Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interplay of Matrix Stiffness and c-SRC in Hepatic Fibrosis

Introduction: In liver fibrosis activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSC) comprises phenotypical change into profibrotic and myofibroplastic cells with increased contraction and secretion of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. The small GTPase RhoA orchestrates cytoskeleton formation, migration, and mobility via non-receptor tyrosine-protein kinase c-SRC (cellular sarcoma) in different cells. Furthermore, RhoA and its downstream effector Rho-kinase also play a crucial role in hepatic stellate cells and hepatic fibrogenesis. Matrix stiffness promotes HSC activation via cytoskeleton modulation. This study investigated the interaction of c-SRC and RhoA under different matrix stiffness conditions. Methods: Liver fibrosis was induced in rats using bile duct ligation (BDL), thioacetamide (TAA) or carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) models. mRNA levels of albumin, PDGF-R, RHOA, COL1A1, and αSMA were analyzed via qRT-PCR. Western Blots using phospho-specific antibodies against p-c-SRC418 and p-c-SRC530 analyzed the levels of activating and inactivating c-SRC, respectively. LX2 cells and hepatocytes were cultured on acrylamide gels of 1 and 12 kPa or on plastic to mimic non-fibrotic, fibrotic, or cirrhotic environments then exposed to SRC-inhibitor PP2. Overexpression of RhoA was performed by transfection using RhoA-plasmids. Additionally, samples from cirrhotic patients and controls were collected at liver transplantations and tumor resections were analyzed for RhoA and c-SRC protein expression by Western Blot. Results: Transcription of albumin and RhoA was decreased, whereas transcription and activation of c-SRC was increased in hepatocytes cultured on 12 kPa compared to 1 kPa gels. LX2 cells cultured on 12 kPa gels showed upregulation of RHOA, COL1A1, and αSMA mRNA levels. Inhibition of c-SRC by PP2 in LX2 cells led to an increase in COL1A1 and αSMA most prominently in 12 kPa gels. In LX2 cells with RhoA overexpression, c-SRC inhibition by PP2 failed to improve fibrosis. RhoA expression was significantly elevated in human and experimental liver fibrosis, while c-SRC was inactivated. Conclusions: This study shows that c-SRC is inactive in activated myofibroblast-like HSC in liver cirrhosis. Inactivation of c-SRC is mediated by a crosstalk with RhoA upon hepatic stellate cell activation and fibrosis progression.
Hard X-Ray Radiation in the Coma Cluster Spectrum

Hard X-ray radiation has been detected for the first time in the Coma Cluster by BeppoSAX. Thanks to the unprecedented sensitivity of the Phoswich Detection System (PDS) instrument, the source has been detected up to ~80 keV. There is clear evidence (4.5 σ) for nonthermal emission in excess of thermal emission above ~25 keV. The hard excess is very unlikely to be the result of X Comae, the Seyfert 1 galaxy that is present in the field of view of the PDS. A hard spectral tail that is due to inverse Compton scattering on cosmic microwave background photons is predicted in clusters, like Coma, with radio halos. Combining the present results with radio observations, a volume-averaged intracluster magnetic field of ~0.15 μG is derived, while the electron energy density of the emitting electrons is ~7×10−14 ergs cm-3.
Clinicopathological Phenotype of Autosomal Recessive Cholesterol Deficiency in Holstein Cattle

Background Cholesterol deficiency (CD), a newly identified autosomal recessive genetic defect in Holstein cattle, is associated with clinical signs of diarrhea, failure to thrive, and hypocholesterolemia. Hypothesis/Objectives The objective is to describe the clinicopathological phenotype of affected Holstein cattle homozygous for the causative apolipoprotein B gene (APOB) mutation. Animals Six Holstein cattle, 5 calves with a clinical history of chronic diarrhea, and 1 heifer with erosions in the buccal cavity and neurologic symptoms were admitted to the Clinic for Ruminants. Methods This case review included a full clinical examination, a complete blood count, blood chemistry, and measurements of cholesterol and triglycerides. The animals were euthanized and necropsied. A PCR‐based direct gene test was applied to determine the APOB genotype. Results All 6 animals were inbred, could be traced back to the sire Maughlin Storm, and were confirmed homozygous for the APOB mutation. The clinical phenotype included poor development, underweight, and intermittent diarrhea in the calves, and neurologic signs in the heifer included hypermetria and pacing. Hypocholesterolemia and low triglycerides concentrations were present in all animals. The pathological phenotype of all animals was steatorrhea with enterocytes of the small intestine containing intracytoplasmic lipid vacuoles. The peripheral nervous system of the heifer displayed degenerative changes. Conclusions and clinical importance Suspicion of CD in Holstein cattle is based on the presence of chronic diarrhea with no evidence of primary infections. Confirmation of the associated APOB gene mutation is needed. Additionally, the heifer demonstrated primarily signs of neurologic disease providing an unexpected phenotype of CD.
Detection of Copy-Move Forgery in Digital Images Using SIFT Algorithm

As result of powerful image processing tools, digital image forgeries have already become a serious social problem. In this paper we describe an effective method to detect copy-move forgery in digital images. This method works by first extracting SIFT descriptors of an image, which are invariant to changes in illumination, rotation, scaling etc. Owing to the similarity between pasted region and copied region, descriptors are then matched between each other to seek for any possible forgery in images. Experiments have been performed to demonstrate the efficiency of this method on different forgeries and quantify its robustness and sensitivity to post image processing, such as additive noise and lossy JPEG compression etc, or even compound processing.
What is the degree of innovation routinely implemented in Dutch radiotherapy centres? A multicentre cross-sectional study

Objective: To study the implementation of innovation activities in Dutch radiotherapy (RT) centres in a broad sense (product, technological, market and organizational innovations). Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in 15 Dutch RT centres. A list of innovations implemented from 2011 to 2013 was drawn up for each centre using semi-structured interviews. These innovations were classified into innovation categories according to previously defined innovation indicators. Where applicable, each innovation was rated by each centre on the effort required to implement it and on its expected effects, to get an impression of how far reaching and radical the innovations were and to be able to compare the number of innovations between centres. Results: The participating RT centres in the Netherlands implemented 12 innovations per year on average (range 5–25); this number was not significantly different for academic (n = 13) or non-academic centres (n = 10). Several centres were dealing with the same innovations at the same time. The average required effort and expected output did not differ significantly between product, technological and organizational innovation or between academic and non-academic centres. Conclusion: The number of innovations observed per centre varied across a large range, with a large overlap in terms of the type of innovations that were implemented. Registering innovations using the innovation indicators applied in our study would make it possible to improve collaboration between centres, e.g. with common training modules, to avoid duplication of work. Advances in knowledge: This study is the first of its kind investigating innovation implementation in RT in a broad sense.
Multimedia Information Management in an Object-Oriented Database System

This paper describes the implementation of the Multimedia Information Manager (MIM) in the ORION object-oriented da- tabase system which is operational at MCC. We describe design objectives and implementation techniques that have satisfied the design objectives. Our design objectives in- clude extensibility, flexibility and efficiency in supporting the capture, storage, and presentation of many types of multi- media information. We have achieved extensibility by providing an object-ori- ented framework for multimedia information management. The framework consists of definitions of class hierarchies and a message passing protocol for not only the multimedia capture, storage, and presentation devices, but also the captured and stored multimedia objects. Both the class hier- archies and the protocol may be easily extended and/or modified by system developers and end users as they see fit. We have satisfied flexibility by supporting a variety of ways in which the end users may control the capture and presentation of multimedia information. Our implementation has achieved storage efficiency by using a technique for sharing storage blocks among multiple versions of a multi- media object, while achieving data transfer performance by directly interfacing the MIM to certain low level components of the ORION storage subsystem.
A Timestamp based Detection of fast retransmission loss for improving the performance of TCP NewReno over wireless networks

NewReno is the most widely deployed TCP protocol in today's internet. When NewReno operates in wireless networks, the performance of NewReno degrades significantly. Frequent retransmission timeout is one of the well-know problems of the performance degradation of TCP NewReno over wireless networks. In wireless networks, a retransmission timeout is unavoidable, when the fast retransmission of a lost packet fails to reach the destination particularly due to the changing level of congestion and bit error rate in wireless channel. There have been many schemes developed for reducing the retransmission timeouts. However, these schemes have no mechanism to detect the loss of fast retransmitted packets. In this paper, we introduce an efficient mechanism based on TCP NewReno, called T-DLRP (Timestamp based- Detection of the Loss of fast Retransmitted Packets) which is able to detect fast retransmission loss and react accordingly without waiting for retransmission timeouts even multiple loss of packets in a single window of data and the loss of its fast retransmission. T-DLRP consists of three schemes, called FRL (Fast Retransmission Loss)-Detection, FRL-Differentiation and Immediate fast recovery. Through extensive simulations using qualnet 4.5, we evaluate the performance of TDRLP and demonstrate that our mechanism achieves 40–90% performance improvement than key existing TCP schemes over wireless networks especially when the network co-existed with packet loss and retransmission losses.
A critical investigation on the discrepancy between the observational and the theoretical red giant luminosity function ‘bump’

New theoretical evaluations of the RGB luminosity function 'bump' and the ZAHB luminosity covering the range of metallicities typical of galactic globular cluster are presented. The variation of the theoretical RGB bump and ZAHB levels due to the metallicity, original helium content, mixing length value, age, mass loss, bolometric corrections, opacities and equation of state adopted in the evolutionary models is also discussed. These new prescriptions have been taken into account for casting light on a longstanding astrophysical problem connected with the Red Giant Branch evolutionary phase, namely the discrepancy between the observational and the theoretical luminosity of RGB bump. A sample of globular clusters with accurate evaluations of the bump luminosity and spectroscopical metallicity determinations has been selected. The Zero Age Horizontal Branch luminosity at the RR-Lyrae instability strip has been evaluated as accurately as possible, and the observational luminosity difference between the RGB bump and the ZAHB has been compared with the theoretical values. It is shown that there is no significant disagreement between observations and canonical stellar models. The possible applications of this result are also briefly discussed.
Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling Regulates the Proliferation and Differentiation of Mesenchymal Progenitor Cells through the p53 Pathway

Objective Mesenchymal progenitor cells (MPCs) are found in articular cartilage from normal controls and patients with osteoarthritis (OA). Nevertheless, the molecular mechanisms of the proliferation and differentiation of these cells remain unclear. In this study, we aimed to determine the involvement of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in regulating the proliferation and differentiation of MPCs. Methods MPCs were isolated from the articular cartilage of normal and OA patients. Cells were sorted by immunomagnetic cell separation. Cell proliferation capacity was evaluated using the MTT assay. Toluidine blue staining and immunostaining with anti-collagen II or anti-aggrecan antibodies were used to determine the chondrogenic differentiation capabilities of MPCs. The mRNA and protein expression of target genes were examined by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting, respectively. Knock-down of p53 expression was achieved with RNA interference. Results Most cells isolated from the normal and OA patients were CD105+ and CD166+ positive (Normal subjects: CD105+/CD166+, 94.6%±1.1%; OA: CD105+/CD166+, 93.5%±1.1%). MPCs derived from OA subjects exhibited decreased differentiation capabilities and enhanced Wnt/β-catenin activity. Inhibition of Wnt/β-catenin signaling promoted proliferation and differentiation, whereas activation of this pathway by treatment with rWnt3a protein decreased the proliferation and differentiation of normal MPCs. Additionally, Wnt/β-catenin signaling positively regulated p53 expression, and silencing of p53 increased proliferation and differentiation of MPCs. Conclusions Wnt/β-catenin regulated the proliferation and differentiation of MPCs through the p53 pathway.
Collision aware coloring algorithm for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have received significant attention over the last few years as they afford a growing number of applications in various fields. At the same time, these networks provide numerous challenges due to their constraints, primarily related to energy scarcity. To overcome energy waste caused by collisions and contention based algorithm, the channel assignment mechanisms, like TDMA1, seem to be an effective way for scheduling node transmissions. To solve channel assignment problems, graph coloring theory has been exploited in many research works, primarily in order to assure collision-free communications. In this paper, we present a novel distributed coloring algorithm for WSNs taking into account the constraints of a real WSN environment. Our collision aware coloring algorithm assures a 2 hop nodes coloring, in a deterministic time execution, without requiring a neighborhood discovering phase. Performance evaluation results have shown the effectivness of our algorithm in terms of exchanged control packets per node as well as the chromatic number.
FORMI: an RMI extension for adaptive applications

RMI is a well-known middleware that smoothly integrates into Java. RMI uses classical RPC-based client-server interaction, precisely remote method calls. Although RMI has several extension points (i.e., for replacing transport protocols and call semantics), this is not enough for many applications as it can not cope with non-RPC-based communication, fault tolerance, scalability, and quality-of-service in general. We present FORMI, an RMI extension for supporting the very flexible fragmented-object model. This model allows to build distributed objects with arbitrary internal communication protocols and interaction patterns (e.g., internal peer-to-peer communication) and with a truly distributed internal structure (e.g., replicated servers, smart proxies, hierarchical servers). Both, internal communication and structure, remains hidden behind the RMI-object interface and is thus transparent to clients. We demonstrate our approach by an Internet radio example.
A Uniied Statistical Approach for Determining Signiicant Signals in Location and Scale Space Images of Cerebral Activation Worsley Et Al. Uniied Statistics for Location and Scale Space 2

We present a uniied P-value for assessing the signiicance of peaks in statistical elds searched over regions of any shape or size. We extend this to 4-D scale space searches over smoothing lter width as well as location. The results are usable in a wide range of applications, including PET and fMRI, but are discussed with particular reference to PET images which represent changes in cerebral blood ow (CBF) elicited by a speciic cognitive or sensorimotor task.
Gorilla and Orangutan Brains Conform to the Primate Cellular Scaling Rules: Implications for Human Evolution

Gorillas and orangutans are primates at least as large as humans, but their brains amount to about one third of the size of the human brain. This discrepancy has been used as evidence that the human brain is about 3 times larger than it should be for a primate species of its body size. In contrast to the view that the human brain is special in its size, we have suggested that it is the great apes that might have evolved bodies that are unusually large, on the basis of our recent finding that the cellular composition of the human brain matches that expected for a primate brain of its size, making the human brain a linearly scaled-up primate brain in its number of cells. To investigate whether the brain of great apes also conforms to the primate cellular scaling rules identified previously, we determine the numbers of neuronal and other cells that compose the orangutan and gorilla cerebella, use these numbers to calculate the size of the brain and of the cerebral cortex expected for these species, and show that these match the sizes described in the literature. Our results suggest that the brains of great apes also scale linearly in their numbers of neurons like other primate brains, including humans. The conformity of great apes and humans to the linear cellular scaling rules that apply to other primates that diverged earlier in primate evolution indicates that prehistoric Homo species as well as other hominins must have had brains that conformed to the same scaling rules, irrespective of their body size. We then used those scaling rules and published estimated brain volumes for various hominin species to predict the numbers of neurons that composed their brains. We predict that Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis had brains with approximately 80 billion neurons, within the range of variation found in modern Homo sapiens. We propose that while the cellular scaling rules that apply to the primate brain have remained stable in hominin evolution (since they apply to simians, great apes and modern humans alike), the Colobinae and Pongidae lineages favored marked increases in body size rather than brain size from the common ancestor with the Homo lineage, while the Homo lineage seems to have favored a large brain instead of a large body, possibly due to the metabolic limitations to having both.
Hemoglobin Level to Facilitate Off-Pump Coronary Artery Bypass without Transfusion

Background Conservation of blood during cardiac surgery is important because of the shortage of donor blood, risks associated with transfusion, and the costs of allogeneic blood products. This retrospective study explored the feasibility of off-pump coronary artery bypass (OPCAB) without transfusion. Methods One hundred and two consecutive patients underwent OPCAB from January 2007 to June 2012 at Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital. Excluding 10 chronic renal failures patients, 102 patients were enrolled. Their characteristics, clinical data, and laboratory data were analyzed. We investigated the success rate of OPCAB without transfusion according to pre-operative hemoglobin (Hb), and the cutoff point of the Hb level and the risk factors for transfusion. We implemented multidisciplinary blood-saving protocols. Results The overall operative mortality and the success rate of OPCAB without transfusion were 2.9% (3/102) and 73.5% (75/102). The success rates in patients with Hb<11, 11 70 years, diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction, preoperative Hb and creatinine levels, and operation time. The events precipitating the need for transfusion were low Hb level in 9 patients and hypotension or excessive bleeding in 18 patients. Conclusion The preoperative Hb level of >11 facilitates OPCAB without transfusion. These results suggest that transfusion-free OPCAB can be performed by modifying the risk factors and correctable causes of transfusion and improving various blood salvage methods.
Fluorescent dot counting in interphase cell nuclei

Fluorescence in situ hybridization allows the enumeration of chromosomal abnormalities in interphase cell nuclei. This process is called dot counting. To estimate the distribution of chromosomes per cell, a large number of cells have to be analysed, particularly when the frequency of aberrant cells is low. Automation of dot counting is desirable because manual counting is tedious, fatiguing, and time consuming. We have developed a completely automated fluorescence microscope system that counts fluorescent hybridization dots for one probe in interphase cell nuclei. This system works with two fluorescent dyes—one for the DNA hybridization dots and one for the cell nucleus. A fully automated scanning procedure has been used for the image acquisition. After an image is acquired it has to be analysed in order to find the nuclei and to detect the dots. This article focuses upon the dot detection procedure. Three different algorithms are presented. The problems of 'overlapping' dots and split dots are discussed. The automated dot counter has been tested on a number of normal specimens where DAPI was used for the nucleus counter stain and a centromeric probe was used to mark the chromosome 12. The slides contained lymphocytes from cultured blood. The performance of the different algorithms has been evaluated and compared with manually obtained results. The automated counting results approximate the results of manual counting.
Finite Field Multiplication Using Reordered Normal Basis Multiplier

We present in this paper affine linear and nonlinear techniques for design space exploration of the finite-field multiplication using reordered normal basis. Fifteen basic designs are possible using these linear techniques that are in close agreement with the results previously published using ad-hoc techniques. However, the major contribution of this paper is the introduction of nonlinear techniques to allow the designer to control the workload per processor and also control the communication requirements between processors. We present also models for the performance of processor arrays implementing the finite field multiplier. Performance includes system area, delay and power consumption. The main parameters affecting performance include the number of bits processed in parallel per processor and the hardware details such as how much each performance parameters depend on the number of bits being processed in parallel.
A new self-piercing riveting process and strength evaluation

Self-piercing riveting (SPR) has become an important alternative joining technique for the automotive applications of aluminum sheets. Most existing SPR machines use electrical motors to drive a rivet into the sheets. A significant amount of research has been conducted to improve an SPR joint's strength by increasing the mechanical interlock. In this paper, a new process is presented using gunpowder to drive the riveting process. A joint formed using the new process has different geometric characteristics from one created using a conventional system. The tensile-shear; cross-tension, fatigue, and impact performances of self-piercing riveted joints using the new device are compared to those of spot-welded joints on aluminum sheets. The experiment has proven that the new SPR joints have provided a similar or higher strength than resistance spot welds.