Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Latest animal models for anti-HIV drug discovery

Introduction: HIV research is limited by the fact that lentiviruses are highly species specific. The need for appropriate models to promote research has led to the development of many elaborate surrogate animal models. Areas covered: This review looks at the history of animal models for HIV research. Although natural animal lentivirus infections and chimeric viruses such as chimera between HIV and simian immunodeficiency virus and simian-tropic HIV are briefly discussed, the main focus is on small animal models, including the complex design of the ‘humanized’ mouse. The review also traces the historic evolution and milestones as well as depicting current models and future prospects for HIV research. Expert opinion: HIV research is a complex and challenging task that is highly manpower-, money- and time-consuming. Besides factors such as hypervariability and latency, the lack of appropriate animal models that exhibit and recapitulate the entire infectious process of HIV, is one of the reasons behind the failure to eliminate the lentivirus from the human population. This obstacle has led to the exploitation and further development of many sophisticated surrogate animal models for HIV research. While there is no animal model that perfectly mirrors and mimics HIV infections in humans, there are a variety of host species and viruses that complement each other. Combining the insights from each model, and critically comparing the results obtained with data from human clinical trials should help expand our understanding of HIV pathogenesis and drive future drug development.
Growth and fresh meat quality characteristics of pigs supplemented with vitamin E.

Crossbred pigs (n = 30) were fed to determine the influence of supplementation with vitamin E on growth and slaughter characteristics of swine and on the quality characteristics of fresh pork. Pigs received either a control diet containing no vitamin E (CON) or a diet formulated to contain 100 mg of vitamin E/kg feed (VITE). During 84 d of feeding, feed intake and weight gain were measured every 2 wk. After the feeding period, pigs were slaughtered and the loin from the left side of each carcass was removed 4 d after death. Alpha-Tocopherol concentration and proximate composition of the longissimus muscle were determined. Loins were sliced into 10-cm sections and stored under vacuum (2 degrees C) for 0, 14, 28, and 56 d. After storage, loins were sliced into 2.54-cm chops, wrapped in polyvinyl chloride film and stored in a retail case (2 to 4 degrees C) for 5 d. Thiobarbituric acid (TBA) values, Hunter L, a, and b values, total plate counts, pH, purge loss, drip loss, cook loss, taste panel characteristics, and visual panel characteristics were evaluated. Growth traits, slaughter characteristics, and proximate composition did not differ (P > .05) between dietary treatment groups. Alpha-Tocopherol concentrations were greater (P < .05) and TBA values during extended retail display were less (P < .05) for VITE chops than for CON chops. Overall palatability ratings were more desirable (P < .05, at 14 d of vacuum storage) for VITE chops than for CON chops. Color measurements, sensory characteristics, total plate counts, pH, purge loss, drip loss, and cook loss were not influenced (P > .05) by vitamin E supplementation. These results indicated that at the tissue alpha-tocopherol concentrations of the present study, vitamin E supplementation of the growing-finishing diet of hogs reduced lipid oxidation in fresh pork but did not influence pork color or tissue drip loss.
Orienting towards social features in naturalistic scenes is reflexive

Saliency-based models of visual attention postulate that, when a scene is freely viewed, attention is predominantly allocated to those elements that stand out in terms of their physical properties. However, eye-tracking studies have shown that saliency models fail to predict gaze behavior accurately when social information is included in an image. Notably, gaze pattern analyses revealed that depictions of human beings are heavily prioritized independent of their low-level physical saliency. What remains unknown, however, is whether the prioritization of such social features is a reflexive or a voluntary process. To investigate the early stages of social attention in more detail, participants viewed photographs of naturalistic scenes with and without social features (i.e., human heads or bodies) for 200 ms while their eye movements were being recorded. We observed significantly more first eye movements to regions containing social features than would be expected from a chance level distribution of saccades. Additionally, a generalized linear mixed model analysis revealed that the social content of a region better predicted first saccade direction than its saliency suggesting that social features partially override the impact of low-level physical saliency on gaze patterns. Given the brief image presentation time that precluded visual exploration, our results provide compelling evidence for a reflexive component in social attention. Moreover, the present study emphasizes the importance of considering social influences for a more coherent understanding of human attentional selection.
Word-finding strategies in closed head injured adults.

Word-finding difficulties are a common and prominent language deficit following closed head injury. The word-finding difficulties of three closed head injured patients were investigated within the framework of compensatory strategies using Teicher's Taxonomy of Word-Finding Strategies (Teicher, 1986). The word-finding difficulties were evaluated during procedural discourse and two confrontation naming conditions. Each subject's communicative competence and language ability was determined. Results indicated that all subjects employed a wide range of strategies, particularly during confrontation naming, but with differential effectiveness. A relationship was noted between the strategy's effectiveness and the subject's pragmatic ability. The results are discussed in the light of the existing literature on head injury. The theoretical and clinical implications are considered.
Análisis de Valoraciones de Usuario de Hoteles con Sentitext: un sistema de análisis de sentimiento independiente del dominio

En este trabajo describimos la primera prueba sistematica realizada para evaluar el rendimiento de Sentitext, un sistema de analisis de sentimiento aun en fase de desarrollo. A diferencia de la mayoria de los sistemas existentes, el funcionamiento de Sentitext esta basado enteramente en conocimiento linguistico independiente del dominio, empleando para ello bases de datos lexicas de amplia cobertura desarrolladas al efecto, careciendo de algoritmos de aprendizaje y de clasificador en el sentido estricto. Los resultados arrojados por esta primera prueba, para la que hemos empleado textos de criticas de usuarios a hoteles provenientes de la version en espanol de Tripadvisor, son extremadamente alentadores, dada la alta tasa de acierto en cuanto a polaridad.
Reduction of α 1 GABAA receptor mediated by tyrosine kinase C ( PKC ) phosphorylation in a mouse model of fragile X syndrome

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) caused by lack of fragile X mental retardation protein (Fmr1) is the most common cause of inherited intellectual disability and characterized by many cognitive disturbances like attention deficit, autistic behavior, and audiogenic seizure and have region-specific altered expression of some gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABAA) receptor subunits. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blot experiments were performed in the cultured cortical neurons and forebrain obtained from wild-type (WT) and Fmr1 KO mice demonstrate the reduction in the expression of α1 gamma-aminobutyric acid (α1GABAA) receptor, phospho-α1GABAA receptor, PKC and phosphor-PKC in Fmr1 KO mice comparing with WT mice, both in vivo and in vitro. Furthermore, we found that the phosphorylation of the α1GABAA receptor was mediated by PKC. Our results elucidate that the lower phosphorylation of the α1GABAA receptor mediated by PKC neutralizes the seizure-promoting effects in Fmr1 KO mice and point to the potential therapeutic targets of α1GABAA agonists for the treatment of fragile X syndrome.
“Hands On” Visual Recognition for Visually Impaired Users

Blind or visually impaired (BVI) individuals are capable of identifying an object in their hands by combining the available visual cues (if available) with manipulation. It is harder for them to associate the object with a specific brand, a model, or a type. Starting from this observation, we propose a collaborative system designed to deliver visual feedback automatically and to help the user filling this semantic gap. Our visual recognition module is implemented by means of an image retrieval procedure that provides real-time feedback, performs the computation locally on the device, and is scalable to new categories and instances. We carry out a thorough experimental analysis of the visual recognition module, which includes a comparative analysis with the state of the art. We also present two different system implementations that we test with the help of BVI users to evaluate the technical soundness, the usability, and the effectiveness of the proposed concept.
Do environmental agents affect semen quality?

In the early 1990s, Skakkebaek and colleagues 1 noted the decline in semen quality in Danish men and reviewed the literature for evidence of a global trend. Although there had been earlier reports of declining semen quality2–4 it was not until Skakkabaek’s paper that this issue received wide public attention. This paper concluded that “there has been a genuine decline in semen quality over the past 50 years. ” Sharpe and Skakkebaek5 linked this decline to trends in testicular cancer and other male reproductive parameters, suggesting that all shared a common etiology, hypothesized to be prenatal exposure to environmental agents, particularly xenoestrogens. After this publication, researchers reviewed historical records from sperm banks and infertility clinics and published numerous reports on trends in semen quality. The results of this intensive effort were conflicting and inconclusive, suggesting the need for a new approach to this problem. If xenobiotics had produced global trends, as suggested by Sharpe and Skakkebaek,5 these exposures (unless uniformly distributed), should also produce geographic variation. Moreover, geographic differences, unlike historical trends, can be examined using well-controlled, cross-sectional studies—and, in fact, two recent studies provide convincing evidence of such variation in semen quality.6,7 However, neither study addresses the causes of these geographic differences in semen quality. Researchers are now searching for environmental agents that may have contributed to the reported geographic (and temporal) variability in male reproductive function; agents that are reproductive toxins in the laboratory and prevalent in the environment are natural candidates. The papers by Storgaard et al.8 and Duty et al.9 in this issue of EPIDEMIOLOGY are among the first to examine such exposures in humans. Storgaard and colleagues8 study maternal smoking in relation to semen quality, sex hormones and sperm deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) integrity in the offspring. Duty et al.9 ask whether adult exposure to phthalates can alter semen quality. Because the exposures examined by these authors are prevalent, the reported associations could, if causal, explain a substantial fraction of the reported decline in semen quality.
Fast Discovery of Discriminative Mid-level Patches

Learning discriminative mid-level patches has gained popularity in recent years since they can be applied to various computer vision topics and achieve better performance. However, state-of-the-art learning methods require a lot of training time, especially when the problem scale becomes much larger. In this paper we propose a simple but fast and effective way, the Fast Exemplar Clustering(FEC), to mine discriminative mid-level patches with only class labels provided. We verified our results on the task of scene classification and it took us only one day to train the model on the MIT Indoor 67 dataset using an Core i5 quad-core computer with Matlab. The results of our experiments revealed that the mid-level patches discovered by our method were semantically meaningful and achieved competitive accuracy compared to the state-of-the-art techniques. In addition, we created a new scene classification dataset named Outdoor Sight 20 which contains outdoor views of 20 famous tourist attractions to test our model.
Feelings and the need for information and counselling of expectant parents of twins

Abstract In this study, expectant parents of twins were questioned about their feelings and need for information and counselling on the parenting of twins. Data were obtained from self-rating questionnaires and an interview with the expectant mother. From the results it is argued that expectant parents of twins need specific information and counselling about the medical, emotional and parenting issues of having twins. Guidelines for organising this counselling are proposed.
Functional basis of poliovirus neutralization determined with monospecific neutralizing antibodies

Antibody-mediated poliovirus neutralization was studied by using a series of 13 monospecific neutralizing antibodies. These antibodies were found to recognize seven individual viral epitopes, several of which functionally overlap one another. Each epitope was capable of undergoing variation so that the variant virus was no longer capable of being neutralized by antibody directed against that epitope. The measured degree of variation for each site varied from -3.1 to -4.2 log10 variant PFU per wild-type PFU. Under nonsaturating but neutralizing conditions, the antibodies, with the exception of those directed to one specific epitope, failed to completely inhibit the virion's binding to the cell. Similarly, none of the neutralizing antibodies completely inhibited viral penetration, but all prevented virus-specific transcription. A strong correlation was established between the binding of each of the neutralizing antibodies, with one exception, to the virion and a significant shift in the virion's pI from 7.0 to ca. 4.0.
Role of the Bradyrhizobium japonicum ntrC gene product in differential regulation of the glutamine synthetase II gene (glnII)

We isolated the ntrC gene from Bradyrhizobium japonicum, the endosymbiont of soybean (Glycine max), and examined its role in regulating nitrogen assimilation. Two independent ntrC mutants were constructed by gene replacement techniques. One mutant was unable to produce NtrC protein, while the other constitutively produced a stable, truncated NtrC protein. Both ntrC mutants were unable to utilize potassium nitrate as a sole nitrogen source. In contrast to wild-type B. japonicum, the NtrC null mutant lacked glnII transcripts in aerobic, nitrogen-starved cultures. However, the truncated-NtrC mutant expressed glnII in both nitrogen-starved and nitrogen-excess cultures. Both mutants expressed glnII under oxygen-limited culture conditions and in symbiotic cells. These results suggest that nitrogen assimilation in B. japonicum is regulated in response to both nitrogen limitation and oxygen limitation and that separate regulatory networks exist in free-living and symbiotic cells.
3‐hydroxy 3‐methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase increase is essential for rat muscle differentiation

3‐Hydroxy 3‐methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMG‐CoAR) is the key and rate‐limiting enzyme of cholesterol biosynthetic pathway. Although HMG‐CoAR activity has already been related to the differentiation of some cellular lines there are no studies that analyze the role of HMG‐CoAR, and the pathway it is involved with in a fully characterized muscle differentiation model. Thus, the aim of this work is to evaluate such role and delineate the pathway involved in foetal rat myoblasts (L6) induced to differentiate by insulin—a standard and feasible model of the myogenic process. The results obtained by biochemical and morphological approaches demonstrate that (i) HMG‐CoAR increase is crucial for differentiation induction, (ii) p21waf, whose increase is a necessary requisite for differentiation to occur, rises downstream HMG‐CoAR activation, (iii) the main role of p38/MAPK as key regulator also for HMG‐CoAR. Pathologies characterized by muscle degeneration might benefit from therapeutic programmes committed to muscle function restoration, such as modulation and planning myoblast differentiation. Thus, the important role of HMG‐CoAR in muscular differentiation providing new molecular basis for the control of muscle development can help in the design of therapeutic treatment for diseases characterized by the weakening of muscular fibers and aging‐related disorders (sarcopenia). J. Cell. Physiol. 220: 524–530, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Prevalence of Sarcocystis species in slaughtered goats in Shiraz, Iran

are widely distributedparasites of mammals and birds (Neva and Brown 1994). Goat breeding has an important role in many areas of theworld, not only for meat and milk production but also tomake use of the natural pasture on mountains which isunsuitable for other species. There are three reported speciesof
Minireview: Polychlorinated Biphenyls and the Thyroid Gland.

During last 60-70 years a considerable global environmental pollution developed due to the massive use of several polychlorinated organic compounds, some of which being used as pesticides (DDT, hexachlorobenzene, hexachlorocyclohexane etc.), insecticides (DDT), defoliants (e.g. Agent Orange in Vietnam war), multipurpose industrial chemicals (polychlorinated biphenyls) and some of them originating as byproducts of large scale chemical industrial production (e.g. polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans). Perhaps the most widespread global pollutants are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). It should be underlined that the global atmosphere is polluted by those compounds up to the altitude of about 6000 meters. Remarkable amounts of PCBs have been found in all world oceans, in the Arctic and Antarctic and in the middle of all deserts. There are even several areas which are so heavily polluted that they are now called PCB reservoirs, among them the Baltic See, Hudson Bay and Great Lakes in North America.
Plankton in the open Mediterranean Sea: a review

Abstract. We present an overview of the plankton studies conducted during the last 25 years in the epipelagic offshore waters of the Mediterranean Sea. This quasi-enclosed sea is characterized by a rich and complex physical dynamics with distinctive traits, especially in regard to the thermohaline circulation. Recent investigations have basically confirmed the long-recognised oligotrophic nature of this sea, which increases along both the west-east and the north-south directions. Nutrient availability is low, especially for phosphorous (N:P up to 60), though this limitation may be buffered by inputs from highly populated coasts and from the atmosphere. Phytoplankton biomass, as chl a, generally displays low values (less than 0.2 μg chl a l−1) over large areas, with a modest late winter increase. A large bloom (up to 3 μg l−1) is observed throughout the late winter and spring exclusively in the NW area. Relatively high biomass values are recorded in fronts and cyclonic gyres. A deep chlorophyll maximum is a permanent feature for the whole basin, except during the late winter mixing. It is found at increasingly greater depths ranging from 30 m in the Alboran Sea to 120 m in the easternmost Levantine basin. Primary production reveals a west-east decreasing trend and ranges between 59 and 150 g C m−2 y−1 (in situ measurements). Overall, the basin is largely dominated by small autotrophs, microheterotrophs and egg-carrying copepod species. The microorganisms (phytoplankton, viruses, bacteria, flagellates and ciliates) and zooplankton components reveal a considerable diversity and variability over spatial and temporal scales, although the latter is poorly studied. Examples are the wide diversity of dinoflagellates and coccolithophores, the multifarious role of diatoms or picoeukaryotes, and the distinct seasonal or spatial patterns of the species-rich copepod genera or families which dominate the basin. Major dissimilarities between western and eastern basins have been highlighted in species composition of phytoplankton and mesozooplankton, but also in the heterotrophic microbial components and in their relationships. Superimposed to these longitudinal differences, a pronounced biological heterogeneity is also observed in areas hosting deep convection, fronts, cyclonic and anti-cyclonic gyres or eddies. In such areas, the intermittent nutrient enrichment promotes a switching between a small-sized microbial community and diatom-dominated populations. A classical food web readily substitutes the microbial food web in these cases. These switches, likely occurring within a continuum of trophic pathways, may greatly increase the flux towards higher trophic levels, in spite of the apparent heterotrophy. Basically, the microbial system seems to be both bottom-up and top-down controlled. A "multivorous web" is shown by the great variety of feeding modes and preferences and by the significant and simultaneous grazing impact on phytoplankton and ciliates by mesozooplankton.
Machine learning for Asian language text classification

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to compare several machine learning techniques on the task of Asian language text classification, such as Chinese and Japanese where no word boundary information is available in written text. The paper advocates a simple language modeling based approach for this task.Design/methodology/approach – Naive Bayes, maximum entropy model, support vector machines, and language modeling approaches were implemented and were applied to Chinese and Japanese text classification. To investigate the influence of word segmentation, different word segmentation approaches were investigated and applied to Chinese text. A segmentation‐based approach was compared with the non‐segmentation‐based approach.Findings – There were two findings: the experiments show that statistical language modeling can significantly outperform standard techniques, given the same set of features; and it was found that classification with word level features normally yields improved classification performanc.
Thermic effect of a meal

The thermic effect of a standard liquid meal (TEM; energy 2.5 MJ; containing (g/kg) protein 100, fat 150, carbohydrate 750; volume 350 ml) was measured in a chronically undernourished (UN; n 9) group of human subjects and was compared with results from two control groups, one normal weight (NW)-for-height (BMI > 20; n 10) and the other underweight (UW)-for-height (BMI < 18, n 10), using a ventilated-hood system over a period of 6 h after ingestion of the meal. Results indicated that the UN subjects had lower values for body-weight, height, percentage fat and fat-free mass (FFM) compared with those of either control group. Basal metabolic rates were lowest in the UN group in absolute terms; however, there were no significant differences among groups on an analysis of covariance (ANACOVA) with FFM as the covariate. TEM responses in the UN group were significantly higher when expressed either in absolute terms or as a percentage of the energy density of the meal. The post-meal total energy output was significantly lower (P < 0.05) in the UW and UN groups as compared with the NW group in absolute terms; however, on adjusting for differences in FFM (by ANACOVA) there were no significant differences among groups. This would suggest that in the chronically undernourished thermogenic responses to a meal are unlikely to contribute towards any energy saving and may not constitute a part of any adaptive response to the undernourished state. Chronic undernutrition: Thermic effect: Substrate oxidation rates: Body composition