Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cell-specific and athero-protective roles for RIPK3 in a murine model of atherosclerosis

ABSTRACT Receptor-interacting protein kinase 3 (RIPK3) was recently implicated in promoting atherosclerosis progression through a proposed role in macrophage necroptosis. However, RIPK3 has been connected to numerous other cellular pathways, which raises questions about its actual role in atherosclerosis. Furthermore, RIPK3 is expressed in a multitude of cell types, suggesting that it may be physiologically relevant to more than just macrophages in atherosclerosis. In this study, Ripk3 was deleted in macrophages, endothelial cells, vascular smooth muscle cells or globally on the Apoe−/− background using Cre-lox technology. To induce atherosclerosis progression, male and female mice were fed a Western diet for three months before tissue collection and analysis. Surprisingly, necroptosis markers were nearly undetectable in atherosclerotic aortas. Furthermore, en face lesion area was increased in macrophage- and endothelial-specific deletions of Ripk3 in the descending and abdominal regions of the aorta. Analysis of bone-marrow-derived macrophages and cultured endothelial cells revealed that Ripk3 deletion promotes expression of monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1) and E-selectin in these cell types, respectively. Western blot analysis showed upregulation of MCP-1 in aortas with Ripk3-deficient macrophages. Altogether, these data suggest that RIPK3 in macrophages and endothelial cells protects against atherosclerosis through a mechanism that likely does not involve necroptosis. This protection may be due to RIPK3-mediated suppression of pro-inflammatory MCP-1 expression in macrophages and E-selectin expression in endothelial cells. These findings suggest a novel and unexpected cell-type specific and athero-protective function for RIPK3. This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper. Summary: This study reports that RIPK3 in macrophages and endothelial cells protects against atherosclerosis progression in mice, providing novel information about unexpected roles for RIPK3 in an inflammatory vascular disease.
PA6 and Halloysite Nanotubes Composites with Improved Hydrothermal Ageing Resistance: Role of Filler Physicochemical Properties, Functionalization and Dispersion Technique

Polyamide 6 (PA6) suffers from fast degradation in humid conditions due to hydrolysis of amide bonds, which limits its durability. The addition of nanotubular fillers represents a viable strategy for overcoming this issue, although the additive/polymer interface at high filler content can become privileged site for moisture accumulation. As a cost-effective and versatile material, halloysite nanotubes (HNT) were investigated to prepare PA6 nanocomposites with very low loadings (1–45% w/w). The roles of the physicochemical properties of two differently sourced HNT, of filler functionalization with (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane and of dispersion techniques (in situ polymerization vs. melt blending) were investigated. The aspect ratio (5 vs. 15) and surface charge (−31 vs. −59 mV) of the two HNT proved crucial in determining their distribution within the polymer matrix. In situ polymerization of functionalized HNT leads to enclosed and well-penetrated filler within the polymer matrix. PA6 nanocomposites crystal growth and nucleation type were studied according to Avrami theory, as well as the formation of different crystalline structures (α and γ forms). After 1680 h of ageing, functionalized HNT reduced the diffusion of water into polymer, lowering water uptake after 600 h up to 90%, increasing the materials durability also regarding molecular weights and rheological behavior.
New SiO2/Caffeic Acid Hybrid Materials: Synthesis, Spectroscopic Characterization, and Bioactivity

The sol–gel route represents a valuable technique to obtain functional materials, in which organic and inorganic members are closely connected. Herein, four hybrid materials, containing caffeic acid entrapped in a silica matrix at 5, 10, 15, and 20 wt. %, were synthesized and characterized through Fourier-Transform Infrared (FT-IR) and Ultraviolet-Visible (UV–Vis) spectroscopy. FT-IR analysis was also performed to evaluate the ability to induce the hydroxyapatite nucleation. Despite some structural changes occurring on the phenol molecular skeleton, hybrid materials showed scavenging properties vs. 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical and 2,2′-azinobis-(3-ethylbenzothiazolin-6-sulfonic acid) radical cation (ABTS•+), which was dependent on the tested dose and on the caffeic acid wt. %. The SiO2/caffeic acid materials are proposed as valuable antibacterial agents against Escherichia coli and Enterococcus faecalis.
Treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer.

Despite optimal surgery and appropriate first-line chemotherapy, ∼70%-80% of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer will develop disease relapse. The same modalities as used primarily are available for treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer (ROC). The rationale for repetitive surgery in ROC was based on a stable body of retrospective data; however, prospective data were missing. Now, preliminary data from the prospective AGO-DESKTOP III give evidence that surgery for ROC seems to be of benefit for selected patients with platinum-sensitive relapse undergoing complete resection. With respect to systemic therapy, tumor histology, BRCA status, the platinum-free interval (PFI) and previous treatment with bevacizumab (anti-VEGF monoclonal antibody) are considered the most important features that influence treatment choice in ROC. In patients with resistant or refractory relapse (PFI < 6 months), monotherapy with a non-platinum drug or participation in clinical trials is indicated. The association of non-platinum monotherapy with bevacizumab, followed by maintenance has been approved in this setting in some European countries due to PFS benefit. In patients with partially sensitive relapse (PFI between 6 and 12 months), two options are available: platinum doublets or non-platinum therapy (single agent or combination). The pegylated liposomal doxorubicin/trabectedin combination represents a viable alternative in patients that cannot receive platinum. In platinum-sensitive patients, treatment with platinum-based combinations is associated with PFS advantage compared with single agents or non-platinum combinations. The presence of germline or somatic BRCA mutations allows platinum-responsive patients to optimize chemotherapy efficacy and prolonging PFS by the use of olaparib (PARP inhibitor) given as maintenance therapy until progression. In patients not pretreated with bevacizumab in first line, the carboplatin/gemcitabine/bevacizumab combination, followed by maintenance is a viable alternative in platinum-sensitive patients (PFI> 6 months). The integration of surgery, with a 'personalized' approach by the use of antiangiogenic agent and of PARP inhibitors is affecting survival of patients with recurrent disease and will help epithelial ovarian cancer to become a chronic disease.
Papillary muscle intervention vs mitral ring annuloplasty in ischemic mitral regurgitation

The main pathophysiological factor of chronic ischemic mitral regurgitation (MR) is the outward displacement of the papillary muscles (PMs) leading to leaflet tethering. For this reason, papillary muscle intervention (PMI) in combination with mitral ring annuloplasty (MRA) has recently been introduced into clinical practice to correct this displacement, and to reduce the recurrence of regurgitation.
The relationship between location and early childhood health choices among urban residents of Bangladesh

LAUREN R. HELLER: The Relationship Between Location and Early Childhood Health Choices Among Urban Residents of Bangladesh. (Under the direction of Dr. John Akin.) The upward trends in both the quantity and relative proportions of slum residents in developing countries have led to international health concerns, including the impact of slum residency on health behaviors. Measurement of these impacts, however, requires recognizing that the unobservable household characteristics that affect the location decision may also affect health care choices and health outcomes. To address the potential bias resulting from this pattern of causality, this research models the decision to locate in a particular area and the household’s demand for maternal and child health services simultaneously. It uses a unique urban data set from Bangladesh that incorporates sophisticated geographical mapping techniques to carefully delineate between slum and non-slum areas at a particular point in time. The estimation method allows for correlation across outcomes using a flexible, semi-parametric approach to the modeling of unobserved heterogeneity. The results suggest that accounting for the endogenous location decision of a family substantially reduces bias in estimated marginal effects of slum residence on preventive care demand. While community infrastructure variables appear correlated with preventive care demand, the causal effect of the availability of primary health care facilities is indistinguishable from zero when unobserved heterogeneity is taken into account. The research also incorporates endogenous fertility into the analysis in order to account for potential interactions between the quantity and quality of child health inputs. When accounting for fertility decisions, the results support the initial findings pertaining to community infrastructure but complicate the interpretation of the relationship between slum residence and investments in child health.
Flooding Irrigation Weakens the Molecular Ecological Network Complexity of Soil Microbes during the Process of Dryland-to-Paddy Conversion

Irrigation has been applied on a large scale for the improvement of grain yield per hectare and production stability. However, the dryland-to-paddy conversion affects the ecological environment of areas of long-term dry farming, especially soil microorganisms. Little attention has been paid to the changes in microbial communities and the interactions between their populations in this process. Therefore, in this paper, the compositions and diversity of soil bacterial and fungal communities were explored through a combination of high-throughput sequencing technology and molecular ecological network methods using bacterial 16S rRNA and fungal ITS. The results showed that: (1) both the abundance and diversity of soil bacteria and fungi decreased in a short time, and the abundance of Actinobacteria, Firmicutes and Olpidiomycota varied greatly. (2) Compared to dry land, the modular structure of interaction networks and interspecific relationships of bacterial and fungal communities in paddy soil were simpler, and the network became more unstable. A cooperative relationship dominated in the molecular ecological network of bacteria, while a competitive relationship was dominant in the network of fungi. Actinobacteria and Firmicutes were the dominant bacterial species in dry land and paddy field, respectively. Ascomycota was dominant in the fungal communities of both dry land and paddy field. (3) The change in soil environmental factors, such as pH, electrical conductivity (EC), organic matter (OM) and available potassium (AK), directly affected the soil microbial community structure, showing a significant correlation (p < 0.05). These environmental factors also influenced the dominant microbial species. Microorganisms are the most important link in the carbon and nitrogen cycles of soil, and a large-scale dryland-to-paddy conversion may reduce the ecological stability of regional soil.
A Biomimetic Elastic-Cable-Driven Quadruped Robot: Design, Dynamics and Controls

State of the art legged robots, such as Honda’s bipedal walking robot ASIMO and the bipedal robot WABIAN of Waseda University, employ joint-mount motors, which simplifies the analysis/design and allows an effective control system, but results in legs that are heavy and bulky. Cable-driven robots overcome this shortcoming by mounting the motors on the torso, thereby reducing the weight and inertia of the legs, resulting in lower overall weight and power consumption. Typical cable-driven robots use non-elastic cables; elastic cable-driven walking is explored in this article. The drive trains of conventional joint-mounted and cable-driven designs are rigid, which cannot effectively absorb ground impact shocks nor transfer potential energy to kinetic energy and vice versa when the robot is in motion, as biological animals do. In this article we present the design and testing of a cat-size quadruped robot called RoboCat, which employs stretchable elastic cable-driven joints as inspired by biological quadrupeds. Although it complicates kinematics and dynamics analysis and design, the elastic cables and torso-mounted motors enable weight and power savings relative to conventional designs. The elastic cable-driven joints not only absorb ground contact shock, but also transfer potential and kinetic energy during walking or running, thereby improving the robot motion performance and energy efficiency. In this article we discuss the kinematics and dynamics analysis of elastic cable-driven joints, implementation of elastic cable-driven joints on the Ohio University RoboCat, and control.
TRANSDERMAL MAGNESIUM SPRAYS FOR MYOFASCIAL PAIN RELIEF AND FACILITATION OF AUTONOMOUS TWITCH ELICITATION WITH ELECTRICAL TWITCH-OBTAINING INTRAMUSCULAR STIMULATION (ETOIMS)

Introduction: ETOIMS optimally relieves denervation supersensitivity related myofascial pain when autonomous muscle twitches can be elicited focally or remotely at involved trigger points. Aim: To provide objective evidence that autonomous twitch elicitation with ETOIMS is best facilitated with concomitant transdermal magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) spray rather than magnesium chloride (MgCl) or using only faucet-water. Methods and materials: An 83 year old mildly hypertensive patient with refractory migraine and persistent pain had 3 consecutive ETOIMS therapy trials (N=40/trial) with faucet-water wetted electrodes only or with trans-dermal spray supplementation using MgCl or MgSO4. Pain scores, blood pressure (BP) and pulse/heart-rate were recorded before and immediately after each treatment alongside highest level of clinically elicitable twitch-forces/session and number of muscles with autonomous twitches. For MgSO4 sessions (N=30), the patient also measured onset BP and heart-rate/pulse immediately on sitting down, as well as after sitting for 10 minutes without spray and 10 more minutes with MgSO4 spray applied once to paraspinal and limb muscles. Results: ETOIMS results for eliciting autonomous twitches with MgCl spray were equivalent to using faucet-water. One way ANOVA comparisons showed that using MgSO4 significantly increased number of muscles with autonomous twitches and reduced pain and heart-rate/pulse. Twitch-forces (TWF) between the three groups did not differ. MgSO4 spray alone was also able to reduce the systolic BP within 10 minutes. Conclusions: MgSO4 showed the best capacity to potentiate ETOIMS pain relief effects probably through better skin absorption and vasodilation made possible through skin hydration and iontophoresis effects that enabled autonomous twitching.
Aerodynamic Shape Optimization with the Adjoint Method

The biggest cost for airlines is due to fuel consumption. Therefore, it is of the interest of airlines that fuel consumption be minimized. This task is done by aircraft manufacturers, including Airbus, for example, by reducing drag. Currently, this work is done by experienced engineers with years of experience, making use of their extensive knowledge in aircraft aerodynamics. Nevertheless, this work is done manually and by trial and error, which becomes particularly challenging for complex shapes and complex aerodynamics. The subject of automatic aerodynamic optimization responds to this problem. It is a recent subject and promises good results where human insight fails. Namely, aerodynamic shape optimization with the adjoint method offers many advantages with respect to other techniques. This technique, in conjunction with others will be studied and applied to the optimization of a transonic airfoil and of a winglet for a long range airplane of Airbus.
Energy demand assessment of European urban structures based on a multi-scale approach

Introduction Climate change is meanwhile one of the key phenomena in recent human societies also facing future cities development. Respecting the growing conscience and political foresight, be it by responding to the approaching demands which the cities have to react to or be it by meaning to the overall responsibility of cities to make their contributions to reduce climate effective emissions. Influencing the structures of the urban fabric, changes planning procedures and triggers at the same time various climate protection strategies addressing the global level. There is an essential need of understanding the influences and need of climate change to existing cities structure and strategies in local action. These new demands will lead to new methods of research and planning.
The Assembly Line Simulator Project: modeling U-shaped, un-paced, mixed model assembly lines

To evaluate performances of U-shaped un-paced mixed model assembly line may be complicated. This complication is a result of blockage and starvation caused by the arrival of different models to the line, having different assembly time requirements at each station. Considering the throughput as the main operational design objective, the effects of these phenomena on line throughput are very difficult to evaluate. Unfortunately, its evaluation is fundamental in almost all procedures and algorithms developed to solve U-MALBP (U-shaped Mixedmodel Assembly Line Balancing Problem), since the estimation of objective functions that includes performance indicators is often required. The only practical method to accurately evaluate throughput is a simulation study, which is very time consuming and hard to perform. For this reason, instead, various performance measures, not simulation based, have been presented in literature in order to evaluate and compare design alternatives. Unfortunately, these performance measures are often poorly correlated to the real value of the throughput when the complexity of the line increases. The aim of the Assembly Line Simulator Project is to overcome the limit of using performance measures instead of simulated throughput, by developing a parametric simulator for mixed model lines that can quickly simulate different line configurations and can be used iteratively in algorithms and procedures. In the paper, the last version of the simulator, designed for U-shaped lines, is presented and tested.
Knowledge, Renewal and Flexibility: Exploratory Research in Family Firms

This study aims to explore how family firms pursue strategies that promote strategic flexibility and knowledge-management (KM) practices to respond to strategic-renewal goals. Specifically, based on a knowledge-based view of the firm, the following research question is proposed: Are there heterogeneous groups of family firms in terms of knowledge management, strategic flexibility and strategic renewal goals? To answer this question, an exploratory study using a two-step cluster analysis is developed. It reveals natural groupings from a sample of 288 small and medium-sized Spanish family enterprises (SMEs). The results obtained identified three distinctive clusters of family firms, namely proactive family firms, transitional or adaptive family firms, and rigid family firms. After two-step cluster analysis, we also conducted analysis of variance (ANOVA) to confirm that significant differences amongst the three clusters exist. After heterogeneity been confirmed, a further profile of the cluster solution was provided by using CEO and board characteristics, as well as the generational stage of the company. The findings offer some counterbalance for those studies that tend to study family businesses as a homogeneous entity, thus permitting researchers to access more information, providing rich explanations for renewal managerial decision-making purposes in family firm contexts.
Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, Vol. 82, No. 4, pp. 1147--1160, 2004

Number-size distribution of aerosols and its spatial variation, were observed in the free troposphere up to 11 km altitude over the northwestern Pacific Ocean, in the Pacific Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (PACE)-7 campaign in February 2000. Characteristics of the size distributions were observed in the relation to the different air mass. The spatial difference in the features of size distributions was clearly divided by the location of subtropical front. Over the extratropical region, the mode radii were large (0.03–0.06 mm), and the concentrations of aerosols in the accumulation mode (0:15 < r < 0:5 mm) were high, suggesting a strong influence from anthropogenic particles from the Asian continent. On the other hand, the size distributions in the subtropical air mass had the mode radii of 0.01–0.03 mm, and showed low concentrations of accumulation mode particle. Moreover, high number concentrations of very fine particles (0.004–0.01 mm radius), were distributed at upper altitudes (> 8 km) over 15–31 N latitude. These aerosols were assumed to be mainly sulfuric acid particles transported from the tropics. Size distribution at the center of subtropical jet streams was slightly aged, suggesting influence from the continent. However, it is basically resemble to the size distributions measured in the upper troposphere over the subtropical region. On the basis of the trajectory analysis, these aerosols would have been transported from the tropical upper troposphere, to the middle latitudes by Hadley circulation, and then mixed into the subtropical jet streams.
Efﬁcient Rendering of Volumetric Motion Blur Using Temporally Unstructured Volumes

We introduce temporally unstructured volumes (TUVs), a data structure for representing 4D volume data that is spatially structured but temporally unstructured, and Reves , an algorithm for constructing those volumes. The data structure supports efﬁcient rendering of motion blur effects in volumes, including sub-frame motion. Reves is a volumetric extension to the classic Reyes algorithm, and produces TUV data sets through spatio-temporal stochastic sampling. Our method scales linearly and maximizes data locality and parallelism both during construction and rendering of volumes, making it suitable for ray tracing, and supports arbitrarily large input models. Compared to the current state-of-the-art in volumetric motion blur, our approach produces more accurate results using less memory and less time, and it can also provide high-quality re-timing of volumetric data sets, such as ﬂuid simulations.
Studying Intercity Travels and Traffic Using Cellular Network Data

We use anonymized mobile phone CDR (call detail record) dataset provided by Orange D4D and crowdsourced OpenStreetMap data to study people’s intercity travels and traffic speed on intercity highways in Ivory Coast. Knowledge about people’s intercity travel behaviour and speed on highways would help government officers such as transportation strategic planners make informed development decisions. It is also very valuable to end users who would like to understand the traffic situation to avoid traffic jams or slow speed time. We design algorithms and implement a system that discovers people’s intercity trips and extracts intercity travel trajectories suitable for estimating traffic speed on intercity highways. The data and results are visualized using a visualization engine we developed for this project. Besides describing our ideas and system, we in this paper also present our analysis results of intercity travels and highway traffic.