Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lamprey GnRH-III Acts on Its Putative Receptor via Nitric Oxide to Release Follicle-Stimulating Hormone Specifically 1

Lamprey gonadotropin-releasing hormone-III (I-GnRH-III), the putative follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH)-releasing factor (FSHRF), exerts a preferential FSH-releasing activity in rats both in vitro and in vivo. To test the hypothesis that I-GnRH-III acts on its own receptors to stimulate gonadotropin release, the functional activity of this peptide at mammalian (m) leutinizing hormone (LH)RH receptors transfected to COS cells was tested. I-GnRH-III activated m-LHRH receptors only at a minimal effective concentration (MEC) of 10–6 M, whereas m-LHRH was active at a MEC of 10–9 M, at least 1,000 times less than that required for I-GnRH-III. In 4-day monolayer cultured cells, I-GnRH-III was similarly extremely weak in releasing either LH or FSH, and, in fact, it released LH at a lower concentration (10–7 M) than that required for FSH release (10–6 M). In this assay, m-LHRH released both FSH and LH significantly at the lowest concentration tested (10–10 M). On the other hand, I-GnRH-III had a high potency to selectively release FSH and not LH from hemipituitaries of male rats. The results suggest that the cultured cells were devoid of FSHRF receptors, thereby resulting in a pattern of FSH and LH release caused by the LHRH receptor. On the other hand, the putative FSH-releasing factor receptor accounts for the selective FSH release by I-GnRH-III when tested on hemipituitaries. Removal of calcium from the medium plus the addition of EGTA, a calcium chelator, suppressed the release of gonadotropins induced by either I-GnRH-III or LHRH, indicating that calcium is required for the action of either peptide. Previous results showed that sodium nitroprusside, a releaser of nitric oxide (NO), causes the release of both FSH and LH from hemipituitaries incubated in vitro. In the present experiments, a competitive inhibitor of NO synthase, L-NG-monomethyl-l-arginine (300 μM) blocked the action of I-GnRH-III or partially purified FSHRF. The results indicate that I-GnRH-III and FSHRF act on putative FSHRF receptors by a calcium-dependent NO pathway.
Sensing Characterization of Helical Long Period Fiber Grating Fabricated by a Double-Side CO2 Laser in Single-Mode Fiber

A simple and efficient manufacture method of helical long period fiber grating (HLPFG) in a single-mode fiber (SMF) is designed and verified through experiment. Different from the previous fabricating methods, the SMF is heated by a double-side CO2 laser beam after being twisted. There are multiple transmission depletions caused by model coupling which could be observed when the period length is 500 μm. The sensing characteristics of the HLPFG have been investigated. Experimental results demonstrate axial strain sensitivities of 3.3 and 6.4 pm/μϵ at the selected dips in the range of 0–450 μϵ or temperature sensitivities of 35.3 and 49.5 pm/°C at the selected dips in the range of 20–70 °C, respectively. Moreover, through theoretical analysis, it is found that the fabricated HLPFG can measure axial strain and temperature concurrently by monitoring the resonance wavelength shift. Therefore, the fabricated HLPFG has brilliant applications value in dual measurement.
Prevalence of the metabolic syndrome and its relation to all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in nondiabetic European men and women.

BACKGROUND Few studies have evaluated the associations between the metabolic syndrome (by any definition) and mortality. This study examined the age- and sex-specific prevalence of the metabolic syndrome and its association with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in nondiabetic European men and women. METHODS The study was based on 11 prospective European cohort studies comprising 6156 men and 5356 women without diabetes and aged from 30 to 89 years, and had a median follow-up of 8.8 years. A modification of the World Health Organization definition of the metabolic syndrome was used. The subjects were considered to have the metabolic syndrome if they had hyperinsulinemia and 2 or more of the following: obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, or impaired glucose regulation; however, other definitions were also studied. Hazard ratios for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality were estimated with Cox models in each cohort. Meta-analyses were performed to assess the overall association of the metabolic syndrome with mortality risk. RESULTS The age-standardized prevalence of the metabolic syndrome was slightly higher in men (15.7%) than in women (14.2%). Of the 1119 deaths recorded during follow-up, 432 were caused by cardiovascular disease. The overall hazard ratios for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in persons with the metabolic syndrome compared with persons without it were 1.44 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.17-1.84) and 2.26 (95% CI, 1.61-3.17) in men and 1.38 (95% CI, 1.02-1.87) and 2.78 (95% CI, 1.57-4.94) in women after adjustment for age, blood cholesterol levels, and smoking. CONCLUSIONS The overall prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in nondiabetic adult Europeans is 15%. Nondiabetic persons with the metabolic syndrome have an increased risk of death from all causes as well as cardiovascular disease.
Modeling of HCD Kinetics for Full ${V}_{{G}}$ / ${V}_{{D}}$ Span in the Presence of NBTI, Electron Trapping, and Self Heating in RMG SiGe p-FinFETs

A SPICE compatible compact modeling framework is proposed for the time kinetics of threshold voltage shift (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta {V}_{T}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) in FinFETs subjected to hot carrier degradation (HCD) stress. The model is valid for the entire drain (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{D}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) and gate (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{G}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) voltage space and calculates the generation of interface traps for pure HCD (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta {V}_{\text {IT-HC}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) and for negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta {V}_{\text {IT-BT}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>), hole trapping (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta {V}_{\text {HT}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>), and electron trapping (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta {V}_{\text {ET}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) as necessary, and considers the self-heating effect (SHE). The model is validated by using ultrafast (10-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> delay) measured data from replacement metal gate (RMG) silicon germanium (SiGe) p-FinFETs having a different fin length (FL) and different nitrogen (N%) in the gate insulator stack. A calibrated TCAD framework is used to verify the impact of pure NBTI for varying <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{G}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{D}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> stress in the presence of SHE but no HCD.
Effects of Duplication Operator in Evolutionary Simultaneous Design Optimization of Multiple Cars

We propose a duplication operator to increase the number of common design parts in the simultaneous design optimization of multiple cars. In the optimization problem, we optimize a combined sets of design variables of multiple cars simultaneously and tries to increase the number of common parts among multiple cars. In order to increase the number of common parts, the design variable values of the same design parts among multiple cars should be matched. However, it is a hard task to evolutionary algorithms treating each variable independently and varying it stochastically. To improve the number of common parts among multiple cars, we propose a duplication operator copying a variable value of a car to others, and verify its effectiveness when we combined with three algorithms, NSGA-III, MOEA/D, and TNSDM-A. As the results, we show that the proposed duplication operator improves the number of common parts and the combination with TNSDM-A achieves the highest search performance.
A New Multilevel Inverter Topology With Reduce Switch Count

Multilevel inverters are a new family of converters for dc–ac conversion for the medium and high voltage and power applications. In this paper, two new topologies for the staircase output voltage generations have been proposed with a lesser number of switch requirement. The first topology requires three dc voltage sources and ten switches to synthesize 15 levels across the load. The extension of the first topology has been proposed as the second topology, which consists of four dc voltage sources and 12 switches to achieve 25 levels at the output. Both topologies, apart from having lesser switch count, exhibit the merits in terms of reduced voltage stresses across the switches. In addition, a detailed comparative study of both topologies has been presented in this paper to demonstrate the features of the proposed topologies. Several experimental results have been included in this paper to validate the performances of the proposed topologies with different loading condition and dynamic changes in load and modulation indexes.
A New Cross Clustering Algorithm for Improving Performance of Supervised Learning

In this paper, a new clustering algorithm is proposed based on cross clusters without using membership functions. In light of the cross clustering data transformation, the spatial distribution of data is changed while the original data dimension simultaneously is maintained. Combining with the performance index and visual technology, an explanation of the performance improvement of the classification model is presented in accordance with the proposed algorithm. This approach was evaluated on UCR time series datasets, the experiments showed that the algorithm can improve not only the accuracy and the performance of the fully convolutional network and nearest neighbor algorithm, but also the time complexity in time series classification model. It is worth well to apply this method to further research and popularization.
Separate Neuronal and Glial Na+,K+-ATPase Isoforms Regulate Glucose Utilization in Response to Membrane Depolarization and Elevated Extracellular Potassium

The role of cell type-specific Na+,K+-ATPase isozymes in function-related glucose metabolism was studied using differentiated rat brain cell aggregate cultures. In mixed neuron-glia cultures, glucose utilization, determined by measuring the rate of radiolabeled 2-deoxyglucose accumulation, was markedly stimulated by the voltage-dependent sodium channel agonist veratridine (0.75 μmol/L), as well as by glutamate (100 μmol/L) and the ionotropic glutamate receptor agonist N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) (10 μmol/L). Significant stimulation also was elicited by elevated extracellular potassium (12 mmol/L KCl), which was even more pronounced at 30 mmol/L KCl. In neuron-enriched cultures, a similar stimulation of glucose utilization was obtained with veratridine, specific ionotropic glutamate receptor agonists, and 30 mmol/L but not 12 mmol/L KCl. The effects of veratridine, glutamate, and NMDA were blocked by specific antagonists (tetrodotoxin, CNQX, or MK801, respectively). Low concentrations of ouabain (10−6 mol/L) prevented stimulation by the depolarizing agents but reduced only partially the response to 12 mmol/L KCl. Together with previous data showing cell type–specific expression of Na+,K+-ATPase subunit isoforms in these cultures, the current results support the view that distinct isoforms of Na+,K+-ATPase regulate glucose utilization in neurons in response to membrane depolarization, and in glial cells in response to elevated extracellular potassium.
Systematic Initialization Approaches for Portfolio Optimization Problems

Selecting the number of assents to obtain the maximized expected return under the possible lowest risk is the main concern of portfolio optimization problems. Optimization algorithms -multi/many-objective- are evaluated to find the desired/possible level of investment. Converging to the best possible asset set and -if possible- distribution of the many possible solution sets for an efficient frontier is expected as the result of the multi/many-objective optimization algorithms. Obtaining an accurate and well-distributed set of solutions is the main motivation. Hence, in this paper, two initialization approaches are proposed for multi/many-objective optimization algorithms to obtain a better convergence and distribution solution set for the portfolio optimization problem. The initial population set is composed of the assets with the largest income and binary combinations of the assets where their sum returns the maximum income. These proposed approaches are integrated with eight different optimization algorithms and the performance of the algorithms is compared with respect to the convergence and diversity metrics.
Escape from chronic estrogenic suppression of ovarian function in the adult rhesus monkey: evidence for changing sensitivity of gonadotropin secretion to estrogen inhibition.

Regularly menstruating female rhesus monkeys were implanted sc with Silastic tubing packed with estrone. The implants were replaced every 6-8 months to maintain the serum estrone and estradiol concentrations constantly elevated 1.5-2.5-fold, i.e. in the midfollicular phase range, for 4 yr. Increasing the estrone and estradiol concentrations initially led to anovulation which persisted for 6 to 15 months after which three of four of the estrogen-treated animals resumed ovulatory cycles. These animals then waxed and waned between anovulation and ovulatory cycles for the remainder of the study period. The resumption of ovulatory cycles were attributed to an escape of the central nervous system-pituitary axis from the suppressive effect of the elevated estrogen concentrations, since serum estradiol concentrations did not change. During anovulatory and ovulatory months the basal LH concentration was not significantly increased in the estrogen-treated monkeys compared to the control animals, but it was significantly reduced during anovulatory months compared to ovulatory months. Furthermore, LH secretion in response to a bolus of GnRH was attenuated in the monkeys chronically exposed to the acyclic elevation of blood estrogen levels. As the sensitivity to estrogen decreased, sufficient basal concentrations of FSH and LH were achieved to support ovulatory cycles with associated midcycle surges of LH and FSH secretion and apparently normal luteal patterns of progesterone secretion. Since the daily FSH concentrations of these ovulatory cycles of the estrone-treated animals were significantly lower than that of ovulatory cycles of the control monkeys, the ovulatory cycles of the estrogen animals may not have been normal, but this was not directly documented. These studies suggest that elevated basal estrogen levels do not lead to elevated basal LH secretion in the female primate; and also in the intact adult primate the central nervous system-pituitary axis has the potential to change its sensitivity to the negative feedback effects of estrogen on gonadotropin secretion.
[Pathological bone density in chronic inflammatory bowel diseases--prevalence and risk factors].

INTRODUCTION Osteopenia and osteoporosis are frequent but often underestimated complications in inflammatory bowel disease. In patients with IBD, several factors could contribute to osteopenia, but the pathogenetic mechanisms are still not completely understood. We carried out a prospective study to evaluate the prevalence and possible etiologic factors for osteopenia and subsequent osteoporosis in IBD-patients. METHODS 140 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's disease n = 125, ulcerative colitis n = 15) underwent clinical and spine radiological assessments. Lumbar bone mineral densities were measured by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Markers of bone formation and resorption and vitamin D were assessed in n = 95 patients. Patients were asked about medication, previous or actual intestinal stenosis, smoking and intestinal resection. A lactose-H2-breath test was undertaken if lactose intolerance was clinically suspected. RESULTS Compared to age- and sex-matched healthy controls (Z-score), the prevalence of osteopenia (Z < -1) was 62%, while osteoporosis (Z < -2) occurred in 38%. The mean bone density of IBD-patients was osteopenic with no significant differences between Crohn's disease (Z = -1.24) and ulcerative colitis (Z = -1.25). Osteoporotic fractures were seen in three patients (2.1%). Crohn's disease patients with osteoporosis showed a significant lower body mass index (BMI) than patients with normal bone density. 52.9% of patients with manifest osteoporosis underwent systemic steroid treatment in the preceding year, but only 34% of those with normal bone density. Except hemoglobin, none of the biochemical markers showed a significant difference between osteoporosis, osteopenia and patients with normal bone density. CONCLUSION The results show a high prevalence of osteopenia and osteoporosis in IBD. Since osteoporosis is often associated with low body mass index, multiple intestinal resections and previous systemic steroid treatment, we suggest a bone densitometry in these patients. Since etiology of osteoporosis in IBD is multifactorious and not completely understood, there is still no standard treatment. The effect of osteoanabolic and antiresorptive agents must be evaluated in further studies.
Right and left perisylvian cortex and left inferior frontal cortex mediate sentence‐level rhyme detection in spoken language as revealed by sparse fMRI

In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural basis of auditory rhyme processing at the sentence level in healthy adults. In an explicit rhyme detection task, participants were required to decide whether the ending syllable of a metrically spoken pseudosentence rhymed or not. Participants performing this task revealed bilateral activation in posterior–superior temporal gyri with a much more extended cluster of activation in the right hemisphere. These findings suggest that the right hemisphere primarily supports suprasegmental tasks, such as the segmentation of speech into syllables; thus, our findings are in line with the “asymmetric sampling in time” model suggested by Poeppel ( : Speech Commun 41:245–255). The direct contrast between rhymed and nonrhymed trials revealed a stronger BOLD response for rhymed trials in the frontal operculum and the anterior insula of the left hemisphere. Our results suggest an involvement of these frontal regions not only in articulatory rehearsal processes, but especially in the detection of a matching syllable, as well as in the execution of rhyme judgment. Hum Brain Mapp 34:3182–3192, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Predictors of Citation Rate in Psychology: Inconclusive Influence of Effect and Sample Size

In the present article, we investigate predictors of how often a scientific article is cited. Specifically, we focus on the influence of two often neglected predictors of citation rate: effect size and sample size, using samples from two psychological topical areas. Both can be considered as indicators of the importance of an article and post hoc (or observed) statistical power, and should, especially in applied fields, predict citation rates. In Study 1, effect size did not have an influence on citation rates across a topical area, both with and without controlling for numerous variables that have been previously linked to citation rates. In contrast, sample size predicted citation rates, but only while controlling for other variables. In Study 2, sample and partly effect sizes predicted citation rates, indicating that the relations vary even between scientific topical areas. Statistically significant results had more citations in Study 2 but not in Study 1. The results indicate that the importance (or power) of scientific findings may not be as strongly related to citation rate as is generally assumed.
Experimental Verification of ITU-R P.1411 as Path Loss Prediction Model for IEEE 802.11af

Path loss models are important in determining the optimum location and coverage of access points in a wireless local area network. IEEE 802.11af is a wireless local area network standard operating in television white space. As a white space device, it must avoid causing harmful interference to an existing digital Television (DTV) service. This necessitates the need for an accurate path loss estimation models to avoid overestimation that will result to unnecessarily limiting the areas where the WSDs can operate or underestimate path loss that may not be enough to protect DTVs from harmful interference caused by WSDs. In this study, field measurements were conducted to experimentally verify the feasibility of Sections 4.1 and 4.3 of ITU-R P.1411-7 Recommendation in estimating path loss in a low-rise urban/suburban environment. Measurements obtained were also compared with the Free Space Path Loss (FSPL) prediction model. Results of the study have shown that the use of ITU-R P.1411-7, particularly Section 4.3. with 99% location variability, could provide an average prediction error of 7 dB for all experimental sites considered in this study. Since this error prediction is due largely to overestimation, the study concludes that the use of such location variability could provide protection to primary users such as Digital TV broadcast from harmful interference that may originate from WSDs such as IEEE 802.11af devices.
Supply Contracts with Options in E-Business

A unit for retaining a disposable electrophoresis test kit adapted for detecting the presence of hepatitis associated antigen and the like includes a base, means for illuminating said test kit spaced within said base, a work platform for supporting the test kit, wherein the platform has at least one pair of electrodes oppositely disposed thereon and connected to said base for generating an electric potential across said test kit; a removable cover connected to said base for enclosing said unit, said cover having a transparent viewing port spaced therein for observing said test kit and an electrical circuit in said unit for supplying power to said illuminating means and said electrodes.
Industrial Symbiosis Initiatives in United States of America and Canada: Current Status and Challenges

Industrial symbiosis ties companies from all business sectors with the aim of improving the efficiency of resources at an intersectional level through the commercial exchange of materials, energy and water and sharing assets, logistics and experience. It involves industries and other organizations that have always been separated in a collective approach to achieve competitive advantages that imply the physical exchange of materials, energy, water and by-products together with the shared use of goods, logistics and experience. This model raises the need to address a new perspective in the production of waste, its recovery and reuse, reducing the environmental impact and generating new business models that positively impact the economy of a region. This paper aims to analyze the industrial symbiosis initiatives in USA and Canada published by the research community in order to assess the current status, its challenges, successes and failures.