Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The contribution of transforming growth factor-β and epidermal growth factor signalling to airway remodelling in chronic asthma

Asthma is increasing in prevalence in the developing world, affecting ∼10% of the world’s population. It is characterised by chronic lung inflammation and airway remodelling associated with wheezing, shortness of breath, acute bronchial hyperresponsiveness to a variety of innocuous stimuli and a more rapid decline in lung function over time. Airway remodelling, involving proliferation and differentiation of mesenchymal cells, particularly myofibroblasts and smooth muscle cells, is generally refractory to corticosteroids and makes a major contribution to disease chronicity. Transforming growth factor-β is a potent profibrogenic factor whose expression is increased in the asthmatic airways and is a prime candidate for the initiation and persistence of airway remodelling in asthma. This review highlights the role of transforming growth factor-β in the asthmatic lung, incorporating biosynthesis, signalling pathways and functional outcome. In vivo, however, it is the balance between transforming growth factor-β and other growth factors, such as epidermal growth factor, which will determine the extent of fibrosis in the airways. A fuller comprehension of the actions of transforming growth factor-β, and its interaction with other signalling pathways, such as the epidermal growth factor receptor signalling cascade, may enable development of therapies that control airway remodelling where there is an unmet clinical need.
Supercluster properties as a cosmological probe

ABSTRA C T We investigate the supercluster shape properties of the all-sky observed (Abell/ACO) and simulated (Virgo data) cluster catalogues using an approach based on differential geometry. We identify rich superclusters by applying the percolation algorithm to both observed and mock cluster populations, the latter being constructed following the observational selection of the Abell/ACO sample, extended out to zmax # 0:114. We apply a set of shape diagnostics in order to study the morphological features of superclusters with $8 cluster members. Our results demonstrate that filamentarity is the dominant supercluster shape feature. On comparing data and models, we show that the LCDMOVLa 1 2 Vma 0:7U model performs better than tCDM, which is excluded at a relatively high confidence level, in agreement with other recent large-scale structure studies.
Noncoding RNA Expression in Myocardium From Infants With Tetralogy of Fallot

Background— The importance of noncoding RNAs (ncRNA), especially microRNAs (miRNAs), for maintaining stability in the developing vertebrate heart has recently become apparent; however, there is little known about the expression pattern of ncRNA in the human heart with developmental anomalies. Methods and Results— We examined the expression of miRNAs and small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) in right ventricular myocardium from 16 infants with nonsyndromic tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) without a 22q11.2 deletion, 3 fetal heart samples, and 8 normally developing infants. We found 61 miRNAs and 135 snoRNAs to be significantly changed in expression in myocardium from children with TOF compared with normally developing comparison subjects. The pattern of ncRNA expression in TOF myocardium had a surprising resemblance to expression patterns in fetal myocardium, especially for the snoRNAs. Potential targets of miRNAs with altered expression were enriched for gene networks of importance to cardiac development. We derived a list of 229 genes known to be critical to heart development and found 44 had significantly changed expression in TOF myocardium relative to normally developing myocardium. These 44 genes had significant negative correlation with 33 miRNAs, each of which also had significantly changed expression. The primary function of snoRNAs is targeting specific nucleotides of ribosomal RNAs and spliceosomal RNAs for biochemical modification. The targeted nucleotides of the differentially expressed snoRNAs were concentrated in the 28S and 18S ribosomal RNAs and 2 spliceosomal RNAs, U2 and U6. In addition, in myocardium from children with TOF, we observed splicing variants in 51% of genes that are critical for cardiac development. Taken together, these observations suggest a link between levels of snoRNA that target spliceosomal RNAs, spliceosomal function, and heart development. Conclusions— This is the first report characterizing ncRNA expression in a congenital heart defect. The striking shift in expression of ncRNAs reflects a fundamental change in cell biology, likely impacting expression, transcript splicing, and translation of developmentally important genes and possibly contributing to the cardiac defect.
Visually impaired users on an online social network

In this paper we present the first large-scale empirical study of how visually impaired people use online social networks, specifically Facebook. We identify a sample of 50K visually impaired users, and study the activities they perform, the content they produce, and the friendship networks they build on Facebook. We find that visually impaired users participate on Facebook (e.g. status updates, comments, likes) as much as the general population, and receive more feedback (i.e., comments and likes) on average on their content. By analyzing the content produced by visually impaired users, we find that they share their experience and issues related to vision impairment. We also identify distinctive patterns in their language and technology use. We also show that, compared to other users, visually impaired users have smaller social networks, but such differences have decreased over time. Our findings have implications for improving the utility and usability of online social networks for visually impaired users.
Oscillation of Second-Order Neutral Di ¤ erential Equations

We study oscillatory behavior of a class of second-order neutral di¤erential equations relating oscillation of these equations to existence of positive solutions to associated first-order functional di¤erential inequalities. Our assumptions allow applications to di¤erential equations with both delayed and advanced arguments, and not only. New theorems complement and improve a number of results reported in the literature. Two illustrative examples are provided.
Operational specification of a commitment-based agent communication language

In this paper we propose an operational method to express the meaning of the messages exchanged among agents that interact in open environments. In an open environment, like for example the Internet, agents are usually designed by different constructors, so it is very important to define the meaning of a standard, widely accepted Agent Communication Language. We express the meaning of messages using the social notion of commitment. Commitments are defined operationally within an object-oriented paradigm. We give an operational specification of the commitment class that includes the concepts of conditional commitment and precommitment. Then we use commitment objects to define the meaning of some interesting speech acts, and give an example of their use in negotiation.
Functional coupling and differential regulation of the Phospholipase A2‐cyclooxygenase pathways in inflammation

Prostaglandins generated by the phospholipase A2 (PLA2)/cyclooxygenase (COX) pathway are well known to mediate diverse intracellular and extracellular effects that regulate mammalian development, vascular function, renal physiology, parturition, and immune responses to infection or wounding. In immune‐mediated diseases and in certain cancers, this pathway is aberrantly upregulated and excessive prostaglandin production contributes to the pathology. It is now known that there are two isoforms of COX and multiple secreted and intracellular PLA2 enzymes. The use of isoform‐specific inhibitors, coupled with antisense and in vivo gene deletion experiments, has identified independent pathways of arachidonic acid metabolism, which are differentially regulated at the levels of gene expression, protein phosphorylation, and cellular localization. There is cross‐talk between the pathways at the level of PLA2 and substrate supply to the two isoforms of COX is apparently compartmentalized. Knockout studies have shown that the two COX isoforms play independent roles in immediate and delayed agonist‐ induced prostaglandin synthesis. Cytosolic PLA2‐α is essential for both responses. Inducible secreted forms of PLA2 are, as yet, not essential for either response with the exception of the in vitro murine mast cell immediate response and instances of murine macrophage prostaglandin synthesis. These enzymes amplify the delayed response and are likely to modulate the severity of immune‐mediated diseases. J. Leukoc. Biol. 66: 535–541; 1999.
Dynamic thread mapping for high-performance, power-efficient heterogeneous many-core systems

This paper addresses the problem of dynamic thread mapping in heterogeneous many-core systems via an efficient algorithm that maximizes performance under power constraints. Heterogeneous many-core systems are composed of multiple core types with different power-performance characteristics. As well documented in the literature, the generic mapping problem is an NP-complete problem which can be formulated as a 0-1 integer linear program, therefore, prohibitively expensive to solve optimally in an online scenario. However, in real applications, thread mapping decisions need to be responsive to workload phase changes. This paper proposes an iterative approach bounding the runtime as O(n2/m), for mapping multi-threaded applications on n cores comprising of m core types. Compared with an optimal solution, the proposed algorithm produces results less than 0.6% away from optimum on average, with two orders of magnitude improvement in runtime. Results show that performance improvement can reach 16% under iso-power constraints compared to a random mapping. The algorithm can be brought online for hundred-core heterogeneous systems as it scales to systems comprised of 256 cores with less than one millisecond in overhead.
Linear problems in P-th order and stable processes

This work extends to processes with finite moments or order p, 1 < P < 2 and to symmetric a-stable processes, 1 < a < 2, some of the basic linear theory known for processes with finite second moments (p=2) and for Gaussian processes (a=2). Here the IIcovariationll plays a role analogous to the covariance. Specifically, stochastic integrals of two types are introduced and studied for p-th order processes and in particular for symmetric stable processes. Regression estimates and linear estimates on certain symmetric stable processes are evaluated, including regression and linear filtering of signal in noise. Also, for certain symmetric stable inputs, the identification of a linear system from the input covariation and the input-output cross co-variation is considered, and the way the distribution of the output depends on the linear system is studied.
Argument status and timing 1 Running Head : ARGUMENT STATUS AND PP-ATTACHMENT Argument Status and PP-Attachment

Prepositional phrase attachment was investigated in temporarily ambiguous sentences. Both attachment site (noun phrase or verb phrase) and argument status (argument or adjunct) were manipulated to test the hypothesis that arguments are processed differently than adjuncts. Contrary to this hypothesis, some previous research suggested that arguments and adjuncts are initially processed in the same manner, following a general bias to attach prepositional phrases to the verb phrase whenever possible (Clifton et al., 1991). The current study supports the hypothesis for differential processing, even during the initial stages of syntactic analysis. In an eye movement experiment, readers spent less first-pass time on argument prepositional phrases (PPs) than adjunct PPs. The results support a view in which a noun’s or verb’s argument structure can facilitate the analysis of its arguments.
Cholinergic regulation of the suprachiasmatic nucleus circadian rhythm via a muscarinic mechanism at night

In mammals, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is responsible for the generation of most circadian rhythms and for their entrainment to environmental cues. Carbachol, an agonist of acetylcholine (ACh), has been shown to shift the phase of circadian rhythms in rodents when injected intracerebroventricularly. However, the site and receptor type mediating this action have been unknown. In the present experiments, we used the hypothalamic brain-slice technique to study the regulation of the SCN circadian rhythm of neuronal firing rate by cholinergic agonists and to identify the receptor subtypes involved. We found that the phase of the oscillation in SCN neuronal activity was reset by a 5 min treatment with a carbachol microdrop (1 microliter, 100 microM), but only when applied during the subjective night, with the largest phase shift (+ 6 hr) elicited during the middle of the subjective night. This effect also was produced by ACh and two muscarinic receptor (mAChR) agonists, muscarine and McN-A-343 (M1-selective), but not by nicotine. Furthermore, the effect of carbachol was blocked by the mAChR antagonist atropine (0.1 microM), not by two nicotinic antagonists, dihydro-beta-erythroidine (10 microM) and d-tubocurarine (10 microM). The M1-selective mAChR antagonist pirenzepine completely blocked the carbachol effect at 1 microM, whereas an M3-selective antagonist, 4,2-(4,4'-diacetoxydiphenylmethyl)pyridine, partially blocked the effect at the same concentration. These results demonstrate that carbachol acts directly on the SCN to reset the phase of its firing rhythm during the subjective night via an M1-like mAChR.
MAPPING THE DARK MATTER FROM UV LIGHT AT HIGH REDSHIFT: AN EMPIRICAL APPROACH TO UNDERSTAND GALAXY STATISTICS

We present a simple formalism to interpret the observations of two galaxy statistics, the UV luminosity function (LF) and two-point correlation functions for star-forming galaxies at z∼4, 5, and 6 in the context of Λ cold dark matter cosmology. Both statistics are the result of how star formation takes place in dark matter halos, and thus are used to constrain how UV light depends on halo properties, in particular halo mass. The two physical quantities we explore are the star formation duty cycle, and the range of UV luminosity that a halo of mass M can have (mean and variance). The former directly addresses the typical duration of star formation activity in halos, while the latter addresses the averaged star formation history and regularity of gas inflow into these systems. In the context of this formalism, we explore various physical models consistent with all the available observational data, and find the following: (1) the typical duration of star formation observed in the data is ≲0.4 Gyr (1σ); (2) the inferred scaling law between the observed LUV and halo mass M from the observed faint-end slope of the LFs is roughly linear out to M ≈ 1011.5–1012 h−1 M☉ at all redshifts probed in this work; and (3) the observed LUV for a fixed halo mass M decreases with time, implying that the star formation efficiency (after dust extinction) is higher at earlier times. We explore several different physical scenarios relating star formation to halo mass, but find that these scenarios are indistinguishable due to the limited range of halo mass probed by our data. In order to discriminate between different scenarios, we discuss the possibility of using the bright-faint galaxy cross-correlation functions and more robust determination of luminosity-dependent galaxy bias for future surveys.
EFFECT OF CARNATIC VOCAL MUSIC TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE ON CORTICAL AUDITORY EVOKED POTENTIALS

Background: A musician’s ability to produce a precise pitch must involve some kind of neuroplasticity, allowing them to control fundamental frequency, maintain target pitch, and accurately control pitch through auditory perceptual monitoring. The present study uses cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) to investigate neuroplasticity by assessing the latency of P1, N1, P2, and N2 as well as the peak-to-peak amplitudes P1–N1, N1–P2, and P2–N2 in two groups of subjects: Carnatic vocal musicians and non-musicians. Materials and methods: Two groups of normal hearing females aged 18 to 25 years. There were 20 Carnatic vocal musicians (Indian classical music of south India) and 20 non-musicians. Pure tones were used as stimuli. Results: Descriptive statistics revealed lower latency and greater peak-to-peak amplitude for all measures in the Carnatic vocal musicians compared to the non-musicians. MANOVA showed that vocalists had significantly better (shorter) N1, P2, and N2 latencies and significantly better (greater) peak-to-peak amplitude of P1–N1. Conclusions: The present study showed some significantly enhanced CAEP parameters in Carnatic vocal musicians compared to non-musicians. This indicates that musical experience has an effect on the central auditory nervous system, and this form of neuroplasticity can be investigated with CAEPs.
Observer-Based Adaptive Fuzzy Control of Time-Delay Chaotic Systems

This work presents an observer-based adaptive control approach for time-delay chaotic systems with uncertainty. The chaotic system is initially expressed with the Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model. The design of the adaptive fuzzy observer is introduced based on the assumptions of chaotic system properties. Next, the design principle is applied to stabilization and tracking problems. Based on Lyapunov's stability analysis, the sufficient conditions for synthesizing a stable observer and controller are expressed in the form of adaptive updating laws and linear matrix inequality (LMI). Computer simulation verifies the system, controlled by the proposed method, performs well.
Electrochemical Detection of Hydrazine Using Poly(dopamine)-Modified Electrodes

We have developed a simple and selective method for the electrochemical detection of hydrazine (HZ) using poly(dopamine) (pDA)-modified indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes. Modification with pDA was easily achieved by submerging the ITO electrode in a DA solution for 30 min. The electrocatalytic oxidation of HZ on the pDA-modified ITO electrode was measured by cyclic voltammetry. In buffer solution, the concentration range for linear HZ detection was 100 µM–10 mM, and the detection limit was 1 µM. The proposed method was finally used to determine HZ in tap water to simulate the analysis of real samples. This method showed good recovery (94%–115%) and was not affected by the other species present in the tap water samples.
SFP Genotyping From Affymetrix Arrays Is Robust But Largely Detects Cis-acting Expression Regulators

The recent development of Affymetrix chips designed from assembled EST sequences has spawned considerable interest in identifying single-feature polymorphisms (SFPs) from transcriptome data. SFPs are valuable genetic markers that potentially offer a physical link to the structural genes themselves. However, most current SFP prediction methodologies were developed for sequenced species although SFPs are particularly valuable for species with complex and unsequenced genomes. To establish the sensitivity and specificity of prediction, we explored four methods for identifying SFPs from experiments involving two tissues in two commercial barleys and their doubled-haploid progeny. The methods were compared in terms of numbers of SFPs predicted and their ability to identify known sequence polymorphisms in the features, to confirm existing SNP genotypes and to match existing maps and individual haplotypes. We identified >4000 separate SFPs that accurately predicted the SNP genotype of >98% of the doubled-haploid (DH) lines. They were highly enriched for features containing sequence polymorphisms but all methods uniformly identified a majority of SFPs (∼64%) in features for which there was no sequence polymorphism while 5% mapped to different locations, indicating that “SFPs” mainly represent polymorphism in cis-acting regulators. All methods are efficient and robust at predicting markers for gene mapping.
Computer-supported collaborative learning in higher education: scripts for argumentative knowledge construction in distributed groups

Learners rarely know how to construct knowledge together in argumentation. This experimental study analyzes two computer-supported collaboration scripts, which should facilitate processes and outcomes of argumentative knowledge construction. One script aims to support the construction of single arguments and the other script aims to support the construction of argumentation sequences. Both scripts were varied independently in a 2x2-factorial design. 120 students of Educational Science participated in the study in groups of three. Results show that the computer-supported scripts facilitate specific processes and outcomes of argumentative knowledge construction. Learners with scripts argued better and acquired more knowledge on argumentation than learners without scripts without impeding acquisition of domain specific knowledge.
Ordinal position of neurons in cat striate cortex.

I. The ordinal, or serial, position of different types of striate neurons was assessed from their latencies to electrical stimulation of the optic radiations in paralyzed cats anesthetized with N,O/O, (70/30%). 2. The distribution histogram for response latencies of striate neurons to electrical stimulation in the optic radiations shows three broad peaks. These peaks become sharper if the stimulating site is moved from a low point (OR,) to a high point (OR,) in the optic radiations. It is argued that each peak represents a population of cells lying at a different ordinal, or serial, position within the cortical pathway, i.e., receiving a mono-, di-, or polysynaptic excitatory input from the thalamus. 3. The duration separating the peaks, of the order of 1.0 ms, is then taken as the transmission time for conduction of the nervous impulse from one cortical cell to the next. Confirmatory evidence for this value of the cell-to-cell transmission time comes from the measurement of interspike intervals in cortical cells that responded with multiple spikes to electrical stimulation. 4. From the peaks in the distribution of OR, latencies, boundaries have been established to arrive at an ordinal position for 131 cells classified as S, Sh, C, B, or cells with nonoriented or concentric receptive field (N-O and cone), following the terminology of Henry (14). Four ordinal groups were distinguished: group M comprised cells receiving an exclusive monosynaptic input from the thalamus, group C1+,i consisted of cells exhibiting a convergence of excitatory inputs, one of which was monosynaptic; group D was composed of cells in which the lowest order input was disynaptic. Cells were placed in group P if they were driven from the thalamus through three or more synapses. Examination of the distribution of different cell types for these various ordinal groups revealed that no particular cell type was exclusively associated with a single ordinal position. In particular, a large proportion of S-, Sh-, C-, and N-O and cone cells showed a monosynaptic input from the thalamus (groups M and Cl+,)). 5. For the three classes of cell, S, Sh, and C, with sufficient numbers in groups MY cl+n~ and D, a search was made for differences in response properties associated with the various ordinal groups. The properties examined included ocular dominance, direction selectivity, orientation specificity, and receptive-field size. With the exception of the C-cell, which showed a difference of direction selectivity in groups M and Cl+,), we observed no systematic changes in the response properties with differences in ordinal position. 6. For most cell types in cat striate cortex there are examples of neurons receiving a monosynaptic input. It is difficult to reconcile these findings with a hierarchical model for the processing of visual information. It is proposed that these cells are first-order elements of different streams running in parallel within the cortex and that this multiplicity of streams may be associated with the diversity of outputs leaving the striate cortex.