Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A cellular investment of bone marrow

We describe a method for cleanly separating; the cell layers at the bone‐marrow interface, which reveals that the myeloid tissue is invested by an epithelial‐like layer of specialized squamous cells we call the marrow sac. The scanning electron microscope showed that the sac was fenestrated and that some of its cells pass as perivascular elements with the marrow capillaries that penetrate the bony cortex. The transmission electron microscope (TEM) showed that the cells comprising the marrow sac are less than 0.1 μm thick, overlap at their margins without specialized cell junctions, and are more electron dense than the reticular or fibroblastic cells of the marrow stroma. The fenestrations in the sac were intercellular and were usually occupied by cells having an ultrastructure compatible with an osteoprogenitor cell (OPC) lineage. The observation of a close proximity between the cells of the marrow sac and the osteogenic cells that line the endosteal surfaces of bone suggest that the sac cells, along with the OPCs of the superficial marrow stroma, should be included in any morphological or functional definition of an endosteum.
The Role of Micro RNA and its Modulation in Diseases and Drug Response: The Spark in Bioscience

The cutting edge research area in the field of molecular biology is a micro-RNA study. It makes the mile stone of gene regulation in plant and animal cell. Small noncoding RNAs rise as a micro-RNA and it reveals the fact of gene regulation with more information from Caenorhabditis elegans to the humans from last two decades. In this review paper, we focus on the biogenesis micro-RNA and small-interfering RNA with the association of various proteins that efficiently take part in the gene silencing process as well as modulation of various micro-RNAs in disease conditions and under the drug stress causing the extent of drug efficacy by inhibiting the putative targeted messenger RNA. © 2011 Universal Research Publications. All rights reserved
Boosting the Efficiency of HPCG and Graph500 with Near-Data Processing

HPCG and Graph500 can be regarded as the two most relevant benchmarks for high-performance computing systems. Existing supercomputer designs, however, tend to focus on floating-point peak performance, a metric less relevant for these two benchmarks, leaving resources underutilized, and resulting in little performance improvements, for these benchmarks, over time. In this work, we analyze the implementation of both benchmarks on a novel shared-memory near-data processing architecture. We study a number of aspects: 1. a system parameter design exploration, 2. software optimizations, and 3. the exploitation of unique architectural features like user-enhanced coherence as well as the exploitation of data-locality for inter near-data processor traffic.For the HPCG benchmark, we show a factor 2.5x application level speedup with respect to a CPU, and a factor 2.5x power-efficiency improvement with respect to a GPU. For the Graph500 benchmark, we show up to a factor 3.5x speedup with respect to a CPU. Furthermore, we show that, with many of the existing data-locality optimizations for this specific graph workload applied, local memory bandwidth is not the crucial parameter, and a high-bandwidth as well as low-latency interconnect are arguably more important, shining a new light on the near-data processing characteristics most relevant for this type of heavily optimized graph processing.
High-resolution chest CT findings do not predict the presence of pulmonary hypertension in advanced idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

BACKGROUND Reliable, noninvasive approaches to the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension (PH) in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) are needed. We tested the hypothesis that chest CT-determined extent of pulmonary fibrosis and/or main pulmonary artery diameter (MPAD) can be used to identify the presence of PH in patients with advanced IPF. METHODS Cross-sectional study of 65 patients with advanced IPF and available right-heart catheterization and high-resolution chest CT. An expert radiologist scored ground-glass opacity, lung fibrosis, and honeycombing in the CT images on a scale of 0 to 4. These scores were also summed into a total profusion score. The main pulmonary artery was measured at its widest dimension on the supine full-chest sequence. At this same level, the widest aorta diameter was measured. RESULTS Chest CT-determined fibrosis score, ground-glass opacity score, honeycombing score, total profusion score, diameter of the main pulmonary artery, and the ratio of the pulmonary artery to aorta diameter did not differ between those with and without PH. There was no significant correlation between mean pulmonary artery pressure and any of the chest CT-determined measures. CONCLUSIONS High-resolution chest CT-determined extent of pulmonary fibrosis and/or MPAD cannot be used to screen for PH in advanced IPF patients.
Diurnal Changes in Blood Metabolites and Their Relation to Plasma Growth Hormone and Time of Feeding in Mithun Heifers (Bos frontalis)

The aim of the present study was to investigate what, if any, diurnal changes occur in blood metabolites in relation to plasma growth hormone (GH) and feeding time among mithun (Bos frontalis), a semi‐wild ruminant. Blood samples were collected at hourly intervals during a 24 h span from 6 mithun heifers (averaging 2.5 yr of age and averaging 230 kg in weight) that were fed twice a day at 11:00 and 16:00 h. Samples were assayed for plasma GH and blood metabolites, non‐esterified fatty acids (NEFA), glucose, and alpha‐amino nitrogen. The total sampling period was divided into a 1) postprandial (after meal) period (period I: 11:00 to 21:00 h) and 2) interprandial period (period II: 22:00 to 10:00 h) and also into night (20:00 to 05:00 h) and day (06:00 to 10:00 h) periods for statistical analysis. Plasma glucose and alpha‐amino nitrogen levels increased (p<0.01), and plasma NEFA and GH decreased (p<0.01) after each meal. No diurnal rhythmicity was detected in plasma glucose or alpha‐amino nitrogen levels. Interestingly, plasma NEFA and GH levels were higher (p<0.01) during the interprandial (period II) and night periods, indicating an energy deficit that occurred progressively during the interprandial period of nocturnal feed deprivation. In twice‐daily‐fed mithuns we conclude that: 1) plasma metabolites and GH exhibited a definite pattern of change with time of feeding; 2) concentrations of plasma NEFA were higher nocturnally due to an energy deficit and that GH levels were higher during the interprandial period after the second meal; 3) the interprandial period after the second feeding may be considered to constitute a short‐term food deprivation; 4) the longer interprandial period of 19 h in this study between the second and subsequent morning meal may be changed into equally divided feedings to minimize the short‐term energy deficit; and 5) blood sampling for blood metabolites in mithuns should be conducted at a fixed time of day with special emphasis on time of feeding.
Wrecking 1 rap's conventions: the cultural production of three daring Detroit emcees

Abstract This article profiles the music of three politically motivated hip hop emcees. It combines textual and musicological analysis with ethnographic data to examine the ways in which these women use music to empower themselves and to contribute to meaningful, positive change in post-industrial, post-bankruptcy Detroit. These narratives are significant because they combat the dominant, hegemonic two-dimensional representations of African American women that are epitomised in commercial hip hop and popular culture at large. Further, in a context where art and activism are connected, their work challenges the current controlling images and sexual scripts that dominate both commercial music industry representations and scholarship on women in hip hop. The artists we profile exemplify a new kind of musical movement where women are agents and creative solutionaries. At times, they are explicitly critical of the narrow range of black womanhood presented in popular culture and in other instances, they focus on issues such as the environment, race relations, racialized bodies, poverty and abuse, all the while challenging the hip hop industry and popular culture norms that communicate who black women are and who they should be.
The Star Clusters in the Irregular Galaxy NGC 4449

We examine the star clusters in the luminous irregular galaxy NGC 4449. We use a near‐infrared spectrum and broadband images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope to place a limit of 8–15 Myr on the age of the bright central object in NGC 4449. Its luminosity and size suggest that it is comparable to young super star clusters. However, there is a peculiar nucleated‐bar structure at the center of this star cluster, and we suggest that this structure is debris from the interaction that has produced the counterrotating gas systems and extended gas streamers in the galaxy. From the images we identify 60 other candidate compact star clusters in NGC 4449. Fourteen of these could be background elliptical galaxies or old globular star clusters. Of the star clusters, three, in addition to the central object, are potentially super star clusters, and many others are comparable to the populous clusters found in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The star clusters span a large range in ages with no obvious peak in cluster formation that might be attributed to the interaction that the galaxy has experienced.
Influence of Cognitive Age and Socio-Psychographics in the Purchasing of Luxury Goods by Elderly Consumers

This study compares elderly consumers who consider luxury goods mainly as status symbols – a situation which is known as “externalized luxury” – with elderly consumers who, on the contrary, perceive luxury goods mainly as an expression of individual style – so-called “internalized luxury” (Amatulli and Guido, 2011). Their cognitive age is analyzed and, more in particular, their “youth age” (Barak and Gould, 1985) – i.e., the difference between their objective chronological age and the subjective cognitive age that they perceive when imagining themselves in different circumstances. An online survey with a sample of 619 Italian consumers aged 60 and over revealed that places, contexts and situations significantly influenced the cognitive age declared by participants and also point out the relative differences between the two segments of elderly consumers. Moreover, the socio-psychographic differences between elderly consumers who buy luxury goods mainly for status, or mainly for individual lifestyle, are pointed out. The results provide implications for marketing managers of luxury companies, who need to better understand and reach older consumers. In particular, these findings can help luxury marketing managers in planning specific communication strategies aimed at improving the effectiveness of brand image among elderly consumers.
Brief IPQ: some remarks on a success story

Health psychology has come a long way. The first conference on the topic was held in 1979 when Matarazzo presented his presidential address to the Division of Health Psychology at an APA Conference (Matarazzo, 1980). Stone, Cohen and Adler published their ‘Health Psychology – A Handbook’ in 1979 as well (Stone, Cohen, & Adler, 1979). The first journal in the field started in 1982 (Health Psychology), followed by others (Psychology & Health, 1987). It looks as if it is about time to start writing the book: ‘Health Psychology – the first forty years’. Howard Leventhal is certainly a major figure in health psychology, over those 40 years. He will be pleased with the publication of the systematic review and metaanalysis of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire [Brief IPQ, or B-IPQ] in this journal (Broadbent, Wilkes, Koschwanez, Weinman, Norton, & Petrie, 2015). His self-regulation model (SRM) or common sense model (CSM) is a frequently used theoretical model in (health) psychology research. It would be an exciting project to study the relative position of the CSM compared to other theoretical models in health psychology. A paper on this topic should be part of the book ‘Health Psychology – the first 40 years’. Leventhal himself continues publishing papers where ‘illness perceptions’ and the CSM are central concepts, in medical conditions such as asthma, COPD, diabetes type-2, genetic counselling, prostate cancer, lung cancer (PubMed search for Leventhal H, 19 October 2015). The current paper on the Brief IPQ demonstrates the enormous theoretical and empirical value of the concept of ‘illness perceptions’, a central part of Leventhal’s theoretical model. Kleinman, another researcher on illness perceptions, listened to visitors of smoky bars in Taiwan answering his questions about their explanations of ‘common cold’, which led to the development of his ‘explanatory models’ (Kleinman, Eisenberg, & Good, 1978). Kleinman’s findings are impressive in their relative simplicity and straightforwardness. He structured his questions around a number of concepts that he distilled from the interviews, including ideas about the cause, timeline, consequences, and fear of their illness. The authors of the Brief IPQ have taken this initial work and built upon it to facilitate assessment in a clinical setting. The dimensions of the various versions of the IPQ (i.e. IPQ, IPQ-R, B-IPQ) are clearly recognisable in Kleinman’s explanatory models. Apparently, human beings think and feel about illness in a rather similar fashion – which can also be deduced from the
How Does Emotional Intelligence Regulate Emotional Exhaustion? the Mediating Role of Work Stress

This study explores the mechanism of how emotional intelligence regulates emotional exhaustion based on the questionnaire survey of 387 Chinese employees. The results show that emotional intelligence is negatively related to perceived work stress and emotional exhaustion, and that work stress fully mediates the relationship between emotional intelligence and emotional exhaustion. Theoretical and practical implications of this study for psychological health and emotion research are discussed.
Transplantation tolerance: The concept and its applicability

Abstract: Recent advances have enabled researchers to induce tolerance in animal transplant models. Although it has been relatively easy to do so in rodents, it has been much more difficult to translate such strategies into primates. Understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the alloimmune response has prompted the development of novel strategies that may obviate the need for immunosuppression in humans. Mechanisms of tolerance and promising new therapies, as well as the inherent difficulties in bringing them into clinical practice, are reviewed.
A Novel Polymorphism in the Promoter Region for the Human Osteocalcin Gene: The Possibility of a Correlation with Bone Mineral Density in Postmenopausal Japanese Women

We present a polymorphism of the human osteocalcin gene (also known as BGP, for bone Gla protein) due to a 1 base pair (bp) substitution from cytosine to thymine at position 298 nucleotides (nt), which is at position 198 nt upstream from the BGP exon 1. This mutation was detected by single‐strand conformation polymorphism analysis after polymerase chain reaction for the osteocalcin gene fragment (326 bp) and sequencing analysis. The cytosine/thymine polymorphism can be defined by restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis using a modified primer pair and the restriction endonuclease HindIII. The osteocalcin genotype was determined in 160 postmenopausal Japanese women (age 48–80 years). Osteocalcin alleles were designated according to the absence (H) or presence (h) of the HindIII restriction site. There were 12 HH, 49 Hh, and 99 hh individuals, and the allele frequencies were 22.8% for H and 77.2% for h. To determine if genetic variation influences bone mineral density (BMD) and thus can be a determinant of susceptibility to osteoporosis in older women, we examined the association of BMD with the osteocalcin genotypes found in the present study. The subjects with genotype HH had the smallest BMD and those with hh had the greatest BMD among subjects, but these differences did not reach statistical significance. The HindIII genotype showed a significant effect on the prevalence of osteopenia in the subjects, that is, women with genotype HH had a 5.74 times greater risk for osteopenia (p < 0.05) and those with genotype Hh had a 1.59 times greater risk than women with genotype hh. We identified the osteocalcin gene polymorphism, detected with the HindIII genotype, which was suggested to influence bone density and is a possible genetic marker for bone metabolism.
GenImpro: Analysewerkzeug, Forschungsumgebung und generatives System für musikalische Evolution

An der Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg wird aktuell das Forschungsprojekt „Genetische Improvisation“ durchgeführt, das nach einer evolutionären Beschreibung für musikalische Entwicklungslogik sucht. In diesem Rahmen entsteht die Software-Sammlung GenImpro, die zunächst nur zur Analyse und als Forschungsumgebung für die durchgeführten Testreihen dient, später die erkannten Muster aber auch generativ nutzbar machen will, indem sie zur musikalischen Metakreation in einen genetischen Algorithmus eigespeist werden.
Predictors of Initial Abstinence in Smokers Enrolled in a Smoking Cessation Program

The present study examined the relative contribution of nicotine dependence, self-efficacy, and stages of change variables in predicting the initial abstinence of 102 smokers enrolled in a smoking cessation program. Over half the participants were female, the majority were White, and about half were married or living with a partner. Data were collected between 2000 and 2002. When smoking abstinence was defined as having a breath carbon monoxide (CO) level < 4 ppm within 24 hours of enrollment in the study, low nicotine dependence and a higher level of contemplation both predicted abstinence. When other potentially confounding variables were included in the analysis, neither nicotine dependence nor contemplation was predictive of abstinence. When abstinence was defined as the number of study baseline days in which the participant had a breath CO level < 4 ppm, multiple-regression analysis revealed that self-efficacy predicted abstinence. Self-efficacy remained predictive when other potentially confounding variables were included in the analysis. These results suggest that all three types of constructs are useful in predicting initial smoking abstinence.
An Approach for Top-k Recommendation Based on Trust Information

Personalized recommendations can effectively solve the data explosion problem in network. Most existing works utilize rating information to reduce the score prediction error, e.g. MAE; however, users prefer a list of top-k items and minimizing MAE does not always result in better top-k item lists. Meanwhile, because of data sparse problem, social connections among users play an increasingly important role in top-k recommendation system. So, this paper presents a new trust-based top-k recommendation algorithm, called BTRank. It integrates rating and trust information to construct the rating sorting model, which effectively improves the quality of the top-k item list of all users. A series of experiments on real-world datasets prove the effectiveness of our algorithm.
Therapeutic Class Overview Inhaled Corticosteroid and Long-Acting β 2-Agonist Combination Products Therapeutic

Therapeutic Class  Overview/Summary: The combination inhaled corticosteroid (ICS)/long-acting β2-agonist (LABA) products include Advair (fluticasone propionate/salmeterol), Dulera (mometasone/formoterol) and Symbicort (budesonide/formoterol), with Dulera being the most recently Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved product within the class. All of the products are FDA approved for the treatment of asthma; however, only fluticasone propionate/salmeterol and budesonide/formoterol have FDA approval for use in the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The ICSs exert their anti-inflammatory effect by binding to the glucocorticoid receptors with a subsequent activation of genes involved in anti-inflammatory processes, as well as via the inhibition of pro-inflammatory genes involved in the asthmatic response. These agents have selective action on β2 receptors which stimulate adenyl cyclase, resulting in an increased intracellular cyclic adenosine monophosphate level, which subsequently triggers bronchial smooth muscles relaxation. The LABA medications also inhibit the release of mediators that are involved in immediate hypersensitivity. All of the combination products are associated with the same adverse events, precautions and contraindications. Moreover, all LABA-containing medications have revised their package labeling to reflect the results of an analysis which reported an increased risk of asthma exacerbations and hospitalizations in pediatric and adult patients, as well as death in some patients with all of the LABA-containing medications. The combination ICS/LABA products appear to be equally efficacious for their respective indications, with the products differing in available dosage forms, dosing frequency (one vs two inhalations twice daily), pharmacokinetic profiles and ages for their FDA approved indications.
Connexin 48.5 Is Required for Normal Cardiovascular Function and Lens Development in Zebrafish Embryos*[boxs]

Gap junctions are composed of connexin (Cx) proteins and mediate intercellular communication required for many developmental and physiological processes. Here we describe the isolation and characterization of Cx48.5, a zebrafish connexin with the highest sequence identity to mammalian Cx46. Expression analysis showed that Cx48.5 is expressed in the adult and embryonic lens and heart, adult testis, and transiently in the embryonic otic vesicles. Injection of Cx48.5 cRNA into Xenopus oocytes elicited intercellular electrical coupling with voltage sensitivity similar to mammalian Cx46. In single oocytes, Cx48.5 also induced large outward currents on depolarization, consistent with gap-junctional hemichannels. Disruption of Cx48.5 expression in embryos with antisense morpholino oligos (morpholinos) revealed that Cx48.5 has an essential role in the maintenance of lens homeostasis. The morpholino-treated embryos also developed small lenses and eyes as well as severe cardiovascular abnormalities.
Mini-graph processing

For years, single-thread performance was the most dominant force driving processor development. In recent years, however, the poor scaling of single-thread super-scalar performance and power concerns coupled with the ever-increasing number of transistors available on chip has changed the focus from single-thread performance to thread-level parallelism running on multi-core designs. The trend is for these cores to be narrower with smaller windows. This dissertation addresses the question of how to maintain—and, ideally, improve—single-thread performance under such constraints. Mini-graph processing is a form of instruction fusion—the grouping of multiple operations into a single processing unit—that increases the instruction-per-cycle (IPC) throughput of dynamically scheduled superscalar processors in an efficient way. Mini-graphs are compiler-identified aggregates of multiple instructions that look and behave like singleton instructions at every pipeline stage, except for execute—there the constituent operations are retrieved and performed serially micro-code style. A mini-graph processor exploits instruction fusion to increase the efficiency of pipeline stages and structures that perform instruction book-keeping. This dissertation describes a mini-graph architecture and evaluates it using cycle-level simulation. A superscalar processor enhanced with mini-graphs can match the performance otherwise achieved with a wider, deeper superscalar processor. Experiments show that across four benchmark suites, the addition of mini-graph processing allows a dynamically scheduled 3-wide superscalar processor to match the IPC of a 4-wide superscalar machine.