Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toward JUSTIS - A Research Program Aimed at Fostering Business Ethics by Empowering Stakeholders Through Information Systems

As incidents involving corporate social responsibility—or rather the lack thereof—hit headlines at regular intervals, stakeholders are becoming increasingly concerned about ethical issues, thus encouraging researchers to identify problematic business processes and pressing practitioners to start rectifying their questionable courses of action. In the meantime, information systems (IS) are becoming ever more pervasive and ubiquitous and are shaping and altering many of our everyday activities and behavior. We argue that when it comes to promoting ethical behaviors, IS can be used as powerful tools to empower stakeholders, and, thus, it is crucial to consider the role that IS can play in either advancing or deterring ethical—or conversely, unethical—behaviors. In this article, we present a research agenda for a new research program specifically concerned with the task of analyzing the social impact of existing IS and devising new ones that can be used to encourage ethical behavior. JustIS is the name of this program.
Confidentiality-Preserving Personal Health Records in Tele-Healthcare System Using Authenticated Certificateless Encryption

Wireless Medical Sensor Networks (WMSN) facilitate the traditional healthcare systems, however, due to the public transmission, the healthcare system in WMSN also faces some serious security and privacy challenges. These are major concerns in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Especially, integrity and conﬁ-dentiality of patient physiological data are two key issues in privacy protection, which must be considered and addressed ﬁrstly. Therefore, the security and privacy in such systems should be enforced via authentication as well as encryption. This paper presents an authenticated certiﬁ-cateless public key encryption scheme for protecting the integrity and conﬁdentiality of the patient sensitive information in tele-healthcare system simultaneously. The security of this protocol is based on the hardness of the bilinear Diﬃe-Hellman problem, and we prove that it is secure in the random oracle model. Our analysis and comparisons with related protocols show that this scheme is a viable encryption for tele-healthcare system.
Bone marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem cells differentiation into tubular epithelial‐like cells in vitro

The possibility of differentiating bone marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) into tubular epithelial‐like cells is explored in vitro. Purified BMSCs from Sprague–Dawley rats were obtained by density gradient centrifugation. Third generation BMSCs were divided into six groups and were cultured under different conditions. The expression of alkaline phosphatase and cytokeratin (CK)‐18 protein was detected through staining and immunocytochemistry, respectively, and the expression of E‐cadherin proteins was recorded through immunofluorescence. Some cells in ischemia/reperfusion (I/R), all‐trans retinoic acid (ATRA), epidermal growth factor (EGF) and bone morphogenetic protein‐7 (BMP‐7) groups turned positive, whereas the positive cells in the combined group significantly increased compared with the other groups. Compared with the control group, the positive expression rates of CK‐18 in the I/R, ATRA, EGF, BMP‐7 and the combined group were 11·50% ± 3·84%, 27·40% ± 2·70%, 29·60% ± 4·51%, 26·80% ± 5·00% and 44·00% ± 3·16%, respectively, and CK‐18 mRNA expression in the combined group was obviously higher than that in the other groups (P < 0·01). Immunofluorescence detection showed that E‐cadherin expression was not detectable in the control group, whereas the positive expression rates of E‐cadherin in the I/R, ATRA, EGF, BMP‐7 and the combined group were 6·75% ± 2·13%, 16·40% ± 2·69%, 18·25% ± 3·50%, 16·06% ± 2·00% and 30·26% ± 5·16%, respectively. The addition of ATRA, EGF and BMP‐7 induces BMSCs differentiation into tubular epithelial‐like cells in stimulated acute renal failure microenvironment in vitro. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Professional development for online university teaching

Almost every higher education institution is challenged to develop increasing numbers of staff to teach online or blended modes of learning. The process needs to be rapid, cost-effective and lead directly to practical outcomes. From our experience, we had little time, opportunity or the need to start from scratch, and we chose to adopt and adapt a course that was based on a well-rehearsed and respected pedagogical model. We offer our experience to date as a case study with some extracted principles for others to explore and follow. We discuss the value of contextualization, incremental innovation, and mentoring of online convenors. This article will be of interest to those seeking to provide effective professional development routes for large numbers of staff.
Improvements on MultiView Intrinsic Images of Outdoors Scenes

We can further separate out the incoming radiance into three components: the radiance due to the sun, that due to the sky and that due to indirect lighting. To simplify notation, we define two subsets of the hemisphere: Ωsky , i.e., the subset of directions in which the visible point sees the sky, and Ωind the subset of directions in which another object is visible, and thus contributes to indirect lighting. We model the sun as a directional light source subject to the visibility term vsun to obtain
A Comparative Study of Sonification Methods to Represent Distance and Forward-Direction in Pedestrian Navigation

This article presents a new design of using nonspeech audio (i.e., earcons, spearcons, and short pulses) to represent distance and forward-direction for pedestrian navigation in eyes-free environment. Experiment in the field is carried out with the involvement of 15 participants using within-subject design to evaluate the newly developed earcons, spearcons, and short pulses for distance and forward-direction in pedestrian navigation. Results from the experiment suggest that spearcons are efficient in tasks completion, and it conveys distance and forward-direction information to participants more accurately compared with earcons and short pulses. Overall, participants have shown their satisfaction with spearcons as an audio feedback in pedestrian navigation.
Benign Tumors of the Spine: Has New Chemotherapy and Interventional Radiology Changed the Treatment Paradigm?

Study Design. Clinically based systematic review. Objective. To determine the role of (A) medical treatment and (B) interventional radiology as either adjuvant or stand-alone treatment in primary benign bone tumors of the spine. Methods. A multidisciplinary panel of spine surgeons, radiation oncologists, and medical oncologists elaborated specific focused questions regarding aneurysmal bone cyst, giant cell tumor, and osteoid osteoma. Denosumab, bisphosphonate, interferon, bone marrow aspirate, doxycycline, thermal ablation, and selective arterial embolization were identified as areas of interest for the article. A systematic review was performed through MEDLINE and EMBASE. Recommendations based on the literature review and clinical expertise were issued using the GRADE system. Results. The overall quality of the literature is very low with few multicenter prospective studies. For giant cell tumor, combination with Denosumab identified 14 pertinent articles with four multicenter prospective studies. Nine studies were found on bisphosphonates and six for selective arterial embolization. The search on aneurysmal bone cyst and selective arterial embolization revealed 12 articles. Combination with Denosumab, Doxycycline, and bone marrow aspirate identified four, two, and three relevant articles respectively. Eleven focused articles were selected on the role of thermal ablation in osteoid osteoma. Conclusion. Alternative and adjuvant therapy for primary benign bone tumors have emerged. Their ability to complement or replace surgery is now being scrutinized and they may impact significantly the algorithm of treatment of these tumors. Most of the data are still emerging and further research is desirable. Close collaboration between the different specialists managing these pathologies is crucial. Level of Evidence: N/A
Impact of Lower Screening TSH Cutoff Level on the Increasing Incidence of Congenital Hypothyroidism

Lower cutoff levels in screening programs have led to an increase in the proportion of detected cases with transient hypothyroidism, leading to increase of the overall incidence of primary congenital hypothyroidism (CH) in several countries. We have performed retrospective evaluation on the data from 251,008 (96.72%) neonates screened for thyroidstimulating hormone (TSH) level in dried blood spot specimens taken 48 hours after birth, between 2002 and 2015, using DELFIA method. A TSH value of 15 mIU/L was used as the cutoff point until 2010 and 10 mIU/L thereafter. Primary CH was detected in 127 newborns (1/1976) of which 81.1% had permanent and 18.9% had transient CH. The incidence of primary CH was increased from 1/2489 until to 2010 to 1/1585 thereafter (p=0.131). However, the incidence of permanent CH was slightly increased (p=0.922), while the transient CH incidence had 8-fold increasing after lowering the TSH cutoff level (p<0.001). In cases with permanent CH, we observed lower frequency for thyroid dysgenesis (82.7 vs. 66.7%) and higher frequency for normal in-situ thyroid gland (17.3 vs. 33.3%), for the period Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 8 February 2017 doi:10.20944/preprints201702.0025. v1 Peer-reviewed version available at Int. J. Neonatal Screen. 2017, 3, 007; doi:10.3390/ijns3020007
Differential Activation of Lung-specific Genes by Two Forkhead Proteins, FREAC-1 and FREAC-2 (*)

We describe the cDNA sequences for two human transcription factors, Forkhead RElated ACtivator (FREAC)-1 and −2, that belong to the forkhead family of eukaryotic DNA binding proteins. FREAC-1 and −2 are encoded by distinct genes, are almost identical within their DNA binding domains and in the COOH termini, but are otherwise divergent. Cotransfections with a reporter carrying FREAC binding sites showed that both proteins are transcriptional activators, and deletions located the activation domains to the COOH-terminal side of the forkhead domains. Expression of FREAC-1 and FREAC-2 is restricted to lung and placenta. We show that the promoters of genes for lung-specific proteins such as pulmonary surfactant proteins A, B, and C (SPA, SPB, and SPC) and the Clara cell 10-kDa protein (CC10) contain potential binding sites for FREAC-1 and FREAC-2. DNaseI footprinting verified that FREAC proteins bind to the predicted sites in the CC10 and SPB promoters. While an SPB promoter construct could be transactivated by both FREAC-1 and FREAC-2, CC10 was only activated by FREAC-1. Efficient activation of CC10 by FREAC-1 is shown to be specific for a lung cell line with Clara cell characteristics (H441) and to involve a region of the FREAC-1 protein unable to activate in other cell types.
The impact of an integrated hospital-community medical information system on quality of care and medical service utilisation in primary-care clinics

Background. In 2005, an innovative system of hospital-community, on-line medical records (OFEK) was introduced in Clalit Health Services (CHS). Goals. To examine OFEK's use and impact on quality indicators and medical-service utilisation in CHS primary-care clinics. Methods. Examining the frequency of OFEK's use with its own track-log data; comparing ‘before’ and ‘after’ quality indicators and service utilisation of experimental versus control clinics. Results. Use of OFEK increased by hundreds of percent between 2005 and 2006, continued rising at a slower rate in 2007 and decreased slightly in 2008. At clinics in catchment areas of hospitals using OFEK extensively, OFEK reduced the number of imaging tests and, to a lesser extent, laboratory testing and improved several quality measures. An examination of all clinics in the catchment areas and in the study revealed a much weaker impact. Conclusions. OFEK's introduction affected a number of outcome measures – some, significantly – in medical and financial terms. Its increased use at additional clinics may exert a stronger impact there, too. The study contributes to the development of measures to examine the impact of such systems, which can be used to assess a broad range of Health Information Technology (HIT) systems.
Genetic Background May Confer Susceptibility to PTC in Benign Multinodular Thyroid Disease

Purpose: The incidence of hyperplastic thyroid nodular disease has been consistently rising over the last decades. In addition, unsuspected papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) can be found in up to 34% of patients operated for benign thyroid lesions. PTC tends to occur multi-focally and is commonly of polyclonal origin. We set out to test the hypothesis that in benign thyroid disease, a unique genetic signature can already be identified in the benign pathology, which is associated with a susceptibility of the thyroid tissue to neoplastic transformation in the context of additional growth promoting stimuli. Patients and Methods: We obtained a set of 23 samples from patients with multinodular goiter (MNG), 12 of whom also harbored an unsuspected PTC. We used global gene expression analysis to evaluate for dissimilarities in the gene expression patterns between these two groups. We also compared these patterns to the profiles of 3 normal thyroid and 7 PTC samples. Results: We were able to accurately distinguish between hyperplastic nodules of patients with multinodular goiter and those that were associated with a PTC. One of the strongest differentially expressed genes, CDC42, has been implicated to respond to environmental factors such as UVB radiation and might point to novel factors contributing to PTC genesis in the setting of pre-existing benign proliferative disease. Conclusion: While the comparison between histologically identical samples cannot distinguish the two groups of goiters, unsupervised or supervised approaches allowed us to identify a molecular signature associated with PTC susceptibility in multinodular goiter.
Glycerol formation during wine fermentation is mainly linked to Gpd1p and is only partially controlled by the HOG pathway

Glycerol 3‐phosphate dehydrogenase, a key enzyme in the production of glycerol, is encoded by GPD1 and GPD2. The isoforms encoded by these genes have different functions, in osmoregulation and redox balance, respectively. We investigated the roles of GPD1, GPD2 and HOG1—the kinase involved in the response to osmotic stress—in glycerol production during wine fermentation. We found that the deletion of GPD2 in a wine yeast‐derived strain did not affect growth or fermentation performance and reduced glycerol production by only 20%. In contrast, a gpd1Δ mutant displayed a prolonged lag phase, and produced 40% less glycerol than the wild‐type strain. The deletion of HOG1 resulted in a slight decrease in growth rate and a 20% decrease in glycerol production, indicating that the HOG pathway operates under wine fermentation conditions. However, the hog1Δ mutant was not as severely affected as the gpd1Δ mutant during the first few hours of fermentation, and continued to express GPD1 strongly. The hog1Δ mutant was able to increase glycerol production in response to high sugar concentration (15–28% glucose), to almost the same extent as the wild‐type, whereas this response was totally abolished in the gpd1Δ mutant. These data show that Gpd1p plays a major role in glycerol formation, particularly during the first few hours of exposure to high sugar concentration, and that GPD2 is only of little significance in anaerobic fermentation by wine yeast. The results also demonstrate that the HOG pathway exerts only limited control over GPD1 expression and glycerol production during wine fermentation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Computational Study of the DNA-Binding Protein Helicobacter pylori NikR : The Role of Ni 2 +

An integrated approach, combining atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, coarsegrained models, and solution NMR, was used to characterize the internal dynamics of HpNikR, a Ni-dependent transcription factor. Specifically, these methods were used to ascertain how the presence of bound Ni ions affects the stability of the known open, cis, and trans forms observed in the crystal structures of this protein as well as their interconversion capability. The consensus picture emerging from all the collected data hints at the interconversion of NikR among the three types of conformations, regardless of the content of bound Ni. On the basis of atomistic and coarse-grained simulations, we deduce that the interconversion capability is particularly effective between the cis and the open forms and appreciably less so between the trans conformer and the other two forms. The presence of the bound Ni ions does, however, affect significantly the degree of the correlations on the two DNA-binding domains of NikR, which is significantly suppressed as compared to the apo form. Overall, the findings suggest that the binding of HpNikR to DNA occurs through a sophisticated multistep process involving both a conformational selection and an induced fit.
On the computational complexity of projective image matching

Image matching is an important problem in image processing and arises in such diverse fields as video compression, optical character recognition, medical imaging, watermarking and others. Given two digital images A and B, image matching determines a transformation f for A such that it most closely resembles B. Conventional approaches require either exponential time, or find only an approximate solution, even when f has to consist of only rotations and scalings. This thesis introduces the first known discretization technique for the class Fp of projective transformations. Based on this, it shows a polynomial bound on the cardinality of D(A), the set containing all different transformations of A with f ∈ Fp. Accordingly, structural properties of D(A) lead to a polynomial time algorithm that finds the exact solution to the projective image matching problem by searching through the complete set D(A). The algorithm is applicable for various natural subclasses of projective transformations, such as e. g. affine transformations. From a theoretical point of view providing a polynomial time algorithm for projective image matching is not enough to completely characterize the complexity of the problem. Accordingly, TCO, a class of problems deep in the hierarchy within PTIME, is shown to exactly describe the complexity of image matching with projective transformations. This relates the problem to a number of most basic challenges in computer science, like integer multiplication, division and sorting. Beyond this, the containment in TCO implies extremely efficient parallel algorithms for image matching.
Ethnicity/racial differences in employment outcomes following spinal cord injury.

OBJECTIVE To examine differences in employment outcomes among Hispanics and Caucasians with Spinal Cord Injuries at one year post-injury. DESIGN Retrospective study. SETTING Longitudinal dataset of the SCI Model Systems. PARTICIPANTS 11,424 Individuals diagnosed with spinal cord injury (1369 Hispanics and 10055 Caucasians) that were enrolled in the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center (NSCISC) database and interviewed during their scheduled one-year post-injury follow-up evaluation between 1975 and 2006. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Employment status (competitively employed, unemployed and other). RESULTS After adjusting for age, gender, marital status, education level, employment status at admissions, cause of injury, category of neuro-impairment, and ASIA impairment scale, race/ethnicity has a significant effect on employment status at 1 year post-injury. Specifically, the odds of unemployment versus employment were 1.864 times greater for Hispanics than for Caucasians (95% CI = 1.478, 2.349) and the odds of unemployment versus other were 1.980 times greater for Hispanics than for Caucasians (95% CI = 1.625, 2.413). CONCLUSIONS Racial disparities do exist in successful employment after 1 year post SCI, particularly between Caucasians and Hispanics. Future research should focus on what factors contribute to this disparity, along with forming new education and rehabilitation strategies to improve return-to-work outcomes for Hispanics after SCI.
Recent Advances in Transgenic Orchid Production

With their attractive flowers and wildly diverse forms, orchids are a mainstay of the global floricultural trade. New varieties with improved floral characters and extended vase-life are continuously being generated by classical breeding techniques, though the selection process is necessarily time-consuming and remains a major obstacle to the rapid production of commercially-valuable orchids. Manipulation of specific floral traits and other desirable characteristics such as flowering time and vase-life by conventional sexual hybridization methods is also practically impossible. In the past decade, researchers have used molecular genetic techniques to revolutionize orchid biotechnology, which typically employs gene transformation systems coupled with rapid selection and regeneration methods for the production of new orchid varieties with the desired traits. Here, we summarize recent findings in transgenic orchid production, particularly with regards to improved transformation methods and the use of novel selectable markers.
Scanning electron microscope studies of Agrobacterium tumefaciens attachment to Zea mays, Gladiolus sp., and Triticum aestivum

Scanning electron microscope studies demonstrated that cells of Agrobacterium tumefaciens strains attach to cells on the cut surfaces of corn and wheat seedlings and to gladiolus disks. Bacterial cells attached to these monocots in the same manner as they attached to the dicots tested. Of the strains tested, A66 and T37 covered more of the cut surfaces of these monocots in a nonrandom fashion than did cells of other isolates. These bacteria attached to cells of intact monocotyledonous plants and had the greatest affinity for tissues located within the vascular bundles. They attached in large numbers to cells in these areas in all three monocots tested.
Ethanol exposure enhances cell death in the developing cerebral cortex: Role of brain‐derived neurotrophic factor and its signaling pathways

Exposure to ethanol during fetal development induces brain damage, causing cell loss in several brain areas and affecting synaptic connections. Because neurotrophin signaling plays an important role in neuronal survival and differentiation, we have investigated the effect of ethanol exposure on cell death in the developing cerebral cortex and whether this effect correlates with alterations in brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels, expression of its receptors, TrkB, and its signaling. We report that chronic ethanol intake during gestation and lactation enhances natural cell death and induces cell necrosis, decreases BDNF levels, and increases the ratio of the truncated to full‐length TrkB mRNA receptors during postnatal developing cerebral cortex. Furthermore, we provide evidence that during brain development BDNF activates the extracellular signal‐regulated kinases (ERK1 and ERK2) and the phosphoinoside‐3‐kinase (PI‐3‐K/Akt) pathways. However, BDNF‐induced cell signaling throughout the above‐mentioned survival pathways is significantly reduced by ethanol exposure. These findings suggest that ethanol‐induced alterations in BDNF availability and in its receptor function might impair intracellular signaling pathways involved in cell survival, growth, and differentiation, leading to enhanced natural cell death during cerebral cortex development. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.