Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Notch Signaling-Induced Oscillatory Gene Expression May Drive Neurogenesis in the Developing Retina

After integrating classic and cutting-edge research, we proposed a unified model that attempts to explain the key steps of mammalian retinal neurogenesis. We proposed that the Notch signaling-induced lateral inhibition mechanism promotes oscillatory expression of Hes1. Oscillating Hes1 inhibitory activity as a result leads to oscillatory expression of Notch signaling inhibitors, activators/inhibitors of retinal neuronal phenotypes, and cell cycle-promoting genes all within a retinal progenitor cell (RPC). We provided a mechanism explaining not only how oscillatory expression prevents the progenitor-to-precursor transition, but also how this transition happens. Our proposal of the mechanism posits that the levels of the above factors not only oscillate but also rise (with the exception of Hes1) as the factors accumulate within a progenitor. Depending on which factors accumulate fastest and reach the required supra-threshold levels (cell cycle activators or Notch signaling inhibitors), the progenitor either proliferates or begins to differentiate without any further proliferation when Notch signaling ceases. Thus, oscillatory gene expression may regulate an RPC’s decision to proliferate or differentiate. Meanwhile, a post-mitotic precursor’s selection of one retinal neuronal phenotype over many others depends on the expression level of key transcription factors (activators) required for each of these retinal neuronal phenotypes. Because the events described above are stochastic due to oscillatory gene expression and gene product inheritance from a mother RPC after its division, an RPC or precursor’s decision requires the assignment of probabilities to specific outcomes in the selection process. While low and sustained (non-oscillatory) Notch signaling activity is required to promote the transition of retinal progenitors into various retinal neuronal phenotypes, we propose that the lateral inhibition mechanism, combined with high expression of the BMP signaling-induced Inhibitor of Differentiation (ID) protein family, promotes high and sustained (non-oscillatory) Hes1 and Hes5 expression. These events facilitate the transition of an RPC into the Müller glia (MG) phenotype at the late stage of retinal development.
Trees and shrubs of the tropical dry forest of the Magdalena river upper watershed (Colombia)

Abstract Background We describe the database of trees and shrubs of tropical dry forest patches of the Magdalena upper river basin in Colombia, preserved in the Herbarium of Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas y Ambientales. The dataset includes 211 taxa, from which 156 were identified to species. We reported 48 families and 137 genera. The most species rich and abundant families were Fabaceae and Rubiaceae and the most abundant species was Talisia stricta (Sapindaceae). We found differences in diversity between north and south zones of the study area. New information The Magdalena river upper watershed region is an important tropical dry forest conservation area. Twenty nine species and 4 genera recorded in this study have not been reported in previous reviews of the region. Additionally, Oxandra espintana is reported in literature as critically endangered and Aspidosperma polyneuron is reported as endangered, but there are no studies about their conservation status in the region. Our results suggest the strong need to develop additional inventories of plants that contribute to the knowledge of the plant diversity of this ecosystem in the region and studies of their conservation status.
SCHWANNOMATOSIS

SCHWANNOMATOSIS To the Editor: I read with interest the case illustration by Surov et al. presenting impressive MR images of bilateral masses along peripheral nerves. Due to the large number of tumors, the authors termed it “schwannomatosis. ” These masses occurred in this patient apparently with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF-1) also known as von Recklinghausen disease and fulfilling diagnostic criteria for NF-1 because the patient had multiple cutaneous neurofibromas and café-au-lait spots. NF-1 is an autosomal dominant disorder caused by mutations of the NF-1 gene on chromosome 17q11.2. The term von Recklinghausen disease is associated with NF-1 and should not be used with other types of neurofibromatosis. Characteristic nervous system neoplasms include neurofibromas, malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors, and gliomas. Schwannomas do not belong to this group. Neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF-2) is a clinically and genetically different disease caused by mutations of the NF-2 gene on chromosome 22q12 and with schwannomas, meningiomas, and gliomas as nervous system neoplasms. Many neurofibromas in NF-2 patients prove to be misdiagnosed schwannomas. Recent clinical and genetic data indicate the existence of a third, usually sporadic and sometimes autosomal dominant disorder within the spectrum of neurofibromatosis. Patients present with multiple schwannomas of cranial nerve, spinal nerve root, or peripheral nerve origin. These lesions are present in the absence of cutaneous stigmata, neurofibromas, vestibular schwannomas, or parenchymal brain tumors, characteristic of NF-1 or NF-2. Exclusion of NF-2 by clinical criteria and by imaging of the vestibular nerves is essential for the diagnosis of schwannomatosis. It is becoming evident that the SMARCB1/INI1 gene on chromosome 22q11 (near the NF-2 gene) contributes to the pathogenesis of this disorder. Given these diagnostic and classification considerations, we would inquire whether the diagnosis of von Recklinghausen disease had been confirmed by genetic methods in the patient. If not, were the multiple cutaneous neurofibromas perhaps plexiform schwannomas or were bilateral vestibular schwannomas present? Finally, does MRI provide a reliable method to differentiate neurofibromas from schwannomas? Schwannomatosis is an independent disease entity which should not be confused with neurofibromatosis, especially type 1. Thus, I would caution against the designation of the multiple bilateral masses in the patient described by Surov et al. as schwannomatosis as long as the primary diagnosis is NF-1.
Identification of Flap endonuclease 1 as a potential core gene in hepatocellular carcinoma by integrated bioinformatics analysis

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common yet deadly form of malignant cancer. However, the specific mechanisms involved in HCC diagnosis have not yet fully elucidated. Herein, we screened four publically available Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) expression profiles (GSE14520, GSE29721, GSE45267 and GSE60502), and used them to identify 409 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including 142 and 267 up- and down-regulated genes, respectively. The DAVID database was used to look for functionally enriched pathways among DEGs, and the STRING database and Cytoscape platform were used to generate a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network for these DEGs. The cytoHubba plug-in was utilized to detect 185 hub genes, and three key clustering modules were constructed with the MCODE plug-in. Gene functional enrichment analyses of these three key clustering modules were further performed, and nine core genes including BIRC5, DLGAP5, DTL, FEN1, KIAA0101, KIF4A, MCM2, MKI67, and RFC4, were identified in the most critical cluster. Subsequently, the hierarchical clustering and expression of core genes in TCGA liver cancer tissues were analyzed using the UCSC Cancer Genomics Browser, and whether elevated core gene expression was linked to a poor prognosis in HCC patients was assessed using the GEPIA database. The PPI of the nine core genes revealed an interaction between FEN1, MCM2, RFC4, and BIRC5. Furthermore, the expression of FEN1 was positively correlated with that of three other core genes in TCGA liver cancer tissues. FEN1 expression in HCC and other tumor types was assessed with the FIREBROWSE and ONCOMINE databases, and results were verified in HCC samples and hepatoma cells. FEN1 levels were also positively correlated with tumor size, distant metastasis and vascular invasion. In conclusion, we identified nine core genes associated with HCC development, offering novel insight into HCC progression. In particular, the aberrantly elevated FEN1 may represent a potential biomarker for HCC diagnosis and treatment.
One-bead one-compound combinatorial library derived targeting ligands for detection and treatment of oral squamous cancer

Oral squamous cancers (OSC) are hallmarked by poor prognosis, delayed clinical detection, and a lack of defined, characteristic biomarkers. By screening combinatorial one-bead one-compound (OBOC) peptide libraries against oral squamous cancer cell lines, two cyclic peptide ligands, LLY12 and LLY13 were previously identified. These ligands are capable of specific binding to the oral cancer cell lines (MOK-101, HSC-3, SCC-4 and SCC-10a) but not non-cancerous keratinocytes, leukocytes, fibroblast, and endothelial cells. These two peptides were synthesized and evaluated for their binding property, cytotoxicity and cell permeability. In vitro studies indicate that both LLY12 and LLY13 were able to bind to oral cancer cells with high specificity but did not show any cytotoxicity against human keratinocytes. Biotinylated LLY13, in complex with streptavidin-alexa488 was taken up by live oral cancer cells, thus rendering it as an excellent candidate vehicle for efficient delivery of drug loaded-nanoparticles. In vivo and ex vivo near infra-red fluorescence imaging studies confirmed the in vivo targeting efficiency and specificity of LLY13 in oral cancer orthotopic murine xenograft model. In vivo studies also showed that LLY13 was able to accumulate in the OSC tumors and demarcate the tumor margins in orthotopic xenograft model. Together, our data supports LLY13 as a promising theranostic agent against OSC.
Selecting Informative Context Sentence by Forced Back-Translation

As one of the contributions of this paper, this paper ﬁrst explores the upper bound of context-based neural machine translation and attempt to utilize previously un-used context information. We found that, if we could appropriately select the most informative context sentence for a given input source sentence, we could boost translation accuracy as much as approximately 10 BLEU points. This paper next explores a criterion to select the most informative context sentences that give the highest BLEU score. Applying the proposed criterion, context sentences that yield the highest forced back-translation probability when back-translating into the source sentence are selected. Experimental results with Japanese and English parallel sentences from the OpenSubtitles2018 corpus demonstrate that, when the context length of ﬁve preceding and ﬁve subsequent sentences are examined, the proposed approach achieved signiﬁcant improvements of 0.74 (Japanese to English) and 1.14 (English to Japanese) BLEU scores compared to the baseline 2-to-2 model, where the oracle translation achieved upper bounds improvements of 5.88 (Japanese to English) and 9.10 (English to Japanese) BLEU scores.
Challenges and Opportunities of Mixed Reality Systems in Education

Mixed reality gained much research attention in recent years due to the availability of capable hardware. Current smartphones allow people to immerse themselves in virtual worlds or explore digital artifacts through augmented reality applications. Schools, universities, and other educational establishment have started to equip students and pupils with tablets potentially capable of presenting mixed reality content. However, the development of compelling mixed reality applications that foster enhanced knowledge transfer lags behind. While the availability of mixed reality hardware offers new opportunities, it also creates challenges for content creators and educators. We discuss these challenges and opportunities and suggest directions for future research. We consider mixed reality as a chance to foster supportive and personalized learning experiences for everyone.
Spaceline und Interaktion in Cinematischer Virtueller Realität

Bei der Betrachtung von 360°-Filmen mit Head-Mounted-Displays ist der Zuschauer mitten im Geschehen und kann seine Blickrichtung und damit den Bildausschnitt frei wählen. Dabei gelingt es mit den Erzählweisen des traditionellen Films nicht immer, dem Zuschauer das zu zeigen, was für den Fortlauf der Geschichte von Bedeutung ist. Andererseits bietet die zusätzliche Raumkomponente neue Möglichkeiten. Diese Arbeit untersucht verschiedene Methoden, die es dem Zuschauer erleichtern, der Erzählung zu folgen, in seinem eigenen Tempo und mit eigenen Schwerpunkten. In Analogie zur traditionellen ‘Timeline’ führen wir das Konzept einer ‘Spaceline’ ein, die Filmsequenzen über Regionen miteinander verbindet. Für die Umsetzung wurde ein Spaceline-Editor entwickelt, der es ermöglicht, interaktive 360°Filmerlebnisse zu kreieren, und dabei Indikatoren festzulegen, die auf Regionen innerund außerhalb des Blickfeldes hinweisen.
Translating Terminologies: A Comparative Examination of NMT and PBSMT Systems

Terminology translation is a critical aspect in translation quality assurance, as it requires exact forms not typically expected of conventional translation. Recent studies have examined the quality of machine translation, but little work has focused speciﬁcally on the translation of terms. We present a comparative evaluation of the success of NMT and PBSMT systems in term translation. We selected eight language pairs among English, French, German, Finnish, and Romanian, taking into account their diverse language families and resource abundance. Based on the evaluation of Exact Match (EM) and recall scores, we concluded that NMT, in general, performs better with context, but PB-SMT outperforms when translating without context, and found that signiﬁcant differences often arise from language nature.
Towards Instantiating the Algebraic Group Model

The Generic Group Model (GGM) is one of the most important tools for analyzing the hardness of a cryptographic problem. Although a proof in the GGM provides a certain degree of confidence in the problem’s hardness, it is a rather strong and limited model, since it does not allow an algorithm to exploit any property of the group structure. To bridge the gap between the GGM and the Standard Model, Fuchsbauer, Kiltz, and Loss proposed a model, called the Algebraic Group Model (AGM, CRYPTO 2018). In the AGM, an adversary can take advantage of the group structure, but it needs to provide a representation of its group element outputs, which seems weaker than the GGM but stronger than the Standard Model. Due to this additional information we learn about the adversary, the AGM allows us to derive simple but meaningful security proofs. In this paper, we take the first step to bridge the gap between the AGM and the Standard Model. We instantiate the AGM under Standard Assumptions. More precisely, we construct two algebraic groups under the Knowledge of Exponent Assumption (KEA). In addition to the KEA, our first construction requires symmetric pairings, and our second construction needs an additively homomorphic Non-Interactive ZeroKnowledge (NIZK) argument system, which can be implemented by a standard variant of Diffie-Hellman Assumption in the asymmetric pairing setting. Furthermore, we show that both of our constructions provide cryptographic hardness which can be used to construct secure cryptosystems. We note that the KEA provably holds in the GGM. Our results show that, instead of instantiating the seemingly complex AGM directly, one can try to instantiate the GKEA under falsifiable assumptions in the Standard Model. Thus, our results can serve as a stepping stone towards instantiating the AGM under falsifiable assumptions.
Halo: Recursive Proof Composition without a Trusted Setup

Non-interactive proofs of knowledge allow us to publicly demonstrate the faithful execution of arbitrary computations. SNARKs have the additional property of succinctness, meaning that the proofs are short and fast to verify even when the computations involved are large. This property raises the prospect of recursive proof composition: proofs that verify other proofs. All previously known realizations of recursive proof composition have required a trusted setup and cycles of expensive pairing-friendly elliptic curves. We obtain the ﬁrst practical example of recursive proof composition without a trusted setup, using only ordinary cycles of elliptic curves. Our primary contribution is a novel technique for amortizing away expensive veriﬁcation procedures from within the proof veriﬁcation cycle so that we could obtain recursion using a composition of existing protocols and techniques. We devise a technique for amortizing the cost of verifying multiple inner product arguments which may be of independent interest.
An Effective Technique to Higher Throughput for Streaming Applications on an MPSoC

In the era of multicore system architectures, it is empirical to develop efficient techniques to utilize the added compute power. High speed schedules are one of the main benefits that can be extracted from such systems. This is especially important for embedded systems that are required to run highly complex applications fast. Embedded systems often employ a multi-processor system-on-a-chip (MPSoC) to enhance performance. Hence in this article, we present an effective technique to scheduling of multiple streaming applications on an MPSoC with the objective of maximizing throughput. The proposed technique is implemented and tested on real and hypothetical systems on a range of benchmarks and the results show the great improvement in the systems' throughput generated from the presented technique.
Ein kollaboratives Task-Management-System mit spielerischen Elementen

Unterstützende Aufgaben im Büroalltag, wie etwa das Ausräumen der Spülmaschine, werden häufig als lästig und störend empfunden. Werden sie jedoch in ein spielerisches Setting übertragen, können sie mit mehr Motivation angegangen werden, das Gemeinschaftsgefühl der Mitarbeiter stärken und nicht zuletzt viel Spaß bereiten. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir TaskMarket, ein kollaboratives Task-ManagementSystem (TMS) für den Büroalltag, und seinen nutzerzentrierten Designprozess vor. TaskMarket basiert auf einemAufgabenmarktplatz, über den sich Mitarbeiter gegenseitig zur Erledigung vonAufgaben motivieren und kollaborativ auf ein gemeinsames Achievement hinarbeiten können. In einer dreitägigen Nutzerstudie zeigte sich, dass TaskMarket für mehr Motivation zur Erledigung von andernfalls als lästig empfundenen Aufgaben sorgte und den Probanden viel Spaß beim Umgang mit dem TMS bereitete.
Improving Domain Adaptation for Machine Translation withTranslation Pieces

Neural Machine Translation has achieved impressive results in the last couple years, in particular when aided by domain adaptation methods. However, it has well known caveats, and can sometimes generate inadequate content that appears ﬂuent, but does not convey the meaning of the original sentence. In particular, for scarce in-domain data, these models tend to over-ﬁt, performing poorly on any content that differs slightly from the domain data. In this paper, we apply a recent technique based on translation pieces and show that it can work as a way to improve and stabilize domain adaptation. We present human evaluation results, with gains as high as 20 MQM points for single domains, and consistent gains in a multiple subdomain scenario of 3 MQM points for several language pairs.
Revisiting the Hybrid attack on sparse and ternary secret LWE

In the practical use of the Learning With Error (LWE) based cryptosystems, it is quite common to choose the secret to be extremely small: one popular choice is ternary (±1, 0) coefficient vector, and some further use ternary vector having only small numbers of nonzero coefficient, what is called sparse and ternary vector. This use of small secret also benefits to attack algorithms against LWE, and currently LWEbased cryptosystems including homomorphic encryptions (HE) set parameters based on the attack complexity of those improved attacks. In this work, we revisit the well-known Howgrave-Graham’s hybrid attack, which was originally designed to solve the NTRU problem, with respect to sparse and ternary secret LWE case, and also refine the previous analysis for the hybrid attack in line with LWE setting. Moreover, upon our analysis we estimate attack complexity of the hybrid attack for several LWE parameters. As a result, we argue the currently used HE parameters should be raised to maintain the same security level by considering the hybrid attack; for example, the parameter set (n, log q, σ) = (65536, 1240, 3.2) with Hamming weight of secret key h = 64, which was estimated to satisfy ≥ 128 bit-security by the previously considered attacks, is newly estimated to provide only 113 bit-security by the hybrid attack.
Gamification und Augmented Reality für Lagerprozesse

In einem Experiment mit 66 untersuchten Probanden wurde die motivierende Wirkung der beiden Spielelemente Abzeichen und Bestenliste im Umfeld eines durch Augmented Reality gestützten Lagerprozesses betrachtet. Konkret wurde die Wirkung der beiden Elemente auf die individuelle Motivation der Probanden und die Geschwindigkeit bei der Ausführung von Arbeitsaufträgen untersucht. Es konnten interessante und teilweise unerwartete Unterschiede in der Wirkung der beiden Spielelemente festgestellt werden.
VirtEx: Eine Ontologie-basierte Virtuelle Ausstellungen

Universitäten besitzen in ihren Technischen Sammlungen Objekte, die nicht nur aus historischer Sicht, sondern zu Teilen immer noch für Lehre und Forschung relevant sind. Häufig sind seltene, Domänenspezifische Objekte nur in einer oder wenigen Sammlungen weltweit vorhanden. In der Regel besitzen Technische Sammlungen keine Dauerausstellungen oder geregelte Öffnungszeiten. Der Zugang zu den Objekten ist demnach lokal und zeitlich beschränkt. Durch Virtuelle Ausstellungen wird die Erreichbarkeit erhöht. Zugleich sollen Ontologien die Vernetzung und wissenschaftliche Auswertbarkeit steigern. Daher wird in dieser Arbeit direkt aus einer Ontologie, welche einen Sammlungsbestand beschreibt, eine Virtuelle Ausstellung erzeugt.
Large-scale Machine Translation Evaluation of the iADAATPA Project

This paper reports the results of an indepth evaluation of 34 state-of-the-art domain-adapted machine translation (MT) systems that were built by four leading MT companies as part of the EU-funded iADAATPA project. These systems support a wide variety of languages for several domains. The evaluation combined automatic metrics and human methods, namely assessments of adequacy, ﬂuency, and comparative ranking. The paper also discusses the most effective techniques to build domain-adapted MT systems for the relevant language combinations and domains.
Evolution of bot and human behavior during elections

Online social media have become one of the main communication platforms for political discussion. The online ecosystem, however, does not only include human users but has given a space to an increasing number of automated accounts, referred to as bots, extensively used to spread messages and manipulate the narratives others are exposed to. Although social media service providers put increasing efforts to protect their platforms, malicious bot accounts continuously evolve to escape detection. In this work, we monitored the activity of almost 245K accounts engaged in the Twitter political discussion during the last two U.S. voting events. We identified approximately 31K bots and characterized their activity in contrast with humans. We show that, in the 2018 midterms, bots changed the volume and the temporal dynamics of their online activity to better mimic humans and avoid detection. Our findings highlight the mutable nature of bots and illustrate the challenges to forecast their evolution.