Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibition of NOS-NO System Prevents Autoimmune Orchitis Development in Rats: Relevance of NO Released by Testicular Macrophages in Germ Cell Apoptosis and Testosterone Secretion

Background Although the testis is considered an immunoprivileged organ it can orchestrate immune responses against pathological insults such as infection and trauma. Experimental autoimmune orchitis (EAO) is a model of chronic inflammation whose main histopathological features it shares with human orchitis. In EAO an increased number of macrophages infiltrate the interstitium concomitantly with progressive germ cell degeneration and impaired steroidogenesis. Up-regulation of nitric oxide (NO)-NO synthase (NOS) system occurs, macrophages being the main producers of NO. Objective The aim of our study was to evaluate the role of NO-NOS system in orchitis development and determine the involvement of NO released by testicular macrophages on germ cell apoptosis and testosterone secretion. Method and Results EAO was induced in rats by immunization with testicular homogenate and adjuvants (E group) and a group of untreated normal rats (N) was also studied. Blockage of NOS by i.p. injection of E rats with a competitive inhibitor of NOS, L-NAME (8mg/kg), significantly reduced the incidence and severity of orchitis and lowered testicular nitrite content. L-NAME reduced germ cell apoptosis and restored intratesticular testosterone levels, without variations in serum LH. Co-culture of N testicular fragments with testicular macrophages obtained from EAO rats significantly increased germ cell apoptosis and testosterone secretion, whereas addition of L-NAME lowered both effects and reduced nitrite content. Incubation of testicular fragments from N rats with a NO donor DETA-NOnoate (DETA-NO) induced germ cell apoptosis through external and internal apoptotic pathways, an effect prevented by N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC). DETA-NO inhibited testosterone released from Leydig cells, whereas NAC (from 2.5 to 15 mM) did not prevent this effect. Conclusions We demonstrated that NO-NOS system is involved in the impairment of testicular function in orchitis. NO secreted mainly by testicular macrophages could promote oxidative stress inducing ST damage and interfering in Leydig cell function.
Prevalence of antibodies to hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV and risk factors in entrants to Irish prisons: a national cross sectional survey.

Abstract Objectives: To determine the prevalence of antibodies to hepatitis B core antigen, hepatitis C virus, and HIV in entrants to Irish prisons and to examine risk factors for infection. Design: Cross sectional, anonymous survey, with self completed risk factor questionnaire and oral fluid specimen for antibody testing. Setting: Five of seven committal prisons in the Republic of Ireland. Participants: 607 of the 718 consecutive prison entrants from 6 April to 1 May 1999. Main outcome measures: Prevalence of antibodies to hepatitis B core antigen, hepatitis C virus, and HIV in prison entrants, and self reported risk factor status. Results: Prevalence of antibodies to hepatitis B core antigen was 37/596 (6%; 95% confidence interval 4% to 9%), to hepatitis C virus was 130/596 (22%; 19% to 25%), and to HIV was 12/596 (2%; 1% to 4%). A third of the respondents had never previously been in prison; these had the lowest prevalence of antibodies to hepatitis B core antigen (4/197, 2%), to hepatitis C (6/197, 3%), and to HIV (0/197). In total 29% of respondents (173/593) reported ever injecting drugs, but only 7% (14/197) of those entering prison for the first time reported doing so compared with 40% (157/394) of those previously in prison. Use of injected drugs was the most important predictor of antibodies to hepatitis B core antigen and hepatitis C virus. Conclusions: Use of injected drugs and infection with hepatitis C virus are endemic in Irish prisons. A third of prison entrants were committed to prison for the first time. Only a small number of first time entrants were infected with one or more of the viruses. These findings confirm the need for increased infection control and harm reduction measures in Irish prisons. What is already known on this topic High rates of using injected drugs, initiation of use of injected drugs, and sharing of injecting equipment occur in Irish prisons Injecting drug users have high rates of infection with hepatitis B and C viruses, and hepatitis C is endemic in injecting drug users and in Irish prisoners What this study adds The prevalence of antibodies to hepatitis B core antigen, to hepatitis C, and to HIV in prison entrants who had previously been imprisoned was similar to that found in the recent national survey of Irish prisoners, but the prevalence of these antibodies was much lower in the third of prison entrants who had never previously been in prison Tattooing in prison is an independent risk factor for hepatitis C infection in prisoners who have never used injected drugs
Bilingual Learning and its Effects on Students' Communicative Competence

The study looks into the important issues concerning the development of bilingual learning of the third-grade bilingual students in the Thai context. The research sample consists of 67 primary students at third grade from three classrooms and their six Thai teachers (three Thai teachers and three native English speaking teachers). The data are collected through classroom observations and semi-structured in-depth interview with the teachers. This study is based on an interpretive approach concerned with subjective meaning in a particular context with the collected data analysed inductively. The study reveals that the students can manage to communicate well in English. They have been exposed to considerable amount of language from which they learned much more than grammar rules. Their main social task is to acquire communicative competence. The role of the environment has become more meaningful for the students’ communicative ability. Overall, the bilingual education results in satisfying English proficiency and academic performance while the students’ proficiency in their native language has been further developing. The results of this study help to advance the debate surrounding the effectiveness of a bilingual learning programme suggesting that a bilingual learning programme provides an effective instructional approach for elementary bilingual students.
Cryptovirology: extortion-based security threats and countermeasures

Traditionally, cryptography and its applications are defensive in nature, and provide privacy, authentication, and security to users. In this paper we present the idea of Cryptovirology which employs a twist on cryptography, showing that it can also be used offensively. By being offensive we mean that it can be used to mount extortion based attacks that cause loss of access to information, loss of confidentiality, and information leakage, tasks which cryptography typically prevents. In this paper we analyze potential threats and attacks that rogue use of cryptography can cause when combined with rogue software (viruses, Trojan horses), and demonstrate them experimentally by presenting an implementation of a cryptovirus that we have tested (we took careful precautions in the process to insure that the virus remained contained). Public-key cryptography is essential to the attacks that we demonstrate (which we call "cryptovirological attacks"). We also suggest countermeasures and mechanisms to cope with and prevent such attacks. These attacks have implications on how the use of cryptographic tools should be managed and audited in general purpose computing environments, and imply that access to cryptographic tools should be well controlled. The experimental virus demonstrates how cryptographic packages can be condensed into a small space, which may have independent applications (e.g., cryptographic module design in small mobile devices).
Miniboxing: improving the speed to code size tradeoff in parametric polymorphism translations

Parametric polymorphism enables code reuse and type safety. Underneath the uniform interface exposed to programmers, however, its low level implementation has to cope with inherently non-uniform data: value types of different sizes and semantics (bytes, integers, floating point numbers) and reference types (pointers to heap objects). On the Java Virtual Machine, parametric polymorphism is currently translated to bytecode using two competing approaches: homogeneous and heterogeneous. Homogeneous translation requires boxing, and thus introduces indirect access delays. Heterogeneous translation duplicates and adapts code for each value type individually, producing more bytecode. Therefore bytecode speed and size are at odds with each other. This paper proposes a novel translation that significantly reduces the bytecode size without affecting the execution speed. The key insight is that larger value types (such as integers) can hold smaller ones (such as bytes) thus reducing the duplication necessary in heterogeneous translations. In our implementation, on the Scala compiler, we encode all primitive value types in long integers. The resulting bytecode approaches the performance of monomorphic code, matches the performance of the heterogeneous translation and obtains speedups of up to 22x over the homogeneous translation, all with modest increases in size.
Solving Ill-Posed Optimal Power Flow Problems Via Fritz-John Optimality Conditions

Optimal power flow (OPF) programs must be able to provide sound operating points for power systems under different conditions while meeting a large number of constraints. These constraints, however, either due to the operating conditions at hand or by construction, can have linearly dependent gradients, thus defining ill-behaved feasible sets. This paper analyzes the use of an alternative set of optimality conditions, derived from the Fritz-John (FJ) conditions, to represent OPF solutions in such critical cases. Results are presented for realistic test systems.
The Role of Explanatory Models in Teaching for Conceptual Change

This chapter discusses research on instruction aiming to promote conceptual change in explanatory models. Two traditional areas of research have examined the use of discrepant events and the use of analogies. These can be seen as setting up a contrast between dissonance producing and constructive strategies. I then consider studies where these two, seemingly disparate, approaches are combined successfully. This can be extended to a model evolution approach that includes many cycles of model evaluation and revision. Each revision can also utilize other contributing strategies besides dissonance promoters and analogies, expanding the image of conceptual change teaching to one that includes multiple strategies. Because it breaks learning down into small pieces, a model evolution approach holds out the possibility of enabling students to do a significant share of the reasoning in a process of co-construction with the teacher. This finer grained level of strategies promoting “smaller” learning processes from instructional research is complemented by reviewing a list of types of conceptual change--“larger” processes at a more coarse grained level from the more theoretical literature. These are two of several levels of learning processes that need to be described, and mapping the relations between them is an important future research agenda. As an example, I identify four basic roles for analogies in instruction that map to different types of conceptual change. Refining our concepts for different types of “models”, “analogies, and “conceptual change” should help us develop a more adequate theory of conceptual change instruction.
Therapeutic Effect of Topical 5-Fluorouracil in Conjunctival Squamous Carcinoma Is Associated With Changes in Matrix Metalloproteinases and Tissue Inhibitor of Metalloproteinases Expression

Purpose: To evaluate matrix metalloproteinases (MMP)-2, MMP-9, and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (TIMP)-1 expression in a case of conjunctival intraepithelial squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) treated with topical 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) chemotherapy. Methods: Clinicopathologic case report. Results: A 71-year-old male patient presented with an intraepithelial conjunctival SCC. Because of a recurrence, he was placed on topical 5-FU for 4 weeks that ultimately led to a complete resolution of the disease. Conjunctival biopsies, impression cytologies, and tear samples were taken from the mass and the contralateral healthy eye. An overexpression of MMP-2, MMP-9, and TIMP-1 was observed in the tumor by immunohistochemistry. Clinical resolution of the neoplasm obtained using topical 5-FU was accompanied by a reduction in the expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, and TIMP-1 in tears and dysplastic conjunctival epithelium. Conclusions: In our case report, we have shown that gelatinase and TIMP-1 are unregulated in conjunctival SCC and can be monitored as a marker of response to topical chemotherapy. Further studies are required to define the role of MMPs in growth and resolution of ocular tumors.
CHARACTERIZING THE MID-INFRARED EXTRAGALACTIC SKY WITH WISE AND SDSS

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has completed its all-sky survey in four channels at 3.4–22 μm, detecting hundreds of millions of objects. We merge the WISE mid-infrared data with optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and provide a phenomenological characterization of WISE extragalactic sources. WISE is most sensitive at 3.4 μm (W1) and least sensitive at 22 μm (W4). The W1 band probes massive early-type galaxies out to z ≳ 1. This is more distant than SDSS identified early-type galaxies, consistent with the fact that 28% of 3.4 μm sources have faint or no r-band counterparts (r > 22.2). In contrast, 92%–95% of 12 μm and 22 μm sources have SDSS optical counterparts with r ⩽ 22.2. WISE 3.4 μm detects 89.8% of the entire SDSS QSO catalog at S/NW1 >7σ, but only 18.9% at 22 μm with S/NW4 > 5σ. We show that WISE colors alone are effective in isolating stars (or local early-type galaxies), star-forming galaxies, and strong active galactic nuclei (AGNs)/QSOs at z ≲ 3. We highlight three major applications of WISE colors: (1) Selection of strong AGNs/QSOs at z ⩽ 3 using W1 − W2 > 0.8 and W2 < 15.2 criteria, producing a better census of this population. The surface density of these strong AGN/QSO candidates is 67.5 ± 0.14 deg−2. (2) Selection of dust-obscured, type-2 AGN/QSO candidates. We show that WISE W1 − W2 > 0.8, W2 < 15.2 combined with r − W2 > 6 (Vega) colors can be used to identify type-2 AGN candidates. The fraction of these type-2 AGN candidates is one-third of all WISE color-selected AGNs. (3) Selection of ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) at z ∼ 2 with extremely red colors, r − W4 > 14 or well-detected 22 μm sources lacking detections in the 3.4 and 4.6 μm bands. The surface density of z ∼ 2 ULIRG candidates selected with r − W4 > 14 is 0.9 ± 0.07 deg−2 at S/NW4 ⩾ 5 (the corresponding, lowest flux density of 2.5 mJy), which is consistent with that inferred from smaller area Spitzer surveys. Optical spectroscopy of a small number of these high-redshift ULIRG candidates confirms our selection, and reveals a possible trend that optically fainter or r − W4 redder candidates are at higher redshifts.
ART2 based classification of sparse high dimensional parameter sets for a simulation parameter selection assistant

This paper presents the design and creation of a simulation parameter selection assistant (SPSA) that helps modeling researchers choose meaningful values for their complex simulations, and encourages collaboration between teams searching through high dimensional parameter spaces. Proposed simulation parameters are compared to past runs using adaptive resonance theory to measure similarity with the goals of preventing repetitive exploitations of parameters and of encouraging the exploration of new regions of the parameter space. The assistant was designed to be used as part of a high performance animal disease spread simulator but is general and modular enough to be easily adapted to other simulation and search domains.
[Effect of teeth protector on dental injuries during general anesthesia].

BACKGROUND Dental injuries are the most common reason for complaints against anesthetists. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of teeth protector on dental injuries during general anesthesia. METHODS Incidence of dental injuries was evaluated retrospectively in 5,946 consecutive patients between November 1998 and October 2001. All the patients were interviewed directly at a post-anesthetic clinic. RESULTS Dental injuries were observed in 2.1% of the patients, and the injuries occurred more frequently in the patients undergoing difficult tracheal intubation. The teeth protector used in the present study was made of cellulose aceto-butylate and was produced using eruko-pressed disks molded from own teeth form. One hundred and eighty five patients (3.1%) requested teeth protectors, and none of them had their teeth injured during anesthesia. CONCLUSION Our results showed that the teeth protector could protect the teeth from dental injuries and increased the satisfaction with anesthesia. Preoperatively anesthesiologists should know the characteristics of patients' teeth and inform the patients of the risk of injury. We conclude that the custom-made protector might be useful and necessary to preserve the teeth from dental injuries during anesthesia.
Te Papa: a forum for the world? Bicultural meanings negotiated by global visitors

The purpose of this thesis is to substantiate the museum forum idea theoretically as well as empirically. I concluded my literature review with a museum forum model proposing a museological epistemology, which integrates visitor, museum, society and the global perspective. It is characterised by circular and interdependent relationships and a focal point for the reciprocal negotiation and interpretation of identities via narratives.
A comparison of neural network and fuzzy clustering techniques in segmenting magnetic resonance images of the brain

Magnetic resonance (MR) brain section images are segmented and then synthetically colored to give visual representations of the original data with three approaches: the literal and approximate fuzzy c-means unsupervised clustering algorithms, and a supervised computational neural network. Initial clinical results are presented on normal volunteers and selected patients with brain tumors surrounded by edema. Supervised and unsupervised segmentation techniques provide broadly similar results. Unsupervised fuzzy algorithms were visually observed to show better segmentation when compared with raw image data for volunteer studies. For a more complex segmentation problem with tumor/edema or cerebrospinal fluid boundary, where the tissues have similar MR relaxation behavior, inconsistency in rating among experts was observed, with fuzz-c-means approaches being slightly preferred over feedforward cascade correlation results. Various facets of both approaches, such as supervised versus unsupervised learning, time complexity, and utility for the diagnostic process, are compared.
Irregular Trend Finder: Visualization tool for analyzing time-series big data

We created a visualization tool called Irregular Trend Finder (ITF) for the VAST Challenge 2012 Mini Challenge 1. ITF is an interactive tool designed for analyzing large amounts of data with times-tamp and hierarchy structure in mind, so that a user can see the overview first, and then obtain more detailed information. We discovered the answers for the Challenge, and confirmed that overview first and then looking in detail is an efficient method to seek particular information in case of large amounts of data.
Do Ratings of Firms Converge? Implications for Strategy Research

Raters of corporations play an important role in assessing domains ranging from sustainability to corporate governance to best workplaces. Scholars increasingly rely on these ratings to test theories about corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate governance and the influence of stakeholders. Though these raters frequently develop sophisticated methodologies, we find they often diverge in their ratings of the same firm, creating uncertainty for managers and stakeholders, and also posing challenges for researchers. We document the surprising lack of convergence of social ratings for the first time using six well-established socially responsible investing (SRI) raters, with comparisons of overlap, correlations, and regression analysis. Our results suggest that scholars should interpret empirical results with caution and at least use multiple ratings schemes in studies of CSR and governance.
The Measure of Times Past: Pre-Newtonian Chronologies and the Rhetoric of Relative Time.

In this extraordinary work, Donald J. Wilcox seeks to discover an approach to narrative and history consistent with the discontinuous, relative time of the twentieth century. He shows how our B.C./A.D. system, intimately connected to Newtonian concepts of continuous, objective, and absolute time, has affected our conception and experience of the past. He demonstrates absolute time's centrality to modern historical methodologies and the problems it has created in the selection and interpretation of facts. Inspired by contemporary fiction and Einsteinian concepts of relativity, he concludes his analysis with a comparison of our system with earlier, pre-Newtonian time schemes to create a radical new critique of historical objectivity.
The challenges of assessment in a new learning culture

The role of assessment has always been crucial in education. It is a truism that assessment shapes how teachers teach and students learn. If we want to know the truth about an educational system, we have to look at the assessment practices and what qualities of students and their work that are being valued by the system. If educational reforms do not include assessment, they often fail. Changing perspectives on teaching and learning combined with new demands in society on students' knowledge and abilities are gradually reshaping learning cultures. In such contexts we also need to see assessment through new eyes. While assessment in the past has primarily been a means of certification and accountability, a much wider range of purposes of assessment are now advocated. A new vision for assessment for the new millennium integrates learning and assessment and redefines the roles of students and teachers in the assessment process. Assessment for learning is now gaining importance over assessment of learning. The keynote speaker will discuss new modes of assessment from a socio-cultural perspective, focusing on how to engage students actively in the learning process through for instance portfolios, self-assessment and peer review, but also on the dilemmas arising when formative and summative forms of assessment are mixed.
Semantic Indexing and Known Item Search Based on a Unified Model with Topic Transition Representation

We applied a generative approach to the TRECVID 2010 Semantic Indexing (SIN) and Known-Item Search (KIS) tasks, using a probabilistic network called Hierarchical Topic Trajectory Model (HTTM). It is our newly-developed model that can integrate multiple sources of potentially associated information such as video frames and texts, as well as dynamically changing high-level pieces of information such as topics. With this model, the semantic indexing and the known-item search tasks were dealt within a single uniﬁed framework. We show how it worked, and present some analysis for the SIN task.