Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of an Oxycodone Conjugate Vaccine on Oxycodone Self-Administration and Oxycodone-Induced Brain Gene Expression in Rats

Prescription opioid abuse is an increasing public health concern in the USA. A vaccine comprising a hapten (OXY) conjugated to the carrier protein keyhole limpet hemocyanin (OXY-KLH) has been shown to attenuate the antinociceptive effects of oxycodone. Here, the vaccine's ability to prevent acquisition of intravenous (i.v.) oxycodone self-administration was studied in rats. Effects of vaccination on oxycodone-induced changes in the expression of several genes within the mesolimbic system, which are regulated by chronic opiate use, were also examined. Vaccination with OXY-KLH reduced the proportion of rats acquiring i.v. self-administration of oxycodone under a fixed ratio (FR) 3 schedule of reinforcement compared to control rats immunized with the unconjugated KLH carrier protein. Vaccination significantly reduced the mean number of infusions at FR3, total number of infusions, and total oxycodone intake during the entire protocol. Compared to oxycodone self-administering control rats immunized with the carrier alone, rats vaccinated with the OXY-KLH immunogen showed increased levels of adenylate cyclase 5 (Adcy5) and decreased levels of early growth response protein 2 (Egr2) and the early immediate gene c-Fos in the striatum. These data suggest that vaccination with OXY-KLH can attenuate the reinforcing effects of oxycodone at a clinically-relevant exposure level. Analysis of mRNA expression identified some addiction-relevant markers that may be of interest in understanding oxycodone effects or the protection provided by vaccination.
NLRP3 Inflammasome Inhibition by MCC950 Reduces Atherosclerotic Lesion Development in Apolipoprotein E–Deficient Mice—Brief Report

Objective— Inflammasomes are multiprotein complexes, and their activation has been associated with cardiovascular disease. Inflammasome activation leads to secretion of caspase-1 by innate immune cells, resulting in the activation of interleukin-1&bgr;. Recently, a potent and selective inhibitor of the NLRP3 inflammasome, MCC950, was described. In this study, we investigated the effect of MCC950 on atherosclerotic lesion development in apoE−/− mice. Approach and Results— First, we determined the efficacy of MCC950 in vitro. Bone marrow–derived macrophages and dendritic cells were stimulated with lipopolysaccharide and cholesterol crystals resulting in high levels of interleukin-1&bgr; release, which was inhibited by MCC950. In vivo MCC950 treatment reduced lipopolysaccharide–induced interleukin-1&bgr; secretion, without affecting the tumor necrosis factor-&agr; response. Subsequently, atherosclerotic plaques were induced in Western-type diet fed apoE−/− mice by semiconstrictive perivascular collar placement at the carotid arteries, after which the mice received MCC950 (10 mg/kg) or vehicle control 3× per week intraperitoneally for 4 weeks. After euthanize, atherosclerotic plaque size and volume were quantified in hematoxylin-eosin–stained 10-µm cryosections throughout the artery. MCC950 treatment significantly reduced the development of atherosclerotic lesions as determined by maximal stenosis, average plaque size, and plaque volume. Although the amount of collagen and the necrotic core size were not affected, the number of macrophages in the plaque was significantly reduced on treatment. In addition, VCAM-1 (vascular cell adhesion molecule 1) and ICAM-1 (intercellular adhesion molecule 1) mRNA expression was significantly reduced in the carotids of MCC950-treated mice. Conclusions— These findings show that specific inhibition of the NLRP3 inflammasome using MCC950 can be a promising therapeutic approach to inhibit atherosclerotic lesion development.
High-Throughput Sequencing of Six Bamboo Chloroplast Genomes: Phylogenetic Implications for Temperate Woody Bamboos (Poaceae: Bambusoideae)

Background Bambusoideae is the only subfamily that contains woody members in the grass family, Poaceae. In phylogenetic analyses, Bambusoideae, Pooideae and Ehrhartoideae formed the BEP clade, yet the internal relationships of this clade are controversial. The distinctive life history (infrequent flowering and predominance of asexual reproduction) of woody bamboos makes them an interesting but taxonomically difficult group. Phylogenetic analyses based on large DNA fragments could only provide a moderate resolution of woody bamboo relationships, although a robust phylogenetic tree is needed to elucidate their evolutionary history. Phylogenomics is an alternative choice for resolving difficult phylogenies. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we present the complete nucleotide sequences of six woody bamboo chloroplast (cp) genomes using Illumina sequencing. These genomes are similar to those of other grasses and rather conservative in evolution. We constructed a phylogeny of Poaceae from 24 complete cp genomes including 21 grass species. Within the BEP clade, we found strong support for a sister relationship between Bambusoideae and Pooideae. In a substantial improvement over prior studies, all six nodes within Bambusoideae were supported with ≥0.95 posterior probability from Bayesian inference and 5/6 nodes resolved with 100% bootstrap support in maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood analyses. We found that repeats in the cp genome could provide phylogenetic information, while caution is needed when using indels in phylogenetic analyses based on few selected genes. We also identified relatively rapidly evolving cp genome regions that have the potential to be used for further phylogenetic study in Bambusoideae. Conclusions/Significance The cp genome of Bambusoideae evolved slowly, and phylogenomics based on whole cp genome could be used to resolve major relationships within the subfamily. The difficulty in resolving the diversification among three clades of temperate woody bamboos, even with complete cp genome sequences, suggests that these lineages may have diverged very rapidly.
Step‐wise changes in glacier flow speed coincide with calving and glacial earthquakes at Helheim Glacier, Greenland

Geodetic observations show several large, sudden increases in flow speed at Helheim Glacier, one of Greenland's largest outlet glaciers, during summer, 2007. These step‐like accelerations, detected along the length of the glacier, coincide with teleseismically detected glacial earthquakes and major iceberg calving events. No coseismic offset in the position of the glacier surface is observed; instead, modest tsunamis associated with the glacial earthquakes implicate glacier calving in the seismogenic process. Our results link changes in glacier velocity directly to calving‐front behavior at Greenland's largest outlet glaciers, on timescales as short as minutes to hours, and clarify the mechanism by which glacial earthquakes occur.
Androgen Receptor Expression in the Levator Ani Muscle of Male Mice

The spinal nucleus of the bulbocavernosus (SNB) is a sexually dimorphic group of motoneurones that innervates the bulbocavernosus (BC) and levator ani (LA), skeletal muscles that attach to the base of the penis. In many species, including mice, rats and hamsters, the LA and BC have been found to be highly responsive to androgen and, in rats, these muscles mediate several effects of androgen on the SNB system. However, characterising the SNB system in mice is important because of the availability of genetic models in this species. In the present study, we examined AR expression in skeletal muscles of C57/BlJ6 adult male mice using immunoblotting and immunocytochemistry, comparing the BC/LA to the androgen‐unresponsive extensor digitorum longus (EDL). We found similar differences in AR expression for these muscles in the mouse as previously reported for rats. In mice, the BC/LA contains more AR protein than does the EDL. At the cellular level, the LA contains a higher percentage of AR positive myonuclei and fibroblasts than does the EDL. Finally, AR expression is enriched at the neuromuscular junction of mouse LA fibres. The increased expression of AR in the LA compared to the EDL in both muscle fibres and fibroblasts indicates that each cell type may critically mediate androgen action on the SNB system in mice.
Huntington's disease is a multi-system disorder

Huntington's disease (HD) is one of the most common non-curable rare diseases and is characterized by choreic movements, psychiatric symptoms, and slowly progressive dementia. HD is inherited as an autosomal dominant disorder with complete penetrance. Although brain pathology has become a hallmark of HD, there is a critical mass of new studies suggesting peripheral tissue pathology as an important factor in disease progression. In particular, recently published studies about skeletal muscle malfunction and HD-related cardiomyopathy in HD mouse models strongly suggest their important roles, leading to upcoming preclinical and clinical trials. One might conclude that therapeutic approaches in HD should not be restricted only to the brain pathology but instead major efforts should also be made to understand the cross-talk between diseased tissues like the CNS-Heart or CNS-skeletal muscle axes.
Lattice Desegmentation for Statistical Machine Translation

Morphological segmentation is an effective sparsity reduction strategy for statistical machine translation (SMT) involving morphologically complex languages. When translating into a segmented language, an extra step is required to desegment the output; previous studies have desegmented the 1-best output from the decoder. In this paper, we expand our translation options by desegmentingn-best lists or lattices. Our novel lattice desegmentation algorithm effectively combines both segmented and desegmented views of the target language for a large subspace of possible translation outputs, which allows for inclusion of features related to the desegmentation process, as well as an unsegmented language model (LM). We investigate this technique in the context of English-to-Arabic and English-to-Finnish translation, showing significant improvements in translation quality over desegmentation of 1-best decoder outputs.
Human Social Attention

The present review examines the neural‐behavioral correlates of human social attention, with special regard to the neural mechanisms involved in processing gaze information and the functional impact of gaze direction on the spatial orienting of attention. Our review suggests that there is strong evidence that specific brain systems are preferentially biased toward processing gaze information, yet this specificity is not mirrored by the behavioral data as measured in highly controlled model attention tasks such as the Posner cueing paradigm. In less controlled tasks, however, such as when observers are left free to select what they want to attend, they focus on people and their eyes, consistent with one's intuition and with the neural evidence that eyes are special. We discuss a range of implications of these data, including that much is to be gained by examining brain and behavioral processes to social stimuli as they occur in complex real‐world settings.
Ranking flows from sampled traffic

Most of the theoretical work on sampling has addressed the inversion of general traffic properties such as flow size distribution, average flow size, or total number of flows. In this paper, we make a step towards understanding the impact of packet sampling on individual flow properties. We study how to detect and rank the largest flows on a link. To this end, we develop an analytical model that we validate on real traces from two networks. First we study a blind ranking method where only the number of sampled packets from each flow is known. Then, we propose a new method, protocol-aware ranking, where we make use of the packet sequence number (when available in transport header) to infer the number of non-sampled packets from a flow, and hence to improve the ranking. Surprisingly, our analytical and experimental results indicate that a high sampling rate (10% and even more depending on the number of top flows to be ranked) is required for a correct blind ranking of the largest flows. The sampling rate can be reduced by an order of magnitude if one just aims at detecting these flows or by using the protocol-aware method.
Diabetes mellitus and the eye. 11. Intraocular pressure and aqueous outflow facility.

The distribution of applanation pressure and of tonographic estimate of outflow facility were investigated in 390 diabetics and in a control group. Analysis of the results suggested that adult diabetes produces a reduction in intraocular pressure. In addition, it suggested the possibility that a complex relationship between diabetes and intraocular pressure may exist with effects acting in opposite directions such that their detection is masked by interaction and requires refinement in classification.
Paircoil2: improved prediction of coiled coils from sequence

We introduce Paircoil2, a new version of the Paircoil program, which uses pairwise residue probabilities to detect coiled-coil motifs in protein sequence data. Paircoil2 achieves 98% sensitivity and 97% specificity on known coiled coils in leave-family-out cross-validation. It also shows superior performance compared with published methods in tests on proteins of known structure.
Distribution of Primed T Cells and Antigen-Loaded Antigen Presenting Cells Following Intranasal Immunization in Mice

Priming of T cells is a key event in vaccination, since it bears a decisive influence on the type and magnitude of the immune response. T-cell priming after mucosal immunization via the nasal route was studied by investigating the distribution of antigen-loaded antigen presenting cells (APCs) and primed antigen-specific T cells. Nasal immunization studies were conducted using the model protein antigen ovalbumin (OVA) plus CpG oligodeoxynucleotide adjuvant. Trafficking of antigen-specific primed T cells was analyzed in vivo after adoptive transfer of OVA-specific transgenic T cells in the presence or absence of fingolimod, a drug that causes lymphocytes sequestration within lymph nodes. Antigen-loaded APCs were observed in mediastinal lymph nodes, draining the respiratory tract, but not in distal lymph nodes. Antigen-specific proliferating T cells were first observed within draining lymph nodes, and later in distal iliac and mesenteric lymph nodes and in the spleen. The presence at distal sites was due to migration of locally primed T cells as shown by fingolimod treatment that caused a drastic reduction of proliferated T cells in non-draining lymph nodes and an accumulation of extensively divided T cells within draining lymph nodes. Homing of nasally primed T cells in distal iliac lymph nodes was CD62L-dependent, while entry into mesenteric lymph nodes depended on both CD62L and α4β7, as shown by in vivo antibody-mediated inhibition of T-cell trafficking. These data, elucidating the trafficking of antigen-specific primed T cells to non-draining peripheral and mucosa-associated lymph nodes following nasal immunization, provide relevant insights for the design of vaccination strategies based on mucosal priming.
Implications of market integration for cardiovascular and metabolic health among an indigenous Amazonian Ecuadorian population

Background: Market integration (MI), the suite of social and cultural changes that occur with economic development, has been associated with negative health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease; however, key questions remain about how this transition manifests at the local level. Aim: The present paper investigates the effects of MI on health among Shuar, an indigenous lowland Ecuadorian population, with the goal of better understanding the mechanisms responsible for this health transition. Subjects and methods: This study examines associations between measures of MI and several dimensions of cardiovascular and metabolic health (fasting glucose, lipids [LDL, HDL and total cholesterol; triglycerides] and blood pressure) among 348 adults. Results: Overall, Shuar males and females have relatively favourable cardiovascular and metabolic health. Shuar who live closer to town have higher total (p < 0.001) and HDL cholesterol (p < 0.001), while Shuar in more remote regions have higher diastolic blood pressure (p = 0.007). HDL cholesterol is positively associated with consumption of market foods (r = 0.140; p = 0.045) and ownership of consumer products (r = 0.184; p = 0.029). Conclusions: This study provides evidence that MI among Shuar is not a uniformly negative process but instead produces complex cardiovascular and metabolic health outcomes.
Non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm effect.

The scattering of a nucleon beam on a non-Abelian flux line (proposed by Wu and Yang for testing the existence of gauge fields) is studied in a test-particle framework. All predictions of Wu and Yang are quantitatively confirmed. In particular, protons can be turned into neutrons under suitable conditions. (Charge conservation is restored at the field-theoretical level.) Similar results hold for the scattering of \ensuremath{\pi} mesons. A ``shadow'' of the effect survives also in the classical limit.
Geometrical bounds on the efficiency of wireless network coding

This paper explores wireless network coding both in case of deterministic and random point patterns. Using the Boolean connectivity model we provide upper bounds for the maximum encoding number, i.e., the number of packets that can be combined such that the corresponding receivers are able to decode. For the models studied, this upper bound is of order √N, where N denotes the (mean) number of neighbours. Our simulations show that the √N law is applicable to small-sized networks as well. Moreover, achievable encoding numbers are provided for grid-like networks where we obtain the multiplicative constants analytically. Building on the above results, we provide an analytic expression for the upper bound of the efficiency of wireless network coding. The conveyed message is that it is favourable to reduce computational complexity by relying only on small encoding numbers, for example, XORing only pairs, as the resulting throughput loss is typically small.
Effect of Prostate Biopsy Hemorrhage on MRDW and MRS Imaging

Purpose To retrospectively evaluate the effect of post-prostate-biopsy hemorrhage on the interpretation of magnetic resonance diffusion-weighted (MRDW) and magnetic resonance spectroscopic (MRS) imaging in the detection of prostate cancer. We also investigated the optimal timing for magnetic resonance examination after prostate biopsy. Materials and Methods We reviewed the records of 135 men. All patients underwent prostate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The prostate was divided into eight regions according to the biopsy site. Subsequently, we measured hemorrhage on apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values and (choline+creatinine)/citrate ([Cho+Cr]/Cit) ratios in the same regions on the MRI. We investigated the effect of hemorrhage at ADC values and (Cho+Cr)/Cit ratios on MRI and the relationship between prostate biopsy results and MRI findings. Results The mean patient age was 68.7 years and the mean time between biopsy and MRI was 23.5 days. The total hemorrhagic score demonstrated no significant associations with intervals from biopsy to MRI. Higher hemorrhagic scores were associated with higher ADC values, prostate cancer, and noncancer groups, respectively (p<0.001). ADC values were lower in tumors than in normal tissue (p<0.001), and ADC values were inversely correlated with tumor Gleason score in biopsy cores (p<0.001). However, (Cho+Cr)/Cit ratios did not exhibit any association with prostate biopsy results and hemorrhage. Conclusions Hemorrhage had no significant associations with the interval from biopsy to MRI. ADC values may help to detect prostate cancer and predict the aggressiveness of cancer; however, it is important to consider the bias effect of hemorrhage on the interpretation of MRDW imaging given that hemorrhage affects ADC values.
Supporting Application Requirements in Cloud-based IoT Information Processing

IoT infrastructures can be seen as an interconnected network of sources of data, whose analysis and processing can be beneficial for our society. Since IoT devices are limited in storage and computation capabilities, relying on external cloud providers has recently been identified as a promising solution for storing and managing IoT data. Due to the heterogeneity of IoT data and applicative scenarios, the cloud service delivery should be driven by the requirements of the specific IoT applications. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for supporting application requirements (typically related to security, due to the inevitable concerns arising whenever data are stored and managed at external third parties) in cloud-based IoT data processing. Our solution allows a subject with an authority over an IoT infrastructure to formulate conditions that the provider must satisfy in service provisioning, and computes a SLA based on these conditions while accounting for possible dependencies among them. We also illustrate a CSP-based formulation of the problem of computing a SLA, which can be solved adopting off-the-shelves CSP solvers.
Transport of human lysosomal neuraminidase to mature lysosomes requires protective protein/cathepsin A

Human lysosomal N‐acetyl‐α‐neuraminidase is deficient in two lysosomal storage disorders, sialidosis, caused by structural mutations in the neuraminidase gene, and galactosialidosis, in which a primary defect of protective protein/cathepsin A (PPCA) leads to a combined deficiency of neuraminidase and β‐D‐galactosidase. These three glycoproteins can be isolated in a high molecular weight multi‐enzyme complex, and the enzymatic activity of neuraminidase is contingent on its interaction with PPCA. To explain the unusual need of neuraminidase for an auxiliary protein, we examined, in transfected COS‐1 cells, the effect of PPCA expression on post‐translational modification, turnover and intracellular localization of neuraminidase. In pulse–chase studies, we show that the enzyme is synthesized as a 46 kDa glycoprotein, which is poorly phosphorylated, does not undergo major proteolytic processing and is secreted. Importantly, its half‐life is not altered by the presence of PPCA. However, neuraminidase associates with the PPCA precursor shortly after synthesis, since the latter protein co‐precipitates with neuraminidase using anti‐neuraminidase antibodies. We further demonstrate by subcellular fractionation of transfected cells that neuraminidase segregates to mature lysosomes only when accompanied by wild‐type PPCA, but not by transport‐impaired PPCA mutants. These data suggest a novel role for PPCA in the activation of lysosomal neuraminidase, that of an intracellular transport protein.