Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cyclotides Suppress Human T-Lymphocyte Proliferation by an Interleukin 2-Dependent Mechanism

Cyclotides are a diverse and abundant group of ribosomally synthesized plant peptides containing a unique cyclic cystine-knotted topology that confers them with remarkable stability. Kalata B1, a representative member of this family of mini-proteins, has been found to inhibit the proliferation of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Analysis of T-cell proliferation upon treatment with chemically synthesized kalata B1 mutants revealed a region comprising inter-cysteine loops 1 and 2 of the cyclotide framework to be important for biological activity. Cytokine signaling analysis using an ‘active’ kalata B1 mutant [T20K], and the reference drug cyclosporin A (CsA) demonstrated that treatment of activated T-lymphocytes with these compounds decreased the expression of the interleukin-2 (IL-2) surface receptor as well as IL-2 cytokine secretion and IL-2 gene expression, whereas the ‘inactive’ kalata B1 mutant [V10K] did not cause any effects. The anti-proliferative activity of [T20K] kalata B1 was antagonized by addition of exogenous IL-2. Furthermore, treatment with [T20K] kalata B1 led to an initial reduction of the effector function, as indicated by the reduced IFN-γ and TNF-α production, but the levels of both cytokines stabilized over time and returned to their normal levels. On the other hand, the degranulation activity remained reduced. This indicated that cyclotides interfere with T-cell polyfunctionality and arrest the proliferation of immune-competent cells through inhibiting IL-2 biology at more than one site. The results open new avenues to utilize native and synthetically-optimized cyclotides for applications in immune-related disorders and as immunosuppressant peptides.
Abnormal pathways in the genu of the corpus callosum in schizophrenia pathogenesis: a proteome study

Abnormalities within the corpus callosum (CC) have been identified in schizophrenia brains and are thought to affect inter‐hemispheric communication, which in‐turn is postulated to underlie some schizophrenia symptoms. Furthermore, hemisphere asymmetry of fractional anisotropy, detected by diffusion tensor imaging, left‐higher‐than‐right‐ has been observed in normal individuals in the CC genu. This asymmetry is significantly reduced in the left CC genu of first‐episode and chronic schizophrenia subjects. We examined the protein expression profile of the CC genu, including the profiles from the left and right hemisphere, in schizophrenia brains compared to controls using two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry techniques. Proteins involved in cytoskeletal structure and function, neuroprotective function and energy metabolism were identified as differentially expressed, suggesting these proteins may underlie abnormal CC genu structure and function. Proteins in these functional categories also displayed different expression levels in the left CC genu compared to the right in both control and schizophrenia brains and therefore may be involved in normal CC asymmetry and reduced asymmetry in schizophrenia individuals. This initial pool of protein candidates and abnormal functional pathways opens up avenues for further investigation of molecular mechanisms involving the CC in schizophrenia pathogenesis and symptoms.
Adaptive Subspace Iterative Information Measure Directed Synchronization in MIMO Channel

The paper addresses the problem of iterative soft-information measure supported synchronization. We use a subspace based model for the arbitrarily time-variant MIMO channel. The channel subspace can have arbitrary dimension allowing to model also a fast time-variant channel. The equivalence between expectation-maximization based iterative synchronizer and weighted least squares problem is demonstrated to hold for general MIMO system. We introduce the idea of adaptive subspace control during the iterative synchronization iterations using the order recursive solver. This allows to use a coarse subspace (low dimension) at initial iterations while fine subspace (higher dimension) for later iterations. We show that the asymptotic properties of the estimate (MSE) are not affected. The reduction of the dimensionality of the estimator at the beginning of procedure lowers substantially the complexity
Health Information Brokers in the General Population: An Analysis of the Health Information National Trends Survey 2013-2014

Background Health information exchanged between friends or family members can influence decision making, both for routine health questions and for serious health issues. A health information broker is a person to whom friends and family turn for advice or information on health-related topics. Characteristics and online behaviors of health information brokers have not previously been studied in a national population. Objective The objective of this study was to examine sociodemographic characteristics, health information seeking behaviors, and other online behaviors among health information brokers. Methods Data from the Health Information National Trends Survey (2013-2014; n=3142) were used to compare brokers with nonbrokers. Modified Poisson regression was used to examine the relationship between broker status and sociodemographics and online information seeking. Results Over half (54.8%) of the respondents were consulted by family or friends for advice or information on health topics (ie, they acted as health information brokers). Brokers represented 54.1% of respondents earning <$20,000 yearly and 56.5% of respondents born outside the United States. Women were more likely to be brokers (PR 1.34, 95% CI 1.23-1.47) as were those with education past high school (PR 1.42, CI 1.22-1.65). People aged ≥75 were less likely to be brokers as compared to respondents aged 35-49 (PR 0.81, CI 0.67-0.99). Brokers used the Internet more frequently for a variety of online behaviors such as seeking health information, creating and sharing online content, and downloading health information onto a mobile device; and also reported greater confidence in obtaining health information online. Conclusions More than 50% of adults who responded to this national survey, including those with low income and those born abroad, were providing health information or advice to friends and family. These individuals may prove to be effective targets for initiatives supporting patient engagement and disease management, and may also be well-positioned within their respective social networks to propagate health messages.
The Integrin α9β1 Mediates Adhesion to Activated Endothelial Cells and Transendothelial Neutrophil Migration through Interaction with Vascular Cell Adhesion Molecule-1

The integrin α9β1 has been shown to be widely expressed on smooth muscle and epithelial cells, and to mediate adhesion to the extracellular matrix proteins osteopontin and tenascin-C. We have found that the peptide sequence this integrin recognizes in tenascin-C is highly homologous to the sequence recognized by the closely related integrin α4β1, in the inducible endothelial ligand, vascular cell adhesion mole-cule-1 (VCAM-1). We therefore sought to determine whether α9β1 also recognizes VCAM-1, and whether any such interaction would be biologically significant. In this report, we demonstrate that α9β1 mediates stable cell adhesion to recombinant VCAM-1 and to VCAM-1 induced on human umbilical vein endothelial cells by tumor necrosis factor-α. Furthermore, we show that α9β1 is highly and selectively expressed on neutrophils and is critical for neutrophil migration on VCAM-1 and tenascin-C. Finally, α9β1 and α4 integrins contribute to neutrophil chemotaxis across activated endothelial monolayers. These observations suggest a possible role for α9β1/VCAM-1 interactions in extravasation of neutrophils at sites of acute inflammation.
Publication Bias in Laboratory Animal Research: A Survey on Magnitude, Drivers, Consequences and Potential Solutions

Context Publication bias jeopardizes evidence-based medicine, mainly through biased literature syntheses. Publication bias may also affect laboratory animal research, but evidence is scarce. Objectives To assess the opinion of laboratory animal researchers on the magnitude, drivers, consequences and potential solutions for publication bias. And to explore the impact of size of the animals used, seniority of the respondent, working in a for-profit organization and type of research (fundamental, pre-clinical, or both) on those opinions. Design Internet-based survey. Setting All animal laboratories in The Netherlands. Participants Laboratory animal researchers. Main Outcome Measure(s) Median (interquartile ranges) strengths of beliefs on 5 and 10-point scales (1: totally unimportant to 5 or 10: extremely important). Results Overall, 454 researchers participated. They considered publication bias a problem in animal research (7 (5 to 8)) and thought that about 50% (32–70) of animal experiments are published. Employees (n = 21) of for-profit organizations estimated that 10% (5 to 50) are published. Lack of statistical significance (4 (4 to 5)), technical problems (4 (3 to 4)), supervisors (4 (3 to 5)) and peer reviewers (4 (3 to 5)) were considered important reasons for non-publication (all on 5-point scales). Respondents thought that mandatory publication of study protocols and results, or the reasons why no results were obtained, may increase scientific progress but expected increased bureaucracy. These opinions did not depend on size of the animal used, seniority of the respondent or type of research. Conclusions Non-publication of “negative” results appears to be prevalent in laboratory animal research. If statistical significance is indeed a main driver of publication, the collective literature on animal experimentation will be biased. This will impede the performance of valid literature syntheses. Effective, yet efficient systems should be explored to counteract selective reporting of laboratory animal research.
Systematic constructions of zero-correlation zone sequences

Sequences with desired autocorrelation (AC) and cross-correlation (CC) properties are often needed in many communication and radar system applications. In a multipath fading channel with a known delay spread bound, one needs a family of sequences that meets these desired correlation requirements only for those correlation lags that lie within a window called zero-correlation zone. This paper presents two classes of new systematic approaches-a transform domain method and a direct (time domain) synthesis method-for generating zero-correlation zone (ZCZ) sequences. The former approach generates sequence families that achieve the upper bounds on the family size and the zero-correlation zone width for a given sequence period. The latter unifies many existing construction methods and both provide more flexibilities in producing new families of sequences. We also suggest a modulation operation that is capable of transforming nonconstant modulus sequences into polyphase sequences.
Dextromethorphan protects against cerebral injury following transient focal ischemia in rabbits.

We investigated dextromethorphan, both a dextrorotatory opioid derivative and a clinically tested N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, in a rabbit model of transient focal cerebral ischemia. Fourteen rabbits were randomly assigned to treatment with a 20 mg/kg i.v. loading dose followed by a 10 mg/kg/hr infusion of 0.4% dextromethorphan in normal saline or with an equivalent volume of normal saline alone. One hour after treatment, the rabbits underwent a 1-hour occlusion of the left internal carotid and anterior cerebral arteries followed by 4 hours of reperfusion. The seven dextromethorphan-treated rabbits showed a significant decrease in the area of neocortical severe ischemic neuronal damage (10.5%) compared with the seven normal saline-treated controls (49.6%, p less than 0.001). The dextromethorphan-treated rabbits also demonstrated significantly smaller areas of cortical edema (10.2%) on magnetic resonance imaging than the controls (38.6%, p less than 0.01). Analysis of somatosensory evoked potentials revealed recovery of the ipsilateral amplitude to contralateral values within 5 minutes of reperfusion in the dextromethorphan-treated rabbits but not in the controls (p less than 0.01). In our rabbit model of transient focal cerebral ischemia, dextromethorphan appears to protect the brain against ischemic neuronal damage and edema, as well as to promote neurophysiologic recovery. This clinically available drug should be further investigated as having potential therapeutic value in the treatment of stroke.
Algorithm-Based Fault Tolerance for Matrix Operations

The rapid progress in VLSI technology has reduced the cost of hardware, allowing multiple copies of low-cost processors to provide a large amount of computational capability for a small cost. In addition to achieving high performance, high reliability is also important to ensure that the results of long computations are valid. This paper proposes a novel system-level method of achieving high reliability, called algorithm-based fault tolerance. The technique encodes data at a high level, and algorithms are designed to operate on encoded data and produce encoded output data. The computation tasks within an algorithm are appropriately distributed among multiple computation units for fault tolerance. The technique is applied to matrix compomations which form the heart of many computation-intensive tasks. Algorithm-based fault tolerance schemes are proposed to detect and correct errors when matrix operations such as addition, multiplication, scalar product, LU-decomposition, and transposition are performed using multiple processor systems. The method proposed can detect and correct any failure within a single processor in a multiple processor system. The number of processors needed to just detect errors in matrix multiplication is also studied.
Three in one go: consequential angular momentum loss can solve major problems of CV evolution

The average white dwarf (WD) masses in cataclysmic variables (CVs) have been measured to significantly exceed those of single WDs, which is the opposite of what is theoretically expected. We present the results of binary population synthesis models taking into account consequential angular momentum loss (CAML) that is assumed to increase with decreasing WD mass. This approach can not only solve the WD mass problem, but also brings in agreement theoretical predictions and observations of the orbital period distribution and the space density of CVs. We speculate that frictional angular momentum loss following nova eruptions might cause such CAML and could thus be the missing ingredient of CV evolution.
Colored de Bruijn Graphs and the Genome Halving Problem

Breakpoint graph analysis is a key algorithmic technique in studies of genome rearrangements. However, breakpoint graphs are defined only for genomes without duplicated genes, thus limiting their applications in rearrangement analysis. We discuss a connection between the breakpoint graphs and de Bruijn graphs that leads to a generalization of the notion of breakpoint graph for genomes with duplicated genes. We further use the generalized breakpoint graphs to study the genome halving problem (first introduced and solved by Nadia El-Mabrouk and David Sankoff). The El-Mabrouk-Sankoff algorithm is rather complex, and, in this paper, we present an alternative approach that is based on generalized breakpoint graphs. The generalized breakpoint graphs make the El-Mabrouk-Sankoff result more transparent and promise to be useful in future studies of genome rearrangements
The third flight of the Colorado high-resolution echelle stellar spectrograph (CHESS): improvements, calibrations, and preliminary results

In this proceeding, we describe the scientific motivation and technical development of the Colorado HighResolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph (CHESS), focusing on the hardware advancements and testing of components for the third launch of the payload (CHESS-3). CHESS is a far ultraviolet rocket-borne instrument designed to study the atomic-to-molecular transitions within translucent cloud regions in the interstellar medium. CHESS is an objective echelle spectrograph, which uses a mechanically-ruled echelle and a powered (f/12.4) crossdispersing grating, and is designed to achieve a resolving power R > 100,000 over the bandpass λλ 1000−1600 Å. Results from final efficiency and reflectivity measurements for the optical components of CHESS-3 are presented. An important role of sounding rocket experiments is the testing and verification of the space flight capabilities of experimental technologies. CHESS-3 utilizes a 40mm-diameter cross-strip anode microchannel plate detector fabricated by Sensor Sciences LLC, capable of achieving high spatial resolution and a high global count rate (∼1 MHz). We present pre-flight laboratory spectra and calibration results, including wavelength solution and resolving power of the instrument. The fourth launch of CHESS (CHESS-4) will demonstrate a δ-doped CCD, assembled in collaboration with the Microdevices Laboratory at JPL and Arizona State University. In support of CHESS-4, the CHESS-3 payload included a photomultiplier tube, used as a secondary confirmation of the optical alignment of the payload during flight. CHESS-3 launched on 26 June 2017 aboard NASA/CU sounding rocket mission 36.323 UG. We present initial flight results for the CHESS-3 observation of the β1 Scorpii sightline.
Systems architect and systems analyst: are these comparable roles?

The aim of this paper is to define the role of the 'systems architect' in the Irish telecommunications software sector and to compare it with Misic's definition of a 'systems analyst' in the information systems arena. The architect definition is based on in-depth interviews with practicing architects. The interview instrument is informed by social cognitive theory and the interviews were analyzed using the method of triples. The conclusion is that there are noticeable similarities between the roles, suggesting that the Irish telecommunications software sector can benefit from the computer personnel research carried out in the information systems field.
A Unified Passivity-based Control Framework for Position, Torque and Impedance Control of Flexible Joint Robots

This paper describes a general passivity-based framework for the control of flexible joint robots. Recent results on torque, position, as well as impedance control of flexible joint robots are summarized, and the relations between the individual contributions are highlighted. It is shown that an inner torque feedback loop can be incorporated into a passivity-based analysis by interpreting torque feedback in terms of shaping of the motor inertia. This result, which implicitly was already included in earlier work on torque and position control, can also be used for the design of impedance controllers. For impedance control, furthermore, potential energy shaping is of special interest. It is shown how, based only on the motor angles, a potential function can be designed which simultaneously incorporates gravity compensation and a desired Cartesian stiffness relation for the link angles. All the presented controllers were experimentally evaluated on DLR lightweight robots and their performance and robustness shown with respect to uncertain model parameters. Experimental results with position controllers as well as an impact experiment are presented briefly, and an overview of several applications is given in which the controllers have been applied.
ECOLOGICAL STUDY OF SOME HIGH ALTITUDE MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS IN THE GYASUMDO VALLEY,MANANG,NEPAL

ABSTRACT Distribution pattern, population density, regeneration status, and biomass production of five most important high altitude medicinal and aromatic plants (Aconitum orochryseum, Dactylorhiza hatagirea, Nardostachys grandiflora, Picrorhiza scrophulariiflora and Rheum australe) were assessed in three different natural sites of the Gyasumdo Valley in Manang district, Nepal. These plants have supported livelihood of local people as traditional healing ·substances and important commodities for export outside the district. These plants were sampled by laying quadrats of 1 m X 1 m. In each site sixty quadrats were laid randomly. All these medicinal plants generally grow above timberline (3,500 m). However, not all the plants were found in each study site. The density, regeneration and biomass were comparatively higher in Ponger lake site for N. grandijlora and P. scrophulariijlora compared to other medicinal plants. The extent of human disturbances is attributed as the major factor influencing the population of medicinal plants in three different sites. Key words: Manang, medicinal plants, regeneration, biomass, density, Himalaya.
Systematic studies in Neotropical Myrtaceae with an emphasis on Myrcia s.l. : the evolution and biogeography of a large South American clade

Low morphological variation at all taxonomic levels give Neotropical Myrtaceae a reputation as a 'difficult' family to identify even to genus, resulting in a lack of taxonomic data on every front. The subtribal classification of the predominantly Neotropical and exclusively fleshy-fruited tribe Myrteae (49 genera and c. 2500 species) is unstable, as are generic boundaries within it. Neotropical Myrtaceae are particularly species rich in some of South America's most threatened habitats. The second largest Neotropical genus, Myrcia s.l. , comprises >700 taxonomically 'difficult' species with species diversity reaching its peak in the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest and cerrado , habitats in urgent need of inventories of their plant species before conservation initiatives can be undertaken. Phylogenetic hypotheses are provided for evolutionary relationships within Myrteae and Myrcia s.l. based on nuclear ITS and ETS ribosomal DNA and plastid psbA-trnH and matK DNA sequences, using parsimony and Bayesian inference. Four morphological characters of Myrteae are optimized on the resulting trees and nineteen are used in a cladistic analysis of Myrcia s.l. Myrteae appear monophyletic, comprising seven clades plus two isolated taxa. Of the four previously accepted genera of subtribe Myrciinae sensu DC. , two are polyphyletic and all emerge in a single clade treated here as Myrcia s.l. Morphological characters exhibit homoplasy at both ranks, although in combination are useful for clade diagnosis. Biogeographical analysis is inconclusive regarding tribal ancestral areas, but South American colonization before northern radiation via the Andes appears likely. The largest genera, Eugenia and Myrcia s.l. , have western and southeastern South American origins, respectively. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling and ordination techniques are employed to divide the distribution of Myrcia s.l. into discrete areas of endemism and historical biogeographical scenarios are discussed. Finally, modern, natural, subtribal and infrageneric classifications are proposed and concluding inferences are drawn regarding drivers of large genera using Myrtaceae and Myrcia s.l. as case studies.