Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lack of Socs2 expression causes the high-growth phenotype in mice.

Characterizing causal molecular defects in mouse models of overgrowth or dwarfism helps to identify the key genes and pathways that regulate the growth process. We report here the molecular basis for high growth (hg), a spontaneous mutation that causes a 30-50% increase in postnatal growth. We conclude that hg is an allele of the suppressor of cytokine signaling 2 (Socs2), a member of a family of regulators of cytokine signal transduction. We demonstrate mapping of Socs2 to the hg region, lack of Socs2 mRNA expression, a disruption of the Socs2 locus in high-growth (HG) mice, and a similarity of phenotypes of HG mice and Socs2(-/-) mice generated by gene targeting. Characteristics of the HG phenotype suggest that Socs2 deficiency affects growth prenatally and postnatally most likely through deregulating the growth hormone (GH)/insulin-like growth factor I (IGF1). These results demonstrate a critical role for Socs2 in controlling growth.
Noninvasive Prediction of Transvalvular Pressure Gradient in Patients with Pulmonary Stenosis by Quantitative Iwo‐dimensional Echocardiographic Doppler Studies

Recent studies suggest that maximal Doppler velocities measured within the jets that form downstream from stenotic valves can be used to predict aortic valve gradients. To test whether the Doppler method would be useful for evaluation and management of pediatric patients with right ventricular outflow obstruction, we evaluated pulmonary artery flow before catheterization in 16 children with pulmonary valve stenosis. We used a 3.5-MHz, quantitative, range-gated, two-dimensional, pulsed, echocardiographic Doppler scanner with fast Fourier transform spectral output and a 2.5-MHz phased array with pulsed or continuous-mode Doppler. Peak systolic pulmonary artery flow velocities in the jet were recorded distal to the domed pulmonary valve leaflets in short-axis parasternal echocardiographic views. The pulsed Doppler scanner, because of its limitations for resolving high velocities, could quantify only the mildest stenoses; but, especially with the continuous Doppler technique, a close correlation was found between maximal velocity recorded in the jet and transpulmonary gradients between 11 and 180 mm Hg. A simplified Bernoulli equation (transvalvular gradient = 4 X [maximal velocity]2) proposed by Hatle and Angelsen could be used to predict the gradients found at catheterization with a high degree of accuracy (r = 0.98, SEE = + 7 mm Hg). Our study shows that recording of maximal Doppler jet velocities appears to provide a reliable measure of the severity of valvular pulmonic stenosis.
Identification of Novel and Conserved miRNAs in Leaves of In vitro Grown Citrus reticulata “Lugan” Plantlets by Solexa Sequencing

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play essential roles in plant development, but the roles in the in vitro plant development are unknown. Leaves of ponkan plantlets derived from mature embryos at in vitro culture conditions were used to sequence small RNA fraction via Solexa sequencing, and the miRNAs expression was analyzed. The results showed that there were 3,065,625 unique sequences in ponkan, of which 0.79% were miRNAs. The RNA sequences with lengths of 18–25 nt derived from the library were analyzed, leading to the identification of 224 known miRNAs, of which the most abundant were miR157, miR156, and miR166. Three hundred and fifty-eight novel miRNA candidates were also identified, and the number of reads of ponkan novel miRNAs varied from 5 to 168,273. The expression of the most known miRNAs obtained was at low levels, which varied from 5 to 4,946,356. To better understand the role of miRNAs during the preservation of ponkan in vitro plantlet, the expression patterns of cre-miR156a/159b/160a/166a/167a/168a/171/398b were validated by quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). The results showed that not only the development-associated miRNAs, e.g., cre-miR156/159/166/396, expressed highly at the early preservation period in the in vitro ponkan plantlet leaves but also the stress-related miRNAs, e.g., cre-miR171 and cre-miR398b, expressed highly at the same time. The expression levels of most tested miRNAs were found to decrease after 6 months and the amounts of these miRNAs were kept at low levels at 18 months. After analyzing the expression level of their targets during the reservation of the ponkan in vitro plantlet, development-associated cre-ARF6 and stress-related cre-CSD modules exhibited negative correlation with miR167 and miR398, respectively, indicating an involvement of the miRNAs in the in vitro development of ponkan and function in the conservation of ponkan germplasm.
Fluconazole levels in plasma and vaginal secretions of patients after a 150-milligram single oral dose and rate of eradication of infection in vaginal candidiasis

Mean peak concentrations of fluconazole in plasma and vaginal secretions of females after a 150-mg single oral dose were shown to be 2.82 micrograms/ml and 2.43 micrograms/g, respectively. Our results indicate that clinically efficacious concentrations of fluconazole in vaginal secretions are easily achieved after this single oral dose.
Study of piezo-tunnel effect in Metal/A2O3/metal junctions

In this work, the electrical transport in Al/A<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/Pt and Al/A<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/Al junctions under mechanical stress was investigated. The junctions were fabricated by evaporation for the metals (with shadow mask lithography) and Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) for the A<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>. First, IV characteristics were extracted from the unstressed sample and these curves were fitted with the Fowler-Nordheim current expression to identify the conduction mechanism. Then, gauges were tested under mechanical strain using the beam deflection method. Gauge factors of -34 for Al/A<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/Al and -70 for Al/A<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/Pt junctions were measured. Finally, the geometrical gauge factor is discussed and a possible effect of the variation of the Metal/A<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> interface's barrier height under stress is suggested as a plausible cause for the difference in gauge factor observed between the two junction types.
Surgical Management of Infective Endocarditis Complicated by Embolic Stroke: Early versus Delayed Surgery

Background The optimal timing of surgery for infective endocarditis complicated by embolic stroke is unclear. We compared early versus delayed surgery in these patients. Materials and Methods Between 1992 and 2007, 56 consecutive patients underwent open cardiac surgery for the treatment of infective endocarditis complicated by acute septic embolic stroke, 34 within 2 weeks (early group) and 22 more than 2 weeks (delayed group) after the onset of stroke. Results The mean age at time of surgery was 45.7±14.8 years. Stroke was ischemic in 42 patients and hemorrhagic in 14. Patients in the early group were more likely to have highly mobile, large (>1 cm in diameter) vegetation and less likely to have hemorrhagic infarction than those in the delayed group. There were two (3.7%) intraoperative deaths, both in the early group and attributed to neurologic aggravation. Among the 54 survivors, 4 (7.1%), that is, 2 in each group, showed neurologic aggravation. During a median follow-up of 61.7 months (range, 0.4~170.4 months), there were 5 late deaths. Overall 5-year neurologic aggravation-free survival rates were 79.1±7.0% in the early group and 90.9±6.1% in the delayed group (p=0.113). Conclusion Outcomes of early operation for infective endocarditis in stroke patients were similar to those of the conventional approach. Early surgical intervention may be preferable for patients at high risk of life-threatening septic embolism.
Control architecture for tuning intensity and burstiness of traffic

In this paper we explore a control architecture that can implement active queue management and transport control. For queue management, two independent metrics-utilization factor /spl rho/ and burstiness factor /spl eta/, are used to characterize queueing congestion state. Consequently, two information bits are generated to guide the sender's adaptation of traffic intensity and burstiness. Transport control is achieved through the combination of a window and a token bucket that can respond to the two-bit feedback properly. Preliminary simulation study shows that this architecture can easily achieve specified throughput and constrain both queueing delay and delay jitter within specified bounds.
Oxidative killing of Aspergillus fumigatus proceeds by parallel myeloperoxidase-dependent and -independent pathways

The relative importance of several oxygen intermediates in fungicidal action against opsonized Aspergillus fumigatus conidia was investigated with monocytes from normal volunteers and patients with either chronic granulomatous disease or myeloperoxidase (MPO) deficiency. Results from experiments in which catalase, taurine, mannitol, or glucose-glucose oxidase were added to these phagocytes indicated that the MPO-hydrogen peroxide-halide system and an MPO-independent oxidative system exerted comparable conidiacidal activity. These findings offer a plausible explanation for the susceptibility of patients with chronic granulomatous disease to invasive Aspergillus infections; their phagocytes fail to generate hydrogen peroxide, a substrate necessary for both systems. Patients with MPO deficiency are not known to be predisposed to invasive aspergillosis, suggesting that an MPO-independent oxidative system may provide an alternative mechanism for the oxidative killing of Aspergillus spp.
Comparing the Effects of Reflexology and Footbath on Sleep Quality in the Elderly: A Controlled Clinical Trial

Background: Sleep disorders are common mental disorders reported among the elderly in all countries, and with nonpharmacological interventions, they could be helped to improve their sleep quality. Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the effects of two interventions, foot reflexology and foot bath, on sleep quality in elderly people. Patients and Methods: This three-group randomized clinical trial (two experimental groups and a control group) was conducted on 69 elderly men. The two experimental groups had reflexology (n = 23) and foot bath (n = 23) interventions for 6 weeks. The reflexology intervention was done in the mornings, once a week for ten minutes on each foot. The participants in the foot bath group were asked to soak their feet in 41°C to 42°C water one hour before sleeping. The pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI) was completed before and after the intervention through an interview process. Results: The results showed that the PSQI scores after intervention compared to before it in the reflexology and foot bath groups were statistically significant (P = 0.01 , P = 0.001); however, in the control group did not show a statistically significant difference (P = 0.14). In addition, the total score changes among the three groups were statistically significant (P = 0.01). Comparing the score changes of quality of sleep between the reflexology and foot bath groups showed that there was no significant difference in none of the components and the total score (P = 0.09). The two interventions had the same impact on the quality of sleep. Conclusions: It is suggested that the training of nonpharmacological methods to improve sleep quality such as reflexology and foot bath be included in the elderly health programs. In addition, it is recommended that the impact of these interventions on subjective sleep quality using polysomnographic recordings be explored in future research.
A method for Automatic Text Summarization using Consensus of Multiple Similarity Measures and Ranking Techniques

In the era of information overload, text summarization can be defined as the process of extracting useful information from a large space of available content using traditional filtering methods. One of the major challenges in the domain of extraction based summarization is that a single statistical measure is not sufficient to produce efficient summaries which would be close to human-made ‘gold standard’, since each measure suffers from i n-dividual weaknesses. We deal with this problem by proposing a text summarization model that combines various statistical measures so that the pitfalls of an individual technique could be compensated by the strengths of others. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method using the TAC 2011 Multiling pilot dataset for English language and ROUGE summary evaluation tool.
Global Analysis of Expectation Maximization for Mixtures of Two Gaussians

Expectation Maximization (EM) is among the most popular algorithms for estimating parameters of statistical models. However, EM, which is an iterative algorithm based on the maximum likelihood principle, is generally only guaranteed to find stationary points of the likelihood objective, and these points may be far from any maximizer. This article addresses this disconnect between the statistical principles behind EM and its algorithmic properties. Specifically, it provides a global analysis of EM for specific models in which the observations comprise an i.i. d. sample from a mixture of two Gaussians. This is achieved by (i) studying the sequence of parameters from idealized execution of EM in the infinite sample limit, and fully characterizing the limit points of the sequence in terms of the initial parameters; and then (ii) based on this convergence analysis, establishing statistical consistency (or lack thereof) for the actual sequence of parameters produced by EM.
High damping electrostatic system for vibration energy scavenging

Advances in low power electronics and microsystems design open up the possibility to power small wireless sensor nodes thanks to energy scavenging techniques. Among the potential energy sources, we have focused on mechanical surrounding vibrations. To convert vibrations into electrical power we have chosen mechanical structures based on electrostatic transduction. Thanks to measurements and in agreement with recent studies [1], we have observed that most of surrounding mechanical vibrations occurs at frequencies below 100 Hz. We report here global simulations and designs of mechanical structures able to recover power over a large spectrum below 100 Hz. Contrary to existing structures tuned on a particular frequency [2], we have investigated conversion structures with a high electrical damping. Mathematica analytical models have been performed to determine the mechanical and electrical parameters that maximize the scavenged power for a wide number of applications. Two prototypes of mechanical structures have been designed.
Preserving Linked Data on the Semantic Web by the application of Link Integrity techniques from Hypermedia

As the Web of Linked Data expands it will become increasingly important to preserve data and links such that the data remains useful. In this work we present a method for locating linked data to preserve which functions even when the URI the user wishes to preserve does not resolve (i.e. is broken/not RDF) and an application for monitoring and preserving the data. This work is based upon the principle of adapting ideas from hypermedia link integrity in order to apply them to the Semantic Web.
Manipulation and gender neutrality in stable marriage procedures

The stable marriage problem is a well-known problem of matching men to women so that no man and woman who are not married to each other both prefer each other. Such a problem has a wide variety of practical applications ranging from matching resident doctors to hospitals to matching students to schools. A well-known algorithm to solve this problem is the Gale-Shapley algorithm, which runs in polynomial time. It has been proven that stable marriage procedures can always be manipulated. Whilst the Gale-Shapley algorithm is computationally easy to manipulate, we prove that there exist stable marriage procedures which are NP-hard to manipulate. We also consider the relationship between voting theory and stable marriage procedures, showing that voting rules which are NP-hard to manipulate can be used to define stable marriage procedures which are themselves NP-hard to manipulate. Finally, we consider the issue that stable marriage procedures like Gale-Shapley favour one gender over the other, and we show how to use voting rules to make any stable marriage procedure gender neutral.
Changing Pattern of Chlamydia trachomatis Strains in Lymphogranuloma Venereum Outbreak, France, 2010–2015

We describe a change in the molecular epidemiology of Chlamydia trachomatis strains involved in an outbreak of rectal lymphogranuloma venereum in France during January 2010–April 2015. Until 2012, the C. trachomatis L2b strain predominated; however, starting in 2013, most cases involved the L2 strain. We also identified 4 genetic L2b ompA variants.
Discrimination of fast click-series produced by tagged Risso's dolphins (Grampus griseus) for echolocation or communication

ABSTRACT Early studies that categorized odontocete pulsed sounds had few means of discriminating signals used for biosonar-based foraging from those used for communication. This capability to identify the function of sounds is important for understanding and interpreting behavior; it is also essential for monitoring and mitigating potential disturbance from human activities. Archival tags were placed on free-ranging Grampus griseus to quantify and discriminate between pulsed sounds used for echolocation-based foraging and those used for communication. Two types of rapid click-series pulsed sounds, buzzes and burst pulses, were identified as produced by the tagged dolphins and classified using a Gaussian mixture model based on their duration, association with jerk (i.e. rapid change of acceleration) and temporal association with click trains. Buzzes followed regular echolocation clicks and coincided with a strong jerk signal from accelerometers on the tag. They consisted of series averaging 359±210 clicks (mean±s.d.) with an increasing repetition rate and relatively low amplitude. Burst pulses consisted of relatively short click series averaging 45±54 clicks with decreasing repetition rate and longer inter-click interval that were less likely to be associated with regular echolocation and the jerk signal. These results suggest that the longer, relatively lower amplitude, jerk-associated buzzes are used in this species to capture prey, mostly during the bottom phase of foraging dives, as seen in other odontocetes. In contrast, the shorter, isolated burst pulses that are generally emitted by the dolphins while at or near the surface are used outside of a direct, known foraging context. Summary: Discrimination of two kinds of fast click-series produced by Risso's dolphins identifies that terminal buzzes are used for biosonar-based foraging and isolated burst pulses emitted outside of foraging are likely used for communication.
Magnetic transition from dot to antidot regime in large area Co/Pd nanopatterned arrays with perpendicular magnetization

We have studied the transition between two different magnetization reversal mechanisms for thin Co/Pd multilayers with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, appearing in magnetic dot and antidot arrays, which were prepared by nanosphere lithography. Various ordered arrays of nanostuctures, both magnetic dots and antidots, were created by varying size and distance between the nanospheres employing RF-plasma etching. We have shown that the coercivity values reach a maximum for the array of antidots with a separation length close to the domain wall width. In this case, each area between three adjacent holes corresponds to a single domain configuration, which can be switched individually. On the contrary, small hole sizes and large volume of material between them results in domain wall propagation throughout the system accompanied by strong domain wall pinning at the holes. We have also shown the impact of edge effects on the magnetic anisotropy energy.
Gradient domain color restoration of clipped highlights

Sensor clipping destroys the hue of colored highlight regions by misrepresenting the relative magnitude of the color channels. This becomes particularly noticeable in regions with brightly colored light sources or specularities. We present a simple yet effective gradient-space color restoration algorithm for recovering the hue in such image regions. First, we estimate a smooth distribution of the hue of the affected region from information at its boundary. We combine this hue estimate with gradient information from channels unaffected by clipping to restore clipped color channels.
The role of offering support online in promoting Well-being and action to support disadvantaged others

People are increasingly interacting online. However, research has tended to focus on the detrimental outcomes of online activity (e.g., cyberbullying, ostracism). This thesis considers the positive psychological outcomes that may flow to people who offer support to disadvantaged others online. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that creating and sharing online messages of support (to Rwandan Genocide survivors) will promote well-being and solidarity-based collective action. I predict that these outcomes will be mediated by hope and efficacy, and develop a distinction between personal processes leading to well-being, and collective processes leading to solidarity-based collective action. The research (n=77) compared the effects of a mere information control with watching a message of hope then creating a message of support. The results of the experimental design did not produce the predicted effects. However, tests of the process involving the measured variables showed results consistent with hypotheses. Results provide an intriguing instantiation of how the strategic use of online interactive media to offer support can promote well-being, and bolster commitment to action to support disadvantaged others.
The role of epigenetic mechanisms and processes in autoimmune disorders

The lack of complete concordance of autoimmune disease in identical twins suggests that nongenetic factors play a major role in determining disease susceptibility. In this review, we consider how epigenetic mechanisms could affect the immune system and effector mechanisms in autoimmunity and/or the target organ of autoimmunity and thus affect the development of autoimmune diseases. We also consider the types of stimuli that lead to epigenetic modifications and how these relate to the epidemiology of autoimmune diseases and the biological pathways operative in different autoimmune diseases. Increasing our knowledge of these epigenetic mechanisms and processes will increase the prospects for controlling or preventing autoimmune diseases in the future through the use of drugs that target the epigenetic pathways.