Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nerve Growth Factor-Independent Neuronal Survival: A Role for NO Donors

Because of the limited therapeutic applications of nerve growth factor (NGF), there has been increasing focus on the development of pharmacological tools to bypass the requirement of NGF for the activation of the TrkA tyrosine kinase receptor neuronal survival pathway. In this issue of Molecular Pharmacology, the work by Culmsee et al. (p. 1006) shows that NGF-independent activation of TrkA by protein tyrosine phosphatase (PTP) inhibitors is only achieved when accompanied by release of nitric oxide (NO). This work identifies the integration of the NO/cGMP/protein kinase G (PKG) and NGF/TrkA pathways to induce activation of Akt and ERK1/2 and mediate neuronal survival in the absence of NGF. In addition, it underscores the potential therapeutic effects of ethyl-3,4-dephostatin (DPN), a stable analog of the naturally occurring PTP inhibitor dephostatin, which serves as a NO donor and protects neurons from apoptosis. This Perspective comparatively reviews two major signal transduction pathways that mediate NGF-independent neuronal survival by activating the TrkA pathway: the NO/cGMP/PKG and adenosine/G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) pathways.
Effect of Laser Coupling and Active Stabilization on the Phase Noise Performance of Optoelectronic Microwave Oscillators Based on Whispering-Gallery-Mode Resonators

We investigate the effect of laser coupling efficiency and active stabilization on the phase noise performance of optoelectronic oscillators based on monocrystalline whispering-gallery-mode disk resonators. We show that the resonator's intrinsic optical quality factor is not the only parameter to optimize in order to get a good phase-noise performance. In addition, the oscillator setup may involve many noise conversion processes that have to be evaluated and understood in order to optimize the spectral purity of the output microwave. We study the effect of the laser lightwave coupling into and out of the optical resonator on the spectral purity of the oscillator, and we evidence the role of this critical parameter on the phase noise performance. We also investigate the upconversion of baseband noise, even originating from marginal components in the oscillator setup, onto the output microwave and the resulting degradation of the spectral purity. Our experimental results are obtained using two ultrahigh-Q disk resonators manufactured with calcium and magnesium fluoride, respectively.
Correlation of neuropsychological evaluation and SPECT imaging in patients with Alzheimer's disease

Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE) is a very useful tool for diagnosing changes in cognitive functions by the general practitioner or other medical staff who is not familiar with neuropsychological tests. On the other hand, HMPAO brain SPECT has been shown to have a high sensitivity to detect neurodegenerative processes, which lead to dementia. The correlation between both methods is unknown. We compared both methods in order to find a rational evaluation tool for the practitioner to obtain a higher efficacy and cost effective way of using both methods.
Histologic Distribution of Fatal Rotaviral Pneumonitis: An Immunohistochemical and RT In Situ PCR Analysis

Rotaviral infection is a common cause of gastroenteritis and pharyngitis; to our knowledge, infection has not been associated with severe pneumonia. We report on two cases of fatal pneumonitis in 49-and 54-year-old men; the latter was on long-term steroid treatment of multiple sclerosis. In the latter case, the histologic examination after a several week history of symptoms showed severe organizing interstitital pneumonitis and necrotizing bronchiolitis with extensive squamous metaplasia. The other case, which was fatal several days after the onset of symptoms, showed marked septal capillaritis with denudement of the alveolar pneumocytes, extravascated red blood cells, and intravascular thrombi formation. In each case, rotaviral RNA was localized by reverse transcription (RT) in situ PCR to the endothelial cells of the alveolar capillaries, macrophages, and pneumocytes as well as, in the second case, to the squamous metaplastic cells. Immunohistochemical analysis for the virus demonstrated an equivalent histologic distribution. It is concluded that rotaviral infection can lead to fatal pneumonitis and that the mechanism of this complication is centered on a diffuse septal endothelialitis with concomitant tissue damage.
Determinants of counseling for children in Manhattan after the September 11 attacks.

OBJECTIVE After the September 11 terrorist attacks, many adults and children received counseling. The authors assessed the prevalence and correlates of counseling for experiences related to the disaster received by children aged four to 18 years living in Manhattan. METHODS From a representative sample of 1,008 adult residents of Manhattan who were living below 110th Street five to eight weeks after the attacks, the authors interviewed 112 parents or primary caretakers about their child's level of exposure to the disaster, the extent of loss, receipt of counseling services, and behavioral reaction. RESULTS Overall, 22 percent of the children had received some form of counseling related to their experiences after the disaster. More than half of the counseling received (58 percent) was delivered in schools. Predictors of counseling in a multivariate model were male sex (odds ratio=5.3), having a parent with current posttraumatic stress disorder related to the attacks (OR=4.3), and having at least one sibling living in the household (OR=3.6). CONCLUSIONS Parents' own level of posttraumatic stress was associated with whether their children received counseling related to the September 11 attacks. This finding has important implications, because parents act as decision makers for their children in seeking health care. After the terrorist attacks, school and health care personnel provided early intervention counseling in Manhattan.
Slip! Slop! Slap! and SunSmart, 1980-2000: Skin Cancer Control and 20 Years of Population-Based Campaigning

The Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria has been running sun protection programs for more than 20 years: Slip! Slop! Slap! from 1980 to 1988 and SunSmart from 1988 to the present. The Victorian Health Promotion Foundation has provided funding for the SunSmart program for the past 13 years. These programs have played an important role in changing the whole society’s approach to the sun and have resulted in marked reductions in sun exposure. This article describes the social, political, economic, and organizational context within which these programs developed. Then 10 areas are discussed that illustrate a critical aspect of the development and implementation of this successful systemwide health promotion program. These areas focus on key aspects of the context within which the program operates and on issues that derive from the experience of implementing program strategies. In summary, the success of the two programs is described as having been built on two key foundations: the vital integration of research and evaluation, on one hand, and a strong basis of consistency and continuity, on the other.
Sensorless Induction Motor Control Using Low-Cost Electrical Sensors

This paper presents a sensorless control strategy for induction motors using low cost electrical sensors. The main contribution is the use of low-cost electrical sensors. It is allowed thanks to the use of a linear Kalman filter. To achieve state estimates as close as possible to the optimal ones it is also presented a procedure to perform the tuning of the Kalman filter. A robust model reference adaptive controller (RMRAC) is used to perform the tuning of a model reference controller (MRC) that controls the induction motor despite unmodeled dynamics
Multi-frequency printed loop antenna for mobile phone application

The printed loop antenna for multi-frequency operation in the mobile phone application is proposed. The loop antenna consists of an inverted-L shaped strip and a rectangular patch on the front side, while the back side consists of a meander loop antenna and a 100×60 mm2 ground plane. The inverted-L shaped strip and the rectangular patch are connected with a 50 Ω microstrip line. The feeding mechanism is coupled-fed method, which excites the loop antenna through the inverted-L strip and the rectangular patch. The loop antenna provides two wide operating bands centered at about 810 and 2175 MHz for LTE700/GSM850/GSM900/DCS/PCS/UMTS/LTE2300/WLAN/LTE2500 bands operation. The proposed antenna also has the advantages of low profile, low cost, ease fabrication, and less affected by changing ground plane size.
Power management supervisory control algorithm for standalone wind energy systems

Being natural and renewable, the wind is a valuable energy resource. Standalone off-grid wind systems cannot simply extract the maximum power at all times due to energy storage limitations. As a result of the limited energy storage, wasted surplus wind power is directed to an energy `dump' known as a `dummy load' and the power is dissipated as heat. Therefore, the challenge for standalone wind systems is to efficiently extract the maximum power from the wind when necessary, and reduce the energy extraction - as dictated by the energy storage mechanism - to minimize surplus of energy. By regulating the power output as necessary, the amount of wasted energy and heat dissipation requirements of the energy dump mechanism will be reduced. This paper proposes a power management supervisory controller that autonomously switches between an adaptive MPPT mode and a power limit search (PLS) mode to regulate the wind energy extraction. MPPT is used when the wind speeds result in maximum power levels that are lower than the desired power level. The memory based adaptive MPPT uses the internally captured atmospheric information to detect wind speed change and extract an equivalent of the turbine's tip speed ratio (TSR) parameter. The PLS is used whenever the power level exceeds the desired power and the MPPT is activated when the wind speed has decreased and no surplus power is detected. The functionality of the power management controller has been verified through simulation. The controller was able to successfully regulated the output power and exhibited smooth transitions between the MPPT and PLS.
Proteomic analysis of the phytopathogenic soilborne fungus Verticillium dahliae reveals differential protein expression in isolates that differ in aggressiveness

Verticillium dahliae is a soilborne fungus that causes a vascular wilt disease of plants and losses in a broad range of economically important crops worldwide. In this study, we compared the proteomes of highly (Vd1396‐9) and weakly (Vs06‐14) aggressive isolates of V. dahliae to identify protein factors that may contribute to pathogenicity. Twenty‐five protein spots were consistently observed as differential in the proteome profiles of the two isolates. The protein sequences in the spots were identified by LC‐ESI‐MS/MS and MASCOT database searches. Some of the identified sequences shared homology with fungal proteins that have roles in stress response, colonization, melanin biosynthesis, microsclerotia formation, antibiotic resistance, and fungal penetration. These are important functions for infection of the host and survival of the pathogen in soil. One protein found only in the highly aggressive isolate was identified as isochorismatase hydrolase, a potential plant‐defense suppressor. This enzyme may inhibit the production of salicylic acid, which is important for plant defense response signaling. Other sequences corresponding to potential pathogenicity factors were identified in the highly aggressive isolate. This work indicates that, in combination with functional genomics, proteomics‐based analyses can provide additional insights into pathogenesis and potential management strategies for this disease.
Migration in Europe and Its Economic Impact: A CGE Approach

The objective of this paper is to examine whether the migration of refugees in Europe will be able to contribute to the economic development of both the countries of origin and destination. This is done by conducting a quantitative assessment of the potential economic impact of the migration of refugees in Europe at the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels using a global computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that takes into account bilateral migration blows. The simulation results of policy scenarios on migration of refugees in Europe are presented in terms of real GDP, equivalent variation (EV) as a measure of welfare, supply of and demand for unskilled and skilled labor, wages for unskilled and skilled labor, and domestic production by sector of the countries concerned. Major findings of this study are that the EU member states that accept migrants are predicted to gain an additional increase in real GDP and welfare, while the countries of source such as Middle East countries, North African countries and Sub-Saharan African countries are expected to lose in economic growth and welfare, because they lose the labor force and produce less goods and services.
Assessment of organizational climate in the restaurant industry

ABSTRACT The objectives of this study were to assess organizational climate in restaurants and to examine the impact of the individual-level characteristics of employees on organizational climate based on the well-known 17-dimension-framework. Survey questionnaires were distributed to more than 380 foodservice establishments in the United States. For the data analysis, 418 responses from managers and frontline employees were used. Principal component analysis, factor analysis, and analysis of variance were employed. This study indicated that age, education, work experience, title, and employee status impacted the organizational climate in restaurants. These results will be useful in developing managerial strategies to improve organizational performance in restaurants.
Challenging the Degeneration Thesis: The Role of Democracy in Worker Cooperatives?

This paper uses data collected through written narratives, focus groups and participant observation in three small UK worker cooperatives to investigate the role of democracy in maintaining cooperatives’ dual social-economic characteristic and resisting degeneration. More specifically, it adds to limited empirical literature countering the degeneration thesis by arguing that ongoing processes of individual-collective alignment, understood as central to the practice of democracy, help cooperatives to: balance varying and conflicting needs and aims; challenge the assumption underpinning the degeneration thesis; and transform degenerative “risks” into creative and productive spaces where new meanings and practices can be formed.
The Capabilities Questionnaire for the Community Mental Health Context (CQ-CMH): A measure inspired by the capabilities approach and constructed through consumer-researcher collaboration.

OBJECTIVE The involvement of people with psychiatric disabilities in research and service evaluation has traditionally been rare, especially in the construction of outcome measures. This study documents a collaborative process with consumers from 2 Portuguese community mental health services in the construction of the Capabilities Questionnaire for the Community Mental Health context (CQ-CMH). The measure is inspired by Nussbaum's capabilities approach and aims to measure consumers' capabilities when supported by the community mental health services. METHOD Focus groups with 50 consumers from 2 programs generated data about their gains from and goals for participation in the programs. A Steering Committee-comprising 3 consumers and 2 researchers-analyzed the data, generated a list of items, sorted them according to Nussbaum's list of capabilities, and developed a rating scale. To check face validity, the questionnaire was tested with 15 consumers. RESULTS The collaborative process led to the transformation of traditional research roles, the promotion of empowerment to participants, the ecological validity of the results, and a cultural adaptation of Nussbaum's list to the context of the study. The resulting CQ-CMH is composed of 104 items organized by 10 capabilities, and 1 open-ended question about service improvements. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE The capabilities approach and the collaborative process undertaken both support the exercise of choice and control by people with psychiatric disabilities. The capabilities measure-constructed by consumers-may be used as an outcome measure in service evaluation. The questionnaire will undergo further testing of its validity and psychometric qualities.
Phase I clinical trial of adoptive transfer of expanded natural killer cells in combination with IgG1 antibody in patients with gastric or colorectal cancer

Natural killer (NK) cells exhibit strong cytotoxic activity against tumor cells without prior sensitization, and have the potential to exert antibody‐dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC). In this clinical trial, we examined the safety and efficacy of the use of NK cells, generated using a novel expansion system, in combination with IgG1 antibodies for the treatment of advanced gastric or colorectal cancers. Treatment consisted of trastuzumab‐ or cetuximab‐based chemotherapy, plus adoptive NK cell therapy. For administration of expanded NK cells, dose escalation with a sequential 3 + 3 design was performed in three steps, at doses of 0.5 × 109, 1.0 × 109, and 2.0 × 109 cells/injection (N = 9). After 3 days of IgG1 antibody administration, patients were infused with expanded NK cells three times at triweekly intervals. NK cell populations expanded with our system were confirmed as being enriched in NK cells (median 92.9%) with high expression of NKG2D (97.6%) and CD16 (69.6%). The combination therapy was very well tolerated with no severe adverse events. Among six evaluable patients, four presented stable disease (SD) and two presented progressive disease. Of the four SD patients, three showed an overall decrease in tumor size after combination therapy. Immune monitoring suggested that combination therapy enhanced whole blood IFN‐γ production and reduced peripheral regulatory T cells (Tregs). In conclusion, this phase I trial provides evidence of good tolerability, induction of Th1 immune responses, and preliminary anti‐tumor activity for this combination therapy, in patients with advanced gastric and colorectal cancer that have received previous therapy.
Trichromacy, opponent colours coding and optimum colour information transmission in the retina

This paper presents a systematic analysis of the role of opponent type processing in colour vision and the relation between opponent type colour transformations and the initial three colour mechanisms. It is shown that efficient information transmission is achieved by a transformation of the initial three colour mechanisms into an achromatic and two opponent chromatic channels. The derivation of the transformation is dependent solely on criteria from information theory. Thus it provides a logical rationale reconciling opponent type processing as an optimal necessary step after the initial three colour mechanisms, unifying respectively the Hering and Young-Helmholtz approaches to colour vision. The effects of chromatic adaptation on the spectral response of the achromatic and two chromatic channels are discussed from the point of view of information theory. It is argued that adaptation serves as a dynamic readjustment of these responses, necessary to meet criteria of efficient colour information transmission. The results are confronted with empirical observations to test the principles of the theory and the relation to other theories is discussed. Within the same framework the issue of trichromacy is discussed. It is argued that a broad class of typical colour spectra can effectively be represented by three significant degrees of freedom that make up a trichromatic system.
EUS predictors of long-term survival in esophageal carcinoma.

BACKGROUND EUS is the most accurate nonsurgical modality for the staging of esophageal cancer, but the ability of EUS to predict outcomes or prognosis is unclear. Patients were examined who had EUS performed for esophageal cancer staging to determine which endosonographic features predict survival. METHOD Data on 203 patients undergoing EUS for esophageal cancer staging were studied retrospectively. Median survival was calculated for each T-stage and N-stage and according to the presence or absence of celiac axis (CAx) lymphadenopathy as determined by EUS. Kaplan-Meier survival curves were generated for each stage and the log-rank test was used to test for significant differences in survival. Multivariate analysis was performed to test for the relative importance in predicting survival of the EUS stages, also considering age, gender, histology, and type of treatment. RESULTS Significant differences were found in the ability of EUS-determined T-stage (p = 0.0005), N-stage (p < 0.0001), and presence of CAx nodes (p = 0.0049) to predict survival. Multivariate analysis showed N-stage to predict survival. CONCLUSIONS Pretreatment EUS can predict survival in esophageal cancer based on initial T-stage, N-stage, and the presence of CAx nodes. The presence of lymphadenopathy at EUS is an important predictor of survival. EUS should be performed in all patients with esophageal cancer, not only for staging patients before therapy, but also as a valuable method of determining prognosis.
Abnormal osmotic regulation in trpv4-/- mice

Osmotic homeostasis is one of the most aggressively defended physiological parameters in vertebrates. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying osmotic regulation are poorly understood. The transient receptor potential channel, vanilloid subfamily (TRPV4), is an osmotically activated ion channel that is expressed in circumventricular organs in the mammalian CNS, which is an important site of osmotic sensing. We have generated trpv4-null mice and observed abnormalities of their osmotic regulation. trpv4-/- mice drank less water and became more hyperosmolar than did wild-type littermates, a finding that was seen with and without administration of hypertonic saline. In addition, plasma levels of antidiuretic hormone were significantly lower in trpv4-/- mice than in wild-type littermates after a hyperosmotic challenge. Continuous s.c. infusion of the antidiuretic hormone analogue, dDAVP, resulted in systemic hypotonicity in trpv4-/- mice, despite the fact that their renal water reabsorption capacity was normal. Thus, the response to both hyper- and hypoosmolar stimuli is impaired in trpv4-/- mice. After a hyperosmolar challenge, there was markedly reduced expression of c-FOS in the circumventricular organ, the organum vasculosum of the lamina terminalis, of trpv4-/- mice compared with wild-type mice. This finding suggests that there is an impairment of osmotic sensing in the CNS of trpv4-/- mice. These data indicate that TRPV4 is necessary for the normal response to changes in osmotic pressure and functions as an osmotic sensor in the CNS.