Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring the Charge State of an Adatom with Noncontact Atomic Force Microscopy

Spotting Charges Many nanoscale physical systems are sensitive to the position of isolated charges, such as single-electron transistors and molecular assemblies that separate charges with energy from photons. In order to probe the location of a charged atom, the most general methods would work on insulating surfaces. Gross et al. (p. 1428; see the Perspective by Meyer and Glatzel) show that a tuning-fork atomic force microscope (AFM) operating in a noncontact mode at cryogenic temperatures can resolve the charge state of gold and silver atoms absorbed on a sodium chloride film. Charged atoms set up image charges in the AFM tip, which creates an electrostatic force not present with a neutral atom. Charging of gold and silver atoms on salt films changes the force detected by the tip of a scanning probe microscope. Charge states of atoms can be investigated with scanning tunneling microscopy, but this method requires a conducting substrate. We investigated the charge-switching of individual adsorbed gold and silver atoms (adatoms) on ultrathin NaCl films on Cu(111) using a qPlus tuning fork atomic force microscope (AFM) operated at 5 kelvin with oscillation amplitudes in the subangstrom regime. Charging of a gold atom by one electron charge increases the force on the AFM tip by a few piconewtons. Moreover, the local contact potential difference is shifted depending on the sign of the charge and allows the discrimination of positively charged, neutral, and negatively charged atoms. The combination of single-electron charge sensitivity and atomic lateral resolution should foster investigations of molecular electronics, photonics, catalysis, and solar photoconversion.
Epitopes and hemagglutination binding domain on subgenus B:2 adenovirus fibers

The adenovirus fiber serves as a ligand between the virus and the host cell receptor and manifests hemagglutination (HA) activity and antigenic domains. We have screened both the antigenic and immunogenic epitopes on the adenovirus fibers of subgenus B:2 by using recombinant fiber proteins (rfibers) expressed in Escherichia coli, synthesized peptides (P1 to P8), and the corresponding antisera. The results indicated that P4 (amino acids [aa] 201 to 220), P5 (aa 231 to 250), and P7 (aa 275 to 295) presented both antigenic and immunogenic epitopes in adenovirus type 11 prototype (Ad11p), Ad34a, and Ad11a fibers. P6 (aa 251 to 270) presented both epitopes in Ad11a fiber but only an antigenic epitope in other fibers. The C-terminal 20 amino acids of the fiber, corresponding to P8, manifested an epitope of low-level immunogenicity. P5, localized at the N-terminal aa 231 to 250, displayed an epitope that reacted with fibers of all the members of subgenus B analyzed. The rfibers of Ad11p and Ad34a displayed HA activity with monkey erythrocytes, though those of Ad11a did not. Mutagenesis of the rfibers revealed that neither the fragment replacements, 11p20211a, llp26011a,and 11a28011p, nor the Ad11p rfiber with the substitutions of Tyr-260-->H (Tyr260H)and Arg279Q displayed HA activity. The Ad11a fiber knob was sensitive to proteolytic digestion, whereas that of Ad11p was resistant. The results demonstrated that the decisive HA binding domain was presented at aa 260 to 280 and was conformation dependent. Nearby amino acids, aa 283 and 284, may also affect the HA function.
Real-time Functional Architecture of Visual Word Recognition

Abstract Despite a century of research into visual word recognition, basic questions remain unresolved about the functional architecture of the process that maps visual inputs from orthographic analysis onto lexical form and meaning and about the units of analysis in terms of which these processes are conducted. Here we use magnetoencephalography, supported by a masked priming behavioral study, to address these questions using contrasting sets of simple (walk), complex (swimmer), and pseudo-complex (corner) forms. Early analyses of orthographic structure, detectable in bilateral posterior temporal regions within a 150–230 msec time frame, are shown to segment the visual input into linguistic substrings (words and morphemes) that trigger lexical access in left middle temporal locations from 300 msec. These are primarily feedforward processes and are not initially constrained by lexical-level variables. Lexical constraints become significant from 390 msec, in both simple and complex words, with increased processing of pseudowords and pseudo-complex forms. These results, consistent with morpho-orthographic models based on masked priming data, map out the real-time functional architecture of visual word recognition, establishing basic feedforward processing relationships between orthographic form, morphological structure, and lexical meaning.
Ubiquitin C-Terminal Hydrolase L1 in Tumorigenesis

Ubiquitin carboxyl-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCH-L1, aka PGP9.5) is an abundant, neuronal deubiquitinating enzyme that has also been suggested to possess E3 ubiquitin-protein ligase activity and/or stabilize ubiquitin monomers in vivo. Recent evidence implicates dysregulation of UCH-L1 in the pathogenesis and progression of human cancers. Although typically only expressed in neurons, high levels of UCH-L1 have been found in many nonneuronal tumors, including breast, colorectal, and pancreatic carcinomas. UCH-L1 has also been implicated in the regulation of metastasis and cell growth during the progression of nonsmall cell lung carcinoma, colorectal cancer, and lymphoma. Together these studies suggest UCH-L1 has a potent oncogenic role and drives tumor development. Conversely, others have observed promoter methylation-mediated silencing of UCH-L1 in certain tumor subtypes, suggesting a potential tumor suppressor role for UCH-L1. In this paper, we provide an overview of the evidence supporting the involvement of UCH-L1 in tumor development and discuss the potential mechanisms of action of UCH-L1 in oncogenesis.
Electrochemistry-Mass Spectrometry Unveils the Formation of Reactive Triclocarban Metabolites

Triclocarban (3,4,4′-trichlorocarbanilide, TCC) is a widely used antibacterial agent in personal care products and is frequently detected as an environmental pollutant in waste waters and surface waters. In this study, we report novel reactive metabolites potentially formed during biotransformation of TCC. The oxidative metabolism of TCC has been predicted using an electrochemical cell coupled online to liquid chromatography and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. The electrochemical oxidation unveils the fact that hydroxylated metabolites of TCC may form reactive quinone imines. Moreover, a so-far unknown dechlorinated and hydroxylated TCC metabolite has been identified. The results were confirmed by in vitro studies with human and rat liver microsomes. The reactivity of the newly discovered quinone imines was demonstrated by their covalent binding to glutathione and macromolecules, using β-lactoglobulin A as a model protein. The results regarding the capability of the electrochemical cell to mimic the oxidative metabolism of TCC are discussed. Moreover, the occurrence of reactive metabolites is compared with findings from earlier in vivo studies and their relevance in vivo is argued.
On the DMA mapping problem in direct device assignment

I/O intensive workloads running in virtual machines can suffer massive performance degradation. Direct assignment of I/O devices to virtual machines is the best performing I/O virtualization mechanism, but its performance still remains far from the bare-metal (non-virtualized) case. The primary gap between direct assignment I/O performance and bare-metal I/O performance is the overhead of mapping the VM's memory pages for DMA in IOMMU translation tables. One could avoid this overhead by mapping all of the VM's pages for the lifetime of the VM, but this leads to memory consumption which is unacceptable in many scenarios. The DMA mapping problem can be stated briefly as "when should a memory page be mapped or unmapped for DMA? " We begin by presenting a theoretical framework for reasoning about the DMA mapping problem. Then, using a quota-based approach, we propose the on-demand DMA mapping strategy, which provides the best DMA mapping performance for a given amount of memory consumed. In particular, on-demand mapping can achieve the same performance as state-of-the-art mapping strategies while consuming much less memory (exact amount depends on the workload's requirements). We present the design and implementation of on-demand mapping in the Linux-based KVM hypervisor and an experimental evaluation of its application to various workloads.
Structural and Functional Interactions between Transient Receptor Potential Vanilloid Subfamily 1 and Botulinum Neurotoxin Serotype A

Background Botulinum neurotoxins are produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria. There are eight serologically distinct botulinum neurotoxin isoforms (serotypes A–H). Currently, botulinum neurotoxin serotype A (BoNT⁄A) is commonly used for the treatment of many disorders, such as hyperactive musculoskeletal disorders, dystonia, and pain. However, the effectiveness of BoNT⁄A for pain alleviation and the mechanisms that mediate the analgesic effects of BoNT⁄A remain unclear. To define the antinociceptive mechanisms by which BoNT/A functions, the interactions between BoNT⁄A and the transient receptor potential vanilloid subfamily 1 (TRPV1) were investigated using immunofluorescence, co-immunoprecipitation, and western blot analysis in primary mouse embryonic dorsal root ganglion neuronal cultures. Results 1) Three-week-old cultured dorsal root ganglion neurons highly expressed transient TRPV1, synaptic vesicle 2A (SV2A) and synaptosomal-associated protein 25 (SNAP-25). SV2A and SNAP-25 are the binding receptor and target protein, respectively, of BoNT⁄A. 2) TRPV1 colocalized with both BoNT⁄A and cleaved SNAP-25 when BoNT⁄A was added to dorsal root ganglia neuronal cultures. 3) After 24 hours of BoNT⁄A treatment (1 nmol⁄l), both TRPV1 and BoNT⁄A positive bands were detected in western blots of immunoprecipitated pellets. 4) Blocking TRPV1 with a specific antibody decreased the cleavage of SNAP-25 by BoNT⁄A. Conclusion BoNT/A interacts with TRPV1 both structurally and functionally in cultured mouse embryonic dorsal root ganglion neurons. These results suggest that an alternative mechanism is used by BoNT⁄A to mediate pain relief.
Androgen control of gene expression in the mouse meibomian gland.

PURPOSE In prior work, it has been found that the meibomian gland is an androgen target organ, that androgens modulate lipid production within this tissue, and that androgen deficiency is associated with glandular dysfunction and evaporative dry eye. This study's purpose was to test the hypothesis that the androgen control of the meibomian gland involves the regulation of gene expression. METHODS Meibomian glands were obtained from orchiectomized mice that were treated with placebo or testosterone for 14 days. Tissues were processed for the analysis of differentially expressed mRNAs by using gene bioarrays, gene chips, and real-time PCR procedures. Bioarray data were analyzed with GeneSifter software (VizX Labs LLC, Seattle, WA). RESULTS The results show that testosterone influenced the expression of more than 1590 genes in the mouse meibomian gland. This hormone action involved a significant upregulation of 1080 genes (e.g., neuromedin B), and a significant downregulation of 518 genes (e.g., small proline-rich protein 2A). Some of the most significant androgen effects were directed toward stimulation of genes associated with lipid metabolism, sterol biosynthesis, fatty acid metabolism, protein transport, oxidoreductase activity, and peroxisomes. CONCLUSIONS These findings demonstrate that testosterone regulates the expression of numerous genes in the mouse meibomian gland and that many of these genes are involved in lipid metabolic pathways.
Bacterial infection alters the kinetics and function of iNKT cell responses

CD1d‐restricted Vα14 invariant NKT cells (iNKT) are innate‐like, immunoregulatory lymphocytes that play critical roles in autoimmunity, tumor surveillance, and infectious disease. Although iNKT cells are activated during microbial infection, the impacts of infection on the function of iNKT cells have not been fully characterized. Using a Listeria monocytogenes (LM) infection model, we found that iNKT cells failed to expand after infection, resulting in prolonged loss in the spleen, in contrast to the typical expansion and contraction of conventional T cells. iNKT cells from LM‐infected mice responded more rapidly to secondary LM infection; however, they became functionally hyporesponsive to antigenic challenge for at least 1 month. This infection‐induced hyporesponsiveness was also induced by Mycobacteria infection and was more profound in LM‐infected, thymectomized mice, suggesting that infection‐primed iNKT cells might have altered functionality. Interestingly, activation with α‐galactosylceramide‐loaded dendritic cells was able to overcome infection‐induced hyporesponsiveness of iNKT cells, suggesting a role for extrinsic factors in this functional deficit. Taken together, these findings suggest that infection affects iNKT cell responses quantitatively and qualitatively. As humans are under constant microbial insult, predictions of iNKT cell function based on naïve animal models may not accurately reflect iNKT cell behavior in a clinical setting.
Extracting Social Networks and Biographical Facts From Conversational Speech Transcripts

We present a general framework for automatically extracting social networks and biographical facts from conversational speech. Our approach relies on fusing the output produced by multiple information extraction modules, including entity recognition and detection, relation detection, and event detection modules. We describe the specific features and algorithmic refinements effective for conversational speech. These cumulatively increase the performance of social network extraction from 0.06 to 0.30 for the development set, and from 0.06 to 0.28 for the test set, as measured by f-measure on the ties within a network. The same framework can be applied to other genres of text — we have built an automatic biography generation system for general domain text using the same approach.
Testing deprojection algorithms on mock angular catalogues: evidence for a break in the power spectrum

We produce mock angular catalogues from simulations with different initial power spectra to test methods that recover measures of clustering in three dimensions, such as the power spectrum, variance and higher order cumulants. We find that the statistical properties derived from the angular mock catalogues are in good agreement with the intrinsic clustering in the simulations. In particular, we concentrate on the detailed predictions for the shape of the power spectrum, P(k). We find that there is good evidence for a break in the galaxy P(k) at scales in the range 0.02<k<0.06 h Mpc−1, using an inversion technique applied to the angular correlation function measured from the APM Galaxy Survey. For variants on the standard cold dark matter (CDM) model, a fit at the location of the break implies Ωh=0.45±0.10, where Ω is the ratio of the total matter density to the critical density, and Hubble's constant is parametrized as H0=100 h km s−1 Mpc−1. On slightly smaller, though still quasi-linear scales, there is a feature in the APM power spectrum where the local slope changes appreciably, with the best match to CDM models obtained for Ωh≃0.2. Hence the location and narrowness of the break in the APM power spectrum combined with the rapid change in its slope on quasi-linear scales cannot be matched by any variant of CDM, including models that have a non-zero cosmological constant or a tilt to the slope of the primordial P(k). These results are independent of the overall normalization of the CDM models or any simple bias that exists betwen the galaxy and mass distributions.
ERPs Recorded during Early Second Language Exposure Predict Syntactic Learning

Millions of adults worldwide are faced with the task of learning a second language (L2). Understanding the neural mechanisms that support this learning process is an important area of scientific inquiry. However, most previous studies on the neural mechanisms underlying L2 acquisition have focused on characterizing the results of learning, relying upon end-state outcome measures in which learning is assessed after it has occurred, rather than on the learning process itself. In this study, we adopted a novel and more direct approach to investigate neural mechanisms engaged during L2 learning, in which we recorded ERPs from beginning adult learners as they were exposed to an unfamiliar L2 for the first time. Learners' proficiency in the L2 was then assessed behaviorally using a grammaticality judgment task, and ERP data acquired during initial L2 exposure were sorted as a function of performance on this task. High-proficiency learners showed a larger N100 effect to open-class content words compared with closed-class function words, whereas low-proficiency learners did not show a significant N100 difference between open- and closed-class words. In contrast, amplitude of the N400 word category effect correlated with learners' L2 comprehension, rather than predicting syntactic learning. Taken together, these results indicate that learners who spontaneously direct greater attention to open- rather than closed-class words when processing L2 input show better syntactic learning, suggesting a link between selective attention to open-class content words and acquisition of basic morphosyntactic rules. These findings highlight the importance of selective attention mechanisms for L2 acquisition.
Key Competences in Europe: Interpretation, Policy Formulation and Implementation.

The evolution in Europe towards more competence-based curricula in the last ten years or so is the result of several exogenous factors and a determined European policy. The Reference Framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, a Recommendation approved by the European Parliament and the Council in 2006, and the work carried out within the Open Method of Coordination as well as by European research bodies have had a significant impact on Member States' curriculum reforms. This article shows that some terminology issues, both conceptual and practical, may explain, together with other causes, the diverse formulations of key competences and the way in which they are being integrated into the compulsory education curricula by the Member States or at intra-national levels. The focus of the article is on cross-curricular competences because these are the key competences which require the most significant innovations in teaching and learning practices, on assessment tools and procedures, and school organisation. The analysis illustrates the main differences and convergences in policy formulation and implementation strategies among the EU Member States. It also identifies key obstacles that must be overcome for an effective implementation before suggesting some policy recommendations.
Diagnosing and treating neurogenic orthostatic hypotension in primary care

Abstract In response to a change in posture from supine or sitting to standing, autonomic reflexes normally maintain blood pressure (BP) by selective increases in arteriovenous resistance and by increased cardiac output, ensuring continued perfusion of the central nervous system. In neurogenic orthostatic hypotension (NOH), inadequate vasoconstriction and cardiac output cause BP to drop excessively, resulting in inadequate perfusion, with predictable symptoms such as dizziness, lightheadedness and falls. The condition may represent a central failure of baroreceptor signals to modulate cardiovascular function, a peripheral failure of norepinephrine release from cardiovascular sympathetic nerve endings, or both. Symptomatic patients may benefit from both non-pharmacologic and pharmacologic interventions. Among the latter, two pressor agents have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration: the sympathomimetic prodrug midodrine, approved in 1996 for symptomatic orthostatic hypotension, and the norepinephrine prodrug droxidopa, approved in 2014, which is indicated for the treatment of symptomatic neurogenic orthostatic hypotension caused by primary autonomic failure (Parkinson’s disease, multiple system atrophy and pure autonomic failure). A wide variety of off-label options also have been described (e.g. the synthetic mineralocorticoid fludrocortisone). Because pressor agents may promote supine hypertension, NOH management requires monitoring of supine BP and also lifestyle measures to minimize supine BP increases (e.g. head-of-bed elevation). However, NOH has been associated with cognitive impairment and increases a patient’s risk of syncope and falls, with the potential for serious consequences. Hence, concerns about supine hypertension – for which the long-term prognosis in patients with NOH is yet to be established – must sometimes be balanced by the need to address a patient’s immediate risks.
The Empirical Properties of Some Popular Estimators of Long Memory Processes

We present the results of a simulation study into the properties of 12 different estimators of the Hurst parameter, H, or the fractional integration parameter, d, in long memory time series. We compare and contrast their performance on simulated Fractional Gaussian Noises and fractionally integrated series with lengths between 100 and 10,000 data points and H values between 0.55 and 0.90 or d values between 0.05 and 0.40. We apply all 12 estimators to the Campito Mountain data and estimate the accuracy of their estimates using the Beran goodness of t test for long memory time series.
Physical attractiveness, happiness, neuroticism, and self-esteem.

The hypotheses that physical attractiveness is positively correlated with happiness, psychological health, and self-esteem was tested with 211 men and women undergraduates. Physical attractiveness was measured by judges' ratings, while happiness, psychological health (neuroticism), and self-esteem were measured by self-report inventories. Physical attractiveness was found to correlate positively with happiness (r equals .37), negatively with neuroticism (r equals minus.22), and positively with self-esteem (r equals .24) for women but not for men (corresponding rs equals .09, .03, and minus.04, respectively). These results were accounted for by the suggestion that physical attractiveness "buys" more for women than for men, and the most prominent outcomes obtained by physical attractiveness--friends and dates--are of greater value to women undergraduates than men. The superior outcomes obtained by the attractive women made them happy, psychologically healthy, and proud of themselves.