Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
cAMP induces ABCA1 phosphorylation activity and promotes cholesterol efflux from fibroblasts Published, JLR Papers in Press, August 16, 2002. DOI 10.1194/jlr.M200235-JLR200

ATP-binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1) plays a crucial role in apoA-I lipidation, a key step in reverse cholesterol transport. cAMP induces apoA-I binding activity and promotes cellular cholesterol efflux. We investigated the role of the cAMP/protein kinase A (PKA) dependent pathway in the regulation of cellular cholesterol efflux. Treatment of normal fibroblasts with 8-bromo-cAMP (8-Br-cAMP) increased significantly apoA-I-mediated cholesterol efflux, with specificity for apoA-I, but not for cyclodextrin. Concomitantly, 8-Br-cAMP increased ABCA1 phosphorylation in a time-dependent manner. Maximum phosphorylation was reached in <10 min, representing a 260% increase compared to basal ABCA1 phosphorylation level. Forskolin, a known cAMP regulator, increased both cellular cholesterol efflux and ABCA1 phosphorylation. In contrast, H-89 PKA inhibitor reduced cellular cholesterol efflux by 70% in a dose-dependent manner and inhibited almost completely ABCA1 phosphorylation. To determine whether naturally occurring mutants of ABCA1 may affect its phosphorylation activity, fibroblasts from subjects with familial HDL deficiency (FHD, heterozygous ABCA1 defect) and Tangier disease (TD, homozygous/compound heterozygous ABCA1 defect) were treated with 8-Br-cAMP or forskolin. Cellular cholesterol efflux and ABCA1 phosphorylation were increased in FHD but not in TD cells. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for a link between the cAMP/PKA-dependent pathway, ABCA1 phosphorylation, and apoA-I mediated cellular cholesterol efflux.
k-CoRating: Filling Up Data to Obtain Privacy and Utility

For datasets in Collaborative Filtering (CF) recommendations, even if the identifier is deleted and some trivial perturbation operations are applied to ratings before they are released, there are research results claiming that the adversary could discriminate the individual's identity with a little bit of information. In this paper, we propose $k$-coRating, a novel privacy-preserving model, to retain data privacy by replacing some null ratings with "well-predicted" scores. They do not only mask the original ratings such that a $k$-anonymity-like data privacy is preserved, but also enhance the data utility (measured by prediction accuracy in this paper), which shows that the traditional assumption that accuracy and privacy are two goals in conflict is not necessarily correct. We show that the optimal $k$-coRated mapping is an NP-hard problem and design a naive but efficient algorithm to achieve $k$-coRating. All claims are verified by experimental results.
Scoring and selecting terms for text categorization

We propose a set of (machine learning) ML-based scoring measures for conducting feature selection. We've tested these measures on documents from two well-known corpora, comparing them with other measures previously applied for this purpose. In particular, we've analyzed which measure obtains the best overall classification performance in terms of properties such as precision and recall, emphasizing to what extent some statistical properties of the corpus affects performance. The results show that some of our measures outperform the traditional measures in certain situations.
Changes in long luteal protocol affects the number of days of stimulation: evolution of an assisted reproductive technology practice.

OBJECTIVE To determine if the types of drugs used in controlled ovarian hyperstimulation influence the number of days of stimulation. STUDY DESIGN This retrospective study of couples presenting at an assisted reproductive technology (ART) facility January 1997 through December 2007 included patients who were < 40 years of age, had a body mass index (BMI) of 20-35, used fresh sperm or oocytes, had > or = 3 embryos available on day 3, never had previous ART, and did not use a gestational carrier. Data analysis was limited to patients treated with long luteal stimulation. Data were separated into two groups: patients stimulated with urinary drugs and those stimulated with recombinant drugs. RESULTS The groups were not different in age and day 3 follicle-stimulating hormone values, but were different in BMI, diagnoses, and fertilization methods. There were a significantly greater number of days of stimulation, total number of follicles produced, and peak estradiol level in the recombinant group. The recombinant group had less drug given per day, less endometrial thickness, and fewer embryos transferred. CONCLUSION A change in our long luteal stimulation protocol appears to have lengthened the days of stimulation for our patients without altering pregnancy rate.
Rust and C + + performance on the Algorithmic Lovasz Local Lemma

1 SUMMARY The performance and ease of use of a programming language are two major considerations for developers when choosing the appropriate language for a project. This work compares C++ and Rust through the lens of performance and usability in both serial and concurrent contexts, and uses the algorithmic Lovasz Local Lemma as a test-bed. Performance is evaluated quantitatively through run time statistics collected over different instances of K-SAT while usability is evaluated qualitatively. It was found that although both languages make trade-offs with respect to usability, Rust outperforms C++ in both serial and parallel contexts. From this the author concludes that, regardless of the performance of the optimal implementation in each language, non-optimal but more practical implementations of similar development effort seem to result in higher performance code in Rust, likely due to Rust’s ownership and safety features.
Experiencing meaning in two presbyterian churches: a qualitative analysis

Worship has changed through the centuries (Jones, 2000 and White, 2003). In the mid 1800s, the feelings and emotions of the individual worshiper became an important consideration in church service (White, 2003). Little research has been conducted to ascertain the role architecture plays in this experience (MacDonald, 2002). Using a qualitative research format, this is a case study of two Presbyterian Churches in the Kansas City metropolitan area. The overall goal of this study is to understand what creates feelings of meaning on Sunday mornings in these churches’ sanctuaries. Five recurrent themes were discovered that seem to be necessary for these feelings: 1) large quantity of natural light, 2) feeling a connection with nature, 3) visible symbols of the Presbyterian faith, 4) optimal acoustics for music as well as the spoken word, and 5) architectural volume.
Image analysis , methanogenic activity and molecular biological techniques to monitor granular sludge from an egsb reactor fed with oleic acid

Morphological changes in anaerobic granular sludge fed with increasing loads of oleic acid were quantified by image analysis. The combination of this technique with data on the accumulation of adsorbed long chain fatty acid give insight into the mechanisms of sludge disintegration, flotation and washout The molecular characterization of microbial community indicated that the bacterial domain was affected during sludge disintegration, flotation and washout. The archaeal domain was less affected although no acetoclastic and only a residual hydrogenotrophic activity were detected at the end of the operation.
Robust stabilization of approximately feedback linearizable time-varying systems with uncertainties using singular perturbation

We consider the robust stabilization of approximately feedback linearizable time-varying systems with uncertainties. By using high-gain feedback, we can transform the original system into the singularly perturbed system. Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, we propose a new stabilizing controller by using singular perturbation and feedback linearization. The proposed method relaxes the conditions for feedback linearization and compensates the effect of uncertainties.
Adaptive synchronization design for chaotic systems via a scalar driving signal

Using a scalar driving signal, synchronization for a class of chaotic systems has been developed. For chaotic systems characterized by nonlinearity, which depend only on the available output, a unified approach is developed by carefully extending the conventional adaptive observer design. For exactly known chaotic systems, an exponential convergence of synchronization is achieved in the large. When mismatched parameters are presented, this method performs the asymptotic synchronization of output state in the large. The convergence of the estimated parameter error is related to an implicit condition of persistent excitation (PE) on internal signals. From the broad spectrum characteristics of the chaotic driving signal, we reformulate the implicit PE condition as an condition on injection inputs. If this condition is satisfied, the estimated parameters converge to true values and exponential synchronization of all internal states is guaranteed. Two typical examples, including Duffing-Holmes system and Chua's circuit, are considered as illustrations to demonstrate the effectiveness of the adaptive synchronizer. Furthermore, the robustness of adaptive synchronization in the presence of measurement noise is considered where the update law is modified. Finally, numerical simulations and DSP-based experiments show the validity of theoretical derivations.
Action Attribute Detection from Sports Videos with Contextual Constraints

In this paper, we are interested in detecting action attributes from sports videos for event understanding and video analysis. Action attribute is a middle layer between low level motion features and high level action classes, which includes various motion patterns of human limbs and bodies and the interaction between human and objects. Successfully detecting action attributes provides a richer video description that facilitates many other important tasks, such action classification, video understanding, automatic video transcript, etc. A naive approach to deal with this challenging problem is to train a classifier for each attribute and then use them to detect attributes in novel videos independently. However, this independence assumption is often too strong, and as we show in our experiments, produces a large number of false positives in practice. We propose a novel approach that incorporates the contextual constraints for activity attribute detection. The temporal contexts within an attribute and the co-occurrence contexts between different attributes are modelled by a factorial conditional random field, which encourages agreement between different time points and attributes. The effectiveness of our methods are clearly illustrated by the experimental evaluations.
Establishing Referential Integrity in Legacy Information Systems - Reality Bites!

Most modern relational DBMS have the ability to monitor and enforce referential integrity constraints (RICs). In contrast to new applications, however, heavily evolved legacy information systems may not make use of this important feature, if their design predates its availability. The detection of RICs in legacy systems has been a long-term research topic in the DB reengineering community and a variety of different methods have been proposed, analyzing schema, application code and data. However, empirical evidence on their application for reengineering large-scale industrial systems is scarce and all too often "problems" (case studies) are carefully selected to fit a particular "solution" (method), rather than the other way around. This paper takes a different approach. We analyze in detail the issues posed in reengineering a complex, mission-critical information system to support RICs. In our analysis, we find that many of the assumptions typically made in DB reengineering methods do not readily apply. Based on our findings, we design a process and tools for detecting RICs in context of our real-world problem and provide preliminary results on their effectiveness.
Relationships Between Work Team Climate, Individual Motivation, and Creativity

Creativity of employees is a major focus of research in the organization sciences. In this study we examine the relationships between both micro (intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) and molar (team climate) variables with manager-rated creativity of R&D employees. Specifically, we hypothesize that (a) extrinsic motivation has a direct relationship with creativity, (b) intrinsic motivation is more strongly related to creativity when extrinsic motivation is low compared to when it is high, (c) team collaborative and competitive climates have direct effects on creativity as well as indirect effects through individual motivation, and (d) intrinsic motivation mediates relationships of the climate variables with creativity, which in turn is moderated by extrinsic motivation. Data were collected from R&D engineers and their managers at a large high-tech company headquartered in Taiwan. Results indicate that a collaborative team climate has a direct positive relationship with creativity as well as one that operates through intrinsic motivation, which in turn was moderated by employee’s extrinsic motivation level. A competitive team climate positively related to extrinsic motivation, but extrinsic motivation did not directly relate to creativity. However, extrinsic motivation did have strong relationships with creativity when intrinsic motivation was low. Results suggest that perhaps the different types of motivation relate to different types of creativity (incremental versus radical). Managerial and theoretical implications of results are discussed as are the study’s limitations.
Reflexivity of Routines: An Ethnomethodological Investigation of Initial Service Encounters at Sushi Bars in Tokyo

This study reconsiders the meaning and implications of reflexivity for the theory of routines. Due to their mundane nature, routines tend to be considered unambiguous phenomena that everyone can readily understand. The performative theory of routines has challenged this view by suggesting there is no guarantee that participants have the same understanding of a routine. Nonetheless, this theory has yet to explain how routines are possible in relation to divergent understandings. Through empirical analyses of customer-provider interactions videotaped at sushi bars, this study shows how participants themselves exhibit and use their understandings of routines within the routine performance. That is to say, understandings of a routine are a reflexive part of the routine performance. It is not necessary to assume that divergent understandings are reconciled prior to the routine performance. Reflexivity helps clarify how routines are possible without a priori shared understanding.
A Small But Non-negligible Flaw in the Android Permission Scheme

This paper presents a flaw in the permission scheme of Android. The Android framework enforces a permission-based security policy where an application can access the other parts of the system only when the application is explicitly permitted. The security of the framework depends to a large extent on the owner of a device since the authorization decisions are mainly made by the user. As a result, the permission scheme imposes much of the administrative burden on the user instead of keeping it simple. Moreover, the framework does not impose enough controls nor support dynamic adjustment in the following respects: No naming rule or constraint is applied for a new permission declaration; once an application acquires a permission, the permission is never revoked during the lifetime of the application, two different permissions can be in use having the same name. These features of the framework can result in a security flaw. We explain how we found the flaw, demonstrate an exploit example, and discuss the solution.
Use of a Moist Granulation Technique (MGT) to Develop Controlled-Release Dosage Forms of Acetaminophen

The moist granulation technique (MGT), which involves agglomeration and moisture absorption, has only been applied to immediate-release dosage forms. Our results indicate that MGT appears to be applicable in developing a controlled-release formulation. A small amount of granulating fluid (water) was added to a powder blend to activate a dry binder (such as polyvinylpyrrolidone [PVP] at 2% and 3.6%) and to facilitate agglomeration. Then, a moisture-absorbing material (microcrystalline cellulose [MCC]) was added to absorb any excess moisture. By adding MCC in this way, a drying step was not necessary. Acetaminophen (APAP) was the model drug, with diluents lactose FastFlo® and dicalcium phosphate. Hydroxypropylcellulose (HPC) was used as the controlled-release agent. The MGT was compared to conventional wet granulation (WG) and direct compression (DC) processing methods. The results indicate that MGT appears to be applicable in developing a controlled-release formulation. Particle size distribution of MGT and WG batches containing 3.6% PVP is similar.
Apparent sixth sense in theropod evolution: The making of a Cretaceous weathervane

Objective Two separate and distinctive skills are necessary to find prey: Detection of its presence and determination of its location. Surface microscopy of the dentary of albertosaurines revealed a previously undescribed sensory modification, as will be described here. While dentary “foramina” were previously thought to contain tactile sensory organs, the potential function of this theropod modification as a unique localizing system is explored in this study. Method Dentary surface perforations were examined by surface epi-illumination microscopy in tyrannosaurine and albertosaurine dinosaurs to characterize their anatomy. Fish lateral lines were examined as potentially comparable structures. Result In contrast to the subsurface vascular bifurcation noted in tyrannosaurines (which lack a lateral dentary surface groove), the area subjacent to the apertures in albertosaurine grooves has the appearance of an expanded chamber. That appearance seemed to be indistinguishable from the lateral line of fish. Conclusion Dentary groove apertures in certain tyrannosaurid lines (specifically albertosaurines) not only have a unique appearance, but one with significant functional and behavior implications. The appearance of the perforations in the dentary groove of albertosaurines mirrors that previously noted only with specialized neurologic structures accommodating derived sensory functions, as seen in the lateral line of fish. The possibility that this specialized morphology could also represent a unique function in albertosaurine theropods for interacting with the environment or facilitating prey acquisition cannot be ignored. It is suggested that these expanded chambers function in perceiving and aligning the body relative to the direction of wind, perhaps a Cretaceous analogue of the contemporary midwestern weathervane.
The Comparison of Healthy and Unhealthy Perfectionism and Type A Personality in The Perceived Parenting Styles in University Students

The purpose of the present research is to study healthy and unhealthy perfectionism as well as type A personality based on different parenting styles. With a ex-post-facto method, a sample of undergraduate students at Shahid Beheshti University was selected through random multistage cluster sampling with at least 80 students in every parenting style. Corresponding author: Dept. of Counseling, Faculty of psychology, University of Shahid Beheshti, Tehran, Iran. Tel: +9809193303912 Email: mjahanbakhsh.89@gmail.com www.SID. ir Ar ch ive of S ID 360 / / ! "# $% / & '$() / This sample consists of 407 students: 235 girls and 172 boys. The subjects completed three questionnaires of perceived parenting style, positive and negative perfectionism scale and type A personality. The collected data was analyzed by statistical tests MANOVA and ANOVA and Scheffe post hoc test. Results indicated that healthy perfectionism in the authoritative parenting style is more and in negligent parenting style is lower than the other parenting styles. The unhealthy perfectionism of the boys was more than girls. The interactive effect of the two variables namely parenting styles and gender upon healthy perfectionism was significant. Healthy perfectionism in authoritative parenting style in girls was more than boys and in permissive parenting style healthy perfectionism in boys was more than girls. The general effect of parenting styles and general effect of gender in score of type A personality did not show significant difference; however, the interactive effect of parenting styles and gender upon type A personality was supported. Here in permissive parenting style the type A personality in boys is higher than girls and in authoritarian parenting style the type A personality in girls is higher than boys. Conclusion: Due to the crucial role of parents' parenting styles in creating healthy and unhealthy perfectionism and also due to interactive effect of parenting style and gender on the healthy perfectionism and type A personality, educating parents on parenting styles and also giving instruction to the families for raising healthy persons in the society is a high priority.
Tracking Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract: Population‐based brain mapping provides great insight into the trajectory of aging and dementia, as well as brain changes that normally occur over the human life span. We describe three novel brain mapping techniques, cortical thickness mapping, tensor‐based morphometry (TBM), and hippocampal surface modeling, which offer enormous power for measuring disease progression in drug trials, and shed light on the neuroscience of brain degeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We report the first time‐lapse maps of cortical atrophy spreading dynamically in the living brain, based on averaging data from populations of subjects with Alzheimer's disease and normal subjects imaged longitudinally with MRI. These dynamic sequences show a rapidly advancing wave of cortical atrophy sweeping from limbic and temporal cortices into higher‐order association and ultimately primary sensorimotor areas, in a pattern that correlates with cognitive decline. A complementary technique, TBM, reveals the 3D profile of atrophic rates, at each point in the brain. A third technique, hippocampal surface modeling, plots the profile of shape alterations across the hippocampal surface. The three techniques provide moderate to highly automated analyses of images, have been validated on hundreds of scans, and are sensitive to clinically relevant changes in individual patients and groups undergoing different drug treatments. We compare time‐lapse maps of AD, MCI, and other dementias, correlate these changes with cognition, and relate them to similar time‐lapse maps of childhood development, schizophrenia, and HIV‐associated brain degeneration. Strengths and weaknesses of these different imaging measures for basic neuroscience and drug trials are discussed.
Use of a rapid, single-round, multiplex PCR to detect malarial parasites and identify the species present

Abstract A new, rapid assay, based on a single-round, multiplex PCR, can be used to detect Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, P. malariae or P. ovale in human blood. The PCR, which targets the conserved 18S small-subunit RNA genes of the parasites, not only permits a malarial infection to be detected but also allows each Plasmodium species present to be identified, even in cases of mixed infection.