, and the genus was Fusarium species, Aspergillus species, Rhizopus species, Trichoderma species, Penicillium species, Rhizoctonia species and Metharizium species. Moreover, Fusarium species and Rhizopus species were the most frequent genus isolated from rice field ecosystem, while on dryland ecosystems, the fungus of Metharizium species found more frequent than Fusarium species and Aspergillus species According to a geographical location on rice field ecosystems. The number of fungi isolated on the regency of Gowa more numerous than regency of Sidrap, Takalar, and Pinrang. Meanwhile, on the dryland ecosystems, three locations were the city of Makassar, the regency of Maros, and the regency of Polman. Among three areas, the regency of Maros founded more fungi than regency of Polman and Makassar. This study exhibits the diversity of fungi on the rice field, and dryland ecosystems were quite different.
A canopy conundrum : can wind-induced movement help to increase crop productivity 2 by relieving photosynthetic limitations ? 3 4 Running Title : Wind Movement and Productivity 5 6

30 Wind-induced movement is a ubiquitous occurrence for all plants grown in natural or 31 agricultural settings and in the context of high, damaging wind speeds it has been well studied. 32 However, the impact of lower wind speeds (that do not cause any damage) on mode of 33 movement, light transmission and photosynthetic properties has, surprisingly, not been fully 34 explored. This is likely to be influenced by biomechanical properties and architectural features 35 of the plant and canopy. A limited number of eco-physiological studies have indicated that 36 movement in wind has the potential to alter light distribution within canopies, improving 37 canopy productivity by relieving photosynthetic limitations. Given the current interest in 38 canopy photosynthesis is timely to consider such movement in terms of crop yield progress. 39 This opinion article sets out the background to wind-induced crop movement and argues that 40 plant biomechanical properties may have a role in the optimisation of whole canopy 41 photosynthesis via established physiological processes. We discuss how this could be achieved 42 using canopy models. 43
Discussion of “Extreme Events: Mechanisms and Prediction” by M. Farazmand and T. P. Sapsis (ASME, Applied Mechanics Reviews)

Farazmand and Sapsis provide a thorough review on dynamical systems and offer strategies to predict the occurrence of extreme events. The aim of this discussion is to supplement the review by presenting additional mechanisms that yield extreme events and suggesting statistical tools to assess the quality of our prediction. The perspective taken here appeals to probabilistic and statistical approaches used in modeling heavytailed phenomena.
Incidence of Stroke in On-Pump Versus Off-Pump Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting: A Metanalysis on 11,500 Patients

Background and Aims: Conventional coronary artery bypass grafting (CCABG) has been associated with high incidence of stroke, especially for the high degree of aortic manipulation. Off-pump CABG (OPCAB) theoretically represents a valid option, since the avoidance of aortic manipulation can prevent the embolization of atherosclerotic debris. There is a lot of controversy about the outcomes of CCABG compared to OPCAB. The aim of this metanalysis is to examine the incidence of stroke within 30 days from the surgical procedure. Methods and Results: A literature search was conducted from 2009 to 2019 using PubMed database. Nine randomized control trials were included in the metanalysis. Results: The odds ratio between the CCABG vs OPCAB was 0.87 (Lower, Upper limits: 0.65, 1.17, p = 0.355; I2 = 0.0%, p = 0.68; Egger’s test: intercept -0.15 [-1.55, 1.25], p = 0.81). Conclusion: Compared to the CCABG, no advantage was detected in the OPCAB group in terms of stroke.
Axl-148b chimeric aptamers inhibit breast cancer and melanoma progression

microRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs acting as negative regulators of gene expression and involved in tumor progression. We recently showed that inhibition of the pro-metastatic miR-214 and simultaneous overexpression of its downstream player, the anti-metastatic miR-148b, strongly reduced metastasis formation. To explore the therapeutic potential of miR-148b, we generated a conjugated molecule aimed to target miR-148b expression selectively to tumor cells. Precisely, we linked miR-148b to GL21.T, an aptamer able to specifically bind to AXL, an oncogenic tyrosine kinase receptor highly expressed on cancer cells. Axl-148b conjugate was able to inhibit migration and invasion of AXL-positive, but not AXL-negative, cancer cells, demonstrating high efficacy and selectivity in vitro. In parallel, expression of ALCAM and ITGA5, two miR-148b direct targets, was reduced. More importantly, axl-148b chimeric aptamers were able to inhibit formation and growth of 3D-mammospheres, to induce necrosis and apoptosis of treated xenotransplants, as well as to block breast cancer and melanoma dissemination and metastatization in mice. Relevantly, axl aptamer acted as specific delivery tool for miR-148b, but it also actively contributed to inhibit metastasis formation, together with miR-148b. In conclusion, our data show that axl-148b conjugate is able to inhibit tumor progression in an axl- and miR-148b-dependent manner, suggesting its potential development as therapeutic molecule.
Removal of Methyl Red using Chemical Impregnated Activated Carbon Prepared from Parkia speciosa Pod (Petai) as a Potential Adsorbent

Textile industry is one of the major contributors either in terms of employment or economies. This industry has provided variety of daily necessity such as sources of yarn and clothing. Extensively use of dyes in this textile industry has created water pollution. The serious problem happened when the daily water usage is from the untreated effluents which are discharged directly into water bodies. However, the disposed dyes into environment can be treated with adsorbents such as activated carbon via adsorption process. In this study, Parkia speciosa (petai) pods were chosen as the raw material from agricultural waste to produce activated carbon. Activated carbon was prepared from two different chemicals and application of four different carbonization time. Two parameters studied in the experiment are initial dye concentration and contact time. From the result, 100% of methyl red was removed by the activated carbon impregnated with zinc chloride solution at 1 hour carbonization time. The optimum time and initial concentration of dye was 30 minutes and 10 ppm respectively with the percentage removal of 100%. Thus, this result could contribute some knowledge on the use of alternative adsorbent from agricultural waste impregnation with specified chemicals in treating textile industrial wastewater.
A Review of Thomas Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities

In Discrimination and Disparities, Thomas Sowell describes how economists think about the causes of disparities in socioeconomic outcomes. He cautions against government intervention to reduce disparities, noting that such interventions often have unintended consequences. In this review, I discuss the role of economic theory and empirical evidence in helping move society towards more equitable outcomes. I find far more reason to be hopeful about the role of government than Sowell does, but also argue for more experimentation and rigorous evaluation to be sure that our well-intentioned policies have their intended impacts.
Strain-, moment- and energy-based self-correcting models for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis in Italy

This study presents a series of self-correcting models that were obtained by integrating information about seismicity and fault sources in Italy. Four versions of the stress release model are analyzed, in which the evolution of the system over time is represented by the level of strain, moment, seismic energy, or energy scaled by the moment. We carried out the analysis on a regional basis by subdividing the study area into eight tectonically coherent regions. In each region, we reconstructed the seismic history and statistically evaluated the completeness of the resulting seismic catalog. The conditional intensity function that characterizes each self-correcting model was estimated following the Bayesian paradigm and by applying Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. In this way, we obtain not only the parameter estimates given by their posterior mean, but also a measure of their uncertainty expressed by the simulated posterior distribution. The comparison of the four models through the Bayes factor indicates overall significant, albeit to different degrees, evidence in favor of the stress release model based on the scaled energy. Therefore, among the quantities considered, this turns out to be the most appropriate measure of the size of an earthquake for use in stress release models. At any instant, the ’time to the next event’ is the realization of a Gompertz distributed random variable with a shape parameter that depends on time through the value of the conditional intensity at that instant. In light of this result, the issue of the forecasting problem is tackled through both retrospective and prospective approaches. Retrospectively, the forecasting procedure is carried out on the occurrence times of the events recorded in each region, to determine whether the stress release model reproduces the observations used in the estimation procedure. Prospectively, the estimates of the time to the next event are compared with the date of the earthquakes that occurred after the end of the learning catalog. Four earthquakes of Mw ≥ 5.3 occurred in the 2003-2012 decade, excluding their aftershocks, and all of these fall within the 75% highest probability density intervals of the forecast.