Robust Recovery of Subspace Structures by Low-Rank Representation

In this work we address the subspace recovery problem. Given a set of data samples (vectors) approximately drawn from a union of multiple subspaces, our goal is to segment the samples into their respective subspaces and correct the possible errors as well. To this end, we propose a novel method termed Low-Rank Representation (LRR), which seeks the lowest-rank representation among all the candidates that can represent the data samples as linear combinations of the bases in a given dictionary. It is shown that LRR well solves the subspace recovery problem: when the data is clean, we prove that LRR exactly captures the true subspace structures; for the data contaminated by outliers, we prove that under certain conditions LRR can exactly recover the row space of the original data and detect the outlier as well; for the data corrupted by arbitrary errors, LRR can also approximately recover the row space with theoretical guarantees. Since the subspace membership is provably determined by the row space, these further imply that LRR can perform robust subspace segmentation and error correction, in an efficient way.Comment: IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligenc

GPER-induced signaling is essential for the survival of breast cancer stem cells.

G protein-coupled estrogen receptor-1 (GPER), a member of the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily, mediates estrogen-induced proliferation of normal and malignant breast epithelial cells. However, its role in breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs) remains unclear. Here we showed greater expression of GPER in BCSCs than non-BCSCs of three patient-derived xenografts of ER- /PR+ breast cancers. GPER silencing reduced stemness features of BCSCs as reflected by reduced mammosphere forming capacity in vitro, and tumor growth in vivo with decreased BCSC populations. Comparative phosphoproteomics revealed greater GPER-mediated PKA/BAD signaling in BCSCs. Activation of GPER by its ligands, including tamoxifen (TMX), induced phosphorylation of PKA and BAD-Ser118 to sustain BCSC characteristics. Transfection with a dominant-negative mutant BAD (Ser118Ala) led to reduced cell survival. Taken together, GPER and its downstream signaling play a key role in maintaining the stemness of BCSCs, suggesting that GPER is a potential therapeutic target for eradicating BCSCs

Tyrosine phosphorylation of HPK1 by activated Src promotes ischemic brain injury in rat hippocampal CA1 region

AbstractHematopoietic progenitor kinase 1 (HPK1) is a hematopoietic cell-restricted member of the Ste20 serine/threonine kinase super family. We recently reported that HPK1 is involved in c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase (JNK) signaling pathway by sequential activation of MLK3–MKK7–JNK3 after cerebral ischemia. Here, we used 4-amino-5-(4-chlorophenyl)-7-(t-butyl) pyrazolo [3,4-d] pyrimidine (PP2) and MK801 to investigate the events upstream of HPK1 in ischemic brain injury. Immunoprecipitation and immunoblot results showed that PP2 and MK801 significantly decreased the activation of Src, HPK1, MLK3, JNK3 and c-Jun, respectively, during ischemia/reperfusion. Histology and TUNEL staining showed PP2 or MK801 protects against neuron death after brain ischemia. We speculate that this unique signaling pathway through the tyrosine phosphorylation of HPK1 promotes ischemic brain injury by activated Src via N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor and, ultimately, the activation of the MLK3–MKK7–JNK3 pathway after cerebral ischemia

Internationalization in Higher Education – International Student’s Chinese Learning as Serious Leisure in Taiwan

Due to the economic and commercial rise of China, the economic value, political value, and instrumental advantages produced by Chinese have become more significant. The fever for learning Chinese continues to intensify all over the world, and Chinese instruction has become increasingly popular. Taiwan is a country with Chinese as its official language; and an important issue rose in international educational policy is how to attract international students to study Chinese in Taiwan. At the same time, Taiwan has promoted the internationalization of universities in the recent years; it hopes to elevate the visibility of its universities on the international stage, and intends to broaden diplomacy and promote economic development. This study found that international students who came to Taiwan to learn Chinese tended to be Asians. The different original residence locations of international students would significantly affect learning Chinese as serious leisure. International students who rented apartments with others off-campus or who chose home-stays had greater life planning, effort in Chinese learning, continuous benefits from Chinese learning, and a sense of community identification with their learning peers, as compared to international students who lived in school dormitories or lived alone off-campus. International students who had mor e disposable income each month were more likely to gain lasting benefits from Chinese learning and strong community identification with their learning peers. Key words: International education; International students; Chinese learning; Language learning as serious leisure Resumé: En raison de l'essor économique et commercial de la Chine, la valeur économique, la valeur politique et les avantages instrumentaux produits par les Chinois sont devenus plus importants. L'enthouiasme pour apprendre le chinois continue de s'intensifier dans le monde entier, et l'enseignement du chinois est devenu de plus en plus populaire. La langue officielle de Taiwan est le chinois, et l'une des questions importantes dans la politique éducative internationale est de savoir comment attirer des étudiants étrangers à étudier le chinois à Taiwan. En même temps, Taiwan a favorisé l'internationalisation des universités dans les années récentes. Il espère rehausser la visibilité de ses universités sur la scène internationale et il a l'intention d'élargir la diplomatie et promouvoir le développement économique. Cette étude a révélé que les étudiants étrangers qui sont venus à Taiwan pour apprendre le chinois sont plutôt des Asiatiques. Les localisations différentes de résidence originale des étudiants étrangers auraient une influence significative sur leur apprentissage du chinois en tant que loisir sérieux. Les étudiants étrangers qui ont loué des appartements avec d'autres étudiants en dehors du campus ou ceux qui ont choisi une famille d'acceuil avaient une planification de vie plus longue et un effort d'apprendre le Chinois plus grand. Ils bénéficiaient des avantages continus de l'apprentissage du chinois et avaient un sentiment d'identification de communauté avec leurs partenaires de l'apprentissage, par rapport aux étudiants étrangers qui vivaient dans les dortoirs scolaires ou vivaient seuls en dehors du campus. Les étudiants étrangers qui avaient un revenu disponible plus élevé chaque mois étaient plus susceptibles d'obtenir des avantages durables de l'apprentissage du chinois et avaient une identification forte de communauté avec leurs partenaire de l'apprentissage. Mots-clés: éducation internationale; étudiants internationaux; apprentissage du chinois; apprentissage de langue en tant que loisir sérieu

ANALYSIS OF TRUNK ROTATION PATTERNS WHEN SWINGING AT DIFFERENT SPEEDS: A PILOT STUDY

As the trunk plays a vital role during the golf full swing, it is important to understand how body movements affect the golf swing. The purpose of this study was to determine how golfers increase club head speed through trunk rotation. Trunk rotation patterns were captured by 3D motion capture system at 250 Hz. To investigate the effective factors of increasing club head speed, we compared two situations, swing at normal club head speed and at accelerated club head speed, via the trunk rotation angles at three dimensions through six temporary events. The results showed that subtle differences between normal club head speed and accelerated club head speed. To increase club head speed, golfers might optimize the separation between shoulder and pelvic in the early downswing

A Hint-Based Random Access Protocol for mMTC in 5G Mobile Network

With the increasing popularity of machine-type communication (MTC) devices, several new challenges are encountered by the legacy long term evolution (LTE) system. One critical issue is that a massive number of MTC devices trying to conduct random access procedures may cause significant collisions and long delays. In this work, we present a new random access mechanism by splitting the contention-based preambles in LTE into two logically disjoint parts, one for the user equipment (UE) being paged and the other for the UEs not being paged. Since the IDs of paged UEs are known by the base station, a novel hash-based random access, which we call hint, is possible. The main idea is to pre-allocate preambles to paged UEs in a contention-free manner and confines non-paged UEs to contend in a separate region. We further build a mathematical model to find the optimal ratio of pre-allocated preambles. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate our results

r-Hint: A message-efficient random access response for mMTC in 5G networks

Massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) has attracted increasing attention due to the explosive growth of IoT devices. Random Access (RA) for a large number of mMTC devices is especially difficult since the high signaling overhead between User Equipments (UEs) and an eNB may overwhelm the available spectrum resources. To address this issue, we propose “respond by hint” (r-Hint), an ID-free handshaking protocol for contention-based RA in mMTC. The core idea of r-Hint is to avoid sequentially notifying contending UEs of their IDs by broadcasting a hint in the RA Response (RAR). To do so, we exploit the concept of prime factorization and hashing to encode the hint such that UEs can extract their required information accordingly. Our simulation results show that r-Hint reduces the RAR message size by 20%–40%. Such reduction can be translated to around 50% improvement of spectrum efficiency in LTE-M