Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibitory Activity on Xanthine Oxidase and Antioxidant Properties of Teucrium polium

The antioxidative activities of subfractions; methanol (CE), chloroform (CHE) and ethyl acetate (EAE) of Teucrium polium extracts (TPE) were investigated. HPLC analysis of the plant revealed the existence of procyanidins B1 and B2, gallic acid, catechin and epicatechin. All the extracts showed inhibitory properties on xanthine oxidase, with IC50 ranging from 0.80 ± 0.07 to 11.76 ± 0.50 μM/quercetin equivalent. In the cellular system, all the extracts showed a protec-tive effect greater than those of quercetin, rutin and gallic acid against t-BHP induced oxidative damages in human erythrocytes. These results were clearly confirmed by a modified thiobarbituric acid-reactive species (TBARS), and β-carotene/linoleic acid assay which demonstrated that CHE possess an inhibition ratio of the linoleic acid oxidation (83.11%) close to that of BHT (96.77%). In addition, the results showed that the extracts possess a potent DPPH radical scavenging activity and gave a reduction power greater than rutin, quercetin, gallic acid and ascorbic acid in FRAP assay. These results show that Teucrium polium extracts have strong antioxidant effects and may have some clinical benefits.
Activity-dependent regulation of NMDA receptors in substantia nigra dopaminergic neurones

Calcium ion influx through N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate receptors (NMDARs) may contribute to substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) dopaminergic neurone dysfunction in Parkinson's disease. Responses of NMDARs in dopaminergic neurones showed use‐dependent run‐down that was not readily reversible and was partly dependent on Ca2+ influx and partly dependent on clathrin‐mediated endocytosis. Thus, we report regulation of NMDARs in SNc dopaminergic neurones by intracellular Ca2+ at both synaptic and extrasynaptic sites and provide evidence for activity‐dependent changes in receptor trafficking.
Analysis of the gyrA Gene of Clinical Yersinia ruckeri Isolates with Reduced Susceptibility to Quinolones

ABSTRACT Antimicrobial susceptibility of seven clinical strains of Yersinia ruckeri representative of those isolated between 1994 and 2002 from a fish farm with endemic enteric redmouth disease was studied. All isolates displayed indistinguishable pulsed-field gel electrophoresis restriction patterns, indicating that they represented a single strain. However, considering both inhibition zone diameters (IZD) and MICs, the isolates recovered in 2001-2002 formed a separate cluster with lower levels of susceptibility to all the quinolones tested, especially nalidixic acid (NA) and oxolinic acid (OA), compared with the isolates recovered between 1994 and 1998. Analysis of the PCR product of the quinolone resistance-determining region of the gyrA gene from clinical isolates of Y. ruckeri with reduced susceptibility to OA and NA revealed a single amino acid substitution, Ser-83 to Arg-83 (Escherichia coli numbering). Identical substitution was observed in induced OA-resistant mutant strains, which displayed IZD and MICs of quinolones similar to those of the clinical isolates of Y. ruckeri with reduced susceptibility to these antimicrobial agents. These data indicate in that for Y. ruckeri, the substitution of Ser by Arg at position 83 of the gyrA gene is associated with reduced susceptibility to quinolones.
A SYNTHETIC APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF LEARNING AND MEMORY IN CHAMBERED nautiluS L . ( CEPHALOPODA , NAUTILOIDEA )

– We apply the synthetic approach to the study of learning in the ancient cephalopod nautilus pompilius, l. as a way of understanding how the complex brain and behaviors may have evolved in its more derived relatives, the coleoid cephalopods (octopuses, cuttlefish and squid), whose brains are heavily invested in learning and memory. nautilus in all likelihood retains a more primitive cephalopod neural condition, whereas coleoid brains are among the most complex of all the invertebrates, containing the vertical and frontal lobe complexes dedicated to learning and memory processing. nautilus is uniquely placed within this lineage for studies of the evolution and function of neural and behavioral complexity. Using a synthetic and comparative approach, we frame our studies with the natural history and ecology of these animals, as natural selection acts upon outcomes like behaviors. By identifying possible pressures and problems nautiluses face in their environment, we develop hypotheses about the kinds of cognitive abilities they may possess to solve them. Predictions are tested in the laboratory and the field using a multiprocedural approach (classical conditioning, operant conditioning, maze study, semi-naturalistic study, and field study). In this way, should characteristics of a complex behavior persist in all contexts, this supports the hypothesis that these abilities are a general feature of the animal, rather than a function of the particular task. We compare our results to those found in similar studies with coleoids to identify common, possibly ancient, characteristics of learning and memory found in both classes. Remarkably, nautiluses have demonstrated learning and memory capabilities far more complex than their relatively simple brain would predict. They are capable of rapid learning, long memory, and dynamic switching among tactics when solving complex problems. Despite lacking the dedicated neural structures of its more derived relatives, nautilus performs well in a variety of cognitive tasks. Perhaps the antecedent of the vertical or frontal lobe may be present in the nautilus CNS, and this is the focus of future neuroanatomical and electrophysiological experiments. CHAMBERED NAUTILUS
Incidental prostate 18F-FDG uptake without calcification indicates the possibility of prostate cancer

Incidental 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) uptake in the prostate is often experienced in clinical practice; however, it is difficult to determine whether incidental uptake is indicative of a malignancy or benign state based on the maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax). In the present study, we investigated the clinical significance of incidental prostate uptake by 18F-FDG positron emission tomography (PET)/CT, and examined the differences between malignant and benign uptake from a clinicopathological viewpoint. We reviewed 3,236 male subjects who underwent 18F-FDG PET/CT scans at Hirosaki University Hospital (Japan) from 2008 to 2012 in order to identify cases of incidental prostate FDG uptake. The final diagnosis was made by serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels, biopsy, imaging studies and clinical follow-up with PET findings. Incidental FDG uptake of the prostate was observed in 53 cases (2%). Four cases were excluded due to insufficient clinical data, and 49 cases were included in the present study. Of the 49 cases, 8 (16%) had prostate cancer, while 41 (84%) were benign. All 8 malignant cases had high uptake areas, e.g. in the prostate peripheral zone, where there was no coexistence of calcification or FDG uptake. Of the 41 benign cases, 19 had high uptake in the inner zone, 17 in the peripheral zone, and 5 in both the inner and peripheral zones. Of the 41 cases, 18 (44%) showed FDG uptake coexisting with prostatic calcification. Incidental prostate 18F-FDG uptake infrequently signifies prostate cancer; however, FDG uptake not coexisting with calcification indicates the possibility of prostate cancer and should be included in the differential diagnosis for performing other clinical examinations.
The Silent Politics of Temporal Work: A Case Study of a Management Consultancy Project to Redesign Public Health Care

In this article, we discuss temporal work and temporal politics situated between groups with different temporal orientations, arguing that attention needs to be paid to covert and unarticulated silent politics during temporal work. Drawing on a case study of a management consultancy project to redesign public health care, we explain how unarticulated temporal interests and orientations shape the construction of problems, which, in turn, legitimate tasks and time frames. We also show how task and time frames are temporarily fixed and imposed through boundary objects, and the way these may then be reinterpreted and co-opted to deflect pressure to change. Thus, we argue, unarticulated, covert and political temporal inter-dynamics produce expedient provisional temporal settlements, which resolve conflict in the short term, while perpetuating it in the longer run.
Carrier dynamics and erbium sensitization in silicon-rich nitride nanocrystals

Ultrafast two-color pump-probe measurements, time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL), and photoluminescence excitation measurements were performed on Si-rich nitride (SRN) and Er doped SRN (Er:SRN) nanocrystals samples. Transient absorption data were compared with picosecond TRPL and excited state absorption cross (ESA) sections σ were measured at different wavelengths. Our data show that σ in Er:SRN, which is approximately 10−19cm2 at 1. 54μm, does not scale with the ∼λ2 behavior predicted by simple free carrier absorption models. Finally, our data demonstrate that in Er:SRN efficient energy transfer to Er ions occurs on the nanosecond time scale with reduced ESA compared to Er-doped oxide-based systems.
Marginalizing Corrupted Features

The goal of machine learning is to develop predictors that generalize well to test data. Ideally, this is achieved by training on an almost infinitely large training data set that captures all variations in the data distribution. In practical learning settings, however, we do not have infinite data and our predictors may overfit. Overfitting may be combatted, for example, by adding a regularizer to the training objective or by defining a prior over the model parameters and performing Bayesian inference. In this paper, we propose a third, alternative approach to combat overfitting: we extend the training set with infinitely many artificial training examples that are obtained by corrupting the original training data. We show that this approach is practical and efficient for a range of predictors and corruption models. Our approach, called marginalized corrupted features (MCF), trains robust predictors by minimizing the expected value of the loss function under the corruption model. We show empirically on a variety of data sets that MCF classifiers can be trained efficiently, may generalize substantially better to test data, and are also more robust to feature deletion at test time.
Technology Adoption under Organizational Diseconomies of Scale ∗

We show that, in the presence of pre-contractual private information, firms with a multi-tier hierarchy may be reluctant to adopt incremental technological improvements that reduce expected production costs. The reason is that such advanced technologies may aggravate the extraction of informational rents along the hierarchy chain. We present an example where the adoption of a technological improvement becomes less likely as the hierarchy lengthens. As a consequence, investments in R&D increase less than proportionally with firm size. JEL Classification: D82, L23, O33
Reaction Time Performance in Healthy Adults as an Effect of Age and Hand Preference Using the CRTT

Background: The Computerized Revised Token Test (CRTT) is a standardized assessment of language processing abilities. The test requires perceptual, motor, and cognitive skills that may impact patient performance. A battery of reaction time tasks (CRTT-RT) was developed to assess these skills on a more basic, nonlinguistic level in order to assess a patient’s perceptual-motor-cognitive skills’ contribution to their CRTT language performance. Normative data on the CRTT-RT Battery do not currently exist across age and for right and left hands. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of age and hand preference on the simple and choice reaction time (RT) tasks included in the CRTT-RT Battery. Procedures: Sixty-four healthy, normal adults completed the CRTT-RT tasks and the CRTT-R-WF version of the CRTT with both their right and left hands. Participants included 32 younger adults (20-32 years; 16 male, 16 female) and 32 older adults (65-78 years; 16 male, 16 female). For this study, the CRTT-RT data were analyzed to evaluate the effects of age and hand preference on speed and accuracy of responses. Results: Statistically significant main effects were determined for both age and hand preference on all RT tasks combined. Age effects were additionally observed on individual RT tasks, where the older group performed slower (increased RT) than the younger group. Hand preference effects were observed on 4 of the 6 RT tasks, those that required motor movement control and response mapping, with the left hand performing significantly slower. A significant interaction between age and hand was observed for CRTT-RT Task 3 (Movement), where the older group demonstrated an over-additive slowing with the left hand. Accuracy of responses on the choice RT tasks demonstrated non-substantive differences between age and hand. Conclusions: Slowing in reaction time performance on the CRTT-RT Battery is evident with increased age as well as non-preferred hand use with a computer mouse. Theories of generalized slowing with age, increased task complexity, cognitive load, and automaticity are explored as potential explanations for the obtained results.
Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center

A brief history of the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center is presented, and results obtained from its six research projects (Psychometric Assessmentffwin Study; Reading and Language Processes; Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Executive Functions; Linkage Analysis and Physical Mapping; Computer-based Remediation of Reading Disabilities; and Brain Morphometry in ReadingDisabled Twins) are reviewed. To date, co-investigators of thisNICHD-funded research center have developednew methods for analyzing twin data that provide compelling evidence for a genetic etiology ofreading disability and its co-morbidity with mathematics disability; obtained evidence that word recognition deficits are due to heritable variation in both phonological and orthographic coding; begun to assess the relationship between ADHD and reading disability; reported evidence for a quantitative trait locus for reading disability in a small region on chromosome 6; undertaken studies of computer-based remediation in children with deficits in phoneme awareness, word decoding and reading comprehension; and initiated a study of brain structure in twins with reading disability. During the next five-year period, we shall conduct more searching tests of hypotheses concerning the genetic and environmental etiologies of reading deficits and ADHD, as well as their covariation with measures of reading and language processes, mathematics performance, executive functions and brain morphometry.
Differentiable Programs with Neural Libraries

We develop a framework for combining differentiable programming languages with neural networks. Using this framework we create end-to-end trainable systems that learn to write interpretable algorithms with perceptual components. We explore the benefits of inductive biases for strong generalization and modularity that come from the program-like structure of our models. In particular, modularity allows us to learn a library of (neural) functions which grows and improves as more tasks are solved. Empirically, we show that this leads to lifelong learning systems that transfer knowledge to new tasks more effectively than baselines.
Incomplete Deletion of IL-4Rα by LysMCre Reveals Distinct Subsets of M2 Macrophages Controlling Inflammation and Fibrosis in Chronic Schistosomiasis

Mice expressing a Cre recombinase from the lysozyme M-encoding locus (Lyz2) have been widely used to dissect gene function in macrophages and neutrophils. Here, we show that while naïve resident tissue macrophages from IL-4Rαflox/deltaLysMCre mice almost completely lose IL-4Rα function, a large fraction of macrophages elicited by sterile inflammatory stimuli, Schistosoma mansoni eggs, or S. mansoni infection, fail to excise Il4rα. These F4/80hiCD11bhi macrophages, in contrast to resident tissue macrophages, express lower levels of Lyz2 explaining why this population resists LysMCre-mediated deletion. We show that in response to IL-4 and IL-13, Lyz2loIL-4Rα+ macrophages differentiate into an arginase 1-expressing alternatively-activated macrophage (AAM) population, which slows the development of lethal fibrosis in schistosomiasis. In contrast, we identified Lyz2hiIL-4Rα+ macrophages as the key subset of AAMs mediating the downmodulation of granulomatous inflammation in chronic schistosomiasis. Our observations reveal a limitation on using a LysMCre mouse model to study gene function in inflammatory settings, but we utilize this limitation as a means to demonstrate that distinct populations of alternatively activated macrophages control inflammation and fibrosis in chronic schistosomiasis.
Bilingual Language Mixing: Why Do Bilinguals Code-Switch?

Bilingual speakers often code-switch from one language to another, especially when both languages are used in the environment. This article explores the potential theoretical explanations for this language behavior, the costs and benefits associated with language switching, and the role of language dominance in the direction of the switch. In short, code switching follows functional and grammatical principles and is a complex, rule-governed phenomenon. Although significant progress has been made in understanding the psycholinguistics of code switching, research is needed to examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying the bilingual's ability to integrate and separate two languages during the communicative process.
Evidence for Top Quark Production in 1.8 Tev Pp Collisions on Behalf of the Cdf Collaboration

This report is a summary of the evidence for top quark production in pp collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.8 TeV which was obtained by the CDF Collaboration earlier this year. The data analyzed corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.3 pb ? 1 , recorded with the CDF Detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider during 1992-1993. Three diierent search channels for t t production are used. A search for dilepton events nds 2 events, while two diierent methods of identifying b-quark jets in events with W+ 3 jets nd 6 and 7 events, respectively. The probability that the observed total yield is consistent with the estimated background of 5:96 +0:49 ? 0:44 is 0.26%. Though the statistics are too limited to rmly establish the existence of the top quark, a natural interpretation of the excess is that it is due to t t production. Under this assumption, constrained mass tting of a subset of events yields a top quark mass of 174 10 +13 ? 12 GeV/c 2 and a t t production cross section of 13:9 +6:1 ? 4:8 pb.
Steady-state Mantle-Melt Interactions in One Dimension: II. Thermal Interactions and Irreversible Terms

Progress in development of thermodynamically based models of silicate equilibria with explicit entropy budgets has motivated a reexamination of the conclusion of McKenzie (Journal of Petrology 25, 713–765, 1984) that isentropic upwelling suffices as a model of mantle melting. An entropy budget equation for fractional melting with melt migration in an upwelling two-phase continuum is presented. The energetically self-consistent melt production model predicted by MELTS is used to evaluate numerically the magnitudes of differences between fractional melting (with melt migration) and equilibrium melting (without relative movement) that can be bounded in one dimension: chemical advection by out-of-equilibrium melt; thermal disequilibrium between migrating liquid and residue; frictional dissipation of gravitational potential; dissipation as a result of solid compaction. Like the familiar isobaric case in which fractional melting is significantly less productive than equilibrium melting, chemical isolation of the escaping melts from the residue reduces the oceanic crustal thickness by ~1 km. Allowing escaping melts to move on their own adiabats and ascend at higher temperature than the residue further suppresses melting but yields only ~100 m less crustal thickness. Extra crustal thickness as a result of gravitational dissipation is ~100 m, much smaller than the effect of chemical isolation. Viscous dissipation as a result of compaction is negligible.
Reddening, colour and metallicity of the M31 globular cluster system

Using metallicities from the literature, combined with the Revised Bologna Catalogue of photometric data for M31 clusters and cluster candidates [the latter of which is the most comprehensive catalogue of M31 clusters currently available, including 337 confirmed globular clusters (GCs) and 688 GC candidates], we determine 443 reddening values and intrinsic colours, and 209 metallicities for individual clusters without spectroscopic observations. This, the largest sample of M31 GCs presently available, is then used to analyse the metallicity distribution of M31 GCs, which is bimodal with peaks at [Fe/H] ≈− 1.7 and −0.7 dex. An exploration of metallicities as a function of radius from the M31 centre shows a metallicity gradient for the metal-poor GCs, but no such gradient for the metal-rich GCs. Our results show that the metal-rich clusters appear as a centrally concentrated spatial distribution; however, the metal-poor clusters tend to be less spatially concentrated. There is no correlation between luminosity and metallicity among the M31 sample clusters, which indicates that self-enrichment is indeed unimportant for cluster formation in M31. The reddening distribution shows that slightly more than half of the GCs are affected by a reddening of E(B − V) � 0.2 mag; the mean reddening value is E(B − V) = 0.28 +0.23 −0.14 mag. The spatial distribution of the reddening values indicates that the reddening on the north-western side of the M31 disc is more significant than that on the south-eastern side, which is consistent with the conclusion that the north-western side is nearer to us.
Two tRNA gene clusters associated with rRNA operons rrnD and rrnE in Bacillus subtilis

Sequence analysis of cloned rescued DNA fragments from a Bacillus subtilis strain with an inserted recombinant plasmid in ribosomal operon rrnE revealed the presence of two tRNA genes for Met and Asp at the 3' end of the operon. Probing chromosomal DNA from a strain carrying a plasmid inserted in rrnD with a fragment containing the genetically unassigned cluster of 16 tRNA genes revealed that the cluster is located immediately following the rrnD operon. Our findings show that all 10 rrn operons in B. subtilis are associated with tRNA gene clusters.
Optimal Deceptive Strategies in Security Games: a Preliminary Study

Attacker-defender Stackelberg games have been used in several deployed applications of game theory for infrastructure security. Security resources of the defender are game-theoretically allocated to prevent a strategic attacker from using surveillance to learn and exploit patterns in the allocation. Existing work on security games assumes that the defender honestly displays her real security resources. We introduce a new model in which the defender may use deceptive resources (e.g., a mock camera in the part for deterring potential adversaries, or a hidden camera on the road for detecting overspeed) to mislead the attacker. We provide algorithms for computing the defender's optimal strategy in consideration of deceptions. We also present experimental results evaluating the effectiveness of using deceptive strategies.