Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro and in vivo release characteristics of Tacrolimus (FK506) from an episcleral drug-delivery implant.

PURPOSE To investigate the in vitro and in vivo release characteristics of Tacrolimus (FK506) from an episcleral drug-delivery implant. METHODS For in vitro experiments, Tacrolimus-loaded implants (0.5 mL; at concentrations of 0.25, 0.5, and 1.0 mg/mL) were immersed in a balanced salt solution. Samples of the surrounding liquid were aspirated at different times over a 96-h period. For in vivo experiments, the experimental group received an implant loaded with Tacrolimus (0.5 mg/mL; 0.5 mL); the control group was given a subconjunctival injection of 0.5 mL Tacrolimus (0.5 mg/mL). On postoperative days 3, 7, 14, 28, and 56, 3 animals were sacrificed, and their eyes were enucleated. Tacrolimus concentrations were determined by liquid chromatographic-tandem mass spectrometry. Ocular toxicity was evaluated by slit-lamp photography, fundus photography, intraocular pressure (IOP), and histology. RESULTS The implants released Tacrolimus in a biphasic pattern for 96 h in the in vitro study. The release kinetics were not dependent on the drug concentrations. The in vivo study showed statistically significant differences between the 2 treatment groups. Tacrolimus levels were particularly high in the conjunctiva, iris, ciliary body, cornea, sclera, choroid, and retina in the experimental group, while concentrations were low and only lasted for 1 week in the controls. Slit-lamp photography, fundus photography, IOP, and histology showed no evidence of toxic effects. CONCLUSIONS The episcleral drug-delivery implant mechanically released Tacrolimus through the apertures of capsules and, consequently, may be a promising drug vehicle for the treatment of immune-mediated ocular disorders.
IL-6 stimulates Th2 type cytokine secretion and upregulates VEGF and NRP-1 expression in pancreatic cancer cells

BACKGROUND. Although upregulation of interleukin-6 (IL-6) is associated with many solid tumors, its role in pancreatic cancer has not been well elucidated. In this study, we examined the expression of IL-6 in pancreatic cancer cells, and determined the effect of exogenous IL-6 on cytokine secretion, gene expression, and signaling in human pancreatic cancer cells. METHODS. The mRNA levels of IL-6, VEGF165, neuropilin-1 (NRP-1), and neuropilin-2 (NRP-2) were determined by real-time RT PCR. Phosphorylation of ERK2 in pancreatic cancer cells was determined by using Bio-Plex phosphoprotein assay. The expression of IL-6 and other cytokines in human pancreatic cancer cell lines was determined with Bio-Plex cytokine assay. RESULTS. Pancreatic cancer cell lines expressed higher levels of IL-6 than normal human pancreatic ductal epithelium (HPDE) cells. Exogenous IL-6 increased the secretion of multiple Th2 type of cytokines in Panc-1, MIA PaCa-2, and BxPC-3 cells. IL-6 also upregulated the expression of VEGF165, and NRP-1, and both IL-6 and VEGF165 were inducible by hypoxia. In addition, IL-6 activated ERK2 signaling pathways in pancreatic cancer cells. CONCLUSIONS. IL-6 may be involved in promoting human pancreatic cancer development by furnishing Th2 type of cytokine environment and upregulating cell proliferation and angiogenesis related genes. Targeting IL-6 might be an effective treatment for pancreatic cancer.
Patient outcomes after total pancreatectomy: a single centre contemporary experience.

INTRODUCTION Total pancreatectomy (TP) is associated with significant metabolic abnormalities leading to considerable morbidity. With the availability of modern pancreatic enzyme formulations and improvements in control of diabetes mellitus, the metabolic drawbacks of TP have diminished. As indications for TP have expanded, we examine our results in patients undergoing TP. MATERIALS AND METHODS Retrospective study of 47 patients undergoing TP from January 2002 to January 2008 was performed. Patient data and clinical outcomes were collected and entered into a database. Disease-free survival and overall survival were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS Fifteen males and 32 females with a median age of 70 years underwent TP for non-invasive intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMN) (21), pancreatic adenocarcinoma (20), other neoplasm (3), chronic pancreatitis (2) and trauma (1). Median hospital stay and intensive care stay were 11 days and 1 day, respectively. Thirty-day major morbidity and mortality was 19% and 2%, respectively. With a median follow-up length of 23 months, 33 patients were alive at last follow-up. Estimated overall survival at 1, 2 and 3 years for the entire cohort was 80%, 72% and 65%, and for those with pancreatic adenocarcinoma was 63%, 43% and 34%, respectively. Median weight loss at 3, 6 and 12 months after surgery was 6.8 kg, 8.5 kg and 8.8 kg, respectively. Median HbA1c values at 6, 12 and 24 months after surgery were 7.3, 7.5 and 7.7, respectively. Over one-half of the patients required re-hospitalization within 12 months post-operatively. CONCLUSION TP results in significant metabolic derangements and exocrine insufficiency, diabetic control and weight maintenance remain a challenge and readmission rates are high. Survival in those with malignant disease remains poor. However, the mortality appears to be decreasing and the morbidities associated with TP appear acceptable compared with the benefits of resection in selected patients.
An emotional-intelligence-based model for improving faculty members effectiveness

Aiming at determining the role of Emotional Intelligence (EI) - based leadership in improving faculty effectiveness, the present study suggested a model with 10 principle components. Research methodology was descriptive-survey of exploratory type. Statistical population were the present faculty members in the semester (N = 3500). The subjects of the study (sample) consisted of 351 faculty members selected through stratified random method. Data were collected via two researcher-administered questionnaires. Statistical operations utilized for data analysis included: Independent t-test, Wilkoxon test, variance analysis, factor analysis and principle component analysis. Findings showed that there are 10 EI-based leadership factors which determine faculty effectiveness. Results also suggested a significant difference between desirable and current situations in Islamic Azad universities. Bridging such a gap, a suggested model was developed and proposed. Its conformity degree was then evaluated by higher education experts' viewpoints (95%). The necessary amendments were made at the end. Key words: Emotional intelligence, higher education leadership, faculty members.
Psycholinguistic Features for Deceptive Role Detection in Werewolf

We tackle the problem of identifying deceptive agents in highly-motivated high-conﬂict dialogues. We consider the case where we only have textual information. We show the usefulness of psycho-linguistic deception and persuasion features on a small dataset for the game of Werewolf. We analyse the role of syntax and we identify some characteristics of players in deceptive roles
Barriers to Accessing Services for Young Children

This study investigates barriers to accessing services for children under age 3 presenting with language delays and behavioral difficulties, including language barriers for Spanish-speaking families. Using a telephone script, researchers called 30 agencies in Los Angeles County, including regional centers (the state network of Part C agencies for children with developmental disabilities), mental health centers, and schools, requesting services for a 2-year-old child. Outcomes of calls were compared by agency and by language of call (Spanish or English). Regional center calls resulted in an appointment 90% of the time, whereas schools and mental health centers were significantly less likely to link callers with services. Calls in Spanish revealed language access barriers, with fewer than half of Spanish-speaking callers to schools and mental health agencies obtaining an appointment. The study indicated barriers including basic access (e.g., reaching a live person; response in the home language), and obtaining appropriate appointment or referral.
Awareness in e-Banking Security and usage

As e-Banking has become one of the most widely used method of banking, the security risks caused by attacks on the e-Banking systems have also become imminent. The consequences of these attacks can be dire and most banks have been trying to keep the risks low. In order to be trusted and used by the customers, information confidentiality, integrity and availability have to be maintained. This paper aims to address the potential security risks of e-Banking systems and discuss the possible ways to prevent such attacks from successfully extracting the data from the customers and from the bank. We will go in-depth into the prevention aspect of the attacks by providing insights on technical controls, training and analyzing their effects.
The Core of the Polycomb Repressive Complex Is Compositionally and Functionally Conserved in Flies and Humans

ABSTRACT The Polycomb group (PcG) genes are required to maintain homeotic genes in a silenced state during development in drosophila and mammals and are thought to form several distinct silencing complexes that maintain homeotic gene repression during development. Mutations in the PcG genes result in developmental defects and have been implicated in human cancer. Although some PcG protein domains are conserved between flies and humans, substantial regions of several PcG proteins are divergent and humans contain multiple versions of each PcG gene. To determine the effects of these changes on the composition and function of a PcG complex, we have purified a human Polycomb repressive complex from HeLa cells (hPRC-H) that contains homologues of PcG proteins found in drosophila embryonic PRC1 (dPRC1). hPRC-H was found to have fewer components than dPRC1, retaining the PcG core proteins of dPRC1 but lacking most non-PcG proteins. Preparations of hPRC-H contained either two or three different homologues of most of the core PcG proteins, including a new Ph homologue we have named HPH3. Despite differences in composition, dPRC1 and hPRC-H have similar functions: hPRC-H is able to efficiently block remodeling of nucleosomal arrays through a mechanism that does not block the ability of nucleases to access and cleave the arrays.
Clone Attack in Wireless Sensor Networks

The increasing growth of mobile sensor nodes technology and rising the deployment of them; these networks are faced with security challenges; specially clone nodes attack. In Mobile Wireless Sensor Network, the attacker can capture a node easily and compromise that sensor node and take out all the keying materials from that compromised node and make duplicate of them. These replica node attacks are hazardous because they permit the attacker to control the compromise of a few nodes to use control over much of the network . Then attacker use the replica node to insert fake data and disturb the whole operations in the network. In this paper an general review of the methodologies to identify or prevent such attacks has been presented.
A Boosted Semi-Markov Perceptron

This paper proposes a boosting algorithm that uses a semi-Markov perceptron. The training algorithm repeats the training of a semi-Markov model and the update of the weights of training samples. In the boosting, training samples that are incorrectly segmented or labeled have large weights. Such training samples are aggressively learned in the training of the semi-Markov perceptron because the weights are used as the learning ratios. We evaluate our training method with Noun Phrase Chunking, Text Chunking and Extended Named Entity Recognition. The experimental results show that our method achieves better accuracy than a semi-Markov perceptron and a semi-Markov Conditional Random Fields.
Evaluation of the impact of dataset characteristics for classification problems in biological applications

Availability of high dimensional biological datasets such as from gene expression, proteomic, and metabolic experiments can be leveraged for the diagnosis and prognosis of diseases. Many classification methods in this area have been studied to predict disease states and separate between predefined classes such as patients with a special disease versus healthy controls. However, most of the existing research only focuses on a specific dataset. There is a lack of generic comparison between classifiers, which might provide a guideline for biologists or bioinformaticians to select the proper algorithm for new datasets. In this study, we compare the performance of popular classifiers, which are Support Vector Machine (SVM), Logistic Regression, k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, and Random Forest based on mock datasets. We mimic common biological scenarios simulating various proportions of real discriminating biomarkers and different effect sizes thereof. The result shows that SVM performs quite stable and reaches a higher AUC compared to other methods. This may be explained due to the ability of SVM to minimize the probability of error. Moreover, Decision Tree with its good applicability for diagnosis and prognosis shows good performance in our experimental setup. Logistic Regression and Random Forest, however, strongly depend on the ratio of discriminators and perform better when having a higher number of discriminators. Keywords—Classification, High dimensional data, Machine learning
Gender Differences in Cambodian Delinquency: The Role of Ethnic Identity, Parental Discipline, and Peer Delinquency

Contrary to the model minority stereotype, Asian youth are increasingly becoming more involved in crime and delinquency. For instance, in the California Youth Authority, Southeast Asian adolescents are disproportionately represented, including Cambodian, Hmong, and Lao and Mien youth. However, few studies have focused on factors that are associated with Southeast Asian adolescent delinquency. Using a Cambodian adolescent sample, this study found significant gender similarities as well as differences. In both groups, peer delinquency was significantly associated with juvenile delinquency. However, for males, ethnic identity search was also a significant factor whereas for females, parental discipline was significant. These findings argue for the need to consider gender differences in conducting research and intervention programs for Cambodians and generally, for Southeast Asian adolescents. These results also suggest a need for more research, not only with respect to gender differences, but also on how they are similar to their Southeast Asian, Asian, and U.S. counterparts.
On the relationship between phonetic modeling precision and phonetic speaker recognition accuracy

Speaker recognition techniques have traditionally relied on purely acoustic features and models. During the last few years, however, the field of speaker recognition has started to show interest in the use of higher level features. In particular, phonetic decodings modeled with statistical language models (n-grams) have already shown its effectiveness in several research works. However, the relationship between phonetic modeling precision and the accuracy of phonetic speaker recognition has not yet been sufficiently analyzed. As part of our preparation for the NIST 2005 speaker recognition evaluation, we have performed a number of experiments that show that there is a negligible correlation between phonetic modeling precision and phonetic speaker recognition accuracy. Furthermore, our experimental results show that phonetic speaker recognition results may even be better when using phonetic decodings in languages different from that of the speech.
Performance Evaluation of AODV with Different Propagation Models

MANETs along with its special features has several challenges and issues those need to be considered. Routing in MANETs is one of such issue. So keeping this in view, it is considered to evaluate ad hoc network routing protocols. For establishing a wireless or an ad hoc network, we require a routing protocol, capable of handling all the environmental changes that take place in an ad hoc network. The primary objective of this paper is to compare the performance of Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance-Vector (AODV) protocol against different network parameters with different propagation models. The performance is evaluated on the basis of Packets received, packets lost and throughput. The evaluation is done by means of simulations using NS-2 network simulator. This paper begins with a brief introduction about the wireless networks. Then we introduce review of existing ad hoc network routing protocols and describes literature survey on ad hoc network routing protocols. Then we discuss performance evaluation criteria that are used for doing the comparison of routing protocols. After that we give an overview of the network simulator NS2. Further we discuss the propagation models and simulation results of the performance evaluation of AODV with different propagation models considering TCP as transport protocol. Finally we summarize the results obtained and highlight some of the future research directions and recommendations
Correlates and consequences of social withdrawal in childhood

Social withdrawal in childhood is a challenge for child development research and clinic due to its implications for child psychological well-being and psychosocial development. The goal of this article is to present a synthesis of the scientific literature on the subject based on a systematic review of national and international databases.It is expected that this work will add one step forward in the theoretical support for empirical research on the understanding of the complex interwoven factors that lead the first signs of inhibited behavior to evolve into shy and social withdrawal during
Ship detection for Radarsat-2 ScanSAR data using DoG scale-space

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a significant tool to satisfy the growing demand of the maritime vessel traffic. ScanSAR, as an important role of SAR systems with very high imageries swath, is more suitable for the detection issue. In this paper, features of ships on Radarsat-2 ScanSAR imagery are characterized as “Bright-Dark” structure. According to the unique features, a new ship detector based on the Difference of Gauss (DoG) scale-space is proposed. To enhance the robustness, a threshold method simulated by the “dark spots” matrix is designed. In the threshold method, the average KL test is carried out with 6 different distributions on several Radarsat-2 ScanSAR Narrow imageries of sea which shows the Gamma distribution fits the sea clutter the best and is selected. Finally, the proposed detector is validated on a slice of Radarsat-2 ScanSAR imagery and comparisons with CFAR are made.
Spectral Efficient Doppler Diversity Transmissions in High Mobility Systems with Channel Estimation Errors

This paper studies spectral efficient Doppler diversity transmissions in the presence of imperfect channel state information (CSI). Fast time-varying fading in high mobility communication systems introduces Doppler diversity that can benefit system performance. On the other hand, it is more difficult to estimate and track fast time-varying channel, thus channel estimation errors might seriously degrade system performance in high mobility systems. We propose a practical pilot- assisted system design that can balance the tradeoff between Doppler diversity and channel estimation errors. At the transmitter, the data symbols are precoded with a rate-1 Doppler domain multiplexing scheme to achieve maximum Doppler diversity without sacrificing spectral efficiency. At the receiver, the information is detected by using imperfect CSI and a block decision feedback equalizer (BDFE), which is developed by exploiting the statistical properties of channel estimation errors. The analytical pairwise error probability (PEP) and a bit error rate (BER) lower bound are developed by considering a large number of design parameters, such as the percentage of pilot symbols in the transmitted symbols, the energy allocation between pilot and data symbols, and the maximum Doppler spread of the channel. Both simulation and analytical results show that maximum Doppler diversity can be achieved through optimizations of the various design parameters in the presence of imperfect CSI.
A novel synchronization scheme for free-space quantum key distribution system

We propose a novel synchronization scheme using a periodic light pulse for free-space quantum key distribution (QKD) system. For our 10MHz system, the repetition rate of timing pulse in the novel synchronization scheme can be reduced to 100 KHz or even lower. It allows employing a KHz repetition rate ultrashort pulse laser as timing synchronization source to implement high precision time synchronization. In this paper, short term time drift induced by atmospheric turbulence is analyzed, and how the time deviation impacts on the final secure key generation rate in our QKD system is calculated. In addition, we carried out the QKD experiments over the distance of 1.38 km. The results of the experiments indicate that our scheme is feasible.
ALGORITHMS FOR SPATIAL PYTHAGOREAN-HODOGRAPH CURVES

The quaternion representation for spatial Pythagorean–hodograph (PH) curves greatly facilitates the formulation of basic algorithms for their construction and manipulation, such as first–order Hermite interpolation, transformations between coordinate systems, and determination of rotation–minimizing frames. By virtue of their algebraic structures, PH curves offer unique computational advantages over “ordinary” polynomial curves in geometric design, graphics, path planning and motion control, computer vision, and similar applications. We survey some recent advances in theory, algorithms, and applications for spatial PH curves, and present new results on the unique determination of PH curves by the tangent indicatrix, and the use of generalized stereographic projection as a tool to obtain deeper insight into the basic structure and properties of spatial PH curves.
Terapia de Aceitação e Compromisso: o sofrimento psicológico em um caso clínico

Uma das condicoes relacionada a verbalizacao de sofrimento no contexto clinico se refere ao modo como as pessoas lidam com seus sentimentos, pensamentos e lembrancas, na tentativa de controla-los e evita-los quando associados a eventos dolorosos. A Terapia de Aceitacao e Compromisso (ACT) e uma modalidade terapeutica que propoe uma visao contextual de eventos privados, nao focando o controle ou modificacao dos mesmos. A partir da aceitacao, espera-se que o individuo compreenda os eventos privados, agradaveis ou desagradaveis, como naturais a vida humana e direcione uma acao comprometida com a mudanca, a qual sera guiada pelas metas e valores estabelecidos. Nesse sentido, o objetivo do presente trabalho consiste em apresentar o recorte de estudo de um caso atendido na Clinica Psicologica da Universidade Estadual de Londrina, descrevendo os procedimentos da ACT que fizeram parte do percurso psicoterapico baseado na Analise do Comportamento. Palavras-chave: Terapia de Aceitacao e Compromisso, Eventos Privados, Sofrimento, Analise do Comportamento, Caso Clinico