Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Apelin/APJ signaling system: a potential link between adipose tissue and endothelial angiogenic processes

Adipose tissue is an active endocrine organ that produces a variety of secretory factors involved in the initiation of angiogenic processes. The bioactive peptide apelin is the endogenous ligand of the G protein‐coupled receptor, APJ. Here we investi gated the potential role of apelin and its receptor, APJ, in the angiogenic responses of human endothelial cells and the development of a functional vascular network in a model of adipose tissue development in mice. Treatment of human umbilical vein endothelial cells with apelin dose‐dependently increased angiogenic re sponses, including endothelial cell migration, prolifer ation, and Matrigel® capillary tubelike structure forma tion. These endothelial effects of apelin were due to activation of APJ, because siRNA directed against APJ, which led to long‐lasting down‐regulation of APJ mRNA, abolished cell migration induced by apelin in contrast to control nonsilencing siRNA. Hypoxia upregulated the expression of apelin in 3T3F442A adipo cytes, and we therefore determined whether apelin could play a role in adipose tissue angiogenesis in vivo. Epididymal white adipose tissue (EWAT) transplanta tion was performed as a model of adipose tissue angiogenesis. Transplantation led to increased apelin mRNA levels 2 and 5 days after transplantation associ ated with tissue hypoxia, as evidenced by hydroxyprobe staining on tissue sections. Graft revascularization evolved in parallel, as the first functional vessels in EWAT grafts were observed 2 days after transplantation and a strong angiogenic response was apparent on day 14. This was confirmed by determination of graft hemoglobin levels, which are indicative of functional vascularization and were strongly increased 5 and 14 days after transplantation. The role of apelin in the graft neovascularization was then assessed by local delivery of stable complex apelin‐targeting siRNA lead ing to dramatically reduced apelin mRNA levels and vascularization (quantified by hemogloblin content) in grafted EWAT on day 5 when compared with control siRNA. Taken together, our data provide the first evidence that apelin/APJ signaling pathways play a critical role in the development of the functional vascular network in adipose tissue. In addition, we have shown that adipocyte‐derived apelin can be up‐regu lated by hypoxia. These findings provide novel insights into the complex relationship between adipose tissue and endothelial vascular function and may lead to new therapeutic strategies to modulate angiogenesis. — Kunduzova, O. , Alet, N. , Delesque‐Touchard, N. , Millet, L. , Castan‐Laurell, I. , Muller, C. , Dray, C. , Schaeffer, P., Herault, J. P., Savi, P., Bono, F. , Valet, P. Apelin/APJ signaling system: a potential link between adipose tissue and endothelial angiogenic processes. FASEB J. 22, 4146–4153 (2008)
Inside insider trading: Patterns & discoveries from a large scale exploratory analysis

How do company insiders trade? Do their trading behaviors differ based on their roles (e.g., CEO vs. CFO)? Do those behaviors change over time (e.g., impacted by the 2008 market crash)? Can we identify insiders who have similar trading behaviors? And what does that tell us? This work presents the first academic, large-scale exploratory study of insider filings and related data, based on the complete Form 4 fillings from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We analyzed 12 million transactions by 370 thousand insiders spanning 1986 to 2012, the largest reported in academia. We explore the temporal and network-centric aspects of the trading behaviors of insiders, and make surprising and counter-intuitive discoveries. We study how the trading behaviors of insiders differ based on their roles in their companies, the transaction types, the company sectors, and their relationships with other insiders. Our work raises exciting research questions and opens up many opportunities for future studies. Most importantly, we believe our work could form the basis of novel tools for financial regulators and policymakers to detect illegal insider trading, help them understand the dynamics of the trades and enable them to adapt their detection strategies towards these dynamics.
Brain and cognition

A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself. Graphical abstract Although a graphical abstract is optional, its use is encouraged as it draws more attention to the online article. The graphical abstract should summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Image size: Please provide an image with a minimum of 531 × 1328 pixels (h × w) or proportionally more. The image should be readable at a size of 5 × 13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi. Preferred file types: TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files. You can view Example Graphical Abstracts on our information site. Authors can make use of Elsevier's Illustration Services to ensure the best presentation of their images and in accordance with all technical requirements. Highlights Highlights are mandatory for this journal. They consist of a short collection of bullet points that convey the core findings of the article and should be submitted in a separate editable file in the online submission system. Please use 'Highlights' in the file name and include 3 to 5 bullet points (maximum 85 characters, including spaces, per bullet point). You can view example Highlights on our information site.
Nurses’ experiences of the hospitalisation of their own children for acute illnesses

Background: The hospitalisation of a child is a stressful event for parents. Parents who are also nurses may face additional challenges not encountered by other parents; yet, scant attention has been given to this issue in the literature. Aim: To explore the experiences of Nurse-Parents whose children were hospitalised for acute illnesses. Methods/Design: Using a case-study design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six registered nurses and thematically analysed. Results/Findings: Nurse-Parents experienced significant conflicts between their parental role and nurse persona as they were ‘torn between dual roles’. Nurse-Parents' specialised knowledge prompted them to elevate the care their child needed, leading to increased stress and anxiety as they struggled to balance these roles. Conclusion: Nurse-Parents want and need a different type of input into their children's care than non-nurse-parents. An increased awareness among healthcare professionals is the first step to ensuring that effective and individualised support is provided to Nurse-Parents.
New 2017 American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology guideline for hypertension in the adults: major paradigm shifts, but will they help to fight against the hypertension disease burden?

Publication of a new guideline for the prevention, diagnosis and management of hypertension always generates huge interest among general physicians as well as hypertension specialists. In the last 10 years, American and European hypertension guidelines have become increasingly congruent on almost all aspects, including the definition of hypertension stages, therapeutic targets and therapeutic strategies to achieve blood pressure (BP) goals. This was a major advance as physicians and scientists used the same taxonomy and references to handle their patients with hypertension. At the last meeting of the American Heart Association (AHA) in November, the new 2017 High Blood Pressure Clinical Practice Guidelines produced by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the AHA in collaboration with many other societies were presented [1]. These recommendations provide major conceptual changes when compared to all previously published guidelines, including JNC7 [2], the 2014 JNC8 committee report [3] and the 2013 European Society of Hypertension(ESH)/European Society of Cardiology (ESC) hypertension guidelines [4]. It is beyond the scope of this editorial to discuss all the differences between the 2017 AHA/ACC guideline and previous ones. However, a few important paradigm shifts deserve comments. These include: (1) the new definition of hypertension, which affects the prevalence of hypertension and its various phenotypes in the population, (2) the lower BP thresholds to start treating hypertension with drugs in high cardiovascular risk patients and (3) the lower BP goals for treated hypertensive patients.
Leaf anatomical properties in relation to differences in mesophyll conductance to CO(2) and photosynthesis in two related Mediterranean Abies species.

Abies alba and Abies pinsapo are closely related species with the same ribulose 1·5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) large subunit (rbcL) but contrasting hydraulic traits and mesophyll structure occurring in the Iberian Peninsula under contrasting conditions. As photosynthesis and hydraulic capacities often co-scale, we hypothesize that these species differ in mesophyll conductance to CO(2) (g(m) ). g(m) and key anatomical traits were measured in both species. Drought-adapted population of A. pinsapo has higher photosynthesis than the more mesic population of A. alba, in agreement with its higher hydraulic capacity. However, A. alba exhibits the largest stomatal conductance (g(s) ), and so water use efficiency (WUE) is much higher in A. pinsapo. The differences in photosynthesis were explained by differences in g(m) , indicating a correlation between hydraulic capacity and g(m) . We report a case where g(m) is the main factor limiting photosynthesis in one species (A. alba) when compared with the other one (A. pinsapo). The results also highlight the discrepancy between g(m) estimates based on anatomical measurements and those based on gas exchange methods, probably due to the very large resistance exerted by cell walls and the stroma in both species. Thus, the cell wall and chloroplast properties in relation to CO(2) diffusion constitute a near-future research priority.
Sympathetic Function During Whole‐Body Cooling is Altered in Hypertensive Adults

Acute cold exposure activates the sympathetic nervous system and elicits a robust systemic pressor response. In hypertensive adults (HTN), cardiovascular‐related morbidity and mortality peak during cold winter months; however, the mechanisms underlying this association are not well defined. We hypothesized that whole‐body cold stress would evoke exaggerated increases in muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) and blood pressure (BP) in HTN compared to normotensive adults (NTN). MSNA (peroneal microneurography), beat‐to‐beat BP (Finometer), and heart rate (HR; ECG) were measured continuously in 10 NTN (6 M/4 W; age 53±3 yrs; resting BP 125±3/79±1 mmHg) and 10 HTN (5 M/5 W; age 57±2 yrs; resting BP 149±6/88±3 mmHg) during whole‐body cooling‐induced reductions in mean skin temperature (Tsk; water‐perfused suit) from 34.0 to 30.5°C. MSNA at 34.0°C was not different between groups (NTN: 51±4 v. HTN: 54±5 bursts· (100 heartbeats)−1; P=0.71). During cooling, the increase in MSNA was exaggerated in HTN (NTN: Δ = 8±3, HTN: Δ = 19±3 bursts· (100 heartbeats)−1; P=0.02). The cooling‐induced increases in both systolic BP (NTN: 9±3, HTN: 19±3 mmHg; P=0.03) and mean arterial pressure (NTN: 6±2, HTN: 10±2 mmHg; P=0.08) were greater in HTN. The HR response to cooling was not different between groups (P=0.16). The slope of the relation between MSNA burst incidence and diastolic BP did not change during cold stress in NTN (Tsk = 34.0°C: ‐4.0±0.7 v. Tsk = 30.5°C: ‐5.0±0.3 bursts· (100 heartbeats)−1·mmHg−1; P=0.17) but increased in HTN (Tsk = 34.0°C: ‐2.9±0.5, Tsk = 30.5°C: ‐5.0±0.4 bursts· (100 heartbeats)−1·mmHg−1; P=0.04). These data demonstrate that the whole‐body cooling‐induced increases in MSNA and BP are augmented in HTN. Further, sympathetic baroreflex sensitivity increases during cooling in HTN, but not NTN, presumably to allow for baroreflex‐mediated buffering of excessive cooling‐induced increases in BP. Collectively, these findings suggest that sympathetic function during cold stress is altered in human hypertension, likely contributing to increased cold‐associated cardiovascular risk.
Fault-Tolerant Control of Multiarea Power Systems via a Sliding-Mode Observer Technique

This paper is focused on solving the problems of fault estimation and fault-tolerant control for multiarea power systems with sensor failures. First, the estimations of the system states and fault vectors are determined using an improved sliding-mode observer technique. Moreover, a derivative gain and a proportional gain are introduced to design the resultant sliding-mode observer more freely, and a discontinuous input is given to reduce the impact of sensor faults and aggregated uncertainties. Then, based on the obtained state estimates, an integral-type sliding-mode control scheme against faults and disturbances is proposed to ensure that the resultant fault system is asymptotically stable, from which each subsystem states in the multiarea power system can be driven onto the designed sliding-mode surfaces in both the state estimation and error estimation spaces. Finally, a three-area power system is simulated to validate the feasibility of the developed fault-tolerant control scheme.
CHEX: statically vetting Android apps for component hijacking vulnerabilities

An enormous number of apps have been developed for Android in recent years, making it one of the most popular mobile operating systems. However, the quality of the booming apps can be a concern [4]. Poorly engineered apps may contain security vulnerabilities that can severally undermine users' security and privacy. In this paper, we study a general category of vulnerabilities found in Android apps, namely the component hijacking vulnerabilities. Several types of previously reported app vulnerabilities, such as permission leakage, unauthorized data access, intent spoofing, and etc., belong to this category. We propose CHEX, a static analysis method to automatically vet Android apps for component hijacking vulnerabilities. Modeling these vulnerabilities from a data-flow analysis perspective, CHEX analyzes Android apps and detects possible hijack-enabling flows by conducting low-overhead reachability tests on customized system dependence graphs. To tackle analysis challenges imposed by Android's special programming paradigm, we employ a novel technique to discover component entry points in their completeness and introduce app splitting to model the asynchronous executions of multiple entry points in an app. We prototyped CHEX based on Dalysis, a generic static analysis framework that we built to support many types of analysis on Android app bytecode. We evaluated CHEX with 5,486 real Android apps and found 254 potential component hijacking vulnerabilities. The median execution time of CHEX on an app is 37.02 seconds, which is fast enough to be used in very high volume app vetting and testing scenarios.
Handling cold-start scenarios in point-of-interest recommendations through crowdsourcing

Point-of-Interest (POI) recommender systems are used to suggest places or venues for a target user based on her preferences. The traditional recommender systems utilise the historical data to learn user preferences and then select places that relate to them. Therefore, knowledge of the features of a POI is important along with the preferences of the target users for a traditional recommender system. This technique faces a serious problem when a new POI emerges in a city. A 'new' POI has no historical data and hence a recommender system fails to learn about its features. This results in absence of the 'new' POIs in the recommended list. Such a scenario is popularly known as the POI cold-start scenario. Online social networks such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, Foursquare, etc. that provide POI recommendations as a service mostly face this particular problem. To address this issue, the proposed work gathers content on the cold-start POIs by crowdsourcing other online social networks and subsequently the dominating features at POIs are identified from the collected review and rating data. These features are utilized to address the cold-start problem. Finally, we develop a POI recommender system that can handle the POI cold-start scenario. We experimented on the real-world data provided by Yelp and the results are found to be significantly better than the state-of-art techniques in handling cold-start scenarios.
Value-Suppressing Uncertainty Palettes

Understanding uncertainty is critical for many analytical tasks. One common approach is to encode data values and uncertainty values independently, using two visual variables. These resulting bivariate maps can be difficult to interpret, and interference between visual channels can reduce the discriminability of marks. To address this issue, we contribute Value-Suppressing Uncertainty Palettes (VSUPs). VSUPs allocate larger ranges of a visual channel to data when uncertainty is low, and smaller ranges when uncertainty is high. This non-uniform budgeting of the visual channels makes more economical use of the limited visual encoding space when uncertainty is low, and encourages more cautious decision-making when uncertainty is high. We demonstrate several examples of VSUPs, and present a crowdsourced evaluation showing that, compared to traditional bivariate maps, VSUPs encourage people to more heavily weight uncertainty information in decision-making tasks.
Genome sequencing and comparative analysis of three hypermucoviscous Klebsiella pneumoniae strains isolated in Russia

The prevalence and characteristics of hypermucoviscous (HV) strains among Klebsiella pneumoniae isolated in Russian hospitals were investigated. The HV strains accounted for 11% of the K. pneumoniae isolates collected in the period from 2011 to 2016, and were characterized as belonging to the K1, K2, K20 and K57 serotypes. Whole genome sequences (WGSs) of K. pneumoniae HV clinical strains KPi261 (SCPM-O-B-7850) and KPB4010 (SCPM-O-B-7846) belonging to the K1 and K2 capsular types, as well as WGSs of K. pneumoniae strain KPM9 (SCPM-O-B-7749) of the K20 capsular type isolated from freshwater, were completed. The final draft genome sequences of KPi261, KPB4010 and KPM9 strains consisted of 5 719 189, 5 431 785 and 5 427 926 bp with 57.0, 57.1 and 57.4% GC content, respectively. The chromosomal and plasmid genes associated with K. pneumoniae virulence including the capsular polysaccharide synthesis gene cluster, mucoid phenotype regulator rmpA and transcriptional activator rmpA2, the all operon associated with allantoin metabolism, the kfu operon involved in iron uptake, the aerobactin-producing system iucABCDiutA, and the iron-transport systems iroBCDN and fecIRA were detected.
A dynamic contract mechanism for risk-sharing management on interdependent electric power and gas supply networks

This paper considers interdependent electric power and gas supply networks and investigates a dynamic contract mechanism between risk-averse prosumers and a risk-neutral aggregator. The aggregator tries to manage not only financial risks but also power energy and gas energy generated by the prosumers in the presence of uncertain and volatile risk of energy generation processes. The aggregator will determine an incentive condition required of the prosumers so as to indirectly control their actions preferable for the aggregator. We first formulate a novel dynamic contract problem, where each prosumer minimizes an exponential-type cost functional with risk aversion under energy dynamical systems. The problem is regarded as a principal-agent problem in contract theory and the prosumers' optimization problem can be reduced to a Linear Exponential Quadratic Gaussian dynamic game problem. Most part of the solution to the problem considered here can be obtained analytically, while we need to employ a numerical optimization technique to determine the aggregator's action. The effectiveness of the risk-sharing between aggregator and prosumers induced by the proposed mechanism is demonstrated through a simulation.
Glycoproteins and Polysaccharides are the Main Class of Active Constituents Required for Lymphocyte Stimulation and Antigen-Specific Immune Response Induction by Traditional Medicinal Herbal Plants.

Traditional herbal remedies stimulate and modulate the immune system, and it is thought that their glycoproteins and polysaccharides are responsible for this activity. We prepared crude water, protein, and polysaccharide extracts from Atractylodes macrocephala Koidz, Helianthus annuus L. , Scutellaria barbata D. Don, and Hedyotis diffusa Willd, respectively, and compared their immune-stimulating activities in vitro and in vivo. All protein and polysaccharide samples of the plants led to greater lymphocyte proliferation and TNF-α and IL-6 production in cultured splenocytes than did the crude water extracts at the same concentrations tested. In addition, the protein and polysaccharide samples did not contain lectin- or lipopolysaccharide-like molecules, so glycoproteins were deduced to be responsible for the lymphocyte stimulation. Oral administration with each of the samples enhanced the hen egg-white lysozyme (HEL)-specific humoral immune and lymphocyte proliferative responses in HEL low-responder C57BL/6 mice. Splenocytes from the mice fed the samples showed significantly greater increases in the level of IFN-γ, but not IL-4, after stimulation with HEL compared with that from the untreated control. However, higher increases in HEL-specific IgG1, IgG2b, and IgG3 rather than IgG2a were found in the mice fed the samples. These results indicate that the sample-mediated enhancement of anti-HEL-specific humoral immune responses was due to the stimulation of B lymphocytes rather than a selective priming of helper T cell populations. Collectively, we suggest that glycoproteins and/or polysaccharides of traditional herbal remedies enhance cellular and humoral immune response induction and thus could be useful for patients who need enhanced immune function.