Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Respiratory viral infections as promoters of allergic sensitization and asthma in animal models

Respiratory virus infections can trigger exacerbations of asthma and may also contribute to allergic sensitization to aeroallergens and the development of asthma. Conversely, atopy may predispose to more severe virus-induced airway disease. The animal models reviewed in this article support the hypothesis that respiratory virus infections can promote allergic sensitization and the development of asthma. Respiratory viruses can prevent induction of tolerance and enhance sensitization to inhaled allergens resulting in increased airway inflammation and airway hyperresponsiveness. Probable mechanisms involved in this enhanced sensitization are increased permeability of the airway mucosa to allergens and recruitment of dendritic cells to the respiratory epithelium during acute infection. Factors involved in augmenting the consequences of allergic airway sensitization appear to be T-cells, especially CD8+ T-cells as regulators of this process, interleukin-5 as a pivotal cytokine for eosinophilic airway inflammation and eosinophils themselves as effector cells triggering airway hyperresponsiveness. Depending on the timing of allergen exposure, respiratory virus infections which elicit a significant type 1 T-helper cell cytokine response may also downregulate allergic sensitization. Respiratory virus infections in animals previously sensitized to aeroallergens result in prolonged increases in inflammation and airway responsiveness, indicating that critical interactions between immune responses to allergen sensitization and the responses to infection can lead to more severe disease. Taken together, animal models have proved valuable in generating a number of plausible pathogenetic concepts, and can be used to address a host of unresolved questions regarding the immunology of respiratory virus infections, allergic sensitization and asthma.
Empirical Evidence of Bias in the Design of Experimental Stroke Studies: A Metaepidemiologic Approach

Background and Purpose— At least part of the failure in the transition from experimental to clinical studies in stroke has been attributed to the imprecision introduced by problems in the design of experimental stroke studies. Using a metaepidemiologic approach, we addressed the effect of randomization, blinding, and use of comorbid animals on the estimate of how effectively therapeutic interventions reduce infarct size. Methods— Electronic and manual searches were performed to identify meta-analyses that described interventions in experimental stroke. For each meta-analysis thus identified, a reanalysis was conducted to estimate the impact of various quality items on the estimate of efficacy, and these estimates were combined in a meta–meta-analysis to obtain a summary measure of the impact of the various design characteristics. Results— Thirteen meta-analyses that described outcomes in 15 635 animals were included. Studies that included unblinded induction of ischemia reported effect sizes 13.1% (95% CI, 26.4% to 0.2%) greater than studies that included blinding, and studies that included healthy animals instead of animals with comorbidities overstated the effect size by 11.5% (95% CI, 21.2% to 1.8%). No significant effect was found for randomization, blinded outcome assessment, or high aggregate CAMARADES quality score. Conclusions— We provide empirical evidence of bias in the design of studies, with studies that included unblinded induction of ischemia or healthy animals overestimating the effectiveness of the intervention. This bias could account for the failure in the transition from bench to bedside of stroke therapies.
Looking outside of the Box: Object Detection and Localization with Multi-scale Patterns

Detection and localization of objects at multiple scales often involves sliding a single scale template in order to score windows at different scales independently. Nonetheless, multi-scale visual information at a given image location is highly correlated. This fundamental insight allows us to generalize the traditional multi-scale sliding window technique by jointly considering image features at all scales in order to detect and localize objects. Two max-margin approaches are studied for learning the multi-scale templates and leveraging the highly structured multi-scale information which would have been ignored if a single-scale template was used. The multi-scale formulation is shown to significantly improve general detection performance (measured on the PASCAL VOC dataset). The experimental analysis shows the method to be effective with different visual features, both HOG and CNN. Surprisingly, for a given window in a specific scale, visual information from windows at the same image location but other scales (`out-of-scale' information) contains most of the discriminative information for detection.
Time-dependent changes in inhibitory action of lipopolysaccharide on intestinal motility in rat

Endotoxin causes gastrointestinal motility disorder. Aim of this study is to clarify inhibitory mechanisms of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) on smooth muscle contraction in rat ileum. Ileal tissues were isolated from control rat or from LPS-induced peritonitis model rat. Treatment with LPS inhibited carbachol (CCh)-mediated contraction in a time-dependent manner. Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) genes were also upregulated, but iNOS expression was preceded by a rising of COX-2. All subtypes of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) receptors (EP1-EP4) were expressed in ileum, and PGE2 and selective EP2 or EP4 agonist inhibited CCh-mediated contraction. Selective iNOS inhibitor did not reverse LPS-induced inhibition of contraction by CCh at 1 and 2 hr, but reduced the inhibitory action at 4 hr after the LPS treatment. COX-2 inhibitor reversed the inhibitory action by LPS in all exposure time. Finally, in ileal tissues isolated from peritonitis model rat, iNOS expression was upregulated only at 4 hr after LPS administration, resulting in enhanced inhibitory action of LPS against CCh-induced contraction. In conclusion, LPS induces COX-2 to produce PGE2, which initially activates EP2 and/or EP4 on smooth muscle cells to inhibit the contractility in early phase of LPS exposure. Moreover, in late phase of LPS treatment, iNOS is expressed to produce NO, which in turn inhibited the contraction by CCh. The inhibitory cascade is similar in the ileum isolated from peritonitis model rat, indicating time-dependent changes of inhibitory action by LPS on intestinal motility in peritonitis.
Childhood cognitive performance and risk of generalized anxiety disorder.

BACKGROUND Perception of control over one's environment, particularly when faced with an ambiguous situation, has been identified as a critical cognitive process involved in worry and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Similarly, it is thought that individuals with lower cognitive skills feel less in control, and do not cope as well as individuals with higher cognitive skills. This study tests the hypothesis that individuals with higher cognitive skills are less likely to develop a lifetime diagnosis of GAD, and considers onset in three developmental periods: childhood, adolescence and adulthood. METHODS Survival analysis and multivariate regression models were used to evaluate the relationship between cognitive performance at age seven, and DSM-IV diagnosis of GAD. Study participants were 689 individuals in their mid-30s, who had been followed since birth as part of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project in Providence, RI, USA. RESULTS A 15-point (1 SD) advantage in childhood cognitive performance was significantly associated with a 50% reduced risk of lifetime GAD and an 89 and 57% reduction in risk of GAD in childhood and adolescence, respectively, after adjusting for relevant covariates including socio-economic status and parent history of mental health problems. These results were not affected by behavioural inhibition or learning disabilities in childhood. CONCLUSIONS Childhood cognitive performance is associated with a diagnosis of GAD in childhood and adolescence. Further research on the association between childhood cognitive performance and GAD is warranted.
The Role of High School and College Counselors in Supporting the Psychosocial and Emotional Needs of Latinx First-Generation College Students

Latinx first-generation college students (FGCS) are a growing population faced with unique challenges for college retention and graduation. Because their parents did not attend postsecondary education, this group of college students has not inherited the social or cultural capital common to many traditional college freshmen. Both high school and college counselors are in positions to support the psychosocial and emotional needs of Latinx FGCS, which may increase successful college completion rates. This article provides high school and college counselors with (a) an overview of FGCS’ characteristics, (b) information specific to Latinx culture, (c) an understanding of the college experiences of Latinx FGCS, and (d) a discussion of counseling implications for addressing the psychosocial and emotional needs of this population.
Ocean acidification modulates expression of genes and physiological performance of a marine diatom

Ocean Acidification (OA) is known to affect various aspects of physiological performances of diatoms, but little is known about the underlining molecular mechanisms involved. Here, we show that in the model diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum, the expression of key genes associated with photosynthetic light harvesting as well as those encoding Rubisco, carbonic anhydrase, NADH dehydrogenase and nitrite reductase, are modulated by OA (1000 μatm, pHnbs 7.83). Growth and photosynthetic carbon fixation were enhanced by elevated CO2. OA treatment decreased the expression of β-carbonic anhydrase (β-ca), which functions in balancing intracellular carbonate chemistry and the CO2 concentrating mechanism (CCM). The expression of the genes encoding fucoxanthin chlorophyll a/c protein (lhcf type (fcp)), mitochondrial ATP synthase (mtATP), ribulose-1, 5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase large subunit gene (rbcl) and NADH dehydrogenase subunit 2 (ndh2), were down-regulated during the first four days (< 8 generations) after the cells were transferred from LC (cells grown under ambient air condition; 390 μatm; pHnbs 8.19) to OA conditions, with no significant difference between LC and HC treatments with the time elapsed. The expression of nitrite reductase (nir) was up-regulated by the OA treatment. Additionally, the genes for these proteins (NiR, FCP, mtATP synthase, β-CA) showed diel expression patterns. It appeared that the enhanced photosynthetic and growth rates under OA could be attributed to stimulated nitrogen assimilation, increased CO2 availability or saved energy from down-regulation of the CCM and consequently lowered cost of protein synthesis versus that of non-nitrogenous cell components.
The Republic of Moldova as a Potential Failing State

The Republic of Moldova is a young post-Soviet country facing a continuous internal struggle in the definition of its identity given its location between two major geopolitical blocs – Euroatlantic and Eurasian. In consequence to the combination of several internal and external factors it has striven to stabilize its political scene, sustain economic growth and enhance defense capabilities since its creation. Yet the success is questionable and Moldova today manifests certain features of state fragility. The aim of the article is to answer the question whether Moldova can be regarded as a failing state and if so, which areas in terms of sectoral security are stricken the most by state fragility. The authors point to the shortcomings that Moldova exhibits in political, economic and military sectors of security and concludes that potential failure of Moldova may have serious geopolitical consequences given the interests of external actors, especially Russia. The authors also suggest that the future development of Moldova will depend to a large extent on the attitude and role of the European Union in regard to the stabilization of the state.
Recent progress toward real-time measurement of ultrashort laser pulses

Frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) is a technique that produces a spectrogram of an ultrashort laser pulse optically. While a great deal of information about the pulse can be gleaned from its FROG trace, often it is desirable to obtain of the pulse information immediately, in real time. Quantitative information about the guise is not readily obtainable from its spectrogram without the use of a two-dimensional phase retrieval algorithm. While current algorithms are quite robust, retrieval of all the pulse information can be slow. In this paper, I describe a recently developed FROG trace inversion algorithm called Principal Component Generalized Projects that is fast, robust, and can invert FROG traces in real time. A femtosecond oscilloscope based on second-harmonic generation FROG is also described that uses this new algorithm to rapidly (up to 2.3 Hz) and continuously display the intensity and phase of ultrashort laser pulses.
Breast Sclerosing Adenosis and Accompanying Malignancies

AbstractSclerosing adenosis (SA) is a less common histopathological lesion of the breast that can coexist with proliferative lesions as well as malignancies. We aimed to analyze the clinicopathological characteristics of SA and to investigate the radiological features of SA.Patients who underwent breast surgery at our institute from 2007 to 2013 were retrospectively reviewed. A total of 815 breasts (722 patients) were included in the final analysis. Synchronous bilateral SA was defined as the detection of another SA arising in the contralateral breast within 1 month after surgery for the initial breast lesion. Baseline characteristics, imaging records (ultrasonography, mammography, and magnetic resonance imaging [MRI]), and pathology were included in the analysis.The median age at diagnosis was 47 years old. The majority of patients had unilateral non-Bc-SA (457/722). Among 102 patients with bilateral SA, 78.4% were diagnosed synchronously. In total, 26 patients suffered from synchronous bilateral breast cancer. Upon final pathological investigation, 226 cases were SA involving breast cancer (Bc-SA), most (56.2%) of which were ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). In addition, lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS) and diseases that involved LCIS also comprised up to 11.1% of cases. The majority of SA cases (405; 49.7%) had no obvious symptoms except for imaging changes in mammography or ultrasound. Compared with non-Bc-SA cases, Bc-SA cases were more likely to exhibit features of mass (32.8% vs. 28.6%) and architectural distortion (20.4% vs. 13.0%) on mammography. Ultrasonography, mammography, and MRI revealed unsatisfactory sensitivity and specificity to differentiate Bc-SA from non-Bc-SA. MRI exhibited the highest sensitivity and lowest specificity, whereas the specificity of mammography was as low as 50.0%. A tendency for synchronous bilaterality in both Bc-SA and non-Bc-SA was noted. DCIS was the most commonly observed malignancy involved in Bc-SA. Although most patients with SA were asymptomatic, the ability of imaging studies to accurately differentiate non-Bc-SA from Bc-SA remained unsatisfactory.
Averaged Collapsed Variational Bayes Inference

This paper presents the Averaged CVB (ACVB) inference and oers convergence-guaranteed and practically useful fast Collapsed Variational Bayes (CVB) inferences. CVB inferences yield more precise inferences of Bayesian probabilistic models than Variational Bayes (VB) inferences. However, their convergence aspect is fairly unknown and has not been scrutinized. To make CVB more useful, we study their convergence behaviors in a empirical and practical approach. We develop a convergence-guaranteed algorithm for any CVB-based inference called ACVB, which enables automatic convergence detection and frees non-expert practitioners from the difficult and costly manual monitoring of inference processes. In experiments, ACVB inferences are comparable to or better than those of existing inference methods and deterministic, fast, and provide easier convergence detection. These features are especially convenient for practitioners who want precise Bayesian inference with assured convergence.
School Connectedness as a Moderator between Racial Microaggressions and Academic Performance for African American High School Students

Racial microaggressions are subtle, often unconscious, words or actions that demean African Americans (Sue et al., 2007). The impact of racial microaggressions may not be seen, and so it is important to study potential long-term consequences such as academic performance. This study addressed an identified gap in the literature on the relationship between racial microaggressions and academic performance among African American high school students. A quantitative design was used to study the relationship between racial microaggressions and academic performance, and school connectedness as a moderating variable of this relationship. There were 417 high school students who completed the surveys. Of those students, 81 were used for the data analysis in this study because they identified as African American or Black. Results indicated that experience of racial microaggressions (from peers or from school staff) did not correlate with academic performance (GPA). Additionally, school connectedness was not found to moderate this relationship. Female students indicated more experiences with racial microaggressions than male students. Also, school connectedness was correlated with racial microaggressions such that the more racial microaggressions that students reported, the less connected they felt to the school. Furthermore, perceived racial microaggressions by school personnel were correlated with microaggressions by peers, indicating the more experiences students had of microaggressions by adults, the more they had by their peers. These results illustrated the importance of understanding students’ experiences and their environment in the school setting. Counseling implications and areas for future research are addressed and discussed. SCHOOL CONNECTEDNESS AS A MODERATOR iii
Cloud droplet activation of mixed organic-sulfate particles produced by the photooxidation of isoprene

The cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) properties of ammonium sulfate particles mixed with organic material condensed during the hydroxyl-radical-initiated photooxidation of isoprene (C5H8) were investigated in the continuous-flow Harvard Environmental Chamber. CCN activation curves were measured for organic particle mass concentrations of 0.5 to 10.0 ? g m? 3, NOx concentrations from under 0.4 ppbv up to 38 ppbv, particle mobility diameters from 70 to 150 nm, and thermodenuder temperatures from 25 to 100 °C. At 25 °C, the observed CCN activation curves were accurately described by a Kohler model having two internally mixed components, namely ammonium sulfate and secondary organic material. The modeled physicochemical parameters of the organic material were equivalent to an effective hygroscopicity parameter ? ORG of 0.10±0.03, regardless of the C5H8:NOx concentration ratio for the span of >200:0.4 to 50:38 (ppbv:ppbv). The volatilization curves (i.e., plots of the residual organic volume fraction against temperature) were also similar for the span of investigated C5H8:NOx ratios, suggesting a broad similarity of particle chemical composition. This suggestion was supported by limited variance at 25 °C among the particle mass spectra. For example, the signal intensity at m/z 44 (which can result from the fragmentation of oxidized molecules believed to affect hygroscopicity and CCN properties) varied weakly from 6 to 9% across the range of investigated conditions. In contradistinction to the results for 25 °C, conditioning up to 100 °C in the thermodenuder significantly reduced CCN activity. The altered CCN activity might be explained by chemical reactions (e.g., decomposition or oligomerization) of the secondary organic material at elevated temperatures. The study's results at 25 °C, in conjunction with the results of other chamber and field studies for a diverse range of conditions, suggest that a value of 0.10±0.05 for ? ORG is representative of both anthropogenic and biogenic secondary organic material. This finding supports the use of ? ORG as a simplified yet accurate general parameter to represent the CCN activation of secondary organic material in large-scale atmospheric and climate models.
Utilizing a Creative Task to Assess Langerian Mindfulness

Despite the growing interest in mindfulness and its demonstrated benefits, there are concerns about the reliance on subjective assessment tools. This study focused on the measurement of Langerian mindfulness, which refers to the active process of noticing new things and flexibly responding to the current context. Some of its key features overlap with the construct of creativity, which can be used to create a direct assessment for central components of mindfulness. The aim is to start a discussion in the field about how a direct creativity-based tool to current subjective measures might best be used.
ON THE SURVIVAL AND ABUNDANCE OF DISK-DOMINATED GALAXIES

We study the formation of disk-dominated galaxies in a Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) universe. Their existence is considered to be a challenge for the ΛCDM cosmology, because galaxy mergers isotropize stellar disks and trigger angular momentum transport in gas disks, thus fostering the formation of central stellar spheroids. Here, we postulate that the formation of stellar spheroids from gas-rich disks is controlled by two parameters that characterize galaxy mergers, the mass ratio of merging dark matter halos, and the virial velocity of the larger merging halo. We utilize merger histories generated from realizations of the cosmological density field to calculate the fraction of dark matter halos that have avoided spheroid formation, and compare the derived statistics with the spheroid occupation fractions in surveys of nearby galaxies. We find, for example, that the survival rate of disk-dominated galaxies in ΛCDM is just high enough to explain the observed fractional representation of disk-dominated galaxies in the universe if the only mergers which lead to central spheroid formation are those with mass ratios M2/M1 > 0.3 and virial velocities Vvir,1 > 55kms−1. We discuss the physical origin of this criterion.