Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor ( Fgf 2 ) Is Necessary for Cell Proliferation and Neurogenesis in the Developing Cerebral Cortex

Little is known about regionally specific signals that control the number of neuronal progenitor cells in vivo. We have previously shown that the germline mutation of the basic fibroblast growth factor (Fgf2) gene results in a reduction in the number of cortical neurons in the adult. We show here that Fgf2 is expressed in the pseudostratified ventricular epithelium (PVE) in a dorsoventral gradient and that Fgf2 and its receptor, Fgfr-1, are downregulated by mid to late stages of neurogenesis. In Fgf2 knockout mice, the volume and cell number of the dorsal PVE (the cerebral cortical anlage) are substantially smaller, whereas the volume of the basal PVE is unchanged. The dorsal PVE of Fgf2 knockout mice has a 50% decrease in founder cells and a reduced expansion of the progenitor pool over the first portion of neurogenesis. Despite this reduction, the degree of apoptosis within the PVE is not changed in the Fgf2 knockouts. Cortical neuron number was decreased by 45% in Fgf2 knockout mice by the end of neurogenesis, whereas the number of neurons in the basal ganglia was unaffected. Microscopically, the frontal cerebral cortex of neonatal Fgf2 null mutant mice lacked large neurons in deep cortical layers. We suggest that Fgf2 is required for the generation of a specific class of cortical neurons arising from the dorsal PVE.
Exploring IT Governance Arrangements In Practice: The Case Of A Utility Organisation In Thailand

Much attention is being directed towards IT to facilitate better management of information and enhance decision-making as a result of factors like: expenditure on information technology (IT); the imposition of legislation and implications of standards calling for timely, accurate and comprehensive reporting; and the need to respond to the increasing pace of change in organisations. Consequently IT governance (ITG), as an integral part of corporate governance, has become a focal point of corporate strategy. Despite growth in the number of research projects concerned with aspects of ITG, few have focused on the practical implementation of ITG in real-life contexts, particularly in Asia and Thailand. The objective of this paper is to investigate how a state-owned organisation in Thailand had adopted and implemented ITG and the factors that contributed to or impacted on the effectiveness of this. Findings deepen understanding about how cultural differences impact ITG implementation, which may enrich theoretical models about ITG and their associated implementation strategies. Further, our research highlights critical success factors related to ITG like assessment practices; and details understandings that other case organisations may apply to their advantage.
Sustained Reverse Left Ventricular Structural Remodeling With Cardiac Resynchronization at One Year Is a Function of Etiology: Quantitative Doppler Echocardiographic Evidence From the Multicenter InSync Randomized Clinical Evaluation (MIRACLE)

Background— Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is an effective therapy for patients with moderate to severe heart failure and prolonged QRS duration. The purpose of this study was to determine whether reverse left ventricular (LV) remodeling and symptomatic benefit from CRT were sustained at 12 months, and if so, in what proportion of patients this occurred. Methods and Results— Serial Doppler echocardiograms were obtained at baseline and 6 and 12 months after CRT in 228 patients enrolled in the Multicenter InSync Randomized Clinical Evaluation (MIRACLE) trial. Measurements were made of LV end-diastolic (EDV) and end-systolic (ESV) volumes, ejection fraction, LV mass, severity of mitral regurgitation (MR), peak transmitral velocities during early (E wave) and late (A wave) diastolic filling, and myocardial performance index. At both 6 and 12 months, respectively, CRT was associated with reduced LV EDV (P<0.0001 and P=0.007) and LV ESV (P<0.0001 and P<0.0001), improved ejection fraction (P<0.0001 and P<0.0001), regression of LV mass (P=0.012 and P<0.0001), and reduced MR (P<0.0001 and P<0.0001). LV filling time, transmitral E/A ratio, and myocardial performance index all improved at 12 months compared with baseline (P<0.001, P=0.031, and P<0.0001). Reverse LV remodeling with CRT occurred in more patients at 6 than at 12 months (74% versus 60%, respectively; P<0.05) and was greater in patients with a nonischemic than an ischemic etiology. Conclusions— Reverse LV remodeling and symptom benefit with CRT are sustained at 12 months in patients with New York Heart Association class III/IV heart failure but occur to a lesser degree in patients with an ischemic versus a nonischemic etiology, most likely owing to the inexorable progression of ischemic disease.
Rising United States Hospital Admissions for Acute Bacterial Skin and Skin Structure Infections: Recent Trends and Economic Impact

Background The number of ambulatory patients seeking treatment for skin and skin structure infections (SSSI) are increasing. The objective of this study is to determine recent trends in hospital admissions and healthcare resource utilization and identify covariates associated with hospital costs and mortality for hospitalized adult patients with a primary SSSI diagnosis in the United States. Methods We performed a retrospective cross-sectional analysis (years 2005–2011) of data from the US Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project National Inpatient Sample. Recent trends, patient characteristics, and healthcare resource utilization for patients hospitalized with a primary SSSI diagnosis were evaluated. Descriptive and bivariate analyses were conducted to assess patient and hospital characteristics. Results A total of 1.8% of hospital admissions for the years 2005 through 2011 were for adult patients with a SSSI primary diagnosis. SSSI-related hospital admissions significantly changed during the study period (P < .001 for trend) ranging from 1.6% (in 2005) to 2.0% (in 2011). Mean hospital length of stay (LOS) decreased from 5.4 days in the year 2005 to 5.0 days in the year 2011 (overall change, P < .001) with no change in hospital costs. Patients with postoperative wound infections had the longest hospital stays (adjusted mean, 5.81 days; 95% confidence interval (CI), 5.80–5.83) and highest total costs (adjusted mean, $9388; 95% CI, $9366-$9410). Year of hospital admission was strongly associated with mortality; infection type, all patient refined diagnosis related group severity of illness level, and LOS were strongly associated with hospital costs. Conclusions Hospital admissions for adult patients in the United States with a SSSI primary diagnosis continue to increase. Decreasing hospital inpatient LOS and mortality rate may be due to improved early treatment. Future research should focus on identifying alternative treatment processes for patients with SSSI that could shift management from inpatient to outpatient treatment settings.
Improving l2 cache performance through stream-directed optimizations

Research on caches has traditionally concentrated on the L1 cache. Most of the improvements in the design of L2 caches have been rather simple: increase in size and associativity. We believe that the L2 offers some unique opportunities for improvement. First, the L2 does not lie on the critical path, and can be made more complex. Second, the L1 filters out many temporal references to data blocks, so that accesses to the L2 are more uniform and show streaming patterns. Third, the miss penalty of the L2 cache is very high, since the next level in the memory hierarchy is usually the main memory (system RAM). In this work, we propose to improve overall performance by detecting streaming references at the L2 access level and by performing stream-based optimizations. The first optimization is targeted towards improving the LRU replacement policy. We identify streaming blocks that will not be accessed before being eventually evicted and we promote them to the LRU position. By removing such blocks from the cache immediately after their last access, we retain potentially useful cache blocks. This leads to better cache utilization and lower capacity/conflict misses. The second optimization is a prefetching scheme that is triggered by streaming accesses. Accesses to the streaming blocks are continuously monitored, and prefetching is stopped immediately after a streaming access ends. This eliminates the two most significant drawbacks of prefetching: it ensures that there is no cache pollution, and it keeps the increase in memory traffic to a minimum. Prefetching reduces the compulsory L2 misses. The key element in our optimizations is a low-overhead technique for identifying streaming accesses. Our stream detector is less than 0.002% of the size of the L2 cache, and thus has an extremely low hardware overhead. Our preliminary results for SPECfp2000 and multimedia applications show that there is significant sequentiality at the L2 access level. Trace-driven simulations for cache miss rates show that our first optimization, modified LRU, does not perform well. More importantly, the results show that our second optimization, stream-based prefetching performs quite well: it yields substantial reductions in the miss rates of most applications without increasing the memory traffic. Full-system, execution-driven simulations show significant reductions in cache miss rates: 22% for SPECfp2000 and 33% for multimedia applications. The simulations also show an 18% reduction in the overall L2 access time. Thus it is clear that stream-based prefetching is highly effective in improving system performance. Moreover, its low hardware cost makes it ideal for a real-world implementation.
The Absence of Adiabatic Contraction of the Radial Dark Matter Profile in the Galaxy Cluster A2589

We present an X-ray analysis of the radial mass profile of the radio-quiet galaxy cluster A2589 between 0.015 and 0.25rvir, using an XMM-Newton observation. Except for a ≈16 kpc shift of the X-ray center of the R = 45-60 kpc annulus, A2589 possesses a remarkably symmetrical X-ray image and is therefore an exceptional candidate for precision studies of its mass profile by applying hydrostatic equilibrium. The total gravitating matter profile is well described by the NFW model with cvir = 6.1 ± 0.3 and Mvir = 3.3 ± 0.3 × 1014 M☉ (rvir = 1.74 ± 0.05 Mpc), in excellent agreement with ΛCDM. When the mass of the hot intracluster medium is subtracted from the gravitating matter profile, the NFW model fitted to the resulting dark matter (DM) profile produces essentially the same result. However, when accounting for the stellar mass (M*) of the cD galaxy, the NFW fit to the DM profile substantially degrades in the central r ~ 50 kpc for reasonable values of M*/LV. Modifying the NFW DM halo by adiabatic contraction arising from the early condensation of stellar baryons in the cD galaxy further degrades the fit. The fit is improved substantially with a Sérsic-like model recently suggested by high-resolution N-body simulations but with an inverse Sérsic index, α ~ 0.5, that is a factor of ~3 higher than predicted. We argue that neither random turbulent motions nor magnetic fields can provide sufficient nonthermal pressure support to reconcile the XMM-Newton mass profile with adiabatic contraction of a CDM halo, assuming reasonable values of M*/LV. Our results support the scenario in which, at least for galaxy clusters, processes during halo formation counteract adiabatic contraction so that the total gravitating mass in the core approximately follows the NFW profile.
Gamma interferon is not essential for recovery from acute infection with murine gammaherpesvirus 68

Murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV-68) when administered intranasally induces high levels of gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) in the lymphoid tissues of infected mice. In order to investigate the role of this cytokine in the immune response to MHV-68, mice which were congenitally deficient in the IFN-gamma gene (IFN-gamma knockout mice) were infected with the virus. Comparison of the courses of the disease in wild-type control and IFN-gamma knockout mice revealed surprisingly little difference. Both groups of mice had cleared infectious virus from the lungs 15 days after infection, although there did appear to be a slight delay in viral clearance in the IFN-gamma knockout mice. In addition, after the initial phase of viral clearance, the lungs of both groups remained clear of replicating virus throughout the course of the experiment, which concluded 34 days after infection. Consistent with these observations, cytotoxic T-cell activities were similar in the two groups of mice. Levels of latent virus were comparable in wild-type and knockout mice over the time course studied. Furthermore, analysis of the numbers, types, and activation status of cells in the lungs, lymph nodes, and spleens of control and knockout mice revealed no striking difference. This suggests that IFN-gamma is not essential for regulating the cell recruitment or proliferation that normally occurs during this viral infection. Apart from the expected lack of IFN-gamma, cytokine profiles were not dramatically altered in IFN-gamma knockout mice, demonstrating that IFN-gamma did not suppress the proliferation or differentiation of Th2 cells during MHV-68 infection. These observations indicate that IFN-gamma plays a nonessential or redundant role in the control of acute infection with MHV-68.
ERAD 2006 Proceedings of Melting layer characterization and identification with a C-band dual-polarization radar : a long-term analysis

Bright band has always been recognized as a major source of error in radar Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE) especially in the winter time (Zawadzski 1984). Many operational services have introduced real-time Vertical Profile of Reflectivity identification and correction procedures (e.g. Koistinen 1991). However, bright band is not always easy to recognize on conventional reflectivity images because of the large variability of the horizontal reflectivity field and because of beam smoothing. Dualpolarization clearly offers new perspectives in that regard (Brandes and Ikeda 2004; Ikeda et al. 2004; Giangrande et al. 2005).
Protein synthesis and growth in the gastrointestinal tract of the young preruminant lamb

1. In Expt 1, fractional synthesis rates (FSR) of tissue protein were measured along the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of six 1-week-old, milk-fed lambs by using a large amount of L-[3,4(n)-3H]valine. 2. In Expt 2, eighteen lambs were used to determine the fractional growth rate (FGR) of gastrointestinal tissue protein. 3. FSRMinimum(Min) and FSRMaximum(Max) were calculated assuming plasma or tissue homogenate free valine specific radioactivity was representative of the valine precursor pool for protein synthesis. There were no significant differences between FSR(Min) and FSR(Max) in any gastrointestinal tissue of lambs used in Expt 1 (P > 0.05). FSR gradually and significantly (P > 0.05) increased from the oesophagus (FSR(Max)26.5%/d). reticulo-rumen (30.1%/d), omasum (41.0%/d) and abomasum (56.1%/d) to small intestine (87.5%/d), and then declined significantly (P < 0.05) towards the caecum (45.2%/d) and the colon (38.4%/d). No significant differences were observed between FSR in the duodenum, jejunum or ileum (P > 0.05). 4. FGR ranged from 2,6%/d in the oesophagus to 8,7%/d in the omasum. The ratio, FGR:FSR, which reflected the efficiency of protein deposition, was at a maximum in the stomachs and caecum and at a minimum in the small intestine. 5. The relative contribution of the oesophagus, stomachs, small intestine and large intestine to GIT protein synthesis was 1, 13, 76 and 10% respectively. The GIT accounted for approximately 11.5% of whole-body protein synthesis.
Erythropoietic Potential of CD34+ Hematopoietic Stem Cells from Human Cord Blood and G-CSF-Mobilized Peripheral Blood

Red blood cell (RBC) supply for transfusion has been severely constrained by the limited availability of donor blood and the emergence of infection and contamination issues. Alternatively, hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from human organs have been increasingly considered as safe and effective blood source. Several methods have been studied to obtain mature RBCs from CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells via in vitro culture. Among them, human cord blood (CB) and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor-mobilized adult peripheral blood (mPB) are common adult stem cells used for allogeneic transplantation. Our present study focuses on comparing CB- and mPB-derived stem cells in differentiation from CD34+ cells into mature RBCs. By using CD34+ cells from cord blood and G-CSF mobilized peripheral blood, we showed in vitro RBC generation of artificial red blood cells. Our results demonstrate that CB- and mPB-derived CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells have similar characteristics when cultured under the same conditions, but differ considerably with respect to expression levels of various genes and hemoglobin development. This study is the first to compare the characteristics of CB- and mPB-derived erythrocytes. The results support the idea that CB and mPB, despite some similarities, possess different erythropoietic potentials in in vitro culture systems.
Aquaporins and Glia

Glial cells coordinate the differentiation, metabolism, and excitability of neurons; they modulate synaptic transmission and integrate signals emanating from neurons and other glial cells. Several evidences underlying the relation between these pathways and the regulatory mechanisms of ion concentration, supporting the role of Aquaporins (AQPs) in these processes. The goal of this review is to summarize the localization of different isoforms of AQPs in relation to glial cells both in central and peripheral nervous system, underlying AQP involvement in physiological and in pathophysiological conditions such as brain edema, glioma and epilepsy.
Introducing Intelligent Environments, Agents and Autonomy to Users

There is a long-standing debate over the role that intelligent agents should play and how much autonomy they should be given in user-centric systems such as intelligent environments and other pervasive computing technologies. A recent online survey has been conducted to assess people's opinions of the use of autonomy in intelligent environments. In order to conduct this survey, an animated video was created to explain the necessary concepts of intelligent environments to the survey participants. This short paper gives an overview of the online survey and discusses the explanation video.
Sentiment Analysis For Modern Standard Arabic And Colloquial

The rise of social media such as blogs and social networks has fueled interest in sentiment analysis. With the proliferation of reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression, online opinion has turned into a kind of virtual currency for businesses looking to market their products, identify new opportunities and manage their reputations, therefore many are now looking to the field of sentiment analysis. In this paper, we present a feature-based sentence level approach for Arabic sentiment analysis. Our approach is using Arabic idioms/saying phrases lexicon as a key importance for improving the detection of the sentiment polarity in Arabic sentences as well as a number of novels and rich set of linguistically motivated features (contextual Intensifiers, contextual Shifter and negation handling), syntactic features for conflicting phrases which enhance the sentiment classification accuracy. Furthermore, we introduce an automatic expandable wide coverage polarity lexicon of Arabic sentiment words. The lexicon is built with gold-standard sentiment words as a seed which is manually collected and annotated and it expands and detects the sentiment orientation automatically of new sentiment words using synset aggregation technique and free online Arabic lexicons and thesauruses. Our data focus on modern standard Arabic (MSA) and Egyptian dialectal Arabic tweets and microblogs (hotel reservation, product reviews, etc.). The experimental results using our resources and techniques with SVM classifier indicate high performance levels, with accuracies of over 95%.
A network programming language based on concurrent processes and regular expressions

We propose a new programming language Preccs for networking and implementing communication protocols. Preccs is based on ideas of concurrent processes and regular expressions. We designed the language for simple and intuitive description of communication protocols. Then, we have developed a Preccs compiler that generates C code from a Preccs source program. The generation of C code with the Preccs compiler will make it possible for reliable communication programs development in a short period. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we have implemented a simple HTTP server and a simple VoIP application in Preccs. Both of them are implemented in a few lines of code.
Cancer Preventive Potential of Kimchi Lactic Acid Bacteria (Weissella cibaria, Lactobacillus plantarum)

The number of death due to cancer has been increasing in Korea. Chemotherapy is known to cause side effects because it damages not only cancerous cells but healthy cells. Recently, attention has focused on food-derived chemopreventive and anti-tumor agents or formulations with fewer side effects. Kimchi, most popular and widely consumed in Korea, contains high levels of lactic acid bacteria and has been shown to possess chemopreventive effects. This review focuses on Weissella cibaria and Lactobacillus plantarum, the representatives of kimchi lactic acid bacteria, in terms of their abilities to prevent cancer. Further studies are needed to understand the mechanisms by which lactic acid bacteria in kimchi prevent carcinogenic processes and improve immune functions.
Combining domain knowledge and machine learning for robust fall detection

This paper presents a method for combining domain knowledge and machine learning (CDKML) for classifier generation and online adaptation. The method exploits advantages in domain knowledge and machine learning as complementary information sources. Whereas machine learning may discover patterns in interest domains that are too subtle for humans to detect, domain knowledge may contain information on a domain not present in the available domain dataset. CDKML has three steps. First, prior domain knowledge is enriched with relevant patterns obtained by machine learning to create an initial classifier. Second, genetic algorithms refine the classifier. Third, the classifier is adapted online on the basis of user feedback using the Markov decision process. CDKML was applied in fall detection. Tests showed that the classifiers developed by CDKML have better performance than machine‐learning classifiers generated on a training dataset that does not adequately represent all real‐life cases of the learned concept. The accuracy of the initial classifier was 10 percentage points higher than the best machine‐learning classifier and the refinement added 3 percentage points. The online adaptation improved the accuracy of the refined classifier by an additional 15 percentage points.
Analyzing and Addressing Localized Degradation in the Commons

Social scientists are paying increasing attention to the implications for commons management of user and resource heterogeneity. This study considers the example of localized degradation of a shared rangeland where users and rangeland sub-areas differ in characteristics. A model of land-use decisions is developed. Longitudinal data on land-use decisions are investigated. The impact of proportionate reduction and uniform quota policies are evaluated by simulating estimation results. The study finds recognizing heterogeneity allows insight into the causes of localized degradation, and explains how policies intended to increase the efficiency of exploitation can go awry if heterogeneity is not recognized. (JEL Q22, Q24)