Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Malignant Catarrhal Fever of Cattle Is Associated with Low Abundance of IL-2 Transcript and a Predominantly Latent Profile of Ovine Herpesvirus 2 Gene Expression

Background Malignant catarrhal fever (MCF) is a lethal disease of cattle, characterized by vasculitis, necrosis, and accumulation of activated, dysregulated cytotoxic lymphocytes in various tissues. Ovine gamma herpesvirus 2 (OvHV-2) is a causative agent of MCF, which may trigger the disease through immunopathogenic pathways. Lymphocytes are the main target of the virus. However, the pathogenic basis of the disease is still mysterious. Methods/Findings We hypothesized that the gene expression patterns of OvHV-2 and the relative abundances of host cell transcripts in lymphnodes may be used to identify pathways that help to explain the pathogenesis of MCF. Therefore, viral and host cell gene expression patterns in lymph nodes of animals with MCF and healthy controls were analyzed by microarray. Two regions on the viral genome were transcriptionally active, one encoding an orthologue to the latency-associated nuclear antigen (ORF73) of other gamma herpesviruses, the other with no predicted open reading frame. A vast number of transcripts related to inflammatory processes, lymphocyte activation, cell proliferation and apoptosis were detected at different abundances. However, the IL-2 transcript was eminent among the transcripts, which were, compared to healthy controls, less abundant in animals with MCF. The ratio between CD4- and CD8-positive T-lymphocytes was decreased in the lymphnodes of animals with MCF compared to healthy controls. In contrast, the same ratio was stable, when peripheral blood lymphocytes were analyzed. Conclusions/Significance The phenotype of mice with a deficient IL-2-system almost perfectly matches the clinical signs observed in cattle with MCF, which feature a significantly decreased IL-2 transcript abundance, compared to healthy cattle. This supports the hypothesis that immunopathogenic events are linked to the pathogenesis of MCF. IL-2-deficiency may play an important role in the process. Therefore, this work opens new avenues for research on MCF.
Anterior cingulate cortex activity can be independent of response conflict in Stroop-like tasks

Cognitive control includes the ability to formulate goals and plans of action and to follow these while facing distraction. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the presence of conflicting response alternatives in Stroop-like tasks increases activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), suggesting that the ACC is involved in cognitive control. However, the exact nature of ACC function is still under debate. The prevailing conflict detection hypothesis maintains that the ACC is involved in performance monitoring. According to this view, ACC activity reflects the detection of response conflict and acts as a signal that engages regulative processes subserved by lateral prefrontal brain regions. Here, we provide evidence from functional MRI that challenges this view and favors an alternative view, according to which the ACC has a role in regulation itself. Using an arrow–word Stroop task, subjects responded to incongruent, congruent, and neutral stimuli. A critical prediction made by the conflict detection hypothesis is that ACC activity should be increased only when conflicting response alternatives are present. Our data show that ACC responses are larger for neutral than for congruent stimuli, in the absence of response conflict. This result demonstrates the engagement of the ACC in regulation itself. A computational model of Stroop-like performance instantiating a version of the regulative hypothesis is shown to account for our findings.
Physical activity is independently related to aerobic capacity in cystic fibrosis

It is unclear whether a relationship between physical activity (PA) and maximal oxygen uptake (V′O2,max) exists in cystic fibrosis (CF) and, if so, whether the relationship reflects a direct effect or is mediated by the effects of confounding variables, such as pulmonary or muscle function. The objective of the present study was to determine the relationship between PA and V′O2,max in CF while adjusting for possible influences of confounding factors. In total, 36 female and 35 male patients with CF from Germany and Switzerland (aged 12–40 yrs, forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) 25–107% predicted) were studied. A Wingate test was employed to measure muscle power. PA was monitored for 7 days and expressed in two ways: 1) average daily accelerometer count (ADAC) and 2) time spent in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). V′O2,max was determined during an incremental cycle exercise test to volitional fatigue. PA was positively related to V′O2,max. In a multiple linear regression analysis, height, sex, FEV1, muscle power and ADAC (additionally explained variance 2.5%) or time spent in MVPA (additionally explained variance 3.7%) were identified as independent predictors of V′O2,max. In conclusion, high levels of physical activity in addition to good muscular and pulmonary functions are associated with a high aerobic capacity in cystic fibrosis.
Neutrophils Contribute to the Protection Conferred by ArtinM against Intracellular Pathogens: A Study on Leishmania major

ArtinM, a D-mannose binding lectin from Artocarpus heterophyllus, has immunomodulatory activities through its interaction with N-glycans of immune cells, culminating with the establishment of T helper type 1 (Th1) immunity. This interaction protects mice against intracellular pathogens, including Leishmania major and Leishmania amazonensis. ArtinM induces neutrophils activation, which is known to account for both resistance to pathogens and host tissue injury. Although exacerbated inflammation was not observed in ArtinM-treated animals, assessment of neutrophil responses to ArtinM is required to envisage its possible application to design a novel immunomodulatory agent based on carbohydrate recognition. Herein, we focus on the mechanisms through which neutrophils contribute to ArtinM-induced protection against Leishmania, without exacerbating inflammation. For this purpose, human neutrophils treated with ArtinM and infected with Leishmania major were analyzed together with untreated and uninfected controls, based on their ability to eliminate the parasite, release cytokines, degranulate, produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), form neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) and change life span. We demonstrate that ArtinM-stimulated neutrophils enhanced L. major clearance and at least duplicated tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and interleukin-1beta (IL-1β) release; otherwise, transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) production was reduced by half. Furthermore, ROS production and cell degranulation were augmented. The life span of ArtinM-stimulated neutrophils decreased and they did not form NETs when infected with L. major. We postulate that the enhanced leishmanicidal ability of ArtinM-stimulated neutrophils is due to augmented release of inflammatory cytokines, ROS production, and cell degranulation, whereas host tissue integrity is favored by their shortened life span and the absence of NET formation. Our results reinforce the idea that ArtinM may be considered an appropriate molecular template for the construction of an efficient anti-infective agent.
A novel log-based relevance feedback technique in content-based image retrieval

Relevance feedback has been proposed as an important technique to boost the retrieval performance in content-based image retrieval (CBIR). However, since there exists a semantic gap between low-level features and high-level semantic concepts in CBIR, typical relevance feedback techniques need to perform a lot of rounds of feedback for achieving satisfactory results. These procedures are time-consuming and may make the users bored in the retrieval tasks. For a long-term study purpose in CBIR, we notice that the users' feedback logs can be available and employed for helping the retrieval tasks in CBIR systems. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme to study the log-based relevance feedback (LRF) technique for improving retrieval performance and reducing the semantic gap in CBIR. In order to effectively incorporate the users' feedback logs, we propose a modified support vector machine (SVM) technique called soft label support vector machine (SLSVM) to construct the LRF algorithm in CBIR. We conduct extensive experiments to evaluate the performance of our proposed algorithm. Compared with the typical approach using query expansion (QEX) technique, we demonstrate that our proposed scheme can significantly improve the retrieval performance of semantic image retrieval from detailed experiments.
Neurophysiological Distinction between Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective Disorder

Schizoaffective disorder (SA) is distinguished from schizophrenia (SZ) based on the presence of prominent mood symptoms over the illness course. Despite this clinical distinction, SA and SZ patients are often combined in research studies, in part because data supporting a distinct pathophysiological boundary between the disorders are lacking. Indeed, few studies have addressed whether neurobiological abnormalities associated with SZ, such as the widely replicated reduction and delay of the P300 event-related potential (ERP), are also present in SA. Scalp EEG was acquired from patients with DSM-IV SA (n = 15) or SZ (n = 22), as well as healthy controls (HC; n = 22) to assess the P300 elicited by infrequent target (15%) and task-irrelevant distractor (15%) stimuli in separate auditory and visual ”oddball” tasks. P300 amplitude was reduced and delayed in SZ, relative to HC, consistent with prior studies. These SZ abnormalities did not interact with stimulus type (target vs. task-irrelevant distractor) or modality (auditory vs. visual). Across sensory modality and stimulus type, SA patients exhibited normal P300 amplitudes (significantly larger than SZ patients and indistinguishable from HC). However, P300 latency and reaction time were both equivalently delayed in SZ and SA patients, relative to HC. P300 differences between SA and SZ patients could not be accounted for by variation in symptom severity, socio-economic status, education, or illness duration. Although both groups show similar deficits in processing speed, SA patients do not exhibit the P300 amplitude deficits evident in SZ, consistent with an underlying pathophysiological boundary between these disorders.
Kinect V2 Performance Assessment in Daily-Life Gestures: Cohort Study on Healthy Subjects for a Reference Database for Automated Instrumental Evaluations on Neurological Patients

Background The increase of sanitary costs related to poststroke rehabilitation requires new sustainable and cost-effective strategies for promoting autonomous and dehospitalized motor training. In the Riprendo@Home and Future Home for Future Communities research projects, the promising approach of introducing low-cost technologies that promote home rehabilitation is exploited. In order to provide reliable evaluation of patients, a reference database of healthy people's performances is required and should consider variability related to healthy people performances. Methods 78 healthy subjects performed several repetitions of daily-life gestures, the reaching movement (RM) and hand-to-mouth (HtMM) movement with both the dominant and nondominant upper limbs. Movements were recorded with a Kinect V2. A synthetic biomechanical protocol based on kinematical, dynamical, and motor control parameters was used to assess motor performance of the healthy people. The investigation was conducted by clustering participants depending on their limb dominancy (right/left), gender (male/female), and age (young/middle/senior) as sources of variability. Results Results showed that limb dominancy has minor relevance in affecting RM and HtMM; gender has relevance in affecting the HtMM; age has major effect in affecting RM and HtMM. Conclusions An investigation of healthy subjects' upper limb performances during daily-life gestures was performed with the Kinect V2 sensor. Findings will be the basis for a database of normative data for neurological patients' motor evaluation.
Crigler-Najjar Syndrome: An Unusual Course with Development of Neurologic Damage at Age Eighteen

Extract: A patient with type I congenital nonhemolytic jaundice (type I Crigler-Najjar syndrome (CNJ)), who first developed overt neurologic signs at age 18, is reported. Studies with isotopic bilirubin, performed both when she was well and after the onset of brain damage, demonstrated normal hepatic bilirubin uptake and storage capacity, and normal bilirubin turnover (3.0 mg/kg/24hr). As a result of a virtual absence of conjugation, net bilirubin clearance was reduced to 0.0075 ml/min/kg, which is approximately 1% of normal (0.65 ± 0.18 ml/min/kg). Therapy with glutethimide, phenobarbital, blue light, and oral agar were all ineffective in reducing the concentration of unconjugated bilirubin in plasma or accelerating radiobilirubin disappearance.The acute onset of neurologic disease occurred at age 18, and may possibly have related to a transient increase in the molar bilirubin to albumin ratio to a value greater than 1.0. Exchange plasmapheresis, performed with a continuous flow centrifuge, rapidly reduced the bilirubin concentration in plasma from 41 to 6 mg/100 ml, and was associated with apparent clinical improvement. A total of 1,900 mg bilirubin was removed by this procedure.Although in vivo phototherapy was ineffective, in vitro illumination of the patient's plasma with special blue lamps produced a rapid fall in the bilirubin concentration in plasma. Bilirubin was converted to polar, diazo-negative derivatives by a process in which several steps could be distinguished. The initial photodegradation products were colored, tightly albumin bound and nondialyzable, which explained their tendency to be excreted in the bile in preference to the urine. Continued illumination for up to 24 hr resulted in the production of colorless, nonalbumin-bound compounds which, when injected into rats, were excreted principally in the urine.Speculation: Pending the perfection of techniques for auxiliary hepatic transplantation in man, extracorporeal phototherapy or hemoperfusion over albumin-conjugated agarose columns may provide a means of prevention of the otherwise inevitable development of neurologic disease in patients with type I CNJ.
Characterization of Anion Channels in the Plasma Membrane of Arabidopsis Epidermal Root Cells and the Identification of a Citrate-Permeable Channel Induced by Phosphate Starvation1

Organic-acid secretion from higher plant roots into the rhizosphere plays an important role in nutrient acquisition and metal detoxification. In this study we report the electrophysiological characterization of anion channels in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) root epidermal cells and show that anion channels represent a pathway for citrate efflux to the soil solution. Plants were grown in nutrient-replete conditions and the patch clamp technique was applied to protoplasts isolated from the root epidermal cells of the elongation zone and young root hairs. Using SO42− as the dominant anion in the pipette, voltage-dependent whole-cell inward currents were activated at membrane potentials positive of −180 mV exhibiting a maximum peak inward current (Ipeak) at approximately −130 mV. These currents reversed at potentials close to the equilibrium potential for SO42−, indicating that the inward currents represented SO42− efflux. Replacing intracellular SO42− with Cl− or NO3− resulted in inward currents exhibiting similar properties to the SO42− efflux currents, suggesting that these channels were also permeable to a range of inorganic anions; however when intracellular SO42− was replaced with citrate or malate, no inward currents were ever observed. Outside-out patches were used to characterize a 12.4-picoSiemens channel responsible for these whole-cell currents. Citrate efflux from Arabidopsis roots is induced by phosphate starvation. Thus, we investigated anion channel activity from root epidermal protoplasts isolated from Arabidopsis plants deprived of phosphate for up to 7 d after being grown for 10 d on phosphate-replete media (1.25 mm). In contrast to phosphate-replete plants, protoplasts from phosphate-starved roots exhibited depolarization-activated voltage-dependent citrate and malate efflux currents. Furthermore, phosphate starvation did not regulate inorganic anion efflux, suggesting that citrate efflux is probably mediated by novel anion channel activity, which could have a role in phosphate acquisition.
Domestic Violence Among Iranian Women: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Context Violence against women, or domestic violence, is both a physical and mental health issue that is rampant in many societies. It undermines the personal health of those involved by inflicting physical, sexual, and psychological damage. The purpose of the present systematic review and meta-analysis is to assess the prevalence of domestic violence in Iranian society. Evidence Acquisition A total of 31 articles published between 2000 and 2014 in Iranian and international databases (MagIran, IranMedex, SID, Google Scholar, Science Direct, PubMed, Pre Quest, and Scopus) were examined. The data collected from the articles were analyzed through a meta-analysis using a random effects model. The heterogeneity of the articles was examined using the I2 index, and the analyses were performed with STATA software version 11.2. Results Based on the 31 articles, which represent a sample size of 15,514 persons, we estimated the prevalence of domestic violence to be 66% (CI 95%: 55 - 77). The geographical classification showed that the prevalence of domestic violence was 70% (CI 95%: 57 - 84) in the east of the country, 70% in the south (CI 95%: 32 - 100), 75% in the west (CI 95%: 56 - 94), 62% in the north (CI 95%: 37 - 86), and 59% in the center (CI 95%: 44 - 74). Conclusions The results of the study showed a high prevalence of domestic violence in Iran, which requires the adoption of appropriate measures and the initiation of effective interventions by the legal authorities. These measures and interventions should aim to determine the causes of domestic violence and to develop ways of controlling and reducing this destructive phenomenon.
Very deep convolutional neural networks for raw waveforms

Learning acoustic models directly from the raw waveform data with minimal processing is challenging. Current waveform-based models have generally used very few (∼2) convolutional layers, which might be insufficient for building high-level discriminative features. In this work, we propose very deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that directly use time-domain waveforms as inputs. Our CNNs, with up to 34 weight layers, are efficient to optimize over very long sequences (e.g., vector of size 32000), necessary for processing acoustic waveforms. This is achieved through batch normalization, residual learning, and a careful design of down-sampling in the initial layers. Our networks are fully convolutional, without the use of fully connected layers and dropout, to maximize representation learning. We use a large receptive field in the first convolutional layer to mimic bandpass filters, but very small receptive fields subsequently to control the model capacity. We demonstrate the performance gains with the deeper models. Our evaluation shows that the CNN with 18 weight layers outperforms the CNN with 3 weight layers by over 15% in absolute accuracy for an environmental sound recognition task and is competitive with the performance of models using log-mel features.
Simple Sequence Repeats Together with Mismatch Repair Deficiency Can Bias Mutagenic Pathways in Pseudomonas aeruginosa during Chronic Lung Infection

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that chronically infects the airways of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients and undergoes a process of genetic adaptation based on mutagenesis. We evaluated the role of mononucleotide G:C and A:T simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in this adaptive process. An in silico survey of the genome sequences of 7 P. aeruginosa strains showed that mononucleotide G:C SSRs but not A:T SSRs were greatly under-represented in coding regions, suggesting a strong counterselection process for G:C SSRs with lengths >5 bp but not for A:T SSRs. A meta-analysis of published whole genome sequence data for a P. aeruginosa strain from a CF patient with chronic airway infection showed that G:C SSRs but not A:T SSRs were frequently mutated during the infection process through the insertion or deletion of one or more SSR subunits. The mutation tendency of G:C SSRs was length-dependent and increased exponentially as a function of SSR length. When this strain naturally became a stable Mismatch Repair System (MRS)-deficient mutator, the degree of increase of G:C SSRs mutations (5-fold) was much higher than that of other types of mutation (2.2-fold or less). Sequence analysis of several mutated genes reported for two different collections, both containing mutator and non-mutator strains of P. aeruginosa from CF chronic infections, showed that the proportion of G:C SSR mutations was significantly higher in mutators than in non-mutators, whereas no such difference was observed for A:T SSR mutations. Our findings, taken together, provide genome-scale evidences that under a MRS-deficient background, long G:C SSRs are able to stochastically bias mutagenic pathways by making the genes in which they are harbored more prone to mutation. The combination of MRS deficiency and virulence-related genes that contain long G:C SSRs is therefore a matter of concern in P. aeruginosa CF chronic infection.
When the course of aggressive behavior in childhood does not predict antisocial outcomes in adolescence and young adulthood: An examination of potential explanatory variables

Theoretical models and empirical studies suggest that there are a number of distinct pathways of aggressive behavior development in childhood that place youth at risk for antisocial outcomes in adolescence and young adulthood. The prediction of later antisocial behavior based on these early pathways, although substantial, is not perfect. The goal of the present study was to identify factors that explain why some boys on a high-risk developmental trajectory in middle childhood do not experience an untoward outcome, and, conversely, why some boys progressing on a low-risk trajectory do become involved in later antisocial behavior. To that end, we explored a set of theoretically derived predictors measured at entrance to elementary and middle school and examined their utility in explaining discordant cases. First-grade reading achievement, race, and poverty status proved to be significant early predictors of discordance, whereas the significant middle-school predictors were parent monitoring, deviant peer affiliation, and neighborhood level of deviant behavior.This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Mental Health (RO1 MH42968 to Sheppard G. Kellam, PI, and T-32 MH18834 to Nick Ialongo, PI) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (R49/CCR318627-03). We thank the Baltimore City Public Schools for their continuing collaborative efforts and the parents, children, teachers, principals, and school psychologists and social workers who participated.