Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of IL-6R Inhibition with Tocilizumab on the Proteome of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells from a Rheumatoid Arthritis Patient

Objective: The availability of biological disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) has increased during the last decade, and while focus has been on treating clinical symptoms, the associated changes in the immune system remains poorly understood. Several key immunological regulators, including Interleukin (IL)-6 are intimately associated with rheumatoid arthritis disease progression. In this proof-of-concept case study we assess the immunological changes in multiple important immune cell populations to treatment with the commonly applied bDMARD tocilizumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody against the IL-6 receptor. Methods: Peripheral blood was obtained from one rheumatoid arthritis patient with poor response to conventional DMARD, before biological treatment and 4 months after. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were extracted and separated into CD14+, CD4+, CD8+, CD19+, and CD56+ immune cells. Each cell-type was prepared through a discovery proteomics pipeline, and analyzed on a Q Exactive Plus mass spectrometer by gel-free shotgun proteomics. Results: The patient responded well to tocilizumab monotherapy, and reached clinical remission without any observed side effects. A combined total of 4,343 proteins were identified at <1% false discovery rate, hereof 3,242 proteins qualified for label free quantification. We systematically evaluated the metabolic, inflammatory and signaling pathways of each immune cell type as a result of the IL-6R inhibition. The CD14+ cells were the most responsive to therapy, and proteins involved in the JAK/STAT and MAPK signaling pathways were less abundant. Conclusion: Our data support that effective treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with tocilizumab causes decrease in the JAK/STAT and MAPK signaling pathways, increases glucose metabolism, and reduces stress responses.
Optimal designs for 3D shape analysis with spherical harmonic descriptors

We determine optimal designs for some regression models which are frequently used for describing 3D shapes. These models are based on a Fourier expansion of a function defined on the unit sphere in terms of spherical harmonic basis functions. In particular it is demonstrated that the uniform distribution on the sphere is optimal with respect to all p-criteria proposed by Kiefer (1974) and also optimal with respect to a criterion which maximizes a p-mean of the r smallest eigenvalues of the variance-covariance matrix. This criterion is related to principal component analysis, which is the common tool for analyzing this type of image data. Moreover, discrete designs on the sphere are derived, which yield the same information matrix in the spherical harmonic regression model as the uniform distribution and are therefore directly implementable in practice. It is demonstrated that the new designs are substantially more efficient than the commonly used designs in 3D-shape analysis.
Photon Absorption characteristics of some selected Enzyme Inhibitors used in Cancer Research in the Energy range 1 keV-100 GeV

Enzymes are generally proteins which catalyze chemical reactions and they play essential roles in life processes. Enzyme inhibitors decrease the ratio of an enzyme catalyzed reaction by interfering with the enzyme in some way and this effect may be persistent or transient. Enzyme inhibitors can be used as anti-tumour agents in cancer research. For example, aminoglutethimide restricts the enzyme steroid aromatase, which is related in the biosynthesis of estrogens. It is currently utilized as an effective agent for the treatment of advanced breast cancer in post menopausal women [1]. Camptothecin is an alkaloid that exhibits anti-leukemic and anti-tumour activities [2]. It is naturally obtained and it displays intense blue luorescence under UV light. Mevinolin, which is a fungal metabolite isolated from fungus Aspergillus sp. , is a strong anti-hypercholesterolemic agent. Mevinolin inhibits cell proliferation due to cell cycle arrest in a dose-dependent manner. Mevinolin diminishes the platelet aggregation, macrophage foam cell formation, and LDL oxidation and as a result of that it can signi icantly attenuate the atherosclerotic process [3].
Effect of Surface Hydration and Interfusion of Suspended Silica Nanoparticles on Heat Transfer

Experimental results of silica nanofluids consisting of 10nm or 20nm silica particles have been performed. Particle size, zeta potential and the CHF values under different volume concentrations are provided, and agglomeration structures are seen to affect the critical heat flux of NiChrome wire immersed in a pool of water. The critical heat flux (CHF) of the wire does not increase monotonically with concentration. CHF decreases when particle concentration is increased depending on the particle shape and the hydroxylated surface of the nanoparticles.
Economic crisis and womenâ€™s employment rate in a Sub-Saharan African country: explaining the rise in womenâ€™s employment rate in the urban areas of Kenya

textabstractFocusing on urban Kenya, this paper attempts to identify the sources of the temporal increase in women’s employment rate between 1986 and 1998. The paper relies on labour survey data, household responses to coping strategies and case studies. The analysis presented in the paper shows that the bulk of the increase in women’s insertion into the labour market comes from an increase in the work participation of married women. While women’s higher educational endowments, particularly the increase in secondary education, account for an improvement in their employment prospects, the period also witnesses a sharp decline in the importance given to education in determining employment and by 1998, university graduates were just as likely to be employed as individuals with no education. The period between 1986 and 1998 witnessed civil service reforms, restructuring of the private sector, firm closures and increasing job insecurity. Notwithstanding the role of education, declining opportunities for males, who in 1986 were the primary breadwinners and the accompanying income and employment insecurities within households seem to be the key factors prompting the sharp increase in the labour supply of (married) women. The analysis presented in this paper focused mainly on the period 1986 and 1998 and while more recent data would have provided an updated picture of the issues discussed in this paper, there is little evidence to suggest that the situation of women in Kenya’s labour market has changed substantially in recent years.
Knowledge Management in Mexican Manufacturing Small Business

In an unpredictable business environment, such as the one that characterized the economy at the beginning of the 21st century, knowledge management has become one of the most valued intangible assets by organizations that have recognized the importance of knowledge in the creation and development of competitive advantages and performance. However, most investigations have been focused on big enterprises, only a few have been paid attention to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). For this reason, the present research analyzes the importance of knowledge management in SMEs through a sample of 125 manufacturing SMEs from Aguascalientes State (Mexico). The results obtained show that manufacturing SMEs have good knowledge management which can be regarded as a competitive advantage.
Improving reservoir rock classification in heterogeneous carbonates using boosting and bagging strategies: A case study of early Triassic carbonates of coastal Fars, south Iran

An accurate reservoir characterization is a crucial task for the development of quantitative geological models and reservoir simulation. In the present research work, a novel view is presented on the reservoir characterization using the advantages of thin section image analysis and intelligent classification algorithms. The proposed methodology comprises three main steps. First, four classes of reservoir intervals are defined using a limited number of porosity and permeability values obtained from the core plugs of Kangan and Dalan formations. Then seven micro-scale features including distribution of pore types (interparticle, interaparticle, moldic, and vuggy), pore complexity, and cement distribution as well as textural characteristics are extracted from thin section images. Finally, the features extracted from each photomicrograph and its corresponding reservoir class are used as the training data for several intelligent classifiers including decision trees, discriminant analysis functions, support vector machines, K-nearest neighbor models and two ensemble algorithms, named bagging and boosting. The relationship between the micro-scale features and the reservoir classes was studied. Performance of all classifiers is evaluated using the concepts of accuracy, precision, recall, and harmonic average. The results obtained showed that the bagging decision tree delivered the best performance among the models and improved the accuracy of simple models up to 7.7% compared with the best single classifier.
A Computational Method of Active Earth Pressure from Finite Soil Body

Nowadays, Coulomb and Rankine earth pressure theories have been widely applied to solve the earth pressure on a retaining structure. However, both of the theories established on the basis of the semi-infinite space assumption are not suitable for calculating the earth pressure from finite soil body. Therefore, this paper focuses on a theoretical study about the active earth pressure from finite soil body. Firstly, a common calculation model of finite soil body is established according to the results of previous studies. And then, based on Coulomb’s theory and the wedge element method, an analytical solution of the unit active earth pressure from finite soil body is deduced without an assumption of its linear distribution in advance. Meanwhile, formulas of the active earth pressure strength coefficient and the application point of the resultant force are also deduced. Finally, the influence of parameters such as the frictional angle between the retaining wall back and backfill, slope angle of backfill, dip angle of the retaining wall back, the frictional angle between backfill and rock slope, and uniformly applied load on the backfill surface on the distribution of the unit active earth pressure and the application point of the resultant force is analyzed in detail.
ReactJS: An Open Source JavaScript Library for Front-end Development

Author(s) Title Number of Pages Date Naimul Islam Naim ReactJS: An Open Source JavaScript library for front-end development. 36 pages + 0 appendices 30 May 2017 Degree Bachelor of Engineering Degree Programme Information Technology Specialisation option Software Engineering Instructor(s) Markku Karhu, Principal Lecturer The main purpose of this final year thesis was to study a JavaScript based front-end library for web and mobile application development. There are many front-end application development frameworks and libraries at the moment. ReactJS library, one of the most recent web technologies, is one of them. It has been proven as the fastest rendering library. It focuses on the view part of the MVC pattern and is being widely adopted for big scale application development. Being developed by Facebook for their internal use, it has proved as an efficient and fast library compared to other technologies. However, it has been open-sourced later on and enriched with more functionalities everyday by plenty of contributors. When it comes to dealing with large amounts of data and users, it has been quite successful to give better user experiences. Alongside Facebook, some other big organisations and applications are also using ReactJS and React Native for their development. Instagram, Netflix, Airbnb are a few of the big names serving smoothly enormous numbers of users worldwide. Those big names prove that ReactJS is serving them quite well. Throughout the research, the main intention was to evaluate the library and to prove ReactJS as a compatible platform to be adopted where there are several options to choose from. The fundamentals, core architecture, features, data handling methods, popularity, and adoptability were discussed in this study. Even though, there is no constraint to use ReactJS over other frameworks it is recommended to use it as an emerging web technology to be adopted depending on the nature of the intended application to be built.
A Residual Thermodynamic Analysis of Inert Wear and Attrition, Part 2: Applications

Some differential relations of inert wear- and attrition work mechanisms, derived in a parallel paper, are here applied. The consideration of relevant and suitable boundary conditions is called for. For ductile- and brittle-type target materials, one may often establish a direct- or proportional connection between the relevant sub-process work mechanism – referred to as wear work or attrition work – and corresponding net resulting wear- or attrition rates. Kinetic theory can be supportive in estimating model coefficients. In addition, additional thermodynamic considerations may be necessary, in order to estimate behavior at extremum conditions. The direct connection is demonstrated for the differential process of ductile wear, which encompasses most types of macroscopic-scale ductile erosion and 2-body- and 3-body ductile abrasion situations. The direct connection is also demonstrated for brittle erosion, and for impact wear. It is shown that the size effect on ductile erosion and abrasion – a hitherto not understood phenomenon – can also be explained by this connection.
Survival and life history characteristics among wild and hatchery coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) returns: how do unfed fry differ from smolt releases?

Survival and life history characteristics were evaluated for a coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) integrated hatchery program using two stocking strategies. Fish were released as unfed fry or smolts and returned as adults, and then molecular analysis was employed to pedigree the entire population. We showed that mean adult survival of individuals released as unfed fry was less than that of individuals released as smolts (0.03% vs. 2.39%). The relative reproductive success (RRS) of the fry release strategy to wild spawning was significantly greater for one of two cohorts, whereas the smolt release strategy to wild RRS was significantly greater for both cohorts. Fish released as smolts were significantly smaller upon returning as adults than either those released as unfed fry or wild returns. Mean run timing was also significantly biased towards an earlier run time for hatchery-released fish when compared with the wild component. The incidence of jacking (males maturing at age 2) was greater among fish stoc.
Licensing Foreign Technology and the Moderating Role of Local R&D Collaboration: Extending the Relational View

The relational resource-based view posits that performance differences among firms can be explained not only by the possession of internal resources but also by maintaining and developing relationships with external partners. However, studies in the extant literature usually address the separated roles of various external relationships of focal firms, but the literature has not addressed how relationships with different sets of knowledge partners are related to each other and influence focal firms' performance. Therefore, to fill this research gap, this study focuses on how technological resources acquired from one set of partners (licensing foreign technologies) may generate subsequent internal and relational rents in terms of technological innovation in the context of collaboration with an entirely different set of knowledge partners (local R&D partners). Specifically, we propose that local R&D collaborations need to be large in scale and broad in scope. The empirics are based on the analysis of a sample of 160 high-tech Chinese firms observed from 2000 to 2011. Consistent with our predictions, our findings contribute to extending the relational view by addressing the relations among the relationships of focal firms
Assembly Discontinuity Factors for the Neutron Diffusion Equation discretized with the Finite Volume Method. Application to BWR

The neutron flux spatial distribution in Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) can be calculated by means of the Neutron Diffusion Equation (NDE), which is a spaceand time-dependent differential equation. In steady state conditions, the time derivative terms are zero and this equation is rewritten as an eigenvalue problem. In addition, the spatial partial derivatives terms are transformed into algebraic terms by discretizing the geometry and using numerical methods. As regards the geometrical discretization, BWRs are complex systems containing different components of different geometries and materials, but they are usually modelled as parallelepiped nodes each one containing only one homogenized material to simplify the solution of the NDE. There are several techniques to correct the homogenization in the node, but the most commonly used in BWRs is that based on Assembly Discontinuity Factors (ADFs). As regards numerical methods, the Finite Volume Method (FVM) is feasible and suitable to be applied to the NDE. In this paper, a FVM based on a polynomial expansion method has been used to obtain the matrices of the eigenvalue problem, assuring the accomplishment of the ADFs for a BWR. This eigenvalue problem has been solved by means of the SLEPc library.
Adaptive backstepping controller design for leveling control of an underwater platform based on joint space

This paper focuses on high precision leveling control of an underwater heavy load platform, which is viewed as an underwater parallel robot on the basis of its work pattern. The kinematic of platform with deformation is analyzed and the dynamics model of joint space is established. An adaptive backstepping controller according to Lyapunov's function is proposed for leveling control of platform based on joint space. Furthermore, the "lowest point fixed angle error" leveling scheme called "chase" is chosen for leveling control of platform. The digital simulation and practical experiment of single joint space actuator are carried out, and the results show high precision servo control of joint space. On the basis of this, the platform leveling control simulation relies on the hardware-in-loop system. The results indicate that the proposed controller can effectively restrain the influence from system parameter uncertainties and external disturbance to realize high precision leveling control of the underwater platform.
Qualitative analysis of qualitative evaluation: an exploratory examination of investigative interviewers’ reflections on their performance

ABSTRACT Self-evaluation of interviews conducted by law enforcement professionals is a principal feature of a prescribed interview framework in England and Wales, underpinning their practice development. However, self-evaluation has been found in prior research to be neglected. Building on our recent study (which found that interviewers regularly over-rated themselves, when compared to our independent ratings), the same interviewers assessed their interview skills by way of completing an extensive reflective log. We found that those we regarded as skilled in our prior study tended to be more accurate in identifying their strengths and areas for improvement, while planning to correct such shortfalls in their future practice. On the other hand, those we had earlier rated as least skilled tended to be much less reflective, being both descriptive and inaccurate in their understanding of key interview tasks. They also remained inaccurate concerning their own interview skills, failing to be prospective in planning to improve their skills. As such, while reflective logs appear to be, for skilled interviewers, both a prompt for accurate self-assessment and a catalyst for planning further professional development, we also caution that such tools need further refinement to achieve the same goals for those either less reflective or less skilled.
Media Consumption of Second generation Diaspora in Brussels

Some of the existing studies on the media consumption of diaspora (Georgiou,2001, 2002; Hiller & Franz, 2004; Wood & Smiths, 2004; De Andrea & Levine, 2010; Ibold, 2010; Krivolap, 2011; Macri, 2011; Dobrowsky, 2012) confirm that the Internet provides diasporas with new spaces for communication, and a new context for thinking of identity and community. This thesis particularly explores the media consumption of second generation diaspora. It focuses on the ways members of the second generation of the Congolese diaspora in Brussels use Social Network Sites (SNS), especially when it comes to self-expression and cultural identity. This research particularly seeks to identify the various ways and different types of cultural elements that could be presented on SNS. In particular, the study centers on three dimensions: identity and cultural identity, online behaviour (especially on SNS), and the relationship between cultural identity and SNS. The research design comprises of two qualitative methods: two focus groups respectively conducted with five and seven participants, in addition to a series of 13 in-depth interviews conducted with the Congolese youth and emerging adults (18-30 years old). The participants were asked to particularly reflect upon their identities and cultural identities, on their online behaviour, and on the type of cultural elements they share or could share on SNS. The results of the research demonstrated that the second generation of the Congolese diaspora in Brussels often negotiates plural identities: double, African/Congolese, or Cosmopolitan. On a cultural and collective level, the participants were proud of their community but at the same time really pessimistic. This leads to two types of online behaviour and to the expression of different cultural elements. On the one hand, SNS are used as entertainment tools where the positive and negative cultural elements presented are presented in a humoristic way. On the other hand, SNS are used as empowering tools presenting claims of cultural identity and for cultural change within the community and more self-awareness. It was discovered that the interaction on SNS helps the second generation of the Congolese diaspora in their cultural identification process and feeling of belonging.
A Photovoltaic Cell Based Dc-Dc Converterfor Dc Motor

In recent years, power generation utilizing solar power or wind power has been being great attractive for effective utilization of electrical energy. In Order to protect the natural environment on the earth, the development of clean energy without pollution has the major representative role in the last decade. By dealing with the issue of global warming, clean energies, such as fuel cell (FC), photovoltaic, and wind energy, etc., have been rapidly promoted.Standalone photovoltaic (SAPV) systems are widely used in remote areas after development of photovoltaic cell industry in recent years. A PV cell has an exponential relationship between current and voltage, and the maximum power point (MPP) occurs at the knee of the curve. In this paper a photovoltaic array is used to run a DC motor using a dc-dc converter. The gating signal to the dc-dc converter is giving using soft switching technique. The simulink model of the PV array connected to dc motor using a dc –dc converter is developed in MATLAB and the outputs are observed.