Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blockade of cholinergic transmission elicits somatic signs in nicotine-naïve adolescent rats

High doses of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) antagonist mecamylamine can elicit somatic signs resembling those associated with nicotine withdrawal in nicotine-naïve adult rats. Understanding this phenomenon, and its possible modulation by acute nicotine and age, could inform the use of mecamylamine as both an experimental tool and potential pharmacotherapy for tobacco dependence and other disorders. This study evaluated the ability of high-dose mecamylamine to elicit somatic signs in adolescent rats, and the potential for acute nicotine pretreatment to potentiate this effect as previously reported in adults. Single or repeated injections of mecamylamine (1.5 or 3.0 mg/kg, s.c.) elicited somatic signs in nicotine-naïve adolescents, but this effect was not influenced by 2 h pretreatment with acute nicotine (0.5 mg/kg, s.c.). In an initial evaluation of the effects of age in this model, mecamylamine (2.25 mg/kg, s.c.) elicited somatic signs in nicotine-naïve adolescents and adults. This effect was modestly enhanced following acute nicotine injections in adults but not in adolescents, even when a higher nicotine dose (1.0 rather than 0.5 mg/kg, s.c.) was used in adolescents to account for age differences in nicotine pharmacokinetics. These studies are the first to show that mecamylamine elicits somatic signs in nicotine-naïve adolescent rats, an effect that should be considered when designing and interpreting studies examining effects of high doses of mecamylamine in adolescents. Our findings also provide preliminary evidence that these signs may be differentially modulated by acute nicotine pretreatment in adolescents versus adults.
Development of a Novel Nitro-Derivative of Noscapine for the Potential Treatment of Drug-Resistant Ovarian Cancer and T-Cell Lymphoma

We have shown previously that an antitussive plant alkaloid, noscapine, binds tubulin, displays anticancer activity, and has a safe pharmacological profile in humans. Structure-function analyses pointed to a proton at position-9 of the isoquinoline ring that can be modified without compromising tubulin binding activity. Thus, many noscapine analogs with different functional moieties at position-9 were synthesized. Those analogs that kill human cancer cells resistant to other antimicrotubule agents, vincas and taxanes, were screened. Here, we present one such analog, 9-nitro-noscapine (9-nitro-nos), which binds tubulin and induces apoptosis selectively in tumor cells (ovarian and T-cell lymphoma) resistant to paclitaxel, vinblastine, and teniposide. 9-Nitro-nos treatment at doses as high as 100 μM did not affect the cell cycle profile of normal human fibroblasts. This selectivity of 9-nitro-nos for cancer cells represents a unique edge over the other available antimitotics. 9-Nitro-nos perturbs the progression of cell cycle by mitotic arrest, followed by apoptotic cell death associated with increased caspase-3 activation and appearance of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick-end labeling-positive cells. Thus, we conclude that 9-nitro-nos has great potential to be a novel therapeutic agent for ovarian and T-cell lymphoma cancers, even those that have become drug-resistant to currently available chemotherapeutic drugs.
New results on passivity analysis of uncertain neural networks with time-varying delays

In this paper, the passivity problem is investigated for a class of uncertain neural networks with generalized activation functions. By employing an appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional, a new delay-dependent criterion for the passivity of the addressed neural networks is established in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), which can be checked numerically using the effective LMI toolbox in MATLAB. An example is given to show the effectiveness and less conservatism of the proposed criterion. It is noteworthy that the traditional assumptions on the differentiability of the time-varying delays and the boundedness of its derivative are removed.
The effects of conditional indicative language on the comprehension and acceptance of advertising claims

Conditional indicatives are words or short phrases that facilitate comprehension and signal relationships among the clauses and sentences comprising an argument. Causal indicatives (e.g. because, since and thanks to) imply a positive relationship between two clauses such that the acceptance of one makes the other more likely to be true, whereas contrary indicatives (e.g. yet, even though and but) suggest a negative relationship between two clauses such that accepting one makes the other less plausible. A laboratory experiment compared the effects of contrary indicatives, causal indicatives and neutral connectives (e.g. and, also and in addition) on the comprehension and acceptance of advertising claims. The results indicated that, compared to neutral connectives, conditional indicatives had little or no impact when they were consistent with message recipients' expectations. However, causal indicatives had a negative effect on comprehension and acceptance when they ran counter to prior beliefs about product attributes.
EFL Saudi Students' Class Emotions and Their Contributions to Their English Achievement at Taif University

This paper investigates class academic emotions of anger, anxiety, enjoyment, hope, hopelessness, pride, boredom and shame in the academic situation and their contributions to Saudi EFL students’ English achievement. It also strives to find if there are any differences in class emotions and achievement according gender and streams (science and humanities). The sample consists of 315 (177 males & 138 females) university students. The Pekrun, Goetz, Titz and Perry (2002) class-related emotions scale was used to determine class emotions of students. The findings revealed that there are no differences between science and humanities (M = 22.763, SD = 8.118) in achievement and class emotions except in boredom in favour of science stream. The results also indicated that there were no differences between males and females in class emotions except in the enjoyment in favour of females. It also revealed that there were significant differences between males and females in English achievement in favour of females. On the other hand, it was found that emotions explained 65.8 % in variance of the students’ academic achievement. Furthermore, the findings have implications for students, teachers, and curriculum developers who are to develop a curriculum well-suited with the needs of language learners.
Voluntary Action Affects Perception of Bistable Motion Display

Hand action can bias the perceived direction of ambiguously moving objects (Wohlschlager, 2000 Vision Research 40 925–930). A common coding framework has been proposed to account for action–perception interaction, assuming goal-based feature matching between action and perception [Prinz, 2003, in Agency and Self-Awareness (New York: Oxford University Press)]. I investigated whether and how movement representation and a distal action goal are implicated in biased motion perception using a stream–bounce display as stimulus. By moving a mouse, participants controlled the progression of disks, which were initially separated and then moved toward each other. Mouse movement was found to bias perception toward the stream when the directional motion of the mouse and disk were consistent; however, this biased perception was not observed when the directions were orthogonal. Subsequent experiments revealed that this induced stream percept could not be attributed to the processes of attention, and the action goal of disk control was critical to the occurrence of biased motion perception. These results suggest that feature matching occurs at the level of movement representation, and the action goal is important in linking movement representation to perceptual representation.
Introduction to Special Series: Science-Based Guidance and Framework for the Evaluation and Identification of PBTs and POPs

Abstract There is a growing sense of urgency among scientists and environmental policy-makers concerning the need for improving the scientific foundation supporting international regulations for identifying and evaluating persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT) substances and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the environment. The current national and international regulations define PBTs and POPs in terms of fairly strict criteria that are based on the state of the science in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then, an evolution in the state of the science has produced new insights into PBT substances and an array of new methods to identify PBT chemicals. The development of regulatory criteria has not kept up with the rapid development in environmental chemistry and toxicology, and as a result, scientists often find themselves in the situation where guidance on PBT and POPs criteria is limited and, in some respects, out of date. With this background, a Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Pellston Workshop brought together experts from academia, government, and industry to reach consensus on the significance of advancements in our understanding of the behavior and potential impact of POPs and PBTs in the environment, the current understanding of the state of the science, as well as recommendations for policy-makers to improve and coordinate national and international regulations on this issue. The workshop builds on the outcome of a previous Pellston workshop, held in 1998, which focused on the evaluation of persistence and long-range transport of organic chemicals in the environment, and is linked to other recent Pellston workshops, among them the Tissue Residue Approach for Toxicity Assessment workshop held in 2007. The results of this workshop are conveyed in a series of 9 articles, published in this issue of Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, and describe the coordination of science, regulation, and management needed to more effectively achieve a common goal of managing chemicals on our planet.
The Effects of Deuteration on the Metabolism of Halogenated Anesthetics in the Rat

The authors studied the effects of substituting deuterium for hydrogen in several volatile anesthetics on their metabolism in the Fischer rat. Substitution of deuterium in the ethyl portion of methoxyflurane increased the metabolic production of fluoride ion by 19 per cent when administered at a concentration of 0.05 per cent. Total replacement of hydrogen by deuterium resulted in a 29 per cent decrease in the amount of fluoride produced, while deuteration of only the methoxyl group produced a 33 per cent decrease in fluoride produced. Deuteration of halothane resulted in a 15 or 26 per cent decrease in serum bromide at 0.75 per cent or 1.0 per cent, respectively. Deuteration in the ethyl portions of enflurane and two experimental agents, CF2HOCF2CFBrH and CF2HOCF2CCl2H resulted in 65, 76, and 29 per cent decreases in urinary fluoride, respectively. Anesthesia with deuterated chloroform at a concentration of 0.36 per cent produced a 35 per cent decrease in serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase (SGPT). It is concluded that deuteration of volatile anesthetics changes their metabolism, in most cases producing decreases in metabolism. This effect may lessen the organ toxicity believed to occur with some of these anesthetics.
Spatiotemporal distribution of a late synchronized activity in olfactory pathways following stimulation of the olfactory bulb in rats

The evoked potential recorded in the rat piriform cortex in response to electrical stimulation of the olfactory bulb is composed of an early component occasionally followed by a late component (60–70 ms). We previously showed that the late component occurrence was enhanced following an olfactory learning. In the present study carried out in naive rats, we investigated the precise conditions of induction of this late component, and its spatiotemporal distribution along the olfactory pathways. In the anaesthetized rat, a stimulating electrode was implanted in the olfactory bulb. Four recording electrodes were positioned, respectively, in the olfactory bulb, the anterior and posterior parts of the piriform cortex, and the entorhinal cortex. Simultaneous recording of signals evoked in the four sampled structures in response to stimulation of the olfactory bulb revealed that the late component was detected in anterior and posterior piriform cortex as well as in entorhinal cortex, but not in the olfactory bulb. The late component occurred reliably for a narrow range of low intensities of stimulation delivered at frequencies not exceeding 1 Hz. Comparison of late component amplitude and latency across the different recorded sites showed that this component appeared first and with the greatest amplitude in the posterior piriform cortex. In addition to showing a functional dissociation between anterior and posterior parts of the piriform cortex, these data suggest that the posterior piriform cortex could be the locus of generation of this late high amplitude synchronized activity, which would then propagate to the neighbouring regions.
Issues in Teaching Participatory Action Research

This article discusses participatory action research, a methodology that incorporates subjects in the research and indexes results to transforming the lives of those involved. The approach is gaining momentum and recognition in academic circles but still often limited to specialized training centers. The author discusses two years of experience teaching participatory action research at a school of social work, focusing on the challenges that educators planning courses in action-oriented research are likely to meet.
What do you think about this photo? A novel approach to opinion and sentiment analysis of photo comments

We propose a practical unsupervised approach to opinion and sentiment analysis of photo comments with a real-valued strength orientation. We extract two types of opinions: opinions that relate to the photo quality and general sentiments targeted towards objects depicted on the photo. Our approach combines linguistic features for part of speech tagging, traditional statistical methods for modelling word importance in the photo comment corpus (in a real-valued scale), and a predefined lexicon for detecting negative and positive opinion orientation. In addition, we apply a semi-automatic photo feature detection method and introduce a set of syntactic patterns to resolve opinion references. The results of our user study among 49 non-expert participants of different ages showed no statistical differences between user evaluation and the algorithm.
An evolving hot spot orbiting around Sgr A

Here we report on recent near-infrared observations of the Sgr A* counterpart associated with the super-massive 4 x 106M⊙ black hole at the Galactic Center. We find that the May 2007 flare shows the highest sub-flare contrast observed until now, as well as evidence for variations in the profile of consecutive sub-flares. We modeled the flare profile variations according to the elongation and change of the shape of a spot due to differential rotation within the accretion disk.
Parenting Behaviors in the First Year of Life: A National Comparison of Latinos and Other Cultural Communities

The present study utilizes a nationally representative sample of infants and families (N = 10,498) to examine Latino parenting, building upon previous studies on book reading, storytelling, singing, and teaching behaviors. The findings suggest that, once factors pertaining to family resources and characteristics have been accounted for (e.g., educational level, knowledge about infant development, partner conflict, religious service attendance, and child age), there are relatively few differences in the examined parenting behaviors across racial/ethnic groups. One exception pertains to less frequent book reading and storytelling among mothers of Latino infants, suggesting that culturally responsive interventions be developed targeting both of these practices. This work was supported by the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics and the Foundation for Child Development. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and editorial support on earlier drafts of this article.
A Systems Biology Approach to Characterize Biomarkers for Blood Stasis Syndrome of Unstable Angina Patients by Integrating MicroRNA and Messenger RNA Expression Profiling

Blood stasis syndrome (BSS) has been considered to be the major type of syndromes in unstable angina (UA) patients. The aim of this study was to find the systems biology-based microRNA (miRNA) and mRNA expression biomarkers for BSS of UA. We identified 1081 mRNAs and 25 miRNAs differentially expressed between BSS of UA patients and healthy controls by microarrays. We used DAVID, miRTrail, and the protein-protein interactions method to explore the related pathways and networks of differentially expressed miRNAs and mRNAs. By combining the results of pathways and networks, we found that the upregulation of miR-146b-5p may induce the downregulation of CALR to attenuate inflammation and the upregulation of miR-199a-5p may induce the downregulation of TP53 to inhibit apoptosis in BSS of UA patients. The expression patterns of miR-146b-5p, miR-199a-5p, CALR, and TP53 were confirmed by qRT-PCR in an independent validation cohort including BBS of UA patients, non-BBS of UA patients, and healthy controls. miR-146b-5p, miR-199a-5p, CALR, and TP53 could be significant biomarkers of BSS of UA patients. The systems biology-based miRNA and mRNA expression biomarkers for the BSS of UA may be helpful for the further stratification of UA patients when deciding on interventions or clinical trials.
Interferon Regulatory Factor-1 (IRF-1) Is Involved in the Induction of Phosphatidylserine Receptor (PSR) in Response to dsRNA Virus Infection and Contributes to Apoptotic Cell Clearance in CHSE-214 Cell

The phosphatidylserine receptor (PSR) recognizes a surface marker on apoptotic cells and initiates engulfment. This receptor is important for effective apoptotic cell clearance and maintains normal tissue homeostasis and regulation of the immune response. However, the regulation of PSR expression remains poorly understood. In this study, we determined that interferon regulatory factor-1 (IRF-1) was dramatically upregulated upon viral infection in the fish cell. We observed apoptosis in virus-infected cells and found that both PSR and IRF-1 increased simultaneously. Based on a bioinformatics promoter assay, IRF-1 binding sites were identified in the PSR promoter. Compared to normal viral infection, we found that PSR expression was delayed, viral replication was increased and virus-induced apoptosis was inhibited following IRF-1 suppression with morpholino oligonucleotides. A luciferase assay to analyze promoter activity revealed a decreasing trend after the deletion of the IRF-1 binding site on PSR promoter. The results of this study indicated that infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV) infection induced both the apoptotic and interferon (IFN) pathways, and IRF-1 was involved in regulating PSR expression to induce anti-viral effects. Therefore, this work suggests that PSR expression in salmonid cells during IPNV infection is activated when IRF-1 binds the PSR promoter. This is the first report to show the potential role of IRF-1 in triggering the induction of apoptotic cell clearance-related genes during viral infection and demonstrates the extensive crosstalk between the apoptotic and innate immune response pathways.
A Behavioral Account of the Labor Market: The Role of Fairness Concerns

In this paper, we argue that important labor market phenomena can be better understood if one takes (a) the inherent incompleteness and relational nature of most employment contracts and (b) the existence of reference-dependent fairness concerns among a substantial share of the population into account. Theory shows and experiments confirm that, even if fairness concerns were to exert only weak effects in one-shot interactions, repeated interactions greatly magnify the relevance of such concerns on economic outcomes. We also review evidence from laboratory and field experiments examining the role of wages and fairness on effort, derive predictions from our approach for entry-level wages and incumbent workers’ wages, confront these predictions with the evidence, and show that reference-dependent fairness concerns may have important consequences for the effects of economic policies such as minimum wage laws.
The Observation and Execution of Actions Share Motor and Somatosensory Voxels in all Tested Subjects: Single-Subject Analyses of Unsmoothed fMRI Data

Many neuroimaging studies of the mirror neuron system (MNS) examine if certain voxels in the brain are shared between action observation and execution (shared voxels, sVx). Unfortunately, finding sVx in standard group analyses is not a guarantee that sVx exist in individual subjects. Using unsmoothed, single-subject analyses we show sVx can be reliably found in all 16 investigated participants. Beside the ventral premotor (BA6/44) and inferior parietal cortex (area PF) where mirror neurons (MNs) have been found in monkeys, sVx were reliably observed in dorsal premotor, supplementary motor, middle cingulate, somatosensory (BA3, BA2, and OP1), superior parietal, middle temporal cortex and cerebellum. For the premotor, somatosensory and parietal areas, sVx were more numerous in the left hemisphere. The hand representation of the primary motor cortex showed a reduced BOLD during hand action observation, possibly preventing undesired overt imitation. This study provides a more detailed description of the location and reliability of sVx and proposes a model that extends the original idea of the MNS to include forward and inverse internal models and motor and sensory simulation, distinguishing the MNS from a more general concept of sVx.
The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance Inflation Expectations from Index-linked Bonds: Correcting for Liquidity and Inflation Risk Premia

Keywords: Inflation expectations Liquidity risk premium Inflation risk premium Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS) State-space model a b s t r a c t We propose a novel method to correct break-even inflation rates derived from index-linked bonds for liquidity and inflation risk premia without resorting to survey based measures. In a state-space framework the difference between break-even inflation rates and unobserved true inflation expectation is explained by measures of time-varying liquidity and inflation risk premia. Our results have better forecasting performance for the average annual inflation rate over the following 10 years than raw break-even rates and the Survey of Professional Forecasters.