Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pathways and processes of risk in associations among maternal antisocial personality symptoms, interparental aggression, and preschooler's psychopathology

Abstract Two studies examined the nature and processes underlying the joint role of interparental aggression and maternal antisocial personality as predictors of children's disruptive behavior problems. Participants for both studies included a high-risk sample of 201 mothers and their 2-year-old children in a longitudinal, multimethod design. Addressing the form of the interplay between interparental aggression and maternal antisocial personality as risk factors for concurrent and prospective levels of child disruptive problems, the Study 1 findings indicated that maternal antisocial personality was a predictor of the initial levels of preschooler's disruptive problems independent of the effects of interparental violence, comorbid forms of maternal psychopathology, and socioeconomic factors. In attesting to the salience of interparental aggression in the lives of young children, latent difference score analyses further revealed that interparental aggression mediated the link between maternal antisocial personality and subsequent changes in child disruptive problems over a 1-year period. To identify the family mechanisms that account for the two forms of intergenerational transmission of disruptive problems identified in Study 1, Study 2 explored the role of children's difficult temperament, emotional reactivity to interparental conflict, adrenocortical reactivity in a challenging parent–child task, and experiences with maternal parenting as mediating processes. Analyses identified child emotional reactivity to conflict and maternal unresponsiveness as mediators in pathways between interparental aggression and preschooler's disruptive problems. The findings further supported the role of blunted adrenocortical reactivity as an allostatic mediator of the associations between parental unresponsiveness and child disruptive problems.
Effectiveness of Business Innovation in Emerging Economies; Exploitation of Relative Profit Growth Model

The issues of management and optimization of business innovative effort seem to be of vital importance in the contemporary economics, especially in the period of global economic slowdown. The problem of optimal allocation of limited resources allocated to various categories of innovative effort at the firm level seems to be of paramount importance for emerging and catching up economies in the times of knowledge based economy. The main purpose of the research is to deepen the level of understanding of the factors affecting the effectiveness of business innovation effort in the case of This paper is the continuation of research work aiming to assess, emerging economies. on the basis of estimation of transformation of Cobb-Douglas production function the effectiveness of various types of business innovation expenditures of manufacturing enterprises located in Poland. The survey is based on relatively large data basis obtained from public statistics (The Central Statistical Office). The econometric estimations are based on the total sample of maximum 909 firms active in the field of R&D over the observed 10 year period between 2000 and 2009. The estimations are based on the relative EBITD growth as dependent variable. The estimations were carried out on the basis of five subsamples of firms active in the field of R&D subject to increasing R&D regularity. Previous estimations based on relative sales growth as the dependent variable are used as reference for formulating conclusions. Independent variables including various categories of innovation expenditure plus non innovative capital expenditure relative to sales and relative employment growth were lagged from 0 to 6 years. The study revealed differences in terms of the number of statistically significant independent variables among the examined subsamples. In comparison with previous research, the current survey revealed that relative EBITD growth as the dependent variable is to the smaller extent explained by various categories of innovation expenditure in comparison to the model based on relative sales growth. The study showed positive and constant, regardless of R&D regularity, impact of business R&D effort over relative EBITD growth.
Decreasing Net Primary Productivity in Response to Urbanization in Liaoning Province, China

Regional ecosystems have been greatly affected by the rapid expansion of urban areas. In order to explore the impact of land use change on net primary productivity (NPP) in rapidly developing cities during the current urbanization process, we quantified land use change in Liaoning province between 2000 and 2010 using net primary productivity as an indicator of ecosystem productivity and health. The Carnegie–Ames–Stanford Approach model was used to estimate NPP by region and land use. We used a unit circle-based evaluation model to quantify local urbanization effects on NPP around eight representative cities. The dominant land use types were farmland, woodland and urban, with urban rapidly replacing farmland. Mean annual NPP and total NPP decreased faster from 2005 to 2010 than from 2000 to 2005, reflecting increasing urbanization rates. The eastern, primarily woodland part of Liaoning province had the greatest reduction in NPP, while the western part, which was primarily farmland and grassland, had the lowest reduction.
Pharmacological manipulation of inflammation resolution during spontaneously resolving tissue neutrophilia in the zebrafish

Zebraﬁsh are a unique model for pharmacological manipulation of physiological processes such as inﬂammation; they are small and permeable to many small molecular compounds, and being transparent, they permit the visualization and quantitation of the inﬂammatory response by observation of transgenically labeled inﬂammatory cell populations. Using a transgenic line speciﬁcally labeling neutrophils in vivo (mpx:GFP), we studied the effects of a range of pharmacological agents on the resolution of inﬂammation in vivo. These agents were selected for their ability to modulate neutrophil function and lifespan in human neutrophils in vitro. Agents delaying neutrophil apoptosis (LPS, dbcAMP, and several caspase inhibitors) all lead to a delay in resolution of neutrophilic inﬂammation. Recip-rocally, pyocyanin and roscovitine (inducers of neutrophil apoptosis) lead to reduced neutrophil numbers. The occurrence of apoptosis was observed by time-lapse analysis and conﬁrmed by dual staining for neutrophil-speciﬁc mpx activity (TSA staining) and an apoptotic marker (TUNEL). During inﬂammation, macrophages follow neutrophils into the inﬂamed site, and TUNEL/TSA dual-positive material can be demonstrated within macrophages, consistent with their uptake of apoptotic neutrophils. This model has several advantages over mammalian models and lends itself to the study of pharmaceutical agents modulating inﬂammation. J. Leukoc. Biol. 87: 203–212; 2010. between two groups and ANOVA appropriate adjustment) for other data.
In vitro studies of activity of voriconazole (UK-109,496), a new triazole antifungal agent, against emerging and less-common mold pathogens

The in vitro activity of voriconazole was compared with that of itraconazole. Eighty-six isolates of pathogenic molds belonging to 23 species were tested by an agar dilution method in High Resolution medium. Voriconazole was more active than itraconazole against a number of hyaline molds, including several Fusarium spp. and Scedosporium prolificans. Voriconazole and itraconazole showed comparable good activity against several hyaline molds, including Penicillium marneffei and Scedosporium apiospermum, and a number of dematiaceous molds, including Bipolaris australiensis, Cladophialophora bantiana, several Exophiala spp. , and several Fonsecaea spp. Our results suggest that voriconazole could be effective against a wide range of mold infections in humans.
Intrapleural low-dose silver nitrate elicits more pleural inflammation and less systemic inflammation than low-dose talc.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Several systemic effects have been described after talc pleurodesis. The aim of this study was to assess the systemic response induced by low, nonpleurodesis-inducing doses of talc and silver nitrate in an experimental model in rabbits. DESIGN Groups of six rabbits were injected intrapleurally with talc, 100 mg/kg or 400 mg/kg, and silver nitrate, 0.1% or 0.5%. After 6, 24, or 48 h, samples of blood and pleural fluid were collected and assayed for leukocytes, percentage of neutrophils, lactate dehydrogenase, interleukin-8, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) levels. Preinjection blood samples were used as normal blood controls. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Silver nitrate 0.1% induced a more intense pleural inflammation than that produced by talc 100 mg/kg. In contrast, talc 100 mg/kg induced a more pronounced acute systemic response with higher values of WBCs and neutrophils, whereas silver nitrate 0.1% produced no significant increases in leukocytes or neutrophils. The serum interleukin-8 and VEGF levels increased in all groups, and decreased with time only in the silver nitrate 0.1% group. The highest serum VEGF levels were observed in the talc 100 mg/kg group. CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, 0.1% silver nitrate produced an intense pleural inflammatory response with a less evident systemic response in comparison to 0.5% silver nitrate and talc 100 mg/kg or 400 mg/kg.
The persistence of socially instructed threat: two threat-of-shock studies.

Learning to anticipate threat is crucial in guiding protective behavior. In classical conditioning, single trial learning can result in long-lasting fear associations. To examine whether threat learned through social communication is equally stable, an instructed fear paradigm was used with two repeated sessions on 1 day (Study 1; N = 43) and with separate sessions on 3 consecutive days (Study 2; N = 30). Startle EMG, skin conductance level (SCL), and self-report data were recorded during alternating periods of instructed threat and safety. Within 1 day, threat-potentiated startle was present across sessions but threat-enhanced SCL decreased (Study 1). Across days, threat effects subsided with different timing for startle EMG, SCL, and self-report (Study 2). The present findings are a laboratory analog for the persistence of socially transmitted fear, which can be amazingly resistant to extinction (e.g., in specific phobias) even in the absence of aversive experiences.
DualAcE: fine-grained dual access control enforcement with multi-privacy guarantee in DaaS

Database as a service DaaS, a new paradigm of software as a service based on cloud computing, is attracting more and more enterprises data owners to delegate their database management to a professional third party database service provider such as Amazon Web Services and Rackspace. Data owners in DaaS lose control of their sensitive data, which are stored in the delegated database and managed by the untrusted database service provider. Therefore, many encryption-based approaches including attribute-based encryption were proposed to implement fine-grained access control in DaaS scenarios. However, most of the proposed access control enforcement approaches only support one or two of the following privacy guarantees: data privacy, policy privacy and key privacy. In this paper, we first propose a novel concept of DualAcE: a flexible fine-grained dual access control enforcement mechanism in DaaS by efficiently combining the ciphertext-policy attribute-set-based encryption with database service provider re-encryption into a DaaS paradigm. The proposed mechanism has implemented dual access control enforcement with multi-privacy guarantee: data privacy in delegated database, policy privacy in delegated authorization table and key privacy in key distribution process.We describe the security and efficiency analysis through cryptography theory and experimental results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Investigating the Contribution of the Phosphate Transport Pathway to Arsenic Accumulation in Rice1[W]

Arsenic (As) accumulation in rice (Oryza sativa) may pose a significant health risk to consumers. Plants take up different As species using various pathways. Here, we investigated the contribution of the phosphate (Pi) transport pathway to As accumulation in rice grown hydroponically or under flooded soil conditions. In hydroponic experiments, a rice mutant defective in OsPHF1 (for phosphate transporter traffic facilitator1) lost much of the ability to take up Pi and arsenate and to transport them from roots to shoots, whereas transgenic rice overexpressing either the Pi transporter OsPht1;8 (OsPT8) or the transcription factor OsPHR2 (for phosphate starvation response2) had enhanced abilities of Pi and arsenate uptake and translocation. OsPT8 was found to have a high affinity for both Pi and arsenate, and its overexpression increased the maximum influx by 3- to 5-fold. In arsenate-treated plants, both arsenate and arsenite were detected in the xylem sap, with the proportion of the latter increasing with the exposure time. Under the flooded soil conditions, the phf1 mutant took up less Pi whereas the overexpression lines took up more Pi. But there were no similar effects on As accumulation and distribution. Rice grain contained predominantly dimethylarsinic acid and arsenite, with arsenate being a minor species. These results suggest that the Pi transport pathway contributed little to As uptake and transport to grain in rice plants grown in flooded soil. Transgenic approaches to enhance Pi acquisition from paddy soil through the overexpression of Pi transporters may not increase As accumulation in rice grain.
Population Migration Using Dominance in Multi-population Cultural Algorithms

In this study we introduce a new method to enable the migration of individuals from one population to another using the concept of dominance in Multi-Population Cultural Algorithms (MPCA's). The MPCA's artificial population comprises of agents that belong to a certain sub-population. Multiple sub-populations are generated, each running its own Cultural Algorithm (CA). In this work we create a dominance-MPCA (D-MPCA) with a network of populations that implements a dominance strategy. We hypothesize that the evolutionary advantage of dominance can help improve the performance of MPCA in general optimization problems. The Sphere function from the CEC 2013 benchmark optimization functions is used to calculate the fitness value of the individuals. We observe how the populations adapt to the changes. Preliminary results show improved performance in our proposed D-MPCA over traditional MPCA.
Phosphatidic Acid (PA)-preferring Phospholipase A1 Regulates Mitochondrial Dynamics*

Background: Phosphatidic acid (PA) is involved in membrane dynamics. Results: PA-preferring phospholipase A1 (PA-PLA1) affects mitochondrial morphology in an activity-dependent manner. Gene disruption of PA-PLA1 in mice causes sperm malformation due to mitochondrial organization defects. Conclusion: PA-PLA1 regulates mitochondrial dynamics. Significance: We demonstrate an in vivo function of PA-PLA1 and suggest a possible mechanism of PA regulation of the mitochondrial membrane. Recent studies have suggested that phosphatidic acid (PA), a cone-shaped phospholipid that can generate negative curvature of lipid membranes, participates in mitochondrial fusion. However, precise mechanisms underling the production and consumption of PA on the mitochondrial surface are not fully understood. Phosphatidic acid-preferring phospholipase A1 (PA-PLA1)/DDHD1 is the first identified intracellular phospholipase A1 and preferentially hydrolyzes PA in vitro. Its cellular and physiological functions have not been elucidated. In this study, we show that PA-PLA1 regulates mitochondrial dynamics. PA-PLA1, when ectopically expressed in HeLa cells, induced mitochondrial fragmentation, whereas its depletion caused mitochondrial elongation. The effects of PA-PLA1 on mitochondrial morphology appear to counteract those of MitoPLD, a mitochondrion-localized phospholipase D that produces PA from cardiolipin. Consistent with high levels of expression of PA-PLA1 in testis, PA-PLA1 knock-out mice have a defect in sperm formation. In PA-PLA1-deficient sperm, the mitochondrial structure is disorganized, and an abnormal gap structure exists between the middle and principal pieces. A flagellum is bent at that position, leading to a loss of motility. Our results suggest a possible mechanism of PA regulation of the mitochondrial membrane and demonstrate an in vivo function of PA-PLA1 in the organization of mitochondria during spermiogenesis.
Neonatal Asphyxia Induces the Nitration of Cardiac Myosin Light Chain 2 That is Associated with Cardiac Systolic Dysfunction

Hypoxia followed by reoxygenation (H-R) observed during perinatal asphyxia is a serious complication with high mortality and morbidity rates that may cause adverse cardiovascular effects in neonates. Our aim was to determine if oxidative stress related to H-R induces peroxynitrite-dependent modifications of the cardiac contractile protein, myosin regulatory light chain 2 (MLC2), and whether this is associated with development of cardiac systolic dysfunction. Twelve newborn piglets were acutely instrumented for hemodynamic monitoring and randomized to a control group ventilated with only atmospheric air or to the H-R study group exposed to alveolar normocapnic hypoxia followed by reoxygenation. Afterward, animals were euthanized, and the hearts were harvested for biochemical analyses. Systolic function as well as cardiac MLC2 levels decreased in H-R animals, whereas nitrates and nitrotyrosine levels increased. Negative correlations between nitrates, nitrotyrosine, and MLC2 levels were observed. Moreover, H-R induced nitration of two tyrosine residues within the MLC2 protein. Similarly, in vitro exposure of MLC2 to peroxynitrite resulted in the nitration of tyrosine, which increased the susceptibility of MLC2 to subsequent degradation by matrix metalloproteinase 2. Substitution of this tyrosine with phenylalanine prevented the matrix metalloproteinase 2-dependent degradation of MLC2. In addition, a large decrease in MLC2 phosphorylation caused by H-R was observed. Oxidative stress related to asphyxia induces nitration of cardiac MLC2 protein and thus increases its degradation. This and a large decrease in MLC2 phosphorylation contribute to the development of systolic dysfunction. Inhibition of MLC2 nitration and/or direct inhibition of its degradation by MMP-2 could be potential therapeutic targets aiming at reduction of myocardial damage during resuscitation of asphyxiated newborns.
Clinical Trial Design and Outcomes in Patients with Severe Sepsis

Severe sepsis is common, frequently fatal, and expensive. Many factors related to the pathogenesis of severe sepsis have made it difficult to effectively design clinical trials for the management of this disease. Hence, multiple trials of compounds for the treatment of severe sepsis have yielded largely negative results, except in small subsets of patients. This review provides a synopsis of the complex nature of sepsis and the problems associated with sepsis trials. Emphasis is placed on the difficulties in evaluating investigational agents in patients with severe sepsis because of the heterogeneity of the disorder, lack of correlation between animal and human models, the complexity of the insult and the host reaction, and the interaction between inflammation and coagulation in severe sepsis. Additionally, positive results from trials of steroids, intensive insulin therapy, and activated protein C (drotrecogin alfa [activated]) will be discussed. Because drotrecogin alfa (activated) is the only Food and Drug Administration-approved therapy for severe sepsis, the Phase 3 Protein C Worldwide Evaluation in Severe Sepsis (PROWESS) trial results will be discussed in detail to help define a model for further clinical trials on severe sepsis.
Procedural sedation and analgesia in a Canadian adult tertiary care emergency department: a case series.

OBJECTIVES To examine the safety of emergency department (ED) procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) and the patterns of use of pharmacologic agents at a Canadian adult teaching hospital. METHODS Retrospective analysis of the PSA records of 979 patients, treated between Aug. 1, 2004, and July 31, 2005, with descriptive statistical analysis. This represents an inclusive consecutive case series of all PSAs performed during the study period. RESULTS Hypotension (systolic blood pressure < or = 85 mm Hg) was documented during PSA in 13 of 979 patients (1.3%; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.3%-2.3%), and desaturation (SaO2 < or = 90) in 14 of 979 (1.4%; Cl 0.1%-2.7%). No cases of aspiration, endotracheal intubation or death were recorded. The most common medication used was fentanyl (94.0% of cases), followed by propofol (61.2%), midazolam (42.5%) and then ketamine (2.7%). The most frequently used 2-medication combinations were propofol and fentanyl (P/F) followed by midazolam and fentanyl (M/F), used with similar frequencies 58.1% (569/979) and 41.0% (401/979) respectively. There was no significant difference in the incidence of hypotension or desaturation between the P/F and M/F treated groups. In these patients, 9.1% (90/979) of patients received more than 2 different drugs. CONCLUSIONS Adverse events during ED PSA are rare and of doubtful clinical significance. Propofol/fentanyl and midazolam/fentanyl are used safely, and at similar frequencies for ED PSA in this tertiary hospital case series. The use of ketamine for adult PSA is unusual in our facility.
At-Speed SEE Testing of RHBD Embedded SRAMs

We describe a test structure architecture that allows at-speed Single Event Effects (SEE) testing on embedded memory arrays. The at-speed test structure enables identification of Multiple Cell Upsets (MCU), Multiple Bit Upsets (MBU), persistent errors and transient errors. Error Detection and Correction (EDAC) can reduce the residual error rate due to SEU by multiple orders of magnitude. Consequently, careful testing of the at-speed test structure is essential to detect and quantify the risk of rare, uncorrectable MBU.
Adaptive robust control of mobile satellite communication system with disturbance and model uncertainties

The tracking and stabilizing control of a typical ship-mounted mobile satellite communication system (MSCS) is studied in this paper. Severe parametric uncertainties and uncertain nonlinearities exist in the dynamic model of the MSCS. Therefore, a discontinuous projection-based desired compensation adaptive robust control (DCARC) strategy is adopted to compensate for both the parametric uncertainties and the uncertain nonlinearities to achieve precise posture trajectory tracking control. The resulting controller accurately tracks the desired posture and effectively handles the effects of various parameter variations and the hard-to-model nonlinearities. The designed DCARC controller and other three controllers are tested in the comparative simulations under three different situations. The simulation results show the tracking and stabilizing validity of the proposed controller.