Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Further neuroendocrine evidence of enhanced vasopressin V3 receptor responses in melancholic depression

Background. In situations of chronic stress vasopressin plays an important role in regulating the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. The aim of the current study was to investigate the role of anterior pituitary vasopressin V3 receptors in maintaining the hypercortisolism seen in melancholic depression. Method. Fourteen patients with major depression and 14 age- and sex-matched healthy comparison subjects were recruited. Desmopressin (ddAVP) 10 μg was given intravenously and ACTH and cortisol release was monitored for 120 min. Results. The mean±S.E. M. ACTH response in the depressives was 28·4±4·3 ng/l and in the healthy subjects was 18·8±4·9 ng/l (P=0·04). The mean±S.E. M. cortisol response in the depressives was 261·8±46·5 nmol/l and in the healthy subjects was 107·3±26·1 nmol/l (P<0·01). Conclusions. Patients with major depression have augmented ACTH and cortisol responses to desmopressin indicating enhanced V3 responsivity.
Economic Pressure and Marital Conflict in Retirement-Aged Couples

Tests of the relationship between economic difficulties and marital distress have generally excluded retirement-aged couples. Given the aging U.S. population and the upcoming retirement of the baby boom cohort, this research gap is problematic.To rectify this omission, this study uses longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH; N = 3,853) and assesses whether the family stress model operates differently for three retirement-aged groups of couples (one group that retired before the study, one that retired during the study, and one group of retirement-aged couples that did not retire during the study) and a comparison group of younger couples. The family stress model did not operate for married couples that began the NSFH already retired but did operate for the two other retirement-aged couples. The authors discuss the potential mechanisms behind these findings and the implications for the upcoming retirement of the baby boom cohort.
Rickettsia-like microorganisms in the ovarian primordial of molting Ixodes ricinus (acari : ixodidae) larvae and nymphs

A large number of coccoid, or oval to spindle-shaped rickettsialike microorganisms are detected intracellularly within the primordial ovaries of all examined molting larvae and nymphs, descendants of a female Ixodes ricinus collected in a forest near Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and within all molting nymphal I. ricinus captured as starved ticks in the same area. The morphology of the microorganisms is identical in all ticks. They measure 0.3-0.4 µ m in diameter and 0.6-1.3 µ m, occasionally up to about 2.5 µ m in length. The microorganisms possess a highly rippled membranous outer cell wall and an inner plasma membrane. Both cellular boundaries show a thickness of approximately 6-10 nm. The microorganisms are always enclosed, singly or in groups, within membrane limited vacuoles of host cells, within vacuolated mitochondria, or within vacuoles with their wall consisting partially of a deformed mitochondrion and partially of a plasma membrane of host cells. With the advance of the development of the nymphal ovaries, the groups of microorganisms associated with mitochondria become larger and increase in number, and they are dominant within the posterior part of the organs in the nymphs examined at day 21 after repletion. The relationship between the microorganisms and the mitochondria is discussed. The morphology of the gonads of the examined immature ticks is also described.
Roles of lipooligosaccharide and capsular polysaccharide in antimicrobial resistance and natural transformation of Campylobacter jejuni.

OBJECTIVES This study is aimed to determine the role of capsular polysaccharide (CPS) and lipooligosaccharide (LOS) in modulating antimicrobial resistance and natural transformation of Campylobacter jejuni, an important food-borne human pathogen. METHODS A series of C. jejuni mutants, which are defective in either CPS or LOS or both, were constructed. The antimicrobial susceptibility, bacterial surface hydrophobicity, natural transformation frequency and DNA binding and uptake were measured and compared between the mutants and the wild-type strain. RESULTS Truncation of LOS greatly reduced (8-fold) the intrinsic resistance of C. jejuni to erythromycin, a key antibiotic used for treating human campylobacteriosis, while the loss of CPS did not result in significant changes in the susceptibility to antimicrobial agents. Notably, mutation of LOS also significantly increased (>16-fold) the susceptibility to erythromycin in C. jejuni mutants carrying the A2074G mutation in 23S rRNA. The increased susceptibility to erythromycin in the LOS mutant was probably due to enhanced permeability to this antibiotic, because the LOS mutation rendered the surface of C. jejuni more hydrophobic. Loss of CPS and truncation of LOS increased the transformation frequency by 4- and 25-fold, respectively, and mutation of both CPS and LOS resulted in a 97-fold increase in the transformation frequency. Consistent with the increased transformation frequencies, the CPS and LOS mutants showed enhanced rates of DNA uptake. CONCLUSIONS These results demonstrate that the surface polysaccharides in C. jejuni contribute to the resistance to erythromycin, a clinically important antibiotic, but restrict natural transformation.
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Political participation and civic community of ethnic minorities in four cities in the Netherlands

In this article, the political participation of Turkish, Surinamese and Moroccan immigrants in four cities in the Netherlands is related to the civic community of these groups. The usefulness of Robert Putnam’s civic community perspective is tested for the immigrant communities in Dutch cities in the Netherlands. The relationship between the networks in the migrant communities and political par- ticipation found in earlier research can partly explain the differences between the ethnic groups and between the cities, but some additional explanatory factors are suggested.
The periaxonal space of crayfish giant axons

The influence of the glial cell layer on effective external ion concentrations has been studied in crayfish giant axons. Excess K ions accumulate in the periaxonal space during outward K+ current flow, but at a rate far below that expected from the total ionic flux and the measured thickness of the space. At the conclusion of outward current flow, the external K+ concentration returns to normal in an exponential fashion, with a time constant of approximately 2 ms. This process is about 25 times faster than is the case in squid axons. K+ repolarization (tail) currents are generally biphasic at potentials below about -40 mV and pass through a maximum before approaching a final asymptotic level. The initial rapid phase may in part reflect depletion of excess K+. After block of inactivation and reversal of the Na+ concentration gradient, we could demonstrate accumulation and washout of excess Na ions in the periaxonal space. Characteristics of these processes appeared similar to those of K+. Crayfish glial cell ultrastructure has been examined both in thin sections and after freeze fracture. Layers of connective tissue and extracellular fluid alternate with thin layers of glial cytoplasm. A membranous tubular lattice, spanning the innermost glial layers, may provide a pathway allowing rapid diffusion of excess ions from the axon surface.
Sentence similarity based on semantic nets and corpus statistics

Sentence similarity measures play an increasingly important role in text-related research and applications in areas such as text mining, Web page retrieval, and dialogue systems. Existing methods for computing sentence similarity have been adopted from approaches used for long text documents. These methods process sentences in a very high-dimensional space and are consequently inefficient, require human input, and are not adaptable to some application domains. This paper focuses directly on computing the similarity between very short texts of sentence length. It presents an algorithm that takes account of semantic information and word order information implied in the sentences. The semantic similarity of two sentences is calculated using information from a structured lexical database and from corpus statistics. The use of a lexical database enables our method to model human common sense knowledge and the incorporation of corpus statistics allows our method to be adaptable to different domains. The proposed method can be used in a variety of applications that involve text knowledge representation and discovery. Experiments on two sets of selected sentence pairs demonstrate that the proposed method provides a similarity measure that shows a significant correlation to human intuition
RNA Structural Elements Determine Frequency and Sites of Nonhomologous Recombination in an Animal Plus-Strand RNA Virus

ABSTRACT For highly variable RNA viruses, RNA recombination significantly contributes to genetic variations which may lead to changes of virulence, adaptation to new hosts, escape from the host immune response, and emergence of new infectious agents. Using a system based on transfection of cells with synthetic nonreplicable subgenomic transcripts derived from bovine viral diarrhea virus (family Flaviviridae), the existence of a replication-independent mechanism of RNA recombination, in addition to the commonly accepted replicative copy-choice recombination, has been previously proven (A. Gallei et al., J. Virol. 78:6271–6281, 2004). To identify RNA signals involved in efficient joining of RNA molecules, RNA recombination in living cells was targeted to the 3′ nontranslated region. Molecular characterization of 40 independently emerged recombinant viruses revealed that the majority of recombination sites are located in single-stranded regions of the RNA molecules. Furthermore, the results of this study showed that the frequency of RNA recombination directly correlated with the RNA amounts of both recombination partners. The frequency can be strongly increased by modification of the 5′ triphosphates and 3′ hydroxyls of the recombining RNA molecules to 5′ hydroxyl and 3′ monophosphoryl ends, respectively. Analysis of recombinants that emerged after transfection with such modified RNA molecules revealed a complete integration and efficient end-to-end joining of the recombination partner(s) in at least 80% of recombinants, while unmodified RNA molecules recombined exclusively at internal positions. These results are in line with the hypothesis that endoribonucleolytic cleavage and a subsequent ligation reaction can cause RNA recombination.
THE INTEGRATION OF AUTHENTIC LEARNING PRINCIPLES AND FACEBOOK IN SERVICE LEARNING

To date, lots of research was carried out solely on the effectiveness of Authentic Learning principles in service learning. The results showed positive relationships between theories and practices because students had become relatively analytical thinkers, problem-solvers and collaborators. The uses of Authentic Learning and Facebook in service learning, however, are under research. Hence, this paper tends to investigate the effectiveness of Authentic Learning Principles and Facebook in promoting active learning among students in their service learning curriculum. These students are from Albukhary International University (AiU) whereby servicelearning curriculum also known as Community Engagement Project (CEP) has been introduced to all undergraduate students across their 3-year curriculum. Purposive samplings were employed to find out the students’ preferences in using Authentic Learning Principles together with Facebook as a social media tool in their service learning projects. Surveys which consisted of Likert-scale questions were administered to ninetysix (99) students from 20 different countries. Fifty-one percent (51%) of the students were males and the other forty-nine (49%) were females. The results have shown that Authentic Learning Principles and Facebook as a
Analysis of Ar(1s 5 ) Metastable Populations in High Pressure Argon-Helium Gas Discharges

Simulations of an argon-helium plasma are performed for two high pressure discharge scenarios in an attempt to find a uniform, large-volume plasma with Ar(1s5) metastable densities on the order of 10 cm−3 for use as the ground state in an optically pumped rare gas laser. An analysis of a pulsed direct current discharge is performed for a 7% argon in helium mixture at a pressure of 270 Torr using both zero and one-dimensional models. Kinetics of species relevant to the operation of an optically pumped rare gas laser are analyzed throughout the pulse duration to identify key reaction pathways. Time dependent densities, electron temperatures, current densities, and reduced electric fields in the positive column are analyzed over a single 20 μs pulse, showing temporal agreement between the two models. Through the use of a robust reaction rate package, radiation trapping is determined to play a key role in reducing Ar(1s5) metastable loss rates through the reaction sequence Ar(1s5) + e − → Ar(1s4) + e− followed by Ar(1s4)→ Ar+~ω. Collisions with He are observed to be responsible for Ar(2p9) mixing, with nearly equal rates to Ar(2p10) and Ar(2p8). Additionally, dissociative recombination of Ar + 2 is determined to be the dominant electron loss mechanism for the simulated discharge conditions and cavity size. Simulations are also performed for an α-mode radio frequency dielectric barrier discharge with varying mixtures of argon and helium at pressures ranging from 200500 Torr using both zero and one-dimensional models. Metastable densities are analyzed as a function of argon fraction and pressure to determine the optimal conditions maximizing metastable density for use in an optically pumped rare gas laser. Argon fractions corresponding to the peak metastable densities are found to be pressure
Professing Passion:Emotion in the Scholarship of Professors at Research Universities

Interviews with 40 recently tenured university professors indicated that scholarly work is emotional in content; it draws on scholars’ emotional resources. Yet, discourse about scholarship’s personal and emotional meanings is uncommon, given historic separations (reified in university policy) between emotional and cognitive work and between personal and professional endeavors. This study blurs such distinctions by portraying academic work as anchored in a concept of “passionate thought”: as discrete and bounded peak experiences and as contextualization of these peak experiences in broader emotional processes, interactions, and remembrance. The study’s contributions include its representation of scholarly learning as emotional in content and as emotionally contextualized (and thereby as emotionally complex) and its implications for reform of policy discourses to account for the personal content of scholarly work.
State estimation for large ensembles

We consider the problem of estimating the state of a large but finite numberN of identical quantum systems. As N becomes large the problem simplifies dramatically. The only relevant measure of the quality of estimation becomes the mean quadratic error matrix. Here we present a bound on this quantity: a quantum Cramer-Rao inequality. This bound succinctly expresses how in the quantum case one can trade information about one parameter for information about another. The bound holds for arbitrary measurements on pure states, but only for separable measurements on mixed states—a striking example of nonlocality without entanglement for mixed but not for pure states. Cramer-Rao bounds are generally only derived for unbiased estimators. Here we give a version of our bound for biased estimators, and a simple asymptotic version for large N. Finally we prove that when the unknown state belongs to a two-dimensional Hilbert space our quantum Cramer-Rao bound can always be attained, and we provide an explicit measurement strategy that attains it. Thus we have a complete solution to the problem of estimating as efficiently as possible the unknown state of a large ensemble of qubits in the same pure state. The same is true for qubits in the same mixed state if one restricts oneself to separable measurements, but nonseparable measurements allow dramatic increase of efficiency. Exactly how much increase is possible is a major open problem.
Comparative Efficiency and Safety of Pharmacological Approaches to the Management of Obesity

Obesity and overweight are reaching global epidemic proportions affecting more than 1.1 billion individuals worldwide. Excess weight is associated with an increased mortality, chronic morbidity (including type 2 diabetes, arterial hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and certain cancers), decreased quality of life, and considerable health care costs (1). Antiobesity drugs work through different mechanisms either in the central nervous system (CNS) or in the peripheral tissues. These mechanisms include: 1 ) suppression of food intake in the CNS, 2 ) decreased gut absorption of nutrients, and 3 ) increased energy expenditure or oxidation of nutrients. The efficacy of antiobesity drugs should be evaluated by their ability to reduce fat stores (preferentially visceral adipose tissue), maintain weight loss, diminish obesity-related health risks, and thus decrease morbidity and mortality, and improve quality of life. An ideal antiobesity drug should be administered orally, devoid of major side effects, and distributed at affordable price. Treatment with antiobesity drugs can be considered in obese patients who failed to achieve a sufficient weight loss to a program of lifestyle change, diet, and physical activity. However, the drug treatment of obesity should be an integral part of the comprehensive obesity treatment program that includes diet, exercise, and cognitive behavioral intervention (2,3). Treatment of obesity should be individually tailored taking into account the degree and character of obesity, age, sex, and the presence of comorbidities (4). Drugs used for the treatment of obesity in the past were associated with serious side effects (psycho-stimulatory, depression, addiction, cardio-excitatory effects, pulmonary hypertension, and valve disease). Antiobesity agents that possess cardio-excitatory and psycho-stimulatory effects (e.g., phentermine, ephedrine, and caffeine mixture) have still been available for the short-term use in some countries (<3 months). Currently, only two drugs, sibutramine and orlistat, are prescribed for long-term administration. The most important trial evaluating the long-term efficacy of …
Effects of Hypertension on the Lipid Composition of Rat Aortic Intima‐Media

Since hypertension intensifies the development of atherosclerosis, effects of hypertension on the lipid composition of aortic intima-media of male rats were studied. Concentrations of cholesterol, both esterified and unesterified, and of phospholipid were increased, and the concentration of triglyceride was decreased in aortas of hypertensive rats maintained on a stock diet. Changes in free cholesterol, phospholipid, and triglyceride are believed to be concomitants of medial hypertrophy, which was pronounced in aortas of hypertensive rats. Changes in esterified cholesterol, however, may be attributable to an influence of plasma lipids on aortic lipids. Cholesteryl ester, quantitatively a minor lipid component of the aorta, shows a larger increase with hypertension than other lipid classes. The resemblance between fatty acid compositions of aortic and plasma cholesteryl esters was strong, and persisted when the composition of plasma cholesteryl esters was altered by diet. These results suggest that most of the aortic esters originated in the plasma, and support the concept that hypertension intensifies the development of atherosclerosis by increasing the net transfer of lipid from plasma to vessel.
Sequence analysis of the 5' untranslated region in isolates of at least four genotypes of hepatitis C virus in The Netherlands

The RNAs of hepatitis C virus (HCV) isolates from 62 patients with chronic HCV infection were analyzed by direct sequencing of the 5' untranslated region. Two important sequence motifs were recognized: one between positions -170 and -155 and the other between positions -132 and -117. These motifs are partly complementary. All three previously published genotypes were observed; 34 (55%) isolates were classified as type 1 (including prototype [from the United States] and HCV-BK [from Japan] sequences), 11 (18%) were classified as type 2 (including HC-J6 and HC-J8), and 12 (19%) were classified as type 3 (including EB1); one patient was infected with genotypes 1 and 2. Four (6%) isolates showed aberrant sequences and were therefore provisionally classified as genotype 4. These results indicate the significance of sequence variation among the 5' untranslated regions of different HCV genotypes and indicate that this region could possibly be used for consistent genotyping of HCV isolates.
Assessment of Iron Status and Red Cell Parameters in Healthy Full Term Small for Gestational Age Neonates at Birth

Background: Hematological values of the newborn babies vary according to the gestational age and intrauterine growth. Objective: The objective of this study is to compare the iron status and red cell parameters in healthy term small for gestational age (SGA) and appropriate for gestational age (AGA) neonates. Materials and Methods: A prospective hospital based study was conducted in a tertiary care teaching institution of central India. 50 AGA and 50 SGA neonates were included in the study and serum iron, serum ferritin and red cell parameters (hemoglobin (Hb), red blood cell (RBC) count and hematocrit (Hct), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), means corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) and red cell distribution width (RDW]) were estimated within 24 h of birth. Results: Serum ferritin levels were significantly low in SGA neonates as compared with AGA (mean 103 vs. 158 ng/ml; P=0.001) neonates. In SGA neonates, mean values of Hb (P=0.001), RBC count (P=0.018) and Hct (P=0.005) were significantly higher than in AGA neonates. Higher values of RDW and MCV were seen in SGA group in comparison with AGA neonates. Similarly, lower values of serum iron, MCH and MCHC were seen in the same group; although, these were non-significant. Conclusion: Despite higher Hb content, SGA neonates are deficient in iron store at birth as indicated by lower serum ferritin levels in them and early iron supplementation should be considered in them.
Forwarding Unit Generation for Loop Pipelining in High-level Synthesis

: In the loop pipelining of high-level synthesis, the reduction of initiation intervals (IIs) is very important. Existing loop pipelining techniques, however, pessimistically assumes that dependences whose occurrences can be determined only at runtime always occur, resulting in increased IIs. To address this issue, recent work achieves reduced II by a source code transformation which introduces runtime dependence analysis and performs pipeline stalls when the dependences actually occur. Unfortunately, the recent work su ﬀ ers from the increased execution cycles by frequent pipeline stalls under the frequent occurrences of the dependences. In this paper, we propose a technique to reduce IIs in which data written to memories are also written to registers for such dependences of read-after-write (RAW) type. In our technique, registers which are faster than memories are accessed when the RAW dependences occur. Since the proposed technique achieved the reduction of the execution cycles by 34% with 15% gate count increase on average for three examples compared to the state-of-the-art technique, the proposed technique is e ﬀ ective for synthesizing high-speed circuits with loop pipelining.