Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IL-1β suppresses TGF-β-mediated myofibroblast differentiation in cardiac fibroblasts

Abstract Cardiac fibrosis is a maladaptive response of the injured myocardium and is mediated through a complex interplay between molecular triggers and cellular responses. Interleukin (IL)-1β is a key inflammatory inducer in cardiac disease and promotes cell invasion and cardiomyocyte injury, but little is known of its impact on fibrosis. A major cornerstone of fibrosis is the differentiation of cardiac fibroblasts (CFs) into myofibroblasts (myoFbs), which is highly promoted by Transforming Growth Factor (TGF)-β. Therefore, we asked how IL-1β functionally modulated CF-to-myoFb differentiation. Using a differentiation model of ventricular fibroblasts, we found that IL-1β instigated substantial anti-fibrogenic effects. In specific, IL-1β reduced proliferation, matrix activity, cell motility and α-smooth muscle actin expression, which are all hallmarks of myoFb differentiation. These findings suggest that IL-1β, besides from its acknowledged adverse role in the inflammatory response, can also exert beneficial effects in cardiac fibrosis by actively suppressing differentiation of CFs into fibrogenic myoFbs.
Employee Misuse of Information Technology Resources: Testing a Contemporary Deterrence Model

Recent research in information systems and operations management has considered the positive impacts of information technology (IT). However, an undesirable side effect of firms’ increasing reliance on IT to support the distribution and delivery of goods and services to customers is a greater exposure to a diverse set of IT security risks. One such risk is intentional employee misuse of technology resources. In this article, we draw upon modern deterrence frameworks to develop a predictive model of technology misuse intention that incorporates formal and informal sanctions as well as employment context factors. The model specifies previously untested relationships between formal and informal sanctions, thereby providing fresh insight into the role of sanctions in deterring technology misuse in organizations. Our results suggest that a predisposition toward the need for social approval and moral beliefs regarding the behavior are key determinants of technology misuse. Contrary to criminological research that has questioned the relative importance of formal sanctions in the deterrence process, we also found that the threat of formal sanctions has both direct and indirect influences on technology misuse intention. Further, from an employment context standpoint, employees who spend more working days away from the office (i.e., “virtual” mode) appear more inclined to misuse their organization's technology resources. The findings have implications for the research and practice of technology management.
Identification using a Deep Neural Network

Most work on automatic writer identification relies on handwriting features defined by humans[6, 4]. These features correspond to basic units such as letters and words of text. Instead of relying on human-defined features, we consider here the determination of writing similarity using automatically determined word-level features learnt by a deep neural network. We generalize the problem of writer identification to the definition of a content-irrelevant handwriting similarity. Our method first takes whether two words were written by the same person as a discriminative label for word-level feature training. Then, based on word-level features, we define writing similarity between passages. This similarity not only shows the distinction between writing styles of different people, but also the development of style of the same person. Performance with several hidden layers in the neural network are evaluated. The method is applied to determine how a person’s writing style changes with time considering a children’s writing dataset. The children’s handwriting data are annually collected. They were written by children of 2nd, 3rd or 4th grade. Results are given with a whole passage (50 words) of writing over one-year change. As a comparison, similar experiments on a small amount of data using conventional generative model are also given.
Investigation of a 2 V 1.1 kW MOSFET commutated DC motor

This paper proposes an extremely-low voltage high current MOSFET-based drive architecture. A single-turn multiphase winding design allows a copper fill factor approaching one. The single-turn coil design leads to a low EMF voltage and high current design which requires a matched drive system. To identify the technical design obstacles and verify the feasibility of the proposed architecture, a small scale prototype is built and successfully tested. The described prototype consists of an extremely-low voltage 13-phase single-turn coil permanent magnet DC motor and MOSFET-based commutator. The prototype's locked rotor-torque and no-load power consumption, as well as the EMF voltage measurements are presented and the DC motor constants are extracted. The experimental results from the prototype measurements indicate a promising potential for cost-effective extremely-low voltage high current MOSFET-based drive systems.
The Constructive Engine

The Calculus of Constructions is a higher-order formalism for writing constructive proofs in a natural deduction style, inspired from work of de Bruijn [4, 7], Girard [21] and MartinLof [33]. The calculus and its syntactic theory were presented in Coquand’s thesis [12], and an implementation by the author was used to mechanically verify a substantial number of proofs demonstrating the power of expression of the formalism [15]. The Calculus of Constructions is proposed as a foundation for the design of programming environments where programs are developed consistently with formal specifications[37]. This note presents in detail an implementation in CAML[18, 44] of a proof-checker for the calculus. This proof-checker proceeds by operating an abstract machine, called the constructive engine. The description in this paper is close in spirit to the inference system described in section 10.2 of [13]. The main departure is the addition of a system of constants, allowing a form of definitional equality. The implementation shown corresponds to a simplification of version 4.9 of the system. Differences with the actual implementation are discussed below.
Verification of temporal requirements of complex systems using UML patterns, application to a railway control example

Temporal aspects have a vital importance while dealing with the verification of critical systems. Time constraints may reflect both security and performance requirements. Thereby, verifying the temporal requirements is a major task in the validation of critical systems. In this paper, we discuss a new approach for the specification of the temporal requirements within complex systems. We also sketch a global verification method integrating the specification process proposed.
A Fuzzy-ACO Method for Detect Breast Cancer

Data mining usually means the methodologies and tools for the efficient new knowledge discovery from databases. It is also a form of knowledge discovery essential for solving problems in a specific domain. For instance, the data mining approaches are applied in the filed of medical diagnosis recently. A major class of problems in medical science involves the diagnosis of disease, based upon various tests performed upon the patient. When several tests are involved, the ultimate diagnosis may be difficult to obtain, even for a medical expert. This has given rise, over the past few decades, to computerized diagnostic tools, intended to aid the physician in making sense out of the welter of data. Specifically, where breast cancer is concerned, the treating physician is interested in ascertaining whether the patient under examination exhibits the symptoms of a benign case, or whether her case is a malignant one. In this paper, we have focused on breast cancer diagnosis by combination of fuzzy systems and evolutionary algorithms. Fuzzy rules are desirable because of their interpretability by human experts. Ant colony algorithm is employed as evolutionary algorithm to optimize the obtained set of fuzzy rules. Results on breast cancer diagnosis data set from UCI machine learning repository show that the proposed approach would be capable of classifying cancer instances with high accuracy rate in addition to adequate interpretability of extracted rules.
Association Between Malnutrition and Clinical Outcomes in the Intensive Care Unit: A Systematic Review

Malnutrition is associated with poor clinical outcomes among hospitalized patients. However, studies linking malnutrition with poor clinical outcomes in the intensive care unit (ICU) often have conflicting findings due in part to the inappropriate diagnosis of malnutrition. We primarily aimed to determine whether malnutrition diagnosed by validated nutrition assessment tools such as the Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) or Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) is independently associated with poorer clinical outcomes in the ICU and if the use of nutrition screening tools demonstrate a similar association. PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, and Cochrane Library were systematically searched for eligible studies. Search terms included were synonyms of malnutrition, nutritional status, screening, assessment, and intensive care unit. Eligible studies were case-control or cohort studies that recruited adults in the ICU; conducted the SGA, MNA, or used nutrition screening tools before or within 48 hours of ICU admission; and reported the prevalence of malnutrition and relevant clinical outcomes including mortality, length of stay (LOS), and incidence of infection (IOI). Twenty of 1168 studies were eligible. The prevalence of malnutrition ranged from 38% to 78%. Malnutrition diagnosed by nutrition assessments was independently associated with increased ICU LOS, ICU readmission, IOI, and the risk of hospital mortality. The SGA clearly had better predictive validity than the MNA. The association between malnutrition risk determined by nutrition screening was less consistent. Malnutrition is independently associated with poorer clinical outcomes in the ICU. Compared with nutrition assessment tools, the predictive validity of nutrition screening tools were less consistent.
Outage Protection for Cellular-Mode Users in Device-to-Device Communications through Stochastic Optimization

Coexistence between cellular-mode and D2D-mode users that share the same radio resource is one key problem for D2D communications. While related work has investigated transmission power control for interference management, most approaches have considered only the long-term channel gain without specifically addressing the stochastic fluctuations of the channel. In this paper, we investigate interference management under Rayleigh channel fading through stochastic optimization. We first transform the objective and constraint functions in stochastic forms into equivalent yet deterministic forms, and then we propose a low-complexity method to solve the formulated nonlinear problem. The proposed method relaxes and separates the constraint functions into simpler ones, and then solves the linearized problem using an iterative algorithm while simultaneously shrinking the search space. Simulation results demonstrate that the outage probability of the cellular- mode user can be maintained below the desired threshold despite the uncertainty of channel conditions, while the sum rate of D2D- mode users outperforms baseline methods under the same constraint.
Vps45p stabilizes the syntaxin homologue Tlg2p and positively regulates SNARE complex formation

Sec1p‐like/Munc‐18 (SM) proteins bind to t‐SNAREs and inhibit ternary complex formation. Paradoxically, the absence of SM proteins does not result in constitutive membrane fusion. Here, we show that in yeast cells lacking the SM protein Vps45p, the t‐SNARE Tlg2p is down‐regulated, to undetectable levels, by rapid proteasomal degradation. In the absence of Vps45p, Tlg2p can be stabilized through abolition of proteasome activity. Surprisingly, the stabilized Tlg2p was targeted to the correct intracellular location. However, the stabilized Tlg2p is non‐functional and unable to bind its cognate SNARE binding partners, Tlg1p and Vti1p, in the absence of Vps45p. A truncation mutant lacking the first 230 residues of Tlg2p no longer bound Vps45p but was able to form complexes with Tlg1p and Vti1p in the absence of the SM protein. These data provide us with two valuable insights into the function of SM proteins. First, SM proteins act as chaperone‐like molecules for their cognate t‐SNAREs. Secondly, SM proteins play an essential role in the activation process allowing their cognate t‐SNARE to participate in ternary complex formation.
A Review on Big Data Analytics : An Eminent Approach for Handling an Outsized Data

: The volatile increase of data volume and the growing demands of data mining have stimulated us into the era of big data. Many research scholars are drawn their desirability towards the research areas of big data mining, machine learning, computational intelligence and social networking. The big data technologies with conventional data mining approaches have posed many challenges in the field of big data analytics. These newest challenges are determined mainly on the issues related to the pre-processing of data, representation of data, data storage management, big social data mining and visualization. This paper reviews the concept of big data, technologies, architecture and applications. The open challenges and future directions are also stated at the end for the research community in this field of study.
Rotated sandpiles: The role of grain reorganization and inertia.

We present a coupled-map lattice model of a sandpile which relaxes via the dual mechanisms of surface flow and bulk reorganization. We focus on the situation where reorganization dominates flow and examine the response of our model to rotation; the event size distribution is analyzed as a function of the model parameters. In regions of phase space where the effects of excess volume and grain inertia are both large, we see a characteristic double peak in the size distribution, indicating a preferred scale for large avalanches. We explain this, and the associated configurational memory, using a simple picture of grain-cluster coupling. We next compare the distribution functions with those produced by random deposition and, in the latter case, present results for the event size distribution function in terms of the size of the deposited grains. Finally, we show the connection of our model to earlier scale-invariant models, and discuss our results. @S1063-651X~96! 09306-3#
Race as a Predictor of Palliative Care Referral Time, Hospice Utilization, and Hospital Length of Stay: A Retrospective Noncomparative Analysis

Background: Palliative care is associated with significant benefits, including reduced pain and suffering, an increased likelihood of patients dying in their preferred location, and decreased health-care expenditures. Racial and ethnic disparities are well-documented in hospice use and referral patterns; however, it is unclear whether these disparities apply to inpatient palliative care services. Objective: To determine if race is a significant predictor of time to inpatient palliative care consult, patient enrollment in hospice, and patients’ overall hospital length of stay among patients of an inpatient palliative care service. Design: Retrospective noncomparative analysis. Setting: Urban academic medical center in the United States. Patients: 3207 patients referred to an inpatient palliative care service between March 2006 and April 2015. Measurements: Time to palliative care consult, disposition of hospice/not hospice (excluding patients who died), and hospital length of stay among patients by racial (Asian, black, Native American/Eskimo, Hispanic, white, Unknown) and ethnic (Hispanic/Latino, non-Hispanic, Unknown) background. Results: Race was not a significant predictor of time to inpatient palliative care consult, discharge to hospice, or hospital length of stay. Similarly, black/white, Hispanic/white, and Asian/white variables were not significant predictors of hospice enrollment (Ps > .05). Limitations: Study was conducted at 1 urban academic medical center, limiting generalizability; hospital race and ethnicity categorizations may also limit interpretation of results. Conclusions: In this urban hospital, race was not a predictor of time to inpatient palliative care service consult, discharge to hospice, or hospital length of stay. Confirmatory studies of inpatient palliative care services in other institutions are needed.
Facilitating the retention of experienced critical care nurses: a survey report on what matters most.

If healthcare facilities are . interested in retaining their . nurses, [they should enable] these nurses to not only plan their work and time off, but [ensure] that those schedules are implemented on a reliable basis. The Editorial in the April 2007 issue of Critical Care Nurse addressed the topic of how experienced critical care nurses might be retained within the profession, summarized existing strategies proposed from literature and discourse on this topic, and invited readers to complete a brief online survey on this topic so their priorities on this important issue could be captured and communicated. This is a report on the findings from that survey.
A dual-phase-controlled dynamic latched amplifier for high-speed and low-power DRAMs

A dual-phase-controlled dynamic latched (DDL) amplifier for a differential data transfer scheme designed to achieve both high speed and low power in DRAMs is described. This circuit reduces the excessive operating margin caused by device fluctuations by using a pair of dynamic latched amplifiers, controlled by a dual-phase clock, to automatically correct the output data. Two circuit technologies are used in the DDL amplifier to achieve 200-MHz operation in a 1-Gb SDRAM using 0.13-/spl mu/m technology: a cycle-time-progressive control circuit that increases the operating frequency and a shared DDL amplifier technique that reduces the area penalty of the DDL amplifier. These techniques and circuits reduce the access time to 10 ns, which is 1.2 ns less than that of the conventional dynamic amplifier, while also reducing the operating current to less than 10% that of the static amplifier.
Periodic Orbits of Henon Heiles Hamiltonian --Bifurcation Phenomenon--

In this paper we discuss the bifurcation of periodic orbits for the Henon-Heiles Hamiltonian. The model of Henon-Heiles> has been studied by many authors since 1964. We make no attempt to list all references to periodic orbits of this Hamiltonian, but only those which are representative in the field of celestial mechanics,> dynamical systems,> and solid state physics. > El-Sabaa and Sherief> discussed nine classes of the main periodic orbits in Henon-Heiles potential which they regarded as a two-dimensional galactic potential. Davies et al.> studied eight families, using the monodromy method, of the simple and basic orbits in Henon-Heiles potential partly on the basis of Churchill et al.'s study> where the periodic orbits in Henon-Heiles potential were classified into the eight families taking into account various symmetries. Other literature cited for periodic orbits of Henon-Heiles Hamiltonian can be found, for references in the past 15 years, in Ref. 3), and for earlier references in Ref. 5). Akhiezer et al. > studied, in their research of dynamical chaos of charged particles in a crystal, the dynamical chaos of the Henon-Heiles hamiltonian, regarding Henon-Heiles potential, on the basis of a reasonable theory, as a model potential of the real channel potentials in a crystal. Bifurcation theory has been developed by many authors since the time of Poincare. Meyer> analytically studied the bifurcation of periodic orbits for a conservative differential equation, Duffing equation, selecting from these many bifurcation theories those cases which are generic. Aguiar et al.7l extended Meyer's work, in which he confined himself to the generic case of a Hamiltonian without symmetry, to include Hamiltonian with time-reversal symmetry and space-reflection symmetry. That is, Aguiar et al.7l developed a method to study the nongeneric case of a Hamiltonian with symmetries, beyond the generic case of a Hamiltonian without symmetry. Generally speaking, some of typical types of generic bifurcations are influenced directly by special symmetries of the system. All Hamiltonian systems discussed below are of the form
Energy on Demand

New imaging techniques can see into the functioning brain, revealing the regions that are active during certain tasks and sensations. Magistretti et al., in their Perspective, take this notion one step further and, by careful analysis of the biochemistry that gives rise to imaging signals, they deduce some of the cellular and molecular events that accompany neuronal activity in the working brain, ultimately laying the groundwork for determining the biochemistry that underlies human cognition.
Immunolocalization of maize transglutaminase and its substrates in plant cells and in Escherichia coli transformed cells

Plant transglutaminases (TGases) are poorly characterized in contrast to mammalian members of the super family. Two cDNAs encoding active maize chloroplast TGase, TGZ15 and TGZ21 were cloned for the first time in plants by our group (Patent WWO03102128). The plant TGase was shown to be preferentially present in the grana-appressed thylakoids of mesophyll light-exposed chloroplasts by subcellular localisation, with the abundance depending on the degree of grana development, and the enzyme activity being light dependent. Using antibodies obtained from the plant protein, the enzyme has been immunolocalized at different stages of chloroplast development, in dark-grown maize embryogenic callus, etiolated and light-grown plants as well as co-immunolocalized with its LHCII antenna protein substrates. Variants of maize chloroplast transglutaminase have also been sub-cloned into a pET28 vector and overexpressed in Escherichia coli cells, with the recombinant protein immunodetected preferentially in bacterial-formed inclusion bodies.