Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Educational Governance and Social Inclusion and Exclusion: Some conceptual difficulties and problematics in policy and research1

The relationship of the social administration of the state and problems of social inclusion and exclusion has become an increasingly important cross-national welfare policy issue. This interest is not only one of the altruistic promises of modernity but historically bound to a variety of contemporary changes that relate processes of globalization to traditions of nationalism and liberal ideals about democratic participation. Concern with governing and social inclusion and exclusion is a focus of the European Union which relates to a number of factors. Long-term migration patterns associated with and following World War II changed the complexions of nationalities and citizenship in European nations. These changes overlap with changes in the work patterns and educational requirements in the post-Fordist economies of the European Union coupled with, for example, changes in the politics of cultural movements as there are new demands for representation of groups previously excluded, such as in contemporary feminism, green movements, and multiculturalism, in many European states. In conjunction with these changes are changes in the models of participation and the welfare safety nets as the welfare state is redesigned in current processes of globalization and economic restructuring. These collective patterns have made administration of cultural and social affairs a policy issue in the Europe Union. More general concern with the relationship of state policy and issues of social inclusion and exclusion is explicit within the educational arena. Economic issues of equity and justice are prominent in the assessment of the role of school in producing the workforce deemed necessary in the new work world. The other side of this is international competition and conceived risks of economic degradation and exclusion on a national or regional level if education cannot produce the competencies needed. Economic concerns are themselves tightly interwoven with national and European Union cultural issues of representation of different social and ethnic groups within educational policy. At one end, education is to forge the new cosmopolitan image of the citizen, who is no longer de ned in a singular image of the citizen. And with this new sense of citizenship are changing national imaginaries—what it means to be Swedish, British, Spanish, as well as
Methadone versus buprenorphine in pregnant addicts: a double-blind, double-dummy comparison study.

AIMS To evaluate the efficacy and safety of methadone versus buprenorphine treatment in pregnant opioid-dependent women. DESIGN Randomized, double-dummy, double-blind, flexible-dosing comparison study. SETTING Addiction Clinic at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. PARTICIPANTS Eighteen women were assigned randomly to receive either methadone (n = 9) or buprenorphine (n = 9) during weeks 24-29 of pregnancy. After dropouts, data were available from 14 cases (six in the methadone and eight in the buprenorphine group). INTERVENTION Sublingual buprenorphine tablets (8-24 mg/day) or oral methadone solution (40-100 mg/day), with matched placebos. MEASUREMENTS Mothers: retention in treatment, urine toxicology and nicotine use. Neonates: Routine birth data, neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) in severity and duration. FINDINGS There was somewhat greater retention in the buprenorphine group but significantly lowered use of additional opioids in the methadone group (P = 0.047). Neonates: There was earlier onset of NAS in neonates born to the methadone (mean 60 hours) than to the buprenorphine groups (mean 72 hours after last medication); 43% did not require NAS-treatment with short treatment duration in both groups (mean 5 days). CONCLUSION This preliminary study had limited power to detect differences but the trends observed suggest this kind of research is practicable and that further studies are warranted.
Induction–maintenance antiretroviral therapy: proof of concept

Objective:To investigate the concept of aggressive initial combination therapy followed by reduction to a less demanding maintenance regimen with respect to its potential for sustaining viral suppression. Design:Durable viral suppression to < 20 HIV RNA copies/ml plasma was achieved with zidovudine–nevirapine–didanosine (ZDV–NVP–ddI) therapy. Potential for sustained antiviral response was explored for patients who began with ZDV–NVP–ddI and subsequently interrupted ddI. Methods:Antiretroviral-naive patients were treated with ZDV–NVP, ZDV–ddI, or ZDV–NVP–ddI. Viral load was measured with the Amplicor assay (limit of quantification 400 copies/ml) and by the Ultra Direct assay (limit of quantification 20 copies/ml) when the Amplicor result was < 500 copies/ml. Treatment adherence for each drug was recorded, including all dose adjustments. Results:Five patients who had begun treatment with ZDV–NVP–ddI discontinued ddI for at least 6 weeks after achieving viral load levels below detection. All were documented to have sustained their viral load at < 20 copies/ml during the ddI interruption. Two patients permanently discontinued ddI, both with sustained viral load below detection for more than 1 year while treated with ZDV–NVP. In contrast, no patient initially receiving ZDV–NVP was able to maintain viral load below detection for sustained periods; none had viral load below detection after week 12 of treatment. Conclusions:After induction with ZDV–NVP–ddI, patients were able to sustain viral suppression with a regimen (ZDV–NVP) that was only transiently effective as initial therapy. There was no evidence of virologic escape, even with the most sensitive measure of plasma viral load.
Cdc42 controls the polarity of the actin and microtubule cytoskeletons through two distinct signal transduction pathways

Cdc42, a Rho family GTPase, is a key regulator of cell polarity. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, it is required for polarized bud formation and pheromone gradient sensing, while in higher eukaryotes, it participates in asymmetric cell division, directional sensing during migration, and morphogenesis. Using a scratch-induced fibroblast migration assay, we previously showed that Cdc42 controls the polarization of both membrane protrusions and the Golgi/centrosome. We now find that Golgi/centrosome polarity is mediated through activation of the Par6/aPKC complex, as previously described in astrocytes. However, this complex is not involved in Cdc42-dependent polarization of protrusions, which instead is mediated by Pak acting through the Rac guanine nucleotide exchange factor, βPIX. Pak kinase activity is essential for spatially restricting Rac-dependent actin polymerization to the leading edge of the migrating cells, though it is not required for actin polymerization per se. We conclude that in migrating cells, Cdc42 co-ordinately regulates the polarity of the microtubule and actin cytoskeletons through two distinct pathways.
The Use of Occlusion Training to Produce Muscle Hypertrophy

LOW-INTENSITY OCCLUSION (50-100 MM HG) TRAINING PROVIDES A UNIQUE BENEFICIAL TRAINING MODE FOR PROMOTING MUSCLE HYPERTROPHY. TRAINING AT INTENSITIES AS LOW AS 20% 1 REPETITION MAXIMUM WITH MODERATE VASCULAR OCCLUSION RESULTS IN MUSCLE HYPERTROPHY IN AS LITTLE AS 3 WEEKS. A TYPICAL EXERCISE PRESCRIPTION CALLS FOR 3 TO 5 SETS TO VOLITIONAL FATIGUE WITH SHORT REST PERIODS. THE METABOLIC BUILDUP CAUSES POSITIVE PHYSIOLOGIC REACTIONS, SPECIFICALLY A RISE IN GROWTH HORMONE THAT IS HIGHER THAN LEVELS FOUND WITH HIGHER INTENSITIES. OCCLUSION TRAINING IS APPLICABLE FOR THOSE WHO ARE UNABLE TO SUSTAIN HIGH LOADS DUE TO JOINT PAIN, POSTOPERATIVE PATIENTS, CARDIAC REHABILITATION, ATHLETES WHO ARE UNLOADING, AND ASTRONAUTS.
Current practice of prostate biopsy in Australia and New Zealand: A survey

Introduction: Prostate biopsy remains the gold standard for prostate cancer diagnosis. The field of prostate biopsy is undergoing a rapid change. This study aims to provide a snapshot of the current practice of prostate biopsy in the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand (USANZ). Materials and Methods: A 31-question multiple-choice survey was constructed using a web-based provider and was distributed to 644 members of USANZ. The questionnaire addressed various aspects of prostate biopsy. Questionnaire results were collated and the data were analyzed statistically. Results: 150 completed surveys were returned, with a response rate of 23.3%: 84.5% of those completing the survey were consultant urologists and 68% were working in a metropolitan setting. 98.6% of clinicians used prophylactic antibiotics before prostate biopsy, most commonly a quinolone. 30.6% had used intravenous (IV) carbapenems at least once. Peri-prostatic local anesthetic (LA) infiltration was used by 39.9% of clinicians with 73% using IV sedation or general anesthetic (GA). 38.4% of clinicians reported performing TPT biopsy of the prostate and 19.6% of clinicians had ordered a MRI of the prostate prior to an initial biopsy with 10.2% routinely ordering a MRI of the prostate before repeat biopsy. Conclusion: Frequent prophylactic use of carbapenems suggests concern amongst clinicians about sepsis with quinolone-resistant bacteria. Almost 75% of TRUS biopsies were performed under IV sedation or GA indicating a heavy demand of health resources. TPT biopsy was used commonly and there was significant use of multiparametric MRI prior to prostate biopsy.
MicroRNA and Cancer: Tiny Molecules with Major Implications

Cancer is currently a major public health problem and, as such, emerging research is making significant progress in identifying major players in its biology. One recent topic of interest involves microRNAs (miRNAs) which are small, non-coding RNA molecules that inhibit gene expression post-transcriptionally. They accomplish this by binding to the 3’ untranslated region (3’UTR) of target messengerRNA (mRNA), resulting in either their degradation or inhibition of translation, depending on the degree of complementary base pairing. They are transcribed by RNA polymerase II and are formed into mature miRNAs via two steps, each catalyzed by a different ribonuclease III (RNaseIII). Cross-species comparisons demonstrate that miRNAs are evolutionarily conserved and play important roles in a wide array of normal biological processes. Importantly, aberrant miRNA expression is correlated with human disease, especially in the development of cancer. Recent research has identified targets and functions of miRNAs, illustrating that some are oncogenic in nature while others show tumor suppressor activity. The miRNAs have also been characterized as having high potential in the clinical arena and, as such, have been a target for exploitation toward cancer therapy. Not only has it been shown that miRNA expression profiles may prove useful as diagnostic and prognostic markers in cancer, various miRNA-based therapies show promise as well. It is anticipated that further research will elucidate the benefits of using miRNAs as clinical agents in the battle against cancer and other chronic diseases.
A Conversation Analysis of self-initiated repair structures in Jordanian Spoken Arabic

This article studies the Conversation Analysis (CA) of self-initiated repair structures in everyday conversations in Jordanian Spoken Arabic (JSA). It aims to cast light on self-initiated repairs practised by Jordanians. The data were collected in 2010; 18 dyadic-videotaped conversations totalling about nine hours, mixed and single-sex, were conducted at Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan. The data analysed include 1595 self-initiated repairs. The CA approach is employed as a theoretical framework for this study. The findings of this research indicate that Jordanian speakers practise 10 self-initiated repair structures, namely, expansion, hesitation, replacement, repetition, abort and restart, abort and abandon, insertion, deletion, meta-repair and modify order.
Resistance to the Translation Initiation Inhibitor Silvestrol is Mediated by ABCB1/P-Glycoprotein Overexpression in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Cells

Protein synthesis is a powerful therapeutic target in leukemias and other cancers, but few pharmacologically viable agents are available that affect this process directly. The plant-derived agent silvestrol specifically inhibits translation initiation by interfering with eIF4A/mRNA assembly with eIF4F. Silvestrol has potent in vitro and in vivo activity in multiple cancer models including acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and is under pre-clinical development by the US National Cancer Institute, but no information is available about potential mechanisms of resistance. In a separate report, we showed that intraperitoneal silvestrol is approximately 100% bioavailable systemically, although oral doses were only 1% bioavailable despite an apparent lack of metabolism. To explore mechanisms of silvestrol resistance and the possible role of efflux transporters in silvestrol disposition, we characterized multi-drug resistance transporter expression and function in a silvestrol-resistant ALL cell line generated via culture of the 697 ALL cell line in gradually increasing silvestrol concentrations. This resistant cell line, 697-R, shows significant upregulation of ABCB1 mRNA and P-glycoprotein (Pgp) as well as cross-resistance to known Pgp substrates vincristine and romidepsin. Furthermore, 697-R cells readily efflux the fluorescent Pgp substrate rhodamine 123. This effect is prevented by Pgp inhibitors verapamil and cyclosporin A, as well as siRNA to ABCB1, with concomitant re-sensitization to silvestrol. Together, these data indicate that silvestrol is a substrate of Pgp, a potential obstacle that must be considered in the development of silvestrol for oral delivery or targeting to tumors protected by Pgp overexpression.
The influence of MHC and non-MHC genes on the nature of murine cardiac allograft rejection. I. Kinetic analysis of mononuclear cell infiltrate and MHC-class I/class II expression in donor tissue.

While normal cardiac tissue expresses low levels of MHC-class I, undetectable levels of MHC-class II antigens, and no mononuclear cell infiltrates, posttransplantation allogeneic donor cardiac tissue demonstrates dramatic increases of MHC-class I/class II expression coincident with the infiltration of the tissue with mononuclear cells. Results of this study demonstrate that the kinetics of MHC-class I/II antigen expression and the phenotype of mononuclear cell infiltrate are influenced, to a great degree, by the genetic H-2, intra-H-2 and non-H-2 incompatibility between donor and recipient strains of mice. Increases of MHC-class I precede class II expression in cells from donor cardiac tissue from completely allogeneic BALB/c, H-2-disparate B10.D2, B10.BR, and K, I-A and I-E-disparate B10.T (6R) strains of mice implanted in B10 recipients. In contrast, increase in the level of MHC-class II precedes MHC-class I increases in donor cardiac tissue from H-2-identical but non-H-2-incompatible A. By and the I-E + H-2D end-different B10.A(5R) donor tissue. The completely allogeneic, H-2-disparate or K, I-A, I-E-disparate donor cardiac tissue induced the infiltration of predominantly CD8+ T cells, whereas the non H-2 and I-E + H-2D end-different donor cardiac tissue induced the infiltration of predominantly CD4+ T cells. Finally, whereas bm1 donor cardiac tissue is rejected by B6 recipients by day 32, the (bm1 x bm12)F1 allografts are rejected by day 20, and both express MHC-class I antigens followed by MHC-class II antigens, and contain predominantly CD8+ T cells. In contrast, bm12 allografts are not rejected by B6 recipients, express chronic low levels of both MHC-class I and II antigens, and contain predominantly CD4+ T cells. Of interest is our preliminary finding that bm12 allografts placed in one ear of B6 recipients appear to modify the kinetics of MHC antigen expression and the predominant phenotype of mononuclear cell infiltrates in bm1 allografts placed in the opposite ear. Cumulatively, these data suggest that the type of genetic disparity between cardiac donor and recipient greatly influences the quantitative and qualitative host responses.
Performance impact of resource contention in multicore systems

Resource sharing in commodity multicore processors can have a significant impact on the performance of production applications. In this paper we use a differential performance analysis methodology to quantify the costs of contention for resources in the memory hierarchy of several multicore processors used in high-end computers. In particular, by comparing runs that bind MPI processes to cores in different patterns, we can isolate the effects of resource sharing. We use this methodology to measure how such sharing affects the performance of four applications of interest to NASA — OVERFLOW, MITgcm, Cart3D, and NCC. We also use a subset of the HPCC benchmarks and hardware counter data to help interpret and validate our findings. We conduct our study on high-end computing platforms that use four different quad-core microprocessors — Intel Clovertown, Intel Harpertown, AMD Barcelona, and Intel Nehalem-EP. The results help further our understanding of the requirements these codes place on their production environments and also of each computer's ability to deliver performance.
Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide stimulates insulin and glucagon secretion in humans.

Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) has been localized to pancreatic nerves and demonstrated to stimulate insulin and glucagon secretion in experimental animals. This study examined the occurrence and possible function of PACAP in the human pancreas. The content of PACAP27 was 0.44 +/- 0.04 pmol/g tissue, and that of PACAP38 was 29.6 +/- 6.4 pmol/g tissue in extracted human pancreas (n = 4). Furthermore, in a homogeneous group of seven healthy postmenopausal women, all aged 57 yr, iv infusion of synthetic human PACAP27 (3 pmol/kg.min for 75 min) increased basal levels of insulin, C peptide, and glucagon without significantly influencing basal glucose after 14 min. At 15 min, glucose was administered rapidly (0.3 g/kg, iv). The peak insulin after bolus glucose was 797 +/- 232 pmol/L during PACAP27 infusion vs. 559 +/- 164 pmol/L during saline infusion (P = 0.018). Also, the peak in C peptide after glucose was potentiated by PACAP27 (P = 0.018). In contrast, hepatic extraction, calculated as the C peptide/insulin molar ratio, was not significantly affected by PACAP27, and neither the glucose elimination rate nor reduction of serum insulin after the glucose-induced peak was changed by PACAP27. We conclude that PACAP occurs in human pancreas and stimulates insulin and glucagon secretion in humans. This suggests that PACAP is involved in the regulation of islet function in humans.
A Review of the Pathophysiology and Novel Treatments for Erectile Dysfunction

Erectile dysfunction (ED) affects up to 50% of men between the ages of 40 and 70. Treatment with PDE-5 inhibitors is effective in the majority of men with ED. However, PDE-5 inhibitors are not effective when levels of nitric oxide (NO), the principle mediator of erection, are low. The pharmacologic actions of three new potential treatments for ED are discussed in this paper: (1) sGC stimulators/activators, (2) Rho-kinase inhibitors, and (3) sodium nitrite.
Production planning problems with joint service-level guarantee: a computational study

We consider a class of single-stage multi-period production planning problems under demand uncertainty. The main feature of our paper is to incorporate a joint service-level constraint to restrict the joint probability of having backorders in any period. This is motivated by manufacturing and retailing applications, in which firms need to decide the production quantities ex ante, and also have stringent service-level agreements. The inflexibility of dynamically altering the pre-determined production schedule may be due to contractual agreement with external suppliers or other economic factors such as enormously large fixed costs and long lead time. We focus on two stochastic variants of this problem, with or without pricing decisions, both subject to a joint service-level guarantee. The demand distribution could be nonstationary and correlated across different periods. Using the sample average approximation (SAA) approach for solving chance-constrained programs, we reformulate the two variants as mixed-integer linear programs (MILPs). Via computations of diverse instances, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the SAA approach, analyse the solution feasibility and objective bounds, and conduct sensitivity analysis for the two MILPs. The approaches can be generalised to a wide variety of production planning problems, and the resulting MILPs can be efficiently computed by commercial solvers.
Statistical Analysis of Reliability in edge detection techniques using Optical Coherent Tomography image

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) has many uses in medicine and engineering biology. It is a non-invasive technique where Edge detection in image processing playing a significant role in characterization of boundaries and identifying the structural properties in image. In this paper, Choroidal neovascularization – OCT image is comparatively analysis by various Edge Detection techniques. Statistical analysis of Mean Square Error (MSE) is compared with multidimensional scaling methods. On the reliability of scaling, inter-correlation matrix in calculated from correction, dissimilarly and Euclidean distance model is evolved. Resultant graph described the characteristics of edge detection techniques. Keyword: Multidimensional analysis; Correlation; Edge detection; Optical Coherence Tomography.
Enhancing loop buffering of media and telecommunications applications using low-overhead predication

Media- and telecommunications-focused processors, increasingly designed as deeply pipelined, statically-scheduled VLIWs, rely on loop buffers for low-overhead execution of simple loops. Key loops containing control flow pose a substantial problem-full predication has a high encoding overhead, and partial predication techniques do not support if-conversion, the transformation of general acyclic control flow into predicated blocks. Using a set of significant media processing benchmarks, drawn from MediaBench and contemporary telecommunications standards, we explore a compromise approach. We demonstrate a compiler using if-conversion and specialized loop transformations to arrange for 70-99% of fetched operations to come from a simple, statically managed 256-instruction loop buffer, saving instruction fetch power and eliminating branch penalties. To complement this we introduce a "niche" form of predication specialized to permit general if-conversion with only a single bit in the encoding of each operation and to eliminate much of the hardware overhead of a predicate register-based approach.