Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of metastatic liver disease in patients with primary extrahepatic tumors by contrast-enhanced sonography versus CT and MRI.

AIM To evaluate contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) using SonoVue in the detection of liver metastases in patients with known extrahepatic primary tumors versus the combined gold standard comprising CT, MRI and clinical/histological data. METHODS It is an international multicenter study, and there were 12 centres and 125 patients (64 males, 61 females, aged 59+/-11 years) involved, with 102 patients per protocol. Primary tumors were colorectal in 35%, breast in 27%, pancreatic in 17% and others in 21%. CEUS using SonoVue was employed with a low-mechanical-index technique and contrast-specific software using Siemens Elegra, Philips HDI 5000 and Acuson Sequoia; continuous scanning for at least five minutes. RESULTS CEUS with SonoVue increased significantly the number of focal liver lesions detected versus unenhanced sonography. In 31.4% of the patients, more lesions were found after contrast enhancement. The total numbers of lesions detected were comparable with CEUS (55), triple-phase spiral CT (61) and MRI with a liver-specific contrast agent (53). Accuracy of detection of metastatic disease (i.e. at least one metastatic lesion) was significantly higher for CEUS (91.2%) than for unenhanced sonography (81.4%) and was similar to that of triple-phase spiral CT (89.2%). In 53 patients whose CEUS examination was negative, a follow-up examination 3-6 mo later confirmed the absence of metastatic lesions in 50 patients (94.4%). CONCLUSION CEUS is proved to be reliable in the detection of liver metastases in patients with known extrahepatic primary tumors and suspected liver lesions.
Angiotensin II induces reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton and myosin light-chain phosphorylation in podocytes through rho/ROCK-signaling pathway*

Abstract Aims In the present study, we have evaluated the effect of angiotensin II (Ang II) on actin cytoskeleton reorganization and myosin light-chain (MLC) phosphorylation in podocytes to demonstrate whether the Rho/Rho-associated coiled kinase (ROCK) pathway is involved podocyte injury. Methods Eighteen male Sprague–Dawley rats were divided into three groups and treated with Ang II, saline or telmisartan. Morphological changes were studied at 28 days after treatment. Immunohistochemistry and Western blotting were used to determine the renal expression of p-MLC and ROCK2. Cultured podocytes were treated with Ang II (10−7 M) with or without Rho-kinase inhibitor (Y27632, 10−6 M) for variable time periods. F-actin was visualized with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-conjugated phalloidin or tetraethyl rhodamine isothiocyanate (TRITC)-conjugated phalloidin. p-MLC expression was evaluated by immunofluorescence and Western blot. The activation of Rho/ROCK was evaluated by Western blot. Results The expression of p-MLC in glomeruli increased significantly in rats treated with Ang II when compared to the control rats as shown by Western blot (p < 0.05). In cultured podocytes, Rho A and ROCK2 increased after incubation with Ang II. Ang II increased the expression of ROCK2, which was accompanied with altered morphology, redistribution of actin and increased phosphorylation of MLC. The distribution of actin changed to a large extent, although overall quantitative differences were not observed. Addition of Y-27632 to podocytes treated with Ang II could ameliorate F-actin cytoskeleton remodeling and the increment in p-MLC expression. Conclusion Ang II-induced podocyte cytoskeleton protein expression changing through the RhoA/ROCK2 p-MLC/F-actin pathway.
Cutting Edge: The Natural Ligand for Glucocorticoid-Induced TNF Receptor-Related Protein Abrogates Regulatory T Cell Suppression 1

CD4+25+ regulatory T (Treg) cells maintain immunological self-tolerance through mechanisms that are only in part understood. Previous studies suggest that the glucocorticoid-induced TNFR-related protein (GITR), which is preferentially expressed on the surface of Treg cells, potentially provides a signal that abrogates Treg suppression. In this study, we show that a soluble form of mouse GITR ligand (sGITR-L) induces GITR-dependent NF-κB activation and blocks in vitro suppression mediated by both resting and preactivated polyclonal and Ag-specific Treg cells. Since sGITR-L along with rIL-2 induces proliferation of CD4+25+ cells, it appears that sGITR-L can break the anergic state of Treg cells. Because sGITR-L also up-regulates IL-2 secretion by activated CD4+25 −T cells, these two sGITR-L induced signals synergize to interfere with suppressor activity by CD4+25+ Treg cells.
Impact of Antenna Correlation on Optimum Improved Energy Detector in Cognitive Radio

This paper investigates the detection performance of an improved energy detector for a secondary user with spatially correlated multiple antennas. In an improved energy detector, an arbitrary positive power operation p replaces the squaring operation in a conventional energy detector, and the optimum value of p that gives the best detection performance may be different from 2. Firstly, for a given value of p, we derive closed-form expressions for the probability of detection and the probability of false alarm when antennas at the secondary user are exponentially correlated. We then find the optimum value of p for two different detection criteria−maximizing the probability of detection for a target probability of false alarm, and minimizing the probability of false alarm for a target probability of detection. We show that the optimum p is strongly dependent on system parameters like number of antennas, antenna correlation coefficient among multiple antennas, and average received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). From results, we infer that, in low SNR regime, the effect of antenna correlation is less pronounced on the optimum p. Finally, we find the optimum values of p and threshold jointly that minimize the total error rate. key words: cognitive radio; correlation, improved energy detector, multiple antennas, total error rate
Prevalence and Antimicrobial Resistance Patterns of Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli in Shanghai, China

Background: Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli (DEC) is a major cause of bacterial gastroenteritis in children. Also, antibiotic resistance among DEC is becoming a critical area of concern in clinical settings. Methods: This study was conducted in 4 hospitals in Shanghai from June 2012 to October 2013. DEC isolates from stool samples of patients with diarrhea were examined to determine their antimicrobial susceptibilities and presence of virulence genes, in order to identify high risk clones. Results: A total of 735 (10.2%) DEC isolates were identified from 7204 stool samples from patients with diarrhea, including 374 enteropathogenic E. coli, 318 enterotoxigenic E. coli, 36 Shigella/enteroinvasive E. coli and 7 Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC). Among the 735 DEC isolates, 299 (40.7%) were isolated from children less than 5 years old. High resistance rates were observed to streptomycin (90.7%), ampicillin (63.4%), nalidixic acid (61.1%), sulfisoxazole (49.1%), tetracycline (41.2%), trimethoprim (35.6%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (35.4%), followed by amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (27.2%), cefotaxime (24.5%), cefepime (23.5%), gentamicin (16.7%), ceftazidime (12.4%), chloramphenicol (10.6%), ciprofloxacin (7.2%) and ofloxacin (3.4%). All the isolates were susceptible to imipenem. In addition, potential virulence genes were screened by polymerase chain reaction. A total of 15 enterotoxigenic E. coli belonging to the same clone were identified to be associated with nosocomial neonatal diarrhea and resistant to greater than 10 antimicrobials. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that active surveillance programs combining both phenotypic and genetic data would help identify disease outbreaks and strengthen antibiotic management.
Pharmacological and functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques in CNS drug discovery

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has transformed cognitive neuroscience over the past 10 – 15 years, allowing clinical researchers unprecedented access to the functioning of the human brain under many different conditions including motor, sensory and cognitive stimulation. During the past 5 years, increasing interest has also focused on mapping pharmacologically induced changes in human brain activity produced following exposure to psychoactive agents such as amphetamine and cocaine, and is now frequently termed pharmacological MRI (phMRI). Unfortunately, preclinical fMRI and phMRI studies have not kept pace with human research, largely due to numerous technical hurdles inherent in small laboratory animal imaging, as well as the high cost of necessary equipment. However, this is now set to change with significant investment being made across academic and industry laboratories, as researchers attempt to tap into the huge potential of this noninvasive and powerful translational tool. This review introduces the principles and fundamental assumptions behind the technologies, details some important applications of fMRI and phMRI within a CNS research environment, and examines the potential future impact of the technology.
The Outer Game of Strategic Coaching : Principles and Professional Development

In the growing IT services and huge investments on IT infrastructure procurement in Saudi Arabia compared to other GCC countries in Middle East, it was identified fifteen enabling factors relevant to socioeconomic and environmental issues for corporate green IT purchasing. This study attempts to validate and test the interrelationships empirically among these enablers using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling respectively with a survey conducted in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. For this a hypothesised model was proposed by postulating the impact of key factors on consumers’ green purchasing behaviour. Results suggest that the proposed model well fits with the data and majority of the hypothesised relations have positive influence on green purchasing behaviour except power consumption, performance, ewastage disposal, global warming and eco-labeling and certifications failed to support the study indicating lack of awareness on these issues among the consumers. This study contributes for the industry, academia and also Saudi government to formulate new business strategies in promoting green IT products and to develop new regulations towards environment protection. Correspondingly implications and future research directions are also presented.
Overcoming Constraints in Healthcare with Cloud Technology

Transitioning enterprise operations to the cloud brings a variety of opportunities and challenges. Such step requires a deep and complex understanding of all elements related to the technology as well as defining the manner in which specific cloud challenges can be dealt with. To provide a better understanding of these opportunities and challenges within healthcare, systematic literature overview and industrial cases review is used. Results of the two methods show interconnection between cloud deployment advantages and constrains. However, healthcare case studies provide interesting insights emphasizing cloud complexity and superposition which seems to balance organizational limitations.
Teachers' and Students' Conceptions of Ability in Elementary Physical Education

Using Nicholl's (1989) and Dweck's (1999, 2002) theories on ability as conceptual frameworks, this study explored teachers' and students' conceptions of ability in elementary physical education. Participants were 8 physical education specialists from five public schools and 160 students from their second- and fourth-grade classes. Teacher and student interviews and questionnaires were used for data collection. When asked to describe the “best” and “poorest” students in their physical education classes, teachers defined or referenced student status solely in terms of class behavior and effort, such as participation and working hard. In contrast, students primarily used ability-related indicators, such as task mastery and social comparison along with class behavior as criteria of their own ability. Overall, teachers and students had different views of “good” students in elementary physical education. In an era of standards-based learning and accountability in education, teachers may need to focus more on a task-involved climate by taking into account student learning and achievement.
The role of dopamine D2, but not D3 or D4, receptor subtypes, in quinpirole‐induced inhibition of the cardioaccelerator sympathetic outflow in pithed rats

Quinpirole (a dopamine D2‐like receptor agonist) inhibits the cardioaccelerator sympathetic outflow in pithed rats by sympathoinhibitory D2‐like receptors. The present study was designed to identify pharmacologically the specific D2‐like receptor subtypes (i.e. D2, D3 and D4) involved in this sympathoinhibition by quinpirole.
Identification and structure of four yeast genes (SLY) that are able to suppress the functional loss of YPT1, a member of the RAS superfamily

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the GTP-binding Ypt1 protein (Ypt1p) is essential for endoplasmic reticulum-to-Golgi protein transport. By exploiting a GAL10-YPT1 fusion to regulate YPT1 expression, three multicopy suppressors, SLY2, SLY12, and SLY41, and a single-copy suppressor, SLY1-20, that allowed YPT1-independent growth were isolated. Wild-type Sly1p is hydrophilic, is essential for cell viability, and differs from Sly1-20p by a single amino acid. SLY2 and SLY12 encode proteins with hydrophobic tails similar to synaptobrevins, integral membrane proteins of synaptic vesicles in higher eucaryotes. Sly41p is hydrophobic and exhibits sequence similarities with the chloroplast phosphate translocator. SLY12 but not SLY41 is an essential gene. The SLY2 null mutant is cold and heat sensitive. The SLY gene products may comprise elements of the protein transport machinery.
A more secure scheme for CAPTCHA-based authentication in cloud environment

Cloud computing is a remarkable model for permitting on-demand network access to an elastic collection of configurable adaptive resources and features including storage, software, infrastructure, and platform. However, there are major concerns about security-related issues. A very critical security function is user authentication using passwords. Although many flaws have been discovered in password-based authentication, it remains the most convenient approach that people continue to utilize. Several schemes have been proposed to strengthen its effectiveness such as salted hashes, one-time password (OTP), single-sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA). This study proposes a new authentication mechanism by combining user's password and modified characters of CAPTCHA to generate a passkey. The modification of the CAPTCHA depends on a secret agreed upon between the cloud provider and the user to employ different characters for some characters in the CAPTCHA. This scheme prevents various attacks including short-password attack, dictionary attack, keylogger, phishing, and social engineering. Moreover, it can resolve the issue of password guessing and the use of a single password for different cloud providers.
Altered Met receptor phosphorylation and LRP1-mediated uptake in cells lacking carbohydrate-dependent lysosomal targeting

Acid hydrolases utilize a carbohydrate-dependent mechanism for lysosomal targeting. These hydrolases acquire a mannose 6-phosphate tag by the action of the GlcNAc-1-phosphotransferase enzyme, allowing them to bind receptors and traffic to endosomes. Loss of GlcNAc-1-phosphotransferase results in hydrolase hypersecretion and profound lysosomal storage. Little, however, is known about how these cellular phenotypes affect the trafficking, activity, and localization of surface glycoproteins. To address this question, we profiled the abundance of surface glycoproteins in WT and CRISPR-mediated GNPTAB−/− HeLa cells and identified changes in numerous glycoproteins, including the uptake receptor LRP1 and multiple receptor tyrosine kinases. Decreased cell surface LRP1 in GNPTAB−/− cells corresponded with a reduction in its steady-state level and less amyloid-β-40 (Aβ40) peptide uptake. GNPTAB−/− cells displayed elevated activation of several kinases including Met receptor. We found increased Met phosphorylation within both the kinase and the docking domains and observed that lower concentrations of pervanadate were needed to cause an increase in phospho-Met in GNPTAB−/− cells. Together, these data suggested a decrease in the activity of the receptor and non-receptor protein-tyrosine phosphatases that down-regulate Met phosphorylation. GNPTAB−/− cells exhibited elevated levels of reactive oxygen species, known to inactivate cell surface and cytosolic phosphatases by oxidation of active site cysteine residues. Consistent with this mode of action, peroxide treatment of parental HeLa cells elevated phospho-Met levels whereas antioxidant treatment of GNPTAB−/− cells reduced phospho-Met levels. Collectively, these findings identify new mechanisms whereby impaired lysosomal targeting can impact the activity and recycling of receptors.
Attitudes Toward Working on Interdisciplinary Healthcare Teams: A Comparison by Discipline

Interdisciplinary teams are important in providing care for older patients, but interdisciplinary teamwork is rarely a teaching focus, and little is known about trainees' attitudes towards it. To determine the attitudes of second‐year post‐graduate (PGY‐2) internal medicine or family practice residents, advanced practice nursing (NP), and masters‐level social work (MSW) students toward the value and efficiency of interdisciplinary teamwork and the physician's role on the team, a baseline survey was administered to 591 Geriatrics Interdisciplinary Team Training participants at eight U.S. academic medical centers from January 1997 to July 1999.
Analysis of the RAP1 protein binding to homogeneous telomeric repeats in Saccharomyces castellii

The repressor activator protein 1 (RAP1) plays a role in telomere structure and function inS. cerevisiae. Here, the RAP1 homologue was identified and cloned from the budding yeast Saccharomyces castellii (scasRAP1). The scasRAP1 gene encodes a protein of 826 amino acids and shares an overall high degree of similarity with the S. cerevisiae RAP1 (scerRAP1). We demonstrate that the scasRAP1 is able to complement scerRAP1 in temperature‐sensitive S. cerevisiae strains and is able to function as a regulator to maintain the original telomere lengths. Binding analyses of the E. coli‐expressed scasRAP1 protein demonstrate that it needs two consecutive telomeric repeats in order to bind the S. castellii telomeric DNA sequences, and that it binds adjacent sites having a 16 bp centre‐to‐centre spacing. The binding affinity to telomeric DNA of several other yeasts is similar to that of scerRap1p. However, in contrast to scerRap1p, scasRap1p was found to bind the human telomeric sequence. Moreover, the scasRap1p was found to incorporate a variant repeat in its binding to the otherwise homogeneous telomeric DNA of S. castellii. This ability to bind various sites differing in DNA sequence indicates a high degree of adjustability in the binding of scasRap1p to DNA. The GenBank Accession No. for scasRAP1 is AF401990. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Parameter estimation of resonant fault current limiter for protection and stability analysis

Aging or prolonged subjection to stressed conditions cause changes in the parameters of fault current limiter (FCL). These changes must be noticed to take remedial actions if necessary and to make sure whether the system fault current level is within the rated capacities of existing equipment or not. This paper presents a method for estimating parameters of a series resonant type FCL (RFCL) by using synchronized time-domain data from both ends of a transmission line. Estimated parameters during normal operation are used for protection and stability analysis of the system and fault data are used to analyze the performance of RFCL during fault. Electromagnetic transient line model is used to calculate the current and voltage across the device which are used to estimate parameters of RFCL. PSCAD/EMTDC simulations are used to test the method. Applications of the parameter estimation method are also presented and as a demonstration, effect of variation in current limiting reactor on system transient stability is analyzed.
A Cycle-Stealing Technique for Pipelined Instruction Decompression System for Embedded Microprocessors

For instruction decompression, many techniques have been developed. However, when branching and cache missing occur, they may either incur delays to refill buffers or sacrifice the compression ratio or slow down the clock rate. This paper presents a new technique based on cycle-stealing technique to eliminate all these defects. The simulation results for several benchmarks show that the average compression ratio, the hardware cost and the speed are all better than other techniques.
How Do They Become Nodes? Revisiting Team Member Network Centrality

ABSTRACT The present study examines the antecedents of team member network centrality using a sample of 207 team members. Team member network centrality indicates how closely the individual is linked to others in the group. The authors investigated the role of personality traits, interpersonal citizenship behavior (ICB), education, and team tenure on an individual's network centrality. The authors also examined the mediating effect of ICB on the relationship between personality traits and team member network centrality. Results supported the relation between (a) personal traits—conscientiousness and agreeableness—and (b) ICB and network centrality. In addition, ICB mediated the relation between conscientiousness and network centrality and between agreeableness and network centrality, respectively. That is, people who are more conscientious and agreeable manifest more ICB and therefore more possibly become nodes within their teams’ social network. Further, results supported the idea that education and team tenure are positively related to network centrality. The authors discuss the theoretical contributions and implications.
Core Construction for Large Constant Voltage Transformers

Three classes of cores have been used for constant voltage transformers: separate series cores; leakage-shunt cores; and Wroblewski cores. The separate series reactor and main core is not economical nor suitable for special windings. The leakage-shunt core is suitable for high-volume production, but dissipates heat inadequately in the large sizes. The Wroblewski core provides full design freedom for large constant voltage transformers.