Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
miR-1555 p inhibition promotes the transition of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to gastric cancer tissue derived MSC-like cells via NF-κB p 65 activation

Gastric cancer tissue-derived MSC-like cells (GC-MSC) share similar characteristics to bone marrow MSC (BM-MSC); however, the phenotypical and functional differences and the molecular mechanism of transition between the two cell types remain unclear. Compared to BM-MSC, GC-MSC exhibited the classic phenotype of reactive stroma cells, a stronger gastric cancer promoting capacity and lower expression of miR-155-5p. Inhibition of miR-155-5p by transfecting miRNA inhibitor induced a phenotypical and functional transition of BM-MSC into GC-MSC-like cells, and the reverse experiment deprived GC-MSC of tumor-promoting phenotype and function. NF-kappa B p65 (NF-κB p65) and inhibitor of NF-kappa B kinase subunit epsilon (IKBKE/IKKε) were identified as targets of miR-155-5p and important for miRNA inhibitor activating NF-κB p65 in the transition. Inactivation of NF-κB by pyrrolidine dithiocarbamic acid (PDTC) significantly blocked the effect of miR-155-5p inhibitor on BM-MSC. IKBKE, NF-κB p65 and phospho-NF-κB p65 proteins were highly enriched in MSC-like cells of gastric cancer tissues, and the latter two were correlated with the pathological progression of gastric cancer. In GC-MSC, the expression of miR-155-5p was downregulated and NFκB p65 protein was increased and activated. NF-κB inactivation by PDTC or knockdown of its downstream cytokines reversed the phenotype and function of GC-MSC. Taken together, our findings revealed that miR-155-5p downregulation induces BM-MSC to acquire a GC-MSC-like phenotype and function depending on NF-κB p65 activation, which suggests a novel mechanism underlying the cancer associated MSC remodeling in the tumor microenvironment and offers an effective target and approach for gastric
A Decision Tree Approach to Customer Surveys

Many companies assess performance by using customer feedback surveys. A primary purpose for such surveys is to generate actionable insights to improve the company’s areas of weaknesses. Asking too few questions in the survey does not provide sufficient information for root cause analysis. On the other hand, one can also ask a series of more detailed questions which will force the customer to provide specific insights. However, customers are unlikely to complete such detailed surveys and many parts of the survey may be of little interest to them anyway. Suppose instead, we focus on requesting feedback for a small number of pain points of the customer using a hierarchical decision tree approach. By doing this we can provide a more focused, smaller set of questions for that individual, based on their branching choices. This would provide the level of detail needed to determine weak points in the company. We address this problem and outline a hierarchical decision tree approach for determining such a survey, also known as a computer adaptive survey (CAS). Computer adaptive surveys have been shown to be a great tool for root cause analysis. Our approach adds to CAS by providing a relative performance score for measuring customer experience across similar companies and over time. Furthermore, we ensure that responses to the survey are appropriately weighted in order to reduce bias. In addition, we describe the procedure of updating survey questions in the future based on historical survey responses and propose how incentives can be provided to increase participation in such a way that the customer benefits only by providing quality data. In this paper we illustrate the approach using data from the telecommunications industry and compare customer experience results for two different cellular providers.
Granite production in the Delamerian Orogen, South Australia

In the South Australian sector of the Cambro-Ordovician Ross–Delamerian Orogen, granites range in age from Mid-Cambrian to Early Ordovician. Their occurrence is largely confined to deep, Early Cambrian, sediment-filled basins where they are associated with mafic rocks. The syntectonic suites have compositions forming a continuum between I- and S-type granites. After the cessation of convergent deformation at c. 490 Ma an abrupt transition to a bimodal magmatic association of mafic intrusions and felsic granites and volcanic rocks of S- and A-type affinities occurred. As exposed on the south coast of Kangaroo Island, S-type granite originated as in situ partial melts of the Early Cambrian sediments locally intruded by either mafic magmas or I–S granite magmas. These migmatite complexes were mingled with intrusions from the magmas that provided the underlying heat sources. Also on Kangaroo Island, composite S-type rhyodacite–dolerite dykes indicate that crustal melting involved mantle-derived melts. Field observations, major and trace element data and Nd–Sr isotopic data indicate that granite magmas in this fold belt result from mixing of crustal and mantle source components, and from fractional crystallization (AFC-type processes). Whereas the Nd–Sr compositions of granite suites from the Delamerian Orogen form a continuous geochemical trend between the crust and the mantle melts, the A- and I-types cluster towards the mantle endmember and the S-types towards the crustal endmember. This dichotomy reflects three granite magma production situations: (1) lower-crustal mafic magma chambers that are contaminated by, and mingled with, melts of the local metasediments producing I-type magmas; (2) crustal melts formed in the heated zones above upwelling mantle or close to mafic or I-type granite intrusions producing S-type magmas; (3) upper-crustal mafic intrusions where closed-system fractionation dominates to produce A-type granite. The extent of fractionation and crustal assimilation varied progressively through the c. 30 Ma deformation history (514–485 Ma) of this orogen. Importantly in this sector of the Ross–Delamerian Orogen, the crustal endmember is represented only by the Cambrian basin sedimentary fill (Kanmantoo Group) and expressly excludes the older Precambrian crust.
Study of Behaviour Adaptation of Dairy Cows after Regrouping and Facility Change

The objective of this study was to examine the influence of relocation dairy cows to different housing on someindicators of their maintenance behavior. Three days observation (72 hours) of 40 Holstein cows was done. Thebehaviour activities were registered at intervals of 10 minutes. The times of lying and ruminating showed steadilyrising with each day (P<0.001). The time of standing was decreasing (P<0.001) from the first day to the third dayafter relocation. Period’s number differed also significantly in day’s comparison. Number of periods of total lying(7.34; 14.07; 16.34), and ruminating (14.32; 15.75; 18.58) were increasing (P<0.001). The converse trend (P<0.001)was showed in the variables of feeding (17.46; 12.73; 9.54) and total standing (24.93; 18.19; 12.41; P<0.001).
Mechanical design and manufacturing of an insect-scale flapping-wing robot

Despite the prevalence of insect ight as a form of locomotion in nature, manmade aerial systems have yet to match the aerial prowess of ying insects. Within a tiny body volume, ying insects embody the capabilities to ap seemingly insubstantial wings at very high frequencies and sustain beyond their own body weight in ight. A precise authority over their wing motions enables them to respond to obstacles and threats in ight with unrivaled speed and grace. Motivated by a desire for comparably agile ying machines, research e orts in the last decade have generated crucial developments for realizing an arti cial instantiation of insect ight. The need for tiny, high-e ciency mechanical components has produced unconventional solutions for propulsion, actuation, and manufacturing. Early vehicle designs proved to be ightworthy but were critically limited by the inability to produce control torques in ight. In this thesis, we synthesize all existing technologies for insect-scale manufacturing and actuation, and we introduce a new vehicle design, the "dual actuator bee," to address the need for ight control. Our work culminates in the rst demonstration of controlled, hovering ight of an insect-scale, apping-wing robot. As the ultimate goal for this research e ort is the creation of fully autonomous ying robots, these vehicles must sustain their own power sources and intelligence. To that end, we explore the challenges of scaling apping-wing ight to attain greater lift forces. Using a scaling heuristic to determine key vehicle speci cations, we develop and successfully demonstrate a hover-capable vehicle design that possesses the
Proactive Eavesdropping via Jamming in NOMA Network

Recently, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been considered as a promising technique in 5G network, and many investigations have addressed on the physical layer security to improve the security performance. In this paper, an alternative problem, where the eavesdropping process is considered as a legal activity, will be analyzed to track suspicious communications. More specifically, we study a wireless surveillance system in which the legitimate monitor is equipped with multi-antenna to overhear the messages between the suspicious receiver and the suspicious transmitter. Suspicious users are grouped into pairs and use the NOMA technique to transmit signals to a suspicious base station. Meanwhile, the legitimate monitor (LM) simultaneously transmits jamming signals, listens to suspicious links, decode-and-forward (DF) the eavesdropped information to the legitimate eavesdropper (LE). Based on the proposed mechanism, we investigate the power allocation policies for jamming signals of the legitimate monitor under deterministic and non-deterministic interference channel. Accordingly, we derive the closed-form expression of the successful eavesdropping probability for the best and the worst user to evaluate the system performance. Monte Carlo simulations are provided to verify our analytical results.
Understanding the mediating effect of cognitive and emotional satisfaction on customer loyalty

Studies have proven that businesses have to incur new and additional cost in order to attract new customers as compared to retaining existing customers. Retaining loyal customers are crucial as they eventually contribute to the increase in business organization’s revenue and are more likely to occur in a form of word-of-mouth (WOM). In the compound and vibrant Malaysian home computer retail market today, customer loyalty (CL) through word-of-mouth marketing tends to occur very slowly and is limited geographically but is a very potent method of marketing. The influence of cognitive and emotional satisfaction on the relationship between salesperson presentation skills and CL through intention to promote by WOM is vital. This will then lead to increased benefits for the organization in the form of CL. The cognitive evaluation of customer satisfaction (CS) was found to explain CL in a retail setting more than the emotional reaction. This finding holds importance to those retailers who have been able to generate high expectations in the eyes of their customers. Key words: Adaptive selling skills, sales presentation skills, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty.
KDV and FKDV Model for the Run-up of Tsunamis via Lattice Boltzmann Method

An efficient implementation of the Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) for the numerical simulation of the run-up tsunamis, based on Korteweg-de-Vries equation (KdV) and forced Korteweg-de-Vries equation (fKdV) are presented. Numerical results are found to be in good agreement with the theory.
XMM-Newton RGS observation of the warm absorber in Mrk 279

Context. The Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 279 was observed by XMM-Newton in November 2005 on three consecutive orbits, showing significant short-scale variability (average soft band variation in flux ∼20%). The source is known to host a two-component warm absorber with distinct ionisation states from a previous Chandra observation. Aims. We study the warm absorber in Mrk 279 and investigate any possible response to the short-term variations in the ionising flux and assess whether it has varied on a long-term timescale with respect to the Chandra observation. Methods. The XMM-Newton-RGS spectra of Mrk 279 were analysed in both the high- and low-flux states using the SPEX fitting package. Results. We find no significant changes in the warm absorber on either short timescales (∼2 days) or longer ones (two and a half years), as the variations in the ionic column densities of the most relevant elements are below the 90% confidence level. The variations could still be present but are statistically undetected given the signal-to-noise ratio of the data. Starting from reasonable standard assumptions, we estimate the location of the absorbing gas, which is likely to be associated with the putative dusty torus rather than with the broad line region if the outflowing gas is moving at the escape velocity or greater.
Behaviour of railway track subgrade under cyclic loading

The railway track foundation of fine-grained soil subgrade, under repeated loading of cyclic nature, can gradually build up excess pore pressure and result in progressive shear failure at a stress level much lower than the monotonic loading strength of the soil. It is widely accepted that a threshold stress exists, above which, the induced stress generates large shear deformation and; below which, the soil deformation become stabilized irrespective of the number of loading applications. Previous studies into the behaviour of fine-grained subgrade under cyclic loading had mainly involved slow loading rate. The advance in transportation technology and the required efficiency of transporting goods and commuting passengers demands higher train speed and heavier loads. Consequently, better understanding on the behaviour of fine-grained subgrade under higher rate of loading (i.e. cyclic frequency) will be necessary as it influences the build-up of excess pore water pressure and strain accumulation of subgrade soil, hence the stability of the railway track. In addition, current design approaches to the railway tracks foundation of fine-grained subgrade have largely been empirical or semi-empirical unique to a range of geological characteristic, operating and traffic condition. The rationalization and reformulation of design approach may be required if general design means will to be devised. %%%%In this research, an in-depth study of undrained triaxial testing on the behaviour of a typical fine-grained reconstituted kaolinite clay soil, simulating the characteristic subgrade responses exhibit under the passing axles / wheel load of the contemporary train speed was performed and discussed. Four series of both static and cyclic undrained triaxial test were conducted. The static undrained triaxial test provides the behavioural benchmark and a prior indication on the maximum stress level from which the cyclic stress level can be apportioned. The cyclic undrained triaxial test simulates the behaviour of clay subgrade under a large number of passing axles/wheel load. The results of the testing described and characterized the stress / strain behaviour for saturated kaolinite clay of various consolidated state and stress history. In particular, it described the general concept of cyclic stress equilibrium state and resilient state, and detailed the characteristic pattern of the line of cyclic stress equilibrium state which dictates the way in identifying the threshold stress (or critical level of cyclic stress). The study demonstrated that, using effective stress analysis, the threshold stress can be obtained for clay under high cyclic loading rate. In conjunction with the stress response, the deformation and resilient characteristics of various series of cyclic undrained triaxial tests carried out on the saturated clay was described. Apart from highlighting and confirming the influence of consolidated state and stress history on the threshold stress and deformation characteristics, influence of the cyclic loading frequency…
Association between BP and mortality in patients on chronic peritoneal dialysis

circulating levels of leptin but they do not respond to these increased leptin levels with reduced food intake [4]. Numerous authors have supposed that in obese patients a state of relative leptin resistance may occur [5,6]. This issue has been recently reviewed by Munzberg and Myers [7]. Leptin stimulates the production of anorectic neuropeptides and inhibits the action of orexigenic peptides in the arcuate nucleus through complex mechanisms [7]. When leptin binds to its receptor (LRb) it activates the LRb-associated Jak2 tyrosine kinase, leading to the autophosphorylation of tyrosine residues on Jak2 and the phosphorylation of Tyr985 and Tyr1138 on the intracellular tail of LRb. Phosphorylation of Tyr1138 mediates the activation of the transcription factor STAT3. STAT3 also induces the transcription of SOCS3. SOCS3 binding to the LRb-Jak2 complex attenuates LRb-mediated signalling [7–10]. Munzberg and Myers postulate that when leptin levels are low and thus baseline STAT3 activation is modest, SOCS3 expression is low, and incremental changes in leptin would be almost fully translated into increased LRb signalling. When circulating leptin levels are high (as in obesity), the increased baseline STAT3 activation would lead to an increased expression of SOCS3, mitigating much of the effect of increased leptin binding to LRb6. Taking into account these considerations and the results of our clinical study, it could be suggested that a state of relative leptin resistance may occur also in patients with end-stage renal disease receiving haemodialysis in which circulating leptin levels are significantly higher than in healthy subjects. If further studies in the next future will confirm these hypotheses, the title of the article by Wiecek could be changed in ‘Does leptin really contribute to uraemic cachexia? ’.
Stock market reactions to wars and political risks: A cliometric perspective for a falling empire

In this paper, based on cliometric methodology we use new historical data on the most popular stocks traded at the Istanbul bourse between 1910 and 1914, to examine the effect of wars on stock market prices. During this period, the Ottoman Empire was involved in the Turco-Italian and the Balkan wars, leading to massive land losses and risks for the companies before the First World War. The data are manually collected from the available volumes of a daily Ottoman newspaper, Tanin. Our findings are surprising, as we observe only a temporary and small drop in stock prices, indicating little perceived risk by stock investors of the Istanbul bourse.
Study of a New Plaster Composite Based on Dune Sand and Expanded Polystyrene as Aggregates

This study aims to highlight the physicomechanical properties of a new lightweight construction material which is composed of plaster as a binder and dune sand and Expanded Polystyrene Beads (EPS) as aggregates.For this purpose, different mixtures were designed with different percentages and particle sizes of EPS aggregates in order to test the porosity, the density and the thermo-mechanical properties of the studied composite. Furthermore, Electron Microscopy (EM) visualisation and SEM analysis were used for the study of the structure and the interface “paste-aggregates”. The obtained results showed that the progressive incorporation of an increasing percentage of PSE decreases the density of the plaster composite and consequently improves its thermal properties. As expected, the mechanical strength decreases with the increase of the EPS content, but relatively good mechanical strength can be obtained with low quantities of EPS. Concerning the material structure, it should be noted that the composite appears more or less homogeneous and the EPS beads adhere well to the plaster matrix.
Classification of synchronous oceanic and atmospheric El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events for palaeoclimate reconstruction

Since the mid‐1970s, ENSO has changed in character to a predominance of El Niño conditions, the extreme phase of which appears coincidental with increases in global temperature records. Instrumental time series (<150 years) are too short to adequately address the significance of late twentieth‐century ENSO variability, thus, multi‐century palaeoclimate reconstructions derived from long proxy records are sought. Despite the global influence exerted by ENSO on society, limited consensus exists within the scientific community as to which index best defines the timing, duration and strength of events. Here we address issues associated with the complexity of ENSO characterisation by comparing the ‘event capture’ ability of two currently used indices of ENSO. It is suggested that the use of a sole ENSO index is undesirable as a given index is only indicative of one physical aspect of the phenomenon, and as such is unlikely to be representative of the wider interactions experienced in the coupled ocean‐atmospheric system. In an attempt to describe more of the nature and evolution of ENSO events, the Coupled ENSO Index (CEI) classification scheme was devised to identify synchronous oceanic (Niño 3.4 SST) and atmospheric (Southern Oscillation Index) anomalies associated with ENSO for the instrumental period (1871–2003). The CEI is of practical relevance to the ENSO community as it provides an amplitude preserving instrumental baseline for the calibration of proxy records to reconstruct both components of the ENSO system. Analysis of the nature of instrumental ENSO events from the CEI suggests that the frequency and intensity of post‐1970 ENSO events (when 50% of all extreme events identified occur) appears the most anomalous in the context of at least the past century. It is hoped that the CEI will facilitate palaeo‐ENSO research to systematically resolve the long‐term context of past ENSO behaviour to assess whether the apparently anomalous nature of late twentieth‐century variability is unprecedented within existing palaeoclimate archives. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society.
Start-ups initiating business relationships: process and asymmetry

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of how start-ups initiate business relationships and to identify the subprocesses that characterise business-relationship initiations in a start-up context. Design/methodology/approach The paper builds on business-relationship initiation models, develops a theoretical framework of relationship initiation and its subprocesses and, in a multiple-case study, applies this framework to seven relationship initiations by start-ups. Findings The key findings of this study describe the process of business-relationship initiation by start-ups, which comprise six subprocesses. The authors’ detailed and structured initiation-process analyses show how the initiation process occurs in a start-up context and how start-ups develop their relationships. The authors’ analyses also reveal typical patterns and critical issues, such as asymmetry, that characterise start-ups’ business-relationship initiations, particularly with bigger players. Research limitations/implications This paper develops a model of the relationship-initiation process, uses it in a start-up context and identifies the critical characteristics, including asymmetry, of start-up initiations; these contributions address both the literature on start-ups and the literature on relationship initiation and development. Originality/value This paper is the first to focus on how start-ups initiate business relationships; previous studies of business-relationship initiation have focussed on mature firms. Using the industrial marketing and purchasing approach, the paper contributes to shifting the focus from interactions between resource entities to relationship-initiation processes in the context of start-ups.