Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plasmodium falciparum: linkage disequilibrium between loci in chromosomes 7 and 5 and chloroquine selective pressure in Northern Nigeria

In view of the recent discovery (Molecular Cell 6, 861–871) of a (Lys76Thr) codon change in gene pfcrt on chromosome 7 which determines in vitro chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum, we have re-examined samples taken before treatment in our study in Zaria, Northern Nigeria (Parasitology 119, 343–348). Drug resistance was present in 5/5 cases where the pfcrt 76Thr codon change was seen (100% positive predictive value). Drug sensitivity was found in 26/28 cases where the change was absent (93% negative predictive value). Allele pfcrt 76Thr showed strong linkage disequilibrium with pfmdr1 Tyr86 on chromosome 5, more complete than that between pfcrt and cg2 alleles situated between recombination cross-over points on chromosome 7. Physical linkage of cg2 with pfcrt may account for linkage disequilibrium between their alleles but in the case of genes pfmdr1 and pfcrt, on different chromosomes, it is likely that this is maintained epistatically through the selective pressure of chloroquine.
[Language abnormalities in patients with multiple sclerosis].

BACKGROUND Patients suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS) have a high frequency of cognitive deficits. Research has demonstrated impairments in memory, attention, information-processing speed, and executive functions. Although it has been traditionally held that language function is commonly preserved in MS, some studies have demonstrated language impairment in these patients, particularly in tasks of naming and word-generation. OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to examine language functioning in MS, with particular interest in naming ability and verbal fluency. MATERIAL AND METHODS Thirty patients with MS, and 30 neurologically intact normal controls, matched for age and educational level were evaluated. As part of a wider neuropsychological evaluation, all subjects were administered the Boston Naming Tests. To compare performances, a comprehensive classification of error types was devised. RESULTS MS patients showed significantly lower performance on both linguistic measures than the control subjects. On the Boston Naming Test, MS patients obtained significant lower scores than controls, with a high rate of semantic errors. Additionally, they tended to show an also high number of visuoperceptual errors. Low scores on naming task correlated with low performance on verbal fluency. CONCLUSIONS This study reveals that language function can be impaired in MS, and that naming difficulties are a frequent finding. This naming deficit seems to have a double origin, stemming from disruption at the levels of the perceptual and/or the semantic systems.
Effects of Heating Rate and Dose on Trapping Parameters of TLD-100 Crystals

AbstractThe characteristics of the thermoluminescence glow curve and dosimetric peak of LiF:Mg,Ti (TLD-100) crystals are studied, with emphasis on the evaluation of the influence of the irradiation dose and heating rate on the dosimetric peak (peak 5) trapping parameters. These parameters were obtained using a computerized deconvolution routine that assumed first-order kinetics for each peak composing the glow curve. This routine was able to fit accurately (1.2% < FOM < 3.4%) all measured glow curves. It was found that for the evaluated range of photon doses (0.2 to 20 cGy) and heating rates (7 to 25 K/s), the behavior of the dosimetric peak was consistent with the predictions of the Randall-Wilkins first-order kinetic model. In particular, it was confirmed that the activation energy of the dosimetric peak is independent of the heating rate and irradiation dose, as expected from this model. The mean activation energy obtained for peak 5 was 2.27 ± 0.08 eV. The area under the experimental glow curves for the same dose remained stable regardless of the heating rate used, indicating that the thermal quenching effect did not have a significant influence within the studied range. By fixing the heating rate and varying the dose, it was found that the integral was proportional to the irradiation dose, as expected.
Assessment of visceral sensitivity using radio telemetry in a rat model of maternal separation

Abstract Stress plays an important role in the development of visceral hypersensitivity, a key mechanism underlying the pathophysiology of the irritable bowel syndrome. Visceral sensitivity in rats is generally assessed under restrain conditions. To avoid this potential stress factor, we developed a model using implanted radio telemetry for remote measurement of the visceromotor response (VMR) to colorectal distention (CRD). Ten days after implantation of a radio telemetry transmitter and EMG electrodes, visceral sensitivity was evaluated by applying a standardized distension protocol (1, 1.5 and 2 mL) on three different days. In a second series, visceral sensitivity was assessed in maternally separated rats before, directly after and at 6 and 24 h after water avoidance (WA) stress. CRD resulted in a reproducible VMR response on the three different study days. In separated but not in non‐handled rats, WA significantly increased visceral sensitivity at 6 h (P = 0.006) and 24 h (P = 0.004) after WA. Our results show that radio telemetry is a reliable and well tolerated new tool for evaluating visceral sensitivity in rats. These data further confirm that maternal separation is a good model for evaluating the mechanisms underlying visceral hypersensitivity.
Asthma prevalence, morbidity and management practices in South Australia, 1992-1995.

BACKGROUND The Spring South Australian Health Omnibus Survey (SSAHOS) has been used to monitor trends in asthma prevalence, asthma morbidity and asthma management practices between 1992 and 1995. AIMS To determine if self-reported asthma prevalence and availability of asthma action plans were increasing. To identify deficiencies in asthma management and opportunities for intervention. METHODS Representative population survey by trained interviewers using a multistage, systematic, clustered area sample of 4200 households in South Australia where people aged 15 years or more are living. RESULTS Over 3000 interviews were conducted each year. Between 1992 and 1995 the self-reported prevalence of asthma in those aged 15 years or more increased significantly from 15.7% to 20.3% (p < 0.0005), and the prevalence of current asthma increased from 9.3% to 11.4% (p < 0.05). The self-reported availability of individual asthma action plans increased from 21.9% in 1992 to 42.2% in 1995 (p < 0.0005). In 1992, 21% had a nebuliser at home, and 10.5% had a peak flow meter. In 1993, 61.4% were using preventive medications, and 35% thought bronchodilators were 'preventer' medications. In 1994 and 1995, between 12.5% and 15.6% had nocturnal awakening weekly or more often, and 31.4% had morning asthma symptoms weekly or more often. Between 20.1% and 20.8% had lost days from usual activities during the last year. Those on incomes below $20,000 had more symptoms, had more admissions to hospital, and required more medication than those on higher incomes. CONCLUSIONS Self-reported asthma prevalence has increased. There remains a gap between current asthma management and that recommended by the National Asthma Campaign.
Bone resorption control of tooth eruption and root morphogenesis: Involvement of the receptor activator of NF‐κB (RANK)

Activation of the receptor activator of NF‐κB (RANK) is a crucial step in osteoclastogenesis. Loss‐ and gain‐of‐function mutations in the Rank gene cause, respectively, osteopetrosis and several forms of extensive osteolysis. Tooth and alveolar bone alterations are associated with these pathologies but remain to be better characterized. The aim of the present study was to establish the tooth and alveolar bone phenotype of a transgenic mouse model of RANK over‐expression in osteoclast precursors. Early tooth eruption and accelerated tooth root elongation were observed subsequent to an increase in osteoclast numbers surrounding the tooth. The final root length appeared not to be affected by RANK over‐expression, but a significant reduction in root diameter occurred in both control and root‐morphogenesis‐defective Msx2 null mutant mice. These results indicate that root length is independent of the surrounding bone resorption activity. In contrast, root diameter is sensitive to the activity of alveolar bone osteoclasts. These data suggest that early eruption and thin root are phenotypic features that could be associated with extensive osteolytic pathologies. J. Cell. Physiol. 226: 74–85, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Public Attitudes and Behaviors With Respect to Child Abuse Prevention

This article examines public attitudes toward specific parental discipline practices, the incidence of specific parental practices, the public's support for and involvement in child abuse prevention efforts, and the public's perceptions of the causes of child maltreatment. Data were collected from a nationally representative sample of 1,250 adults each year between 1987 and 1992. The majority of the public view physical punishment and repeated yelling and swearing at children as harmful. Slightly more than half (53%) of the parents report spanking or hitting their children. Less than half of the parents surveyed reported yelling or swearing at their children in the last year. The rates of reported yelling and swearing declined between 1988 and 1990 but rose slightly in the past 2 years. The rate of spanking or hitting has declined since 1989, whereas the rate of hitting or trying to hit with objects has remained stable. The public has a strong commitment to preventing child abuse. Although the belief that individuals can do a great deal to prevent abuse declined between 1989 and 1991, it rose in 1992. Public involvement in actions to prevent abuse remains high. The public sees domestic violence as the major cause of elevated rates of child abuse.
Effects of distal cholesterol biosynthesis inhibitors on cell proliferation and cell cycle progression Published, JLR Papers in Press, February 1, 2005. DOI 10.1194/jlr.M400407-JLR200

Cholesterol is a major lipid component of the plasma membrane in animal cells. In addition to its structural requirement, cholesterol is essential in cell proliferation and other cell processes. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the stringency of the requirement for cholesterol as a regulator of proliferation and cell cycle progression, compared with other sterols of the cholesterol biosynthesis pathway. Human promyelocytic HL-60 cells were cultured in cholesterol-free medium and treated with different distal inhibitors of cholesterol biosynthesis (zaragozic acid, SKF 104976, SR 31747, BM 15766, and AY 9944), which allow the synthesis of isoprenoid derivatives and different sets of sterol intermediates, but not cholesterol. The results showed that only the inhibition of sterol Δ7-reductase was compatible with cell proliferation. Blocking cholesterol biosynthesis upstream of this enzyme resulted in the inhibition of cell proliferation and cell cycle arrest selectively in G2/M phase.
A comparison of methods to estimate seismic phase delays: numerical examples for coda wave interferometry

Time-shift estimation between arrivals in two seismic traces before and after a velocity perturbation is a crucial step in many seismic methods. The accuracy of the estimated velocity perturbation location and amplitude depend on this time shift. Windowed cross-correlation and trace stretching are two techniques commonly used to estimate local time shifts in seismic signals. In the work presented here we implement Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to estimate the warping function – a vector of local time shifts that globally minimizes the misfit between two seismic traces. We compare all three methods using acoustic numerical experiments. We show that DTW is comparable to or better than the other two methods when the velocity perturbation is homogeneous and the signal-to-noise ratio is high. When the signal-to-noise ratio is low, we find that DTW and windowed cross-correlation are more accurate than the stretching method. Finally, we show that the DTW algorithm has good time resolution when identifying small differences in the seismic traces for a model with an isolated velocity perturbation. These results impact current methods that utilize not only time shifts between (multiply) scattered waves, but also amplitude and decoherence measurements.
Hydrodynamic Simulations of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect(s)

We have performed a sequence of high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations of structure formation in a ΛCDM model to study the thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effects. Including only adiabatic gas physics, we demonstrate that our simulations for the thermal effect are converged down to subarcminute scales. In this model, the angular power spectrum of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies induced by the thermal effect peaks at l ≃ 104, and reaches an amplitude just below current observational upper limits. Fluctuations due to the kinetic effect are a factor of ≃30 lower in power and peak at slightly smaller angular scales. We identify individual SZ sources and compute their counts as a function of source strength and angular size. We present a preliminary investigation of the consequences of an early epoch of energy injection, which tends to suppress power on small angular scales, while giving rise to additional power on large scales from the reheated intergalactic matter (IGM) at high redshift.
Interpreting the Cosmic Infrared Background: Constraints on the Evolution of the Dust-enshrouded Star Formation Rate

The mid-infrared local luminosity function is evolved with redshift to fit the spectrum of the cosmic infrared background (CIRB) at λ > 5 μm and the galaxy counts from various surveys at mid-infrared, far-infrared, and submillimeter wavelengths. A variety of evolutionary models provide satisfactory fits to the CIRB and the number counts. The degeneracy in the range of models cannot be broken by current observations. However, the different evolutionary models yield approximately the same comoving number density of infrared luminous galaxies as a function of redshift. Since the spectrum of the cosmic background at λ > 200 μm is quite sensitive to the evolution at high redshift, i.e., z > 1, all models that fit the counts require a flattening at z ~ 0.8 to avoid overproducing the CIRB. About 80% of the 140 μm CIRB is produced at 0 < z < 1.5, while only about 30% of the 850 μm background is produced within the same redshift range. The nature of the evolution is then translated into a measure of the dust-enshrouded star formation rate (SFR) density as a function of redshift and compared with estimates from rest-frame optical/ultraviolet surveys. The dust-enshrouded SFR density appears to peak at z = 0.8 ± 0.1, much sooner than previously thought, with a value of 0.25 M☉ yr-1 Mpc-3, and remains almost constant up to z ~ 2. At least 70% of this star formation takes place in infrared luminous galaxies with LIR > 1011 L☉. The long-wavelength observations that constrain our evolutionary models do not strongly trace the evolution at z > 2 and a drop-off in the dust-enshrouded SFR density is consistent with both the CIRB spectrum and the number counts. However, a comparison with the infrared luminosity function derived from extinction-corrected rest-frame optical/ultraviolet observations of the Lyman break galaxy population at z ~ 3 suggests that the almost flat comoving SFR density seen between redshifts of 0.8 and 2 extends up to a redshift of z ~ 4.
Pinpointing Influence in Pinterest

The success of most applications that run on top of a social network infrastructure is due to the social ties among their users; the users can get informed about the activity of their friends and acquain-tances, and, hence, new ideas, habits, and products have the opportunity to gain popularity. Therefore, understanding the inﬂuence dynamics on social networks provides us with insights that are useful in designing ef-ﬁcient social network applications. In this work we focus on Pinterest, a social network that is often used to promote commercial products, and investigate the inﬂuence mechanisms in it. We examine the user inde-gree and PageRank as potential estimators of the number of repins and likes the user may receive. We observe that, although both measures are weakly associated with user inﬂuence in Pinterest, PageRank is much more powerful than indegree in revealing how much inﬂuential a user is.
On Solving Boolean Multilevel Optimization Problems

Many combinatorial optimization problems entail a number of hierarchically dependent optimization problems. An often used solution is to associate a suitably large cost with each individual optimization problem, such that the solution of the resulting aggregated optimization problem solves the original set of optimization problems. This paper starts by studying the package upgradeability problem in software distributions. Straightforward solutions based on Maximum Satisfiability (MaxSAT) and pseudo-Boolean (PB) optimization are shown to be ineffective, and unlikely to scale for large problem instances. Afterwards, the package upgradeability problem is related to multilevel optimization. The paper then develops new algorithms for Boolean Multilevel Optimization (BMO) and highlights a number of potential applications. The experimental results indicate that algorithms for BMO allow solving optimization problems that existing MaxSAT and PB solvers would otherwise be unable to solve.
Age and sex related changes in episodic memory function in middle aged and older adults

Age-related change in episodic memory function is commonly reported in older adults. When detected on neuropsychological tests, it may still be difficult to distinguish normal from pathological changes. The present study investigates age-and sex-related changes in a group of healthy middle-aged and older adults, participating in a three-wave study on cognitive aging. The California Verbal Learning test (CVLT-II) was used to assess their episodic memory function. A cross-sectional analysis of results from the first wave showed higher performance in females than males, with a steeper age-related decline in males. This was confirmed in a longitudinal analysis using a mixed effects regression model, but with a lower age-related change and smaller difference between the sexes. Information about learning strategies and errors in the third wave turned out to contribute significantly to explain change in episodic memory function across the three waves. We argue that the results from the longitudinal analyses are generalizable to the population of healthy middle-aged and older individuals, and that they could be useful in guiding clinicians when evaluating individuals with respect to cognitive change.
L‐Carnitine Treatment Improves Cardiac Performance and Restores High‐Energy Phosphate Pools in Cardiomyopathic Syrian Hamster

Hamsters with either the dilated (BIO 53.58) or hypertrophic (BIO 14.6) form of cardiomyopathy and an inbred control strain of hamster (F1B) were treated for 6 months with high-dose L-carnitine (1 g/kg/day i.p.). After treatment, the animals were killed and their hearts perfused by the isolated working technique. Mechanical performance (as indicated by the double product of heart rate and left ventricular [LV] peak systolic pressure) of both carnitine-treated cardiomyopathic groups was increased significantly above their respective sham-treated groups. Associated with these increases in mechanical performance were significant increases in both peak-positive LV dP/dt (index of contractility) and peak negative dP/dt (index of relaxation) in both carnitine-treated myopathic groups. Serum carnitine levels were increased 10-15 times within 2 hours after injection of L-carnitine in all 3 groups. Myocardial free-carnitine levels were increased twofold in both control and dilated myopathic hearts above their respective sham-treated groups, restoring the level in the dilated hearts comparable to those of controls. Myocardial carnitine levels in the hypertrophic group were not significantly affected by treatment. Total high-energy phosphate stores, i.e., ATP plus creatine phosphate, were restored to control levels by L-carnitine treatment in both cardiomyopathic groups. Levels of the breakdown products of ATP were maintained primarily in the more readily convertible adenosine diphosphate and adenosine monophosphate forms in all three treated groups. These changes resulted in significantly higher ratios of (ATP)/(ADP + AMP + adenosine) and (creatine phosphate)/(creatine) in the treated hearts. This is the first study demonstrating that high-dose L-carnitine treatment results in improved cardiac performance and increased myocardial total high-energy phosphate stores in the Syrian hamster model with one of two distinct forms of cardiomyopathy, i.e., dilated or hypertrophic. The mechanisms for these effects of exogenous L-carnitine treatment cannot be totally explained by changes in oxidative energy metabolism.
Differentiating Hemispheric Contributions to Syntax and Semantics in Patients with Left-Hemisphere Lesions

Understanding the relationship between brain and cognition critically depends on data from brain-damaged patients since these provide major constraints on identifying the essential components of brain–behavior systems. Here we relate structural and functional fMRI data with behavioral data in 21 human patients with chronic left hemisphere (LH) lesions and a range of language impairments to investigate the controversial issue of the role of the hemispheres in different language functions. We address this issue within a dual neurocognitive model of spoken language comprehension in which core linguistic functions, e.g., syntax, depend critically upon an intact left frontotemporal system, whereas more general communicative abilities, e.g., semantics, are supported by a bilateral frontotemporal system and may recover from LH damage through normal or enhanced activity in the intact right hemisphere. The fMRI study used a word-monitoring task that differentiated syntactic and semantic aspects of sentence comprehension. We distinguished overlapping interactions between structure, neural activity, and performance using joint independent components analysis, identifying two structural–functional networks, each with a distinct relationship with performance. Syntactic performance correlated with tissue integrity and activity in a left frontotemporal network. Semantic performance correlated with activity in right superior/middle temporal gyri regardless of tissue integrity. Right temporal activity did not differ between patients and controls, suggesting that the semantic network is degenerately organized, with regions in both hemispheres able to perform similar computations. Our findings support the dual neurocognitive model of spoken language comprehension and emphasize the importance of linguistic specificity in investigations of language recovery in patients.
Multicolor Ramsey Numbers For Complete Bipartite Versus Complete Graphs

Let H1,. ,Hk be graphs. The multicolor Ramsey number r(H1,.,Hk) is the minimum integer r such that in every edge‐coloring of Kr by k colors, there is a monochromatic copy of Hi in color i for some 1≤i≤k . In this paper, we investigate the multicolor Ramsey number r(K2,t,.,K2,t,Km) , determining the asymptotic behavior up to a polylogarithmic factor for almost all ranges of t and m. Several different constructions are used for the lower bounds, including the random graph and explicit graphs built from finite fields. A technique of Alon and Rödl using the probabilistic method and spectral arguments is employed to supply tight lower bounds. A sample result is c1m2tlog4(mt)≤r(K2,t,K2,t,Km)≤c2m2tlog2mfor any t and m, where c1 and c2 are absolute constants.