Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microvesicles from Human Adipose Tissue-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells as a New Protective Strategy in Osteoarthritic Chondrocytes

Background/Aims: Chronic inflammation contributes to cartilage degeneration during the progression of osteoarthritis (OA). Adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AD-MSC) show great potential to treat inflammatory and degradative processes in OA and have demonstrated paracrine effects in chondrocytes. In the present work, we have isolated and characterized the extracellular vesicles from human AD-MSC to investigate their role in the chondroprotective actions of these cells. Methods: AD-MSC were isolated by collagenase treatment from adipose tissue from healthy individuals subjected to abdominal lipectomy surgery. Microvesicles and exosomes were obtained from conditioned medium by filtration and differential centrifugation. Chondrocytes from OA patients were used in primary culture and stimulated with 10 ng/ml interleukin(IL)-1β in the presence or absence of AD-MSC microvesicles, exosomes or conditioned medium. Protein expression was investigated by ELISA and immunofluorescence, transcription factor-DNA binding by ELISA, gene expression by real-time PCR, prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) by radioimmunoassay, and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) activity and nitric oxide (NO) production by fluorometry. Results: In OA chondrocytes stimulated with IL-1β, microvesicles and exosomes reduced the production of inflammatory mediators tumor necrosis factor-α, IL-6, PGE2 and NO. The downregulation of cyclooxygenase-2 and microsomal prostaglandin E synthase-1 would lead to the decreased PGE2 production while the effect on NO could depend on the reduction of inducible nitric oxide synthase expression. Treatment of OA chondrocytes with extracellular vesicles also decreased the release of MMP activity and MMP-13 expression whereas the production of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 and the expression of collagen II were significantly enhanced. The reduction of inflammatory and catabolic mediators could be the consequence of a lower activation of nuclear factor-κB and activator protein-1. The upregulation of annexin A1 specially in MV may contribute to the anti-inflammatory and chondroprotective effects of AD-MSC. Conclusions: Our data support the interest of AD-MSC extracellular vesicles to develop new therapeutic approaches in joint conditions.
Literature Review on Automated Database Searching Methods

Now a days, Database searching from the database is time critical task. Modern database contain enormous data and also it may be heterogeneous. From these types of databases, getting user desired instances is tedious task. To get the satisfactory result multiple refining of the attributes is necessary. Use of traditional predefined query interfaces in this type of databases does not give satisfactory results. To meet the need of aforementioned, many methods and approaches have been proposed. Present paper reviews these research
Annotating Temporally-Anchored Spatial Knowledge by Leveraging Syntactic Dependencies

This paper presents a two-step methodology to annotate temporally-anchored spatial knowledge on top of OntoNotes. We ﬁrst generate potential knowledge using syntactic dependencies, and then crowdsource annotations to validate the potential knowledge. The resulting annotations indicate how long entities are or are not located somewhere, and temporally anchor this information. Crowdsourcing experiments show that spatial inferences are ubiquitous and intuitive, and experimental results show that they can be done automatically.
An empirical study examining the perceptions and behaviours of security-conscious users of mobile authentication

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to better understand, from an explorative qualitative perspective, the motivations and practices of highly security-conscious users of mobile authentication, and their underlying mental models of those behaviours. Mobile authentication studies have largely overlooked the mindset of these users in the upper bound of security experience, who have considered their behaviour in terms of detailed knowledge of mobile authentication risk. Twenty IT professionals who self-identified as security-conscious mobile device users, many with decades of intensive security-specific experience, were interviewed for this study regarding their opinions and experiences with mobile device authentication and security. These users described usability and situational impairment issues, as well as a deep concern for their identity and data security arising from highly contextual combinations of distrust towards underlying technologies and situational risk. Derived implications for development of security methods adapted to these informed perspectives are discussed and will be the basis for follow-on research comparing these findings with everyday users.
BKca channels as physiological regulators: A focused review

: Large-conductance Ca 2 + - and voltage-gated big K + (BK Ca , MaxiK, or Slo1) channels are expressed in almost every cell of mammalian tissues and participate in a multitude of physiological processes such as vascular tone regulation, neuronal excitability, neurotransmitter release, neurovascular coupling, bladder tone regulation, urinary K + excretion, and retinal circulation. BK Ca channel is a tetramer of the pore-forming α -subunit encoded by a single gene, Slo . The BK Ca - α -subunits are associated with the modulatory β -subunits, which contribute to the functional diversity of the channel. BK Ca channels sense and regulate membrane voltage and intracellular Ca 2 + , which then modulates several cell signaling and metabolic pathways. This review focuses on the main physiologic roles of BK Ca channels and the pathogenesis of diseases associated with their loss or malfunction. The mechanistic information highlighted in this review is aimed to enhance the understanding of the unique and diverse roles of BK Ca channels in various physiological and pathophysiological phenomena.
Parent-Provider Communication of HPV Vaccine Hesitancy

With our qualitative analysis of audio recordings, we suggest that engaging parents who express HPV vaccine hesitancy and addressing concerns may result in high rates of same-day vaccination. BrightcoveDefaultPlayer10.1542/6138653799001PEDS-VA_2017-2312 Video Abstract OBJECTIVES: To prevent human papillomavirus (HPV)–related cancers, providers must effectively communicate with HPV vaccine–hesitant parents. Here, we developed a typology characterizing parent-provider communication around HPV vaccine hesitancy. METHODS: We audio-recorded 43 visits with unvaccinated adolescents at 6 pediatric clinics in Dallas, Texas in which parents were undecided about HPV vaccination. We qualitatively coded how parents verbally expressed hesitancy (assertive response, asking a question, or expressing concern) and whether providers responded with acquiescence (agree to defer vaccination) and/or persistence (continue discussion). We described the frequency of parent and provider communication codes and same-day vaccination. RESULTS: Among the 43 visits, 37 parents expressed hesitancy ≥1 times in many ways. Assertive responses were most common (27 visits), followed by questions (16 visits), and concerns (12 visits). When the first expression of hesitancy was a question or concern, 71% and 75% of adolescents, respectively, received same-day vaccinations, whereas 33% of adolescents who received an initial assertive response were vaccinated. Providers responded with only persistence in 18 visits, a mix of acquiescence and persistence in 13 visits, and only acquiescence in 6 visits. When providers only used persistence, 17 of 18 adolescents were vaccinated; when providers responded with only acquiescence, no adolescents received the vaccine. CONCLUSIONS: Our exploratory analysis reveals that providers engaging hesitant parents and addressing their concerns can lead to same-day HPV vaccination. Data reveal that even parents making assertive statements are amenable to influence by providers. Our findings reveal an important missed opportunity when providers simply acquiesce to parental hesitation.
How Free Choice Affects Student Interest in a Junior-level Embedded Systems Lab Course

Graduate students at Auburn University (AU) have developed a new course structure for a longstanding embedded systems lab in an effort to increase student interest in the subject matter. Students are now given a choice between two different lab exercises each week that focus on the same skills and course material. In order to quantify the success of this change in course structure, an anonymous survey measuring the Engineering Identity of each student was administered at the beginning and end of the semester for two groups in two semesters: a control group given no choice of lab exercise and an experimental group given a free choice between two lab exercises. This paper examines the results of these surveys to determine the effect that student agency can have on student interest levels and their perception of themselves as engineers.
Anemia and thrombocytopenia in the cohort of HIV-infected adults in northwest Ethiopia: a facility-based cross-sectional study

Background Anemia and thrombocytopenia are frequent hematological abnormalities in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and have been associated with increased morbidity and mortality. However, there is a paucity of data on the prevalence and correlates of these hematological abnormalities among HIV infected adults in Ethiopia. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and correlates of anemia and thrombocytopenia in a cohort of HIV-1 infected adults in northwest Ethiopia. Methods A total of 320 HIV-infected adults were enrolled into the study, from March 2016 to July 2016. Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of the study participants were recorded. Blood samples were collected from each patient to determine hematological and immunological parameters. A binary logistic regression model was fitted to identify factors associated with each hematological abnormality. The odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval was calculated. A p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results Out of 320 HIV-1 positive participants, 203 (63.4%) were female. Overall, anemia was found in 25% (95% CI: 20.23 - 29.8%) of the study participants, of whom 2.5% (n=2) had severe and 21.2% (n=17) had moderate anemia. About 83.8% (67/80) anemic patients were on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for a minimum of six months, and 31 of them were receiving Zidovudine (AZT)-based HAART regimen. Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that being HAART-naïve (AOR= 5.5, 95% CI: 1.5-19.9) and having CD4 count below 200 cells/µl (AOR= 2.4, 95% CI: 1.3-4.9) were independent and significant predictors of anemia. Thrombocytopenia was noted in 6.3% (95% CI: 3.58-8.9%) of the study participants. Sixty percent of thrombocytopenic (n=12) subjects were over the age of 40 years. Conclusion We found an overall high prevalence of anemia in the cohort of HIV-infected adults in northwest Ethiopia. HAART naïve subjects and those with CD4 count less than 200 cells/µl were found to be at higher risk for developing anemia. This data has an important implication for management of hematological abnormalities in HIV patients and highlights the need for early initiation of HAART to reduce the burden of anemia.
Exploiting Pre-Ordering for Neural Machine Translation

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) has drawn much attention due to its promising translation performance in recent years. However, the under-translation and over-translation problem still remain a big challenge. Through error analysis, we ﬁnd that under-translation is much more prevalent than over-translation and the source words that need to be reordered during translation are more likely to be ignored. To address the under-translation problem, we explore the pre-ordering approach for NMT. Speciﬁcally, we pre-order the source sentences to approximate the target language word order. We then combine the pre-ordering model with position embedding to enhance the monotone translation. Finally, we augment our model with the coverage mechanism to tackle the over-translation problem. Experimental results on Chinese-to-English translation have shown that our method can signiﬁcantly improve the translation quality by up to 2.43 BLEU points. Furthermore, the detailed analysis demonstrates that our approach can substantially reduce the number of under-translation cases by 30 . 4% (compared to 17 . 4% using the coverage model).
Chaotic and Resonant Streamlines in the ABC Flow

Using the method of Melnikov, the dynamical system associated with fluid particle motion of the Arnold-Beltrami-Childress (ABC) flow is studied in this paper. Let \[ ( 1 )\qquad \dot x = A\sin z + C\cos y,\qquad\dot y = B\sin x + A\cos z,\qquad\dot z = C\sin y + B\cos x \], where $A,B,C$ are real parameters and satisfy $A > B > C > 0$ and $C \ll 1$. The analytical criteria for the existence of chaotic streamlines and resonant streamlines in (1) have been obtained.
Corpus Building and Evaluation of Aspect-based Opinion Summaries from Tweets in Spanish

This project involves the presentation and analysis of a corpus of Spanish extractive and abstractive summaries of opinions. The purpose of this work is to display a corpus of diverse summaries that could be used as a reference for academic research as we have not found one for the Spanish language as far as we know. We have analyzed the summaries based on the agreement between them as this shows how different they are written between each other and on aspect coverage and sentiment orientation as this proves the difference between the content that each summary tries to express. After the experimentation, we have found that even if each annotator uses a different expression to summarize a text, all of them contain similar messages. Furthermore, when writing, all of them prioritize on common aspects that are more representative of the corpus.
Linguistically-driven Framework for Computationally Efficient and Scalable Sign Recognition

We introduce a new general framework for sign recognition from monocular video using limited quantities of annotated data. The novelty of the hybrid framework we describe here is that we exploit state-of-the art learning methods while also incorporating features based on what we know about the linguistic composition of lexical signs. In particular, we analyze hand shape, orientation, location, and motion trajectories, and then use CRFs to combine this linguistically significant information for purposes of sign recognition. Our robust modeling and recognition of these sub-components of sign production allow an efficient parameterization of the sign recognition problem as compared with purely data-driven methods. This parameterization enables a scalable and extendable time-series learning approach that advances the state of the art in sign recognition, as shown by the results reported here for recognition of isolated, citation-form, lexical signs from American Sign Language (ASL).
A novel method for measurement of small opaque objects using Fraunhofer diffraction in divergent light

High accuracy dimensional measurement of small objects with nano- or subnanometre resolution is a very urgent problem especially applied to micromechanics and nanotechnology. A new high precision method for measurement of small opaque objects using Fraunhofer diffraction in divergent light is presented. The algorithm, based on contrast analysis of the diffraction Fraunhofer pattern at its centre, allows determination of the sought parameter with high precision within a range from a few to dozens of microns. Experimental results are presented.
Placenta-specific drug delivery by trophoblast-targeted nanoparticles in mice

Rationale: The availability of therapeutics to treat pregnancy complications is severely lacking, mainly due to the risk of harm to the fetus. In placental malaria, Plasmodium falciparum-infected erythrocytes (IEs) accumulate in the placenta by adhering to chondroitin sulfate A (CSA) on the surfaces of trophoblasts. Based on this principle, we have developed a method for targeted delivery of payloads to the placenta using a synthetic placental CSA-binding peptide (plCSA-BP) derived from VAR2CSA, a CSA-binding protein expressed on IEs. Methods: A biotinylated plCSA-BP was used to examine the specificity of plCSA-BP binding to mouse and human placental tissue in tissue sections in vitro. Different nanoparticles, including plCSA-BP-conjugated nanoparticles loaded with indocyanine green (plCSA-INPs) or methotrexate (plCSA-MNPs), were administered intravenously to pregnant mice to test their efficiency at drug delivery to the placenta in vivo. The tissue distribution and localization of the plCSA-INPs were monitored in live animals using an IVIS imaging system. The effect of plCSA-MNPs on fetal and placental development and pregnancy outcome were examined using a small-animal high-frequency ultrasound (HFUS) imaging system, and the concentrations of methotrexate in fetal and placental tissues were measured using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Results: plCSA-BP binds specifically to trophoblasts and not to other cell types in the placenta or to CSA-expressing cells in other tissues. Moreover, we found that intravenously administered plCSA-INPs accumulate in the mouse placenta, and ex vivo analysis of the fetuses and placentas confirmed placenta-specific delivery of these nanoparticles. We also demonstrate successful delivery of methotrexate specifically to placental cells by plCSA-BP-conjugated nanoparticles, resulting in dramatic impairment of placental and fetal development. Importantly, plCSA-MNPs treatment had no apparent adverse effects on maternal tissues. Conclusion: These results demonstrate that plCSA-BP-guided nanoparticles could be used for the targeted delivery of payloads to the placenta and serve as a novel placenta-specific drug delivery option.
Demography and rapid local adaptation shape Creole cattle genome diversity in the tropics

The introduction of Iberian cattle in the Americas after Columbus’ arrival imposed high selection pressures on a limited number of animals over a brief period of time. Knowledge of the genomic regions selected during this process may help in enhancing climatic resilience and sustainable animal production. We first determined taurine and indicine contributions to the genomic structure of modern Creole cattle. Second, we inferred their demographic history using approximate Bayesian computation (ABC), linkage disequilibrium (LD) and Ne Slope (NeS) analysis. Third, we performed whole genome scans for selection signatures based on cross‐population extended haplotype homozygosity (XP‐EHH) and population differentiation (FST) to disentangle the genetic mechanisms involved in adaptation and phenotypic change by a rapid and major environmental transition. To tackle these questions, we combined SNP array data (~54,000 SNPs) in Creole breeds with their modern putative Iberian ancestors. Reconstruction of the population history of Creoles from the end of the 15th century indicated a major demographic expansion until the introduction of zebu and commercial breeds into the Americas ~180 years ago, coinciding with a drastic Ne contraction. NeS analysis provided insights into short‐term complexity in population change and depicted a decrease/expansion episode at the end of the ABC‐inferred expansion, as well as several additional fluctuations in Ne with the attainment of the current small Ne only towards the end of the 20th century. Selection signatures for tropical adaptation pinpointed the thermoregulatory slick hair coat region, identifying a new candidate gene (GDNF), as well as novel candidate regions involved in immune function, behavioural processes, iron metabolism and adaptation to new feeding conditions. The outcomes from this study will help in future‐proofing farm animal genetic resources (FAnGR) by providing molecular tools that allow selection for improved cattle performance, resilience and welfare under climate change.
Coronary Computed Tomography Angiography ( CCTA ) , Including Noninvasive Fractional Flow Reserve ( FFR )

Contrast-enhanced CCTA for evaluation of symptomatic individuals with suspected ischemic heart disease, who meet guideline criteria for a noninvasive test in the outpatient setting may be considered medically necessary (refer to NOTE 1 below). NOTE 1: A noninvasive test should be performed on individuals with at least intermediate risk for coronary artery disease (10%-90% risk by standard risk prediction instruments/pre-test probability assessments). The choice of test will depend on:
Application of wavelet transform in the classification of pollen grains

This paper presents a proposal for the automatic classification of pollen grains, to assist in the analysis of the botanical origin of honey samples. For this task, techniques based on computer vision and machine learning were used. At first, the pollen grain image was segmented using a technique based on watershed. Then, a wavelet transform technique was used to extract texture features from the segmented image. Finally, a supervised machine learning technique was used to classify the pollen grain regarding its floral species. Other attributes based on shape, texture and color were taken for comparison with the proposed method. The technique has been assessed using an image dataset from 7 different pollen species and a 79% F-Score has been achieved.
Export Trade Incentives and Export Growth Nexus: Evidence from Ethiopia

Aims: Export trade is often considered as an engine of economic growth, and this led to attempts by governments in many countries towards promoting the export sector. The Ethiopian government has been taking measures to promote the export sector by introducing comprehensive financial and fiscal incentive schemes since 2002. Hence, this paper attempts to examine the type and trend of export incentive schemes and their effect on export growth in Ethiopia. Study Design: This is an explanatory study trying to shed light on whether and to what extent financial and fiscal incentives provided by the government have led to export growth in the country using time series data on financial incentives, fiscal incentives, export volume, export value, export diversification, GDP growth rate, and real effective exchange rate covering the period 2003 to 2011. Methodology: The data were collected from Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (ERCA), Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED), National Development Research Institute (NDRI) and National bank of Ethiopia (NBE). Three stage analysis has been conducted including graphical analysis of trends of export incentive schemes and export growth, examination of correlation among variables in the data set, and finally, a time series econometric analysis. Results: The study revealed that there are improvements in the export sector in terms of Original Research Article British Journal of Economics, Management & Trade, 4(1): 111-128, 2014 112 export value, destination and diversification despite that the share of manufactured exports is still marginal. The study also revealed that while the incentives are positively correlated with export value and export volume, they are negatively correlated with export concentration. In addition, the time series econometric analysis reveals that financial and fiscal incentives have a statistically significant impact on export growth both in the short run and long run. Conclusion: Incentives to the export sector have robustly improved export value and volume. However, it has been noted that manufactured export is still insignificant which implies that the incentives have played only a partial role in boosting export earnings of the country.