Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Activated platelets induce monocyte chemotactic protein-1 secretion and surface expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 on endothelial cells.

BACKGROUND Platelet/endothelium interaction plays an important role in the pathophysiology of inflammation and atherosclerosis. The role of platelets for monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1) secretion and surface expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) on endothelial cells has been assessed. METHODS AND RESULTS Monolayers of human umbilical vein endothelial cells were incubated with nonstimulated or ADP-activated platelets for 6 hours, and secretion of MCP-1 and surface expression of ICAM-1 were determined by ELISA and flow cytometry, respectively. In the presence of ADP-activated platelets, both MCP-1 secretion and ICAM-1 surface expression were significantly increased compared with nonstimulated platelets (P<0.02). Activation of the transcription factor nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-kappaB) determined by electrophoretic mobility shift assay and kappaB-dependent transcriptional activity was enhanced in the presence of activated platelets. In addition, ADP-activated platelets induced MCP-1 and ICAM-1 promoter-dependent transcription. Liposomal transfection of a double-stranded kappaB phosphorothioate oligonucleotide, but not of the mutated form, inhibited MCP-1 secretion and surface expression of ICAM-1 on activated endothelium (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS The present study indicates that activated platelets modulate chemotactic (MCP-1) and adhesive (ICAM-1) properties of endothelial cells via an NF-kappaB-dependent mechanism. Platelet-induced activation of the NF-kappaB system might contribute to early inflammatory events in atherogenesis.
Experimental Manipulation of Psychological Involvement with Media

The study evaluates the effectiveness of experimental manipulations of transportation, immersion, spatial presence, character identification, and perceived similarity. The meta-analysis reveals that only about half the studies reported significant group differences in the predicted direction. On average, manipulations had a small to medium effect. Certain manipulations were more likely to influence some types of involvement than others. Transportation was impacted by distraction, perspective taking instructions, and meta-narrative information. Manipulation of literary qualities that had a large effect on character identification had no effect on transportation. Stimulus display characteristics had the strongest effect on immersion, whereas manipulations of the media world qualities had a larger effect on presence. Demographic similarity enhanced perceived similarity but not identification. Effect sizes were larger for advertising than for entertainment. Print and videogame stimuli yielded larger effects than videos. Together, these findings identify manipulations that future studies can use to enhance their statistical power.
Non-contemporary speech samples: auditory detectability of an 11 year delay and itseffect on automatic speaker identification

The need to compare non-contemporary speech samples is a common issue in forensic speaker recognition. Even if the size of the delay is known a crucial question has still to be answered in every single case: Is it possible that physiological aging or other factors have caused alterations of parameters of voice, speech and language to such a degree that the material basis for identification by human listeners and/or by automatic systems may no longer be regarded as adequate when a new identification task is due? Some studies on auditory speaker recognition suggest that, other variables being equal, a time lag of up to 6 years does not seem to pose a problem. To this author’s knowledge, the question has not yet been directed towards automatic identification systems. The present study uses speech data from ten male speakers recorded at intervals of 11 years and analyses the effect of the delay in terms of (a) the ability of different groups of listeners to detect it, and (b) its influence on the performance of an advanced automatic speaker identification system for forensic applications. Using contemporary samples for both ‘known’ and ‘unknown’ models as a benchmark the automatic speaker identification system identified all speakers correctly with LRs between 102 and over 108. In the non-contemporary condition, where the older samples (i.e. ‘younger’ speakers) were used for the construction of models for ‘known’ and the samples recorded 11 years later for ‘unknown’ speakers, LRs of nine speakers remained unchanged or dropped only slightly. The LR for one speaker dropped sharply. It seems that this is the only case in which vocal aging, but perhaps also other time-related factors, may have played a role. The main conclusions of these experiments are that for most male speakers a delay of the size of a decade between voice samples will not pose a problem to either auditory or machine-based speaker identification.
Diagnostic accuracy of single-compartment magnetic resonance arthrography in detecting common causes of chronic wrist pain

We reviewed a series of 50 consecutive wrist arthroscopy patients who had been investigated pre-operatively by direct magnetic resonance arthrography and calculated the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and overall accuracy of magnetic resonance arthrography in detecting full-thickness triangular fibrocartilage complex tears, intrinsic carpal ligamentous lesions, wrist synovitis and chondral lesions in the radiocarpal joint. The sensitivities of magnetic resonance arthrography in detecting central triangular fibrocartilage complex tears, peripheral triangular fibrocartilage complex tears, scapholunate ligament tears, lunotriquetral ligament tears, dorsal synovitis and radiocarpal chondral lesions were 89%, 63%, 71%, 100%, 32% and 65%, respectively, and its specificities in detecting these lesions were 91%, 98%, 89%, 94% 94% and 97%, respectively. This study suggests that single compartment direct wrist magnetic resonance arthrography can provide high diagnostic accuracy for full-thickness triangular fibrocartilage lesions, intrinsic carpal ligament tears and chondral lesions in the radiocarpal joint, but that it is much less accurate in diagnosing synovitis of the radiocarpal joint. Level of evidence: III
Targeting FXR in cholestasis: hype or hope

Introduction: Bile acids, the end product of cholesterol metabolism, are signaling molecules. The farnesoid X receptor (FXR) is a bile acid sensor and is part of a network of nuclear receptors that regulate bile acid homeostasis. In addition to FXR, bile acids activate other nuclear receptors (CAR, PXR and VDR), cell surface receptors including the G protein-coupled bile acid receptor 1 (GP-BAR1/TGR5), muscarinic receptor and calcium-gated potassium channels. Areas covered: The semisynthetic bile acid derivative 6-ethyl chenodeoxycholic acid (6-ECDCA, INT-747 later christened obeticholic acid) is a dual FXR/GP-BAR1 ligand that attenuates bile flow impairment in cholestasis induced by 17β-estradiol; a model of pregnancy-induced cholestasis. Phase II trials with this agent in early stage primary biliary cirrhosis have shown beneficial effects on surrogate markers of damage progression, specifically alkaline phosphatase, with a dose-dependent itching being the most severe and common side effect (up to 70% of patients) leading to therapy discontinuation in 38% of patients. GP-BAR1 activation in the skin triggers itching, thus providing a molecular explanation for this side effect. Expert opinion: While the role of FXR activation in treating severe cholestasis needs confirmation, the activation of GP-BAR1 is likely involved in pruritus development that associates with clinical use of dual FXR/GP-BAR1 ligands. FXR antagonist could be an interesting opportunity for treatment of severe/obstructive cholestasis.
Factors affecting contraceptive use in women seeking pregnancy tests: Missouri, 1997.

CONTEXT If the national health objective of reducing unintended pregnancy is to be met, a better understanding is needed of barriers to women's acquisition and use of contraceptives. METHODS A sample of 311 Missouri women who were seeking pregnancy tests in public health department clinics in 1997 and who said their potential pregnancy was unintended were asked about potential barriers to family planning. Factors affecting contraceptive use among these women were examined by frequency of use, insurance status, education and race. RESULTS In general, the women mostly disagreed that particular factors were potential barriers to contraceptive use. For only one item--worry over the potential side effects of the hormonal injectable contraceptive--did a majority agree or strongly agree that it was a barrier to method use in the previous six months. Women who used a contraceptive infrequently were more likely than frequent users to identify 33 factors in nine areas as being potential barriers to contraceptive use. These ranged from factors involving access to services and condom-specific issues to cost-related concerns, social norms, pregnancy denial, embarrassment over discussing or obtaining birth control, worry about side effects and experience with forced sex, among others. Perceived barriers differed somewhat by insurance status in the areas of access, embarrassment, side effects and forced sex. For example, women with no insurance coverage reported a higher level of agreement that transportation problems had hindered their access to a clinic than did women with private insurance. Level of education affected agreement only in the area of side effects, with more-educated women expressing greater concern about side effects than less-educated women. The respondent's race affected agreement in six areas: access, social norms, pregnancy denial, embarrassment, forced sex and other miscellaneous concerns, such as condom use and relationship issues. CONCLUSION Better education and improved access to and delivery of services might address several factors affecting contraceptive use that are associated with unintended pregnancy. Some barriers, however, such as those related to self-efficacy, self-esteem and fatalistic attitudes about pregnancy, would be much harder for family planning providers to resolve.
Effect of efavirenz on intestinal p-glycoprotein and hepatic p450 function in rats.

PURPOSE P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and cytochrome P450 (P450) affect drug disposition. Efavirenz (EFV) is an anti-HIV drug used in combination. Since most anti-HIV medications are substrate and modulators of P-gp and/or P450, we investigated the effects of EFV on intestinal P-gp and hepatic P450 function to predict drug interactions. METHODS (i) The effect of EFV on rat intestinal P-gp function was studied on everted gut sacs and in situ intestinal perfusion. EFV was orally administered (150 mg/kg) for 6 days. Then, rhodamine 123 was used as a P-gp substrate and verapamil as an inhibitor. P-gp function was evaluated by the difference between rhodamine 123 transport with and without verapamil. (ii) The effect of EFV on rat hepatic P450 metabolism was investigated using hepatic microsomes, prepared from rats pretreated or not with EFV. RESULTS In everted gut sacs, P-gp function was not modified and in the in situ intestinal perfusion, rhodamine 123 clearance was not affected by EFV. Concentrations of the metabolites, 1-OH midazolam and 4-OH midazolam were higher in EFV pretreated rats than those in the control group. CONCLUSION EFV should not modify intestinal absorption of co-administered substrates of P-gp, but could decrease plasma concentrations of co-administered drugs metabolized by P450.
Cultures and Their Discontents: On the Cultural Mediation of Shame and Guilt

In various parts of Civilizations and Its Discontents, Freud (1930) raises the very important and interesting question of whether social, cultural, and historical contingencies may affect how the process of renunciation and the development of guilt unfolds, but then leaves the question dangling. This article argues that rather than leave Freud's anthropological question dangling, we should take it seriously by examining more closely the phenomenology of human subjectivity in other times and places. The article uses person-centered data and interviews from 1960s Tahiti and 1980s Toraja to suggest that the quality and intensity of shame and guilt in small, face-to-face communities may differ considerably from that described by Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents. The paper concludes by arguing that it is to Freud's focus on the experiential dimension of human life to which we should turn when examining discontentment and unhappiness from a cross-cultural point of view. When we do, we return with renewed interest and appreciation to the profound anthropological and sociological questions Freud raised but never answered in Civilization and Its Discontents.
Bayesian factor analysis using Gaussian mixture sources, with application to separation of the cosmic microwave background

In this paper a fully Bayesian factor analysis model is developed that assumes a very general model for each factor, namely the Gaussian mixture. We discuss the cases where factors are both independent and dependent. In the statistical literature, factor analysis has been used principally as a dimension reduction technique, with little interest in a priori modelling of the factors, but here the application is source separation where the factors may have a direct interpretation and the usual Gaussian model for a factor may not be appropriate. That is the case for the application that illustrates our work, which is that of identifying different sources of extra-terrestrial microwaves from all-sky images taken at different frequencies. In particular there is interest in separating out the cosmic microwave background (CMB) signal from the other sources.
Reinstating effortful encoding operations at test enhances episodic remembering

Two experiments investigated the effects of reinstating encoding operations on remember and know responses in recognition memory. Experiment 1 showed that reinstating an effortful encoding task (generating words from fragments) increased remember responses at test but reinstating an automatic encoding task (reading intact words) did not. This pattern was confirmed in Experiment 2 in which words were either read intact or generated from anagrams. These findings show that repeating effortful (but not automatic) encoding operations at test cues not only the recognition of the information that was acquired via those operations but also the conscious recollection of the encoding episode.
Haldane's solution of the Luria-Delbrück distribution.

I N the 1940s it was still controversial whether bacterial mutants, such as those resistant to a particular phage, arose spontaneously (that is, at random) during the growth of a bacterial culture or in response to the presence of phage in the environment (SARKAR 1991). In order to answer this question, LURIA and DELBRUCK (1 943) devised their famous “fluctuation test. ” Several bacteria of the same genotype are allowed to grow for many generations in separate test tubes. The contents of these tubes are then separately inoculated onto plates containing phage. Sensitive bacteria die on the plates while resistant ones flourish and produce visible colonies. The number of such colonies, then, is equal to the number of resistant cells present in the generation of bacteria first plated. Suppose that the resistant bacteria arose through spontaneous mutations during the growth of the bacteria in each of the tubes prior to plating. If there is always a small finite probability of mutation, mutations would occur very early in a few tubes and many mutant cells would be present in a generation much later because of exponential growth of the mutants through ordinary cell division (assuming back-mutations are negligible). In many other tubes there would be no mutations at all or only one in the last few generations. The distribution of mutants observed after plating would reflect this fact and would show considerable variance. Suppose, however, that mutations arose only because of some interaction between the bacteria and the phage. Then, in each of the plates, the only mutants observed would be those produced during the last generation, that is, after plating. The probability of a large number of mutants so produced in only a few tubes is low, and the distribution of observed mutants would have much lower variance than in the former case. This insight into the highly differing variances expected under the
Ese peculiar estilo de contar las noticias. La entonación en los informativos radiofónicos

The voice is one of the radio news reader’s most important resources when conveying messages. Controlling the voice, through the proper use of prosodic features as the main tool for transmitting the explicit content of a text, provides a referential framework. It is also instrumental in conveying the sense of the text as well as its affective dimension. Ultimately, therefore, it affects the impression forming process of the listener. Therefore, the objective of this study is to contribute to the prosodic characterisation of radio news by identifying the prosodic resources used. The results show that radio news bulletins can be characterised by a wealth of circumflex contours, regular use of the pitch contour or accent and constant stress on the emphatic accent. Although these resources can guide the discursive understanding of the listener at specific moments during speech, their repeated use can lead to counterproductive effects for comprehension and attention.
Integrating the CAx process chain for STEP-compliant NC manufacturing of asymmetric parts

Acceleration of product development, decrease of NC programming effort and increase of product quality are demands from enterprises to make their products competitive. These requirements are hardly met by the today's used CAx process chain which is based on a multitude of interfaces and the standardized control data format ISO 6983. New concepts of product data modelling are necessary for a structured and object-oriented description of machining. The development of STEP-NC (ISO 14649) over the last ten years has brought new opportunities for automating the CAx process chain. The present paper portrays a methodology for implementation of a standardized CAx process chain for rotational asymmetric parts, which are described in the technology-oriented process model for turning (ISO 14649-12). The methodology is realized through a suite of STEP-compliant NC software tools, based on STEP-compliant information models to integrate the whole chain from design to machining. Component case studies are used to demonstrate and analyse the methodology. The final part of the paper discusses the major issues and deficiencies related to the current phase of development of this new approach.
Identiﬁcation and characterization of more than 4 million intervarietal SNPs across the group 7 chromosomes of bread wheat

examined SNP density variation along the chromosome syntenic builds and identiﬁed genes in low-density regions which may have been selected during domestication and breeding. This study highlights the impact of evolution and breeding on the bread wheat genome and provides a substantial resource for trait association and crop improvement. All SNP data are publically available on a generic genome browser GBrowse at www.wheatgenome. info.
The Double Disadvantage Reconsidered: Gender, Immigration, Marital Status, and Global Labor Force Participation in the 21st Century 1

Although women's representation among international migrants in many countries has risen over the last 100 years, we know far less about gender gaps in the labor force participation of immigrants across a wide span of host societies. Prior studies have established that immigrant women are doubly disadvantaged in terms of labor market outcomes in the U.S., Canada, and Israel. These studies suggest an intriguing question: Are there gender gaps in immigrant labor force participation across destinations countries? In this paper, we investigate the extent to which the double disadvantage exists for immigrant women in a variety of host countries. We also examine how marriage moderates this double disadvantage. For the U.S., although we find that immigrant women have had the lowest labor force participation rates compared to natives and immigrant men since 1960, marital status is an important stratifying attribute that helps explain nativity differences. Extending the analysis to eight other countries reveals strong gender differences in labor force participation and shows how marriage differentiates immigrant women's labor force entry more so than men's.
Log Data as Digital Evidence: What Secure Logging Protocols Have to Offer?

While log data are being increasingly used as digital evidence in judicial disputes, the extent to which existing secure logging protocols used to collect log data fulfill the legal requirements for admissible evidence remain largely unclear. We elucidate the necessary secure requirements for digital evidence and extensively survey the state of the art secure logging protocols,thereby demonstrating that none of the current proposals fulfills the necessary conditions for admissible evidence.
A phase I/II trial of hydroxychloroquine in conjunction with radiation therapy and concurrent and adjuvant temozolomide in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme

Preclinical studies indicate autophagy inhibition with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) can augment the efficacy of DNA-damaging therapy. The primary objective of this trial was to determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) and efficacy of HCQ in combination with radiation therapy (RT) and temozolomide (TMZ) for newly diagnosed glioblastoma (GB). A 3 + 3 phase I trial design followed by a noncomparative phase II study was conducted in GB patients after initial resection. Patients received HCQ (200 to 800 mg oral daily) with RT and concurrent and adjuvant TMZ. Quantitative electron microscopy and immunoblotting were used to assess changes in autophagic vacuoles (AVs) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). Population pharmacokinetic (PK) modeling enabled PK-pharmacodynamic correlations. Sixteen phase I subjects were evaluable for dose-limiting toxicities. At 800 mg HCQ/d, 3/3 subjects experienced Grade 3 and 4 neutropenia and thrombocytopenia, 1 with sepsis. HCQ 600 mg/d was found to be the MTD in this combination. The phase II cohort (n = 76) had a median survival of 15.6 mos with survival rates at 12, 18, and 24 mo of 70%, 36%, and 25%. PK analysis indicated dose-proportional exposure for HCQ. Significant therapy-associated increases in AV and LC3-II were observed in PBMC and correlated with higher HCQ exposure. These data establish that autophagy inhibition is achievable with HCQ, but dose-limiting toxicity prevented escalation to higher doses of HCQ. At HCQ 600 mg/d, autophagy inhibition was not consistently achieved in patients treated with this regimen, and no significant improvement in overall survival was observed. Therefore, a definitive test of the role of autophagy inhibition in the adjuvant setting for glioma patients awaits the development of lower-toxicity compounds that can achieve more consistent inhibition of autophagy than HCQ.
Gait Analysis of Horses for Lameness Detection with Radar Sensors

This paper presents the preliminary investigation of the use of radar signatures to detect and assess lameness of horses and its severity. Radar sensors in this context can provide attractive contactless sensing capabilities, as a complementary or alternative technology to the current techniques for lameness assessment using video-graphics and inertial sensors attached to the horses' body. The paper presents several examples of experimental data collected at the Weipers Centre Equine Hospital at the University of Glasgow, showing the micro- Doppler signatures of horses and preliminary results of their analysis.