Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epithelial to mesenchymal transition is associated with rapamycin resistance

Rapamycin analogues have antitumor efficacy in several tumor types, however few patients demonstrate tumor regression. Thus, there is a pressing need for markers of intrinsic response/resistance and rational combination therapies. We hypothesized that epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) confers rapamycin resistance. We found that the epithelial marker E-cadherin protein is higher in rapamycin sensitive (RS) cells and mesenchymal breast cancer cell lines selected by transcriptional EMT signatures are less sensitive to rapamycin. MCF7 cells, transfected with constitutively active mutant Snail, had increased rapamycin resistance (RR) compared to cells transfected with wild-type Snail. Conversely, we transfected two RR mesenchymal cell lines—ACHN and MDA-MB-231—with miR-200b/c or ZEB1 siRNA to promote mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition. This induced E-cadherin expression in both cell lines, and ACHN demonstrated a significant increase in RS. Treatment of ACHN and MDA-MB-231 with trametinib modulated EMT in ACHN cells in vitro. Treatment of MDA-MB-231 and ACHN xenografts with trametinib in combination with rapamycin resulted in significant growth inhibition in both but without an apparent effect on EMT. Future studies are needed to determine whether EMT status is predictive of sensitivity to rapalogs and to determine whether combination therapy with EMT modulating agents can enhance antitumor effects of PI3K/mTOR inhibitors.
Harmonic suppressed bandpass filter using composite right/left handed transmission line

A wideband composite right/left handed transmission line (CRLH TL) in conjunction with its corresponding equiva-lent circuit model is studied based on a cascaded complementary single split ring resonator (CCSSRR). The characterization is performed by theory analysis, circuit simulation, and full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation. The negative refractive index (NRI) and backward wave propagation performance of the CRLH TL are demonstrated. For application, a bandpass filter (BPF) with enhanced out-of-band selectivity and harmonic suppression operating at the wireless local area network (WLAN) band is designed, fabricated, and measured by combining the CRLH TL with a complementary electric inductive-capacitive resonator (CELC). Three CELC cells with wideband stopband performance in the conductor strip and ground plane, respectively, are utilized in terms of single negative permeability. The design concept has been verified by the measurement data.
Getting ready for building: signaling and autophagosome biogenesis

Autophagy is the main cellular catabolic process responsible for degrading organelles and large protein aggregates. It is initiated by the formation of a unique membrane structure, the phagophore, which engulfs part of the cytoplasm and forms a double‐membrane vesicle termed the autophagosome. Fusion of the outer autophagosomal membrane with the lysosome and degradation of the inner membrane contents complete the process. The extent of autophagy must be tightly regulated to avoid destruction of proteins and organelles essential for cell survival. Autophagic activity is thus regulated by external and internal cues, which initiate the formation of well‐defined autophagy‐related protein complexes that mediate autophagosome formation and selective cargo recruitment into these organelles. Autophagosome formation and the signaling pathways that regulate it have recently attracted substantial attention. In this review, we analyze the different signaling pathways that regulate autophagy and discuss recent progress in our understanding of autophagosome biogenesis.
Circularly-polarized discrete lens antennas in the 60-GHz band

This paper presents the design and demonstration of circularly-polarized transmit-arrays operating in the 60-GHz band. These arrays have a fairly simple structure with three metal layers and are fabricated with a standard printed-circuit board technology. The simulation method is based on an electromagnetic model of the focal source and the unit-cells, associated to an analytical modeling of the full structure. The experimental results in V-band are in very good agreement with the simulations and demonstrate very satisfactory characteristics. Power efficiencies up to 60% are reached with a −1 dB gain-bandwidth up to 7%, and low cross-polarization level.
Magnetization transfer ratio values and proton MR spectroscopy of normal-appearing cerebral white matter in patients with liver cirrhosis.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Hepatic encephalopathy in cirrhotic patients may be the clinical manifestation of disturbed cerebral cell volume homeostasis. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of significant changes in magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) values, which could reflect an increase in free water within the brain of patients with liver cirrhosis, and to correlate these findings with minimal hepatic encephalopathy and proton MR spectroscopy ((1)H-MRS) abnormalities. METHODS Twenty-four patients with liver cirrhosis and eight healthy control volunteers were included in the study. MR imaging studies included conventional T1- and T2-weighted imaging, (1)H-MRS, and magnetization transfer imaging. MTR and (1)H-MRS values were obtained from normal-appearing white matter and were correlated with each other and with the presence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy. RESULTS (1)H-MRS showed a decrease in choline and myo-inositol and an increase in glutamine + glutamate with respect to creatine + phosphocreatine. MTR values were significantly decreased in cirrhotic patients when compared with healthy control volunteers, although this decrease was not significantly higher in the patients with minimal hepatic encephalopathy. The decreases in MTR values correlated with increases in glutamine + glutamate. CONCLUSION The MTR decrease in patients with liver cirrhosis may be caused by low-grade astrocytic swelling produced as a response to the osmotic stress occurring in these patients. However, in this cross-sectional study, we did not find a correlation between MTR decrease and the presence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy, probably because of limitations in MTR quantification techniques.
Use of unilateral screw-stick and cage bone graft fusion for the treatment of lumbar disc herniation

Background: The clinical application of unilateral pedicle screw internal fixation to the treatment of lumbar disc herniation is rarely reported. The aim of our study was to discuss the feasibility and clinical effects of using unilateral pedicle screw-stick and single polyether ether ketone (PEEK) Cage combined with unilateral pedicle internal fixation for lumbar disc herniation. Methods: Retrospective analysis was made on the clinical data of 353 patients with unilateral monosegmental lumbar disc herniation from January 2007 to February 2013. Unilateral pedicle screw-stick and single PEEK Cage were used for the study group, and bilateral pedicle screw-stick and single PEEK Cage for the control group. Criteria such as Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), Visual Analog Scale (VAS) for pain and Macnab were used to effects of surgery. Results: Compared with those in the control group, the patients in the study group had considerably smaller size of incision, shorter duration of operation, lower intraoperative blood loss, lower postoperative drainage and shorter length of stay and much less money spent on hospitalization (P 0.05). In the postoperative follow-up evaluations of ODI, VAS and postoperative curative effects of lumbar surgery, excellent and good rates of the study group were higher than those of the contract group (P <0.05). Conclusions: Compared with bilateral pedicle screw-stick and single PEEK Cage, unilateral pedicle screw-stick and single PEEK cage are a reliable choice for the treatment of monosegmental lumbar disc herniation.
Among-species differences in pollen quality and quantity limitation: implications for endemics in biodiverse hotspots.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Insufficient pollination is a function of quantity and quality of pollen receipt, and the relative contribution of each to pollen limitation may vary with intrinsic plant traits and extrinsic ecological properties. Community-level studies are essential to evaluate variation across species in quality limitation under common ecological conditions. This study examined whether endemic species are more limited by pollen quantity or quality than non-endemic co-flowering species in three endemic-rich plant communities located in biodiversity hotspots of different continents (Andalusia, California and Yucatan). METHODS Natural variations in pollen receipt and pollen tube formation were analysed for 20 insect-pollinated plants. Endemic and non-endemic species that co-flowered were paired in order to estimate and compare the quantity and quality components of pre-zygotic pollination success, obtained through piecewise regression analysis of the relationship between pollen grains and pollen tubes of naturally pollinated wilted flowers. KEY RESULTS Pollen tubes did not frequently exceed the number of ovules per flower. Only the combination of abundant and good quality pollen and a low number of ovules per flower conferred relief from pre-zygotic pollen limitation in the three stochastic pollination environments studied. Quality of pollen receipt was found to be as variable as quantity among study species. The relative pollination success of endemic and non-endemic species, and its quantity and quality components, was community dependent. CONCLUSIONS Assessing both quality and quantity of pollen receipt is key to determining the ovule fertilization potential of both endemic and widespread plants in biodiverse hotspot regions. Large natural variation among flowers of the same species in the two components and pollen tube formation deserves further analysis in order to estimate the environmental, phenotypic and intraindividual sources of variation that may affect how plants evolve to overcome this limitation in different communities worldwide.
U Synthesis of Flexible Rotor-Magnetic Bearing Systems

AbstructThe p synthesis design method was evaluated for a flexible rotor magnetic bearing system with a five-axis-control system using both simulations and experiments. After modeling the full-order system using the finite element method, we obtained a reduced-order model in the modal domain by truncating the flexible modes. After choosing appropriate weighting functions with respect to frequency, we designed the p-synthesis control system using the Lr-toolbox in MATLAB. We then carried out simulations of the control system for a flexible rotor magnetic bearing system with a five-axis-control system and obtained good performance. Next, we conducted experiments to verify the robustness of the controllers on a test rig during initial levitation. The controllers provided robust stability and performance over a wide range of parameter variations in the test rig.
Supercontinuum generation in tapered fibers

Here we demonstrate a supercontiuum spectrum generated in a tapered fiber pumped by a Ti sapphire laser with 130fs pulse width at 800nm centre wavelength. The tapered fiber with the diameter of 1. 25µm and the length of 16cm was made by using a tapered machine. The supercontiuum range is from 500nm to 900nm. We simulated the supercontinuum with the nonlinear Schrodinger Equation and discussed the affecting factors. In some conditions, the experimental results are agreed very well with the theoretical analyses.
Induction with Lopinavir-Based Treatment Followed by Switch to Nevirapine-Based Regimen versus Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors-Based Treatment for First Line Antiretroviral Therapy in HIV Infected Children Three Years and Older

Background The World Health Organization recommends non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs)-based antiretroviral therapy (ART) for children three years and older. In younger children, starting ART with lopinavir boosted with ritonavir (LPVr) results in lower risk of virological failure, but data in children three years and older are scarce, and long-term ART with LPVr is problematic in resource-poor settings. Methodology Retrospective cohort of children three years and older who started triple ART including LPVr or a NNRTI between 2007 and 2013 in a rural setting in India. Children who started LPVr were switched to nevirapine-based ART after virological suppression. We analysed two outcomes, virological suppression (HIV-RNA <400 copies/ml) within one year of ART using logistic regression, and time to virological failure (HIV-RNA >1000 copies/ml) after virological suppression using Cox proportional hazard regression. A sensitivity analysis was performed using inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) based of propensity score methods. Findings Of 325 children having a viral load during the first year of ART, 74/83 (89.2%) in the LPVr group achieved virological suppression versus 185/242 (76.5%) in the NNRTI group. In a multivariable analysis, the use of LPVr-based ART was associated with higher probability of virological suppression (adjusted odds ratio 3.19, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.11–9.13). After IPTW, the estimated risk difference was 12.2% (95% CI, 2.9–21.5). In a multivariable analysis including 292 children who had virological suppression and available viral loads after one year of ART, children switched from LPVr to nevirapine did not have significant higher risk of virological failure (adjusted hazard ratio 1.18, 95% CI 0.36–3.81). Conclusions In a cohort of HIV infected children three years and older in a resource-limited setting, an LPVr induction- nevirapine maintenance strategy resulted in more initial virological suppression and similar incidence of virological failure after initial virological suppression than NNRTI-based regimens.
A turbo-like symbol by symbol decoder for randomly distributed space-time coding in amplify-and-forward relay networks

In this letter, a simple distributed space-time coding scheme is introduced by allocating random interleavers to each relay node in amplify-and-forward (AF) network. By using multiuser definition each rely node provides an interference to the detected signal, a turbo-like symbol by symbol decoder is also introduced. The complexity involved grows only linearly with the number of relay nodes. Simulation results show an acceptable improvement to previous works in the high SNR region.
Electrospun vancomycin-loaded coating on titanium implants for the prevention of implant-associated infections

The objectives of this work were to develop an antibiotic coating on the surface of a titanium plate to determine its antibacterial properties in vitro and in vivo. To prepare vancomycin-coated titanium implants, we adopted the electrospinning nanotechnique. The surface structure of the coating implants was observed using a scanning electron microscope. An elution method and a high-pressure liquid chromatography assay were used to characterize the release behavior of vancomycin from the coating. The antibacterial efficacy and the cytotoxicity of the coated titanium implants on osteoblasts were investigated in vitro. In addition, X-ray, white blood cell count, C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and pathological examination were performed to validate its antimicrobial efficacy in vivo. The antibiotic coating released 82.7% (approximately 528.2 μg) of total vancomycin loading in the coating in vitro. The release behavior of vancomycin from nanofiber coatings exhibited a biphasic release pattern with an initial burst on day 1, followed by a slow and controlled release over 28 days. There was no cytotoxicity observed in vitro for the vancomycin-loaded coating. The vancomycin-coated titanium implants were active in treating implant-associated infection in vivo. Thus, vancomycin-coated titanium implants may be a promising approach to prevent and treat implant-associated infections.
Tailoring density estimation via reproducing kernel moment matching

Moment matching is a popular means of parametric density estimation. We extend this technique to nonparametric estimation of mixture models. Our approach works by embedding distributions into a reproducing kernel Hilbert space, and performing moment matching in that space. This allows us to tailor density estimators to a function class of interest (i.e., for which we would like to compute expectations). We show our density estimation approach is useful in applications such as message compression in graphical models, and image classification and retrieval.
Past and future of emergency medicine education and training

Science fiction movie fans will already be familiar with one possible future for emergency medicine education and training. In the 1999 film The Matrix (Warner Bros. Entertainment) Keanu Reeves’s character Neo simply connects to a computer via a port in the back of his head and receives a ‘direct download’ of knowledge and skills ranging from martial arts and bullet dodging to languages (enabling him to save the world, obviously). The experience appears briefly painful but incredibly efficient. This might be closer to reality than we think. The approach taken in The Matrix is the logical extension of medical education and training methods over the past 50 years. As the apprenticeship model used in the preceding 800 years has fallen out of vogue, medical educators have sought to codify and collate their body of knowledge. The training task has been the transmission of this knowledge and skills, with a passing interest in the acquisition of appropriate attitudes and behaviours. Traditional lectures and textbook-based education have been enhanced by advanced curricular design, explicit learning outcomes and psychometrically reliable assessment. Technology, including Social Media, has further improved the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge transmission.
Design and Analysis of an IPLayer Anonymizing Infrastructure

This paper describes an IP-layer anonymizing infrastructure , called ANON, which allows server addresses to be hidden from clients and vice versa. In providing address anonymity, ANON uses a network resident set of IP-layer anonymizing forwarders that can forward IP packets with nested encryption and decryption applied to their source and destination addresses. To prevent adversaries from compromising the anonymity by learning the forwarding path, ANON incorporates a suite of countermeasures, including non-malleable, semantically secure link encryp-tion and link padding. To lower the bandwidth cost of padding traffic, two novel algorithms are suggested: on-demand link padding and probabilistic link padding. To prevent inband denial of service (DoS) attacks through the anonymizing infrastructure itself, ANON uses rate limiting. Finally, ANON makes use of fault-tolerant transport networks to enhance its resilience against failures and out-band attacks.
Molecular analysis of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in 32 breast and/or ovarian cancer Spanish families

It is estimated that about 5–10% of breast cancer cases may be due to inherited predisposition. Until now, two main susceptibility genes have been identified: BRCA1 and BRCA2. The first linkage and mutational studies suggested that mutations in these two genes would account for the majority of high-risk breast cancer families, but recent studies show how the proportion of families due to BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations strongly depends on the population and the types of family analyzed. It is now clear that, in the context of families with a modest cancer profile, which are the most commonly found in the clinical practice, the percentage of mutations found is much lower than that suggested by the first studies. In the present study, we analyze a group of 32 Spanish families, which contatined at least three cases of female breast cancer (at least one of them diagnosed before the age of 50 years), for the presence of mutations in the BRCA genes. The total proportion of mutations was low (25%), although the percentage of mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes was higher, considering the breast and ovarian cancer families and the male breast cancer families respectively. Our results are in agreement with the idea that a great proportion of moderate-risk cancer families could be due to low penetrance susceptibility genes distinct from BRCA1 or BRCA2. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Version-consistent dynamic reconfiguration of component-based distributed systems

There is an increasing demand for the runtime reconfiguration of distributed systems in response to changing environments and evolving requirements. Reconfiguration must be done in a safe and low-disruptive way. In this paper, we propose version consistency of distributed transactions as a safe criterion for dynamic reconfiguration. Version consistency ensures that distributed transactions be served as if there were operating on a single coherent version of the system despite possible reconfigurations that may happen meanwhile. The paper also proposes a distributed algorithm to maintain dynamic dependences between components at architectural level and enable low-disruptive version-consistent dynamic reconfigurations. An initial assessment through simulation shows the benefits of the proposed approach with respect to timeliness and low degree of disruption.
Applying Machine Learning to Chinese Temporal Relation Resolution

Temporal relation resolution involves extraction of temporal information explicitly or implicitly embedded in a language. This information is often inferred from a variety of interactive grammatical and lexical cues, especially in Chinese. For this purpose, inter-clause relations (temporal or otherwise) in a multiple-clause sentence play an important role. In this paper, a computational model based on machine learning and heterogeneous collaborative bootstrapping is proposed for analyzing temporal relations in a Chinese multiple-clause sentence. The model makes use of the fact that events are represented in different temporal structures. It takes into account the effects of linguistic features such as tense/aspect, temporal connectives, and discourse structures. A set of experiments has been conducted to investigate how linguistic features could affect temporal relation resolution.
Comparing Action-Query Strategies in Semi-Autonomous Agents

We consider settings in which a semi-autonomous agent has uncertain knowledge about its environment, but can ask what action the human operator would prefer taking in the current or in a potential future state. Asking queries can improve behavior, but if queries come at a cost (e.g., due to limited operator attention), the value of each query should be maximized. We compare two strategies for selecting action queries: 1) based on myopically maximizing expected gain in long-term value, and 2) based on myopically minimizing uncertainty in the agent's policy representation. We show empirically that the first strategy tends to select more valuable queries, and that a hybrid method can outperform either method alone in settings with limited computation.