Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pharmacokinetic/Pharmacodynamic Correlation of Cefquinome Against Experimental Catheter-Associated Biofilm Infection Due to Staphylococcus aureus

Biofilm formations play an important role in Staphylococcus aureus pathogenesis and contribute to antibiotic treatment failures in biofilm-associated infections. The aim of this study was to evaluate the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) profiles of cefquinome against an experimental catheter-related biofilm model due to S. aureus, including three clinical isolates and one non-clinical isolate. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC), minimal biofilm inhibitory concentration (MBIC), biofilm bactericidal concentration (BBC), minimal biofilm eradication concentration (MBEC) and biofilm prevention concentration (BPC) and in vitro time-kill curves of cefquinome were studied in both planktonic and biofilm cells of study S. aureus strains. The in vivo post-antibiotic effects (PAEs), PK profiles and efficacy of cefquinome were performed in the catheter-related biofilm infection model in murine. A sigmoid Emax model was utilized to determine the PK/PD index that best described the dose-response profiles in the model. The MICs and MBICs of cefquinome for the four S. aureus strains were 0.5 and 16 μg/mL, respectively. The BBCs (32–64 μg/mL) and MBECs (64–256 μg/mL) of these study strains were much higher than their corresponding BPC values (1–2 μg/mL). Cefquinome showed time-dependent killing both on planktonic and biofilm cells, but produced much shorter PAEs in biofilm infections. The best-correlated PK/PD parameters of cefquinome for planktonic and biofilm cells were the duration of time that the free drug level exceeded the MIC (fT > MIC, R2 = 96.2%) and the MBIC (fT > MBIC, R2 = 94.7%), respectively. In addition, the AUC24h/MBIC of cefquinome also significantly correlated with the anti-biofilm outcome in this model (R2 = 93.1%). The values of AUC24h/MBIC for biofilm-static and 1-log10-unit biofilm-cidal activity were 22.8 and 35.6 h; respectively. These results indicate that the PK/PD profiles of cefquinome could be used as valuable guidance for effective dosing regimens treating S. aureus biofilm-related infections.
One-class classification: taxonomy of study and review of techniques

Abstract One-class classification (OCC) algorithms aim to build classification models when the negative class is either absent, poorly sampled or not well defined. This unique situation constrains the learning of efficient classifiers by defining class boundary just with the knowledge of positive class. The OCC problem has been considered and applied under many research themes, such as outlier/novelty detection and concept learning. In this paper, we present a unified view of the general problem of OCC by presenting a taxonomy of study for OCC problems, which is based on the availability of training data, algorithms used and the application domains applied. We further delve into each of the categories of the proposed taxonomy and present a comprehensive literature review of the OCC algorithms, techniques and methodologies with a focus on their significance, limitations and applications. We conclude our paper by discussing some open research problems in the field of OCC and present our vision for future research.
Differential regulation of the release of the same peptide transmitters from individual identified motor neurons in culture

Aplysia motor neurons B1, B2, and B15 synthesize the small cardioactive peptides A and B (SCPs). In previous studies using semi-intact preparations we have demonstrated that the SCPs are released from B15. Significant peptide release only occurred when B15 was stimulated at a high frequency or at lower frequencies with a long burst duration. In the behaving animal B15 fires in patterns expected to release the SCPs. In contrast, in the behaving animal, neurons B1 and B2 fire at much lower frequencies. We therefore examined whether similar aspects of the stimulation pattern governed the release of the SCPs from B1 and B2. To monitor peptide release, all three neurons were individually cultured and newly synthesized peptides labeled with 35S-methionine. Release of labeled SCPs was detected by HPLC of extracts of superfusates. By keeping spike number constant and varying the stimulation pattern, the release of the SCPs from B1 and B2 was found to be pattern insensitive. That is, regardless of the stimulation paradigm, each action potential released a similar amount of peptide. By severing the primary neurite, peptide release was found to occur mainly from the regenerated neurites and most likely from the intensely immunoreactive varicosites. Calcium- and stimulation-dependent release of the SCPs and a third neuropeptide termed buccalin A from motor neuron B15 was also observed in culture. The release of these peptides from B15 was found to be pattern sensitive as was observed in the semi-intact preparations. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Characterization of Acid- and Pepsin-soluble Collagens Extracted from Scales of Carp and Lizardfish Caught in Japan, Bangladesh and Vietnam with a Focus on Thermostability

Department of Food Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, 4-5-7 Konan, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8477, Japan Department of Marine Biosciences, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, 4-5-7 Konan, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8477, Japan Center of Excellence in Food Processing Pilot Plant, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, 254 Phayathai Road, Wangmai, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Ablation of the Id2 Gene Results in Altered Circadian Feeding Behavior, and Sex-Specific Enhancement of Insulin Sensitivity and Elevated Glucose Uptake in Skeletal Muscle and Brown Adipose Tissue

Inhibitor of DNA binding 2 (ID2) is a helix-loop-helix transcriptional repressor rhythmically expressed in many adult tissues. Our earlier studies have demonstrated a role for ID2 in the input pathway, core clock function and output pathways of the mouse circadian system. We have also reported that Id2 null (Id2−/−) mice are lean with low gonadal white adipose tissue deposits and lower lipid content in the liver. These results coincided with altered or disrupted circadian expression profiles of liver genes including those involved in lipid metabolism. In the present phenotypic study we intended to decipher, on a sex-specific basis, the role of ID2 in glucose metabolism and in the circadian regulation of activity, important components of energy balance. We find that Id2−/− mice exhibited altered daily and circadian rhythms of feeding and locomotor activity; activity profiles extended further into the late night/dark phase of the 24-hr cycle, despite mice showing reduced total locomotor activity. Also, male Id2−/− mice consumed a greater amount of food relative to body mass, and displayed less weight gain. Id2−/− females had smaller adipocytes, suggesting sexual-dimorphic programing of adipogenesis. We observed increased glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in male Id2−/− mice, which was exacerbated in older animals. FDG-PET analysis revealed increased glucose uptake by skeletal muscle and brown adipose tissue of male Id2−/− mice, suggesting increased glucose metabolism and thermogenesis in these tissues. Reductions in intramuscular triacylglycerol and diacylglycerol were detected in male Id2−/− mice, highlighting its possible mechanistic role in enhanced insulin sensitivity in these mice. Our findings indicate a role for ID2 as a regulator of glucose and lipid metabolism, and in the circadian control of feeding/locomotor behavior; and contribute to the understanding of the development of obesity and diabetes, particularly in shift work personnel among whom incidence of such metabolic disorders is elevated.
High-Fat Diet Induces Oxidative Stress and MPK2 and HSP83 Gene Expression in Drosophila melanogaster

The consumption of a high-fat diet (HFD) causes alteration in normal metabolism affecting lifespan of flies; however molecular mechanism associated with this damage in flies is not well known. This study evaluates the effects of ingestion of a diet supplemented with 10% and 20% of coconut oil, which is rich in saturated fatty acids, on oxidative stress and cells stress signaling pathways. After exposure to the diet for seven days, cellular and mitochondrial viability, lipid peroxidation and antioxidant enzymes SOD and CAT activity, and mRNA expression of antioxidant enzymes HSP83 and MPK2 were analyzed. To confirm the damage effect of diet on flies, survival and lifespan were investigated. The results revealed that the HFD augmented the rate of lipid peroxidation and SOD and CAT activity and induced a higher expression of HSP83 and MPK2 mRNA. In parallel, levels of enzymes involved in lipid metabolism (ACSL1 and ACeCS1) were increased. Our data demonstrate that association among metabolic changes, oxidative stress, and protein signalization might be involved in shortening the lifespan of flies fed with a HFD.
Citation for Published Item: Use Policy Elsevier Editorial System(tm) for Neuropsychologia Manuscript Draft Time Course of the Involvement of the Ventral and Dorsal Visual Processing Streams in a Visuospatial Task

(2007) 'Time course of the involvement of the ventral and dorsal visual processing streams in a visuospatial task. The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Title: Time course of the involvement of the ventral and dorsal visual processing streams in a visuospatial task. Abstract: A previous transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) study (Ellison & Cowey, 2006) showed that both the dorsal and ventral cortical visual processing streams are involved in the processing of a task in which judgement of relative spatial position is required. In order to determine whether both streams are active in a parallel or serial manner, a double pulse TMS (20Hz) experiment was carried out to expose peaks of disruption, indicative of when each of the areas under investigation is most potently involved. Results show that TMS over lateral occipital cortex produces greater disruption of performance than that provoked by TMS over posterior parietal cortex, significantly so when applied at 50 ms and 100 ms post visual array onset. Both areas showed peaks of disruption up to 350 ms after visual stimulus onset. The results are discussed with respect to why each of these areas is involved in this task and what the pattern of their involvement reveals.
Stopping the Killing: How Civil Wars End.

Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Liberia, Somalia, Azerbaijan, El Salvador, Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Cambodia -- all provide bloody evidence that civil wars continue to have a powerful impact on the international scene. Because they tear at the very fabric of a society and pit countryman against countryman, civil wars are often the most brutal and difficult to extinguish -- witness the American Revolution. And yet, civil wars do inevitably end. England is no longer criss-crossed by warring armies representing York and Lancaster or King and Parliament. The French no longer kill one another over the divine right of kings. Argentines seem reconciled to living in a single state, rather than several. The ideologies of the Spanish Civil War now seem largely irrelevant. And the possibility of Southern secession is an issue long-buried in the American past. The question then begs itself: how do people who have been killing one another with considerable enthusiasm and success come together to form a common government? How can individuals and factions work together, politically and economically, with others who have killed their friends, parents, children and lovers? How are armed societies disarmed? What effect does a total military victory have on a lasting peace? In sum, how are civil societies constructed from civil violence and chaos? This is the central concern of Stopping the Killing. In this highly original and much needed volume, a distinguished group of experts on civil wars discuss both specific conflicts and broader theoretical issues. Individual chapters examine civil wars in Colombia, the Sudan, Yemen, America, Greece, and Nigeria, and analyze the causes of peace, the relationship between the battlefield and the negotiating table, and issues of settlement. An introduction and conclusion by the editor unify the volume. Contributors include: Jonathan Hartlyn (Univ. of North Carolina), Caroline Hartzell (Univ. of California, Davis), Jane E. Holl (U.S. Military Academy), John Iatrides (Southern Connecticut State University), James O'Connell (University of Bradford), Donald Rothchild (Univ. of California, Davis), Stephen John Stedman (Johns Hopkins Univ.), Robert Harrison Wagner (Univ. of Texas, Austin), Harvey Waterman (Rutgers Univ.), Manfred Wenner (Northern Illinois Univ.), and I. William Zartman (Johns Hopkins Univ.).
Career Maturity and College Students: A Case Study Comparison of Student-Athletes and Non-Athletes at a Division I Institution.

This quantitative comparative research study examines the career maturity of student-athletes in comparison to non-athletes at a Division I university. The study also measures differences in career maturity among student-athletes based on gender, class level, race/ethnicity, by sport, by type of sport (revenue/non-revenue), and professional sports aspirations. Super’s Theory of Career Development served as the theoretical framework, while disproportionate stratified sampling was utilized to secure the student-athlete (N=122) and non-athlete (N=171) participants. Data collection occurred via an online survey comprised of the 25-question Career Maturity Inventory-Revised Attitude Scale (CMI-R/AS), as well as 13 demographic and supplemental questions. An analysis of the data indicated that student-athletes exhibited lower levels of career maturity compared to non-athletes, though the difference was not highly significant. The data also yielded the following key findings. First, as student-athletes’ belief in their likelihood that they would play professional sports decreased, their levels of career maturity increased. Next, student-athletes competing in football, baseball, and men’s basketball exhibited the lowest levels of career maturity across sports. In addition, student-athletes who identified most with their athletic identities exhibited lower levels of career maturity. Finally, as class level and year of eligibility increased, student-athletes’ levels of career maturity increased. The study concludes with some recommendations on how to engage student-athletes in the career development process and some suggestions for future research.
Biclique Cryptanalysis of Lightweight Block Ciphers PRESENT, Piccolo and LED

Abstract. In this paper, we evaluate the security of lightweight block ciphers PRESENT, Piccolo and LED against biclique cryptanalysis. To recover the secret key of PRESENT-80/128, our attacks require 2 full PRESENT-80 encryptions and 2 full PRESENT-128 encryptions, respectively. Our attacks on Piccolo-80/128 require computational complexities of 2 and 2, respectively. The attack on a 29-round reduced LED-64 needs 2 29-round reduced LED-64 encryptions. In the cases of LED-80/96/128, we propose the attacks on two versions. First, to recover the secret key of 45-round reduced LED-80/96/128, our attacks require computational complexities of 2, 2 and 2, respectively. To attack the full version, we require computational complexities of 2, 2 and 2, respectively. However, in these cases, we need the full codebook. These results are superior to known biclique cryptanalytic results on them.
The possibility of lapatinib treatment for breast cancer patients with central nervous system metastases. Case study and literature review

In patients with breast cancer with overexpression of the HER2 receptor, during treatment with trastuzumab, in 30% of cases brain metastases are observed. The use of lapatinib with capecitabine (L + C) seems to be an efficacious method of curing patients in whom the spread of cancer in this location has occurred. In a patient aged 52 treated by the L + C scheme a stabilization of changes in the brain was noted, lingering for 17 months. The tolerance of the treatment was good. Grade 2 hand-foot syndrome on the NCI 2,0 scale, nausea, a first degree increase in transaminase levels and first degree diarrhea were observed. No hematological or cardiac complications were observed. In the third phase test comparing capecitabine with capecitabine and lapatinib in patients with advanced breast cancer, adding lapatinib to capecitabine significantly prolonged the time until progression and contributed to lessening of the amount of progression of the condition into the central nervous system. Recently published studies showed 6% remission of metastases to the central nervous system in patients with advanced breast cancer with brain metastases treated with lapatinib and 20–21% in patients receiving lapatinib with capecitabine. Future studies evaluating the effectiveness of lapatinib in patients with spread into the central nervous system should include the evaluation of lapatinib in association with cytostatics able to break through the blood-brain barrier. Lapatinib should also be tested in association with brain radiation, considering the results of preclinical studies indicating that it may work as a radiation sensitizer.
Long-short Term Motion Feature for Action Classification and Retrieval

We propose a method for representing motion information for video classification and retrieval. We improve upon local descriptor based methods that have been among the most popular and successful models for representing videos. The desired local descriptors need to satisfy two requirements: 1) to be representative, 2) to be discriminative. Therefore, they need to occur frequently enough in the videos and to be be able to tell the difference among different types of motions. To generate such local descriptors, the video blocks they are based on must contain just the right amount of motion information. However, current state-of-the-art local descriptor methods use video blocks with a single fixed size, which is insufficient for covering actions with varying speeds. In this paper, we introduce a long-short term motion feature that generates descriptors from video blocks with multiple lengths, thus covering motions with large speed variance. Experimental results show that, albeit simple, our model achieves state-of-the-arts results on several benchmark datasets.
Donor PPARα Gene Polymorphisms Influence the Susceptibility to Glucose and Lipid Disorders in Liver Transplant Recipients

AbstractPeroxisome proliferator-activated receptor &agr; (PPAR&agr;) is an important regulator of glucose and lipid metabolism, and is predominantly expressed in the liver. We aimed to evaluate the effect of donor hepatic PPAR&agr; gene polymorphisms on the development of metabolic disorders following liver transplantation (LT). A total of 176 patients undergoing primary LT were included in this Review Board-approved study. Genomic DNA was extracted from fresh frozen donor liver tissues (biopsy specimens for pathological testing at surgery). Eight single nucleotide polymorphisms in the PPAR&agr; gene were chosen from either the HapMap CHB database or previous reports.The distribution of metabolic disorders differed significantly between the wild-type and variant genotypes of both the rs5767743 and rs5767700 loci (P < 0.05 for all). After an adjustment for other factors (body mass index and tacrolimus blood concentration), the rs5767743 genetic variant was found to be an independent protective factor (P = 0.005, odds ratio = 0.416 per C allele, 95% confidence interval = 0.225–0.768). When compared with the wild-type genotype, the variant genotypes rs5767743 and rs5767700 correlated with significantly increased PPAR&agr; and CYP3A4 mRNA expression and lower tacrolimus trough concentration/dose ratios (P < 0.05 for all). Donor PPAR&agr; gene polymorphisms influence the susceptibility to metabolic disorders following LT and may also be associated with a fasten tacrolimus metabolism because of elevated CYP3A4 expression.
Rhythm Generation and Rhythm Perception in Insects: The Evolution of Synchronous Choruses

Insect sounds dominate the acoustic environment in many natural habitats such as rainforests or meadows on a warm summer day. Among acoustic insects, usually males are the calling sex; they generate signals that transmit information about the species-identity, sex, location, or even sender quality to conspecific receivers. Males of some insect species generate signals at distinct time intervals, and other males adjust their own rhythm relative to that of their conspecific neighbors, which leads to fascinating acoustic group displays. Although signal timing in a chorus can have important consequences for the calling energetics, reproductive success and predation risk of individuals, still little is known about the selective forces that favor the evolution of insect choruses. Here, we review recent advances in our understanding of the neuronal network responsible for acoustic pattern generation of a signaler, and pattern recognition in receivers. We also describe different proximate mechanisms that facilitate the synchronous generation of signals in a chorus and provide examples of suggested hypotheses to explain the evolution of chorus synchrony in insects. Some hypotheses are related to sexual selection and inter-male cooperation or competition, whereas others refer to the selection pressure exerted by natural predators. In this article, we summarize the results of studies that address chorus synchrony in the tropical katydid Mecopoda elongata, where some males persistently signal as followers although this reduces their mating success.
On Negotiating Racial and Regional Identities: Vocalic Variation Among African Americans in Bakersfield, California

This paper investigates the linguistic construction of ethnic and regional identities through the use of a local feature, BAT retraction and lowering (D’Onofrio 2015, Kennedy and Grama 2012, Podesva, D’Onofrio, Van Hofwegen and Kim 2015). Analysis of the speech of twelve African Americans from Bakersfield, California, shows an apparent change over time, such that younger African Americans produce backer tokens. Additionally, a targeted analysis of a single speaker suggests that African Americans’ degree of retraction can index local-based stances and affiliations. Because of BAT retraction’s indexing of coastal urban identity (Kennedy and Grama 2012) and the valley girl character-type (D’Onofrio 2015), the recruitment of this linguistic resource among African Americans opens up a larger discussion on who owns the local sound change. This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: https://repository.upenn. edu/pwpl/vol22/iss2/12