Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nutlin-3a Decreases Male Fertility via UQCRC2

Ubiquinol-cytochrome-c reductase core protein 2 (UQCRC2) is a component of ubiquinol-cytochrome c reductase complex that is known to correlate with male fertility via spermatogenesis. Simultaneously, nutlin-3a is a small molecule antagonist of mouse double minute 2 repressor (MDM2), activate p53 and induce apoptosis responsible for spermatogenesis. To date, however there are no known effects of nutlin-3a on reproduction. Therefore, present study was designed to investigate the effect of nutlin-3a on male fertility via UQCRC2. In this in vitro trial with mice spermatozoa, we utilized CASA, CTC staining, ATP assay, western blotting, and IVF to measure the main study outcome. The short-term exposure of spermatozoa in nutlin-3a decreases sperm motion kinematics, intracellular ATP production, capacitation, the acrosome reaction, UQCRC2, and tyrosine phosphorylation (TYP) of sperm proteins in a dose-dependent manner. Notably, the decreased UQCRC2 and TYP were associated with reduced sperm kinematics, ATP production, and capacitation, which ultimately led to adverse effects on male fertility such as poor fertilization rates and embryo development. Thus, nutlin-3a may be considered as a potential male contraceptive agent due to its ability to decrease fertility secondary to changes in overall sperm physiology and embryonic development. However, the results of this preliminary study have to be confirmed by additional independent trial.
2 Targeted Apoptosis in Breast Cancer Immunotherapy

Apoptosis is programmed and precisely regulated cell death characterized by morphological and biochemical alterations distinct from necrosis (Edinger & Thompson, 2004). The development of breast cancers, like other processes of carcinogenesis, involves uncontrolled cell proliferation and insufficient apoptosis due to either the lack of proapoptotic stimuli in the in vivo environment or the disturbance of cellular apoptotic pathways (Brown & Attardi, 2005). Whereas both chemotherapy and radiation caused massive apoptotic cell death in the tumor tissues, we are far from conquering the breast malignancies until the establishment of targeted pro-apoptotic therapeutic protocols or the development of apoptosis-inducing drugs that target the tumor without causing severe impairment of the normal organism (Alvarez et al, 2010; Fulda & Debatin, 2006; Motyl et al, 2006; Muschel et al, 1998). However, thanks to the elucidation of mechanisms underlying physiological and pathological apoptosis, studies have been addressed in the development of pro-apoptotic strategies targeting the cancer cells, which has provided novel approaches to the successful immutherapy of breast cancers (Schlotter et al, 2008).
Daring to Dare—Theoretical Experiment for Pedagogical Practices and Body-Brain-Embedded Subject

This article discusses and experiments with a psychological constructionist account of the brain basis of emotion—the conceptual act model (Lindquist et al., 2012; Barrett et al., 2014) and the Deleuzian and Guattarian (1987; 2009) philosophical accounts of affect, concept and stratum. Why those two? The conceptual act model theorizes process of meaning making of external and internal sensations including experience of emotions. Deleuze and Guattari, with their accounts, reflect on various patterns of making meaning comprising those that lead to self-/criticism and creativity. Since it is crucial to think about teaching practices that support students in daring to challenge, problematize and generate new meaning of experienced sensations, theories that address meaning making processes are of particular relevance. This article shows that those theories alone and once exposed to an experiment may possibly inspire pedagogical undertakings that aim to create self-/critically-creative abilities among students, but also add to the ways of conceptualizing subject, body, mind and brain.
Emotional Empathy during service encounters: the price for caring

This study examines the relationship between Emotional Empathy (EE) and Depressed Mood at Work among front line employees (FLEs). The goal was to test the hypothesis that Depressed Mood increases with displays of Emotional Empathy. One-hundred fifty-nine FLEs completed a survey that measured Emotional Empathy, work strain and related key constructs. Respondents were unaware of the research hypothesis, guaranteed confidentiality and represented a complete random sample. FLEs reported significantly higher levels of work strain associated with displays of Emotional Empathy. Moreover, the Strain-to-Empathy relationship was not mediated by job tenure, FLE sense of task importance or an index of potential role stressors. Unfortunately, the results suggest that FLEs are rewarded for not emotionally identifying with their customers; it appears one can escape work strain by emotionally detaching from customers. To the extent that successful service encounters hinge on positive interaction between FLE and customer, managers are challenged to develop practices that facilitate displays of empathy. Potential remedial practices are reviewed.
The Effects of Ergonovine Maleate on Coronary Arterial Size

Changes in coronary arterial size due to ergonovine maleate are described and quantitated in 90 patients - 18 with typical angina pectoris, 56 with atypical chest pain, nine with variant angina pectoris, and seven heart transplant (allograft) recipients. We observed two angiographic changes in the diameter of coronary arteries: 1) spasm, which was characterized by occlusion or marked (>85%) focal or diffuse vessel narrowing, or 2) relatively mild and diffuse vessel narrowing, which was interpreted as the normal pharmacologic response to the drug. Serial bolus injections of 0.05 mg, 0.10 mg and 0.25 mg of ergonovine maleate produced diffuse narrowing of the diameter of coronary arteries of 10 ± 1.5%, 16 ± 1.4% and 20 ± 1.3% (mean ± SEM), respectively, in the 72 patients with anginal syndromes who did not develop coronary spasm. The degree of coronary arterial narrowing was the same in heart transplant recipients and in patients with normally innervated hearts who did not develop coronary spasm. We believe the normal pharmacologic response to ergonovine maleate was due to a direct vasoconstrictor action of the drug; this action was independent of neural control extrinsic to the heart.
Use of Theory in Behavior Change Interventions

Objective. Theory use may enhance effectiveness of behavioral interventions, yet critics question whether theory-based interventions have been sufficiently scrutinized. This study applied a framework to evaluate theory use in physical activity interventions for breast cancer survivors. The aims were to (1) evaluate theory application intensity and (2) assess the association between extensiveness of theory use and intervention effectiveness. Methods. Studies were previously identified through a systematic search, including only randomized controlled trials published from 2005 to 2013, that addressed physical activity behavior change and studied survivors who were <5 years posttreatment. Eight theory items from Michie and Prestwich’s coding framework were selected to calculate theory intensity scores. Studies were classified into three subgroups based on extensiveness of theory use (Level 1 = sparse; Level 2 = moderate; and Level 3 = extensive). Results. Fourteen randomized controlled trials met search criteria. Most trials used the transtheoretical model (n = 5) or social cognitive theory (n = 3). For extensiveness of theory use, 5 studies were classified as Level 1, 4 as Level 2, and 5 as Level 3. Studies in the extensive group (Level 3) had the largest overall effect size (g = 0.76). Effects were more modest in Level 1 and 2 groups with overall effect sizes of g = 0.28 and g = 0.36, respectively. Conclusions. Theory use is often viewed as essential to behavior change, but theory application varies widely. In this study, there was some evidence to suggest that extensiveness of theory use enhanced intervention effectiveness. However, there is more to learn about how theory can improve interventions for breast cancer survivors.
Selective dip-coating of chemically micropatterned surfaces

We characterize the selective deposition of liquid microstructures on chemically heterogeneous surfaces by means of dip coating processes. The maximum deposited film thickness depends critically on the speed of withdrawal as well as the pattern size, geometry, and angular orientation. For vertically oriented hydrophilic strips, we derive a hydrodynamic scaling relation for the deposited film thickness which agrees very well with interferometric measurements of dip-coated liquid lines. Due to the lateral confinement of the liquid, our scaling relation differs considerably from the classic Landau–Levich formula for chemically homogeneous surfaces. Dip coating is a simple method for creating large area arrays of liquid microstructures for applications involving chemical analysis and synthesis, biochemical assays, or wet printing of liquid polymer or ink patterns.
Using hand synergies as an optimality criterion for planning human-like motions for mechanical hands

The use of anthropomorphic mechanical hands allows the execution of complex manipulation tasks and, therefore, its use is increasing, both in humanoid robots and mobile manipulators. The planning of the motions of these hands is not easy due to the high number of degrees of freedom (DOF) involved. Even when they may be mechanically independent, these degrees of freedom can be artificially coupled in order to mimic the human hand motions by using synergies, which in its turn results in a lower subspace where to perform the motion planning, as previously done by the authors using a PRM. This paper extends this idea by using an RRT*, that differently from other sampling-based planners, is an asymptotically optimal method. The optimization function selected evaluates the alignment of the path to the directions defined by the synergies, thus favoring human-like motions. The proposal is conceptually illustrated with a simple 2 DOF planar robot and applied to a 13 DOF mechanical hand.
Coordination-Aware Elasticity

Enabling and controlling elasticity of cloud computing applications is a challenging issue. Elasticity programming directives have been introduced to delegate elasticity control to infrastructures and to separate elasticity control from application logic. Since coordination models provide a general approach to manage interaction and elasticity control entails interactions among cloud infrastructure components, we present a coordination-based approach to elasticity control, supporting delegation and separation of concerns at design and run-time, paving the way towards coordination-aware elasticity.
First Arrival Detection for Sparse Multipath Channel

Since most components of sparse multi-path channel (SMPC) are zero, impulse response of SMPC can be recovered from a short training sequence and its non-zero entries can be detected from a short training sequence. In this paper, we use 1-bit measurements, which preserve only the sign information of the random measure, to detect the first arrival of sparse channel. Although it is possible to detect using the classical compressive sensing approach by treating the 1-bit measurement as measurement values, in this paper we reformulate the problem to a convex problem. In order to mitigate inter-atom interference (IAI), a sensing dictionary is used. The simulation results demonstrate that the percentage of first arrival of SMPC by the proposed method is significantly better than the classical compressive sensing method hat use the quantized 1-bit measurementand better than that doesn't use a sensing dictionary.
Aberrant DNA methylation associated with Alzheimer's disease in the superior temporal gyrus

Abnormal DNA methylation patterns have been demonstrated to be associated with the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The present study aimed to identify differential methylation in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) of patients with late-onset AD based on epigenome-wide DNA methylation data by bioinformatics analysis. The genome-wide DNA methylation data in the STG region of 34 patients with late-onset AD and 34 controls without dementia were recruited from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. Through systemic quality control, differentially methylated CpG sites were determined by the Student's t-test and mean methylation value differences between the two conditions. Hierarchical clustering analysis was applied to assess the classification performance of differentially methylated CpGs. Functional analysis was performed to investigate the biological functions of the genes associated with differentially methylated CpGs. A total of 17,895 differentially methylated CpG sites were initially identified, including 11,822 hypermethylated CpGs and 6,073 hypomethylated CpGs. Further analysis examined 2,211 differentially methylated CpGs (covering 1,991 genes). AD subjects demonstrated distinctive DNA methylation patterns when compared with the controls, with a classification accuracy value of 1. Hypermethylation was mainly detected for genes regulating the cell cycle progression, whereas hypomethylation was observed in genes involved in transcription factor binding. The present study demonstrated widespread and distinctive DNA methylation alterations in late-onset AD. Identification of AD-associated epigenetic biomarkers may allow for the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic targets.
Temporal Analysis of Inter-Community User Flows in Online Knowledge-Sharing Networks

In this work we provide new insights into the structure of knowledge-sharing networks by approaching them as a dynamic multi-community environment. Focusing on a large dataset collected from Stack Overflow, a popular Q&A site for programming discussions, we analyze how users interact with multiple communities over time, assessing the flow of members across communities. We then employ these estimates of inter-community user flows to identify groups of closely related macro-communities in the network, analyzing how these macro-communities are formed following temporal changes in the flow of users. The insights uncovered by our study about how communities and their relationships evolve over time can be used to improve maintenance of the system and user navigation, as well as to provide a way to track the impact of new topics in existing communities.
Individualized femininity and feminist politics of choice

Women’s right to exercise choice has been one of feminism’s central political claims. Where second wave feminism focused on the constraints women faced in making free choices, choice feminism more recently reorients feminist politics with a call for recognition of the choices women are actually making. From this perspective the role of feminism is to validate women’s choices without passing judgement. This article analyses this shift in orientation by locating women’s choices within a late modern gender order in which the ideal of choice has increasingly been associated with a new form of femininity characterized as self-determining, individuated and ‘empowered’. Instead of offering an effective analysis of the changing social conditions within which the relationship between feminism, femininity and individual choice has become increasingly complicated, choice feminism directs criticism at feminist perspectives characterized as overly prescriptive. This critique fails to appreciate how feminist ideals have been recuperated in the service of late capitalism and neoliberal forms of governance. By failing to engage critically with processes currently impacting on the social organization of gender choice feminism aids in the constitution of an individuated neoliberal feminist subject which performs cultural work vital to the reproduction of neoliberal governmentality.
Constructing side chains on near-native main chains for ab initio protein structure prediction.

Is there value in constructing side chains while searching protein conformational space during an ab initio simulation? If so, what is the most computationally efficient method for constructing these side chains? To answer these questions, four published approaches were used to construct side chain conformations on a range of near-native main chains generated by ab initio protein structure prediction methods. The accuracy of these approaches was compared with a naive approach that selects the most frequently observed rotamer for a given amino acid to construct side chains. An all-atom conditional probability discriminatory function is useful at selecting conformations with overall low all-atom root mean square deviation (r.m.s.d.) and the discrimination improves on sets that are closer to the native conformation. In addition, the naive approach performs as well as more sophisticated methods in terms of the percentage of chi(1) angles built accurately and the all-atom r. m.s.d. , between the native and near-native conformations. The results suggest that the naive method would be extremely useful for fast and efficient side chain construction on vast numbers of conformations for ab initio prediction of protein structure.
Assessing 3GPP LTE-advanced as IMT-advanced technology: the WINNER+ evaluation group approach

This article describes the WINNER+ approach to performance evaluation of the 3GPP LTE-Advanced proposal as an IMT-Advanced technology candidate. The official registered WINNER+ Independent Evaluation Group evaluated this proposal against ITU-R requirements. The first part of the article gives an overview of the ITU-R evaluation process, criteria, and scenarios. The second part is focused on the working method of the evaluation group, emphasizing the simulator calibration approach. Finally, the article contains exemplary evaluation results based on analytical and simulation approaches. The obtained results allow WINNER+ to confirm that the 3GPP LTE Release 10 & Beyond (LTE-Advanced) proposal satisfies all the IMTAdvanced requirements, and thus qualifies as an IMT-advanced system.
The role of high- and low-dose corticotropin tests in the diagnosis of secondary adrenal insufficiency.

Secondary adrenal insufficiency (SAI) results from hypothalamic or hypophyseal damage or from prolonged administration of supraphysiological doses of glucocorticoids. SAI may be mild, potentially leading to decompensation in stressful situations, or it may be severe per se with symptoms similar to an Addisonian crisis (without hyperpigmentation and hyperkalemia, however). Severe SAI is easy to diagnose. The patients are pale (adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) deficiency), weak, hypotensive and often suffer from gastrointestinal symptoms. Amenorrhea, loss of libido, small testicles, scanty pubic hair and secondary hypothyreosis or visual field defects may be accompanying signs and symptoms pointing to the diseased pituitary. In those patients, basal plasma cortisol is often low (<100 nmol/l). If plasma ACTH is also low or low–normal, the diagnosis of SAI is confirmed, no further dynamic testing of the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis is necessary, and the patient needs regular substitution with hydrocortisone. The diagnosis is much more difficult if the HPA axis is only mildly impaired, other endocrine deficits of the pituitary are missing or also mild, and neurological symptoms hinting at a hypophyseal lesion like visual field defects are missing. With such non-specific complaints as tiredness, reduced appetite and occasional dizziness, it is important that the patient is lucky enough to find a physician whose threshold of suspicion is low enough to consider the possibility of SAI at all. What test is to be done in such a patient, and likewise in another who presents with an ‘incidentally’ detected pituitary tumor (on CCT or MRT ordered for other than pituitary reasons) without the clinical symptoms and signs of hypocortisolism or SAI? The standard tests for diagnosing or excluding SAI are the insulin hypoglycemia test (IHT) and the metyrapone test (MT). In order to give a normal result (IHT: increase of plasma cortisol to >500 or >550 or >580 nmol/l in different reports; MT: increase of plasma 11-deoxy-cortisol to >200 nmol/l at 0800 h after taking metyrapone at midnight), the entire HPA axis needs to be intact (1–6). With very few exceptions (7), patients with a normal IHT or MT do not need hydrocortisone substitution, although they may need hydrocortisone later on, if the underlying pituitary disorder is progressive.
The Lower Limb and Mechanics of Walking in Australopithecus sediba

The discovery of a relatively complete Australopithecus sediba adult female skeleton permits a detailed locomotor analysis in which joint systems can be integrated to form a comprehensive picture of gait kinematics in this late australopith. Here we describe the lower limb anatomy of Au. sediba and hypothesize that this species walked with a fully extended leg and with an inverted foot during the swing phase of bipedal walking. Initial contact of the lateral foot with the ground resulted in a large pronatory torque around the joints of the foot that caused extreme medial weight transfer (hyperpronation) into the toe-off phase of the gait cycle (late pronation). These bipedal mechanics are different from those often reconstructed for other australopiths and suggest that there may have been several forms of bipedalism during the Plio-Pleistocene.
Single-Stage Three-Phase Current-Source Photovoltaic Grid-Connected Inverter High Voltage Transmission Ratio

This paper proposes a circuit topology of a single-stage three-phase current-source photovoltaic (PV) grid-connected inverter with high voltage transmission ratio (VTR). Also, an improved zone sinusoidal pulsewidth modulation (SPWM) control strategy and an active-clamped subcircuit that can suppress the energy storage switch's turn-off voltage spike are introduced. The circuit topology, control strategy, steady principle characteristics, and high-frequency switching process are analyzed profoundly, as well as the VTR's expression and design criterion of the center-tapped energy storage inductor. The improved zone SPWM control strategy consists of two control loops, namely, the outer loop of input dc voltage of PV cells with the maximum power point tracking and the inner loop of the energy storage inductor current. The experimental results of a 3-kW 96VDC/380V50Hz3ϕAC prototype have shown that this kind of a three-phase inverter has the excellent performances such as single-stage power conversion, high VTR and power density, and high conversion efficiency. Nonetheless, it has small energy storage inductor and output CL filter, low output current total harmonic distortion, and flexible voltage configuration of the PV cells. This study provides an effective design method for single-stage three-phase inverting with high VTR.
Video-based evaluation of driver's visual attention using smartphones

In the recent period, video processing algorithms emerged as a valid solution to various problems, including the automation of some repetitive processes, for retrieving information from dynamic environments or the inspection of the physical state of human operators. On the other hand, with the latest advancements in the automotive industry, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADASs) are becoming more and more common. It was just a matter of time until ADASs will rely heavily on the bio-cues processed from video steam. We present a system that obtains driver's head orientation, thus inferring the level of visual attention. The result of this research will be included in a Personal Navigation Assistant (PNA) based on dual camera mobile phones. We address the vision algorithms, the system architecture and the main implementation issues implied by the system.