Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of Multivalent Displays on Metalloprotease-Dependent Cleavage of Semaphorin 4D in Synapse Development

ii Acknowledgments I would like to take this time to thank my wonderful friends, old and new, who have made these last four years at Brandeis truly memorable. I'm grateful that you were able to pull me out of studying and lab work long enough for me to take a break from it all and enjoy life. I'll always cherish the moments that we spent together. In terms of my development as a scientist, I would like to extend a wholehearted thank you to my terrific research mentors, Dr. for giving me a once in a lifetime opportunity to pursue this fascinating research project as an undergraduate. From my undergraduate research career, I realize just how hard lab work can be! However, despite these difficulties, Sue and Jason were always extremely supportive. And reflecting back, I've now come to appreciate how they always demanded more of me and pushed me to fulfill my potential. Thank you, Dr. Paradis and Dr. Pontrello, I had a lot of fun… and I learned quite a bit too! Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my graduate student mentor, Aram Raissi. It just wouldn't be the same without him! He's an excellent teacher, brilliant scientist, and a genuinely kind-hearted person. He transformed me from a bumbling undergraduate, into a " somewhat " competent researcher. I've always looked up to him as a role model and I truly consider him one of my best friends. Thanks, Aram. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my family for all their love and support. I would like to thank my little sister, Jade Scangarello, for always being happy iii and cheerful. You're the light of my life and I hope that you know that I will always be there for you. But most importantly of all, I would like to thank my parents, Anthony and Maria Scangarello. Thank you for providing me with a warm and loving household to grow up in. Thank you for showing me the value of hard work and of being a kind person. My life would be nowhere without you. Please know that I appreciate the sacrifices that you two make for me and Jade every day. I couldn't have asked for better parents. So now, it is a great honor for me to present to you my biochemistry Master's thesis. I consider this work the culmination …
Fragebogen zu Dissoziativen Symptomen : FDS

The "Fragebogen zu dissoziativen Symptomen (FDS)" represents the authorised German translation and adaptation of the "Dissociative Experience Scale" (DES; Bernstein and Putnam 1986). The original scale comprises 28 items covering dissociative experiences with regard to memory, identity, awareness and cognition according to DSM-III-R and DSM-IV. For the German version, 16 items were added to cover dissociative phenomena according to ICD-10, mainly pseudoneurological conversion symptoms. Reliability and validity of the German version were studied in a total sample of 813 persons and were compared to the results of the original version. Test-retest reliability of the FDS was rtt = 0.88 and Cronbach's consistency coefficient was alpha = 0.93, which is comparable to the results of the DES. The instrument differentiates between different samples (healthy control subjects, students, unselected neurological and psychiatric inpatients, neurological and psychiatric patients with a dissociative disorder and schizophrenics). The FDS is an easily applicable, reliable and valid measure to quantify dissociative experiences.
Lossy Compression of Weak-Lensing Data

Future orbiting observatories will survey large areas of sky in order to constrain the physics of dark matter and dark energy using weak gravitational lensing and other methods. Lossy compression of the resultant data will improve the cost and feasibility of transmitting the images through the space communication network. We evaluate the consequences of the lossy compression algorithm of Bernstein et al. for the high-precision measurement of weak-lensing galaxy ellipticities. This square-root algorithm compresses each pixel independently, and the information discarded is, by construction, less than the Poisson error from photon shot noise. For simulated space-based images (without cosmic rays) digitized to the typical 16 bits pixel-1, application of the lossy compression followed by imagewise lossless compression yields images with only 2.4 bits pixel-1, a factor of 6.7 compression. We demonstrate that this compression introduces no bias in the sky background. The compression introduces a small amount of additional digitization noise to the images, and we demonstrate a corresponding small increase in ellipticity measurement noise. The ellipticity measurement method is biased by the addition of noise, so the additional digitization noise is expected to induce a multiplicative bias on the galaxies’ measured ellipticities. After correcting for this known noise-induced bias, we find a residual multiplicative ellipticity bias of m ≈ -4 × 10-4. This bias is small when compared with the many other issues that precision weak-lensing surveys must confront; furthermore, we expect it to be reduced further with better calibration of ellipticity measurement methods.
New Analytic Solution Related to the Richards, Philip, and Green–Ampt Equations for Infiltration

Based on physical laws of similarity, an analytic solution of the soil water potential form of the Richards equation was derived for water infiltration into a homogeneous sand. The derivation assumes a similarity between the soil water retention function and that of the soil water content profiles taken at fixed times. The new solution successfully described soil water content profiles experimentally measured for water infiltrating downward, upward, and horizontally into a homogeneous sand and agrees with that presented by Philip in 1957. The utility of this analysis is still to be verified, but it is expected to hold for soils that have a narrow pore‐size distribution before wetting and that manifest a sharp increase of water content at the wetting front during infiltration. The effect of van Genuchten's parameters α and n on the application of the solution to other porous media was investigated. The solution also improves and provides a more realistic description of the infiltration process than that pioneered by Green and Ampt in 1911.
Psychiatric morbidity in perimenopausal women

Background: Women in the perimenopausal period are reported to be vulnerable to psychiatric disorders. Aim: To assess the psychiatric morbidity in perimenopausal women aged 45–55 years. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional, observational, hospital-based study was conducted at the Department of Psychiatry in a tertiary care hospital attached to a medical college. The study sample consisted of consecutive women in perimenopause as diagnosed by a gynecologist and written informed consent for inclusion in the study. Women with a previous history of psychiatric illnesses, with a major medical illness, or who had undergone surgical menopause were excluded from the study. All women were evaluated with a brief questionnaire for collecting demographic and clinical information and the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview for assessing psychiatric disorders. Results: Of the 108 women in perimenopause included in the study, 31% had depressive disorder, 7% had anxiety, while 5% had depressive disorder with anxiety features. Psychiatric morbidity was significantly more in women having lesser education, from rural background, with a history of psychiatric illness in the family, a later age of menarche, and in the late stage of perimenopause. Conclusions: Women in the perimenopause affected by psychiatric morbidity were most commonly diagnosed with depression. As perimenopause is a time of vulnerability in women, attention to signs and symptoms of depression may be required so that they may lead a more productive life.
Rat liver and kidney catechol-O-methyltransferase activity measured by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection.

We have previously reported a highly sensitive method for the measurement of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) activities in rat erythrocytes with norepinephrine (NE), an endogenous native substrate, using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-fluorescence or peroxyoxalate chemiluminescence reaction detection. Applying this method to COMT activities in rat liver and kidney, known to have the highest activities of all organs, the optimum reaction conditions were investigated. Under the optimum conditions, soluble (S)-COMT and membrane-bound (MB)-COMT activities in rat liver, with NE as a substrate, were 2.17 +/- 0.33 and 0.16 +/- 0.02 nmol/min/mg protein (n = 5), respectively. In rat kidney, S-COMT and MB-COMT activities were 1.81 +/- 0.20 and 0.079 +/- 0.009 nmol/min/mg protein (n = 5), respectively. Since liver and kidney play important roles in inactivating catecholamines, using the proposed method would yield critical information to delineate the role of metabolism of catecholamines in rat tissues.
Chemical constituents of Machaerium hirtum Vell. (Fabaceae) leaves and branches and its anti-inflammatory activity evaluation

Leaves and branches of Machaerium hirtum Vell. (Fabaceae), native to South America, were subjected to phytopharmacological investigation in order to identify its major chemical constituents and evaluate its extracts, fractions and isolated compounds in assays for anti-inflammatory activities. These were performed using mouse ear edema model, pleurisy and myeloperoxidase activity assays. Six compounds were isolated and identified as the flavanones swertisin and isovitexin, the alkaloid 4-hydroxy-N-methylproline, the triterpenes friedelin and lupeol, and the steroids sitosterol and stigmasterol. These compounds were identified by nuclear magnetic resonance of 1H and 13C data, in comparison with literature.
Restoration of a tumorigenic phenotype by beta 2-microglobulin transfection to EL-4 mutant cells

It has frequently been suggested that loss of beta 2-microglobulin (beta 2m) in tumor cells may lead to malignant progression due to escape from immunological recognition. Here, we directly tested the role of beta 2m expression in tumorigenicity. A beta 2 m loss mutant (C4.4-25-), selected from the murine lymphoma EL-4, showed a marked reduction in tumorigenicity as compared with EL-4 in normal C57B1/6 (B6) mice. The reduced tumorigenicity was directly related to beta 2 m expression. Transfection of an intact murine beta 2m gene markedly increased the tumorigenic potential. The reduced tumorigenicity of C4.4- 25- compared with beta 2m transfected cells was observed also in athymic B6 nu/nu mice, but was abolished in B6 mice depleted of natural killer (NK) 1.1-positive cells. These results show that restoration of beta 2m expression can promote tumorigenicity and demonstrate for the first time that induction of major histocompatibility complex class I expression by transfection can lead to escape from NK cells in vivo.
Estimates of Tropical Diabatic Heating Profiles: Commonalities and Uncertainties

This study aims to evaluate the consistency and discrepancies in estimates of diabatic heating profiles associated with precipitation based on satellite observations and microphysics and those derived from the thermodynamics of the large-scale environment. It presents a survey of diabatic heating profile estimates from four Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) products, four global reanalyses, and in situ sounding measurements from eight field campaigns at various tropical locations. Common in most of the estimates are the following: (i) bottom-heavy profiles, ubiquitous over the oceans, are associated with relatively low rain rates, while top-heavy profiles are generally associated with high rain rates; (ii) temporal variability of latent heating profiles is dominated by two modes, a deep mode with a peak in the upper troposphere and a shallow mode with a low-level peak; and (iii) the structure of the deep modes is almost the same in different estimates and different regions in the tropics. The primary uncertainty is in the amount of shallow heating over the tropical oceans, which differs substantially among the estimates.
Robust control of T-S fuzzy systems with time-varying delay: New approach.

This paper aims to design a controller to robustly stabilize uncertain nonlinear systems with time-varying delay and norm bounded uncertainties via Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model. The stabilization conditions are given in the form of Linear Matrix Inequalities using a single Lyapunov- Krasovskii Functional (LKF) combining the introduction of some relaxation matrices and only one tuning parameter. In comparison with the existing techniques in the literature, the proposed approach gives two great advantages. The first one is the reduction of computational complexity when the number of IF-THEN rules, r, is big. The second one concerns the conservatism reduction. An example is given to show the effectiveness and the merits of the design procedure.
Treatment of persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn: update.

Persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn is pfimarily characterised by persistence of, or return to, the suprasystemic pulmonary vascular resistance and pressure normally found in the fetus. The increased pulmonary pressure causes right to left shunting through the ductus arteriosus or the foramen ovale, or both. The resulting hypoxaemia and acidosis may produce further pulmonary vasoconstriction and lead to a vicious cycle of shunting, hypoxia, and acidosis.
Synthesis and processing of the three major envelope glycoproteins of Epstein-Barr virus

In pulse-chase experiments, the three major Epstein-Barr virus envelope glycoproteins, gp350/300, gp250/200, and gp85, were shown to be synthesized from separate precursors of 190,000, 160,000, and 83,000 daltons, respectively. These three pulse-labeled species were chased into the mature forms of the glycoproteins between 1 and 3 h after transfer to nonradioactive medium. Digestion of precursor forms with endo-beta-N-acetylglucosaminidase H (endo H) yielded polypeptides of 160,000, 120,000, and 75,000 daltons. Comparison of these results with those from experiments with tunicamycin, which specifically blocks N-linked glycosylation, indicated that some other post-translational modification(s), probably O-linked glycosylation, contributes about 100,000 and 60,000 daltons of apparent molecular mass to gp350/300 and gp250/200, respectively. Experiments with endo H showed that mature gp350/300 and gp250/200 contain complex-type (endo H-resistant) N-linked glycosyl chains, whereas gp85 contains both high-mannose (endo H-sensitive)- and complex-type oligosaccharides. In contrast to the results obtained with the three envelope glycoproteins, no precursor forms of the two unglycosylated protein, p160 (the major Epstein-Barr virus capsid antigen) and p140 (an envelope protein), were detected. The partial proteolytic maps of gp350/300 and gp250/200 were quite similar, suggesting that polypeptide sequence homology could account for at least part of the observed serological cross-reactivity of the two proteins. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the polypeptide portions of gp350/300 and gp250/200 are closely related but not derived from a common precursor. Furthermore, the polypeptide portions comprise half or less of the apparent molecular weight of the mature glycoproteins on sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.
Fungal keratitis due to Schizophyllum commune: an emerging pathogenic fungus

Fungal keratitis due to Schizophyllum commune is very rare. In this study, we report the clinical and microbiological profile of five patients with fungal keratitis due to S. commune. Direct microscopic examination of corneal scrapings from all five patients showed septate branching hyaline fungal filaments. Similarly, in all five patients Sabouraud dextrose agar (SDA) plates inoculated with corneal scrapings showed white, cottony colonies on the second day of incubation. Lactophenol cotton blue stained wet preparation of 7‐day‐old colonies on SDA revealed clamp connections and no spores. The fungus was identified by its characteristic clamp connections, fan‐shaped bracket fruiting body with pinkish‐grey longitudinally split‐radiating gills. The phenotypic identification of one of the five isolates further conformed by ITS sequencing. Treatment outcome was available for two of the five patients; in these two patients, the keratitis resolved with topical natamycin.
VHL gene mutation analysis of a Chinese family with non- syndromic pheochromocytomas and patients with apparently sporadic pheochromocytoma.

OBJECTIVE The Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome (VHLD), an inherited neoplastic syndrome predisposing to central nervous system hemangioblastoma (CNS), pheochromocytoma (PCC), renal cell carcinoma(RCC), retinal hemangioma (RA) and renal cysts, is caused by mutations or deletions of the VHL tumor-suppressor gene. To assess VHL genotype-phenotype correlations with function of pVHL a gene mutation analysis of members in a Chinese family with non-syndromic PCCs and individuals with apparently sporadic pheochromocytoma (ASP) was performed. MATERIALS AND METHODS DNA samples of 20 members from the Chinese family with non-syndromic PCCs and 41 patients with ASP were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction and direct sequencing, confirmed by Taqman probe. RESULTS Three novel mutations (H125P, 623(? TTTGTtG) and R120T) were identified in the Chinese family and in 3 among 41 ASP patients. The mutations were all located in exon 2 of VHL gene encoding β-domain of pVHL. The tumor type in H125P carriers and R120T carriers was VHL type 2C. And 623(? TTTGTtG) carriers presented VHL type 2B or type 2C. CONCLUSIONS VHL gene abnormalities were identified in the Chinese family with non-syndromic PCCs and patients with APS, resulting in dysfunction of pVHL. H125P and R120T could be associated with VHL type 2C, while 623(? TTTGTtG) might be linked with VHL type 2B or type 2C. Not only is the genetic analysis helpful for early diagnosis and treatment of patients with VHLD, it is also benefitial for research into VHLD pathogenesis.
Myeloma Cells Phosphorylation in Human Multiple Constitutive and IL-6-Inducible STAT3 Curcumin (Diferuloylmethane) Inhibits

Numerous reports suggest that IL-6 promotes survival and proliferation of multiple myeloma (MM) cells through the phosphorylation of a cell signaling protein, STAT3. Thus, agents that suppress STAT3 phosphorylation have potential for the treatment of MM. In the present report, we demonstrate that curcumin (diferuloylmethane), a pharmacologically safe agent in humans, inhibited IL-6–induced STAT3 phosphorylation and consequent STAT3 nuclear translocation. Curcumin had no effect on STAT5 phosphorylation, but inhibited the IFN- (cid:1) -induced STAT1 phosphorylation. The constitutive phosphorylation of STAT3 found in certain MM cells was also abrogated by treatment with curcumin. Curcumin-induced inhibition of STAT3 phosphorylation was reversible. Compared with AG490, a well-characterized Janus kinase 2 inhibitor, curcumin was a more rapid (30 min vs 8 h) and more potent (10 (cid:2) M vs 100 (cid:2) M) inhibitor of STAT3 phosphorylation. In a similar manner, the dose of curcumin completely suppressed proliferation of MM cells; the same dose of AG490 had no effect. In contrast, a cell-permeable STAT3 inhibitor peptide that can inhibit the STAT3 phosphorylation mediated by Src blocked the constitutive phosphorylation of STAT3 and also suppressed the growth of myeloma cells. TNF- (cid:1) and lymphotoxin also induced the proliferation of MM cells, but through a mechanism independent of STAT3 phosphorylation. In addition, dexamethasone-resistant MM cells were found to be sensitive to curcumin. Overall, our results demonstrated that curcumin was a potent inhibitor of STAT3 phosphorylation,
Sandwiched Flux-Switching Permanent-Magnet Brushless AC Machines Using V-Shape Magnets

Conventional flux-switching permanent-magnet (FSPM) brushless machines have emerged as an attractive machine type by virtue of their high torque densities, simple and robust rotor structure, and the fact that permanent magnets and coils are both located on the stator. In order to improve the torque density, the sandwiched FSPM (SFSPM) machine has been proposed in which two PM pieces are sandwiched in one stator pole, and V-shape magnet is adopted to enhance the PMs usage efficiency. Finite element method is employed to compare the performance of a conventional 12/10-pole FSPM machine topology with that of V-shape magnet SFSPM machine topologies, in terms of field distribution, flux-linkage, back EMF, and output torque. It shows that the average torque of V-shape SSFPM is increased about 25% compared with conventional FSPM machine, and meanwhile, the magnet usage efficiency has been increased by 29.4%. A variation in stator and rotor pole combination of the proposed topology is analyzed in order to maintain a sinusoidal back- EMF waveform and reduce the torque ripple. Finally, efficiency of the machine is simulated to evaluate the proposed system.
The relationship between short‐term memory and working memory: Complex span made simple?

This experiment addresses the question of what makes a working memory measure a good predictor of higher‐level abilities. Verbal and visuospatial processing episodes were interleaved with distinct verbal and visuospatial storage episodes to form four complex span tasks. Although these measures were reliable predictors of reading and mathematics ability in children, they were no more predictive of these abilities than corresponding simple span tasks involving storage alone. However, when individual differences in storage ability and processing capacity were controlled for, residual variance in complex span performance was related to academic ability in some cases. These findings indicate that complex span tasks are multiply determined, and that differences in task structure can dramatically influence the relative importance of these multiple constraints and the predictive power of a complex span measure.
Brightness Temperature Computation of Microwave Calibration Targets

A rigorous numerical technique to compute the brightness temperature of arbitrarily shaped microwave calibration targets is presented. The proposed method allows the brightness temperature of calibration targets to be investigated depending on frequency, absorber material, geometry, antenna pattern, field incidence, and temperature environment. We have validated the accuracy and studied the numerical complexity of the approach by means of analytical reference solutions. Fundamental brightness temperature investigations of pyramid absorbers are shown for various thermal environments in different frequency bands between 20 and 450 GHz. Based on these analyses, a novel pyramid geometry was designed, which features a superior electromagnetic and thermal performance compared with conventional pyramid designs. Using the theoretical findings, we have developed reduced-order models of pyramid targets for rapid brightness temperature studies.