Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intracellular distribution of enzymes; the distribution of succinic dehydrogenase, cytochrome oxidase, adenosinetriphosphatase, and phosphorus compounds in normal rat liver and in rat hepatomas.

Interest in the particulate components of the cell has achieved considerable prominence during the last few years largely as the result of the development of technics for the isolation of these cellular constituents in quantities sufficient for chemical and biochemical analysis. Thus, Bensley and his coworkers (4, 5, 19, 21, 22) have described the isolation of mitochondria, particulate glycogen, and a submicroscopic component of guinea pig liver. Claude has been instrumental in developing well defined methods for the isolation of large granules, microsomes, and chromatin threads from normal and neoplastic tissues (8, 9, 10, 11, 12). He has subjected these particulate components to elementary chemical analysis and more recently has described some of the enzymatic properties of the large granules and of the microsomes (11). A number of enzymes important to cellular metabolism were associated with the large granules while other enzymes were not associated with any particulate material and were apparently present in the cell in soluble form. None of the enzymes studied was found to be associated with the microsomes. The enzymatic properties of the nucleus have been studied in the case of liver by Dounce (13) but these studies have not been extended to malignant tissues because of technical difficulties encountered in the isolation of nuclei from these tissues (14, 15). The importance to cancer research of a study of the particulate components of the cell is perhaps best emphasized by a few illustrations. In the first place, the viruses which cause several tumors have dimensions and chemical properties similar to those of particulate components isolated from normal cells (7, 8, 28). Furthermore, a preliminary report has indicated that the antigen which is specific for the Brown-Pearce tumor is associated with the microsome or small particle fraction of this tissue (24). Finally, Graffi (17,
Convection in TOGA COARE: Horizontal Scale, Morphology, and Rainfall Production

Abstract The occurrence frequency and rainfall production of mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) relative to smaller groups of convective clouds over the tropical oceans is not well known. Eighty days of shipboard radar data collected during the recent Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE) were used to provide a detailed view of convection in the western Pacific warm pool, a region of global climatological significance. The aim of this study was to document the frequency of occurrence, rainfall production, and depth of convection observed during TOGA COARE within a simple and meaningful framework of convective horizontal organization. Organization was characterized in terms of the horizontal scale and morphology of convective systems. Precipitation events were defined based on whether they attained the length scale of an MCS, and on whether convection was organized into lines. About four-fifths of rainfall during COARE was associated with MCS-scale squa.
Fermented Brown Rice and Rice Bran with Aspergillus oryzae (FBRA) Prevents Inflammation-Related Carcinogenesis in Mice, through Inhibition of Inflammatory Cell Infiltration

We have established an inflammation-related carcinogenesis model in mouse, in which regressive QR-32 cells subcutaneously co-implanted with a foreign body—gelatin sponge—convert themselves into lethal tumors due to massive infiltration of inflammatory cells into the sponge. Animals were fed with a diet containing 5% or 10% fermented brown rice and rice bran with Aspergillus oryzae (FBRA). In 5% and 10% FBRA diet groups, tumor incidences were lower (35% and 20%, respectively) than in the non-treated group (70%). We found that FBRA reduced the number of inflammatory cells infiltrating into the sponge. FBRA administration did not cause myelosuppression, which indicated that the anti-inflammatory effects of FBRA took place at the inflammatory lesion. FBRA did not have antitumor effects on the implanted QRsP-11 tumor cells, which is a tumorigenic cell line established from a tumor arisen after co-implantation of QR-32 cells with sponge. FBRA did not reduce formation of 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanine adducts, a marker of oxidative DNA damage in the inflammatory lesion; however, it reduced expression of inflammation-related genes such as TNF-α, Mac-1, CCL3 and CXCL2. These results suggest that FBRA will be an effective chemopreventive agent against inflammation-related carcinogenesis that acts by inhibiting inflammatory cell infiltration into inflammatory lesions.
Cheating Prevention in Visual Cryptography

Visual cryptography (VC) is a method of encrypting a secret image into shares such that stacking a sufficient number of shares reveals the secret image. Shares are usually presented in transparencies. Each participant holds a transparency. Most of the previous research work on VC focuses on improving two parameters: pixel expansion and contrast. In this paper, we studied the cheating problem in VC and extended VC. We considered the attacks of malicious adversaries who may deviate from the scheme in any way. We presented three cheating methods and applied them on attacking existent VC or extended VC schemes. We improved one cheat-preventing scheme. We proposed a generic method that converts a VCS to another VCS that has the property of cheating prevention. The overhead of the conversion is near optimal in both contrast degression and pixel expansion
Preliminary Study Characterizing the Use of Sitagliptin for Glycemic Control in Healthy Beagle Dogs with Normal Gluco-Homeostasis

ABSTRACT Sitagliptin is a dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor aimed at treating Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and T1DM, by increasing blood levels of Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) and insulin. The objective of this preliminary study is to characterize Sitagliptin’s ability for glycemic control, in healthy dogs under an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) environment. Overall, Sitagliptin did not result in any significant changes to temporal glucose and insulin concentrations. However, a ~55% increase in median total GLP-1 AUC0–120min was observed, as compared to baseline control in healthy dogs (n=5), thus indicating a similar mode of action of Sitagliptin between healthy dogs and humans. Future studies to validate the use of Sitagliptin with dogs suffering from insulin independent diabetes are warranted.
Interlayer dependent polarity of magnetoresistance in graphene spin valves

We fabricated spin valves of NiFe/Al2O3/single layer graphene (SLG)/Co, NiFe/SLG/Co, and NiFe/Al2O3/Co. In the fabrication, lithography processes using e-beam resist or photoresist were avoided to obtain residue-free clean junctions in all devices. While all three types of magnetic junctions showed a distinctly clear spin valve effect from 10 to 300 K, the polarity of magnetoresistance (MR) revealed different signs. A negative MR value (−1.6% at 10 K) was observed in the spin valve effect for the junction with the Al2O3/SLG interlayer, however the other types of junctions showed conventional positive MR values. The positive or negative MR signs are explained by the Julliere model of spin-dependent tunneling.
Burnout in Relation to Age in the Adult Working Population

Burnout is a three-dimensional syndrome of exhaustion, cynicism, and diminished professional efficacy which can result from a combination of prolonged work stress and dysfunctional ways of coping . Burnout has both individual and organizational relevance since it has been shown to be associated with physical and mental ill health 4) and to predict work disability as indicated by medically certified sickness absence. In reviews, which have concerned mostly human service work, burnout has been reported to decrease with age , whereas population studies on burnout have found the opposite. In two nationally representative Finnish samples , which excluded the youngest adults, a positive association emerged between age and the level of burnout. Also, among the working population of one Swedish county, a high level of burnout was more common among aging workers than among middle aged workers, but not among young workers, suggesting a non-linear association between age and burnout. Other sociodemographic associations of burnout have been shown to differ between the sexes. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between age and burnout by sex in three different age groups, namely among young, middle-aged, and aging workers in a nationally representative sample of employees including the full age range of the adult working population in Finland.
Biodistribution of bone marrow mononuclear cells after intra-arterial or intravenous transplantation in subacute stroke patients.

AIMS To assess the biodistribution of bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMNC) delivered by different routes in patients with subacute middle cerebral artery ischemic stroke. PATIENTS & METHODS This was a nonrandomized, open-label Phase I clinical trial. After bone marrow harvesting, BMMNCs were labeled with technetium-99m and intra-arterially or intravenously delivered together with the unlabeled cells. Scintigraphies were carried out at 2 and 24 h after cell transplantation. Clinical follow-up was continued for 6 months. RESULTS Twelve patients were included, between 19 and 89 days after stroke, and received 1-5 × 10(8) BMMNCs. The intra-arterial group had greater radioactive counts in the liver and spleen and lower counts in the lungs at 2 and 24 h, while in the brain they were low and similar for both routes. CONCLUSION BMMNC labeling with technetium-99m allowed imaging for up to 24 h after intra-arterial or intravenous injection in stroke patients.
A myosin V inhibitor based on privileged chemical scaffolds.

Small molecules that perturb the function of their targets on fast-time scales can be powerful probes of dynamic cellular processes, such as intracellular transport. [1] In the past decade, inhibitors for motor proteins, ATPases that drive movements of cellular cargoes, have been reported. [2] These chemical inhibitors (with μM potency) have served as valuable tools to dissect complex cellular mechanisms and have even provided an impetus for developing chemotherapeutics that target motor proteins. [3] However, chemical inhibitors are available for only ~ 6% of the motor proteins (over 100 in humans[4]) involved in a variety of biological processes, ranging from development, hearing, intracellular signaling, and muscle function.
Processing of Nuclear Viroids In Vivo: An Interplay between RNA Conformations

Replication of viroids, small non-protein-coding plant pathogenic RNAs, entails reiterative transcription of their incoming single-stranded circular genomes, to which the (+) polarity is arbitrarily assigned, cleavage of the oligomeric strands of one or both polarities to unit-length, and ligation to circular RNAs. While cleavage in chloroplastic viroids (family Avsunviroidae) is mediated by hammerhead ribozymes, where and how cleavage of oligomeric (+) RNAs of nuclear viroids (family Pospiviroidae) occurs in vivo remains controversial. Previous in vitro data indicated that a hairpin capped by a GAAA tetraloop is the RNA motif directing cleavage and a loop E motif ligation. Here we have re-examined this question in vivo, taking advantage of earlier findings showing that dimeric viroid (+) RNAs of the family Pospiviroidae transgenically expressed in Arabidopsis thaliana are processed correctly. Using this methodology, we have mapped the processing site of three members of this family at equivalent positions of the hairpin I/double-stranded structure that the upper strand and flanking nucleotides of the central conserved region (CCR) can form. More specifically, from the effects of 16 mutations on Citrus exocortis viroid expressed transgenically in A. thaliana, we conclude that the substrate for in vivo cleavage is the conserved double-stranded structure, with hairpin I potentially facilitating the adoption of this structure, whereas ligation is determined by loop E and flanking nucleotides of the two CCR strands. These results have deep implications on the underlying mechanism of both processing reactions, which are most likely catalyzed by enzymes different from those generally assumed: cleavage by a member of the RNase III family, and ligation by an RNA ligase distinct from the only one characterized so far in plants, thus predicting the existence of at least a second plant RNA ligase.
Design and implementation of a passive UHF RFID tag with a temperature and process compensation oscillator

A fully integrated passive UHF RFID tag chip compatible with ISO18000-6B protocol is pre- sented. In order to save die area, an all CMOS transistor regulator is adopted. An NMOS based traditional Dickson rectifier is employed with the advantage of circuit simplicity. An ultra-low power ring oscillator with temperature and process compensation is designed to guarantee the accuracy of the clock, which has a direct impact on the accuracy of backscatter link frequency (BLF). By utilizing several low power design approaches, a low power baseband processor is achieved. The whole tag chip is fabricated in TSMC 0.18m CMOS technology and the chip size is 730m × 605m. Measurement results show that the total power consumption of the tag is about 7W with a sensitivity of −13.1 dBm and an operational range of about 7.5 m under 4 W effective isotropic radiated (EIRP) power, and the accuracy of BLF is within ±10%. With the long operational range, the tag is suitable for many commercial applications, such as supply-chain and logistics managements as well as location sensing system.
New results on fixed priority aperiodic servers

The issue of using the sporadic server (SS) for scheduling aperiodic tasks has received new attention under the POSIX standard as it has been proposed in P1003.1 d, the additional real-time extensions to POSIX. The SS has been traditionally considered a better approach to the deferrable server (DS) due to its supposed higher achievable utilisation. However, SS also has higher implementation complexity. Nevertheless, the analysis of the comparisons performed from several authors between DS and SS is not conclusive. A review on fixed priority servers is presented with a new parameter selection technique and comprehensive performance analysis based on simulation techniques. With this parameter selection, it is shown that no server performs significantly better than the other in most of the situations. This suggests that future POSIX revisions for real-time support should also consider mechanisms by which other types of servers could be implemented.
L‐carnitine supplementation in the dialysis population: Are Australian patients missing out? (Review Article)

SUMMARY: It has been widely established that patients with end‐stage renal disease undergoing chronic haemodialysis therapy exhibit low endogenous levels of L‐carnitine and elevated acylcarnitine levels; however, the clinical implication of this altered carnitine profile is not as clear. It has been suggested that these disturbances in carnitine homeostasis may be associated with a number of clinical problems common in this patient population, including erythropoietin‐resistant anaemia, cardiac dysfunction, and dialytic complications such as hypotension, cramps and fatigue. In January 2003, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (USA) implemented coverage of intravenous L‐carnitine for the treatment of erythropoietin‐resistant anaemia and/or intradialytic hypotension in patients with low endogenous L‐carnitine concentrations. It has been estimated that in the period of 1998–2003, 3.8–7.2% of all haemodialysis patients in the USA received at least one dose of L‐carnitine, with 2.7–5.2% of patients receiving at least 3 months of supplementation for one or both of these conditions. The use of L‐carnitine within Australia is virtually non‐existent, which leads us to the question: Are Australian haemodialysis patients missing out? This review examines the previous research associated with L‐carnitine administration to chronic dialysis patients for the treatment of anaemia, cardiac dysfunction, dyslipidaemia and/or dialytic symptoms, and discusses whether supplementation is warranted within the Australian setting.
Primary structure of OXA-3 and phylogeny of oxacillin-hydrolyzing class D beta-lactamases

We determined the nucleotide sequence of the blaOXA-3(pMG25) gene from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The bla structural gene encoded a protein of 275 amino acids representing one monomer of 31,879 Da for the OXA-3 enzyme. Comparisons between the OXA-3 nucleotide and amino acid sequences and those of class A, B, C, and D beta-lactamases were performed. An alignment of the eight known class D beta-lactamases including OXA-3 demonstrated the presence of conserved amino acids. In addition, conserved motifs composed of identical amino acids typical of penicillin-recognizing proteins and specific class D motifs were identified. These conserved motifs were considered for possible roles in the structure and function of oxacillinases. On the basis of the alignment and identity scores, a dendrogram was constructed. The phylogenetic data obtained revealed five groups of class D beta-lactamases with large evolutionary distances between each group.
Finding Influential Authors in Brand-Page Communities

Enterprises are increasingly using social media forums to engage with their customer online- a phenomenon known as Social Customer Relation Management (Social CRM). In this context, it is important for an enterprise to identify “influential authors” and engage with them on a priority basis. We present a study towards finding influential authors on Twitter forums where an implicit network based on user interactions is created and analyzed. Furthermore, author profile features and user interaction features are combined in a decision tree classification model for finding influential authors. A novel objective evaluation criterion is used for evaluating various features and modeling techniques. We compare our methods with other approaches that use either only the formal connections or only the author profile features and show a significant improvement in the classification accuracy over these baselines as well as over using Klout score.
Flexible Framework for Secret Handshakes (Multi-Party Anonymous and Un-observable Authentication)

In the society increasingly concerned with the erosion of privacy, privacy-preserving techniques are becoming very important. This motivates research in cryptographic techniques offering built-in privacy. A secret handshake is a protocol whereby participants establish a secure, anonymous and unobservable communication channel only if they are members of the same group. This type of “private” authentication is a valuable tool in the arsenal of privacy-preserving cryptographic techniques. Prior research focused on 2-party secret handshakes with onetime credentials. This paper breaks new ground on two accounts: (1) it shows how to obtain secure and efficient secret handshakes with reusable credentials, and (2) it represents the first treatment of group (or multi-party) secret handshakes, thus providing a natural extension to the secret handshake technology. An interesting new issue encountered in multi-party secret handshakes is the need to ensure that all parties are indeed distinct. (This is a real challenge since the parties cannot expose their identities.) We tackle this and other challenging issues in constructing GCD – a flexible framework for secret handshakes. The proposed GCD framework lends itself to many practical instantiations and offers several novel and appealing features such as self-distinction and strong anonymity with reusable credentials. In addition to describing the motivation and stepby-step construction of the framework, this paper provides a thorough security analysis and illustrates two concrete framework instantiations.
Analysis of the tip roundness effects on the micro- and macroindentation response of elastic-plastic materials

In this work, the effects of indenter tip roundness on the load–depth indentation curves were analyzed using finite element modeling. The tip roundness level was studied based on the ratio between tip radius and maximum penetration depth ( R/h _max), which varied from 0.02 to 1. The proportional curvature constant ( C ), the exponent of depth during loading (α), the initial unloading slope ( S ), the correction factor (β), the level of piling-up or sinking-in ( h _c /h _max), and the ratio h _max /h _f are shown to be strongly influenced by the ratio R/h _max. The hardness ( H ) was found to be independent of R/h _max in the range studied. The Oliver and Pharr method was successful in following the variation of h _c /h _max with the ratio R/h _max through the variation of S with the ratio R/h _max. However, this work confirmed the differences between the hardness values calculated using the Oliver–Pharr method and those obtained directly from finite element calculations; differences which derive from the error in area calculation that occurs when given combinations of indented material properties are present. The ratio of plastic work to total work ( W _p /W _t) was found to be independent of the ratio R/h _max, which demonstrates that the methods for the calculation of mechanical properties based on the indentation energy are potentially not susceptible to errors caused by tip roundness.
A developmental career guidance and counselling process for learners with disabilities: preparation for employment

This research explored the role of guidance and counselling in preparing learners for work from primary to university levels of education. It explored current status of learners with visual impairment regarding their ability to understand abilities and potentials, realistically accepting limitations and making independent career decisions. The study adopted Career Development and Self-efficacy Theories as bases of exploration. Proponents of these theories assume that career development process facilitates development of vocational self-concept and decisionmaking self-efficacy. The premise was that a correct self-image as a worker contributes to the person environment match, facilitating self-actualization to impact on future employment outcomes. Major findings indicated linear relationship between vocational self-concept and decision-making self-efficacy, implying increased development as learners progressed in education. However, learners portrayed limited awareness on impact of severity of disability. This affirmed need for developmental career guidance and counselling process for learners with disabilities, culminating to suggested model by Murugami (2010).
In vitro differentiation of human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells into CD34 + cells via CD34 antibody

CD34+cells differentiated from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have a strong biological function in cardiovascular regeneration. However, the molecular mechanisms of and the methods to improve the CD34+ cell differentiation from MSCs, especially from human MSCs (hUC-MSCs) are still unclear. In the current study, the effect of CD34 antibody on the CD34+ cell differentiation from human umbilical cord (UC)-derived MSCs (hUC-MSCs) is determined. The results have demonstrated that the expression of cd34 protein is significantly increased in hUC-MSCs treated with CD34 antibody. In addition, the cell proliferation is increased in hUC-MSCs after treatment with CD34 antibody. Moreover, the expression of PI3K, AKT, p-AKT proteins, which are signaling molecules related to stem cell differentiation, is increased by CD34 antibody. The results suggest that CD34 antibody could promote the differentiation of hUC-MSCs into CD34+ cells and PI3K/AKT may be involved in this important process.