Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Molecular Profiling of CD34+ Cells in Idiopathic Myelofibrosis Identifies a Set of Disease‐Associated Genes and Reveals the Clinical Significance of Wilms' Tumor Gene 1 (WT1)

This study was aimed at the characterization of a gene expression signature of the pluripotent hematopoietic CD34+ stem cell in idiopathic myelofibrosis (IM), which would eventually provide novel pathogenetic insights and/or diagnostic/prognostic information. Aberrantly regulated genes were revealed by transcriptome comparative microarray analysis of normal and IM CD34+ cells; selected genes were also assayed in granulocytes. One‐hundred seventy four differentially expressed genes were identified and in part validated by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Altered gene expression was corroborated by the detection of abnormally high CD9 or CD164, and low CXCR4, membrane protein expression in IM CD34+ cells. According to class prediction analysis, a set of eight genes (CD9, GAS2, DLK1, CDH1, WT1, NFE2, HMGA2, and CXCR4) properly recognized IM from normal CD34+ cells. These genes were aberrantly regulated also in IM granulocytes that could be reliably differentiated from control polycythemia vera and essential thrombocythemia granulocytes in 100% and 81% of cases, respectively. Abnormal expression of HMGA2 and CXCR4 in IM granulocytes was dependent on the presence and the mutational status of JAK2V617F mutation. The expression levels of both CD9 and DLK1 were associated with the platelet count, whereas higher WT1 expression levels identified IM patients with more active disease, as revealed by elevated CD34+ cell count and higher severity score. In conclusion, molecular profiling of IM CD34+ cells uncovered a limited number of genes with altered expression that, beyond their putative role in disease pathogenesis, are associated with patients' clinical characteristics and may have potential prognostic application.
Land subsidence characteristtics of Bandung Basin as revealed by ENVISAT ASAR and ALOS PALSAR interferometry

In this study, characteristics of land subsidence in Bandung Basin, Indonesia was estimated using the C-band ENVISAT ASAR and the L-band ALOS PALSAR data, acquired between 2002 to 2008 and 2007 to 2011, respectively. The software, GEOS-APSI (Advanced Persistent Scatterer Interferometry), was used to map the long term land displacement. GEOS-APSI is an in-house developed software by GEOS at UNSW for Interferometric SAR Persistent Scatterer Interferometry. Several subsidence zones were identified in the basin including areas in Cimahi, Dayeuh Kolot, Rancaekek, and Solokan Jeruk. Subsidence with a maximum of 250 mm/yr was observed in some of the zones. The results were validated with six epochs of GPS survey between 2002 and 2010. The standard deviation of difference in subsidence between InSAR and GPS measurements for ENVISAT ASAR and ALOS PALSAR was 13 mm/yr and 22 mm/yr, respectively.
Toll-like receptor stimulation in splenic marginal zone lymphoma can modulate cell signaling, activation and proliferation

Recent studies on splenic marginal zone lymphoma identified distinct mutations in genes belonging to the B-cell receptor and Toll-like receptor signaling pathways, thus pointing to their potential implication in the biology of the disease. However, limited data is available regarding the exact role of TLRs. We aimed at characterizing the expression pattern of TLRs in splenic marginal zone lymphoma cells and their functional impact on the activation, proliferation and viability of malignant cells in vitro. Cells expressed significant levels of TLR1, TLR6, TLR7, TLR8, TLR9 and TLR10 mRNA; TLR2 and TLR4 showed a low, variable pattern of expression among patients whereas TLR3 and TLR5 mRNAs were undetectable; mRNA specific for TLR signaling molecules and adapters was also expressed. At the protein level, TLR1, TLR6, TLR7, TLR9 and TLR10 were detected. Stimulation of TLR1/2, TLR2/6 and TLR9 with their respective ligands triggered the activation of IRAK kinases, MAPK and NF-κB signaling pathways, and the induction of CD86 and CD25 activation molecules, although in a heterogeneous manner among different patient samples. TLR-induced activation and cell viability were also inhibited by a specific IRAK1/4 inhibitor, thus strongly supporting the specific role of TLR signaling in these processes. Furthermore, TLR2/6 and TLR9 stimulation also significantly increased cell proliferation. In conclusion, we demonstrate that splenic marginal zone lymphoma cells are equipped with functional TLR and signaling molecules and that the stimulation of TLR1/2, TLR2/6 and TLR9 may play a role in regulating disease pathobiology, likely promoting the expansion of the neoplastic clone.
Immunophenotype of Human Adipose‐Derived Cells: Temporal Changes in Stromal‐Associated and Stem Cell–Associated Markers

Adipose tissue represents an abundant and accessible source of multipotent adult stem cells and is used by many investigators for tissue engineering applications; however, not all laboratories use cells at equivalent stages of isolation and passage. We have compared the immunophenotype of freshly isolated human adipose tissue‐derived stromal vascular fraction (SVF) cells relative to serial‐passaged adipose‐derived stem cells (ASCs). The initial SVF cells contained colony‐forming unit fibroblasts at a frequency of 1:32. Colony‐forming unit adipocytes and osteoblasts were present in the SVF cells at comparable frequencies (1:28 and 1:16, respectively). The immunophenotype of the adipose‐derived cells based on flow cytometry changed progressively with adherence and passage. Stromal cell–associated markers (CD13, CD29, CD44, CD63, CD73, CD90, CD166) were initially low on SVF cells and increased significantly with successive passages. The stem cell–associated marker CD34 was at peak levels in the SVF cells and/or early‐passage ASCs and remained present, although at reduced levels, throughout the culture period. Aldehyde dehydrogenase and the multidrug‐resistance transport protein (ABCG2), both of which have been used to identify and characterize hematopoietic stem cells, are expressed by SVF cells and ASCs at detectable levels. Endothelial cell–associated markers (CD31, CD144 or VE‐cadherin, vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2, von Willebrand factor) were expressed on SVF cells and did not change significantly with serial passage. Thus, the adherence to plastic and subsequent expansion of human adipose‐derived cells in fetal bovine serum‐supplemented medium selects for a relatively homogeneous cell population, enriching for cells expressing a stromal immunophenotype, compared with the heterogeneity of the crude SVF.
Predictors of Fear of Death and Self-Mortality: An Atlantic Canadian Perspective

This research was undertaken to explore gender, religiosity, perceived time-left-to-live and the interactions between these variables as predictors of fear of death in 144 Atlantic Canadian students using the Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS). Predictions about cause, age, marital status, and place of death were also derived from the Do-It-Yourself-Death-Certificate and compared with actuarial data to determine accuracy. Results showed significant gender effects on 2 MFODS subscales, such that women demonstrated greater fear for significant others and fear of the dead. More religious participants expressed greater fear of the dead, fear of being destroyed, and fear of conscious death, whereas participants with lower religious conviction were more fearful of the unknown. In addition, significant interactions between the predictors on various subscales of the MFODS were observed. Finally, both men and women made inaccurate death-related predictions when compared to actuarial data but predicted differential causes of death.
KANAZAWA'S 'GENERALIZED TRIVERS-WILLARD HYPOTHESIS' AND THE HERITABILITY OF OFFSPRING SEX-RATIO *

The 'generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis' (gTWH) proposes that heritable traits as- sociated with reproductive success of one sex will be positively associated with a genetic ten- dency to produce offspring of that sex. However, unlike the original Trivers-Willard hypothesis, the predictions of gTWH are proposed to be borne out regardless of environmental conditions. This is a problem because it ignores the influence of the hypothetical genetic variance in offspring sex-ratio on population operational sex-ratio and thus offspring's likely success in finding a mate. Accordingly, there is a notable lack of evidence to support the existence of such heritable varia- tion in offspring sex-ratio in humans or other mammals. The genetic tendency for all individuals within populations of birds and mammals to produce a male offspring with the same probability as one another is well-established. In fact it is a cornerstone of population sex-ratio theory, upon which is built hypotheses of facultative (environmental) sex-ratio adjustment, including the origi- nal Trivers-Willard hypothesis. I therefore suggest that any phenotypic correlations between off- spring sex-ratio and traits that may be associated with the reproductive success of offspring of one sex are most likely to be environmental in origin.
Distinguishing On-Target versus Off-Target Activity in Early Antibacterial Drug Discovery Using a Macromolecular Synthesis Assay

The macromolecular synthesis assay was optimized in both S. aureus and E. coli imp and used to define patterns of inhibition of DNA, RNA, protein, and cell wall biosynthesis of several drug classes. The concentration of drug required to elicit pathway inhibition differed among the antimicrobial agents tested, with inhibition detected at concentrations significantly below the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for tedizolid; within 4-fold of the MIC for ciprofloxacin, cefepime, vancomycin, tetracycline, and chloramphenicol; and significantly above the MIC for rifampicin and kanamycin. In a DNA gyrase/topoisomerase IV structure-based drug design optimization program, the assay rapidly identified undesirable off-target activity within certain chemotypes, altering the course of the program to focus on the series that maintained on-target activity.
Research Africa Network (RAN) RAN Working Paper WP/17/039 Enhancing ICT for Environmental Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study examines how increasing ICT penetration in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) can contribute towards environmental sustainability by decreasing CO 2 emissions. The empirical evidence is based the Generalised Method of Moments and forty-four countries for the period 2000-2012. ICT is measured with internet penetration and mobile phone penetration while CO 2 emissions per capita and CO 2 emissions from liquid fuel consumption are used as proxies for environmental degradation. The following findings are established: First, from the non-interactive regressions, ICT (i.e. mobile phones and the internet) does not significantly affect CO 2 emissions. Second, with interactive regressions, increasing ICT has a positive net effect on CO 2 emissions per capita while increasing mobile phone penetration alone has a net negative effect on CO 2 emissions from liquid fuel consumption. Policy thresholds at which ICT can change the net effects from positive to negative are computed and discussed. These policy thresholds are the minimum levels of ICT required, for the effect of ICT on CO 2 emissions to be negative. Other practical implications for policy and theory are discussed.
Examining accuracy of screening mammography using an event order model

Screening mammography is a widely used method for breast cancer detection. For each mammogram we propose a performance model based on order of outcomes. That is, we envision an initial assessment, a follow up assessment if the initial one is positive and, eventually, a determination of whether cancer was present or not. A model can be built at each stage reflecting effects due to patient characteristics, to the facility where mammogram was performed and to the radiologist reading the mammogram. Since assessment is not perfectly associated with outcome, familiar rates of agreement and disagreement are of interest. These rates can be investigated at various levels of risk factors of interest. The approach is illustrated with screening mammography data from the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, WA. A Bayesian framework is adopted for inference and an analysis of the data set is presented. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Temperament and stress resilience in school-age children: a within-families study.

OBJECTIVE Stress resilience was assessed in 81 school-age children, from within 32 families acknowledging severe psychosocial stress. Resilient and nonresilient children, identified via competence and behavior disorder measures from school and home, were compared. METHOD Parents and teachers completed questionnaires and rating scales, and children were observed and assessed at home on attributes of temperament, self-esteem, ability, gender, and mother-child warmth. RESULTS Individual differences in child and family attributes that were predictive of competent child functioning varied according to the outcome measure used. Teachers' ratings of positive temperament (low emotional reactivity, high social engagement) best discriminated children showing resilience on all indicators, i.e., behavioral and social competence both at home and at school, with maternal warmth and the number of adverse life events the child had recently experienced also contributing. Level of maternal stress and individual differences in child intelligence were related to academic adjustment, but the child's age, sex, ability, and self-concept were not significant discriminators of behavioral adjustment. CONCLUSIONS The findings emphasize the salience of a positive temperament as a resilience factor as well as the need to consider different estimates and contexts in assessing resilience for children growing up in stressful situations.
Cosegmentation from similar backgrounds

Recently, the common objects are often required to be extracted from a group of images in many applications, such as video coding and model training. Co-segmentation is a new and efficient method for this requirement. In realistic applications, we observe that the images usually contain similar backgrounds (namely similar scene co-segmentation), such as the city landmark images collected from the web or the key frames sampled from a video. Meanwhile, the existing co-segmentation has not paid so much attention on the similar scene co-segmentation, and the insufficiently accurate segments may be provided by the existing methods. In this paper, we propose an active contours based co-segmentation model to provide foregrounds from the similar backgrounds. We combine the background consistency constraint with the foreground consistency constraint to form the energy function, and use the method of level-set and the calculus of variations to minimize the model. We also speed up the model by the hierarchical structure and the superpixel technique. We test the method on both the image and video dataset. The results show that the proposed model can obtain larger IOU values than the state-of-the-art co-segmentation methods.
Long-Term Human Motion Prediction by Modeling Motion Context and Enhancing Motion Dynamic

Human motion prediction aims at generating future frames of human motion based on an observed sequence of skeletons. Recent methods employ the latest hidden states of a recurrent neural network (RNN) to encode the historical skeletons, which can only address short-term prediction. In this work, we propose a motion context modeling by summarizing the historical human motion with respect to the current prediction. A modified highway unit (MHU) is proposed for efficiently eliminating motionless joints and estimating next pose given the motion context. Furthermore, we enhance the motion dynamic by minimizing the gram matrix loss for long-term motion prediction. Experimental results show that the proposed model can promisingly forecast the human future movements, which yields superior performances over related state-of-the-art approaches. Moreover, specifying the motion context with the activity labels enables our model to perform human motion transfer.
Corticosteroid induced changes in plasma amino acids and thyroid activity in dairy cows treated early or late during lactation.

Abstract The effect of a single injection of flumethasone (6 α , 9 α -difluoro-16 α -methyl-11 β , 17 α , 21-triol-l, 4-pregnadien-3, 20-dione) or dexamethasone TMA (9 α -fluoro-16 α -methyl-11 β , 17 α , 21-triol-l, 4-pregnadien-3, 20-dione 21-trimethylacetate) at their optimal clinical doses, for ketosis treatment (2.5 and 15mg) on the plasma amino acid pool and on thyroid function was studied in dairy cows early and late in lactation. Both corticosteroids temporarily increased most amino acid in the plasma. Quality and quantity of the responses were significantly dependent upon the steroid administered and stage of lactation. Flumethasone superseded dexamethasone TMA in mobilizing glucogenic amino acids. Significantly more amino acids, taurine, serine, glutamine, glycerine, valine, methionine, isoleucine, leucine, tyrosine and phenylalanine were found early in lactation. Simultaneously, there were nearly uniform increases in total plasma iodine and protein bound iodine for 12 to 24 hours, followed by decreases 36 to 72 hours after injection, which were more pronounced early in lactation. The total plasma iodine mobilizing effect of flumethasone lasted about 12 hours longer in both stages of lactation. There were significant differences in total plasma and protein bound iodine base levels between stages of lactation, being highest post-partum.
Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) – an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS)

Asgari N, Owens T, Frøkiær J, Stenager E, Lillevang ST, Kyvik KO. Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) – an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS). Acta Neurol Scand: 2011: 123: 369–384. © 2010 John Wiley & Sons A/S.
LINKING PERSONAL COMPETENCIES WITH TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP STYLE EVIDENCE FROM THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY IN THAILAND

This study explored the linkage between personal competencies and leadership behaviours as well as their influences on leadership outcomes and subordinates’ work performance. Personal competencies were measured using the Project Manager Competency Development (PMCD) tool. Leadership behaviours and outcomes were measured using Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). Data was collected from construction projects in Thailand. Findings revealed that leadership outcomes have significant positive relationship with all personal competencies specified in the PMCD framework, every factor in the transformational style and contingent reward factor in the transactional style. Transformational leaders tend to produce high work quality, work quantity, and problem solving creativity from subordinates. Findings further verified that all PMCD personal competencies have significant positive relationship with every factor in the transformational style. It implies that project managers who apply the transformational style and/or have high personal competencies indicated in PMCD framework are likely to generate greater leadership outcomes and work performance on construction projects.
One Size Fits Some : A Reassessment of EMU’s Core–periphery Framework

This study provides a new multivariate assessment of core–periphery structures within the European Union. By applying different cluster algorithms to the broad set of Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure indicators, we detect a relatively stability-oriented and homogeneous group of European Union core countries that would be suitable for having a common currency. Unlike previous results, our analysis shows that countries such as the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden would also fit well within such a hypothetical euro area. However, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain plus Cyprus and Croatia on the southern periphery, as well as most of the countries of the eastern enlargement are found to form very distinct clusters in terms of competitiveness, indebtedness, and economic performance. Our findings thus reveal that a single monetary policy can be appropriate only for some countries, even when measured using the official Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure scoreboard specifically designed to monitor the smooth functioning of the Economic and Monetary Union.
Voluntary screening program for HIV in pregnancy. Cost effectiveness.

OBJECTIVE To determine the effectiveness of a voluntary human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) screening program in pregnancy. STUDY DESIGN Using a business decision theory analysis model, we estimated the outcomes and costs of the two possible decisions by our patients (test/no test). Patients with a positive HIV screen would undergo evaluation and possible prophylactic antiviral therapy. The model was utilized to evaluate the Naval Medical Center San Diego Program from 1995-1997. RESULTS Prevalence of HIV in active duty Navy personnel during the years evaluated were 1995, 0.024%; 1996, 0.028%; and 1997, 0.022%. Patients screened for HIV during these years were 1995, 3,874; 1996, 3,924; and 1997, 4,127 (n = 11,925). Incidence of HIV seroprevalence in patients screened during the study period was zero. The number of patients declining HIV screening was: 1995, 10; 1996, 8; and 1997, 5. During the same period, reported HIV seroprevalence among pregnant patients in the United States was 1.5/1,000. CONCLUSION HIV seroprevalence in our pregnant population (zero) was lower than expected, considering the national pregnancy prevalence and Navy prevalence. The expected number of cases of positive HIV screens was 17.8. The cost of the program for the study period was $103,748. The cost of care for one positive neonate ranges between $100,000 and $200,000.
Unemployment and Labor Market Institutions

The development of the unemployment rate di¤ers substantially between OECD countries. In this paper we investigate to what extent these di¤erences are related to labor market institutions. In our analysis we use data of eighteen OECD countries over the period 1960-1994 and show that the way in which institutions interact is important.