Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combined effects of aging and HIV infection on semantic verbal fluency: A view of the cortical hypothesis through the lens of clustering and switching

The profile of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) has classically been characterized as “subcortical,” but questions have arisen as to whether aging with HIV in the antiretroviral therapy era has subtly shifted the expression of HAND into a more “cortical” disorder (e.g., decay of semantic memory stores). We evaluated this hypothesis by examining semantic fluency and its component processes (i.e., clustering and switching) in 257 individuals across four groups stratified by age (<40 and ≥50 years) and HIV serostatus. Jonckheere–Terpstra tests revealed significant monotonic trends for the combined effects of HIV and aging on overall semantic (and letter) fluency and switching, but not cluster size, with greatest deficits evident in the older adults with HIV infection. Within the older HIV-infected cohort, poorer switching was uniquely associated with self-reported declines in instrumental activities of daily living and deficits in learning and executive functions, but not semantic memory. Results suggest that HIV infection and aging may confer adverse additive effects on the executive components of semantic fluency (i.e., switching), rather than a degradation of semantic memory stores (i.e., cluster size), which is a profile that is most consistent with combined frontostriatal neuropathological burden of these two conditions.
Flavone limitations to root nodulation and symbiotic nitrogen fixation in alfalfa.

Transcription of the nodABC genes in Rhizobium meliloti is required for root nodule formation in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) and occurs when specific compounds, such as the flavone luteolin, are supplied by the host plant. Results reported here indicate how luteolin in the root and rhizosphere can affect subsequent N(2) fixation and plant growth. Previous experiments with ;Hairy Peruvian 32' (HP32), an alfalfa population produced from ;Hairy Peruvian' (HP) by two generations of selection for increased N(2) fixation and growth, found that HP32 had more root nodules and fixed more N(2) than the parental HP population. In the present study, flavonoid extracts of HP32 seedling roots are shown to contain a 60% higher concentration of compounds that induce transcription of a nodABC-lacZ fusion in R. meliloti than comparable extracts of HP roots. Chromatographic data indicated that HP32 roots had a 77% higher concentration of luteolin than HP roots. Adding 10 micromolar luteolin to the rhizosphere of HP seedlings increased nodulation, N(2) fixation, total N, and total dry weight but had no effect on nitrate assimilation. These data show that normal levels of flavone nodulation signals in the rhizosphere of HP alfalfa can limit root nodulation, symbiotic N(2) fixation, and seedling growth and suggest that one mechanism for increasing N(2) fixation can be the genetic enhancement of specific biochemical signals which induce nodulation genes in Rhizobium.
Estimated paediatric mortality associated with influenza virus infections, United States, 2003–2010

SUMMARY Death certificate reports and laboratory-confirmed influenza deaths probably underestimate paediatric deaths attributable to influenza. Using US mortality data for persons aged <18 years who died during 28 September 2003 to 2 October 2010, we estimated influenza-attributable deaths using a generalized linear regression model based on seasonal covariates, influenza-certified deaths (deaths for which influenza was a reported cause of death), and occurrence during the 2009 pandemic period. Of 32 783 paediatric deaths in the death categories examined, 853 (3%) were influenza-certified. The estimated number of influenza-attributable deaths over the study period was 1·8 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1·3–2·8] times higher than the number of influenza-certified deaths. Influenza-attributable deaths were 2·1 (95% CI 1·5–3·4) times higher than influenza-certified deaths during the non-pandemic period and 1·1 (95% CI 1·0–1·8) times higher during the pandemic. Overall, US paediatric deaths attributable to influenza were almost twice the number reported by death certificate codes in the seasons prior to the 2009 pandemic.
Identification of MicroRNAs Regulating the Developmental Pathways of Bone Marrow Derived Mast Cells

Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in leukocyte differentiation, although those utilised for specific programs and key functions remain incompletely characterised. As a global approach to gain insights into the potential regulatory role of miRNA in mast cell differentiation we characterised expression in BM cultures from the initiation of differentiation. In cultures enriched in differentiating mast cells we characterised miRNA expression and identified miRNA targeting the mRNA of putative factors involved in differentiation pathways and cellular identity. Detailed pathway analysis identified a unique miRNA network that is intimately linked to the mast cell differentiation program. Methodology/Principal Findings We identified 86 unique miRNAs with expression patterns that were up- or down- regulated at 5-fold or more during bone marrow derived mast cells (BMMC) development. By employing TargetScan and MeSH databases, we identified 524 transcripts involved in 30 canonical pathways as potentially regulated by these specific 86 miRNAs. Furthermore, by applying miRanda and IPA analyses, we predict that 7 specific miRNAs of this group are directly associated with the expression of c-Kit and FcεRIα and likewise, that 18 miRNAs promote expression of Mitf, GATA1 and c/EBPα three core transcription factors that direct mast cell differentiation. Furthermore, we have identified 11 miRNAs that may regulate the expression of STATs-3, -5a/b, GATA2 and GATA3 during differentiation, along with 13 miRNAs that target transcripts encoding Ndst2, mMCP4 and mMCP6 and thus may regulate biosynthesis of mast cell secretory mediators. Conclusions/Significance This investigation characterises changes in miRNA expression in whole BM cultures during the differentiation of mast cells and predicts functional links between miRNAs and their target mRNAs for the regulation of development. This information provides an important resource for further investigations of the contributions of miRNAs to mast cell differentiation and function.
Worldvolume Uncertainty Relations for D-Branes

By quantizing an open string ending on a D-brane in a nontrivial supergravity background, we argue that there is a new kind of uncertainty relation on a D-brane worldvolume. Furthermore, we fix the form of the uncertainty relations and their dependence on the string coupling constant by requiring them to be consistent with various string theory and M theory dualities. In this way we find a web of uncertainties of spacetime for all kinds of brane probes, including fundamental strings, D-branes of all dimensions as well as M theory membranes and fivebranes.
Surgical Management of Craniopharyngiomas in Children: Meta-analysis and Comparison of Transcranial and Transsphenoidal Approaches

BACKGROUND:Controversy persists regarding the optimal treatment of pediatric craniopharyngiomas. OBJECTIVE:We performed a meta-analysis of reported series of transcranial (TC) and transsphenoidal (TS) surgery for pediatric craniopharyngiomas to determine whether comparisons between the outcomes in TS and TC approaches are valid. METHODS:Online databases were searched for English-language articles reporting quantifiable outcome data published between 1990 and 2010 pertaining to the surgical treatment of pediatric craniopharyngiomas. Forty-eight studies describing 2955 patients having TC surgery and 13 studies describing 373 patients having TS surgery met inclusion criteria. RESULTS:Before surgery, patients who had TC surgery had less visual loss, more frequent hydrocephalus and increased intracranial pressure, larger tumors, and more suprasellar disease. After surgery, patients in the TC group had lower rates of gross total resection (GTR), more frequent recurrence after GTR, higher neurological morbidity, more frequent diabetes insipidus, less improvement, and greater deterioration in vision. There was no difference in operative mortality, obesity/hyperphagia, or overall survival percentages. CONCLUSION:Directly comparing outcomes after TC and TS surgery for pediatric craniopharyngiomas does not appear to be valid. Baseline differences in patients who underwent each approach create selection bias that may explain the improved rates of disease control and lower morbidity of TS resection. Although TS approaches are becoming increasingly used for smaller tumors and those primarily intrasellar, tumors more amenable to TC surgery include large tumors with significant lateral extension, those that engulf vascular structures, and those with significant peripheral calcification.
Tunability and loss of the ferroelectric-dielectric composites

This paper addresses the modeling of dielectric-dielectric composites, consisting of an electrically tunable (nonlinear) dielectric mixed with a linear, low loss dielectric. Different models of the redistribution of components in the composite have been considered to evaluate its electrical properties. The effective dielectric permittivity, effective tunability and effective loss tangent of the columnar, layered, and spherical inclusions composites have been modeled using exact analytical solutions and a solution based on the effective medium approximation (EMA). A finite element method (FEM) analysis has been used to estimate the tunability of the composite at strong nonlinearities (large signal regime). It is shown that in the case of ferroelectric-dielectric composite the addition of small amounts of the linear dielectric into the tunable ferroelectrics leads to a small increase of the tunability of the mixture. At the same time, the loss tangent of the composite is virtually unaffected by the addition of the low-loss dielectrics.
The wiki defense: contesting the status of knowledge in the floyd Landis doping case.

This theoretical essay applies active audience theory, convergence theory, and contemporary understandings of Web logs to an analysis of knowledge production in the antidoping movement. Using the Floyd Landis doping case as an example it examines how cycling fans and other interested parties used Internet sites such as wikis and blogs to mount a challenge to the hegemony of institutional knowledge produced by organizations such as the World Anti Doping Agency and Union Cycliste Internationale. The essay concludes that Landis’s so-called wiki defense—based as it was on popular challenges to received knowledge—was a successful contestation of normative procedures and institutional authority in the prosecution of doping allegations in international sport.
Estudo de adaptação do questionário de satisfação com o relacionamento sexual (QSRS) em mulheres com incontinência urinária

Sexual satisfaction is an important issue in everyday life of ordinary people, with a chronic disease and without disease. The aims of the present study are to explore the psychometric properties of the Self-Esteem and Relationship (SEAR) questionnaire in women with urinary incontinence and with sexual activity. Urinary incontinence is an event relatively frequent that is growing when society become older. Participants are 54 women with urinary incontinence that maintain sexual activity, aged between 35 and 77 years of age. The adaptation process of the questionnaire, initially developed for males, imposed the change of an item from male perspective for female perspective. Results show good metric properties for the Portuguese version, similar to the ones of the original version.
A General Approach for Representing Constructs in Organizational Research

A key assumption underlying methods of construct validation is that constructs and their indicators are represented at the appropriate depth (i.e., the specificity versus generality of constructs and their indicators). This article presents a framework that depicts constructs and indicators at various depths and provides guidelines for choosing from among these depths. The framework is then integrated with methods of construct validation based on the confirmatory factor analysis of multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) matrices. The authors apply these methods to the measurement of work values, using the Work Aspect Preference Scale (WAPS). Results show that the WAPS performs better when used to represent relatively specific work values as opposed to more global, general values. Further analyses supported the generalizability of the WAPS factor structure for men and women, although gender differences were found on structured means for several latent value dimensions.
Effect of Milling Time on the Microstructure, Physical and Mechanical Properties of Al-Al2O3 Nanocomposite Synthesized by Ball Milling and Powder Metallurgy

The effect of milling time on the morphology, microstructure, physical and mechanical properties of pure Al-5 wt % Al2O3 (Al-5Al2O3) has been investigated. Al-5Al2O3 nanocomposites were fabricated using ball milling in a powder metallurgy route. The increase in the milling time resulted in the homogenous dispersion of 5 wt % Al2O3 nanoparticles, the reduction of particle clustering, and the reduction of distances between the composite particles. The significant grain refining during milling was revealed which showed as a reduction of particle size resulting from longer milling time. X-Ray diffraction (XRD) analysis of the nanocomposite powders also showed that designated ball milling contributes to the crystalline refining and accumulation of internal stress due to induced severe plastic deformation of the particles. It can be argued that these morphological and microstructural variations of nanocomposite powders induced by designated ball milling time was found to contribute to an improvement in the density, densification, micro-hardness (HV), nano-hardness (HN), and Young’s modulus (E) of Al-5Al2O3 nanocomposites. HV, HN, and E values of nanocomposites were increased by ~48%, 46%, and 40%, after 12 h of milling, respectively.
The Antiviral Cytomegalovirus Inducible Gene 5/Viperin Is Expressed in Atherosclerosis and Regulated by Proinflammatory Agents

Objective—Inflammatory processes play an important role in atherosclerosis, and increasing evidence implies that microbial pathogens and proinflammatory cytokines are involved in the development and activation of atherosclerotic lesions. To find new inflammatory genes, we explored the vascular transcriptional response to an activator of innate immunity bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPSs). Methods and Results—Gene arrays identified the cytomegalovirus-inducible gene 5 (cig5)/viperin among the genes most potently induced by LPS in human vascular biopsies. Viperin was expressed by endothelial cells in atherosclerotic arteries and significantly elevated in atherosclerotic compared with normal arteries. In culture, cytomegalovirus infection, interferon-γ, and LPS induced viperin expression. Conclusion—Viperin is expressed in atherosclerosis and induced in vascular cells by inflammatory stimuli and cytomegalovirus infection. The putative functions of viperin in atherosclerosis may relate to disease-associated microbes.
Stable but responsive cloth

We present a semi-implicit cloth simulation technique that is very stable yet also responsive. The stability of the technique allows the use of a large fixed time step when simulating all types of fabrics and character motions. The animations generated using this technique are strikingly realistic. Wrinkles form and disappear in a quite natural way, which is the feature that most distinguishes textile fabrics from other sheet materials. Significant improvements in both the stability and realism were made possible by overcoming the post-buckling instability as well as the numerical instability. The instability caused by buckling arises from a structural instability and therefore cannot be avoided by simply employing a semi-implicit method. Addition of a damping force may help to avoid instabilities; however, it can significantly degrade the realism of the cloth motion. The method presented here uses a particle-based physical model to handle the instability in the post-buckling response without introducing any fictitious damping.
Optimization of Area in Digital FIR Filters using Gate-Level Metrics

In the paper, we propose a new metric for the minimization of area in the generic problem of multiple constant multiplications, and demonstrate its effectiveness for digital FIR filters. Previous methods use the number of required additions or subtractions as a cost function. We make the observation that not all of these operations have the same design cost. In the proposed algorithm, a minimum area solution is obtained by considering area estimates for each operation. To this end, we introduce accurate hardware models for addition and subtraction operations in terms of gate-level metrics, under both signed and unsigned representations. Our algorithm not only computes the best design solution among those that have the same number of operations, but is also able to find better area solutions using a non-minimum number of operations. The results obtained by the proposed exact algorithm are compared with the results of the exact algorithm designed for the minimum number of operations on FIR filters and it is shown that the area of the design can be reduced by up to 18%.
Gated Self-Matching Networks for Reading Comprehension and Question Answering

In this paper, we present the gated self-matching networks for reading comprehension style question answering, which aims to answer questions from a given passage. We first match the question and passage with gated attention-based recurrent networks to obtain the question-aware passage representation. Then we propose a self-matching attention mechanism to refine the representation by matching the passage against itself, which effectively encodes information from the whole passage. We finally employ the pointer networks to locate the positions of answers from the passages. We conduct extensive experiments on the SQuAD dataset. The single model achieves 71.3% on the evaluation metrics of exact match on the hidden test set, while the ensemble model further boosts the results to 75.9%. At the time of submission of the paper, our model holds the first place on the SQuAD leaderboard for both single and ensemble model.
Word-shape and word-lexical-frequency effects in lexical-decision and naming tasks

The present study investigated the use of word-shape information in visual word recognition. Word-shape frequency was computed for lexically frequent and rare words. Experiment 1 contrasted lowercase and uppercase presentations in a lexical-decision task. The observed latencies indicated a shape-frequency effect in lowercase presentation, i.e., responses were given faster for words with a low-frequency shape than for words with a high-frequency shape, and an interaction between shape frequency and lexical frequency, indicating that, for rare words, having a rare shape speeded up lexical decisions. Experiment 2 primed shape information with a 400 ms SOA. The results showed that high-frequency shape words benefited more from the priming procedure than did low-frequency ones. Priming was also used in a naming task (Experiment 3). The results indicated a strong priming effect for all four target types. When all words were given an up-down configuration (Experiment 4), the same pattern of results as in Experiment 1 was found, rejecting a letter-confusability explanation. Taken together, the results suggest that shape information affects word recognition. Having a rare shape seems to shorten lexical decision times on lexically rare words and to lengthen naming times on lexically frequent words.
A Document Retrieval System for Math Queries

We present and analyze the results of our Math search sys-tem in the MathIR tasks in the NTCIR-12 Information Retrieval challenge. The Math search engine in the paper utilizes the co-occurrence ﬁnding technique of LDA and doc2vec to bring more contextual search. Additionally, it uses common patterns to improve the search output. To combine various scoring algorithms, it uses hybrid ranking mechanism to re-rank the documents retrieved from Elastic Search. In this paper, we evaluate the results from these algorithms and present possible future work for further improvements
Isolation and characterization of 4-allyl-2-methoxyphenol (eugenol) from clove buds marketed in Tehran city of Iran.

Clove oil was extracted from the buds of clove plant, Syzygium aromaticum. Hydrodistillation of clove buds purchased in the maket of Tehran, Iran, resultled in the formation of a mixture which contained the desired eugenol and eugenol acetate. The progress of isolation of the crude oil was monitored by FT-IR and HPLC. Separation of eugenol from eugenol acetate was achieved through chemical methods, by dissolving the mixture in ether and extracting it with aqueous NaOH (6M) solution. The aqueous layer was separated and to it was added concentrated HCl until its pH became about 7-8. Finally, ether was added to this solution until the free eugenol was migrated and dissolved completely in the ethereal layer. The purity of eugenol was determined by HPLC. The chemical structure of isolated eugenol was confirmed by its HNMR, MS, FT-IR, UV-VISIBLE spectra.
Olfaction, Taste, and Cognition: Odor Memory: A Memory Systems Approach

Research focusing on human memory suggests that memory is not a single or unitary faculty of the mind. Instead, it can be conceived of as a variety of distinct and dissociable processes and systems that are subserved by particular constellations of neural networks that mediate different forms of learning (e.g., Gabrieli et al., 1995; Tulving, 1995; McDonald, Ergis, and Winocur, 1999). One categorical distinction within human memory is that between declarative memory and non-declarative memory (Tulving, 1995). According to this division, non-declarative memory is characterized by unintentional learning, or learning without awareness, and by inability to access conscious recall. This form of memory is manifested in multiple dissociable processes and is measured in terms of changes in performance (produced by conditioning and priming) in the learning of motor skills (e.g., Schacter, 1992). In contrast, declarative memory can be conceptualized as learning with awareness and refers to the acquisition and retention of information about events and facts, and is typically assessed by accuracy in tests of recall and recognition. The available evidence suggests that medial temporal/diencephalic structures are critical for the integrity of declarative memory, whereas non-declarative forms of memory rely on other brain areas, such as occipital structures (visual priming) (Gabrieli et al., 1995) and basal ganglia (procedural memory) (Heindel et al., 1989). Although based on hypothetical constructs and still under considerable debate, the view that human memory is composed of at least five different systems has been highly influential (e.g., Nyberg and Tulving, 1996; Roediger, Buckner, and McDermott, 1999).