Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Animal models of atherosclerosis and magnetic resonance imaging for monitoring plaque progression

Atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attack and stroke, is the leading cause of death in most modern countries. Preventing clinical events depends on a better understanding of the mechanism of atherosclerotic plaque destabilization. Our knowledge on the characteristics of vulnerable plaques in humans has grown past decades. Histological studies have provided a precise definition of high-risk lesions and novel imaging methods for human atherosclerotic plaque characterization have made significant progress. However the pathological mechanisms leading from stable lesions to the formation of vulnerable plaques remain uncertain and the related clinical events are unpredictable. An animal model mimicking human plaque destablization is required as well as an in vivo imaging method to assess and monitor atherosclerosis progression. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly used for in vivo assessment of atherosclerotic plaques in the human carotids. MRI provides well-characterized morphological and functional features of human atherosclerotic plaque which can be also assessed in animal models. This review summarizes the most common species used as animal models for experimental atherosclerosis, the techniques to induce atherosclerosis and to obtain vulnerable plaques, together with the role of MRI for monitoring atherosclerotic plaques in animals.
AKA-Glucose: a program for kinetic and epidemiological analysis of frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance test data using database technology.

BACKGROUND The Bergman Minimal Model enables estimation of two key indices of glucose/ insulin dynamics: glucose effectiveness and insulin sensitivity. METHODS AND RESULTS In this paper we describe AKA-Glucose, a program that combines MINMOD Millennium (minimal model analysis software) with relational database technologies. AKA-Glucose enables the fitting of individual frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance test (FSIGT) data sets to the Minimal Model and the secure storage in a dedicated database (and retrieval from) of thousands of individual subjects' demographic data, their individual FSIGT data, and each subject's parameters and indices derived from minimal model analysis. AKA-Glucose also enables the population analysis of various strata or subpopulations within the database. AKA-Glucose has all of the capabilities of MINMOD Millennium, provides Minimal Model parameter estimates that are concordant with estimates from previous MINMOD software, and allows importation of data files from earlier versions of the MINMOD software. CONCLUSIONS By combining FSIGT data fitting, population analysis, and relational database technologies, AKA-Glucose is the first minimal model software designed specifically for researchers confronted with minimal model and epidemiological analysis of large numbers of either human or animal FSIGT data sets.
Adolescents at risk for alcohol abuse demonstrate altered frontal lobe activation during Stroop performance.

BACKGROUND Children and adolescents, family history positive (FH+) for alcoholism, exhibit differences in brain structure and functional activation when compared to family history negative (FH-) counterparts. Given that frontal brain regions, and associated reciprocal connections with limbic structures, undergo the most dramatic maturational changes during adolescence, the objective of this study was to compare functional brain activation during a frontally mediated test of response inhibition in 32 adolescents separated into low-risk (FH-) and high-risk (FH+) groups. METHODS Functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) blood oxygen level-dependent data were acquired at 1.5 Tesla during performance of Stroop Color Naming, Word Reading, and Interference. Preprocessing and statistical analyses, covaried for age, were conducted in SPM99 using a search territory that included superior, middle, and inferior frontal gyri (trigone region), anterior cingulate gyrus (CG), and left and right amygdala. RESULTS Significantly greater activation in the fronto-limbic search territory was observed in FH+ relative to FH- subjects during Stroop Interference. In addition, a significant regression between brain activation and family history density was observed, with a greater density being associated with increased activation in regions including middle frontal gyrus (BA9) and CG (BA24). CONCLUSIONS These data demonstrate a significant influence of FH status on brain activation during the performance of a response inhibition task, perhaps reflecting a neurobiological vulnerability associated with FH status that may include reduced neuronal efficiency and/or recruitment of additional neuronal resources. These findings are important given that the adolescent developmental period is already associated with reduced inhibitory capacity, even prior to the onset of alcohol use.
GPU Projection of ECAS-II Segmenter for Hyperspectral Images Based on Cellular Automata

Segmentation is a key issue in the processing of multidimensional images such as those in the field of remote sensing. Most of the segmentation algorithms developed for multidimensional images begin by reducing the dimensionality of the images, thus loosing information that could be relevant in the segmentation process. Evolutionary cellular automata segmentation (ECAS-II) is an evolutionary approach that provides cellular automata-based segmenters considering all the spectral information contained in a hyperspectral image without applying any technique for dimensionality reduction. This paper presents an efficient graphics processor unit implementation of the type of segmenters produced by ECAS-II for land cover hyperspectral images. The method is evaluated over remote sensing hyperspectral images, introducing it on a spectral-spatial classification scheme based on extreme learning machines. Experiments have shown that the proposed approach achieves better accuracy results for land cover purposes than other spectral-spatial classification techniques based on segmentation.
Maturation‐dependent oligodendrocyte apoptosis caused by hyperoxia

In the immature human brain, periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) is the predominant white matter injury underlying the development of cerebral palsy. PVL has its peak incidence during a well‐defined period in human brain development (23–32 weeks postconceptional age) characterized by extensive oligodendrocyte migration and maturation. We hypothesized that the dramatic rise of oxygen tissue tension associated with mammalian birth and additional oxygen exposure of the preterm infant during intensive care may be harmful to immature oligodendrocytes (OLs). We therefore investigated the effects of hyperoxia on rat oligodendroglia cells in vitro and in vivo. Immature OLs (OLN‐93), their progenitors [preoligodendrocytes (pre‐OL)], and mature OLs were subjected to 80% hyperoxia (24–96 hr). Flow cytometry was used to assess cell death. Cell viability was measured by metabolism of 3‐(4,5‐dimethylthiazol‐2‐yl)‐2,5‐diphenyl tetrazolium (MTT). In addition, 6‐day‐old rat pups were subjected to 80% oxygen (24 hr) and then sacrificed, and their brains were processed for immunfluorescence staining. Apoptosis was detected at various stages (annexin‐V, activated caspase‐3) after 24–48 hr of incubation in 80% oxygen in pre‐ and immature OLs. Mature OLs were resistant to oxygen exposure. These results were confirmed by MTT assay. This cell death was blocked by administration of the pan‐caspase inhibitor zVAD‐fmk. Degeneration of OLs was confirmed in 7‐day‐old rat brains by positive staining for activated caspase‐3. Hyperoxia triggers maturation‐dependent apoptosis in immature and pre‐OLs and involves caspase activation. This mechanism may be relevant to the white matter injury observed in infants born preterm. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Establishment of human endometriosis-derived immortalized eutopic endometrium stromal and epithelial cell lines

Endometriosis (EM) is commonly seen in women at reproductive age and can have a significant social and psychological impact. However, reliable, simple in vitro models of endometriosis are not common. To establish human EM-derived immortalized cell lines, we transfected cells from eutopic and ectopic endometria of endometriosis patients with the plasmid PCD2SV40T. The cells were then screened with G418, and monoclonal cells were isolated by the limited dilution method. Subclones were evaluated by karyotype analysis, immunocytochemistry, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, cell doubling time, and nude mice implantation. The established immortalized eutopic stromal cell line was named hEM15A, and the ectopic epithelial cell line was named hEM5B2. hEM15A cells exhibited the characteristics of endometrium stromal cells, and no abnormalities in chromosome structure or number were observed. hEM5B2 cells exhibited the characteristics of epithelial cells, but had a polyploid karyotype. Both of these cell lines could be passaged continuously. No tumourigenicity was observed. hEM15A is the first immortalized EM-derived eutopic endometrium stromal cell line, and hEM5B2 is an immortalized ectopic endometrium epithelial cell line from Asian EM tissues. These cells could facilitate studies on the aetiology, molecular mechanisms, and therapeutic models of EM.
Leadership promotion of public values : public service motivation as a leadership strategy in the public sector

Both leadership and public service motivation are important issues in contemporary public administration. By connecting these issues, the aim of this paper is to assess the impact of transformational leadership behaviour (promoting public values) on public service motivation development. Two hypotheses were tested with a dataset of 3507 state civil servants in Belgium. The analysis shows that a positive relation exists, and that it is moderated by a set of basic psychological needs (security, autonomy, competence and relatedness).
Internal Governance Mechanisms and Commercial Performance of Tunisian Financial Institutions

Purpose: Financial institutions are always in touch with customers, therefore, many support for commercial performance needs to be addressed in order to be more competitive. Then, this research is an attempt to present some aspects of this performance. Indeed, the performance of companies represents a very varied field of study. And, through its mechanisms, governance is a tool for improving performance. The purpose of this article is to inspect the effects of internal governance mechanisms on the commercial performance of Tunisian financial institutions. Result: Data econometrics is used to study a sample of 34 financial institutions. We find that the results dealing with the impact of governance on commercial performance are mixed. Some mechanisms have a positive effect while others have a negative effect. Only the variables “effectiveness of the board, confidence, organizational culture and importanceof the existence of an auditing” has positively and significantly affected the commercial performance of Tunisian financial institutions. On the other hand, the variable “incentive system of managers by the remuneration” negatively affects this performance. Originality/value: Theoretically, the commercial performance of Tunisian financial institutions is an extension and a supplement to the literature on financial institutions. This article is, therefore, a source of ideas and information on the Tunisian financial sector. And, empirically, this study is an attempt to assess the existing association between commercial performance and internal governance mechanisms in the Tunisian financial sector.
A Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Model for Human Activity Recognition

There are two key issues in human activity recognition: spatial dependencies and temporal dependencies. Most recent methods focus on only one of them, and thus do not have sufficient descriptive power to recognize complex activity. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical spatio-temporal model (HSTM) to solve the problem by modeling spatial and temporal constraints simultaneously. The new HSTM is a two-layer hidden conditional random field (HCRF), where the bottom-layer HCRF aims at describing spatial relations in each frame and learning more discriminative representations, and the top-layer HCRF utilizes these high-level features to characterize temporal relations in the whole video sequence. The new HSTM takes advantage of the bottom layer as the building blocks for the top layer and it aggregates evidence from local to global level. A novel learning algorithm is derived to train all model parameters efficiently and its effectiveness is validated theoretically. Experimental results show that the HSTM can successfully classify human activities with higher accuracies on single-person actions (UCF) than other existing methods. More importantly, the HSTM also achieves superior performance on more practical interactions, including human–human interactional activities (UT-Interaction, BIT-Interaction, and CASIA) and human–object interactional activities (Gupta video dataset).
Electron Microscopy of Tick-borne Fever Agent in Bovine and Ovine Phagocytizing Leukocytes

Tuomi, Jaakko (University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland), and C. -H. von Bonsdorff. Electron microscopy of tick-borne fever agent in bovine and ovine phagocytizing leukocytes. J. Bacteriol. 92:1478–1492. 1966. —Two strains of tick-borne fever agent, one more virulent to cattle and the other more virulent to sheep, were studied in thin sections of leukocyte concentrates of an affected calf and sheep, respectively. The calf was partially immune from previous infections. To obtain leukocyte concentrate, erythrocytes were lysed by ammonium chloride solution. Glutaraldehyde fixation and osmium tetroxide postfixation were used. Agent particles were detected in neutrophil and eosinophil granulocytes (occasionally also in monocytes) inside cytoplasmic vacuoles. The preparation from the sheep revealed that the tick-borne fever agent has a life cycle; it appeared as large particles, intermediate forms, and small particles. In the preparation from the calf, only large particles were observed, probably as a result of partial immunity. Large particles had a cell wall, plasma membrane, cytoplasm with ribosome-like granules, and nucleoid. They were often elongated, bearing closer resemblance to rickettsiae than to psittacosis-lymphogranuloma-trachoma (PLT) agents. The arrangement of large particles in vacuoles was variable and provided an explanation for the different forms of light microscopic tick-borne fever bodies. The intermediate forms and small particles resembled those of PLT organisms. Release of particles occurred by rupture of inclusions. In the calf also extrusion of whole inclusions was observed. This phenomenon was thought to reflect increased resistance of the cells. The large particle was considered to be the usual infective form of the agent. A middle-ground position of the agent between the genus Rickettsia and the PLT group is suggested.
The 2015-2017 Policy Changes to the Means-Tests of Australian Age Pension: Implication to Decisions in Retirement

The Australian Government uses the means-test as a way of managing the pension budget. Changes in Age Pension policy impose difficulties in retirement modelling due to policy risk, but any major changes tend to be `grandfathered' meaning that current retirees are exempt from the new changes. In 2015, two important changes were made in regards to allocated pension accounts -- the income means-test is now based on deemed income rather than account withdrawals, and the income-test deduction no longer applies. We examine the implications of the new changes in regards to optimal decisions for consumption, investment, and housing. We account for regulatory minimum withdrawal rules that are imposed by regulations on allocated pension accounts, as well as the 2017 asset-test rebalancing. The new policy changes are modelled in a utility maximizing lifecycle model and solved as an optimal stochastic control problem. We find that the new rules decrease the benefits from planning the consumption in relation to the means-test, while the housing allocation increases slightly in order to receive additional Age Pension. The difference in optimal drawdown between the old and new policy are only noticeable early in retirement until regulatory minimum withdrawal rates are enforced. However, the amount of extra Age Pension received for many households is now significantly different due to the new deeming income rules, which benefit slightly wealthier households who previously would receive no Age Pension due to the income-test and minimum withdrawals.
Toxicity of Seven Herbicides to the Three Cyanobacteria Anabaena flos-aquae , Microcystis flos-aquae and Mirocystis aeruginosa

The toxicity of 7 herbicides to the three cyanobacteria was tested in this work. The results indicated that: (1) There was a highly significant relationship between dried weight or chlorophyll-a and OD680nm for tested cyanobacteria; (2) the toxicity of the tested herbicides with the order from high to low was: photosynthesis-inhibiting > ACCase inhibitor > protox inhibiting herbicides; (3) the sensitivity of various species exposed to cyanazine, diclofop, prometryn, simazine and simetryn varied by over one order of magnitude. The decreasing order of sensitivity of cyanobacteria to the selected herbicides was: M. Flosaquae > M. Aeruginosa > A. flos-aquae. Cyanobacteria can produce toxins including hepatotoxins e.g. microcystins and endotoxins e.g. lipopolysaccharides. Therefore, the research on comparing the differential sensitivity of cyanobacteria and green algae is of important scientific significance and realistic value
Sleep–wake up scheduling with probabilistic coverage model in sensor networks1

Energy optimisation is one of the important issues in the research of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In the application of monitoring, a large number of sensors are scattered uniformly to cover a collection of points of interest (PoIs) distributed randomly in the monitored area. Since the energy of battery-powered sensor is limited in WSNs, sensors are scheduled to wake up in a large-scale sensor network application. In this paper, we consider how to reduce the energy consumption and prolong the lifetime of WSNs through wake-up scheduling with probabilistic sensing model in the large-scale application of monitoring. To extend the lifetime of sensor network, we need to balance the energy consumption of sensors so that there will not be too much redundant energy in some sensors before the WSN terminates. The detection probability and false alarm probability are taken into consideration to achieve a better performance and reveal the real sensing process which is characterised in the probabilistic sensing model. Data fusion is also introduced to utilise information of sensors so that a PoI in the monitored area may be covered by multiple sensors collaboratively, which will decrease the number of sensors that cover the monitored region. Based on the probabilistic model and data fusion, minimum weight probabilistic coverage problem is formulated in this paper. We also propose a greedy method and modified genetic algorithm based on the greedy method to address the problem. Simulation experiments are conducted to demonstrate the advantages of our proposed algorithms over existing work.
Religion and Ratio Analysis: Towards an Islamic Corporate Liquidity Measure

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on the effect of religion on corporate decision making and financial reporting. Financial statement analytical tools could violate several commands of Islamic law. Specifically, traditional liquidity ratios imply undervaluation, uncertainty, and interest bearing aspects that are strictly prohibited in Islamic law. We propose an Islamic-compliant measure of corporate liquidity. In order to validate our proposed ratio as a measure of corporate liquidity, we incorporate it in the traditional corporate bankruptcy prediction models. Our measure significantly improves the accuracy of the corporate bankruptcy prediction models of Altman (1968) Z-score and Ohlson (1980).
Impact of Fiscal Policy Shocks on the Indian Economy

The prime objective of this study is to analysis the impact of fiscal policy on the economy of India. For this purpose, we have taken the data from 1981 to 2010 and applied the Johansen co integration test, error correction model and variance decomposition model. Our results are showing that there is long run association between GDP and other variables. The prime objective of the fiscal policy is to deal with taxations and monetary policy is helpful to control the money supply. Consequently, Fiscal policy is the way of increase or decrease the inflation. Fiscal policy is the tool to control the fiscal deficit. To run the economy, there is need of proper fiscal policy. Our paper is trying to show that fiscal policy has always long run phenomena on the growth of the economy.
Predictive Nomogram of RAGE Genetic Polymorphisms and Metabolic Risk Factors for Myocardial Infarction Risk in a Han Chinese Population

We investigated the association of 4 well-characterized polymorphisms in receptor for the advanced glycation end-product (RAGE) gene with myocardial infarction (MI) risk and the changes in metabolic risk factors among 717/612 patients/controls, with the aim of constructing a predictive nomogram. The genotype/allele distributions differed significantly between the 2 groups for T-429C (P genotype/allele = .004/.001) and G1704T (P < .001/.001). T-429C was significantly associated with MI risk, especially under a recessive model (adjusted odds ratio: 2.24, 95% confidence interval: 1.33-3.79, P = .003). For G1704T, significance was detected under additive (1.37; 1.12-1.67; P = .002) and recessive (3.86; 2.27-6.57; P < .001) models. There were significant differences in blood pressure and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) across T-429C genotypes and in total cholesterol and LDL-C across G1704T genotypes. The overall best multifactor dimensionality reduction model included dyslipidemia, G1704T, and T-429C. Further predictive nomogram on 2 significant polymorphisms, blood pressure and lipids, showed a better predictive capability (concordance index = 0.716, P < .001). Altogether, we identified 2 polymorphisms of RAGE, T-429C and G1704T, which interacted with metabolic risk factors associated with the occurrence of MI. We also constructed a genetic–metabolic nomogram that can better predict MI risk.
Modeling ecohydrological dynamics of smallholder strategies for food production in dryland agricultural systems

In dryland environments, characterized by low and frequently variable rainfall, smallholder farmers must take crop water sensitivity into account along with other characteristics like seed availability and market price when deciding what to plant. In this paper we use the results of surveys conducted among smallholders located near Mount Kenya to identify clusters of farmers devoting different fractions of their land to subsistence and market crops. Additionally, we explore the tradeoffs between water-insensitive but low-value subsistence crops and a water-sensitive but high-value market crop using a numerical model that simulates soil moisture dynamics and crop production over multiple growing seasons. The cluster analysis shows that most farmers prefer to plant either only subsistence crops or only market crops, with a minority choosing to plant substantial fractions of both. The model output suggests that the value a farmer places on a successful growing season, a measure of risk aversion, plays a large role in whether the farmer chooses a subsistence or market crop strategy. Furthermore, access to irrigation, makes market crops more appealing, even to very risk-averse farmers. We then conclude that the observed clustering may result from different levels of risk aversion and access to irrigation.