Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Propofol attenuates LPS-induced tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-6 and nitric oxide expression in canine peripheral blood mononuclear cells possibly through down-regulation of nuclear factor (NF)-κB activation

Sepsis is a major cause of mortality in intensive care medicine. Propofol, an intravenous general anesthetic, has been suggested to have anti-inflammatory properties and able to prevent sepsis induced by Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria by down-regulating the gene expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines. However, propofol’s anti-inflammatory effects upon canine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) have not yet been clarified. Here, we isolate canine PBMCs and investigate the effects of propofol on the gene expressions of both lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and upon the production of nitric oxide (NO). Through real-time quantitative PCR and the Griess reagent system, we found that non-cytotoxic levels of propofol significantly inhibited the release of NO and IL-6 and TNF-α gene expression in LPS-induced canine PBMCs. Western blotting revealed that LPS does significantly increase the expression of inducible NO synthase (iNOS) protein in canine PBMCs, while pretreatment with propofol significantly decreases the LPS-induced iNOS protein expression. Propofol, at concentration of 25 µM and 50 µM, also significantly inhibited the LPS-induced nuclear translocation of nuclear factor (NF)-κB p65 protein in canine PBMCs. This diminished TNF-α, IL-6 and iNOS expression, and NO production was in parallel to the respective decreased NF-κB p65 protein nuclear translocation in the LPS-activated canine PBMCs pretreated with 25 µM and 50 µM propofol. This suggests that non-cytotoxic levels of propofol pretreatment can down-regulate LPS-induced inflammatory responses in canine PBMCs, possibly by inhibiting the nuclear translocation of the NF-κB p65 protein.
Superior colliculus connections with visual thalamus in gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis): Evidence for four subdivisions within the pulvinar complex

As diurnal rodents with a well‐developed visual system, squirrels provide a useful comparison of visual system organization with other highly visual mammals such as tree shrews and primates. Here, we describe the projection pattern of gray squirrel superior colliculus (SC) with the large and well‐differentiated pulvinar complex. Our anatomical results support the conclusion that the pulvinar complex of squirrels consists of four distinct nuclei. The caudal (C) nucleus, distinct in cytochrome oxidase (CO), acetylcholinesterase (AChE), and vesicular glutamate transporter‐2 (VGluT2) preparations, received widespread projections from the ipsilateral SC, although a crude retinotopic organization was suggested. The caudal nucleus also received weaker projections from the contralateral SC. The caudal nucleus also projects back to the ipsilateral SC. Lateral (RLl) and medial (RLm) parts of the previously defined rostral lateral pulvinar (RL) were architectonically distinct, and each nucleus received its own retinotopic pattern of focused ipsilateral SC projections. The SC did not project to the rostral medial (RM) nucleus of the pulvinar. SC injections also revealed ipsilateral connections with the dorsal and ventral lateral geniculate nuclei, nuclei of the pretectum, and nucleus of the brachium of the inferior colliculus and bilateral connections with the parabigeminal nuclei. Comparisons with other rodents suggest that a variously named caudal nucleus, which relays visual inputs from the SC to temporal visual cortex, is common to all rodents and possibly most mammals. RM and RL divisions of the pulvinar complex also appear to have homologues in other rodents. J. Comp. Neurol. 519:1071–1094, 2011. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
External auditory canal cholesteatoma: clinical and imaging spectrum.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Cholesteatoma is an inflammatory lesion of the temporal bone that uncommonly involves the external auditory canal (EAC). In this large case series, we aimed to define its imaging features and to determine the characteristics most important to its clinical management. METHODS Thirteen cases of EAC cholesteatoma (EACC) were retrospectively reviewed. Clinical data were reviewed for the history, presentation, and physical examination findings. High-resolution temporal bone CT scans were examined for a soft-tissue mass in the EAC, erosion of adjacent bone, and bone fragments in the mass. The middle ear cavity, mastoid, facial nerve canal, and tegmen tympani were evaluated for involvement. RESULTS Patients presented with otorrhea, otalgia, or hearing loss. Eight cases were spontaneous, and five were postsurgical or post-traumatic. CT imaging in all 13 cases showed a soft-tissue mass with adjacent bone erosion. Intramural bone fragments were identified in seven cases. This mass most often arose inferiorly (n = 8) or posteriorly (n = 8), but it was circumferential in two cases. We noted middle ear extension (n = 5), mastoid involvement (n = 4), facial canal erosion (n = 2), and tegmen tympani dehiscence (n = 1). CONCLUSION Temporal bone CT shows EACC as a soft-tissue mass within the EAC, with adjacent bone erosion. Bone fragments may be present within the mass. The cholesteatoma may extend into the mastoid or middle ear, or it may involve the facial nerve canal or tegmen tympani. Recognition of this entity and its possible extension is important because it may influence clinical management.
Poverty, Politics, and Faithful Witness in the Age of Humanitarianism

Beginning with a critique of humanitarianism, this essay explores alternative, theological ways of framing responses to the poverty and suffering of strangers. A particular focus is the differing kinds of neighbor-love at work in humanitarianism and democracy and how a christological and eschatological frame of reference re-configures them so as to enable the formation of a people that seeks the flourishing of the whole.
Histone Deacetylase 6 (HDAC6) Is an Essential Modifier of Glucocorticoid-Induced Hepatic Gluconeogenesis

In the current study, we investigated the importance of histone deacetylase (HDAC)6 for glucocorticoid receptor–mediated effects on glucose metabolism and its potential as a therapeutic target for the prevention of glucocorticoid-induced diabetes. Dexamethasone-induced hepatic glucose output and glucocorticoid receptor translocation were analyzed in wild-type (wt) and HDAC6-deficient (HDAC6KO) mice. The effect of the specific HDAC6 inhibitor tubacin was analyzed in vitro. wt and HDAC6KO mice were subjected to 3 weeks’ dexamethasone treatment before analysis of glucose and insulin tolerance. HDAC6KO mice showed impaired dexamethasone-induced hepatic glucocorticoid receptor translocation. Accordingly, dexamethasone-induced expression of a large number of hepatic genes was significantly attenuated in mice lacking HDAC6 and by tubacin in vitro. Glucose output of primary hepatocytes from HDAC6KO mice was diminished. A significant improvement of dexamethasone-induced whole-body glucose intolerance as well as insulin resistance in HDAC6KO mice compared with wt littermates was observed. This study demonstrates that HDAC6 is an essential regulator of hepatic glucocorticoid-stimulated gluconeogenesis and impairment of whole-body glucose metabolism through modification of glucocorticoid receptor nuclear translocation. Selective pharmacological inhibition of HDAC6 may provide a future therapeutic option against the prodiabetogenic actions of glucocorticoids.
The intelligent product driven supply chain

Establishing connectivity of products with real-time information about themselves can at one level provide accurate data, and at another, allow products to assess and influence their own destiny. In this way, the specification for an intelligent product is being built - one whose information content is permanently bound to its material content. This paper explores the impact of such development on supply chains, contrasting between simple and complex product supply chains. The Auto-ID project is on track to enable such connectivity between products and information using a single, open-standard, data repository for storage and retrieval of product information. The potential impact on the design and management of supply chains is immense. This paper provides an introduction to of some of these changes, demonstrating that by enabling intelligent products, Auto ID systems will be instrumental in driving future supply chains. The paper also identifies specific application areas for this technology in the product supply chain.
Coverage probability in cellular networks with partial or full loading

In cellular networks, all base stations (BSs) do not continuously transmit i.e., the BSs transmit only when their queues are non-empty. This implies that the system resources are only partially loaded, and the dynamics of such a network differs significantly from that of a fully-loaded system. The coverage probability in a fully- and partially-loaded cellular network is analysed. We consider a regular spatial arrangement of base stations, and obtain the coverage probability in the presence of interference. More specifically, expressions for coverage probability are obtained for square and hexagonal lattices with full and partial loading. The coverage probability is obtained using properties of lattice sums which were first used in physics to analyse potentials in crystal structures.
The 1995 Pilot Campaign of PLANET: Searching for Microlensing Anomalies through Precise, Rapid, Round-the-Clock Monitoring

PLANET (the Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) is a worldwide collaboration of astronomers whose primary goal is to monitor microlensing events densely and precisely in order to detect and study anomalies that contain information about Galactic lenses and sources that would otherwise be unobtainable. The results of PLANET's highly successful first year of operation are presented here. Details of the observational setup, observing procedures, and data-reduction procedures used to track the progress in real time at the three participating observing sites in 1995 are discussed. The ability to follow several events simultaneously with a median sampling interval of 1.6 hr and a photometric precision of better than 0.10 mag even at I = 19 has been clearly demonstrated. During PLANET's 1995 pilot campaign, ten microlensing events were monitored, resulting in the most precise and densely-sampled light curves to date; the binary nature of one of these, MACHO 95-BLG-12, was recognized by PLANET on the mountain. Another event, OGLE 95-BLG-04, displayed chromaticity that may betray the presence of blending with unresolved stars projected onto the same resolution element. Although lasting only about a month, the campaign may allow constraints to be placed on the number of planets with mass ratios to the parent star of 0.01 or greater.
Gender, Race, and the Shadow Structure

In this article, I analyze survey data from more than 1,000 financial services employees to understand how gender inequality manifests itself in employees' informal networks. I found that even when Black and white women had jobs in which they controlled organizational resources and had ties to powerful employees, they received less work-related help from their network members than did white men. Drawing on status characteristics theory, I explain that network members were less likely to invest in women than in white men because of cultural beliefs that rank women below that of white men. While past research has documented how employers use gender to rank workers and distribute rewards unequally, my research indicates that workers use gender to categorize and rank their network members as well.
Scoring Targets of Transcription in Bacteria Rather than Focusing on Individual Binding Sites

Reliable identification of targets of bacterial regulators is necessary to understand bacterial gene expression regulation. These targets are commonly predicted by searching for high-scoring binding sites in the upstream genomic regions, which typically leads to a large number of false positives. In contrast to the common approach, here we propose a novel concept, where overrepresentation of the scoring distribution that corresponds to the entire searched region is assessed, as opposed to predicting individual binding sites. We explore two implementations of this concept, based on Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) and Anderson–Darling (AD) tests, which both provide straightforward P-value estimates for predicted targets. This approach is implemented for pleiotropic bacterial regulators, including σ70 (bacterial housekeeping σ factor) target predictions, which is a classical bioinformatics problem characterized by low specificity. We show that KS based approach is both faster and more accurate, departing from the current paradigm of AD being slower, but more accurate. Moreover, KS approach leads to a significant increase in the search accuracy compared to the standard approach, while at the same time straightforwardly assigning well established P-values to each potential target. Consequently, the new KS based method proposed here, which assigns P-values to fixed length upstream regions, provides a fast and accurate approach for predicting bacterial transcription targets.
Reducing the gap in perceptions of legitimacy of victims and non-victims

Crime victims are a unique subgroup who evaluate the police and police legitimacy more harshly than those who have not been victimized. This could be explained by their victimization, and their special needs from and expectations of the police. Due to the importance of crime victims for the criminal justice system, the current study examines the mechanisms underlying differences in legitimacy evaluations of victims and non-victims. We focus on the two main antecedents of legitimacy: procedural justice and police performance. We find that procedural justice operates similarly for victims and non-victims, but that police performance plays a much more important role as an antecedent for victims. These findings suggest that managing perceptions of police performance may be key to closing the gap in legitimacy evaluations between victims and non-victims.
Psychometric Properties of the Dutch Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

Interest in self-esteem has been fuelled by the suggestion that level of self-esteem is associated with psychological well-being. In the present study, we translated the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) into the Dutch language and evaluated its psychometric properties in a sample of 442 adults. The results of both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed that a single-factor solution provides the best fit. In addition, the Dutch RSES showed high internal consistency as well as high congruent validity. Overall, these findings support the usefulness of the Dutch RSES as a measure for global self-esteem.
Corporate Social Responsibility and Development in Africa: Issues and Possibilities

The literature on the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and development in Africa is only just emerging, and it is characterized by a wide range of diverse perspectives. While the analysis of the CSR-development nexus in Africa has been particularly insightful, there is often the lack of sufficiently grounded systematically accumulated empirical evidence. However, central to the CSR-development nexus debate in Africa is the disagreement over the reimagining of the role of business from being the cause to becoming a part of the solution to the problem of underdevelopment in the region. This paper critically examines the CSR-development nexus literature in Africa and lays bare the controversies that have so far emerged. The article engages with the drivers of CSR, its dynamics and nature within Africa. It then examines the debate of whether or not contextual factors matters for CSR and its relationship with development. Crucially, it identifies differences between proponents of CSR is good for development and those that share opposing views at the conceptual, practical, and discourse levels. The paper concludes by considering the emerging issues and its implications for future research agenda.
The year of encroaching genomics.

The year 2000 has been called “The year of the genome”. Perhaps better would have been to call it “The year of encroaching genomics” (Einarson and Golemis, 2000) intending by this vivid term the torrents of information pouring out of multiorganizational genome sequence projects, large research groups, consortia and industries into the field of active biological research. This is bound to have a strong impact on how research strategies will be designed from now on and it is our expectation that the year 2001 will be the year in which the small academic laboratories now at the forefront of research will have to cope with this new situation if they are to remain at the cutting edge. They will have to show granting institutions how their new research project proposals involve collaboration with large scientific groups and industries such as those mentioned above in order to win financial backing.
Integrating RFID in MAS through “Sleeping” Agents: a Case Study

Intelligent Agent technology is an important, exciting and relatively new paradigm in software design. The term intelligent agent is now used as an umbrella term representing a wide range of software with different characteristics and abilities [1]. This fact led to many definitions of intelligent agent, but the authors agree with the definition proposed by Wooldridge and Jennings [2] stating that an intelligent agent is a problem solving entity characterized by the following properties: • autonomy, the agent does the major part of its tasks without user intervention • social ability, the agent is able to communicate with other agents (or human beings) to solve a given problem. This property has an enormous importance because it requires that the agent is able to understand a language, to know when and with who this should communicate and so on. • Proactiveness, the agent takes the initiative to act on the surrounding environment when appropriate • Responsiveness, the agent is aware of the surrounding environment and can react to its variations. The natural evolution of the intelligent agent technology is the Multi Agent System (MAS) technology [3]. Systems of this kind are composed of a set of intelligent agents interacting and collaborating each other to solve complex problems that are beyond the individual capability or knowledge of each agent. There are many applications of MAS in various problems. For example MAS technology was used in [4] to increase the reliable of a distributed sensor network, in [5] this technology was used for databases integration, in [6] as decision support system for an intelligent transport system, in [7] a MAS that implements mine detection, obstacle avoidance and route planning was proposed. In this work the authors will show the advantages that MAS technology can obtain combining the autonomy and proactivity of the intelligent agents and the intrinsic mobility of the RFID devices.
C-Reactive Protein as a Marker for Inflammatory Bowel Disease

The production of CRP occurs almost exclusively in the liver by the hepatocytes as part of the acute phase response upon stimulation by IL-6, TNF-&agr;and IL-1-βoriginating at the site of inflammation. Its short half-life makes CRP a valuable marker to detect and follow up disease activity in Crohn’s disease (CD). In contrast, ulcerative colitis has only a modest to absent CRP response despite active inflammation, and the reason for this is unknown. In CD, serum levels of CRP correlate well with disease activity and with other markers of inflammation as the CDAI, serum amyloid, IL-6 and faecal calprotectin. CRP is a valuable marker for predicting the outcome of certain diseases as coronary heart disease and haematological malignancies. An increased CRP (>45 mg/L) in patients with IBD predicts with a high certainty the need for colectomy and this by reflecting severe ongoing and uncontrollable inflammation in the gut. Finally, trials with anti-TNF and anti-adhesion molecules have shown that a high CRP predicts better response to these drugs. However, whether we need to include CRP as an inclusion criterion for future trials with biologicals is still a matter of debate.
[Neuropathological aspects of Alzheimer disease].

In the present review we describe the morphological features of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and compare these findings with those obtained in argyrophilic grain disease, a frequent but often unrecognized form of late-onset dementia. Macroscopically AD brains exhibit a marked atrophy of the medical temporal lobe, including the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex and amygdala. Neuronal loss, decreased synapse density and the intra- and extracellular deposition of abnormal proteins constitute the histological hallmark lesions of AD. The intraneural accumulation of the microtubule-associated protein tau in a hyperphosphorylated state leads to the formation of neurofibrillary lesions (NFL). Whereas the widespread distribution of NFL in the neocortex correlates with the cognitive decline in AD patients no such correlation could be found for the extracellular deposition of the A beta-protein in the shape of senile plaques (SP). However, dementia correlates with the amount of neuritic degeneration within a subtype of SP ('neuritic plaques'). We further discuss some of the risk factors for AD, i.e. the genetic risk factors.
Notice of RetractionA Lightweight Visual Approach to Teaching Formal Access Control Model for Computer Science Students

This paper presents the results in the area of Computer Science and Formal Methods Education. The result was an effort to study the formal method software tools into computer science student curriculum. Our purposes were to pioneer an innovative methodology that will increase the learning experience by introducing the use of mechanized approaches in teaching formal methods and to demonstrate the potential of graduate students for learning formal analysis techniques, by using these software tools. This methodology depends on the traditional teaching models and adds the use of automated software tools to enhance the student's learning experience. The result demonstrated increased student performance and understanding of difficult concepts in formal software analysis and design problems with the use of mechanized assistants.
Aphasic discourse analysis: The story so far

This paper provides a critical review of the literature currently available relating to aphasic discourse. It outlines the major approaches which have been taken to analysis, differentiating the structuralist and functionalist frameworks in particular and discusses the resultant gap existing in aphasiology research between microstructural linguistic aspects of discourse and macrostructural/pragmatic aspects. Studies addressing lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and conversational aspects of discourse, as well as those focusing on specific aspects such as cohesion and text macrostructure are discussed and placed in a theoretical perspective. The different methodologies involved in the various studies are critically examined, with implications for using different elicitation techniques in particular discussed.
Adding segmented feet to passive dynamic walkers

This paper presents a passive dynamic walking model with segmented feet. The model extends the Simplest Walking Model with the addition of flat feet and torsional springs based compliance on ankle joints and toe joints, to achieve stable walking on a slope driven by gravity. The push-off phase includes foot rotations around toe joint and around toe tip, which shows a great resemblance to human normal walking. The segmented foot model is compared with single rigid foot model in simulations to study the advantages of adding toe joints to passive dynamic walkers. We investigate the effects of segmented foot structure on dynamic bipedal walking. Experimental results show that the model achieves efficient and stable walking on even or uneven slope.