Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Influence of Genetic and Environmental Factors among MDMA Users in Cognitive Performance

This study is aimed to clarify the association between MDMA cumulative use and cognitive dysfunction, and the potential role of candidate genetic polymorphisms in explaining individual differences in the cognitive effects of MDMA. Gene polymorphisms related to reduced serotonin function, poor competency of executive control and memory consolidation systems, and high enzymatic activity linked to bioactivation of MDMA to neurotoxic metabolites may contribute to explain variations in the cognitive impact of MDMA across regular users of this drug. Sixty ecstasy polydrug users, 110 cannabis users and 93 non-drug users were assessed using cognitive measures of Verbal Memory (California Verbal Learning Test, CVLT), Visual Memory (Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test, ROCFT), Semantic Fluency, and Perceptual Attention (Symbol Digit Modalities Test, SDMT). Participants were also genotyped for polymorphisms within the 5HTT, 5HTR2A, COMT, CYP2D6, BDNF, and GRIN2B genes using polymerase chain reaction and TaqMan polymerase assays. Lifetime cumulative MDMA use was significantly associated with poorer performance on visuospatial memory and perceptual attention. Heavy MDMA users (>100 tablets lifetime use) interacted with candidate gene polymorphisms in explaining individual differences in cognitive performance between MDMA users and controls. MDMA users carrying COMT val/val and SERT s/s had poorer performance than paired controls on visuospatial attention and memory, and MDMA users with CYP2D6 ultra-rapid metabolizers performed worse than controls on semantic fluency. Both MDMA lifetime use and gene-related individual differences influence cognitive dysfunction in ecstasy users.
Breast Cancer Risk Perception and Lifestyle Behaviors Among White and Black Women With a Family History of the Disease

Although researchers have investigated the relationships between perceived risk and behavioral risk factors for breast cancer, few qualitative studies have addressed the meaning of risk and its impact on decision making regarding lifestyle behaviors. This qualitative study explored factors involved in the formulation of perceived breast cancer risk and associations between risk perception and lifestyle behaviors in white and black women with a family history of breast cancer. Eligible participants were North Carolina residents in the Sister Study, a nationwide study of risk factors for breast cancer among women who have at least 1 sister diagnosed with breast cancer. Personal interviews were conducted with 32 women. Although most had heightened perceived risk, almost 20% considered themselves below-to-average risk. Participants with moderate-to-high perceived risk were more likely to report an affected sister and mother, a first-degree relative's diagnosis within 4 years, and death of a first-degree relative from breast cancer. Many women were unaware of associations between lifestyle behaviors and breast cancer risk. Only one-third of the women reported healthy lifestyle changes because of family history; dietary change was most frequently reported. Findings may be important for cancer nurses involved in developing breast cancer education programs for women with a family history of breast cancer.
A small, fast and low-power register file by bit-partitioning

A large multi-ported register file is indispensable for exploiting instruction level parallelism (ILP) in today's dynamically scheduled superscalar processors. The number of ports and the size of the register file must be enlarged as the issue width and instruction window size increase. However, a larger register file causes longer access delays and more power consumption. To tackle these problems, we propose bit-partitioned register file which reduces the area, access time, and energy consumption of the register file. The proposed method relies on the fact that many operands do not need the full-bit width (typically a 32-bit or 64-bit width) of a register entry. Because the effective bit-width of most register operands is narrower than the full-bit width of a register entry, the upper bits of the register entries assigned to such narrow-width operands are useless. Thus, we propose to use of these useless upper bits for other operands by partitioning the register entries. In this paper, we show the mechanism of the proposed register file and evaluate its performance and power consumption. The evaluation results reveal that the proposed register file achieves higher instruction per cycle (IPC) in a smaller physical area, and consequently with shorter access time and less power consumption.
The multinational second Diabetes, Attitudes, Wishes and Needs study: results of the French survey

Aim The second Diabetes, Attitudes, Wishes and Needs (DAWN2™) multinational cross-sectional study was aimed at generating insights to facilitate innovative efforts by people with diabetes (PWD), family members (FMs), and health care professionals (HCPs) to improve self-management and psychosocial support in diabetes. Here, the French data from the DAWN2™ study are described. Methods In France, 500 PWD (80 with type 1 diabetes [T1] and 420 with type 2 diabetes [T2]), 120 FMs, and 288 HCPs were recruited. The questionnaires assessed the impact of diabetes on quality of life and mood, self-management, attitudes/beliefs, and care/support. Results Diabetes negatively impacted the emotional well-being of 59% of people with T1 versus 45% of people with T2 (P<0.05) and about half of FMs. A high level of distress was felt by about half of PWD and FMs. About half of HCPs reported assessing depression in their patients. Sixty-two percent of FMs considered managing diabetes to be a burden. Hypoglycemia was a source of concern for 64% of people with T1 and 73% of FMs of insulin users. About two-thirds of non-insulin-medicated people with T2 agreed to start insulin if prescribed, while half of HCPs preferred to delay insulin initiation. A discrepancy between HCPs’ perceptions of their interactions with their patients and PWD’s recollection of these interactions with regard to patients’ personal needs and distress was also observed. Conclusion While distress remains under-assessed by HCPs, the negative impact of diabetes on the lives of PWD and FMs clearly induces distress on both groups. These findings provide new understanding of barriers precluding optimal management of diabetes. Developing strategies to overcome these barriers is now warranted.
Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization

Previous studies have established that people encode the race of each individual they encounter, and do so via computational processes that appear to be both automatic and mandatory. If true, this conclusion would be important, because categorizing others by their race is a precondition for treating them differently according to race. Here we report experiments, using unobtrusive measures, showing that categorizing individuals by race is not inevitable, and supporting an alternative hypothesis: that encoding by race is instead a reversible byproduct of cognitive machinery that evolved to detect coalitional alliances. The results show that subjects encode coalitional affiliations as a normal part of person representation. More importantly, when cues of coalitional affiliation no longer track or correspond to race, subjects markedly reduce the extent to which they categorize others by race, and indeed may cease doing so entirely. Despite a lifetime's experience of race as a predictor of social alliance, less than 4 min of exposure to an alternate social world was enough to deflate the tendency to categorize by race. These results suggest that racism may be a volatile and eradicable construct that persists only so long as it is actively maintained through being linked to parallel systems of social alliance.
Comparative Ground Validation of IMERG and TMPA at Variable Spatiotemporal Scales in the Tropical Andes

AbstractAn initial ground validation of the Integrated Multisatellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) Day-1 product from March 2014 to August 2015 is presented for the tropical Andes. IMERG was evaluated along with the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) against 302 quality-controlled rain gauges across Ecuador and Peru. Detection, quantitative estimation statistics, and probability distribution functions are calculated at different spatial (0.1°, 0.25°) and temporal (1 h, 3 h, daily) scales. Precipitation products are analyzed for hydrometeorologically distinct subregions. Results show that IMERG has a superior detection and quantitative rainfall intensity estimation ability than TMPA, particularly in the high Andes. Despite slightly weaker agreement of mean rainfall fields, IMERG shows better characterization of gauge observations when separating rainfall detection and rainfall rate estimation. At corresponding space–time scales, IMERG shows better estimati.
Enhanced Control of Attention by Stimulating Mesolimbic–Corticopetal Cholinergic Circuitry

Sustaining and recovering attentional performance requires interactions between the brain's motivation and attention systems. The first experiment demonstrated that in rats performing a sustained attention task (SAT), presentation of a distractor (dSAT) augmented performance-associated increases in cholinergic neurotransmission in prefrontal cortex. Because stimulation of NMDA receptors in the shell of the nucleus accumbens activates PFC cholinergic neurotransmission, a second experiment demonstrated that bilateral infusions of NMDA into the NAc shell, but not core, improved dSAT performance to levels observed in the absence of a distractor. A third experiment demonstrated that removal of prefrontal or posterior parietal cholinergic inputs, by intracortical infusions of the cholinotoxin 192 IgG-saporin, attenuated the beneficial effects of NMDA on dSAT performance. Mesolimbic activation of cholinergic projections to the cortex benefits the cognitive control of attentional performance by enhancing the detection of cues and the filtering of distractors.
The Cincinnati Lipid Research Clinic family study: cultural and biological determinants of lipids and lipoprotein concentrations.

A general linear model is described here for cultural and biological inheritance of lipids and lipoproteins. This model involves 10 parameters to be estimated from a total of 17 correlations, leaving ample degrees of freedom to test the goodness of fit. The model fits very well to each of the five lipid and lipoprotein variables analyzed here from a Lipid Research Clinic family data set. Both genetic and cultural inheritance are significant for each trait with the single exception that triglyceride levels fail to support genetic inheritance. Under the most parsimonious hypothesis, the genetic heritability (h2) ranges from . 194 +/- . 092 for triglyceride to . 624 +/- . 093 for low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol. Cultural heritability ranges from . 070 +/- . 030 for total cholesterol to . 149 +/- . 034 for triglyceride.
Doxorubicin-Loaded PEG-PCL-PEG Micelle Using Xenograft Model of Nude Mice: Effect of Multiple Administration of Micelle on the Suppression of Human Breast Cancer

The triblock copolymer is composed of two identical hydrophilic segments Monomethoxy poly(ethylene glycol) (mPEG) and one hydrophobic segment poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL); which is synthesized by coupling of mPEG-PCL-OH and mPEG-COOH in a mild condition using dicyclohexylcarbodiimide and 4-dimethylamino pyridine. The amphiphilic block copolymer can self-assemble into nanoscopic micelles to accommodate doxorubixin (DOX) in the hydrophobic core. The physicochemical properties and in vitro tests, including cytotoxicity of the micelles, have been characterized in our previous study. In this study, DOX was encapsulated into micelles with a drug loading content of 8.5%. Confocal microscopy indicated that DOX was internalized into the cytoplasm via endocystosis. A dose-finding scheme of the polymeric micelle (placebo) showed a safe dose of PEG-PCL-PEG micelles was 71.4 mg/kg in mice. Importantly, the circulation time of DOX-loaded micelles in the plasma significantly increased compared to that of free DOX in rats. A biodistribution study displayed that plasma extravasation of DOX in liver and spleen occurred in the first four hours. Lastly, the tumor growth of human breast cancer cells in nude mice was suppressed by multiple injections (5 mg/kg, three times daily on day 0, 7 and 14) of DOX-loaded micelles as compared to multiple administrations of free DOX.
RNA Structural Domains in Noncoding Regions of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Genome Trigger Innate Immunity in Porcine Cells and Mice

ABSTRACT The induction of type I interferons (alpha/beta interferon [IFN-α/β]) in response to viral infection is a crucial step leading to the antiviral state in the host. Viruses produce double-stranded RNA (dsDNA) during their replication cycle that is sensed as nonself by host cells through different receptors. A signaling cascade then is activated to block viral replication and spread. Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is a picornavirus that is highly sensitive to IFN, and it causes one of the world's most important animal diseases. In this study, we showed the ability of structural domains predicted to enclose stable dsRNA regions in the 5′- and 3′-noncoding regions (NCRs) of the FMDV genome to trigger an IFN-α/β response in porcine kidney cultured cells and newborn mice. These RNAs, generated by in vitro transcription, were able to stimulate IFN-β transcription and induce an antiviral state in SK-6 cells. The induction levels elicited by the different NCR RNAs were compared. Among them, the 3′NCR was identified as a potent IFN activator, and the features in this region involved in signaling have been analyzed. To address whether the FMDV NCR transcripts were able to trigger the innate immune response in vivo, Swiss suckling mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with the RNAs. All transcripts induced the innate response in transfected animals, measured as IFN-α/β protein levels, antiviral activity in sera, and reduced susceptibility to FMDV infection. Our work provides new insight into innate responses against FMDV and identifies these small noninfectious RNA molecules as potential adjuvants for vaccine improvement and antiviral strategies against picornaviruses.
Control and Regulation of Integrated Mitochondrial Function in Metabolic and Transport Networks

The pattern of flux and concentration control coefficients in an integrated mitochondrial energetics model is examined by applying a generalized matrix method of control analysis to calculate control coefficients, as well as response coefficients The computational model of Cortassa et al. encompasses oxidative phosphorylation, the TCA cycle, and Ca2+ dynamics. Control of ATP synthesis, TCA cycle, and ANT fluxes were found to be distributed among various mitochondrial processes. Control is shared by processes associated with ATP/ADP production and transport, as well as by Ca2+ dynamics. The calculation also analyzed the control of the concentrations of key regulatory ions and metabolites (Ca2+, NADH, ADP). The approach we have used demonstrates how properties of integrated systems may be understood through applications of computational modeling and control analysis.
Stability of erp Loci duringBorrelia burgdorferi Infection: Recombination Is Not Required for Chronic Infection of Immunocompetent Mice

ABSTRACT Borrelia burgdorferi can persistently infect mammals despite their production of antibodies directed against bacterial proteins, including the Erp lipoproteins. We sequenced erploci of bacteria reisolated from laboratory mice after 1 year of infection and found them to be identical to those of the inoculant bacteria. We conclude that recombination of erp genes is not essential for chronic mammalian infection.
Real-time investigation of nucleic acids phosphorylation process using molecular beacons

Phosphorylation of nucleic acids is an indispensable process to repair strand interruption of nucleic acids. We have studied the process of phosphorylation using molecular beacon (MB) DNA probes in real-time and with high selectivity. The MB employed in this method is devised to sense the product of a ‘phosphorylation–ligation’ coupled enzyme reaction. Compared with the current assays, this novel method is convenient, fast, selective, highly sensitive and capable of real-time monitoring in a homogenous solution. The preference of T4 polynucleotide kinase (T4 PNK) has been investigated using this approach. The results revealed that a single-stranded oligonucleotide containing guanine at the 5′ termini is most preferred, while those utilizing cytosine in this location are least preferred. The preference of (T)9 was reduced greatly when phosphoryl was modified at the 5′ end, implying that T4 PNK could discern the phosphorylated/unphosphorylated oligonucleotides. The increase of oligonucleotide DNA length leads to an enhancement in preference. A fast and accurate method for assaying the kinase activity of T4 PNK has been developed with a wide linear detection range from 0.002 to 4.0 U/ml in 3 min. The effects of certain factors, such as NTP, ADP, (NH4)2SO4 and Na2HPO4, on phosphorylation have been investigated. This novel approach enables us to investigate the interactions between proteins and nucleic acids in a homogenous solution, such as those found in DNA repair or in drug development.
Multi‐model and multi‐scenario assessments of Asian water futures: The Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) initiative

This paper presents one of the first quantitative scenario assessments for future water supply and demand in Asia to 2050. The assessment, developed by the Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) initiative, uses the latest set of global climate change and socioeconomic scenarios and state‐of‐the‐art global hydrological models. In Asia, water demand for irrigation, industry, and households is projected to increase substantially in the coming decades (30–40% by 2050 compared to 2010). These changes are expected to exacerbate water stress, especially in the current hotspots such as north India and Pakistan, and north China. By 2050, 20% of the land area in the Asia‐Pacific region, with a population of 1.6–2 billion, is projected to experience severe water stress. We find that socioeconomic changes are the main drivers of worsening water scarcity in Asia, with climate change impacts further increasing the challenge into the 21st century. Moreover, a detailed basin‐level analysis of the hydro‐economic conditions of 40 Asian basins shows that although the coping capacity of all basins is expected to improve due to gross domestic product (GDP) growth, some basins continuously face severe water challenges. These basins will potentially be home to up to 1.6 billion people by mid‐21st century.
Inverted browser: a novel approach towards display symbiosis

In this paper we introduce the inverted browser, a novel approach to enable mobile users to view content from their personal devices on public displays. The inverted browser is a network service to start and control a browser that is then used to view the content. In contrast to a traditional Web browser, which runs on the client device and pulls content from a server, content is pushed to the inverted browser from a personal data source upon user input. This approach allows a wide variety of personal content to be viewed by facilitating symbiotic relationships between mobile devices and intelligent displays in the environment. Our initial inverted browser prototype is based on a Web services wrapper around a traditional Web browser. Our experiments show that the inverted browser approach is superior to other solutions in terms of user convenience, ease of use, energy consumption, and privacy, but interaction latencies need improvement
Multimodal gesture recognition via multiple hypotheses rescoring

We present a new framework for multimodal gesture recognition that is based on a multiple hypotheses rescoring fusion scheme. We specifically deal with a demanding Kinect-based multimodal data set, introduced in a recent gesture recognition challenge (ChaLearn 2013), where multiple subjects freely perform multimodal gestures. We employ multiple modalities, that is, visual cues, such as skeleton data, color and depth images, as well as audio, and we extract feature descriptors of the hands' movement, handshape, and audio spectral properties. Using a common hidden Markov model framework we build single-stream gesture models based on which we can generate multiple single stream-based hypotheses for an unknown gesture sequence. By multimodally rescoring these hypotheses via constrained decoding and a weighted combination scheme, we end up with a multimodally-selected best hypothesis. This is further refined by means of parallel fusion of the monomodal gesture models applied at a segmental level. In this setup, accurate gesture modeling is proven to be critical and is facilitated by an activity detection system that is also presented. The overall approach achieves 93.3% gesture recognition accuracy in the ChaLearn Kinect-based multimodal data set, significantly outperforming all recently published approaches on the same challenging multimodal gesture recognition task, providing a relative error rate reduction of at least 47.6%.
Numerical Sensitivity Analysis for the Quantity of Interest in PDE-Constrained Optimization

In this paper, we consider the efficient computation of derivatives of a functional (the quantity of interest) which depends on the solution of a PDE-constrained optimization problem with inequality constraints and which may be different from the cost functional. The optimization problem is subject to perturbations in the data. We derive conditions under with the quantity of interest possesses first and second order derivatives with respect to the perturbation parameters. An algorithm for the efficient evaluation of these derivatives is developed, with considerable savings over a direct approach, especially in the case of high-dimensional parameter spaces. The computational cost is shown to be small compared to that of the overall optimization algorithm. Numerical experiments involving a parameter identification problem for Navier-Stokes flow and an optimal control problem for a reaction-diffusion system are presented which demonstrate the efficiency of the method.
Multifunctional Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase is necessary for nuclear envelope breakdown

The role of multifunctional Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase (CaM kinase) in nuclear envelope breakdown (NEB) was investigated in sea urchin eggs. The eggs contain a 56-kD polypeptide which appears to be a homologue of neuronal CaM kinase. For example, it undergoes Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent autophosphorylation that converts it to a Ca2(+)-independent species, a hallmark of multifunctional CaM kinase. It is homologous to the alpha subunit of rat brain CaM kinase. Autophosphorylation and substrate phosphorylation by the sea urchin egg kinase are inhibited in vitro by CaMK(273-302), a synthetic peptide corresponding to the autoinhibitory domain of the neuronal CaM kinase. This peptide inhibited NEB when microinjected into sea urchin eggs. Only one mAb to the neuronal enzyme immunoprecipitated the 56-kD polypeptide. Only this antibody blocked or significantly delayed NEB when microinjected into sea urchin eggs. These results suggest that sea urchin eggs contain multifunctional CaM kinase, and that this enzyme is involved in the control of NEB during mitotic division.