Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
JPET # 145862 1 Therapeutic effect of blocking CXCR 2 on neutrophil recruitment and DSS induced colitis

Dextran sodium sulphate (DSS)-induced colitis in mice is characterized by polymorphonuclear neutrophil (PMN) infiltration into the colonic mucosa and lumen. The mechanism by which this occurs is unclear. To begin to understand the mechanism we determined the role of the PMN chemokine receptor, CXCR2, in DSS-induced colitis by using CXCR2 mice or by neutralizing CXCR2. DSS was administered through drinking water to CXCR2 and Balb/c mice for 5 days followed by regular water for 1 day. In the neutralization study mice were injected with control serum or goat anti-CXCR2 antiserum. Balb/c mice receiving DSS, and control serum-injected mice receiving DSS, lost weight and showed considerable clinical illness. Histological observation revealed submucosal edema, PMN infiltration into the submucosa and mucosa, extensive crypt damage with abscesses, and ulceration. In contrast, both the CXCR2 and anti-CXCR2 antiserum-treated mice gained weight and had significantly lower symptom scores. Histology of these mice showed submucosal edema but relatively intact crypt architecture and very few ulcers. Significantly fewer PMNs were found in the mucosa in anti-CXCR2 antiserum compared to control serum injected inflamed mice but no significant difference in eosinophil infiltration was observed between the groups. Our experiments identify a role for CXCR2 in DSS-induced colitis and suggest that antagonizing CXCR2 provides some therapeutic efficacy, possibly by impeding PMN recruitment into the mucosa. Antagonizing CXCR2 may form the basis for therapeutic drugs directed at controlling colitis.
Globotriaosylsphingosine Accumulation and Not Alpha-Galactosidase-A Deficiency Causes Endothelial Dysfunction in Fabry Disease

Background Fabry disease (FD) is caused by a deficiency of the lysosomal enzyme alpha-galactosidase A (GLA) resulting in the accumulation of globotriaosylsphingosine (Gb3) in a variety of tissues. While GLA deficiency was always considered as the fulcrum of the disease, recent attention shifted towards studying the mechanisms through which Gb3 accumulation in vascular cells leads to endothelial dysfunction and eventually multiorgan failure. In addition to the well-described macrovascular disease, FD is also characterized by abnormalities of microvascular function, which have been demonstrated by measurements of myocardial blood flow and coronary flow reserve. To date, the relative importance of Gb3 accumulation versus GLA deficiency in causing endothelial dysfunction is not fully understood; furthermore, its differential effects on cardiac micro- and macrovascular endothelial cells are not known. Methods and Results In order to assess the effects of Gb3 accumulation versus GLA deficiency, human macro- and microvascular cardiac endothelial cells (ECs) were incubated with Gb3 or silenced by siRNA to GLA. Gb3 loading caused deregulation of several key endothelial pathways such as eNOS, iNOS, COX-1 and COX-2, while GLA silencing showed no effects. Cardiac microvascular ECs showed a greater susceptibility to Gb3 loading as compared to macrovascular ECs. Conclusions Deregulation of key endothelial pathways as observed in FD vasculopathy is likely caused by intracellular Gb3 accumulation rather than deficiency of GLA. Human microvascular ECs, as opposed to macrovascular ECs, seem to be affected earlier and more severely by Gb3 accumulation and this notion may prove fundamental for future progresses in early diagnosis and management of FD patients.
Blending ‘home’ and ‘away’: young Israeli migrants as VFR travelers

ABSTRACT This study explores the nexus between migration and tourism by focusing on the experiences of young Israeli migrants who engage in return-visits to their country of origin. The experiences of the migrants are examined with respect to transnational theory, VFR (visiting friends and relatives) travel and conceptualizations of ‘home’ and ‘away. ’ The migrants’ sense of ‘being at home’ is deconstructed in terms of familiarity with place, privacy and situational control, and sociability in associations. The findings of this multidimensional analysis reveal that the young migrants’ experiences of ‘home’ and ‘away’ is transformed across time in accordance with their sense of adaptation in the receiving country. While in terms of familiarity with place and sociability in associations the sense of being at home is weakened considerably, it is actually strengthened in terms of privacy and situational control. These findings stress the complexity of VFR experiences in the context of transnational migration.
Providing Trustworthy Contributions via a Reputation Framework in Social Participatory Sensing Systems

Social participatory sensing is a newly proposed paradigm that tries to address the limitations of participatory sensing by leveraging online social networks as an infrastructure. A critical issue in the success of this paradigm is to assure the trustworthiness of contributions provided by participants. In this paper, we propose an application-agnostic reputation framework for social participatory sensing systems. Our framework considers both the quality of contribution and the trustworthiness level of participant within the social network. These two aspects are then combined via a fuzzy inference system to arrive at a final trust rating for a contribution. A reputation score is also calculated for each participant as a resultant of the trust ratings assigned to him. We adopt the utilization of PageRank algorithm as the building block for our reputation module. Extensive simulations demonstrate the efficacy of our framework in achieving high overall trust and assigning accurate reputation scores.
Spatial Patterns and Size Distributions of Cities

City size distributions are known to be well approximated by power laws across many countries. One popular explanation for such power-law regularities is in terms of random growth processes, where power laws arise asymptotically from the assumption of iid growth rates among all cities within a given country. But this assumption has additional consequences. Since all subsets of cities have the same statistical properties, each subset must exhibit essentially the same power law. Moreover, this common power law (CPL) property must hold regardless of the spatial relations among cities. Using data from the US, this paper shows first that spatial partitions of cities based on geographical proximity are significantly more consistent with the CPL property than are random partitions. It is then shown that this significance becomes even stronger when proximity among cities is measured in terms of trade linkages rather than simple geographical distance. These results provide compelling evidence that spatial relations between cities do indeed matter for city-size distributions. Further analysis shows that these results hinge on the natural “spacing out” property of city patterns in which larger cities tend to be widely spaced apart with smaller cities organized around them.
Mobility Modeling of Rush Hour Traffic for Multihop Routing in Mobile Wireless Networks

Simulation is a critical tool for analyzing the performance of multihop routing protocols for mobile wireless networks, be it, autonomous mobile ad hoc networks or multihop extensions to infrastructure- based 3G/4G mobile networks. Node movement and network topology are critical factors determining the performance of routing protocols. Using unrealistic mobility models in simulations, e.g. random waypoint, result in performance results that do not reflect the actual deployment scenarios. In this paper, two typical features of rush hour traffic conditions are considered. Firstly, we focus on modeling high node traffic areas where there is a surge of traffic at specific times. Secondly, we study the choice of destinations which tend to be inversely proportional to the exponential of the distance of the destination from the origin since people tend to travel to locations that are nearer rather than further. We then show that protocols which typically perform well under the random waypoint model perform poorly in the more realistic Rush Hour model.
The Relative Contribution of Proximal 5′ Flanking Sequence and Microsatellite Variation on Brain Vasopressin 1a Receptor (Avpr1a) Gene Expression and Behavior

Certain genes exhibit notable diversity in their expression patterns both within and between species. One such gene is the vasopressin receptor 1a gene (Avpr1a), which exhibits striking differences in neural expression patterns that are responsible for mediating differences in vasopressin-mediated social behaviors. The genomic mechanisms that contribute to these remarkable differences in expression are not well understood. Previous work has suggested that both the proximal 5′ flanking region and a polymorphic microsatellite element within that region of the vole Avpr1a gene are associated with variation in V1a receptor (V1aR) distribution and behavior, but neither has been causally linked. Using homologous recombination in mice, we reveal the modest contribution of proximal 5′ flanking sequences to species differences in V1aR distribution, and confirm that variation in V1aR distribution impacts stress-coping in the forced swim test. We also demonstrate that the vole Avpr1a microsatellite structure contributes to Avpr1a expression in the amygdala, thalamus, and hippocampus, mirroring a subset of the inter- and intra-species differences observed in central V1aR patterns in voles. This is the first direct evidence that polymorphic microsatellite elements near behaviorally relevant genes can contribute to diversity in brain gene expression profiles, providing a mechanism for generating behavioral diversity both at the individual and species level. However, our results suggest that many features of species-specific expression patterns are mediated by elements outside of the immediate 5′ flanking region of the gene.
Sociotechnical systems design: coordination of virtual teamwork in innovation

Purpose This paper aims to report on a qualitative comparative case study of coordination in three ongoing research and development projects, each conducted by teams working virtually across multiple, geographically dispersed sites and involving varying degrees of task uncertainty at differing stages on an innovation continuum, from basic fundamental research to scale-up and commercial development. Design/methodology/approach This study investigated characteristics of effective virtual innovation teamwork, primarily using structured interviews, observation and a limited number of surveys. The analysis was based upon Pava’s (1983) methodology of sociotechnical systems (STS) for non-linear work and was used to assess the influence of virtuality and task uncertainty on the quality of team deliberations and the knowledge development barriers experienced at the various stages on the innovation continuum. Findings The study identified different technical and social coordination mechanisms and their impact in mitigating knowledge barriers for differing levels of task uncertainty. Technical elements, many based in digital information technology, appeared most significant for coordination where task uncertainty and ambiguity were low. However, with high task uncertainty, the most significant mechanisms were closely tied to the formal and informal social systems of virtual organization. Research limitations/implications The key implication for future research is the development of further applications to evaluate this coordination model for modern teamwork in virtual contexts. Practical implications The findings extend previous theory about coordination of innovation to include fundamental research and virtual collaboration. Based on the results, a four-step STS methodology for design of virtual team coordination mechanisms was developed and piloted successfully by scientific teams at a prominent North American research laboratory. Originality/value This research project has shown that modern STS methodology, updated for non-routine work in a virtual context, can provide a way to assess and mitigate “coordination costs” associated with virtual teamwork. Further, it has identified clear categories of coordination mechanisms that are most effective when teams are working at different stages in the innovation process.
Lovasz theta-function of a class of graphs representing digital lines

We consider the problem of estimating the Shannon capacity of a circulant graph Cn,j of degree four with n vertices and chord length j, 2 ≤ j ≤ n, by computing its Lovász theta function θ(Cn,j). Our interest in this problem is driven by possible applications to error-free communication of data describing the structure of a digital line. The latter can be represented in terms of spirographs [12], which, as a matter of fact, are circulants of degree four. We present an algorithm for θ(Cn,j) computation that takes O(j) operations if j is an odd number, and O(n/j) operations if j is even. On the considered class of graphs our algorithm strongly outperforms the known algorithms for theta function computation.
Expression of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor and Its Receptors in the Central Nervous System in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) prolongs survival in the mutant SOD1 transgenic mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), whereas dysregulation of VEGF through deletion of its hypoxia-regulatory element causes motor neuron degeneration in mice. We investigated the expression of VEGF and its major agonist receptors in the normal central nervous system and in patients with ALS. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated similar expression patterns of VEGF and VEGF receptor 2 (VEGFR2) in the spinal cord with finely punctate staining of the neuropil and strong expression in anterior horn cells (AHCs). Granular staining on the surface of some AHCs, similar to that seen with synaptic markers, suggested synaptic labeling. VEGFR2 staining was reduced in the neuropil of ALS cases (p = 0.018) associated with a reduction of synaptophysin but not SNAP25 expression. A greater proportion of AHCs in ALS cases showed low expression of VEGF (p = 0.006) and VEGFR2 (p = 0.009) compared with controls. Expression of VEGF and VEGFR2 was confirmed by Western blotting and quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (QPCR). The similar expression patterns of VEGF and VEGFR2 suggests autocrine/paracrine effects on spinal motor neurons, and the reduction in their expression seen in ALS cases would support the hypothesis that, as in mouse models of the disease, reduced VEGF signaling may play a role in the pathogenesis of ALS.
mRNA localization in the Drosophila germline

Localization and the associated translational control of mRNA is a well established mechanism for segregating cellular protein expression. Drosophila has been instrumental in deciphering the prevailing mechanisms of mRNA localization and regulation. This review will discuss the diverse roles of mRNA localization in the Drosophila germline, the cis-elements and cellular components regulating localization and the superimposition of translational regulatory mechanisms. Despite a history of discovery, there are still many fundamental questions regarding mRNA localization that remain unanswered. Take home messages, outstanding questions and future approaches that will likely lead to resolving these unknowns in the future are summarized at the end.
Adult-onset, short-term dietary restriction reduces cell senescence in mice

Dietary restriction (DR) extends the lifespan of a wide variety of species and reduces the incidence of major age-related diseases. Cell senescence has been proposed as one causal mechanism for tissue and organism ageing. We show for the first time that adult-onset, short-term DR reduced frequencies of senescent cells in the small intestinal epithelium and liver of mice, which are tissues known to accumulate increased numbers of senescent cells with advancing age. This reduction was associated with improved telomere maintenance without increased telomerase activity. We also found a decrease in cumulative oxidative stress markers in the same compartments despite absence of significant changes in steady-state oxidative stress markers at the whole tissue level. The data suggest the possibility that reduction of cell senescence may be a primary consequence of DR which in turn may explain known effects of DR such as improved mitochondrial function and reduced production of reactive oxygen species.
Nonlocal image denoising via collaborative spatial-domain LMMSE estimation

In recent years, the performance of image denoising has been boosted drastically by nonlocal algorithms and sparse coding techniques. In this paper, we also take a nonlocal approach to image denoising and formulate the problem as one of collaborative LMMSE estimation from grouped image patches. We show that our optimal LMMSE solution amounts to shrinking the singular values of the matrix representation of the grouped image patches. This interpretation of our solution allows us to relate our estimation-theoretic approach to other nonlocal algorithms and sparse coding techniques in the literature. In addition, we develop an iterative algorithm to find the best LMMSE estimate. Experimental results show that our proposed denoising algorithm achieves better PSNR and subjective performance than the state of the art.
A new multi-channel MAC protocol with on-demand channel assignment for multi-hop mobile ad hoc networks

The wireless mobile ad hoc network (MANET) architecture has received a lot of attention recently. This paper considers the access of multiple channels in a MANET with multi-hop communication behavior. We point out several interesting issues when using multiple channels. We then propose a new multi-channel MAC protocol, which is characterized by the following features: (i) it follows an "on-demand" style to assign channels to mobile hosts, (ii) the number of channels required is independent of the network topology and degree, (iii) it flexibly adapts to host mobility and only exchanges few control messages to achieve channel assignment and medium access, and (iv) no clock synchronization is required. Compared to existing protocols, some assign channels to hosts statically (thus a host will occupy a channel even when it has no intention to transmit) some require a number of channels which is a function of the maximum connectivity, and some necessitate a clock synchronization among all hosts in the MANET. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the proposed protocol.
A virtual reality system combined with biofeedback for treating pediatric chronic headache--a pilot study.

OBJECTIVE Pediatric headache is highly widespread and is associated with distress and reduced quality of life. Pharmacological treatment of chronic headache in children has been only partially effective and, as in medication-overuse headache, can sometimes be counterproductive. Therefore, there is a substantial need to develop other effective methods of treatment. Here we present the rationale, feasibility, and preliminary results of a pilot study applying a novel system, combining virtual reality and biofeedback, aimed as an abortive treatment of pediatric chronic headache. DESIGN A prospective single-arm open-label, pilot study. Ten children attending an outpatient pediatric neurology clinic were treated by the proposed system. Participants practiced relaxation with biofeedback and learned to associate successful relaxation with positive pain-free virtual images of themselves. RESULTS Nine patients completed the 10-session intervention. Ratings of pain, daily functioning, and quality of life improved significantly at 1 and at 3 months posttreatment. Most patients reported applying their newly acquired relaxation and imagery skills to relieve headache outside the lab. CONCLUSION This novel system, combining biofeedback and virtual reality, is feasible for pediatric use. Randomized controlled studies in larger populations are needed in order to determine the utility of the system in reducing headache, improving daily functioning, and elevating quality of life.
Exploring the Relationship between Religion and Production : Evidence from Protestantism and Agriculture

The main object of the paper relies on examining the possible connection between religion and growth, the purpose of the survey not being a recent issue in economics. It seems that several papers have merely attempted to identify the fundamental aspect of the question. The topic made heated debate through the first theoretical advances of the classical economic school. However, it continued to make up the discussion of several recent surveys and academic researches, as an attempt to identify new evidence about the solid relationship between religion and economic growth. The paper attempted to explore the essence of the relationship between religion and efficiency of production in agriculture. Thus, we carried out an empirical investigation to demonstrate the influence of religion on production, from an efficiency perspective. In other terms, the survey made up an illuminating attempt to find out if the religion could affect the production efficiency in agriculture. It also allowed us to account for the principal causes of the religion influence on production in overall, and especially on agriculture. The empirical investigation conducted in this manuscript relied on estimating the impact of the Protestants on the agriculture production. The econometric model is a cross-sectional panel including the bulk of the European countries in 2000. The outcome of the empirical investigation has revealed the positive impact of Protestant on agriculture cross-sectional, more important and statistically significant compared with other religious groups of workers, from the efficiency perspective.
An Expert EFL Teacher’s Class Management

The present research sought to investigate how expert EFL teachers manage their class and keep its discipline. To this aim, the existing prior ELT (English Language Teaching) research on exemplary teachers’ practices were reviewed and the typical class management strategies used were extracted. Moreover, 20 ELT specialists including teacher educators, university professors of applied linguistics, mentor teachers and language institute supervisors were selected through purposive snowball and convenience sampling methods, and were interviewed. Since they were directly dealing with teachers as trainers, supervisors, and mentors, they were considered as qualified informants. There were finally 4 themes and 3 sub-themes extracted from the qualitative content analysis of the interviews, which were presented in this paper along with sample extracts of the actual interview content. The themes included: expert teachers’ identification power, use of external control, use of preventive management strategies and monitoring student behavior. The 3 sub-themes of the second theme were: clarification of expectations, use of body language and establishing rules and routines. Knowledge of these themes and sub-themes can shed light on a key behavioral aspect of expert English language teachers in class. These strategies, if followed properly, can set good examples for novice teachers and those who have problem managing their classes.