Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of MicroRNAs on Cancer Cell

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small single-stranded noncoding RNA of about 20–25 nucleotides in length. Since finding in the early 1990s in [1], these small molecules have an important role in the regulation of a wide range of biological processes, as regulation of gene expression and control many pathways as cell growth, differentiation, and apoptosis by controlling their target gene expression. The miRNAs have negative regulation of gene expression by binding 3’ untranslated regions of mRNA of a protein-coding gene, producing a degradation or blockage of translation of these mRNAs [2]. One of the most recent discoveries in molecular oncology over the last decade is the interaction between abnormalities in protein-coding genes and miRNAs that are causally involved in cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis. In recent years, more data have described the active participation of miRNAs in regulating gene expression is produced by microenvironment cells [3].
Validity of a New Rating of Perceived Exertion Scale ( WHEEL Scale ) During Arm Cycle Ergometry in People with Spina Bifida

A total of 24 subjects with diagnosis of spina bifida, 24 subjects (females, n= 12), ages 17 to 72 years, participated in a one-time arm ergometry exercise stress test. The aim of this study was to investigate the construct and concurrent validity of two rating of perceived exertion scales, the Borg 6-20 Scale and a newly designed WHEEL Scale in adolescents and adults with spina bifida. The results of the study indicated that a modest significant correlation was found between physiological factors, oxygen uptake (VO2) and heart rate (HR), the Borg Scale and the WHEEL Scale during an arm ergometry exercise stress test. Rating of perceived exertion derived from the Borg Scale and from the WHEEL scale were significantly correlated with each other and both scales similar responses to increases in exercise intensity, indicating internal consistency. The WHEEL Scale shows promise as a tool for physical therapists and exercise physiologists to monitor exercise intensity in the spina bifida population. Future studies are needed to validate the WHEEL Scale in a larger cohort of people with spina bifida and to test inter and intra-reliability.
Small-angle neutron scattering in materials science: Recent practical applications

Modern materials science and engineering relies increasingly on detailed knowledge of the structure and interactions in “soft” and “hard” materials, but there have been surprisingly few microscopic techniques for probing the structures of bulk samples of these substances. Small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) was first recognized in Europe as a major technique for this purpose and, over the past several decades, has been a growth area in both academic and industrial materials research to provide structural information on length scales ∼10–1000A (or 1–100nm). The technique of ultrahigh resolution small-angle neutron scattering (USANS) raises the upper resolution limit for structural studies by more than two orders of magnitude and (up to ∼30μm) and hence overlaps with light scattering and microscopy. This review illustrates the ongoing vitality of SANS and USANS in materials research via a range of current practical applications from both soft and hard matter nanostructured systems.
Ab initio modeling of quantum transport properties of molecular electronic devices

We report on a self-consistent ab initio technique for modeling quantum transport properties of atomic and molecular scale nanoelectronic devices under external bias potentials. The technique is based on density functional theory using norm conserving nonlocal pseudopotentials to define the atomic core and nonequilibrium Green's functions (NEGF's) to calculate the charge distribution. The modeling of an open device system is reduced to a calculation defined on a finite region of space using a screening approximation. The interaction between the device scattering region and the electrodes is accounted for by self-energies within the NEGF formalism. Our technique overcomes several difficulties of doing first principles modeling of open molecular quantum coherent conductors. We apply this technique to investigate single wall carbon nanotubes in contact with an Al metallic electrode. We have studied the current-voltage characteristics of the nanotube-metal interface from first principles. Our results suggest that there are two transmission eigenvectors contributing to the ballistic conductance of the interface, with a total conductance $G\ensuremath{\approx}{G}_{0}$ where ${G}_{0}{=2e}^{2}/h$ is the conductance quanta. This is about half of the expected value for infinite perfect metallic nanotubes.
( AISeL ) All Sprouts Content Sprouts 11-20-2008 A Configurational Approach to Information Technology Outsourcing

As scholarly interest in IT outsourcing has gained momentum recently, the ability to integrate this line of research into a coherent and consistent body of evidence seems to have been constrained by the difficulty of reconciling the contradictory findings that have emerged from outsourcing studies. This paper suggests that the recurring call for an integrative view of outsourcing can be addressed by breaking away from the reductionistic approach of contingency theory toward the holistic approach of configurational theory. The paper adopts a configurational approach to develop a framework of IT outsourcing effectiveness. Drawing on the relational view of the firm and taking a process view of outsourcing, the framework identifies four high-level dimensions that correspond to an organization's resource position in four key areas: organizational IT value position, organizational IT asset position, relational asset position, and relational capability position. A novel structured method is used to identify the congruent (internally consistent) outsourcing configurations within the range of possible outsourcing configurations based on the interdependencies among the four dimensions. Furthermore, a settheoretic approach and Boolean algebra are applied to formally demonstrate the logic underlying the framework. Three congruent outsourcing configurations, labeled as asset dependence, relational dependence, and independence, emerge from this analysis. Drawing on the assumptions of configurational theory about organizational change and taking a dynamic perspective, the framework is extended to describe how organizations transition between outsourcing configurations over time. The discussion concluding this paper uses the framework to demonstrate how a configurational approach can effectively address the limitations of the outsourcing literature and advance outsourcing research. While configurational theory offers a holistic and multifaceted way of modeling the intricate interactions between IT and organizational attributes, previous IT studies have drawn on it to a limited extent, primarily as a lens to describe frequently recurring patterns of attributes. Hence, an important contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the potential value of comprehensively adopting a configurational approach for IT research in general and outsourcing research in particular.
Evaluation of predictive factors for conversion of laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

BACKGROUND Laparoscopic cholecystectomy has now replaced open cholecystectomy for the treatment of gallbladder diseases. However, certain cases still require conversion to open procedures. This study identifies and evaluates risk factors that may predict conversion from laparoscopic to an open procedure. OBJECTIVES To identify and evaluate the predictive factors for conversion of laparoscopic to open cholecystectomy. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 234 Laparoscopic cholecystectomies were attempted at the Kasturba Medical College Hospital, Manipal, from January 2003 to July 2005. Of these, 61 had to be converted to open cholecystectomy. A retro and prospective analysis of different parameters, including Patient factors, Intra-operative factors and Surgeon factors were performed. RESULTS Sixty one (26.1%) laparoscopic cholecystectomies required conversion. Factors contributing to conversion included male sex, age group of 31-40 years, over weight and history of biliary pain within last two to four months, ultrasonography findings of multiple calculi and gall bladder wall thickness of more than 3 mm. Intraoperative gall bladder perforation with spillage of its contents in abdominal cavity and dense adhesions with difficult anatomy resulted in higher conversion rates. Surgery performed by surgeons in learning phase of laparoscopic surgery was more prone to conversion. CONCLUSION Patient factors, presentation, preoperative ultrasonography findings and surgeon's experience, all contribute to the possibility of conversion of laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Knowledge of these factors may help in preinformation to patient for psychological preparations for conversion and an experienced surgeon can plan to operate on these patients.
A SELF-RATING DEPRESSION SCALE.

The fact that there is a need for assessing depression, whether as an affect, a symptom, or a disorder is obvious by the numerous scales and inventories available and in use today. The need to assess depression simply and specifically as a psychiatric disorder has not been met by most scales available today. We became acutely aware of this situation in a research project where we needed to correlate both the presence and severity of a depressive disorder in patients with other parameters such as arousal response during sleep and changes with treatment of the depressive disorder. It was felt that the general depression scales used were insufficient for our purpose and that the more specific scales were also inadequate. These inadequacies related to factors such as the length of a scale or inventory being too long and too time consuming, especially for a patient
Study and analysis of rectifying antenna for wireless transmission

The rectenna consists of wideband antenna, Low pass filter and a rectifying circuit using schottky diode as a rectifying elements. The wide band rectenna has great potential to harvest wireless energy in GSM/3G/4G and ISM 2.5 GHz. In this paper we discussed about the performance of rectenna and their advantages, disadvantages and applications.
Image Reconstruction for High-Contrast Conductivity Imaging in Mutual Induction Tomography for Industrial Applications

Mutual induction tomography (MIT) attempts to image the electromagnetic characteristics of an object by measuring the mutual inductances between sets of coils placed around its periphery. The application of MIT for molten metal flow visualization is of interest in this paper, which focuses on computational aspects of the forward and inverse MIT problem. The forward problem has been solved using an edge finite element formulation. The Jacobian matrix is a key to image reconstruction in MIT. The entries of the Jacobian matrix are the sensitivity of the measurement data to the image values, which has been generated by an efficient adjoint formulation. We have implemented a standard regularized Gauss-Newton scheme to solve such a problem. The reconstructed images for a high-contrast conductivity example of steel/argon flow shown in this paper are some of the first nonlinear image reconstruction results for MIT.
Principles and applications of dereverberation for noisy and reverberant audio signals

This report reviews a recent dereverberation algorithm to effectively remove late reverberation from observed audio signals. Since such late reverberation is the most detrimental to the performance of automatic speech recognition (ASR), the algorithm is expected to improve the ASR performance when a distant microphone is used to capture an objective speech signal.
An e-Science Environment for Ecological and Hydrological Simulation Research

Comprehensive integrated research on ecological and hydrological processes and the simulation of river basin environments are critical foundations for decision making by governments and river-basin managers. The demand for a holistic understanding of environmental systems such as river basins is increasing. Eco-hydrological research needs two types of monitoring platforms to access and collect data from basins: a modeling platform to support access, select, and run models online, and build new models with the collected data, and a manipulation platform to generate forcing data, run models, and visualize the results. Consequently, we developed an e-science environment framework comprising three platforms - a monitoring platform, a model platform, and a manipulation platform. The framework allows automatic data transmission, storage, management, analysis, model management, simulation, computing, and result visualization. The e-science environment integrates land surface models such as Simplified Simple Biosphere model, the Revised Simple Biosphere model and WRF, hydrological models such as SWAT and TOPMODEL, data assimilation filters including such as Kalman filter algorithm, and several tools and methods for dealing with data, principally artificial neural networks and Markov chains. We demonstrate the application of the framework that uses an SSIB land surface model ensemble Kalman filter to improve evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and ground temperature simulation in the Heihe inland river basin. The approach proves suitable for environmental simulation for inland river research.
Facile cell sheet manipulation and transplantation by using in situ gelation method.

Cell sheets harvested from temperature-responsive cell culture dishes (TRDs) has attracted considerable attention as effective tools for reconstructing the lost functions of tissues and organs in the regenerative medicine field. However, because of their thinness, handling problems sometimes arise when transferring cell sheets from a TRD to a target surface. In this study, we developed a facile cell transfer method referred to as in situ gelation by using both gelatin hydrogel and a support membrane. Gelation and low-temperature processes were simultaneously performed on TRD. Confluent cultured cells were efficiently harvested from TRD in less than 5 min by decreasing the incubation temperature to 20°C. Harvested cells were found to maintain their cell viability, extracellular matrix, and original shape, thus allowing transfer of the cells to another surface with a short incubation time at 37°C. This method is applicable for various cell types regardless of the formation of tight cell-cell junctions. In addition, because of the high flexibility of the gelatin-coated membrane, cells were efficiently transferred to the surface of a mouse subcutis and liver. When compared with conventional cell sheet manipulation methods, the interaction between the cell surface and membrane was reinforced by the uniformly formed gelatin gel layer without using a special device. Therefore, the in situ gelation method is a promising technique for cell sheet-based tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
Study of Ferricyanide by Cyclic Voltammetry Using the CV-50 W

couple is used as an example of an electrochemically reversible redox system in order to introduce some of the basic concepts of cyclic voltammetry (1,2). The CV-50W is ideal for teaching purposes. The instrument is simple to use, and its Windows-based software can be quickly mastered by students with little or no background in electrochemistry. The experiment outlined below demonstrates the determination of the following: the formal reduction potential (E0’); the number of electrons transferred in the redox process (n); the diffusion coefficient (D); electrochemical reversibility; and the effects of varying concentration (C) and scan rate (ν). Experimental
Rate increase in digital communications by using master-slave power amplifiers

In this paper we propose to use a so-called “Slave” power amplifier (PA) to remove the distortions caused by the non-linear “Master” high power amplifier (HPA) in multicarrier systems. We derive the mutual information (MI) expressions for the proposed scheme and perform simulations to obtain the spectral mask. It is shown that by adding an additional “Slave” PA we increase the MI and improve the spectral mask, while maintaining the same supplied power as in regular multicarrier system with a single “Master” HPA.
Risk factors and prognostic variables for survival of foals with radiographic evidence of pulmonary disease.

The medical records of 163 neonatal foals that had thoracic radiographs taken within 48 hours of admission to a referral hospital were reviewed. The objectives of this study were (1) to identify risk factors for the development of thoracic radiographic changes and (2) to identify prognostic indicators for survival in foals with radiographic evidence of pulmonary disease. Failure of transfer of passive immunity (IgG concentration < or = 400 mg/dL) was the only risk factor for radiographic evidence of respiratory disease identified by multivariate analysis. Hypoxemic patients (PaO2 < or = 60 mm Hg) were 4.9 times more likely to reveal radiographic abnormalities in a subset of foals for which arterial blood gas results were available. Foals with a serum creatinine concentration > 1.7 mg/dL upon presentation, dyspnea, and a history of dystocia were significantly more likely to die based on the multivariate statistical outcome analysis. An anion gap > or = 20 mEq/dL was strongly associated with nonsurvival in a subset of foals with arterial blood gas results. These hematologic and biochemical variables can be readily obtained during the initial evaluation of sick foals. The presence of a high anion gap appeared to have the greatest clinical impact and may be a useful prognostic indicator in foals with radiographic evidence of respiratory disease. In contrast, the majority of physical examination variables, including evaluation of tachypnea, abnormal respiratory sounds, fever, weakness, and milk reflux from the nares, which are usually obtained during the general respiratory evaluation of foals, were unrelated to outcome.
Foxa2 Programs Th2 Cell-Mediated Innate Immunity in the Developing Lung

After birth, the respiratory tract adapts to recurrent exposures to pathogens, allergens, and toxicants by inducing the complex innate and acquired immune systems required for pulmonary homeostasis. In this study, we show that Foxa2, expressed selectively in the respiratory epithelium, plays a critical role in regulating genetic programs influencing Th2 cell-mediated pulmonary inflammation. Deletion of the Foxa2 gene, encoding a winged helix/forkhead box transcription factor that is selectively expressed in respiratory epithelial cells, caused spontaneous pulmonary eosinophilic inflammation and goblet cell metaplasia. Loss of Foxa2 induced the recruitment and activation of myeloid dendritic cells and Th2 cells in the lung, causing increased production of Th2 cytokines and chemokines. Loss of Foxa2-induced expression of genes regulating Th2 cell-mediated inflammation and goblet cell differentiation, including IL-13, IL-4, eotaxins, thymus and activation-regulated chemokine, Il33, Ccl20, and SAM pointed domain-containing Ets transcription factor. Pulmonary inflammation and goblet cell differentiation were abrogated by treatment of neonatal Foxa2∆/∆ mice with mAb against IL-4Rα subunit. The respiratory epithelium plays a central role in the regulation of Th2-mediated inflammation and innate immunity in the developing lung in a process regulated by Foxa2.
Comparison of the incidences of neuroblastoma for screened and unscreened cohorts

The incidences of neuroblastoma in screened cohorts and unscreened cohorts were compared to evaluate the usefulness of neuroblastoma mass screening. Data for screened and unscreened populations were collected from annual reports from the Neuroblastoma Committee and the number of cases of neuroblastoma with information on the screening history was provided by the Japan Children's Cancer Registry, whose registration rate has been estimated to be 0.71. In the age category of 6–11 months, the ratios of incidences per 106 person‐years for unscreened to screened cohorts were 6.58 [95% confidence intervals (CI) 4.51‐9.60] during the early period, 1985–1989, and 11.15 (95% CI 7.65‐16.25) during the later period, 1990–1994. However, they were 0.67 (95% CI 0.31‐1.44) and 0.81 (95% CI 0.33‐2.03) for the age categories of 1–4 y and 2–4 y during the early period and 1.32 (95% CI 0.63‐2.76) and 1.17 (95% CI 0.48‐2.89) for the age categories of 1–4 y and 2–4 y, respectively. The incidences of neuroblastoma per 10 person‐years were not different among screened and unscreened cohorts. Neuroblastoma mass screening has not contributed to any decrease in the incidence of neuroblastoma in children over 1 y of age.
ZnO-Based Low-Voltage Inverter With Quantum-Well-Structured Nanohybrid Dielectric

We report on the fabrication of 2-V-operating ZnO-based inverter with two n-channel thin-film transistors (TFTs) on 22-nm-thin organic/inorganic nanohybrid dielectric, which contains AlOx/TiOx/AlOx in triple-layer structure. The inverter shows a high voltage gain of ~20 under the supply voltage (VDD) of 2 V but with a marginal transition voltage of 0.1 V (operation range of 0-2 V). To control the transition voltage to a more adequate value, an 8-V gate pulse was applied on driving ZnO-TFT so that some of the channel electrons would be tunneled through the AlOx-based barrier and trapped in the TiOx-based layer. Our inverter then displayed an optimum transition voltage of 0.75 V.
Fourteen years of plant proteomics reflected in Proteomics: Moving from model species and 2DE‐based approaches to orphan species and gel‐free platforms

In this article, the topic of plant proteomics is reviewed based on related papers published in the journal Proteomics since publication of the first issue in 2001. In total, around 300 original papers and 41 reviews published in Proteomics between 2000 and 2014 have been surveyed. Our main objective for this review is to help bridge the gap between plant biologists and proteomics technologists, two often very separate groups. Over the past years a number of reviews on plant proteomics have been published . To avoid repetition we have focused on more recent literature published after 2010, and have chosen to rather make continuous reference to older publications. The use of the latest proteomics techniques and their integration with other approaches in the “systems biology” direction are discussed more in detail. Finally we comment on the recent history, state of the art, and future directions of plant proteomics, using publications in Proteomics to illustrate the progress in the field. The review is organized into two major blocks, the first devoted to provide an overview of experimental systems (plants, plant organs, biological processes) and the second one to the methodology.
Edge Preserving Based on Weighted Guided Image Filtering

: In this paper a weighted guided image filter (WGIF) is being proposed incorporating an edge-aware weighting technique into the guided image filter (GIF). The WGIF preserves sharp edges as well as existing global filters, and the intricacy of the WGIF is O(N) for an image with N pixels which is almost the same as the GIF. As WGIF is simple, it has numerous applications in the fields of computational photography and image processing. The WGIF provides advantages of both local and global smoothing filters in the sense that: 1) the complexity of the WGIF is O(N) for an image with N pixels, which is similar as the GIF and 2) the WGIF can avoid halo artifacts like the existing global smoothing filters. The WGIF is practical for single image feature enhancement. Finally, the parameters like mean, standard deviation, mean square error and PSNR for GIF and WGIF techniques are compared.