Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Catalase Prevents Maternal Diabetes–Induced Perinatal Programming via the Nrf2–HO-1 Defense System

We investigated whether overexpression of catalase (CAT) in renal proximal tubular cells (RPTCs) could prevent the programming of hypertension and kidney disease in the offspring of dams with maternal diabetes. Male offspring of nondiabetic and diabetic dams from two transgenic (Tg) lines (Hoxb7-green fluorescent protein [GFP]-Tg [controls] and Hoxb7/CAT-GFP-Tg, which overexpress CAT in RPTCs) were studied from the prenatal period into adulthood. Nephrogenesis, systolic blood pressure, renal hyperfiltration, kidney injury, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation were assessed. Gene expression of transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1), nuclear factor erythroid 2p45–related factor-2 (Nrf2), and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) was tested in both in vitro and in vivo studies. Renal dysmorphogenesis was observed in offspring of Hoxb7-GFP-Tg dams with severe maternal diabetes; the affected male offspring displayed higher renal ROS generation and developed hypertension and renal hyperfiltration as well as renal injury with heightened TGF-β1 expression in adulthood. These changes were ameliorated in male offspring of diabetic Hoxb7/CAT-GFP-Tg dams via the Nrf2–HO-1 defense system. CAT promoted Nrf2 nuclear translocation and HO-1 gene expression, seen in both in vitro and in vivo studies. In conclusion, CAT overexpression in the RPTCs ameliorated maternal diabetes–induced perinatal programming, mediated, at least in part, by triggering the Nrf2–HO-1 defense system.
Pedestrian Detection in Far-Infrared Daytime Images Using a Hierarchical Codebook of SURF

One of the main challenges in intelligent vehicles concerns pedestrian detection for driving assistance. Recent experiments have showed that state-of-the-art descriptors provide better performances on the far-infrared (FIR) spectrum than on the visible one, even in daytime conditions, for pedestrian classification. In this paper, we propose a pedestrian detector with on-board FIR camera. Our main contribution is the exploitation of the specific characteristics of FIR images to design a fast, scale-invariant and robust pedestrian detector. Our system consists of three modules, each based on speeded-up robust feature (SURF) matching. The first module allows generating regions-of-interest (ROI), since in FIR images of the pedestrian shapes may vary in large scales, but heads appear usually as light regions. ROI are detected with a high recall rate with the hierarchical codebook of SURF features located in head regions. The second module consists of pedestrian full-body classification by using SVM. This module allows one to enhance the precision with low computational cost. In the third module, we combine the mean shift algorithm with inter-frame scale-invariant SURF feature tracking to enhance the robustness of our system. The experimental evaluation shows that our system outperforms, in the FIR domain, the state-of-the-art Haar-like Adaboost-cascade, histogram of oriented gradients (HOG)/linear SVM (linSVM) and MultiFtrpedestrian detectors, trained on the FIR images.
A 40-year-old man with testicular torsion and large bilateral spermatoceles

Testicular torsion is a rare disease that mostly involves children. Peak incidence is in infancy and in adolescence. Testicular torsion is rarely seen in men over 40 years of age and has only once been accompanied with spermatocele. We report the case of a 40-year-old man with testicular pain one day prior to visiting our clinic. The patient's visit to the clinic was delayed due to history of occasional testicular pain related to his bilateral spermatoceles. On arrival, a color Doppler ultrasound test was performed, which revealed heterogeneous echo in the right testis with no vascular flow, suggestive of torsion, as well as two cystic lesions in the right and left scrotums indicating spermatoceles. The patient was immediately transferred to the operating room where the bilateral spermatoceles were resected and after detorting, the right testis was saved. After four months, a normal left testis along with partial right testicular atrophy was observed. It is highly recommended to educate patients with spermatocele who have no indication for surgical treatment to visit their physician in case any new testicular pain is experienced. Furthermore, testicular pain regardless of the co-existing pathology may always be treated as an indicator of suspected torsion.
Neurocontrol of Movement in Humans With Spinal Cord Injury.

In this review of neurocontrol of movement after spinal cord injury, we discuss neurophysiological evidences of conducting and processing mechanisms of the spinal cord. We illustrate that external afferent inputs to the spinal cord below the level of the lesion can modify, initiate, and maintain execution of movement in absence or partial presence of brain motor control after chronic spinal cord injury. We review significant differences between spinal reflex activity elicited by single and repetitive stimulation. The spinal cord can respond with sensitization, habituation, and dis-habituation to regular repetitive stimulation. Therefore, repetitive spinal cord reflex activity can contribute to the functional configuration of the spinal network. Moreover, testing spinal reflex activity in individuals with motor complete spinal cord injury provided evidences for subclinical residual brain influence, suggesting the existence of axons traversing the injury site and influencing the activities below the level of lesion. Thus, there are two motor control models of chronic spinal cord injury in humans: "discomplete" and "reduced and altered volitional motor control. " We outline accomplishments in modification and initiation of altered neurocontrol in chronic spinal cord injury people with epidural and functional electrical stimulation. By nonpatterned electrical stimulation of lumbar posterior roots, it is possible to evoke bilateral extension as well as rhythmic motor outputs. Epidural stimulation during treadmill stepping shows increased and/or modified motor activity. Finally, volitional efforts can alter epidurally induced rhythmic activities in incomplete spinal cord injury. Overall, we highlight that upper motor neuron paralysis does not entail complete absence of connectivity between cortex, brain stem, and spinal motor cells, but there can be altered anatomy and corresponding neurophysiological characteristics. With specific input to the spinal cord below the level of the lesion, the clinical status of upper motor neuron paralysis without structural modification can be modified, and movements can be initiated. Thus, external afferent input can partially replace brain control.
Teachers' criteria for selecting textbooks for the technology subject

Abstract Learning support materials, including commercially prepared textbooks, play a central role in the implementation of a new curriculum. In South Africa, classroom resource materials such as textbooks are reported to have had a considerable influence on Teachers' pedagogical practices. The aim of the article is to explore the criteria that Grade 9 teachers use for the selection of technology textbooks. The data were purposefully collected from technology teachers at ten schools in the Tshwane South and Tshwane North districts through semi-structured interviews. The linguistic notion of textbook register was used to classify the selection criteria used by teachers according to the field, mode and tenor of the textbook. Results indicate that when technology teachers select textbooks they mainly use criteria related to the field (the nature of the content of the text) and the mode (the way the content is presented) of the book. Few criteria relate to relationships conveyed by the book (the tenor) which is expressed as the extent to which it provides teacher support and the influence it allocates to the student. The findings confirm the high frequency of the use of criteria in the area of breadth, depth and accuracy of content knowledge and, less frequently, its progression and relationship with students' everyday experiences. Selection criteria related to activities presented in the book include the number and detail of practical activities and design tasks, and the variety and the relevance of activities with respect to the content knowledge presented. A concern with the quality of communication of a book is more often expressed in selection criteria for illustrations than for language difficulty. Lastly, criteria for selecting textbooks do hardly focus on the teaching strategies in the book, and infrequently on the guidance for lesson planning and assessment. However, several teachers select texts on the basis of the opportunities for tailoring information and activities specifically for their students' contexts.
An Information Retrieval Approach to Short Text Conversation

Human computer conversation is regarded as one of the most difficult problems in artificial intelligence. In this paper, we address one of its key sub-problems, referred to as short text conversation, in which given a message from human, the computer returns a reasonable response to the message. We leverage the vast amount of short conversation data available on social media to study the issue. We propose formalizing short text conversation as a search problem at the first step, and employing state-of-the-art information retrieval (IR) techniques to carry out the task. We investigate the significance as well as the limitation of the IR approach. Our experiments demonstrate that the retrieval-based model can make the system behave rather "intelligently", when combined with a huge repository of conversation data from social media.
Semi-Metric Topology of the Human Connectome: Sensitivity and Specificity to Autism and Major Depressive Disorder

Introduction The human functional connectome is a graphical representation, consisting of nodes connected by edges, of the inter-relationships of blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) time-series measured by MRI from regions encompassing the cerebral cortices and, often, the cerebellum. Semi-metric analysis of the weighted, undirected connectome distinguishes an edge as either direct (metric), such that there is no alternative path that is accumulatively stronger, or indirect (semi-metric), where one or more alternative paths exist that have greater strength than the direct edge. The sensitivity and specificity of this method of analysis is illustrated by two case-control analyses with independent, matched groups of adolescents with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and major depressive disorder (MDD). Results Significance differences in the global percentage of semi-metric edges was observed in both groups, with increases in ASC and decreases in MDD relative to controls. Furthermore, MDD was associated with regional differences in left frontal and temporal lobes, the right limbic system and cerebellum. In contrast, ASC had a broadly increased percentage of semi-metric edges with a more generalised distribution of effects and some areas of reduction. In summary, MDD was characterised by localised, large reductions in the percentage of semi-metric edges, whilst ASC is characterised by more generalised, subtle increases. These differences were corroborated in greater detail by inspection of the semi-metric backbone for each group; that is, the sub-graph of semi-metric edges present in >90% of participants, and by nodal degree differences in the semi-metric connectome. Conclusion These encouraging results, in what we believe is the first application of semi-metric analysis to neuroimaging data, raise confidence in the methodology as potentially capable of detection and characterisation of a range of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.
Motor ability of forelimb both on- and off-riding during walk and trot cadence of horse

The aim of this study was to investigate the motor ability of forelimb according to on- or off-riding during cadences (walk and trot) of horse. Horses and rider selected as subject consisted of total 37 heads of Jeju native horse and 1 female rider. The variables analyzed composed of 1 stride length, 1 step length, elapsed time of stance, elapsed time of swing, elapsed time of 1 step, and forward velocity (x-axis). Two-way analysis of variance of variables was employed for the statistical analysis with the level of significance set at 5% (P<0.05). Trot cadence showed significant difference with the faster and shorter during trot than that of walk in velocity and elapsed time. When analyzed interaction effect in stance and swing phase, the locomotion showed the shorter elapsed time in trot than that of walk, but more delayed in case of on-riding during stance phase, whereas the case of on-riding showed with the shorter during swing phase than that of the case of off-riding These result of horse’s analysis meant that there was very close relation among variables of rider’s weight-velocity-stride length-stride elapsed time. Next study will be necessary to analyze cadence variables added both stride length and rider’s weight for riding activity and rehabilitation during horse riding using Jeju native horse.
Automatic Morphological Analysis of Medial Temporal Lobe

Research in Alzheimer's disease (AD) has seen a tremendous growth of candidate biomarkers in the last decade. The role of such established or putative biomarkers is to allow an accurate diagnosis of AD, to infer about its prognosis, to monitor disease progression and evaluate changes induced by disease-modifying drugs. An ideal biomarker should detect a specific pathophysiological feature of AD, not present in the healthy condition, in other primary dementias, or in confounding conditions. Besides being reliable, a biomarker should be detectable by means of procedures which must be relatively non-invasive, simple to perform, widely available and not too expensive. At present, no candidate meets these requirements representing the high standards aimed at by researchers. Among others, various morphological brain measures performed by means of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ranging from the total brain volume to some restricted regions such as the hippocampal volume, have been proposed. Nowadays the efforts are directed toward finding an automated, unsupervised method of evaluating atrophy in some specific brain region, such as the medial temporal lobe (MTL). In this work we provide an extensive review of the state of the art on the automatic and semi-automatic image processing techniques for the early assessment of patients at risk of developing AD. Our main focus is the relevance of the morphological analysis of MTL, and in particular of the hippocampal formation, in making the diagnosis of AD and in distinguishing it from other dementias.
The Small Entrepreneur in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations

This report is part of a broader effort by the World Bank Group to understand the motives and challenges of small entrepreneurs in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS). The report's key finding is that, compared to entrepreneurs elsewhere, entrepreneurs in FCS have different characteristics, face significantly different challenges, and thus may be subject to different incentives and have different motives. Therefore, it is recommended that both the current analytical approach and the operational strategy of the World Bank be informed by the findings that follow. The publication is organized in the following manner: (i) Overview of the Entrepreneur's Challenges in FCS; (ii) Observations of FCS Firms, Sectors, and Business Environments; (iii) Implications of findings; and (iv) Conclusions and Recommendations. Included are also appendices, boxes, figures, and tables.
The Architecture of Economic Systems: Hierarchies and Polyarchies

This paper presents some new perspectives on the structure and performance of alternative economic organizations. We posit that decision makers make errors of judgement (for example, they sometimes select bad projects while rejecting good projects), and that how these errors are aggregated within different organizations depends on their architecture (for example, on how individuals are organized together). Using this framework, we compare the performances of two polar forms of organizations: hierarchies and polyarchies. Assuming judgmental abilities of individuals are similar in the two systems, we show that polyarchies accept a larger proportion of bad projects (compared to hierarchies) whereas hierarchies reject a larger proportion of good projects. We then determine the conditions under which polyarchies have higher or lower expected profit. The conditions under which polyarchies perform better appear to be more plausible and, moreover, this conclusion holds also in the case where the rules for accepting or rejecting projects are rationally determined based on the information available to individuals. The architecture of organizations also affects their portfolio of available projects; we determine conditions under which polyarchies have better or worse portfolios compared to those available to hierarchies.There are many possible extensions of our approach. Among them are the analysis of internal structure of firms, selection of managers (by other managers) and the reproduction and self-perpetuation of organizations over time.
Membrane resistance change of the frog taste cells in response to water and Nacl

The electrical properties of the frog taste cells during gustatory stimulations with distilled water and varying concentrations of NaCl were studied with intracellular microelectrodes. Under the Ringer adaptation of the tongue, two types of taste cells were distinguished by the gustatory stimuli. One type, termed NaCl-sensitive (NS) cells, responded to water with hyperpolarizations and responded to concentrated NaCl with depolarizations. In contrast, the other type of cells, termed water-sensitive (WS) cells, responded to water depolarizations and responded to concentrated NaCl with hyperpolarizations. The membrane resistance of both taste cell types increased during the hyperpolarizing receptor potentials and decreased during the depolarizing receptor potentials, Reversal potentials for the depolarizing and hyperpolarizing responses in each cell type were a few millivolts positive above the zero membrane potential. When the tongue was adapted with Na-free Ringer solution for 30 min, the amplitude of the depolarizing responses in the NS cells reduced to 50% of the control value under normal Ringer adaptation. On the basis of the present results, it is concluded (a) that the depolarizing responses of the NS and WS cells under the Ringer adaptation are produced by the permeability increase in some ions, mainly Na+ ions across the taste cell membranes, and (b) that the hyperpolarizing responses of both types of taste cells are produced by a decrease in the cell membrane permeability to some ions, probably Na+ ions, which is slightly enhanced during the Ringer adaptation.
Preservice Science Teachers and Cultural Diversity Awareness

800x600 Preservice science teachers hold a number of existing beliefs and expectations when teaching in the science classroom. Many teacher education programs provide diversity or multicultural education courses to better prepare preservice teachers for the increasingly diverse classroom. The Cultural Awareness Diversity Inventory (CDAI) was used to examine the preservice science teacher’s cultural awareness and sensitivity based on their course and field experiences. Findings suggest that preservice science teachers did acknowledge the importance of racial and ethnic sensitivity and accommodating diversity in their classroom. However, they are neutral relative to the impact their own lack of cultural knowledge has on science teaching and learning. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:. 0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
Fetal-Maternal Interactions in the Synepitheliochorial Placenta Using the eGFP Cloned Cattle Model

Background To investigate mechanisms of fetal-maternal cell interactions in the bovine placenta, we developed a model of transgenic enhanced Green Fluorescent Protein (t-eGFP) expressing bovine embryos produced by nuclear transfer (NT) to assess the distribution of fetal-derived products in the bovine placenta. In addition, we searched for male specific DNA in the blood of females carrying in vitro produced male embryos. Our hypothesis is that the bovine placenta is more permeable to fetal-derived products than described elsewhere. Methodology/Principal Findings Samples of placentomes, chorion, endometrium, maternal peripheral blood leukocytes and blood plasma were collected during early gestation and processed for nested-PCR for eGFP and testis-specific Y-encoded protein (TSPY), western blotting and immunohistochemistry for eGFP detection, as well as transmission electron microscopy to verify the level of interaction between maternal and fetal cells. TSPY and eGFP DNA were present in the blood of cows carrying male pregnancies at day 60 of pregnancy. Protein and mRNA of eGFP were observed in the trophoblast and uterine tissues. In the placentomes, the protein expression was weak in the syncytial regions, but intense in neighboring cells on both sides of the fetal-maternal interface. Ultrastructurally, our samples from t-eGFP expressing NT pregnancies showed to be normal, such as the presence of interdigitating structures between fetal and maternal cells. In addition, channels-like structures were present in the trophoblast cells. Conclusions/Significance Data suggested that there is a delivery of fetal contents to the maternal system on both systemic and local levels that involved nuclear acids and proteins. It not clear the mechanisms involved in the transfer of fetal-derived molecules to the maternal system. This delivery may occur through nonclassical protein secretion; throughout transtrophoblastic-like channels and/or by apoptotic processes previously described. In conclusion, the bovine synepitheliochorial placenta displays an intimate fetal-maternal interaction, similar to other placental types for instance human and mouse.
Life Cycle Savings in the United States, 1900-1990

This study explores the effect of farm value on retirement decisions of farm owners in the early twentieth century. The average farm value per acre of county, as of either 1900 or 1910, and the growth rate over the decade had a strong positive effect on the probability of retirement of farm owners in 1910. Farm owners were more responsive to a change in farm value when it was not produced by a shift in the farmland productivity than when it was. I argue that the rapid growth in the value of farm properties between 1900 and 1910 was a major force behind the decline in the labor force participation rate of males aged 65 and over during the same period.