Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Organising servitization: an in-depth case study

Why this paper might be of interest to Alliance Partners: Transitioning towards service provision has been suggested as an advisable strategy for manufacturers responding to price competition. Servitization refers to the transition process of adding services into a goods-based offering, where the importance lies in the relationship between the corporation and the customer. Instead of viewing services and goods from a traditional point of view, servitizing companies offer bundles of products and services. This paper identifies the structural changes that are needed when a manufacturer seeks to increase its service provision. Using a longitudinal case study design, we explored the organisational changes that took place as a manufacturer shifted to service provision. The paper illustrates how different organisational tensions emerged during the shift to services and how the service teams self-organised in response to these tensions, in advance of management’s decision to re-organise.
Patch Clamp Study of Neurotransmission at Single Mammalian CNS Synapses

Single mammalian CNS neurons can be acutely isolated with adherent and functional excitatory and inhibitory synaptic nerve terminals (boutons) using a mechanical dissociation procedure without any enzyme treatment (Vorobjev, 1991; Haage & Johansson, 1998; Rhee et al., 1999). This ‘synaptic bouton’ preparation is particularly suitable for physiological and pharmacological investigations of mammalian CNS synaptic transduction mechanisms, and the properties of both the receptors, transporters, and 2nd messengers present in the presynaptic terminals (boutons), and the synaptic and extrasynaptic receptors on the postsynaptic membrane, can be studied.
The biology of fracture healing in long bones.

The healing of a fracture is one of the most remarkable of all the repair processes in the body since it results, not in a scar, but in the actual reconstitution of the injured tissue in something very like its original form. It is not to be expected therefore that the mechanisms controlling such a process will be easily elucidated and indeed they involve problems of cellular homeostasis which are among the most fundamental in biology. If it is not quite the “cunning’st pattern of excelling nature” then it is something quite close to it and a great deal of that pattern at present stands unrevealed. However, this review is primarily concerned with those features which have direct clinical relevance and it is fortunately possible to treat fractures successfully without a complete understanding of the cellular mechanisms involved without at the same time relying entirely on empiricism. A number of factors influence the healing which can be identified from both clinical and experimental work and may be taken into consideration to put treatment on a more rational basis. It is with these observations that we shall be particularly concerned and cellular mechanisms will be discussed only if they appear to have clinical implications. Such an account must necessarily include details of the healing process as it is modified by contemporary methods of treatment but first it is necessary to consider the events that occur in the healing of a simple fracture in an unsplinted long bone.
Optimizing the free distance of Error-Correcting Variable-Length Codes

This paper considers the optimization of Error-Correcting Variable-Length Codes (EC-VLC), which are a class of joint-source channel codes. The aim is to find a prefix-free codebook with the largest possible free distance for a given set of codeword lengths, ℓ = (ℓ<inf>1</inf>, ℓ<inf>2</inf>, …, ℓ<inf>M</inf>). The proposed approach consists in ordering all possible codebooks associated to ℓ on a tree, and then to apply an efficient branch-and-prune algorithm to find a codebook with maximal free distance. Three methods for building the tree of codebooks are presented and their efficiency is compared.
Oxidative stress is an early event in hydrostatic pressure induced retinal ganglion cell damage.

PURPOSE To determine whether oxidative adduct formation or heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) expression are altered in retinal ganglion cell (RGC) cultures exposed to elevated hydrostatic pressure and in a mouse model of glaucoma. METHODS Cultured RGC-5 cells were subjected to 0, 30, 60, or 100 mm Hg hydrostatic pressure for 2 hours, and the cells were harvested. Parallel experiments examined the recovery from this stress, the effect of direct 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (HNE) treatment, and the effect of pretreatment with resveratrol or quercetin. Mice were anesthetized and intraocular pressure was increased to 30, 60, or 100 mm Hg for 1 hour; then the retinas were harvested. HNE adduct formation and HO-1 expression were assessed by immunocytochemistry and immunoblotting. RESULTS Increases of HNE-protein adducts (up to 5-fold) and HO-1 expression (up to 2.5 fold) in pressure-treated RGC-5 cells were dose dependent. During recovery experiments, HNE-protein adducts continued to increase for up to 10 hours; in contrast, HO-1 expression decreased immediately. HNE, at a concentration as low as 5 muM, led to neurotoxicity in RGC-5 cells. HNE adducts and HO-1 expression increased in the mouse retina and optic nerve after acute IOP elevation up to 5.5-fold and 2-fold, respectively. Antioxidant treatment reduced the oxidative stress level in pressure-treated RGC-5 cells. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates that oxidative stress is an early event in hydrostatic pressure/IOP-induced neuronal damage. These findings support the view that oxidative damage contributes early to glaucomatous optic neuropathy.
Error performance of NOMA VLC systems

Visible light communication (VLC) systems are expected to provide remarkably high speed indoor communications and effective ubiquitous connectivity. However, the key limitation of such systems is the narrow modulation bandwidth of the light sources. Based on this, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been recently proposed as an effective method that can enhance considerably the spectral efficiency of indoor downlink VLC systems. In this context, the present work is devoted to the evaluation of the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of NOMA-based VLC systems. Specifically, a novel closed-form expression is first derived for the BER of the considered set up, by also taking into account the realistically incurred cancellation errors and interference terms. The validity of the derived expressions is verified through extensive comparisons with respective results from Monte Carlo simulations, while their algebraic representation is relatively simple, which renders them convenient to handle both analytically and numerically. This leads to meaningful insights on the behavior and performance gains achieved, thanks to the adoption of NOMA, which are particularly useful in future design and deployment of VLC systems.
Lower Bounds and Algorithm for Partially Replicated Causally Consistent Shared Memory

Distributed shared memory systems maintain multiple replicas of the shared memory locations. Maintaining causal consistency in such systems has received significant attention in the past. However, much of the previous literature focuses on full replication wherein each replica stores a copy of all the locations in the shared memory. In this paper, we investigate causal consistency in partially replicated systems, wherein each replica may store only a subset of the shared data. To achieve causal consistency, it is necessary to ensure that, before an update is performed at any given replica, all causally preceding updates must also be performed. Achieving this goal requires some mechanism to track causal dependencies. In the context of full replication, this goal is often achieved using vector timestamps, with the number of vector elements being equal to the number of replicas. Building on the past work, this paper makes three key contributions: 1. We develop lower bounds on the size of the timestamps that must be maintained in order to achieve causal consistency in partially replicated systems. The size of the timestamps is a function of the manner in which the replicas share data, and the set of replicas accessed by each client. 2. We present an algorithm to achieve causal consistency in partially replicated systems using simple vector timestamps. 3. We present some optimizations to improve the overhead of the timestamps required with partial replication.
Improving efficiency-friendliness tradeoffs of TCP in wired-wireless combined networks

In this paper, we propose a new version of TCP to improve (1) efficiency in wired-wireless combined networks with nonnegligible random packet losses, and also (2) friendliness to existing protocols, such as TCP-Reno. TCP-Westwood (TCPW) was proposed to improve efficiency in such networks; however, it is shown to be unfriendly to existing protocols under certain RTT and/or router buffer capacities. Since friendliness to existing protocols is one of the most important issues in a real network environment where different protocols coexist, we propose TCPW-BBE (TCPW with buffer and bandwidth estimation) to ensure the friendliness even under varying effective buffer capacities. Based on buffer capacity estimation mechanism, TCPW-BBE reacts more appropriately to a packet loss event, whether the loss is due to congestion or link errors. Simulation results show that TCPW-BBE maintains friendliness to TCP-Reno in networks for a broad range of buffer capacities, RTT, with/without RED routers, yet retaining the efficiency of the original TCPW.
Fish and Long-Chain &ohgr;-3 Fatty Acid Intake and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Total Mortality in Diabetic Women

Background—Although several prospective cohort studies have found an inverse association between fish consumption and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) or sudden cardiac death in the general population, limited data are available among diabetic patients. Methods and Results—We examined prospectively the association between intake of fish and &ohgr;-3 fatty acids and risk of CHD and total mortality among 5103 female nurses with diagnosed type 2 diabetes but free of cardiovascular disease or cancer at baseline. Between 1980 and 1996 (45 845 person-years of follow-up), we documented 362 incident cases of CHD (141 CHD deaths and 221 nonfatal myocardial infarctions) and 468 deaths from all causes. Compared with women who seldom consumed fish (<1 serving/mo), the relative risks (RRs) (95% CI) of CHD adjusted for age, smoking, and other established coronary risk factors were 0.70 (0.48 to 1.03) for fish consumption 1 to 3 times per month, 0.60 (0.42 to 0.85) for once per week, 0.64 (0.42 to 0.99) for 2 to 4 times per week, and 0.36 (0.20 to 0.66) for 5 or more times per week (P for trend=0.002). Higher consumption of fish was also associated with a significantly lower total mortality (multivariate RR=0.48 [0.29 to 0.80] for ≥5 times per week [P for trend=0.005]). Higher consumption of long-chain &ohgr;-3 fatty acids was associated with a trend toward lower incidence of CHD (RR=0.69 [95% CI 0.47 to 1.03], P for trend=0.10) and total mortality (RR=0.63 [95% CI, 0.45 to 0.88], P for trend=0.02). Conclusions—A higher consumption of fish and long-chain &ohgr;-3 fatty acids was associated with a lower CHD incidence and total mortality among diabetic women.
Intellectual disability: beyond IQ scores

Currently Intellectual disability (ID) is classified as a Wechsler Intelligence Scale for ChildrenFourth Edition (WISC-IV) Intelligence Quotient (IQ) below 70 and an impairment in adaptive skills during the developmental period. We argue that because so many children/adults with ID have language based deficits, mental age comparison or matching of individuals from different ID groups or to a typically developing (TD) group should be according to their overall performance on a non-verbally based measure, such as the Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM). We suggest that the RCPM should replace the commonly used WISC-IV measure of intelligence, as a means of matching groups of ID and TD group on mental age as it is a better measure of reasoning ability in children with ID who invariably have verbally based deficits. In addition, we present evidence that RCPM mental aged matched children with low functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Down Syndrome (DS), idiopathic ID use different problem solving strategies than TD children, to achieve the same overall performance on the RCPM. This is presumably due to group difference in brain impairments as evidenced by brain imaging studies. We also present evidence from the literature that working memory is a major component of successful performance on an IQ test and impairment in working memory in ID could also affect problem solving abilities on the RCPM. The theoretical and educational implications of the discrepancy between similar overall performance level on an intelligence test, but different use of strategy are also explored. * Corresponding author: 400 Burwood Rd., Bundoora, Victoria , Australia 3086, screwther@latrobe.edu. au, t +613 9214 5877, f +6139214 5525 Nahal Goharpey, David P. Crewther and Sheila G. Crewther 2
Interleukin-17-Mediated Control of Parasitemia in Experimental Trypanosoma congolense Infection in Mice

ABSTRACT BALB/c mice are highly susceptible to experimental Trypanosoma congolense infections, whereas C57BL/6 mice are relatively resistant. Infected highly susceptible BALB/c mice die of systemic inflammatory response syndrome. Because interleukin-17 (IL-17) and Th17 cells regulate inflammatory responses, we investigated their role in the pathogenesis of experimental African trypanosomiasis in mice. We show that the production of IL-17 by spleen and liver cells and the serum IL-17 level increased after T. congolense infection in mice. Interestingly, infected highly susceptible BALB/c mice produced more IL-17 and had more Th17 cells than infected relatively resistant C57BL/6 mice. Paradoxically, neutralization of IL-17 with anti-IL-17 monoclonal antibody in vivo induced higher parasitemia in both the susceptible and the relatively resistant mice. Interestingly, anti-IL-17 antibody-treated mice had higher serum levels of alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase, and the production of IL-10 and nitric oxide by liver cells was markedly decreased. Moreover, recombinant IL-17-treated mice exhibited significantly faster parasite control and lower peak parasitemia compared to control mice. Collectively, these results suggest that the IL-17/Th17 axis plays a protective role in murine experimental African trypanosomiasis.
An approach to user interactions with IoT-enabled spaces

IoT-enabled built environments have potential to improve the lives of individuals, groups, and the broader community. Internet of Things (IoT), a collection of networked and interacting embedded devices, provides the necessary infrastructure and enabling technologies to design, develop and deploy smart built environments. We describe an approach to supporting user interaction with IoT-enabled smart built environments. This approach takes advantages of affordances and embodied cognition in a physical space to model user interaction with built spaces. The corresponding implementation leverages standard protocols (MQTT) and IoT-Lite ontology to represent IoT resources, entities and services. A proof-of-concept light-control application demonstrates the approach.
Detection of altered membrane phospholipid asymmetry in subpopulations of human red blood cells using fluorescently labeled annexin V.

The phospholipids of the human red cell are distributed asymmetrically in the bilayer of the red cell membrane. In certain pathologic states, such as sickle cell anemia, phospholipid asymmetry is altered. Although several methods can be used to measure phospholipid organization, small organizational changes have been very difficult to assess. Moreover, these methods fail to identify subpopulations of cells that have lost their normal phospholipid asymmetry. Using fluorescently labeled annexin V in flow cytometry and fluorescent microscopy, we were able to identify and quantify red cells that had lost their phospholipid asymmetry in populations as small as 1 million cells. Moreover, loss of phospholipid organization in subpopulations as small as 0.1% of the total population could be identified, and individual cells could be studied by fluorescent microscopy. An excellent correlation was found between fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) analysis results using annexin V to detect red cells with phosphatidylserine (PS) on their surface and a PS-requiring prothrombinase assay using similar red cells. Cells that bound fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled annexin V could be isolated from the population using magnetic beads covered with an anti-FITC antibody. Evaluation of blood samples from patients with sickle cell anemia under oxygenated conditions demonstrated the presence of subpopulations of cells that had lost phospholipid asymmetry. While only a few red cells were labeled in normal control samples (0.21% +/- 0.12%, n = 8), significantly increased (P < .001) annexin V labeling was observed in samples from patients with sickle cell anemia (2.18% +/- 1.21%, n = 13). We conclude that loss of phospholipid asymmetry may occur in small subpopulations of red cells and that fluorescently labeled annexin V can be used to quantify and isolate these cells.
IFN-Lambda (IFN-λ) Is Expressed in a Tissue-Dependent Fashion and Primarily Acts on Epithelial Cells In Vivo

Interferons (IFN) exert antiviral, immunomodulatory and cytostatic activities. IFN-α/β (type I IFN) and IFN-λ (type III IFN) bind distinct receptors, but regulate similar sets of genes and exhibit strikingly similar biological activities. We analyzed to what extent the IFN-α/β and IFN-λ systems overlap in vivo in terms of expression and response. We observed a certain degree of tissue specificity in the production of IFN-λ. In the brain, IFN-α/β was readily produced after infection with various RNA viruses, whereas expression of IFN-λ was low in this organ. In the liver, virus infection induced the expression of both IFN-α/β and IFN-λ genes. Plasmid electrotransfer-mediated in vivo expression of individual IFN genes allowed the tissue and cell specificities of the responses to systemic IFN-α/β and IFN-λ to be compared. The response to IFN-λ correlated with expression of the α subunit of the IFN-λ receptor (IL-28Rα). The IFN-λ response was prominent in the stomach, intestine and lungs, but very low in the central nervous system and spleen. At the cellular level, the response to IFN-λ in kidney and brain was restricted to epithelial cells. In contrast, the response to IFN-α/β was observed in various cell types in these organs, and was most prominent in endothelial cells. Thus, the IFN-λ system probably evolved to specifically protect epithelia. IFN-λ might contribute to the prevention of viral invasion through skin and mucosal surfaces.
Does photodynamic therapy enhance standard antibacterial therapy in dentistry?

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess whether or not photodynamic therapy enhanced standard antibacterial therapy in dentistry. BACKGROUND DATA Photodynamic therapy when used as an adjunct to conventional periodontal therapy kills more bacteria than when conventional periodontal therapy is used alone. MATERIALS AND METHODS To address the focused question, "Does photodynamic therapy enhance killing of oral bacteria? " PubMed/MEDLINE(®) and Google Scholar databases were explored. Original human and experimental studies and studies using photodynamic therapy for killing oral bacteria were included. Letters to the Editor, historic reviews, and unpublished data were excluded. RESULTS Photodynamic therapy significantly reduces periodontopathogenic bacteria including Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Prevotella intermedia, and Porphyromonas gingivalis. Photodynamic therapy kills cariogenic bacteria (such as Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sanguis), bacteria associated with infected root canals, and those associated with periimplantitis. CONCLUSIONS Photodynamic therapy, when used as an adjunct to conventional oral disinfection protocols, enhances standard antibacterial therapy in dentistry.
Literature Review on the Effects of tDCS Coupled with Robotic Therapy in Post Stroke Upper Limb Rehabilitation

Today neurological diseases such as stroke represent one of the leading cause of long-term disability. Many research efforts have been focused on designing new and effective rehabilitation strategies. In particular, robotic treatment for upper limb stroke rehabilitation has received significant attention due to its ability to provide high-intensity and repetitive movement therapy with less effort than traditional methods. In addition, the development of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) has also demonstrated the capability of modulating brain excitability thus increasing motor performance. The combination of these two methods is expected to enhance functional and motor recovery after stroke; to this purpose, the current trends in this research field are presented and discussed through an in-depth analysis of the state-of-the-art. The heterogeneity and the restricted number of collected studies make difficult to perform a systematic review. However, the literature analysis of the published data seems to demonstrate that the association of tDCS with robotic training has the same clinical gain derived from robotic therapy alone. Future studies should investigate combined approach tailored to the individual patient's characteristics, critically evaluating the brain areas to be targeted and the induced functional changes.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Visual Cortical Gamma-Band Activity During Free Viewing of Natural Images

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Suppression of inflammatory and neuropathic pain symptoms in mice lacking the N‐type Ca2+ channel

The importance of voltage‐dependent Ca2+ channels (VDCCs) in pain transmission has been noticed gradually, as several VDCC blockers have been shown to be effective in inhibiting this process. In particular, the N‐type VDCC has attracted attention, because inhibitors of this channel are effective in various aspects of pain‐related phenomena. To understand the genuine contribution of the N‐type VDCC to the pain transmission system, we generated mice deficient in this channel by gene targeting. We report here that mice lacking N‐type VDCCs show suppressed responses to a painful stimulus that induces inflammation and show markedly reduced symptoms of neuropathic pain, which is caused by nerve injury and is known to be difficult to treat by currently available therapeutic methods. This finding clearly demonstrates that the N‐type VDCC is essential for development of neuropathic pain and, therefore, controlling the activity of this channel can be of great importance for the management of neuropathic pain.