Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of different growth factors on the chondrogenic potential of human bone marrow stromal cells.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of different growth factors on the chondrogenic potential of human bone marrow stromal cells (BMSC). DESIGN Different growth factors which have been shown to sustain the osteogenic potential of BMSC during their 'in vitro' expansion were assayed for the maintenance of the chondrogenic potential. We compared the ability of BMSC to reconstitute cartilage in vitro with their ability to form bone on hydroxyapatite microporous particles in an ectopic bone formation assay. RESULTS Among the factors assayed, fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) was the most effective in promoting growth of BMSC 'in vitro'. For all growth factors tested, we have found a complete overlap of the enhancement of chondrogenic and osteogenic potential. Any factor, either promoting or depressing bone formation, exerted the same effect on the chondrogenic potential of human BMSC. In particular, FGF2, either alone or in combination with other factors, strongly supported the formation of bone as well as of cartilage. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that FGF2 maintains human BMSC in an immature state allowing their 'in vitro' expansion. Expanded cells retain the chondro- osteogenic potential. Interestingly, the chondrogenic potential of BMSC 'in vitro' is directly related to their ability to form bone 'in vivo'. BMSC expanded 'ex vivo' are presently being proposed for cell therapy of bone defects. 'In vitro' chondrogenesis may be regarded as a rapid prediction assay to assess cell ability to form bone after 'in vivo' transplant.
Chemical Constituents from Andrographis echioides and Their Anti-Inflammatory Activity

Phytochemical investigation of the whole plants of Andrographis echioides afforded two new 2′-oxygenated flavonoids (1) and (2), two new phenyl glycosides (3) and (4), along with 37 known structures. The structures of new compounds were elucidated by spectral analysis and chemical transformation studies. Among the isolated compounds, (1–2) and (6–19) were subjected into the examination for their iNOS inhibitory bioactivity. The structure-activity relationships of the flavonoids for their inhibition of NO production were also discussed.
3D multitouch advanced interaction techniques and applications

The Cubtile is a 3D multitouch device composed of 5 multitouch surfaces. It allows the use of classical multitouch gestures in 3D, and therefore to ease the manipulation of 3D scenes: it provides more direct ways to handle complex 3D operations such as applying arbitrary rotations. The video illustrates several of those advanced gestures that the cubtile supports, and demonstrates the integration of this device in an actual museal application: it allows visitors, even non experts, to manipulate with great efficiency a 3D environment used to teach the basics of species classifications.
Original Antigenic Sin Response to RNA Viruses and Antiviral Immunity

The human immune system has evolved to fight against foreign pathogens. It plays a central role in the body's defense mechanism. However, the immune memory geared to fight off a previously recognized pathogen, tends to remember an original form of the pathogen when a variant form subsequently invades. This has been termed 'original antigenic sin'. This adverse immunological effect can alter vaccine effectiveness and sometimes cause enhanced pathogenicity or additional inflammatory responses, according to the type of pathogen and the circumstances of infection. Here we aim to give a simplified conceptual understanding of virus infection and original antigenic sin by comparing and contrasting the two examples of recurring infections such as influenza and dengue viruses in humans.
Generating a Large-Scale Entity Linking Dictionary from Wikipedia Link Structure and Article Text

Wikipedia has been increasingly used as a knowledge base for open-domain Named Entity Linking and Disambiguation. In this task, a dictionary with entity surface forms plays an important role in finding a set of candidate entities for the mentions in text. Existing dictionaries mostly rely on the Wikipedia link structure, like anchor texts, redirect links and disambiguation links. In this paper, we introduce a dictionary for Entity Linking that includes name variations extracted from Wikipedia article text, in addition to name variations derived from the Wikipedia link structure. With this approach, we show an increase in the coverage of entities and their mentions in the dictionary in comparison to other Wikipedia based dictionaries.
Prurigo as a clinical prodrome to adult T‐cell leukaemia/lymphoma

We report a case of adult T‐cell leukaemia/lymphoma (ATLL) with prurigo as a prodromal skin manifestation. The patient was a 52‐year‐old woman with a 2‐year history of a fluctuating skin condition consisting of pruritic papules and pigmentation on her lower legs and right buttock. Prurigo was diagnosed at her first visit in October 1995, and she was found to be seropositive for human T‐cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV‐1). Two years later, the skin lesions had spread over the patient's forearms and dorsa of the hands, and abnormal lymphoid cells had appeared in her peripheral blood. Southern blot analysis revealed monoclonal integration of HTLV‐1 provirus in the peripheral blood, but not in a skin lesion. Based on these results, a diagnosis of overt ATLL of the smouldering type was made. The findings in this case indicate that in healthy HTLV‐1 seropositive carriers, prurigo requires careful follow‐up as a cutaneous prodrome of ATLL.
Optimizing the Performance of Dynamically-Linked Programs

Dynamically-linked programs in general do not perform as well as statically-linked programs. This paper identifies three main areas that account for the performance loss. First, symbols are referenced indirectly and thus extra instructions are required. Second, the overhead in run-time symbol resolution is significant. Third, poor locality of functions in shared libraries and data structures maintained by the run-time linker may result in poor memory utilization. This paper presents new optimization techniques we developed that address these three areas and significantly improve the performance of dynamically-linked programs. Also, we provide measurements of the performance improvement achieved. Most importantly, we show that all desirable features of shared libraries can be achieved without sacrificing performance.
Impacts of Big Data Analytics on Organizations: A Resource Fit Perspective

Using big data analytics is generally considered to improve organizational performance. However, we argue here that the role of fit between different organizational resources associated with big data use needs to be better understood in order to explore how organizations can create value, increase agility, and ultimately improve overall performance from the use of big data analytics. This research-inprogress study draws on the theory of resource-based view (RBV) and the person-environment (P-E) fit perspective to develop a theoretical model explaining the impacts of fit between various elements including (i.e., tools, data, tasks, employees) on organizational performance. A survey-based methodology is outlined to empirically validate the proposed research model using structural equation modeling techniques. Potential contributions from this research to theory and practice are also outlined.
β-Arrestins 1 and 2 are critical regulators of inflammation

β-Arrestins 1 and 2 couple to seven trans-membrane receptors and regulate G protein-dependent signaling, receptor endocytosis and ubiquitylation. Recent studies have uncovered several unanticipated functions of β-arrestins, suggesting that the role of β-arrestins in cell signaling is much broader than originally thought. It is now recognized that β-arrestins can transduce receptor signaling independent of G proteins. The expression of β-arrestins is differentially regulated in immune cells and tissues in response to specific inflammatory stimuli, and β-arrestins are critical regulators of the inflammatory response. This review will focus on β-arrestins in immune cells and the impact of altered expression on the pathogenesis of specific inflammatory diseases. Understanding the role of β-arrestins in inflammation may lead to new strategies to treat inflammatory diseases, such as sepsis, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease and atherosclerosis.
The effect of chaya (Cnidoscolus aconitifolius) leaf meal and of exogenous enzymes on amino acid digestibility in broilers

1. The apparent ileal nitrogen (N) and amino acid digestibilities in chaya leaf meal (CLM) (Cnidoscolus aconitifolius) with added enzymes, and the same variables in diets containing different amounts of CLM were studied in chickens. 2. In the first experiment pectinase, β-glucanase, and pectinase + β-glucanase were added to CLM. In the second experiment, there were three diets based on maize and soybean: 0, 150 and 250 g/kg CLM. 3. Pectinase significantly increased both lysine and overall amino acid digestibilities in CLM. 4. In experiment 2, the amino acid digestibility in birds fed on CLM250 was lower than that from birds fed on either control or CLM150. Only the digestibilities of alanine, arginine and proline were lower in birds fed on CLM150 than in those fed on the control diet. Nitrogen digestibility was lower in birds fed on the CLM250 diet than on either control or CLM150 diets. These findings were attributed to the increasing concentration of fibre with increasing dietary CLM.
Crisis Prevention and Crisis Management The Role of Regulatory Governance

Good regulatory governance in the financial system is a critical component of financial stability. Research on the topic has not been very systematic and deep. This paper first defines four key components of regulatory governanceindependence, accountability, transparency, and integrity. It explores the quality of regulatory governance based on the financial system evaluations under the Financial Sector Assessment Programs (FSAPs), which are the first and most comprehensive effort to analyze regulatory governance issues. In terms of independence, banking supervisors are ahead of the others, while securities regulators perform better on transparency. Insurance regulators are weak in all the regulatory governance components. On the whole, regulators still have a long way to go in terms of practicing good governance. The paper also discusses governance issues specific to crisis management and concludes with an agenda for further research.
Caracterização de carga de uma rede social baseada em localização.

Recently, there has been a large popularization of location-based social networks, such as FourSquare and Gowalla, in which users can create and share locations, check-in in these places using smart phones, and add comments and tips about places within the system. Part of that popularity is due to easy access to the internet through mobile devices with GPS. There is a big different between publishing content through social networks and through location-based social networks (LBSNs). LBSNs provide a new social structure derived from individuals locations in the physical world. Despite considerable interest, little is known about the patterns of access to new systems of social networks like LBSNs and how they differ from the patterns of traditional systems. This paper aims to take the first step in understanding this change. To that end, we use a dataset obtained from Apontador, a Brazilian system with characteristics similar to FourSquare and Gowalla, where users share information about their locations and can navigate on existent system locations. As results, we identified models that describe unique characteristics of the user sessions on this kind of system, patterns in which requests arrive on the server as well as the user navigation profile within the system.
The Role of Seniority at U.S. Work Places: A Report on Some New Evidence

This study discusses newly collected data concerning the role played by seniority in U.S. firms' termination and promotion decisions. The new information, based on 561 usable responses to a nation-wide survey of companies conducted by the authors, sheds light on two key questions: For what percentage of U.S. private sector employees (outside of agriculture and construction) is seniority -- per se (that is, seniority independent of current performance) rewarded in promotion decisions? For what percentage does protection against job loss grow with seniority even when current value to the firm does not? While there appear to be important differences for hourly versus salaried employees and for those covered by collective bargaining versus those not so covered, the new evidence presented strongly supports the claim that seniority independent of productivity plays a major role in the compensation and termination decisions affecting all employee groups at most U.S. workplaces.
Induction of protein oxidation by intravenous iron in hemodialysis patients: role of inflammation.

BACKGROUND Oxidative stress and inflammation contribute to the high prevalence and severity of atherosclerosis, infections, and beta2-microglobulin amyloidosis; and thus, to reduced survival rate and quality of life in hemodialysis (HD) patients. Inflammation induces oxidative stress by production of the oxidants: superoxide anion, hydrogen peroxide, and hypochlorite. Intravenous iron (IVIR), administered in HD patients to correct anemia, can release free iron, that may react with hydrogen peroxide to produce the strong oxidant hydroxyl radical. Inflammation-induced lipid and protein oxidation and IVIR-induced lipid oxidation were shown in HD patients. However, IVIR-induced protein oxidation and a relationship between inflammation and IVIR-induced oxidative stress have not been reported to date. METHODS We examined the effect of IVIR administration on markers of protein oxidation in HD patients (advanced oxidation protein products [AOPPs], thiol, and dityrosine) in relation to such inflammatory markers as C-reactive protein (CRP) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha). Iron saccharate, 100 mg, was administered to 19 HD patients for 1 hour after 3.5 hours of high-flux dialysis. Blood samples were drawn pre-HD, pre-IVIR, and post-IVIR for iron, transferrin, TNF-alpha, AOPP, thiol, total antioxidant capacity (TEAC), and dityrosine levels and pre-HD for ferritin and CRP levels. RESULTS IVIR administration induced a 37% increase in AOPP level (P < 0.001), which correlated positively with pre-HD CRP level (r = 0.72; P < 0.05) and was greater in patients with a greater pre-HD TNF-alpha level (P < 0.05). IVIR administration did not affect TEAC, thiol, dityrosine, or TNF-alpha levels. CONCLUSION IVIR administration induced an increase in protein oxidation (AOPP levels) that was related to the degree of inflammation.
Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus Type 1 (HTLV-1) bZIP Protein Interacts with the Cellular Transcription Factor CREB To Inhibit HTLV-1 Transcription

ABSTRACT The complex human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) retrovirus encodes several proteins that are unique to the virus within its 3′-end region. Among them, the viral transactivator Tax and posttranscriptional regulator Rex are well characterized, and both positively regulate HTLV-1 viral expression. Less is known about the other regulatory proteins encoded in this region of the provirus, including the recently discovered HBZ protein. HBZ has been shown to negatively regulate basal and Tax-dependent HTLV-1 transcription through its ability to interact with specific basic-leucine zipper (bZIP) proteins. In the present study, we found that HBZ reduces HTLV-1 transcription and virion production. We then characterized the interaction between HBZ and the cellular transcription factor CREB. CREB plays a critical role in Tax-mediated HTLV-1 transcription by forming a complex with Tax that binds to viral cyclic AMP-response elements (CREs) located within the viral promoter. We found that HBZ and CREB interact in vivo and directly in vitro, and this interaction occurs through the bZIP domain of each protein. We also found that CREM-Ia and ATF-1, which share significant homology in their bZIP domains with the bZIP domain of CREB, interact with HBZ-bZIP. The interaction between CREB and HBZ prevents CREB binding to the viral CRE elements in vitro and in vivo, suggesting that the reduction in HTLV-1 transcription by HBZ is partly due to the loss of CREB at the promoter. We also found that HBZ displaces CREB from a cellular CRE, suggesting that HBZ may deregulate CREB-dependent cellular gene expression.
Reproducibility of reference tissue quantification of dynamic contrast-enhanced data: comparison with a fixed vascular input function

Reference tissues are currently used to analyse dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE–MRI) data. The assessment of tumour response to treatment with anti-cancer drugs is a particularly important application of this type of analysis and requires a measure of reproducibility to define a level above which a significant change due to therapy can be inferred. This study compares the reproducibility of such quantification strategies with that found using a published, group-averaged uptake curve. It is shown that reference tissue quantification gives poorer reproducibility for most parameters than that found using a group-averaged plasma curve (a change in Ktrans of greater than 41.8% and 16.4% would be considered significant in the two approaches, respectively), but successfully incorporates some of the variability observed in plasma kinetics between visits and provides vascular input functions that, across the group, are comparable with the group-averaged curve. This study therefore provides an indirect validation of the methodology.
CAPITALIZATION RATES AS RISK INDICATORS FOR (NON-)EFFICIENT PROPERTIES?

Sustainability is at the forefront of recent management discussions. Climate changes, the fact that buildings are responsible for about 40% of the worldwide CO2-emissions and the increasing occupancy costs force investors and occupiers to change their management strategies and behaviors. But greening the portfolios might sometimes lead into converse directions and different benefits. All these biased perspectives of investors and occupiers interact in the valuation of the properties as efficient buildings should realize higher capital values as non-efficient buildings since efficiency reduces the property specific risk. Therefore the capitalization rate as all risk yield can be taken as indicator for the individual property to reflect the risks of being (non-)efficient. The aim of this paper is to analyze how current valuers account for the risk of non-efficient properties in the derivation of the adequate capitalization rate. By combining the investorsi and the occupiersi perspectives and taking all their relevant property costs on lease contract level into consideration this paper addresses the overall impacts of efficiency in the valuation process of the property market. Thereby, the crucial question will be addressed whether significant differences occur in the risk premiums of the capitalization rates for (non-)efficient properties. For this purpose, the relative risk premiums of 47 properties in the UK, based on data from the IPD Investment Property Databank as well as the IPD Occupier Databank, are each analyzed and measured against tailored IPD capitalization rate benchmarks of direct properties for the years 2007 and 2008. The results will give new insight into the definition of the right capitalization rate. The analysis shall help to explain risk patterns add to an improved understanding of the valuation and differentiation of (non-)efficient properties.
An image community detection method for hierarchical visualisation

Better ways of representing the results of image search can be found rather than regular lists of thumbnails. For this purpose, we propose a hierarchical visualisation scheme with two stages. We utilise the notion of image community and aim to detect communities within a large set of images by means of a novel deterministic community detection method. After image communities are detected, the representative key images of these communities are presented to the user in an intuitive and expressive layout. The layout is determined according to the detected community structure. As a result, the user is presented a distinctive set of images at the first stage. If similar images are desired, the members of the communities can be explored at the second stage. We experimentally show that the proposed community detection algorithm significantly outperforms generic community detection methods. Furthermore, we believe that the proposed hierarchical visualisation can be preferred by many of the users.
Improving Land Use/Cover Classification with a Multiple Classifier System Using AdaBoost Integration Technique

Guangzhou has experienced a rapid urbanization since 1978 when China initiated the economic reform, resulting in significant land use/cover changes (LUC). To produce a time series of accurate LUC dataset that can be used to study urbanization and its impacts, Landsat imagery was used to map LUC changes in Guangzhou from 1987 to 2015 at a three-year interval using a multiple classifier system (MCS). The system was based on a weighted vector to combine base classifiers of different classification algorithms, and was improved using the AdaBoost technique. The new classification method used support vector machines (SVM), C4.5 decision tree, and neural networks (ANN) as the training algorithms of the base classifiers, and produced higher overall classification accuracy (88.12%) and Kappa coefficient (0.87) than each base classifier did. The results of the experiment showed that, based on the accuracy improvement of each class, the overall accuracy was improved effectively, which combined advantages from each base classifier. The new method is of high robustness and low risk of overfitting, and is reliable and accurate, and could be used for analyzing urbanization processes and its impacts.
Oral antiviral therapies for chronic hepatitis C infection

The treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection with pegylated interferon alpha and ribavirin leads to a sustained virologic response in around 50% of patients with HCV genotype 1, 65% with HCV genotype 4, 75% with HCV genotype 3 and around 80% with HCV genotype 2. A better understanding of the HCV lifecycle has resulted in the development of several potential direct-acting antiviral drugs (DAAs) targeting viral proteins [NS3/4A protease inhibitors, NS5B nucleos(t)idic and non-nucleos(t)idic polymerase inhibitors, NS5A replication complex inhibitors]. This review summarizes the main clinical data for the combinations of oral DAAs. DAAs, either in combination with pegylated interferon alpha or in interferon-free regimens, have demonstrated a high level of antiviral efficacy and a generally well-tolerated safety profile in treatment-naïve patients and in prior nonresponders to pegylated interferon alpha/ribavirin. Oral combination of new DAAs is likely to become the standard of care for chronic HCV in treatment-naïve or treatment-experienced patients. However, most studies so far have included small numbers of ‘easy-to-treat’ patients with short post-treatment periods for defining the sustained virologic response. Extension of the number of treated patients (including ‘difficult-to-treat’ patients, i.e. patients infected with genotype 3, who failed to respond to first-generation protease inhibitors or with cirrhosis as well as immunocompromised patients) and of the post-treatment follow up in a real-life setting could significantly worsen the rate of recovery. In these ‘difficult-to-treat’ patients, the rate of virologic cure with new DAAs could be lower than expected and consequently interferons may be still necessary in combination with the new drugs.