Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Atorvastatin protects GABAergic and dopaminergic neurons in the nigrostriatal system in an experimental rat model of transient focal cerebral ischemia.

INTRODUCTION Cerebral ischemia is the third leading cause of death and the primary cause of permanent disability worldwide. Atorvastatin is a promising drug with neuroprotective effects that may be useful for the treatment of stroke. However, the effects of atorvastatin on specific neuronal populations within the nigrostriatal system following cerebral ischemia are unknown. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of atorvastatin on dopaminergic and GABAergic neuronal populations in exofocal brain regions in a model of transient occlusion of the middle cerebral artery. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty-eight male eight-week-old Wistar rats were used in this study. Both sham and ischemic rats were treated with atorvastatin (10 mg/kg) or carboxymethylcellulose (placebo) by gavage at 6, 24, 48 and 72 hours post-reperfusion. We analyzed the immunoreactivity of glutamic acid decarboxylase and tyrosine hydroxylase in the globus pallidus, caudate putamen and substantia nigra. RESULTS We observed neurological damage and cell loss in the caudate putamen following ischemia. We also found an increase in tyrosine hydroxylase immunoreactivity in the medial globus pallidus and substantia nigra reticulata, as well as a decrease in glutamic acid decarboxylase immunoreactivity in the lateral globus pallidus in ischemic animals treated with a placebo. However, atorvastatin treatment was able to reverse these effects, significantly decreasing tyrosine hydroxylase levels in the medial globus pallidus and substantia nigra reticulata and significantly increasing glutamic acid decarboxylase levels in the lateral globus pallidus. CONCLUSION Our data suggest that post-ischemia treatment with atorvastatin can have neuro-protective effects in exofocal regions far from the ischemic core by modulating the GABAergic and dopaminergic neuronal populations in the nigrostriatal system, which could be useful for preventing neurological disorders.
Quests for therapy in northern Uganda: healing at Laropi revisited

Abstract This article presents a case of diachronic ethnography. It examines quests for therapy among the Madi people of northern Uganda. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in and around the small trading centre of Laropi; originally in the late 1980s and again in 2008. By revisiting the same field site at different points in time, and by drawing on related ethnographic material collected in the 1950s and 70s, we are able to examine how such quests have altered and to discuss factors influencing these changes. We also comment on shifts in conceptual approaches of medical anthropology that have influenced perceptions and analysis. Laropi lies close to the border with Sudan and its inhabitants have experienced much upheaval and political isolation. We examine how this has influenced understandings and responses to ill-health and misfortune. Particularly important in recent years has been the increasing availability and accessibility of biomedicine, which the population have embraced and indigenized as a mark of progress and political recognition. On the face of it, this has rendered recourse to more “traditional” forms of healing obsolete. However, as we describe, the situation is more ambiguous. Notions of witchcraft, spirit possession and ancestor veneration are more pervasive than they might seem.
Major haemorrhage related to surgery in patients with type 1 and possible type 1 von Willebrand disease

Summary Patients with von Willebrand disease (VWD) frequently bleed under a challenge. The aim of our study was to identify predictive markers of perioperative major haemorrhage in type 1 (VWF:RCo = 15–30 IU dl-1) and possible type 1 (VWF:RCo = 31–49 IU dl-1)VWD patients. We recorded perioperative bleeding complications previous to diagnosis and laboratory parameters in 311 patients with 498 surgical procedures. The patients were grouped according to the absence (A) or presence (B) of perioperative major haemorrhages. Eighty-one patients (26%) and 87 surgical procedures (17.5%) presented major haemorrhages associated with surgeries. There was no difference between the percentage of type 1 and possible type 1 VWD patients who had major haemorrhages (32.6% and 24.8% respectively; p=ns). No difference in the prevalence of O blood group, age, gender, positive family history and laboratory test results (FVIII and VWF) was observed, independent of the haemorrhagic tendency. Bleeding after tooth extraction was the most frequent clinical feature observed in patients with perioperative major haemorrhages. The bleeding score and the number of bleeding sites (≥3) were not predictors of major haemorrhage associated with surgery. Caesarean section and adenotonsillectomy showed the highest frequency of major haemorrhages (24.6% and 22.3%, respectively). In conclusion, type 1 and possible type 1VWD patients showed similar incidence of perioperative major haemorrhages. Laboratory tests and positive family history did not prove to be effective at predicting major haemorrhages in patients that had either type 1 or possible type 1 VWD. The history of bleeding after tooth extraction could define risk factors of major haemorrhage.
Profiling Computer Predispositions

ABSTRACT An exploratory study was undertaken to measure undergraduate student attitudes toward computers. A revised version of the Bath County Computer Scale (BCCAS) developed by George Bear, Herbert Richards, and Paul Lancaster was administered to a proportionality sample of 310 undergraduate students whose demographic make-up was very dissimilar to those who had participated in the original BCCAS instrument validation study. A thirty-six item instrument was personally administered to 310 learners pursuing undergraduate studies, yielding a total of 11,160 individual responses. The data so obtained were subjected to several statistical tests of significance such as ANOVA. Through cross-classification numerous tables were generated and analyzed. The findings indicate that demographic variables such as gender, status, GPA average, major, prior computer experience and anticipated future use of computers show significant differences in how Students feel about computers.
Publishing by New Zealand and Australian ecologists: trends and comparisons

Publishing trends in the New Zealand and Australian Journals' of Ecology (NZJE and AJE) were compared (1953-97) and publishing by contemporary (1997) Australasian authors examined from mid-1995 to 1998. The NZJE published a smaller proportion (9%) of their authors total manuscripts than the AJE (13%). Both Journals' authors published almost 70% of their manuscripts in international journals and 31% (NZ) and 35% (Aust.) in their local journals. The AJE consistently contained a high proportion (80%) of papers on the fundamental ecology of native species. In contrast, the NZJE gradually increased the proportion of papers on the ecology, impacts and management of exotic species (13%, 1953-62 to 52%, 1993-97) and reduced the proportion of manuscripts investigating the fundamental ecology of native species from 67% (1953-62) to 28% (1993-97). Comparisons show that the difference between the journals is due to a fundamental difference in the emphasis of ecological research in Australia and New Zealand that can, in part, be attributed to differences in the relative contribution of government research agencies to publishing in ecology in the two countries. Government research agencies contribute relatively more to ecological publishing in and from New Zealand than they do in Australia. However, the differences were also amplified by different submission behaviour by Australian and New Zealand authors. When submitting manuscripts about the ecology of native species and ecosystems, New Zealand ecologists favoured international journals rather than the NZJE, and local journals generally. Australian ecologists, on the other hand, favoured international journals over the AJE when submitting manuscripts on the ecology, impacts and management of exotic species.
Efficient reclaiming in reservation-based real-time systems with variable execution times

We present a general CPU scheduling methodology for managing overruns in a real-time environment, where tasks may have different criticality, flexible timing constraints, shared resources, and variable execution times. The proposed method enhances, the constant bandwidth server (CBS) by providing two important extensions. First, it includes an efficient bandwidth sharing mechanism that reclaims the unused bandwidth to enhance task responsiveness. It is proven that the reclaiming mechanism does not violate the isolation property of the CBS and can be safely adopted to achieve temporal protection even when resource reservations are not precisely assigned. Second, the proposed method allows the CBS to work in the presence of shared resources. The enhancements achieved by the proposed approach turned out to be very effective with respect to classical CPU reservation schemes. The algorithm complexity is O(ln N), where N is the number of real-time tasks in the system, and its performance has been experimentally evaluated by extensive simulations.
Joubert syndrome: A haplotype segregation strategy and exclusion of the zinc finger protein of cerebellum 1 (ZIC1) gene

Joubert syndrome (JS) is a rare autosomal recessive malformation syndrome, involving dysgenesis of the cerebellar vermis with accompanying brainstem malformations (comprising the molar tooth sign). JS is characterized by hypotonia, developmental delay, intermittent hyperpnea and apnea, and abnormal eye movements. A single locus for JS was previously identified on 9q34 in a consanguineous family of Arabian origin. However, linkage to this locus has subsequently been shown to be rare. We have ascertained 35 JS pedigrees for haplotype segregation analysis of genetic loci for genes with a putative role in cerebellar development. We examined the ZIC1 gene as a functional candidate for JS as Zic1−/− null mice have a phenotype reminiscent of JS. We undertook mutational analysis of ZIC1 by standard mutational analysis (dideoxy‐fingerprinting (ddf)) of 47 JS probands, and fully sequenced the coding region in five of these probands. By these means, ZIC1 was excluded from playing a causal role in most cases of JS as no disease‐associated mutations were identified. Further, linkage to the ZIC1 genetic locus (3q24) was excluded in 21 of 35 pedigrees by haplotype segregation analysis of closely spaced markers. The remaining 14 of 35 pedigrees were consistent with linkage. However, this number does not significantly depart from that expected by random chance (16.5) for this cohort. Therefore, this systematic approach has been validated as a means to prioritize functional candidate genes and enables us to confine mutational analysis to only those probands whose segregation is consistent with linkage to any given locus. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Communication message cues and opinions about people with depression: an investigation of discussion on Weibo

A content analysis was conducted of the posts generated by mass media organizations and public opinion leaders on the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo to investigate the associations between several communication message cues and opinions about people with depression (N = 102). The study revealed that the posts of the influential users were more likely to be stigmatizing when they communicated stereotypes, but less likely to be stigmatizing or more likely to be supportive when they made personal, genetic and medical, and social and environmental cause and responsibility claims. The posts were also more likely to be supportive if the influential users presented treatment and recovery information. In addition to finding out what communication cues activate the influential users' stigmatizing or supportive opinions, the study also examined and found the impact of the influential users' opinions on their followers' opinions on this issue (N = 8261). The findings showed that the public opinion leaders were more likely than the mass media to express support for people with depression. This support then translated into supportive responses among their followers toward those living with the disease.
An infinite server queueing approach for describing software reliability growth: unified modeling and estimation framework

In general, the software reliability models based on the nonhomogeneous Poisson processes (NHPPs) are quite popular to assess quantitatively the software reliability and its related dependability measures. Nevertheless, it is not so easy to select the best model from a huge number of candidates in the software testing phase, because the predictive performance of software reliability models strongly depends on the fault-detection data. The asymptotic trend of software fault-detection data can be explained by two kinds of NHPP models; finite fault model and infinite fault model. In other words, one needs to make a hypothesis whether the software contains a finite or infinite number of faults, in selecting the software reliability model in advance. In this article, we present an approach to treat both finite and infinite fault models in a unified modeling framework. By introducing an infinite server queueing model to describe the software debugging behavior, we show that it can involve representative NHPP models with a finite and an infinite number of faults. Further, we provide two parameter estimation methods for the unified NHPP based software reliability models from both standpoints of Bayesian and nonBayesian statistics. Numerical examples with real fault-detection data are devoted to compare the infinite server queueing model with the existing one under the same probability circumstance.
On the Fundamental Diagram of Traffic Flow

We present a new fluid-dynamical model of traffic flow. This model generalizes the model of Aw and Rascle [SIAM J. Appl. Math., 60 (2000), pp. 916-938] and Greenberg [SIAM J. Appl. Math., 62 (2001), pp. 729-745] by prescribing a more general source term to the velocity equation. This source term can be physically motivated by experimental data, when taking into account relaxation and reaction time. In particular, the new model has a (linearly) unstable regime as observed in traffic dynamics. We develop a numerical code that solves the corresponding system of balance laws. Applying our code to a wide variety of initial data, we find the observed inverse-$\lambda$ shape of the fundamental diagram of traffic flow.
The effect of homocysteine reduction by B-vitamin supplementation on markers of endothelial dysfunction

Summary Hyperhomocysteinemia is a risk factor for arterial vascular disease and venous thrombosis. The pathophysiology of this relation is unclear, but several studies suggest that hyperhomocysteinemia impairs endothelial function. We examined the effect of homocysteine lowering by B-vitamin supplementation on tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1 (PAI) and von Willebrand factor (vWf) markers of endothelial dysfunction in hyperhomocysteinemic and normohomocysteinemic volunteers. A total of 123 healthy volunteers were randomized to placebo or B-vitamins (5 mg folic acid, 0.4 mg hydroxycobalamin and 50 mg pyridoxine) daily for 8 weeks. Before and after the intervention period, blood samples were taken for measurements of homocysteine, tPA, PAI and vWf.There was no evident association between homocysteine concentration and concentrations of markers of endothelial dysfunction at baseline.The mean reduction of homocysteine concentration was 31% (95%CI 22.7 to 39.1) in the B-vitamin group compared to 3% reduction in the placebo group. Concentrations of tPA, PAI and vWf did not change after supplementation of B-vitamins. In conclusion, the results of our study show that homocysteine reduction by B-vitamin supplementation has no effect on markers of endothelial dysfunction in healthy volunteers.
Plant Protein Annotation in the UniProt Knowledgebase1

The Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL, Protein Information Resource (PIR), and DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) protein database activities have united to form the Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) Consortium. UniProt presents three database layers: the UniProt Archive, the UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProtKB), and the UniProt Reference Clusters. The UniProtKB consists of two sections: UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot (fully manually curated entries) and UniProtKB/TrEMBL (automated annotation, classification and extensive cross-references). New releases are published fortnightly. A specific Plant Proteome Annotation Program (http://www.expasy.org/sprot/ppap/) was initiated to cope with the increasing amount of data produced by the complete sequencing of plant genomes. Through UniProt, our aim is to provide the scientific community with a single, centralized, authoritative resource for protein sequences and functional information that will allow the plant community to fully explore and utilize the wealth of information available for both plant and nonplant model organisms.
Comparative Genome Analysis Reveals Metabolic Versatility and Environmental Adaptations of Sulfobacillus thermosulfidooxidans Strain ST

The genus Sulfobacillus is a cohort of mildly thermophilic or thermotolerant acidophiles within the phylum Firmicutes and requires extremely acidic environments and hypersalinity for optimal growth. However, our understanding of them is still preliminary partly because few genome sequences are available. Here, the draft genome of Sulfobacillus thermosulfidooxidans strain ST was deciphered to obtain a comprehensive insight into the genetic content and to understand the cellular mechanisms necessary for its survival. Furthermore, the expressions of key genes related with iron and sulfur oxidation were verified by semi-quantitative RT-PCR analysis. The draft genome sequence of Sulfobacillus thermosulfidooxidans strain ST, which encodes 3225 predicted coding genes on a total length of 3,333,554 bp and a 48.35% G+C, revealed the high degree of heterogeneity with other Sulfobacillus species. The presence of numerous transposases, genomic islands and complete CRISPR/Cas defence systems testifies to its dynamic evolution consistent with the genome heterogeneity. As expected, S. thermosulfidooxidans encodes a suit of conserved enzymes required for the oxidation of inorganic sulfur compounds (ISCs). The model of sulfur oxidation in S. thermosulfidooxidans was proposed, which showed some different characteristics from the sulfur oxidation of Gram-negative A. ferrooxidans. Sulfur oxygenase reductase and heterodisulfide reductase were suggested to play important roles in the sulfur oxidation. Although the iron oxidation ability was observed, some key proteins cannot be identified in S. thermosulfidooxidans. Unexpectedly, a predicted sulfocyanin is proposed to transfer electrons in the iron oxidation. Furthermore, its carbon metabolism is rather flexible, can perform the transformation of pentose through the oxidative and non-oxidative pentose phosphate pathways and has the ability to take up small organic compounds. It encodes a multitude of heavy metal resistance systems to adapt the heavy metal-containing environments.
The Peptide-Receptive Transition State of MHC Class I Molecules: Insight from Structure and Molecular Dynamics

MHC class I (MHC-I) proteins of the adaptive immune system require antigenic peptides for maintenance of mature conformation and immune function via specific recognition by MHC-I–restricted CD8+ T lymphocytes. New MHC-I molecules in the endoplasmic reticulum are held by chaperones in a peptide-receptive (PR) transition state pending release by tightly binding peptides. In this study, we show, by crystallographic, docking, and molecular dynamics methods, dramatic movement of a hinged unit containing a conserved 310 helix that flips from an exposed “open” position in the PR transition state to a “closed” position with buried hydrophobic side chains in the peptide-loaded mature molecule. Crystallography of hinged unit residues 46–53 of murine H-2Ld MHC-I H chain, complexed with mAb 64-3-7, demonstrates solvent exposure of these residues in the PR conformation. Docking and molecular dynamics predict how this segment moves to help form the A and B pockets crucial for the tight peptide binding needed for stability of the mature peptide-loaded conformation, chaperone dissociation, and Ag presentation.
Users' perceptions of library effectiveness: A comparative users' evaluation of central libraries of AMU, BHU, ALU and BBRAU

This study examines user perceptions regarding level of satisfaction with library collections, organization, facilities as well as traditional and IT enabled services. A questionnaire was administered to the faculty members, research scholars and students of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Allahabad University (ALU) and Baba Bhim Rao Ambedkar (BBRAU). Overall, respondents indicated that library collections are adequate. In the case of newly centralized university libraries, users were dissatisfied with library collections, particularly at BBRAU, though they were satisfied with the existing infrastructure. Overall, satisfaction levels of users at old centralized universities are good.
Dominant achievement goals across tracks in high school

The dominant achievement goals (DAGs) of 7008 students in the third grade of Dutch secondary education (US grade 9) were investigated, based on Elliot & McGregors’ 2 × 2 framework (2001), in relation to track-level and motivational variables. We found the mastery-approach goal and the performance-approach goal, generally considered adaptive, to be more prominent among students in lower tracks. In contrast, avoidance goals were more common in higher tracks. Most notably, in the highest track, the mastery-avoidance goal was the most prominent. Additionally, we found that students with a dominant performance-approach goal scored highest on almost all motivational variables examined; students without a DAG scored mostly second highest. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Migrants of Privilege: The Political Transnationalism of Americans in Mexico

This article applies the literature on political transnationalism to the unique case of a growing population of Americans, born and bred in the United States, who are choosing to live in Mexico. With few exceptions, this population, moving from north to south, fits the model of transnational migrants who reside in a country of settlement while maintaining ties, political and otherwise, to their country of origin. They vote in U.S. elections, raise money for U.S. campaigns, meet with U.S. politicians, and form civic organizations dedicated to the values of their homeland all while residing in Mexico. The exceptions in the case, however, point to the need for minor refinements in the literature on transnationalism to take account of a sending state that is privileged in relation to the receiving state and migrants who are privileged relative to their host society. The case also has important political and policy implications given that this population of U.S. emigrants, many of them retirees, is likely to increase in coming years, as is their cross-border political engagement.