Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antidepressants and Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Differentially Reduce the Release of NGF and BDNF from Rat Platelets

Abstract Introduction: Platelets store serotonin and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) as well as amyloid precursor protein and nerve growth factor (NGF), thus platelets are of special interest in depression and Alzheimer’s disease, respectively. Both diseases are associated with inflammation and release of NGF or BDNF from platelets may play a potent role. Methods: Platelets were isolated from adult Sprague-Dawley rats and were incubated with anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen and indomethacin) and antidepressants (citalopram, paroxetine and sertraline) (final concentration: 0.3 µM) with or without 2 mM calcium chloride. The release of NGF and BDNF was analyzed in comparison to serotonin release from rat platelets after 10 or 60 min. Results: Spontaneous release of serotonin and BDNF was approximately 10–15% of total serotonin or BDNF content in platelets, but nearly all NGF was released within 10 min. All antidepressants increased the serotonin release from rat platelets. NGF release was reduced by sertraline, paroxetine and ibuprofen, but only when calcium was present, except for sertraline after 10 min. BDNF release was only reduced by ibuprofen when calcium was added. Conclusion: We conclude that antidepressants and anti-inflammatory drugs differentially influence the NGF and BDNF release, in a time-, dose- and calcium-specific pattern.
Correlates of Quality of Life in Older Adults With Diabetes

OBJECTIVE To evaluate associations between health-related quality of life (HRQL) and geriatric syndromes, diabetes complications, and hypoglycemia in older adults with diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A race-stratified random sample of 6,317 adults with type 2 or type 1 diabetes, aged 60 to 75 years, enrolled in Kaiser Permanente Northern California, who completed a survey that included a HRQL instrument based on the Short Form 8-item health survey. Administrative records were used to ascertain diagnoses of geriatric syndromes, diabetes complications, and hypoglycemia. Associations were estimated between HRQL and exposures in exposure-specific and combined exposure models (any syndrome, any complication, or hypoglycemia). Conservatively, differences of ≥3 points were considered the minimally important difference in HRQL scores. RESULTS HRQL was lower with nearly all exposures of interest. The lowest physical HRQL was associated with amputation. In combined exposure models, geriatric syndromes (−5.3 [95% CI −5.8 to −4.8], P < 0.001) and diabetes complications (−3.5 [−4.0 to −2.9], P < 0.001) were associated with lower physical HRQL. The lowest mental HRQL was associated with depression, underweight (BMI <18 kg/m2), amputation, and hypoglycemia. In combined exposure models, only hypoglycemia was associated with lower mental HRQL (−4.0 [−7.0 to −1.1], P = 0.008). CONCLUSIONS Geriatric syndromes and hypoglycemia are associated with lower HRQL to a comparable degree as diabetes complications. Addressing geriatric syndromes and avoiding hypoglycemia should be given as high a priority as preventing diabetes complications in older adults with diabetes.
Polyamide 6-Long Glass Fiber Injection

The injection molding ability of long glass fiber reinforced polyamide pellets was studied. The injection moldable materials were produced by a melt impregnation process of continuous fiber rovings. The rovings were chopped to pellets of 9 mm length. Chopped pellets with a variation in the degree of impregnation and fiber concentration were studied. The injection molded samples were analyzed for fiber concentration, fiber length, and fiber orientation. Dumbbell-shaped tensile bars were made to evaluate the mechanical properties. The fibers in the tensile bars had a high orientation in the flow direction and minor fiber concentration gradients were observed. The fiber lengths decreased with fiber concentration from 1.6 mm for a 2 vol% to 0.6 mm for a 25 vol% system. The tensile and impact properties increased considerably with fiber concentration. A low degree of impregnation in the pellets of the fibers resulted in somewhat lower tensile and impact properties.
Young people's experience of football: a grounded theory

The aim of this study was to generate a substantive grounded theory to explain a variety of young people's experiences of football within and external to FA Charter Standard Clubs and Schools. A modified grounded theory methodology (Strauss and Corbin, 1998; Charmaz, 2000) was selected following an ethical commitment to 'listen to young people's voices'. This methodology was underpinned by critical realist ontological assumptions (Sayer, 2000) and reformulated according to Popperian epistemology (Popper, 1972; 1981). Ten mini-ethnographies were conducted in football clubs and schools in England over a period of 12 months. Data were generated through focussed group interviews with young people (aged 8-18), and participant observation captured in field notes. Over three increasingly deductive iterations (or 'vintages') of data collection and analysis, a substantive theory of socialisation processes in youth football was created. This abstract theory hypothesised that young people's experiences may be conceptualised as partially individualised responses to external influences, expressed as desires and concerns that may act reciprocally on the social context. More specific hypotheses (or models) were formulated and 'mapped over' the abstract theory. The relationship between stress, enjoyment and learning in youth football is explored in the first of these models, focussing specifically on the role of significant adults. Coach behaviour and its impact on the youth football environment is the subject of the second model, which describes an 'ideal type' football programme. Female experiences are the subject of the third section of the discussion which focuses on 'first contact' with football (particularly male domination in mixed football) and subsequent socialisation experiences. Here it is conjectured that the development of friendships and identity specific to football may increase the propensity to participate. The final model conceptualises socialisation processes for young players from black and minority ethnic communities. The problems of 'culture barriers' and institutional racism are explored before considering the role youth football might play in the wider 'integration debate'. Finally, some recommendations for policy change and for future research are offered. Here it is suggested that policy changes are monitored and evaluated with critical sociological studies focussing on young people's experiences of coaching and parenting and hegemonic power relations in female and multicultural football respectively.
A Cytosine Methyltransferase Homologue Is Essential for Sexual Development in Aspergillus nidulans

Background The genome defense processes RIP (repeat-induced point mutation) in the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa, and MIP (methylation induced premeiotically) in the fungus Ascobolus immersus depend on proteins with DNA methyltransferase (DMT) domains. Nevertheless, these proteins, RID and Masc1, respectively, have not been demonstrated to have DMT activity. We discovered a close homologue in Aspergillus nidulans, a fungus thought to have no methylation and no genome defense system comparable to RIP or MIP. Principal Findings We report the cloning and characterization of the DNA methyltransferase homologue A (dmtA) gene from Aspergillus nidulans. We found that the dmtA locus encodes both a sense (dmtA) and an anti-sense transcript (tmdA). Both transcripts are expressed in vegetative, conidial and sexual tissues. We determined that dmtA, but not tmdA, is required for early sexual development and formation of viable ascospores. We also tested if DNA methylation accumulated in any of the dmtA/tmdA mutants we constructed, and found that in both asexual and sexual tissues, these mutants, just like wild-type strains, appear devoid of DNA methylation. Conclusions/Significance Our results demonstrate that a DMT homologue closely related to proteins implicated in RIP and MIP has an essential developmental function in a fungus that appears to lack both DNA methylation and RIP or MIP. It remains formally possible that DmtA is a bona fide DMT, responsible for trace, undetected DNA methylation that is restricted to a few cells or transient but our work supports the idea that the DMT domain present in the RID/Masc1/DmtA family has a previously undescribed function.
Making More by Doing Less: An Analysis of Outsourcing and its Effects on Firm Performance

This study empirically examined the extent to which outsourcing of both peripheral and near-core tasks influences firms’ financial and nonfinancial performance. In addition, the potential moderating effects of firm strategy and the environment on the outsourcing-performance relationship were examined. Results indicate that, whereas there was no significant direct effect of outsourcing on firm performance, both firm strategy and environmental dynamism moderated the relationship between outsourcing and performance.
Genetic Programming Exploratory Power and the Discovery of Functions

Hierarchical genetic programming (HGP) approaches rely on the discovery, modification, and use of new functions to accelerate evolution. This paper provides a qualitative explanation of the improved behavior of HGP, based on an analysis of the evolution process from the dual perspective of diversity and causality. From a static point of view, the use of an HGP approach enables the manipulation of a population of higher diversity programs. Higher diversity increases the exploratory ability of the genetic search process, as demonstrated by theoretical and experimental fitness distributions and expanded structural complexity of individuals. From a dynamic point of view, an analysis of the causality of the crossover operator suggests that HGP discovers and exploits useful structures in a bottom-up, hierarchical manner. Diversity and causality are complementary, affecting exploration and exploitation in genetic search. Unlike other machine learning techniques that need extra machinery to control the tradeoff between them, HGP automatically trades off exploration and exploitation.
POI2Vec: Geographical Latent Representation for Predicting Future Visitors

With the increasing popularity of location-aware social media applications, Point-of-Interest (POI) recommendation has recently been extensively studied. However, most of the existing studies explore from the users' perspective, namely recommending POIs for users. In contrast, we consider a new research problem of predicting users who will visit a given POI in a given future period. The challenge of the problem lies in the difficulty to effectively learn POI sequential transition and user preference, and integrate them for prediction. In this work, we propose a new latent representation model POI2Vec that is able to incorporate the geographical influence, which has been shown to be very important in modeling user mobility behavior. Note that existing representation models fail to incorporate the geographical influence. We further propose a method to jointly model the user preference and POI sequential transition influence for predicting potential visitors for a given POI. We conduct experiments on 2 real-world datasets to demonstrate the superiority of our proposed approach over the state-of-the-art algorithms for both next POI prediction and future user prediction.
Does Seasonal Influenza Vaccination Increase the Risk of Illness with the 2009 A/H1N1 Pandemic Virus?

As the novel pandemic influenza A (H1N1) (pH1N1) virus spread around the world in late spring 2009 with a wellmatched pandemic vaccine not immediately available, the question of partial protection afforded by seasonal influenza vaccine arose. Coverage of the seasonal influenza vaccine had reached 30%–40% in the general population in 2008–09 in the US and Canada, following recent expansion of vaccine recommendations. Serology studies demonstrated a lack of cross-reactive antibody to the novel virus in vaccinated and unvaccinated people under 60 years of age, suggesting that there would be no protection against pandemic influenza from natural immunity or seasonal vaccination [1]. By contrast, about one third of seniors over 60 y had cross-reactive antibodies [1], perhaps due to childhood exposure to antigenically similar A/H1N1 viruses. As a result, the mean age of pandemic cases and deaths was younger than that of interpandemic seasons [2], a signature age shift also experienced in three historical influenza pandemics [3].
Pathophysiological Mechanisms of Focal Cortical Dysplasia: A Critical Review of Human Tissue Studies and Animal Models

Summary: Cortical dysplasia (CD, also known as malformations of cortical development) are the pathological substrates in a large percentage of patients with pharmacoresistant epilepsy who may be amenable to surgical treatment. Therefore, research on the mechanisms of dysplastic lesion formation and epileptogenicity is of paramount importance for the prevention, detection, and treatment of CD‐induced epilepsy. The purpose of this review is to discuss and critically evaluate the current state and results of human tissue experimentation (focusing on reported results of studies done on neocortical dysplastic tissue resected from patients with pharmacoresistant epilepsy), and to discuss some of the concerns related to research that uses surgically resected epileptic human tissue. The use of better animal models of CD as a tool toward the better understanding of the mechanisms of pathogenesis, epileptogenesis, and epileptogenicity of dysplastic lesions will be reviewed from the perspective of their usefulness in a model of translational research that should ultimately result in better diagnostic and therapeutic techniques of CD.
Sexology as a Profession in Portugal: Sociographical Composition and Self-nomination of Portuguese Sexologists

ABSTRACT Objectives: The objective of this study was to describe the socio-demographic characteristics, the initial profession and training in sexology, sex therapy and psychotherapeutic techniques of Portuguese sexologists. Methods: As part of an European survey on sexology as a profession (Euro-Sexo), a questionnaire was mailed to all Portuguese sexologists. Results: Portuguese sexologist is in average 43 years old, is mainly female, a non-physician, and has training in sexology. Age, gender, profession, clinical practice and educational background in sexology, research practice in sexology and sexual education made a significant contribution to the prediction of self-nomination as a sexologist. Conclusions: An interesting diversity of sexology professions, from medical to non-medical fields was identified, and its influence on the practice of sexual medicine was discussed.
Polymorphisms in RETN gene and susceptibility to colon cancer in Saudi patients

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Resistin is an adipocytokine, which has been studied for its role in insulin resistance and recently in inflammation. Several single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified in the human resistin gene (RETN). This study aims to investigate the association of RETN rs1862513 (C-420G) and rs3745367 (G+299A) SNPs with the colon cancer risk in Saudi patients. DESIGN AND SETTINGS This is a case-control study conducted among Saudi adult colon cancer patients recruited from King Abdulaziz Hospital and Oncology Center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. SUBJECTS AND METHODS In this study, 120 Saudi volunteers (60 colon cancer patients and 60 disease-free controls) were studied. The SNPs were determined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and genotyping using PCR- restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. RESULTS In comparing the result obtained for the patient group with that of the controls, colon cancer group displayed different genotype distribution of the RETN C-420G and G+299A SNPs. The study indicated that the SNP-420 heterozygous (CG) genotype (odds ratio [OR]=2.48, 95% CI 1.07–5.74, P=.03) and the SNP +299 heterozygous (GA) genotype (OR=6.5, 95% CI 1.77–24.18, P=.002) significantly increased the risk of colon cancer. A further analysis of the genotype combination of SNPs RETN C-420G and G+299A showed a larger increase in the colon cancer risk. CONCLUSION These preliminary results suggested a potential role for RETN C-420G and G+299A polymorphisms in the genetic predisposition to colon cancer disease.
Optimization of RunBefore decoder and first one detector for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 CAVLC decoding

In this paper, we propose a novel RunBefore decoder and a new FOD (First One Detector) for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 CAVLC decoding. By reusing common blocks aggressively, the proposed FOD has smaller area and less power consumption. Also a new RunBefore decoder which decodes two values in one clock has been designed to improve the decoding performance. The proposed CAVLC decoder has been designed in Verilog HDL, and synthesized by synopsys' design compiler using magnachip 0.18mum CMOS cell library. Performance evaluation results show that our design has on average 48% faster than conventional designs.
Modeling Discrete-Time Transactions Using the BG/BB Model

For a business, it's important to know the repeat purchasing behavior of an existing customer. However, in a non-contractual setting, businesses cannot easily observe whether a customer is still active. The BetaGeometric/Beta Binomial (BG/BB) model developed by Fader and Hardie in 2004 serves as a natural framework to model these types of behaviors. We further evaluate the BG/BB model by applying two different versions of the model to a dataset of 1975 customers over a period of 16 years to evaluate the predictive abilities of the BG/BB, and compares it with the Binary Logistic Regression model to determine whether the BG/BB model can give accurate forecasts over a long period of time.
A Hitchhiker's Guide to Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies have become increasingly popular both with clinicians and researchers as they are capable of providing unique insights into brain functions. However, multiple technical considerations (ranging from specifics of paradigm design to imaging artifacts, complex protocol definition, and multitude of processing and methods of analysis, as well as intrinsic methodological limitations) must be considered and addressed in order to optimize fMRI analysis and to arrive at the most accurate and grounded interpretation of the data. In practice, the researcher/clinician must choose, from many available options, the most suitable software tool for each stage of the fMRI analysis pipeline. Herein we provide a straightforward guide designed to address, for each of the major stages, the techniques, and tools involved in the process. We have developed this guide both to help those new to the technique to overcome the most critical difficulties in its use, as well as to serve as a resource for the neuroimaging community.
Local anaesthetics transiently block currents through single acetylcholine‐receptor channels.

1. Single channel currents through acetylcholine receptor channels (ACh channels) were recorded at chronically denervated frog muscle extrajunctional membranes in the absence and presence of the lidocaine derivatives QX‐222 and QX‐314. 2. The current wave forms due to the opening and closing of single ACh channels (activated by suberyldicholine) normally are square pulses. These single pulses appear to be chopped into bursts of much shorter pulses, when the drug QX‐222 is present in addition to the agonist. 3. The mean duration of the bursts is comparable to or longer than the normal channel open time, and increases with increasing drug concentration. 4. The duration of the short pulses within a burst decreases with increasing drug concentration. 5. It is concluded that drug molecules reversibly block open end‐plate channels and that the flickering within a burst represents this fast, repeatedly occurring reaction. 6. The voltage dependence of the reaction rates involved, suggested that the site of the blocking reaction is in the centre of the membrane, probably inside the ionic channel.
High-Resolution Association Mapping of Atherosclerosis Loci in Mice

Objective—The purpose of this study was to fine map previously identified quantitative trait loci affecting atherosclerosis in mice using association analysis. Methods and Results—We recently showed that high-resolution association analysis using common inbred strains of mice is feasible if corrected for population structure. To use this approach for atherosclerosis, which requires a sensitizing mutation, we bred human apolipoprotein B-100 transgenic mice with 22 different inbred strains to produce F1 heterozygotes. Mice carrying the dominant transgene were tested for association with high-density single nucleotide polymorphism maps. Here, we focus on high-resolution mapping of the previously described atherosclerosis 30 locus on chromosome 1. Compared with the previous linkage analysis, association improved the resolution of the atherosclerosis 30 locus by more than an order of magnitude. Using expression quantitative trait locus analysis, we identified one of the genes in the region, desmin, as a strong candidate. Conclusion—Our high-resolution mapping approach accurately identifies and fine maps known atherosclerosis quantitative trait loci. These results suggest that high-resolution genome-wide association analysis for atherosclerosis is feasible in mice.
Allergen challenge causes inflammation but not goblet cell degranulation in asthmatic subjects.

BACKGROUND An allergen challenge to the airways of sensitized mice causes eosinophilic airway inflammation and degranulation of goblet cells, which lead to airway obstruction. However, whether allergen challenge causes a similar pattern of airway inflammation and goblet cell degranulation in human beings is unknown. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine whether allergen challenge increases airway inflammatory cells and causes goblet cell degranulation in human subjects with asthma. METHODS In bronchial biopsy specimens taken from 8 asthmatic subjects at 1 and 24 hours after allergen challenge, we measured eosinophil and neutrophil numbers as indicators of inflammation. We also measured goblet cell mucin stores and the amounts of secreted mucin in bronchial lavage as indicators of goblet cell degranulation. RESULTS Airway eosinophil numbers at both 1 and 24 hours after allergen challenge were twice as high as those after diluent challenge. Changes in neutrophil numbers were smaller and statistically insignificant. Goblet cell mucin stores measured in tissue stained with alcian blue/periodic acid-Schiff did not decrease significantly from baseline to 1 hour and actually tended to increase at 24 hours. This increase was significant in the subgroup of subjects with normal stored mucin levels at baseline. Mucin-like glycoprotein concentrations in bronchial lavage did not change significantly at either time point. CONCLUSION Although allergen challenge in asthmatic subjects increases airway eosinophil numbers as early as 1 hour after challenge, this inflammatory response does not cause goblet cell degranulation. In fact, in subjects with normal baseline mucin stores, allergen challenge increases goblet cell mucin stores.