Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Laser capture microdissection-directed profiling of glycolytic and mTOR pathways in areas of selectively ablated Müller cells in the murine retina.

PURPOSE We have reported previously down-regulation of key metabolic pathways, the glycolytic and mTOR pathways, from a global retinal microarray analysis after selective Müller cell ablation in a novel transgenic model. The purpose of the present study was to examine changes in expression of key molecules of glycolytic and mTOR pathways specifically in patches of Müller cell loss. METHODS Eyes were enucleated 1 and 3 months after induced Müller cell ablation, directly embedded in optimal cutting temperature medium, and snap frozen in liquid nitrogen. Laser capture microdissection (LCM) was conducted to dissect patches of Müller cell loss for quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis of key genes of the glycolytic (glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, enolase 1 and 2, lactate dehydrogenase A and B) and mTOR pathways (insulin-like growth factor receptor 1, phosphatidylinositide-3-kinase, Akt1, and regulatory-associated protein of mTOR). Protein validations were performed by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS The LCM-directed qRT-PCR analysis of Müller cell ablated specimens demonstrated reduced transcription of genes involved in the glycolytic and mTOR metabolic pathways. Of the proteins we chose to study, only enolase 1 was expressed by Müller cells. Other glycolytic and mTOR pathway proteins were expressed by photoreceptor inner and outer segments, which were lost in patches of Müller cell ablation. CONCLUSIONS We found suppression of genes encoding various glycolytic and mTOR pathway-associated enzymes in areas of Müller cell loss. This appeared mainly to be due to loss of photoreceptor inner and outer segments. The consequences of metabolic derangement caused by Müller cell ablation warrant further investigation.
Social entrepreneurship: towards conceptualisation

The marketing in strategy dialogue and the emerging marketing/entrepreneurship interface paradigm stress the need for marketers to research entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneur-ship, the entrepreneurship leading to the establishment of new social enterprises and the continued innovation in existing ones, is much discussed but little understood and given the increasing importance of such organisations should be addressed. This paper conceptualises social entrepreneurship as a multidimensional construct involving the expression of entrepreneurially virtuous behaviour to achieve the social mission, a coherent unity of purpose and action in the face of moral complexity, the ability to recognise social value-creating opportunities and key decision-making characteristics of innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. The paper discusses implications for policy and practice and concludes with a consideration of theoretical issues and directions for future research. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications
Testing experimentally the robustness against friction of a force control algorithm

Among the many challenges to deal with when a robot is interacting with its environment, friction at the contact surface and/or at the joints is one of the most important to be considered. Recently a force control algorithm for robot manipulators was proposed. This scheme was designed to work under the assumption that only viscous friction is present. Since in general this may be restrictive, in this work we test experimentally the robustness of this control scheme against more rigorous conditions of friction.
The Relevance of HLA Sequencing in Population Genetics Studies

Next generation sequencing (NGS) is currently being adapted by different biotechnological platforms to the standard typing method for HLA polymorphism, the huge diversity of which makes this initiative particularly challenging. Boosting the molecular characterization of the HLA genes through efficient, rapid, and low-cost technologies is expected to amplify the success of tissue transplantation by enabling us to find donor-recipient matching for rare phenotypes. But the application of NGS technologies to the molecular mapping of the MHC region also anticipates essential changes in population genetic studies. Huge amounts of HLA sequence data will be available in the next years for different populations, with the potential to change our understanding of HLA variation in humans. In this review, we first explain how HLA sequencing allows a better assessment of the HLA diversity in human populations, taking also into account the methodological difficulties it introduces at the statistical level; secondly, we show how analyzing HLA sequence variation may improve our comprehension of population genetic relationships by facilitating the identification of demographic events that marked human evolution; finally, we discuss the interest of both HLA and genome-wide sequencing and genotyping in detecting functionally significant SNPs in the MHC region, the latter having also contributed to the makeup of the HLA molecular diversity observed today.
Genetic architecture of pollination syndrome transition between hummingbird-specialist and generalist species in the genus Rhytidophyllum (Gesneriaceae)

Adaptation to pollinators is a key factor of diversification in angiosperms. The Caribbean sister genera Rhytidophyllum and Gesneria present an important diversification of floral characters. Most of their species can be divided in two major pollination syndromes. Large-open flowers with pale colours and great amount of nectar represent the generalist syndrome, while the hummingbird-specialist syndrome corresponds to red tubular flowers with a less important nectar volume. Repeated convergent evolution toward the generalist syndrome in this group suggests that such transitions rely on few genes of moderate to large effect. To test this hypothesis, we built a linkage map and performed a QTL detection for divergent pollination syndrome traits by crossing one specimen of the generalist species Rhytidophyllum auriculatum with one specimen of the hummingbird pollinated R. rupincola. Using geometric morphometrics and univariate traits measurements, we found that floral shape among the second-generation hybrids is correlated with morphological variation observed between generalist and hummingbird-specialist species at the genus level. The QTL analysis showed that colour and nectar volume variation between syndromes involve each one major QTL while floral shape has a more complex genetic basis and rely on few genes of moderate effect. Finally, we did not detect any genetic linkage between the QTLs underlying those traits. This genetic independence of traits could have facilitated evolution toward optimal syndromes.
The editing enzyme ADAR1 and the mRNA surveillance protein hUpf1 interact in the cell nucleus

Posttranscriptional regulation is an important step in the regulation of gene expression. In this article, we show an unexpected connection between two proteins that participate in different processes of posttranscriptional regulation that ensures the production of functional mRNA molecules. Specifically, we show that the A-to-I RNA editing protein adenosine deaminase that acts on RNA 1 (ADAR1) and the human Upf1 (hUpf1) protein involved in RNA surveillance are found associated within nuclear RNA-splicing complexes. A potential functional role for this association was revealed by RNAi-mediated down-regulation of ADAR1, which was accompanied by up-regulation of a number of genes previously shown to undergo A-to-I editing in Alu repeats and to be down-regulated by hUpf1. This study suggests a regulatory pathway by a combination of ADAR1 A-to-I editing enzyme and RNA degradation presumably with the aid of hUpf1.
Relação entre sensibilidade plantar e controle postural em jovens e idosos

A diminuicao da sensibilidade plantar em idosos acarreta alteracoes na locomocao e no controle postural que podem aumentar o risco de quedas. Compreender o uso de aferencias podais em idosos pode auxiliar na prevencao da perda de mobilidade e quedas. Contudo, a relacao entre a sensibilidade de diferentes regioes do pe e alteracoes no controle postural representa uma lacuna na literatura. Com o proposito de investigar esta lacuna na literatura, o objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar a relacao entre a sensibilidade plantar e o controle postural em jovens e idosos. Foram avaliados 42 participantes, organizados em dois grupos de acordo com a faixa etaria (jovens ou idosos). Os participantes foram avaliados quanto as caracteristicas antropometricas, sensibilidade dos pes (usando monofilamentos) e controle postural (usando plataforma de forca). Os indices de sensibilidade plantar e de controle postural foram correlacionados e comparados entre os grupos. Os resultados mostraram que idosos tiveram menor sensibilidade dos pes e pior controle postural do que jovens. A amplitude ântero-posterior e a area do centro de pressao de idosos tiveram correlacao com a sensibilidade plantar geral, mas nao com regioes especificas do pe. Para jovens, a sensibilidade na regiao do antepe esteve relacionada com o melhor controle postural.
Advances in Medical Education and Practice Dovepress the Transformation of Continuing Medical Education (cme) in the United States

This article describes five major themes that inform and highlight the transformation of continuing medical education in the USA. Over the past decade, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and other national entities have voiced concern over the cost of health care, prevalence of medical errors, fragmentation of care, commercial influence, and competence of health professionals. The recommendations from these entities, as well as the work of other regulatory, professional, academic, and government organizations, have fostered discussion and development of strategies to address these challenges. The five themes in this paper reflect the changing expectations of multiple stakeholders engaged in health care. Each theme is grounded in educational, politico-economic priorities for health care in the USA. The themes include (1) a shift in expectation from simple attendance or a time-based metric (credit) to a measurement that infers competence in performance for successful continuing professional development (CPD); (2) an increased focus on interprofes-sional education to augment profession-specific continuing education; (3) the integration of CPD with quality improvement; (4) the expansion of CPD to address population and public health issues; and (5) identification and standardization of continuing education (CE) professional competencies. The CE profession plays an essential role in the transformation of the US CPD system for health professionals. Coordination of the five themes described in this paper will foster an improved, effective, and efficient health system that truly meets the needs of patients.
Unobtrusive and Ubiquitous In-Home Monitoring: A Methodology for Continuous Assessment of Gait Velocity in Elders

Gait velocity has been shown to quantitatively estimate risk of future hospitalization, a predictor of disability, and has been shown to slow prior to cognitive decline. In this paper, we describe a system for continuous and unobtrusive in-home assessment of gait velocity, a critical metric of function. This system is based on estimating walking speed from noisy time and location data collected by a ¿sensor line¿ of restricted view passive infrared motion detectors. We demonstrate the validity of our system by comparing with measurements from the commercially available GAITRite walkway system gait mat. We present the data from 882 walks from 27 subjects walking at three different subject-paced speeds (encouraged to walk slowly, normal speed, or fast) in two directions through a sensor line. The experimental results show that the uncalibrated system accuracy (average error) of estimated velocity was 7.1 cm/s (SD = 11.3 cm/s), which improved to 1.1 cm/s (SD = 9.1 cm/s) after a simple calibration procedure. Based on the average measured walking speed of 102 cm/s, our system had an average error of less than 7% without calibration and 1.1% with calibration.
A Review of Expert System in Information System Audit

-The advent of leading edge auditing techniques which allow auditors to identify risks and evaluate the adequacy of controls over critical information systems in their organizations, has far reaching consequences for many areas of companies’ activities. More and more organizations are moving to a computer-based audit approach that can be adapted to develop and improve the continuous audit process. This approach is used to assess risk and to assist an IS auditor’s decision to do either compliance testing or substantive testing. In a computer based audit approach, IS auditors are not just relying on risk. They are also relying on internal and operational controls as well as knowledge of the organization. This type of computer assessment decision can help relate the cost/benefit analysis of the control to the known risk, allowing practical choices. A knowledge based approach to an Information Systems Audit will enable us to develop an overall and effective IS Audit plan which will consider all the potential weaknesses and /or absence of Controls and determine whether this could lead to a significant deficiency or material weakness. In order to perform an effective Risk Assessment, it is needed to understand the Client’s Business Environment
Information-Theoretic Bounded Rationality

Bounded rationality, that is, decision-making and planning under resource limitations, is widely regarded as an important open problem in artificial intelligence, reinforcement learning, computational neuroscience and economics. This paper offers a consolidated presentation of a theory of bounded rationality based on information-theoretic ideas. We provide a conceptual justification for using the free energy functional as the objective function for characterizing bounded-rational decisions. This functional possesses three crucial properties: it controls the size of the solution space; it has Monte Carlo planners that are exact, yet bypass the need for exhaustive search; and it captures model uncertainty arising from lack of evidence or from interacting with other agents having unknown intentions. We discuss the single-step decision-making case, and show how to extend it to sequential decisions using equivalence transformations. This extension yields a very general class of decision problems that encompass classical decision rules (e.g. EXPECTIMAX and MINIMAX) as limit cases, as well as trust- and risk-sensitive planning.
Preparing for natural hazards: The role of community trust

Abstract: Purpose – This paper seeks to examine how perception of the relationship between people and sources of information influence hazard preparedness and how trust in civic emergency planning agencies responsible for risk communication influences preparedness decisions. It aims to hypothesize that: familiarity with and information about hazards predicts the relative importance of trust; and that levels of trust are influenced by community characteristics. Design/methodology/approach – A cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between trust and hazard preparedness was conducted. Hypotheses were tested using data on bushfire, volcanic and earthquake hazards. Data were analysed using multiple regression analyses. Findings – The first hypothesis, that situational factors predict the relative importance of trust, was supported. Partial support was forthcoming for the second hypothesis. Collective problem solving and empowerment predicted levels of trust. Research limitations/implications – The findings demonstrated the utility of this multi-level model for the analysis of risk communication and need to accommodate societal-level variables in future risk communication research. The source of information plays a role in risk communication that is independent of the information per se. Practical implications – The relationship between people and civic agencies and the information provided must be accommodated in planning risk communication. The analysis provides an evidence-based framework for the development of risk communication strategies based on community engagement principles. Originality/value – This is the first time this multi-level model has been applied to natural hazards and contributes to understanding the contingent nature of the risk communication process.
Phenolic Compounds and Antioxidant Activity of Phalaenopsis Orchid Hybrids

Phalaenopsis spp. is the most commercially and economically important orchid, but their plant parts are often left unused, which has caused environmental problems. To date, reports on phytochemical analyses were most available on endangered and medicinal orchids. The present study was conducted to determine the total phenolics, total flavonoids, and antioxidant activity of ethanol extracts prepared from leaves and roots of six commercial hybrid Phalaenopsis spp. Leaf extracts of “Chian Xen Queen” contained the highest total phenolics with a value of 11.52 ± 0.43 mg gallic acid equivalent per g dry weight and the highest total flavonoids (4.98 ± 0.27 mg rutin equivalent per g dry weight). The antioxidant activity of root extracts evaluated by DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) free radical scavenging assay and β-carotene bleaching method was higher than those of the leaf extracts. Eleven phenolic compounds were identified, namely, protocatechuic acid, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, vanillic acid, caffeic acid, syringic acid, vanillin, ferulic acid, sinapic acid, p-coumaric acid, benzoic acid, and ellagic acid. Ferulic, p-coumaric and sinapic acids were concentrated largely in the roots. The results suggested that the root extracts from hybrid Phalaenopsis spp. could be a potential source of natural antioxidants. This study also helps to reduce the amount of this orchid waste in industrial production, as its roots can be exploited for pharmaceutical purposes.
Access to elements of a memorized list

McGill UniversityThe & watched series of one, two, three, four, or six letters presented visually,one every 300 msec. , and then decided if a probe letter, presented 600 msec,later, was or was not in the original list. Decision time increased with thenumber of letters in a series; the increase was more pronounced for YES thanfor NO decisions. Within the four- and six-letter sequences, there were pro-nounced primacy and recency effects. These results favor a theory that 5 hasdirect access to an internal representation of the probe letter and decidesYES or NO depending on its memory strength. They are inconsistent withtheories which hold that 5 scans through the series to discover whether theprobe is there.
Epigenetic inactivation of HOXA5 and MSH2 gene in clear cell renal cell carcinoma.

424 Background: The high-throughput method using microarray is easy and fast way to analyze the methylation status of hundreds of preselected genes and to screen them for signatures in methylation. The aim of our study is to detect hypermethylated genes and to analyze the association between methylation status and clinicopathological parameters of clear cell renal cell carcinoma. METHODS The genetic substrate included 62 cancer tissues and 62 matched adjacent normal kidney tissues. We adapted the GoldenGate genotyping assay to determine the methylation state of 1505 specific CpG sites in 807 genes. RESULTS We identified two genes (HOXA5 and MSH2) with β-value differences of more than 0.3 between cancer and normal tissues. High methylation group in HOXA5 had high Fuhrman's nuclear grade (P=0.041). Other data in HOXA5 and MSH2 were not significant with methylation status (P>0.05). Survival curve of high methylation group in HOXA5 was slightly lower than that of low methylation group. However, the statistical significances of overall survival in HOXA5 and MSH2 were low (P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS We report the hypermethylation of two genes in clear cell renal cell carcinoma. The data we obtained could provide the basis for a diagnostic test pathological assessment, or prognosis in clear cell renal cell carcinoma.
EFFECT OF PALM KERNEL MEAL ON THE PERFORMANCE OF BROILERS

A study was conducted to evaluate the utilization of palm kernel (Elaeis guineensis) meal in broilers (n=360) at 0, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0 % either alone or in combination with enzymes (0.05%) made nine dietary treatments. The body weight gain and feed intake were not affected among different dietary treatment groups. The feed efficiency was not significantly affected during starter phase, but it was affected significantly (P<0.01) among different groups during finisher and entire period. The feed cost per kg live weight gain was less in broilers fed 7.5% palm kernel meal with enzymes compared to all other groups. The different inclusion levels of palm kernel meal either alone or in combination with enzymes in broiler diets did not influence the carcass traits, total serum protein, serum alkaline phosphatase , antibody titres for Newcastle disease vaccination and mortality compared to control group . It is inferred that the palm kernel meal with enzymes at 7.5% was proved to be better in terms of economic production of broilers .
The RESCUE Project Cooperative Navigation for Rescue Robots

| This paper provides an overview of the RESCUE project, a joint work of three research groups at ISR/IST, Lisboa. The main goal of the project is to provide integrated solutions for the design of teams of cooperative robots operating in outdoors environments, with special focus in the short and mid-terms on perception and representation issues, as well as cooperative navigation, and, in the mid to long-terms, on task modeling, planning and coordination as well. Currently, the reference scenario for the project refers to a long-term goal of developing robotic teams to help humans in search and rescue missions, and is based on one land and one aerial (blimp) robot. The scienti c advances made on the enabling disciplines during the project lifetime should be extendable to other outdoors applications. A brief description of the on-going research and the results obtained is also provided. Keywords| Topological Navigation, Cooperative Navigation, Task Coordination, Software and Functional Architectures, Rescue Robots.
Effect of personal and situational variables on noise annoyance in residential areas

This study uses methods that control for noise level and data quality to objectively evaluate the evidence on 22 personal and situational explanations for annoyance with environmental noise in residential areas. The balance of the evidence from 464 findings drawn from 136 surveys suggests that annoyance is not affected to an important extent by ambient noise levels, the amount of time residents are at home, the type of interviewing method, or any of the nine demographic variables (age, sex, social status, income, education, home ownership, type of dwelling, length of residence, or receipt of benefits from the noise source). Annoyance is related to the amount of isolation from sound at home and to five attitudes (fear of danger from the noise source, noise prevention beliefs, general noise sensitivity, beliefs about the importance of the noise source, and annoyance with non‐noise impacts of the noise source). The evidence is too evenly divided to indicate whether changes in noise environments cause residents to be annoyed more, less, or about the same as would be expected in long‐established noise environments. The evidence shows that even at low noise levels (below DNL 55 dB), a small percentage are highly annoyed and that the extent of annoyance is related to noise exposure.