Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Raman Spectra of Carbon-Based Materials (from Graphite to Carbon Black) and of Some Silicone Composites

Carbon-based nanomaterials have emerged as a subject of enormous scientific attention due to their outstanding mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. Incorporated in a polymeric matrix, they are expected to significantly improve physical properties of the host medium at extremely small filler content. In this work, we report a characterization of various carbonaceous materials by Raman spectroscopy that has become a key technique for the analysis of different types of sp2 nanostructures, including one-dimensional carbon nanotubes, two-dimensional graphene and the effect of disorder in their structures. The dispersion behavior of the D and G’ Raman bands, that is, their shift to higher frequencies with increasing laser excitation energy, is used to assess the interfacial properties between the filler and the surrounding polymer in the composites.
Feasibility and Short-Term Efficacy of Percutaneous Mitral Annular Reduction for the Therapy of Heart Failure-Induced Mitral Regurgitation

Background—Mitral regurgitation (MR) frequently accompanies congestive heart failure (CHF) and is associated with poorer prognosis and more significantly impaired symptomatic status. Although surgical mitral valve annuloplasty has the potential to offer benefit, concerns about the combined surgical risk and possible effects on ventricular performance have limited progress. We evaluated the feasibility and short-term efficacy of a novel device placed in the coronary sinus to reduce MR in the setting of CHF. Methods and Results—CHF and MR were induced in 9 adult sheep by rapid ventricular pacing for 5 to 8 weeks. A mitral annular constraint device was implanted percutaneously through the right internal jugular vein in the coronary sinus and great cardiac vein to create a short-term stable reduction (24.9±2.5%) in the mitral annular septal-lateral dimension as assessed echocardiographically. Right and left heart pressures and cardiac output were determined before and 15 minutes after device implantation. MR extent was examined echocardiographically and expressed as a ratio of left atrial area (MR/LAA). After device placement, MR was substantially reduced from an MR/LAA of 42+6% to 4±3% (P <0.01). In association, mean pulmonary wedge pressure was significantly reduced (26±3 to 18±3 mm Hg; P <0.01) and mean cardiac output significantly increased (3.4±0.3 to 4.3±0.4 L/min; P =0.01). Conclusions—In this model of CHF, percutaneous placement of a mitral annular constraint device in the coronary sinus resulted in the short-term elimination or minimization of MR and was accompanied in the short term by favorable hemodynamic effects.
A Novel Scoring Approach for Protein Co-Purification Data Reveals High Interaction Specificity

Large-scale protein interaction networks (PINs) have typically been discerned using affinity purification followed by mass spectrometry (AP/MS) and yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) techniques. It is generally recognized that Y2H screens detect direct binary interactions while the AP/MS method captures co-complex associations; however, the latter technique is known to yield prevalent false positives arising from a number of effects, including abundance. We describe a novel approach to compute the propensity for two proteins to co-purify in an AP/MS data set, thereby allowing us to assess the detected level of interaction specificity by analyzing the corresponding distribution of interaction scores. We find that two recent AP/MS data sets of yeast contain enrichments of specific, or high-scoring, associations as compared to commensurate random profiles, and that curated, direct physical interactions in two prominent data bases have consistently high scores. Our scored interaction data sets are generally more comprehensive than those of previous studies when compared against four diverse, high-quality reference sets. Furthermore, we find that our scored data sets are more enriched with curated, direct physical associations than Y2H sets. A high-confidence protein interaction network (PIN) derived from the AP/MS data is revealed to be highly modular, and we show that this topology is not the result of misrepresenting indirect associations as direct interactions. In fact, we propose that the modularity in Y2H data sets may be underrepresented, as they contain indirect associations that are significantly enriched with false negatives. The AP/MS PIN is also found to contain significant assortative mixing; however, in line with a previous study we confirm that Y2H interaction data show weak disassortativeness, thus revealing more clearly the distinctive natures of the interaction detection methods. We expect that our scored yeast data sets are ideal for further biological discovery and that our scoring system will prove useful for other AP/MS data sets.
Miniband transport in GaAs-AlAs superlattices

We report on the investigation of the miniband transport regime in GaAs-AlAs superlattices by electrical time-of-flight experiments. The temperature dependence of the low-field drift mobility is used to obtain information about the underlying transport mechanisms. The photocurrent as a function of the applied field can be fitted over a wide temperature range with a modified Kazarinov-Suris model.
Clostridium difficile Toxin CDT Induces Formation of Microtubule-Based Protrusions and Increases Adherence of Bacteria

Clostridium difficile causes antibiotic-associated diarrhea and pseudomembranous colitis by production of the Rho GTPase-glucosylating toxins A and B. Recently emerging hypervirulent Clostridium difficile strains additionally produce the binary ADP-ribosyltransferase toxin CDT (Clostridium difficile transferase), which ADP-ribosylates actin and inhibits actin polymerization. Thus far, the role of CDT as a virulence factor is not understood. Here we report by using time-lapse- and immunofluorescence microscopy that CDT and other binary actin-ADP-ribosylating toxins, including Clostridium botulinum C2 toxin and Clostridium perfringens iota toxin, induce redistribution of microtubules and formation of long (up to >150 µm) microtubule-based protrusions at the surface of intestinal epithelial cells. The toxins increase the length of decoration of microtubule plus-ends by EB1/3, CLIP-170 and CLIP-115 proteins and cause redistribution of the capture proteins CLASP2 and ACF7 from microtubules at the cell cortex into the cell interior. The CDT-induced microtubule protrusions form a dense meshwork at the cell surface, which wrap and embed bacterial cells, thereby largely increasing the adherence of Clostridia. The study describes a novel type of microtubule structure caused by less efficient microtubule capture and offers a new perspective for the pathogenetic role of CDT and other binary actin-ADP-ribosylating toxins in host–pathogen interactions.
Molecular and Cellular Pathobiology Interleukin-17 Promotes Formation and Growth of Prostate Adenocarcinoma in Mouse Models

The contributions of interleukin (IL)-17 to cancer remain unclear and somewhat controversial. We took a genetic approach to explore its role in prostate cancers by interbreeding IL-17 receptor C (IL-17RC)–deficient mice with mice that are conditionally mutant for PTEN, one established preclinical model for prostate cancer. Mice that were IL-17RC–deficient (IL-17RC ) displayed prostates that were smaller than mice that maintained IL-17RC expression (IL-17RCþ). In addition, IL-17RC mice developed a reduced number of invasive prostate adenocarcinomas with lower rates of cellular proliferation and higher apoptosis than IL-17RCþ mice. Moreover, the fibromuscular stroma surrounding prostatic glands was relatively thicker in IL-17RC mice and was associated with decreased matrix metalloproteinase (Mmp)7 expression and increased Timp1, 2, and 4 expression, whereas administration of recombinant mouse IL-17 induced prostatic expression of Mmp7. Taken together, our results suggested that IL-17 promotes the formation and growth of prostate adenocarcinoma, and that an IL-17–MMP7 signaling axis is required for the transition of prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia to frank adenocarcinoma. Cancer Res; 72(10); 2589–99. 2012 AACR.
Excessive weight gain in women with a normal pre‐pregnancy BMI is associated with increased neonatal adiposity

More than 40% of women with a normal pre‐pregnancy body mass index (BMI) exceed the 2009 Institute of Medicine (IOM) guidelines’ recommended weight gain of 25–35 lb. Excessive gestational weight gain is one modifiable factor that may be contributing to childhood overweight and obesity.
Effects of antihypertensive drugs on carotid intima-media thickness: Focus on angiotensin II receptor blockers. A review of randomized, controlled trials

Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) and plaques have been shown to have a strong continuous relationship with cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality; therefore, carotid atherosclerosis, as assessed by ultrasonography, can be regarded as a reliable surrogate end-point for therapeutic interventions. In this survey, we report the results of 16 double blind, randomized, controlled studies comparing: 1) antihypertensive drugs versus placebo/no treatment (five trials including 3,215 patients); 2) different active antihypertensive drug regimens (five trials including 4,662 patients); 3) angiotensin-II receptor blockers (ARBs) versus other antihypertensive agents (six trials including 841 patients). Our main findings can be summarized as follows: I) Long-term antihypertensive treatment has a blunting effect on carotid IMT progression, regardless of types of drugs. II) Calcium-channel blockers (CCBs) are more effective than other antihypertensive drugs including diuretics, beta-blockers, and angiotensin converting-enzyme (ACE)-inhibitors in this blunting effect; III) the effect of ARBs compared to other antihypertensive regimens (mostly based on atenolol) on carotid atherosclerosis progression needs to be further elucidated, as a protective effect was demonstrated by some, but not all studies examined. Thus, further studies are needed to clarify the role of ARBs in this therapeutic area.
Chloroplast microsatellites: measures of genetic diversity and the effect of homoplasy

Chloroplast microsatellites have been widely used in population genetic studies of conifers in recent years. However, their haplotype configurations suggest that they could have high levels of homoplasy, thus limiting the power of these molecular markers. A coalescent‐based computer simulation was used to explore the influence of homoplasy on measures of genetic diversity based on chloroplast microsatellites. The conditions of the simulation were defined to fit isolated populations originating from the colonization of one single haplotype into an area left available after a glacial retreat. Simulated data were compared with empirical data available from the literature for a species of Pinus that has expanded north after the Last Glacial Maximum. In the evaluation of genetic diversity, homoplasy was found to have little influence on Nei's unbiased haplotype diversity (HE) while Goldstein's genetic distance estimates () were much more affected. The effect of the number of chloroplast microsatellite loci for evaluation of genetic diversity is also discussed.
THE PHARMACOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION OF ADRENERGIC RECEPTORS *

For over half a century pharmacologists have relied on operational procedures to provide evidence for the existence of adrenergic receptors and for differentiating types of such receptors (for earlier reviews see Furchgott, 1959, 1960a). The procedures used for differentiating types of adrenergic receptors are of two kinds. In the first procedure, dose-response curves of a given effector system are obtained for epinephrine, norepinephrine, and certain closely related amines; and the relative potencies of these agonists are compared. I n the second procedure, the ability of various drugs to antagonize or block the response of the effector system to one or more of the agonists is determined. Ahlquist (1948) first combined results of the two procedures to classify operationally different types of adrenergic receptors. He concluded tha t most adrenergic receptors were of either one or two types which, for convenience, he termed alpha and beta. According to Ahlquist (1948, 1958), the alpha receptors mediate responses for which the order of potency for four of the most commonly used sympathomimetic amines is epinphrine (E) > norepinephrine (NE) > phenylephrine (PE) > isoproterenol (ISO), while beta receptors mediate responses for which the order of potency is IS0 > E > N E > PE. (Actually, Ahlquist used a-methylepinephrine and a-methylnorepinephrine in his original series and not PE, but many investigators now use PE along with E , NE, and ISO.) In addition the responses mediated through alpha receptors can be antagonized by a variety of natural and synthetic agents (including certain ergot alkaloids, phentolamine, and certain p-haloalkylamines, to name but a few) which exhibit little if any antagonism against responses mediated through beta receptors, while responses mediated through beta receptors can be antagonized rather selectively by a number of other synthetic agents (including dichloroisoproterenol, pronethalol and propranolol, to name but a few, all of which were actually introduced 10 or more years after Ahlquist first proposed his operational classification). The Ahlquist classification has been applied with greatest success to adrenergic receptors of various smooth muscles and heart. I t met the challenge that a third type of adrenergic receptor was responsible for mediating inhibition of intestinal smooth muscle (Furchgott, 1959), when Ahlquist & Levy (1959), and later Furchgott (1960a), provided experimental evidence tha t the intestine contained both alpha and beta type receptors, both of which could
Musculoskeletal Abnormalities in Chronic Headache: A Controlled Comparison of Headache Diagnostic Groups

The presence of postural, myofascial, and mechanical abnormalities in patients with migraine, tension‐type headache, or both headache diagnoses was compared to a headache‐free control sample. Twenty‐four control subjects were obtained from a convenience sampling and each was matched by age and sex to three patients with headache (one with migraine [with or without aura], one with tension‐type headache, and one with diagnoses of both migraine and tension‐type headache [combined diagnosis]) who had been previously assessed by a physical therapist at a headache clinic. Physical therapy assessment findings were compared among the four groups.
Human Neuroscience Original Research Article Awareness of Central Luminance Edge Is Crucial for the Craik-o'brien-cornsweet Effect

The Craik-O'Brien-Cornsweet (COC) effect demonstrates that perceived lightness depends not only on the retinal input at corresponding visual areas but also on distal retinal inputs. In the COC effect, the central edge of an opposing pair of luminance gradients (COC edge) makes adjoining regions with identical luminance appear to be different. To investigate the underlying mechanisms of the effect, we examined whether the subjective awareness of the COC edge is necessary for the generation of the effect. We manipulated the visibility of the COC edge using visual backward masking and continuous flash suppression while monitoring subjective reports regarding online percepts and aftereffects of adaptation. Psy-chophysical results showed that the online percept of the COC effect nearly vanishes in conditions where the COC edge is rendered invisible. On the other hand, the results of adaptation experiments showed that the COC edge is still processed at the early stage even under the perceptual suppression. These results suggest that processing of the COC edge at the early stage is not sufficient for generating the COC effect, and that subjective awareness of the COC edge is necessary.
Access region locality for high-bandwidth processor memory system design

This paper studies an interesting yet less explored behavior of memory access instructions, called access region locality. Unlike the traditional temporal and spatial data locality that focuses on individual memory locations and how accesses to the locations are inter-related, the access region locality concerns with each static memory instruction and its range of access locations at run time. We consider program's data, heap, and stack regions in this paper. Our experimental study using a set of SPEC95 benchmark programs shows that most memory reference instructions access a single region at run time. Also shown is that it is possible to accurately predict the access region of a memory instruction at run time by scrutinizing the addressing mode of the instruction and the past access region history of it. A simple run-time access region predictor is developed that is similar to a branch predictor in structure. We describe and evaluate a superscalar processor with two distinct sets of memory pipelines, driven by the access region predictor. Experimental results indicate that the proposed mechanism is very effective in providing high memory bandwidth to the processor, resulting in comparable or better performance than a conventional memory design with a heavily multi-ported data cache that can lead to much higher hardware complexity.
Recurrent Processing of Contour Integration in the Human Visual Cortex as Revealed By fMRI-Guided TMS

Contour integration is a critical step in visual perception because it groups discretely local elements into perceptually global contours. Previous investigations have suggested that striate and extrastriate visual areas are involved in this mid-level processing of visual perception. However, the temporal dynamics of these areas in the human brain during contour integration is less understood. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to briefly disrupt 1 of 2 visual areas (V1/V2 and V3B) and examined the causal contributions of these areas to contour detection. The results demonstrated that the earliest critical time window at which behavioral detection performance was impaired by TMS pluses differed between V1/V2 and V3B. The first critical window of V3B (90-110 ms after stimulus onset) was earlier than that of V1/V2 (120-140 ms after stimulus onset), thus indicating that feedback connection from higher to lower area was necessary for complete contour integration. These results suggested that the fine processing of contour-related information in V1/V2 follows the generation of a coarse template in the higher visual areas, such as V3B. Our findings provide direct causal evidence that a recurrent mechanism is necessary for the integration of contours from cluttered background in the human brain.
Thrombin Activates the Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1 Signaling Pathway in Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells: Role of the p22phox-Containing NADPH Oxidase

Abstract— The heterodimeric transcription factor hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) is activated under hypoxic conditions, resulting in the upregulation of its target genes plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). PAI-1 and VEGF are also induced in response to vascular injury, which is characterized by the activation of platelets and the coagulation cascade as well as the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). However, it is not known whether HIF-1 is also stimulated by thrombotic factors. We investigated the role of thrombin, platelet-associated growth factors, and ROS derived from the p22phox-containing NADPH oxidase in the activation of HIF-1 and the induction of its target genes PAI-1 and VEGF in human vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). Thrombin, platelet-derived growth factor-AB (PDGF-AB), and transforming growth factor-&bgr;1 (TGF-&bgr;1) upregulated HIF-1&agr; protein in cultured and native VSMCs. This response was accompanied by nuclear accumulation of HIF-1&agr; as well as by increased HIF-1 DNA-binding and reporter gene activity. The thrombin-induced expression of HIF-1&agr;, PAI-1, and VEGF was attenuated by antioxidant treatment as well as by transfection of p22phox antisense oligonucleotides. Inhibition of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase and phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase significantly decreased thrombin-induced HIF-1&agr;, PAI-1, and VEGF expression. These findings demonstrate that the HIF-1 signaling pathway can be stimulated by thrombin and platelet-associated growth factors and that a redox-sensitive cascade activated by ROS derived from the p22phox-containing NADPH oxidase is crucially involved in this response.
Learning Deep Representations for Graph Clustering

Recently deep learning has been successfully adopted in many applications such as speech recognition and image classification. In this work, we explore the possibility of employing deep learning in graph clustering. We propose a simple method, which first learns a nonlinear embedding of the original graph by stacked autoencoder, and then runs $k$-means algorithm on the embedding to obtain the clustering result. We show that this simple method has solid theoretical foundation, due to the similarity between autoencoder and spectral clustering in terms of what they actually optimize. Then, we demonstrate that the proposed method is more efficient and flexible than spectral clustering. First, the computational complexity of autoencoder is much lower than spectral clustering: the former can be linear to the number of nodes in a sparse graph while the latter is super quadratic due to eigenvalue decomposition. Second, when additional sparsity constraint is imposed, we can simply employ the sparse autoencoder developed in the literature of deep learning; however, it is non-straightforward to implement a sparse spectral method. The experimental results on various graph datasets show that the proposed method significantly outperforms conventional spectral clustering which clearly indicates the effectiveness of deep learning in graph clustering.
Evaluating quality of text clustering with ART1

Self-organizing large amounts of textual data in accordance to some topics structure is an increasingly important application of clustering. Adaptive resonance theory (ART) neural networks possess several interesting properties that make them appealing in this area. Although ART has been used in several research works as a text clustering tool, the level of quality of the resulting document clusters has not been clearly established yet. In this paper, we present experimental results with binary ART that address this issue by determining how close clustering quality is to an upper bound on clustering quality.