Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GRbeta expression in nasal polyp inflammatory cells and its relationship to the anti-inflammatory effects of intranasal fluticasone.

BACKGROUND Nasal polyposis disease is an inflammatory disorder with intense eosinophilic infiltration of respiratory mucosa that is often difficult to control with topical steroids. Recent evidence suggests that overexpression of the glucocorticoid receptor splice variant GRbeta in inflammatory cells might contribute to steroid insensitivity in diseases such as asthma. OBJECTIVE The purposes of this investigation were to determine whether nasal polyp (NP) inflammatory cells overexpress GRbeta and to examine whether GRbeta overexpression is associated with insensitivity to the potent topical steroid fluticasone propionate (FP). METHODS Biopsies were obtained from 10 subjects with NPs before and 4 weeks after treatment with intranasal FP. Middle turbinates biopsies from 6 healthy, nonallergic subjects served as normal controls. Biopsies were immunostained for inflammatory cell markers as well as GRbeta and probed for various cytokine mRNA. The anti-inflammatory response to FP was examined in relation to pretreatment levels of GRbeta expression. RESULTS The total numbers of inflammatory cells were increased in NPs. The percentage of inflammatory cells expressing GRbeta was also increased (40.5% +/- 19.2% vs 16.1% +/- 4.0%, P =.009). GRbeta expression in NPs was almost exclusive to T lymphocytes, eosinophils, and macrophages. An inverse correlation was observed between the baseline inflammatory cell GRbeta expression and the reduction after FP treatment in EG2-positive eosinophils, CD4-positive T lymphocytes, endothelial VCAM-1 expression, and IL-4 mRNA-positive cells. NPs that were "FP-insensitive" in terms of suppression of eosinophil numbers (major basic protein-positive) had a significantly greater percentage of GRbeta-positive inflammatory cells, a higher ratio of GRbeta-positive/GRalpha-positive cells, and increased numbers of GRbeta-positive eosinophils and macrophages in comparison with those that were "FP-sensitive. " "FP-insensitive" NPs also demonstrated a higher percentage of IL-5-positive inflammatory cells expressing GRbeta before and after FP treatment. CONCLUSION GRbeta expression appears to be a marker of steroid insensitivity in NPs. Expression of GRbeta by NP inflammatory cells, particularly T cells and eosinophils, might render them resistant to suppression by topical steroids and thereby contribute to persistent NP inflammation.
Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity

Language and social reality a metaphysics for conversation the linguistic analysis of pronouns - decomposition and distribution the diversity of personal pronoun inventories and their description "I" - indexicalities of responsisility and of place "you" - the grammatical expression of social relations "we" - speaking for more than one "yours and mine" - generalizations about possessive pronouns "he", "she" and "it" - the enigmas of grammar and gender on the origins and development of pronouns and pronoun use.
Acoustic-Articulatory Modeling With the Trajectory HMM

In this letter, we introduce an hidden Markov model (HMM)-based inversion system to recovery articulatory movements from speech acoustics. Trajectory HMMs are used as generative models for modelling articulatory data. Experiments on the MOCHA-TIMIT corpus indicate that the jointly trained acoustic-articulatory models are more accurate (lower RMS error) than the separately trained ones, and that trajectory HMM training results in greater accuracy compared with conventional maximum likelihood HMM training. Moreover, the system has the ability to synthesize articulatory movements directly from a textual representation.
De Facto School Segregation: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis

No issue of our time has drawn the courts more deeply into the vortex of social change and conflict than that of school segregation. In the 18 years since Brown v. Board of Education,' the Court, falteringly at first, decisively at last, has spelled out the remedial obligations of communities that had deliberately segregated children by race in their public schools.2 That task is nearly completed.3 However, the problem of de facto segregation-racial imbalance resulting merely from adherence to the traditional, racially neutral, neighborhood school policy in a community marked by racially segregated residential patterns4 -has yet to be faced. On this issue, the Supreme Court has
The motivation of Russian Federation social work students for pursuing a social work degree

This study examined Russian Federation social work students’ motivation for pursuing a degree in social work. The study’s sample included 176 students from two universities in the Russian Federation. The study found that motivation for studying social work was complex. Over half of the sample (54.9%) indicated that altruistic motivation was among their top two reasons for studying social work, and a desire to help others was the most common response to an open-ended item that asked students to explain their reasons for deciding to study social work. However, careerist motivation also clearly played a strong role in participants’ decisions to pursue social work education; 80.8 percent of the sample indicated that a careerist motivation was their first choice reason for pursuing social work education. The study found that sex, family of origin’s income level, and religious observance were not significantly related to motivation for pursuing social work education. Contrary to previous research that reported high attrition rates, the majority of respondents indicated that they planned to work in the social work field following completion of their education. The implications of this study for the continued development of the social work profession in the Russian Federation are discussed, as are the limitations of the study.
Skills training in research degree programmes : politics and practices

How might research degrees develop to improve both research student learning and employability? How should research student skills and development be evaluated? What are the skills that employers seek from research graduates? This book analyzes the development of research skills training and development and its wide-ranging impact on the UK research degree. The book examines the politics of skills training and its implications for academic culture as well as providing essential support and advice for practitioners and policy makers through examples of best practice. It also contains a thorough examination of the future of research degrees in the context of skills development and the supply of highly trained and specialized researchers to the academic and business world. Skills Training in Research Degree Programmes provides comprehensive coverage of skills training in research degree programmes in the UK, providing instructive, self-contained chapters that serve as a resource to all academics, trainers, research administrators and senior management involved in the postgraduate research community. Foreword by Professor Sir Gareth Roberts Contributors: Esat Alpay, Charlie Ball, Simon Beecroft, Tim Birtwistle, Tony Bromley, Howard Green, Ged Hall, Richard Hinchcliffe, Steve Hutchinson, Peter Lewis, Alistair McCulloch, Chris Park, Stuart Powell, Imelda Race, Julie Reeves, Al Richardson, Sara Shinton, Claire Souter, Peter Stokes, Judi Sture and Elaine Walsh.
gStudy traces of children's self-regulated learning in the Lifecycles Learning Kit

Evidence is accumulating that young children engage in self-regulated learning (SRL). One challenge is obtaining valid and reliable measures of children’s SRL. The gStudy software and its associated Learning Kits hold promise in this regard. We used gStudy to trace grade 1 children’s SRL as they studied the lifecycle of frogs in the Lifecycles Learning Kit (LLK). Children studied two interactive information texts that described the lifecycle of frogs and provided opportunities for SRL. After reading each text, children completed note templates configured for recording observations, asking questions, making predictions, and self-evaluating learning. Finally, they used gStudy’s concept mapping tool to group key concepts across texts. gStudy traces of children’s SRL, responses to comprehension questions, observation logs, self-evaluation templates, and concept maps were analyzed for evidence of (a) what children learned and (b) how they regulated learning. Results indicated participants achieved high text-based comprehension and high SRL. Also, statistically significant positive correlations existed between teachers’ ratings of students’ achievement and students’ achievement on LLK tasks, and between students’ SRL in the LLK and their achievement on LLK tasks. Children reported high motivation for studying with the LLK. Qualitative analyses of children’s observation logs and concept maps reveal their depth of understanding.
PHONEUTRIA SPIDER TOXINS BLOCK ISCHEMIA-INDUCED GLUTAMATE RELEASE AND NEURONAL DEATH OF CELL LAYERS OF THE RETINA

Purpose: To investigate the effect of calcium channel blockers, spider toxins, on cell viability and the glutamate content of ischemic retinal slices. Methods: Rat retinal slices were subjected to ischemia via exposure to oxygen-deprived low-glucose medium for 45 minutes. Slices were either treated or not treated with the toxins PhTx3, Tx3-3, and Tx3-4. After oxygen-deprived low-glucose insult, glutamate content and cell viability were assessed in the slices by confocal and optical microscopy. Results: In the retinal ischemic slices that were treated with PhTx3, Tx3-3, and Tx3-4, confocal imaging showed a decrease in cell death of 79.5 ± 3.1%, 75.5 ± 5.8%, and 61 ± 3.8%, respectively. Neuroprotective effects were also observed 15, 30, 60, and 90 minutes after the onset of the retinal ischemic injury. As a result of the ischemia, glutamate increased from 6.2 ± 1.0 nMol/mg protein to 13.2 ± 1.0 nMol/mg protein and was inhibited by PhTx3, Tx3-3, and Tx3-4 to 8.6 ± 0.7, 8.8 ± 0.9, and 7.4 ± 0.8 nMol/mg protein, respectively. Histologic analysis of the live cells in the outer, inner, and ganglion cell layers of the ischemic slices showed a considerable reduction in cell death by the toxin treatment. Conclusion: Spider toxins reduced glutamate content and cell death of retinal ischemic slices.
Role of Acetyl Coenzyme A Synthesis and Breakdown in Alternative Carbon Source Utilization in Candida albicans

ABSTRACT Acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) is the central intermediate of the pathways required to metabolize nonfermentable carbon sources. Three such pathways, i.e., gluconeogenesis, the glyoxylate cycle, and β-oxidation, are required for full virulence in the fungal pathogen Candida albicans. These processes are compartmentalized in the cytosol, mitochondria, and peroxosomes, necessitating transport of intermediates across intracellular membranes. Acetyl-CoA is trafficked in the form of acetate by the carnitine shuttle, and we hypothesized that the enzymes that convert acetyl-CoA to/from acetate, i.e., acetyl-CoA hydrolase (ACH1) and acetyl-CoA synthetase (ACS1 and ACS2), would regulate alternative carbon utilization and virulence. We show that C. albicans strains depleted for ACS2 are unviable in the presence of most carbon sources, including glucose, acetate, and ethanol; these strains metabolize only fatty acids and glycerol, a substantially more severe phenotype than that of Saccharomyces cerevisiae acs2 mutants. In contrast, deletion of ACS1 confers no phenotype, though it is highly induced in the presence of fatty acids, perhaps explaining why acs2 mutants can utilize fatty acids. Strains lacking ACH1 have a mild growth defect on some carbon sources but are fully virulent in a mouse model of disseminated candidiasis. Both ACH1 and ACS2 complement mutations in their S. cerevisiae homolog. Together, these results show that acetyl-CoA metabolism and transport are critical for growth of C. albicans on a wide variety of nutrients. Furthermore, the phenotypic differences between mutations in these highly conserved genes in S. cerevisiae and C. albicans support recent findings that significant functional divergence exists even in fundamental metabolic pathways between these related yeasts.
Low-Complexity Least-Squares Dynamic Synchrophasor Estimation Based on the Discrete Fourier Transform

In this paper, the expressions for the phasor parameter estimates returned by the Taylor-based weighted least-squares (TWLS) approach, achieved using either complex-valued or real-valued variables, are derived. In particular, the TWLS phasor estimator and its derivatives are expressed as weighted sums of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT) of the analyzed waveform and its derivatives. The derived expressions show that the TWLS algorithm is sensitive to lower order harmonics and interharmonics located close to the waveform frequency when few waveform cycles are analyzed. Also, the algorithm sensitivity to wideband noise is explained. The relationship between the TWLS phasor estimator and the waveform DTFT is then specifically analyzed when either a static or a second-order dynamic phasor model is assumed. Moreover, a simple and accurate procedure for evaluating the TWLS estimator of the dynamic phasor parameters is proposed. The derived expressions for the real-valued version are then approximated in order to reduce the required computational burden so as to achieve the simplified TWLS (STWLS) procedure. That procedure can be advantageously employed in real-time low-cost applications when the reference frequency used in the TWLS approach is estimated in runtime to improve estimation accuracy. Finally, computer simulations show that the phasor parameter estimates returned by the STWLS procedure when the waveform frequency is estimated by the interpolated discrete Fourier transform method comply with the M-class of performance if an appropriate number of waveform cycles is considered.
Interactions between impact-induced vapor clouds and the ambient atmosphere: 1. Spectroscopic observations using diatomic molecular emission

[1] The importance of interactions between impact-induced vapor clouds and an ambient atmosphere has been widely recognized, and theoretical approaches have provided significant insights. Few experiments, however, have been done to observe directly the energy partitioning during the interactions between impact vapor clouds and the ambient atmosphere. The present study attempts to understand the difference between actual and theoretical model impact vapor clouds produced under an atmosphere. A series of hypervelocity impact experiments was conducted using a spectroscopic measurement method. Plastic (polycarbonate) impactors allowed simulating vaporization phenomena associated with natural impactors (e.g., silicates and metals) at high impact velocities into water. Water as the target material served to suppress the effect of fine-grained fragments from the target. Emission spectra of the leading part of downrange-moving impact vapor clouds were captured with high-speed spectrometers as a function of time for various ambient pressures. The emission spectra exhibit strong molecular bands from carbon compounds as well as blackbody continuum radiation. In order to estimate the temperature of the radiation source, we carried out a spectral-form inversion analysis based on diatomic emission theory. Obtained molecular radiation temperatures range from 4500 K to 5500 K with relatively high accuracy (∼2%) and place a number of well-defined constraints for the radiation source. A simple theoretical model that is often assumed for an impact-induced vapor cloud, however, does not readily satisfy the constraints. This strongly suggests that real impact-induced vapor clouds may be more complex than previously thought.
The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and U.S. Hospital Operations

The Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 initiated several changes to Medicare payment policy in an effort to slow the growth of hospital Medicare payments and ensure the future of the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. Although subsequent federal legislation relaxed some original proposals, restored funds were limited and directed to specific types of hospitals. In addition, these Medicare policy changes came at a time when hospitals faced private sector payment constraints. This paper assesses the short-term effects of the BBA on operations of nonprofit hospitals in the United States and compares these effects to those observed in the early 1980s during implementation of the Medicare prospective payment system (PPS). We found that some operational changes instituted by hospitals facing financial pressures from the BBA were similar to those observed for hospitals that faced pressure from Medicare PPS, including efforts to contain Medicare cost growth, to expand outpatient service provision, and to contain hospital staffing. However, during PPS implementation hospitals experienced declining inpatient use and growing profit margins, whereas post-BBA hospitals experienced growing inpatient use and declining margins.
Hierarchical Decomposition of LTL Synthesis Problem for Nonlinear Control Systems

This paper deals with the control synthesis problem for a continuous nonlinear dynamical system under a linear temporal logic (LTL) formula. The proposed solution is a top-down hierarchical decomposition of the control problem involving three abstraction layers of the problem, iteratively solved from the coarsest to the finest. The LTL planning is first solved on a small transition system only describing the regions of interest involved in the LTL formula. For each pair of consecutive regions of interest in the resulting accepting path satisfying the LTL formula, a discrete plan is then constructed in the partitioned workspace to connect these two regions while avoiding unsafe regions. Finally, an abstraction refinement approach is applied to synthesize a controller for the dynamical system to follow each discrete plan. The second main contribution, used in the third abstraction layer, is a new monotonicity-based method to overapproximate the finite-time reachable set of any continuously differentiable system. The proposed framework is demonstrated in simulation for a motion planning problem of a mobile robot modeled as a disturbed unicycle.
Planarian Hh Signaling Regulates Regeneration Polarity and Links Hh Pathway Evolution to Cilia

Hedgehog, Flatworms, and Regeneration The Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway plays pivotal roles during embryonic development, post-embryonic tissue maintenance, and disease. In spite of having at its core a collection of highly conserved components, the Hh pathway displays unusual differences in signal transduction mechanisms among flies, fish, and mammals. Using planarians (nonparasitic flatworms), Rink et al. (p. 1406, published online 22 October) report a key role for Hh signaling during adult regeneration and provide evidence that the perplexing diversity of transduction mechanisms may have arisen from animal-specific losses of an ancestral association between cilia and Hh signaling. Analysis of the Hedgehog signaling pathway in planaria suggests an ancestral association of this signaling pathway and cilia function. The Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway plays multiple essential roles during metazoan development, homeostasis, and disease. Although core protein components are highly conserved, the variations in Hh signal transduction mechanisms exhibited by existing model systems (Drosophila, fish, and mammals) are difficult to understand. We characterized the Hh pathway in planarians. Hh signaling is essential for establishing the anterior/posterior axis during regeneration by modulating wnt expression. Moreover, RNA interference methods to reduce signal transduction proteins Cos2/Kif27/Kif7, Fused, or Iguana do not result in detectable Hh signaling defects; however, these proteins are essential for planarian ciliogenesis. Our study expands the understanding of Hh signaling in the animal kingdom and suggests an ancestral mechanistic link between Hh signaling and the function of cilia.
New Media, New Publics: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere of Islam

FOR well over a generation, the public sphere of Islam has been an arena of contest in which activists and militants brought forth challenges to traditional interpretative practices and authority to speak for Islam, especially to articulate its social interests and political agendas. Patrick Gaffney (1994) has astutely noted that their claims draw on social and political experience as alternatives both to expertise in textual hermeneutics associated with the learned men of Islam (ulema) and to more illuminationist priorities exemplified in Sufi and generally mystical ways. Opening the social field to new spokespeople and new discursive practices not only challenges authority long since thought settled to interpret what religion requires, but also blurs boundaries between pubic and private discourse and fosters new habits of production and consumption tied to media and particularly to new media. Ideas and issues circulated in intellectuals’ books a generation ago are now found in popular chapbooks (Gonzalez-Quijano, 1998) and on street-corner newsstands (Starrett, 1995); audiocassettes that carried sermons
Impact of Parathyroid Hormone on Bone Density in Long-term Renal Transplant Patients with Good Graft Function

Background. It remains unknown whether low-grade hyperparathyroidism persisting beyond the first year postrenal transplantation has any impact on bone density. Methods. Parathyroid hormone (PTH), glomerular filtration rate (GFR), and bone density (by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry [DXA]) were monitored in the follow-up of our transplant patients. Of 260 long-term renal transplant patients, 41 fulfilled the following criteria: Two DXA measurements performed at least five years apart (median 6.8 years, range 5–9); GFR ≥35 ml/min per 1.73 m2 body surface area (median 50, range 35–76); no bisphosphonate treatment or parathyroidectomy in the study period. Results. In all, 40% had mean PTH values above the normal limit 6.9 pmol/L (65 pg/ml), and the range was 0.9–17 pmol/L. In the first DXA, 8 of 41 patients had osteoporosis and 17 more had osteopenia. Hip bone density Z-score was –0.60 SD, range (–2.6 to +2.3). The absolute median value (g/cm2) remained unchanged until the second DXA, but among patients there was a variation which ranged from –2.3% to +1.7% per year. In a simple linear regression analysis, these changes were significantly correlated to mean PTH (r2=0.16, P=0.010). Median lumbar spine bone density was also reduced in the first DXA and was not different at follow-up, but with this variable individual changes did not correlate to mean PTH. Conclusion. Bone density is often reduced and PTH remains elevated in long-term renal transplant patients with good transplant function. Slight to moderate elevation of PTH is associated with reduction in hip bone mineral density.