Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
QiShenYiQi Attenuates Renal Interstitial Fibrosis by Blocking the Activation of β-Catenin

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is becoming a worldwide problem. However, current treatment options are limited. In the current study we showed that QiShenYiQi (QSYQ), a water-ethanol extract from several Chinese medicines, is a potent inhibitor of renal interstitial fibrosis. QSYQ inhibited transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1)-responsive α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), collagen I, and fibronectin up-regulation in obstructive nephropathy and cultured cells. Administration of QSYQ also inhibited the established renal interstitial fibrosis in obstructive nephropathy. Interestingly, QSYQ selectively inhibited TGF-β1-induced β-catenin up-regulation and downstream gene transcription. Taken together, our study suggests that QSYQ selectively inhibits TGF-β1-induced β-catenin up-regulation and might have significant therapeutic potential for the treatment of renal fibrosis.
Tailoring ERP systems: a spectrum of choices and their implications

The IS literature distinguishes between custom-built and off-the-shelf software. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages are often viewed as off-the-shelf software, because adopters implement them by setting parameters (called configuration), rather traditional programming. Making changes to ERP software code (called modification) is usually strongly discouraged by vendors and implementation consultants. Nevertheless, field research has shown that many companies have had to modify ERP software in various ways to meet essential business needs. This suggests that ERP packages do not fit cleanly into the custom/off-the shelf distinction. The authors describe a portfolio of tailoring options between configuration and modification, with important implications for implementation risk and the difficulty of ERP system upgrades. They discuss the implications of their framework for practitioners and for further research on ERP systems.
Current distribution and recent development of sessile oak forests in Montseny (1956–2015)

Abstract There is a distribution limit of sessile oak (Quercus petraea) in the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula, with its southernmost populations located at the xeric limit for the species. We present here the current distribution of these populations in the Montseny Massif (N.E. Catalonia) and how the surface area they cover has developed over the last 50 years. Using a new high-resolution map (1:5000) we have calculated that Q. petraea currently covers 64.1 ha, and is found between 450 and 1150 m above sea level with a predominantly southern exposure, with the north-facing slopes being dominated by beech forests. With regard to its recent development, 44% of what is now dense forest was, in 1956, much more dispersed while 11% of it consisted of open spaces or shrubs. Such changes clearly show that, in Montseny, Q. petraea is well capable of regenerating its forest canopy as well as colonising adjacent environments.
Duration of action of two insulin glargine products, LY2963016 insulin glargine and Lantus insulin glargine, in subjects with type 1 diabetes mellitus

LY2963016 (LY IGlar) and Lantus (IGlar) are insulin glargine products manufactured by distinct processes, but with identical amino acid sequences. This study compared the duration of action of LY IGlar and IGlar in subjects with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM).
ASPOGAMO: Automated Sports Games Analysis Models

We propose automated sport game models as a novel technical means for the analysis of team sport games. The basic idea is that automated sport game models are based on a conceptualization of key notions in such games and probabilistically derived from a set of previous games. In contrast to existing approaches, automated sport game models provide an analysis that is sensitive to their context and go beyond simple statistical aggregations allowing objective, transparent and meaningful concept definitions. Based on automatically gathered spatio-temporal data by a computer vision system, a model hierarchy is built bottom up, where context-sensitive concepts are instantiated by the application of machine learning techniques. We describe the current state of implementation of the A SPOGAMO system including its computer vision subsystem that realizes the idea of automated sport game models. Their usage is exemplified with an analysis of the final of the soccer World Cup 2006.
Vasoactive Intestinal Polypeptide and Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide Activate Hyperpolarization-Activated Cationic Current and Depolarize Thalamocortical Neurons In Vitro

Ascending pathways mediated by monoamine neurotransmitters regulate the firing mode of thalamocortical neurons and modulate the state of brain activity. We hypothesized that specific neuropeptides might have similar actions. The effects of vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) were tested on thalamocortical neurons using whole-cell patch-clamp techniques applied to visualized neurons in rat brain slices. VIP (2 μm) and PACAP (100 nm) reversibly depolarized thalamocortical neurons (7.8 ± 0.6 mV; n = 16), reduced the membrane resistance by 33 ± 3%, and could convert the firing mode from bursting to tonic. These effects on resting membrane potential and membrane resistance persisted in the presence of TTX. Morphologically diverse thalamocortical neurons located in widespread regions of thalamus were all depolarized by VIP and PACAP38. In voltage-clamp mode, we found that VIP and PACAP38 reversibly activated a hyperpolarization-activated cationic current (IH) in thalamocortical neurons and altered voltage- and time-dependent activation properties of the current. The effects of VIP on membrane conductance were abolished by the hyperpolarization-activated cyclic-nucleotide-gated channel (HCN)-specific antagonist ZD7288, showing that HCN channels are the major target of VIP modulation. The effects of VIP and PACAP38 on HCN channels were mediated by PAC1 receptors and cAMP. The actions of PACAP-related peptides on thalamocortical neurons suggest an additional and novel endogenous neurophysiological pathway that may influence both normal and pathophysiological thalamocortical rhythm generation and have important behavioral effects on sensory processing and sleep–wake cycles.
Say You’re Sorry: Children Distinguish Between Willingly Given and Coerced Expressions of Remorse

Abstract:Apologies can promote forgiveness; thus, for victims and bystanders, a sensitivity to nongenuine apologies could facilitate the development of wariness with regard to potential repeat offenders. We asked whether children are sensitive to two simple markers of potential nongenuine remorse: (a) the spontaneity of a transgressor’s apology and (b) a transgressor’s willingness to apologize. In Study 1, 4- to 9-year-olds (N = 40) viewed both a spontaneous apology and a prompted-but-willing apology as conveying a transgressor’s remorse and soothing the feelings of victims. In Study 2, 7- to 9-year-olds (n = 25) viewed a coerced apology as less effective in communicating remorse and mending a victim’s feelings. They also viewed the coerced apologizer as less nice relative to the willing apologizer. The 4- to 6-year-olds (n = 25) did not discriminate between the two apologies to that extent but did view the recipient of the coerced apology as feeling worse than the recipient of the prompted-but-willing apology.
Viruses with More Than 1,000 Genes: Mamavirus, a New Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus Strain, and Reannotation of Mimivirus Genes

The genome sequence of the Mamavirus, a new Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus strain, is reported. With 1,191,693 nt in length and 1,023 predicted protein-coding genes, the Mamavirus has the largest genome among the known viruses. The genomes of the Mamavirus and the previously described Mimivirus are highly similar in both the protein-coding genes and the intergenic regions. However, the Mamavirus contains an extra 5′-terminal segment that encompasses primarily disrupted duplicates of genes present elsewhere in the genome. The Mamavirus also has several unique genes including a small regulatory polyA polymerase subunit that is shared with poxviruses. Detailed analysis of the protein sequences of the two Mimiviruses led to a substantial amendment of the functional annotation of the viral genomes.
Inhibition of Nitric Oxide–Stimulated Vasorelaxation by Carbon Monoxide-Releasing Molecules

Objective—Carbon monoxide (CO) is a weak soluble guanylyl cyclase stimulator, leading to transient increases in cGMP and vasodilation. The aim of the present work was to measure the effect of CO-releasing molecules (CORMs) on the cGMP/nitric oxide (NO) pathway and to evaluate how selected CORMs affect NO-induced vasorelaxation. Methods and Results—Incubation of smooth muscle cells with some but not all of the CORMs caused a minor increase in cGMP levels. Concentration-response curves were bell-shaped, with higher CORMs concentrations producing lower increases in cGMP levels. Although exposure of cells to CORM-2 enhanced cGMP formation, we observed that the compound inhibited NO-stimulated cGMP accumulation in cells and NO-stimulated soluble guanylyl cyclase activity that could be reversed by superoxide anion scavengers. Reactive oxygen species generation from CORMs was confirmed using luminol-induced chemiluminescence and electron spin resonance. Furthermore, we observed that NO is scavenged by CORM-2. When used alone CORM-2 relaxed vessels through a cGMP-mediated pathway but attenuated NO donor-stimulated vasorelaxation. Conclusion—We conclude that the CORMs examined have context-dependent effects on vessel tone, as they can directly dilate blood vessels, but also block NO-induced vasorelaxation.
Evaluation of text-to-speech synthesizer for Indonesian language using semantically unpredictable sentences test: IndoTTS, eSpeak, and google translate TTS

A text-to-speech (TTS) synthesizer aims to produce speech from the corresponding text input. For Indonesian language, IndoTTS, eSpeak, and text-to-speech on Google Translate are available and widely used among the Indonesian. In this study, we evaluated those systems and conducted semantically unpredictable sentences (SUS) test. SUS test results showed that the intelligibility of those systems needs further improvement.
Biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles using pink guava waste extract (PGWE)

Bio-inspired silver nanoparticles were synthesized with the aid of a novel, non-toxic, eco-friendly biological material namely, pink guava waste extract (PGWE). The pink guava waste extract will act as the reducing agent in reduction process in order to reduce the aqueous salt solutions of the silver nitrate. Moreover, economically, this process will also lower the cost of producing metal nanoparticles compared to other methods. Boiled, separated, filtrated process was used for reducing silver nitrate. Silver nanoparticles were formed when the reaction conditions were altered with respect to ratio of extraction, pink guava waste extract content and aging time. The nanoparticles were characterized by UV-vis spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM). The colorless reaction mixtures turned brown and displayed UV - visible spectra characteristic of silver nanoparticles. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) indicated the role of different functional groups (carboxyl, amine and hydroxyl) in the synthetic process. After 72 h of treatment, silver nanoparticles obtained were in the range of 23-105 nm as obtained from TEM.
Unsupervised system for Lexical disambiguation of Arabic language using a vote procedure

In this paper we propose an unsupervised method for Arabic word sense disambiguation. Using the corpus and the glosses of the ambiguous word, we define a method to generate automatically the context of use for each sense. Since that, we define a similarity measure based on collocation measures to find the most nearest context of use to the sentence containing the ambiguous word. The similarity measure may give more than one sense, for that we define a novel supervised approach called vote procedure. Our work was compared with other related works. We obtained a better rate of disambiguation in the average of 79%.
News audience fragmentation in the Japanese Twittersphere

ABSTRACT Although computational approaches to ideology-based audience fragmentation are promising, they are not without limitations. First, most existing studies have focused on the US, and the cross-national validity of their results has rarely been tested. Second, previous studies that rely solely on behavioral data from social media tend to make strong analytical assumptions such as that Twitter users prefer to follow media and politicians whose ideological positions are similar to their own, and that the ideologies of political elites can be extrapolated to infer the ideologies of ordinary users. We aim to address these limitations. First, we focus on Japan to test the generalizability of US findings in an Asian context. Second, we do not rely solely on behavioral measurement but combine survey and social media data to infer the ideologies of Twitter users. Results indicate that our classifier built based on these self-reported ideologies produces more valid estimates than naïve extrapolation from views of the elites. Based on these improved estimates of Twitter users’ ideologies, we demonstrate that the ideological distributions of those who follow major Japanese media accounts on Twitter largely overlap, suggesting an absence of ideology-based audience fragmentation.
Simply denoise: Wavefield reconstruction via jittered undersampling

We present a new, discrete undersampling scheme designed to favor wavefield reconstruction by sparsity-promoting inversion with transform elements localized in the Fourier domain. The work is motivated by empirical observations in the seismic community, corroborated by results from compressive sampling, that indicate favorable (wavefield) reconstructions from random rather than regular undersampling. Indeed, random undersampling renders coherent aliases into harmless incoherent random noise, effectively turning the interpolation problem into a much simpler denoising problem. A practical requirement of wavefield reconstruction with localized sparsifying transforms is the control on the maximum gap size. Unfortunately, random undersampling does not provide such a control. Thus, we introduce a sampling scheme, termed jittered undersampling, that shares the benefits of random sampling and controls the maximum gap size. The contribution of jittered sub-Nyquist sampling is key in formu-lating a versatile wavefi.
The Efficacy of Scaffolding Strategies in Holistic Language Intervention on Language and Phonologically Delayed Children.

Interactions in Development of Phonological, Morphological, and Syntactic Language Parts . 14 Current Intervention S t r a te g ie s . 2 0 Whole Language Intervention. 41 Research Q uestions. 5 4 M ethods.5 6 S u b je c t s . 58 M a te r ia ls . 6 4 P ro c e d u re s . 6 6 M e asu rem en ts . 78 Data Analysis. 8 4 R e s u l ts . 8 5 Frequency of Child U tterances.8 6 Sem antic Analysis. 9 2 Syntactic A nalysis . 123 Phonological Analysis.1 2 9 D isc u ss io n . 1 3 7 Summary of Findings. 138 Comparison to Current Intervention L i te r a tu r e . 1 3 9 Support for Theoretical C onstruc ts . 1 4 3 Practical A p p lica tio n s . 153 Future S tu d ie s . 156 R e fe re n c e s . 159 Appendix A: C onsen t for Participation F o rm s. 170 Appendix B: Sam ple W h-questions for Control Conditons.1 7 2 V i t a . 174
A Digital Map of Middle Cerebral Artery Infarcts Associated With Middle Cerebral Artery Trunk and Branch Occlusion

Background and Purpose— Knowledge of the topographic distribution of infarcts of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) may give insight into the limits of the arterial territory and infarct mechanism and may influence the decision to use thrombolytic therapy. We describe the creation of a digital atlas of MCA (DA-MCA) infarction associated with MCA branch and trunk occlusion using magnetic resonance (MR) techniques. Methods— Hemispheric infarcts, with evidence of MCA trunk or branch occlusion, were manually segmented into binary images, linearly registered into a common stereotaxic coordinate space, and averaged to yield the probability of involvement by infarction at each voxel. Comparisons were made with existing maps of the MCA territory. Results— Twenty-eight patients with median age of 74 years (range, 26 to 87 years) were studied. On the DA-MCA, the highest frequency of infarction was within the striatocapsular region, centrum semiovale, and the insula. The mean and maximal MCA infarct volumes were 195.5 cm3 and 366.3 cm3, respectively. Comparison with published maps showed that the most common difference from the DA-MCA was in the superomedial extent of the MCA territory. Some maps showed the MCA territory reaching the interhemispheric fissure, whereas in the DA-MCA it did not. There was a lower variability in the anterior boundary of the MCA territory compared with its posterior counterpart. Conclusion— We have created a digital atlas of MCA infarction using MR imaging techniques. This approach may be useful to establish the distribution of the MCA and other arterial territories and the border zones between them with greater certainty.
Inflammatory bowel disease is no longer a risk factor of viral hepatitis infection in Asia

HBV and HCV infections in IBD patients was similar to that in the general population in north India. In this retrospective single-center study of 908 IBD patients, the HBsAg and anti-HCV positivity rates were 2.4% and 1.4%, respectively, similar to the community prevalence rates of infections in India (3.7% and 1%, respectively). The result of this study is noteworthy in that IBD is not a risk factor of viral hepatitis in the country endemic to HBV and HCV infections. This is consistent with the results of other Asian studies conducted in HBV-endemic areas such as China and South Korea. A recent Chinese study reported that the HBsAg positivity rates in CD and UC were 13.6% and 16.8%, respectively, which were not significantly different from those in the general population of southern China. A study by Kim et al. also showed that the prevalence of HBsAg in Korean IBD patients was similar to that in an ageand sex-matched control group (CD, 4.1%; UC, 3.3%; and control, 4.4%; P=0.713). Despite uncertainties, no increased risk of viral hepatitis infection was found in IBD patients even in the endemic areas. This might be attributed to the implementation of satisfactory preventive measures in hospitals and patients’ avoidance of riskassociated behavior. Another important issue in the present study is that the risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in IBD patients is not higher than that in the general population (IBD, 0.1% vs. general population, 0.2%; P =0.31), which has not been fully evaluated before mainly because of the rarity of the incidence of HIV. It is interesting that the authors showed that the HBV infection rate in intestinal tuberculosis was significantly higher than that in IBD (5.9% vs. 3.7%, P=0.04). Although the Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), composed of CD and UC, were once considered high risk factors of viral hepatitis infection. In 2001, an Italian study by Biancone et al. reported that the infection rate by HCV or HBV in patients with CD was considerably high, up to 24.7%. The hepatitis B core antibody positivity was higher in patients with UC than in the control group (11.5% vs. 5.1%, P=0.02). This high prevalence of viral hepatitis in IBD patients might be attributed to the existence of a nosocomial transmission of these viral infections, such as blood transmissions and via surgical procedures. HCV transmission in the hospital has been reported, which suggests that patients with IBD are at a high risk of hepatitis infection. However, recent European studies have shown evidence that the prevalence rates of HBV and HCV infections are similar to those in the general population. The prevalence rate of present and/or previous HBV and HCV infections in patients with IBD was 2.9% to 9.7%, which was much lower than that previously reported. Several plausible factors exist for such a decrease in the prevalence of HBV and HCV infections in IBD, including blood transfusion safety measures, single-use materials, better aseptic perioperative rules, and improved decontamination procedures in endoscopy.
Outcomes of bacteremia in patients with cancer and neutropenia: observations from two decades of epidemiological and clinical trials.

The prognostic significance of major organ and tissue infection was examined in 909 episodes of bacteremia that were selected from 10 consecutive, randomized clinical trials of antibiotic therapy for infection in patients with cancer and neutropenia. Extensive tissue infection significantly compromised response to initial therapy (38% vs. 74%; P < .0001), ultimate outcome of infection (73% vs. 94%; P < .0001), median time to normalization of temperature (5.3 days vs. 2.5 days; P < .0001), and survival (P < .0001). Other poor prognostic factors revealed by logistic regression included shock (P < .0001) and bacteremia caused by Pseudomonas species (P = .03), Clostridium species (P = .006), or a pathogen resistant to antibiotics used for initial therapy (P < .0001). Recovery of the granulocyte count predicted a superior response (P < .0001). Although the overall mortality rate was not significantly increased when patients with bacteremia due to gram-negative organisms initially received monotherapy or when patients with bacteremia due to gram-positive organisms received delayed vancomycin therapy, these strategies increased the duration of therapy by 25%. Patients with bacteremia due to alpha-hemolytic streptococcus died more often when vancomycin was not included in the initial empirical regimen (P = .004). Because of the prognostic significance of extensive tissue or major organ infection, this factor should be considered in decisions concerning modification of therapy and use of colony-stimulating factors. The cost-effectiveness of initial monotherapy and delayed vancomycin therapy remains to be demonstrated.
The Progress on Genetic Analysis of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a rare malignancy in most parts of the world, but is one of the most common cancers in Southeast Asia. Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to the tumorigenesis of NPC, most notably the consumption of certain salted food items and Epstein-Barr virus infection. This review will focus on the current progress of the genetic analysis of NPC (genetic susceptibilities and somatic alterations). We will review the current advances in genomic technologies and their shaping of the future direction of NPC research.