Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dose-Dependent Effect of Estrogen Suppresses the Osteo-Adipogenic Transdifferentiation of Osteoblasts via Canonical Wnt Signaling Pathway

Fat infiltration within marrow cavity is one of multitudinous features of estrogen deficiency, which leads to a decline in bone formation functionality. The origin of this fat is unclear, but one possibility is that it is derived from osteoblasts, which transdifferentiate into adipocytes that produce bone marrow fat. We examined the dose-dependent effect of 17β-estradiol on the ability of MC3T3-E1 cells and murine bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell (BMMSC)-derived osteoblasts to undergo osteo-adipogenic transdifferentiation. We found that 17β-estradiol significantly increased alkaline phosphatase activity (P<0.05); calcium deposition; and Alp, Col1a1, Runx2, and Ocn expression levels dose-dependently. By contrast, 17β-estradiol significantly decreased the number and size of lipid droplets, and Fabp4 and PPARγ expression levels during osteo-adipogenic transdifferentiation (P<0.05). Moreover, the expression levels of brown adipocyte markers (Myf5, Elovl3, and Cidea) and undifferentiated adipocyte markers (Dlk1, Gata2, and Wnt10b) were also affected by 17β-estradiol during osteo-adipogenic transdifferentiation. Western blotting and immunostaining further showed that canonical Wnt signaling can be activated by estrogen to exert its inhibitory effect of osteo-adipogenesis. This is the first study to demonstrate the dose-dependent effect of 17β-estradiol on the osteo-adipogenic transdifferentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells and BMMSCs likely via canonical Wnt signaling. In summary, our results indicate that osteo-adipogenic transdifferentiation modulated by canonical Wnt signaling pathway in bone metabolism may be a new explanation for the gradually increased bone marrow fat in estrogen-inefficient condition.
Effects of timing and duration of gestational exposure to serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants: Population-based study

Background Late-gestational serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI) exposure has been linked to adverse neonatal outcomes; however, the impact of timing and duration of exposure is unknown. Aims To determine whether late-gestational exposure to an SRI is associated with increased risk of adverse neonatal outcome relative to early exposure. Method Population-based maternal and neonatal health records were linked to prenatal maternal prescription records for an SRI medication (n=3500). Results After controlling for maternal illness and duration of exposure, using propensity score matching, neonatal outcomes did not differ between late and early exposure (P IQ>0.05). After controlling for maternal illness, longer prenatal exposure increased the risks of lower birth weight, respiratory distress and reduced gestational age (P<0.05). Conclusions Using population health data, length of gestational SRI exposure, rather than timing, increased the risk for neonatal respiratory distress, lower birth weight and reduced gestational age, even when controlling for maternal illness and medication dose. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing the specific impact of medication exposure from exposure to maternal illness itself.
Channel identification and its impact on quantum LDPC code performance

In this work we probe the impact of channel estimation on the performance of quantum LDPC codes. Our channel estimation is based on an optimal estimate of the relevant decoherence parameter via its quantum Fisher information. Using state-of-the art quantum LDPC codes designed for the quantum depolarization channel, and utilizing various quantum probes with different entanglement properties, we show how the performance of such codes can deteriorate by an order of magnitude when optimal channel identification is fed into a belief propagation decoding algorithm. Our work highlights the importance in quantum communications of a viable channel identification campaign prior to decoding, and highlights the trade-off between entanglement consumption and quantum LDPC code performance.
Reciprocal Effects of Student Engagement and Disaffection on Changes in Teacher Support Over the School Year

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu. Recommended Citation Currie, Cailin Tricia, "Reciprocal Effects of Student Engagement and Disaffection on Changes in Teacher Support Over the School Year" (2014). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 1646.
The financing and management of higher education : a status report on worldwide reforms

The decade of the 90's has seen a remarkably consistent worldwide reform agenda for the finance and management of universities and other institutions of higher education. What is remarkable about the consistency is that there are very similar patterns in countries with dissimilar political-economic systems and higher educational traditions, and at extremely dissimilar stages of industrial and technological development. Thus, there seem to be similarities among countries greatly disparate in wealth and in political-economic systems. And there are similarities in the reform agendas of countries whose higher education systems are elite and universal, predominantly public or private, or relatively wealthy or staggering under austerity. This review is an attempt to assess the status of this worldwide reform agenda in the late 1990s, in anticipation of the first years of the next millennium. This financial and management reform agenda can be viewed in five themes: a) expansion and diversification; b) fiscal pressure; c) orientation to the market; d) accountability; and e) quality and efficiency.
Conspicuous consumption and household indebtedness

Using a novel, large dataset of consumer transactions in Singapore, we study how conspicuous consumption affects household indebtedness. The coexistence of private housing (condominiums) and subsidized public housing (HDB) allows us to identify conspicuous consumers. Conditional on income and other socioeconomic characteristics, those who choose to reside in condominiums – considered a status good in Singapore – are likely to be more conspicuous than their counterparts living in HDB units. We find that condominium residents spend considerably more (by 25%) on conspicuous goods but not differently on inconspicuous goods. Compared with their matched HDB counterparts, these consumers with higher conspicuous motivation carry 7% more credit card debt and 108% more delinquent credit card debt. Our results suggest that status-seeking-induced conspicuous consumption is an important determinant of household indebtedness.
Mutagenic potency of Helicobacter pylori in the gastric mucosa of mice is determined by sex and duration of infection

Helicobacter pylori is a human carcinogen, but the mechanisms evoked in carcinogenesis during this chronic inflammatory disease remain incompletely characterized. We determined whether chronic H. pylori infection induced mutations in the gastric mucosa of male and female gpt delta C57BL/6 mice infected for 6 or 12 mo. Point mutations were increased in females infected for 12 mo. The mutation frequency in this group was 1.6-fold higher than in uninfected mice of both sexes (P < 0.05). A:T-to-G:C transitions and G:C-to-T:A transversions were 3.8 and 2.0 times, respectively, more frequent in this group than in controls. Both mutations are consistent with DNA damage induced by oxidative stress. No increase in the frequency of deletions was observed. Females had more severe gastric lesions than males at 6 mo postinfection (MPI; P < 0.05), but this difference was absent at 12 MPI. In all mice, infection significantly increased expression of IFNγ, IL-17, TNFα, and iNOS at 6 and 12 mo, as well as H. pylori–specific IgG1 levels at 12 MPI (P < 0.05) and IgG2c levels at 6 and 12 MPI (P < 0.01 and P < 0.001). At 12 MPI, IgG2c levels in infected females were higher than at 6 MPI (P < 0.05) and also than those in infected males at 12 MPI (P < 0.05). Intensity of responses was mediated by sex and duration of infection. Lower H. pylori colonization indicated a more robust host response in females than in males. Earlier onset of severe gastric lesions and proinflammatory, Th1-biased responses in female C57BL/6 mice may have promoted mutagenesis by exposing the stomach to prolonged oxidative stress.
Bulimic behaviours and psychopathology in obese adolescents and in their parents

Objective. To help identify and advance the understanding of the potential mechanisms underlying the association between parents’ and adolescents’ psychological maladjustment in obesity, we evaluated bulimic behaviours and psychopathology in a clinical sample of obese adolescents and in their parents. Methods. This is a cross-sectional cohort study including 115 severely obese, treatment-seeking adolescents aged 12–17 years (mean age: 14.2; mean body mass index z-score: 4.32), and their parents (115 mothers and 96 fathers). Adolescents filled out the Bulimic Investigatory Test, Edinburgh (BITE), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC). Their parents completed the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and the BITE. A child psychiatrist filled out the Montgomery and Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and the Brief Scale for Anxiety (BSA) for the adolescents. Results. Obese adolescents demonstrated significant correlations between the severity of bulimic symptoms and the degree of emotional symptomatology, such as depression and anxiety, but not with the severity of obesity. Psychopathological maladjustment and bulimic symptoms in obese adolescents were significantly associated with the maternal psychopathological disturbances, especially anxiety and somatisation in mother. In fact, maternal psychopathology, not maternal bulimic symptoms, was the factor most strongly associated with bulimic behaviours in obese adolescents. Discussion. These results highlight the importance of including an adolescent and parental psychiatric assessment (bulimic, depressive and anxiety symptoms), particularly maternal psychopathology in the treatment of severely obese adolescents.
Collaborative QoS Prediction via Matrix Factorization and Topic Model

With the explosive growth of Web services on the Internet, Quality-of-Service-based (QoS) service selection is becoming an important issue of service-oriented computing. The QoS values of services to current users are all supposed to be known in the previous works, while lots of them are not known in reality. In order to predict the missing data, many approaches have been employed in recent years. However, those approaches don't carefully consider the online cold-start scenario where many new registered Web services haven't been involved even once. This paper proposes a collaborative QoS prediction framework named CQP integrating matrix factorization with probabilistic topic model. This approach builds an integral latent user and Web service representative space, and can be applied online to predict QoS value and handle the online cold-start problem. To validate our methods, some approaches and our algorithm are conducted on a real-world dataset. The experiment result demonstrates that the proposed approach outperforms the previous works in prediction accuracy.
Food safety hazards associated with smooth textured leafy greens produced in aquaponic, hydroponic, and soil-based systems with and without roots in retail

Food Safety Hazards Associated with Smooth-Textured Leafy Greens Produced in Aquaponic, Hydroponic, and Soil-Based Systems With and Without Roots at Retail Caitlin Barnhart1, Laura Hayes2, and Danielle Ringle3 1Food Systems, Dept of Horticultural Science, 2Nutrition and Horticulture, Dept of Horticulture & Department of Food Science and Nutrition, 3Forest and Natural Resource Management, Dept of Forest Resources
Dialogic Accounting and Stakeholder Engagement Through Social Media: The Case of Top-Ranked Universities

Abstract:This study examines whether online interaction through social media is used as a mechanism of dialogic accounting and stakeholder engagement by top-ranked universities. Our research adopts a quantitative methodology based on the Content Analysis of the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the top 200 universities in the QS World University Rankings. Our analysis confirms that many universities take advantage of social media to provide public information and engage stakeholders. This highlights some early signs of dialogic accounting and the attempts of top-ranked universities to create spaces for stakeholders whose opinions are ignored in traditional accounting.
Proactive drive failure prediction for large scale storage systems

Most of the modern hard disk drives support Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART), which can monitor internal attributes of individual drives and predict impending drive failures by a thresholding method. As the prediction performance of the thresholding algorithm is disappointing, some researchers explored various statistical and machine learning methods for predicting drive failures based on SMART attributes. However, the failure detection rates of these methods are only up to 50% ~ 60% with low false alarm rates (FARs). We explore the ability of Backpropagation (BP) neural network model to predict drive failures based on SMART attributes. We also develop an improved Support Vector Machine (SVM) model. A real-world dataset concerning 23,395 drives is used to verify these models. Experimental results show that the prediction accuracy of both models is far higher than previous works. Although the SVM model achieves the lowest FAR (0.03%), the BP neural network model is considerably better in failure detection rate which is up to 95% while keeping a reasonable low FAR.
Development of the projection from the nucleus of the brachium of the inferior colliculus to the superior colliculus in the ferret

Neurons in the deeper layers of the superior colliculus (SC) have spatially tuned receptive fields that are arranged to form a map of auditory space. The spatial tuning of these neurons emerges gradually in an experience‐dependent manner after the onset of hearing, but the relative contributions of peripheral and central factors in this process of maturation are unknown. We have studied the postnatal development of the projection to the ferret SC from the nucleus of the brachium of the inferior colliculus (nBIC), its main source of auditory input, to determine whether the emergence of auditory map topography can be attributed to anatomical rewiring of this projection. The pattern of retrograde labeling produced by injections of fluorescent microspheres in the SC on postnatal day (P) 0 and just after the age of hearing onset (P29), showed that the nBIC‐SC projection is topographically organized in the rostrocaudal axis, along which sound azimuth is represented, from birth. Injections of biotinylated dextran amine‐fluorescein into the nBIC at different ages (P30, 60, and 90) labeled axons with numerous terminals and en passant boutons throughout the deeper layers of the SC. This labeling covered the entire mediolateral extent of the SC, but, in keeping with the pattern of retrograde labeling following microsphere injections in the SC, was more restricted rostrocaudally. No systematic changes were observed with age. The stability of the nBIC‐SC projection over this period suggests that developmental changes in auditory spatial tuning involve other processes, rather than a gross refinement of the projection from the nBIC. J. Comp. Neurol. 485:202–217, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
King of the Hill: Positional Dynamics in Contests

In a contest with positional dynamics between an incumbent and a challenger i) inequality of power may magnify conflicts, ii) more severe conflicts can go together with lower turnover of incumbents, and iii) power can be self defeating as cost advantages can reduce pay-offs. These three propositions of our paper are contrary to the implications of static conflict models. They follow from incorporating positional dynamics into the standard static approach. Such positional dynamics are relevant for competition in battlefields, politics, and market places.
Preoperative Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Survival Outcomes in T1–2 Breast Cancer Patients Who Receive Breast-Conserving Therapy

Purpose The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effect of preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on survival outcomes for breast cancer. Methods A total of 954 patients who had T1–2 breast cancer and received breast-conserving therapy (BCT) between 2007 and 2010 were enrolled. We divided the patients according to whether they received preoperative MRI or not. Survival outcomes, including locoregional recurrence-free survival (LRRFS), recurrence-free survival (RFS), and overall survival (OS), were analyzed. Results Preoperative MRI was performed in 743 of 954 patients. Clinicopathological features were not significantly different between patients with and without preoperative MRI. In the univariate analyses, larger tumors were marginally associated with poor LRRFS compared to smaller tumors (hazard ratio [HR], 3.22; p=0.053). Tumor size, histologic grade, estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), hormonal therapy, and adjuvant chemotherapy status were associated with RFS. Larger tumor size, higher histologic grade, lack of ER and PR expression, and no hormonal therapy were associated with decreased OS. Tumor size was associated with LRRFS in the multivariate analyses (HR, 4.19; p=0.048). However, preoperative MRI was not significantly associated with LRRFS, RFS, or OS in either univariate or multivariate analyses. Conclusion Preoperative MRI did not influence survival outcomes in T1–2 breast cancer patients who underwent BCT. Routine use of preoperative MRI in T1–2 breast cancer may not translate into longer RFS and OS.
Modeling user Progress and Visualizing Feedback - The Case of ProPer

In traditional classroom education instructors can detect the learning difficulties of their students and take all the necessary actions in order for the problem to be overcome. In asynchronous online education, however, it is system functionality that plays a vital role in locating potential problems that may be related to either or both the students and the courses. In addition, students expect the online course to provide them with personalized instruction and useful feedback. This paper presents how ProPer, an adaptive SCORM compliant Learning Management System, monitors and visualizes user progress through instruction in order to help teachers and students alike to locate possible weaknesses. Moreover, ProPer, through immediate feedback and comparative techniques aims to motivate students to continue with their study. Evaluation findings indicate that ProPer can help both instructors and students with their work through out the learning
Offsetting Opposing Left-Turn Lanes at Signalized Intersections: A Safety Assessment Case Study in Lincoln, Nebraska

Opposing left-turning vehicles at signalized intersections block each others’ view of oncoming traffic. The ability to see oncoming traffic is critical for safe negotiation of left-turns at intersections during a permitted left-turn phase of the signal. Offsetting of opposing left-turn lanes at signalized intersections improves sight distance for left-turning motorists. This paper reports on a case study conducted in the City of Lincoln, Nebraska that was aimed at analyzing the safety benefits from offsetting opposing left-turn lanes at signalized intersections. Data from before-after scenarios were analyzed using the empirical Bayes procedure, which accounts for the effects of regression to the mean. The multivariate regression method was used to estimate the expected number of crashes for a reference population of 36 non-treated intersection approaches with similar geometric and traffic characteristics as the treated sites. These estimates were then used to determine the expected number of crashes at the treated sites in the ‘after’ period, had the treatment not been applied. Results from this study indicate a 1.5 percent change in safety. Based on the results, the author concludes that safety improved (but only minimally) at the three treated intersections as a result of offsetting opposing left-turn lanes.
Disruptive Innovation: New Models of Legal Practice

For decades, lawyers have been complaining that they hate working at law firms, and clients have expressed increasing frustration with high legal fees. But complaining is as far as either group went, until recently.This is the first attempt at a comprehensive review of a wide variety of new business organizations that have arisen in recent years to remedy the market’s failure to deliver business organizations responsive to the complaints of either lawyers or of clients.The “New Models of Legal Practice” described here typically offer a new value proposition for lawyers and clients. For lawyers, New Models offer better work-life balance and more control over other aspects of their work lives — in exchange for which lawyers typically (though not invariably) shoulder more risk, giving up a guaranteed salary, to be paid instead only for the hours they work. For clients, New Models typically drive down legal fees by sharply diminishing overhead through elimination of expensive real estate and the high cost of training new lawyers, and (again) dispensing with guaranteed salaries.
Do Inside Ownership and Leverage Share Common Determinants

Papers by Jensen and Meckling (1976), Jensen (1986), and Stulz (1988) suggest that a firm's leverage ratio and its level of inside ownership share common determinants. This paper examines whether inside equity and leverage are explained by a common set of variables that proxy for a firm's exposure to various market imperfections. These imperfections include the agency costs of equity, leverage-related costs, the tax advantage of debt, the costs of issuing securities, and the demand for risk-sharing by insiders. In contrast to Crutchley and Hansen (1989), but consistent with Jensen, Solberg, and Zorn (1992) and Holthausen and Larcker (1991), little evidence is found that leverage and inside equity are explained by the same variables. These results hold even after controlling for industry effects, an issue not examined by previous literature. In addition, leverage is related strongly and negatively to free cashflow, a result that is inconsistent with Jensen (1986), but consistent with the pecking order hypothesis of Myers (1984).