Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Connexin32 inhibits gastric carcinogenesis through cell cycle arrest and altered expression of p21Cip1 and p27Kip1

Gap junctions and their structural proteins, connexins (Cxs), have been implicated in carcinogenesis. To explore the involvement of Cx32 in gastric carcinogenesis, immunochemical analysis of Cx32 and proliferation marker Ki67 using tissue-microarrayed human gastric cancer and normal tissues was performed. In addition, after Cx32 overexpression in the human gastric cancer cell line AGS, cell proliferation, cell cycle analyses, and p21Cip1 and p27Kip1 expression levels were examined by bromodeoxyuridine assay, flow cytometry, real-time RT-PCR, and western blotting. Immunohistochemical study noted a strong inverse correlation between Cx32 and Ki67 expression pattern as well as their location. In vitro, overexpression of Cx32 in AGS cells inhibited cell proliferation significantly. G1 arrest, up-regulation of cell cycle-regulatory proteins p21Cip1 and p27Kip1 was also found at both mRNA and protein levels. Taken together, Cx32 plays some roles in gastric cancer development by inhibiting gastric cancer cell proliferation through cell cycle arrest and cell cycle regulatory proteins. [BMB Reports 2013; 46(1): 25-30]
Effects of species raw material source, ash content, and processing temperature on amino acid digestibility of animal by-product meals by cecectomized roosters and ileally cannulated dogs.

We conducted experiments to determine amino acid (AA) digestibility of nine animal by-product meals using precision-fed cecectomized roosters and ileally cannulated dogs. The products initially evaluated in roosters were meat and bone meals (MBM) containing 24 or 34% ash, poultry by-product meals (PBP) containing 7 or 16% ash, lamb meals (LM) containing 15 or 24% ash, a LM analog containing a mixture of LM and turkey meal, and two MBM processed at either a low or high temperature. The MBM and PBP differing in ash, low-ash LM, and low-temperature MBM then were incorporated into extruded dry dog foods and evaluated in cecectomized roosters and ileally cannulated dogs. True digestibility of total AA in roosters averaged 76% for the nine meals fed alone, with the low-temperature MBM being highest at 84% and the low-ash LM being lowest at 66% (P < .05). No consistent differences in rooster AA digestibility were observed between pairs of meals differing in ash content. Digestibilities of AA were higher in the low-temperature MBM than in the high-temperature MBM. Differences in rooster AA digestibility values among the six extruded dog foods containing selected animal meals were similar to those observed when the animal meals were fed alone. The ileally cannulated dog assay yielded results for AA digestibilities that were highly correlated (r = .87 to .92) with those of the rooster assay, whereby the high-ash MBM and low-temperature MBM foods had the highest mean AA digestibility at 82% and the low-ash LM food had the lowest mean AA digestibility at 62% (P < .05). Again, no consistent differences in AA digestibilities for dogs were observed between pairs of dog foods containing MBM or PBP differing in ash content. Results of this study indicated that processing temperature influenced AA digestibility of MBM, but species raw material source and ash content had no consistent effect on AA digestibility. Results also indicated that the precision-fed cecectomized rooster assay could be used to predict differences in AA digestibility among animal by-product meals for dogs.
SERUM IGE LEVELS IN PATIENTS WITH ISCHEMIC HEART DISEASE

BackgroundRecently, mast cells have been found to participate in the inflammatory process of atherosclerosis. Mast cells can be activated by IgE-mediated mechanisms to release potent mediators which also affect coronary blood flow. The aim of this study was to determine serum IgE levels in patients with acute ischemic syndromes. MethodsSerum samples were collected from 3 groups consisting of 30 patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI), 30 patients with unstable angina pectoris and 30 subjects without any ischemic heart diseases, as a control group. The serum IgE levels were measured by sandwich ELISA technique. ResultsThe mean serum IgE concentrations in AMI, unstable angina and control groups were 367.1, 286.2 and 136 IU/ml, respectively. There was a significant difference between the IgE levels in patients with AMI and those in the control group (p<0.01). Moreover, there was a significant association between IgE levels and acute ischemic syndromes in men as compared to women. ConclusionElevated levels of serum IgE were observed in patients with ischemic heart diseases. These results suggested that IgE might play an important role in the immunopathogenesis of AMI and unstable angina or that it could only be a marker formed during pathological mechanisms (Iranian Heart Journal 2004; 5(1,2):20-25).
Making the Grade with Students: The Case for Accessibility

Student‐based teaching evaluations are one critical component of instructor and course evaluation in most universities. The purpose of this study is to critically examine several factors that drive student‐based ratings of instructors and courses in an undergraduate mechanical engineering program. The findings are based on a statistical study of student ratings in 181 mechanical engineering courses during a three and one‐half year period, two mid‐semester classroom interviews, and anecdotal evidence garnered from personal experience. A key rating that appears strongly linked with the overall instructor and course rating is the “accessibility of the instructor. ” The instructor accessibility factor outweighs others often cited by conventional wisdom, such as perceived course workload or expected grade in the course. Rationale for the strong correlation between instructor rating and perceived instructor accessibility is discussed. Several suggestions for how to improve instructor accessibility and resulting student‐based teaching evaluations are provided.
Complete stiffness model for a serial robot

The paper addresses a problem of robotic manipulator calibration. The main contributions are in the area of the elastostatic parameters identification. In contrast to other works, the considered approach takes into account elastic properties of both links and joint. Particular attention is paid to generation of the complete and irreducible stiffness model that is suitable for the identification. To solve the problem, physical and algebraic model reduction methods are proposed. They are based on taking into account the physical properties of the manipulator elements and structure of the corresponding observation matrix. The advantages of the developed approach are illustrated by an application example that deals with elastostatic calibration of an industrial robot.
Quantification of telomere features in tumor tissue sections by an automated 3D imaging-based workflow

The microscopic analysis of telomere features provides a wealth of information on the mechanism by which tumor cells maintain their unlimited proliferative potential. Accordingly, the analysis of telomeres in tissue sections of patient tumor samples provides can be exploited to obtain diagnostic information and to define tumor subgroups. In many instances, however, analysis of the image data is conducted by manual inspection of 2D images at relatively low resolution for only a small part of the sample. As the telomere feature signal distribution is frequently heterogeneous, this approach is prone to a biased selection of the information present in the image and lacks subcellular details. Here we address these issues by using an automated high-resolution imaging and analysis workflow that quantifies individual telomere features on tissue sections for a large number of cells. The approach is particularly suited to assess telomere heterogeneity and low abundant cellular sub-populations with distinct telomere characteristics in a reproducible manner. It comprises the integration of multi-color fluorescence in situ hybridization, immunofluorescence and DNA staining with targeted automated 3D fluorescence microscopy and image analysis. We apply our method to telomeres in glioblastoma and prostate cancer samples, and describe how the imaging data can be used to derive statistically reliable information on telomere length distribution or colocalization with PML nuclear bodies. We anticipate that relating this approach to clinical outcome data will prove to be valuable for pretherapeutic patient stratification. Abbreviations 3D-TIM 3D targeted imaging ALT alternative lengthening of telomeres APB ALT-associated PML-NB CLSM confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy ECTR extrachromosomal telomeric repeat FFPE formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded FISH fluorescence in situ hybridization IF Immunofluorescence pedGBM pediatric glioblastoma PML promyelocytic leukemia PML-NB PML nuclear body PNA peptide nucleic acid ROI region of interest TMA tissue microarray TMM telomere maintenance mechanism SMLM single molecule localization microscopy
3D Palmprint Identification Using Block-Wise Features and Collaborative Representation

Developing 3D palmprint recognition systems has recently begun to draw attention of researchers. Compared with its 2D counterpart, 3D palmprint has several unique merits. However, most of the existing 3D palmprint matching methods are designed for one-to-one verification and they are not efficient to cope with the one-to-many identification case. In this paper, we fill this gap by proposing a collaborative representation (CR) based framework with l1-norm or l2-norm regularizations for 3D palmprint identification. The effects of different regularization terms have been evaluated in experiments. To use the CR-based classification framework, one key issue is how to extract feature vectors. To this end, we propose a block-wise statistics based feature extraction scheme. We divide a 3D palmprint ROI into uniform blocks and extract a histogram of surface types from each block; histograms from all blocks are then concatenated to form a feature vector. Such feature vectors are highly discriminative and are robust to mere misalignment. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed CR-based framework with an l2-norm regularization term can achieve much better recognition accuracy than the other methods. More importantly, its computational complexity is extremely low, making it quite suitable for the large-scale identification application. Source codes are available at http://sse.tongji. edu.cn/linzhang/cr3dpalm/cr3dpalm.htm.
Membrane permeability-guided identification of neuroprotective components from Polygonum cuspidatun

Abstract Context: Polygonum cuspidatum Sieb et Zucc. (Polygonaceae) possesses various pharmacological activities and has been widely using as one of the most popular and valuable Chinese herbal medicines in clinics. Its usage has increasingly attracted much of our attention and urges investigation on its bioactive components. Objective: To establish a rapid and valid approach for screening potential neuroprotective components from P. cuspidatum. Materials and methods: Potential neuroprotective components from P. cuspidatum were screened utilizing liposome equilibrium dialysis followed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. Their neuroprotective effects on modulation of protein expression of α7 nAChR, α3 nAChR and synaptophysin (SPY) on SH-SY5Y human neuroblastoma cell line (SH-SY5Y) were evaluated by means of Western blotting. Results: Two potential compounds, polydatin (C1) and emodin-8-O-β-d-glucoside (C2), were detected and identified in our study. The biological tests showed that both compounds C1 and C2, respectively, at concentrations of 0.1 and 0.25 mg/mL significantly increased protein expression of α7 and α3 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in SH-SY5Y cells. Moreover, C1 and C2 at 0.1 mg/mL significantly reversed the Aβ1-42-induced decrease of α7 and α3 nAChRs protein expression in SH-SY5Y cells. In addition, C2 at 0.1 mg/mL significantly increased protein expression of SPY in SH-SY5Y cells and Aβ1-42-induced SH-SY5Y cells whereas C1 did not provide any positive effects. Discussion and conclusion: In conclusion, our approach utilizing liposome equilibrium dialysis combined with HPLC analysis and cell-based assays is a prompt and useful method for screening neuroprotective agents.
Using Caspar Creek flow records to test peak flow estimation methods applicable to crossing design

Long-term flow records from sub-watersheds in the Caspar Creek Experimental Watersheds were used to test the accuracy of four methods commonly used to estimate peak flows in small forested watersheds: the Rational Method, the updated USGS Magnitude and Frequency Method, flow transference methods, and the NRCS curve number method. Comparison of measured and calculated results for 10-year return-interval flows demonstrates that, under the conditions tested, the direct flow transference method provides the most reliable results if suitable data are available; results for 100-year flows show similar patterns. None of the methods consistently underestimated the values derived from the gaging record. This indicates that these methods are unlikely to result in an under-design of drainage structures with respect to flow capacity. However, design of stable stream crossings in steep forested areas also requires consideration for passage of sediment, woody debris, and fish, so estimation of required flow capacity represents only a first step in the design process.
Transmission scheduling for efficient wireless utilization

We present an "opportunistic" transmission scheduling policy that exploits time-varying channel conditions and maximizes the system performance stochastically under a certain resource allocation fairness constraint. We establish the optimality of the scheduling scheme and also describe a practical scheduling procedure to implement our scheme. Through simulation results, we show that the scheme also works well for nonstationary scenarios and results in performance improvements of 20-150% compared with a scheduling scheme that does not take into account channel conditions. Furthermore, we note that in wireless networks, an important role of resource allocation is to balance the system performance and fairness among "good" and "bad" users. We propose three heuristic time-fraction assignment schemes, which approach the problem from different viewpoints.
Efficient and direct estimation of a neural subunit model for sensory coding

Many visual and auditory neurons have response properties that are well explained by pooling the rectified responses of a set of spatially shifted linear filters. These filters cannot be estimated using spike-triggered averaging (STA). Subspace methods such as spike-triggered covariance (STC) can recover multiple filters, but require substantial amounts of data, and recover an orthogonal basis for the subspace in which the filters reside rather than the filters themselves. Here, we assume a linear-nonlinear-linear-nonlinear (LN-LN) cascade model in which the first linear stage is a set of shifted ('convolutional') copies of a common filter, and the first nonlinear stage consists of rectifying scalar nonlinearities that are identical for all filter outputs. We refer to these initial LN elements as the 'subunits' of the receptive field. The second linear stage then computes a weighted sum of the responses of the rectified subunits. We present a method for directly fitting this model to spike data, and apply it to both simulated and real neuronal data from primate V1. The subunit model significantly outperforms STA and STC in terms of cross-validated accuracy and efficiency.
An Investigation on Noisy Environments in Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization

In addition to satisfying several competing objectives, many real-world applications are also characterized by a certain degree of noise, manifesting itself in the form of signal distortion or uncertain information. In this paper, extensive studies are carried out to examine the impact of noisy environments in evolutionary multiobjective optimization. Three noise-handling features are then proposed based upon the analysis of empirical results, including an experiential learning directed perturbation operator that adapts the magnitude and direction of variation according to past experiences for fast convergence, a gene adaptation selection strategy that helps the evolutionary search in escaping from local optima or premature convergence, and a possibilistic archiving model based on the concept of possibility and necessity measures to deal with problem of uncertainties. In addition, the performances of various multiobjective evolutionary algorithms in noisy environments, as well as the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed features are examined based upon five benchmark problems characterized by different difficulties in local optimality, nonuniformity, discontinuity, and nonconvexity
Localization of myosin IC and myosin II in Acanthamoeba castellanii by indirect immunofluorescence and immunogold electron microscopy

Polyclonal antisera have been raised against purified Acanthamoeba myosin II and to a synthetic 26 amino acid peptide that corresponds in sequence to the phosphorylation site of Acanthamoeba myosin IC. These antisera are specific for their respective antigens as determined by immunoblotting after SDS-PAGE of total cell lysates. By using the antisera, localization studies were performed by indirect immunofluorescence and by immunogold electron microscopy. Myosin II occurred in the cell cytoplasm and appeared to be concentrated in the cortex. Immunogold cytochemistry revealed at high resolution that myosin II is organized into rodlike filaments approximately 200 nm long. The antibody raised against the myosin IC synthetic peptide recognized both the plasma membrane and the membrane of the contractile vacuole. The plasma membrane staining was labile to treatment with saponin suggesting an intimate association of the myosin IC with membrane phospholipids. Immunogold cytochemistry with the antimyosin IC synthetic peptide showed that the myosin IC is closely associated with the membrane bilayer.
Changes in peatland plant community composition and stand structure due to road induced flooding and desiccation

ii Preface: . iv Acknowledgments: . v Table of contents . vi List of Tables . ix List of Figures . x List of Appendices . xiii Chapter 1: General Introduction . 1 1.1 Background . 1 1.2 Conceptual model . 2 1.3 Hierarchy of controls . 2 1.4 Peatland Classification . 2 1.5 Road orientation . 4 1.6 Permeability and texture of surficial geology/ soil substrate below the peat . 5 1.7 Landscape position . 6 1.8 Study Area . 7 1.9 Research questions . 8 1.10 Figures . 8 Chapter 2: Using airborne LiDAR to evaluate changes in woody vegetation structure in roadfragmented peatlands . 13 Abstract . 13
Characterization of a novel subtype of hippocampal interneurons that express corticotropin‐releasing hormone

A subset of corticotropin‐releasing hormone (CRH) neurons was previously identified in the hippocampus with unknown function. Here we demonstrate that hippocampal CRH neurons represent a novel subtype of interneurons in the hippocampus, exhibiting unique morphology, electrophysiological properties, molecular markers, and connectivity. This subset of hippocampal CRH neurons in the mouse reside in the CA1 pyramidal cell layer and tract tracing studies using AAV‐Flex‐ChR2‐tdTomato reveal dense back‐projections of these neurons onto principal neurons in the CA3 region of the hippocampus. These hippocampal CRH neurons express both GABA and GAD67 and using in vitro optogenetic techniques, we demonstrate that these neurons make functional connections and release GABA onto CA3 principal neurons. The location, morphology, and importantly the functional connectivity of these neurons demonstrate that hippocampal CRH neurons represent a unique subtype of hippocampal interneurons. The connectivity of these neurons has significant implications for hippocampal function. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Shallow-water channel sounding for high speed acoustic communication

Underwater acoustic communication at low and medium frequencies has been available for several years. The low frequency allows for long-range communication, but also limits the available bandwidth. To increase the available bandwidth and enhance the data-rate, higher frequency bands have to be exploited. This work focuses on channel sounding for acoustic digital communication in high-frequency (250kHz) horizontal shallow-water channels, targeting moving platforms. Results from two test locations in the Oslofjord, exemplifying two very different channels, both which a robust modern communication system must handle is presented. These are compared to soundings made for a medium frequency (25.6kHz) channel. The result includes channel impulse responses, scattering functions and power delay profiles. Doppler power spectrums are analyzed and quantized for different ranges, relevant for the design of a future high-speed underwater communication system.
Residual Energy Scans for Monitoring Wireless Sensor Networks

It is important to have continuously updated information about network resources and application activities in a wireless sensor network after it is deployed in an unpredictable environment. Such information can help notify users of resource depletion or abnormal activities. However, constrained by the low user-to-node ratio, limited energy and bandwidth resources, it is infeasible to extract state of each individual node. In this paper, we propose an approach to construct abstracted scans of sensor network health by applying in-network aggregation of network state. Specifically, we design a residual energy scan which approximately depicts the remaining energy distribution within a sensor network. Simulations show that our approach has good scalability and energy-efficiency characteristics, compared to continuously extracting the residual energy level individually from each node.
Nudging towards security: developing an application for wireless network selection for android phones

People make security choices on a daily basis without fully considering the security implications of those choices. In this paper we present a prototype application which promotes the choice of secure wireless network options, specifically when users are unfamiliar with the wireless networks available. The app was developed based on behavioural theory, choice architecture and good practices informed by HCI design. The app includes several options to 'nudge' users towards selecting more secure public wireless networks. This paper outlines the development and the results of an evaluation of some of the potential app nudges (specifically, presentation order and colour coding). Colour coding was found to be a powerful influence, less so with the order in which we listed the Wi-Fi networks, although the colour x order combination was most effective. The paper contributes to the body of evidence on the effectiveness of cyber-security interventions to empower the user to make more informed security decisions.