Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhanced Activation of Motor Execution Networks Using Action Observation Combined with Imagination of Lower Limb Movements

The combination of first-person observation and motor imagery, i.e. first-person observation of limbs with online motor imagination, is commonly used in interactive 3D computer gaming and in some movie scenes. These scenarios are designed to induce a cognitive process in which a subject imagines himself/herself acting as the agent in the displayed movement situation. Despite the ubiquity of this type of interaction and its therapeutic potential, its relationship to passive observation and imitation during observation has not been directly studied using an interactive paradigm. In the present study we show activation resulting from observation, coupled with online imagination and with online imitation of a goal-directed lower limb movement using functional MRI (fMRI) in a mixed block/event-related design. Healthy volunteers viewed a video (first-person perspective) of a foot kicking a ball. They were instructed to observe-only the action (O), observe and simultaneously imagine performing the action (O-MI), or imitate the action (O-IMIT). We found that when O-MI was compared to O, activation was enhanced in the ventralpremotor cortex bilaterally, left inferior parietal lobule and left insula. The O-MI and O-IMIT conditions shared many activation foci in motor relevant areas as confirmed by conjunction analysis. These results show that (i) combining observation with motor imagery (O-MI) enhances activation compared to observation-only (O) in the relevant foot motor network and in regions responsible for attention, for control of goal-directed movements and for the awareness of causing an action, and (ii) it is possible to extensively activate the motor execution network using O-MI, even in the absence of overt movement. Our results may have implications for the development of novel virtual reality interactions for neurorehabilitation interventions and other applications involving training of motor tasks.
Similarities in Gene Expression Profiles during In Vitro Aging of Primary Human Embryonic Lung and Foreskin Fibroblasts

Replicative senescence is of fundamental importance for the process of cellular aging, since it is a property of most of our somatic cells. Here, we elucidated this process by comparing gene expression changes, measured by RNA-seq, in fibroblasts originating from two different tissues, embryonic lung (MRC-5) and foreskin (HFF), at five different time points during their transition into senescence. Although the expression patterns of both fibroblast cell lines can be clearly distinguished, the similar differential expression of an ensemble of genes was found to correlate well with their transition into senescence, with only a minority of genes being cell line specific. Clustering-based approaches further revealed common signatures between the cell lines. Investigation of the mRNA expression levels at various time points during the lifespan of either of the fibroblasts resulted in a number of monotonically up- and downregulated genes which clearly showed a novel strong link to aging and senescence related processes which might be functional. In terms of expression profiles of differentially expressed genes with age, common genes identified here have the potential to rule the transition into senescence of embryonic lung and foreskin fibroblasts irrespective of their different cellular origin.
Regulation of Nucleus Accumbens Activity by the Hypothalamic Neuropeptide Melanin-Concentrating Hormone

The lateral hypothalamus and the nucleus accumbens shell (AcbSh) are brain regions important for food intake. The AcbSh contains high levels of receptor for melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH), a lateral hypothalamic peptide critical for feeding and metabolism. MCH receptor (MCHR1) activation in the AcbSh increases food intake, while AcbSh MCHR1 blockade reduces feeding. Here biochemical and cellular mechanisms of MCH action in the rodent AcbSh are described. A reduction of phosphorylation of GluR1 at serine 845 (pSer845) is shown to occur after both pharmacological and genetic manipulations of MCHR1 activity. These changes depend upon signaling through Gi/o, and result in decreased surface expression of GluR1-containing AMPA receptors (AMPARs). Electrophysiological analysis of medium spiny neurons (MSNs) in the AcbSh revealed decreased amplitude of AMPAR-mediated synaptic events (mEPSCs) with MCH treatment. In addition, MCH suppressed action potential firing MSNs through K+ channel activation. Finally, in vivo recordings confirmed that MCH reduces neuronal cell firing in the AcbSh in freely moving animals. The ability of MCH to reduce cell firing in the AcbSh is consistent with a general model from other pharmacological and electrophysiological studies whereby reduced AcbSh neuronal firing leads to food intake. The current work integrates the hypothalamus into this model, providing biochemical and cellular mechanisms whereby metabolic and limbic signals converge to regulate food intake.
Ligation of CD27 on B Cells In Vivo during Primary Immunization Enhances Commitment to Memory B Cell Responses 1

Ligation of CD27 on B cells has been shown to inhibit terminal differentiation of activated murine B cells into plasma cells. We show in this study that this inhibition is accompanied by an enhanced movement of activated B cells toward differentiation into memory cells. Treatment of mice with anti-CD27 during immunization leads to the generation of greater numbers of Ag-binding B cells in draining lymph nodes that persist for longer periods of time, and they contain a greater proportion of cells of a postgerminal center phenotype. Limiting dilution analyses reveal that they contain a higher frequency of cells that can be stimulated to secrete specific IgG, and adoptive transfer experiments confirm that they can generate higher secondary responses in carrier-primed recipients. Remarkably, significant secondary responses are also seen following primary immunization with a T-independent Ag in the presence of anti-CD27, confirming that ligation of CD27 on B cells during priming induces differentiation into the memory lineage. Treatment with anti-CD27 during priming also increases the average affinity of the secondary response, suggesting that high affinity clones generated early in a primary response may normally differentiate preferentially into plasma cells and are rescued from this fate by CD27 ligation. Anti-CD40 treatment shows similar effects in vivo. However, unlike CD27, CD40 coligation also enhances proliferation, survival, and isotype switching of LPS-stimulated B cells, suggesting that the two receptors may enhance commitment to B cell memory by different mechanisms, or that a common mechanism is used through both receptors that does not involve cell cycle control or survival.
Intranasal and transantral ethmoidectomy: A 20‐year experience

Ethmoidectomy is an operation that has engendered controversy concerning the best route of surgical access. The purpose of this study was to present the results of the authors' experience in more than 1300 intranasal spheno‐ethmoidectomies and transantral sphenoethmoidectomies performed over a 20‐year period. The authors contend that the most effective ethmoidectomy is the most complete ethmoidectomy and have previously presented a case for ethmoid marsupialization. Polyp recurrence rates of less than 20% and a major complication rate of less than 1% were reported in this study.
Automotive electric motors, generators, and actuator drive systems with reduced or no permanent magnets and innovative design concepts [Special section intro.]

Due to environmental and energy concerns, electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid EVs (HEVs) are gaining increased attention. At the heart of the drive system of these vehicles is the electric machine and drive. For these applications, high power density, high torque density, wide speed range, and efficiency are of primary importance. To meet these demands, interior-permanent-magnet (IPM) machines have been widely used. However, IPM machines use rare-earth PMs (usually neodymium-iron-boron magnets) in their structure. The price of these types of rare-earth PMs has increased by orders of magnitude over several years. Due to the high cost and limited supply of this material, the use of IPM machines in HEV applications is now being challenged. In fact, many researchers are working on other machines that can compete with IPM machines in terms of size, efficiency, power, and torque density. With consideration of the above points, there is a timeliness to this important topic; thus, we are pleased to present this "Special Section on Automotive Electric Motors, Generators, and Actuator Drive Systems With Reduced or No Permanent Magnets and Innovative Design Concepts" of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics that consists of 12 papers reporting on the most recent research on automotive electric drive machines. Most of these papers focus on machines with less or no rare-earth PM material in their structure, although control is also important, and there are some papers related to this topic.
Unscented Kalman Filter for Brain-Machine Interfaces

Brain machine interfaces (BMIs) are devices that convert neural signals into commands to directly control artificial actuators, such as limb prostheses. Previous real-time methods applied to decoding behavioral commands from the activity of populations of neurons have generally relied upon linear models of neural tuning and were limited in the way they used the abundant statistical information contained in the movement profiles of motor tasks. Here, we propose an n-th order unscented Kalman filter which implements two key features: (1) use of a non-linear (quadratic) model of neural tuning which describes neural activity significantly better than commonly-used linear tuning models, and (2) augmentation of the movement state variables with a history of n-1 recent states, which improves prediction of the desired command even before incorporating neural activity information and allows the tuning model to capture relationships between neural activity and movement at multiple time offsets simultaneously. This new filter was tested in BMI experiments in which rhesus monkeys used their cortical activity, recorded through chronically implanted multielectrode arrays, to directly control computer cursors. The 10th order unscented Kalman filter outperformed the standard Kalman filter and the Wiener filter in both off-line reconstruction of movement trajectories and real-time, closed-loop BMI operation.
Using ghost edges for classification in sparsely labeled networks

We address the problem of classification in partially labeled networks (a.k.a. within-network classification) where observed class labels are sparse. Techniques for statistical relational learning have been shown to perform well on network classification tasks by exploiting dependencies between class labels of neighboring nodes. However, relational classifiers can fail when unlabeled nodes have too few labeled neighbors to support learning (during training phase) and/or inference (during testing phase). This situation arises in real-world problems when observed labels are sparse. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to within-network classification that combines aspects of statistical relational learning and semi-supervised learning to improve classification performance in sparse networks. Our approach works by adding "ghost edges" to a network, which enable the flow of information from labeled to unlabeled nodes. Through experiments on real-world data sets, we demonstrate that our approach performs well across a range of conditions where existing approaches, such as collective classification and semi-supervised learning, fail. On all tasks, our approach improves area under the ROC curve (AUC) by up to 15 points over existing approaches. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our approach runs in time proportional to L • E, where L is the number of labeled nodes and E is the number of edges.
A high-throughput assay for rat liver golgi and Saccharomyces cerevisiae-expressed murine CMP-N-acetylneuraminic acid transport proteins.

Rat liver Golgi and Saccharomyces cerevisiae-expressed CMP-Neu5Ac transport protein were reconstituted in phosphatidylcholine liposomes and transport of CMP-Neu5Ac into these proteoliposomes was determined. The separation of transported substrate from free substrate was performed using Multiscreen minicolumns loaded with Sephadex G-50 resin (fine). The CMP-Neu5Ac transport characteristics of the rat liver Golgi and S. cerevisiae-expressed transporters, determined using this separation system, were very similar to those previously reported. Inhibition studies, utilizing the above procedure, revealed that the main structural features required for recognition of glycosyl nucleosides by the rat liver Golgi CMP-Neu5Ac transport protein were the nature of the nucleoside base and the anomeric configuration of the associated carbohydrate. In general, pyrimidine-based glycosyl nucleosides were found to inhibit transport to a far greater extent than purine-based glycosyl nucleosides, an observation that is in good agreement with previous reports. These results indicate that the reconstitution procedure, in conjunction with Multiscreen minicolumns, is an effective high-throughput method for the determination of CMP-Neu5Ac transport.
Optimizing State-Intensive Non-Blocking Queries Using Run-time Adaptation

Main memory is a critical resource when processing non-blocking queries with state intensive operators that require real-time responses. While partitioned parallel processing can alleviate the stringent memory demands in some cases, in general even in a distributed system main memory remains bounded. In this work, we thus investigate the integration of two run-time adaptation techniques, namely, state spill to disk and state relocation to an alternate machine, to handle this memory shortage problem. We analyze the tradeoffs regarding key factors affecting these two run-lime operator state adaptation techniques in a modern compute-cluster environment. Two strategics, lazy-disk and active-disk, are then proposed that integrate both state spill and state relocation adaptations with different emphasis on local versus global decision making. Extensive experiments of the proposed query processing system conducted on a compute-cluster (not merely a simulation) confirm the effectiveness of these strategies.
In-duct matching strategies

• A submitted manuscript is the author's version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.
Ex vivo Nicotine Stimulation Augments the Efficacy of Therapeutic Bone Marrow–Derived Dendritic Cell Vaccination

Purpose: To explore the preventive and therapeutic antitumor effects of nicotine-treated immature dendritic cells (imDC). Experimental Design: First, bone marrow–derived imDCs were stimulated with nicotine in vitro, and nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, costimulator molecules, chemokine receptor, and endocytosis ability of imDCs were detected by flow cytometry. Second, the DC-dependent antigen-specific T-cell proliferation, CTL priming, and interleukin-12 secretion were determined by flow cytometry, enzyme-linked immunospot assay, and ELISA, respectively. Finally, preventive and therapeutic antitumor effects of such imDCs were determined by i.p. transfer against tumor challenge or implantation in mice. Results: Nicotine could up-regulate expression of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, costimulatory molecules, such as CD80, CD86, and CD40, adhesion molecule CD11b, and chemokine receptor CCR7 and enhance endocytosis ability of imDCs. In addition, nicotine could promote imDC-dependent CTL priming and interleukin-12 secretion in vitro. Most importantly, systemic transfer of ex vivo nicotine-stimulated imDCs could reveal preventive and therapeutic effect on tumor development. Conclusions:Ex vivo nicotine stimulation can significantly improve the efficacy of imDCs for adaptive therapy of cancer and nicotine-treated imDCs may be considered as a potential candidate for preventive and therapeutic tumor vaccination.
Alcohol consumption, setting, gender and activity as predictors of injury: a population-based case-control study.

OBJECTIVE A population-based case-control design was employed to quantify the risk of injury after consumption of alcohol as a function of setting, concurrent activity and usual drinking habits. METHOD A total of 797 cases (66.6% men) and 797 controls (57.7% women) were interviewed. The response rate was 83% for eligible cases approached for an interview. Cases were injured patients from a hospital emergency department. Community controls used were each paired with a case on suburb of residence, and interviewed regarding their activities in the 6-hour period preceding their paired case's injury. RESULTS Self-reported alcohol consumption was consistent with both medical records and breath-analyzer tests. Drinking any alcohol and using prescribed medication in the prior 6 hours were both associated with significantly increased risk of injury when controlling for demographic and setting variables. Use of illicit drugs (mainly cannabis) was associated with reduced risk of injury. Setting (e.g., recreational, work) and activity (e.g., sport, travel, work) variables were also independently associated with risk of injury. The risk of injury for women was significantly elevated for any consumption of alcohol; for men it was elevated only when consumption exceeded 90 grams. CONCLUSIONS These data confirm earlier findings that risk of injury for women for a given level of consumption is greater than for men. They extend earlier findings by identifying significant setting, activity and drug use variables predictive of injury. In addition, when these latter variables are controlled, it is found that for women, but not for men, the risk of injury is significantly elevated even at low levels of alcohol intake.
An experiment to evaluate the benefits of processing aged transformer oil

The mineral oil/paper insulating medium used in high voltage applications is subject to ageing through electrical, thermal and mechanical stresses. A significant factor in ageing is chemical action through moisture, metal contaminants and oxidation. The stresses change the properties of the paper and oil, which ages the insulation system. Transmission and distribution operators use condition monitoring and maintenance programs in an attempt to prolong the life of the insulation and hence the transmission equipment. Condition monitoring typically involves moisture analysis, dissolved gas analysis and furanic analysis of the oil. Maintenance involves purification of the oil to remove contaminants. Additional monitoring techniques may be used such as infra-red (IR) spectroscopy and dielectric analysis. However, without controlled ageing experiments under laboratory conditions the applicability of condition monitoring particularly for lifetime prediction is questionable. An opportunity arose from the recent scrapping of an aged high voltage transformer to analyze the diagnostic parameters of typical transformer oil aged under service conditions and compare these results with oil aged under control conditions. The aim is to understand the effects of reprocessing and ageing on some physical, chemical and dielectric properties. Some measurable properties of ageing and the benefits of oil maintenance are discussed in this paper
Synthesis and characterization of organosoluble, thermoplastic elastomer/clay nanocomposites

We synthesized organosoluble, thermoplastic elastomer/clay nanocomposites by making a jelly like solution of ethylene vinyl acetate containing 28% vinyl acetate (EVA-28) and blending it with organomodified montmorillonite. Sodium montmorillonite (Na+-MMT) was made organophilic by the intercalation of dodecyl ammonium ions. X-ray diffraction patterns of Na+-MMT and its corresponding organomodified dodecyl ammonium ion intercalated montmorillonite (12Me-MMT) showed an increase in the interlayer spacing from 11.94 to 15.78 A. However, X-ray diffraction patterns of the thermoplastic elastomer and its hybrids with organomodified clay contents up to 6 wt % exhibited the disappearance of basal reflection peaks within an angle range of 3–10°, supporting the formation of a delaminated configuration. A hybrid containing 8 wt % 12Me-MMT revealed a small hump within an angle range of 5–6° because of the aggregation of silicate layers in the EVA-28 matrix. A transmission electron microscopy image of the same hybrid showed 3–5-nm 12Me-MMT particles dispersed in the thermoplastic elastomer matrix; that is, it led to the formation of nanocomposites or molecular-level composites with a delaminated configuration. The formation of nanocomposites was reflected through the unexpected improvement of thermal and mechanical properties; for example, the tensile strength of a nanocomposite containing only 4 wt % organophilic clay was doubled in comparison with that of pure EVA-28, and the thermal stability of the same nanocomposite was higher by about 34 °C. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 40: 2065–2072, 2002
Thrombophilic Factors Do Not Predict Outcomes in Renal Transplant Recipients Under Prophylactic Acetylsalicylic Acid

A cohort of recipients of renal transplant after 2000 (N = 310) was prospectively screened on the day of transplantation and 1 month later for a panel of 11 thrombophilic factors to assess their effect on posttransplant outcomes. All patients received prophylactic acetylsalicylic acid, started before transplantation.
No Effects of Antidepressants on Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia

Abstract Negative symptoms are common in schizophrenia, but often difficult to differentiate from depression. They are associated with long-term impairment and do not respond well to current treatment approaches. Even though antidepressants are commonly prescribed in schizophrenia, their beneficial effect is still under debate. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the effect of serotonergic versus noradrenergic antidepressant add-on therapy on negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Fifty-eight patients with schizophrenia according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria and with predominant negative symptoms were randomized in a double-blind design to add-on treatment with citalopram, reboxetine, or placebo for 4 weeks. Analysis of covariance with repeated-measures design was used to compare improvement between treatment groups in scores of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. A &khgr;2 test was used to compare responder rates between treatment groups. Repeated-measures analysis of covariance revealed no differences between treatment groups over time (treatment × time, not statistically significant) for Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale subscales. Although a subgroup analysis in subjects fulfilling the criteria for minor depression was suggestive of higher responder rates in the citalopram group compared with reboxetine, the results did not reach significance level. Our findings do not support a beneficial effect of adjunctive antidepressant treatment on negative symptoms in schizophrenia. However, depressive symptoms are reduced in patients with minor depression by citalopram but not reboxetine, which is in line with previous findings.