Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Suppression of Matrix Metalloproteinase Production in Nasal Fibroblasts by Tranilast, an Antiallergic Agent, In Vitro

Allergic rhinitis is an inflammatory disease characterized by nasal wall remodeling with intense infiltration of eosinophils and mast cells/basophils. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), MMP-2 and MMP-9, are the major proteolytic enzymes that induce airway remodeling. These enzymes are also important in the migration of inflammatory cells through basement membrane components. We evaluated whether tranilast (TR) could inhibit MMP production from nasal fibroblasts in response to tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) stimulation in vitro. Nasal fibroblasts (NF) were established from nasal polyp tissues taken from patients with allergic rhinitis. NF (2 × 105 cells/mL) were stimulated with TNF-α in the presence of various concentrations of TR. After 24 hours, the culture supernatants were obtained and assayed for MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-1, and TIMP-2 levels by ELISA. The influence of TR on mRNA expression of MMPs and TIMPs in cells cultured for 12 hours was also evaluated by RT-PCR. TR at more than 5 × 10−5 M inhibited the production of MMP-2 and MMP-9 from NF in response to TNF-α stimulation, whereas TIMP-1 and TIMP-2 production was scarcely affected. TR also inhibited MMP mRNA expression in NF after TNF-α stimulation. The present data suggest that the attenuating effect of TR on MMP-2 and MMP-9 production from NF induced by inflammatory stimulation may underlie the therapeutic mode of action of the agent in patients with allergic diseases, including allergic rhinitis.
Urban housing in India

Evidence indicates that the situation of urban housing in India has been poor over the past thirty years and may have even deteriorated in many important aspects over this period. This paper documents and brings together a range of scattered information not hitherto accessible to shed light on this neglected area of economic policy in India. It evaluates the existing housing stock in the country and the role of housing in the national economy. It analyses the components of increasing housing demand and identifies the series of constraints that impair the expansion of supply. It concludes that there is a clear need for a major overhaul of many of the government policies and regulations such that housing supply may be more responsive to demand from all income levels.
Perceived Attributes of E-Commerce and the Adoption Decision: The Case of Malaysian SMEs

Research on e-commerce adoption in SMEs has gained considerable attention in the past few years. However, most of them were conducted in developed countries such as USA, UK or Australia. This study attempts to understand ecommerce adoption amongst Malaysian SMEs, applying the persuasion stage of the Diffusion of Innovation Model by Rogers’s. The objective is to determine the relationship between perceived attributes of e-commerce and the adoption decision by SMEs. A survey method was used to collect data whereby questionnaires were mailed to SME owners or managers in the manufacturing sector. The analysis on 107 responses shows that perceived relative advantage, perceived trialability, and perceived observability have significant influence on the willingness to adopt e-commerce.
More secrecy... more knowledge disclosure?: On disclosure outside of patents

It is an important concern that innovators by waiving their patent rights might obstruct the disclosure of knowledge and therefore retard progress. This paper explores this concern by using a simple model of two innovators who must decide sequentially whether to protect an innovation with limited patent rights. Two features are crucial to the disclosure decision. First: the second inventor may use his valid patent right to exclude the first inventor from using a secret invention. Second: when waiving her patent right, the first inventor may disclose her knowledge outside of a patent. Disclosure informs the Patent Office and courts that related inventions from later inventors may lack novelty and hence should not be protected by valid patent rights. This paper shows that when the first inventor chooses not to patent the innovation, the amount of disclosure is related to the intellectual property choices in a paradoxical way: the amount of disclosure will be ‘large’ (‘small’) when the second inventor chooses secrecy (patenting) to protect the innovation too.
Unmet health care needs for persons with environmental sensitivity

Studies of unmet health care needs have shown that women, people with poor health, and people with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to report having unmet health care needs. In this study, we examined the types of and reasons for unmet health care needs in 465 people with environmental sensitivities. A second area of inquiry involved negative reactions to general anesthesia. Results showed that the most common barriers to receiving care were the inability to find a provider who understands environmental sensitivities and a lack of accessibility due to chemical and electromagnetic exposures in health care environments. Lower income and poorer health (longer illness, a worsening or fluctuating course of illness, and a higher level of disability) were significantly correlated with the total number of reported unmet health care needs. Some people with environmental sensitivities reported having negative reactions to anesthesia of long duration; most common were nausea and vomiting, fatigue, and reduced cognitive ability.
Asperaculanes A and B, Two Sesquiterpenoids from the Fungus Aspergillus aculeatus

Six sesquiterpenoids 1–6, including two new ones, an ent-daucane-type sesquiterpenoid, asperaculane A (1), and a nordaucane one, asperaculane B (2), and four known nordaucane derivatives, aculenes A–D 3–6, together with the known secalonic acid D (7), were isolated from a fermentation culture of the fungus Aspergillus aculeatus. Their structures and absolute configurations were established by analyses of their spectroscopic data, including 1D and 2D-NMR spectra, HR-ESIMS, electronic circular dichroism (ECD) data, and quantum chemical calculations. These metabolites were evaluated for in vitro cytotoxic activity against two cell lines, human cancer cell lines (HeLa) and one normal hamster cell line (CHO).
Using Usage Control to Access XML Databases

XML documents usually contain private information that cannot be shared by every user communities. It is widely used in web environment. XML database is becoming increasingly important since it consists of XML documents. Several applications for supporting selective access to data are available over the web. Usage control has been considered as the next generation access control model with distinguishing properties of decision continuity. It has been proven efficient to improve security administration with flexible authorization management. Object-oriented database systems represent complex data structure and XML databases may be stored in the objects-oriented database system. Therefore authorization models for XML databases could be used the same the models as object-oriented databases. In this paper, we propose usage control models to access XML databases and compare with an authorization model designed for object-oriented databases. We have analyzed the characteristics of various access authorizations and presented detailed models for different kinds of authorizations. Finally, comparisons with related works are analyzed.
Effects of ischemic preconditioning in a pig model of large-for-size liver transplantation

OBJECTIVE: In most cases of pediatric liver transplantation, the clinical scenario of large-for-size transplants can lead to hepatic dysfunction and a decreased blood supply to the liver graft. The objective of the present experimental investigation was to evaluate the effects of ischemic preconditioning on this clinical entity. METHODS: Eighteen pigs were divided into three groups and underwent liver transplantation: a control group, in which the weights of the donors were similar to those of the recipients, a large-for-size group, and a large-for-size + ischemic preconditioning group. Blood samples were collected from the recipients to evaluate the pH and the sodium, potassium, aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase levels. In addition, hepatic tissue was sampled from the recipients for histological evaluation, immunohistochemical analyses to detect hepatocyte apoptosis and proliferation and molecular analyses to evaluate the gene expression of Bax (pro-apoptotic), Bcl-XL (anti-apoptotic), c-Fos and c-Jun (immediate-early genes), ischemia-reperfusion-related inflammatory cytokines (IL-1, TNF-alpha and IL-6, which is also a stimulator of hepatocyte regeneration), intracellular adhesion molecule, endothelial nitric oxide synthase (a mediator of the protective effect of ischemic preconditioning) and TGF-beta (a pro-fibrogenic cytokine). RESULTS: All animals developed acidosis. At 1 hour and 3 hours after reperfusion, the animals in the large-for-size and large-for-size + ischemic preconditioning groups had decreased serum levels of Na and increased serum levels of K and aspartate aminotransferase compared with the control group. The molecular analysis revealed higher expression of the Bax, TNF-alpha, I-CAM and TGF-beta genes in the large-for-size group compared with the control and large-for-size + ischemic preconditioning groups. Ischemic preconditioning was responsible for an increase in c-Fos, IL-1, IL-6 and e-NOS gene expression. CONCLUSION: Ischemia-reperfusion injury in this model of large-for-size liver transplantation could be partially attenuated by ischemic preconditioning.
Exploring lexical patterns in text : lexical cohesion analysis with WordNet.

We present a system for the linguistic exploration and analysis of lexical cohesion in English texts. Using an electronic thesaurus-like resource, Princeton WordNet, and the Brown Corpus of English, we have implemented a process of annotating text with lexical chains and a graphical user interface for inspection of the annotated text. We describe the system and report on some sample linguistic analyses carried out using the combined thesaurus-corpus resource.
Profile of Patients with Special Needs Assisted at a Brazilian University

Objective: To characterize the profile of patients with special needs assisted at a Dentistry School of a Brazilian University. Material and Methods: A retrospective and descriptive study was carried out through the analysis of 329 dental records from individuals with special needs assisted at the Dentistry for Special Needs Patients discipline between 2012 and 2017. Data on gender, age, race, monthly family income, schooling, medical diagnosis of the disabling condition, drug used and type of dental procedures performed were reviewed. Data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics (Shapiro-Wilk and t-student tests) with 5% significance level. Results: There was higher prevalence of females (50.5%) aged 45-54 years (18.7%), low schooling (36.2%) and monthly income of 1 minimum wage (61.9%). Most special needs were chronic systemic diseases (67.2%) and endocrine-metabolic diseases (16.7%). Among patients investigated, 66.3% used anti-hypertensive (38.3%) and anti-inflammatory (20.6%) drugs. Of dental procedures performed, curative procedures were the most prevalent in the majority of patients (90.6%). Conclusion: The profile of most patients with special needs was characterized by females with chronic systemic diseases and mean age of 39.6 years, low schooling and monthly family income of up to 1 minimum wage, whose main reason for the visit was the search for curative dental treatment.
Analysis and simulation of conducted interference in three-phase-in-one-tank GIS

The Modeling methods for elements (equipments) in the primary circuits of Gas Insulated Substation (GIS) are discussed and summarized. The EMTP is used to set up the simulation model of the primary and secondary circuits of an 110kV GIS and the Very Fast Transient Overvoltage (VFTO) and conducted interference caused by swiching operations traveling to the secondary circuits are calculated. The so-formed model has been experimentally verified, indicating the model's acceptable accuracy and feasibility of the simulation.
Looking Beyond Text: Extracting Figures, Tables and Captions from Computer Science Papers

Identifying and extracting figures and tables along with their captions from scholarly articles is important both as a way of providing tools for article summarization, and as part of larger systems that seek to gain deeper, semantic understanding of these articles. While many "off-the-shelf" tools exist that can extract embedded images from these documents, e.g. PDFBox, Poppler, etc., these tools are unable to extract tables, captions, and figures composed of vector graphics. Our proposed approach analyzes the structure of individual pages of a document by detecting chunks of body text, and locates the areas wherein figures or tables could reside by reasoning about the empty regions within that text. This method can extract a wide variety of figures because it does not make strong assumptions about the format of the figures embedded in the document, as long as they can be differentiated from the main article's text. Our algorithm also demonstrates a caption-to-figure matching component that is effective even in cases where individual captions are adjacent to multiple figures. Our contribution also includes methods for leveraging particular consistency and formatting assumptions to identify titles, body text and captions within each article. We introduce a new dataset of 150 computer science papers along with ground truth labels for the locations of the figures, tables and captions within them. Our algorithm achieves 96% precision at 92% recall when tested against this dataset, surpassing previous state of the art. We release our dataset, code, and evaluation scripts on our project website for enabling future research.
Overconfidence, Compensation Contracts, and Capital Budgeting

A risk-averse manager's overconfidence makes him less conservative. As a result, it is cheaper for firms to motivate him to pursue valuable risky projects. When compensation endogenously adjusts to reflect outside opportunities, moderate levels of overconfidence lead firms to offer the manager flatter compensation contracts that make him better off. Overconfident managers are also more attractive to firms than their rational counterparts because overconfidence commits them to exert effort to learn about projects. Still, too much overconfidence is detrimental to the manager since it leads him to accept highly convex compensation contracts that expose him to excessive risk.
Inclusion of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Mainstream Primary School Classrooms: Zimbabwean Teachers' Experiences.

The shift in paradigm from exclusion to inclusion in education in Zimbabwe, in alignment with the global world, has resulted in a significant number of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) being educated in mainstream primary school classrooms. Consequently, new demands are being made on teachers who are not necessarily adequately prepared for these children. The current study, embedded within the phenomenological approach, interpreted 24 Zimbabwean primary school teachers’ responses to individual semi-structured, in-depth interviews on their experiences in the inclusion of children with ASD in mainstream classrooms. Despite participants’ apprehension and uncertainty about inclusion, they held positive attitudes and commitment to its practice based on its entrenchment in human rights and social justice. Participants confronted and strategized on curriculum and instruction, communication, social and behaviour issues that interfered with the inclusion of children with ASD in mainstream
Nutrient Intakes of Pregnant Women and their Associated Factors in Eight Cities of China: A Cross-sectional Study

Background: During the last 3 decades, China has dramatic changes of the dietary pattern among its citizens, particularly in urban cities. This study aimed to determine the nutrient intake status and factors associated with nutrient intakes of urban Chinese pregnant women now-a-day. Methods: The multistage stratified random sampling method was applied in the cross-sectional study. 479 women in three trimesters of pregnancy from eight cities of China were recruited. Nutrient intakes were evaluated with one 24 h dietary recall, and compared with the Chinese Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) 2013 for available nutrients. Results: Most pregnant women had imbalanced macronutrient distribution with excessive energy derived from fat. Intakes of Vitamin A, B6, calcium, magnesium, and selenium were below Chinese Recommended Nutrient Intake (RNI) and Estimated Average Requirements (EARs) in all trimesters. Most pregnant women took more folic acid in the first trimester with a significant decrease in the second and third trimester (P < 0.05). Shortfall in iron intake was found in the third trimester whereas some women may be at the risk of excessive iron intake. Intakes of thiamin met RNI in the first trimester but were below EAR in all trimesters. Trimester phasing was positively associated with most nutrients (P < 0.05). Prepregnancy body mass index was inversely associated with energy, fat, Vitamin C, and calcium intake (P < 0.05). Educational level and household income were positively associated with folic acid intake (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Current prenatal dietary choices of urban pregnant women in China are imbalanced in the nutrient intake when compared with national DRIs 2013, particularly in intakes of energy derived from fat and micronutrients. Appropriate dietary advice to pregnant women should promote a balanced diet with emphasis on avoidance of foods of high fat content and incorporation of foods that are good sources of the key micronutrients that are usually lacking in a regular pregnancy diet. Further research is needed to understand the eating habits and food patterns that contribute to this imbalanced diet in order to be able to effectively improve prenatal women's nutrient intake status.
Progressive central and peripheral demyelinating disease of adult onset in a Norwegian family.

OBJECTIVE To describe the clinical features of a Norwegian family with a combined central and peripheral demyelinating disease. DESIGN Multiple case report. SUBJECTS AND MATERIALS Three generations of a Norwegian family. Medical records were available for all 9 members of the second generation and 5 affected members in the third generation. RESULTS At least 5 members had clinical features, neuroimaging findings, and electrophysiologic signs indicating a chronic progressive disorder affecting both the central and peripheral nervous systems. The clinical symptoms developed between the ages of 30 and 70 years in affected family members, who gradually developed sensory loss, muscle deterioration, and distal weakness in all extremities, unsteady gait, and dysarthria. Five of 9 persons in the second generation had strokes and experienced mental deterioration. The initial stroke episodes were recognized between the ages of 54 and 68 years, and death occurred between the ages of 62 and 75 years. In 7 subjects, cerebrospinal fluid protein levels were increased, and in 5 agar gel electrophoresis indicated blood-brain barrier dysfunction. Seven family members had neuroimaging signs of a widespread white matter disorder. In 4 subjects, neurophysiological investigations indicated a polyneuropathy, and in 3 subjects, results from a sural nerve biopsy showed a demyelinating neuropathy. There was no evidence of co-inheritance with genetic markers of cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (19p), PMP22 (17q), APP (21q), CMTX1 (Xq), or PLP (Xq). CONCLUSIONS Progressive central and peripheral demyelinating disease seems to be a distinct type of hereditary adult-onset demyelinating disorder affecting both the peripheral and central nervous systems. Its exact nature remains unknown.
Retention of new words learned incidentally from reading: Word exposure frequency, L1 marginal glosses, and their combination

This article examines the influence of different reading conditions (i.e. reading only and reading with first language marginal glosses), number of word encounters (one, three, and seven) while reading, and combinations of these two variables on new word retention. This study considered a total of six possible combinations. Six groups of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) (n = 240) were randomly selected and each assigned to a condition including 15 target lexical items. Each treatment session lasted for 5 weeks. One delayed test, containing four dimensions of vocabulary knowledge, was intended to measure learners’ retention of unknown words. The delayed test was administered 2 weeks after the experiment and was not disclosed to the learners in advance. The groups whose reading was accompanied by first-language (L1) marginal glosses scored significantly higher than the reading-only groups. The increased effectiveness of repeatedly encountering target lexical items was more pronounced in the reading experiment including L1 marginal glosses. The combination of L1 marginal glosses and seven encounters was found to be the most effective combination for lexical item retention. This study highlighted the effectiveness of repeatedly encountering target words and being provided with L1 marginal glosses to retain new words incidentally learned from reading. The conditions and relevant teaching implications are discussed in this study.