Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The relationship of the histologic grade at the deep invasive front and the expression of Ki-67 antigen and p53 protein in oral squamous cell carcinoma.

BACKGROUND Although many histopathologic characteristics of oral squamous cell carcinoma (O-SCC) have been identified as prognostic factors, accurate, and unequivocal factors have not been clearly identified. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a potential association between the histologic grade of malignancy at the deep invasive front and the expression of Ki-67 antigen and p53 protein in O-SCC. METHODS The expression of Ki-67 antigen and p53 at the invasive tumor front area of O-SCC was examined by immunohistochemistry of archived tissue from 62 cases. The mean age of patients was 60.7 years (range: 37-89) and the male-female ratio was 1.6:1 (38 men, 24 women). There were 20, 17, 14, and 11 cases classified as stage I to stage IV, respectively. The correlation between the intensity of immunostaining for Ki-67 antigen and p53 and the histologic grade of malignancy at the deep invasive front (invasive front grade, IFG) was analyzed. The expression of Ki-67 antigen and p53 in normal oral epithelia (10 cases) was also investigated. RESULTS The mean Ki-67 labeling index (LI) in the O-SCC samples was 32.8 +/- 12.0% (n = 62). The mean total score of IFG (IFG score) was 9.1 +/- 2.7 points (n = 62). There was a significant linear correlation between the IFG score and the Ki-67 antigen (gamma = 0.651, R2 = 0.596, P < 0.0001). Of 50 tumors examined, 27 (54.0%) exhibited p53-positive nuclear immunostaining. The staining patterns for Ki-67 antigen and p53 were similar. Both Ki-67-LI and p53-positive status were significantly correlated with the IFG scores. CONCLUSION The findings of this study demonstrate that overexpression of Ki-67 antigen and p53 at the deep tumor invasive front of O-SCC is associated with histologic grade of malignancy.
Essential tyrosine residues in transport of organic cations in renal BBMV.

The effects of tyrosine modifying agents on organic cation transport in brush-border membrane vesicles prepared from rabbit renal cortex were investigated. Treatment of membranes with 7-chloro-4-nitrobenzo-2-oxa-1,3-diazole (NBD-Cl) and N-acetylimidazole reduced the initial rate of transport of N'-methylnicotinamide (NMN) significantly. The inactivation of NMN transport by NBD-Cl was concentration and time dependent. The maximal transport rate (Tmax) of NMN transport (18.4 +/- 4.3 pmol X s-1 X mg protein-1) in vesicles treated with NBD-Cl (0.15 mM) was reduced to 56% of the Tmax in the control vesicles (32.6 +/- 8.4 pmol X s-1 X mg protein-1, P less than 0.05); whereas the Km was not changed. Treatment with 2-mercaptoethanol reversed the reaction of NBD-Cl with sulfhydryl groups but did not significantly change the transport of NMN in the control or the treated membranes, suggesting that tyrosine but not sulfhydryl residues are involved. The overshoot of NMN uptake in the presence of a proton gradient was 3.38 +/- 0.67 pmol/mg protein in the untreated membranes and was reduced to 2.05 +/- 0.71 pmol/mg protein in the NBD-Cl-treated membranes (P less than 0.05). Studies with the pH-sensitive dye, acridine orange, demonstrated that NBD-Cl-treated vesicles were not leakier with respect to protons, suggesting that NBD-Cl may have specifically affected the organic cation-proton transporter. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Exercise for depression.

BACKGROUND Depression is a common and important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Depression is commonly treated with antidepressants and/or psychotherapy, but some people may prefer alternative approaches such as exercise. There are a number of theoretical reasons why exercise may improve depression. OBJECTIVES To determine the effectiveness of exercise in the treatment of depression. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched Medline, Embase, Sports Discus, PsycINFO, the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews for eligible studies in March 2007. In addition, we hand-searched several relevant journals, contacted experts in the field, searched bibliographies of retrieved articles, and performed citation searches of identified studies. We also searched www.controlled-trials.com in May 2008. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomised controlled trials in which exercise was compared to standard treatment, no treatment or a placebo treatment in adults (aged 18 and over) with depression, as defined by trial authors. We excluded trials of post-natal depression. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS We calculated effect sizes for each trial using Cohen's method and a standardised mean difference (SMD) for the overall pooled effect, using a random effects model. Where trials used a number of different tools to assess depression, we included the main outcome measure only in the meta-analysis. MAIN RESULTS Twenty-eight trials fulfilled our inclusion criteria, of which 25 provided data for meta-analyses. Randomisation was adequately concealed in a minority of studies, most did not use intention to treat analyses and most used self-reported symptoms as outcome measures. For the 23 trials (907 participants) comparing exercise with no treatment or a control intervention, the pooled SMD was -0.82 (95% CI -1.12, -0.51), indicating a large clinical effect. However, when we included only the three trials with adequate allocation concealment and intention to treat analysis and blinded outcome assessment, the pooled SMD was -0.42 (95% CI -0.88, 0.03) i.e. moderate, non-significant effect. The effect of exercise was not significantly different from that of cognitive therapy. There was insufficient data to determine risks and costs. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS Exercise seems to improve depressive symptoms in people with a diagnosis of depression, but when only methodologically robust trials are included, the effect sizes are only moderate and not statistically significant. Further, more methodologically robust trials should be performed to obtain more accurate estimates of effect sizes, and to determine risks and costs. Further systematic reviews could be performed to investigate the effect of exercise in people with dysthymia who do not fulfil diagnostic criteria for depression.
Geometric Assortative Growth Model for Small-World Networks

It has been shown that both humanly constructed and natural networks are often characterized by small-world phenomenon and assortative mixing. In this paper, we propose a geometrically growing model for small-world networks. The model displays both tunable small-world phenomenon and tunable assortativity. We obtain analytical solutions of relevant topological properties such as order, size, degree distribution, degree correlation, clustering, transitivity, and diameter. It is also worth noting that the model can be viewed as a generalization for an iterative construction of Farey graphs.
H-SVM: Hardware-Assisted Secure Virtual Machines under a Vulnerable Hypervisor

With increasing demands on cloud computing, protecting guest virtual machines (VMs) from malicious attackers has become critical to provide secure services. The current cloud security model with software-based virtualization relies on the invulnerability of the software hypervisor and its trustworthy administrator with the root permission. However, compromising the hypervisor with remote attacks or root permission grants the attackers with a full access capability to the memory and context of a guest VM. This paper proposes a HW-based approach to protect guest VMs even under an untrusted hypervisor. With the proposed mechanism, memory isolation is provided by the secure hardware, which is much less vulnerable than the software hypervisor. The proposed mechanism extends the current hardware support for memory virtualization based on nested paging with a small extra hardware cost. The hypervisor can still flexibly allocate physical memory pages to virtual machines for efficient resource management. In addition to the system design for secure virtualization, this paper presents a prototype implementation using system management mode. Although the current system management mode is not intended for security functions and thus limits the performance and complete protection, the prototype implementation proves the feasibility of the proposed design.
Book Reviews: Ontology-Based Interpretation of Natural Language by Philipp Cimiano, Christina Unger and John McCrae

For humans, understanding a natural language sentence or discourse is so effortless that we hardly ever think about it. For machines, however, the task of interpreting natural language, especially grasping meaning beyond the literal content, has proven extremely difficult and requires a large amount of background knowledge. This book focuses on the interpretation of natural language with respect to specific domain knowledge captured in ontologies. The main contribution is an approach that puts ontologies at the center of the interpretation process. This means that ontologies not only provide a formalization of domain knowledge necessary for interpretation but also support and guide the construction of meaning representations. We start with an introduction to ontologies and demonstrate how linguistic information can be attached to them by means of the ontology lexicon model lemon. These lexica then serve as basis for the automatic generation of grammars, which we use to compositionally construct meaning representations that conform with the vocabulary of an underlying ontology. As a result, the level of representational granularity is not driven by language but by the semantic distinctions made in the underlying ontology and thus by distinctions that are relevant in the context of a particular domain. We highlight some of the challenges involved in the construction of ontology-based meaning representations, and show how ontologies can be exploited for ambiguity resolution and the interpretation of temporal expressions. Finally, we present a question answering system that combines all tools and techniques introduced throughout the book in a real-world application, and sketch how the presented approach can scale to larger, multi-domain scenarios in the context of the Semantic Web.
Intentions in the brain

Cognitive neuroscientists are beginning to clarify the neural structures and circuits involved in intention recognition. The purpose of this paper is to offer a selective overview on the recent research in social neuroscience dealing with the neural mechanisms supporting the comprehension of others’ intentions. In addition, we present data from our group (Ciaramidaro et al. 2007; Walter et al. 2004; 2009) and we propose a new theoretical framework on how people read intentions. We introduce a novel theoretical distinction among varieties of intention, which differ by the nature of the private’s pursued goal (private again or social) and by the temporal dimension of the social interaction (present or future). We regard our experimentation with normal and with pathological subjects as converging evidence supporting our theoretical claims. *
Vitamin D Insufficiency: Disease or No Disease?

Vitamin D insufficiency (VDI) is widely reported. In patients with normal PTH, the diagnosis rests on increases in fractional calcium absorption (FCA) when 25(OH)D increases above 30 ng/ml. However, estimates of increased FCA after correction of VDI vary dramatically, depending on study methods. We used a dual stable calcium isotope to clarify the impact of vitamin D repletion on FCA in postmenopausal women with VDI. We hypothesized that FCA would increase with vitamin D repletion. We studied postmenopausal women with VDI [25(OH)D = 16–24 ng/ml] and an estimated calcium intake ≤1100 mg daily. Exclusion criteria included hypercalcemia, hypercalciuria, renal insufficiency, nephrolithiasis, gastrointestinal disorders, osteomalacia, prior adult fragility fracture, baseline T‐score < −3.0, and use of medications known to interfere with vitamin D or calcium metabolism. Each woman underwent inpatient FCA studies before and after correction of VDI. We used ergocalciferol 50,000 IU/d for 15 days to achieve vitamin D repletion. During each study, women consumed their typical diet. They ingested 44Ca orally with breakfast and received 42Ca intravenously. We collected urine for 24 h and measured its calcium isotope content by mass spectrometry. Eighteen women completed the study; all but two had normal PTH. During the first and second FCA studies, their mean 25(OH)D level was 22 ± 4 and 64 ± 21 ng/ml, respectively (p < 0.001). Subjects' average FCA was 24 ± 7% initially and 27 ± 6% after vitamin D repletion (p = 0.04). Thus, FCA increased by 3 ± 1% with correction of VDI. Postmenopausal women with VDI experience small FCA increments with vitamin D therapy. In existing literature, this small change in FCA does not associate with lower fracture rates or consistently higher bone mass. Future studies should ascertain whether small FCA increments favorably affect the skeleton.
Dairy Production among Small and Medium Scale Farmers in Nigeria: A Case Study of Kaduna and Kano States

A study on dairy production and processing by small and medium scale farmers was conducted in Kaduna and Kano states of Nigeria. The survey showed that dairy production is characterized by low milk production, and poor milk hygiene as a result of the use of indigenous/local breeds of dairy cattle managed under pastoral production system by Fulani herders which dominate the dairy sub-sector. There are limited availability of dairy production and processing technologies and facilities in these target states. Dairy processing and marketing are not will developed with hand milking and marketing by Fulani women being a common feature. These local women process these products into 'nono' (fermented milk) and yoghurt and market these milk products in semi-urban and urban cities and in the communities. Identified key constraints to small and medium scale dairy farming were lack of suitable improved breeds of dairy cattle, lack of modern dairy technologies and facilities, and dearth of such infrastructure as electricity and access road network. Other constraints include the poor socio-economic status of dairy farmers, poor input supply and distribution system, lack of credit facilities and insufficient institutional support. In order to promote the development and commercialization of the dairy sub-sector, it is recommended that there should be sustained provision of dairy technologies, technical and business advisory services to dairy farmers, modern market development and facilitation and capacity build/training of dairy producers and processors. There is the need for institutional and infrastructural support and development of a strong public-private partnership (PPP) for enhanced business environment and private sector participation.
A Nitric Oxide Scavenger Protects Against Pulmonary Inflammation Following Hemorrhagic Shock

Hemorrhagic shock (HS) elicits an inflammatory response characterized by increased cytokine production and recruitment of PMN which we previously found to be iNOS dependent. In this study we attempted to remove excess induced-NO by administration of the NO scavenger, NOX, with the goal of suppressing proinflammatory signaling and reducing organ damage. Rats subjected to HS (MAP = 40 mmHg for 100 min) followed by resuscitation and examined 24 h later demonstrated histological signs of lung injury including pulmonary edema as well as an 8.6-fold increase in MPO-positive PMN. These events were accompanied by a 3.9-fold increase in mRNA levels for IL-6, 3.7-fold for ICAM-1, 3.5-fold for IL-1&bgr;, and 7.3-fold for TNF&agr; compared to sham animals. Immunostaining of the lungs of shock animals demonstrated IL-6 protein localized to cells lining the luminal sides of bronchiols. These animals also demonstrated a 2-fold and 5.5-fold increase in activation of NF-&kgr;B and Stat3 (an IL-6 signaling intermediate), respectively. Administration of NOX (30 mg/kg/h beginning at 60 min of shock for total of 4.5 h) resulted in reduced lung injury as measured by a 46% reduction in PMN infiltration, a 20% decrease in wet-to-dry ratio, and improved arterial blood gases. NOX reduced proinflammatory signaling in the lung as demonstrated by a 62% decrease in NF-&kgr;B binding, 47% reduction in Stat3 binding, a reduction in mRNA expression of 48% for IL-6, 57% for ICAM-1, 67% for IL-1&bgr;, and 64% for TNF&agr;, as well as a marked reduction in the intensity of IL-6 protein staining. These data indicate that NOX prevents lung injury in this HS model, possibly through downmodulation of proinflammatory signaling and the shock-induced inflammatory response.
A 1.8-V 700-mb/s/pin 512-mb DDR-II SDRAM with on-die termination and off-chip driver calibration

A 512-Mb DDR-II SDRAM has achieved 700-Mb/s/pin operation at 1.8-V supply voltage with 0.12-/spl mu/m DRAM process. The low supply voltage presents challenges in high data rate and signal integrity. Circuit techniques such as hierarchical I/O lines, local sense amplifier, and fully shielded data lines without area penalty have provided improved data access time and, thus, high data rate can be achieved. Off-chip driver with calibrated strength and on-die termination are utilized to give sufficient signal integrity for over 533-Mb/s/pin operation.
Foot reflexology can increase vagal modulation, decrease sympathetic modulation, and lower blood pressure in healthy subjects and patients with coronary artery disease.

OBJECTIVE Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has long been used by people to postpone the aging process and to reverse disease progression. Reflexology is a CAM method that involves massage to reflex areas in the feet and hands. This study investigated the effect of foot reflexology (FR) on the autonomic nervous modulation in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) by using heart rate variability analysis. STUDY METHODS Seventeen people with angiographically patent coronary arteries and 20 patients with CAD scheduled for coronary artery bypass graft surgery were recruited as the control and CAD groups, respectively. The normalized high-frequency power (nHFP) was used as the index of vagal modulation and the normalized very low-frequency power (nVLFP) as the index of vagal withdrawal and renin-angiotensin modulation. RESULTS In both control and CAD groups, the nHFP was increased significantly whereas the nVLFP was decreased significantly 30 and 60 minutes after FR, as compared with those before FR. The systolic, diastolic, mean arterial, and pulse pressures were significantly decreased after FR in both groups of participants. In the CAD group, the percentage change in heart rate 30 and 60 minutes after FR was smaller than that in the control, and the percentage change in nVLFP 60 minutes after FR was smaller than that in the control. In conclusion, a higher vagal modulation, lower sympathetic modulation, and lower blood pressure can be observed following 60 minutes of FR in both controls and CAD patients. The magnitude of change in the autonomic nervous modulation in CAD patients was slightly smaller than that in the controls. CONCLUSION FR may be used as an efficient adjunct to the therapeutic regimen to increase the vagal modulation and decrease blood pressure in both healthy people and CAD patients.
Influences of Head Motion Regression on High-Frequency Oscillation Amplitudes of Resting-State fMRI Signals

High-frequency oscillations (HFOs, >0.1 Hz) of resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) signals have received much attention in recent years. Denoising is critical for HFO studies. Previous work indicated that head motion (HM) has remarkable influences on a variety of rs-fMRI metrics, but its influences on rs-fMRI HFOs are still unknown. In this study, we investigated the impacts of HM regression (HMR) on HFO results using a fast sampling rs-fMRI dataset. We demonstrated that apparent high-frequency (∼0.2–0.4 Hz) components existed in the HM trajectories in almost all subjects. In addition, we found that individual-level HMR could robustly reveal more between-condition (eye-open vs. eye-closed) amplitude differences in high-frequency bands. Although regression of mean framewise displacement (FD) at the group level had little impact on the results, mean FD could significantly account for inter-subject variance of HFOs even after individual-level HMR. Our findings suggest that HM artifacts should not be ignored in HFO studies, and HMR is necessary for detecting HFO between-condition differences.
Securing Harari's Authentication Scheme

Code-based authentication schemes are very fast and ef-ﬁcient for implementation in small devices. The security of these schemes and the size of underlying coding matrices are often the main barriers to their use in practice. In this paper, we remove the security ﬂaw of a classical code-based authentication scheme and modify it to achieve a secure code-based authentication scheme. We provide a formal proof of security for the modiﬁed scheme. More-over, we apply the recent improvement to reduce the size of the coding matrix and to gain an eﬃcient authentication scheme suitable for small devices.
Comparison of silver and molybdenum microfocus X-ray sources for single-crystal structure determination

A detailed comparison of single-crystal diffraction data collected with Ag Kα and Mo Kα microsources (IµS) indicates that the Ag Kα data are better when absorption is significant. Empirical corrections intended to correct for absorption also correct well for the effects of the highly focused IµS beams.
Cells adhesion/detachment control onto temperature-responsive glass coverslips modified with ultra thin poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) layer and its application of cell detachment process observed by TIRF microscopy

Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PIPAAm) was covalently grafted on glass coverslips (PIPAAm-CSs) by electron beam irradiation. Thickness and amount of the grafted polymer amount were increased with the initial monomer concentration. PIPAAm-CSs with thicker and larger amount of the grafted polymer exhibited more hydrophilic surfaces. When the monomer concentration was 5 wt%, the grafted polymer density was 0.84 mug/cm2, and cells adhered, spread on the surface at 37degC, but detached at 20degC. In contrast, when the monomer concentration was 35 wt%, the polymer density was 1.28 mug/cm2, and the surfaces were cell repellent even at 37degC. These results showed a remarkable contrast to those with temperature-responsive polymer-grafted tissue culture polystyrene dishes, since various types of cells showed temperature-dependent cell adhesion/detachment when the grafted density was around 2 mug/cm2 on these surfaces. We discuss the possible molecular mechanisms underlying this discrepancy. Furthermore, we applied PIPAAm-CS surfaces to observation of cell detachment process by using total internal reflectance fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy.
ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSE IN COLLABORATIVE LEARNING CHAT CONVERSATIONS WITH MULTIPLE PARTICIPANTS

The paper introduces a discourse model for instant messenger conversations (chats) with multiple participants, based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic theory. Some chat environments for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) support and encourage the existence of parallel discussion threads by providing explicit referencing facilities. The model considers such parallel discussion threads that inter-animate, sometimes in a polyphonic, counterpointal way. An implemented system is also presented, which analyzes such chat logs for detecting additional, implicit links among utterances and threads and, more important for CSCL, for detecting the involvement (inter-animation) of the participants in problem solving. The system begins with a NLP pipe and concludes with inter-animation identification in order to generate feedback and to propose grades for the learners. The system may be used for both English and Romanian languages.