Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhanced Bcr-Abl-specific antileukemic activity of arsenic trioxide through glutathione-depletion in imatinib-resistant cells

The development of resistance to imatinib mesylate may partly depend on high Bcr-Abl-expression levels. Arsenic trioxide (ATO) has Bcr-Abl suppressing activity in vitro. Here we investigated means to improve ATO activity in CML by modulating cellular glutathione (GSH), a key regulator of ATO-activity in malignant disease. Our studies demonstrate that depletion of cellular glutathione using dl-buthionine-[S,R]-sulfoximine (BSO) enhances ATO activity against CML cells. GSH-depletion promotes enhanced Bcr-Abl specific activity of ATO through avid repression of Bcr-Abl protein levels and total cellular Bcr-Abl activity. These data provide a rationale for the clinical development of optimized ATO-based regimens through incorporation of GSH-modulators in CML treatment.
Strengthening the Basic Competence of Sciences for Master Students of Science Education Program

Based on Indonesian National Qualification Framework (known as, KKNI), master studen in science education alumnus is targeting to well understanding about materials or concepts that rely on memorization will impact on students' inability to construct relationships between concepts, integrate new concepts with previous concepts to create imagination in understanding concepts. In order to achieve the specific target, the research used explorative research design with writing test data, then for triangulation data, the test result is followed up with in-depth interview. In-depth interviews were conducted through clinical interviews and individual demonstration interviews. The results showed that the initial ability of science S2 students in science subjects is low. On a scale of 0-100 the profiles of basic competence in science of the students is 35.4 for Physics, 43.7 for Biology and 49.7 for Chemistry. Interviews indicate that unfavorable learning materials are complex materials and a lot of discussion on work mechanism, abstract material and many scientific terms and materials that require a high level of understanding. Based on these results need to be developed studentcentered learning that is learning that activate and cause high curiosity. Implementable learning is a learning model with experiment / practice, problem solving, assignment or project, invention and simulation so that students find their own concept or material to be learned. The results of this learning will be more memorable and not easy to forget.
Powergrading: a Clustering Approach to Amplify Human Effort for Short Answer Grading

We introduce a new approach to the machine-assisted grading of short answer questions. We follow past work in automated grading by first training a similarity metric between student responses, but then go on to use this metric to group responses into clusters and subclusters. The resulting groupings allow teachers to grade multiple responses with a single action, provide rich feedback to groups of similar answers, and discover modalities of misunderstanding among students; we refer to this amplification of grader effort as “powergrading. ” We develop the means to further reduce teacher effort by automatically performing actions when an answer key is available. We show results in terms of grading progress with a small “budget” of human actions, both from our method and an LDA-based approach, on a test corpus of 10 questions answered by 698 respondents.
Big data storage workload characterization, modeling and synthetic generation

A huge increase in data storage and processing requirements has lead to Big Data, for which next generation storage systems are being designed and implemented. As Big Data stresses the storage layer in new ways, a better understanding of these workloads and the availability of flexible workload generators are increasingly important to facilitate the proper design and performance tuning of storage subsystems like data replication, metadata management, and caching. Our hypothesis is that the autonomic modeling of Big Data storage system workloads through a combination of measurement, and statistical and machine learning techniques is feasible, novel, and useful. We consider the case of one common type of Big Data storage cluster: A cluster dedicated to supporting a mix of MapReduce jobs. We analyze 6-month traces from two large clusters at Yahoo and identify interesting properties of the workloads. We present a novel model for capturing popularity and short-term temporal correlations in object request streams, and show how unsupervised statistical clustering can be used to enable autonomic type-aware workload generation that is suitable for emerging workloads. We extend this model to include other relevant properties of storage systems (file creation and deletion, pre-existing namespaces and hierarchical namespaces) and use the extended model to implement MimesisBench, a realistic namespace metadata benchmark for next-generation storage systems. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of MimesisBench through a study of the scalability and performance of the Hadoop Distributed File System name node.
Influence of water deficit on the molecular responses of Pinus contorta × Pinus banksiana mature trees to infection by the mountain pine beetle fungal associate, Grosmannia clavigera

Conifers exhibit a number of constitutive and induced mechanisms to defend against attack by pests and pathogens such as mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) and their fungal associates. Ecological studies have demonstrated that stressed trees are more susceptible to attack by mountain pine beetle than their healthy counterparts. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that water deficit affects constitutive and induced responses of mature lodgepole pine × jack pine hybrids (Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud. var. latifolia Engelm. ex S. Wats. × Pinus banksiana Lamb.) to inoculation with the mountain pine beetle fungal associate Grosmannia clavigera (Robinson-Jeffrey and Davidson) Zipfel, de Beer and Wingfield. The degree of stress induced by the imposed water-deficit treatment was sufficient to reduce photosynthesis. Grosmannia clavigera-induced lesions exhibited significantly reduced dimensions in water-deficit trees relative to well-watered trees at 5 weeks after inoculation. Treatment-associated cellular-level changes in secondary phloem were also observed. Quantitative RT-PCR was used to analyze transcript abundance profiles of 18 genes belonging to four families classically associated with biotic and abiotic stress responses: aquaporins (AQPs), dehydration-responsive element binding (DREB), terpene synthases (TPSs) and chitinases (CHIs). Transcript abundance profiles of a TIP2 AQP and a TINY-like DREB decreased significantly in fungus-inoculated trees, but not in response to water deficit. One TPS, Pcb(+)-3-carene synthase, and the Class II CHIs PcbCHI2.1 and PcbCHI2.2 showed increased expression under water-deficit conditions in the absence of fungal inoculation, while another TPS, Pcb(E)-β-farnesene synthase-like, and two CHIs, PcbCHI1.1 and PcbCHI4.1, showed attenuated expression under water-deficit conditions in the presence of fungal inoculation. The effects were observed both locally and systemically. These results demonstrate that both constitutive and induced carbon- and nitrogen-based defenses are affected by water deficit, suggesting potential consequences for mountain pine beetle dynamics, particularly in novel environments.
THE FATE OF MYCOBACTERIUM TUBERCULOSIS IN MOUSE TISSUES AS DETERMINED BY THE MICROBIAL ENUMERATION TECHNIQUE

Populations of tubercle bacilli of human origin exposed in vivo to pyrazinamide and a companion drug, vanished from the tissues of the mouse in so far as could be determined by microscopy, culture, or guinea pig subinoculation. The vanishing did not represent a complete elimination of the tubercle bacilli from all the animals. 90 days after the completion of treatment, tubercle bacilli could be cultured from approximately one-third of the animals examined at that time. This complete disappearance of the tubercle bacilli thus meets the definition of a truly latent infection in that the infection is present but is hidden beyond the limits of diagnostic reach. All but one of the strains of tubercle bacilli which survived in the animals and were detectable in the posttreatment period, were susceptible to pyrazinamide when tested under appropriate conditions in vitro. Only two factors could be identified which were essential for the uniform occurrence of the disappearance of tubercle bacilli: the administration of the pyrazinamide in a high daily dosage for at least eight of a total of 12 weeks of antimicrobial therapy; and the concurrent or prior exposure of the microbial populations to isoniazid or in some cases to other antituberculous drugs. The observations suggest that the ability of pyrazinamide-containing chemotherapies to bring about the disappearance of a tubercle bacillus is closely related to the occurrence of some alteration in the bacillus, essential for maximal pyrazinamide action, in response to environmental influences, including other antituberculous drugs present in the environment.
Typography and readability : An experiment with post-stroke patients

Typography for challenged readers has unique problems. There is a large amount of research about reading by people with impaired vision. Since reading is a complex process, other impairments, for example, cognitive problems, may also influence it. Should a publisher of texts for this audience be aware of this? Which typographical devices must be used for these texts? In our previous reports we showed that serifs do not influence the readability and understandability of texts by healthy students. In this report we study the readability and understandability of serif and sans-serif texts by post-stroke patients. We discuss the experimental setup and preliminary results.
Contextual Predictors of Protest Behavior on Social Media: A #Ferguson Case Study

ABSTRACT Using an original Python program, we extracted data from the 2014 #Ferguson Twitterstorm to explore contextual predictors of digital activism. Through content analysis we identify whether tweets related to police conduct, race relations, and perceptions of justice were influenced by local arrest rates and economic inequality. Instead, results suggest that race and partisanship drove much of the digital protest behavior. Negative perceptions of justice and police conduct largely originated from within Democratic-leaning communities and areas with larger African American populations. We speculate that deeper social grievances surfaced in the Ferguson case, causing the digital conversation to become both racialized and politicized.
The PDS versus Markarian starburst galaxies: comparing strong and weak IRAS emitter at 12 and 25 μm in the nearby Universe

The characteristics of the starburst galaxies from the Pico dos Dias survey (PDS) are compared with those of the nearby UV-bright Markarian starburst galaxies, having the same limit in redshift (vh < 7500 km s 1 ) and absolute B magnitude (MB < 18). An important difference is found: the Markarian galaxies are generally undetected at 12µm and 25µm in IRAS. This is consistent with the UV excess shown by these galaxies and suggests that the youngest star forming regions dominating these galaxies are relatively free of dust. The FIR selection criteria for the PDS is shown to introduce a strong bias towards massive (luminous) and large size late-type spiral galaxies. This is contrary to the Markarian galaxies, which are found to be remarkably rich in smaller size early-type galaxies. These results suggest that only late-type spirals with a large and massive disk are strong emitter at 12µm and 25µm in IRAS in the nearby universe. The Markarian and PDS starburst galaxies are shown to share the same environment. This rules out an explanation of the differences observed in terms of external parameters. These differences may be explained by assuming two different levels of evolution, the Markarian being less evolved than the PDS galaxies. This interpretation is fully consistent with the disk formation hypothesis proposed in Coziol et al. (2000) to explain the special properties of the Markarian SBNG.
Insights and Hopes in Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cell Transplantations

Over 20.000 umblical cord blood transplantations (UCBT) have been carried out around the world. Indeed, UCBT represents an attractive source of donor hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and, offer interesting features (e.g., lower graft-versus-host disease) compared to bone marrow transplantation (BMT). Thereby, UCBT often represents the unique curative option against several blood diseases. Recent advances in the field of UCBT, consisted to develop strategies to expand umbilical stem cells and shorter the timing of their engraftment, subsequently enhancing their availability for enhanced efficacy of transplantation into indicated patients with malignant diseases (e.g., leukemia) or non-malignant diseases (e.g., thalassemia major). Several studies showed that the expansion and homing of UCBSCs depends on specific biological factors and cell types (e.g., cytokines, neuropeptides, co-culture with stromal cells). In this review, we extensively present the advantages and disadvantages of current hematopoietic stem cell transplantations (HSCTs), compared to UBCT. We further describe the importance of cord blood content and obstetric factors on cord blood selection, and report the recent approaches that can be undertook to improve cord blood stem cell expansion as well as engraftment. Eventually, we provide two majors examples underlining the importance of UCBT as a potential cure for blood diseases.
Incidence and Clinical Significance of De Novo Donor Specific Antibodies after Kidney Transplantation

Kidney transplantation has evolved over more than half a century and remarkable progress has been made in patient and graft outcomes. Despite these advances, chronic allograft dysfunction remains a major problem. Among other reasons, de novo formation of antibodies against donor human leukocyte antigens has been recognized as one of the major risk factors for reduced allograft survival. The type of treatment in the presence of donor specific antibodies (DSA) posttransplantation is largely related to the clinical syndrome the patient presents with at the time of detection. There is no consensus regarding the treatment of stable renal transplant recipients with circulating de novo DSA. On the contrast, in acute or chronic allograft dysfunction transplant centers use various protocols in order to reduce the amount of circulating DSA and achieve long-term graft survival. These protocols include removal of the antibodies by plasmapheresis, intravenous administration of immunoglobulin, or depletion of B cells with anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies along with tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil. This review aims at the comprehension of the clinical correlations of de novo DSA in kidney transplant recipients, assessment of their prognostic value, and providing insights into the management of these patients.
Synthesis of Adaptable Hybrid Adders for Area Optimization under Timing Constraint

Satisfying the timing constraint is the utmost concern in the integrated circuit design and it is true that most critical timing paths in a circuit cover one or more arithmetic components such as adder, subtractor, and multiplier of which addition logic is commonly involved. This work addresses the problem of redesigning the addition logic (in a form of hybrid adder) on a critical timing path to meet the timing constraint while minimally allocating the required addition logic. Unlike the conventional hybrid adder design schemes in which they assume uniform or specific patterns of input signal arrival times and minimize the latest timing of the output signals, our work extracts the required timing of each output signal as well as the input arrival times directly from the circuit and resynthesizes the addition logic by creating a customized hybrid adder that is best suited, in terms of logic area, for meeting the timing constraint of the circuit. Specifically, we propose a systematic approach of hybrid adder design exploration, basically following the principle of dynamic programming with well-controlled pruning techniques. This work is realistic and practically very useful in that it can be used as a timing optimizer to the computation-intensive circuits with a tight timing budget. We provide a set of diverse experimental data to show how much the proposed hybrid adder scheme is effective in meeting or reducing timing while maintaining the circuit area as minimal as possible.
The impact of CLIL on pluriliteracy development and content learning in a rural multilingual setting: A longitudinal study

Although CLIL (content and language integrated learning) programmes are now globally expanding, the number of studies that have examined their impact on both multiple language learning (students’ L1, L2 and English as a foreign language) and content learning are scarce. This study investigates the effects of a CLIL programme implemented in a rural multilingual school context in Galicia, Spain. Bearing in mind the deficiencies identified in previous CLIL research, this two-year longitudinal study secured the homogeneity of the CLIL and non-CLIL samples (n = 44) before the actual implementation of the CLIL approach. Although both groups improved their competence in English after two years, the CLIL cohort made significantly greater progress. Interestingly, the CLIL students also outperformed their non-CLIL counterparts in both Spanish and Galician over the two school years, whereas content learning was not negatively affected. In the conclusions the importance of paying heed to the pedagogical features and the methodology employed in CLIL settings is underscored.
Double-nesting behaviour and sexual differences in breeding success in wild Red-legged Partridges Alectoris rufa

Double-nesting behaviour, a rare breeding system in which females lay in two nests, one incubated by herself and the other one by her mate, could be considered an intermediate stage in the evolutionary trend from biparental to uniparental care of single clutches. We examined the occurrence and success of double-nesting behaviour in Red-legged Partridges Alectoris rufa in Central Spain. Clutch size and hatching success were recorded, as well as the variation in these between years and between incubating sexes. Participation in incubation was higher for females (94.76%) than males (41.0%), and the proportion of incubating males varied markedly between years, with no incubating males in one dry year and approximately 50% of males incubating in other years. There was significant variation among years and between sexes in laying date, clutch size and hatching success. Clutch size decreased with later laying date in males and females. The probability of clutch loss to predation differed between sexes, being much higher for nests incubated by females. Our results suggest that both rainfall and predation influence the occurrence and success of double-nesting.
A Prediction Divergence Criterion for Model Selection

In this paper, we propose a new criterion for selection between nested models. We suppose that the correct model is one (or near one) of the available models and construct a criterion which is based on the Bregman divergence between the out-of-sample prediction of the smaller model and the in-sample prediction of the larger model. This criterion, the prediction divergence criterion (PDC), is different from the ones that are often used like the AIC, BIC, Cp, in that, in a sequential approach, it directly considers the prediction divergence between two models, rather that differences between the former criteria evaluated at two different models. We derive an estimator for the PDC (PDCE) using Efron (2004) approach on parametric covariance penalty method, and for the linear model and smoothing splines, we show that the PDCE on a suitable sequence of nested models that we formalize, selects the correct model with probability 1 as the sample size tends to infinity. In finite samples, we compare the performance of our criterion to the other ones as well as to the lasso, as find that it outperforms the other criteria in terms of prediction error in sparse situations.
Does body mass index affect progression-free or overall survival in patients with ovarian cancer? Results from SCOTROC I trial.

BACKGROUND Previous studies have indicated an association between obesity and poor survival in several tumour types, including ovarian cancer. We sought to test the hypothesis that obesity reduces survival in a large, well-characterised and relatively homogeneous cohort of ovarian cancer patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS The relationship between body mass index (BMI) and overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in 1067 patients participating in the Scottish Randomised Trial in Ovarian Cancer I trial was assessed. All patients received first-line carboplatin/taxane chemotherapy. The dose of carboplatin was determined by a measured glomerular filtration rate (GFR), ensuring accurate dosing in all categories of BMI and the dose of taxane was not capped. Patients were assigned to one of four categories: underweight (BMI < 18.5), ideal weight (BMI 18.5-24.9), overweight (BMI 25-29.9) or obese (BMI >or= 30). RESULTS There were neither statistically significant differences in PFS or OS between these four groups nor were there any differences in taxane or carboplatin dose intensity. Furthermore, there was no association between BMI and tumour stage or grade at presentation, or completeness of debulking surgery. CONCLUSIONS Obese patients with epithelial ovarian cancer do not have a poorer prognosis, provided that they receive optimal doses of chemotherapy based on measured GFR and actual body weight.
Association of Presence of Band Cells and Toxic Neutrophils with Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome and Outcome in Horses with Acute Disease

Background Band cells and toxic neutrophils are thought to indicate acute and severe systemic illness but no studies have investigated their importance in adult equine emergency admissions. Objectives The objective of this study was to evaluate the association of band cells and toxic neutrophils with systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) and outcome in horses. Animals One hundred and five adult horses admitted on emergency basis to a private primary referral practice. Methods Prospective observational study with sample collection. All horses admitted on emergency basis over the study period were included in the study if they had a CBC and a blood smear collected on admission. Results The detection of band neutrophils on admission was associated with the SIRS status of the horse (RR = 2.80; 95% CI = 1.57–4.99; P < .001) and with poor outcome (RR = 1.88; 95% CI: 1.05–3.37; P = .038). Similarly, the presence of a neutrophil toxic grade higher than 3 was associated with SIRS (RR = 1.71; 95% CI: 1.03–2.82; P = .034) and death (RR = 2.34; 95% CI: 1.22–4.50, P = .007). The information gained from the blood smear review could not be captured by looking at only the WBC or neutrophil count. Conclusions and Clinical Importance The microscopic review of blood smears from critically ill horses to detect band cells or neutrophil toxic change is valuable and could help in assessing disease severity and prognosis in adult equine emergency admissions.