Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modulated electro-hyperthermia induced loco-regional and systemic tumor destruction in colorectal cancer allografts

Background: Modulated electro-hyperthermia (mEHT), a non-invasive intervention using 13.56 MHz radiofrequency, can selectively target cancers due to their elevated glycolysis (Warburg-effect), extracellular ion concentration and conductivity compared to normal tissues. We showed earlier that mEHT alone can provoke apoptosis and damage associated molecular pattern (DAMP) signals in human HT29 colorectal cancer xenografts of immunocompromised mice. Materials: Here we tested the mEHT induced stress and immune responses in C26 colorectal cancer allografts of immunocompetent (BALB/c) mice between 12-72 h post-treatment. The right side of the symmetrical tumors grown in both femoral regions of mice were treated for 30 minutes, while the left side tumors served for untreated controls. Results: Loco-regional mEHT treatment induced an ongoing and significant tumor damage with the blockade of cell cycle progression indicated by the loss of nuclear Ki67 protein. Nuclear shrinkage, apoptotic bodies and DNA fragmentation detected using TUNEL assay confirmed apoptosis. Cleaved/activated-caspase-8 and -caspase-3 upregulation along with mitochondrial translocation of bax protein and release of cytochrome-c were consistent with the activation of both the extrinsic and intrinsic caspase-dependent programmed cell death pathways. The prominent release of stress-associated Hsp70, calreticulin and HMGB1 proteins, relevant to DAMP signaling, was accompanied by the significant tumor infiltration by S100 positive antigen presenting dendritic cells and CD3 positive T-cells with only scant FoxP3 positive regulatory T-cells. In addition, mEHT combined with a chlorogenic acid rich T-cell promoting agent induced significant cell death both in the treated and the untreated contralateral tumors indicating a systemic anti-tumor effect. Conclusions: mEHT induced caspase-dependent programmed cell death and the release of stress associated DAMP proteins in colorectal cancer allografts can provoke major immune cell infiltration. Accumulating antigen presenting dendritic cells and T-cells are likely to contribute to the ongoing tumor destruction by an immunogenic cell death mechanism both locally and through systemic effect at distant tumor sites.
Bargaining over Australian public service cuts: Do forcing strategies work?

Although a Labor government fiscal stimulus had helped Australia weather the 2008 global financial crisis, budget deficits increased, and the public service was targeted for economies. The Liberal/National (Coalition) opposition won office in 2013, promising public sector cuts. In this context, the Walton et al. concept of a forcing strategy helps analyse the 2014–2016 bargaining round in the Australian Public Service. A forcing strategy involves three negotiating processes: distributive bargaining to achieve concessions in pay and working conditions, the structuring of attitudes to heighten animosity between the negotiating parties, and the management of internal differences to minimise intragroup conflicts. The Liberal/National (Coalition) government adopted elements of these approaches, requiring Australian Public Service agencies to reduce a range of employment conditions to justify pay increases. Interactions between Australian Public Service management and the principal Australian Public Service trade union, the Community and Public Sector Union became increasingly hostile over the course of the bargaining round. In addition, internal differences emerged between the Australian Public Service Commission, which oversaw the bargaining process, and individual Australian Public Service agencies. We consider the efficacy of this forcing strategy in light of the potential for the Community and Public Sector Union to mobilise its membership to resist such an approach to pay negotiations.
Hydraulic Scale Modeling of Sediments for Pressurized Sand Traps

iii Abstract In recent years, several Norwegian hydropower plants have experienced operational problems due to entrainment of sediments in the turbine water. This may lead to reduced turbine efficiency and hence financial losses. To address this problem, new research on sand traps has been initiated. The sand traps are located upstream or inside the headrace tunnel with the purpose of allowing sediments to settle, reducing the mean particle size and overall sediment load in the turbine water. All sand traps do unfortunately not function optimally, and this thesis is part of an ongoing research project aiming to improve Norwegian sand traps. In this thesis, the aim was to propose which modeling materials to use for future physical modeling of pressurized sand traps. In order to properly address this, a literature review outlining the previous contributions on the topics hydraulic scale modeling, scaling of sediment transport and erosion, and pressurized sand traps was conducted. This was followed by general theory regarding hydraulics, similitude and dimensional analysis. The theoretical part of the thesis lays the foundation for a better understanding of the scaling and the mechanics behind sediment transport in tunnels and sand traps. A field trip was organized to Sand trap 3 in the 960 MW Tonstad hydropower plant in southern Norway. This trip was set for the annual draining and cleaning of the sand trap. A series of sediment samples were taken from the sand trap and analyzed back at the Hydraulic Laboratory at NTNU. The resulting grain size distribution curves became the basis for deciding on which modeling sediments to test in an experimental flume prior to the completion of the sand trap model. Three different modeling materials available in the laboratory were selected for testing. Those were (i) sand, (ii) carbonate rock and (iii) PMMA. The modeling materials had different properties and hence behaved differently in the model. A survey showed that sand often is the preferred modeling material for hydraulic scale models due to its similar properties to natural sediments. When testing the sand in the model at a velocity equivalent to the prototype, the sand formed ripple marks throughout the length of the model upon settling. The carbonate rock had the same density as the sand, but larger particles and settled therefore in the upstream part of the sand trap. PMMA was the only lightweight modeling material and represented the smallest fraction of prototype sediments recreated in the model. The PMMA also gave the deposition pattern in the model most similar to the prototype and is together with sand, recommended for further use in the modeling of pressurized sand traps.
Effect of nicotine on cerebellar granule neuron development

To assess the role of nicotinic cholinergic receptors (nAChR) on neuronal maturation, nAChR expression and the direct effects of nAChR activation were examined in cerebellar external granular layer (EGL) precursors isolated in vitro. Treatment of EGL neuroblasts with nicotine elicited a concentration‐dependent increase in DNA content and synthesis, implying an increase in cell numbers. Pretreatment of cultures with the nAChR antagonist dihydro‐β‐erythroidine (DHBE) attenuated nicotine‐induced changes in DNA abundance and synthesis. Furthermore, chronic nicotine treatment for 4–7 days promoted EGL cell survival. Epibatidine but not cytisine stimulated granule neuroblast DNA synthesis and survival. Survival effects mediated by nicotine and epibatidine were attenuated by pretreating cultures with DHBE. Immunocytochemical analysis revealed that EGL neurons possessed α3, but not α4, nAChR immunoreactivity. Quantitative autoradiography was used to determine which nAChRs are present during the period of granule cell neurogenesis in vivo. On postnatal day 5, the EGL was intensely labelled by [3H]‐epibatidine but virtually devoid of [3H]‐A85380 binding, suggesting that a high concentration of α3 AChRs is present in granule neuroblasts. The pharmacology of [3H]‐epibatidine displacement from EGL neurons also suggested an interaction with the α3‐nAChR subunits. Together these data provide novel evidence that the activation of nAChRs directly affect the development of primary cerebellar neuroblasts and further suggest that the effects are mediated through the α3‐nAChR subtype.
Thyroid hormone profile in patients with chronic kidney disease: a single centre study.

BACKGROUND Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global burden and now recognized as a major public health problem worldwide. Patients with CKD have alteration in thyroid hormone metabolism. This study aims to evaluate the status of thyroid hormone profile in different stages of CKD. METHODS The cross-sectional study included 103 CKD patients attending Nephrology and Dialysis unit of KIST Medical College Teaching Hospital, Lalitpur, Nepal. Serum creatinine, free triiodothyronine (fT3), free thyroxine (fT4), and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) were measured. Risk factors, duration of illness and physical examination of patients were recorded along with their written informed consent. Patients with history of any thyroid function abnormalities, on medication for hypothyroidism and pregnancy were excluded. RESULTS Out of 103 CKD patients, 59 (57.28%) were males and 44 (42.71%) were females. Thirty five (33.98%) CKD patients had low fT3 and 19 (18.44%) had low fT4 with normal TSH. Six (5.82%) CKD patients had increased TSH concentrations with normal fT3 and fT4. The median value of creatinine, fT3 and fT4 were significantly altered at different stages of CKD. Among the risk factors for CKD, diabetic nephropathy (44.66%) was found to be the lead primary cause followed by chronic glomerulonephritis (26.21%) and hypertension (23.30%). CONCLUSIONS In our study thyroid hormone profile was altered in CKD patients, mainly in the stage 5 CKD. Most common thyroid dysfunction was low fT3 and low fT4 with normal TSH levels.
The Estimation of Welfare Gains from Demonopolization

Two proposals to massively demonopolize the American economy have been offered during the past decade. The Neal Report in 1968 suggested that an Antitrust Court be established to reduce market shares throughout the economy to a maximum of 12 percent [17]. Senator Hart's Industrial Reorganization Act, introduced in Congress in 1972, proposed that an Industrial Reorganization Commission be created with authority to investigate industries and to litigate their restructure before a newly-established Industrial Reorganization Court [15]. Neither of these proposals currently appears on the verge of implementation. However, they testify to the existence of a latent, potentially explosive political issue-the overhaul of American industrial structure. This paper discusses welfare benefits from economy-wide demonopolization. A model of demonopolization is presented, and estimates of welfare gains are made. The model differs from existing discussions of monopoly distortions because it treats demonopolization as a general equilibrium problem. Earlier work views monopoly distortions in a partial equilibrium framework. A partial equilibrium estimate of welfare gains is satisfactory if a single industry is restructured, but a general equilibrium analysis is warranted when one contemplates restructuring the entire monopolistic sector of the United States economy.2 Comparisons are made in Section II between partial-equilibrium
Correlation of urinary excretion of sodium with severity of sleep‐disordered breathing in children: A preliminary study

Nocturnal urinary sodium excretion is related to blood pressure (BP) levels. Elevated BP and increased nocturnal natriuresis have been demonstrated in adults with sleep apnea. Although evidence indicates increased BP in children with obstructive sleep‐disordered breathing (SDB), it is unknown whether these children have also enhanced urinary sodium excretion.
The Applicability of Statistical Process Control to Systems Involving People Processes and Business Rhythms

The operation and maintenance (O&M) activities of systems can account for 75% of total lifecycle cost. To effectively manage cost, optimize system “on” time, and mitigate defects/failures during the O&M phase of a system's lifecycle, the application of systems monitoring and control is encouraged. Statistical process control (SPC) in general, the control chart specifically, is the most common monitoring approach. The control chart provides alerts with respect to the behavior of systems and processes, as well as changes in process variability. Data applied to control charts is assumed to adhere to a normal distribution, a constraint often satisfied in manufacturing and similar industries where the natural variation in the process or system follows the Gaussian distribution. Systems involving people processes and business rhythms can compromise the normality assumption, reducing the reliability of SPC. Through the application of SPC, this paper proposes a novel approach to monitoring operational systems in the systems engineering O&M phase for the express purpose of reducing high costs by mitigating system discrepancies and uncovering inefficiencies. This paper focuses on processes that require 100% system data sampling due to the operational nature of the system.
Analysis of the correlation between p53 and bcl-2 expression with staging and prognosis of the colorectal adenocarcinoma.

PURPOSE To analyze the correlation between p53 and bcl-2 expression and colorectal adenocarcinoma staging and prognosis. METHODS This was a retrospective series of 125 colorectal adenocarcinoma patients (67 women and 58 men; ages 30-87 years) who underwent surgery with curative intent. The mean follow-up was 28.5 months (range: 2-96 months). TNM staging, tumor recurrence, survival and cancer-related mortality were analyzed. Immunoreactivity was evaluated using DO7 (Dako) for p53 and K492 (Dako) for bcl-2. Tumors with accumulation of staining for cytoplasmic bcl-2 or nuclear p53 in more than 10% of cells were considered positive. Statistical analysis utilized Pearson chi-squared, log-rank and Wilcoxon tests, and Kaplan-Meier survival estimation (significance level: p<0.05). RESULTS p53+ was found in 11.8% (14/118), bcl-2+ in 50% (58/116) and associated p53+/bcl-2+ in 6.4% (7/109) of the tumors. There was no significant correlation between expression of these biomarkers and TNM I, II, III and IV staging (p=0.385 for p53; p=0.461 for bcl-2). For tumor recurrence, p53+ was found in 9.5% (2/21), bcl-2+ in 50% (11/22), and associated p53+/bcl-2+ in 5.2% (1/19) of the tumors (p=0.714, p=1.000 and p=0.960, respectively). For survival analysis, p53+: 57 months (45.0-68.0), bcl-2+: 78 (37.0-89.0), and p53+/bcl-2+: 62 (56.0-68.0) (p=0.319). For cancer-related mortality, p53+: 8.3% (3/36), bcl-2+: 47.2% (17/36), and p53+/bcl-2+: 5.9% (2/36) of the patients (p=0.432, p=0.688 and p=0.907, respectively). CONCLUSION No correlation was found between tumor expression of p53 and bcl-2 and the TNM staging, recurrence, survival and cancer-related mortality in colorectal adenocarcinoma.
Human Mob1 proteins are required for cytokinesis by controlling microtubule stability

Summary The completion of cytokinesis requires abscission of the midbody, a microtubule-rich cytoplasmic bridge that connects the daughter cells before their final separation. Although it has been established that both the midbody structure and membrane fusion are essential for abscission, the biochemical machinery and the cellular processes of abscission remain ill-defined. Here we report that human Mob1A and Mob1B proteins are involved in the regulation of abscission of the intercellular bridge. The Mob family is a group of highly conserved proteins in eukaryotes, described as binding partners as well as co-activators of protein kinases of the Ndr family, and as members of the Hippo pathway. We show that depletion of Mob1A and Mob1B by RNAi causes abscission failure as a consequence of hyper-stabilization of microtubules in the midbody region. Interestingly, depleting Mob1 also increases cell motility after cytokinesis, and induces prolonged centriole separation in G1 phase. In contrast, centrosomes fail to split when either Mob1A or Mob1B is overexpressed. Our findings indicate that human Mob1 proteins are involved in the regulation of microtubule stability at the midbody. We conclude that Mob1A and Mob1B are needed for cell abscission and centriole re-joining after telophase and cytokinesis.
Understanding lifelog sharing preferences of lifeloggers

The lifelogging activity enables users, the lifeloggers, to passively capture images using wearable cameras from a first person perspective and ultimately create a visual diary encoding every possible aspect of their life with unprecedented details. This growing phenomenon, has posed several privacy concerns for the lifeloggers (people wearing the device), and bystanders (any person who is captured in the images). In this paper, we present a user- study to understand the sharing preferences of the lifeloggers for the images captured in difference scenarios with different audience groups. Our findings motivate the need to design privacy preserving techniques, which will automatically recommend sharing decisions which will help the lifeloggers avoid misclosure, i.e. wrongly sharing a sensitive image with one or more sharing groups.
Developing Sustainable Learning Communities through Blogging

Students have an uncanny ability to outpace faculty ability to master technology. Blogging, texting, flash video and other methods of electronic communication have supplanted more mundane methods of communication. In this paper, it is proposed that instituting a perpetual blog that encompasses a course taught by multiple faculty members will foster a sustainable community of learners with infinite possibilities of collaboration. A common blog effectively links multiple sections of a common course and will remain viable, useful and accessible long after an individual course has ended. Moreover, an effective blog can eliminate artificial barriers between different sections of the same course and provide a foundation for perpetual learning. Finally, the Socratic Method can be utilized as an effective teaching methodology in on-line blogging.
Management of prolactinoma with cabergoline treatment in a pregnant woman during her entire pregnancy

Management of prolactinoma in pregnancy is a big challenge for the treating obstetrician as prolactin levels are normally raised in pregnancy and this creates a possibility of missing the diagnosis of prolactinoma. Women with micro adenomas and intrasellar macro adenomas do not require serial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or visual field testing as required in macro adenomas with extrasellar extension. A strict and vigil monitoring during each trimester for any clinical signs and symptoms related to tumor will suffice for the diagnosis of enlarging prolactinoma and for any active intervention required thereof. Dopamine agonists are the first choice of drugs to treat these tumors during pregnancy. Cabergoline is reported to be more effective and better tolerated as compared to traditional bromocriptine, with minimal risk of spontaneous abortion, congenital malformations or menstrual abnormalities. We are reporting a patient with macro prolactinoma who was treated successfully throughout her pregnancy with cabergoline. We achieved a very good control of prolactinoma without any significant alteration of dose and also without any adverse effects. We convey that cabergoline can be a first choice drug to treat macro prolactinomas in pregnancy also.
The Ontogeny of Postmaturation Resource Allocation in Turtles

Resource-allocation decisions vary with life-history strategy, and growing evidence suggests that long-lived endothermic vertebrates direct resources toward growth and self-maintenance when young, increasing allocation toward reproductive effort over time. Few studies have tracked the ontogeny of resource allocation (energy, steroid hormones, etc.) in long-lived ectothermic vertebrates, limiting our understanding of the generality of life-history strategies among vertebrates. We investigated how reproductively mature female painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) from two distinct age classes allocated resources over a 4-yr period and whether resource-allocation patterns varied with nesting experience. We examined age-related variation in body size, egg mass, reproductive frequency, and yolk steroids and report that younger females were smaller and allocated fewer resources to reproduction than did older females. Testosterone levels were higher in eggs from younger females, whereas eggs from second (seasonal) clutches contained higher concentrations of progesterone and estradiol. These allocation patterns resulted in older, larger females laying larger eggs and producing second clutches more frequently than their younger counterparts. We conclude that resource-allocation patterns do vary with age in a long-lived ectotherm.
Efficient Crosspolar Optimization of Shaped-Beam Dual-Polarized Reflectarrays Using Full- Wave Analysis for the Antenna Element Characterization

A method for the optimization of the crosspolar component of dual-polarized reflectarrays using full-wave analysis at the element level is described and demonstrated. The reflectarray full-wave analysis is based on local periodicity (LP) and integrated within the optimization process in order to accurately characterize the crosspolar far field. The proposed method is based on the generalized Intersection Approach framework using the Levenberg–Marquardt Algorithm as backward projector, and the employed full-wave analysis is based on the Method of Moments assuming Local Periodicity (MoM-LP). Several strategies to accelerate the computations are exploited, such as the parallelization of all the algorithm building blocks. To minimize the impact of MoM-LP in the optimization process, a strategy to reduce the number of MoM-LP calls is described, further accelerating the algorithm. Moreover, the convergence is improved by working with the squared field amplitude, alleviating the trap problem of local optimizers. This method allows to optimize the crosspolar component in the whole visible region or only in the coverage zone to facilitate the convergence, reducing computing time and memory usage. Two test cases are provided to validate the technique, one with an isoflux pattern for global Earth coverage and another with European coverage for direct broadcast satellite application.
Presence of Acute Ischaemic Lesions on Diffusion-Weighted Imaging Is Associated with Clinical Predictors of Early Risk of Stroke after Transient Ischaemic Attack

Background: Early risk of stroke after a transient ischaemic attack (TIA) can be reliably predicted with risk scores based on clinical features of the patient and the event, but it is unclear how these features correlate with findings on brain imaging and few studies have investigated this in the subacute phase. Methods: Two hundred consecutive patients attending a specialist clinic underwent diffusion-weighted brain imaging (DWI) on the day of the clinic (≧3 days after a TIA) and the presence of recent lesions (positive DWI) was related to the presence of clinical features associated with a high stroke risk and to 2 validated risk scores (ABCD and California). Results: Thirty-one patients (16%) had positive DWI. Increasing ABCD and California scores were associated with positive DWI (p = 0.02 for both) independent of the delay from TIA to scan. Conclusion: Presence of recent ischaemic lesions on DWI correlates with validated clinical scores for risk of stroke after TIA in patients scanned subacutely. Future prognostic studies of DWI after TIA should adjust for the risk scores to determine the independent predictive value of DWI and hence the likely role of DWI in refinements of the scores.