Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
XRCC 1 Polymorphisms and Cancer Risk : A Meta-analysis of 38 Case-Control Studies

Several potential functional polymorphisms (ArgTrp, ArgHis, ArgGln) in the DNA base excision repair gene X-ray repair cross-complementing group 1 (XRCC1) have been implicated in cancer risk. Our meta-analysis on total of 11,957 cancer cases and 14,174 control subjects from 38 published case-control studies showed that the odds ratio (OR) for the variant genotypes (Trp/Trp + Arg/Trp) of the ArgTrp polymorphism, compared with the wild-type homozygote (Arg/Arg), was 0.89 [95% confidence interval (95% CI), 0.81-0.98] for all tumor types without between-study heterogeneity. Similarly, the overall risk for the combined variant genotypes (His/His + Arg/His) of the ArgHis, compared with the wild homozygote (Arg/Arg), was 1.19 (95% CI, 1.00-1.42). However, there was no main effect in either recessive or dominant modeling for the ArgGln, and the variant Gln/Gln homozygote was not associated with overall cancer risk (OR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.90-1.14). The analyses suggest that XRCC1 ArgTrp, ArgHis polymorphisms may be biomarkers of cancer susceptibility and a single larger study with thousands of subjects and tissue-specific biochemical and biological characterization is warranted to further evaluate potential gene-to-gene and gene-to-environment interactions on XRCC1 polymorphisms and cancer risk. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2005;14(7):1810–8)
Optimal location and size determination of FACTS devices by using multiobjective optimal power flow

This paper proposes an algorithm based on nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) with the feature of adaptive crowding distance for solving multiobjective optimal power flow (MOOPF) problem to find the optimal location and capacity of FACTS devices in power system. The problem is formulated as mixed integer one with both continuous and discrete control variables. Two types of FACTS devices (TCSC and SVC) are modeled and analyzed to improve the steady state performance of power system. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been tested on IEEE-30 bus systems. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach is quite efficient in finding optimal solutions.
The Recruitment of older australian workers: A survey of employers in a high growth industry

In The Recruitment of Older Workers: A Survey of a High Growth Industry Michael Bittman, Mardi Flick and James Rice from the Social Policy Research Centre present the results of a survey on employer attitudes and practices towards the recruitment of older workers in the business services sector. To better grasp the likely policy implications of the ageing population, it is important to understand both supply-side and demand-side phenomena associated with the labour market for mature-age workers. This research sheds new light on employersi views of and practices towards older workers. The special qualities of this study can be summarised under three headings n methodological innovations, original findings, and implications for social policy.
Computer vision for the structured representation and stylisation of visual medial collections

The proliferation of digital cameras in commodity consumer devices, and the social trend for casually capturing and sharing media, has led to an explosive growth in personal visual media collections. However this wealth of digital material is infrequently accessed beyond the point of initial capture or sharing, and often lies dormant gathering digital dust in the media repository. This thesis proposes novel Computer Vision and Computer Graphics techniques to release the value in personal media collections - investigating new ways to stylise and present images and video in such collections. First, personal visual media tends to be shot casually in varied and challenging capture conditions by amateur operators. This necessitates some interactive manipulation prior to presentation. This thesis contributes a novel solution for editing such amateur home video into succinct clips of this nature, using a parse-tree representation of the video editing process. We also enable interactive manipulation of still images through a novel object segmentation algorithm dubbed TouchCut which enables object selection with a single touch and is intended for direct media manipulation on commodity media capture devices such as touch-screen digital cameras. Second, there is an interaction barrier to digital media. The casual nature of personal media encourages the capture of significantly larger collections than traditional media. This thesis explores the application of artistic stylisation to create digital ambient displays (DADs) of personal media in the style of cartoons, paintings and paper-cut out. Underpinning this contribution are two new algorithms for video segmentation that enforce temporal coherences within the stylised video. Furthermore, we explore how structuring the media collection hierarchically within the DAD can promote interest and engagement with the collection. Third, personal media collections often contains images of friends or family members. The artistic stylisation of such content using existing approaches rarely results in acceptable output. We propose a novel example-based approach to portrait stylisation driven by a high level model of facial structure that gives rise to improved aesthetics and enables the example-based rendering of a diverse range of portrait styles. This work was supported by the Hewlett Packard Laboratories Innovation Research Program.
Conformational Correlates of the Epitopes of Human Myelin Basic Protein Peptide 80–89

Different epitopes residing within the decapeptide of residues 80–89 of human myelin basic protein (MBP) exist in the MBP‐like material detected in human CSF and urine. In the present study, the structure of human MBP peptide 80–89 was examined by a combination of physical measurements and correlated with its varying immunochemical reaction with three polyclonal antisera. At least two epitopes are present in the decapeptide. Progressive shortening and reduction in net negative charge of MBP peptide 80–89 to form peptides 81–89, 82–89, 83–89, and 84–89 revealed an epitope not present in intact MBP. Circular dichroism and Fourier‐transform infrared of these MBP peptides in water demonstrated random structure that was partially changed to β‐structure in the shorter peptides. In methanol, used as a model for a lipid environment, the random structure was diminished and was replaced by α‐helix and β‐structure, especially in the shorter peptides. The findings indicate that the range of epitopes present in this decapeptide is influenced by conformation, which, unexpectedly, becomes progressively less random as the peptide becomes smaller, especially in a hydrophobic environment. This behavior has implications for the immunochemical detection of small antigens or antibodies to them in tissue extracts or body fluids.
Fine Structure of the Landers Fault Zone: Segmentation and the Rupture Process

Observations and modeling of 3- to 6-hertz seismic shear waves trapped within the fault zone of the 1992 Landers earthquake series allow the fine structure and continuity of the zone to be evaluated. The fault, to a depth of at least 12 kilometers, is marked by a zone 100 to 200 meters wide where shear velocity is reduced by 30 to 50 percent. This zone forms a seismic waveguide that extends along the southern 30 kilometers of the Landers rupture surface and ends at the fault bend about 18 kilometers north of the main shock epicenter. Another fault plane waveguide, disconnected from the first, exists along the northern rupture surface. These observations, in conjunction with surface slip, detailed seismicity patterns, and the progression of rupture along the fault, suggest that several simple rupture planes were involved in the Landers earthquake and that the inferred rupture front hesitated or slowed at the location where the rupture jumped from one to the next plane. Reduction in rupture velocity can tentatively be attributed to fault plane complexity, and variations in moment release can be attributed to variations in available energy.
SECURITY ANALYSIS OF NETWORK NEIGHBORS

This thesis addresses a common issue to many of current Internet Service Providers (ISPs): efficient mitigation of malicious traffic flowing through their network. This unwanted traffic imposes a waste of network resources, leading to a degradation of quality of service. It also creates an unsafe environment for users, therefore mining the Internet potential and opening way for severe criminal activity. Some of the main constraints of creating systems that may tackle these problems are the enormous amount of traffic to be analyzed, the fact that the Internet is inherently untraceable and the lack of incentive for transit networks to block this type of traffic. Under the scope of a mid scale ISP, this thesis focuses on three main areas: the origins of malicious traffic, security classification of ISP neighbors and intervention policies. We collected network data from particular types of malicious traffic: address scans and flow floods; and network reachability information: BGP update messages from RIPE Routing Information Service (RIS). We analyzed the malicious traffic looking for network patterns, which allowed us to understand that most of it originates from a very small subset of Internet ASes. We defined a correlation expression to quantify the security risks of neighbor connections within an ISP scope according to a set of security metrics that we named Risk Score. We finally proposed techniques to implement the network tasks required to mitigate malicious traffic efficiently, if possible in cooperation with other neighbors/ASes. We are not aware of any work been done that correlates the malicious traffic characteristics of address scans and flow flood attacks, with network reachability information of an ISP network, to classify the security of neighbor connections in order to decide to filter traffic from specific prefixes of an AS, or to block all traffic from an AS. It is our belief, the findings presented in this thesis can be immediately applied to real world scenarios, enabling more secure and scalable network environments, therefore opening way for better deployment environments of new services.
Mechanisms of the beneficial effect of adrenomedullin and adrenomedullin-binding protein-1 in sepsis: Down-regulation of proinflammatory cytokines

ObjectiveOur recent study indicates that administration of adrenomedullin (AM) in combination with AM-binding protein-1 (AMBP-1) before sepsis (i.e., pretreatment) maintains cardiovascular stability and reduces the mortality rate. The aim of the present study was to determine whether administration of AM/AMBP-1 after the onset of sepsis (posttreatment) has any salutary effects on the septic host, and if so, whether AM/AMBP-1 down-regulates proinflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor-&agr;, interleukin-1&bgr;, and interleukin-6. DesignProspective, controlled, randomized animal study. SettingA university research laboratory. SubjectsMale adult Sprague-Dawley rats. InterventionsRats were subjected either to polymicrobial sepsis by cecal ligation and puncture or to sham operation followed by the administration of normal saline solution (i.e., fluid resuscitation). Measurements and Main ResultsAt 5 hrs after cecal ligation and puncture, AM (12 &mgr;g/kg body weight) and AMBP-1 (40 &mgr;g/kg body weight) were administered intravenously over 1 hr. At 20 hrs after cecal ligation and puncture (i.e., the late, hypodynamic stage of sepsis), cardiac output, stroke volume, total peripheral resistance, systemic oxygen delivery, and organ blood flow were determined by radioactive microspheres, and circulating concentrations of proinflammatory cytokines were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits. Moreover, plasma concentrations of transaminases and lactate were measured. The results indicated that administration of AM/AMBP-1 at 5 hrs after cecal ligation and puncture prevented the decrease in measured systemic and regional hemodynamic variables and reduced plasma concentrations of tumor necrosis factor-&agr;, interleukin-1&bgr;, and interleukin-6 at 20 hrs after the onset of sepsis. Moreover, administration of AM/AMBP-1 attenuated hepatic damage and the increase in plasma lactate and prevented hemoconcentration. ConclusionAdministration of AM/AMBP-1 may provide a novel approach to the treatment of sepsis. Moreover, because AM/AMBP-1 significantly reduced circulating concentrations of tumor necrosis factor-&agr;, interleukin-1&bgr;, and interleukin-6, down-regulation of those proinflammatory cytokines by AM/AMBP-1 appears to play an important role for the beneficial effects of these agents in polymicrobial sepsis.
A Compact CNN-DBLSTM Based Character Model for Online Handwritten Chinese Text Recognition

Recently, character model based on integrated convolutional neural network (CNN) and deep bidirectional long short-term memory (DBLSTM) has been demonstrated to be effective for online handwritten Chinese text recognition (HCTR). However, the reported CNN-DBLSTM topologies are too complex to be practically useful. In this paper, we propose a compact CNN-DBLSTM which has small footprint and low computation cost yet be able to accommodate multiple receptive fields for CNN-based feature extraction. By using the training set of a popular benchmark database, namely CASIA-OLHWDB, we trained a compact CNN-DBLSTM by a connectionist temporal classification (CTC) criterion with a multi-step training strategy. Combined this character model with a character trigram language model, our online HCTR system with a WFSTbased decoder has achieved state-of-the-art performance on both CASIA and ICDAR-2013 Chinese handwriting recognition competition test sets.
Silicon nanowire arrays passivated by Al2O3/TiO2 stack layers

To reduce reflectance on heterojunction silicon nanowire (SiNW) solar cells with the structure of ITO/p-type hydrogenated amorphous silicon(a-Si:H)/n-type SiNWs embedded in dielectric materials for passivation/n-type a-Si:H/back electrode, stack layers of aluminum oxide (Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>) and titanium oxide (TiO<sub>2</sub>) were deposited on SiNW arrays by atomic layer deposition (ALD). Refractive index of TiO<sub>2</sub> prepared by ALD was 2.5 in a visible spectral range. The effective minority carrier lifetime in SiNW arrays embedded in an Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/TiO<sub>2</sub> stack layer of 94 μsec was obtained, which was comparable to an Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> single layer. The surface reflectance of SiNW solar cells was drastically decreased below around 5% in all the wavelength range using the Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/TiO<sub>2</sub>/Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> stack layer.
An Overview of the Kauffman Firm Survey: Results from 2011 Business Activities

Although entrepreneurial activity is an important part of a capitalist economy, data about U.S. businesses in their early years of operation have been extremely limited. Only recently has it become apparent what important contributions new and young businesses make to job creation and innovation activities. As part of an effort to understand the dynamics of new businesses in the United States, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (the Foundation) sponsored the Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS), a panel study of new businesses founded in 2004 that are being tracked annually over their first eight years of operation. Tracking businesses over time allows us to follow business evolutions that would not be apparent in cross-sectional snapshots, the more typical collection method. The KFS dataset provides researchers with a unique opportunity to study a panel of new businesses from startup to sustainability (or exit), with longitudinal data centering on topics such as how businesses are financed; the products, services, and innovations these businesses possess and develop in their early years of existence; and the characteristics of those who own and operate them. The data collection has been completed, and data are available through calendar year 2011, the eighth year of operations for continuing businesses. Additionally, since our panel came into existence before the most recent recession, following these businesses allows us to get a picture of how young businesses in the United States have recovered or been affected. A series of tables give a broad overview of the 4,928 businesses included in the Kauffman Firm Survey that are nationally representative of startups from 2004.
Size distributions of vesicular stomatitis virus-specific polysomes.

Summary The three major structural proteins of vesicular stomatitis virus, M (mol. wt. 29000), N (mol. wt. 50000) and G (mol. wt. 69000) are synthesized at non-equimolar rates. The possibility of translational control of VSV protein synthesis by examining the size distributions of polysomes involved in the synthesis of these three proteins has been tested. The strategy was to label the nascent peptide chains in vivo with radioactive amino acids and to analyse separately membrane-bound polysomes, involved predominantly in synthesis of the G protein, and soluble polysomes, involved predominantly in the synthesis of the M and N proteins. Analysis by sucrose gradient centrifugation indicated that the G protein was synthesized on membrane-bound polysomes having a mean size of 8 ribosomes per polysome. The M and N proteins were synthesized on soluble polysomes having a mean size of 5 ribosomes per polysome. Both membrane-bound and soluble polysomes had a maximal size of approximately 15 ribosomes per poly-some. The distribution of M and N nascent chains within the soluble polysome gradient was determined by tryptic peptide analysis. The M nascent chains were found to be associated predominantly with the smaller polysomes. Thus, the data indicate that the average size of the polysomes involved in the synthesis of the M, N and G proteins reflects the mol. wt. of these proteins. This suggests that the relative rates of synthesis of the M, N and G proteins are not the outcome of controls at the translational level.
Ensuring accountability when there is no bottom line

This handbook series comprises six volumes: The first volume focused on incentives that insure accountability of the public sector, measuring government performance in the delivery of public services, addressing social issues in government decision making, improving governance through better policy and expenditure evaluations, principles and practices of intergovernmental fiscal relations, and harmonizing fiscal decentralization with regional disparities and fiscal constraints.
Frequent ventricular extrasystole treated by needling neiguan (PC 6) plus oral administration of mexiletine--a report of 30 cases.

PURPOSE To observe the therapeutic effect of needling at Neiguan (PC 6) plus oral administration of mexiletine. METHODS 60 cases of frequent ventricular extrasystole were randomly divided into two groups: a treatment group, and a control group. In the control group, mexiletine was orally administered, and in the treatment group needling at bilateral Neiguan (PC 6) plus oral administration of mexiletine were given. 2 weeks of treatments constituted a therapeutic course. RESULTS Of the 30 cases in the treatment group, 23 cases were markedly effective, 5 cases improved, and 2 cases failed; while in the control group 16 cases were markedly effective, 8 cases improved, 4 cases failed, and 2 cases aggravated. The total effective rates of 90.3% and 80.0%, respectively in the treatment and control groups showed a very significant difference between the two groups (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION Needling at bilateral Neiguan (PC 6) may enhance the therapeutic effect for frequent ventricular extrasystole.
The Effects of Insurance Status on Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury Outcomes: A Literature Review

Objective: To review the literature that describes the effects of insurance status on traumatic brain injury (TBI) outcomes among pediatric patients to understand how policies related to access to health insurance changes TBI outcomes. Method: This review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). A search of OVID Medline was conducted in May of 2016 for all years for peer-reviewed articles that included keywords related to “brain injuries” and “insurance status”. Articles were included if authors conducted a separate analysis of children aged 0 to 18. Articles were excluded if the TBI was the result of abuse. Results: After screening for inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 12 articles were analyzed. Discussion/Summary: The findings of this review indicate that insurance status has a significant effect on the health outcomes of pediatric patients who experience TBI, with insured children having lower mortality rates than those with insurance from the government or uninsured. In addition, those insured from the government had a survival benefit when compared to those without insurance. We found evidence that insurance status plays a role in long term outcomes such as rates of placement into rehabilitation facilities and level of disability.
Online user-generated content for travel planning - different for different kinds of trips?

Travellers are increasingly turning to online user-generated content for vacation planning. Previous studies have looked at a variety of factors to explain differing levels of social media consumption between travellers. Previous research, however, has not examined the role of the role of trip characteristics (such as familiarity with a destination, location of a destination, trip length, travel planning lead time, and travel party composition) in this context. This study found that trip characteristics seem to play a key role when it comes to travellers' engagement with user-generated content for travel planning a higher percentage of travellers turned to user-generated content when visiting a destination for the first time, as well as visiting an international destination; a lower percentage of those who travel on their own engaged with social media. This study did not find differences regarding trip length or travel planning lead times.
α‐Adrenergic Control of Skeletal Muscle Circulation at Rest and During Exercise in Aging Humans

Aging is associated with many changes in autonomic nervous system function that often lead to impairments in the normal ability to respond to physiological stressors commonly encountered in daily life. In addition, many of these chronic age‐related changes in autonomic‐circulatory function can potentially predispose the older adult to elevated risk for acute and chronic cardiovascular complications. One of the most pronounced and repeatable findings with respect to changes in the autonomic nervous system with human aging is the progressive increase in basal muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) directed to skeletal muscle vascular beds. Although the mechanism(s) underlying this sustained age‐associated increase in MSNA are not completely understood, several changes in sympathetic α‐adrenergic function occur with age. In this review, the authors discuss how aging affects ( 1 ) α‐adrenergic control of skeletal muscle vascular tone under resting conditions and the differences that exist in this control of the upper and lower limbs (forearm vs leg circulation); ( 2 ) vasoconstrictor responsiveness to endogenous norepinephrine release, as well as the specific responsiveness of postjunctional α1‐ and α2‐adrenergic receptors; and ( 3 ) sympathetic α‐adrenergic control of muscle blood flow and vascular tone during exercise in humans. Further, they discuss how these changes in sympathetic α‐adrenergic control of skeletal muscle blood vessels have important physiological and clinical implications for the aging human.