Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantification of astrocyte volume changes during ischemia in situ reveals two populations of astrocytes in the cortex of GFAP/EGFP mice

Energy depletion during ischemia leads to disturbed ionic homeostasis and accumulation of neuroactive substances in the extracellular space, subsequently leading to volume changes in astrocytes. Confocal microscopy combined with 3D reconstruction was used to quantify ischemia‐induced astrocyte volume changes in cortical slices of GFAP/EGFP transgenic mice. Twenty‐minutes of oxygen‐glucose deprivation (OGD) or oxygen‐glucose deprivation combined with acidification (OGDpH 6.8) revealed the presence of two distinct astrocytic populations, the first showing a large volume increase (HR astrocytes) and the second displaying a small volume increase (LR astrocytes). In addition, changes in resting membrane potential (Vm), measured by the patch‐clamp technique, supported the existence of two astrocytic populations responding differently to ischemia. Although one group markedly depolarized during OGD or OGDpH 6.8, only small changes in Vm toward more negative values were observed in the second group. Conversely, acidification (ACFpH 6.8) led to a uniform volume decrease in all astrocytes, accompanied by only a small depolarization. Interestingly, two differently responding populations were not detected during acidification. Differences in the expression of inwardly rectifying potassium channels (Kir4.1), glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), and taurine levels in cortical astrocytes were detected using immunohistochemical methods. We conclude that two distinct populations of astrocytes are present in the cortex of GFAP/EGFP mice, based on volume and Vm changes during exposure to OGD or OGDpH 6.8. Immunohistochemical analysis suggests that the diverse expression of Kir4.1 channels and GFAP as well as differences in the accumulation of taurine might contribute to the distinct ability of astrocytes to regulate their volume. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Comparison of the sensitivity to heavy ions of SRAM's in different SIMOX technologies

We propose a simple model to evaluate the sensitivity to heavy ions of SRAM's in different CMOS/SIMOX technologies. The critical Linear Energy Transfer LETc and the asymptotic cross section /spl sigma/ characterize the sensitivity of a memory. Theoretical values of LETc and /spl sigma/ are calculated according to intrinsic characteristics of the technology (thickness of the silicon layer, lateral bipolar amplification) and design parameters of the memory, LETc and /spl sigma/ are then compared to experiments. <<ETX>>
Codebook Design for Millimeter-Wave Channel Estimation With Hybrid Precoding Structure

In this paper, we study hierarchical codebook design for channel estimation in millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications with a hybrid precoding structure. Due to the limited saturation power of the mmWave power amplifier, we consider the per-antenna power constraint (PAPC). We first propose a metric, termed generalized detection probability (GDP), to evaluate the quality of an arbitrary codeword. This metric not only enables an optimization approach for mmWave codebook design, but also can be used to compare the performance of two different codewords/codebooks. To the best of our knowledge, GDP is the first such metric, particularly for mmWave codebook design. We then propose a heuristic approach to design a hierarchical codebook exploiting beam widening with the multi-RF-chain sub-array (BMW-MS) technique. To obtain crucial parameters of BMW-MS, we provide two solutions, namely, a low-complexity search (LCS) solution to optimize the GDP metric and a closed-form (CF) solution to pursue a flat beam pattern. Performance comparisons show that BMW-MS/LCS and BMW-MS/CF achieve very close performances, and they outperform the existing alternatives under the PAPC.
Cardiovascular Responses to an Isometric Handgrip Exercise in Females with Prehypertension

Background: Hypertensive individuals are known to exhibit greater increases in blood pressure during an isometric handgrip exercise (IHE) than their normotensive counterparts. Aim: This study tests the hypothesis that, compared to normotensive individuals, prehypertensive individuals exhibit an exaggerated response to IHE. Materials and Methods: In this study, the effects of IHE were compared in matched prehypertensive vs. normotensive healthy African-American females. Six healthy young adult African-American female university students were screened in a physician′s office for blood pressure in the range of prehypertension, systolic blood pressure (SBP) 120-139 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) 80-89 mmHg. Six young adult African-American women were also recruited to serve as a healthy normotensive control group with SBP ≤119 mmHg and DBP ≤79 mmHg. Cardiovascular fitness was determined by peak oxygen uptake (VO 2 peak) measured during a progressive exercise test. Results: During the handgrip exercise, the prehypertensive group exhibited greater increases in SBP (from 139 ± 6 to 205 ± 11 mmHg, +48%) than the controls (from 132 ± 3 to 145 ± 3 mmHg, +10%); intergroup difference P < 0.001. The prehypertensive group also exhibited greater increases in DBP (from 77 ± 2 to 112 ± 5 mmHg, +46%) compared to the controls (from 72 ± 3 to 78 ± 4 mmHg, +8%); intergroup difference P < 0.001. The increase in systemic vascular resistance was also greater in the prehypertensive group (from 1713 ± 91 to 2807 ± 370 dyne.s.cm -5 , +64%) than in the controls (from 1668 ± 80 to 1812 ± 169 dyne.s.cm -5 , +9%); intergroup difference P < 0.05. Conclusion: These results suggest that blood pressure measurements performed during IHE may be a useful screening tool in evaluating prehypertensive individuals for antihypertensive treatments.
Ki‐ras and p53 mutations are early and late events, respectively, in urethane‐induced pulmonary carcinogenesis in A/J mice

In the A/J strain of mice, urethane (ethyl carbamate) induces lung hyperplasia, adenoma, and adenocarcinoma in a time‐dependent manner. These distinct morphological stages may correlate with sequential molecular genetic changes in this mouse model. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the presence of mutations involving Ki‐ras and p53 in urethane‐induced lung lesions in A/J mice at early and late stages of tumorigenesis. We precisely microdissected 40 lung lesions from paraffin‐embedded sections. Ki‐ras mutations around codon 61 and p53 mutations in exons 5–8 were identified by polymerase chain reaction‐single‐strand conformation polymorphism and DNA sequencing techniques. In 29 early‐stage lung lesions classified as hyperplasias (seven) or adenomas (22), we observed 19 Ki‐ras mutations (66%), including three silent mutations and one double mutation at different codons, and one silent p53 mutation (3.5%). In 11 late‐stage adenomas, we identified nine activating Ki‐ras mutations (82%) and four missense p53 mutations (36%). These results indicate that Ki‐ras mutations arise early, whereas p53 mutations occur relatively late during the benign stages of urethane‐induced lung carcinogenesis in A/J mice. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Influence of MgO on the phase equilibria in the CuxO–FeOy–MgO –SiO2 system in equilibrium with copper alloy – Part II: Results and discussion

Abstract Phase equilibria in the ‘Cu2O’–‘Fe2O3’–MgO – SiO2 system in equilibrium with copper alloy have been investigated at temperatures between 1 075 and 1 250 °C. A high-temperature equilibration/quenching/electron probe micro-analysis technique has been used to accurately determine the liquid and solid compositions. Results on phase equilibria in the pyroxene and olivine primary phase fields are reported, providing new data on the effect of MgO on the liquidus temperatures in these fields. It was found that increasing MgO concentrations increases the liquidus temperatures in the olivine and pyroxene primary phase fields. The cuprite–delafossite–tridymite–pyroxene eutectic temperature of the quaternary system was determined to be between 1 075 and 1 080 ± 5 °C.
Stress, fatigue, and sleep quality leading up to and following a stressful life event

This study aims to examine (a) the time course of stress, fatigue, and sleep quality among PhD students awaiting a stressful event and (b) whether daily anticipation of this event influences day-level stress, fatigue, and sleep quality. Forty-four PhD students completed evening and morning questionnaires on eight days from 1 month before their dissertation defense until one month thereafter. Results showed increased stress leading up to the defense, while fatigue and sleep quality remained unchanged. Comparing the night before the defense with the night after, stress rapidly decreased, whereas fatigue and sleep quality increased. Following the defense, stress and sleep quality remained stable, whereas fatigue declined. Stress 1 month before the defense was higher than 1 month thereafter. Regarding day-level relations, stress was adversely affected by negative anticipation and favorably by positive outcome expectancy, whereas positive anticipation had no influence. Positive outcome expectancy was an important predictor of improved sleep quality. We conclude that stress may be elevated long before a stressful event takes place but that one can recover rather quickly from temporary stress. Positive outcome expectancy of a stressful event may be an important predictor of reduced day-level stress and improved day-level sleep quality leading up to a stressful event.
Nutrition Principles for the Management off Diabetes and Related Complications

Health professionals and people with diabetes recognize nutrition therapy as one of the most challenging aspects of diabetes care and education (1). Adherence to meal planning principles requires the person with diabetes to learn specific nutrition recommendations. It may require altering previous patterns of eating and implementing new eating behaviors, which requires motivation for a healthy lifestyle and may also require participation in exercise programs. Finally, individuals must be able to evaluate the effectiveness of these lifestyle changes. Despite these challenges, nutrition is an essential component of successful diabetes management.
Hepatitis C progressing to hepatocellular carcinoma: the HCV dialysis patient in dilemma

Summary. Approximately 3.2 million people in the United States have chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection; the primary cause for adult liver transplantation and a significant burden on healthcare resources. The role of HCV and other risk factors in development of HCC in patients with chronic kidney disease is not well defined. We studied predictors of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in dialysis patients with chronic HCV by analyzing factors associated with its development. Data were extracted from the United States Renal Database System (USRDS) using ICD‐9 codes. Variables included were gender, race, duration on dialysis and co‐morbidities (alcohol abuse, drug abuse, HIV, hepatitis B, diabetes and/or presence of cirrhosis). Among the 32 806 HCV infected subjects, 262 cases had HCC. HCC was 12 times more likely in subjects with cirrhosis (P < 0.001), three times more likely in subjects with alcohol abuse (P < 0.001), and 1.3 times more likely in subjects with diabetes (P = 0.04). Asians were three times more likely (P < 0.001) to have HCC. Females were less likely to have HCC compared to males (P = 0.002). The likelihood of having HCC increased with age (P =0.001). This population‐based study demonstrates that among subjects with HCV on dialysis, those with cirrhosis, Asian race and history of alcohol abuse are at highest risk for development of HCC. Furthermore, these findings indicate links between HCV and HCC which are valuable in case management for identifying; monitoring, and managing dialysis patients with HCC.
Health literacy skills of U.S. adults.

OBJECTIVES To examine adults' literacy proficiencies in multiple health contexts. METHODS One hundred ninety-one (191) health-related items drawn from all large-scale adult literacy surveys before 2003 were scored as an independent health literacy scale. Latent class analyses provide portraits of adults with different health literacy skills. RESULTS Adults without a high school diploma or GED, with health-related restrictions, with limited access to resources, who are members of minority population groups, and who are immigrants - have lower health literacy skills than do others. CONCLUSIONS The distribution of health literacy is not independent of general literacy skills at population or subpopulation levels.
Boolector at the SMT Competition 2014

—This paper serves as solver description for our SMT solver Boolector entering the SMT Competition 2014 in three different conﬁgurations. We only list important differences to the earlier version of Boolector that participated in the SMT Competition 2012 [2]. For further information we refer to [2] or source code.
Contribution to scaling of Vertical-Slit Field-Effect Transistor (VeSFET)

A Junction-less twin-gate Vertical-Slit Field-Effect Transistor (VeSFET) is the elementary component of a new 3D VeSTIC technology [1]. Feasibility studies conducted until now indicate that VeSTIC architecture has the potential to overcome many barriers of ICs scaling in the deep-submicron era. As it was shown earlier, electrical properties of VeSFETs seems to be very attractive, but simulations [5] indicate different correlations between electrical and structure parameters in comparison with those of MOSFETs which operate in inversion mode. In this paper the exploration of the VeSFET parameters space has been developed and preliminary scaling recommendations are formulated.
Engaging viewers through nonphotorealistic visualizations

Research in human visual cognition suggests that beautiful images can engage the visual system, encouraging it to linger in certain locations in an image and absorb subtle details. By developing aesthetically pleasing visualizations of data, we aim to engage viewers and promote prolonged inspection, which can lead to new discoveries within the data. We present three new visualization techniques that apply painterly rendering styles to vary interpretational complexity (IC), indication and detail (ID), and visual complexity (VC), image properties that are important to aesthetics. Knowledge of human visual perception and psychophysical models of aesthetics provide the theoretical basis for our designs. Computational geometry and nonphotorealistic algorithms are used to preprocess the data and render the visualizations. We demonstrate the techniques with visualizations of real weather and supernova data.
Myelin-Associated Glycoprotein as a Functional Ligand for the Nogo-66 Receptor

Axonal regeneration in the adult central nervous system (CNS) is limited by two proteins in myelin, Nogo and myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG). The receptor for Nogo (NgR) has been identified as an axonal glycosyl-phosphatidyl-inositol (GPI)–anchored protein, whereas the MAG receptor has remained elusive. Here, we show that MAG binds directly, with high affinity, to NgR. Cleavage of GPI-linked proteins from axons protects growth cones from MAG-induced collapse, and dominant-negative NgR eliminates MAG inhibition of neurite outgrowth. MAG-resistant embryonic neurons are rendered MAG-sensitive by expression of NgR. MAG and Nogo-66 activate NgR independently and serve as redundant NgR ligands that may limit axonal regeneration after CNS injury.
Free energy score space

A score function induced by a generative model of the data can provide a feature vector of a fixed dimension for each data sample. Data samples themselves may be of differing lengths (e.g., speech segments, or other sequence data), but as a score function is based on the properties of the data generation process, it produces a fixed-length vector in a highly informative space, typically referred to as a "score space". Discriminative classifiers have been shown to achieve higher performance in appropriately chosen score spaces than is achievable by either the corresponding generative likelihood-based classifiers, or the discriminative classifiers using standard feature extractors. In this paper, we present a novel score space that exploits the free energy associated with a generative model. The resulting free energy score space (FESS) takes into account latent structure of the data at various levels, and can be trivially shown to lead to classification performance that at least matches the performance of the free energy classifier based on the same generative model, and the same factorization of the posterior. We also show that in several typical vision and computational biology applications the classifiers optimized in FESS outperform the corresponding pure generative approaches, as well as a number of previous approaches to combining discriminating and generative models.
The analgesic effect of pregabalin in patients with chronic pain is reflected by changes in pharmaco-EEG spectral indices.

AIM To identify electroencephalographic (EEG) biomarkers for the analgesic effect of pregabalin in patients with chronic visceral pain. METHODS This was a double-blind, placebo-controlled study in 31 patients suffering from visceral pain due to chronic pancreatitis. Patients received increasing doses of pregabalin (75mg-300mg twice a day) or matching placebo during 3 weeks of treatment. Pain scores were documented in a diary based on a visual analogue scale. In addition, brief pain inventory-short form (BPI) and quality of life questionnaires were collected prior to and after the study period. Multi-channel resting EEG was recorded before treatment onset and at the end of the study. Changes in EEG spectral indices were extracted, and individual changes were classified by a support vector machine (SVM) to discriminate the pregabalin and placebo responses. Changes in individual spectral indices and pain scores were correlated. RESULTS Pregabalin increased normalized intensity in low spectral indices, most prominent in the theta band (3.5-7.5Hz), difference of -3.18, 95% CI -3.57, -2.80; P= 0.03. No changes in spectral indices were seen for placebo. The maximum difference between pregabalin and placebo treated patients was seen in the parietal region, with a classification accuracy of 85.7% (P= 0.009). Individual changes in EEG indices were correlated with changes in pain diary (P= 0.04) and BPI pain composite scores (P= 0.02). CONCLUSIONS Changes in spectral indices caused by slowing of brain oscillations were identified as a biomarker for the central analgesic effect of pregabalin. The developed methodology may provide perspectives to assess individual responses to treatment in personalized medicine.
Strong Logic for Weak Memory: Reasoning About Release-Acquire Consistency in Iris (Artifact)

This artifact provides the soundness proofs for the encodings in Iris the RSL and GPS logics, as well as the verification for all standard examples known to be verifiable in those logics. All of these proofs are formalized in Coq, which is the main content of this artifact. The formalization is provided in a virtual machine for the convenience of testing, but can also be built from source.
Electrical and thermal conductivity and tensile and flexural properties: Comparison of carbon black/polycarbonate and carbon nanotube/polycarbonate resins

Adding conductive carbon fillers to thermoplastic polymers increases the resulting composite's electrical conductivity. Carbon black (CB) is very effective at increasing composite electrical conductivity at low loading levels. In this study, varying amounts (2 to 10 wt %) CB were added to polycarbonate (PC) and the resulting composites were tested for electrical conductivity (1/electrical resistivity), thermal conductivity, and tensile and flexural properties. These results were compared with prior work done for carbon nanotubes (CNT) in polycarbonate. The percolation threshold was ∼ 2.3 vol % CB compared to between 0.7 and 1.4 vol % CNT. At 8 wt % filler, the CNT/PC composite had an electrical resistivity of 8 ohm-cm compared to 122 ohm-cm for the CB/PC composite. The addition of CB to polycarbonate increased the composite electrical and thermal conductivity and tensile and flexural modulus. The 8 wt % (5.5 vol %) CB in polycarbonate composite had a good combination of properties for semiconductive applications. Ductile tensile behavior is noted in pure polycarbonate and in samples containing up to 8 wt % CB. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011
Effects of gender and gonadectomy on growth and plasma cholesterol levels in pigs

We conducted two studies to determine the effect of gender, gonadectomy (GDX) on growth and plasma cholesterol levels in pigs. In experiment 1, five sham-operated and five GDX female Landrace pigs (26 kg) were allowed to have free access to water and feed up to market weight (approximately 100 kg). Body weight and feed consumption were recorded biweekly, and daily body weight gain, daily feed intake and feed efficiency (gain/feed) were calculated during the feeding period. In experiment 2, 10 male (26 kg) and 10 female (26 kg) Landrace pigs were used; five male and five female pigs were assigned to sham-operated or GDX. Pigs were allowed to have free access to water and a diet without added cholesterol (Table 1) until they were 6 months old (male 104 and female 98 kg) and thereafter they were fed a hypercholesterolemic diet (Table 1) containing 0.5% cholesterol and 0.1% cholate for 10 days. GDX of female pigs increased average daily gain (P<0.05), compared with their sham-operated counterparts during the growing-finishing period, but had no effect (P>0.05) on feed efficiency. Plasma cholesterol levels in pigs fed a hypercholesterolemic diet for 10 days were much higher (P<0.05) in females than in males (161 vs 104 mg/100 mL plasma), and were increased by GDX only in male pigs. HDL-cholesterol/LDL+VLDL-cholesterol ratio appeared to be higher in males than in females, and was not influenced by GDX in either sex. Results suggested that the lower growth rate of female pigs than their male counterparts is attributable to the ovarian activity, and the lower plasma cholesterol level in male than in female pigs fed a hypercholesterolemic diet is due to the testicular activity.
High-level debugging in parasight

Debugging parallel programs with time critical dependencies is difficult due to subtle race conditions that may cause deadlock, starvation, and other errors. These errors can be detected by multiple instrumentation points triggered by logical assertions. Although some advanced debuggers provide a programmer with the ability to define complex logical assertions, they are inadequate for debugging parallel programs due to the high overhead of monitoring these assertions. This paper describes the facilities for high-level debugging in Parasight#8482; a parallel programming environment. In Parasight, high-level debugging facilities are implemented as separate programs that are linked dynamically to a target program. The target program is controlled by attaching these debugging programs to light-weight instrumentation points that are dynamically inserted and deleted. Different facilities of arbitrary complexity may be created to support high-level debugging. Parasight has been implemented on Multimax#8482; a shared-memory multiprocessor. It has been used for debugging and profiling “C” programs.