Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Food industry by-products as raw materials in functional food production.

Summary Western civilization problems nowadays are overweight, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and different disorders closely linked to unbalanced diet. Since it is extremely difficult to influence nutritional preferences of consumers, food industry is now increasingly developing new products, such as bread, pasta, snack products and other highly consumed products by all groups of consumers enriched with ingredients that are lacking in every day nutrition (fiber, polyphenols, antioxidants, vitamins, s-glucan…) and functional products which have scientifically proven beneficial effect on human health. Food industry by-products, such as apple pomace, by-products from sugar industry and brewers spent grains are rich source of polyphenols, fiber and s-glucan. Grape pomace is rich in polyphenols, tomato pomace in lycopene and carrot pomace in β-carotene. These are just some examples of by-products with great potential of application in enriched and functional food production. In addition to natural substances which are produced in this manner, problem of large quantities of waste disposal is also resolved.
Intuitive risk aversion and reflective risk taking in gain-framed economic games

We typically think of risk taking as impulsive, but evolutionary pressure may actually favor playing it safe as a default strategy. In the context of dual-process theory of reasoning (Evans, 2003), we hypothesized that risk aversion is intuitive for an average decision maker and reflective thinking serves to reduce this intuition. This idea was tested in two studies using economic decision-making tasks. Information processing style was manipulated by forcing fast or slow decisions (Study 1) and by picture priming (Study 2). These manipulations did not affect decisions. We also measured participants’ cognitive reflection ability as an individual difference variable in both studies. As expected, greater reflection ability predicted a greater frequency of risky choices (Study 1 and 2). The findings are consistent with the perspective that risk aversion is impulsive while risk taking is reflective, at least under certain conditions.
Low Concentrations of the Solvent Dimethyl Sulphoxide Alter Intrinsic Excitability Properties of Cortical and Hippocampal Pyramidal Cells

Dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) is a widely used solvent in biology. It has many applications perhaps the most common of which is in aiding the preparation of drug solutions from hydrophobic chemical entities. Recent studies have suggested that this molecule may be able to induce apoptosis in neural tissues urging caution regarding its introduction into humans, for example as part of stem cell transplants. Here we have used in vitro electrophysiological methods applied to murine brain slices to examine whether a few hours treatment with 0.05% DMSO (a concentration regarded by many as innocuous) alters intrinsic excitability properties of neurones. We investigated pyramidal neurones in two distinct brain regions, namely area CA1 of the hippocampus and layer 2 of perirhinal cortex. In the former there was no effect on resting potential but input resistance was decreased by DMSO pre-treatment. In line with this action potential count for any level of depolarizing current stimulus was reduced by ∼25% following DMSO treatment. Ih-mediated “sag” was also increased in CA1 pyramids and action potential waveform analysis demonstrated that DMSO treatment moved action potential threshold towards resting potential. In perirhinal cortex a decreased action potential output for various depolarizing current stimuli was also seen. In these cells action potential threshold was unaltered by DMSO but a significant increase in action potential width was apparent. These data indicate that pre-treatment with this widely employed solvent can elicit multifaceted neurophysiological changes in mammalian neurones at concentrations below those frequently encountered in the published literature.
Observer Influences on Mothers and Fathers: Self-Reported Influence during a Home Observation.

Possible differences in observer influences on mothers and fathers during a naturalistic home observation of families having an eldest child age 6-7 years were examined. Parents were interviewed immediately after the observation and self-reports of influence were obtained. Parents were divided into groups which reported low-perceived influence versus moderate-to-high influence in order to compare their observed behavior for possible observer effects. The results suggest that fathers may have been more influenced than mothers, and differences in apparent influence were related to the child sex
Clinicopathological correlation of deep retinal vascular anomalous complex in age related macular degeneration

AIMS To analyse the histopathology of “deep retinal vascular anomalous complex” or “chorioretinal anastomosis”. METHODS Six patients with a deep retinal vascular anomalous complex (age range 66–88 years) had fundus photography and fluorescein angiography not more than 14 days before foveal translocation surgery. Four patients were also documented with indocyanine green angiography. The surgical specimens were serially sectioned and stained in a stepped fashion with Masson trichrome, periodic acid Schiff, and phosphotungstic acid haematoxylin, a histochemical stain for fibrin. RESULTS A subretinal fibrovascular membrane was surrounded by a rim consisting of diffuse drusen (basal laminar deposits), retinal pigment epithelium, and amorphous, fibrinous material interspersed with remains of outer segments in all specimens. In two specimens vascular structures were identified that left the specimen towards the retina. Amorphous material with the remains of outer segments was not found on the retinal side of the fibrovascular tissue itself but in four specimens a small neuroretinal portion (outer nuclear layer) was adherent to the complex. In three specimens a thin fibrocellular membrane was seen at the choroidal side of the diffuse drusen. CONCLUSION Deep retinal vascular anomalous complex represents histologically neovascularisation growing out of the neuroretina, into the subretinal space, which mimics choroidal neovascularisation. The term therefore appears rightly chosen.
Morningness/eveningness and the need for sleep

The purpose of this study was to determine, in a large sample of adults of all ages (17–80 years), the effect of morningness/eveningness on sleep/wake schedules, sleep needs, sleep hygiene and subjective daytime somnolence. A total of 617 subjects (219 subjects per chronotype group) matched for age, sex and employment status, completed an abridged morningness/eveningness questionnaire, a questionnaire on sleep habits and the quality of sleep, and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. Eveningness was associated with a greater need for sleep, less time in bed during the week compared to ideal sleep needs, more time in bed at the weekend, a later bedtime and waking‐up time especially at the weekend, more irregular sleep/wake habits and greater caffeine consumption. These subjects built up a sleep debt during the week and extended their duration of sleep at the weekend. They did not, however, rate themselves more sleepy than other types, despite the fact that our results showed a clear link between subjectively evaluated daytime somnolence and sleep debt. Why they were less affected by sleep deprivation is not clear. This raises the question of individual susceptibility to the modification of sleep parameters.
Investigation of the Bnp Level Changes in Blood Stream in Different Modes and Lead Locations after Pacemaker Implementation

As has been proven, increase of mechanical strain could result in an increase of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) in the blood stream of implanted patient pacemakers. We measured the BNP concentration in blood due to different mode and lead implantation location of pacemaker in the time period of 3 months. The aim of this study was to investigate the changing trend of BNP level after pacemaker implantation. One hundred and three pacemaker implanted patients were monitored. Patients were in the age span of 54±12 years, including 48 men and 55 women. A group of 44 were programmed in Dual Chamber Rate Adaptive (DDDR) Pacemaker mode and a group of 59 were programmed in Ventricular Rate Modulated Pacing (VVIR) mode by the recommendation of the cardiologist. Between these two groups, the pacing levels of pacemakers was divided to under and above 50%. Some of these pacemaker leads were located at the apex of the right ventricle and the others were located in the septum wall in the right ventricle. To evaluate BNP changes during a period of 3 months, the BNPs were measured in pg/ml within 24 h of implantation (BNP1) and after 3 months (BNP2). For different classes of pacemaker implantations, the ratio of final measurement (BNP2) is divided to after implantation measurements (BNP1). Results showed that in VVIR mode, the ratio is 1.54±0.3 and in DDDR mode, the ratio is 0.38±0.17, with acceptable standard error means (<0.04). Also, comparisons are made for lead location at two modes of DDDR and VVIR separately. In the DDDR mode, the ratio for apex location is 0.49±0.12 and for septum location is 0.22±0.34, with acceptable standard error means (<0.02). In the VVIR mode, the ratio for apex location is 1.71±0.27 and for septum location is 1.28±0.09, with acceptable standard error means (<0.04). Therefore, BNP decrease in DDDR mode is more than in VVIR mode programming. In both cases of DDDR and VVIR modes, the septum location of the leads would result in a greater decrease of BNP.
HDAC activity is required for renal protection and regeneration after acute kidney injury

Jinhua Tang, Yanli Yan, Ting C. Zhao, Rujun Gong, George Bayliss, Haidong Yan, and Shougang Zhuang Department of Nephrology, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China; Department of Medicine, Rhode Island Hospital and Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; and Department of Emergency Medicine, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China; Department of Surgery, Roger William Medical Center, Boston University Medical School, Providence, Rhode Island
How good is your blind spot sampling policy

Assessing software costs money and better assessment costs exponentially more money. Given finite budgets, assessment resources are typically skewed towards areas that are believed to be mission critical. This leaves blind spots: portions of the system that may contain defects which may be missed. Therefore, in addition to rigorously assessing mission critical areas, a parallel activity should sample the blind spots. This paper assesses defect detectors based on static code measures as a blind spot sampling method. In contrast to previous results, we find that such defect detectors yield results that are stable across many applications. Further, these detectors are inexpensive to use and can be tuned to the specifics of the current business situations.
Nuclear location of an endogenously expressed antigen, EBNA1, restricts access to macroautophagy and the range of CD4 epitope display

Whereas exogenously acquired proteins are the major source of antigens feeding the MHC class II pathway in antigen-presenting cells, some endogenously expressed antigens also access that pathway but the rules governing such access are poorly understood. Here we address this using Epstein–Barr virus (EBV)-coded nuclear antigen EBNA1, a protein naturally expressed in EBV-infected B lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) and a source of multiple CD4+ T cell epitopes. Using CD4+ T cell clones against three indicator epitopes, we find that two epitopes are weakly displayed on the LCL surface whereas the third is undetectable, a pattern of limited epitope presentation that is maintained even when nuclear expression of EBNA1 is induced to high supraphysiological levels. Inhibitor and siRNA studies show that, of the two epitopes weakly presented under these conditions, one involves macroautophagy, and the second involves antigen delivery to the MHC II pathway by another endogenous route. In contrast, when EBNA1 is expressed as a cytoplasmic protein, all three CD4 epitopes are processed and presented much more efficiently, and all involve macroautophagy. We conclude that EBNA1’s nuclear location limits its accessibility to the macroautophagy pathway and, in consequence, limits the level and range of EBNA1 CD4 epitopes naturally displayed on the infected cell surface.
Site-specific PEGylation endows a mammalian ribonuclease with antitumor activity

Mammalian ribonucleases are emerging as cancer chemotherapeutic agents. Their cationicity engenders cell permeability, and their enzymatic activity destroys the biochemical information encoded by RNA. The pharmacologic potential of ribonucleases is, however, obviated by their high sensitivity to a cytosolic inhibitor protein (RI) and their small size, which limits their residence in serum. We reasoned that site specific conjugation of a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) chain could both reduce sensitivity to RI and increase serum half-life. We found that appending a PEG moiety can enable bovine pancreatic ribonuclease (RNase A) to evade RI, depending on the site of conjugation and the length and branching of the chain. Although a pendant PEG moiety decreases antiproliferative activity in vitro, PEGylation discourages renal clearance in vivo and leads to nearly complete tumor growth inhibition in a mouse xenograft model. These data demonstrate that a pendant PEG moiety can be beneficial to the action of proteins that act within the cytosol, and that strategic site-specific PEGylation can endow a mammalian ribonuclease with potent antitumor activity.
Task demands and individual variation in referring expressions

Aiming to improve the human-likeness of natural language generation systems, this study investigates different sources of variation that might influence the production of referring expressions (REs), namely the effect of task demands and inter- intra- individual variation. We collected REs using a discrimination game and varied the instructions, telling speakers that they would get points for being fast, creative, clear, or no incentive would be mentioned. Our results show that task demands affected REs production (number of words, number of attributes), and we observe a considerable amount of variation among the length of REs produced by single speakers, as well as among the REs of different speakers referring to the same targets.
A High-Throughput LDPC Decoder Architecture With Rate Compatibility

This paper presents a high-throughput decoder architecture for rate-compatible (RC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes which supports arbitrary code rates between the rate of mother code and 1. Puncturing techniques are applied to produce different rates for quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes with dual-diagonal parity structure. Simulation results show that our selected puncturing scheme only introduces the BER performance degradation of less than 0.2 dB, compared with the dedicated codes for different rates specified in the IEEE 802.16e (WiMax) standard. Subsequently, parallel layered decoding architecture (PLDA) is employed for high-throughput decoder design. While the original PLDA is lack of rate flexibility, the problem is solved gracefully by incorporating the puncturing scheme. As a case study, an RC-LDPC decoder based on the rate-1/2 WiMax LDPC code is implemented in the CMOS 65-nm process. The clock frequency is 1.1 GHz, and the synthesis core area is 1.96 mm2. The decoder can achieve an input throughput of 1.28 Gb/s at ten iterations and supports any rate between 1/2 and 1.
Intersite differences in weight growth velocity of extremely premature infants.

OBJECTIVE To explain differences in weight growth velocity of extremely premature infants among 6 level III neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). METHODS In 6 NICUs, we studied 564 infants, stratified by gestational age (GA), who were first admissions, survivors, <30 weeks' GA at birth, and in the NICU at least 16 days. Case mix (eg, birth weight, GA, race, illness severity, prenatal steroids), exposure to medical practices/complications (eg, respiratory support, postnatal steroids, necrotizing enterocolitis, infection), and nutritional intake (kcal/kg/d and protein in g/kg/d) were collected and used to predict weight growth velocity between day 3 and day 28 (or discharge, if transferred early) in multiple linear regression models. RESULTS Weight growth velocities varied significantly among the 6 NICUs. Adjustment for case mix and medical factors explained little of this variability, but additional control for calorie and especially protein intake accounted for much of the intersite variability. For the average infant, adjusted growth velocity ranged from 10.4 to 14.3 g/kg/d among the sites studied. The final predictive model, including case mix and medical and nutritional factors, explained 53% of the overall variance in growth velocity. Prolonged (> or =15 days) exposure to postnatal steroids and greater severity of illness both decreased growth velocity. The model predicted that adding 1 g/kg/d protein to the mean intake for our sample would increase growth by 4.1 g/kg/d. CONCLUSIONS Variation in nutrition explained much of the difference in growth among the NICUs studied. Mean intake of calories and protein failed to meet recommended levels, and the average growth in only 1 NICU approximated intrauterine growth standards. Increasing nutritional intake into the recommended ranges, in particular of protein, may increase growth of extremely premature infants up to or above intrauterine rates.
Local Expansion of a Panmictic Lineage of Water Bloom-Forming Cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa

In previous studies, we have demonstrated that the population structure of the bloom-forming cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa is clonal. Expanded multilocus sequence typing analysis of M. aeruginosa using 412 isolates identified five intraspecific lineages suggested to be panmictic while maintaining overall clonal structure probably due to a reduced recombination rate between lineages. Interestingly, since 2005 most strains belonging to one of these panmictic clusters (group G) have been found in a particular locality (Lake Kasumigaura Basin) in Japan. In this locality, multiple, similar but distinct genotypes of this lineage predominated in the bloom, a pattern that is unprecedented for M. aeruginosa. The population structure underlying blooms associated with this lineage is comparable to epidemics of pathogens. Our results may reveal an expansion of the possible adaptive lineage in a localized aquatic environment, providing us with a unique opportunity to investigate its ecological and biogeographical consequences.
Values for strategic games in which players cooperate

In this paper we propose a new method to associate a coalitional game with each strategic game. The method is based on the lower value of finite two-player zero-sum games. We axiomatically characterize this new method, as well as the method that was described in Von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944). As an intermediate step, we provide axiomatic characterizations of the value and the lower value of matrix games and finite two-player zero-sum games, respectively.
Faerie: efficient filtering algorithms for approximate dictionary-based entity extraction

Dictionary-based entity extraction identifies predefined entities (e.g., person names or locations) from a document. A recent trend for improving extraction recall is to support approximate entity extraction, which finds all substrings in the document that approximately match entities in a given dictionary. Existing methods to address this problem support either token-based similarity (e.g., Jaccard Similarity) or character-based dissimilarity (e.g., Edit Distance). It calls for a unified method to support various similarity/dissimilarity functions, since a unified method can reduce the programming efforts, hardware requirements, and the manpower. In addition, many substrings in the document have overlaps, and we have an opportunity to utilize the shared computation across the overlaps to avoid unnecessary redundant computation. In this paper, we propose a unified framework to support many similarity/dissimilarity functions, such as jaccard similarity, cosine similarity, dice similarity, edit similarity, and edit distance. We devise efficient filtering algorithms to utilize the shared computation and develop effective pruning techniques to improve the performance. The experimental results show that our method achieves high performance and outperforms state-of-the-art studies.
Self-representations: Alterations in frontotemporal lobar degeneration and correlates in the brain

Self-representations are multi-faceted and complex. Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is a neurodegenerative disease that selectively atrophies anterior brain regions (e.g., frontal pole, insula, anterior cingulate cortex) that are thought to subserve self-representations. While past work has extensively characterized the changes that occur in FTLD patients' comprehension of the social world, relatively little attention has been paid to the changes that occur in the self-representations of patients themselves. The present study assessed five domains of self-representations: (1) self-conscious emotion, (2) self-monitoring, (3) self-focus, (4) self-reflection, and (5) insight in individuals with a neurodegenerative disease (i.e., FTLD, Alzheimer's disease, corticobasal degeneration, supranuclear palsy) and without (i.e., healthy control participants). Multiple methods were used to evaluate participants' behavioral (i.e., emotional facial expressions and eye movements), physiological, and experiential responses. Self-representations in the FTLD and control groups were compared, and the neural correlates of self-representations were investigated across diagnostic categories. Results supported the hypothesis of altered self-representations in FTLD, with FTLD patients exhibiting significantly lower levels of self-conscious emotion, self-monitoring, self-reflection, and insight and significantly higher levels of self-focus than controls. In terms of the neural correlates, three medial right hemisphere regions emerged as being significant predictors of self-representations. In line with expectations, smaller rostral anterior cingulate volumes predicted less self-conscious emotional responding, smaller frontal pole volumes predicted less self-monitoring, and smaller amygdala volumes predicted greater self-focus. FTLD is a disease in which changes in self are common. The present study expanded upon past work by detailing the specific domains of self-representations that are disrupted in FTLD and investigating the neural correlates of these self-representations in a sample of neurodegenerative patients and controls. The findings of the present study have implications for improving the diagnosis and treatment of FTLD and add to our basic understanding of the neural substrates of self-representations.