Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of Methylenetetrahydrofolate Reductase Gene 677C>T Polymorphism with Hypertension in Older Women in a Population of Buenos Aires City

We examined the relationship between the 677C >T polymorphism in the MTHFR gene and tHcy in normotensive (NT) and hypertensive (HT) subjects and the influence of sex and age in a cross-sectional study. Smoking habits, history of vascular disease, diabetes, and tHcy were significantly associated with T allele as hypertension risk factors. The T allele was significantly related with higher tHcy in (i) men versus women (P < .01), (ii) men and women older than 47 years versus the younger ones (P < .05 and P < .001, respectively), (iii) HT women versus NT women (P < .01), and (iv) older HT women versus older NT women (P < .01). We found an association between the 677C>T MTHFR polymorphism and tHcy with hypertension that in women is manifested with age.
Hyparrhenia hirta: A potential protective agent against hematotoxicity and genotoxicity of sodium nitrate in adult rats

The present study was carried out to examine the adverse hematotoxic and genotoxic effects of water nitrate pollution on male adult rats and the use of hyparrhenia hirta methanolic extract in alleviating these effects. Sodium nitrate (NaNO3) was administered to adult rats by oral gavage at a dose of 400 mg kg−1 bw daily for 50 days, while hyparrhenia hirta methanolic extract was given by drinking water at a dose of 1.5 mg mL−1 (200 mg kg−1 bw). The NaNO3‐treated group showed a significant decrease in red blood cell count, hemoglobin and hematocrit and a significant increase in total white blood cell, in neutrophil and eosinophil counts. Platelet count, mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular hemoglobin, and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration remained unchanged in treated groups compared to those of controls. Meanwhile, the results showed a marked reduction in the antioxidant enzyme activities, such as superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione peroxidase, along with an elevation in the level of lipid peroxidation and a reduction in the total glutathione content, indicating the induction of oxidative stress in the erythrocytes of NaNO3‐treated group. Interestingly, NaNO3 treatment showed a significant increase in the frequencies of total chromosomal aberrations, aberrant metaphases and micronucleus in bone‐marrow cells. The oxidative stress induced by nitrate treatment might be the major cause for chromosomal rearrangements as free radicals leading to DNA damage. Hyparrhenia hirta methanolic extract appeared to be effective against hematotoxic and genotoxic changes induced by nitrate, as evidenced by the improvement of the markers cited above. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 30: 1275–1284, 2015.
A game theoretical approach to evaluate cooperation enforcement mechanisms in mobile ad hoc networks

In this paper we propose two methods to evaluate the effectiveness of the CORE mechanism based on a cooperative game approach and a non-cooperative game approach: the results obtained using the first approach define a lower bound on the number of legitimate nodes in an ad hoc network when the CORE mechanism is adopted while the second approach describe the asymptotical behavior of a selfish node that is controlled by CORE.
Myopic Discounting of Future Rewards after Medial Orbitofrontal Damage in Humans

Choices are often intertemporal, requiring tradeoff of short-term and long-term outcomes. In such contexts, humans may prefer small rewards delivered immediately to larger rewards delivered after a delay, reflecting temporal discounting (TD) of delayed outcomes. The medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) is consistently activated during intertemporal choice, yet its role remains unclear. Here, patients with lesions in the mOFC (mOFC patients), control patients with lesions outside the frontal lobe, and healthy individuals chose hypothetically between small-immediate and larger-delayed rewards. The type of reward varied across three TD tasks, including both primary (food) and secondary (money and discount vouchers) rewards. We found that damage to mOFC increased significantly the preference for small-immediate over larger-delayed rewards, resulting in steeper TD of future rewards in mOFC patients compared with the control groups. This held for both primary and secondary rewards. All participants, including mOFC patients, were more willing to wait for delayed money and discount vouchers than for delayed food, suggesting that mOFC patients' (impatient) choices were not due merely to poor motor impulse control or consideration of the goods at stake. These findings provide the first evidence in humans that mOFC is necessary for valuation and preference of delayed rewards for intertemporal choice.
Dietary fenugreek and onion attenuate cholesterol gallstone formation in lithogenic diet–fed mice

An animal study was conducted to evaluate the antilithogenic effect of a combination of dietary fenugreek seeds and onion. Lithogenic conditions were induced in mice by feeding them a high (0.5%) cholesterol diet (HCD) for 10 weeks. Fenugreek (12%) and onion (2%) were included individually and in combination in this HCD. Fenugreek, onion and their combination reduced the incidence of cholesterol gallstones by 75%, 27% and 76%, respectively, with attendant reduction in total cholesterol content by 38–42%, 50–72% and 61–80% in serum, liver and bile respectively. Consequently, the cholesterol/phospholipid ratio was reduced significantly in serum, liver and bile. The cholesterol saturation index of bile was reduced from 4.14 to 1.38 by the combination of fenugreek and onion and to 2.33 by onion alone. The phospholipid and bile acid contents of the bile were also increased. Changes in the hepatic enzyme activities (3‐hydroxy‐3‐methylglutaryl Coenzyme A reductase, cholesterol‐7α‐hydroxylase and cholesterol‐27‐hydroxylase) induced by HCD were countered by fenugreek, onion and their combination. Hepatic lipid peroxides were reduced by 19–22% and 39–45% with fenugreek, onion and their combination included in the diet along with the HCD. Increased accumulation of fat in the liver and inflammation of the gallbladder membrane produced by HCD were reduced by fenugreek, onion and their combination. The antilithogenic influence was highest with fenugreek alone, and the presence of onion along with it did not further increase this effect. There was also no additive effect of the two spices in the recovery of antioxidant molecules or in the antioxidant enzyme activities.
Traveling Front Solutions to Directed Diffusion Limited Aggregation Digital Search Trees and the Lempel-Ziv Data Compression Algorithm

We use the traveling front approach to derive exact asymptotic results for the statistics of the number of particles in a class of directed diffusion-limited aggregation models on a Cayley tree. We point out that some aspects of these models are closely connected to two different problems in computer science, namely, the digital search tree problem in data structures and the Lempel-Ziv algorithm for data compression. The statistics of the number of particles studied here is related to the statistics of height in digital search trees which, in turn, is related to the statistics of the length of the longest word formed by the Lempel-Ziv algorithm. Implications of our results to these computer science problems are pointed out.
Abnormal intraepithelial airway nerves in persistent unexplained cough?

Idiopathic persistent nonproductive cough (PNPC) is characterized by enhanced cough sensitivity to inhaled capsaicin, suggesting that capsaicin-sensitive afferent airway nerves are either present in increased numbers or functionally upregulated. In 16 patients with idiopathic PNPC and eight healthy control subjects, we measured cough sensitivity to inhaled capsaicin and the anatomic density in bronchial epithelium of nerves immunoreactive for the general nerve-marker protein gene product (PGP)-9.5 and the sensory neuropeptides calcitonin-gene-related-peptide (CGRP) and substance-P (SP). The log concentrations of capsaicin required to elicit at least two (C2) and five (C5) coughs were significantly lower in patients (P) than in control subjects (C) (median [range] log C2, P = 0.3 [-0.3 to 1.2] microM; C = 1.5 [0.9 to 2.1], p < 0.0005; log C5, P = 0.8 [-0.3 to 2.1]; C = 2.6 [1.8 to 3.0], p < 0.0005). In bronchial epithelium taken from the carina of the right upper lobe (RUL) and a subsegmental carina of the right lower lobe (RLL), total nerve density (PGP-9.5 immunoreactivity) was greater in P than C, although this was not significant. CGRP-immunoreactive nerve density was significantly higher in P than in C in the RUL (median [range] P = 1.05% [0.13 to 5.08]; C = 0.02% [0 to 0.24], p = 0.001) and RLL (P = 0.59% [0.04 to 3.14]; C = 0% [0 to 0.50], p < 0.02). SP-immunoreactive nerves were not significantly different in the two groups. Abnormal intraepithelial airway nerves containing increased quantities of CGRP are present in patients with idiopathic PNPC. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
What challenges do foundation phase teachers experience when teaching writing in rural multigrade classes

A one-size-fits-all curriculum cannot address the issues faced by rural multigrade teachers and learners. In South Africa, despite government efforts to relieve adversity, poverty in rural areas is still rife and poor education still fails to lift people out of it (Joubert 2010). Equality is essential in ensuring that all South African children have access to quality education where they can learn in an environment free from bias and discrimination (Asmal 2001). Bronfenbrenner’s social ecological systems theory underpinned this study. The purpose of this research was to identify the challenges experienced by two foundation phase teachers in teaching writing. This research was a qualitative study embedded within an interpretive case study. The following factors became evident: poor socio-economic backgrounds, transport, parental illiteracy, and teacher challenges that include the following subthemes: reading problems, differentiated teaching, resources, the language of teaching and learning, and writing support from the Western Cape Education Department (WCED).
Situation Recognition: Visual Semantic Role Labeling for Image Understanding

This paper introduces situation recognition, the problem of producing a concise summary of the situation an image depicts including: (1) the main activity (e.g., clipping), (2) the participating actors, objects, substances, and locations (e.g., man, shears, sheep, wool, and field) and most importantly (3) the roles these participants play in the activity (e.g., the man is clipping, the shears are his tool, the wool is being clipped from the sheep, and the clipping is in a field). We use FrameNet, a verb and role lexicon developed by linguists, to define a large space of possible situations and collect a large-scale dataset containing over 500 activities, 1,700 roles, 11,000 objects, 125,000 images, and 200,000 unique situations. We also introduce structured prediction baselines and show that, in activity-centric images, situation-driven prediction of objects and activities outperforms independent object and activity recognition.
What to do about non-standard (or non-canonical) language in NLP

Real world data differs radically from the benchmark corpora we use in natural language processing (NLP). As soon as we apply our technologies to the real world, performance drops. The reason for this problem is obvious: NLP models are trained on samples from a limited set of canonical varieties that are considered standard, most prominently English newswire. However, there are many dimensions, e.g., socio-demographics, language, genre, sentence type, etc. on which texts can differ from the standard. The solution is not obvious: we cannot control for all factors, and it is not clear how to best go beyond the current practice of training on homogeneous data from a single domain and language. In this paper, I review the notion of canonicity, and how it shapes our community's approach to language. I argue for leveraging what I call fortuitous data, i.e., non-obvious data that is hitherto neglected, hidden in plain sight, or raw data that needs to be refined. If we embrace the variety of this heterogeneous data by combining it with proper algorithms, we will not only produce more robust models, but will also enable adaptive language technology capable of addressing natural language variation.
Functional interaction between Trace Amine Associated Receptor 1 (TAAR1) and dopamine D2 receptor

The ability of dopamine receptors to interact with other receptor subtypes may provide mechanisms for modulating dopamine-related functions and behaviors. In particular, there is evidence suggesting that the Trace Amine-Associated Receptor 1 (TAAR1) affects the dopaminergic system by regulating the firing rate of dopaminergic neurons or by altering dopamine D2 receptor (D2R) responsiveness to ligands. TAAR1 is a G protein-coupled receptor that is activated by biogenic amines, “trace amines” (TAs), such as β -phenylethylamine ( β -PEA) and tyramine that are normally found at low concentrations in the mammalian brain. In the present study, we investigated the biochemical mechanism of interaction between TAAR1 and D2R and the role this interaction plays in D2R-related signaling and behaviors. Using a bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) biosensor for cAMP, we demonstrated that the D2R antagonists haloperidol, raclopride and amisulpride were able to enhance selectively a TAAR1-mediated β -PEA increase of cAMP. Moreover, TAAR1 and D2R were able to form heterodimers when co-expressed in HEK 293 cells and this direct interaction was disrupted in the presence of haloperidol. In addition, in mice lacking TAAR1, haloperidol-induced striatal c-Fos expression and catalepsy were significantly reduced. Taken together, these data suggest that TAAR1 and D2R have functional as well as physical interactions that could be critical for the modulation of the dopaminergic system by TAAR1 in vivo . the absorbance of with the presence of the receptors in the membrane. When TAAR1 is co-expressed with D2R, its presence on the membrane is significantly reduced by about 50% (p<0.001) compared to cells in which this receptor expressed alone. The reduction in TAAR1 levels was not observed in cells expressing TAAR1 and D1R. B, D2R co-expression does not affect membrane levels of D1R By using a HA-D1R we measured the effect of D2R on D1R expression. D2R co-expression did not cause significant changes in D1R membrane levels. C, D2R membrane expression is not modulated by co-expression with TAAR1. In cells expressing both TAAR1 and D2R receptors, D2R surface immunoreactivity is not changed compared to cells only expressing D2R. D, D2R co-expression, but not D1R, significantly reduces TAAR1 total expression. TAAR1 tagged with Renilla luciferase in the C-terminus was used to monitor the total expression of the receptor by using the cell permeable R luc substrate coelenterazine h . The cells were detached from their dishes and approximately 90000 cells were placed for each well in a 96-well plate. Coelenterazine h was added at a final concentration of 5 µM and 10 minutes later the luminescence was measured. Similarly to surface expression, total amount of TAAR1 was also reduced in presence of D2R by about 60% (p<0.01). All values are expressed as means ± SEM (n=3-5 independent experiments for each experimental condition).
Furcocercous cercariae (Trematoda) from freshwater snails in Central Finland

A total of eight species of furcocercous cercariae of four families (Strigeidae, Diplostomidae, Schistosomatidae and Sanguinicolidae), were found in 2005 in Lake Konnevesi in Central Finland in four snail species (Valvata macrostoma, Lymnaea stagnalis, Bathyomphalus contortus and Planorbarius corneus). Australapatemon burti (Miller, 1923), Australapatemon sp. , Cotylurus brevis Dubois et Rausch, 1950, Cercaria spinulosa Ginetsinskaya, 1959 and Sanguinicola sp. are new species records for Finland. Ichthyocotylurus variegatus (Creplin, 1825) and Bilharziella polonica (Kowalewski, 1895) were first recorded as cercariae in Finland. The most common cercariae were A. burti (prevalence 13.3%) and Diplostomum pseudospathaceum Niewiadomska, 1984 (10.0%). Our study represents the first host record of Valvata macrostoma for larval stages of Australapatemon sp. and Sanguinicola sp.
Serum MicroRNA-155 as a Potential Biomarker to Track Disease in Breast Cancer

Background One major impediment to improving the management of breast cancer is the current lack of tumor marker with sufficient sensitivity and specificity. A growing body of evidence implicates the diagnostic potential of circulating miRNAs in cancer detection. MiR-155 plays an important role in the pathogenesis of breast cancer. However, the level of circulating miR-155 and its clinical relevance are not well established. The objective of the current study was to learn more about serum miR-155 in patients with breast cancer. Methodology/Principal Findings Using quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), we demonstrated that serum miR-155 had significant increased levels in breast cancer patients (n = 103) compared with healthy subjects (n = 55) (p<0.001), which had a mean fold change of 2.94. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis revealed that miR-155 had considerable diagnostic accuracy, yielding an ROC-AUC (the areas under the ROC curve) of 0.801 (sensitivity 65.0%, specificity 81.8%). In addition, sera from a subset of breast cancer patients (n = 29) were collected after surgery and after four cycles of chemotherapy to evaluate the effects of clinical treatment on serum levels of candidate miRNAs. Surprisingly, a decreased level of serum miR-155 was found; whereas the concentrations of carbohydrate antigen 15-3 (CA15-3), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and tissue polypeptide specific antigen (TPS) did not show this trend. Our results revealed that 79% patients showed response or stable disease after therapy had declined levels of serum miR-155. Conclusions/Significance Our results suggest that serum miR-155 is a potential biomarker to discriminate breast cancer patients from healthy subjects. For the first time, we demonstrated a declined trend of miR-155 after surgery and chemotherapy, which raises the possibility to use it as an indicator for treatment response.
Coating additives for enhanced mechanical reliability of fused silica optical fibers: effect on mechanical and optical performance

It is now well known that fused silica optical fiber can suffer from enhanced strength degrathtion after prolonged exposure to aggressive environments. This is caused by corrosion of the glass surface by moisture leading to roughening, strength loss, and, potentially, problems with handleability. It has been found that addition of nanosized silica particles to the polymer coating can improve the long term mechanical reliability by slowing corrosion and delaying the onset of strength loss. However, previous studies have shown that addition of these particles can lead to unacceptably high added optical loss, when measured using the "basketweave" test. In this work, it is shown that the added loss caused by coating additives can be reduced by improving the mixing and dispersion ofthe silica powders in the polymer. It is further shown that well dispersed powders still substantially improve the long term fatigue and aging behavior. This clearly shows that coating additives can improve the mechanical reliability without significantly degrading the optical performance.
A behavioral interface to simulate agent-object interactions in real time

The paper shows a novel approach to model and control interactive objects for simulations with virtual human agents when real time interactivity is essential. A general conceptualization is made to model objects with behaviors that can provide: information about their functionality changes in appearance from parameterized deformations, and a complete plan for each possible interaction with a virtual human. Such behaviors are described with simple primitive commands, following the actual trend of many standard scene graph file formats that connects language with movements and events to create interactive animations. In our case, special attention is given to correctly interpret object behaviors in parallel; a situation that arrives when many human agents interact at the same time with one same object.
Phospholipids

Cytoskeleton serves as structural, membrane-bound and highly nonlinear dynamics element that basically functions in abiotic and biotic stresses. The study of phospholipid-regulated cytoskeletal organization to strengthen plants against stresses is emerging. Phospholipids in lipid bilayers, as the main compound of cellular membranes, have roles in modulation of membrane curvature and anchoring, cross-linking or regulating particular cytoskeletal proteins to modulate cytoskeletal dynamics. In this review, we highlight the role of phospholipids and their metabolic enzymes through regulating cytoskeletal organization and dynamics in response to abiotic stresses, such as salt, drought and low/high temperature stresses.
Networks of Neuronal Genes Affected by Common and Rare Variants in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental disorders with phenotypic and genetic heterogeneity. Recent studies have reported rare and de novo mutations in ASD, but the allelic architecture of ASD remains unclear. To assess the role of common and rare variations in ASD, we constructed a gene co-expression network based on a widespread survey of gene expression in the human brain. We identified modules associated with specific cell types and processes. By integrating known rare mutations and the results of an ASD genome-wide association study (GWAS), we identified two neuronal modules that are perturbed by both rare and common variations. These modules contain highly connected genes that are involved in synaptic and neuronal plasticity and that are expressed in areas associated with learning and memory and sensory perception. The enrichment of common risk variants was replicated in two additional samples which include both simplex and multiplex families. An analysis of the combined contribution of common variants in the neuronal modules revealed a polygenic component to the risk of ASD. The results of this study point toward contribution of minor and major perturbations in the two sub-networks of neuronal genes to ASD risk.