Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chitinases: An update

Chitin, the second most abundant polysaccharide in nature after cellulose, is found in the exoskeleton of insects, fungi, yeast, and algae, and in the internal structures of other vertebrates. Chitinases are enzymes that degrade chitin. Chitinases contribute to the generation of carbon and nitrogen in the ecosystem. Chitin and chitinolytic enzymes are gaining importance for their biotechnological applications, especially the chitinases exploited in agriculture fields to control pathogens. Chitinases have a use in human health care, especially in human diseases like asthma. Chitinases have wide-ranging applications including the preparation of pharmaceutically important chitooligosaccharides and N-acetyl D glucosamine, preparation of single-cell protein, isolation of protoplasts from fungi and yeast, control of pathogenic fungi, treatment of chitinous waste, mosquito control and morphogenesis, etc. In this review, the various types of chitinases and the chitinases found in different organisms such as bacteria, plants, fungi, and mammals are discussed.
Efficient lattice-based signature scheme

In Crypto 1997, Goldreich, Goldwasser and Halevi (GGH) proposed a lattice analogue of McEliece public key cryptosystem, in which security is related to the hardness of approximating the Closest Vector Problem in a lattice. Furthermore, they also described how to use the same principle of their encryption scheme to provide a signature scheme. Practically, this cryptosystem uses the Euclidean norm, l2-norm, which has been used in many algorithms based on lattice theory. Nonetheless, many drawbacks have been studied and these could lead to cryptanalysis of the scheme. In this article, we present a novel method of reducing a vector under the l∞-norm and propose a digital signature scheme based on it. Our scheme takes advantage of the l∞-norm to increase the resistance of the GGH scheme and to decrease the signature length. Furthermore, after some other improvements, we obtain a very efficient signature scheme, that trades the security level, speed and space.
The Depth Irreducibility Hypothesis

We propose the following computational assumption: in general if we try to compress the depth of a circuit family (parallel time) more than a constant factor we will suffer super-quasipolynomial blowup in the size (number of processors). This assumption is only slightly stronger than the popular assumption about the robustness of NC, and we observe that it has surprising consequences. Note also that the choice of super-quasi-polynomial blowup is the smallest bound that avoids the circuit class collapse of [Vol98]. In this proposal we put our assumption in perspective, discuss its relation to the existing literature, and show that it has two important consequences. The first consequence is NC 6= SC, where NC is the class characterized by uniform circuits of poly-logarithmic depth and polynomial size, and SC is characterized by algorithms that run in poly-logarithmic space and polynomial time. For the second consequence we use an additional but mild complexity assumption to obtain a strong separation between the graph isomorphism GraphIso and the group isomorphism GroupIso problem. In particular, we show that GraphIso is not reducible to GroupIso using circuits of O(log n) depth.
More than seizures: improving the lives of people with refractory epilepsy

As captured by the proposed new definition, epilepsy is increasingly recognized as a disorder characterized not only by an enduring predisposition to recurrent seizures but explicitly also by the neurobiological, cognitive, psychological and social consequences of this condition. Further, both in the estimated 15 million people worldwide who have ongoing seizures despite optimal management and in a substantial proportion of those in remission, the consequences and comorbidities of epilepsy are the major determinants of quality of life. These include mood disorders such as anxiety and depression, dose related and longer term effects of antiepileptic drugs, including on prenatal development and bone health, and neurobehavioural effects. Whilst separating those that are part of an underlying condition or have unrelated contributors from those that are potentially remediable can be difficult, given the range of tools now available to assist with screening and management there is no excuse for not at least trying as part of standard care for people with epilepsy. Managing epilepsy well is about much more than controlling seizures and this needs to be recognized in planning and delivering services, as well as in prioritizing research.
NetworkSeer: Visual analysis for social network in MOOCs

The rising trend of MOOCs has attracted wide ranging research interests. Among all the existing studies related to MOOCs, most of them focus on individuals' study behaviors and evaluations (e.g., analysis on click streams for video-watching behavior exploration, etc.) for course design purposes. However, in addition to traditional course materials, MOOCs also provide interactive user forums to encourage students to seek help from peers, which endows the courses with social network formation and interaction. Thus, we present NetworkSeer to help evaluate why MOOC students use forums, and what they do. NetworkSeer visualizes interactions in the forum, including where, when the interactions happen, and why. It also enables filtering out un-targeted groups. A case study is conducted to demonstrate its usefulness.
Supplemental Protocol S2 – Model implementation, model fitting and model selection

Implementation of model variants: We analyzed eight variants of the promoter model (Fig. 2B). All model variants contained well-known aspects of promoter regulation such as pSTAT/pSMAD binding to the promoter and RNAP activation by transcription factors (grey arrows in Fig. 2B). In the full model (topology 8 in Fig. 2B), we additionally allowed all possible cooperative protein-protein interactions between transcription factors (indicated by red arrows in Fig. 2B). This full model is described by the thermodynamic promoter model derived in Supplemental Text S2 (Eq. S2.10). In the context of hepcidin promoter regulation, Eq S2.10 may be rewritten as (S2.13)
Inhibition of fluid phase and clot-bound thrombin by the thrombin exosite I ligand LU 58463: comparison with heparin and hirudin.

Heparin inhibits clot-bound thrombin less efficiently than fluid phase thrombin. We compared the ability of heparin, a non-selective indirect thrombin inhibitor, r-hirudin, a selective bifunctional thrombin inhibitor, and LU 58463, a non-catalytic exosite I thrombin inhibitor, to inhibit fluid-phase and clot-bound thrombin. The thrombin inhibitor LU 58463 was more effective than heparin and as effective as hirudin in inhibiting clot-bound thrombin.
Atividade física, autoavaliação negativa de saúde e condutas de risco em adolescentes

Introducao: Durante a adolescencia o individuo adquire comportamentos que podem influenciar sua saude, como, por exemplo, a pratica de atividade fisica, e algumas condutas de risco e autoavaliacao da Saude. Objetivo: verificar a associacao entre atividade fisica e autoavaliacao negativa da saude, com condutas de risco a saude em adolescentes. Metodos: Trata-se de uma pesquisa epidemiologica, de base escolar, com delineamento transversal. Realizada com estudantes, do Ensino Medio, da Rede Publica Estadual de Sergipe, com idade entre 14 e 19 anos. Foi aplicado um questionario autoadministrado. Para fins de analise, as alternativas foram categorizadas de forma dicotomica: a) Autoavaliacao de saude positiva (muito boa/ boa) e Autoavaliacao de saude negativa (regular/ruim); b) Voce diria que: sou fisicamente ativo ha > 6 meses; sou fisicamente ativo ha < 6 meses; Nao sou fisicamente ativo; Nao sou, e nao pretendo me tornar nos proximos 6 meses. A variavel foi categorizada em: a) Ativo (0 a 6 meses ou mais); b) Nao Ativo (Nao sou, Nao sou e nao pretendo me tornar ativo nos proximos 6 meses). As variaveis de analise foram: Autoavaliacao Negativa de Saude (ANS) e Nao ativo. As variaveis independentes, consideradas para o estudo, foram organizadas em dois dominios: a) Dominio Sociodemografico (idade, sexo, cor da pele, territorio, ano de estudo do adolescente, escolaridade materna, renda familiar); b) Dominio Comportamental (uso de drogas, alcool, tabaco e habito Alimentar: consumo de frutas, verdura, suco de frutas e refrigerante). Na analise da associacao foi empregado o teste de Qui-quadrado, e na analise multivariavel foi usada a regressao logistica binaria. Resultado: A prevalencia da autoavaliacao negativa de saude foi maior entre adolescentes do sexo feminino (61,3%). A conduta de risco associou-se a adolescentes inativos (OR=0,63; IC95%0,55-0,73), habito alimentar inadequado, consumo de fruta (OR= 0,67; IC95%0,53-0,85), consumo de verduras (OR= 0,66; IC95%0,51-0,86), consumo de frutas (OR=0,63; IC95%0,50-0,79), uso de tabaco (OR=0,92 IC95%0,80-1,07). A prevalencia de adolescentes inativos foi de 44,7% que se associou a autoavaliacao negativa de saude (OR=0,63; IC95% 0,55-0,72), a habito alimentar inadequado, consumo de suco de frutas (OR=1,42; IC95%1,14-1,76), consumo de frutas (OR=1,37; IC95%1,12-1,69). Conclusoes: As evidencias geradas pela pesquisa constitui um importante instrumento para subsidiar informacoes e monitorar a saude dos escolares sergipanos dando sustentabilidade a implantacao de programas voltados para a saude de escolares, como o Programa Saude na Escola.
Correlation of regional cerebral blood flow measured by stable xenon CT and perfusion MRI.

PURPOSE The purpose of this work was to investigate the validity of perfusion MRI in comparison with stable xenon CT for evaluating regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). METHOD The rCBF was measured by xenon CT and perfusion MRI within a 24 h interval in 10 patients (mean +/- SD age 63 +/- 10 years). For perfusion MRI, absolute values of rCBF were calculated based on the indicator dilution theory after injection of 0.1 mmol/kg of Gd-DTPA. Eight to 10 regions of interest (37 mm2) were located in the white and gray matter on the rCBF images for each of the 10 patients. RESULTS The mean +/- SD values of rCBF in gray matter were 48.5 +/- 14.1 ml/100 g/min measured by xenon CT and 52.2 +/- 16.4 ml/100 g/min measured by perfusion MRI. In the white matter, the rCBF was 22.6 +/- 9.1 ml/100 g/min by xenon CT and 27.4 +/- 6.8 ml/100 g/min by perfusion MRI. There was a good correlation of rCBF values between perfusion MRI and xenon CT (Pearson correlation coefficient 0.83; p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION Comparable to xenon CT, perfusion MRI provides relatively high resolution, quantitative local rCBF information coupled to MR anatomy.
Appearance-based human gesture recognition using multimodal features for human computer interaction

The use of gesture as a natural interface plays an utmost important role for achieving intelligent Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Human gestures include different components of visual actions such as motion of hands, facial expression, and torso, to convey meaning. So far, in the field of gesture recognition, most previous works have focused on the manual component of gestures. In this paper, we present an appearance-based multimodal gesture recognition framework, which combines the different groups of features such as facial expression features and hand motion features which are extracted from image frames captured by a single web camera. We refer 12 classes of human gestures with facial expression including neutral, negative and positive meanings from American Sign Languages (ASL). We combine the features in two levels by employing two fusion strategies. At the feature level, an early feature combination can be performed by concatenating and weighting different feature groups, and LDA is used to choose the most discriminative elements by projecting the feature on a discriminative expression space. The second strategy is applied on decision level. Weighted decisions from single modalities are fused in a later stage. A condensation-based algorithm is adopted for classification. We collected a data set with three to seven recording sessions and conducted experiments with the combination techniques. Experimental results showed that facial analysis improve hand gesture recognition, decision level fusion performs better than feature level fusion.
Animal models of cigarette smoke-induced COPD.

OBJECTIVES To review the animal models of COPD, and to compare these data to those found in humans. RESULTS Smoke-induced animal models can produce emphysema, although the lesions are not generally close mimics of human emphysema, as well as increases in mucous-secreting cells and vascular changes including pulmonary hypertension. There is considerable species-to-species variation in the degree and/or presence of these different abnormalities, so that care has to be used in selecting a species to study. Remarkably little information is available about the biochemical and molecular changes induced by cigarette smoke in animal models. CONCLUSIONS Great insights into the pathology of chronic obstructive lung disease have been made using various animal models.
Decentralized Steam-Valving Adaptive Neural Control of Multi-machine Power Systems

In this paper, an adaptive neural control scheme is proposed for multi-machine steam-valving power systems. The multi-machine steam-valving power systems consist of interconnected subsystems, with coupling in the form of unknown nonlinearities and parametric uncertainties. Using the adaptive neural control method by S. S. Ge and Cong Wang, A (2004), the coupling problem between subsystems can be solved without linearization treatment. Semi-global ultimate boundedness of all the signals in the closed-loop system are obtained. The outputs of the closed-loop system are proven to converge to a small neighborhood of the desired trajectories. Simulation results of two-machine power systems are presented as an example to show the effectiveness of the approach.
Method to detect differentially methylated loci with case‐control designs using Illumina arrays

It is now understood that many human cancer types are the result of the accumulation of both genetic and epigenetic changes. DNA methylation is a molecular modification of DNA that is crucial for normal development. Genes that are rich in CpG dinucleotides are usually not methylated in normal tissues, but are frequently hypermethylated in cancer. With the advent of high‐throughput platforms, large‐scale structure of genomic methylation patterns is available through genome‐wide scans and tremendous amount of DNA methylation data have been recently generated. However, sophisticated statistical methods to handle complex DNA methylation data are very limited. Here, we developed a likelihood based Uniform‐Normal‐mixture model to select differentially methylated loci between case and control groups using Illumina arrays. The idea is to model the data as three types of methylation loci, one unmethylated, one completely methylated, and one partially methylated. A three‐component mixture model with two Uniform distributions and one truncated normal distribution was used to model the three types. The mixture probabilities and the mean of the normal distribution were used to make inference about differentially methylated loci. Through extensive simulation studies, we demonstrated the feasibility and power of the proposed method. An application to a recently published study on ovarian cancer identified several methylation loci that are missed by the existing method. Genet. Epidemiol. 2011. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 35:686‐694, 2011
Target Protectors Reveal Dampening and Balancing of Nodal Agonist and Antagonist by miR-430

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) repress hundreds of target messenger RNAs (mRNAs), but the physiological roles of specific miRNA-mRNA interactions remain largely elusive. We report that zebrafish microRNA-430 (miR-430) dampens and balances the expression of the transforming growth factor–β (TGF-β) Nodal agonist squint and the TGF-β Nodal antagonist lefty. To disrupt the interaction of specific miRNA-mRNA pairs, we developed target protector morpholinos complementary to miRNA binding sites in target mRNAs. Protection of squint or lefty mRNAs from miR-430 resulted in enhanced or reduced Nodal signaling, respectively. Simultaneous protection of squint and lefty or absence of miR-430 caused an imbalance and reduction in Nodal signaling. These findings establish an approach to analyze the in vivo roles of specific miRNA-mRNA pairs and reveal a requirement for miRNAs in dampening and balancing agonist/antagonist pairs.
Aspects of Chinese sociolinguistics : essays

distinguished scholar, Dr. Y. R. Chao, who has contributed much to language sciences over half a century. The articles contained in this anthology are representative but show only a glimpse of his long and fruitful career. He has pioneered and excelled in five major areas (not all of which are presented in this collection): Chinese dialects, language standardization, sociolinguistics, structuralism in the study of human language and symbolic systems, and identification of critical questions in linguistic theory. The book consists of 26 previously published articles which are arranged into four sections: Chinese Language and Dialects; Divergence and Unification; Interlingual Perspectives; Philosophical Perspectives; and Structural Perspectives. In addition, there is an introduction by the compiler and a postscript and bibliography by the author. It is significant that these 26 articles cover a span of more than 30 years, from 1943 to 1976. Many of them were published in the 1970s, six of them in 1976 alone, indicating that Dr. Chao is still active in his research and writing. The first section contains ten articles which
Analysis of the Relationship Between the Pro 12 Ala Variant in the PPAR-2 Gene and the Response Rate to Therapy With Pioglitazone in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS — A total of 131 patients were treated in an open-label, randomized, multicenter study with pioglitazone (45 mg o.d.) during a course of 26 weeks. Response to the pioglitazone therapy was defined by either a 20% decrease in fasting plasma glucose or a 15% decrease in HbA1c values after 26 weeks of pioglitazone treatment. We evaluated the association between the PPARgenotype and the response rate to pioglitazone treatment.
Early referential context effects in sentence processing: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

An event-related brain potentials experiment was carried out to examine the interplay of referential and structural factors during sentence processing in discourse. Subjects read (Dutch) sentences beginning like “David told the girl that … ” in short story contexts that had introduced either one or two referents for a critical singular noun phrase (“the girl”). The waveforms showed that within 280 ms after onset of the critical noun the reader had already determined whether the noun phrase had a unique referent in earlier discourse. Furthermore, this referential information was immediately used in parsing the rest of the sentence, which was briefly ambiguous between a complement clause (“ … that there would be some visitors”) and a relative clause (“ … that had been on the phone to hang up”). A consistent pattern of P600/SPS effects elicited by various subsequent disambiguations revealed that a two-referent discourse context had led the parser to initially pursue the relative-clause alternative to a larger extent than a one-referent context. Together, the results suggest that during the processing of sentences in discourse, structural and referential sources of information interact on a word-by-word basis.
Towards targeted therapy for infant acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Despite the greatly improved treatment regimes for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in general, resulting in long‐term survival in approximately 80% of cases, current therapies still fail in >50% of ALL cases diagnosed within the first year of life (i.e. in infants). Therefore, more adequate treatment strategies are urgently needed to also improve the prognosis for these very young patients with ALL. Here we review the current acquaintance with the biology of infant ALL and describe how this knowledge may lead to innovative therapeutic approaches.
Structure of an acyl-enzyme intermediate during catalysis: (guanidinobenzoyl)trypsin.

The crystal and molecular structure of trypsin at a transiently stable intermediate step during catalysis has been determined by X-ray diffraction methods. Bovine trypsin cleaved the substrate p-nitrophenyl p-guanidinobenzoate during crystallization under conditions in which the acyl-enzyme intermediate, (guanidinobenzoyl)trypsin, was stable. Orthorhombic crystals formed in space group P2(1)2(1)2(1), with a = 63.74, b = 63.54, and c = 68.93 A. This is a crystal form of bovine trypsin for which a molecular structure has not been reported. Diffraction data were measured with a FAST (Enraf Nonius) diffractometer. The structure was refined to a crystallographic residual of R = 0.16 for data in the resolution range 7.0-2.0 A. The refined model of (guanidinobenzoyl)trypsin provides insight into the structural basis for its slow rate of deacylation, which in solution at 25 degrees C and pH 7.4 exhibits a t1/2 of 12 h. In addition to the rotation of the Ser-195 hydroxyl away from His-157, C beta of Ser-195 moves 0.7 A toward Asp-189 at the bottom of the active site, with respect to the native structure. This allows formation of energetically favorable H bonds and an ion pair between the carboxylate of Asp-189 and the guanidino group of the substrate. This movement is dictated by the rigidity of the aromatic ring in guanidinobenzoate--model-building indicates that this should not occur when arginine, with its more flexible aliphatic backbone, forms the ester bond with Ser-195. As a consequence, highly ordered water molecules in the active site are no longer close enough to the scissile ester bond to serve as potential nucleophiles for hydrolysis. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)