Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Creating a culture of quality.

The article discusses research on quality-improvement actions and strategies that employers use to encourage employees to care about quality outcomes and to make quality a cultural value in the organization. The researchers found that leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement, and employee ownership are attributes which predict a corporate culture focused on quality. The discussion topics include making quality a leadership priority, delivering communications that appeal to workers, holding peers responsible for quality, and empowering workers to make quality decisions and to challenge directives that do not maintain or improve quality. INSET: THE FOUR ESSENTIALS OF QUALITY.
Expression of Lysophosphatidic Acid Receptor 1 and Relation with Cell Proliferation, Apoptosis, and Angiogenesis on Preneoplastic Changes Induced by Cadmium Chloride in the Rat Ventral Prostate

Background Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) is a phospholipid growth factor involved in cell proliferation, differentiation, migration, inflammation, angiogenesis, wound healing, cancer invasion, and survival. This study was directed to evaluate the immunoexpression of LPA-1, cell proliferation, apoptosis, and angiogenesis markers in preneoplastic lesions induced with cadmium chloride in rat prostate. Methods The following parameters were calculated in ventral prostate of normal rats and rats that received Cd in drinking water during 24 months: percentages of cells immunoreactive to LPA-1 (LILPA1), PCNA (LIPCNA), MCM7 (LIMCM7), ubiquitin (LIUBI), apoptotic cells (LIAPO), and p53 (LIp53); volume fraction of Bcl-2 (VFBcl-2); and length of microvessels per unit of volume (LVMV/mm3). Data were analyzed using Student's t-test and Pearson correlation test. Results The LILPA1 in dysplastic lesions and normal epithelium of Cd-treated rats was significantly higher than those in the control group. Markers of proliferation were significantly increased in dysplastic lesions, whereas some apoptotic markers were significantly decreased. No significant differences between groups were found in VFBcl-2. Dysplastic lesions showed a significant increase of LIp53. The length of microvessels per unit of volume was elevated in dysplastic acini. Statistically significant correlations were found only between LILPA1 and LIUBI. Conclusions Our results suggest that LPA-1 might be implicated in dysplastic lesions induced by cadmium chloride development. More studies are needed to confirm its potential contribution to the disease.
Backstory: Inside the Business of News

Auletta, Ken. Backstory: Inside the Business of News. New York: Penguin Press, 2003. 290 pp. $24.95. "The acorn of good journalism is humility," media reporter and critic Ken Auletta writes in the introduction of Backstoty: Inside the Business of News. However, contemporary journalism, driven by business interests and journalists with an attitude, has lost its humility. This loss is profound, he contends, because with it goes the curiosity to seek truth and the value of public service. The book is a collection of nine longform magazine articles, seven of which appeared in the New Yorker between 1993 and 2003. Its common thread is the story of what happens when journalists and media companies treat "journalism" as an obsolete craft. With few exceptions, the stories chronicle a corporate media environment dominated by brashness, ego, profits, synergy, and attitude. The collection includes profiles of contemporary media giants, including former LOJ Angeles Times Publisher Mark Willes, radio personality Don Imus, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., and former New York Times Editor Howell Raines. The story lines cover many current discussions of the news media: the changing "culture" of news organizations, the diminished "wall" between news and business, convergence and its promise of synergy, the arrogance of journalists, and the end of objectivity as a journalistic norm. A feature on Willes reveals the former LA. Times publisher as either unaware of the value of editorial independence or unconcerned about it, as he partnered each section editor with a "brand manager" to galvanize marketing awareness throughout the newsroom. Although credited (and vilified) for tearing down the "wall," Auletta reports in "Synergy City" how the Tribune Company has institutionalized a converged corporate culture where the word journalism is seldom heard. The result of the journalistic process is not a "story" but "content" that can be used for "extending the brand" of the company's print, broadcast, and online products. The explosion of "news" on cable television has encouraged brashness among journalists striving for celebrity status. Auletta reports that high-profile journalists line up to appear on Imus' politically incorrect radio show because "The Don" takes care of celebrity journalists (his "guys") by not calling them jerks on the air and promoting their personal endeavors, especially if they are willing to contribute $5,000 to lus expansive Ranch in New Mexico, a camp for children with cancer. …
Warfarin dosing in patients with impaired kidney function.

BACKGROUND In patients with kidney impairment, warfarin, a drug metabolized primarily by the cytochrome P-450 system, is initiated at similar doses and managed similarly as in the general medical population. Unfortunately, few data exist to guide dose adjustment in patients with decreased kidney function. Here, we determine the degree of warfarin dose reduction associated with kidney impairment and make recommendations for warfarin dosing. STUDY DESIGN Cross-sectional analysis. SETTING & PARTICIPANTS Long-term warfarin users followed up at anticoagulation clinics (n = 980); 708 participants from the University of Alabama (UAB) and 272 participants from the University of Chicago (UIC). PREDICTOR No/mild (estimated glomerular filtration rate [eGFR] ≥ 60 mL/min/1.73 m(2)), moderate (eGFR, 30-59 mL/min/1.73 m(2)), and severe (eGFR < 30 mL/min/1.73 m(2)) kidney impairment; CYP2C9 and VKORC1 genotype; age; race; sex; body mass; sociodemographic factors; smoking status; alcohol; vitamin K intake; comorbid conditions (eg, congestive heart failure); and drug interactions (eg, amiodarone and statins). OUTCOME & MEASUREMENT Warfarin dose (milligrams per day) was evaluated using linear regression after adjustment for clinical, demographic, and genetic factors. RESULTS Prevalences of moderate (31.8% and 27.6%) and severe kidney impairment (8.9% and 6.6%) were similar in the UAB and UIC cohorts. Warfarin dose requirements were significantly lower in patients with moderate and severe kidney impairment compared with those with no/mild kidney impairment in the UAB (P < 0.001) and UIC (P < 0.001) cohorts. Compared with patients with no/mild kidney impairment, patients with moderate kidney impairment required 9.5% lower doses (P < 0.001) and patients with severe kidney impairment required 19% lower doses (P < 0.001). LIMITATIONS No measurement of warfarin, serum albumin, vitamin K, and coagulation factors; no evaluation of other markers (eg, cystatin). CONCLUSION Moderate and severe kidney impairment were associated with a reduction in warfarin dose requirements.
European Union vs. Spam: A Legal Response

Unsolicited commercial communications now represent more than fifty per cent of the e-mail traffic in the European Union and around the world. This paper is about the legal EU approach to such an issue. Through the analysis of the evolution of the legislative framework, it aims to define, under a legal perspective, what spam is, to explain why the opt-in choice has been adopted by the EU, and to show the discipline of other related specific aspects.
The Na+/H+ exchanger Nhx1p regulates the initiation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae vacuole fusion

Nhx1p is a Na+(K+)/H+ antiporter localized at the vacuolar membrane of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Nhx1p regulates the acidification of cytosol and vacuole lumen, and is involved in membrane traffic from late endosomes to the vacuole. Deletion of the gene leads to aberrant vacuolar morphology and defective vacuolar protein sorting. These phenotypes are hallmarks of malfunctioning vacuole homeostasis and indicate that membrane fusion is probably altered. Here, we investigated the role of Nhx1p in the regulation of homotypic vacuole fusion. Vacuoles isolated from nhx1Δ yeast showed attenuated fusion. Assays configured to differentiate between the first round of fusion and ongoing rounds showed that nhx1Δ vacuoles were only defective in the first round of fusion, suggesting that Nhx1p regulates an early step in the pathway. Although fusion was impaired on nhx1Δ vacuoles, SNARE complex formation was indistinguishable from wild-type vacuoles. Fusion could be rescued by adding the soluble SNARE Vam7p. However, Vam7p only activated the first round of nhx1Δ vacuole fusion. Once fusion was initiated, nhx1Δ vacuoles appeared behave in a wild-type manner. Complementation studies showed that ion transport function was required for Nhx1p-mediated support of fusion. In addition, the weak base chloroquine restored nhx1Δ fusion to wild-type levels. Together, these data indicate that Nhx1p regulates the initiation of fusion by controlling vacuole lumen pH.
Fight Like a Butterfly: Three Critical Elements for Taking the Sting out of Professional Development.

This paper describes the need for developing, implementing and sustaining professional development (PD) designed to provide a network of coaching support for teachers, an element of independent online study and a collaborative network of peers. Leaders recognize the importance of school structure but need to further address the impact of professional development as a means of creating a culture of change and support for teacher leaders focused on student achievement and shared values.
The SMC proteins and the coming of age of the chromosome scaffold hypothesis

The mechanism of chromosome condensation is one of the classic mysteries of mitosis. A number of years ago, it was suggested that nonhistone proteins of the chromosome scaffold fraction might help chromosomes to condense, possibly by constructing a framework for the condensed structure. Recent results have shown that topoisomerase II and the SMC proteins, two abundant members of the scaffold fraction, are required for chromosome condensation and segregation during mitosis. Topoisomerase II is a well‐characterized enzyme. In contrast, nothing is yet known about the function of the SMC proteins. We summarize evidence suggesting that these proteins may be enzymes whose activity is somehow involved in the establishment and maintenance of mitotic chromosome morphology.
SemQuest: University of Houston's Semantics-based Question Answering System

This work presents, SemQuest, a questionanswering system used in the TAC 2011 guided summarization task based on semantics and extensions of a previous-developed single-document extractor. Our overall methodology includes: a data cleaning step, linguistic preprocessing among category articles, and a sentence extraction phase. A maximal marginal relevance technique, proposed by Carbonell et al., is also used in SemQuest to reduce redundancy and save space to answer as many category aspects as possible within a short summary extract.
Evaluating the Use of ABBA–BABA Statistics to Locate Introgressed Loci

Several methods have been proposed to test for introgression across genomes. One method tests for a genome-wide excess of shared derived alleles between taxa using Patterson’s D statistic, but does not establish which loci show such an excess or whether the excess is due to introgression or ancestral population structure. Several recent studies have extended the use of D by applying the statistic to small genomic regions, rather than genome-wide. Here, we use simulations and whole genome data from Heliconius butterflies to investigate the behavior of D in small genomic regions. We find that D is unreliable in this situation as it gives inflated values when effective population size is low, causing D outliers to cluster in genomic regions of reduced diversity. As an alternative, we propose a related statistic a modified version of a statistic originally developed to estimate the genome-wide fraction of admixture. is not subject to the same biases as D, and is better at identifying introgressed loci. Finally, we show that both D and outliers tend to cluster in regions of low absolute divergence (dXY), which can confound a recently proposed test for differentiating introgression from shared ancestral variation at individual loci.
FPGA-based implementation alternatives for keyed-hash message authentication code in networked embedded systems

Field-programmable gate arrays provide a very flexible implementation platform that supports the development of tamper-proof networked embedded systems. In order to achieve a secure mode of operation, many of these systems employ keyed-hash message authentication code, to provide security against intentional tampering. Since this algorithm is of high computational complexity, this paper utilizes various hardware-software co-design techniques for its implementation, and compares the results to standard software. The considered techniques vary in the degree of required design expertise and of how (software) functionalities are implemented in hardware logic.
Comparative pharmacokinetics of cefotaxime and ceftizoxime and the role of desacetylcefotaxime in the antibacterial activity of cefotaxime.

A single 15 mg/kg i.v. dose of cefotaxime (CTX) and ceftizoxime (CTZ) were given to six adult volunteers on two separate occasions in a cross-over experiment to determine the pharmacokinetics of each drug and the desacetyl metabolite of cefotaxime, desacetylcefotaxime (des-CTX). From these data, mock serum samples were prepared in human serum to simulate the concentrations of CTX, CTZ, and des-CTX at the following times postdose: 5, 10, 30, and 45 min; 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10 hr. At each of these time periods, serum bacteriostatic and bactericidal assays were performed against selected pathogens (Escherichia coli, Serratia marcescens, Enterobacter species) with similar susceptibilities to CTX and CTZ, but with varying sensitivity to des-CTX, and against one organism (Bacteroides fragilis) toward which CTX and des-CTX exhibited synergistic activity. From these studies, it was found that des-CTX can appreciably lengthen the microbiologic action of CTX when it has a high degree of inherent activity (MIC less than or equal to mcg/ml) against the organism, or when it behaves synergistically with CTX toward the bacterium, or both. It is possible that the major advance of CTX and CTZ pertains to their ability to kill many organisms at extremely low concentrations, allowing for monotherapy with low and infrequent dosing, which is very cost-effective in comparison with high and more frequent dosing required by older agents or with antibiotic combinations.
Robust Fault Diagnosis for Atmospheric Reentry Vehicles: A Case Study

This paper deals with the design of robust model-based fault detection and isolation (FDI) systems for atmospheric reentry vehicles. This work draws expertise from actions undertaken within a project at the European level, which develops a collaborative effort between the University of Bordeaux, the European Space Agency, and European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company Astrium on innovative and robust strategies for reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) autonomy. Using an H∞/H- setting, a robust residual-based scheme is developed to diagnose faults on the vehicle wing-flap actuators. This design stage is followed by an original and specific diagnosis-oriented analysis phase based on the calculation of the generalized structured singular value. The latter provides a necessary and sufficient condition for robustness and FDI fault sensitivity over the whole vehicle flight trajectory. A key feature of the proposed approach is that the coupling between the in-plane and out-of-plane vehicle motions, as well as the effects that faults could have on the guidance, navigation, and control performances, are explicitly taken into account within the design procedure. The faulty situations are selected by a prior trimmability analysis to determine those for which the remaining healthy control effectors are able to maintain the vehicle around its center of gravity. Finally, some performance indicators including detection time, required onboard computational effort, and CPU time consumption are assessed and discussed. Simulation results are based on a nonlinear benchmark of the HL-20 vehicle under realistic operational conditions during the autolanding phase. The Monte Carlo results are quite encouraging, illustrating clearly the effectiveness of the proposed technique and suggesting that this solution could be considered as a viable candidate for future RLV programs.
Brain structural changes in obstructive sleep apnea.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Determine whether obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) subjects show indications of axonal injury. DESIGN We assessed fiber integrity in OSA and control subjects with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). We acquired four whole-brain DTI series from each subject. The four series were realigned, and the diffusion tensor calculated at each voxel. Fractional anisotropy (FA), a measure of fiber integrity, was derived from the diffusion tensor, resulting in a whole brain FA "map. " The FA maps were spatially normalized, smoothed, and compared using voxel-based statistics to determine differences between OSA and control groups, with age as a covariate (P < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons). SETTING University medical center. SUBJECTS We studied 41 patients with untreated OSA (mean age +/- SD: 46.3 +/- 8.9 years; female/male: 7/34) with apnea-hypopnea index 15 to 101 (mean +/- SD: 35.7 +/- 18.1 events/hour), and 69 control subjects (mean age +/- SD: 47.5 +/- 8.79 years; female/male: 25/44). MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Multiple regions of lower FA appeared within white matter in the OSA group, and included fibers of the anterior corpus callosum, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex and cingulum bundle, right column of the fornix, portions of the frontal, ventral prefrontal, parietal and insular cortices, bilateral internal capsule, left cerebral peduncle, middle cerebellar peduncle and corticospinal tract, and deep cerebellar nuclei. CONCLUSIONS White matter is extensively affected in OSA patients; the alterations include axons linking major structures within the limbic system, pons, frontal, temporal and parietal cortices, and projections to and from the cerebellum.
A selective imaging of tinnitus.

We selectively imaged the neural correlates of tinnitus, by contrasting a condition with no phantom auditory sensation with a condition during which tinnitus is present, using a rare form of tinnitus elicited by eye movements. Using positron emission tomography (PET), we demonstrate that phantom auditory sensation increases regional cerebral blood flow bilaterally in temporo-parietal association auditory areas but not in the primary auditory cortex. These results confirm that conscious perception does not necessarily require activation in primary areas and suggest that the perceptual qualities of tinnitus, e.g. intensity, frequency and spatial localization, are represented in temporo-parietal regions. Activation in these regions is compatible with cortical processing of ascending auditory messages generated at subcortical levels.
Algebraic Multigrid (AMG) for Higher-Order Finite Elements

Two related approaches for solving linear systems that arise from a higher-order nite element discretization of elliptic partial dieren tial equations are described. The rst approach explores direct application of an algebraic-based multigrid method (AMG) to iteratively solve the linear systems that result from higher-order discretizations. While the choice of basis used on the discretization has a signican t impact on the performance of the solver, results indicate that AMG is capable of solving operators from both Poisson’s equation and a rst-order system least-squares (FOSLS) formulation of Stoke’s equation in a scalable manner, nearly independent of basis order, p, for 3 < p 8. The second approach incorporates preconditioning based on a bilinear nite element mesh overlaying the entire set of degrees of freedom in the higher-order scheme. AMG is applied to the operator based on bilinear nite elements and is used as a preconditioner in a conjugate gradient (CG) iteration to solve the algebraic system derived from the high-order discretization. This approach is also nearly independent of p. Although the total iteration count is slightly higher than using AMG accelerated by CG directly on the high-order operator, the preconditioned approach has the advantage of a straightforward matrix-free implementation of the high-order operator, thereby avoiding typically large computational and storage costs.
SSVChecker: unifying static security vulnerability detection tools in an Eclipse plug-in

The increasing complexity of secure software applications has given rise to static analysis security tools to alert developers to potential security flaws within source code. However, these static security vulnerability detection tools tend to be difficult to use and are not integrated with common software development environments. The contribution of this work is SSVChecker, an Eclipse plug-in that unifies existing static security vulnerability detection tools into a powerful, intuitive tool. We make three fundamental claims for SSVChecker. First, it contains functionality not found in other static security vulnerability detection tools (e.g., union and intersection of multiple tool results). Second, the tool can adapt to the results of user-performed analysis to prevent repeatedly reporting user-dismissed security vulnerabilities. Lastly, it operates on a user-friendly, generic framework allowing for the inclusion of future static security vulnerability detection tools. To illustrate these claims, we use SSVChecker on a security-sensitive networking package. Results show the benefits of the tool in identifying potential security vulnerabilities.
The method for breast cancer grade prediction and pathway analysis based on improved multiple kernel learning

Breast cancer histologic grade represents the morphological assessment of the tumor's malignancy and aggressiveness, which is vital in clinically planning treatment and estimating prognosis for patients. Therefore, the prediction of breast cancer grade can markedly elevate the detection of early breast cancer and efficiently guide its treatment. With the advent of high-throughput profiling technology, a large number of data of different types are rapidly generated, and each data provides its unique biological insight. Although many researches focused on cancer grade prediction, hardly most of them attempted to integrate multiple data types, by which we cannot only improve and boost results obtained from learning method, but also have a good understanding or explanation of biological issues. In this paper, we take advantage of a sophisticated supervised learning method called multiple kernel learning (MKL) to design a breast cancer grading predictor fusing heterogeneous data for classification of breast cancer histopathology. Furthermore, we modify our model by involving biological pathway information. The new model can evaluate the significance of various pathways in which differential expression genes fall between different breast cancer grades. The merits of the novel model are lucubration in bridging between omics data and various phenotypes of breast cancer grades, and providing an auxiliary method integrating omics data of cancer mechanism research. In experiments, the proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods and has abundant biological interpretation in explaining differences between breast cancer grades.