Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression and function of micro RNAs in immune cells during normal or disease state

Micro RNAs (miRNAs) are 19-24 nucleotide long non-coding RNAs that posttranscriptionally modulate gene expression. They are found in almost all species: viruses, plants, nematodes, fly, fish, mouse, human, and are implicated in a wide array of cellular and developmental processes. Microarray-based miRNA profiling brought to the discovery of miRNAs specific to different hematopoietic lineages. Furthermore, the functional assays performed in tissue cultures to discover miRNAs involved in immune responses in combination with the reports of miRNA-transgenic or miRNA-knockout mouse models has helped elucidating the miRNA roles in the development and function of immune system. Abnormal patterns of hematopoietic-specific miRNAs have been found in different types of cancer and miRNA based gene therapy is being considered as a potential technology of choice in immunological disorders and cancer. The purpose of this review is to discuss recent findings related with the expression and function of miRNAs in hematopoietic lineages.
Analysis of Dynamic Recrystallization of Ice from EBSD Orientation Mapping

We present high resolution observations of microstructure and texture evolution during dynamic recrystallization (DRX) of ice polycrystals deformed in the laboratory at high temperature (≈0.98Tm). Ice possesses a significant viscoplastic anisotropy that induces strong strain heterogeneities, which result in an early occurrence of DRX mechanisms. It is therefore a model material to explore these mechanisms. High resolution c-axis measurements at sample scale by optical techniques and full crystallographic orientation measurements by cryo-Electron Back Scattering Diffraction (EBSD) provide a solid database for analyzing the relative impact of the macroscopic imposed stress vs. the local and internal stress fields on DRX mechanisms. Analysis of misorientation gradients in the EBSD data highlights a heterogeneous dislocation distribution, which is quantified by the Nye tensor estimation. Joint analyses of the dislocation density maps and microstructural observations highlight spatial correlation between high dislocation density sites and the onset of nucleation taking place by grain-boundary bulging, subgrain rotation or by the formation of kink-bands.
Student Persistence in Career and Technical Education: A Multi-Sample, Mixed-Method Evaluation of Student Services

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the student services offered at the Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology (TCAT) institutions, getting perspectives from students, faculty, and administrators. It also served to investigate the link between student support services and persistence. Using the TCAT institutions as an exemplary model, the evaluation study provided a model to be used by similar institutions to help students persist through their career and technical education experience. The evaluation used a utilization focused approach to determine the effectiveness of student support services provided. Data were collected from student, staff, and administrators and triangulated to draw study conclusions. Both students and staff recognized the role that instructors play in student support at the TCAT institutions. Although students were able to more specifically discuss the impact of their instructors on their success, the staff members were also aware of the fact that instructors spend the most time with the students on campus and are the first-line of support for them. Neither population discussed the formal activities of student support services (i.e. financial aid, counseling, enrollment, orientation), rather they usually referred to extra-role behaviors of the student support staff. There was discrepancy when examining student awareness of the services and their use. Staff members do not seem to be aware of the fact that students may not fully understand what student support services are, nor how these services could help them. These results provide evidence that TCAT institutions are for the most part meeting the needs of their students. It is also evident that the needs of CTE students are very different from those of traditional higher education students. The current research allowed for the examination of an exemplary CTE system, and the investigation of how this system is helping their students persist.
Network Unbundling, Ownership Structure and Oligopolies: A Case Study for the Belgian Electricity Market

This paper studies how different types of unbundling – accounting, management, legal and ownership unbundling – influence the electricity wholesale market. Starting from the current market situation as observed in many countries, with imperfect competition in generation and imperfect regulation of the network operator, it is not obvious that any kind of unbundling will result in a better outcome in terms of efficiency and welfare. With the imperfections just mentioned, unbundling can create better incentives for entry in the generation market, but it can also create a double marginalisation problem. We study the effect of unbundling in a numerical model that captures two kinds of ownership interactions between the generation and the transmission sector. Passive ownership – or legal unbundling – where the generation firm simply cashes its share of the transmission firm's profit without having a direct impact on its decision process, and active ownership – or management unbundling – where the generator still has a direct influence on the transmission firm's decision process. Simulations, calibrated on Belgian electricity market data, show that the fastest road towards a more efficient electricity market is a road that implies a welfare reduction at an intermediate stage. The results also strongly suggest that the current European electricity directive, imposing legal unbundling, is not sufficient. European legislation should move further and impose ownership unbundling if a level playing field and a competitive electricity market is the objective.
Electromagnetic sensing and imaging for medical applications

Electromagnetic sensing and imaging (EMT) is an emerging biomedical imaging modality, which when matured, might present an effective supplement to current imaging technologies for non-invasive assessment of functional and pathological conditions of tissues. This paper presents the review of research results obtained by author with his colleagues and focused on various potential clinical applications of the technology.
Automatic ILP-based Firewall Insertion for Secure Application-Specific Networks-on-Chip

Next to performance, it becomes increasingly important that Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) also provide security features such as access control, authentication and availability. They are usually implemented by firewalls at the network interfaces (NIs) of the processing elements (PEs). This paper provides a more efficient way to integrate these security requirements into application-specific NoCs by inserting firewalls also between NoC routers. This approach helps to reduce the communication overhead required for the security information in the packet headers, which can consume 3% to 9% of the total communication bandwidth. It is challenging to manually find the optimal firewall configuration because an application-specific NoC has an irregular topology, which is customized for certain known application, e.g. a smartphone chip. Thus, we show how to automatically solve this problem by formulating it as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem. The solution results in firewall positions such that the communication overhead is minimized and all given security requirements are satisfied. Experiments are performed on two industrial system specifications. Compared to the solution with the firewalls at the NIs, communication overhead is reduced by up to 63%. The optimization only takes a few seconds for a standard ILP solver.
Low-Level Mark-Up and Large-scale LFG Grammar Processing

It is commonly believed that shallow mark-up techniques such as part-of-speech disambiguation or low-level phrase chunking provide useful information that can improve the performance of natural language processing systems, even those that ultimately require deeper levels of analysis. In this paper, we discuss three types of shallow mark-up: part of speech tagging, named entities, and labeled bracketing. We show how they were integrated into the ParGram LFG English grammar and report on the results of parsing the PARC700 sentences with each type of mark-up. We observed that named-entity mark-up improves both speed and accuracy and labeled brackets also can be beneficial, but that part-of-speech tags are not particularly useful.
Multidimensional Poverty: Measurement, Estimation, and Inference

Multidimensional poverty measures give rise to a host of statistical hypotheses that are of interest to applied economists and policy-makers alike. In the specific context of the generalized Alkire–Foster (Alkire and Foster, 2008) class of measures, we show that many of these hypotheses can be treated in a unified manner and also tested simultaneously using a minimum p-value approach. When applied to study the relative state of poverty among Hindus and Muslims in India, these tests reveal novel insights into the plight of the poor which are not otherwise captured by traditional univariate approaches.
Type Inference for Generic Haskell

The more expressive a type system, the more type information has to be provided in a program. Having to provide a type is sometimes a pain, but lacking expressivity is often even worse. There is a continuous struggle between expressivity and (type-)verbosity. However, even very expressive type systems allow type inference for parts of a program. Generic Haskell is an extension of Haskell that supports defining generic functions. Generic Haskell assumes that the type of a generic function is explicitly specified. This is often no problem, but sometimes it is rather painful to have to specify a type – in particular for generic functions with many dependencies – and sometimes the specified type can be generalized. In this paper, we identify three type inference problems specific to generic functions, and present (partial) solutions to each of them.
The entrepreneur in youth : an untapped resource for economic growth, social entrepreneurship, and education

Contents: Foreword 1. Finding the Entrepreneur in Youth 2. Interest in Entrepreneurship 3. Giving Back to the Community 4. Entrepreneurial Knowledge 5. Markets and Government 6. Entrepreneurship Education 7. A Longitudinal Perspective and the Major Findings 8. Implications and Extrapolations References Index
Which exercises target the gluteal muscles while minimizing activation of the tensor fascia lata? Electromyographic assessment using fine-wire electrodes.

STUDY DESIGN Controlled laboratory study, repeated-measures design. OBJECTIVES To compare hip abductor muscle activity during selected exercises using fine-wire electromyography, and to determine which exercises are best for activating the gluteus medius and the superior portion of the gluteus maximus, while minimizing activity of the tensor fascia lata (TFL). BACKGROUND Abnormal hip kinematics (ie, excessive hip adduction and internal rotation) has been linked to certain musculoskeletal disorders. The TFL is a hip abductor, but it also internally rotates the hip. As such, it may be important to select exercises that activate the gluteal hip abductors while minimizing activation of the TFL. METHODS Twenty healthy persons participated. Electromyographic signals were obtained from the gluteus medius, superior gluteus maximus, and TFL muscles using fine-wire electrodes as subjects performed 11 different exercises. Normalized electromyographic signal amplitude was compared among muscles for each exercise, using multiple 1-way repeated-measures analyses of variance. A descriptive gluteal-to-TFL muscle activation index was used to identify preferred exercises for recruiting the gluteal muscles while minimizing TFL activity. RESULTS Both gluteal muscles were significantly (P<.05) more active than the TFL in unilateral and bilateral bridging, quadruped hip extension (knee flexed and extending), the clam, sidestepping, and squatting. The gluteal-to-TFL muscle activation index ranged from 18 to 115 and was highest for the clam (115), sidestep (64), unilateral bridge (59), and both quadruped exercises (50). CONCLUSION If the goal of rehabilitation is to preferentially activate the gluteal muscles while minimizing TFL activation, then the clam, sidestep, unilateral bridge, and both quadruped hip extension exercises would appear to be the most appropriate.
A Review of Information Visualization Approaches and Interfaces to Digital Cultural Heritage Collections

After decades of digitization, the web hosts a large scale museum, consisting of millions of digital cultural objects. To balance the drawbacks of parsimonious search-centric interfaces, various approaches have been developed to enable also visual access to these collections, and to browse and explore the cultural richness of existing archives. This paper reviews information visualization approaches to digital cultural heritage collections, reflects on prominent arrangement principles and design choices for digital collection interfaces, and points out options for future research.
Freedom of Contract in an Augmented Reality: The Case of Consumer Contracts

This Article argues that freedom of contract will take on different meaning in a world in which ubiquitous information about places, goods, people, firms and contract terms is available to contracting parties anywhere, any time. In particular, our increasingly “augmented reality” calls into question leading justifications for distrusting consumer contracts - and thereby strengthens traditional understandings of freedom of contract as enforcing contracts as written. This is largely a descriptive and predictive argument: the Article aims to introduce contract law to these technologies and consider their most likely effects. It certainly has normative implications, however. Given that the vast majority of consumer contracting occurs in physical space, the introduction of ubiquitous digital information into these transactions has profound consequences for contract law.
Post-Thrombotic Syndrome after Total Hip or Knee Arthroplasty: Incidence in Patients with Asymptomatic Deep Venous Thrombosis

Purpose. To measure the risk of developing signs of post-thrombotic syndrome 15 to 24 months after total hip or knee arthroplasty in patients with asymptomatic deep venous thrombosis (DVT). Methods. A total of 85 total knee arthroplasty patients and 47 total hip arthroplasty patients were postoperatively screened for asymptomatic DVT using colour duplex ultrasound. Results. The rate of asymptomatic DVT was 37.6% (n=32) in knee patients and 34.0% (n=16) in hip patients. All 32 DVT cases in the knee group had thrombi located below the knee, whereas 6 of the 16 DVT cases in the hip group had thrombi located above the knee, the remaining 10 were below the knee. Patients with proximal thrombi were treated with warfarin for 3 months, whereas patients with distal DVT received 300 mg aspirin daily for the same period. All DVT cases were monitored for up to 12 weeks using repeated colour duplex scans. Signs of thrombus resolution were present at around 6 weeks (range, 4–12 weeks). Clot propagation was observed in 3 cases. In a mean of postoperative 18 months (range, 15–24 months), 28 of the 32 knee patients with asymptomatic DVT were available for follow-up: 11 had transient calf and ankle swelling, 6 had persistent oedema, and the remaining 11 were symptom free. 14 of the 16 hip patients with asymptomatic DVT were available for follow-up: 6 had transient calf and ankle swelling, 4 had persistent oedema, and 4 remained symptom free. 17 patients reported ongoing problems and were re-examined. Signs of mild-to-moderate post-thrombotic syndrome were recorded in 4 knee patients and 3 hip patients. Conclusions. Patients with above-knee DVT were much more likely to have post-thrombotic syndrome. Despite thromboprophylaxis with low-molecular-weight heparin, asymptomatic DVT is common after total joint arthroplasty and is responsible for the development of post-thrombotic venous insufficiency and post-thrombotic syndrome in a considerable proportion of patients. Once symptomatic or asymptomatic DVT is established, treatment appears incapable of preventing the occurrence of post-thrombotic syndrome, especially in cases of above-knee DVT. Efforts should hence concentrate on combating DVT propagation and improving DVT prevention.
Sex Determination in the First-Described Sexual Fungus

ABSTRACT The original report of sex in fungi dates 2 centuries ago to the species Syzygites megalocarpus (Mucoromycotina). The organism was subsequently used in 1904 to represent self-fertile homothallic species when the concepts of heterothallism and homothallism were developed for the fungal kingdom. In this study, two putative sex/MAT loci were identified in individual strains of S. megalocarpus, accounting for its homothallic behavior. The strains encode both of the high-mobility-group domain-containing proteins, SexM and SexP, flanked by RNA helicase and glutathione oxidoreductase genes that are found adjacent to the mating-type loci in other Mucoromycotina species. The presence of pseudogenes and the arrangement of genes suggest that the origin of homothallism in this species is from a heterothallic relative, obtained via a chromosomal rearrangement to switch two alleles into two separated loci within a single genetic background. Similar events have given rise to homothallic species from heterothallic species in ascomycete fungi, demonstrating that conserved forces shape the evolution of sex determination and speciation in highly diverged fungi.
A Conceptual Framework for Enhancing the Instructional Design Process

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMSs) are platforms which enable meaningful interaction between instructors, administrators and students with regards to Web-based and classroom training. The distinction between the two management systems lies in the added authoring functionality in LCMSs. This paper examines the differences between LMS and LCMS, compares the latest authoring tools in the market and finally presents automated instructional design in the Ontological Instructional Design ( OntoID ) authoring tool, a Java and XML -based Authoring Tool. The ultimate aim is to scaffold the instructional design process.
Reverse Engineering of eMule

eMule is a popular peer-to-peer (p2p) client which builds upon the severbased eDonkey2000 (ed2k) platform. In newer versions of eMule, lookups can also be performed over the serverless Kad-network, an implementation of a distributed hash table (DHT) called Kademlia. Since only little is known about the techniques and algorithms used by eMule, this thesis presents an analysis of the implementation of Kademlia in eMule. This includes the structure of the routing table, the connection phase with bootstrapping, searching and publishing in Kademlia, the behavior of the client if network address translation (NAT) or a firewall is used and an analysis of all message types used in Kademlia. The algorithms found are compared to the version described in the Kademlia paper. Additionally, a successful attack is presented, that removes an arbitrary keyword from the Kademlia network, using a modified version of the client.
Association between the V109G Polymorphism of the p27 Gene and the Risk and Progression of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Purpose: Abnormalities in p27 may alter cell cycle delay required for DNA repair after exposure to carcinogens. A coding exon 1 polymorphism at codon 109 (T→G) in p27 was identified and thought to have an effect on the functions of its protein. We hypothesized that this p27 T109G polymorphism is associated with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) risk. Experimental Design: We tested this hypothesis in a hospital-based case-control study of 713 patients newly diagnosed with SCCHN and 1224 cancer-free controls frequency matched to the cases by age (±5 years), sex, and smoking status. All subjects were non-Hispanic whites. We genotyped for this p27 variant using genomic DNA from each subject. Results: Compared with the p27 109VV variant, the p27 109GG variant was associated with a nonsignificantly increased risk of SCCHN [crude odds ratio (OR) = 1.29; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.88–1.90; adjusted OR = 1.20; 95% CI = 0.81–1.77], but the risk was statistically significant among men (adjusted OR = 1.55, 95% CI = 1.00–2.42), current alcohol users (adjusted OR = 1.68, 95% CI = 1.01–2.82), and patients with oral cavity cancer (adjusted OR = 1.77, 95% CI = 1.03–3.04). The p27 109GG variant was also associated with oral tumor overall stage, suggesting that it may play a role in tumor progression. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the p27 109GG variant genotype may not play a major role in the etiology of SCCHN but may be associated with an increased risk in at-risk subgroups or subsets of SCCHN, particularly oral cavity cancer and possibly tumor progression. Larger studies with oral squamous cell carcinoma are needed to verify these findings.
Prediction Markets: Does Money Matter?

The accuracy of prediction markets has been documented for both markets based on real money and those based on play money. To test how much extra accuracy can be obtained by using real money versus play money, we set up a real-world on-line experiment pitting the predictions of TradeSports.com (real money) against those of NewsFutures.com (play money) regarding American Football outcomes during the fall-winter 2003-2004 NFL season. As expected, both types of markets exhibited significant predictive powers, and remarkable performance compared to individual humans. Perhaps more surprisingly, the play-money markets performed as well as the real- money markets. We speculate that this result reflects two opposing forces: real-money markets may better motivate information discovery while play-money markets may yield more efficient information aggregation.
Performance of two-path successive relaying in the presence of inter-relay interference

Half-duplex constraint refers to the inability of a radio to transmit and receive signals simultaneously due to the hardware limitation. In cooperative communication, half duplex constraint requires orthogonal time or frequency channel use between source transmission phase and relay transmission phase. This limits the spectral efficiency of conventional relaying to half of the performance of direct transmission without relay. Two-path successive relaying has been proposed to relax this half-duplex constraint by allowing nonorthogonal transmission, where the source transmits new message continuously in every time slot. In twopath successive relaying, two relays are scheduled to assist the transmission alternately. However, the interrelay interference degrades the performance significantly since the two relays are not operating in orthogonal channel. Majority of the existing literature neglects the inter-relay interference and over estimates the performance of two-path successive relaying. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the actual interference limited performance of two-path successive relaying compared to conventional half-duplex relaying in terms of ergodic capacity. We consider several channel and system conditions to identify the optimal scheme in respective conditions. The results show that the two-path successive relaying is not always optimal if compared to the conventional half-duplex relaying in interference limited scenario.