Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physiological Requirement for Both SH2 Domains for Phospholipase C-γ1 Function and Interaction with Platelet-Derived Growth Factor Receptors

ABSTRACT Two approaches have been utilized to investigate the role of individual SH2 domains in growth factor activation of phospholipase C-γ1 (PLC-γ1). Surface plasmon resonance analysis indicates that the individual N-SH2 and C-SH2 domains are able to specifically recognize a phosphotyrosine-containing peptide corresponding to Tyr 1021 of the platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) β receptor. To assess SH2 function in the context of the full-length PLC-γ1 molecule as well as within the intact cell, PLC-γ1 SH2 domain mutants, disabled by site-directed mutagenesis of the N-SH2 and/or C-SH2 domain(s), were expressed in Plcg1−/− fibroblasts. Under equilibrium incubation conditions (4°C, 40 min), the N-SH2 domain, but not the C-SH2 domain, was sufficient to mediate significant PLC-γ1 association with the activated PDGF receptor and PLC-γ1 tyrosine phosphorylation. When both SH2 domains in PLC-γ1 were disabled, the double mutant did not associate with activated PDGF receptors and was not tyrosine phosphorylated. However, no single SH2 mutant was able to mediate growth factor activation of Ca2+mobilization or inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) formation. Subsequent kinetic experiments demonstrated that each single SH2 domain mutant was significantly impaired in its capacity to mediate rapid association with activated PDGF receptors and become tyrosine phosphorylated. Hence, when assayed under physiological conditions necessary to achieve a rapid biological response (Ca2+mobilization and IP3 formation), both SH2 domains of PLC-γ1 are essential to growth factor responsiveness.
Cloud-based Learning Environments: Investigating Learning Activities Experiences from Motivation, Usability and Emotional Perspective

Cloud education environments consider all the cloud services, such as Web 2.0 applications, content, or infrastructure services. These services form an e-learning ecosystem which can be built upon the learning objectives and the preferences of the learner group. A great variety of existing cloud services might be repurposed for educational activities and it can be taken advantage from already widely used services without steep learning curves on their adoption. In this article is presented the design, deployment and evaluation of learning activities using cloud applications and services. The experiences presented here are from Galileo University in Guatemala with students from three different countries in Central America and Spain. This study reports findings from motivational attitudes, emotional aspects and usability perception. Selected cloud-based tools were used for the different learning activities in three courses in various application domains. These activities include collaboration, knowledge representation, storytelling activities and social networking. Experimentation results obtained aim to demonstrate that students are eager to use and have new and more interactive ways of learning, which challenges their creativity and group organization skills, while professors have a growing interest on using new tools and resources that are easy to use, mix and reuse. Thus, future research should focus on incentives for motivating participation as well as on providing systems with high usability, accessibility and interoperability that are capable of doing learning orchestration.
Forecasting with Many Predictors

Historically, time series forecasts of economic variables have used only a handful of predictor variables, while forecasts based on a large number of predictors have been the province of judgmental forecasts and large structural econometric models. The past decade, however, has seen considerable progress in the development of time series forecasting methods that exploit many predictors, and this chapter surveys these methods. The first group of methods considered is forecast combination (forecast pooling), in which a single forecast is produced from a panel of many forecasts. The second group of methods is based on dynamic factor models, in which the comovements among a large number of economic variables are treated as arising from a small number of unobserved sources, or factors. In a dynamic factor model, estimates of the factors (which become increasingly precise as the number of series increases) can be used to forecast individual economic variables. The third group of methods is Bayesian model averaging, in which the forecasts from very many models, which differ in their constituent variables, are averaged based on the posterior probability assigned to each model. The chapter also discusses empirical Bayes methods, in which the hyperparameters of the priors are estimated. An empirical illustration applies these different methods to the problem of forecasting the growth rate of the U.S. index of industrial production with 130 predictor variables.
Group B rotavirus infection in patients with acute gastroenteritis from India: 1994–1995 and 2004–2010

SUMMARY Faecal specimens collected from 2101 patients with acute gastroenteritis from three cities (Pune, Alappuzha, Belgaum) in India during 1994–1995 and 2004–2010 were tested for group B rotavirus (RVB) by amplification of the NSP2 gene using RT–PCR. Seventy-five (3·6%) specimens were shown to contain RVB RNA. The positivity rate in Pune, Alappuzha and Belgaum was 4·1%, 7·3% and 4·1%, respectively, in the 2000s which was not significantly different from the detection rate in the 1990s in Pune (2·5%, P>0·05). RVB infections prevailed in adolescents and adults (62/1082, 5·7%) compared to children (13/1019, 1·3%, P<0·001) and were detected throughout the year. Phylogenetically, all strains clustered in an NSP2 lineage together with Indian-Bangladeshi RVB strains belonging to VP7 genotype G2. The study confirmed the occurrence of RVB infections in western India and reported for the first time circulation of RVB strains in southern India, suggesting that an increased awareness and monitoring for RVB infections is necessary in India.
Multispectral Random Field Models for Synthesis and Analysis of Color Images

Multispectral extensions to the traditional gray level simultaneous autoregressive (SAR) and Markov random field (MRF) models are considered. Furthermore, a new image model is proposed, the pseudo-Markov model, which retains the characteristics of the multispectral Markov model, yet admits to a simplified parameter estimation method. These models are well-suited to analysis and modeling of color images. For each model considered, procedures are developed for parameter estimation and image synthesis. Experimental results, based on known image models and natural texture samples, substantiate the validity of thee results.
Cryopreservation of zona-free cloned buffalo (Bubalus Bubalis) embryos: slow freezing vs open-pulled straw vitrification.

This study was carried out to compare the post-thaw cryosurvival rate and the level of apoptosis in vitro produced zona-free cloned buffalo blastocysts subjected to slow freezing or vitrification in open-pulled straws (OPS). Zona-free cloned embryos produced by handmade cloning were divided into two groups and were cryopreserved either by slow freezing or by vitrification in OPS. Cryosurvival of blastocysts was determined by their re-expansion rate following post-thaw culture for 22-24 h. The post-thaw re-expansion rate was significantly (p < 0.05) higher following vitrification in OPS (71.2 ± 2.3%) compared with that after slow freezing (41.6 ± 4.8%). For examining embryo quality, the level of apoptosis in day 8 frozen-thawed blastocysts was determined by TUNEL staining. The total cell number was not significantly different among the control non-cryopreserved cloned embryos (422.6 ± 67.8) and those cryopreserved by slow freezing (376.4 ± 29.3) or vitrification in OPS (422.8 ± 36.2). However, the apoptotic index, which was similar for embryos subjected to slow freezing (14.8 ± 2.0) or OPS vitrification (13.3 ± 1.8), was significantly (p < 0.05) higher than that for the control non-cryopreserved cloned embryos (3.4 ± 0.6). In conclusion, the results of this study demonstrate that vitrification in OPS is better than slow freezing for the cryopreservation of zona-free cloned buffalo blastocysts because it offers a much higher cryosurvival rate.
Shear induced alignment of short nanofibers in 3D printed polymer composites

3D printing of composite materials offers an opportunity to combine the desired properties of composite materials with the flexibility of additive manufacturing in geometric shape and complexity. In this paper, the shear-induced alignment of aluminum oxide nanowires during stereolithography printing was utilized to fabricate a nanowire reinforced polymer composite. To align the fibers, a lateral oscillation mechanism was implemented and combined with wall pattern printing technique to generate shear flow in both vertical and horizontal directions. A series of specimens were fabricated for testing the composite material’s tensile strength. The results showed that mechanical properties of the composite were improved by reinforcement of nanofibers through shear induced alignment. The improvement of tensile strength was approximately ∼28% by aligning the nanowires at 5 wt% (∼1.5% volume fraction) loading of aluminum oxide nanowires.
Multiuser decorrelator detectors in MIMO CDMA systems over Nakagami fading channels

Space-time spreading has been employed to exploit the spatial diversity in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems. In the presence of multiuser interference, resulting from the cross-correlation between users' code sequences, the full system diversity cannot be achieved when using the conventional matched receiver. In this paper we investigate the performance of space-time spreading (STS) and transmit diversity in the uplink of a MIMO DS-CDMA system over Nakagami-m fast-fading channels. The space-time system employs N = 2 transmit antennas and L receive antennas at the user side and base-station, respectively. We analyze the performance of the system when a linear decorrelator detector is employed to mitigate the effect of multiuser interference. In our analysis, we start by finding the probability density function (pdf) of the signal-to-interference ratio (SINR) at the output of the space-time combiner. Using this pdf, we derive a closed form expression for the bit-error rate (BER) for binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) transmission. The accuracy of the derived pdf and BER expression are verified using simulations, for different values of fading figure m and number of users.
Using SVM with uneven margins to extract acronym-expansions

Extracting acronyms and their expansions from plain text is an important problem in text mining. Previous research work shows that it can be solved using machine learning approaches. That is, converting the problem of acronym extraction into a binary classification one. We investigated the classification problem and found that the classes are highly unbalanced. So we try to tackle the problem using SVM with Uneven Margins. Experimental results showed that our approach can get better results than baseline methods of using rules and conventional SVM models. Experimental results also showed how uneven margins classifier making the tradeoff between the extracting precision and recall.
The Influence of Palliative Care on the Level of Anxiety and Depression in Lung Cacer Patients on the level of anxiety and depression of lung cancer patients starting with the fact that Palliative Care

Objective. Starting from the fact that Palliative Care Centre has been in the existence within the University Clinical Centre Tuzla for a few years, and from the positive daily experience while working with lung cancer patients and relatively small number of research in the area this work has an aim to establish the influence of palliative care on the level of anxiety and depression at lung cancer patients. Subjects and Methods. The examined group consecutively chosen was consisted of 40 patients who were given symptomatic therapy and who were hospitalized at the Palliative Care Department of the University Clinical Centre Tuzla. The controlled group was consisted of 40 patients who were treated at home after the diagnosed lung cancer by the Tuzla’s Heath Centre infirmary in charge. Depression and anxiety were estimated by Zung self-rating scale. Two-level testing was conducted: first of all the initial testing, immediately after the given diagnosis, and then two-week-later testing. The significance of the established differences was tested by the students’ t-test, while the difference was recognised as significant for the level of probability starting with p < 0.05. Results. The average score for depression outcome at the beginning of the treatment of the hospitalized patients at the Palliative Care Department was 62.68±5.88, while the outpatients had a score of 48.65±4.90. After two-month treatment at the Palliative Care Department the depression was reduced to 48.73±4.11 (p<0.001), while it was 47.33±5.37 (p=0.004) of the outpatients. At the beginning the hospitalized patients had an average score of anxiety of 51.55±2.88, while two weeks later it was 44.53±2.98 (p<0.0001). The controlled group of outpatients’ average score of anxiety at the beginning was 44.43±2.63, while two weeks later it was 46.15±2.62 (p<0.0001). Conclusion. The treatment of the lung cancer patients at the Palliative Care Centre significantly reduced the level of their anxiety and depression and it represents a better way of treatment than treatment at home that outpatients received.
Gout in liver transplant patients receiving tacrolimus

Chronic synovitis in rheumatoid arthritis results in the formation of pannus that invades the joint cartilage and the underlying bone. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) can degrade cartilage, bone, and connective tissue matrix.1 Of these matrix degrading enzymes, MMP-1 is the most important and is present in the synovial lining of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). 2 In synovial tissue, the level of tissue inhibitor of MMP (TIMP) is reduced, tilting the balance towards tissue destruction. The effect of soluble tumour necrosis factor receptor (sTNFr) on these mediators is not known, because the only study available had pooled data of patients treated with sTNFr alone and in combination with methotrexate.3 Angiogenesis is central to the maintenance of pannus and is controlled by many factors. Identification of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) as the major angiogenic factor, demonstration of its presence in …
Test Case Generation from UML Models

Software Testing is one of the important phases in the software development life cycle. The cost of software testing is approximately 50% of the total development cost. In order to test software in an effective and an efficient manner, the test case should be generated systematically. Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the current industrial standard used to assist software development. It is widely used to describe the requirements and the design of the software in a number of diagrams. Each diagram provides a view of the system. The class diagram provides the static configuration, while the interaction diagrams describes the dynamics of the system behavior. This paper presents a methodology to generate the test case from a design level class diagram and an interaction diagram. It is in the category of model-based testing. It is assumed that the given model is correct and the goal of the testing is to check if the implementation conforms to the given model. A car rental example is used to illustrate the test case generation. The test adequacy criteria used in this paper are the coverage for the model elements, also called the building blocks in the class diagrams and the interaction diagrams. These criteria are based on the same premise for the underlying code testing criteria to help define testing objectives. The class diagram defines the object configuration and the interaction diagram determines the method sequence in the testing. The generated test cases are compared with a few other UML model-based test case generation methodologies; they are able to meet the required test adequacy criteria better.
Application of moving window FDTD to modeling the effects of atmospheric variations and foliage on radio wave propagation over terrain

A new approach to wave oriented radio propagation modeling based on extended finite difference time domain (FDTD) method has been developed. In order to model radio wave propagation using standard FDTD, the entire propagation path would need to be included in the FDTD grid. This would require prohibitive amount of computer memory and time. The new approach takes advantage of the fact that when a pulsed radio wave propagates over a long distance the significant pulse energy exists only over a small part of the propagation path at any instant of time. This allows the use of a relatively small FDTD computational mesh that exists only over a portion of the propagation path and move along with the pulse. At the leading edge of the FDTD mesh inside the moving window the appropriate terrain, foliage, and atmospheric parameters are added to the mesh. At the trailing edge the terrain and foliage that have been left behind by the pulse are removed. Since this method solves Maxwell's equation directly, all physics relevant to radio wave propagation is included in this model In addition, since it is based on the FDTD method, this model can take advantage of the extensive research that has been done on the FDTD algorithm, such as the higher-order finite differencing and multiresolution time domain (MRTD). The moving window FDTD (MWFDTD) method has previously been applied to propagation over different types of irregular terrain. This paper extends this approach to forest covered terrain by treating the foliage as a lossy dielectric layer. In addition, using MWFDTD, atmospheric refractive effects can also be included simultaneously with irregular terrain effects and foliage. We apply our method to radio wave propagation in atmospheric ducts. Comparisons with path loss measurements show good accuracy and illustrate the advantages of a full wave method. While this method is slower than other propagation models, it is potentially much more accurate. Therefore, MWFDTD can be used to validate other faster propagation models, and can provide predictions in cases where a high degree of accuracy is desired.
Laser Micro Dissection Systems: An Alternative Method of Defined Cell Isolation for Molecular Profiling

Laser micro-dissection permits isolation groups of cells from heterogeneous tissue sections under direct microscopic visualization. This technology not only allows isolation of homogenous subpopulation of cells but also allows immunophenotypically similar cells for RNA/ DNA or protein extraction for downstream applications like western blot, mass spectrophotometry, real time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, microarray and RNA sequencing. Isolation of dead cells unsuitable for functional assays, high cost of equipment and technical expertise required for operation are few limitations to laser microdissection systems.
Influence of Temperature on Growth and Alkaloid Content of Cinchona Seedlings.

Introduction The importance of temperature as an environmental factor in the growth of Cinchona, the tree from which quinine is obtained, may be realized from a study of its natural environment. The genus is native to a region extending over 1,500 miles along the slopes of the Andes Mountains of South America. The various species occur at altitudes ranging from 2,500 to 9,000 feet above sea level (4). Relatively cool temperatures, high rainfall and high humidity prevail in these areas. In Java, where Cinchona has reached the peak of cultivation, the most suitable elevation is from 3,000 to 7,000 feet (1). Temperature conditions are relatively uniform from one month to the next. A mean temperature of 630 F. was the average over a period of 11 years at the Government Cinchona Station located at Tjinjiroean, Java, at 5,200 feet elevation (2).
Refractive Index Sensing of SMS Fiber Structure Based Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

A Mach-Zehnder interferometer based on single-mode-thin-core-multimode-single-mode (STMS) fiber structure for refractive index (RI) measurement is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. It works on the basis of interference between the core mode and cladding mode. Using the multimode fiber core, the transmission spectrum of STMS structure is very sensitive to RI variations of the surrounding medium. The experimental results show that the sensor possesses a high sensitivity of 148.27 nm/RIU in the RI range of 1.333-1.403 and has a good linear response to the SRI.
The effect of thrombectomy on myocardial blush in primary angioplasty: The randomized evaluation of thrombus aspiration by two thrombectomy devices in acute myocardial infarction (RETAMI) trial

Background: In patients with ST‐segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) may cause thrombus dislodgment leading to microvascular function impairment, which is a negative independent predictor of myocardial function recovery. Compared with conventional stenting, pretreatment with aspiration thrombectomy during primary PCI significantly improves coronary epicardial flow and myocardial tissue perfusion parameters. We sought to evaluate the angiographic findings of two different manual aspiration thrombectomy devices (Diver‐Invatec® (DI) and Export‐Medtronic®® (EM)) in STEMI patients undergoing primary angioplasty. Methods: We randomized 103 STEMI patients referred to our hospital to undergo primary PCI (<12 hr from symptoms onset) to DI (n = 52) and EM (n = 51) devices. The primary angiographic composite end‐points were the rates of post‐thrombectomy thrombus score (TS) ≤≤2, TIMI flow grade ≥≥2, and post‐stenting myocardial blush grade (MBG) ≥≥2 in the two groups. Results: Baseline, clinical, and angiographic preprocedural findings did not differ between the two groups. After aspiration thrombectomy, a TS ≤≤ 2 was more frequently present in EM group (92.3 vs. 69.3%, P = 0.0052). Also the rate of post‐thrombectomy TIMI ≥≥ 2 (69.3 vs. 92.2%, P = 0.0052) and post‐stenting MBG ≥≥2 (88.2 vs. 69.3%, P = 0.029) were significantly higher in EM group. No significative differences were observed in terms of clinical events at 1 and 12 months. Conclusions: In this single‐center, prospective, randomized study, a EM use before stenting in STEMI patients seems to remove more thrombotic burden compared with DI, providing a greater post‐thrombectomy epicardial flow and a better post‐stenting microvascular perfusion. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
K-band Substrate Integrated Waveguide T-junction diplexer design by Mode-Matching Techniques

The Mode-Matching Technique (MMT) is deployed to analyze and design a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) T-junction diplexer in K-band. The diplexer has bandwidths of 2.75 percent and 2.63 percent at 18.15 GHz and 19 GHz, respectively. The MMT results are compared with simulated data obtained from commercially available field solvers such as CST Microwave Studio, μWave Wizard and ANSYS HFSS. Excellent agreement between MMT and simulated data is achieved. Measured data obtained from a fabricated prototype diplexer agree well with simulated and MMT results.