Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The RNA binding protein Zfp36l1 is required for normal vascularisation and post‐transcriptionally regulates VEGF expression

The Zfp36l1 gene encodes a zinc finger‐containing mRNA binding protein implicated in the posttranscriptional control of gene expression. Mouse embryos homozygous for a targeted mutation in the Zfp36l1 locus died mid‐gestation and exhibited extraembryonic and intraembryonic vascular abnormalities and heart defects. In the developing placenta, there was a failure of the extraembryonic mesoderm to invaginate the trophoblast layer. The phenotype was associated with an elevated expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)‐A in the embryos and in embryonic fibroblasts cultured under conditions of both normoxia and hypoxia. VEGF‐A overproduction by embryonic fibroblasts was not a consequence of changes in Vegf‐a mRNA stability; instead, we observed enhanced association with polyribosomes, suggesting Zfp36l1 influences translational regulation. These data implicate Zfp36l1as a negative regulator of Vegf‐a gene activity during development. Developmental Dynamics 235:3144–3155, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
National Financial Frictions and International Business Cycle Synchronization

A two-country real business cycle model with national endogenous borrowing constraints and frictionless international financial markets can account for the high level of international co-movements. The borrowing mechanism brings about a wedge between the real interest rate and the expected marginal product of capital, which plays a key role in the international transmission of technology shocks. Moreover, terms of trade are amplified by the effects of these shocks on real interest rates which ultimately lead to greater synchronization of economic activities across countries. Finally, the signs of international co-movements are not sensitive to the structure of international asset markets (incomplete markets or financial autarky). Therefore, in the presence of national financial frictions, international efficiency cannot be assessed from looking at the behavior of aggregate variables.
Principals’ Integration of Technology in Education at Sharjah City Government Schools

School leadership includes several elements; one of them is technology leadership that is necessary for the success of technology integration in education. The purpose of this study is to describe the state of technology integration in Sharjah City Government Schools based on a juxtaposition and comparison of principals' perceived practices of technology integration and teachers' perceptions. This technique of study would help in reaching a more trusted image of technology integration at Sharjah schools. The second purpose was to investigate the influence of the principals' gender on integrating technology in their schools, in addition to identify the main challenges that faced Sharjah government schools' principals in integrating technology in their schools. The descriptive approach was used to collect the quantitative data through administering the Educational Technology Survey for principals and teachers. A sample of 34 government school principals and 344 teachers responded to the survey. The findings indicated that a difference exists between principals' and teachers’ perceptions of Sharjah City government school principals' ability to integrate technology in their schools based on National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). Standard I (Visionary Leadership) was the least level achieved in comparison to the other standards. Moreover, gender had a significant difference just in Standard II “Digital Age Learning Culture” in the favor of female. The high cost of integrating technology and lack of funding, continuous production of new technology tools and the inability to cope with them, lack of professional development programs, and lack of skilled and qualified teachers in integrating technology were the most important challenges that faced Sharjah City principals in integrating technology in their schools.
Large-Scale Distributed Dedicated- and Non-Dedicated Smart City Sensing Systems

The past decade has witnessed an explosion of interest in smart cities in which a set of applications, such as smart healthcare, smart lighting, and smart transportation promise to drastically improve the quality and efficiency of these services. The skeleton of these applications is formed by a network of distributed sensors that captures data, pre-processes, and transmits it to a center for further processing. While these sensors are generally perceived to be a wireless network of sensing devices that are deployed permanently as part of an application, the emerging mobile crowd-sensing (MCS) concept prescribes a drastically different platform for sensing; a network of smartphones, owned by a volunteer crowd, can capture, pre-process, and transmit the data to the same center. We call these two forms of sensors dedicated and non-dedicated sensors in this paper. While dedicated sensors imply higher deployment and maintenance costs, the MCS concept also has known implementation challenges, such as incentivizing the crowd and ensuring the trustworthiness of the captured data, and covering a wide sensing area. Due to the pros/cons of each option, the decision as to which one is better becomes a non-trivial answer. In this paper, we conduct a thorough study of both types of sensors and draw conclusions about which one becomes a favourable option based on a given application platform.
Advocacy 101: A Step Beyond Complaining. How the Individual Practitioner can Become Involved and Make a Difference

There are critical issues facing the neuropsychological community, such as inadequate reimbursement for services, a lack of familiarity among public policy makers regarding the science and practice of neuropsychology, and a lack of public policy awareness among professional neuropsychologists. Advocacy for the field is the most effective way to undertake positive change. Currently, a minority of psychological professionals actively engages in an advocacy process, while the majority is not involved, or is involved periodically or passively. With weak advocacy our field risks slower development in key areas, and without strong and constant advocacy we risk losing ground previously gained. The purpose of this article, and those that follow in this special issue of The Clinical Neuropsychologist, is to: (1) convey the importance of advocacy, (2) address and dispel unfounded mental obstacles that inhibit involvement in advocating for the specialty, and (3) aid neuropsychologists in preparing to join the advocacy process. To accomplish this, we acquaint readers with the advocacy process, delineate to practitioners how they can become involved, and encourage participation in advocacy.
Feedback analysis using big data tools

With the ever increasing man-machine interaction, automation of process and decline in hardware and software cost, the amount of digital data generated and used is increasing day by day. The big data referred here is the massive amount of digital data generated in each and every second in structured, semi-structured and unstructured format throughout the world. This emerging field of big data analytic has driven the researcher worldwide toward design, development and implementation of various tools, technologies, architecture and platforms for analyzing the huge volume of data generated day to day. Big data consist of data sets which is difficult for legacy database management system to analysis. This paper details some analysis like feedback analysis, sentiment analysis and word-count. Feedback are important for the system enhancement, finding loop holes and as well as for proper work distribution. Feedback is valuable information that will be used to make good decision. Feedback is important not only when it highlights weaknesses but also for strengths. If analysis of feedback is done in wrong way then the result of analysis will also be wrong. As a result, the pattern identified will also be incorrect thus making the whole system incorrect as a whole. We will be implementing this proposed system for feedback analysis using Map-Reduce framework for processing large data set and for storage we will use Hadoop.
Hypogonadotropic Hypogonadism and Hematologic Phenotype in Patients With Transfusion-Dependent Beta-Thalassemia

Objective To determine the prevalence and risk factors of hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in transfusion-dependent patients with thalassemia. Patients and Methods The authors examined 29 patients with thalassemia major aged 15 years or older. Luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone tests were performed and &bgr;-thalassemia mutations were analyzed by direct sequencing. Results The prevalence of hypogonadotropic hypogonadism was 72%. Failure of puberty was observed in 5 of 11 (45%) boys and 7 of 18 (39%) girls. Arrested puberty was noted in two boys (18%) and five girls (28%). Ten girls (56%) did not menstruate, two (11%) had regular menstrual cycles, one (6%) had irregular menstrual cycles, and five (28%) developed secondary amenorrhea. Twenty-one and eight patients had the &bgr;0/&bgr;0 and &bgr;0/&bgr;+ hematologic phenotypes, respectively. &bgr;0-thalassemia mutation alleles involved IVS II-654 (C-T), codons 41/42 (-TCTT), codons 27/28 (+C), and codons 17 (A-T). &bgr;+-thalassemia mutations alleles were -28 (A-G) and HbE (codons 26(GAG-AAG)). Hematologic phenotype (odds ratio, 28.50; P = 0.002) was the only risk factor identified in the logistic regression analysis. Conclusions In patients with thalassemia major, genetic differences may influence their susceptibility to hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, possibly as a result of differences in the amounts of blood transfused and/or their vulnerability to free radical damage. The hematologic phenotype is a main determinant of the severity of thalassemia major; hence, it may influence the need for and frequency of blood transfusion and the patient's iron-overload status.
Generation of multi-view video using a fusion camera system for 3D displays

In this paper, we present a fusion camera system combining one time-of-flight depth camera and two video cameras to generate multi-view video sequences. In order to obtain the multi-view video using the fusion camera system for 3D displays, we capture a stereo video using a pair of video cameras and a single view depth video with the depth camera. After performing a 3D warping operation for the depth video to obtain an initial depth map at each viewpoint, we refine it using segment-based stereo matching. To reduce mismatched depth values along object boundaries, we detect moving objects using color difference between frames. Finally, we recompute the depth value of each pixel in every segment using stereo matching with a new cost function. Experimental results show that the proposed fusion system produces multi-view video sequences with accurate depth maps, especially along the boundaries of objects. Therefore, it is suitable for generating more natural 3D views for 3D displays than previous works.
Impaired Biological Activity of Erythropoietin by Cyanate Carbamylation

Aims: During advanced renal failure, particularly in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), proteins are carbamylated as a result of a reaction with cyanate. Some or all of the cyanate is derived from urea. If the carbamylation of proteins adversely alters their biologic activities, then urea must be viewed as an uremic toxin, rather than a surrogate. Therefore, we studied the effect of cyanate carbamylation on the erythropoietic activity of erythropoietin (EPO) in a rodent model. Methods: EPO was carbamylated by incubation with cyanate at 37°C. The extent of carbamylation was monitored using trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid. In Sprague-Dawley rats the erythrocyte count, hemoglobin concentration, and hematocrit were measured after the twice-weekly subcutaneous injection of either EPO or carbamylated EPO for 3 weeks. Two additional control groups received physiologic saline or 0.2 ml of 1 M cyanate. Results: The level of carbamylated EPO was increased as the time of exposure to cyanate increased from 1 to 6 h, and as the cyanate concentration increased from 8 to 2,000 mM. EPO injections caused significantly large increases in all erythropoietic measures. Physiologic saline or 1 M cyanate-injected controls and the carbamylated EPO-injected animals demonstrated no change from baseline in erythropoietic parameters. Conclusion: These results support that EPO exposed to high levels of cyanate in vitro demonstrates diminished biologic activity in healthy Sprague-Dawley rats. This effect may be manifested by the carbamylation of EPO by the cyanate. Should this occur in ESRD patients, it may contribute to the suboptimal erythropoietic response to EPO therapy associated with high urea levels, especially related to inadequate dialysis. Targeting dialysis doses specifically to urea concentrations may be more important than previously considered.
Resveratrol promotes osteogenesis of human mesenchymal stem cells by upregulating RUNX2 gene expression via the SIRT1/FOXO3A axis

Reports of the bone‐protective effects of resveratrol, a naturally occurring phytoestrogen and agonist for the longevity gene SIRT1, have highlighted this compound as a candidate for therapy of osteoporosis. Moreover, SIRT1 antagonism enhances adipogenesis. There has been speculation that resveratrol can promote osteogenesis through SIRT1, but the mechanism remains unclear. In this study we investigated the molecular mechanism of how resveratrol can modulate the lineage commitment of human mesenchymal stem cells to osteogenesis other than adipogenesis. We found that resveratrol promoted spontaneous osteogenesis but prevented adipogenesis in human embryonic stem cell–derived mesenchymal progenitors. Resveratrol upregulated the expression of osteo‐lineage genes RUNX2 and osteocalcin while suppressing adipo‐lineage genes PPARγ2 and LEPTIN in adipogenic medium. Furthermore, we found that the osteogenic effect of resveratrol was mediated mainly through SIRT1/FOXO3A with a smaller contribution from the estrogenic pathway. Resveratrol activated SIRT1 activity and enhanced FOXO3A protein expression, a known target of SIRT1, in an independent manner. As a result, resveratrol increased the amount of the SIRT1‐FOXO3A complex and enhanced FOXO3A‐dependent transcriptional activity. Ectopic overexpression or silencing of SIRT1/FOXO3A expression regulated RUNX2 promoter activity, suggesting an important role for SIRT1‐FOXO3A complex in regulating resveratrol‐induced RUNX2 gene transcription. Further mutational RUNX2 promoter analysis and chromatin immunoprecipitation assay revealed that resveratrol‐induced SIRT1‐FOXO3A complex bound to a distal FOXO response element (−1269/−1263), an action that transactivated RUNX2 promoter activity in vivo. Taken together, our results describe a novel mechanism of resveratrol in promoting osteogenesis of human mesenchymal stem cells by upregulating RUNX2 gene expression via the SIRT1/FOXO3A axis. © 2011 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research
EGFR mutations detected on cytology samples by a centralized laboratory reliably predict response to gefitinib in non–small cell lung carcinoma patients

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations are reliably detected by referral laboratories, even if most lung cancer cytology specimens sent to such laboratories contain very few cells. However, EGFR mutations may be distributed heterogeneously within tumors, thereby raising concerns that mutations detected on cytology are not representative of the entire tumor and, thus, are less reliable in predicting response to tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment than mutations detected on histology. To address this issue, the authors reviewed their clinical practice archives and compared the outcome of TKI treatment among patients who were selected by cytology versus patients who were selected by histology.
Research on localization algorithm based on path prediction and adaptive radio range for mobile sensor network

For localizing workers and equipments in readiness sap, based on Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) algorithm, an accurate localization algorithm for mobile sensor network, in which anchor nodes are fixed and normal nodes can move freely, is presented in this paper. Adopting two dimensional Newton interpolation to predict the movement path of normal node, localization selection model is builded, and by designing an adaptive method of computing the radio range of node, the impact of unsteady radio range to prediction result can be improved. Result of simulation indicates that the accuracy of new localization algorithm is higher, and the request of anchor node density is much lower than the basic MCL algorithm.
A statistical method for alignment-free comparison of regulatory sequences

MOTIVATION The similarity of two biological sequences has traditionally been assessed within the well-established framework of alignment. Here we focus on the task of identifying functional relationships between cis-regulatory sequences that are non-orthologous or greatly diverged. 'Alignment-free' measures of sequence similarity are required in this regime. RESULTS We investigate the use of a new score for alignment-free sequence comparison, called the score. It is based on comparing the frequencies of all fixed-length words in the two sequences. An important, novel feature of the score is that it is comparable across sequence pairs drawn from arbitrary background distributions. We present a method that gives quadratic improvement in the time complexity of calculating the score, over the naïve method. We then evaluate the score on several tissue-specific families of cis-regulatory modules (in Drosophila and human). The new score is highly successful in discriminating functionally related regulatory sequences from unrelated sequence pairs. The performance of the score is compared to five other alignment-free similarity measures, and shown to be consistently superior to all of these measures. AVAILABILITY Our implementation of the score will be made freely available as source code, upon publication of this article, at: http://veda.cs. uiuc.edu/d2z/. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
A Persuasive Communication Approach to Conservation

One of the major problems facing community leaders is to persuade the general public to consume or pollute less of the world's natural resources. If preliminary steps are not taken to communicate to the people the impending shortages that resource managers have foreseen for sometime, then each shortage will be met with severe measures of forced compliance which will be politically and emotively disruptive. Unless these critical consumption behaviours of the community are gradually shaped to the necessary levels of reduced consumption, social upheaval caused by resource scarcity will be great. One only needs to review the fuel shortage crisis a few years ago in the United States to predict the consequences of public consumption, or demand, exceeding supply. Long queues of customers waiting for petrol were a common sight in many parts of America; persistent fuel shortages would have produced massive social and economic disruption.
Comparative evaluation of the pharmacokinetics of N-methylthiotetrazole following administration of cefoperazone, cefotetan, and cefmetazole

The comparative pharmacokinetics and in vivo production of N-methylthiotetrazole (NMTT) were evaluated following administration of cefoperazone, cefotetan, and cefmetazole. In a randomized-crossover manner, 11 healthy male volunteers received single 2-g intravenous doses of each agent and serial blood and urine samples were collected. Concentrations of NMTT and the parent compound in plasma, urine, and the reconstituted antibiotic solution were determined by high-pressure liquid chromatography. The amounts of NMTT administered were 6.06 +/- 0.46, 14.4 +/- 0.87, and 17.4 +/- 1.06 mg for cefoperazone, cefotetan, and cefmetazole, respectively (P less than 0.05). The mean NMTT plasma concentration-time profiles following administration of each cephalosporin were markedly different. Six hours after dosing, NMTT concentrations in plasma following cefoperazone administration were higher than those following administration of cefmetazole and cefotetan. Urinary recoveries of NMTT averaged 137.0 +/- 37.1, 38.3 +/- 6.98, and 25.2 +/- 5.95 mg following administration of cefoperazone, cefotetan, and cefmetazole, respectively (P less than 0.01). The apparent amount of NMTT produced in vivo, calculated by subtracting the amount of NMTT administered from the amount of NMTT excreted in urine, was significantly lower following cefmetazole administration than after administration of cefoperazone and cefotetan (P less than 0.01). The discrepancy between in vitro NMTT production (cefmetazole greater than cefotetan greater than cefoperazone) and the amount of NMTT formed in vivo and excreted unchanged (cefoperazone greater than cefotetan greater than cefmetazole) suggests that in vivo production of NMTT is dependent on the disposition of the parent cephalosporin. These results further suggest that cephalosporins which undergo extensive biliary excretion, such as cefoperazone, are associated with the greatest amount of in vivo NMTT release, whereas cephalosporins which are primarily renally excreted, such as cefmetazole, are associated with the lowest in vivo production of NMTT.
Aporetic openings in living well with others : the teacher as a thinking subject

This dissertation is a philosophical inquiry that addresses two questions: First, what does it mean to live well with others in educational contexts? And second, what might the way we engage with this question mean for the possibility of the teacher as a thinking subject? In support of this exposition, the author draws from the work of Jacques Derrida, Jean Luc Nancy, and Roberto Esposito and, to a lesser extent, Michael Hardt and Alain Badiou. This dissertation is concerned with the predeterminations and determinations that arise from particular conceptualizations of what it means to live well with others in educational contexts and how these may prevent or create conditions of possibility for the teacher as a thinking subject, and for the event of thinking. It responds to such commitments in education by engaging with a critique of the concept of community as one of the key concepts that animate educational practices today. It further presents the importance of the recognition of the constitutive aporetic character of community, and also of education. Such recognition, the author argues, is necessary for a conceptualization of the teacher as a thinking subject, and for the teacher as subject to the event of thought.