Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Activation of the CED3/ICE-Related Protease CPP32 in Cerebellar Granule Neurons Undergoing Apoptosis But Not Necrosis

Neuronal apoptosis occurs during nervous system development and after pathological insults to the adult nervous system. Inhibition of CED3/ICE-related proteases has been shown to inhibit neuronal apoptosisin vitro and in vivo, indicating a role for these cysteine proteases in neuronal apoptosis. We have studied the activation of the CED3/ICE-related protease CPP32 in two in vitro models of mouse cerebellar granule neuronal cell death: K+/serum deprivation-induced apoptosis and glutamate-induced necrosis. Pretreatment of granule neurons with a selective, irreversible inhibitor of CED3/ICE family proteases, ZVAD-fluoromethylketone, specifically inhibited granule neuron apoptosis but not necrosis, indicating a selective role for CED3/ICE proteases in granule neuron apoptosis. Extracts prepared from apoptotic, but not necrotic, granule neurons contained a protease activity that cleaved the CPP32 substrate Ac-DEVD-aminomethylcoumarin. Induction of the protease activity was prevented by inhibitors of RNA or protein synthesis or by the CED3/ICE protease inhibitor. Affinity labeling of the protease activity with an irreversible CED3/ICE protease inhibitor, ZVK(biotin)D-fluoromethylketone, identified two putative protease subunits, p20 and p18, that were present in apoptotic but not necrotic granule neuron extracts. Western blotting with antibodies to the C terminus of the large subunit of mouse CPP32 (anti-CPP32) identified p20 and p18 as processed subunits of the CPP32 proenzyme. Anti-CPP32 specifically inhibited the DEVD-amc cleaving activity, verifying the presence of active CPP32 protease in the apoptotic granule neuron extracts. Western blotting demonstrated that the CPP32 proenzyme was expressed in granule neurons before induction of apoptosis. These results demonstrate that the CED3/ICE homolog CPP32 is processed and activated during cerebellar granule neuron apoptosis. CPP32 activation requires macromolecular synthesis and CED3/ICE protease activity. The lack of CPP32 activation during granule neuron necrosis suggests that proteolytic processing and activation of CED3/ICE proteases are specific biochemical markers of apoptosis.
Convolution engine: balancing efficiency & flexibility in specialized computing

This paper focuses on the trade-off between flexibility and efficiency in specialized computing. We observe that specialized units achieve most of their efficiency gains by tuning data storage and compute structures and their connectivity to the data-flow and data-locality patterns in the kernels. Hence, by identifying key data-flow patterns used in a domain, we can create efficient engines that can be programmed and reused across a wide range of applications. We present an example, the Convolution Engine (CE), specialized for the convolution-like data-flow that is common in computational photography, image processing, and video processing applications. CE achieves energy efficiency by capturing data reuse patterns, eliminating data transfer overheads, and enabling a large number of operations per memory access. We quantify the tradeoffs in efficiency and flexibility and demonstrate that CE is within a factor of 2-3x of the energy and area efficiency of custom units optimized for a single kernel. CE improves energy and area efficiency by 8-15x over a SIMD engine for most applications.
Needle Aponeurotomy for Dupuytren's Contracture

Purpose. To review the efficacy and safety of needle aponeurotomy for Dupuytren's contracture in Chinese patients. Methods. Seven men and one woman aged 50 to 80 (mean, 67) years underwent needle aponeurotomy for Dupuytren's contracture. Five were manual workers and the other 3 were retired. Their chief complaints were difficulty moving the fingers, clumsiness of the hand, and occasional pain in the palm. No patient had any family history of Dupuytren's contracture. Results. 41 points were released in 13 fingers (3 middle, 3 ring, and 7 little). Immediately after release, the respective mean flexion contracture correction of the metacarpophalangeal and proximal interphalangeal joints were 50 (from 50 to 0) and 35 (from 46 to 11) degrees. At 22-month follow-up, the respective mean residual flexion contracture of both joints were 12 and 27 degrees; the corresponding long-term improvements were 70 and 41%. No patient had a wound complication or neurovascular injury. All had a normal score for Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder, and Hand. Conclusion. For Chinese patients with Dupuytren's contracture, needle aponeurotomy is safe and effective. Long-term correction is better maintained in metacarpophalangeal than proximal interphalangeal joints (70 vs 41%).
Virtual Model Control: An Intuitive Approach for Bipedal Locomotion

Virtual model control is a motion control framework that uses virtual components to create virtual forces generated when the virtual components interact with a robot system. An algorithm derived based on the virtual model control framework is applied to a physical planar bipedal robot. It uses a simple set of virtual components that allows the robot to walk successfully over level terrain. This paper also describes how the algorithm can be augmented for rough terrain walking based on geometric consideration. The resulting algorithm is very simple and does not require the biped to have an extensive sensory system. The robot does not know the slope gradients and transition locations in advance. The ground is detected using foot contact switches. Using the algorithm, we have successfully compelled a simulated seven-link planar biped to walk blindly up and down slopes and over rolling terrain.
Improving Public Engagement With Climate Change

Despite being one of the most important societal challenges of the 21st century, public engagement with climate change currently remains low in the United States. Mounting evidence from across the behavioral sciences has found that most people regard climate change as a nonurgent and psychologically distant risk—spatially, temporally, and socially—which has led to deferred public decision making about mitigation and adaptation responses. In this article, we advance five simple but important “best practice” insights from psychological science that can help governments improve public policymaking about climate change. Particularly, instead of a future, distant, global, nonpersonal, and analytical risk that is often framed as an overt loss for society, we argue that policymakers should (a) emphasize climate change as a present, local, and personal risk; (b) facilitate more affective and experiential engagement; (c) leverage relevant social group norms; (d) frame policy solutions in terms of what can be gained from immediate action; and (e) appeal to intrinsically valued long-term environmental goals and outcomes. With practical examples we illustrate how these key psychological principles can be applied to support societal engagement and climate change policymaking.
Do-loop-surface: an abstract representation of parallel program performance

Performance is a critical issue in current massively parallel processors. However, delivery of adequate performance is not automatic and performance evaluation tools are required in order to help the programmer to understand the behaviour of a parallel program. In recent years, a wide variety of tools have been developed for this purpose, including tools for monitoring and evaluating performance and visualization tools. However, these tools do not provide an abstract representation of performance. Massively parallel processors can generate a huge amount of performance data, and sophisticated methods for representing and displaying these data (e.g. visual and aural) are required. Performance views are not scalable in general and do not represent an abstraction of the performance data. The do-loop-surface display is proposed as an abstract representation of the performance of a particular do-loop in a program. It has been used to improve the performance of a matrix multiply parallel algorithm as well as to understand the behaviour of the following applications: matrix transposition (TRANSl) and fast fourier transform (FFI’l) from the Genesis benchmarks, and the kernel of a fluid dynamics package (FIRE). These experiments were performed on a CM-S, a Meiko CS-1 and a PARSYS Supemode. The examples demonstrate that the do-loop-surface display is a useful way to represent performance. It is implemented using AVS (application visualization system), a standard data visualization package.
Image retrieval using wavelet-based salient points

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) has become one of the most active research areas in the past few years. Most of the attention from the research has been focused on indexing techniques based on global feature distributions. However, these global distributions have limited discriminating power because they are unable to capture local image information. The use of interest points in content-based image retrieval allow image index to represent local properties of the image. Classic corner detectors can be used for this purpose. However, they have drawbacks when applied to various natural images for image retrieval, because visual features need not be corners and corners may gather in small regions. In this paper, we present a salient point detector. The detector is based on wavelet transform to detect global variations as well as local ones. The wavelet-based salient points are evaluated for image retrieval with a retrieval system using color and texture features. The results show that salient points with Gabor feature perform better than the other point detectors from the literature and the randomly chosen points. Significant improvements are achieved in terms of retrieval accuracy, computational complexity when compared to the global feature approaches.
Facets of Two-Dimensional Infinite Group Problems

In this paper, we lay the foundation for the study of the two-dimensional mixed integer infinite group problem (2DMIIGP). We introduce tools to determine if a given continuous and piecewise linear function over the two-dimensional infinite group is subadditive and to determine whether it defines a facet of 2DMIIGP. We then present two different constructions that yield the first known families of facet-defining inequalities for 2DMIIGP. The first construction uses valid inequalities of the one-dimensional integer infinite group problem (1DIIGP) as building blocks for creating inequalities for the two-dimensional integer infinite group problem (2DIIGP). We prove that this construction yields all continuous piecewise linear facets of the two-dimensional group problem that have exactly two gradients. The second construction we present has three gradients and yields facet-defining inequalities of 2DMIIGP whose continuous coefficients are not dominated by those of facets of the one-dimensional mixed integer infinite group problem (1DMIIGP).
Supracricoid Laryngectomy with CHEP: Functional Results and Outcome

OBJECTIVES: To assess whether supracricoid laryngectomy with cricohiodoepiglottopexy could successfully reach the cure and preserve the voice in glottic laryngeal cancer, we studied 27 patients with T2/T3 squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx treated in our institution with cricohiodoepiglottopexy. STUDY DESIGN: A retrospective analysis has been carried out between 1995 through 1997. We classified 11 patients as T2N0M0 and 16 patients as T3N0M0. Nineteen patients had bilateral selective lateral neck dissection, 3 patients had unilateral lateral neck dissection, and 5 patients had undissected neck. Survival was analyzed under the Kaplan-Meyer method. RESULTS: Five patients had postoperative complications, 2 were treated with a total laryngectomy. The remaining 25 patients kept the normal airway, swallowing, and speech. None of the patients in the neck dissection group had neck metastasis. Two patients had recurrences, 1 with local recurrence was treated with a total laryngectomy and is alive without disease; the other patient had neck recurrence, was treated with radical neck dissection plus radiotherapy, and is dead of the disease. One patient had a second tumor in oropharynx treated with palliative radiotherapy and is dead of the disease. Three years disease-free survival was 75% for T2 and 79% for T3. CONCLUSIONS: This technique is useful in the treatment of selected cases of T3/T2 glottic cancer regarding the extent of disease. The incidence of complications in need of a complete laryngectomy does not compromise the functionality of this technique. The survival is comparable to patients who submitted to total laryngectomy and near-total laryngectomy, regarding the extent of the lesion.
Application of sonoelastography for evaluating the stiffness of equine superficial digital flexor tendon during healing

Sonoelastography can assess the inner stiffness of tissues. Sonoelastographic evaluation of injured equine superficial digital flexor tendons (SDFTs) is considered to be useful for assessing the stiffness of a lesion even during late-stage rehabilitation. The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the sonoelastographic appearance of injured SDFTs over time from the onset of the injury. Eighteen horses were classified into three groups according to the length of time from injury onset: group A, within two weeks after injury; group B, approximately five months after injury; and group C, approximately nine months after injury. Longitudinal and transverse images of all injured SDFTs were obtained using grey-scale ultrasonography and sonoelastography. Grey-scale and sonoelastographic images were evaluated by two observers using echogenicity-grading and colour-grading systems, respectively. The authors evaluated the interobserver agreement and compared the grades among the three groups. The results indicated almost perfect interobserver agreement. Significant differences were found in the sonoelastography among the three groups, whereas no significant difference was found in the grey-scale ultrasonography between groups B and C. Sonoelastography is a feasible and useful modality to evaluate the equine injured SDFTs in vivo and to distinguish between them among the different phases even during the chronic phase.
Biologically Inspired Spiking Neurons: Piecewise Linear Models and Digital Implementation

There has been a strong push recently to examine biological scale simulations of neuromorphic algorithms to achieve stronger inference capabilities. This paper presents a set of piecewise linear spiking neuron models, which can reproduce different behaviors, similar to the biological neuron, both for a single neuron as well as a network of neurons. The proposed models are investigated, in terms of digital implementation feasibility and costs, targeting large scale hardware implementation. Hardware synthesis and physical implementations on FPGA show that the proposed models can produce precise neural behaviors with higher performance and considerably lower implementation costs compared with the original model. Accordingly, a compact structure of the models which can be trained with supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms has been developed. Using this structure and based on a spike rate coding, a character recognition case study has been implemented and tested.
Resveratrol Regulates N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor Expression and Suppresses Neuroinflammation in Morphine-Tolerant Rats

BACKGROUND:In the present study, we examined the effects and mechanisms of the Chinese herb resveratrol on attenuation of morphine tolerance in rats. METHODS:Male Wistar rats were implanted with 2 intrathecal catheters; one catheter was connected to a mini-osmotic pump, used for either morphine (15 &mgr;g/h) or saline (1 &mgr;L/h) infusion for 5 days. On day 5, resveratrol (7.5, 15, 30, or 60 &mgr;g), dimethyl sulfoxide (5 &mgr;L), or saline (5 &mgr;L) was injected via the other catheter immediately after the discontinued morphine infusion. Three hours later, intrathecal morphine (15 &mgr;g in 5 &mgr;L saline) was given. All rats received the nociceptive tail-flick test every 30 minutes for 120 minutes after the morphine challenge. RESULTS:Long-term morphine infusion induced antinociceptive tolerance and up-regulated N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) subunit NR1 and NR2B expression in the synaptosome fraction of the tolerant spinal cord dorsal horn. Resveratrol pretreatment provided a significant antinociceptive effect of morphine in morphine-tolerant rats, and it was associated with reversal of the up-regulated NR1 and NR2B subunits in the synaptosome fraction of morphine-tolerant rat spinal cords. NR1/NR2B-specific antagonist ifenprodil treatment produced a similar effect as that of resveratrol. Furthermore, an increase of postsynaptic density-95/NR1/NR2B complex immunoprecipitation in morphine-tolerant rat spinal cord was also inhibited by resveratrol pretreatment. Moreover, chronic morphine infusion activated glial cells with an increase of proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor-&agr;, interleukin-1&bgr;, and interleukin-6 mRNA expression in morphine-tolerant rat spinal cords and these effects were suppressed by resveratrol pretreatment before the morphine challenge. CONCLUSIONS:Resveratrol attenuates morphine tolerance by inhibiting neuroinflammation and down-regulating NMDAR NR1 and NR2B subunit expression. Resveratrol regulates the NMDAR expression, which might be involved in a loss of scaffolding postsynaptic density-95 protein.
The Association of Multiple Interacting Genes with Specific Phenotypes in Rice Using Gene Coexpression Networks1[C][W][OA]

Discovering gene sets underlying the expression of a given phenotype is of great importance, as many phenotypes are the result of complex gene-gene interactions. Gene coexpression networks, built using a set of microarray samples as input, can help elucidate tightly coexpressed gene sets (modules) that are mixed with genes of known and unknown function. Functional enrichment analysis of modules further subdivides the coexpressed gene set into cofunctional gene clusters that may coexist in the module with other functionally related gene clusters. In this study, 45 coexpressed gene modules and 76 cofunctional gene clusters were discovered for rice (Oryza sativa) using a global, knowledge-independent paradigm and the combination of two network construction methodologies. Some clusters were enriched for previously characterized mutant phenotypes, providing evidence for specific gene sets (and their annotated molecular functions) that underlie specific phenotypes.
Physician beliefs about the impact of meaningful use of the EHR

Summary Background: As adoption and use of electronic health records (EHRs) grows in the United States, there is a growing need in the field of applied clinical informatics to evaluate physician perceptions and beliefs about the impact of EHRs. The meaningful use of EHR incentive program provides a suitable context to examine physician beliefs about the impact of EHRs. Objective: Contribute to the sparse literature on physician beliefs about the impact of EHRs in areas such as quality of care, effectiveness of care, and delivery of care. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey of physicians at two academic medical centers (AMCs) in the northeast who were preparing to qualify for the meaningful use of EHR incentive program. Results: Of the 1,797 physicians at both AMCs who were preparing to qualify for the incentive program, 967 completed the survey for an overall response rate of 54%. Only 23% and 27% of physicians agreed or strongly agreed that meaningful use of the EHR will help them improve the care they personally deliver and improve quality of care respectively. Physician specialty was significantly associated with beliefs; e.g., 35% of primary care physicians agreed or strongly agreed that meaningful use will improve quality of care compared to 26% of medical specialists and 21% of surgical specialists (p=0.009). Satisfaction with outpatient EHR was also significantly related to all belief items. Conclusions: Only about a quarter of physicians in our study responded positively that meaningful use of the EHR will improve quality of care and the care they personally provide. These findings are similar to and extend findings from qualitative studies about negative perceptions that physicians hold about the impact of EHRs. Factors outside of the regulatory context, such as physician beliefs, need to be considered in the implementation of the meaningful use of the EHR incentive program. Citation: Emani S, Ting DY, Healey M, Lipsitz SR, Karson AS, Einbinder JS, Leinen L, Suric V, Bates DW. Physician beliefs about the impact of meaningful use of the EHR: A cross-sectional study. Appl Clin Inf 2014; 5: 789–801 http://dx.doi. org/10.4338/ACI-2014-05-RA-0050
Submucosal tunnelling endoscopic resection (STER) for the treatment of a case of huge esophageal tumor arising in the muscularis propria: a case report and review of literature.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Endoscopic Interventional Treatment is of little trauma and less complications in the treatment of esophageal tumor and leads to faster recovery and fewer days of hospitalization. This study was aimed to investigate the safety and efficacy of endoscopic interventional therapy for huge esophageal tumor arising in the muscularis propria. METHODS The patient was treated by submucosal tunneling endoscopic resection (STER). RESULTS The huge esophageal tumor was resected completely by STER technique, with little trauma and less complications. The size of the resected tumor was 5.5×3.5×3.0 cm. CONCLUSION Submucosal tunneling endoscopic resection is a safe and efficient technique for treating Huge Esophageal Tumor originating from muscularis propria layer.