Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mitochondria-targeted drug delivery system for cancer treatment

Abstract Mitochondria are one type of the major organelles in the cell, participating in a variety of important physiological and biochemical processes, such as tricarboxylic acid cycle, fatty acid metabolism and oxidative phosphorylation. Meanwhile, it also happens to be the key regulator of apoptosis by triggering the complex cell-death processes through a variety of mechanisms. Since it plays a pivotal role in cell-death, a mitochondria-targeted treatment strategy could be promising for cancer therapy. In this comprehensive review, we focused on the mechanisms of mitochondrial targeting and a variety of strategies to realize the purpose of mitochondrial targeting, including that based on the use of lipophilic cations, and mitochondrial targeting signal peptides (MTS) as well as cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs). Then on this basis we present some several developed strategies for multifunctional mitochondria-targeted agents so as to achieve the good anti-cancer therapeutic effects.
In-hospital cost of total hip arthroplasty in Canada and the United States.

BACKGROUND There is little information comparing the costs of specific surgical procedures performed in Canada and those done in the United States. The objective of this study was to compare the in-hospital costs associated with primary total hip arthroplasty performed in the two countries. METHODS In-hospital costs of 1679 consecutive patients (940 Canadian and 739 American patients) who underwent total hip arthroplasty were extracted from three Canadian and three United States teaching hospitals between 1997 and 2001. Participating hospitals used the same cost accounting system to provide per-patient demographic, clinical, and cost data. Canadian dollar costs were converted to United States dollar costs with use of purchasing power parities. RESULTS The baseline clinical characteristics of patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty in Canada and the United States were similar. The American patients were a mean of 4.6 years older than the Canadian patients (mean [and standard deviation], 67.8 +/- 12.4 years compared with 63.2 +/- 14.9 years). The median cost for the primary arthroplasty was $6080 (mean [and standard error of the mean], $6766 +/-$119) at the three Canadian hospitals and $12,846 (mean, $13,339 +/-$131) at the United States hospitals (p < 0.0001). The mean length of stay (and standard deviation) was 7.2 +/- 4.7 days for the Canadian patients and 4.2 +/- 2.0 days for the American patients. Implants at one hospital in the United States were found to be four times more costly than those in a Canadian hospital. CONCLUSIONS Higher in-hospital costs were found for the American hospitals despite the fact that they had a significantly shorter patient length of stay compared with Canadian centers (p < 0.0001). Canadian hospitals should follow the lead of their counterparts in the United States and implement strategies to decrease the length of stay in the hospital, while institutions in the United States should revisit their ability to better manage the costs related to a primary total hip arthroplasty, particularly by controlling unit costs.
Emergency Management, Twitter, and Social Media Evangelism

This paper considers how emergency response organizations utilize available social media technologies to communicate with the public in emergencies and to potentially collect valuable information using the public as sources of information on the ground. The authors discuss the use of public social media tools from the emergency management professional’s viewpoint with a particular focus on the use of Twitter. Limited research has investigated Twitter usage in crisis situations from an organizational perspective. This paper contributes to the understanding of organizational innovation, risk communication, and technology adoption by emergency management. An in-depth longitudinal case study of Public Information Officers (PIO) of the Los Angeles Fire Department highlights the importance of the information evangelist within emergency management organizations and details the challenges those organizations face engaging with social media and Twitter. This article provides insights into practices and challenges of new media implementation for crisis and risk management organizations.
Virus-Binding Proteins Recovered from Bacterial Culture Derived from Activated Sludge by Affinity Chromatography Assay Using a Viral Capsid Peptide

ABSTRACT The contamination of water environments by pathogenic viruses has raised concerns about outbreaks of viral infectious diseases in our society. Because conventional water and wastewater treatment systems are not effective enough to inactivate or remove pathogenic viruses, a new technology for virus removal needs to be developed. In this study, the virus-binding proteins (VBPs) in a bacterial culture derived from activated sludge were successfully recovered. The recovery of VBPs was achieved by applying extracted crude proteins from a bacterial culture to an affinity column in which a custom-made peptide of capsid protein from the poliovirus type 1 (PV1) Mahoney strain (H2N-DNPASTTNKDKL-COOH) was immobilized as a ligand. VBPs exhibited the ability to adsorb infectious particles of PV1 Sabin 1 as determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The evaluation of surface charges of VBPs with ion-exchange chromatography found that a majority of VBP molecules had a net negative charge under the conditions of affinity chromatography. On the other hand, a calculated isoelectric point implied that the viral peptide in the affinity column was also charged negatively. As a result, the adsorption of the VBPs to the viral peptide in the affinity column occurred with a strong attractive force that was able to overcome the electrostatic repulsive force. Two-dimensional electrophoresis revealed that the isolated VBPs include a number of proteins, and their molecular masses were widely distributed but smaller than 100 kDa. Amino acid sequences of N termini of five VBPs were determined. Homology searches for the N termini against all protein sequences in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database showed that the isolated VBPs in this study were newly discovered proteins. These VBPs that originated with bacteria in activated sludge might be stable, because they are existing in the environment of wastewater treatments. Therefore, a virus removal technology utilizing VBPs as viral adsorbents can be developed, since it is possible to replicate VBPs by protein cloning techniques.
The design and implementation of a smartphone-based acoustic array system for DOA estimation

Microphone array for high-quality audio recording has been realized by dedicated devices. But lack of portability and high cost prevent such system being widely adopted. Today's commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) smartphones are relatively more convenient for audio recording. However, in order to estimate the target's direction of arrival (DOA), several asynchronous receivers (smartphones) must be precisely time synchronized. Nevertheless, the additional computational cost and errors caused by realizing time synchronization with traditional methods may lower the accuracy of DOA estimation and even make the DOA estimation failure. In this paper, we design and implement the Smartphone-based and DOA-estimation acoustic array system called SDOAs, in which the effective and straightforward RBS-based and Post-Facto Synchronization (RBS-PFS) mechanism with sample-counting technique is proposed to figure out the problem of time asynchronization. The real SDOAs is implemented on a test-bed using several android smartphones. The experiment demonstrates that our acoustic array system SDOAs can achieve high accuracy DOA estimation with Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm and the RMSE is lower than 2.7° when the range of degree is between 0° and 45°.
Effects of Blood Pressure Lowering With Different Antihypertensive Agents on Cognitive Function and Plasma Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor Levels: A Comparative Study

Purpose: Hypertension is a risk factor for cognitive impairment (CI). However, the specific effect of antihypertensive therapy on cognitive function is still controversial. We aimed to investigate the effect of antihypertensive agents targeting the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) on CI and brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF). Methods: We included 62 patients who had been using the same antihypertensive agent for at least 3 months. Patients who had relevant conditions that could contribute to CI were excluded. After subjects were divided into 3 groups according to their current antihypertensive medication, the cognitive status of each patient was assessed by the mini-mental state examination (MMSE). BDNF and plasma renin activity were evaluated. Results: There was a negative association between systolic blood pressure and MMSE independent of medication (rho = −0.251, P = 0.049). There was no significant correlation between MMSE and BDNF. The MMSE score was slightly higher in the non-RAS group, but the difference did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.09). There was also no significant difference in BDNF levels between study groups (P = 0.32). Mean plasma renin activity levels were significantly lower in the non-RAS group compared with the angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker groups (P = 0.007). Conclusions: We suggest that the essential intervention for CI in hypertensive patients is appropriate for blood pressure control.
Delayed Stroke Secondary to Increasing Mass Effect after Endovascular Treatment of a Giant Aneurysm by Parent Vessel Occlusion

We thank Desai et al (1) for an elegant corroboration of neuroimaging and pathology regarding a case of radiculomyelitic (paralytic or dumb) human rabies. Three previous reports of MR imaging of the spine in cases of human rabies appear in the literature (2–4). In one case of furious or encephalitic rabies, the findings of MR imaging of the lumbar spine were unremarkable (2). In two cases of paralytic rabies, the findings of MR imaging of the cervical spine were consistent with myelitis (3, 4). Desai et al (1) argue that findings of MR imaging of the spine in cases of human rabies are different and that they distinguish rabies resulting from encephalomyelitis from rabies resulting from any other cause or, more specifically, from rabies occurring secondary to postexposure prophylaxis with inactive nerve tissue vaccines (ie, Semple vaccine). This claim seems premature, especially considering the limited data available. More descriptions of MR imaging of the spine in cases of human rabies are needed. More important is the clear documentation of spinal abnormalities revealed by imaging in cases of paralytic human rabies. When MR imaging of the spine suggests myelitis, paralytic rabies should be considered. In a patient whose condition progresses from flaccid paralysis with myelitis evident on MR images of the spine to both paralysis and encephalitis, rabies should be strongly considered. Unfortunately, patients with rabies who did not receive appropriate postexposure prophylaxis will die, regardless of their neuroimaging findings. Michael J. Doherty Nathaniel F.Watson Department of Neurology University of Washington Seattle, WA
Anchoring Democracy from Above? The European Union and Democratic Backsliding in Hungary and Romania after Accession†

This article analyzes the European Union's reactions to breaches of liberal democratic practices in Hungary and Romania during 2012-13 in order to assess its capacity to lock in democracy in the Member States. The article finds that a combination of partisan politics and weak normative consensus thwarted the EU's ability to use the sanctioning mechanism of Article 7. The effectiveness of alternative instruments that EU institutions used - social pressure, infringement procedures and issue linkage - varied across issues and countries. In Hungary, changes to illiberal practices generally remained limited, but differences in the EU's material leverage explain cross-issue variation. The EU's relative success in Romania suggests that it is not necessarily powerless against democratic backsliding. It might require a demanding constellation of favourable conditions for both social and material pressure, but there are grounds for a more optimistic interpretation that material leverage might be unnecessary if the conditions for social pressure are favourable.
The 40-year pursuit of equal pay: a case of constantly moving goalposts

Progress towards equal pay is elusive. This article reviews debates on and prescribed remedies for gender pay equality over the past 40 years of equal pay policy. It looks at pay from four perspectives—the economic, the sociological, the institutional and the organisational—and explores how and why once an apparent remedy for unequal pay is pursued, the goalposts tend to shift. The argument is made that the difficulties in securing long-term progress may be attributed to a number of factors, including the multifaceted nature of pay as a social phenomenon, the challenge of pursuing social objectives in a rapidly changing and fragmenting environment, the need for political will not technical solutions to achieve redistribution and the potential for gender inequalities to re-emerge in new forms.
Macrophage accumulation, division, maturation and digestive and microbicidal capacities in tuberculous lesions. II. Rate at which mononuclear cells enter and divide in primary BCG lesions and those of reinfection.

During the first 2 weeks the rate of entry of mononuclear cells (MN) into rabbit dermal BCG lesions was roughly proportional to the increase in size of the lesions. Lesions of reinfection increased in size much faster than primary lesions. After caseous necrosis was prominent, changes in lesion size no longer reflected the entry of new MN because many were dying. Tritiated thymidine (H 3 T) was therefore used to label MN (mostly in the bone marrow), and their rate of entry into dermal BCG lesions was determined by autoradiographic techniques. Multiple lesions were produced and biopsied, each at a different time after a single intravenous (i.v.) pulse of H 3 T. This pulse was given when the BCG lesions were -1, +6, +14 or +27 days of age. Five days afterward 20 to 30% of the MN present were labeled, regardless of whether the lesion was beginning (-1 and +6 days), at its height (+14 days) or regressing (+27 days). Thus there was a continuous entry of new MN into the lesions throughout their life. Many more H 3 T-labeled MN entered the BCG lesions after hypersensitivity to tuberculin developed. The rate of local MN division in dermal BCG lesions was determined by H 3 T grain count analyses. A single i.v. pulse of H 3 T was given to rabbits when their lesions were -1, +6, +14 or +27 days of age, and biopsies were made 1, 2, 5 and 8 days after the pulse. The reduction in H 3 T grain counts caused by previous MN division in the bone marrow was compared with the grain count reduction caused by MN division in the BCG lesions. The rate of MN division in these lesions was highest when delayed hypersensitivity was strong, namely in lesions of reinfection and in 14-day primary lesions. Similar H 3 T grain count analyses indicated that the MN which divided in the BCG lesions did so only once (or twice) during their first week of residence. After such division, they still functioned awhile before they died and were replaced by new MN from the bloodstream. Thus most of the MN in tuberculous lesions were relatively recent immigrants, and their local division did not contribute substantially to the total number present.
Review of the Etiology of Breast Cancer with Special Attention to Organochlorines as Potential Endocrine Disruptors

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among Canadian women, accounting for about 30% of all new cancer cases each year. Although the incidence of breast cancer has increased over the past 50 years, the cause of this rise is unknown. Risk factors for breast cancer may be classified into four broad categories: (1) genetic/familial, (2) reproductive/hormonal, (3) lifestyle, and (4) environmental. Established risk factors for breast cancer include older age, later age at first full-term pregnancy, no full-term pregnancies, postmenopausal obesity, and genetic factors. However, these known risk factors cannot account for the majority of cases. In the early 1990s, it was suggested that exposure to some environmental chemicals such as organochlorine compounds may play a causal role in the etiology of breast cancer through estrogen-related pathways. The relationship between organochlorines and breast cancer risk has been studied extensively in the past decade and more, and at this point there is no clear evidence to support a causal role of most organochlorine pesticides in the etiology of human breast cancer, but more evidence is needed to assess risk associated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Future studies need to consider the combined effects of exposures, concentrate on vulnerable groups such as those with higher levels of exposure, only consider exposures occurring during the most etiologically relevant time periods, and more thoroughly consider gene–environment interactions.
Pathways of Power: The Dynamics of National Policymaking

Preface 1. Introduction2. The Pluralist Pathway3. The Partisan Pathway4. The Expert Pathway5. The Symbolic Pathway6. Pathways and Policy Change7. Pathways and Budgeting8. Pathways through the Political Thicket of Taxation9. The Pathway Dynamics of Intergovernmental Policymaking and Reform10. Conclusion Appendix: Analysis of Pathways Designations Index
Fine-Tuning Sales Compensation Programs

H arsh economic times have made the selling environment more competitive than ever. Against this background, how are organizations tuning up their compensation programs to encourage good sales performance? To find out, the human resource consulting firm William M. Mercer, Incorporated, conducted a survey for Compensation f~’ Benefits Review in late summer 1993. Ninety-three individuals in sales manage-
Enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay-detected p53 protein accumulation: a prognostic factor in a large breast cancer cohort.

PURPOSE This study was designed to evaluate whether patients with an unfavorable breast cancer prognosis could be identified by p53 protein overexpression detected by a quantitative enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay (ELISA). PATIENTS AND METHODS Extracts from 998 breast carcinomas were assayed for p53 protein by an ELISA that used both DO-1 monoclonal and CM-1 polyclonal antibodies. Relative risks (RRs) for cancer relapse and death after 6 years of follow-up for patients with p53-positive tumors based on different dichotomization criteria were determined by multivariate Cox regression, adjusted for patient age, tumor size, S-phase fraction, estrogen (ER) and progesterone (PR) receptor concentrations, DNA ploidy, and lymph node metastases. Disease-free (DFS) and overall (OS) survival probabilities of p53-positive and p53-negative groups, using a median cutoff, were also estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method and the log-rank test. These analyses were performed for all patients and for subgroups defined by ER status, node status, and primary postoperative treatment. RESULTS Univariate analysis showed that p53 concentrations that exceeded the median indicated significantly increased risks for relapse (P < .01) and death (P = .02). Multivariate analyses confirmed these observations (RR = 1.40; P = .02 for DFS and RR = 1.50; P < .01 for OS) and showed trends for increasing risks for relapse (P = .02) and death (P = .06) when p53 was considered as a four-level categoric variable, and identified p53 positivity as a significant predictor of outcome in node-positive patients (RR = 1.67; P < .01 and RR = 2.10; P < .01 for DFS and OS, respectively), ER-positive patients (RR = 1.45; P = .02 and RR = 1.50; P = .01 for DFS and OS, respectively), and in patients treated with chemotherapy (RR = 1.73; P = .04 for relapse and RR = 2.04; P = .03 for death). CONCLUSION Assessment of p53 overexpression by ELISA, easily incorporated into the routine biochemical work-up of breast tumors, may be an independent predictor of reduced survival of breast cancer patients.
USER BEHAVIOUR ANALYSIS OF IPTV CHANNELS USING MARKOV CHAIN MODEL

Due to the emergence of innovative technologies over Internet, the traditional broadcasting of TV is changed to use IPTV for next generation networks. IPTV is the delivery of multimedia content to multiple subscribers through multicasting over well known IP. The IPTV depends on the Internet and telecommunications. Therefore, the inherent issues are to be identified and resolved for the success of IPTV. In this paper we proposed a Markov chain model that characterizes the user behaviour. Markov model a stochastic model that expresses a sequence of events. In the set of events, the probability of each event is likely based on the state gained from previous event. We considered two IPTV channels. Users may prefer any one. However, user switches to other channel if the channel fails. The Markov chain model used for modelling user behaviour includes states and transition probabilities. Quitting from a channel is the variation parameter over the popularity of channels. The more of quitting behaviour pertaining to a channel reflects the deteriorated quality of services and popularity of that channel. The results of the study reveal probable inter relationship between user behaviour parameters and channel’s popularity in the market. Index Terms – IPTV, Markov chain, transition probability, user behaviour modelling INTRODUCTION In the wake of technological advancements Internet Protocol (IP) is being used for delivering multimedia content over Internet. In fact, leveraging IP for global communications became a cheaper alternative for reliable and instant communication over global communication medium such as information super highway. It is wise idea to utilize already established public network such as Internet for public communications. With IP v6 and security considerations, IP became a viable alternative for cost effective global communications. Many technologies such as Voice over IP (VoIP) are already in place to exploit delivery of voice communications and multimedia content over Internet Protocol. This has motivated broadcasting networks like Television to adapt IP based content delivery as its next generation broadcasting method. The phenomenon which facilitates deliverance of multimedia services of Television via Internet Protocol is known as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). Thus the TV network can leverage the advantages of well established public network (Internet) and its underlying protocols for broadcasting content. IPTV when International Journal of Advances in Engineering Research http://www.ijaer. com (IJAER) 2016, Vol. No. 12, Issue No. I, July e-ISSN: 2231-5152, p-ISSN: 2454-1796