Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chemotaxis of Metastatic Breast Cancer Cells in Parallel Gradient Microfluidic Chambers

Growth factor-induced chemotaxis of cancer cells plays a critical role in metastasis. Using a novel microfluidic chemotaxis chamber capable of simultaneously generating multiple growth factor gradients, we quantified and compared the migration of the human metastatic breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 in different gradients of epidermal growth factor (EGF). We confirmed the potency of EGF as a chemoattractant, and demonstrated that EGF can direct migration over a large dynamic range of gradients. We also investigated the effect of antibody against the EGF receptor (EGFR) on MDA-MB-231 chemotaxis; both motility and directional orientation were impaired, indicating that cell motility was induced by the activation of EGFR. The microfluidic chamber described in this work will provide a platform for cell-based assays that can be used to compare the effectiveness of different pharmaceutical compounds targeting cell migration and metastasis.
Development and Evaluation of Multimedia Interventions to Promote Breast and Cervical Health among South Asian Women in Hong Kong: A Project Protocol

Recent studies conducted in the local community indicate that the uptake rates of breast and cervical cancer screening among South Asian ethnic minorities are lower than those of the general population. The development of interventions to promote these minorities' awareness of breast and cervical health and the importance of cancer screening is therefore required. This study protocol aims to develop culturally sensitive multimedia interventions to promote awareness of breast and cervical cancer prevention among South Asian women in Hong Kong, and to evaluate the outcomes of such interventions using a Reach-Effectiveness-Adoption-Implementation-Maintenance framework. By using a multimedia approach and developing socio-culturally relevant and linguistically appropriate educational materials, information related to cancer and accessible preventive measures for breast and cervical cancer is expected to be disseminated more effectively among South Asian women and ultimately increase their awareness of engaging in healthy lifestyles and taking part in cancer screening tests. Successful engagement of community partners will enhance the future sustainability of the project.
Dynamic recruitment of the adaptor protein LAT: LAT exists in two distinct intracellular pools and controls its own recruitment

The integral membrane adaptor protein linker for activation of T cells (LAT) couples the T-cell receptor (TCR) with downstream signalling and is essential for T-cell development and activation. Here, we investigate the dynamic distribution of LAT-GFP fusion proteins by time-lapse video imaging of live T lymphocytes interacting with antigen-presenting cells. We show that LAT forms two distinct cellular pools, one at the plasma membrane and one that co-distributes with transferrin-labelled intracellular compartments also containing the TCR/CD3-associated ζ chain. The distribution of LAT between these two pools is dependent on LAT intracytoplasmic residues. Whereas plasma membrane-associated LAT is recruited to immune synapses after a few seconds of cell conjugate formation, the intracellular pool is first polarized and then recruited after a few minutes. We further show that LAT intracytoplasmic amino acid residues, particularly the Tyr136, 175, 195 and 235 residues, are required for its own recruitment to the immune synapse and that a herein-identified juxtamembrane LAT region (amino acids 32-104) is involved in the localization of LAT in intracellular pools and in T-cell signalling. Altogether, our results demonstrate that LAT controls its own recruitment at the immune synapse, where it is required as a scaffold protein for the signalling machinery. The results also suggest that the intracellular pool of LAT might be required for T-cell activation.
Interactions between drug resistance mutations in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 reverse transcriptase.

Introduction. It has become apparent from recent studies that human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) has an enormous capacity to mutate in order to become resistant to anti-retroviral agents (for a review see Larder, 1993). Monotherapy with nucleoside analogues or non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors (NNRTIs) has, without exception, resulted in the emergence of drug-resistant virus. This may take only a matter of weeks with NNRTIs (Richman et al., 1993; Saag et al., 1993), or months to years in the case of the most studied nucleosides 3'-azido-3'-deoxythymidine (AZT, zidovudine), 2',3'-dideoxyinosine (ddI) and 2',3'-dideoxycytidine (ddC; Boucher et al., 1990; Fitzgibbon et al., 1992; Japour et al., 1991; Land et al., 1990; Larder et al., 1989; McLeod et al., 1992; Richman et al., 1990; Rooke et al., 1989; St. Clair et al., 1991). Genetic characterization of these mutant strains has revealed that specific mutations in the RT coding region are responsible for the observed resistance (Fitzgibbon et al., 1992; Kellam et al., 1992; Larder & Kemp, 1989; Richman et al., 1993; Saag et al., 1993; St. Clair et al., 1991).
Scalable Support for Multi-homed Multi-provider Connectivity

An improved coupling ring is disclosed having unitary structure providing spring biased engagement between cooperating members. The coupling ring has a substantially cylindrical profile including, at one end, a rigid portion with inwardly directed helical latching grooves and, at the opposite end, an integral spring portion terminating with an inwardly directed annular flange. The members to be coupled are assembled with the coupling ring engaging a shoulder of one member by the flange and with the grooves receiving lugs fixed on the opposite member so that rotation of the ring will draw the members together and hold them together in a spring loaded condition.
Protection against Genital Herpes Infection in Mice Immunized under Different Hormonal Conditions Correlates with Induction of Vagina-Associated Lymphoid Tissue

ABSTRACT The present study was undertaken to examine the effect of the hormonal environment on immunization with an attenuated strain of herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2 TK−) and subsequent protection against challenge. Ovariectomized mice were administered saline (S; control), estradiol (E2), progesterone (P4), or a combination of estradiol and progesterone (E+P) and immunized intravaginally (IVAG) with HSV-2 TK−. Three weeks later, the immunized mice were challenged IVAG with wild-type HSV-2. Mice that were immunized following E treatment were not protected, whereas complete protection against the challenge was seen in mice from the S- and P4-treated groups. In the P4-treated group, 15% of mice developed chronic pathology following TK− immunization. Interestingly, about 40% of the E+P-treated mice were also protected. Upon examination of viral shedding in the vaginal secretions, it was clear that protection against challenge was dependent on the ability of the TK− virus to cause productive genital infection under different hormonal conditions. In the protected mice (the S and P groups and part of the E+P group), induced vagina-associated lymphoid tissues composed of CD11c+ dendritic cells and CD3+ and CD4+ T cells were formed transiently in the vaginal lamina propria from day 2 to day 5 postchallenge. These aggregates were absent in the unprotected mice (the E group and part of the E+P group). Significant HSV-2-specific activation of lymphocytes was observed in the local draining lymph nodes of protected mice. This response was absent in the unprotected groups. High titers of gB-specific local immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies were present in the vaginal secretions of S- and P4-treated immunized mice following HSV-2 challenge. The S-treated group of mice also had high gB-specific IgG titers. These studies show that sex hormones modify the induction of protective immune responses following IVAG immunization.
Another Angolan Namib endemic species: a new Nucras Gray, 1838 (Squamata: Lacertidae) from south-western Angola

—A new endemic Sandveld Lizard, genus Nucras, is described from south-western Angola. Morphologically it resembles members of the Nucras tessellata group, but it is genetically separated and is sister to the larger tessellata + lalandii group. Although the genus is generally very conservative morphologically, the new species differs from other congeners in a combination of scalation, overall dorsal color pattern, and geographic separation. The new species is known from fewer than 12 specimens collected over a period spanning 120 years from arid south-western Angola. This brings the total number of species in the genus to 12 and adds another species to the growing list of endemic species of the Namib region of Angola. This new finding further reinforces the idea that this Kaokoveld Desert region is a key biodiversity area worthy of conservation and long-term protection.
Developing dynamic capability through partnership: The role of capabilities

Partnerships have been adopted by most organizations as a major technique to manage technological turbulence and dynamic market environments. The paper aims to investigate four key organizational capabilities in partnerships that are proposed to contribute to the improvement of the organization’s agility—a dynamic capability for managing capricious environments. The role of trust between partnering organizations as a moderating variable is examined. A samples ( n=300) from Chinese managers in manufacturing industries was used for this study. The results indicate the significant effects of market orientation and learning orientation on agility, as well as the moderator role of trust.
Spectroscopic parallelism in structural skeletonization and standardization of pharmaceuticals

Spectroscopy based pharmaceuticals chemo fingerprinting and standardization is an essential intent to portrait molecular structures as well, a cemented platform to harvest diversified physiochemical characteristics of therapeutic chemo entity. Compared to classical wet techniques, the spectroscopic-framed-chemical analysis meritoriously distinguished from former in terms of sensitivity, accuracy, precession, rapidness, detection limit, spectrum, versatility, result reliability, intuiting data, and automated operation. Quest for “ideal medicine” is still a misnomer, however, may comply if being assisted with well planned and excellently executed spectroscopy methodology. The present paper is design to explore various prospective of different spectroscopic technique and their role in chemical evaluation and standardization of pharmaceuticals.
Relatedness of Vibrio cholerae O1/O139 Isolates from Patients and Their Household Contacts, Determined by Multilocus Variable-Number Tandem-Repeat Analysis

ABSTRACT The genetic relatedness of Vibrio cholerae O1/O139 isolates obtained from 100 patients and 146 of their household contacts in Dhaka, Bangladesh, between 2002 and 2005 was assessed by multilocus variable-number tandem-repeat analysis. Isolate genotypes were analyzed at five loci containing tandem repeats. Across the population, as well as within households, isolates with identical genotypes were clustered in time. Isolates from individuals within the same household were more likely to have similar or identical genotypes than were isolates from different households, but even within a household, isolates from different individuals often had different genotypes. When household contacts were sampled regularly for 3 weeks after the illness of the household index patient, isolates with genotypes related to the index patient appeared in contacts, on average, ∼3 days after the index patient, while isolates with unrelated genotypes appeared in contacts ∼6 days after. Limited data revealed that multiple isolates from the same individual collected within days of each other or even from a single stool sample may have identical, similar, or unrelated genotypes as well. Our results demonstrate that genetically related V. cholerae strains cluster in local outbreaks but also suggest that multiple distinct strains of V. cholerae O1 may circulate simultaneously within a household.
Intensity of Estonian Emotional Speech

The mean intensities were computed from the intensities of the middle of all vowels. In order to find the intensity range the difference between highest and lowest intensities measured for each sentence and a median was taken for each emotion and the neutral group. In order to find the intensity at the beginning and end of sentences the intensity was measured at the first (stressed) vowel of the first word of the sentence and the first (stressed) vowel of the sentence-final word.
Development of nanofiber filters with high PM2.5 removal efficiency and low air resistance

Particulate Matter (PM) pollution has recently raised great concern to public health. PM pollution can enter into indoor environment, while people spend most of their time indoors and suffer from the indoor exposures. In this paper, we report a novel window screen coated with nanofiber films which is fabricated via electrospinning technique to capture PM2.5 when using natural ventilation. When the wind speed is 0.47m/s, the electrospun fiber with nanoscale diameter and surface chemistry enable strong PM2.5 removal efficiency at 99.02% and with a relatively low pressure drop of 50Pa. The high filtration efficiency and low air resistance that the nanofiber window screen achieved may be able to provide people a healthier living environment.
Natural aerosol direct and indirect radiative effects

Natural aerosol plays a significant role in the Earth's system due to its ability to alter the radiative balance of the Earth. Here we use a global aerosol microphysics model together with a radiative transfer model to estimate radiative effects for five natural aerosol sources in the present‐day atmosphere: dimethyl sulfide (DMS), sea‐salt, volcanoes, monoterpenes, and wildfires. We calculate large annual global mean aerosol direct and cloud albedo effects especially for DMS‐derived sulfate (–0.23 Wm–2 and –0.76 Wm–2, respectively), volcanic sulfate (–0.21 Wm–2 and –0.61 Wm–2) and sea‐salt (–0.44 Wm–2 and –0.04 Wm–2). The cloud albedo effect responds nonlinearly to changes in emission source strengths. The natural sources have both markedly different radiative efficiencies and indirect/direct radiative effect ratios. Aerosol sources that contribute a large number of small particles (DMS‐derived and volcanic sulfate) are highly effective at influencing cloud albedo per unit of aerosol mass burden.
Effects of Psychological Distance and Need for Cognitive Closure on Impression Formation

ABSTRACT Based on theoretical and empirical similarities between Construal level theory of psychological distance and the Need for cognitive closure (NFC) theory, it could be hypothesized that psychological distance and NFC represent constructs that overlap to some degree. Since both theories describe judgmental behavior in terms of schematic processing, we hypothesized that primacy effect, a schema-driven phenomenon, is strengthened under the heightened NFC and psychological distance. We tested this hypothesis in an impression formation experiment while manipulating psychological distance and measuring NFC. Low NFC and psychological closeness reflect preference for situationally specific, contextually rich information, and therefore their joint effect resulted in reliance on all available information regardless of their position in a sequence. High NFC and psychological distance produced a preference for clear, schematic, stable knowledge, and therefore weighed first information more, which resulted in the primacy effect.
Community physician's role in case management of children with chronic illnesses.

There is general agreement that case management should be provided to children with chronic illnesses, yet it is not clear who should provide this service. A survey of physicians and parents of children with chronic illnesses was conducted to evaluate the practice and views of pediatricians and compare their assessments with those of parents. Surveys were mailed to 360 physicians and 519 families with response rates of 39% and 63%, respectively. The majority of physicians (74%) thought that the primary care physician should provide case management. When compared with parents, physicians underestimated the parental need for information about the child's diagnosis (8% vs 52%, P less than .001), treatments (3% vs 54%, P less than .01), and prognosis (30% vs 78%, P less than .01). They also overestimated parental needs for information regarding financial aid (70% vs 58%, P less than .01), vocations (78% vs 54%, P less than .01), and insurance (62% vs 51%, P less than .05). Four services ranked by need by parents in the top 10 were not ranked in the top 10 by physicians. Rural physicians noted that services were more difficult to obtain than did those in nonrural areas. The physicians surveyed made several recommendations for steps that could be implemented to facilitate their role as case managers. If primary care physicians are to be effective case managers, alterations in the current system of care will be required including continuing education related to chronic illness, information about community resources, reimbursement for the time required to perform case management, and better communication between physician and parents.
Object Detection from Video Using Temporal Convolutional Network

The exciting possibilities for tackling many video understanding problems opened up by the increasing availability of video sensors and high performance video processing hardware. This reveals the need of a robust and flexible video object detection technique. In this work, various techniques for object detection and recognition are studied and a novel technique is developed. Method using R-CNN, AlexNet and MobileNet are some of the main techniques. Since object detection on videos dealing with large temporal fluctuations is challenging. The model used for this work is created with Inception_V2as base architecture with Faster R-CNN convolutional layers and with TCN layers which is a better video detection algorithm. The temporal convolution network is proposed to incorporate temporal information to regularize the detection results and shows its effectiveness for the task. The performance is compared with the existing two methods and it shows better results than still image object detection methods. The improved method introduced in this work can thereby be extremely useful to detect the objects even in the presence of inter-frame temporal fluctuations.
Disturbance of the 24-hour rhythm in endogenous depression and the treatment of endogenous depression by sleep deprivation.

The significance of the alteration in circadian rhythm in endogenous depression is discussed. 23 patients with endogenous depression, 11 patients with neurotic depression and 23 healthy subjects were deprived of sleep for one night. Those with endogenous depression responded favourably though the duration of the improvement was variable. In those with neurotic depression the response was less reliable and when it occurred the improvement was less marked. In one patient the condition was made worse. Patients with endogenous depression showed a rise in systolic bloodpressure in the ophthalmic artery following sleep deprivation. This did not occur in those with neurotic depression nor in healthy subjects. Sleep deprivation is to be recommended for the treatment of endogenous depression both in the initial stage and in later stages when the condition has proved resistant to thymoleptic agents.
Path Loss Exponent Estimation for Indoor Wireless Sensor Positioning

Rapid developments in wireless sensor networks have extended many applications, hence, many studies have developed wireless sensor network positioning systems for indoor environments. Among those systems, the Global Position System (GPS) is unsuitable for indoor environments due to Line-Of-Sight (LOS) limitations, while the wireless sensor network is more suitable, given its advantages of low cost, easy installation, and low energy consumption. Due to the complex settings of indoor environments and the high demands for precision, the implementation of an indoor positioning system is difficult to construct. This study adopts a low-cost positioning method that does not require additional hardware, and uses the received signal strength (RSS) values from the receiver node to estimate the distance between the test objects. Since many objects in indoor environments would attenuate the radio signals and cause errors in estimation distances, knowing the path loss exponent (PLE) in an environment is crucial. However, most studies preset a fixed PLE, and then substitute it into a radio propagation loss model to estimate the distance between the test points; such method would lead to serious errors. To address this problem, this study proposes a Path Loss Exponent Estimation Algorithm, which uses only four beacon nodes to construct a radio propagation loss model for an indoor environment, and is able to provide enhanced positioning precision, accurate positioning services, low cost, and high efficiency.
Ramp-Limited Optimal Dispatch Strategy for PV-Embedded Microgrid

This letter is focused on the issue of power imbalance caused by significant fluctuations of photovoltaic (PV) generation in a stand-alone microgrid. To exploit the flexibility of microgrid in addressing such issue, a novel rolling optimization based dispatch strategy involving a microgrid flexibility check model and a PV ramp scenario generation model is proposed. Based on the proposed strategy, the optimal operation schedule for conventional generation and energy storage system can be efficiently found. Case study demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model.
From What to Where

Three experiments examined nonspatial extinction in G.K. , a patient with bilateral parietal damage. Experiment 1 demonstrated nonspatial extinction (poor detection of a weak relative to a stronger perceptual group), even when the stronger group was less complex than the weaker group. Experiment 2 showed improved report of a letter falling at the location of the stronger group, but explicit judgments of the location of the letter were at chance. Experiment 3 replicated the object-cuing benefit, though G.K. could not discriminate whether a letter fell at the same location as the stronger perceptual group. The data indicate coupling between object- and space-based attention, so that spatial attention is drawn to the location occupied by the winner of object-based competition for selection. In this case, what cues where. This coupling operates implicitly, even when explicit location judgments are impaired.
Surface-Temperature Control of Silicon Nanowires in Dry and Liquid Conditions

In this paper we present the results of surface temperature control of silicon nanowires by using fluorescent thermometry at the nanometer scale. Rhodamine B is one of the stable fluorescent molecules, which rely on the characteristic of temperature-dependent change in fluorescent intensity, and it was used for nano-scale surface temperature sensing interface. The resistive heating on Si nanowires was carried out with applying voltage potential of 6 ~ 12 V. Surface-temperature measurement was performed by converting the changes in fluorescent intensity with calibration curve of Rhodamine B. The temperature at the central line along nanowires increasing from 30 degrees to 35~70 degrees was observed.