Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Winter thermal structure of Lake Superior

Moorings equipped with thermistors that span the water column were deployed at up to seven locations throughout Lake Superior from October 2005 through May 2013. This year‐round, multi‐year, multi‐location, full water‐column record of the thermal structure reveals significant inter‐annual and spatial variability in Lake Superior's winter heat content, thermocline depth, and phenology. There is a stark contrast in thermal structure between the cold, icy winter of 2009, during which strong negative stratification formed, and the much warmer winter of 2012, during which the stratification was much weaker. Significant inter‐annual and spatial variability was also observed in ice cover, which influenced heat content. Ice cover significantly inhibits heat flux between the lake and the atmosphere, and spatial variability in ice cover translates into spatial variability in end‐of‐winter heat content. This is found to be preserved through the spring warming season, and is strongly correlated with variability in the timing of the onset of summer stratification, with regions that have warmer end‐of‐winter water columns stratifying earlier than regions with colder end‐of‐winter water‐columns. Observed spring warming rates appear to depend not on mooring depth, but on regionally averaged depth; this suggests the existence of a lateral mixing mechanism.
MT5-MMP Promotes Alzheimer’s Pathogenesis in the Frontal Cortex of 5xFAD Mice and APP Trafficking in vitro

We previously reported that deficiency of membrane-type five matrix metalloproteinase (MT5-MMP) prevents amyloid pathology in the cortex and hippocampus of 5xFAD mice, and ameliorates the functional outcome. We have now investigated whether the integrity of another important area affected in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the frontal cortex, was also preserved upon MT5-MMP deficiency in 4-month old mice at prodromal stages of the pathology. We used the olfactory H-maze (OHM) to show that learning impairment associated with dysfunctions of the frontal cortex in 5xFAD was prevented in bigenic 5xFAD/MT5-MMP−/− mice. The latter exhibited concomitant drastic reductions of amyloid beta peptide (Aβ) assemblies (soluble, oligomeric and fibrillary) and its immediate precursor, C99. Simultaneously, astrocyte reactivity and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) levels were also lowered. Moreover, MT5-MMP deficiency induced a decrease in N-terminal soluble fragments of amyloid precursor protein (APP), including soluble APPα (sAPPα), sAPPβ and the MT5-MMP-linked fragment of 95 kDa, sAPP95. However, the lack of MT5-MMP did not affect the activity of β- and γ-secretases. In cultured HEKswe cells, transiently expressed MT5-MMP localized to early endosomes and increased the content of APP and Aβ40 in these organelles, as well as Aβ levels in cell supernatants. This is the first evidence that the pro-amyloidogenic features of MT5-MMP lie, at least in part, on the ability of the proteinase to promote trafficking into one of the amyloidogenic subcellular loci. Together, our data further support the pathogenic role of MT5-MMP in AD and that its inhibition improves the functional and pathological outcomes, in this case in the frontal cortex. These data also support the idea that MT5-MMP could become a novel therapeutic target in AD.
Review of novel therapeutic targets for improving heart failure treatment based on experimental and clinical studies

Heart failure (HF) is a major public health priority due to its epidemiological transition and the world’s aging population. HF is typified by continuous loss of contractile function with reduced, normal, or preserved ejection fraction, elevated vascular resistance, fluid and autonomic imbalance, and ventricular dilatation. Despite considerable advances in the treatment of HF over the past few decades, mortality remains substantial. Pharmacological treatments including β-blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, and aldosterone antagonists have been proven to prolong the survival of patients with HF. However, there are still instances where patients remain symptomatic, despite optimal use of existing therapeutic agents. This understanding that patients with chronic HF progress into advanced stages despite receiving optimal treatment has increased the quest for alternatives, exploring the roles of additional pathways that contribute to the development and progression of HF. Several pharmacological targets associated with pathogenesis of HF have been identified and novel therapies have emerged. In this work, we review recent evidence from proposed mechanisms to the outcomes of experimental and clinical studies of the novel pharmacological agents that have emerged for the treatment of HF.
Impact of Corticosterone Treatment on Spontaneous Seizure Frequency and Epileptiform Activity in Mice with Chronic Epilepsy

Stress is the most commonly reported precipitating factor for seizures in patients with epilepsy. Despite compelling anecdotal evidence for stress-induced seizures, animal models of the phenomena are sparse and possible mechanisms are unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that increased levels of the stress-associated hormone corticosterone (CORT) would increase epileptiform activity and spontaneous seizure frequency in mice rendered epileptic following pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus. We monitored video-EEG activity in pilocarpine-treated mice 24/7 for a period of four or more weeks, during which animals were serially treated with CORT or vehicle. CORT increased the frequency and duration of epileptiform events within the first 24 hours of treatment, and this effect persisted for up to two weeks following termination of CORT injections. Interestingly, vehicle injection produced a transient spike in CORT levels – presumably due to the stress of injection – and a modest but significant increase in epileptiform activity. Neither CORT nor vehicle treatment significantly altered seizure frequency; although a small subset of animals did appear responsive. Taken together, our findings indicate that treatment of epileptic animals with exogenous CORT designed to mimic chronic stress can induce a persistent increase in interictal epileptiform activity.
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Effect of Study Context on Item Recollection

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Aspergillus nidulans Dis1/XMAP215 Protein AlpA Localizes to Spindle Pole Bodies and Microtubule Plus Ends and Contributes to Growth Directionality

ABSTRACT The dynamics of cytoplasmic microtubules (MTs) is largely controlled by a protein complex at the MT plus end. In Schizosaccharomyces pombe and in filamentous fungi, MT plus end-associated proteins also determine growth directionality. We have characterized the Dis1/XMAP215 family protein AlpA from Aspergillus nidulans and show that it determines MT dynamics as well as hyphal morphology. Green fluorescent protein-tagged AlpA localized to MT-organizing centers (centrosomes) and to MT plus ends. The latter accumulation occurred independently of conventional kinesin or the Kip2-familiy kinesin KipA. alpA deletion strains were viable and only slightly temperature sensitive. Mitosis, nuclear migration, and nuclear positioning were not affected, but hyphae grew in curves rather than straight, which appeared to be an effect of reduced MT growth and dynamics.
FACTORS THAT AFFECT SUCCESSFUL MOBILE COMMERCE

This paper deals with what factors facilitate development of m-commerce. The government support on building mobile infrastructure is proposed as the major factor to facilitate mcommerce success. Scholars agree that the productivity gain and industry competitiveness can be influenced by the characteristics of government IT spending. Could government-initiated infrastructure investment on mobile infrastructure increase mobile commerce industry output and competitiveness? There exist numerous theoretical and empirical supports for the positive role of national infrastructure on industry competitiveness. As for the question of the impact of government support on m-commerce, we posit that national IT infrastructure investment should foster e-commerce industry. In this paper, this proposition will be explored by a case study
Open DNS Resolver Activity in Campus Network System

We statistically investigated the total A-resource record (RR) based DNS query request packet traffic from the campus network system to the top domain DNS server in a university during January 1st to December 31st, 2014. The obtained results are: (1) we found significant query keyword based entropy changes in the total DNS query request traffic at February 5th, 2014. (2) In the total A-RR based DNS query request packet traffic, we observed 73-90% of unique random query keywords including eleven source IP addresses like a Kaminsky-like random query (KLRQ) attack. (3) Also, we found that the source IP addresses were assigned to the home/broadband routers in campus laboratories, as open DNS resolvers. (4) Also, we calculated frequency distribution of the Levenshtein distance between the DNS query keywords and the peaks that were observed at 10-15 per day. Therefore, we can conclude that the Levenshtein distance model is useful for developing a detection model of open DNS resolvers.
Methylation of Gibberellins by Arabidopsis GAMT1 and GAMT2[W]

Arabidopsis thaliana GAMT1 and GAMT2 encode enzymes that catalyze formation of the methyl esters of gibberellins (GAs). Ectopic expression of GAMT1 or GAMT2 in Arabidopsis, tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), and petunia (Petunia hybrida) resulted in plants with GA deficiency and typical GA deficiency phenotypes, such as dwarfism and reduced fertility. GAMT1 and GAMT2 are both expressed mainly in whole siliques (including seeds), with peak transcript levels from the middle until the end of silique development. Within whole siliques, GAMT2 was previously shown to be expressed mostly in developing seeds, and we show here that GAMT1 expression is also localized mostly to seed, suggesting a role in seed development. Siliques of null single GAMT1 and GAMT2 mutants accumulated high levels of various GAs, with particularly high levels of GA1 in the double mutant. Methylated GAs were not detected in wild-type siliques, suggesting that methylation of GAs by GAMT1 and GAMT2 serves to deactivate GAs and initiate their degradation as the seeds mature. Seeds of homozygous GAMT1 and GAMT2 null mutants showed reduced inhibition of germination, compared with the wild type, when placed on plates containing the GA biosynthesis inhibitor ancymidol, with the double mutant showing the least inhibition. These results suggest that the mature mutant seeds contained higher levels of active GAs than wild-type seeds.
Metabolomic Elucidation of the Effects of Curcumin on Fibroblast-Like Synoviocytes in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic inflammatory disease characterized by synovial inflammation and joint disability. Curcumin is known to be effective in ameliorating joint inflammation in RA. To obtain new insights into the effect of curcumin on primary fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS, N = 3), which are key effector cells in RA, we employed gas chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC/TOF-MS)-based metabolomics. Metabolomic profiling of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α-stimulated and curcumin-treated FLS was performed using GC/TOF-MS in conjunction with univariate and multivariate statistical analyses. A total of 119 metabolites were identified. Metabolomic analysis revealed that metabolite profiles were clearly distinct between TNF-α-stimulated vs. the control group (not stimulated by TNF-α or curcumin). Treatment of FLS with curcumin showed that the metabolic perturbation by TNF-α could be reversed to that of the control group to a considerable extent. Curcumin-treated FLS had higher restoration of amino acid and fatty acid metabolism, as indicated by the prominent metabolic restoration of intermediates of amino acid and fatty acid metabolism, compared with that observed in TNF-α-stimulated FLS. In particular, the abundance of glycine, citrulline, arachidonic acid, and saturated fatty acids in TNF-α-stimulated FLS was restored to the control level after treatment with curcumin, suggesting that the effect of curcumin on preventing joint inflammation may be elucidated with the levels of these metabolites. Our results suggest that GC/TOF-MS-based metabolomic investigation using FLS has the potential for discovering the mechanism of action of curcumin and new targets for therapeutic drugs in RA.
Gastroprotective Effect of Ginger Rhizome (Zingiber officinale) Extract: Role of Gallic Acid and Cinnamic Acid in H+, K+-ATPase/H. pylori Inhibition and Anti-Oxidative Mechanism

Zinger officinale has been used as a traditional source against gastric disturbances from time immemorial. The ulcer-preventive properties of aqueous extract of ginger rhizome (GRAE) belonging to the family Zingiberaceae is reported in the present study. GRAE at 200 mg kg−1 b.w. protected up to 86% and 77% for the swim stress-/ethanol stress-induced ulcers with an ulcer index (UI) of 50 ± 4.0/46 ± 4.0, respectively, similar to that of lansoprazole (80%) at 30 mg kg−1 b.w. Increased H+, K+-ATPase activity and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) were observed in ulcer-induced rats, while GRAE fed rats showed normalized levels and GRAE also normalized depleted/amplified anti-oxidant enzymes in swim stress and ethanol stress-induced animals. Gastric mucin damage was recovered up to 77% and 74% in swim stress and ethanol stress, respectively after GRAE treatment. GRAE also inhibited the growth of H. pylori with MIC of 300 ± 38 μg and also possessed reducing power, free radical scavenging ability with an IC50 of 6.8 ± 0.4 μg mL−1 gallic acid equivalent (GAE). DNA protection up to 90% at 0.4 μg was also observed. Toxicity studies indicated no lethal effects in rats fed up to 5 g kg−1 b.w. Compositional analysis favored by determination of the efficacy of individual phenolic acids towards their potential ulcer-preventive ability revealed that between cinnamic (50%) and gallic (46%) phenolic acids, cinnamic acid appear to contribute to better H+, K+-ATPase and Helicobacter pylori inhibitory activity, while gallic acid contributes significantly to anti-oxidant activity.
An Academic Survey Concerning High School and University Students' Attitudes and Approaches to Problem Solving in Chemistry.

The aim of this study is to reveal differences between attitudes and approaches of students from different types of high school and the first grade of university towards problem solving in chemistry. For this purpose, the scale originally developed by Mason and Singh (2010) to measure students’ attitude and approaches towards problem solving in physics (AAPS), was adapted for chemistry. The Attitudes and Approaches to Chemistry Problem Solving (AACPS) scale included Likert-type items and was conducted with 552 students from science (2), regular (2), and vocational (2) high schools, plus one university. No statistically significant difference were found among high schools, but there was between high school and university students, and between female and male students in terms of their attitudes and approaches towards problem solving in chemistry. University students demonstrated more expert-like attitudes towards problem solving, and science and regular high school students were similarly expertlike, while the vocational high school students were rather novice-like. The results obtained through the AAPS physics attitude scale conducted in the same sample group were compared with results of the chemistry scale. Variances between these attitudes and approaches towards problem solving in both chemistry and physics were analyzed and some suggestions made.
UV-divergences of Wilson loops for gauge/gravity duality

We analyze the structure of the UV divergences of the Wilson loop for a general gauge/gravity duality. We find that, due to the presence of a nontrivial NSNS B-field and metric, new divergences that cannot be subtracted out by the conventional Legendre transform may arise. We also derive conditions on the B-field and the metric, which when satisfied, the leading UV divergence will become linear, and can be cancelled out by choosing the boundary condition of the string appropriately. Our results, together with the recent result of arXiv:0807.5127, where the effect of a nontrivial dilaton on the structure of UV divergences in Wilson loop is analysed, allow us to conclude that Legendre transform is at best capable of cancelling the linear UV divergences arising from the area of the worldsheet, but is incapable to handle the divergences associated with the dilaton or the B-field in general. We also solve the conditions for the cancellation of the leading linear divergences generally and find that many well-known supergravity backgrounds are of these kinds, including examples such as the Sakai-Sugimoto QCD model or = 1 duality with Sasaki-Einstein spaces. We also point out that Wilson loop in the Klebanov-Strassler background have a divergence associated with the B-field which cannot be cancelled away with the Legendre transform. Finally we end with some comments on the form of the Wilson loop operator in the ABJM superconformal Chern-Simons theory.
Modeling coordinated checkpointing for large-scale supercomputers

Current supercomputing systems consisting of thousands of nodes cannot meet the demands of emerging high-performance scientific applications. As a result, a new generation of supercomputing systems consisting of hundreds of thousands of nodes is being proposed. However, these systems are likely to experience far more frequent failures than today's systems, and such failures must be tackled effectively. Coordinated checkpointing is a common technique to deal with failures in supercomputers. This paper presents a model of a coordinated checkpointing protocol for large-scale supercomputers, and studies its scalability by considering both the coordination overhead and the effect of failures. Unlike most of the existing checkpointing models, the proposed model takes into account failures during checkpointing and recovery, as well as correlated failures. Stochastic activity networks (SANs) are used to model the system, and the model is simulated to study the scalability, reliability, and performance of the system.
Utility and Game-Theory Based Network Selection Scheme in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The paper proposes a utility function and game theory (UGT) based network selection scheme to maximize accommodated number of calls, minimize handoff occurrence frequency, and fulfill quality of service (QoS) requirements in heterogeneous wireless networks. When a new call or a handoff call arrives, UGT would calculate the utility value and preference value for each candidate network based on the QoS satisfaction of the call request and the cooperative game computation. Finally, the network, which has the maximum result of linearly combined utility value and preference value, would be selected as the most suitable network for the call request. Simulation results show that UGT has good QoS satisfaction. It also allows system to accommodate more calls than iterative TOPSIS scheme. In addition, UGT can reduce the handoff occurrence frequency by about 30% as compared to iterative TOPSIS.
Insulin adherence and persistence among Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes: a retrospective database analysis

Objective To assess adherence and persistence to insulin therapy and identify its associated factors among Chinese insulin-naïve patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Methods Tianjin Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance claims database was used (2008–2011). Adult patients with T2D who initiated insulin therapy during January 2009 through December 2010 and were continuously enrolled for 12 months pre-(baseline) and 12 months post-initiation (follow-up) were included. Patients who had a ≥80% medication possession ratio were deemed adherent, while patients who had no gaps of ≥90 days in insulin therapy were deemed persistent. Associated factors of insulin adherence and persistence were detected by univariate and multivariate analyses. Results A total of 24,192 patients were included; the patients had a mean age of 58.9 years, with 49.5% being female. About 51.9% of the patients had human insulin as initiation therapy, while 39.1% were initiated with insulin analog and 9.0% with animal-derived insulin. Premixed insulin (77.3%) was prescribed most often in comparison with basal (11.8%) and prandial (10.9%) insulin. Only 30.9% of patients were adherent, and the mean (standard deviation) medication possession ratio was 0.499 (0.361). About 53.0% of patients persisted insulin therapy during follow-up, and the mean time to nonpersistence was 230.3 (145.5) days. Patients initiated with analog were more likely to be adherent (adjusted odds ratio: 1.07, P=0.036) and persistent (adjusted hazard ratio: 0.88, P<0.001) compared with those initiated with human insulin. Patients initiation with basal insulin had lower adherence relative to premixed (adjusted odds ratio: 0.79, P<0.001). Patients comorbid with hypertension or dyslipidemia, initiated with prandial insulin, and with baseline severe hypoglycemic events were more likely to be nonadherent/nonpersistent. Conclusion The insulin adherence and persistence among Chinese patients with T2D are generally poor. Initiation with insulin analog or premixed insulin may result in better adherence/persistence to insulin therapy.
The Elapsed Time Between Acquisitions

Acquirer cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) have been investigated intensively for more than three decades. CARs measure shareholders’ wealth changes conditional upon a deal announcement. The unconditional acquirer shareholders’ expected profit is, however, the product of the acquirer’s CAR and the probability of making the acquisition. This probability element has been mostly overlooked in the M&A literature. Since the probability cannot be observed directly, we use the time between successive acquisitions as a proxy and provide a systematic empirical analysis of its determinants. JEL classification: G32; G34