Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Obesity and inflammation: the linking mechanism and the complications

Obesity is the accumulation of abnormal or excessive fat that may interfere with the maintenance of an optimal state of health. The excess of macronutrients in the adipose tissues stimulates them to release inflammatory mediators such as tumor necrosis factor α and interleukin 6, and reduces production of adiponectin, predisposing to a pro-inflammatory state and oxidative stress. The increased level of interleukin 6 stimulates the liver to synthesize and secrete C-reactive protein. As a risk factor, inflammation is an imbedded mechanism of developed cardiovascular diseases including coagulation, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and diabetes mellitus. It is also associated with development of non-cardiovascular diseases such as psoriasis, depression, cancer, and renal diseases. On the other hand, a reduced level of adiponectin, a significant predictor of cardiovascular mortality, is associated with impaired fasting glucose, leading to type-2 diabetes development, metabolic abnormalities, coronary artery calcification, and stroke. Finally, managing obesity can help reduce the risks of cardiovascular diseases and poor outcome via inhibiting inflammatory mechanisms.
Controlling the Perceived Material in an Impact Sound Synthesizer

In this paper, we focused on the identification of the perceptual properties of impacted materials to provide an intuitive control of an impact sound synthesizer. To investigate such properties, impact sounds from everyday life objects, made of different materials (wood, metal and glass), were recorded and analyzed. These sounds were synthesized using an analysis-synthesis technique and tuned to the same chroma. Sound continua were created to simulate progressive transitions between materials. Sounds from these continua were then used in a categorization experiment to determine sound categories representative of each material (called typical sounds). We also examined changes in electrical brain activity (using event related potentials (ERPs) method) associated with the categorization of these typical sounds. Moreover, acoustic analysis was conducted to investigate the relevance of acoustic descriptors known to be relevant for both timbre perception and material identification. Both acoustic and electrophysiological data confirmed the importance of damping and highlighted the relevance of spectral content for material perception. Based on these findings, controls for damping and spectral shaping were tested in synthesis applications. A global control strategy, with a three-layer architecture, was proposed for the synthesizer allowing the user to intuitively navigate in a “material space” and defining impact sounds directly from the material label. A formal perceptual evaluation was finally conducted to validate the proposed control strategy.
Building on Redundancy: Factoid Question Answering, Robust Retrieval and the "Other"

We have explored how redundancy based techniques can be used in improving factoid question answering, definitional questions (“other”), and robust retrieval. For the factoids, we explored the meta approach: we submit the questions to the several open domain question answering systems available on the Web and applied our redundancy-based triangulation algorithm to analyze their outputs in order to identify the most promising answers. Our results support the added value of the meta approach: the performance of the combined system surpassed the underlying performances of its components. To answer definitional (“other”) questions, we were looking for the sentences containing re-occurring pairs of noun entities containing the elements of the target. For robust retrieval, we applied our redundancy based Internet mining technique to identify the concepts (single word terms or phrases) that were highly related to the topic (query) and expanded the queries with them. All our results are above the mean performance in the categories in which we have participated, with one of our robust runs being the best in its category among all 24 participants. Overall, our findings support the hypothesis that using as much as possible textual data, specifically such as mined from the World Wide Web, is extremely promising.
Group disparities and health information: a study of online access for the underserved

The Internet is an oft-cited learning resource, useful to consumers who seek to educate themselves on specific technical issues or knowledge-intensive topics. Availability of public-access Internet portals and decreasing costs of personal computers have created a consensus that unequal access to information, or a “Digital Divide”, presents a like problem specific to information for uninsured or under-insured healthcare consumers. Access to information, however, is now an essential part of consumer-centric healthcare management. To date little research has been done to differentiate levels of health information access on the Web by different subgroups, linking online socioeconomic characteristics and health seeking behaviors. This analysis of a landmark Pew Foundation survey seeks to differentiate and delineate information access, or lack of desired access, across targeted, “digitally underserved” subgroups.
A Novel Variant in the Platelet Endothelial Aggregation Receptor-1 Gene Is Associated With Increased Platelet Aggregability

Objective—Platelet endothelial aggregation receptor-1 (PEAR1) is a recently identified platelet transmembrane protein that becomes activated by platelet contact. We looked for novel genetic variants in PEAR1 and studied their association with agonist-induced native platelet aggregation and with the inhibitory effect of aspirin on platelets. Methods and Results—We genotyped PEAR1 for 10 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), selected for optimal gene coverage at a density of 4 kb, in 1486 apparently healthy individuals from two generations of families with premature CAD. Subjects had a mean age of 45 years; 62% were white and 38% black. Platelet aggregation to collagen, epinephrine, and ADP was measured in platelet rich plasma, at baseline and after 2 weeks of aspirin (ASA, 81 mg/d), and genotype-phenotype associations were examined separately by ethnicity using multivariable generalized linear models adjusted for covariates. The C allele of SNP rs2768759 [A/C], located in the promoter region of the gene, was common in whites and uncommon in blacks (allele frequency 70.2% versus 17.7%). The C allele was generally associated in both ethnic groups with increased aggregation of native platelets to each agonist. After ASA, the associations were stronger and more consistent and remained significant when post-ASA aggregation was adjusted for baseline aggregation, consistent with a relationship between the C allele and reduced platelet responsiveness to ASA. The PEAR1 SNP explained up to 6.9% of the locus specific genetic variance in blacks and up to 2.5% of the genetic variance in whites after ASA. Conclusion—PEAR1 appears to play an important role in agonist-induced platelet aggregation and in the response to ASA in both whites and blacks.
Real-time text tracking in natural scenes

The authors present a system that automatically detects, recognises and tracks text in natural scenes in real-time. The focus of the author's method is on large text found in outdoor environments, such as shop signs, street names, billboards and so on. Built on top of their previously developed techniques for scene text detection and orientation estimation, the main contribution of this work is to present a complete end-to-end scene text reading system based on text tracking. They propose to use a set of unscented Kalman filters to maintain each text region's identity and to continuously track the homography transformation of the text into a fronto-parallel view, thereby being resilient to erratic camera motion and wide baseline changes in orientation. The system is designed for continuous, unsupervised operation in a handheld or wearable system over long periods of time. It is completely automatic and features quick failure recovery and interactive text reading. It is also highly parallelised to maximise usage of available processing power and achieve real-time operation. They demonstrate the performance of the system on sequences recorded in outdoor scenarios.
Neuroeconomics: How Neuroscience Can Inform Economics

Neuroeconomics uses knowledge about brain mechanisms to inform economic analysis, and roots economics in biology. It opens up the "black box" of the brain, much as organizational economics adds detail to the theory of the firm. Neuroscientists use many tools— including brain imaging, behavior of patients with localized brain lesions, animal behavior, and recording single neuron activity. The key insight for economics is that the brain is composed of multiple systems which interact. Controlled systems ("executive function") interrupt automatic ones. Emotions and cognition both guide decisions. Just as prices and allocations emerge from the interaction of two processes—supply and demand— individual decisions can be modeled as the result of two (or more) processes interacting. Indeed, "dual-process" models of this sort are better rooted in neuroscientific fact, and more empirically accurate, than single-process models (such as utility-maximization). We discuss how brain evidence complicates standard assumptions about basic preference, to include homeostasis and other kinds of state-dependence. We also discuss applications to intertemporal choice, risk and decision making, and game theory. Intertemporal choice appears to be domain-specific and heavily influenced by emotion. The simplified s-d of quasi-hyperbolic discounting is supported by activation in distinct regions of limbic and cortical systems. In risky decision, imaging data tentatively support the idea that gains and losses are coded separately, and that ambiguity is distinct from risk, because it activates fear and discomfort regions. (Ironically, lesion patients who do not receive fear signals in prefrontal cortex are "rationally" neutral toward ambiguity.) Game theory studies show the effect of brain regions implicated in "theory of mind", correlates of strategic skill, and effects of hormones and other biological variables. Finally, economics can contribute to neuroscience because simple rational-choice models are useful for understanding highly-evolved behavior like motor actions that earn rewards, and Bayesian integration of sensorimotor information.
Terra MODIS Band 27 Electronic Crosstalk Effect and Its Removal

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is one of the primary instruments in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Earth observing system. The first MODIS instrument was launched in December, 1999 onboard the Terra spacecraft. MODIS has 36 bands, covering a wavelength range 0.4-14.4 μm. MODIS band 27 (6.72 μm) is a water vapor band, which is designed to be insensitive to Earth surface features. In recent Earth view images of Terra band 27, surface feature contamination is clearly seen with pronounced striping. In this paper, it is shown that these band-27 issues are caused by electronic crosstalk from bands 28-30. An algorithm using a linear approximation is developed to correct the crosstalk effect. The crosstalk coefficients are derived from Terra MODIS lunar observations. They show that the crosstalk is strongly detector-dependent and the crosstalk pattern has changed in a noticeable fashion since launch. The crosstalk contributions were positive to the instrument response of band 27 early in the mission but became negative and much larger in magnitude at later stages of the mission for most detectors of the band. The algorithms are applied to both the black body (BB) calibration and the MODIS L1B calibrated products. With the crosstalk effect significantly removed, the calibration coefficients of Terra MODIS band 27 derived from the BB show that the detector differences become smaller. With the algorithms applied to MODIS L1B products, the Earth surface features are significantly removed, thereby restoring the radiometric balance of the band and substantially reducing the striping features in the image.
Association of DISC1/TRAX haplotypes with schizophrenia, reduced prefrontal gray matter, and impaired short- and long-term memory.

CONTEXT Chromosome 1q42 is among several genomic regions showing replicated evidence of linkage with schizophrenia, but the specific susceptibility mechanisms underlying this relationship remain to be identified. OBJECTIVE To examine a series of haplotype blocks of single-nucleotide polymorphic markers from a segment of 1q42 spanning the disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) and translin-associated factor X (TRAX) genes for association with schizophrenia and several endophenotypic traits thought to be involved in disease pathogenesis. DESIGN Population-based twin cohort study. SETTING Finland. PARTICIPANTS Two hundred thirty-six subjects, consisting of 7 twin pairs concordant for schizophrenia (6 monozygotic [MZ] and 1 dizygotic [DZ]), 52 pairs discordant for schizophrenia (20 MZ and 32 DZ), and 59 demographically balanced normal pairs (28 MZ and 31 DZ), were drawn from a twin cohort consisting of all of the same-sex twins born in Finland from 1940 through 1957. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Psychiatric diagnosis, performance on neurocognitive tests of short- and long-term memory, and gray matter volume measurements taken from high-resolution magnetic resonance images. RESULTS A common haplotype incorporating 3 single-nucleotide polymorphic markers near the translocation break point of DISC1 (odds ratio, 2.6 [P = .02]) and a rare haplotype incorporating 4 markers from the DISC1 and TRAX genes (odds ratio, 13.0 [P = .001]) were significantly overrepresented among individuals with schizophrenia. These haplotypes were also associated with several quantitative endophenotypic traits previously observed to covary with schizophrenia and genetic liability to schizophrenia, including impairments in short- and long-term memory functioning and reduced gray matter density in the prefrontal cortex, as demonstrated using a population-based brain atlas method, with a trend toward association with reduced hippocampal volume. CONCLUSIONS Specific alleles of the DISC1 and TRAX genes on 1q42 appear to contribute to genetic risk for schizophrenia through disruptive effects on the structure and function of the prefrontal cortex, medial temporal lobe, and other brain regions. These effects are consistent with their production of proteins that play roles in neuritic outgrowth, neuronal migration, synaptogenesis, and glutamatergic neurotransmission.
High-throughput single-microparticle imaging flow analyzer

Optical microscopy is one of the most widely used diagnostic methods in scientific, industrial, and biomedical applications. However, while useful for detailed examination of a small number (< 10,000) of microscopic entities, conventional optical microscopy is incapable of statistically relevant screening of large populations (> 100,000,000) with high precision due to its low throughput and limited digital memory size. We present an automated flow-through single-particle optical microscope that overcomes this limitation by performing sensitive blur-free image acquisition and nonstop real-time image-recording and classification of microparticles during high-speed flow. This is made possible by integrating ultrafast optical imaging technology, self-focusing microfluidic technology, optoelectronic communication technology, and information technology. To show the system’s utility, we demonstrate high-throughput image-based screening of budding yeast and rare breast cancer cells in blood with an unprecedented throughput of 100,000 particles/s and a record false positive rate of one in a million.
Cohort Profile: The Mother-Child Cohort in Crete, Greece (Rhea Study).

cytokinesis-block micronuclei (CBMN) assay using whole blood according to the standardized protocol for the semi-automated image analysis system. 20–22 We recorded the total numbers of bi-nucleated T lymphocytes and calculated MN frequency per 1000 bi-nucleated T lymphocytes.
Effect of precipitates on grain growth in non-oriented silicon steel

Precipitates and grain sizes in non-oriented silicon steel samples, which were hot-rolled (HR), continuously annealed (CA), and stress-relief-annealed (SA), were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with electron back-scattered diffraction. The average grain sizes of the HR, CA, and SA samples were 28, 46, and 46 μm, respectively. SEM observations revealed that the precipitates were mainly dispersed inside grains in the HR and the CA samples, but mainly at grain boundaries in the SA sample. The density of precipitates was highest in the SA sample and lowest in the HR sample. Precipitates at the grain boundaries, which were identified as manganese sulfides, were nearly spherical, their diameter ranging from 0.3 to 0.7 μm. We calculated the pining force exerted by grain-boundary precipitates and found that it outweighed the driving force of the grain growth that was controlled by boundary curvature.
Beyond Traditional Newspaper Advertisement: Leveraging Facebook-Targeted Advertisement to Recruit Long-Term Smokers for Research

Background Smokers are a stigmatized population, but an important population to reach for the purpose of research. Therefore, innovative recruitment methods are needed that are both cost-effective and efficacious in recruiting this population. Objective The aim of the present article was to evaluate the feasibility of Facebook-targeted advertisement to recruit long-term smokers eligible for lung cancer screening for a descriptive, cross-sectional survey. Methods A social media recruitment campaign was launched using Facebook-targeted advertisement to target age and keywords related to tobacco smoking in the Facebook users profile, interests, and likes. A 3-day newspaper advertisement recruitment campaign was used as a comparison. The study that used both recruitment methods aimed to test the psychometric properties of 4 newly developed lung cancer screening health belief scales. Data were collected via cross-sectional survey methodology using an Web-based survey platform. Results The Facebook-targeted advertisements were viewed 56,621 times over an 18-day campaign in 2015 in the United States. The advertisement campaign yielded 1121 unique clicks to the Web-based survey platform at a cost of $1.51 per completed survey. Of those who clicked through to the study survey platform, 423 (37.7%) consented to participate; 92 (8.2%) dropped out during completion of the survey yielding a final study pool of 331 completed surveys. Recruitment by newspaper advertisement yielded a total of 30 participants in response to a 3-day advertisement campaign; recruitment efficacy resulted in 10 participants/day at $40.80 per completed survey. Participants represented current (n=182; 51%) and former smokers (n=178; 49%) with a mean age of 63.4 years (SD 6.0). Cost of the advertisement campaign was $500 total for the 18-day campaign. Conclusions Recruitment by Facebook was more efficacious and cost-effective compared with newspaper advertisement. Facebook offers a new venue for recruitment into research studies that offer the potential for wider reach at a lower cost while providing privacy and flexibility for potential study participants. The study’s findings extend recent work of other researchers who have demonstrated Facebook’s utility with younger smokers, and Facebook is an effective tool to recruit older smokers. Furthermore, Facebook is a cost-effective alternative to traditional newspaper advertisement offering a new, affordable venue to recruit large numbers of older smokers efficiently.
Tropomyosin distinguishes between the two actin-binding sites of villin and affects actin-binding properties of other brush border proteins

The intestinal epithelial cell brush border exhibits distinct localizations of the actin-binding protein components of its cytoskeleton. The protein interactions that dictate this subcellular organization are as yet unknown. We report here that tropomyosin, which is found in the rootlet but not in the microvillus core, can bind to and saturate the actin of isolated cores, and can cause the dissociation of up to 30% of the villin and fimbrin from the cores but does not affect actin binding by 110-kD calmodulin. Low speed sedimentation assays and ultrastructural analysis show that the tropomyosin-containing cores remain bundled, and that 110-kD calmodulin remains attached to the core filaments. The effects of tropomyosin on the binding and bundling activities of villin were subsequently determined by sedimentation assays. Villin binds to F-actin with an apparent Ka of 7 X 10(5) M-1 at approximate physiological ionic strength, which is an order of magnitude lower than that of intestinal epithelial cell tropomyosin. Binding of villin to F-actin presaturated with tropomyosin is inhibited relative to that to pure F-actin, although full saturation can be obtained by increasing the villin concentration. Villin also inhibits the binding of tropomyosin to F- actin, although not to the same extent. However, tropomyosin strongly inhibits bundling of F-actin by villin, and bundling is not recovered even at a saturating villin concentration. Since villin has two actin- binding sites, both of which are required for bundling, the fact that tropomyosin inhibits bundling of F-actin under conditions where actin is fully saturated with villin strongly suggests that tropomyosin's and one of villin's F-actin-binding sites overlap. These results indicate that villin and tropomyosin could compete for actin filaments in the intestinal epithelial cell, and that tropomyosin may play a major role in the regulation of microfilament structure in these and other cells.
Modeling invasive alien plant species in river systems: Interaction with native ecosystem engineers and effects on hydro‐morphodynamic processes

Invasive alien plant species negatively impact native plant communities by out‐competing species or changing abiotic and biotic conditions in their introduced range. River systems are especially vulnerable to biological invasions, because waterways can function as invasion corridors. Understanding interactions of invasive and native species and their combined effects on river dynamics is essential for developing cost‐effective management strategies. However, numerical models for simulating long‐term effects of these processes are lacking. This paper investigates how an invasive alien plant species affects native riparian vegetation and hydro‐morphodynamics. A morphodynamic model has been coupled to a dynamic vegetation model that predicts establishment, growth and mortality of riparian trees. We introduced an invasive alien species with life‐history traits based on Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica), and investigated effects of low‐ and high propagule pressure on invasion speed, native vegetation and hydro‐morphodynamic processes. Results show that high propagule pressure leads to a decline in native species cover due to competition and the creation of unfavorable native colonization sites. With low propagule pressure the invader facilitates native seedling survival by creating favorable hydro‐morphodynamic conditions at colonization sites. With high invader abundance, water levels are raised and sediment transport is reduced during the growing season. In winter, when the above‐ground invader biomass is gone, results are reversed and the floodplain is more prone to erosion. Invasion effects thus depend on seasonal above‐ and below ground dynamic vegetation properties and persistence of the invader, on the characteristics of native species it replaces, and the combined interactions with hydro‐morphodynamics.