Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pharmacodynamics of Doxorubicin in Human Bladder Tumors1

Intravesical doxorubicin treatment delivers high drug concentrations to the bladder wall, yet the treatment pro-duces only a variable and incomplete response in superficial bladder cancer and insignificant activity in muscle-invading disease. This study evaluated the pharmacological basis for the clinical observations and potential prognostic indicators of tumor sensitivity to doxorubicin. The pharmacodynamics of doxorubicin were studied using histocultures of surgical specimens of seven superficial (Ta and T1) and nine invasive (T2-.T4) tumors. After a 2-h exposure, drug treatment caused a concentration-dependent inhibition of proliferation, as measured by bromodeoxyuridine incorporation into DNA. Extensive cell death was observed at high concentrations (> 10 (cid:1). LM) in sensitive tumors. The IC50 values ranged from 0.14 to 5.2 p.M for superficial tumors and from 1.4 to > 100 (cid:1)LM for invasive tumors. A comparison of the IC50 and IC(cid:1) values doxorubicin therapy is likely due to the 35-fold variability in tumor chemosensitivity and, to a lesser degree, the 4-fold variability in tissue pharmacokinetics; (c) the lack of response of invasive cancer to intravesical doxorubicin therapy is likely the result of the inadequate drug concentrations presented to the deep muscle layers and the low chemosensitivity of the more aggressive tumors; and (d) the combination of p53 expression and high stage was the most significant predictor of doxorubicin sensitivity, whereas Pgp expression was the least important.
Cigarette smoking and quit attempts among injection drug users in Tijuana, Mexico.

INTRODUCTION Injection drug use and cigarette smoking are major global health concerns. Limited data exist regarding cigarette smoking behavior and quit attempts among injection drug users (IDUs) in low- and middle-income countries to inform the development of cigarette smoking interventions. We conducted a cross-sectional study to describe cigarette smoking behavior and quit attempts among IDUs in Tijuana, Mexico. METHODS IDUs were recruited through community outreach and administered in-person interviews. Multivariable Poisson regression models were constructed to determine prevalence ratios (PRs) for quit attempts. RESULTS Of the 670 participants interviewed, 601 (89.7%) were current smokers. Of these, median number of cigarettes smoked daily was 10; 190 (31.6%) contemplated quitting smoking in the next 6 months; 132 (22.0%) had previously quit for ≥1 year; and 124 (20.6%) had made a recent quit attempt (lasting ≥1 day during the previous 6 months). In multivariable analysis, recent quit attempts were positively associated with average monthly income (≥3,500 pesos [US$280] vs. <1,500 pesos [US$120]; PR = 2.30; 95% CI = 1.57-3.36), smoking marijuana (PR = 1.38; 95% CI = 1.01-2.90), and smoking heroin (PR = 1.85; 95% CI = 1.23-2.78), and they were negatively associated with number of cigarettes smoked daily (PR = 0.96; 95% CI = 0.94-0.98). CONCLUSIONS One out of 5 IDUs attempted to quit cigarette smoking during the previous 6 months. Additional research is needed to improve the understanding of the association between drug use patterns and cigarette smoking quit attempts, including the higher rate of quit attempts observed among IDUs who smoke marijuana or heroin compared with IDUs who do not smoke these substances.
Length normalization in XML retrieval

XML retrieval is a departure from standard document retrieval in which each individual XML element, ranging from italicized words or phrases to full blown articles, is a potentially retrievable unit. The distribution of XML element lengths is unlike what we usually observe in standard document collections, prompting us to revisit the issue of document length normalization. We perform a comparative analysis of arbitrary elements versus relevant elements, and show the importance of length as a parameter for XML retrieval. Within the language modeling framework, we investigate a range of techniques that deal with length either directly or indirectly. We observe a length bias introduced by the amount of smoothing, and show the importance of extreme length priors for XML retrieval. We also show that simply removing shorter elements from the index (by introducing a cut-off value) does not create an appropriate document length normalization. Even after increasing the minimal size of XML elements occurring in the index, the importance of an extreme length bias remains.
New Constraints on the Nature of Radio Emission in Sagittarius A*

The millimeter to submillimeter spectrum of Sagittarius A* at the Galactic center, as well as its polarization characteristics, are consistent with the inner ~10 Schwarzschild radii of a tight Keplerian emitting region of hot, magnetized, orbiting gas. This plasma may also be the source (through self-Comptonization) of the X-rays detected by Chandra. It has long been suspected that the circularization region between the quasi-spherical infall at large radii, and this inner zone, is responsible for producing the rest of Sgr A*'s spectrum. In this Letter, we report the results of a detailed study of this region, with several important conclusions that will be highly relevant to upcoming coordinated multiwavelength observations. First, the combination of existing centimeter and X-ray data preclude the possibility of producing the observed strong 1.36 GHz radio flux via thermal synchrotron within a bounded flow. If Sgr A*'s radio spectrum is produced by accreting gas, it appears that a nonthermal particle distribution is a necessity. This may not be surprising, given that the energy associated with the radial motion is probably dissipated by shocks before the gas circularizes, which can produce the required power-law distribution. Second, if this is the correct picture for how Sgr A*'s spectrum is produced, it appears that the Chandra-detected X-rays may originate either from self-Comptonization in the inner Keplerian region or from optically thin nonthermal synchrotron emission in the much larger circularization zone, extending up to 500 Schwarzschild radii or more. This is a question that should be answered by upcoming broadband observations, since the millimeter bump and X-rays are strongly correlated in the former case, whereas the X-rays are strongly correlated to the centimeter radio flux in the latter. In addition, X-rays produced in the circularized gas could show periodic or quasi-periodic variations but not those produced via nonthermal synchrotron emission much farther out.
Mining branching-time scenarios

Specification mining extracts candidate specification from existing systems, to be used for downstream tasks such as testing and verification. Specifically, we are interested in the extraction of behavior models from execution traces. In this paper we introduce mining of branching-time scenarios in the form of existential, conditional Live Sequence Charts, using a statistical data-mining algorithm. We show the power of branching scenarios to reveal alternative scenario-based behaviors, which could not be mined by previous approaches. The work contrasts and complements previous works on mining linear-time scenarios. An implementation and evaluation over execution trace sets recorded from several real-world applications shows the unique contribution of mining branching-time scenarios to the state-of-the-art in specification mining.
A review of drug patch testing and implications for HIV clinicians

Systemic drug-induced hypersensitivity reactions (HSRs) have been reported for a variety of drugs, and are thought to have a combined immunological, genetic and metabolic basis. These diverse idiosyncratic reactions are both drug and host dependent, and subsequent rechallenge with the drugs responsible can result in a potentially life-threatening clinical reaction.Hypersensitivity has been observed in regard to several drugs used to manage HIV and associated infections, with the antiretrovirals nevirapine and abacavir being the best characterized of the syndromes. These events represent a high cost both to the patient and the healthcare system, and those labelled as being hypersensitive to one or both drugs may find their treatment options significantly reduced.The identification of HSRs can be challenging due to the heterogeneity of their clinical manifestations. Furthermore, with multidrug regimens - common in HIV management - it may be difficult to identify the drug responsible. Epicutaneous patch testing, a procedure well established in contact dermatitis, has also been used as a supplementary diagnostic test for several drug-related HSRs; its usefulness, however, depends on both the drug and syndrome involved. This study discusses HSRs and the application of patch testing to their investigation, with particular emphasis on HIV and abacavir - the antiretroviral with which patch testing has been most studied
Autonomic Cloud computing: Open challenges and architectural elements

As Clouds are complex, large-scale, and heterogeneous distributed systems, management of their resources is a challenging task. They need automated and integrated intelligent strategies for provisioning of resources to offer services that are secure, reliable, and cost-efficient. Hence, effective management of services becomes fundamental in software platforms that constitute the fabric of computing Clouds. In this direction, this paper identifies open issues in autonomic resource provisioning and presents innovative management techniques for supporting SaaS applications hosted on Clouds. We present a conceptual architecture and early results evidencing the benefits of autonomic management of Clouds.
Elastic modulus and thermal conductivity of ultradrawn polyethylene

The axial and transverse Young's modulus and thermal conductivity of gel and single crystal mat polyethylene with draw ratios λ = 1–350 have been measured from 160 to 360 K. The axial Young's modulus increases sharply with increasing λ, whereas the transverse modulus shows a slight decrease. The thermal conductivity exhibits a similar behavior. At λ = 350, the axial Young's modulus and thermal conductivity are, respectively, 20% and three times higher than those of steel. For this ultradrawn material both the magnitude and the temperature dependence of the axial Young's modulus are close to those of polyethylene crystal. The high values of the axial Young's modulus and thermal conductivity arise from the presence of a large percentage (∼85%) of long needle crystals. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci B: Polym Phys 37: 3359–3367, 1999
Rad51 Accumulation at Sites of DNA Damage and in Postreplicative Chromatin

Rad51, a eukaryotic RecA homologue, plays a central role in homologous recombinational repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) in yeast and is conserved from yeast to human. Rad51 shows punctuate nuclear localization in human cells, called Rad51 foci, typically during the S phase (Tashiro, S., N. Kotomura, A. Shinohara, K. Tanaka, K. Ueda, and N. Kamada. 1996. Oncogene. 12:2165–2170). However, the topological relationships that exist in human S phase nuclei between Rad51 foci and damaged chromatin have not been studied thus far. Here, we report on ultraviolet microirradiation experiments of small nuclear areas and on whole cell ultraviolet C (UVC) irradiation experiments performed with a human fibroblast cell line. Before UV irradiation, nuclear DNA was sensitized by the incorporation of halogenated thymidine analogues. These experiments demonstrate the redistribution of Rad51 to the selectively damaged, labeled chromatin. Rad51 recruitment takes place from Rad51 foci scattered throughout the nucleus of nonirradiated cells in S phase. We also demonstrate the preferential association of Rad51 foci with postreplicative chromatin in contrast to replicating chromatin using a double labeling procedure with halogenated thymidine analogues. This finding supports a role of Rad51 in recombinational repair processes of DNA damage present in postreplicative chromatin.
BMI1 as a novel target for drug discovery in cancer

Growing evidence has demonstrated that clonogenic cancer stem (initiating) cells are responsible for tumor regrowth and disease relapse. Bmi‐1 plays a critical role in the self‐renewal of adult stem cells. The Bmi‐1 protein is elevated in many types of cancers, and experimental reduction of Bmi‐1 protein levels by small interfering RNA (siRNA) causes apoptosis and/or senescence in tumor cells in vitro and increases susceptibility to cytotoxic agents. The Bmi‐1 protein has no known enzymatic activity, but serves as the key regulatory component of the PRC1 complex (polycomb repressive complex‐1). This complex influences chromatin structure and regulates transcriptional activity of a number of important loci including the Ink4a locus which encodes the tumor suppressor proteins p16Ink4a and p14Arf. In this prospective study, we will discuss the implication of BMI1 in cancers, the biology of BMI1, and the regulatory control of BMI1 expression. The target validation and the future prospects of targeting BMI1 in cancer therapy are also discussed. J. Cell. Biochem. 112: 2729–2741, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Rehabilitation Management of Neuromuscular Disease: The Role of Exercise Training

This paper summarizes the current state of knowledge regarding exercise and neuromuscular diseases/disorders (NMDs) and reviews salient studies in the literature. Unfortunately, there is inadequate evidence in much of the NMDs to make specific recommendations regarding exercise prescriptions. This review focuses on the role of exercise in a few of the specific NMDs where most research has taken place and recommends future research directions.
UFlood: High-throughput flooding over wireless mesh networks

This paper proposes UFlood, a flooding protocol for wireless mesh networks. UFlood targets situations such as software updates where all nodes need to receive the same large file of data, and where limited radio range requires forwarding. UFlood's goals are high throughput and low airtime, defined respectively as rate of completion of a flood to the slowest receiving node and total time spent transmitting. The key to achieving these goals is good choice of sender for each transmission opportunity. The best choice evolves as a flood proceeds in ways that are difficult to predict. UFlood's core new idea is a distributed heuristic to dynamically choose the senders likely to lead to all nodes receiving the flooded data in the least time. The mechanism takes into account which data nearby receivers already have as well as internode channel quality. The mechanism includes a novel bit-rate selection algorithm that trades off the speed of high bit-rates against the larger number of nodes likely to receive low bitrates. Unusually, UFlood uses both random network coding to increase the usefulness of each transmission and detailed feedback about what data each receiver already has; the feedback is critical in deciding which node's coded transmission will have the most benefit to receivers. The required feedback is potentially voluminous, but UFlood includes novel techniques to reduce its cost. The paper presents an evaluation on a 25-node 802.11 test-bed. UFlood achieves 150% higher throughput than MORE, a high-throughput flooding protocol, using 65% less airtime. UFlood uses 54% less airtime than MNP, an existing efficient protocol, and achieves 300% higher throughput.
Improving efficacy of hyperthermia in oncology by exploiting biological mechanisms

Abstract It has long been established that hyperthermia increases the therapeutic benefit of radiation and chemotherapy in cancer treatment. During the last few years there have been substantial technical improvements in the sources used to apply and measure heat, which greatly increases enthusiasm for the clinical use of hyperthermia. These advances are converging with a better understanding of the physiological and molecular effects of hyperthermia. Therefore, we are now at a juncture where the parameters that will influence the efficacy of hyperthermia in cancer treatment can be optimised in a more systematic and rational manner. In addition, the novel insights in hyperthermia’s many biological effects on tumour cells will ultimately result in new treatment regimes. For example, the molecular effects of hyperthermia on the essential cellular process of DNA repair suggest novel combination therapies, with DNA damage response targeting drugs that should now be clinically explored. Here, we provide an overview of recent studies on the various macroscopic and microscopic biological effects of hyperthermia. We indicate the significance of these effects on current treatments and suggest how they will help design novel future treatments.
The inotropic effects of ammonia on isolated perfused rat hearts and the mechanisms involved

SUMMARY Ammonia (NH3) is a common exogenous gas in the atmosphere, as well as an endogenous chemical produced by amino acid catabolism and other pathways in vivo. Physiological and pathophysiological roles of NH3 in the nervous system have been studied. Recently, endogenous NH3 has been suggested to be a gas transmitter. However, so far the role of NH3 in cardiovascular functions has not been reported. The present study was designed to investigate the inotropic effects of NH3 on isolated perfused rat hearts and the possible mechanisms involved in these effects. The results showed that NH3 had a positive inotropic effect in a concentration-dependent manner and produced a higher positive effect than NaOH and NH4Cl. At low concentrations, the effect of NH3 on cardiac function was caused by NH3 molecules; at high concentrations, the effect of NH3 on hearts may be partly correlated with a change of pH value, but was mainly caused by NH3 molecules. The mechanisms involved in the NH3-induced positive inotropic effect may be related to the ATP-sensitive K+ (KATP) channel and the nitric oxide (NO)–cyclic GMP (cGMP) signaling pathway. In addition, at a concentration of 1.5 mmol l–1, NH3 significantly increased the activity of creatine kinase (CK) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) in the coronary perfusate and decreased the activity of Na+,K+-ATPase and Ca2+,Mg2+-ATPase in the hearts. These results indicate that NH3 at physiological or low concentrations may play a modulatory role in heart function, but at high concentrations had a damaging effect on isolated rat hearts.
Statistical Disclosure: Improved, Extended, and Resisted

Traffic analysis is a type of attack on secure communications systems, in which the adversary extracts useful patterns and information from the observed traffic. This paper improves and extends an efficient traffic analysis attack, called "statistical disclosure attack. " Moreover, we propose a solution to defend against the improved (and, a fortiori, the original) statistical disclosure attack. Our solution delays the attacker considerably, meaning that he should gather significantly more observations to be able to deduce meaningful information from the traffic.
Towards developing intervarietal substitution lines in Brassica napus using marker-assisted selection.

Sets of substitution lines have advantages over segregating populations for the rigorous analysis of loci influencing quantitative traits. A general strategy for the rapid production of substitution lines was developed. It involved the systematic application of marker-assisted selection over 2-4 generations of backcrossing. The effectiveness of this strategy was demonstrated by the production of intervarietal substitution lines in Brassica napus. A genetic map containing 158 loci, distributed across all 19 B. napus linkage groups and assayed in 200 B1 individuals, was generated. Six complementary B1 individuals enriched for recurrent genotype and collectively carrying almost all the donor genome were selected. A total of 288 B2 plants derived from the selected B1 individuals were analysed and complementary individuals carrying five or fewer donor segments were identified. Similar selection, carried out on 250 B3 plants from two distinct B1 lineages, identified 74 B3 individuals carrying one or two donor segments. Together, 12 of these isolated segments represented 33% of the mapped genome. Lines homozygous for single substituted segments were derived from selfed progeny of selected B3 plants. A full set of substitution lines will be used to elucidate the genetic control of quantitative production traits in oilseed rape over several environments. Key words : QTL mapping, quantitative genetics, backcross, genetic linkage map, plant breeding, restriction fragment length polymorphism.
Mining time dependency patterns in clinical pathways

Clinical pathways are widely adopted by many large hospitals around the world in order to provide high-quality patient treatment and to reduce the length of hospital stay of each patient. The development of clinical pathways is a lengthy process, and may require the collaboration among physicians, nurses and other staff in a hospital. However, individual differences cause great variance in the execution of clinical pathways. This calls for a more dynamic and adaptive process to improve the performance of clinical pathways. This paper proposes a data mining technique to discover the time-dependency patterns of clinical pathways for curing brain strokes. The purpose of mining time-dependency patterns is to discover patterns of process execution sequences and to identify the dependent relations between activities in a majority of cases. By obtaining the time-dependency patterns, we can predict the paths for new patients when they are admitted to a hospital, and, in turn, the health care procedure will then be more effective and efficient.
A quantitative computational model for complete partial metric spaces via formal balls†

Given a partial metric space (X, p), we use (BX, ⊑dp) to denote the poset of formal balls of the associated quasi-metric space (X, dp). We obtain characterisations of complete partial metric spaces and sup-separable complete partial metric spaces in terms of domain-theoretic properties of (BX, ⊑dp). In particular, we prove that a partial metric space (X, p) is complete if and only if the poset (BX, ⊑dp) is a domain. Furthermore, for any complete partial metric space (X, p), we construct a Smyth complete quasi-metric q on BX that extends the quasi-metric dp such that both the Scott topology and the partial order ⊑dp are induced by q. This is done using the partial quasi-metric concept recently introduced and discussed by H. P. Künzi, H. Pajoohesh and M. P. Schellekens (Künzi et al. 2006). Our approach, which is inspired by methods due to A. Edalat and R. Heckmann (Edalat and Heckmann 1998), generalises to partial metric spaces the constructions given by R. Heckmann (Heckmann 1999) and J. J. M. M. Rutten (Rutten 1998) for metric spaces.
Efficient Learning of Sparse Invariant Representations

We propose a simple and efficient algorithm for learning sparse invariant representations from unlabeled data with fast inference. When trained on short movies sequences, the learned features are selective to a range of orientations and spatial frequencies, but robust to a wide range of positions, similar to complex cells in the primary visual cortex. We give a hierarchical version of the algorithm, and give guarantees of fast convergence under certain conditions.