Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chromatin condensation during apoptosis is accompanied by degradation of lamin A+B, without enhanced activation of cdc2 kinase

Chromatin condensation paralleled by DNA fragmentation is one of the most important criteria which are used to identify apoptotic cells. However, comparable changes are also observed in interphase nuclei which have been treated with cell extracts from mitotic cells. In this respect it is known that in mitosis, the lamina structure is broken down as a result of lamin solubilization and it is possible that a similar process is happening in apoptotic cells. The experiments described in this study have used confluent cultures of an embryonic fibroblast cell line which can be induced to undergo either apoptosis at low serum conditions or mitosis. Solubilization of lamin A+B was analyzed by immunoblotting and indirect immunofluorescence. These studies showed that in mitotic cells lamina breakdown is accompanied by lamin solubilization. In apoptotic cells, a small amount of lamin is solubilized before the onset of apoptosis, thereafter, chromatin condensation is accompanied by degradation of lamin A+B to a 46-kD fragment. Analysis of cellular lysates by probing blots with anti- PSTAIR followed by anti-phosphotyrosine showed that in contrast to mitosis, dephosphorylation on tyrosine residues did not occur in apoptotic cells. At all timepoints after the onset of apoptosis there was no significant increase in the activation of p34cdc2 as determined in the histone H1 kinase assay. Coinduction of apoptosis and mitosis after release of cells from aphidicolin block showed that apoptosis could be induced in parallel with S-phase. The sudden breakdown of chromatin structure may be the result of detachment of the chromatin loops from their anchorage at the nuclear matrix, as bands of 50 kbp and corresponding multimers were detectable by field inversion gel electrophoresis (FIGE). In apoptotic cells all of the DNA was fragmented, but only 14% of the DNA was smaller than 50 kbp. DNA strand breaks were detected at the periphery of the condensed chromatin by in situ tailing (ISTAIL). Chromatin condensation during apoptosis appears to be due to a rapid proteolysis of nuclear matrix proteins which does not involve the p34cdc2 kinase.
Air Pollution from Truck Traffic and Lung Function in Children Living near Motorways

The contribution of motorized traffic to air pollution is widely recognized, but relatively few studies have looked at the respiratory health status of subjects living near busy roads. We studied children in six areas located near major motorways in the Netherlands. We measured lung function in the children, and we assessed their exposure to traffic‐related air pollution using separate traffic counts for automobiles and trucks. We also measured air pollution in the children's schools. Lung function was associated with truck traffic density but had a lesser association with automobile traffic density. The association was stronger in children living closest (<300 m) to the motorways. Lung function was also associated with the concentration of black smoke, measured inside the schools, as a proxy for diesel exhaust particles. The associations were stronger in girls than in boys. The results indicate that exposure to traffic‐related air pollution, in particular diesel exhaust particles, may lead to reduced lung function in children living near major motorways.
Large scale opportunistic antenna and user selection in AF relay networks with interference

In this paper, the asymptotic performance of multiuser multiple-antenna (MU-MIMO) relay networks employing opportunistic scheduling and operating in the presence of Rayleigh fading and co-channel interference is investigated. Notwithstanding the system complexity, due to the newly found complementary moment generating function (CMGF) transform, an exact expression for the capacity, when the antenna counts at the source and the user number are allowed to grow unbound, is obtained. The large scale analysis embodies popular observations, so far intuitively or empirically disclosed, through analytically insightful new formulas. An interesting aspect of this analysis comes from an altered view of multiuser diversity in the context of cellular systems. Previously, multiuser diversity capacity gain has been known to grow as 0(ln ln(K)), from selecting the maximum of K exponentially-distributed powers. Because interference aware scheduling is considered, we find instead that the gain is 0(ln(K1/Q)) where Q is the number of interferers. Simulation results indicate a rather fast convergence to the asymptotic limits with the system's size, thereby demonstrating the practical importance of the scaling results.
The entrepreneur, risk perception and change over time: a typology approach

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the entrepreneur on the formation of strategy over time. It can be argued that the research on traits is extremely important, and cannot be forgotten in any serious attempt to understand entrepreneurship. It is shown that different types of founders exist which challenge the single, stereotypical image of the entrepreneur in the literature. While there are good reasons for believing in the primacy of the founder and in the influence of entrepreneurial traits on the strategy formation process, the findings suggest that other variables such as the ability to learn from experience, adapt to change, and deal with crisis are also important.
Performance analysis of amplify-and-forward two-way relaying with co-channel interference and channel estimation error

In this paper, we consider the performance of a two-way amplify-and-forward relaying network (AF TWRN) in the presence of unequal power co-channel interferers (CCI). Specifically, we consider AF TWRN with an interference-limited relay and two noisy-nodes with channel estimation error and CCI. We derive the approximate signal-to-interference plus noise ratio expressions and then use these expressions to evaluate the outage probability and error probability. Numerical results show that the approximate closed-form expressions are very close to the exact ones.
Analysis of Island Dynamics in Epitaxial Growth of Thin Films

This work is concerned with analysis and refinement for a class of island dynamics models for epitaxial growth of crystalline thin films. An island dynamics model consists of evolution equations for step edges (or island boundaries), coupled with a diffusion equation for the adatom density, on an epitaxial surface. The island dynamics model with irreversible aggregation is confirmed to be mathematically ill-posed, with a growth rate that is approximately linear for large wavenumbers. By including a kinetic model for the structure and evolution of step edges, the island dynamics model is made mathematically well-posed. In the limit of small edge Peclet number, the edge kinetics model reduces to a set of boundary conditions, involving line tension and one-dimensional surface diffusion, for the adatom density. Finally, in the infinitely fast terrace diffusion limit, a simplified model ofone-dimensional surface diffusion and kink convection is derived and found to be linearly stable.
Modification of Breast Cancer Risk in Young Women by a Polymorphic Sequence in the egfr Gene

The regulation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (egfr) gene in human cancer is not yet fully understood. Recent data on a polymorphic CA repeat located at the 5′-regulatory sequence in intron 1 of the egfr gene [egfr CA simple sequence repeat (SSR) I] point to a possible inheritance of cancer risk associated with the egfr gene. Furthermore, we have detected frequent allelic imbalances restricted to the egfr CA SSR I in breast cancer tissue and nontumorous breast tissue adjacent to invasive and in situ breast cancer representing amplifications. Therefore, we conducted a population-based case-control study to assess the relationship between the egfr polymorphism and breast cancer risk. Cases with a first primary breast cancer by age 50 years and age-matched population controls provided information on known and suspected risk factors. The allelic length of the egfr CA SSR was determined in 616 cases and 1072 population-sampled controls. Genotypes were categorized for analysis by allele length. Multivariate logistic regression was used to compare genotype distributions, accounting for other risk factors, and to investigate gene-environment interactions. We found a modifying effect, albeit no main effect, of the allelic length of the egfr polymorphism on breast cancer risk. The presence of two long alleles (≥19 CA) was associated with a significantly elevated odds ratio (OR) of 10.4 [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.85–58.70] among women with a first-degree family history of breast cancer (P = 0.015 for interaction). The risk increase associated with high red meat consumption (OR, 10.68; 95% CI, 1.57–72.58) and the protective effect of high vegetable intake (OR, 0.07; 95% CI, 0.004–1.07) was also most pronounced among carriers of two long alleles (≥19 CA). The length of the egfr CA SSR may increase the risk for familial breast cancers, and its effect could be modulated by dietary factors.
Software and Biological Evolvability: A Comparison Using Key Properties

Biological and software systems share a common property from evolution: they need to change and adapt to either a new environment or a new requirement. If the environment or requirement changes, those systems that have high evolvability will survive and others will be eliminated. The evolvability of a biological system has been widely studied and shown to be dependent on several properties: self-organization, modularity, gene duplication, gene robustness, and symbiosis. This position paper discusses the evolvability of a software system with respect to these properties. Our study shows that software systems share similar evolvability properties with biological systems. We conclude that studying and comparing the internal structures as well as the overall evolution process of these biological systems can help us understand software systems from a holistic 'product-lifecycle' perspective thereby helping us develop software systems with better evolvability traits
Knee finding based Optimized K-MEANS for Web Search

With the vast amount of information available online, searching results for a given query requires the user to go through many titles and snippets. This searching time can be reduced by clustering search results into clusters so that the user can select the relevant cluster at a glance by looking at the cluster labels. For web page clustering, terms (features) can be extracted from different parts of the web page. Giansalvatore, Salvatore and Alessandro (1) have extracted terms from entire web page for clustering. Number of terms returned in this case is more and it produces lengthy vectors. To reduce the size of the vector, Stanis law Osinski et al.,(2) and Ahmed Sameh and Amar Kadray (3) have considered terms from the snippets. In this work, we extracted terms from Uniform Resource Locator (URL), Title tag and Meta tag and we used optimized K- means algorithm for clustering. Optimization of K-means algorithm is done by selecting the number of clusters using knee finding algorithm instead of selecting it randomly. We compared our method with existing methods in terms of Intra-cluster distance and Inter-cluster distance.
The Role of Monitoring Arterial Stiffness with Cardio-Ankle Vascular Index in the Control of Lifestyle-Related Diseases

Arteriosclerosis is a major contributor to cardiovascular diseases. One of the difficulties in controlling those diseases is the lack of a suitable indicator of arteriosclerosis or arterial injury in routine clinical practice. Arterial stiffness was supposed to be one of the monitoring indexes of arteriosclerosis. Cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) is reflecting the stiffness of the arterial tree from the origin of the aorta to the ankle, and one of the features of CAVI is independency from blood pressure at a measuring time. When doxazosin, an α1-adrenergic blocker, was administered, CAVI decreased, indicating that arterial stiffness is composed of both organic stiffness and functional stiffness, which reflects the contraction of arterial smooth muscle. CAVI shows a high value with aging and in many arteriosclerotic diseases, and is also high in persons possessing main coronary risk factors such as diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, hypertension and smoking. Furthermore, when the most of those risk factors were controlled by proper methods, CAVI improved. Furthermore, the co-relationship between CAVI and heart function was demonstrated during treatment of heart failure. This paper reviews the principle and rationale of CAVI, and discusses the meaning of monitoring CAVI in following up so-called lifestyle-related diseases and cardiac dysfunction in routine clinical practice.
Comparing different ways of horizontal information transmission on cooperation Dynamics over different social networks

An Agent Based Model was used to explore the effects of spatial social networks and of different means of horizontal information transmission over cooperation when groups provide protection against predation. We tested two ways to calculate transition probabilities governing the information diffusion of the majority’s opinion: using fixed rates and using a rate proportional to group’ sizes. Our results show that spatial structures affect the cooperation dynamics. Particularly in Small World Networks, cooperation is more sensible to information transmission. The type of horizontal information transmission is less important as long as over 50% of individuals follow the majority rule.
An Investigation of the Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Black and Hispanic Students that have Experienced Success or Failure in Mathematics

This study explored the self-efficacy beliefs of Black and Hispanic middle school students that have experienced success or failure on a standardized mathematics test. Using qualitative analysis techniques, this study sought to complement the existing extensive quantitative literature on student self-efficacy. Seventeen middle school students in grades 6 through 8 were interviewed with varying experiences of success or failure on the Mathematics portion of the Georgia Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) over a 3 year period. The results revealed that students with multiple failures (limited mastery experience) were more apt to express negative self-efficacy beliefs associated with mathematics compared to their higher achieving peers. In addition, it was discovered that grade level strongly influenced the self­ efficacy beliefs where students in upper middle grades more routinely expressed negative beliefs than students in the lower middle grades. This research supported the assertion that educators can reference constructs such as student self-efficacy as a means to understand the consequences of student failure and can perhaps raise achievement by employing improvement strategies that directly address student self-efficacy perceptions.
Order Filters in Super-Resolution Image Reconstruction

In this paper, we propose the use of order filters in the iterative process of super-resolution reconstruction. At each iteration, order statistic filters are used to filter and fuse the error images. The signal dependent L-filter structure adjusts its coefficients to achieve edge preservation as well as maximum noise suppression in homogeneous regions. Depending on the amount of variance of the image pixels in different directional masks, the filter switches to use the orientation, which is most likely to follow the image edges. This procedure allows for the incorporation of a directional prior across the iterations. The introduction of a spatial filtering stage into the iterative process of super-resolution attempts to increase the robustness towards motion error and image outliers. Experimental results show the improvement obtained on sequences of noisy text images when motion is exactly known, and when a random motion error is introduced to simulate the real life situation of inaccurate motion estimation.
The effect of different sealer placement techniques on sealing Ability: An in vitro study

Aim: The aim of this in vitro study was to evaluate the sealing ability of an endodontic sealer following different techniques of its placement. Materials and Methods: A total of 119 permanent human anterior teeth were prepared by using manual Protaper® and randomly divided into three equal groups of 33 teeth each. The teeth were obturated with the cold lateral condensation technique and AH26 sealer which was placed by using the following: G1: rotary lentulo spiral; G2: manual lentulo spiral; and G3: master gutta-percha coating. The remaining 20 teeth served as positive and negative controls. The samples were immersed in the methylene blue solution for 3 days and longitudinally sectioned for dye penetration assessment and analyzed using a stereomicroscope. Results: There was no statistically significant difference (P = 0.305) among the three groups. However, the rotary lentulo spiral technique and the master gutta-percha coating technique showed the highest (4.5 mm) and the lowest (3.8 mm) microleakage values, respectively. Conclusion: Different techniques of sealer placement used in this study provided a comparable seal. However, the master gutta-percha coating technique might be preferable because of its ease of use.
The herpes simplex virus type 1 latency-associated transcript gene regulates the establishment of latency

Herpes simplex virus type 1 establishes latent infections in sensory neurons. During latency only one locus, the latency-associated transcript (LAT), is abundantly transcribed. Several lines of evidence suggest that this locus is required for the efficient reactivation from latency in experimental models. However, it is not yet clear whether this is a direct effect on the reactivation process per se or, as we have suggested, an indirect effect resulting from a decreased efficiency of establishment of latent infections. In this report wild-type and genetically engineered viral mutants were analyzed in a mouse model using a recently developed approach to precisely quantify latently infected neurons. It was found that strain KOS/M established latent infections, as defined by the presence of the viral genome, in about 30% of the neurons. Thirty-three percent of the mice with this latent viral burden reactivated in vivo following hyperthermic stress. In contrast, mutants in which either the basal LAT promoter or the 5' end of the LAT gene was deleted established latency in only 10% of trigeminal neurons (P < 0.00001), and these mice were impaired for reactivation. Repair of the locus resulted in wild-type levels of establishment and reactivation, mapping this function to the LAT region. Finer mapping demonstrated that a 2.3-kb fragment that contains the major LAT transcripts was sufficient to promote efficient establishment and subsequent reactivation when expressed in the context of a foreign gene. Hyperthermic stress applied during the first 3 days postinfection resulted in greatly increased numbers of neurons harboring the latent viral genome. This approach was found to increase the level of establishment of LAT-null mutants to that normally achieved by wild-type KOS/M. These establishment-repaired mice reactivated with wild-type efficiency. Thus, the LAT gene serves to increase the number of neurons in which latency is established, and no direct role for the LAT locus in reactivation could be demonstrated.
A fully integrated 24-GHz eight-element phased-array receiver in silicon

This paper reports the first fully integrated 24-GHz eight-element phased-array receiver in a SiGe BiCMOS technology. The receiver utilizes a heterodyne topology and the signal combining is performed at an IF of 4.8 GHz. The phase-shifting with 4 bits of resolution is realized at the LO port of the first down-conversion mixer. A ring LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) generates 16 different phases of the LO. An integrated 19.2-GHz frequency synthesizer locks the VCO frequency to a 75-MHz external reference. Each signal path achieves a gain of 43 dB, a noise figure of 7.4 dB, and an IIP3 of -11 dBm. The eight-path array achieves an array gain of 61 dB and a peak-to-null ratio of 20 dB and improves the signal-to-noise ratio at the output by 9 dB.
Deblurring depth blur and motion blur simultaneously by using space-time coding

In recent years, various methods have been proposed for recovering depth blur and motion blur by coding camera optics, such as aperture and exposure. However, these methods are limited to deblurring just a single type of blur, such as depth blur or motion blur. In this paper, we propose a method, which enables us to deblur the depth blur and the motion blur simultaneously by coding image capture both in space and time. The validity and the advantages of the proposed method are shown by real-image experiments and quantitative evaluations using lens simulator.
Air Pollution from Traffic and Risk for Lung Cancer in Three Danish Cohorts

Background: Air pollution is suspected to cause lung cancer. The purpose was to investigate whether the concentration of nitrogen oxides (NOx) at the residence, used as an indicator of air pollution from traffic, is associated with risk for lung cancer. Methods: We identified 679 lung cancer cases in the Danish Cancer Registry from the members of three prospective cohorts and selected a comparison group of 3,481 persons from the same cohorts in a case-cohort design. Residential addresses from January 1, 1971, were traced in the Central Population Registry. The NOx concentration at each address was calculated by dispersion models, and the time-weighted average concentration for all addresses was calculated for each person. We used Cox models to estimate incidence rate ratios after adjustment for smoking (status, duration, and intensity), educational level, body mass index, and alcohol consumption. Results: The incidence rate ratios for lung cancer were 1.30 [95% confidence interval (95% CI), 1.07-1.57] and 1.45 (95% CI, 1.12-1.88) for NOx concentrations of 30 to 72 and >72 μg/m3, respectively, when compared with <30 μg/m3. This corresponds to a 37% (95% CI, 6-76%) increase in incidence rate ratio per 100 μg/m3 NOx. The results showed no significant heterogeneity in the incidence rate ratio for lung cancer between cohorts or between strata defined by gender, educational level, or smoking status. Conclusion: The study showed a modest association between air pollution from traffic and the risk for lung cancer. Impact: This study points at traffic as a source of carcinogenic air pollution and stresses the importance of strategies for reduction of population exposure to traffic-related air pollution. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 19(5); 1284–91. ©2010 AACR.