Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TNF and IL‐6 are potent growth factors for OH‐2, a novel human myeloma cell line

Abstract: A novel human myeloma cell line, OH‐2, was established from pleural fluid of a myeloma patient in end stage of the disease. Effects of cytokines on proliferation were analyzed by measuring uptake of 3H‐thymidine. Cell surface antigens were detected by flow cytometry. The cell line is dependent on IL‐6 for growth and proliferates in response to TNF. There is synergy between the stimulatory response of TNF and IL‐6. The cells express both the p55 and p75 TNF receptors. Neutralizing anti‐IL‐6 did not inhibit TNF‐mediated proliferation, showing that TNF acts through a pathway that is independent of IL‐6. TNF was more potent than IL‐6 in stimulating the growth of primary myeloma cultures (>99% pure) from the same patient (OH‐2‐PC), indicating that TNF in selected myeloma patients has a growth‐promoting effect equal to IL‐6. OH‐2 cells produce and secrete monoclonal IgG‐kappa.
Characteristics of fluid‐induced resonances observed during microseismic monitoring

Three groups of resonances are observed during a two‐stage hydraulic experiment recorded by 12 three‐component geophones. The injected fluid is composed of a slurry of mostly water and proppant plus some supercritical nitrogen. Resonance characteristics are estimated using an autoregressive model. Three resonance models are investigated: fluid‐filled cracks, nonlaminar fluid flow, and repetitive events in terms of anticipated resonance frequencies, quality factors, and amplitudes. The observed resonances are very stable and positively correlated with either the slurry flow or the nitrogen injection rate, which is in contradiction with the repetitive events and fluid‐filled crack models, respectively. Resonances obtained by numerical simulations of an unstable jet agree with the main characteristics of most observed resonances. Our observations suggest that variations in resonance frequencies are mainly driven by variations in fluid flow, whereas quality factors are more sensitive to the fluid composition through variations in nitrogen injection rate. This study also suggests that resonance frequencies and quality factors can provide complementary information for real‐time monitoring of fluid injection into reservoirs, for hydraulic stimulations, geothermal operations, carbon capture, and storage or fluid movement during volcano eruptions.
DETERMINANTS OF BANK CAPITAL STRUCTURE AND PROCYCLICALITY OF LEVERAGE: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS FROM TURKEY

Bu calisma banka sermaye yapisinin belirleyicilerini ve kaldirac oraninin dongusel davranisini incelemektedir. Farkli tipteki kaldirac oranlari ile bankalarin aktif buyumesi arasindaki iliskiyi bulmak icin bir panel veri analizi gelistirilmistir. Ayrica, bankaya ozgu faktorlerin ve makroekonomik degiskenlerin banka sermaye yapisina olasi etkileri de tartisilmaktadir. Calisma, aktif buyume ve kaldirac orani arasindaki pozitif iliskinin bir sonucu olarak Turk bankalarinin kaldiraclarinin dongusel oldugu sonucuna varmistir. Dongusel kaldirac, finansal sektor ve genel ekonomide istikrarsizliga katkida bulunabilir. Bu nedenle, daha fazla duzenlemenin gerekli oldugu varsayilmaktadir. Turk bankalarinin sermaye yapisini etkileyen faktorler, buyukluk, kâr, banka sayisi, enflasyon, doviz kuru ve gayri safi yurtici hâsiladir. Bu calisma banka sermaye yapisinin belirleyicilerini ve kaldirac oraninin dongusel davranisini incelemektedir. Farkli tipteki kaldirac oranlari ile bankalarin aktif buyumesi arasindaki iliskiyi bulmak icin bir panel veri analizi gelistirilmistir. Ayrica, bankaya ozgu faktorlerin ve makroekonomik degiskenlerin banka sermaye yapisina olasi etkileri de tartisilmaktadir. Calisma, aktif buyume ve kaldirac orani arasindaki pozitif iliskinin bir sonucu olarak Turk bankalarinin kaldiraclarinin dongusel oldugu sonucuna varmistir. Dongusel kaldirac, finansal sektor ve genel ekonomide istikrarsizliga katkida bulunabilir. Bu nedenle, daha fazla duzenlemenin gerekli oldugu varsayilmaktadir. Turk bankalarinin sermaye yapisini etkileyen faktorler, buyukluk, kâr, banka sayisi, enflasyon, doviz kuru ve gayri safi yurtici hâsiladir.
Study on the Development of Quality Measurements Models for Steering Business Services in Relation to Customer Satisfaction

The growing competition in the market, higher customer demands and globalisation forces the business service providers to improve their services much faster. Nowadays, it is not enough to provide good quality it is more important to delight the customers and to deliver more than they expect. Likewise, renowned research companies predicted that customer satisfaction will become the competitive differentiator within the next years. Thus, the main reasons of the present study are at first, establishing a common understanding on the term “quality” and presenting the relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality. Secondly, the study summarizes the identified factors, which mostly influence the customer satisfaction, as well as the common methods used to measure service quality in relation to these factors. Thirdly, the authors introduce and explain the newly developed six step model for establishing an effective measurement method for service quality and the proposed three level service quality model with the related measurements and outcomes. Both models will assist business service providers to protect and improve their service quality and with that their customer satisfaction. The methodology used for this research is a systematic literature review focused on subjects of quality, customer satisfaction and best-practice metrics for service quality. In addition, surveys and studies from well-known research companies were evaluated. The outcome of the study is always focused on the business service area.
Customer-Supplier Relationships and Abnormal Accruals

We examine the relationship between customer and supplier firms’ abnormal accruals. We propose “earnings management” hypothesis and “customer demand shock” hypothesis. We find that customer firms’ demand shocks link customer and supplier abnormal accruals as they propagate along the supply chain, via the “bullwhip” effect. Our evidence supports “customer demand shock” hypothesis. The evidence that a customer’s abnormal accruals transmit and magnify down the supply chain suggests that suppliers imperfectly predict new orders from their customers and that improving predictions would mitigate this bullwhip effect. Consistent with this view, we find that a customer’s abnormal accruals have a much smaller impact on those of its suppliers whose auditors have expertise in the customer’s industries. Overall, our results suggest that the supply chain is an important transmission channel of abnormal accruals, and auditor expertise serves to reduce information opaqueness during this process.
16.4: 2D and 3D analysis of a 2-stage depressed collector including the effects of secondary electrons

This paper describes the simulation of an axi-symmetric 2-stage depressed collector including the effects of secondary electrons using a 2D FDM based code and compares its efficacy against experimental results and 3D simulation using CST Particle Studio. The paper also demonstrates the 3D simulation of a tilted electric field (TEF) collector using CST Studio for arresting the secondary electron back-migration.
Growth differentiation factor 15: a canary in a coal mine?

It has been 50 years since Dr. William B. Kannel coined the term “factors of risk” in relation to cardiovascular disease (1). Since then, clinical risk assessment, including the use of circulating biomarkers, has become an integral part of medical practice. The current era of genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics is projected to lead to the discovery of an immense number of novel candidate biomarkers. With that in mind, the American Heart Association recently issued a statement emphasizing the critical appraisal of novel risk markers to determine their clinical utility (2). Although very few candidate biomarkers will likely survive the test of time (3), the study by Rohatgi et al. published in the present issue of Clinical Chemistry demonstrates the strengths of one such biomarker, growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF-15),2 as a prognostic marker in the community (4). In this report from the Dallas Heart Study, the authors describe their investigation of the association of GDF-15 with subclinical coronary atherosclerosis and mortality. Increasing circulating GDF-15 concentrations were cross-sectionally associated with cardiovascular risk factors and coronary artery calcium. More importantly, GDF-15 was a significant predictor of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality independent of traditional risk factors and other novel biomarkers (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, N-terminal pro–B-type natriuretic peptide, and high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T). This study is an important contribution to the mounting evidence that GDF-15 bears prognostic information in the general population. GDF-15 has been shown to predict all-cause, cardiovascular, and noncardiovascular mortality in older individuals in the Rancho Bernardo Study (5) and was associated with endothelial and cardiac dysfunction in elderly participants in the Prospective Investigation of the Vasculature in Uppsala Seniors study (6). The findings in the Dallas Heart Study certainly add to those of existing community-based studies and, importantly, extend the prognostic role of GDF-15 to a substantially younger …
THE MAXIMAL AND SUBMAXIMAL VERTICAL JUMP: IMPLICATIONS FOR STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING

The vertical jump is a widely used activity to develop explosive strength, particularly in plyometric and maximal power training programs. It is a multijoint action that requires substantial muscular effort from primarily the ankle, knee, and hip joints. It is not known if submaximal performances of a vertical jump have a proportional or differential training effect on the major lower-limb muscles compared to maximal jump performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the contribution that each of the major lower-limb joints makes to vertical jump performance as jump height increases and to comment on the previously mentioned uncertainty. Adult males (N = 20) were asked to perform a series of submaximal (LOW and HIGH) and maximal (MAX) vertical jumps while using an arm swing. Force, motion, and electromyographical data were recorded during each performance and used to compute a range of kinematic and kinetic data, including ankle, knee, and hip joint torques, powers, and work done. It was found that the contribution to jump height made by the ankle and knee joints remains largely unchanged as jump height increases (work done at the ankle: LOW = 1.80, HIGH = 1.97, MAX = 2.06 J·kg−1, F = 3.596, p = 0.034; knee: LOW = 1.62, HIGH = 1.77, MAX = 1.94 J·kg−1, F = 1.492, p = 0.234) and that superior performance in the vertical jump is achieved by a greater effort of the hip extensor muscles (work done at the hip: LOW = 1.03, HIGH = 1.84, MAX = 3.24 J·kg−1, F = 110.143, p < 0.001). It was concluded that the role of submaximal and maximal jumps can be differentiated in terms of their effect on ankle, knee, and hip joint muscles and may be of some importance to training regimens in which these muscles need to be differentially trained.
Comparative Study of the Effects of Lacidipine and Enalapril on the Left Ventricular Cardiomyocyte Remodeling in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

Antihypertensive medications are the most efficient drugs in achieving regression of myocardial hypertrophy in both clinical studies and animal models of hypertension. Nevertheless, there is a lack of clear and concise comparative study of their effects on the modulation of cardiomyocyte morphology and function. Here, we assessed the tissue-protective actions of 2 of these drugs, the calcium channel blocker lacidipine (3 mg/kg/day) and the angiotensin-converting enzyme-inhibitor enalapril (10 mg/kg/day) in vivo, after 8 weeks of treatment of 12-week-old spontaneously hypertensive rats, as well as in vitro, after short-term (4 min) application to isolated cardiomyocytes. Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) was compared at organ, tissue, and single-cell level. Our data showed that both drugs prevented the LVH of 20-week-old spontaneously hypertensive rats, but only lacidipine significantly decreased the cardiomyocyte size. Similarly, the single-cell contractility was significantly lowered in lacidipine-treated rats only. The effect of lacidipine was initiated shortly after exposure to the drug in a dose-dependent manner at 0.5 Hz, as well as at 2 Hz, with EC50 of 10−7 mol/L. These results can help in understanding the effects of these drugs on the prevention of LVH.
Prediction of potential disease-associated microRNAs based on random walk

MOTIVATION Identifying microRNAs associated with diseases (disease miRNAs) is helpful for exploring the pathogenesis of diseases. Because miRNAs fulfill function via the regulation of their target genes and because the current number of experimentally validated targets is insufficient, some existing methods have inferred potential disease miRNAs based on the predicted targets. It is difficult for these methods to achieve excellent performance due to the high false-positive and false-negative rates for the target prediction results. Alternatively, several methods have constructed a network composed of miRNAs based on their associated diseases and have exploited the information within the network to predict the disease miRNAs. However, these methods have failed to take into account the prior information regarding the network nodes and the respective local topological structures of the different categories of nodes. Therefore, it is essential to develop a method that exploits the more useful information to predict reliable disease miRNA candidates. RESULTS miRNAs with similar functions are normally associated with similar diseases and vice versa. Therefore, the functional similarity between a pair of miRNAs is calculated based on their associated diseases to construct a miRNA network. We present a new prediction method based on random walk on the network. For the diseases with some known related miRNAs, the network nodes are divided into labeled nodes and unlabeled nodes, and the transition matrices are established for the two categories of nodes. Furthermore, different categories of nodes have different transition weights. In this way, the prior information of nodes can be completely exploited. Simultaneously, the various ranges of topologies around the different categories of nodes are integrated. In addition, how far the walker can go away from the labeled nodes is controlled by restarting the walking. This is helpful for relieving the negative effect of noisy data. For the diseases without any known related miRNAs, we extend the walking on a miRNA-disease bilayer network. During the prediction process, the similarity between diseases, the similarity between miRNAs, the known miRNA-disease associations and the topology information of the bilayer network are exploited. Moreover, the importance of information from different layers of network is considered. Our method achieves superior performance for 18 human diseases with AUC values ranging from 0.786 to 0.945. Moreover, case studies on breast neoplasms, lung neoplasms, prostatic neoplasms and 32 diseases further confirm the ability of our method to discover potential disease miRNAs. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION A web service for the prediction and analysis of disease miRNAs is available at http://bioinfolab.stx. hk/midp/.
Choice of anticoagulant can influence the analysis using fluorescence in situ hybridization of fetal cells enriched from maternal blood

A notable degree of research attention is being focused on the use of fetal cells enriched from the blood of pregnant women as a non‐invasive means of prenatal diagnosis. By using magnetic activated cells sorting (MACS) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), we have examined the efficacy of enriched fetal cells in determining fetal sex. An unexpected finding of this investigation was that the sensitivity of this analysis was influenced by the anticoagulant used to treat the maternal blood samples. As such, samples treated with heparin showed significantly lower detection rates than samples chelated with EDTA. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Differences among Endophytic Fungal Communities Isolated from the Roots of Cephalanthera longibracteata Collected from Different Sites in Korea

Abstract Orchidaceous plants have symbiotic relationships with endophytic fungi, including mycorrhizal fungi, which play important roles in the seed germination and growth of the host plants. In this study, endophytic fungal communities isolated from the roots of Cephalanthera longibracteata collected from three different sites in Korea were analyzed, and it was determined whether fungal communities were preferentially correlated with the sites. The fungal isolates were identified by sequence analysis of the internal transcribed spacer regions of rDNA. In total, 30 species of endophytic fungi, including two species of mycorrhizal fungi belonging to the genus Tulasnella, were identified. Leptodontidium orchidicola showed the highest frequency and was isolated from all root samples. Species diversity and richness were not significantly different among sites. However, the community structure of the endophytic fungi significantly differed among sites, suggesting that the site characteristics affected the community composition of the endophytic fungi colonizing the roots of C. longibracteata. Our findings will aid in developing methods involving the use of symbiotic fungi for orchid conservation and restoration in native habitats.
A Personalized Result Recommendation Method based on Communities

The vagueness of queries is a thorny problem of web search all the time. Because of the length of queries is general short, identifying user's search intent from a single query session is unpractical. In this paper, a result recommendation method which refers to the idea of swarm intelligent to optimizing the result list is proposed to solve this problem. In this method, users will be allocated to several communities where users have similar features of searching or other characteristics. And users will benefit from the search experience of co-community users when they search the repetitive queries. Furthermore, to optimizing the result list, the most relative results from similar users will be place ahead of the result page. Finally, experimental evaluation shows that our approach improves the accuracy of results and personalized user experience of searching.
Metallothionein-1 and nitric oxide expression are inversely correlated in a murine model of Chagas disease

Chagas disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, represents an endemic among Latin America countries. The participation of free radicals, especially nitric oxide (NO), has been demonstrated in the pathophysiology of seropositive individuals with T. cruzi. In Chagas disease, increased NO contributes to the development of cardiomyopathy and megacolon. Metallothioneins (MTs) are efficient free radicals scavengers of NO in vitro and in vivo. Here, we developed a murine model of the chronic phase of Chagas disease using endemic T. cruzi RyCH1 in BALB/c mice, which were divided into four groups: infected non-treated (Inf), infected N-monomethyl-L-arginine treated (Inf L-NAME), non-infected L-NAME treated and non-infected vehicle-treated. We determined blood parasitaemia and NO levels, the extent of parasite nests in tissues and liver MT-I expression levels. It was observed that NO levels were increasing in Inf mice in a time-dependent manner. Inf L-NAME mice had fewer T. cruzi nests in cardiac and skeletal muscle with decreased blood NO levels at day 135 post infection. This affect was negatively correlated with an increase of MT-I expression (r = -0.8462, p < 0.0001). In conclusion, we determined that in Chagas disease, an unknown inhibitory mechanism reduces MT-I expression, allowing augmented NO levels.
Mixed-Signal-Makromodellierung für komplexe Schaltkreise

Schaltkreise der Telekommunikation zeichnen sich durch ihre Komplexität also neben der Größe auch die Vielfalt der enthaltenen Funktionsgruppen aus. Dazu gehören Analogfilter und DSP-cores für analoge und digitale Signalverarbeitung, Switched-Capacitor-Schaltungen und Sigma-Delta-Wandler, sehr unterschiedliche Frequenzbereiche für Teilschaltungen, Multi-RateSysteme, extrem lange zu simulierende Zeiten und gleichzeitig die genaue Berücksichtigung von "Second-Order-Effekten" (z.B. zur Berechnung von Bitfehlerraten). Das macht eine Gesamtsystemsimulation auf Transistorund Gatterniveau unmöglich. Die Systemsimulation auf Blockebene (z.B. mit COSSAP oder SPW) gestattet nicht die Einbeziehung kritischer Schaltungsteile, vor allem im analogen Schaltungsbereich.
Orthodontic treatment need and demand in Senegalese school children aged 12-13 years. An appraisal using IOTN and ICON.

OBJECTIVE To assess the normative need, knowledge of, and demand for orthodontic treatment in Senegalese schoolchildren aged 12-13 years. MATERIALS AND METHODS The sample consisted of 665 Senegalese schoolchildren randomly selected from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The normative orthodontic treatment need was assessed using the Dental Health Component (DHC) and the Aesthetic Component (AC) of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (IOTN) and the Index of Complexity, Outcome, and Need (ICON). Knowledge of and demand for orthodontic treatment were assessed with a questionnaire. RESULTS The DHC and the AC of the IOTN and the ICON classified respectively 42.6%, 8.7%, and 44.1% of the children as having a definite need for orthodontic treatment. There were no ethnic or gender differences with respect to normative orthodontic treatment need. The mean ICON score ranged from 42.31 to 44.46 according to the ethnic group. Only 10% of the children had some knowledge of orthodontics. However, between 17% and 30% of the children clearly expressed a need for orthodontic treatment, and the distribution between ethnic groups was significant. In contrast, there were no significant gender differences concerning this demand for treatment. CONCLUSIONS The present study shows that the need for orthodontic treatment far exceeds the actual available supply.
A Survey on Big Data Mining Challenges

— Big Data is the new technology or science to make the well informed decision in business or any other science discipline with huge volume of data from new sources of heterogeneous data. Such new sources include blogs, online media, social network, sensor network, image data and other forms of data which vary in volume, structure, format and other factors. Big Data applications are increasingly adopted in all science and engineering domains, including space science, biomedical sciences and astronomic and deep space studies. The major challenges of big data mining are in data accessing and processing, data privacy and mining algorithms. This paper includes the information about what is big data, data mining with big data, the challenges in big data mining and what are the currently available solutions to meet those challenges.