Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regulation of endothelial glutathione by ICAM‐1: implications for inflammation

The role of glutathione (GSH) in inflammation is largely discussed from the context of providing reducing equivalents to detoxify reactive oxygen and nitrogen species. Inflammation is now recognized to be an underlying cause of many vascular diseases including atherosclerosis, a disease in which endothelial GSH concentrations are decreased. However, mechanisms that control GSH levels are poorly understood. Key players in the inflammatory process are endothelial adhesion molecules, including intercellular adhesion molecule‐1 (ICAM‐1). This adhesion molecule is present constitutively and can be induced by a variety of inflammatory stimuli. In this study, using mouse aortic endothelial cells (MAEC) deficient in ICAM‐1, we demonstrate a novel interplay between constitutive ICAM‐1 and cellular GSH. Deficiency of ICAM‐1 was associated with an approximately twofold increase in total GSH content. Inhibiting glutamate‐cysteine ligase (GCL), the enzyme that catalyses the rate‐limiting step in GSH biosynthesis, prevented the increase in GSH. In addition, the catalytic subunit of GCL was increased (~1.6‐fold) in ICAM‐1 deficient relative to wild‐type cells, suggesting that constitutive ICAM‐1 represses GCL expression. Furthermore, the ratio of reduced (GSH) to oxidized (GSSG) glutathione was also increased suggesting a role for ICAM‐1 in modulating cellular redox status. Interestingly, increasing cytosolic GSH in wild‐type mouse endothelial cells decreased constitutive ICAM‐1, suggesting the presence of an inverse and reciprocal pathway. To test the effects of inducible ICAM‐1 on GSH, cells were stimulated with the proinflammatory cytokine TNF‐α. TNF‐α stimulated production of ICAM‐1, which was however not associated with induction of GSH. In contrast, supplementation of endothelial cells with GSH before TNF‐α addition, inhibited induction of ICAM‐1. These data suggest a novel regulatory pathway between constitutive ICAM‐1 and GSH synthesis in the endothelium and are discussed in the context of modulating the inflammatory response.
Habitat modeling of Dahl’s toad-headed turtle (Mesoclemmys dahli) in Colombia

—Dahl’s Toad-headed Turtle (Mesoclemmys dahli) is an endemic and threatened species from Northern Colombia. It was originally described by Zangerl and Medem (1958) but information on its distribution, natural history, and ecology has been limited. Recent research and conservation efforts have contributed to the identification of new populations and a broader understanding of its natural history. There is, however, no quantitative assessment of the species’ potential distribution in Colombia, or studies of the factors that make certain areas suitable for the species. This type of information is important for developing and continuing species-specific conservation strategies. We modeled the habitat distribution of M. dahli at three spatial scales. We first modeled the species geographic distribution at an ecoregional scale in Colombia using presence-only data (known localities) and a maximum entropy (Maxent) model. Second, we evaluated the factors that differentiate the first order streams where the species occurs vs. those where it is absent at the locality of Chimichagua, Cesar (9°17.717'N, 73°47.741'W), during the dry season (December to March). Finally, we evaluated the habitat variables associated with the presence of turtles at trap sites within the streams in Chimichagua. Our model predicts the presence of this species in seven departments in Northern Colombia, occupying an area of about 32,700 km. This estimate of the range represents a potential range extension of approximately 9,000 km compared to the previously known distribution. The model, however, does not inform us about habitat quality or abundance of the species throughout this range. The tropical dry forest ecosystem, which was the most important variable explaining the species range, has been heavily transformed by human activities and is remarkable for its low level of formal protection. In Chimichagua, the species was associated with first order streams (1–10 m width), with slow flowing (< 0.22 m/sg) and dark water (< 32 cm clarity). In this same locality, within the streams where it occurs, the species was associated with portions of the stream that had considerable (> 82%) canopy cover and pools deeper than 78cm. This highlights the importance of the riparian vegetation for the species.
Heat Transfer and Thermal Design of Finned Frames for TEFC Variable-Speed Motors

This paper addresses the evaluation of the heat transfer capability of a finned frame for different velocities of the cooling fan and different numbers and dimensions of the fins. As the heat transfer is highly dependent on the air speed and turbulence, separate evaluations are done in four axial sectors of four different frames. For each frame, each sector is thermally isolated and evenly heated by an internal cylindrical heater with controlled losses. The experimental results allow computing the local transfer coefficient on each axial sector in terms of the fin dimensions and cooling air velocity, and using these empirical coefficients, it is possible to evaluate the thermal capability of the frames and/or to compute the temperature gradient needed to dissipate certain losses. Based on these results, a simple and accurate method to size finned frames is proposed.
Patients with limited communication in end-of-life situations: Initial psychometric properties of a discomfort observation scale

This work presents an observational scale which takes into account different observable indicators of discomfort of patients in end-of-life situations with difficulties in communicating due to cognitive impairment, fatigue or sedation and provides details of its validation. In all, 71 adults participated. Model fit was adequate (χ2(27) = 43.28, p = . 024, comparative fit index = . 975, root mean square error of approximation = . 092 and confidence interval 90% (.033–.140)). Alpha coefficient was . 70 and composite reliability index was . 90. Our study provides data regarding the properties of a discomfort assessment scale. Such a scale is needed and could be very useful for the evaluation of such patients and thus to attend to their needs.
“Whom Should I Pass To?” The More Options the More Attentional Guidance from Working Memory

Three experiments investigated the predictions of the biased competition theory of selective attention in a computer based sport task. According to this theory objects held in the circuitry of working memory (WM) automatically bias attention to objects in a visual scene that match or are related to the WM representation. Specifically, we investigated whether certain players that are activated in the circuitry of WM automatically draw attention and receive a competitive advantage in a computer based sport task. In all three experiments participants had to hold an image of a certain player in WM while engaged in a speeded sport task. In Experiment 1 participants had to identify as quickly as possible which player was in possession of the ball. In Experiment 2 and 3 participants had to decide to which player they would pass to in a cartoon team handball situation and a photo picture basketball situation. The results support the biased competition theory of selective attention and suggest that certain decision options receive a competitive advantage if they are associated with the activated contents in the circuitry of WM and that this effect is more pronounced when more decision options compete for attention. A further extension compared to previous research was that the contents of working memory not only biased attention but also actual decisions that can lead to passing errors in sport. We critically discuss the applied implications of the findings.
Brain Mechanisms Underlying Human Communication

Human communication has been described as involving the coding-decoding of a conventional symbol system, which could be supported by parts of the human motor system (i.e. the “mirror neurons system”). However, this view does not explain how these conventions could develop in the first place. Here we target the neglected but crucial issue of how people organize their non-verbal behavior to communicate a given intention without pre-established conventions. We have measured behavioral and brain responses in pairs of subjects during communicative exchanges occurring in a real, interactive, on-line social context. In two fMRI studies, we found robust evidence that planning new communicative actions (by a sender) and recognizing the communicative intention of the same actions (by a receiver) relied on spatially overlapping portions of their brains (the right posterior superior temporal sulcus). The response of this region was lateralized to the right hemisphere, modulated by the ambiguity in meaning of the communicative acts, but not by their sensorimotor complexity. These results indicate that the sender of a communicative signal uses his own intention recognition system to make a prediction of the intention recognition performed by the receiver. This finding supports the notion that our communicative abilities are distinct from both sensorimotor processes and language abilities.
Lattice Extension and Vocabulary Adaptation for Turkish LVCSR

This paper presents two-pass speech recognition techniques to handle the out-of-vocabulary (OOV) problem in Turkish newspaper content transcription. OOV words are assumed to be replaced by acoustically ldquosimilarrdquo in-vocabulary (IV) words during decoding. Therefore, the first pass recognition lattice is used as the prior knowledge to adapt the vocabulary and the search space for the second pass. Vocabulary adaptation and lattice extension are performed with words similar to the hypothesis lattice words. These words are selected from a fallback vocabulary using distance functions that take the agglutinative language characteristics of Turkish into account. Morphology-based and phonetic-distance-based similarity functions respectively yield 1.9% and 4.6% absolute accuracy improvements. Statistical sub-word units are also utilized to handle the OOV problem encountered in the word-based system. Using sub-words alleviates the OOV problem and improves the recognition accuracy - OOV accuracy improved from 0% to 60.2%. However, this introduces ungrammatical items to the recognition output. Since automatically derived sub-word units do not provide explicit morphological features, the lattice extension strategy is modified to correct these ungrammatical items. Lattice extension for sub-words reduces the word error rate to 32.3% from 33.9%. This improvement is statistically significant at p=0.002 as measured by the NIST MAPSSWE significance test.
Inflammatory Proteins in Plasma Are Associated with Severity of Alzheimer’s Disease

Markers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are being widely sought with a number of studies suggesting blood measures of inflammatory proteins as putative biomarkers. Here we report findings from a panel of 27 cytokines and related proteins in over 350 subjects with AD, subjects with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and elderly normal controls where we also have measures of longitudinal change in cognition and baseline neuroimaging measures of atrophy. In this study, we identify five inflammatory proteins associated with evidence of atrophy on MR imaging data particularly in whole brain, ventricular and entorhinal cortex measures. In addition, we observed six analytes that showed significant change (over a period of one year) in people with fast cognitive decline compared to those with intermediate and slow decline. One of these (IL-10) was also associated with brain atrophy in AD. In conclusion, IL-10 was associated with both clinical and imaging evidence of severity of disease and might therefore have potential to act as biomarker of disease progression.
Airborne microflora in the atmosphere of an hospital environment of University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), Benin City, Nigeria.

A study was undertaken to determine typical concentrations of airborne bacteria and fungi (microflora) in Teaching Hospital environment in Benin City in the tropical rainforest environment of Nigeria. Aerial sampling was conducted at various hospital wards each day. The air samples were collected thrice daily. Concentrations of airborne microflora exceeded available local guidelines for indoor quality in the accident and emergency ward, female ward, male ward, pediatric ward and the maternity ward, but not in the restricted wards like the theatre, intensive care unit and bacteriological laboratory. The occupant density was the key factor influencing the levels of airborne microflora, while humidity was also observed as a factor, depending on the particular location with the hospital. The concentration of airborne bacteria and fungi in the nine different hospital units varied from wards to wards. The bacterial population ranges from 3.0 cfu/m to 76.0 cfu/m , with 33 the highest bacterial population recorded in the accident and emergency ward. The fungal population ranges from 6.0 cfu/m to 44.7 cfu/m , while the highest fungal population was recorded in the accident and 33 emergency ward. The microflora characterized and identified, were representative of the normal microflora of the human body (skin, gastrointestinal tracts, respiratory tract) and the opportunistic pathogens. The microbial isolates included six bacterial genera, among which are, Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermis, Escherichia coli, Bacillus sp. and Proteus mirabilis, the fugal isolates included, Aspergillus sp, Penicillium sp. , Mucor sp. , Candida sp and Verticillium sp. The concentrations of airborne microflora recorded in the hospital environment, specifically in the accident and emergency ward was significantly different from other wards
Capacity-Approaching Design for Half-Duplex NAF Relay Channels

In this paper, we design a capacity-approaching coded modulation scheme for half-duplex non-orthogonal amplify-and-forward (NAF) single-relay channel. We apply the idea of multi-dimensional (multi-D) mapping employed in precoded multiple cooperative frames, concatenated with a simple outer binary code. Using union bounding techniques, it is first shown that for any unitary and full-diversity rotation ${\bm G}$, the optimal multi-D labeling for NAF relaying shall maximize the average Euclidean distance between all pairs in the multi-D rotated constellation whose labels differ in only one bit. The extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts are then used to match the outer code, the multi-D mapping, and the precoder for near-capacity performance. It is demonstrated that the proposed scheme is promising for NAF relaying, in the sense that it can operate below the achievable rate obtained by using a conventional modulation scheme, i.e., the constrained capacity. In particular, for various spectral efficiencies, we obtain the bit error rate (BER) of $10^{-5}$ or lower at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) that is 0.45dB-1dB below the traditional achievable rate and within 1.55dB-1.95dB from the ergodic capacity with Gaussian inputs.
Cell Cycle Regulation of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Polo-Like Kinase Cdc5p

ABSTRACT Progression through and completion of mitosis require the actions of the evolutionarily conserved Polo kinase. We have determined that the levels of Cdc5p, a Saccharomyces cerevisiae member of the Polo family of mitotic kinases, are cell cycle regulated. Cdc5p accumulates in the nuclei of G2/M-phase cells, and its levels decline dramatically as cells progress through anaphase and begin telophase. We report that Cdc5p levels are sensitive to mutations in key components of the anaphase-promoting complex (APC). We have determined that Cdc5p-associated kinase activity is restricted to G2/M and that this activity is posttranslationally regulated. These results further link the actions of the APC to the completion of mitosis and suggest possible roles for Cdc5p during progression through and completion of mitosis.
Squamous Dysplasia—The Precursor Lesion for Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) accounts for 80% of all esophageal cancers worldwide, and esophageal squamous dysplasia (ESD) is the only histopathology that predicts the development of ESCC. The prevalence of ESD parallels rates of invasive ESCC and is typically found in 25% or more of adults above the age of 35 years in populations in north central China, where risk for ESCC is among the highest in the world. Results of chemoprevention and early detection studies to prevent progression of ESD suggest that these approaches, coupled with emerging endoscopic therapies, offer promise for the prevention of esophageal cancer mortality in high-risk populations. Future research on ESD and ESCC should focus on finding additional modifiable risk factors and on identifying biomarkers to incorporate into early detection strategies. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 22(4); 540–52. ©2013 AACR.
Sterol Regulatory Element Binding Protein Is a Principal Regulator of Anaerobic Gene Expression in Fission Yeast

ABSTRACT Fission yeast sterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP), called Sre1p, functions in an oxygen-sensing pathway to allow adaptation to fluctuating oxygen concentrations. The Sre1p-Scp1p complex responds to oxygen-dependent sterol synthesis as an indirect measure of oxygen availability. To examine the role of Sre1p in anaerobic gene expression in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, we performed transcriptional profiling experiments after a shift to anaerobic conditions for 1.5 h. Of the 4,940 genes analyzed, expression levels of 521 (10.5%) and 686 (13.9%) genes were significantly increased and decreased, respectively, under anaerobic conditions. Sre1p controlled 68% of genes induced ≥2-fold. Oxygen-requiring biosynthetic pathways for ergosterol, heme, sphingolipid, and ubiquinone were primary targets of Sre1p. Induction of glycolytic genes and repression of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation genes largely did not require Sre1p. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation, we demonstrated that Sre1p acts directly at target gene promoters and stimulates its own transcription under anaerobic conditions. sre1 + promoter analysis identified two DNA elements that are both necessary and sufficient for oxygen-dependent, Sre1p-dependent transcription. Interestingly, these elements are homologous to sterol regulatory elements bound by mammalian SREBP, highlighting the evolutionary conservation between Sre1p and SREBP. We conclude that Sre1p is a principal activator of anaerobic gene expression, upregulating genes required for nonrespiratory oxygen consumption.
Mode of Genetic Inheritance Modifies the Association of Head Circumference and Autism-Related Symptoms: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background Frequently individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been noted with a larger head circumference (HC) than their typical developing peers. Biologic hypotheses suggest that an overly rapid brain growth leads to the core symptoms of ASD by impairing connectivity. Literature is divided however where deleterious, protective and null associations of HC with ASD symptoms in individuals with ASD have been found. Method Individuals (n = 1,416) from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange with ASD were examined for associations of HC with ASD like symptoms. Mixed models controlling for sex, age, race/ethnicity, simplex/multiplex status and accounting for correlations between siblings were used. Interactions by simplex/multiplex were explored. Adjustments for height in a sub-population with available data were explored as well. Results A Significant interaction term (p = 0.03) suggested that the effect of HC was dependent on whether the individual was simplex or multiplex. In simplex individuals at mean age (8.9 years) 1 cm increase in head circumference was associated with a 24% increase in the odds of a high social diagnostic score from the Autism Diagnostic Interview – Revised (odds ratio = 1.24, p = 0.01). There was no association in multiplex individuals. Additionally, individuals classified with a non-verbal IQ <70 were 90% simplex and had a significantly increased head circumference (0.7 cm p = 0.03) relative to a mid-range non-verbal IQ group. Interestingly, children classified with a >110 non-verbal IQ also had an increased HC (0.4 cm p = 0.04), relative to a mid-range non-verbal IQ group, and were 90% multiplex. HC effects do not appear to be confounded by height, however, larger samples with height information are needed. Conclusion The potential link between brain growth and autism like symptoms is complex and could depend on specific etiologies. Further investigations accounting for a likely mode of inheritance will help identify an ASD subtype related to HC.
Optimal Search for Product Information

Consumers often need to search for product information before making purchase decisions. We consider a tractable (continuous-time) model of gradual learning, in which consumers incur search costs to learn further product information, and update their expected utility of the product at each search occasion. We characterize the optimal stopping rules for either purchase, or no purchase, as a function of search costs and of the importance/informativeness of each attribute. This paper also characterizes how the likelihood of purchase changes with the ex ante expected utility, search costs, and the importance/informativeness of each attribute. We discuss optimal pricing, the impact of consumer search on profits and social welfare, and how the seller chooses its price to strategically affect the extent of the consumers' search behavior. We show that lower search costs can hurt the consumer because the seller may then choose to charge higher prices. Discounting creates asymmetry in the purchase and no-purchase search thresholds, and may lead to lower prices if search occurs in equilibrium, or higher prices if there is no search in equilibrium. This paper also considers searching for signals of the value of the product, heterogeneous importance of attributes, endogenous intensity of search, and social learning. This paper was accepted by Pradeep Chintagunta, marketing.
Wigner theorems for random matrices with dependent entries: Ensembles associated to symmetric spaces and sample covariance matrices

It is a classical result of Wigner that for an hermitian matrix with independent entries on and above the diagonal, the mean empirical eigenvalue distribution converges weakly to the semicircle law as matrix size tends to infinity. In this paper, we prove analogs of Wigner's theorem for random matrices taken from all infinitesimal versions of classical symmetric spaces. This is a class of models which contains those studied by Wigner and Dyson, along with seven others arising in condensed matter physics. Like Wigner's, our results are universal in that they only depend on certain assumptions about the moments of the matrix entries, but not on the specifics of their distributions. What is more, we allow for a certain amount of dependence among the matrix entries, in the spirit of a recent generalization of Wigner's theorem, due to Schenker and Schulz-Baldes. As a byproduct, we obtain a universality result for sample covariance matrices with dependent entries.