Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sex and Gender in an Aging Society

The extension of the humal life span that has taken place in developed societies is only the latest in a number of biosocial changes the human species has undergone during the past century. The US population density has increased from 549 per square mile in 1960 to 796 per square mile today. Height weight health fertility and longevity are phenotypic rather than genotypic changes that reflect environmental influences at work over relatively short periods of historic times and not genetic changes in the human organism. This essay examines sex and gender in a bio-evolutionary framework and discusses what implications they have for changes in the characteristics of elderly men and women in the future compared to those alive today. Sex refers to reproductive and sexual characteristics while gender refers to all the social and psychological attributes linked to the social roles of men and women. One fundamental "gender gap" of a demographic nature in an aging society is the sex difference in longevity. The social institutions of the past are masculine in tone not simply because men held the power to structure social institutions to their advantage but because few adults survived beyond their reproductive years. In an aging society a female majority combined with the dramatic blurring of sex and gender differences in the 2nd half of life may effect a change in the social institution structures and in the societal values that dominate. The larger proportion of people in the 2nd half of their lives may contribute to the social transformation; young adults are more absorbed in personal and interpersonal issues while older people bring much broader social concerns to their political participation. The prospect is bright that an aging and androgynous society holds the potential for becoming a society that is more humane and caring than any Western nation has been.
Theme and Variations in the Evolutionary Pathways to Virulence of an RNA Plant Virus Species

The diversity of a highly variable RNA plant virus was considered to determine the range of virulence substitutions, the evolutionary pathways to virulence, and whether intraspecific diversity modulates virulence pathways and propensity. In all, 114 isolates representative of the genetic and geographic diversity of Rice yellow mottle virus (RYMV) in Africa were inoculated to several cultivars with eIF(iso)4G-mediated Rymv1-2 resistance. Altogether, 41 virulent variants generated from ten wild isolates were analyzed. Nonconservative amino acid replacements at five positions located within a stretch of 15 codons in the central region of the 79-aa-long protein VPg were associated with virulence. Virulence substitutions were fixed predominantly at codon 48 in most strains, whatever the host genetic background or the experimental conditions. There were one major and two isolate-specific mutational pathways conferring virulence at codon 48. In the prevalent mutational pathway I, arginine (AGA) was successively displaced by glycine (GGA) and glutamic acid (GAA). Substitutions in the other virulence codons were displaced when E48 was fixed. In the isolate-specific mutational pathway II, isoleucine (ATA) emerged and often later coexisted with valine (GTA). In mutational pathway III, arginine, with the specific S2/S3 strain codon usage AGG, was displaced by tryptophane (TGG). Mutational pathway I never arose in the widely spread West African S2/S3 strain because G48 was not infectious in the S2/S3 genetic context. Strain S2/S3 least frequently overcame resistance, whereas two geographically localized variants of the strain S4 had a high propensity to virulence. Codons 49 and 26 of the VPg, under diversifying selection, are candidate positions in modulating the genetic barriers to virulence. The theme and variations in the evolutionary pathways to virulence of RYMV illustrates the extent of parallel evolution within a highly variable RNA plant virus species.
Oligodendrocyte reactions and cell proliferation markers in human demyelinating diseases

We have carried out immunocytochemical reactions using antibodies to markers of oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, microglia and proliferating cells (PCNA) in sections of human brain in a variety of demyelinating conditions and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. In the acute phases of demyelinating diseases we found marked reactive changes in oligodendrocytes with hyperplasia and an increased cytoplasmic reaction using antibodies to enzymes involved in myelin formation. Proliferative responses were implied by the hyperplasia and the common finding of clusters of two or three adjacent oligodendrocytes at sites of acute myelin dam age. This was borne out by studies using the PCNA antibody which gave negative reactions in normal brain but positive reactions in acute demyelination. Double staining for PCNA and cell markers showed that cells that had entered the cell proliferation cycle were to be found among astrocytes, microglia/macrophages and oligodendrocytes. In chronic demyelinating conditions, numbers of oligodendrocytes were reduced and cells in the proliferative cycle were not present, suggesting that the reactive potential of oligodendrocytes or their precursors and their capacity to respond to demyelination is limited.
Global Sparse Analysis Framework

In this article, we present a general method for achieving global static analyzers that are precise and sound, yet also scalable. Our method, on top of the abstract interpretation framework, is a general sparse analysis technique that supports relational as well as nonrelational semantics properties for various programming languages. Analysis designers first use the abstract interpretation framework to have a global and correct static analyzer whose scalability is unattended. Upon this underlying sound static analyzer, analysis designers add our generalized sparse analysis techniques to improve its scalability while preserving the precision of the underlying analysis. Our method prescribes what to prove to guarantee that the resulting sparse version should preserve the precision of the underlying analyzer. We formally present our framework and show that existing sparse analyses are all restricted instances of our framework. In addition, we show more semantically elaborate design examples of sparse nonrelational and relational static analyses. We then present their implementation results that scale to globally analyze up to one million lines of C programs. We also show a set of implementation techniques that turn out to be critical to economically support the sparse analysis process.
Basic Emotions in Human Neuroscience: Neuroimaging and Beyond

The existence of so-called ‘basic emotions’ and their defining attributes represents a long lasting and yet unsettled issue in psychology. Recently, neuroimaging evidence, especially related to the advent of neuroimaging meta-analytic methods, has revitalized this debate in the endeavor of systems and human neuroscience. The core theme focuses on the existence of unique neural bases that are specific and characteristic for each instance of basic emotion. Here we review this evidence, outlining contradictory findings, strengths and limits of different approaches. Constructionism dismisses the existence of dedicated neural structures for basic emotions, considering that the assumption of a one-to-one relationship between neural structures and their functions is central to basic emotion theories. While these critiques are useful to pinpoint current limitations of basic emotions theories, we argue that they do not always appear equally generative in fostering new testable accounts on how the brain relates to affective functions. We then consider evidence beyond PET and fMRI, including results concerning the relation between basic emotions and awareness and data from neuropsychology on patients with focal brain damage. Evidence from lesion studies are indeed particularly informative, as they are able to bring correlational evidence typical of neuroimaging studies to causation, thereby characterizing which brain structures are necessary for, rather than simply related to, basic emotion processing. These other studies shed light on attributes often ascribed to basic emotions, such as automaticity of perception, quick onset, and brief duration. Overall, we consider that evidence in favor of the neurobiological underpinnings of basic emotions outweighs dismissive approaches. In fact, the concept of basic emotions can still be fruitful, if updated to current neurobiological knowledge that overcomes traditional one-to-one localization of functions in the brain. In particular, we propose that the structure-function relationship between brain and emotions is better described in terms of pluripotentiality, which refers to the fact that one neural structure can fulfill multiple functions, depending on the functional network and pattern of co-activations displayed at any given moment.
Strategies for enhanced dual failure restorability with static or reconfigurable p-cycle networks

We suggest methods for achieving high dual-failure restorability in p-cycle networks that are optimally designed only to withstand all single failures, or have minimized amounts of additional capacity for dual failure considerations. In one set of circumstances we consider static p-cycles (that cannot be rearranged once established) and propose strategies to enhance the dual-failure restorability based on concepts of failure spreading and limiting the maximum number of protection relationships of any p-cycle. We then consider the case of reconfigurable p-cycles, in which the spare capacity can be reconfigured dynamically, creating a new set of p-cycles that are optimized to withstand possible second failures. Results show significant improvements of the dual-failure restorability obtained by limiting the number of protection relationships in static design. For 100% dual-failure restorability, p-cycle reconfiguration reusing most of the existing p-cycles and adding some new ones appears to be the most promising approach.
Problem Solving as an Encoding Task: A Special Case of the Generation Effect

Recent evidence suggests that solving problems through insight can enhance long-term memory for the problem and its solution. Previous findings have shown that generation of the solution as well as experiencing a feeling of Aha! can have a beneficial relationship to later memory. These findings lead to the question of how learning in problem-solving tasks in which a novel solution needs to be generated—such as in tasks used to study insight— differs from the classical generation effect. Because previous studies on learning from insight on one hand and the generation effect on the other hand have measured different types of memory, the present study examined two kinds of memory measures: indirect (solving old and new problems at test) and direct (recognition memory). At encoding, we manipulated whether participants had the chance to solve Compound Remote Associates Task items and compared later memory for generated solutions (generate condition) to solutions that were presented after failing to generate one (fail-to-generate condition), and to solutions that were presented without a chance at generation (read condition). Participants also reported if they had an Aha! experience for each problem. While both Aha! experiences and generated solutions were associated with more positive emotional responses, only the generation variable was associated with differences in later memory performance. While attempts to generate had an advantage over the read condition in recognition memory performance (generate > fail-to-generate > read), only when generation was successful did it enhance the solution rate of old items during testing (generate > read > fail-to-generate). Contrary to generation effects with other verbal stimuli, these results suggest that the generation effect in problem-solving tasks in which a novel solution needs to be found differs from the classical generation effect. Seeing a correct solution for a longer time (read) seems in the current case to be more helpful for solving the same problem later on, compared to being presented with the solution after a failed attempt at problem solving. Correspondence: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jasmin M. Kizilirmak, via email to kizilirmak@uni-hildesheim.de.
An Inverse Source Problem in Radiative Transfer

The spherical-harmonics method is used to develop a solution to an inverse source problem in radiative transfer. It is assumed that, with the exception of the inhomogeneous source term, all aspects of the radiation-transport problem are known, and we seek to determine the inhomogeneous source term from specified angular distributions of radiation exiting the two surfaces of a homogeneous plane-parallel medium. Anisotropic scattering is included in the monochromatic radiative-transfer model and general reflecting boundary conditions are considered.
Prognosis and Outcome Predictors in Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures

It is estimated that one in five patients referred to specialist epilepsy clinics for refractory seizures have psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES). Despite the high prevalence, little is known about the prognosis of patients with PNES. In this paper we set out to systematically assess published original studies on the prognosis and outcome predictors of patients with PNES. Our literature search across the databases Medline, PsycINFO, and EMBASE generated 18 original studies meeting the search criteria. Prognosis was found to be poor in adults, but good in children. Predictors of poor outcome included the presence of coexisting epilepsy or psychiatric comorbidities, violent seizure phenomenology, dependent lifestyle, and poor relationships. Overall, too much reliance is placed on seizure remission as an outcome measurement for patients with PNES, and the impact of many of the outcome predictors requires evaluation using larger studies with longer followup.
Expression of Cyclooxygenase-2 in Human Breast Carcinoma: Relevance to Tumor Angiogenesis and Expression of Estrogen Receptor.

PURPOSE This study investigates the COX-2 expression in human primary breast carcinomas and its relationship with both angiogenesis and the expression of estrogen receptor. MATERIALS AND METHODS COX-2 expression, angiogenesis, and estrogen receptor expression were examined by immunohistochemical methods in 167 human breast carcinomas by using monoclonal antibodies against COX-2, CD34, and estrogen receptor protein. RESULTS Although COX-2 was expressed in 77.8% of the breast carcinomas (130/167) regardless of histological types, it was not detected at all in benign epithelial cells. Interestingly, COX-2 expression was found to be significantly correlated with tumor angiogenesis (p=0.004), but not with estrogen receptor and other histopathologic parameters. CONCLUSION The results suggest that COX-2 expression occurs frequently in breast tissue during transformation of benign epithelial cells to malignant cells regardless of the estrogen receptor status. COX-2 expression may play a role in tumor angiogenesis that is responsible for tumor growth and metastasis.
Beyond Skip Connections: Top-Down Modulation for Object Detection

In recent years, we have seen tremendous progress in the field of object detection. Most of the recent improvements have been achieved by targeting deeper feedforward networks. However, many hard object categories such as bottle, remote, etc. require representation of fine details and not just coarse, semantic representations. But most of these fine details are lost in the early convolutional layers. What we need is a way to incorporate finer details from lower layers into the detection architecture. Skip connections have been proposed to combine high-level and low-level features, but we argue that selecting the right features from low-level requires top-down contextual information. Inspired by the human visual pathway, in this paper we propose top-down modulations as a way to incorporate fine details into the detection framework. Our approach supplements the standard bottom-up, feedforward ConvNet with a top-down modulation (TDM) network, connected using lateral connections. These connections are responsible for the modulation of lower layer filters, and the top-down network handles the selection and integration of contextual information and low-level features. The proposed TDM architecture provides a significant boost on the COCO testdev benchmark, achieving 28.6 AP for VGG16, 35.2 AP for ResNet101, and 37.3 for InceptionResNetv2 network, without any bells and whistles (e.g., multi-scale, iterative box refinement, etc.).
Genome-wide analysis of a G-quadruplex-specific single-chain antibody that regulates gene expression

G-quadruplex nucleic acids have been proposed to play a role in a number of fundamental biological processes that include transcription and translation. We have developed a single-chain antibody that is selective for G-quadruplex DNA over double-stranded DNA, and here show that when it is expressed in human cells, it significantly affects the expression of a wide variety of genes, in a manner that correlates with the presence of predicted G-quadruplexes. We observe cases where gene expression is increased or decreased, and that there are apparent interactions with G-quadruplex motifs at the beginning and end of the genes, and on either strand. The outcomes of this genome-wide study demonstrate that G-quadruplex recognition by the antibody has physiological consequences, and provides insights into some of the complexity associated with G-quadruplex-based regulation.
Discrimination and Perceived Stress in Sexual and Gender Minorities: Self-esteem As a Moderating Factor

Sexual and gender minorities are subjected to discrimination and stigmatization which increase vulnerability to psychological co-morbidities (Mays & Cochran, 2001). The mechanisms through which discrimination contributes to distress in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) communities can be partially elucidated through the minority stress model. The minority stress model argues that minorities are subjected to negative societal attitudes and discrimination that results in excessive psychosocial stress related to their minority position, which is distinct from daily stress. Meyer’s minority stress model is supported by social stress theoriesand data linking discrimination to stress in lgb samples. Researchers suggest that self-esteem buffers the negative effects of adverse experiences but tests of the moderating effect of self-esteem on the discrimination-distress relationship in ethnic and gender minorities yielded mixed results. Szymanski found that self-esteem moderates the relationship between discrimination and psychological distress in a male sexual minority sample, but this has never been tested in a gender-balanced sexual minority sample. We hypothesized that higher levels of self-esteem are associated with lower overall perceived stress in lgbt adults, and that self-esteem acts differentially in lgbt populations to moderate perceived discrimination. We found that discrimination, self-esteem and the interaction effect between discrimination and self-esteem accounted for 53 percent of the total variance in perceived stress scores, ∆R2 = . 38; adj. R2 = . 53, F(12, 133) = 14.47, p < . 001.When we tested whether self-esteem moderated the relationship between discrimination and stress, discrimination was positively related to stress, β = . 13, t(144) = 2.14, p < . 05, and self-esteem was negatively related to stress, β = -. 63, t(144) = -10.26, p < . 001. The interaction between self-esteem and discrimination positively correlated with stress, β = . 14, t(144) = 2.29, p < . 05. Our findings suggest that self-esteem may alleviate the impact of discrimination on perceived stress, which has important implications for interventions designed to reduce stress in lgbt communities.
Ginkgo biloba extract 761 reduces doxorubicin-induced apoptotic damage in rat hearts and neonatal cardiomyocytes.

AIMS The objective of this study was to investigate whether a cytoprotective herb-derived agent, Ginkgo biloba extract (EGb) 761, could have a beneficial effect on doxorubicin-induced cardiac toxicity in vitro and in vivo. METHODS AND RESULTS Primary cultured neonatal rat cardiomyocytes were treated with the vehicle, doxorubicin (1 microM), EGb761 (25 microg/mL), or EGb761 plus doxorubicin. After 24 h, doxorubicin upregulated p53 mRNA expression, disturbed Bcl-2 family protein balance, disrupted mitochondrial membrane potential, precipitated mitochondrion-dependent apoptotic signalling, induced apoptotic cell death, and reduced viability of cardiomyocytes, whereas EGb761 pretreatment suppressed all the actions of doxorubicin. Similarly, rats treated with doxorubicin [3 mg/kg intraperitoneally (i.p.) three doses every other day] displayed retarded growth of body and heart as well as elevated apoptotic indexes in heart tissue at both 7 and 28 days after exposure, whereas EGb761 pretreatment (5 mg/kg i.p. 1 day before each dose of doxorubicin) effectively neutralized the aforementioned gross and cellular adverse effects of doxorubicin. CONCLUSION Doxorubicin impairs viability of cardiomyocytes at least partially by activating the p53-mediated, mitochondrion-dependent apoptotic signalling. EGb761 can effectively and extensively counteract this action of doxorubicin, and may potentially protect the heart from the severe toxicity of doxorubicin.
Self-Regulatory Climate: A Social Resource for Student Regulation and Achievement

Background/Context Schools have differential effects on student learning and development, but research has not generated much explanatory evidence of the social-psychological pathway to better achievement outcomes. Explanatory evidence of how normative conditions enable students to thrive is particularly relevant in the urban context where attention disproportionately centers on the pathology of these environments rather than social attributes that contribute to student growth. Research Purpose Our purpose in this study was to determine if a self-regulatory climate works through student self-regulation to influence academic achievement. We hypothesized that (1) self-regulatory climate explains school-level differences in self-regulated learning, and (2) self-regulated learning mediates the relationship between self-regulatory climate and math achievement. Research Design We used ex post facto survey data from students and teachers in 80 elementary and secondary schools from a large, southwestern urban school district. A multilevel modeling building process in HLM 7.0 was used to test our hypotheses. Results Both hypotheses were supported. Self-regulatory climate explained significant school-level variance in self-regulated learning. Additionally, student self-regulated learning mediated the relationship between self-regulatory climate and math achievement. Conclusions Our results suggest that schools, like teachers, have differential effects on the motivational resources of students, with self-regulatory climate being an essential social condition for self-regulation and achievement. We believe self-regulatory climate has value for educators seeking to provide equitable learning opportunities for all students and for researchers seeking to account for achievement differences attributed to schools. In both cases, self-regulatory climate advances a construct and measure that conceptualizes and operationalizes school-level support for psychological needs.