Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spontaneous and induced primary oncogenesis in natural killer (nk)‐cell‐deficient beige mutant mice

Spontaneous tumor development and primary oncogenesis were compared in a large number of NK Abbreviations: NK, Natural killer; s.c, subcutaneously; i.u. , infectious units; d.f. , degree(s) of freedom; DMBA‐LV, dime‐thylbenzanthracene‐induced murine leukemia virus; PVM, pneumonia virus of mice; Reo‐3, Reo virus 3; MHV, murine hepatitis virus; LCM, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus; MEV, murine encephalomyelitis virus; MVM, minute virus of mice; BP, benzo[alpha]pyrene. ‐deficient, homozygous C57B1/6‐bg/bg mice and their NK normal, heterozygous + /bg littermate controls. In a group of 167 retired breeders followed for spontaneous tumors, the probability of survival for mice eventually dying with a tumor was greater for the NK‐competent, +/bg than for the NK‐deficient, homozygous C57BL/6‐bg/bg mice (p = 0.0019), although the higher overall incidence of tumors in the bg/bg group (48%) was not significantly different from that in the +/bg group (37%). In the bg/bg group the incidence of tumor death appeared to increase relatively sharply in the 25‐ to 29‐month age bracket compared to the fairly regular increase in incidence observed in the +/bg group. All the spontaneous tumors except 2 (discovered in +/bg mice) were classified histologically as widely disseminated malignant lymphomas. The other two were one squamous‐cell carcinoma and one sarcoma. A total of 73 bg/bg mice injected s.c. with benzo[alpha]pyrene (BP) had a higher overall incidence of tumors (81%) (rhabdomyosarcomas) than 138 +/bg mice (64%) and in the largest group (0.3 mg, n = 85) the bg/bg group developed tumors, at a higher incidence (p = 0.01) and with a shorter latency (p = 0.025) than the +/bg group. On the other hand, mice injected with dimethylbenzanthracene or given 4 weekly doses of 160 rads of gamma irradiation showed no difference in overall tumor incidence. In addition, mice injected with various doses of DMBA‐induced murine leukemia virus (DMBA‐LV) also showed no significant difference in tumor incidence. Others have reported that some of these treatments (DMBA, split‐dose irradiation) cause profound NK suppression, thereby reducing NK differences between the two groups of mice. These results suggest that a partial NK impairment in beige mutant mice early in life may lead to significantly greater rates of death with spontaneous malignant tumors late in life. Some primary oncogenesis treatments (BP) but not others (DMBA, split‐dose irradiation, leukemia viruses) cause tumors with a greater incidence and shorter latency in beige mice. The results suggest, but do not prove, that NK cells play a role in surveillance against spontaneously arising, and possibly some types of carcinogen‐induced, tumors.
The Whitbread Umbrella: A Structural Response to Shareholder Activism

This article investigates a structural ownership model that is used to protect firms from unwelcome capital market intrusion: a multiple-share arrangement. It details the evolution of one of the United Kingdom’s most successful former family firms, Whitbread, in the post-World War II era. In investigating the formation and operation of the so-called Whitbread Umbrella, the study poses the question of whether it was a positive factor in long-term strategic decision making at Whitbread. The emerging popularity of multiple-share ownership structures in the United States, as well as their endurance in other jurisdictions, positions this historic analysis in wider debates on structure, ownership, and corporate governance in the finance, economics, and general management literature.
Purging disorder: a comparison to established eating disorders with purging behaviour.

This study is part of the larger Christina Barz Study, and it compared consecutively admitted patients with purging disorder (PurD; N = 225) with consecutively admitted patients with anorexia nervosa binge eating/purging subtype (AN-bp; N = 503) and bulimia nervosa purging subtype (BN-p; N = 756). Participants answered self-rating questionnaires on admission, at the end of inpatient treatment, and in a 5-year follow-up. Patients with PurD reported lower severity of general psychopathology than patients with AN-bp and lower severity of eating disorder symptoms than patients with AN-bp and BN-p on admission. Eating disorder symptoms of patients with PurD improved less during the course than of the comparison groups. Diagnostic perseverance was stronger in the PurD group than for patients with AN-bp; mortality was higher than for patients with BN-p. Predictors for better outcome differed for the groups. Our results provide new data about the long-term course of patients with PurD and indicate clinical relevance of the disorder.
Exploring gait-related dual task tests in community-dwelling fallers and non-faller: A pilot study

The best test to assess dual task (DT)-related falls' risk is not known. The aim of this study was to investigate differences between community-dwelling fallers and non-fallers on a variety of simple task combinations. Twenty-seven adults, aged 65 years or older, took part. Forty-eight DT tests and one triple task (TT) test were conducted. Fallers had longer walking time when avoiding a moving obstacle and performing a motor task and longer walking time when triple tasking, as suggested by a measure of proportionate difference between single and DT/TT conditions (p = 0.014 and 0.044, respectively). The absolute difference in accuracy on a visuospatial task suggested that fallers were more accurate than non-fallers when combined with walking with turns and when triple tasking (p = 0.048 and 0.030, respectively). Fallers were less accurate in naming animals than non-fallers when combined with a bending task (p = 0.009). These results indicate that fallers might prioritise tasks based on perceived risk, which highlights the importance of task selection when designing tests. Despite the small sample size, the data suggest that a TT test could be used to assess risk of falling. However, this needs to be confirmed with larger prediction studies.
An Enhanced Universal N x N Fully Nonblocking Quantum Switch

This study develops a quantum switching device with fully nonblocking properties. Although previous studies have also presented quantum-based solutions for the blocking problem, the proposed schemes are characterized by an increased packet loss, a large number of quantum SWAP gates and an increased propagation delay time complexity. The current study overcomes these drawbacks by designing an N x N fully nonblocking quantum switch, in which the packet payload is passed through quantum SWAP gates while the packet header is passed through quantum control gates designed by applying a modified quantum Karnaugh mapping method. The allocation of quantum SWAP gates to the different layers within the switch is solved using a Perfect Matching in Complete Graph (PMiCG) algorithm with a time complexity of O(N! /(2N/2(N/2)! )). A symmetry-based heuristic method is proposed to reduce the time complexity of the search process for all the perfect matching pairs to a time complexity of O(N2). The performance of the proposed quantum switch is compared with that of a quantum self-routing packet switch and a quantum switching/quantum merge sorting scheme, respectively, in terms of the hardware complexity, the propagation delay time complexity, the auxiliary qubit complexity, and the packet loss probability.
Optimal Power Management in Fueled Systems With Finite Storage Capacity

Fueled power systems using secondary energy storage are analyzed. A generic model of such systems is suggested, and an optimal power management strategy that maximizes efficiency is derived analytically. The model and optimal management solution emphasizes the constraint imposed by finite storage capacity. The optimal generated energy is established independently of the system's capacity, and load, and general characteristics of it are derived and proved. The analytic solution provides an intuitive comprehension into the optimal power management, without needing numeric simulations.
SHORT TIME FULL ASYMPTOTIC EXPANSION OF HYPOELLIPTIC HEAT KERNEL AT THE CUT LOCUS

In this paper we prove a short time asymptotic expansion of a hypoelliptic heat kernel on a Euclidean space and a compact manifold. We study the ‘cut locus’ case, namely, the case where energy-minimizing paths which join the two points under consideration form not a finite set, but a compact manifold. Under mild assumptions we obtain an asymptotic expansion of the heat kernel up to any order. Our approach is probabilistic and the heat kernel is regarded as the density of the law of a hypoelliptic diffusion process, which is realized as a unique solution of the corresponding stochastic differential equation. Our main tools are S. Watanabe’s distributional Malliavin calculus and T. Lyons’ rough path theory.
Development and evaluation of a treatment fidelity instrument for family-based treatment of adolescent anorexia nervosa.

OBJECTIVE This study provides data on the psychometric properties of a newly developed measure of treatment fidelity in Family-Based Treatment (FBT) for adolescent anorexia nervosa (AN). The Family Therapy Fidelity and Adherence Check (FBT-FACT) was created to evaluate therapist adherence and competency on the core interventions in FBT. METHOD Participants were 45 adolescents and their families sampled from three randomized clinical trials evaluating treatment for AN. Trained fidelity raters evaluated 19 therapists across 90 early session recordings using the FBT-FACT. They also rated an additional 15 session 1 recordings of an alternate form of family therapy-Systemic Family Therapy for the purpose of evaluating discriminant validity of the FBT-FACT. The process of development and the psychometric properties of the FBT-FACT are presented. RESULTS Overall fidelity ratings for each session demonstrated moderate to strong inter-rater agreement. Internal consistency of the measure was strong for sessions 1 and 2 and poor for session 3. Principal components analysis suggests sessions 1 and 2 are distinct interventions. DISCUSSION The FBT-FACT demonstrates good reliability and validity as a measure of treatment fidelity in the early phase of FBT.
Advantages of open source processes for reliability: clarifying the issues

Some authors maintain that open source software processes are particularly well-suited for delivering good reliability. We discuss this kind of statement, first clarifying the different measures of reliability and of a process’s ability to deliver it that can be of interest, and then proposing a way of addressing part of it via probabilistic modelling. We present a model of the reliability improvement process that results from the use of the software and the fixing of reported faults, which takes account of the effect on this process of the variety of software use patterns within the user community. We show preliminary, interesting, non intuitive results concerning the conjecture that a more diverse population of users engaged in reporting faults may give OSS processes an advantage over conventional industrial processes, in terms of fast reliability growth after release, and discuss further possible developments.
Ecologically differentiated stress-tolerant endosymbionts in the dinoflagellate genus Symbiodinium (Dinophyceae) Clade D are different species

Abstract: We used an integrative genetics approach using sequences of (1) nuclear ribosomal rDNA (internal transcribed spacers and partial large subunit rDNA), (2) single-copy microsatellite nuclear DNA, (3) chloroplast-encoded 23S rDNA, (4) mitochondrial cytochrome b, and (5) repeat variation at eight microsatellite markers, to test the hypothesis that the stress-tolerant, ‘morphologically cryptic’ Clade D Symbiodinium (Dinophyceae) was composed of more than one species. Concordant phylogenetic and population genetic evidence clearly differentiate separately evolving, reproductively isolated lineages. We describe Symbiodinium boreum sp. nov. and S. eurythalpos sp. nov., two symbionts known to occur in colonies of the zebra coral, Oulastrea crispata (Scleractinia), which lives in turbid, marginal habitats extending from equatorial Southeast Asia to the main islands of Japan in the temperate northwest Pacific Ocean. Symbiodinium boreum was associated with O. crispata in temperate latitudes and S. eurythalpos was common to colonies in the tropics. The geographical ranges of both symbiont species overlapped in the subtropics where they sometimes co-occurred in the same host colony. Symbiodinium trenchii sp. nov. is also described. As a host-generalist symbiont, it often occurs in symbiosis with various species of Scleractinia possessing open (horizontal) modes of symbiont acquisition and is common to reef coral communities thriving in warm turbid reef habitats in the western Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, Arabian/Persian Gulf, Red Sea and western Atlantic (Caribbean). As is typical for dinoflagellates, S. boreum and S. eurythalpos were haploid, but microsatellite loci from field-collected and cultured S. trenchii often possessed two alleles, implying that a genome-wide duplication occurred during the evolution of this species. The recognition that Clade D Symbiodinium contains species exhibiting marked differences in host specificity and geographical distribution will yield greater scientific clarity about how stress-tolerant symbionts function in the ecological response of coral–dinoflagellate symbioses to global climate change.
Interference with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) replication by CD8+ T cells in peripheral blood leukocytes of asymptomatic HIV carriers in vitro

A long asymptomatic period is one of the characteristics of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, despite its fatal consequences. Antiviral defense in HIV-infected individuals controls viral replication during this period. In the present study, we demonstrate that peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL) of asymptomatic HIV-1 carriers, following exogenous HIV-1 infection in vitro, do not support viral replication. These cells do not produce detectable amounts of reverse transcriptase or accumulate unintegrated proviral DNA. This is a striking contrast to the behavior of HIV-1-infected PBL of seronegative individuals, which produce large amounts of RT and unintegrated DNA. Such resistance to HIV-1 replication is not seen in PBL of patients with advanced disease. Since the binding of HIV-1 to CD4 molecule is not impaired in PBL of asymptomatic carriers, the interference with HIV replication must occur after the stage of virus binding. PBL lose their resistance when CD8+ lymphocytes are removed. In addition, these PBL are not resistant to an exogenous infection with HIV-2. These observations suggest that certain populations of CD8+ lymphocytes of asymptomatic HIV-1 carriers operate on the target cells in PBL to block viral replication in an HIV-1-specific manner. Such CD8+ lymphocyte-mediated interference with HIV replication could play an important role in the maintenance of the period of disease latency.
Combining Local and Global Motion Estimators for Robust Face Tracking

Faces show both global and local motions, where the former represents rigid head movements due to 3D translation and rotation and the local motion represents non-rigid deformation due to speech, or facial expressions. Although non- rigid face models can represent both types of the facial motions, they are not enough to track the facial motions correctly. The non-rigid face models have large number of model parameters to explain various deformation of the face and the high dimensionality of their model parameter space make them sensitive to initial model parameters, apt to be stuck to local minimum, and difficult to be recovered (re-initialized) from failure when iterative gradient descent optimization techniques are used. To alleviate these problems, we propose to use two types of face trackers that are suitable for estimating the global and local motions, respectively. In the proposed algorithm, the global motion estimator is applied at first and the estimated global motion is used to compute proper initial model parameters of the local motion estimator to make it converge correctly. In this paper, we used active appearance model (MM) and cylinder head model (CHM) as the representative examples of the non- rigid and rigid face models. Experimental results showed that face tracking combining AAMs and CHMs improved the face tracking performance than that of AAMs in terms of 170% higher tracking rate and the 115% wider pose coverage.
Animal models of asthma

Animal models of asthma are a tool that allows studies to be conducted in the setting of an intact immune and respiratory system. These models have highlighted the importance of T‐helper type 2 driven allergic responses in the progression of asthma and have been useful in the identification of potential drug targets for interventions involving allergic pathways. However, a number of drugs that have been shown to have some efficacy in animal models of asthma have shown little clinical benefit in human asthmatics. This may be due to a number of factors including the species of animal chosen and the methods used to induce an asthmatic phenotype in animals that do not normally develop a disease that could be characterized as asthma. The range of animal models available is vast, with the most popular models being rodents (inbred mice and rats) and guinea‐pigs, which have the benefit of being easy to handle and being relatively cost effective compared with other models that are available. The recent advances in transgenic technology and the development of species‐specific probes, particularly in mice, have allowed detailed mechanistic studies to be conducted. Despite these advances in technology, there are a number of issues with current animal models of asthma that must be recognized including the disparity in immunology and anatomy between these species and humans, the requirement for adjuvant during senitization in most models, the acute nature of the allergic response that is induced and the use of adult animals as the primary disease model. Some larger animal models using sheep and dogs have been developed that may address some of these issues but they also have different biology from humans in many ways and are extremely costly, with very few probes available for characterizing allergic responses in the airway in these species. As research in this area continues to expand, the relative merits and limitations of each model must be defined and understood in order to evaluate the information that is obtained from these models and to extrapolate these findings to humans so that effective drug therapies can be developed. Despite these issues, animal models have been, and will continue to be, vital in understanding the mechanisms that are involved in the development and progression of asthma.
Gender Differences in Chemical Carcinogenesis in National Toxicology Program 2-Year Bioassays

Differences in cancer incidences between men and women are often explained by either differences in environmental exposures or by influences of sex hormones. However, there are few studies on intrinsic gender differences in susceptibility to chemical carcinogens. We have analyzed the National Toxicology Program (NTP) database for sex differences in rat responses to chemical carcinogens. We found that the odds that male rat bioassays were assigned a higher level of evidence than female rat bioassays was 1.69 (p < .001). Of 278 carcinogenic chemicals in the database, 201 (72%) exhibited statistical gender differences (p ≤ .05) in at least one nonreproductive organ. One hundred thirty of these 201 chemicals induced gender-specific tumors in male rats and 59 in female rats. Sixty-eight chemicals induced tumors in males but no tumors in females. Less than one third (i.e., 19 chemicals) induced tumors in females but not males. Male-specific tumors included pancreatic and skin tumors, and female-specific tumors included lung tumors. For some tumor sites, these differences in gender susceptibility can be associated with literature data on sex hormone receptor expression. In conclusion, gender-specific tumors were common. The male dominance is in line with recent human data, and the male susceptibility to carcinogens should be further studied.
Simultaneous Determination of 24 Antidepressant Drugs and Their Metabolites in Wastewater by Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Antidepressants are a new kind of pollutants being increasingly found in wastewater. In this study, a fast and sensitive ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for the analysis of 24 antidepressant drugs and six of their metabolites in wastewater. This is the first time that the antidepressant residues in wastewater of Beijing (China) were systematically reported. A solid-phase extraction process was performed with 3 M cation disk, followed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry measurements. The chromatographic separation and mass parameters were optimized in order to achieve suitable retention time and good resolution for analytes. All compounds were satisfactorily determined in one single injection within 20 min. The limit of quantification (LOQ), linearity, and extraction recovery were validated. The LOQ for analytes were ranged from 0.02 to 0.51 ng/mL. The determination coefficients were more than 0.99 within the tested concentration range (0.1–25 ng/mL), and the recovery rate for each target compound was ranged from 81.2% to 118% at 1 ng/mL. This new developed method was successfully applied to analysis the samples collected from Beijing municipal wastewater treatment plants. At least ten target antidepressants were found in all samples and the highest mean concentration of desmethylvenlafaxin was up to 415.6 ng/L.
Profiles and predictors of the course of psychological distress across four years after heart transplantation

Background. Like individuals exposed to other life stressors, patients undergoing organ transplantation typically show elevated psychological distress initially post-transplant, with improvement thereafter. However, this ‘average’ pattern may conceal subgroups with differing profiles of psychological response. We sought to identify unique temporal distress profiles, and their predictors, after heart transplantation. Method. A total of 156 transplant recipients (refusal rate, 6%) were enrolled and assessed at 2, 7, 12, 36, and 42 months post-transplant. Cluster analysis was used to identify distinct distress profiles over time. Multivariate analyses examined health and psychosocial predictors of the profiles. Results. Five groups were identified, with either: (a) low distress at all time-points (45% of the sample), (b) high, clinically significant distress at all times (21%), (c) high distress over several years with low distress only at final assessment (12%), (d) high distress during the first several months with decline thereafter (6%), or (e) fluctuating distress levels (16%). Patients showing any distress (versus none) were more likely to have a pre-transplant psychiatric history, poorer social supports and more physical impairment early post-transplant, and continued physical impairment over time. Among distressed patients, those with persistent (versus declining) distress were most likely to be female, waited more briefly for transplant, and were most physically impaired early post-transplant. While persistently distressed patients had better social supports early post-transplant, these supports subsequently worsened. Conclusions. Individuals differ in whether and when psychological distress abates after heart transplantation. Findings regarding distress profiles and their predictors may inform the design of interventions to address each transplant recipient's unique psychological needs.