Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cordycepin inhibits ERK pathway to suppress FGF9-induced tumorigenesis with MA-10 mouse Leydig tumor cells

Fibroblast growth factor 9 (FGF9) is a member of FGF family, and abnormal expression of FGF9 can promote tumorigenesis. Cordycepin, a major bioactive component in fungus Cordyceps sinensis, could suppress various tumors. We have shown that cordycepin could inhibit FGF9-induced testicular tumor growth in vitro and in vivo with MA-10 mouse Leydig tumor cells. In the present study, the mechanisms related to apoptosis and autophagy were determined. Results show that cordycepin significantly suppressed cell viability and colony formation with correlatedly morphological change related to cell death in FGF9-treated MA-10 cells. Flow cytometry and western blotting results further demonstrate that cordycepin induced apoptosis through the cleavage of caspase-8, -9, -3 and PARP in FGF9-treated MA-10 cells. However, the expressions of LC3-II, beclin-1 and p62 were not stimulated by cordycepin with the presence of FGF9, suggesting cordycepin would activate apoptosis, but not autophagy, in FGF9-treated MA-10 cells. Moreover, inhibition of ERK signal pathway and autophagy would enhance cordycepin-induced cell death effects in FGF9-treated MA-10 cells, referring that ERK signaling was regulated under cordycepin and FGF9 treatments. In NOD-SCID mouse allograft model inoculated with MA-10 cells, cordycepin significantly suppressed tumor growth with the presence of FGF9, and the cleavage of caspase-3 could be observed in tumor tissue, implying cordycepin induced caspase cascade to suppress tumor growth. Moreover, cordycepin plus U0126, ERK inhibitor, further significantly suppressed tumor growth with the presence of FGF9 as compared to the FGF9 only group, confirming the involvement of ERK signaling in this event. In conclusion, cordycepin induced caspase and ERK pathways to promote MA-10 cell apoptosis, but not autophagy, with the presence of FGF9.
Efficient combined SSIM- and landmark-driven image registration in a variational framework

Image registration methods are used to establish geometrical correspondences between different datasets. Various characteristics of image data can be exploited to drive image registration algorithms. Thus, the currently available schemes can be roughly divided into two classes: intensity-based and feature-based registration schemes. In this paper, we present a mathematical framework, based on the calculus of variations, for combining these two classes in order to benefit from the advantages of both strategies. The goal is to obtain a registration algorithm which achieves a good matching of datasets near landmark locations but also away from them (by matching the corresponding intensities). The proposed approach includes the novel formulation of a disparity term which simultaneously takes into account the structural similarity index (a similarity measure which considers spatial dependencies in the images) and the location of outstanding points. Since the iteration which results of the variational formulation is translated into the frequency domain, the implementation of the proposed algorithm offers a good speed-performance trade-off when compared to other state-of-the-art image registration implementations. Experimental results show the advantages, in the medical setting, of the combined SSIMand landmark-based approach over well-established registration techniques which use either landmark or intensity information alone. In particular, the registration of triple-phase 3D computed tomographies of the liver under injection of a contrast agent has been chosen for such a comparison. The datasets are acquired at different times depending on the arrival time of the contrast agent in arteries, portal and hepatic veins, so they have to be registered in order to show the liver structures acquired at each phase in a common framework. These multi-phase studies provide tumor enhancement on the arterial and portal venous phases that support differential diagnosis of lesions in the liver.
COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Hesitancy in Low-and-Middle Income Countries

As COVID-19 vaccination ramps up worldwide, understanding factors that may lead people in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) to reject COVID-19 vaccination is of global concern, as lags in vaccination could facilitate global spread of virus variants. Researchers surveyed nearly 45,000 individuals in 10 LMICs, the United States, and Russia between June 2020 and January 2021on vaccine acceptance and trusted sources for vaccination advice. They found high levels of vaccine acceptance in LMICs, with an average acceptance rate of 80 percent among respondents, and self-protection as the primary motivation. Respondents’ top cited concern with the vaccines are potential side eﬀects. Finally, health workers are considered the most trusted information sources on vaccines. Governments can improve vaccination campaigns by appealing to self-protection and partnering with health workers to promote public health messaging.
The Impact of Maintenance Dredging on Water Quality and Phytoplankton Standing Stock in Kwan Phayao Lake, Thailand

This study focuses on the role of the lake dredging, the effect of seasonal changes and distribution of total suspended solids, changes in light levels, lake water quality and phytoplankton biomass in Kwan Phayao between November 2004 and October 2005. A water quality monitoring program was carried out in Kwan Phayao Lake, an internationally recognized wetland in the upper north region of Thailand, to determine the impact of lake dredging. Water samples were collected monthly from November 2004 to October 2005 at 10 stations. Results indicated extraordinary high total suspended solid (TSS) concentrations at the upper end of the lake during March and April 2005 when the inflow channel was being dredged. These high concentrations of TSS limited photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) light penetrating into the lake at depths of 60 cm and 40 cm in March and April, respectively. During July to October there were high water inflows into the lake with moderate TSS. During these months surface water was also partly covered by floating macrophytes, especially water hyacinth, resulting in low phytoplankton standing stock. Mean phytoplankton standing stocks, expressed as chlorophyll a, were higher than 100 mg m-3 between March and May 2005 due to algal blooms. Among 10 stations where data were collected, the lowest chlorophyll a recordings were concurrently observed at the most turbid site. Dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations near lake bottom of this sampling site were also usually lower than DO criteria for the survival of aquatic animals. No correlation between rainfall and TSS was found in this study. Results indicated that the dredging activity had a minor effect on surface water pH, DO, and water temperature. However, the impact on PAR, phytoplankton standing stock, and dissolved inorganic materials were locally prominent.
The Relationship between Children’s Film Appreciation and Children’s Media Usage Habits of Film Viewing

: The purpose of this study is to investigate into the relationship between children’s film appreciation and media usage habits of film viewing with respect to the films i) E.T. : the Extra Terrestrial and ii) Saving Private Ryan. The research study was quantitative in nature. For the collection of the data the researcher used the questionnaire as the data collection instrument. The sample of the study comprised of 93 school children from standard XI who were of age ranging from 15-17 years of age. They belonged to a government school of Telangana, which is one of the southern states of India. Correlation analysis was used for data analysis. The results in the research study showed a positive relationship between school children’s film appreciation and media usage habits of film viewing with respect to the films E.T. : the Extra Terrestrial and Saving Private Ryan.
‘Poverty, Equity and Growth in Developing and Transition Countries: Statistical Methods and Empirical Analysis’

Grant disbursals and school-based management interventions are expensive interventions that have recently received growing attention from policy-makers despite their mixed success at delivering improvements in educational outcomes in a cost-effective way. This paper reports results from a large-scale, cluster randomized controlled trial that evaluated two components of the Nigerian Partnership for Education Project (NIPEP) in Sokoto state, Nigeria. School-based management committees received both a training and a grant to improve access to and quality of primary school education, especially for girls. One year after implementation, the intervention had no impact on schools’ infrastructure, educational attainment or learning outcome measures. Our results show the importance of understanding the context-specific constraints inhibiting the delivery and uptake of primary school education to avoid spending 100 million USD on a program with no discernable impact.
PickSim: A dynamically configurable Gazebo pipeline for robotic manipulation

—State-of-the art robot learning approaches are data-driven and require a large amount of diverse robot data which are prohibitively expensive to acquire. In this paper, we present PickSim, an open source dynamically configurable Gazebo-based pipeline for the purpose of robot manipulation learning. Specifically, we propose a new plugin and pipeline, based on the well known open source robot software Gazebo. We showcase the potential of PickSim through the generation of 6D pose estimation dataset, potentially randomized over a number of factors (e.g., lighting, texture, shape, etc.). Rich and perfect annotations (e.g., object masks, poses, occlusions, etc.) are automatically generated and enable the learning and evaluation of computer vision models over a number of varying factors. PickSim unlocks multi-task robot manipulation learning when a robot model and physics engine are integrated into it, and thereby paves the way to the generation of large-scale robot manipulation data as required in general-purpose robot manipulation learning.
Automobile Prices, Gasoline Prices, and Consumer Demand for Fuel Economy: Economic Analysis Group Discussion Paper

The relationship between gasoline prices and the demand for vehicle fuel efficiency is important for environmental policy but poorly understood in the academic literature. We provide empirical evidence that automobile manufacturers price as if consumers respond to gasoline prices. We derive a reduced-form regression equation from theoretical micro-foundations and estimate the equation with nearly 300,000 vehicle-week-region observations over the period 2003-2006. We found that vehicle prices generally decline in the gasoline price. The decline is larger for inefficient vehicles, and the prices of particularly efficient vehicles actually rise. Structural estimation that ignores these effects underestimates consumer preferences for fuel efficiency.
Implicit-Explicit Formulations for a 3D Nonhydrostatic Unified Model of the Atmosphere (NUMA)

We derive an implicit-explicit (IMEX) formalism for the three-dimensional Euler equations that allow a unified representation of various nonhydrostatic flow regimes, including cloud-resolving and mesoscale (flow in a 3D Cartesian domain) as well as global regimes (flow in spherical geometries). This general IMEX formalism admits numerous types of methods including single-stage multi-step methods (e.g., Adams methods and backward difference formulas) and multi-stage single-step methods (e.g., additive Runge-Kutta methods). The significance of this result is that it allows a numerical model to reuse the same machinery for all classes of time-integration methods described in this work. We also derive two classes of IMEX methods, 1D and 3D, and show that they achieve their expected theoretical rates of convergence regardless of the geometry (e.g., 3D box or sphere) and introduce a new second-order IMEX Runge-Kutta method that performs better than the other second order methods considered. We then compare all the IMEX methods in terms of accuracy and efficiency for two types of geophysical fluid dynamics problems: buoyant convection and inertia-gravity waves. These results show that the high-order time-integration methods yield better efficiency particularly when high levels of accuracy are desired.
2 The Problem : Vulnerable Programs and Least Privilege

Internet security incidents have shown that while network cryptography tools like SSL are valuable to Internet service, the hard problem is to protect the server itself from attack. The host security problem is important because attackers know to attack the weakest link, which is vulnerable servers. The problem is hard because securing a server requires securing every piece of software on the server that the attacker can access, which can be a very large set of software for a sophisticated server. Sophisticated security architectures that protect against this class of problem exist, but because they are either complex, expensive, or incompatible with existing application software, most Internet server operators have not chosen to use them.
Reactive oxygen species in health and disease

Risk factors indicate the importance of oxidative stress during ovarian carcinogenesis. To tolerate oxidative stress, cells activate the transcription factor Nrf2 (Nfe2l2), the master regulator of antioxidant and cytoprotective genes. Indeed, for most cancers, hyperactivity of Nrf2 is observed, and siRNA studies assigned Nrf2 as therapeutic target. However, the cancer ‐ protective role of Nrf2 in healthy cells highlights the requirement for an adequate therapeutic window. We engineered artificial transcription factors to assess the role of Nrf2 in healthy (OSE ‐ C2) and malignant ovarian cells (A2780). Successful NRF2 up ‐ and downregulation correlated with decreased, respectively increased, sensitivity toward oxidative stress. Inhibition of NRF2 reduced the colony forming potential to the same extent in wild ‐ type and BRCA1 knockdown A2780 cells. Only in BRCA1 knockdown A2780 cells, the effect of Nrf2 inhibition could be enhanced when combined with PARP inhibitors. Therefore, we propose that this combination therapy of PARP inhibitors and Nrf2 inhibition can further improve treatment efficacy specifically in BRCA1 mutant cancer cells without acquiring the side ‐ effects associated with previously studied Nrf2 inhibition combinations with either chemotherapy or radiation. Our findings stress the dual role of Nrf2 in carcinogenesis, while offering approaches to exploit Nrf2 as a potent therapeutic target in ovarian cancer.
Title: The Consequence of Drug-Drug Interactions Influencing the Interplay between P-gp and Cyp3a: An Ex Vivo Study with Rat Precision-Cut Intestinal Slices

Groningen Research Institute of Pharmacy, University of Groningen, Antonius Deusinglaan 1, 9713 AV Groningen, the Netherlands. (M. L., I. A. M. de G., S. S., M. H. de J. G. M. M. G.) Interfaculty Mass Spectrometry Center, University of Groningen, Antonius Deusinglaan 1, 9713 AV Groningen, the Netherlands (A. van D.) This article has not been copyedited and formatted. The final version may differ from this version. DMD Fast Forward. Published on March 1, 2016 as DOI: 10.1124/dmd.115. 068684
The Rural Educator The Rural Educator

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown a light on structural problems in education. Changing conditions, policy recommendations, and pressure from local communities have caused strain among educators and administrators across the nation. For rural districts already strained by shortages of teachers and administrators, the pandemic particularly raised alarms about the potential for accelerating superintendent turnover. By examining the superintendent turnover literature through the lens of district leadership roles and critical leadership of place, this review can support research to address superintendent turnover, provide guidance for preparation programs that aim to reduce the instability of rural district leadership, and the preparation of administrators for crisis situations. The Covid-19 pandemic created once-in-a-lifetime challenges for superintendents across the United States, leading to increased turnover
CONTROVERSIES IN CARDIOVASCULAR RESEARCH

BOTH studies in the "Controversies* show that models play an important role in attempts to understand the physics of the coronary circulation. A model is a representation of and is supposed to be analogous to a different, more complex system. If the physics of the system is well understood and the boundary conditions are well defined, a model can be used as an analogous computer. Thus can the sailing characteristics of a mammoth tanker be designed by studies on a model no longer than a few meters. Unfortunately, in coronary physiology, there is as yet a dramatic lack in knowledge of anatomy and mechanical behavior of the microcirculation. Hence, models are used to test whether hypothetized mechanisms may indeed be operative at locations where observations are not yet possible. The chance that mechanisms are as hypothetized is greater, as more measured phenomena are being correctly described. Hence, an appraisal of these phenomena is important. In this respect, the two reviews are complementary. To many researchers, but especially to clinicians, this discussion about models may seem very theoretical. However, the discussion has practical implications. This is dear from the different recommendations resulting from the two different papers in these 'Controversies. " According to the model based on intramyocardial compliance alone, the ratio between mean pressure and mean flow in the beating heart is an adequate index of vasomotor tone. If a waterfall element is thought to be essential, both the slope of the diastolic pressure-flow line and Pf_0 should be measured. In addition, a number of experimental requirements must be met.
The Economic and Budget Outlook: An Update

Abstract : The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that, under current taxing and spending policies, the federal budget deficit will approach $200 billion in 1990 and will average almost $160 billion over the next five fiscal years. These projections, however, do not include sufficient resources to resolve the hundreds of insolvent savings and loan associations whose deposits are federally insured. New legislation will be required to provide for these additional spending needs, which if included would push the projected budget deficit to more than $230 billion in 1991 and 1992. At the request of the Congressional budget negotiators, CBO has based its economic projections on the premise that a substantial multiyear package of deficit reduction measures will be adopted later this year. Under this assumption, CBO expects that the U.S. economy will grow by 2.0 percent in 1990 and by about 2.6 percent a year in 1991 through 1995. The three-month Treasury bill rate is projected to fall from its current level of 7.8 percent to an average of 6.9 percent in 1991 and 5.4 percent in 1995. If significant deficit reduction measures of the sort assumed by CBO are not enacted, interest rates are likely to be higher and growth rates are likely to be lower than CBO has projected. CBO's baseline budget projections follow the rules laid down in the Balanced Budget Act. For revenues and entitlement spending, the baseline generally assumes that laws now on the statute books will continue. For defense and nondefense discretionary spending, the projections for 1991 through 1995 are based on the 1990 appropriations, including supplemental appropriations and rescissions, increased only to keep pace with inflation. The baseline projections provide a benchmark for analyzing alternative deficit reduction proposals.
Revealing the Buried Past: Geophysics for Archaeologists

Thanks to ever-more sophisticated technology archaeologists can identify much that is beneath the soil without having to excavate. From Pitt-Rivers banging the surface of the ground with a pick in the late nineteenth century, through Atkinson's revolutionary use of the 'Megger-Earth Tester', to modern-day radar survey, the value of geophysical techniques is lucidly explained with many real-life case studies.
Survey: Reduplication vs Repetition classiﬁcation

Reduplication is a common linguistic phenomenon in many languages, including Indian languages, where it serves a distinct grammatical and semantic function. However, in the context of automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcripts, reduplication can often be mis-taken for repetition, leading to errors in down-stream NLP systems that rely on these transcripts as input. The unavailability of labeled data for this task further impairs progress. In this survey paper, we propose the task to classify reduplication vs. repetition in ASR transcripts to improve the performance of disﬂu-ency correction systems and downstream NLP tasks. We also clearly deine the problem in hand and the motivation behind the task. We discuss about existing ASR datasets that can be used to create new datasets for the task of reduplication vs repetition classiﬁcation.
The genetics of vacuoles

The sour taste of Citrus fruits is due to the extreme acidification of vacuoles in juice vesicle cells via a mechanism that remained elusive. Genetic analysis in petunia identified two vacuolar P-ATPases, PH1 and PH5, which determine flower color by hyperacidifying petal cell vacuoles. Here we show that Citrus homologs, CitPH1 and CitPH5, are expressed in sour lemon, orange, pummelo and rangpur lime fruits, while their expression is strongly reduced in sweet-tasting “acidless” varieties. Down-regulation of CitPH1 and CitPH5 is associated with mutations that disrupt expression of MYB, HLH and/or WRKY transcription factors homologous to those activating PH1 and PH5 in petunia. These findings address a long-standing enigma in cell biology and provide targets to engineer or select for taste in Citrus and other fruits.
Hungry for Change: Food Imports, Urban Bias, and the Political Economy of Debt Default in Autocracies

What drives autocrats to default on their sovereign debt? This paper develops the first theory of sovereign debt default in autocracies that explicitly investigates survival incentives of political actors in non-democracies. I argue that self-interested elites, fearful of threats to their tenure due to urban unrest, may be willing to endure the long-term borrowing costs that defaulting creates rather than risk the short-term survival costs of removing cheap food policies for urban consumers. I test my main claims that both urbanization and food imports should be associated with greater likelihood of autocratic default using panel data covering 43 countries over 50 years, finding that autocracies that are more reliant on imported food and that are more urbanized are significantly more likely to be in default on their external sovereign debt. I substantiate the mechanisms put forward in my formal theory through illustrative historical cases of sovereign debt default in Zambia and Peru, in which I demonstrate that fear of urban unrest in the face of rapidly increasing food prices does indeed drive autocratic elites to default on international debt obligations. In addition to providing the first political theory of debt default in autocracies, the paper introduces two robust predictors of autocratic default which have been overlooked in previous work, and in so doing highlights the importance of urban-rural dynamics in non-democratic regimes. ∗The author wishes to thank Ken Scheve, Thad Dunning, Alex Debs, Gary Cox, Michael Tomz, Lucy Martin, Quintin Beazer, Allison Carnegie, Allan Dafoe and James Hollyer for incredibly valuable advice and feedback. All remaining errors are my own.