Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression of pancreatic and duodenal homeobox1 (PDX1) protein in the interior and exterior regions of the intestine, revealed by development and analysis of Pdx1 knockout mice

We developed pancreatic and duodenal homeobox1 (Pdx1) knockout mice to improve a compensatory hyperinsulinemia, which was induced by hyperplasia in the β cells or Langerhans' islands, as the diabetic model mice. For targeting of Pdx1 gene by homologous recombination, ES cells derived from a 129+Ter/SvJcl×C57BL/6JJcl hybrid mouse were electroporated and subjected to positive-negative selection with hygromycin B and ganciclovir. As these results, one of the three chimeric mice succeeded to produce the next or F1 generation. Then, the mouse fetuses were extracted from the mother's uterus and analyzed immunohistologically for the existence of a pancreas. The fetuses were analyzed at embryonic day 14.5 (E14.5) because Pdx1 knockout could not alive after birth in this study. Immunohistochemical staining revealed that 10 fetuses out of 26 did not have any PDX1 positive primordium of the pancreas and that the PDX1 expresses in both the interior and exterior regions of intestine. In particular, one the exterior of the intestine PDX1 was expressed in glands that would be expected to form the pancreas. The result of PCR genotyping with extracted DNA from the paraffin sections showed existence of 10 Pdx1-knockout mice and corresponded to results of immunostaining. Thus, we succeeded to establish a Pdx1-knockout (Pdx1-/-) mice.
Modeling the Driving Behavior of Electric Vehicles Using Smartphones and Neural Networks

The modeling of eco-driving behaviors is a key issue in the research of Intelligent Transportation Systems. Most efforts have been made regarding internal combustion vehicles, and few works have been reported in the field of electric vehicles. On the other hand, these behavior analyses are usually conducted through naturalistic driving researches that involve the use of instrumented vehicles, available in a small number, which reduces the impact of the results. This paper presents a system for estimating the remaining charge of an electric vehicle by considering the driving behavior measured using a smartphone. For this purpose, first of all, data measured by the smartphone and by the onboard instrumentation were compared in order to demonstrate that both sources are equivalent and that the former is sufficiently accurate. The driving profiles obtained were then used to estimate the expected battery consumption of the electric vehicle using a Neural Network to represent the model that uses the information provided from the smartphone as input, such as speed, acceleration and jerk. The system has been tested with 10 drivers with a prediction capability of the expected battery consumption higher than 95%. These results show that a smartphone is a tool with a sufficient degree of fidelity to capture data from drivers, and so avoid expensive, complex systems like instrumented vehicles, and it can also be used for estimating energy consumption and predicting the remaining battery charge.
When Networks Disagree: Ensemble Methods for Hybrid Neural Networks

Abstract : This paper presents a general theoretical framework for ensemble methods of constructing significantly improved regression estimates. Given a population of regression estimators, the authors construct a hybrid estimator that is as good or better in the mean square error sense than any estimator in the population. They argue that the ensemble method presented has several properties: (1) it efficiently uses all the networks of a population -- none of the networks need to be discarded; (2) it efficiently uses all of the available data for training without over-fitting; (3) it inherently performs regularization by smoothing in functional space, which helps to avoid over-fitting; (4) it utilizes local minima to construct improved estimates whereas other neural network algorithms are hindered by local minima; (5) it is ideally suited for parallel computation; (6) it leads to a very useful and natural measure of the number of distinct estimators in a population; and (7) the optimal parameters of the ensemble estimator are given in closed form. Experimental results show that the ensemble method dramatically improves neural network performance on difficult real-world optical character recognition tasks.
The Moderating Effect of Perceived Lack of Facilities on Consumers’ Recycling Intentions

With Municipal solid waste (MSW) management turning into a global problem, capitalizing on resource residuals is one way to ensure sustained material well-being. An extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) research model that incorporates moral norms and consequences of recycling is built for probing consumers’ behavioral intentions to recycle waste. Perceived lack of facilities is adopted as a moderator to further examine its impacts on the hypothetical relationships in this extended TPB model. The results from an empirical study of Taiwan indicate that the extended TPB model is a useful research framework to explain consumers’ recycling intentions and that consumers’ perceived lack of facilities also exerts moderating effects on determining consumers’ recycling intentions. Based on the findings, some constructive suggestions are provided to the policy makers to strengthen consumers’ recycling intentions in Taiwan.
AutoBlackTest: a tool for automatic black-box testing

In this paper we present AutoBlackTest, a tool for the automatic generation of test cases for interactive applications. AutoBlackTest interacts with the application though its GUI, and uses reinforcement learning techniques to understand the interaction modalities and to generate relevant testing scenarios. Early results show that the tool has the potential of automatically discovering bugs and generating useful system and regression test suites.
Organizing Far from Equilibrium: Nonlinear Change in Organizational Fields

Organizational fields undergo upheavals. Shifting industry boundaries, new network forms, emerging sectors, and volatile ecosystems have become the stuff of everyday organizational life. Curiously, profound changes of this sort receive scant attention in organization theory and research. Researchers acknowledge fieldwide flux, emergence, convergence, and collapse, but sidestep direct investigations of the causes and dynamic processes, leaving these efforts to political scientists and institutional economists. We attribute this neglect to our field's philosophical, theoretical, and methodological fealty to the precepts of equilibrium and linearity. We argue that ingrained assumptions and habituated methodologies dissuade organizational scientists from grappling with problems to which these ideas and tools do not apply. Nevertheless, equilibrium and linearity are assumptions of social theory, not facts of social life. Drawing on four empirical studies of organizational fields in flux, we suggest new intellectual perspectives and methodological heuristics that may facilitate investigation of fields that are far from equilibrium. We urge our colleagues to transcend the general linear model, and embrace ideas like field configuration, complex adaptive systems, self-organizing networks, and autocatalytic feedback. We recommend conducting natural histories of organizational fields, and paying especially close attention to turning points when fields are away from equilibrium and discontinuous changes are afoot.
Why Organizations Choose to Manage Diversity? Toward a Leadership-Based Theoretical Framework

Research suggests that equal employment opportunity (EEO) legislation and affirmative action programs (AAPs) have been only partially successful in promoting women and minorities in the workplace. Firms are voluntarily pursuing diversity management, but only when business objectives coincide with the needs of women and minorities. Thus, the question of what factors are needed to help women and minorities advance in the workplace merits further investigation. Although top executive support is believed to be crucial to managing diversity, few studies have linked CEO commitment to diversity outcomes. This article proposes a theoretical framework for linking CEO commitment to diversity practices. Specifically, CEO commitment is expected to mediate the relationships between the leader's demographic characteristics and personal factors—consisting of values, cognition, and leadership styles—and a firm's strategic orientation toward managing diversity. This article further argues that without CEO commitment, institutional and environmental factors (e.g., legislation) are limited in promoting workplace diversity. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Dinucleotide repeat polymorphism of heme oxygenase-1 promotor region is not associated with IBD risk or disease course

Haem oxygenase-1 (HO-1) up-regulation was suggested to reduce mucosal tissue damage in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and an up-regulation of HO-1 expression in patients with Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) was demonstrated. A HO-1 gene promoter microsatellite (GT)(n) dinucleotide repeat polymorphism was associated with regulation of HO-1 in response to inflammatory stimuli. We therefore hypothesized that IBD patients might segregate into phenotypes with high or low HO-1 inducibility. Ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid blood samples were obtained from 179 CD patients, 110 UC patients and 56 control patients without inflammation. Genomic DNA was purified and the 5'-flanking region of the HO-1 gene containing the (GT)(n) dinucleotide repeat was amplified. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products were purified and the length of the PCR fragments was analysed. The number of (GT)(n) repeats in the population studied ranged from 13 to 42. The distribution of the allele frequencies was comparable in patients and controls for both the short and the long alleles. The frequencies of short-, middleand long-sized alleles were not changed among the groups studied. No correlation was found between IBD and microsatellite instability detected in five individals. Our data indicate that (GT)(n) dinucleotide repeats of the HO-1 promotor region have no significance for the pathophysiology and disease course of IBD. (GT)n Dinucleotide repeat polymorphism of heme oxygenase-1 promotor region is not associated with IBD risk or disease course Martin Hausmann , Gisela Paul, Silvia Kellermeier, Isabelle Frey, Jürgen Schölmerich, Werner Falk, Katrin Menzel, Michael Fried, Hans Herfarth, Gerhard Rogler 1 Department of Internal Medicine I, University of Regensburg, Germany 2 present address: Clinic of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland 3 present address: Division of Gastroenterology, UCSD Medical Center, San Diego, USA 4 present address: Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA Running Title: Polymorphism of HO-1 promotor Address for correspondence: Martin Hausmann, PhD Clinic of Gastroenterology and Hepatology Department of Internal Medicine University Hospital of Zurich 8091 Zurich, Switzerland Tel. 41-44-255 9479 E-mail: martin.hausmann@usz.ch Hausmann et. al.: Polymorphism of HO-1 promotor region is not associated with IBD risk 2 ___________________________________________________________________________ Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Ro 1236/8-1) and the BMBF “Kompetenznetz Chronisch entzündliche Darmerkrankungen“ (Core facility Regensburg)
Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology

The partial area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (PAUC) is a well-established performance measure to evaluate biomarker combinations for disease classification. Because the PAUC is defined as the area under the ROC curve within a restricted interval of false positive rates, it enables practitioners to quantify sensitivity rates within pre-specified specificity ranges. This issue is of considerable importance for the development of medical screening tests. Although many authors have highlighted the importance of PAUC, there exist only few methods that use the PAUC as an objective function for finding optimal combinations of biomarkers. In this paper, we introduce a boosting method for deriving marker combinations that is explicitly based on the PAUC criterion. The proposed method can be applied in high-dimensional settings where the number of biomarkers exceeds the number of observations. Additionally, the proposed method incorporates a recently proposed variable selection technique (stability selection) that results in sparse prediction rules incorporating only those biomarkers that make relevant contributions to predicting the outcome of interest. Using both simulated data and real data, we demonstrate that our method performs well with respect to both variable selection and prediction accuracy. Specifically, if the focus is on a limited range of specificity values, the new method results in better predictions than other established techniques for disease classification.
Going Wild: Large-Scale Classification of Open DNS Resolvers

Since several years, millions of recursive DNS resolvers are-deliberately or not-open to the public. This, however, is counter-intuitive, since the operation of such openly accessible DNS resolvers is necessary in rare cases only. Furthermore, open resolvers enable both amplification DDoS and cache snooping attacks, and can be abused by attackers in multiple other ways. We thus find open recursive DNS resolvers to remain one critical phenomenon on the Internet. In this paper, we illuminate this phenomenon by analyzing it from two different angles. On the one hand, we study the landscape of DNS resolvers based on empirical data we collected for over a year. We analyze the changes over time and classify the resolvers according to device type and software version. On the other hand, we take the viewpoint of a client and measure the response authenticity of these resolvers. Besides legitimate redirections (e.g., to captive portals or router login pages), we find millions of resolvers to deliberately manipulate DNS resolutions (i.e., return bogus IP address information). To understand this threat in more detail, we systematically analyze non-legitimate DNS responses and reveal open DNS resolvers that manipulate DNS resolutions to censor communication channels, inject advertisements, serve malicious files, perform phishing, or redirect to other kinds of suspicious or malicious activities.
Speak up! Barriers to challenging erroneous decisions of seniors in anaesthesia

‘Speaking up’ or the ability to effectively challenge erroneous decisions is essential to preventing harm. This mixed‐methods study in two parts explores the concept of ‘barriers to challenging seniors’ for anaesthetic trainees, and proposes a conceptual framework. Using a fully immersive simulation scenario with unanticipated airway difficulty, we investigated how junior anaesthetists (one to two years of training) challenged a scripted error. We also conducted focus groups with senior trainees (three to seven years of training) and undertook a ‘thematic network analysis’ of responses. Junior anaesthetic trainees challenged erroneous decisions effectively, but trainees with an additional year of experience challenged more quickly and effectively, combining ‘crisp‐advocacy‐inquiry challenge’ with ‘non‐verbal cues’. Focus group analysis conceptualised a ‘barrier network’ with three main themes: concerns around relationships; decision‐making; and risk/cost–benefit. Emotional maturity is an important protective layer around decisions to challenge. Despite significant multifactorial barriers, systematic training in effective ‘speaking up’ could improve the confidence and ability of juniors to challenge erroneous decisions.
STRESS AND FAILURE ANALYSIS OF RAPIDLY ROTATING ASTEROID (29075) 1950 DA

Rozitis et al. recently reported that near-Earth asteroid (29075) 1950 DA, whose bulk density ranges from 1.0 g cm−3 to 2.4 g cm−3, is a rubble pile and requires a cohesive strength of at least 44–76 Pa to keep from failing due to its fast spin period. Since their technique for giving failure conditions required the averaged stress over the whole volume, it discarded information about the asteroid's failure mode and internal stress condition. This paper develops a finite element model and revisits the stress and failure analysis of 1950 DA. For the modeling, we do not consider material hardening and softening. Under the assumption of an associated flow rule and uniform material distribution, we identify the deformation process of 1950 DA when its constant cohesion reaches the lowest value that keeps its current shape. The results show that to avoid structural failure the internal core requires a cohesive strength of at least 75–85 Pa. It suggests that for the failure mode of this body, the internal core first fails structurally, followed by the surface region. This implies that if cohesion is constant over the whole volume, the equatorial ridge of 1950 DA results from a material flow going outward along the equatorial plane in the internal core, but not from a landslide as has been hypothesized. This has additional implications for the likely density of the interior of the body.
Goal Orientation and Comparative Valence in Persuasion

Using regulatory focus theory, this study investigates the interaction effects of goal orientation and comparative valence on persuasion. With three dependent variables—magnitude of difference in attitudes toward target and competitive brands, message diagnosticity, and purchase intentions—the authors use a 2 (goal orientation: promotionfocused, prevention-focused) x 3 (comparative valence: positive, moderately negative, extremely negative) between-subjects factorial design. The results show that when the comparative valence is positive, promotion-focused consumers experience stronger persuasion effects than do prevention-focused consumers. When the comparative valence is extremely negative, prevention-focused consumers experience stronger persuasion effects.
Aging and Language Production

Experimental research and older adults' reports of their own experience suggest that the ability to produce the spoken forms of familiar words declines with aging. Older adults experience more word-finding failures, such as tip-of-the-tongue states, than young adults do, and this and other speech production failures appear to stem from difficulties in retrieving the sounds of words. Recent evidence has identified a parallel age-related decline in retrieving the spelling of familiar words. Models of cognitive aging must explain why these aspects of language production decline with aging whereas semantic processes are well maintained. We describe a model wherein aging weakens connections among linguistic representations, thereby reducing the transmission of excitation from one representation to another. The structure of the representational systems for word phonology and orthography makes them vulnerable to transmission deficits, impairing retrieval.
Salicylate-based analgesic balm attenuates pressor responses from skeletal muscle.

PURPOSE Analgesic balms (AB) are widely used in sports medicine. We previously have examined effects of various counterirritant-based AB on pressor responses evoked by muscular contraction (MC), mediated by group III and IV muscle afferents known to produce exercise and nociceptive responses. Our purpose was to examine trolamine salicylate-based analgesic balm (TS) effects. METHODS Ten healthy, adult male and female cats were used. Decerebration under halothane allowed elimination of anesthesia. Electrical stimulation of L7 and S1 ventral roots evoked static MC (30 s). After control runs, commercial TS (10% concentration) was applied to the skin over the contracting muscles of one hind limb (N = 5). MC was evoked every 10 min, alternating between sides. Ipsilateral (T = 0, T + 20, T + 40, T + 60 min) and contralateral (T - 10, T + 10, T + 30, T + 50 min) responses were analyzed. Five additional cats received AB minus TS. RESULTS There were significant attenuations in both peak mean arterial pressure (MAP), in the last 12 s and the last 6 s of the 30 s of MC for both contra- and ipsilateral limbs occurring at T + 50 and T + 60 min after TS application, respectively. No significant changes in heart rate (HR) responses were seen for either the ipsi- or contralateral stimulation. There were no changes in MAP or HR in control cats. CONCLUSIONS These results indicate that TS affects the end of the 30 s of MC, which is thought to be mainly chemically mediated through group IV afferents. TS represents the salicylate class of AB and has no counterirritant properties. TS works as an inhibitor of cyclooxygenase (prostaglandin formation) and is, at least in part, blood borne.
Coagulability in obstructive sleep apnea.

BACKGROUND Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common disorder that affects both quality of life and cardiovascular health. The causal link between OSA and cardiovascular morbidity⁄mortality remains elusive. One possible explanation is that repeated episodes of nocturnal hypoxia lead to a hypercoagulable state that predisposes patients to thrombotic events. There is evidence supporting a wide array of hematological changes that affect hemostasis (eg, increased hematocrit, blood viscosity, platelet activation, clotting factors and decreased fibrinolytic activity). OBJECTIVE To provide a comprehensive review of the current evidence associating OSA with increased coagulability, and to highlight areas for future research. METHODS Keyword searches in Ovid Medline were used to identify relevant articles; all references in the articles were searched for relevant titles. The Web of Science was used to identify articles citing the relevant articles found using the Ovid Medline search. All original peer-reviewed articles, meta-analyses and systematic reviews regarding the pertinent topics between 1990 and present were selected for review. RESULTS Hematocrit, blood viscosity, certain clotting factors, tissue factor, platelet activity and whole blood coagulability are increased in patients with OSA, while fibrinolysis is impaired. CONCLUSION There is considerable evidence that OSA is associated with a procoagulant state. Several factors are involved in the procoagulant state associated with OSA. There is a need for adequately powered clinical studies involving well-matched control groups to address potential confounding variables, and to accurately delineate the individual factors involved in the procoagulant state associated with OSA and their response to treatment.
The implausibility of low-level visual deficits as a cause of children's reading difficulties

Abstract Lovegrove, Martin, and Slaghuis (1986) have argued that low-level visual deficits may commonly be a cause of reading retardation in children. It is argued here that these deficits do not provide a plausible explanation for the sorts of reading problems seen in children retarded in reading. In the minority of cases of reading retardation that do seem to reflect an underlying visual deficit, the problem would appear to depend upon higher-level visual processes.