Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased levels of GALbeta1-4GLCNACalpha2-6 sialyltransferase pretransplant predict delayed graft function in kidney transplant recipients.

BACKGROUND Galbeta1-4GlcNAcalpha2-6 sialyltransferase (ST6GalI) is an acute phase reactant whose release from cells can be induced by proinflammatory cytokines. Because patients with chronic renal failure have high circulating levels of proinflammatory cytokines, we hypothesized that patients on the renal transplant waiting list would have high circulating levels of ST6GalI, which might adversely affect post-transplant events. METHODS Levels of ST6GalI were measured in the serum of 70 patients immediately before renal transplant; these were correlated with posttransplant events, such as delayed graft function and rejection. RESULTS The mean serum level of ST6GalI was significantly higher in the patients (3162+/-97 U) than in 19 controls (2569 +/- 125 U; P<0.003). Patients who required dialysis posttransplant for treatment of delayed graft function (n=20) had significantly higher levels of ST6GalI pretransplant (3735+/-228 U) than patients (n=50) who did not require dialysis (2933+/-83 U; P<0.0001). In a multivariate analysis the ST6GalI level and cold ischemic time were found to be independent risk factors for the development of delayed graft function. CONCLUSIONS ST6GalI levels are high in renal failure patients awaiting a renal transplant and may be a risk factor for the development of delayed graft function. The assessment and perhaps modulation of a potential transplant recipient's ST6GalI systemic level may be beneficial.
Word segmentation in phonemically identical and prosodically different sequences using cochlear implants: A case study

ABSTRACT Cochlear implant (CI) users frequently achieve good speech understanding based on phoneme and word recognition. However, there is a significant variability between CI users in processing prosody. The aim of this study was to examine the abilities of an excellent CI user to segment continuous speech using intonational cues. A post-lingually deafened adult CI user and 22 normal hearing (NH) subjects segmented phonemically identical and prosodically different sequences in French such as ‘l’affiche’ (the poster) versus ‘la fiche’ (the sheet), both [lafiʃ]. All participants also completed a minimal pair discrimination task. Stimuli were presented in auditory-only and audiovisual presentation modalities. The performance of the CI user in the minimal pair discrimination task was 97% in the auditory-only and 100% in the audiovisual condition. In the segmentation task, contrary to the NH participants, the performance of the CI user did not differ from the chance level. Visual speech did not improve word segmentation. This result suggests that word segmentation based on intonational cues is challenging when using CIs even when phoneme/word recognition is very well rehabilitated. This finding points to the importance of the assessment of CI users’ skills in prosody processing and the need for specific interventions focusing on this aspect of speech communication.
Current approaches to atherosclerotic obstructive renal artery stenosis

Increased lifespan in the last few decades has substantially changed the scenario for renal artery stenosis. Indeed, because older populations show a higher prevalence of atherosclerotic disease, the incidence of atheromatous renal artery stenosis has also increased. Intuitively, one could surmise that stenosis removal should void both the hypertension and the kidney damage resulting from the obstructive stenosis. Surprisingly, a number of important clinical trials have failed to show the reversion seen in experimental models. The reasons for these differences may be linked to chronicity and inflammation associated with the atherosclerotic lesion. However, the failure to obtain a favorable response may also be related to abnormalities in the contralateral kidney. Indeed, this apparently normal kidney should work to compensate the hemodynamic effects of the ipsilateral stenosed kidney. Instead, structure and function in the contralateral kidney can be altered in renal artery stenosis to the point that this nonstenotic kidney may sustain both, hypertension and progressive kidney disease. Certainly, comparing the effects of clip removal in the Goldblatt model to angioplasty in clinical settings with atherosclerotic lesions may be totally inappropriate. Nevertheless, there remain certain clinical situations such as bilateral renal arterial disease, congestive heart failure, and progressive renal failure, where angioplasty may be an alternative. These approaches however are yet to be tested.
Development of a Program Information Base for the FPT Programming Environment

FPT is a Fortran Parallel Transformer 1 which parallelizes sequential programs for various parallel processing architectures. Recently, a Program Information Base (PIB) is developed in order to adapt the FPT for diierent application domains. A program information base integrates various forms of program information into a database. Users are asked to use a data manipulation language (DML) to describe their new algorithms and routines for parallelizing a class of applications. By adding new algorithms and new routines into FPT, an adaptable parallel programming environment is obtained
Design and simulation study of Helix Traveling Wave Amplifier for Ku-Band applications

The purpose of this investigation is to present a Ku-Band Helix Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier (TWTA) design and simulation procedure with considering initial design assumptions. The design process which consists of four critical steps is stated. Firstly, required input parameters such as dc beam current (Io), dc beam voltage (Vo) and frequency band of operation are chosen. Determination of the design objectives such as gain and output power constitutes the second stage of the design procedure. For this purpose, overall gain in considered frequency range is specified as over 20 dB. The output power is aimed to 100 W. To obtain design objectives mentioned in the second step, it is necessary to have optimum helix slow wave structure (SWS) design parameters such as helix pitch, radius and pitch angle. Therefore, the optimized design parameters of the SWS are determined by using Eigen Mode Solver (EMS) (cold (beam absent) analysis) of Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Microwave Studio (MWS) for acquiring the beam-wave synchronization. Particle in Cell (PIC) simulation (hot (beam present) analysis) is carried out by assuming the uniform electron beam flow. The length of the interaction structure of the designed TWT is nearly 110 mm and all design objectives are nearly achieved as it is expected. Many crucial figures related to gain, power and beam wave interaction are depicted with detailed explanations. Furthermore, the design limitations of this proposed design due to assumptions are also clarified.
Owner-Occupation: At Home with a Hybrid of Money and Materials

This paper is about the changing character of housing assets, owned homes, and perhaps owner-occupiers themselves. It draws from two studies of UK homebuyers, whose lives are entangled in the materiality of housing, the meaning of home, and the mobilisation of money. This mélange is facilitated by a new generation of financial services that render housing wealth interchangeable with the cash economy, turning owned homes into a hybrid of money and materials. In total 150 qualitative narratives are interrogated to document three key trends. First, a shift of households' disposition, from opting for ownership by chance to banking on housing by design. Second, a change of financial orientation as property-holding citizens illapse into asset-accumulating investors. Third, an ethically charged encounter between the governance of housing and the micropolitics of home, which is prompted by the growing tangibility of housing wealth as it inspires new styles of, and imperatives for, consumption.
Design of Warehouse Contol System for Automated Warehouse Environment

In the warehouse, typical logistics software of the warehouse is Warehouse Management System(WMS) and Warehouse Control System(WCS). WCS is different from WMS, and WCS aims to manage a broad range of material handling equipment in the warehouse. We analyzed key functions and limitations of existing WSC and suggest a new architecture for WCS. To address such requirements and limitation, a new architecture and functions of Smart WCS/ECS are suggested. SMART WCS/ECS will enhance the efficiency of warehouse operation.
A randomized trial examining the effect of pretreatment point‐of‐care computed tomography imaging on the management of patients with chronic rhinosinusitis symptoms

Recent consensus statements on the diagnosis of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) now require endoscopic or radiographic evidence of paranasal sinus inflammation. The timing of point‐of‐care (POC) computed tomography (CT) scan in the workup of these patients remains to be elucidated, particularly when endoscopy is negative. The objective of this research was to prospectively evaluate 2 algorithms for the initial management of patients with symptoms of CRS who manifest a normal nasal endoscopic examination.
Akt Activates the Mammalian Target of Rapamycin by Regulating Cellular ATP Level and AMPK Activity*

The serine/threonine kinase Akt is an upstream positive regulator of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). However, the mechanism by which Akt activates mTOR is not fully understood. The known pathway by which Akt activates mTOR is via direct phosphorylation and inhibition of tuberous sclerosis complex 2 (TSC2), which is a negative regulator of mTOR. Here we establish an additional pathway by which Akt inhibits TSC2 and activates mTOR. We provide for the first time genetic evidence that Akt regulates intracellular ATP level and demonstrate that Akt is a negative regulator of the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), which is an activator of TSC2. We show that in Akt1/Akt2 DKO cells AMP/ATP ratio is markedly elevated with concomitant increase in AMPK activity, whereas in cells expressing activated Akt there is a dramatic decrease in AMP/ATP ratio and a decline in AMPK activity. Currently, the Akt-mediated phosphorylation of TSC2 and the inhibition of AMPK-mediated phosphorylation of TSC2 are viewed as two separate pathways, which activate mTOR. Our results demonstrate that Akt lies upstream of these two pathways and induces full inhibition of TSC2 and activation of mTOR both through direct phosphorylation and by inhibition of AMPK-mediated phosphorylation of TSC2. We propose that the activation of mTOR by Akt-mediated cellular energy and inhibition of AMPK is the predominant pathway by which Akt activates mTOR in vivo.
An unusual job for a woman? Female entrepreneurs in scientific, engineering and technology sectors

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand more about the conditions which foster certain women’s resilience in science engineering and technology (SET) entrepreneurship. The research responds to the so-called “leaky pipeline”, which sees progressively smaller numbers of women participating in SET at each developmental stage from training to employment, and asks why some women establish and grow their businesses while others are discouraged. Design/methodology/approach – In all, 15 female SET entrepreneurs, with businesses that had progressed beyond the initial start-up phase were selected from national databases. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews and documentary records over a six-month period and analysed using both manual and software-based thematic review. Responses were mapped to bring narratives to the forefront, and were compared using relevant literature on emerging gender topics. Findings – Findings suggest that female SET entrepreneurs undertake a continual process of.
Inter Layer Spatial Interpolation Based on Component-Separable Filter Design

Scalable video coding is a new emerging standard, which provides scalability at the bit stream level with good compression efficiency and allowing free combinations of spatial, temporal and quality scalability. In current working draft (WD), a uniform up-sampling filter is employed to interpolate the base layer frames. This technique achieves high interpolated precision for both luma component and chroma components, but it results in extremely large encoding time which obstructs it from practical use. This paper proposes an inter layer spatial interpolation based on component-separable filter design, which makes use of a basic characteristic of human vision system and intends to assign different filters for different components. Specifically, current usage of the 6-tap filter is only for luma component, but for chroma components, much more simplified filter such as 2-tap or 4-tap filter, should be used instead. Experimental results show that our proposed scheme can reduce the computational complexity significantly with negligible coding loss and bit-rate increases. As a result, it can be applied in the inter layer spatial interpolation of SVC.
Every Planar Map Is Four Colorable

As has become standard, the four color map problem will be considered in the dual sense as the problem of whether the vertices of every planar graph (without loops) can be colored with at most four colors in such a way that no pair of vertices which lie on a common edge have the same color. The restriction to triangulations with all vertices of degree at least five is a consequence of the work of A. B. Kempe. Over the past 100 years, a number of authors including A. B. Kempe, G. D. Birkhoff, and H. Heesch have developed a theory of reducibility to attack the problem. Simultaneously, a theory of unavoidable sets has been developed and the fusion of these has led to the proof. A configuration is a subgraph of a planar triangulation consisting of a circuit (called the ring) and its interior. A configuration is called reducible if it can be shown by certain standard methods that it cannot be immersed in a minimal counterexample to the four color conjecture. (For details, see [3] or [4].) A set of configurations is called unavoidable if every planar triangulation contains some member of the set. From the definitions, it is immediate that the four color theorem is proved if an unavoidable set of reducible configurations is provided. The most efficient known method of producing unavoidable sets of configurations is called the method of discharging. This method treats the planar triangulation as an electrical network with charge assigned to the vertices. Euler's formula is used to show that the initial charge distribution, giving positive charge to vertices of degree five and negative charge to vertices of degree greater than six, has positive total charge. Next, the initial charge is redistributed in a manner which obeys the principle of conservation of charge. This means that some vertices must end up with positive charge. Such an algorithm can be made sufficiently sophisticated that a finite list of neighborhoods of all possible vertices of ultimately positive charge can be described in detail.
Outline of a Multilevel Approach of the Network Society

Social and media networks, the Internet in particular, increasingly link interpersonal, organizational and mass communication. It is argued that this gives a cause for an interdisciplinary and multilevel approach of the network society. This will have to link traditional micro- and meso-level research of social and communication ties (Rogers, Granovetter a.o.) to the macro-level research of the network society at large (Castells a.o.). Systems theory linked to a theory of communicative action establishes a potential basis for a multilevel theory. The systems theory described uses elements of a biologically inspired analysis of networks as complex adaptive systems and the mathematically inspired theory of random and scale-free networks recently elaborated by Barabasi, Strogatz and Watts. The outline of the multilevel theory is summarized in ten statements about changing relationships in the network society: an information society with structures and modes of organization primarily shaped by social and media networks. In the last section an inventory is made of the theoretical and methodological changes communication science will have to make to develop a general theory of the information and the network society in the perspective of communication.
Bioprospecting for Microbial Endophytes and Their Natural Products

SUMMARY Endophytic microorganisms are to be found in virtually every plant on earth. These organisms reside in the living tissues of the host plant and do so in a variety of relationships, ranging from symbiotic to slightly pathogenic. Because of what appears to be their contribution to the host plant, the endophytes may produce a plethora of substances of potential use to modern medicine, agriculture, and industry. Novel antibiotics, antimycotics, immunosuppressants, and anticancer compounds are only a few examples of what has been found after the isolation, culture, purification, and characterization of some choice endophytes in the recent past. The potential prospects of finding new drugs that may be effective candidates for treating newly developing diseases in humans, plants, and animals are great.
CONHECIMENTOS PARA A DOCÊNCIA DA PROBABILIDADE NO ÂMBITO DO PIBID NA UFRJ

RESUMO Neste trabalho, utilizamos as categorias da base de conhecimento de Shulman (1986) para identificar alguns conhecimentos de conteudo, curricular e pedagogico de conteudo mobilizados por licenciandos, em Matematica da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, que aplicaram uma sequencia didatica sobre Probabilidade no âmbito do PIBID. Procuramos tambem verificar como foram atendidas as expectativas iniciais dos licenciandos em relacao ao PIBID apos um semestre de trabalho em que foram coletados os dados para esta pesquisa. Em geral percebemos que a experiencia que tiveram foi bastante positiva principalmente para nao ministrarem aulas sem significado para os alunos, somente repetindo os conceitos e exemplos do livro didatico. Palavras-chave: PIBID; conhecimentos docentes; pratica pedagogica; formacao; matematica e probabilidade. KNOWLEDGE FOR TEACHING PROBABILITY UNDER PIBID UFRJ ABSTRACT Abstract: In this paper we applied the categories of knowledge base by Shulman (1986) to identify some content knowledge, curricular knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge articulated by undergraduate students in mathematics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. These students applied a didactic sequence about probability in the PIBID scope. We also verified how the initial expectations of the students were satisfied in respect to PIBID after one semester with this work during which the data to this research were collected. It was seen in general that the experience was quite positive, mainly in order not to give the students meaningless classes and avoiding the sole repetition of concepts and examples extracted from textbooks. Keyword : PIBID; Teacher’s knowledge; pedagogical praxis; formation of teachers; Mathematics and Probability.
Phytoplankton responses to atmospheric metal deposition in the coastal and open-ocean Sargasso Sea

This study investigated the impact of atmospheric metal deposition on natural phytoplankton communities at open-ocean and coastal sites in the Sargasso Sea during the spring bloom. Locally collected aerosols with different metal contents were added to natural phytoplankton assemblages from each site, and changes in nitrate, dissolved metal concentration, and phytoplankton abundance and carbon content were monitored. Addition of aerosol doubled the concentrations of cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), and nickel (Ni) in the incubation water. Over the 3-day experiments, greater drawdown of dissolved metals occurred in the open ocean water, whereas little metal drawdown occurred in the coastal water. Two populations of picoeukaryotic algae and Synechococcus grew in response to aerosol additions in both experiments. Particulate organic carbon increased and was most sensitive to changes in picoeukaryote abundance. Phytoplankton community composition differed depending on the chemistry of the aerosol added. Enrichment with aerosol that had higher metal content led to a 10-fold increase in Synechococcus abundance in the oceanic experiment but not in the coastal experiment. Enrichment of aerosol-derived Co, Mn, and Ni were particularly enhanced in the oceanic experiment, suggesting the Synechococcus population may have been fertilized by these aerosol metals. Cu-binding ligand concentrations were in excess of dissolved Cu in both experiments, and increased with aerosol additions. Bioavailable free hydrated Cu2+ concentrations were below toxicity thresholds throughout both experiments. These experiments show (1) atmospheric deposition contributes biologically important metals to seawater, (2) these metals are consumed over time scales commensurate with cell growth, and (3) growth responses can differ between distinct Synechococcus or eukaryotic algal populations despite their relatively close geographic proximity and taxonomic similarity.
Metastatic phenotype in CWR22 prostate cancer xenograft following castration

CWR22 is a human xenograft model of primary prostate cancer (PCa) that is often utilized to study castration recurrent (CR) PCa. CWR22 recapitulates clinical response to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), in that tumors regress in response to castration, but can recur after a period of time.
Superior Water Maze Performance and Increase in Fear-Related Behavior in the Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase-Deficient Mouse Together with Monoamine Changes in Cerebellum and Ventral Striatum

Nitric oxide (NO) has been implicated in the control of emotion, learning, and memory. We have examined endothelial NO synthase-deficient mice (eNOS−/−) in terms of habituation to an open field, elevated plus-maze behavior, Morris water maze performance, and changes in cerebral monoamines. In the open field, eNOS−/− animals were less active than wild-type controls but showed unimpaired habituation. In the plus-maze, an anxiogenic effect was observed. Proceeding from previous findings of deficits in hippocampal and neocortical long-term potentiation (LTP) in our eNOS−/− mice, we investigated whether these animals also express deficits in learning tasks that have been linked to hippocampal function and LTP. Unexpectedly, eNOS gene disruption led to accelerated place learning in the water maze. Furthermore, during long-term retention and reversal learning, eNOS−/− mice showed improved performance. In a cued version of the water maze task, eNOS−/− and control mice did not differ, implying that the superior performance of eNOS−/− animals on the former tasks cannot be attributed solely to differences in sensorimotor capacities. The neurochemical evaluation of the eNOS−/− mice revealed increases in the concentrations of the serotonin metabolite 5-HIAA in the cerebellum, together with an accelerated serotonin turnover in the frontal cortex. Furthermore, eNOS−/− mice had a higher dopamine turnover in the ventral striatum. These findings are discussed in terms of possible concomitant effects on physiological parameters, such as a decreased reactivity of GABAergic neurotransmission or changes in vascular functions, and effects on behavioral processes related to reinforcement, learning, and emotion.
The body in the mind: the bodily basis of meaning

"There are books-few and far between-which carefully, delightfully, and genuinely turn your head inside out. This is one of them. It ranges over some central issues in Western philosophy and begins the long overdue job of giving us a radically new account of meaning, rationality, and objectivity. "-Yaakov Garb, "San Francisco Chronicle"