Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Molecular Insights into the Local Anesthetic Receptor within Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels Using Hydroxylated Analogs of Mexiletine

We previously showed that the β-adrenoceptor modulators, clenbuterol and propranolol, directly blocked voltage-gated sodium channels, whereas salbutamol and nadolol did not (Desaphy et al., 2003), suggesting the presence of two hydroxyl groups on the aromatic moiety of the drugs as a molecular requisite for impeding sodium channel block. To verify such an hypothesis, we synthesized five new mexiletine analogs by adding one or two hydroxyl groups to the aryloxy moiety of the sodium channel blocker and tested these compounds on hNav1.4 channels expressed in HEK293 cells. Concentration–response relationships were constructed using 25-ms-long depolarizing pulses at −30 mV applied from an holding potential of −120 mV at 0.1 Hz (tonic block) and 10 Hz (use-dependent block) stimulation frequencies. The half-maximum inhibitory concentrations (IC50) were linearly correlated to drug lipophilicity: the less lipophilic the drug, minor was the block. The same compounds were also tested on F1586C and Y1593C hNav1.4 channel mutants, to gain further information on the molecular interactions of mexiletine with its receptor within the sodium channel pore. In particular, replacement of Phe1586 and Tyr1593 by non-aromatic cysteine residues may help in the understanding of the role of π–π or π–cation interactions in mexiletine binding. Alteration of tonic block suggests that the aryloxy moiety of mexiletine may interact either directly or indirectly with Phe1586 in the closed sodium channel to produce low-affinity binding block, and that this interaction depends on the electrostatic potential of the drug aromatic tail. Alteration of use-dependent block suggests that addition of hydroxyl groups to the aryloxy moiety may modify high-affinity binding of the drug amine terminal to Phe1586 through cooperativity between the two pharmacophores, this effect being mainly related to drug lipophilicity. Mutation of Tyr1593 further impaired such cooperativity. In conclusion, these results confirm our former hypothesis by showing that the presence of hydroxyl groups to the aryloxy moiety of mexiletine greatly reduced sodium channel block, and provide molecular insights into the intimate interaction of local anesthetics with their receptor.
Treatment outcomes of Asian‐ and White‐American clients in outpatient therapy

This study was the first to examine extensively the outcomes of Asian-American clients in mental health treatment. The research evaluated the short-term effects of outpatient individual psychotherapy. The focus on shortterm outcome was particularly appropriate in view of earlier utilization studies that have consistently found higher premature termination rates and shorter treatment stays for Asian clients relative to White clients. The study used multiple outcome criteria from two different sources: Client self-reports of symptomatology and satisfaction with services and therapist evaluations of client symptomatology and adjustment. To better interpret ethnic effects, client and therapist variables (e.g., social class and pretreatment adjustment) that often have been confounded with ethnicity were accounted for in a multiple regression design. Results indicated poorer short-term treatment outcomes for Asian-American clients. Asian clients were less satisfied than White clients on all five satisfaction indices and reported greater depression, hostility, and anxiety after four sessions of treatment. No ethnic differences were found on the therapist-rated outcome measures, but there was a tendency for therapists to evaluate Asian clients as having lower levels of psychosocial functioning than White clients after short-term treatment. The findings underscore the need for culturally responsive therapies because Asian-American clients are experiencing worse outcomes, and these outcomes cannot be attributed to cultural differences between Asian and White clients that exist prior to treatment.
Measuring the perceived restorativeness of soundscapes: is it about the sounds, the person, or the environment?

To determine the ‘restorative aspects of sound exposure’ a reliable and valid measure is needed. A Perceived Restorativeness Soundscape Scale (PRSS), which measures the level of Fascination, Being-Away, Compatibility, and Extent (FACE), has been proposed and shown to be reliable. This study aimed to test its validity further by establishing the comprehension and interpretation of the scale’s items. Ten participants completed a questionnaire involving adapted items of the PRSS. Half the questions were phrased in relation to the soundscape (holistic), the other, near, identical half were phrased in relation to the sounds (specific). Participants rated their agreement with each item using a 7 point Likert scale and wrote the reason for their response. A semi-structured interview followed the questionnaire, which took place in two urban cafes. The question framing (holistic or specific) did not result in varied responses for these matched items. However, depending on the FACE component being measured responses varied in their reference to a) the place, soundscape, or individual sounds, and b) the individual’s moods and desires, or the temporality of the sound(scape). Increased understanding of FACE components and amendments to the PRSS are necessary to improve the scale’s comprehension and validity.
Spatial As Deep: Spatial CNN for Traffic Scene Understanding

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are usually built by stacking convolutional operations layer-by-layer. Although CNN has shown strong capability to extract semantics from raw pixels, its capacity to capture spatial relationships of pixels across rows and columns of an image is not fully explored. These relationships are important to learn semantic objects with strong shape priors but weak appearance coherences, such as traffic lanes, which are often occluded or not even painted on the road surface as shown in Fig. 1 (a). In this paper, we propose Spatial CNN (SCNN), which generalizes traditional deep layer-by-layer convolutions to slice-by-slice convolutions within feature maps, thus enabling message passings between pixels across rows and columns in a layer. Such SCNN is particular suitable for long continuous shape structure or large objects, with strong spatial relationship but less appearance clues, such as traffic lanes, poles, and wall. We apply SCNN on a newly released very challenging traffic lane detection dataset and Cityscapse dataset. The results show that SCNN could learn the spatial relationship for structure output and significantly improves the performance. We show that SCNN outperforms the recurrent neural network (RNN) based ReNet and MRF+CNN (MRFNet) in the lane detection dataset by 8.7% and 4.6% respectively. Moreover, our SCNN won the 1st place on the TuSimple Benchmark Lane Detection Challenge, with an accuracy of 96.53%.
Corporate Real Estate Holdings and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

This article explores the link between the composition of firms' capital and stock returns. I develop a general equilibrium production economy where firms use two factors: real estate and other capital. Investment is subject to asymmetric adjustment costs. Because real estate depreciates slowly, firms with high real estate holdings are more vulnerable to bad productivity shocks and hence are riskier and have higher expected returns. This prediction is supported empirically. I find that the returns of firms with a high share of real estate capital exceed that of low real estate firms by 3--6% annually, adjusted for exposures to the market return, size, value, and momentum factors. Moreover, conditional beta estimates reveal that these firms indeed have higher market betas, and the spread between the betas of high and low real estate firms is countercyclical. The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org. , Oxford University Press.
Exploring Attitudes and Predicting Intentions: Profiling Student Debtors Using an Extended Theory of Planned Behavior

This study was designed to investigate application of a theory of planned behavior, including involvement and decision-making style in predicting undergraduates' borrowing attitudes. We conducted interviews to explore antecedents of students' debt-consumption/borrowing attitudes. We employed exploratory factor analysis to identify attitudinal dimensions utilized in hierarchical regression as independent variables. The results suggest students regard themselves as good money managers, but lack control over borrowing and debt. Combining involvement and decision-making style as a style/involvement variable had a powerful mediating effect in predicting borrowing intention. Research suggests that grouping students, based on their involvement level with finance and decision-making style, into debtor types offers opportunities for more understanding of their debt-consumption intentions. Strategies are proposed for dealing with different debtor types.
Signs in Which Handshape and Hand Orientation Are Either Not Visible or Are Only Partially Visible: What Is the Consequence for Lexical Recognition?

We present the results of an experiment on lexical recognition of human sign language signs in which the available perceptual information about handshape and hand orientation was manipulated. Stimuli were videos of signs from Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN). The videos were processed to create four conditions: (1) one in which neither handshape nor hand orientation could be observed, (2) one in which hand orientation could be extracted but not handshape, (3) one in which an approximation of the handshape could be seen, and (4) one where the video was unmodified. In general, recognition of the signs was almost impossible in the first two conditions, while condition 3 showed a rise in recognition rate to about 60 percent However, some signs were recognized well even in conditions 1 and 2. Their success rate cannot be linked to a single sign property but seems to be due to a combination of factors. In general, handshape information appears more salient for resolving the lexical meaning of a sign than hand orientation.
The role of the medial temporal lobe in discriminating complex object and scene stimuli

The emergent memory account (EMA) proposes that the medial temporal lobe (MTL), a region implicated in declarative memory, supports perception. EMA hypothesises that the perirhinal cortex (PRC) and hippocampus (HC), form complex conjunctions of objects and scenes, respectively, which can support fine-grained perceptual discriminations. This thesis combined both neuropsychological and functional imaging approaches, to examine the representations supported by the MTL. The final experiment applied one of the tasks in cognitive-genetic neuroimaging of Alzheimer‟s disease (AD). Consistent with EMA, patients with focal HC damage showed impaired learning of spatial, but not object, conjunctions (Chapter 2), and showed specific deficits in scene perception (Chapter 3). A complementary functional imaging study examined contributions of PRC and HC to the detection of object and scene differences, respectively; the predicted effects – PRC activation for object discrimination; HC for scene discrimination – were evident only at a relaxed statistical threshold. Significant MTL effects were demonstrated using an oddity task with items presented from different views (Chapter 4). Increasing object and scene feature overlap, however, did not increase PRC and HC activity; the opposite pattern was evident for scenes, with a novel context by feature overlap interaction for objects. In the final experimental Chapter (Chapter 5), it was found that young healthy adults at increased genetic risk of AD (ApoE-e4 carriers) showed increased scene-related activity in posterior cingulate cortex (PCC); a region affected, structurally, early in AD. The novel contributions of these findings are detailed in the General Discussion (Chapter 6). Briefly, they partially confirm EMA‟s predictions that the HC is necessary for learning conjunctive scenes, and that MTL involvement fractionates according to the stimulus to-be-processed. It also describes limitations of the experiments, proposes future challenges for representational accounts, and outlines experiments to elucidate the effect of ApoE-e4 on scene-related activity in PCC.
Optimization in Dynamic Environments : Improved Regret Rates for Strongly Convex Problems

In this paper, we address tracking of a timevarying parameter with unknown dynamics. We formalize the problem as an instance of online optimization in a dynamic setting. Using online gradient descent, we propose a method that sequentially predicts the value of the parameter and in turn suffers a loss. The objective is to minimize the accumulation of losses over the time horizon, a notion that is termed dynamic regret. While existing methods focus on convex loss functions, we consider strongly convex functions so as to provide better guarantees of performance. We derive a regret bound that captures the path-length of the time-varying parameter, defined in terms of the distance between its consecutive values. In other words, the bound represents the natural connection of tracking quality to the rate of change of the parameter. We provide numerical experiments to complement our theoretical findings.
Effects of Visual Cues of a Moving Model Predator on Body Patterns in Cuttlefish Sepia pharaonis

We examined the effects of predator-prey distance (PPD) and trajectory of the predator on the body patterns that the pharaoh cuttlefish, Sepia pharaonis, shows in response to a predator. A model predator moving in three different trajectories was presented to the cuttlefish: T1, approached the cuttlefish but bypassed above; T2, approached directly toward the cuttlefish; T3, bypassed the cuttlefish both vertically and horizontally. We divided the body patterns that the cuttlefish expressed into seven categories, i.e., “uniform light”, “disruptive”, “center circle”, “dark square”, “vertical stripe”, “all dark” and “eyespots”. In T1, the number of individuals that showed “dark square” increased as the model approached the cuttlefish, whereas the number of individuals that showed “disruptive” decreased. In T2, the number of individuals that showed “all dark” and “eyespots” increased as the model approached the cuttlefish. In T3, the number of individuals that showed “dark square” and “vertical stripe” increased as the model approached the cuttlefish, and it tended to decrease as the model receded from the cuttlefish. These results demonstrate that S. pharaonis changes its body patterns according to PPD and the trajectory of the predator, which would affect predation risk and/or predator perception.
Organochlorine pesticides, their toxic effects on living organisms and their fate in the environment

Abstract Organochlorine (OC) pesticides are synthetic pesticides widely used all over the world. They belong to the group of chlorinated hydrocarbon derivatives, which have vast application in the chemical industry and in agriculture. These compounds are known for their high toxicity, slow degradation and bioaccumulation. Even though many of the compounds which belong to OC were banned in developed countries, the use of these agents has been rising. This concerns particularly abuse of these chemicals which is in practice across the continents. Though pesticides have been developed with the concept of target organism toxicity, often non-target species are affected badly by their application. The purpose of this review is to list the major classes of pesticides, to understand organochlorine pesticides based on their activity and persistence, and also to understand their biochemical toxicity.
Gender and Wellness: A Multidimensional Systems Model for Counseling

An expanded view of health is advocated for assessment and treatment of individual clients in helping them achieve and maintain their maximum potential for high-level wellness. In addition, moderating variables, such as culture, age, and gender differences, have an impact on every dimension of health and wellness. In this article a multidimensional systems model for wellness is described, and gender differences along those dimensions are reviewed. Application of the model and implications for counseling are discussed. Finally, two illustrative case examples, one man and one woman, are described.
Selective apoptosis of natural killer‐cell tumours by l‐asparaginase

We examined the effectiveness of various anti‐tumour agents to natural killer (NK)‐cell tumour cell lines and samples, which are generally resistant to chemotherapy, using flow cytometric terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase‐mediated dUTP‐biotin nick end‐labelling (TUNEL) assay. Although NK‐YS and NK‐92 were highly resistant to various anti‐tumour agents, l‐asparaginase induced apoptosis in these two NK‐cell lines. NK‐cell leukaemia/lymphoma and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) samples were selectively sensitive to l‐asparaginase and to doxorubicin (DXR) respectively. Samples of chronic NK lymphocytosis, an NK‐cell disorder with an indolent clinical course, were resistant to both drugs. Our study clearly separated two major categories of NK‐cell disorders and ALL according to the sensitivity to DXR and l‐asparaginase. We examined asparagine synthetase levels by real‐time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RQ‐PCR) and immunostaining in these samples. At least in nasal‐type NK‐cell lymphoma, there was a good correlation among asparagine synthetase expression, in vitro sensitivity and clinical response to l‐asparaginase. In aggressive NK‐cell leukaemia, although asparagine synthetase expression was high at both mRNA and protein levels, l‐asparaginase induced considerable apoptosis. Furthermore, samples of each disease entity occupied a distinct area in two‐dimensional plotting with asparagine synthetase mRNA level (RQ‐PCR) and in vitrol‐asparaginase sensitivity (TUNEL assay). We confirmed rather specific anti‐tumour activity of l‐asparaginase against NK‐cell tumours in vitro, which provides an experimental background to the clinical use of l‐asparaginase for NK‐cell tumours.
Olfactory Information Processing in the Drosophila Antennal Lobe: Anything Goes?

When an animal smells an odor, olfactory sensory neurons generate an activity pattern across olfactory glomeruli of the first sensory neuropil, the insect antennal lobe or the vertebrate olfactory bulb. Here, several networks of local neurons interact with sensory neurons and with output neurons—insect projection neurons, or vertebrate mitral/tufted cells. The extent and form of information processing taking place in these local networks has been subject of controversy. To investigate the role of local neurons in odor information processing we have used the calcium sensor G-CaMP to perform in vivo recordings of odor-evoked spatiotemporal activity patterns in five genetically defined neuron populations of the antennal lobe of Drosophila melanogaster: three distinct populations of local neurons (two GABAergic and one cholinergic), as well as sensory neurons and projection neurons. Odor-specific and concentration dependent spatiotemporal response patterns varied among neuron populations. Activity transfer differed along the olfactory pathway for different glomerulus–odor combinations: we found cases of profile broadening and of linear and complex transfer. Moreover, the discriminability between the odors also varied across neuron populations and was maximal in projection neurons. Discriminatory power increased with higher odor concentrations over a wide dynamic range, but decreased at the highest concentration. These results show the complexity and diversity of odor information processing mechanisms across olfactory glomeruli in the fly antennal lobe.
Sociodemographic Effects on the Test-Retest Reliability of the Big Five Inventory

Abstract. Psychometric properties of self-report scales can be affected by sociodemographic differences among respondents. For example, factor structures of established personality scales tend to be distorted in samples with less formal education. Whether test-retest reliabilities are comparably affected is of yet not well known. Therefore, this study examined the measurement precision of a short Big Five instrument in a diverse sample of the German population. A sample of 1,696 (50% women) participants reported on their personality twice within an interval of 10 weeks. The median test-retest reliability for the five traits, rtt = . 66, was notably smaller than previously reported coefficients from college students, median rtt = . 78. Moderator analyses identified modest effects of age and educational attainment on these reliability estimates, whereas sex showed no differential impact. These results highlight that test-retest reliabilities derived from student samples should not be generalized to sociodemog.
Meteorological Aspects of the El Ni�o/Southern Oscillation

The single most prominent signal in year-to-year climate variability is the Southern Oscillation, which is associated with fluctuations in atmospheric pressure at sea level in the tropics, monsoon rainfall, and wintertime circulation over North America and other parts of the extratropics. Although meteorologists have known about the Southern Oscillation for more than a half-century, its relation to the oceanic El Ni�o phenomenon was not recognized until the late 1960's, and a theoretical understanding of these relations has begun to emerge only during the past few years. The past 18 months have been characterized by what is probably the most pronounced and certainly the best-documented El Ni�o/Southern Oscillation episode of the past century. In this review meteorological aspects of the time history of the 1982-1983 episode are described and compared with a composite based on six previous events between 1950 and 1975, and the impact of these new observations on theoretical interpretations of the event is discussed.
Gravity currents shoaling on a slope

Laboratory experiments are performed to examine gravity currents propagating into an ambient of uniformly decreasing depth. Predominantly, the study is of a surface gravity current shoaling over a bottom slope as it approaches a corner between the horizontal surface and the sloping topography. For sufficiently high Reynolds number currents, they are found to propagate at a constant speed over the slope until the depth of the ambient below the nose is comparable to the depth of the current in the lee of the gravity current nose. It then decelerates at a constant rate set by the product of the reduced gravity, g′, and the magnitude of the topographic slope, s. The shape of the head evolves to form a front parallel to the slope itself and the ambient ahead of the current accelerates downslope with significant turbulence between the ambient and current head. The dependency of the deceleration upon g′s is anticipated from WKB-like extensions of steady-state gravity current theory that include the effect of the ambient depth in one case varying slowly in space as the current first passes over the slope and in another case varying slowly in time as the nose approaches the corner. However, the measured deceleration magnitude of ≃ 0.31( ± 0.01)g′s is found to be larger than these heuristic predictions.