Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adenovirus-mediated transfer of inducible caspases: a novel "death switch" gene therapeutic approach to prostate cancer.

In patients with localized prostate cancer, radical prostatectomy and radiation therapy, although effective in controlling localized disease, are often associated with significant side effects attributable to injury of adjacent tissues. Moreover, patients with metastatic disease eventually fail systemic hormonal or chemotherapy because of the development of progressive, refractory disease. In this study, we evaluated the safety and efficacy of a novel suicide gene therapy that could potentially spare normal tissue while bypassing molecular mechanisms of apoptosis resistance by using chemically inducible effector caspases to trigger apoptosis in prostate cancer cells. Initially, we compared the ability of a panel of inducible Fas signaling intermediates to kill human and murine prostate cancer cell lines. On the basis of the superior killing by downstream caspase-1 and caspase-3, replication-deficient adenoviral vectors expressing conditional caspase-1 (Ad-G/iCasp1) or caspase-3 (Ad-G/iCasp3), regulated by nontoxic, lipid-permeable, chemical inducers of dimerization (CID), were constructed. Upon vector transduction followed by CID administration, aggregation and activation of these recombinant caspases occur, leading to rapid apoptosis. In vitro, both human (LNCaP and PC-3) and murine (TRAMP-C2 and TRAMP-C2G) prostate cancer cell lines were efficiently transduced and killed in a CID-dependent fashion. In vivo, direct injection of Ad-G/iCasp1 into s.c. TRAMP-C2 tumors caused focal but extensive apoptosis without evidence for a bystander effect at the maximal viral dose (i.e., 2.5 x 10(10) viral particles/25 microl) in host animals that also received CID compared with control animals. Treatment with Ad-G/iCasp1 plus CID resulted in a transient, yet significant, reduction both in tumor growth and volume compared with tumors treated with vector but not CID (P < 0.035) or vector-diluent plus CID (P < 0.022), both of which grew more rapidly. These results demonstrate that CID-regulated, caspase-based suicide gene therapy is safe and can inhibit the growth of experimental prostate cancer in vitro and in vivo through potent induction of apoptosis, providing a rationale for further development.
PATIENTS IN THE NEW ECONOMY: THE "SICK ROLE" IN A TIME OF ECONOMIC DISCIPLINE

From the anonymous victim of epidemics as collective scourges, from the traditional image of the alienated and passive "patient" to the "self-provider of medical care" as a new cultural figure, to the "health-care user" as a collective actor in the public-health system, and finally to the militant for whom the body is the basis of a new political action, the "sick person" appears to have travelled a long way, about which a number of questions must be asked (Herzlich and Pierret, 1987: 229).
A new RSA cryptosystem hardware design based on Montgomery's algorithm

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm based on Montgomery's algorithm to calculate modular multiplication that is the core arithmetic operation in an RSA cryptosystem. The modified algorithm eliminates over large residue and has very short critical path delay that yields a very high speed processing. The new architecture based on this modified algorithm takes about 1.5n/sup 2/ clock cycles on the average to finish one n-bit RSA operation. We have implemented a 512-bit single-chip RSA processor based on the modified algorithm with Compass 0.6-/spl mu/m SPDM CMOS cell library. The simulation results show that the processor can operate up to 125 MHz and deliver the baud rate of 164 Kbits/s on the average.
An encoding and identification approach for the static sign language recognition

Sign language identification and recognition technique is composed by the gesture images detection and the hand gestures recognition. Gesture images detection is to locate the image part of palm and fingers from the captured pictures, and rotating them to the appropriate gesture posture. Both of them are the important pre-processing for sign language identification and recognition. Lose them, the correctness rate of the sign language recognition algorithms will be dropped down to an unacceptable level. This paper presents novel processing algorithms for the gesture images detection and recognition. In the detection process, it rotates an askew gesture to right position, and to delete the elbow and forearm parts from the captured pictures. In the recognition process, it includes two phases with the model construction and the sign language identification. In the model construction phase, the static hand gesture of sign language is constructed by the Gaussian mixture model, and the unknown gesture image is identified by Gaussian model match. Based on this presented static sign language detection and recognition algorithms, the correct recognition rate is about 94% in average.
Draft Genome Sequence of Methylobacterium mesophilicum Strain SR1.6/6, Isolated from Citrus sinensis

ABSTRACT Methylobacterium mesophilicum strain SR1.6/6 is an endophytic bacterium isolated from a surface-sterilized Citrus sinensis branch. Ecological and biotechnological aspects of this bacterium, such as the genes involved in its association with the host plant and the primary oxidation of methanol, were annotated in the draft genome.
Teaching about Religion's Power in Colonial New England: The Case of Elizabeth Jackson Howe

Broadcasting System’s Colonial House series (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ colonialhouse/), they experience the physical and technological hardships involved in establishing a colony in the New World in the seventeenth century. Students participating in a case study of Elizabeth Jackson Howe examine and come to understand the overarching power of religion in shaping the perspectives and behavior of seventeenthcentury colonists in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The power of Puritan religious expression is missing in Colonial House, partly because the modern colonists in the simulated experiment about life in 1628 in the Maine woods brought with them concerns about materialism and technology. In Colonial House, the colonists go to church for an informal sharing of their personal visions and their relationships with each other. By contrast, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, members attended church to examine their relationship with God and the power of His expectations for them in overcoming evil. Religion was a far more dominant concern in the Massachusetts Bay Colony than it is depicted in Colonial House. Puritan society was so permeated by its religious beliefs that there was almost no separation between sacred and secular (Hill 1995, 8).
Finnish nurses’ attitudes towards their role in the euthanasia process

Background: Nurses’ voices remain unheard in most debates about euthanasia, although their crucial role in the euthanasia process is widely acknowledged. Moreover, in Canadian euthanasia law, nurses have a more active role, which further highlights the need for knowledge about nurses’ attitudes towards their role in the euthanasia process. Research questions: What are Finnish nurses’ attitudes towards their potential role in the euthanasia process? Which characteristics are associated with those attitudes? Research design: Cross-sectional web-based survey. Participants and research context: 1003 nurses, recruited via social media and the members’ bulletin of the Finnish Nurses Association. Ethical considerations: Ethical approval was obtained from the Committee on Research Ethics of the university to which the first author was affiliated. Findings: The great majority (85.2%) of nurses felt that their perspective should be considered in decision-making related to euthanasia. Furthermore, most of the participants (74.7%) reported willingness to participate in the euthanasia process if it were legal, and 88.6% agreed that a nurse should be present when euthanasia is performed if the patient wishes so. Furthermore, over half agreed that some of the preparatory tasks were part of their job description. However, a minority (32.9%) agreed with a possible obligation to participate based on their profession. Nurses’ age, religiosity and educational level influenced their attitudes in the current results. Discussion: Despite the strong agreement on decision-making concerning euthanasia and participation in the euthanasia process, obligation to participate based on the profession was rejected by most participants. Nurses regarded themselves as consultants in the decision-making process, which may indicate their unwillingness to share the responsibility for the decision itself. Conclusion: Specific safety mechanisms should be considered to protect nurses who refuse to be involved in the euthanasia process due to harm that involuntary participation might cause.
Exercise-Induced Cognitive Plasticity, Implications for Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease

Lifestyle factors such as intellectual stimulation, cognitive and social engagement, nutrition, and various types of exercise appear to reduce the risk for common age-associated disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular dementia. In fact, many studies have suggested that promoting physical activity can have a protective effect against cognitive deterioration later in life. Slowing or a deterioration of walking speed is associated with a poor performance in tests assessing psychomotor speed and verbal fluency in elderly individuals. Fitness training influences a wide range of cognitive processes, and the largest positive impact observed is for executive (a.k.a. frontal lobe) functions. Studies show that exercise improves additional cognitive functions such as tasks mediated by the hippocampus, and result in major changes in plasticity in the hippocampus. Interestingly, this exercise-induced plasticity is also pronounced in APOE ε4 carriers who express a risk factor for late-onset AD that may modulate the effect of treatments. Based on AD staging by Braak and Braak (1991) and Braak et al. (1993) we propose that the effects of exercise occur in two temporo-spatial continua of events. The “inward” continuum from isocortex (neocortex) to entorhinal cortex/hippocampus for amyloidosis and a reciprocal “outward” continuum for neurofibrillary alterations. The exercise-induced hypertrophy of the hippocampus at the core of these continua is evaluated in terms of potential for prevention to stave off neuronal degeneration. Exercise-induced production of growth factors such as the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has been shown to enhance neurogenesis and to play a key role in positive cognitive effects. Insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) may mediate the exercise-induced response to exercise on BDNF, neurogenesis, and cognitive performance. It is also postulated to regulate brain amyloid β (Aβ) levels by increased clearance via the choroid plexus. Growth factors, specifically fibroblast growth factor and IGF-1 receptors and/or their downstream signaling pathways may interact with the Klotho gene which functions as an aging suppressor gene. Neurons may not be the only cells affected by exercise. Glia (astrocytes and microglia), neurovascular units and the Fourth Element may also be affected in a differential fashion by the AD process. Analyses of these factors, as suggested by the multi-dimensional matrix approach, are needed to improve our understanding of this complex multi-factorial process, which is increasingly relevant to conquering the escalating and intersecting world-wide epidemics of dementia, diabetes, and sarcopenia that threaten the global healthcare system. Physical activity and interventions aimed at enhancing and/or mimicking the effects of exercise are likely to play a significant role in mitigating these epidemics, together with the embryonic efforts to develop cognitive rehabilitation for neurodegenerative disorders.
Adding large EM stack support

Serial section electron microscopy (SSEM) image stacks generated using high throughput microscopy techniques are an integral tool for investigating brain connectivity and cell morphology. FIB or 3View scanning electron microscopes easily generate gigabytes of data. In order to produce analyzable 3D dataset from the imaged volumes, efficient and reliable image segmentation is crucial. Classical manual approaches to segmentation are time consuming and labour intensive. Semiautomatic seeded watershed segmentation algorithms, such as those implemented by ilastik image processing software, are a very powerful alternative, substantially speeding up segmentation times. We have used ilastik effectively for small EM stacks - on a laptop, no less; however, ilastik was unable to carve the large EM stacks we needed to segment because its memory requirements grew too large - even for the biggest workstations we had available. For this reason, we refactored the carving module of ilastik to scale it up to large EM stacks on large workstations, and tested its efficiency. We modified the carving module, building on existing blockwise processing functionality to process data in manageable chunks that can fit within RAM (main memory). We review this refactoring work, highlighting the software architecture, design choices, modifications, and issues encountered.
Are between- and within-school differences in student performance largely due to socio-economic background? Evidence from 30 countries

Background Educational differentiation, or the allocation of students to different types of school or different locations within schools, is a common feature of modern education systems. In most countries, student outcomes vary considerably, both by school and academic location within schools. Purpose The purpose is to ascertain the extent that between- and within-school differences in student performance can be attributed to students' socio-economic background and their home resources. Sample The samples are from the OECD's 2000 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study of 15-year-old students' performance in reading, mathematics and science. Data from 30 countries were analysed. The student samples ranged between 2500 (USA) and 30,000 (Canada) students. The samples are representative of the populations of 15-year-old school students in each country. Design and methods Multiple regression analysis was used to ascertain the extent to which between-school differences (measured by intra-class correlations) and within-school differences (measured by the effects of the composite variable ‘academic location’ which comprised grade and school programme) declined when taking into consideration students' socio-economic background and home environment. Results In most countries the intra-class correlations and the effects of academic location declined only marginally. This was especially the case in countries with large between-school differences such as the tracked systems of continental Europe. Conclusions Differences in student performance between and within schools cannot be accounted for by socio-economic background. The study lends some support to the official rational for tracking and other forms of educational differentiation, that the allocation of students to different school types and academic locations within schools is largely based on student ability.
Finding module-based gene networks with state-space models - Mining high-dimensional and short time-course gene expression data

This study explores some problems to analyze time-course gene expression data by state-space models (SSMs). One problem is regarding the methods of parameter estimation and determination of the dimension of the internal state variable. Although several methods have been applied, there are few literature studies which with to compare them. Thus, this paper gives a brief review of the existing literature that use the SSM to analyze the gene expression time-course data. Another problem is the identifiability of the model. If the parameters of SSMs are simply estimated without any constraints for parameter space, they lack identifiability. To identify a system uniquely, it requires a specific algorithm to estimate the parameters with some constraints. For that purpose, an identifiable form of SSMs and an algorithm for estimating parameters are derived. The last problem is the extraction of biological information by interpreting the estimated parameters, such as mechanism of gene regulations at the module level. For that one, this paper explores methods to extract further information using the estimated parameters, that is, reconstruction of a module network from time-course gene expression data
Causal Binding of Actions to Their Effects

According to widely held views in cognitive science harking back to David Hume, causality cannot be perceived directly, but instead is inferred from patterns of sensory experience, and the quality of these inferences is determined by perceivable quantities such as contingency and contiguity. We report results that suggest a reversal of Hume's conjecture: People's sense of time is warped by the experience of causality. In a stimulus-anticipation task, participants' response behavior reflected a shortened experience of time in the case of target stimuli participants themselves had generated, relative to equidistant, equally predictable stimuli they had not caused. These findings suggest that causality in the mind leads to temporal binding of cause and effect, and extend and generalize beyond earlier claims of intentional binding between action and outcome.
Students' Need for Belonging in the School Community

Defining sense of community as a feeling of belongingness within a group, this article reviews research about students' sense of acceptance within the school community to address three questions: Is this experience of belongingness important in an educational setting? Do students currently experience school as a community? And how do schools influence students' sense of community? Conceptually, the review reflects a social cognitive perspective on motivation. This theoretical framework maintains that individuals have psychological needs, that satisfaction of these needs affects perception and behavior, and that characteristics of the social context influence how well these needs are met. The concern here is how schools, as social organizations, address what is defined as a basic psychological need, the need to experience belongingness. The findings suggest that students' experience of acceptance influences multiple dimensions of their behavior but that schools adopt organizational practices that neglect and may actually undermine students' experience of membership in a supportive community.
Expected traffic reduction by content-oriented incentive in peer-assisted content delivery networks

Content services that deliver large-volume content files have been growing rapidly. In these services, it is crucial for the service provider and the network operator to minimize traffic volume in order to lower the cost charged for bandwidth and the cost for network infrastructure, respectively. To reduce the traffic, traffic localization has been discussed; network traffic is localized when requested content files are served by an other nearby altruistic client instead of the source servers. With this mechanism, the concept of the peer-assisted content delivery network (CDN) can localize the overall traffic and enable service providers to minimize traffic without deploying or borrowing distributed storage. To localize traffic effectively, content files that are likely to be requested by many clients should be cached locally. We present a traffic engineering scheme for peer-assisted CDN models. Its key idea is to control the behavior of clients by using a content-oriented incentive mechanism. This approach optimizes traffic flows by letting altruistic clients download content files that are most likely to contribute to localizing network traffic. To let altruistic clients request the desired files, we combine content files while keeping the price equal to that for a single content. We discuss the performance of our proposed algorithm considering the cache replacement algorithms.
R‐CHOP‐14 in patients with diffuse large B‐cell lymphoma younger than 70 years: a multicentre, prospective study

Several studies have shown that adding rituximab to CHOP (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, prednisolone) or reducing the interval between chemotherapy cycles from 3 weeks to 2 weeks improves survival in patients with diffuse large B‐cell lymphoma (DLBCL). These studies prompted our group (GOTEL) to evaluate prospectively in a pilot study the feasibility and efficacy of R‐CHOP‐14 in patients with DLBCL. Patients (<70 years) with stage II bulky or stage III or IV DLBCL and no significant comorbidities were included in the study. Rituximab was administered on day 1 before chemotherapy. R‐CHOP was given every 14 days. All patients received filgrastim (5 µg/kg) from days 4 to 10. From May 2002 to August 2004, 80 patients were recruited. Median age was 53 years and 58 patients were <60 years. According to the age‐adjusted international prognostic index (aaIPI), 13 patients (16%) had low‐risk disease, 31 (39%) low‐to‐intermediate risk, 27 (34%) high‐to‐intermediate risk and 9 (11%) high‐risk disease. Grade 3–4 neutropenia was observed in 15 patients (17.5%) and grade 3–4 infections in 13 patients (16%). After therapy, 58 patients (73%) achieved CR‐CRu (95% CI: 55–90%). With a median follow‐up of 26 months, progression‐free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) at 30 months were 72% and 86%, respectively. Administration of R‐CHOP‐14 is feasible and effective in patients <70 years. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Tolerantie in de postindustriële stad

In hedendaagse westerse samenlevingen kan intolerantie jegens etnische minderheden met name worden gevonden onder laagopgeleiden. Op basis van verschillende theorieen in de stadsstudies kan echter worden verondersteld dat zij in de meest postindustriele steden minder etnocentrisch zijn dan in de minst postindustriele steden. Dit artikel vergelijkt het etnocentrisme van laagopgeleide autochtonen woonachtig in de 22 Nederlandse grootstedelijke gebieden, en toont aan dat dit inderdaad het geval is. Vervolgens wordt onderzocht of dit kan worden verklaard door de grotere arbeidsmarktkansen aldaar of het tolerantere culturele klimaat.
A Dynamic Model of Repositioning

Consumer preferences change through time and firms must adjust their product positioning for their products to continue to be appealing to consumers. These changes in product positioning require fixed investments such that firms reposition only occasionally. I construct a model that can include predictable and unpredictable consumer preference changes, and where a firm optimally repositions its product given the current market conditions, and expected future repositionings. When unpredictable consumer preferences evolve away from a current firm’s positioning, the decision to reposition is like exercising an option to be closer to current consumer preferences, or waiting to reposition later or for those preferences to return so as to be closer to the firm’s current position. We characterize this optimal repositioning strategy, how it depends on the discount factor, variance of preferences, and repositioning costs. I compare the optimal policy of the firm with what could be optimal from a social welfare poi.