Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Induction of corticosteroid insensitivity in human PBMCs by microbial superantigens.

BACKGROUND Microbial superantigens have been described to contribute to the pathogenesis of chronic inflammatory diseases often complicated by insensitivity to glucocorticoid therapy. In bronchial asthma glucocorticoid insensitivity has been associated with increased expression of glucocorticoid receptor beta, an endogenous inhibitor of the classic glucocorticoid receptor alpha. OBJECTIVE To study a potential mechanism by which superantigens could contribute to poor disease control, we examined their capacity to alter steroid sensitivity and expression of glucocorticoid receptor beta. METHODS The capacity of dexamethasone to inhibit stimulation of PBMCs from 7 healthy subjects with the prototypic superantigens, staphylococcal enterotoxin (SE) B, toxic shock syndrome toxin (TSST)-1 and SEE, versus PHA, was tested. The expression of glucocorticoid receptor beta in normal PBMCs after stimulation with SEB, versus PHA, was assessed by immunocytochemistry. RESULTS Dexamethasone 10(-6) mol/L caused a 99% inhibition of PHA-induced PBMC proliferation but only a 19% inhibition of the SEB-induced, 26% inhibition of the TSST-1, and 29% inhibition of the SEE-induced PBMC proliferation (P <.01 for all superantigens versus PHA) demonstrating that superantigens can induce steroid insensitivity. Stimulation of normal PBMCs with SEB induced a significant increase of glucocorticoid receptor beta compared with PHA and unstimulated cells (P <.01). CONCLUSION We have demonstrated the capacity of microbial superantigens to induce glucocorticoid insensitivity, which should be considered in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with superantigen-triggered diseases. These data suggest that superantigens may contribute to glucocorticoid insensitivity through induction of glucocorticoid receptor beta.
High time-resolution measurement and analysis of LAN traffic: Implications for LAN interconnection

In order to study the interactions between LANs and proposed interconnection networks, a high time-resolution hardware monitor for Ethernet LANs is presented that avoids the shortcomings of previous monitoring tools, such as traffic burst clipping and timestamp jitter. Using data recorded by a monitor for several hundred million Ethernet packets, an overview of the short-range time correlations in external LAN traffic is presented. The analysis shows that LAN traffic is extremely bursty across time domains spanning six orders of magnitude. This behavior is compared with simple formal traffic models. The results suggest that the pronounced short-term traffic correlations, together with the extensive time regime of traffic burstiness, strongly influence the patterns of loss and delay induced by LAN interconnection. <<ETX>>
A security authentication scheme in machine-to-machine home network service

Machine-to-machine M2M techniques have significant application potential in the emerging internet of things, which may cover many fields from intelligence to ubiquitous environment. However, because of the data exposure when transmitted via cable, wireless mobile devices, and other technologies, its security vulnerability has become a great concern during its further extending development. This problem may even get worse if the user privacy and property are considered. Therefore, the authentication process of communicating entities has attracted wide investigation. Meanwhile, the data confidentiality also becomes an important issue in M2M, especially when the data are transmitted in a public and thereby insecure channel. In this paper, we propose a promising M2M application model that connects a mobile user with the home network using the existing popular Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access TD-SCDMA network. Subsequently, a password-based authentication and key establishment protocol is designed to identify the communicating parties and hence establish a secure channel for data transmissions. The final analysis shows the reliability of our proposed protocol. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Menopause: A Life Cycle Transition

Menopause is an issue that family therapists need to address proactively to be of benefit to couples andfamilies during this transitional period in the family life cycle. This article provides background on the physical, psychological and psychosocial factors affecting the menopausal woman and herfamily and describes ways to address issues arising from these factors in counseling.
Reflection on a Five-Year Learning Strategies Project Implemented in the Public Schools

This is the story of a five-year learning strategies project designed to assist special education teachers with promoting independence and school success in their students. Our saga describes a dogged persistence and faith in teaching students &dquo;how to learn&dquo; via the use of learning strategies as an alternative to traditional remedialltutorial approaches common in our special education programs. The developmental history of our project is replete with mistakes, short-sightedness, and naivete; yet 5 years of wrestling with these issues has taught us much about what works in terms of building an effective learning strategies program. This article highlights the results of our efforts to develop teacher expertise in strategy instruction, overcome school/district obstacles to change, establish teacher support groups, and facilitate a reorientation in basic special education philosophy among teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Our project took place in Riverside County, California. It involved 12 school districts in both urban and rural settings with a multiethnic population mix totaling 140,000 + students. The majority of project teachers are known as resource specialists, serving mildly handicapped students for 1 to 3 periods (up to 1/2 day) per day in a pull-out type setting. The project began with an exclusive focus on secondary
Sums of squares and varieties of minimal degree

Let X be a real nondegenerate projective subvariety such that its set of real points is Zariski dense. We prove that every real quadratic form that is nonnegative on X is a sum of squares of linear forms if and only if X is a variety of minimal degree. This substantially extends Hilbert's celebrated characterization of equality between nonnegative forms and sums of squares. We obtain a complete list for the cases of equality and also a classification of the lattice polytopes Q for which every nonnegative Laurent polynomial with support contained in 2Q is a sum of squares.
Barriers to Treatment Success in Behavioral Consultation: Current Limitations and Future Directions

Behavioral consultation is a prominent indirect service model in the practice of psychology in the schools. Despite some empirical support for the use of behavioral consultation strategies, consultants frequently face a number of barriers to implementation of treatment in practice. This article outlines a number of these barriers in behavioral consultation, including the lack of standardization of consultation, lack of specific training of consultants, little or no consultee (teacher) training, problems surrounding target behavior identification, and external constraints to consultation. Each of these areas is described along several dimensions that need to be addressed in future research.
Tumor and Stem Cell Biology HER 2 Silences Tumor Suppression in Breast Cancer Cells by Switching Expression of C / EBP b Isoforms

Tumor progression requires ablation of suppressor functions mediated by transforming growth factor b (TGFb) signaling and by oncogene-induced senescence (OIS), but how these functions are canceled in specific subtypes of breast cancer remains unknown. In this study, we show that HER2-overexpressing breast cancer cells avert TGFband OIS-mediated tumor suppression by switching expression of 2 functionally distinct isoforms of the transcription factor C/EBPb, which has been implicated previously in breast cancer development. HER2 signaling activates the translational regulatory factor CUGBP1, which favors the production of the transcriptionally inhibitory isoform LIP over that of the active isoform LAP. LIP overexpression prevents the assembly of LAP/Smad transcriptional repressor complexes on the MYC promoter in response to TGFb, and interferes with activation of OIS responses. Treatment of HER2-transformed mammary epithelial cells with the HER2 antibody trastuzumab reduces LIP levels, restoring these suppressor responses. Our findings reveal a novel mechanism through which HER2 silences tumor suppression in a concerted manner, contributing to the potency of this oncogene in breast cancer. Cancer Res; 70(23); 9927–36. 2010 AACR.
Proscription and its impact on anti‐consumption behaviour and attitudes: the case of plastic bags

This paper empirically examines whether proscription of a habitual consumption item can act as a mechanism to develop anti-consumption behaviour and attitudes. The paper tracks a legislated retail ban on single-use polyethylene plastic bags, analysing 1167 interviews with shoppers before the ban's announcement, during a 4-month phasing-out period (and demarketing campaign), and when the ban was in full effect. Two hundred and fifty three interviews are repeated with the same individuals to allow identification of individual-level attitudinal and behavioural change. Anti-consumption is typically conceptualised as a phenomenon based on choice. This research investigates how shoppers react when forced into anti-consumption behaviour, and how supportive voluntary anti-consumers are of others being made to change. Grouping shoppers according to their level of voluntary anti-consumption of plastic bags before the ban, the analysis finds that shoppers who voluntarily showed anti-consumption behaviour were the only group showing any voluntary shift in anti-consumption behaviours during the phasing-out period. These shoppers are supportive of forcing others to show anti-consumption, while the level of behavioural and attitudinal resistance from shoppers that showed little or no voluntary anti-consumption is low. These findings support the use of proscription to achieve anti-consumption behaviours, however, proscription does not necessarily engender full anti-consumption attitudes. This study adds to knowledge on anti-consumption and shopper resistance to proscriptive interventions designed to reduce socially undesirable behaviours. It provides further evidence that demarketing campaigns, without accompanying negative reinforcers, may be insufficient to achieve widespread behavioural change alone. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
‘We Had to be There to Make Sure it was What We Wanted’

The article reports from a qualitative study of family group conferencing in Wales. Family group conferences are meetings of extended family networks that are convened in order to plan for a child’s care and welfare. They are an attempt to enable families to have a greater say in welfare decisions and often particularly encourage children’s participation in the meetings. The research was a qualitative study of 17 family meetings. Twenty-five children and young people were interviewed within 1 month of the meeting and 13 were reinterviewed 6 months later. Adult participants were also interviewed. The findings and discussion are related to the following broad areas: the risks and benefits for children of taking part in such interventions, some of the different priorities for children and adults regarding participation and the potential tensions between individual needs and rights and those of ‘the family’ as a whole.
Auditory feature extraction using self-timed, continuous-time discrete-signal processing circuits

A compact integrated subsystem for accurate real-time measurement of level crossing time-intervals, suitable for multiresolution feature extraction from an analog cochlear filter bank is presented. The subsystem is inspired by the function of the inner hair cells in the mammalian cochlea and is based on continuous time discrete-signal processing circuits. Experimental results from a fabricated array of nine elements demonstrate instantaneous frequency-to-voltage conversion over a range covering the audio band. The power consumption is less than 20 /spl mu/W per cell from a 5 V supply, when the system is biased to operate over the speech frequency range.
Multi-objective cost-to-go functions on robot navigation in dynamic environments

In our previous work [1] we introduced the Anticipative Kinodynamic Planning (AKP): a robot navigation algorithm in dynamic urban environments that seeks to minimize its disruption to nearby pedestrians. In the present paper, we maintain all the advantages of the AKP, and we overcome the previous limitations by presenting novel contributions to our approach. Firstly, we present a multi-objective cost function to consider different and independent criteria and a well-posed procedure to build a joint cost function in order to select the best path. Then, we improve the construction of the planner tree by introducing a cost-to-go function that will be shown to outperform a classical Euclidean distance approach. In order to achieve real time calculations, we have used a steering heuristic that dramatically speeds up the process. Plenty of simulations and real experiments have been carried out to demonstrate the success of the AKP.
Medical and psychosocial diagnoses in women with a history of intimate partner violence.

BACKGROUND We characterized the relative risk of a wide range of diagnoses in women with a history of intimate partner violence (IPV) compared with never-abused women. METHODS The sample comprised 3568 English-speaking women who were randomly sampled from a large US health plan and who agreed to participate in a telephone survey to assess past-year IPV history using questions from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (physical, sexual, and psychological abuse) and the Women's Experience with Battering Scale. Medical and psychosocial diagnoses in the past year were determined using automated data from health plan records. We estimated the relative risk of receiving diagnoses for women with a past-year IPV history compared with women with no IPV history. RESULTS In age-adjusted models, compared with never-abused women, abused women had consistently significantly increased relative risks of these disorders: psychosocial/mental (substance use, 5.89; family and social problems, 4.96; depression, 3.26; anxiety/neuroses, 2.73; tobacco use, 2.31); musculoskeletal (degenerative joint disease, 1.71; low back pain, 1.61; trauma-related joint disorders, 1.59; cervical pain, 1.54; acute sprains and strains, 1.35); and female reproductive (menstrual disorders, 1.84; vaginitis/vulvitis/cervicitis, 1.56). Abused women had a more than 3-fold increased risk of being diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease (3.15) and a 2-fold increased risk of lacerations (2.17) as well as increased risk of acute respiratory tract infection (1.33), gastroesophageal reflux disease (1.76), chest pain (1.53), abdominal pain (1.48), urinary tract infections (1.79), headaches (1.57), and contusions/abrasions (1.72). CONCLUSION Past-year IPV history was strongly associated with a variety of medical and psychosocial conditions observed in clinical settings.
Coping with risk: analysis on the importance of integrating social perceptions on flood risk into management mechanisms – the case of the municipality of Águeda, Portugal

The paper reflects on how populations prone to flood risk perceive such hazards and the way this perception has or has not been incorporated into the measures and mechanisms of flood risk management. The frequent occurrence of flooding, as well as the population's vulnerability and exposure to this risk, shows that the municipality of Águeda is a paradigmatic case for analysis of these issues. Similar to the rest of the country, the municipality of Águeda has been neglecting the multidimensional nature of flood risk. The data collected present some disparity between the proposals and technical perspectives regarding the management and mitigation of flood risk and the perception of local populations. In addition, neither knowledge of social perception of flood risk nor of the local communities is being integrated in a substantial and pro‐active way, whether in the processes of policy‐making or in the implementation of these policies. Empirical evidence equally shows that there is a clear tendency towards acceptance and coping with flood risk by the population in the municipality of Águeda. This seems to be connected to the local populations' recognition that though it is impossible to eliminate risk, there are at the same time advantages to occupying the floodplains.
Midgut specific immune response of vector mosquito Anopheles stephensi to malaria parasite Plasmodium.

Innate immune-related polypeptides expression in midgut in the ageing vector mosquito A. stephensi following infection by malaria parasite, Plasmodium yoelii yoelii has been studied. Twenty polypeptides were induced by an infected blood meal during various stages of adult life. A 24 kDa polypeptide was induced generally in most of the stages. Maximum parasite induced polypeptides i.e. 22, 33, 111, 122, 127, 140, 143 and 146 kDa were found in 5 days of post blood feeding (PBF) which coincides with the presence of oocysts on the midgut. However, in addition, three polypeptides in 11 days PBF and 8 polypeptides in 20 days PBF were also induced due to parasite infection in aged mosquitoes. Quantitatively, the amount of soluble proteins in the midgut in oocyst-sporozoite-positive mosquitoes was always less as compared to their normal counterparts. The parasite evidently elicits defined immune responses by inducing specific polypeptides in the midgut of the mosquito.
Cell Coverage Extension With Orthogonal Random Precoding for Massive MIMO Systems

In this paper, we investigate a coverage extension scheme based on orthogonal random precoding (ORP) for the downlink of massive multiple-input multiple-output systems. In this scheme, a precoding matrix consisting of orthogonal vectors is employed at the transmitter to enhance the maximum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio of the user. To analyze and optimize the ORP scheme in terms of cell coverage, we derive the analytical expressions of the downlink coverage probability for two receiver structures, namely, the single-antenna receiver and multiple-antenna receiver with antenna selection. The simulation results show that the analytical expressions accurately capture the coverage behaviors of the systems employing the ORP scheme. It is also shown that the optimal coverage performance is achieved when a single precoding vector is used under the condition that the threshold of the signal-to-noise ratio of the coverage is greater than one. The performance of the ORP scheme is further analyzed when the different random precoder groups are utilized over multiple time slots to exploit precoding diversity. The numerical results show that the proposed ORP scheme over multiple time slots provides a substantial coverage gain over the space–time coding scheme despite its low feedback overhead.
Scientific Utopia: That Which Cannot Exist?

Thomas More’s social critique of 16th-century English and European society coined the word “utopia. ” In its original Latin it literally means “in no place”—that which cannot exist. Although the perfection More envisaged may be unachievable, his powers of imagination allow us to think something better is possible. From our perspectives as the Director of a large university press with 25 years’ experience in scholarly publishing and a behavioral scientist with extensive publishing and journal editorial experience in social psychology, we agree with Brian A. Nosek and Yoav Bar-Anan’s (this issue) basic case that much can and should be done to improve the openness and speed of scientific communication in the digital age. We do not attempt to respond point by point to Nosek and Bar-Anan but rather focus on three key areas which we believe require further consideration. We start with a discussion of the function of scholarly journals in the scientific community, which in turn informs a deeper review of the cultural constraints to change. We argue that the critical role that “branded” journals have acquired in professional recognition and career advancement make it challenging to return journal publishing to its original exclusive role of scholarly communication. Finally, we argue that Nosek and BarAnan underestimate both the financial barriers to and consequences of change.
Social dilemmas and leadership

Subjects acted in a social dilemma situation. Two variables were experimentally manipulated: use and variance. One third of the subjects thought that the others in their group were overusing the common resource, one third thought that the others were underusing it, and the remaining third were led to believe that the others were using the resource optimally. Moreover, half of the subjects thought that the others took relatively similar harvests (low variance) while the other half thought the others differed greatly (high variance). Support was found for Homans' assumption that the internal function of leaders is to allocate outcomes equitably over group members, whereas their external function is to deal efficiently with the external environment. The results indicated that more subjects in the overuse condition voted to give up free access to the resource and to hand over the management of the resource to a leader than in the other me conditions. Moreover, more subjects in the high variance condition voted for a leader than in the low variance condition. Over all conditions, furthermore, subjects preferred themselves most as prospective leader. In addition, group members who were similar to the subject, competent at the task and concerned for the group were preferred as Leader. When subjects acted as leader they were more moderate in withdrawing harvests from the resource than as regular group member. Moreover, leaders allocated outcomes equitably to the group members. Cette recherche presente une situation de dilemme suivant un plan experimental 3 × 2. Le premier facteur correspond a l'usage des ressources communes (abus, usage optimum, Sousemploi); le second, a I'homogeneite des comportements: variabilite faible ou forte. Le point de vue de Homans suivant lequel les leaders ont une double fonction: distribuer de manere equitable les ressources entre les membres du groupe (fonction interne) et agir de maniere efficace sur l'environnement (fonction externe) se trouve confirme. Dans la condition ou les sujets etaient amenes a croire que les autres membres du groupe abusaient des ressources communes, plus de sujets accepterent de laisser a un leader la gestion des ressources communes que dans les autres conditions. De měme, un leader fut plus souvent choisi dans la condition ‘forte variabilite’ que dans la condition ‘variabilite faible’. Dans tous les cas, les sujets avaient choisi des leaders semblables a eux, competents et soucieux du groupe. En agissant comme leaders, les sujets etaient plus moderes que s'ils etaient de simples membres. Enfin, les leaders distribuerent les profits de maniere equitable entre les membres du groupe.
A distributed motion coordination strategy for multiple nonholonomic mobile robots in cooperative hunting operations

This paper presents a distributed smooth time-varying feedback control law for coordinating motions of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots of the Hilare-type to capture/enclose a target by making troop formations. This motion coordination is a cooperative behavior for security against invaders in surveillance areas. Each robot in this control law has its own coordinate system and it senses a target/invader, other robots and obstacles, to achieve this cooperative behavior without making any collision. Each robot especially has a two-dimensional control input refereed to as a "formation vector" and the formation is controllable by the vectors. The validity of this control law is supported by computer simulations.