Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Electrical Characteristics and Activation Potential of Bufo Eggs

Electrical characteristics and their changes during activation were studied with the microelectrodes on the oocytes and eggs of the toad, Bufo vulgaris formosus Boulenger. In young oocytes, the membrane characteristics had some similarities to those of nerve and muscle, except for a relatively large resistance of 25 KΩcm. 2 and an absence of the action potential in the former. After maturation, however, the membrane characteristics became entirely different from those of oocytes and other excitable tissues. In the mature eggs the membrane resistance was measured to be as high as 200 KΩcm. 2, and no specific permeability of the membrane to potassium ions was observable. A slow monophasic change in the membrane potential was recorded in every activation produced by mechanical stimulation, and termed "activation potential. " In fresh water, its amplitude was as large as 80 to 90 mv. with an overshoot of about 50 mv. The activation potential might be comparable to the action potential of nerve and muscle, but was fundamentally different in ionic mechanism from the latter, since the former was caused by a marked increase in permeability to chloride ions.
Vfr controls quorum sensing in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Pseudomonas aeruginosa controls several genes in a cell density-dependent manner through a phenomenon termed quorum sensing. The transcriptional activator protein of the las quorum-sensing system is encoded for by the lasR gene, which is at the top of a quorum-sensing hierarchy. The activation of LasR as a transcriptional activator induces the expression of multiple genes that code for factors important for virulence, and rhlR, which encodes the transcriptional activator protein of the P. aeruginosa rhl quorum-sensing system. Elucidating the method of lasR regulation is crucial to understanding P. aeruginosa quorum sensing. In this report, we present studies on the transcriptional control of lasR. We identified two distinct transcriptional start sites for lasR that were located 201 bp (transcript T1) and 231 bp (transcript T2) upstream from the lasR start of translation. With the use of transcriptional lasRp-lacZ fusions, we showed that in P. aeruginosa, lasR expression is cell density dependent. This gene was expressed at a basal level until it was induced during the second half of log-phase growth, with expression becoming maximal during stationary-phase growth. We also showed that lasR expression was regulated through the cyclic AMP receptor protein (CRP)-binding consensus sequence in its promoter region. Our results from P. aeruginosa mutant studies and gel retardation assays indicated that this regulation was mediated by Vfr, a homolog of the Escherichia coli CRP.
Capacitance measurement applied to the medical injection pen

Many drugs need to be injected frequently by the patient himself, e.g. insulin for diabetes treatment. Disposable injection pens comprise the most popular delivery devices for ease of use and discretion. However, these devices do not provide any tracking capability. In this paper we present a method to measure automatically the injected dose based on a capacitive measurement. A typical dose of e.g. 2 IU insulin (volume of 20.8μl) can be accurately detected corresponding to a capacitance change of 11.82fF at a standard deviation of 4.89 fF for 5 consecutive injections. This paper will focus on the design of the electrodes and the feasibility of the capacitive tracking method.
Deep Generative Vision as Approximate Bayesian Computation

Probabilistic formulations of inverse graphics have recently been proposed for a variety of 2D and 3D vision problems [15, 12, 14, 9]. These approaches represent visual elements in form of graphics simulators that produce approximate renderings of the visual scenes. Existing approaches either model pixel data or hand-crafted intermediate representations such as edge maps, super-pixels, silhouettes etc. However, the choice of features can drastically affect inference quality and run-time. Recently, deep learning techniques such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have demonstrated impressive performance on various tasks such as object recognition and scene pixel labeling, suggesting the superiority of CNN-based features. Encouraged by this findings, we test the ability of CNNs in combination with Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to invert high dimensional generative inverse graphics models from single images. We successfully applied a variant of the probabilistic approximate MCMC algorithm [21] which uses CNN to quantify summary statistics on two real world problems: inferring 3D pose of humans and generative face analysis from single images. Computer Graphics seems to be advancing at a great pace in terms of designing solutions for hard image synthesis problems. Our experiments indicate that the combination of rich probabilistic inverse graphics models and deep learning approaches could utilize such simulators directly to solve the hard inversion problem.
Post-ictal Kliuver-Bucy syndrome after temporal lobectomy

In both animals and humans, Kluver-Bucy syndrome is produced by bilateral temporal lobectomy. It is characterised by hypersexuality, visual agnosia, strong oral tendencies, dietary changes, and hypermetamorphosis. Recurrent, postic-tal Kluver-Bucy syndrome occurred transiently after seizures in a female who had undergone unilateral temporal lobectomy. The pathophysiological mechanism may have been postictal dysfunction of the remaining temporal lobe, producing a transient functional bilateral temporal lobectomy.
An overview of patient acceptance of Health Information Technology in developing countries: a review and conceptual model

The potential to improve the quality, efficiency, outcomes, patient safety and reduce cost of healthcare by Health Information Technology (HIT) has been established by researchers. But unfortunately HIT systems are not properly utilized or are not widely available. This problem is even more glaring in developing countries. This article presents a review of some available HIT systems in order to assess the level of their presence and the technology used in developing them. Works related to acceptance of HIT systems were also reviewed so as to study the gaps in this area and propose a solution in order to fill the gaps identified. The problems discovered from this review include lack of availability of these systems especially in developing countries, low rate of HIT systems acceptance and insufficient works on patient acceptance of HIT systems. Studying the factors that affect the acceptance of HIT systems by patients and considering the factors while developing the systems will play a significant role in getting over the aforementioned limitations. As Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is one of the most popular models for studying users' perception and acceptance of Information System (IS)/Information Technology (IT), we proposed a conceptual model of HIT acceptance in developing countries based on TAM.
Shelf life of air and modified atmosphere-packaged fresh tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) fillets stored under chilled and superchilled conditions

Optimal packaging and storage conditions for fresh tilapia fillets were established by evaluating sensory and microbiological changes, as well as monitoring physicochemical properties. Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) farmed in recirculation aquaculture system was filleted, deskinned, and packaged in air and 50% CO2/50% N2 prior to chilling and superchilling storage at 1°C and −1°C. Sensory analysis of cooked samples revealed a shelf life of 13–15 days for air-packaged fillets during storage at 1°C and 20 days at −1°C. At the end of shelf life in air-packaged fillets, total viable counts (TVC) and pseudomonads counts reached log 8 colony-forming units (CFU) g−1. In 50% CO2/50% N2-packaged fillets, the lag phase and generation time of bacteria were extended and recorded counts were below the limit for consumption (<log 8 CFU g−1) after 23 days of storage at both 1°C and −1°C. However, modified atmosphere (MA) packaging negatively affected color characteristics of the fillets soon after packaging (day 6). Color is an important indicator of tilapia fillets quality and a major factor in influencing retail purchase decisions. In view of that, air packaged at −1°C storage temperature was the optimal condition for fresh tilapia fillets. Total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) and trimethylamine (TMA) were not good indicators of spoilage of tilapia fillets in this study.
Genotyping of Verocytotoxin-ProducingEscherichia coli O157: Comparison of Isolates of a Prevalent Phage Type by Fluorescent Amplified-Fragment Length Polymorphism and Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis Analyses

ABSTRACT We applied the high-resolution genotyping technique fluorescent amplified-fragment length polymorphism (FAFLP) analysis to 71 isolates of a single phage type (PT8) of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE)-characterized verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli O157. Twenty-seven similar, but not identical, groupings were defined by both FAFLP analysis and the PFGE profiles. Given the FAFLP analysis conditions described here, these two methods exhibited equivalent discriminatory powers.
Handbook of Functional Neuroimaging Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION TO FUNCTIONAL NEUROIMAGING

There has been explosive interest in the use of brain imaging to study cognitive and affective processes in recent years. Examine Figure 1, for example, to see the dramatic rise in numbers of publications from 1992 to 1999 in which the term, " functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging " (fMRI) appears in the title. Because of the surge of empirical work that now relies on a combination of behavioral and neuroimaging data, it is critical for students of the mind also to be students of the brain because data about each informs the other. Our goal in this chapter is to provide an introduction to the growing field of neuroimaging research for those not expert in it. The chapter provides general coverage of the various steps involved in conducting a neuroimaging experiment, from task design to interpretation of the results. We begin by detailing several reasons one might want to use neuroimaging data to understand cognitive and other processes. Having provided this motivation, we then trace out several techniques that are used in the design and execution of imaging experiments. Finally, in the last section of the chapter, we provide a detailed overview of positron emission tomography (PET) and fMRI: a review of the physics underlying each technique and the analysis tools that can be used to work with the resulting data. In these three sections, we hope to illustrate to the reader the why, the what, and the how of functional neuroimaging. Perhaps the most obvious rationale for conducting functional neuroimaging experiments is to correlate structure with function. While some psychologists in the last century argued that the brain operated by the principle of mass action (Lashley, 1950), we now know that there is substantial localization of many functions in the neural tissue of the brain. Knowing this, many investigators have Handbook of Functional Neuroimaging Chapter 3 sought to map out the primitive processes that are engaged when various brain structures are active. In a certain gross sense, modern neuroimaging is similar to the 18 th century practice of phrenology, whose practitioners read a patient's personality traits from bumps on their skulls. To be sure, both modern functional imaging and phrenology are attempts to map out the localization of function in the brain. But the similarity ends there. Modern neuroimaging measures processes within the brain that are replicable and have been extensively cross-validated with other neuroscientific methodologies. Phrenology, of course, …
Increasing the Recall of Corpus Annotation Error Detection

While error detection approaches have been developed for various types of corpus annotation, so far only limited attention has been paid to the recall of those methods. We show how the recall of the so-called variation n-gram method can be increased by examining comparable part-of-speech tag sequences instead of the recurring strings themselves. To guide the search for erroneous annotation and to distinguish errors with high precision, we also develop new context reliability indicators.
Lexical Normalisation of Short Text Messages: Makn Sens a #twitter

Twitter provides access to large volumes of data in real time, but is notoriously noisy, hampering its utility for NLP. In this paper, we target out-of-vocabulary words in short text messages and propose a method for identifying and normalising ill-formed words. Our method uses a classifier to detect ill-formed words, and generates correction candidates based on morphophonemic similarity. Both word similarity and context are then exploited to select the most probable correction candidate for the word. The proposed method doesn't require any annotations, and achieves state-of-the-art performance over an SMS corpus and a novel dataset based on Twitter.
Pro-oxidant HDL predicts poor outcome in patients with ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome

Summary Oxidative stress affects clinical outcome in patients with ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome (STE-ACS). Although high-density lipoprotein (HDL) particles are generally considered protective, deleterious properties of HDL have been observed in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Here, we analysed the association between pro oxidant HDL and all-cause mortality in STE-ACS patients. We determined the antioxidant function of HDL in 247 prospectively enrolled patients undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention for STE-ACS. Patients were stratified as by a pro-oxidant serum HDL oxidant index (HOI 1) or with an antioxidant serum HOI (HOL< 1) capacity. Multivariate regression analysis was used to relate HOI to survival. The median follow-up time was 23 months (IQR 14.4–40.0 months). Pro-oxidant HDL was observed in 44.1 % of STE-ACS patients and was independently associated with all-cause mortality with a hazard ratio of 3.30(95 %CI 1.50–7.27, p = 0.003). Mortality rates were higher in patients with baseline pro-oxidant HDL compared to patients with preserved HDL function at 30 days (11.9 % vs 2.2 %, p=0.002), and at 4 years (22.9 % vs 8.7 %, p=0.002). Elevated neutrophil counts were a strong and independent predictor for pro-oxidant HDL with an odds ratio per standard deviation of 1.50 (95 %CI 1.11–2.03, p=0.008), as was history of prior acute myocardial infarction, elevated triglycerides levels and reduced glomerular filtration rate. In conclusion, pro-oxidant HDL represents a strong and independent predictor of long-term as well as short-term all-cause mortality in STE-ACS patients. Elevated neutrophil counts predicted the presence of serum pro-oxidant HDL. The maintenance of HDL functions might be a promising therapeutic target in STE-ACS patients.
Stress and family relationship functioning as indicators of the severity of fibromyalgia symptoms: a regression analysis

This article presents the results of a secondary analysis of data collected from a cross-sectional survey of 201 individuals with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). This study examines the influence of stress and family relationship functioning (differentiation of self) on symptoms severity among FMS patients. The primary analysis of the data (published elsewhere) revealed that perceived levels of stress were correlated with symptom severity, and that other variables related to family functioning moderated this relationship to a small degree. In the secondary analysis presented here, additional relationships among perceived stress, stressful life events, family relationship functioning, age of FMS onset, and symptom severity were examined. The results indicated that participants’ levels of symptom severity could be predicted by their level of differentiation and appraisal of stressful life events occurring within a year prior to the age of onset. Consistent with the findings of the primary analyses, the level of perceived stress was the predictor variable that accounted for the greatest amount of variance associated with FMS symptoms. Limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are presented.
The yeast ABC transporter Pdr18 (ORF YNR070w) controls plasma membrane sterol composition, playing a role in multidrug resistance

The action of multidrug efflux pumps in MDR (multidrug resistance) acquisition has been proposed to partially depend on the transport of physiological substrates which may indirectly affect drug partition and transport across cell membranes. In the present study, the PDR18 gene [ORF (open reading frame) YNR070w], encoding a putative PDR (pleiotropic drug resistance) transporter of the ATP-binding cassette superfamily, was found to mediate plasma membrane sterol incorporation in yeast. The physiological role of Pdr18 is demonstrated to affect plasma membrane potential and is proposed to underlie its action as a MDR determinant, conferring resistance to the herbicide 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid). The action of Pdr18 in yeast tolerance to 2,4-D, which was found to contribute to reduce [14C]2,4-D intracellular accumulation, may be indirect, given the observation that 2,4-D exposure deeply affects the sterol plasma membrane composition, this effect being much stronger in a Δpdr18 background. PDR18 activation under 2,4-D stress is regulated by the transcription factors Nrg1, controlling carbon source availability and the stress response, and, less significantly, Yap1, involved in oxidative stress and MDR, and Pdr3, a key regulator of the yeast PDR network, consistent with a broad role in stress defence. Taken together, the results of the present study suggest that Pdr18 plays a role in plasma membrane sterol incorporation, this physiological trait contributing to an MDR phenotype.
Microhomology-mediated deletion and gene conversion in African trypanosomes

Antigenic variation in African trypanosomes is induced by DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). In these protozoan parasites, DSB repair (DSBR) is dominated by homologous recombination (HR) and microhomology-mediated end joining (MMEJ), while non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) has not been reported. To facilitate the analysis of chromosomal end-joining, we established a system whereby inter-allelic repair by HR is lethal due to loss of an essential gene. Analysis of intrachromosomal end joining in individual DSBR survivors exclusively revealed MMEJ-based deletions but no NHEJ. A survey of microhomologies typically revealed sequences of between 5 and 20 bp in length with several mismatches tolerated in longer stretches. Mean deletions were of 54 bp on the side closest to the break and 284 bp in total. Break proximity, microhomology length and GC-content all favored repair and the pattern of MMEJ described above was similar at several different loci across the genome. We also identified interchromosomal gene conversion involving HR and MMEJ at different ends of a duplicated sequence. While MMEJ-based deletions were RAD51-independent, one-sided MMEJ was RAD51 dependent. Thus, we describe the features of MMEJ in Trypanosoma brucei, which is analogous to micro single-strand annealing; and RAD51 dependent, one-sided MMEJ. We discuss the contribution of MMEJ pathways to genome evolution, subtelomere recombination and antigenic variation.
Relationship between Carotenoids, Retinol, and Estradiol Levels in Older Women

Background. In vitro evidence suggests anti-estrogenic properties for retinol and carotenoids, supporting a chemo-preventive role of these phytochemicals in estrogen-dependent cancers. During aging there are significant reductions in retinol and carotenoid concentrations, whereas estradiol levels decline during menopause and progressively increase from the age of 65. We aimed to investigate the hypothesis of a potential relationship between circulating levels of retinol, carotenoids, and estradiol (E2) in a cohort of late post-menopausal women. Methods. We examined 512 women ≥ 65 years from the InCHIANTI study. Retinol, α-caroten, β-caroten, β-criptoxantin, lutein, zeaxanthin, and lycopene levels were assayed at enrollment (1998–2000) by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography. Estradiol and testosterone (T) levels were assessed by Radioimmunometry (RIA) and testosterone-to-estradiol ratio (T/E2), as a proxy of aromatase activity, was also calculated. General linear models adjusted for age (Model 1) and further adjusted for other confounders including Body Mass Index (BMI) BMI, smoking, intake of energy, lipids, and vitamin A; C-Reactive Protein, insulin, total cholesterol, liver function, and testosterone (Model 2) were used to investigate the relationship between retinol, carotenoids, and E2 levels. To address the independent relationship between carotenoids and E2 levels, factors significantly associated with E2 in Model 2 were also included in a fully adjusted Model 3. Results. After adjustment for age, α-carotene (β ± SE = −0.01 ± 0.004, p = 0.02) and β-carotene (β ± SE = −0.07 ± 0.02, p = 0.0007) were significantly and inversely associated with E2 levels. α-Carotene was also significantly and positively associated with T/E2 ratio (β ± SE = 0.07 ± 0.03, p = 0.01). After adjustment for other confounders (Model 2), the inverse relationship between α-carotene (β ± SE = −1.59 ± 0.61, p = 0.01), β-carotene (β ± SE = −0.29 ± 0.08, p = 0.0009), and E2 persisted whereas the relationship between α-carotene and T/E2 ratio was attenuated (β ± SE = 0.22 ± 0.12, p = 0.07). In a fully adjusted model (Model 3), only β-carotene (β ± SE = −0.05 ± 0.02, p = 0.03) was significantly and inversely associated with E2 levels independent of α-carotene. No association was found between retinol, total non-pro-vitamin A carotenoids, lutein, zeaxanthin, and lycopene, and E2 levels. Conclusions: In older women, β-carotene levels are independently and inversely associated with E2.
Phytoseiidae (Acari: Mesostigmata) from natural ecosystems in the State of São Paulo, Brazil.

This work describes the results of a study of the phytoseiid mites collected from plants in two natural ecosystems in the State of São Paulo, Brazil-Cerrado and Atlantic Forest. In this study, 40 phytoseiid species are reported. Measurements of different structures are given for species for which measurements for the respective São Paulo populations were not previously provided. This study also includes the description of two new genera, Breviseius g. n. and Serraseius g. n. , and ten new species, Amblydromalus macroatrium n. sp. , Amblyseius atlanticus n. sp. , Breviseius sennae n. sp. , Cocoseius paucisetis n. sp. , Proprioseiospsis pariquerassuensis n. sp. , Serraseius caicara n. sp. , Typhlodromalus ingae n. sp. , Typhlodromalus feresisimilis n. sp. , Typhlodromips corniformis n. sp. and Typhlodromips robustisetus n. sp.