Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased Canine Pancreatic Acinar Cell Damage After Organophosphate and Acetylcholine or Cholecystokinin

Sublethal doses of organophosphate anticholinesterases cause acute pancreatitis in dogs within 2 h. In vitro studies using canine pancreatic fragments have also demonstrated that the peak of amylase release in response to acetylcholine is shifted far to the left after incubation with the organophosphates echothiophate (10−4M) or tetraisopropyl pyrophosphoramide (iso-OMPA) (10−3M), indicating an increased sensitivity of response The present in vitro study examined whether there was also an increased susceptibility to acinar cell damage at the electron microscopic level after acetylcholine or cholecystokinin. Minced pieces of whole fresh canine pancreas 2–3 mm in size were placed in buffered Eagle's solution and gassed with 100% O2. After pretreatment 1 h with echothiophate or iso-OMPA, they were then incubated with acetylcholine (10−5M). Other tissues preincubated with echothiophate were stimulated with cholecystokinin (10−9M). These are submaximal doses for untreated canine pancreatic fragments. After acetylcholine and echothiophate or acetylcholine and iso-OMPA, there was extensive acinar damage with the appearance of large vacuoles and lakes, and interstitial edema. There was evidence of intense supramaximal stimulation and lateral exocytosis. Similar destructive changes were seen after echothiophate and cholecystokinin. In control sections from tissues stimulated with acetylcholine (10−5M) or cholecystokinin (10−9M), there were lumenal exocytotic patterns typical of submaximal stimulation. Other controls, organophosphate alone and unstimulated basal conditions, showed only minor changes. It is concluded that the increased sensitivity to acetylcholine after organophosphate incubation correlates with an increased susceptibility to acinar ultrastructural damage from acetylcholine and cholecystokinin.
Linking Green Supply Chain Management and Shareholder Value Creation

This paper reviews some of the causes of global warming and its consequences, and identifies Green Supply Chain Management (GrSCM) as one of the most effective ways to reduce pollution and waste, which represent incomplete and ineffective utilization of resources or inefficient conversion processes. Deterioration of the environment and excess consumption of resources have put increasing pressure on corporates operating in emerging markets. The biggest concern facing corporates today is how to reduce or eliminate adverse environmental impacts of their products and processes throughout their life cycle. The study suggests that resources committed and utilized for GrSCM need to be looked upon as long-term strategic investments and not merely as cost centers. In fact, it attempts to bring out its bearing on enhancing shareholder value. The study lends support to the emerging paradigm that investment in GrSCM and corporate performance need not be mutually exclusive and dichotomous. The study tracks down the GrSCM strategies adopted by Reliance Industries and tries to assess its linkage with the organization’s Price-Earnings (P/E) ratio and ultimately in creating value for its shareholders. The study proposes that GrSCM not only contributes positively to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), but also generates exceptional value for its shareholders. It, therefore, encourages corporates to shed their myopic view and become early adopters of GrSCM.
Vocal tract area functions from magnetic resonance imaging.

There have been considerable research efforts in the area of vocal tract modeling but there is still a small body of information regarding direct 3-D measurements of the vocal tract shape. The purpose of this study was to acquire, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an inventory of speaker-specific, three-dimensional, vocal tract air space shapes that correspond to a particular set of vowels and consonants. A set of 18 shapes was obtained for one male subject who vocalized while being scanned for 12 vowels, 3 nasals, and 3 plosives. The 3-D shapes were analyzed to find the cross-sectional areas evaluated within planes always chosen to be perpendicular to the centerline extending from the glottis to the mouth to produce an "area function. " This paper provides a speaker-specific catalogue of area functions for 18 vocal tract shapes. Comparisons of formant locations extracted from the natural (recorded) speech of the imaged subject and from simulations using the newly acquired area functions show reasonable similarity but suggest that the imaged vocal tract shapes may be somewhat centralized. Additionally, comparisons of the area functions reported in this study are compared with those from four previous studies and demonstrate general similarities in shape but also obvious differences that can be attributed to differences in imaging techniques, image processing methods, and anatomical differences of the imaged subjects.
Financial Crises and Bank Funding: Recent Experience in the Euro Area

This paper provides an overview of bank funding trends in the euro area following the 2007-09 global financial crisis and the euro area crisis. It shows that funding has become segmented along national borders and that secured instruments are much more prevalent than previously. Rising debt retention by euro area banks has accompanied greater dependence on liquidity provided by the ECB.
Female‐Versus‐Male Alloreactivity as a Model for Minor Histocompatibility Antigens in Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

H‐Y encoded gene products were the first to be recognized as clinically relevant minor histocompatibility antigens. Compared to other gender combinations, female donor/male recipient (FDMR) transplants are associated with increased graft‐versus‐host disease (GvHD), increased transplant‐related mortality (TRM) and reduced risk of relapse. Still, their relative impact on transplant outcome remains controversial. We analyzed donor/recipient sex combination in 53 988 patients treated with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) between 1980 and 2005. We found a strong increase in chronic GvHD and late TRM and decreased survival in FDMR transplants irrespective of underlying disease. Conversely, FDMR patients had lower relapse rates. The negative effect on survival decreased with advancing disease stage as relapse protection became more important. Effects of H‐Y alloreactivity were most pronounced in patients transplanted from HLA‐matched donors and in those receiving transplants from an adult donor. Adjustment for acute and chronic GvHD only partially corrected the effects of H‐Y alloreactivity. Analysis of the FDMR proportion over time indicated that the frequency of this gender combination has declined in unrelated transplants over the last 10 years. These data define the role of H‐Y mismatching in allogeneic HSCT and support the current practice of avoiding female donors for male patients, if possible.
Negative Capacitance in Short-Channel FinFETs Externally Connected to an Epitaxial Ferroelectric Capacitor

We report subthreshold swings as low as 8.5 mV/decade over as high as eight orders of magnitude of drain current in short-channel negative capacitance FinFETs (NC-FinFETs) with gate length Lg = 100 nm. NC-FinFETs are constructed by connecting a high-quality epitaxial bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) ferroelectric capacitor to the gate terminal of both n-type and p-type FinFETs. We show that a self-consistent simulation scheme based on Berkeley SPICE Insulated-Gate-FET Model:Common Multi Gate model and Landau-Devonshire formalism could quantitatively match the experimental NC-FinFET transfer characteristics. This also allows a general procedure to extract the effective S-shaped ferroelectric charge-voltage characteristics that provides important insights into the device operation.
The Host Range Phenotype Displayed by a Sindbis Virus Glycoprotein Variant Results from Virion Aggregation and Retention on the Surface of Mosquito Cells

ABSTRACT The Sindbis virus variant NE2G216 is a PE2-containing host range mutant that is growth restricted in cultured mosquito cells (C6/36) due to inefficient release of virions from this cell type. The maturation defect of NE2G216 has been linked to the structures of N-linked oligosaccharides synthesized by arthropod cells. Analysis of C6/36 cells infected with NE2G216 by transmission electron microscopy revealed the presence of dense virus aggregates within cytoplasmic vacuoles and virus aggregates adhered to the cell surface. The virus aggregation phenotype of NE2G216 was reproduced in vertebrate cells (Pro-5) by the addition of 1-deoxymannojirimycin, an inhibitor of carbohydrate processing which limits the processing of N-linked oligosaccharides to structures that are structurally similar, albeit not identical, to those synthesized in C6/36 cells. We conclude that defective maturation of NE2G216 in mosquito cells is due to virion aggregation and retention on the cell surface and that this phenotype is directly linked to the carbohydrate-processing properties of these cells.
Understanding Customer Delight and Outrage

Evidence indicates that satisfied customers defect at a high rate in many industries. Because satisfaction alone does not translate linearly into outcomes such as loyalty in terms of purchases, businesses must strive for 100 percent, or total, customer satisfaction and even delight to achieve the kind of loyalty they desire. Current studies attribute a higher degree of emotionality to the dissatisfaction end of the satisfaction continuum than in the past. For example, customers who have experienced service failures feel annoyed or victimized. Although victimization is felt at a deeper emotional level than irritation, both can result in outrage. By focusing on more intense customer emotions, such as outrage and delight, the authors explore the dynamics of customer emotions and their effect on customer behavior and loyalty. Schneider and Bowen base their conceptualization on people's needs rather than the more conventional model that focuses on customer expectations about their interactions with a firm. The authors propose a complementary needs-based model for service businesses that assumes customer delight and outrage originate with the handling of three basic human needs ? security, justice, and self-esteem. By recasting a situation as one that has violated any of a customer's fundamental needs, the deeper emotional outcome (e.g., outrage) does not seem incongruous. The authors describe each need and offer specific managerial tactics for avoiding outrage and creating delight. Recent emphasis on relationship marketing ? that is, attracting, developing, and retaining customers ? is pertinent because building relationships requires that companies view customers as people first and consumers second. Service is an exchange relationship in which customers swap their money and loyalty for what Schneider and Bowen argue is need gratification ? a psychological contract with service firms to have their needs gratified. The authors discuss strategies that help firms gratify and, in some cases, delight customers, while avoiding the perception that they do not respect customer needs. Companies must manage how they show concern for customer needs in all actions, including the activities of the back office (e.g., billing, shipping), not just front-office personnel who directly contact the customer.
Testing for genetic heterogeneity in the genome search meta‐analysis method

The Genome Search Meta‐Analysis (GSMA) method is widely used to detect linkage by pooling results of previously published genome‐wide linkage studies. The GSMA uses a non‐parametric summed rank statistic in 30 cM bins of the genome. Zintzaras and Ioannidis ([2005] Genet. Epidemiol. 28:123–137) developed a method of testing for heterogeneity of evidence for linkage in the GSMA, with three heterogeneity statistics (Q, Ha, B). They implement two testing procedures, restricted versus unrestricted for the summed rank within the bin. We show here that the rank‐unrestricted test provides a conservative test for high heterogeneity and liberal test for low heterogeneity in linked regions. The rank‐restricted test should therefore be used, despite the extensive simulations needed. In a simulation study, we show that the power to detect heterogeneity is low. For 20 studies of affected sib pairs, simulated assuming linkage in all studies to a gene with sibling relative risk of 1.3, the power to detect low heterogeneity using the Q statistic was 14%. With linkage present in 50% of the studies (to a gene with sibling relative risk of 1.4), the Q heterogeneity statistic had power of 29% to detect high heterogeneity. The power to detect linkage using the summed rank was high in both of these situations, at 98% and 79%, respectively. Although testing for heterogeneity in the GSMA is of interest, the currently available method provides little additional information to that provided by the summed rank statistic. Genet. Epidemiol. 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
DeepSea: Progressive Workload-Aware Partitioning of Materialized Views in Scalable Data Analytics

Selective materialization of intermediate query results as views is an effective method for improving query performance. In this paper, we extend this technique to adaptively partition views based on the access patterns of a workload. That is, we collect information about the selection conditions of queries at runtime and utilize this information to determine fragment boundaries for the initial partitioning when materializing a view. Furthermore, we refine view partitions over time based on the selection conditions of incoming queries. We present a novel cost-benefit model for partitioned views, as well as a candidate view and fragment selection approach both of which exploit the nature of partitioned views by taking the correlation among view fragments into account. Furthermore, we present DeepSea, an implementation of these techniques built on top of Hive. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of partitioned views, improving performance by up to an order of magnitude compared to state-of-the-art approaches.
High-Resolution Genotyping of Streptococcus pyogenesSerotype M1 Isolates by Fluorescent Amplified-Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis

ABSTRACT We have used fluorescent amplified-fragment length polymorphism (FAFLP) analysis to subtype clinical isolates of Streptococcus pyogenes serotype M1. Established typing methods define most M1 isolates as members of a clone that has a worldwide distribution and that is strongly associated with invasive diseases. FAFLP analysis simultaneously sampled 90 to 120 loci throughout the M1 genome. Its discriminatory power, precision, and reproducibility were compared with those of other molecular typing methods. Irrespective of disease symptomatology or geographic origin, the majority of the clinical M1 isolates shared a single ribotype, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis macrorestriction profile, and emm1 gene sequence. Nonetheless, among these isolates, FAFLP analysis could differentiate 17 distinct profiles, including seven multi-isolate groups. The FAFLP profiles of M1 isolates reproducibly exhibited between 1 and more than 20 amplified fragment differences. The high discriminatory power of genotyping by FAFLP analysis revealed genetic microheterogeneity and differentiated otherwise “identical” M1 isolates as members of a clone complex.
Pricing Two Trees When Trees and Investors are Heterogeneous

We consider an exchange economy with two heterogeneous stocks and two groups of investors. Dividends follow diffusion processes, with a constant expected growth rate for one stock and a stochastic drift for the other. 'Rational investors' can either observe this stochastic drift without error or are at least able to use a noisy signal about it, while 'irrational investors' base their inference only on dividend observations. In an economy with homogeneous investors, uncertainty about the drift increases the volatilities of both stocks and the expected return of the smaller stock. Differences between the two types of stocks are mainly caused by learning, which increases both the volatility and the expected return of the stock with the stochastic drift. When both groups of investor are present, differences in portfolio holdings and thus trading mainly depend on differences in beliefs. In the long run, the irrational investors will be driven out of the market, and for realistic parameter scenarios, they can loose on average half of their wealth within twenty years.
Oxidative damage to proteins in yeast cells exposed to adaptive levels of H2O2

Abstract When yeast cells are exposed to sublethal concentrations of oxidants, they adapt to tolerate subsequent lethal treatments. Here, we show that this adaptation involves tolerance of oxidative damage, rather than protection of cellular constituents. o- and m-tyrosine levels are used as a sensitive measure of protein oxidative damage and we show that such damage accumulates in yeast cells exposed to H2O2 at low adaptive levels. Glutathione represents one of the main cellular protections against free radical attack and has a role in adaptation to oxidative stress. Yeast mutants defective in glutathione metabolism are shown to accumulate significant levels of o- and m-tyrosine during normal aerobic growth conditions.
Chinese expert consensus statement on issues related to small specimen sampling of lung cancer

Lung cancer is a malignant disease with the highest morbidity and mortality in the world. Radical surgery cannot be used for the 75% of lung cancer patients who have advanced lung cancer at first presentation. [1] Further treatment of these patients with advanced lung cancer should be based on a minimally invasive diagnostic workup that provides an accurate histopathological diagnosis and identifies the molecular subtype and stage. For nearly 80% of patients with advanced lung cancer, the diagnosis is confirmed by evaluation of a small biopsy specimen. [2] The treatment of lung cancer has recently entered the era of precision medicine; treatments are based on the combined results from histological subtyping and molecular profiling. Therefore, adequate and highquality lung cancer specimens are of vital importance for an accurate histological and molecular diagnosis and require multidisciplinary collaboration. In addition, selected patients can be monitored for disease progression and changes in molecular profiles by repeated biopsies or biopsies of multiple sites.
Performance Evaluation of Multiresolution Isosurface Rendering

Our work involves the establishment of a standard multiresolution data hierarchy of large scientific datasets. In additional to a conventional level-of-detail design, our model provides a meaningful localized error estimation for each level of the representation. This paper describes a computational study that examines our multiresolution data representation model and evaluates its performance using real life volume datasets. A C++ wavelet library implements the multidimensional transformations and recursive data projections. We explore the space/time tradeoffs of approximation construction within a multiresolution hierarchy for volume data.
Experimental Study Of The Identification Methods For An Industrial Robot Manipulator

Two identification methods; ”stepby-step method” and ”simultaneous method” which takes advantage of the instrumental variable method are experimentary examined to estimate the parameters of the dynamic model of the PUMA 560. To evaluate the accuracy of the estimates we compare simulated trajectories with measured trajectory. It can be concluded that the two methods are neary same precise way to estimate the model parameters.
Realising Telework: The Role Of Design

Telework is a form of organisational design in which organisations change their temporal-spatial characteristics in response to internal and/or external demands. This paper argues that realising such a new way of working involves the participatory creation a flexible, tailorable design, that triggers a gradual process of change. During this implementation process the design itself evolves to adjust to individual requirements and increasing understanding of needs. A case study is presented to demonstrate characteristics of telework design and its role in achieving successful teleworking.
Feature selection for support vector machines by alignment with ideal kernel

Feature selection has several potentially beneficial uses in machine learning. Some of them are to improve the performance of the learning method by removing noisy features, to reduce the feature set in data collection, and to better understand the data. In this report we present how to use empirical alignment, a well known measure for the fitness of kernels to data labels, to perform feature selection for support vector machines. We show that this measure improves the results obtained with other widely used measures for feature selection (like information gain or correlation) in linearly separable problems. We also show how alignment can be successfully used to select relevant features in non-linearly separable problems when using support vector machines.
Multi-User Computation Partitioning for Latency Sensitive Mobile Cloud Applications

Elastic partitioning of computations between mobile devices and cloud is an important and challenging research topic for mobile cloud computing. Existing works focus on the single-user computation partitioning, which aims to optimize the application completion time for one particular single user. These works assume that the cloud always has enough resources to execute the computations immediately when they are offloaded to the cloud. However, this assumption does not hold for large scale mobile cloud applications. In these applications, due to the competition for cloud resources among a large number of users, the offloaded computations may be executed with certain scheduling delay on the cloud. Single user partitioning that does not take into account the scheduling delay on the cloud may yield significant performance degradation. In this paper, we study, for the first time, multi-user computation partitioning problem (MCPP), which considers the partitioning of multiple users' computations together with the scheduling of offloaded computations on the cloud resources. Instead of pursuing the minimum application completion time for every single user, we aim to achieve minimum average completion time for all the users, based on the number of provisioned resources on the cloud. We show that MCPP is different from and more difficult than the classical job scheduling problems. We design an offline heuristic algorithm, namely SearchAdjust, to solve MCPP. We demonstrate through benchmarks that SearchAdjustoutperforms both the single user partitioning approaches and classical job scheduling approaches by 10 percent on average in terms of application delay. Based on SearchAdjust, we also design an online algorithm for MCPP that can be easily deployed in practical systems. We validate the effectiveness of our online algorithm using real world load traces.