Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spinal cord injury‐induced up‐regulation of AHNAK, expressed in cells delineating cystic cavities, and associated with neoangiogenesis

To investigate the molecular basis for the poor regenerative capacity of the mammalian central nervous system (CNS) after injury, we searched for genes whose expression was affected by an adult rat spinal cord hemi‐section. Differential screening of a rat spinal cord expression library was performed using polyclonal antibodies raised against lesioned spinal cord tissue. A striking overexpression was found for ahnak, encoding a 700‐kDa protein, in normal CNS present only in the blood–brain barrier (BBB) forming vascular endothelial cells. Indeed, very early after spinal cord injury (SCI), high levels of membrane‐associated AHNAK are observed on non‐neuronal cells invading the lesion site. With time, AHNAK distribution spreads rostrally and caudally concomitant with the process of tissue inflammation and axon degeneration, delineating the interior surface of cystic cavities, mainly in front of barrier‐forming astrocytes. Strong overexpression is also observed on vascular endothelial cells reacting to BBB breakdown. Based on our detailed analysis of its spatiotemporal and cellular expression, and its previously described function in BBB, we suggest that AHNAK expression is associated with cell types displaying tissue–protective barrier properties. Our study may thus contribute to the elucidation of the precise molecular and cellular events that eventually render traumatic spinal cord tissue non‐permissive for regeneration.
Dissociation between affective experience and motivated behaviour in schizophrenia patients and their unaffected first-degree relatives and schizotypal individuals

Abstract Background The neuropsychological origins of negative syndrome of schizophrenia remain elusive. Evidence from behavioural studies, which utilised emotion-inducing pictures to elicit motivated behaviour generally reported that that schizophrenia patients experienced similar affective experience as healthy individuals but failed to translate emotional salience to motivated behaviour, a phenomenon called emotion–behaviour decoupling. However, a few studies have examined emotion–behaviour decoupling in non-psychotic high-risk populations, who are relatively unaffected by medication effects. Methods In this study, we examined the nature and extent of emotion–behaviour decoupling in in three independent samples (65 schizophrenia patients v. 63 controls; 40 unaffected relatives v. 45 controls; and 32 individuals with social anhedonia v. 32 controls). We administered an experimental task to examine their affective experience and its coupling with behaviour, using emotion-inducing slides, and allowed participants to alter stimulus exposure using button-pressing to seek pleasure or avoid aversion. Results Schizophrenia patients reported similar affective experiences as their controls, while their unaffected relatives and individuals with high levels of social anhedonia exhibited attenuated affective experiences, in particular in the arousal aspect. Compared with their respective control groups, all of the three groups showed emotion–behaviour decoupling. Conclusions Our findings support that both genetically and behaviourally high-risk groups exhibit emotion–behaviour decoupling. The familial association apparently supports its role as a putative trait marker for schizophrenia.
Direct demonstration of actin filament annealing in vitro

Direct electron microscopic examination confirms that short actin filaments rapidly anneal end-to-end in vitro, leading over time to an increase in filament length at steady state. During annealing of mixtures of native unlabeled filaments and glutaraldehyde-fixed filaments labeled with myosin subfragment-1, the structural polarity within heteropolymers is conserved absolutely. Annealing does not appear to require either ATP hydrolysis or the presence of exogenous actin monomers, suggesting that joining occurs through the direct association of filament ends. During recovery from sonication the initial rate of annealing is consistent with a second-order reaction involving the collision of two filament ends with an apparent annealing rate constant of 10(7) M-1s-1. This rapid phase lasts less than 10 s and is followed by a slow phase lasting minutes to hours. Annealing is calculated to contribute minimally to filament elongation during the initial stages of self-assembly. However, the rapid rate of annealing of sonicated fixed filaments observed in vitro suggests that it may be an efficient mechanism for repairing breaks in filaments and that annealing together with polymer-severing mechanisms may contribute significantly to the dynamics and function of actin filaments in vivo.
Cytomegalovirus Infection and Relative Risk of Cardiovascular Disease (Ischemic Heart Disease, Stroke, and Cardiovascular Death): A Meta‐Analysis of Prospective Studies Up to 2016

Background Several studies have suggested that cytomegalovirus infection is likely associated with an increased relative risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD); however, the results are inconsistent. We aimed to provide a systematic review and meta‐analysis of community‐based prospective studies assessing the association between cytomegalovirus infection and relative risk of CVD. Methods and Results We searched Medline and EMBASE to retrieve prospective studies that reported risk estimates of the association between cytomegalovirus infection and relative risk of CVD. The search yielded 10 articles including a total of 34 564 participants and 4789 CVD patients. Overall, exposure to cytomegalovirus infection was associated with a 22% (relative risk: 1.22, 95% CI: 1.07–1.38, P=0.002) increased relative risk of future CVD. We estimated that 13.4% of CVD incidence could be attributable to cytomegalovirus infection. Conclusions In conclusion, cytomegalovirus infection is associated with a significantly increased relative risk of CVD.
Fly Ash Concrete: An Evaluation Of Chloride Penetration Testing Methods

This paper verifies that concrete containing fly ash is very resistant to chloride penetration, and that the rapid chloride test can be used, but that the results have to be correlated with the AASHTO T259 chloride ponding test. The concrete mixtures evaluated were air entrained and contained cementitious materials combinations. The chemical and physical properties of the cement and fly ash complied with the requirements of ASTM C 150 and C 618, respectively.
Object-oriented analysis

Since its introduction in the early seventies, structured analysis and design has evolved into a widely used systematic, phase-by-phase software development methodology. Structured analysis and design provide data flow diagrams as the structured analysis tool, structure charts as the design tool, and transform analysis and transaction analysis as the transitions from data flow diagrams to structure charts. The intent of structured analysis is to decompose the system, functlon-by-functlon, until the "essence" of the system is understood [6] and depicted in data flow dlagrans. The intent of structured design is to determine programs and modules for system implementation. Structured analysis and design have yielded substantial life-cycle benefits for systems implemented using conventional languages such as Cobol and Fortran. However, features of obJect-orlented languages such as Ada and Modula-2 (i.e. , packages, generics) are not fully exploited when software is developed using structured design techniques. Booth [I] has devised a partial llfe cycle method for object-orlented design. However, no tool presently supports object-orlented analysls. Moreover, no formal transition technique has been developed to allow the software engineer to use the traditional structured analysis techniques coupled with object-orlented design.
Taking your robot for a walk: Force-guiding a mobile robot using compliant arms

Guiding a mobile robot by the hand would make a simple and natural interface. This requires the ability to sense forces applied on the robot from direct physical contacts, and to translate these forces into motion commands. This paper presents a joint-space impedance control approach that does so by perceiving forces applied on compliant arms, making the robot react as a real-life physical object to a user pulling and pushing on one or both of its arms. By independently controlling stiffness in specific degrees-of-freedom, our approach allows the general position of the arms to change to the preferences of the person interacting with it, a capability that is not possible using a strictly position-based control approach. A test case with 15 volunteers was conducted on IRL-1, an omnidirectional, non-holonomic mobile robot, to study and fine-tune our approach in an unconstrained guiding task, making IRL-1 go in and out of a room through a doorway.
Development in Societal Context An Interactionist Perspective on the Socioeconomic Context of Human Development

Social cognitive neuroscience examines social phenomena and processes using cognitive neuroscience research tools such as neuroimaging and neuropsychology. This review examines four broad areas of research within social cognitive neuroscience: (a) understanding others, (b) understanding oneself, (c) controlling oneself, and (d ) the processes that occur at the interface of self and others. In addition, this review highlights two core-processing distinctions that can be neurocognitively identified across all of these domains. The distinction between automatic versus controlled processes has long been important to social psychological theory and can be dissociated in the neural regions contributing to social cognition. Alternatively, the differentiation between internally-focused processes that focus on one’s own or another’s mental interior and externally-focused processes that focus on one’s own or another’s visible features and actions is a new distinction. This latter distinction emerges from social cognitive neuroscience investigations rather than from existing psychological theories demonstrating that social cognitive neuroscience can both draw on and contribute to social psychological theory. 259 A nn u. R ev . P sy ch ol . 2 00 7. 58 :2 59 -2 89 . D ow nl oa de d fr om a rj ou rn al s. an nu al re vi ew s. or g by U ni ve rs ity o f C al if or ni a L os A ng el es o n 09 /2 8/ 07 . F or p er so na l u se o nl y. ANRV296-PS58-11 ARI 17 November 2006 1:27
Atypical multidrug resistance: breast cancer resistance protein messenger RNA expression in mitoxantrone-selected cell lines.

BACKGROUND Human cancer cell lines grown in the presence of the cytotoxic agent mitoxantrone frequently develop resistance associated with a reduction in intracellular drug accumulation without increased expression of the known drug resistance transporters P-glycoprotein and multidrug resistance protein (also known as multidrug resistance-associated protein). Breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP) is a recently described adenosine triphosphate-binding cassette transporter associated with resistance to mitoxantrone and anthracyclines. This study was undertaken to test the prevalence of BCRP overexpression in cell lines selected for growth in the presence of mitoxantrone. METHODS Total cellular RNA or poly A+ RNA and genomic DNA were isolated from parental and drug-selected cell lines. Expression of BCRP messenger RNA (mRNA) and amplification of the BCRP gene were analyzed by northern and Southern blot hybridization, respectively. RESULTS A variety of drug-resistant human cancer cell lines derived by selection with mitoxantrone markedly overexpressed BCRP mRNA; these cell lines included sublines of human breast carcinoma (MCF-7), colon carcinoma (S1 and HT29), gastric carcinoma (EPG85-257), fibrosarcoma (EPF86-079), and myeloma (8226) origins. Analysis of genomic DNA from BCRP-overexpressing MCF-7/MX cells demonstrated that the BCRP gene was also amplified in these cells. CONCLUSIONS Overexpression of BCRP mRNA is frequently observed in multidrug-resistant cell lines selected with mitoxantrone, suggesting that BCRP is likely to be a major cellular defense mechanism elicited in response to exposure to this drug. It is likely that BCRP is the putative "mitoxantrone transporter" hypothesized to be present in these cell lines.
Combined Optimal Control of Activation and Transmission in Delay-Tolerant Networks

Performance of a delay-tolerant network has strong dependence on the nodes participating in data transportation. Such networks often face several resource constraints especially related to energy. Energy is consumed not only in data transmission, but also in listening and in several signaling activities. On one hand these activities enhance the system's performance while on the other hand, they consume a significant amount of energy even when they do not involve actual node transmission. Accordingly, in order to use energy efficiently, one may have to limit not only the amount of transmissions, but also the amount of nodes that are active at each time. Therefore, we study two coupled problems: 1) the activation problem that determines when a mobile will turn on in order to receive packets; and 2) the problem of regulating the beaconing. We derive optimal energy management strategies by formulating the problem as an optimal control one, which we then explicitly solve. We also validate our findings through extensive simulations that are based on contact traces.
Characterization of polyploid wheat genomic diversity using a high-density 90 000 single nucleotide polymorphism array

High-density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping arrays are a powerful tool for studying genomic patterns of diversity, inferring ancestral relationships between individuals in populations and studying marker–trait associations in mapping experiments. We developed a genotyping array including about 90 000 gene-associated SNPs and used it to characterize genetic variation in allohexaploid and allotetraploid wheat populations. The array includes a significant fraction of common genome-wide distributed SNPs that are represented in populations of diverse geographical origin. We used density-based spatial clustering algorithms to enable high-throughput genotype calling in complex data sets obtained for polyploid wheat. We show that these model-free clustering algorithms provide accurate genotype calling in the presence of multiple clusters including clusters with low signal intensity resulting from significant sequence divergence at the target SNP site or gene deletions. Assays that detect low-intensity clusters can provide insight into the distribution of presence–absence variation (PAV) in wheat populations. A total of 46 977 SNPs from the wheat 90K array were genetically mapped using a combination of eight mapping populations. The developed array and cluster identification algorithms provide an opportunity to infer detailed haplotype structure in polyploid wheat and will serve as an invaluable resource for diversity studies and investigating the genetic basis of trait variation in wheat.
Decision boundary feature extraction for neural networks

The authors propose a novel feature extraction method for neural networks. The method is based on the decision boundary feature extraction algorithm. It has been shown that all the necessary features for classification can be extracted from the decision boundary. To apply the method, the authors first define the decision boundary in neural networks. Next, they propose a procedure for extracting all the necessary features for classification from the decision boundary. The proposed algorithm preserves the characteristics of neural networks, which can define an arbitrary decision boundary. Experiments show promising results. <<ETX>>
A transonic small-disturbance model for the propagation of weak shock waves in heterogeneous gases

The interaction of weak shock waves with small heterogeneities in gaseous media is studied. It is first shown that various linear theories proposed for this problem lead to pathological breakdowns or singularities in the solution near the wavefront and necessarily fail to describe this interaction. Then, a nonlinear small-disturbance model is developed. The nonlinear theory is uniformly valid and accounts for the competition between the near-sonic speed of the wavefront and the small variations of vorticity and sound speed in the heterogeneous media. This model is an extension of the transonic small-disturbance problem, with additional terms accounting for slight variations in the media. The model is used to analyse the propagation of the sonic-boom shock wave through the turbulent atmospheric boundary layer. It is found that, in this instance, the nonlinear model accounts for the observed behaviour. Various deterministic examples of interaction phenomena demonstrate good agreement with available experimental data and explain the main observed phenomena in Crow (1969).
Cusped Mass Models of Gravitational Lenses

Recent observations of galaxy luminosity profiles and dark matter simulations find luminosity and mass distributions characterized by central cusps rather than finite core radii. We introduce and implement a set of cusped ellipsoidal lens models that include limits similar to the Jaffe, Hernquist, η and NFW models and apply them to the gravitational lenses APM 08279+5255 and B1933+503. A successful model of APM 08279+5255 with its central, odd image requires a very shallow cusp, γ ≲ 0.4, where ρ ∝ r-γ as r → 0, which is similar to a core rather than the favored 1 ≲ γ ≲ 2 cusps. B1933+503, by contrast, is well modeled with a steep density cusp, 1.6 ≲ γ ≲ 2.0.
Comparative Alterations in the Compositional Profile of Selected Root and Vegetable Peels Subjected to Three Pretreatments for Enhanced Saccharification

Lignocellulosic feedstocks have gained worldwide interest as alternative biofuel source in the context of squeezing petroleum resources, enhanced environmental pollution from greenhouse gases and resulting climate change. The potential of agricultural processing residues such as root and vegetable peels (beet root, greater yam, pumpkin and vegetable banana) for bioethanol production was investigated through an understanding of their compositional profile and efficacy of three pretreatments in altering their composition and reducing biomass recalcitrance. Starch was the major polysaccharide in the residues (range: 25-37%), followed by cellulose (18-22%) and hemicellulose (15-20%). While dilute sulfuric acid (DSA; 121°C ; 0.102 MPa) hydrolyzed starch and hemicellulose to a high extent, steam pretreatment of moist residues (40 % and 50 % MC) at 100 °C also facilitated hemicellulose and starch solubilization. On the contrary, lime pretreatment retained most of the cellulose, hemicellulose and starch in the pretreated residues. Delignification was the highest (28- 37%) in steam pretreated residues, with minimal effect in DSA and lime pretreatments, necessitating lignin binding surfactants during saccharification in the latter. Reducing sugar content in pretreated liquors and Pretreatment Efficiency (%) were the highest (40-45 g L-1 and 57-64% respectively) in the DSA pretreatment. The study showed that as the pretreated liquor DSA and steam pretreatment was rich in fermentable sugars, whole slurry saccharification would be beneficial for maximizing the bioethanol yield.
Real-Time Residential-Side Joint Energy Storage Management and Load Scheduling With Renewable Integration

We consider joint energy storage management and load scheduling at a residential site with integrated renewable generation. Assuming unknown arbitrary dynamics of renewable source, loads, and electricity price, we aim at optimizing the load scheduling and energy storage control simultaneously in order to minimize the overall system cost within a finite time period. Besides incorporating battery operational constraints and costs, we model each individual load task by its requested power intensity and service durations, as well as the maximum and average delay requirements. To tackle this finite time horizon stochastic problem, we propose a real-time scheduling and storage control solution by applying a sequence of modification and transformation to employ Lyapunov optimization that otherwise is not directly applicable. With our proposed algorithm, we show that the joint load scheduling and energy storage control can in fact be separated and sequentially determined. Furthermore, both scheduling and energy control decisions have closed-form solutions for simple implementation. Through analysis, we show that our proposed real-time algorithm has a bounded performance guarantee from the optimal ${T}$ -slot look-ahead solution, and is asymptotically equivalent to it as the battery capacity and time period goes to infinity. The effectiveness of joint load scheduling and energy storage control by our proposed algorithm is demonstrated through simulation as compared with alternative algorithms.
Design methodology of nested-Miller amplifiers for small capacitive loads

A novel methodology for designing the compensation network of nested-Miller amplifiers is proposed. Constructing the root contours of the nested structure, the method allows pole positioning to be carried out for small capacitive loads, as occurring in discrete-time applications. At the same time, it allows critical parameters such as the phase margin of the amplifier to be controlled by means of simple analytical expressions. Examples of its application to three-stage schemes are also presented.
The Microstructure of Polyacrylonitrile-Stabilized Fibers

The microstructure of the polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-stabilized fibers was investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), and high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM). XRD analysis indicated that the chemical reactions sped up notably when temperature was above 250°C. The crosssection SEM image of the stabilized fibers presented concentric multilayer morphology. TEM images showed that the lamellar-like skin was compact and the core was disorderly and loose. The vermiculate-like crystallites in the precursor fibers were transferred to spheres during stabilization process. HRTEM images showed that many spheres existed in the stabilized fibers. The exterior of spheres which had annular structure was amorphous phase. The inner of spheres which was not completely stabilized had some crystallite areas. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009
A Political Economy Model of Congressional Careers

Theories in political economy depend critically on assumptions about motivations of politicians. Our analysis starts from the premise that politicians, like other economic agents, are rational individuals who make career decisions by comparing the expected returns of alternative choices. The main goal of the paper is to quantify the returns to a career in the United States Congress. To achieve this goal we specify a dynamic model of career decisions of a member of Congress and we estimate this model using a newly collected data set. Given estimates of the structural model, we assess reelection probabilities for members of Congress, estimate the effect of congressional experience on private and public sector wages, and quantify the value of a congressional seat. Moreover, we use the estimated model to assess how an increase in the congressional wage or the imposition of term limits would affect the career decisions of politicians and the returns to a career in Congress.