Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Maintain the Resting Phenotype of Microglia and Inhibit Microglial Activation

Many studies have shown that microglia in the activated state may be neurotoxic. It has been proven that uncontrolled or over-activated microglia play an important role in many neurodegenerative disorders. Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) have been shown in many animal models to have a therapeutic effect on neural damage. Such a therapeutic effect is attributed to the fact that BMSCs have the ability to differentiate into neurons and to produce trophic factors, but there is little information available in the literature concerning whether BMSCs play a therapeutic role by affecting microglial activity. In this study, we triggered an inflammatory response situation in vitro by stimulating microglia with the bacterial endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and then culturing these microglia with BMSC-conditioned medium (BMSC-CM). We found that BMSC-CM significantly inhibited proliferation and secretion of pro-inflammatory factors by activated microglia. Furthermore, we found that the phagocytic capacity of microglia was also inhibited by BMSC-CM. Finally, we investigated whether the induction of apoptosis and the production of nitric oxide (NO) were involved in the inhibition of microglial activation. We found that BMSC-CM significantly induced apoptosis of microglia, while no apoptosis was apparent in the LPS-stimulated microglia. Our study also provides evidence that NO participates in the inhibitory effect of BMSCs. Our experimental results provide evidence that BMSCs have the ability to maintain the resting phenotype of microglia or to control microglial activation through their production of several factors, indicating that BMSCs could be a promising therapeutic tool for treatment of diseases associated with microglial activation.
Multiscale modeling and optimization of an atomic layer deposition process for nanomanufacturing applications

Abstract A multiscale model of atomic layer deposition (ALD) inside a nanoporous material is developed in this paper. The overall model couples lattice Monte Carlo simulators describing molecular-scale growth of the ALD film to a continuum description of the precursor transport within the nanopore. The multiscale simulator is used to study how intra-pore precursor depletion leads to nonuniform ALD films and can be used to examine whether film properties, such as composition and surface roughness, are functions of position within the pore. The simulator developed in this study is used to optimize the film growth process by manipulating the precursor species exposure level to produce nearly perfectly uniform films within the nanopores.
Ethnic Militancy and National Stability in Nigeria: A Case Study of the Oodua People's Congress

Nigeria is a deeply divided country, whether the yardstick for measuring the plurality is religious, ethnic or geographical. The aggressive pursuit of the principle of self-determination has resulted in the formation of ethnic militias, the existence of which raises several questions: Is the existence of ethnic militias compatible with democracy, or a negation of it? What threat do they pose to the unity and stability of Nigeria? Is the blanket ban on them justifiable or workable? This article examines these questions, using the Oodua People's Congress as a case study in the wider context of the challenges that the Obasanjo administration has faced since its inception. The article concludes by proposing the establishment of a 'People's Committee' to foster cordial relations between the ethnic congresses and the government at all levels. The issue of OPC is a very serious one. If the issue is not addressed and contained it is not only a threat to what Nigerians have been longing for democracy -we believe that it will be a threat even to the country.1 THE OBASANJO ADMINISTRATION WAS TWO YEARS OLD ON 29 MAY 2001. This occasion provided an opportunity for Nigerians to assess the performance of the government. The verdict, however, is that Nigerians have yet to see the dividends of democracy.2 The explanations for the poor performance centre on the alleged lack of a plan by the government, official corruption and the forces of instability that the government has had to contend with since its inception.3 This last factor can be attributed partly to the freedom of expression and right of self-determination which democracy is seen to promote. The centrifugal forces have manifested themselves in various forms. R. T. Akinyele is a senior lecturer in the department of history, University of Lagos. 1. Statement credited to Hon. Zailani, Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on the OPC, during a fact-finding mission to Lagos: see This Day, 2 February 2000, p. 24. The same view was also expressed by General Abdusalam Abubakar, the former head of state: The Guardian, 27 November 2000, p. 8. 2. An opinion poll in mid-2000 showed that 937 of the total 1,027 persons interviewed (i.e. 91.2 percent) believed that the Obasanjo administration had failed to realize the hopes of the people: see The Post Express, 4 June 2000, p. 1, and Tell, 8 June 2001, pp. 48-9. 3. Eko Today, 4-10 June 2001, p. 6, and Post Express, 31 May 2001, p. 28.
Gender differences in the relationship between sexual satisfaction and propensity for risky sexual behavior

While a number of studies have explored the correlates of casual sexual behavior, few have examined how malleable psychosocial characteristics such as sexual satisfaction and reasons to have sex interact with each other in predicting risky sexual behavior. The present study examined the interaction of gender, sexual satisfaction, and reasons for having sex as predictors of propensity to engage in casual sexual behavior (sexual permissiveness) in a sample of 269 women and 86 men [mean age (M) = 22.05 years, standard deviation (SD) = 3.02]. Among men who reported having sex relatively frequently for non-sexual, goal-oriented reasons, higher levels of sexual satisfaction were associated with lower levels of sexual permissiveness, while for men who reported having sex relatively less frequently for goal-oriented reasons, sexual satisfaction was unrelated to sexual permissiveness. Among women, sexual satisfaction was associated with lower sexual permissiveness only for those who reported having sex relatively infrequently for goal-oriented reasons. For women who reported frequently having sex for physical pleasure, higher levels of sexual satisfaction were associated with lower sexual permissiveness. Satisfaction was associated with lower sexual permissiveness for men independently from their physical motives to have sex. There was no relationship between having sex for insecurity reasons and propensity for casual sex. These findings are explored in the context of the protective factors of sexual satisfaction and the role of gender in moderating these relationships.
Transportation-network-inspired network-on-chip

A cost-efficient network-on-chip is needed in a scalable many-core systems. Recent multicore processors have leveraged a ring topology and hierarchical ring can increase scalability but presents different challenges, including higher hop count and global ring bottleneck. In this work, we describe a hierarchical ring topology that we refer to as a transportation-network-inspired network-on-chip (tNoC) that leverages principles from transportation network systems. In particular, we propose a novel hybrid flow control for hierarchical ring topology to scale the topology efficiently. The flow control is hybrid in that the channels are allocated on flit granularity while the buffers are allocated on packet granularity. The hybrid flow control enables a simplified router microarchitecture (to minimize per-hop latency) as router input buffers are minimized and buffers are pushed to the edges, either at the output ports or at the hub routers that interconnect the local rings to the global ring - while still supporting virtual channels to avoid protocol deadlock. We also describe a packet-quota-system (PQS) and a separate credit network that provide congestion management, support prioritized arbitration in the network, and provide support for multiflit packets. A detailed evaluation of a 64-core CMP shows that the tNoC improves performance by up to 21% compared with a baseline, buffered hierarchical ring topology while reducing NoC energy by 51%.
Clinical supervision: a means of promoting reciprocity between practitioners and academics

This paper explores the potential of adopting an alternative approach to the facilitation of clinical supervision in a practice context by focusing on the experiences of academic staff of facilitating clinical supervision for clinical colleagues. The exploratory study, which forms the basis for ideas generated, was very small and hence it might be better conceptualized as an analysis of conversations about practice understandings rather than research per se, and certainly, we make no claims of any possibility of generalizability. Nonetheless, we anticipate that our findings will be of interest to a wide audience involved in clinical supervision given that the supervision by academic staff of colleagues in practice is an unusual and unconventional departure from the norm. The experiences of six academic staff from one higher education institution who were brought together to form a focus group provide the basis for discussion. Analysis of the structured discussion led to emergence of four major themes which are presented in an order that moves from the individuals’ experiences and perceptions of themselves in the process, to explore the relational nature of clinical supervision. The first theme highlights issues of professional identity or academics’ sense of themselves as health professionals and/or academics. This leads to the second theme that explores the tangible benefits identified by participants of providing clinical supervision as academics. The third theme about the perceived contribution that academics make to supervision, links, finally, to the perceived reciprocity that springs from clinical supervision relationships between academics providing supervision in practice, and clinicians. Our findings, based on this modest inquiry, suggest that this model of clinical supervision has potential to prove highly fruitful for both academic staff and their clinical colleagues.
African Feminist Media Studies

The media constitute social realities, meaning and power, and, in many developing states, are sites of social and political struggle. Political and economic developments in African media over the last two decades have led to significant media transformation, with, I would argue, a concurrent dearth of feminist media scholarship (see also Audrey Gadzekpo 2009). Media monitoring initiatives, such as the Global Media Monitoring Project, which has now reported on the ways in which women have been portrayed in the news since 1995 to the present day, show that the media often continue to produce subtle manifestations of sexism and gender stereotypes. Additionally, it is important to point out that there are few women owners or managers of mainstreammedia organizations; women are still disadvantaged by the context of unequal global wealth distribution (Mickey Lee 2006). Increased gender activism and advocacy has led to more media coverage, but “patriarchal framing of stories, ill-considered language and non-contextualized reporting undermines such stories” (Gadzekpo 2009, p. 74). Ten years ago in the inaugural issue of Feminist Media Studies, Aida Opuku-Mensah (2001) observed that feminist research is rarely undertaken in Africa, and since then, I am afraid to say, very little has changed. Denise Buiten (2009) has shown how, in South Africa for example, as in many other parts of the continent despite numerous advancements in terms of progressive legislation, the media continue to reproduce discourses that counter progressive gender transformation. Important negotiations regarding gendered meaning often take place in the more informal sections of newspapers, such as opinion columns or jokes. Progressive feminist perspectives, moving beyond numerical representation towards greater attention to symbolic, relational and integrated understandings of gender, are generally lacking (Buiten 2009). This essay reflects briefly on what I believe to be certain key issues for feminist media scholars in the global South, with particular reference to Africa. These include a reconsideration of black feminist media studies and a call for the widening of these philosophies to include an even more diverse range of voices; an argument for the repositioning of self-reflexive and action-oriented methods, while recognizing that feminist qualitative research is already highly contested and diversified; and finally, I would like to consider the impacts of new media, which require further exploration by feminist media scholars, and which are particularly significant within the African context where we see rapid proliferation of new media, mobile and online social networking.
Impact of Metal Gate Granularity on Threshold Voltage Variability: A Full-Scale Three-Dimensional Statistical Simulation Study

It has recently become clear that the use of high-κ /metal gate stacks will have a distinct impact on the intrinsic parameter variability of the corresponding CMOS devices. The metal gates have a natural granularity, with the work function of each grain depending on its orientation. Here, we present a full-scale 3-D statistical simulation study of the statistical variability induced by this metal gate granularity (MGG). We investigate the effect of grain size on both the magnitude of the variability and the shape of the corresponding statistical distribution. The distributions in threshold voltage due to MGG are analyzed in isolation and in combination with random discrete dopants and line-edge roughness.
Consumer Culture, Islam and the Politics of Lifestyle

This article traces the growth of the `fashion for veiling' which has grown in Turkey since the early 1990s, and discusses the representation of Muslim women in both the cultural and public spheres in the late 1980s. The practice of veiling has been chosen to explore how religious iconography is changing to reflect new patterns of consumption and pleasure, and the ways in which these changes are occurring. The authors focus on the shifting meanings of the practice of veiling due to the articulation of Islamic faith into consumption culture, as evidenced in advertising images and commentaries taken from Islamic women's magazines, and fashion catalogues of major Islamic clothing companies. The authors examine the problematic relationship of the fashion for veiling to two other established meanings of veiling: as a sign of adherence to the Islamic principle of covering the female body to conceal it from the male gaze, and as a sign of `political Islam'.
Identification of BC005512 as a DNA Damage Responsive Murine Endogenous Retrovirus of GLN Family Involved in Cell Growth Regulation

Genotoxicity assessment is of great significance in drug safety evaluation, and microarray is a useful tool widely used to identify genotoxic stress responsive genes. In the present work, by using oligonucleotide microarray in an in vivo model, we identified an unknown gene BC005512 (abbreviated as BC, official full name: cDNA sequence BC005512), whose expression in mouse liver was specifically induced by seven well-known genotoxins (GTXs), but not by non-genotoxins (NGTXs). Bioinformatics revealed that BC was a member of the GLN family of murine endogenous retrovirus (ERV). However, the relationship to genotoxicity and the cellular function of GLN are largely unknown. Using NIH/3T3 cells as an in vitro model system and quantitative real-time PCR, BC expression was specifically induced by another seven GTXs, covering diverse genotoxicity mechanisms. Additionally, dose-response and linear regression analysis showed that expression level of BC in NIH/3T3 cells strongly correlated with DNA damage, measured using the alkaline comet assay,. While in p53 deficient L5178Y cells, GTXs could not induce BC expression. Further functional studies using RNA interference revealed that down-regulation of BC expression induced G1/S phase arrest, inhibited cell proliferation and thus suppressed cell growth in NIH/3T3 cells. Together, our results provide the first evidence that BC005512, a member from GLN family of murine ERV, was responsive to DNA damage and involved in cell growth regulation. These findings could be of great value in genotoxicity predictions and contribute to a deeper understanding of GLN biological functions.
A Normative Theory of Forgetting: Lessons from the Fruit Fly

Recent experiments revealed that the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has a dedicated mechanism for forgetting: blocking the G-protein Rac leads to slower and activating Rac to faster forgetting. This active form of forgetting lacks a satisfactory functional explanation. We investigated optimal decision making for an agent adapting to a stochastic environment where a stimulus may switch between being indicative of reward or punishment. Like Drosophila, an optimal agent shows forgetting with a rate that is linked to the time scale of changes in the environment. Moreover, to reduce the odds of missing future reward, an optimal agent may trade the risk of immediate pain for information gain and thus forget faster after aversive conditioning. A simple neuronal network reproduces these features. Our theory shows that forgetting in Drosophila appears as an optimal adaptive behavior in a changing environment. This is in line with the view that forgetting is adaptive rather than a consequence of limitations of the memory system.
RPE, a plant gene involved in early developmental steps of nematode feeding cells

Sedentary plant‐parasitic nematodes are able to induce the redifferentiation of root cells into multinucleate nematode feeding sites (NFSs). We have isolated by promoter trapping an Arabidopsis thaliana gene that is essential for the early steps of NFS formation induced by the root‐knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita. Its pattern of expression is similar to that of key regulators of the cell cycle, but it is not observed with the cyst nematode. Later in NFS development, this gene is induced by both root‐knot and cyst nematodes. It encodes a protein similar to the D‐ribulose‐5‐phosphate 3‐epimerase (RPE) (EC 5.1.3.1), a key enzyme in the reductive Calvin cycle and the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway (OPPP). Quantitative RT–PCR showed the accumulation of RPE transcripts in potato, as in Arabidopsis NFS. Homozygous rpe plants have a germination mutant phenotype that can be rescued in dwarf plants on sucrose‐supplemented medium. During root development, this gene is expressed in the meristems and initiation sites of lateral roots. These results suggest that the genetic control of NFSs and the first stages of meristem formation share common steps and confirms the previous cytological observations which indicate that root cells undergo metabolic reprogramming when they turn into NFSs.
Comparing Religious Messages in the Media and in the Congregation: A Greek Orthodox Case Study

Religious messages may be delivered to two kinds of audiences: the local congregation and, through the mass media, the general public. Do religious actors issue the same cues to both audiences? Existing research suggests that speakers change their message depending on the audience, especially if that audience is reached through the media. This calls for the direct comparison of religious communication in the local congregation and in the mass media. The study investigates the phenomenon by focusing on the political content of religious messages. Using information from Greek news coverage of religious discourse and from the direct observation of sermons in selected Greek Orthodox congregations, the results highlight the importance of the mass media in communicating the political concerns of religious actors. These concerns remain silenced in the local congregation. The conclusion discusses implications regarding the communication mechanisms that underlie the politicization of religion in the overlooked Orthodox context.
Constructing a perfect matching is in random NC

We show that the problem of constructing a perfect matching in a graph is in the complexity class Random NC; i.e., the problem is solvable in polylog time by a randomized parallel algorithm using a polynomial-bounded number of processors. We also show that several related problems lie in Random NC. These include:(i)Constructing a perfect matching of maximum weight in a graph whose edge weights are given in unary notation;(ii)Constructing a maximum-cardinality matching;(iii)Constructing a matching covering a set of vertices of maximum weight in a graph whose vertex weights are given in binary;(iv)Constructing a maximums-t flow in a directed graph whose edge weights are given in unary.
SIGN VIDEO SEGMENTATION USING REGION , BOUNDARY BASED ACTIVE CONTOURS WITH SHAPE PRIORS

In this paper we proposed a new and improved concept of segmentation for sign language gestures. The algorithm presented extracts signs from video sequences under various non-static backgrounds. The signs are segmented which are normally hands and head of the signing person by minimizing the energy function of the level set fused by various image characteristics such as colour, texture, boundary and shape information. Three color planes are extracted from the RGB and one color plane is used based on the environments presented by the video background. Texture edge map provides spatial information which makes the color features more distinctive for video segmentation. The boundary features are extracted by forming image edge map form the existing color and texture features. The shape of the sign is calculated dynamically and is made adaptive to each video frame for segmentation of occlude objects. The energy minimization is achieved using level sets. Experiments show that our approach provides excellent segmentation on signer videos for different signs under robust environments such as diverse backgrounds, sundry illumination and different signers.
Morbidity associated with sleep disorders in primary care: a longitudinal cohort study.

OBJECTIVE Few epidemiologic studies evaluate the relative contribution of different risk factors on sleep problems. The aim of the present study was to assess demographics, comorbid characteristics, and health outcomes in patients with sleep disorders. METHOD A population-based cohort study with nested case-control analysis was conducted in adults using the U.K. General Practice Research Database. Information was collected for 12,437 patients with a new sleep disorder diagnosis during the year 1996 and 18,350 age- and sex-matched controls. Logistic regression analysis was used to compute odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). RESULTS The incidence of a new sleep disorder diagnosis was 12.5 per 1000 person-years. There was a clear association of sleep disorders with smoking and excessive alcohol consumption; prior psychiatric disorders, including stress (OR = 3.6, 95% CI = 2.9 to 4.4) and depression (OR = 3.1, 95% CI = 2.8 to 3.3); prior circulatory diseases, including heart failure (OR = 1.8, 95% CI = 1.4 to 2.2) and coronary heart disease (OR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.2 to 1.6); and prior gastrointestinal diseases, including gastroesopha-geal reflux disease (OR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.2 to 1.7) and irritable bowel syndrome (OR = 1.5, 95% CI = 1.2 to 1.9). Use of hypnotics and anti-depressants was increased in the year after diagnosis. Relative 1-year mortality risk was 3-fold higher in the sleep disorder group than in controls, with a noticeably higher proportion of deaths due to suicide. CONCLUSION The fact that sleep disorders were associated with several morbidities, most strongly with psychiatric disorders as well as with increased mortality, underscores the importance of sleep problems as indicators of health status.