Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oxidized Phospholipids Trigger Atherogenic Inflammation in Murine Arteries

Objective—Lipoprotein-derived phospholipid oxidation products have been implicated as candidate triggers of the inflammatory process in atherosclerosis. However, in vivo evidence regarding the impact of oxidized phospholipids on the artery wall thus far has been elusive. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate if structurally defined oxidized phospholipids induce expression of atherogenic chemokines and monocyte adhesion in intact murine arteries. Methods and Results—To model the accumulation of oxidized phospholipids in the arterial wall, oxidized 1-palmitoyl-2-arachidonoyl-sn-3-glycero-phosphorylcholine (OxPAPC) was topically applied to carotid arteries in mice using pluronic gel. Using quantitative reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and immunohistochemistry, we show that OxPAPC induced a set of atherosclerosis-related genes, including monocyte chemotactic protein 1 (MCP-1) and keratinocyte-derived chemokine (KC), tissue factor (TF), interleukin 6 (IL-6), heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1), and early growth response 1 (EGR-1). OxPAPC-regulated chemokines were also expressed in atherosclerotic lesions of apolipoprotein E-deficient (ApoE−/−) mice. In isolated perfused carotid arteries, OxPAPC triggered rolling and firm adhesion of monocytes in a P-selectin and KC-dependent manner. Conclusion—Oxidized phospholipids contribute to vascular inflammation in murine arteries in vivo, initiating atherogenic chemokine expression that leads to monocyte adhesion; therefore, they can be regarded as triggers of the inflammatory process in atherosclerosis.
Effectiveness of Four Supplemental Reading Comprehension Interventions

Abstract This article presents evidence from a large-scale randomized controlled trial of the effects of four supplemental reading comprehension curricula (Project CRISS, ReadAbout, Read for Real, and Reading for Knowledge) on students’ understanding of informational text. Across 2 school years, the study included 10 school districts, more than 200 schools, and more than 10,000 fifth-grade students. Schools interested in implementing 1 of the 4 supplemental curricula were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatment groups or to a control group. The impact analyses in the study's first year revealed a statistically significant negative impact of Reading for Knowledge on students’ reading comprehension scores and no other significant impacts. The impact of ReadAbout was positive and significant in the study's second year among teachers with 1 year of experience using the intervention.
Control-aware Uplink Resource Allocation for Cyber-Physical Systems in Wireless Networks

Cellular networks beyond LTE must address the requirements of Machine Type Communications (MTC). Many MTC applications fall into category of the cyber-physical systems, i.e., feedback systems with the physical processes integrated with networks and computation. The challenge of CPS is to design the communication network to support the underlying feedback control loop. To address this challenge, we adopt a cross-layer approach to scheduling in wireless networks. We formulate the resource allocation problem with the objective of maximizing the control performance in terms of the network-induced error. Following that, we devise a Maximum Predicted Error First (MPEF) scheduler, which provides a close to optimal performance while only relying on offline information about the control loops. In a case study of LTE cell, we compare MPEF with state-ofthe-art scheduling algorithms.
The radius of metric regularity

Metric regularity is a central concept in variational analysis for the study of solution mappings associated with “generalized equations,” including variational inequalities and parameterized constraint systems. Here it is employed to characterize the distance to irregularity or infeasibility with respect to perturbations of the system structure. Generalizations of the Eckart-Young theorem in numerical analysis are obtained in particular.
Prednisone for the treatment of withdrawal headache in patients with medication overuse headache: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study

Purpose To investigate the efficacy of prednisone for treatment of withdrawal headache in patients with medication overuse headache (MOH). Patients and methods In this prospective double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel designed multicentre trial, 96 consecutive patients with MOH were randomized to withdrawal treatment with either 100 mg prednisone or placebo over 5 days. Patients were enrolled if they met the International Headache Society criteria for MOH and were diagnosed with migraine or episodic tension-type headache as primary headache. Exclusion criteria comprised significant neurological or psychiatric disorders. Withdrawal symptoms, including headache severity and intake of rescue medication, were documented for 14 days after randomization. Results Patients treated with prednisone did not experience fewer hours of moderate or severe headache than patients receiving placebo. However, patients requested less rescue medication within the first 5 days. Conclusions During withdrawal in MOH, prednisone reduces rescue medication without decreasing the severity and duration of withdrawal headache.
Overexpression of heat shock protein 27 (HSP27) increases gemcitabine sensitivity in pancreatic cancer cells through S-phase arrest and apoptosis

We previously established a role for HSP27 as a predictive marker for therapeutic response towards gemcitabine in pancreatic cancer. Here, we investigate the underlying mechanisms of HSP27‐mediated gemcitabine sensitivity. Utilizing a pancreatic cancer cell model with stable HSP27 overexpression, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis induction were analysed by flow cytometry, nuclear staining, immunoblotting and mitochondrial staining. Drug sensitivity studies were performed by proliferation assays. Hyperthermia was simulated using mild heat shock at 41.8°C. Upon gemcitabine treatment, HSP27‐overexpressing cells displayed an early S‐phase arrest subsequently followed by a strongly increased sub‐G1 fraction. Apoptosis was characterized by PARP‐, CASPASE 3‐, CASPASE 8‐, CASPASE 9‐ and BIM‐ activation along with a mitochondrial membrane potential loss. It was reversible through chemical caspase inhibition. Importantly, gemcitabine sensitivity and PARP cleavage were also elicited by heat shock‐induced HSP27 overexpression, although to a smaller extent, in a panel of pancreatic cancer cell lines. Finally, HSP27‐overexpressing pancreatic cancer cells displayed an increased sensitivity also towards death receptor‐targeting agents, suggesting another pro‐apoptotic role of HSP27 along the extrinsic apoptosis pathway. Taken together, in contrast to the well‐established anti‐apoptotic properties of HSP27 in cancer, our study reveals novel pro‐apoptotic functions of HSP27—mediated through both the intrinsic and the extrinsic apoptotic pathways—at least in pancreatic cancer cells. HSP27 could represent a predictive marker of therapeutic response towards specific drug classes in pancreatic cancer and provides a novel molecular rationale for current clinical trials applying the combination of gemcitabine with regional hyperthermia in pancreatic cancer patients.
Visualizing sequential data: a new detail-in-context layout

Relationships between images are often of a sequential nature. Temporal sequences may include keyframes in an animation or frequently recorded satellite pictures. An example for spatial sequences is Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) as they show successive slices of a volume. When interacting with these images, the user may wish to see detailed information without losing the context. Detail-in-context techniques provide methods to display parts of the data in full detail without sacrificing contextual information. Studies have shown that it is important to match the user's mental model as well as the underlying structure of the data when designing a detail-in-context algorithm. This paper describes a new algorithm to visualize sequential data and an application of this technique to the display of MR images.
A puppy and case reports in Medwave.

There was vomit and loose stools everywhere. I was aghast and acted immediately. I put the puppy in the car and took her to the best veterinarian center in the city. It has specialist emergency care and is one of the teaching hospitals of the main veterinarian school of the country. She was admitted on the spot. Hypoglycemia was ruled out to begin with, together with canine distemper and other age-appropriate conditions.
Spontaneous diabetes mellitus syndrome in the rat. I. Association with the major histocompatibility complex

A syndrome of spontaneous diabetes mellitus has been previously described in a partially inbred rat strain called BB Wistar. We have determined whether there is major histocompatibility complex (MHC) linkage as well as other predisposing haplotype-associated factors of development. BB rats are RT1 (MHC) genotype u/u. Using BB x Lewis F1 hybrid matings, an F2 study analyzed 128 rats from 8 primary and 3 additional litters from a breeding pair producing a diabetic offspring. 4 of 128 F2 rats, all from the 48 progeny of same breeding pair, became clinically diabetic. The four diabetics were all genotype u/u (P = 0.03). In the primary F2 litters, haplotype distribution was not different from the 1:2:1 expected ratio. However, in the four litters from the from the F1 breeding pair producing diabetics, there was an increased number of u/u animals. Two-way analysis of variance revealed significant differences in pancreatic insulin content between litters (diabetics excluded), P less than 0.001, and between haplotypes P less than 0.007 with heterozygous u/u less than 1/1 progeny. The glucagon content showed no significant differences. These data demonstrate (a) MHC linkage with spontaneous diabetes in this rat model; (b) penetrance similar to the human disease; and (c) a possible association of MHC haplotype with pancreatic inflammation as well as insulin content in nondiabetic F2 siblings.
Scheduling of Multi-Class Single-Server Queues Under Nontraditional Performance Measures

We consider a multi-class production system without setups where many job classes share a single server. The traditional performance measure used for scheduling these systems is that of mean throughput time (i.e., the time spent in the system). However, mean throughput time may not be the only measure of importance in real systems. In particular, throughput time variance and the outer percentiles of throughput time may be equally important. We present two heuristics for scheduling multi-class single-server queues that are based on heavy-traffic analysis and perform well with respect to these nontraditional measures in a wide variety of cases. An approximation is given for the throughput time distribution under both scheduling methods.
Inter-sentential Relations in Information Extraction Corpora

In natural language relationships between entities can asserted within a single sentence or over many sentences in a document. Many information extraction systems are constrained to extracting binary relations that are asserted within a single sentence (single-sentence relations) and this limits the proportion of relations they can extract since those expressed across multiple sentences (inter-sentential relations) are not considered. The analysis in this paper focuses on finding the distribution of inter-sentential and single-sentence relations in two corpora used for the evaluation of Information Extraction systems: the MUC6 corpus and the ACE corpus from 2003. In order to carry out this analysis we had to manually mark up all the management succession relations described in the MUC6 corpus. It was found that inter-sentential relations constitute 28.5% and 9.4% of the total number of relations in MUC6 and ACE03 respectively. This places upper bounds on the recall of information extraction systems that do not consider relations that are asserted across multiple sentences (71.5% and 90.6% respectively).
User involvement in developing mobile and temporarily interconnected systems

Information systems (IS) research on user involvement has primarily theorized relationships between developers, managers and users in systems development. However, so far, marginal attention has been paid to differences in user involvement practices between information systems. This paper explores user involvement in developing mobile and temporarily interconnected systems (MTIS). We refer to MTIS as heterogeneous systems that rely on network technologies for increasing the ubiquity of information services for users on the move. Such systems are becoming increasingly important in leveraging, e.g. car infotainment, supply chain management and wireless e‐commerce. With particular emphasis on the nature of MTIS and its implications for user involvement, the paper analyses the systems development process of an action research project. The findings suggest that user involvement practices need to be adapted to accommodate features of this class of systems. Being an early attempt to trace the implications of technology features such as use context switches and temporary system relationships, the paper contributes to the development of an updated theory of the user role in an era of increased system complexity and stakeholder ambiguity.
Computational rule-based model for Irony Detection in Italian Tweets

English. In the domain of Natural Language Processing (NLP), the interest in figurative language is enhanced, especially in the last few years, thanks to the amount of linguistic data provided by web and social networks. Figurative language provides a non-literary sense to the words, thus the utterances require several interpretations disclosing the play of signification. In order to individuate different meaning levels in case of ironic texts detection, it is necessary a computational model appropriated to the complexity of rhetorical artifice. In this paper we describe our rulebased system of irony detection as it has been presented to the SENTIPOLC task of EVALITA 2016, where we ranked third on twelve participants. Italiano. Nell’ambito del Natural Language Processing (NLP) l’interesse per il linguaggio figurativo è particolarmente aumentato negli ultimi anni, grazie alla quantità d’informazione linguistica messa a disposizione dal web e dai social network. Il linguaggio figurativo conferisce alle parole un senso che va oltre quello letterale, pertanto gli enunciati richiedono interpretazioni plurivoche che possano svelare i giochi di significato del discorso. Nel caso specifico del riconoscimento automatico di un testo ironico, infatti, determinare la presenza di diversi gradi di significazione esige un modello computazionale adeguato alla complessità dell’artificio retorico. In questo articolo descriviamo il nostro sistema “rule-based” dedito al riconoscimento dell’ironia che ha partecipato al task SENTIPOLC di EVALITA 2016, nel quale ci siamo classificati terzi su dodici partecipanti.
Controlled Tripping of Overheated Lines Mitigates Power Outages

We study cascades of blackouts in the model of the Polish (transmission) power grid (2700 nodes and 3504 transmission lines). A cascade is initiated by a sufficientl y severe initial contingency tripping. The cascade advances via sequential tripping of many more overheated lines (with the thermal limits exceeded), islanding loads and generators and eventually arriving at a fixed point with the surviving part of the system being pow er- flow-balanced and the rest of the system being outaged. Utili zing the quasi-static model for cascade propagation, introduced in our earlier study (Statistical Classification of Cascading Failures in Power Grids, IEEE PES GM 2011), we analyze how the severity of the cascade depends on the order of tripping overheated lines. Our main observation is that the order of tripping has a tremendous effect on the size of the resulting outage: the probability distribution function of the outage size is broad; moreover in many of the cases studied, picking an overheated line at random results in a much larger outage than in some other observed samples. Finding the "best" tripping, defined as causing the least dam age, constitutes a difficult dynamical optimization problem, wh ose solution is most likely computationally infeasible. Inste ad, we study performance of a number of natural heuristics, resolving the next switching decision based on the current state of the grid. We discover that some of the heuristics, in particular the one suggesting to trip the least overloaded of the overheated lines, is at least as good, and often significantly better, th an a typical/random switching. However, none of the heuristics is universally good for the variety of initial tripping paths s tudied. We offer explanations for success of the heuristics based on the hierarchical structure of the grid and suggest that intentional tripping of lines according to a good tripping heuristic canbecome a practical tool for cascade control, provided communication with line relays is reliable.
Phylogenetic and microsatellite markers for Tulasnella (Tulasnellaceae) mycorrhizal fungi associated with Australian orchids

Premise of the study: Phylogenetic and microsatellite markers were developed for Tulasnella mycorrhizal fungi to investigate fungal species identity and diversity. These markers will be useful in future studies investigating the phylogenetic relationship of the fungal symbionts, specificity of orchid—mycorrhizal associations, and the role of mycorrhizae in orchid speciation within several orchid genera. Methods and Results: We generated partial genome sequences of two Tulasnella symbionts originating from Chiloglottis and Drakaea orchid species with 454 genome sequencing. Cross-genus transferability across mycorrhizal symbionts associated with multiple genera of Australian orchids (Arthrochilus, Chiloglottis, Drakaea, and Paracaleana) was found for seven phylogenetic loci. Five loci showed cross-transferability to Tulasnella from other orchid genera, and two to Sebacina. Furthermore, 11 polymorphic microsatellite loci were developed for Tulasnella from Chiloglottis. Conclusions: Highly informative markers were obtained, allowing investigation of mycorrhizal diversity of Tulasnellaceae associated with a wide variety of terrestrial orchids in Australia and potentially worldwide.
Near-automated quantification of prenatal aortic intima-media thickness from ultrasound images

Aortic intima-media thickness (aIMT) is an early marker for atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases risk assessment in children and young adults. Recent studies have underlined the potential usefulness of its estimation at the fetal stage from ultrasound (US) images. However, this measurement currently relies on tedious and error-prone manual tracing. The aims of this study were to develop and test a near-automated technique for aIMT quantification from US images. The proposed technique is based on narrow-band level-set methods to identify blood-intima and media-adventitia interfaces, thus allowing aIMT estimation. The technique was tested on images acquired from 11 subjects at a mean gestational age of 29 weeks. Automatically estimated aIMT values were compared to reference ones manually extracted by an experienced interpreter. Quantitative comparisons were performed using Pearson's correlation coefficients, Bland-Altman and linear regression analyses. The results (R up to 0.92) indicate the high correlation between automatically and manually estimated values, suggesting that near-automated quantification of aIMT from US images using level-set methods is feasible.
Expression of Cpgp40/15 in Toxoplasma gondii: a Surrogate System for the Study of Cryptosporidium Glycoprotein Antigens

ABSTRACT Cryptosporidium parvum is a waterborne enteric coccidian that causes diarrheal disease in a wide range of hosts. Development of successful therapies is hampered by the inability to culture the parasite and the lack of a transfection system for genetic manipulation. The glycoprotein products of the Cpgp40/15 gene, gp40 and gp15, are involved in C. parvum sporozoite attachment to and invasion of host cells and, as such, may be good targets for anticryptosporidial therapies. However, the function of these antigens appears to be dependent on the presence of multiple O-linked α-N-acetylgalactosamine (α-GalNAc) determinants. A eukaryotic expression system that would produce proteins bearing glycosylation patterns similar to those found on the native C. parvum glycoproteins would greatly facilitate the molecular and functional characterization of these antigens. As a unique approach to this problem, the Cpgp40/15 gene was transiently expressed in Toxoplasma gondii, and the expressed recombinant glycoproteins were characterized. Antisera to gp40 and gp15 reacted with the surface membranes of tachyzoites expressing the Cpgp40/15 construct, and this reactivity colocalized with that of antiserum to the T. gondii surface protein SAG1. Surface membrane localization was dependent on the presence of the glycophosphatidylinositol anchor attachment site present in the gp15 coding sequence. The presence of terminal O-linked α-GalNAc determinants on the T. gondii recombinant gp40 was confirmed by reactivity with Helix pomatia lectin and the monoclonal antibody 4E9, which recognizes α-GalNAc residues, and digestion with α-N-acetylgalactosaminidase. In addition to appropriate localization and glycosylation, T. gondii apparently processes the gp40/15 precursor into the gp40 and gp15 component glycopolypeptides, albeit inefficiently. These results suggest that a surrogate system using T. gondii for the study of Cryptosporidium biology may be useful.
An analog baseband chain for a UMTS zero-IF receiver in a 75 GHz SiGe BiCMOS technology

A zero-IF receiver for UMTS realized by using an advanced 0.35 /spl mu/m SiGe BiCMOS process with 75 GHz transit frequency is presented. The focal point is the analog baseband chain consisting of a low-noise buffer (LNB), a fully integrated channel selection filter, programmable gain amplifiers (PGA) and circuits to reduce the effects of DC-offsets. The whole chain is able to provide a voltage gain from -14 dB up to 50 dB in 1 dB steps and 43 dB adjacent channel selectivity. The total receiver current consumption for a supply voltage of 2.7 V is less than 45 mA, whereby the baseband chain consumes 15 mA.
Permutation Routing and Sorting on Meshes with Row and Column Buses

We study the problems of permutation routing and sorting on several models of meshes with fixed and reconfigurable row and column buses. We describe two fast and fairly simple deterministic algorithms for permutation routing on two-dimensional networks, and a more complicated algorithm for multi-dimensional networks. The algorithms are obtained by converting two known off-line routing schemes into deterministic routing algorithms, and they can be implemented on a variety of different models of meshes with buses. We also give a deterministic algorithm for 1–1 sorting whose running time matches that for permutation routing, and another algorithm that matches the bisection lower bound on reconfigurable networks of arbitrary constant dimension.