Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of telomere length in peripheral leukocytes with chronic hepatitis B and hepatocellular carcinoma

Background & Objectives:Telomere plays a critical role in the maintenance of genomic stability in eukaryotic chromosomes. More and more findings have shown that alteration in telomere length may involve in normal somatic cells and some diseases, however, whether the telomere length is associated with the development and/or progression of hepatic diseases remains poorly understood. Methods:A case–control study was employed to illustrate the correlation of relative telomere length (RTL) with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In this study, 152 patients with HCC, 212 patients with CHB, and 184 healthy controls were recruited. Genomic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was extracted from the peripheral blood leukocytes, and fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (FQ-PCR) was used to detect telomere repeated numbers and 36B4 copy numbers. The RTL was calculated by telomere repeat copy number to single-copy gene number ratio in each sample compared with a reference DNA sample. Results:We found that the RTL in HCC group was the longest, followed by CHB group, and healthy control group was the shortest, showing significant statistical differences. When participants were categorized into longer and shorter group according to medium value in healthy controls, individuals who had longer RTL had a significant increased risk of CHB (odds ratio [OR]: 1.83, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.22–2.73) when the healthy control was used as the reference groups; furthermore, longer RTL also showed higher incidence of HCC (OR: 3.22, 95% CI: 2.01–5.17; OR: 1.58, 95% CI:1.03–2.41) when healthy control and CHB were used as the reference groups, respectively. When participants were categorized further into 4 groups according to quartile values of RTL in healthy controls, it showed that the longest RTL was also associated with an increased risk of CHB (OR: 2.09, 95% CI: 1.17–3.74) and HCC (OR: 4.31, 95% CI: 2.18–8.52; OR: 2.86, 95% CI: 1.53–5.34) when control and control/CHB group were used as the reference groups, respectively. Conclusion:Our results suggest that the alteration of telomere length in peripheral leukocytes might be involved in the hepatitis B virus infection and HCC events, and RTL might be a potential useful predictor of CHB and HCC.
Measuring the effects of toys on the problem-solving, creative and social behaviours of preschool children

Although previous research has explored the effects of various environmental influences on young children's play, the influence of toys has rarely been examined. This paucity of toy studies is due to a lack of a scientifically constructed observation system to evaluate the impact of play materials across developmental domains. The purpose of this study was to develop and test the reliability and validity of such an instrument. An eight-item, five-point rating system was constructed, based on previous toy research. To establish inter-rater reliability, two researchers independently used the instrument to rate the effects of 23 toys on the spontaneous play of 16 preschool children. There was a high level of agreement between observers (r = .81–.88, across items). A factor analysis was conducted to identify clusters of items that measure like dimensions of play effects; three distinct factors were identified: thinking/learning, creativity/imagination and social interaction. To establish validity, the instrument was used to rate five common toys that could be predicted, based on earlier work, to have distinct influences on play. The instrument was found to discriminate among these toys in ways that are consistent with previous research and that make theoretical sense. The uses of this instrument in both future research and classroom practice are discussed.
Use of adaptive fuzzy systems in parameter tuning of sliding-mode controllers

The paper proposes to combine adaptive fuzzy systems with sliding-mode control (SMC) to solve the chattering problem of SMC for robotic applications. In the design of the controller, special attention is paid to chattering elimination without a degradation of the tracking performance. Furthermore, the a priori knowledge required of the system dynamics for design is kept to a minimum. The paper first considers the basic principles of sliding-mode and fuzzy controllers. Implementation difficulties and most popular solutions are then overviewed. Next, the design of a SMC reported in the literature is outlined and guidelines for the selection of controller parameters for the best tracking performance without chattering are presented. A novel approach based on the introduction of a "chattering variable" is developed. This variable, as a measure of chattering, is used as an input to an adaptive fuzzy system responsible for the minimization. Online tuning of parameters by fuzzy rules is carried out for the SMC. The experimental results obtained are given, and conclusions are presented.
Further improvements on impedance-based fault location for power distribution systems

In this study, further improvements regarding the fault location problem for power distribution systems are presented. The proposed improvements relate to the capacitive effect consideration on impedance-based fault location methods, by considering an exact line segment model for the distribution line. The proposed developments, which consist of a new formulation for the fault location problem and a new algorithm that considers the line shunt admittance matrix, are presented. The proposed equations are developed for any fault type and result in one single equation for all ground fault types, and another equation for line-to-line faults. Results obtained with the proposed improvements are presented. Also, in order to compare the improvements performance and demonstrate how the line shunt admittance affects the state-of-the-art impedance-based fault location methodologies for distribution systems, the results obtained with two other existing methods are presented. Comparative results show that, in overhead distribution systems with laterals and intermediate loads, the line shunt admittance can significantly affect the state-of-the-art methodologies response, whereas in this case the proposed developments present great improvements by considering this effect.
Analysis and Reduction of Unipolar Leakage Flux in Series Hybrid Permanent-Magnet Variable Flux Memory Machines

A series hybrid variable flux memory (VFM) machine employing two kinds of permanent magnets (PMs) on alternate rotor poles is investigated. This VFM machine features controllable PM flux and thus good flux-weakening capability, as well as improved torque density. However, it is found that the unipolar end leakage flux occurs if the two kinds of PMs are not balanced. According to the analyses of series connection between two PMs based on the fundamental magnetic circuit, the mechanism of the unbalanced rotor poles and the unipolar end leakage flux is revealed. Further, the rule of obtaining balanced poles is identified and the effects of operating conditions are presented. A series hybrid VFM machine prototype is fabricated and tested.
Changes in plasma fibrinogen, homocysteine and lipid profile in coronary artery disease patients of north Indian (Punjab) popu-lation

Conventional risk factors such as age, smoking, hyperlipidemia and hypertension do not ex-plain all the mortality and morbidity due to coronary artery disease. Novel factors like plasma fibrinogen, homocysteine, C - reactive protein have been recently recognized as in-dependent risk factors for coronary artery disease. The objective of the present study was to examine the change in plasma fibrinogen, homocysteine along with lipid profile in the pathogenesis of angiographically established coronary artery disease. 75 male patients in the age range of 30-60 years with angiographically established coronary artery disease and equal number of age and sex matched normal healthy subjects were re-cruited in the present study. Coronary artery disease patients had significant high plasma fibrinogen, homocysteine, total cholesterol, triglyceride and LDL-cholesterol levels whereas the level of HDL-cholesterol significantly decreased in them as compared to normal healthy subjects (control). Elevated levels of plasma fibrinogen, homocysteine contribute signifi-cantly to the risk of coronary artery disease and might be considered in screening program to identify individuals at increased thrombotic risk.
The Role of Services in Urban and Regional Development: Recent Debates and New Directions

The growing prominence of service activities in the advanced economies poses a substantial challenge for studies of urban and regional development. This paper is a review of different approaches to the analysis of service growth. Studies directed specifically at the development of producer or information services have contributed a valuable sense of the way in which services are leading economic change. They are, however, constrained by the predominantly sectoral nature of their approach, which plays down the diverse character of services and the intimate links between services and other sectors. The conceptualisation of structural change is also too narrow, viewed almost solely through the lens of changes in the service sector. In contrast, a number of Marxist-inspired analyses provide a broader interpretation of the character of structural change, emphasising the role of services in changing phases of capitalist development. They also provide a more sophisticated analysis of the diverse character of services and the types of development they provide. However, they have generally so far been constrained by the limited and derivative role given to services in the dynamics of the economy. The authors argue for a ‘service-informed’ view of structural change which contains a broad analysis of the dynamics of the advanced economies and a sense of the significance of individual service activities in change.
Nurse’s A-Phase Material Enhance Adhesion, Growth and Differentiation of Human Bone Marrow-Derived Stromal Mesenchymal Stem Cells

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the bioactivity and cell response of a well-characterized Nurse’s A-phase (7CaO·P2O5·2SiO2) ceramic and its effect compared to a control (tissue culture polystyrene-TCPS) on the adhesion, viability, proliferation, and osteogenic differentiation of ahMSCs in vitro. Cell proliferation (Alamar Blue Assay), Alizarin Red-S (AR-s) staining, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, osteocalcin (OCN), and collagen I (Col I) were evaluated. Also, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) images were acquired in order to visualise the cells and the topography of the material. The proliferation of cells growing in a direct contact with the material was slower at early stages of the study because of the new environmental conditions. However, the entire surface was colonized after 28 days of culture in growth medium (GM). Osteoblastic differentiation markers were significantly enhanced in cells growing on Nurse’s A phase ceramic and cultured with osteogenic medium (OM), probably due to the role of silica to stimulate the differentiation of ahMSCs. Moreover, calcium nodules were formed under the influence of ceramic material. Therefore, it is predicted that Nurse’s A-phase ceramic would present high biocompatibility and osteoinductive properties and would be a good candidate to be used as a biomaterial for bone tissue engineering.
Empathic chimpanzees: A proposal of the levels of emotional and cognitive processing in chimpanzee empathy

Chimpanzees are arguably capable of empathizing with others' emotional states. Understanding emotional states is closely associated with understanding non-emotional mental states, thus, with Theory of Mind. Chimpanzees are probably able to represent some, but not all of the mental states grasped by adult humans. However, whether and how they understand another's emotional states is unknown, since the level of cognitive and emotional processing in chimpanzee empathy has not been addressed in detail. We propose a model for chimpanzee empathy, using the development of empathy in humans as a comparative viewpoint. Human empathy develops gradually with increasing cognitive complexity. In the first developmental stages the following levels can be distinguished: emotional contagion in neonates, transition from egocentric to veridical empathy during the second year of life, and finally cognitive empathy at 3 to 4 years of age. The current evidence suggests that chimpanzees are capable of emotional contagion, may be capable of veridical empathy, but probably do not achieve cognitive empathy. Thus, we propose that chimpanzee empathy operates on a continuum from egocentric, to quasi-egocentric, to veridical empathy. We evaluate evidence for this hypothesis and discuss possible ways to test it.
Characteristics of routine, development and idea networks in teams

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose that there is not one ideal network structure of knowledge flow, but many, and that the network structures of knowledge flows between employees in teams are task‐related.Design/methodology/approach – Ideal knowledge network structures in teams are examined on the basis of the literature. A case study of a well‐established team, presented with social network analysis methods, reveals the different structures of knowledge flow.Findings – According to the case study, it is shown that the network structures of knowledge flow are different in different tasks. It is suggested on the basis of theory that the ideal knowledge network structures are hierarchical for routine tasks, core‐peripheral for development tasks and ego‐centric for idea generation tasks.Research limitations/implications – The research design presented in this paper should be applied to more cases to ascertain its validity.Practical implications – This paper provides means for understanding, as.
On Kings, Pietism and Rent-seeking in Scandinavian Welfare States

This paper argues that the origins of the Scandinavian welfare states are most usefully seen in the small-state absolutism and Lutheran Pietism characterizing 18th-century Denmark/Norway. Towards the end of the 18th century, the Danish monarch or, more correctly, his agents, created a quite generous set of welfare benefits in the 1799 Poor Law for the City of Copenhagen. In return for non-punitive and generous support, the state assumed that recipients would be obedient and grateful servants of the state and its institutions. This system was replaced with more punitive and petty systems as liberalism gained importance in the following century, but basic elements of the Pietist model for the relationship between state and citizen were maintained and recreated in the development of the generous welfare state of the late 20th century.
Identity and morality in the Italian red brigades

The article provides a brief background to the activities of the Italian Red Brigades, then examines the group's development in terms of three phases ‐ social, existential and survivalist. A perceived social and political identity in the early 1970s gave the organization an illusory security and the self‐confidence to step up the attack on the state. As the level of violence increased the BR became separated from their social base and created an auto‐identity based on self‐delusion and political alienation. Armed struggle was simplified to existential abstractions of myth and symbol. By the early 1980s the effects of legal and police repression, popular rejection and internal conflict reduced the remaining militants to a strategy of simple survival. The irreversible degeneration of the group's morality accompanied the process of social estrangement.
On performance of meta-learning templates on different datasets

Meta-learning templates are data-tailored algorithms that produce supervised models. When a template is evolved on a particular dataset, it is supposed to generate good models not only on this data set but also on similar data. In this paper, we will investigate one possible way of measuring the similarity of datasets and whether it can be used to estimate if meta-learning templates produce good models. We performed experiments on several well known data sets from the UCI machine learning repository and analyzed both the similarity of datasets and templates in the space of performance meta-features (landmarking). Our results show that the most universal algorithms (in terms of average performance) for supervised learning are the complex hierarchical templates evolved by our SpecGen approach.
Activation of transcription factor IL‐6 (NF‐IL‐6) and nuclear factor‐κB (NF‐κB) by lipid ozonation products is crucial to interleukin‐8 gene expression in human airway epithelial cells

Ozone (O3) is a major component of smog and an inhaled toxicant to the lung. O3 rapidly reacts with the airway epithelial cell membrane phospholipids to generate lipid ozonation products (LOP). 1‐Hydroxy‐1‐hydroperoxynonane (HHP‐C9) is an important LOP, produced from the ozonation of 1‐palmitoyl‐2‐oleoyl‐sn‐glycerol‐3‐phosphatidylcholine. This LOP, at a biologically relevant concentration (100 μM), increases the activity of phospholipase C, nuclear factors‐κB (NF‐κB), and interleukin‐6 (NF‐IL‐6) and the expression of the inflammatory gene, interleukin‐8 (IL‐8) in a cultured human bronchial epithelial cell line (BEAS‐2B). The signaling pathways of ozone and its biologically‐active products are as yet undefined. In the present study, we report that the HHP LOP, HHP‐C9 (100 μM × 4 h), activated the expression of IL‐8 (218 ± 26% increase over control, n = 4, P < 0.01) through an apparent interaction between the two transcription factors, NF‐κB and NF‐IL‐6. Transfection studies using luciferase reporter assays demonstrated that HHP‐C9 induced a significant increase in NF‐κB‐DNA binding activity (37 ± 7% increase over control, n = 6, P < 0.05). Inhibition of NF‐κB showed a statistically significant but modest decrease in IL‐8 release, which suggested a role for another transcription factor, NF‐IL‐6. Exposure of BEAS‐2B cells to HHP‐C9 induced a significant increase in the DNA binding activity of NF‐IL‐6 (45 ± 11% increase over control, n = 6, P < 0.05). The results of the present study indicate that NF‐IL‐6 interacts with NF‐κB in regulating the expression of IL‐8 in cultured human airway epithelial cells exposed to LOP, the biological products of ozone in the lung. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 22: 159–168, 2007.
A High-Voltage-Enabled Class-D Polar PA Using Interactive AM-AM Modulation, Dynamic Matching, and Power-Gating for Average PAE Enhancement

This paper describes a 2.4-GHz digitally-modulated class-D polar power amplifier (PA) with novel circuit techniques to enhance the average power-added efficiency (PAEave) that becomes increasingly crucial to prolong the battery lifetime. The PA features 5+5-b interactive AM-AM modulation between the class-D unit amplifiers and a novel high resolution dynamic matching network (DMN) to improve the back-off PAE. A novel power-gating technique tailored for class-D PAs is also proposed and embedded into each unit amplifier and its driver (tapped inverter chain), alleviating leakage-current suppression, area reduction of the DMN, and direct-powering by a standard 1.5-V AA battery. An high back-off power efficiency is made possible by introducing a multi-bit capacitively-tuned DMN, which adds low loss while improving the PAE of the unit amplifiers using the load-pull optimization. The DMN also can correct the antenna impedance mismatch for better average Pout (Pout,ave) and PAEave under a practical VSWR (2.5:1), and aids to reconfigure the PA between the Pout-optimized and the PAE-optimized modes. For a 20-MHz 64-QAM OFDM output at a typical EVM (< −25 dB), the 65-nm CMOS PA exhibits 40.7% PAEave at a 16.3-dBm Pout. The mode switching is demonstrated as a prospective function for battery lifetime extension.
Spatial demultiplexing in the submillimeter wave band using multilayer free-standing frequency selective surfaces

In this paper, we show that a multilayer freestanding slot array can be designed to give an insertion loss which is significantly lower than the value obtainable from a conventional dielectric backed printed frequency selective surface (FSS). This increase in filter efficiency is highlighted by comparing the performance of two structures designed to provide frequency selective beamsplitting in the quasioptical feed train of a submillimeter wave space borne radiometer. A two layer substrateless FSS providing more than 20 dB of isolation between the bands 316.5-325.5 GHz and 349.5-358.5 GHz, gives an insertion loss of 0.6 dB when the filter is orientated at 45/spl deg/ incidence in the TM plane, whereas the loss exhibited by a conventional printed FSS is in excess of 2 dB. A similar frequency response can be obtained in the TE plane, but here a triple screen structure is required and the conductor loss is shown to be comparable to the absorption loss of a dielectric backed FSS. Experimental devices have been fabricated using a precision micromachining technique. Transmission measurements performed in the range 250-360 GHz are in good agreement with the simulated spectral performance of the individual periodic screens and the two multilayer freestanding FSS structures.
Characteristic Profiles of Instrumental Activities of Daily Living in Chinese Older Persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment

Increasing evidence suggests that performance of the instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) can be impaired at the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) stage. Our study aimed at investigating the profiles of functional impairment in Chinese subjects with MCI. Subjects with MCI were categorized into single-domain amnestic MCI (a-MCI) (n = 54) and multiple-domain amnestic MCI (md-MCI) (n = 93) groups. Their functional scores of Disability Assessment of Dementia (DAD) were compared with those of cognitively normal elderly controls (NC) (n = 78) and those with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 85). Subjects with md-MCI had intermediate performance in IADL between the NC and those with mild AD. Subjects with a-MCI had functional scores similar to those of normal controls. Age, education, and global cognitive test scores were not associated with functional scores in MCI subjects. Our results demonstrated that Chinese older persons with md-MCI had impairment in IADL, as compared to NC and subjects with a-MCI. This finding suggests that assessment of IADL should be incorporated in the clinical evaluation of MCI.
Optimal Backbone Generation for Robotic Relay Networks

There has been a growing interest in robotic relay networks for applications in dangerous and hazardous environments. In particular, a team of robots with onboard radios deployed in an unknown environment would coordinate to form an ad-hoc relay network that maximizes the connectivity to transmit data from a set of unknown data sources to a gateway. In this paper, we present a problem and solutions to minimize the number of stationary relay nodes given a set of unknown but stationary sources. The goal is to maximize the number of free robots to search for more unknown sources to extend the connectivity of the network, while keeping the communications to the existing connected sources. We present two types of algorithms: OLQ (Optimal Link Quality) and AST (Approximate Steiner Tree), and analyze their performance in various routing metrics. The algorithms have been developed in a real robotic platform and demonstrated in multi-floor indoor environments.