Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on freezing of gait in patients with Parkinsonism.

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to investigate the site-specific effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on freezing of gait (FOG) in patients with parkinsonism. METHODS Twenty patients with parkinsonism and FOG were included. A single session of 10 Hz rTMS was applied over three different cortical regions of the dominant hemisphere: the primary motor cortex of the lower leg (M1-LL), the supplementary motor area (SMA), and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). We also performed sham stimulation as a control. The Timed Up and Go (TUG) test, Turn Steps and Turn Time in 180° turning, Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) part III, FOG Questionnaire (FOG-Q), and motor evoked potential (MEP) studies were performed before and after each intervention. RESULTS There were significant improvements in TUG test times after rTMS over the M1-LL and the DLPFC. Improvement was significantly greater after the M1-LL stimulation than sham condition. The M1-LL and DLPFC stimulation also resulted in significant improvements in both the number of Turn Steps and Turn Time. UPDRS-III scores were significantly decreased after the M1-LL and DLPFC stimulation. CONCLUSIONS Use of 10 Hz rTMS on the M1-LL and DLPFC is therapeutically effective for FOG in patients with parkinsonism.
Augmented Anticancer Efficacy by si-RNA Complexed Drug-Loaded Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles in Lung Cancer Therapy

Lung cancer remains the major cause of death throughout the world. However, with the cutting-edge therapeutic approaches the patient’s survivability remains poor. Nanoparticle-mediated targeted gene therapy has surfaced globally for the therapeutic improvement in cancer patients. Recently, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) have attracted much attention for the intracellular delivery of siRNA. Further codelivery strategy has been proposed to minimize the amount of each drug and to achieve the synergistic effect for cancer therapies. In the present investigation we explored the efficacy of codelivery of anticancer drugs along with survivin siRNA in the MSNs for a comparative therapeutic efficacy in lung cancer. Our results revealed such combinational approach has provoked enhanced therapeutic efficacy by synergistic drug activity while restraining the action of survivin protein. Thus, we anticipate this emerging approach may be quite beneficial for lung cancer therapy in future.
Down-regulation of Mitochondrial Acyl Carrier Protein in Mammalian Cells Compromises Protein Lipoylation and Respiratory Complex I and Results in Cell Death*

The objective of this study was to evaluate the physiological importance of the mitochondrial fatty acid synthesis pathway in mammalian cells using the RNA interference strategy. Transfection of HEK293T cells with small interfering RNAs targeting the acyl carrier protein (ACP) component reduced ACP mRNA and protein levels by >85% within 24 h. The earliest phenotypic changes observed were a marked decrease in the proportion of post-translationally lipoylated mitochondrial proteins recognized by anti-lipoate antibodies and a reduction in their catalytic activity, and a slowing of the cell growth rate. Later effects observed included a reduction in the specific activity of respiratory complex I, lowered mitochondrial membrane potential, the development of cytoplasmic membrane blebs containing high levels of reactive oxygen species and ultimately, cell death. Supplementation of the culture medium with lipoic acid offered some protection against oxidative damage but did not reverse the protein lipoylation defect. These observations are consistent with a dual role for ACP in mammalian mitochondrial function. First, as a key component of the mitochondrial fatty acid biosynthetic pathway, ACP plays an essential role in providing the octanoyl-ACP precursor required for the protein lipoylation pathway. Second, as one of the subunits of complex I, ACP is required for the efficient functioning of the electron transport chain and maintenance of normal mitochondrial membrane potential.
Autonomous Discovery of Reliable Exception Rules

This paper presents an autonomous algorithm for discovering exception rules from data sets. An exception rule, which is defined as a deviational pattern to a well-known fact, exhibits unexpectedness and is sometimes extremely useful in spite of its obscurity. Previous discovery approaches for this type of knowledge have neglected the problem of evaluating the reliability of the rules extracted from a data set. It is clear, however, that this question is mandatory in distinguishing knowledge from unreliable patterns without annoying the users. In order to circumvent these difficulties we propose a probabilistic estimation approach in which we obtain an exception rule associated with a common sense rule in the form of a ride pair. Our approach discovers, based on the normal approximations of the multinomial distributions, rule pairs which satisfy, with high confidence, all the specified conditions. The time efficiency of the discovery process is improved by the newly-derived stopping criteria. PEDRE, which is a data mining system based on our approach, has been validated using the benchmark data sets in the machine learning community.
Interacting effects of wildlife loss and climate on ticks and tick-borne disease

Both large-wildlife loss and climatic changes can independently influence the prevalence and distribution of zoonotic disease. Given growing evidence that wildlife loss often has stronger community-level effects in low-productivity areas, we hypothesized that these perturbations would have interactive effects on disease risk. We experimentally tested this hypothesis by measuring tick abundance and the prevalence of tick-borne pathogens (Coxiella burnetii and Rickettsia spp.) within long-term, size-selective, large-herbivore exclosures replicated across a precipitation gradient in East Africa. Total wildlife exclusion increased total tick abundance by 130% (mesic sites) to 225% (dry, low-productivity sites), demonstrating a significant interaction of defaunation and aridity on tick abundance. When differing degrees of exclusion were tested for a subset of months, total tick abundance increased from 170% (only mega-herbivores excluded) to 360% (all large wildlife excluded). Wildlife exclusion differentially affected the abundance of the three dominant tick species, and this effect varied strongly over time, likely due to differences among species in their host associations, seasonality, and other ecological characteristics. Pathogen prevalence did not differ across wildlife exclusion treatments, rainfall levels, or tick species, suggesting that exposure risk will respond to defaunation and climate change in proportion to total tick abundance. These findings demonstrate interacting effects of defaunation and aridity that increase disease risk, and they highlight the need to incorporate ecological context when predicting effects of wildlife loss on zoonotic disease dynamics.
Randomized Controlled Trial of Home-Based Telehealth Versus In-Person Prolonged Exposure for Combat-Related PTSD in Veterans: Preliminary Results.

OBJECTIVES Telehealth technology may reduce the effect of treatment barriers and improve participation in treatment for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The present study is an ongoing randomized controlled trial comparing the effectiveness of prolonged exposure (PE) delivered via in person or home-based video telehealth modalities. METHOD A total of 52 veterans with combat-related PTSD were randomized to receive 8-12 weeks of PE through either home-based telehealth or standard in-person office-based care. RESULTS Participants evinced significant reductions in symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety from pre- to posttreatment across both conditions. Analyses conducted within a noninferiority framework suggested nonsignificant treatment outcome differences in clinician-reported PTSD and self-reported anxiety between the conditions. Results were inconclusive for self-reported PTSD and depression symptoms. Patient satisfaction ratings did not significantly differ between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS Results suggest that PE can be delivered via home-based telehealth with outcomes and satisfaction ratings comparable to in-person practices for certain symptoms, however additional research is needed. This modality has the potential to address stigma- and geographic-related barriers to treatment, such as travel time and cost.
Time-course effects of aerobic exercise training on cardiovascular and renal parameters in 2K1C renovascular hypertensive rats

Exercise training (Ex) has been recommended for its beneficial effects in hypertensive states. The present study evaluated the time-course effects of Ex without workload on mean arterial pressure (MAP), reflex bradycardia, cardiac and renal histology, and oxidative stress in two-kidney, one-clip (2K1C) hypertensive rats. Male Fischer rats (10 weeks old; 150–180 g) underwent surgery (2K1C or SHAM) and were subsequently divided into a sedentary (SED) group and Ex group (swimming 1 h/day, 5 days/week for 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 weeks). Until week 4, Ex decreased MAP, increased reflex bradycardia, prevented concentric hypertrophy, reduced collagen deposition in the myocardium and kidneys, decreased the level of thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS) in the left ventricle, and increased the catalase (CAT) activity in the left ventricle and both kidneys. From week 6 to week 10, however, MAP and reflex bradycardia in 2K1C Ex rats became similar to those in 2K1C SED rats. Ex effectively reduced heart rate and prevented collagen deposition in the heart and both kidneys up to week 10, and restored the level of TBARS in the left ventricle and clipped kidney and the CAT activity in both kidneys until week 8. Ex without workload for 10 weeks in 2K1C rats provided distinct beneficial effects. The early effects of Ex on cardiovascular function included reversing MAP and reflex bradycardia. The later effects of Ex included preventing structural alterations in the heart and kidney by decreasing oxidative stress and reducing injuries in these organs during hypertension.
Enhanced collection efficiency of vesicles in a suspension by optical pressure using gold nanoparticles

We developed a method to collect micro- and nano-vesicles on a glass substrate using the optical pressure of a laser beam. The laser beam was focused on the glass substrate which sandwiches a suspension containing micro- or nano-sized vesicles prepared by a phospholipid. The optical pressure generated at the interface of the medium and the vesicles accelerated the vesicles to form aggregates on the glass surface. Two types of glass substrates, hydrophilic and aminated ones, showed no difference in the adsorption property of the vesicles. Time to be required for collecting a certain amount of the vesicles was inversely proportional to the concentration of the vesicles. To enhance the collection efficiency, gold nanoparticles were added to the suspension of the vesicles. We found that gold nanoparticles reduced the collection time as short as 1/10-times.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Renewable Energy

We document three facts related to innovation and entrepreneurship in renewable energy. Using data from the US Patent and Trademark Office, we first show that patenting in renewable energy remains highly concentrated in a few large energy firms. In 2009, the top 20% firms accounted for over 40% of renewable energy patents in our data. Second, we compare patenting by venture‐backed startups and incumbent firms. Using a variety of measures, we find that VC‐backed startups are engaged in more novel and more highly cited innovations, compared to incumbent firms. Incumbent firms also have a higher share of patents that are completely un‐cited or self‐cited, suggesting that incumbents are more likely to engage in incremental innovation compared to VC‐backed startups. Third, we document a rising share of patenting by startups that coincided with the surge in venture capital finance for renewable energy technologies in the early 2000s. We also point to structural factors about renewable energy that have led the availability of venture capital finance for renewable energy to fall dramatically in recent years, with potential implications for the rate and trajectory of innovation in this sector.
Experiments with syllable-based Zulu-English machine translation

Due to morphological complexity and scarce resources, machine translation from Zulu to English is challenging. We investigate the possibility of phrase-based statistical machine translation from Zulu to English using syllables as the tokens in the Zulu source text. Initial experiments on a relatively small but multi-domain data set suggest merit in our approach, with our best syllable-based model outperforming the best word-based model by 12,90% using the BLEU evaluation measure. Our syllabification approach is largely language independent, at least within the Bantu language family, and holds promise for similar efforts in related languages.
Volume-pressure relationships of lungs and thorax in fetal, newborn, and adult goats.

The physical properties of the lungs and thorax in kids before and after the onset of respiration and in older goats demonstrate changes with age. The fetal goats' lungs contained a volume of fluid which made them approximately twice as heavy as those of animals which had lived a few hours. The intrapleural pressure in the fetus was atmospheric, and was more negative the larger the goat. The pressure-volume characteristics of the lungs and thorax measured in the paralyzed, anesthetized animals show the thorax of the kid to be more compliant and the lungs of the kid less compliant per gram of lung tissue than in the older animal. Studies on excised lungs from these animals show that the lungs of older animals contain a larger gas volume per unit lung weight at pressures over 5 cm H2O than lungs of younger animals. Submitted on July 19, 1961
The miR27b-CCNG1-P53-miR-508-5p axis regulates multidrug resistance of gastric cancer

Multidrug resistance (MDR) correlates with treatment failure and poor prognosis among gastric cancer (GC) patients. In a previous study using high-throughput functional screening, we identified 11 microRNAs (miRNAs) that regulate MDR in GC and found that miR-508-5p reversed MDR by targeting ABCB1 and ZNRD1. However, the mechanism by which miR-508-5p was decreased in chemo-resistant GC cells was unclear. In this study, we found that ectopic miR-27b is sufficient to sensitize tumors to chemotherapy in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, miR-27b directly targets the 3′ untranslated regions (3′-UTRs) of CCNG1, a well-known negative regulator of P53 stability. Interestingly, miR-27b up-regulation leads to increased miR-508-5p expression, and this phenomenon is mediated by CCNG1 and P53. Further investigation indicated that miR-508-5p is directly regulated by P53. Thus, the miR-27b/CCNG1/P53/miR-508-5p axis plays important roles in GC-associated MDR. In addition, miR-27b and miR-508-5p expression was detected in GC tissues with different chemo-sensitivities, and we found that tissues in which miR-27b and miR-508-5p are up-regulated are more sensitive to chemotherapy. Together, these data suggest that the combination of miR-27b and miR-508-5p represents a potential marker of MDR. Restoring the miR-27b and miR-508-5p levels might contribute to MDR reversion in future clinical practice.
Similarities and differences in the phenotype, genotype and pathogenesis of different spinocerebellar ataxias

Historically, the differential diagnosis of the autosomal ataxias (ADCAs) has been difficult. In 1983 Harding proposed a useful clinical classification. Since 1983 ADCAs have been increasingly characterized in terms of their genetic locus and are referred to as spinocerebeller ataxia (SCA). The overlap between the SCA phenotypes and the high variability within SCA subgroups means that, for individual patients, the underlying mutation cannot be predicted reliable purely on the basis of clinical symptoms and so diagnosis should be made on the genotype. However, for executing DNA analyses in order of clinical likelihood, neurologists may try to deduce the underlying mutation by using a clinical algorithm. In this article we not only describe such an algorithm but also plot the pathway from clinical presentation, genetic classification and mutation, abnormal protein to common neuropathology in these disorders.
Calcium‐mobilizing and electrophysiological effects of bradykinin on cortical astrocyte subtypes in culture

The possible consequences of activating bradykinin (Bk) receptors on identified astrocyte subtypes derived from rat cortex have been investigated in terms of: 1) mobilization of intracellular Ca2+; and (2) electrophysiological response. Bk induced a rapid, transient rise in intracellular Ca2+ in 63% of cortical type‐1‐like astrocytes and 44% of type‐2 astrocytes tested. Experiments involving Ca2+‐free conditions suggested that the release occurred largely from internal stores in both astrocyte subtypes. Bk receptor activation resulted in an inward current in approximately 10% of each astrocyte subtype tested using the whole‐cell patch clamp technique. The use of perforated patch recording confirmed a similar population of cells responsive to Bk. The Bk‐induced current was associated with a decrease in membrane conductance. The reversal potential was close to the K+equilibrium potential, consistent with the closure of K+ channels. The current demonstrated similar EC50values and Hill coefficients and also a marked degree of desensitization for both astrocyte subtypes. Recordings from type‐1‐like astrocytes indicated that the receptor mediating the electrophysiological response was of the B2 subtype. The data were consistent with the functional translation of Bk receptor occupation to physiological responses in distinct sub‐populations of cortical type‐1‐like and type‐2 astrocytes. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Differential Expression of Matrix Metalloproteinases After Stent Implantation and Balloon Angioplasty in the Hypercholesterolemic Rabbit

Background—Intimal hyperplasia is the principal mechanism of in-stent restenosis. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) play a key role in intimal growth after balloon angioplasty (BA). Little is known, however, about MMP expression after stent implantation (ST). We investigated whether MMP9 and MMP2 are differentially expressed after ST and BA. Methods and Results—Hypercholesterolemic rabbits underwent ST and BA in the right and left iliac arteries, respectively. The expression of MMPs and their inhibitors (TIMPs) was studied at various time points in the injured arteries by use of zymography, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, and immunohistochemistry. MMP2, but not MMP9, was constitutively expressed in uninjured arteries. MMP9 expression was rapidly induced after injury, whereas the increase in MMP2 expression was delayed. At all time points, pro-MMP9 activity and MMP9 mRNA levels were ≥2-fold (ANOVA, P =0.002) and ≥3-fold (P <0.0001) higher after ST than after BA, respectively. Active MMP9 was detected only after ST. Although the increases in MMP2 mRNA levels were of similar magnitudes after ST and BA, pro-MMP2 activity was slightly higher 7 and 30 days after ST, and MMP2 activity was ≥2-fold higher 7 to 60 days after ST (P =0.002). No difference in TIMP expression was observed between stented and balloon-injured arteries. Cellular distributions of MMPs and TIMP1 were similar after ST and BA. Early inflammatory cell recruitment and 30-day intimal growth were more severe after ST. Conclusions—Stent implantation results in more intense and sustained expression of MMP9 and activation of MMP2 than balloon angioplasty.
Joint scheduling and power control for wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, we introduce a cross-layer design framework to the multiple access problem in contention-based wireless ad hoc networks. The motivation for this study is twofold, limiting multiuser interference to increase single-hop throughput and reducing power consumption to prolong battery life. We focus on next neighbor transmissions where nodes are required to send information packets to their respective receivers subject to a constraint on the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio. The multiple access problem is solved via two alternating phases, namely scheduling and power control. The scheduling algorithm is essential to coordinate the transmissions of independent users in order to eliminate strong levels of interference (e.g., self-interference) that cannot be overcome by power control. On the other hand, power control is executed in a distributed fashion to determine the admissible power vector, if one exists, that can be used by the scheduled users to satisfy their single-hop transmission requirements. This is done for two types of networks, namely time-division multiple-access (TDMA) and TDMA/code-division multiple-access wireless ad hoc networks.
Global Asymptotical Stability of Recurrent Neural Networks With Multiple Discrete Delays and Distributed Delays

By employing the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach, the problem of global asymptotical stability is studied for recurrent neural networks with both discrete time-varying delays and distributed time-varying delays. Some sufficient conditions are given for checking the global asymptotical stability of recurrent neural networks with mixed time-varying delay. The proposed LMI result is computationally efficient as it can be solved numerically using standard commercial software. Two examples are given to show the usefulness of the results
The Neural Hawkes Process: A Neurally Self-Modulating Multivariate Point Process

Many events occur in the world. Some event types are stochastically excited or inhibited—in the sense of having their probabilities elevated or decreased—by patterns in the sequence of previous events. Discovering such patterns can help us predict which type of event will happen next and when . We model streams of discrete events in continuous time, by constructing a neurally self-modulating multivariate point process in which the intensities of multiple event types evolve according to a novel continuous-time LSTM . This generative model allows past events to inﬂuence the future in complex and realistic ways, by conditioning future event intensities on the hidden state of a recurrent neural network that has consumed the stream of past events. Our model has desirable qualitative properties. It achieves competitive likelihood and predictive accuracy on real and synthetic datasets, including under missing-data conditions.