Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cartilage destruction by matrix degradation products

The progressive destruction of articular cartilage is one of the hallmarks of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Cartilage degradation is attributed to different classes of catabolic factors, including proinflammatory cytokines, aggrecanases, matrix metalloproteinases, and nitric oxide. Recently, matrix degradation products generated by excessive proteolysis in arthritis have been found to mediate cartilage destruction. These proteolytic fragments activate chondrocytes and synovial fibroblasts via specific cell surface receptors that can stimulate catabolic intracellular signaling pathways, leading to the induction of such catalysts. This review describes the catabolic activities of matrix degradation products, especially fibronectin fragments, and discusses the pathologic implication in cartilage destruction in osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Increased levels of these degradation products, found in diseased joints, may stimulate cartilage breakdown by mechanisms of the kind demonstrated in the review.
Physical Skills and Work Performance in Policing

Research has indicated that most police tasks seem to be, in general, fairly undemanding physically. Nevertheless, physical skills may be particularly important in police work. This study examines the extent to which this is so. The study is based on a survey of police students as well as observations and informal conversations with police students and police officers, together with interviews with police students. The findings indicate that physical skills are important in police work for three reasons: while physical skills seem to be essential in situations that necessitate physical force, physical skills also seem important from health and psychological perspectives. This study indicates that even if most police tasks do not seem to require excellent physical skills, it is important that police officers and police students exercise and have these skills.
Revisiting curriculum, the numbers game and the inequality problem

This essay reflects on Daniel Tanner’s ‘Race to the top and leave the children behind’ by attention to the way our particular national histories impact on our thinking about what is valuable, the kinds of curriculum pressures and commonsenses that are now at work internationally at government and policy level, the specific forms these are taking in Australia, and the ways they are impacting positively and negatively on concerns about equity and difference. The article argues that neither testing nor lack of testing will solve the issue of schooling and difference and social inequalities. The Program for International Student Assessment agenda has influenced the language and rationale through which differences in schooling outcomes are made visible, and it also contributes to an overarching political and public sense of education as a competitive race, and as an economic vehicle. In Australia, this is underpinning some support for better funding of disadvantaged students, but also building a climate of competitive anxiety that embeds parental concerns about maintaining differential advantage. Beyond the testing arena, the substance of the curriculum is also being reshaped and this essay discusses the ways this too is important in relation to concerns about difference and social equity.
Communism, conformity, and civil liberties : a cross-section of the nation speaks its mind

Whether in terms of sociological structures or psychological nuances, Com munism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties, originally published in 1955, is a recognized landmark. Stouffer helped strengthen the fundamental liberties of all Americans by showing dangerous consequences of efforts to thwart a perceived Communist conspiracy, including some of the very real liberties that can be destroyed in the process of a witch-hunt.
The nature of the Wolf–Rayet galaxy Mrk 209 from photoionization models

We present a detailed photoionization model of the brightest knot of star formation in the blue compact dwarf galaxy Mrk 209. The model reproduces the intensities of main lines emitted by the ionized gas, resulting in a very good agreement between observed and predicted line temperatures and chemical abundances of the observed ionic species. The model has been calculated using the spectral energy distribution of a massive cluster of recent formation as the ionizing source. The features of Wolf–Rayet (WR) stars observed in the spectrum of the object, along with its ionizing properties, lead to different solutions for the ages and characteristics of the ionizing stellar populations. The found solutions are compatible with either a composite population of two ionizing clusters or a continuous star formation. In the first case, a young cluster, with an age less than 3 Myr, would be responsible for most of the ionization properties while an older cluster, with either 3.2 or 4.2 Myr, would be responsible for the emission of the observed WR features in the spectrum of the knot. In the second case, the duration of the star formation episode is found to be 3.6 Myr. The addition of a certain amount of dust was required in order to reproduce correctly the measured electron temperatures. This dust implies a gas/dust ratio of 6.13 × 10−3, identical to that in the Milky Way, and a fraction of absorbed photons of f= 0.58. The taking into account the dust grain physics combined with a thick-shell geometry solves the problem of the heating in this object and allows the fitting of the auroral lines, the line temperatures and the ionization structure of the nebula with a negligible presence of temperature fluctuations, in agreement with the most recent results found for this type of objects from the measurement of the Balmer jump temperature. An analysis of the ionization structure of the gas as well as the calculation of the main ionization correction factors for the unseen ionic stages is presented.
Increasing Mammography Screening among African American Women in Rural Areas

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a church-based breast cancer screening education program on mammography attainment by African American women 40 years old and older in rural Alabama. The sample consisted of 192 women who volunteered to participate in the study through 13 African American churches in a rural, economically-depressed Alabama county. The design was quasi-experimental and had some features of community-based participatory research. Churches were randomly assigned to three groups (full program, partial program and control). The full program (group educational session plus an in-home visit from a Home Health Educator) positively affected mammography attainment (38% increase from baseline to Time 2). In addition, barriers to mammography attainment were reduced for women who had not obtained a mammogram by follow-up. Community-based participatory projects in collaboration with churches and cooperative extension programs have the potential to reduce racial disparities in breast cancer in rural areas.
WHYPER: Towards Automating Risk Assessment of Mobile Applications

Application markets such as Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store have played an important role in the popularity of smartphones and mobile devices. However, keeping malware out of application markets is an ongoing challenge. While recent work has developed various techniques to determine what applications do, no work has provided a technical approach to answer, what do users expect? In this paper, we present the first step in addressing this challenge. Specifically, we focus on permissions for a given application and examine whether the application description provides any indication for why the application needs a permission. We present WHYPER, a framework using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to identify sentences that describe the need for a given permission in an application description. WHYPER achieves an average precision of 82.8%, and an average recall of 81.5% for three permissions (address book, calendar, and record audio) that protect frequently-used security and privacy sensitive resources. These results demonstrate great promise in using NLP techniques to bridge the semantic gap between user expectations and application functionality, further aiding the risk assessment of mobile applications.
Multi-level logic optimization for low power using local logic transformations

We present an efficient technique to reduce the switching activity in a CMOS combinational logic network based on local logic transformations. These transformations consist of adding redundant connections or gates so as to reduce the switching activity. Simple and efficient procedures, based on logic implication, for identifying the sources and targets of the redundant connections are presented. Additionally, procedures that permit the designer to trade-off power and delay after the transformations are described. Results of experiments on the MCNC benchmark circuits are given. The results indicate that significant reduction of the switching activities of a CMOS combinational circuit can be achieved with a very low area overhead and low computational cost.
Assessment of tumor size reduction improves outcome prediction of positron emission tomography/computed tomography after chemotherapy in advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma.

PURPOSE Positron emission tomography (PET) after chemotherapy can guide consolidating radiotherapy in advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). This analysis aims to improve outcome prediction by integrating additional criteria derived by computed tomography (CT). PATIENTS AND METHODS The analysis set consisted of 739 patients with residues≥2.5 cm after chemotherapy from a total of 2,126 patients treated in the HD15 trial (HD15 for advanced stage Hodgkin's disease: Quality assurance protocol for reduction of toxicity and the prognostic relevance of fluorodeoxyglucose-positron-emission tomography [FDG-PET] in the first-line treatment of advanced-stage Hodgkin's disease) performed by the German Hodgkin Study Group. A central panel performed image analysis and interpretation of CT scans before and after chemotherapy as well as PET scans after chemotherapy. Prognosis was evaluated by using progression-free survival (PFS); groups were compared with the log-rank test. Potential prognostic factors were investigated by using receiver operating characteristic analysis and logistic regression. RESULTS In all, 548 (74%) of 739 patients had PET-negative residues after chemotherapy; these patients did not receive additional radiotherapy and showed a 4-year PFS of 91.5%. The 191 PET-positive patients (26%) receiving additional radiotherapy had a 4-year PFS of 86.1% (P=.022). CT alone did not allow further separation of patients in partial remission by risk of recurrence (P=.9). In the subgroup of the 54 PET-positive patients with a relative reduction of less than 40%, the risk of progression or relapse within the first year was 23.1% compared with 5.3% for patients with a larger reduction (difference, 17.9%; 95% CI, 5.8% to 30%). CONCLUSION Patients with HL who have PET-positive residual disease after chemotherapy and poor tumor shrinkage are at high risk of progression or relapse.
Finding Home in Migration: Montagnard Refugees and Post-Migration Identity

Abstract This essay examines post-migration identity of the Montagnard men who came to the United States as refugees. In particular, given the salience of home to identity, interview participants' notions of home space are explored. Findings are discussed first in terms of emotional, relational, sociocultural and political significance of home spaces that were identified by the participants. Then, the articulations of home are discussed in terms of implications they have for the current post-migration theories of cross-cultural adaptation and diaspora. The Montagnard men's experiences with and views of home shed light on applicability and limitations of the theories.
Using Online Computer Tailoring to Promote Physical Activity: A Randomized Trial of Text, Video, and Combined Intervention Delivery Modes

Website-delivered interventions are increasingly used to deliver physical activity interventions, yet problems with engagement and retention result in reduced effectiveness. Hence, alternative modes of online intervention delivery need to be explored. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the acceptability and effectiveness of a computer-tailored physical activity intervention delivered on the Internet in 3 delivery modes: video, text, or both. Australian adults (N = 803), recruited through e-mail, were randomized into the three delivery modes and received personal physical activity advice. Intervention content was identical across groups. Repeated measures analyses of variance were used to compare the three groups regarding acceptability, website usability, and physical activity. Participants in the video group accepted the content of the physical activity advice significantly better (F = 5.59; p < .01), and spent significantly more time on the website (F = 21.19; p < .001) compared with the text and combination groups. Total physical activity improved significantly over time in all groups (F = 3.95; p < .01). Although the combination group increased physical activity the most, few significant differences between groups were observed. Providing video-tailored feedback has advantages over the conventional text-tailored interventions; however, this study revealed few behavioral differences. More studies, examining alternative delivery modes, that can overcome the limitations of the present study, are needed.
The seizure Locus Encodes the DrosophilaHomolog of the HERG Potassium Channel

Mutations in the seizure (sei) locus cause temperature-induced hyperactivity, followed by paralysis. Gene cloning studies have established that the seizuregene product is the Drosophila homolog ofHERG, a member of the eag family of K+ channels implicated in one form of hereditary long QT syndrome in humans. A series of five null alleles with premature stop codons are all recessive, but viable. A missense mutation in thesei gene, which changes the charge at a conserved glutamate residue near the outer mouth of the pore, has a semidominant phenotype, suggesting that the mutant seizure protein acts as a poison in a multimeric complex. Transformation rescue of a null allele with a cDNA under the control of an inducible promoter demonstrates that induced expression of seizure potassium channels in adults rescues the paralytic phenotype. This rescue decays with at1/2 of ∼1-1.5 d after gene induction is discontinued, providing the first estimate of ion channel stability in an intact, multicellular animal.
Genetic analysis of Escherichia coli RadA: functional motifs and genetic interactions

The RadA/Sms protein is a RecA‐related protein found universally in eubacteria and plants, implicated in processing of recombination intermediates. Here we show that the putative Zn finger, Walker A motif, KNRXG motif and Lon protease homology domain of the Escherichia coli RadA protein are required for DNA damage survival. RadA is unlikely to possess protease activity as the putative active site serine is not required. Mutants in RadA have strong synergistic phenotypes with those in the branch migration protein RecG. Sensitivity of radA recG mutants to azidothymidine (AZT) can be rescued by blocking recombination with recA or recF mutations or by overexpression of RuvAB, suggesting that lethal recombination intermediates accumulate in the absence of RadA and RecG. Synthetic genetic interactions for survival to AZT or ciprofloxacin exposure were observed between RadA and known or putative helicases including DinG, Lhr, PriA, Rep, RuvAB, UvrD, YejH and YoaA. These represent the first affected phenotypes reported for Lhr, YejH and YoaA. The specificity of these effects sheds new light on the role of these proteins in DNA damage avoidance and repair and implicates a role in replication gap processing for DinG and YoaA and a role in double‐strand break repair for YejH.
Narcissism predicts impulsive buying: phenotypic and genetic evidence

Impulsive buying makes billions of dollars for retail businesses every year, particularly in an era of thriving e-commerce. Narcissism, characterized by impulsivity and materialism, may serve as a potential antecedent to impulsive buying. To test this hypothesis, two studies examined the relationship between narcissism and impulsive buying. In Study 1, we surveyed an online sample and found that while adaptive narcissism was not correlated with impulsive buying, maladaptive narcissism was significantly predictive of the impulsive buying tendency. By investigating 304 twin pairs, Study 2 showed that global narcissism and its two components, adaptive and maladaptive narcissism, as well as the impulsive buying tendency were heritable. The study found, moreover, that the connections between global narcissism and impulsive buying, and between maladaptive narcissism and impulsive buying were genetically based. These findings not only establish a link between narcissism and impulsive buying but also help to identify the origins of the link. The present studies deepen our understanding of narcissism, impulsive buying, and their interrelationship.
Doubling zeta integrals and local factors for metaplectic groups

Abstract We develop the theory of the doubling zeta integral of Piatetski-Shapiro and Rallis for metaplectic groups Mp2n , and we use it to give precise definitions of the local γ-factors, L-factors, and ε-factors for irreducible representations of Mp2n × GL1, following the footsteps of Lapid and Rallis.
A Location Model for Urban Hierarchy Planning with Population Dynamics

Spatial development plans often aim at defining the level of hierarchy to assign to the urban centers of a region, each level being characterized by a class of facilities. The services provided at the facilities typically include education, health care, public safety, and justice. In this paper we present a multiperiod, multilevel location model for urban hierarchy planning. The objective of the model is to maximize the aggregate accessibility of population to the different classes of facilities, taking explicitly into account the fact that location decisions influence the spatial distribution of population growth. The model was applied to a problem dealt with in Portugal during the preparation of the Centro Region Development Plan 1994: the redefinition of the regions' urban hierarchy. The results obtained through the model demonstrate its potential usefulness in real-world applications.
Sport and Social Capital

Even though voluntary sport organizations make up the largest part of the voluntary sector in many western countries, few studies have been carried out focusing on sport as part of civil society. Against this background, the aim of the article is to study how voluntary sport organizations operate and what social and political effects they might have through the concept of social capital. The theoretical part of the article identifies the most useful dimensions of the social-capital concept for this topic, lists hypotheses and suggests three relevant social mechanisms. Empirical studies show how social capital related to participation in voluntary sport organizations is distributed and the consequences this has for various forms of social capital: generalized trust and political commitments. Analyses are based on Norwegian data. The results show that being a member of a voluntary sport organization involves social capital which is conducive to generalized trust and political commitment. Yet, the effect of sport organizations is weaker than for voluntary organizations in general, stronger when membership in sport organizations goes together with other memberships (more weak ties) and stronger the less politicized the social effect in question.
Binge drinking vs. drunkenness. The questionable threshold of excess for young Italians

The use of a standard definition of ‘binge drinking’ can potentially offer the advantage of ‘objectifying’ the concept of excessive drinking. Nevertheless, the term has become somewhat confusing, as it is often used as a synonym of drunkenness, making cross-cultural comparison difficult. The present study investigates the meaning Italian young people attribute to binge drinking, to explain the gap between self-reported rates of drunkenness and episodes of binge drinking found by comparative youth drinking surveys. About 134 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted, targeting adolescents (aged 15–17) and young adults (aged 22–24) who had admitted to drinking excessively. In addition, an online forum was created, using a video clip as a stimulus and asking for web users' comments (132 were analysed). Results show how in the view of Italian bingers, binge drinking does not necessarily entail drunkenness, but only being tipsy. This is what they aim at when they drink, while they have negative attitudes and expectations regarding intoxication and its effects. This boundary establishes the concept of excess and marks the threshold between socially acceptable and unacceptable drinking. In conclusion, the concept of binge drinking cannot be used as a synonym of drunkenness, which young people in Italy judge severely.
Components of Story Comprehension and Strategies to Support Them in Hearing and Deaf or Hard of Hearing Readers

In this article, we review the skills that have been found to be related to good story comprehension in novice readers with normal hearing and describe the relative weight each plays. The relationship between effective story comprehension and lower level skills (such as syntactic awareness and vocabulary knowledge) is considered, and the casual relations between discourse-level skills (such as inference abilities and story-structure understanding) and good text comprehension are delineated. We then compare this information with what is known about the abilities of children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and review the current research findings concerned with text intervention strategies designed for this population. Drawing on research with both hearing and DHH readers, we make suggestions for future text intervention strategies and research for DHH readers, which emphasize the need for research on practices that are directed (at least in part) at training the discourse-level component skills involved in effective story comprehension.
Apoptotic cells are generated at every division of in vitro cultured T cell lines.

Long- and short-term T cell lines form the backbone of many assays for T cell function and also represent important tools for use in human immunotherapy. Despite much study concerning the requirements for T cell activation and growth in culture there is relatively little information about the kinetics of proliferation and cell death in such cultures. Here we studied these parameters in a long-term CD8(+) T cell line using a tetrameric MHC reagent and the fluorescent dye CFSE. We observed proliferation of the T cells within 24 h of restimulation with antigen and IL-2 and the cells continued to divide once every 12 h on average. Interestingly, a proportion of cells entered apoptosis with each cell division, showing that a degree of programmed cell death occurred constantly in vitro, not merely at the end of the culture period when antigen or the necessary growth factors became limiting. This information should assist in the design of more efficient protocols for generating large numbers of specific T cells for clinical use.