Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Topical Application of Hangeshashinto (TJ-14) in the Treatment of Chemotherapy-Induced Oral Mucositis

Background The optimal treatment of chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis is not well established. A recent study showed that hangeshashinto (TJ-14) might be useful for periodontal disease via downregulating pro-inflammatory prostaglandins in the cyclooxygenase pathway in human. Our study aimed to determine whether TJ-14 is effective in the management of chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis. Methods Fourteen patients afflicted with chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis during mFOLFOX6 or FOLFIRI treatment for metastasis of advanced colorectal cancer were randomly assigned to topical TJ-14 treatment thrice daily for 7 days. Patients prepared a 50 ml solution with 2.5 g of TJ-14 dissolved in tap water and rinsed their oral mucosa for more than 5 seconds and then expectorated it. TJ-14 was also topically applied with a cotton pellet on the mucosal lesions. The severity of oral mucositis was evaluated using the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 4 before and after one-week TJ-14 treatment. Results After the one-week topical treatment with TJ-14, thirteen of the fourteen patients (92.8 %) showed improvements in oral mucositis, with significantly decreased mean CTCAE grades (P = 0.0012). Compared to baseline, none of the patients’ CTCAE grades worsened. The compliance of TJ-14-treatment was good and side effects from TJ-14 were not observed. Conclusions Topical application of TJ-14 may have therapeutic effects in patients with chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis via downregulation of pro-inflammatory prostaglandins. A prospective, randomized, controlled, double-blind studies are necessary to confirm the findings of this open-label, pilot study.
A Multi-Step miRNA-mRNA Regulatory Network Construction Approach Identifies Gene Signatures Associated with Endometrioid Endometrial Carcinoma

We aimed to identify endometrioid endometrial carcinoma (EEC)-related gene signatures using a multi-step miRNA-mRNA regulatory network construction approach. Pathway analysis showed that 61 genes were enriched on many carcinoma-related pathways. Among the 14 highest scoring gene signatures, six genes had been previously shown to be endometrial carcinoma. By qRT-PCR and next generation sequencing, we found that a gene signature (CPEB1) was significantly down-regulated in EEC tissues, which may be caused by hsa-miR-183-5p up-regulation. In addition, our literature surveys suggested that CPEB1 may play an important role in EEC pathogenesis by regulating the EMT/p53 pathway. The miRNA-mRNA network is worthy of further investigation with respect to the regulatory mechanisms of miRNAs in EEC. CPEB1 appeared to be a tumor suppressor in EEC. Our results provided valuable guidance for the functional study at the cellular level, as well as the EEC mouse models.
Polysialylated Neuropilin-2 Is Expressed on the Surface of Human Dendritic Cells and Modulates Dendritic Cell-T Lymphocyte Interactions*

Polysialic acid (PSA) is a unique linear homopolymer of α2,8-linked sialic acid that has been identified as a posttranslational modification on only five mammalian proteins. Studied predominantly on neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) during development of the vertebrate nervous system, PSA modulates cell interactions mediated by NCAM and other adhesion molecules. An isoform of NCAM (CD56) on natural killer (NK) cells is the only protein known to be polysialylated in cells of the immune system, yet the function of PSA in NK cells remains unclear. We show here that neuropilin-2 (NRP-2), a receptor for the semaphorin and vascular endothelial growth factor families in neurons and endothelial cells, respectively, is expressed on the surface of human dendritic cells and is polysialylated. Expression of NRP-2 is up-regulated during dendritic cell maturation, coincident with increased expression of ST8Sia IV, one of the key enzymes of PSA biosynthesis, and with the appearance of PSA on the cell surface. PSA on NRP-2 is resistant to digestion with peptide N-glycosidase F but is sensitive to release under alkaline conditions, suggesting that PSA chains are added to O-linked glycans of NRP-2. Removal of polysialic acid from the surface of dendritic cells or binding of NRP-2 with specific IgG promoted dendritic cell-induced activation and proliferation of T lymphocytes. Thus, this newly recognized polysialylated protein on the surface of dendritic cells influences dendritic cell-T lymphocyte interactions through one or more of its distinct extracellular domains.
Credibilidad en latinoamérica del informe de responsabilidad social corporativa

Para dar mayor credibilidad a la informacion publicada en los informes de responsabilidad social corporativa se asigna a estos de un proceso de aseguramiento por parte de un experto externo. Esta investigacion se basa en 1.021 observaciones de 12 paises de Latinoamerica durante los anos 2006-2010. A la vista de los resultados, podemos concluir que Latinoamerica es una region donde cada vez hay un mayor compromiso con la sostenibilidad. Ademas, los resultados senalan que la decision de otorgar mayor credibilidad a las politicas sostenibles por medio del aseguramiento depende del tamano de la empresa, del sector al que pertenece y del pais donde se encuentre.
A Hybrid Architectural Approach to Understanding and Appropriately Generating Indirect Speech Acts

Current approaches to handling indirect speech acts (ISAs) do not account for their sociolinguistic underpinnings (i.e., politeness strategies). Deeper understanding and appropriate generation of indirect acts will require mechanisms that integrate natural language (NL) understanding and generation with social information about agent roles and obligations,which we introduce in this paper. Additionally, we tackle the problem of understanding and handling indirect answers that take the form of either speech acts or physical actions, which requires an inferential, plan-reasoning approach. In order to enable artificial agents to handle an even wider-variety of ISAs, we present a hybrid approach, utilizing both the idiomatic and inferential strategies. We then demonstrate our system successfully generating indirect requests and handling indirect answers, and discuss avenues of future research.
The Transition to Fatherhood: The Level of First-Time Fathers’ Involvement and Strength of Bonding with Their Infants

The aim of this study was to describe the level of involvement and psychological bonding of a sample of Australian first-time fathers with their 6-month-old infants. Involvement was defined in terms of fathers’ engagement, accessibility, and responsibility. Sixty-one men completed a time-diary interview protocol, a responsibility scale, and a postnatal bonding scale. Predictably, fathers were more involved on non-workdays, than workdays but the extent of the difference depended on the type of involvement. Father’s share of the responsibility for their infant was a little less than mother’s share. Similar and contrasting findings with recent local and international large-scale studies are discussed. Paternal involvement and bonding were shown to be different dimensions of fathering, adding to the idea of a multidimensional conceptualisation of fathering. Further research avenues are suggested.
Emotive Facial Expression Detection

Facial expressions are important cues to observe human emotions. The thesis studies the involuntary type of facial expressions called micro-expressions. Micro-expressions are quick facial motions, appearing in high stake and stressful situations, typically when a subject tries to hide his or her emotions. Two attributes are present fast duration and low intensity. A simple detection method is proposed, which determines instants of micro-expressions in a video. The method is based on analyzing image intensity differences over a registered face sequence. The specific pattern is detected by an SVM classifier. The results are evaluated on standard micro-expression datasets SMIC and CASMEII. The proposed method outperformed the competing method in detection accuracy. Further, we collected a new real-world micro-expression dataset consisting mostly of poker game videos downloaded from YouTube. We achieved average cross-validation AUC 0.88 for the SMIC, and 0.81 on the new challenging “in the Wild” database called MEVIEW.
Emotional Abilities in Couples: A Construct Validation Study

Extensive research has evaluated emotional abilities measures among individuals, but the validity of these constructs in a couples context has yet to be examined despite theoretical perspectives often highlighting the detrimental effects of poor emotional abilities on interpersonal functioning. The current study evaluates four measures of emotional abilities in a sample of 104 couples (emotional intelligence, self-rated alexithymia, partner-rated alexithymia, and couples’ emotional awareness). Results indicate emotional intelligence and alexithymia are significantly associated with mood and relationship functioning of both self and partner. These findings support the utility of brief measures of emotional abilities to inform clinical practice with couples.
Expression of TGF‐α and EGFR in Breast Cancer and its Relation to Angiogenesis

Abstract: Immunohistochemical analysis of the expression of transforming growth factor α (TGF‐α) and its receptor, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), was performed in a series of 86 invasive carcinomas of the breast. TGF‐α immunostaining was observed in the majority of the cases (72.1%), both in epithelial cells and in adjacent stromal cells. EGFR was also present in tumors (34.2%) and in the endothelial cells (46.1% of the cases) near the tumors. A significant association was observed between TGF‐α expression and angiogenesis evaluated by immunohistochemistry using an antibody against factor VIII‐related antigen. No association was observed between TGF‐α expression and other clinicopathologic features. In contrast, EGFR expression in the tumor was associated with features of poor prognosis, such as tumor size, histologic grade, lymph node status, estrogen receptor content, p53 expression, sialyl‐Tn expression, and age. The presence of EGFR in endothelial cells was correlated to young patient age. We also observed an association of EGFR in endothelial cells and angiogenesis in tumors with a size of less than 2 cm. Inversely, in larger tumors, angiogenesis was only associated with tumor TGF‐α expression. These results indicate that endothelial EGFR may play a role in the early steps of breast cancer angiogenesis.
Challenges in childhood tuberculosis

While tuberculosis (TB) typically causes respiratory disease in adults, the spectrum of disease is different in children, ranging from paucibacillary lymphadenitis or limited intrathoracic disease to severe disseminated disease. Diagnosing pediatric TB and monitoring treatment response is challenging, as collecting respiratory specimens is difficult in children and disease may be extrapulmonary. While basic principles of treatment are similar to adults, developmental differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics require that drug dosages in children be adjusted for body weight and age.
The Acquisition of Gender by American Students of German.

noun. However, some recent studies have held that gender assignment in German is subject to certain regularities and that native speakers of German employ strategies when assigning gender. In the most thorough study in this area, K6pcke shows that phonological, morphological, and semantic criteria play a role in the assignment of gender to one-syllable words.1 If gender assignment is at least to some degree predictable, then we can assume that native speakers of German have abstracted the underlying principles of gender assignment. In this context the following questions arise with respect to learners of German as a second language: 1) do learners of German develop strategies for dealing with gender assignment? 2) if yes, what is the nature of these strategies? How, if at all, do they differ from those employed by native Germans?
Local Effect of Enhancer of Zeste-Like Reveals Cooperation of Epigenetic and cis-Acting Determinants for Zygotic Genome Rearrangements

In the ciliate Paramecium tetraurelia, differentiation of the somatic nucleus from the zygotic nucleus is characterized by massive and reproducible deletion of transposable elements and of 45,000 short, dispersed, single-copy sequences. A specific class of small RNAs produced by the germline during meiosis, the scnRNAs, are involved in the epigenetic regulation of DNA deletion but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, we show that trimethylation of histone H3 (H3K27me3 and H3K9me3) displays a dynamic nuclear localization that is altered when the endonuclease required for DNA elimination is depleted. We identified the putative histone methyltransferase Ezl1 necessary for H3K27me3 and H3K9me3 establishment and show that it is required for correct genome rearrangements. Genome-wide analyses show that scnRNA-mediated H3 trimethylation is necessary for the elimination of long, repeated germline DNA, while single copy sequences display differential sensitivity to depletion of proteins involved in the scnRNA pathway, Ezl1- a putative histone methyltransferase and Dcl5- a protein required for iesRNA biogenesis. Our study reveals cis-acting determinants, such as DNA length, also contribute to the definition of germline sequences to delete. We further show that precise excision of single copy DNA elements, as short as 26 bp, requires Ezl1, suggesting that development specific H3K27me3 and H3K9me3 ensure specific demarcation of very short germline sequences from the adjacent somatic sequences.
Characterization and role in morphogenesis of a new subviral particle (55S) isolated from poliovirus-infected cells

A previously undetected subviral particle, designated the 55S particle because of its position in sucrose density gradients, has been found in cytoplasmic extracts of poliovirus-infected cells. It contains no RNA, is composed of equimolar amounts of the structural polypeptides P1AB, P1C, and P1D, and is stable in vitro under a variety of conditions: presence or absence of EDTA, dilution in low- or high-ionic-strength buffers, suspension in buffers up to pH 10, incubation at 37 degrees C, and centrifugation to equilibrium in CsCl gradients (where it bands at a density of 1.285 g/cm3). Conventional pulse-chase experiments show that 55S particles are the products of the assembly of 14S subunits and the precursors of virions. These data led to the formulation of a model of poliovirus morphogenesis in which the conversion of capsomers into 73S empty capsids does not occur directly, but through the formation of an intermediate structure, the 55S particle.
Deaf students ' attitudes toward racial / ethnic diversity , campus climate , and role models

Deaf students' attitudes toward racial/ethnic diversity, campus climate, and role models" (2005). EAF COLLEGE STUDENTS' attitudes toward a variety of issues related to racial/ethnic diversity were surveyed by contacting all racial/ethnic minority deaf students and a random sample of Caucasian deaf students attending the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), Rochester Institute of Technology; 38% completed the survey. Although racial/ethnic groups similarly perceived NTID's commitment and efforts related to diversity, they differed significantly on some items related to campus climate and role models. Furthermore, the racial/ethnic minority groups differed from each other in their perceptions of campus comfort level, racial conflict, friendship patterns, and availability of role models. Educational satisfaction was positively correlated with campus comfort level; both correlated negatively with perception of discrimination and racial conflict. Qualitative data analyses supported quantitative data analyses and provided rich detail that facilitated interpretation of deaf students' experiences related to racial/ethnic diversity. The importance of recognizing the cultural diversity of students in planning their educational experiences on campus and consequently strengthening student retention has inspired much recent discussion and research in higher education. Retention rates and the academic success of racial/eth-nic minority students are central concerns shared by universities across the Educational satisfaction and campus climate are among the variety of complex factors that are recognized as influencing racial/ethnic minority retention rates and academic success. Chang, Witt-Sandis, Jones, and Hakuta (1999) suggest that race influences social perceptions , attitudes, and behaviors in ways that place members of racial/eth-nic minority groups at a disadvantage. They also suggest that racially diverse environments, when properly nurtured , lead to both quantitative and qualitative gains in educational outcomes for all students, including higher retention rates and greater overall satisfaction with college. Landrum, Dillinger, and Vandernoot (2000) found that campus comfort level relates positively to educational satisfaction for racial/ethnic minority hearing students. No empirical data are available regarding the campus comfort level and educational satisfaction of racial/ethnic minority deaf students. Twenty-three percent of deaf college students enro ll ed at the Na-arc racial/ethnic minority deaf students, and their retention rate is lower than that of Caucasian deaf students. It is possible that campus comfort level and educational satisfaction are important factors determining the retention rates of racial/ethnic minority deaf students. For the present study, we constructed a 35-item "Campus Diversity Survey," which was based in part on the questionnaire Landrum and colleagues (2000) used in their study. …
Comb-Actuated Resonant Torsional Microscanner With Mechanical Amplification

A comb-actuated torsional microscanner is developed for high-resolution laser-scanning display systems. Typical torsional comb-drive scanners have fingers placed around the perimeter of the scanning mirror. In contrast, the structure in this paper uses cascaded frames, where the comb fingers are placed on an outer drive frame, and the motion is transferred to the inner mirror frame with a mechanical gain. The structure works only in resonant mode without requiring any offset in the comb fingers, keeping the silicon-on-insulator-based process quite simple. The design intent is to improve actuator efficiency by removing the high-drag fingers from the high-velocity scanning mirror. Placing them on the lower velocity drive frame reduces their contribution to the damping torque. Furthermore, placement on the drive frame allows an increase of the number of fingers and their capacity to impart torque. The microscanner exhibits a parametric response, and as such, the maximum deflection is found when actuated at twice its natural frequency. Analytical formulas are given for the coupled-mode equations and frame deflections. A simple formula is derived for the mechanical-gain factor. For a 1-mm × 1.5-mm oblong scanning mirror, a 76° total optical scan angle is achieved at 21.8 kHz with 196-V peak-to-peak excitation voltages.
Imag(in)ing the University: Visual Sociology and Higher Education

This study examines the potential of visual sociology to expand our knowledge of higher education through the use of visual data sources and methods of analysis. Photographs and archival material form the basis of the study. The images were analyzed as being part of the initiation and fulfillment stages of the social construction of collective discourse known as an “organizational saga” (Clark, 1972). These stages were coupled with theories and methods from visual sociology to examine the production and reproduction of iconic images central to the organizational saga of the case study university.
Metalinguistic development in French learners enrolled in an immersion programme: A longitudinal study

Research on bilingualism has shown a bilingual advantage in phonological and syntactic awareness, and more recently on some morphological awareness tasks in children who had acquired two languages simultaneously. However, there is still limited knowledge about this advantage in students who acquire a second language in school after having developed a first language. The present longitudinal study addressed this issue by comparing, over the first two years of primary school, the development of metalinguistic abilities in 33 French learners enrolled in an immersion French–German programme to that of 43 French monolingual peers. Results support the bilingual advantage and add to the growing body of research reaching the same conclusion. In this study, this advantage appears as early as in first grade and the gap favouring second language learners widens with time. The results are discussed in light of differences between the characteristics of the two languages.
Factors Influencing Wishful Thinking and Predictions of Election Outcomes

Wishful thinking (WT) is the link between preference (wish) and expectation (prediction). New Zealand voters (N = 605) were asked to predict election outcomes 8 to 10 weeks prior to the 1990 general election and to state their preference for one of the two major parties (Labour or National). Strong and consistent WT effects were found, with more favorable outcomes being predicted for the preferred party. Level of confidence in their prediction also contributed to anticipated election outcomes. A minority of respondents who displayed accurate information about the outcome of the previous election showed no WT effect in their predictions. An instruction to be objective, designed to increase rationality, was ineffective in reducing WT. Independent of preference and WT, predictions of nationwide election outcomes also varied as a function of electorate of residence. Mechanisms contributing to WT, adaptive and maladaptive aspects of WT, and the human capacity for rational control are discussed.
Contextual influences on the relationship between absorption and hypnotic ability

Council, Kirsch, and Hafner (1986) have argued that the relationship between absorption and hypnotic ability might depend on the context in which the measures are administered. We employed a sample of 88 university students and replicated the context effect, finding both a significant difference in the correlation between a measure of absorption and hypnotic ability across contexts and a change in the regression slope across contexts when absorption is used as a predictor of hypnotic ability. No context effects were found for a measure of dissociative experiences which was included as a control. These results are somewhat difficult to reconcile with the expectancy theory described by Council, Kirsch and Hafner (1986). An alternative explanation in terms of S's interpretations of absorption items is discussed. Copyright © 1996 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis