Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Activation of epidermal growth factor receptor results in Snail protein but not mRNA overexpression in endometrial cancer

Reduced E‐cadherin expression is associated with tumour progression of many carcinomas, including endometrial cancers. The transcription factor Snail is known as one of the most prominent transcriptional E‐cadherin repressors; its regulation in cancer tissues, however, still remains unclear. Here, we report that activation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) resulted in overexpression of Snail and also identified critical downstream signalling molecules. Stimulation of two endometrial carcinoma cell lines with epidermal growth factor (EGF) lead to an increase of Snail protein expression. In primary human endometrioid endometrial carcinomas Snail protein expression correlated with the activated, phosphorylated form of EGFR (Tyr1086) as revealed by profiling 24 different signalling proteins using protein lysate microarrays. In addition, we observed an inverse correlation between Snail and E‐cadherin protein levels in these tumours. Most likely, p38 MAPK, PAK1, AKT, ERK1/2 and GSK‐3β are involved in the up‐regulation of Snail downstream of EGFR. Snail mRNA expression did not show a correlation with activated EGFR in these tumours. Taken together, profiling of signalling proteins in primary human tissues provided strong evidence that EGFR signalling is involved in Snail protein overexpression.
Feasibility of the extended finite element method for the simulation of composite bonded joints

Adhesive-bonding for the unions in multi-component structures is gaining momentum over welding, riveting and fastening. It is vital for the design of bonded structures the availability of accurate damage models, to minimize design costs and time to market. Cohesive Zone Models (CZM’s) have been used for fracture prediction in structures. The eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) is a recent improvement of the Finite Element Method (FEM) that relies on traction-separation laws similar to those of CZM’s but it allows the growth of discontinuities within bulk solids along an arbitrary path, by enriching degrees of freedom. This work proposes and validates a damage law to model crack propagation in a thin layer of a structural epoxy adhesive using the XFEM. The fracture toughness in pure mode I (GIc) and tensile cohesive strength (sn0) were defined by Double-Cantilever Beam (DCB) and bulk tensile tests, respectively, which permitted to build the damage law. The XFEM simulations of the DCB tests accurately matched the experimental load-displacement (P-d) curves, which validated the analysis procedure.
Pitch and Timbre Interfere When Both Are Parametrically Varied

Pitch and timbre perception are both based on the frequency content of sound, but previous perceptual experiments have disagreed about whether these two dimensions are processed independently from each other. We tested the interaction of pitch and timbre variations using sequential comparisons of sound pairs. Listeners judged whether two sequential sounds were identical along the dimension of either pitch or timbre, while the perceptual distances along both dimensions were parametrically manipulated. Pitch and timbre variations perceptually interfered with each other and the degree of interference was modulated by the magnitude of changes along the un-attended dimension. These results show that pitch and timbre are not orthogonal to each other when both are assessed with parametrically controlled variations.
Bounds on recovery times of decision feedback equalizers

New upper and lower bounds on the mean recovery times of decision feedback equalizers are derived. The analysis uses an approach based on writing difference equations for conditional, state dependent, mean recovery times. This method is simple and leads to simple expressions for the bounds. Two different recovery times are investigated; the channel error recovery time and the startup, or reset, error recovery time. Quantitative relationships between the two recovery times are established. Both noiseless and noisy equalizer operating conditions are examined. The new upper bounds are several orders of magnitude smaller than previous upper bounds in some practical cases. >
Expansion and Functional Relevance of High-Avidity Myelin-Specific CD4+ T Cells in Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease in which myelin-specific T cells are believed to play a crucial pathogenic role. Nevertheless, so far it has been extremely difficult to demonstrate differences in T cell reactivity to myelin Ag between MS patients and controls. We believe that by using unphysiologically high Ag concentrations previous studies have missed a highly relevant aspect of autoimmune responses, i.e., T cells recognizing Ag with high functional avidity. Therefore, we focused on the characterization of high-avidity myelin-specific CD4+ T cells in a large cohort of MS patients and controls that was matched demographically and with respect to expression of MHC class II alleles. We demonstrated that their frequency is significantly higher in MS patients while the numbers of control T cells specific for influenza hemagglutinin are virtually identical between the two cohorts; that high-avidity T cells are enriched for previously in vivo-activated cells and are significantly skewed toward a proinflammatory phenotype. Moreover, the immunodominant epitopes that were most discriminatory between MS patients and controls differed from those described previously and were clearly biased toward epitopes with lower predicted binding affinities to HLA-DR molecules, pointing at the importance of thymic selection for the generation of the autoimmune T cell repertoire. Correlations between selected immunological parameters and magnetic resonance imaging markers indicate that the specificity and function of these cells influences phenotypic disease expression. These data have important implications for autoimmunity research and should be considered in the development of Ag-specific therapies in MS.
Using top-ranking sentences to facilitate effective information access

Web searchers typically fail to view search results beyond the first page nor fully examine those results presented to them. In this article we describe an approach that encourages a deeper examination of the contents of the document set retrieved in response to a searcher's query. The approach shifts the focus of perusal and interaction away from potentially uninformative document surrogates (such as titles, sentence fragments, and URLs) to actual document content, and uses this content to drive the information seeking process. Current search interfaces assume searchers examine results document-by-document. In contrast our approach extracts, ranks, and presents the contents of the top-ranked document set. We use query-relevant top-ranking sentences extracted from the top documents at retrieval time as fine-grained representations of top-ranked document content and, when combined in a ranked list, an overview of these documents. The interaction of the searcher provides implicit evidence that is used to reorder the sentences where appropriate. We evaluate our approach in three separate user studies, each applying these sentences in a different way. The findings of these studies show that top-ranking sentences can facilitate effective information access.
Interactive Instruction in Bayesian Inference

An instructional approach is presented to improve human performance in solving Bayesian inference problems. Starting from the original text of the classic Mammography Problem, the textual expression is modified and visualizations are added according to Mayer’s principles of instruction. These principles concern coherence, personalization, signaling, segmenting, multimedia, spatial contiguity, and pretraining. Principles of self-explanation and interactivity are also applied. Four experiments on the Mammography Problem showed that these principles help participants answer the questions at significantly improved rates. Nonetheless, in novel interactivity conditions, performance was lowered suggesting that more interaction can add more difficulty for participants. Overall, a leap forward in accuracy was found, with more than twice the participant accuracy of previous work. This indicates that an instructional approach to improving human performance in Bayesian inference is a promising direction.
Polymorphism in Exon 2 of CD1 Genes in Southwest of Iran

Background: The CD1 family is less variable transmembrane antigen presenting molecules related to the MHC molecules. CD1a and CD1e genes are the most polymorphic ones associated with autoimmune diseases. The aim was to better clarify the map of CD1 genes in Southwest Iranian normal population for implications in vaccine design. Methods: In this study we investigated the polymorphism of CD1a, CD1d and CD1e in 311 healthy individuals from Fars Province in Southwest of Iran by PCR-SSP method. Results: Six of individuals had homozygote CD1a 01/01 genotype and 248 had homozygote CD1a 02/02 genotype. CD1d was found to be monomorphic with all tested individuals showing CD1d 01/01 genotype. Hundred and eleven individuals had homozygote CD1e 01/01 genotype and 48 had homozygote CD1e 02/02 genotype. The frequencies of CD1a 01 and CD1a 02 alleles were 11% and 89% while the frequencies of CD1e 01 and CD1e 02 alleles were 60.1% and 39.9%, respectively. Consistent with previous reports on other genes, a high degree of similarity in CD1a and CD1e allelic distribution was observed between Southwest Iranians and other Indo-European populations. However, the allelic frequency of the CD1a and CD1e alleles showed a significant difference from those of Chinese Han and She populations. Conclusion: These data are notable in the light of relatively recent genetic admixture along the Silk Road. Considering the significance of CD1 alleles in some autoimmune and infectious diseases and with the admixed nature of Iranian population, mapping the distribution of CD1e alleles in different regions of Iran can be useful in future designing of preventive and therapeutic vaccines.
New multifunctional zirconia composite nanomaterials – from electronics to ceramics

In the present study the multifunctional composite materials on zirconia based for different applications were synthesized, studied and analyzed. It has been shown that the using of liquid solutions reagents instead of powders mixing allows entering in the matrix material the oxide dopants in supersaturated concentrations. The nanoparticles synthesized during this investigation contain a potential for the formation of various structures. By the controlling of heating regimes during nanopowders firing or sintering processes it become possible to control the diffusion processes on the particles volume and boundaries. In this study was found the decomposition of initial supersaturated solid solution during heat treatment leads to formation of multilevel nanocomposite structure in the ceramic matrix with enhancing mechanical, electrical, optical and catalytic properties. It was established that the modification of zirconia even a slight amount of aluminum oxide, zinc oxide leads to a significant changing in the properties of nanopowders and ceramics.
Full disjunctions: polynomial-delay iterators in action

Full disjunctions are an associative extension of the outer-join operator to an arbitrary number of relations. Their main advantage is the ability to maximally combine data from different relations while preserving all the original information. An algorithm for efficiently computing full disjunctions is presented. This algorithm is superior to previous ones in three ways. First, it is the first algorithm that computes a full disjunction with a polynomial delay between tuples. Hence, it can be implemented as an iterator that produces a stream of tuples, which is important in many cases (e.g., pipelined query processing and Web applications). Second, the total runtime is linear in the size of the output. Third, the algorithm employs a novel optimization that divides the relation schemes into biconnected components, uses a separate iterator for each component and applies outerjoins whenever possible. Combining efficiently full disjunctions with standard SQL operators is discussed. Experiments show the superiority of our algorithm over the state of the art.
STDP as presynaptic activity times rate of change of postsynaptic activity

We introduce a weight update formula that is expressed only in terms of firing rates and their derivatives and that results in changes consistent with those associated with spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) rules and biological observations, even though the explicit timing of spikes is not needed. The new rule changes a synaptic weight in proportion to the product of the presynaptic firing rate and the temporal rate of change of activity on the postsynaptic side. These quantities are interesting for studying theoretical explanation for synaptic changes from a machine learning perspective. In particular, if neural dynamics moved neural activity towards reducing some objective function, then this STDP rule would correspond to stochastic gradient descent on that objective function.
Electron Beam Melting of Sponge Titanium

Fundamental investigations were done on electron beam (EB) melting of sponge titanium by using 80 kW EB melting furnace. Results obtained are as follows:(1) To increase the melting yield of titanium in EB melting of sponge titanium, it is important to recover splashed metal by installation of water-cooled copper wall around the hearth and to decrease evaporation loss of titanium by keeping the surface temperature of molten metal just above the melting temperature of titanium without local heating. (2) Specific power consumption of drip melting of pressed sponge titanium bar and hearth melting of sponge titanium are approximately 0.9 kWh/kg-Ti and 0.5–0.7 kWh/kg-Ti, respectively. (3) Ratios of the heat conducted to water-cooled mould in the drip melting and to water-cooled hearth in the hearth melting to the electron beam input power are 50-65% and 60-65%, respectively. (4) Surface defects of EB-melted ingots include rap which occurs when the EB output is excessively great, and transverse cracks when the EB output is excessively small. To prevent surface defects, the up-down withdrawal method is effective.
The influence of mixing order on the phase inversion and crystallization behavior of polyamide 6/maleic anhydride-g-ethylene–propylene–diene rubber/high-density polyethylene blend

In this work, the morphology and crystallization behavior of polyamide 6 (PA6)/maleic anhydride-grafted-ethylene–propylene–diene rubber (MAH-g-EPDM)/high-density polyethylene (HDPE) blends with different ratios of the components were studied. In order to study the influence of both thermodynamics and kinetic factors, the interfacial tension between various polymer pairs was taken into account and two processing methods were used. Contact angle measurements and rheological relaxation time simulation were used to calculate the interfacial tension. It was found that because of the reaction between PA6 and MAH-g-EPDM, the value of interfacial tension of PA6/MAH-g-EPDM binary blends calculated by the contact angle measurement was not correct and the real value α = 0.97 mN m−1 was calculated by rheological relaxation time simulation. The two processing methods (one-step and two-step processing methods) led to different crystallization behaviors with different morphologies of the blends.
Antimony film sensor for sensitive rare earth metal analysis in environmental samples

ABSTRACT A sensor for the adsorptive stripping voltammetric determination of rare earth elements has been developed. The electrochemical procedure is based on the oxidation of the rare earth elements complexed with alizarin complexone at a glassy carbon electrode that was in situ modified with an antimony film, during an anodic scan from –0.2 V to 1.1 V (vs. Ag/AgCl) and deposition potential of –0.1 V (vs. Ag/AgCl). The factors influencing the adsorptive stripping capability were optimised, including the complexing agent concentration, plating concentration of antimony and deposition time. The detection of rare earth elements (La, Ce and Pr) were realised in 0.08 M sodium acetate (pH = 5.8) solution as supporting electrolyte, with 2 × 10−6 M alizarin complexone and 1.0 mg L−1 antimony solution. Under the optimised conditions, a deposition time of 360 s was obtained and a linear response was observed between 1 and 25 µg L−1. The reproducibility of the voltammetric measurements was found to be within 5.0% RSD for 12 replicate measurements of cerium(III) concentration of 5 µg L−1 using the same electrode surface. The detection limits obtained using stripping analysis was 0.06, 0.42 and 0.71 μg L−1 for Ce(III), La(III) and Pr(III), respectively. The developed sensor has been successfully applied for the determination of cerium, lanthanum and praseodymium in municipal tap water samples.
Assessment of buildings with ventilated facade systems and evaluation of point thermal bridges

Analyzes of influence of the point thermal bridges of buildings with ventilated facade systems on the thermal properties of envelops are presented in the paper. The relation between the separate components of the envelop were made: thermal properties and thickness of supporting wall’s layer; value of thermal conductivity and thickness of insulation layer. Studies have shown, that the value of the point thermal transmittance, which depended on the thermal properties of the envelop and thickness of the layers, might increase to 35%. The higher thermal conductivity coefficient of the material of the supporting wall and thickness of the insulation layer, the larger value the point thermal transmittance. And contrary, if the thickness of the supporting wall and coefficient of thermal conductivity of insulation layer was increased, the value the point thermal transmittance was decreased. It is possible to determine the value of thermal bridges of certain construction design solution by simplified calculations, according to the existing dependencies formulas or graphics. In this case it’s necessary to have dependence of the point thermal bridges from thermal insulation properties and dimensions of envelop layers. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.5755/j01.sace. 11.2. 12606
Incremental concrete syntax for embedded languages

Embedded domain-specific languages (EDSLs) are known to improve the productivity of developers. However, for many domains no DSL implementation is available. Two important reasons are: First, the effort to implement embedded DSLs that provide the domain's established syntax (called concrete syntax) is very high. Second, the embedded DSL and its underlying general-purpose programming language (GPL) are typically tightly integrated which hampers reusability across different GPLs. In this paper, we present an approach that significantly reduces the necessary effort to implement embedded DSLs with concrete syntax. The idea is to use island grammars to specify the EDSL's concrete syntax. This enables the developer to implement the embedded DSL as a library and to incrementally specify the concrete syntax using meta-data. Only those parts of the EDSL's grammar need to be specified that deviate from the grammar of the GPL and which is required to enable the integration with the GPL.
Incorporation and clearance of omega-3 fatty acids in erythrocyte membranes and plasma phospholipids.

BACKGROUND The sum of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, 20:5 omega3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, 22:6 omega3) in erythrocyte membranes, termed the omega-3 index, can indicate suboptimal intake of omega-3 fatty acids, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). To study the effects of fatty acid supplementation, we investigated the rate of incorporation and clearance of these fatty acids in erythrocyte membranes and plasma after intake of supplements. METHODS Twenty study participants received supplementation with either fish oil (1296 mg EPA + 864 mg DHA/day) or flaxseed oil (3510 mg alpha-linolenic acid + 900 mg linoleic acid/day) for 8 weeks. We obtained erythrocyte membrane and plasma samples at weeks 0, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 24 and extracted and analyzed fatty acids by gas chromatography. RESULTS After 8 weeks of fish oil supplementation, erythrocyte membrane EPA and DHA increased 300% (P < 0.001) and 42% (P < 0.001), respectively. The mean erythrocyte omega-3 index reached a near optimal value of 7.8%, and remained relatively high until week 12. EPA and DHA showed greater increases and more rapid washout period decreases in plasma phospholipids than in erythrocyte membranes. Flaxseed oil supplementation increased erythrocyte membrane EPA to 133% (P < 0.05) and docosapentaenoic acid (DPA, 22:5 omega3) to 120% (P < 0.01) of baseline, but DHA was unchanged. In plasma phospholipids, EPA, DPA, and DHA showed a slight but statistically insignificant increase. CONCLUSIONS Erythrocyte membrane EPA+DHA increases during relatively short intervals in response to supplementation at rates related to amount of supplementation. These results may be useful to establish appropriate dosage for omega-3 fatty acid supplementation.
Statistical end-to-end performance bounds for networks under long memory FBM cross traffic

Fractional Brownian motion (fBm) became known as a useful model for Internet traffic incorporating its self-similar and long-range dependent properties. In this paper we derive end-to-end performance bounds for a through flow in a network of tandem queues under fBm cross traffic. We build on a previously derived sample path envelope for fBm, which possesses a Weibullian decay of overflow probabilities. We employ the sample path envelope and the concept of leftover service curves to model the remaining service after scheduling fBm cross traffic at a system. Using composition results for tandem systems from the stochastic network calculus we derive end-to-end statistical performance bounds for individual flows in networks under fBm cross traffic. We discover that these bounds grow in O(n(log n)1/2−2H) for n systems in series where H is the Hurst parameter of the fBm cross traffic. We show numerical results on the impact of the variability and the correlation of fBm traffic on network performance.
Energy-Efficient Hadoop Green Scheduler

The problems of energy consumption controlling of data center is the hot spot on big data, cloud computing and green computing. In this paper we construct an energy consumption controlling frame of Xen virtual machines on Hadoop from the perspective of Hadoop scheduler: first, we propose an energy calculation model to calculate the energy consumption of tasks running in a virtual environment via which we can implement the real-time energy consumption measurement of physical machine and virtual machine, then based on the above model, we design Green Scheduler which can allocate resources to jobs rationally and efficiently by perceiving the status of each resource in real time. In addition, this paper compares 3 different schedulers including Green Scheduler, FIFO Scheduler and Capacity Scheduler on Hadoop and the result shows that on the premise of similar total runtime, Green Scheduler has more advantages in energy consumption controlling.