Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Androgen exposure increases human monocyte adhesion to vascular endothelium and endothelial cell expression of vascular cell adhesion molecule-1.

BACKGROUND Male sex is an independent risk factor for coronary artery disease. Owing to the importance of monocyte adhesion to endothelial cells in the development of atherosclerosis, we hypothesized that androgens might promote this process. We therefore studied the effects of the nonaromatizable androgen dihydrotestosterone (DHT) on human monocyte adhesion to human endothelial cells and on endothelial cell-surface expression of adhesion molecules. METHODS AND RESULTS Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were grown to confluence in media supplemented with postmenopausal female serum, then exposed for 48 hours to either DHT (40 and 400 nmol/L), with or without the androgen receptor blocker hydroxyflutamide (HF) (4 micromol/L); HF alone; or vehicle control (ethanol 0.1%). Human monocytes obtained by elutriation were incubated for 1 hour with the HUVECs at 37 degrees C, and adhesion was measured by light microscopy. Compared with vehicle control, monocyte adhesion was increased in the androgen-treated HUVECs in a dose-dependent manner (116+/-6% and 128+/-3% for DHT 40 and 400 nmol/L respectively; P<0.001). HF blocked this increase (P>/=0.3 compared with control). Surface expression of endothelial cell adhesion molecules was measured by ELISA and revealed an increased expression of vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) in the DHT-treated HUVECs (125+/-5% versus 100+/-4% in controls; P=0.002), an effect also antagonized by HF (P>/=0.3 compared with controls). Furthermore, the DHT-related increase in adhesion was completely blocked by coincubation with anti-VCAM-1 antibody. Comparable results were obtained in arterial endothelial cells and in endothelium stimulated with the cytokine tumor necrosis factor-alpha. CONCLUSIONS Androgen exposure is associated with increased human monocyte adhesion to endothelial cells, a proatherogenic effect mediated at least in part by an increased endothelial cell-surface expression of VCAM-1.
Quality metrics for mixed-signal indirect testing

Analog and mixed-signal circuit testing is a challenging task demanding large amounts of resources. In order to battle against this drawback, alternate testing has been established as an efficient way of testing analog and M-S circuits by using indirect measures instead of the classic specification based testing. In this work we propose the use of Kendall's Tau rank correlation coefficient for rating the suitability of a set of candidate indirect measures to be used in mixed-signal testing. Such criterion is shown to be adequate since it allows to avoid or minimize information redundancy in the measures set. As a proof of concept, a 4th order band-pass Butterworth filter has been simulated under the presence of process variations. The circuit has been tested using a subset of measures selected according to minimum Kendall's Tau coefficient. Analog test efficiency metrics are reported showing test misclassification rate is among the best 15% possible, therefore validating the proposal.
Identification of an essential Caulobacter crescentus gene encoding a member of the Obg family of GTP-binding proteins

We have identified an essential Caulobacter crescentus gene (cgtA) that encodes a member of a recently identified subfamily of GTPases (the Obg family) conserved from Bacteria to Archaea to humans. This evolutionary conservation between distantly related species suggests that this family of GTP-binding proteins possesses a fundamental, yet unknown, cellular role. In this report, we describe the isolation and sequence of the cgtA gene. The predicted CgtA protein displays striking similarity to the Obg family of small, monomeric GTP-binding proteins, both in the conserved guanine nucleotide-binding domains and throughout the N-terminal glycine-rich domain that is found in many members of the Obg family. Disruption of the cgtA gene was lethal, demonstrating that this gene is essential for cell growth. Immunoblot analysis revealed that CgtA protein levels remained constant throughout the C. crescentus cell cycle.
Workplace Organization And Human Resource Practices: The Retail Food Industry

Most retail food firms adhere to traditional human resources management practices, with employees enjoying little involvement in decision-making and little participation in company financial returns. More than one tenth of non-food firms have innovative human resources systems, with much individual and group involvement in decision-making and financial returns, but only a minuscule proportion of food firms have such systems. At the other end of the spectrum, more than one-fifth of food stores and eating and drinking places (and nearly one-third of food wholesale firms) have traditional systems, as compared to only one-tenth of non-food firms. The tasks and the human resource practices typical of retail food firms are consistent with each other. Core employees in these firms perform tasks that are generally simpler and less variable than those in other industries, and the firms' human resource practices generally give workers less autonomy and incentives than those in other industries. Whether the structure and variability of tasks are the result of a particular business strategy or adoption of a certain technology is not known. Which came first, these simple tasks, the workers who perform them, or these human resource policies is similarly unknown. We arrive at these conclusions through analysis of an original data set composed of 806 Minnesota firms, including 211 food firms, which allows us to characterize the change in human resource practices since the early 1980s, and to examine differences in the organization of work across companies. Work organization and human resource practices in the retail food industry have changed substantially, although the change has been less pronounced than in most other industries.
Texture synthesis based on wavelet transform

Texture synthesis is an important process in image post-production. A Large number of previous approaches can be classified as either parametric or nonparametric method. Of these, the nonparametric approaches have achieved the most impressive results. This paper proposes a fast and efficient algorithm of texture synthesis algorithm; it is based on patch-based texture synthesis algorithm. We propose a pyramid-based synthesis algorithm. First, we apply wavelet to analysis texture figure. At the same time, we save the details of every level. And use the low-resolution to reconstruct the high-resolution texture by the inverse wavelet transform, and add the details to the results. In the paper, we will analysis some typical algorithm, and take an an experiment on it, then we will propose an improved algorithm and compare it with some typical algorithms.
The Mass-to-Light Function of Virialized Systems and the Relationship between Their Optical and X-Ray Properties

We compare the B-band luminosity function of virialized halos with the mass function predicted by the Press-Schechter theory in cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogonies. We find that all cosmological models fail to match our results if a constant mass-to-light ratio is assumed. In order for these models to match the faint end of the luminosity function, a mass-to-light ratio decreasing with luminosity as L-0.5 ± 0.06 is required. For a ΛCDM model, the mass-to-light function has a minimum of ~100 h in solar units in the B band, corresponding to ~25% of the baryons in the form of stars, and this minimum occurs close to the luminosity of an L* galaxy. At the high-mass end, the ΛCDM model requires a mass-to-light ratio increasing with luminosity as L+0.5 ± 0.26. This scaling behavior of the mass-to-light ratio seems to be in qualitative agreement with the predictions of semianalytical models of galaxy formation. In contrast, for the τCDM model, a constant mass-to-light ratio suffices to match the high-mass end. We also derive the halo occupation number, i.e., the number of galaxies brighter than L hosted in a virialized system. We find that the halo occupation number scales nonlinearly with the total mass of the system, Ngal(>L) ∝ ℳ0.55 ± 0.026 for the ΛCDM model. We find a break in the power-law slope of the X-ray-to-optical luminosity relation, independent of the cosmological model. This break occurs at a scale corresponding to poor groups. In the ΛCDM model, the poor-group mass is also the scale at which the mass-to-light ratio of virialized systems begins to increase. This correspondence suggests a physical link between star formation and the X-ray properties of halos, possibly due to preheating by supernovae or to efficient cooling of low-entropy gas into galaxies.
Development and Evaluation of a New Lateral Flow Immunoassay for Serodiagnosis of Human Fasciolosis

Background Human fasciolosis is a re-emerging disease worldwide and is caused by species of the genus Fasciola (F. hepatica and F. gigantica). Human fasciolosis can be diagnosed by classical coprological techniques, such as the Kato-Katz test, to reveal parasite eggs in faeces. However, although 100% specific, these methods are generally not adequate for detection of acute infections, ectopic infections, or infections with low number of parasites. In such cases immunological methods may be a good alternative and are recommended for use in major hospitals where trained personnel are available, although they are not usually implemented for individual testing. Methodology/Principal Findings We have developed a new lateral flow test (SeroFluke) for the serodiagnosis of human fasciolosis. The new test was constructed with a recombinant cathepsin L1 from F. hepatica, and uses protein A and mAb MM3 as detector reagents in the test and control lines, respectively. In comparison with an ELISA test (MM3-SERO) the SeroFluke test showed maximal specificity and sensitivity and can be used with serum or whole blood samples. Conclusions/Significance The new test can be used in major hospitals in hypoendemic countries as well as in endemic/hyperendemic regions where point-of-care testing is required.
Statistical evaluation of prognostic versus diagnostic models: beyond the ROC curve.

BACKGROUND Diagnostic and prognostic or predictive models serve different purposes. Whereas diagnostic models are usually used for classification, prognostic models incorporate the dimension of time, adding a stochastic element. CONTENT The ROC curve is typically used to evaluate clinical utility for both diagnostic and prognostic models. This curve assesses how well a test or model discriminates, or separates individuals into two classes, such as diseased and nondiseased. A strong risk predictor, such as lipids for cardiovascular disease, may have limited impact on the area under the curve, called the AUC or c-statistic, even if it alters predicted values. Calibration, measuring whether predicted probabilities agree with observed proportions, is another component of model accuracy important to assess. Reclassification can directly compare the clinical impact of two models by determining how many individuals would be reclassified into clinically relevant risk strata. For example, adding high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and family history to prediction models for cardiovascular disease using traditional risk factors moves approximately 30% of those at intermediate risk levels, such as 5%-10% or 10%-20% 10-year risk, into higher or lower risk categories, despite little change in the c-statistic. A calibration statistic can asses how well the new predicted values agree with those observed in the cross-classified data. SUMMARY Although it is useful for classification, evaluation of prognostic models should not rely solely on the ROC curve, but should assess both discrimination and calibration. Risk reclassification can aid in comparing the clinical impact of two models on risk for the individual, as well as the population.
System-level issues for software thread integration: guest triggering and host selection

Software thread integration provides low-cost concurrency on general-purpose processors by automatically interleaving multiple threads of control into one. This simplifies hardware to software migration and can help embedded system designers meet design constraints. Previous work describes how to efficiently integrate threads. In this paper we demonstrate how to link trigger events with guest thread execution and how to analyze an application to determine which threads to integrate. The analysis involves timing measurement and prediction to identify the amount of easily accessible temporally deterministic code within each function. This information is used to predict quantitatively the impact of design decisions on system efficiency and help guide integration. To illustrate this process we evaluate an application predicted for the year 2005, when $20 buys a 2000 MIPS embedded processor-a software-based high-resolution MPEG video player.
Correlation between detailed and simplified simulations in studying multiprocessor architecture

Simulation of multiprocessor systems is widely used to evaluate design alternatives. Using detailed simulation can be prohibitive especially for tackling large design space. Simplified simulation, on the other hand, may not provide accurate picture of the performance trend. In this work, we studied the correlation between the measurements of synchronization-based execution times for detailed and simplified simulations. We show that these measurements are highly correlated. Using the correlation information, the total detailed execution time can be estimated within 5% error with less than 25% of the detailed simulation cycles.
Steroid sulfatase gene in XX males.

The human X and Y chromosomes pair and recombine at their distal short arms during male meiosis. Recent studies indicate that the majority of XX males arise as a result of an aberrant exchange between X and Y chromosomes such that the testis-determining factor gene (TDF) is transferred from a Y chromatid to an X chromatid. It has been shown that X-specific loci such as that coding for the red cell surface antigen, Xg, are sometimes lost from the X chromosome in this aberrant exchange. The steroid sulfatase functional gene (STS) maps to the distal short arm of the X chromosome proximal to XG. We have asked whether STS is affected in the aberrant X-Y interchange leading to XX males. DNA extracted from fibroblasts of seven XX males known to contain Y-specific sequences in their genomic DNA was tested for dosage of the STS gene by using a specific genomic probe. Densitometry of the autoradiograms showed that these XX males have two copies of the STS gene, suggesting that the breakpoint on the X chromosome in the aberrant X-Y interchange is distal to STS. To obtain more definitive evidence, cell hybrids were derived from the fusion of mouse cells, deficient in hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase, and fibroblasts of the seven XX males. The X chromosomes in these patients could be distinguished from each other when one of three X-linked restriction-fragment-length polymorphisms was used. Hybrid clones retaining a human X chromosome containing Y-specific sequences in the absence of the normal X chromosome could be identified in six of the seven cases of XX males. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Neutrophils: Between Host Defence, Immune Modulation, and Tissue Injury

Neutrophils, the most abundant human immune cells, are rapidly recruited to sites of infection, where they fulfill their life-saving antimicrobial functions. While traditionally regarded as short-lived phagocytes, recent findings on long-term survival, neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation, heterogeneity and plasticity, suppressive functions, and tissue injury have expanded our understanding of their diverse role in infection and inflammation. This review summarises our current understanding of neutrophils in host-pathogen interactions and disease involvement, illustrating the versatility and plasticity of the neutrophil, moving between host defence, immune modulation, and tissue damage.
IMPLEMENTING PASSENGER INFORMATION, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SECURITY SYSTEMS IN LIGHT RAIL TRANSIT

Passenger information, entertainment, and security systems are becoming indispensable in light rail transit (LRT) and other mass transit transportation modes. They respond to the changes underway in the railways and mass transit global environments, such as government debt reduction, demands of the aging population, integration of disabled people in society, private-public partnerships, utilizing information technology to lower costs, improved customer services, and enhanced commuter safety and security. Several major cities (New York; Montreal, Quebec; Hong Kong; Santiago, Chile) around the world have successfully introduced passenger information, entertainment, and security technologies that also allow for the generation of advertising revenues. Before implementing new passenger information, entertainment, and security systems, the operator needs to carefully assess the technical solution to be implemented, the impact on passengers in terms of satisfaction and increased ridership, the advertising potential and new revenue streams, and the set up of media and security operations. The methodologies to implement emergency assistance, safety, and public information via real time electronic customer displays, audio systems, and surveillance systems are described.
The geometry of the third moment of exponential sums

Nous donnons une interpretation geometrique a deux types distincts de sommes d'exponentielles. L'une d'elles correspond au moment d'ordre trois des sommes de Kloosterman sur F q de type K(v 2 ;q). Nous commencons par etablir un lien entre les sommes considerees et le nombre de points F q -rationnels sur certaines surfaces projectives lisses: l'une d'entre elles est une surface K3 et l'autre est une surface cubique lisse. Appliquant la theorie de Grothendieck-Lefschetz, on retrouve alors en particulier une formule pour le troisieme moment des sommes de Kloosterman obtenue par D. H. et E. Lehmer en 1960.
Automated thermal face recognition based on minutiae extraction

In this paper, an efficient approach for human face recognition based on the use of minutiae points in thermal face image is proposed. The thermogram of human face is captured by thermal infra-red camera. Image processing methods are used to pre-process the captured thermogram, from which different physiological features based on blood perfusion data are extracted. Blood perfusion data are related to distribution of blood vessels under the face skin. In the present work, three different methods have been used to get the blood perfusion image, namely bit-plane slicing and medial axis transform, morphological erosion and medial axis transform, sobel edge operators. A five layer feed-forward back propagation neural network is used as the classification tool. It has been found that the first method supercedes the other two producing an accuracy of 97.62% with block size 16×16 for bit-plane 4.
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome: Role of Oleic Acid-Triggered Lung Injury and Inflammation

Lung injury especially acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) can be triggered by diverse stimuli, including fatty acids and microbes. ARDS affects thousands of people worldwide each year, presenting high mortality rate and having an economic impact. One of the hallmarks of lung injury is edema formation with alveoli flooding. Animal models are used to study lung injury. Oleic acid-induced lung injury is a widely used model resembling the human disease. The oleic acid has been linked to metabolic and inflammatory diseases; here we focus on lung injury. Firstly, we briefly discuss ARDS and secondly we address the mechanisms by which oleic acid triggers lung injury and inflammation.
Learning robust principal components from L1-normmaximization

Principal component analysis (PCA) is fundamental in many pattern recognition applications. Much research has been performed to minimize the reconstruction error in L1-norm based reconstruction error minimization (L1-PCA-REM) since conventional L2-norm based PCA (L2-PCA) is sensitive to outliers. Recently, the variance maximization formulation of PCA with L1-norm (L1-PCA-VM) has been proposed, where new greedy and nongreedy solutions are developed. Armed with the gradient ascent perspective for optimization, we show that the L1-PCA-VM formulation is problematic in learning principal components and that only a greedy solution can achieve robustness motivation, which are verified by experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets.
A multifrequency study of giant radio sources – III. Dynamical age versus spectral age of the lobes of selected sources

The dynamical ages of the opposite lobes of selected giant radio sources are estimated using the DYNAGE algorithm of Machalski et al., and compared with their spectral ages estimated and studied by Jamrozy et al. in Paper II. As expected, the DYNAGE fits give slightly different dynamical ages and other model parameters for the opposite lobes modelled independently of each other, e.g. the age ratios are found to be between ∼1.1 and ∼1.4. Demanding similar values of the jet power and the radio core density for the same source, we look for a self-consistent solution for the opposite lobes, which results in different density profiles along them. We also show that a departure from the equipartition conditions assumed in the model, justified by X-ray observations of the lobes of some nearby radio galaxies, and a relevant variation of the magnetic field strengths may provide an equalization of the ages of the lobes. A comparison of the dynamical and spectral ages shows that a ratio of the dynamical age to the spectral age of the lobes of investigated giant radio galaxies is between ∼1 and ∼5, i.e. similar to that found for smaller radio galaxies. To supplement possible causes for this effect already discussed in the literature, such as uncertainty of the assumed parameters of the model, or influence of a possible departure from the energy equipartition assumption, a further two causes are identified and discussed: (i) a difference between the injection spectral indices describing the initial energy distributions of the emitting relativistic particles determined using the DYNAGE algorithm in the dynamical analysis and in the classical spectral-ageing analysis, and (ii) a different influence of the axial ratio of the lobes in the estimation of the dynamical age and the spectral (synchrotron) age. Arguments are given to suggest that DYNAGE can better take account of radiative effects at lower frequencies than the spectral-ageing analysis. The DYNAGE algorithm is especially effective for sources at high redshifts, for which an intrinsic spectral curvature is shifted to low frequencies.