nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
STAT3 in the systemic inflammation of cancer cachexia.
Venue: Seminars in cell developmental biology

Weight loss is diagnostic of cachexia, a debilitating syndrome contributing mightily to morbidity and mortality in cancer. Most research has probed mechanisms leading to muscle atrophy and adipose wasting in cachexia; however cachexia is a truly systemic phenomenon. Presence of the tumor elicits an inflammatory response and profound metabolic derangements involving not only muscle and fat, but also the hypothalamus, liver, heart, blood, spleen and likely other organs. This global response is orchestrated in part through circulating cytokines that rise in conditions of cachexia. Exogenous Interleukin 6 (IL6) and related cytokines can induce most cachexia symptomatology, including muscle and fat wasting, the acute phase response and anemia, while IL 6 inhibition reduces muscle loss in cancer. Although mechanistic studies are ongoing, certain of these cachexia phenotypes have been causally linked to the cytokine activated transcription factor, STAT3, including skeletal muscle wasting, cardiac dysfunction and hypothalamic inflammation. Correlative studies implicate STAT3 in fat wasting and the acute phase response in cancer cachexia. Parallel data in non cancer models and disease states suggest both pathological and protective functions for STAT3 in other organs during cachexia. STAT3 also contributes to cancer cachexia through enhancing tumorigenesis, metastasis and immune suppression, particularly in tumors associated with high prevalence of cachexia. This review examines the evidence linking STAT3 to multi organ manifestations of cachexia and the potential and perils for targeting STAT3 to reduce cachexia and prolong survival in cancer patients.
Short term pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate administration attenuates cachexia induced alterations to muscle and liver in ApcMin/ mice
Venue: Oncotarget

Cancer cachexia is a complex wasting condition characterized by chronic inflammation, disrupted energy metabolism, and severe muscle wasting. While evidence in pre clinical cancer cachexia models have determined that different systemic inflammatory inhibitors can attenuate several characteristics of cachexia, there is a limited understanding of their effects after cachexia has developed, and whether short term administration is sufficient to reverse cachexia induced signaling in distinctive target tissues. Pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (PDTC) is a thiol compound having anti inflammatory and antioxidant properties which can inhibit STAT3 and nuclear factor kB (NF kB) signaling in mice. This study examined the effect of short term PDTC administration to ApcMin/ mice on cachexia induced disruption of skeletal muscle protein turnover and liver metabolic function. At 16 weeks of age ApcMin/ mice initiating cachexia (7% BW loss) were administered PDTC (10mg/kg bw/d) for 2 weeks. Control ApcMin/ mice continued to lose body weight during the treatment period, while mice receiving PDTC had no further body weight decrease. PDTC had no effect on either intestinal tumor burden or circulating IL 6. In muscle, PDTC rescued signaling disrupting protein turnover regulation. PDTC suppressed the cachexia induction of STAT3, increased mTORC1 signaling and protein synthesis, and suppressed the induction of Atrogin 1 protein expression. Related to cachectic liver metabolic function, PDTC treatment attenuated glycogen and lipid content depletion independent to the activation of STAT3 and mTORC1 signaling. Overall, these results demonstrate short term PDTC treatment to cachectic mice attenuated cancer induced disruptions to muscle and liver signaling, and these changes were independent to altered tumor burden and circulating IL 6.
A real time face recognition for class participation enrollment system over WebRTC
Venue: International Conference on Digital Image Processing

In the classroom, students can get the most benefit for themselves when attend and participate in the classroom. Roll call is a classical method that mostly uses for the class participation enrollment. The time that used for this method is depended on the number of students; the more number of students, the more time to spend. This work presents the method that improves the class participation enrollment process Thus, we developed the face detection and face recognition system by applying the WebRTC. Since it is a platform independent, we could capture the participant faces from anywhere without an installation. In addition, the three standard face detection and recognition algorithms were applied in two main processes properly. The result showed that system can improve the class participation enrollment accuracy to be more precise and persuaded the student to attend the class as well. Moreover, the system can install to the classroom easily because it is developed in form of the web application and needs an only web camera for the additional device.
Young people's perceptions of smartphone enabled self testing and online care for sexually transmitted infections: qualitative interview study
Venue: BMC Public Health

BackgroundControl of sexually transmitted infections (STI) is a global public health priority. Despite the UK's free, confidential sexual health clinical services, those at greatest risk of STIs, including young people, report barriers to use. These include: embarrassment regarding face to face consultations; the time commitment needed to attend clinic; privacy concerns (e.g. being seen attending clinic) and issues related to confidentiality.A smartphone enabled STI self testing device, linked with online clinical care pathways for treatment, partner notification, and disease surveillance, is being developed by the eSTI2 consortium. It is intended to benefit public health, and could do so by increasing testing among populations which underutilise existing services and/or by enabling rapid provision of effective treatment. We explored its acceptability among potential users.MethodsIn depth interviews were conducted in 2012 with 25 sexually experienced 16 24 year olds, recruited from Further Education colleges in an urban, high STI prevalence area. Thematic analysis was undertaken.ResultsNine females and 16 males participated. 21 self defined as Black; three, mixed ethnicity; and one, Muslim/Asian. 22 reported experience of STI testing, two reported previous STI diagnoses, and all had owned smartphones.Participants expressed enthusiasm about the proposed service, and suggested that they and their peers would use it and test more often if it were available. Utilizing sexual healthcare was perceived to be easier and faster with STI self testing and online clinical care, which facilitated concealment of STI testing from peers/family, and avoided embarrassing face to face consultations. Despite these perceived advantages to privacy, new privacy concerns arose regarding communications technology: principally the risk inherent in having evidence of STI testing or diagnosis visible or retrievable on their phone. Some concerns arose regarding the proposed self test's accuracy, related to self operation and the technology's novelty. Several expressed anxiety around the possibility of being diagnosed and treated without any contact with healthcare professionals.ConclusionsRemote STI self testing and online care appealed to these young people. It addressed barriers they associated with conventional STI services, thus may benefit public health through earlier detection and treatment. Our findings underpin development of online care pathways, as part of ongoing research to create this complex e health intervention.
Optimal Decision Rules in Repeated Games Where Players Infer an Opponent's Mind via Simplified Belief Calculation
Venue: Games

In strategic situations, humans infer the state of mind of others, e.g. emotions or intentions, adapting their behavior appropriately. Nonetheless, evolutionary studies of cooperation typically focus only on reaction norms, e.g. tit for tat, whereby individuals make their next decisions by only considering the observed outcome rather than focusing on their opponent's state of mind. In this paper, we analyze repeated two player games in which players explicitly infer their opponent's unobservable state of mind. Using Markov decision processes, we investigate optimal decision rules and their performance in cooperation. The state of mind inference requires Bayesian belief calculations, which is computationally intensive. We therefore study two models in which players simplify these belief calculations. In Model 1, players adopt a heuristic to approximately infer their opponent's state of mind, whereas in Model 2, players use information regarding their opponent's previous state of mind, obtained from external evidence, e.g. emotional signals. We show that players in both models reach almost optimal behavior through commitment like decision rules by which players are committed to selecting the same action regardless of their opponent's behavior. These commitment like decision rules can enhance or reduce cooperation depending on the opponent's strategy.
Lu Lu: A framework for collaborative decision making games
Venue: Decis. Support Syst.

This paper proposes Lu Lu as an add on architecture to open MMOGs and social network games, which has been developed to utilise a key set of ingredients that underline collaborative decision making games as reported within the research literature: personalisation, team matching, non optimal decision making, leading, decisiveness index, scoring, levelling, and multiple stages. The implementation of Lu Lu is demonstrated as an add on to the classic supply chain beer game, including customisation of Lu Lu to facilitate information exchange through the Facebook games platform, e.g. Graph API and Scores API. Performance assessment of Lu Lu using Behaviour Driven Development suggests a successful integration of all key ingredients within Lu Lu's architecture, yielding autonomous behaviour that improves both player enjoyment and decision making.
Optimal information disclosure policies in strategic queueing games
Venue: Oper. Res. Lett.

Information about queue length is an important parameter for customers who face the decision whether to join a queue or not. In this paper, we study how optimal information disclosure policies can be used by a service provider of an M M 1 queue to increase its revenue. Our main contribution is showing that the intuitive policy of informing customers about the current queue length when it is short and hiding this information when it is long is never optimal.
Assessing cost effectiveness of specific LID practice designs in response to large storm events

Low impact development (LID) practices have become more important in urban stormwater management worldwide. However, most research on design optimization focuses on relatively large scale, and there is very limited information or guideline regarding individual LID practice designs (i.e. optimal depth, width and length) The objective of this study is to identify the optimal design by assessing the hydrological performance and the cost effectiveness of different designs of LID practices at a household or business scale, and to analyze the sensitivity of the hydrological performance and the cost of the optimal design to different model and design parameters. First, EPA SWMM, automatically controlled by MATLAB, is used to obtain the peak runoff of different designs of three specific LID practices (i.e. green roof, bioretention and porous pavement) under different design storms (i.e. 2 yr and 50 yr design storms of Hong Kong, China and Seattle, U.S. Then, life cycle cost is estimated for the different designs, and the optimal design, defined as the design with the lowest cost and at least 20% peak runoff reduction, is identified. Finally, sensitivity of the optimal design to the different design parameters is examined. The optimal design of green roof tends to be larger in area but thinner, while the optimal designs of bioretention and porous pavement tend to be smaller in area. To handle larger storms, however, it is more effective to increase the green roof depth, and to increase the area of the bioretention and porous pavement. Porous pavement is the most cost effective for peak flow reduction, followed by bioretention and then green roof. The cost effectiveness, measured as the peak runoff reduction/thousand Dollars of LID practices in Hong Kong (e.g. 0.02 L/10 3 US$ s, 0.15 L/10 3 US$ s and 0.93 L/10 3 US$ s for green roof, bioretention and porous pavement for 2 yr storm) is lower than that in Seattle (e.g. 0.03 L/10 3 US$ s, 0.29 L/10 3 US$ s and 1.58 L/10 3 US$ s for green roof, bioretention and porous pavement for 2 yr storm) The optimal designs are influenced by the model and design parameters (i.e. initial saturation, hydraulic conductivity and berm height) However, it overall does not affect the main trends and key insights derived, and the results are therefore generic and relevant to the household/business scale optimal design of LID practices worldwide.
m6A RNA methylation promotes XIST mediated transcriptional repression
Venue: Nature

The long non coding RNA X inactive specific transcript (XIST) mediates the transcriptional silencing of genes on the X chromosome. Here we show that, in human cells, XIST is highly methylated with at least 78 N6 methyladenosine (m6A) residues a reversible base modification of unknown function in long non coding RNAs. We show that m6A formation in XIST, as well as in cellular mRNAs, is mediated by RNA binding motif protein 15 (RBM15) and its paralogue RBM15B, which bind the m6A methylation complex and recruit it to specific sites in RNA. This results in the methylation of adenosine nucleotides in adjacent m6A consensus motifs. Furthermore, we show that knockdown of RBM15 and RBM15B, or knockdown of methyltransferase like 3 (METTL3) an m6A methyltransferase, impairs XIST mediated gene silencing. A systematic comparison of m6A binding proteins shows that YTH domain containing 1 (YTHDC1) preferentially recognizes m6A residues on XIST and is required for XIST function. Additionally, artificial tethering of YTHDC1 to XIST rescues XIST mediated silencing upon loss of m6A. These data reveal a pathway of m6A formation and recognition required for XIST mediated transcriptional repression.
Maxout neurons for deep convolutional and LSTM neural networks in speech recognition
Venue: Speech Commun.

We combine maxout neurons with convolutional and LSTM structures for DNNs.The optimal network structures and training strategies are explored for the models.Experiments are carried out for 6 languages on the IARPA Babel data sets.State of the art results are achieved after system combination. Deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved great success in acoustic modeling for speech recognition. However, DNNs with sigmoid neurons may suffer from the vanishing gradient problem during training. Maxout neurons are promising alternatives to sigmoid neurons. The activation of a maxout neuron is obtained by selecting the maximum value within a local region, which results in constant gradients during the training process. In this paper, we combine the maxout neurons with two popular DNN structures for acoustic modeling, namely the convolutional neural network (CNN) and the long short term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network (RNN) The optimal network structures and training strategies for the models are explored. Experiments are conducted on the benchmark data sets released under the IARPA Babel Program. The proposed models achieve 2.5 6.0% relative improvements over their corresponding CNN or LSTM RNN baselines across six language collections. The state of the art results on these data sets are achieved after system combination.
Hallucinations Experienced by Visually Impaired: Charles Bonnet Syndrome
Venue: Optometry and vision science official publication of the American Academy of Optometry

&NA; Charles Bonnet Syndrome is a condition where visual hallucinations occur as a result of damage along the visual pathway. Patients with Charles Bonnet Syndrome maintain partial or full insight that the hallucinations are not real, absence of psychological conditions, and absence of hallucinations affecting other sensory modalities, while maintaining intact intellectual functioning. Charles Bonnet Syndrome has been well documented in neurologic, geriatric medicine, and psychiatric literature, but there is lack of information in optometric and ophthalmologic literature. Therefore, increased awareness of signs and symptoms associated with Charles Bonnet Syndrome is required among practicing clinicians. This review of the literature will also identify other etiologies of visual hallucinations, pathophysiology of Charles Bonnet Syndrome, and effective management strategies.
How (not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor

Without any doubt, the best part of the book is the cover. The portrait of Charles Taylor on the front of the cover of Smith's book could have been easily used in Roman times to emboss a coin during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Philosopher King. It is with such a similar admiration and devotion the author gives an interpretation of Charles Taylor's "monumental" A Secular Age, a book that offers a genealogy of the secular and an archaeology of our angst (sic) Moreover, as the author asserts, "this is also meant to be a kind of how to manual guidance on how (not) to live in a secular age" (p. ix) James K.A. Smith's book is written as a guide through the "forest" of Charles Taylor's book A Secular Age,  It is an offspring of a seminar Professor Smith held at Calvin College, Michigan. Designed for pastors and church planters the author writes: "I believe Taylor's analysis can help pastors and church planters understand better the contexts in which they proclaim the gospel. In many ways, Taylor's Secular Age (sic) amounts to a cultural anthropology for urban mission" (p. xi) The book intends to afforest Taylor's thoughts of secularisation theories and tries to digest key elements of the concept of secularisation, ready made for practitioners and their business. Charts, tables, text boxes, sketches, and references to a vast number of popular songs are designed to break down Taylor's argument into a more legible and intelligible format. The author has decided to present his understanding of Charles Taylor as a manual, a handbook to work and wrestle through Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. One can read Smith's book either as an interpretation of Charles Taylor's work and classify it as a contribution to secularisation theory in the tradition of the good theological practice of writing commentaries to the gospel, or, as an exhortation for believers not to despair in times of advanced secularity. The book by James K.A. Smith is not an academic book, despite the misleading references to postmodern thinkers in footnotes, it is, first of all a pastoral book. A book in which Taylor's work is analysed according to the normative imperative of spreading the gospel. Therefore, James K.A. Smith's How (not) to be Secular is prone to suggesting shortcuts which, in the end, distort the accurate apprehension of a secular age. I recommend reading Charles Taylor's book first, bearing in mind Marcus Aurelius' stoic advice: 'Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth'
The Personal Rule Of Charles I

The Personal Rule of Charles I UK Parliament The Personal Rule was the period from 1629 to 1640, when King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland ruled without recourse to Parliament. The King claimed that he was entitled to do this under the Royal Prerogative. Charles had already dissolved three Parliaments by the third year of his reign in 1628. After the murder of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was deemed to have a
Gel a base de papaina: una nueva alternativa para la remocion quimica y mecanica de la caries

Buscando la maxima preservacion de las estructuras dentarias sanas, se han desarrollado diferentes tecnicas minimamente invasivas para el tratamiento de la enfermedad caries. Entre esas alternativas tenemos la remocion quimico mecanica de la caries, que se caracteriza por la aplicacion de un agente quimico capaz de actuar solamente sobre la dentina infectada, facilitando su remocion con curetas sin corte, preservando las estructuras sanas y evitando estimulos dolorosos. El Papacarie(r) un gel a base de papaina, fue formulado con la intencion de volver mas accesible la remocion quimico mecanica de la caries. Su composicion es basicamente la papaina (una proteina extraida de la papaya) cloramina, un espesante y azul de toluidina. La papaina interactua con el colageno expuesto por la disolucion de los minerales de la dentina por las bacterias, tornando la dentina infectada mas blanda, permitiendo su remocion por medio de instrumentos no cortantes, y evitando asi el uso de anestesia y de instrumental rotatorio. El objetivo de este trabajo es relatar un caso clinico donde fue utilizado el gel a base de papaina Papacarie(r) para la remocion del tejido infectado en una lesion de caries. Para la remocion quimico mecanica de la caries fue seguido el protocolo de utilizacion de gel y en seguida el diente fue restaurado con cemento de ionomero de vidrio. La remocion del tejido cariado com el Papacarie se ostro eficiente, de facil ejecucion y confortable para el paciente.
Cultural differences in social media use, privacy, and self disclosure research report on a multicultural study

This research report presents comparative results from five nations (United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and China) with regard to social media use, self disclosure, privacy perceptions and attitudes, and privacy behavior in online environments. The data stemmed from an online survey that was conducted from November, 2011, to December, 2011. Across all five nations, N 1,800 participants completed the survey. The findings suggest that a broad differentiation between Western and Eastern cultures only partly accounted for differences in social media use and privacy behavior. Rather, the results of this report suggest that European countries (United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands) share similar privacy perceptions and show similar behavioral patterns. Non European cultures (the USA and China) on the other hand, use social media differently. Participants from European countries had generally smaller audiences on social network sites and microblogging platforms, tended to limit the visibility of their postings and profile information more, and used more privacy settings to safeguard their privacy. In particular, German social media users seemed to be guarded, protective, and rather reluctant to participate in online communication. Users from the US, on the other hand, rated privacy related behavior as less risky and were hence less likely to imply sophisticated privacy strategies. Apart from these findings, the report also shows that there are more commonalities than differences. People from all five countries think that it is important to protect privacy. Most users consciously decides what to share and what not to share. Accordingly, social media users do not always share intimate and detailed information about their lives.