Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aldose reductase modulates acute activation of mesenchymal markers via the β-catenin pathway during cardiac ischemia-reperfusion

Aldose reductase (AR: human, AKR1B1; mouse, AKR1B3), the first enzyme in the polyol pathway, plays a key role in mediating myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. In earlier studies, using transgenic mice broadly expressing human AKR1B1 to human-relevant levels, mice devoid of Akr1b3, and pharmacological inhibitors of AR, we demonstrated that AR is an important component of myocardial I/R injury and that inhibition of this enzyme protects the heart from I/R injury. In this study, our objective was to investigate if AR modulates the β-catenin pathway and consequent activation of mesenchymal markers during I/R in the heart. To test this premise, we used two different experimental models: in vivo, Akr1b3 null mice and wild type C57BL/6 mice (WT) were exposed to acute occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) followed by recovery for 48 hours or 28 days, and ex-vivo, WT and Akr1b3 null murine hearts were perfused using the Langendorff technique (LT) and subjected to 30 min of global (zero-flow) ischemia followed by 60 min of reperfusion. Our in vivo results reveal reduced infarct size and improved functional recovery at 48 hours in mice devoid of Akr1b3 compared to WT mice. We demonstrate that the cardioprotection observed in Akr1b3 null mice was linked to acute activation of the β-catenin pathway and consequent activation of mesenchymal markers and genes linked to fibrotic remodeling. The increased activity of the β-catenin pathway at 48 hours of recovery post-LAD was not observed at 28 days post-infarction, thus indicating that the observed increase in β-catenin activity was transient in the mice hearts devoid of Akr1b3. In ex vivo studies, inhibition of β-catenin blocked the cardioprotection observed in Akr1b3 null mice hearts. Taken together, these data indicate that AR suppresses acute activation of β-catenin and, thereby, blocks consequent induction of mesenchymal markers during early reperfusion after myocardial ischemia. Inhibition of AR might provide a therapeutic opportunity to optimize cardiac remodeling after I/R injury.
Multipoint and single point non‐parametric linkage analysis with imperfect data

We used simulation to explore the impact of common data imperfections (i.e., missing parents, genotyping error, map error, and missing genotypes) upon the performance of multipoint and single point linkage analysis in the analyses of linkage data from pairs of siblings affected with an idealized complex trait. The performance of single point and multipoint linkage was similar under an unrealistic best case scenario; however, when four data imperfections were combined, the performance of single point linkage analysis appeared to be superior to multipoint. The absence of parental genotypes in the presence of 1% genotype error led to marked degradation of linkage signal, particularly for multipoint analyses. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Some contemporary issues in social accounting and audit

Paper delivered to the Social Auditing in New Zealand Conference 11 and 12 October 2001, Wellington. “I took the local train from my village into Edinburgh recently and was pleased to find that some new rolling stock has replaced the old style diesel carriages. I also noticed that the small but more luxurious section at one end of the train is now called `Business Class’. A metaphor for our times it seemed to me: we are now divided into `business class’ (who make the world work and need more comfortable seats) and the rest of us. And that of course reminds us of the origins of modern social auditing – seeking a means to ensure that companies, as they became bigger and less connected to their local communities, remained accountable to the people and places they affect. George Goyder explained as early as 1961: “[financial auditing] is a onesided state of affairs and belongs to the days when companies were small and public accountability was secured.in an economy of big business.there is clearly as much need for a social audit as for a financial audit”. ” 2
Spatial diversity vs. array gain in cellular communication systems

Multiple antennas are used in cellular communication systems to create spatial diversity and array gain. Techniques such as transmit diversity do for the former, while beamforming systems do the latter. This paper investigates the tradeoff between spatial diversity and array gain as a function of the total diversity available in the system, both spatial and temporal.
Interannual and Interdecadal Variability in 335 Years of Central England Temperatures

Understanding the natural variability of climate is important for predicting its near-term evolution. Models of the oceans' thermohaline and wind-driven circulation show low-frequency oscillations. Long instrumental records can help validate the oscillatory behavior of these models. Singular spectrum analysis applied to the 335-year-long central England temperature (CET) record has identified climate oscillations with interannual (7- to 8-year) and interdecadal (15- and 25-year) periods, probably related to the North Atlantic's wind-driven and thermohaline circulation, respectively. Statistical prediction of oscillatory variability shows CETs decreasing toward the end of this decade and rising again into the middle of the next.
Encoding Timing Information for Musical Query Matching

We compare representing note timing as Inter Onset Intervals (IOIs) and as the ratio of adjacent IOI values. A variety of log2 and linear quantizations of IOI and IOI ratios are considered for each representation. The utility of encoding with a particular quantization is measured by the ability of a simple string-matcher to differentiate between themes in a melodic corpus. Results indicate that time is best represented by IOI ratios quantized to a logarithmic scale.
Design of a 1×4 silicon wavelength demultiplexer based on multimode interference in a slot waveguide structures

In this paper, we present a 1×4 wavelength demultiplexer operating at 1. 4μm, 1. 45μm, 1. 5μm and 1.55 μm wavelength, based on multimode interference (MMI) coupler in a slot waveguide structure. The design is based on a cascade of three 1×2 MMI demultiplexer. Tapered waveguide structures are being used to connect the input/output and the MMI section, for reducing the excess loss. Since the slot waveguide encompass true guided modes, confined by total internal reflections, there are no noticeable confinement losses. A BPM simulation is applied for optimizing the device parameters and assessing its performance. To the best of our knowledge it is the first time that a 1×4 demultiplexer is being implemented by a based MMI slot waveguide.
Consistency of Constraints on Nulls and on Dynamic Range Ratio in Pattern Synthesis for Antenna Arrays

Given an antenna array of N elements, we deal with the problem of finding an array pattern that approximates a desired pattern, while: a) null constraints are imposed in M(les N - 2) assigned directions; b) an upper bound D is imposed on the dynamic range ratio (DRR) of the excitations. At first we show that the system of constraint equations has solutions if and only if D ges D0, where D0 is a parameter depending on the null directions, and describe a method to evaluate D0. Then we propose two simple and fast algorithms to solve the synthesis problem and show their effectiveness by numerical examples. Statistical results show that usually D0 = 1 when M is small compared to N, thus exact nulls can be formed for any D ges 1. This result provides an insight into the numerical results.
Evaluation of BACTEC MGIT 960 and BACTEC 460TB Systems for Recovery of Mycobacteria from Clinical Specimens of a University Hospital with Low Incidence of Tuberculosis

ABSTRACT Clinical samples obtained over a period of 8 months (n = 2,624) were processed in parallel with the BACTEC 460TB system, with the MGIT 960 system, and in Löwenstein-Jensen (LJ) medium, resulting in the recovery of 127 mycobacteria. Recovery rates in combinations of the BACTEC 460TB or MGIT 960 system with LJ were, respectively, 94.7 and 94.7% forMycobacterium tuberculosis complex (n = 57) and 91.4 and 70.0% for nontuberculous mycobacteria (n = 70). Contamination rates, elevated in the MGIT 960 system, were associated with patients (cystic fibrosis) and type of material but not with transport time. Detection time was reduced in the MGIT 960 system.
The Effect Of Board Diversity On The Financial Performance Of Trading And Manufacturing Companies Listed In The Nairobi Securities Exchange

Scholars and researchers have in over the past two decades tried to determine the relationship between company board of directors’ attributes and the financial performance of firms listed in the securities exchange all over the world. Several studies show that companies with more diversified boards in terms of age, gender, education, board size, ethnic or racial orientation of the board members among other diversity variables have greater financial performance measured using the Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE) and Tobin’s Q. The objective of this study was to establish the effects of board diversity variables viz board average age, gender, education level, nationality, board independence and size of the firms and the financial performance of companies Listed in the Nairobi Securities Exchange. Financial performance was measured in terms of Return on Assets (ROA). Age attribute was measured by determining the log of the average age of the board members, gender was measured by the proportion of female to the total number of the board members, education levels of the board members were obtained by administering questionnaires designed to capture levels of education as either ‘O’-level / KCSE, diploma, graduate level, masters / post graduate, PhD and above. Dummy variables were used to measure the education attribute. Nationality was measured by the proportion of the non-Kenyan to the total number of the board members. Board independence was measured by the proportion of outside directors to the total number of the board members while company size was measured by the log of total assets. The findings show a strong positive relationship between board nationality and the financial performance. Also, board average age, gender, education, board independence and size of the firm had a weak positive relationship to the financial performance of the Trading and Manufacturing companies Listed in the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
FasL (CD95L, Apo1L) is expressed in the normal rat and human brain: Evidence for the existence of an immunological brain barrier

Despite the mechanical blood‐brain barrier, activated T‐cells can cross brain vessels. Thus, the CNS is routinely surveyed by immune competent cells; yet the healthy brain is not a target of antigen‐specific immune reactions. Therefore, mechanisms must exist to prevent brain‐antigen‐specific T‐cells from inducing immune responses. Data indicate that activated T‐cells entering the CNS may undergo apoptosis rather than leaving the brain to induce immune responses. Applying RT‐PCR, Western‐blots, and immunocytochemistry, we have demonstrated expression of the apoptosis‐inducing protein Fas ligand on astrocytes and neurons of apparently normal rat and human brains. FasL‐positive astrocytes were often situated in close vicinity to cerebral blood vessels in vivo and induced apoptosis of Fas expressing Jurkat cells in vitro. We propose that similar to other immune privileged organs FasL‐induced apoptosis of activated T‐cells in the brain protects the tissue from self damaging immune attacks by forming an immunological brain barrier. GLIA 27:62–74, 1999>. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Multi-sampling SVM Scheme for Current Source Converter with Superior Harmonic Performance

The device switching frequency of current source converters (CSC) in high power medium voltage applications is usually several hundred hertz. Selective harmonic elimination (SHE) has been the dominant modulation scheme because of its ability to eliminate unwanted low order harmonics at low switching frequency. Conventional space vector modulation (SVM), as another CSC modulation method, provides variable modulation index but its output contains low order harmonics with high magnitudes. In this paper, a multi-sampling SVM (MS-SVM) is proposed which substantially suppresses the low order harmonics. Investigation on the switching frequency of the proposed modulation method is carried out and methods to reduce additional switchings are developed. The proposed MS-SVM method exhibits a superior low order harmonics profile comparable to that of SHE and provides the same fast and flexible control capability as the conventional SVM. Simulation and experimental results are provided to verify the proposed method.
Effective Communications over Doubly-Selective Acoustic Channels using Iterative Signal Cancelation

A low-frequency doubly-spread acoustic channel is used to illustrate the effectiveness of iterative (turbo-) equalization for rapidly changing communications channels. The channel is modeled as a 1 km shallow ocean channel and its physical parameters are supported by recent measurements conducted by Dalhousie University. The proposed signal processing mechanism for equalization and decoding borrows from turbo equalization, but uses repetition coding and frequency-domain signal processing. Both have been shown to be advantagous for signaling on radio-frequency channels. Several simulation experiments verify that iterative interchannel interference cancelation can, in principle, effectively remove such interference, even for channels with very short coherence times. A low-complexity signal processing structure for effective communications over doubly-spread channels is presented and its performance is quantified in a series of experiements and related to the theoretically obtainable maximum performance, providing a well-rooted baseline benchmark for other methods, or the future inclusion of channel estimation and tracking algorithms.
Managerial Fads and Fashions: The Diffusion and Rejection of Innovations

Reviews indicate that the dominant perspective in the diffusion of innovation literature contains proinnovation biases which suggest that innovations and the diffusion of innovations will benefit adopters. As a result, it is difficult to either address or begin answering the questions: when and how do technically inefficient innovations diffuse? or when and how are technically efficient innovations rejected? This article has two goals: (1) to develop a typology that focuses attention on three less dominant perspectives that can be used to guide research on these questions and (2) to suggest how organizational scientists can develop more encompassing theories of innovation diffusion and rejection by using the theoretical tensions that exist between the dominant perspective and the three perspectives developed in this article. These resolutions are important because they indicate that processes which prompt the adoption of efficient innovations may coexist with processes that prompt the adoption of ineffici.
Images paired with concrete claims improve skeptical consumers’ responses to advertising promoting a firm’s good deeds

Abstract Previous research has focused attention on state skepticism over corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications, but little work has focused on how to override preexisting differences in consumer skepticism. To gain insight into this issue, the present studies explore whether company ads promoting a firm’s good deeds generate more positive responses when the ads contain concrete claims and/or images related to the firm’s corporate social responsibility claims, and how these elements of the CSR communication interact with individual differences in advertising skepticism. Results show that highly skeptical consumers (a) respond less favorably to ads than less skeptical consumers, overall; (b) respond more favorably to ads that contain a combination of concrete claims and images supporting those claims; and (c) respond as favorably as less skeptical consumers when ads feature concrete claims with supporting images. Additional results suggest that images are effective among highly skeptical consumers because skeptical consumers have a reduced ability to visualize advertising claims. Implications and future research directions are discussed.
A first theoretical realization of honeycomb topological magnon insulator

It has been recently shown that in the Heisenberg (anti)ferromagnet on the honeycomb lattice, the magnons (spin wave quasipacticles) realize a massless two-dimensional (2D) Dirac-like Hamiltonian. It was shown that the Dirac magnon Hamiltonian preserves time-reversal symmetry defined with the sublattice pseudo spins and the Dirac points are robust against magnon–magnon interactions. The Dirac points also occur at nonzero energy. In this paper, we propose a simple realization of nontrivial topology (magnon edge states) in this system. We show that the Dirac points are gapped when the inversion symmetry of the lattice is broken by introducing a next-nearest neighbour Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya (DM) interaction. Thus, the system realizes magnon edge states similar to the Haldane model for quantum anomalous Hall effect in electronic systems. However, in contrast to electronic spin current where dissipation can be very large due to Ohmic heating, noninteracting topological magnons can propagate for a long time without dissipation as magnons are uncharged particles. We observe the same magnon edge states for the XY model on the honeycomb lattice. Remarkably, in this case the model maps to interacting hardcore bosons on the honeycomb lattice. Quantum magnetic systems with nontrivial magnon edge states are called topological magnon insulators. They have been studied theoretically on the kagome lattice and recently observed experimentally on the kagome magnet Cu(1-3, bdc) with three magnon bulk bands. Our results for the honeycomb lattice suggests an experimental procedure to search for honeycomb topological magnon insulators within a class of 2D quantum magnets and ultracold atoms trapped in honeycomb optical lattices. In 3D lattices, Dirac and Weyl points were recently studied theoretically, however, the criteria that give rise to them were not well-understood. We argue that the low-energy Hamiltonian near the Weyl points should break time-reversal symmetry of the pseudo spins. Thus, recovering the same criteria in electronic systems.
Managing Access Control in Virtual Private Networks

Virtual Private Network technology allows remote network users to benefit from resources on a private network as if their host machines actually resided on the network. However, each resource on a network may also have its own access control policies, which may be completely unrelated to network access. Thus users' access to a network (even by VPN technology) does not guarantee their access to the sought resources. With the introduction of more complicated access privileges, such as delegated access, it is conceivable for a scenario to arise where a user can access a network remotely (because of direct permissions from the network administrator or by delegated permission) but cannot access any resources on the network. There is, therefore, a need for a network access control mechanism that understands the privileges of each remote network user on one hand, and the access control policies of various network resources on the other hand, and so can aid a remote user in accessing these resources based on the user's privileges. This research presents a software solution in the form of a centralized access control framework called an Access Control Service (ACS), that can grant remote users network presence and simultaneously aid them in accessing various network resources with varying access control policies. At the same time, the ACS provides a centralized framework for administrators to manage access to their resources. The ACS achieves these objectives using VPN technology, network address translation and by proxying various authentication protocols on behalf of remote users. ii Acknowledgements First, I would like to acknowledge Professor Sean Smith, and all his support throughout this research. Professor Smith was instrumental in helping me identify a topic and develop the ideas that have lead to this work. His optimism has been inspirational, especially when I was not sure how to progress with my research. I owe much gratitude to the other members of my thesis committee as well: Doug McIlroy and Tristan Henderson. Both were patient enough to listen to my proposals and their suggestions were most helpful in refining this research. I appreciate the time they took in reading over each revision of this document, as well as their comments about both the writing and content.
Cognitive Functions in Bipolar Manic, Depressed and Remission Episodes

Objective: In recent research, it has been suggested that cognitive functions seem to be impaired not only during the acute phases of bipolar disorder, but also during remission. In this study, we aimed to investigate cognitive functions in the manic, depressed and remission periods of bipolar disorder by comparing with a healthy control group. Methods: Cognitive functions including attention and memory were examined in 20 manic, 10 depressed and 21 euthymic bipolar I patients (3 months of remission, Hamilton depression scale score? 8, and Young Mania Rating Scale score? 6) as compared with 22 healthy subjects. All subjects were male, and their ages were between 20-45 years. Cognitive evaluation was carried out by the Serial Digit Learning Test, Auditory Verbal Learning Test, Cancellation Test and Stroop Test. Results: We found that attention, memory and learning functions were worse in the manic and depressive patients than healthy controls or patients in remission and that the number of depressive episodes had a negative effect on attention functions. No difference was found between patients in remission and healthy controls. Some attention subtests scores were negatively related to the memory test and its subtest scores in manic and depressed patients. Conclusion: This study has shown that impairments in attention, memory, information processing and learning functions of bipolar patients were specific to the depressive and manic periods of the disorder and no effect was present in the remission period.
[Increased prevalence of overweight and obesity in Dutch children, and the detection of overweight and obesity using international criteria and new reference diagrams].

OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity in Dutch children in 1980 and 1997 according to international criteria, and to design new reference diagrams for overweight and obesity in children. DESIGN Descriptive. METHOD The prevalence of overweight and obesity, based on height and weight data from the Fourth Dutch Growth Study (1997), was determined according to international criteria for age and sex. RESULTS In 1997, the prevalence of overweight and obesity increased in both boys and girls compared to 1980: in 1997, the prevalence of overweight ranged between 7.1 and 15.5% for boys, and between 8.2 and 16.1% for girls. Both the prevalence of overweight and obesity was higher in girls than in boys. CONCLUSION By applying the international criteria for overweight and obesity and reference growth diagrams based upon the 1997 Dutch growth study, the prevention and detection of overweight and obesity has to be implemented with vigour in Dutch youth health care.