Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-term reliability of Al2O3 and Parylene C bilayer encapsulated Utah electrode array based neural interfaces for chronic implantation

Objective. We focus on improving the long-term stability and functionality of neural interfaces for chronic implantation by using bilayer encapsulation. Approach. We evaluated the long-term reliability of Utah electrode array (UEA) based neural interfaces encapsulated by 52 nm of atomic layer deposited Al2O3 and 6 µm of Parylene C bilayer, and compared these to devices with the baseline Parylene-only encapsulation. Three variants of arrays including wired, wireless, and active UEAs were used to evaluate this bilayer encapsulation scheme, and were immersed in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) at 57 °C for accelerated lifetime testing. Main results. The median tip impedance of the bilayer encapsulated wired UEAs increased from 60 to 160 kΩ during the 960 days of equivalent soak testing at 37 °C, the opposite trend to that typically observed for Parylene encapsulated devices. The loss of the iridium oxide tip metallization and etching of the silicon tip in PBS solution contributed to the increase of impedance. The lifetime of fully integrated wireless UEAs was also tested using accelerated lifetime measurement techniques. The bilayer coated devices had stable power-up frequencies at ∼910 MHz and constant radio-frequency signal strength of −50 dBm during up to 1044 days (still under testing) of equivalent soaking time at 37 °C. This is a significant improvement over the lifetime of ∼100 days achieved with Parylene-only encapsulation at 37 °C. The preliminary samples of bilayer coated active UEAs with a flip-chip bonded ASIC chip had a steady current draw of ∼3 mA during 228 days of soak testing at 37 °C. An increase in the current draw has been consistently correlated to device failures, so is a sensitive metric for their lifetime. Significance. The trends of increasing electrode impedance of wired devices and performance stability of wireless and active devices support the significantly greater encapsulation performance of this bilayer encapsulation compared with Parylene-only encapsulation. The bilayer encapsulation should significantly improve the in vivo lifetime of neural interfaces for chronic implantation.
Morphogenesis of the Nucleoprotein of Vesicular Stomatitis Virus

Accumulation of the nucleoprotein of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) in the cytoplasm of BHK-21 cells and in two of four human cell lines was demonstrated. Appearance and progression of the nucleoprotein inclusions paralleled development of virus-specific immunofluorescence and production of virus progeny. The inclusions appeared early as discrete foci of filamentous material which eventually increased in size to form large masses which replaced normal cytoplasmic constituents. The filamentous strands were found in close proximity to budding virions. The inclusion material was extracted from infected cells and purified in cesium chloride gradients. The isolated filaments resembled the ribonucleoprotein isolated from purified virions. They incorporated 3H-uridine, exhibited virus-specific complement-fixing activity, had a buoyant density of 1.32 g/cm3, and appeared as single wavy strands the width of which varied from 2.5 to 8.5 nm, depending on the angle of viewing.
Metabolic cost of generating muscular force in human walking: insights from load-carrying and speed experiments.

We sought to understand how leg muscle function determines the metabolic cost of walking. We first indirectly assessed the metabolic cost of swinging the legs and then examined the cost of generating muscular force during the stance phase. Four men and four women walked at 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 m/s carrying loads equal to 0, 10, 20, and 30% body mass positioned symmetrically about the waist. The net metabolic rate increased in nearly direct proportion to the external mechanical power during moderate-speed (0.5-1.5 m/s) load carrying, suggesting that the cost of swinging the legs is relatively small. The active muscle volume required to generate force on the ground and the rate of generating this force accounted for >85% of the increase in net metabolic rate across moderate speeds and most loading conditions. Although these factors explained less of the increase in metabolic rate between 1.5 and 2.0 m/s ( approximately 50%), the cost of generating force per unit volume of active muscle [i.e., the cost coefficient (k)] was similar across all conditions [k = 0.11 +/- 0.03 (SD) J/cm3]. These data indicate that, regardless of the work muscles do, the metabolic cost of walking can be largely explained by the cost of generating muscular force during the stance phase.
The nucleus accumbens as a nexus between values and goals in goal-directed behavior: a review and a new hypothesis

Goal-directed behavior is a fundamental means by which animals can flexibly solve the challenges posed by variable external and internal conditions. Recently, the processes and brain mechanisms underlying such behavior have been extensively studied from behavioral, neuroscientific and computational perspectives. This research has highlighted the processes underlying goal-directed behavior and associated brain systems including prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia and, in particular therein, the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). This paper focusses on one particular process at the core of goal-directed behavior: how motivational value is assigned to goals on the basis of internal states and environmental stimuli, and how this supports goal selection processes. Various biological and computational accounts have been given of this problem and of related multiple neural and behavior phenomena, but we still lack an integrated hypothesis on the generation and use of value for goal selection. This paper proposes an hypothesis that aims to solve this problem and is based on this key elements: (a) amygdala and hippocampus establish the motivational value of stimuli and goals; (b) prefrontal cortex encodes various types of action outcomes; (c) NAcc integrates different sources of value, representing them in terms of a common currency with the aid of dopamine, and thereby plays a major role in selecting action outcomes within prefrontal cortex. The “goals” pursued by the organism are the outcomes selected by these processes. The hypothesis is developed in the context of a critical review of relevant biological and computational literature which offer it support. The paper shows how the hypothesis has the potential to integrate existing interpretations of motivational value and goal selection.
Bacteriological Profile of Diabetic FootInfections

Diabetic foot infection is one of the dreaded complications of diabetes. Hence, proper management of diabetic foot infection requires appropriate selection of antimicrobials based on culture and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. This study was undertaken to evaluate the clinical and the microbial characteristic of diabetic foot infection in patients of Salem district, Tamil Nadu, India. The ulcers were graded and swab samples were collected under aseptic condition. A total of sixty patients with type 2 diabetics presented in this study. Out of sixty patients, fifty patients were culture positive and ten were found to be culture negative. Mono microbial infection was found to be higher than poly microbial infection. The bacteria isolated in this study included Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus saprophyticus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Micrococcus spp. , Streptococcus pneumoniae, Pleisomonas spp. , Bacillus spp. Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp. , Salmonella spp. , Vibrio spp. , and Enterococcus spp. MRSA and ESBL strains constituted 50 % in this study. Oxacillin and meropenem were found to be the best drug of the choice against both gram positive and gram negative organisms.
Nuclear Pore Composition and Gating in Herpes Simplex Virus-Infected Cells

ABSTRACT The mechanism by which herpes simplex virus (HSV) exits the nucleus remains a matter of controversy. The generally accepted route proposes that capsids exit via primary envelopment at the inner nuclear membrane and subsequent fusion of this primary particle with the outer nuclear membrane to gain capsid entry to the cytoplasm. However, recent observations indicate that HSV may induce gross morphological alterations of nuclear pores, resulting in the loss of normal pores and the appearance of dilated gaps in the nuclear membrane of up to several 100 nm. On this basis, it was proposed that a main route of capsid exit from the nucleus is directly through these altered pores. Here, we examine the biochemical composition of some of the major nuclear pore components in uninfected and HSV-infected cells. We show that total levels of major nucleoporins and their sedimentation patterns in density gradients remain largely unchanged up to 18 h after HSV infection. Some alteration in modification of one nucleoporin, Nup358/RanBP2, was observed during enrichment with anti-nucleoporin antibody and probing for O glycosylation. In addition, we examine functional gating within the nucleus in live cells, using microinjection of labeled dextran beads and a recombinant virus expressing GFP-VP16 to track the progress of infection. The nuclear permeability barrier for molecules bigger than 70 kDa remained intact throughout infection. Thus, in a functional assay in live cells, we find no evidence for gross perturbation to the gating of nuclear pores, although this might not exclude a small population of modified pores.
Reading Scene Text with Attention Convolutional Sequence Modeling

Reading text in the wild is a challenging task in the field of computer vision. Existing approaches mainly adopted Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) or Attention models based on Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), which is computationally expensive and hard to train. In this paper, we present an end-to-end Attention Convolutional Network for scene text recognition. Firstly, instead of RNN, we adopt the stacked convolutional layers to effectively capture the contextual dependencies of the input sequence, which is characterized by lower computational complexity and easier parallel computation. Compared to the chain structure of recurrent networks, the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) provides a natural way to capture long-term dependencies between elements, which is 9 times faster than Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BLSTM). Furthermore, in order to enhance the representation of foreground text and suppress the background noise, we incorporate the residual attention modules into a small densely connected network to improve the discriminability of CNN features. We validate the performance of our approach on the standard benchmarks, including the Street View Text, IIIT5K and ICDAR datasets. As a result, state-of-the-art or highly-competitive performance and efficiency show the superiority of the proposed approach.
Progesterone and Wnt4 control mammary stem cells via myoepithelial crosstalk

Ovarian hormones increase breast cancer risk by poorly understood mechanisms. We assess the role of progesterone on global stem cell function by serially transplanting mouse mammary epithelia. Progesterone receptor (PR) deletion severely reduces the regeneration capacity of the mammary epithelium. The PR target, receptor activator of Nf‐κB ligand (RANKL), is not required for this function, and the deletion of Wnt4 reduces the mammary regeneration capacity even more than PR ablation. A fluorescent reporter reveals so far undetected perinatal Wnt4 expression that is independent of hormone signaling. Pubertal and adult Wnt4 expression is specific to PR+ luminal cells and requires intact PR signaling. Conditional deletion of Wnt4 reveals that this early, previously unappreciated, Wnt4 expression is functionally important. We provide genetic evidence that canonical Wnt signaling in the myoepithelium required PR and Wnt4, whereas the canonical Wnt signaling activities observed in the embryonic mammary bud and in the stroma around terminal end buds are independent of Wnt4. Thus, progesterone and Wnt4 control stem cell function through a luminal–myoepithelial crosstalk with Wnt4 acting independent of PR perinatally.
Bipolar disorder and comorbid obsessive-compulsive disorder is associated with higher rates of anxiety and impulse control disorders

Issler CK, Monkul ES, Amaral JAMS, Tamada RS, Shavitt RG, Miguel EC, Lafer B. Bipolar disorder and comorbid obsessive-compulsive disorder is associated with higher rates of anxiety and impulse control disorders. Objective: Although bipolar disorder (BD) with comorbid obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is highly prevalent, few controlled studies have assessed this comorbidity. The objective of this study was to investigate the clinical characteristics and expression of comorbid disorders in female BD patients with OCD. Method: We assessed clinically stable female outpatients with BD: 15 with comorbid OCD (BD+OCD group) and 15 without (BD/no-OCD group). All were submitted to the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV, with additional modules for the diagnosis of kleptomania, trichotillomania, pathological gambling, onychophagia and skin picking. Results: The BD+OCD patients presented more chronic episodes, residual symptoms and previous depressive episodes than the BD/no-OCD patients. Of the BD+OCD patients, 86% had a history of treatment-emergent mania, compared with only 40% of the BD/no-OCD patients. The following were more prevalent in the BD+OCD patients than the BD/no-OCD patients: any anxiety disorder other than OCD; impulse control disorders; eating disorders; and tic disorders. Conclusion: Female BD patients with OCD may represent a more severe form of disorder than those without OCD, having more depressive episodes and residual symptoms, and being at a higher risk for treatment-emergent mania, as well as presenting a greater anxiety and impulse control disorder burden.
Alteration of thiol pools in roots and shoots of maize seedlings exposed to cadmium : adaptation and developmental cost.

Roots of intact 5-day-old maize (Zea mays L.) seedlings were exposed to 3 micromolar Cd during a 7-day period. Cysteine, gamma-glutamylcysteine, glutathione (GSH), and Cd-induced acid-soluble thiols (ASTs), including phytochelatins, were quantified in roots and shoots. Adaptation to Cd and its cost to seedling development were evaluated by measuring Cd content, tissue fresh weight, and rate of root elongation. Roots contained 60 to 67% of the Cd in the seedlings between 4 and 7 days of exposure. Exposure to Cd decreased the fresh weight gain in roots from day 4 onward without affecting the shoots. Between days 1.5 and 3.5 of Cd treatment, roots elongated more slowly than controls; however, their growth rate recovered thereafter and exceeded that of controls. Exposure to Cd did not appreciably affect the concentration of cysteine in the seedlings. However, the initial low concentration of gamma-glutamylcysteine increased (after a lag of 6 hours in roots and 2 days in shoots), reaching a plateau by day 6 at 28.5 nanomoles per gram of fresh weight in roots and by day 5 at 19.1 nanomoles per gram of fresh weight in shoots. During the first 9 hours of Cd exposure, the concentration of GSH in roots decreased dramatically (at 31.6 nanomoles per gram of fresh weight per hour) and thereafter decreased more slowly than in controls. The depletion of GSH in the roots (366 nanomoles per gram of fresh weight) matched the synthesis of ASTs (349 nanomoles per gram of fresh weight) during the first 48 hours. The concentration of ASTs in roots increased steadily thereafter to reach 662.2 nanomoles per gram of fresh weight by 6 days of Cd exposure. In shoots, Cd had little influence on the concentration of GSH, but ASTs still accumulated to 173.3 nanomoles per gram fresh weight after 5 days. The molar ratio of thiols in ASTs to Cd increased to a maximum of 10.24 in roots after 4 hours and of 4.25 in shoots after 2 days of Cd exposure. After 4 days, the ratio reached a plateau of approximately 2 in roots and between 2 and 3 in shoots, as if a steady state of Cd chelation had been achieved in both organs. The plateau coincided with recovered root elongation or an adaptation to Cd. The reduced fresh weight gain of the roots during this time, however, indicated that the synthesis of Cd-induced thiols was at a cost to root development.
PubMed and beyond: a survey of web tools for searching biomedical literature

The past decade has witnessed the modern advances of high-throughput technology and rapid growth of research capacity in producing large-scale biological data, both of which were concomitant with an exponential growth of biomedical literature. This wealth of scholarly knowledge is of significant importance for researchers in making scientific discoveries and healthcare professionals in managing health-related matters. However, the acquisition of such information is becoming increasingly difficult due to its large volume and rapid growth. In response, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is continuously making changes to its PubMed Web service for improvement. Meanwhile, different entities have devoted themselves to developing Web tools for helping users quickly and efficiently search and retrieve relevant publications. These practices, together with maturity in the field of text mining, have led to an increase in the number and quality of various Web tools that provide comparable literature search service to PubMed. In this study, we review 28 such tools, highlight their respective innovations, compare them to the PubMed system and one another, and discuss directions for future development. Furthermore, we have built a website dedicated to tracking existing systems and future advances in the field of biomedical literature search. Taken together, our work serves information seekers in choosing tools for their needs and service providers and developers in keeping current in the field. Database URL: http://www.ncbi. nlm.nih. gov/CBBresearch/Lu/search
Probabilistic visibility for multi-view stereo

We present a new formulation to multi-view stereo that treats the problem as probabilistic 3D segmentation. Previous work has used the stereo photo-consistency criterion as a detector of the boundary between the 3D scene and the surrounding empty space. Here we show how the same criterion can also provide a foreground/background model that can predict if a 3D location is inside or outside the scene. This model replaces the commonly used naive foreground model based on ballooning which is known to perform poorly in concavities. We demonstrate how the probabilistic visibility is linked to previous work on depth-map fusion and we present a multi-resolution graph-cut implementation using the new ballooning term that is very efficient both in terms of computation time and memory requirements.
Truthful Secretaries with Budgets

We study online auction settings in which agents arrive and depart dynamically in a random (secretary) order, and each agent's private type consists of the agent's arrival and departure times, value and budget. We consider multi-unit auctions with additive agents for the allocation of both divisible and indivisible items. For both settings, we devise truthful mechanisms that give a constant approximation with respect to the auctioneer's revenue, under a large market assumption. For divisible items, we devise in addition a truthful mechanism that gives a constant approximation with respect to the liquid welfare --- a natural efficiency measure for budgeted settings introduced by Dobzinski and Paes Leme [ICALP'14]. Our techniques provide high-level principles for transforming offline truthful mechanisms into online ones, with or without budget constraints. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that addresses the non-trivial challenge of combining online settings with budgeted agents.
The Selection of Pay Referents: Potential Patterns and Impacts on Life Satisfaction

Despite the relatively extensive research on pay levels and the consequences of income disparities, little is known about which reference groups people choose for comparative evaluation of personal income and why different selection patterns emerge. The aim of this paper is to dig deeper for answers to the following three questions: (1) What are the most important reference groups for income comparisons? (2) Who tends to use which type of reference group? (3) Which reference groupsare most detrimental to life satisfaction? The analysis is based on data from the 2008 and 2009 pretest modules of the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). The results show the working sphere (colleagues and members of the same profession) to be the most important point of reference for income comparisons, whereas neighbors are the least important. No clear-cut picture emerges for the differential selection of reference groups. Structural characteristics - e.g., level of income, education, and type of employment - are of only minor importance in the selection of reference groups for income comparisons. The results also suggest that individuals are likely to select those reference groups whose income is closest to their own. Therefore, the level of income relative to a reference group is related to the relevance of that group in income comparisons. The consequences of such comparisons for life satisfaction prove to be negative: the more importance an individual attaches to income comparisons with reference groups, the lower his or her life satisfaction. Income relative to neighbors and colleagues only affected life satisfaction when the respondent perceived such reference groups to be relevant in income comparisons. These results challenge previous research suggesting that people are unconscious of the true impact of comparison processes. Nevertheless, the results point to various difficulties in the measurement of social comparison processes andshow personal predispositions to be a major factor influencing such comparisons. The results strongly indicate the need for advanced instruments to measure the cognitive processes underlying social comparisons.
Mobbing, Bullying, & Harassment: A Silent Dilemma in the Workplace

Mobbing, bullying and harassment in the workplace are problems that workers have experienced and continue too. There is a need in the United States for further study and a greater understanding of this problem. With a process in place to handle these cases, those being mobbed would have a resource to access. This study is a review of previous literature to increase awareness about mobbing, bullying and harassment in the workplace. i DEDICATION In honor of my grandmother Eleanor Mickelson, who inspired and encouraged me in all my endeavors in life.