Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cocaine withdrawal reduces group I mGluR‐mediated long‐term potentiation via decreased GABAergic transmission in the amygdala

Cocaine relapse can occur when cocaine‐associated environmental cues induce craving. Conditioned place preference (CPP) is a behavioral paradigm modeling the association between cocaine exposure and environmental cues. The amygdala is involved in cocaine cue associations with the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and central amygdala (CeA) acting differentially in cue‐induced relapse. Activation of metabotropic glutamate receptors induces synaptic plasticity, the mechanism of which is thought to underlie learning, memory and drug–cue associations. The goal of this study was to examine the neural alterations in responses to group I metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) agonists in the BLA to lateral capsula of CeA (BLA–CeLc) pathway in slices from rats exposed to cocaine‐CPP conditioning and withdrawn for 14 days. mGluR1, but not mGluR5, agonist‐induced long‐term potentiation (mGluR1‐LTP) in the BLA–CeLc pathway was reduced in rats withdrawal from cocaine for 2 and 14 days, and exhibited an altered concentration response to picrotoxin. Cocaine withdrawal also reduced γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic synaptic inhibition in CeLc neurons. Blocking cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1) reduced mGluR1‐LTP in the saline‐treated but not cocaine‐withdrawn group. Response to CB1 but not CB2 agonist was altered after cocaine. Additionally, increasing endocannabinoid (eCB) levels abolished mGluR1‐LTP in the saline but not cocaine‐withdrawn group. However, CB1 and CB2 protein levels were increased in the amygdala of cocaine‐withdrawn rats while mGluR1 and mGluR5 remained unchanged. These data suggested that the mechanisms underlying the diminished mGluR1‐LTP in cocaine‐withdrawn rats involve an altered GABAergic synaptic inhibition mediated by modulation of downstream eCB signaling. These changes may ultimately result in potentiated responses to environmental cues that would bias behavior toward drug‐seeking.
A Parallel Sorting AlgorithmWith an Experimental Study ( Preliminary Draft )

Previous schemes for sorting on general-purpose parallel machines have had to choose between poor load balancing and irregular communication or multiple rounds of all-to-all personalized communication. In this paper, we introduce a novel variation on sample sort which uses only two rounds of regular all-to-all personalized communication in a scheme that yields very good load balancing with virtually no overhead. This algorithm was implemented in Split-C and run on a variety of platforms, including the Thinking Machines CM-5, the IBM SP-2, and the Cray Research T3D. We ran our code using widely diierent benchmarks to examine the dependence of our algorithm on the input distribution. Our experimental results are consistent with the theoretical analysis and illustrate the eeciency and scalability of our algorithm across diierent platforms. In fact, it seems to outperform all similar algorithms known to the authors on these platforms, and its performance is invariant over the set of input distributions unlike previous eecient algorithms. Our results also compare favorably with those reported for the simpler ranking problem posed by the NAS Integer Sorting (IS) Benchmark.
An approximation approach to the problem of the acquisition of phonotactics in Optimality Theory

The problem of the acquisition of phonotactics in Optimality Theory is intractable. This paper offers a way to cope with this hardness result: the problem is reformulated as a well known integer program (the Assignment problem with linear side constraints) paving the way for the application to phonotactics of approximation algorithms recently developed for integer programming.
Cerebral Energy State and Glycolytic Metabolism During Enflurane Anesthesia in the Rat

The effects of enflurane anesthesia on the cerebral cortical energy state and glycolytic metabolism were studied in rats. Twenty‐four rats were divided into four groups with increasing concentrations of enflurane in the arterial blood, i.e. control (1,9±0.3 mg/dl, means+s.e.mean), level I (16.1 ±1.1 mg/dl), level II (26.0± 1.6 mg/dl), and level III (32.9±0.9 mg/dl). At level I, high voltage 1–3 Hz slow waves superimposed on low voltage 10–12 Hz waves were predominant, and at levels II and III, spiking activity and burst suppression were recorded in the EEG. The duration of suppression at level III was significantly longer than that at level II. During enflurane anesthesia, there were no significant differences compared with the control group in the cerebral energy state or energy charge. Glycolytic metabolism remained unchanged except for an increase in glucose at levels II and III. Effects of hypocapnia and hypercapnia were examined in an additional 12 rats with an enflurane concentration in the blood similar to that al level II. Irrespective of PacOz levels, there were no significant changes in cerebral energy charge and glycolytic metabolites except for a decrease in glucose and an increase in lactate at hypocapnia. It was concluded that there was neither evidence of derangement of energy state nor increased anaerobic metabolism in the cerebral cortex during enflurane anesthesia.
Ask Your Neurons: A Neural-Based Approach to Answering Questions about Images

We address a question answering task on real-world images that is set up as a Visual Turing Test. By combining latest advances in image representation and natural language processing, we propose Neural-Image-QA, an end-to-end formulation to this problem for which all parts are trained jointly. In contrast to previous efforts, we are facing a multi-modal problem where the language output (answer) is conditioned on visual and natural language input (image and question). Our approach Neural-Image-QA doubles the performance of the previous best approach on this problem. We provide additional insights into the problem by analyzing how much information is contained only in the language part for which we provide a new human baseline. To study human consensus, which is related to the ambiguities inherent in this challenging task, we propose two novel metrics and collect additional answers which extends the original DAQUAR dataset to DAQUAR-Consensus.
Combined Effects of Experimental Warming and Eutrophication on Phytoplankton Dynamics and Nitrogen Uptake

Shallow lakes are highly vulnerable to damages caused by human activities and warming trends. To assess whether and how community structures of phytoplankton and nitrogen uptake respond to the combined effects of elevated temperature and eutrophication, we performed a mesocosm experiment in field by combining a 4.5 °C increase in temperature and the addition of phosphorus. Our results demonstrated that the combination of rising temperatures and phosphorus loading stimulated the maximum biomass built up by the phytoplankton community, and changed the phytoplankton community by significantly increasing the number of Chlorophyta and Cyanophyta, and decreasing that of Cryptophyta. We also examined the effects of climate warming and eutrophication on phytoplankton nitrogen uptake and dynamics using 15N tracer techniques. The addition of phosphorus slightly increased the phytoplankton nitrate uptake velocity and relative preference index, but decreased the nitrate uptake turnover time. Warming relatively increased the ammonium uptake velocity and the relative preference index, but decreased the ammonium turnover time. In kinetic studies, NH4+ exhibited a higher maximum uptake rate (Vmax) and a lower half-saturation constant (Ks) than NO3− substrates due to temperature elevation and the addition of phosphorus. Hence, warming and eutrophication increased the capacity of phytoplankton for NH4+ uptake and their affinity at low substrate concentrations. Thus, the combined effects of climate warming and phosphorus nutrient availability may increase the prevalence of Chlorophyta and Cyanophyta, and change the nitrogen cycling of aquatic ecosystems.
STRUCTURAL EVOLUTION OF THE CARNARVON TERRACE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

The under-explored Carnarvon Terrace is situated offshore of the Cape Range area in the Carnarvon Basin near the boundary of the Gascoyne and Exmouth Sub-basins. The stratigraphy of the area is controlled by only two wells (Pendock-1, Yardie East-1), but several onshore wells aid interpretation of seismic data. Understanding of the structural evolution of the region is facilitated by interpretation of a high-resolution non-exclusive seismic survey acquired by Geco-Prakla in 1993 (GPCTR-93 Survey). Three major tectonic stages are responsible for the structural configuration of the region: Late Palaeozoic extension in the Gascoyne Sub-basin; continental break-up between Australia and Greater India which took place along a major fracture marked by the Flinders-Long Island-Learmonth fault system active in Late Triassic and Early Jurassic times; and the collision between Australia and Asia that commenced in Miocene times and is continuing to the present day. This event, marked by wrench and compressional structures, and often reactivation of older structures, is one of the most economically important in Australian geological history. From a regional prospectivity viewpoint at least three plays are worthy of further investigation.
Screening of Musa cultivars for resistance to Helicotylenchus multicinctus, Meloidogyne incognita, Pratylenchus coffeae and Radopholus similis

The host response of 31 Musa cultivars to Helicotylenchus multicinctus, Meloidogyne incognita, Pratylenchus coffeae and/or Radopholus similis was tested in pots under greenhouse conditions. The Musa cultivars examined belong to the AA, AB, AAA, AAB, ABB, AAAA, AAAB, AABB and balbisiana genomic groups. This is the first time that the host response of Musa cultivars to H. multicinctus has been evaluated in pots. Resistance to this nematode was found in Tjau Lagada (AA) which supported significantly lower nematode numbers per unit root and per plant than Grande Naine (AAA), the susceptible reference cultivar. Yangambi km5 was less susceptible to H. multicinctus. In all the other cultivars tested, the final H. multicinctus numbers per plant were higher than the initial nematode inoculum. For M. incognita, the differences in final nematode numbers reflected differences in susceptibility but no resistance was found. The resistance of Yangambi km5 (AAA) to P. coffeae was confirmed. Also the roots of Tjau Lagada, Pisang Bungai and Pisang Mas (AA) supported significantly lower nematode numbers per unit root and per plant than Grande Naine. In contrast, all FHIA hybrids were equally susceptible to P. coffeae as Grande Naine. Tjau Lagada, Kunnan (AB), Paka (AA) and Pisang Lemak Manis (AA) did not differ significantly in resistance to R. similis from Yangambi km5, the reference resistant cultivar. Also Pisang Ceylan (AAB) seems to be resistant to this nematode.
Effects of roasting and boiling of quinoa, kiwicha and kañiwa on composition and availability of minerals in vitro.

BACKGROUND Andean indigenous crops such as quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), kiwicha (Amaranthus caudatus) and kañiwa (Chenopodium pallidicaule) seeds are good sources of minerals (calcium and iron). Little is known, however, about mineral bioavailability in these grains. Thus the aim of the present study was to determine the iron, calcium and zinc potential availability in raw, roasted and boiled quinoa, kañiwa and kiwicha seeds. Potential availability was estimated by dialyzability. RESULTS These seeds are good sources of phenolic compounds and kañiwa of dietary fiber. Their calcium, zinc and iron content is higher than in common cereals. In general, roasting did not significantly affect mineral dialyzability. Conversely, in boiled grains there was an increase in dialyzability of zinc and, in the case of kañiwa, also in iron and calcium dialyzability. CONCLUSION Taking into account the high content of minerals in Andean grains, the potential contribution of these minerals would not differ considerably from that of wheat flour. Further studies are required to research the effect of extrusion on mineral availability in Andean grains.
Treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension.

OBJECTIVE To perform a review of the diagnostic and therapeutic management of pulmonary hypertension in the pediatric population, with emphasis on pharmacological factors. SOURCES Electronic search of publications on the MEDLINE/PubMed, LILACS and Cochrane Collaboration databases. The search strategy adopted gave priority to the identification of clinical trials (controlled or uncontrolled), systematic reviews and directives published during the last 10 years. SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS Many advances have been incorporated into our understanding of pulmonary hypertension during recent years. Issues related to differences in the pathophysiological mechanism of the disease between different age groups have altered both the treatment and prognosis of patients. The combined effect of more selective vasodilatory properties and antiproliferative action and the employment of new drugs are the basic principles of new treatment proposals. In order to be able to gauge the benefits associated with the use of these new therapies, it is of fundamental importance that all patients have their disease correctly diagnosed, the degree of functional compromise classified and their vascular reactivity capacity established, which is more difficult with pediatric patients. CONCLUSIONS To date there is no treatment that can be considered ideal for the management of pulmonary hypertension. With reference to the possibility of employing new drugs, the majority of studies that have been published were undertaken with adult populations. Few data are available on children, and the majority of studies are uncontrolled trials or case series. Taking into account differences that have already been established between different age groups in terms of disease mechanisms and prognostic aspects, it is difficult to claim that these drugs can be incorporated into the treatment of childhood pulmonary hypertension with the same indications and results.
A New Automatic Method to Adjust Parameters for Object Recognition

To recognize an object in an image, the user must apply a combination of operators, where each operator has a set of parameters. These parameters must be "well" adjusted in order to reach good results. Usually, this adjustment is made manually by the user. In this paper we propose a new method to automate the process of parameter adjustment for an object recognition task. Our method is based on reinforcement learning, we use two types of agents: User Agent that gives the necessary information and Parameter Agent that adjusts the parameters of each operator. Due to the nature of reinforcement learning the results do not depend only on the system characteristics but also the user's favorite choices.
RhoE Inhibits Cell Cycle Progression and Ras-Induced Transformation

ABSTRACT Rho GTPases are major regulators of cytoskeletal dynamics, but they also affect cell proliferation, transformation, and oncogenesis. RhoE, a member of the Rnd subfamily that does not detectably hydrolyze GTP, inhibits RhoA/ROCK signaling to promote actin stress fiber and focal adhesion disassembly. We have generated fibroblasts with inducible RhoE expression to investigate the role of RhoE in cell proliferation. RhoE expression induced a loss of stress fibers and cell rounding, but these effects were only transient. RhoE induction inhibited cell proliferation and serum-induced S-phase entry. Neither ROCK nor RhoA inhibition accounted for this response. Consistent with its inhibitory effect on cell cycle progression, RhoE expression was induced by cisplatin, a DNA damage-inducing agent. RhoE-expressing cells failed to accumulate cyclin D1 or p21cip1 protein or to activate E2F-regulated genes in response to serum, although ERK, PI3-K/Akt, FAK, Rac, and cyclin D1 transcription was activated normally. The expression of proteins that bypass the retinoblastoma (pRb) family cell cycle checkpoint, including human papillomavirus E7, adenovirus E1A, and cyclin E, rescued cell cycle progression in RhoE-expressing cells. RhoE also inhibited Ras- and Raf-induced fibroblast transformation. These results indicate that RhoE inhibits cell cycle progression upstream of the pRb checkpoint.
Evaluation of lung ventilation distribution in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients using the global inhomogeneity index

The global inhomogeneity (GI) index is a electrical impedance tomography (EIT) parameter that quantifies the tidal volume distribution within the lung. In this work the global inhomogeneity index was computed for twenty subjects in order to evaluate his potential use in the detection and follow up of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. EIT data of 17 subjects were acquired: 14 patients with the main diagnoses of COPD and 3 healthy subjects which served as a control group. Two or three datasets of around 30 seconds were acquired at 33 scans/s and analysed for each subject. After reconstruction, a tidal EIT image was computed for each breathing cycle and a GI index calculated from it. Results have shown significant differences in GI values between the two groups (0.745 ± 0.007 for COPD and 0.668 ± 0.006 for lung-healthy subject, p <; 0.005). The GI values obtained for each subject have shown small variance between them, which is a good indication of stability. The results suggested that the GI may be useful for the identification and follow up of ventilation problems in patients with COPD.
Impact of mobility on energy provisioning in wireless rechargeable sensor networks

One fundamental question in Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks (WRSNs) is the energy provisioning problem, i.e., how to deploy energy sources in a network to ensure that the nodes can harvest sufficient energy for continuous operation. Though the potential mobility of nodes has been exploited to reduce the number of sources necessary in energy provisioning problem in existing literature, the non-negligible impacts of the constraints of node speed and battery capacity on energy provisioning are completely overlooked, in order to simplify the analysis. In this paper, we propose a new metric - Quality of Energy Provisioning (QoEP) - to characterize the expected portion of time that a mobile node can sustain normal operation in WRSNs, which factors in the constraints of node speed and battery capacity. To avoid confining the analysis to a specific mobility model, we study spatial distribution instead. We investigate the upper and lower bounds of QoEP in one-dimensional case with one single source and multiple sources respectively. For single source case, we prove the tight lower bound and upper bound of QoEP. Extending the results to multiple sources, we obtain tight lower bound and relaxed upper bound in normal cases, together with tight upper bound for one special case. Moreover, we give the tight lower bounds in both 2D and 3D cases. Finally, we perform extensive simulations to verify our findings. Simulation results show that our bounds perfectly hold, and outperform the former works.
Parallel Adaptive Divergence among Geographically Diverse Human Populations

Few genetic differences between human populations conform to the classic model of positive selection, in which a newly arisen mutation rapidly approaches fixation in one lineage, suggesting that adaptation more commonly occurs via moderate changes in standing variation at many loci. Detecting and characterizing this type of complex selection requires integrating individually ambiguous signatures across genomically and geographically extensive data. Here, we develop a novel approach to test the hypothesis that selection has favored modest divergence at particular loci multiple times in independent human populations. We find an excess of SNPs showing non-neutral parallel divergence, enriched for genic and nonsynonymous polymorphisms in genes encompassing diverse and often disease related functions. Repeated parallel evolution in the same direction suggests common selective pressures in disparate habitats. We test our method with extensive coalescent simulations and show that it is robust to a wide range of demographic events. Our results demonstrate phylogenetically orthogonal patterns of local adaptation caused by subtle shifts at many widespread polymorphisms that likely underlie substantial phenotypic diversity.
Degradation of APCcdc20 and APCcdh1 substrates during the second meiotic division in mouse eggs

Metaphase II-arrested mouse eggs are stimulated to complete meiosis by sperm-induced Ca2+ spiking. The Ca2+ signal causes activation of the E3 ligase anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC), leading to the destruction of key proteins necessary for meiotic exit. We show, using western blots of mouse eggs, the presence of both APC activators cdc20 and cdh1, which target D-box and D-box/KEN-box substrates, respectively, for proteolysis. We decided to examine the temporal activation of APCcdc20 and APCcdh1 by coupling APC substrates to GFP and examining their destruction in real-time following release from second meiotic division arrest. D-box substrates were degraded quickly after the initiation of sperm-induced Ca2+ spiking, such that their degradation was complete by the time of second polar body extrusion. By contrast, KEN-box-containing substrates were degraded when CDK1 activity was low, during the period between polar body extrusion and pronucleus formation. This observation of apparent APCcdh1 activity in meiosis II based on destruction of exogenous GFP-coupled substrates was then confirmed by observing destruction of endogenous APCcdh1 substrates. These data are consistent with a model of initial APCcdc20 activation on sperm-induced activation, followed by APCcdh1 activation after second polar body extrusion. Interestingly, therefore, we propose that mammalian eggs undergo meiosis II with both APCcdc20 and APCcdh1, whereas eggs of other species so far described have APCcdc20 activity only.
BIOMONITORING OF NICKEL AIR POLLUTION NEAR THE CITY OF KAVADARCI, REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

Baceva, K, Stafilov, T. , Sajn, R. (2009). Biomonitoring of nickel air pollution near the city of Kavadarci, Republic of Macedonia, Ekol. Zast. Život. Sred. , Vol. 12, No. 1-2, 57-69, Skopje. Air pollution with nickel was investigated in the vicinity of the ferronickel smelter plant near the city of Kavadarci, Republic of Macedonia. In this work the moss biomonitoring technique and atomic emission spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma was applied. The purpose of the study was to establish range of air pollution with nickel which could be expected due to the pollution from the ferronickel plant. For this purpose, 35 moss samples were collected together with 19 soil samples taken from the same localities as a topsoil (0-5 cm) and subsoil (20-30 cm). The analyses of moss and soil samples were performed using atomic emission spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma. The obtained results show that there is evidently higher content of nickel in moss samples collected in the vicinity of the ferronickel smelter plant. The median value of Ni in moss samples from the whole region (31.0 mg kg -1 ) is much higher that the median for Macedonia (2.4 mg kg -1 ). This fact confirms the influence of the air pollution with dust from the ferronickel plant in the larger region of city of Kavadarci.