Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Possible Role of Heat Shock Protein 60 in Reducing Ischemic-Reperfusion Injury in Canine Pancreas Grafts After Preservation by the Two-Layer Method

Introduction Recently, results of the clinical application of the two-layer method have shown the morphologic quality of the human pancreas grafts after reperfusion to be excellent, although ischemia-reperfusion injury is related to early graft loss in pancreas transplantation. However, some reports have indicated that heat shock proteins (HSPs) have important functions in response to the stress-related events. Aim To examine whether the two-layer method reduced ischemia-reperfusion injury in a canine pancreas autotransplantation model by investigating the expression of HSPs. Methodology There were three experimental groups in which dogs received segmental autografts after preservation by the two-layer method using University of Wisconsin solution (UW) (group 1), simple storage in UW (group 2) for 24 hours, or no preservation (group 3). Results In group 1, pancreatic tissue perfusions were high, and pancreatic exocrine functions were well preserved after 1, 2, and 4 hours of reperfusion with low incidence of graft pancreatitis or vessel thrombosis compared with that in group 2. Moreover, ATP rapidly recovered, and HSP 60 was strongly enhanced after reperfusion in group 1. On the other hand, ATP recovery and the enhancement of HSP 60 were weak after reperfusion in group 2. Conclusion The two-layer method reduced ischemia-reperfusion injury compared with UW simple storage in canine pancreas autotransplantation with a strong expression of HSP 60.
Optimization of plasmid vectors for high-level expression in lung epithelial cells.

Nonviral gene therapy approaches use a plasmid vector to express the desired transgene. We have systematically examined several regulatory elements within plasmid vectors that govern gene expression, e.g., the promoter, enhancer, intron, and polyadenylation signal, by constructing a series of plasmids that differed only in the particular sequence element being evaluated. Of the several promoters and polyadenylation signal sequences that were tested, the human cytomegalovirus (CMV) immediate early gene promoter and the addition of polyadenylation signal sequences from the bovine growth hormone (BGH) gene or rabbit beta-globin gene produced the highest levels of expression in vitro. The inclusion of a hybrid intron 3 to the promoter further increased expression 1.6-fold. The addition of a region of the CMV enhancer 5' to several weak promoters increased expression 8- to 67-fold, and co-transfection with a second plasmid encoding a chimeric transcription factor also enhanced expression. On the basis of these results, the CMV promoter, the hybrid intron, and the BGH polyadenylation signal were selected for consistent high level expression in vitro and in the mouse lung. However, expression was transient, with greater than 60% loss of activity in the first 7 days. This transient expression was not specific to CMV promoter-containing plasmids, because plasmids containing other heterologous promoters showed a similar profile of transient expression in vivo. These comparative analyses begin to provide a basis for the development of optimized expression plasmids for gene therapy of lung diseases.
Pervasive Developmental Disorders Rating Scale: Development and Construct Validity

The Pervasive Developmental Disorders Rating Scale was designed for use in screening of pervasive developmental disorders. This paper describes the rationale and development of the scale and assesses its construct validity with ratings from a sample of 362 children ranging in age from 1 to 12 years and diagnosed with autistic disorder. The hypothesized heirarchical factor model and two competing models were examined through confirmatory factor analysis. The analysis supported the factor structure of the hypothesized model in this particular sample of children with autistic disorder. Limitations and areas for research are discussed.
The MiMo 2 Research System

The MiMo2 translation system combines several leading ideas in the areas of linguistics, computation and translation. In the area of translation we follow the basic ideas of Landsbergen [26] by assuming that translation is symmetric; and combine these ideas with the advantages of a transfer approach. Computationally the system focuses on computability and declarativity. The linguistics of the system is based on a lexicalistic and sign-based approach to grammar.
Prosodic Phrase Break Prediction: Problems in the Evaluation of Models against a Gold Standard

The goal of automatic phrase break prediction is to identify prosodic-syntactic boundaries in text which correspond to the way a native speaker might process or chunk that same text as speech. This is treated as a classification task in machine learning and output predictions from language models are evaluated against a 'gold standard': human-labelled prosodic phrase break annotations in transcriptions of recorded speech - the speech corpus. Despite the introduction of rigorous metrics such as precision and recall, the evaluation of phrase break models is still problematic because prosody is inherently variable; morphosyntactic analysis and prosodic annotations for a given text are not representative of the range of parsing and phrasing strategies available to, and exhibited by, native speakers. This article recommends creating automatically-generated POS tagged and prosodically annotated variants of a text to enrich the gold standard and enable more robust 'noise- tolerant' evaluation of language models. RESUME. L'objectif de la prediction automatique des frontieres entre syntagmes est d'identifier dans le texte les frontieres prosodiques et syntaxiques qui correspondent a la maniere dont un locuteur natif traiterait ou decouperait ce texte en parlant. Ceci correspond a une tâche de classement en apprentissage automatique et les predictions produites a partir des modeles de langage sont evaluees a l'aide d'un corpus de reference, c'est-a-dire un corpus de parole transcrite annote manuellement par les frontieres prosodiques entre syntagmes. Malgre l'utilisation de mesures rigoureuses comme la precision et le rappel, l'evaluation des modeles de frontieres entre syntagmes reste problematique car la prosodie est intrinsequement variable : l'analyse morphosyntaxique et les annotations prosodiques d'un texte donne ne sont pas representatives de l'ensemble des strategies d'analyse et de decoupage possibles utilisees par les locuteurs natifs. Cet article recommande de generer automatiquement des variantes d'etiquetage morphosyntaxique et d'annotation prosodique d'un texte pour enrichir le corpus de reference et permettre une evaluation des modeles de langage plus robuste et tolerante au bruit.
Toponym disambiguation in online social network profiles

In online social networks individuals are given the option to reveal on their online profiles some personal information about themselves including, among others, their home location that, if specified, is typically referred to with a toponym. A toponym disclosed by an individual on her profile, or self-reported toponym (e.g., "London"), is often ambiguous and may be interpreted as the name of different geographic locations ("London, U.K.", "London, Ontario, Canada", "London, Arkansas, USA"). The determination of the right interpretation of a self-reported toponym is challenging because the profile of an individual usually lacks the contextual information that can be used to disambiguate the toponym. In this paper, we propose LocusRank, an algorithm for the disambiguation (or resolution) of the self-reported toponyms in online social network profiles. More precisely, LocusRank chooses the right interpretation of a self-reported toponym of an individual by using the (possibly ambiguous) self-reported toponyms of her friends. Besides, LocusRank can also be used to infer with good accuracy the home location of profiles that do not even have a self-reported toponym. We evaluated LocusRank with good results on a dataset of profiles obtained from two real social networks, namely Flickr and LiveJournal.
Institutions , Infrastructure , and Trade Joseph Francois

We work with a panel of bilateral trade flows from 1988 to 2002, exploring the influence of infrastructure, institutional quality, colonial and geographic context, and trade preferences on the pattern of bilateral trade. We are interested in threshold effects, and so emphasize those cases where bilateral country pairs do not actually trade. We depart from the institutions and infrastructure literature in this respect, using selection-based gravity modeling of trade flows. We also depart from this literature by mixing principal components (to condense our institutional and infrastructure measures) with a focus on deviations from expected values for given income cohorts to control for multicollinearity. Infrastructure, and institutional quality, are significant determinants not only of export levels, but also of the likelihood exports will take place at all. Our results support the notion that export performance, and the propensity to take part in the trading system at all, depends on institutional quality and access to well developed transport and communications infrastructure. Indeed, this dependence is far more important, empirically, than variations in tariffs in explaining sample variations in North-South trade. This implies that policy emphasis on developing country market access, instead of support for trade facilitation, may be misplaced.
Synchronising Service Compositions in Dynamic Ad Hoc Environments

Service compositions in dynamic ad hoc environments face frequent changes in the network and service topology. Late service binding is a way to adapt to runtime changes but requires additional communication over error-prone and energy-constrained networks. In particular, synchronising parallel service flows relies on steady message exchange when mutually unknown service providers have to agree on a common merge node. Binding the merge node early through a single entity reduces the need for coordination. However, it compromises flexibility and may nonetheless increase communication as the decision entity has only partial view of the system. This paper proposes a multi-party late binding protocol as a solution for flexible, communication-aware service composition in dynamic ad hoc environments. The protocol integrates the discovery of unknown synchronisation partners with the exchange of binding suggestions to reduce communication. We embed this protocol in our model for opportunistic service composition and evaluate it against an early binding approach. Simulation results show that while being overall equally successful, late service binding outperforms early binding with respect to communication overhead and response time.
Seeing the body produces limb-specific modulation of skin temperature

Vision of the body, even when non-informative about stimulation, affects somatosensory processing. We investigated whether seeing the body also modulates autonomic control in the periphery by measuring skin temperature while manipulating vision. Using a mirror box, the skin temperature was measured from left hand dorsum while participants: (i) had the illusion of seeing their left hand, (ii) had the illusion of seeing an object at the same location or (iii) looked directly at their contralateral right hand. Skin temperature of the left hand increased when participants had the illusion of directly seeing that hand but not in the other two view conditions. In experiment 2, participants viewed directly their left or right hand, or the box while we recorded both hand dorsum temperatures. Temperature increased in the viewed hand but not the contralateral hand. These results show that seeing the body produces limb-specific modulation of thermal regulation.
Gender on the Page

This project employs a qualitative methodology to analyze the ways in which authors of letters to the editor consistently “do gender,” per West and Zimmerman's (1987) construct. Extracting 105 news clippings from a larger study related to media coverage of tobacco, the present research relies on an inductively derived coding framework to consider the arguments upon which letter writers draw when constructing tobacco issues in letters to the editor, and the gendered ways that these arguments are written. These letters serve as a methodologically interesting source of data because they succinctly articulate an opinion that is strong enough to compel the author to write a letter to their local newspaper. As such, this analysis advances beyond a simple description of gendered differences in public attitudes, and considers the role that gender performance plays in the public discussion of opinions. This project unearthed three distinct mechanisms through which gender can be said to be performed: through general support for tobacco control efforts; through the arguments that letter writers employ; and through the rhetorical devices that authors use to construct these arguments. Excerpts from the letters are included to support my argument.
Comparing Group and Individual Choices Under Risk and Ambiguity: An Experimental Study

In this paper, we build on the emerging literature on group decision-making to study the so-called ‘group shift’ effect, i.e., groups are less risk-averse than individuals. Our study complements past research in two ways. First, we study the group shift effect under two sources of uncertainty, namely risk where probabilities are known, and ambiguity where probabilities are imprecise. Second, we study the impact of the group decision rule (unanimity and majority) on group shift. Results from a lottery-choice experiment show a general tendency for the group shift effect, regardless of the decision rule. The group shift effect, however, is found to be significant only under risk in the unanimity treatment. Our study hence provides a clear test of the effect of the decision rule on the group shift effect under both risk and ambiguity.
A 3-level prognostic classification in septic shock based on cortisol levels and cortisol response to corticotropin.

CONTEXT The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is a major determinant of the host response to stress. The relationship between its activation and patient outcome is not known. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the prognostic value of cortisol levels and a short corticotropin stimulation test in patients with septic shock. DESIGN AND SETTING Prospective inception cohort study conducted between October 1991 and September 1995 in 2 teaching hospital adult intensive care units in France. PARTICIPANTS A total of 189 consecutive patients who met clinical criteria for septic shock. INTERVENTION A short corticotropin stimulation test was performed in all patients by intravenously injecting 0.25 mg of tetracosactrin; blood samples were taken immediately before the test (T0) and 30 (T30) and 60 (T60) minutes afterward. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Twenty-eight-day mortality as a function of variables collected at the onset of septic shock, including cortisol levels before the corticotropin test and the cortisol response to corticotropin (delta max, defined as the difference between T0 and the highest value between T30 and T60). RESULTS The 28-day mortality was 58% (95% confidence interval [CI], 51%-65%) and median time to death was 17 days (95% CI, 14-27 days). In multivariate analysis, independent predictors of death (P < or = .001 for all) were McCabe score greater than 0, organ system failure score greater than 2, arterial lactate level greater than 2.8 mmol/L, ratio of PaO2 to fraction of inspired oxygen no more than 160 mm Hg, cortisol level at T0 greater than 34 microg/dL and delta max no more than 9 microg/dL. Three groups of patient prognoses were identified: good (cortisol level at T0 < or = 34 microg/dL and delta max > 9 microg/dL; 28-day mortality rate, 26%), intermediate (cortisol level at T0 34 microg/dL and delta max < or = 9 microg/dL or cortisol level at T0 > 34 microg/dL and delta max > 9 microg/dL; 28-day mortality rate, 67%), and poor (cortisol level at T0 > 34 microg/dL and delta max < or = 9 microg/dL; 28-day mortality rate, 82%). CONCLUSION Our data suggest that a short corticotropin test has a good prognostic value and could be helpful in identifying patients with septic shock at high risk for death.
A novel Geo-Spatial image storage method based on Hilbert Space Filling Curves

Massive Geo-Spatial image data play an increasing important role in mapping, resource and environmental research recently, usually it is stored on external storage for its massive data volume within some image files or spatial database, where image storage organization is still a major bottleneck of range query performance. In contrast to the one-dimensional data, the multi-dimensional data such as Geo-spatial image is far more complex, since there is no obvious storage method that serves all purposes. The image data blocks are stored as separate documents on external storage. Due to the external hard disk storage facility is one-dimensional, and the spatial order of image blocks has a direct impact on the performance of range queries. Several Space Filling Curves (SFC) have been proposed, and the most prominent ones include the Z-order (also known as Morton encoding), the Gray code and Hilbert's curve. In fact the multidimensional interval in range queries can be transformed into several one-dimensional intervals. The preserving spatial proximity in SFC help the image blocks keep possible spatial proximity if it is stored according to SFC. Our previous storage experiment has shown that node sequencing distance in curve for each two spatial adjacent nodes is essential for range query performance, especially for distributed system. In the analysis of Hilbert's curve, we find that Hilbert's curve has high frequency distribution of short sequencing distance in curve for each two spatial adjacent nodes, it is very conducive to efficient regional access, while there exists some super large sequencing distance for spatial adjacent nodes, and those nodes leads to Hilbert curve's average adjacent node distance is larger than ordinary sequence and Z-line order. According to the above experiment, we present a novel geo-spatial storage method based on Hilbert SFC in this paper, and the method use the benefits of Hilbert SFC such as recursive attribute and preserving proximity, but have some adjustments to Hilbert SFC. We stored additional 2(n−1) specific nodes in n-th curve according to our definition, and this method lead to good query performance than existing method. The merit of this method is that it can be used in massive geo-spatial image and has the balance of retrieval efficiency and storage overhead.
Application of cognitive-behavioural family intervention for schizophrenia in multidisciplinary teams : what can the matter be?

Surveyed 45 therapists who had participated in a family intervention for schizophrenia training program to examine the difficulties they had encountered, their recall of the intervention strategies, and the extent that they thought the approach had become integrated in their everyday work. Between 6 mo and 3 yrs after the family training, Ss reported the number of families they had systematically treated, and the difficulties they had encountered. Allowance of time to undertake the intervention, afterhours scheduling, and illness or holidays presented particular difficulties. Only 4% reported that their knowledge of behavioral techniques was a problem, but in a written test most therapists did not display minimum recall of the material of cognitive therapy, social skills training, or behavioral strategies. The study demonstrated significant problems in disseminating cognitive-behavioral approaches to multidisciplinary settings.
Robust Face Detection using Fusion of Haar and Daubechies Orthogonal Wavelet Template

detection is fundamental step in the process of face recognition. This work presents a robust approach for Face detection. Orthogonal wavelet considerer details of images and its multi-resolution representation. Template making procedure consider lots of face images. After that orthogonal wavelet transform is applied on that each image and make one template of face after averaging all wavelet transform images coefficients, and using matching algorithm that template is matched with test images and thus face is detected in images. Experimental results indicate that this approach is more efficient and accurate for robust domain.
T-type Ca2+ signalling regulates aldosterone-induced CREB activation and cell death through PP2A activation in neonatal cardiomyocytes

Aims We have investigated Ca2+ signalling generated by aldosterone-induced T-type current (ICaT), the effects of ICaT in neonatal cardiomyocytes, and a putative role for ICaT in cardiomyocytes during cardiac pathology induced by stenosis in an adult rat. Methods and results Neonatal rat cardiomyocytes treated with aldosterone showed an increase in ICaT density, principally due to the upregulation of the T-type channel Cav3.1 (by 80%). Aldosterone activated cAMP-response element-binding protein (CREB), and this activation was enhanced by blocking ICaT or by inhibiting protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) activity. Aldosterone induced PP2A activity, an induction that was prevented upon ICaT blockade. ICaT exerted a negative feedback regulation on the transcription of the Cav3.1 gene, and the activation of PP2A by ICaT led to increased levels of the pro-apoptotic markers caspase 9 and Bcl-xS and decreased levels of the anti-apoptotic marker Bcl-2. These findings were corroborated by flow cytometry analysis for apoptosis and necrosis. Similarly, in a rat model of cardiac disease, ICaT re-emergence was associated with a decrease in CREB activation and was correlated with increases in caspase 9 and Bcl-xS and a decrease in Bcl-2 levels. Conclusion Our findings establish PP2A/CREB as targets of ICaT-generated Ca2+ signalling and identify an important role for ICaT in cardiomyocyte cell death.
Large-Scale Hierarchical Topic Models

In the past decade, a number of advances in topic modeling have produced sophisticated models that are capable of generating hierarchies of topics. One challenge for these models is scalability: they are incapable of working at the massive scale of millions of documents and hundreds of thousands of terms. We address this challenge with a technique that learns a hierarchy of topics by iteratively applying topic models and processing subtrees of the hierarchy in parallel. This approach has a number of scalability advantages compared to existing techniques, and shows promising results in experiments assessing runtime and human evaluations of quality. We detail extensions to this approach that may further improve hierarchical topic modeling for large-scale applications.
Compiler support for software-based cache partitioning

Cache memories have become an essential part of modern processors to bridge the increasing gap between fast processors and slower main memory. Until recently, cache memories were thought to impose unpredictable execution time behavior for hard real-time systems. But recent results show that the speedup of caches can be exploited without a significant sacrifice of predictability. These results were obtained under the assumption that real-time tasks be scheduled non-preemptively.This paper introduces a method to maintain predictability of execution time within preemptive, cached real-time systems and discusses the impact on compilation support for such a system. Preemptive systems with caches are made predictable via software-based cache partitioning. With this approach, the cache is divided into distinct portions associated with a real-time task, such that a task may only use its portion. The compiler has to support instruction and data partitioning for each task. Instruction partitioning involves non-linear control-flow transformations, while data partitioning involves code transformations of data references. The impact on execution time of these transformations is also discussed.