Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Photodynamic Effects of Novel XF Porphyrin Derivatives on Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Cells

ABSTRACT The worldwide rise in the rates of antibiotic resistance of bacteria underlines the need for alternative antibacterial agents. A promising approach to the killing of gram-positive antibiotic-resistant bacteria of the skin uses light in combination with a photosensitizer to induce a phototoxic reaction. Different concentrations (0 to 100 μM) of porphyrin-based photosensitizers (CTP1, XF70, and XF73) and different incubation times (5 min, 1 h, and 4 h) were used to determine phototoxicity against two methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains, one methicillin-sensitive S. aureus strain, one methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis strain, one Escherichia coli strain, and human keratinocytes and fibroblasts. Incubation with 0.005 μM XF70 or XF73, followed by illumination, yielded a 3-log10 (≥99.9%) decrease in the viable cell numbers of all staphylococcal strains, indicating that the XF drugs have high degrees of potency against gram-positive bacteria and also that the activities of these novel drugs are independent of the antibiotic resistance pattern of the staphylococci examined. CTP1 was less potent against the staphylococci under the same conditions. At 0.005 μM, XF70 and XF73 demonstrated no toxicity toward fibroblasts or keratinocytes. No inactivation of E. coli was detected at this concentration. XF73 was confirmed to act via a reactive oxygen species from the results of studies with sodium azide (a quencher of singlet oxygen), which reduced the killing of both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. When a quencher of superoxide anion and the hydroxyl radical was used, cell killing was not inhibited. These results demonstrate that the porphyrin-based photosensitizers had concentration-dependent differences in their efficacies of killing of methicillin-resistant staphylococcal strains via reactive oxygen species without harming eukaryotic cells at the same concentrations.
Irrational Beliefs in Major Depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorders in an Iranian Sample: A Preliminary Study

Previous research on Rational Emotive Theory using western samples has shown that irrational belief systems are associated with emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression. In a replication of this work the present study was conducted to compare the scores of 29 clinically depressed, 31 clinically anxious, and 34 normal controls on the Irrational Beliefs Test in an Iranian sample. Consistent with Ellis's theory, depressed and anxious patients scored higher than the controls on scores for the full scale and all 10 subscales of the Irrational Beliefs Test. Also, the two patient groups differed significantly in their endorsement of 2 out of 10 irrational belief subscales but not in overall score on irrational beliefs. Results were interpreted in light of previous literature.
Imaging , Diagnosis , Prognosis MicroRNA-31 Predicts the Presence of Lymph Node Metastases and Survival in Patients with Lung Adenocarcinoma

Purpose: We conducted genome-wide miRNA-sequencing (miRNA-seq) in primary cancer tissue from patients of lung adenocarcinoma to identify markers for the presence of lymph node metastasis. Experimental Design:Markers for lymph node metastasis identified by sequencing were validated in a separate cohort using quantitative PCR. After additional validation in the TheCancerGenomeAtlas (TCGA) dataset, functional characterization studies were conducted in vitro. Results: MiR-31 was upregulated in lung adenocarcinoma tissues from patients with lymph node metastases compared with those without lymph node metastases. We confirmed miR-31 to be upregulated in lymph node-positive patients in a separate patient cohort (P1⁄4 0.009, t test), and to be expressed at higher levels in adenocarcinoma tissue than in matched normal adjacent lung tissues (P < 0.0001, paired t test). MiR-31 was then validated as a marker for lymph node metastasis in an external validation cohort of 233 lung adenocarcinoma cases of the TCGA (P 1⁄4 0.031, t test). In vitro functional assays showed that miR-31 increases cell migration, invasion, and proliferation in an ERK1/2 signaling-dependent manner. Notably, miR-31 was a significant predictor of survival in a multivariate cox regressionmodel even when controlling for cancer staging. Exploratory in silico analysis showed that low expression of miR-31 is associated with excellent survival for T2N0 patients. Conclusions:We appliedmiRNA-seq to studymicroRNomes in lung adenocarcinoma tissue samples for the first time and potentially identified a miRNA predicting the presence of lymph node metastasis and survival outcomes in patients of lung adenocarcinoma. Clin Cancer Res; 19(19); 5423–33. 2013 AACR.
In vivo imaging identifies temporal signature of D1 and D2 medium spiny neurons in cocaine reward

Significance Strong associations between cocaine and the environmental contexts where cocaine is administered are thought to drive relapse. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) encodes these cue–reward associations, and here we determined how cocaine alters the ability of cells in NAc to respond to drug-associated environmental stimuli to drive drug seeking. Using fiber photometry calcium imaging we define the specific population of cells, dopamine D1 receptor-expressing neurons, that encodes information about drug associations and show that these cells can be manipulated to attenuate the strength of drug associations and prevent relapse. Together, these data define a basic circuit mechanism underlying drug–context associations and suggest that pharmacotherapeutic agents aimed at D1-type neurons may help to promote sustained abstinence in cocaine abusers. The reinforcing and rewarding properties of cocaine are attributed to its ability to increase dopaminergic transmission in nucleus accumbens (NAc). This action reinforces drug taking and seeking and leads to potent and long-lasting associations between the rewarding effects of the drug and the cues associated with its availability. The inability to extinguish these associations is a key factor contributing to relapse. Dopamine produces these effects by controlling the activity of two subpopulations of NAc medium spiny neurons (MSNs) that are defined by their predominant expression of either dopamine D1 or D2 receptors. Previous work has demonstrated that optogenetically stimulating D1 MSNs promotes reward, whereas stimulating D2 MSNs produces aversion. However, we still lack a clear understanding of how the endogenous activity of these cell types is affected by cocaine and encodes information that drives drug-associated behaviors. Using fiber photometry calcium imaging we define D1 MSNs as the specific population of cells in NAc that encodes information about drug associations and elucidate the temporal profile with which D1 activity is increased to drive drug seeking in response to contextual cues. Chronic cocaine exposure dysregulates these D1 signals to both prevent extinction and facilitate reinstatement of drug seeking to drive relapse. Directly manipulating these D1 signals using designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs prevents contextual associations. Together, these data elucidate the responses of D1- and D2-type MSNs in NAc to acute cocaine and during the formation of context–reward associations and define how prior cocaine exposure selectively dysregulates D1 signaling to drive relapse.
A Survey on Security Mechanisms of Leading Cloud Service Providers

With an unprecedented pace of developments in Cloud computing technology, there has been an exponential increase of users of these services and an equal rise of cloud services providers. Clouding Computing is a virtual pool of resources provided to users as service through a web interface. These resources may include Software, Infrastructure, Storage, Network, Platform etc. With more and more organizations migrating their data over cloud, it is imperative to ensure security and integrity of their data. In this paper we 1) discuss the security challenges posed to data on the cloud computing. 2) Survey cryptographic algorithms that can be used to overcome these challenges. 3) Survey Security designs of 5 leading cloud service providers. 4) Perform a comparative study of security and features of these providers.
Insider Trading of Managers: Information Environments and Executive Role Groups

I examine the information asymmetry that exists between managers and shareholders. However, managers are not one homogeneous group. Information asymmetry may exist amongst managers as well. I test this hypothesis using the trades of different Executive Role Groups. I find that all managers do not trade the same, suggesting they experience a different information environment within the firm. By splitting executives into three groups, which parallels their relative positions in firm hierarchies, I document differences in purchase and sales behavior, controlling for ownership levels, firm and managerial attributes. By forming portfolios based on insider trades, these differences are born out in subsequent excess returns. Information asymmetry is likely to vary across firms in differently regulated environments or vary across time as new laws are implemented to increase disclosure. I find that reduced information asymmetry in more heavily regulated firms results in lower insider trading returns for managers as a whole. However, insiders are unequally affected by this information asymmetry with the senior and junior executives benefiting from information asymmetry while the middle role group (of predominantly financial experts) not apparently exploiting the information asymmetry.
Success of Collaborative Environments in Project Management: Organisation E-Readiness

Collaborative environments for construction project management are widely accepted as becoming an essential element to address construction business improvement. However, there are still many failures in adopting it. Various cases studies has shown people and process in organisations as critical success factors; not technology. Organisations can address this issue further through the ability to measure electronic readiness (ereadiness) of their organisation, enabling them to adopt and use the available ICT to improve their business strategies and performance, and services to customers. Ereadiness reflects organisational soft issues such as business processes, management structure, change management, people and culture.
Sentiment Lexical-Augmented Convolutional Neural Networks for Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis is the method of analyzing a piece of text for human sentiment or emotions. In this paper, we consider the sentence-level sentiment classification task. Recently an end-to-end convolutional neural network has been proposed to predict sentiment polarity directly. However, this approach extracts features only based on input word embedding sets, and fails to make full use of a word's information. It ignores the sentiment polarity of words which has been proved beneficial to sentiment classification. In this paper, we propose a Sentiment lexical-Augmented Convolutional Neural Network (SCNN) for sentiment analysis. We learn sentiment embedding for each word based on SentiWordNet, a widely used sentiment-lexical resource. Then both word embedding and sentiment embedding are fed into a convolutional neural network classifier. Experimental results on benchmark tasks show that our approach outperforms baseline methods.
The transient appearance of zipper-like actin superstructures during the fusion of osteoclasts

Multinucleated osteoclasts are responsible for bone resorption. Hypermultinucleated osteoclasts are often observed in some bone-related diseases such as Paget's disease and cherubism. The cellular mechanics controlling the size of osteoclasts is poorly understood. We introduced EGFP–actin into RAW 264.7 cells to monitor actin dynamics during osteoclast differentiation. Before their terminal differentiation into osteoclasts, syncytia displayed two main types of actin assembly, podosome clusters and clusters of zipper-like structures. The zipper-like structures morphologically resembled the adhesion zippers found at the initial stage of cell–cell adhesion in keratinocytes. In the zipper-like structure, Arp3 and cortactin overlapped with the distribution of dense F-actin, whereas integrin β3, paxillin and vinculin were localized to the periphery of the structure. The structure was negative for WGA–lectin staining and biotin labeling. The zipper-like structure broke down and transformed into a large actin ring, called a podosome belt. Syncytia containing clusters of zipper-like structures had more nuclei than those with podosome clusters. Differentiated osteoclasts with a podosome belt also formed the zipper-like structure at the cell contact site during cell fusion. The breakdown of the cell contact site resulted in the fusion of the podosome belts following plasma membrane fusion. Additionally, osteoclasts in mouse calvariae formed the zipper-like structure in the sealing zone. Therefore, we propose that the zipper-like actin superstructures might be involved in cell–cell interaction to achieve efficient multinucleation of osteoclasts. Understanding of the zipper-like structure might lead to selective therapeutics for bone diseases caused by hypermultinucleated osteoclasts.
A compact planar multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna for ultra-wideband applications

This paper presents a planar multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna for Ultra-wideband wireless applications. The antenna system consists of a radiating patch with stair steps, microstrip feed line and T- and L-like shape slots at the ground plane with low profile structure (54×30×0.8mm3). The proposed antenna can cover the wide frequency range from 3.04 GHz to 11.2 GHz. It shows nearly omnidirectional radiation pattern and high gain. To improve the isolation, a stub and two L-like shape slots are introduced into the ground plane and hence, the achieved isolation is higher than 15 dB over the entire frequency band.
An original topology of dual-band filter with transmission zeros

This paper reports on a new topology of high-performance dual-band filters. This topology is derived from the Dual Behavior Resonator (DBR) filter. The resulting resonator is directly dual-band. It allows the control of two bandpasses separated by a transmission zero to ensure a high rejection level between them. Moreover, two other transmission zeros are located on either side of the two bandpasses. The possibilities offered by this structure are discussed and measurements are presented to validate the method.
In vitro and in vivo activities of the hydroxynaphthoquinone 566C80 against the cyst form of Toxoplasma gondii

The in vitro and in vivo activities of the hydroxynaphthoquinone 566C80 against the cyst form of Toxoplasma gondii were evaluated. In vitro treatment (100 micrograms of 566C80 per ml for 3 days) of cysts isolated from brains of mice infected for 1, 2, 3, 4, or 9 months resulted in loss of viability of the cysts and did not reveal any influence of the duration of in vivo infection on sensitivity to the drug. In vivo experiments to determine the effect of prolonged treatment with 200 mg of 566C80 per kg of body weight per day on cysts in brains of CBA/Ca mice infected with strain ME49 revealed a steady and significant decline in the numbers of cysts compared with the numbers in untreated controls. Histopathology of brains from control mice revealed inflammatory infiltrates around capillaries and in the parenchymas and meninges which were consistently less evident in the brains of treated mice. In addition, cysts were rarely observed in treated mice, whereas extensive inflammation and large numbers of cysts were found throughout the entire brain in control mice infected for the same period. The reduction in the numbers of cysts was evident as early as day 5 of treatment but was more marked at 8 weeks of treatment. The numbers of cysts in the brains of Swiss Webster mice infected for 3 or 6 months also significantly decreased following treatment for 15 or 30 days with the same dose of 566C80. Our results indicate that 566C80 has excellent activity against cysts of T. gondii both in vivo and in vitro and that sensitivity of the cysts to 566C80 is not affected by the duration of the infection in vivo.
Factors Predicting Co‐creation of Value: A Study of Boutiques

Central to Service-Dominant Logic is the proposition that the customer has become a co-creator of the value. This emphasises the development of customer‐supplier relationships through interaction and dialogue. However, research to date suggests that relatively little is known about how consumers engage in co-creation of value with the service provider. Thus, the present study develops a framework of the facilitators or antecedents of the co-creation of value for understanding and managing creation of value. The study examines the co-creation efforts ofthe customers of fashionable boutiques of a city and statistical techniques like CFA and SEM were used to analyse the data. Further, reliability and validity tests were also performed. Based upon a sample of 196 female customers, the study found that resource integration and composite expertise of customers and suppliers significantly influence customer participation, which in turn significantly predicts CCV. The study also discusses the managerial implications, limitations and future research agenda at the end.
Shape and Temperature Memory of Nanocomposites with Broadened Glass Transition

Shape-memory polymers can revert to their original shape when they are reheated. The stress generated by shape recovery is a growing function of the energy absorbed during deformation at a high temperature; thus, high energy to failure is a necessary condition for strong shape-memory materials. We report on the properties of composite nanotube fibers that exhibit this particular feature. We observed that these composites can generate a stress upon shape recovery up to two orders of magnitude greater than that generated by conventional polymers. In addition, the nanoparticles induce a broadening of the glass transition and a temperature memory with a peak of recovery stress at the temperature of their initial deformation.
Measuring the cost-effectiveness of idle reduction technologies in heavy-duty trucks

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank those whose expertise was immeasurable in this study. provided oversight and guidance that was essential to the development of this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Catherine Ross for her review of my thesis and support over the course of the work. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support of my family,
A New Approach of Minimizing Commutation Torque Ripple for BLDCM

The properties of brushless DC motor (BLDCM) are similar to the fractional, slot-concentrated winding of permanent-magnet synchronous machines, and they fit well for electric vehicle application. However, BLDCM still suffers from the high commutation torque ripple in the case of the traditional square-wave current control (SWC) method, where the current vector rotates asynchronously with back-EMF. A current optimizing control (COC) method for BLDCM is proposed in the paper to minimize the commutation torque ripple. The trajectories of the three phase currents are planned by the given torque and the optimized result of the copper loss and motor torque equations. The properties of COC are analyzed and compared with that of SWC in the stationary reference frame. The results show that the way of making the current vector rotate synchronously with back-EMF (back-Electromotive Force) can minimize the modulus and velocity of the current vector in the commutation region, and reduce the torque ripple. Experimental tests obtained from an 82 W BLDCM are done to confirm the theoretical findings.
Modeling and Pareto Optimization of Microfabricated Inductors for Power Supply on Chip

Microfabricated inductors experience increasing interest and research activity because of their high potential in buck converters for power supply in package and power supply on chip applications. This paper details the modeling and optimization of microfabricated racetrack inductors. The analytical expressions derived characterize inductance, efficiency, and power density based on geometrical parameters, inductor current, and switching frequency. An accurate analysis of the inductor current that includes the impact of losses is performed to determine the switching frequency, the ac copper losses, and the core losses. The presented model is compared to finite element method simulations and reported results of three microfabricated inductors. Finally, the optimum tradeoff between efficiency and power density is identified using the Pareto front, which results from the evaluation of a large number of microfabricated inductors in the design space defined by the application.
IMPACT OF STOCK SPLIT ANNOUNCEMENT ON STOCK PRICES

Corporate events have numerous effects on the stock market and it is been observed that stock price movements is an area of research that attracted the attention of various researchers. Therefore, the present study attempts to contribute to the understanding of the behavior of Indian share prices in relation to stock split announcements. A standard event study methodology is adopted in this study to examine the impact and price reactions of CNX Nifty companies of NSE from January 2006 to December 2013 surrounding sixty days of the announcement dates. Abnormal returns were calculated and t-tests are conducted to test the significance. From the study, it can be inferred that stock split announcement have positive impact of stock prices around announcement dates.
A 77-GHz FMCW MIMO radar based on loosely coupled stations

In this work the realization of a frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar for the 77-GHz frequency band is presented. The proposed system consists of two separate radar units only loosely synchronized by the ramp trigger signal. To realize the separation of each transmitter's signal at reception, as it is required for the MIMO principle, a delayed ramp start of the slave station is implemented leading to different output frequencies for each transmitter. Since the delay caused by the ramp trigger is estimated in each measurement, the required accuracy of the ramp start timing is only defined by the maximum achievable sampling frequency of the used analog-to-digital converter. Due to the derived signal processing algorithms a coherent measurement with the two stations can be realized without requiring an RF link between them.
Adaptation in Vertical Relationships: Beyond Incentive Conflict

In this study, we extend the analysis of adaptation in theories of economic organization beyond traditional considerations of incentive conflict (hold-up). We conceptualize adaptation as coordinated and cooperative response to change, and define the adaptive capacity of a vertical relationship as the ability to generate coordinated and cooperative responses across procurer and supplier to changes in procurement conditions. We draw on the concepts of differentiation and integration to dimensionalize the adaptive capacity of different modes of procurement. Using data on all component classes procured internally and externally by Ford and Chrysler, we show that different procurement modes differ in terms of their adaptive capacity and performance. We also show that performance differences across modes of procurement arise as a function of the match between adaptive capacity and adaptation requirements associated with the exchange, and not only the match between governance form and transaction hazards.