Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immunoglobulin G (IgG) Expression in Human Umbilical Cord Endothelial Cells

Traditional views hold that immunoglobulin G (IgG) in the human umbilical cord is internalized by human umbilical endothelial cells for passive immunity. In this study, the protein and mRNA transcripts of IgG were found in the cytoplasm of human umbilical endothelial cells by immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, and reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR). The essential enzymes for IgG synthesis and assembling, RAG1 (recombination activating gene 1), RAG2, and variable (V), diversity (D), and joining (J) segments for recombination of IgG, were also found in these cells by RT-PCR and real-time PCR. These results indicate that umbilical endothelial cells are capable of synthesizing IgG with properties similar to those of immune cells and that they may play additional roles besides lining the vessels and transporting IgG.
Circle Time as an Inclusive Learning Space: Exploring Student Teachers’ Prior School Experiences.

Abstract Promoting inclusive practices has become a priority for many higher education institutions (Higher Education Authority (HEA) 2008). Inclusive learning is promoted across a number of teacher education courses as part of the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degree. Circle time - a widely employed and popular learning method amongst primary and post-primary teachers – is conceptualised as one effective method for facilitating inclusive learning at third-level. [1] Drawing on research which investigated student teachers’ prior experiences of and attitudes towards circle time in their primary and post-primary schools (Collins and Kavanagh 2013), this paper critically assesses the extent to which the practice of circle time reflects its inclusive theoretical underpinnings in light of research findings, and highlights some implications for teacher educators who wish to promote inclusion in their courses. The methodology employed was mixed methods, with the use of a self-administered questionnaire distributed to 200 students and provision for focus group interviews with a small number of students. Two key research questions were identified: what was your prior experience of circle time at primary and post-primary school; and how will this impact on your future use of the method in your own teaching practice? The research uncovered both positive and negative aspects of students’ prior experiences of circle time and practices which support and undermine inclusion. Circle time’s capacity to facilitate students’ voices and peer discussion were cited as key benefits but some students did not feel that they were provided with opportunities to participate on an equal basis either with each other or with the facilitating teacher. These findings suggest a need to modify practices in order to promote inclusion, participation and equality of voice. This paper’s findings and implications may resonate with other third level practitioners who seek to facilitate inclusive learning as part of their pedagogical approach. [1] In this paper, inclusive learning is conceptualised as organising learning to ensure that all students are provided with opportunities to actively and meaningfully participate in the learning process (Kershner 2009; Black-Hawkins, Florian, and Rouse 2007). In particular, it requires providing students with equal opportunities to exercise their voices, to have a say in decisions which affect them and to have what they say taken seriously and acted upon (Cook-Sather 2006; Holdsworth 2000).
Volumizing Hyaluronic Acid Filler for Midface Volume Deficit: 2‐Year Results from a Pivotal Single‐Blind Randomized Controlled Study

BACKGROUND Hyaluronic acid (HA) gels are commonly used to correct age‐related midface volume deficit (MVD), yet the Food and Drug Administration has not specifically approved them for this purpose. OBJECTIVE To study the safety and effectiveness of a new 20‐mg/mL HA gel (VYC‐20L) specifically formulated and optimized for mid‐face volumizing. METHODS AND MATERIALS A multicenter, single‐blind, controlled study randomized 235 subjects aged 35 to 65 with MVD to a treatment group and 47 to a no‐treatment control group. Responders were defined as subjects who achieved improvement of 1 point or more on the validated 6‐point Mid‐Face Volume Deficit Scale (MFVDS) at 6 months as rated live by two blinded independent evaluators. The primary endpoint required a 70% or greater treatment group response and a statistically significant difference (p < .001) between the treatment and control group responder rates. RESULTS The primary endpoint was met, with 85.6% of the treatment group improving by 1 point or more on the MFVDS at month 6 and a statistically significant difference (p < .001) between the treatment and control group responder rates. Subjects tolerated VYC‐20L well, with no unanticipated adverse device effects. Nearly half of subjects maintained correction for 24 months. CONCLUSION VYC‐20L is safe and effective for age‐related MVD, with correction lasting up to 2 years.
RELATIVE DIVERSITY INDICES

Diversity indices are frequently applied in the form of ratios of absolute diver- sity to the maximum diversity possible. Regardless of whether the maximum diversity is de- fined to be limited by the number of species or by the number of individuals present, the re- sultant indices can be shown to possess mathematically undesirable qualities. All such indices, including equitability as measured by Pielou's J and J', Lloyd and Ghelardi's ratios, redun- dancy, and the scaled diversity formulations of Fager, are inappropriate for most ecological applications.
Personal counselling skills : an integrative approach

This book is a comprehensive, easy-to-read introduction to personal counseling written for professional and volunteer counselors and those who train them. The chapters describing basic and more advanced counseling skills are arranged in a sequence that is particularly suitable when teaching student counselors to learn and practice using these skills for the first time. The authors adopt an integrative approach that allows the reader to learn, understand, and use skills taken from major counseling approaches, and to integrate these into a sequential process that maximizes the possibility of facilitating change in the client. Of considerable value for new counselors are those sections of the book that describe the fundamental principles of the counseling relationship, and explain the theories of change applicable to the various approaches to counseling. Unique features include: a highly practical integrative approach to counseling; discussion of the specific skills required for success; practical suggestions on ways to learn and develop new skills; ways of managing particular situations involving angry, depressed, grieving, and suicidal clients; an understanding of the role of a counselor’s supervisor; information on practical issues such as keeping records, arrangement of the counseling room, and ways to look after yourself as a counselor; plus practical information on issues of confidentiality and professional ethics. Additionally, there are numerous examples of useful dialogue to illustrate real experiences of and for use in counseling situations, including key statements that are highlighted throughout the book for ease of reference. This text will serve as a valuable resource for workers in a wide variety of helping professions where counseling skills are useful such as psychology, social work, welfare work, medicine, nursing, education, and human services.
An evolutionary approach for performing multiple sequence alignment

Despite of being a very common task in bioinformatics, multiple sequence alignment is not a trivial matter. Arranging a set of molecular sequences to reveal their similarities and their differences is often hardened by the complexity and the size of the search space involved, which undermine the approaches that try to explore exhaustively the solution's search space. Due to its nature, Genetic Algorithms, which are prone for general combinatorial problems optimization in large and complex search spaces, emerge as serious candidates to tackle with the multiple sequence alignment problem. We have developed an evolutionary approach, AlineaGA, which uses a Genetic Algorithm with local search optimization embedded on its mutation operators for performing multiple sequence alignment. Now, we have enhanced its selection method by employing an elitist strategy, and we have also developed a new crossover operator. These transformations allow AlineaGA to improve its robustness and to obtain better fit solutions. Also, we have studied the effect of the mutation probability in solutions' evolution by analyzing the performance of the whole population throughout generations. We conclude that increasing the mutation probability leads to better solutions in fewer generations and that the mutation operators have a dramatic effect in this particular domain.
Eliminating Path Redundancy via Postconditioned Symbolic Execution

Symbolic execution is emerging as a powerful technique for generating test inputs systematically to achieve exhaustive path coverage of a bounded depth. However, its practical use is often limited by path explosion because the number of paths of a program can be exponential in the number of branch conditions encountered during the execution. To mitigate the path explosion problem, we propose a new redundancy removal method called postconditioned symbolic execution. At each branching location, in addition to determine whether a particular branch is feasible as in traditional symbolic execution, our approach checks whether the branch is subsumed by previous explorations. This is enabled by summarizing previously explored paths by weakest precondition computations. Postconditioned symbolic execution can identify path suffixes shared by multiple runs and eliminate them during test generation when they are redundant. Pruning away such redundant paths can lead to a potentially exponential reduction in the number of explored paths. Since the new approach is computationally expensive, we also propose several heuristics to reduce its cost. We have implemented our method in the symbolic execution engine KLEE [1] and conducted experiments on a large set of programs from the GNU Coreutils suite. Our results confirm that redundancy due to common path suffix is both abundant and widespread in real-world applications.
Ocean color remote sensing of seagrass and bathymetry in the Bahamas Banks by high‐resolution airborne imagery

New coastal ocean remote sensing techniques permit benthic habitats to be explored with higher resolution than ever before. A mechanistic radiative transfer approach is developed that first removes the distorting influence of the water column on the remotely sensed signal to retrieve an estimate of the reflectance at the seafloor. The retrieved bottom reflectance is then used to classify the benthos. This spectrally based approach is advantageous because model components are separate and can be evaluated and modified individually for different environments. Here, we applied our approach to quantitatively estimate shallow‐water bathymetry and leaf area index (LAI) of the seagrass Thalassia testudinum for a study site near Lee Stocking Island, Bahamas. Two high‐resolution images were obtained from the ocean portable hyperspectral imager for low‐light spectroscopy (Ocean PHILLS) over the study site in May 1999 and 2000. A combination of in situ observations of seafloor reflectance and radiative transfer modeling was used to develop and test our algorithm. Bathymetry was mapped to meter‐scale resolution using a site‐specific relationship (r2 = 0.97) derived from spectral ratios of remote sensing reflectance at 555 and 670 nm. Depth‐independent bottom reflectance was retrieved from remote sensing reflectance using bathymetry and tables of modeled water column attenuation coefficients. The magnitude of retrieved bottom reflectance was highly correlated to seagrass LAI measured from diver surveys at seven stations within the image (r2 = 0.88–0.98). Mapped turtlegrass LAI was remarkably stable over a 2‐yr period at our study site, even though Hurricane Floyd swept over the study site in September 1999.
Two Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases, MPK3 and MPK6, Are Required for Funicular Guidance of Pollen Tubes in Arabidopsis1[W][OPEN]

Two Arabidopsis mitogen-activated protein kinases, are involved in the funicular guidance phase of pollen tube growth in plant reproduction. Double fertilization in flowering plants requires the delivery of two immotile sperm cells to the female gametes by a pollen tube, which perceives guidance cues, modifies its tip growth direction, and eventually enters the micropyle of the ovule. In spite of the recent progress, so far, little is known about the signaling events in pollen tubes in response to the guidance cues. Here, we show that MPK3 and MPK6, two Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) mitogen-activated protein kinases, mediate the guidance response in pollen tubes. Genetic analysis revealed that mpk3 mpk6 double mutant pollen has reduced transmission. However, direct observation of mpk3 mpk6 mutant pollen phenotype was hampered by the embryo lethality of double homozygous mpk3–/– mpk6–/– plants. Utilizing a fluorescent reporter-tagged complementation method, we showed that the mpk3 mpk6 mutant pollen had normal pollen tube growth but impaired pollen tube guidance. In vivo pollination assays revealed that the mpk3 mpk6 mutant pollen tubes were defective in the funicular guidance phase. By contrast, semi-in vitro guidance assay showed that the micropylar guidance of the double mutant pollen tube was normal. Our results provide direct evidence to support that the funicular guidance phase of the pollen tube requires an in vivo signaling mechanism distinct from the micropyle guidance. Moreover, our finding opened up the possibility that the MPK3/MPK6 signaling pathway may link common signaling networks in plant stress response and pollen-pistil interaction.
On optical burst switching and self-similar traffic

In this letter we consider burst switching for very high speed routing in the next generation Internet backbone. In this scenario, Internet protocol (IP) packets to a given destination are collected in bursts at the network edges. We propose a burst assembly mechanism that can reduce the traffic autocorrelation or degree of self-similarity, and at the same time keep the delay due to burst formation limited at the network edges.
Association between sarcopenic obesity and cardiovascular risk: where are we?

INTRODUCTION The main changes in the body composition refer to the increase of adipose tissue and/or the decrease of muscular mass, and these changes have effect in many clinical outcomes. Sarcopenic obesity (SO) consists of the presence of excessive adipose tissue and deficit of muscular mass simultaneously. People with SO may have synergistic effect due to obesity and sarcopenia, with increases cardiovascular risk more than obesity itself. OBJECTIVE To describe the findings in the literature about the association between SO and risk factors and/or cardiometabolic disease (CMD) or cardiovascular disease (CVD). METHODS An electronic search was done on the following databases: MEDLINE, Scopus, SciELO, LILACS and Web of Science, using the matching expressions and Boolean operators: "obesity sarcopenic" OR "sarcopenic obesity", in the titles of the studies, AND "cardiometabolic disease" OR "cardiovascular disease" OR "metabolic syndrome" OR "insulin resistance", in the abstract. RESULTS Most of studies are cross-sectional and present many different diagnosis criteria for SO. It was possible to verify the association of the SO and the risk factors and/or CMD or CVD. CONCLUSION SO is associated with risk factors and/or CMD or CVD. The lack of a consensus about this definition jeopardizes the effective clinical practice and the research about the subject.
Amide proton transfer imaging with improved robustness to magnetic field inhomogeneity and magnetization transfer asymmetry using saturation with frequency alternating RF irradiation

Amide proton transfer (APT) imaging has shown promise as an indicator of tissue pH and as a marker for brain tumors. Sources of error in APT measurements include direct water saturation, and magnetization transfer (MT) from membranes and macromolecules. These are typically suppressed by postprocessing asymmetry analysis. However, this approach is strongly dependent on B0 homogeneity and can introduce additional errors due to intrinsic MT asymmetry, aliphatic proton features opposite the amide peak and radiation damping‐induced asymmetry. Although several methods exist to correct for B0 inhomogeneity, they tremendously increase scan times and do not address errors induced by asymmetry of the z‐spectrum. In this article, a novel saturation scheme—saturation with frequency alternating RF irradiation (SAFARI)—is proposed in combination with a new magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) parameter designed to generate APT images insensitive to direct water saturation and MT, even in the presence of B0 inhomogeneity. The feasibility of the SAFARI technique is demonstrated in phantoms and in the human brain. Experimental results show that SAFARI successfully removes direct water saturation and MT contamination from APT images. It is insensitive to B0 offsets up to 180 Hz without using additional B0 correction, thereby dramatically reducing scanning time. Magn Reson Med, 2011. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Partitionable light-weight groups

Group communication, providing virtual synchrony semantics, is a powerful paradigm for building distributed applications. For applications that require a large number of groups, significant performance gains can be attained if these groups share the resources required to provide virtual synchrony. A service that maps multiple user groups onto a small number of instances of a virtually synchronous implementation is called a Light-Weight Group Service. The paper describes the design of a light-weight group service able to operate in partitionable networks. Partitions pose challenges to the design of this service, in particular because inconsistent mapping decisions can be made when the system is partitioned. The paper focuses on the design of reconciliation mechanisms needed when a partition is healed.
Usability Evaluation Based on Web Design Perspectives

Given the growth in the number and size of Web Applications worldwide, Web quality assurance, and more specifically Web usability have become key success factors. Therefore, this work proposes a usability evaluation technique based on the combination of Web design perspectives adapted from existing literature, and heuristics. This new technique is assessed using a controlled experiment aimed at measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of our technique, in comparison to Nielsen's heuristic evaluation. Results indicated that our technique was significantly more effective than and as efficient as Nielsen's heuristic evaluation.
Energy harvesting circuit using integrated transformer

In this work we present a prototype circuit to harvest energy from radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic waves based on an integrated transformer together with a half-wave multi-stage rectifier. This circuit is designed to be impedance matched to a standard 50 Ω antenna and to operate at 2.4 GHz with input power as low as −15 dBm. The circuit presented here shows that it is possible to harvest low power input signals and therefore it can be used to supply alone a circuit, or to work as a backup battery charger. The circuit was designed and simulated in a standard 130 nm CMOS process.
Engineering Psychology and Human Performance

1. Introduction to Engineering Psychology and Human Performance 2. Signal Detection, Information Theory and Absolute Judgment 3. Attention in Perception and Display Space 4. Spatial Displays 5. Spatial Cognition, Navigation and Manual Control 6. Language and Communications 7. Memory and Training 8. Decision Making 9. Selection of Action 10. Attention, Time sharing and Workload 11. Mental Workload, Stress, and Individual Differences: Cognitive and Neuroergonomic Perspectives 12. Automation 13. Epilogue
Genetic Structures at the Origin of Acquisition of the β-Lactamase blaKPC Gene

ABSTRACT Genetic structures surrounding the carbapenem-hydrolyzing Ambler class A blaKPC gene were characterized in several KPC-positive Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains isolated from the United States, Colombia, and Greece. The blaKPC genes were associated in all cases with transposon-related structures. In the K. pneumoniae YC isolate from the United States, the β-lactamase blaKPC-2 gene was located on a novel Tn3-based transposon, Tn4401. Tn4401 was 10 kb in size, was delimited by two 39-bp imperfect inverted repeat sequences, and harbored, in addition to the β-lactamase blaKPC-2 gene, a transposase gene, a resolvase gene, and two novel insertion sequences, ISKpn6 and ISKpn7. Tn4401 has been identified in all isolates. However, two isoforms of this transposon were found: Tn4401a was found in K. pneumoniae YC and K. pneumoniae GR from the United States and Greece, respectively, and differed by a 100-bp deletion, located just upstream of the blaKPC-2 gene, compared to the sequence of Tn4401b, which was found in the Colombian isolates. In all isolates tested, Tn4401 was flanked by a 5-bp target site duplication, the signature of a recent transposition event, and was inserted in different open reading frames located on plasmids that varied in size and nature. Tn4401 is likely at the origin of carbapenem-hydrolyzing β-lactamase KPC mobilization to plasmids and its further insertion into various-sized plasmids identified in nonclonally related K. pneumoniae and P. aeruginosa isolates.
Multi-resource Aware Congestion Control in Data Centers

Network has been widely reported as a bottleneck of data center applications. However, current researches of congestion control are unaware of multiple resources consuming and decrease all flows when congestion, ignoring some involved flows may not be the faults. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-resources aware congestion control framework MRTCP to provide a fine-grain control on flows when congestions appear. MRTCP exploits a multi-tuple vector model to measure multi-resources provision and consumption, and develops a novel metric RB (Resource Balance) to denote the heterogeneous amounts of resources employed by each flow. It analyzes which resources are being the bottlenecks that lead to congestions, calculates the responsibility of each flow to this congestion, and then adjusts their sending rates respectively. Our experiment results demonstrate that MRTCP is able to optimize network multi-resources utilization and improve network throughput without adding obvious packets delays.