Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Berberine Improves Intestinal Motility and Visceral Pain in the Mouse Models Mimicking Diarrhea-Predominant Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS-D) Symptoms in an Opioid-Receptor Dependent Manner

Background and Aims Berberine and its derivatives display potent analgesic, anti-inflammatory and anticancer activity. Here we aimed at characterizing the mechanism of action of berberine in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and cortical neurons using animal models and in vitro tests. Methods The effect of berberine was characterized in murine models mimicking diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D) symptoms. Then the opioidantagonists were used to identify the receptors involved. Furthermore, the effect of berberineon opioid receptors expression was established in the mouse intestine and rat fetal cortical neurons. Results In mouse models, berberine prolonged GI transit and time to diarrhea in a dose-dependent manner, and significantly reduced visceral pain. In physiological conditions the effects of berberine were mediated by mu- (MOR) and delta- (DOR) opioidreceptors; hypermotility, excessive secretion and nociception were reversed by berberine through MOR and DOR-dependent action. We also found that berberine increased the expression of MOR and DOR in the mouse bowel and rat fetal cortical neurons. Conclusion Berberine significantly improved IBS-D symptoms in animal models, possibly through mu- and delta- opioid receptors. Berberine may become a new drug candidate for the successful treatment of IBS-D in clinical conditions.
Dust and Elemental Abundances in Damped Lyα Absorbers

The effects of the dust on the determination of elemental abundances in damped Lyα (DLA) absorbers are investigated. Relations between the observed abundances measured in the gas phase and the overall abundances (gas plus dust) are derived as a function of dust-to-gas ratio, metallicity, element-to-element abundance pattern, average extinction coefficient of dust grains, and chemical composition of dust grains. A method is presented for determining dust-to-gas ratios, dust-to-metals ratios, and dust-corrected relative abundances in DLA absorbers by assuming dust of Galactic type and constant abundance ratios between iron-peak elements. The method is applied to a sample of 17 DLA absorbers with available Zn, Cr, and/or Fe measurements. The resulting dust-to-gas ratios are mostly distributed between 2% and 25% of the Galactic value, in good quantitative agreement with the results from reddening studies of QSOs with foreground DLA absorption. A correlation is found between dust-to-gas ratio and metallicity in DLA galaxies, with a typical dust-to-metals ratio of ≈ 60% of the Galactic value. The derived dust-to-metals ratios are then used to correct from the effects of dust the abundance ratios [Si/Fe], [S/Fe], [Ti/Fe], [Mn/Fe], and [Ni/Fe] available for a subsample of nine absorbers. The [α/Fe] ratios corrected from dust do not show the enhancement characteristic of metal-poor Galactic stars, but instead have essentially solar values, within ±0.2 dex. This suggests that the chemical history of DLA absorbers is different from that experienced by the Milky Way. Evidence that points to dwarf galaxies, rather than to spiral galaxies, as important contributors to the DLA phenomenon is summarized.
MASSLESS SCALAR FREE FIELD IN 1+1 DIMENSIONS I: WEYL ALGEBRAS PRODUCTS AND SUPERSELECTION SECTORS

This is the first of two papers on the superselection sectors of the conformal model in the title, in a time zero formulation. A classification of the sectors of the net of observables as restrictions of solitonic (twisted) and non-solitonic (untwisted) sector automorphisms of proper extensions of the observable net is given. All of them are implemented by the elements of a field net in a non-regular vacuum representation and the existence of a global compact Abelian gauge group is proved. A non-trivial center in the fixed-point net of this gauge group appears, but in an unphysical representation and reducing to the identity in the physical one. The completeness of the described superselection structure, to which the second paper is devoted, is shown in terms of Roberts' net cohomology. Some general features of physical field models defined by twisted cross products of Weyl algebras in non-regular representations are also presented.
Diurnal variation of stratospheric and lower mesospheric HOCl , ClO and HO 2 at the equator : comparison of 1-D model calculations with measurements by satellite instruments

The diurnal variation of HOCl and the related species ClO, HO2 and HCl measured by satellites has been compared with the results of a one-dimensional photochemical model. The study compares the data from various limbviewing instruments with model simulations from the middle stratosphere to the lower mesosphere. Data from three submillimetre instruments and two infrared spectrometers are used, namely from the Sub-Millimetre Radiometer (SMR) on board Odin, the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) on board Aura, the Superconducting Submillimeter-wave LimbEmission Sounder (SMILES) on the International Space Station, the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) on board ENVISAT, and the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS) on board SCISAT. Inter-comparison of the measurements from instruments on sun-synchronous satellites (SMR, MLS, MIPAS) and measurements from solar occultation instruments (ACE-FTS) is challenging since the measurements correspond to different solar zenith angles (or local times). However, using a model which covers all solar zenith angles and data from the SMILES instrument which measured at all local times over a period of several months provides the possibility to verify th model and to indirectly compare the diurnally variable species. The satellite data were averaged for latitudes of 20 ◦ S to 20 N for the SMILES observation period from November 2009 to April 2010 and were compared at three altitudes: 35, 45 and 55 km. Besides presenting the SMILES data, the study also shows a first comparison of the latest MLS data (version 3.3) of HOCl, ClO, and HO2 with other satellite observations, as well as a first evaluation of HO2 observations made by Odin/SMR. The MISU-1D model has been carefully initialised and run for conditions and locations of the observations. The diurnal cycle features for the species investigated here are generally well reproduced by the model. The satellite observations and the model agree well in terms of absolute mixing ratios. The differences between the day and night values of the model are in good agreement with the observations although the amplitude of the HO2 diurnal variation is 10–20 % lower in the model than in the observations. In particular, the data offered the opportunity to study the reaction ClO+HO 2 → HOCl+O2 in the lower mesosphere at 55 km. At this altitude the HOCl Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 7588 M. Khosravi et al.: HOCl, ClO and HO2 diurnal variation in the tropics night-time variation depends only on this reaction. The result of this analysis points towards a value of the rate constant within the range of the JPL 2006 recommendation and the upper uncertainty limit of the JPL 2011 recommendation at 55 km.
Using Single Colors and Color Pairs to Communicate Basic Tastes II: Foreground–Background Color Combinations

People associate basic tastes (e.g., sweet, sour, bitter, and salty) with specific colors (e.g., pink or red, green or yellow, black or purple, and white or blue). In the present study, we investigated whether a color bordered by another color (either the same or different) would give rise to stronger taste associations relative to a single patch of color. We replicate previous findings, highlighting the existence of a robust crossmodal correspondence between individual colors and basic tastes. On occasion, color pairs were found to communicate taste expectations more consistently than were single color patches. Furthermore, and in contrast to a recent study in which the color pairs were shown side-by-side, participants took no longer to match the color pairs with tastes than the single colors (they had taken twice as long to respond to the color pairs in the previous study). Possible reasons for these results are discussed, and potential applications for the results, and for the testing methodology developed, are outlined.
Should We Combine Difference In Differences with Conditioning on Pre-Treatment Outcomes?

Applied researchers often combine Difference In Differences (DID) with conditioning on pre-treatment outcomes when the Parallel Trend Assumption (PTA) fails. I examine both the theoretical and empirical basis for this approach. I show that the theoretical argument that both methods combine their strengths – DID differencing out the permanent confounders while conditioning on pre-treatment outcomes captures the transitory ones – is incorrect. Worse, conditioning on pre-treatment outcomes might increase the bias of DID. Simulations of a realistic model of earnings dynamics and selection in a Job Training Program (JTP) show that this bias can be sizable in practice. Revisiting empirical studies comparing DID with RCTs, I also find that conditioning on pre-treatment outcomes increases the bias of DID. Taken together, these results suggest that we should not combine DID with conditioning on pre-treatment outcomes but rather use DID conditioning on covariates that are fixed over time. When the PTA fails, DID applied symmetrically around the treatment date performs well in simulations and when compared with RCTs. Matching on several observations of pre-treatment outcomes also performs well in simulations, but evidence on its empirical performance is lacking.
Validation of the Dutch Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory in Patients With Medical Illness

Most validation studies of the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI) involved healthy subjects. Validation in patients who suffer from a life-threatening medical illness is needed, to investigate the FMI’s validity in medical psychology research and practice. Psychometric properties of the Dutch FMI were examined in two patient groups of two different studies: (Sample 1) cardiac patients (n = 114, M age = 56 ± 7 years, 18% women) and (Sample 2) severely fatigued cancer survivors (n = 158, M age = 50 ± 10 years, 77% women). Confirmatory factor analysis (studied only in Sample 2) provided good fit for the two-factor solution (Acceptance and Presence), while the one-factor solution provided suboptimal fit indices. Internal consistency was good for the whole scale in both samples (Sample 1 α = .827 and Sample 2 α = .851). The two-factor model showed acceptable to good internal consistency in Sample 2 (Presence: α = .823; Acceptance α = .744), but poor to acceptable in Sample 1 (Presence subscale: α = .577, Acceptance subscale: α = .791). Clinical sensitivity was supported in both samples, and construct validity (studied only in Sample 1) was acceptable. The Dutch FMI is an acceptable instrument to measure mindfulness in patients who experienced a life-threatening illness in a Dutch-speaking population.
Posterior cingulate cortex activation by emotional words: fMRI evidence from a valence decision task

Functional imaging studies consistently find that emotional stimuli activate the posterior cingulate cortex, a region that appears to have memory‐related functions. However, prior imaging studies have not controlled for non‐emotional stimulus features that might activate this region by engaging memory processes unrelated to emotion. This study examined whether emotional words activated the posterior cingulate cortex when these potentially confounding factors were controlled. Sixty‐four pleasant and 64 unpleasant words were matched with neutral words on non‐emotional features known to influence memory. Eight subjects underwent block‐designed functional magnetic resonance imaging scans while evaluating the valence of these words. The posterior cingulate cortex was significantly activated bilaterally during both unpleasant and pleasant compared to neutral words. The strongest activation peak with both unpleasant and pleasant words was observed in the left subgenual cingulate cortex. Anteromedial orbital and left inferior and middle frontal cortices were also activated by both pleasant and unpleasant words. Right amygdala and auditory cortex were activated only by unpleasant words, while left frontal pole was activated only by pleasant words. The results show that activation of the posterior cingulate cortex by emotional stimuli cannot be attributed to the memory‐enhancing effects of non‐emotional stimulus features. The findings are consistent with the suggestion that this region may mediate interactions of emotional and memory‐related processes. The results also extend prior findings that evaluating emotional words consistently activates the subgenual cingulate cortex, and suggest a means of probing this region in patients with mood disorders. Hum. Brain Mapping 18:30–41, 2003. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Gaining insight on friendly jamming in a real-world IEEE 802.11 network

Frequency jamming is the fiercest attack tool to disrupt wireless communication and its malicious aspects have received much attention in the literature. Yet, several recent works propose to turn the table and employ so-called friendly jamming for the benefit of a wireless network. For example, recently proposed friendly jamming applications include hiding communication channels, injection attack defense, and access control. This work investigates the practical viability of friendly jamming by applying it in a real-world network. To that end, we implemented a reactive and frame-selective jammer on a consumer grade IEEE 802.11 access point. Equipped with this, we conducted a three weeks real-world study on the jammer's performance and side-effects on legitimate traffic (the cost of jamming) in a university office environment. Our results provide detailed insights on crucial factors governing the trade-off between the effectiveness of friendly jamming (we evaluated up to 13 jammers) and its cost. In particular, we observed -- what we call the power amplification phenomenon -- an effect that aggravates the known hidden station problem when the number of jammers increases. However, we also find evidence that this effect can be alleviated by collaboration between jammers, which again enables effective and minimally invasive friendly jamming.
Evaluation in Information Visualization: Heuristic Evaluation

This paper presents a review of heuristic evaluation and recommendations for how to apply the method for information visualization evaluation. Heuristic evaluation is a widely known and popular method within the area of human-computer interaction and the information visualization community now also recognizes its usefulness. However, in this area it is not applied to the same extent. In its original form the method has limitations that need to be considered in order for it to be optimal for information visualization. The aim with this paper is to provide the reader with knowledge about the method and awareness of what issues that call for refined or supplemental actions and resources in order for it to generate as valid and useful results as possible. The paper also discusses the research challenges for future work in how to further improve the method.
Increasing the effect size in event-related fMRI studies

Independent component analysis (ICA) has proved to be a powerful method for exploratory analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. It has been used to uncover unexpected activations in fMRI data derived from brain activation. ICA has been used to characterize other sources of variability in the fMRI signal besides task-related activity, as well as challenging some of the assumptions inherent in other fMRI analysis methods. As a data-driven fMRI analysis technique, the philosophy of ICA is often in disagreement with hypothesis-driven methods. By exploiting the fact that much of fMRI data has deterministic spatial-temporal structure, a scheme employing ICA denoising and least squares (LS) estimation of the evoked hemodynamic response (HDR) is proposed. Simulations suggest that the method is more robust to different noise models compared to naive application of LS. The result is a considerably increased level of significance of activation for a given voxel but still qualitatively similar spatial distribution of activations over all voxels. This suggests that the proposed method has the potential to substantially reduce total scanning time requirements to achieve the same level of statistically significant activation.
Galaxy Size Evolution at High Redshift and Surface Brightness Selection Effects: Constraints from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

We use the exceptional depth of the Ultra Deep Field (UDF) and UDF-parallel Advanced Camera for Surveys fields to study the sizes of high-redshift (z ~ 2-6) galaxies and address long-standing questions about possible biases in the cosmic star formation rate due to surface brightness dimming. Contrasting B-, V-, and i-dropout samples culled from the deeper data with those obtained from the shallower Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey fields, we demonstrate that the shallower data are essentially complete at bright magnitudes to z ≲ 5.5 and that the principal effect of depth is to add objects at the magnitude limit. This indicates that high-redshift galaxies are compact in size (~0.″1-0.″3) and that large (≳0.″4, ≳3 kpc) low surface brightness galaxies are rare. A simple comparison of the half-light radii of the Hubble Deep Field-North + Hubble Deep Field-South U-dropouts with B-, V-, and i-dropouts from the UDF shows that the sizes follow a (1 + z)-1.05±0.21 scaling toward high redshift. A more rigorous measurement compares different scalings of our U-dropout sample with the mean profiles for a set of intermediate-magnitude (26.0 < z850, AB < 27.5) i-dropouts from the UDF. The best fit is found with a (1 + z) size scaling (for fixed luminosity). This result is then verified by repeating this experiment with different size measures, low-redshift samples, and magnitude ranges. Very similar scalings are found for all comparisons. A robust measurement of size evolution is thereby demonstrated for galaxies from z ~ 6 to 2.5 using data from the UDF.
Exploration of self-reported motivation for females’ use of intimate partner violence in Scotland

3 Introduction . 4 Methods . 9 Results . 10 Discussion . 32 JOURNAL ARTICLE 2: EMPIRICAL STUDY . 46 Abstract . 47. 47 Introduction . 48 Methods . 53 Results . 60 Discussion . 74 Thesis Portfolio References . 87 Appendices . 99 WORD COUNT MAIN BODY OF TEXT): 23,079 (excluding research portfolio references and appendices)
Causal and Synthetic Associations of Variants in the SERPINA Gene Cluster with Alpha1-antitrypsin Serum Levels

Several infrequent genetic polymorphisms in the SERPINA1 gene are known to substantially reduce concentration of alpha1-antitrypsin (AAT) in the blood. Since low AAT serum levels fail to protect pulmonary tissue from enzymatic degradation, these polymorphisms also increase the risk for early onset chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The role of more common SERPINA1 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in respiratory health remains poorly understood. We present here an agnostic investigation of genetic determinants of circulating AAT levels in a general population sample by performing a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in 1392 individuals of the SAPALDIA cohort. Five common SNPs, defined by showing minor allele frequencies (MAFs) >5%, reached genome-wide significance, all located in the SERPINA gene cluster at 14q32.13. The top-ranking genotyped SNP rs4905179 was associated with an estimated effect of β = −0.068 g/L per minor allele (P = 1.20*10−12). But denser SERPINA1 locus genotyping in 5569 participants with subsequent stepwise conditional analysis, as well as exon-sequencing in a subsample (N = 410), suggested that AAT serum level is causally determined at this locus by rare (MAF<1%) and low-frequent (MAF 1–5%) variants only, in particular by the well-documented protein inhibitor S and Z (PI S, PI Z) variants. Replication of the association of rs4905179 with AAT serum levels in the Copenhagen City Heart Study (N = 8273) was successful (P<0.0001), as was the replication of its synthetic nature (the effect disappeared after adjusting for PI S and Z, P = 0.57). Extending the analysis to lung function revealed a more complex situation. Only in individuals with severely compromised pulmonary health (N = 397), associations of common SNPs at this locus with lung function were driven by rarer PI S or Z variants. Overall, our meta-analysis of lung function in ever-smokers does not support a functional role of common SNPs in the SERPINA gene cluster in the general population.
Bacterial Wall Attachment in a Flow Reactor : mixed culture

A mathematical model of a mixed culture of bacteria in a fully three dimensional flow reactor which accounts for the colonization of the reactor wall surface by the microbes is studied both analytically and by simulation. It can be viewed as a model of the large intestine or of the fouling of a commercial bio-reactor or pipe flow. The primary focus is on coexistence of microbial populations in the reactor.
The core and halo of primary progressive aphasia and semantic dementia

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a language-based dementia. It is diagnosed by distinctive clinical features that set it apart from typical forms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In contrast to the patient with AD, who usually comes with a history of forgetfulness, the patient with PPA comes with reports of word-finding difficulties, abnormal speech patterns, or a deterioration of spelling. The clinical diagnosis of PPA is made when other mental faculties such as memory for daily events, visuospatial skills, and comportment display no major deficits; when language is the only area of salient and progressive dysfunction for at least the first 2 years of the disease; and when brain imaging does not show a specific lesion, other than atrophy, that can account for the language deficit. Standardized neuropsychological tests of language function are helpful for detecting early stages of the disease. However, a strict reliance on neuropsychological tests, most of which depend on verbal instructions, verbal responses, or covert verbal reasoning, may occasionally lead to the erroneous conclusion that areas other than language are also impaired. Scores on the Mini-Mental Status Examination, for example, can greatly exaggerate the degree of disability. Although the language disorder in PPA may interfere with the ability to memorize word lists or solve reasoning tasks, the patient typically has no difficulty recalling daily events or behaving with sound judgment, indicating that explicit memory, reasoning, and social skills remain relatively intact. PPA is a form of dementia because it causes a gradual cognitive decline to the point at which daily living functions become compromised. It is also an unusual dementia because core memory functions, which are severely impaired in AD, remain largely preserved.
Exercise in Pregnancy: Weighing Up the Long-Term Impact on the Next Generation

There is now a large body of evidence demonstrating the influence of the in utero environment on postnatal growth. Regular aerobic exercise during pregnancy elicits maternal and fetal adaptations that seem specific to the period of gestation in which training is initiated and maintained. This review considers the evidence for both positive and negative long-term health outcomes for offspring.