Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification of MicroRNAs Linked to Regulators of Muscle Protein Synthesis and Regeneration in Young and Old Skeletal Muscle

Background Over the course of ageing there is a natural and progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass. The onset and progression of age-related muscle wasting is associated with an attenuated activation of Akt-mTOR signalling and muscle protein synthesis in response to anabolic stimuli such as resistance exercise. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are novel and important post-transcriptional regulators of numerous cellular processes. The role of miRNAs in the regulation of muscle protein synthesis following resistance exercise is poorly understood. This study investigated the changes in skeletal muscle miRNA expression following an acute bout of resistance exercise in young and old subjects with a focus on the miRNA species predicted to target Akt-mTOR signalling. Results Ten young (24.2±0.9 years) and 10 old (66.6±1.1 years) males completed an acute resistance exercise bout known to maximise muscle protein synthesis, with muscle biopsies collected before and 2 hours after exercise. We screened the expression of 754 miRNAs in the muscle biopsies and found 26 miRNAs to be regulated with age, exercise or a combination of both factors. Nine of these miRNAs are highly predicted to regulate targets within the Akt-mTOR signalling pathway and 5 miRNAs have validated binding sites within the 3′ UTRs of several members of the Akt-mTOR signalling pathway. The miR-99/100 family of miRNAs notably emerged as potentially important regulators of skeletal muscle mass in young and old subjects. Conclusion This study has identified several miRNAs that were regulated with age or with a single bout of resistance exercise. Some of these miRNAs were predicted to influence Akt-mTOR signalling, and therefore potentially skeletal muscle mass. These miRNAs should be considered as candidate targets for in vivo modulation.
Europe and Iraq: From Stand-off to Engagement?. CEPS Working Documents No. 216, 1 December 2004

As of November 2004, persistent violence in Iraq and the legacy of opposition in some European countries to the US-led invasion continued to militate against more extensive EU engagement in the country. Europe’s absence has been felt most acutely in the security sphere, both in terms of troop deployments and the contribution to the training of Iraqi security forces. While European governments have valid criticisms over the coalition’s handling of Iraq’s post-conflict imperatives, and are right not to over-commit to Iraq under the present circumstances, there are nevertheless a number of areas where stronger European engagement might now be both possible and helpful. These include: · economic projects in the areas least affected by violence; · a discussion of Iraqi participation in some of the softer social and cultural aspects of EuroMed programmes; · development of sub-national institution-building programmes; · support for the development of a dense web of national institutions, such as syndicates, chambers of commerce and universities; · capacity-building for emerging political parties; · preparation of sub-national elections; · elaboration of a more carefully thought through regional plan; · training and capacity-building for border guards; · broadening the scope of security sector reform assistance; and · mediation with insurgents.
Approaches to the sense of humor: A historical review.

There seems to be general agreement, among humor researchers and laypersons alike, that there is considerable variability across individuals in the degree to which they possess a sense of humor. There is also general agreement that a sense of humor is a highly desirable trait to possess. As the American essayist Frank Moore Colby observed, "Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor? " (cited in Andrews 1993: 431). However, when we begin to ask what, exactly, researchers and laypeople mean by "sense of humor", and how they conceptualize individual differences in this trait, we encounter a great deal of disagreement. Although everyone seems to recognize a sense of humor when they see it, no one seems to agree on how to define or explain it. As Omwake (1939: 95) aptly put it nearly 60 years ago:
Output probability density functions of logic circuits: Modeling and fault-tolerance evaluation

The precise evaluation of the reliability of logic circuits has a significant importance in highly-defective and future nanotechnologies. It allows efficient comparison of fault-tolerance techniques, and enables designs improvement with respect to their reliability figure. This paper presents a novel, accurate and scalable method for modeling the output probability density functions (PDFs) of logic circuits. Our method combines probability theory with concepts from logic synthesis and testing. The PDFs are modeled using the acquired circuit output probability of failure and PDFs of gates in the last two layers of the output cone. Unlike the existing output PDF modeling techniques, the proposed method is directly applicable to standard CMOS design. Simulation results of benchmark circuits demonstrate the accuracy of the method. Several potential applications of the proposed technique include the analysis of averaging (analog) fault-tolerant techniques, fine-grained redundancy insertion, and reliability-driven design optimization.
Level Crossing Sampling in Feedback Stabilization under Data-Rate Constraints

This paper introduces a novel event-driven sampled-data feedback scheme where the plant output samples are triggered by the crossings - with hysteresis - of the signal through its quantization levels. The plant and controller communicate over binary channels that operate asynchronously and are assumed to be error and delay-free. The paper proposes two systematic output feedback control design strategies. The first strategy consists in the digital emulation of a previously designed analog controller. The second strategy is a simple direct design that drives the plant state to the origin in finite time after a total transmission of 2n + 2 bits, where n is the order of the plant
Permissive strategies: from parity games to safety games

It is proposed to compare strategies in a parity game by comparing the sets of behaviours they allow. For such a game, there may be no winning strategy that encompasses all the behaviours of all winning strategies. It is shown, however, that there always exists a permissive strategy that encompasses all the behaviours of all memoryless strategies. An algorithm for finding such a permissive strategy is presented. Its complexity matches currently known upper bounds for the simpler problem of finding the set of winning positions in a parity game. The algorithm can be seen as a reduction of a parity to a safety game and computation of the set of winning positions in the resulting game.
Optimal Commodity and Cross-Currency Heding: The Case of Asean-5-Based Grain and Soft Commodity Traders

The changes in commodity prices and exchange rates leave the representative ASEAN-5-based international commodity traders exposed with multiple risks. Foreign exchange hedging ratios are simultaneously estimated alongside commodity ratios in a time-varying portfolio framework. The comparisons of the minimum variance hedge ratios (MVHR) performance reveal that the model with the time-varying variance-covariance matrix provides greater risk reduction than the conventional model, illustrating importance of time-varying variance-covariance effect when modeling joint dynamic of spot and futures returns and hence estimating hedging strategies. When transaction costs are taken into account, incorporating Student’s t significantly enhances the performance of dynamic strategies in wheat and soybeans markets. However, the conventional OLS shows superior performance in the cotton market in terms of utility gain.
A state-space method for language modeling

A new state-space method for language modeling is presented. The complexity of the model is controlled by choosing the dimension of the state instead of the smoothing and back-off methods common in n-gram modeling. The model complexity also controls the generalization ability of the model, allowing the model to handle similar words in a similar manner. We compare the state-space model to a traditional n-gram model in a task of letter prediction. In this proof-of-concept experiment, the state-space model gives similar results as the n-gram model with sparse training data, but performs clearly worse with dense training data. While the initial results are encouraging, the training algorithm should be made more effective, so that it can fully exploit the model structure and scale up to larger token sets, such as words.
Direct Human Contact with Siloxanes (Silicones) – Safety or Risk Part 1. Characteristics of Siloxanes (Silicones)

Siloxanes are commonly known as silicones. They belong to the organosilicon compounds and are exclusively obtained by synthesis. Their chemical structure determines a range of physicochemical properties which were recognized as unique. Due to the susceptibility to chemical modifications, ability to create short, long or complex polymer particles, siloxanes found an application in many areas of human life. Siloxanes differ in particle size, molecular weight, shape and chemical groups. As a result, this determines the different physico-chemical properties, that directly affect the safety or the risk of their use. The areas that can be a source of danger to human health will be commented in this paper.
A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users

 8% of Americans are deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications  Another 23% are heavy, pragmatic tech adopters – they use gadgets to keep up with social networks or be productive at work  10% rely on mobile devices for voice, texting, or entertainment  10% use information gadgets, but find it a hassle  49% of Americans only occasionally use modern gadgetry and many others bristle at electronic connectivity This Pew Internet & American Life Project report is based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans' use of the Internet. All numerical data was gathered through telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates between February 15 and April 6, 2006, among a sample of 4,001 adults, aged 18 and older. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is +/-2%. For results based Internet users (n=2,822), the margin of sampling error is +/-2 The advent of Web 2.0 – the ability of people to use a range of information and communication technology as a platform to express themselves online and participate in the commons of cyberspace – is often heralded as the next phase of the information society. Yet little is known about which segments of the population are inclined to make robust use of information technology and which aren't. With that in mind, the Pew Internet & American Life Project conducted a survey designed to classify Americans into different groups of technology users. We developed our typology along three dimensions of people's relationship to information and communications technology (ICT):  Assets: We asked people about their use of the internet, cell phones and other devices that connect to the internet (e.g., video or digital cameras). We also asked about their use of services that facilitate digital consumption, participation, and electronic communication (e.g., broadband and non-voice applications on cell phones).  Actions: We asked about activities in which people engage, such as downloading audio and video, generating their own online content, and a variety of things they do with their cell phones and computers. We also asked about frequency of online use.  Attitudes: We asked how people see ICTs helping them to be more productive at work, to pursue hobbies, and to keep up with family and friends; we also solicited their views about information …
On Filtering of DDoS Attacks Based on Source Address Prefixes

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are a grave threat to Internet services and even to the network itself. Widely distributed "zombie" computers subverted by malicious hackers are used to orchestrate massive attacks. Any defense against such flooding attacks must solve the hard problem of distinguishing the packets that are part of the attack from legitimate traffic, so that the attack can be filtered out without much collateral damage. We explore one technique that can be used as part of DDoS defenses: using ACL rules that distinguish the attack packets from the legitimate traffic based on source addresses in packets. One advantage of this technique is that the ACL rules can be deployed in routers deep inside the network where the attack isn't large enough to cause loss of legitimate traffic due to congestion. The most important disadvantage is that the ACL rules can also cause collateral damage by discarding some legitimate traffic. We use simulations to study this damage how it is influenced by various factors. Our technique is much better than uninformed dropping due to congestion, but it produces larger collateral damage than more processing-intensive approaches. For example it can reduce the attack size by a factor of 3 while also dropping between 2% and 10% of the legitimate traffic. We recommend the use of source address prefix based filtering in combination with other techniques, for example as a coarse pre-filter that ensures that devices performing the processing-intensive filtering are not overwhelmed
Neuroadrenergic Dysfunction Along the Diabetes Continuum

Neuroadrenergic function in type 2 diabetic (T2D) patients without neuropathy is poorly characterized. We therefore compared sympathetic nervous system activity at rest and during an oral glucose tolerance test in obese metabolic syndrome (MetS) subjects classified as glucose intolerant (impaired glucose tolerance [IGT]; n = 17) or treatment-naive T2D (n = 17). Untreated subjects, matched for age (mean 59 ± 1 year), sex, BMI (32.4 ± 0.6 kg/m2), and family history of diabetes were studied. We measured resting muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) by microneurography, whole-body norepinephrine kinetics by isotope dilution, insulin sensitivity by euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp (steady-state glucose utilization adjusted for fat-free mass and steady-state insulin concentration [M/I]), and MetS components. T2D subjects had higher resting MSNA burst incidence (67 ± 4 versus 55 ± 3 bursts per 100 heartbeats; P = 0.05) and arterial norepinephrine levels (264 ± 33 versus 167 ± 16 pg/mL; P = 0.02), lower plasma norepinephrine clearance (by 17%; P = 0.03), and reduced neuronal reuptake compared with IGT subjects (by 46%; P = 0.04). Moreover, norepinephrine spillover responses to glucose ingestion were blunted in T2D subjects. The M/I value independently predicted whole-body norepinephrine spillover (r = −0.47; P = 0.008), whereas fasting insulin level related to neuronal norepinephrine reuptake (r = −0.35, P = 0.047). These findings demonstrate that progression to T2D is associated with increased central sympathetic drive, blunted sympathetic responsiveness, and altered norepinephrine disposition.
Workplace Stress and Coping Strategies of Security Guards Working in Universities

The present research explored factors causing work-place stress and coping strategies in security guards working in universities. This study used qualitative research design with a sample consisting of 11 guards working in a university. Their ages ranged between 23 and 50 years. A purposive sampling technique was used to select participants. A semi-structured interview schedule was developed and administered for the purpose of data collection. Analysis of data was done by using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The results showed that job stressors relating to job role like duty hours and low income were most prevalent among guards. Furthermore, the most prevalent coping mechanisms employed by guards were religious coping and acceptance. Owing to the increased incidents of terrorism in our country, the results of this research hold useful implications for any development needed in this profession and/or providing more benefits for security guards in future to improve their performance and hence, security of the institution.
A Call to Honesty: Extending Religious Priming of Moral Behavior to Middle Eastern Muslims

Two experiments with Middle Eastern participants explored the generalizability of prior research on religious priming and moral behavior to a novel cultural and religious context. Participants in Experiment 1 completed a sentence unscrambling task with religious or non-religious content (in Arabic) before taking an unsupervised math test on which cheating was possible and incentivized. No difference in honesty rates emerged between the two groups, failing to extend findings from previous research with similar stimuli. Experiment 2 tested the effects of the athan, the Islamic call to prayer, using the same design. This naturalistic religious prime produced higher rates of honesty (68%) compared to controls who did not hear the call to prayer (53%). These results raise the possibility that the psychological mechanisms used by religion to influence moral behavior might differ between religions and cultures, highlighting an avenue of exploration for future research. The experiments here also address two growing concerns in psychological science: that the absence of replications casts doubt on the reliability of original research findings, and that the Westernized state of psychological science casts doubt on the generalizability of such work.
Does the application of ground force set the energetic cost of cross-country skiing?

We tested whether the rate at which force is applied to the ground sets metabolic rates during classical-style roller skiing in four ways: 1) by increasing speed (from 2.5 to 4.5 m/s) during skiing with arms only, 2) by increasing speed (from 2.5 to 4.5 m/s) during skiing with legs only, 3) by changing stride rate (from 25 to 75 strides/min) at each of three speeds (3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 m/s) during skiing with legs only, and 4) by skiing with arms and legs together at three speeds (2.0-3.2 m/s, 1.5 degrees incline). We determined net metabolic rates from rates of O2 consumption (gross O2 consumption - standing O2 consumption) and rates of force application from the inverse period of pole-ground contact [1/tp(arms)] for the arms and the inverse period of propulsion [1/tp(legs)] for the legs. During arm-and-leg skiing at different speeds, metabolic rates changed in direct proportion to rates of force application, while the net ground force to counteract friction and gravity (F) was constant. Consequently, metabolic rates were described by a simple equation (metab = F . 1/tp . C, where metab is metabolic rates) with cost coefficients (C) of 8.2 and 0.16 J/N for arms and legs, respectively. Metabolic rates predicted from net ground forces and rates of force application during combined arm-and-leg skiing agreed with measured metabolic rates within +/-3. 5%. We conclude that rates of ground force application to support the weight of the body and overcome friction set the energetic cost of skiing and that the rate at which muscles expend metabolic energy during weight-bearing locomotion depends on the time course of their activation.
Contemporary Diagnostic Imaging of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma – A Review of Literature

Summary Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most common cancer of the oral cavity and constitutes 95% of all cancers of this area. Men are affected twice as commonly as women, primarily if they are over 50 years of age. Forty percent of the lesions are localized in the tongue and 30% in the floor of the oral cavity. OSCC often affects upper and lower gingiva, buccal mucous membrane, the retromolar triangle and the palate. The prognosis is poor and the five-year survival rate ranges from 20% (OSCC in the floor of the mouth) to 60% (OSCC in the alveolar part of the mandible). Treatment is difficult, because of the localization and the invasiveness of the available methods. The diagnosis is made based on a histopathological examination of a biopsy sample. The low detection rate of early oral SCC is a considerable clinical issue. Although the oral cavity can be easily examined, in the majority of cases oral SCC is diagnosed in its late stages. It is difficult to diagnose metastases in local lymph nodes and distant organs, which is important for planning the scope of resection and further treatment, graft implantation, and differentiation between reactive and metastatic lymph nodes as well as between disease recurrence and scars or adverse reactions after surgery or radiation therapy. Imaging studies are performed as part of the routine work-up in oral SCC. However, it is difficult to interpret the results at the early stages of the disease. The following imaging methods are used – dental radiographs, panoramic radiographs, magnetic resonance imaging with diffusion-weighted and dynamic sequences, perfusion computed tomography, cone beam computed tomography, single-photon emission computed tomography, hybrid methods (PET/CT, PET/MRI, SPECT/CT) and ultrasound. Some important clinical problems can be resolved with the use of novel modalities such as MRI with ADC sequences and PET. The aim of this article is to describe oral squamous cell carcinoma as it appears in different imaging methods considering both their advantages and limitations.
Market‐Triggered Changes in Capital Structure: Equilibrium Price Dynamics

We analyze the internal consistency of using the market price of a firm's equity to trigger a contractual change in the firm's capital structure, given that the value of the equity itself depends on the firm's capital structure. Of particular interest is the case of contingent capital for banks, in the form of debt that converts to equity, when conversion is triggered by a decline in the bank's stock price. We analyze the problem of existence and uniqueness of equilibrium values for a firm's liabilities in this context, meaning values consistent with a market‐price trigger. Discrete‐time dynamics allow multiple equilibria. In contrast, we show that the possibility of multiple equilibria can largely be ruled out in continuous time, where the price of the triggering security adjusts in anticipation of breaching the trigger. Our main condition for existence of an equilibrium requires that the consequences of triggering a conversion be consistent with the direction in which the trigger is crossed. For the design of contingent capital with a stock price trigger, this condition may be interpreted to mean that conversion should be disadvantageous to shareholders, and it is satisfied by setting the trigger sufficiently high. Uniqueness follows provided the trigger is sufficiently accessible by all candidate equilibria. We illustrate precise formulations of these conditions with a variety of applications.