Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative mRNA expression analysis of co‐stimulatory molecules in sequential biopsies from heart allografts

Allograft‐specific T‐cell activation requires two signals, ‘signal one’ via the T‐cell receptor and ‘signal two’ via costimulatory pathways. Animal models provide promising data that blockade of costimulatory signals can lead to T‐cell anergy and tolerance. We analyzed 72 formalin‐fixed and paraffin‐embedded sequential heart allograft biopsies from 22 patients by quantitative real‐time reverse transcriptase‐polymerase chain reaction for the mRNA expression of the costimulatory molecules CD28, CD80, CD86, CD40, and CD154. mRNA expression levels were correlated to histological grade and time‐point of rejection. mRNA expression of costimulatory molecules predominantly expressed by antigen‐presenting cells (CD80, CD86, CD40), correlated with histological grade of cell‐mediated acute rejection. Costimulatory molecules were up‐regulated not only during rejection episodes early after transplantation, but also at late occurring rejection. The present results suggest a simultaneous and long‐term therapeutical blockade of more than one costimulatory pathway for the prevention of repetitive T‐cell mediated acute rejection episodes after heart transplantation.
Casing the joint

Purpose – The paper aims to explore factors that impinge on the “insider‐researcher” (IR) when undertaking a work‐based learning project, which will result in the creation of a context analysis framework.Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative, interpretative approach with the IR as central to the research process, together with data from students work‐based projects, research literature and texts, and an academic advisers' focus group.Findings – Themes of benefits and constraints identified the organisation, the clients and co‐workers and the IR benefiting from work‐based projects. The positionality and personal attributes of the IR may be a constraint. Of major consideration are ethical issues arising from the project process. Academics' concerns include student supervision, the impact on the IR, and factors affecting change and project processes.Research limitations/implications – A small study constrained by the researcher being central to the data and therefore introducing potential bias to the i.
MC framework: High-performance distributed framework for standalone data analysis packages over Hadoop-based cloud

The Hadoop MapReduce is the programming model of designing the scalable distributed computing applications, that provides developers can attain automatic parallelization. However, most complex manufacturing systems are arduous and restrictive to migrate to private clouds, due to the platform incompatible and tremendous complexity of system reconstruction. For increasing the efficiency of manufacturing systems with minimum efforts on modifying source codes, a high-performance framework is designed in this paper, called Multi-users-based Cloud-Adaptor Framework (MC-Framework), which provides the simple interface to users for fairly executing requested tasks worked with traditional standalone data analysis packages in MapReduce-based private cloud environments. Moreover, this framework focuses on multiuser workloads, but the default Hadoop scheduling scheme, i.e., FIFO, would increase delay under multiuser scenarios. Hence, a new scheduling mechanism, called Job-Sharing Scheduling, is designed to explore and fairly share the jobs to machines in the private cloud. Then, we prototype an experimental virtual-metrology module of a manufacturing system as a case study to verify and analysis the proposed MC-Framework. The results of our experiments indicate that our proposed framework enormously improved the time performance compared with the original package.
Agent-based multimedia interaction for virtual Web pages

Wolfgang Wahlster is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Saarbruecken, Germany and the Director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). He received his diploma and doctoral degree in computer science and computational linguistics from the University of Hamburg. Since 1975 he has been working in the field as a principal investigator in various intelligent user interface projects, including HAM-ANS, XTRA, VITRA, PHI, RAP and WIP, PPP and AiA. He has published more than 150 technical papers on man-machine communication.
Serum adiponectin acutely after an ischemic stroke: implications for a long‐lasting, suppressed anti‐inflammatory role

Marousi S, Theodorou G, Karakantza M, Papathanasopoulos P, Ellul J. Serum adiponectin acutely after an ischemic stroke: implications for a long‐lasting, suppressed anti‐inflammatory role. Acta Neurol Scand: 2010: 121: 277–284. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Munksgaard.
On Label Dependence in Multi-Label Classification

The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the important issue of label dependence in multi-label classification (MLC). Looking at the problem from a statistical perspective, we claim that two different types of label dependence should be distinguished, namely conditional and unconditional. We formally explain the differences and connections between both types of dependence and illustrate them by means of simple examples. Moreover, we given an overview of state-of-the-art algorithms for MLC and categorize them according to the type of label dependence they seek to capture.
Narrative, disclosure and psychophysiology: a mixed methods exploration of emotion

The research in this thesis focuses on the ways in which participants represent highly charged negative emotional experiences in narrative form through vocal disclosures, and the relationships between disclosure style and psychophysiological activity. This thesis also attempts to theorise some of the psychophysiological mechanisms that may be associated with the effects of emotional disclosure. Participants were randomly assigned to an emotion (disclosure) group (n = 16) in which they talked about a particular highly charged negative experience, or a neutral (control) group (n = 16) in which they talked about their typical morning. Participants undertook these tasks on three separate occasions, each separated by one week. Skin conductance levels (SCLs) were measured throughout. Statistical analyses were conducted to look at possible SCL differences between the two groups and associations between the disclosure style and SCL variations. Although there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups’ SCLs, there were significant differences in SCLs with regard to disclosure style. Qualitative narrative and discourse analyses were undertaken on 4 selected participants, chosen on the basis of clinically significant SCL moves. These analyses revealed that neutral participants also engaged in forms of emotional disclosure through forms of identity negotiation that were constructed within their talk concerning their typical mornings. The qualitative analysis also identified disclosure styles that may be associated with variations in psychophysiological activity.
Anti‐nociceptive activity of nitric oxide synthase inhibitors in the mouse: dissociation between the effect of l‐NAME and l‐NMMA

Abstract— The anti‐nociceptive effect of selective inhibitors of nitric oxide synthase has been assessed in a formalin‐induced paw‐licking model in mice. l‐NG‐Nitro arginine methyl ester (l‐NAME) but not l‐NG‐monomethyl arginine (l‐NMMA) exhibited anti‐nociceptive activity in both the early and late phases of paw licking following intraperitoneal administration. The effect on the late phase response was more pronounced. l‐NAME (0·1–100 μg) and l‐NG‐nitro arginine base (l‐NOARG; 10 μg) but not d‐NAME (10 μg) were also anti‐nociceptive following intracerebroventricular administration. l‐NAME (10 μg) administered by this route did not influence locomotor activity. l‐NMMA was inactive at doses up to 40 μg by this route. At higher doses (75–200 μg) l‐NMMA produced a similar and non‐dose related reduction in early/late phase paw‐licking time. d‐NMMA (100 μg) was inactive. The greater anti‐nociceptive effect of l‐NAME in this model accords with recently published biochemical data indicating that l‐NAME is several orders of magnitude more potent than l‐NMMA as an inhibitor of brain nitric oxide synthase. These data support the use of l‐NAME as a selective tool to investigate the central pharmacological effects of nitric oxide.
Moral Development: Theory and Applications

Part I. Moral Development in the 21st Century: Theoretical Roots and New Directions 1. Introduction 2. Classic Theories of Morality: Freud and Piaget 3. From Stages to Schemas: Kohlberg and Rest 4. Theoretical Challenges to Classic Cognitive Developmental Models 5.The Rise of Theories from Neuroscience and Evolutionary Perspectives 6. Global Perspectives: A Sampling of Research and Issues 7. Conclusion: In a Different Mind Part II. Applications of Theory to Practice 8. Applied Moral Education: Accomplishments and New Directions 9. Development Therapy: Helping Clients Grapple with Core Moral Issues 10. When Development Goes Awry: Deficits in moral and empathic development 11. Conclusion: How to Live and What to do?
Global impact of mature biofilm lifestyle on Escherichia coli K‐12 gene expression

The formation of biofilm results in a major lifestyle switch that is thought to affect the expression of multiple genes and operons. We used DNA arrays to study the global effect of biofilm formation on gene expression in mature Escherichia coli K‐12 biofilm. We show that, when biofilm is compared with the exponential growth phase, 1.9% of the genes showed a consistent up‐ or downregulation by a factor greater than two, and that 10% of the E. coli genome is significantly differentially expressed. The functions of the genes induced in these conditions correspond to stress response as well as energy production, envelope biogenesis and unknown functions. We provide evidence that the expression of stress envelope response genes, such as the psp operon or elements of the cpx and rpoE pathways, is a general feature of E. coli mature biofilms. We also compared biofilm with the stationary growth phase and showed that the biofilm lifestyle, although sharing similarities with the stationary growth phase, triggers the expression of specific sets of genes. Using gene disruption of 54 of the most biofilm‐induced genes followed by a detailed phenotypic study, we validated the biological relevance of our analysis and showed that 20 of these genes are required for the formation of mature biofilm. This group includes 11 genes of previously unknown function. These results constitute a comprehensive analysis of the global transcriptional response triggered in mature E. coli biofilms and provide insights into its physiological signature.
The role of morality in driving our social support decisions

Time and again research has suggested and supported the supremacy of warm attributes like morality over attributes of competencies. In the present research, we explore whether perception of warmth-morality or prosocial behavior in others, make us more supportive towards them. In addition we also explore whether the established measures of likeness and positive affect are crucial in mediating this link between the dimensions of social judgment (morality vs competence) and social support.
Similarity search: a matching based approach

Similarity search is a crucial task in multimedia retrieval and data mining. Most existing work has modelled this problem as the nearest neighbor (NN) problem, which considers the distance between the query object and the data objects over a fixed set of features. Such an approach has two drawbacks: 1) it leaves many partial similarities uncovered; 2) the distance is often affected by a few dimensions with high dissimilarity. To overcome these drawbacks, we propose the k-n-match problem in this paper.The k-n-match problem models similarity search as matching between the query object and the data objects in n dimensions, where n is a given integer smaller than dimensionality d and these n dimensions are determined dynamically to make the query object and the data objects returned in the answer set match best. The k-n-match query is expected to be superior to the kNN query in discovering partial similarities, however, it may not be as good in identifying full similarity since a single value of n may only correspond to a particular aspect of an object instead of the entirety. To address this problem, we further introduce the frequent k-n-match problem, which finds a set of objects that appears in the k-n-match answers most frequently for a range of n values. Moreover, we propose search algorithms for both problems. We prove that our proposed algorithm is optimal in terms of the number of individual attributes retrieved, which is especially useful for information retrieval from multiple systems. We can also apply the proposed algorithmic strategy to achieve a disk based algorithm for the (frequent) k-n-match query. By a thorough experimental study using both real and synthetic data sets, we show that: 1) the k-n-match query yields better result than the kNN query in identifying similar objects by partial similarities; 2) our proposed method (for processing the frequent k-n-match query) outperforms existing techniques for similarity search in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency.
Reconstructing ancestral genome content based on symmetrical best alignments and Dollo parsimony

MOTIVATION Gene duplications and losses (GDLs) are important events in genome evolution. They result in expansion or contraction of gene families, with a likely role in phenotypic evolution. As more genomes become available and their annotations are improved, software programs capable of rapidly and accurately identifying the content of ancestral genomes and the timings of GDLs become necessary to understand the unique evolution of each lineage. RESULTS We report EvolMAP, a new algorithm and software that utilizes a species tree-based gene clustering method to join all-to-all symmetrical similarity comparisons of multiple gene sets in order to infer the gene composition of multiple ancestral genomes. The algorithm further uses Dollo parsimony-based comparison of the inferred ancestral genes to pinpoint the timings of GDLs onto evolutionary intervals marked by speciation events. Using EvolMAP, first we analyzed the expansion of four families of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) within animal lineages. Additional to demonstrating the unique expansion tree for each family, results also show that the ancestral eumetazoan genome contained many fewer GPCRs than modern animals, and these families expanded through concurrent lineage-specific duplications. Second, we analyzed the history of GDLs in mammalian genomes by comparing seven proteomes. In agreement with previous studies, we report that the mammalian gene family sizes have changed drastically through their evolution. Interestingly, although we identified a potential source of duplication for 75% of the gained genes, remaining 25% did not have clear-cut sources, revealing thousands of genes that have likely gained their distinct sequence identities within the descent of mammals. AVAILABILITY Query server, source code and executable are available at http://kosik-web.mcdb. ucsb.edu/evolmap/index.htm .
CONTEXT ENGINEERING AND MODELING CHALLENGES

The authors previously proposed the Context Engineering (CE) approach to Information Systems Development (ISD) as a framework to organise ideas about previous development experience and to guide future research on specific ISD methods and techniques. The goals of the CE approach are: to achieve an understanding of the ISD as socio-technical phenomena within a cultural and historical envelope; to provide a framework of problems supported on the relation between context and mediators; and to use contextuality as a key to performing emancipatory movements. Fundamental concepts are the notions of context as figure-ground and as autopoietic flux, of human activity as unit of contextual analysis, of the pervasiveness of mediation in human activity, of socio-technical networks as media and the hypothesis of a heterogeneous social engineering. A framework of development problems is presented along with a discussion of general and process related principles for the CE approach. A fundamental challenge proposed in this approach is the modeling of context as central influencing aspect of development, and the need to find appropriate instruments – concepts, techniques, representations – for modeling context as part of the ongoing decision making processes in the flow of ISD development activities. Moreover, we need modeling approaches that enable participation and focus on socio-technical relationships as the fabric of reality .
Exploring Business Opportunities from Mobile Service Data of Customers Using Inter-cluster Analysis

Customer clustering is used to understand customers' preferences and behaviors by examining the differences and similarities between customers. Kohonen vector quantization (KVQ), Kohonen self organizing map (SOM) and K-means are used in this research to find interesting behaviors of customers who subscribe to mobile services. Clustering is followed by inter-cluster analysis in order to identify possible business opportunities
Immunomodulation of Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Purified from Nitzschia Laevis

Polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) plays an important role in the regulation of biological functions and prevention of a number of diseases involved heart and inflammatory diseases. The immunomodulation of a high-purity PUFA ethyl ester purified from Nitzschia Laevis was assessed in vitro in this paper. The main composition of PUFA is arachidonic acid (ARA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), accounted for 25.48% and 66.39%, respectively. Mitogen-induced splenocyte prolife-ration, the effect of PUFA on splenocytes fatty acids composition and proinflammatory cytokine were examined. Incubated with PUFA at the concentration of 2 μg/mL for 72 h, splenocyte proliferation index was significant increased compared to control (P<0.05). The lipid profiles of splenocyte were changed significantly when incubated with PUFA for 72 h, long chain unsaturated fatty acids were increased, whereas saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids were decreased. The production of tumor necrosis factor by splenocyte incubated with PUFA for 48 h was increased apparently (P<0.05). However, there was no difference in production of interleukin-2 at either concentration of PUFA (P<0.05).
Caregiving Transitions: Changes in Depression Among Family Caregivers of Relatives With Dementia

Depression among family caregivers of relatives with dementia was examined at three time intervals over a 4-year period. Comparisons were made between 46 residential caregivers, 49 caregivers of institutionalized elders, and 47 bereaved caregivers. No overall difference was found between the depression paths of the three groups. Female bereaved caregivers experienced a pattern of decreasing depression following their relative's death, while male bereaved caregivers experienced an increase in depression. Findings suggest the need for further investigation of the influences of gender on bereavement following the experience of providing family care for a relative with dementia.
Exploiting Schema Knowledge for the Integration of Heterogeneous Sorces

Information sharing from multiple heterogeneous sources is a challenging issue which ranges from database to ontology areas. In this paper, we propose an intelligent approach to information integration which takes into account semantic connicts and contradictions, caused by the lack of a common shared ontology. Our goal is to provide an integrated access to information sources, allowing a user to pose a single query and to receive a single uniied answer. We propose a \semantic" approach to integration where the conceptual schema of each source is provided, adopting a common standard data model and language, and Description Logics plus clustering techniques are exploited. Description Logics is used to obtain a semi-automatic generation of a Common Thesaurus (to solve semantic heterogeneities and to derive a common ontology). Clustering techniques are used to build the global schema, i.e. the uniied view of the data to be used for query processing.
Regression Model-Based Walking Speed Estimation Using Wrist-Worn Inertial Sensor

Walking speed is widely used to study human health status. Wearable inertial measurement units (IMU) are promising tools for the ambulatory measurement of walking speed. Among wearable inertial sensors, the ones worn on the wrist, such as a watch or band, have relatively higher potential to be easily incorporated into daily lifestyle. Using the arm swing motion in walking, this paper proposes a regression model-based method for longitudinal walking speed estimation using a wrist-worn IMU. A novel kinematic variable is proposed, which finds the wrist acceleration in the principal axis (i.e. the direction of the arm swing). This variable (called pca-acc) is obtained by applying sensor fusion on IMU data to find the orientation followed by the use of principal component analysis. An experimental evaluation was performed on 15 healthy young subjects during free walking trials. The experimental results show that the use of the proposed pca-acc variable can significantly improve the walking speed estimation accuracy when compared to the use of raw acceleration information (p<0.01). When Gaussian process regression is used, the resulting walking speed estimation accuracy and precision is about 5.9% and 4.7%, respectively.
Statistical Multiparty Computation Based on Random Walks on Graphs

With respect to a special class of access structures based on connectivity of graphs, we start from a linear secret sharing scheme and turn it into a secret sharing scheme with perfect security and exponentially small error probability by randomizing the reconstruction algorithm through random walks on graphs. It reduces the polynomial work space to logarithmic. Then we build the corresponding statistical multiparty computation protocol by using the secret sharing scheme. The results of this paper also imply the inherent connections and influences among secret sharing, randomized algorithms, and secure multiparty computation.
Distributed Optimization by Ant Colonies

Ants colonies exhibit very interesting behaviours: even if a single ant only has simple capabilities, the behaviour of a whole ant colony is highly structured. This is the result of coordinated interactions. But, as communication possibilities among ants are very limited, interactions must be based on very simple flows of information. In this paper we explore the implications that the study of ants behaviour can have on problem solving and optimization. We introduce a distributed problem solving environment and propose its use to search for a solution to the travelling salesman problem.
Energy-efficient localization for mobile sensor networks based on RSS and historical information

Existing localization algorithms for mobile sensor networks are mostly based on the Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) localization method. However, these methods usually suffer from low sampling efficiency. So some algorithms try to reduce the sampling area by employing position relationship with neighbor common nodes. But such algorithms need high communication cost and significantly shorten the network life time. In order to solve the energy problem and improve localization accuracy, in this paper, we proposed a new energy-efficient algorithm based on Received Signal Strength (RSS), distance and direction of the moving anchor nodes and Monte Carlo localization (MCL), so the algorithm is called RDMCL. RDMCL derives three methods based on the number of nodes' one-hop neighbor anchors to build a more effective sampling area. Simulation results show that our algorithm indeed improve localization accuracy and save energy cost of network.