Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reduced nitric oxide production and altered myocardial metabolism during the decompensation of pacing-induced heart failure in the conscious dog.

The aim of the present study was to determine whether cardiac nitric oxide (NO) production changes during the progression of pacing-induced heart failure and whether this occurs in association with alterations in myocardial metabolism. Dogs (n=8) were instrumented and the heart paced until left ventricular end-diastolic pressure reached 25 mm Hg and clinical signs of severe failure were evident. Every week, hemodynamic measurements were recorded and blood samples were withdrawn from the aorta and the coronary sinus for measurement of NO metabolites, O2 content, free fatty acids (FFAs), and lactate and glucose concentrations. Cardiac production of NO metabolites or consumption of O2 or utilization of substrates was calculated as coronary sinus-arterial difference times coronary flow. In end-stage failure, occurring at 29+/-1.6 days, left ventricular end-diastolic pressure was 25+/-1 mm Hg, left ventricular systolic pressure was 92+/-3 mm Hg, mean arterial pressure was 75+/-2.5 mm Hg, and dP/dtmax was 1219+/-73 mm Hg/s (all P<0.05). These changes in hemodynamics were associated with a fall of cardiac NO metabolite production from 0.37+/-0.16 to -0.28+/-0.13 nmol/beat (P<0.05). O2 consumption and lactate uptake did not change significantly from control, while FFA uptake decreased from 0.16+/-0.03 to 0.05+/-0.01 microEq/beat and glucose uptake increased from -2.3+/-7.0 to 41+/-10 microgram/beat (P<0.05). The cardiac respiratory quotient also increased significantly by 28%. In 14 normal dogs the same measurements were performed at control and 1 hour after we injected 30 mg/kg of nitro-L-arginine, a competitive inhibitor of NO synthase . O2 consumption increased from 0.05+/-0.002 mL/beat at control to 0.071+/-0.003 mL/beat after nitro-L-arginine, while FFA uptake decreased from 0.1+/-0.01 to 0.06+/-0.01 microEq/beat, lactate uptake increased from 0.15+/-0.04 to 0.31+/-0.03 micromol/beat, glucose uptake increased from 8.2+/-5.0 to 35.4+/-9.5 microgram/beat, and RQ increased by 23% (all P<0.05). Our results indicate that basal cardiac production of NO falls below normal levels during cardiac decompensation and that there are shifts in substrate utilization. This switch in myocardial substrate utilization also occurs after acute pharmacological blockade of NO production in normal dogs.
Mutation-Driven Generation of Unit Tests and Oracles

To assess the quality of test suites, mutation analysis seeds artificial defects (mutations) into programs; a nondetected mutation indicates a weakness in the test suite. We present an automated approach to generate unit tests that detect these mutations for object-oriented classes. This has two advantages: First, the resulting test suite is optimized toward finding defects modeled by mutation operators rather than covering code. Second, the state change caused by mutations induces oracles that precisely detect the mutants. Evaluated on 10 open source libraries, our μtest prototype generates test suites that find significantly more seeded defects than the original manually written test suites.
Leader follower formation control of ground vehicles using dynamic pixel count and inverse perspective mapping

This paper deals with leader-follower formations of non-holonomic mobile robots, introducing a formation control strategy based on pixel counts using a commercial grade electro optics camera. Localization of the leader for motions along line of sight as well as the obliquely inclined directions are considered based on pixel variation of the images by referencing to two arbitrarily designated positions in the image frames. Based on an established relationship between the displacement of the camera movement along the viewing direction and the difference in pixel counts between reference points in the images, the range and the angle estimate between the follower camera and the leader is calculated. The Inverse Perspective Transform is used to account for non linear relationship between the height of vehicle in a forward facing image and its distance from the camera. The formulation is validated with experiments.
A graph-based topic extraction method enabling simple interactive customization

It is often desirable to identify the concepts that are present in a corpus. A popular way to deal with this objective is to discover clusters of words or topics, for which many algorithms exist in the literature. Yet most of these methods lack the interpretability that would enable interaction with a user not familiar with their inner workings. The paper proposes a graph-based topic extraction algorithm, which can also be viewed as a soft-clustering of words present in a given corpus. Each topic, in the form of a set of words, represents an underlying concept in the corpus. The method allows easy interpretation of the clustering process, and hence enables the scope of user involvement at various steps. For a quantitative evaluation of the topics extracted, we use them as features to get a compact representation of documents for classification tasks. We compare the classification accuracy achieved by a reduced feature set obtained with our method versus other topic extraction techniques, namely Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Non-negative Matrix Factorization. While the results from all the three algorithms are comparable, the speed and easy interpretability of our algorithm makes it more appropriate to be used interactively by lay users.
Dyanimc key based authentication scheme for Vehicular Cloud Computing

In recent years, Vehicular Cloud Computing (VCC) has emerged as new technology to provide uninterrupted information to the vehicles from anywhere, anytime. The VCC provides two types of services such as safety related messages and non-safety related messages to the users. The vehicles have less computational power, storage etc. so that the vehicles collect information and send these information to the local or vehicular cloud for computation or storage purposes. But due to the dynamic nature, rapid topology changes and open communication medium, the information can be altered so that it leads to misguiding users, wrong information sharing etc. In the proposed scheme, Elliptic Curve Cryptography used for secure communication in the network that also ensures the security requirements such as confidentiality, integrity, privacy etc. The proposed scheme ensures the mutual authentication of both sender and receiver that wants to communicate. The scheme uses additional operation such as one-way hash function and concatenation to secure the network against various attacks i.e. spoofing attack, man-in-the-middle attack, replay attack etc. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is evaluated using the different metrics such as packet delivery ratio, throughput and end-to-end delay and it is found better where it is not applied.
Cyst hydatid case ruptured after awake intubation causing difficult airway

Cyst Hydatid is a parasitary disease seen throughout the history, and caused by Echinococcus Granulosus. Cyst hydatid settles in the liver at a rate of almost 60% and about 30% in the lungs. The cysts settlings in the lungs are generally solitary and asymptomatic. While the cyst hydatid of the lungs is often seen as solitary, the spontaneous perforation rate in these cases is reported as 0.36%. The iatrogenic perforation is quite rare, like 1% in the studies. In the literature, we could not come across a cyst hydatid case ruptured due to intubation. In this article, we aimed to present a cyst hydatid case that was operated due to diaphragmatic hernia, instantly ruptured after intubation and caused difficult airway management.
Genetic and environmental contributions to variation in human tooth size

Human dental crowns are complex structures without simple genetic or environmental determination, but mathematical modelling of data from family studies is now providing a more complete picture of their ontogeny. Mesiodistal (MD) and buccolingual (BL) dental crown diameters were recorded from almost 600 monozygotic and dizygotic twins, and univariate biometrical models were fitted to the data for 28 permanent teeth (excluding third molars). All 56 variables showed significant contributions of additive genetic variation, varying from 56 to 92% of phenotypic variation, with most being over 80%. The effects of individual or unique environment ranged from 8 to 29%. A significant effect of the environment shared by twins — either uterine or early childhood — was found for MD and BL diameters of maxillary first molars (22–27%). There were also significant levels of non-additive genetic variation in MD diameters of canines and first premolars, which is consistent with selective pressures acting on these teeth at some stage in human evolution.
QUT ielab at CLEF 2017 e-Health IR Task: Knowledge Base Retrieval for Consumer Health Search

In this paper we describe our participation to the CLEF 2017 e-Health IR Task [6]. This track aims to evaluate and advance search technologies aimed at supporting consumers to find health advice online. Our solution addressed this challenge by developing a knowledge base (KB) query expansion method. We found that the two best KB query expansion methods are mapping entity mentions to KB entities by performing exact matching entity mentions to the KB aliases (EM-Aliases) and multi-matching entity mentions to all KB features (Title, Categories, Links, Aliases, and Body) (EM-All). After mapping between entity mentions to KB entities established, we found the Title of the mapped KB entities as the best source of expansion terms compared to the aliases or combination of both features. Finally, we also found that Relevance Feedback and Pseudo Relevance Feedback are effective to further improve the query effectiveness.
Antihypertensive Treatments Obscure Familial Contributions to Blood Pressure Variation

Abstract—The linkage and association between inherent blood pressure and underlying genotype is potentially confounded by antihypertensive treatment. We estimated blood pressure variance components (genetic, shared environmental, individual-specific) in 767 adult volunteer families by using a variety of approaches to adjusting blood pressure of the 244 subjects (8.2%) receiving antihypertensive medications. The additive genetic component of variance for systolic pressure was 73.9 mm Hg2 (SE, 8.8) when measured pressures (adjusted for age by gender within each generation) were used but fell to 61.4 mm Hg2 (SE, 8.0) when treated subjects were excluded. When the relevant 95th percentile values were substituted for treated systolic pressures, the additive genetic component was 81.9 mm Hg2 (SE, 9.5), but individual adjustments in systolic pressure ranged from −53.5 mm Hg to +64.5 mm Hg (mean, +17.2 mm Hg). Instead, when 10 mm Hg was added to treated systolic pressure, the additive genetic component rose to 86.6 mm Hg2 (SE, 10.1). Similar changes were seen in the shared environment component of variance for systolic pressure and for the combined genetic and shared environmental (ie, familial) components of diastolic pressure. There was little change in the individual-specific variance component across any of the methods. Therefore, treated subjects contribute important information to the familial components of blood pressure variance. This information is lost if treated subjects are excluded and obscured by treatment effects if unadjusted measured pressures are used. Adding back an appropriate increment of pressure restores familial components, more closely reflects the pretreatment values, and should increase the power of genomic linkage and linkage disequilibrium analyses.
Proteomic Analysis of Interactions between a Deep-Sea Thermophilic Bacteriophage and Its Host at High Temperature

ABSTRACT The virus-host interaction is essential to understanding the role that viruses play in ecological and geochemical processes in deep-sea vent ecosystems. Virus-induced changes in cellular gene expression and host physiology have been studied extensively. However, the molecular mechanism of interaction between a bacteriophage and its host at high temperature remains poorly understood. In the present study, the virus-induced gene expression profile of Geobacillus sp. E263, a thermophile isolated from a deep-sea hydrothermal ecosystem, was characterized. Based on proteomic analysis and random arbitrarily primed PCR (RAP-PCR) of Geobacillus sp. E263 cultured under non-bacteriophage GVE2 infection and GVE2 infection conditions, there were two types of protein/gene profiles in response to GVE2 infection. Twenty differentially expressed genes and proteins were revealed that could be grouped into 3 different categories based on cellular function, suggesting a coordinated response to infection. These differentially expressed genes and proteins were further confirmed by Northern blot analysis. To characterize the host proteins in response to virus infection, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) was inactivated to construct the AST mutant of Geobacillus sp. E263. The results showed that the AST protein was essential in virus infection. Thus, transcriptional and proteomic analyses and functional analysis revealed previously unknown host responses to deep-sea thermophilic virus infection.
Service Priority based Reliable Routing Path Select Method in Smart Grid Communication Network

The new challenges and schemes for the Smart Grid require high reliable transmission technologies to support various types of electrical services and applications. This paper concentrates the degree of importance of services and tries to allocate more important service to more reliable network routing path to deliver the key instructions in the Smart Grid communication networks. Pareto probability distribution is used to weight the reliability of IP-based router path. In order to definition the relationship of service and reliability of router path, we devise a mapping and optimal function is presented to access. An optimal method is used for adapting to find the appropriate value to match the objective function. Finally, we validate the proposed algorithms by experiments. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the random routing algorithms.
Dynamics of Portal Email Switching: Attractive Alternatives and Switching Costs

Internet portals have been using the email service to attract new members and to retain existing customers. This research aims to enhance the understanding of mechanisms associated to users' intention for email switching (IES). We have employed customer's satisfaction on email service, attractive alternatives, and switching cost to explain the dynamics of IES. Customer's satisfaction is measured in terms of storage capacity, spam blocking, interface design, and system stability variables. Setup cost and continuity cost are chosen as switching costs. By conducting a survey with 1,408 responses, we have found the vital importance of user satisfaction for service continuation. Variables of attractive alternatives and continuity cost demonstrated its strong association with IES. We have also found that attractive alternatives moderates the relationship of customers’ satisfaction and IES, but the moderating effects of switching cost are weak. Our investigation indicates that the findings of extant studies on the dynamics of service switching or re-purchase mostly apply to the email service as well.
Web-Based Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Two Novel Loci and a Substantial Genetic Component for Parkinson's Disease

Although the causes of Parkinson's disease (PD) are thought to be primarily environmental, recent studies suggest that a number of genes influence susceptibility. Using targeted case recruitment and online survey instruments, we conducted the largest case-control genome-wide association study (GWAS) of PD based on a single collection of individuals to date (3,426 cases and 29,624 controls). We discovered two novel, genome-wide significant associations with PD–rs6812193 near SCARB2 (, ) and rs11868035 near SREBF1/RAI1 (, )—both replicated in an independent cohort. We also replicated 20 previously discovered genetic associations (including LRRK2, GBA, SNCA, MAPT, GAK, and the HLA region), providing support for our novel study design. Relying on a recently proposed method based on genome-wide sharing estimates between distantly related individuals, we estimated the heritability of PD to be at least 0.27. Finally, using sparse regression techniques, we constructed predictive models that account for 6%–7% of the total variance in liability and that suggest the presence of true associations just beyond genome-wide significance, as confirmed through both internal and external cross-validation. These results indicate a substantial, but by no means total, contribution of genetics underlying susceptibility to both early-onset and late-onset PD, suggesting that, despite the novel associations discovered here and elsewhere, the majority of the genetic component for Parkinson's disease remains to be discovered.
A tale of two lakes: Fish introduction and the biodiversity of upland Amazonian lakes

Astyanax bimaculatus was artificially introduced in Violao lake, an upland Amazonian lake located on Serra dos Carajas/Brazil. This fish became abundant there, but is absent across nearby fishless lakes with similar characteristics, as is the case of Amendoim lake. This study aimed to test predictions of food-web theory regarding effects of a top predator fish introduction in these systems. Data series of biotic variables sampled on both Violao and Amendoin lakes from 2010 to 2013 were used. Lakes were very distinct regarding the structure and composition of macroinvertebrates, with communities being richer and more abundant in Amendoim lake. A difference on zooplankton composition was detected but no consistent effects were observed regarding zooplankton structure. Phytoplankton in Violao lake presented higher richness and chlorophyll-a biomass. Differences found at ecosystem-scale for macroinvertebrates community suggests descendent effects of A. bimaculatus translocation are more consistent in benthic-littoral communities than on planktonic communities. Results also indicates that A. bimaculatus has potential to couple pelagic and littoral habitat trough nutrient recycling. Our results showed differences between lakes are within the description of omnivorous fish effects on aquatic systems and thus, considering the effects of fish translocation in such aquatic ecosystems is pivotal for preserving local biodiversity.
MIMO interference channel with confidential messages: Game theoretic beamforming designs

We study the achievable rate regions of the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel with confidential messages sent to two receivers. Under this model, each receiver is an eavesdropper for the other link and tries to decode both its own message and the message intended for the other receiver. We describe several transmission schemes for Gaussian interference channels and derive their achievable secrecy rate regions under the assumption that the transmitters use low complexity beamforming algorithms. We also consider the trade-offs associated with their need for channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). We approach the above topics from a game-theoretic perspective.
Mechanistic consequences of temperature on DNA polymerization catalyzed by a Y-family DNA polymerase

Our previous publication shows that Sulfolobus solfataricus Dpo4 utilizes an ‘induced-fit’ mechanism to select correct incoming nucleotides at 37°C. Here, we provide a comprehensive report elucidating the kinetic mechanism of a DNA polymerase at a reaction temperature higher than 37°C in an attempt to determine the effect of temperature on enzyme fidelity and mechanism. The fidelity of Dpo4 did not change considerably with a 30°C increase in reaction temperature, suggesting that the fidelity of Dpo4 at 80°C is similar to that determined here at 56°C. Amazingly, the incorporation rate for correct nucleotides increased by 18 900-fold from 2°C to 56°C, similar in magnitude to that observed for incorrect nucleotides, thus not perturbing fidelity. Three independent lines of kinetic evidence indicate that a protein conformational change limits correct nucleotide incorporations at 56°C. Furthermore, the activation energy for the incorporation of a correct nucleotide was determined to be 32.9 kcal/mol, a value considerably larger than those values estimated for a rate-limiting chemistry step, providing a fourth line of evidence to further substantiate this conclusion. These results herein provide evidence that Dpo4 utilizes the ‘induced-fit’ mechanism to select a correct nucleotide at all temperatures.
Retinal Vein Occlusion as the Surrogate Marker for Premature Brain Aging in Young Patients.

Purpose We investigated cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) in patients with incidental retinal vein occlusion (RVO). Methods This retrospective, case-control, observational trial included 125 patients with RVO who underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and 1105 age-matched controls who underwent comprehensive medical interviews and MRI. Underlying cardiovascular diseases and MRI findings were investigated in the patients with RVO according to age (<60 or ≥60 years) and RVO occlusion level (central or branch). The characteristics of underlying cardiovascular disease and MRI findings were compared between the younger patients with RVO and age-matched controls. The cerebrovascular burden also was assessed in the younger patients with RVO. Results The mean age of the patients with RVO was 63.9 ± 12.1 years and the predominant underlying disease was hypertension (72/125, 58%). The older RVO group had a longer history of hypertension and less smoking history. The prevalence of cerebral SVD in the RVO group was 54% (68/125), and was significantly higher in older than in younger patients with RVO (62% [53/86] vs. 38% [15/39], P = 0.016). However, the latter had a significantly higher prevalence of cerebral SVD than their age-matched controls (38% [15/39] vs. 4% [47/1105], P < 0.001). There was no difference in prevalence of cerebral SVD between the central and branch RVO groups (P = 0.478). Conclusions Cerebral SVD presented frequently in patients with RVO and was magnified in young patients, suggesting that RVO is a surrogate marker for cerebral SVD.
APETx1 from Sea Anemone Anthopleura elegantissima Is a Gating Modifier Peptide Toxin of the Human Ether-a-go-go- Related Potassium Channel

We studied the mechanism of action and the binding site of APETx1, a peptide toxin purified from sea anemone, on the human ether-a-go-go-related gene (hERG) channel. Similar to the effects of gating modifier toxins (hanatoxin and SGTx) on the voltage-gated potassium (Kv) 2.1 channel, APETx1 shifts the voltage-dependence of hERG activation in the positive direction and suppresses its current amplitudes elicited by strong depolarizing pulses that maximally activate the channels. The APETx1 binding site is distinctly different from that of a pore-blocking peptide toxin, BeKm-1. Mutations in the S3b region of hERG have dramatic impact on the responsiveness to APETx1: G514C potentiates whereas E518C abolishes the APETx1 effect. Restoring the negative charge at position 518 (methanethiosulfonate ethylsulfonate modification of 518C) partially restores APETx1 responsiveness, supporting an electrostatic interaction between E518 and APETx1. Among the three hERG isoforms, hERG1 and hERG3 are equally responsive to APETx1, whereas hERG2 is insensitive. The key feature seems to be an arginine residue uniquely present at the 514-equivalent position in hERG2, where the other two isoforms possess a glycine. Our data show that APETx1 is a gating modifier toxin of the hERG channel, and its binding site shares characteristics with those of gating modifier toxin binding sites on other Kv channels.