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In this paper, we describe our approach for Cross-Lingual linking of Indian news stories, submitted for Cross-Lingual Indian News Story Search (CL!NSS) task at FIRE 2012. Our approach consists of two major steps, the reduction of search space by using di�erent features and ranking of the news stories according to their relatedness scores. Our approach uses Wikipedia-based Cross-Lingual Explicit Semantic Analysis (CLESA) to calculate the semantic similarity and relatedness score between two news stories in di�erent languages. We evaluate our approach on CL!NSS dataset, which consists of 50 news stories in English and 50K news stories in Hindi.

Recently, the Semantic Web has experienced signi�cant advancements in standards and techniques, as well as in the amount of semantic information available online. Even so, mechanisms are still needed to automatically reconcile semantic information when it is expressed in di�erent natural languages, so that access to Web information across language barriers can be improved. That requires developing techniques for discovering and representing cross-lingual links on the Web of Data. In this paper we explore the different dimensions of such a problem and reflect on possible avenues of research on that topic.

Reduced intrahepatic nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability and increased cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1)-derived vasoconstrictor prostanoids modulate the hepatic vascular tone in cirrhosis. We aimed at investigating the reciprocal interactions between NO and COX in the hepatic endothelium of control and cirrhotic rats. NO bioavailability (DAF-FM-DA staining), superoxide (O(2)(-)) content (DHE staining), prostanoid production (PGI(2) and TXA(2) by enzyme immunoassays) as well as COX expression (Western Blot), were determined in hepatic endothelial cells (HEC) from control and cirrhotic rats submitted to different experimental conditions: COX activation, COX inhibition, NO activation and NO inhibition. In control and cirrhotic HEC, COX activation with arachidonic acid reduced NO bioavailability and increased O(2)(-) levels. These effects were abolished by pre-treating HEC with the COX inhibitor indomethacin. In control, but not in cirrhotic HEC, scavenging of O(2)(-) by superoxide dismutase (SOD) incubation partially restored the decrease in NO bioavailability promoted by COX activation. NO supplementation produced a significant and parallel reduction in PGI(2) and TXA(2) production in control HEC, whereas it only reduced TXA(2) production in cirrhotic HEC. By contrast, in control and cirrhotic HEC, NO inhibition did not modify COX expression or activity. Our results demonstrate that NO and COX systems are closely interrelated in HEC. This is especially relevant in cirrhotic HEC where COX inhibition increases NO bioavailability and NO supplementation induces a reduction in TXA(2). These strategies may have beneficial effects ameliorating the vasoconstrictor/vasodilator imbalance of the intrahepatic circulation of cirrhotic livers.

Background & Aims Statins improve hepatic endothelial function and liver fibrosis in experimental models of cirrhosis, thus they have been proposed as therapeutic options to ameliorate portal hypertension syndrome. The transcription factor Kruppel-like factor 2 (KLF2) may be induced by statins in liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (SEC), orchestrating an efficient vasoprotective response. The present study aimed at characterizing whether KLF2 mediates statins-derived hepatic protection. Methods Expression of KLF2 and its vasoprotective target genes was determined in SEC freshly isolated from control or CCl 4 -cirrhotic rats treated with four different statins (atorvastatin, mevastatin, simvastatin, and lovastatin), in the presence of mevalonate (or vehicle), under static or controlled shear stress conditions. KLF2-derived vasoprotective transcriptional programs were analyzed in SEC transfected with siRNA for KLF2 or siRNA-control, and incubated with simvastatin. Paracrine effects of SEC highly-expressing KLF2 on the activation status of rat and human hepatic stellate cells (HSC) were evaluated. Results Statins administration to SEC induced significant upregulation of KLF2 expression. KLF2 upregulation was observed after 6h of treatment and was accompanied by induction of its vasoprotective programs. Simvastatin vasoprotection was inhibited in the presence of mevalonate, and was magnified in cells cultured under physiological shear stress conditions. Statin-dependent induction of vasoprotective genes was not observed when KLF2 expression was muted with siRNA. SEC overexpressing KLF2 induced quiescence of HSC through a KLF2–nitric oxide–guanylate cyclase-mediated paracrine mechanism. Conclusions Upregulation of hepatic endothelial KLF2-derived transcriptional programs by statins confers vasoprotection and stellate cells deactivation, reinforcing the therapeutic potential of these drugs for liver diseases that course with endothelial dysfunction.

Hepatic Hemodynamic Laboratory, Liver Unit, IMDIM, Hospital Clinic, Institut d’Investigacions Biomediques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS)and CIBERehd, SpainPortal hypertension is a severe and frequent complication ofchronic liver disease. Its consequences, bleeding from gastro-esophageal varices and portal hypertensive gastropathy, ascites,spontaneous bacterial peritonitis, hepatorenal syndrome, hepato-pulmonary/portopulmonary syndromes, and hepatic encephalop-athy, represent the first cause of death and liver transplantationin patients with cirrhosis. The primary factor in the developmentof portal hypertension is a marked increase in hepatic vascularresistance (HVR) to portal blood flow, which was classicallyattributed to distortion of the liver architecture inherent to cir-rhosis. However, over the past 20 years, a better understandingof the liver microcirculation has demonstrated that a dynamiccomponent due to an increased hepatic vascular tone furthercontributes to augment HVR. Secondarily to the increased HVR,there is a progressive splanchnic vasodilatation that incrementsportal blood flow, which aggravates and perpetuates the portalhypertension syndrome [1] (Fig. 1).Intrahepatic vascular regulationThe analysis of the structural factors (fibrosis, vascular remodel-ing, vascular occlusion, nodule formation) contributing toincrease HVR is out of the scope of this review that will focuson the dynamic component of the increased HVR.During progression to cirrhosis, sinusoidal endothelial cells(SEC) become dysfunctional and among other features acquire avasoconstrictor phenotype, characterized by elevated productionof vasoconstrictors and reduced release of vasodilators. Theresulting imbalance promotes the contraction of different cellsof the cirrhotic liver, such as hepatic stellate cells (HSC), portalmyofibroblasts and vascular smooth muscle cells that lead toincreased hepatic vascular tone and portal pressure. HSC in turnalso experience a profound phenotypical transformation, withmorphologic and functional consequences: loss of vitamin Adroplets, alpha-smooth muscle actin overexpression, hyper-response to vasoconstrictors and enhanced proliferative and fibr-ogenic activity. Interestingly, in experimental models of cirrhosis,strategies aimed at improving the hepatic vascular tone by tar-geting SEC have also been shown to improve liver fibrosis. Thismay be due to the fact that cellular phenotype alterations sharepathophysiological mechanisms, but also because SEC phenotypeamelioration positively affects HSC phenotype [2].Increase of vasoconstrictors in the liverIncreasedactivityof several endogenous vasoconstrictors,such asendothelin, norepinephrine, angiotensin II, vasopressin, leukotri-enes, and thromboxane A

The Web has witnessed an enormous growth in the amount of semantic information published in recent years. This growth has been stimulated to a large extent by the emergence of Linked Data. Although this brings us a big step closer to the vision of a Semantic Web, it also raises new issues such as the need for dealing with information expressed in different natural languages. Indeed, although the Web of Data can contain any kind of information in any language, it still lacks explicit mechanisms to automatically reconcile such information when it is expressed in ifferent languages. This leads to situations in which data expressed in a certain language is not easily accessible to speakers of other languages. The Web of Data shows the potential for being extended to a truly multilingual web as vocabularies and data can be published in a language-independent fashion, while associated language-dependent (linguistic) information supporting the access across languages can be stored separately. In this sense, the multilingual Web of Data can be realized in our view as a layer of services and resources on top of the existing Linked Data infrastructure adding i) linguistic information for data and vocabularies in different languages, ii) mappings between data with labels in different languages, and iii) services to dynamically access and traverse Linked Data across different languages. In this article we present this vision of a multilingual Web of Data. We discuss challenges that need to be addressed to make this vision come true and discuss the role that techniques such as ontology localization, ontology mapping, and cross-lingual ontology-based information access and presentation will play in achieving this. Further, we propose an initial architecture and describe a roadmap that can provide a basis for the implementation of this vision.

The Semantic Web is an extension of the traditional Web in which meaning of information is well defined, thus allowing a better interaction between people and computers. To accomplish its goals, mechanisms are required to make explicit the semantics of Web resources, to be automatically processed by software agents (this semantics being described by means of online ontologies). Nevertheless, issues arise caused by the semantic heterogeneity that naturally happens on the Web, namely redundancy and ambiguity. For tackling these issues, we present an approach to discover and represent, in a non-redundant way, the intended meaning of words in Web applications, while taking into account the (often unstructured) context in which they appear. To that end, we have developed novel ontology matching, clustering, and disambiguation techniques. Our work is intended to help bridge the gap between syntax and semantics for the Semantic Web construction.

Conceptual modeling is a complex task that requires domain specific knowledge as well as a good command of modeling techniques. In this paper we propose an approach that aims to capture relevant knowledge from an online pool of conceptual models. This knowledge is brought to the user in order to assist the construction of new conceptual models. With our method, relevant feedback is generated based on knowledge extracted from the pool of models. Such feedback, tailored to the current modeling process of the user, allows the model to be improved based on shared knowledge.

In this paper we present the cast of pedagogical agents in the DynaLearn Intelligent Learning Environment. We describe the different character roles and how they interact with the learners. Our aim in using these characters is to increase the learners' motivation.

Objective The transcription factor Kruppel-like factor 2 (KLF2) modulates the expression of multiple endothelial vasoprotective genes. In the absence of KLF2, the endothelial phenotype becomes dysfunctional. To date, blood-derived shear stress is the main physiological stimulus identified to trigger and sustain endothelial KLF2 expression. Portal hypertension is a common complication of cirrhosis. Sinusoidal distortion and endothelial dysfunction play a significant role in its pathogenesis. This study aimed to assess whether abnormal intrahepatic haemodynamics in cirrhosis could modify KLF2 expression and consequently its downstream transcriptional programmes. Design Rats received carbon tetrachloride or vehicle for two (acute injury), six (early cirrhosis) and twelve weeks (advanced cirrhosis). Systemic and hepatic haemodynamic parameters were measured in vivo. Hepatic expression of KLF2 and its vasoprotective targets were determined. Additionally, KLF2 expression was determined in liver sections, in freshly-isolated hepatic endothelial cells, and in livers from simvastatin-treated cirrhotic animals. Results Cirrhotic livers have increased endothelial KLF2 expression compared with controls. KLF2 elevation, observed at six weeks of cirrhosis induction, was accompanied by a parallel increase in portal pressure and an increase in the expression of its target genes eNOS, thrombomodulin and CNP. Simvastatin administration further increased hepatic KLF2 and target genes expression. Conclusions This study shows an increase in the expression of the vasoprotective transcription factor KLF2 in the cirrhotic liver, accompanied by an activation of its downstream transcriptional programmes. These data suggest that the marked increase in KLF2 expression may represent an endothelial compensatory mechanism to improve the ongoing vascular dysfunction in the cirrhotic liver.

Background. Vascular pathologies constitute a major cause of graft rejection after organ transplantation. Recent studies have documented an improvement in transplant outcome when organs are preserved through pulsatile perfusion; however, the underlying mechanisms of these observations are poorly characterized. We hypothesized that the temporaryabsenceofflowoccurringinthecontextoforgancoldstorageconditionsdisruptsendothelialvasoprotective programs, and that this consequence of stasis may be a target for pharmacological modulation. Methods. The expression of the transcription factor Kruppel-like factor 2 (KLF2) and its vasoprotective target genes were assessed during cold storage conditions in cultured human endothelial cells and murine aortic segments. In addition, we evaluated the effect of simvastatin used as a supplement in a cold preservation solution on the expression of vasoprotective genes, and on endothelial activation and apoptosis. Results.TheexpressionofendothelialKLF2anditsvasoprotectivetranscriptionaltargetswererapidlylostduringcold preservation in vitro and ex vivo. Importantly, simvastatin treatment blocked the decay of KLF2, sustaining a vasoprotective phenotype, and preventing endothelial activation and apoptosis. Conclusions.Flowstasisleadstoacuteendothelialdysfunctionandapoptosisinthecontextofcoldstorageconditions. Supplementation of organ preservation solutions with pharmacologic agents that restore endothelial vasoprotective programs, by upregulating KLF2, may represent a significant advancement of current organ preservation techniques.

Biomechanical forces are emerging as critical regulators of embryogenesis, particularly in the developing cardiovascular system1,2. After initiation of the heartbeat in vertebrates, cells lining the ventral aspect of the dorsal aorta, the placental vessels, and the umbilical and vitelline arteries initiate expression of the transcription factor Runx1 (refs 3–5), a master regulator of haematopoiesis, and give rise to haematopoietic cells4. It remains unknown whether the biomechanical forces imposed on the vascular wall at this developmental stage act as a determinant of haematopoietic potential6. Here, using mouse embryonic stem cells differentiated in vitro, we show that fluid shear stress increases the expression of Runx1 in CD41+c-Kit+ haematopoietic progenitor cells7,concomitantly augmenting their haematopoietic colony-forming potential. Moreover, we find that shear stress increases haematopoietic colony-forming potential and expression of haematopoietic markers in the paraaortic splanchnopleura/aorta–gonads–mesonephros of mouse embryos and that abrogation of nitric oxide, a mediator of shear-stress-induced signalling8, compromises haematopoietic potential in vitro and in vivo. Collectively, these data reveal a critical role for biomechanical forces in haematopoietic development.

Nowadays, the increasing amount of semantic data available on the Web leads to a new stage in the potential of Semantic Web applications. However, it also introduces new issues due to the heterogeneity of the available semantic resources. One of the most remarkable is redundancy, that is, the excess of dierent semantic descriptions, coming from dierent sources, to describe the same intended meaning. In this paper, we propose a technique to perform a large scale integration of senses (expressed as ontology terms), in order to cluster the most similar ones, when indexing large amounts of online semantic information. It can dramatically reduce the redundancy problem on the current Semantic Web. In order to make this objective feasible, we have studied the adaptability and scalability of our previous work on sense integration, to be translated to the much larger scenario of the Semantic Web. Our evaluation shows a good behaviour of these techniques when used in large scale experiments, then making feasible the proposed approach.

The technology in the field of digital media generates huge amounts of textual information every day, so mechanisms to retrieve relevant information are needed. Under these circumstances, many times current web search engines do not provide users with the information they seek, because these search tools mainly use syntax based techniques. However, search engines based on semantic and context information can help overcome some of the limitations of current alternatives. In this paper, we propose a system that takes as input a list of plain keywords provided by a user and translates them into a query expressed in a formal language without ambiguity. Our system discovers the semantics of user keywords by consulting the knowledge represented by many (heterogeneous and distributed) ontologies. Then, context information is used to remove ambiguity and build the most probable query. Our experiments indicate that our system discovers the user's information need better than traditional search engines when the semantics of the request is not the most popular on the Web.

The increased availability of online knowledge has led to the design of several algorithms that solve a variety of tasks by harvesting the Semantic Web, i.e., by dynamically selecting and exploring a multitude of online ontologies. Our hypothesis is that the performance of such novel algorithms implicitly provides an insight into the quality of the used ontologies and thus opens the way to a task-based evaluation of the Semantic Web. We have investigated this hypothesis by studying the lessons learnt about online ontologies when used to solve three tasks: ontology matching, folksonomy enrichment, and word sense disambiguation. Our analysis leads to a suit of conclusions about the status of the Semantic Web, which highlight a number of strengths and weaknesses of the semantic information available online and complement the findings of other analysis of the Semantic Web landscape.

Background: Recent studies have shown the presence of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-dependent splanchnic angiogenesis in experimental models of portal hypertension, and the role of such neovascularisation on the development of both portosystemic collaterals and hyperdynamic splanchnic circulation. However, the mechanisms modulating angiogenesis in portal hypertension are unknown. Experimental evidence indicates that NAD(P)H oxidase is required for VEGF-induced angiogenesis. Interestingly, we have recently shown that splanchnic NAD(P)H oxidase activity is significantly increased in portal hypertensive rats. Therefore, it could be possible that activated NAD(P)H oxidases modulate angiogenesis in portal hypertension. Aim: To determine the effects of chronic NAD(P)H oxidase inhibition on angiogenesis and splanchnic haemodynamics in portal hypertensive rats. Methods: Partial portal vein-ligated and sham-operated rats were treated with the NAD(P)H oxidase inhibitor apocynin, or with vehicle for 5 days. Then, the expression of angiogenesis markers (western blotting), the formation of portosystemic collaterals (radioactive microspheres) and the production of superoxide anion (lucigenin-enhanced chemiluminescence) were determined. Mean arterial pressure, portal pressure, and superior mesenteric arterial blood flow and resistance were also measured. Results: In portal hypertensive rats, NAD(P)H oxidase blockade significantly decreased portosystemic collateral formation, and superior mesenteric arterial flow. It also reduced the splanchnic expression of VEGF, VEGF receptor-2 and CD31, and attenuated the increased production of superoxide, compared with vehicle. Conclusions: NAD(P)H oxidase plays an important role in experimental portal hypertension, modulating splanchnic angiogenesis, the formation of portosystemic collaterals and the development of splanchnic hyperdynamic circulation. These results suggest that NAD(P)H oxidase may represent a new target in the treatment of portal hypertension.

Background/Aims The pathophysiological significance of heme oxygenase-1 up-regulation in portal hypertension is not completely understood. In this study, we determined the role of heme oxygenase-1 on oxidative stress, inflammation, angiogenesis, and splanchnic hemodynamics in rats with portal hypertension induced by partial portal vein ligation. Methods Rats were treated with the heme oxygenase inhibitor SnMP or vehicle for 7 days. Then, oxidative stress was quantified by superoxide anion production, and inflammatory response was assessed by immunofluorescence. Expression of angiogenesis mediators was determined by western blotting, and the extent of portosystemic collaterals by radioactive microspheres. Hemodynamic studies were performed by flowmetry. Results Oxidative stress was significantly increased in the mesentery of portal hypertensive rats, as compared with sham-operated controls. In portal hypertensive rats, chronic heme oxygenase inhibition (1) potentiated oxidative stress and inflammation, (2) significantly decreased VEGF expression, without modifying the extent of collaterals or the splanchnic neovascularization, and (3) significantly decreased superior mesenteric artery blood flow and portal pressure. Conclusions This study demonstrates that heme oxygenase plays an important (beneficial) role attenuating oxidative stress and inflammation, but it also plays a detrimental role in stimulating VEGF production, and contributing to the development of hyperdynamic splanchnic circulation in rats with portal hypertension.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome. Most morbidity associated with the metabolic syndrome is related to vascular complications, in which endothelial dysfunction is a major pathogenic factor. However, whether NAFLD is associated with endothelial dysfunction within the hepatic vasculature is unknown. The aims of this study were to explore, in a model of diet-induced overweight that expresses most features of the metabolic syndrome, whether early NAFLD is associated with liver endothelial dysfunction. Wistar Kyoto rats were fed a cafeteria diet (CafD; 65% of fat, mostly saturated) or a control diet (CD) for 1 month. CafD rats developed features of the metabolic syndrome (overweight, arterial hypertension, hypertryglyceridemia, hyperglucemia and insulin resistance) and liver steatosis without inflammation or fibrosis. CafD rats had a significantly higher in vivo hepatic vascular resistance than CD. In liver perfusion livers from CafD rats had an increased portal perfusion pressure and decreased endothelium-dependent vasodilation. This was associated with a decreased Akt-dependent eNOS phosphorylation and NOS activity. In summary, we demonstrate in a rat model of the metabolic syndrome that shows features of NAFLD, that liver endothelial dysfunction occurs before the development of fibrosis or inflammation.

The Open Linguistics Working Group (OWLG) brings together researchers from various fields of linguistics, natural language processing, and information technology to present and discuss principles, case studies, and best practices for representing, publishing and linking linguistic data collections. A major outcome of our work is the Linguistic Linked Open Data (LLOD) cloud, an LOD (sub-)cloud of linguistic resources, which covers various linguistic databases, lexicons, corpora, terminologies, and metadata repositories. We present and summarize five years of progress on the development of the cloud and of advancements in open data in linguistics, and we describe recent community activities. The paper aims to serve as a guideline to orient and involve researchers with the community and/or Linguistic Linked Open Data.

Victimology is about human suffering, often focusing on the consequences generated by crime and how these affect victims and their lives. It analyzes how society manages pain, so concern about victims’ status and needs are important issues. Yet victimology has an undeserved bad reputation, often being accused of exercising commiseration towards certain victims while forgetting others, or providing excuses for the punitive turn in criminal policy. This chapter argues that another type of victimology is possible. Challenging inadequate understandings of compassion and its limits provides us with a useful tool rooted in public virtue which generates stronger and more accurate victim support. An analysis of victim hierarchies illustrates perceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ victims; those worthy of support and compassion and those that inspire only oblivion or contempt. Further reflection on the ideal victim stereotype present in Nils Christie’s work offers a starting point from which to achieve an inclusive and critical victimology; a victimology that really embraces the conception of useful compassion which is strongly connected with justice as a public virtue in a democratic and decent society. The chapter argues that this may be a way to recover some of the lost prestige of the discipline.

Background: Increased intrahepatic vascular tone in cirrhosis has been attributed to a decrease of hepatic nitric oxide (NO) secondary to disturbances in the post-translational regulation of the enzyme eNOS. NO scavenging by superoxide (O2−) further contributes to a reduction of NO bioavailability in cirrhotic livers. Aim: To investigate whether removing increased O2− levels could be a new therapeutic strategy to increase intrahepatic NO, improve endothelial dysfunction and reduce portal pressure in cirrhotic rats with portal hypertension. Methods: Adenoviral vectors expressing extracellular superoxide dismutase (SOD) (AdECSOD) or β-galactosidase (Adβgal) were injected intravenously in control and CCl4-induced cirrhotic rats. After 3 days, liver O2− levels were determined by dihydroethidium staining, NO bioavailability by hepatic cGMP levels, nitrotyrosinated proteins by immunohistochemistry and western blot, and endothelial function by responses to acetylcholine in perfused rat livers. Mean arterial pressure (MAP) and portal pressure were evaluated in vivo. Results: Transfection of cirrhotic livers with AdECSOD produced a significant reduction in O2− levels, a significant increase in hepatic cGMP, and a decrease in liver nitrotyrosinated proteins which were associated with a significant improvement in the endothelium-dependent vasodilatation to acetylcholine. In addition, in cirrhotic livers AdECSOD transfection produced a significant reduction in portal pressure (17.3 (SD 2) mm Hg vs 15 (SD 1.6) mm Hg; p

Terminesp is a multilingual terminological resource with terms from a range of specialized domains. Along with definitions, notes, scientific denominations and provenance information, it includes translations from Spanish into a variety of languages. A linked data resource with these features would represent a potentially relevant source of knowledge for NLP-based applications. In this contribution we show that Terminesp constitutes an appropriate validating test bench for OntoLex and its vartrans module, a newly developed model which evolves the lemon model to represent the lexicon-ontology interface. We present a first showcase of this module to account for variation across entries, while highlighting the modeling problems we encountered in this effort. Furthermore, we extend the resource with part-of-speech and syntactic information which was not explicitly declared in the original data with the aim of exploring its future use in NLP applications.

Ontolex-lemon is the de facto standard to represent lexica relative to ontologies and it can be used to encode term banks as RDF. A multi-lingual, multi-jurisdictional term bank of copyright-related concepts has been published as linked data based on the ontolex-lemon model. The terminology links information from WIPO (concepts and definitions), IATE (multilingual terms, usage notes) and other sources as Creative Commons (multilingual definitions) or DBpedia (general concepts). The terms have been hierarchically arranged, spanning multiple languages and targeting different jurisdictions. The term bank has been published as a TBX dump file and is publicly accessible as linked data. The term bank has been used to annotate common licenses in the RDFLicense dataset.

Increased production of vasoconstrictive prostanoids, such as thromboxane A2 (TXA2), contributes to endothelial dysfunction and increased hepatic vascular tone in cirrhosis. TXA2 induces vasoconstriction by way of activation of the thromboxane-A2/prostaglandin-endoperoxide (TP) receptor. This study investigated whether terutroban, a specific TP receptor blocker, decreases hepatic vascular tone and portal pressure in rats with cirrhosis due to carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) or bile duct ligation (BDL). Hepatic and systemic hemodynamics, endothelial dysfunction, liver fibrosis, hepatic Rho-kinase activity (a marker of hepatic stellate cell contraction), and the endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) signaling pathway were measured in CCl4 and BDL cirrhotic rats treated with terutroban (30 mg/kg/day) or its vehicle for 2 weeks. Terutroban reduced portal pressure in both models without producing significant changes in portal blood flow, suggesting a reduction in hepatic vascular resistance. Terutroban did not significantly change arterial pressure in CCl4-cirrhotic rats but decreased it significantly in BDL-cirrhotic rats. In livers from CCl4 and BDL-cirrhotic terutroban-treated rats, endothelial dysfunction was improved and Rho-kinase activity was significantly reduced. In CCl4-cirrhotic rats, terutroban reduced liver fibrosis and decreased alpha smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), collagen-I, and transforming growth factor beta messenger RNA (mRNA) expression without significant changes in the eNOS pathway. In contrast, no change in liver fibrosis was observed in BDL-cirrhotic rats but an increase in the eNOS pathway. Conclusion: Our data indicate that TP-receptor blockade with terutroban decreases portal pressure in cirrhosis. This effect is due to decreased hepatic resistance, which in CCl4-cirrhotic rats was linked to decreased hepatic fibrosis, but not in BDL rats, in which the main mediator appeared to be an enhanced eNOS-dependent vasodilatation, which was not liver-selective, as it was associated with decreased arterial pressure. The potential use of terutroban for portal hypertension requires further investigation. (Hepatology 2013;58:1424–1435)

Modeling lexical information as a graph is not a novel notion coming from LD

Semantic Web aims to allow machines to make inferences using the explicit conceptualisations contained in ontologies. By pointing to ontologies, Semantic Web-based applications are able to inter-operate and share common information easily. Nevertheless, multilingual semantic applications are still rare, owing to the fact that most online ontologies are monolingual in English. In order to solve this issue, techniques for ontology localisation and translation are needed. However, traditional machine translation is difficult to apply to ontologies, owing to the fact that ontology labels tend to be quite short in length and linguistically different from the free text paradigm. In this paper, we propose an approach to enhance machine translation of ontologies based on exploiting the well-structured concept descriptions contained in the ontology. In particular, our approach leverages the semantics contained in the ontology by using Cross Lingual Explicit Semantic Analysis (CLESA) for context-based disambiguation in phrase-based Statistical Machine Translation (SMT). The presented work is novel in the sense that application of CLESA in SMT has not been performed earlier to the best of our knowledge.

Relation paths are sequences of relations with inverse that allow for complete exploration of knowledge graphs in a two-way unconstrained manner. They are powerful enough to encode complex relationships between entities and are crucial in several contexts, such as knowledge base verification, rule mining, and link prediction. However, fundamental forms of reasoning such as containment and equivalence of relation paths have hitherto been ignored. Intuitively, two relation paths are equivalent if they share the same extension, i.e., set of source and target entity pairs. In this paper, we study the problem of containment as a means to find equivalent relation paths and show that it is very expensive in practice to enumerate paths between entities. We characterize the complexity of containment and equivalence of relation paths and propose a domain-independent and unsupervised method to obtain approximate equivalences ranked by a tri-criteria ranking function. We evaluate our algorithm using test cases over real-world data and show that we are able to find semantically meaningful equivalences efficiently. peer-reviewed