Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro Study of the Antagonistic Effect of Low-dose Liquiritigenin on Gemcitabine-induced Capillary Leak Syndrome in Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma via Inhibiting ROS- Mediated Signalling Pathways.

BACKGROUND To investigate in-vitro antagonistic effect of low-dose liquiritigenin on gemcitabine-induced capillary leak syndrome (CLS) in pancreatic adenocarcinoma via inhibiting reactive oxygen species (ROS)- mediated signalling pathways. MATERIALS AND METHODS Human pancreatic adenocarcinoma Panc-1 cells and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were pre-treated using low-dose liquiritigenin for 24 h, then added into gemcitabine and incubated for 48 h. Cell viability, apoptosis rate and ROS levels of Panc-1 cells and HUVECs were respectively detected through methylthiazolyldiphenyl-tetrazoliumbromide (MTT) and flow cytometry. For HUVECs, transendothelial electrical resistance (TEER) and transcellular and paracellular leak were measured using transwell assays, then poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP-1) and metal matrix proteinase-9 (MMP9) activity were assayed via kits, mRNA expressions of p53 and Rac-1 were determined through quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR); The expressions of intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1), vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) and PARP-1 were measured via western blotting. RESULTS Low-dose liquiritigenin exerted no effect on gemcitabine-induced changes of cell viability, apoptosis rate and ROS levels in Panc-1 cells, but for HUVECs, liquiritigenin (3 μM) could remarkably elevate gemcitabine- induced decrease of cell viability, transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER), pro-MMP9 level and expression of ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 (p<0.01). Meanwhile, it could also significantly decrease gemcitabine-induced increase of transcellular and paracellular leak, ROS level, PARP-1 activity, Act-MMP9 level, mRNA expressions of p53 and Rac-1, expression of PARP-1 and apoptosis rate (p<0.01). CONCLUSIONS Low-dose liquiritigenin exerts an antagonistic effect on gemcitabine-induced leak across HUVECs via inhibiting ROS-mediated signalling pathways, but without affecting gemcitabine-induced Panc-1 cell apoptosis. Therefore, low-dose liquiritigenin might be beneficial to prevent the occurrence of gemcitabine-induced CLS in pancreatic adenocarcinoma.
Analysis of novel approaches for SAR-GMTI based on modulated stepped-frequency signals

SAR-GMTI is of great significance and attraction in target surveillance. Modulated stepped frequency (MSF) signal is studied in this paper as a competent choice to satisfy the cooperation of SAR and GMTI. The characteristics of SAR-GMTI and relevant signal forms are presented firstly. Several MSF based approaches are analyzed for SAR-GMTI application, including MIMO configuration, PRF transformation and compound velocity measurement.
Indico central – events organisation, ergonomics and collaboration tools integration

While the remote collaboration services at CERN slowly aggregate around the Indico event management software, its new version which is the result of a careful maturation process includes improvements which will set a new reference in its domain. The presentation will focus on the description of the new features of the tool, the user feedback process which resulted in a new record of usability. We will also describe the interactions with the worldwide community of users and server administrators and the impact this has had on our development process, as well as the tools set in place to streamline the work between the different collaborating sites. A last part will be dedicated to the use of Indico as a central hub for operating other local services around the event organisation (registration epayment, audiovisual recording, webcast, room booking, and videoconference support)
Investigating Personalized Price Discrimination of Textile-, Electronics- and General Stores in German Online Retail

Developers of pricing strategies in e-commerce businesses see a wide range of opportunities for deploying online price discrimination techniques given their ability to track consumers’ online identity and behavior. In theory, an increasing use of personal data enables organizations to show every single consumer their own personalized price, which is determined by the consumer’s characteristics, e.g. age, gender, surfing history, or location. This paper aims to explore the existence of online price discrimination activities within the German ecommerce market using a three-method approach. First, inquiring the online retailers via email and investigating their public documents; second, surveying students; and third, using a software crawler to simulate surfing activity. Our results do not provide any evidence of individualized price discrimination, which, we argue, is due to economic and political reasons, not technical reasons.
Recognition of Persian Online Handwriting Using Elastic Fuzzy Pattern Recognition

Persian is a fully cursive handwriting in which each character may take different forms in different parts of the word, characters overlap and there is a wide range of possible styles. These complexities make automatic recognition of Persian a very hard task. This paper presents a novel approach on recognition of such writings systems which is based on the description of input stream by a sequence of fuzzy linguistic terms; representation of character patterns with the same descriptive language; and comparison of inputs with character patterns using a novel elastic pattern matching approach. As there is no general benchmark for recognition of Persian handwriting, the approach has been tested on the set of words in first primary Iranian school books including 1250 words resulting in 78% correct recognition without dictionary and 96% with dictionary.
Molecular Insights into the Potential Insecticidal Interaction of β-Dihydroagarofuran Derivatives with the H Subunit of V-ATPase

Celangulin V (CV), one of dihydroagarofuran sesquiterpene polyesters isolated from Chinese bittersweet (Celastrus angulatus Maxim), is famous natural botanical insecticide. Decades of research suggests that is displays excellent insecticidal activity against some insects, such as Mythimna separata Walker. Recently, it has been validated that the H subunit of V-ATPase is one of the target proteins of the insecticidal dihydroagarofuran sesquiterpene polyesters. As a continuation of the development of new pesticides from these natural products, a series of β-dihydroagarofuran derivatives have been designed and synthesized. The compound JW-3, an insecticidal derivative of CV with a p-fluorobenzyl group, exhibits higher insecticidal activity than CV. In this study, the potential inhibitory effect aused by the interaction of JW-3 with the H subunit of V-ATPase c was verified by confirmatory experiments at the molecular level. Both spectroscopic techniques and isothermal titration calorimetry measurements showed the binding of JW-3 to the subunit H of V-ATPase was specific and spontaneous. In addition, the possible mechanism of action of the compound was discussed. Docking results indicated compound JW-3 could bind well in ‘the interdomain cleft’ of the V-ATPase subunit H by the hydrogen bonding and make conformation of the ligand–protein complex become more stable. All results are the further validations of the hypothesis, that the target protein of insecticidal dihydroagarofuran sesquiterpene polyesters and their β-dihydroagarofuran derivatives is the subunit H of V-ATPase. The results also provide new ideas for developing pesticides acting on V-ATPase of insects.
The Role of Supply Chain Management toward Performance of Manufacturing Companies in Yemen

Supply chain management plays a major role in industrial companies, with strengthen collaboration among their suppliers and customers. The main aims of his paper, is to examine the role of Supply Chain Management Capabilities- SCMC toward industrial companies performance in Yemen. Top and middle managers were asked to answer the questionnaire, which drawn from a geographical clustered sample. Thirty nine manufacturing were surveyed in five governorates. To examine the role of SCMC towards industrial companies hypothesis testing employed correlation. The findings showed a significant positive relationship at statistical significant level (α ≤0.05) between outside-in capabilities and inside-out capabilities, inside-out capabilities and companies’ market performance only, and spanning capabilities with both outside-in capabilities and company’s performance.
Energy-aware and stable cluster-based multipath routing protocol for wireless ad hoc networks

Ad hoc networks are wireless networks that can operate without infrastructure and without centralised network management; they may contain nodes with limited battery power. Hence, energy conservation is a critical requirement in the design of routing protocols for ad hoc networks. Clustering has been proposed as a promising method for simplifying the routing process in mobile ad hoc networks when network size increases. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient multipath routing protocol, called energy aware and stable cluster-based multipath routing (ES-CMR protocol), which preserves the residual energy of nodes and increases the network lifetime. To achieve this goal, we use an objective model to select energy-efficient paths with stable links. The simulation results demonstrate that ES-CMR has better performance in terms of energy consumption, network lifetime and end-to-end delay.
Derangement of Heart Rate Variability During a Catastrophic Earthquake: A Possible Mechanism for Increased Heart Attacks

LIN, L. ‐Y. , et al.: Derangement of Heart Rate Variability During a Catastrophic Earthquake: A Possible Mechanism for Increased Heart Attacks. At 1:47 AM on September 21, 1999, the middle part of Taiwan was struck by a major earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale. It has been shown that the mental stress caused by an earthquake could lead to a short‐ or long‐term increase in frequency of cardiac death probably through activation of the sympathetic nervous system. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of emotional stress on the autonomic system during an actual earthquake. Fifteen patients receiving a 24‐hour Holter ECG study starting from 10 ± 4 hours before the onset of the earthquake were included for the analysis of time‐ and frequency‐domains of heart rate variability (HRV) at several time periods. A 24‐hour Holter study recorded 2–6 months before the earthquake in 30 age‐ and sex‐matched subjects served as the control group. Heart rate and the low frequency (LF) to high frequency (HF) ratio increased significantly after the earthquake and were attributed mainly to the withdrawal of the high frequency component (parasympathetic activity) of HRV. Sympathetic activation was blunted in elderly subjects > 60 years old. The concomitant ST‐T depression observed in the Holter study correlated with a higher increment of LF as compared to HF components. The changes observed in HRV recovered completely 40 minutes following the earthquake. The derangement of HRV results from the withdrawal of the parasympathetic component and the arousal of sympathetic activity by the stressful earthquake. However, this autonomic derangement returned towards normal 40 minutes following the earthquake.
DF-LDA tree: a nonlinear multilevel classifier for pattern recognition

This article presents a new nonlinear classifier by arranging linear classifiers in a tree structure. The proposed classifier, called the direct fractional-step linear discriminant (DF-LDA) tree, adopts a tree structure containing a DF-LDA at each node. The structure of the tree classifier evolves as the training proceeds, so there is no need to decide any parameters as a priori. Due to the many DF-LDAs arranged in the tree structure, classification performance of the proposed classifier is improved over single-shot DF-LDA. The proposed DF-LDA tree is tested on various synthetic and real datasets. Experimental results show that the proposed classifier leads to very satisfactory results in terms of classification accuracy.
Impact of serum SP-A and SP-D levels on comparison and prognosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

Background and objective: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) has a poor prognosis in general; however, it is heterogeneous to detect relative biomarkers for predicting the disease progression. Serum biomarkers can be conveniently collected to detect and help to differentially diagnose IPF and predict IPF prognosis. This meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the use of serum surfactant proteins A and D (SP-A and SP-D) for differential diagnosis and prognosis of IPF. Methods: Relevant articles were searched in PubMed, Embase, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases and reviewed by 2 independent readers. Standard mean difference (SMD) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated to assess the difference in serum levels of SP-A/D among patients with IPF, when compared to patients with non-IPF interstitial lung disease (ILD), pulmonary infection, and healthy control. Hazard ratio (HR) and 95% CI were used to compare the relative risk of mortality. Results: Twenty-one articles (totalling 1289 IPF patients) were included in final meta-analysis. Serum SP-A levels were significantly higher in patients with IPF than in patients with non-IPF ILD (SMD: 1.108 [0.584, 1.632], P < .001), or pulmonary infection (SMD: 1.320 [0.999, 1.640], P < .001) and healthy controls (SMD: 2.802 [1.901, 3.702], P < .001). There was no significant difference in serum SP-D levels between patients with IPF and those with non-IPF ILD patients (SMD: 0.459 [−0.000, 0.919], P = .050). Serum SP-D levels were significantly higher in patients with IPF than in patients with pulmonary infection (SMD: 1.308 [0.813, 1.803], P < .001) and healthy controls (SMD: 2.235 [1.739, 2.731], P < .001). Risk of death in patients with IPF and elevated serum SP-A was increased 39% compared to patients with low SP-A groups. Elevated SP-D increased risk by 111% when compared to low SP-D. In acute exacerbation of IPF, serum SP-A/D were higher than those in stable stage. The comparisons and prognosis might be different in Asian and Caucasian patients. Conclusions: Serum SP-A/D detection might be useful for differential diagnosis and prediction of survival in patients with IPF.
Psychometric properties of the WHO Violence Against Women instrument in a male population-based sample in Sweden

Objectives To explore the psychometric properties of the WHO's Violence Against Women instrument (VAWI) in a randomly selected national sample of Swedish men. Design Cross-sectional survey study. Setting Sweden. Participants A postal survey was sent to 1009 men between January and March 2009, during which 458 men (45.4%) returned the questionnaire. 49 men who did not answer any of the violence items were excluded from the analyses, resulting in a final sample of 399 men. Primary and secondary outcome measures Self-reported exposure to psychological, physical and sexual intimate partner violence. Results Cronbach's α were 0.74 (psychological scale), 0.86 (physical scale), 0.82 (sexual scale) and 0.88 (total scale). Principal components analysis did not corroborate the conceptual three-dimensional model of the VAWI and other constructs were found. Past-year prevalence of physical (7.6%; 95% CI 5.0% to 10.2%) and sexual (2.3%; 95% CI 0.8% to 3.8%) violence was higher than in other Nordic studies; earlier-in-life prevalence of physical violence (6.8%; CI 95% 4.3% to 9.3%) was lower and sexual violence (2.5%; 95% CI 1.0% to 4.0%) was higher. Reported exposure rates were generally higher than those obtained from a concurrently administered instrument (NorVold Abuse Questionnaire). Conclusions The VAWI conceptual model was only partially replicated and boundaries between psychological, physical and sexual acts of violence were indistinct among men exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV). This finding suggests that there is need for research instruments assessing intimate partner violence to be validated separately in male and female samples in order to ensure their suitability for the respective groups. Furthermore, theoretical frameworks for understanding men's exposure to intimate partner violence need to be advanced and should serve to guide in the development and evaluation of gender-specific IPV assessment instruments.
Linking primary care EMR data and administrative data in Alberta, Canada: experiences, challenges, and potential solutions

IntroductionAdministrative data are commonly used for a variety of secondary purposes. Although they lack clinical detail and risk factor information, linkage to primary care electronic medical records (EMR) could fill this gap. Primary care EMRs are a relatively new data source available in Alberta and thus, EMR-administrative linkages are novel. Objectives and ApproachTo describe the process undertaken for linking de-identified primary care EMR data from two regional Alberta networks of the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN) with administrative data (hospital admissions, emergency department visits, pharmacy information) from Alberta Health Services Analytics, specifically as it relates to a study on patients with complex, chronic diseases. As this linkage process is new in Alberta, we will describe the challenges encountered and possible solutions to inform future data linkage for research studies. ResultsLinkage steps: 1) approval from research ethics board and individual CPCSSN providers as data custodians; 2) notify Privacy Commissioner on behalf of custodian; 3) send linking key (CPCSSN patient ID, EMR ID) from regional database to Analytics; 4) send linking files (patient personal health number [PHN], EMR ID) from custodian’s EMR system to Analytics; 5) match unique EMR ID from linking key and clinic linking files; 6) PHN from clinic linking file mapped to administrative data; 7) data de-identified before transferring to secure repository; administrative data matched to EMR data using CPCSSN ID. Challenges: obtaining individual provider consent for each study; sampling bias; delays/issues generating clinic linkage file; mismatch between patients in clinic \& regional linking files. Current and potential solutions will be discussed during the presentation. Conclusion/ImplicationsAs primary care EMR and administrative data become more routinely linked and accepted, the process will become more efficient and streamlined. These data will contribute to a better understanding of patients and their care in Alberta.
NONPARAMETRIC CLUSTERING ALGORITHM WITH AN APPLICATION IN FINANCIAL TIME-SERIES DATA

A new methodology for clustering nonstationary time series with nonparametric regression model is proposed. The new methodology first use the projection pursuit regression models for formulating each time series and then use the measure of crossvalidation to calculating the similarity of fitted models and carry out the cluster analysis. Application of the proposed method is adopted in the collection of average personal income of 25 states in the US. Comparison with existing clustering method show several advantages of the proposed.
Learning stable Gaussian process state space models

Data-driven nonparametric models gain importance as control systems are increasingly applied in domains where classical system identification is difficult, e.g., because of the system's complexity, sparse training data or its probabilistic nature. Gaussian process state space models (GP-SSM) are a data-driven approach which requires only high-level prior knowledge like smoothness characteristics. Prior known properties like stability are also often available but rarely exploited during modeling. The enforcement of stability using control Lyapunov functions allows to incorporate this prior knowledge, but requires a data-driven Lyapunov function search. Therefore, we propose the use of Sum of Squares to enforce convergence of GP-SSMs and compare the performance to other approaches on a real-world handwriting motion dataset.
Warehousing and Inventory Management in Dual Channel and Global Supply Chains

v DEDICATION . vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . viii LIST OF TABLES . xiii LIST OF FIGURES . xv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS/SYMBOLS . xvi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Dual Channel Supply Chain. 2 1.2 Warehousing and Storage Policies. 5 1.3 Border Crossing Time and RFID Application in Cross-Border Supply Chain . 7 1.3. 1 Border Crossing Time . 7 1.3. 2 RFID Application in Cross-Border Supply Chain . 9 1.4 Global Cross-Docking System . 10 1.5. Research Objectives . 12 1.6 Solution Methodologies . 12 1.7 Contributions. 14 1.8 Organization of the Dissertation . 15 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW . 17 2.1 Warehouse and Inventory Management in Dual-Channel Supply Chain . 17 2.1.1 Inventory Management in Dual-Channel Supply Chains . 17 2.1.2 Warehouse Operations and Management in Dual-Channel Supply Chains . 20 2.2 Border Crossing Time and RFID Application in Cross-Border Supply Chain . 22 2.2.1 Border Crossing Time . 22
Issues in the measurement and reporting of work health and safety performance : a review

Disclaimer The information provided in this document can only assist you in the most general way. This document does not replace any statutory requirements under any relevant state and territory legislation. Safe Work Australia is not liable for any loss resulting from any action taken or reliance made by you on the information or material contained on this document. Before relying on the material, users should carefully make their own assessment as to its accuracy, currency, completeness and relevance for their purposes, and should obtain any appropriate professional advice relevant to their particular circumstances. The views in this report should not be taken to represent the views of Safe Work Australia unless otherwise expressly stated. Currently there is a lack of standardised and accepted indicators to measure the work health and safety performance of organisations and businesses at the organisational level. Work health and safety information can and is being reported on a voluntary basis, however reporting is often selective and inconsistent. This hinders comparisons of work health and safety performance and due diligence reporting over time and across organisations. This paper is one of a series of research papers that will inform a broader three staged policy development project taking place over the next three years. The aim of the project is to develop a standardised set of indicators businesses can use in annual reports as well as guidelines for the development of lead and lag indicators relevant to the size and nature of the business. Stage one involves developing a draft set of external and internal indicators to improve organisational level work health and safety reporting, and to help Officers meet their due diligence obligations under the model Work Health and Safety Act. Stage two involves testing of the work health and safety indicators and guidelines. Testing will be carried out using a mixed method approach involving case studies, interviews and surveys in selected businesses across Australia. A pilot test will be conducted, and an assessment of the outcomes undertaken. Stage three will involve a review of the research outcomes, which will be used to develop policy options for the consistent use of standardised work health and safety indicators and guidelines.