Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Caspase-8 Is an Effector in Apoptotic Death of Dopaminergic Neurons in Parkinson's Disease, But Pathway Inhibition Results in Neuronal Necrosis

Caspase-8 is a proximal effector protein of the tumor necrosis factor receptor family death pathway. In the present human postmortem study, we observed a significantly higher percentage of dopaminergic (DA) substantia nigra pars compacta neurons that displayed caspase-8 activation in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients compared with controls. In an in vivo experimental PD model, namely subchronically 1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine-treated mice, we also show that caspase-8 is indeed activated after exposure to this toxin early in the course of cell demise, suggesting that caspase-8 activation precedes and is not the consequence of cell death. However, cotreatment of 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium-intoxicated primary DA cultures with broad-spectrum and specific caspase-8 inhibitors did not result in neuroprotection but seemed to trigger a switch from apoptosis to necrosis. We propose that this effect is related to ATP depletion and suggest that the use of caspase inhibitors in pathologies linked to intracellular energy depletion, such as PD, should be cautiously evaluated.
Neurophysiological findings from magnetoencephalography in autism spectrum disorder: a comprehensive review

ABSTRACT: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an etiologically and clinically heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental disorders, diagnosed exclusively by the behavioral phenotype. The neural basis of altered social, communicative, somatosensory, and restricted and repetitive behaviors remains largely unknown. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) provides a vital method of inquiry to identify the neurophysiological mechanisms of ASD, better illuminate etiologically distinct subgroups, understand the developmental trajectories of aberrant connectivity and track outcome. MEG is a neuroimaging methodology that can localize sources of electrical activity within the brain with millisecond resolution by noninvasively measuring the magnetic fields arising from such activity. This review addresses the central MEG findings exploring auditory, visual and somatosensory processing, higher-order/executive functioning, and resting state in individuals with ASD over the past decade and a half. We offer a summary of emerging tre.
End-User Effects of Microreboots in Three-Tiered Internet Systems

Microreboots restart fine-grained components of software systems "with a clean slate," and only take a fraction of the time needed for full system reboot. Microreboots provide an application-generic recovery technique for Internet services, which can be supported entirely in middleware and requires no changes to the applications or any a priori knowledge of application semantics. This paper investigates the effect of microreboots on end-users of an eBay-like online auction application; we find that microreboots are nearly as effective as full reboots, but are significantly less disruptive in terms of downtime and lost work. In our experiments, microreboots reduced the number of failed user requests by 65% and the perceived downtime by 78% compared to a server process restart. We also show how to replace user-visible transient failures with transparent call-retry, at the cost of a slight increase in end-user-visible latency during recovery. Due to their low cost, microreboots can be used aggressively, even when their necessity is less than certain, hence adding to the reduced recovery time a reduction in the fault detection time, which further improves availability.
Education and Professional Socialization

SOCIALIZATION is a concept which links the individual and society. It refers to the process which changes natural, biological man into a good working member of his community. The socialized individual is one who has acquired the habits, beliefs, skills, knowledge and dispositions which are characteristic of his culture. Until recently the concept has been used mainly by psychologists studying personality development in infants and young children.l The learning of role and status obligations has not been regarded as an important part of early socialization. Now, however, with the focus on socialization after childhood, emphasis has shifted to the learning of adult roles and statuses: work, parenthood, citizenship, and the like. Whereas the family is almost the sole agent for early socialization numerous institutions are important later on: the school, university, apprenticeship and other means of induction to work, church and various voluntary organizations all play a significant part in the process. After the family, the school is the most universal agent, and today most people in advanced Western societies spend at least ten years in full-time schooling. For many professionals schooling and subsequent ’apprenticeship’ are much longer, frequently amounting to a period which is about half as long as the time which will be spent in practice as a fullyqualified worker. The length of training for professionals and the strict definition of professional status and role is one of the outstanding features of modern bureaucratic society. The emergence in society of clearly defined professional groups and the growth of complex institutional arrangements within an educational system for the proper training of professionals is a relatively recent phenomenon and it can be seen as a response to certain societal needs: the need for skilled administrators, for technically trained experts and so on. A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson in their pioneering history of the professions in England show clearly how the emergence of the new professions is associated with the application of scientific knowledge to problems of production :-’
Does Incorporation of a Clinical Support Template in the Electronic Medical Record Improve Capture of Wound Care Data in a Cohort of Veterans With Diabetic Foot Ulcers?

PURPOSE: The purpose of this cohort study was to evaluate the effect of a 1-year intervention of an electronic medical record wound care template on the completeness of wound care documentation and medical coding compared to a similar time interval for the fiscal year preceding the intervention. METHODS: From October 1, 2006, to September 30, 2007, a “good wound care” intervention was implemented at a rural Veterans Affairs facility to prevent amputations in veterans with diabetes and foot ulcers. The study protocol included a template with foot ulcer variables embedded in the electronic medical record to facilitate data collection, support clinical decision making, and improve ordering and medical coding. RESULTS: The intervention group showed significant differences in complete documentation of good wound care compared to the historic control group (&khgr;2 = 15.99, P < .001), complete documentation of coding for diagnoses and procedures (&khgr;2 = 30.23, P < .001), and complete documentation of both good wound care and coding for diagnoses and procedures (&khgr;2 = 14.96, P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: An electronic wound care template improved documentation of evidence-based interventions and facilitated coding for wound complexity and procedures.
Female circumcision in Egypt: social implications, current research, and prospects for change.

The social implications of the practice of female circumcision in Egypt are examined in this paper. Female circumcision is defined as the partial or complete removal of the external female genitalia, varying from removal of the prepuce of the clitoris only to the full excision of the clitoris, the labia minora, and the labia majora. Most Egyptian women are circumcised in the first or second degrees. The practice probably originated in Pharaonic Egypt, in which it was invested with mythological significance. Islamic tradition has reinforced the practice because of the belief that it attenuates sexual desire in women. The legal status is ambiguous. Current research shows that women, especially among lower socioeconomic groups, often do not understand the danger of the operation, which mothers usually cause to be performed on their daughters between the ages of 6 and 10, before the girl reaches puberty. Interviews conducted by the author in a pilot study in 1979 suggest that even in the absence of social and economic change, many uneducated women, given information, will question the validity of female circumcision. This questioning, and the uneducated woman's rejection of the practice, are based on new and emerging values such as respect for modern concepts of health and an enhanced definition of women's identity and roles. Moreover, in most cases, the memory of the operation is sufficiently traumatic so that mere questioning by a trusted service-provider or a friend would receive a positive response. The paper concludes with detailed responses of 4 women interviewed in the pilot study.
The effect of change in organizational identity on knowledge creation by mobile R&D workers in M&As

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between change in organizational identity and knowledge creation of mobile research and development (R&D) workers by combining the literature on human mobility and mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Design/methodology/approach – Negative binomial regression was used to test the hypotheses, based on knowledge creation of 410 mobile R&D workers in 75 high-technology M&As. Findings – The findings showed that while a change in organizational identity after M&As decreased the knowledge creation by R&D workers who moved before M&As, a higher degree of human capital in mobile R&D workers could increase knowledge creation after M&As. A moderating effect of the change in organizational identity on the relationship between knowledge creation and human capital of mobile R&D workers was also found. Research limitations/implications – This paper augmented the research opportunity on the organizational change and knowledge creation during an M&A by combin.
Portfolio Selection with Multiple Spectral Risk Constraints

We propose an iterative gradient-based algorithm to efficiently solve the portfolio selection problem with multiple spectral risk constraints. Since the conditional value at risk (CVaR) is a special case of the spectral risk measure, our algorithm solves portfolio selection problems with multiple CVaR constraints. In each step, the algorithm solves very simple separable convex quadratic programs; hence, we show that the spectral risk constrained portfolio selection problem can be solved using the technology developed for solving mean-variance problems. The algorithm extends to the case where the objective is a weighted sum of the mean return and either a weighted combination or the maximum of a set of spectral risk measures. We report numerical results that show that our proposed algorithm is very efficient; it is at least one order of magnitude faster than the state-of-the-art general purpose solver for all practical instances. One can leverage this efficiency to be robust against model risk by including constraints with respect to several different risk models.
CONTINUOUS Q-LEARNING FOR MULTI-AGENT COOPERATION

The structure of the proposed Q-learning with a continuous actions set, as well as the states, consists of three parts: a fuzzy quantizer, whose output is used to learn the action policy; an action evaluation module, which models and produces the expected evaluation signal; and a stochastic action selection unit that generates an action with the expectation of better performance using a probability distribution function to estimate an optimal action selection policy. Further, the algorithm is applied to cooperative tasks where two robots must consider their partner's action before taking their own actions. Conventional Q-learning requires a predefined and discrete state space but fails to identify the variances in different situations in the same state. The proposed Q-learning with the stochastic recording real-valued unit can differentiate the actions corresponding to different state inputs but categorized to the same state. Therefore, this unit can be regarded as an action evaluation module, which models and produces the expected evaluation signal, and an action selection unit that generates an action with the expectation of better performance using a probability distribution function to estimate an optimal action selection policy. The results from the simulations demonstrate better performance and applicability of the proposed learning model.
A Rice PECTATE LYASE-LIKE Gene Is Required for Plant Growth and Leaf Senescence1[OPEN]

DEL1 affects rice growth and leaf senescence mediated by PECTATE LYASE-LIKE genes. To better understand the molecular mechanisms behind plant growth and leaf senescence in monocot plants, we identified a mutant exhibiting dwarfism and an early-senescence leaf phenotype, termed dwarf and early-senescence leaf1 (del1). Histological analysis showed that the abnormal growth was caused by a reduction in cell number. Further investigation revealed that the decline in cell number in del1 was affected by the cell cycle. Physiological analysis, transmission electron microscopy, and TUNEL assays showed that leaf senescence was triggered by the accumulation of reactive oxygen species. The DEL1 gene was cloned using a map-based approach. It was shown to encode a pectate lyase (PEL) precursor that contains a PelC domain. DEL1 contains all the conserved residues of PEL and has strong similarity with plant PelC. DEL1 is expressed in all tissues but predominantly in elongating tissues. Functional analysis revealed that mutation of DEL1 decreased the total PEL enzymatic activity, increased the degree of methylesterified homogalacturonan, and altered the cell wall composition and structure. In addition, transcriptome assay revealed that a set of cell wall function- and senescence-related gene expression was altered in del1 plants. Our research indicates that DEL1 is involved in both the maintenance of normal cell division and the induction of leaf senescence. These findings reveal a new molecular mechanism for plant growth and leaf senescence mediated by PECTATE LYASE-LIKE genes.
A system for application-independent time-critical rendering

AIBSTRACT I am developing a rendering system which supports automatic, application-independent time-critical rendering fc,r 3D graphics. When the scenes being generated overload the rendering engine, a rendering scheduler employs perception-based techniques to reduce the scene complexity at run-time. Perception-based degradation mechanisms are used because they are based on characteristics of the human, not characteristics of the application. Since the human is the one element guaranteed to exist across all interactive applications, this rendering system is application-independent.
Churches as Healing Communities: Impulses from the South for an Integral Understanding of Healing

For several reasons in missionary ecumenical circles healing could become the new paradigm for mission. One of the main reasons is that in churches in the Southern hemisphere healing is the central focus of the local Christian community. Church life is characterized by the conviction that not the mere change of political structures will lead to a better world. Liberation from evil, forgiveness, medical care, mutual acceptance and common socio-political engagement, all are inspired by the integral message of the gospel. The author gives several examples of African Christian communities in the Netherlands that may be called healing communities and are an inspiration for new forms of living the Christian faith, badly needed for the white middle class congregations that are weakened by secularism and Enlightenment.
PHYTOCONSTITUENTS ANALYSIS BY GC-MS , CARDIOPROTECTIVE AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF BUCHANANIA AXILLARIS AGAINST DOXORUBICIN-INDUCED CARDIO TOXICITY IN ALBINO RATS

Buchanania axillaries(Anacardiaceae) is a traditional herbal medicine , the leaves are used to treat many diseases including cardiotoxicity. ’The present study was designed to scientifically evaluate the cardioprotective potential of the ethanol extract of Buchanania axillaries(BA), on Doxorubicin (DOX) induced cardiotoxicity, in albino rats. DOX is one of the most effective chemotherapeutic drugs in cancer; however, its incidence of cardiotoxicity compromises its therapeutic index. DOX-induced heart failure is thought to be caused by reduction/oxidation cycling of DOX to generate oxidative stress and cardiomyocyte cell death. A Doxorubicin dose of 20 mg/kg was selected for the present study as this dose offered significant alteration in biochemical parameters and moderate necrosis in heart. Effect of BA oral treatment for 14 days at two doses (250 mg and 500 mg/kg body weight) was evaluated against DOXinduced cardiotoxicity. Significant cardiotoxicity, depletion of endogenous antioxidants and biochemical parameters were observed in DOX-treated animals when compared with the normal animals. The Pretreatment of DOXinduced rats with BA significantly prevented the altered biochemical variation such as marker enzymes (SGPT, SGOT, CPK, ALP and LDH), lipid profile (LDL, VLDL, TGs, HDL and Total cholesterol), and antioxidant parameters (SOD, GSH, CAT, GPx, MDA, and GR) to near normal status. Serum urea, and uric acid which increased on DOX administration, registered near normal values on pretreatment with BA. Histology of Dox-induced heart of rats pretreated with BA showed a significant recovery from cell damage. The present findings have demonstrated that the cardioprotective effects of BA in DOX-induced oxidative damage may be due to an augmentation of the endogenous antioxidants and inhibition of lipid peroxidation of cell membrane.
The neural optimal control hierarchy for motor control

Our empirical, neuroscientific understanding of biological motor systems has been rapidly growing in recent years. However, this understanding has not been systematically mapped to a quantitative characterization of motor control based in control theory. Here, we attempt to bridge this gap by describing the neural optimal control hierarchy (NOCH), which can serve as a foundation for biologically plausible models of neural motor control. The NOCH has been constructed by taking recent control theoretic models of motor control, analyzing the required processes, generating neurally plausible equivalent calculations and mapping them on to the neural structures that have been empirically identified to form the anatomical basis of motor control. We demonstrate the utility of the NOCH by constructing a simple model based on the identified principles and testing it in two ways. First, we perturb specific anatomical elements of the model and compare the resulting motor behavior with clinical data in which the corresponding area of the brain has been damaged. We show that damaging the assigned functions of the basal ganglia and cerebellum can cause the movement deficiencies seen in patients with Huntington's disease and cerebellar lesions. Second, we demonstrate that single spiking neuron data from our model's motor cortical areas explain major features of single-cell responses recorded from the same primate areas. We suggest that together these results show how NOCH-based models can be used to unify a broad range of data relevant to biological motor control in a quantitative, control theoretic framework.
New Guidelines for NJMT

NJMT's Guidelines for authors have recently been revised (see our website www.njmt.no). Some of the changes made are minor adjustments, while the "Genre Characteristics" section has been given a complete revision. Our intention has been not only to clarify how we define the difference between research articles and other text genres such as essays, perspectives on practice, and book reviews. We also want to clarify how the research articles that we publish may be of different kinds. Our new guidelines therefore specifically state that "NJMT publishes empirically based research (quantitative and qualitative studies) as well as literature-based research (theoretical studies, historical research, and review articles). " In empirical research, there are some specific challenges related to clarity and transparency that we would like to address here. To be able to evaluate a piece of research, a reader must be able to assess precisely what the researchers did, and how they came to their results. However, to achieve good transparency in a research report is often difficult, not only because journal space is limited, but also because important details may be easily overlooked. This problem has been increasingly recognised in recent years not only in music therapy, but across many fields of health care research. Therefore, guidelines and checklists have been developed for various types of research designs. The NJMT guidelines for authors now recommend their use as a tool for writing and reviewing research reports. Perhaps the most well-known design-specific guideline is the CONSORT statement (Moher et al., 2001; see also Altman et al., 2001). It provides a list of items that are important in determining the validity of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), together with brief explanations and examples. For instance, it is important to know the method by which the participants were selected and whether the data for those participants who stopped therapy earlier than planned, were retained in the analysis (this is often referred to as an 'intention-to-treat' analysis and will usually lead to a more conservative estimate than if drop-outs are excluded). Using this checklist helps authors and reviewers to make sure that all the important methodological details are included. The reader will hopefully benefit from this improved transparency. In this issue, we have included a RCT on a music listening programme in a medical context (Masuda et al., p. 4-14), and this article is the first that we have reviewed with application of the CONSORT statement principles. Studies with randomised designs are still rare in music therapy and for many reasons may not always be possible. Therefore, the NJMT recommends similar guidelines for non-randomised evaluation studies (TREND statement; Des Jarlais et al., 2004). We also refer to a guideline that is relevant for systematic reviews/meta-analyses, and we are planning to include a specific guideline for the reporting of qualitative research in the future. By doing so, we hope to contribute to the continued development of good quality research in music therapy.
Small, Slow, and Gradual Reform: What can Historical Institutionalism Teach us?

In this article, the issue of “small, slow and gradual reform” is explored, particularly from the perspective of “historical institutionalism. ” Historically grown and solidified institutions explain why change usually is only small, slow, and gradual. We have a closer look at the political science theory of historical institutionalism. After considering key-concepts of historical institutionalism such as “path dependency” and “punctuated equilibrium,” we look at recent developments of typologies of incremental, gradual transformations. Elaborating upon this typology we develop a conceptual framework of various and varying types of change. The descriptive validity of this framework is “tested” by offering empirical illustrations in three case studies of changes that have occurred in and around the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture.