Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Therapeutic concentrations of cyclosporine A, but not FK506, increase P-glycoprotein expression in endothelial and renal tubule cells.

BACKGROUND The immunosuppressive drugs cyclosporine A (CsA) and tacrolimus (FK506) are extruded from cells by the multidrug resistance P-glycoprotein (P-gp), an efflux pump for drugs and xenobiotics, which may limit their therapeutic effectiveness and/or incidence of toxic side effects. In the present study, we investigated the effect of therapeutic concentrations of CsA and FK506 on the expression of P-gp in cultured endothelial and proximal tubule cells. METHODS P-gp expression in human arterial endothelial (HAEC) and rat proximal tubule cells (RPTC) was determined by immunoblotting and immunocytochemistry, and correlated with P-gp-mediated transport by measuring the intracellular accumulation of the fluorescent probe calcein. RESULTS Following incubation of HAEC with therapeutic concentrations of 0.1 to 1.6 microM CsA up to seven days, P-gp expression increased in a time- and concentration-dependent manner, maximally to 291 +/- 42% of controls with 0.8 microM CsA for seven days. Similar effects of CsA were observed in RPTC. In contrast, therapeutic concentrations of FK506 (0.01 to 0.2 microM up to 7 days) did not change P-gp expression in either cell type, though at higher, supratherapeutic concentrations of FK506 (0.6 to 1.2 microM) P-gp expression was also increased. Immunocytochemistry revealed increased P-gp expression in the plasma membrane of HAEC and RPTC treated with 0.8 microM CsA, which was reflected by a decrease of P-gp-mediated accumulation of calcein in both cell types. CONCLUSIONS The data suggest that the induction of P-gp expression in HAEC and RPTC at concentrations of CsA or FK506 above 0.5 microM is part of the protective answer of cells to toxic concentrations of the drugs and could therefore interfere with the therapeutic effectiveness of CsA in vivo.
A Novel Dynamic Resource Allocation Using Virtual Machines for Cloud Computing

The main potential of cloud computing is that it's capable of dealing with a tremendous quantity of developing work in a predestined manner for the utilization of the trade consumers. The foremost enabling science for cloud computing is virtualization which generalize the physical infrastructure and makes it effortless to use and manage. In this paper, we present a procedure that makes use of virtualization technology to allocate data center assets dynamically based on utility demands and support green computing by optimizing the quantity of servers in use. We introduce the proposal of “skewness” to measure the unevenness in the multi-dimensional resource utilization of a server. By way of minimizing skewness, we will combine extraordinary varieties of workloads effectively and strengthen the overall utilization of server resources. We advance a suite of heuristics that prevent overload in the method without problems while saving energy used. Index Terms — Cloud computing; Green computing; Resource; Skewness; Virtual machine.
Body composition in cachexia resulting from malignant and non‐malignant diseases

The body composition of 23 patients with cachexia resulting from malignant or benign inflammatory disease was studied. Skinfold thickness and radioisotope tracer measurements enabled us to estimate total body fat, lean body mass, the ratio of fat loss to lean body loss, erythrocyte and plasma volumes, total body water, extra‐, and intracellular water volumes, total body potassium, and intracellular potassium concentration. The total body fat and lean body mass information suggests that the body composition in cancerous cachexia differs from that in cachexia caused by benign inflammatory disease, in that lean tissue appears to be better conserved in the former. The radioactive tracer studies showed that the cachectic patients were anemic, potassium‐deficient, and overhydrated; however, fluid partitioning into extra‐ and intracellular compartments was normal.
PCR-mediated detection of acidophilic, bioleaching-associated bacteria

The detection of acidophilic microorganisms from mining environments by culture methods is time consuming and unreliable. Several PCR approaches were developed to amplify small-subunit rRNA sequences from the DNA of six bacterial phylotypes associated with acidic mining environments, permitting the detection of the target DNA at concentrations as low as 10 fg.
Annotating Qualia Relations in Italian and French Complex Nominals

The goal of this paper is to provide an annotation scheme for compounds based on generative lexicon theory (GL, Pustejovsky, 1995; Bassac and Bouillon, 2001). This scheme has been tested on a set of compounds automatically extracted from the Europarl corpus (Koehn, 2005) both in Italian and French. The motivation is twofold. On the one hand, it should help refine existing compound classifications and better explain lexicalization in both languages. On the other hand, we hope that the extracted generalizations can be used in NLP, for example for improving MT systems or for query reformulation (Claveau, 2003). In this paper, we focus on the annotation scheme and its on going evaluation.
How the Fly Balances Its Ability to Combat Different Pathogens

Health is a multidimensional landscape. If we just consider the host, there are many outputs that interest us: evolutionary fitness determining parameters like fecundity, survival and pathogen clearance as well as medically important health parameters like sleep, energy stores and appetite. Hosts use a variety of effector pathways to fight infections and these effectors are brought to bear differentially. Each pathogen causes a different disease as they have distinct virulence factors and niches; they each warp the health landscape in unique ways. Therefore, mutations affecting immunity can have complex phenotypes and distinct effects on each pathogen. Here we describe how two components of the fly's immune response, melanization and phagocytosis, contribute to the health landscape generated by the transcription factor ets21c (CG2914) and its putative effector, the signaling molecule wntD (CG8458). To probe the landscape, we infect with two pathogens: Listeria monocytogenes, which primarily lives intracellularly, and Streptococcus pneumoniae, which is an extracellular pathogen. Using the diversity of phenotypes generated by these mutants, we propose that survival during a L. monocytogenes infection is mediated by a combination of two host mechanisms: phagocytic activity and melanization; while survival during a S. pneumoniae infection is determined by phagocytic activity. In addition, increased phagocytic activity is beneficial during S. pneumoniae infection but detrimental during L. monocytogenes infection, demonstrating an inherent trade-off in the immune response.
Neuroglobin Expression in Ischemic Stroke

Background and Purpose— We investigated whether neuroglobin, a neuronal protein that protects neurons from hypoxic–ischemic injury, is upregulated in ischemic stroke. Methods— Neuroglobin immunoreactivity was measured in brain tissue from control subjects and patients with ischemic stroke. Results— Neuroglobin was detected in several brain areas, and its expression was increased in the cortical peri-infarct region after stroke. Conclusions— Ischemic stroke increases expression of the neuroprotective protein neuroglobin, suggesting neuroglobin may represent a novel target for stroke therapy.
Real-time optical character recognition on field programmable gate array for automatic number plate recognition system

The last main stage in an automatic number plate recognition system (ANPRs) is optical character recognition (OCR), where the number plate characters on the number plate image are converted into encoded texts. In this study, an artificial neural network-based OCR algorithm for ANPR application and its efficient architecture are presented. The proposed architecture has been successfully implemented and tested using the Mentor Graphics RC240 field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) development board equipped with a 4M Gates Xilinx Virtex-4 LX40. A database of 3570 UK binary character images have been used for testing the performance of the proposed architecture. Results achieved have shown that the proposed architecture can meet the real-time requirement of an ANPR system and can process a character image in 0.7 ms with 97.3% successful character recognition rate and consumes only 23% of the available area in the used FPGA.
Acquiring Organizational Legitimacy Through Illegitimate Actions: A Marriage of Institutional and Impression Management Theories

This article links institutional and impression management perspectives in a process model of how controversial and possibly unlawful actions of members of organizations can lead to endorsement and support from key constituencies. This model is grounded in interview, archival, and observational data concerning eight illegitimate actions attributed to members of two social movement organizations. We found that institutional conformity and decoupling illegitimate activities from legitimate structures facilitated spokespersons’ efforts to use impression management tactics that shifted attention away from the controversial actions and toward the socially desirable goals endorsed by broader constituencies. As a result, these organizations used publicity generated by illegitimate actions to obtain endorsement and support from those constituencies. We discuss the implications of the model for other kinds of organizations and derive testable propositions. We also consider implications for institutional and impres.
Third Research Study on the Provision of the EMDR Integrative Group Treatment Protocol with Child Victims of Severe Interpersonal Violence

This study presents the results of the application of the EMDR Integrative Group Treatment Protocol and Individual EMDR Therapy Protocol, to a total of 16 children (2 boys and 14 girls), aged between 9 to 13 years old, who attended a trauma recovery camp. All had been victims of severe interpersonal violence. The 14 girls had been victims of physical violence and rape; some for long periods of time, even years, by family members or acquaintances. One of the girls, as young as 11 years old, contracted a sexually transmitted disease as a result of the rape; another girl, besides of being repeatedly raped by her political grandfather, was blamed by him, for the rape he perpetrated on the younger sister; arguing she was responsible for looking after her. Regarding the two boys, in addition of being victims of physical and emotional violence; one of them witnessed how his father and cousin raped a female cousin; and the other one witnessed the attempted suicide of his father. All children were living with their families, characterized by being dysfunctional (e.g., knife fights between parents). To analyze the effects of treatment, a General Linear Model was used. There were analyzed three measures (pre-treatment, post-treatment and follow-up), obtained in the Subjective Units of Disturbance (SUD) and the Short PTSD Rating Interview (SPRINT) scores. The results showed a statistically significant effect of treatment in the betweensubjects test for both the SUD and the SPRINT scores: (F [1,15] = 146.85, p < .000 and F [ 1,14 ] = 238.56 , p < .000, respectively. The statistical one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) on the effects of treatment in all groups participating in the trauma recovery camps from 2011 to 2013, showed that after EMDR Therapy, participants had no significant differences in the SPRINT scores, this results denotes that the EMDR therapy had similar beneficial effect for all participants. Further research on the application of Group and Individual EMDR Therapy, as part of a multicomponent phase-based treatment for children and adolescents victims of severe interpersonal violence is needed.
Cognitive Load in Cross‐Modal Dual‐Task Processing

Summary Unitary-resource models posit a collective attentional resource responsible for sustaining information processing across all modalities. In contrast, multiple-resource models presume a system of modality-independent resources. The two models predict similar within-modal performance, but seemingly contradictory cross-modal performance. Discordant outcomes in past research are here hypothesized to result from inconsistent levels of cognitive load imposed within experimental tasks. Participants monitored two simultaneously presented alphabetic letter arrays consisting of the serial presentation of a target and multiple distractors. The dual-task design required the identification of targets in within-modal and cross-modal trials. Cognitive load was manipulated by altering the presentation rate of the letters. While cross-modal performance was generally superior and cognitive load was associated with decreasing performance, the cross-modal advantage prominent at low levels of cognitive load was absent under high cognitive load. Therefore, neither resource model can alone account for dual-task processing, suggesting the role of a hierarchical resource model. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Chitin in Diatoms and Its Association with the Cell Wall

ABSTRACT Chitin is a globally abundant polymer widely distributed throughout eukaryotes that has been well characterized in only a few lineages. Diatoms are members of the eukaryotic lineage of stramenopiles. Of the hundreds of diatom genera, two produce long fibers of chitin that extrude through their cell walls of silica. We identify and describe here genes encoding putative chitin synthases in a variety of additional diatom genera, indicating that the ability to produce chitin is more widespread and likely plays a more central role in diatom biology than previously considered. Diatom chitin synthases fall into four phylogenetic clades. Protein domain predictions and differential gene expression patterns provide evidence that chitin synthases have multiple functions within a diatom cell. Thalassiosira pseudonana possesses six genes encoding three types of chitin synthases. Transcript abundance of the gene encoding one of these chitin synthase types increases when cells resume division after short-term silicic acid starvation and during short-term limitation by silicic acid or iron, two nutrient conditions connected in the environment and known to affect the cell wall. During long-term silicic acid starvation transcript abundance of this gene and one additional chitin synthase gene increased at the same time a chitin-binding lectin localized to the girdle band region of the cell wall. Together, these results suggest that the ability to produce chitin is more widespread in diatoms than previously thought and that a subset of the chitin produced by diatoms is associated with the cell wall.
CELL MOBILIZATION BY HYPERBARIC OXYGEN

We hypothesized that exposure to hyperbaric oxygen (HBO2) would mobilize stem/progenitor cells from the bone marrow by a nitric oxide (NO) dependent mechanism. The population of CD34+ cells in the peripheral circulation of humans doubled in response to a single exposure to 2.0 atmospheres absolute (ATA) O2 for 2 hours. Over a course of twenty treatments, circulating CD34+ cells increased eight-fold, although the over-all circulating white cell count was not significantly increased. The number of colony-forming cells (CFCs) increased from 16 + 2 to 26 + 3 CFCs/100,000 monocytes plated. Elevations in CFCs were entirely due to the CD34+ subpopulation, but increased cell growth only occurred in samples obtained immediately posttreatment. A high proportion of progeny cells express receptors for vascular endothelial growth factor-2 and for stromal derived growth factor. In mice, HBO2 increased circulating stem cell factor by 50%, increased the number of circulating cells expressing stem cell antigen-1 and CD34 by 3.4-fold, and doubled the number of CFCs. Bone marrow NO concentration increased by 1008 + 255 nM in association with HBO2. Stem cell mobilization did not occur in knock out mice lacking genes for endothelial NO synthase. Moreover, pre-treatment of wild type mice with a nitric oxide (NO) synthase inhibitor prevented the HBO2-induced elevation in stem cell factor and circulating stem cells. We conclude that HBO2 mobilizes stem/progenitor cells by stimulating NO synthesis.
Knot signature functions are independent

A Seifert matrix is a square integral matrix V satisfying det(V-V T )=±1. To such a matrix and unit complex number ω there corresponds a signature, σ ω (V) = sign((1 - ω)V + (1 - ω)V T ). Let S denote the set of unit complex numbers with positive imaginary part. We show that {σ ω } ω ∈ S is linearly independent, viewed as a set of functions on the set of all Seifert matrices. If V is metabolic, then σ ω (V) = 0 unless ω is a root of the Alexander polynomial, Δ V (t) = det(V - tV T ). Let A denote the set of all unit roots of all Alexander polynomials with positive imaginary part. We show that {σ ω } ω ∈ A is linearly independent when viewed as a set of functions on the set of all metabolic Seifert matrices. To each knot K C S 3 one can associate a Seifert matrix V K , and σ ω (V K ) induces a knot invariant. Topological applications of our results include a proof that the set of functions {σ ω } ω ∈ S is linearly independent on the set of all knots and that the set of two-sided averaged signature functions, {σ* ω } ω ∈ S , forms a linearly independent set of homomorphisms on the knot concordance group. Also, if v ∈ S is the root of some Alexander polynomial, then there is a slice knot K whose signature function σ ω (K) is nontrivial only at ω = v and ω = v. We demonstrate that the results extend to the higher-dimensional setting.
Study on Oscillations During Short Circuit of MW-Scale IGBT Power Modules by Means of a 6-kA/1.1-kV Nondestructive Testing System

This paper uses a 6-kA/1.1-kV nondestructive testing system for the analysis of the short-circuit behavior of insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) power modules. A field-programmable gate array enables the definition of control signals to an accuracy of 10 ns. Multiple 1.7-kV/1-kA IGBT power modules displayed severe divergent oscillations, which were subsequently characterized. Experimental tests indicate that nonnegligible circuit stray inductance plays an important role in the divergent oscillations. In addition, the temperature dependence of the transconductance is proposed as an important element in triggering for the oscillations.
HERA: Design Framework for Decentralized Distributed Virtual Environments and Games

Distributed Virtual Environments such as Massive Multiplayer Online Games or Virtual Worlds have become very popular in the last few years and a more substantial surge in popularity and use is expected. Because of the huge number of users most of these environments have to cope with scalability problems. The change of the basic infrastructure from a centralized client-server to a decentralized peer-to-peer architecture mitigates these problems. However it makes the handling of management and consistency issues more complicated. To address these issues we have developed HERA - a design framework for decentralized distributed virtual environments. In this paper we present HERA's Area of Interest handling as well as its consistency provision and introduce a 2D online game application based on the HERA framework.
1 Third Year Report

The aim of my PhD research is focused on Text Mining, one major research school in Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD), and in particular language-independent Documentbase Pre-processing (DPP) for classification / categorisation of documents, noted as Text Classification (TC), using novel algorithms for the identification of hidden patterns, rules, regularities and/or trends within these documents. Significant techniques in Data Mining, the classical research school in KDD that parallels to Text Mining, are involved to support this research, especially when dealing with a very large documentbase, such as Classification Rule Mining (CRM), Association Rule Mining (ARM), etc. One possible way to understand the framework of TC is to split it as DPP plus CRM. When applying Classification Association Rule Mining (CARM), a well established intersection between CRM and ARM, in TC, (1) the large volume of textual data (i.e., a given documentbase usually consists of more than 10,000 documents, where each document contains hundreds of words) can be handled, and (2) it is possible to deal with a small number of noisy data (i.e., a number of misspelling and/or cross-language words in documents). Based on (2), this approach can be identified as language-insensitive or language-independent in some angles, while acknowledging that such alternative approaches exist. With regards to the CARM based approach, developing a TC oriented Language-independent DPP (TC-LI-DPP) approach will consequently result an “almighty” TC approach, which have a general applicability regardless of the language(s) in which the documentbase to be classified are presented. In this report (a report that details what have been done within the third year of my PhD research), a number of language-independent DPP techniques, to support single-label Nclass TC, are described and compared. The discussion focuses on the vector space / “bag-of-*” model while acknowledging that alternative approaches to languageindependent DPP exist. A simple but effective statistical key / significant word identification approach is proposed which in turn is coupled with a number of phrase identification mechanisms. The emphasis in all cases is on language-independence so that the techniques described have a general applicability regardless of the language(s) in which the documentbase to be mined are presented. PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.software-partners.co.uk
Recognition of Arabic Characters

A statistical approach for the recognition of Arabic characters is introduced. As a first step, the character is segmented into primary and secondary parts (dots and zigzags). The secondary parts of the character are then isolated and identified separately, thereby reducing the number of classes from 28 to 18. The moments of the horizontal and vertical projections of the remaining primary characters are then calculated and normalized with respect to the zero-order moment. Simple measures of the shape are obtained from the normalized moments. A 9-D feature vector is obtained for each character. Classification is accomplished using quadratic discriminant functions. The approach was evaluated using isolated, handwritten, and printed characters from a database established for this purpose. The results indicate that the technique offers better classification rates in comparison with existing methods. >
Antimetastatic activity of novel ruthenium (III) pyridine complexes

Ruthenium‐based complexes have emerged as promising anticancer, especially antimetastatic agents. Among them, NAMI‐A (trans‐[Ru(III)Cl4 (DMSO)(Im)][ImH], Im = imidazole, DMSO = dimethyl sulfoxide) was well studied. In this study, we studied the antimetastatic activities of two novel NAMI‐A derivatives containing pyridine, G26b and G94a, using cultured cells and tumor‐bearing mice. Same to NAMI‐A, these two complexes displayed little direct cytotoxicity to the cancer cells in vitro and in vivo, but they, especially G26b, significantly reduced the occurrence and development of lung metastases in mice bearing the 4T1 mammary carcinoma. In vitro, these two complexes displayed significant suppressive effect on invasion and migration of cells and tube formation of human umbilical vein endothelial cell, to the same extent of NAMI‐A. The transcription of important molecules involved in metastasis, matrix metalloproteinase 2 and 9 (MMP‐2 and ‐9), and vascular endothelial growth factor, was suppressed by the two complexes, as well as NAMI‐A. Plasma atomic emission spectrometer showed G26b had a longer Ru‐elimination time in lung, which may be a reason for better antimetastatic effect of G26b than NAMI‐A. Our results have demonstrated that G26b is a more effective antimetastatic agent than NAMI‐A.