Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Potentiation by salicylate and salicyl alcohol of cadmium toxicity and accumulation in Escherichia coli

The toxicity of Cd2+ in Escherichia coli K-12 was potentiated by salicylate and several related compounds. The efficiency of plating on Luria broth plates was reduced by more than 10(5)-fold when 10 mM salicylate and 200 microM CdCl2 were present simultaneously but was unaffected when either compound was present by itself. Synergistic effects were found at pH 7.4 with certain other weak acids (acetyl salicylate [aspirin], benzoate, and cinnamate) and with a nonacidic salicylate analog, salicyl alcohol, but not with acetate or p-hydroxy benzoate. Thus, the synergism with Cd2+ is determined by the structure of the compounds and not merely by their acidity. The kinetics of 109Cd2+ uptake by cells grown and assayed in broth indicated the presence of two uptake systems with Kms of 1 and 52 microM Cd2+ and Vmaxs of 0.059 and 1.5 mumol of Cd2+ per min per g of cells, respectively. The kinetics of uptake for cells grown and assayed with 20 mM salicyl alcohol showed 2.5-fold increases in the Vmaxs of both systems but no change in the Kms. Salicylate-grown cells also exhibited increased rates of 109Cd2+ uptake by both systems. Thus, enhanced uptake of Cd2+ may be responsible for the potentiation of Cd2+ toxicity by salicylate and salicyl alcohol.
Dual Inhibition of mTOR and Estrogen Receptor Signaling In vitro Induces Cell Death in Models of Breast Cancer

Purpose: RAD001 (everolimus), a mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway inhibitor in phase II clinical trials in oncology, exerts potent antiproliferative/antitumor activities. Many breast cancers are dependent for proliferation on estrogens synthesized from androgens (i.e., androstenedione) by aromatase. Letrozole (Femara) is an aromatase inhibitor used for treatment of postmenopausal women with hormone-dependent breast cancers. The role of the mTOR pathway in estrogen-driven proliferation and effects of combining RAD001 and letrozole were examined in vitro in two breast cancer models. Experimental Design: The role of the mTOR pathway in estrogen response was evaluated in aromatase-expressing MCF7/Aro breast cancer cells by immunoblotting. Effects of RAD001 and letrozole (alone and in combination) on the proliferation and survival of MCF7/Aro and T47D/Aro cells were evaluated using proliferation assays, flow cytometry, immunoblotting, and apoptosis analyses. Results: Treatment of MCF7/Aro cells with estradiol or androstenedione caused modulation of the mTOR pathway, a phenomenon reversed by letrozole or RAD001. In MCF7/Aro and T47D/Aro cells, both agents inhibited androstenedione-induced proliferation; however, in combination, this was significantly augmented (P < 0.001, two-way ANOVA, synergy by isobologram analysis). Increased activity of the combination correlated with more profound effects on G1 progression and a significant decrease in cell viability (P < 0.01, two-way ANOVA) defined as apoptosis (P < 0.05, Friedman test). Increased cell death was particularly evident with optimal drug concentrations. Conclusion: mTOR signaling is required for estrogen-induced breast tumor cell proliferation. Moreover, RAD001-letrozole combinations can act in a synergistic manner to inhibit proliferation and trigger apoptotic cell death. This combination holds promise for the treatment of hormone-dependent breast cancers.
Automatic bleeding frame detection in the wireless capsule endoscopy images

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is a revolutionary imaging technique that enables direct inspection of the gastrointestinal tract in a non-invasive way. However, viewing the large amounts of images is a very time-consuming and labor intensive task for clinicians. In this paper, we propose an automatic bleeding detection method in the WCE images. We propose a two-stage saliency map extraction method to highlight bleeding regions where the first-stage saliency map is created by means of different color channels mixer and the second-stage saliency map is obtained from the visual contrast in the RGB color space. Followed by an appropriate fusion strategy and threshold, we localize the bleeding areas in the WCE images. Then we extract statistic color features in the corresponding saliency region and non-saliency region respectively and fuse them together to represent the whole WCE images. Finally Support Vector Machine (SVM) is applied to carry out the experiment on 800 sample WCE images. Experiment result achieves an accuracy of 95.89%, sensitivity of 98.77% and specificity of 93.45%. This inspiring result demonstrates that the proposed method is very effective in detecting bleeding patterns in the WCE images. Our comparison studies with several state-of-the-art bleeding detection methods confirm that the proposed method achieves much better results than those of the alternative techniques.
Medical Uncertainty, Diagnostic Testing, and Legal Liability

H e a l t h care cost considerations exert increasing influence today over clinical decision-making. One way to help contain costs while maintaining the quality of health care may be to increax among both physicians and patients an acknowledgment o f , and toleraIicr for. a reasonahle degree of mctlical uncertainty. By medical u11certainty \ve mean here those clinical siui:itions in \vhich, based 011 available data. absolute scientific proof re. garding some aspect of a patient's heallh statiis cannot he obtained. To the extent that acceptance of medical uncertainty and a corresponding restraint among physicians can he encouraged without exposing the physicians t o an undue risk of legal liahility, all participants in the health care system would benefit from this tolerance. To help provide this encouragement. we will explore the legal implications of medical u n certainty. focusing on diagnostic testing. and argue that our legal system &ies now :incl lvill continue to recognizc. tolerair. :ind perhaps even promote some medical uncertainty in the diagnostic realm. We will discuss the hases of niedical uncert:~inty. kg.1 liahility, and tleFensive mcrlicine. and then will ~ W J -
A clinical trial of oral therapy in a rural cholera-treatment center.

Abstract A clinical trial in a field hospital in rural East Pakistan of an orally administered solution used in conjunction with intravenous fluid for the treatment of cholera in adults has demonstrated the efficacy of oral therapy. After initial intravenous rehydration, fluid balance in actively purging patients with cholera was adequately maintained in most patients, by the administration of an oral solution of drinking water containing sodium chloride, potassium citrate, sodium bicarbonate, and dextrose. It was found that 135 patients with cholera who received oral maintenance therapy required 70% less intravenous fluid than a similar group of 135 treated at the same rural treatment center in a previous epidemic. This treatment regimen has now become routine at our field hospital.
Identification of tools to measure changes in musculoskeletal symptoms and physical functioning in women with breast cancer receiving aromatase inhibitors.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To estimate and compare responsiveness of standardized self-reported measures of musculoskeletal symptoms (MSSs) and physical functioning (PF) during treatment with aromatase inhibitors (AIs). DESIGN Prospective, longitudinal study. SETTING Park Nicollet Institute and North Memorial Cancer Center, both in Minneapolis, MN. SAMPLE 122 postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. METHODS MSSs and PF were assessed before starting AIs and at one, three, and six months using six self-reported MSSs measures and two PF tests. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES MSSs and PF changes from baseline to six months. FINDINGS Using the Breast Cancer Prevention Trial-Musculoskeletal Symptom (BCPT-MS) subscale, 54% of participants reported MSSs by six months. Scores from the BCPT-MS subscale and the physical function subscales of the Australian/Canadian Osteoarthritis Hand Index (AUSCAN) and Western Ontario and McMaster Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) were most responsive to changes over six months. CONCLUSIONS BCPT-MS, AUSCAN, and WOMAC were the most responsive instruments for measuring AI-associated MSSs. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING Assessment and management of MSSs are important aspects of oncology care because MSSs can affect functional ability and AI adherence. KNOWLEDGE TRANSLATION The three measures with the greatest sensitivity were the BCPT-MS, AUSCAN, and WOMAC questionnaires. These measures will be useful when conducting research on change in MSSs associated with AI treatment in women with breast cancer.
Discrete, Continuous, and Constrained Optimization Using Collectives

Aerospace systems continue to grow in complexity while demanding optimal performance. This requires the systems to be both designed and controlled optimally. Aerospace systems are also typically comprised of many interacting components, some of which may have competing requirements. The optimization approaches used for aerospace systems usually require centralized coordination and synchronous updates. In addition, while the approaches treat the large numbers of variables, they may not take advantage of the fact that the coupling may only be between a relatively small number of the variables. Distributed optimization algorithms, such as the approach based upon collectives presented in this paper, attempt to exploit this aspect. A collective is deflned as a multi-agent system where each agent is self-interested and capable of learning. Furthermore, a collective has a specifled system objective which rates the performance of the joint actions of the agents. Although collectives have been used for a number of distributed optimization problems in computer science, recent developments based upon Probability Collectives (PC) theory enhance their applicability to discrete, continuous, mixed, and constrained optimization problems. This paper will present the theoretical underpinnings of the approach for these various problem domains. Several example problems are used to illustrate the technique and to provide insight into its behavior. The examples include discrete, constrained, and continuous problems. In particular a constrained discrete structural optimization and a continuous trajectory optimization illustrate the breadth of the collectives approach.
Tracking on-line radicalization using investigative data mining

The increasing complexity and emergence of Web 2.0 applications have paved way for threats arising out of the use of social networks by cyber extremists (Radical groups). Radicalization (also called cyber extremism and cyber hate propaganda) is a growing concern to the society and also of great pertinence to governments & law enforcement agencies all across the world. Further, the dynamism of these groups adds another level of complexity in the domain, as with time, one may witness a change in members of the group and hence has motivated many researchers towards this field. This proposal presents an investigative data mining approach for detecting the dynamic behavior of these radical groups in online social networks by textual analysis of the messages posted by the members of these groups along with the application of techniques used in social network analysis. Some of the preliminary results obtained through partial implementation of the approach are also discussed.
Aelite: A flit-synchronous Network on Chip with composable and predictable services

To accommodate the growing number of applications integrated on a single chip, Networks on Chip (NoC) must offer scalability not only on the architectural, but also on the physical and functional level. In addition, real-time applications require Guaranteed Services (GS), with latency and throughput bounds. Traditionally, NoC architectures only deliver scalability on two of the aforementioned three levels, or do not offer GS. In this paper we present the composable and predictable aelite NoC architecture, that offers only GS, based on flit-synchronous Time Division Multiplexing (TDM). In contrast to other TDM-based NoCs, scalability on the physical level is achieved by using mesochronous or asynchronous links. Functional scalability is accomplished by completely isolating applications, and by having a router architecture that does not limit the number of service levels or connections. We demonstrate how aelite delivers the requested service to hundreds of simultaneous connections, and does so with 5 times less area compared to a state-of-the-art NoC.
The Cia5 gene controls formation of the carbon concentrating mechanism in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Wild-type Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cells shifted from high concentrations (5%) of CO2 to low, ambient levels (0.03%) rapidly increase transcription of mRNAs from several CO2-responsive genes. Simultaneously, they develop a functional carbon concentrating mechanism that allows the cells to greatly increase internal levels of CO2 and HCO\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} \begin{equation*}{\mathrm{_{3}^{-}}}\end{equation*}\end{document}. The cia5 mutant is defective in all of these phenotypes. A newly isolated gene, designated Cia5, restores transformed cia5 cells to the phenotype of wild-type cells. The 6,481-bp gene produces a 5.1-kb mRNA that is present constitutively in light in high and low CO2 both in wild-type cells and the cia5 mutant. It encodes a protein that has features of a putative transcription factor and that, likewise, is present constitutively in low and high CO2 conditions. Complementation of cia5 can be achieved with a truncated Cia5 gene that is missing the coding information for 54 C-terminal amino acids. Unlike wild-type cells or cia5 mutants transformed with an intact Cia5 gene, cia5 mutants complemented with the truncated gene exhibit constitutive synthesis of mRNAs from CO2-responsive genes in light under both high and low CO2 conditions. These discoveries suggest that posttranslational changes to the C-terminal domain control the ability of CIA5 to act as an inducer and directly or indirectly control transcription of CO2-responsive genes. Thus, CIA5 appears to be a master regulator of the carbon concentrating mechanism and is intimately involved in the signal transduction mechanism that senses and allows immediate responses to fluctuations in environmental CO2 and HCO\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} \begin{equation*}{\mathrm{_{3}^{-}}}\end{equation*}\end{document} concentrations.
Control of modal properties and modal effects in air guiding photonic bandgap fibres

The advent of microstructured fibre technology has opened up the possibility of photonic bandgap fibres (PBGFs), which guide light in a low index core, or even a gas or vacuum. Their unique optical properties make them particularly attractive for applications in high power laser delivery, pulse compression, gas-based nonlinear spectroscopy and optical sensing. PBGFs, however, operate by virtue of a radically different mechanism as compared to conventional index guiding fibres and as a consequence they present unusual and rather complex modal properties. Control over the modal properties of these waveguides is paramount to a number of application areas, particularly those requiring a relatively short device length. In this paper we address the issue of multi-modeness in PBGFs and investigate various strategies to control the number and type of modes supported in these fibres.
Characterizing the delay performance of web-based cloud services in a browser-scripting approach

Cloud services are often provisioned to their customers using user-friendly web browsers with flexible and rich plug-in environments. Delay is one of the fundamental performance metrics of these web-based services. Commonly-used network measurement tools usually only measure network delay and it may be difficult to infer the web-delay performance using only network layer measurement approaches. In this paper, we propose to characterize the application layer delay in a browser-based network measurement platform using scripts. We conducted a delay measurement study using engineered scripts in the proposed browser-based measurement platform. Our investigation included a comparison study of three browser-scripting delay measurement methods, including Java applet, JSP and Flash ActionScript. We developed a browser-based delay measurement testbed over the Internet so that different delay measurement tools could be evaluated in the same real network environment. We also decomposed the components of the end-to-end delay process of the above measurements to reveal the difference and relationship between network-layer delay and application-layer delay. Our measurement results characterize the stochastic properties of the application layer delay over real Internet paths, and how these properties varied from the underlying network layer delay. The browser-scripting measurement approach can be easily cooperated with different cloud service platforms to inspect their application-layer delay performance. The results may provide insights into designing new cloud services with enhanced quality-of-experience perceived by cloud users.
Implementation of Permutation Functions in Illiac IV-Type Computers

Much research has recently been done on processor interconnection schemes for parallel computers. These interconnection schemes allow certain permutations to be performed in less than linear time, typically 0(log N), 0(log2N), or 0(√N) for a vector of N elements and N processors. In this paper we show that many permutations can also be performed in less than linear time on a machine with an Illiac IV-type interconnection scheme, that is connections to processors at distances of ± 1 and ±√N. These reselts show that, for irregular permutations, these recently developed interconnection schemes yield a speedup of at most 0(√N) over the Illiac IV-type interconnections. These results are of current interest due to the present Illiac IV programming effort.
Citizenship in an Unequal World

We inhabit a thoroughly globalized world. People are increasingly and visibly connected by a “World Wide Web,” by a world market, and by universalist discourses of human rights and democracy. At the same time, full citizenship in a political community—and the rights conferred by such citizenship—is an exclusive status that remains, remarkably, tied to accidents of birth and historical circumstance. And what one has a right to—gainful employment, education, health care, political voice, mere presence—is largely a function of whether one has the precious status of citizenship or is, alternatively, regarded as an alien. Ayelet Shachar's The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality is a compelling account of the moral arbitrariness of this state of affairs. A study in “normative political theory,” it is a work of political science that incorporates legal theory, moral philosophy, political economy, and public policy. The author tackles issues of increasing global political importance—global disparities of wealth; unequal access to clear air, water, and a secure place to live; and the increasingly contentious politics of immigration and immigrant rights. So it seems fitting to invite a range of political science scholars who work on these topics to comment on the book. The basic editorial charge of this symposium is thus straightforward: How do you assess Shachar's arguments and the attention she focuses on the phenomenon of “birthright lottery”? How does this argument bear upon the topics and approaches that characterize your own scholarship? And how do these topics and approaches shed light on the book and its arguments? While the focus of the symposium is this provocative book, the discussion of it should also be regarded as an opportunity to address the question of whether or not the bases of citizenship need to be fundamentally reconceived, and in what ways political science can and should contribute to such a rethinking. —Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor
Review Classification Using Semantic Features and Run-Time Weighting

We introduce a method for learning to assign suitable sentiment ratings to review articles. In our approach, reviews are transformed into collections of n-gram and semantic word class features aimed at maximizing the probability of classifying them into accurate ratings. The method involves automatically segmenting review articles into sentences and automatically estimating associations between features and sentiment ratings via machine learning techniques. At run-time, a simple weighting strategy is performed to give extra weights to features in potential evaluative sentences (e.g., the first, the last sentences and sentences with adverbs) from others. Experiments show that word class information alleviates data sparseness problem facing higher-level n-grams (e.g., bigrams and trigrams) and that our model using both training-time n-gram and semantic features and run-time weighting mechanism outperforms a strong baseline with surface n-gram features by 2.5% relatively.
Acquired resistance to echinocandins in Candida albicans: case report and review.

OBJECTIVES A patient with Candida albicans thrush and oesophagitis was treated with high doses of caspofungin but treatment eventually failed. Four C. albicans isolates were serially recovered before and after caspofungin treatment. A microbiological study was performed to characterize these four isolates. METHODS In vitro antifungal susceptibility testing was performed by the EUCAST reference method in RPMI and AM3 and by Etest. Molecular typing of the four isolates was done by sizing three polymorphic microsatellite markers. To look for specific mutations, sequencing of a region of the gene encoding the 1-3-beta-D-glucan synthase was performed for the four isolates. RESULTS In vitro antifungal susceptibility testing showed an increase in both caspofungin and micafungin MICs for the two isolates recovered after caspofungin treatment failure. The best discrimination between the pre-treatment and post-treatment isolates was obtained with Etest. Molecular typing of the four isolates showed that the post-treatment isolates with reduced susceptibility were identical to a susceptible pre-treatment isolate, suggesting the acquisition of caspofungin resistance. Sequencing of the gene encoding the 1-3-beta-D-glucan synthase showed a mutation responsible for an amino acid change at Phe-641 that could confer reduced susceptibility to both echinocandins. CONCLUSIONS Our results indicate that is it useful to perform in vitro susceptibility testing in the cases of clinical failure during caspofungin therapy.