Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence that action potentials activate an internodal potassium conductance in lizard myelinated axons.

1. We have studied action potentials and after‐potentials evoked in the internodal region of visualized lizard intramuscular nerve fibres by stimulation of the proximal nerve trunk. Voltage recordings were obtained using microelectrodes inserted into the axon (intra‐axonal) or into the layers of myelin (peri‐internodal), with the goal of studying conditions required to activate internodal K+ currents. 2. Peri‐internodal recordings made using K2SO4‐, KCl‐ or NaCl‐filled electrodes exhibited a negligible resting potential (less than 2 mV), but showed action potentials with peak amplitudes of up to 78 mV and a duration less than or equal to that of the intra‐axonally recorded action potential. 3. Following ionophoretic application of potassium from a peri‐internodal microelectrode, the peri‐internodal action potential was followed by a prolonged (hundreds of milliseconds) negative plateau. This plateau was not seen following peri‐internodal ionophoresis of sodium. The prolonged negative potential (PNP) was confined to the K(+)‐injected internode: it could be recorded by a second peri‐internodal microelectrode inserted into the same internode, but not into an adjacent internode. 4. The peri‐internodally recorded PNP was accompanied by an equally prolonged intra‐axonal depolarizing after‐potential, and by an increase in the conductance of the internodal axolemma. However, the K+ ionophoresis that produced the PNP had little or no detectable effect on the intra‐axonally or peri‐internodally recorded resting potential or action potential. These findings suggest that the PNP is generated by an inward current across the axolemma of the K(+)‐injected internode, through channels opened following the action potential. 5. Following peri‐internodal K+ ionophoresis a PNP could also be evoked by passage of depolarizing current pulses through an intra‐axonal electrode or by passage of negative current pulses through an electrode in the K(+)‐filled peri‐internodal region. The threshold for evoking a PNP was less than the threshold for evoking an action potential, and the PNP persisted in 10 microM‐tetrodotoxin. Thus the PNP is evoked by depolarization of the axolemma rather than by Na+ influx. 6. The PNP was reversibly blocked by tetraethylammonium (TEA, 2‐10 mM), but was not blocked by 100 microM‐3,4‐diaminopyridine or 5 mM‐4‐aminopyridine. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Microglial cells prevent nitric oxide‐induced neuronal apoptosis in vitro

Apoptotic neuronal death is known to occur in the developing brain and in the mature brain of patients with ischemic and degenerative disorders. Although microglial cells are known to become activated in specific conditions, it has not been elucidated whether they enhance or prevent neuronal apoptosis. The present study was intended to observe how microglial cells are involved in neuronal death. When rat primary cortical neurons were incubated with a nitric oxide (NO) donor sodium nitroprusside (SNP; 300 μM) for 10 min, neuronal death occurred 12–16 hr later. The NO‐induced neuronal death was inhibited by cycloheximide, and the SNP‐treated neurons were characterized by nuclear fragmentation and intact cell membrane under electron microscopy. Agarose gel electrophoresis demonstrated DNA fragmentation of the SNP‐treated neurons. Thus, the NO‐induced neuronal death appeared to be apoptosis. When neurons were cocultured with rat primary microglial cells, the SNP treatment failed to induce the neuronal death. Because microglia‐conditioned medium also prevented apoptotic neuronal death, microglial cells were considered to secrete antiapoptotic factors. The microglia‐conditioned medium rescued neurons even when they were added to neuronal cultures after the SNP treatment, implying that the factors acted on neurons in a manner other than scavenging NO. Interleukin‐3, interleukin‐6, macrophage colony‐stimulating factor, and basic fibroblast growth factor, which are known to be secreted by microglial cells, were not effective in preventing NO‐induced neuronal death. Among microglia‐derived substances, tumor necrosis factor α and plasminogen, which are heat‐labile proteins, inhibited neuronal apoptosis. The neuroprotective action of the microglia‐conditioned medium, however, still remained, even after it was heated. These findings suggest that microglial cells protect neurons against NO‐induced lethal damage by secreting heat‐labile and heat‐stable neuroprotective factors in vitro. J. Neurosci. Res. 53:415–425, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Prospective Whole-Genome Sequencing Enhances National Surveillance of Listeria monocytogenes

ABSTRACT Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has emerged as a powerful tool for comparing bacterial isolates in outbreak detection and investigation. Here we demonstrate that WGS performed prospectively for national epidemiologic surveillance of Listeria monocytogenes has the capacity to be superior to our current approaches using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multilocus sequence typing (MLST), multilocus variable-number tandem-repeat analysis (MLVA), binary typing, and serotyping. Initially 423 L. monocytogenes isolates underwent WGS, and comparisons uncovered a diverse genetic population structure derived from three distinct lineages. MLST, binary typing, and serotyping results inferred in silico from the WGS data were highly concordant (>99%) with laboratory typing performed in parallel. However, WGS was able to identify distinct nested clusters within groups of isolates that were otherwise indistinguishable using our current typing methods. Routine WGS was then used for prospective epidemiologic surveillance on a further 97 L. monocytogenes isolates over a 12-month period, which provided a greater level of discrimination than that of conventional typing for inferring linkage to point source outbreaks. A risk-based alert system based on WGS similarity was used to inform epidemiologists required to act on the data. Our experience shows that WGS can be adopted for prospective L. monocytogenes surveillance and investigated for other pathogens relevant to public health.
Gemination in Tarifit Berber: Doing One or Two Things at Once?

Acoustic and X-ray data have been collected for gemination in Tarifit Berber. The acoustic data show that consonantal closure of geminates is significantly longer than that of corresponding singletons, for all consonants examined (alveolars, velars and uvulars), in both voiced and voiceless contexts, for two subjects, in two speech rate conditions: normal and fast. Articulatory measurements obtained from mid sagittal profiles show that occlusion contact-extents are longer for geminate consonants than for their singleton counterparts. Results take into account the elasticity of speech signals and are discussed within the "doing one or two things" paradigm.
V-Dem Comparisons and Contrasts with Other Measurement Projects

For policymakers, activists, academics, and citizens around the world the conceptualization and measurement of democracy matters. The needs of democracy promoters and social scientists are convergent. We all need better ways to measure democracy. In the first section of this document we critically review the field of democracy indices. It is important to emphasize that problems identified with extant indices are not easily solved, and some of the issues we raise vis-a-vis other projects might also be raised in the context of the V-Dem project. Measuring an abstract and contested concept such as democracy is hard and some problems of conceptualization and measurement may never be solved definitively. In the second section we discuss in general terms how the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project differs from extant indices and how the novel approach taken by V-Dem might assist the work of activists, professionals, and scholars.
One Dose versus Three Weekly Doses of Benzathine Penicillin G for Patients Co-Infected with HIV and Early Syphilis: A Multicenter, Prospective Observational Study

Background One dose of benzathine penicillin G (BPG) has been recommended for HIV-infected patients with early syphilis (primary, secondary, and early latent syphilis) in the sexually transmitted diseases treatment guidelines, but clinical data to support such a recommendation are limited. Methods We prospectively observed the serological response to 1 or 3 weekly doses of BPG in HIV-infected adults who sought treatment of early syphilis at 8 hospitals around Taiwan. Rapid plasma reagin (RPR) titers were followed every 3–6 months after treatment. The serological response was defined as a 4-fold or greater decline in RPR titers at 12 months of treatment. The missing values were treated by following the last-observed-carried-forward principle. We hypothesized that 1 dose was non-inferior to 3 weekly doses of BPG with the non-inferiority margin for the difference of serological response set to 10%. Results Between 2007 and 2012, 573 patients completed at least 12 months of follow-up: 295 (51.5%) receiving 1 dose of BPG (1-dose group) and 278 (48.5%) 3 doses (3-dose group). Overall, 198 patients (67.1%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 61.4–72.5%) in the 1-dose group achieved serological response at 12 months, as did 208 patients (74.8%; 95% CI, 69.3–79.8%) in the 3-dose group (one-sided 95% CI of the difference, 15.1%). In the multivariate analysis, secondary syphilis (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.90; 95% CI 1.17–3.09), RPR titer ≥32 (AOR, 1.93; 95% CI, 1.38–2.69), and 3 doses of BPG (AOR, 1.68; 95% CI, 1.20–2.36) were independently associated with a serological response. The time to the first episode of treatment failure was 1184 (standard deviation [SD], 70.5) and 1436 (SD, 80.0) days for 1- and 3-dose group, respectively. Conclusions Single-dose BPG resulted in a higher serological failure rate and shorter time to treatment failure than 3 weekly doses of BPG in the treatment of early syphilis in HIV-infected patients.
Split‐Liver Transplantation Using the Left Lateral Segment: A Collaborative Sharing Experience Between Two Distant Centers

Split‐liver transplantation (SLT) increases the pool of organs for pediatric orthotopic liver transplantation (pOLT). With increased collaboration and organ sharing, transplant centers can fully maximize the use of all split donor allografts. Herein, we report the collaborative results between two distant centers involved in a sharing alliance.
Adult spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea: diagnosis and management.

OBJECTIVE To describe demographic, radiologic, and surgical features in adult patients with spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea (SCSFO). STUDIED: Review was made of office and hospital charts of 21 patients with SCSFO and 2 patients with spontaneous CSF rhinorrhea, all of which were repaired successfully from 1989 to 1998. METHOD Radiologic examples of the structure responsible for SCSFO and rhinorrhea are used to illustrate the changes essential for diagnosis. RESULTS The responsible lesion for SCSFO and rhinorrhea in the adult are arachnoid granulations (AG) or villi, which do not reach a venous lumen and are aberrantly distributed in areas of the anterior, middle, and posterior cranial fossae that are in proximity to the middle ear/mastoid space, ethmoid, and sphenoid sinuses. The ages of the 21 patients ranged from 38 to 83 years (mean 63 years) with all but one older than 50 years. The sex ratio was 14 women to 7 men; the CSF leak was right sided in 13 and left sided in 8 patients. Eighteen of the SCSF leaks were located in the middle cranial fossa surface of the temporal bone (TB) while two were on the posterior fossa border of the TB. The middle fossa leaks were managed by craniotomy and repair with fascia, whereas the posterior fossa defects were obliterated by adipose tissue inserted through an intact canal wall mastoidectomy. The most common radiologic finding on computerized tomography (CT) was a soft tissue mass adjacent to a tegmen bone defect. The posterior fossa AG created an erosion of cortical and trabecular bone in the mastoid compartment. Spontaneous CSF rhinorrhea in two patients also radiologically appeared as soft tissue mass adjacent to bone erosion in the sphenoid and ethmoid sinuses. These also represent aberrant AGs, which are responsible for CSF rhinorrhea in later life. CONCLUSIONS The demographic, radiologic, and pathologic findings in this series of 21 TB and 2 paranasal sinus SCSF leaks support the concept that the responsible lesions are AGs that are aberrantly located adjacent to pneumatized parts of the skull. Because these AGs enlarge with age, they may erode through the bony confines of the TB and sinuses and present as SCSFO or rhinorrhea in middle and old age.
A scalable broadcast algorithm for multiport meshes with minimum communication steps

Many broadcast algorithms have been proposed for the mesh over the past decade. However, most of these algorithms do not exhibit good scalability properties as the network size increases. As a consequence, most existing broadcast algorithms cannot support real-world parallel applications that require large-scale system sizes due to their high computational demands. Motivated by these observations, this study proposes a new adaptive broadcast algorithm for the mesh. The unique feature of our algorithm is that it handles broadcast operations with a fixed number of message passing steps irrespective of the network size. Our algorithm is based on the coded path routing, which has been proposed in (Al-Dubai and Ould-Khaous, 2001). Results from extensive comparative analysis reveal that the proposed algorithm exhibits superior performance characteristics over those of the well-known Recursive Doubling and Extending Dominating Node algorithms.
Flightin Is Essential for Thick Filament Assembly and Sarcomere Stability in Drosophila Flight Muscles

Flightin is a multiply phosphorylated, 20-kD myofibrillar protein found in Drosophila indirect flight muscles (IFM). Previous work suggests that flightin plays an essential, as yet undefined, role in normal sarcomere structure and contractile activity. Here we show that flightin is associated with thick filaments where it is likely to interact with the myosin rod. We have created a null mutation for flightin, fln0, that results in loss of flight ability but has no effect on fecundity or viability. Electron microscopy comparing pupa and adult fln0 IFM shows that sarcomeres, and thick and thin filaments in pupal IFM, are 25–30% longer than in wild type. fln0 fibers are abnormally wavy, but sarcomere and myotendon structure in pupa are otherwise normal. Within the first 5 h of adult life and beginning of contractile activity, IFM fibers become disrupted as thick filaments and sarcomeres are variably shortened, and myofibrils are ruptured at the myotendon junction. Unusual empty pockets and granular material interrupt the filament lattice of adult fln0 sarcomeres. Site-specific cleavage of myosin heavy chain occurs during this period. That myosin is cleaved in the absence of flightin is consistent with the immunolocalization of flightin on the thick filament and biochemical and genetic evidence suggesting it is associated with the myosin rod. Our results indicate that flightin is required for the establishment of normal thick filament length during late pupal development and thick filament stability in adult after initiation of contractile activity.
School Bullying: Do Adult Survivors Perceive Long-Term Effects?

This is a pilot study of 15 adult males, older than age 23, who were bullied at schools in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. All but 1 of the 15 participants reported having been bullied at school on average once a week or more, the majority for at least 5 years. Six of the participants were bullied at boarding school. The study is qualitative, with quantitative evaluation of survey data. The participants attribute significant and lasting effects to their school bullying, notably in high levels of shame, anxiety, and relational difficulties as adults. This pilot study suggests that in some cases school bullying is perceived as causing more wide-ranging long-term effects than commonly understood and that these effects may be similar to those experienced by survivors of child abuse.
Engineering the Human Soul: Analyzing Psychological Expertise

The Argument In the liberal democratic capitalist societies of “the West,” psychological know-how has made itself indispensable, not only in the regulation of domains from the factory to the family but also in the ethical systems according to which citizens live their lives. We cannot fully understand the role that psychology has come to play in terms of the application of science, the diffusion of ideas, or the entrepreneurial activities of a profession. Rather, we need to see psychology as making possible forms of expertise that have a particular capacity to graft themselves onto the practices of all those concerned with the conduct of conduct. Psychology operates within these practices to make individuals who are calculable, to make intersubjective spaces that are manageable, to simplify the heterogeneous tasks of authorities and to underpin them with an ethico-therapeutic rationale. Psychology has also come to infuse contemporary “technologies of the self,” with its promises to restore persons to freedom and autonomy. These features of the “techne” of psychology are intrinsically linked to the problematics of liberal democracies, which seek to govern through privacy, rationality, and autonomy. And if the expert technologies of psychology have come to play such a significant role in the regulation of conduct in the West, we should not be surprised if psychological expertise is a beneficiary of current transformations of the societies of Eastern Europe.
A Distributed Hybrid Matchmaker for IoT Services

The use of service-oriented computing paradigm in Internet of Things research has recently received significant attention to create a semantic service layer that supports virtualisation of and interaction among ``Things''. Using service-based solutions will produce a deluge of services that provide access to different data and capabilities exposed by different resources. The heterogeneity of the resources and their service attributes require efficient solutions that can discover services and match them to the data and capability requirements of different users. We propose a distributed hybrid service matchmaking method that combines our previous work on probabilistic service matchmaking using latent semantic analysis with a weighted-link analysis based on logical signature matching. The hybrid method can overcome semantic synonymy in semantic service description which usually presents the biggest challenge for semantic service matchmakers. The results show that the proposed method performs better than existing solutions in terms of precision and normalised discounted cumulative gain measurement values.
Successful Publishing in Academic and Scientific Journals: Framing and Organizing the Scholarly Paper

Publishing in quality academic journals is challenging. Authors who want to improve their chances of publishing in management and allied business and social science journals can save themselves time by ensuring that manuscripts are consistent with the journal’s aims and scope and what the field requires in terms of addressing unanswered research questions or improvements to current theory and evidence. It is well-understood if a manuscript lacks theoretical grounding or makes significant methodological or research design mistakes, it will probably be rejected. Researchers in the social sciences are typically well-trained in methods, statistical analysis, and research design. But doctoral programs and other masters-level research programs spend much less time on the situating, organizing, and writing of manuscripts and how they should be framed for publication. Oftentimes, an author may face rejection of his or her submitted manuscript not because of bad data or methods, but because of major framing and organizing issues. These problems are addressed within the context of writing clear introductions which form the basis for a complete and well-organized manuscript that will likely have an improved chance of publication.
Doctrine, discussion and disagreement: Evangelical Protestant interaction with Catholics in American politics

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2008. ; Includes bibliographical references. In this dissertation, I examine the Christian Right as a cross-cutting network and assess the impact of Catholics' participation in this social movement on evangelical Protestant political attitudes. After reviewing the historical animosity that previously defined this political partnership, I outline the areas of disagreement that remain even in the context of today's religious conservative movement. These areas of disagreement are significant, according to deliberative democratic theorists, because exposure to rationales for opposing viewpoints might lead to opinion change and greater political tolerance. Therefore, I conduct a survey-experiment to investigate the effect of exposure to dissonant Catholic rationales on evangelicals' policy preferences and their political tolerance. ; In general, the results of the survey-experiment suggest that evangelical supporters of the Christian Right are unlikely to change their policy opinions in light of Catholic claims regarding capital punishment and immigration policy, but exposure to these cross-cutting messages does have the potential to increase tolerance. Moreover, I find that exposure to these same cross-cutting messages attributed to a political out-group (mainline Protestants) actually decreases tolerance. Finally, my empirical results make clear that evangelicals are not uniformly affected by Catholic arguments in the information environment. Specifically, previous contact with Catholics appears to moderate how these messages are received, perhaps by altering the perceived credibility of the source of the message. ; In this way, the study deepens our understanding of source credibility and cross-cutting exposure by demonstrating how the source of a dissonant message moderates its effect. The empirical results are supplemented with in-depth interviews with elites as well as a case study of one evangelical-Catholic network that I use to trace the causal mechanisms behind the increase in tolerance. In closing, I argue that the Christian Right has the potential to contribute to the goals of deliberative democracy by uniting citizens across lines of religious difference.
Televisão e violência: (para) novas formas de olhar

This paper presents the results of a study conducted with 820 students from the 4th, 6th and 8th grades, with the purpose of testing the hypothesis that enjoyment of TV violence, perception of realism in TV violence and identification with violent characters would mediate the relationship between viewing TV violence and physical aggression. The results suggest that children who take pleasure in viewing TV violence, who identify with violent heroes and who think of TV violence as similar to real life are more likely to be influenced by violence on television. In the discussion of the results, implications of these findings for parents, children, and teachers will be a central focus.