Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cutting Edge: B Cell Receptor Signals Regulate BLyS Receptor Levels in Mature B Cells and Their Immediate Progenitors 1

This study examines how B lymphocyte stimulator (BLyS) receptor expression and responsiveness are influenced by B cell receptor (BcR) signaling. Our results show that resting and BcR-stimulated B cells are dependent on BLyS for survival and that B cells remain BLyS responsive during BcR-induced activation. Further, BcR ligation up-regulates expression of the BLySR B cell maturation defect/BLySR3 (Bcmd/BR3), but not other known BLySRs. Finally, the coupling of BcR signaling with Bcmd/BR3 expression is limited to late transitional and mature B cells. Together, these findings establish the coupling of BcR signaling with Bcmd/BR3 expression as a fundamental aspect of follicular B cell selection, survival, and activation.
Motivation and Flow: Toward an Understanding of the Dynamics of the Relation in Architecture Students

The authors investigated the relation between motivation and flow in a sample of 327 architecture students. Specifically, they investigated the relation between flow and several levels of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, as well as amotivation. They also assessed the need for autonomy in moderating the relation between intrinsic motivation and engagement. Results indicated a significant relation between flow experiences in academic activities and the more self-determined forms of intrinsic motivation, but not for extrinsic motivation. The need for autonomy moderated the relation between flow and intrinsic motivation. These results are discussed in the context of understanding flow as an intrinsically motivating state and a viable construct for understanding engagement.
Microtiming in Swing and Funk affects the body movement behavior of music expert listeners

The theory of Participatory Discrepancies (or PDs) claims that minute temporal asynchronies (microtiming) in music performance are crucial for prompting bodily entrainment in listeners, which is a fundamental effect of the “groove” experience. Previous research has failed to find evidence to support this theory. The present study tested the influence of varying PD magnitudes on the beat-related body movement behavior of music listeners. 160 participants (79 music experts, 81 non-experts) listened to 12 music clips in either Funk or Swing style. These stimuli were based on two audio recordings (one in each style) of expert drum and bass duo performances. In one series of six clips, the PDs were downscaled from their originally performed magnitude to complete quantization in steps of 20%. In another series of six clips, the PDs were upscaled from their original magnitude to double magnitude in steps of 20%. The intensity of the listeners' beat-related head movement was measured using video-based motion capture technology and Fourier analysis. A mixed-design Four-Factor ANOVA showed that the PD manipulations had a significant effect on the expert listeners' entrainment behavior. The experts moved more when listening to stimuli with PDs that were downscaled by 60% compared to completely quantized stimuli. This finding offers partial support for PD theory: PDs of a certain magnitude do augment entrainment in listeners. But the effect was found to be small to moderately sized, and it affected music expert listeners only.
Quality of Life and Psychological Aspects in Patients with Visual Impairment Secondary to Uveitis: A Clinical Study in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Brazil

ABSTRACT Purpose: To evaluate the quality of life in individuals with bilateral visual impairment secondary to uveitis and its association with sociodemographic, clinical and psychosocial aspects. Methods: Data were collected through a structured interviews, using four forms; the SF-12v2, HADS, NEI-VFQ-25 and a specific form developed to collect clinical and sociodemographic data. Results: 80 patients were included with a mean age of 42.8 years; 63.8% female; 57.5% with permanent reduction of familiar income. The average number of medical visits was 15.2 ±10.7/year. In terms of health-related quality of life (HRQol), the mean of VFQ-25 score was 36.6 ± 15.1 and the mean of SF-12 physical and mental components scores were 43.3 ± 9.9 and 44.9 ± 12.2. Anxiety and depression symptoms were found in 65.1% and 32.5% of patients, respectively. Conclusions: Visual impairment has impact on several scales of HRQoL leading to productivity loss and consumption of health resources.
Intermittent Hypoxia in Rats Increases Myogenic Tone Through Loss of Hydrogen Sulfide Activation of Large-Conductance Ca2+-Activated Potassium Channels

Rationale: Myogenic tone, an important regulator of vascular resistance, is dependent on vascular smooth muscle (VSM) depolarization, can be modulated by endothelial factors, and is increased in several models of hypertension. Intermittent hypoxia (IH) elevates blood pressure and causes endothelial dysfunction. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a recently described endothelium-derived vasodilator, is produced by the enzyme cystathionine &ggr;-lyase (CSE) and acts by hyperpolarizing VSM. Objective: Determine whether IH decreases endothelial H2S production to increase myogenic tone in small mesenteric arteries. Methods and Results: Myogenic tone was greater in mesenteric arteries from IH than sham control rat arteries, and VSM membrane potential was depolarized in IH in comparison with sham arteries. Endothelium inactivation or scavenging of H2S enhanced myogenic tone in sham arteries to the level of IH. Inhibiting CSE also enhanced myogenic tone and depolarized VSM in sham but not IH arteries. Similar results were seen in cerebral arteries. Exogenous H2S dilated and hyperpolarized sham and IH arteries, and this dilation was blocked by iberiotoxin, paxilline, and KCl preconstriction but not glibenclamide or 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine. Iberiotoxin enhanced myogenic tone in both groups but more in sham than IH. CSE immunofluorescence was less in the endothelium of IH than in sham mesenteric arteries. Endogenouse H2S dilation was reduced in IH arteries. Conclusions: IH appears to decrease endothelial CSE expression to reduce H2S production, depolarize VSM, and enhance myogenic tone. H2S dilatation and hyperpolarization of VSM in small mesenteric arteries requires BKCa channels.
Fetal DNA Quantitation in Peripheral Blood Is Not Useful as a Marker of Disease Severity in Women with Preeclampsia

Objective: Trophoblast migration into the maternal circulation is increased in preeclampsia and can trigger the endothelial dysfunction that characterizes the clinical disease. We hypothesised that ‘fetal trafficking’ is increased in women with severe preeclampsia and that the quantity of trafficking is greater in women with more severe disease. Study Design: To test the hypothesis, we used a technique that quantifies a genetic marker specific for the fetomaternal unit, that is, the SRY gene in a pregnant woman carrying a male fetus. Thirty two women with pre‐eclampsia and 32 control women (women without preeclampsia) were recruited. Preeclampsia was defined according to the International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy (ISSHP). All subjects with preeclampsia had evidence of the multisystemic nature of the disease. DNA was extracted from maternal peripheral blood and RTQ PCR analysis was performed to quantify the fetal DNA (SRY) and the total DNA (β‐actin) in each sample. The ratio of fetal to total DNA was calculated and compared between women with preeclampsia and controls. Results: The women with preeclampsia and the control women did not differ in parity, blood pressure at booking, and gestational age at sampling. The groups differed significantly in age (29 ± 5.7 vs 25 ± 5.1 years; P = .007), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) at sampling (101 ± 9.5 vs 70 ± 5.5 mm Hg; P < .0001), gestational age at delivery (33 ± 4.3 vs 39 ± 1.8 weeks; P < .001), and fetal weight (1.98 ± 1 vs 3.35 ± 0.5 kgs; P < .0001). SRY was detected in 31 out of 32 women with preeclampsia and in 24 out of 32 control women (P < .001). The median SRY copy number per µL was greater in women with preeclampsia (10.6, interquartile range 12.89) than in the control women (8.6, interquartile range 20.1) but these differences were not statistically significant at P = . 75. The median ratio of fetal to total DNA was almost identical in both groups (0.06, interquartile range 0.13) in PET compared to (0.06, interquartile range 0.17) the control women. No correlation was found between the quantity of fetal DNA and disease severity. Conclusion: Fetal trafficking is more likely to be detected in women with preeclampsia compared to control women but the quantity does not appear to correlate with disease severity.
Is the Health and Wellbeing of University Students Associated with their Academic Performance? Cross Sectional Findings from the United Kingdom

This study explored the associations between health awareness, health behaviour, subjective health status, and satisfaction of students with their educational experience as independent variables and three outcomes of educational achievement as dependent variables. We undertook two simultaneous cross-sectional surveys among students from one University in the UK during 2008−2009. The first survey was a general health survey; the second survey measured students’ satisfaction with different aspects of their learning and teaching experience. Students’ registration numbers linked the responses of both questionnaires together, and subsequently linked the questionnaires to the university database to import the grades that students actually achieved in their studies. Generally, on average, students (N = 380) exhibited medium to high satisfaction with their educational experiences. In the multivariate regression analyses, students’ satisfaction with their educational experiences was not associated with any of the three indicators of educational achievement (actual module mark; perceived own performance; importance of achieving good grades). The associations of educational satisfaction, health, health behaviours, heath complaints and financial parameters with the three outcomes of educational achievement did not differ between male and female students. Each of the health, health behaviours, health complaints and financial parameters were selectively associated with only some but not all three indicators of student educational achievement. We conclude that the findings support a conceptual framework suggesting reciprocal relationships between health, health behaviour and educational achievement. Comprehensive health promotion programmes may have the potential to influence relevant predictors of educational achievement in university students.
On a class of $\mathrm{II}_1$ factors with at most one Cartan subalgebra

We prove that the normalizer of any diffuse amenable subalgebra of a free group factor $L(\Bbb F_r)$ generates an amenable von Neumann subalgebra. Moreover, any II$_1$ factor of the form $Q \vt L(\Bbb F_r) $, with $Q$ an arbitrary subfactor of a tensor product of free group factors, has no Cartan subalgebras. We also prove that if a free ergodic measure preserving action of a free group $\Bbb F_r$, $2\leq r \leq \infty$, on a probability space $(X,\mu)$ is profinite then the group measure space factor $L^\infty(X)\rtimes \Bbb F_r$ has unique Cartan subalgebra, up to unitary conjugacy.
Machine Beats Experts: Automatic Discovery of Skill Models for Data-Driven Online Courseware Refinement

How can we automatically determine which skills must be mastered for the successful completion of an online course? Large-scale online courses (e.g., MOOCs) often contain a broad range of contents frequently intended to be a semester’s worth of materials; this breadth often makes it difficult to articulate an accurate set of skills and knowledge (i.e., a skill model, or the QMatrix). We have developed an innovative method to discover skill models from the data of online courses. Our method assumes that online courses have a pre-defined skill map for which skills are associated with formative assessment items embedded throughout the online course. Our method carefully exploits correlations between various parts of student performance, as well as in the text of assessment items, to build a superior statistical model that even outperforms human experts. To evaluate our method, we compare our method with existing methods (LFA) and human engineered skill models on three Open Learning Initiative (OLI) courses at Carnegie Mellon University. The results show that (1) our method outperforms human-engineered skill models, (2) skill models discovered by our method are interpretable, and (3) our method is remarkably faster than existing methods. These results suggest that our method provides a significant contribution to the evidence-based, iterative refinement of online courses with a promising scalability.
User Level IPC and Device Management in the Raven Kernel

The increasing bandwidth of networks and storage devices in recent years has placed greater emphasis on the performance of low level operating system services. Data must be delivered between hardware devices and user applications in an efficient matter. Motivated by the need for low overhead operating system services, the Raven kernel utilizes user level implementation techniques to reduce kernel intervention for many common services. In particular, our user level send/receive/reply communication implementation generates no kernel interactions per iteration in the best case, and two kernel interactions in the worst case. In more general cases, we observe approximately one kernel interaction for every two send/receive/reply iterations. Device driver support is also done entirely at the user level reducing copy costs and context switching.
Molecular Epidemiology of Amoebiasis: A Cross-Sectional Study among North East Indian Population

Background Epidemiological studies carried out using culture or microscopy in most of the amoebiasis endemic developing countries, yielded confusing results since none of these could differentiate the pathogenic Entamoeba histolytica from the non-pathogenic Entamoeba dispar and Entamoeba moshkovskii. The Northeastern part of India is a hot spot of infection since the climatic conditions are most conducive for the infection and so far no systemic study has been carried out in this region. Methodology/Principal Findings Following a cross-sectional study designed during the period 2011–2014, a total of 1260 fecal samples collected from the Northeast Indian population were subjected to microscopy, fecal culture and a sensitive and specific DNA dot blot screening assay developed in our laboratory targeting the Entamoeba spp. Further species discrimination using PCR assay performed in microscopy, culture and DNA dot blot screening positive samples showed E. histolytica an overall prevalence rate of 11.1%, 8.0% and 13.7% respectively. In addition, infection rates of nonpathogenic E. dispar and E. moshkovskii were 11.8% (95% CI = 10.2, 13.8) and 7.8% (95% CI = 6.4, 9.4) respectively. The spatial distributions of infection were 18.2% (107/588) of Assam, 11.7% (23/197) of Manipur, 10.2% (21/207) of Meghalaya, and 8.2% (22/268) of Tripura states. Association study of the disease with demographic features suggested poor living condition (OR = 3.21; 95% CI = 1.83, 5.63), previous history of infection in family member (OR = 3.18; 95% CI = 2.09, 4.82) and unhygienic toilet facility (OR = 1.79; 95% CI = 1.28, 2.49) as significant risk factors for amoebiasis. Children in age group <15 yr, participants having lower levels of education, and daily laborers exhibited a higher infection rate. Conclusions/Significance Despite the importance of molecular diagnosis of amoebiasis, molecular epidemiological data based on a large sample size from endemic countries are rarely reported in the literature. Improved and faster method of diagnosis employed here to dissect out the pathogenic from the nonpathogenic species would help the clinicians to prescribe the appropriate anti-amoebic drug.
Stroop Color-Word Interference Test : Normative data for the Latin American Spanish speaking adult population

OBJECTIVE: To generate normative data on the Stroop Test across 11 countries in Latin America, with country-specific adjustments for gender, age, and education, where appropriate. METHOD: The sample consisted of 3,977 healthy adults who were recruited from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and, Puerto Rico. Each subject was administered the Stroop Test, as part of a larger neuropsychological battery. A standardized five-step statistical procedure was used to generate the norms. ∗Address for correspondence: Juan Carlos Arango-Lasprilla, Ph.D., IKERBASQUE Research Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Deusto, IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain. Tel. : +34 804 859 4329; E-mail: jcarango@
Magnesium restriction induces granulocytic differentiation and expression of P27Kip1 in human leukemic HL‐60 cells

When cultured in Mg restricted medium, human leukemic HL‐60 cells develop morphological and functional granulocytic differentiation. In 0.03 mM Mg, cells display the distinctive features of differentiation, without appreciable inhibition of proliferation. In 0.01 mM Mg, cells show terminal differentiation, accompanied by clear inhibition of proliferation. Such cells accumulate in the G0/G1 phase and subsequently die via apoptosis, similar to HL‐60 cells that have been induced to differentiate by DMSO. These phenotypic changes are associated with a marked increase in the expression level of the cyclin dependent kinase inhibitor p27Kip1. Cyclin E expression is also slightly increased in Mg restricted cells, whereas no changes are observed in the expression level of cyclin D1. We also show that during differentiation cell total Mg decreases, whereas [Mg2+]i increases in both Mg‐depleted and DMSO‐treated cells. These data suggest that the maturation process is paralleled by a redistribution of intracellular Mg, leading to a shift from the bound to the free form. These changes could modulate the kinetics of Mg‐dependent enzyme(s) that are involved in the control of the differentiation pathway. We propose that this model may represent an useful tool for the study of the mechanisms of cell differentiation and related events, such as aging and death. J. Cell. Biochem. 70:313–322, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Weighted Low-Rank Tensor Recovery for Hyperspectral Image Restoration

Hyperspectral imaging, providing abundant spatial and spectral information simultaneously, has attracted a lot of interest in recent years. Unfortunately, due to the hardware limitations, the hyperspectral image (HSI) is vulnerable to various degradations, such as noises (random noise), blurs (Gaussian and uniform blur), and downsampled (both spectral and spatial downsample), each corresponding to the HSI denoising, deblurring, and super-resolution tasks, respectively. Previous HSI restoration methods are designed for one specific task only. Besides, most of them start from the 1-D vector or 2-D matrix models and cannot fully exploit the structurally spectral–spatial correlation in 3-D HSI. To overcome these limitations, in this article, we propose a unified low-rank tensor recovery model for comprehensive HSI restoration tasks, in which nonlocal similarity within spectral–spatial cubic and spectral correlation are simultaneously captured by third-order tensors. Furthermore, to improve the capability and flexibility, we formulate it as a weighted low-rank tensor recovery (WLRTR) model by treating the singular values differently. We demonstrate the reweighed strategy, which has been extensively studied in the matrix, also greatly benefits the tensor modeling. We also consider the stripe noise in HSI as the sparse error by extending WLRTR to robust principal component analysis (WLRTR-RPCA). Extensive experiments demonstrate the proposed WLRTR models consistently outperform state-of-the-art methods in typical HSI low-level vision tasks, including denoising, destriping, deblurring, and super-resolution.
The way forward

A number of common themes run throughout this volume. First, one begins to appreciate just how much variation there is in body size among most groups of animals. For the most part, a clade is not a homogenous collection of similar bauplans. Even among volant taxa, such as birds and bats, substantial variation in body mass exists despite the considerable constraints imposed by fl ight (chaps. 3, 4, 8). Moreover, body size variation is clearly important in terms of community and ecosystem dynamics and structure (e.g., chaps. 6–9); how animals interact with their environment is strongly mediated by their body mass. Thus, the size of an organism is of great physiological and ecological signifi cance (Peters 1983). Second, there are remarkably consistent patterns in the body size distributions of some taxa across spatial and temporal gradients that may well refl ect how organisms acquire and allocate energy. For example, right-skewed body size distributions seem to be quite common among diverse clades (chaps. 1–5). However, these regular patterns vary between groups in ways that we do not yet understand. As Maurer and Marquet (chap. 7) note, numerous processes have been invoked to explain the minimum, maximum, mode, and shape of body mass distributions. Which of these processes are universal? Which are unique to particular taxa or geological histories (e.g., response to glaciation; chap. 2)? Are size frequency distributions similarly skewed to the right because organisms contributing to these distributions share similar trophic or life history traits? To some extent, our inability to develop universal explanations may refl ect a lack of fundamental information. For example, as Gaston and Chown (chap. 1) note, it is likely that only 9%–24% of
Intuitive decision making as a gradual process: investigating semantic intuition‐based and priming‐based decisions with fMRI

Intuition has been defined as the instantaneous, experience‐based impression of coherence elicited by cues in the environment. In a context of discovery, intuitive decision‐making processes can be conceptualized as occurring within two stages, the first of which comprises an implicit perception of coherence that is not (yet) verbalizable. Through a process of spreading activation, this initially non‐conscious perception gradually crosses over a threshold of awareness and thereby becomes explicable. Because of its experiential basis, intuition shares conceptual similarities with implicit memory processes. Based on these, the study addresses two research questions: (1) Is the gradual nature of intuitive processes reflected on a neural level? (2) Do intuition‐based decisions differ neurally from priming‐based decisions?
Taming the Wild: A Unified Analysis of Hogwild-Style Algorithms

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a ubiquitous algorithm for a variety of machine learning problems. Researchers and industry have developed several techniques to optimize SGD's runtime performance, including asynchronous execution and reduced precision. Our main result is a martingale-based analysis that enables us to capture the rich noise models that may arise from such techniques. Specifically, we use our new analysis in three ways: (1) we derive convergence rates for the convex case (Hogwild! ) with relaxed assumptions on the sparsity of the problem; (2) we analyze asynchronous SGD algorithms for non-convex matrix problems including matrix completion; and (3) we design and analyze an asynchronous SGD algorithm, called Buckwild! , that uses lower-precision arithmetic. We show experimentally that our algorithms run efficiently for a variety of problems on modern hardware.