Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Survival-Related Autophagic Activity Versus Procalcific Death in Cultured Aortic Valve Interstitial Cells Treated With Critical Normophosphatemic-Like Phosphate Concentrations

Valve dystrophic calcification is a common disorder affecting normophosphatemic subjects. Here, cultured aortic valve interstitial cells (AVICs) were treated 3 to 28 days with phosphate (Pi) concentrations spanning the normal range in humans (0.8, 1.3, and 2.0 mM) alone or supplemented with proinflammatory stimuli to assess possible priming of dystrophic-like calcification. Compared with controls, spectrophotometric analyses revealed marked increases in calcium amounts and alkaline phosphatase activity for 2.0-mM-Pi-containing cultures, with enhancing by proinflammatory mediators. Ultrastructurally, AVICs treated with low/middle Pi concentrations showed an enormous endoplasmic reticulum (ER) enclosing organelle debris, so apparently executing a survival-related atypical macroautophagocytosis, consistently with ultracytochemical demonstration of ER-associated acid phosphatase activity and decreases in autophagosomes and immunodetectable MAP1LC3. In contrast, AVICs cultured at 2.0-mM Pi underwent mineralization due to intracellular release and peripheral layering of phospholipid-rich material acting as hydroxyapatite nucleator, as revealed by Cuprolinic Blue and von Kossa ultracytochemical reactions. Lack of immunoblotted caspase-3 cleaved form indicated apoptosis absence for all cultures. In conclusion, fates of cultured AVICs were crucially driven by Pi concentration, suggesting that serum Pi levels just below the upper limit of normophosphatemia in humans may represent a critical watershed between macroautophagy-associated cell restoring and procalcific cell death.
Insights into the pathogenesis of Mycoplasma pneumoniae

Following the publication of this review, an interested reader alerted us to the fact that a couple of figures had been reproduced from a pair of previous publications without proper acknowledgement of the original source/authors. Figs. 2 and 3, as featured in our review, had originally appeared (with only minor modifications) as Figs. 2 and 4, respectively, in the following articles: Rottem S: Interaction of mycoplasmas with host cells. Physiol Rev 83: 417-32, 2003; and Pilo P, Vilei EM, Peterhans E, Bonvin-Klotz L, Stoffel MH, Dobbelaere D and Frey J: A metabolic enzyme as a primary virulence factor of Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. mycoides small colony. J Bacteriol 187: 6824-6831, 2005. Permission to publish these figures was sought retrospectively from the publishers [The American Physiological Society (Fig. 2) and The American Society of Microbiology (Fig 3)]. Subsequently, Figs. 2 and 3 are reprinted in this Corrigendum, together with strap-lines that properly acknowledge the source articles. In addition, we omitted to explain that the glycerol metabolism causing injury in host cells refers to Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. mycoides. Consequently, this information has also been inserted into the corrected legend for Fig. 3 (opposite), with a pair of supporting references. We profusely apologize to the authors of the previous publications (Dr Joachim Frey and colleagues) for our having failed to include a proper acknowledgement of their figure, or to have credited their work appropriately. [the original article was published in the Molecular Medicine Reports 14: 4030-4036, 2016; DOI: 10.3892/mmr.2016. 5765].
Diffusion in the Face of Failure: The Evolution of a Management Innovation

Recent work has questioned the institutional model of management innovation by highlighting interactions between the field-level actors engaged in diffusing innovations and implementation of the innovation at organization level. Focusing on the adaptation of management innovations to their context, rather than their creation, we review this work and use it to analyse the global diffusion of resource planning (RP), counter posing this case with the widely studied example of total quality management. Both of these innovations experienced a high level of failure when implemented by organizations. Total quality management's diffusion was characterized by a ‘boom and bust’ cycle. RP, however, has continued to spread globally in the form of its variants: MRP, MRPII and ERP. Our analysis seeks to account for the long-run diffusion of RP through a processual model which highlights the interplay between RP's discursive framing at field level, the affordances of the innovation itself and its adaptation within organizations. This demonstrates how objectifying RP in software not only helped to spread the innovation but also allowed field-level actors to differentiate its development as a successful innovation from the many failures experienced by organizations attempting to adapt it.
Factorization tricks for LSTM networks

We present two simple ways of reducing the number of parameters and accelerating the training of large Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks: the first one is "matrix factorization by design" of LSTM matrix into the product of two smaller matrices, and the second one is partitioning of LSTM matrix, its inputs and states into the independent groups. Both approaches allow us to train large LSTM networks significantly faster to the near state-of the art perplexity while using significantly less RNN parameters.
Office-Cycling: A Promising Way to Raise Pain Thresholds and Increase Metabolism with Minimal Compromising of Work Performance

Aim Establishing the effects of low intensity cycling (LC), moderate intensity cycling (MC), and standing at a simulated office workstation on pain modulation, work performance, and metabolic expenditure. Methods 36 healthy adults (21 females), mean age 26.8 (SD 7.6) years, partook in this randomized 3 × 3 crossover trial with 75 minutes of LC on 20% of maximum aerobic power (MAP) output, 30 minutes of MC on 50% of MAP, and standing 30 minutes with 48-hour wash-out periods. Outcome measures were pain modulation (pressure pain threshold (PPT) and thermal pain threshold)), work performance (transcription, mouse pointing, and cognitive performance), and metabolic expenditure. Results PPTs increased in all conditions. PPT trapezius showed the highest increase after LC, 39.3 kilopascals (kPa) (15.6; 78.6), compared to MC, 17.0 kPa (2.8; 49.9), and standing, 16.8 kPa (−5.6; 39.4), p = 0.015. Transcription was reduced during LC and MC. Mouse pointing precision was best during standing and worst and slowest during MC. Cognitive performance did not differ between conditions. Metabolic expenditure rates were 1.4 (1.3; 1.7), 3.3 (2.3; 3.7), and 7.5 (5.8; 8.7) kcal/minute during standing, LC, and MC, respectively (p < 0.001). Conclusions LC seems to be the preferred option; it raised PPTs, more than doubled metabolic expenditure, whilst minimally influencing work performance.
The Elucidation of the Ground State in the H-Atom-Model of Niels Bohr and its Application on the Bond-Length Computation in the H2-Molecule

The phenomenon of spin-orbit-coupling let suppose that the electron spin, which exhibits the character of an oscillator but which cannot be explained by classical physical laws, is herewith identified to be responsible for a minimal angular momentum – given by Planck’s constant which determines the ground state of a single H-atom according to Bohr’s model. Thereby, the frequencies of the spin and of the revolution are identically-equal which leads to a standing wave. However, in contrast to the theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics where the electron-orbital is spherical even in the ground state, here the electron trajectory is planar. Applying the same concept for the H2-molecule, i.e. assuming the maintenance of the basic angular momentum for both H-atoms at the H-H bond, a comparatively simple computation method for the intrinsic variables could be found regarding several force equilibria between electrons and protons. However, the relation could not be formulated generally but had to be adapted to four conceivable arrays. Since in any case a variety of combinations of the relevant parameters exists fulfilling the given condition, the total energy has to be introduced for determining the preferred stable state which is given by an energy minimum. As the computations yielded, only the so-called intranuclear-sympodial array enables a stable state being given at a bond length of 0.746 Å, and hence matching perfectly the desired value determined by XRD-crystallography. This result exceeds the accuracy of the next best result which was obtained by the Classical Quantum Mechanics, namely 0. 71Å. However, the difference between the resulting bond energies for the two methods is enormous. If these values are compared with the experimentally determined literature value, the traditional method appears to be accurate. However, as consideration of plausibility yielded, this literature value is probably not true but significantly too high, so it cannot be adduced to stringent evidence. If the here proposed approach is correct, implicating well-defined electron trajectories, the theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics, as well as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, cannot be maintained since it is not possible that the reality can be described in terms of two different theories.
The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgment

Is the basis of criminality an act that causes harm, or an act undertaken with the belief that one will cause harm? The present study takes a cognitive neuroscience approach to investigating how information about an agent's beliefs and an action's consequences contribute to moral judgment. We build on prior developmental evidence showing that these factors contribute differentially to the young child's moral judgments coupled with neurobiological evidence suggesting a role for the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) in belief attribution. Participants read vignettes in a 2 × 2 design: protagonists produced either a negative or neutral outcome based on the belief that they were causing the negative outcome (“negative” belief) or the neutral outcome (“neutral” belief). The RTPJ showed significant activation above baseline for all four conditions but was modulated by an interaction between belief and outcome. Specifically, the RTPJ response was highest for cases of attempted harm, where protagonists were condemned for actions that they believed would cause harm to others, even though the harm did not occur. The results not only suggest a general role for belief attribution during moral judgment, but also add detail to our understanding of the interaction between these processes at both the neural and behavioral levels.
ADMM-based Networked Stochastic Variational Inference

Owing to the recent advances in "Big Data" modeling and prediction tasks, variational Bayesian estimation has gained popularity due to their ability to provide exact solutions to approximate posteriors. One key technique for approximate inference is stochastic variational inference (SVI). SVI poses variational inference as a stochastic optimization problem and solves it iteratively using noisy gradient estimates. It aims to handle massive data for predictive and classification tasks by applying complex Bayesian models that have observed as well as latent variables. This paper aims to decentralize it allowing parallel computation, secure learning and robustness benefits. We use Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers in a top-down setting to develop a distributed SVI algorithm such that independent learners running inference algorithms only require sharing the estimated model parameters instead of their private datasets. Our work extends the distributed SVI-ADMM algorithm that we first propose, to an ADMM-based networked SVI algorithm in which not only are the learners working distributively but they share information according to rules of a graph by which they form a network. This kind of work lies under the umbrella of `deep learning over networks' and we verify our algorithm for a topic-modeling problem for corpus of Wikipedia articles. We illustrate the results on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic model in large document classification, compare performance with the centralized algorithm, and use numerical experiments to corroborate the analytical results.
Anisotropic spatial structure of deep acceptor states in GaAs and GaP

Cross-sectional scanning tunneling microscopy is used to identify the origin of the anisotropic electronic structure of acceptor states in III–V semiconductors. The density of states introduced by a hole bound to an individual Cd acceptor in GaP is spatially mapped at room temperature. Similar to the Mn hole wave function in GaAs, we found a highly anisotropic, crosslike shape of the hole bound to Cd both at the GaP110 and the GaP11 ¯ 0 orthogonal cleavage planes. The experimentally observed similarity of the symmetry properties of Mn:GaAs to Cd:GaP shows that the anisotropic structure of acceptor states in zinc-blende III–V compounds is determined by the cubic symmetry of the host crystal. Nevertheless, the weak spin-orbit interaction in GaP leads to a slight modification of the Cd bound-hole wave function relative to that of Mn in GaAs. In addition to the anisotropic angular structure of the d-like spherical harmonic of the wave function, which dominates the appearance of the hole ground state far from the ionic core, the admixture of g-like and higher order spherical harmonics is identified at the sides of the Cd hole wave function. The experimentally obtained results agree with both atomistic tight-binding and envelope-function effective-mass theoretical models.
Knock Knock, Who's There? Membership Inference on Aggregate Location Data

Aggregate location data is often used to support smart services and applications, e.g., generating live traffic maps or predicting visits to businesses. In this paper, we present the first study on the feasibility of membership inference attacks on aggregate location time-series. We introduce a game-based definition of the adversarial task, and cast it as a classification problem where machine learning can be used to distinguish whether or not a target user is part of the aggregates. We empirically evaluate the power of these attacks on both raw and differentially private aggregates using two mobility datasets. We find that membership inference is a serious privacy threat, and show how its effectiveness depends on the adversary's prior knowledge, the characteristics of the underlying location data, as well as the number of users and the timeframe on which aggregation is performed. Although differentially private mechanisms can indeed reduce the extent of the attacks, they also yield a significant loss in utility. Moreover, a strategic adversary mimicking the behavior of the defense mechanism can greatly limit the protection they provide. Overall, our work presents a novel methodology geared to evaluate membership inference on aggregate location data in real-world settings and can be used by providers to assess the quality of privacy protection before data release or by regulators to detect violations.
Impact of human monocyte and macrophage polarization on NLR expression and NLRP3 inflammasome activation

Inflammasomes are multiprotein complexes nucleating around an NLR (Nucleotide-binding domain and Leucine-rich Repeat containing protein), which regulate the secretion of the pro-inflammatory interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-18 cytokines. Monocytes and macrophages, the main cells expressing the inflammasome genes, adapt to their surrounding microenvironment by a phenotypic polarization towards a pro-inflammatory M1 phenotype that promotes inflammation or an anti-inflammatory M2 phenotype important for resolution of inflammation. Despite the importance of inflammasomes in health and disease, little is known about inflammasome gene expression in relevant human cells and the impact of monocyte and macrophage polarization in inflammasome gene expression. We examined the expression of several members of the NLR, caspase and cytokine family, and we studied the activation of the well-described NLRP3 inflammasome in an experimental model of polarized human primary monocytes and monocyte-derived macrophages (M1/M2 phenotypes) before and after activation with LPS, a well-characterized microbial pattern used in inflammasome activation studies. Our results show that the differentiation of monocytes to macrophages alters NLR expression. Polarization using IFN-γ (M1 phenotype), induces among the NLRs studied, only the expression of NOD2. One of the key results of our study is that the induction of NLRP3 expression by LPS is inhibited in the presence of IL-4+IL-13 (M2 phenotype) at both mRNA and protein level in monocytes and macrophages. Unlike caspase-3, the expression of inflammasome-related CASP1 (encodes caspase-1) and CASP4 (encodes caspase-4) is up-regulated in M1 but not in M2 cells. Interestingly, the presence of LPS marginally influenced IL18 mRNA expression and secretion, unlike its impact on IL1B. Our data provide the basis for a better understanding of the role of different inflammasomes within a given environment (M1 and M2) in human cells and their impact in the pathophysiology of several important inflammatory disorders.
Surface modification of poplar veneer by means of radio frequency oxygen plasma (RF-OP) to improve interfacial adhesion with urea-formaldehyde resin

Abstract The radio frequency oxygen plasma (RF-OP) treatment of wood was in focus, namely the surface properties of poplar veneer has been analyzed as a function of RF-OP treatment power concerning the chemical composition, free radicals, morphology and roughness. In addition, the interfacial adhesion of plywood composites was measured by determining the shear strength. The results show that RF-OP treatment introduced free radicals and polar groups onto the veneer surface, changed the surface morphology, and increased the surface roughness. Shear strength of the composite was improved. It can be concluded that RF-OP treatment is most effective at the optimal treatment power of 200 W.
Toxoplasma gondii in wild boars and domestic pigs in Sweden

Ingestion of undercooked meat is a major risk factor for human toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by the zoonotic protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Infected pork, mutton and game meat are considered important infection sources in Europe. This thesis aims to describe the epidemiology of T. gondii in two possible key species for human toxoplasmosis in Sweden, namely domestic pigs and wild boars. Approximately half of the wild boars investigated were found to be T. gondii seropositive, and the seroprevalence was dependent on age, geographical region, and year of sampling. In conventional fattening pigs the seroprevalence was estimated to 1%, compared to 8% in pigs raised in organic management systems with pasture access (KRAV). A one-month increase in pasture access was associated with an 80% increase in the odds of being seropositive. This strengthens the hypothesis that pigs become infected via their natural rooting behaviour. The high level of T. gondii infection in wild boars, and the increasing demand for outdoor management systems for pigs, emphasise the need of consumer awareness of proper cooking procedures to prevent infection. Other means to limit meat-borne transmission could include abattoir-based serological screening of pigs to reduce the amount of T. gondii infected meat distributed to consumers. Since it has been suggested that such screening systems could be based on meat-juice serology, a study was conducted to investigate aspects of the sampling and preparation of meat-juice samples. It was found that antibody levels in meat juice varied depending on the muscle used for extraction, and in meat juice obtained from the diaphragm, levels of anti-T. gondii IgG correlated poorly with levels in serum. However, the level of anti-T. gondii IgG in meat juice was associated with the total level of IgG, which could possibly be used to assess if enough antibodies have been distributed to the meat-juice sample for the test result to be reliable. However, implementation of meat-juice serology in risk-management programmes needs to be preceded by further evaluation and standardisation of sampling, extraction, and testing procedures.
SOME PHENOLIC COMPOUNDS OF SALVIA PLEBEIA R. BR

A linear relationship existed between the medicinal potential and phytoconstituents specially phenolic contents of the medicinal herbs. Salvia plebeia is one of important plant of high medicinal potential. The present study deals with the HPLC analysis of phenolic compounds of this herb. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with diode-array detection was used to identify and quantify the phenolic compound. Among the identified phenolic compounds, the quantity of rosmarinic acid was the predominant followed by leuteolin and hispidulin respectively.
Super-high thermal conductivity of polyamide-6/graphene-graphene oxide composites through in situ polymerization

Graphene is often used to improve the thermal conductivity of polymers but usually with high amount. The key factor that limits the thermal conductivity is graphene agglomeration as well as the incompatible interface between graphene and polymer. Here, we report super-high thermal conductivity of polyamide-6 (PA6) composites achieved by adding small amounts of graphene oxide (GO)-stabilized graphene dispersions (graphene-GO). The introduction of GO not only acts as an effective dispersant for graphene due to the non-covalent π-stacking interactions but also participates in PA6 polymerization. Therefore, the issues associated with graphene dispersion in PA6 can be resolved and the interface adhesion enhanced by adding small amounts of graphene-GO. Furthermore, this approach reduces the tendency for decreased crystallinity. All these factors enhance the formation of heat conducting pathways among the graphene sheets. Thus, compared with graphene, graphene-GO enhances thermal conductivity at lower filler loading levels by enhancing graphene dispersion and interface adhesion.
Wire type assignment for FPGA routing

The routing channels of an FPGA consist of wire segments of various types providing the tradeoff between performance and routability. In the routing architectures of recently developed FPGAs (e.g., Virtex-II), there are more versatile wire types and richer connections between them than those of the older generations of FPGAs (e.g. XC4000). To fully exploit the potential of the new routing architectures, it is beneficial to perform wire type assignment for all channels as an intermediate stage between global routing and detailed routing. In this paper, we present a wire-type assignment algorithm that is based on iteratively applying min-cost max-flow technique to simultaneously route many nets. At each stage of the network flow computation, we have guaranteed optimal result in terms of routability and delay cost. We use the routing architecture of the Virtex-II FPGAs from Xilinx as a target architecture in our experiments. Experimental results show that our algorithm outperforms the traditional sequential net-by-net approach.