Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recanalization Modulates Association Between Blood Pressure and Functional Outcome in Acute Ischemic Stroke

Background and Purpose— Historical stroke cohorts reported a U- or J-shaped relationship between blood pressure (BP) and clinical outcome. However, these studies predated current revascularization strategies, disregarding the recanalization state of the affected arterial territory. We aimed to investigate the relationship between BP in the first 24 hours after ischemic stroke and clinical outcome in patients submitted to intravenous or intra-arterial recanalization treatments. Methods— Consecutive patients with acute stroke treated with intravenous thrombolysis or intra-arterial therapies were enrolled in a retrospective cohort study. BP was measured on regular intervals throughout day and night during the first 24 hours after stroke onset. The mean systolic BP and diastolic BP during the first 24 hours post stroke were calculated. Recanalization was assessed at 6 hours by transcranial color-coded Doppler, angiography, or angio–computed tomography. Functional outcome was assessed at 3 months by modified Rankin Scale. Linear and quadratic multivariate regression models were performed to determine associations between BP and functional outcome for the whole population and recanalyzed and nonrecanalyzed patients. Results— We included 674 patients; mean age was 73.28 (SD, 11.50) years. Arterial recanalization was documented in 355 (52.70%) patients. In multivariate analyses, systolic BP and diastolic BP in the first 24 hours post stroke show a J-shaped relationship with functional outcome in the total population and in the nonrecanalyzed patients. Recanalyzed patients show a linear association with functional outcome (systolic BP: odds ratio, 1.015; 95% confidence interval, 1.007–1.024; P=0.001; R2 change=0.001; P=0.412 and diastolic BP: odds ratio, 1.019; 95% confidence interval, 1.004–1.033; P=0.012; R2 change<0.001; P=0.635). Conclusions— Systemic BP in the first 24 hours after ischemic stroke influences 3-month clinical outcome. This association is dependent on the revascularization status.
Prostasin, a potential serum marker for ovarian cancer: identification through microarray technology.

BACKGROUND Screening biomarkers for ovarian cancer are needed because of its late stage at diagnosis and poor survival. We used microarray technology to identify overexpressed genes for secretory proteins as potential serum biomarkers and selected prostasin, a serine protease normally secreted by the prostate gland, for further study. METHODS RNA was isolated and pooled from three ovarian cancer cell lines and from three normal human ovarian surface epithelial (HOSE) cell lines. Complementary DNA generated from these pools was hybridized to a microarray slide, and genes overexpressed in the cancer cells were identified. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to examine prostasin gene expression in ovarian cancer and HOSE cell lines. Anti-prostasin antibodies were used to examine prostasin expression and to measure serum prostasin by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 64 case patients with ovarian cancer and in 137 control subjects. Previously determined levels of CA 125, an ovarian cancer marker, were available from about 70% of all subjects. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS Prostasin was detected by immunostaining more strongly in cancerous ovarian epithelial cells and stroma than in normal ovarian tissue. The mean level of serum prostasin was 13.7 microg/mL (95% confidence interval [CI] = 10.5 to 16.9 microg/mL) in 64 case patients with ovarian cancer and 7.5 microg/mL (95% CI = 6.6 to 8.3 microg/mL) in 137 control subjects (P<.001, after adjustment for the subject's age, year of collection, and specimen quality). In 14 of 16 case patients with both preoperative and postoperative serum samples, postoperative prostasin levels were statistically significantly lower than preoperative levels (P =.004). In 37 case patients with nonmucinous ovarian cancer and in 100 control subjects for whom levels of CA 125 and prostasin were available, the combination of markers gave a sensitivity of 92% (95% CI = 78.1% to 98.3%) and a specificity of 94% (95% CI = 87.4% to 97.7%) for detecting ovarian cancer. CONCLUSIONS Prostasin is overexpressed in epithelial ovarian cancer and should be investigated further as a screening or tumor marker, alone and in combination with CA 125.
Type III Secretion System of Aeromonas salmonicida Undermining the Host's Immune Response

Aeromonas salmonicida subsp. salmonicida is an important pathogen in salmonid aquaculture and is responsible for furunculosis, a common infectious disease in salmon, trout and char. The type-three secretion system (T3SS) is considered as the major virulence attribute of A. salmonicida. It is used by the bacterium to secrete and translocate a large number of toxins and effector proteins into the host cell. Some of these factors such as the bi-functional ADP ribosylating – GTPase activating protein AexT have been shown to have a detrimental impact on the integrity of the cell cytoskeleton, and hence contribute to impair phagocytosis. Other effector proteins that are injected to the host cell such as AopP act by inhibiting the NF-κB signalling pathway blocking the translocation of NF-κB (p65) into the nucleus, thus influencing the host’s inflammatory response. Several additional effectors that are secreted and translocated via the T3SS including Ati2, AopN and ExsE have been suggested to modulate the host’s immune response in particular by down regulating the inflammatory reaction. The analysis of the immune response in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) infected with virulent, T3SS harbouring A. salmonicida subsp. salmonicida revealed that the infection leads to a rapid and strong downregulation of several immune-relevant markers affecting both the innate and the adaptive immune response, leading to mortality of the infected fish. In contrast, infection with a T3SS deficient mutant causes a normal immune reaction and clearing of the pathogen. These findings show that T3SS-delivered effector molecules and toxins of A. salmonicida do not only impair the host’s cytoskeleton thus damaging cell physiology and phagocytosis, but also affect the transcription of critical immune markers including the shut-down of important warning signals to recognize infection and induce immune defense.
Effect of cytoarchitecture on the transport and localization of protein synthetic machinery

The emerging picture of cytoarchitecture imposes constraints on the transport and localization of several components of the protein synthetic machinery. The range in which “free” polysomes can diffuse through the cytoplasm may be restricted to about 50 nm due to obstruction by cytoskeletal barriers. Individual ribosomes and large transcripts will diffuse at least 4–10 times slower in cytoplasm than in dilute aqueous solution and may be sterically excluded from some cytoplasmic domains. The transport of these components from the nucleus to the cell periphery may be restricted to microtubule‐containing channels that traverse the excluding domains. In the peripheral cytoplasm, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, and other membrane‐bound organelles are found only in nonexcluding channels, while actin, nonmuscle filamin (ABP280), and fodrin are concentrated in excluding domains. This suggests that the cytoplasmic volume may be functionally compartmentalized by local differentiations of cytoarchitecture. Excluding compartments may play a structural role, while nonexcluding compartments are the site of vesicle traffic and protein synthesis.
Preclinical evaluation of adoptive cell therapy for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

BACKGROUND Interleukin-2 (IL-2) shows encouraging clinical results in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients, but is limited by substantial toxicity. Cell-based therapy holds a promise, but past attempts in RCC were unsuccessful. Advances in tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) generation technology and modified clinical protocols recently yielded a 50% response in refractory melanoma patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS RCC-derived TIL and tumor cells were processed by current protocols from tumor specimens in a clean laboratory. The expanded TIL were characterized and tested in functional assays. RESULTS The TIL cultures were efficiently generated and massively expanded. Virtually all the expanded cells were T-cells, but a considerable variability in the CD4/CD8 ratio and a frequent CD4-CD8-phenotype were observed. The TIL exerted cytotoxic or IFNgamma-release activities against autologous targets in major histocompatibility (MHC) class I-restricted and -independent functional patterns. The functional results were superior to former technologies. CONCLUSION Recent developments in TIL generation technology and clinical patient conditioning protocols indicate that the TIL-based approach for RCC could be revisited.
"O refúgio da escrita": Processo terapêutico da escrita em pessoas

The main goal of this work is to provide more details about the creative writing as a therapeutic process allowing that the writing works as a self-therapy to the writer. The act of writing can then be a repairing process, providing the writer the possibility to reach a deeper self-knowledge, solve and relieve psychic conflicts and organize his mental behavior. It also allows the restructuring of the writer himself. To perform this work, a qualitative analysis of the works of the great writer Fernando Pessoa was used and an interview to Pedro Sena-Lino, poet, novelist and literary critic, about the actual creative writing was made.
Power quality conditioning using Hybrid multilevel inverter as UPQC

This paper introduces Hybrid MLI as UPQC and the proposed UPQC utilizes Synchronous Reference Frame Theory as control strategy to generate reference signal. The main objective of this paper is to implement hybrid MLI as UPQC to regulate voltage sag under nonlinear balanced and unbalanced constraints as well as to compensate the harmonics, reactive and negative sequence currents. The analysis and performance are examined using MATLAB/Simulink platform.
Principal Leadership

This introductory article presents the research background for this special issue of the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership. The article includes an overview of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) as well as a description of the subsequent development of a multi-institution North American team. The primary focus of the emerging North American team has been to examine the work of principals who have successfully improved student performance in schools serving low income, high need communities. The article identifies the institutions currently participating in the project, the research that has already been published and the potential contributions to the literature that this body of work is hoping to make.
Future Directions in Vulnerability to Depression Among Youth: Integrating Risk Factors and Processes Across Multiple Levels of Analysis

Depression is a developmental phenomenon. Considerable progress has been made in describing the syndrome, establishing its prevalence and features, providing clues as to its etiology, and developing evidence-based treatment and prevention options. Despite considerable headway in distinct lines of vulnerability research, there is an explanatory gap in the field's ability to more comprehensively explain and predict who is likely to become depressed, when, and why. Still, despite clear success in predicting moderate variance for future depression, especially with empirically rigorous methods and designs, the heterogeneous and multi-determined nature of depression suggests that additional etiologies need to be included to advance knowledge on developmental pathways to depression. This paper advocates for a multiple levels of analysis approach to investigating vulnerability to depression across the lifespan and providing a more comprehensive understanding of its etiology. One example of a multiple levels of analysis model of vulnerabilities to depression is provided that integrates the most accessible, observable factors (e.g., cognitive and temperament risks), intermediate processes and endophenotypes (e.g., information-processing biases, biological stress physiology, and neural activation and connectivity), and genetic influences (e.g., candidate genes and epigenetics). Evidence for each of these factors as well as their cross-level integration is provided. Methodological and conceptual considerations important for conducting integrative, multiple levels of depression vulnerability research are discussed. Finally, translational implications for how a multiple levels of analysis perspective may confer additional leverage to reduce the global burden of depression and improve care are considered.
Two-Source Extractors Secure Against Quantum Adversaries

We initiate the study of multi-source extractors in the quantum world. In this setting, our goal is to extract random bits from two independent weak random sources, on which two quantum adversaries store a bounded amount of information. Our main result is a two-source extractor secure against quantumadversaries, with parameters closely matching the classical case and tight in several instances. Moreover, the extractor is secure even if the adversaries share entanglement. The construction is the Chor-Goldreich [5] two-source inner product extractor and its multibit variant by Dodis et al. [9]. Previously, research in this area focused on the construction of seeded extractors secure against quantum adversaries; the multi-source setting poses new challenges, among which is the presence of entanglement that could potentially break the independence of the sources.
Osteogenic and neurogenic differentiation of EGFP gene transfected neural stem cells derived from the brain of porcine fetuses at intermediate and late gestational age

The aims of this study were (i) to determine whether NSCs (neural stem cells) could be isolated from the brain of porcine fetuses at intermediate and late gestational age and (ii) to determine if these stem cells could be differentiated in vitro into osteogenic and neurogenic lineages following transfection with a reporter gene, EGFP (enhanced green fluorescence protein). The NSCs were isolated from the brains of porcine fetuses at intermediate and late gestational age and transfected with EGFP gene using lipofection. The transfected NSCs cells were induced to differentiate into cells of osteogenic and neurogenic lineages. Markers associated with NSCs and their osteogenic and neurogenic derivatives were tested by PCR. The results demonstrated that NSCs could be isolated from the brain of porcine fetus at intermediate and late gestational age and that transfected NSCs expressed EGFP and could be induced to differentiate in vitro. NSCs expressed CD‐90, Hes1, Oct4, Sox2 and Nestin, while following differentiation cells expressed markers for osteogenic (osteocalcin and osteonectin) and neurogenic cells such as astrocyte [GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein)], oligodendrocyte [GALC (galactosylceramide)] and neuron [NF (neurofilament), ENO2 (enolase 2) and MAP (microtubule‐associated protein)].
High immunity to threshold voltage variability in undoped ultra-thin FDSOI MOSFETs and its physical understanding

Sources responsible for local and inter-die threshold voltage (V<sub>t</sub>) variability in undoped ultra-thin FDSOI MOSFETs with a high-k/metal gate stack are experimentally discriminated for the first time. Charges in the gate dielectric and/or TiN gate workfunction fluctuations are determined as major contributors to the local V<sub>t</sub> variability and it is found that SOI thickness (T<sub>Si</sub>) variations have a negligible impact down to T<sub>Si</sub>=7 nm. Moreover, T<sub>Si</sub> scaling is shown to limit both local and inter-die V<sub>t</sub> variability induced by gate length fluctuations. The highest matching performance ever reported for 25 nm gate length MOSFETs is achieved (A<sub>Vt</sub>=0.95 mV.mum), demonstrating the effectiveness of the undoped ultra-thin FDSOI architecture in terms of V<sub>t</sub> variability control.
The Role of Seating Position in Group Interaction: A Review, with Applications for Group Trainers

Experimental research relating seating position to group interaction was critically reviewed. Studies have found that persons in central seating positions were able to maintain eye contact with the most group mem bers, thereby enhancing their ability to interact with the group and emerge as the leader. Tasks requiring interpersonal communication were associated with the use of close seating arrangements, and tasks requir ing independent activities were associated with distant seating ar rangements. Research on affiliative relations found that physical close ness enhances friendship formation and is a reliable sociometric index of friendship choices within groups. Final discussion centered on the prac tical implications of these findings for the group training session. It was stressed that group trainers learn to alter the seating positions of mem bers in order to facilitate the attainment of group goals.
The distribution, abundance and subcellular localization of kinesin

An antiserum which binds kinesin specifically on Western blots was used to determine the distribution and abundance of chicken kinesin by correlated immunoblotting and immunolocalization. Quantitative immunoblotting showed that the abundance of kinesin varied widely in different cell and tissue types, from 0.039% of total protein in epidermal fibroblasts to 0.309% in sympathetic neurons; of the types examined, only red blood cells lacked detectable kinesin. The molar ratio of tubulin/kinesin varied over a narrower range. To analyze the intracellular distribution of kinesin, cultured fibroblasts were fractionated by sequential extraction with saponin-, Triton X-100-, and SDS-containing buffer. Quantitative blotting of the resulting cell fractions indicated that 68% of fibroblast kinesin is in soluble form, 32% is membrane- or organelle-associated, and none is detectable in cytoskeletal fractions. To visualize this distribution, cells treated by the same extraction protocol were immunofluorescently stained with antikinesin and antitubulin. Without extraction, kinesin staining was located throughout cultured neurons and fibroblasts. However, when fibroblasts were extracted with saponin or Brij 58 before fixation, subsequent staining revealed that the remaining kinesin fraction was colocalized with interphase microtubules, but not with mitotic spindles. Prefixation extraction with Triton abolished antikinesin staining. These data suggest that kinesin may play a role in tubovesicular movement but provide no evidence for a role in mitosis.
Decentralized Adaptive Helper Selection in Multi-channel P2P Streaming Systems

In Peer-to-Peer (P2P) multi-channel live streaming, helper peers with surplus bandwidth resources act as micro-servers to compensate the server deficiencies in balancing the resources between different channel overlays. With deployment of helper level between server and peers, optimizing the user/helper topology becomes a challenging task since applying well-known reciprocity-based choking algorithms is impossible due to the one-directional nature of video streaming from helpers to users. Because of selfish behavior of peers and lack of central authority among them, selection of helpers requires coordination. In this paper, we design a distributed online helper selection mechanism which is adaptable to supply and demand pattern of various video channels. Our solution for strategic peers' exploitation from the shared resources of helpers is to guarantee the convergence to correlated equilibria (CE) among the helper selection strategies. Online convergence to the set of CE is achieved through the regret-tracking algorithm which tracks the equilibrium in the presence of stochastic dynamics of helpers' bandwidth. The resulting CE can help us select proper cooperation policies. Simulation results demonstrate that our algorithm achieves good convergence, load distribution on helpers and sustainable streaming rates for peers.
AIDS Information and Sexual Behavior on a University Campus

AbstractA questionnaire was used to assess the role of education, social background, and other factors potentially related to safer sexual practices at a university in southern California. Although most of the students had relatively accurate knowledge about AIDS, the majority were not engaging in safer sexual practices: Less than 20 % of currently sexually active students used condoms 75% of the time or more. Of these currently active students, 54% reported having a new partner within the past 3 months, and 8% had had three or more partners within the past 3 months. The present study underscores the needs for AIDS education to include more than accurate AIDS information alone, and it provides clues about what might increase the effectiveness of AIDS education.
Semi-supervised Semantic Role Labeling Using the Latent Words Language Model

Semantic Role Labeling (SRL) has proved to be a valuable tool for performing automatic analysis of natural language texts. Currently however, most systems rely on a large training set, which is manually annotated, an effort that needs to be repeated whenever different languages or a different set of semantic roles is used in a certain application. A possible solution for this problem is semi-supervised learning, where a small set of training examples is automatically expanded using unlabeled texts. We present the Latent Words Language Model, which is a language model that learns word similarities from unlabeled texts. We use these similarities for different semi-supervised SRL methods as additional features or to automatically expand a small training set. We evaluate the methods on the PropBank dataset and find that for small training sizes our best performing system achieves an error reduction of 33.27% F1-measure compared to a state-of-the-art supervised baseline.
Development of an UHF RFID Chemical Sensor Array for Battery-Less Ambient Sensing

Battery-less ultrahigh frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) tags coated by proper sensitive layers have been recently demonstrated capable to play as low-cost sensors of some volatile compounds. The issue of cross-sensitivity and the possibility to develop an array of differently coated sensors are, however, still completely open. This paper investigates, through an experimental campaign involving a general-purpose sensor-antenna transducer, the potentiality of functionalized tags in the UHF RFID band to sense a multiplicity of volatile compounds, as well as the cross-sensitivity effects of different coatings in array configuration. Four effective materials, such as Pedot:PSS, doped PSS, SWCNT, and PDAC, revealed a remarkable sensitivity to ammonia, ethanol, octane, and water. Wireless sensing may be hence performed by narrowband processing of the power response of the RFID tags as well as by the broadband extraction of features related to the resonance shift. It was finally observed how the inter-antenna coupling may affect the sensor capability of an array of UHF tags in term of increased cross-sensitivity.