Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differing chemical compositions of three teas may explain their different effects on acute blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rats.

BACKGROUND Heavy tea consumption is suggested to be unsuitable for hypertensive people. However, the bioactive substances in different varieties of tea leaves are very different. This study compares the effects of three Chinese teas - C. sinensis, C. ptilophylla and C. assamica var. kucha - on blood pressure (BP) and heart rate in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). RESULTS Intragastric administration of C. sinensis extract led to an acute increase in systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and heart rate in SHRs. However, C. ptilophylla and C. assamica var. kucha exerted no obvious influences on SBP, DBP or heart rate. Similar to the extract of C. sinensis, intragastric administration of caffeine also led to an acute increase in BP and heart rate in SHRs. In contrast, theobromine and theacrine - purine alkaloids predominantly contained in C. ptilophylla and C. assamica var. kucha, respectively - had no pressor effects. The effect of caffeine on BP was related to the regulation of plasma epinephrine and norepinephrine levels in SHRs. CONCLUSION The different effects of C. sinensis, C. ptilophylla and C. assamica var. kucha on BP might be explained, at least partially, by the differences in the varieties and contents of purine alkaloids.
Calcium Orthophosphates as Bioceramics: State of the Art

In the late 1960s, much interest was raised in regard to biomedical applications of various ceramic materials. A little bit later, such materials were named bioceramics. This review is limited to bioceramics prepared from calcium orthophosphates only, which belong to the categories of bioactive and bioresorbable compounds. There have been a number of important advances in this field during the past 30–40 years. Namely, by structural and compositional control, it became possible to choose whether calcium orthophosphate bioceramics were biologically stable once incorporated within the skeletal structure or whether they were resorbed over time. At the turn of the millennium, a new concept of calcium orthophosphate bioceramics—which is able to promote regeneration of bones—was developed. Presently, calcium orthophosphate bioceramics are available in the form of particulates, blocks, cements, coatings, customized designs for specific applications and as injectable composites in a polymer carrier. Current biomedical applications include artificial replacements for hips, knees, teeth, tendons and ligaments, as well as repair for periodontal disease, maxillofacial reconstruction, augmentation and stabilization of the jawbone, spinal fusion and bone fillers after tumor surgery. Exploratory studies demonstrate potential applications of calcium orthophosphate bioceramics as scaffolds, drug delivery systems, as well as carriers of growth factors, bioactive peptides and/or various types of cells for tissue engineering purposes.
Imaging and spectroscopic approaches to probe brain energy metabolism dysregulation in neurodegenerative diseases

Changes in energy metabolism are generally considered to play an important role in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases. Whether these changes are causal or simply a part of self-defense mechanisms is a matter of debate. Furthermore, energy defects have often been discussed solely in the context of their probable neuronal origin without considering the cellular heterogeneity of the brain. Recent data point towards the existence of a tri-cellular compartmentation of brain energy metabolism between neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes, each cell type having a distinctive metabolic profile. Still, the number of methods to follow energy metabolism in patients is extremely limited and existing clinical techniques are blind to most cellular processes. There is a need to better understand how brain energy metabolism is regulated in health and disease through experiments conducted at different scales in animal models to implement new methods in the clinical setting. The purpose of this review is to offer a brief overview of the broad spectrum of methodological approaches that have emerged in recent years to probe energy metabolism in more detail. We conclude that multi-modal neuroimaging is needed to follow non-cell autonomous energy metabolism dysregulation in neurodegenerative diseases.
A Cost-Effective Random Testing Method for Programs with Non-Numeric Inputs

Random testing (RT) has been widely used in the testing of various software and hardware systems. Adaptive random testing (ART) is a family of random testing techniques that aim to enhance the failure-detection effectiveness of RT by spreading random test cases evenly throughout the input domain. ART has been empirically shown to be effective on software with numeric inputs. However, there are two aspects of ART that need to be addressed to render its adoption more widespread-applicability to programs with nonnumeric inputs, and the high computation overhead of many ART algorithms. We present a linear-order ART algorithm for software with non-numeric inputs. The key requirement for using ART with non-numeric inputs is an appropriate “distance” measure. We use the concepts of categories and choices from category-partition testing to formulate such a measure. We investigate the failure-detection effectiveness of our technique by performing an empirical study on 14 object programs, using two standard metrics-F-measure and P-measure. Our ART algorithm statistically significantly outperforms RT on 10 of the 14 programs studied, and exhibits performance similar to RT on three of the four remaining programs. The selection overhead of our ART algorithm is close to that of RT.
THUHCSI in MediaEval 2018 Emotional Impact of Movies Task

In this paper we describe our team’s approach to the MediaEval 2018 Challenge Emotional Impact of Movies. We extract several sets of audio and visual features, and then apply the time-sequential models such as LSTM and BLSTM to model the continuous flow of emotion in movies. Different fusion methods are also considered and discussed. The results show that our methods achieve promising performance, indicating the effectiveness of the features and the models we choose.
Best Practices for Dealing with Price Volatility in Utah's Residential Construction Market

Price volatility is a problem that affects each discipline involved in the residential construction industry. The myriad factors that can have an impact on construction costs are such that it is extremely hard to anticipate upcoming changes in a timely and accurate way. When prices fluctuate during the course of a project, estimates become erroneous and completion of projects within expected budgets becomes difficult. Increasing prices typically leave contractors with the majority of the risk burden due to the enforceability of contracts were likely executed months prior. Numerous methods have been developed for managing the risk of price volatility. The various methods available are implemented based on the disciplines involved, the types of contracts being used, and the existing market conditions. Typical practices transfer the risk of price volatility to other involved disciplines, be it the owner, the contractor, subcontractors, or suppliers. However, no method has proven completely effective at removing the risks associated with price volatility. Involved disciplines need to utilize a combination of best practices to protect themselves. They need to coordinate and communicate with the other disciplines to ensure that the risk of price volatility is appropriately accounted for and managed throughout the construction process.
A Measure of Time Series’ Predictability Using Genetic Programming

_______________________________________________________________ Based on standard genetic programming (GP) paradigm, we introduce a new test of time series’ predictability. It is an index computed as the ratio of two fitness values from GP runs when searching for a series’ data generating process. One value belongs to the original series, while the other belongs to the same series after it is randomly shuffled. Theoretically, the index boundaries are between zero and 100, where zero characterizes stochastic processes while 100 typifies predictability. This test helps in reducing model search space and in producing more reliable forecast models.
An International Comparison and Analysis of Lotteries and the Distribution of Lottery Expenditures

Lotteries are found in nearly half of the world's countries, with annual worldwide lottery ticket sales topping $115 billion. Despite the global presence of lottery games, there has been little research conducted on any international aspect of lotteries. This paper presents the first-ever examination and comparison of lottery games from around the world. Differences in both absolute and relative lottery expenditures are presented. Estimates for the income elasticity of demand for lottery tickets provide evidence on the distributional burden of lottery expenditures. These estimates consider each country by continental location and country income level. Further analysis reveals that lower income countries could adopt Lotto games in order to increase revenues. Recognizing that the distributional impact of lottery games is one of the greatest concerns surrounding lotteries, it is shown that the introduction of Lotto games does not significantly affect the distributional burden of lottery ticket expenditures. Given the international scope of lotteries and the availability of international lottery game data, the paper concludes by discussing future research on international lottery games.
Structural and functional consequence of neonatal sympathectomy on the blood vessels of spontaneously hypertensive rats.

Neonatal sympathectomy of spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and control Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) was performed by a combined treatment with antiserum to nerve growth factor and guanethidine during the first 4 weeks after birth. The development of hypertension was completely prevented in the treated SHR: at 28 to 30 weeks of age, systolic blood pressure of treated SHR was 139 +/- 2 mm Hg as compared with 195 +/- 8 mm Hg in untreated SHR. The extent of sympathectomy was verified by histofluorescence. Fluorescence histochemistry for catecholamine-containing nerves showed a complete absence of adrenergic nerves in the mesenteric arteries of treated rats. A supersensitivity to norepinephrine was exhibited by mesenteric arteries, anococcygeus muscle, and tail arteries from the treated SHR and WKY. In the mesenteric vascular bed, maximal response to norepinephrine was significantly reduced by sympathectomy. Sympathectomy also abolished the responses (e.g., generation of excitatory junctional potentials) of tail arteries to electrical stimulation of perivascular nerves. Morphometric measurements of three categories of mesenteric arteries showed that sympathectomy had no effect on the hypertrophic change of smooth muscle cells in the conducting vessels, but it prevented the hyperplastic changes of the muscle cells from reactive, muscular arteries and small resistance vessels. These results suggest that one of the primary roles of the overactive sympathetic nervous system in the development of hypertension in SHR is manifested through its trophic effect on the arteries of SHR. This trophic effect appears to cause a hyperplastic change in the smooth muscle cells in the reactive and resistance vessels, thereby contributing to the development of hypertension in older SHR.
Genomic structural variations lead to dysregulation of important coding and non‐coding RNA species in dilated cardiomyopathy

The transcriptome needs to be tightly regulated by mechanisms that include transcription factors, enhancers, and repressors as well as non‐coding RNAs. Besides this dynamic regulation, a large part of phenotypic variability of eukaryotes is expressed through changes in gene transcription caused by genetic variation. In this study, we evaluate genome‐wide structural genomic variants (SVs) and their association with gene expression in the human heart. We detected 3,898 individual SVs affecting all classes of gene transcripts (e.g., mRNA, miRNA, lncRNA) and regulatory genomic regions (e.g., enhancer or TFBS). In a cohort of patients (n = 50) with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), 80,635 non‐protein‐coding elements of the genome are deleted or duplicated by SVs, containing 3,758 long non‐coding RNAs and 1,756 protein‐coding transcripts. 65.3% of the SV‐eQTLs do not harbor a significant SNV‐eQTL, and for the regions with both classes of association, we find similar effect sizes. In case of deleted protein‐coding exons, we find downregulation of the associated transcripts, duplication events, however, do not show significant changes over all events. In summary, we are first to describe the genomic variability associated with SVs in heart failure due to DCM and dissect their impact on the transcriptome. Overall, SVs explain up to 7.5% of the variation of cardiac gene expression, underlining the importance to study human myocardial gene expression in the context of the individual genome. This has immediate implications for studies on basic mechanisms of cardiac maladaptation, biomarkers, and (gene) therapeutic studies alike.
On the EU's performance and leadership in global environmental governance: the case of the Nagoya Protocol

ABSTRACT Analysing the European Union's (EU) role in the negotiations of the 2010 Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing regarding genetic resources, this article argues for the integration of (1) the EU's policy objectives and (2) their achievement in the analysis of the EU's performance and leadership in international (environmental) negotiations. We first develop a conceptual and explanatory framework that highlights the inter-relationship between both aspects. We then establish that the EU pursued conservative policy objectives in the Nagoya process (becoming more moderate in 2006/2007) but was highly successful in achieving its goals. The explanatory analysis provides illustrative evidence of how the degree of ambition of the EU's policy objectives directly affects and indirectly frames goal achievement: while conservative objectives are easier to realize than ambitious ones, factors such as domestic legislation, internal interest homogeneity, universal norms and external policy making procedures may be especially important for achieving ambitious goals.
Analyzing the Impact of International Tourism on Economic Growth in Turkey

Using quarterly data and two different indicators of the volume of international tourism, namely the international tourist expenditures and the total number of international tourist arrivals, this paper aims to investigate whether tourism has been a vehicle of economic growth in Turkey. We use the ARDL approach to cointegration and error correction model and find evidence of long-run uni-directional causality running from the volume of international tourism (both the tourist expenditures and tourist arrivals) and real exchange rates to economic growth, but not vice versa. The results indicate that the Turkish case supports the tourism-led growth hypothesis.
Sustainability and competencies in organisational contexts: a proposal of a model of interaction

The objective of this article is to propose a model of interaction between sustainability and competencies in organisational contexts. It explores the construction of a model for understanding organisational sustainability, which is supported by contributions from organisational competencies and linked with the theory of organisational action. This leads to a brief presentation of topics related to discourse on the central idea of interaction. The article culminates by explaining the model’s logic: that competencies concede the ability for organisations to manage sustainability, and since the theory of organisational action helps clarify how organisational and societal action mesh in attempts to achieve holistic sustainability, their alignment links sustainability and competences in an organisational context with management strategies that allow an organisation to become a social agent that is aware of its place in reaching overall sustainable development.
The limited scope of policy appraisal in the context of referendum democracy - the case of regulatory impact assessment in Switzerland

The article investigates how the specific political system context shapes the effectiveness of policy appraisals. Based on a single case study on Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) in Switzerland, we argue that the meager impact and success of the RIA is due to its institutional context, namely Swiss semi-direct referendum democracy. Direct democratic involvement and the division of power in the course of consensual government are both great barriers for effective policy appraisal. We conclude by discussing the possibilities and limits of policy appraisal in a polity emphasizing political acceptance over evidence-based policy-making like Switzerland and address the normative issue of legitimacy of public action. Furthermore, we discuss how future research may build upon the presented findings in a more comparative manner.
Role of Rac1 in fibronectin-induced adhesion and motility of human corneal epithelial cells.

PURPOSE The fibronectin-integrin system plays an important role in adhesion and migration of corneal epithelial cells and thereby contributes to epithelial wound healing. The role of Rac1, a member of the Rho family of GTPases, in the intracellular signaling responsible for regulation of the adhesion and motility of corneal epithelial cells by fibronectin was examined. METHODS Simian virus 40-transformed human corneal epithelial (HCE) cells were plated on fibronectin or on bovine serum albumin as a control. Cell motility was monitored by time-lapse video microscopy. The actin cytoskeleton and focal adhesions were detected by staining of cells with rhodamine-phalloidin and antibodies to phosphotyrosine, respectively. The activation of Rac1 and phosphorylation of its effector PAK were evaluated with a pull-down assay and immunoblot analysis, respectively. The effects of mutant forms of Rac1 were determined by cell transfection. RESULTS HCE cells plated on fibronectin manifested greater levels of cell adhesion and motility than did those plated on bovine serum albumin. Fibronectin also induced the accumulation of F-actin and the formation of focal adhesions at the cell periphery as well as the activation of Rac1 and the phosphorylation of PAK. Expression of the dominant negative mutant Asn17Rac1 inhibited the effects of fibronectin on cell adhesion and motility, the actin cytoskeleton, and focal adhesions. Expression of the constitutive active mutant Val12Rac1 mimicked the effects of fibronectin on F-actin and focal adhesions. CONCLUSIONS Rac1 is necessary for the promotion of HCE cell adhesion and motility by fibronectin. It therefore probably plays an important role in corneal wound healing.
Centralized Gradient Pattern for Face Recognition

This paper proposes a novel face recognition approach using a centralized gradient pattern image and image covariance-based facial feature extraction algorithms, i.e. a two-dimensional principal component analysis and an alternative two-dimensional principal component analysis. The centralized gradient pattern image is obtained by AND operation of a modified center-symmetric local binary pattern image and a modified local directional pattern image, and it is then utilized as input image for the facial feature extraction based on image covariance. To verify the proposed face recognition method, the performance evaluation was carried out using various recognition algorithms on the Yale B, the extended Yale B and the CMU-PIE illumination databases. From the experimental results, the proposed method showed the best recognition accuracy compared to different approaches, and we confirmed that the proposed approach is robust to illumination variation. key words: centralized gradient pattern, local binary pattern, local directional pattern, face recognition
Experiences in Developing an Experimental Robotics Course Program for Undergraduate Education

An interdisciplinary undergraduate-level robotics course offers students the chance to integrate their engineering knowledge learned throughout their college years by building a robotic system. Robotics is thus a core course in system and control-related engineering education. This paper summarizes the experience of developing robotics courses presented in the literature and shares the author's experiences through many years of teaching and developing robotics courses with other educators in the Department of Mechatronics, Chungnam National University (CNU), Daejeon, Korea. First, the CNU robotics course described here has classroom and laboratory sections. In class, students learn the theories behind robotics and practice them by performing simulation studies. In parallel, students perform robotics exercises in the laboratory. Second, the lab exercises are focused on hands-on experiments on robot systems; these include an experimental kit, LEGO robots, humanoid robots, industrial robots, and home service robots. Third, competition-based learning is explored by assigning a class project to develop a boxing robot, which covers both manipulation and mobility. Finally, the course introduces robotics-associated outreach activities. The analysis of several years of student evaluation is presented.
Managerial innovations in central government: not wrong, but hard to explain

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of managerial innovations in the public sector, identifying the reasons why their uptake and use may fail.Design/methodology/approach – The problem is investigated empirically through a case study approach. The change processes resulting from the adoption of two managerial innovations within the same Italian Central Government Institution are illustrated in detail.Findings – Both cases represent a failure in the adoption and use of managerial innovations, attributable to a complex interplay of external and organisational forces. The empirical investigation points out the relevancy of individuals' actions and choices. The real explanation for the failure of both projects in fact seems to be key individuals' inability: first to “make sense” of what the innovation was about and second to communicate this “sense” throughout the organisation.Research limitations/implications – The findings are based on data from the Italian Central Government, and .
Is graduate employability the ‘whole-of-higher-education-issue’?

Graduate employability has become an issue in Vietnam since many university students do not satisfy the needs of employers. Universities often receive the strongest criticism on the poor employability assets graduates possess. The ill-preparation of university graduates is considered the result of the out dated and irrelevant curriculum in the higher education system, of the traditional teaching methods and the absent of career guidance in most universities. This article, however, aims to challenge this common criticism that university is to blame for the ill-preparation for employment of its graduates. By conducting a qualitative research inviting the voices of both students and employers on the issue, this article wants to address a wider context and circumstance and also the related issues surrounding the transition from university to work of Vietnamese university graduates. It suggests that not only universities, but also students, employers and other related stakeholders (i.e. student’s family, government and educational policy makers) should acknowledge the changes in society, should be aware of the cultural features at work, and should see their responsibility in the process. They all should make an effort to create mutual understanding, to collaborate and to enhance the development of graduate employability in the Vietnamese context.