Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanisms of heterogeneous distribution of monoclonal antibodies and other macromolecules in tumors: significance of elevated interstitial pressure.

The therapeutic efficacy of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs), bound to radionuclides, chemotherapeutic agents, toxins, growth factors, or effector antibodies, depends upon their ability to reach their target in vivo in adequate quantities. Despite the high vascular permeability and interstitial transport coefficients in tumor tissue compared to several normal tissues, MAbs and their fragments do not distribute homogeneously in a tumor. Heterogeneity of tumor-associated antigen expression alone cannot explain this maldistribution of MAbs in tumors. We propose that in addition to the heterogeneous blood perfusion, hindered diffusion in the interstitium, and extravascular binding of MAbs, elevated interstitial pressure is responsible for the poor penetration of MAbs into tumors. Elevated interstitial pressure principally reduces the driving force for extravasation of fluid and macromolecules in tumors, and also leads to an experimentally verifiable, radially outward convection which opposes the inward diffusion. We present here mathematical models for transport of fluid and macromolecules in a tumor. To illustrate the significance of elevated interstitial pressure, these models are used to describe the interstitial pressure, interstitial fluid velocity, and concentration of nonbinding macromolecules as a function of radial position in a uniformly perfused tumor. The key result of these models is that the filtration of fluid from blood vessels in a uniformly perfused tumor is (a) spatially heterogeneous, (b) a result of elevated interstitial pressure, and (c) sufficient to explain the heterogeneous distribution of macromolecules in tumors. Nonuniform blood flow, and extravascular binding would enhance this heterogeneity in the solute distribution considerably. The results of the models also agree with the following experimental data: (a) tumor interstitial pressure is low in the periphery and it increases toward the center of the tumor; (b) the radially outward fluid velocity at the tumor periphery predicted by the model is of the same order of magnitude as measured in tissue-isolated tumors; and (c) immediately after bolus injection, the concentration of macromolecules is higher in the periphery than in the center; however, at later time periods the peripheral concentration is lower than in the center. These results have significant implications not only for MAbs and their fragments, but for other biologically useful macromolecules (e.g., cytokines) produced by genetic engineering for cancer diagnosis and treatment.
A coding system for spatial relational reference

A coding System is presented for the semantic description of natural language expressions referring to spatial relations. The coding system has been developed with the principal (but not exclusive) aim of conducting crossHnguistic analyses of spatial language acquisition and development. Theoretical and methodological problems attendant upon the analysis of spatial relational meaning are addressed. The coding system is described and its use is illustrated. A reformulation is proposed of the traditional distinction between sense and reference in terms ofa notion of "meaning äs mapping". The specific research questions which the coding system is designed to address are outlined.
Commentary: The birth of the twin study--a commentary on Francis Galton's 'The history of twins'.

In this passage, the primary stirp is the stirp of a zygote immediately after it has been fertilized and the secondary stirps of monozygotic twins are their stirps immediately after the zygote has divided into two. Galton explains the similarities of three classes of twins as follows. (i) Monozygotic twins who divided shortly after conception are very similar because they have very similar secondary stirps derived from the division of the same primary stirp, and these secondary stirps develop in very similar conditions. (ii) Dizygotic twins and siblings are moderately similar because they are derived from very similar primary stirps, which develop under somewhat similar conditions. No prediction is made about the degree of similarity. (iii) Monozygotic twins who divided a considerable time after conception are very dissimilar because the primary stirp, which divides into two, has been organized into contrasting halves. Galton could not in 1875 have invented the classical twin method based on this non-Mendelian theory of heredity. What he did was to track the life-history changes of twins to see whether twins who were very similar at birth diverged in later life or whether twins who were very dissimilar at birth converged later, as a test of the relative importance of nature and nurture. The classical twin method of comparing the similarities of monozygotic and dizygotic twins on Mendelian assumptions was first used in the 1920s.
Depletion of Foxp3+ T Cells Abrogates Tolerance of Skin and Heart Allografts in Murine Mixed Chimeras Without the Loss of Mixed Chimerism

The relative contribution of central and peripheral mechanisms to the generation and maintenance of allograft tolerance is of considerable interest. Here, we present new evidence that regulatory T cells (Foxp3+) maintain skin and heart allograft tolerance in mixed hematopoietic chimeric mice. Transient depletion of both donor‐ and recipient‐derived Foxp3+ cells was necessary and sufficient to induce decisive rejection of long‐accepted skin and heart allografts. In contrast, stable hematopoietic chimerism remained, and there was no detectable induction of donor‐specific reactivity to hematopoietic cells. Foxp3+ cell depletion did not result in the rejection of skin grafts of only MHC‐disparate donors (B6.C‐H2d/bByJ), indicating that MHC antigens were not the target in the graft. We conclude that two different mechanisms of tolerance are present in mixed chimeras. Hematopoietic chimerism, resistant to Foxp3+ depletion, is probably due to deletional tolerance to MHC antigens, as supported by previous studies. In contrast, regulatory tolerance mechanisms involving Foxp3+ cells are required to control reactivity against non‐MHC antigens not present on hematopoietic lineages.
Social Support, Stress, and Psychological Distress among Older Black and White Adults

This analysis examines the relationship among sources of stress, sources of support, and psychological distress among black and white elderly living in the community. The data are drawn from an epidemiological survey conducted in 1984 and show that black and white elders are equally likely to have family and friends available. and to ask relatives for help when they have problems. Older black people, however, are more likely than their white counterparts to ask friends more frequently for help. Using regression models and adjusting for age, sex, education and marital status, the results provide qualified support for a buffering hypothesis. Asking family and friends for help does modify the relationship between financial concerns and psychological distress among older adults. Friends are an important resource for coping with financial concerns among older blacks, and relatives are an important resource for coping with financial concerns among older, low-income whites. Finally, there is no evidence for a buffering hypothesis of calling on family or friends for help among older. high-income whites. These findings illustrate the need to examine the buffering effects of specific sources of support in relation to specific sources of stress, and the need to examine how race and socioeconomic status shape these relationships.
Interpretation of ambiguous emotional information in clinically anxious children and adolescents

Cognitive theories of anxiety based on adult data predict that individuals vulnerable to anxiety should show threat - related interpretations of ambiguous material and it is proposed that this is an important maintaining factor in anxiety disorders. In the present study, interpretation of ambiguous emotional/neutral information was examined in child and adolescent anxious patients. Two groups of participants, anxious patients (n = 17) and healthy controls (n = 40), were presented with a series of homographs, each with a threatening and a neutral interpretation. For each homograph, the participants were asked to construct a sentence using the homograph. Anxious children and adolescents produced significantly more sentences consistent with threatening homograph interpretations and less consistent with neutral interpretations than did normal controls. Regression analyses revealed no relationship between age and this interpretive bias. Preliminary developmental and theoretical implications are discussed.
UOW: Semantically Informed Text Similarity

The UOW submissions to the Semantic Textual Similarity task at SemEval-2012 use a supervised machine learning algorithm along with features based on lexical, syntactic and semantic similarity metrics to predict the semantic equivalence between a pair of sentences. The lexical metrics are based on word-overlap. A shallow syntactic metric is based on the overlap of base-phrase labels. The semantically informed metrics are based on the preservation of named entities and on the alignment of verb predicates and the overlap of argument roles using inexact matching. Our submissions outperformed the official baseline, with our best system ranked above average, but the contribution of the semantic metrics was not conclusive.
SAR target recognition based on sub-block statistical features extracted from the Gabor filtered image

A method for SAR target recognition using low-frequency sub-band and Gabor filter sub-block statistical feature is proposed. The sub-band image extracted from the pre-processed SAR image is filtered by Gabor filter on different directions and scales. The each filtered sub-band image is divided into different sub-blocks and the statistical features derived from every sub-block of all filtered sub-band images are regarded as the target recognition feature, which can be used to recognize the targets with SVM. The proposed method is validated on MSTAR dataset for 3-type SAR target recognition.
Financial Decision Making and the Aging Brain

We are currently at a unique moment in human history where demographic changes are and will continue to drastically alter the profile of decision makers in the global population. These changes highlight the challenges (e.g., rising entitlement costs) but also opportunities of a graying population. To the extent that an emerging subfield of multidisciplinary science can respond to the immediate demand for integrative and translational research, we have the potential to make major contributions to improving the well-being of humans across the life span.
Visualization of D1 Dopamine Receptors on Living Nucleus Accumbens Neurons and Their Colocalization with D2 Receptors

Abstract: To examine the substrate for dopamine (DA) synaptic action in the nucleus accumbens (nAcc), we visualized the cellular and subcellular distribution of DA receptors on postnatal nAcc neurons in culture using fluoroprobe derivatives of DA receptor ligands. Previously, we have shown that rhodamine‐N‐(p‐aminophenethyl)‐spiperone (NAPS) (10 nM), a derivative of the D2 antagonist spiperone, labels D2‐like receptors on living nAcc neurons. We now show that rhodamine‐Sch‐23390 (30 nM), a derivative of the D1 antagonist, labels D1‐like receptors. Putative specific membrane labeling reached a plateau after about 20 min. Labeling was stereospecific, as it was unaffected by competition with (−)‐butaclamol, but blocked with (+)‐butaclamol. We found that 52 ± 7% of nAcc medium‐sized neurons showed D1 labeling, which extended onto the dendrites. Labeling was also seen on presynaptic terminals, often abutting D1‐positive and D1‐negative cell bodies, consistent with a presynaptic modulatory role for D1 receptors. Larger neurons, which may be GABAergic or cholinergic interneurons, were also labeled. By sequential labeling first with rhodamine‐Sch‐23390 and then rhodamine‐NAPS, we found that 38 ± 6% of medium‐sized neurons express both D1‐ and D2‐like receptors, indicating that D1–D2 interactions may occur at the level of single postsynaptic neurons.
Wearable authentication device for transparent login in nomadic applications environment

This paper describes a wearable authentication device for continuous user authentication and transparent login procedure in nomadic applications environment, where users are mobile and current authentication methods are not applicable. The wearable authentication device is a wristband in which the user authentication is done by using the fingerprint and to ensure that the person is wearing the device, it measures continuously his vital signs (skin temperature and heart rate) along with body capacitance and acceleration. By wearing the authentication device, the user can login transparently to any computer simply by approaching it. The prototype of the wearable authentication device was implemented and demonstrated successfully. The user was authenticated with the fingerprint and his presence could be verified continuously by using the skin temperature and the body capacitance. In addition, the heart rate of the user could be obtained from the pulse oximeter output. The received signal strength of the wireless connection offered an inexpensive and simple way to implement the transparent login by estimating the range between the user and a terminal.
Myocardial regeneration with bone‐marrow‐derived stem cells

Despite significant therapeutic advances, heart failure remains the predominant cause of mortality in the Western world. Ischaemic cardiomyopathy and myocardial infarction are typified by the irreversible loss of cardiac muscle (cardiomyocytes) and vasculature composed of endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells, which are essential for maintaining cardiac integrity and function. The recent identification of adult and embryonic stem cells has triggered attempts to directly repopulate these tissues by stem cell transplantation as a novel therapeutic option. Reports describing provocative and hopeful examples of myocardial regeneration with adult bone‐marrow‐derived stem and progenitor cells have increased the enthusiasm for the use of these cells, yet many questions remain regarding their therapeutic potential and the mechanisms responsible for the observed therapeutic effects. In this review article we discuss the current preclinical and clinical advances in bone‐marrow‐derived stem or progenitor cell therapies for regeneration or repair of the ischaemic myocardium and their multiple related mechanisms involved in myocardial repair and regeneration.
Accumulation of free amino acids in the shoots and roots of three northern conifers during drought.

The effects of drought on the free amino acid pools in 21- to 23-week-old seedlings of black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) Britt. ), white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench.) Voss) and jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb.) were followed during soil drying. Although water and pressure potentials were sensitive to water deficits, large changes in osmotic potential were not recorded until after the development of severe drought. Total soluble amino nitrogen in the shoots and roots of the three species rose as turgor declined, with peak concentrations attained late in the drought period when the pressure potentials of the shoots approached zero. All white spruce seedlings were alive at zero turgor and showed large decrements in osmotic potential, but concentrations of free amino nitrogen in the roots and shoots showed only modest increases, reaching 125 to 150% of their control values. In contrast, large numbers of black spruce and jack pine were dead or severely damaged at zero turgor, and only small changes in osmotic potential were detected during soil drying. Nevertheless, concentrations of soluble amino nitrogen in both species reached 150 to 200% of control values a few days before the seedlings died. Alanine, arginine, aspartic acid/asparagine, glutamic acid/glutamine, glycine, hydroxyproline and proline were the major components of the free amino acid pools under both water-stressed and non-stressed conditions, with the largest and most consistent increases observed in the roots of all three conifers. Although proline was an important and dynamic component of the free pools, absolute concentrations were commony equalled or exceeded by other free amino acids in the roots and shoots and nearly always exceeded by the concentration of aspartic acid/asparagine in both tissues. Differences in drought resistance among the three conifers were not reflected by unique patterns of amino acid accumulation or by large differences in absolute concentrations of the free amino acid pools.
Administrator career paths and decision processes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present qualitative evidence on the processes and forces that shape school administrator career paths.Design/methodology/approach – An embedded case study approach is used to understand more than 100 administrator career transitions within the Delaware education system. Semi‐structured interview data were collected from 48 principals and assistant principals. Coding and analysis occurred through an iterative process, revealing patterns in processes and forces influencing the careers of school administrators.Findings – While some career decisions are self‐initiated, most are influenced in part or entirely by other actors in the system, described as recruiting/tapping, requesting, reassigning, passing over, and removing. In self‐initiated decisions to move or stay, a number of “pushes” and “pulls” are identified. Findings also suggest the decision to stay‐equilibrium is driven by relationships with students and by district support.Research limitations/implications –.
To Offload or to Wait: An Opportunistic Offloading Algorithm for Parallel Tasks in a Mobile Cloud

The significant development of mobile cloud computing allows a mobile user to access resources of the nearby mobile devices, i.e., Cloudlets, for processing tasks by using the offloading mechanism. However, due to the mobility of the user and cloudlets, the connection between the user's device and cloudlets may be interrupted since cloudlets move out of transmission range of the user's device. Consequently, the task transmission may fail, forcing the user to re-offload the task to another cloudlet or process on the local device. In this paper, we propose a dynamic opportunistic offloading algorithm which allows the user to make the decision of offloading or deferring the processing of each task in a set of parallel tasks. We formulate and solve a Markov Decision Process (MDP) model for the mobile user to obtain an optimal offloading policy while minimizing the offloading and processing cost. We extend the MDP model to a constrained MDP to solve the offloading problem when the user has a processing deadline. Numerical studies and simulations were carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed model. The results show that the proposed model outperforms conventional baseline schemes.
ORIGAMI: Mining Representative Orthogonal Graph Patterns

In this paper, we introduce the concept of alpha-orthogonal patterns to mine a representative set of graph patterns. Intuitively, two graph patterns are alpha-orthogonal if their similarity is bounded above by alpha. Each alpha-orthogonal pattern is also a representative for those patterns that are at least beta similar to it. Given user defined alpha, beta isin [0,1], the goal is to mine an alpha-orthogonal, beta-representative set that minimizes the set of unrepresented patterns. We present ORIGAMI, an effective algorithm for mining the set of representative orthogonal patterns. ORIGAMI first uses a randomized algorithm to randomly traverse the pattern space, seeking previously unexplored regions, to return a set of maximal patterns. ORIGAMI then extracts an alpha-orthogonal, beta-representative set from the mined maximal patterns. We show the effectiveness of our algorithm on a number of real and synthetic datasets. In particular, we show that our method is able to extract high quality patterns even in cases where existing enumerative graph mining methods fail to do so.
Finding invariant sets for biological systems using monomial domination

In this paper we present a novel approach to the analysis of nonnegative dynamical systems whose vector fields are polynomial or rational functions. Our analysis framework is based on results developed and presented in a previous study on general conditions that imply non-vanishing of polynomial functions on the positive orthant. This approach is due to the sparsity of the negative terms in the polynomial, which are then “dominated” by the positive terms. Particularly, we present a novel approach to find invariant sets of a dynamical system and one to aid the search for the number of possible equilibria of the system. To illustrate this approach we apply it to a model of a food web to check for overpopulation or extinction of species.
Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice: Language Policy in Multilingual Organisations

A number of language policy researchers have discussed language needs of business, while nearly all of the scant literature on what a corporate language policy would look like has been conducted by human resource management scholars and published in management journals. This lack of attention in the academic literature is surprising, since corporate language policy (presumably) affects everyone who works or will work in a corporation. From a language management theory perspective, ‘language’ presents particular resources and challenges in multilingual organisations, such as how to reconcile power implications of language choice with organisational need for effective communication. In order for an international organisation to have an effective language management policy, it must carefully consider its linguistic needs and be able to develop and capture the linguistic knowledge of its employees to surmount communication barriers. Language management as a form of knowledge management is proposed and recommendations are made with regard to language management practices.
Susceptibility to Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia : Influence of CYP 1 A 1 , CYP 2 D 6 , GSTM 1 , and GSTT 1 Genetic Polymorphisms

Although acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common childhood cancer, factors governing susceptibility to this disease have not yet been identified. As such, ALL offers a useful opportunity to examine the glutathione S-transferase and cytochrome P450 genes in determining susceptibility to pediatric cancers. Both enzymes are involved in carcinogen metabolism and have been shown to influence the risk a variety of solid tumors in adults. To determine whether these genes played a similar role in childhood leukemogenesis, we compared the allele frequencies of 177 childhood ALL patients and 304 controls for the CYP1A1, CYP2D6, GSTM1, and GSTT1 genes. We chose the French population of Quebec as our study population because of its relative genetic homogeneity. The GSTM1 null and CYP1A1*2A genotypes were both found to be significant predictors of ALL risk (odds ratio [OR] 5 1.8). Those possessing both genotypes were at an even greater risk of developing the disease (OR 5 3.3). None of the other alleles tested for proved to be significant indicators of ALL risk. Unexpectedly, girls carrying the CYP1A1p4 were significantly underrepresented in the ALL group (OR 5 0.2), suggesting that a gender-specific protective role exists for this allele. These results suggest that the risk of ALL may indeed be associated with xenobiotics-metabolism, and thus with environmental exposures. Our findings may also explain, in part, why ALL is more prevalent among males than females. r 1999 by The American Society of Hematology.