Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perivascular macrophage‐like melanocyte responsiveness to acoustic trauma—a salient feature of strial barrier associated hearing loss

Tissue perivascular resident macrophages (PVM/Ms), a hybrid cell type with characteristics of both macrophages and melanocytes, are critical for establishing and maintaining the endocochlear potential (EP) required for hearing. The PVM/Ms modulate expression of tight‐ and adherens‐junction proteins in the endothelial barrier of the stria vascularis (intrastrial fluid‐blood barrier) through secretion of a signaling molecule, pigment epithelium growth factor (PEDF). Here, we identify a significant link between abnormalities in PVM/Ms and endothelial barrier breakdown from acoustic trauma to the mouse ear. We find that acoustic trauma causes activation of PVM/Ms and physical detachment from capillary walls. Concurrent with the detachment, we find loosened tight junctions between endothelial cells and decreased production of tight‐ and adherens‐junction protein, resulting in leakage of serum proteins from the damaged barrier. A key factor in the intrastrial fluid‐blood barrier hyperpermeability exhibited in the mice is down‐regulation of PVM/M modulated PEDF production. We demonstrate that delivery of PEDF to the damaged ear ameliorates hearing loss by restoring intrastrial fluid‐blood barrier integrity. PEDF up‐regulates expression of tight junction‐associated proteins (ZO‐1 and VE‐cadherin) and PVM/M stabilizing neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM‐120). These studies point to the critical role PVM/Ms play in regulating intrastrial fluid‐blood barrier integrity in healthy and noise‐damaged ears. —Zhang, F. , Dai, M. , Neng, L. , Zhang, J.H. , Zhi, Z. , Fridberger, A. , Shi, X. , Perivascular macrophage‐like melanocyte responsiveness to acoustic trauma—a salient feature of strial barrier associated hearing loss. FASEB J. 27, 3730–3740 (2013). www.fasebj. org
Evaluating the Impact of Software Evolution on Software Clustering

The evolution of a software project is a rich data source for analyzing and improving the software development process. Recently, several research groups have tried to cluster source code artifacts based on information about how the code of a software system evolves. The results of these evolutionary approaches seem promising, but a direct comparison to traditional software clustering approaches based on structural code dependencies is still missing. To fill this gap, we conducted several clustering experiments with an approved software clustering tool comparing and combining the evolutionary and the structural approach. These experiments show that the evolutionary approach could produce meaningful clustering results. But still the traditional approach provides better results because of a more reliable data density of the structural data. Finally, the combination of both approaches is able to improve the overall clustering quality.
Optimal Allocation of Resources among Threatened Species: a Project Prioritization Protocol

Abstract: Conservation funds are grossly inadequate to address the plight of threatened species. Government and conservation organizations faced with the task of conserving threatened species desperately need simple strategies for allocating limited resources. The academic literature dedicated to systematic priority setting usually recommends ranking species on several criteria, including level of endangerment and metrics of species value such as evolutionary distinctiveness, ecological importance, and social significance. These approaches ignore 2 crucial factors: the cost of management and the likelihood that the management will succeed. These oversights will result in misallocation of scarce conservation resources and possibly unnecessary losses. We devised a project prioritization protocol (PPP) to optimize resource allocation among New Zealand's threatened‐species projects, where costs, benefits (including species values), and the likelihood of management success were considered simultaneously. We compared the number of species managed and the expected benefits gained with 5 prioritization criteria: PPP with weightings based on species value; PPP with species weighted equally; management costs; species value; and threat status. We found that the rational use of cost and success information substantially increased the number of species managed, and prioritizing management projects according to species value or threat status in isolation was inefficient and resulted in fewer species managed. In addition, we found a clear trade‐off between funding management of a greater number of the most cost‐efficient and least risky projects and funding fewer projects to manage the species of higher value. Specifically, 11 of 32 species projects could be funded if projects were weighted by species value compared with 16 projects if projects were not weighted. This highlights the value of a transparent decision‐making process, which enables a careful consideration of trade‐offs. The use of PPP can substantially improve conservation outcomes for threatened species by increasing efficiency and ensuring transparency of management decisions.
Affective disorders and suicide risk: a reexamination.

OBJECTIVE In 1970, Guze and Robins published a meta-analysis of suicide in patients with affective illness that inferred a lifetime risk of 15%. Since then, this figure has been generalized to all depressive disorders and cited uncritically in many papers and textbooks. The authors argue for an alternative estimate of suicide risk and question the generalizability of the Guze and Robins estimate. METHOD The authors sorted studies obtained through a literature search that included data pertaining to suicide occurrence in affective illness into one of three groups: outpatients, inpatients, or suicidal inpatients. Suicide risks were calculated meta-analytically for these three groups, as well as for two previously published collections. RESULTS There was a hierarchy in suicide risk among patients with affective disorders. The estimate of the lifetime prevalence of suicide in those ever hospitalized for suicidality was 8.6%. For affective disorder patients hospitalized without specification of suicidality, the lifetime risk of suicide was 4.0%. The lifetime suicide prevalence for mixed inpatient/outpatient populations was 2.2%, and for the nonaffectively ill population, it was less than 0.5%. CONCLUSIONS The percentage of subjects dead due to suicide (case fatality prevalence) is a more appropriate estimate of suicide risk than the percentage of the dead who died by suicide (proportionate mortality prevalence). More important, it is well established that patients with affective disorders suffer a higher risk of suicide relative to the general population. However, no risk factor, including classification of diagnostic subtype, has been reliably shown to predict suicide. This article demonstrates a hierarchy of risk based on the intensity of the treatment setting. Given that patients with a hospitalization history, particularly when suicidal, have a much elevated suicide prevalence over both psychiatric outpatients and nonpatients, the clinical decision to hospitalize in and of itself appears to be a useful indicator of increased suicide risk.
Sequential-Design, Multicenter, Randomized, Controlled Trial of Early Decompressive Craniectomy in Malignant Middle Cerebral Artery Infarction (DECIMAL Trial)

Background and Purpose— There is no effective medical treatment of malignant middle cerebral artery (MCA) infarction. The purpose of this clinical trial was to assess the efficacy of early decompressive craniectomy in patients with malignant MCA infarction. Methods— We conducted in France a multicenter, randomized trial involving patients between 18 and 55 years of age with malignant MCA infarction to compare functional outcomes with or without decompressive craniectomy. A sequential, single-blind, triangular design was used to compare the rate of development of moderate disability (modified Rankin scale score ≤3) at 6 months’ follow-up (primary outcome) between the 2 treatment groups. Results— After randomization of 38 patients, the data safety monitoring committee recommended stopping the trial because of slow recruitment and organizing a pooled analysis of individual data from this trial and the 2 other ongoing European trials of decompressive craniectomy in malignant MCA infarction. Among the 38 patients randomized, the proportion of patients with a modified Rankin scale score ≤3 at the 6-month and 1-year follow-up was 25% and 50%, respectively, in the surgery group compared with 5.6% and 22.2%, respectively, in the no-surgery group (P=0.18 and P=0.10, respectively). There was a 52.8% absolute reduction of death after craniectomy compared with medical therapy only (P<0.0001). Conclusions— In this trial, early decompressive craniectomy increased by more than half the number of patients with moderate disability and very significantly reduced (by more than half) the mortality rate compared with that after medical therapy.
Building Efficiency and Sustainability in the Tropics ( SinBerBEST ) Title Low-cost coarse airborne particulate matter sensing for indoor occupancy detection

In the energy-efficient smart building, occupancy detection and localization is an area of increasing interest, as services, such as lighting and ventilation, could be targeted towards individual occupants instead of an entire room or floor. Also, an increasing quantity and diversity of environmental sensors are being added to smart buildings to ensure the quality of services provided by the building. The need for particulate matter (PM) sensors in consumer devices such as air purifiers, is an example where manufacturing advances have made the sensors much less expensive than laboratory equipment. Beyond their original intended use, air quality, they can also be used for occupancy monitoring. The work presented in this article proposes to use a low-cost (< 8 USD) PM sensor to infer the local movement of occupants in a corridor by sensing the resuspension of coarse (≥ 2.5 μm) particles. To obtain meaningful values from the inexpensive sensors, we have calibrated them against a laboratory-grade instrument. After calibration, we conducted a 7.8 hour experiment measuring coarse PM within a pedestrian corridor of a heavily-used office area. Comparing against ground truth data obtained by a camera, we show that the PM sensor readings are correlated with human activity, thus enabling statistical methods to infer one from the other.
Single‐axon action potentials in the rat hippocampal cortex

Whether all action potentials propagate faithfully throughout axon arbors in the mammalian CNS has long been debated, and remains an important issue because many synapses occur far from the soma along extremely thin, unmyelinated, varicosity‐laden branches of axon arbors. We detected unitary action potentials along individual axon branches of adult hippocampal CA3 pyramidal cells using extracellular electrodes, and analysed their conduction across long distances (mean, 2.1 mm) at 22 and 37 °C. Axons nearly always transmitted low‐frequency impulses. At higher frequencies, most axons also transmitted impulses with striking fidelity. However, at paired‐pulse frequencies in the hundreds of kilohertz range, axons exhibited variability: refractory periods ranged from 2.5 to 10 ms at 37 °C and from 5 to 40 ms at 22 °C. Although the basis for the refractory period variability could not be determined, these limits overlap with CA3 spike frequencies observed in vivo, raising the possibility that some axonal branches act as filters for the higher‐order spikes in bursts, in contrast to the observed first‐spike reliability. These results extend the observations of propagation reliability to a much longer distance and higher frequency domain than previously reported, and suggest a high safety factor for action potential propagation along thin, varicose axons.
An Assessment of Behavioral Dynamic Information Processing Measures in Audiovisual Speech Perception

Research has shown that visual speech perception can assist accuracy in identification of spoken words. However, little is known about the dynamics of the processing mechanisms involved in audiovisual integration. In particular, architecture and capacity, measured using response time methodologies, have not been investigated. An issue related to architecture concerns whether the auditory and visual sources of the speech signal are integrated “early” or “late. ” We propose that “early” integration most naturally corresponds to coactive processing whereas “late” integration corresponds to separate decisions parallel processing. We implemented the double factorial paradigm in two studies. First, we carried out a pilot study using a two-alternative forced-choice discrimination task to assess architecture, decision rule, and provide a preliminary assessment of capacity (integration efficiency). Next, Experiment 1 was designed to specifically assess audiovisual integration efficiency in an ecologically valid way by including lower auditory S/N ratios and a larger response set size. Results from the pilot study support a separate decisions parallel, late integration model. Results from both studies showed that capacity was severely limited for high auditory signal-to-noise ratios. However, Experiment 1 demonstrated that capacity improved as the auditory signal became more degraded. This evidence strongly suggests that integration efficiency is vitally affected by the S/N ratio.
Refined Solidification Structure and Improved Formability of A356 Aluminum Alloy Plate Produced using a High-Speed Twin-Roll Strip Caster

An A356 aluminum alloy was cast into a 2 mm thick plate by a strip caster equipped with a pair of water-cooled rolls made of pure copper. The twin-roll cast plate exhibited fairly refined primary aluminum dendrite- and eutectic solidified structure. The estimated maximum cooling rate at the near-surface region of the plate is 4000 K/s. These values are significantly higher than the cooling rate for the permanent mold cast (2 K/s). The cast plate was cold-rolled and annealed into a 0.5 mm thick sheet. The resultant sheet was subjected to the 180 bending test. No cracking occurred in the twin-roll cast product. Improved formability is considered to be mainly due to the homogeneous distribution of fine Si particles.
Kidney Function in Cor Pulmonale: Particular Consideration of Changes in Renal Hemodynamics and Sodium Excretion during Variation in Level of Oxygenation

Renal hemodynamics and sodium excretion were investigated in two groups of patients with cor pulmonale: group 1 was in heart failure at the time of study, and group 2 had previously been in heart failure. These subjects, who were virtually or potentially in heart failure, were exposed to various levels of oxygenation in order to aggravate acutely or relieve their chronic anoxia. The compensatory adjustments in kidney function to these changes in oxygen tension and their implications constitute the substance of this report.
Developmental Changes in Electrophysiological Properties and a Transition from Electrical to Chemical Coupling between Excitatory Layer 4 Neurons in the Rat Barrel Cortex

During development, sensory systems switch from an immature to an adult mode of function along with the emergence of the active cortical states. Here, we used patch-clamp recordings from neocortical slices in vitro to characterize the developmental changes in the basic electrophysiological properties of excitatory L4 neurons and their connectivity before and after the developmental switch, which occurs in the rat barrel cortex in vivo at postnatal day P8. Prior to the switch, L4 neurons had higher resting membrane potentials, higher input resistance, lower membrane capacity, as well as action potentials (APs) with smaller amplitudes, longer durations and higher AP thresholds compared to the neurons after the switch. A sustained firing pattern also emerged around the switch. Dual patch-clamp recordings from L4 neurons revealed that recurrent connections between L4 excitatory cells do not exist before and develop rapidly across the switch. In contrast, electrical coupling between these neurons waned around the switch. We suggest that maturation of electrophysiological features, particularly acquisition of a sustained firing pattern, and a transition from the immature electrical to mature chemical synaptic coupling between excitatory L4 neurons, contributes to the developmental switch in the cortical mode of function.
[A comparison of fat and muscle thickness in Japanese and American women].

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ethnic differences in the body composition, thickness of subcutaneous fat and muscle between Japanese and American white females. Thirty-six Japanese (aged 20-30 years) and 42 American white females (aged 20-29 years) served as subjects. Percentage of fat weight (%fat) and fat free weight (FFW) were assessed by hydrostatic weighing. Subcutaneous fat and muscle thickness were measured by using B-scan ultrasound equipment with a 5MHz transducer at eight sites: forearm, biceps, triceps, subscapular, abdomen, quadriceps, hamstrings and posterior calf. There were no significant differences in %fat between Japanese and American subjects. However, American subjects had significantly higher values in FFW compared to Japanese. The Americans showed higher muscle thickness than Japanese at every site and higher fat thickness of biceps, triceps and hamstrings compared to Japanese subjects. For fat thickness at the abdomen, however, Japanese indicated significantly higher values than American. In both Japanese and Americans, relative values of fat weight (FW) and FFW per unit of height were significantly related to each of the sum of fat and muscle thicknesses obtained from every measurement site respectively. There were no differences in fat thickness at a given FW/height between Japanese and Americans. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Global Self-esteem across the Life Span

This study provides a comprehensive picture of age differences in self-esteem from age 9 to 90 years using cross-sectional data collected from 326,641 individuals over the Internet. Self-esteem levels were high in childhood, dropped during adolescence, rose gradually throughout adulthood, and declined sharply in old age. This trajectory generally held across gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and nationality (U.S. citizens vs. non-U.S. citizens). Overall, these findings support previous research, help clarify inconsistencies in the literature, and document new trends that require further investigation. Over the past century, hundreds of studies have examined the development of self-esteem, but this research has failed to produce a consensual portrait of age differences in self-esteem across the entire life span. Two decades ago, Wylie (1979) conducted an extensive review of the self-esteem literature and concluded that there are no systematic age differences in self-esteem. Although researchers have questioned Wylie's conclusion debates surrounding this issue have not led to any agreement about the trajectory of self-esteem from childhood to old age. There are several reasons for the lack of consensus in the field. First, the most recent comprehensive reviews of the existing literature were conducted at least a decade ago (e.g., Demo, 1992; Wylie, 1979). Second, the vast majority of existing studies have focused on age differences in self-esteem during childhood and adolescence, and only a handful of studies have examined the development of self-esteem during adulthood or old age. As Demo (1992) noted, " the research to date is extremely lopsided, with 12-and 13-year-olds forming the floor and 18-to 22-year-olds representing the ceiling of our convenience samples " (p. 323). These gaps in the research literature make any conclusions about change across much of the life span highly tenuous. Third, research on self-esteem development has produced inconsistent findings, making it difficult to reach unequivocal conclusions even within specific stages of life. For example, some studies show a rise in self-esteem during adolescence Moreover, if self-esteem does drop in adolescence, researchers have yet to determine the age at which the drop begins, when it reaches its lowest level, and when (if ever) it begins to rise. The literature on self-esteem in old age has also produced equivocal findings, with some studies showing a decline (e. Fourth, many studies of self-esteem development have used relatively small and homogeneous samples, and their findings may not generalize to more diverse populations. Given sample size limitations, these studies often group …
Effect of exogenous thyroxine on timing of seasonal reproductive transitions in ewes.

The thyroid gland is necessary for the transition from the breeding season to anestrus in the ewe, but the importance of seasonal changes in thyroxine in this process is not known. The objective of this experiment was to determine the effects of exogenous thyroxine during the breeding season on the time of the transition to anestrus and on the onset of the subsequent breeding season in ewes maintained on natural photoperiod. Cyclic Galway ewes were blocked on the basis of body weight and randomly allocated to the following groups: 1) untreated controls (n = 11), 2) placebo-injected controls (n = 9), and 3) ewes injected daily with thyroxine from the middle of the breeding season until the onset of anestrus (n = 10). Reproductive state was assessed from serum progesterone concentrations determined twice weekly until the breeding season had ended in placebo-injected controls, and until the onset of the subsequent breeding season in untreated and thyroxine-injected ewes. The mean (+/- SEM) date of onset of anestrus did not differ between untreated ewes (April 19 +/- 9 days) and placebo-injected controls (April 15 +/- 9 days; p > 0.05), but occurred earlier in ewes injected with thyroxine (February 28 +/- 6 days; p < 0.001). Thyroxine treatment during the breeding season, however, did not affect the onset of the subsequent breeding season. These data indicate that supplementary thyroxine during the breeding season can advance anestrus and thus shorten the duration of the breeding season. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Standing on textured surfaces: effects on standing balance in healthy older adults.

BACKGROUND standing on textured surfaces or wearing textured shoe insoles can alter balance performance. This evidence, although inconclusive, offers a potential intervention for improving balance in older adults. This study explored the effect of standing on textured surfaces on double-limb balance in older adults and changes in muscle activity as a possible mechanism of effect. METHODS 50 healthy older adults (29 female, age mean [1SD] 75.1 [5.0]) stood quietly in six conditions-eyes open and closed on two different textured surfaces and a smooth surface control. Mediolateral sway, anterior-posterior sway and centre of pressure velocity were extracted from a force platform and lower limb muscle activity collected using surface electromyography (EMG) over 30 s. RESULTS for mediolateral range with eyes closed, there was a statistically significant effect of texture (F [2, 47] = 3.840, P = 0.033). This was attributed to a 9.2% decrease with Texture 1 compared with Control. No such effects were seen in any other balance variable or lower limb EMG activity for either visual condition. CONCLUSION the results suggest an effect of standing on textured surfaces on mediolateral sway in older adults, supporting further work to develop the therapeutic benefits of textured surfaces as an intervention to improve balance.