University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

About: University of Modena and Reggio Emilia is a education organization based out in Modena, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Transplantation. The organization has 8179 authors who have published 22418 publications receiving 671337 citations. The organization is also known as: Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia & Universita degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia.

Ontological uncertainty and innovation

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between uncertainty and innovation. It distinguishes three kinds of uncertainty: truth uncertainty, semantic uncertainty, and ontological uncertainty, the latter of which is particularly important for innovation processes. The paper then develops some implications of ontological uncertainty for innovation processes at three levels of organization, by means of three theories: a narrative theory of action at the level of individual economic actors; the theory of generative relationships at the meso-level of agent interaction; and the theory of scaffolding structures at the macro-level of market systems. These theories are illustrated by means of examples drawn from a prospective study on the emergence of a new market system around a technology for distributed control.

Target flexibility: an emerging consideration in drug discovery and design.

Abstract: Department of General and Inorganic Chemistry, UniVersity of Parma, Via G.P. Usberti 17/A 43100, Parma, Italy, National Institute for Biosystems and Biostructures, Rome, Italy, Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Institute for Structural Biology & Drug DiscoVery, Virginia Commonwealth UniVersity, Richmond, Virginia 23298-0540, Department of Pharmaceutics, UniVersity of Parma, Via GP Usberti 27/A, 43100 Parma, Italy, High Performance Systems, CINECA Supercomputing Centre, Casalecchio di Reno, Bologna, Italy, Dulbecco Telethon Institute, Department of Chemistry, UniVersity of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Campi 183, 41100 Modena, Italy, Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Pharmaceutical Institute, Christian-Albrechts-UniVersity, Gutenbergstrasse 76, 24118 Kiel, Germany, Departments of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Computer Science & Engineering, and Physics & Astronomy, Michigan State UniVersity, East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1319, Department of Molecular Biology, MB-5, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, California 92037-1000, Molecular Modeling and Bioinformatics Unit, Institute of Biomedical Research, Scientific Park of Barcelona, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UniVersity of Barcelona, Josep Samitier 1-5, Barcelona 08028, Spain, Department of Experimental Medicine, UniVersity of Parma, Via Volturno, 39, 43100, Parma, Italy, Department of Chemical, Food, Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Sciences, UniVersity of Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo AVogadro”, Via BoVio 6, 28100 NoVara, Italy, Institute of Pharmacy and Food Chemistry, UniVersity of Wurzburg, Am Hubland, D-97074 Wurzburg, Germany

Nuclear architecture dictates HIV-1 integration site selection

Abstract: HIV-1 integration into the host cell genome occurs in the outer shell of the nucleus in close correspondence with the nuclear pore, in which a series of cellular genes are preferentially targeted by the virus. Infection by human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) requires the integration of the viral genome into host DNA, and the virus is known to integrate preferentially into a subset of transcriptionally active genes. Mauro Giacca and colleagues report here that nuclear location influences target gene selection. They show that hotspots preferentially targeted by the virus are more commonly found in the outer shell of the nucleus proximal to the nuclear pore rather than centrally, implying that perhaps because of the short half-life of HIV-1 integrase, the virus interacts with the first open chromatin regions it encounters on its route into the nucleus. Long-standing evidence indicates that human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) preferentially integrates into a subset of transcriptionally active genes of the host cell genome1,2,3,4. However, the reason why the virus selects only certain genes among all transcriptionally active regions in a target cell remains largely unknown. Here we show that HIV-1 integration occurs in the outer shell of the nucleus in close correspondence with the nuclear pore. This region contains a series of cellular genes, which are preferentially targeted by the virus, and characterized by the presence of active transcription chromatin marks before viral infection. In contrast, the virus strongly disfavours the heterochromatic regions in the nuclear lamin-associated domains5 and other transcriptionally active regions located centrally in the nucleus. Functional viral integrase and the presence of the cellular Nup153 and LEDGF/p75 integration cofactors are indispensable for the peripheral integration of the virus. Once integrated at the nuclear pore, the HIV-1 DNA makes contact with various nucleoporins; this association takes part in the transcriptional regulation of the viral genome. These results indicate that nuclear topography is an essential determinant of the HIV-1 life cycle.

Survival of metastatic breast carcinoma patients over a 20-year period: a retrospective analysis based on individual patient data from six consecutive studies.

Abstract: BACKGROUND The expectation of improvement in patient survival with administration of new chemotherapy agents for metastatic breast carcinoma (MBC) is not consistently supported by data from clinical trials, which are often underpowered and have not detected moderate survival advantage. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of new agents on prognosis of MBC patients enrolled in clinical trials of first-line chemotherapy. METHODS Between 1983 and 2001, 640 MBC patients were entered into 6 consecutive trials; the present analysis was limited to patients. The date of diagnosis of metastatic breast disease was used to define 5 arbitrarily chosen 3-year time cohorts, 1983–1986, 1987–1989, 1992–1994, 1995–1997, and 1998–2001. Multivariate proportion of hazard (PH) models were used to evaluate changes in overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) over time and to detect changes associated with the use of taxanes, while adjusting for differences in baseline factors among 5 cohorts. RESULTS Patient characteristics were evenly distributed across the 5 cohorts. Median OS was 18 months, 17.2 months, 19.2 months, 26.1 months, and 23.6 months, respectively, in cohorts 1983–1986, 1987–1989, 1992–1994, 1995–1997, 1998–2001 (P < 0.0001). Age, performance status, relapse-free survival, type of adjuvant treatment, metastatic site, and taxane first-line chemotherapy were all associated with survival. These data failed to provide an indication of temporal trend and suggested a reduction in hazard of death in two cohorts (1995–1997 and 1998–2001) where taxane was added to first-line chemotherapy. CONCLUSIONS The analysis provided evidence of improvement in prognosis of MBC patients that was associated with use of modern chemotherapeutic agents independent of time. Cancer 2005. © 2005 American Cancer Society.

Attention in Natural Language Processing

Abstract: Attention is an increasingly popular mechanism used in a wide range of neural architectures. The mechanism itself has been realized in a variety of formats. However, because of the fast-paced advances in this domain, a systematic overview of attention is still missing. In this article, we define a unified model for attention architectures in natural language processing, with a focus on those designed to work with vector representations of the textual data. We propose a taxonomy of attention models according to four dimensions: the representation of the input, the compatibility function, the distribution function, and the multiplicity of the input and/or output. We present the examples of how prior information can be exploited in attention models and discuss ongoing research efforts and open challenges in the area, providing the first extensive categorization of the vast body of literature in this exciting domain.