Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Augmentation of Limb Perfusion and Reversal of Tissue Ischemia Produced by Ultrasound-Mediated Microbubble Cavitation

Background—Ultrasound can increase tissue blood flow, in part, through the intravascular shear produced by oscillatory pressure fluctuations. We hypothesized that ultrasound-mediated increases in perfusion can be augmented by microbubble contrast agents that undergo ultrasound-mediated cavitation and sought to characterize the biological mediators. Methods and Results—Contrast ultrasound perfusion imaging of hindlimb skeletal muscle and femoral artery diameter measurement were performed in nonischemic mice after unilateral 10-minute exposure to intermittent ultrasound alone (mechanical index, 0.6 or 1.3) or ultrasound with lipid microbubbles (2×108 IV). Studies were also performed after inhibiting shear- or pressure-dependent vasodilator pathways, and in mice with hindlimb ischemia. Ultrasound alone produced a 2-fold increase (P<0.05) in muscle perfusion regardless of ultrasound power. Ultrasound-mediated augmentation in flow was greater with microbubbles (3- and 10-fold higher than control for mechanical index 0.6 and 1.3, respectively; P<0.05), as was femoral artery dilation. Inhibition of endothelial nitric oxide synthase attenuated flow augmentation produced by ultrasound and microbubbles by 70% (P<0.01), whereas inhibition of adenosine-A2a receptors and epoxyeicosatrienoic acids had minimal effect. Limb nitric oxide production and muscle phospho-endothelial nitric oxide synthase increased in a stepwise fashion by ultrasound and ultrasound with microbubbles. In mice with unilateral hindlimb ischemia (40%–50% reduction in flow), ultrasound (mechanical index, 1.3) with microbubbles increased perfusion by 2-fold to a degree that was greater than the control nonischemic limb. Conclusions—Increases in muscle blood flow during high-power ultrasound are markedly amplified by the intravascular presence of microbubbles and can reverse tissue ischemia. These effects are most likely mediated by cavitation-related increases in shear and activation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase.
The Effect of Retirement on Cognitive Functioning

Cognitive impairment has emerged as a major driver of disability in old age, with profound effects on individual well-being and decision making at older ages. In the light of policies aimed at postponing retirement ages, an important question is whether continued labour supply helps to maintain high levels of cognition at older ages. We use data of older men from the US Health and Retirement Study to estimate the effect of continued labour market participation at older ages on later-life cognition. As retirement itself is likely to depend on cognitive functioning and may thus be endogenous, we use offers of early retirement windows as instruments for retirement in econometric models for later-life cognitive functioning. These offers of early retirement are legally required to be nondiscriminatory and thus, inter alia, unrelated to cognitive functioning. At the same time, these offers of early retirement options are significant predictors of retirement. Although the simple ordinary least squares estimates show a negative relationship between retirement duration and various measures of cognitive functioning, instrumental variable estimates suggest that these associations may not be causal effects. Specifically, we find no clear relationship between retirement duration and later-life cognition for white-collar workers and, if anything, a positive relationship for blue-collar workers.
Myoplasmic Calcium, Myosin Phosphorylation, and Regulation of the Crossbridge Cycle in Swine Arterial Smooth Muscle

Our objective was to test the hypothesis that changes in crossbndge phosphorylation in the swine carotid media are due to changes in the myoplasmic calcium concentration. The photoprotein aequonn was loaded intracellularly by incubation in a series of calcium-free solutions This loading procedure did not affect subsequent stress development, myosin light chain phosphorylation, or ultrastructure The time course of light production, myosin light chain phosphorylation, shortening velocity at zero load, and active stress were measured in three stimulus protocols: depolarization with 109 mM potassium chlonde at (1) 22°C, (2) 37°C, and (3) 37°C, followed by a reduction in potassium chlonde to 20 mM to induce stress maintenance with basal phosphorylation (latch) Light-predicted intracellular calcium concentration was found to correlate with myosin phosphorylation and unloaded shortening velocity. The calcium concentration required for half-maximal myosin phosphorylation was approximately twice that for stress maintenance. These estimates depend on many assumptions, but they compared favorably with the half-maximal myosin phosphorylation values obtained for the calcium-dependence of stress maintenance and phosphorylation in Triton X-100 skinned carotid media preparations. This supports the hypothesis that myoplasmic calcium is the determinant of myosin phosphorylation and mean crossbridge cycling rates in intact smooth muscle depolarized by potassium chloride.
Neurobiological Degeneracy and Affordance Perception Support Functional Intra-Individual Variability of Inter-Limb Coordination during Ice Climbing

This study investigated the functional intra-individual movement variability of ice climbers differing in skill level to understand how icefall properties were used by participants as affordances to adapt inter-limb coordination patterns during performance. Seven expert climbers and seven beginners were observed as they climbed a 30 m icefall. Movement and positioning of the left and right hand ice tools, crampons and the climber’s pelvis over the first 20 m of the climb were recorded and digitized using video footage from a camera (25 Hz) located perpendicular to the plane of the icefall. Inter-limb coordination, frequency and types of action and vertical axis pelvis displacement exhibited by each climber were analysed for the first five minutes of ascent. Participant perception of climbing affordances was assessed through: (i) calculating the ratio between exploratory movements and performed actions, and (ii), identifying, by self-confrontation interviews, the perceptual variables of environmental properties, which were significant to climbers for their actions. Data revealed that experts used a wider range of upper and lower limb coordination patterns, resulting in the emergence of different types of action and fewer exploratory movements, suggesting that effective holes in the icefall provided affordances to regulate performance. In contrast, beginners displayed lower levels of functional intra-individual variability of motor organization, due to repetitive swinging of ice tools and kicking of crampons to achieve and maintain a deep anchorage, suggesting lack of perceptual attunement and calibration to environmental properties to support climbing performance.
Minimizing execution time in MPI programs on an energy-constrained, power-scalable cluster

Recently, the high-performance computing community has realized that power is a performance-limiting factor. One reason for this is that supercomputing centers have limited power capacity and machines are starting to hit that limit. In addition, the cost of energy has become increasingly significant, and the heat produced by higher-energy components tends to reduce their reliability. One way to reduce power (and therefore energy) requirements is to use high-performance cluster nodes that are frequency- and voltage-scalable (e.g., AMD-64 processors). The problem we address in this paper is: given a target program, a power-scalable cluster, and an upper limit for energy consumption, choose a schedule (number of nodes and CPU frequency) that simultaneously (1) satisfies an external upper limit for energy consumption and (2) minimizes execution time. There are too many schedules for an exhaustive search. Therefore, we find a schedule through a novel combination of performance modeling, performance prediction, and program execution. Using our technique, we are able to find a near-optimal schedule for all of our benchmarks in just a handful of partial program executions.
Rewriting flash memories by message passing

This paper constructs WOM codes that combine rewriting and error correction for mitigating the reliability and the endurance problems in flash memory.We consider a rewriting model that is of practical interest to flash applications where only the second write uses WOM codes. Our WOM code construction is based on binary erasure quantization with LDGM codes, where the rewriting uses message passing and has potential to share the efficient hardware implementations with LDPC codes in practice. We show that the coding scheme achieves the capacity of the rewriting model. Extensive simulations show that the rewriting performance of our scheme compares favorably with that of polar WOM code in the rate region where high rewriting success probability is desired. We further augment our coding schemes with error correction capability. By drawing a connection to the conjugate code pairs studied in the context of quantum error correction, we develop a general framework for constructing error-correction WOM codes. Under this framework, we give an explicit construction of WOM codes whose codewords are contained in BCH codes.
Endoscope-assisted pars plana vitrectomy in severe ocular trauma

Purpose To report the results of pars plana vitrectomy (PPV) assisted by ophthalmic endoscope (OE) in severe ocular trauma cases which are unsuitable for PPV using wide-angle contact/non-contact lens due to media haze and/or disorganised anterior segment. Methods Prospective, non-comparative, interventional case series. Main outcome measured was anatomic status of the retina postoperatively, secondary outcome measured was functional status regarding vision, intraocular pressure and control of inflammation in cases of endophthalmitis. Results Fifty trauma cases were included in the study. Out of these, 43 eyes had open globe injuries (32 eyes without intraocular foreign body (IOFB), and 11 eyes with retained IOFB), and seven eyes had post-traumatic endophthalmitis. In the open globe injury group, 36 (83.7%) eyes reported improvement in vision. In endophthalmitis group, five eyes showed improvement in vision. Conclusions OE provided a clear view to conduct PPV in select trauma cases where delay in surgery due to hazy media or due to non-availability of donor cornea for simultaneous penetrating keratoplasty can lead to severe proliferative vitreoretinopathy changes.
Comparative Protein Composition Analysis of Goat Milk Produced by the Alpine and Saanen Breeds in Northeastern Brazil and Related Antibacterial Activities

The protein composition of goat milk differs between goat breeds and could present regional trends. The aim of this study was to comparatively analyze the protein composition of goat milk produced by the Alpine and Saanen breeds in northeastern Brazil and to evaluate the antibacterial activity of its protein fractions. SDS-PAGE, 2-DE electrophoresis and RP-HPLC analyses revealed the absence of αs1-casein in the milk of both breeds and no differences between the αs2-casein, β-casein, β-lactoglobulin and α-lactalbumin profiles. The amounts of soluble proteins and β-casein hydrolysis residues were higher in Saanen milk. Only the protein fraction containing the largest amounts of casein (F60–90%) inhibited bacterial growth, with MIC values between 50 and 100 mg/mL. This study describe for the first time three important points about the goat milk protein of two Brazilian goat breeders: absence of α-s1 casein in the protein profile, differences between the milk protein composition produced by goats of Alpine and Saanen breeders and antibacterial activity of unbroken proteins (casein-rich fraction) present in these milk.
Player identification in soccer videos

A method for the identification of players in soccer videos is presented. The proposed approach exploits the inherent multiple media structure of soccer videos to perform people identification without relying on face recognition. Instead, faces are detected in close-up shots, and then the filmed player is recognized by means of recognition of the number depicted on the frontal part of its jersey, or by detection and interpretation of superimposed closed caption. Players not identified by this process are then assigned to one of the labeled faces by means of a face similarity measure. We present results obtained from soccer videos of the last European Championship for national teams, held in Portugal in June 2004.
Molecular Insights Revealing Interaction of Tim23 and Channel Subunits of Presequence Translocase

ABSTRACT Tim23 is an essential channel-forming subunit of the presequence translocase recruiting multiple components for assembly of the core complex, thereby regulating the protein translocation process. However, understanding of the precise interaction of subunits associating with Tim23 remains largely elusive. Our findings highlight that transmembrane helix 1 (TM1) is required for homodimerization of Tim23, while, together with TM2, it is involved in preprotein binding within the channel. Based on our evidence, we predict that the TM1 and TM2 from each dimer are involved in the formation of the central translocation pore, aided by Tim17. Furthermore, TM2 is also involved in the recruitment of Tim21 and the presequence-associated motor (PAM) subcomplex to the Tim23 channel, while the matrix-exposed loop L1 generates specificity in their association with the core complex. Strikingly, our findings indicate that the C-terminal sequence of Tim23 is dispensable for growth and functions as an inhibitor for binding of Tim21. Our model conceptually explains the cooperative function between Tam41 and Pam17 subunits, while the antagonistic activity of Tim21 predominantly determines the bound and free forms of the PAM subcomplex during import.
Photosynthesis and the dynamics of oxygen consumption in a microbial mat as calculated from transient oxygen microprofiles

A new method is presented to determine the rates of oxygen consumption, net oxygen metabolism (defined as photosynthesis minus oxygen consumption), and gross photosynthesis at high vertical resolution in benthic photo‐trophic communities. The rates of oxygen consumption and of net oxygen metabolism as a function of depth and time are calculated from the dynamics in oxygen concentration, as measured with oxygen microsensors during light‐dark cycles, by numerically solving the general non‐steady state diffusion‐reaction equation. The results, as obtained for a temperate intertidal microbial mat, strongly suggest that the vertical distribution and the dynamics in oxygen consumption are controlled by the supply of both oxygen and oxidizable substrates from different sources. The depth distribution of gross photosynthesis, as obtained by the cycling procedure, showed reasonable agreement with the photosynthesis profile, as measured with the conventional light‐dark shift method prior to the light‐dark cycling experiment, thus supporting the applicability of the method.
A Fall Prediction System for Humanoid Robots Using a Multi-Layer Perceptron

In this paper, we estimate the stability of a walking humanoid robot using an artificial neural network (ANN). This way, we predict whether a robot will fall down within a short period. Fall prediction allows for appropriate countermeasures, e.g. stopping or slowing down the walk. Our experiments show that the application of the neural network leads to a significant decrease of falls while minimizing false positives. We use the NAO robot by Softbank for our research as a low cost robotic platform.
Learning data triage: Linear decoding works for compressive MRI

The standard approach to compressive sampling considers recovering an unknown deterministic signal with certain known structure, and designing the sub-sampling pattern and recovery algorithm based on the known structure. This approach requires looking for a good representation that reveals the signal structure, and solving a non-smooth convex minimization problem (e.g., basis pursuit). In this paper, another approach is considered: We learn a good sub-sampling pattern based on available training signals, without knowing the signal structure in advance, and reconstruct an accordingly sub-sampled signal by computationally much cheaper linear reconstruction. We provide a theoretical guarantee on the recovery error, and show via experiments on real-world MRI data the effectiveness of the proposed compressive MRI scheme.
On the Effect of Sex on Prefrontal and Cerebellar Neurometabolites in Healthy Adults: An MRS Study

In neuropsychiatric research, the aspects of sex have received increasing attention over the past decade. With regard to the neurometabolic differences in the prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum of both men and women, we performed a magnetic resonance spectroscopic (MRS) study of a large group of healthy subjects. For neurometabolic measurements, we used single-voxel proton MRS. The voxels of interest (VOI) were placed in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC) and the left cerebellar hemisphere. Absolute quantification of creatine (Cre), total choline (t-Cho), glutamate and glutamine (Glx), N-acetylaspartate, and myo-inositol (mI) was performed. Thirty-three automatically matched ACCs and 31 cerebellar male–female pairs were statistically analyzed. We found no significant neurometabolic differences in the pACC region (Wilks' lambda: p = 0.657). In the left cerebellar region, we detected significant variations between the male and female groups (p = 0.001). Specifically, we detected significantly higher Cre (p = 0.005) and t-Cho (p = 0.000) levels in men. Additionally, males tended to have higher Glx and mI concentrations. This is the first study to report neurometabolic sex differences in the cerebellum. The effects of sexual hormones might have influenced our findings. Our data indicates the importance of adjusting for the confounding effects of sex in MRS studies.
The origin, mechanisms, incidence and clinical consequences of chromosomal mosaicism in humans.

BACKGROUND Chromosomal mosaicism, the presence of two or more distinct cell lines, is prevalent throughout human pre- and post-implantation development and can lead to genetic abnormalities, miscarriages, stillbirths or live births. Due to the prevalence and significance of mosaicism in the human species, it is important to understand the origins, mechanisms and incidence of mosaicism throughout development. METHODS Literature searches were conducted utilizing Pubmed, with emphasis on human pre- and post-implantation mosaicism. RESULTS Mosaicism persists in two separate forms: general and confined. General mosaicism is routine during human embryonic growth as detected by preimplantation genetic screening at either the cleavage or blastocyst stage, leading to mosaicism within both the placenta and fetus proper. Confined mosaicism has been reported in the brain, gonads and placenta, amongst other places. Mosaicism is derived from a variety of mechanisms including chromosome non-disjunction, anaphase lagging or endoreplication. Anaphase lagging has been implicated as the main process by which mosaicism arises in the preimplantation embryo. Furthermore, mosaicism can be caused by any one of numerous factors from paternal, maternal or exogenous factors such as culture media or possibly controlled ovarian hyperstimulation during in vitro fertilization (IVF). Mosaicism has been reported in as high as 70 and 90% of cleavage- and blastocyst-stage embryos derived from IVF, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The clinical consequences of mosaicism depend on which chromosome is involved, and when and where an error occurs. Mitotic rescue of a meiotic error or a very early mitotic error will typically lead to general mosaicism while a mitotic error at a specific cell lineage point typically leads to confined mosaicism. The clinical consequences of mosaicism are dependent on numerous aspects, with the consequences being unique for each event.
Nutrient and Energy Apparent Digestibility of Protein-Based Feed Ingredients and Effect of the Dietary Factors on Growth Performance and Feed Utilization of Sobaity Seabream, Sparidentex hasta

Simple Summary The diet development process for new species includes various steps. Included among these is the investigation of the potential of different feed ingredients so that diets can be formulated with some flexibility to utilize a wider range of resources. Another step is the evaluation of existing diets (designed for other species) when fed to the new species being studied. The sobaity seabream, Sparidentex hasta, is considered a promising fish species for aquaculture in the Arabian Gulf region because of its good adaptation to culture, rapid growth, and high market value. This study investigated the responses to three existing commercial diets on the performance of the fish. Additionally, the digestibility of various locally available protein feed ingredients was also examined with the species. Our findings provide quantitative nutrient digestibility data for different feed ingredients and benchmark the responses of the fish to some locally available commercial diets. These findings provide a foundation to begin formulating nutritionally balanced diets for sobaity seabream from resources found locally. Abstract Two separate feeding trials were undertaken to benchmark a series of commercial diets and determine the nutrient and energy apparent digestibility coefficients of a variety of protein-based feed ingredients when fed to sobaity seabream, Sparidentex hasta. In Experiment 1, triplicate groups of fish (initial body weight: 330.5 ± 2.6 g) were fed with one of three locally available diets containing crude protein (CP) levels ranging from 44 to 46% of dry matter (DM), each with ~12% crude fat. Fish grew at around 3.2 g day−1 with a specific growth rate (SGR) of 0.7% day−1. Both the feed conversion ratio (FCR) and protein efficiency ratio (PER) were significantly better in fish fed diets, which contained the highest (46.4%) crude protein level. Overall, the data from these preliminary studies suggest that the best performance by sobaity seabream was obtained with a diet containing 46% crude protein, 20 MJ/kg, and a protein-to-energy ratio of 23 mg/kJ. In Experiment 2, fish with an initial body weight of 319 ± 7 g were held in 11 tanks and fed reference (D1) and test diets (D2–D11) for 7 days before fecal collection. This process was repeated twice in a blocking arrangement to generate three replicates. Each of the ten test diets contained 30% of a test ingredient, with the remaining 70% proportionally identical to the D1 diet. Diet apparent digestibility coefficients (ADCs) were measured, and the diet ADCs were then used to derive the protein and energy ADCs for the individual test ingredients. Ingredient protein ADC ranged between 75.5 and 93.9%, while ingredient energy ADC ranged between 66.8 and 81.2%.