Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Conditioning of food aversions by injections of psychoactive drugs.

Injected male Sprague-Dawley rats with various drugs or saline immediately after drinking milk for the 1st time. 1 wk. later Ss were again given access to the milk. Conditioned aversion to the milk was produced by moderate doses of scopolamine, scopolamine methyl nitrate, amphetamine, lorazepam, and chlorpromazine. Conditioned aversion was not obtained if scopolamine was injected 30 min. prior to milk drinking or more than 4 hr. afterward. (22 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)
Two-pass ℓp-regularized least-squares algorithm for compressive sensing

A two-pass algorithm for signal reconstruction in compressive sensing (CS) is proposed. It is based on using a new regularization in the objective function which elevates functional value at a previously obtained optimal or near-optimal point. Elevation in the objective function causes the optimization to converge to a new solution which would be optimal or near-optimal. Either previously obtained solution or the newly obtained solution is selected as the final solution based on which one yields lower value of the objective function. This algorithm is suitable for nonconvex optimization-based sparse signal reconstruction in CS. Simulation results are presented which indicate that the proposed algorithm is effective for not only improving the percentage of perfect reconstructions from noiseless measurements by upto 3.4% but also offering similar performance improvement for the reconstruction from noisy measurements.
Real-time PCR provides evidence for thyrotropin receptor mRNA expression in orbital as well as in extraorbital tissues.

OBJECTIVE The TSH receptor (TSHr) expressed on thyroid follicular cells is the autoantigen involved in the pathogenesis of Graves' hyperthyroidism. Whether this receptor is expressed in extrathyroidal tissues, and whether it participates directly in the pathogenesis of thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO) is unclear. DESIGN The aim of the present study was to measure TSHr mRNA in retro-orbital tissues, retro-orbital adipose tissue, extraocular muscle, and skin from patients with TAO and in several tissues from patients not affected by thyroid diseases using RT-PCR and real-time PCR. METHODS Total RNA was isolated from tissue specimens, reverse transcribed, and amplified using specific primers for the extracellular portion and a part of a 1.3 kbp variant form of the TSHr gene. Determination of TSHr mRNA levels using real-time PCR was also performed by the TaqMan system; to normalize for differences in the amount of total RNA added to the reaction, amplification of beta-actin gene was performed as an endogenous control. RESULTS A single-round RT-PCR amplification using specific primers for the extracellular portion of the TSHr gene demonstrated an amplification product of 1.2 kbp in the thyroid, but not in all other tissues. A second-round RT-PCR amplification using the same primers and starting from the previous amplification product demonstrated a band of the size expected for the TSHr gene in all tissue specimens analyzed irrespective of their origin. Similar results were obtained using primers specific for a part of the variant form of 1.3 kbp of the TSHr gene. The amount of TSHr mRNA measured by real-time PCR with the TaqMan probe and expressed as TSHr/beta-actin ratio was similar in the tissues from TAO patients with respect to the tissues from subjects not affected by thyroid diseases. CONCLUSIONS We measured TSHr mRNA in tissues from patients with TAO using the very sensitive and quantitative method of real-time PCR. The level of transcription was similar to that measured in extraorbital tissues from patients who were not affected by thyroid diseases. These data suggest an illegitimate TSHr mRNA transcription in all the tissues examined apart from thyroid.
Chimeric Bovine/Human Parainfluenza Virus Type 3 Expressing Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) F Glycoprotein: Effect of Insert Position on Expression, Replication, Immunogenicity, Stability, and Protection against RSV Infection

ABSTRACT A recombinant chimeric bovine/human parainfluenza type 3 virus (rB/HPIV3) vector expressing the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) fusion F glycoprotein previously exhibited disappointing levels of RSV F immunogenicity and genetic stability in children (D. Bernstein et al., Pediatr. Infect. Dis. J. 31:109–114, 2012; C.-F. Yang et al., Vaccine 31:2822–2827, 2013). To investigate parameters that might affect vaccine performance and stability, we constructed and characterized rB/HPIV3 viruses expressing RSV F from the first (pre-N), second (N-P), third (P-M), and sixth (HN-L) genome positions. There was a 30- to 69-fold gradient in RSV F expression from the first to the sixth position. The inserts moderately attenuated vector replication in vitro and in the upper and lower respiratory tracts of hamsters: this was not influenced by the level of RSV F expression and syncytium formation. Surprisingly, inserts in the second, third, and sixth positions conferred increased temperature sensitivity: this was greatest for the third position and was the most attenuating in vivo. Each rB/HPIV3 vector induced a high titer of neutralizing antibodies in hamsters against RSV and HPIV3. Protection against RSV challenge was greater for position 2 than for position 6. Evaluation of insert stability suggested that RSV F is under selective pressure to be silenced during vector replication in vivo, but this was not exacerbated by a high level of RSV F expression and generally involved a small percentage of recovered vector. Vector passaged in vitro accumulated mutations in the HN open reading frame, causing a dramatic increase in plaque size that may have implications for vaccine production and immunogenicity. IMPORTANCE The research findings presented here will be instrumental for improving the design of a bivalent pediatric vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus and parainfluenza virus type 3, two major causes of severe respiratory tract infection in infants and young children. Moreover, this knowledge has general application to the development and clinical evaluation of other mononegavirus vectors and vaccines.
Comparison of postoperative results between carotid endarterectomy and carotid artery stenting for patients with contralateral carotid artery occlusion: A meta-analysis

Objectives The purpose of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis to systematically compare the safety and efficacy of carotid endarterectomy and carotid artery stenting in contralateral carotid occlusion patients who needed reperfusion. Methods This study retrieved potential academic articles comparing results between carotid endarterectomy and carotid artery stenting for patients with contralateral carotid occlusion from the MEDLINE database, the PubMed database the EMBASE database, and the Cochrane Library from January 1990 to May 2018. The reference articles for the identified studies were carefully reviewed to ensure that all available documents were represented in the study. Results Four retrospective cohort study involving 6252 patients with contralateral carotid occlusion were included in our meta-analysis. During 30-day follow-up, there is significant difference in post-procedure mortality (odds ratio (OR) = 0.476, 95% confidence interval (CI) (0.306–0.740), P = 0.001); no significant differences are not found in post-procedure stroke (risk difference (RD) = 0.002, 95%CI (–0.007 to 0.011); P = 0.631), myocardial infarction (RD = 0.003, 95%CI (–0.002 to 0.008); P = 0.301), and transient cerebral ischemia (RD = 1.059, 95%CI (–0.188 to 5.964); P = 0.948). Conclusions Carotid endarterectomy was associated with a lower incidence of mortality compared to carotid artery stenting for patients with contralateral carotid occlusion. Regarding stroke, myocardial infarction, and transient ischemic attack, there was no significant difference between the two groups. More randomized controlled trials and prospective cohorts are necessary to help further clarify the ideal approach for these patients.
A graph based audio-visual document annotation and browsing system

In this paper we present an audiovisual (AV) data annotation and exploitation system, which was developed as a feasibility demonstration of several theoretical models and algorithms. These models provide a graph based AV document annotation model, a rapid search method to exploit these annotations and the representation of connected, distributed graphs in XML. First we present the theoretical background underlining the new approach of our model to the audiovisual document annotation and exploitation. In the second part we describe our demonstration application illustrating the use cases related to the theoretical model. At the end we will present our plans to enhance as well the theoretical models as the application.
Gut failure in critical care: old school versus new school

The concept of bacterial translocation and gut-origin sepsis as causes of systemic infectious complications and multiple organ deficiency syndrome in surgical and critically ill patients has been a recurring issue over the last decades attracting the scientific interest. Although gastrointestinal dysfunction seemingly arises frequently in intensive care unit patients, it is usually underdiagnosed or underestimated, because the pathophysiology involved is incompletely understood and its exact clinical relevance still remains controversial with an unknown yet probably adverse impact on the patients’ outcome. The purpose of this review is to define gut-origin sepsis and related terms, to describe the mechanisms leading to gut-derived complications, and to illustrate the therapeutic options to prevent or limit these untoward processes.
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Tracks Multiple Environmental Variables during Search

To make efficient foraging decisions, we must combine information about the values of available options with nonvalue information. Some accounts of ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) suggest that it has a narrow role limited to evaluating immediately available options. We examined responses of neurons in area 14 (a putative macaque homolog of human vmPFC) as 2 male macaques performed a novel foraging search task. Although many neurons encoded the values of immediately available offers, they also independently encoded several other variables that influence choice, but that are conceptually distinct from offer value. These variables include average reward rate, number of offers viewed per trial, previous offer values, previous outcome sizes, and the locations of the currently attended offer. We conclude that, rather than serving as specialized economic value center, vmPFC plays a broad role in integrating relevant environmental information to drive foraging decisions. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Decision makers must often choose whether to take an immediately available option or continue to search for a better one. We hypothesized that this process, which is integral to foraging theory, leaves neural signatures in the brain region ventromedial PFC. Subjects performed a novel foraging task in which they searched through differently valued options and attempted to balance their reward threshold with various time costs. We found that neurons not only encode the values of immediately available offers, but multiplexed these with environmental variables, including reward rate, number of offers viewed, previous offer values, and spatial information. We conclude that vmPFC plays a rich role in encoding and integrating multiple foraging-related variables during economic decisions.
Personality in Recovered Depressed Elderly

Personality traits in euthymic elderly subjects with and without past histories of major depressive episodes were assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R and the Social Adjustment Scale-SR. Recovered depressed subjects were characterized by significantly more personality traits from DSM-III-R Clusters B and C than controls, and they exhibited differences in social adjustment, as well. Subjects who have recovered from depressive episodes may show significant diferences in personality and social adjustment that might represent residua of past depression, a trait characteristic, or a risk factor for recurrence.
The use of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for detection of Mycoplasma hominis antibodies in infertile women serum samples.

BACKGROUND Besides Chlamydiae trachomatis and Mycoplasma genitalium, Mycoplasma hominis may also cause infertility due to damage of the Fallopian tubes. Therefore serum samples from infertile women were analyzed for antibodies to M. hominis. METHODS Sera from 304 infertile women were investigated for seropositivity to M. hominis by immunoblotting and a developed ELISA. Women were classified into groups based on the type of infertility: infertile due to lack of passage in Fallopian tubes (TFI, tubal factor infertility), an infertile male partner (MFI, male factor infertility) and unexplained infertility (UFI, unexplained factor infertility). Three M. hominis isolates were used in the immunoblotting analysis and clear differences in patient immunoprofiles were observed between two isolates. For the ELISA we used a mixture of Triton X-114 extracted membrane proteins from those two M. hominis isolates as antigen. RESULTS Ninety-seven sera (32%) were seropositive to M. hominis when tested by the ELISA. There was a significant correlation between TFI and seropositivity to M. hominis (P = 0.0015, OR = 2.21, CI = 1.35-3.61). We compared the seropositivity of 304 patients to M. hominis with the presence of antibodies against two other bacteria Chlamydiae trachomatis and Mycoplasma genitalium and there was no statistical correlation between those bacteria and M. hominis. CONCLUSION Our results indicate that M. hominis may be an independent predictor of TFI.
Pitavastatin, an HMG-CoA Reductase Inhibitor, Exerts eNOS-Independent Protective Actions Against Angiotensin II–Induced Cardiovascular Remodeling and Renal Insufficiency

Angiotensin II (Ang II) plays a pivotal role in cardiovascular remodeling leading to hypertension, myocardial infarction, and stroke. Pitavastatin, an HMG-CoA reductase inihibitor, is known to have pleiotropic actions against the development of cardiovascular remodeling. The objectives of this study were to clarify the beneficial effects as well as the mechanism of action of pitavastatin against Ang II–induced organ damage. C57BL6/J mice at 10 weeks of age were infused with Ang II for 2 weeks and were simultaneously administered pitavastatin or a vehicle. Pitavastatin treatment improved Ang II–induced left ventricular hypertrophy and diastolic dysfunction and attenuated enhancement of cardiac fibrosis, cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, coronary perivascular fibrosis, and medial thickening. Ang II–induced oxidative stress, cardiac TGFβ-1 expression, and Smad 2/3 phosphorylation were all attenuated by pitavastatin treatment. Pitavastatin also reduced Ang II–induced cardiac remodeling and diastolic dysfunction in eNOS−/− mice as in wild-type mice. In eNOS−/− mice, the Ang II–induced cardiac oxidative stress and TGF-β–Smad 2/3 signaling pathway were enhanced, and pitavastatin treatment attenuated the enhanced oxidative stress and the signaling pathway. Moreover, pitavastatin treatment reduced the high mortality rate and improved renal insufficiency in Ang II–treated eNOS−/− mice, with suppression of glomerular oxidative stress and TGF-β-Smad 2/3 signaling pathway. In conclusion, pitavastatin exerts eNOS-independent protective actions against Ang II–induced cardiovascular remodeling and renal insufficiency through inhibition of the TGF-β-Smad 2/3 signaling pathway by suppression of oxidative stress.
Visceral fat and liver fat are independent predictors of metabolic risk factors in men.

We examined the independent associations among abdominal adipose tissue (AT), liver fat, cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), and lipid variables in 161 Caucasian men who had a wide variation in adiposity. We measured AT and liver fat by computed tomography and CRF by a maximal exercise test on a treadmill. Visceral AT remained a significant (P <or= 0.05) predictor of plasma triglycerides (TG), high-density-lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and total cholesterol (TC)/HDL-C ratio (TC/HDL-C) after statistical control for abdominal subcutaneous AT, CRF, and alcohol consumption. Abdominal subcutaneous AT was not a significant (P >or= 0.05) correlate of any lipid variable after control for visceral AT and CRF. Furthermore, subdivision of subcutaneous AT into deep and superficial depots did not alter these observations. Visceral AT was the strongest correlate of liver fat and remained so after control for abdominal subcutaneous AT, CRF, and alcohol consumption (r = -0.34, P < 0.01). In contrast, abdominal subcutaneous AT and CRF were not significant (P > 0.10) correlates of liver fat after control for visceral AT. Visceral AT remained a significant (P < 0.01) correlate of TG, HDL-C, and TC/HDL-C independent of liver fat. However, liver fat was also a significant correlate (P <or= 0.05) of fasting glucose and TG independent of visceral AT. These observations reinforce the importance of visceral obesity in the pathogenesis of dyslipidemia in men, and they suggest that visceral AT and liver fat carry independent health risk.
A polymerase chain reaction-based epidemiologic investigation of the incidence of nonpolio enteroviral infections in febrile and afebrile infants 90 days and younger.

OBJECTIVE Enteroviruses are important pathogens in infants, but their true contribution to febrile illness in infants </=90 days old is unknown. The purpose of this study was to use the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for diagnosis of enteroviral (EV) infection in febrile and afebrile infants </=90 days of age to improve the understanding of the epidemiology of EV infection in this population. METHODS Patients included all unimmunized, febrile infants </=90 days of age admitted to Primary Children's Medical Center (Salt Lake City, UT) for sepsis evaluation from December 1996 to December 1997. Blood, urine, cerebrospinal fluid, and throat swabs were tested for enteroviruses using a PCR assay (Roche Molecular Systems, Branchburg, NJ). Alternate PCR assays separated polio and nonpolio enteroviruses. Results of bacterial cultures, outcome, and hospital charges were obtained. Blood from afebrile, control infants </=90 days old was tested for enteroviruses. RESULTS A total of 345 febrile infants were enrolled; 89 (25.8%) were positive for enterovirus. The incidence of EV infection ranged from 3.2% in January to 50% in August and October. Five EV-positive, febrile infants (5.6%) had concomitant urinary tract infections, and 1 (1. 1%) had concomitant bacteremia. Infants with confirmed EV infection were significantly less likely to have bacterial infection than those who were EV-negative. All infants infected with an enterovirus recovered. Average length of stay was 3 days, average charges were nearly $4500. Eighty-six afebrile, control infants were enrolled; 6 (6.9%) were positive for enterovirus; 3 had received oral polio vaccine. CONCLUSIONS Nonpolio EV infections commonly cause fever in infants </=90 days of age. Rates of EV positivity are low in afebrile, unimmunized infants. The use of PCR to identify febrile infants with nonpolio EV infections may decrease length of hospital stay, unnecessary antibiotic administration, and charges.
Haptic Rendering of Volume Data with Collision Determination Guarantee Using Ray Casting and Implicit Surface Representation

Haptic exploration adds an additional dimension to working with 3D data: a sense of touch. This is especially useful in areas such as medical simulation, training and pre-surgical planning, as well as in museum display, sculpting, CAD, military applications, assistive technology for blind and visually impaired, entertainment and others. There exist different surface- and voxel-based haptic rendering methods. Unaddressed practical problems for almost all of them are that no guarantees for collision detection could be given and/or that a special topological structure of objects is required. Here we present a novel and robust approach based on employing the ray casting technique to collision detection, which does not have the aforementioned drawbacks while guaranteeing nearly constant time complexity independent of data resolution. This is especially important for such delicate procedures as pre-operation planning. A collision response in the presented prototype system is rigid and operates on voxel data, and no precalculation is needed. Additionally, our collision response uses an implicit surface representation "on the fly", which can be used with dynamically changing objects.
A Few Steps Toward a Science of Mental Life

28 ABSTRACT — Under what conditions can a true " science of mental life " arise from psychological investigations? Can psy- chology formulate scientifi c laws of a general nature, compa- rable in soundness to the laws of physics? I argue that the search for such laws must return to the forefront of psycho- logical and developmental research, an enterprise that requires extensive collaboration between psychologists, neu- roscientists, physicists, and mathematicians. Psychological laws may arise from at least 3 sources: the anchoring of thought processes in the biophysics of the brain, the compu- tational constraints on possible mental algorithms, and the internalization of physical or statistical laws into our brains during evolution or development. I consider as an illustration the domain of numerical cognition, where a few solid psycho- physical and decision-making laws have been established and related in part to their evolutionary precursors and neural bases. From this platform, I tentatively outline a few promis- ing research directions in the domains of infant development, reading acquisition, executive control of multiple tasks, access to conscious report, and the spontaneous fl ow of con-
NUMA-aware memory manager with dominant-thread-based copying GC

We propose a novel online method of identifying the preferred NUMA nodes for objects with negligible overhead during the garbage collection time as well as object allocation time. Since the number of CPUs (or NUMA nodes) is increasing recently, it is critical for the memory manager of the runtime environment of an object-oriented language to exploit the low latency of local memory for high performance. To locate the CPU of a thread that frequently accesses an object, prior research uses the runtime information about memory accesses as sampled by the hardware. However, the overhead of this approach is high for a garbage collector. Our approach uses the information about which thread can exclusively access an object, or the Dominant Thread (DoT). The dominant thread of an object is the thread that often most accesses an object so that we do not require memory access samples. Our NUMA-aware GC performs DoT based object copying, which copies each live object to the CPU where the dominant thread was last dispatched before GC. The dominant thread information is known from the thread stack and from objects that are locked or reserved by threads and is propagated in the object reference graph. We demonstrate that our approach can improve the performance of benchmark programs such as SPECpower ssj2008, SPECjbb2005, and SPECjvm2008.We prototyped a NUMAaware memory manager on a modified version of IBM Java VM and tested it on a cc-NUMA POWER6 machine with eight NUMA nodes. Our NUMA-aware GC achieved performance improvements up to 14.3% and 2.0% on average over a JVM that only used the NUMA-aware allocator. The total improvement using both the NUMA-aware allocator and GC is up to 53.1% and 10.8% on average.