Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low-dose testosterone alleviates vascular damage caused by castration in male rats in puberty via modulation of the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of testosterone on glucolipid metabolism and vascular injury in male rats, and examine the underlying molecular mechanisms. A total of 40 male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into a control group (n=10), high-fat-diet + castration group (n=10), high-fat-diet + castration + low dose testosterone group (n=10), and high-fat-diet + castration + high dose testosterone group (n=10). Hematoxylin and eosin staining was performed to evaluate the morphology of the thoracic aortic tissues. Immunohistochemical staining was used to detect biomarkers of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway. The mRNA and protein expression levels of PI3K, AKT, insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1), glucose transporter type 4 (GLUT-4), nuclear factor (NF)-κB and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α in the aortas were determined using quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blot analyses, respectively. Apoptosis in the aortic tissues was detected using a TUNEL assay. Castration induced apoptosis in the animals fed a high-fat-diet, whereas low dose testosterone replacement ameliorated the apoptosis in the aorta. However, the levels of apoptosis was more severe following high-dose testosterone treatment. Low-dose testosterone induced upregulation in the levels of IRS-1, AKT, GLUT-4 protein, NF-κB, TNF-α and PI3K, compared with those in the animals fed a high-fat diet following castration. A high dose of testosterone resulted in a significant decrease in the levels of IRS-1, AKT, GLUT-4, NF-κB, TNF-α and PI3K. Compared with the rats in the high-fat diet + castration group, a low dose of testosterone induced upregulation in the mRNA levels of IRS-1, AKT and GLUT-4, and downregulation of the mRNA levels of NF-κB, TNF-α and PI3K. A high dose of testosterone resulted in a significant decrease in the levels of IRS-1, AKT and GLUT-4, and marked increases in the mRNA levels of NF-κB, TNF-α and PI3K, compared with the low dose group. Castration induced marked disorders of glucolipid metabolism and vascular injuries in the pubescent male rats. Low-dose testosterone treatment was found to ameliorate the vascular damage caused by castration via the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway.
Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity: Comparisons and Evaluations of Paper-and-Pencil versus Behavioral Measures

Abstract Sixty-eight undergraduate students experienced 32 hands-on tasks designed to provide a behavioral validation for the paper-and-pencil Disgust Scale, which the students had completed 2 months before. Tasks assessed participant-determined degree of exposure (looking at, picking up, touching, and in some cases eating) to objects such as a cockroach, cremated ashes, and a freshly killed pig's head and to disgusting video clips (seconds watching). These tasks elicited strong negative affect in a way that was ethical and not very disturbing to participants; they may be useful for future laboratory study of emotion. Participants also experienced nondisgusting control tasks, such as imitating a chicken or holding one's hand in ice-water. Analysis of task intercorrelations indicated four factors: food-related disgust, body-violation-and-death-related disgust, compliance motivation, and embarrassability. Only the two disgust factors correlated significantly with the paper-and-pencil Disgust Scale; a combination of the two correlated . 58 with Disgust Scale scores obtained months before the laboratory assessment and correlated . 71 with scores obtained immediately after this assessment. Most generally, these results are a reminder that there is no gold standard for personality assessment. As with paper-and-pencil measures, behavioral measures require getting beyond face validity to assess threats to validity from factors such as embarrassment and compliance motivation.
Live Imaging of Immune Responses in Experimental Models of Multiple Sclerosis

Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) is the most common animal model of multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS) characterized by multifocal perivascular infiltrates that predominantly comprise lymphocytes and macrophages. During EAE, autoreactive T cells first become active in the secondary lymphoid organs upon contact with antigen-presenting cells (APCs), and then gain access to CNS parenchyma, through a compromised blood–brain barrier, subsequently inducing inflammation and demyelination. Two-photon laser scanning microscopy (TPLSM) is an ideal tool for intravital imaging because of its low phototoxicity, deep tissue penetration, and high resolution. In the last decade, TPLSM has been used to visualize the behavior of T cells and their contact with APCs in the lymph nodes (LNs) and target tissues in several models of autoimmune diseases. The leptomeninges and cerebrospinal fluid represent particularly important points for T cell entry into the CNS and reactivation following contact with local APCs during the preclinical phase of EAE. In this review, we highlight recent findings concerning the pathogenesis of EAE and MS, emphasizing the use of TPLSM to characterize T cell activation in the LNs and CNS, as well as the mechanisms of tolerance induction. Furthermore, we discuss how advanced imaging unveils disease mechanisms and helps to identify novel therapeutic strategies to treat CNS autoimmunity and inflammation.
Near Duplicate Image Detection: min-Hash and tf-idf Weighting

This paper proposes two novel image similarity measures for fast indexing via locality sensitive hashing. The similarity measures are applied and evaluated in the context of near duplicate image detection. The proposed method uses a visual vocabulary of vector quantized local feature descriptors (SIFT) and for retrieval exploits enhanced min-Hash techniques. Standard min-Hash uses an approximate set intersection between document descriptors was used as a similarity measure. We propose an efficient way of exploiting more sophisticated similarity measures that have proven to be essential in image / particular object retrieval. The proposed similarity measures do not require extra computational effort compared to the original measure. We focus primarily on scalability to very large image and video databases, where fast query processing is necessary. The method requires only a small amount of data need be stored for each image. We demonstrate our method on the TrecVid 2006 data set which contains approximately 146K key frames, and also on challenging the University of Kentucky image retrieval database.
Measuring the Workload of Mixed Martial Arts using Accelerometry, Time Motion Analysis and Lactate

Tri-axial accelerometry has previously been shown to provide a reliable technique for the assessment of MMA specific activities during isolated training movements. However, this method has yet to be used for the analysis of competition demands. Six male MMA trained participants took part in a single simulated MMA bout each comprising of 3 rounds of 5 minutes with 1 minute rest between rounds. Participants wore a tri-axial accelerometer positioned between the T3-T4 vertebrae in a harness. Mean accumulated player load (PLdACC) and mean accumulated player load per minute (PLdACC.min-1) were calculated for each round and for the bout overall. Capillary blood lactate samples were also taken prior to warm up, post warm up, upon completion of each round and 5 minutes post bout whilst video based time motion analysis was completed post hoc. PLdACC was 224.32 ± 26.59 au, whilst PLdACC.min-1 was 14.91 ± 1.78 au. Participants had a mean post bout lactate of 9.25 ± 2.96 mmol.L whilst there was significant differences in lactate levels across all six sampling points. The group was found to have a work rest ratio (W:R) of 1:1.01 whilst a significant difference was found between bout winners and bout losers in terms of the amount of successful takedowns.
The impact of low self-control and delinquent peer associations on bullying perpetration and victimization among South Korean adolescents: Time-concurrent, time-lagged, and latent growth curve modeling

ABSTRACT This study examines the impact of low self-control and deviant peer affiliations on bullying perpetration and victimization in South Korea. Our sample is drawn from a five-wave, longitudinal study of 2,844 Korean adolescents (ages 11–15), compiled by the Korean Youth Panel Study. Theoretically driven models are tested using time-concurrent and time-lagged models to assess the time-ordered relationship between deviant peer affiliations and bullying perpetration and victimization, and latent growth curve models to assess developmental trajectories of bullying outcomes. Low self-control is incorporated as a time-invariant construct, and deviant peer affiliations is incorporated as a time-varying construct. The impact of covariates drawn from the mixed model is slightly different for bullying perpetrators and victims. The time-concurrent effect of deviant peer associations is stronger than the time-lagged effect on both bullying perpetration and victimization. Deviant peer affiliations fully mediate the link between low self-control and only bullying victimization in a full model.
A Crowd of Your Own: Crowdsourcing for On-Demand Personalization

Personalization is a way for computers to support people’s diverse interests and needs by providing content tailored to the individual. While strides have been made in algorithmic approaches to personalization, most require access to a significant amount of data. However, even when data is limited online crowds can be used to infer an individual’s personal preferences. Aided by the diversity of tastes among online crowds and their ability to understand others, we show that crowdsourcing is an effective on-demand tool for personalization. Unlike typical crowdsourcing approaches that seek a ground truth, we present and evaluate two crowdsourcing approaches designed to capture personal preferences. The first, taste-matching, identifies workers with similar taste to the requester and uses their taste to infer the requester’s taste. The second, taste-grokking, asks workers to explicitly predict the requester’s taste based on training examples. These techniques are evaluated on two subjective tasks, personalized image recommendation and tailored textual summaries. Taste-matching and taste-grokking both show improvement over the use of generic workers, and have different benefits and drawbacks depending on the complexity of the task and the variability of the taste space.
Induction of root Fe(lll) reductase activity and proton extrusion by iron deficiency is mediated by auxin-based systemic signalling in Malus xiaojinensis

Iron is a critical cofactor for a number of metalloenzymes involved in respiration and photosynthesis, but plants often suffer from iron deficiency due to limited supplies of soluble iron in the soil. Iron deficiency induces a series of adaptive responses in various plant species, but the mechanisms by which they are triggered remain largely unknown. Using pH imaging and hormone localization techniques, it has been demonstrated here that root Fe(III) reductase activity and proton extrusion upon iron deficiency are up-regulated by systemic auxin signalling in a Fe-efficient woody plant, Malus xiaojinensis. Split-root experiments demonstrated that Fe-deprivation in a portion of the root system induced a dramatic increase in Fe(III) reductase activity and proton extrusion in the Fe-supplied portion, suggesting that the iron deficiency responses were mediated by a systemic signalling. Reciprocal grafting experiments of M. xiaojinensis with Malus baccata, a plant with no capability to produce the corresponding responses, indicate that the initiation of the systemic signalling is likely to be determined by roots rather than shoots. Iron deficiency induced a substantial increase in the IAA content in the shoot apex and supplying exogenous IAA analogues (NAA) to the shoot apex could mimic the iron deficiency to trigger the corresponding responses. Conversely, preventing IAA transport from shoot to roots blocked the iron deficiency responses. These results strongly indicate that the iron deficiency-induced physiological responses are mediated by systemic auxin signalling.
Exchange Economies and Loss Exposure: Experiments Exploring Prospect Theory and Competitive Equilibria in Market Environments

Exchange economies were created in which individuals faced losses. If people are risk seeking in the losses, as predicted by prospect theory, then due to the nonconvexity, the competitive equilibria are all on the boundaries of the Edgeworth box. The experimental results are that risk-seeking behavior is observed in many people and appears in markets as predicted. In addition, market behavior is consistent with answers to hypothetical questionnaires. Contrary to prospect theory, risk seeking seems to diminish with experience: preferences in the market setting are not labile; and risk-seeking preferences are not simply a result of framing effects. Copyright 1997 by American Economic Association.
Oxidative Stress and Autophagy in Metabolism and Longevity

1Department of Internal Medicine, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52246, USA 2Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA 3Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Hyderabad, Telangana 500037, India 4Center for Precision Environmental Health, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA 5Department of Immunobiology, School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
Merger Negotiations and the Toehold Puzzle

The substantial control premium typically observed in corporate takeovers makes a compelling case for acquiring target shares (a toehold) in the market prior to launching a bid. Moreover, auction theory suggests that toehold bidding may yield a competitive advantage over rival bidders. Nevertheless, with a sample exceeding 10,000 initial control bids for US public targets, we show that toehold bidding has declined steadily since the early 1980s and is now surprisingly rare. At the same time, the average toehold is large when it occurs (20%), and toeholds are the norm in hostile bids. To explain these puzzling observations, we develop and test a two-stage takeover model where attempted merger negotiations are followed by open auction. With optimal bidding, a toehold imposes a cost on target management, causing some targets to (rationally) reject merger negotiations. Optimal toeholds are therefore either zero (to avoid rejection costs) or greater than a threshold (so that toehold benefits offset rejection costs). The toehold threshold estimate averages 9% across initial bidders, reflecting in part the bidder's opportunity loss of a merger termination agreement. In the presence of market liquidity costs, a threshold of this size may well induce a broad range of bidders to select zero toehold. As predicted, the probability of toehold bidding decreases, and the toehold size increases, with the threshold estimate. The model also predicts a relatively high frequency of toehold bidding in hostile bids, as observed. Overall, our test results are consistent with rational bidder behavior with respect to the toehold decision.
Mondrian Multidimensional K-Anonymity

K-Anonymity has been proposed as a mechanism for protecting privacy in microdata publishing, and numerous recoding "models" have been considered for achieving ��anonymity. This paper proposes a new multidimensional model, which provides an additional degree of flexibility not seen in previous (single-dimensional) approaches. Often this flexibility leads to higher-quality anonymizations, as measured both by general-purpose metrics and more specific notions of query answerability. Optimal multidimensional anonymization is NP-hard (like previous optimal ��-anonymity problems). However, we introduce a simple greedy approximation algorithm, and experimental results show that this greedy algorithm frequently leads to more desirable anonymizations than exhaustive optimal algorithms for two single-dimensional models.
Recovery of heart rate variability and baroreflex sensitivity following open heart surgery

Dynamic measures of heart rate variability (HRV) and baroreflex sensivity (BRS) may uncover the postoperative course of patients undergoing cardiovascular surgery. 162 patients participated in a prospective study; Cardiovascular signals were recorded the day before, 24 h after surgery, one week and three month after surgery. Time domain parameters of heart rate variability showed a significant (p = 8,9-10~ ) decline 24 h after surgery and a significant recovery (p = 0,00049) first week after surgery. The bradycardic and tachycardic regulation strength regenerated similar. Furthermore the number of tachycardiac regulations decreased significant (p = ) within the first week after surgery. The HRV and BRS parameters of the autonomic system obviously show a tendency towards recovery after coronary artery surgery.
Optimality Model of Unsupervised Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity: Synaptic Memory and Weight Distribution

We studied the hypothesis that synaptic dynamics is controlled by three basic principles: (1) synapses adapt their weights so that neurons can effectively transmit information, (2) homeostatic processes stabilize the mean firing rate of the postsynaptic neuron, and (3) weak synapses adapt more slowly than strong ones, while maintenance of strong synapses is costly. Our results show that a synaptic update rule derived from these principles shares features, with spike-timing-dependent plasticity, is sensitive to correlations in the input and is useful for synaptic memory. Moreover, input selectivity (sharply tuned receptive fields) of postsynaptic neurons develops only if stimuli with strong features are presented. Sharply tuned neurons can coexist with unselective ones, and the distribution of synaptic weights can be unimodal or bimodal. The formulation of synaptic dynamics through an optimality criterion provides a simple graphical argument for the stability of synapses, necessary for synaptic memory.
Acceptable Masculinities: Working-Class Young Men and Vocational Education and Training Courses

ABSTRACT Since the 1970s, the process of deindustrialisation, accompanied by social, cultural and political changes, has altered youth transitions from school to work. This paper is drawn from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study that explored the diversity of white, working-class young men (aged between 16 and 18) in a post-industrial community. The study focused on how young men performed their masculinities through different post-16 educational pathways and within the limits of place and a disadvantaged social class position. In this paper, I explore the way three of these young men who were enrolled on different vocational education and training courses learned how to display acceptable masculinities within these settings. Drawing on the work of Goffman, I argue that these vocational courses can ‘frame’ traditional forms of working-class masculinity, but also have the potential to enable alternative performances of masculinity to come through. However, the role of a locale’s industrial heritage on gendered and classed expectations is important, and the impact this has on successful futures needs to be recognised.
Effect of social and climatological factors on antimicrobial use and Streptococcus pneumoniae resistance in different provinces in Spain.

OBJECTIVES To investigate the association between geographical differences in antibiotic consumption and resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae to penicillin and erythromycin in 15 provinces of Spain, taking into account the potential influence of a series of social and climatological factors. METHODS Possible correlations between prevalence of resistance to penicillin and erythromycin of S. pneumoniae, as determined in the national reference laboratory, and antibiotic consumption, and socio-economic and climatological variables were investigated. Partial correlations and multivariate linear regression were performed to assess the relative importance of variables predicting resistance and to investigate explicative factors for antibiotic consumption, respectively. RESULTS A correlation was found between resistance and educational level, the proportion of young people in the population and climate, but was explained by their effects on differences in antibiotic use, which appeared to be the basic and only force behind resistance patterns in different geographical areas. Antibiotic use was found to be determined by the interplay of adult illiteracy, rainfall and GDP per capita. CONCLUSIONS Interventions aimed at improving educational level and economic growth might therefore be followed by a noticeable reduction in overall antibiotic consumption, which might in turn be followed by a reduction in penicillin and erythromycin resistance in clinical isolates of S. pneumoniae.
The Ant Odometer: Stepping on Stilts and Stumps

Desert ants, Cataglyphis, navigate in their vast desert habitat by path integration. They continuously integrate directions steered (as determined by their celestial compass) and distances traveled, gauged by as-yet-unknown mechanisms. Here we test the hypothesis that navigating ants measure distances traveled by using some kind of step integrator, or “step counter. ” We manipulated the lengths of the legs and, hence, the stride lengths, in freely walking ants. Animals with elongated (“stilts”) or shortened legs (“stumps”) take larger or shorter strides, respectively, and concomitantly misgauge travel distance. Travel distance is overestimated by experimental animals walking on stilts and underestimated by animals walking on stumps.
When Women Give Health Advice Online, Do We Listen? The Effect of Source Sex on Credibility and Likelihood to Use Online Health Advice

This experiment examined the effect of source sex on perceptions of source credibility and likelihood to use health advice given by an online source as well as the potential interaction effect between user sex and source sex on source credibility. Participants in the two conditions viewed a mock Yahoo! Answers response about type 2 diabetes posted by a male or female source. The male source was deemed significantly more credible than the female source, but this effect only held true for female participants. Source credibility was, in turn, positively related to likelihood to use the health advice viewed.
A survey of modern optical character recognition techniques

This report explores the latest advances in the field of digital document recognition. With the focus on printed document imagery, we discuss the major developments in optical character recognition (OCR) and document image enhancement/restoration in application to Latin and non-Latin scripts. In addition, we review and discuss the available technologies for hand-written document recognition. In this report, we also provide some company-accumulated benchmark results on available OCR engines.