Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changing Metabolic Signatures of Amino Acids and Lipids During the Prediabetic Period in a Pig Model With Impaired Incretin Function and Reduced β-Cell Mass

Diabetes is generally diagnosed too late. Therefore, biomarkers indicating early stages of β-cell dysfunction and mass reduction would facilitate timely counteraction. Transgenic pigs expressing a dominant-negative glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide receptor (GIPRdn) reveal progressive deterioration of glucose control and reduction of β-cell mass, providing a unique opportunity to study metabolic changes during the prediabetic period. Plasma samples from intravenous glucose tolerance tests of 2.5- and 5-month-old GIPRdn transgenic and control animals were analyzed for 163 metabolites by targeted mass spectrometry. Analysis of variance revealed that 26 of 163 parameters were influenced by the interaction Genotype × Age (P ≤ 0.0001) and thus are potential markers for progression within the prediabetic state. Among them, the concentrations of seven amino acids (Phe, Orn, Val, xLeu, His, Arg, and Tyr) were increased in 2.5-month-old but decreased in 5-month-old GIPRdn transgenic pigs versus controls. Furthermore, specific sphingomyelins, diacylglycerols, and ether phospholipids were decreased in plasma of 5-month-old GIPRdn transgenic pigs. Alterations in plasma metabolite concentrations were associated with liver transcriptome changes in relevant pathways. The concentrations of a number of plasma amino acids and lipids correlated significantly with β-cell mass of 5-month-old pigs. These metabolites represent candidate biomarkers of early phases of β-cell dysfunction and mass reduction.
Magnetization transfer MRS

This review deals with magnetization transfer (MT) effects observed in in vivo NMR spectroscopy. The basic experimental methods of MT experiments, the underlying kinetic mechanisms as well as the evaluation of measured data by fits to two‐ or three‐pool models are described. Experimental results of both 31P and 1H in vivo MRS are reviewed showing the potential of MT experiments to characterize kinetic equilibrium reactions. This includes reactions where all involved components are MR visible, as well as situations where one indirectly measures pools of bound spins which cannot directly be observed in vivo. In particular, MT effects are described which have been observed in in vivo 1H NMR spectra measured on the animal or human brain or on skeletal muscle. Possible mechanisms for the strong MT effects observed for the signals of creatine/phosphocreatine, lactate, alcohol and other metabolites are discussed. It is also emphasized that MT effects caused by water suppression techniques may lead to systematic errors in the quantification of in vivo 1H NMR spectra. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Inexpensive microscopy for introductory laboratory courses

We present an inexpensive apparatus for bright field and fluorescence microscopy with video capture, suitable for introductory laboratory courses. Experiments on Brownian motion and the Boltzmann distribution of suspended particles in a gravitational field are described. The Boltzmann constant is measured in three ways, and the results fall within 15% of the accepted value.
A cognitive network with clustered decoding

We study the uplink of a linear cellular model featuring short range inter-cell interference. Specifically, we consider a K-transmitter/K-receiver interference network where the signal transmitted by a given transmitter is interfered by the signal sent by the transmitter to its left. We assume that each transmitter has side-information consisting of the messages of the Jl users to its left and the Jr users to its right, and that each receiver can decode its message using the signals received at its own antenna, at the il antennas to its left, and at the ir antennas to its right. For this setting, we characterize the multiplexing gain, i.e., the asymptotic logarithmic growth of the sum-rate capacity at high SNR, and point out interesting duality aspects. We also present results on the multiplexing gain of a symmetric version of this network where the signal sent by a given transmitter is interfered by the signals sent by the transmitter to its left and the transmitter to its right.
Metabolic Imaging of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Detects Altered Choline Metabolism

Purpose: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive and lethal disease that develops relatively symptom-free and is therefore advanced at the time of diagnosis. The absence of early symptoms and effective treatments has created a critical need for identifying and developing new noninvasive biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Experimental Design: We investigated the metabolism of a panel of PDAC cell lines in culture and noninvasively in vivo with 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) to identify noninvasive biomarkers and uncover potential metabolic targets. Results: We observed elevated choline-containing compounds in the PDAC cell lines and tumors. These elevated choline-containing compounds were easily detected by increased total choline (tCho) in vivo, in spectroscopic images obtained from tumors. Principal component analysis of the spectral data identified additional differences in metabolites between immortalized human pancreatic cells and neoplastic PDAC cells. Molecular characterization revealed overexpression of choline kinase (Chk)-α, choline transporter 1 (CHT1), and choline transporter–like protein 1 (CTL1) in the PDAC cell lines and tumors. Conclusions: Collectively, these data identify new metabolic characteristics of PDAC and reveal potential metabolic targets. Total choline detected with 1H MRSI may provide an intrinsic, imaging probe–independent biomarker to complement existing techniques in detecting PDAC. The expression of Chk-α, CHT1, and CTL1 may provide additional molecular markers in aspirated cytological samples. Clin Cancer Res; 21(2); 386–95. ©2014 AACR.
Memristor-based synaptic networks and logical operations using in-situ computing

We present new computational building blocks based on memristive devices. These blocks, can be used to implement either supervised or unsupervised learning modules. This is achieved using a crosspoint architecture which is an efficient array implementation for nanoscale two-terminal mem-ristive devices. Based on these blocks and an experimentally verified SPICE macromodel for the memristor, we demonstrate that firstly, the Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity (STDP) can be implemented by a single memristor device and secondly, a memristor-based competitive Hebbian learning through STDP using a 1×1000 synaptic network. This is achieved by adjusting the memristor's conductance values (weights) as a function of the timing difference between presynaptic and postsynaptic spikes. These implementations have a number of shortcomings due to the memristor's characteristics such as memory decay, highly nonlinear switching behaviour as a function of applied voltage/current, and functional uniformity. These shortcomings can be addressed by utilising a mixed gates that can be used in conjunction with the analogue behaviour for biomimetic computation. The digital implementations in this paper use in-situ computational capability of the memristor.
A seeded propagation of Cu, Zn-superoxide dismutase aggregates in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Abnormal accumulation of protein inclusions in motor neurons has been known as a major pathological change in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Increasing numbers of proteins including mutant Cu, Zn-superoxide dismutase (SOD1) have been identified as constituents of pathological inclusions in a form of insoluble fibrillar aggregates. Notably, protein fibrillar aggregates exhibit a self-perpetuating property, which can convert a soluble native protein into insoluble fibrillar aggregates. Such “seeding reaction” of protein fibrils can accelerate the aggregation significantly and would contribute to the spread of inclusion pathologies from an affected cell to its neighboring cells in neurodegenerative diseases. In ALS, a pathological change first occurs at the site of disease onset and then propagates throughout the affected tissues in a time-dependent manner; therefore, it can be assumed that seeded aggregation may be the key factor of disease progression in ALS. In this mini review, we will briefly summarize recent studies on possible roles of a seeded aggregation of SOD1 in pathomechanism of ALS.
System combination and score normalization for spoken term detection

Spoken content in languages of emerging importance needs to be searchable to provide access to the underlying information. In this paper, we investigate the problem of extending data fusion methodologies from Information Retrieval for Spoken Term Detection on low-resource languages in the framework of the IARPA Babel program. We describe a number of alternative methods improving keyword search performance. We apply these methods to Cantonese, a language that presents some new issues in terms of reduced resources and shorter query lengths. First, we show score normalization methodology that improves in average by 20% keyword search performance. Second, we show that properly combining the outputs of diverse ASR systems performs 14% better than the best normalized ASR system.
Twenty‐year changes in the prevalence of overweight in Japanese adults: The National Nutrition Survey 1976–95

The aim of this study was to describe the 20‐year changes in body mass index (BMI; kg m−2) and the prevalence of overweight in Japanese adults. Cross‐sectional annual nationwide surveys (National Nutrition Survey, Japan) were carried out with a large probability sample of the Japanese population. Data sets of the 1976–95 surveys, comprising 91 983 men and 120 822 women (≥20 years of age), were used. The analyses were carried out in age and gender groups, and by residential area according to the size of the municipality (metropolitan areas, cities and small towns). The mean BMI increaseed in men with an increment of +0.44 kg m−2 10 years−1 and slightly decreased in women, by −0.09 kg m−2 10 years−1, after adjustment for age. A decreasing trend of mean BMI was most significant in the female 20–29 years age‐group (−0.38 kg m−2 10 years−1), in contrast to an increasing trend observed in elderly women (60–69 and 70+ years age‐groups). The prevalence of preobese (BMI: 25–29.9 kg m−2) and obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg m−2) men increased from 14.5% and 0.8%, respectively, in the time‐period 1976–80 to 20.5% and 2.01% during 1991–95. The increasing trend was most evident in the youngest age‐group (20–29 years) and in those from small towns. The overall prevalence of preobese and obese women did not change during the 20‐year study period. The prevalence in younger women decreased, this trend being more prominent in metropolitan areas. Although the prevalence of overweight (BMI ≥25 kg m−2) in Japanese men and elderly women has increased in the last 20 years, the mean BMI in younger women, especially those in metropolitan areas, has decreased. A population approach to control obesity and prevent obesity‐associated diseases should be mainly focused on men and women older than 40 years of age.
Hierarchical Audio Segmentation with HMM and Factor Analysis in Broadcast News Domain

This paper investigates the performance of a Factor Analysis stage in audio segmentation systems. The system described here is designed to segment and classify the audio ﬁles com-ing from broadcast programs into ﬁve different classes: speech, speech with noise, speech with music, music or others. This task was recently proposed as a competitive evaluation organized by the Spanish Network on Speech Technologies as part of the conference FALA 2010. The system proposed here makes use of a hierarchical structure in two steps with two different acoustic features. First, the system decides among music, speech with music or the rest of the classes by using HMM/GMM and a smoothed combination of MFCC and Chroma as feature vectors. Next, the system classiﬁes speech and speech with noise by using FA and MFCC as acoustic features. The results shows that, with this conﬁguration, the error rate achieved is lower than the one obtained by the best system presented in the FALA 2010 evaluation.
Regions of Mid-level Human Visual Cortex Sensitive to the Global Coherence of Local Image Patches

The global structural arrangement and spatial layout of the visual environment must be derived from the integration of local signals represented in the lower tiers of the visual system. This interaction between the spatially local and global properties of visual stimulation underlies many of our visual capacities, and how this is achieved in the brain is a central question for visual and cognitive neuroscience. Here, we examine the sensitivity of regions of the posterior human brain to the global coordination of spatially displaced naturalistic image patches. We presented observers with image patches in two circular apertures to the left and right of central fixation, with the patches drawn from either the same (coherent condition) or different (noncoherent condition) extended image. Using fMRI at 7T (n = 5), we find that global coherence affected signal amplitude in regions of dorsal mid-level cortex. Furthermore, we find that extensive regions of mid-level visual cortex contained information in their local activity pattern that could discriminate coherent and noncoherent stimuli. These findings indicate that the global coordination of local naturalistic image information has important consequences for the processing in human mid-level visual cortex.
Partial parsing via finite-state cascades

Finite state cascades represent an attractive architecture for parsing unrestricted text. Deterministic parsers specified by finite state cascades are fast and reliable. They can be extended at modest cost to construct parse trees with finite feature structures. Finally, such deterministic parsers do not necessarily involve trading off accuracy against speed — they may in fact be more accurate than exhaustive search stochastic context free parsers.
Normative Study of Oral and Non-Oral Structures Using Vibrotactile Stimuli

An investigation to establish vibrotactile thresholds on oral and non-oral structures of 10 normal adults was conducted. Thresholds obtained on the lip and tongue were compared with those obtained on the palmar surface. Threshold frequencies within the range of 60 to 600 Hz were used. Results reported in microns showed statistically significant threshold differences among frequencies which are not apparent when the data were reported in dB.
Tailoring Exchange Coupling in Carbon-Based Magnetic Materials

In this paper, geometric structure, electronic structure, and magnetic properties of several radicals, that is, C13H9, C13F9, and C13Cl9 have been investigated based on density-functional theory with dispersion correction. Each of these radicals has a spin of 1/2. However, in their dimer structures, the net spin becomes zero due to antiferromagnetic spin-exchange between radicals. To avoid the typical antiferromagnetic spin-exchange of identical face-to-face radicals, alternating stacks of π-radicals and diamagnetic molecules have been designed. Our calculated results confirm that alternating stacks have ferromagnetic spin-exchange between radicals. To explore a way to tailor exchange coupling in carbon-based magnetic materials, the effect of size of diamagnetic molecules on spin-exchange coupling in stacks has been investigated. Moreover, the nature of spin-exchange coupling in stacks is shed light on. These results demonstrate an effective way to tailor exchange coupling in carbon-based materials.
MODEL-BASED SOUND SYNTHESIS OF THE HARPSICHORD †

We have developed a sound synthesis algorithm for the harpsichord by applying the principles of digital waveguide modeling. A short overview on the acoustics of the harpsichord is given, and signal-processing techniques for synthesizing harpsichord tones are suggested. In particular, a new loop filter for the digital waveguide model is introduced and analyzed. The implementation of the synthesizer using a block-based graphical programming language is briefly described. Parameter values estimated from recorded data are given. Sound examples are available at http://www.acoustics. hut.fi/publications/papers/jasp-harpsy/.
Disrupting the Interaction between Retinoblastoma Protein and Raf-1 Leads to Defects in Progenitor Cell Proliferation and Survival during Early Inner Ear Development

The retinoblastoma protein (pRb) is required for cell-cycle exit of embryonic mammalian hair cells but is not required for hair cell fate determination and early differentiation, and this provides a strategy for hair cell regeneration by manipulating the pRb pathway. To reveal the mechanism of pRb functional modification in the inner ear, we compared the effects of attenuated pRb phosphorylation by an inhibitor of the Mitogen-Activated Protein (MAP) kinase pathway and an inhibitor of the Rb–Raf-1 interaction on cultured chicken otocysts. We demonstrated that the activity of pRb is correlated with its phosphorylation state, which is regulated by a newly established cell cycle-independent pathway mediated by the physical interaction between Raf-1 and pRb. The phosphorylation of pRb plays an important role during the early stage of inner ear development, and attenuated phosphorylation in progenitor cells leads to cell cycle arrest and increased apoptosis along with a global down-regulation of the genes involved in cell cycle progression. Our study provides novel routes to modulate pRb function for hair cell regeneration.
An Exhibition Reminiscent System for Ubiquitous Environment

Rapid evolution of the Internet and wireless network technology enables people to access multimedia contents and services using mobile devices in a wireless environment. This trend, combined with other technologies opens many new possibilities in a daily life. For example, if people are visiting unfamiliar places like museum or exhibition, they would like to make a reminiscent tour summary so that they can retrospect what they had seen later. So far, we used either camera or camcorder to capture any interesting spots. This might cause inconvenience to them and the visitors considering such places are usually crowded. But if the place is equipped with ubiquitous devices and sensors, then it might be possible to generate such summary automatically without requiring any fussy actions to the visitor. In this paper, we present an exhibition reminiscent system for generating tour summary in a ubiquitous environment. First, we describe a data model for capturing relevant context information for the summary. Second, we implement a prototype system based on the model and report some of the experiment result on how well the system generates tour summaries in a typical scenario.
Community Preserving Lossy Compression of Social Networks

Compression plays an important role in social network analysis from both practical and theoretical points of view. Although there are a few pioneering studies on social network compression, they mainly focus on lossless approaches. In this paper, we tackle the novel problem of community preserving lossy compression of social networks. The trade-off between space and information preserved in a lossy compression presents an interesting angle for social network analysis, and, at the same time, makes the problem very challenging. We propose a sequence graph compression approach, discuss the design of objective functions towards community preservation, and present an interesting and practically effective greedy algorithm. Our experimental results on both real data sets and synthetic data sets demonstrate the promise of our method.
Constraints on the Source of the Martian Magnetic Anomalies Inferred From Relaxation Time of Remanent Magnetization

The strong magnetic anomalies observed over Mars originate from remanence of deep crust, which should be preserved during 4 billion years. We estimate the relaxation time of remanence carried by various types of magnetite, considering temperature and pressure dependences of magnetic parameters. The estimation shows that acicular‐shaped single‐domain magnetite is needed to retain the thick magnetized layer during 4 billion years in a low‐Urey ratio scenario, whereas acicular‐shaped single‐domain, equidimensional single‐domain, and pseudo‐single‐domain magnetites can be the source of anomalies in a high‐Urey ratio scenario. In each case, fine‐grained (<10 μm) and preferably high‐aspect‐ratio magnetite in deep crust is needed to explain the observed anomalies.
Prevalence and Risk Factors of Glaucoma Among Adults in Rural and Urban Communities of Ilorin West Local Government Area , North-Central Nigeria

Glaucoma is becoming an increasingly important cause of blindness, as the world’s population ages. Glaucoma, however, presents perhaps an even greater public health challenge than cataracts; because the blindness it causes is irreversible. This study assessed the prevalence and risk factors of glaucoma among adults in rural and urban communities of Ilorin West Local Government Area, North-Central Nigeria. This was a cross-sectional comparative study. Respondents were selected through a Multi-stage sampling technique. Intervieweradministered structured questionnaire and clinical report form were used to collect data. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 15. Bivariate, correlation analysis and multivariate regression analyses were used to analyze data. Level of statistical significance was set at p<0.05. The prevalence of glaucoma was higher in the rural, 56 (12.4%), compared with the urban area, 37 (8.2%) with a p value of 0.037. Age of respondents, educational status, hypertension; and intra-ocular pressure, were found to be associated with glaucoma. However, the multivariate regression analysis identified only age and intra-ocular pressure as the two significant predictors of glaucoma in both the rural and urban areas of this study. The high prevalence of glaucoma obtained from this study attest to the high burden of glaucoma in the study communities. Regular community-based eye screening will be useful in early detection of glaucoma. In addition, government should make eye care services available at the primary health care centres at reduced cost to enhance geographical and financial access.