Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression of PDGF and PDGF receptors in human astrocytoma operation specimens supports the existence of an autocrine loop

Established cell lines derived from human malignant astrocytomas typically express a combination of platelet‐derived growth factor (PDGF) and PDGF receptor which could form an autocrine loop. In this study, we screened for the essential components of a PDGF autocrine loop in fresh surgical isolates of human astrocytomas, using in situ hybridization and immunohis‐tochemical techniques. Eight malignant astrocytomas (6 glioblastomas and 2 anaplastic astrocytomas), 5 low‐grade astrocytomas and 4 non‐neoplastic glial specimens (mesial temporal sclerosis) were evaluated. Malignant astrocytomas, and to a lesser extent low‐grade astrocytomas, expressed more PDGF‐A and PDGF‐B than non‐neoplastic glia. PDGF‐α‐receptor expression was elevated both in malignant and in iow‐grade astrocytomas. These data support the argument that PDGF autocrine loops contribute to the unregulated growth of human astrocytomas. Expression of PDGF and PDGF receptor in low‐grade astrocytomas suggests that activation of PDGF autocrine loops may be an early event in the pathogenesis of malignant astrocytomas. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
International Politics and Oil Trade : Evidence from Russian Firms

It is widely argued that oil exporters could use their natural resources as a weapon to punish adversaries and reward allies. Yet empirical analysis of these claims has been elusive due to lack of data. Using a novel dataset on Russian companies’ oil exports over 1999–2011, we show that a decline in relations between Russia and another country, measured by divergence in their United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voting patterns, considerably reduces the value of Russian oil exports to that country. The effect is more pronounced for state-owned companies. A deterioration in political relations and associated decrease in oil exports are costly for Russian companies. They experience a decline in profitability following a breakdown in political relations between Russia and those companies’ main export destination countries. Finally, we show that a deterioration in political relations with Russia is costly for the countries importing oil from Russia as their total oil imports decline, suggesting that, at least in the short run, it is costly for these countries to find close substitute for Russian oil. Notably, such adverse effect of political relations on oil importers is pretty recent phenomenon observed over 20002011, which coincide with the rise of Vladimir Putin to power, such patterns are absent in the earlier 1992-1999 period. This draft: Jan 19, 2017 1 Portnykh (Corresponding author: mportnyk@andrew.cmu.edu) Heinz College, Carnegie-Mellon University; Tsui (ktsui@clemson.edu) Clemson University. We would like to thank participants of PERC seminar Bozeman, MT, Applied Micro seminar at Carnegie-Mellon University, Environmental Economics seminar at CMU-Pitt, Environmental Economics seminar at UC Santa Barbara. We also would like to thank Terry Anderson, Dan Benjamin, Dan Berkowitz, Karen Clay, Chris Costello, Robert Crandall, Olivier Deschenes, William Dougan, Arnold Harberger, Brian Kovak, Gary Libecap, Kyle Meng, Tom Mroz, Yadviga Semikolenova, Edson Severnini.
When Parties Become Racialized: Deconstructing Racially Themed Parties

Racially themed parties are all-too-common occurrences on college campuses. Using critical race theory as a lens, this article provides a contemporary overview of these events and deconstructs these incidents as examples of overt forms of racism often emanating from subtle, everyday occurrences of covert racism or racial microaggressions. Implications for future empirical research and professional practice are provided in hopes of better responding to and prevention of racially themed parties.
Sport Competition Anxiety Test

Sport: Daten zu Schulsportfragen, zur Sportvereinsangehorigkeit, zu Breitensport -aktivitaten, Jugendund Erwachsenenspor sowie Motivangaben werden ohne Zusammenhang und Differenzierung vorgestellt und diskutiert. Zudem hatten seine auf -wendigen Untersuchungen in Giesen (ein Ergebnis: die soziale Schichtung von zwei Sportvereinen mit identischem Sportangebot variiert mitunter ebenso stark wie die von zwei Sportvereinen mit unterschied -lichem Sportangebot) Anlas sein konnen, die (moderne) These von der Disparitat der Lebensbereiche (37 f.) aufzugreifen und zu prufen. Oberhaupt ist schwer zu erkennen, ob und ggfs. welche Hypothesen uberpruft werden.
Using image statistics for automated quality assessment of urban geospatial data

: In this paper, a framework is proposed to assess the quality of urban geospatial data using image information. An important aspect is the emphasis on accuracy and reliability of the system. The quality of the image information is quantified by characterizing the ridge detection performance in terms of detection rate. Based on statistics of a typical road and its immediate surroundings, a prediction of the detection performance is made and the parameter set for the optimal performance of the ridge detection is derived. The prediction is used to define a displacement quality measure. Experiments were conducted on IKONOS panchromatic and Quickbird multispectral satellite images.
Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care

The goals, objectives, and philosophy of Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) are outlined in this article. Three specific mechanisms of the MTFC approach known to reduce conflict in the therapeutic milieu and to contribute to successful outcomes for youth and their families are described: a proactive approach to reducing problem behavior, the creation and maintenance of a consistent and reinforcing environment for the participating youth, and the separation and stratification of staff roles. Controlled outcome research comparing MTFC to other community treatment alternatives with similar populations of troubled youth are also described.Additionally, the results of preliminary research evaluating the impact of an MTFC model adapted to meet the needs of maltreated preschool-age children at entry to foster care are presented.
Assessing distress in caregivers of people with a traumatic brain injury (TBI): a psychometric study of the Head Injury Behaviour Scale

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Head Injury Behaviour Scale (HIBS) using responses from 242 caregivers. The HIBS is a 20-item, scale describing common behavioural problems following traumatic brain injury (TBI), which are typical of dysexecutive syndrome. A principal components analysis was conducted on caregiver distress ratings for the 20 items comprising the HIBS and produced a two-factor solution with 10 items loading on each factor. Consequently, two sub-scales were derived and labelled Emotional Regulation and Behavioural Regulation. The sub-scales were found to have good internal-consistency reliability. It is suggested that the Emotional Regulation sub-scale assesses behaviours reflecting impaired emotional control, occurring during interactions with caregivers. The Behavioural Regulation sub-scale assesses problems typical of dysexecutive syndrome, but which carry less emotional valence for caregivers. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed and normative data provided for the two sub-scales.
Exploiting ordered dictionaries to efficiently construct histograms with q-error guarantees in SAP HANA

Histograms that guarantee a maximum multiplicative error (q-error) for estimates may significantly improve the plan quality of query optimizers. However, the construction time for histograms with maximum q-error was too high for practical use cases. In this paper we extend this concept with a threshold, i.e., an estimate or true cardinality θ, below which we do not care about the q-error because we still expect optimal plans. This allows us to develop far more efficient construction algorithms for histograms with bounded error. The test for θ, q-acceptability developed also exploits the order-preserving dictionary encoding of SAP HANA. We have integrated this family of histograms into SAP HANA, and we report on the construction time, histograms size, and estimation errors on real-world data sets. In virtually all cases the histograms can be constructed in far less than one second, requiring less than 5% of space compared to the original compressed data.
Precise Thermometry for Next Generation LHC Superconducting Magnet Prototypes

The next generation of LHC superconducting magnets is very challenging and must operate in harsh conditions: high radiation doses in a range between 10 and 50 MGy, high voltage environment of 1-5 kV during the quench, dynamic high magnetic field up to 12 T, dynamic temperature range 1.8-300 K in 0.6 s. For magnet performance and long-term reliability, it is important to study dynamic thermal effects, such as the heat flux through the magnet structure, or measuring hot spot in conductors during a magnet quench with high sampling rates above 200 Hz. Available on the market, cryogenic temperature sensors comparison is given. An analytical model for special electrically insulating thermal anchor (Kapton pad) with high voltage insulation is described. A set of instrumentation is proposed for fast monitoring of thermal processes during normal operation, quenches, and failure situations. This paper presents the technology applicable for mounting temperature sensors on high voltage superconducting (SC) cables. The temperature measurements of fast heat cross propagation in MQXC SC cable and FCM dynamic tests are also presented. Novel thermometry has been successfully applied to a few CERN magnet prototypes (MQXC, FCM, and FRESCA2).
A Complex Event Detection Method for Multi-probability RFID Event Stream

Aiming to solve the problems of big combination number of possible events and high memory consumption and low detection efficiency during the detection process of Naive method for multi-probability RFID event streams, a new complex event detection method based on NFA-DAG (Nondeterministic Finite Automaton-Directed Acyclic Graph) is presented for multi-probability RFID event stream in this paper. The achievement of our proposed algorithm lies that we use the union of NFA and DAG to detect multiple-probability RFID event stream, as a result, it can effectively improve those problems above existed in Naive method. The simulation results show that our proposed scheme based on NFA-DAG in this paper can greatly reduce the combinations number of possible events, lower memory consumption and improve event detection efficiency in detecting multi-probability RFID event streams compared with Naive method, without degrading detection quality.
Distributed augmented lambda-iteration method for economic dispatch in smart grid

The economic dispatch problem (EDP) is of vital importance in the operation and planning of power systems. In this paper, we study the EDP with general cost functions, transmission losses and prohibited operating zones. The equality constraint of the EDP is nonlinear due to transmission losses, while the feasible region is discontinuous due to prohibited operating zones, meaning that the EDP is a non-convex optimization problem. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes the distributed augmented lambda-iteration method. Compared with the conventional lambda-iteration method, the proposed method has the advantages that it can get the optimal dispatch in the presence of prohibited operating zones and effectively avoid the oscillatory behavior that the conventional lambdaiteration method often exhibits. Furthermore, the proposed method is distributed in the sense that the nodes conduct local computations and communicate with their neighbors in a connected undirected graph. Simulation results are given to show the performance of our method.
Comparison of LQR and PD controller for stabilizing Double Inverted Pendulum System

this paper presented comparison of the time specification performance between two type of controller for a Double Inverted Pendulum system. Double Inverted Pendulum is a non-linear ,unstable and fast reaction system. DIP is stable when its two pendulums allocated in vertically position and have no oscillation and movement and also inserting force should be zero. The objective is to determine the control strategy that to delivers better performance with respect to pendulum angle's and cart position. In this paper simple multi PD controller designed on the theory of pole placement and its performance is compared with Linear Quadratic Regulator controller using MATLAB and Simulink.
Islet Amyloid Polypeptide: Structure, Function, and Pathophysiology

The hormone islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP, or amylin) plays a role in glucose homeostasis but aggregates to form islet amyloid in type-2 diabetes. Islet amyloid formation contributes to β-cell dysfunction and death in the disease and to the failure of islet transplants. Recent work suggests a role for IAPP aggregation in cardiovascular complications of type-2 diabetes and hints at a possible role in type-1 diabetes. The mechanisms of IAPP amyloid formation in vivo or in vitro are not understood and the mechanisms of IAPP induced β-cell death are not fully defined. Activation of the inflammasome, defects in autophagy, ER stress, generation of reactive oxygen species, membrane disruption, and receptor mediated mechanisms have all been proposed to play a role. Open questions in the field include the relative importance of the various mechanisms of β-cell death, the relevance of reductionist biophysical studies to the situation in vivo, the molecular mechanism of amyloid formation in vitro and in vivo, the factors which trigger amyloid formation in type-2 diabetes, the potential role of IAPP in type-1 diabetes, the development of clinically relevant inhibitors of islet amyloidosis toxicity, and the design of soluble, bioactive variants of IAPP for use as adjuncts to insulin therapy.
Aspergillus flavus infection induces transcriptional and physical changes in developing maize kernels

Maize kernels are susceptible to infection by the opportunistic pathogen Aspergillus flavus. Infection results in reduction of grain quality and contamination of kernels with the highly carcinogenic mycotoxin, aflatoxin. To understanding host response to infection by the fungus, transcription of approximately 9000 maize genes were monitored during the host-pathogen interaction with a custom designed Affymetrix GeneChip® DNA array. More than 4000 maize genes were found differentially expressed at a FDR of 0.05. This included the up regulation of defense related genes and signaling pathways. Transcriptional changes also were observed in primary metabolism genes. Starch biosynthetic genes were down regulated during infection, while genes encoding maize hydrolytic enzymes, presumably involved in the degradation of host reserves, were up regulated. These data indicate that infection of the maize kernel by A. flavus induced metabolic changes in the kernel, including the production of a defense response, as well as a disruption in kernel development.
Conservative Management of Paediatric Clavicle Fractures

Paediatric clavicle fractures have traditionally been treated nonoperatively. Recent studies have recommended operative management for displaced midshaft fractures. We conducted a retrospective review of all clavicle fractures in children aged one to sixteen over a two-year period. We classified fractures and evaluated followup and clinical outcome. We identified 190 fractures. There were 135 boys and 55 girls. 65% of fractures were displaced and 35% undisplaced. Mean radiographic and clinical followup was 35 days and 44 days, respectively. Clavicle fractures in children heal with nonoperative management. Radiographs of clavicle fractures in children are unnecessary in the absence of clinical symptoms.
Reduced expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase in the lungs of patients with pulmonary hypertension.

BACKGROUND Pulmonary hypertension is characterized by abnormal thickening of the pulmonary arteries and increased pulmonary vascular resistance. Nitric oxide is a potent endothelium-derived vasorelaxant substance and an inhibitor of smooth-muscle-cell growth. Nitric oxide is produced in various cell types by the action of an enzyme, nitric oxide synthase. We compared the expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase in the lungs of control subjects with that in the lungs of patients with pulmonary hypertension. METHODS We investigated the expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase by histochemical and immunohistochemical analysis, in situ hybridization, and Northern blot analysis in the lungs of 22 patients with plexogenic pulmonary arteriopathy (arteriopathy of grades 4 through 6), 24 patients with secondary pulmonary hypertension (arteriopathy of grades 1 through 3), and 23 control subjects. RESULTS In the lungs of the control subjects, nitric oxide synthase was expressed at a high level in the vascular endothelium of all types of vessels and in the pulmonary epithelium. In contrast, little or no expression of the enzyme was found in the vascular endothelium of pulmonary arteries with severe histologic abnormalities (i.e., plexiform lesions) in patients with pulmonary hypertension. The intensity of the enzyme immunoreactivity correlated inversely with the severity of histologic changes. There was an inverse correlation between the arterial expression of the enzyme and total pulmonary resistance in patients with plexogenic pulmonary arteriopathy (r = -0.766, P = 0.004). CONCLUSIONS Pulmonary hypertension is associated with diminished expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase. It is possible that decreased expression of nitric oxide synthase may contribute to pulmonary vasoconstriction and to the excessive growth of the tunica media observed in this disease.
GPS and GPRS Based Telemonitoring System for Emergency Patient Transportation

Telemonitoring during the golden hour of patient transportation helps to improve medical care. Presently there are different physiological data acquisition and transmission systems using cellular network and radio communication links. Location monitoring systems and video transmission systems are also commercially available. The emergency patient transportation systems uniquely require transmission of data pertaining to the patient, vehicle, time of the call, physiological signals (like ECG, blood pressure, a body temperature, and blood oxygen saturation), location information, a snap shot of the patient, and voice. These requirements are presently met by using separate communication systems for voice, physiological data, and location that result in a lot of inconvenience to the technicians, maintenance related issues, in addition to being expensive. This paper presents design, development, and implementation of such a telemonitoring system for emergency patient transportation employing ARM 9 processor module. This system is found to be very useful for the emergency patient transportation being undertaken by organizations like the Emergency Management Research Institute (EMRI).
Tomographic SAR Inversion by $L_{1}$ -Norm Regularization—The Compressive Sensing Approach

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tomography (TomoSAR) extends the synthetic aperture principle into the elevation direction for 3-D imaging. The resolution in the elevation direction depends on the size of the elevation aperture, i.e., on the spread of orbit tracks. Since the orbits of modern meter-resolution spaceborne SAR systems, like TerraSAR-X, are tightly controlled, the tomographic elevation resolution is at least an order of magnitude lower than in range and azimuth. Hence, super-resolution reconstruction algorithms are desired. The high anisotropy of the 3-D tomographic resolution element renders the signals sparse in the elevation direction; only a few pointlike reflections are expected per azimuth-range cell. This property suggests using compressive sensing (CS) methods for tomographic reconstruction. This paper presents the theory of 4-D (differential, i.e., space-time) CS TomoSAR and compares it with parametric (nonlinear least squares) and nonparametric (singular value decomposition) reconstruction methods. Super-resolution properties and point localization accuracies are demonstrated using simulations and real data. A CS reconstruction of a building complex from TerraSAR-X spotlight data is presented.
Urinary albumin excretion associated with arterial wall stiffness rather than thickness in type 2 diabetic patients.

BACKGROUND A close relationship has been reported between microalbuminuria and atherosclerosis in patients with diabetes mellitus. The aim of this study was to determine which of the 2 aspects of atherosclerosis, arterial thickening or stiffness, has more effect on levels of microalbuminuria in type 2 diabetic patients. METHODS Twenty-four-hour urine samples of 167 Japanese type 2 diabetic patients (aged 58 +/- 12 years) without overt proteinuria were collected for quantitative analysis of urinary albumin excretion (UAE). Arterial stiffness was evaluated by measuring aortic pulse-wave velocity (PWV), and arterial thickness was measured by the intima-media thickness (IMT) of the carotid artery. RESULTS The aortic PWV and carotid IMT were both significantly positively correlated with logarithmically transformed UAE (r=0.269, p<0.001; and r=0.188, p<0.05, respectively). Although there was a significant positive correlation between aortic PWV and carotid IMT (r=0.263, p<0.001), multiple regression analyses demonstrated that aortic PWV, but not carotid IMT, was a significant factor associated with log UAE, independent of other confounding factors (R2=0.246, p<0.0001). CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that increased arterial stiffness, but not arterial thickness, is significantly associated with the increase in albuminuria, and that decreased arterial distensibility due to increased stiffness caused by atherosclerosis may be related to the progression of diabetic nephropathy in type 2 diabetic patients.
Pilot and Feasibility Studies: Application in Music Therapy Research

BACKGROUND Pilot studies are an important step in the research process and are used to examine research methods and procedures before a larger trial is attempted. Pilot studies provide the researcher an opportunity to determine feasibility of study procedures and generate initial data in previously unstudied areas. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the design characteristics of a pilot study, including generation of research questions, corresponding methods for analysis, and reporting of outcomes. METHODS This article reviews core characteristics of pilot research, addresses misconceptions and misuse of the term pilot, and provides practical guidelines for the design and reporting of pilot studies. CONCLUSIONS Pilot research offers a unique opportunity for researchers to test study procedures before conducting a larger study. The well-designed pilot study can advance future research by increasing the likelihood of a successful and informative study.