Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Proteomic study of neuron and astrocyte cultures from senescence‐accelerated mouse SAMP8 reveals degenerative changes

Senescence‐accelerated prone (SAMP) strain 8 mice suffer an earlier development of cognitive age‐related pathologies and a shorter life span than conventional mice. Protein alterations in astrocytes, in addition to those in neurons, may contribute to neurodegenerative damage. We applied proteomics techniques to study cell‐specific early markers of brain aging‐related degeneration in SAMP8. The two‐dimensional protein expression patterns of the SAMP8 neuron and astrocyte cultures were compared with those obtained from senescence‐accelerated resistant mouse strain 1 cultures. Differentially expressed spots were identified by matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization–time of flight peptide map fingerprinting and database search. Proteins belonged to cell pathways of energy metabolism, biosynthesis, cell transduction and signaling, stress response, and the maintenance of cytoskeletal functions. Most of the changes were cell type specific. However, there was a general increase in cell transduction, signaling, and stress‐related proteins and a decrease in cytoskeletal proteins. In addition, neurons showed an increased expression of proteins involved in biosynthetic pathways. A number of the protein alterations have been previously reported in the brain tissue proteome of SAMP8, aged brain or Alzheimer’s disease brain. Alterations in neuron and astrocyte proteoma indicated that both cell types are involved in the brain degenerative changes of SAMP8 mice. However, network analysis suggests that neuronal changes are more complex and have a greater influence.
Discriminative stimulus properties of the benzodiazepine receptor partial agonist β‐carbolines abecarnil and ZK 95962: a comparison with chlordiazepoxide

Separate groups of rats were trained to discriminate one of three benzodiazepine receptor ligands from vehicle. The three ligands used, the benzodiazepine chlordiazepoxide, and the β-carboline partial agonists ZK 95962 and abecarnil, have been reported to have different agonistic profiles. All three ligands formed specific benzodiazepine-receptor mediated discriminative stimuli antagonizable by at least one benzodiazepine antagonist. Different patterns of generalization were observed for each cue. As reported previously full and partial agonists substituted for chlordiazepoxide, whereas generalization to ZK 95962 was obtained more readily with partial agonists and antagonists with weak partial agonist activity. In contrast to the other two cues, the abecarnil discriminative stimulus was difficult to train and was unstable over time. Additionally, the abecarnil cue showed commonalities only with sedative or BZI receptor agonists. These results demonstrate qualitative differences between different benzodiazepine receptor ligands dependent on the intrinsic activity of the compound used.
An experimental test of behavior under team production

This study reports experiments that examine behavior under team production and a piece rate. In the experiments, participants complete a forecasting task and are rewarded based on the accuracy of their forecasts. In the piece-rate condition, participants are paid based on their own performance, whereas the team‐production condition rewards participants based on the average performance of the team. Overall, there is no statistically significant difference in performance between the conditions. However, this result masks important differences in the behavior of men and women across the conditions. Men in the team‐production condition increase their performance relative to men in the piece‐rate condition. However, this gap in male performances across conditions diminishes over the course of the experiment. In contrast, women in the team‐production condition show significantly lower performance than the women in the piece rate. As a consequence of these differences, men in the team‐production condition show significantly better performance than women in the team‐production condition. We also find evidence that men show stronger performance when they are in teams with a larger variation in skill level. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Evolution of brain region volumes during artificial selection for relative brain size

The vertebrate brain shows an extremely conserved layout across taxa. Still, the relative sizes of separate brain regions vary markedly between species. One interesting pattern is that larger brains seem associated with increased relative sizes only of certain brain regions, for instance telencephalon and cerebellum. Till now, the evolutionary association between separate brain regions and overall brain size is based on comparative evidence and remains experimentally untested. Here, we test the evolutionary response of brain regions to directional selection on brain size in guppies (Poecilia reticulata) selected for large and small relative brain size. In these animals, artificial selection led to a fast response in relative brain size, while body size remained unchanged. We use microcomputer tomography to investigate how the volumes of 11 main brain regions respond to selection for larger versus smaller brains. We found no differences in relative brain region volumes between large‐ and small‐brained animals and only minor sex‐specific variation. Also, selection did not change allometric scaling between brain and brain region sizes. Our results suggest that brain regions respond similarly to strong directional selection on relative brain size, which indicates that brain anatomy variation in contemporary species most likely stem from direct selection on key regions.
Learning Visual Attributes

We present a probabilistic generative model of visual attributes, together with an efficient learning algorithm. Attributes are visual qualities of objects, such as 'red', 'striped', or 'spotted'. The model sees attributes as patterns of image segments, repeatedly sharing some characteristic properties. These can be any combination of appearance, shape, or the layout of segments within the pattern. Moreover, attributes with general appearance are taken into account, such as the pattern of alternation of any two colors which is characteristic for stripes. To enable learning from unsegmented training images, the model is learnt discriminatively, by optimizing a likelihood ratio. As demonstrated in the experimental evaluation, our model can learn in a weakly supervised setting and encompasses a broad range of attributes. We show that attributes can be learnt starting from a text query to Google image search, and can then be used to recognize the attribute and determine its spatial extent in novel real-world images.
Dopamine, Working Memory, and Training Induced Plasticity: Implications for Developmental Research Dopamine and Working Memory Evidence from Primates

Cognitive deficits and particularly deficits in working memory (WM) capacity are common features in neuropsychiatric disorders. Understanding the underlying mechanisms through which WM capacity can be improved is therefore of great importance. Several lines of research indicate that dopamine plays an important role not only in WM function but also for improving WM capacity. For example, pharmacological interventions acting on the dopaminergic system, such as methylpheni-date, improve WM performance. In addition, behavioral interventions for improving WM performance in the form of intensive computerized training have recently been associated with changes in dopamine receptor density. These two different means of improving WM performance— pharmacological and behavioral—are thus associated with similar biological mechanisms in the brain involving dopaminergic systems. This article reviews some of the evidence for the role of dopamine in WM functioning, in particular concerning the link to WM development and cognitive plasticity. Novel data are presented showing that variation in the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1) influences improvements in WM and fluid intelligence in preschool-age children following cognitive training. Our results emphasize the importance of the role of dopamine in determining cognitive plasticity. Working memory (WM) is the ability to manipulate and keep task relevant information in mind for a short period of time. This is important for reasoning, which typically involves several steps of planning and execution. WM deficits are commonly observed in several neuropsychiatric disorders occurring during development, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Castella-nos & Tannock, 2002; Martinussen, Hayden, Hogg-Johnson, & Tannock, 2005). WM capacity is also strongly associated with general intellectual ability and is a predictor for later academic The link between WM and dopamine has been investigated at a cellular level by studying neurons exhibiting memory fields in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of monkeys. These neurons are believed to be the cellular basis for visuospatial WM as they are specifically active in response to distinct spatial locations of a stimulus and are also active during the delay period between stimulus presentation and response. Dopamine D1 receptor antagonists enhance the response of these neurons (Williams & Goldman-Rakic, 1995). This effect seems restricted to the D1 receptor, as no effect of a D2 agonist was observed in the same study. Effects were also dose dependent and specific to the neurons displaying memory field properties. D1 receptor stimulation can also lead to long-term improvements in WM performance, as observed in rhesus monkeys with either age-related (Castner & Goldman-Rakic, 2004) …
Student debt and its relation to student mental health

The present paper provides an analysis of the relationship between attitudes toward debt and mental health among university undergraduates. Data were collected from the same cohort of students across their three years of university, with responses from 2146, 1360 and 1391 first, second and third year students, respectively. Mental health was measured using the General Population version of the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (GP-CORE). Attitudes toward debt were measured using items that tapped current financial concerns and worry about debt on leaving university. Results showed that students become more concerned about their finances as they progress through university, that there was no relationship between anticipated debt and mental health and that attitudes toward debt were related to mental health levels. Students who were identified as having high financial concerns possessed significantly worse CORE-GP scores than students with low financial concern in all three years of university. In all three years students with high financial concerns felt more ‘tense, anxious or nervous’, more ‘criticised by other people’ and found it more ‘difficult getting to sleep or staying asleep’ than students with low financial concerns. There was also evidence that students with high worry about their debt anticipated leaving university with higher amounts of debt than low debt worry students. These findings are discussed in relation to the pattern of increased student debt in UK higher education.
Unraveling BitTorrent's File Unavailability: Measurements, Analysis and Solution Exploration

BitTorrent suffers from one fundamental problem: the long-term availability of content. This occurs on a massive-scale with 38% of torrents becoming unavailable within the first month. In this paper we explore this problem by performing two large-scale measurement studies including 46K torrents and 29M users. The studies go significantly beyond any previous work by combining per-node, per-torrent and system-wide observations to ascertain the causes, characteristics and repercussions of file unavailability. The study confirms the conclusion from previous works that seeders have a significant impact on both performance and availability. However, we also present some crucial new findings: (i) the presence of seeders is not the sole factor involved in file availability, (ii) 23.5% of nodes that operate in seedless torrents can finish their downloads, and (iii) BitTorrent availability is discontinuous, operating in cycles of temporary unavailability. Due to our new findings, we consider it is important to revisit the solution space; to this end, we perform large-scale trace-based simulations to explore the potential of two abstract approaches.
Do Team Sports Matter for Black Males?

Abstract The purpose of this study is to explore Black males’ participation in team and individual sports at the high school level and the differential direct, indirect, and total effects on their college attendance using a large, nationally representative, longitudinal database (ELS: 2002). Previous studies (e.g. ; ) have claimed that the type of sport makes a significant difference in student outcomes such as social adjustment and social self-efficacy. While such outcomes may indirectly affect the college attendance behaviors of participants, it was not the goal of such studies to make such connections. This study, however, endeavors to make explicit the effect, if any, that the type of sport has on college attendance within the context of previously noted antecedents (e.g. socioeconomic status, academic achievement, and student educational expectations) to educational attainment. Two different hypotheses have emerged from the literature with regard to sports participation in general: 1) Sport-impedes-mobility and 2) Sport-enhances-mobility ().
Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis of Bone in Children and Adolescents

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the orthopaedic aspects of Langerhans cell histiocytosis and to assess the outcome after treatment. Fifty-six patients with Langerhans cell histiocytosis involving the bone were retrospectively studied. Three groups were identified with regard to the type of bone involvement. Group I patients (n = 26) had a solitary bone lesion, with no systemic involvement. No treatment was given in 22 patients and curettage was done in 4 patients. At last follow-up, complete or partial healing was observed in 25 patients. Group II patients (n = 13) had multiple bone lesions, with no systemic involvement. Clinical and radiographic pictures as well as the outcome after treatment were similar to those in group I. Group III patients (n = 17) had bone and systemic involvement. Chemotherapy was used in all group III patients, with adjuvant radiotherapy in seven patients. Recurrence or new lesions were observed in 11 patients. Complications of treatment were observed in 14 patients. Lesions in group I and II patients had a considerable potential for spontaneous healing. Group III patients had the worst prognosis. Current chemotherapy protocols have a high morbidity and produce a variable response.
Au-nanoarray by nanosphere lithography sensors for Staphylococcus aureus 16S rRNA

Nanopatterning of Au-nanoarray on an indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode using efficient and low-cost nanospheres lithography (NSL) is reported. Convective self-assembly of 500 nm polystyrene (PS) nanobeads was found to effectively provide a well-ordered monolayer template for Au deposition with the coverage of about 90% on ITO. A simple Au-nanoparticles (AuNPs) spin coating was performed. It is observed that AuNPs immobilized by spin-coating techniques tends to follow the contour of the spherical nanobeads instead of filling the gaps within them, therefore, a distinguished hexagonal ring of Au-nanoarray was generated after nanobeads etching. As used for electrochemical sensor of Staphyloccocus aureus 16S rRNA hybridization detection, this substrate resulted high effective surface area which subsequently gave an excellent limitation of detection (LOD) of 10 pM target DNA. Overall, we have demonstrated an integration of NSL and AuNPs spin-coating for a uniform and high troughput substrate fabrication for electrochemical biosensor development.
Symptomatic Dry Eye Treatment with Autologous Platelet-Rich Plasma

Background: Autologous platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been proven to be very effective on tissue regeneration and wound healing. Here we investigate the potential use of PRP in the treatment of symptomatic dry eye. Methods: Eighteen consecutive patients with symptomatic dry eye were treated with topical PRP and followed up for 1 month. Disappearance of subjective symptoms, increase in best corrected visual acuity, tear meniscus, tear breakup time, decrease in inflammation, fluorescein staining and improvement in impression cytology were measured. Results: Symptoms improved significantly in 89% of the patients, 28% improved at least 1 line of best corrected visual acuity. A significant improvement on lachrymal meniscus and conjunctival hyperemia and a decrease or disappearance of corneal fluorescein staining were observed. Impression cytology revealed a significant increase in conjunctival goblet cells. Conclusion: Treatment of patients suffering from significant dry eye symptoms with autologous RPR proved to be very effective, improving both patient symptoms and major clinical signs.
Blocking as a Retrieval Failure: Reactivation of Associations to a Blocked Stimulus

Conditioned lick suppression in rats was used to examine the effectiveness of three different “reminder” treatments in reactivating associations to a blocked stimulus in a Kamin blocking paradigm. Experiment I indicated that with our parameters prior tone-footshock pairings could block manifestation of a light-footshock association that would otherwise be evident following pairings of a light-tone compound stimulus with footshock. In Experiment II, exposure to either the US, the blocked stimulus (light), or the apparatus cues between the compound conditioning trials and testing decreased blocking. Experiments III(a) and III(b) replicated the unblocking effects seen in Experiment II and included control groups that received the identical training and reminder treatments except for the omission of the light from the compound stimulus. These latter animals failed to display behaviour comparable to the blocked and reminded subjects, thereby establishing the associative basis of suppression to the light in the animals reminded following treatment known to produce blocking. Experiment IV also replicated the results of Experiment II and included control groups that received identical light-tone compound trials and reminder treatments without prior conditioning to the tone alone. In these control groups, reminder treatments tended to disrupt rather than increase evidence of conditioning to the light. The results suggest that associations are formed to the added element of a compound despite prior conditioning to the initial element, and that failure on the test trial to retrieve these associations to the blocked CS, rather than a failure to attend to or learn about the added element, is at least in part responsible the Kamin blocking effect.
A review of methodological strategies for consulting children with special educational needs in physical education

Children have the right to be consulted regarding their life choices and experiences. This has been examined in a plethora of research specific to the education of children. However, methods for engaging children with special educational needs (SEN) in research have met with mixed results. This paper explores a range of methodological strategies for consulting children with SEN about their experiences of and accessibility to physical education (PE). Based on a review of the methodological strategies, the paper concludes with proposed guidelines for including and empowering children with SEN to participate in PE research, have their voices heard and ensure teachers and schools respond effectively to their views.
The radial structure of galaxy groups and clusters

ABSTRACT Simple self-consistent models of galaxy groups and clusters are tested against the re-sults of high-resolutionadiabatic gasdynamicalsimulations. We investigate two modelsbased on the existence of a ’universal’ dark matter density proﬁle and two versionsof the beta-model. The mass distribution of relaxed clusters can be ﬁtted by phe-nomenological formulae proposed in the literature. Haloes that have experienced arecent merging event are systematically less concentrated and show steeper proﬁlesthan relaxed objects near the centre. The hot X-ray emitting gas is found to be inapproximate hydrostatic equilibrium with the dark matter potential, and it is welldescribed by a polytropic equation of state. Analytic formulae for the gas densityand temperature can be derived from these premises. Though able to reproduce theX-ray surface brightness, the beta-model is shown to provide a poor description ofour numerical clusters. We ﬁnd strong evidence of a ’universal’ temperature proﬁlethat decreases by a factor of 2 − 3 from the centre to the virial radius. We claimthat the spherically-averaged proﬁles of all physical properties of galaxy groups andclusters can be ﬁtted with only two free parameters. Numerical resolution and entropyconservation play a key role in the shapes of the simulated proﬁles at small radii.Key words: galaxies: clusters: general — cosmology: theory — methods: N-bodysimulations
Identity and social conduct in a transient multilingual setting

Abstract This article focuses on the question of how systems of expectations for social conduct develop in a context characterized by diversity and transience. The empirical focus is a series of women's neighborhood meetings in a transient urban milieu in Indonesia. Drawing on work on semiotic register formation, I argue that expectations for social conduct within this neighborhood are constructed through the positioning of self and others in talk across speech situations. In doing so, I explore interdiscursive relationships between this conversational activity and more perduring signs of personhood and social relations. (Enregisterment, identity, Indonesia, migration, trust)*
Mothers' Sensitivity and Book-reading Interactions with First Graders

Research Findings: This study expands on previous research (Bus & van Ijzendoorn, 1988, 1992, 1997) establishing an association between the quality of mother–child interactions and reading behavior during a joint book-reading task. In a sample of 58 mother–child pairs, the quality of the relationship between mothers and their children at 36 months old predicted the amount and quality of literacy information shared during a joint book-reading task in 1st grade. Other variables related to reading behavior were also examined but were found to be less predictive than maternal sensitive responding. Practice or Policy: Learning to read is a complex social phenomenon that involves more than the mastery of isolated academic skills. This study supports the idea that early literacy emerges in part from a relational system involving caregiver–child interactions that have properties not directly involving print. The importance of examining the quality of the relationships between caregivers and their children when supporting reading-related pursuits is discussed.
Aqueous Extracts of Some Medicinal Plants are as Toxic as Lmidacloprid to the Sweet Potato Whitefly, Bemisia tabaci

Abstract Aqueous extracts of nine plants, known to have medicinal activity, were tested for their toxicity against the sweet potato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci Genn. (Homoptera: Aleurodidae) compared to the toxicity of the insecticide, Imidacloprid. Extracts of Lepidiuim sativum L. (Brassicales: Brassicaceae) killed 71 % of early stage nymphs, which was not significantly different from mortality caused by Imidacloprid. Treatment of pupae with three plant extracts, L. sativum, Achillea biebersteinii L. (Asterales: Asteraceae), or Retama raetam (Forssk.) Webb and Berthel (Fabales: Fabaceae) prevented adult development, and treatment with R. raetam extract killed adults, at levels that were not significantly different from Imidacloprid. None of the other plants showed significant toxicity. However extracts of four plants, Pimpinella anisum L. (Apiales: Apiaceae), Galium longifolium (Sibth. and SM.) (Gentianales: Rubiaceae), R. raetam and Ballota undulata Bentham (Lamiales: Lamiaceae) had a repellent effect.