100 research outputs found
ChatGPT and the AI Act
It is not easy being a tech regulator these days. The European institutions are working hard towards finalising the AI Act in autumn, and then generative AI systems like ChatGPT come along! In this essay, we comment the European AI Act by arguing that its current risk-based approach is too limited for facing ChatGPT & co
Storia: Summarizing Social Media Content based on Narrative Theory using Crowdsourcing
People from all over the world use social media to share thoughts and
opinions about events, and understanding what people say through these channels
has been of increasing interest to researchers, journalists, and marketers
alike. However, while automatically generated summaries enable people to
consume large amounts of data efficiently, they do not provide the context
needed for a viewer to fully understand an event. Narrative structure can
provide templates for the order and manner in which this data is presented to
create stories that are oriented around narrative elements rather than
summaries made up of facts. In this paper, we use narrative theory as a
framework for identifying the links between social media content. To do this,
we designed crowdsourcing tasks to generate summaries of events based on
commonly used narrative templates. In a controlled study, for certain types of
events, people were more emotionally engaged with stories created with
narrative structure and were also more likely to recommend them to others
compared to summaries created without narrative structure
Beyond mystery: Putting algorithmic accountability in context
Critical algorithm scholarship has demonstrated the difficulties of attributing accountability for the actions and effects of algorithmic systems. In this commentary, we argue that we cannot stop at denouncing the lack of accountability for algorithms and their effects but must engage the broader systems and distributed agencies that algorithmic systems exist within; including standards, regulations, technologies, and social relations. To this end, we explore accountability in “the Generated Detective,” an algorithmically generated comic. Taking up the mantle of detectives ourselves, we investigate accountability in relation to this piece of experimental fiction. We problematize efforts to effect accountability through transparency by undertaking a simple operation: asking for permission to re-publish a set of the algorithmically selected and modified words and images which make the frames of the comic. Recounting this process, we demonstrate slippage between the “complication” of the algorithm and the obscurity of the legal and institutional structures in which it exists
LST1 promotes the assembly of a molecular machinery responsible for tunneling nanotube formation
Carefully orchestrated intercellular communication is an essential prerequisite for the development
of multicellular organisms. In recent years, tunneling nanotubes (TNT) have emerged as a novel
and widespread mechanism of cell-cell communication. However, the molecular basis of their
formation is still poorly understood. In the present study we report that the transmembrane MHC
class III protein LST1 induces the formation of functional nanotubes and is required for endogenous
nanotube generation. Mechanistically, we found LST1 to induce nanotube formation by recruiting
the small GTPase RalA to the plasma membrane and promoting its interaction with the exocyst
complex. Furthermore, we determined LST1 to recruit the actin-crosslinking protein filamin to the
plasma membrane and to interact with M-Sec, myosin and myoferlin. These results allow us to
suggest a molecular model for nanotube generation. In this proposal LST1 functions as a membrane
scaffold mediating the assembly of a multimolecular complex, which controls the formation of
functional nanotubes
Doing social media analytics
'The era of Big Data has begun' (boyd and Crawford, 2012: 662). In the few years since this statement, social media analytics has begun to accumulate studies drawing on social media as a resource and tool for research work. Yet, there has been relatively little attention paid to the development of methodologies for handling this kind of data. The few works that exist in this area often reflect upon the implications of 'grand' social science methodological concepts for new social media research (i.e. they focus on general issues such as sampling, data validity, ethics, etc). By contrast, we advance an abductively-oriented methodological suite designed to explore the construction of phenomena played out through social media. To do this, we use a software tool - Chorus - to illustrate a visual analytic approach to data. Informed by visual analytic principles, we posit a two-by-two methodological model of social media analytics, combining two data collection strategies with two analytic modes. We go on to demonstrate each of these four approaches ‘in action’, to help clarify how and why they might be used to address various research questions
SentiBench - a benchmark comparison of state-of-the-practice sentiment analysis methods
In the last few years thousands of scientific papers have investigated
sentiment analysis, several startups that measure opinions on real data have
emerged and a number of innovative products related to this theme have been
developed. There are multiple methods for measuring sentiments, including
lexical-based and supervised machine learning methods. Despite the vast
interest on the theme and wide popularity of some methods, it is unclear which
one is better for identifying the polarity (i.e., positive or negative) of a
message. Accordingly, there is a strong need to conduct a thorough
apple-to-apple comparison of sentiment analysis methods, \textit{as they are
used in practice}, across multiple datasets originated from different data
sources. Such a comparison is key for understanding the potential limitations,
advantages, and disadvantages of popular methods. This article aims at filling
this gap by presenting a benchmark comparison of twenty-four popular sentiment
analysis methods (which we call the state-of-the-practice methods). Our
evaluation is based on a benchmark of eighteen labeled datasets, covering
messages posted on social networks, movie and product reviews, as well as
opinions and comments in news articles. Our results highlight the extent to
which the prediction performance of these methods varies considerably across
datasets. Aiming at boosting the development of this research area, we open the
methods' codes and datasets used in this article, deploying them in a benchmark
system, which provides an open API for accessing and comparing sentence-level
sentiment analysis methods
LST1 promotes the assembly of a molecular machinery responsible for tunneling nanotube formation
Carefully orchestrated intercellular communication is an essential prerequisite for the development
of multicellular organisms. In recent years, tunneling nanotubes (TNT) have emerged as a novel
and widespread mechanism of cell-cell communication. However, the molecular basis of their
formation is still poorly understood. In the present study we report that the transmembrane MHC
class III protein LST1 induces the formation of functional nanotubes and is required for endogenous
nanotube generation. Mechanistically, we found LST1 to induce nanotube formation by recruiting
the small GTPase RalA to the plasma membrane and promoting its interaction with the exocyst
complex. Furthermore, we determined LST1 to recruit the actin-crosslinking protein filamin to the
plasma membrane and to interact with M-Sec, myosin and myoferlin. These results allow us to
suggest a molecular model for nanotube generation. In this proposal LST1 functions as a membrane
scaffold mediating the assembly of a multimolecular complex, which controls the formation of
functional nanotubes
Leptin and Amylin Act in an Additive Manner to Activate Overlapping Signaling Pathways in Peripheral Tissues: In vitro and ex vivo studies in humans
OBJECTIVE: Amylin interacts with leptin to alter metabolism. We evaluated, for the first time, amylin- and/or leptin-activated signaling pathways in human peripheral tissues (hPTs). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Leptin and amylin signaling studies were performed in vitro in human primary adipocytes (hPAs) and human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (hPBMCs) and ex vivo in human adipose tissue (hAT) from male versus female subjects, obese versus lean subjects, and subjects with subcutaneous versus omental adipose tissue. RESULTS: The long form of leptin receptor was expressed in human tissues and cells studied in ex vivo and in vitro, respectively. Leptin and amylin alone and in combination activate signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), AMP-activated protein kinase, Akt, and extracellular signal-regulated kinase signaling pathways in hAT ex vivo and hPAs and hPBMCs in vitro; all phosphorylation events were saturable at leptin and amylin concentrations of ∼50 and ∼20 ng/ml, respectively. The effects of leptin and amylin on STAT3 phosphorylation in hPAs and hPBMCs in vitro were totally abolished under endoplasmic reticulum stress and/or in the presence of a STAT3 inhibitor. Results similar to those in the in vitro studies were observed in hAT studied ex vivo. CONCLUSIONS: Leptin and amylin activate overlapping intracellular signaling pathways in humans and have additive, but not synergistic, effects in signaling pathways studied in hPTs in vitro and ex vivo
Extensive preclinical validation of combined RMC-4550 and LY3214996 supports clinical investigation for KRAS mutant pancreatic cancer
Over 90% of pancreatic cancers present mutations in KRAS, one of the most common oncogenic drivers overall. Currently, most KRAS mutant isoforms cannot be targeted directly. Moreover, targeting single RAS downstream effectors induces adaptive resistance mechanisms. We report here on the combined inhibition of SHP2, upstream of KRAS, using the allosteric inhibitor RMC-4550 and of ERK, downstream of KRAS, using LY3214996. This combination shows synergistic anti-cancer activity in vitro, superior disruption of the MAPK pathway, and increased apoptosis induction compared with single-agent treatments. In vivo, we demonstrate good tolerability and efficacy of the combination, with significant tumor regression in multiple pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) mouse models. Finally, we show evidence that 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) can be used to assess early drug responses in animal models. Based on these results, we will investigate this drug combination in the SHP2 and ERK inhibition in pancreatic cancer (SHERPA; ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04916236) clinical trial, enrolling patients with KRAS-mutant PDAC.This work was funded by the American Association for Cancer Research, Lustgarten Foundation, and Stand Up to Cancer as a Pancreatic Cancer Collective New Therapies Challenge grant (grant no. SU2C-AACR-PCC-01-18)
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