Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reminiscence, personality, and psychological functioning in older adults.

PURPOSE The present study examined the relationships between the frequency and functions of reminiscence, personality styles, and psychological functioning. There is little research on the psychological factors that correlate with reminiscence, especially in relationship to clinical constructs such as depression and anxiety. Research in the area of reminiscence functions may facilitate a better understanding of the factors affecting change in reminiscence therapies. DESIGN AND METHODS Seventy-seven healthy older adults completed the following self-report scales: Reminiscence Functions Scale, NEO Five Factor Personality Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Templer-McMordie Death Anxiety Scale. RESULTS Using canonical correlation techniques, results indicated that individuals with negative psychological functioning frequently reminisce as a way to refresh bitter memories, reduce boredom, and prepare for death. IMPLICATIONS The present study provides implications for both researchers and clinicians. Contrary to previous studies, results indicate that depressed and anxious older adults commonly use reminiscence and therefore may be appropriate candidates for reminiscence treatments.
Waste Cassava Tuber Fibers as an Immobilization Carrier of Saccharomyces cerevisiae for Ethanol Production

Waste cassava tuber fibers (wCTF), derived from the ethanolic fermentation of cassava tubers, have potential use as anatural adsorption immobilization carrier. Ethanol fermentation was conducted using 15% (w/v) glucose-containing mediumat 40 °C for 48 h by Saccharomyces cerevisiae G6-2-2 (1.3 x 1010cells). Ethanol concentration produced by free, wCTF (1.2 g dry weight) adsorbed, wCTFadsorbed-calcium alginate entrapped,and calcium alginate entrapped cellswere 42.10 ± 0.61, 67.35 ± 0.53, 52.10 ± 0.40, and 46.45 ± 0.18 g/L (0.34, 0.45, 0.35, and 0.31 g ethanol/g reducing sugar), respectively. The wCTF adsorbed cells produced a maximum ethanol yield of 82.15 ± 0.48 g/L (0.43 g ethanol/g total sugar) from molasses (20% w/v initial total sugar) after 48 h, compared to 74 g/L to 76 g/L and 48 h to 100 h for the free suspension cells. The increase in ethanol produced by the wCTF adsorbed cells compared to free cells reflected that the cells were protected from environmental stresses and received amino nitrogen from the wCTF that supported growth and ethanol tolerance.
Verification of Prognosability for Labeled Petri Nets

This technical note is concerned with the fault prognosis problem for partially observed discrete-event systems modeled by unbounded labeled Petri nets. The goal of this problem is to predict the occurrence of each fault before its occurrence. The condition of prognosability provides the necessary and sufficient condition under which any fault can be predicted with no missed detection and no false alarm. In this technical note, we investigate the verification of prognosability for unbounded labeled Petri nets. First, we show that checking prognosability is decidable for Petri net languages. Our approach is based on a reduction from this verification problem to an existing Petri nets model checking problem. Then, we show that the complexity of this problem is EXPSPACE-complete. Our results extend previous works on the verification of language-based prognosability from regular languages to Petri net languages.
Economic Conditions and Electoral Outcomes: Class Differences in the Political Response to Recession

Politicians and journalists appreciate the fact that economic conditions are politically important because voters punish national administrations for bad macroeconomic policy performance. Nevertheless, scholars have been divided over the question whether economic conditions affect voters' choices of candidates in elections. The weight of results from aggregate studies suggests that economic downturns do have political costs but research at this level allows no unique specification of individual response patterns. Using data from the 1956-60 American panel study, data which span the worst recession (to that time) since the Great Depression, this paper attempts to specify the sources of political responses to the recessions of 1958 and 1960. Relative to middle class individuals, working class citizens are more severely affected by economic cycles, and they are found to provide the bulk of the electoral response to economic recession.
Coreness Tunable Network Model

Kitsak et al argued that nodes dwell in diverse network shells by a k-core decomposition process show more reliable identification for nodal importance which had attracted more and more attentions in different domains. But one seldom focuses on the distribution of node numbers (DNN) in different shells of a network, experiment results show regular characteristics. While, the existing theoretical network models, such as BA scale-free model, WS Small-world model, ER random network model et al cannot reproduce the features. To fill this gap, a group of coreness tunable network (CTN) models are proposed, in which the coreness of each node is totally controllable. The CTN has a similar network performance compared to real-world by counting basic static geometric features and spreading performance under SIR model. Our CTN models are providing a theoretical framework to deepen humans’ understanding of the coreness structure and function of complex networks.
Extracellular Pectinase from a Novel Bacterium Chryseobacterium indologenes Strain SD and Its Application in Fruit Juice Clarification

Pectinase is one of the important enzymes of industrial sectors. Presently, most of the pectinases are of plant origin but there are only a few reports on bacterial pectinases. The aim of the present study was to isolate a novel and potential pectinase producing bacterium as well as optimization of its various parameters for maximum enzyme production. A total of forty bacterial isolates were isolated from vegetable dump waste soil using standard plate count methods. Primary screening was done by hydrolysis of pectin. Pectinase activity was determined by measuring the increase in reducing sugar formed by the enzymatic hydrolysis of pectin. Among the bacterial isolates, the isolate K6 exhibited higher pectinase activity in broth medium and was selected for further studies. The selected bacterial isolate K6 was identified as Chryseobacterium indologenes strain SD. The isolate was found to produce maximum pectinase at 37°C with pH 7.5 upon incubation for 72 hours, while cultured in production medium containing citrus pectin and yeast extract as C and N sources, respectively. During enzyme-substrate reaction phase, the enzyme exhibited its best activity at pH of 8.0 and temperature of 40°C using citrus pectin as substrate. The pectinase of the isolate showed potentiality on different types of fruit juice clarification.
Optimal Feasible Tax Mechanism for a Heterogeneous Economy

The main goal of this paper is to extend the model of optimal feasible tax mechanism developed in Rhee (2008) to a heterogeneous economy in which agents have different characteristics related to their income or wealth. We provide a full characterization of optimal feasible tax mechanism for such a heterogeneous economy and find that if the level of low endowment is relatively low, only the incentive compatibility constraint of a rich minority agent will be binding. We also present some interesting comparative statics analyses as to how the optimal mechanism will respond to a change in the primitives of the economy. These analyses explain how the incentive problem of a heterogeneous economy will be resolved efficiently under feasibility constraint.
Chase++: Fountain-Enabled Fast Flooding in Asynchronous Duty Cycle Networks

Due to limited energy supply on many Internet of Things (IoT) devices, asynchronous duty cycle radio management is widely adopted to save energy. Flooding is a critical way to disseminate messages through the whole network. Capture effect enabled concurrent broadcast is appealing to accelerate network flooding in asynchronous duty cycle networks. However, when the flooding payload’s size is large, the concurrent broadcast performance is far from efficient due to the frequently unsatisfied capture effect. Intuitively, senders can send a short packet containing partial flooding payload to keep concurrent broadcast efficiency. In practice, we still face two challenges. Considering packet loss, a receiver needs an effective way to recover the entire flooding payload from several received packets as soon as possible. Moreover, considering different channel states of different senders, how a sender chooses the optimal packet length to guarantee high channel utilization is not easy. In this paper, we propose Chase++ a Fountain-code based concurrent broadcast control layer to enable fast flooding in asynchronous duty cycle networks. Chase++ uses Fountain code to alleviate the negative influence of a certain part of the flooding payload’s continuous loss. Moreover, Chase++ adaptively selects packet length with the local estimation of channel utilization. Specifically, Chase++ partitions long payload into several short payload blocks, further encoded into many encoded payload blocks by Fountain-code. Then, with temporal and spatial features of the sampled RSS (received signal strength) sequence, a sender estimates the number of concurrent senders. Finally, according to the estimated number of concurrent senders, the sender determines the optimal number of encoded payload blocks in a packet and assembles the encoded payload blocks as lots of packets. Then, the concurrent broadcast layer continuously transmits these packets. Receivers can recover the original flooding payload after several independent encoded payload blocks are collected. We implement Chase++ in TinyOS with TelosB nodes. We further evaluate Chase++ on Local testbed with 50 nodes and Indriya testbed with 95 nodes. The improvement of network flooding speed can reach 23.6% and 13.4%, respectively.
A New Venue of TNF Targeting

The first Food and Drug Administration-(FDA)-approved drugs were small, chemically-manufactured and highly active molecules with possible off-target effects, followed by protein-based medicines such as antibodies. Conventional antibodies bind a specific protein and are becoming increasingly important in the therapeutic landscape. A very prominent class of biologicals are the anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) drugs that are applied in several inflammatory diseases that are characterized by dysregulated TNF levels. Marketing of TNF inhibitors revolutionized the treatment of diseases such as Crohn’s disease. However, these inhibitors also have undesired effects, some of them directly associated with the inherent nature of this drug class, whereas others are linked with their mechanism of action, being pan-TNF inhibition. The effects of TNF can diverge at the level of TNF format or receptor, and we discuss the consequences of this in sepsis, autoimmunity and neurodegeneration. Recently, researchers tried to design drugs with reduced side effects. These include molecules with more specificity targeting one specific TNF format or receptor, or that neutralize TNF in specific cells. Alternatively, TNF-directed biologicals without the typical antibody structure are manufactured. Here, we review the complications related to the use of conventional TNF inhibitors, together with the anti-TNF alternatives and the benefits of selective approaches in different diseases.
TEEG Induced A549 Cell Autophagy by Regulating the PI3K/AKT/mTOR Signaling Pathway

TEEG (3β,16β,23-trihydroxy-13,28-epoxyurs-11-ene-3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside) is derived from the chloroform extract of the Chinese medicine formula Shenqi San (CE-SS). In the present study, we aimed to elucidate the anticancer effect and possible molecular mechanism underlying the action of TEEG against the human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell line A549 in vitro. A549 cells were incubated with different concentrations of TEEG. Cell proliferation was assessed by MTT assay. Autophagy was evaluated by immunofluorescence staining. Autophagy-associated proteins were examined by Western blot analysis. TEEG markedly inhibited A549 cell proliferation in a concentration-dependent manner. Immunofluorescence staining showed that TEEG induced autophagy in A549 cells. The LC3-II : LC3-I conversion ratio and the expression of Beclin-1, Atg5, Atg7, and Atg12 increased with the concentration of TEEG. In addition, increased TEEG concentration enhanced the expression of Class III p-PI3K and reduced the expression of Class I p-PI3K, p-AKT, p-mTOR, and p-P70S6K. These results indicate that TEEG induces autophagy of A549 cells through regulation of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway.
Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: A Strong Imbalance of Good and Bad Immunological Cops in the Tumor Microenvironment

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most aggressive and lethal cancers with very few available treatments. For many decades, gemcitabine was the only treatment for patients with PDAC. A recent attempt to improve patient survival by combining this chemotherapy with FOLFIRINOX and nab-paclitaxel failed and instead resulted in increased toxicity. Novel therapies are urgently required to improve PDAC patient survival. New treatments in other cancers such as melanoma, non-small-cell lung cancer, and renal cancer have emerged, based on immunotherapy targeting the immune checkpoints cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 or programmed death 1 ligand. However, the first clinical trials using such immune checkpoint inhibitors in PDAC have had limited success. Resistance to immunotherapy in PDAC remains unclear but could be due to tissue components (cancer-associated fibroblasts, desmoplasia, hypoxia) and to the imbalance between immunosuppressive and effector immune populations in the tumor microenvironment. In this review, we analyzed the presence of “good and bad immunological cops” in PDAC and discussed the significance of changes in their balance.
Neurocognitive Disorders and Dehydration in Older Patients: Clinical Experience Supports the Hydromolecular Hypothesis of Dementia

Abnormalities of water homeostasis can be early expressions of neuronal dysfunction, brain atrophy, chronic cerebrovasculopathy and neurodegenerative disease. The aim of this study was to analyze the serum osmolality of subjects with cognitive impairment. One thousand and ninety-one consecutive patients attending the Alzheimer’s Evaluation Unit were evaluated with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), 21-Item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS-21), Activities of Daily Living (ADL), Instrumental-ADL (IADL), Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), Exton-Smith Scale (ESS), and Cumulative Illness Rating Scale (CIRS). For each patient, the equation for serum osmolality developed by Khajuria and Krahn was applied. Five hundred and seventy-one patients had cognitive decline and/or depression mood (CD-DM) and 520 did not have CD-DM (control group). Patients with CD-DM were less likely to be male (p < 0.001), and were more likely to be older (p < 0.001), have a significant clear cognitive impairment (MMSE: p < 0.001), show the presence of a depressive mood (HDRS-21: p < 0.001) and have major impairments in ADL (p < 0.001), IADL (p < 0.001), MNA (p < 0.001), and ESS (p < 0.001), compared to the control group. CD-DM patients had a higher electrolyte concentration (Na+: p < 0.001; K+: p < 0.001; Cl−: p < 0.001), risk of dehydration (osmolality p < 0.001), and kidney damage (eGFR: p = 0.021), than the control group. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients showed a major risk for current dehydration (p ≤ 0.001), and dehydration was associated with the risk of developing a type of dementia, like AD or vascular dementia (VaD) (OR = 2.016, p < 0.001). In the multivariate analysis, the presence of dehydration state was associated with ADL (p < 0.001) and IADL (p < 0.001), but independently associated with age (r2 = 0.0046, p = 0.77), ESS (r2 = 0.0052, p = 0.54) and MNA (r2 = 0.0004, p = 0.48). Moreover, younger patients with dementia were significantly more dehydrated than patients without dementia (65–75 years, p = 0.001; 76–85 years, p = 0.001; ≥86 years, p = 0.293). The hydromolecular hypothesis intends to explain the relationship between dehydration and cognitive impairment in older patients as the result of protein misfolding and aggregation, in the presence of a low interstitial fluid volume, which is a defect of the microcirculation. Defective proteins were shown to impair the amount of information in brain biomolecular mechanisms, with consequent neuronal and synaptic damage.
The domino SWI2/SNF2 Gene Product Represses Cell Death in Drosophila melanogaster

The Drosophila domino locus encodes DNA-dependent ATPases of the SWI2/SNF2 class. This class of chromatin remodeler is associated with an array of cellular activities encompassing transcription, replication, repair and recombination. Moreover, domino was observed initially to maintain a repressive chromatin state via genetic interaction studies with homeotic genes. Although domino mutations were also characterized with a cell death phenotype, its association with a death pathway has not been investigated. Here we have used targeted RNA interference to depress domino function in the wing. Resultant wing damage phenotypes were found to be enhanced through overexpression of pro-apoptotic loci, and suppressed through loss of function of these loci. Loss of wing margin and blade tissue was correlated with activation of the effector Caspase Dcp-1, a marker for apoptosis. The affected wing regions also exhibited lower levels of the DIAP1 protein, an inhibitor of apoptosis. The lower level of DIAP1 protein was not correlated with an effect on the activity of a DIAP1 gene transgenic reporter (thread-LacZ), suggesting that loss of DIAP1 occurred post transcriptionally. In some cases excessive cell proliferation within the targeted tissue, measured through BrdU incorporation, was also observed. Finally, we used a transgenic reporter construct to monitor the chromatin state upstream of the proapoptotic reaper locus. In genotypes exhibiting targeted domino loss and wing phenotypes, we observed increased reporter activity only in the affected areas. These data support the conclusion that domino normally functions to maintain pro-apoptotic genes in a repressed state.
A study of HER2 gene amplification and protein expression in gastric cancer

Background Gastric cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related mortality, and current treatment outcomes for advanced disease remain poor. HER2 has been identified as a potential candidate for targeted therapy in gastric cancers displaying HER2 gene amplification and protein overexpression. Aims To study the prevalence rate of HER2 gene amplification/overexpression in a local population, and determine the concordance rate between the various modalities. Methods 128 gastric cancer samples were analysed by fluorescence (FISH) and chromogenic (CISH) in situ hybridisation and immunohistochemistry (IHC). The relation between HER2 status and various clinicopathological parameters was also analysed. Results 11.7% (15/128) and 9.4% (12/128) of gastric cancers displayed HER2 gene amplification and protein overexpression (score 3+), respectively, with a perfect correlation between the FISH and CISH analyses. There was also a significant inverse correlation between overall survival and HER2 protein overexpression in intestinal-type gastric carcinomas (p<0.05). Conclusion Results, besides corroborating existing reports that discrepancies exist between HER2 ISH and IHC assays, also suggest the need to rigorously evaluate CISH as an independent reference standard for assessment of HER2 amplification in gastric cancers.
It matters what you measure: a systematic literature review examining whether young people in poorer socioeconomic circumstances are more at risk of chlamydia

Background England has invested in chlamydia screening interventions for young people. It is not known whether young people in poorer socioeconomic circumstances (SEC) are at greater risk of chlamydia and therefore in greater need of screening. Objective To conduct a systematic review examining socioeconomic variations in chlamydia prevalence or positivity in young people. Data sources Eight bibliographic databases using terms related to chlamydia and SEC, supplemented by website and reference searches. Eligibility Studies published 1999–2011 in North America, Western Europe, Australia or New Zealand, including populations aged 15–24 years, with chlamydia prevalence or positivity diagnosed by nucleic acid amplification testing. Appraisal and synthesis Two reviewers independently screened references, extracted data, appraised studies meeting inclusion criteria and rated studies as high, medium or low according to their quality and relevance. Socioeconomic variations in chlamydia were synthesised for medium/high-rated studies only. Results No high-rated studies were identified. Eight medium-rated studies reported variations in chlamydia prevalence by SEC. In 6/8 studies, prevalence was higher in people of poorer SEC. Associations were more often significant when measured by education than when using other indicators. All studies measuring positivity were rated low. Across all studies, methodological limitations in SEC measurement were identified. Conclusions The current literature is limited in its capacity to describe associations between SEC and chlamydia risk. The choice of SEC measure may explain why some studies find higher chlamydia prevalence in young people in disadvantaged circumstances while others do not. Studies using appropriate SEC indicators (eg, education) are needed to inform decisions about targeting chlamydia screening.
Recognition and Detection of Two-Person Interactive Actions Using Automatically Selected Skeleton Features

Recognition and detection of interactive actions performed by multiple persons have a wide range of real-world applications. Existing studies on the human activity analysis focus mainly on classifying video clips of simple actions performed by a single person, whereas the problem of understanding complex human activities with causal relationships between two people has not been sufficiently addressed yet. In this paper, we employ systematically organized skeleton features enhanced with directional features, and utilize sparse-group lasso to automatically choose discriminative factors that help in dealing with interactive action recognition and real-time detection tasks. Experiments on two person interaction datasets demonstrate the superiority of our approach to the state-of-the-art methods.
Career Opportunities and Membership Stability in Legislatures

This paper proposes and tests a theory that the level of membership stability in a legislature is a function of members' prospects for advancement beyond the body and financial incentives for staying in it. Regression analysis reveals that pay and advancement prospects are the most important variables in explaining membership stability. These two variables are then used to categorize legislatures according to the career opportunities they offer. The differences in membership stability and recruitment patterns among these types of legislature are then analyzed.
N 9 0 2-INTEGRATING PLANNING , EXECUTION , AND LEARNING

To achieve the goal of building an autonomous agent, the usually disjoint capabilities of planning, execution, and learning must be used together. This paper describes an architecture, called MAX, within which cognitive capabilities can be purposefully and intelligently integrated. The architecture supports the codification of capabilities as explicit knowledge that can be reasoned about. In addition, specific problem solving, learning, and integration knowledge is developed.