Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MicroRNA‐122, a tumor suppressor microRNA that regulates intrahepatic metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), which are inhibitors of gene expression, participate in diverse biological functions and in carcinogenesis. In this study, we show that liver‐specific microRNA‐122 (miR‐122) is significantly down‐regulated in liver cancers with intrahepatic metastastasis and negatively regulates tumorigenesis. Restoration of miR‐122 in metastatic Mahlavu and SK‐HEP‐1 cells significantly reduced in vitro migration, invasion, and anchorage‐independent growth as well as in vivo tumorigenesis, angiogenesis, and intrahepatic metastasis in an orthotopic liver cancer model. Because an inverse expression pattern is often present between an miRNA and its target genes, we used a computational approach and identified multiple miR‐122 candidate target genes from two independent expression microarray datasets. Thirty‐two target genes were empirically verified, and this group of genes was enriched with genes regulating cell movement, cell morphology, cell‐cell signaling, and transcription. We further showed that one of the miR‐122 targets, ADAM17 (a disintegrin and metalloprotease 17) is involved in metastasis. Silencing of ADAM17 resulted in a dramatic reduction of in vitro migration, invasion, in vivo tumorigenesis, angiogenesis, and local invasion in the livers of nude mice, which is similar to that which occurs with the restoration of miR‐122. Conclusion: Our study suggests that miR‐122, a tumor suppressor microRNA affecting hepatocellular carcinoma intrahepatic metastasis by angiogenesis suppression, exerts some of its action via regulation of ADAM17. Restoration of miR‐122 has a far‐reaching effect on the cell. Using the concomitant down‐regulation of its targets, including ADAM17, a rational therapeutic strategy based on miR‐122 may prove to be beneficial for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. (HEPATOLOGY 2009.)
The effects of phytase and phytic acid on the loss of endogenous amino acids and minerals from broiler chickens

1. The effects of myo-inositol hexaphosphate (IP6) and phytase (EC 3.1.3.26) on the excretion of endogenous compounds were investigated using growing broiler chickens. 2. A total of 32 female Ross broilers were used in a precision feeding assay involving a 2×2 factorial arrangement of treatments. The materials administered were glucose, glucose + 1000 units of phytase activity (FTU), glucose + 1 g of IP6 and glucose + 1 g of IP6 + 1000 FTU. Excreta were collected quantitatively over a 48-h period following intubation of the test materials. The excretion of nitrogen, amino acids, minerals, sialic acid and phytate phosphorus was determined. 3. The ingestion of 1 g of IP6 by broilers increased the excretion of endogenous nitrogen, amino acids, iron, sodium, sulphur and sialic acid compared with birds fed on glucose. Supplementation of IP6 with exogenous phytase reduced the excretion of endogenous amino acids, calcium, sodium, phytate phosphorus and sialic acid compared with birds fed IP6. 4. It can be concluded that IP6 increases the excretion of endogenous minerals and amino acids in broiler chickens. Part of the beneficial effects of the addition of exogenous phytases to the diets of poultry appears to be mediated through a reduction in endogenous losses of these nutrients.
Survey of pharmacy involvement in hospital medication reconciliation programs across the United States

Objective: The objective of this study is to conduct a review of pertinent literature, assess pharmacy involvement in medication reconciliation, and offer insight into best practices for hospitals to implement and enhance their medication reconciliation programs. Method: Pharmacists in hospitals nationwide were asked to complete an anonymous survey via the American College of Clinical Pharmacy online database. The multiple choice survey analyzed the roles that healthcare professionals play in medication reconciliation programs at hospitals. Results: Of the survey responses received, 32/91 (35%) came from pharmacists at hospitals with a pharmacy-led medication reconciliation program. Of these pharmacy-led programs, 17/32 (53%) have a dedicated pharmacist or pharmacy staff to perform medication reconciliation. Conclusion: A comprehensive review of literature suggests that pharmacy involvement has the potential to reduce medication reconciliation errors and may improve patient satisfaction. Focused, full-time medication reconciliation pharmacists can help hospitals save time and money, improve outcomes, and meet higher standards issued by the Joint Commission. Data obtained in this study show the extent to which pharmacists contribute to achieving these goals in healthcare systems nationwide. This baseline study provides a strong case for hospitals to implement a pharmacy-led medication reconciliation program.
Facing face: non-professional interpreting in prison mental health interviews

Abstract Face, or the public self-image that each individual claims for him-/herself, is continuously constructed and negotiated in interaction. In interpreter-mediated events, the interpreter’s actions may threaten, maintain or enhance the primary participants’ face, as well as their own. This single case study of a real-life interview between a prison psychologist and a foreign language-speaking inmate, interpreted by another inmate, aims to explore how and why the three members of the triad engage in face-threatening acts (Brown and Levinson 1987) and face-boosting acts (Bayraktaroglu 1991). The transcribed audio recording of the interview shows how this non-professional interpreter actively seeks to protect and improve his fellow prisoner’s face, as a potential expression of his in-group loyalty, but ultimately prioritizes his own social image in an attempt to present himself as cooperative and trustworthy before the psychologist. This analysis shows how underlying issues of social distance, power and trust forcefully shape conversational behaviors in the prison environment.
A game analysis of firms' product safety responsibility basing on the consumer's preference

Applying the basic idea of game thoery, the essay studies on the consumers' pulling game for product safety responsibility(PSR) of firms, the requirement and struggling game between consumers and firms about PSR, and the firms' PSR signaling game. The results show that It is the key to optimize the pareto for firms and consumers that <sup>b</sup> kind of firms fulfil PSR preferably and signal the useful information to the consumers. Because category <sup>b</sup> firms' expected profit is bigger than that of category <sup>ω</sup>, therefore, even though consumers think category <sup>b</sup> firms is better, it is more likely to become a pressuring target, suffering more corporate social responsibility pressure. When the expected profit coming from the target firms is bigger than the struggling cost needed, both category <sup>b</sup> and <sup>ω</sup> firms would choose to fight. Category<sup>b</sup> firms adopt the positive PSR signaling strategies, and they send out the signals which can not imitated by the category<sup>ω</sup> firms, this method can not only make the market disassociate in a balanced and satisfactory, and solve the problems of category<sup>ω</sup> firms expelling category <sup>b</sup> firms, but also can help the category <sup>b</sup> firms create the fine social images, and increase the future profits.
Blood compatibility studies of Swarna bhasma (gold bhasma), an Ayurvedic drug

Swarna bhasma (gold bhasma) preparations are widely utilized as therapeutic agents. However, in vitro biological evaluations of bhasma preparations are needed along with the physicochemical characterization for present day standardization of metallic bhasma preparations to meet the criteria that supports its use. Therefore, an attempt has been made to evaluate the protein adsorption, blood compatibility and complement activation potential of two batches of Swarna bhasma preparation, along with its physicochemical characterization. The particle size, morphology, elemental analysis, and in vitro cytotoxicity were evaluated initially. Red blood cell hemolysis, aggregation studies with blood cells, protein adsorption, complement C3 adsorption, platelet activation and tight junction permeability in Caco-2 cell line were investigated. The Swarna bhasma preparations with a crystallite size of 28–35 nm did not induce any blood cell aggregation or protein adsorption. Activation potential of these preparations towards complement system or platelets was negligible. These particles were also non-cytotoxic. Swarna bhasma particles opened the tight junctions in Caco-2 cell experiments. The results suggest the application of Swarna bhasma preparations as a therapeutic agent in clinical medicine from the biological safety point of view.
UV‐inducible cellular aggregation of the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus is mediated by pili formation

The hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus has been shown to exhibit a complex transcriptional response to UV irradiation involving 55 genes. Among the strongest UV‐induced genes was a putative pili biogenesis operon encoding a potential secretion ATPase, two pre‐pilins, a putative transmembrane protein and a protein of unknown function. Electron microscopy and image reconstruction of UV‐treated cells showed straight pili with 10 nm in diameter, variable in length, not bundled or polarized and composed of three evenly spaced helices, thereby clearly being distinguishable from archaeal flagella. A deletion mutant of SSO0120, the central type II/IV secretion ATPase, did not produce pili. It could be complemented by reintroducing the gene on a plasmid vector. We have named the operon ups operon for UV‐inducible pili operon of Sulfolobus. Overexpression of the pre‐pilins, Ups‐A/B (SSO0117/0118) in Sulfolobus resulted in production of extremely long filaments. Pronounced cellular aggregation was observed and quantified upon UV treatment. This aggregation was a UV‐dose‐dependent, dynamic process, not inducible by other physical stressors (such as pH or temperature shift) but stimulated by chemically induced double‐strand breaks in DNA. We hypothesize that pili formation and subsequent cellular aggregation enhance DNA transfer among Sulfolobus cells to provide increased repair of damaged DNA via homologous recombination.
MR lung imaging at 0.2 T with T1‐weighted true FISP: Native and oxygen‐enhanced

An inversion recovery true fast imaging with steady precession (FISP) pulse sequence was developed to carry out fast imaging of the lungs at 0.2 T. Using this sequence, oxygen‐enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) lung imaging was performed on healthy volunteers. The lungs showed signal enhancement (11.7% ± 3.8%) when breathing 100% oxygen. Using inversion recovery, true FISP at low field may prove promising for MR lung imaging. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2001;14:164–168. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Efficient generation of human hepatocytes by the intrahepatic delivery of clonal human mesenchymal stem cells in fetal sheep

Alternative methods to whole liver transplantation require a suitable cell that can be expanded to obtain sufficient numbers required for successful transplantation while maintaining the ability to differentiate into hepatocytes. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) possess several advantageous characteristics for cell‐based therapy and have been shown to be able to differentiate into hepatocytes. Thus, we investigated whether the intrahepatic delivery of human MSCs is a safe and effective method for generating human hepatocytes and whether the route of administration influences the levels of donor‐derived hepatocytes and their pattern of distribution throughout the parenchyma of the recipient's liver. Human clonally derived MSCs were transplanted by an intraperitoneal (n = 6) or intrahepatic (n = 6) route into preimmune fetal sheep. The animals were analyzed 56–70 days after transplantation by immunohistochemistry, enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay, and flow cytometry. The intrahepatic injection of human MSCs was safe and resulted in more efficient generation of hepatocytes (12.5% ± 3.5% versus 2.6% ± 0.4%). The animals that received an intrahepatic injection exhibited a widespread distribution of hepatocytes throughout the liver parenchyma, whereas an intraperitoneal injection resulted in a preferential periportal distribution of human hepatocytes that produced higher amounts of albumin. Furthermore, hepatocytes were generated from MSCs without the need to first migrate/lodge to the bone marrow and give rise to hematopoietic cells. Conclusion: Our studies provide evidence that MSCs are a valuable source of cells for liver repair and regeneration and that, by the alteration of the site of injection, the generation of hepatocytes occurs in different hepatic zones, suggesting that a combined transplantation approach may be necessary to successfully repopulate the liver with these cells. (HEPATOLOGY 2007.)
Re-configurable linear precoders to compensate for antenna correlation in orthogonal and quasi-orthogonal space-time block coded systems

High fading correlations reduce multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channel capacity and system performance (Shiu, D. et al., 2000; Bolcskei, H. and Paulraj, A.J., 2000). Nevertheless, considerable performance gains can be obtained by transmission on the eigenmodes of the transmit antenna correlation matrix (Brunner, C. et al., 2000). H. Sampath and H. Paulraj (see IEEE Commun. Lett., vol.6, no.6, p.239-41, 2002) propose an optimal linear precoder that assumes knowledge of the transmit antenna correlations and improves performance of a space-time coded system by forcing transmission on the nonzero eigenmodes of the transmit antenna correlation matrix. The main advantage of this precoder is that it does not have to track fast fading, but only the slowly varying antenna correlations. The latter can be fed back to the transmitter using a low-rate feedback link or can be based on uplink channel estimation. We investigate the application of linear precoders to space-time block coded systems. The system model and the design criterion for re-configurable precoders are presented and applied to orthogonal and quasi-orthogonal space-time block coding schemes with N transmit antennas. Simulation results illustrate the achieved performance enhancements.
THE SURVIVAL OF HOMOGRAFTS IN MICE PRETREATED WITH ANTISERA TO MOUSE TISSUE

The investigations reported here, made by my colleagues and myself stem historically from early attempts to develop an immune therapy for cancer. An experimental approach to this goal appeared to be offered by the demonstration that some cancers could be transplanted from animal to animal of the same species to which the cancers were indigenous. Anomalous results, however, were soon reported by a number of investigators, who found that tumor grafts sometimes grew better in seemingly immunized animals when the reverse should have been expected. Thus, as early as 1907, Flexner and Jobling,’ found that a second graft of a transplantable rat sarcoma grew progressively in a large proportion of rats in which a first graft of the same tumor had previously regressed. In the early 1900’s there also appeared several papers in which it was reported that tumors implanted in mice or rats pretreated with killed tumor tissues, prepared in a variety of ways, grew more successfully than in untreated controls (for a review of the early literature, see Snell et aZ.2). The first systematic studies on this phenomenon were done by Casey and his co-worker~,S-~ who used the Brown-Pearce tumor in rabbits and two transplantable mouse tumors in mice? * These investigators found that grafts of the Brown-Pearce tumor grew and metastasized more rapidly and more widely in rabbits pretreated with killed homologous tumor tissues. They also demonstrated that the effect was specific in that it could be produced only by killed tumor tissue derived from the transplantable tumor under study.6. 7.81 9 Later, Snell and his co-workers,23 lo using a variety of inbred strains of mice and transplantable tumors, established the presence of the phenomenon in animals pretreated with freeze-dried tumor tissue, and demonstrated that the effect was obtained with some host-graft combinations and not with others. All these observations raised the question of whether the phenomenon was due to specific cancerous substances that behaved as “growth-stimulating” factors for cancers, or whether there was involved some more general principle that was an expression of experimentally altered host-graft relationships. My colleagues and I addressed ourselves to this question and demonstrated that homografts of transplantable tumors would survive in mice pretreated with normal mouse spleen, kidney, or liver.ll-la It was also found,14 with a host-tumor combination in which the grafts normally survived in about 50 per cent of the untreated mice, that very small doses of freeze-dried homologous tumor tissue would immunize a significant proportion of the mice to a subsequent tumor graft, while larger doses led to an
Control Method to Increase the Reliability of IGBT Power Modules Validated on a Three Phase Inverter

This paper presents a junction temperature controller which increases the reliability of IGBT power modules in power electronic applications without affecting the demanded output power. Power electronic applications have to deal with varying load conditions. These varying load conditions lead to temperature swings which lead to mechanical stress of common IGBT power modules. At low load conditions the switching losses are increased by increasing the switching frequency. This leads to reduced temperature swings resulting in a higher reliability. The functionality of the control system is verified on a three phase two level inverter connected to a passive load.
Differences in lower limb muscle activation patterns during Sit to Stand Task for different heel heights

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in lower limb muscle activation patterns for females wearing shoes with different heel heights during Sit to Stand Task (STS). Ten female participants with no prior history of neurological disorders participated in this study. Surface electromyography (sEMG) characteristics were recorded for four different heel heights (ranging from 4cm to 10cm) while performing the STS task. Signal processing analysis suggests that muscle activities increases on elevated heel heights, which may induce muscle imbalance for frequent STS tasks. In addition, results of muscle utilisation (percentage) for different heel heights suggest that lower limb muscles tend to compensate in order to maintain postural balance.
Attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities: A cross cultural study.

Part 1, the literature review, considers the historical context of conceptualisations of ID and service provision for people with intellectual disabilities in the UK. Current policies are outlined and research on public attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities is considered, to help us understand the broader climate within which policies are implemented. Furthermore, this review critiques the quantitative approaches currently dominant within attitudinal research. It concludes that the impact of demographics particularly culture and religion, on attitudes to ID remain under researched areas. Part 2, the empirical paper, reports on a study which explores attitudes towards people with intellectual disability among young people (ages 16-19) from white British and South Asian backgrounds (Total N=6 and how they arrive at their beliefs. Five themes regarding attitudes were identified: confusion versus more sophisticated understandings of ID invisibility of people with ID versus representations in the media universal humanity positioning self as accepting and empowering and views on care giving, with marked differences occurring between cultural groups. The main influences on attitudes towards people with ID acknowledged by participants were culture, religion, parents, education and previous contact with people with ID. Of note, there were more similarities than differences between groups in terms of what they viewed as influencing their attitudes. Both individual interviews and focus groups were useful in generating data. Part 3, the critical appraisal, discusses the strengths, weaknesses and limitations of the present study, with references to changes in understandings of phenomena, sampling, being a white researcher and critically evaluating qualitative research. Finally, this part concludes with a discussion of areas for future research and possible clinical implications derived from the study.
A Clash of Opposing Worldviews: How One Professor Teaches the Intelligent Design/Evolution Controversy

My main purpose in writing this article is to look at the controversy between Intelligent Design (ID) and Evolution (EV) from the point of view of a veteran college professor who teaches a unit on this topic in his elective graduate course “Religious Pluralism for Educators. ” Many public school teachers and administrators sign up for this course every year, along with a number of higher education administrators. Because so much has already been written on the ID/EV controversy, and because the most publicly visible advocates of each position tend to express their views in stark either-or rhetoric, I have decided to write this essay in another way. I am less interested in providing readily available technical information about ID and EV (the other articles in this theme issue of R&E do that very nicely), or in arguing for a pet position, than I am in giving readers a sense of what one professor actually tries to do on the front lines of a classroom seminar as professional educators grapple with the ID/EV conflict. As a teacher, I seek to be a reconciling force in the ID/EV debate without watering down those intractable intellectual, political, and philosophical differences in the opposing views. This is dangerous, of course, because both sides have accused me of selling out to the opposition, of watering down the obvious “truth” of science or religion, of giving aid and comfort to the “enemy” because I refuse to take them on and immobilize, or destroy, them once and for all. I am a college professor of nearly four decades working in a college of education and social services, and there isn’t much by way of extremism that I haven’t heard in my religious pluralism, and other philosophically-oriented, courses that I teach, especially on the ID/EV conflict. So, what the reader can expect in the following pages are a brief summary of the main points of Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution, as well as some issues that come up in my classes around the ID/EV controversy and how I handle them.
Auxiliary channel Diffie-Hellman encrypted key-exchange authentication

In wireless personal area networks, establishing trust and authentication with previously unknown parties is both necessary and important. We propose an auxiliary channel Diffie-Hellman encrypted key-exchange authentication scheme to establish secure authentication between two previously unknown devices. The key exchange creates a high-entropy shared key from a low-entropy PIN that is transferred through an auxiliary channel. The strong shared key is then used for authentication of exchanged public keys. The scheme protects against both man-in-the-middle and passive eavesdropping attacks, including offline PIN cracking. We focus on Bluetooth version 2.1 and analyze the Simple Pairing protocols. We restrict the supported usage scenarios for the Just Works and Passkey Entry protocols and design a protocol using our proposed solution to replace both protocols. We recognize that our proposed protocol is substantially more secure than the current Just Works protocol, achieves the same security level as the Passkey Entry protocol while maintaining the usability and convenience level for the user. In addition, the proposed protocol considerably reduces the number of messages exchanged compared to the Passkey Entry protocol.