Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reduced type II interleukin-4 receptor signalling drives initiation, but not progression, of colorectal carcinogenesis: evidence from transgenic mouse models and human case–control epidemiological observations

We investigated the role of interleukin (IL)-4 receptor (IL-4R) signalling during mouse carcinogen-induced colorectal carcinogenesis and in a case–control genetic epidemiological study of IL-4Rα single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Azoxymethane-induced aberrant crypt focus (ACF; 6 weeks) and tumours (32 weeks) were analysed in wild-type (WT) BALB/c mice, as well as in IL-4Rα − /−, IL-13 −/− and ‘double-knockout’ (DKO) animals. Colorectal cancer (CRC) cases (1502) and controls (584) were genotyped for six coding IL-4Rα SNPs. The association with CRC risk and CRC-specific mortality was analysed by logistic regression. Lack of IL-4Rα expression was associated with increased ACFs [median 8.5 ACFs per mouse (IL-4Rα −/−) versus 3 (WT); P = 0.007], but no difference in the number of colorectal tumours [mean 1.4 per mouse (IL-4Rα −/−) versus 2 (WT)], which were smaller and demonstrated reduced nuclear/cytoplasmic β-catenin translocation compared with WT tumours. Tumour-bearing IL-4Rα −/− mice had fewer CD11b+/Gr1+ myeloid-derived suppressor splenocytes than WT animals. IL-13 −/− mice developed a similar number of ACFs to IL-4Rα −/− and DKO mice. There was a significant increase in CRC risk associated with the functional SNP Q576R [odds ratio 1.54 (95% confidence interval 0.94–2.54), P trend 0.03 for the minor G allele]. There was no effect of IL-4Rα genotype on either CRC-specific or all-cause mortality. These combined pre-clinical and human data together demonstrate that reduced IL-4R signalling has stage-specific effects on colorectal carcinogenesis (increased CRC initiation and risk but reduced tumour progression and no effect on CRC mortality). These results should prompt evaluation of the effect of pharmacological manipulation of IL-4R signalling on future CRC risk and for CRC treatment.
Organization‐stakeholder relationships: exploring trust and transparency

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the organization‐stakeholder relationship between oil and gas operators and community members involved in the Sundre Petroleum Operators Group (SPOG) in Alberta, Canada. After a crisis of trust, the SPOG was established to increase transparency, and attempt to rebuild trust and healthy community stakeholder relationships.Design/methodology/approach – This research paper is a result of interviews with both SPOG industry and community members (n=18). A qualitative phenomenological orientation was adopted because of its focus on the individual experience of the relationship. Key relational elements such as trust and transparency were examined in relation to the importance for relationship building. The research is limited by the number of interviews that were obtained during the time allotted for data collection.Findings – The results indicated that after a crisis, transparency is crucial for rebuilding trust and maintaining healthy community stakeholder rela.
An sEMG-driven neuromusculoskeletal model of upper limb for rehabilitation robot control

This study proposes a new method for modeling the complicated dynamics between motor neural signal (surface electromyography, sEMG) and corresponding joint torque of muscle contraction (sEMG-driven neuromusculoskeletal model), which has potential to be used for rehabilitation robot control and neuromuscular evaluation after stroke, etc. In this model, muscle activation dynamics and contraction dynamics are built based on Hill-type muscle model, which has many parameters to be determined using optimization methods, and training samples of sEMG, joint angles, and joint torques are acquired with the aid of an upper-limb rehabilitation robot. Subject-specific parameters are initialized with scaled Standford VA model data by subjects' weight, limb length, etc., and the model is optimized using the genetic algorithm (GA). Based on this study, characteristics of a certain single muscle during voluntary movements can be obtained by measuring their sEMG signals, and the motor commands of brain are decoded in some degree.
Information Sharing During the University of Texas at Austin Active Shooter/Suicide Event

Emergency response systems can be improved by investigating the motives and manner in which people share information during an active shooter crisis. This article analyzed survey data collected from undergraduate participants at The University of Texas at Austin who were enrolled during the fall of 2010 when an active shooter event occurred on campus. Our findings indicated that distance from a threat predicts an individual’s perception of message credibility. Additional findings suggested innovativeness is a strong driving factor in individuals’ reliance on social and personal media to contact others who need safety updates. Finally, perceptions of mortality and experience to negative media portrayals were positively related to active information sharing during this event. Limitations and suggestions for future research are offered.
Formation control of multiple robot fishes based on artificial potential field and leader-follower framework

Based on the artificial potential field, an approach is proposed for the formation control of multiple robot fishes, which overcomes the disadvantage that the collision avoidance is not satisfactorily solved in the leader-follower framework. In accessible areas, the formation of multiple robot fishes is maintained in the moving to target point by controlling the distance and angle between follower and leader. Under obstacle environment, robotic fish established expectations point to create artificial potential field by the order of priority. The simulation verifies the effectiveness of the method.
Using the Cell Broadband Engine to Compute an Electrochemical Battery Model

This paper discusses the usage of a two-dimensional electrochemical battery model of a lead acid battery cell as a state-of-health indicator in an embedded application. The model equations are a set of coupled highly non-linear partial differential equations that evolve with time. At each time step, these equations are solved using Newton’s Method, and a direct skyline LU solver without partial pivoting is used to solve for the battery cell’s state at each Newton step. The entire model was implemented on a Sony Playstation 3 and the direct solver at each Newton iteration step exploits the parallelism in the Cell Broadband Engine to improve performance. The parallelized direct solver outperforms state-of-the-art dense and sparse solvers running on an AMD Opteron 246-based workstation.
Quality of Life, Health Status, and Clinical Research

Although interest is increasing in measurement of quality of life, health status, and functional status in clinical research, most often the primary focus of the research is traditional measures of mortality and morbidity. Quality-of-life assessments are usually added as an afterthought once the design, data collection, and analytic techniques have been specified. When nonmedical outcomes are considered, they are thought of as quality-of-life outcomes. Quality of life is not well conceptualized in the medical and health literature. In addition, clinical researchers are searching for a single best measure of quality of life. Lack of information about clinical significance and sensitivity and uncertainties about the advantages of different administration strategies are impediments to use of developed measures. These issues and problems are discussed and suggestions made about procedures and investigations that could provide guidance.
Support for mobile pen-based applications

We describe a general software architecture employing handheld comnuters, that provides pen-based interfaces to existing graphical applications that‘ were designed with a conventional mouse-based interface. This architecture allows delivery of computationally intensive applications to mobile users, and is flexible enough to accommodate interface devices with a wide range of capabilities. To illustrate the functionality of the architecture, we describe a system that we have constructed which is based on the architecture.
Shipboard Radar Rainfall Patterns within the TOGA COARE IFA

Abstract Radar rainfall measurements over the equatorial western Pacific warm pool were collected by two shipboard Doppler radars as part of the Tropical Oceans Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Response Experiment during the intensive observing period (November 1992–February 1993). A comprehensive dataset of gridded rainfall fields, convective/stratiform identification maps, and vertical structure products has been produced, covering an area approximately 400 km (E–W) by 300 km (N–S) within the Intensive Flux Array (IFA), centered near 2°S, 156°E. The radar rainfall product, which was used as validation for the Third Algorithm Intercomparison Project of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project, indicates an overall average of 4.8 mm day−1; however, correction for range dependence increases the total to 5.4 mm day−1. Rainfall patterns varied considerably during the experiment with isolated convection dominating periods of light winds, while squall lines and organized mesoscale systems were ab.
Question Answering System QUARK

Recently, we can acquire immence amount of information thanks to the spread of a computer and internet. Therefore, technology for finding the information that a user desires becomes more and more important. A question answering (QA) system answers a question written by natural language in contrast to conventional information retrieval systems where a user expresses his information need by keywords. Therefore, a QA system can provide more user-friendly information access environment to a user. We developed a QA system QUARK1 that finds answer words from large newspaper article corpora and was evaluated by participating in NTCIR4 QAC2, an evaluation workshop of Japanese QA sytems.
Organizational Orientation in Public and Private Elementary Schools

Abstract In this study, we investigated the relationship between organizational value orientation and two variables, organizational commitment and job satisfaction, among teachers from private and public elementary schools. We also assessed the central contribution of personal and organizational attributes (i.e., gender, length of professional experience, and type of school) in explaining employee organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Using survey research methods, we collected data from 135 teachers from public schools and 562 teachers from Catholic private schools. We analyzed the data by multivariate analysis of variance and multiple regression. In our study, we found differences between private (religious) and public schools. Specifically, results of this study suggested that (a) private schools exhibit a more normative orientation, whereas public schools exhibit a more utilitarian orientation; and (b) schools with a more normative value orientation had significantly higher teacher organizat.
Enhanced TFTs model using novel nano-composite high-k gate dielectric

This paper demonstrates an analytical suggested model for enhancing the performance of Thin-Film Transistors (TFTs) by replacing the conventional silicon dioxide gate dielectric with high-k gate dielectric novel nano-composite PVP/La2O3 (kox=25). Our suggested model has a Single nano-composite Material Gate SMG MOSFETs. Also, it has been studied the effects of the gate-dielectric permittivity, spacer oxide permittivity, gate length, and the width of TFTs structure.
Dying while Dry: Kinetics and Mechanisms of Deterioration in Desiccated Organisms1

Abstract Persistence of anhydrous organisms in nature may depend on how long they remain viable in dry environments. Longevity is determined by interactions of humidity, temperature, and unknown cellular factors that affect the propensity for damaging reactions. Here we describe our research to elucidate those cellular factors and to ultimately predict how long a population can survive under extreme conditions. Loss of viability typically follows a sigmoidal pattern, where a period of small changes precedes a cataclysmic decline. The time for viability to decrease to 50% (P50) varied among seed species and among 10 phylogenetically diverse organisms. When stored at elevated temperatures of 35°C and 32% relative humidity (RH), P50 ranged from about a week for spores of Serratia marcescens to several years for fronds of Selaginella lepidophylla. Most of the species studied survived longest at low humidity (10–20% RH), but suffered under complete dryness. Temperature dependencies of aging kinetics appeared similar among diverse organisms despite the disparate longevities. The effect of temperature on seed aging rates was consistent with the temperature dependency of molecular mobility of aqueous glasses, with both showing a reduction by several orders of magnitude when seeds were cooled from 60°C to 0°C. Longevity is an inherited trait in seeds, but its complex expression among widely divergent taxa suggests that it developed through multiple pathways.
Comparison of Algorithms for Haptic Interaction With Isosurfaces Extracted From Volumetric Datasets

Combinations of graphics and haptics libraries are used in medical simulations for simultaneous visualization and tactile interaction with complex 3D anatomy models. The minimum frame rate of 1 kHz for haptics rendering makes it a nontrivial problem when dealing with complex and highly detailed polygonal models. Multiple haptics algorithms based on polygonal mesh rendering, volume haptics, and intermediate representation are evaluated in terms of their servoloop rendering time, client thread rendering time, and quality of force feedback. Algorithms include OpenHaptics' Feedback Buffer and Depth Buffer, GodObject and Ruspini renderers in h3d, chai3d implementation in h3d, ScalarSurfaceFriction mode in Volume Haptics ToolKit (vhtk), and the authors' intermediate representation algorithm based on volumetric data. The latter, in combination with surface graphics visualization, is found to deliver the best rendering time, to detect all collisions and to provide correct haptic feedback where other algorithms fail.
Pipelined Iterative Solvers with Kernel Fusion for Graphics Processing Units

We revisit the implementation of iterative solvers on discrete graphics processing units and demonstrate the benefit of implementations using extensive kernel fusion for pipelined formulations over conventional implementations of classical formulations. The proposed implementations with both CUDA and OpenCL are freely available in ViennaCL and are shown to be competitive with or even superior to other solver packages for graphics processing units. The highest-performance gains are obtained for small to medium-sized systems, while our implementations are on par with vendor-tuned implementations for very large systems. Our results are especially beneficial for transient problems, where many small to medium-sized systems instead of a single big system need to be solved.
The Idea of Chinatown: The Power of Place and Institutional Practice in the Making of a Racial Category

Abstract Racial categories are cultural ascriptions whose construction and transmission cannot be taken for granted. I focus here on the process by which racial categories are themselves constructed; in particular, I examine the presence of place and the role of state in the making of one such category, the “Chinese,” in a British settler society from the 1880s to the 1920s. I argue that “Chinatown,” like race, is an idea that belongs to the “white” European cultural tradition. The significance of government is that it has granted legitimacy to the ideas of Chinese and Chinatown, inscribing social definitions of identity and place in institutional practice and space. Indeed Chinatown has been a critical nexus through which the race definition process was structured. I examine this process in Vancouver, British Columbia, where the municipal authorities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sanctioned the intellectual milieu of race. They did this, I argue, as part of the historical exercise .
Food for Thought ... Cellular Resilience

247 Received September 27, 2015; http://dx.doi. org/10.14573/altex.1509271 tochondria, an Achilles’ heel of cells, where oxidative stress occurs in response to many hazards, triggering apoptosis by cytochrome C release. Given the endosymbiotic theory on the bacterial origin of mitochondria (Wallin, 1923), this could be interpreted as the late manifestation of a chronic infection of the cell. It is tempting to develop testing strategies for hazardous substances based not on the apical manifestations but on the critical infrastructures that trigger the problem. This might be more efficient than identifying the many possible interactions of substances (now called molecular initiating events (MIE) in the context of Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOP)) or characterizing the entire Pathway of Toxicity (PoT, Kleensang et al., 2014). We can interpret these critical infrastructures as the nodes of the PoT networks, which would lend themselves as biomarkers of toxicity (Blaauboer et al., 2012). Introduction
Music and the wellbeing of people with dementia

While therapeutic interventions involving music have been shown to have benefits for people with dementia, little research has examined the role of music and music-related activities in their everyday lives. This paper presents the results of qualitative research that explored this role in terms of: the meaning and importance of music in everyday life; the benefits derived from participation in music-related activities; and the problems of engaging with music. Data were collected during in-depth interviews with 26 people with dementia and their carers, who lived either in their own homes or in residential care in different parts of England. The paper illustrates the many different ways in which people with dementia experience music. As well as being enjoyed in its own right, music can enable people to participate in activities that are enjoyable and personally meaningful. It is an important source of social cohesion and social contact, supports participation in various activities within and outside the household, and provides a degree of empowerment and control over their everyday situations. The practical implications for the provision of care and support for people with dementia are discussed. The scope and implications for technological development to promote access to music are also discussed.
Potential mechanisms for astrocyte‐TIMP‐1 downregulation in chronic inflammatory diseases

The pathogenesis of many neurodegenerative disorders, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)‐1 associated dementia, is exacerbated by an imbalance between matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their inhibitors, tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs). In the context of disease, TIMP‐1 has emerged as an important multifunctional protein capable of regulating inflammation. We previously reported differential TIMP‐1 expression in acute versus chronic activation of astrocytes. This study investigates possible mechanisms underlying TIMP‐1 downregulation in chronic neuroinflammation. We used interleukin (IL)‐1β as a model pro‐inflammatory stimulus and measured TIMP‐1 binding to extracellular matrix, cell death, receptor downregulation, TIMP‐1 mRNA stability and transcriptional regulation in activated astrocytes. TIMP‐1 remained localized to the cell body or was secreted into the cell supernatant. DNA fragmentation ELISA and MTT assay showed that prolonged IL‐1β activation of astrocytes induced significant astrocyte death. In acute and chronic IL‐1β‐activated astrocytes, IL‐1 receptor levels were not significantly different. TIMP‐1 mRNA stability was measured in astrocytes and U87 astroglioma cells by real‐time PCR, and TIMP‐1 promoter activation was studied using TIMP‐1‐luciferase reporter constructs in transfected astrocytes. Our results indicated that TIMP‐1 expression is regulated through multiple mechanisms. Transcriptional control and loss of mRNA stabilization are, however, the most likely primary contributors to chronic downregulation of TIMP‐1. These data are important for unraveling the mechanisms underlying astrocyte responses during chronic neuroinflammation and have broader implications in other inflammatory diseases that involve MMP/TIMP imbalance. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
On the Virtues of Staying 'Inside of the Box' Does Organizational Citizenship Behavior Detract from Performance in Taylorist Jobs?

In the past several years, increasing emphasis has been placed on the role of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) as an important aspect of job performance. OCB is defined as employee behavior that contributes to organizational performance, but that is not formally specified as an aspect of the job. While OCB is likely to be an important element in the performance of most jobs, it is suggested that there are a sizeable number of jobs where OCB is neither desired nor encouraged. These jobs are described as being "Taylorist" in recognition of Frederick Taylor's work advocating strict employee adherence to pre-specified job procedures. Several features are described that distinguish Taylorist jobs where OCB is likely to be harmful rather than beneficial. Implications that Taylorist jobs have with regard to employee selection are also discussed, and two empirical studies are described that illustrate how Taylorist jobs differ from jobs were OCB is more valued in terms of the relationships found between employee characteristics and job performance. Specifically, it appears that several candidate characteristics that one would theoretically expect to be negatively associated with OCB are positively associated with performance and tenure in Taylorist jobs.
Prevalence of Thymine—Adenine Dinucleotide Repeat, IL28B and IFNL4 in Thai Population and Correlation with Spontaneous Clearance and Treatment Outcome of Hepatitis C Infection

Background The interleukin-28B (IL28B) gene polymorphism is a strong baseline predictor of sustained virological response (SVR) in hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment. The length of thymine—adenine dinucleotide repeats, or (TA)n, in the regulatory region of IL28B can affect interferon transcription. In order to determine predictive values in HCV infection, we explored the correlation among factors including (TA)n genotypes, clinical features, interferon-λ-3 (IFNL3) and interferon-λ-4 (IFNL4) polymorphisms, and HCV treatment outcome. Methods Sera from 492 patients with chronic HCV infection, 101 individuals with spontaneous HCV clearance and 123 healthy blood donors (control group) were analyzed. Genotyping of the (TA)n was performed by direct sequencing. The rs12979860 (IFNL3) was identified using nested PCR and sequencing, while ss469415590 (IFNL4) was identified by real-time PCR. Results The distribution of (TA)n was similar between individuals with spontaneous HCV clearance and chronic HCV infection, but differed significantly from healthy controls. Individuals with both (TA)n alleles ≥12 had significantly higher SVR rate compared to individuals with at least one (TA)n <12 allele. This strong correlation was seen for patients infected with HCV-1, HCV-3, and HCV-6. The (TA)n genotypes were not associated with HCV viral load, ALT levels and liver stiffness, but were correlated with platelet counts (p<0.001). In contrast, rs12979860 (CC) and ss469415590 (TT/TT) genotypes were associated with higher SVR rated only in patients with HCV-1. Conclusions The (TA)n genotypes were not associated with spontaneous clearance of HCV infection but associated with treatment response in patients infected with HCV-1, HCV-3 and HCV-6. In contrast, IFNL3 and IFNL4 polymorphisms were predictive of treatment outcome only for patients infected with HCV-1.