Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Selection, and Are Reduced in Murine Lupus Undergone Give Rise to Mature B Cells, Have Cutting Edge: Transitional T3 B Cells Do Not

As the immediate precursors to mature follicular B cells in splenic development, immature transitional cells are an essential component for understanding late B cell differ-entiation. It has been shown that T2 cells can give rise to mature B cells; however, whether T3 B cells represent a normal stage of B cell development, which has been widely assumed, has not been fully resolved. In this study, we demonstrate both in vitro and in vivo that T3 B cells do not give rise to mature B cells and are instead selected away from the T1 3 T2 3 mature B cell developmental pathway and are hyporesponsive to stimulation through the BCR. Significantly reduced numbers of T3 B cells in young lupus-prone mice further suggest that the specificity of this subset holds clues to understanding autoimmunity. The Journal of Immunology, 2007, 178: 7511–7515. ewly formed B cells that have passed through bone marrow (BM) 3 tolerance checkpoints and express a functional BCR migrate to the spleen to complete development. recent emigrants are known as transitional B cells. murine the designated as
Glomerular Filtration Rate Slopes Have Significantly Improved Among Renal Transplants in the United States

Introduction. In recent years, the use of higher risk donor organs and steroid avoidance regimens with potential increased acute rejection risk have increased. We hypothesized that these patterns adversely affect changes in posttransplant renal function. Methods. By using Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients data and multivariable generalized linear models, we examined factors associated with slopes of estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR; modification of diet in renal disease) from 6 to 12 months and 6 to 24 months posttransplant in solitary adult renal transplant recipients transplanted between 2003 and 2008 (n=91,241). We estimated GFR at each interval, analyzed changes within patients between follow-up intervals, and evaluated changes in 1-year graft and patient survival during the study period. Results. GFR intercept at 6 months averaged 54.3 mL/min/1.73 m2 (standard deviation [SD] 18.2 mL/min/1.73 m2). Decline in GFR between 6 and 12 months posttransplant averaged 0.69 mL/min/1.73 m2 (SD 10.9 mL/min/1.73 m2) and between 6 and 24 months averaged 2.45 mL/min/1.73 m2 (SD 15.7 mL/min/1.73 m2). However, the GFR decline was significantly attenuated during the study period among both deceased and living donor transplant recipients. Factors significantly associated with steeper GFR decline were increased pretransplant dialysis time, older donor age, diabetes as a primary diagnosis, low body mass index, African American race, retransplants, nonprivate insurance, and increased panel reactive antibody percent. Baseline or slope in renal function did not differ substantially by immunosuppressive regimen. One-year overall graft survival increased during the study period from 92.3% to 93.9%. Conclusions. GFR slopes and 1-year survival rates have improved in the United States independent of donor quality and immunosuppressive regimen. Findings may reflect increased skill in medical management and need further evaluation to determine whether short-term improvements translate to improved long-term survival.
Structure-Based Assembly of Protein Complexes in Yeast

Images of entire cells are preceding atomic structures of the separate molecular machines that they contain. The resulting gap in knowledge can be partly bridged by protein-protein interactions, bioinformatics, and electron microscopy. Here we use interactions of known three-dimensional structure to model a large set of yeast complexes, which we also screen by electron microscopy. For 54 of 102 complexes, we obtain at least partial models of interacting subunits. For 29, including the exosome, the chaperonin containing TCP-1, a 3′-messenger RNA degradation complex, and RNA polymerase II, the process suggests atomic details not easily seen by homology, involving the combination of two or more known structures. We also consider interactions between complexes (cross-talk) and use these to construct a structure-based network of molecular machines in the cell.
Tuition, Debt, and Human Capital

This paper investigates the effects of college tuition on student debt and human capital accumulation. We exploit data from a random sample of undergraduate students in the United States and implement a research design that instruments for realized tuition with relatively large changes to the advertised tuition of students who enrolled at the same school in different cohorts. We find that $5,000 in higher tuition causally reduces the probability of graduating with a graduate degree by 3.1 percentage points and increases student debt by $1,480. Higher tuition also leads to a decline in mortgage balances and an increase in credit card delinquencies.
A novel Zohair filter for deblurring computed tomography medical images

Deblurring computed tomography (CT) images has been an active research topic in recent years because of the wide variety of challenges it offers. Hence, a novel filter is proposed in this article unveiling a simple, efficient, and fast deblurring process that involves few parameters, low calculations and does not utilize the undesirable iterative property or introduce the common deblurring problems. The newly proposed filter is validated on both real and synthetic blurred CT images to provide a sufficient understanding about its performance. Moreover, proper comparisons are made with high‐profile deblurring methods, in which the results are evaluated using three reliable quality metrics of feature similarity index (FSIM), structural similarity (SSIM), and visual information fidelity in pixel domain (VIFP). The intensive experiments and performance evaluations exhibited the efficiency of the proposed filter, in that it outperformed all the comparative methods. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 25, 265–275, 2015
On Flow Marking Attacks in Wireless Anonymous Communication Networks

This paper studies the degradation of anonymity in a flow-based wireless mix network under flow marking attacks, in which an adversary embeds a recognizable pattern of marks into wireless traffic flows by electromagnetic interference. We find that traditional mix technologies are not effective in defeating flow marking attacks, and it may take an adversary only a few seconds to recognize the communication relationship between hosts by tracking such artificial marks. Flow marking attacks utilize frequency domain analytical techniques and convert time domain marks into invariant feature frequencies. To counter flow marking attacks, we propose a new countermeasure based on digital filtering technology, and show that this filter-based countermeasure can effectively defend a wireless mix network from flow marking attacks
Study of Gene Expression Profiles and Biological Mechanism of Cerebral Palsy Using a Monozygotic Twin Pair

Abstract The gene expression profile of a normal-suffering monozygotic twin pair is investigated to explore biological mechanisms of spastic type cerebral palsy. Main works include following three aspects: First, a cDNA microarray test is carried out to get the differentially expressed genes of the patient with cerebral palsy compared to her monozygotic twin sister. Second, these differentially expressed genes are searched for their bioinformation within 4 biological databases: FatiGO, FatiGOPlus, KEGG, and SOURCE. Third, a set of special genes and gene families are screened out from the spastic type cerebral palsy patient. These biological analyses reveal that those genes for cell junction are mostly down-regulated, while those genes for metabolism are mostly up-regulated. The individual genes, gene family, and their associated biological functions can reflect the pathological and physiological characteristics of the cerebral palsy.
Educative/support groups and subliminal psychodynamic activation for Bulimic college women

This study examined the effects of short-term educative/support groups and subliminal psychodynamic activation on bulimic symptomatology and psychological functioning in 27 female students. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) educative/support group plus experimental stimulus; (2) educative/support group plus neutral stimulus; (3) attention/placebo plus experimental stimulus; and (4) attention/placebo plus neutral stimulus. The educative/support group had significant ameliorative effects on binging and symptoms of emotional distress, regardless of whether or not it was paired with subliminal psychodynamic activation. Decreases in several psychological traits associated with eating disorders were found among all subjects irrespective of treatment conditions. Subliminal psychodynamic activation appeared to exert an independent treatment effect on restrained eating and certain symptoms of emotional distress. Clinical and theoretical implications are discussed and related to current proposed etiologies of bulimia.
Provider Stress and Children's Active Engagement

This study explored provider stress and provider-accumulated training as predictors of child active engagement in child care programs. Providers from 19 child care programs participated in a self-report of stress levels, using an adaptation of the Parent Stress Index-Short Form. Child psychosocial factors were assessed using the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment. Classroom observations of child engagement were assessed through direct observation using a modification of the Engagement Check II and E-Qual III. Results indicated that high provider stress and accumulated provider training hours are predictors of child engagement during free play in child care programs. Additionally, there was a significant interaction between provider training and provider stress, with accumulated training hours predicting high child engagement for those providers with high levels of stress. Thus, high training hours tended to assuage provider stress to a degree. Our results suggest the potentially mitigating effects of state-regulated child care training hours. They also suggest the need to address child care systematically during training and outreach programs.
Biomimetic design through natural language analysis to facilitate cross-domain information retrieval

Biomimetic, or biologically inspired, design uses analogous biological phenomena to develop solutions for engineering problems. Several instances of biomimetic design result from personal observations of biological phenomena. However, many engineers' knowledge of biology may be limited, thus reducing the potential of biologically inspired solutions. Our approach to biomimetic design takes advantage of the large amount of biological knowledge already available in books, journals, and so forth, by performing keyword searches on these existing natural-language sources. Because of the ambiguity and imprecision of natural language, challenges inherent to natural language processing were encountered. One challenge of retrieving relevant cross-domain information involves differences in domain vocabularies, or lexicons. A keyword meaningful to biologists may not occur to engineers. For an example problem that involved cleaning, that is, removing dirt, a biochemist suggested the keyword “defend. ” Defend is not an obvious keyword to most engineers for this problem, nor are the words defend and “clean/remove” directly related within lexical references. However, previous work showed that biological phenomena retrieved by the keyword defend provided useful stimuli and produced successful concepts for the clean/remove problem. In this paper, we describe a method to systematically bridge the disparate biology and engineering domains using natural language analysis. For the clean/remove example, we were able to algorithmically generate several biologically meaningful keywords, including defend, that are not obviously related to the engineering problem. We developed a method to organize and rank the set of biologically meaningful keywords identified, and confirmed that we could achieve similar results for two other examples in encapsulation and microassembly. Although we specifically address cross-domain information retrieval from biology, the bridging process presented in this paper is not limited to biology, and can be used for any other domain given the availability of appropriate domain-specific knowledge sources and references.
The pituitary-ovarian complex in the aged anoestrous golden hamster.

Plasma and pituitary hormones of young (3--5 months of age) dioestrous hamsters with normal cycles and aged (13--17 months of age) anoestrous hamsters were compared. The anoestrous hamsters exhibited lower plasma values of progesterone (P less than 0.001), oestradiol-17 beta (P less than 0.005) and prolactin (P less than 0.001) and higher levels of plasma gonadotrophins (P less than 0.001) than did the dioestrous animals. Pituitary concentrations of LH were higher (P less than 0.005) in anoestrous hamsters, but pituitary FSH and prolactin values did not differ. In another series of experiments three groups of hamsters (3--5- and 13--17-month-old with normal cycles and 13--17-month-old in anoestrus) were ovariectomized. Blood samples were taken by cardiac puncture every 3--4 weeks after receiving s.c. injections of oestradiol-17 beta (1 or 10 micrograms/100 g body wt) for 2 or 9 consecutive days. The markedly lower levels of gonadotrophins in aged anoestrous hamsters indicated that the hypothalamic-hypophysial complex was incapable of responding to the same degree as it did in young and aged cyclic animals. Prolactin values were similarly depressed in all 3 groups. Oestradiol-17 beta treatment caused reduced gonadotrophin and increasing prolactin concentrations in all 3 groups. These results indicate that the ovaries of the senescent anoestrous hamster produce less steroids and suggest that age-related changes in the hypothalamic-hypophysial complex are largely responsible for the cessation of regular oestrous cycles.
Determination of Disk Diffusion and MIC Quality Control Guidelines for Solithromycin, a Novel Fluoroketolide Antibacterial, against Neisseria gonorrhoeae

ABSTRACT This solithromycin quality control study was performed to establish quality control (QC) ranges for the N. gonorrhoeae ATCC 49226 control strain for MIC agar dilution testing (AD) and zones by disk diffusion testing (DD). The following ranges were established: AD, 0.03 to 0.25 μg/ml, and DD, 33 to 43 mm. In January 2015, the CLSI Subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing approved these ranges, which will be important when evaluating solithromycin against clinical isolates of N. gonorrhoeae.
Research Note: Inter-Rater Reliability of the Global Assessment of Functioning Scale in a Psychogeriatric Population*

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was an examination of the inter-rater reliability for a psychogeriatric population of the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF), Axis V of the DSM-IV Classification System,. One-hundred-and-eight psychogeriatric patients, admitted to an acute-care psychiatric hospital, were rated on the GAF by three clinicians: a psychiatrist, a physician, and a psychologist. The psychologist also conducted a cognitive screening assessment at the time of admission, as well as a second rating of global functioning, which was carried out at the time of transfer/discharge from the admission unit. Results indicated good inter-rater reliability, with values ranging from 0.78 to 0.86. Comparisons were also made between the admission and transfer/discharge GAF scores. Implications for improving the inter-rater reliability of the GAF are discussed. RÉSUMÉ La raison d'être de cette recherche était l'examen de la fidélité inter-juges du « Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF), Axis V » du Système de classification DSM-IV au sein d'une population psychogériatrique. Au total, 108 patients psychogériatriques admis à un hôpital psychiatrique de soins de courte durée ont été classés à l'aide du GAF par trois cliniciens : un psychiatre, un médecin et un psychologue. De plus, le psychologue a administré une évaluation de dépistage cognitif à l'admission de même qu'une deuxième classification du fonctionnement global lors du transfert / congé de l'unité d'admission. Les résultats démontrent une fiabilité inter-corrélative, les valeurs se chiffrant entre 0,78 et 0,86. Il y a comparaisons entre les résultats GAF lors de l'admission et du transfert / congé. La recherche discute des retombés pour l'amélioration de la fiabilité inter-corrélative du GAF.
Web Page Clustering Using Heuristic Search in the Web Graph

Effective representation of Web search results remains an open problem in the Information Retrieval community. For ambiguous queries, a traditional approach is to organize search results into groups (clusters), one for each meaning of the query. These groups are usually constructed according to the topical similarity of the retrieved documents, but it is possible for documents to be totally dissimilar and still correspond to the same meaning of the query. To overcome this problem, we exploit the thematic locality of the Web--relevant Web pages are often located close to each other in the Web graph of hyperlinks. We estimate the level of relevance between each pair of retrieved pages by the length of a path between them. The path is constructed using multi-agent beam search: each agent starts with one Web page and attempts to meet as many other agents as possible with some bounded resources. We test the system on two types of queries: ambiguous English words and people names. The Web appears to be tightly connected; about 70% of the agents meet with each other after only three iterations of exhaustive breadth-first search. However, when heuristics are applied, the search becomes more focused and the obtained results are substantially more accurate. Combined with a content-driven Web page clustering technique, our heuristic search system significantly improves the clustering results.
Understanding the Purpose of Permission Use in Mobile Apps

Mobile apps frequently request access to sensitive data, such as location and contacts. Understanding the purpose of why sensitive data is accessed could help improve privacy as well as enable new kinds of access control. In this article, we propose a text mining based method to infer the purpose of sensitive data access by Android apps. The key idea we propose is to extract multiple features from app code and then use those features to train a machine learning classifier for purpose inference. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of two complementary approaches to infer the purpose of permission use, first using purely static analysis, and then using primarily dynamic analysis. We also discuss the pros and cons of both approaches and the trade-offs involved.
Olweus Bullying Prevention Program: Components Implemented by Elementary Classroom and Specialist Teachers

We investigated implementation fidelity of programmatic activities of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) among 2,022 teachers, 88.5% female, from 88 elementary schools located in Pennsylvania. Results indicated that the majority of respondents had attended the school kick-off event, posted the rules in the classroom, and explained the rules to students. Receiving booster sessions and activities involving parental involvement were the least likely elements to have been performed. Logistic regression analyses revealed that teachers with confidence in their ability to implement the OBPP had completed all of the OBPP programmatic activities. Similarly, multiple regression analysis results revealed that teachers with self-efficacy to implement the OBPP implemented more components than respondents without self-efficacy. In addition, teachers with more OBPP experience were more likely to have completed individual-level activities. Our findings reveal that certain OBPP components are easier to perform than others and that implementer characteristics matter.
Load balancing in a heterogeneous computing environment

Heterogeneous distributed computing is the tuned use of a network of machines of diverse architectures and computational power; by directing individual portions of a parallel program to the machine(s) best suited for their execution. Load balancing algorithms for an HCE attempt to improve the response times for parallel programs by adapting the process scheduling policies on individual machines. The authors propose a priority-based load balancing algorithm, the priority algorithm, which dynamically adjusts the quality of service for the processes of a parallel program by detecting dependences among them. Process migration, the most successful means to balance load in homogeneous distributed environments, is undesirable in an HCE both because of architectural differences between machines and because it conflicts with the HCE goal of matching code to machines. They use simulation to evaluate the speedup of the algorithm on synthetic parallel programs under different background load conditions.
Dynamic changes of excitatory amino acid receptors in the rat hippocampus following transient cerebral ischemia

The changes in excitatory amino acid receptor ligand binding induced by transient cerebral ischemia were studied in the rat hippocampal subfields. Ten minutes of ischemia was induced by common carotid artery occlusion combined with hypotension, and the animals were allowed variable periods of recovery ranging from 1 day to 4 weeks. The binding of 3H-AMPA (alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid) to quisqualate receptors, 3H-kainic acid (KA) to kainate receptors, and 3H-glutamate to N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors as determined by quantitative autoradiography. One week following ischemia the CA1 region of the hippocampus displayed a severe (90%) dendrosomatic lesion with preservation of presynaptic terminals. This was associated with a 60% decrease in AMPA binding and a 25% decrease in glutamate binding to NMDA receptors. At 4 weeks postischemia, both AMPA and NMDA sites were greatly reduced. Although the dentate gyrus granule cells are resistant to an ischemic insult of this magnitude, this region showed marked changes in receptor binding. One week following ischemia, the AMPA and NMDA binding decreased by approximately 40 and 20%, respectively. Following 2 weeks of recovery, the NMDA binding was not significantly different from control level, while the AMPA binding remained depressed up to 4 weeks postischemia. The high density of KA binding sites in the inner molecular layer of the dentate gyrus was unaffected by the ischemic insult, despite an extensive degeneration of cells in the hilus of dentate gyrus which projects glutamatergic afferents to this area. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Challenging Behaviours among Children with Intellectual Disability

Hope helps in coping among parents with intellectually disabled children. This study compared the level of hope among parents of such children with and without challenging behaviour. The participants were parents of children with multiple, single and no challenging behaviours. These three groups were compared for their total and subscale hope scores with analysis of variance. Multiple regression analysis was conducted with the total hope score as the dependent variable. The results showed that hopelessness was related to challenging behaviour. The post hoc test showed different levels of hopelessness between parents in challenging behaviour groups in relation to the control group. In particular, only the parents of intellectually disabled children who had multiple challenging behaviours had significantly lower hope scores than the other two groups. Multimodal parental attitude intervention models should address the role challenging behaviours play in contributing to hopelessness among parents.