Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mitochondrial Susceptibility to Oxidative Stress Exacerbates Cerebral Infarction That Follows Permanent Focal Cerebral Ischemia in Mutant Mice with Manganese Superoxide Dismutase Deficiency

Mitochondrial injury has been implicated in ischemic neuronal injury. Mitochondria, producing adenosine triphosphate by virtue of electron flow, have been shown to be both the sites of superoxide anion (O2−) production and the target of free radical attacks. We evaluated these mechanisms in an in vivo cerebral ischemia model, using mutant mice with a heterozygous knock-out gene (Sod2 −/+) encoding mitochondrial manganese superoxide dismutase (Mn-SOD). Sod2 −/+ mice demonstrated a prominent increase in O2− production under normal physiological conditions and in ischemia, as evidenced by specific oxidation of a fluorescent probe, hydroethidine, reflecting decreased activity of Mn-SOD. A mitochondrial viability assay that used rhodamine 123, which is accumulated by transmembrane potential of viable mitochondria, demonstrated accelerated development of mitochondrial injury. This rapid progress of ischemic injury resulted in exacerbation of infarct size and hemisphere enlargement, causing advanced neurological deficits but without altering DNA fragmentation induction. The present study suggests that O2−overproduced in a mitochondrial compartment, when uncoupled from antioxidant defenses, induces impairment of mitochondrial function and causes exacerbation of cerebral infarction after ischemia.
Spatial and temporal variation of the near‐surface wind environment in the dune fields of northern China

Research on the wind environment provides an important reference for tackling desertification and related environmental issues in desert regions. This article examines spatial and temporal variation of the near‐surface wind environment in the dune fields of northern China, using data from 40 meteorological stations inside and around the dune fields. Wind speed series were first subjected to homogenization, with monthly mean wind speed of the highly correlated neighbour stations as reference series. We found that the homogenized wind speed trends were approximately in accordance with the raw wind speed trends. The wind environment showed spatial and temporal differences, but wind speed has generally decreased both annually and seasonally since 1960, with an average trend of −0.193 m s−1 decade−1. Mean wind speed (1960–2014) and maximum wind speed (1975–2014) decreased significantly, with distinct seasonal differences. The decreasing trend depended strongly on a decreased wind of speeds >5 m s−1 and its frequency. Overall, 48.7–80.8% of the decrease resulted from decreases in the maximum wind speed. Thus, decreases in the maximum wind speed were the dominant change in the study area. We also found that two thirds of the decrease in the drift potential primarily resulted from decreases in three prevailing wind groups (northwest, west, and south winds). This resulted from changes in the East Asian monsoon and westerly circulation. Mean air and ground surface temperatures (1960–2014) increased significantly and were significantly negatively correlated with mean wind speed, whereas sunshine duration (1960–2014) decreased significantly and was significantly positively correlated with mean wind speed. Both correlations reveal that an increasing of atmospheric dust may be responsible for the weakened wind environment. However, China's widespread sand‐control and ecological construction projects have increased ground roughness.
Signpost from the masses: learning effects in an exploratory social tag search browser

Social tagging arose out of the need to organize found content that is worth revisiting. A significant side effect has been the use of social tagging sites as navigational signposts for interesting content. The collective behavior of users who tagged contents seems to offer a good basis for exploratory search interfaces, even for users who are not using social bookmarking sites. In this paper, we present the design of a tag-based exploratory system and detail an experiment in understanding its effectiveness. The tag-based search system allows users to utilize relevance feedback on tags to indicate their interest in various topics, enabling rapid exploration of the topic space. The experiment shows that the system seems to provide a kind of scaffold for users to learn new topics.
Management and monitoring in protected areas : a case study in the New Forest National Park : the effects upon valley mire and heathland communities

Conservation depends heavily on protected areas, and many of these must be intensively managed in order to maintain important habitats and species. However, few conservation actions can be properly described as evidence-based, and knowledge of the effects of different types of management is necessary to improve conservation success. The New Forest National Park, Hampshire, UK, has been subject to intensive management which has not been scientifically investigated. In this thesis I assess management and monitoring effectiveness within two important open habitats: valley mires and heathlands. Research aims are to determine the impact that long term management (including differences between cutting and burning) has had on heathland communities in the New Forest, uncover the effects of restoration programmes on both biotic and abiotic components of valley mires, and to identify whether the current monitoring practice through Common Standards Monitoring (CSM) can detect changes in both habitats and serve as a basis for adaptive management. Data were collected in the field for both heathland and mire habitats using space-for-time substitutions, where sites of different ages since management intervention were compared. The plant community and soil chemical properties were assessed using randomly distributed quadrats within plots set up at each site location. A total of 30 heathland plots and 60 mire plots were established. Results showed that different heathland management resulted in great differences in the vegetation community, but with few changes as sites aged following management. The block nature of both management activities resulted in relatively uniform ericaceous age-structures within individual sites, and particularly low species diversity was recorded for burnt sites. CSM in heathland habitats is was poor at detecting changes in the habitats, but attribute sub-scores did demonstrate some differences. Analyses of mire restorations showed mixed results with abiotic conditions showing almost no changes between degraded and restored areas. Some minor differences emerged in the vegetation community, such as a decrease in Carex panicea following restoration and an increase in some Sphagnum species, such as S. papillosum. This work suggests that restoration has largely failed to achieve its goals. Techniques from the established monitoring program failed to show any changes following restoration and lacked the precision that detailed quantitative surveys showed. It was highly ineffective as a tool to monitor restoration work, calling into question its widespread use for such tasks in the New Forest. Current monitoring must be improved substantially if a move to effective and adaptive management is to be achieved.
Path integrals and symmetry breaking for optimal control theory

This paper considers linear-quadratic control of a non-linear dynamical system subject to arbitrary cost. I show that for this class of stochastic control problems the non-linear Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation can be transformed into a linear equation. The transformation is similar to the transformation used to relate the classical Hamilton–Jacobi equation to the Schrödinger equation. As a result of the linearity, the usual backward computation can be replaced by a forward diffusion process that can be computed by stochastic integration or by the evaluation of a path integral. It is shown how in the deterministic limit the Pontryagin minimum principle formalism is recovered. The significance of the path integral approach is that it forms the basis for a number of efficient computational methods, such as Monte Carlo sampling, the Laplace approximation and the variational approximation. We show the effectiveness of the first two methods in a number of examples. Examples are given that show the qualitative difference between stochastic and deterministic control and the occurrence of symmetry breaking as a function of the noise.
A complete symbolic-numeric linear method for camera pose determination

Camera pose estimation is the problem of determining the position and orientation of an internally calibrated camera from known 3D reference points and their images. We briefly survey several existing methods for pose estimation, then introduce our new complete linear method, which is based on a symbolic-numeric method from the geometric (Jet) theory of partial differential equations. The method is stable and robust. In particular, it can deal with the points near critical configurations. Numerical experiments are given to show the performance of the new method.
α-Galactosylceramide Promotes Killing of Listeria monocytogenes within the Macrophage Phagosome through Invariant NKT-Cell Activation

ABSTRACT α-Galactosylceramide (α-GalCer) has been exploited for the treatment of microbial infections. Although amelioration of infection by α-GalCer involves invariant natural killer T (iNKT)-cell activation, it remains to be determined whether macrophages (Mφ) participate in the control of microbial pathogens. In the present study, we examined the participation of Mφ in immune intervention in infection by α-GalCer using a murine model of listeriosis. Phagocytic and bactericidal activities of peritoneal Mφ from C57BL/6 mice, but not iNKT cell-deficient mice, were enhanced after intraperitoneal injection of α-GalCer despite the absence of iNKT cells in the peritoneal cavity. High levels of gamma interferon (IFN-γ) and nitric oxide (NO) were detected in the peritoneal cavities of mice treated with α-GalCer and in culture supernatants of peritoneal Mφ from mice treated with α-GalCer, respectively. Although enhanced bactericidal activity of peritoneal Mφ by α-GalCer was abrogated by endogenous IFN-γ neutralization, this was only marginally affected by NO inhibition. Similar results were obtained by using a listeriolysin O-deficient strain of Listeria monocytogenes. Moreover, respiratory burst in Mφ was increased after α-GalCer treatment. Our results suggest that amelioration of listeriosis by α-GalCer is, in part, caused by enhanced killing of L. monocytogenes within phagosomes of Mφ activated by IFN-γ from iNKT cells residing in an organ(s) other than the peritoneal cavity.
Review of Cold Cathode Research at the Air Force Research Laboratory

Over the last decade, the Air Force Research Laboratory, Directed Energy Directorate (AFRL/DE) has engaged in a high current density field emission cathode research program. This program explored the aspects of cathode materials as well as the details of cathode geometries and emission physics. This paper summarizes the results of this ongoing research effort to date. We review the history and motivation for the program, which provide insight into the physics issues of concern for various vacuum electronic sources. One important aspect of the program consists of the investigation of new cathode materials. For many high power microwave (HPM) sources, neutral out-gassing, which ties critically with cathode materials, plays a key role in the effective operation of the source. These material properties influence plasma formation, which in turn dictates the operation of an HPM device. For a cathode material, AFRL chose to focus on cesium-iodide-coated carbon fiber cathodes, which we discuss in detail here. A second important aspect of the program consists of understanding emission physics and the optimum geometries for a cathode. This aspect couples closely with electron beam quality, which in turns effects the electron beam interaction with microwaves in the HPM structure. This paper concludes with a discussion of the implementation of the cathode material on both a Magnetically Insulated transmission Line Oscillator and a relativistic magnetron.
Business models and resource management for shared wireless networks

In this paper we analyze main use cases for sharing wireless access networks between multiple operators and service providers. Network sharing has been proposed as a method to lower roll-out costs for 3G operators in Europe, and is widely used in WLAN systems where local access providers offer wireless access to service providers. A similar structure also exists in cellular networks where mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) provide mobile services without having a mobile network of their own. The development points at a further fragmentation of wireless access networks into specialized service providers that connect to local service and access providers, possibly via an inter-connection provider serving with core network functionality. In this context, we propose a framework for how radio resources could be managed using service level agreements (SLA) and analyze key differences between the SLA for different types of service and network providers.
Integrin Dynamics Produce a Delayed Stage of Long-Term Potentiation and Memory Consolidation

Memory consolidation theory posits that newly acquired information passes through a series of stabilization steps before being firmly encoded. We report here that in rat and mouse, hippocampus cell adhesion receptors belonging to the β1-integrin family exhibit dynamic properties in adult synapses and that these contribute importantly to a previously unidentified stage of consolidation. Quantitative dual immunofluorescence microscopy showed that induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) by theta burst stimulation (TBS) activates β1 integrins, and integrin-signaling kinases, at spine synapses in adult hippocampal slices. Neutralizing antisera selective for β1 integrins blocked these effects. TBS-induced integrin activation was brief (<7 min) and followed by an ∼45 min period during which the adhesion receptors did not respond to a second application of TBS. Brefeldin A, which blocks integrin trafficking to the plasma membrane, prevented the delayed recovery of integrin responses to TBS. β1 integrin-neutralizing antisera erased LTP when applied during, but not after, the return of integrin responsivity. Similarly, infusions of anti-β1 into rostral mouse hippocampus blocked formation of long-term, object location memory when started 20 min after learning but not 40 min later. The finding that β1 integrin neutralization was effective in the same time window for slice and behavioral experiments strongly suggests that integrin recovery triggers a temporally discrete, previously undetected second stage of consolidation for both LTP and memory.
COVID‐19 in patients with Down syndrome: A systematic review

Abstract Introduction Down syndrome (DS) is associated with multiple comorbid conditions and chronic immune dysfunction. Persons with DS who contract COVID‐19 are at high risk for complications and have a poor prognosis. We aimed to study the clinical symptoms, laboratory and biochemical profiles, radiologic findings, treatment, and outcomes of patients with DS and COVID‐19. Method We systematically searched PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library using the keywords COVID‐19 or coronavirus or SARS‐CoV‐2 and DS or trisomy 21. Seventeen articles were identified: eight case reports and nine case series published from December 2019 through March 2022, with a total of 55 cases. Results Patients averaged 24.8 years (26 days to 60 years); 29 of the patients were male. The most common symptoms were fever, dyspnea, and cough. Gastrointestinal and upper respiratory tract symptoms were commonly reported for pediatric patients. The most common comorbidities present in patients with DS were obesity (49.0%), hypothyroidism (21.6%) and obstructive sleep apnea (15.6%). The patients were hospitalized for a mean of 14.8 days. When the patients were compared with the general COVID‐19 population, the mean number of hospitalized days was higher. Most patients had leukopenia, lymphopenia, and elevated inflammatory markers (d‐dimer and C‐reactive protein). Bilateral infiltrations and bilateral ground‐glass opacifications were frequently seen in chest radiographs and chest computed tomographic imaging. Most of the patients were treated with methylprednisolone, macrolides, and hydroxychloroquine. Of the 55 patients, 22 died. The mean age of the patients who died was 42.8 years. Mortality rate was higher in individuals with DS over 40 years of age. Conclusion More studies are needed to better understand COVID‐19 infections among persons with DS. In addition, the study was limited by a lack of statistical analyses and a specific comparison group.
Diabetic Neuropathy

OBJECTIVE To determine the relationships among large, small, and autonomic fiber neurophysiological measures in a cross-sectional study of patients with diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We assessed 130 individuals: 25 healthy subjects and 105 subjects with diabetes. Subjects were classified by the presence or absence of neuropathy by physical examination. All subjects underwent autonomic testing, nerve conduction studies, quantitative sensory testing, and nerve-axon reflex vasodilation in addition to quantifiable neurological examination and symptom scores. Correlation and cluster analysis were used to determine relationships between and among different neurophysiological testing parameters. RESULTS Results of neurophysiological tests were abnormal in patients with clinical evidence of diabetic neuropathy compared with results in healthy control subjects and in those without neuropathy (P < 0.01, all tests). The correlations among individual tests varied widely, both within (r range <0.5–>0.9, NS to <0.001) and between test groups (r range <0.2–>0.5, NS to <0.01). A two-step hierarchical cluster analysis revealed that neurophysiological tests do not aggregate by typical “small,” “large,” or “autonomic” nerve fiber subtypes. CONCLUSIONS The modest correlation coefficients seen between the different testing modalities suggest that these techniques measure different neurophysiological parameters and are therefore not interchangeable. However, the data suggest that only a small number of neurophysiological tests are actually required to clinically differentiate individuals with neuropathy from those without. The natural clustering of both patients and healthy control subjects suggests that variations in the population will need to be considered in future studies of diabetic neuropathy.
On the existence of Eshelby’s equivalent ellipsoidal inclusion solution

The existence of Eshelby’s equivalent inclusion solution is proved for a non-degenerate ‘transformed’ ellipsoidal inhomogeneity in an infinite anisotropic linear elastic matrix. We prove the invertibility of the fourth rank tensor expression, C ′ S E + C ( I − S E ) , where C is the stiffness tensor of the matrix, C′ is the stiffness tensor of the inhomogeneity, I is the Eshelby tensor, and S E is the symmetric identity tensor. Taking advantage of the positive definiteness of certain tensor expressions, a proof-by-contradiction using energy arguments is posited that eliminates the possibility that the above expression is singular. Because the tensor expression is non-singular, it can always be inverted and Eshelby’s equivalent ellipsoidal inclusion method can be used to find the stress and strain fields in both the matrix and inhomogeneity.
Integrated Analyses of Gene Expression Profiles Digs out Common Markers for Rheumatic Diseases

Objective Rheumatic diseases have some common symptoms. Extensive gene expression studies, accumulated thus far, have successfully identified signature molecules for each rheumatic disease, individually. However, whether there exist shared factors across rheumatic diseases has yet to be tested. Methods We collected and utilized 6 public microarray datasets covering 4 types of representative rheumatic diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, ankylosing spondylitis, and osteoarthritis. Then we detected overlaps of differentially expressed genes across datasets and performed a meta-analysis aiming at identifying common differentially expressed genes that discriminate between pathological cases and normal controls. To further gain insights into the functions of the identified common differentially expressed genes, we conducted gene ontology enrichment analysis and protein-protein interaction analysis. Results We identified a total of eight differentially expressed genes (TNFSF10, CX3CR1, LY96, TLR5, TXN, TIA1, PRKCH, PRF1), each associated with at least 3 of the 4 studied rheumatic diseases. Meta-analysis warranted the significance of the eight genes and highlighted the general significance of four genes (CX3CR1, LY96, TLR5, and PRF1). Protein-protein interaction and gene ontology enrichment analyses indicated that the eight genes interact with each other to exert functions related to immune response and immune regulation. Conclusion The findings support that there exist common factors underlying rheumatic diseases. For rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, ankylosing spondylitis and osteoarthritis diseases, those common factors include TNFSF10, CX3CR1, LY96, TLR5, TXN, TIA1, PRKCH, and PRF1. In-depth studies on these common factors may provide keys to understanding the pathogenesis and developing intervention strategies for rheumatic diseases.
Origin of Oryza sativa in China Inferred by Nucleotide Polymorphisms of Organelle DNA

China is rich of germplasm resources of common wild rice (Oryza rufipogon Griff.) and Asian cultivated rice (O. sativa L.) which consists of two subspecies, indica and japonica. Previous studies have shown that China is one of the domestication centers of O. sativa. However, the geographic origin and the domestication times of O. sativa in China are still under debate. To settle these disputes, six chloroplast loci and four mitochondrial loci were selected to examine the relationships between 50 accessions of Asian cultivated rice and 119 accessions of common wild rice from China based on DNA sequence analysis in the present study. The results indicated that Southern China is the genetic diversity center of O. rufipogon and it might be the primary domestication region of O. sativa. Molecular dating suggested that the two subspecies had diverged 0.1 million years ago, much earlier than the beginning of rice domestication. Genetic differentiations and phylogeography analyses indicated that indica was domesticated from tropical O. rufipogon while japonica was domesticated from O. rufipogon which located in higher latitude. These results provided molecular evidences for the hypotheses of (i) Southern China is the origin center of O. sativa in China and (ii) the two subspecies of O. sativa were domesticated multiple times.
Heuristic Kalman Algorithm for Solving Optimization Problems

The main objective of this paper is to present a new optimization approach, which we call heuristic Kalman algorithm (HKA). We propose it as a viable approach for solving continuous nonconvex optimization problems. The principle of the proposed approach is to consider explicitly the optimization problem as a measurement process designed to produce an estimate of the optimum. A specific procedure, based on the Kalman method, was developed to improve the quality of the estimate obtained through the measurement process. The efficiency of HKA is evaluated in detail through several nonconvex test problems, both in the unconstrained and constrained cases. The results are then compared to those obtained via other metaheuristics. These various numerical experiments show that the HKA has very interesting potentialities for solving nonconvex optimization problems, notably concerning the computation time and the success ratio.