Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nuclear roles and regulation of chromatin structure by the stress‐dependent MAP kinase Sty1 of Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Microorganisms are invariably exposed to abrupt changes in their environment, and consequently display robust, high plasticity gene programmes to respond to stresses. In fission yeast, the Sty1 pathway is activated in response to diverse stress conditions, such as osmotic and oxidative stress, heat shock or nitrogen deprivation. The MAP kinase Sty1 and its substrate, the transcription factor Atf1, regulate diverse processes mainly at the nucleus. For instance, Sty1, Atf1 and its heterodimeric partner Pcr1 participate in promoting recombination at some hot spots, and in the assembly of heterochromatin at the mating locus. Their main role, however, is to engage a wide gene expression programme aimed to allow cellular survival by decreasing and repairing the damage exerted. Once Sty1 and Atf1 are activated by stress, they are recruited to promoters of up to 5–10% of the coding genes and regulate their transcription. Even though there is no simple, global relationship establishing RNA polymerase II occupancy, nucleosome architecture and transcriptional activity in eukaryotes, we discuss within this review the current knowledge and future perspectives of how activation of Sty1 and Atf1 affect chromatin architecture of a large fraction of the Schizosaccharomyces pombe genome to trigger the cellular response to environmental stress.
Multipoint scales: Mean and median differences and observed significance levels

Researchers in human‐computer interaction (HCI) often use discrete multipoint scales (such as 5‐ or 7‐point scales) to measure user satisfaction and preference. Many knowledgeable authors state that the median is the appropriate measure of central tendency for such ordinal scales, although others challenge this assertion. This article introduces a new point of view, based on a human factors consideration. When decision makers read a usability report or attend a briefing, they may make decisions based on the magnitude of the difference between the measures of central tendency for key dependent variables. A major criterion that should affect the choice of presenting means or medians is the strength of the relationship between this difference and the observed significance levels of appropriate statistical tests. The results from two series of “real‐world” usability studies showed that the mean difference correlated more than the median difference with the observed significance levels (both parametric and non.
Variability in Leaf Morphology and Chemical Composition as a Function of Canopy Light Environment in Coexisting Deciduous Trees

Morphology, chemical composition, and photosynthetic capacity of leaf laminas were investigated in Populus tremula L. and Tilia cordata Mill. along a canopy light gradient. Variables determining the thickness of boundary layer for heat and water exchange at a given wind speed—effective leaf width (Ww) and length (Wd)—scaled positively with daily integrated quantum flux density averaged over the season (Qint, mol m−2 d−1) in T. cordata, but Wd decreased and Ww was constant with increasing Qint in P. tremula, bringing about a moderately improved capacity for convective cooling at greater irradiances in the latter species. Foliar stable carbon isotope discrimination (Δ) decreased with increasing Qint, demonstrating that, possibly because of more severe foliar water stress, leaves operated at a lower intercellular CO2 concentration in the upper canopy. Further analysis of foliar characteristics provided additional evidence of the interaction between water stress and Qint. Leaf dry matter content and both components of lamina dry mass per area (MA)—lamina thickness and density (dry mass per unit volume, ρB)—increased with increasing Qint in both species. The ρB and lamina dry matter content were also positively related to lamina carbon concentration, variability in which along the canopy was related to changes in carbon‐rich lignin concentration. Since both increases in lamina density and lignin concentration improve leaf tolerance of low‐water potentials, these foliar modifications were interpreted as indicative of acclimation to enhanced water limitations in high light. For the whole material, foliar nitrogen concentrations decreased with increasing ρB, suggesting that an improvement of foliar mechanical strength may result in declining foliar assimilative potential. However, foliar photosynthetic electron transport capacity per unit area increased with increasing ρB, possibly because increases in ρB with light are not only attributable to greater cell wall lignification but also to denser packing of leaf cells, in particular, in fractional increases in palisade tissues with Qint. Because of a positive scaling of leaf thickness and density with total tree height, MA was greater in taller trees of T. cordata, foliage of which also had lower Δ and was likely to function with less open stomata. In summary, we conclude that leaf water stress, which scales with both Qint and total tree height, is a major factor altering foliage structure and assimilative capacity.
Diffusion Tensor Imaging Changes Correlate with Clinical Progression in Vascular Mild Cognitive Impairment and Vascular Dementia of Subcortical Type

Departments of Neurology*, Radiology†, Inha University School of Medicine, Incheon; Department of Biomedical Engineering‡, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea Background: Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) induces vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) such as subcortical vascular dementia (SVaD) and subcortical vascular mild cognitive impairment (svMCI). We compared MRI parameters between SVaD and svMCI and determined which MRI parameters best correlated with cognitive function and disability on cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses within them. Methods: Twenty-four patients with SVaD and twelve with svMCI were recruited. They underwent multimodal MRIs including fluid-attenuated inversion recovery lesion load, lacunar infarct number, and fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), neuropsychological testing, Sum of Boxes of Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR-SB), Barthel Index, and the Korean version of a Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-K). Seventeen patients were retested after 20 months for a brain MRI and clinical evaluation. Results: There were significant differences in average MD and peak height of MD histograms within normal-appearing brain tissue (NABT) between SVaD and svMCI patients. In the cross-sectional analysis, average MD within NABT significantly correlated with the composite neuropsychology score (r = -0.80, p< 0.001), the composite executive function score (r = -0.67, p< 0.001), and the CDR-SB (r = 0.54, p= 0.001), and the Barthel Index correlated with peak heights of the MD histograms (r = 0.37, p= 0.03) in NABT. Changes of CDR-SB was associated with changes of average MD within WMH (r = 0.57, p= 0.02), and changes of GDS-K was associated with changes of WMH volume (r = 0.51, p= 0.04) on a longitudinal scale. Conclusions: DTI parameters in NABT correlated with cognitive impairment and disability in VCI associated with SVD. Clinical progression of SVD was associated with some increment of WML volume and ultrastructural changes in WMH. Received: July 12, 2013 Revision received: September 9, 2013 Accepted: September 9, 2013
Heamatobiochemical Alterations Induced by Carbamazepine and Phenytoin: Mini Review

This review was carried out to conduct a literature survey of the effects of anticonvulsants carbamazepine (CBZ), phenytoin (PHT) and their combination on haematological and serum biochemical parameters. CBZ and PHT are among the oldest AEDs and usually the first line of treatment in epilepsy, being prescribed alone or sometimes in combination for retractable epilepsy. AEDs have been associated with different side effects which could be deleterious to the haemopoietic, nervous and/or hepatic systems. However, these effects may subside with the discontinuation of the medication(s). Side effects are prominent with the older AEDs such as CBZ, PHT, valproic acid (VPA) and phenobarbital (PB).
Remote State Estimation over an Attenuation Channel in Flight Control Systems

Reliability of real-time fight control system is more relevant with the development of wireless communication. However, due to the existence of the attenuation channel in communication and the limit of transmission power, it is difficult to accurately project control performance. In this paper, we choose a block attenuation channel model to derive its state estimation algorithm, find the critical thresholds in sensor scheduling strategies which can achieve optimal estimation performance with the derived algorithm, and compare the effect of different scheduling strategies on estimation performance. Results show that the optimal estimation performance can be achieved by utilizing an even transmission strategy.
CDRAM in a unified memory architecture

Improved system performance and lower cost can be achieved in small systems by combining all required memory functions into a single bank (or device) of "unified" memory. For example, the L2 cache, frame buffer, and main memory can be combined. The CDRAM has been designed to provide the performance level of large systems in a small and low cost form factor. Thus it is a very attractive option for unified memory architectures. <<ETX>>
Extension of Robust Principal Component Analysis for Incremental Face Recognition

Face recognition performance is highly affected by image corruption, shadowing and various face expressions. In this paper, an efficient incremental face recognition algorithm, robust to image occlusion, is proposed. This algorithm is based on robust alignment by sparse and low-rank decomposition for linearly correlated images, extended to be incrementally applied for large face data sets. Based on the latter, incremental robust principal component analysis (PCA) is used to recover the intrinsic data of a sequence of images of one subject. A new similarity metric is defined for face recognition and classification. Experiments on five databases, based on four different criteria, illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method. We show that our method outperforms other existing incremental PCA approaches such as incremental singular value decomposition, add block singular value decomposition and candid covariance-free incremental PCA in terms of recognition rate under occlusions, facial expressions and image perspectives.
Effects of Tai Chi Ball on Balance and Physical Function in Older Adults with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

To the Editor: The increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) in older adults is a major health concern, because the risk of injurious falls and physical disability is two to three times as great in older adults with diabetes mellitus as in those without. This greater risk is presumably because individuals with DM have chronically high blood glucose levels, which can affect the sensorimotor receptors in the lower extremities, compromising an important mechanism for balance control. Long-term practice of tai chi ball combined with music training can significantly improve the physical function of individuals with DM and improve their glucose and lipid parameters. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether tai chi ball exercise may be an appropriate treatment strategy to improve balance control and decrease the risk of falling in this population.
Synthesis of surfactant free SiO2 nanoparticles via emulsion method

We demonstrate a facile method for the synthesis of monodisperse SiO2 nanoparticles through simple emulsion method without the use of any surfactant and toxic solvents. The effect of concentration of tetraethyl orthosilicate, ammonia and water on final size of nanoparticles was studied. These particles were characterized by X- ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Without the use of any surfactant, SiO2 nanoparticles of size 30 ~ 90 nm are synthesized by incisively controlling the amount of ammonia and water.
Abstract and Lexically Specific Information in Sound Patterns: Evidence from /r/-sandhi in Rhotic and Non-rhotic Varieties of English

Phonological theories differ as to whether phonological knowledge is abstract (e.g., phonemic), concrete (e.g., exemplar-based), or some combination of the two. The abstractness/concreteness of phonological knowledge was examined by analyzing the process of /r/-sandhi in two corpora of spoken English. Two predictions of exemplar-based theories were examined: the extent to which a word manifests a particular sound pattern like /r/-deletion should be influenced by (1) its lexical frequency and (2) its distribution in the language with respect to the sound pattern’s conditioning environment. Lexical frequency was found to influence /r/-sandhi in a corpus of rhotic American English but not in a corpus of predominantly non-rhotic British English. No effect of a word’s long-term distribution was found in either corpus. These results support theories proposing that phonological knowledge is both word-specific and abstract and indicate that speakers do not store all phonetic detail that is in principle available to them. The factors that may favor the use of word-specific versus abstract representations are discussed.
Analysis of serum insulin growth factor‐1 concentrations in localized osteosarcoma: A children's oncology group study

To investigate the role of insulin‐like growth factor‐1 (IGF‐1), in localized osteosarcoma, serum levels of IGF‐1, IGFBP‐2, and IGFBP‐3 were measured in 224 similarly treated, newly diagnosed patients. We demonstrated that younger patients had lower concentrations of IGF‐1 and IGFBP‐3 compared to older (P < 0.001) along with lower IGFBP‐3:IGF‐1 and IGFBP‐2:IGF‐1 ratios (P < 0.001). IGFBP‐2 did not correlate with age (P = 0.16), yet IGFBP‐2:IGF‐1 ratios were higher in the younger population (P < 0.001). These findings show that older patients have higher concentrations of free IGF‐1. None of IGF‐1, IGFBP‐2, nor IGFBP‐3 concentrations were associated with event‐free nor overall survival. Pediatr Blood Cancer 2014;61:749–752. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Review on event detection techniques in social multimedia

Purpose – Social Media is one of the largest platforms to voluntarily communicate thoughts. With increase in multimedia data on social networking websites, information about human behaviour is increasing. This user-generated data are present on the internet in different modalities including text, images, audio, video, gesture, etc. The purpose of this paper is to consider multiple variables for event detection and analysis including weather data, temporal data, geo-location data, traffic data, weekday’s data, etc. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, evolution of different approaches have been studied and explored for multivariate event analysis of uncertain social media data. Findings – Based on burst of outbreak information from social media including natural disasters, contagious disease spread, etc. can be controlled. This can be path breaking input for instant emergency management resources. This has received much attention from academic researchers and practitioners to study the latent patte.
The economic evolution of American health care: from Marcus Welby to managed care

in pre-colonial states, the French colonial administration, and the various post-independence governments as well as the challenges that these offer to plans for democratic decentralization. J.U. Davis looks at the opportunities for political socialization offered by diverse local groups and stresses the importance of capacity building to facilitate their inclusion in the democratic process. N. Mezey focuses on health and the way in which unequal gender roles constrain women’s access to and use of health care, proposing some alternatives for health-care financing. R.J. Bingen’s article looks at a variety of agricultural interest groups, their relationships with one other and with the central administration; he suggests that greater decentralization is likely to lead to greater access to the state by these groups because the nature of state centralization and concentration will change. Finally, C. Diarrah outlines the contemporary challenges to the institutionalization of Malian democracy and efforts by the government to meet them; although placed formally in a separate epilogue, this article fits thematically in the third section. Several of these articles provide historical perspectives of Malian political change; although they are all valuable, D. Rawson’s is particularly comprehensive and noteworthy. While recognizing the achievements that Mali has made in creating multi-party democracy, all the authors recognize the broader institutional and grassroots changes that need to occur in order to strengthen and deepen the process; elections are a only a necessary beginning. The articles also reflect some of the controversies that have marked interpretations of recent Malian history, for example, the extent to which previous regimes were actually able to carry out their centralizing schemes. So, while A. Clark emphasizes the repressiveness of the pre-democracy regime of Moussa Traoré, R.J. Bingen notes the ineffectiveness of central government attempts to transform the countryside. This book is an important contribution for those interested in Mali, in French-speaking Africa, or the savanna countries of West Africa. Political and economic changes are occurring very quickly in Mali; a few of those discussed here have already been overtaken by events, yet these articles offer an invaluable evaluation of the situation at the end of the 1990s. Another outstanding feature of the collection as a whole is the dedication of the authors to explanatory frameworks that emphasize the factors within Mali that enabled contemporary change; while some might suggest that this gives insufficient attention to larger questions of the relationship of these changes to international political economy, it offers a refreshing corrective to analysts who slight the local context to privilege global issues. Overall this is a fine collection of works about the contemporary Malian political economy
[Training mothers: a strategy to improve the treatment of acute respiratory infections among children in Mali].

Acute respiratory infections (ARI) are a major public health issue in Mali. The objective of this study was to examine the management of ARI within the community among children aged 2 to 59 months. The study was based on a pilot community intervention over a period of 15 months (June 2008-August 2009) in 4 health districts in Mali. A survey was conducted two weeks before the intervention in order to determine the incidence of ARI. During the intervention phase, 80 community health workers (CHW) and 1,123 mothers were trained, equipped and supervised. 3,532 children aged 2 to 59 months were managed. Two health areas were selected in each district. A "CHW" area (i.e. an area where CHWs were trained and supervised) and a "mother" area (i.e. an area where mothers were trained and supervised) were randomly selected. Among the managed ARI cases, there were more cases of pneumonia in the "mother" areas (29.5%) than in the "CHW" areas (24.9%) (p = 0.003). The study also found that the duration of the prescription period was more appropriate in "CHW" areas (99.5%) than in "mother" areas (97.6%) (p = 0.03). In addition, the reduction in the incidence of complicated cases (before and after intervention) was more significant in "mother" areas (from 69? to 6? , with p = 10? 6) than in "CHW" areas (from 24? to 11? , with p = 0.01). The results suggest that mothers with the appropriate training, equipment and supervision are able to manage cases of ARI.
Freshwater fishes, dispersal ability, and nonevidence: "gondwana life rafts" to the rescue.

Biogeography, as a topic for discourse or discussion, is in some ways like religion: both topics lend themselves to ever more complicated treatment in the abstract, which is apt to border even on the miraculous, but whichis apt to crumble in confrontation with concrete facts of life. Nelson and Platnick (1981:375) Having failed to dissect these concepts (center of origin, vicariance) to their core, contemporary zoogeographers founder in a self-created morass of chance hops; great capacities for, or mysterious means of, dispersal; rare accidents of over-sea transportation; small probabilities that with time become certainties; and other pseudo-explanations.
Knockdown of IGF‐binding protein 7 inhibits transformation of the endometrial gland in an in vitro model

Uterine endometrial glands and their secretory products are critical for the implantation and survival of the peri‐implantation embryo, and for the establishment of uterine receptivity. We previously reported that insulin‐like growth factor binding protein 7 (IGFBP7) is abundantly expressed in uterine glandular epithelial cells during the secretory phase of the menstrual cycle. In the present study, we used a cultured glandular epithelial cell line of human (EM1) to investigate the significance of IGFBP7 in the function of endometrial glands. EM1 cells formed a mesh‐like structure on Matrigel, which was accompanied by elevated levels of intracellular cyclic AMP. However, these morphological changes were blocked by treatment with protein kinase A (PKA) inhibitor (H89). IGFBP7 knockdown using specific short interference RNA (siRNA) inhibited the formation of the mesh‐like structure on Matrigel. Cyclic AMP analogs, dibutyryl‐cAMP, and N6‐phenyl‐cAMP induced the expression of leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) which is essential for the onset of implantation. Enhanced LIF expression was suppressed by IGFBP7 siRNA treatment. Western blot analysis revealed that IGFBP7 knockdown results in the aberrant, constitutive expression of the MAPK signaling pathway. These results suggest that IGFBP7 regulates morphological changes of glandular cells by interfering with the normal PKA and MAPK signaling pathways that are associated with the transformation and/or differentiation of endometrial glands. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 77: 265–272, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Disease characteristics, treatment patterns, prognosis, outcomes and lymphoma‐related mortality in elderly follicular lymphoma in the United States

Data from the National LymphoCare Study (a prospective, multicentre registry that enrolled follicular lymphoma (FL) patients from 2004 to 2007) were used to determine disease characteristics, treatment patterns, outcomes and prognosis for elderly FL (eFL) patients. Of 2650 FL patients, 209 (8%) were aged >80 years; these eFL patients more commonly had grade 3 disease, less frequently received chemoimmunotherapy and anthracyclines, and had lower response rates when compared to younger patients. With a median follow‐up of 6.9 years, 5‐year overall survival (OS) for eFL patients was 59%; 38% of deaths were lymphoma‐related. No treatment produced superior OS among eFL patients. In multivariate Cox models, anaemia, B‐symptoms and male sex predicted worse OS (P < 0·01); a prognostic index of these factors (0, 1 or ≥2 present) predicted OS [hazard ratio (95% CI): ≥2 vs. 0, 4·72 (2·38–9·33); 1 vs. 0, 2·63 (1·39–4·98)], with a higher concordance index (0·63) versus the Follicular Lymphoma International Prognostic Index (0·55). The index was validated in an independent cohort. In the largest prospective US‐based eFL cohort, no optimal therapy was identified and nearly 40% of deaths were lymphoma‐related, representing baseline outcomes in the modern era.