Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of Genetically-Engineered Anti-CEA Antibodies for Potential Immunotherapy of Colorectal Cancer

Hitherto anti-CEA monoclonal antibodies (MAbs), normally of mouse origin, have been used primarily for clinical diagnosis of colorectal cancer, either as a tumor marker in serum to monitor tumor recurrence, or latterly as a means to localize in vivo CEA-bearing tumors and metastases in patients. In vivo diagnosis using mouse anti-CEA MAbs has so far had limited clinical utility because the antibodies elicit a strong anti-mouse immunoglobulin immune response on repeated administration in man. This problem has been addressed by the development of various strategies for “humanization” of mouse anti-CEA MAbs by genetic manipulation of immunoglobulin genes. Such humanized, engineered antibodies markedly attenuate the antigenic response directed against the MAb, such that safe, repeated administration to patients has become feasible. Such humanized anti-CEA antibodies can thus be radioactively-labelled and applied for in vivo monitoring and detection of recurrent malignant disease, or used for therapeutic strategies which similarly take advantage of the ability of the antibodies to target cytotoxic agents selectively to tumor cells. The application of these novel procedures for manipulating MAb structure presents entirely new opportunities for diagnosis and treatment of human colorectal cancer.
Modified Anand constitutive model for lead-free solder Sn-3.5Ag

An improved Anand constitutive model is proposed to describe the inelastic deformation of lead free solder Sn-3.5Ag used in solder joints of microelectronic packaging. The new model accurately predicted the overall trend of steady-state stress-strain behavior of the solder for the temperature range from 233 K to 398 K and the strain rate range from 0.005 s/sup -1/ to 0.1 s/sup -1//spl middot/h/sub 0/, a constant in the original Anand model, was set to a function of temperature and strain rate in the proposed model. Comparison of the experimental results and simulated results verified that the improved Anand model with modifying h/sub 0/ to a function reasonably simulated the inelastic stress-strain relationships.
An Innovative, Longitudinal Program to Teach Residents about End-of-Life Care

At the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, an end-of-life curriculum was implemented in 2000 for an internal medicine residency utilizing a longitudinal approach that allowed residents to follow patients through their entire hospice experience. An elective home hospice rotation was developed for which third-year residents served as primary care physicians for patients at the end of life over a one-year period. Residents were supervised by faculty who were hospice medical directors. They also learned through case vignettes, quarterly meetings, textbook reading, and personal projects. From July 2000 to June 2002, residents demonstrated positive attitudes towards hospice care and recommended the rotation highly (mean 8.86 on a scale of 1–10). The rotation grew in popularity from six initial residents to ten residents the next year, and has since become a mandatory rotation for all senior residents. A 360-degree evaluation uniformly indicated positive resident performance from the hospice team (mean scores 7.56–8.69 on a 1–9 scale), family (mean scores 9.3–9.7 on a 1–10 scale) and faculty (mean scores 7.29–7.72 on a 1–9 scale). Residents were also pleased with the level of teaching (mean 8.86 on a scale of 1–10) and felt that the patient care load was “just right. ” Their knowledge improved by 8% (p = .0175). In conclusion, a longitudinal hospice rotation was implemented that fulfilled curricular goals without undue burden on the residents or residency program.
Modern macroeconomic models as tools for economic policy

I believe that during the last financial crisis, macroeconomists (and I include myself among them) failed the country, and indeed the world. In September 2008, central bankers were in desperate need of a playbook that offered a systematic plan of attack to deal with fastevolving circumstances. Macroeconomics should have been able to provide that playbook. It could not. Of course, from a longer view, macroeconomists let policymakers down much earlier, because they did not provide policymakers with rules to avoid the circumstances that led to the global financial meltdown. Because of this failure, macroeconomics and its practitioners have received a great deal of pointed criticism both during and after the crisis. Some of this criticism has come from policymakers and the media, but much has come from other economists. Of course, macroeconomists have responded with considerable vigor, but the overall debate inevitably leads the general public to wonder: What is the value and applicability of macroeconomics as currently practiced? The answer is that macroeconomics has made important advances in recent years. Those advances—coupled with a rededicated effort following this recent economic episode— position macroeconomics to make useful contributions to policymaking in the future. In this essay, I want to tell the story of how macroeconomics got to this point, of what the Narayana Kocherlakota* President
Relative deprivation: a comparative analysis of Britain, Finland and Sweden

Our aim is to analyse both the incidence and distribution of economic hardship in three countries - Finland, Britain and Sweden - using measures of relative deprivation. The study represents a unique endeavour as our comparisons are based not on income data but on direct observations of consumption of goods and services. The method applied has been developed from the consensual poverty approach pioneered by Mack and Lansley (1985). Hence, what we will observe is the inability to consume socially perceived necessities, both goods and activities, because of lack of income. The preliminary results contradict, to a large degree, findings derived from more traditional studies based solely on income data. They also reveal a detailed picture of the way relative deprivation is structured within countries and the differences that prevail between the three countries. The analysis represents a first step in an effort to develop alternative tools when comparing poverty and economic well-being between countries.
Earnings inequalities and educational mobility in Brazil over two decades

This paper studies the impact of changes in educational opportunities on various definitions of labour market inequalities in Brazil over two decades (1976-96). Using four editions of the nationally representative PNAD survey, we analyze the evolution of overall inequalities and inequalities of opportunity in 40-49 year old males’ earnings. We design and implement semiparametric decompositions of the respective effects of (i) schooling expansion, (ii) changes in the structure of earnings, and (iii) changes in intergenerational educational mobility. Earnings inequalities varied little over the period, with a peak in the late 1980s that can be imputed to hyperinflation. First of all, the decompositions show that changes in the distribution of education contributed to the increase in both overall earnings inequalities and inequalities of opportunity among the oldest generations, before sharply reducing them among the post-WWII cohorts. Secondly, the decrease in returns to education also contributed to equalizing labour market opportunities in the 1988-96 period. Thirdly and lastly, the changes in educational mobility were not large enough to significantly affect earnings inequalities, whereas it is shown that they should play a prominent role in equalizing opportunities in the future.
Managing Culture in International Mergers and Acquisitions

The aim of this conceptual paper is to examine the current state of the literature on international M&A in order to achieve a better understanding of the influence of culture on performance and attempt to solve the cultural puzzle. An analytical framework is proposed which proceeds from the cultural distance paradigm to address strategies for managing culture on the ground that culture can be an asset or a liability depending on the way it is handled. This framework thus develops two contrasting orientations towards cultural stakes and suggests that the performance of cross-border M&A is contingent upon cross-cultural management capabilities. In pointing to the importance of managing culture in post-acquisition integration, this paper aims at providing a useful guide for future research, including potential “actionable prescriptions” for cross-border M&A integration.
A Robust Translational Motion Compensation Method for ISAR Imaging Based on Keystone Transform and Fractional Fourier Transform Under Low SNR Environment

In this work, a parametric-based approach is proposed to perform joint range alignment and phase adjustment based on the intention of fully exploiting the energy of all the scatterers in the moving target and the two-dimensional coherent accumulation gain of both range and azimuth compressions. To that end, first, translational motion is modeled as a polynomial signal, and inspired by the fact that all the scatterers in the moving target experience the same translational range history, the phase difference operation and keystone transform (KT) are utilized to transform the energy of all the scatterers into one range cell. Second, by the virtue of the fractional Fourier transform (FrFT), the energy of all the scatterers is coherently accumulated into a peak point, and from which the polynomial coefficients can be obtained accurately. With the estimated polynomial coefficients, the dechirp operation and KT are applied jointly to compensate range misalignment and phase error. The analysis of the proposed method shows that it is of low computational complexity due to avoiding multidimensional search and improves the output SNR providing satisfactory low SNR performance. The experimental results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms.
Reduced complexity message passing detection algorithm in large-scale MIMO systems

In this paper, an improved message passing detection algorithm based on probability approximation is proposed for large-scale MIMO systems. Large-scale MIMO has been identified as a key technology for the upcoming fifth generation (5G) wireless communication systems. Message passing detection (MPD) algorithm which exploits channel hardening theory can achieve very good performance in Large-scale MIMO system. However, the complexity of the MPD algorithm grows with the number of users and the order of modulation, presenting an implementation challenge for a high-order massive MIMO system. Our proposed scheme successfully reduces computational complexity by reducing the number of symbol probability points using in iteration part. Numerical simulation results and complexity comparison have shown that the proposed algorithm can show advantages in complexity compared to original MPD algorithm.
The Most Critical Unresolved Issue Associated With: Psychoanalytic Theories of Addiction: Can the Talking Cure Tell Us Anything About Substance Use and Misuse?

The most critical unresolved issue associated with psychoanalysis is whether its core precepts belong in today's substance use armamentarium. Psychoanalytic theories have resisted the criterion of falsifiability, putting them at odds with the current paradigm for treating addiction. However, Freud's earliest pronouncement on the subject, “making the patient a collaborator in his own treatment” (i.e., therapeutic alliance) not only holds up to scientific scrutiny, but is a robust determinant in improving treatment outcomes. Psychoanalytic constructs today appear as conjectures, but recognition of the primacy of the collaborative therapeutic relationship is one example of how psychoanalytic observations have influenced current research.
Cathepsin S Controls Angiogenesis and Tumor Growth via Matrix-derived Angiogenic Factors*

The cysteine protease cathepsin S is highly expressed in malignant tissues. By using a mouse model of multistage murine pancreatic islet cell carcinogenesis in which cysteine cathepsin activity has been functionally implicated, we demonstrated that selective cathepsin S deficiency impaired angiogenesis and tumor cell proliferation, thereby impairing angiogenic islet formation and the growth of solid tumors, whereas the absence of its endogenous inhibitor cystatin C resulted in opposite phenotypes. Although mitogenic vascular endothelial growth factor, transforming growth factor-β1, and the anti-angiogenic endostatin levels in either serum or carcinoma tissue extracts did not change in cathepsin S- or cystatin C-null mice, tumor tissue basic fibroblast growth factor and serum type 1 insulin growth factor levels were higher in cystatin C-null mice, and serum type 1 insulin growth factor levels were also increased in cathepsin S-null mice. Furthermore, cathepsin S affected the production of type IV collagen-derived anti-angiogenic peptides and the generation of bioactive pro-angiogenic γ2 fragments from laminin-5, revealing a functional role for cathepsin S in angiogenesis and neoplastic progression.
Magnetic resonance imaging structural alterations in brain of alcohol abusers and its association with impulsivity

Despite the suggestion that impulsivity plays a central role in the transfer from a recreational drug use to a substance use disorder, very few studies focused on neurobiological markers for addiction. This study aimed to identify volumetric alterations in a sample of patients with mild alcohol use disorder with a short history of alcohol use, compared with a control group, and also focused on its association with impulsivity levels. Most magnetic resonance imaging studies have focused on severe alcohol use disorder, formerly called alcohol‐dependent patients, showing alcohol‐related structural alterations and their association with alcohol use history variables but not with personality parameters like impulsivity. Our hypothesis is that our group of alcohol users may already display structural alterations especially in brain regions related to inhibitory control like medial‐prefrontal regions, and that those structural alterations could be more associated to personality traits like impulsivity than to drug use variables. Our results clearly demonstrate that our population showed lower regional grey and white matter volumes in the medial‐prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices, as well as higher regional white matter volume in the ventral striatum and the internal capsule. Volumetric alterations were associated to the Barratt's impulsivity score: the more impulsive the subjects, the lower the medial‐prefrontal cortex grey matter volume.
BDNF and ARTEMIN are increased in drug-naïve non-depressed GAD patients: Preliminary data

Abstract Objective. While the role of neuronal and glial plasticity are well established in the pathophysiology of mood disorders, the pattern and measures of neuronal and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factors are unknown in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The present study evaluates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and Artemin (ARTN) plasma levels in GAD patients. Methods. Fourteen drug-naïve GAD patients without major depression were enrolled and plasmatic levels of BDNF and ARTN mRNA were measured by RT-PCR, and compared to matched healthy controls. Results. The results showed an unexpected increase in mRNA levels of both BDNF and ARTN in patients with GAD, that appeared almost doubled when compared to healthy controls. In comparison, both BDNF and ARTN are reduced in patients with major depressive disorder. Further, the results are intriguing and might involve distinguishing pathophysiological pathways. Conclusions. This is the first report of increased levels of a neurotrophic factor and of a glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor family member in GAD patients. While further studies to confirm these results and the functional meaning in terms of pathophysiology of GAD are needed, the potential conceptual and clinical meanings are discussed.
Advancing Minority High Achievement: National Trends and Promising Programs and Practices

This report documents recent national progress in advancing the achievements of elementary-aged minority children, the potential for replicable whole-school reform designs to contribute to this advancement, and the individual, classroom, and school characteristics that distinguish those minority students who attain high levels of achievement. The primary focus of the analyses is on the progress of Latino and African American students who begin their academic careers at relatively high achievement levels. The analyses are based on data from the national study, "Prospects", and its companion study of exemplary school programs, "Special Strategies. " As results from other national studies have indicated, the results of this study suggest that minority students are poorly represented among the nation's highest achievers. Results suggest that high-achieving students of all racial/ethnic groups, who are from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, begin a process of disengagement from school from the time they begin first grade. It also appears that the achievement of boys is more likely to suffer than that of girls. Analyses of the "Special Strategies" data indicate that replicable, whole-school reform designs hold considerable promise for advancing the learning of all African American students within high poverty schools. Findings also suggest that many aspects of schools and classrooms that are associated with minority high achievement are readily alterable. Schools and families can work toward promoting many of the individual attributes that tended to characterize the most successful minority students from the study. Two appendixes contain student-level and school-level composite scores for the study questionnaire and summaries of the hierarchical model analyses of achievement and engagement. (Contains 53 tables, 17 figures, and 75 references.) (SLD)
AN INTERNATIONAL MARINE POLLUTANT SINK IN AN ASYMMETRIC ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY GAME

Abstract A differential game with N countries as players is developed for the analysis of a marine resource with open access used by the countries as a pollutant sink and for production of an ecosystem good. Consumption, investment, abatement, and environmental research sectors may differ across countries. Under the assumption that property rights are well defined within the sovereignty of each country although there is a lack of enforcement in the international area, the game is solved for the feedback Nash equilibrium, using the Isaacs–Bellman dynamic programming technique, identifying the nonlinear feedback Nash flows of consumption, investment, harvest effort, abatement, and environmental research effort in each country, which is then compared to the Pareto optimal global solution.
The Determinants of Research Productivity : A Study of Mexican Researchers

This paper uses a unique data set of Mexican researchers to explore the determinants of research productivity. Our findings confirm a quadratic relationship between age and productivity. However, productivity peaks when researchers are approximately 53 years old, 5 or 10 years later than what prior studies have shown. These results suggest that age is not very important in terms of research productivity. We also find that reputation matters for the number of citations but not publications. Results also show great heterogeneity across areas of knowledge. Interpretations of other aspects, such as gender, country of PhD, cohort effect, among others,
Redundancy Payments, Incomplete Labor Contracts, Unemployment and Welfare

It is frequently argued that pure government-mandated severance transfers by the employer to the worker have neither employment nor welfare effect because they can be offset by private transfers from the worker to the employer. In this paper, using a dynamic search and matching model a la Mortensen and Pissarides (1994), we show that it may be not any more the case if labor contracts are incomplete and can be renegotiated by mutual agreement only. Indeed, we show that increases in high severance payments are likely to decrease unemployment but systematically decrease welfare and raise inequality. Moreover, it can be understood that insiders try to get high severance payments through political channels, although they do not fight for such a type of advantage at the firm level.
QoS and load balancing aware task scheduling framework for mobile cloud computing environment

Mobile Cloud Computing MCC is consolidation of cloud computing and mobile computing that resolves the problem of battery power, storage, mobility, context-awareness and resource scarcity in mobile devices. Remote execution of resource-intensive applications saves energy and enhances performance significantly. Thus, utilising resource-rich cloud infrastructure is inevitable for remote execution. The proposed QoS and Load Balancing Aware QALBA approach formulates task scheduling using Enriched-Look ahead HEFT algorithm E-LHEFT. It utilises MAUI Mobile Assistance Using Infrastructure architecture to execute the compute-intensive tasks. E-LHEFT algorithm modifies the processor selection phase of LHEFT algorithm using task grouping and uses the Pareto principle for effective load balancing of Physical Machine PM. The proposed scheduling strategy exploits mobile gaming application for experimental validations. The cloudsim results revealed that the proposed strategy saves the battery level of the mobile device and reduces makespan with less latency and achieves load balancing between cloud resources.
Effects on weight loss in adults of replacing diet beverages with water during a hypoenergetic diet: a randomized, 24-wk clinical trial.

BACKGROUND Obese people believe that drinking diet beverages (DBs) may be a simple strategy to achieve weight loss. However, nutritionists advise drinking water when attempting to lose weight. It is unclear how important drinking water instead of DBs is during a weight-loss program. OBJECTIVE In this study, we compared the effect on weight loss of either replacing DBs with water or continuing to consume DBs in adults during a 24-wk weight-loss program. DESIGN Overweight and obese women [n = 89; body mass index (BMI; in kg/m(2)): 27-40; age: 18-50 y] who usually consumed DBs in their diet were asked to either substitute water for DBs (water group) or continue drinking DBs 5 times/wk after their lunch for 24 wk (DB group) while on a weight-loss program. RESULTS Sixty-two participants (71%) completed the trial (32 in the DB group, 30 in the water group). Baseline variables were not statistically significantly different between groups. A statistically significant reduction in anthropometric measurements and statistically significant improvements in cardiometabolic risk characteristics were observed over 24 wk in both groups. Compared with the DB group, the water group had a greater decrease in weight (mean ± SD: water: -8.8 ± 1.9 kg; DBs: -7.6 ± 2.1 kg; P = 0.015, time × group), fasting insulin (mean ± SD: water: -2.84 ± 0.77 mU/L; DBs: -1.78 ± 1.25 mU/L, P < 0.001), homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (mean ± SD: water: -0.097 ± 0.049; DBs: -0.057 ± 0.042, P < 0.001), and 2-h postprandial glucose (mean ± SD: water: -1.02 ± 0.25 mmol/L; DBs: -0.72 ± 0.27 mmol/L; P < 0.001) over the 24 wk. However, there was no significant time × group interaction for waist circumference, fasting plasma glucose, and lipid profiles within both groups over 24 wk. CONCLUSIONS Replacement of DBs with water after the main meal may lead to greater weight reduction during a weight-loss program. It may also offer clinical benefits to improve insulin resistance. This trial was registered at www.irct. ir/ as IRCT201402177754N5.