Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aberrant Apoptotic Response of Colorectal Cancer Cells to Novel Nucleoside Analogues

Despite the increased understanding of colorectal cancer and the introduction of targeted drug therapy, the metastatic phase of the disease remains refractory to treatment. Since the deregulation of normal apoptosis contributes to the pathogenesis of colorectal cancer, novel nucleoside analogues were synthesized here and evaluated for their ability to induce apoptosis and cause cell death in two colorectal adeno-carcinoma cell lines, Caco-2 and HT-29. Three novel nucleoside analogues assessed here showed cytotoxic activity, as measured by the MTT assay against both cell lines: the IC50 values ranged between 3 and 37 μM, with Caco-2 cells being more sensitive than HT-29 cells. Compared to camptothecin, the positive control, the nucleoside analogues were significantly less toxic to normal unstimulated leukocytes (p>0.05). Moreover, the nucleosides were able to induce apoptosis as measured by an increase in caspase 8 and caspase 3 activity above that of the control. This was additionally supported by data derived from Annexin V-FITC assays. Despite marginal changes to the mitochondrial membrane potential, all three nucleosides caused a significant increase in cytosolic cytochrome c (p>0.05), with a corresponding decrease in mitochondrial cytochrome c. Morphological analysis of both cell lines showed the rapid appearance of vacuoles following exposure to two of the nucleosides, while a third caused cellular detachment, delayed cytoplasmic vacuolisation and nuclear abnormalities. Preliminary investigations, using the autophagic indicator monodansylcadaverine and chloroquine as positive control, showed that two of the nucleosides induced the formation of autophagic vacuoles. In summary, the novel nucleoside analogues showed selective cytotoxicity towards both cancer cell lines and are effective initiators of an unusual apoptotic response, demonstrating their potential to serve as structural scaffolds for more potent analogues.
A Developmental Approach to Social Emotional Learning Practices in Kindergarten - Sixth Grade

The acquisition of social and emotional skills is arguably one of the most important tasks to accomplish throughout child development. Children with high levels of social and emotional skills have more positive academic and non-academic outcomes than their peers with lower levels of skills. Studies have shown that socially and emotionally competent children perform higher on achievement tests, develop healthier relationships with peers and adults, have fewer mental health issues, and are more likely to resist risky behaviors. Conversely, children who lack social emotional skills are at risk for developing problems in many areas of life including school, interpersonal relationships, and their physical and mental health (CASEL, 2003). Humans are not born with innate abilities to accurately express and read every emotion, nor do we know how to develop healthy relationships as soon as we are born; these skills must be promoted and fostered throughout childhood in a progression that is appropriate for each developmental stage (CASEL, 2003 & Elias, Parker, Kash, & Dunkeblau, 2007). There has been a great deal of interest in the area of social and emotional development that has lead to the formation and organization of many social emotional learning programs aimed at promoting socio emotional competencies and preventing problem behavior in children. Six programs in particular do an excellent job educating and encouraging children to develop healthy ways to deal with social and emotional issues through various methods and techniques that have been shown to effectively increase a child’s social emotional skills (CASEL, 2003).
What Drives Political Participation? Motivations and Mobilization in a Digital Age

This article provides insights into the driving forces that underpin new forms of political participation. Digital technologies offer opportunities for engaging in a wide range of civically oriented activities, each of which can contribute to deeper democratic engagement. Conventional acts of political participation are argued to be driven primarily by intrinsic motivations relating to self-efficacy and empowerment, with participants feeling they can have influence over decision makers. Little research explores whether similar motivations drive participation in less conventional acts, as well as whether mobilization attempts via social media by peers or political organizations mediate those motivations. Drawing on data from a survey among a representative sample of the U.K. electorate, we find the offline and online spheres of agency remain fairly distinct. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations both matter but extrinsic motivations have the strongest explanatory power independent of the sphere of activity. The mediating effect of mobilization tactics has a minimal effect on extrinsic motivations, online or offline, but online intrinsic motivations lose their explanatory power. As intrinsic factors offer little explanatory power, some forms of online political participation may lack meaning to the individual. Rather, these non-conventional acts result from reward seeking and are more likely to be encouraged by nongovernmental campaigning organizations, suggesting social media users are most likely to perform simple acts in support of non-contentious causes.
Complexity, selectivity and asymmetry in the conformation of the power phenomenon. Analysis of Chilean society

In this work we analyzed the relationships between powerful politicians and businessmen of Chile in order to study the phenomenon of social power. We developed our study according to Complex Network Theory but also using traditional sociological theories of Power and Elites. Our analyses suggest that the studied network displays common properties of Complex Networks, such as scaling in connectivity distribution, properties of small-world networks, and modular structure, among others. We also observed that social power (a proposed metric is presented in this work) is also distributed inhomogeneously. However, the most interesting observation is that this inhomogeneous power and connectivity distribution, among other observed properties, may be the result of a dynamic and unregulated process of network growth in which powerful people tend to link to similar others. The compatibility between people, increasingly selective as the network grows, could generate the presence of extremely powerful people, but also a constant inequality of power where the difference between the most powerful is the same as among the least powerful. Our results are also in accordance with sociological theories.
Hand-eye calibration of a robot - UltraSound probe system without any 3D localizers

3D UltraSound (US) probes are used in clinical applications for their ease of use and ability to obtain intra-operative volumes. In surgical navigation applications a calibration step is needed to localize the probe in a general coordinate system. This paper presents a new hand-eye calibration method using directly the kinematic model of a robot and US volume registration data that does not require any 3D localizers. First results show a targeting error of 2.34 mm on an experimental setup using manual segmentation of five beads in ten US volumes.
Part II: control theory for buffer sizing

This article describes how control theory has been used to address the question of how to size the buffers in core Internet routers. Control theory aims to predict whether the is stable, i.e. whether TCP flows are desynchronized. If flows are desynchronized then small buffers are sufficient [14 ]; the theory here shows that small buffers actually promote desynchronization--a virtuous circle.
Disadvantaged older jobseekers and the concept of bounded agency

Abstract This article uses the concept of bounded agency to interpret the findings of a study that explored the training and job-seeking activities of a group of older adults. A qualitative, phenomenological approach was used to obtain personal and nuanced accounts of their experiences. A series of semi-structured interviews was conducted with eight adults aged 55 and older, who were low-skilled and unemployed. The findings identified that a range of interrelated barriers constrained their agency in those activities in two key areas. First, there was a disparity between their learning needs and preferences, and the delivery modes in their training programmes. Second, legacies from their personal histories contributed significantly to constraints in their current activities. The bounded agency concept explicated this range of barriers, as it incorporated institutional, societal and personal factors within the agency of individuals. A model of bounded agency was developed, that showed legacies from an individual’s personal history can lie at the base of their disadvantaged state, and that provisions in their training programmes can address those legacies. The article concludes by suggesting that this model could form the basis of further research with other jobseekers from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Effects of Parent Implemented Visual Schedule Routines for African American Children with ASD in Low-Income Home Settings

ABSTRACT Low-income, minority families are underrepresented in the literature on parent training for school-aged children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although the use of visual supports, such as visual schedules, is considered to be an evidence-based practice for children with ASD in school, it is not known whether this strategy is effective for minority, low-income families when implemented by the parent in the home setting. This study used a multiple-baseline across routines design replicated across two African American child-mother dyads to examine the effects of a parent-implemented visual schedule procedure on child independent schedule use and between-activity transitions. Parent participants were trained to implement a visual schedule intervention during home routines. Although a functional relation was demonstrated across routines for one mother-child dyad, results varied across participants, highlighting the importance of treatment fidelity. Implications for future research, including the challenges involved in parent-implemented interventions in low-income settings for minority children with ASD, are addressed.
Plant SILAC: Stable-Isotope Labelling with Amino Acids of Arabidopsis Seedlings for Quantitative Proteomics

Stable Isotope Labelling by Amino acids in Cell culture (SILAC) is a powerful technique for comparative quantitative proteomics, which has recently been applied to a number of different eukaryotic organisms. Inefficient incorporation of labelled amino acids in cell cultures of Arabidopsis thaliana has led to very limited use of SILAC in plant systems. We present a method allowing, for the first time, efficient labelling with stable isotope-containing arginine and lysine of whole Arabidopsis seedlings. To illustrate the utility of this method, we have combined the high labelling efficiency (>95%) with quantitative proteomics analyses of seedlings exposed to increased salt concentration. In plants treated for 7 days with 80 mM NaCl, a relatively mild salt stress, 215 proteins were identified whose expression levels changed significantly compared to untreated seedling controls. The 92 up-regulated proteins included proteins involved in abiotic stress responses and photosynthesis, while the 123 down-regulated proteins were enriched in proteins involved in reduction of oxidative stress and other stress responses, respectively. Efficient labelling of whole Arabidopsis seedlings by this modified SILAC method opens new opportunities to exploit the genetic resources of Arabidopsis and analyse the impact of mutations on quantitative protein dynamics in vivo.
Deficiency citations for physical restraint use in nursing homes.

OBJECTIVES The average percentage of residents restrained in nursing homes is approximately 20%. Facilities that do not meet Health Care Financing Administration standards for restraint use may be issued a deficiency citation. This article investigates which structure and process factors of nursing homes are associated with a deficiency citation for restraint use. METHODS Nationally representative data from the 1997 On-line Survey Certification of Automated Records are used, first, to provide descriptive analyses, and second, for logistic regression analyses of structure and process factors associated with a deficiency citation for restraint use. RESULTS A total of 2,321 facilities were found to have at least one restraint deficiency citation, and 14,703 had none. After controlling for seven other key variables, five structural factors and six process factors are significant. The structural factors--larger bed size, for-profit ownership, and hospital based--were significantly associated with a higher likelihood of a deficiency citation for restraint use; whereas higher numbers of full-time equivalent specialists per resident and nurse aide training were significantly associated with a lower likelihood. The process factors--suctioning therapy, pain management, and bladder training--were significantly associated with a lower likelihood of a deficiency citation for restraint use; whereas intravenous therapy, higher use of catheters, and physical restraints were significantly associated with a higher likelihood of a deficiency citation. DISCUSSION This analysis establishes linkages between structures and processes and the outcome of a deficiency citation for restraint use. The structural results may have some utility for regulators. They could be used to develop a specific program to target facilities most commonly found to have inappropriate restraint use. The process results may have some utility for providers who could use the information to target residents for review of inappropriate restraint use.
The Relationships Among Emotional Intelligence, Gender, Coping Strategies, and Well-being inthe Management of Stress in Close Interpersonal Relationships and the Workplace

People with high levels of emotional intelligence (EI) seem to possess emotional skills that allow them to cope effectively with the challenges they face and promote well-being. Considering the role of EI in coping research may yield significant benefits for individuals because EI has consistently been linked with positive outcome measures, including life and work satisfaction, interpersonal functioning, healthy relationships, job performance, psychological well-being, physical health, and psychophysiological measures of adaptive coping (Martins, Ramalho, & Morin, 2010). Although the theoretical significance of EI to coping has been recognized (e.g., Bar-On & Parker, 2000; Snyder, 1999), relatively few studies explore the relationships among these constructs. The current research explores and compares how emotional intelligence (EI) facilitates adaptive coping across both interpersonal and occupational contexts – two central areas of our lives. It provides evidence in support of an extended adaptational model contextualizing EI within the transactional model of stress and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). In general, results from an online survey (N = 300) showed that most participants (approximately 66%) did not cope adaptively with stress. Results are consistent with a model which suggests that EI and the coping strategies people use when dealing with interpersonal and occupational stressors have significant effects on psychological well-being. The findings linked EI with adaptive coping behaviour, exposing both similarities and differences in the types of coping strategies people implement across interpersonal and occupational contexts, as well as their relationships to well-being. In addition, the
An evaluation of Fugu's network deadlock avoidance solution

In modern multiprocessor systems, interprocessor communication is extremely important. An anti-deadlock strategy is an essential part of a quality communication service. It guarantees that the system can always make forward progress, and it provides the system with tolerance over misbehaving applications. The design of the anti-deadlock strategy has significant impact on the system cost and performance. This thesis presents the Fugu strategy which is an end-toend anti-deadlock strategy. It achieves good performance with minimal architectural support. The Fugu strategy prevents deadlocks by emulating an infinite network resource and by preventing any application from blocking the network for an extended period of time. The infinite network resource is achieved in two steps with different performance trade-offs. First, the system converts the network resource consumption into memory consumption by emptying the network into memory when a possible deadlock is detected. Second, memory on each node is backed up by external I/O devices. The Fugu strategy provides a dedicated system network to ensure that each node can always reach the external resources. In our implementation, a deadlock-free network layer provides message transmission reliability, and a system timer is used to detect deadlocks. Our implementation further optimizes the system performance by tightly integrating the anti-deadlock strategy with the operating system scheduler. By allocating part of the second network's bandwidth to the flow-control process, network performance is drastically improved. This is because the flow-control process provides feed-back to allow the scheduler to effectively schedule processes that optimize the network usage. Analyses and Simulations show that a moderate second network design is sufficient to support a relatively large multiprocessor system. We also find that the Fugu strategy scales relatively well and performs better than two other common anti-deadlock strategies. Thesis Supervisor: Anant Agarwal Title: Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Temporal Evolution of nonlinear Dynamics in Ventricular Arrhythmia

Ventricular fibrillation (VF) is a rapidly lethal cardiac arrhythmia and one of the leading causes of sudden death in many industrialized nations. VF appears at random, but is produced by a spatially extended excitable system. We generated VF-like "pseudo-ECG" signals from a numerical caricature of cardiac tissue of 100 × 100 × 50 elements. The VF-like "pseudo-ECG" signals represent the propagation and break-up of an excitation scroll wave under FitzHugh–Nagumo dynamics. We use surrogate data and correlation dimension techniques to show that the dynamics observed in these computational simulations is consistent with the evolution of spontaneous VF in humans. Furthermore, we apply a novel adaptation of the traditional first return map technique to show that scroll wave break-up may be represented by a characteristic structural transition in the first return plot. The patterns and features identified by the first return mapping technique are found to be independent of the observation function and location. These methods offer insight into the evolution of VF and hint at potential new methods for diagnosis and analysis of this rapidly lethal condition.
Game Addiction from Psychosocial Health Perspective

Many of previous studies showed the effect of psychological variables such as depression and loneliness on game addiction. In addition, the effect of aggression on game addiction has also been studied with its associations with depression and loneliness. However, little research has proved the role of aggression between psychological variables and game addiction in a path model using sub-factors of each construct. With survey data of 789 subjects, the current study tested a SEM to investigate 1) effects of the three variables on game addiction, and 2) effects of loneliness and depression on aggression, and 3) mediation role of aggression between depression and game addiction. Results showed that depression and loneliness significantly affected user aggression, and aggression was the strongest determinant on game addiction among them. Notably, there was no significant effect of depression on game addiction. Aggression played a mediating role between depression and game addiction. Results and implications were discussed.
Improving Chinese Dependency Parsing with Self-Disambiguating Patterns

To solve the data sparseness problem in dependency parsing, most previous studies used features constructed from large-scale auto-parsed data. Unlike previous work, we propose a new approach to improve dependency parsing with context-free dependency triples (CDT) extracted by using self-disambiguating patterns (SDP). The use of SDP makes it possible to avoid the dependency on a baseline parser and explore the influence of different types of substructures one by one. Additionally, taking the available CDTs as seeds, a label propagation process is used to tag a large number of unlabeled word pairs as CDTs. Experiments show that, when CDT features are integrated into a maximum spanning tree (MST) dependency parser, the new parser improves significantly over the baseline MST parser. Comparative results also show that CDTs with dependency relation labels perform much better than CDT without dependency relation label.
The oncolytic effects of reovirus in canine solid tumor cell lines

Oncolytic virotherapy is a new strategy for cancer treatment for humans and dogs. Reovirus has been proven to be a potent oncolytic virus in human medicine. Our laboratory has previously reported that canine mast cell tumor and canine lymphoma were susceptible to reovirus. In this study, canine solid tumor cell lines (mammary gland tumor, osteosarcoma and malignant melanoma) were tested to determine their susceptibility towards reovirus. We demonstrated that reovirus induces more than 50% cell death in three canine mammary gland tumors and one canine malignant melanoma cell line. The reovirus-induced cell death occurred via the activation of caspase 3. Ras activation has been shown to be one of the important mechanisms of reovirus-susceptibility in human cancers. However, Ras activation was not related to the reovirus-susceptibility in canine solid tumor cell lines, which was similar to reports in canine mast cell tumor and canine lymphoma. The results of this study highly suggest that canine mammary gland tumor and canine malignant melanoma are also potential candidates for reovirus therapy in veterinary oncology.
Leu505 of Nox2 is crucial for optimal p67phox‐dependent activation of the flavocytochrome b558 during phagocytic NADPH oxidase assembly

The role of Leu505 of Nox2 on the NADPH oxidase activation process was investigated. An X‐CGD PLB‐985 cell line expressing the Leu505Arg Nox2 mutant was obtained, exactly mimicking the phenotype of a previously published X91+‐CGD case. In a reconstituted cell‐free system (CFS), NADPH oxidase and iodonitrotetrazolium (INT) reductase activities were partially maintained concomitantly with a partial cytosolic factors translocation to the plasma membrane. This suggests that assembly and electron transfer from NADPH occurred partially in the Leu505Arg Nox2 mutant. Moreover, in a simplified CFS using purified mutant cytochrome b558 and recombinant p67phox, p47phox, and Rac1proteins, we found that the Km for NADPH and for NADH was about three times higher than those of purified WT cytochrome b558, indicating that the Leu505Arg mutation induces a slight decrease of the affinity for NADPH and NADH. In addition, oxidase activity can be extended by increasing the amount of p67phox in the simplified CFS assay. However, the maximal reconstituted oxidase activity using WT purified cytochrome b558 could not be reached using mutant cytochrome b558. In a three‐dimensional model of the C‐terminal tail of Nox2, Leu505 appears to have a strategic position just at the entry of the NADPH binding site and at the end of the α‐helical loop (residues 484–504), a potential cytosolic factor binding region. The Leu505Arg mutation seems to affect the oxidase complex activation process through alteration of cytosolic factors binding and more particularly the p67phox interaction with cytochrome b558, thus affecting NADPH access to its binding site.