Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
unamur . be M 1 and M 2 macrophages derived from THP-1 cells differentially modulate the response of cancer cells to etoposide

Background: Tumor associated macrophages (TAMs) are present in high density in solid tumors. TAMs share many characteristics with alternatively activated macrophages, also called M2. They have been shown to favor tumor development and a role in chemoresistance has also been suggested. Here, we investigated the effects of M2 in comparison to M1 macrophages on cancer cell sensitivity to etoposide. Methods: We set up a model of macrophage polarization, starting from THP-1 monocytes differentiated into macrophages using PMA (Phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate). Once differentiated (M0 macrophages), they were incubated with IL-4 and IL-13 in order to obtain M2 polarized macrophages or with IFN-gamma and LPS for classical macrophage activation (M1). To mimic the communication between cancer cells and TAMs, M0, M1 or M2 macrophages and HepG2 or A549 cancer cells were co-cultured during respectively 16 (HepG2) or 24 (A549) hours, before etoposide exposure for 24 (HepG2) or 16 (A549) hours. After the incubation, the impact of etoposide on macrophage polarization was studied and cancer cell apoptosis was assessed by western-blot for cleaved caspase-3 and cleaved PARP-1 protein, caspase activity assay and FACS analysis of Annexin V and PI staining. Results: mRNA and protein expression of M1 and M2 markers confirmed the polarization of THP-1-derived macrophages, which provide a new, easy and well-characterized model of polarized human macrophages. Etoposide-induced cancer cell apoptosis was markedly reduced in the presence of THP-1 M2 macrophages, while apoptosis was increased in cells co-cultured with M1 macrophages. On the other hand, etoposide did not influence M1 or M2 polarization. Conclusions: These results evidence for the first time a clear protective effect of M2 on the contrary to M1 macrophages on etoposide-induced cancer cell apoptosis.
Title : " On the Necessity of Multiple University Rankings "

Nowadays university rankings are ubiquitous commodities; a plethora of them is published every year by private enterprises, state authorities and universities. University rankings are very popular to governments, journalists, university administrations and families as well. At the same time, they are heavily criticized as being very subjective and contradictory to each other. University rankings have been studied with respect to political, educational and data management aspects. In this paper, we focus on a specific research question regarding the alignment of some well-known such rankings, ultimately targeting to investigate the usefulness of the variety of all these rankings. First, we describe in detail the methodology to collect and homogenize the data and, second, we statistically analyze these data to examine the correlation among the different rankings. The results show that despite their statistically significant correlation, there are many cases of high divergence and instability, which can be reduced by ordered categorization. Our conclusion is that if, in principle, someone accepts the reliability of university rankings, the necessity and the usefulness, of all of them is questionable since only few of them could be sufficient representatives of the whole set. The overabundance of university rankings is especially conspicuous for the top universities.
A GENERATIVE ADVERSARIAL NETWORK FOR STYLE MODELING IN A TEXT-TO-SPEECH SYSTEM

The modeling of style when synthesizing natural human speech from text has been the focus of significant attention. Some state-of-the-art approaches train an encoder-decoder network on paired text and audio samples 〈xtxt, xaud〉 by encouraging its output to reconstruct xaud. The synthesized audio waveform is expected to contain the verbal content of xtxt and the auditory style of xaud. Unfortunately, modeling style in TTS is somewhat under-determined and training models with a reconstruction loss alone is insufficient to disentangle content and style from other factors of variation. In this work, we introduce an end-to-end TTS model that offers enhanced content-style disentanglement ability and controllability. We achieve this by combining a pairwise training procedure, an adversarial game, and a collaborative game into one training scheme. The adversarial game concentrates the true data distribution, and the collaborative game minimizes the distance between real samples and generated samples in both the original space and the latent space. As a result, our model delivers a highly controllable generator, and a disentangled representation. Benefiting from the separate modeling of style and content, our model can generate human fidelity speech that satisfies the desired style conditions. Our model achieves start-of-the-art results across multiple tasks, including style transfer (content and style swapping), emotion modeling, and identity transfer (fitting a new speaker’s voice).
Influence of yoga on hormonal changes, quality of life, and musculoskeletal fitness in menopausal women / M.L. Sophia Verzosa

Yoga is often recommended as a non-pharmacological approach for alleviating the wide range of symptoms associated with menopause. In popular literature it is suggested that the beneficial effects of yoga may result from changes in hormone levels, such as the adrenal androgen, DHEA-S and pituitary hormone FSH. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a 10 week yoga intervention on quality of life related to menopausal symptoms and to determine if there were associated changes in circulating DHEA-S and FSH. Volunteer participants were 17 inactive women between ages 45 and 60 experiencing menopause-related symptoms. Women were randomly assigned to either a 10 week Hatha yoga program (N= 10, age= 51.6±4.2, BMI= 27.2±5.8) or an active control group who completed a 10 week walking program (N=7, age= 53.1±4.1, BMI= 27.6±6.7). Both groups completed the Menopause Specific Quality of Life questionnaire (MENQOL) at week 0, 3,7, and 11 of the intervention to assess symptoms over four domains; vasomotor, psychosocial, physical, and sexual. Repeated measures ANOVA showed a trend for reduction in the vasomotor domain (p= 0.096) and summary score (p=0.066) for MENQOL in both groups. A trend towards reduction was seen for time (p= 0.066) and time by group (p= 0.074) for FSH. No changes in circulating DHEA-S were observed for either group. This suggests that 10 weeks of either yoga or walking will improve vasomotor symptoms of menopause, although this effect did not appear to be associated with changes in DHEA-S or FSH. An intervention longer than 10 weeks may be necessary to see changes in other domains of quality of life among menopausal
A Method for Tokenizing Text

The stream of characters in a natural language text must be broken up into distinct meaningful units (or tokens) before any language processing beyond the character level can be performed. If languages were perfectly punctuated, this would be a trivial thing to do: a simple program could separate the text into word and punctuation tokens simply by breaking it up at white-space and punctuation marks. But real languages are not perfectly punctuated, and the situation is always more complicated. Even in a well (but not perfectly) punctuated language like English, there are cases where the correct tokenization cannot be determined simply by knowing the classification of individual characters, and even cases where several distinct tokenizations are possible. For example, the English string chap. can be taken as either an abbreviation for the word chapter or as the word chap appearing at the end of a sentence, and Jan. can be regarded either as an abbreviation for January or as a sentencefinal proper name. The period should be part of the word-token in the first cases but taken as a separate token of the string in the second. As another example, white-space is a fairly reliable indicator of an English token boundary, but there are some multi-component words in English that include whitespace as internal characters (e.g. to and fro, jack rabbit, General Motors, a priori). These difficulties for English are relatively limited and text-processing applications often either ignore them (e.g., simply forget about abbreviations and multi-component words—there are many more difficult problems to worry about) or treat them with special-purpose machinery. But this is a much bigger problem for other languages (e.g. Chinese text is very poorly
Effect of Surface Hardness on Three-Segment Foot Kinematics during Barefoot Running

This paper presents an experimental study on the effect of different surface hardness to the foot kinematics during barefoot running using a multi segment foot model. Joint rotations during the stance phase of nine male subjects that running barefoot on three types of surface with different hardness level (concrete, artificial grass and rubber) was investigated experimentally. Screening process was conducted by evaluating the foot strike pattern among the subjects in order to eliminate the influence of the foot strike on kinematics response. Only heel strikers’ data was analyzed since most of the subjects performed heel strike during the experiment. Differences on joint rotation due to surface effects were analyzed using visual 3D software. The result showed that the pattern of joint rotation was slightly different when barefoot running on artificial grass compared to rubber and concrete surface. The significant difference was found in further investigation of the joint rotation during the mid-stance of the stance phase. The joint rotation was varied in the varying of the surface conditions, meanwhile groupbased analysis in the present study did not imply the significant difference among the surfaces. No significant correlation was found in the present experiment between various surface hardness and joint rotations of foot kinematics segments. This study could provide additional insight on relationships between foot segment kinematics in term of joint rotations when running on different surface hardness. Index Term-running, surface hardness, foot kinematics, joint
A study of the role of monocyte functional subpopulations in patients with carotid atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease

This thesis focuses on monocyte subsets and furthers the understanding of their relationships to the atherosclerotic disease process. A novel method of carotid contrast ultrasound (CEUS) is used in those with carotid disease (CD) and pre-existing coronary artery disease (CAD) to detect the presence of neovascularisation and correlates this with monocyte subset totals determined by flow cytometry/ enzyme- linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Three monocyte subsets ((CD14++CD16-CCR2+ (Mon1), CD14++CD16+CCR2+ (Mon2) and CD14+CD16++CCR2- (Mon3)), are compared with severity of CD by division into 4 groups (each 40 patients); grp.1= CD>50% with pre-existing CAD, grp.2= CD<50% with pre-existing CAD, grp.3=hypercholesterolemia (HC), grp.4= normocholesterolaemic (NC). Monllevels were increased with severity of CD, and found to be predictive in those with increased carotid intima media thickness, a marker of systemic atherosclerosis. Mon3, was shown to be increased in those with moderate CD but not in the presence of severe disease. Finally, monocyte levels where checked after cessation of statin therapy for two weeks, this did not affect monocyte subset counts but caused a reduction in inflammatory receptor expression on Monl. This thesis attempts to expand one's understanding of the behavioral heterogeneity of monocytes in atherosclerotic disease and demonstrates CEUS as a feasible research imaging method.
Literature Review and Proposed Research

1. Identification of the hand motion. This is necessary as input data for the system identification of the myoelectric signals, in order to relate the electrical impulse to a certain motion. The signals will differ, besides physiological variables (environment, history,.), mainly by the motion to perform and the exerted force implied in the action. These two are always coupled, and a system to identify and separate the effects of each of them is needed. This implies the need of a system to track hand motion and another sensory system to track contact and maybe also internal forces, to account for the fact that the same motion can be performed with “relaxed” or with “tense” muscles.
Title Correlation between pre-treatment quasispecies complexity and treatment outcome in chronic HCV genotype 3 a

Pre-treatment HCV quasispecies complexity and diversity may predict response to interferon based anti-viral therapy. The objective of this study was to retrospectively (1) examine temporal changes in quasispecies prior to the start of therapy and (2) investigate extensively quasispecies evolution in a group of 10 chronically infected patients with genotype 3a, treated with pegylated α2a-Interferon and ribavirin. The degree of sequence heterogeneity within the hypervariable region 1 was assessed by analyzing 20–30 individual clones in serial serum samples. Genetic parameters, including amino acid Shannon entropy, Hamming distance and genetic distance were calculated for each sample. Treatment outcome was divided into (1) sustained virological responders (SVR) and (2) treatment failure (TF). Our results indicate, (1) quasispecies complexity and diversity are lower in the SVR group, (2) quasispecies vary temporally and (3) genetic heterogeneity at baseline can be use to predict treatment outcome. We discuss the results from the perspective of replicative homeostasis. Background The Hepatitis C virus (HCV), is the causative agent of chronic hepatitis C and infects at least 170 million individuals worldwide [1-3]. The virus has been classified into six major genotypes and more than 70 subtypes based on sequence diversity [4-10]. The most important feature of HCV is that it causes chronic infection in about 50–80% of individuals [3,11-13]. The HCV genome exhibits significant genetic heterogeneity due to accumulation of mutations during viral replication, attributed to a limited fidelity of the RNA dependent RNA polymerase [14,15]. This phenomenon generates a dynamic population of heterogeneous but closely related variants designated as quasispecies [14-17]. The massive genetic heterogeneity present in quasispecies has important biological consequences and enables HCV to escape immune clearance and to establish chronic infection [1822]. Furthermore, the quasispecies distribution may influence the outcome of anti-viral therapy and be important in the development of resistance to anti-viral therapy [2327]. It is well established that HCV genotype influences Published: 9 July 2008 Virology Journal 2008, 5:78 doi:10.1186/1743-422X-5-78 Received: 19 May 2008 Accepted: 9 July 2008 This article is available from: http://www.virologyj. com/content/5/1/78 © 2008 Moreau et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Virology Journal 2008, 5:78 http://www.virologyj. com/content/5/1/78
Effects of Short-Term CrossFit Training: A Magnitude-Based Approach

Drake N, Smeed J, Carper MJ, Crawford DA. Effects of ShortTerm CrossFit Training: A Magnitude-Based Approach. JEPonline 2017;20(2):111-133. The purpose of this study was to examine the magnitude and direction of the effects of short-term CrossFit (CF) participation on measures of health and fitness. Six male participants completed 4 wks of CF training with outcomes assessed preand post-intervention. Statistical methods consisted of both traditional significance testing and evaluation of magnitude-based inferences. Beneficial effects are noted for the majority of the health and fitness parameters assessed. However, with negative perturbations in inflammatory status and mood states performance, these subjects may have reached a state of functional overreaching. With training intensity not monitored, continuous participation in CF may result in an overtrained individual. Moving forward, research on CF must investigate the utility of improved CF performance outside the gym and integrating appropriate monitoring strategies to improve participant recovery and adaptation while maintaining the integrity of the original programming philosophies.
A Comparative Survey Study on LPWA Networks : LoRa and NB-IoT

According to recent studies, billions of objects are expected to be connected wirelessly by 2020. The Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks are already playing an important role in connecting billions of new devices making up the IoT. Long Range (LoRa) and Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) are currently the two leading technologies triggering considerable research interest. This paper focuses on providing a comprehensive and comparative survey study on the current research and industrial states of NB-IoT and LoRa in terms of their power efficiency, their capacity, quality of service (QoS), reliability and range of coverage. The outcome of this research survey demonstrates that the unlicensed LoRa is more advantageous than the NBIoT in terms of its energy efficiency, its capacity and cost while the NB-IoT gives benefits in terms of its reliability, resilience to interference, latency and QoS. It is further shown that despite the considerable research and development that has so far been carried out on existing LPWA technologies, there are still challenges to be addressed. This paper therefore proposes potential research future directions to address the identified challenges. Keywords—Low Power Wide Area (LPWA); Long Range (LoRa); Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT); comparative; energy efficiency; quality of service (QoS)
Chapter 20 Data Mining for Algorithmic Asset Management

Statistical arbitrage refers to a class of algorithmic trading systems implementing data mining strategies. In this chapter we describe a computational framework for statistical arbitrage based on support vector regression. The algorithm learns the fair price of the security under management by minimining a regularized ε-insensitive loss function in an on-line fashion, using the most recent market information acquired by means of streaming financial data. The difficult issue of adaptive learning in non-stationary environments is addressed by adopting an ensemble learning approach, where a meta-algorithm strategically combines the opinion of a pool of experts. Experimental results based on nearly seven years of historical data for the iShare S&P 500 ETF demonstrate that satisfactory risk-adjusted returns can be achieved by the data mining system even after transaction costs.
A pr 2 00 5 Spatial prisoner ’ s dilemma game with volunteering in Newman-Watts small-world networks

A modified spatial prisoner’s dilemma game with voluntary pa rticipation in Newman-Watts small-world networks is studied. Some reasonable ingredients are introduc ed to the game evolutionary dynamics: each agent in the network is a pure strategist and can only take one of thr ee strategies ( cooperator, defector, andloner); its strategical transformation is associated with both the num ber of strategical states and the magnitude of average profits, which are adopted and acquired by its coplayers in th e previous round of play; a stochastic strategy mutation is applied when it gets into the trouble of l cal commons that the agent and its neighbors are in the same state and get the same average payoffs. In the case of ver y low temptation to defect, it is found that agents are willing to participate in the game in typical small-worl d egion and intensive collective oscillations arise in more random region.
Integrating Enterprise Decision-Making Modules into Industrial Engineering Curricula

Organizations today have become process-focused, linking engineering, product development, order fulfillment and service operations across functions and around the globe. This process orientation is supported by enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that provide an integrated view of cross-functional processes through linked software applications build upon a common database. As both design and production activities are sourced internationally, companies need employees who are able to use integrated ERP data to make decisions. Yet undergraduate students rarely have the opportunity to use commercial systems as part of their curriculum. In this paper, we describe a framework for teaching enterprise decision-making, and examine the value of incorporating a hands-on module using the Oracle E-business Suite in a production planning and control course. We developed task-specific measures of student achievement and self-efficacy to examine learning, and found that use of the ERP-based modules improved students’ confidence in their knowledge of ERP-based systems as well as traditional production planning and control topics.
Evaluation of the use of script concordance test in a multicampus psychiatric pharmacy elective course

Introduction Evaluating a student's ability to accept complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity as part of clinical practice is difficult in a classroom setting using written tests. This study was conducted to explore the feasibility and validation of using a script concordance test (SCT) to evaluate pharmacy student knowledge and clinical competence in a psychiatry elective course. Methods This study involved prospective validation of psychiatry-focused SCT questions using a panel of practicing psychiatric pharmacists and retrospective review of student performance on the same SCT questions. The reliability of the SCT was also evaluated using Cronbach alpha coefficient. Results A total of 13 practicing psychiatric pharmacists participated in the validation phase of the study of 75 questions. Pharmacy student scores (n = 17) averaged 39.79 (±5.02) points, and psychiatric pharmacist scores averaged 50.11 (±4.51) points, representing mean percentages of 61.2% and 77.1%, respectively, on the adjusted exam. The Cronbach alpha was 0.94. Discussion The development of a valid and reliable SCT to test student psychiatric pharmacy knowledge and clinical competence after taking a psychiatry elective course was feasible.
Lysimachia fanii, a new species of Primulaceae from limestone area of Guangxi, China

Abstract Lysimachia fanii, a new species of Lysimachia (Subgen. Idiophyton, Primulaceae), is described and illustrated from Guangxi, China based on morphological and molecular data. Lysimachia fanii differs from L. verbascifolia, L. rupestris and L. alpestris mainly by the habit being nearly rosulate, leaves congested at the apex of the rhizome, leaf blades spatulate to narrowly oblanceolate and flowers solitary. Phylogenetic analyses supported L. verbascifolia as sister to L. fanii. This new species is endemic to limestone areas in Liucheng county of Guangxi, China.
A new species of Amentotaxus (Taxaceae) from China, Vietnam, and Laos

Abstract A new species Amentotaxus hekouensis L.M. Gao is described as new to science from Hekou, Yunnan of China, Lao Cai of Vietnam and Xiang Khouang of Laos. The new species is similar to A. argotaenia (Hance) Pilg. in linear or linear-lanceolate leaves, stomatal bands white and microsporophylls 6–8, each with 4–6 pollen sacs, but differs from the latter by its larger leaf size with 8–12.5 cm × 0.9–1.4 cm (vs. 2–11 cm × 0.5–1.1 cm in A. argotaenia), long acuminate leaf apex (vs. rounded to sharply triangular in A. argotaenia), stomatal bands with 25–30 rows (vs. 15–25 rows in A. argotaenia), stomatal bands equal to or slightly narrower than marginal bands (vs. narrower than marginal bands in A. argotaenia); pollen-cone racemes borne 1–2 (vs. 2–4 (10) in A. argotaenia), cones in 12–16 pairs (vs. ca. 12 pairs in A. argotaenia). Its distinctive nature has also been confirmed through DNA barcoding analysis of this genus. The new species is provisionally assessed as endangered (EN) due to its restricted distribution, small population size and the prevalence of habitat destruction within its range.