Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Therapeutic potential of the dual‐targeted TAS‐102 formulation in the treatment of gastrointestinal malignancies

Current treatment modalities for cancer combine cytotoxic drugs against DNA and novel targeted drugs affecting signal transduction pathways, which are required for growth progression and metastasizing tumors. Classical chemotherapeutic regimens for gastro‐intestinal tumors include antimetabolites based on 5‐fluorouracil (5FU), the platinum analog oxaliplatin and the topoisomerase inhibitor irinotecan. The thymidine analog trifluorothymidine (TFT) has been shown to bypass resistance pathways for 5FU derivatives (S‐1, UFT, Xeloda) in model systems, while concurrent application with a thymidine phosphorylase inhibitor (TPI) increases the bioavailability of TFT, thereby potentiating the in vivo efficacy of TFT. The formulation TAS‐102 is given orally in a 1.0:0.5 molar ratio (TFT:TPI). The formulation is dual‐targeted due to the cytotoxic effect of TFT, which is enhanced by TPI, while TPI also exerts antiangiogenic effects by inhibiting thymidine phosphorylase (TP), also known as platelet‐derived endothelial cell growth factor. Evidence is accumulating from in vitro and in vivo preclinical studies that these properties favor further combinations with other cytotoxic agents currently being used in the treatment of gastro‐intestinal tumors. Also treatment with targeted agents will synergistically down‐regulate signal transduction pathways responsible for growth and progression of tumors. In this review, we summarize the available information on (clinical) pharmacology, mechanisms of action, pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties, early clinical trials and future directions of the new potent combination drug TAS‐102. (Cancer Sci 2007; 98: 779–789)
Evaluating User Targeting Policies: Simulation Based on Randomized Experiment Data

We propose a user targeting simulator for online display advertising. Based on the response of 37 million visiting users (targeted and non-targeted) and their features, we simulate different user targeting policies. We provide evidence that the standard conversion optimization policy shows similar effectiveness to that of a random targeting, and significantly inferior to other causally optimized targeting policies.
The Arbitrage Pricing Theory and the Capital Asset Pricing Models and Artificial Neural Networks Modeling with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)

We examine two stocks of Athens Exchange Stock Market, that of 'Coca-Cola' and 'Compucon'. We analyze the arbitrage pricing theory (APT) model and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and we compare the performance between them. Then we develop a neural network model in Synapse Software with the particle swarm optimization algorithm and show the flexibility of hybrid models and the Synapse software, as the superiority in forecasting performance, in relation to the traditional econometric methodology , like Ordinary least square and ARCH-GARCH estimations.
Openness, Outward Orientation, Trade Liberalization and Economic Performance in Developing Countries

This paper deals with the role of trade regimes in determining economic performance and growth in the developing countries. The policy and empirical literatures on trade orientation and economic growth are critically reviewed; it is argued that a key limitation of these works has been the inability to create measures of trade orientation that are: (i) objective; (ii) continuous and (iii) comparable across countries. A growth model that relates trade orientation to the ability to absorb technological progress from the rest of the world is developed for the case of a small country. The model is tested using a new index of trade orientation that is free from the limitations described above. The results obtained using a cross country data set provide strong support to the hypothesis that, with other things given, countries with a less distorted external sector grow faster than those countries with a more distorted external sector. The new theories of economic growth are also discussed, and their usefulness for analyzing the relation between trade orientation and growth in the developing countries is assessed.
The Performance of Venture-Backed Firms: The Effect of Venture Capital Company Characteristics

This paper deals with the empirical investigation of the question as to which type of venture capital (VC) companies determines the growth and survival of istics of VC companies as additional factors that explain the high variation of the employment growth rate of portfolio firms and their probability of surviving. Surprisingly, venture- backed firms financed by independent VC companies are not among the most successful firms. Independent VC companies are some of those with the greatest profit orientation and hence, a high quality of the value chain process is to be expected. Significantly higher employment growth rates are evident for firms financed by locally active VCs. Changes in the board of directors do not have a positive effect on firms' performance. Syndicated investment strategy seems to be a successful strategy.
Adaptive particle swarm optimizer with nonextensive schedule

This paper introduces a class of adaptive particle swarm optimization (PSO) methods that build on the theory of nonextensive statistical mechanics. These methods combine the traditional position update rule with an annealing schedule that is based on the nonextensive entropy. Comparative experiments conducted on benchmark functions, have showed that the tested algorithms outperform the standard PSO.
A novel digitally controlled low noise ring oscillator

This paper presents a digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) with a novel architecture. The proposed DCO achieves low noise operation without the need for an LC resonator or specialized radio frequency (RF) process layers. Frequency tuning is achieved by controlling capacitive coupled charge injection. The design is easily integrated with digital CMOS circuits and has the flexibility to be scaled to other processes or tuned for specific applications. A proof of concept circuit has been implemented on a 0.13 mum CMOS process. The tuning range is from 820 MHz to 1.09 GHz. The phase noise at 1GHz with an offset frequency of 100 KHz is -92.8 dBc/Hz. The worst case cycle-to-cycle jitter is less than 1.28% with an RMS jitter of 1.7423 ps. Total power consumption is 6.12 mW.
THE ALBANIAN LANGUAGE IN THE FACE OF GLOBALIZATION CHALLANGES: THE ISSUE OF BORROWINGS

Today, due to the rapid development of globalization almost all languages, perhaps are facing more than ever the powerful phenomenon of borrowings. In this course of changes, it is quite natural that even the Albanian language is part of them. But, if languages such as: English, French, Italian, German are widely spoken and are relatively protected, the Albanian language as a language spoken only by a small popullation, faces a more delicate situation for the protection of its own linguistic and cultural identity. But what are the languages which have more supplied the Albanian language with borrowings and what institutional precaution should be taken in order to protect it from an uncontrolled flow of borrowings by preserving its values? By this article, we will try to give a more complete overview of this phenomenon and the efforts needed to preserve it as pure as possible.
Mutations in ZIC2 in human holoprosencephaly: description of a Novel ZIC2 specific phenotype and comprehensive analysis of 157 individuals

Background Holoprosencephaly (HPE), the most common malformation of the human forebrain, may be due to mutations in genes associated with non-syndromic HPE. Mutations in ZIC2, located on chromosome 13q32, are a common cause of non-syndromic, non-chromosomal HPE. Objective To characterise genetic and clinical findings in patients with ZIC2 mutations. Methods Through the National Institutes of Health and collaborating centres, DNA from approximately 1200 individuals with HPE spectrum disorders was analysed for sequence variations in ZIC2. Clinical details were examined and all other known cases of mutations in ZIC2 were included through a literature search. Results By direct sequencing of DNA samples of an unselected group of unrelated patients with HPE in our NIH laboratory, ZIC2 mutations were found in 8.4% (49/582) of probands. A total of 157 individuals from 119 unrelated kindreds are described, including 141 patients with intragenic sequence determined mutations in ZIC2. Only 39/157 patients have previously been clinically described. Unlike HPE due to mutations in other genes, most mutations occur de novo and the distribution of HPE types differs significantly from that of non-ZIC2 related HPE. Evidence is presented for the presence of a novel facial phenotype which includes bitemporal narrowing, upslanting palpebral fissures, a short nose with anteverted nares, a broad and well demarcated philtrum, and large ears. Conclusions HPE due to ZIC2 mutations is distinct from that due to mutations in other genes. This may shed light on the mechanisms involved in formation of the forebrain and face and will help direct genetic counselling and diagnostic strategies.
[Obesity, body morphology, and blood pressure in urban and rural population groups of Yucatan].

OBJECTIVE To characterize body morphology and blood pressure of adults of the Mexican state of Yucatan. MATERIAL AND METHODS Rural-urban differences in weight, height, waist, and hip circumferences, and blood pressure were analyzed in 313 urban and 271 rural subjects. RESULTS No rural-urban differences in prevalence of obesity and overweight were found. Hypertension was marginally higher in urban subjects. Rural abnormal waist circumference was higher in young men and young women. Comparison with two national surveys and a survey in the aboriginal population (rural mixtecos) showed similar prevalence of obesity as ENSA-2000 and higher than mixtecos and ENEC-1993. Abnormal waist circumference was intermediate between ENSANUT-2006 and mixtecos and hypertension was intermediate between ENEC and mixtecos. CONCLUSION The Maya and mestizo population of Yucatan showed a high prevalence of obesity and abnormal waist circumference not accompanied by a comparable higher hypertension frequency. This finding requires further confirmation.
Performance Assessment of Communicable Disease Surveillance in Disasters: A Systematic Review

Background: This study aimed to identify the indices and frameworks that have been used to assess the performance of communicable disease surveillance (CDS) in response to disasters and other emergencies, including infectious disease outbreaks. Method: In this systematic review, PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, ScienceDirect, ProQuest databases and grey literature were searched until the end of 2013. All retrieved titles were examined in accordance with inclusion criteria. Abstracts of the relevant titles were reviewed and eligible abstracts were included in a list for data abstraction. Finally, the study variables were extracted. Results: Sixteen articles and one book were found relevant to our study objectives. In these articles, 31 criteria and 35 indicators were used or suggested for the assessment/evaluation of the performance of surveillance systems in disasters. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updated guidelines for the evaluation of public health surveillance systems were the most widely used. Conclusion: Despite the importance of performance assessment in improving CDS in response to disasters, there is a lack of clear and accepted frameworks. There is also no agreement on the use of existing criteria and indices. The only relevant framework is the CDC guideline, which is a common framework for assessing public health surveillance systems as a whole. There is an urgent need to develop appropriate frameworks, criteria, and indices for specifically assessing the performance of CDS in response to disasters and other emergencies, including infectious diseases outbreaks. Key words: Disasters, Emergencies, Communicable Diseases, Surveillance System, Performance Assessment
PRÁTICA DE OFFSHORE NOS CALL CENTERS: UM EXEMPLO DE SERVIÇO COM USO INTENSIVO DE TECNOLOGIA DA INFORMAÇÃO

RESUMO O objetivo deste trabalho e apresentar o crescimento da comercializacao internacional dos servicos de teleatendimento, pratica conhecida como offshore . Para isso, foram levantadas informacoes sobre o crescimento dos servicos, da atividade de call center e de sua comercializacao internacional, viabilizado pelo emprego das tecnologias da informacao. Foi possivel observar que esta atividade tem crescido muito no Brasil e que o pais tem ingressado no mercado internacional voltado para esta atividade, que, no entanto, apresenta algumas condicoes que merecem maior atencao, entre as quais estao as questoes relacionadas a gestao de recursos humanos.
Dynamic and Static Topic Model for Analyzing Time-Series Document Collections

For extracting meaningful topics from texts, their structures should be considered properly. In this paper, we aim to analyze structured time-series documents such as a collection of news articles and a series of scientific papers, wherein topics evolve along time depending on multiple topics in the past and are also related to each other at each time. To this end, we propose a dynamic and static topic model, which simultaneously considers the dynamic structures of the temporal topic evolution and the static structures of the topic hierarchy at each time. We show the results of experiments on collections of scientific papers, in which the proposed method outperformed conventional models. Moreover, we show an example of extracted topic structures, which we found helpful for analyzing research activities.
The Human Sebocyte Culture Model Provides New Insights into Development and Management of Seborrhoea and Acne

Seborrhoea and acne are exclusively human diseases and sebaceous gland differentiation is species specific. Therefore, fundamental research on human sebaceous cell function and control requires human in vitro models. The human sebocyte culture model, introduced in 1989, has been used in several studies to elucidate sebaceous gland activity and its regulation at the cellular level. Cultured human sebocytes have been shown to preserve important sebocytic characteristics, although they undergo an incomplete terminal differentiation in vitro. In vitro synthesis of free fatty acids without bacterial involvement and marked interleukin 1α expression at the mRNA and protein levels with no further induction by lipopolysaccharides lead to the assumption that human sebocytes may initiate acne lesions by an intrinsic mechanism. Androgens affected sebocyte activity in vitro in a manner dependent on the localization of the sebaceous glands. In vitro stimulation of sebocyte proliferation by androgens could be completely abolished by spironolactone. Cultured sebocytes strongly expressed type 1 5α-reductase and metabolized testosterone to androstenedione, 5α-androstanedione, 5α-dihydrotestosterone, androsterone and 5α-androstanediol, whereas the levels of 5α-reductase activity were probably not feedback regulated. 4,7β-Dimethyl-4-aza-5αcholestan-3-one, a type 1 5α-reductase inhibitor, induced an early, marked down-regulation of 5α-reductase activity in human sebocytes in vitro, while hydrofinasteride, a type 2 inhibitor, required 103-fold higher concentrations to induce similar effects. Stimulation of sebocyte proliferation by insulin, thyroid-stimulating hormone and hydrocortisone indicates that the hormonal control of the sebaceous gland could be a complex mechanism. Retinoids inhibited sebocyte proliferation in a dose-dependent manner and down-regulated lipid synthesis and sebocyte differentiation in vitro. Isotretinoin was the most potent compound. On the other hand, vitamin A was found essential for sebocyte activity and differentiation in vitro and could be partially substituted by synthetic retinoids. The inhibitory effect of isotretinoin on sebocyte proliferation was barely affected by the presence of vitamin A. The low persistent isotretinoin levels or, more likely, the considerably elevated tretinoin concentrations detected in human sebocytes after treatment with isotretinoin in vitro may be responsible for the inhibitory effect of this compound on sebocyte activity.
Limitations and implications of product‐oriented, sales‐oriented and market‐oriented political parties: evidence for public affairs

This paper provides the first literature review of work using Lees-Marshment's product-oriented party (POP), sales-oriented party (SOP) and market-oriented party (MOP) process models with the aims of assessing the models' usefulness to academics, practitioners and educators. This is motivated by an urgent need to evaluate models that claim to balance explanatory power, practical applicability and pedagogic value. Our literature review demonstrates that although the process models can be used in a classroom setting, empirical results are ambivalent as to the usefulness and even existence of the MOP process in contrast to the POP and/or SOP processes. We conclude that academics need to revisit the conceptualisation of the process models, that practitioners need to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the process models, especially the assertion that the MOP process is normatively ‘superior’ to the SOP and POP process models, and that educators can use the process models to introduce political marketing before moving on to more comprehensive models. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Performance analysis of LDPC Convolutional Codes

Low Density Parity Check Convolutional Codes (LDPC-CCs) have the advantage of simple encoding and decoding. ASIC or FPGA implementation of LDPC-CCs have been shown to have very good complexity-performance trade-off. In this paper, we present a class of LDPC-CC and iterative algorithm to decode these codes. The construction technique of our code is simple and easy, compared to other LDPC-CCs, which reduces hardware complexity. The simulation results show that the performance of our proposed codes is better than the LDPC Block codes with the same decoding complexity per information bit. Our code also outperforms its counterpart LDPC-CCs.
Safety stock versus safety time in MRP controlled production systems

The two management set parameters which determine the performance of a material requirements planning (MRP) system are the lead time and the safety stock. The appropriate values of these parameters are influenced by the accuracy of forecasts over the lead time, the variability of processing time and the degree of congestion, together with the costs of inventory and shortages. These influences are explored using stochastic models of a single stage manufacturing system for which work release is controlled using MRP. The major conclusion is that safety time is usually only preferable to safety stock when it is possible to make accurate forecasts of future required shipments over the lead time, otherwise safety stock is more robust in coping with changes in customer requirements in the lead time or with fluctuations in forecasts of lead time demand.
In Codice Ratio: OCR of Handwritten Latin Documents using Deep Convolutional Networks

Automatic transcription of historical handwritten documents is a challenging research problem, requiring in general expensive transcriptions from expert paleographers. In Codice Ratio is designed to be an end-to-end architecture requiring instead limited labeling effort, whose aim is the automatic transcription of a portion of the Vatican Secret Archives (one of the largest historical libraries in the world). In this paper, we describe in particular the design of our OCR component for Latin characters. To this end, we first annotated a large corpus of Latin characters with a custom crowdsourcing platform. Leveraging over recent progresses in deep learning, we designed and trained a deep convolutional network achieving an overall accuracy of 96% over the entire dataset, which is one of the highest results reported in the literature so far. Our training data are publicly available.
Energy Substitution, Technical Change and Rebound Effects

This paper investigates the relationships between energy efficiency improvements by producers, the ease of substitution between energy and other inputs and the size of the resulting “rebound effects”. Fundamentally, easier substitution leads to larger rebounds. Focusing upon conceptual and methodological issues, the paper highlights the challenges of estimating and modeling rebound effects with the help of production and cost functions and questions the robustness of the evidence base in this area. It argues that the multiple definitions of “elasticities of substitution” are a source of confusion, the most commonly estimated elasticity is of little practical value, the empirical literature is contradictory, prone to bias and difficult to use and there are only tenuous links between this literature and the assumptions used within energy-economic models. While “energy-augmenting technical change” provides the natural choice of independent variable for an estimate of rebound effects, most empirical studies do not estimate this form of technical change, many modeling studies do not simulate it and others simulate it in such a way as to underestimate rebound effects. As a result, the paper argues that current econometric and modeling studies do not provide reliable guidance on the magnitude of rebound effects in different industrial sectors.
Cognitive Load Assessment from EEG and Peripheral Biosignals for the Design of Visually Impaired Mobility Aids

Reliable detection of cognitive load would benefit the design of intelligent assistive navigation aids for the visually impaired (VIP). Ten participants with various degrees of sight loss navigated in unfamiliar indoor and outdoor environments, while their electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrodermal activity (EDA) signals were being recorded. In this study, the cognitive load of the tasks was assessed in real time based on a modification of the well-established event-related (de)synchronization (ERD/ERS) index. We present an in-depth analysis of the environments that mostly challenge people from certain categories of sight loss and we present an automatic classification of the perceived difficulty in each time instance, inferred from their biosignals. Given the limited size of our sample, our findings suggest that there are significant differences across the environments for the various categories of sight loss. Moreover, we exploit cross-modal relations predicting the cognitive load in real time inferring on features extracted from the EDA. Such possibility paves the way for the design on less invasive, wearable assistive devices that take into consideration the well-being of the VIP.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome and multiple tract degeneration in a homosexual man

A 35‐year‐old homosexual man with acquired immune deficiency syndrome developed progressive dementia and spastic quadriparesis over a two‐month period. Severe symmetrical, bilateral degeneration of the corticospinal and frontopontine fibers and cerebellar white matter were found postmortem. Several glial nodules in the brainstem and cerebellum suggested “smoldering” brainstem encephalitis. The possible association of the adenovirus that was isolated from the patient's cerebrospinal fluid to these obscure changes in the central nervous system is discussed.