Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of p-Benzoquinone in the Synthesis of a Conducting Polymer, Polyaniline

Polyaniline (PANI) and 2,5-dianilino-p-benzoquinone both are formed by oxidation of aniline in an acidic aqueous environment. The aim of this study is to understand the impact of addition of p-benzoquinone on the structure of PANI prepared by the oxidation of aniline hydrochloride with ammonium peroxydisulfate and to elucidate the formation of low-molecular-weight byproducts. An increasing yield and size-exclusion chromatography, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and nuclear magnetic resonance analyses of the products show that p-benzoquinone does not act as a terminating agent in the synthesis of PANI and the content of 2,5-dianilino-p-benzoquinone increases with the increasing molar concentration of p-benzoquinone in the reaction mixture, [BzQ]. Regarding the structure of PANI, Raman and UV–visible spectra show that the doping level and the charge delocalization both decrease with the increase of [BzQ], and the FTIR spectra of the PANI bases indicate an increased concentration of benzenoid units at higher [BzQ]. We explain these observations by an increasing concentration of structural defects in PANI chains and propose a 2,5-dianilino-p-benzoquinone-like structure of these defects present as pendant groups. The bands typical of 2,5-dianilino-p-benzoquinone-like moiety are observed even in the vibrational spectra of the sample prepared without addition of p-benzoquinone. This confirms in situ oxidation of aniline to p-benzoquinone within the course of the oxidation of aniline hydrochloride to PANI.
Importance sampling for polarization-mode dispersion

We describe the application of importance sampling to Monte-Carlo simulations of polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) in optical fibers. The method allows rare differential group delay (DGD) events to be simulated much more efficiently than with standard Monte-Carlo methods and, thus, it can be used to assess PMD-induced system outage probabilities at realistic bit-error rates. We demonstrate the technique by accurately calculating the tails of the DGD probability distribution with a relatively small number of Monte-Carlo trials.
The effects of 5alpha-reductase inhibitors on the natural history, detection and grading of prostate cancer: current state of knowledge.

PURPOSE The Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT) showed that the 5alpha-reductase inhibitor (5ARI) finasteride significantly decreased the 7-year period prevalence of prostate cancer vs placebo. However, Gleason score 7-10 tumors were significantly more common in the finasteride vs the placebo group. We considered data on the effects of 5ARIs on prostate cancer natural history and detection. MATERIALS AND METHODS A detailed review was performed of the literature identified from the MEDLINE database examining the effects of 5ARIs on prostate cancer prevalence and tumor histopathology. RESULTS In PCPT there were fewer biopsies performed for cause in the finasteride vs the placebo group and the proportion of high grade tumors in the treatment groups did not diverge with time. Given that finasteride has an effect on prostate specific antigen and prostate volume, which are key factors in triggering prostate biopsies, they may be significant confounders of Gleason score results. Prostate shrinkage in the finasteride treated group may minimize biopsy sampling error. Furthermore, histological studies have shown that 5ARIs have a significant effect on prostate architecture, which can make the interpretation of prostate specimens in men treated with 5ARIs difficult. Further evaluation of PCPT findings will help determine the true nature of these observations. CONCLUSIONS 5ARIs decrease the risk of prostate cancer but also alter the detection of disease through effects on prostate specific antigen, and prostate volume and histology. The weight of evidence suggests an artifactual effect of finasteride on Gleason grading in the PCPT. The role of 5ARIs for prostate cancer chemoprevention needs further examination before it can be considered for wide recommendation.
Hsp26: a temperature‐regulated chaperone

Small heat shock proteins (sHsps) are a conserved protein family, with members found in all organisms analysed so far. Several sHsps have been shown to exhibit chaperone activity and protect proteins from irreversible aggregation in vitro. Here we show that Hsp26, an sHsp from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is a temperature‐regulated molecular chaperone. Like other sHsps, Hsp26 forms large oligomeric complexes. At heat shock temperatures, however, the 24mer chaperone complex dissociates. Interestingly, chaperone assays performed at different temperatures show that the dissociation of the Hsp26 complex at heat shock temperatures is a prerequisite for efficient chaperone activity. Binding of non‐native proteins to dissociated Hsp26 produces large globular assemblies with a structure that appears to be completely reorganized relative to the original Hsp26 oligomers. In this complex one monomer of substrate is bound per Hsp26 dimer. The temperature‐dependent dissociation of the large storage form of Hsp26 into a smaller, active species and the subsequent re‐association to a defined large chaperone–substrate complex represents a novel mechanism for the functional activation of a molecular chaperone.
Stereological estimates of nuclear star volume and vessels as predictors of chemotherapy response in small cell carcinoma of the lung: a preliminary report.

AIMS This study was designed to evaluate the role of morphometric and clinical parameters in predicting chemotherapy responder patients with small cell carcinoma of the lung. METHODS AND RESULTS Morphometric studies were performed by means of point counting techniques. Forty-six patients were included in this study. Group 1 patients (n = 19) were those without response to chemotherapy; Group 2 (n = 27) was composed by patients with partial or complete response to chemotherapy. Logistic regression analysis was used to attain the best separation of non-responder from responder patients. Star volume of the nuclei and vessel were selected during the backward procedure as relevant variables to characterize the two groups of patients. The overall sensitivity of the model was 80.43%. CONCLUSIONS Our results indicate that histopathological data may help to predict the chemotherapy response in patients with small cell lung carcinoma, and encourage the use of morphometric procedures in histopathological analysis of this type of lung tumours.
Expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase and formation of peroxynitrite in posttransplant obliterative bronchiolitis.

BACKGROUND Obliterative bronchiolitis is characterized histologically by inflammation, epithelial cell damage and loss, fibrosis, and eventual obliteration of airways. Production of high levels of the potential cytotoxin nitric oxide by inducible nitric oxide synthase has been implicated in several inflammatory diseases. The damaging effects of nitric oxide are mediated by peroxynitrite, are formed from nitric oxide and superoxide, and can be demonstrated by the detection of nitrotyrosine. Our previous finding of high inducible nitric oxide synthase expression in inflamed airway epithelium led us to hypothesize that release of nitric oxide in obliterative bronchiolitis mediates the characteristic epithelial damage. METHODS Immunocytochemistry was carried out to seek expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase and nitrotyrosine in transplant samples from patients with obliterative bronchiolitis (n=10) and, as controls, unused donor lungs (n=5). RESULTS Inducible nitric oxide synthase was strongly expressed in the damaged airway epithelium in obliterative bronchiolitis and in inflammatory cells, where its distribution was matched by that of nitrotyrosine. Normal controls showed little or no immunoreactivity for any of the antigens studied. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that nitric oxide may play a role in the pathogenesis of obliterative bronchiolitis and indicate that further work is essential to fully understand the processes and mechanisms involved.
Mechanistic and experimental models of cell migration reveal the importance of cell-to-cell pushing in cell invasion

Moving fronts of cells are essential for development, repair and disease progression. Therefore, understanding and quantifying the details of the mechanisms that drive the movement of cell fronts is of wide interest. Quantitatively identifying the role of intercellular interactions, and in particular the role of cell pushing, remains an open question. In this work, we report a combined experimental-modelling approach showing that intercellular interactions contribute significantly to the spatial spreading of a population of cells. We use a novel experimental data set with PC-3 prostate cancer cells that have been pretreated with Mitomycin-C to suppress proliferation. This allows us to experimentally separate the effects of cell migration from cell proliferation, thereby enabling us to focus on the migration process in detail as the population of cells recolonizes an initially-vacant region in a series of two-dimensional experiments. We quantitatively model the experiments using a stochastic modelling framework, based on Langevin dynamics, which explicitly incorporates random motility and various intercellular forces including: (i) long range attraction (adhesion); and (ii) finite size effects that drive short range repulsion (pushing). Quantitatively comparing the ability of this model to describe the experimentally observed population-level behaviour provides us with quantitative insight into the roles of random motility and intercellular interactions. To quantify the mechanisms at play, we calibrate the stochastic model to match experimental cell density profiles to obtain estimates of cell diffusivity, D, and the amplitude of intercellular forces, f0. Our analysis shows that taking a standard modelling approach which ignores intercellular forces provides a poor match to the experimental data whereas incorporating intercellular forces, including short-range pushing and longer range attraction, leads to a faithful representation of the experimental observations. These results demonstrate a significant role of cell pushing during cell front movement and invasion.
Comparison of Survival of Patients with Heart and Lung Transplants on Peritoneal Dialysis and Hemodialysis

1. Institute of Medicine and Nielsen-Bohlman L, Panzer AM, Kindig DA, eds. Health literacy: a prescription to end confusion. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2004. 2. Kutner M, Greenberg E, Jin, X, Paulsen C. The Health Literacy of America’s Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2006. 3. Ronksley PE, Hemmelgarn BR. Optimizing care for patients with CKD. Am J Kidney Dis 2012; 60(1):133–8. 4. Adeseun GA, Bonney CC, Rosas SE. Health literacy associated with blood pressure but not other cardiovascular disease risk factors among dialysis patients. Am J Hypertens 2012; 25(3):348–53. 5. Green JA, Mor MK, Shields AM, Sevick MA, Palevsky PM, Fine MJ, et al. Prevalence and demographic and clinical associations of health literacy in patients on maintenance hemodialysis. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol 2011; 6(6):1354–60. 6. Green JA, Mor MK, Shields AM, Sevick MA, Arnold RM, Palevsky PM, et al. Associations of health literacy with dialysis adherence and health resource utilization in patients receiving maintenance hemodialysis. Am J Kidney Dis 2013; 62(1):73–80. 7. Chiu YW, Teitelbaum I, Misra M, de Leon EM, Adzize T, Mehrotra R. Pill burden, adherence, hyperphosphatemia, and quality of life in maintenance dialysis patients. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol 2009; 4:1089–96. 8. Fraser SD, Roderick PJ, Casey M, Taal MW, Yuen HM, Nutbeam D. Prevalence and associations of limited health literacy in chronic kidney disease: a systematic review. Nephrol Dial Transplant 2013; 28(1):129–37. 9. Cavanaugh KL, Wingard RL, Hakim RM, Eden S, Shintani A, Wallston KA, et al. Low health literacy associates with increased mortality in ESRD. J Am Soc Nephrol 2010; 21:1979–85. 10. Grubbs V, Gregorich SE, Perez-Stable EJ, Hsu CY. Health literacy and access to kidney transplantation. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol 2009; 4:195–200. 11. Kleinpeter MA. Health literacy affects peritoneal dialysis performance & outcomes. Adv Perit Dial 2003;19:115–9. 12. Pollock JB, Jaffery JB. Knowledge of phosphorus compared with other nutrients in maintenance dialysis patients. J Ren Nutr 2007; 17(5):323–8. 13. Baker DW, Williams MV, Parker RM, Gazmararian JA, Nurss J. Development of a brief test to measure functional health literacy. Patient Educ Couns 1999; 38:33–42. 14. Green JA, Mor MK, Shields AM, Sevick MA, Arnold RM, Palevsky PM, et al. Associations of health literacy with dialysis adherence and health resource utilization in patients receiving maintenance hemodialysis. Am J Kidney Dis 2013; 62(1):73–80. 15. Berkman ND, Sheridan SL, Donahue KE, Halpern DJ, Crotty K. Low health literacy and health outcomes: an updated systemic review. Ann Intern Med 2011; 155(2):97–107. doi: 10.3747/pdi.2013. 00211
Current State of the Art in Multirobot Systems

To determine the rotary speed of a toothed element (1), for example the starter gear of an internal combustion (IC) engine, or a toothed wheel coupled to a wheel of a vehicle for evaluation of the speed, and change in speed thereof, for use in a brake anti-block system, a magnetic field is generated, for example by a permanent magnet (3) which has both radial and tangential components with respect to the teeth (2) of the rotary element. A magnetic field dependent sensor (4) such as a Hall generator or a thin-film permalloy-type magneto-resistive sensor is positioned to respond to the tangential component of the magnetic field, to thereby eliminate shifts in the null or center line about which the field strength undulates as the disk rotates to permit ready evaluation of the output from the sensor by threshold circuitry.
The Gains from Imperfect Inflation-Targeting Commitments

In a New-Keynesian sticky-price model, we study how the gains from commitments depend on their horizon and credibility. Continuously committing just one period ahead captures all the gains available for any strictly positive level of credibility, unless policymakers themselves exclude deviations, in which case a relatively high credibility is required just to capture the majority of these. The same applies to commitment streaks of stochastic durations; all the gains are captured with any strictly positive expected duration when policymakers believe they might deviate, while a 9-month duration only yields about half the gains available when they exclude deviations. These results, and our approach, differ from earlier contributions. ∗Christian Jensen; Department of Economics; The Moore School of Business; 1705 College Street; Columbia, SC 29208; cjensen@alumni.cmu. edu.
Stress-induced duplex DNA destabilization in scaffold/matrix attachment regions.

S/MARs are DNA elements 300 to several thousand base-pairs long, which are operationally defined by their affinity for the nuclear scaffold or matrix. S/MARs occur exclusively in eukaryotic genomes, where they mediate several functions. Because S/MARs do not have a clearcut consensus sequence, the characteristics that define their activity are thought to be structural. Ubiquitous S/MAR binding proteins have been identified, but to date no unique binding sequence or structural motif has been found. Here we show by computational analysis that S/MARs conform to a specific design whose essential attribute is the presence of stress-induced base-unpairing regions (BURs). Stress-induced destabilization (SIDD) profiles are calculated using a previously developed statistical mechanical procedure in which the superhelical deformation is partitioned between strand separation, twisting within denatured regions, and residual superhelicity. The results of these calculations show that BURs exhibit a succession of evenly spaced destabilized sites that would render part or all of the S/MAR sequence single stranded at sufficient superhelicity. These analyses are performed for a range of sequenced S/MAR elements from the borders of eukaryotic gene domains, from centromeres, and from positions where S/MARs are known to support the action of an enhancer. The results reported here are in excellent agreement with earlier in vitro chemical reactivity studies. This approach demonstrates the potential for computational analysis to predict the points of division of the eukaryotic genome into functional units (domains), and also to locate certain cis-regulatory sequences.
A pitch synchronous feature extraction method for speaker recognition

The paper presents a novel feature extraction method to improve the performance of speaker identification systems. The proposed feature has the form of a typical conventional feature, Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC), but a flexible segmentation to reduce spectral mismatch between training and testing processes. Specifically, the length and shift size of the analysis frame are determined by a pitch synchronous method, pitch synchronous MFCC (PSMFCC). To verify the performance of the new feature, we measure the cepstral distortion between training and testing and also perform closed set speaker identification tests. With text-independent and text-dependent experiments, the proposed algorithm provides 44.3% and 26.7% relative improvement, respectively.
Semantic-based Model Matching with EMFCompare

In MDE resolving pragmatic issues related to the management of models is key to success. Model comparison is one of the most challenging operations playing a central role in a wide range of modelling activities including model versioning, evolution and even collaborative and distributed speciﬁcation of models. Over the last decade, several syntactic methods have been proposed to compare models even though they struggle in achieving higher levels of accuracy especially when the semantics of the application domain has to be considered. Existing methods improve comparison precision at the price of high performance costs. This paper discusses a lightweight semantic comparison method, which relies on a new matching algorithm that considers ontological information encoded in the WordNet lexical database further than ordinary syntactical and structural correlations. The approach has been implemented as extension of EMFCompare and evaluated to measure its precision and performances when compared to existing approaches.
Hemodynamic Simulation of Pancreaticoduodenal Artery Aneurysm Formation Using an Electronic Circuit Model and a Case Series Analysis

Objective: To assess mechanisms underlying aneurysm formation using a simple electronic circuit model. Materials and Methods: We created a simple circuit model connecting the celiac artery (CA) to the superior mesenteric artery via the pancreaticoduodenal arcade. We retrospectively reviewed 12 patients with true pancreaticoduodenal artery aneurysms (PDAAs) who received open or endovascular treatment between 2004 and 2017. We set the resistance of each artery and organ voltage and calculated flow volume and rate in response to degrees of simulated CA stenosis from 0% to 99.9%. Results: Flow volume rates of the anterior pancreaticoduodenal artery and posterior pancreaticoduodenal artery decreased to zero when CA stenosis increased from 0% to 50% and then increased drastically, at which point flow direction reverted and the flow was up to three times the initial rate. The gastroduodenal artery (GDA) also showed reversed flow with severe CA stenosis. In 12 patients with PDAA, eight presented with a CA lesion, and the other patients presented with comorbidities causing the arteries to be pathologically fragile, such as Marfan syndrome, Behçet’s disease, and segmental arterial mediolysis. All four GDA aneurysms were not accompanied by CA lesions. Conclusion: The mechanism underlying CA-lesion-associated PDAA formation may be partially explained using our model.
Thermal percolation for interacting monomers adsorbed on square lattices

In this paper the percolation of monomers on a square lattice is studied as the particles interact with either repulsive or attractive energies. By means of a finite-size scaling analysis, the critical exponents and the scaling collapsing of the fraction of percolating lattice are found. A phase diagram separating a percolating from a non-percolating region is determined. The main features of the phase diagram are discussed in terms of simple considerations related to the interactions present in the problem. The influence of the phase transitions occurring in the system is reflected by the phase diagram. In addition, a scaling treatment maintaining constant the surface coverage and varying the temperature of the system is performed. In all the considered cases, the universality class of the model is found to be the same as for the random percolation model.
Distraction Can Reduce Age-Related Forgetting

In three experiments, we assessed whether older adults’ generally greater tendency to process distracting information can be used to minimize widely reported age-related differences in forgetting. Younger and older adults studied and recalled a list of words on an initial test and again on a surprise test after a 15-min delay. In the middle (Experiments 1a and 2) or at the end (Experiment 3) of the delay, participants completed a 1-back task in which half of the studied words appeared as distractors. Across all experiments, older adults reliably forgot unrepeated words; however, older adults rarely or never forgot the words that had appeared as distractors, whereas younger adults forgot words in both categories. Exposure to distraction may serve as a rehearsal episode for older adults, and thus as a method by which general distractibility may be co-opted to boost memory.
Country Effects in ISSP - 1993 Environmental Data: Comparison of Sem Approaches

Structural equation models (SEM) are commonly used to analyze the relationship between variables some of which may be latent, such as individual ``attitude'' to and ``behavior'' concerning specific issues. A number of difficulties arise when we want to compare a large number of groups, each with large sample size, and the manifest variables are distinctly non-normally distributed. Using an specific data set, we evaluate the appropriateness of the following alternative SEM approaches: multiple group versus MIMIC models, continuous versus ordinal variables estimation methods, and normal theory versus non-normal estimation methods. The approaches are applied to the ISSP-1993 Environmental data set, with the purpose of exploring variation in the mean level of variables of ``attitude'' to and ``behavior'' concerning environmental issues and their mutual relationship across countries. Issues of both theoretical and practical relevance arise in the course of this application.