Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prolongation of Cardiac Allograft Survival by Endometrial Regenerative Cells: Focusing on B-Cell Responses.

: Endometrial regenerative cells (ERCs) have been recently evaluated as an attractive candidate source for emerging stem cell therapies in immunosuppression, but their role in immunoregulation is not fully understood. The present study was designed to investigate their effects, especially on B-cell responses in heart transplantation. In this study, ERCs were noninvasively obtained from menstrual blood. Heart transplantation was performed between C57BL/6 (H-2b) donor mice and BALB/c (H-2d) recipients. B-cell activation and antibody levels were determined using fluorescence-activated cell sorting, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and ELISpot. In this study, we demonstrated that ERCs negatively regulated B-cell maturation and activation in vitro without affecting their viability. ERC treatment prolonged cardiac allograft survival in mice, which was correlated with a decrease in IgM and IgG deposition and circulating antidonor antibodies, as well as with reduction in frequencies of antidonor antibody-secreting CD19+ B cells. In addition, upon ex vivo stimulation, B cells from ERC-treated heart transplant recipients had impaired proliferation capacity and produced less IgM and IgG antibody. Moreover, ERC treatment of mice receiving ovalbumin (OVA)-aluminum hydroxide vaccine resulted in significant lower numbers of anti-OVA IgG antibody-secreting splenic B cells and lower anti-OVA antibody titres. Our results indicate that therapeutic effects of ERCs may be attributed at least in part by their B-cell suppression and humoral response inhibition, suggesting the potential use of ERCs for attenuating antibody-mediated allograft rejection. SIGNIFICANCE The alloantibody-associated episodes of acute and chronic allograft rejection are still prevalent in clinic. This study demonstrates that endometrial regenerative cells (ERCs), a novel source of adult mesenchymal stem cells noninvasively obtained from menstrual blood, inhibit B-cell activation and differentiation with reduced antibody production in a mouse cardiac transplant model. The unique features of the ease of collection, relatively unlimited source, immunomodulatory effect, and hypoimmunogenicity could make ERCs an attractive candidate source for stem cell therapies for the prevention and/or treatment of acute and chronic humoral rejection following transplantation.
Desenvolvimento de modelo computacional de sistemas eólicos utilizando geradores síncronos para estudos de desempenho no contexto da qualidade da energia eletrica

Castillo, B. C. Development of a Computational Modeling of Wind Energy Conversion Systems with Synchronous Generators for Power Quality Studies FEELT-UFU, Uberlândia, 2006, 213 páginas. The majority of wind energy conversion systems (WECS) currently in operation in the world uses asynchronous generators for the transformation of the energy contained in the wind into electric energy. In Brazil, although small the amount of wind power stations, the existing units are mainly based on synchronous generation principles. This is in accordance with the technology named as German concept. Using this technology, the turbine operates with variable speed since the synchronization of the generation with the main grid is made through static frequency converters. Presently, the schemes using variable speed have not yet been followed by comprehensive computational simulation resources to provide means for assessment procedures and operating studies. This fact guided the subject of this thesis research topic, which directed to the development of a software destined to the modeling and studies of wind parks of variable speed taking into account aspects concerning to power quality. The technique here employed is based upon time domain representation. Therefore, a powerful tool to cope with both transient and steady state conditions is obtained. Within this context, distinct operational and real site situations of the electric utility grid at the point of common coupling are evaluated. The impacts on the power quality indexes emphasize the potentiality of the program as a tool to evaluate the connections of new wind parks to the interconnected power system.
Orientation and Development of Heterodera schachtii Larvae on Tomato and Sugarbeet Roots.

Deviation of Heterodera schachtii from the typical development pattern was reported by Strubell (4), who observed that larvae attacking very small roots frequently matured while attached by their heads only. More recent reports on H. schachtii biology have not indicated an ectoparasitic habit (1, 3). Consequently, roots of sugarbeet (Beta vulgaris L., cultivar 'U. S. 75') and tomato ( L ycopersicon esculentum, cultivar, 'Pearson A-I') were examined to determine the orientation of H. schachtii larvae. Fifty beet plants were grown from seed in, and 50 tomato seedlings in the cotyledon stage were transplanted to, individual 15-cm clay pots each containing approximately 1400 cc of sterilized clay-loam soil and sand mixture to which had been added 50 H. schachtii cysts containing eggs and larvae. After growing in the greenhouse 14-117 days, the external surfaces of roots were examined for larvae and adult sugarbeet nematode. Second, third, fourth-stage larvae and young adults were found on the roots of sugarbeet and tomato plants (Figs. 1-4) and within roots. There was wide variation in the
Increased expression of microRNA-148a in osteosarcoma promotes cancer cell growth by targeting PTEN

Osteosarcoma is the most common type of primary malignant bone tumor, and deregulated microRNAs (miRNAs or miRs) in osteosarcoma have attracted great attention. In the present study, through miRNA microarray analysis, it was identified that miR-148a expression was significantly increased in osteosarcoma tissues. Increased miR-148a expression was significantly correlated with tumor progression and prognosis. Furthermore, increased miR-148a expression could promote osteosarcoma growth in vitro and in vivo, and the tumor-promoting effect was due to enhanced activation of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase signaling pathway caused by miR-148a-mediated inhibition of phosphatase and tensin homolog expression. Together, the present results suggest a role for miR-148a in osteosarcoma development and its potential use in prognosis prediction and cancer therapy.
Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies

There was something decidedly asymmetrical about interdisciplinary literary studies prior to the 1980s. The title of the MLA division devoted to the study of literature and society, "Sociological Approaches to Literature," says a great deal about our recent past. Critics "approached" literature via "sociological" ideas concepts developed in a discipline that took "society" as its object of inquiry. Obviously the relationship between literature and society must have been conceived of as intimate for the methods of one discipline to seem applicable to the objects of another: literature was embedded in social practices, was itself a social practice, yielding representations of other social phenomena, and could be analyzed as the world-view of a class, an ethnic group, nation or gender at a particular historical moment. Most of these "approaches" assumed that in the related dyad literature/society, "literature" was the representational, symbolic, or signifying entity, while "society" was the set of human relationships and conditions informing the lived experience of the readers and writers.
Accelerometry: providing an integrated, practical method for long-term, ambulatory monitoring of human movement

Accelerometry offers a practical and low cost method of objectively monitoring human movements, and has particular applicability to the monitoring of free-living subjects. Accelerometers have been used to monitor a range of different movements, including gait, sit-to-stand transfers, postural sway and falls. They have also been used to measure physical activity levels and to identify and classify movements performed by subjects. This paper reviews the use of accelerometer-based systems in each of these areas. The scope and applicability of such systems in unsupervised monitoring of human movement are considered. The different systems and monitoring techniques can be integrated to provide a more comprehensive system that is suitable for measuring a range of different parameters in an unsupervised monitoring context with free-living subjects. An integrated approach is described in which a single, waist-mounted accelerometry system is used to monitor a range of different parameters of human movement in an unsupervised setting.
Adjuvant Effect of a Synthetic Aluminium-Magnesium Silicate on Chloroquine Phosphate, Against Plasmodium berghei

Effect a synthetic Aluminium-Magnesium Silicate (AMS) has on chloroquine was tested. Thirty, Plasmodium berghei-infected mice, in three experimental groups (7 mg/kg, 5 mg/kg and 3 mg/kg) of 10 mice each, were treated. Two subgroups, in each experiment, were treated with chloroquine and with a chloroquine-AMS drug formulation, respectively. Five of the infected mice served as controls. Parasitaemia (%), Haemoglobin concentration (Hb), Red Blood Cells (RBC), rectal temperature and body weight were assessed. Parasitaemia of subgroups treated at 7 mg/kg were higher than that of the control. Also, at 7 mg/kg, there was mortality with chloroquine (20%) and with the chloroquine-AMS drug (80%). At 5 mg/kg and 3 mg/kg, the AMS significantly (P < 0.05) improved ability of chloroquine to reduce plamodial parasitaemia, from 2.46 ± 0.21 to 1.57 ± 0.25 and from 3.82 ± 0.06 to 2.12 ± 0.08. It also significantly (P < 0.05) improved means of Hb and RBC from 12.25 ± 0.27 and 88.99 ± 5.72 to 12.68 ± 0.18 and 92.91 ± 4.01 and from 10.18 ± 3.00 and 63.39 ± 18.02 to 12.98 ± 0.47 and 95.23 ± 5.32. Body weight increased at 5 mg/kg, from 29.06 ± 1.95 to 32.66 ± 2.10 kg (P < 0.05) while at 3 mg/kg, rectal temperature reduced from 37.35 ± 0.32 to 36.84oC ± 0.23oC (P < 0.05). These results suggest, AMS worsened chloroquine toxicity at 7 mg/kg but potentiated its antiplasmodial activities at the lower doses.
Route-lifetime assessment based routing (RABR) protocol for mobile ad-hoc networks

Owing to the absence of any static support structure, ad-hoc networks are prone to link failures. The 'shortest path seeking' routing protocols may not lead to stable routes. The consequent route failures that ensue, lead to the degradation of system throughput. This paper suggests a routing protocol wherein the route selection is done on the basis of an intelligent residual lifetime assessment of the candidate routes. Schemes for performance enhancement with TCP and non-TCP traffic in ad-hoc networks are proposed. The protocol is backed by simulations in ns that show excellent adaptation to increasing network mobility. We have also introduced new route cache management and power aware data transmission schemes.
Analysis of urban heat island (UHI) in the Beijing metropolitan area by time-series MODIS data

Land surface temperature (LST) products of Beijing, China, during 2001-2008 provided by Terra/Aqua Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) are used to characterize the relationships between urban heat island (UHI) magnitude and the rural surface temperature (RST). Two methods for calculating the UHI magnitude and the RST are applied. Results show that UHI magnitudes are significantly related to the RST, with positive correlation in the daytime and negative correlation in the nighttime. Evident lag correlations are found between the daytime UHI magnitude and the nearby rural surface temperature, because of the differences of vegetation abundance and surface moisture between the urban and rural areas. However, similar lag relationships are not found between the nighttime UHI magnitude and the corresponding rural surface temperature.
Light induction of Arabidopsis SIG1 and SIG5 transcripts in mature leaves: differential roles of cryptochrome 1 and cryptochrome 2 and dual function of SIG5 in the recognition of plastid promoters.

SUMMARY In higher plants, multiple nuclear-encoded sigma factors activate select subsets of plastid gene promoters in a partially redundant manner. We analysed the light induction profiles of transcripts from six Arabidopsis sigma factor (AtSIG) genes in mature leaves, focusing on the effects of wavelength and intensity. Red-light illumination (660 nm) of dark-adapted plants strongly induced AtSIG1 transcripts, while blue-light illumination (470 nm) caused strong and rapid induction of AtSIG1 and AtSIG5 transcripts. The fluence response differed in blue-light-responsive rapid induction in AtSIG1 and AtSIG5. AtSIG1 transcripts increased to plateau with a threshold of 2 micromol m(-2) sec(-1) under all fluences examined (1-50 micromol m(-2) sec(-1)), and AtSIG5 transcripts were induced with a distinct two-phase profile, with the lower-fluence induction similar to that of AtSIG1 and further enhancement with increasing fluences greater than 10 micromol m(-2) sec(-1). Blue-light-receptor mutational analysis revealed that AtSIG5-specific two-phase induction is mediated through cryptochrome 1 and cryptochrome 2 at lower fluences and more significantly through cryptochrome 1 at higher fluences. In mature chloroplasts, the promoters of psbA and psbD are predominantly recognized by AtSIG5 among six sigma factors. Using a protoplast transient expression assay with AtSIG5-AtSIG1 chimeric genes, we present evidence that AtSIG5 contains determinants for activating the psbD blue-light-responsive promoter (BLRP) in region 4.2 rather than region 2.4. Amino acid scanning within AtSIG5 region 4.2 revealed that Asn484, but not Arg493, functions as a key residue for psbD BLRP activation. Arginine 493 may be involved in psbA promoter recognition.
Walking-Age Analyzer for Healthcare Applications

This paper describes a walking-age pattern analysis and identification system using a 3-D accelerometer and a gyroscope. First, a walking pattern database from 79 volunteers of ages ranging from 10 to 83 years is constructed. Second, using feature extraction and clustering, three distinct walking-age groups, children of ages 10 and below, adults in 20-60s, and elders in 70s and 80s, were identified. For this study, low-pass filtering, empirical mode decomposition, and K-means were used to process and analyze the experimental results. Analysis shows that volunteers' walking-ages can be categorized into distinct groups based on simple walking pattern signals. This grouping can then be used to detect persons with walking patterns outside their age groups. If the walking pattern puts an individual in a higher “walking age” grouping, then this could be an indicator of potential health/walking problems, such as weak joints, poor musculoskeletal support system or a tendency to fall.
Parallelization of feature extraction techniques on consumer-level multicore system

Three different feature extractions techniques Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), Mel-Frequency Ceptral Coefficient (MFCC), and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) are parallelized in this study and used for classification. The Evolutionary Neural Network (ENN) is used as a classifier. In the scope of classification, ENN is a new technique that can be effectively used as a classifier. This research will help to extract the features in the most efficient way with less computation time in real life use. The parallel FFT, MFCC and DWT are developed in C# for multicore using . Net framework 4.0. The . Net framework offers comprehensive and flexible threads APIs that allow the efficient implementation of multithreaded application.
A deadline-aware rate-adaptive packet pacing algorithm for small buffer networks

Recent research on sizing router buffers in high speed networks promises the realization of core network with buffer enough to store just a few packets. However, such networks work well with traffic efficiently paced to reduce both short-term and long-range burstiness. In this work, we propose an efficient pacing scheme at the edge network that works for packets with or without pre-determined deadlines and smoothen the traffic according to the occupancy of the router buffer. The proposed algorithm paces the traffic both according to the delay and queue length constraints. It is thus shown to possess the advantages of both delay-based pacing and queue length-based pacing algorithms in the literature and yet overcome their shortcomings. We demonstrate through simulations that the proposed pacing algorithm significantly reduces the loss rate even when the traffic contains significant UDP traffic compared to the best known pacing schemes in the literature.
Relationship between Road Traffic Accidents and Drinking Habits in All 47 Prefectures of Japan

We evaluated the road traffic accidents and drinking habits in all 47 prefectures of Japanby ecological study. Data on traffic accidents were obtained from Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications,Japan. Drinking habits were also obtained from Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare and The General Insurance Association of Japan. The effect of drinking on road traffic accidents was evaluated by ecological study. Road traffic accidents were 15442.0 ± 14404.9 deaths due to road traffic accidents were 103.5 ± 57.5 and injured subjects due to road traffic accidents were 19068.3 ± 17433.6 in 2010 inall 47 prefectures of Japan. Drinking habits was significantly and negatively correlated with injured subjects due to road traffic accidents. However, road traffic accidents due to drinking was positively correlated with injured subjects due to road traffic accidents (r = 0.492, p = 0.0004). In conclusion, drinking habits and road traffic accidents due to drunk driving were closely linked to injured subjects due to road traffic accidents inJapan.
The social support of students during the transition from school to university

The purpose of this study was to assess the social support of students during the transition from school to university. In this regard both direct and stress-buffering effects of social support were assessed. Oue-hundred-and-sixty-five first-year students at the University of the Western Cape completed two scales of social support, the Inventory of Socially Supportive Behaviors (ISSB) and the Social Support Questionnaire(SSQ), the Life Experiences Survey and the How I Feel (HIF), a measure of psychological distress, at three assessmentpoints. Generally the results of moderatedregression analysis did not support the stress-bufferingor main effects of social support.
A Virtual Actuator Approach for Fault Tolerant Control of Switching LPV Systems

Abstract In this paper, virtual actuators are proposed as a Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) strategy for switching Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) systems subject to actuator faults. The overall solution relies on the addition of a virtual actuator block that keeps the stability and some desired performances without the need of retuning the nominal controller. It is shown that the design can be performed using polytopic techniques and Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). Simulation results obtained with a four-wheeled omnidirectional mobile robot example are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Formaldehyde substitute fixatives: effects on nucleic acid preservation

Aims In surgical pathology, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues are increasingly being used as a source of DNA and RNA for molecular assays in addition to histopathological evaluation. However, the commonly used formalin fixative is carcinogenic, and its crosslinking impairs DNA and RNA quality. Methods The suitability of three new presumably less toxic, crosslinking (F-Solv) and non-crosslinking (FineFIX, RCL2) alcohol-based fixatives was tested for routine molecular pathology in comparison with neutral buffered formalin (NBF) as gold standard. Size ladder PCR, epidermal growth factor receptor sequence analysis, microsatellite instability (MSI), chromogenic (CISH), fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) and qPCR were performed. Results The alcohol-based non-crosslinking fixatives (FineFIX and RCL2) resulted in a higher DNA yield and quality compared with crosslinking fixatives (NBF and F-Solv). Size ladder PCR resulted in a shorter amplicon size (300 bp) for both crosslinking fixatives compared with the non-crosslinking fixatives (400 bp). All four fixatives were directly applicable for MSI and epidermal growth factor receptor sequence analysis. All fixatives except F-Solv showed clear signals in CISH and FISH. RNA yield and quality were superior after non-crosslinking fixation. qPCR resulted in lower Ct values for RCL2 and FineFIX. Conclusion The alcohol-based non-crosslinking fixatives performed better than crosslinking fixatives with regard to DNA and RNA yield, quality and applicability in molecular diagnostics. Given the higher yield, less starting material may be necessary, thereby increasing the applicability of biopsies for molecular studies.
Automatic paraphrasing based on parallel corpus for normalization

Abstract There are various ways to express the same meaning in natural language. This diversity causes difficulty in many fields of natural language processing. It can be reduced by normalization of synonymous expressions, which is done by replacing various synonymous expressions with a standard one. In this paper, we propose a method for extracting paraphrases from a parallel corpus automatically and utilizing them for normalization. First, synonymous sentences are grouped by the equivalence of translation. Then, synonymous expressions are extracted by the differences between synonymous sentences. Synonymous expressions contain not only interchangeable words but also surrounding words in order to consider contextual condition. Our method has two advantages: 1) only a parallel corpus is required, and 2) various types of paraphrases can be acquired.
Dynamic Graph Traversals for Concurrent Rewriting Using Work-Stealing Frameworks for Multicore Platforms

Parallel programming/execution frameworks for multicore platforms should support as many applications as possible. In general, work-stealing frameworks provide efficient load balancing even for irregular parallel applications. Unfortunately, naive parallel programs for ``general computations'' governed by rewriting rules over configurations (system states) cause stack overflow or unacceptable load imbalance. In this study, we develop parallel programs to perform probabilistically balanced divide-and-conquer graph traversals. We propose a programming technique for accumulating overflowed calls for the next iteration of repeated parallel stages. In an emerging backtracking-based work-stealing framework called "Tascell," which avoids excessive concurrency, we propose a programming technique for long-term use of workspaces, leading a similar technique in the Cilk framework.