Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Rad3 protein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae: a DNA and DNA:RNA helicase with putative RNA helicase activity

The Rad3 protein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a DNA helicase which participates in the repair of ultraviolet‐irradiated DNA and is Inhibited in the presence of DNA containing thymine dimers. This protein is also involved in mitotic recombination and spontaneous mutagenesis and is essential for cell viability in the absence of DNA damage. Furthermore, the Rad3 protein also exhibits a DNA:RNA helicase activity in which there is a significant preference for a partial DNA:RNA hybrid rather than a partial duplex DNA substrate, which suggests that this protein might be involved in DNA repair within transcriptionally active genes. Finally, the Rad3 protein contains the DEAH motif and shares high amino acid sequence similarity with the DEAD family of RNA helicase proteins, suggesting that it might also possess an RNA helicase activity.
Promoting physical activity: the new imperative for public health.

The aim of this essay is to provide an overview of initiatives designed to increase physical activity among different populations and in different settings, and to set the context for the major challenges that lie ahead. The decline in habitual physical activity with modernization, and the causal link between physical activity and health are briefly reviewed. The need to understand physical activity as a health behavior and examples of behavior change theories that have been applied to the promotion of physical activity are discussed. Diverse projects and campaigns in three countries, i.e. South Africa, Australia and the US, are highlighted. Common themes found in these physical activity initiatives include the development of a theory-driven research base, inclusion of behavioral and social scientists on multidisciplinary teams, and advocacy for environmental changes that promote physical activity. Within the next decade, research projects and national campaigns such as those described herein will yield important new findings on how to increase physical activity levels among targeted sectors of the population. The research agenda for the future includes development of both basic and applied research on physical activity, and the integration of theory across social, behavioral and biomedical disciplines.
Validation of nonrigid image registration using finite-element methods: application to breast MR images

Presents a novel method for validation of nonrigid medical image registration. This method is based on the simulation of physically plausible, biomechanical tissue deformations using finite-element methods. Applying a range of displacements to finite-element models of different patient anatomies generates model solutions which simulate gold standard deformations. From these solutions, deformed images are generated with a range of deformations typical of those likely to occur in vivo. The registration accuracy with respect to the finite-element simulations is quantified by co-registering the deformed images with the original images and comparing the recovered voxel displacements with the biomechanically simulated ones. The functionality of the validation method is demonstrated for a previously described nonrigid image registration technique based on free-form deformations using B-splines and normalized mutual information as a voxel similarity measure, with an application to contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance mammography image pairs. The exemplar nonrigid registration technique is shown to be of subvoxel accuracy on average for this particular application. The validation method presented here is an important step toward more generic simulations of biomechanically plausible tissue deformations and quantification of tissue motion recovery using nonrigid image registration. It will provide a basis for improving and comparing different nonrigid registration techniques for a diversity of medical applications, such as intrasubject tissue deformation or motion correction in the brain, liver or heart.
X-Windows Simulation of Steam Power Plants Based on Physics Principles

We have developed a simulation of the thermodynamic cycle of Rankine, frequently used by steam power plants. We adhered to the Object Oriented new archetype of programming, using C++. The simulation is based on a model we built from physics principles, with differential equations to consider time evolution of the variables. The modeling has been done by assigning a different object to each of the main subsystems (boiler, turbine, condenser, etc.). The simulation is coordinated by another object: the scheduler. We have two versions, for demonstrations on PCs, or SUN with X- Windows. The simulation is prepared for conceptual teaching, ready for technical refinements and the embedding of artificial intelligence.
Pharmacogenetics and Regulation of Human Cytochrome P450 1B1: Implications in Hormone-Mediated Tumor Metabolism and a Novel Target for Therapeutic Intervention

Several of the hormone-mediated cancers (breast, endometrial, ovarian, and prostate) represent major cancers in both incidence and mortality rates. The etiology of these cancers is in large part modulated by the hormones estrogen and testosterone. As advanced disease develops, the common treatment for these cancers is chemotherapy. Thus, genes that can alter tissue response to hormones and alter clinical response to chemotherapy are of major interest. The cytochrome P450 1B1 (CYP1B1) may be involved in disease progression and modulate the treatment in the above hormone-mediated cancers. This review will focus on the pharmacogenetics of CYP1B1 in relation to hormone-mediated cancers and provide an assessment of cancer risk based on CYP1B1 polymorphisms and expression. In addition, it will provide a summary of CYP1B1 gene regulation and expression in normal and neoplastic tissue. (Mol Cancer Res 2006;4(3):1–16)
Pathogenesis of preeclampsia

This study aimed to investigate the implication of some apoptotic and lipid peroxidation markers in preeclampsia (PE). A total of 25 women with PE and 25 age- and parity-matched normal pregnant women were enrolled in this study. The malondialdehyde (MDA) level, caspase-9 activity and the percentage of DNA fragmentation were significantly higher in placental tissue of PE than in control women. The serum level of MDA was significantly elevated in women with PE having delivery by cesarean section (CS) than in women with PE having vaginal delivery. In vitro study demonstrated that the addition of 0.5 mM Fe2+ and 0.1 mM ascorbate caused increase in the production of MDA level in placental tissue with PE than normal placentas, and vitamin E (100 µM) caused lower inhibition of in vitro lipid peroxidation in placental tissue with PE when compared with normal tissue. The activity of caspase-9 and percentage of DNA fragmentation were associated with the severity of the PE and both could differentiate between PE and control women with 88% and 100% sensitivity and 96% and 100% specificity, respectively. The activities of caspase-8 and/or -9 were positively correlated with the maternal age but only caspase-8 was negatively correlated with neonatal birth weight and placental weight. In conclusion, the elevations of MDA, caspase-9 activity and the percentage of DNA fragmentation in the placentas of women with PE implicate the involvement of lipid peroxidation and apoptosis in PE. The placenta represents a considerable source of the elevated circulating MDA in PE.
Childhood obesity, self-esteem and health-related quality of life among urban primary schools children in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.

INTRODUCTION There is limited data on childhood obesity and its impact on children from diverse cultural backgrounds. This study is aimed at determining the association between obesity, self-esteem and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among Malaysian urban primary school children of different ethnicity. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted involving 311 children aged 11-13 years from primary schools in Kuching, Sarawak. Self-esteem and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) were measured using the Lawrence Self-esteem Questionnaire (LAWSEQ) questionnaire and the Paediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL), respectively. Body weight and height were taken and body mass index for age calculated. RESULTS The prevalence of overweight and obesity among the children were 18.2% and 15.2% respectively. Parent-proxy and child self-reported PedsQL scores were higher for normal weight children compared to thin and obese children, but lower than overweight children. At the subscale level, only parent-proxy PedsQL scores in psychosocial health and emotional component were significantly different between overweight and obese children (p=0.019, p=0.02). The Self-esteem score was significantly correlated with parent and child PedsQL scores. Although obesity was associated with lower HRQOL among children, both parent and child PedsQL scores among the overweight group were higher than that for the normal weight group. Overweight and obesity did affect quality of life and self-esteem of children in this study, particularly in the areas of psychosocial and emotional health. CONCLUSION Policy makers and programme managers should take into consideration the impact of obesity on children and parents in designing intervention programmes.
To Establish Enterprise Service Model from Enterprise Business Model

One of the key activities that are needed to construct a quality service-oriented solution is the identification of its architectural elements with the right granularity. The selection of an appropriate method for identification of services from business models of an enterprise is thus quite crucial to the success of any service-oriented solution for that enterprise. Existing methods for service identification ignore required performance metrics and semantics integrity of business elements; more importantly, they focus on entity-based services while ignoring process based ones. This paper proposes a new process for identification and specification of enterprise software services and their architectural elements. A novel clustering technique, named elementary business process and business entity affinity analysis technique (EEAT), is introduced for identifying candidate architectural elements. This technique identifies each candidate service with the right granularity, while satisfying low coupling, high cohesion, and low reuse cost principles for reusable software services.
Image adaptive recovery based on compressive sensing and genetic algorithm

Aiming at the characters of compressive sensing and genetic algorithm (GA), an adaptive image recovery method is proposed in this paper. Compressive sensing can capture and represent compressible signal at a rate below the Nyquist rate, and it is possible to reconstruct signals accurately and sometimes even exactly from far fewer data than what is usually considered necessary via using an optimization process which is broadly applied in compressive imaging. GA is global numerical-optimization method which works well in the problem of optimization. Therefore, the new method proposed in this paper combines advantages of compressive sensing and GA which can adaptively look for optimal solution to ensure the best recovery performance. The experiments show that the new method not only has better recovery quality and higher PSNRs, but also can effectively avoid the premature convergence problem and achieve optimization steadily.
Planning footsteps in obstacle cluttered environments

Humanoid robots posses the unique ability to cross obstacles by stepping over or upon them. However, conventional 2D methods for robot navigation fail to exploit it and thus design trajectories only by circumventing obstacles. Recently, global algorithms have been presented that take into account this feature of humanoids. However, due to high computational complexity, most of them are very time consuming. In this paper, we illustrate our novel approach to footstep planning in obstacle cluttered environments that employs a human-like strategy to terrain traversal and report on progress towards its implementation on humanoid robot hardware. Unlike existing hardware executions of footstep planning approaches, we consider obstacles of non-zero height while planning. Specific strategies are adopted to cater for these, both in dodging obstacles by circumvention as well as in design of stepping over trajectories. Experimental results of its implementaion on HRP-2 humanoid robot are also presented.
Towards an optimal separation of space and length in resolution

Most state-of-the-art satisfiability algorithms today are variants of the DPLL procedure augmented with clause learning. The main bottleneck for such algorithms, other than the obvious one of time, is the amount of memory used. In the field of proof complexity, the resources of time and memory correspond to the length and space of resolution proofs. There has been a long line of research trying to understand these proof complexity measures, as well as relating them to the width of proofs, i.e., the size of the largest clause in the proof, which has been shown to be intimately connected with both length and space. While strong results have been proven for length and width, our understanding of space is still quite poor. For instance, it has remained open whether the fact that a formula is provable in short length implies that it is also provable in small space (which is the case for length versus width), or whether on the contrary these measures are completely unrelated in the sense that short proofs can be arbitrarily complex with respect to space. In this paper, we present some evidence that the true answer should be that the latter case holds and provide a possible roadmap for how such an optimal separation result could be obtained. We do this by proving a tight bound of Theta(√(n)) on the space needed for so-called pebbling contradictions over pyramid graphs of size n. Also, continuing the line of research initiated by (Ben-Sasson 2002) into trade-offs between different proof complexity measures, we present a simplified proof of the recent length-space trade-off result in (Hertel and Pitassi 2007), and show how our ideas can be used to prove a couple of other exponential trade-offs in resolution.
Gene Expression During Drosophila Wing Morphogenesis and Differentiation

The simple cellular composition and array of distally pointing hairs has made the Drosophila wing a favored system for studying planar polarity and the coordination of cellular and tissue level morphogenesis. We carried out a gene expression screen to identify candidate genes that functioned in wing and wing hair morphogenesis. Pupal wing RNA was isolated from tissue prior to, during, and after hair growth and used to probe Affymetrix Drosophila gene chips. We identified 435 genes whose expression changed at least fivefold during this period and 1335 whose expression changed at least twofold. As a functional validation we chose 10 genes where genetic reagents existed but where there was little or no evidence for a wing phenotype. New phenotypes were found for 9 of these genes, providing functional validation for the collection of identified genes. Among the phenotypes seen were a delay in hair initiation, defects in hair maturation, defects in cuticle formation and pigmentation, and abnormal wing hair polarity. The collection of identified genes should be a valuable data set for future studies on hair and bristle morphogenesis, cuticle synthesis, and planar polarity.
Signals and structural features involved in integral membrane protein targeting to the inner nuclear membrane

We have examined transfected cells by immunofluorescence microscopy to determine the signals and structural features required for the targeting of integral membrane proteins to the inner nuclear membrane. Lamin B receptor (LBR) is a resident protein of the nuclear envelope inner membrane that has a nucleoplasmic, amino-terminal domain and a carboxyl-terminal domain with eight putative transmembrane segments. The amino-terminal domain of LBR can target both a cytosolic protein to the nucleus and a type II integral protein to the inner nuclear membrane. Neither a nuclear localization signal (NLS) of a soluble protein, nor full-length histone H1, can target an integral protein to the inner nuclear membrane although they can target cytosolic proteins to the nucleus. The addition of an NLS to a protein normally located in the inner nuclear membrane, however, does not inhibit its targeting. When the amino-terminal domain of LBR is increased in size from approximately 22.5 to approximately 70 kD, the chimeric protein cannot reach the inner nuclear membrane. The carboxyl-terminal domain of LBR, separated from the amino-terminal domain, also concentrates in the inner nuclear membrane, demonstrating two nonoverlapping targeting signals in this protein. Signals and structural features required for the inner nuclear membrane targeting of proteins are distinct from those involved in targeting soluble polypeptides to the nucleoplasm. The structure of the nucleocytoplasmic domain of an inner nuclear membrane protein also influences targeting, possibly because of size constraints dictated by the lateral channels of the nuclear pore complexes.
Fast tracking of feature points in full-view image

This paper proposes a method of fast tracking feature points in a full-view image. The full-view image consists of a pair of fisheye sub-images. Each sub-image of the sensor has wider field of view than a hemisphere. The local region of feature points of scenes changes abruptly when the feature points move from one of the pair of fisheye sub-image to the other due to the heavy distortion of fisheye images. In this paper, the tracking of feature points is performed via a spherical model. The similarity of local region of feature points is measured by the normalized image patch of the local region on the spherical model. The computation process is carried out speedily using a look-up table. Furthermore, a good performance on matching correctness via tracking is achieved.
Image-Guided Perforator Flap Design Using Invisible Near-Infrared Light and Validation With X-Ray Angiography

Although perforator flaps mark an important conceptual change in reconstructive surgery, individual perforator vessels show a high degree of variability with respect to anatomic landmarks. We have developed an intraoperative imaging system that simultaneously displays surgical anatomy and otherwise invisible near-infrared images. In 22 adult pigs, perforating vessels were identified within seconds using this optical imaging system and systemic injection of indocyanine green. Perforator flaps were then designed based on these results, and vessel location confirmed by direct visualization and anatomic dissection. Since x-ray angiography remains the gold standard for identification of underlying vessels, conventional x-ray angiography was also performed in 8 pigs to verify the location of perforators. There was full correlation of all the perforators identified among near-infrared fluorescence angiography, x-ray angiography, and anatomic dissection. The technology we describe provides high-sensitivity real-time image guidance throughout perforator dissection, and permits patient-specific flap design.
The Effect of MRET Polymer Compound on SAR Values of RF Phones

This article is related to the proposed hypothesis and experimental data regarding the ability of defined polar polymer compound (MRETpolymer) applied to RF phones to increase the dielectric permittivity of water based solutions and to reduce the SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) values inside the “phantom head” filled with the jelly simulating muscle and brain tissues. Due to the high organizational state of fractal structures of MRET polymer compounds and the phenomenon of piezoelectricity, this polymer generates specific subtle, low frequency, non-coherent electromagnetic oscillations (optimal random field) that can affect the hydrogen lattice of the molecular structure of water and subsequently modify the electrodynamic properties of water. The increase of dielectric permittivity of water finally leads to the reduction of the absorption rate of the electromagnetic field by living tissue. The reduction of SAR values is confirmed by the research conducted in June-July of 2006 at RF Exposure Laboratory in Escondido, California. This test also confirmed that the application of MRET polymer to RF phones does not significantly affect the air measurements of RF phone signals, and subsequently does not lead to any significant distortion of transmitted RF signals.
Exploring Catholic Education In The Twenty-First Century: Teaching Practices, Technology Integration, And Educational Goals

Although Catholic schools are the largest sector of the national private and faithbased educational market, the overall student enrollment in Catholic K-12 schools has steadily declined. In order for Catholic schools to remain sustainable and competitive among the many different educational options in the twenty-first century, they must set themselves apart from other schools by offering unique learning opportunities that support twenty-first century education while promoting Catholic educational values. Recognizing the need for updated teaching practices, balanced pedagogy with Catholic educational values, and focused research on Catholic education, this two-year multiplecase study explored the instructional practices of eight middle level Catholic teachers during an initiative focused on shifting instructional strategies to support twenty-first century education supported by educational technology integration. Teaching practices were documented through participant observations, interviews, survey, and historical and field evidence. Data illuminated much variability in teachers’ interpretations of twenty-first century education, classroom practice, and levels of technology integration. All teachers encouraged creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration in their instruction, however these specific domains of learning were primarily supported through an emphasis on lower order cognitive skills and processes. Although evidence suggested consistent technology integration in classrooms, technology was primarily used to substitute or augment instruction as opposed to the transformation of teaching and learning to support twenty-first century education. Data also revealed a balance between Catholic educational values and new teaching pedagogies except in Religion classes or instruction. This finding suggested content subject culture was a confounding aspect to instructional practices. This study highlights suggestions for teacher practice that include rethinking the purpose and structure of assessment, balancing personal opinions of technology with twenty-first century instruction, and shifting teacher-student classroom roles to foster teaching and learning environments that support creativity. Furthermore, additional implications for teachers and policy makers center on collaboration as a model for student learning, and to promote a shared vision for Catholic education in the twentyfirst century. The implications for future research focus on expanding the study to include school level influencing factors and participants, centering on Religion class as the context, and the inclusion of students’ perspectives.