Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Polymorphisms in the Serotonin Transporter Gene on Oscillatory Dynamics during Inhibition of Planned Movement in Children

The serotonin transporter plays an important role in serotonergic neuromodulation. It is known that polymorphisms in the serotonin transporter gene are linked to the dysregulation of emotions. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the impact of variation in the gene encoding serotonin transporter polymorphism on oscillatory dynamics during inhibition of planned movement in the stop signal paradigm. During performance the stop signal paradigm, electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded in 90 healthy Caucasian children (39 girls) from 7 to 12 years. Buccal epithelium probes were taken from all participants. The La, Lg, and S alleles of serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) polymorphism were detected in the DNA samples using PCR. LaLa genotype carriers did not differ from LaS\LgS and LgS\LgLg\SS carriers in a number of successful inhibitions of a prepotent response. Carriers of LaLa exhibit higher alpha and beta event-related spectral perturbations (ERSP) in parietal and occipital cortices after the presentation of signal of inhibition of movement than LaS\LgS and LgS\LgLg\SS carriers. Results are consistent with current literature and confirm that S allele carriers are more predisposed to disturbances in cognitive control.
Mechanical Response and Parametric Sensitivity Analyses of a Drainage Pipe under Multiphysical Coupling Conditions

Current research was not dedicated to investigate the mechanical behavior of a concrete drainage pipe under multiphysical coupling conditions of overburden pressure, traffic loads, groundwater, and pipe fluids. This study proposes a new numerical solution method for coupled stress, seepage, and flow fields based on a validated finite element model. The model was developed by ABAQUS and FLUENT and then solved simultaneously using the MpCCI (mesh-based parallel-code coupling interface) platform. Results show that the tensile stress at the springline and the radial displacement at the crown (or invert) of the bell under the effect of groundwater alone were reduced by 50.5% and 38.1%, respectively, compared to the effect of traffic load alone. Parametric analyses show that vehicle speed and fluid height have a slight impact on the pipes. The soil cover depth, wheel pressure, and gasket strength are directly proportional to the pipe stress and vertical displacement. Within the scope of their respective changes, the pipe stresses were increased by 34.4%, 36.7%, and 28.5%, and the vertical displacements were increased by 124%, 95.85%, and 87.7%. The bedding and backfill strengths are proportional to the pipe stress and inversely proportional to the vertical displacement. Within the scope of their respective changes, the pipe stresses were increased by 18.2% and 20.0%, and the vertical displacements were decreased by 11.4% and 10.4%. Sensitivity analyses show that soil cover depth has a greatest impact on the pipe, followed by traffic load.
Moduli stabilization and supersymmetry breaking in heterotic orbifold string models

In this paper, we discuss the issues of supersymmetry breaking and moduli stabilization within the context of E 8 ⊗ E 8 heterotic orbifold constructions and, in particular, we focus on the class of "mini-landscape" models. In the supersymmetric limit, these models admit an effective low-energy field theory with a spectrum of states and dimensionless gauge and Yukawa couplings very much like that of the minimal supersymmetric standard model. These theories contain a non-Abelian hidden gauge sector which generates a nonperturbative superpotential leading to supersymmetry breaking and moduli stabilization. We demonstrate this effect in a simple model which contains many of the features of the more general construction. In addition, we argue that once supersymmetry is broken in a restricted sector of the theory, then all moduli are stabilized by supergravity effects. Finally, we obtain the low-energy superparticle spectrum resulting from this simple model.
The Effect of Data-driven Learning on EFL Students’ Acquisition of Lexico-grammatical Patterns in EFL Writing

The present study investigated whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A corpus composed of 40 graded readers was compiled to make the learners do concordance learning activities, and 30 Turkish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at Gazi University School of Foreign Languages were assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At the prewriting stage, both the control group and the experimental group were given a list of ten abstract nouns and wrote stories without using dictionaries. Then, the errors they made while writing were underlined. While the experimental group was taught how to use a concordancing tool and studied on concordance lines from the corpus of graded readers to correct their errors, the control group just had dictionaries to consult and worked on their errors. Afterwards, both groups wrote their second stories using the same words given in the pre-test. The texts written in the pre-test and post-test were analysed and compared between groups. The results indicated that the experimental group, as compared with the control group, used a greater variety of collocational and colligational patterns and had fewer linguistic errors while using the abstract nouns. Finally, a questionnaire was administered to the experimental group and the results obtained from it showed that students were very positive about the use of DDL and concordance activities. Also, they were willing to use DDL activities in the future.
Leveraging regional growth dynamics in African agriculture

This study focuses on public investments and policy reforms for leveraging growth spillovers at the Africa regional level. It reviews first the theory and evidence of knowledge and growth spillovers generally and second the evidence in the African context. Given the limited and scattered evidence of actual past spillovers, it reviews recent ex ante simulations using partial and general equilibrium models to stress the potential for spillovers from greater cooperation in agricultural research, and from trade liberalization, policy harmonization and investments in infrastructure. The results show that permitting greater crossborder transfers and adopting improved technologies could have large spillover multiplier effects on overall economic welfare in the region. And simply reducing African countries’ trade barriers and improving cross-border transport could increase agricultural incomes by as much as 10%. These two examples confirm that regional cooperation in agricultural research and harmonization and liberalization of regional trade systems are two important areas that have yet to be optimally harnessed to generate larger spillovers and enhance regional economic take-off.
Place of death of people with intellectual disabilities: An exploratory study of death and dying within community disability service settings

This article describes an exploratory study of deaths of people with intellectual disabilities (IDs) that had occurred in group homes managed by an ID service provider in Australasia. Such settings are increasingly recognised as places for both living and dying. Little is known about the extent to which they encounter the death of a person with ID and with what outcomes. Data were obtained from service records and telephone interviews on 66 deaths occurring within a 2-year period. The findings suggest that death is an important but relatively rare event within ID services. This rate of death was influenced by the age structure of the population. Most of the deaths occurred within a hospital setting. Cause of death did not have much impact upon place of death. However, setting characteristics seemed to have some influence. As an exploratory study, lessons for future population-based research in this area are addressed.
Spectral Encoding of Seen and Attended Object Categories in the Human Brain

Local field potentials (LFPs) encode visual information via variations in power at many frequencies. These variations are complex and depend on stimulus and cognitive state in ways that have yet to be fully characterized. Specifically, the frequencies (or combinations of frequencies) that most robustly encode specific types of visual information are not fully known. To address this knowledge gap, we used intracranial EEG to record LFPs at 858 widely distributed recording sites as human subjects (six males, five females) indicated whether briefly presented natural scenes depicted one of three attended object categories. Principal component analysis applied to power spectra of the LFPs near stimulus onset revealed a broadband component (1–100 Hz) and two narrowband components (1–8 and 8–30 Hz, respectively) that encoded information about both seen and attended categories. Interestingly, we found that seen and attended categories were not encoded with the same fidelity by these distinct spectral components. Model-based tuning and decoding analyses revealed that power variations along the broadband component were most sharply tuned and offered more accurate decoding for seen than for attended categories. Power along the narrowband delta–theta (1–8 Hz) component robustly decoded information about both seen and attended categories, while the alpha–beta (8–30 Hz) component was specialized for attention. We conclude that, when viewing natural scenes, information about the seen category is encoded via broadband and sub-gamma (<30 Hz) power variations, while the attended category is most robustly encoded in the sub-gamma range. More generally, these results suggest that power variation along different spectral components can encode qualitatively different kinds of visual information. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In this article, we characterize how changes in visual stimuli depicting specific objects (cars, faces, and buildings) and changes in attention to those objects affect the frequency content of local field potentials in the human brain. In contrast to many previous studies that have investigated encoding by variations in power at high (>30 Hz) frequencies, we find that the most important variation patterns are broadband (i.e., distributed across multiple frequencies) and narrowband, but in lower frequencies (<30 Hz). Interestingly, we find that seen and attended categories are not encoded with the same fidelity by these distinct spectral encoding patterns, suggesting that power at different frequencies can encode qualitatively different kinds of information.
Strategy Choice in the Infinitely Repeated Prisoners’ Dilemma

We use a novel experimental design to reliably elicit subjects’ strategies in an infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma experiment with perfect monitoring. We find that three simple strategies repre‑ sent the majority of the chosen strategies: Always Defect, Tit‑for‑Tat, and Grim. In addition, we identify how the strategies systematically vary with the parameters of the game. Finally, we use the elicited strategies to test the ability to recover strategies using statistical methods based on observed round‑by‑round cooperation choices and find that this can be done fairly well, but only under certain conditions. (JEL C72, C73, C92)
PRODUCTION OF POLYHYDROXYBUTERATE (PHB) FROM INDUSTERIAL WASTE

Biodegradable polymers are of reasonable medical and agricultural applications nowadays. Samples from various natural environments in South Riyadh area, Saudi Arabia, were screened for microorganisms that are capable of producing poly (3-hydroxybutyrateco-4hydroxybutyrate). A total of 50 isolates were collected and two out of those were identified as possible PHA producers based on Nile red staining methods. The isolate NG-2 obtained in this study was cultivated in MSM containing date palm syrup as inexpensive carbon source for economic production. Moreover, PHA was extracted from the NG-2 isolate and analyzed by IR followed by electron microscope to confirm the capability of producing PHB. Efforts have been paid to determine the optimal condition of the culture growth and its biodegradation activity. It was found that despite of the type of the polymercontaining media used, the optimum incubation temperature for the tested microorganism was 37°C, while pH value of 7.2 resulted in the best growth pattern in date palm syrup at concentration of 8 % containing media. Our major goal is to develop biodegradable drug carriers as effective drug delivery systems that release particular nutrient or drug at a particular site. This biotechnology of biological delivery has a unique physiochemical and mechanical properties help in field of pharmaceutical and nutraceutical targeting. This sort of nanotechnology will appear in subsequent works.
Collocating Clothes With Generative Adversarial Networks Cosupervised by Categories and Attributes: A Multidiscriminator Framework

The choice of which clothes to wear affects how one is perceived, as well as constitutes an expression of one’s personal style. Based on the recent advances in image-to-image translation by the conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN), we propose a new framework with a multidiscriminator by incorporating different types of conditional information into the discriminator of cGAN for clothing matches. In contrast with most extant frameworks under cGAN, with one generator and one discriminator, the proposed framework investigates the potential of utilizing conditional information delivered by multidiscriminators to guide the generator. Under this framework, we propose an Attribute-GAN with two discriminators and a category-attribute GAN (CA-GAN) with three discriminators. In order to evaluate the performance of our proposed models, we built a large-scale data set that consists of 19 081 pairs of collocation clothing images with 90 manually labeled attributes. Experimental results demonstrate that with supervision of the additional attribute discriminator or category discriminator, the quality of the generated clothing images by GANs is consistently improved in comparison with the state-of-the-art methods.
Caucasian Gentiana Species: Untargeted LC-MS Metabolic Profiling, Antioxidant and Digestive Enzyme Inhibiting Activity of Six Plants

The members of Gentiana genus are widely distributed in the Caucasus region where they are used as phytoremedies, but they still have not been studied for their chemical composition and bioactivity. High-performance liquid chromatography with diode array and electrospray triple quadrupole mass detection (HPLC-DAD-ESI-QQQ-MS) was used to investigate metabolites of herb and roots of six gentians (Gentiana asclepiadea, G. cruciata, G. gelida, G. paradoxa, G. pneumonanthe, G. septemfida) grown in the Caucasus. In total, 137 compounds were found including three carbohydrates, 71 iridoid glycosides (mostly loganic acid), loganin, swertiamarin, gentiopicroside and sweroside derivatives, 40 flavones C-, O-, C,O-glycosides (such as luteolin, apigenin, chrysoeriol, and acacetin derivatives), two phenolic O-glycosides, five hydroxycinnamates, eight xanthones, and seven triterpene glycosides. Most of these compounds were identified in gentian samples for the first time. Quantitative differences were found in levels of seven iridoid glycosides, nine glycosylflavones, and two xanthones obtained by HPLC-DAD assay. The gentian extracts were evaluated for their radical-scavenging properties against DPPH and superoxide anion radicals, lipid peroxidation inhibition, and α-amylase/α-glycosidase inhibition. The herb extracts showed higher activity than root extracts. Positive correlations were found between the content of quantified phenolics and antioxidant and digestive enzymes inhibiting activity. The findings presented in our work suggest that the Caucasian gentians are a good source of bioactive phytocompounds with antioxidant and antidiabetic potential.
Accuracy of the Duration of Tissue Fixation and the Receptor Status Profile of Primary Breast Cancers in a Tertiary Hospital of Rwanda

: Breast Cancer (BC) is the leading cause of cancer morbidity and mortality in women worldwide, and in Rwanda. BC receptor profile guides specific treatment; its ideal characterization requires optimal tissue fixation. While no study is yet done on BC biological profile in Rwanda, BC specimens are usually over-fixed. Objective: To determine BC receptor profiles in Rwanda and the duration of tissue fixation. All cases of invasive BC histologically diagnosed in a two-year period in a tertiary hospital in Rwanda. Optimal fixation duration was defined 24-48 hours. Blinded review was done on haematoxylin and eosin (HE 1 male) were included. Duration of tissue fixation was optimal in 24.4% with mean duration 145.0 (24-720) hours. The main histological types were ductal (74.5%) and lobular (12.8%) among others. Most cases were of high grade (grade III in 40.4%). Molecular types were luminal A (47.8%), luminal B (15.2%), HER2+ (8.7%) and triple negative (28.3%). There was a significant association between age and BC molecular type, but not between adequacy of fixation duration and molecular type or between molecular type and histological type or grade. BC cases in Rwanda show aggressive biological behaviours. Improving the chain of transport and diagnostic infrastructure and staffing are paramount to optimize therapeutic options.
PHARMACOGNOSTICAL, PHYTOCHEMICAL AND IN VIVO GASTRO-PROTECTIVE INVESTIGATION OF GMELINA ARBOREA

Objective: Gmelina arborea Roxb, (Family: Verbenaceae) known as “Gambhari”, is a fast growing tree found throughout India. Traditionally, the various parts of tree have been used as diuretic, aphrodisiac and also finds use in the treatment of anaemia, alopecia, leprosy and ulcers. Therefore the present study was planned to screen pharmacognostical, antioxidant and antiulcer potentials of Gmelina arborea aerial part. Methods: In the present study, microscopic studies on G. arborea leaves and stems were performed. Physico-chemical constants, preliminary phytochemical and in vitro antioxidant assay were performed using ABTS assay. In addition, light is also thrown on the toxicity profile and antiulcer potential of aerial part hydro-alcoholic extract. Results: Preliminary phytochemical screening revealed the presence of tannin, saponin, glycosides, alkaloids, phytosterols, flavonoids and terpenoids. The extract when screened for antioxidant potential revealed encouraging results. Acute oral toxicity was performed and found to be safe upto 2g/kg, b. wt. The hydro-alcoholic extract showed significant gastroprotective efficacy at the dose 250 mg/kg against ethanol induced gastric ulcer model in experimental animals. Conclusion: In the present study, preliminary phytochemical, antioxidant and preclinical studies were conducted and confirmed that hydroalcoholic extract of G. arborea showed significant gastroprotection in rat model.
MET Inhibition Elicits PGC1α-Dependent Metabolic Reprogramming in Glioblastoma.

The receptor kinase c-MET has emerged as a target for glioblastoma therapy. However, treatment resistance emerges inevitably. Here, we performed global metabolite screening with metabolite set enrichment coupled with transcriptome and gene set enrichment analysis and proteomic screening, and identified substantial reprogramming of tumor metabolism involving oxidative phosphorylation and fatty acid oxidation (FAO) with substantial accumulation of acyl-carnitines accompanied by an increase of PGC1α in response to genetic (shRNA and CRISPR/Cas9) and pharmacological (crizotinib) inhibition of c-MET. Extracellular flux and carbon tracing analyses (U-13C-Glucose, U-13C-Glutamine and U-13C-palmitic acid) demonstrated enhanced oxidative metabolism, which was driven by FAO and supported by increased anaplerosis of glucose carbons. These findings were observed in concert with increased number and fusion of mitochondria and production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Genetic interference with PGC1α rescued this oxidative phenotype driven by c-MET inhibition. Silencing and chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments demonstrated that CREB regulates the expression of PGC1α in the context of c-MET inhibition. Interference with both oxidative phosphorylation (metformin, oligomycin) and beta-oxidation of fatty acids (etomoxir) enhanced the anti-tumor efficacy of c-MET inhibition. Synergistic cell death was observed with c-MET inhibition and gamitrinib treatment. In patient-derived xenograft models, combination treatments of crizotinib and etomoxir, and crizotinib and gamitrinib were significantly more efficacious than single treatments and did not induce toxicity. Collectively, we have unraveled the mechanistic underpinnings of c-MET inhibition and identified novel combination therapies that may enhance its therapeutic efficacy.
A set of microRNAs coordinately controls tumorigenesis, invasion, and metastasis

Significance The capabilities for invasion and metastasis underlie the mortality and morbidity of most forms of human cancer. Currently, there are no effective therapies specifically targeting these cancer phenotypes, in part due to the paucity of dominant mutations that induce them, and indeed losses of suppressors of invasion and metastasis are increasingly recognized as determinants, posing challenges for drug development. Our results implicate epigenetic gene regulation mediated by elevated expression of distinct microRNAs in orchestrating invasion and metastasis, evidently by abrogating distinctive suppressor mechanisms. Therefore, targeting such microRNAs holds promise as a strategy to combat malignant cancers with epigenetically disrupted tumor suppressor mechanisms. MicroRNA-mediated gene regulation has been implicated in various diseases, including cancer. This study examined the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) during tumorigenesis and malignant progression of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNETs) in a genetically engineered mouse model. Previously, a set of miRNAs was observed to be specifically up-regulated in a highly invasive and metastatic subtype of mouse and human PanNET. Using functional assays, we now implicate different miRNAs in distinct phenotypes: miR-137 stimulates tumor growth and local invasion, whereas the miR-23b cluster enables metastasis. An algorithm, Bio-miRTa, has been developed to facilitate the identification of biologically relevant miRNA target genes and applied to these miRNAs. We show that a top-ranked miR-137 candidate gene, Sorl1, has a tumor suppressor function in primary PanNETs. Among the top targets for the miR-23b cluster, Acvr1c/ALK7 has recently been described to be a metastasis suppressor, and we establish herein that it is down-regulated by the miR-23b cluster, which is crucial for its prometastatic activity. Two other miR-23b targets, Robo2 and P2ry1, also have demonstrable antimetastatic effects. Finally, we have used the Bio-miRTa algorithm in reverse to identify candidate miRNAs that might regulate activin B, the principal ligand for ALK7, identifying thereby a third family of miRNAs—miRNA-130/301—that is congruently up-regulated concomitant with down-regulation of activin B during tumorigenesis, suggestive of functional involvement in evasion of the proapoptotic barrier. Thus, dynamic up-regulation of miRNAs during multistep tumorigenesis and malignant progression serves to down-regulate distinctive suppressor mechanisms of tumor growth, invasion, and metastasis.