Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DNA-repair ERCC1 Gene Polymorphisms in Epithelial Ovarian Cancer and Relation to Platinum Resistance and Survival

Objectives: Excision repair cross-complementation group 1 (ERCC1) is a key DNA repair gene in the nucleotide excision repair pathway which is activated in the repair of intra- and interstrand DNA crosslink caused by platinum-based treatment. Two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the ERCC1 gene, codon 118 C/T and C8092A, have been reported to be functional, but the influence on platinum resistance and survival is not yet clear. The primary aim of the present study was to investigate whether the two SNPs were associated with resistance to standard combination carboplatin and paclitaxel chemotherapy and the potential prognostic impact in newly diagnosed ovarian cancer patients. Methods: Serum samples from 202 patients with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer were assessed for ERCC1 SNP genotyping using real time PCR. All patients were treated with first line carboplatin/paclitaxel chemotherapy. Results: There were no correlation between the ERCC1 118 C/T and C8092A genotypes and platinum resistance (P = 0.79 and P = 0.36, respectively). Furthermore, the results showed no association to progression free survival (P = 0.18 and P = 0.16, respectively) or overall survival (P = 0.89 and P = 0.78, respectively) for the two SNPs. Conclusions: The ERCC1 118 C/T and C8092A polymorphisms did not have significant influence on clinical outcome defined as platinum resistance, PFS and OS.
Inhibition of melanoma by ultrasound-microbubble-aided drug delivery suggests membrane permeabilization

Ultrasound exposure-induced cavitation has been shown to accentuate cell membrane permeability, thus promoting effective drug delivery into cells, a technique that can be enhanced in the presence of microbubbles (MB). Here we applied this method as a treatment for malignant melanoma of the eyelid. The incidence of malignant melanoma in ophthalmology is relatively high, but its treatment is cosmetically difficult. A greater in vitro growth suppression of B-16 melanoma cells was achieved using ultrasound and MB in combination with the anticancer drug bleomycin than when a more concentrated dose of bleomycin alone was applied to the cell culture. Moreover, this effect was enhanced in an in vivo tumor model created by injecting B-16 melanoma cells into the lower eyelids of SCID mice. The antitumor effect of bleomycin was observed at a lower dose (0.5 mg/ml) when the treatment was used in conjunction with ultrasound. The effect was further enhanced when MB were included, with tumor shrinkage occurring at bleomycin levels of 0.06 mg/ml. These results show that ultrasound and MB promote efficient bleomycin uptake by cells, and that the technique is a potentially useful drug delivery method.
Long polymeric tips of atomic force microscopy for large biological samples

We show a new atomic force microscopy technique for obtaining high‐resolution topographic images of large bio‐samples. To obtain high‐resolution topographic images for the samples, we fabricated a long polymeric tip with a small protrusion using two‐photon adsorbed photo‐polymerization techniques. The obtained tip length was over 50 µm, and the tip was used directly to visualize COS‐1 and 293 cells. Compared with commercial tips, the long tip made it easier to obtain topographic images of the large cells. In the magnified topographic images, the sub‐100‐nm resolution was confirmed with the long tips. This long probe tip is expected to broaden large sample‐related studies and applications in the future.
Trace analysis of microcystins in environmental samples.

Microcystins, the cyclic heptapeptide toxins produced by cyanobacteria such as Microcystis sp. , show potent hepatotoxicity and tumor-promoting activity through inhibition of protein phosphatases 1 and 2A. A toxic incident resulting in the death of 50 people in Brazil in 1996 was due to microcystins in water used for hemodialysis. Microcystins are now threatening human health and life, but many problems associated with microcystins remain unsolved. This report describes how to analyze trace amounts of microcystins in complicated matrixes such as liver tissue, lake water, and sediments.
Breaking into the world of employment: the vocational experience of South African male ex-offenders.

OBJECTIVE The study is aimed at exploring, describing and understanding the experiences and perceptions of male ex-offenders with regards to their participation in skills development and/or training programmes. METHODS The research methodology utilised the qualitative research paradigm, specifically using the tradition of phenomenology. To gather data from the participants, focus groups and face to face interviews were conducted, consisting of broad questions followed by probes to gain an in-depth description of participants' experiences and perceptions. PARTICIPANTS Five males who were classified as being ex-offenders and one female (key informant) participated in the study. RESULTS Three themes emerged that reflected the vocational experience of ex offenders: 1) A sense of distrust, 2) A sense of support: Giving back to the community through learning and doing, 3) Working towards change through capacity building. CONCLUSIONS The findings of the study suggest that occupational therapy practitioners as well as correctional service personnel should identify and eliminate the barriers that impacts on return to work intervention programmes. Professionals working with offenders and ex-offenders should incorporate the enablers identified in this study when designing return to work programmes.
Adoption of an Authentication System: Is Security the Only Consideration?

Despite the development of novel authentication systems, organizations today, are much relying on traditional passwords as their main authentication method for employees’ access to their internal systems, and the adoption of a variety of alternatives has been slow. Taking a decision-making perspective, this study aims to bring new insights to the organizational adoption of novel authentication systems. Results indicate that usability, deployability and security, as innovation characteristics of authentication systems, increase decision makers’ intention to adopt an authentication scheme. Usability has the strongest effect. Further, for the organizations that are more IT-intensive, the effects of usability and security features on adoption intention are stronger
Fault-tolerant control without extra hardware for doubly salient brushless DC motor drive under open-circuit faults

Doubly salient brushless dc (DSBLDC) motors have attracted increasing attention for drive system due to the simple and rugged rotor structure, brushless operation and low cost. Open circuit (OC) faults in power converter as a common fault reduce system performance. The majority of the tolerance approaches require additional hardware which increases the cost. This paper proposes a fault-tolerant control strategy, without extra hardware, for OC tolerance in DSBLDC motor drive. Firstly, a current-based method is proposed to detect OC faults. Then fault-tolerant control strategy based on non-working bridge arm commutation is proposed and corresponding control modes are introduced for OC faults. Finally, fault switch is identified by power converter work mode. Simulation results confirm the feasibility of the proposed fault-tolerant control strategy.
Designing Quantified-Self 2.0 Running Platform to Ensure Physical Activity Maintenance: the Role of Achievement Goals and Achievement Motivational Affordance

With the rapid development of wearable technologies, people can nowadays easily track and record their health-related information — particularly their athletic performance. The quantified-self 2.0 (QS 2.0) movement encourages running website or mobile application users to share their athletic information with other online community members to ensure the sustainable use of the technology and the maintenance of physical activity. However, the health literature claims that health behavior maintenance is difficult because it is easy for people to give up on the regular physical exercise during the maintenance stage, considering the unforeseen barriers and temptations that may occur in the long term. Drawing upon a motivational affordance perspective and the achievement goal theory (AGT), this theory-based manuscript provides design principles for QS 2.0 running platforms, with the purpose to increase users’ physical activity maintenance (PAM). Additionally, we propose a conceptual model explaining the underlying mechanism in terms of how these affordance design principles serve as the sources of two kinds of achievement goals, namely mastery goals and performance goals, which has distinct roles in determining users’ longitudinal exercise performances.
Aging and Cognitive Neuroimaging

What mechanisms underlie declines in memory and other cognitive abilities as we age? Before functional neuroimaging, answers to this question relied primarily on behavioral measures despite aging’s obvious roots in biology. Functional imaging now permits a glimpse of the biological underpinnings of cognition, and recent discoveries offer new insights into how brain function differs in older age. Focusing primarily on studies of working memory, I discuss how neuroimaging provides converging evidence to support and clarify mechanistic accounts of cognitive aging, and how imaging can guide the development of cognitive interventions. These methods promise to adjudicate between hypothesized mechanisms of age differences, and they are generating new, testable hypotheses to elucidate cognitive decline, cognitive stability, and plasticity in older age.
DENTAL IMPLANTS : AS A N ALTERNATIVE FOR TOOTH REPLACEMENT

A dental implant is an artificial tooth that replaces a tooth that has been taken out. Implants are natural - looking, c an provide support for dentures and do not affect the teeth bordering them. They are as stable as your real teet h and protect you from the loss of jawbone, which occurs when you lose teeth. Endosseous dental implants have revolutionized the fields of implants and periodontics. During the last decade, a great deal of informat ion has been generated concerning the effe ctiveness and predictability of endosseous implants. Implant placement is a viable option in the treatment of partial and ful l edentulism and has become an integral facet of periodontal therapy. The available implants are remarkably successful. This review discusses the different aspects of dental implant including its advantages over the contemporary removable implants, its procedure in detail and the financial outlook of the s ame. The review also has a small consideration on minidental implant.
Mechanisms of in ̄ ammatory pain

One of the cardinal features of in ̄ammatory states is that normally innocuous stimuli produce pain. Since the publication of the Melzack±Wall gate control theory in 1965, it has been widely appreciated that the nervous system exhibits a range of responses according to different conditions (`neural plasticity'). Subsequent research has characterized the mechanisms by which these changes occur and highlighted the importance of environmental factors on perception of pain. This review focuses on key peripheral mechanisms that result in the hypersensitivity state that accompanies in ̄ammation. Recent studies are described which characterize a series of receptors, ion channels and transmitters involved in in ̄ammatory pain. The mechanisms by which in ̄ammatory mediators interact with neurones to produce hypersensitivity are also explored.
Treatment and Referral Patterns for Colorectal Cancer

Background:National guidelines recommend adjuvant chemotherapy for colorectal cancer stages III, and IV; however, it has been shown that only 45–55% of these patients receive chemotherapy. Objectives:We sought to describe treatment patterns for patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer and to examine the reasons why patients do not receive chemotherapy. Research Design:This was a retrospective cohort study. Setting and Patients:Patients included newly diagnosed cases of colorectal cancer at a health maintenance organization in central Massachusetts between January 1, 1997, and June 30, 1999. Main Outcome Measure:The main outcome measure was a referral or visit to an oncologist. Results:Sixty-six percent (n = 143) of the 217 colorectal cancer cases had a referral/visit to an oncologist or evidence of chemotherapy within 4 months of the index date. The referral rates by stage were: stage I, 47.7%; stage II, 59.5%; stage III, 87.1%; and stage IV, 66.7%. Of patients not referred with stage III disease, 4/8 were not referred because the treating physician did not recommend an oncology referral; patient refusal accounted for 3/8 (37.5%). The most commonly cited reason for lack of referral for stage IV patients was existing comorbidities or death. Younger age (<70 years) and stage III at diagnosis were significant predictors of oncology referral/visit. Conclusions:A substantial proportion of colorectal cancer patients are receiving appropriate referral for chemotherapy. This study is the first to elucidate reasons why patients do not receive chemotherapy and highlights both patient and physician factors.
Efficient Algorithms for Alternate Paths and Bridges in Networks and Geometric Graphs

Transient single element (node/link) failures dominate the failures in today’s large communication networks like the Internet [MIB+04]. Thus, having the routing paths globally recomputed on a failure does not pay off since the failed element recovers fairly quickly, and the recomputed routing paths need to be discarded. A popular technique for dealing with such issues is that of using a proactive recovery scheme. Such a scheme works typically by precomputing a set of alternate paths that avoid a node or a link, and then using these alternate paths to re-route the traffic when the failure actually occurs. The information of the failed network element is not advertised across the network in the hope that it is transient, and the failed element would recover shortly. In this thesis, we consider the two basic versions of this problem: (a) single link failure and (b) single node failure, and present efficient algorithms for computing alternate paths for such failure scenarios. We also study some variations of these problems, that include variations in the graph properties (primarily, the edge weights).
Simple pharmacometric tools for oral anti‐diabetic drug development: competitive landscape for oral non‐insulin therapies in type 2 diabetes

The objectives were to develop a translational model that will help select doses for Phase‐3 trials based on abbreviated Phase‐2 trials and understand the competitive landscape for oral anti‐diabetics based on efficacy, tolerability and ability to slow disease progression. Data for eight anti‐diabetics with temporal profiles for fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) from 12 publications were digitized. The monotherapy data consisted of FPG and HbA1c profiles that were modeled using a transit compartment model. Evaluation of the competitive landscape utilized HbA1c literature data for 11 drugs. For the safety metric, tolerability issues with anti‐diabetic drug classes were tabulated. For disease progression, the coefficient of failure method was used for assessing data from two long‐term trials. The transit rate constants were remarkably consistent across 12 trials and represent system‐specific/drug‐independent parameters. The competitive landscape analysis showed that the primary efficacy metric fell into two groups of ΔHbA1c: >0.8% or ∼0.8%. On the safety endpoints, older agents showed some tolerability issues while the new agents were relatively safe. Among the different drug classes, only the thiazolidinediones appeared to slow disease progression but may also increase heart failure risk. In conclusion, the ability of system‐specific parameters to predict HbA1c provides a tool to predict the expected efficacy profile from abbreviated dose‐finding trials. To be commercially viable, new drugs should improve ΔHbA1c by about 0.8% or more and possess safety profiles similar to newer anti‐diabetic agents. Thus, this study proposes a suite of simple yet powerful tools to guide type‐2‐diabetes drug development. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Two-Stage Kalman Filtering for Indoor Localization of Omnidirectional Robots

Abstract: In this study a sensor fusion technique was developed for indoor localization of omnidirectional mobile robots. The proposed sensor fusion method combines the measurements made by an indoor localization system (e.g. ultrasound based localization) with the measurements that comes from an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit). It was taken into consideration that the measurements made by the ultrasonic sensor are available with lower measurement rate than the IMU measurements. To tackle this problem a two-stage Kalman filter was developed. The first stage estimates the orientation of the robot at the measurement rate of the IMU using a linear Kalman filter. The second stage estimates the position and velocity of the robot. The prediction of the robot’s position is performed based on the robot model at the update rate of the IMU. The correction phase is performed at the update rate of the external localization system using nonlinear Kalman filtering techniques. All the measurements were considered noisy and in the case of the IMU the measurement biases were also taken into consideration. For the implementation of the nonlinear Kalman filter, a discretized nonlinear omnidirectional robot model was developed. It was necessary as the classic unicycle model cannot be directly applied in the case of the omnidirectional robot. Simulation measurements were performed to evaluate the performances of the proposed two-stage filter. For the implementation of the second stage, two approaches were tested namely the Extended Kalman Filter and the Unscented Kalman Filter.
Antibiotic action on phagocytosed bacteria measured by a new method for determining viable bacteria

Antibiotics such as rifampin that act on phagocytosed bacteria have clinical advantages. The investigation of such intraphagocytic activity of antibiotics is, however, hampered by the time-consuming and cumbersome procedures necessary for enumerating viable bacteria. We have developed a semiautomatic biophotometric method for this purpose that permits the processing of relatively large numbers of samples. Using this method with Staphyloccus aureus Wood 46 as a test organism, we studied the dose dependence of the activities of a number of antibiotics against intraphagocytic bacteria. We could confirm the very good intracellular activity of rifampin. Its activity at low concentrations was slightly better against intracellular than against extracellular bacteria. In contrast, clindamycin and erythromycin, both of which have been reported to accumulate within phagocytes, did not exhibit a correspondingly enhanced intracellular activity, erythromycin being active intracellularly only at high concentrations. Clindamycin and vancomycin were effective against intracellular organisms, but only at relatively high concentrations owing to their low bactericidal activity against S. aureus Wood 46. Penicillin G, ampicillin, gentamicin, and streptomycin exhibited no useful intracellular activity. These results demonstrate that radioactive accumulation studies of antibacterial agents are not sufficient to show intracellular activity. Intracellular activity must be demonstrated in a functional test, preferably with graded concentrations of the test substance.
Developing a Simulation-Based Mastery Learning Curriculum: Lessons From 11 Years of Advanced Cardiac Life Support

Summary Statement Curriculum development in medical education should follow a planned, systematic approach fitted to the needs and conditions of a local institutional environment and its learners. This article describes the development and maintenance of a simulation-based medical education curriculum on advanced cardiac life support skills and its transformation to a mastery learning program. Curriculum development used the Kern 6-step model involving problem identification and general needs assessment, targeted needs assessment, goals and objectives, educational strategies, implementation, and evaluation and feedback. Curriculum maintenance and enhancement and dissemination are also addressed. Transformation of the simulation-based medical education curriculum to a mastery learning program was accomplished after a 2-year phase-in trial. A series of studies spanning 11 years was performed to adjust the curriculum, improve checklist outcome measures, and evaluate curriculum effects as learning outcomes among internal medicine residents and improved patient care practices. We anticipate wide adoption of the mastery learning model for skill and knowledge acquisition and maintenance in medical education settings.
Lung function, arterial saturation and oxygen uptake in elite cross country skiers: influence of exercise mode

Arterial desaturation during exercise is common in endurance‐trained athletes, a phenomenon often more pronounced when the muscle mass engaged in the exercise is large. With this background, the present study monitored seven international‐level cross country skiers performing on a treadmill while running (RUN), double poling (DP; upper body exercise) and diagonal skiing (DIA; arm and leg exercise). Static and dynamic lung function tests were performed and oxygen uptake was measured during submaximal and maximal exercise. Lung function variables (including the diffusion capacity) were only 5–20% higher than reported in sedentary men. Vital capacity was considerably lower than expected from the skiers' maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), but the maximal ventilation followed a linear relationship with VO2max. None or only a mild desaturation was observed in DP, RUN and DIA. Blood lactate concentration was slightly higher in DIA than in DP but not different from RUN. In DIA, VO2max was 6.23 ± 0.47 L/min (mean ± SD), which was 3.8% and 13.9% higher than in RUN and DP, respectively, with similar peak heart rates for the three exercise modes. No relationships were present either between the degree of desaturation and pulmonary functions tests, or with peak oxygen uptakes. The low blood lactate accumulation during the exhaustive efforts contributed to the arterial oxygen saturation being mild in spite of the very high oxygen uptake observed in these skiers.
A survey of iterative learning control

This article surveyed the major results in iterative learning control (ILC) analysis and design over the past two decades. Problems in stability, performance, learning transient behavior, and robustness were discussed along with four design techniques that have emerged as among the most popular. The content of this survey was selected to provide the reader with a broad perspective of the important ideas, potential, and limitations of ILC. Indeed, the maturing field of ILC includes many results and learning algorithms beyond the scope of this survey. Though beginning its third decade of active research, the field of ILC shows no sign of slowing down.
Optimizing of power allocation for two-hop DF relaying systems

This paper addresses the power allocation in two-hop decode and forward (DF) relaying systems under the total power constraint. The optimal solution is obtained by minimizing the end to end symbol error probability. A power allocation solution in a closed form is obtained by a first order Taylor development of the average error probability of each link. These results have been developed for some constellations of the modulator. This study is completed by considering the incremental (DF) relaying. To illustrate the accuracy of the proposed solution, numerical results have been carried out.