Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Postmaterialism and Political Elites: The Value Priorities of Brazilian Federal Legislators

We examine the distribution and consequences of postmaterialist value orientations among national legislators in Brazil. Using data collected in the Brazilian Legislative Survey in 2013, we undertake the first systematic study of postmaterialism within the National Congress and the party system and map the materialist/postmaterialist scale onto other salient divisions within the political class. We present five main findings. First, political elites evince vastly higher commitment to postmaterialism than the mass public. Second, Brazilian political elites drawn from constituencies with higher human development are more postmaterialist than their counterparts in other constituencies. Third, within the political class, the materialist/post-materialist cleavage overlaps in important ways with the left–right cleavage. Fourth, although postmaterialism successfully predicts elite attitudes on a number of “new politics” issues that are unrelated to the construction of the postmaterialist scale itself, postmaterialism is a poor predictor of voting behavior on the Congressional floor. Fifth, as others before us, we find institutional factors to be better predictors of legislative voting behavior in the Brazilian context.
ET Bayesian reconstruction using automatic bandwidth selection for joint entropy optimization

In emission tomography (ET), fast developing Bayesian reconstruction methods can incorporate anatomical information derived from co-registered scanning modalities, such as magnetic resonance (MR) and computed tomography (CT). We propose a Bayesian image reconstruction method for single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), using a joint entropy (JE) similarity measure to embed MR anatomical data. An optimized non-parametric Parzen window approach is used for fast and efficient estimation of the probability density function (PDF) of the JE metric. It is known that the quality of the Parzen estimates strongly depends on the kernel bandwidth of the smoothing function. When the density is over or under-smoothed, because of too large or small bandwidth value, this leads to an incorrect entropy estimate and, eventually, to a biased solution. To alleviate the problem of searching manually for the most suitable weight for the smoothing function and the number of bins for the histogram, we use an adaptive method to find these parameters automatically from the data on each iteration of the Bayesian algorithm. We assess the NRMSE-variance behaviour of the MAP-EM reconstruction method in relation to the quality of the PDF building. For the different bandwidth values of the Gaussian kernel for the density function, an emission image is reconstructed using MR data as a prior. Preliminary numerical experiments are performed using simulated co-registered 2D and 3D SPECT/MR data. Comparison of proposed technique with neighbourhood dependent anatomically-based prior is presented. Lesions are simulated to be apparent on the gray matter of the 3D SPECT data, but invisible on MRI. Preliminary results demonstrate that applying optimal density estimation for JE metric is feasible and more efficient compared to non-adaptive techniques
Parental posttraumatic stress disorder as a vulnerability factor for low cortisol trait in offspring of holocaust survivors.

CONTEXT Lower cortisol levels in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may reflect a preexisting vulnerability associated with developing the disorder after trauma exposure. Because offspring of trauma survivors with PTSD have a greater prevalence of PTSD after their own life events than offspring of trauma survivors without PTSD and offspring of nonexposed persons, examination of patterns of basal cortisol secretion in such offspring provides an opportunity to test this hypothesis. OBJECTIVE To characterize the patterns of basal cortisol secretion in offspring of Holocaust survivors with and without parental PTSD and children of nonexposed parents. DESIGN Cortisol secretion was measured every 30 minutes for 24 hours. The raw hormonal data were subjected to a chronobiological analysis by applying single-oscillator and multioscillator cosinor analyses, a nonlinear least squares curve-fitting program, to determine circadian and ultradian regulatory dynamics. SETTING The study was conducted under controlled conditions at the General Clinical Research Center at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. PARTICIPANTS Twenty-three Holocaust offspring with parental PTSD and 10 without parental PTSD were compared with 16 children of nonexposed parents. No participant had PTSD. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Mean cortisol levels during the 24-hour cycle and other chronobiological parameters (amplitude, acrophase, circadian quotient, and goodness-of-fit coefficient) derived from single-oscillator and multioscillator models. RESULTS Offspring with parental PTSD displayed lower mean cortisol levels, reflected by the circadian mesor and reduced cortisol amplitude, compared with offspring without parental PTSD and children of nonexposed parents. This effect seemed to be specifically related to the presence of maternal PTSD. CONCLUSIONS Low cortisol levels and other chronobiological alterations in offspring are associated with the risk factor of maternal PTSD, raising the possibility that these alterations are acquired via glucocorticoid programming either from in utero exposures or in response to maternal behaviors early in life.
Exploration of instantaneous amplitude and frequency features for epileptic seizure prediction

For the purpose of effective epileptic seizure prediction, this paper presents a new representation for the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal by recurring to their primary amplitude and frequency components. This formulation is then applied on an epoch-by-epoch basis to the preictal and interictal states of EEG signals in order to extract the most dominant amplitude and frequency characteristics. Through inspecting and identifying the distinctive EEG signal changes and stage transitions revealed by these extracted feature vectors, upcoming epileptic seizures could be predicted in due course. Machine learning approaches have been employed to construct patient-specific classifiers that can divide the extracted feature vectors into preictal and interictal groups. In this context, our work is distinguished from most currently adopted feature extraction process which employs time-consuming high-dimensional parameter sets. We have made special efforts to derive discriminative and comprehensive features for the front-end of the epileptic seizure prediction algorithm. To reduce false alarms due to trivial signal fluctuation, a simple yet effective post-processing step is incorporated thereafter. Performance of the prediction algorithm is assessed through out-of-sample evaluation on the intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings provided by the publicly available Freiburg data set. It has been shown by simulation results that the proposed feature estimation method leads to promising prediction results in terms of sensitivity and specificity. In particular, only four out of the 83 seizures across all the patients included in our experiment were missed by the prediction, which means that a sensitivity as high as 95.2% has been achieved.
Fos‐like immunoreactivity in the brain of homozygous diabetes insipidus brattleboro and normal long‐evans rats

Water deprivation induces the production of the transcription factor Fos in neurons of the neurohypophysial system. These neurons, which are located primarily in the hypothalamic paraventricular (PVN) and supraoptic nuclei (SON), produce the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin. The present immunocytochemical study has analyzed the distribution of Fos in brain regions involved in osmoregulation and compared the extent of Fos immunoreactivity (Fos‐IR) in vasopressin‐deficient Brattleboro and normal Long‐Evans rats under stimulated and non‐stimulated conditions. Rats were osmotically challenged by means of a single intraperitoneal injection of 1.5 M/L NaCl. Since Fos may be induced by the stress of handling of animals, non‐injected and isotonic saline‐injected rats were used as controls. Faint nuclear Fos immunostaining was found in the organum vasculosum of the lamina terminalis (OVLT), the median preoptic nucleus (MnPO), subfornical organ (SFO), and SON of non‐injected and isotonic saline‐injected Brattleboro but not Long‐Evans rats. Hypertonic saline injection specifically induced Fos‐IR in neurons located in the SFO, OVLT, MnPO, PVN, SON, hypothalamic accessory nuclei (including the nucleus circularis), and arcuate hypothalamic nucleus (Arc) in both Long Evans and Brattleboro rats. No differences in distribution of the induced immunostaining were found between the strains. Stress of handling and (isotonic saline) injection induced Fos‐IR in the lateral septal nuclei, central amygdaloid nuclei, medial amygdaloid nucleus, medial preoptic area, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, cingulate‐ and piriform cortex, the lateral hypothalamic area, ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus, and the habenular nucleus. The data are consistent with a role for Fos in the regulation of vasopressin gene expression during acute hyperosmotic stimulation. In addition, this study demonstrated that during chronic osmotic stimulation, as experienced by homozygous Brattleboro rats, Fos‐IR is limited but apparently present constantly and that it increased in these animals following acute osmotic challenge. Our observations suggest that c‐fos regulatory controls in homozygous Brattleboro rats are different from those in Long‐Evans rats. © 1992 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Mortality among a cohort of US man-made mineral fiber workers: 1985 follow-up.

This 1983 to 1985 update of an earlier study examined the mortality experience of 16,661 man-made mineral fiber workers employed 1 year or more (6 months for two plants) during 1945 to 1963 (1940 to 1963 for one plant) at one or more of 17 US manufacturing plants. Using local death rates to estimate expected deaths there was a small statistically significant (P less than .05) excess in all malignant neoplasms (standardized mortality ratio [SMR] = 108.3) and in respiratory cancer (SMR = 112.1) for the total period 1946 to 1985. For respiratory cancer the excess was greatest for mineral wool workers. For glass wool workers and glass filament workers respiratory cancer SMR values were much lower. For workers exposed in the production of small-diameter fibers, the overall respiratory cancer SMR was slightly elevated but lower than in earlier reports. A total of four malignant mesotheliomas have now been noted on death certificates. Two of these were coded to the International Classification of Disease rubrics used to estimate 1.45 expected mesothelioma deaths for the total study. Overall, the evidence of a relationship between exposure to man-made mineral fibers and respiratory cancer appears to be somewhat weaker than in the previous update.
Organization and neurochemistry of vagal preganglionic neurons innervating the lower esophageal sphincter in ferrets

The motor control of the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) is critical for normal swallowing and emesis, as well as for the prevention of gastroesophageal reflux. However, there are surprisingly few data on the central organization and neurochemistry of LES‐projecting preganglionic neurons. There are no such data in ferrets, which are increasingly being used to study LES relaxation. Therefore, we determined the location of preganglionic neurons innervating the ferret LES, with special attention to their relationship with gastric fundus‐projecting neurons. The neurochemistry of LES‐projecting neurons was also investigated using two markers of “nontraditional” neurotransmitters in vagal preganglionic neurons, nitric oxide synthase (NOS), and dopamine (tyrosine hydroxylase: TH). Injection of cholera toxin B subunit (CTB)‐horseradish peroxidase (HRP) into the muscular wall of the LES‐labeled profiles throughout the rostrocaudal extent of the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus (DMN) The relative numbers of profiles in three regions of the DMN from caudal to rostral are, 43 ± 5, 67 ± 11, and 113 ± 30). A similar rostrocaudal distribution occurred after injection into the gastric fundus. When CTB conjugated with different fluorescent tags was injected into the LES and fundus both labels were noted in 56 ± 3% of LES‐labeled profiles overall. This finding suggests an extensive coinnervation of both regions by vagal motor neurons. There were significantly fewer LES‐labeled profiles that innervated the antrum (16 ± 9%). In the rostral DMN, 15 ± 4% of LES‐projecting neurons also contained NADPH‐diaphorase activity; however, TH immunoreactivity was never identified in LES‐projecting neurons. This finding suggests that NO, but not catecholamine (probably dopamine), is synthesized by a population of LES‐projecting neurons. We conclude that there are striking similarities between LES‐ and fundic‐projecting preganglionic neurons in terms of their organization in the DMN, presence of NOS activity and absence of TH immunoreactivity. Coinnervation of the LES and gastric fundus is logical, because the LES has similar functions to the fundus, which relaxes to accommodate food during ingestion and preceding emesis, but has quite different functions from the antrum, which provides mixing and propulsion of contents for gastric emptying. The presence of NOS in some LES‐projecting neurons may contribute to LES relaxation, as it does in the case of fundic relaxation. The neurologic linkage of vagal fundic and LES relaxation may have clinical relevance, because it helps explain why motor disorders of the LES and fundus frequently occur together. J. Comp. Neurol. 430:222–234, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
CHRONIC REJECTION OF MURINE CARDIAC ALLOGRAFTS DISCORDANT AT THE H13 MINOR HISTOCOMPATIBILITY ANTIGEN CORRELATES WITH THE GENERATION OF THE H13‐SPECIFIC CD8+ CYTOTOXIC T CELLS1

Background. Minor histocompatibility antigen (mHag) discordances have been shown to play a critical role in graft‐versus‐host disease after bone marrow transplantation. However, the role of mHag in rejection of solid‐organ allografts remains unknown. Therefore, the goal of this study was to define the role of a single mHag discordance derived from the polymorphic H13 allele in the development of cardiac allograft rejection in mice. The H13a and H13b alleles encode for the SSVVGVWYL (SVL9) and SSVIGVWYL (SIL9) mHag bound to the H2Db molecule, respectively. Methods. C56BL/10SnJ (H13a) cardiac allografts were transplanted into congenic B10.CE‐H13b Aw(30NX)/Sn (H13b) mice. Allograft function was monitored daily and rejection was defined by cessation of heart beat. Rejection was confirmed histologically. The phenotypic and functional characteristics of the graft‐infiltrating cells were analyzed by in situ and in vitro staining with H13a‐specific tetramers and by chromium‐51 (51Cr)‐release assay, respectively. Results. Sixty‐five percent of H13‐incompatible allografts were rejected in 37.0±14.5 days. Sixty‐eight percent of the H13a allografts transplanted into H13a‐sensitized mice were rejected earlier, in 27.6±15.9 days. Rejected allografts showed histopathologic signs of chronic rejection with diffuse mononuclear cell infiltration, concentric intimal hyperplasia, and fibrosis. Both CD8+ (87%) and CD4+ (13%) T cells were observed in rejected allografts. In addition, 60% of the graft‐infiltrating CD8+ T cells recognized a H2Db/SVL9 tetramer. Graft‐infiltrating CD8+ T cells showed a significant H2Db‐restricted, SVL9‐specific cytotoxic activity. Conclusions. A single mHag discordance, as demonstrated with H13 disparity, results in the pathogenesis of chronic rejection of major histocompatibility complex‐matched vascularized solid‐organ allograft.
Characterization of feline Helicobacter pylori strains and associated gastritis in a colony of domestic cats

Twenty-four young adult domestic cats from a commercial vendor were found to be infected with Helicobacter pylori. Histopathologic analyses, selected electron microscopy, and urease mapping were performed on mucosal samples collected from the cardias and fundi, bodies, and antra of these cats' stomachs. H. pylori organisms were abundant in all areas of the stomach on the basis of histologic evaluation and urease mapping. H. pylori infection was associated with a moderate to severe lymphofollicular gastritis in 21 of 24 cats (88%). The gastritis was most pronounced in the antral region and consisted mainly of multifocal lymphoplasmacytic follicular infiltrates in the deep mucosa. The severity of gastritis in the antrum corresponded to high numbers of H. pylori there on the basis of the use of the urease assay as an indicator of H. pylori colonization. Ten of 24 cats (42%) also had small to moderate numbers of eosinophils in the gastric mucosa. All 24 cats had gastric lymphoid follicles, with follicles being most prevalent in the antrum. Electron microscopy of gastric tissue revealed numerous H. pylori organisms, some of which were closely adhered to the mucosal epithelium. Human H. pylori gene-specific primers to ureA and ureB amplified products of similar sizes from H. pylori cat isolates. Digestion of the products with restriction enzymes resulted in fragments characteristic of the restriction fragment length polymorphism patterns of H. pylori isolates from humans. In the domestic cat, H. pylori infection is associated with a lymphofollicular gastritis, consisting of lymphocytic and plasmacytic infiltration into the lamina propria, and the organism appears to provide chronic antigenic stimulation resulting in the formation of gastric lymphoid follicles.
Large population solution of the stochastic Luria–Delbrück evolution model

Luria and Delbrück introduced a very useful and subsequently widely adopted framework for quantitatively understanding the emergence of new cellular lineages. Here, we provide an analytical treatment of the fully stochastic version of the model, enabled by the fact that population sizes at the time of measurement are invariably very large and mutation rates are low. We show that the Lea–Coulson generating function describes the “inner solution,” where the number of mutants is much smaller than the total population. We find that the corresponding distribution function interpolates between a monotonic decrease at relatively small populations, (compared with the inverse of the mutation probability), whereas it goes over to a Lévy α-stable distribution in the very large population limit. The moments are completely determined by the outer solution, and so are devoid of practical significance. The key to our solution is focusing on the fixed population size ensemble, which we show is very different from the fixed time ensemble due to the extreme variability in the evolutionary process.
WT1 is Differentially Expressed in Serous, Endometrioid, Clear Cell, and Mucinous Carcinomas of the Peritoneum, Fallopian Tube, Ovary, and Endometrium

Summary:The Wilms’ tumor gene WT1 plays complex roles in the development of the organs of the genitourinary tract and mesothelium, as well as Wilms’ tumors. Although its biologic role is still unclear, most serous carcinomas of the ovary and peritoneum, mesotheliomas, and Wilms’ tumor have been shown to express WT1. A recent study, however, found no WT1 expression in serous carcinomas of the endometrium, suggesting that WT1 could be useful in identifying the primary site of serous carcinomas. We examined the expression of WT1 and p53 by immunohistochemistry in 69 cases of endometrial carcinoma (35 endometrioid, 18 clear cell, 16 serous), 68 cases of ovarian carcinoma (28 serous, 11 endometrioid, 18 clear cell, and 11 mucinous), 14 fallopian tube carcinomas (12 serous, 2 endometrioid), and 20 primary peritoneal serous carcinomas. WT1 nuclear reactivity of any extent and intensity was considered positive. Immunohistochemical stains were evaluated semiquantitatively using a four-tiered scale. Among endometrial carcinomas, WT1 immunoreactivity was seen in 10 of 16 serous, but in none of 35 endometrioid or 18 clear cell carcinomas. Among ovarian tumors, WT1 expression was seen in 24 of 28 serous and 4 of 18 clear cell carcinomas, but in none of 11 endometrioid and 11 mucinous tumors. All 12 serous carcinomas but none of 2 endometrioid carcinomas of the fallopian tube were positive for WT1. WT1 expression was seen in 19 of 20 serous primary peritoneal carcinomas. The difference in WT1 expression was highly significant between serous and other types of tumors in all sites (p<0.0001, chi-square test), although the level of WT1 expression was significantly different among serous carcinomas arising at different sites (p<0.0001, Kruskal-Wallis test). A significant positive correlation was found between the level of p53 and WT1 expression in all carcinomas combined (r = 0.3935, p<0.0001, Spearman test), but when only serous carcinomas were analyzed, the correlation between p53 and WT1 expression levels did not reach statistical significance. Our results suggest that WT1 expression in epithelial tumors of the female genital tract may be related to cell differentiation and histologic subtypes of carcinomas, rather than to primary site of origin.
Activation induces rapid and profound alterations in the trafficking of T cells

Activation and differentiation of lymphocytes have profound effects on their trafficking. Whereas naive T cells recirculate through lymphoid organs, activated cells localize predominantly in other compartments. Here, we report that changes in migratory properties of T cells occur immediately upon activation via the TCR. One hour stimulation is enough to target T cells into lung and liver following i.v. injection. The high localization within lung and liver and the lack of recirculation through lymphoid tissues are key features of activated lymphocytes. Regardless of the source, in vitro as well as in vivo activated lymphocytes show this behavior, which is not caused by increased cell size. Accumulation in the lung requires protein synthesis and is partly mediated by LFA‐1, in contrast to the acquisition of liver "homing" properties. Intravital microscopy reveals firm adhesion of activated cells within periportal sinusoids of the liver. Selective homing to other organs, such as skin or mucosa, was not observed, regardless of the cell's origin. These data indicate that activation quickly switches the trafficking program of lymphocytes from recirculation to sequestration; it is tempting to speculate that especially the induced trapping in the liver has a distinct role in limiting systemic T cell responses.