Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antidepressant-like Effect of l-perillaldehyde in Stress-induced Depression-like Model Mice through Regulation of the Olfactory Nervous System

Perillae Herba (a leaf of Perilla frutescens) has been prescribed as one of the component herbs in certain Kampo (Japanese herbal) medicines that are used clinically for the improvement of depressive mood. l-Perillaldehyde (PAH) is a major component in the essential oil containing in Perillae Herba, but its antidepressant-like effect has not been reported. To clarify the antidepressant-like effect of PAH, the inhaled effect of PAH on stress-induced depression-like model mice prepared by subjection to a combination of forced swimming and chronic mild stresses was investigated. The degree of the depression-like state was measured by the animal's duration of immobility using a forced swimming test. Inhalation of PAH (0.0965 and 0.965 mg/mouse/day, 9 days) significantly shortened the duration of immobility of the depression-like model mice and did not affect locomotor activity. However, another odor substance, cinnamaldehyde containing in Cinnamomi Cortex, exhibited no reduction in the immobility. The reduction in the immobility induced by the inhalation of PAH was prevented on anosmia-induced mice prepared by intranasal irrigation with zinc sulfate. These results suggest that the inhalation of PAH shows antidepressant-like activity through the olfactory nervous function.
Innervation‐dependent and fiber type‐specific transcriptional regulation of the slow myosin heavy chain 2 promoter in avian skeletal muscle fibers

Skeletal muscle fiber type is regulated, in part, by innervation leading to transcriptional regulation of fiber type‐specific genes. Here, we report the initial characterization of the transcriptional regulation of the slow myosin heavy chain 2 (MyHC2) promoter in innervated and noninnervated slow medial adductor (MA) and fast pectoralis major (PM) muscle fibers in cell culture. The proximal 1358 bp of slow MyHC2 upstream DNA contains a functional E‐box and binding sites for myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2) and nuclear factor of activated T cells (NFAT). Mutagenesis studies indicated that both MEF2 and NFAT binding sites are required for innervation‐induced slow MyHC2 promoter activity in MA muscle fibers. However, MEF2 transcription factor activity was unaffected by innervation and did not demonstrate fiber type‐specific interactions with the slow MyHC2 MEF2 binding site. NFAT transcription factor activity did increase in innervated MA muscle fibers and not in PM muscle fibers, indicating innervation and muscle fiber type‐specific regulation. However, transfection of constitutively active NFAT indicated that NFAT is insufficient to induce slow MyHC2 gene expression in either fast PM or slow MA muscle fibers without innervation. These results indicate the requirement for MEF2 and NFAT in innervation‐induced slow MyHC2 gene expression and suggest that additional innervation‐dependent and fiber type‐specific control of slow MyHC2 gene expression resides in MA and PM muscle fibers, respectively. Developmental Dynamics 231:292–302, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The self-organized learning of noisy environmental stimuli requires distinct phases of plasticity

Along sensory pathways, representations of environmental stimuli become increasingly sparse and expanded. If additionally the feed-forward synaptic weights are structured according to the inherent organization of stimuli, the increase in sparseness and expansion leads to a reduction of sensory noise. However, it is unknown how the synapses in the brain form the required structure, especially given the omnipresent noise of environmental stimuli. Here, we employ a combination of synaptic plasticity and intrinsic plasticity - adapting the excitability of each neuron individually - and present stimuli with an inherent organization to a feed-forward network. We observe that intrinsic plasticity maintains the sparseness of the neural code and thereby enables synaptic plasticity to learn the organization of stimuli in low-noise environments. Nevertheless, even high levels of noise can be handled after a subsequent phase of readaptation of the neuronal excitabilities by intrinsic plasticity. Interestingly, during this phase the synaptic structure has to be maintained. These results demonstrate that learning in the presence of noise requires adaptation of the synaptic structure but also of the neuronal properties in two distinct phases of learning: an encoding phase, during which the inherent organization of the environmental stimuli is learned, followed by a readaptation phase to readapt the neuronal system according to the current level of noise. The necessity of these distinct phases of learning suggests a new role for synaptic consolidation.
Home Range, Habitat Use, and Activity Patterns of Free-Roaming Domestic Cats

ABSTRACT We used radio-telemetry and collar-mounted activity sensors to compare home range size, habitat use, and activity patterns of owned and unowned free-roaming cats on the outskirts of Champaign Urbana, Illinois, USA. Owned cats (3 M, 8 F) had smaller home ranges than unowned cats (6 M, 10 F), but we failed to detect consistent differences in home range size between the sexes or among seasons. Home ranges of unowned cats included more grassland and urban area than predicted based on availability in all seasons, and farmsteads were selected in fall and winter. Within home ranges, unowned cats shifted their use of habitats among seasons in ways that likely reflected prey availability, predation risk, and environmental stress, whereas habitat use within home ranges by owned cats did not differ from random. Unowned cats were more nocturnal and showed higher overall levels of activity than owned cats. Space use and behavioral differences between owned and unowned cats supported the hypothesis that the care a cat owner provides influences the impact a cat has on its environment, information that is important for making decisions on controlling cat populations.
Bidirectional Elaboration of Dependently Typed Programs

Dependently typed programming languages allow programmers to express a rich set of invariants and verify them statically via type checking. To make programming with dependent types practical, dependently typed systems provide a compact language for programmers where one can omit some arguments, called implicit, which can be inferred. This source language is then usually elaborated into a core language where type checking and fundamental properties such as normalization are well understood. Unfortunately, this elaboration is rarely specified and in general is ill-understood. This makes it not only difficult for programmers to understand why a given program fails to type check, but also is one of the reasons that implementing dependently typed programming systems remains a black art known only to a few. In this paper, we specify the design of a source language for a dependently typed programming language where we separate the language of programs from the language of types and terms occurring in types. Total functions in our language correspond directly to first-order inductive proofs over a specific index domain. We then give a bi-directional elaboration algorithm to translate source terms where implicit arguments can be omitted to a fully explicit core language and prove soundness of our elaboration. Our framework provides post-hoc explanation for elaboration found in the programming and proof environment, Beluga.
Phishguru: a system for educating users about semantic attacks

Online security attacks are a growing concern among Internet users. Currently, the Internet community is facing three types of security attacks: physical, syntactic, and semantic. Semantic attacks take advantage of the way humans interact with computers or interpret messages. There are three major approaches to counter semantic attacks: silently eliminating the attacks, warning users about the attacks, and training users not to fall for the attacks. The existing methods for silently eliminating the attack and warning users about the attack are unlikely to perform flawlessly and as users are the weakest link in these attacks, it is essential that user training complement other methods. The goal of my thesis is to show that computer users trained with an embedded training system, one grounded in the principles of learning science are able to make more accurate online trust decisions than users who read traditional security training materials, which are distributed via email or posted online. To achieve this goal, I focus on "phishing," a type of semantic attack. I have developed a system called "PhishGuru" based on embedded training methodology and learning science principles. Embedded training is a methodology in which training materials are integrated into the primary tasks users perform in their day-to-day lives. In contrast to existing training methodologies, the PhishGuru shows training materials to users through emails at the moment ("teachable moment") users actually fall for phishing attacks. I evaluated the embedded training methodology through laboratory and field studies. Real-world experiments showed that people trained with PhishGuru retain knowledge even after 28 days. PhishGuru training does not decrease users' willingness to click on links in legitimate messages. The design principles established in this thesis will help researchers to develop systems that can train users in other risky online situations. PhishGuru is also being used in a real-world implementation of the Anti-Phishing Working Group Landing Page initiative. PhishGuru is currently being commercialized by Wombat Security Technologies. http://www.cs. cmu.edu/∼ponguru/PK defense.html.
Arabidopsis CYP707As Encode (+)-Abscisic Acid 8′-Hydroxylase, a Key Enzyme in the Oxidative Catabolism of Abscisic Acid1

Abscisic acid (ABA) is involved in a number of critical processes in normal growth and development as well as in adaptive responses to environmental stresses. For correct and accurate actions, a physiologically active ABA level is controlled through fine-tuning of de novo biosynthesis and catabolism. The hydroxylation at the 8′-position of ABA is known as the key step of ABA catabolism, and this reaction is catalyzed by ABA 8′-hydroxylase, a cytochrome P450. Here, we demonstrate CYP707As as the P450 responsible for the 8′-hydroxylation of (+)-ABA. First, all four CYP707A cDNAs were cloned from Arabidopsis and used for the production of the recombinant proteins in insect cells using a baculovirus system. The insect cells expressing CYP707A3 efficiently metabolized (+)-ABA to yield phaseic acid, the isomerized form of 8′-hydroxy-ABA. The microsomes from the insect cells exhibited very strong activity of 8′-hydroxylation of (+)-ABA (Km = 1.3 μm and kcat = 15 min−1). The solubilized CYP707A3 protein bound (+)-ABA with the binding constant Ks = 3.5 μm, but did not bind (−)-ABA. Detailed analyses of the reaction products confirmed that CYP707A3 does not have the isomerization activity of 8′-hydroxy-ABA to phaseic acid. Further experiments revealed that Arabidopsis CYP707A1 and CYP707A4 also encode ABA 8′-hydroxylase. The transcripts of the CYP707A genes increased in response to salt, osmotic, and dehydration stresses as well as ABA. These results establish that the CYP707A family plays a key role in regulating the ABA level through the 8′-hydroxylation of (+)-ABA.
On using topological degree theory to investigate a coupled system of non linear hybrid differential equations

In this work we discuss the existence of solutions of nonlinear fractional differential equations. By using the topological degree theory, some results on the existence of solutions are obtained. Our analysis relies on the reduction of the problem considered to the equivalent system of Fredholm integral equations. As applications, an examples is also provided to illustrate our main results.
Ieee Transactions on Software Engineering, Manuscript Id Stakerare: Using Social Networks and Collaborative Filtering for Large-scale Requirements Elicitation

—Requirements elicitation is the software engineering activity in which stakeholder needs are understood. It involves identifying and prioritising requirements – a process difficult to scale to large software projects with many stakeholders. This paper proposes StakeRare, a novel method that uses social networks and collaborative filtering to identify and prioritise requirements in large software projects. StakeRare identifies stakeholders and asks them to recommend other stakeholders and stakeholder roles, builds a social network with stakeholders as nodes and their recommendations as links, and prioritises stakeholders using a variety of social network measures to determine their project influence. It then asks the stakeholders to rate an initial list of requirements, recommends other relevant requirements to them using collaborative filtering, and prioritises their requirements using their ratings weighted by their project influence. StakeRare was evaluated by applying it to a software project for a 30,000-user system, and a substantial empirical study of requirements elicitation was conducted. Using the data collected from surveying and interviewing 87 stakeholders, the study demonstrated that StakeRare predicts stakeholder needs accurately, and arrives with a more complete and accurately prioritised list of requirements compared to the existing method used in the project, taking only a fraction of the time.
On characteristic hypersurfaces of submanifolds in Euclidean space.

1* Introduction* The concept of a characteristic submanifold of a given solution for a differential system, was introduced by E. Cartan in his theory of partial differential equations ([2], p. 79). Its importance appears in the treatment of the Cauchy problem. Given an ^-dimensional submanifold M of the Euclidean space E, we can define geometrically the notion of asymptotic submanifolds of M. The asymptotic lines have been used extensively for the study of the geometry of a surface in E. For higher dimension and codimension some results have been obtained, using the generalized concept [3], [4], [9], [10]. It is well known, that the characteristic curves of a surface in E are the asymptotic lines ([2], p. 143). In §2 we start with a brief introduction to the Cartan-Kahler theory of differential equations. Then given a Riemannian manifold M*9 we consider the differential ideal, whose integral submanifolds determine local isometries of M into E, N = n(n + l)/2. Next assuming M* c E, we characterize the (n — l)-dimensional characteristic submanifolds of M. In §3, we define the concept of asymptotic submanifolds of MaE, prove the main result and obtain a first order partial differential equation whose solutions are the characteristic hypersurfaces of M. I am grateful to Professor S. S. Chern for helpful conversations.
The Role of Context in the Inhibitory Conditioning of Honeybees

Conditioned inhibition or CI training (A+/AB−) was compared with S− training (A+/B−) in three experiments on proboscis-extension conditioning in harnessed honeybees. The purpose was to test the Rescorla–Wagner assumption, widely credited in the vertebrate literature, that a nonreinforced stimulus acquires inhibitory properties in proportion to the excitatory value of the context in which it is presented. In prior work with free-flying honeybees pretrained with sucrose to come of their own accord to the experimental situation, no differences were found in the consequences of CI and S− training, perhaps because A added little to the excitatory value of the context (already very high) in which B occurred. In the new experiments, with harnessed subjects brought involuntarily into the training situation, negative results again were obtained. The possibility is considered that inhibitory conditioning in honeybees is independent of the excitatory value of the context.
Internet Use, Social Skills, and Adjustment

The present study investigated the extent to which inter-personal skills, personality, and emotional intelligence (EI) were related to the extent of usage of the Internet, as measured with the Internet Addiction Scale, on a sample of undergraduates. EI was assessed by performance measures derived from the identification and labeling of emotions as shown in pictures of facial expressions, and as interpreted from descriptions of social episodes. Use of the Internet was related to loneliness and adherence to idiosyncratic values (strong effects), and also to poorer balance between work and leisure and emotional intelligence (weaker effects). Big Five personality dimensions were also included in the study. No link was found between personality and usage of the Internet. Results suggest that frequent users tend to be lonely, to have deviant values, and to some extent to lack the emotional and social skills characteristic of high EI.
Adolescents and Adults Need Inhibitory Control to Compare Fractions

For children, adolescents and educated adults, comparing fractions with common numerators (e.g., 4/5 vs. 4/9) is more challenging than comparing fractions with common denominators (e.g., 3/4 vs. 6/4) or fractions with no common components (e.g., 5/7 vs. 6/2). Errors are related to the tendency to rely on the “greater the whole number, the greater the fraction” strategy, according to which 4/9 seems larger than 4/5 because 9 is larger than 5. We aimed to determine whether the ability of adolescents and educated adults to compare fractions with common numerators was rooted in part in their ability to inhibit the use of this misleading strategy by adapting the negative priming paradigm. We found that participants were slower to compare the magnitude of two fractions with common denominators after they compared the magnitude of two fractions with common numerators than after they decided which of two fractions possessed a denominator larger than the numerator. The negative priming effects reported suggest that inhibitory control is needed at all ages to avoid errors when comparing fractions with common numerators.
Children with severe early childhood caries: streptococci genetic strains within carious and white spot lesions

Background and objectives Mutans streptococci (MS) are one of the major microbiological determinants of dental caries. The objectives of this study are to identify distinct MS and non-MS streptococci strains that are located at carious sites and non-carious enamel surfaces in children with severe early childhood caries (S-ECC), and assess if cariogenic MS and non-cariogenic streptococci might independently exist as primary bacterial strains on distinct sites within the dentition of individual children. Design Dental plaque from children (N=20; aged 3–6) with S-ECC was collected from carious lesions (CLs), white spot lesions (WSLs) and non-carious enamel surfaces. Streptococcal isolates (N=10–20) from each site were subjected to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to identify MS, and arbitrarily primed-PCR for assignment of genetic strains. Primary strains were identified as ≥50% of the total isolates surveyed at any site. In several cases, strains were characterized for acidurity using ATP-driven bioluminescence and subjected to PCR-determination of potential MS virulence products. Identification of non-MS was determined by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Results Sixty-four independent MS or non-MS streptococcal strains were identified. All children contained 1–6 strains. In many patients (N=11), single primary MS strains were identified throughout the dentition. In other patients (N=4), primary MS strains were identified within CLs that were distinct from primary strains found on enamel. Streptococcus gordonii strains were identified as primary strains on enamel or WSLs in four children, and in general were less aciduric than MS strains. Conclusions Many children with S-ECC contained only a single primary MS strain that was present in both carious and non-carious sites. In some cases, MS and non-cariogenic S. gordonii strains were found to independently exist as dominant strains at different locations within the dentition of individual children, and the aciduric potential of these strains may influence susceptibility in the development of CLs.
The effect of low shear force on the virulence potential of Yersinia pestis: new aspects that space-like growth conditions and the final frontier can teach us about a formidable pathogen

Manned space exploration has created a need to evaluate the effects of space-like stress (SLS) on pathogenic and opportunistic microbes. Interestingly, several Gram-negative enteric pathogens, e.g., Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, have revealed a transient hyper-virulent phenotype following simulated microgravity (SMG) or actual space flight exposures. We have explored the virulence potential of Yersinia pestis KIM/D27 (YP) following exposure to mechanical low shear forces associated with SMG. Our experimental results demonstrated that SMG-grown YP was decreased in its induced HeLa cell cytotoxicity, suggesting that SMG somehow compromises T3SS functions. This was confirmed by an actual reduced amount of effector protein production and secretion through the T3SS injectisome. Also, SMG-grown YP proliferated less than their NG-grown counterparts did during an 8-h macrophage infection. Presently, we are evaluating the influence of SMG on various KIM/D27 mutant strains to further understanding of our initial phenomenology described above. Taken together, characterizing YP grown under the low shear forces of SMG can provide new insights into its pathogenesis and potentially uncover new targets that could be exploited for the development of novel antimicrobials as well as potential live-attenuated vaccines.
The 192R/Q polymorphs of serum paraoxonase PON1 differ in HDL binding, lipolactonase stimulation, and cholesterol efflux Published, JLR Papers in Press, August 16, 2006.s⃞

Serum paraoxonase (PON1) is a HDL-associated enzyme exhibiting potentially antiatherogenic properties. Here, we examined the common PON1-192R/Q human polymorphism. Despite numerous studies, the effect of this polymorphism on the antiatherogenic potential of PON1 is yet unresolved. Our structural model suggests that amino acid 192 constitutes part of the HDL-anchoring surface and active site of PON1. Based on our findings that PON1 is an interfacially activated lipolactonase that selectively binds HDL carrying apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) and is thereby greatly stabilized and catalytically activated, we examined the interaction of the PON1-192 isozymes with reconstituted HDL-apoA-I particles. We found that PON1 position 192 is indeed involved in HDL binding. The PON1-192Q binds HDL with a 3-fold lower affinity than the R isozyme and consequently exhibits significantly reduced stability, lipolactonase activity, and macrophage cholesterol efflux. We also observed the lower affinity and stability of the 192Q versus the 192R isozyme in sera of individuals belonging to the corresponding genotypes. The observed differences in the properties of PON1-192R/Q isozymes provide a basis for further analysis of the contribution of the 192R/Q polymorphism to the susceptibility to atherosclerosis, although other factors, such as the overall levels of PON1, may play a more significant role.