Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of IL‐6/gp130 family receptor expression reveals that in contrast to astroglia, microglia lack the oncostatin M receptor and functional responses to oncostatin M

The interleukin (IL)‐6/gp130 family of cytokines (e.g., IL‐6, IL‐11, leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) and oncostatin M (OSM)) play important roles in the central nervous system (CNS) during neuroinflammation and neurodevelopment. However, little is known regarding the responses by astroglia and microglia to this family of cytokines. Here the expression of the IL‐6/gp130 cytokine receptors and subsequent signal pathway activation was examined in murine astrocytes and microglia in vitro. Astrocytes had high levels of OSMR mRNA while lower levels of IL‐6R, LIFR and IL‐11R mRNAs were also present. In comparison, in microglia there was no detectable OSMR mRNA, higher levels of IL‐6R mRNA and lower levels of the LIFR and IL‐11R mRNAs. The OSMR protein was present in astrocytes but was undetectable in microglia. Conversely, the IL‐6R protein was present in microglia but not detectable in astrocytes. In astrocytes but not microglia, phosphorylation of STAT1 and STAT3 occurred in response to OSM, whereas both microglia and astrocytes responded to hyper‐IL‐6 (IL‐6 linked to the soluble IL‐6 receptor). Finally, in both microglia and astrocytes, OSM failed to activate NFκB or induce iNOS and nitrite production. We conclude: (1) notable differences exist in the expression of receptors utilized by the IL‐6/gp130 family of cytokines in astrocytes and microglia, and (2) the findings provide a molecular basis for the differential response to OSM by astrocytes versus microglia and demonstrate a fundamental means for achieving cellular specificity in the response of these glial cells to this cytokine. GLIA 2015;63:132–141
A Distributed Multi-Authority Attribute Based Encryption Scheme for Secure Sharing of Personal Health Records

Personal health records (PHR) are an emerging health information exchange model, which facilitates PHR owners to efficiently manage their health data. Typically, PHRs are outsourced and stored in third-party cloud platforms. Although, outsourcing private health data to third-party platforms is an appealing solution for PHR owners, it may lead to significant privacy concerns, because there is a higher risk of leaking private data to unauthorized parties. As a way of ensuring PHR owners' control of their outsourced PHR data, attribute based encryption (ABE) mechanisms have been considered due to the fact that such schemes facilitate a mechanism of sharing encrypted data among a set of intended recipients. However, such existing PHR solutions suffer from inflexibility and scalability issues due to the limitations associated with the adopted ABE mechanisms. To address these issues, we propose a distributed multi-authority ABE scheme and thereby we show how a patient-centric, attribute based PHR sharing scheme which can provide flexible access for both professional users such as doctors as well as personal users such as family and friends is realized. We have shown that the proposed scheme supports on-demand user revocation as well as secure under standard security assumptions. In addition, the simulation results provide evidence for the fact that our scheme can function efficiently in practice. Furthermore, we have shown that the proposed scheme can cater the access requirements associated with distributed multiuser PHR sharing environments as well as more realistic and scalable compared with similar existing PHR sharing schemes.
Oxidative stress enhances the production and actions of adenosine in the kidney.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether superoxide anions (O.) activate 5'-nucleotidase (5'-ND), thereby increasing the production of renal adenosine and regulating renal function. Using HPLC analysis, we found that incubation of renal tissue homogenate with the O. donor KO(2) doubled adenosine production and increased the maximal reaction velocity of 5'-ND from 141 to 192 nmol. min(-1). mg protein(-1). The O. -generating system, xanthine/xanthine oxidase increased the maximal reaction velocity of 5'-ND from 122 to 204 nmol. min(-1). mg protein(-1). Superoxide dismutase (SOD) with catalase produced a concentration-dependent reduction of 5'-ND activity in renal tissue homogenate, while the SOD inhibitor diethyldithiocarbamic acid significantly increased 5'-ND activity. Inhibition of disulfide bond formation by thioredoxin or thioredoxin reductase significantly decreased xanthine/xanthine oxidase-induced activation of renal 5'-ND. In in vivo experiments, inhibition of SOD by diethyldithiocarbamic acid (0.5 mg. kg(-1). min(-1) iv) enhanced renal vasoconstriction induced by endogenously produced adenosine and increased renal tissue adenosine concentrations under control condition and in ischemia and reperfusion. We conclude that oxidative stress activates 5'-ND and increases adenosine production in the kidney and that this redox regulatory mechanism of adenosine production is important in the control of renal vascular tone and glomerular perfusion.
High avidity antibodies to fetal pig pancreas endocrine cells transfer rejection but are not normally generated to fetal pig pancreas xenografts

Fox A, Mountford J, Braakhuis A, Harrison LC. High avidity antibodies to fetal pig pancreas endocrine cells transfer rejection but are not normally generated to fetal pig pancreas xenografts. Xenotransplantation 2002; 9: 382–392. © Blackwell Munksgaard, 2002
Income taxes and the marriage decision

Economic incentives have been found to play an important role in the marriage decision in developed and developing countries. However, the way in which the income tax treatment of the family affects these incentives has been routinely ignored. This paper uses time-series data for the United States from 1947 to 1988 to estimate the impact of economic factors - including, for the first time, the tax consequences of marriage - on the aggregate marriage rate. The estimation results indicate that economic factors like income, female wages and education play an important and statistically significant role in the marriage decision. In particular, the tax consequences of marriage clearly affect the marriage decision: when income taxes increase with marriage, the aggregate marriage rate declines. However, the magnitude of this impact is quite small. This result suggests that some individuals respond to tax incentives in their marriage choices, but that for many individuals taxes do not affect these decisions.
High density high velocity plasma jet interaction

We studied high density high velocity plasma jets interaction in 3D using PIC simulation. Different merging regimes were observed. It was found that plasma density and collision angle of the jets are crucial parameters which determine the interaction dynamics. Well focused merged plasma jets were obtained for relatively low densities and velocities of jets. High turbulent plasma flows were observed for higher densities. Higher jet velocity leads to asymmetrical oscillating flow. The behavior of plasma jets was compared with interaction of neutral gas jets.
The Influence of Hotel Communication Practices on Managers’ Communication Satisfaction with Limited English–Speaking Employees

Communication satisfaction is an important antecedent to significant work outcomes. Therefore, this study examines how organizational practices influence the communication satisfaction of lodging managers. The results showed a strong correlation between organizational practices that deal with language barriers and the communication satisfaction of the managers. Management awareness and encouragement to improve English skills were independently correlated with communication satisfaction. However, translation of documents and translation by coworkers alone were not correlated with communication satisfaction. This was significant because the results showed that the majority (62.8%) of managers rely on a translator, typically a bilingual employee, to communicate for them. More than half of the respondents (53.5%) reported that top management has paid attention to language barriers in the workplace. In fact, 46.5% stated that their company encourages employees with limited-language skills to improve by offering English at work programs.
The Tracking Framework for Lobe Fissure Based on the Modified Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

The chest computed tomography (CT) is the most commonly used imaging technique for the inspection of lung lesions. In order to provide the physician more valuable preoperative opinions, a powerful computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) system is indispensable. In this paper, we aim to develop an efficient tracking framework to extract the lobe fissures by the proposed modified ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm. In this procedure, we will increase the consistency of pheromones on the lobe fissure. Hence, the gray-value of lobe fissure will be improved, and it may promote the accuracy of segmentation procedure. In order to validate the proposed system, we have tested our method in a database from 15 lung patients. The experiments indicate our method results more satisfied performance in most cases, and can help investigators detect lung lesion for further examination.
Effects of Antecedent GABA A Receptor Activation on Counterregulatory Responses to Exercise in Healthy Man

The aim of this study was to determine whether antecedent stimulation of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) A receptors with the benzodiazepine alprazolam can blunt physiologic responses during next-day moderate (90 min) exercise in healthy man. Thirty-one healthy individuals (16 male/15 female aged 28 ± 1 year, BMI 23 ± 3 kg/m2) were studied during separate, 2-day protocols. Day 1 consisted of morning and afternoon 2-h hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic or hypoglycemic clamps with or without 1 mg alprazolam given 30 min before a clamp. Day 2 consisted of 90-min euglycemic cycling exercise at 50% VO2max. Despite similar euglycemia (5.3 ± 0.1 mmol/L) and insulinemia (46 ± 6 pmol/L) during day 2 exercise studies, GABA A activation with alprazolam during day 1 euglycemia resulted in significant blunting of plasma epinephrine, norepinephrine, glucagon, cortisol, and growth hormone responses. Lipolysis (glycerol, nonesterified fatty acids) and endogenous glucose production during exercise were also reduced, and glucose infusion rates were increased following prior euglycemia with alprazolam. Prior hypoglycemia with alprazolam resulted in further reduction of glucagon and cortisol responses during exercise. We conclude that prior activation of GABA A pathways can play a significant role in blunting key autonomous nervous system, neuroendocrine, and metabolic physiologic responses during next-day exercise in healthy man.
Using deep learning neural networks for ECG based authentication

Traditional password based authentication has been proven inadequate and the use of biometrics have provided multiple solutions through the past years. One of the most recent approaches to biometric authentication is using Electrocardiograms (ECG), as they are closely related to unique characteristics of the heart of each person. In this paper a framework for efficient and usable user authentication, based on ECG, is proposed. The ECG is pre-processed in order to remove any noise or distortions and then multiple set of features are extracted from it, through various transformations. These set of features are used as input to classification models and the results are compared in order to find the most effective transformation-classifier combination, which also sets a performance baseline. Additionally Deep Learning Neural Networks are used in order to create classification models that predicts whether an ECG belongs to a specific person or not, based on the combination of the feature sets produced in the transformation step. The results obtained have shown that deep learning neural networks can provide higher accuracy in comparison to most of other techniques used, if there are enough data to train them on.
Fluctuation Tests for a Change in Persistence

In this paper, we develop a set of new persistence change tests which are similar in spirit to those of Kim ["Journal of Econometrics" (2000) Vol. 95, pp. 97-116], Kim "et al." ["Journal of Econometrics" (2002) Vol. 109, pp. 389-392] and Busetti and Taylor ["Journal of Econometrics" (2004) Vol. 123, pp. 33-66]. While the exisiting tests are based on ratios of sub-sample Kwiatkowski "et al." ["Journal of Econometrics" (1992) Vol. 54, pp. 158-179]-type statistics, our proposed tests are based on the corresponding functions of sub-sample implementations of the well-known maximal recursive-estimates and re-scaled range fluctuation statistics. Our statistics are used to test the null hypothesis that a time series displays constant trend stationarity ["I"(0)] behaviour against the alternative of a change in persistence either from trend stationarity to difference stationarity ["I"(1)], or vice versa. Representations for the limiting null distributions of the new statistics are derived and both finite-sample and asymptotic critical values are provided. The consistency of the tests against persistence change processes is also demonstrated. Numerical evidence suggests that our proposed tests provide a useful complement to the extant persistence change tests. An application of the tests to US inflation rate data is provided. Copyright 2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Transmission Investment Timing and Sizing under Uncertainty

We analyse the transmission investment problem by modelling the decision of a private investor holding a perpetual option to construct a transmission line. Using the real options approach, we determine both the optimal investment timing and line capacity under uncertain congestion rents. In particular, we flnd that if consumers at the importing node were to limit the investor’s liability, then not only would the option to invest be worth more, but also investment would be triggered sooner in a higher capacity line. We use price data from PJM and NYISO in numerical experiments to provide intuition for the optimal decision.
Ethics and Economics in International Business Education: A Comparison of Kuwaiti and U.S. Students Using an Ultimatum Game Scenario

In the past 20 years a body of research in behavioral and experimental economics has challenged classical economic theory. Yet, this body of research seems relatively unknown in business education. One behavioral test with implications for international business education has been the use of ultimatum games, which has more recently expanded to cross-cultural studies. Yet, virtually no cross-cultural studies have been conducted for subjects in Middle Eastern countries. One of the central findings from ultimatum game research and other variations is that individuals place a high value on fairness in transactions, a fundamentally ethical concept. This article reports a preliminary study of Kuwaiti and U.S. business students. Results are consistent with previous studies, showing Kuwaiti subjects to be in line with subjects from developed economies. Discussion includes the implications for management and business educators.
Signal Detection for Differential Bidirectional Relaying with Analog Network Coding under Imperfect Synchronisation

A parallel interference cancellation (PIC) based signal detection scheme is proposed for asynchronous bidirectional relay networks using analog network coding (ANC) with differential modulation. It is shown that the proposed scheme can effectively suppress the inter-symbol interference (ISI) in the received mixed signals at the relay node in the first transmission time-slot and offers significant performance improvement when neither the source nodes nor the relay knows the channel state information, and still retains a low computational complexity.
Improving Music Recommendation Using Distributed Representation

In this paper, a music recommendation approach based on distributed representation is presented. The proposed approach firstly learns the distributed representations of music pieces and acquires users' preferences from listening records. Then, it recommends appropriate music pieces whose distributed representations are in accordance with target users' preferences. Experiments on a real world dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.
Target costing: first and second comings

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that target costing (TC) was a 1960s’ Japanese innovation, it is argued that the same concept, albeit then labelled ‘product tailoring’, first appeared in the 1950s’ Anglophone managerial-economics literature in works linked to economist–consultant Joel Dean. These sources describe a range of North American applications of TC which clearly predate Japanese implementations. It is further argued that in the specifically accounting literature, Gordon Shillinglaw (1967) – a one-time employee of Dean – provided the first description of the TC concept. To support these propositions, the post-1990 TC literature is analysed to determine the key characteristics of TC. These phenomena are then shown to be present in the earlier works of Dean and his followers in an oeuvre which can be regarded as the ‘first coming’ of the TC concept. The diffusion of TC concepts is then analysed from two perspectives: as between the USA and Japan at the enterprise level and within and between the economics and accounting literatures. Explanations are then offered for the diffusion patterns identified and for the neglect of the first-coming TC works.
Automated clustering of independent components for discontinuous sounds thoracic imaging

Discontinuous lung sounds (DLS), also known as crackles, are abnormal sounds produced by different pulmonary pathologies (PP) whose thoracic spatial distribution and prevalence are relevant for diagnosis purpose. Recently, DLS imaging has been proposed to help diagnose and follow-up PP where automated recognition of DLS is meaningful. The present study focuses on the automated selection of independent components (ICs) associated with DLS. Extraction of ICs information for clustering by k-means is achieved in two ways: (1) forming features vectors (FVs) containing the kurtosis, entropy and sparsity of each IC or (2) by applying mutual information (MI) or Euclidean distance (ED) to all ICs. Next, silhouette index is computed to estimate the number of necessary clusters (C). Afterward, to detect just the clusters containing ICs of DLS a selection index is proposed. Finally, to estimate the number of DLS per ICs in each selected cluster a time-variant AR modeling is applied; the estimated number is shown in conjunction with the 2D-ICs spatial distribution. The methodology is applied to simulated and real cases; DLS imaging results are also compared against clinical auscultation. The results showed that the automated selection via FVs is promising to imaging DLS.
Sélection de modèles pour la classification supervisée avec des SVM (Séparateurs à Vaste Marge). Application en traitement et analyse d'images. (Model selection for supervised classification with Support Vector Machines. Application to image processing and analysis )

L’objectif de cette these est de definir des systemes d’apprentissage a base de SVM performants. Ces systemes doivent prendre en compte le fait que les problematiques liees au traitement et a l’analyse d’images puissent rentrer en conflit avec les difficultes d’exploitation des SVM. Plusieurs de ces problematiques s’inscrivent dans le cadre plus general de la fouille de donnees, de la definition de processus decisionnels en temps reel, de l’optimisation de problemes difficiles et de la combinaison d’ensembles de fonctions de decision. Les approches proposees dans cette these pour resoudre des problemes de natures differentes pourront etre exploitees dans d’autres domaines ou les memes problematiques sont rencontrees.
Evidence of nonspheroidal behavior in millimeter-wavelength radar observations of snowfall

[1] Recent modeling results have indicated that, in general, idealized homogeneous spheroidal models of ice crystals and snowflakes cannot consistently describe radar backscattering from snowfall when the radar wavelengths are on the order of the snowflake size. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence supporting this prediction by analyzing collocated airborne radar measurements at 13.4 GHz, 35.6 GHz and 94 GHz. The analysis is performed by applying a recently developed method making use of two simultaneously measured dual-frequency ratios, allowing one to distinguish between the multifrequency backscattering behavior of detailed aggregate snow models and that of homogeneous spheroids. We demonstrate that in some naturally occurring cases, detailed snowflake models, which account for their complex structure, are required to describe backscattering by these particles in a manner that is consistent over multiple wavelengths. This implies that the spheroidal approximation is not always adequate as a snowflake shape model in radar retrievals at this wavelength range.
Optimal ion channel clustering for intracellular calcium signaling

Ion channels and receptors in the cell membranes and internal membranes are often distributed in discrete clusters. One particularly well-studied example is the distribution of inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate receptors in the plasma membrane that controls the flux of Ca2+ from the endoplasmic reticulum into the cytosol. By using mathematical modeling, we show that channel clustering can enhance the cell's Ca2+ signaling capability. Furthermore, we predict optimal signaling cellular capability at cluster sizes and distances that agree with experimentally found values in Xenopus oocyte.
Outcome Prediction in a Surgical ICU Using Automatically Calculated SAPS II Scores

The objective of this study was to establish a complete computerized calculation of the Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) II within 24 hours after admission to a surgical intensive care unit (ICU) based only on routine data recorded with a patient data management system (PDMS) without any additional manual data entry. Score calculation programs were developed using SQL scripts (Structured Query Language) to retrospectively compute the SAPS II scores of 524 patients who stayed in ICU for at least 24 hours between April 1, 1999 and March 31, 2000 out of the PDMS database. The main outcome measure was survival status at ICU discharge. Score evaluation was modified in registering missing data as being not pathological and using surrogates of the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). Computerized score calculation was possible for all investigated patients. The 459 (87.6%) survivors had a median SAPS II of 28 (interquartile range (IQR) 13) whereas the 65 (12.4%) deceased patients had a median score of 43 (IQR 16; P<0.001). Of the physiological variables for SAPS II score calculation, bilirubin was missing in 84%, followed by P a O 2 /FiO 2 ratio (34%), and neurological status (34%). Using neurological diagnoses and examinations as surrogates for the GCS, a pathological finding was seen in only 8.8% of all results. The discriminative power of the computerized SAPS II checked with a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.81 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.74–0.87). The Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit statistics showed good calibration (H=5.55, P=0.59, 7 degrees of freedom; C=5.55, P=0.68, 8 degrees of freedom). The technique used in this study for complete automatic data sampling of the SAPS II score seems to be suitable for predicting mortality rate during stay in a surgical ICU. The advantage of the described method is that no additional manual data recording is required for score calculation.