Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of USPIO-enhanced MRI and Gd-DTPA enhancement during the subacute stage of focal cerebral ischemia in rats

Background Being one class of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents, ultrasmall superparamagnetic particles of iron oxides (USPIO) bear the potential to study neuroinflammation following stroke, but there is still debate over whether the iron oxides particles may enter the brain tissue passively over a damaged blood–brain barrier (BBB). Purpose To compare the enhancement patterns of USPIO and gadopentate dimeglumine (Gd-DTPA) during the subacute stage of focal cerebral ischemia, to examine the relationship between USPIO enhancement and BBB disturbance, as well as with neuroinflammatory cell response. Material and Methods Multiple MR sequences were obtained on days 3 and 6 after transient middle cerebral artery occlusion induced in rats with and without the application of USPIO and Gd-DTPA. The enhancement patterns of the two contrast agents were compared and correlated to histology, including IgG for BBB permeability, Prussian Blue staining for iron particle detection, and CD68 immunohistochemistry staining to identify macrophage/microglia. Results Gd-DTPA enhancement depicted BBB breakdown being in line with IgG leakage. The USPIO enhanced images demonstrated both diffuse and focal signal alteration in ischemic lesions. The diffuse enhanced pattern had a similar spatial and temporal profile as with Gd-DTPA enhancement. In addition, focal enhanced signal loss was visible on T1-, T2-, and T2*-weighted images, with a peak tendency of MR signal loss, macrophage/microglia concentration and iron particle accumulation at a later phase of the study. Conclusion After focal cerebral ischemia, Gd-DTPA-enhanced MRI showed a higher sensitivity in detecting BBB alterations than did USPIO enhancement. USPIO provided complementary information regarding inflammatory cell activity in neuroinflammatory to cerebral ischemia that had not been visualized using conventional Gd-DTPA. The assessment using multiple MR parameters may identify intracellular and extracellular USPIO in vivo.
Pathological Teasing and Bullying Turned Deadly: Shooters and Suicide

Abstract Bullying, a form of interpersonal violence, has emerged in the 21st century as an important public health issue. Bullying during childhood and adolescence is a common problem and occurs almost universally. It may be viewed on a continuum as a relationship problem in which power and aggression are inflicted on a vulnerable person to cause distress. However, teasing and bullying can turn deadly. A deeply troubled youth, after years of chronic bullying, may decide he has no alternative but suicide. The Daniel Scruggs case is one such example. Alternatively, the troubled youth may be attracted to the violent hero presented in the media that demonstrates his power via weapons as in the cases of school shootings. Why does bullying continue? Some of the problem is the belief that bullying is simply a part of growing up; adults who believe this are often unwilling to intervene. Bullies are not always easy to identify, as they are adept at concealing bullying behavior. Anti-bullying school programs have shown promise in reducing unacceptable behaviors. The next step is to educate teachers, law enforcement, and mental health staff members to identify the red flags of teasing and bullying that indicate an at-risk youth for either suicide or homicide.
Enhancing intrusion detection in wireless networks using radio frequency fingerprinting

Media access control (MAC) address spoofing can result in the unauthorized use of network resources. This paper demonstrates a novel approach, which incorporates radio frequency fingerprinting (RFF) into a wireless intrusion de tection system (IDS), for detecting this attack. RFF is a technique that is used to uniquely identify a transceiver based on the transient portion of the signal it generates. Moreover, the success rate of a wireless IDS is also improved by correlating several observations in time, using a Bayesian filter. Simulation results, with an average success rate of (94-100%), support the feasibility of employing RFF and Bayesian filtering techniques to successfully address the aforementioned problem.
Role of Heparanase-Driven Inflammatory Cascade in Pathogenesis of Diabetic Nephropathy

Renal involvement is a major medical concern in the diabetic population, and with the global epidemic of diabetes, diabetic nephropathy (DN) became the leading cause of end-stage renal failure in the Western world. Heparanase (the only known mammalian endoglycosidase that cleaves heparan sulfate) is essentially involved in DN pathogenesis. Nevertheless, the exact mode of heparanase action in sustaining the pathology of DN remains unclear. Here we describe a previously unrecognized combinatorial circuit of heparanase-driven molecular events promoting chronic inflammation and renal injury in individuals with DN. These events are fueled by heterotypic interactions among glomerular, tubular, and immune cell compartments, as well as diabetic milieu (DM) components. We found that under diabetic conditions latent heparanase, overexpressed by glomerular cells and posttranslationally activated by cathepsin L of tubular origin, sustains continuous activation of kidney-damaging macrophages by DM components, thus creating chronic inflammatory conditions and fostering macrophage-mediated renal injury. Elucidation of the mechanism underlying the enzyme action in diabetic kidney damage is critically important for the proper design and future implementation of heparanase-targeting therapeutic interventions (which are currently under intensive development and clinical testing) in individuals with DN and perhaps other complications of diabetes.
Towards Verification of Artificial Neural Networks

We consider the safety verification of controllers obtained via machine learning. This is an important problem as the employed machine learning techniques work well in practice, but cannot guarantee safety of the produced controller, which is typically represented as an artificial neural network. Nevertheless, such methods are used in safety-critical environments. In this paper we take a typical control problem, namely the Cart Pole System (a. k. a. inverted pendulum), and a model of its physical environment and study safety verification of this system. To do so, we use bounded model checking (BMC). The created formulas are solved with the SMT-solver iSAT3. We examine the problems that occur during solving these formulas and show that extending the solver by special deduction routines can reduce both memory consumption and computation time on such instances significantly. This constitutes a first step towards verification of machine-learned controllers, but a lot of challenges remain.
Selection and identification of ligand peptides targeting a model of castrate-resistant osteogenic prostate cancer and their receptors

Significance This study shows how phage display technology can be applied successfully to in vivo models and can advance molecular oncology through the identification of tumor-homing peptides and their target receptors. Treatment options are still limited for prostate cancer patients who have progressed to develop castrate-resistant osteoblastic bone metastases. The peptides identified in this study may lead to breakthroughs in fighting metastatic androgen-independent prostate cancer by enabling drug targeting and nanotechnology-based therapeutic strategies and may lead to significant advances in the management and therapy of this frequently lethal disease. We performed combinatorial peptide library screening in vivo on a novel human prostate cancer xenograft that is androgen-independent and induces a robust osteoblastic reaction in bonelike matrix and soft tissue. We found two peptides, PKRGFQD and SNTRVAP, which were enriched in the tumors, targeted the cell surface of androgen-independent prostate cancer cells in vitro, and homed to androgen receptor-null prostate cancer in vivo. Purification of tumor homogenates by affinity chromatography on these peptides and subsequent mass spectrometry revealed a receptor for the peptide PKRGFQD, α-2-macroglobulin, and for SNTRVAP, 78-kDa glucose-regulated protein (GRP78). These results indicate that GRP78 and α-2-macroglobulin are highly active in osteoblastic, androgen-independent prostate cancer in vivo. These previously unidentified ligand–receptor systems should be considered for targeted drug development against human metastatic androgen-independent prostate cancer.
A Flexible Partitioning Tool for Large Ontologies

The benefits of modular ontologies in terms of easier creation and maintenance as well as better computational properties have been recognized by different researchers. As most real world ontologies, however, are still designed in a monolithic way, there is a need for methods that partition an existing ontology into a set of modules. Currently, existing work suffers from the fact that the notion of modularization is not as well understood in the context of ontologies as it is in software engineering. In this paper we present a flexible partitioning tool for large ontologies that can be adapted to the needs of different applications based on criteria that the resulting modular ontology should satisfy.
Depression of phagocytosis by solutes in concentrations found in the kidney and urine.

Immunologic processes in the kidney encounter wide variations in solute concentration and osmotic pressure that exist in no other extracellular fluids (1). It can be anticipated, for example, that leukocytes in the kidney might be exposed to 425 mMper L sodium and 850 mMper L urea, tissue concentrations demonstrated in the renal papillae of mammals. Between the extremes of maximum diuresis and antidiuresis, phagocytic cells might be exposed to tubular fluid that ranges from under 50 to over 1,300 mOsmper L, or approximately one-sixth to four times the osmotic pressure of plasma (1). In order to determine how leukocytes function in this environment, the present study was made of phagocytosis in urine and in improvised fluids containing solutes in the concentrations found in the kidney and urinary tract. The results show that such concentrations of urinary solutes depress phagocytosis and may thereby contribute to the unique susceptibility of the kidney to infection by bacteria that seldom produce disease elsewhere.
What Is that Thing Called Mendelian Genetics?

After the rediscovery of Mendel's work in 1900, a conflict arose in England between William Bateson, who defended Mendelian inheritance, on the one side, and, on the other, Karl Pearson and W.F. R. Weldon, who supported Galton's law of ancestral inheritance and the view that the main evolutionary force was natural selection acting on small continuous variations. This notorious confrontation is known as 'the Biometrician-Mendelian controversy'. Despite a considerable amount of historical and sociological literature on this episode in the history of genetics, there is little agreement on how to interpret it. William Provine (1971) argued that the issue at stake was whether natural selection operated on small continuous variations. He also maintained that the controversy was mainly fuelled by personal factors. Bernard
Trans-Tenon's retrobulbar triamcinolone infusion for myopic choroidal neovascularization.

PURPOSE To report the effects of trans-Tenon's retrobulbar injection of triamcinolone acetonide for subfoveal and juxtafoveal choroidal neovascularization (CNV) caused by pathological myopia. METHODS Eleven consecutive patients (11 eyes) with myopic CNV were treated with trans-Tenon's retrobulbar injection of triamcinolone acetonide. Each patient received a single injection. Evaluation included best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) measurements, fluorescein fundus angiography, retinal oedema examined by optical coherence tomography (OCT), and retinal sensitivity using scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (SLO) at the initial examination and at 6 and 12 months after treatment. RESULTS At 6 months after treatment, BCVA had improved by at least two ETDRS lines in eight eyes, and remained unchanged in three eyes. No eye showed worsening of VA by two or more ETDRS lines. At 12 months, BCVA had improved by at least two ETDRS lines in 10 eyes and remained unchanged in only one eye. The size of the CNV decreased in all patients after treatment. Fluorescein fundus angiography revealed an absence of dye leakage in the late angiographic phase. Optical coherence tomography revealed decreased retinal oedema in all patients and SLO microperimetry revealed an increase in retinal sensitivity in seven eyes, at both 6 and 12 months after treatment. Chorioretinal atrophy developed around the CNV in 10 eyes at 6 months and in all eyes at 12 months after treatment. CONCLUSIONS Trans-Tenon's retrobulbar injection of triamcinolone acetonide for CNV resulting from pathological myopia appears to be relatively safe and to have a good visual outcome, although a longterm follow-up study in a larger series of patients is necessary.
A code-motion pruning technique for global scheduling

In the high-level synthesis of ASICs or in the code generation for ASIPs, the presence of conditionals in the behavioral description represents an obstacle to exploit parallelism. Most existing methods use greedy choices in such a way that the search space is limited by the applied heuristics. For example, they might miss opportunities to optimize across basic block boundaries when treating conditional execution. We propose a constructive method which allows generalized code motions. Scheduling and code motion are encoded in the form of a unified resource-constrained optimization problem. In our approach many alternative solutions are constructed and explored by a search algorithm, while optimal solutions are kept in the search space. Our method can cope with issues like speculative execution and code such duplication. Moreover, it can tackle constraints imposed by the advance choice of a controller, such as pipelined-control delay and limited branch capabilities. The underlying timing models support chaining and multicycling. As tasking code motion into account may lead to a larger search space, a code-motion pruning technique is presented. This pruning is proven to keep optimal solutions in the search space for cost functions in terms of schedule lengths.
Functional reciprocity of organizational management and social work practice

Management functions are examined to assess the significance of administrative practice in relation to the effective performance of social work professionals. Supervision, as a specialized function of middle management, is discussed only briefly as this is a specific field of indirect social work practice and administration and has been the subject of a separate paper by the author (Jacques, 1993).
The Hot Stars of Old Open Clusters: M67, NGC 188, and NGC 6791

We analyze ultraviolet (∼1500 Å) images of the old open clusters M67, NGC 188, and NGC 6791 obtained with the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) during the second flight of the Astro observatory in 1995 March. Twenty stars are detected on the UIT image of M67, including 11 blue stragglers, seven white dwarf candidates, and the yellow giant–white dwarf binary S1040. The ultraviolet photometry of the blue stragglers F90 (S975) and F131 (S1082) suggests that these stars have hot subluminous companions. We present a semiempirical integrated ultraviolet spectrum of M67 and show that the blue stragglers dominate the integrated spectrum at wavelengths shorter than 2600 Å. The number of white dwarfs in M67 is roughly consistent with the number expected from white dwarf cooling models. Eight candidate sdB/sdO stars are detected in NGC 6791, and two are detected in NGC 188. The luminosity range 1.10 < log L/L⊙ < 1.27, derived from the ultraviolet photometry of the six sdB candidates, is consistent with theoretical models of metal-rich hot horizontal branch (HB) stars. The fraction of hot HB stars in both NGC 6791 and NGC 188 is about 30%, implying that the integrated spectra of both clusters should show a UV turnup at least as strong as that observed in any elliptical galaxy.
Transport in Viscous Rotating Fluids

We consider a uniformly rotating viscous incompressible fluid and estimate particle transport in the vertical direction (parallel to the rotation axis). We prove that for short time and regular initial data, strong rotation suppresses the vertical gradient of flow maps. The proof uses a diffusive Lagrangian formalism, and the suppression of the vertical gradient is a natural and direct byproduct of the formalism.
The Crisis of Parties and the Rise of New Political Parties

This paper has a twofold aim: to disentangle the question of party decline, analysing the current meanings and the empirical evidence offered by the literature; to highlight the different and even opposite outcomes of such decline. As far as the party crisis is concerned, contrary to a shared knowledge it is difficult to give a final word. It is suggested that the crisis concerns more a type of party rather than the party per se. Second, the challenges to the party are analysed. In the last decade a convergent attack against the traditional parties has been carried on: on one side, by the new social movements and their partisan representatives, the left-libertarian or New Politics parties; on the other side, by the newly emerged extreme right parties. This paper tries to demonstrate that both types of party are the by-products of the same structural conditions and both provide a (different) answer to the crisis of the party's expressive function.
Deliberate self-harm in Oxford, 1990–2000: a time of change in patient characteristics

Background. Trends in deliberate self-harm (DSH) are important because they have implications for hospital services, may indicate levels of psychopathology in the community and future trends in suicide, and can assist in identification of means of suicide prevention. Method. We have investigated trends in DSH and characteristics of DSH patients between 1990 and 2000 based on data collected through the Oxford Monitoring System for Attempted Suicide. Results. During the 11-year study period 8590 individuals presented following 13858 DSH episodes. The annual numbers of persons and episodes increased overall by 36·3% and 63·1% respectively. Rates (Oxford City) declined, however, in the final 3 years. There were gender- and age-specific changes, with a rise in DSH rates in males aged [ges ]55 years and in females overall and those aged 15–24 years and 35–54 years. Repetition of DSH increased markedly during the study period. Antidepressant overdoses, especially of SSRIs, increased substantially. Paracetamol overdoses declined towards the end of the study period. Alcohol abuse, use of alcohol in association with DSH, and violence increased, especially in females, and the proportion of patients in current psychiatric care and misusing drugs also rose. Conclusions. While overall rates of DSH did not increase markedly between 1990 and 2000, substantial changes in the characteristics of the DSH population and a rise in repetition suggest that the challenges facing clinical services in the management of DSH patients have grown.
Worldwide Occurrence of Beijing/W Strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis: A Systematic Review

Strains of the Beijing/W genotype family of Mycobacterium tuberculosis have caused large outbreaks of tuberculosis, sometimes involving multidrug resistance. This genetically highly conserved family of M. tuberculosis strains predominates in some geographic areas. We have conducted a systematic review of the published reports on these strains to determine their worldwide distribution, spread, and association with drug resistance. Sixteen studies reported prevalence of Beijing strains defined by spoligotyping; another 10 used other definitions. Beijing strains were most prevalent in Asia but were found worldwide. Associations with drug resistance varied: in New York, Cuba, Estonia, and Vietnam, Beijing strains were strongly associated with drug resistance, but elsewhere the association was weak or absent. Although few reports have measured trends in prevalence, the ubiquity of the Beijing strains and their frequent association with outbreaks and drug resistance underline their importance.
Determinants of job mobility: A theoretical integration and extension

The goals of this paper are to conceptually integrate and extend the diverse literature on job mobility. We introduce a multi-level theoretical framework that describes how individuals' job mobility unfolds. Three theoretical perspectives inform this framework. The structural perspective suggests that macro-level factors (e.g. economic conditions and industry differences) determine the opportunity structure of job mobility in the labour market. The individual difference perspective suggests that dispositional attributes affect a person's preferences for and subsequent behaviours associated with job mobility. The decisional perspective, grounded in the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991), suggests that decisions to engage in job mobility are based on the evaluation of three factors: subjective norms, the desirability of the mobility option and individuals' readiness for change. The article concludes with a discussion of the multi-level nature of determinants of job mobility and directions for future research.
Pseudo-Skeleton based ARAP Mesh Deformation

In this work, we present a handle-based direct manipulation paradigm that builds upon a pseudo-skeleton with bones that are allowed to stretch and twist. Solving for the unknown positions of the joints in an as-rigidas-possible manner decouples the optimization problem from the geometric complexity of the input model allowing for real-time edits even for high-quality datasets. The degrees of freedom can be manually adapted to the user’s needs giving the freedom to implicitly specify the regions the deformation takes place.
Cooperative distributed sequential spectrum sensing

We consider cooperative spectrum sensing for cognitive radios. We develop an energy efficient detector with low detection delay using sequential hypothesis testing. Sequential Probability Ratio Test (SPRT) is used at both the local nodes and the fusion center. We also analyse the performance of this algorithm and compare with the simulations. Modelling uncertainties in the distribution parameters are considered. Slow fading with and without perfect channel state information at the cognitive radios is taken into account.
Micro‐businesses and Social Inclusion in Rural Households: a Comparative Analysis

In this paper we bring together arguments developed from three conceptual frameworks: the embeddedness of household economic behaviour; the processes of social inclusion and exclusion; and ideas of choice and well-being. Our study is based on a comparative analysis of self-employed micro-business households in two rural locations: the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway and Northumberland in northern England. It explores the ways in which micro-businesses may limit social exclusion and promote rural development. Household behaviour and decision making are compared in different policy contexts and different micro contexts inside the household itself. We demonstrate that the role that business activity plays in combating social exclusion is by no means straight forward. Choices by households and the individuals within households play a key role in determining perceptions of well-being. We demonstrate that well-being is made up through decisions made across a range of different spheres of inclusion such as family, community, gender and paid and unpaid work roles. The findings have implications for the formulation of rural development policies.