Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Influence of Hypoxia on the Relative Sensitivity of Human Tumor Cells to 62.5 MeV (p→Be) Fast Neutrons and 4 MeV Photons

Abstract Warenius, H. M. , White, R. , Peacock, J. H. , Hanson, J., Britten, R. A. and Murray, D. The Influence of Hypoxia on the Relative Sensitivity of Human Tumor Cells to 62.5 MeV (p→Be) Fast Neutrons and 4 MeV Photons. Fast neutrons have been used in the clinical radiation therapy of tumors largely because of experimental evidence that their cytotoxic effects are much less dependent on oxygen levels than those of low-LET photons. The potential therapeutic advantage of fast neutrons based on hypoxia alone can be calculated as the “hypoxic gain factor”, which is the ratio of the OERs for the fast-neutron compared to the photon beams. The hypoxic gain factor that is generally anticipated based on studies with established mammalian cell lines is about 1.6. However, surprisingly few studies have examined the influence of hypoxia on the fast-neutron radiosensitivity of human tumor cells of different histological types. For this reason, we have determined the OERs of five human tumor cell lines exposed to 62.5 MeV (p→Be) cyclotron-generated fast neutrons or 4 MeV photons from a clinical linear accelerator. The OERs for four chemotherapy-naive cell lines, HT29/5, Hep2, HeLa and RT112, were invariably greater for photons than for neutrons, but all of these values were lower than expected on the basis of the previous literature. Despite their low OERs, these cell lines showed hypoxic gain factors that were within the range of 1.31−1.63, indicating that such effects cannot entirely explain the disappointing clinical results obtained with fast neutrons. In contrast, comparison of the surviving fractions at clinically relevant doses (1.6 Gy of neutrons and 2.0 Gy of photons) for these four tumor cell lines suggested that little benefit should result from neutron treatment. Only the cisplatin-resistant OAW42-CP line showed a significant hypoxic gain factor by this method of analysis. We conclude that, at the dose fractions used in clinical radiation therapy, there may not be a radiobiological precedent for higher local control rates after fast-neutron irradiation of hypoxic tumor cells.
Sustaining the Rheumatology Research Enterprise

Rheumatology academic divisions have historically been comprised of physician-scientists conducting both basic and clinical research, with each scientist leading a group of technical staff and trainees. Recent substantial changes in how science is conducted and funded and in the makeup and demographics of the rheumatology workforce are causing disruptions to this paradigm and are threatening the health of academic divisions nationwide. How we as a community deal with this threat will affect the future of our specialty in the coming decades. In this issue of Arthritis Care & Research, Ogdie et al (1), on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Early Career Investigator Subcommittee of the Committee on Research, report the results of a survey of 430 rheumatologists and trainees (1). The survey questions were based on a comprehensive list of barriers to and facilitators of a successful research career, compiled based on a literature review, with further modifications after discussion by the committee. The survey was distributed online to all US ACR members, with a response rate of 9.2%. Although the response rate was low, the survey captures a relevant group of rheumatologists, many of whom are fellows or junior faculty in academic institutions, and 40% of whom are actively pursuing a research career. The survey also included 97 respondents who left a research career and identified reasons for this attrition. The results of the survey clearly indicate that funding and institutional support are the major factors that contribute to the successful transition to or failure-to-launch of an independent research career. The availability of an outstanding mentor is an additional facilitator. These results are similar to those of surveys of young physicianscientists in other specialties and reflect the current perilous state of research by physician-scientists in academic medicine. Large numbers of free comments by the survey respondents contribute many suggestions for improving the landscape for young investigators (see Table 3 of the Ogdie et al article) (1).
Modeling and Assessing Student Activities in On-Line Discussions

As web-enhanced courses become more successful, they put considerable burdens on instructors and teaching assistants. We present our work on developing software tools to support instructors by automatic assessment of pedagogical discussions. We are developing prototype measures of discussion quality that rely on the quantity of discussion contributions. We are also developing techniques for assessing discussion contributions automatically by mining discussion text. Using information retrieval and natural language processing techniques, our tools learn to detect the conversation focus of threaded discussions, classify topics of discussions, and estimate technical depth of contributions. The results from these assessment tools provide basis for the development of scaffolding and question answering techniques for pedagogical discourse.
CD28 signals the differential control of regulatory T cells and effector T cells

One possible means of driving antigen‐specific immune suppression is to expand or induce antigen‐specific FoxP3‐expressing Treg cells. One way of activating and expanding these specialized cells, both in vitro and in vivo, is by strong costimulation via CD28 with an agonistic anti‐CD28 monoclonal antibody, called anti‐CD28 superagonist (CD28SA). However, CD28SA also strongly activates conventional T (Tconv) cells to secrete proinflammatory cytokines and, under certain conditions, causes serious cytokine release syndrome. In this issue of European Journal of Immunology, Tabares et al. [Eur. J. Immunol. 2014. 44: 1225–1236] address how CD28SA can be used for the differential control of human Treg and Tconv cells to suppress immune responses without serious adverse effects. They show that, depending on the dose of the antibody or by comedication of cortico‐steroid, the selective expansion of Treg cells can be achieved without significantly activating Tconv cells to produce inflammatory cytokines. This difference in CD28 signal sensitivity between the two populations can be exploited for better control of immune responses.
Seat height: effects on submaximal hand rim wheelchair performance during spinal cord injury rehabilitation.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of wheelchair seat height on wheeling efficiency and technique during rehabilitation in subjects with a spinal cord injury. DESIGN Laboratory-based study. SUBJECTS Twelve persons with spinal cord injury (age range 19-77 years, lesion level: C5/C6-L2; 7 men; 8 incomplete). METHODS Subjects conducted 8 submaximal hand rim wheelchair exercise tests (4 min) on a computerized ergometer at 8 seat heights (elbow angle: 70-140 degrees , full extension = 180 degrees) in a counter-balanced order (individualized fixed power output (5.4-13.9 W) and speed). Last-minute physiological and technique parameters were evaluated using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multilevel regression analysis (p < 0.05). RESULTS Physical strain and mechanical efficiency changed significantly (p < 0.05) with seat height, with optimal values at 100-130 degrees . Lower seat heights were clearly detrimental. Forces on the hand rims were affected by seat height, showing lower forces with increasing seat height. Lesion level was not a confounder of seat height with respect to mechanical efficiency, oxygen uptake or fraction effective force. CONCLUSION Mean physiological data indicate a tendency to optimize at 100-130 degrees seat height. This does not relate to the trends seen in force and technique data. Optimization of seat height during spinal cord injury rehabilitation may lead to more efficient and less straining conditions for manual wheeling.
Long-Term Fate Mapping Using Conditional Lentiviral Vectors Reveals a Continuous Contribution of Radial Glia-Like Cells to Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Mice

Newborn neurons are generated throughout life in two neurogenic regions, the subventricular zone and the hippocampal dentate gyrus. Stimulation of adult neurogenesis is considered as an attractive endogenous repair mechanism to treat different neurological disorders. Although tremendous progress has been made in our understanding of adult hippocampal neurogenesis, important questions remain unanswered, regarding the identity and the behavior of neural stem cells in the dentate gyrus. We previously showed that conditional Cre-Flex lentiviral vectors can be used to label neural stem cells in the subventricular zone and to track the migration of their progeny with non-invasive bioluminescence imaging. Here, we applied these Cre-Flex lentiviral vectors to study neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus with bioluminescence imaging and histological techniques. Stereotactic injection of the Cre-Flex vectors into the dentate gyrus of transgenic Nestin-Cre mice resulted in specific labeling of the nestin-positive neural stem cells. The labeled cell population could be detected with bioluminescence imaging until 9 months post injection, but no significant increase in the number of labeled cells over time was observed with this imaging technique. Nevertheless, the specific labeling of the nestin-positive neural stem cells, combined with histological analysis at different time points, allowed detailed analysis of their neurogenic potential. This long-term fate mapping revealed that a stable pool of labeled nestin-positive neural stem cells continuously contributes to the generation of newborn neurons in the mouse brain until 9 months post injection. In conclusion, the Cre-Flex technology is a valuable tool to address remaining questions regarding neural stem cell identity and behavior in the dentate gyrus.
Music Onset Detection Based on Resonator Time Frequency Image

This paper describes a new method for music onset detection. The novelty of the approach consists mainly of two elements: the time-frequency processing and the detection stages. The resonator time frequency image (RTFI) is the basic time-frequency analysis tool. The time-frequency processing part is in charge of transforming the RTFI energy spectrum into more natural energy- change and pitch-change cues that are then used as input elements for the detection of music onsets by detection tools. Two detection algorithms have been developed: an energy-based algorithm and a pitch-based one. The energy-based detection algorithm exploits energy-change cues and performs particularly well for the detection of hard onsets. The pitch-based algorithm successfully exploits stable pitch cues for the onset detection in polyphonic music, and achieves much better performances than the energy-based algorithm when applied to the detection of soft onsets. Results for both the energy-based and pitch-based detection algorithms have been obtained on a large music dataset.
City Research Online Lexical Organization in Deaf Children Who Use British Sign Language: Evidence from a Semantic Lexical Organisation in Deaf Children Who Use British Sign Language: Evidence from a Semantic Fluency Task

Online is checked for eligibility for copyright before being made available in the live archive. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to from other web pages. Enquiries If you have any enquiries about any aspect of City Research Online, or if you wish to make contact with the author(s) of this paper, please email the team at publications@city.ac. uk. Acknowledgements We thank the children who participated in this study, and their teachers and parents. Abstract We adapted the semantic fluency task into British Sign Language (BSL). In Study 1, we present data from 22 deaf signers aged 4-15. We show that the same 'cognitive signatures' that characterise this task in spoken languages are also present in deaf children, for example, the semantic clustering of responses. In Study 2, we present data from 13 deaf children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in BSL, in comparison to a subset of children from Study 1 matched for age and BSL exposure. The two groups' results were comparable in most respects. However, the group with SLI made occasional word-finding errors and gave fewer responses in the first 15 seconds. We conclude that deaf children with SLI do not differ from their controls in terms of the semantic organisation of the BSL lexicon, but that they access signs less efficiently.
Qualities in Possible Worlds

The paper analyzes how and under which assumptions it is possible to compare (in a relationist setting and relatively to qualities) entities living in different worlds. We begin with a standard technique to construct quality kinds via an abstraction process. In the first case, the process is applied across all the possible worlds and we show that the resulting quality system has problematic consequences. Then, we focus on the alternatives that arise when the abstraction process is applied within each single world independently, i.e., assuming similarity judgments make sense only when referring to entities living in the same world. This situation leads to worlds with unrelated quality systems and we look at the problem of quality comparison across worlds. We analyze under which assumptions this comparison is possible and discuss its limits by considering the structural information that one can infer from the elements shared by (two or more) overlapping worlds. Exploiting the use of such information and comparing this situation with the construction of time in branching worlds, it becomes possible to relate and (in a sense to be explained) to 'tune' the quality systems of different worlds. Motivations for this work come from epistemological considerations. Consider a possible world as a context or an information system. The framework we develop helps to understand whether the quality systems of the two contexts (information systems) can be related and, if so, it provides a basic methodology to formally link them.
25-Hydroxyvitamin D deficiency is associated with increased aortic stiffness in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Objective. To determine the relationship between serum vitamin D and markers of subclinical cardiovascular disease (CVD) in patients with SLE. Methods. We recruited SLE patients (≥4 ACR 1997 criteria) from outpatient clinics between January 2007 and January 2009. Vitamin D deficiency was defined as serum 25(OH)D <20 ng/ml measured by ELISA. Disease activity was measured using the SLEDAI-2K score. Aortic pulse wave velocity (aPWV) was measured using PulseTrace 3600 (Micromedical) and carotid plaque (CP) and intima–media thickness (IMT) assessed using B-mode Doppler US. Results. Seventy-five women with SLE were recruited with a median (interquartile range) disease duration of 16 (8–27) years. Patients with vitamin D deficiency had higher BMI (P = 0.014) and insulin resistance (P = 0.023) than those with 25(OH)D >20 ng/ml. Subjects with SLEDAI-2K ≥4 had lower 25(OH)D than those with SLEDAI-2K <4 (median 12.9 vs 20.3 ng/ml, P = 0.031). Aortic stiffness was significantly associated with serum 25(OH)D [log(aPWV) β (95% CI) −0.0217 (−0.038, −0.005), P = 0.010] independently of BMI, CVD risk factors and serum insulin. Adjustment for disease activity reduced the strength of the association. There was no association between 25(OH)D and CP or IMT. Conclusions. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increased aortic stiffness in SLE, independent of CVD risk factors and insulin. Increased inflammatory disease activity may be the mechanism by which vitamin D deficiency mediates vascular stiffness in this patient group.
Dynamic Evidence of Multiplicity in a Reactive Distillation Column for Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel Production Dynamic Evidence of Multiplicity in a Reactive Distillation Column for Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel Production

The objective of the work is to analyze and predict the multiple steady states through dynamic analysis when the reactive distillation column is subject to different input disturbances. The dynamic simulations are carried out to analyze the open loop dynamic responses of the system using step changes in the manipulated variable (reflux ratio, holdup, hydrocarbon mixture feed stage, hydrocarbon mixture feed flowrate, reboiler duty) and recording the dynamic behaviour of the product conversions (dibenzothiophene and 4,6-dimethyldibenthiophene, called controlled variables). The magnitude of the change in the manipulated variables should be reduced to around 0.5% or less than its nominal value.
File system and storage array design challenges for flash memory

Over the few decades the characteristics of the magnetic disk based persistent primary storage system have remained essentially unchanged. Seek, read and write are the primitive operations that can be performed against these devices. These three operations have endured because the devices within storage subsystems have not fundamentally changed since the invention of magnetic disks. In many cases, the file systems for the existing storage arrays are custom and proprietary and tuned for the characteristics of magnetic disk. As the cost of flash memory continues to decrease, enterprises are attempting to deploy flash in primary network attached storage systems such as storage arrays. Flash memory poses unique characteristics, which requires sophisticated data structures and algorithms to exploit the performance benefits. When flash memory is used in primary storage arrays, the file systems face lot of design challenges for the optimal flash performance and device endurance. Replace the new flash arrays with existing enterprise disk based storage arrays that provide data management and protection features is a challenging task. We discussed various challenges in file system and the storage arrays for integrating flash memory arrays in the primary storage. Also we discussed the previously proposed solutions to overcome the discussed problems.
Vitamin E: function and metabolism

Although vitamin E has been known as an essential nutrient for reproduction since 1922, we are far from understanding the mechanisms of its physiological functions. Vitamin E is the term for a group of tocopherols and tocotrienols, of which α‐tocopherol has the highest biological activity. Due to the potent antioxidant properties of tocopherols, the impact of α‐tocopherol in the prevention of chronic diseases believed to be associated with oxidative stress has often been studied, and beneficial effects have been demonstrated. Recent observations that the α‐tocopherol transfer protein in the liver specifically sorts out RRR‐α‐tocopherol from all incoming tocopherols for incorporation into plasma lipoproteins, and that α‐tocopherol has signaling functions in vascular smooth muscle cells that cannot be exerted by other forms of tocopherol with similar antioxidative properties, have raised interest in the roles of vitamin E beyond its antioxidative function. Also, γ‐tocopherol might have functions apart from being an antioxidant. It is a nucleophile able to trap electrophilic mutagens in lipophilic compartments and generates a metabolite that facilitates natriuresis. The metabolism of vitamin E is equally unclear. Excess α‐tocopherol is converted into α‐CEHC and excreted in the urine. Other tocopherols, like γ‐ and δ‐tocopherol, are almost quantitatively degraded and excreted in the urine as the corresponding CEHCs. All rac α‐tocopherol compared to RRR‐α‐tocopherol is preferentially degraded to α‐CEHC. Thus, there must be a specific, molecular role of RRR‐α‐tocopherol that is regulated by a system that sorts, distributes, and degrades the different forms of vitamin E, but has not yet been identified. In this article we try to summarize current knowledge on the function of vitamin E, with emphasis on its antioxidant vs. other properties, the preference of the organism for RRR‐α‐tocopherol, and its metabolism to CEHCs. —Brigelius‐Flohé, R. , Traber, M. G. Vitamin E: function and metabolism. FASEB J. 13, 1145–1155 (1999)
A Machine Learning Approach to Relational Noun Mining in German

In this paper I argue in favour of a collocation extraction approach to the acquisition of relational nouns in German. We annotated frequency-based best lists of noun-preposition bigrams and subsequently trained different classifiers using (combinations of) association metrics, achieving a maximum F-measure of 69.7 on a support vector machine (Platt, 1998). Trading precision for recall, we could achieve over 90% recall for relational noun extraction, while still halving the annotation effort.
A randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled study to evaluate the efficacy in AD of liquid soap containing 12% ammonium lactate + 20% urea

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common chronic skin disease, which mainly affects children. Xerosis is one of the most troublesome signs of the disease. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of liquid soap containing 12% ammonium lactate + 20% urea in patients with AD. In a randomized, double‐blind study, 36 patients (both male and female patients; age range 3–40 years) with mild to moderate AD were enrolled. Patients were divided randomly into two groups, in a ratio of 2 : 1 (active : placebo). The prescribed soap was used on a daily basis during a shower for 3 weeks. All patients continued all other systemic or topical medication but avoided any other soap or emollients. After 3 weeks of treatment, efficacy was assessed both by clinician and patient. There were significant improvements in scaling (P < 0.0001), skin dryness (P < 0.0001) and redness (P = 0.03) as rated by the investigator, and subjective patient assessment of itch also improved (P < 0.001) in the study group compared with the control group. The liquid soap was found to be effective in patients with AD, as use of this soap in patients with stable mild to moderate AD improved the parameters studied.
An overview of computational challenges in online advertising

Online advertising is a large and rapidly growing business. The major players in the space, namely advertisers, publishers, and ad exchanges, are developing increasingly sophisticated systems, methods and tools to facilitate, manage, optimize and report on the performance of online advertising marketplaces and campaigns. Developing solutions that are both mathematically sound and practical draws on techniques from a variety of disciplines including machine learning, stochastic optimal control, information retrieval, data mining, natural language processing, and econometrics. In this paper, we provide an overview of the online advertising space, and identify, frame, and describe solution approaches to some of the major computational challenges in the space. We describe specific examples from industry applications, including ad inventory auctions, bidding and allocation strategies for ad inventory, inventory targeting, banner and landing page optimization, and performance estimation.
Micro air vehicle with nano-sensors to capture the enemy's arsenal

In this paper, the self organizing neural network approach is proposed in the micro air vehicle, inducted with nano-sensors to capture the enemy's arsenal. It is proposed that the nano-sensors sense the given locations. By using self organizing feature the micro air vehicle flies to the desired locations and capture the objects. The micro air vehicle starts from the base station once all the locations are programmed. The concept of travelling salesman problem (TSP) is used in the micro air vehicle. So the air vehicle flies to the various locations and return back to the initial location. The efficiency of the proposed method is simulated to show its effectiveness.