Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in cancer diagnosis and treatment: 31P, 23Na, and 1H MRS studies of three models of pancreatic cancer.

The role of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in pancreatic cancer diagnosis and its treatment were assessed in three models of pancreatic neoplasms. Perfused MIA PaCa-2 human pancreatic cancer cells, s.c. implanted pancreatic tumors in hamsters, and pancreatic tumors induced in situ in rats by direct application of the carcinogen 7,12-dimethyl benzanthracene, were studied by phosphorous ((31)P), sodium ((23)Na), and proton ((1)H) MRS. (31)P spectra of pancreatic cancer were qualitatively similar to those of intact organs. There were, however, variations in peak intensities and ratios. Phosphomonoester signals were prominent in both normal pancreases and tumors, but their levels depended on the proliferation rate and on environmental conditions. Thus, the phosphomonoester:beta-nucleoside triphosphate ratio was 1.15 +/- 0.32 in 90% confluency and 1.31 +/- 0.43 in 70% confluency, and this ratio increased upon lowering the perfusion rate. Total (intra- and extracellular) sodium concentrations, measured in the solid tumors, were 39-40 micromol/g wet weight in normal pancreases. Contrary to a previous hypothesis that malignant transformation is associated with increased sodium content, our (23)Na MRS data showed that there were no significant differences between pancreatic tumors and intact organs. Proton spectra of perchloric acid extracts revealed several differences between tumors and control pancreases. The principal findings were elevated levels of the amino acid taurine, from 1.17 +/- 0.39 micromol/g wet weight in healthy pancreases, to 2.79 +/- 0.71 micromol/g wet weight in pancreatic carcinoma in rats, and lactate levels that increased from 0.92 +/- 0.2 to 6.19 +/- 1.93 micromol/g wet weight, respectively. On the other hand, creatine and glutamate were higher in the normal pancreases. Pancreatic cancer is usually resistant to chemotherapy, and we evaluated the effects of the metabolic inhibitors 2-deoxyglucose and lonidamine on the human pancreatic cancer cells by MRS and cytotoxicity studies. The IC50 of Adriamycin and 2-deoxyglucose were 1.49 +/- 0.18 x 10(6) and 136 +/- 17 microg/ml, respectively. These results were similar to data obtained previously in multidrug-resistant human breast cancer cells, which were highly resistant (33-fold) to Adriamycin but were more susceptible (9-fold) to 2-deoxyglucose than their parental cells.
The thiamine pyrophosphatase technique as an indicator of the morphology of the Golgi apparatus in the neurons. V. Studies on sympathetic ganglion cells.

Received May 8, 1965 Introduction The Golgi apparatus in the sympathetic ganglion cells has been studied in detail by Thomas (1948). He pointed out that the Golgi apparatus in the sympathetic ganglion cells was made up of a number of discrete bodies of variable sizes, from small grains to simple spheroids. He suggested that the classical Golgi network of sympathetic neurons was due to metallic impregnation of the spheroidal system (Golgi complex) and mitochondria. How ever, our studies on the Golgi apparatus of the spinal and vagus ganglion (Tugular and nodosal) cells using the thiamine pyrophosphatase (TPPase) technique as described by Novikoff and Goldfischer (1961), showed that the Golgi apparatus takes the form of a network in some cells and a separate spheroidal system of various sizes and shapes in others (Shanthaveerappa and Bourne, 1965i). This suggests that the Golgi complex exists in both forms. The TPPase technique is not destructive to the cells and electron histo chemistry has shown that the morphology of the cell is well preserved and the Golgi complex is easily identifiable after the application of this technique. Since all the present evidence indicates that the TPPase technique is specific for the Golgi apparatus in ver tebrate cells (Baker 1963) it seems that the application of this technique to the sympathetic ganglia might help to resolve the controversy regarding the nature of the Golgi apparatus in the cells of these ganglia.
Managing change in the culture of general practice: qualitative case studies in primary care trusts

Abstract Objectives To explore the potential tension between the need for managers to produce measurable change and the skills required to produce cultural change, and to investigate how managers of primary care trusts are attempting to deal with this tension. Design Qualitative case studies using data derived from semistructured interviews and a review of published documents. An established cultural framework was to used to help interpret the findings. Setting Six primary care trusts in England purposefully sampled to represent a range of cultural, structural, geographical, and demographic characteristics. Participants 42 interviews with 39 different senior and middle primary care trust managers conducted over an 18 month period. Results We found two distinct and polarised styles of management. One group of managers adopts a directive style and challenges the prevailing norms and values of clinicians, an approach characteristically seen in organisations with hierarchical cultures. This group is made up mostly of senior managers who are driven principally by the imperative to deliver a political agenda. Managers in the second group are more inclined to work with the prevailing cultures found in general practice, attempting to facilitate change from within rather than forcing change from outside. This management style is characteristically seen in organisations with a clan-type culture. The approach was manifest mostly by middle managers, who seem to act as buffers between the demands of senior managers and their own perception of the ability and willingness of health professionals to cope with change. The different management approaches can lead to tension and dysfunction between tiers of management. Conclusions The development of primary care depends on high quality managers who are able to draw on a range of different management skills and styles. Managers are most likely to be effective if they appreciate the merits and drawbacks of their different styles and are willing to work in partnership.
Growth Kinetics Study of a Bacterial Consortium Producing Biosurfactants, Constructed with Six Strains Isolated from an Oily Sludge

We investigated the ability of a bacterial community constructed with six strains isolated from an oily sludge, to utilize diesel oil at high concentrations. The consortium was able to grow at concentrations up to 84 g diesel oil/L and had produced biosurfactants during its active growth phase; these compounds, in their crude form, reduced the surface tension of distilled water from 72 mN/m to 31 mN/m, with a corresponding Critical Micelle Concentration value γCMC = 81 mg/L. The plot of specific growth rates obtained from the growth curves versus initial concentrations was found to fit adequately the experimental data by the Andrews inhibitory model, which resulted in the following kinetic constants: μmax = 0.535d-1 ± 0.063, KS = 18.68 g/L ± 3.59 and KI = 29.02 g/L ± 4.96, reflecting the slow biodegradation rate. At 25.2 g diesel oil/L, close to the optimal concentration S* = 23.28 g/L ± 4.23, the consortium metabolized diesel oil faster than each strain did individually, suggesting that the process was stimulated by a synergistic interaction between the members of the consortium.
Exclamatives and heightened emotion : Extracting pragmatic generalizations from large corpora

Exclamatives like What a dump! , Wow! , and Boy, you’ve grown! are, when uttered in context, rich in information about the speaker’s attitudes. Drawing on evidence from about 100, 000 online product reviews with associated meta-data, we develop a frequency-based characterization of this pragmatic contribution. This allows us to make precise predictions about the exclamativity that inheres in these constructions. In addition, we build logistic regression models and use the resulting statistics to state general, corpusand language-independent hypotheses about what it means to be an exclamative pragmatically. These hypotheses allow us to identify previously unnoticed exclamatives, and they highlight the importance of purely expressive meanings.
Domains of Clarity: Clarity of Competence and Clarity of Liking

ii Acknowledgments. iv Vita . v List of Tables . viii List of Figures . ix Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 Chapter 2: Study 1 . 11 Method . 13 Results . 17 Discussion . 22 Chapter 3: Study 2 . 25 Method . 27 Results . 32 Discussion . 35 Method . 42 Results . 46
Radius Constants for Analytic Functions with Fixed Second Coefficient

Let f(z) = z + ∑n=2 ∞ a n z n be analytic in the unit disk with the second coefficient a 2 satisfying |a 2 | = 2b, 0 ≤ b ≤ 1. Sharp radius of Janowski starlikeness is obtained for functions f whose nth coefficient satisfies |a n | ≤ cn + d (c, d ≥ 0) or |a n | ≤ c/n (c > 0 and n ≥ 3). Other radius constants are also obtained for these functions, and connections with earlier results are made.
The experiences of Canadian children of prisoners

Long hidden from academic scrutiny, children of prisoners have recently become the subjects of much academic study, through a variety of disciplines and methods. However many issues within this topic remain under-examined. This study aimed to explore two such issues: the self-reported experiences of children of prisoners, and children in the Canadian context. This thesis analyses the results of qualitative interviews with children aged 6-17 who currently have a parent in prison (N=22). Employing a ‘sociology of childhood’ framework, this project seeks to centre the voice of children themselves, privileging their own views and meaning-making. These data are supplemented with other findings to provide context to children’s narratives, including: interviews with these children’s caregivers in the community (N=12); interviews with a variety of key informants; observations gathered during extensive recruitment efforts with families of prisoners; and reviews of existing policy documents and service provision specific to parental incarceration. The thesis begins with a review of the existing literature, followed by a description of the methods used in the present study. The analysis then begins in Chapter 4 with a discussion of the context of these children’s lives, with a particular focus on poverty. Moving to the data from children themselves, Chapters 5 and 6 explore children’s inner lives and immediate relationships, specifically their emotions about parental incarceration and relationships with their parents. Chapters 7 and 8 pull back to reveal children’s interactions with their communities, and Chapter 9 widens the lens further to explore their experiences within the social policy context. Through a variety of empirical findings and by telling the story of parental incarceration in Canada from a critical and child-centred perspective, this thesis contributes to the scholarly understanding of parental incarceration.
Network-Based Relating Pharmacological and Genomic Spaces for Drug Target Identification

Background Identifying drug targets is a critical step in pharmacology. Drug phenotypic and chemical indexes are two important indicators in this field. However, in previous studies, the indexes were always isolated and the candidate proteins were often limited to a small subset of the human genome. Methodology/Principal Findings Based on the correlations observed in pharmacological and genomic spaces, we develop a computational framework, drugCIPHER, to infer drug-target interactions in a genome-wide scale. Three linear regression models are proposed, which respectively relate drug therapeutic similarity, chemical similarity and their combination to the relevance of the targets on the basis of a protein-protein interaction network. Typically, the model integrating both drug therapeutic similarity and chemical similarity, drugCIPHER-MS, achieved an area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.988 in the training set and 0.935 in the test set. Based on drugCIPHER-MS, a genome-wide map of drug biological fingerprints for 726 drugs is constructed, within which unexpected drug-drug relations emerged in 501 cases, implying possible novel applications or side effects. Conclusions/Significance Our findings demonstrate that the integration of phenotypic and chemical indexes in pharmacological space and protein-protein interactions in genomic space can not only speed the genome-wide identification of drug targets but also find new applications for the existing drugs.
Climate warming affects biological invasions by shifting interactions of plants and herbivores

Plants and herbivorous insects can each be dramatically affected by temperature. Climate warming may impact plant invasion success directly but also indirectly through changes in their natural enemies. To date, however, there are no tests of how climate warming shifts the interactions among invasive plants and their natural enemies to affect invasion success. Field surveys covering the full latitudinal range of invasive Alternanthera philoxeroides in China showed that a beetle introduced for biocontrol was rare or absent at higher latitudes. In contrast, plant cover and mass increased with latitude. In a 2‐year field experiment near the northern limit of beetle distribution, we found the beetle sustained populations across years under elevated temperature, dramatically decreasing A. philoxeroides growth, but it failed to overwinter in ambient temperature. Together, these results suggest that warming will allow the natural enemy to expand its range, potentially benefiting biocontrol in regions that are currently too cold for the natural enemy. However, the invader may also expand its range further north in response to warming. In such cases where plants tolerate cold better than their natural enemies, the geographical gap between plant and herbivorous insect ranges may not disappear but will shift to higher latitudes, leading to a new zone of enemy release. Therefore, warming will not only affect plant invasions directly but also drive either enemy release or increase that will result in contrasting effects on invasive plants. The findings are also critical for future management of invasive species under climate change.
Comparing physical, automatic and manual map rotation for pedestrian navigation

It is well-established finding that people find maps easier to use when they are aligned so that "up" on the map corresponds to the user's forward direction. With map-based applications on handheld mobile devices, this forward/up correspondence can be maintained in several ways: the device can be physically rotated within the user's hands or the user can manually operate buttons to digitally rotate the map; alternatively, the map can be rotated automatically using data from an electronic compass. This paper examines all three options. In a field experiment, each method is compared against a baseline north-up condition. The study provides strong evidence that physical rotation is the most effective with applications that present the user with a wider map. The paper concludes with some suggestions for design improvements.
United States Elite Youth Tennis Athletes’ Use of Psychological Strategies in Competition

Young athletes are routinely faced with stressors and competitive structures that collegiate and adult athletes face. Psychological skills training (PST) can provide young athletes with strategies and skills to cope with these stressors and ultimately influence sport performance (Vealey, 2007). To date, the only study exploring in-competition experiences of young athletes was with participants between 16 and 18 years of age (Van Raalte, Brewer, Rivera, & Petitpas, 1994). The current study is the first investigation on the in-competition experiences of children and adolescents in sport. Twelve elite young tennis athletes (M[subscript]age = 11.83) who trained within a Player Development program in the Northeastern United States and had been exposed to a PST program participated in this study. Match observations and post-match interviews were used to capture athletes’ match experience and in-competition psychological strategy use. As a result of thematic content analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006), eight themes and 19 subthemes emerged. These eight themes included (a) pre-match feelings, (b) pre-match preparation, (c) competition was used to practice skills and strategies, (d) in-match feelings, (e), in-match use of and rationale for psychological strategies, (f) athletes’ thoughts and behaviors during changeovers, (g) frequency of psychological strategy use, and (h) psychological strategy learning process. Findings support for the notion that early adolescent athletes are capable of understanding their thoughts, focus, and feelings during competitions and are able to use psychological strategies to regulate their emotions and positively influence psychological and physical performance outcomes. In addition, the results of this study provide compelling evidence for the effectiveness of the PST program.
User Acceptance Study of a Mobile System for Assistance during Emergency Situations at Large-Scale Events

We envision a sensor-enabled mobile system to assist organizers and participants of public events in emergencies and evacuation situations using human computing principles. By autonomously detecting elements of emergent collective behavior (e.g. clogging, queuing, herding), efficient interaction and information sharing with specific groups in the crowd is enabled. We have previously shown the technological feasibility to infer collective behavior patterns from mobile sensor data. In this paper we report on key user aspects influencing further investigations: the perceived usefulness of this technology; the desired system deployment vector; and privacy considerations. Based on answers of 92 attendees at a city-wide public event we found that mobile phones were the preferred vector for mobile emergency assistants. We confirmed the acceptance of sharing privacy sensitive context information in this limited application purpose. Additionally, we report statistics on the desired feature sets of a mobile service to augment penetration of such emergency technology by adding value for non-emergency use.
Activation of endothelial cells to pathological status by down-regulation of connexin43.

AIMS We investigated the effects of connexin43 (Cx43) down-regulation on endothelial function. METHODS AND RESULTS We used two different sequences of Cx43-specific small interference RNA (siRNA) to reduce de novo synthesis of Cx43 in human aortic endothelial cells and then examined the expression profiles, proliferation activity and viability, and angiogenic potential. The involvement of mitogen-activated protein kinase signalling pathways was analysed. In parallel, the effect of inhibition of gap-junctional communication by connexin-mimetic peptides was evaluated. During the down-regulation of Cx43 by the siRNA, the cells exhibited impaired gap-junctional communication, proliferation, viability, and angiogenic potential. In addition, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and von Willebrand factor were up-regulated. Furthermore, c-jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and its downstream target c-jun were activated, while caspase-3, p38, and extracellular signal-regulated kinase remained unchanged. Inhibition of JNK by SP600125 blocked the siRNA-induced increased expression of PAI-1 and partially recovered the impaired angiogenic potential. Short-term inhibition of Cx43 channels by connexin-mimetic peptides did not activate JNK. CONCLUSION Down-regulation of Cx43 inhibits gap-junctional communication and activates endothelial cells to pathological status, as characterized by up-regulation of coagulatory molecules and impairment of proliferation, viability, and angiogenesis. The processes are associated with activation of JNK signalling pathways and rectified by inhibition of the activation. These results suggest that inadequate expression of Cx43 per se impairs endothelial function by the activation of stress-activated protein kinase.
Throughput and QoS optimization in nonuniform multichannel wireless mesh networks

A technology to increase throughput and QoS in infrastructure-based Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) is proposed. In a uniform WMN, let each Base Station (BS) have R1 transceivers for communications with neighboring BSs, and R2 transceivers for communications with the Stationary and Mobile Subscribers within the wireless cell. One Gateway BS provides access to the global Internet, and the throughput capacity of the entire WMN is constrained by the IO bandwidth of the Gateway. A small number of extra wireless links can be added to the Gateway BS and selected other BSs, resulting in a nonuniform system. The addition of an asymptotically small number of transceivers can increase WMN capacity several fold. Efficient scheduling requires the partitioning of an asymmetric bipartite graph representing a general traffic rate matrix, into multiple graphs representing doubly-stochastic matrices. Routing and scheduling algorithms presented. The algorithms can provision long-term multimedia flows including VOIP or IPTV with guaranteed service. For multichannel WMNs where the traffic is routed and partitioned, the number of queued cells per BS is near-minimal and bounded, the end-to-end delay and jitter are near-minimal and bounded, and cell loss rates due to scheduling conflicts are zero. The algorithm also achieves 100% of capacity.
Social psychological predictors of satisfaction with intrapartum and postpartum care – what matters to women in Czech maternity hospitals?

Abstract Objective: To identify the social psychological factors affecting women’s evaluation of care provided in Czech maternity hospitals using following criteria: satisfaction with intrapartum and postpartum care, willingness to return to a given hospital and to recommend the hospital to others. Methods: 762 women completed a 71-item original Czech questionnaire KLI-P designed to measure the psychosocial climate in both delivery and after-birth unit on six scales. The sample was representative of the Czech parturients population. Multivariate logistic regression was used to investigate the predictive value of the questionnaire scales for maternal satisfaction, willingness to return to and to recommend a given hospital. Results: For delivery unit, the satisfaction predictors were: helpfulness and empathy of midwives (Χ2=48.9), communication of information and availability of caregivers (Χ2=16.6), helpfulness and empathy of physicians (Χ2=10.9), symmetrical and respectful attitude of staff members (Χ2=9.7) and physical comfort and services (Χ2=7.6). The predictors of satisfaction with after-birth unit included helpfulness and empathy of the staff (Χ2≥42.1), communication of information and availability of caregivers (Χ2=52.5), physical comfort and services (Χ2=30.6), control and involvement in decision-making (Χ2=6.6) and parity (Χ2=8.6). The factors influencing women’s willingness to return to and to recommend a hospital differed from the predictors of general satisfaction. Conclusions: The satisfaction factors revealed in this research correspond predominantly to the results of studies conducted in other countries (warm, non-formal and supportive approach, sufficient and well-timed provision of information and explanation, availability of caregivers, physical environment). However, participation in decision making, which has been repeatedly shown to be among the strongest predictors of childbirth satisfaction, was not important for the Czech parturients’ satisfaction with intrapartal care. This finding can be explained by different attitudes and expectations of both parturients and caregivers in a post-totalitarian country.