Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mcl-1 Mediates Tumor Necrosis Factor-Related Apoptosis-Inducing Ligand Resistance in Human Cholangiocarcinoma Cells

Cholangiocarcinomas are usually fatal neoplasms originating from bile duct epithelia. Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a promising agent for cancer therapy, including cholangiocarcinoma. However, many cholangiocarcinoma cells are resistant to TRAIL-mediated apoptosis. Thus, our aim was to examine the intracellular mechanisms responsible for TRAIL resistance in human cholangiocarcinoma cell lines. Three TRAIL-resistant human cholangiocarcinoma cell lines were identified. All of the cell lines expressed TRAIL receptor 1/death receptor 4 (TRAIL-R1/DR4) and TRAIL-R2/DR5. Expression of TRAIL decoy receptors and the antiapoptotic cellular FLICE-inhibitory protein (cFLIP) was inconsistent across the cell lines. Of the antiapoptotic Bcl-2 family of proteins profiled (Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, and Mcl-1), Mcl-1 was uniquely overexpressed by the cell lines. When small-interfering-RNA (siRNA) technology was used to knock down expression of Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, and Mcl-1, only the Mcl-1-siRNA sensitized the cells to TRAIL-mediated apoptosis. In a cell line stably transfected with Mcl-1-small-hairpin-RNA (Mcl-1-shRNA), Mcl-1 depletion sensitized cells to TRAIL-mediated apoptosis despite Bcl-2 expression. TRAIL-mediated apoptosis in the stably transfected cells was associated with mitochondrial depolarization, Bax activation, cytochrome c release from mitochondria, and caspase activation. Finally, flavopiridol, an anticancer drug that rapidly down-regulates Mcl-1, also sensitized cells to TRAIL cytotoxicity. In conclusion, these studies not only demonstrate that Mcl-1 mediates TRAIL resistance in cholangiocarcinoma cells by blocking the mitochondrial pathway of cell death but also identify two strategies for circumventing this resistance.
Quantitative Analysis of Information Leakage in Probabilistic and Nondeterministic Systems

As we dive into the digital era, there is growing concern about the amount of personal digital information that is being gathered about us. Websites often track people's browsing behavior, health care insurers gather medical data, and many smartphones and navigation systems store or trans- mit information that makes it possible to track the physical location of their users at any time. Hence, anonymity, and privacy in general, are in- creasingly at stake. Anonymity protocols counter this concern by offering anonymous communication over the Internet. To ensure the correctness of such protocols, which are often extremely complex, a rigorous framework is needed in which anonymity properties can be expressed, analyzed, and ulti- mately verified. Formal methods provide a set of mathematical techniques that allow us to rigorously specify and verify anonymity properties. This thesis addresses the foundational aspects of formal methods for applications in security and in particular in anonymity. More concretely, we develop frameworks for the specification of anonymity properties and propose algorithms for their verification. Since in practice anonymity pro- tocols always leak some information, we focus on quantitative properties which capture the amount of information leaked by a protocol. We start our research on anonymity from its very foundations, namely conditional probabilities - these are the key ingredient of most quantitative anonymity properties. In Chapter 2 we present cpCTL, the first temporal logic making it possible to specify conditional probabilities. In addition, we present an algorithm to verify cpCTL formulas in a model-checking fashion. This logic, together with the model-checker, allows us to specify and verify quantitative anonymity properties over complex systems where probabilistic and nondeterministic behavior may coexist. We then turn our attention to more practical grounds: the constructions of algorithms to compute information leakage. More precisely, in Chapter 3 we present polynomial algorithms to compute the (information-theoretic) leakage of several kinds of fully probabilistic protocols (i.e. protocols with- out nondeterministic behavior). The techniques presented in this chapter are the first ones enabling the computation of (information-theoretic) leak- age in interactive protocols. In Chapter 4 we attack a well known problem in distributed anonymity protocols, namely full-information scheduling. To overcome this problem, we propose an alternative definition of schedulers together with several new definitions of anonymity (varying according to the attacker's power), and revise the famous definition of strong-anonymity from the literature. Furthermore, we provide a technique to verify that a distributed protocol satisfies some of the proposed definitions. In Chapter 5 we provide (counterexample-based) techniques to debug complex systems, allowing for the detection of flaws in security protocols. Finally, in Chapter 6 we briefly discuss extensions to the frameworks and techniques proposed in Chapters 3 and 4.
The Escherichia coli Regulator of Sigma 70 Protein, Rsd, Can Up-Regulate Some Stress-Dependent Promoters by Sequestering Sigma 70

ABSTRACT The Escherichia coli Rsd protein forms complexes with the RNA polymerase σ70 factor, but its biological role is not understood. Transcriptome analysis shows that overexpression of Rsd causes increased expression from some promoters whose expression depends on the alternative σ38 factor, and this was confirmed by experiments with lac fusions at selected promoters. The LP18 substitution in Rsd increases the Rsd-dependent stimulation of these promoter-lac fusions. Analysis with a bacterial two-hybrid system shows that the LP18 substitution in Rsd increases its interaction with σ70. Our experiments support a model in which the role of Rsd is primarily to sequester σ70, thereby increasing the levels of RNA polymerase containing the alternative σ38 factor.
Awareness, Attitudes, and Practices Related to Coronavirus Pandemic Among Public in Saudi Arabia

New cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) were reported in Gulf countries in 2014, and to date, it has reportedly infected 837 people and killed 291 globally. Awareness of an individual's knowledge and being able to predict his or her behavior is crucial when evaluating clinical preparedness for pandemics with a highly pathogenic virus. The aim of this study was to identify awareness, attitudes, and practices related to MERS-CoV among the public in Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional study of 1147 adult subjects recruited from various shopping malls in Riyadh was conducted. All the subjects were interviewed using a questionnaire that tested their knowledge, attitudes, and use of precautionary measures in relation to the MERS-CoV pandemic. The majority of the participants showed high levels of concern and had utilized precautionary measures. After adjusting for other variables, gender was the only significant predictor of the level of concern (P < .001), while knowledge was the significant predictor of both the level of concern and precaution (P < .001). High concern translated into a higher compliance with precautionary recommendations. Frequent communication between health care providers and the public is recommended to help dispel myths about the disease and to empower the public with the information needed to help the Saudi government in containing the disease outbreak.
A New Approach to Segmentation of Persian Cursive Script based on Adjustment the Fragments

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a very old and of great interest in pattern recognition field. The recognition of cursive scripts like Persian and Arabic languages is a difficult task as their segmentation suffers from serious problems in different languages. Segmentation is a process of dividing cursive words into smaller parts in order to decrease complexity and increase accuracy of recognition process. In this paper, an improved segmentation method of the Persian script has been presented and to increase the quality of segmentation, some structural features of Persian language is used to adjust the fragments. This method is robust as well as flexible. It also increases the system’s tolerances to font variations. The proposed method is able to segment existing Persian fonts up to 99.2% accuracy.
CLINICAL RELEVANCE OF IL-1&bgr; PROMOTER POLYMORPHISMS (−1470, −511, AND −31) IN PATIENTS WITH MAJOR TRAUMA

Recent reports have indicated that IL-1&bgr; is excessively released into the circulation during sepsis, and the expression level is closely correlated with the clinical course. Polymorphisms in the promoter region of IL-1B have been shown to affect LPS-induced IL-1&bgr; transcription in vitro and IL-1&bgr; plasma levels in healthy adults and to confer susceptibility to inflammatory diseases. However, it is not clear whether they confer susceptibility to sepsis after major trauma. The aim of this study was to search for association of polymorphisms (-1470G/C, -511T/C, and -31C/T) in the IL-1B gene promoter with the susceptibility to sepsis in a cohort of 238 major trauma patients. Genotyping of each patient for the three single-nucleotide polymorphisms was performed by restriction fragment length polymorphism-polymerase chain reaction method. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the -1470 and -31 polymorphisms were associated with IL-1&bgr; production by peripheral leukocytes in response to ex vivo LPS stimulation in an allele dose-dependent manner. Moreover, trauma patients carrying the -1470G or -31T alleles were more likely to develop sepsis compared with those with the -1470C or -31C allele (P = 0.014 and P = 0.038, respectively). Of the eight possible haplotypes composed of the three loci, the GCT and CTC haplotypes were associated with significantly higher and lower IL-1&bgr; secretion (P = 0.005 and P = 0.035, respectively). Moreover, the GCT haplotype imparted higher risk of sepsis after severe injury (P = 0.04; odds ratio, 1.131; 95% confidence interval, 1.013-1.678). GCT homozygote patients also showed higher multiple organ dysfunction scores than CTC homozygote patients (P = 0.048). These data suggest that the IL-1&bgr; promoter polymorphisms -1470G/C, -511T/C, and -31C/T may be functional both in vitro and in vivo. It may be possible to use these polymorphisms as relevant risk estimates for sepsis in trauma patients.
Spotted stream frog diversification at the Australasian faunal zone interface, mainland versus island comparisons, and a test of the Philippine ‘dual‐umbilicus’ hypothesis

To utilize comprehensive geographical sampling and a new, multilocus dataset to re‐examine the biogeography of spotted stream frogs (Hylarana signata complex) throughout Southeast Asia. To compare patterns of diversification among stream frog populations on land‐bridge islands and oceanic islands and to re‐evaluate a previous ‘dual‐invasion’ hypothesis for the origins of endemic Philippine taxa.
Relative effectiveness and validity of mood induction procedures : a meta-analysis

The effectiveness and validity of 11 important mood induction procedures (MIPs) were comparatively evaluated by meta-analytical procedures. Two hundred and fifty effects of the experimental induction of positive, elated and negative, depressed mood in adult, non-clinical samples were integrated. Effect sizes were generally larger for negative than for positive mood inductions. The presentation of a film or story turned out to be most effective in inducing both positive and negative mood states. The effects are especially large when subjects are explicitly instructed to enter the specified mood state. For elated mood, all other MIPs yielded considerably lower effectiveness scores. For the induction of negative mood states, Imagination, Velten, Music, Social Interaction and Feedback MIPs were about as effective as the Film/Story MIP without instruction. Induction effects covaried with several study characteristics. Effects tend to be smaller when demand characteristics are controlled or subjects are not informed about the purpose of the experiment. For behavioural measures, effects are smaller than for self-reports but still larger than zero. Hence, the effects of MIPs can be partly, but not fully due to demand effects.
Efficient Algorithm for Isotropic and Anisotropic Total Variation Deblurring and Denoising

A new deblurring and denoising algorithm is proposed, for isotropic total variation-based image restoration. The algorithm consists of an efficient solver for the nonlinear system and an acceleration strategy for the outer iteration. For the nonlinear system, the split Bregman method is used to convert it into linear system, and an algebraic multigrid method is applied to solve the linearized system. For the outer iteration, we have conducted formal convergence analysis to determine an auxiliary linear term that significantly stabilizes and accelerates the outer iteration. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our algorithm for deblurring and denoising problems is efficient.
The only constant is change: incorporating time-varying network reservations in data centers

In multi-tenant datacenters, jobs of different tenants compete for the shared datacenter network and can suffer poor performance and high cost from varying, unpredictable network performance. Recently, several virtual network abstractions have been proposed to provide explicit APIs for tenant jobs to specify and reserve virtual clusters (VC) with both explicit VMs and required network bandwidth between the VMs. However, all of the existing proposals reserve a fixed bandwidth throughout the entire execution of a job. In the paper, we first profile the traffic patterns of several popular cloud applications, and find that they generate substantial traffic during only 30%-60% of the entire execution, suggesting existing simple VC models waste precious networking resources. We then propose a fine-grained virtual network abstraction, Time-Interleaved Virtual Clusters (TIVC), that models the time-varying nature of the networking requirement of cloud applications. To demonstrate the effectiveness of TIVC, we develop Proteus, a system that implements the new abstraction. Using large-scale simulations of cloud application workloads and prototype implementation running actual cloud applications, we show the new abstraction significantly increases the utilization of the entire datacenter and reduces the cost to the tenants, compared to previous fixed-bandwidth abstractions.
Studying Diffusion of Viral Content at Dyadic Level

Diffusion of information and viral content, social contagion and influence are still topics of broad evaluation. As theory explaining the role of influentials moves slightly to reduce their importance in the propagation of viral content, authors of the following paper have studied the information epidemic in a social networking platform in order to confirm recent theoretical findings in this area. While most of related experiments focus on the level of individuals, the elementary entities of the following analysis are dyads. The authors study behavioral motifs that are possible to observe at the dyadic level. The study shows significant differences between dyads that are more vs less engaged in the diffusion process. Dyads that fuel the diffusion process are characterized by stronger relationships (higher activity, more common friends), more active and networked receiving party (higher centrality measures), and higher authority centrality of person sending a viral message.
Recent Progress in Robust Vocabulary-Independent Speech Recognition

This paper reports recent efforts to improve the performance of CMU's robust vocabulary-independent (VI) speech recognition systems on the DARPA speaker-independent resource management task. The improvements are evaluated on 320 sentences that randomly selected from the DARPA June 88, February 89 and October 89 test sets. Our first improvement involves more detailed acoustic modeling. We incorporated more dynamic features computed from the LPC cepstra and reduced error by 15% over the baseline system. Our second improvement comes from a larger training database. With more training data, our third improvement comes from a more detailed subword modeling. We incorporated the word boundary context into our VI subword modeling and it resulted in a 30% error reduction. Finally, we used decision-tree allophone clustering to find more suitable models for the subword units not covered in the training set and further reduced error by 17%. All the techniques combined reduced the VI error rate on the resource management task from 11.1% to 5.4% (and from 15.4% to 7.4% when training and testing were under different recording environment). This vocabulary-independent performance has exceeded our vocabulary-dependent performance.
Variations in motor unit recruitment patterns occur within and between muscles in the running rat (Rattus norvegicus)

SUMMARY Motor units are generally considered to follow a set, orderly pattern of recruitment within each muscle with activation occurring in the slowest through to the fastest units. A growing body of evidence, however, suggests that recruitment patterns may not always follow such an orderly sequence. Here we investigate whether motor unit recruitment patterns vary within and between the ankle extensor muscles of the rat running at 40 cm s-1 on a level treadmill. In the past it has been difficult to quantify motor unit recruitment patterns during locomotion; however, recent application of wavelet analysis techniques has made such detailed analysis of motor unit recruitment possible. Here we present methods for quantifying the interplay of fast and slow motor unit recruitment based on their myoelectric signals. Myoelectric data were collected from soleus, plantaris and medial gastrocnemius muscles representing populations of slow, mixed and fast fibres, respectively, and providing a good opportunity to relate myoelectric frequency content to motor unit recruitment patterns. Following wavelet transformation, principal component analysis quantified signal intensity and relative frequency content. Significant differences in signal frequency content occurred between different time points within a stride (P<0.001). We optimised high- and low-frequency wavelets to the major signals from the fast and slow motor units. The goodness-of-fit of the optimised wavelets to the signal intensity was high for all three muscles (r2>0.98). The low-frequency band had a significantly better fit to signals from the soleus muscle (P<0.001), while the high-frequency band had a significantly better fit to the medial gastrocnemius (P<0.001).
The Fourth Grade Slump: The Relationship Between Reading Attitudes and Frequency of Reading

Dr. Cynthia Bertelsen, Advisor This study explored the fourth grade slump with regard to the relationship between reading attitude and reading frequency in elementary school children. The Elementary Reading Attitude Scale and the Frequency Questionnaire were administered to two classes of second graders and two classes of fifth graders in the same school. The results were divided into the categories of academic and recreational reading for attitude and frequency. This paper presents the results of the study, as well as the implications for elementary school teachers. Once the surveys had been scored, a correlation was found between overall reading attitude and overall reading frequency, as well as between recreational reading attitude and recreational reading frequency. Surprisingly, the reading attitudes of the students did not drop significantly between second and fifth grade. The implications of this study are that the reading attitudes and frequency of students are connected and one can be improved by increasing the other. This means that teachers should be aware of these two reading elements and how one can positively impact the other.
REVISTA DE PESQUISA: Cuidado é Fundamental Online

Objectives: Evaluate the level of stress in nursing professors of a public university and analyzing the possible factors associated to stress in nursing professors. Method:Descriptive study with quali-quantitative approach. The scenery was a nursing school of a public university where 22 professors were interviewed. For data collection, an instrument with open and closed questions was applied. Results: The study pointed out that 8 (36%) professors consider their level of stress as elevated. However, after the test application, the moderate level was more often gotten (36%). The stress generating situations, in professors opinions are about the categories work/qualification in first place (60%), followed by personal/social (26%). Conclusion: Stresses the importance of identifying the cause of stress,in order to seek alternative strategy to cope with the stimulus and reach a satisfactory resolution. Descriptors: Nursing, Stress, Work, Occupational health. RESUMO Objetivos: Avaliar o nivel de estresse nos docentes de enfermagem de uma universidade publica e analisar os fatores desencadeantes do estresse no docente de enfermagem. Metodo: Estudo descritivo com abordagem quali-quantitativa. Teve como cenario uma escola de enfermagem de uma universidade publica e participaram do estudo 22 professores. Para coleta dos dados aplicou-se um instrumento com perguntas abertas e fechadas. Resultados: O estudo apontou que 8 (36%) docentes consideram elevado o seu nivel de estresse, entretanto apos aplicacao do autoteste, o nivel moderado foi o mais obtido (36%). As situacoes geradoras de estresse na opiniao dos docentes dizem respeito a area trabalho/qualificacao em primeiro lugar, com 60% das citacoes, seguida da area pessoal/social (26%). Conclusao: Assinala a importância de identificar a causa do estresse, a fim de buscar estrategia alternativa de enfrentamento ao estimulo e chegarmos a uma resolucao satisfatoria. Descritores: Enfermagem, Estresse, Trabalho, Saude do trabalhador. RESUMEN Objetivos: Evaluar el nivel de estres en los profesores de la graduacion en enfermeria y analizar los posibles factores que se asocian al estres en los profesores de enfermeria. Metodo: Estudio descriptivo con enfoque cuali-cuantitativo. Tiene como escenario una escuela del oficio de enfermeria de una universidad publica, donde participaran 22 profesores. Para la coleccion de los datos fue aplicado un instrumento con preguntas abiertas y cerradas. Resultados: Los resultados evidencian que 8 (36%) profesores consideran elevado su nivel de estres. Sin embargo, despues del uso del test, el nivel moderado fue mas frecuentemente conseguido (36%). Las situaciones de generacion de estres, segun la opinion de los profesores, se encuadran en la categoria trabajo/calificacion en el primer lugar (60%) y personal/social en seguida (26%). Conclusion: Senala la importancia de identificar la causa del estres para buscar la estrategia alternativa de confrontacion al estimulos e a llegar una resolucion satisfactoria. Descriptores: Enfermeria, Estres, Trabajo, Salud laboral.