Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BLOOD FLOW RESTRICTED RESISTANCE TRAINING ATTENUATES MYOSTATIN GENE EXPRESSION IN A PATIENT WITH INCLUSION BODY MYOSITIS

Inclusion body myositis is a rare idiopathic inflammatory myopathy that produces extreme muscle weakness. Blood flow restricted resistance training has been shown to improve muscle strength and muscle hypertrophy in inclusion body myositis. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of a resistance training programme on the expression of genes related to myostatin (MSTN) signalling in one inclusion body myositis patient. Methods: A 65-year-old man with inclusion body myositis underwent blood flow restricted resistance training for 12 weeks. The gene expression of MSTN, follistatin, follistatin-like 3, activin II B receptor, SMAD-7, MyoD, FOXO-3, and MURF-2 was quantified. Results: After 12 weeks of training, a decrease (25%) in MSTN mRNA level was observed, whereas follistatin and follistatin-like 3 gene expression increased by 40% and 70%, respectively. SMAD-7 mRNA level was augmented (20%). FOXO-3 and MURF-2 gene expression increased by 40% and 20%, respectively. No change was observed in activin II B receptor or MyoD gene expression. Conclusions: Blood flow restricted resistance training attenuated MSTN gene expression and also increased expression of myostatin endogenous inhibitors. Blood flow restricted resistance training evoked changes in the expression of genes related to MSTN signalling pathway that could in part explain the muscle hypertrophy previously observed in a patient with inclusion body myositis.
Towards a software defined reference architecture for smart city ecosystems

With the convergence of information and telecommunication technologies, the vision of the `Smart City' is fast becoming a reality. City governments in a growing number of countries are capitalizing on these advances to ease the lives of their citizens and to increase efficiency and sustainability. In this position paper, we outline our vision for the creation of a reference architecture for Smart City projects, which could serve as the design language for creating smart cities blueprints. Such a blueprint would cater for diverse stakeholders, devices, platforms, and technologies. We argue that a new approach for designing such ultra large and ultra-heterogeneous ecosystems is needed. Hence, we propose a reference architecture inspired by several efforts in software engineering such as SOA. The proposed reference architecture would serve as a blueprint and starting point that contains architectural building blocks, best practices, and patterns; instead of starting from scratch. We present an initial meta-model with multiple views and highlight intra and inter views relationships. We survey the state of the art, outline our research approach, and suggest a research agenda for the smart city software community at large.
Species-specific antigens in salivary glands of phlebotomine sandflies

Saliva inoculated by sandfly females during feeding stimulated production of high levels of anti-saliva antibodies. To determine whether 3 species of the genus Phlebotomus have species-specific salivary antigens we performed dot-blots and immunoblots using sera from mice, hamsters and rabbits repeatedly bitten by sandflies. Important differences were found in the antigen components of the salivary gland lysates (SGL) of Phlebotomus papatasi, P. perniciosus and P. halepensis. In total 4–9 species-specific antigens were detected in each species by immunoblotting. Cross-reactivity was not detected between P. papatasi and the other species tested; in the SGL of P. papatasi sera from animals bitten by this species recognized 5–7 major antigens while sera from animals bitten by other species did not react. A weak cross-reaction was observed between P. perniciosus and P. halepensis; in SGL from P. perniciosus, the sera from rabbits and hamsters bitten by this species recognized about 8 intense bands while sera from animals bitten by P. halepensis reacted weakly with up to 4 saliva polypeptides.
In vitro somatic embryogenesis and adventitious root initiation have a common origin in eggplant (Solanum melongena L.)

Somatic embryogenesis was induced from cotyledon explants of eggplant cultured on MS medium supplemented with 54 µM NAA. Anatomical analysis of somatic embryo initiation and development was performed during the first four weeks. Proembryo formation was observed after the second day of culture, directly from perivascular cells or via pro-embryogenic masses derived from indeterminate meristematic masses (IMMs) originated in the vascular tissue. Those IMMs also gave rise to root primordia after 10 days of culture. The origin of embryos is discussed as well as the similarities between somatic embryogenesis and adventitious root formation.
Reciprocal Modulation of IK1–INa Extends Excitability in Cardiac Ventricular Cells

The inwardly rectifying potassium current (IK1) and the fast inward sodium current (INa) are reciprocally modulated in mammalian ventricular myocytes. An increase in the expression of channels responsible for one of these two currents results in a corresponding increase in expression of the other. These currents are critical in the propagation of action potentials (AP) during the normal functioning of the heart. This study identifies a physiological role for IK1–INa reciprocal modulation in ventricular fiber activation thresholds and conduction. Simulations of action potentials in single cells and propagating APs in cardiac fibers were carried out using an existing model of electrical activity in cardiac ventricular myocytes. The conductances, GK1, of the inwardly rectifying potassium current, and GNa, of the fast inward sodium current were modified independently and in tandem to simulate reciprocal modulation. In single cells, independent modulation of GK1 alone resulted in changes in activation thresholds that were qualitatively similar to those for reciprocal GK1–GNa modulation and unlike those due to independent modulation of GNa alone, indicating that GK1 determines the cellular activation threshold. On the other hand, the variations in conduction velocity in cardiac cell fibers were similar for independent GNa modulation and for tandem changes in GK1–GNa, suggesting that GNa is primarily responsible for setting tissue AP conduction velocity. Conduction velocity dependence on GK1–GNa is significantly affected by the intercellular gap junction conductance. While the effects on the passive fiber space constant due to changes in both GK1 and the intercellular gap junction conductance, Ggj, were in line with linear cable theory predictions, both conductances had surprisingly large effects on fiber activation thresholds. Independent modulation of GK1 rendered cardiac fibers inexcitable at higher levels of GK1 whereas tandem GK1–GNa changes allowed fibers to remain excitable at high GK1 values. Reciprocal modulation of the inwardly rectifying potassium current and the fast inward sodium current may have a functional role in allowing cardiac tissue to remain excitable when IK1 is upregulated.
Age of Majority, Transfer of Rights and Guardianship: Considerations for Families and Educators

Under IDEA, when youths reach the age of majority they become responsible for their educational program, unless they are determined to be incompetent. When considering student competence, the issue of guardianship is often raised. Guardianship is inconsistent with the recent emphasis on self-determination. This study examined guard ianship practices as they relate to young adults who have developmental disabilities. Review of 221 court files found that (a) disability label, limited ability to make decisions, and youth reaching the age of majority were main reasons why petitions were filed; (b) evidence used to "prove" incompetence was unclear; (c) ward's "conditions" remained constant following the guardian appointment; and (d) guardianship did not necessarily resolve the areas of concern. Guardianship is a complex issue in need of further investigation. Age of majority is the legal age, determined by relationship between an adult and a minor State law, when youths become adults who are child or an adult who has been determined by legally responsible for their choices and ac- the court to be either totally or partially inca tions. When a student reaches the age of ma- pacitated (Leary; Lisi, Burns, & Lussenden, jority, IDEA states that schools must provide 1994). Depending upon state statutes and ex the student and parent notice, one year be- tent of authority given to the guardian, an fore the student becomes legal, that all of the individual may lose many or all legal rights. educational rights afforded to the parents are Few studies address the guardianship pro
Fast and Scalable Range Query Processing With Strong Privacy Protection for Cloud Computing

Privacy has been the key road block to cloud computing as clouds may not be fully trusted. This paper is concerned with the problem of privacy-preserving range query processing on clouds. Prior schemes are weak in privacy protection as they cannot achieve index indistinguishability, and therefore allow the cloud to statistically estimate the values of data and queries using domain knowledge and history query results. In this paper, we propose the first range query processing scheme that achieves index indistinguishability under the indistinguishability against chosen keyword attack (IND-CKA). Our key idea is to organize indexing elements in a complete binary tree called PBtree, which satisfies structure indistinguishability (i.e., two sets of data items have the same PBtree structure if and only if the two sets have the same number of data items) and node indistinguishability (i.e., the values of PBtree nodes are completely random and have no statistical meaning). We prove that our scheme is secure under the widely adopted IND-CKA security model. We propose two algorithms, namely PBtree traversal width minimization and PBtree traversal depth minimization, to improve query processing efficiency. We prove that the worst-case complexity of our query processing algorithm using PBtree is O(|R|logn), where n is the total number of data items and R is the set of data items in the query result. We implemented and evaluated our scheme on a real-world dataset with 5 million items. For example, for a query whose results contain 10 data items, it takes only 0.17 ms.
Culture and Early Socio-Emotional Development

Introduction There are considerable individual differences in children’s early dispositional characteristics, such as how they react to challenging situations and their ability to regulate behavioral and emotional reactions. These early characteristics serve as a basis for socio-emotional development in childhood and adolescence. It has been found that early dispositional characteristics and socio-emotional functioning have an extensive and prolonged impact on social, school and psychological adjustment. In Western societies, for example, positive emotionality and sociability are predictive of peer acceptance, school achievement and psychological well-being. In contrast, defiance and aggression are associated with later peer rejection, school problems, and other adjustment problems. Finally, social anxiety and behavioral inhibition in infancy and early childhood may contribute to difficulties in peer relationships and adjustment problems of an internalizing nature such as loneliness and depression.
RECONSTRUCTION OF SAR WAVE IMAGE EFFECTS THROUGH PSEUDO RANDOM SIMULATION

The limited wavelength and the rapidly changing conditions due to short fetches and complex coastal shapes in enclosed seas pose a big challenge to the applications of satellite SAR data. In order improve the understanding of some aspects of image formation in such conditions, the authors are pursuing a long term work mainly based on numerical implementation of satellite SAR two-wavelength models of the sea surface. Numerical sea surface instantaneous height and velocity realizations are produced from given spectral shapes and the images are synthesized by taking into account the local surface tilt and orbital velocity. Different hypotheses are tested for the local scattering function, such Valenzuela's -like shapes. The work presented here is aimed in particular at clarifying the treatment of Doppler-induced effects such as velocity bunching; its role in identifying spectral characteristics is shown by making use of simple monochromatic wave fields and by taking into account the influence of resolution on the image formation. An example is also given of image spectral analysis in the vicinity of a wave measuring buoy in the Mediterranean.
Online speaker adaptation based on quasi-Bayes linear regression

This paper presents an online/sequential linear regression adaptation framework for hidden Markov model (HMM) based speech recognition. Our attempt is to sequentially improve the speaker-independent (SI) speech recognizer to meet nonstationary environments via linear regression adaptation of SI HMMs. A quasi-Bayes linear regression (QBLR) algorithm is developed to execute online adaptation where the regression matrix is estimated using QB theory. In the estimation, we moderately specify the prior density of the regression matrix as a matrix variate normal distribution and exactly derive the pooled posterior density belonging to the same distribution family. Accordingly, the optimal regression matrix can be easily calculated. Also, the reproducible prior/posterior density pair provides a meaningful mechanism for sequential learning of prior statistics. At each sequential epoch, only the updated prior statistics and the current observed data are required for adaptation. In general, the proposed QBLR is universal and can be reduced to the well-known maximum likelihood linear regression (MLLR) and maximum a posteriori linear regression (MAPLR). Experiments show that the QBLR is effective for speaker adaptation in car environments.
Integration of Visual and Auditory Information by Superior Temporal Sulcus Neurons Responsive to the Sight of Actions

Processing of complex visual stimuli comprising facial movements, hand actions, and body movements is known to occur in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) of humans and nonhuman primates. The STS is also thought to play a role in the integration of multimodal sensory input. We investigated whether STS neurons coding the sight of actions also integrated the sound of those actions. For 23% of neurons responsive to the sight of an action, the sound of that action significantly modulated the visual response. The sound of the action increased or decreased the visually evoked response for an equal number of neurons. In the neurons whose visual response was increased by the addition of sound (but not those neurons whose responses were decreased), the audiovisual integration was dependent upon the sound of the action matching the sight of the action. These results suggest that neurons in the STS form multisensory representations of observed actions.
Strain partitioning along the Himalayan arc and the Nanga Parbat antiform

The Himalayan front of continental convergence has a remarkably regular arcuate shape. to north, the convergence front is characterized by three main kinematic elements (Fig. 1; Davis et al., 1983): (1) a foot-wall block (Indian craton) that dips gently northward below the sediment-filled Himalayan foredeep and generally has little internal deformation; (2) an accretionary wedge where thrusting and folding verge toward the foredeep; and (3) a hanging-wall block (Tibetan slab) that has prominent Neogene extension structures in both radial and arc-parallel directions (e. are associated with folds and thrusts striking in the arc-radial direction, indicating arc-parallel shortening on the hanging-wall side of the Himalayan front. Strain-partitioning is observed worldwide along tectonic boundaries where overall motion is oblique to the boundary (e.g., McCaffrey, 1992). Oblique motion is typically partitioned among strike-slip and dip-slip faults. Focal mechanisms of intermediate-magnitude earthquakes marking the Himalayan arc indicate slip in the radial direction on thrust faults parallel to the arc (Fig. 1; Baranowski et al., 1984). Assuming that the convergence direction at the Hima-layan boundary is parallel to these slip vectors, such kinematics cannot alone account for con
Enhancement of high threshold calcium currents in rat primary afferent neurons by constitutively active protein kinase C

Protein kinase C has been implicated in the modulation of calcium channel function. However, controversy exists concerning the actions of agents such as phorbol esters or diacylglycerol (DAG) that activate endogenous PKC, with both enhancement and inhibition of Ca2+ currents described. In this article we report the effects of direct intracellular application of a constitutively active form of PKC (PKM) on whole cell calcium currents in acutely dissociated rat dorsal root ganglion neurons. PKM application significantly enhanced high threshold voltage-activated calcium currents elicited from holding potentials of - 80 mV and -40 mV. The rate of current rundown in PKM-treated cells was not significantly different from controls. The enhancement observed with PKM was not due to a shift in the voltage dependence of the peak current. Synthetic PKC inhibitor peptide (PKC-I) added to recording solutions containing PKM (PKM+PKC-I) abolished the PKM-associated enhancement. The rate of current rundown was significantly increased in the presence of PKM+PKC-I, and PKC-I alone, suggesting that substantial enhancement of voltage-activated calcium currents by endogenous PKC occurred in this preparation of rat dorsal root ganglion neurons. The portions of current attributable to N-, L-, and non-N,L-type currents [determined by applying the N- and L-type calcium antagonists omega- conotoxin GVIA and nifedipine (3–10 microM)] were not affected by PKM, suggesting that both N and L current components were enhanced by PKM.
Trimeric Tau Is Toxic to Human Neuronal Cells at Low Nanomolar Concentrations

In Alzheimer's disease (AD), tau aggregates into fibrils and higher order neurofibrillary tangles, a key histopathological feature of AD. However, soluble oligomeric tau species may play a more critical role in AD progression since these tau species correlate better with neuronal loss and cognitive dysfunction. Recent studies show that extracellular oligomeric tau can inhibit memory formation and synaptic function and also transmit pathology to neighboring neurons. However, the specific forms of oligomeric tau involved in toxicity are still unknown. Here, we used two splice variants of recombinant human tau and generated monomeric, dimeric, and trimeric fractions of each isoform. The composition of each fraction was verified chromatographically and also by atomic force microscopy. The toxicity of each fraction toward both human neuroblastoma cells and cholinergic-like neurons was assessed. Trimeric, but not monomeric or dimeric, tau oligomers of both splice variants were neurotoxic at low nanomolar concentrations. Further characterization of tau oligomer species with disease-specific modifications and morphologies is necessary to identify the best targets for the development of biomarker and therapeutic development for AD and related tauopathies.
Centered Hyperspherical and Hyperellipsoidal One-Class Support Vector Machines for Anomaly Detection in Sensor Networks

Anomaly detection in wireless sensor networks is an important challenge for tasks such as intrusion detection and monitoring applications. This paper proposes two approaches to detecting anomalies from measurements from sensor networks. The first approach is a linear programming-based hyperellipsoidal formulation, which is called a centered hyperellipsoidal support vector machine (CESVM). While this CESVM approach has advantages in terms of its flexibility in the selection of parameters and the computational complexity, it has limited scope for distributed implementation in sensor networks. In our second approach, we propose a distributed anomaly detection algorithm for sensor networks using a one-class quarter-sphere support vector machine (QSSVM). Here a hypersphere is found that captures normal data vectors in a higher dimensional space for each sensor node. Then summary information about the hyperspheres is communicated among the nodes to arrive at a global hypersphere, which is used by the sensors to identify any anomalies in their measurements. We show that the CESVM and QSSVM formulations can both achieve high detection accuracies on a variety of real and synthetic data sets. Our evaluation of the distributed algorithm using QSSVM reveals that it detects anomalies with comparable accuracy and less communication overhead than a centralized approach.
Predicting Pharmacy Costs and Other Medical Costs Using Diagnoses and Drug Claims

Background:Predicting health care costs for individuals and populations is essential for managing care. However, the comparative power of diagnostic and drug data for predicting future costs has not been closely examined. Objective:We sought to compare the predictive performance of claims-based models using diagnoses, drugs claims, and combined data to predict health care costs. Subjects:More than 1 million commercially insured, nonelderly individuals in a national (MEDSTAT MarketScan®) research database comprised our sample. Measures:We used 1997 and 1998 drug and diagnostic profiles to predict costs in 1998 and 1999, respectively. To assess model performance, we compared R2 values and predictive ratios (predicted costs/actual costs) for important subgroups. Results:Models using both drug and diagnostic data best predicted subsequent-year total health care costs (highest R2 = 0.168 versus 0.116 and 0.146 for models based on drug or diagnostic data alone, respectively), with highly accurate predictive ratios (0.95–1.05) for subgroups of patients with major medical conditions. Models predicting pharmacy costs had substantially higher R2 values than models predicting other medical costs (highest R2 0.493 versus 0.124). Drug-based models predicted future pharmacy costs better than diagnosis-based models (highest R2 = 0.482 versus 0.243), whereas diagnosis-based models predicted total costs (highest R2 = 0.146 versus 0.116) and nonpharmacy costs (highest R2 = 0.116 versus 0.071) more effectively than drug-based models. Newer models had markedly higher R2 values than older ones, largely because of richer data rather than model refinements. Conclusions:Combined drug and diagnostic data predicts total health care costs better than either type of data alone. Pharmacy spending is particularly predictable from drug data, whereas diagnoses are more useful than drugs for predicting other medical costs and total costs. Using even slightly more recent data can substantially boost model performance measures; thus, model comparisons should be conducted on the same dataset.