Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The emerging role of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species in redox biology and some implications for plasma applications to medicine and biology

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the closely related reactive nitrogen species (RNS) are often generated in applications of atmospheric pressure plasmas intended for biomedical purposes. These species are also central players in what is sometimes referred to as ‘redox’ or oxidation–reduction biology. Oxidation–reduction biochemistry is fundamental to all of aerobic biology. ROS and RNS are perhaps best known as disease-associated agents, implicated in diabetes, cancer, heart and lung disease, autoimmune disease and a host of other maladies including ageing and various infectious diseases. These species are also known to play active roles in the immune systems of both animals and plants and are key signalling molecules, among many other important roles. Indeed, the latest research has shown that ROS/RNS play a much more complex and nuanced role in health and ageing than previously thought. Some of the most potentially profound therapeutic roles played by ROS and RNS in various medical interventions have emerged only in the last several years. Recent research suggests that ROS/RNS are significant and perhaps even central actors in the actions of antimicrobial and anti-parasite drugs, cancer therapies, wound healing therapies and therapies involving the cardiovascular system. Understanding the ways ROS/RNS act in established therapies may help guide future efforts in exploiting novel plasma medical therapies. The importance of ROS and RNS to plant biology has been relatively little appreciated in the plasma biomedicine community, but these species are just as important in plants. It appears that there are opportunities for useful applications of plasmas in this area as well.
Comparison of totally occlusive nasal pack, internal nasal splint, and transseptal suture technique after septoplasty in terms of immediate respiratory distress related to anesthesia and surgical complications

Abstract Conclusion: The patients who underwent septoplasty with bilateral totally occlusive nasal packing had an increased risk of experiencing respiratory distress (RD). Objective: To compare the immediate RD rates during recovery from anesthesia and surgical complications of totally occlusive nasal pack, internal nasal splint, and transseptal suture technique. Methods: A total of 150 patients were assigned to one of three groups according to the technique utilized following septoplasty: transseptal suturing, internal nasal splint, or Merocel (nasal dressing without airway). To determine RD related to anesthesia in the operating theatre, the criterion was defined as any unanticipated hypoxemia, hypoventilation or upper airway obstruction (stridor or laryngospasm) requiring an active and specific intervention. Postoperative hemorrhage, infection, synechia formation, and septal perforation were evaluated. Results: Patients in the Merocel group were 3.6 times more likely to have RD than patients in the transseptal suture and internal nasal splint groups. Also, patients who smoked had an increased risk of RD during the recovery phase of anesthesia after the septoplasty. In addition, all three techniques resulted in similar complication rates after septoplasty, with the exception of minor hemorrhage, which had a significantly higher rate in the transseptal suture group.
Architecture and circuit techniques for a 1.1-GHz 16-kb reconfigurable memory in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

This paper presents the architecture and circuit techniques for a reconfigurable SRAM building block. The memory block can emulate many memory structures including a cache tag or data array, a FIFO, and a simple scratchpad memory. We choose the block size based on the optimal partition size for large SRAM structures, use self-resetting and replica timing circuit techniques, and add flexible status bits and a few hardwired functional blocks to support reconfigurability. A 16-kb prototype design fabricated in a 0.18 /spl mu/m technology cycles at 1.1 GHz at the nominal 1.8 V supply and room temperature. The additional logic used for reconfigurability consumes 32 % of the area and 23 % of the power of the memory block. We project that these overhead percentages would fall below 15% and 10%, respectively, for a 64-kb memory.
Constructing and communicating an ethical consumer identity: A Social Identity Approach

In recent years the adoption of ethical criteria when making consumer decisions has gained increasing popularity and has been studied as a way of moving towards a more sustainable consumption–production paradigm. Much research has focused on what motivates people to engage in ethical consumer behaviours considered as the expression of an ethical self. However, there is a limited understanding of the construction and communication of these ethical selves. By focusing on how members of Spanish “Responsible Consumption Cooperatives” construct and communicate their ethical identities, this study sheds light on the underlying social psychological processes of ethical consumer behaviour from a Social Identity Approach. Findings from the multi-method qualitative study reveal how consumers negotiate their perceptions of ethics and respective behaviours through the construction and identification of in-groups and out-groups and communicate their shared social identity through different consumption practices, such as the deliberate avoidance of brands/symbols that embody the values of the consumerist society.
Not for the Timid: On the Impact of Aggressive Over-booking in the Cloud

To lower hosting costs and service prices, database-as-a-service (DBaaS) providers strive to maximize cluster utilization without negatively affecting their users' service experience. Some of the most effective approaches for increasing service efficiency result in the over-booking of the cluster with user databases. For instance, one approach is to reclaim cluster capacity from a database when it is idle, temporarily re-using the capacity for some other purpose, and over-booking the cluster's resources. Such approaches are largely driven by policies that determine when it is prudent to temporarily reclaim capacity from an idle database. In this paper, we examine policies that inherently tune the system's idle sensitivity. Increased sensitivity to idleness leads to aggressive over-booking while the converse leads to conservative reclamation and lower utilization levels. Aggressive over-booking also incurs a "reserve" capacity cost (for when we suddenly "owe" capacity to previously idle databases.) We answer these key questions in this paper: (1) how to find a "good" resource reclamation policy for a given DBaaS cluster of users; and (2) how to forecast the needed near-term reserve capacity. To help us answer these questions, we used production user activity traces from Azure SQL DB and built models of an over-booking mechanism. We show that choosing the right policy can substantially boost the efficiency of the service, facilitating lower service prices via lower amortized infrastructure costs.
The Myopic-Ubpy-Hrs nexus enables endosomal recycling of Frizzled

Mop regulates endosomal localization and recycling of Frizzled. Hrs is ubiquitinated and degraded in the absence of Mop. Mop aids in the maintenance of Ubpy to control the ubiquitin homeostasis of Hrs. Mop and Ubpy can rescue each other. Mop’s function is not required in the cell in the absence of the ubiquitin ligase Cbl.
Distributed Beamforming for Magnetic Induction Based Body Area Sensor Networks

Body Area Sensor Networks (BASNs) are a challenging research area with applications in healthcare and entertainment. Due to the importance of the target applications in the daily life, BASNs are a promising candidate for being included into the future Internet of Things (IoT). In particular, the data gathering of the human activity may help customizing the services provided by the IoT and thus dramatically improve the IoT user experience. Magnetic Induction (MI) based communication is known in the context of wireless power transfer (WPT), near-field communication (NFC), and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in challenging environments. In this approach, induction coils are utilized as antennas in the sensor nodes. Distributed beamforming is a well-known technique, that has been thoroughly investigated in the past. Here, the basic idea is to align the phases of signals from different sensor nodes in such a way that a virtual multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with favorable properties is created. For example, this strategy may lead to an improved directionality of the transmitted signals and increase the achievable data rate. In this work, we analyze the potential of the distributed beamforming based MI-BASNs. We observe a significant increase of the achievable data rate for the proposed distributed beamforming compared to our selected baseline scheme.
Frequency Transformation with Pascal Matrix Equations

Abstract—Frequency transformation with Pascal matrix equations is a method for transforming an electronic filter (analogue or digital) into another filter. The technique is based on frequency transformation in the s-domain, bilinear z-transform with pre-warping frequency, inverse bilinear transformation and a very useful application of the Pascal’s triangle that simplifies computing and enables calculation by hand when transforming from one filter to another. This paper will introduce two methods to transform a filter into a digital filter: frequency transformation from the s-domain into the z-domain; and frequency transformation in the z-domain. Further, two Pascal matrix equations are derived: an analogue to digital filter Pascal matrix equation and a digital to digital filter Pascal matrix equation. These are used to design a desired digital filter from a given filter.
Harnessing the Prevention Benefits of Antiretroviral Therapy to Address HIV and Tuberculosis

After 30 years we are still struggling to address a devastating HIV pandemic in which over 25 million people have died. In 2010, an estimated 34 million people were living with HIV, around 70% of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, in 2009 there were an estimated 1.2 million new HIV-associated TB cases, and tuberculosis (TB) accounted for 24% of HIV-related deaths. By the end of 2010, 6.6 million people were taking antiretroviral therapy (ART), around 42% of those in need as defined by the 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Despite this achievement, around 9 million people were eligible and still in need of treatment, and new infections (approximately 2.6 million in 2010 alone) continue to add to the future caseload. This combined with the international fiscal crisis has led to a growing concern regarding weakening of the international commitment to universal access and delivery of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The recently launched UNAIDS/WHO Treatment 2.0 platform calls for accelerated simplification of ART, in line with a public health approach, to achieve and sustain universal access to ART, including maximizing the HIV and TB preventive benefit of ART by treating people earlier, in line with WHO 2010 normative guidance. The potential individual and public health prevention benefits of using treatment in the prevention of HIV and TB enhance the value of the universal access pledge from a life-saving initiative, to a strategic investment aimed at ending the HIV epidemic. This review analyzes the gaps and summarizes the evidence regarding ART in the prevention of HIV and TB.
Populus euphratica APYRASE2 Enhances Cold Tolerance by Modulating Vesicular Trafficking and Extracellular ATP in Arabidopsis Plants1[OPEN]

Overexpression of a poplar apyrase gene enhances vesicular trafficking and cold tolerance in Arabidopsis. Apyrase and extracellular ATP play crucial roles in mediating plant growth and defense responses. In the cold-tolerant poplar, Populus euphratica, low temperatures up-regulate APYRASE2 (PeAPY2) expression in callus cells. We investigated the biochemical characteristics of PeAPY2 and its role in cold tolerance. We found that PeAPY2 predominantly localized to the plasma membrane, but punctate signals also appeared in the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus. PeAPY2 exhibited broad substrate specificity, but it most efficiently hydrolyzed purine nucleotides, particularly ATP. PeAPY2 preferred Mg2+ as a cofactor, and it was insensitive to various, specific ATPase inhibitors. When PeAPY2 was ectopically expressed in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), cold tolerance was enhanced, based on root growth measurements and survival rates. Moreover, under cold stress, PeAPY2-transgenic plants maintained plasma membrane integrity and showed reduced cold-elicited electrolyte leakage compared with wild-type plants. These responses probably resulted from efficient plasma membrane repair via vesicular trafficking. Indeed, transgenic plants showed accelerated endocytosis and exocytosis during cold stress and recovery. We found that low doses of extracellular ATP accelerated vesicular trafficking, but high extracellular ATP inhibited trafficking and reduced cell viability. Cold stress caused significant increases in root medium extracellular ATP. However, under these conditions, PeAPY2-transgenic lines showed greater control of extracellular ATP levels than wild-type plants. We conclude that Arabidopsis plants that overexpressed PeAPY2 could increase membrane repair by accelerating vesicular trafficking and hydrolyzing extracellular ATP to avoid excessive, cold-elicited ATP accumulation in the root medium and, thus, reduced ATP-induced inhibition of vesicular trafficking.
Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue

Part 1: Definitions 1. The ABCs of Altruism 2. Pythagorean Bodies and the Body of Altruism 3. Morality, Altruism and Love 4. The Tradition of Agape Part 2: Human Motivation and Action 5. The Human Experience of Compassionate Love: Conceptual Mapping and Data from Selected Studies 6. Addressing the Altruism Question Experimentally 7. Explicating Altruism 8. Extraordinary Acts of Ordinary People: Faces of Heroism and Altruism Part 3: Evolutionary Biology 9. A Darwinian Naturalist's Perspective on Altruism 10. Relating Self, Others, and Sacrifice in the Ordering of Love 11. The Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Altruism in Evolutionary Biology 12. Some Obstacles to Altruism 13. Emerging Accounts of Altruism: "Love Creation's Final Law"? Part 4: The Science of Altruism 14. Implications for the Neurobiology of Love 15. A Note on the Neurobiology of Emotion 16. Impairment of Interpersonal Social Behavior Caused by Acquired Brain Damage 17. The Communication of Emotions and the Possibility of Empathy in Animals 18. Empathy, Evolution and Altruism Part 5: Religion 19. Science and Religion on the Nature of Love 20. Separation, Attachment, and Altruistic Love: The Evolutionary Basis for Medical Caring 21. Compassion out of Wisdom: Buddhist Perspectives from the Past toward the Human Future
The regularized blind tip reconstruction algorithm as a scanning probe microscopy tip metrology method

The problem of an accurate tip radius and shape characterization is very important for determination of surface mechanical and chemical properties on the basis of the scanning probe microscopy measurements. We think that the most favorable methods for this purpose are blind tip reconstruction methods, since they do not need any calibrated characterizers and might be performed on an ordinary SPM setup. As in many other inverse problems also in case of these methods the stability of the solution in presence of vibrational and electronic noise needs application of so called regularization techniques. In this paper the novel regularization technique (Regularized Blind Tip Reconstruction - RBTR) for blind tip reconstruction algorithm is presented. It improves the quality of the solution in presence of isotropic and anisotropic noise. The superiority of our approach is proved on the basis of computer simulations and analysis of images of the Budget Sensors TipCheck calibration standard. In case of characterization of real AFM probes as a reference method the high resolution scanning electron microscopy was chosen and we obtain good qualitative correspondence of both methods.
Rule Chaining and Approximate Match in textual inference

This paper describes the participation of Bar-Ilan university in the sixth RTE challenge. Our textual-entailment engine, BiuTee , was enhanced with new components that introduce chaining of lexical-entailment rules, and tackle the problem of approximately matching the text and the hypothesis after all available knowledge of entailment rules was utilized. We have also re-engineered our system aiming at an open-source open architecture. BiuTee’s performance is better than the median of all-submissions, and outperforms signicantly an IR-oriented baseline.
A comparison of the performance of children with and without autism on the Sensory Profile.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine whether the Sensory Profile discriminates between children with and without autism and which items on the profile best discriminate between these groups. METHOD Parents of 32 children with autism aged 3 to 13 years and of 64 children without autism aged 3 to 10 years completed the Sensory Profile. A descriptive analysis of the data set of children with autism identified the distribution of responses on each item. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) of each category of the Sensory Profile identified possible differences among subjects without autism, with mild or moderate autism, and with severe autism. Follow-up univariate analyses were conducted for any category that yielded a significant result on the MANCOVA: RESULTS Eight-four of 99 items (85%) on the Sensory Profile differentiated the sensory processing skills of subjects with autism from those without autism. There were no group differences between subjects with mild or moderate autism and subjects with severe autism. CONCLUSION The Sensory Profile can provide information about the sensory processing skills of children with autism to assist occupational therapists in assessing and planning intervention for these children.
Oral Microbiology: Past, Present and Future

Since the initial observations of oral bacteria within dental plaque by van Leeuwenhoek using his primitive microscopes in 1680, an event that is generally recognized as the advent of oral microbiological investigation, oral microbiology has gone through phases of “reductionism” and “holism”. From the small beginnings of the Miller and Black period, in which microbiologists followed Koch's postulates, took the reductionist approach to try to study the complex oral microbial community by analyzing individual species; to the modern era when oral researchers embrace “holism” or “system thinking”, adopt new concepts such as interspecies interaction, microbial community, biofilms, poly‐microbial diseases, oral microbiological knowledge has burgeoned and our ability to identify the resident organisms in dental plaque and decipher the interactions between key components has rapidly increased, such knowledge has greatly changed our view of the oral microbial flora, provided invaluable insight into the etiology of dental and periodontal diseases, opened the door to new approaches and techniques for developing new therapeutic and preventive tools for combating oral poly‐microbial diseases.
CRHIS: cloud based rural healthcare information system

Healthcare in developing countries has always been a major issue. In the Indian subcontinent the healthcare facilities are quite diverse as one travels from major cities to remote locations and to the rural areas. Whatever little healthcare has been possible in rural India is only because of the initiative of the Government or NGOs. No private player is interested to invest in the rural areas because of the possible poor return on investment. In this paper we study how modern ICT in general and cloud computing in particular can be used in the healthcare sector in order to facilitate improved medical services in the rural areas at reduced costs. We argue that cloud services stand as a potential alternative to facilitate rural healthcare information management in terms of cost reduction and resource utilization. At the same time it can improve maintainability and use of up-to-date technologies in the healthcare sector. The main objective of a Cloud based information system is to create secure and state-of-the-art facility to store patient data which can be accessed by the medical professionals and policy makers for disease diagnosis and control. A cloud based information repository system can offer new possibilities, such as easy and ubiquitous access to medical data, and opportunities to utilize the services of medical experts which are otherwise unavailable in rural areas. Here, we propose a cloud based model for building a rural healthcare information system. Design of an overall system along with the functional components is presented and the advantages, open issues and prospects for further improvement of this model is also highlighted.
Dietary vitamin D intake and serum 25‐hydroxyvitamin D level in relation to disease outcomes in head and neck cancer patients

Low pretreatment vitamin D status has been associated with worsened disease outcomes in patients with cancer at various sites. Its prognostic significance in head and neck cancer (HNC) patients has not been studied. Patients with HNC who participated in a randomized trial were evaluated for: (i) total intake of vitamin D from diet and supplements using a validated food frequency questionnaire (all trial participants, n = 540) and (ii) pretreatment serum 25‐hydroxyvitamin D through a radioimmunoassay (n = 522). The association of dietary/serum measures of vitamin D status with HNC recurrence, second primary cancer (SPC) incidence, and overall mortality was evaluated using multivariate Cox proportional hazard models. There was no significant association between dietary or serum vitamin D measures and the three HNC outcomes. The hazard ratios (HRs) comparing the highest with the lowest quartile of dietary/supplemental vitamin D intake were 1.10 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.66–1.84) for recurrence, 1.05 (95% CI: 0.63–1.74) for SPC, and 1.27 (95% CI: 0.87–1.84) for overall mortality. HRs comparing the uppermost to the lowest quartile of serum 25‐hydroxyvitamin D levels were 1.12 (95% CI: 0.65–1.93) for recurrence, 0.72 (95% CI: 0.40–1.30) for SPC, and 0.85 (95% CI: 0.57–1.28) for overall mortality. There was no effect modification by cancer stage, season of initial treatment, or trial arm. Among patients with HNC, vitamin D status before treatment does not influence disease outcomes. Our results contrast with those from most published studies, which suggest prognostic significance of vitamin D status in cancer patients at least in subgroups.
A Role for Calcineurin in Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an incurable age-related neurodegenerative disorder characterized by profound memory dysfunction. This bellwether symptom suggests involvement of the hippocampus -- a brain region responsible for memory formation -- and coincidentally an area heavily burdened by hyperphosphorylated tau and neuritic plaques of amyloid beta (Aβ). Recent evidence suggests that pre-fibrillar soluble Aβ underlies an early, progressive loss of synapses that is a hallmark of AD. One of the downstream effects of soluble Aβ aggregates is the activation of the phosphatase calcineurin (CaN). This review details the evidence of CaN hyperactivity in ‘normal’ aging, models of AD, and actual disease pathogenesis; elaborates on how this could manifest as memory impairment, neuroinflammation, hyperphosphorylated tau, and neuronal death.