Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Responsiveness to the retinoic acid receptor-selective retinoid LGD1550 correlates with abrogation of transforming growth factor alpha/epidermal growth factor receptor autocrine signaling in head and neck squamous carcinoma cells.

PURPOSE The use of retinoids to prevent and/or treat cancers, including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), has been limited by the development of resistance and unwanted side effects. Receptor-selective retinoids are potentially less toxic than nonselective compounds. The present investigation was undertaken to determine the mechanism of responsiveness to an retinoic acid receptor-selective retinoid (LGD1550) that has shown antitumor efficacy in a xenograft model of HNSCC. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN A series of HNSCC cell lines were characterized with respect to proliferation and apoptosis after LGD1550 treatment. Relative responsiveness to LGD1550 was examined with respect to modulation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling pathways. RESULTS Cells were either growth inhibited and underwent apoptosis or were resistant to treatment with this compound. Retinoids have been shown to decrease the gene transcription rates of transforming growth factor (TGF)-alpha and EGFR in HNSCC. LGD1550 responsiveness was accompanied by decreased expression of TGF-alpha, EGFR, and modulation of EGFR signaling pathways, including signal transducers and activators of transcriptions and mitogen-activated protein kinase. In contrast, EGFR autocrine signaling pathways were not altered in HNSCC cells that were resistant to the growth inhibitory effects of LGD1550. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that there is a correlation between the efficacy of receptor-selective retinoids and modulation of TGF-alpha/EGFR signaling in HNSCC. Therefore, alterations of these signaling pathways may serve as a biomarker of clinical response.
Indicators of Land Degradation Vulnerability due to Anthropic Factors: Tools for an Efficient Planning

Land degradation is one of the most impacting phenomena on natural resource availability, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. In order to provide efficient tools for territorial sustainable management in areas affected by land degradation, it is important to define suitable models and indicators able to identify exposed areas and their vulnerability level, so as to provide an effective support for decision makers in identifying intervention priorities and planning mitigation/adaptation strategies. This work is focused on the evaluation at high spatial detail of land degradation vulnerability due to anthropic factors, which is a crucial issue in areas devoted to farming practices. Vulnerability is evaluated by integrating a new indicator of the mechanization level the authors recently developed, with a set of census based indicators of land management. The new indicator is independent of census data being based on land
Handling skewed results in news recommendations by focused analysis of semantic user profiles

To provide personalized services of digital product NEWS, complete understanding of user profile is very essential and crucial. It is observed that user interest in online news reading is very dynamic so we are making two profiles of each user: one for short term (dynamic) interests and one for long term (static) interests. We have designed an online news portal which prioritizes the preferred news topics based on the focused and deep analysis of registered user's profiles, made semantically based on our designed domain ontology.
Acquired disability in young women: a challenge for identity?

ABSTRACT Youth can be described as a transitional phase for the formation of identity. As young people often hold taken-for-granted assumptions regarding their future, disability may pose a challenge for their identity development. This paper analyses the retrospectively written autobiographical narratives by three young women who became disabled during their adolescence. The structure of the narratives is approached with sociologist Arthur Frank’s typology of illness narratives and identity through data-driven content analysis. This paper suggests that chaotic stories may hinder the development of identity, as the identity is described as delayed, hidden, silenced or neglected.
Motherhood Delay and the Human Capital of the Next Generation

This paper exploits biological fertility shocks as instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of motherhood delay on the cognitive ability of the next generation. Using detailed panel data on women in the NLSY79 and their first-born children aged 5 to 14, we find that a year of delay leads to significant increases in math and reading scores: a 7 year delay produces gains on par with the black-white score difference. These results reveal a potential weakness of pro-natalist policies that promote early motherhood. While such policies may succeed at increasing total period fertility rates, they will be less effective at increasing total human capital.
Competitive Advantage in the Irish Indigenous Software Industry and the Role of Inward Foreign Direct Investment

Since the mid-1980s, the software industry has been one of the fastest growing sectors of the Irish economy. This article examines the causes of the degree of success which the Irish indigenous software industry has attained in terms of growth and international competitiveness. In exploring the development of its competitive advantage we examine, in turn, the role of Irish factor conditions, domestic demand conditions, related and supporting industries, and firm strategy, structure and rivalry, in accordance with Porter's (1990) 'diamond' model. In doing this, we pay close attention to the role of foreign-owned transnational corporations (TNCs) in Ireland in influencing the development and competitive advantage of the indigenous software industry. This is a relevant issue in view of the simultaneous rapid development of the indigenous and foreign-owned branches of the industry, and also the strong growth among other, possibly related, TNC-dominated sectors such as computers and telecommunications equipment. This paper shows that the Irish indigenous software industry has had a strong competitive performance. There is no single outstanding reason for this; rather, causes can be found in all four of Porter's suggested determinants of competitive advantage, so that it is the combination of a range of favourable influences that has proved effective. However, the case of the Irish indigenous software industry shows how foreign TNCs can indeed have a significant positive influence on indigenous competitive advantage.
Illustrative Focus+Context Approaches in Interactive Volume Visualization

Illustrative techniques are a new and exciting direction in visualization research. Traditional techniques which have been used by scientific illustrators for centuries are re-examined under the light of modern computer technology. In this paper, we discuss the use of the focus+context concept for the illustrative visualization of volumetric data. We give an overview of the state-of-the-art and discuss recent approaches which employ this concept in novel ways.
Ant Colony Optimization for Tool Path Integration in Spray Forming Processes

Spray forming is a new manufacturing process. The automated tool planning for this process is a challenging problem, especially for geometry-complicated parts consisting of multiple freeform surfaces. We have developed a tool path planning system which can automatically generate tool plans. This paper discusses the path integration problem, i.e, how to connect the paths from different surface patches so that the overall path length is minimized. An ant colony optimization (ACO)-based path integration algorithm is developed to solve this problem. Experimental tests are carried out on sample data as well as real world automotive body parts. The results proved to he better (by up to 10%) compared with those of a genetic algorithm (GA)-based solution we developed before
Interaction between Overtraining and the Interindividual Variability May (Not) Trigger Muscle Oxidative Stress and Cardiomyocyte Apoptosis in Rats

Severe endurance training (overtraining) may cause underperformance related to muscle oxidative stress and cardiomyocyte alterations. Currently, such relationship has not been empirically established. In this study, Wistar rats (n = 19) underwent eight weeks of daily exercise sessions followed by three overtraining weeks in which the daily frequency of exercise sessions increased. After the 11th training week, eight rats exhibited a reduction of 38% in performance (nonfunctional overreaching group (NFOR)), whereas eleven rats exhibited an increase of 18% in performance (functional overreaching group (FOR)). The red gastrocnemius of NFOR presented significantly lower citrate synthase activity compared to FOR, but similar to that of the control. The activity of mitochondrial complex IV in NFOR was lower than that of the control and FOR. This impaired mitochondrial adaptation in NFOR was associated with increased antioxidant enzyme activities and increased lipid peroxidation (in muscle and plasma) relative to FOR and control. Cardiomyocyte apoptosis was higher in NFOR. Plasma creatine kinase levels were unchanged. We observed that some rats that presented evidence of muscle oxidative stress are also subject to cardiomyocyte apoptosis under endurance overtraining. Blood lipid peroxides may be a suitable biomarker for muscle oxidative stress that is unrelated to severe muscle damage.
World Wide Web Collecting Encyclopedic Knowledge Using the World Wide Web

This paper proposes a method to collect encyclopedic knowledge from the World Wide Web. For this purpose, we use linguistic patterns and text structures provided with HTML tags to extract text fragments containing term descriptions, from Web pages. We then use a language model to discard extraneous descriptions, and a clustering method to summarize resultant descriptions. We show the e ectiveness of our method by way of experiments.
The Client Attachment to Therapist Scale (CATS) in a Greek Clinical Population: A Validation Study

Client attachment to therapist has been long considered a prominent process variable in psychotherapy research. The purpose of this study was to translate in Greek and evaluate the structure, reliability, convergent and discriminant validity of the well-known and widely administered Client Attachment to Therapist Scale (CATS) with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in a clinical sample of 153 clients of different treatment modalities and at different agencies. The results indicated that the EFA resulted in a model almost identical to the Mallinckrodt, Gantt and Coble’s [1] original model after the deletion of six items. Moreover, the findings indicated adequate internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent and discriminant validity of the three factors. Normalized scores were provided to help mental health professionals interpret the scale scores. In conclusion, CATS is a valid and reliable tool to measure client attachment to therapist, whose use can promote psychotherapeutic process and outcome. Thus, more validation studies should be conducted in several cultural contexts to better understand its structure and psychometric characteristics.
Giving ideas an equal chance: inclusion and representation in participatory design with children

Participatory Design (PD) in various guises is a popular approach with the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) community. In studying it as a method very little work has considered the fundamentals of participation, namely how children choose to participate and how their ideas are included and represented. This paper highlights ethical concerns about PD with children within the context of information needed to consent. In helping children understand participation in PD, a central aspect is the necessity to help children understand how their design ideas are used which itself challenges researchers to seek a fair and equitable process that is describable and defensible. The TRAck (tracking, representing and acknowledging) Method, is described as an initial process that could meet this need. This is evaluated, in two forms, in a PD study with 84 children. The TRAck Method encouraged careful scrutiny of designs and allowed the researchers to distil useful design ideas although these were maybe not the most imaginative. There is a trade off between the limitations of applying such a process to PD against the benefits of ensuring fullinformed involvement of children.
A Fluid Model for the Many-Server G t / GI / s t + GI Queue

In a recent paper we introduced and analyzed a deterministic GIt/M/st + GI fluid model that can be used to show how queue lengths and waiting times depend on model parameters in a large-scale queueing system that experiences periods of overloading. The main feature of the model is time-varying arrival rate and staffing, but the model also includes the realistic feature of a non-exponential patience distribution. Our key assumptions were (i) that the scale is large (there are many servers), (ii) that the system alternates between overloaded intervals and underloaded intervals, and (iii) that the service-time distribution is exponential. Here we extend the analysis to a large class of non-exponential service distributions. To do so, we express the service content density in an overloaded interval as the solution of a fixed point equation. We apply the Banach contraction fixed point theorem to show that the equation has a unique solution and to develop an efficient algorithm. Given the service content density, all other performance measures can be calculated by previous methods. We also show how the staffing can be chosen to stabilize delays at any target value.
Remote Policy Enforcement Using Java Virtual Machine

This work was carried out in the ASCI graduate school. ASCI dissertation series number 189. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A Ph.D. degree can be a journey of delight, discovery, joy, loneliness, frustration and desperation, maybe not in that order. I have been lucky to have colleagues, friends and family to support and help me through this amazing voyage and see me through to its end. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisors Andrew Tanen-baum and Bruno Crispo. Andy and Bruno have guided me over the years, taking in their stride my crazy ideas and letting me explore topics that lay at the fringes of my research area, while at the same time always steering me towards a cohesive structure for my dissertation work. Andy has always been an inspiring advisor, providing constant support and motivation. His ability to identify the crux of the problem, provide sharp, incisive and critical comments has helped me throughout the work and I hope I have imbibed some of those strengths over the years. Bruno has been a dedicated advisor, teaching me a lot about security, the need for scientific rigour and the need to consider the whole breadth of the research area. I owe a lot to them and I thank them both. Let me also take this opportunity to thank my doctoral committee: Prof. Brazier for their valuable comments and suggestions on the dissertation work. My colleagues have been a constant source of support and help through the years. A big thanks to Patrick for doing the heavy lifting of implementing a lot of the ideas presented in this dissertation. The conversations with Martijn and Philip on security issues and beyond have enriched my work several times over. A big thanks to my room mates Michel, Reza, Maik and Elzbieta for putting up with me! I would also like to Berry and Elth for making vii viii the workplace fun and enjoyable. I was fortunate to do a couple of internships during the course of these years and would like to thank my former colleagues at BT: who hosted me and provided great work environments and welcome break from Ph.D. work. I owe this dissertation work to my family: my dad (who did not live long enough to see it in this form), my mom, my wife and my brother. My parents have been a constant source of comfort and support over …
Comparing Flow-Aware and Flow-Oblivious Adaptive Routing

This paper compares two approaches to realizing adaptive routing in the Internet: flow-oblivious multi-path routing using optimal end-to-end congestion control and flow-aware routing using fair queueing to share bandwidth on one or several paths. Multi-path congestion control provides ideal performance, assuming protocols can be designed to approximate the optimal fluid model. Flow-aware networking is more robust and less dependent on user cooperation and provides satisfactory performance provided use of long paths is limited in heavy traffic by applying "trunk reservation".
Autism, optimism and positive events: Evidence against a general optimistic bias

The conclusion that people are optimistic concerning personal risk does not have a sound evidential basis. Following Harris and Hahn’s (2011) critique of unrealistic optimism research, we consider the evidence from a recent series of high profile neuroscience papers. We demonstrate that the methods used are fundamentally flawed. A simulation and an empirical comparison of autism spectrum condition participants with typical adults confirm that we have learnt nothing about optimism from these studies.
PERSEPSI MAHASISWA TERHADAP STRATEGI READING, QUESTIONING AND ANSWERING (RQA) DAN ARGUMENT-DRIVEN INQURY (ADI)

Individuals’ behaviors are regulated by how they perceive themselves and their surroundings. Learning that encourages students to be active will provide more effective environment to facilitate them to achieve predetermined learning objectives. It is very important to identify college students’ perception and investigate to what extent they can understand learning strategies that are being implemented. This research was a descriptive quantitative research which involved 142 biology education students. Two questionnaires were distributed to obtain students’ perception on the implementation of Reading Questioning and Answering (RQA) and Argument Driven Inqury (ADI) learning strategies. As to collect more data, observation and interviews were also conducted. Research findings indicate that (1) 38,32% of the students have ever heard about RQA, but only 18,60 of them have experienced learning biology with RQA; (2) around 24,26% of the students are quite familiar with ADI, however, only 9,45% have been taught using the strategy.
The Higher Education Funding Revolution: An Exploration of Statewide Community College “Free Tuition” Programs

ABSTRACT This article examines the current literature and state legislation of statewide free tuition promise programs. The purpose of this paper was to analyze state free community college programs, legislation, scholarly literature, and state websites to understand program structures, funding sources, and student-eligibility requirements. The following classifications of state programs emerged: community and technical college programs, workforce development programs, and programs for both 2- and 4-year degrees and certificates. Additionally, this article examines the similarities and differences between programs to inform future research and accompanying outcomes.
Probability distribution, sampling unit, data transformations and sequential sampling of European vine moth, Lobesia botrana (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) larval counts from Northern Greece vineyards

Studies were conducted to investigate the distribution of larvae of the European vine moth, Lobesia botrana (Denis & Schiffermuller) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), a key vineyard pest of grape cultivars. The data collected were larval densities of the second and third generation of L. botrana on half-vine and entire plants of wine and table cultivars in 2003-2004. No insecticide treatments were applied to plants during the 2-year study. The distribution of L. botrana larvae can be described by a negative bino- mial. This reveals that the insect aggregates. A common value for the k parameter of the negative binomial distribution of kc = 0.6042, was obtained, using maximum likelihood estimation, and the advantages and cases of use of a common k are discussed. The and proved to be the best transformations for L. botrana larval counts. An entire vine is k � 1 Sinh � 1 � kx �1/2� k � 1 Sinh � 1 � kx �3/8� recommended as the sampling unit for research purposes, whereas a half-vine, which is suitable for grape vine cultivation in northern Greece, is recommended for practical purposes. We used these findings to develop a fixed precision sequential sampling plan and a sequential sampling program for classifying the pest status of L. botrana larvae.
A Transient-Enhanced 20μA-Quiescent 200mA-Load Low-Dropout Regulator With Buffer Impedance Attenuation

This paper demonstrates a 200mA low-dropout regulator (LDO) for portable applications. Buffer impedance attenuation is developed to realize a single-pole loop response through shunt feedback. The LDO is thus unconditionally stable without using an ESR zero and output undershoots and overshoots are minimized during load transients. Implemented in 0. 35μm twin-well CMOS, the LDO only dissipates 20μA quiescent current. With a 1μF output capacitor, the maximum transient-output variation is 54mV with full-load step change of 200mA.
Frequency Synthesizer using TDTL with Enhanced Performance

An enhanced frequency synthesizer using a first order time delay tanlock loop (TDTL) is proposed in this work. Two adaptation mechanisms are introduced to improve the performance of the synthesizer. The first method compensates for the errors that resulted from the division process within the loop. The other adaptation technique is targeted at improving the locking performance of the loop. The later method is based on sensing the frequency at an earlier stage so that the error signal can be adapted for any frequency disturbance. The new developed synthesizer offers rapid acquisition and improved tracking performance over a wide locking range.
CD56bright natural killer cells and response to daclizumab HYP in relapsing-remitting MS

Objective: To assess the relationship between CD56bright natural killer (NK) cells and multiple sclerosis (MS) disease activity in patients with relapsing-remitting MS treated with daclizumab high-yield process (DAC HYP). Methods: Data were from patients enrolled in a 52-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of DAC HYP and its extension study. Assessments included relationships of CD56bright NK cell numbers (identified using fluorescence-activated cell sorting) at weeks 4 and 8 with the numbers of new or newly enlarging T2-hyperintense lesions between weeks 24 and 52 and the annualized relapse rate. Results: In DAC HYP–treated patients but not placebo-treated patients, the numbers of CD56bright NK cells increased over 52 weeks of treatment, and their numbers at weeks 4 and 8 predicted the number of new or newly enlarging T2-hyperintense lesions between weeks 24 and 52 of treatment (p ≤ 0.005 for each comparison). Similar but nonsignificant trends were observed between CD56bright NK cell counts and the annualized relapse rate in DAC HYP–treated patients. DAC HYP–treated patients who showed lower levels of expansion of CD56bright NK cells still developed fewer new or newly enlarging T2-hyperintense lesions than placebo-treated patients during the first year of treatment. Conclusions: CD56bright NK cells appear to mediate some of the treatment-related effects of DAC HYP, but their numbers do not account for the full effect of DAC HYP on MS-related outcomes.