Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determination of anthracycline antibiotics doxorubicin and daunorubicin by capillary electrophoresis with UV absorption detection

Sweeping preconcentration and electrokinetic injection was used for the capillary electrophoretic analysis of trace amounts of biologically active anthracyclines with UV absorption detection. Phosphate buffer (100 mM), pH 2.5, with addition of 40% v/v methanol was used as background electrolyte (BGE). Sodium dodecyl sulfate (150 mM) was added to BGE in the inlet vial as the sweeping agent. The system enables effective separation of anthracyclines as well as cleanup from matrix impurities. Sweeping preconcentration of sample provides an excellent detection limit (1×10–9 mol L–1). The method was applied for the determination of therapeutic levels of doxorubicin in real plasma samples.
Transition Towards Transradial Approach Improves Outcomes of Acute Myocardial Infarction PCI

Abstract Introduction and aim: Transradial (TRA) instead of transfemoral (TFA) approach strategy has been presented in research literature as superior access strategy especially for acute ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). There is a paucity of registry-based data of outcomes from default TRA strategy compared to TFA. Materials and methods: All-comers STEMI PCI institutional Registry identified 1808 consecutive patients in time-frame of 40 months from 2007 to 2010, without making any exclusions. Moreover, we applied Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to replace randomization, address the potential confounding and selection bias. PSM derived 565 congruent pairs of patients from the groups. Results: After 30 days the primary composite endpoint of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) was in favor of TRA 6.5% vs. 12.4% in TFA group, simultaneously secondary endpoints of death in TRA with rate of 4.8% and with rate of 10.1% in TFA. Moreover, the rate of major access related bleeding was 1.1% in TRA vs. 8.5% in TFA, in contrast the major non-access related bleeding was 1.8% and 2.4% respectively showed no significant difference. One year Kaplan Meier survival plots were in favor of TRA. Conclusions: Default transradial access strategy is associated with improved STEMI PCI outcomes.
Levels of retinoblastoma protein expression in newly diagnosed acute myelogenous leukemia.

The relationship between the level of retinoblastoma protein (RB) expression and the survival of 113 newly diagnosed acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) patients was studied. Western blotting was used to determine the level of RB protein present in peripheral blood leukemia cells and results were confirmed in 26 patients by immunohistochemistry. The leukemic cells from 22/113 AML patients (19%) contained RB protein at levels that were equal to or less than the level of RB observed in the mononuclear cell fraction of peripheral blood from normal individuals (Low RB). Levels of RB greater than that of normal blood (Elevated RB) were seen in 91 patients (81%). The median survival of patients with low RB was significantly shorter than that seen in patients with elevated RB, 12 weeks versus 40 weeks (P = .02). Remission induction frequency was 36% in low RB patients compared with 68% in AML patients with elevated RB (P = .01). Multivariate analysis showed that low RB protein level was an independent prognostic factor predictive or poor survival after allowing for other known prognostic factors. These data suggest that a low level of the RB protein at the time of diagnosis is associated with shortened survival in AML patients because of inferior response to conventional therapy. Monitoring of the RB level could identify a subgroup of AML patients with an extremely poor prognosis when treated with chemotherapy alone, who would be eligible for alternative therapeutic strategies.
The Determinants of Interest Group Membership: Estimating Choice-Based Probability Models of Contribution Decisions

There has been much theorizing about why individuals join interest groups. However, little has been done to test the resulting propositions because of the difficulties associated with empirically analyzing the joining decision. This deficiency is especially great when it comes to public or symbolic interest groups. In this analysis, choice-based probability methods are employed that permit the combination of data from the 1980 National Election Study with comparable information about Common Cause members and the estimation of models of the participation calculus. Besides demonstrating the applicability of the choice-based methodology, this analysis shows the primary importance of political interest and policy preferences for the membership choice. Citizens who are politically interested and have preferences that roughly match an organization's reputation find that associational membership has both greater benefits and lower costs for them than it does for others. An ability to pay is irrelevant, regardless of educational attainment and despite members' high incomes. Organizational leaders deliberately keep the costs of membership low relative to most citizens' ability to pay; this encourages potential contributors to join in order to learn about the organization.
Examination of S-Locus Regulated Differential Expression in Primula vulgaris Floral Development

Recent findings on the molecular basis of heteromorphic self-incompatibility in Primula have shown that the controlling self-incompatibility (S)-locus is not allelic, but is instead a small hemizygous region of only a few genes in the thrum genotype. How these genes alter the development of floral morphology and the specificity of self-incompatibility is still not completely clear. In order to start to identify genes regulated by the S-locus and elucidate the large-scale biological processes affected, we used RNA-seq data from floral buds of heteromorphic P. vulgaris pin (long style, short anthers) and thrum (short style, long anthers) morphs at early and late developmental time points. Differential expression between the two morphs was assessed at both time points and Gene Ontology term analyses of these gene sets were conducted. Our findings suggest that the S-locus regulates a large number of genes outside its physical bounds and likely sets up a cascade of expression changes. Additionally, we found evidence to suggest that there may be a timing difference in pollen development between the morphs, with pin pollen development proceeding earlier than thrum pollen development. This finding provides insight into how morphological differences in pollen between the morphs may be established, but intriguingly, could also be related to the self-incompatibility phenotype.
Spatio-temporal Comparison between ERD/ERS and MRCP-based Movement Prediction

In brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) based on electroencephalography (EEG), two distinct types of EEG patterns related to movement have been used for detecting the brainâs preparation for voluntary movements: a) event-related patterns in the time domain named movement related cortical potentials (MRCPs) and b) patterns in the frequency domain named event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/ERS). The applicability of those patterns in BCIs is often evaluated by the classification performance. To this end, the known spatio-temporal differences in EEG activity can be of interest, since they might influence the classification performance of the two different patterns. In this paper, we compared the classification performance based on ERD/ERS and MRCP while varying the time point of prediction as well as the used electrode sites. Empirical results were obtained from eight subjects performing voluntary right arm movements. Results show: a) classification based on MRCP is superior compared to ERD/ERS close to the movement onset whereas the opposite results farther away from the movement onset, b) the performance maximum of MRCP is located at central electrodes whereas it is at fronto-central electrodes for ERD/ERS. In summary, the results contribute to a better insight into the spatial and temporal differences between ERD/ERS and MRCP in terms of prediction performance.
Effect of stress and food restriction on blood pressure and lifespan of Dahl salt‐sensitive rats

Objective: To evaluate the long‐term consequences of stress in rats with genetic hypertension. Design: Rapp‐Dahl salt‐sensitive rats, maintained on a low‐salt diet, were stressed periodically over 8 weeks during which time their blood pressures were measured. In experiment 1 both stressed and unstressed control rats were given ad libitum access to food. Because of significant differences in body weights, in experiment 2 the unstressed controls were pair‐fed to maintain their food intake at a level similar to that of the stressed rats. Methods: Rats were subjected to 2‐h sessions of supine immobilization stress 5 days a week every other week for 8 weeks. Blood pressures were measured during non‐stress weeks, at least 4 days after the last exposure to the stressor and at monthly intervals thereafter. Survival curves were also established. Results: In experiment 1 stressed rats developed hypertension at a slower rate than controls and lived significantly longer, but also weighed significantly less than controls, presumably because of diminished food intake. In experiment 2, in which food intake was controlled, body weights were similar in the two groups of rats, and hypertension developed at the same rate in both groups. Survival curves were not significantly different. Food restriction extended life compared with free feeding. Conclusions: Stress need not have long‐term, deleterious health consequences in rats with genetically inherited hypertension, whereas caloric restriction is protective.
Differences in Individual NYSE Specialists' Performances and Strategies

This paper shows that there exist differences in the performances of individual NYSE specialists in terms of the execution costs and participation strategies to the posted quotes and trades. We find that quoted and effective spreads, quoted depth, and number of trades that receive price improvement differ significantly across individual specialists. The explanatory power of the model as measured by adjusted R2 increases when we include the individual specialist dummies. Evidence suggests that some of the differences across specialist firms documented in the previous literature are due to the differences in individual specialists. We find that, as the trading frequency increases, order processing costs increase for the portfolios of the individual specialists which implies that specialists use profits from active stocks to subsidize inactive stocks in their portfolios. Using 2001 NYSE System Order Data in the decimal pricing environment, we also show that individual NYSE specialists differ significantly in their participation strategies to the posted quotes and trades. This suggests that there are significant differences in execution costs between specialists because they use different quoting and trading strategies.
Development of a wheeled inverted pendulum mobile platform with a four-bar parallel mechanism

Abstract A wheeled inverted pendulum (WIP) offers benefits such as a small floor occupation area, high dynamic stability, and horizontal force sensitivity. However, the body of a WIP robot inclines at the start of acceleration or deceleration, when an external force is applied, or when the position of a CoG is changed. This incline may result in degraded task performance such as object dropping during delivery or image swaying when taking video. In this paper, a WIP mobile platform adopting a four-bar parallel mechanism which provides robust load position variance and horizontal posture keeping is proposed. The basic structure of this platform connects two front and rear inverted pendulums and two upper and lower bars with free-rotational joints, so as to act as a four-bar parallel link mechanism. Based on the features of the parallel mechanism, the platform can maintain a horizontal posture of the upper bar during balancing motion under various disturbances. The motion equations of the mobile platform showed that a change of the loading condition on the upper bar did not affect the balancing characteristics, as confirmed via balancing simulations. Two possible application tasks, namely object delivery and image taking, were successfully demonstrated to show the utility of the platform in terms of its horizontal posture compensation function and its robustness in terms of load position variance.
Intragenerational stability of postmaterialism in Germany, the Netherlands and the United States

Inglehart's thesis of the 'Silent Revolution' states that the priorities of Western publics have gradually shifted from materialist toward postmaterialist values. An important aspect of this thesis is the socialization hypothesis, predicting that one's (post)-materialist values are stable during adulthood. This paper tests this hypothesis using panel data for the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. For this purpose several multiple indicator two-wave models are developed including (i) a correction for the dependency between the indicators (because of the ranking of the items) and (ii) item specific factors. Application of these models to the data indicates a strong stability of postmaterialist values during adulthood, especially for the United States and the Netherlands. The implications of the findings are discussed.
Polar Coordinate-Based Energy-Efficient-Chain Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Random Projection

Random projection based on compressed sensing can reduce the amount of data transmitted in a wireless sensor network (WSN), and efficient routing can reduce the network traffic. Thus, this paper presents a Random projection-Polar coordinate-Chain routing (RPC) method. The method uses polar coordinates to locate nodes, establishes a chain structure to form a route, and applies random projection to achieve the compressed data collection. In a WSN, the sink is the center of the data collection. With the sink as the pole, the polar coordinates can be used to determine the orientation of each node relative to the sink so that nodes can be searched under certain conditions. By adopting the chain topological structure, the establishment of the chain through the greedy algorithm reduces the energy consumption and complexity. Based on the comparative analysis, a four-quadrant chain routing method combining the polar radius and polar angle is proposed for smaller networks. For large-scale networks, a routing algorithm combining the sector and inner circle is proposed. Then, according to the random projection theory, the weighted sum of the random projections of each row of the corresponding measurement matrix in each partition is transmitted to the sink. The sink has collected all measurements of each partition to complete the signal reconstruction. In this method, the route is formed by searching in the zones according to the polar radius and the polar angle, which avoids the roundabout route between distant nodes and reduces the energy consumption of the network. By comparing the RPC method with other related methods and the simulation experiments for different types of routing, the proposed method is proved to be time and energy efficient.
Kuwait education program achievement report : school education quality improvement program

In cooperation with the World Bank, Kuwaits Ministry of Education and National Center for Education Development have been engaged in a multi-year integrated modernization program that addresses critical issues in Kuwaits education system: curricular reform, the development of national assessment systems, improvement of school leadership, and creation of professional standards. These areas were selected based on a conceptual framework that identified the key reform pillars. The overall objective of the program is to improve the quality of schools and education in Kuwait. Capturing the accomplishments of this intensive effort and documenting lessons learned are valuable practices that can serve to inform future programs of education development in Kuwait and elsewhere. The intent of the Program Achievement Report (PAR) is to qualitatively and retrospectively take stock of major achievements and highlight lessons learned during the Education Technical Cooperation Program (2010-2014). The PAR can also serve as a guide for structuring and organizing future cooperation programs.
Own Interest and Foreign Need: Are Bilateral Investment Treaty Programmes Similar to Aid Allocation?

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have become the most important legal mechanism for the encouragement of foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries. Yet practically no systematic evidence exists on what motivates capital-exporting developed countries to sign BITs earlier with some developing countries than with others, if at all. The theoretical framework from the aid allocation literature suggests that developed countries pursue a mixture of own interest and foreign need. It also suggests differences between the big developed countries and a group of smaller ones known as like-minded countries. We find evidence that both economic and political interests determine the scheduling of BITs. However, with one exception, foreign need as measured by per capita income is also a factor. These results suggest that BIT programmes can be explained employing the same framework successfully applied to the allocation of aid. At the same time, own interest seems to be substantively more important than developing country need when it comes to BITs and the like-minded countries make no exception.
Theory of Financial Decision Making

Based on courses developed by the author over several years, this book provides access to a broad area of research that is not available in separate articles or books of readings. Topics covered include the meaning and measurement of risk, general single-period portfolio problems, mean-variance analysis and the Capital Asset Pricing Model, the Arbitrage Pricing Theory, complete markets, multiperiod portfolio problems and the Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model, the Black-Scholes option pricing model and contingent claims analysis, 'risk-neutral' pricing with Martingales, Modigliani-Miller and the capital structure of the firm, interest rates and the term structure, and others.
Pharmacological Characterization of [ 3 H ] VUF 11211 , a Novel Radiolabeled Small-Molecule Inverse Agonist for the Chemokine Receptor CXCR 3 s

Chemokine receptor CXCR3 has attracted much attention, as it is thought to be associated with a wide range of immunerelated diseases. As such, several small molecules with different chemical structures targeting CXCR3 have been discovered. Despite limited clinical success so far, these compounds serve as interesting tools for investigating receptor activation and antagonism. Accumulating evidence suggests that many of these compounds are allosteric modulators for CXCR3. One feature of allosteric ligands is that the magnitude of the mediated allosteric effect is dependent on the orthosteric probe that is used. Consequently, there is a risk for incorrect assessment of affinity for allosteric modulators with orthosteric radioligands, which has so far been the most applied approach for chemokine receptors. Therefore, we aimed to use a small-molecule allosteric ligand from the piperazinyl-piperidine class, also known as VUF11211 [(S)-5chloro-6-(4-(1-(4-chlorobenzyl)piperidin-4-yl)-3-ethylpiperazin1-yl)-N-ethylnicotinamide]. VUF11211 acts as an inverse agonist at a constitutively active mutant of CXCR3. Radiolabeling of VUF11211 gave [H]VUF11211, which in radioligand binding studies shows high affinity for CXCR3 (Kd 5 0.65 nM) and reasonably fast association (kon5 0.03 minute nM) and dissociation kinetics (koff 5 0.02 minute ). The application of the [H]VUF11211 to assess CXCR3 pharmacology was validated with diverse classes of CXCR3 compounds, including both antagonists and agonists, as well as VUF11211 analogs. Interestingly, VUF11211 seems to bind to a different population of CXCR3 conformations compared with the CXCR3 agonists CXC chemokine ligand 11 (CXCL11), VUF11418 [1-((1R,5S)-6,6-dimethylbicyclo[3.1. 1]hept-2-en-2-yl)N-((29-iodobiphenyl-4-yl)methyl)-N,N-dimethylmethanaminium Iodide], and VUF10661 [N-(6-amino-1-(2,2-diphenylethylamino)1-oxohexan-2-yl)-2-(4-oxo-4-phenylbutanoyl)-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinoline-3-carboxamide]. These findings, taken together, indicate that this allosteric inverse agonist radioligand for CXCR3 may facilitate the discovery, characterization, and optimization of allosteric modulators for the chemokine receptor CXCR3.
Electronically controlled current limiting fuses

Current limiting fuses are designed to control the available fault current in medium voltage power systems. The continuous current ratings of current limiting fuses have to be limited to certain maximum values so that the current limiting effect can be maintained. Numerous studies have been conducted and technologies created to achieve higher continuous ratings and at the same time still maintain the current limiting characteristics of the fuse. This paper provides a review and comparison of the current available technologies developed. Also, the interface requirement between the user/engineer and vendor are given so that these devices can be properly applied. <<ETX>>
Tumor necrosis factor alpha increases P‐glycoprotein expression in a BME‐UV in vitro model of mammary epithelial cells

P‐glycoprotein is an efflux pump belonging to the ATP‐binding cassette super‐family that influences the bioavailability and disposition of many drugs. Mammary epithelial cells express various drug transporters including P‐glycoprotein, albeit at low level during lactation. During inflammatory reactions, which can be associated with changes in epithelial barrier functions, pro‐inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF‐α) are elevated in milk and serum. In this study, the role of TNF‐α in the regulation of P‐glycoprotein was determined in cultured BME‐UV cells, an immortalized bovine mammary epithelial cell line. The protein production of P‐glycoprotein and mRNA expression of bABCB1, the gene encoding P‐glycoprotein, were increased after 24 h of TNF‐α exposure. The highest observed effects for TNF‐α on the regulation of P‐glycoprotein was after 72 h of exposure. Protein and mRNA expression also increased significantly after 120 h of TNF‐α exposure, but was lower than the level observed in the cells exposed to TNF‐α for 72 h. The apical to basolateral flux of digoxin, a P‐glycoprotein substrate, was decreased in the TNF‐α‐exposed epithelium. This effect was reversed when verapamil or ketoconazole, compounds known to interact with P‐glycoprotein, were added together with digoxin into the donor compartment. Probenecid, a compound known to interact with organic anion transporters, but not P‐glycoprotein, did not increase the flux of digoxin. This model has important implications for understanding the barrier function of the mammary epithelium and provides insight into the role of P‐glycoprotein in the accumulation and/or removal of xenobiotics from milk and/or plasma. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.