Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stromal-epithelial interactions in aging and cancer: senescent fibroblasts alter epithelial cell differentiation

Cellular senescence suppresses cancer by arresting cells at risk of malignant tumorigenesis. However, senescent cells also secrete molecules that can stimulate premalignant cells to proliferate and form tumors, suggesting the senescence response is antagonistically pleiotropic. We show that premalignant mammary epithelial cells exposed to senescent human fibroblasts in mice irreversibly lose differentiated properties, become invasive and undergo full malignant transformation. Moreover, using cultured mouse or human fibroblasts and non-malignant breast epithelial cells, we show that senescent fibroblasts disrupt epithelial alveolar morphogenesis, functional differentiation and branching morphogenesis. Furthermore, we identify MMP-3 as the major factor responsible for the effects of senescent fibroblasts on branching morphogenesis. Our findings support the idea that senescent cells contribute to age-related pathology, including cancer, and describe a new property of senescent fibroblasts - the ability to alter epithelial differentiation - that might also explain the loss of tissue function and organization that is a hallmark of aging.
Processing issues, machining, and applications of aluminum metal matrix composites

ABSTRACT Aluminum metal matrix composites (AMMCs) used in different industries from automotive to aerospace for specific purposes. Many problems hinder the full-scale industrialization of AMMCs but the main problems include wettability, particle distribution, porosity, and chemical reaction. These problems have explicit effects on mechanical, wear, and corrosion resistance properties of the composite materials. Therefore, it is essential to cope up with these problems for better quality of AMMCs. This paper focuses on issues related to AMMCs fabrication, corrosion resistance, wear resistance, machining parameter optimization, and chip analysis of AMMCs. Literature provides a guideline to researchers about present scenario of AMMC fabrication using stir casting process. Moreover, paper presents properties and applications of AMMCs.
Assessment of the Economic Burden of COPD in the U.S.: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature

The costs of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) pose a major economic burden to the United States. Studies evaluating COPD costs have generated widely variable estimates; we summarized and critically compared recent estimates of the annual national and per-patient costs of COPD in the U.S. Thirteen articles reporting comprehensive estimates of the direct costs of COPD (costs related to the provision of medical goods and services) were identified from searches of relevant primary literature published since 1995. Few papers reported indirect costs of COPD (lost work and productivity). The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) provides the single current estimate of the total (direct plus indirect) annual cost of COPD to the U.S., $38.8 billion in 2005 dollars. More than half of this cost ($21.8 billion) was direct, aligning with the $20–26 billion range reported by two other recent analyses of large national datasets. For per-patient direct costs (in $US 2005), studies using recent data yield attributable cost estimates (costs deemed to be related to COPD) in the range of $2,700–$5,900 annually, and excess cost estimates (total costs incurred by COPD patients minus total costs incurred by non-COPD patients) in the range of $6,100–$6,600 annually. Studies of both national and per-patient costs that use data approximately 8–10 years old or older have produced estimates that tend to deviate from these ranges. Cost-of-illness studies using recent data underscore the substantial current cost burden of COPD in the U.S.
Variation-and-aging aware low power embedded SRAM for multimedia applications

This paper presents a low power embedded SRAM memory design for MPEG-4 video processors. Considering both of the process variation and aging effect, the proposed design adopts an optimal high voltage for spatial voltage scaling to achieve high power efficiency. Simulations in FreePDK 45nm CMOS technology show that our proposed technique can achieve 85%, 90%, and 79% reduction in write power, read power, and leakage current, respectively, with graceful degradation (~5.6%) in video quality, as compared to conventional SRAM design.
Influence of density fluctuation on the stability of single-lane traffic flow by cellular automata

Cellular automata (CA) models have been applied to simulate complex traffic systems. Various models are developed to understand single-lane traffic, multilane traffic and lane-changing behavior. To realize dynamic traffic management, a rapid and robust traffic CA procedure is necessary. Generally, traffic CA models are proposed based on NaSch model, which is proposed by Nagel and Schreckenberg and is named after their abbreviations of names. The model is a four-step procedure. In this study, sensitivity of single-lane traffic flow is examined by NaSch model. According to the results, sensitivity decreases with density increases. The transient sensitivity is larger than steady-state sensitivity in the increasing profile; hence, transient simulation is still necessary. The transient sensitivity is equal to steady-state sensitivity in the decreasing profile. Although the sensitivity varies with density, the trend is stable and predictable.
Smoking cessation for the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease.

BACKGROUND Although the importance of smoking as a risk factor for coronary heart disease is beyond doubt, the speed and magnitude of risk reduction when a smoker with coronary heart disease quits are still subjects of debate. OBJECTIVES To estimate the magnitude of risk reduction when a patient with CHD stops smoking. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched the Cochrane Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, EMBASE, Science Citation Index, CINAHL, PsychLit, Dissertation Abstracts, BIDS ISI Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings, UK National Research Register from the start of each database. Sixty-one large international cohort studies of cardiovascular disease were identified, and contact made with authors to search for any unpublished results. The search was supplemented by cross-checking references and contact with various experts. Date of last search was April 2003. SELECTION CRITERIA Any prospective cohort studies of patients with a diagnosis of CHD, which include all-cause mortality as an outcome measure. Smoking status must be measured on at least two occasions to ascertain which smokers have quit, and followed-up for at least two years. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Eligibility and trial quality were assessed independently by two reviewers. MAIN RESULTS Twenty studies were included. There was a 36% reduction in crude relative risk (RR) of mortality for those who quit smoking compared with those who continued to smoke (RR 0.64, 95% confidence interval 0.58 to 0.71). There was also a reduction in non-fatal myocardial infarctions (crude RR 0.68, 95% confidence interval 0.57 to 0.82). Many studies did not adequately address quality issues, such as control of confounding, and misclassification of smoking status. However, there was little difference in the results for the six 'higher quality' studies, and little heterogeneity between these studies. This review was not able to assess how quickly the risk of mortality was reduced. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS Quitting smoking is associated with a substantial reduction in risk of all-cause mortality among patients with CHD. The pooled crude RR was 0.64 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.71). This 36% risk reduction appears substantial compared with other secondary preventive therapies such as cholesterol lowering which have received greater attention in recent years. The risk reduction associated with quitting smoking seems consistent regardless of differences between the studies in terms of index cardiac events, age, sex, country, and time period. However, relatively few studies have included large numbers of older people, women, or people of non-European descent, and most were carried out in Western countries.
Ethics, organ donation and tax: a proposal

Five arguments are presented in favour of the proposal that people who opt in as organ donors should receive a tax break. These arguments appeal to welfare, autonomy, fairness, distributive justice and self-ownership, respectively. Eight worries about the proposal are considered in this paper. These objections focus upon no-effect and counter-productiveness, the Titmuss concern about social meaning, exploitation of the poor, commodification, inequality and unequal status, the notion that there are better alternatives, unacceptable expense, and concerns about the veto of relatives. The paper argues that none of the objections to the proposal is very telling.
Data-parallel algorithms for large-scale real-time simulation of the cellular potts model on graphics processing units

In the following paper we present techniques for data-parallel execution of the Cellular Potts Model (CPM) on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). We have developed data-structures and algorithms that are optimized to use available hardware resources on the GPU. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at using data-parallel techniques for simulating the CPM. We benchmarked this implementation against other parallel CPM implementations using traditional CPU clusters. Experimental results demonstrate that this implementation solves many of the drawbacks of traditional CPU clusters, and results in a performance gain of up to 30x, without sacrificing the integrity of the original model.
Hidden receptors for nerve growth factor in PC12 cells.

The binding of nerve growth factor (NGF) to its receptors in PC12 cells was studied in two experimental conditions: (a) cell fixation with paraformaldehyde followed by permeabilization of the plasma membrane with methanol and (b) metabolic poisoning of living cells with sodium azide. Paraformaldehyde fixation of PC12 cells causes a 60-70% reduction of NGF binding capacity; the original binding capacity is restored following permeabilization with methanol. A kinetic analysis of NGF binding under these conditions reveals a single homogeneous population of receptors at variance with experiments performed in living cells where two kinetically distinct types of NGF receptors were demonstrated [Landreth, G. E. and Shooter, E. M. (1980) Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, 77, 4751-4755; Schechter, A. L. and Bothwell, M. A. (1981) Cell, 24, 867-874]. Our results suggest that a proportion of the NGF receptors in PC12 cells is hidden, i.e. not available for binding to the ligand, and in a dynamic equilibrium with exposed receptors. The existence of hidden receptors is confirmed by treatment of PC12 cells with sodium azide, which causes a 50% reduction in NGF binding capacity and protection from trypsin digestion of the remaining pool of hidden receptors. The latter become exposed at the cell surface following removal of sodium azide. Our data provide an interpretation for the as yet unsatisfactorily explained data on NGF receptors.
An Evolutionary Bootstrap Approach to Neural Network Pruning and Generalization

This paper combines techniques drawn from the literature on evolutionary optimization algorithms along with bootstrap based statistical tests. Bootstrapping is used as a general framework for estimating objectives out of sample by redrawing subsets from a training sample. Evolution is used to search the large number of potential network architectures. The combination of these two methods creates a network estimation and selection procedure which nds parsimonious network structures which generalize well. The bootstrap methodology also allows for objective functions other than usual least squares, since it can estimate the in sample bias for any function. Examples are given for forecasting chaotic time series contaminated with noise.
Kundentypen und Nutzungsabsicht von mobilen Versicherungsdiensten: Eine empirische Analyse

Ausgehend von der zunehmenden Verbreitung von Smartphones wird untersucht, welchen Nutzen mobile Dienste als Erganzung klassischer Dienstleistungen in den Augen potenzieller Kunden haben. Am Beispiel der Versicherungsbranche wird zu diesem Zweck analysiert, welche mobilen Dienste von Kunden nachge-fragt werden und wie letztere gezielt angesprochen werden kon-nen. Mit Hilfe von Fokusgruppen werden diejenigen Dienste mit dem grossten Nutzenpotenzial identifiziert. Hierbei zeigt sich, dass diese aus dem Bereich der Hilfe- und Notfallanwendungen kommen. Die Kundenperspektive auf diese Dienste wird mit Hilfe von demographischen Faktoren, der Technologieaffinitat, dem Vertrauen in den Anbieter und der Risikoeinstellung im Rahmen einer Onlinebefragung untersucht. Wahrend abhangig von der Demographie keine Unterschiede sichtbar werden, gehen ein ge-steigertes Vertrauen in den Anbieter, eine hohere Technologieaf-finitat und ein risikoaverses Verhalten mit einer gesteigerten Nut-zungsintention einher.
Static Hedging of Asian Options under Lévy Models

The Asian option pricing problem is a lot like the American put problem in the 1970s. An Asian payoff is a rather simple, and common, option feature, but it messes up our clean, closed-form valuation equations. This situation is apparently a persistent source of annoyance to mathematicians and other quants, who respond with an outpouring of creativity, in the form of theory, algorithms, and approximate solutions. Although this may seem like overkill for the specific problem at hand, it produces useful new ideas and techniques for our general derivatives valuation toolkit. In this article, Albrecher et al, introduce a new approach to pricing Asian options, based on the principle of comonotonicity and the “stop-loss transform. ” They derive tight bounds on the value, even when the underlying asset's price follows a Lévy process, rather than a Gaussian diffusion. As with many of the solutions to the American put problem, this technique can potentially be applied to a much broader class of valuation problems.
Frequency dependence of the harmonic radiation power emitted by a GaAs/AlAs superlattice diode in the terahertz frequency range

We present an experimental study of the harmonic radiation power in the terahertz frequency range emitted by a novel superlattice structure tested at room temperature. The superlattice diodes were pumped with fundamental frequencies in the range of 100-240 GHz. We measured the power spectrum of the harmonic output signal above 600 GHz using a Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) in Groningen and with a terahertz spectrometer for molecular spectra in Cologne. We demonstrate the successful application of the SL-THz multiplier to record rotationally absorption spectral lines of deuterated (heavy) water D/sub 2/O up to the frequency of 2.7 THz with high accuracy.
K+ transport in Malpighian tubules of Tenebrio molitor L.: a study of electrochemical gradients and basal K+ uptake mechanisms

SUMMARY Malpighian tubules of the mealworm Tenebrio molitor were isolated for intracellular measurement of basolateral (Vbl) and, indirectly, apical (Vap) membrane potentials. In control Ringer (50 mmol l-1 K+, 140 mmol l-1 Na+), Vbl was 24mV, cell negative, and Vap was 48 mV, cell negative with reference to the lumen. Ion substitution experiments involving K+ and Na+ indicated that both Vbl and Vap were sensitive to the bathing K+ concentration, with the change in Vap being 60-77% that of Vbl. A 10-fold drop in bath [K+] irreversibly decreased fluid secretion rates from 6.38±0.95 nl min-1 (mean ± S.E.M.) to 1.48±0.52 nl min-1 (N=8). In the presence of 6 mmol l-1 Ba2+, a blocker of basal K+ channels, fluid secretion rates reversibly decreased and the hyperpolarization of both Vbl and Vap seen in 50 mmol l-1 and 140 mmol l-1 K+ indicated a favourable electrochemical gradient for basal K+ entry. In 5 mmol l-1 K+, Ba2+ induced two different responses: Vbl either hyperpolarized by approximately 10 mV or depolarised by approximately 14mV, according to the electrochemical gradient for K+, which was either inward or outward in low bath [K+]. Rubidium, a `permeant' potassium substitute, caused a hyperpolarization of Vbl, indicating the specificity of K+ channels found in Tenebrio tubule cells. Other possible K+ uptake mechanisms located in the basolateral membrane were investigated. Blocking of the putative electroneutral Na+/K+/2Cl- cotransporter by 10 μmol l-1 bumetanide reversibly decreased fluid secretion rates, with no detectable change in membrane potentials. Ouabain (1 mmol l-1), an Na+/K+-ATPase inhibitor, irreversibly decreased fluid secretion rates but had no effect on electrical potential differences either in the absence or presence of Ba2+. The results implicate K+ channels, the Na+/K+/2Cl- contransporter and the Na+/K+-ATPase in basal K+ and fluid transport of Tenebrio tubule cells.
Performance improvement using two level branch predictor on the mobile processor

In the last few years, the microprocessor of mobile device has been developed into multi-core, multi-issue, and deep pipeline for high-performance. But maximizing the parallelism of a pipeline and deepening pipeline cause more penalties so that branch predictor is more and more important. One of the efficient ways to improve its performance is generally to increase the size of the branch predictor. However, increasing the size of branch predictor necessarily involves the increase of memory indexing time and power consumption. Therefore, to improve the performance of branch predictor considering the mobile environment, we have studied the effect on performance improvement by changing the other factors while remaining the size of the memory fixed with 2-level branch predictor. We experimented to investigate the performance improvement by modifying the associativity of Branch Target Buffer (BTB) and the size of Branch History Register (BHR). The simulation was performed using SimpleScalar 3.0 based on ARM Cortex-A15 and benchmarks from SPEC CPU2000. As a result, in the 2-level branch predictor structure, when reducing the length of BHR in 8 bit, the increase of Instruction Per Cycle (IPC) is the highest as 0.599%. Therefore, we concluded that to modify the length of BHR of branch predictor is most effective way to improve the performance of the processor.
A Translator’s Workstation

A description is given of the present state of development of a workstation that has been designed to provide the translator with efficient and easy-to-use computational tools. The aim is to offer translators fast and flexible on-line access to existing dictionary databases and bilingual text archives and also to supply them with facilities for updating, adding to and personalizing the system data archives with their own material.
Follicular Dendritic Cells as Accessory Cells

Follicular dendritic cells (FDC) represent a novel cell type found in the B-cell regions of all secondary lymphoid tissues. The name follicular dendritic cell and the abbreviation FDC have been recommended by a committee on nomenclature (Tew et al. 1982) but a number of names have been used in the literature including: dendritic reticulum cells (DRC), antigen retaining reticular cells, follicular ii6mune complex retaining cells, follicular antigen-binding dendritic cells, follicular reticular cells, follicular dendritic reticulum cells, Nossal's follicular dendritic reticulum cells and dendritic macrophages (Tew et al. 1982). However, in recent years the name follicular dendritic cell has been generally adopted. Two features differentiate FDC from other accessory cells and are considered diagnostic or cardinal: 1) these dendritic cells are restricted to lymphoid follicles and 2) they trap and retain immune complexes on their surfaces for long periods of time (Tew et al. 1982). It was these two features that caught the attention of Szakal & Hanna as well as Nossal et al. in 1968, when both groups identified FDC as the cells responsible for retaining antigen. Important features which help to further characterize FDC are listed in Table I. This is a selected series of markers chosen to emphasize relationships between FDC and other leukocytes as well as discrepancies in the literature. References at the bottom of Table I contain some further phenotypic information. In addition to the cardinal features relating to anatomical location and retention of surface immune complexes, a number of other features appear to be highly consistent among FDC in different species. These include: lack of phagocytie activity, highly convoluted dendritic processes, an irregularly shaped euchromatic nucleus, presence of receptors for complement fragments, and the expression of the adhesion molecule ICAM-1. As indicated in Table I, there are features where the
Soluble E-selectin Induces Monocyte Chemotaxis through Src Family Tyrosine Kinases*

Cellular adhesion molecules such as E-selectin function to recruit leukocytes into the inflammatory lesions of diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and atherosclerosis. Monocytes are the key components of the cellular infiltrates present in these disorders. We hypothesized that soluble E-selectin (sE-selectin) might mediate the chemotaxis of monocytes. In this report, we show that sE-selectin induced normal human peripheral blood monocyte migration in the nanomolar range in a concentration-dependent manner. Neutralization studies using RA human joint synovial fluids and anti-E-selectin antibody showed a mean 31% reduction in RA synovial fluid-mediated monocyte chemotaxis (p < 0.05), indicating that sE-selectin is a major monocyte recruiter in RA. Next, we investigated the role of tyrosine phosphorylation pathways in sE-selectin-induced monocyte chemotaxis. Human peripheral blood monocytes stimulated with sE-selectin showed a time-dependent increase in the tyrosine phosphorylation of a broad range of cellular proteins, predominantly in the molecular size range of Src family kinases (50–60 kDa) and mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs). Western blot analysis of Src family kinases showed a time-dependent increase in Src, Hck, and Lyn phosphorylation. The pretreatment of monocytes with the Src inhibitor AG1879: 4-amino-5-(4-chlorophenyl)-7-(t-butyl)pyrazolol[3,4-d]pyrimidine (PP2) prior to stimulation with sE-selectin markedly inhibited Hck and Lyn phosphorylation, whereas the phosphorylation of Src was partially inhibited. In addition, the sE-selectin stimulation of monocytes resulted in the increased phosphorylation of extracellular signal-related kinase (ERK1/2) and p38 MAPK. The pretreatment of monocytes with PP2 showed 89 and 83% inhibition of ERK1/2 and p38 MAPK phosphorylation, respectively. sE-selectin also showed a time-dependent activation of Ras kinase. Furthermore, the pretreatment of monocytes with PP2 completely inhibited sE-selectin-mediated monocyte chemotaxis. Taken together, our data demonstrate a novel function for sE-selectin as a monocyte chemotactic agent and suggest that sE-selectin might be mediating its biological functions through the Src-MAPK pathway.
External Memory Value Iteration

We propose a unified approach to disk-based search for deterministic, non-deterministic, and probabilistic (MDP) settings. We provide the design of an external Value Iteration algorithm that performs at most O(lG · scan(|E|) + tmax · sort(|E|)) I/Os, where lG is the length of the largest back-edge in the breadth-first search graph G having |E| edges, tmax is the maximum number of iterations, and scan(n) and sort(n) are the I/O complexities for externally scanning and sorting n items. The new algorithm is evaluated over large instances of known benchmark problems. As shown, the proposed algorithm is able to solve very large problems that do not fit into the available RAM and thus out of reach for other exact algorithms.