Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Induction of intracellular heat-shock protein 72 prevents the development of vascular smooth muscle cell calcification.

AIMS Vascular calcification (VC) is a significant contributor to cardiovascular mortality in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and coronary artery disease (CAD). Osteo/chondrocytic transformation and simultaneous dedifferentiation of smooth muscle cells (SMCs) are important in the pathogenesis of VC. Heat-shock protein 72 (HSP72) is a cardioprotective inducible heat-shock protein that functions as a molecular chaperone. However, its role in the development of accelerated vascular dysfunction and calcification is largely unexplored. METHODS AND RESULTS We describe for the first time marked reduction in HSP72 expression in arteries from patients with CKD and CAD, compared with healthy controls, in vivo. Induction of HSP72 by heat-shock treatment (HST) significantly prevented the development of calcification of human aortic smooth muscle cells (HA-SMCs), in vitro. These anti-calcific effects were abolished following treatment with both quercetin, an HST inhibitor, and HSP72 siRNA knockdown. Induction of HSP72 suppressed Cbfa-1-dependent osteo/chondrocytic transformation and stabilized SMC contractile phenotype through the myocardin-serum response factor (SRF) pathway. Co-immunoprecipitation studies demonstrated physical association between SRF and HSP72. Furthermore, organ culture of arteries from CKD and CAD patients showed that these arteries retained their ability to induce HSP72 following HST, despite initially reduced expression. CONCLUSION Our study shows for the first time that intracellular HSP72 may function as a central regulator of molecular pathways involved in the development of VC. We suggest treatment strategies that up-regulate HSP72 as a new approach to inhibit VC.
TRANSITION FROM SCHOOL TO WORK IN TRANSITION ECONOMIES

This paper explores school-to-work transitions in three new EU Member states, Hungary, Slovenia and Estonia, focusing on the effect of the level of education and social background on the timing of the first significant employment and the match between educational qualifications and occupation among school leavers. So-called cohort effects are a focal point as well, since transition process and outcomes seem to be largely influenced by the dynamics of economic and social changes in the transition economies. To explore the early career developments of job entrants in the three transition countries during the 1990s, the study utilizes the European Union Labour Force Survey ad hoc module on school-to-work transitions, which has been launched in Hungary, Slovenia in 2000 and in Estonia in 2002. Event history methods are applied to explore transition to first significant employment, while the match of educational qualification and occupational attainment is modelled using multinomial logistic regression techniques.
Altered Statistical Learning and Decision-Making in Methamphetamine Dependence: Evidence from a Two-Armed Bandit Task

Understanding how humans weigh long-term and short-term goals is important for both basic cognitive science and clinical neuroscience, as substance users need to balance the appeal of an immediate high vs. the long-term goal of sobriety. We use a computational model to identify learning and decision-making abnormalities in methamphetamine-dependent individuals (MDI, n = 16) vs. healthy control subjects (HCS, n = 16), in a two-armed bandit task. In this task, subjects repeatedly choose between two arms with fixed but unknown reward rates. Each choice not only yields potential immediate reward but also information useful for long-term reward accumulation, thus pitting exploration against exploitation. We formalize the task as comprising a learning component, the updating of estimated reward rates based on ongoing observations, and a decision-making component, the choice among options based on current beliefs and uncertainties about reward rates. We model the learning component as iterative Bayesian inference (the Dynamic Belief Model), and the decision component using five competing decision policies: Win-stay/Lose-shift (WSLS), ε-Greedy, τ-Switch, Softmax, Knowledge Gradient. HCS and MDI significantly differ in how they learn about reward rates and use them to make decisions. HCS learn from past observations but weigh recent data more, and their decision policy is best fit as Softmax. MDI are more likely to follow the simple learning-independent policy of WSLS, and among MDI best fit by Softmax, they have more pessimistic prior beliefs about reward rates and are less likely to choose the option estimated to be most rewarding. Neurally, MDI's tendency to avoid the most rewarding option is associated with a lower gray matter volume of the thalamic dorsal lateral nucleus. More broadly, our work illustrates the ability of our computational framework to help reveal subtle learning and decision-making abnormalities in substance use.
Motion likelihood and proposal modeling in Model-Based Stochastic Tracking

Particle filtering is now established as one of the most popular methods for visual tracking. Within this framework, there are two important considerations. The first one refers to the generic assumption that the observations are temporally independent given the sequence of object states. The second consideration, often made in the literature, uses the transition prior as proposal distribution. Thus, the current observations are not taken into account, requesting the noise process of this prior to be large enough to handle abrupt trajectory changes. As a result, many particles are either wasted in low likelihood regions of the state space, resulting in low sampling efficiency, or more importantly, propagated to distractor regions of the image, resulting in tracking failures. In this paper, we propose to handle both considerations using motion. We first argue that in general observations are conditionally correlated, and propose a new model to account for this correlation allowing for the natural introduction of implicit and/or explicit motion measurements in the likelihood term. Secondly, explicit motion measurements are used to drive the sampling process towards the most likely regions of the state space. Overall, the proposed model allows to handle abrupt motion changes and to filter out visual distractors when tracking objects with generic models based on shape or color distribution. Experimental results obtained on head tracking, using several sequences with moving camera involving large dynamics, and compared against the CONDENSATION algorithm, have demonstrated superior tracking performance of our approach.
Capacity of grid-oriented wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networking technology has gained prominence in recent years with a diverse range of applications from small community-based networks to metropolitan area networks. Such mesh networks typically comprise a wireless backbone connected to the wired infrastructure with wireless client residing at the edge. The wireless routers and access points of a wireless mesh network (WMN) are connected by shared links that often use the same channel. The capacity of a WMN depends on several factors such as network size and topology, traffic profile, number of radio interfaces per node, number of radio channels, channel assignment scheme, routing algorithm etc. In this paper, we describe an analytical framework for capacity estimation using the notion of collision domains. Furthermore, we analyse the capacity of WMNs under various scenarios to study the impact of different network parameters.
Interventions to Modify Health Care Provider Adherence to Asthma Guidelines: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Health care provider adherence to asthma guidelines is poor. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of interventions to improve health care providers’ adherence to asthma guidelines on health care process and clinical outcomes. METHODS: Data sources included Medline, Embase, Cochrane CENTRAL Register of Controlled Trials, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Educational Resources Information Center, PsycINFO, and Research and Development Resource Base in Continuing Medical Education up to July 2012. Paired investigators independently assessed study eligibility. Investigators abstracted data sequentially and independently graded the evidence. RESULTS: Sixty-eight eligible studies were classified by intervention: decision support, organizational change, feedback and audit, clinical pharmacy support, education only, quality improvement/pay-for-performance, multicomponent, and information only. Half were randomized trials (n = 35). There was moderate evidence for increased prescriptions of controller medications for decision support, feedback and audit, and clinical pharmacy support and low-grade evidence for organizational change and multicomponent interventions. Moderate evidence supports the use of decision support and clinical pharmacy interventions to increase provision of patient self-education/asthma action plans. Moderate evidence supports use of decision support tools to reduce emergency department visits, and low-grade evidence suggests there is no benefit for this outcome with organizational change, education only, and quality improvement/pay-for-performance. CONCLUSIONS: Decision support tools, feedback and audit, and clinical pharmacy support were most likely to improve provider adherence to asthma guidelines, as measured through health care process outcomes. There is a need to evaluate health care provider-targeted interventions with standardized outcomes.
The onset of solar cycle 24: What global acoustic modes are telling us

We study the response of the low-degree, solar p-mode frequencies to the unusually extended minimum of solar surface activity since 2007. A total of 4768 days of observations collected by the space-based, Sun-as-a-star helioseismic GOLF instrument are analyzed. A multi-step iterative maximum-likelihood fitting method is applied to subseries of 365 days and 91.25 days to extract the p-mode parameters. Temporal variations in the l = 0, 1, and 2 p-mode frequencies are then obtained from April 1996 to May 2009. While the p-mode frequency shifts are closely correlated with solar surface activity proxies during the past solar cycles, the frequency shifts of the l = 0 and 1 = 2 modes increase from the second half of 2007, when no significant surface activity is observable. On the other hand, the l = 1 modes follow the general decreasing trend of solar surface activity. The different behaviors between the l = 0 and l = 2 modes and the l = 1 modes may be interpreted as different geometrical responses to the spatial distribution of the solar magnetic field beneath the surface of the Sun. The analysis of the low-degree, solar p-mode frequency shifts indicates that the solar activity cycle 24 started in late 2007, despite the absence of activity on the solar surface.
Modelling the progression of atrial fibrillation: A stochastic individual-based approach

We propose a stochastic individual-based model of the progression of atrial fibrillation (AF). The model operates at patient level over a lifetime and is based on elements of the physiology and biophysics of AF, making contact with existing mechanistic models. The outputs of the model are times when the patient is in normal rhythm and AF, and we carry out a population-level analysis of the statistics of disease progression. While the model is stylised at present and not directly predictive, future improvements are proposed to tighten the gap between existing mechanistic models of AF, and epidemiological data, with a view towards model-based personalised medicine.
“We Are All for Diversity, but . . .”: How Faculty Hiring Committees Reproduce Whiteness and Practical Suggestions for How They Can Change

Despite stated commitments to diversity, predominantly White academic institutions still have not increased racial diversity among their faculty. In this article Robin DiAngelo and Ozlem Sensoy focus on one entry point for doing so—the faculty hiring process. They analyze a typical faculty hiring scenario and identify the most common practices that block the hiring of diverse faculty and protect Whiteness and offer constructive alternative practices to guide hiring committees in their work to realize the institution's commitment to diversity.
Space‐geodetic evidence for multiple magma reservoirs and subvolcanic lateral intrusions at Fernandina Volcano, Galápagos Islands

[1] Using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) measurements of the surface deformation at Fernandina Volcano, Galapagos (Ecuador), acquired between January 2003 and September 2010, we study the structure and the dynamics of the shallow magmatic system of the volcano. Through the analysis of spatial and temporal variations of the measured line-of-sight displacement we identify multiple sources of deformation beneath the summit and the southern flank. At least two sources are considered to represent permanent zones of magma storage given their persistent or recurrent activity. Elastic deformation models indicate the presence of a flat-topped magma reservoir at ∼1.1 km below sea level and an oblate-spheroid cavity at ∼4.9 km b.s.l. The two reservoirs are hydraulically connected. This inferred structure of the shallow storage system is in agreement with previous geodetic studies and previous petrological analysis of both subaerial and submarine lavas. The almost eight-year-long observation interval provides for the first time geodetic evidence for two subvolcanic lateral intrusions from the central storage system (in December 2006 and August 2007). Subvolcanic lateral intrusions could provide the explanation for enigmatic volcanic events at Fernandina such as the rapid uplift at Punta Espinoza in 1927 and the 1968 caldera collapse without significant eruption.
Inhibition of Epithelial CC-Family Chemokine Synthesis by the Synthetic Chalcone DMPF-1 via Disruption of NF-κB Nuclear Translocation and Suppression of Experimental Asthma in Mice

Asthma is associated with increased pulmonary inflammation and airway hyperresponsiveness. The interaction between airway epithelium and inflammatory mediators plays a key role in the pathogenesis of asthma. In vitro studies evaluated the inhibitory effects of 3-(2,5-dimethoxyphenyl)-1-(5-methylfuran-2-yl)prop-2-en-1-one (DMPF-1), a synthetic chalcone analogue, upon inflammation in the A549 lung epithelial cell line. DMPF-1 selectively inhibited TNF-α-stimulated CC chemokine secretion (RANTES, eotaxin-1, and MCP-1) without any effect upon CXC chemokine (GRO-α and IL-8) secretion. Western blot analysis further demonstrated that the inhibitory activity resulted from disruption of p65NF-κB nuclear translocation without any effects on the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. Treatment of ovalbumin-sensitized and ovalbumin-challenged BALB/c mice with DMPF-1 (0.2–100 mg/kg) demonstrated significant reduction in the secretion and gene expression of CC chemokines (RANTES, eotaxin-1, and MCP-1) and Th2 cytokines (IL-4, IL-5, and IL-13). Furthermore, DMPF-1 treatment inhibited eosinophilia, goblet cell hyperplasia, peripheral blood total IgE, and airway hyperresponsiveness in ovalbumin-sensitized and ovalbumin-challenged mice. In conclusion, these findings demonstrate the potential of DMPF-1, a nonsteroidal compound, as an antiasthmatic agent for further pharmacological evaluation.
Chloroquine-azithromycin combination antimalarial treatment decreases risk of respiratory- and gastrointestinal-tract infections in Malawian children.

BACKGROUND Chloroquine-azithromycin is being evaluated as combination therapy for malaria. It may provide added benefit in treating or preventing bacterial infections that occur in children with malaria. OBJECTIVE We aim to evaluate the effect of treating clinical malaria with chloroquine-azithromycin on the incidence of respiratory-tract and gastrointestinal-tract infections compared to treatment with chloroquine monotherapy. METHODS We compared the incidence density and time to first events of respiratory-tract and gastrointestinal-tract infections among children assigned to receive chloroquine-azithromycin or chloroquine for all symptomatic malaria episodes over the course of 1 year in a randomized longitudinal trial in Blantyre, Malawi. RESULTS The incidence density ratios of total respiratory-tract infections and gastrointestinal-tract infections comparing chloroquine-azithromycin to chloroquine monotherapy were 0.67 (95% confidence interval [CI], .48, .94) and 0.74 (95% CI, .55, .99), respectively. The time to first lower-respiratory-tract and gastrointestinal-tract infections were significantly longer in the chloroquine-azithromycin arm compared to the chloroquine arm (P = .04 and P = .02, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Children treated routinely with chloroquine-azithromycin had fewer respiratory and gastrointestinal-tract infections than those treated with chloroquine alone. This antimalarial combination has the potential to reduce the burden of bacterial infections among children in malaria-endemic countries.
Validity of Single Leg Hop Test in Comparison of Lysholm Score after ACL Reconstruction through Anteromedial Portal Technique by Using Hamstring Tendon

Introduction: The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most frequently injured knee ligament, accounting for about 50% of all knee ligament injuries . The principle function of the ACL is to limit anterior translation of the tibia on the femur. Patients with a lesion of the ACL are characterized by difficulty with athletic performance and giving way symptoms in daily life activities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the short-term functional and clinical outcomes after anatomic ACL reconstruction by single bundle technique with the help of Lysholm scoring system and to assess the validity of the functional test (one leg hop test. Materials & methods: This cohort study included 25 patients (2 females and 23 males), mean age 28.4(1849yrs), with unilateral ACL tear who underwent ACL reconstruction by anteromedial portal technique using 4 strand hamstring graft. Follow up was done in 24 patients (1 patient lost due to infection and graft removal) at a median time of 7.5 months (6 to 11 months) who received standard outpatient and home based rehabilitation and analysis of Lysholm score, single leg hop test and patients’ satisfaction with outcome (VAS) was done. Results: Pre-operative lysholm score, instability subscore, pain subscore and single hop % was 49.12, 8.95, 10.20 and 21.96% respectively. At the follow up Lysholm score was 89.96+-7.9(0 -100), the lysholm instability subscore was 23.33+-3.18 (0 -25), the lysholm pain subscore was 20.42+-3.58 (0 -25), single leg hop test was 69.09+-12.08 % of the normal limb and patients satisfaction score by VAS was 7.6 (0 -10). Excellent results were found in 37.5% patients, good results in 54.16% and poor in 8.3% patients. The score and hop test % as compared to pre-operative values were found to be highly significant with p value<0.001. The highest correlation coefficient was found between lysholm score and single leg hop test (p=0.64) proving its validity, and between score and patients’ satisfaction (p =0.75). Conclusion: We conclude that the anteromedial portal technique and anatomic placement of grafts is an effective surgical technique for treating ACL deficient knees. It restores stability with excellent clinical and functional results. Also single leg hop test is a useful and reliable functional test for evaluating post-operative outcome after an ACL reconstruction.
The Diversity of Personnel Practices and Firm Performance

Personnel economics tends be based on single-firm case studies. Here we examine the personnel practices of nearly 5,000 firms, over a period of 20 years, using detailed matched employer-employee panel data from Portugal. In the spirit of Baker et al (1994a, b), we consider different dimensions of personnel management within each firm: worker turnover, the role of job levels and human capital as wage determinants, the dispersion of wages within job levels, the importance of tenure in terms of promotions and exits, and the scope for careers. We find a large degree of diversity in most of these practices across firms. Moreover, some personnel practices are shown to be robust predictors of higher levels of firm performance, even after controlling for time-invariant firm heterogeneity and other variables: low wage dispersion at low and intermediate job levels and a tight relationship between human capital variables and wages.
The serendipituous discovery of a short-period eclipsing polar in 2XMMp

We report the serendipituous discovery of the new eclipsing polar 2XMMp J131223.4+173659. Its striking X-ray light curve attracted immediate interest when we were visually inspecting the source products of the 2XMMp catalogue. This light curve revealed its likely nature as a magnetic cataclysmic variable of AM Herculis (or polar) type with an orbital period of ∼92 min, which was confirmed by follow-up optical spectroscopy and photometry. 2XMMp J131223.4+173659 probably has a one-pole accretion geometry. It joins the group of now nine objects that show no evidence of a soft component in their X-ray spectra despite being in a high accretion state, thus escaping ROSAT/EUVE detection. We discuss the likely accretion scenario, the system parameters, and the spectral energy distribution.
Embodied Cognition: Taking the Next Step

Recent years have seen a large amount of empirical studies related to “embodied cognition. ” While interesting and valuable, there is something dissatisfying with the current state of affairs in this research domain. Hypotheses tend to be underspecified, testing in general terms for embodied versus disembodied processing. The lack of specificity of current hypotheses can easily lead to an erosion of the embodiment concept, and result in a situation in which essentially any effect is taken as positive evidence. Such erosion is not helpful to the field and does not do justice to the importance of embodiment. Here we want to take stock, and formulate directions for how it can be studied in a more fruitful fashion. As an example we will describe few example studies that have investigated the role of sensori-motor systems in the coding of meaning (“embodied semantics”). Instead of focusing on the dichotomy between embodied and disembodied theories, we suggest that the field move forward and ask how and when sensori-motor systems and behavior are involved in cognition.
A PINOID-Dependent Binary Switch in Apical-Basal PIN Polar Targeting Directs Auxin Efflux

Polar transport–dependent local accumulation of auxin provides positional cues for multiple plant patterning processes. This directional auxin flow depends on the polar subcellular localization of the PIN auxin efflux regulators. Overexpression of the PINOID protein kinase induces a basal-to-apical shift in PIN localization, resulting in the loss of auxin gradients and strong defects in embryo and seedling roots. Conversely, pid loss of function induces an apical-to-basal shift in PIN1 polar targeting at the inflorescence apex, accompanied by defective organogenesis. Our results show that a PINOID-dependent binary switch controls PIN polarity and mediates changes in auxin flow to create local gradients for patterning processes.