Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phospholipase A2 in chamber angle of normal eyes and patients with primary open angle glaucoma and exfoliation glaucoma

Purpose Phospholipase A2 (PLA2) is a growing family of lipolytic enzymes that play a key role in various biological processes including general lipid metabolism, membrane homeostasis, and in diseases such as atherosclerosis, arthritis, and acute pancreatitis. Oxidative stress as well as inflammation may be associated with glaucoma pathogenesis. Therefore, our aim was to examine the expression of group IIA secretory PLA2 (sPLA2-IIA), group V secretory PLA2 (sPLA2-V), calcium-independent PLA2 (iPLA2), and cytosolic PLA2 (cPLA2) type in the trabecular meshwork (TM) and the canal of Schlemm in normal eyes and in juxtacanalicular tissue samples from patients with primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) or exfoliation glaucoma (ExG). Methods TM tissues were isolated from healthy donor eyes for corneal transplantation. Specimens of inner wall of the Schlemm's canal and the juxtacanalicular tissue were collected during deep sclerectomy from the eyes of patients who had POAG or ExG. Antibodies against PLA2s (sPLA2-IIA, sPLA2-V, iPLA2, and cPLA2) and a standard immunohistochemical procedure were used for the analysis. Quantification of immunoreactions was provided using a Photoshop-based image analysis. Double-staining immunofluorescence of macrophages and sPLA2-IIA was performed by using confocal microscopy. Results sPLA2-IIA was not present in normal TM. In contrast, sPLA2-IIA levels were significantly higher in glaucoma patients than in controls. Furthermore, sPLA2-IIA expression was much higher in POAG when compared to ExG. iPLA2 was found to predominate in normal human TM, and it demonstrated strong labeling in the uveal and corneoscleral meshwork. The staining of juxtacanalicular meshwork was only moderate in density. In contrast, expression of the enzyme was significantly decreased in glaucoma patients, especially in ExG, when compared to normal controls or to POAG. In addition, strong regional differences were detected in sPLA2-IIA and iPLA2 levels in POAG, whereas immunostaining of these enzymes was much lower and rather uniform throughout ExG sample. In POAG, sPLA2-IIA staining was restricted to certain parts of the trabecular samples where sPLA2-IIA positive macrophages were also present. Immunostaining of sPLA2-V or cPLA2 was low, and no significant changes were found in levels of these enzymes between normal and glaucomatous samples. Conclusions sPLA2-IIA, an oxidative stress marker in atherosclerosis, is overexpressed especially in POAG. This result supports the hypothesis that oxidative stress may play a significant role in the pathogenesis of POAG. In ExG, a dramatic decrease in the expression level of iPLA2, a housekeeping enzyme in phospholipid remodeling, may indicate imbalance in phospholipid turnover and also inhibition of normal physiological functions in the TM. These findings may contribute to understanding the pathogenesis of POAG and ExG and may be important for the development of novel therapeutic strategies to different glaucomas.
EVOLUCIN DEL MARGEN DE INTERMEDIACIN EN ESPAA: TIPOS DE INTERS, COSTES O COMPETENCIA?

A medical device having a catheter and one or more expandable constricting/occluding members. The catheter is adapted for use with therapeutic or diagnostic devices, including an angioplasty/stent catheter and an atherectomy catheter. A first constrictor/occluder mounted at the distal end of the catheter is adapted for placement in a brachiocephalic or subclavian artery. A second constrictor mounted proximal to the first constrictor/occluder is adapted for placement in the descending aorta. Pressure measuring devices may be included, and filters may be used to capture embolic debris. Methods of using the devices for preventing distal embolization during extracranial or intracranial carotid procedures or vertebral artery procedures by augmenting collateral cerebral circulation by coarctation of the aorta to enhance reversal of blood flow in an internal carotid artery, an external carotid artery, and/or a common carotid artery toward the subclavian artery are disclosed.
Making meaning from mentoring: how successful female student affairs professionals experience mentoring

Approved: Jessica E. White, Major Professor While there is quite a bit of research on mentoring in general, there is a gap in the Student Affairs literature about how successful Student Affairs women make meaning out of their mentoring experiences. This study examines both mentees and their mentors through a phenomenological study in order to better understand what exactly makes up a successful mentonng experience. The goal of the thesis is to extrapolate the essence of the phenonmenon of mentoring, as experienced by successful female Student Affairs administrators. A better understanding of mentoring and the meaning that women make of their mentoring experiences will inform the field of Student Affairs and help professionals deviop more successful mentoring relationships. This can aid the field in the recruitment and retention of women in the profession. Redacted for privacy
Intersectional stigma and Older Black Women with HIV/AIDS.

HIV-related stigma is a barrier to the prevention and treatment of HIV. For midlife and older Black women, the nature and intensity of HIVrelated stigma may be compounded by their multiple marginalised social status based on gender, race, and age. We examined the perceptions and experiences of HIV-related stigma among midlife and older Black women living in Prince George’s County, Maryland, USA. Between 2014 and 2015, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a sample of 35 midlife and older Black women living with HIV. Using a modified grounded theory approach, we explored emergent themes related to the manifestation and experience of intersectional stigma and changes in stigma experience over time. Our findings suggest that intersectional stigma is a central feature in midlife and older Black women’s lives, with women reporting experiences of intersectional stigma at the interpersonal/familial, community, and institutional/structural levels. Although women acknowledged gradual acceptance of their HIV-positive status over time, they continued to experience negative responses related to gender, race, age, and disease. Our findings indicate that a more robust understanding of the impact of HIV-related stigma requires work to consider the complex manifestations of intersectional stigma among an increasingly aging population of Black women in the USA.
Aetiology of congenital and paediatric cataract in an Australian population

Background/aim: Paediatric cataract is a major cause of childhood blindness. Several genes associated with congenital and paediatric cataracts have been identified. The aim was to determine the incidence of cataract in a population, the proportion of hereditary cataracts, the mode of inheritance, and the clinical presentation. Methods: The Royal Children's Hospital and the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital have a referral base for almost all paediatric patients with cataracts in south eastern Australia. The database contains cases seen over the past 25 years. The medical histories of these patients were reviewed. Results: 421 patients with paediatric cataract were identified, which gives an estimated incidence of 2.2 per 10 000 births. Of the 342 affected individuals with a negative family history, 50% were diagnosed during the first year of life, and 56/342 (16%) were associated with a recognised systemic disease or syndrome. Unilateral cataract was identified in 178/342 (52%) of sporadic cases. 79 children (from 54 nuclear families) had a positive family history. Of these 54 families, 45 were recruited for clinical examination and DNA collection. Ten nuclear families were subsequently found to be related, resulting in four larger pedigrees. Thus, 39 families have been studied. The mode of inheritance was autosomal dominant in 30 families, X linked in four, autosomal recessive in two, and uncertain in three. In total, 178 affected family members were examined; of these 8% presented with unilateral cataracts and 43% were diagnosed within the first year of life. Conclusions: In the paediatric cataract population examined, approximately half of the patients were diagnosed in the first year of life. More than 18% had a positive family history of cataracts. Of patients with hereditary cataracts 8% presented with unilateral involvement. Identification of the genes that cause paediatric and congenital cataract should help clarify the aetiology of some sporadic and unilateral cataracts.
The Theory and Practice of Pay Setting

This review focuses on pay variance across workers, employers and across time and illustrates how theories of pay determination can shed light on this variance. We discuss the limitations of the orthodox economic approach to pay setting and emphasise the importance of labour market imperfections and the unique character of the labour contract in determining wage outcomes. Two broad conclusions emerge: first that no single theory of pay setting has an over-riding claim to virtue; and second that, in spite of the institutional knowledge generated by industrial relations, obtaining a greater understanding of the general pattern of wages remains one of the principal challenges to the discipline at the present time.
The HELLAS2XMM Survey. VII. The Hard X-Ray Luminosity Function of AGNs up to z = 4: More Absorbed AGNs at Low Luminosities and High Redshifts

We have determined the cosmological evolution of the density of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and of their NH distribution as a function of the unabsorbed 2-10 keV luminosity up to redshift 4. We used the HELLAS2XMM sample combined with other published catalogs, yielding a total of 508 AGNs. Our best fit is obtained with a luminosity-dependent density evolution (LDDE) model where low-luminosity (LX ~ 1043 ergs s-1) AGNs peak at z ~ 0.7, while high-luminosity AGNs (LX > 1045 ergs s-1) peak at z ~ 2.0. A pure luminosity evolution model (PLE) can instead be rejected. There is evidence that the fraction of absorbed (NH > 1022 cm-2) AGNs decreases with the intrinsic X-ray luminosity and increases with the redshift. Our best-fit solution provides a good fit to the observed counts, the cosmic X-ray background, and to the observed fraction of absorbed AGNs as a function of the flux in the 10-15 ergs cm-2 s-1 < S2-10 < 10-10 ergs cm-2 s-1 range. We find that the absorbed, high-luminosity (LX > 1044 ergs s-1) AGNs have a density of 267 deg-2 at fluxes S2-10 > 10-15 ergs cm-2 s-1. Using these results, we estimate a density of supermassive black holes in the local universe of ρBH = 3.2 h × 105 M☉ Mpc-3, which is consistent with the recent measurements of the black hole mass function in the local galaxies.
Using Matching Pursuit to Assess Atmospheric Circulation Changes over the North Pacific

Matching pursuit was originally formulated as a technique for identifying the time/frequency content of a time series whose spectral properties evolve over time. The basic idea was to construct a large ‘dictionary’ of explanatory vectors that are localized both in time and in frequency and then to analyze a time series by projecting it against the vectors in the dictionary. Matching pursuit can be adapted to explore other properties of a time series besides its time/frequency content. In this paper the technique is described in detail and then used to investigate the notion that North Pacific climate time series exhibit sudden changes in levels (regime-like shifts). In particular matching pursuit is used to explore a hypothesis by Minobe (1999) that there are pentaand bi-decadal oscillations in a North Pacific (NP) index of sea level pressures, with sharp transitions between high and low states that cannot be easily modeled by sinusoidal oscillations. When the NP index is analyzed using a dictionary containing square wave oscillations, sinusoidal oscillations and descriptors of isolated events (Haar wavelet and scaling vectors), matching pursuit selects square wave oscillations with periods and phases that agree closely with Minobe’s analysis and penta-decadal hypothesis; however, the results call into question the existence of an independent bi-decadal oscillation. Matching pursuit was adjusted to handle a time series of winter air temperature measurements from Sitka, Alaska, which have been recorded since 1829, but with 22 missing values scattered throughout the 1800s. For this series, matching pursuit again picks out a square wave oscillation that is quite similar to the one identified for the NP index, with zero crossings during 1840–1, 1867–8, 1894–5, 1921–2, 1948–9 and 1975–6.
Noise in Structured-Light Stereo Depth Cameras: Modeling and its Applications

Depth maps obtained from commercially available structured-light stereo based depth cameras, such as the Kinect, are easy to use but are affected by significant amounts of noise. This paper is devoted to a study of the intrinsic noise characteristics of such depth maps, i.e. the standard deviation of noise in estimated depth varies quadratically with the distance of the object from the depth camera. We validate this theoretical model against empirical observations and demonstrate the utility of this noise model in three popular applications: depth map denoising, volumetric scan merging for 3D modeling, and identification of 3D planes in depth maps.
Training Single Hidden Layer Feedforward Neural Networks by Singular Value Decomposition

Training neural networks has attracted many researchers for a long time. Many training algorithms and their improvements have been proposed. However, up to now, improving performance of training algorithms for neural networks is still a challenge. In this paper, we investigate a new training method for single hidden layer feedforward neural networks (SLFNs) which use ‘tansig’ activation function. The proposed training algorithm uses SVD (Singular Value Decomposition) to calculate the network parameters. It is simple and has low computational complexity. Experimental results show that the proposed approach can obtain good performance with a compact network which has small number of hidden units.
Fully collusion-resistant trace-and-revoke scheme in prime-order groups

A trace-and-revoke scheme is a type of broadcast encryption scheme for content protection on various platforms such as pay-per-view TV and DVD players. In 2006, Boneh and Waters (BW) presented a fully collusion-resistant trace-and-revoke scheme. However, a decisive drawback of their scheme is to re- quire composite-order groups. In this paper, we present a new trace-and-revoke scheme that works in prime-order groups. Our scheme is fully collusion-resistant and achieves ciphertexts and pri- vate keys of size 0(√N) for N users. For the same level of security, our scheme is better than the BW scheme in all aspects of efficiency. Some superior features include 8.5 times faster encryption, 12 times faster decryption, and 3.4 times shorter ciphertexts. To achieve our goal, we introduce a novel technique where, by using asymmetric bilinear maps in prime-order groups, the cancellation effect same as in composite-order groups can be obtained.
Workers’ Remittances, Resident FCAs and Kerb Premium: a Cointegration Analysis

This paper employs Johansen’s model selection and maximum likelihood cointegration technique to analyze the relationship among workers’ remittances, kerb premium and resident FCAs for Pakistan during July 1993 to December 2001. The results suggest that these variables are cointegrated from July 1993 to April 1998. However, the relationship was jolted by the two-tier exchange rate regime, freezing of FCAs and subsequent tightening of foreign exchange regulations following the nuclear tests. In addition, the causal relationship is found to flow (i) from kerb premium to remittances from the Gulf and (ii) from remittances to resident FCAs prior to nuclear tests. After that, the causal relationships reverse for the Gulf and other region. The results also indicate that higher kerb premium has a detrimental effect on remittances. The findings of this paper have implications for the future economic reforms particularly in the area of the monetary, trade, exchange and payments reforms in Pakistan with special emphasis on enhancing remittances from expatriate Pakistanis.
Feature-level fusion of convolutional neural networks for visual object classification

Deep learning architectures have shown great success in various computer vision applications. In this study, we investigate some of the very popular convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures, namely GoogleNet, AlexNet, VGG19 and ResNet. Furthermore, we show possible early feature fusion strategies for visual object classification tasks. Concatanation of features, average pooling and maximum pooling are among the investigated fusion strategies. We obtain state-of-the-art results on well-known image classification datasets of Caltech-101, Caltech-256 and Pascal VOC 2007.
Two Extensions to Manifold Learning Algorithms using α-Complexes

A large body of work has grown up over the past decade [2, 9, 10, 13, 14, 3, 4, 5, 8, 15, 19, 20] dealing with ways of recovering topological invariants of a submanifold M ⊂ RN from a point cloud Z associated to M – most of these use α-complexes and assume Z is from M itself (though some consider base spaces more general than manifolds), while [13, 14] use Čech complexes and consider more general sampling. In addition, most compute exclusively homological invariants, though [13, 14] and [4] do give homotopy equivalence results. The purpose of this report is to briefly point out two simple extensions which can be made to some of the above algorithms. The first consists of a simple pre-processing step (due to [14]) which may be added to many of the other algorithms to extend them to noisy data sampled from a distribution on all of RN , centred but not necessarily supported on M . This extension also results in statements regarding the homotopy equivalence of the computed simplicial complex and M . The second extension is a brief comment describing how the fundamental group of a simplicial complex may be computed. In particular, using the homotopy equivalence guarantee obtained by our first extension one obtains a similar guarantee on isomorphism of the computed fundamental group with π1(M ), the fundamental group of M . We remark, however, that since this group is not in general abelian, its triviality is not decidable.
Transposition of EU social policy in the new member states

This article analyses transposition of European Union (EU) social policy legislation in the new member states (NMS) from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In order to account for the varying rate of adoption of EU law at the national level the article develops several hypotheses about the impact of government preferences and administrative capacity on the pace of transposition in the social policy field. The hypotheses are tested on a new dataset comprising data on the transposition of EU social policy directives in the new member states. The results of the quantitative empirical analysis show that government support for European integration and administrative effectiveness has positive and substantial effects on the number of directives transposed in a given period of time. However, government positions on the Left—Right and libertarianism—traditionalism dimensions do not affect the adoption of EU social policy legislation in CEE.
ANTITUBERCULOUS IMMUNITY INDUCED IN MICE BY VACCINATION WITH LIVING CULTURES OF ATTENUATED TUBERCLE BACILLI

The immunity induced in mice by vaccination with living attenuated cultures of tubercle bacilli was measured by two criteria. (a) Increase in survival time of the vaccinated animals after infection with a dose of virulent bacilli sufficient to kill all the unvaccinated controls within 10 to 20 days. (b) Difference in the number of living bacilli recovered from the spleen and lungs of vaccinated and normal animals infected with a small dose of virulent bacilli. The level of immunity induced was found to depend upon the extent of multiplication in vivo of the bacilli used for vaccination. This in turn was conditioned by the degree of attenuation characteristic of the bacterial strain used in the preparation of the vaccine, the amount of vaccine injected, the route of vaccination, and the time interval between vaccination and challenge infection. It was possible to prevent or retard the development of immunity by treating the mice in course of immunization with a drug, isoniazid, capable of interrupting the multiplication in vivo of the bacilli used as vaccine. Although immunity regularly developed and lasted for many weeks when the proper conditions of vaccination were used, the immune response was never sufficient to protect the animals against ultimate death from infection with virulent tubercle bacilli. The prolongation of life in the vaccinated mice was not consequent on a direct bactericidal effect but rather on a retarded or interrupted multiplication of the virulent bacilli in vivo. The quantitative bacteriological techniques used in the present study would appear to be of value for the analysis of certain problems of immunity, and for the appraisal of vaccines and techniques of vaccination.
Cambiamento istituzionale, salari e flessibilità: l'esperienza della concertazione in Italia

The 1993 Income Policy Agreements (concertazione) reformed wage setting institutions in Italy. This change introduced a relevant ability in absorbing macroeconomic shocks and a curb in inflation- ary expectations, at the cost of stagnant aggregate real wages. The firm-level wage premia remained moderate and partially diffused, with an insufficient distribution of productivity gains, especially to smaller and Southern firms. On the other hand, concertazione between social partners favoured the spread of flexibility, better and before than regulation. Overall the North-South wage differentials slightly increased. Nowadays, after a few years of contrasts, Italy should resume concertazione, by mixing flexibility with a welfare state general reform
Differences of "Traditional Marketing" in opposition to "Electronic Marketing"

This paper initially seeks to document and review Differences of traditional marketing in opposition to Electronic marketing.Nowadays; the methods of business conduction have been changed by the revolution of information communication technology (ICT) that most of the transactions are related to internet. Execution of Electronic marketing all over the world can transform the forms of transactions due to the rapid proliferation of the Internet. The World Wide Web, online communication skills has created fast growing modern electronic distribution channels for Electronic marketing that If we surf through the internet, we will find their goals that they can convince customers to purchase their needs. As far as we concerned, advertising and selling methods are much cheaper, useful, and suitable for producers and suppliers all over the world. It is considered that, there are different types of modern marketing, for instance, internet marketing, and email marketing are all drive transactions to be doing well.