Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Photoaffinity Labeling of Benzodiazepine Receptors in Rat Brain with Flunitrazepam Alters the Affinity of Benzodiazepine Receptor Agonist But Not Antagonist Binding

Abstract: Recently, it was proposed that β‐carbolines interact with a subset of benzodiazepine (BZD) binding sites in mouse brain. This postulate was based upon evidence showing changes in binding properties of the BZD receptor following photoaffinity labeling of membranes with flunitrazepam (FLU). Under conditions in which 80% of specific [3H]diazepam binding was lost in photolabeled membranes, specific [3H]propyl β‐carboline‐3‐carboxylate ([3H]PCC) binding was spared. In this study, the binding of the BZD antagonists [3H]PCC, [3H]Ro15 1788 and [3H]CGS 8216 was examined in rat brain membranes following photoaffinity labeling with FLU. No significant changes in the apparent KD and small reductions in the Bmax of 3H antagonist binding were observed. However, in the same membranes, up to 89% of specific [3H]FLU binding was lost. When [3H]PCC (0.05 nM) was used to label the receptors in control and photolabeled membranes, the ability of BZD receptor agonists to inhibit [3H]PCC binding was greatly diminished in the photolabeled membranes. In contrast, the potency of BZD antagonists remained the same in both control and treated membranes. Based upon PCC/[3H]Ro15 1788 competition experiments, the ability of PCC to discriminate between BZD receptor subtypes was unaffected by photoaffinity labeling of cortical membranes. Overall, these findings suggest that β‐carbolines do not interact with a subset of BZD binding sites per se, but may be a consequence of the differential interaction of BZD agonists and antagonists with BZD binding sites that have been photoaffinity labeled with FLU. A possible mechanism underlying this phenomenon is discussed. The ability of photolabeled membranes to differentiate between BZD agonists and antagonists provides a potential screen for agonist and antagonist activity in compounds that interact with the BZD receptor.
Structural characterization and anti‐angiogenic properties of prostate‐specific antigen isoforms in seminal fluid

The prostate produces high levels of prostate‐specific antigen (PSA), which has been shown to exert anti‐angiogenic properties and thus might slow down prostate tumor growth. It has been suggested that the protease activity of PSA is not needed for its anti‐angiogenic function. We have previously shown that seminal fluid contains both active and inactive, internally cleaved forms of PSA. The precise structural differences between these isoforms and their function are not known.
Panniculitis is a common unrecognized histopathological feature of cutaneous leishmaniasis

Background: Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is a parasitic cutaneous infection caused by Leishmania parasite. The histopathology is usually granulomatous in nature. Aims: The aim of the present study is to elucidate the histology of CL and evaluate the presence and the frequency of panniculitis among the affected patients. Settings and Design: Case series interventional study. Materials and Methods: Thirty-five patients with CL were diagnosed clinically between December-2012 and May-2013. Diagnostic confirmation established by smears, culture, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The histopathological assessment was carried out to study the general pathology and to look for the presence of panniculitis. Statistical Analysis Used: Simple statistics utilized via SPSS version 16.0 (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, USA). Results: Eighteen women and 17 men with CL were enrolled in the present work with a mean duration of their disease was 3 months. The results of the diagnostic tests were as follow: The smear was positive in 21 (60%) of cases, Leishman-Donovan (LD) bodies were seen in 7 (20%) patients, culture was positive in 24 (68%), and PCR was positive in 32 (91.4%) patients. The epidermal changes included acanthosis, pseudoepitheliomatous hyperplasia, ulceration, focal spongiosis, and interface dermatitis while the dermal changes were dependent on the spectrum of the disease, so in the ulcerative lesions there was lymphohistiocytic infiltration with foci of plasma cells and sometimes aggregate of LD bodies, whereas in the dry lesions the pathology is mainly of epithelioid granuloma. Panniculitis was seen in 16 (46%) cases as a diffuse lymphohistiocytic infiltration of both the septum and lobules of the subcutaneous layer of the skin. Conclusion: Panniculitis is an important feature of CL that must be differentiated from other diseases that can simulate CL such as chronic skin infections, Discoid lupus erythematosus, and cutaneous lymphoma.
Duloxetine in the management of elderly patients with major depressive disorder: an analysis of published data.

BACKGROUND Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common condition in the elderly that is frequently associated with disability and cognitive impairment. Duloxetine is an antidepressant medication that inhibits both 5-HT and NE reuptake. OBJECTIVE The objective of this review is to summarize the available know-how on the use of duloxetine in elderly population. METHODS An extensive literature search was performed in Medline and Embase. Peer-reviewed articles only were included in this review. RESULTS A total of four articles meeting search criteria were identified in the Medline and Embase databases. In the short-term controlled studies, treatment with duloxetine was associated with significantly greater improvement in cognitive function, depression and health state compared with placebo, as well as in rate of patients achieving response or remission. Overall pain and back pain also improved in patients receiving duloxetine. The long-term open-label data showed that the significant improvements of HAM-D-17 score and of both clinician-(CGI-S) and patient-(PGI-I) rated health state were rapid and sustained up to week 52. Observed case response and remission rates at end point were 89.4% and 72.3% respectively. Duloxetine was effective in patients who did not respond or tolerate previous treatment with escitalopram. Nausea and dry mouth were the most common events. The safety results in the long-term study, in which duloxetine was given at the upper dose limit, showed that most events occurred early in the study and that rates of events in patients aged >or= 65 years were not greater than those in the younger cohort. CONCLUSIONS Duloxetine given in elderly patients with MDD provides rapid and sustained antidepressant efficacy and seems to be as safe as in younger patients.
Use-dependent alterations of movement representations in primary motor cortex of adult squirrel monkeys

This study was undertaken to document plastic changes in the functional topography of primary motor cortex (M1) that are generated in motor skill learning in the normal, intact primate. Intracortical microstimulation mapping techniques were used to derive detailed maps of the representation of movements in the distal forelimb zone of M1 of squirrel monkeys, before and after behavioral training on two different tasks that differentially encouraged specific sets of forelimb movements. After training on a small-object retrieval task, which required skilled use of the digits, their evoked-movement digit representations expanded, whereas their evoked-movement wrist/forearm representational zones contracted. These changes were progressive and reversible. In a second motor skill exercise, a monkey pronated and supinated the forearm in a key (eyebolt)-turning task. In this case, the representation of the forearm expanded, whereas the digit representational zones contracted. These results show that M1 is alterable by use throughout the life of an animal. These studies also revealed that after digit training there was an areal expansion of dual-response representations, that is, cortical sectors over which stimulation produced movements about two or more joints. Movement combinations that were used more frequently after training were selectively magnified in their cortical representations. This close correspondence between changes in behavioral performance and electrophysiologically defined motor representations indicates that a neurophysiological correlate of a motor skill resides in M1 for at least several days after acquisition. The finding that cocontracting muscles in the behavior come to be represented together in the cortex argues that, as in sensory cortices, temporal correlations drive emergent changes in distributed motor cortex representations.
Deficit irrigation in grapevine improves water‐use efficiency while controlling vigour and production quality

Grapevine irrigation is becoming an important practice to guarantee wine quality or even plant survival in regions affected by seasonal drought. Nevertheless, irri- gation has to be controlled to optimise source to sink balance and avoid excessive vigour. The results we present here in two grapevine varieties (Moscatel and Cas- telao) during 3 years, indicate that we can decrease the amount of water applied by 50% (as in deficit irrigation, DI, and in partial root drying, PRD) in relation to full crop's evapotranspiration (ETc) (full irrigated (FI) vines) with no negative effects on production and even get some gains of quality (in the case of PRD). We report that in non-irrigated and in several cases in PRD vines exhibit higher concentra- tions of berry skin anthocyanins and total phenols than those presented by DI and FI vines. We showed that these effects on quality were mediated by a reduction in vigour, leading to an increase on light interception in the cluster zone. Because plant water status during most of the dates along the season was not significantly different between PRD and DI, and when different, PRD even exhibited a higher leaf water potential than DI vines, we conclude that growth inhibition in PRD was not a result of a hydraulic control. The gain in crop water use in DI and PRD was accompanied by an increase of the d 13 C values in the berries in DI and PRD as compared to FI, suggesting that we can use this methodology to assess the inte- grated water-use efficiency over the growing season.
Learning Low-Rank Document Embeddings with Weighted Nuclear Norm Regularization

Recently, neural embeddings of documents have shown success in various language processing tasks. These lowdimensional and dense feature vectors of text documents capture semantic similarities better than traditional methods. However, the underlying optimization problem is non-convex and usually solved using stochastic gradient descent. Hence solutions are most-likely sub-optimal and not reproducible, as they are the result of a randomized algorithm. We present an alternative formulation for learning lowrank representations based on convex optimization. Instead of explicitly learning low-dimensional features, we compute a lowrank representation implicitly by regularizing full-dimensional solutions. Our approach uses the weighted nuclear norm, a regularizer that penalizes singular values of matrices. We optimize the regularized objective using accelerated proximal gradient descent. We apply the approach to learn embeddings of documents. These embeddings are guaranteed to converge to a global optimum in a deterministic manner. We show that our convex approach outperforms traditional convex approaches in a numerical study. Furthermore we demonstrate that the embeddings are useful for detecting similarities on a standard dataset. Then we apply our approach in an interdisciplinary research project to detect topics in religious online discussions. The topic descriptions obtained from a clustering of embeddings are coherent and insightful. In comparison to existing approaches, they are also reproducible.
Stabilizing the differential protection of transformers supplied with high charging circuit

False trips of the current differential protection of power transformers have become more frequent in Hydro One grid in recent years due to decreasingly low second harmonics in the magnetizing inrush current of power transformers. Protection engineers have made great effort to mitigate these misoperations by applying the cross-blocking scheme, the two-out-of-three logic etc. These schemes have significantly contributed to reducing the number of misoperations of transformer differential protections during magnetizing inrush.
Fatigue Crack Detection via Load-Differential Guided Wave Methods (Preprint)

Abstract : Detection of fatigue cracks originating from fastener holes is an important application for structural health monitoring (SHM) of civil, mechanical and aerospace structures, but their detection via ultrasonic guided waves can be problematic when cracks are tightly closed in the absence of applied tensile loads. Proposed here are load-differential guided wave methods, which compare signals at one load to those at another load at the same damage state. The main advantage of such methods is that cracks can be detected and localized by analyzing current signals obtained from different loading conditions without using baseline data from the damage-free state. The efficacy of the proposed load-differential methods is examined using fatigue test data where multiple cracks grow from a single through-hole. Data were acquired with a spatially distributed array of piezoelectric discs by recording ultrasonic signals as a function of applied uniaxial load at intervals through the fatigue test.
Effects of synbiotics injected in ovo on regulation of immune-related gene expression in adult chickens.

OBJECTIVE To determine immunomodulatory effects of synbiotics administered in ovo on immune-related gene expression in adult chickens. ANIMALS 30 Green-legged Partridgelike chickens. PROCEDURES On incubation day 12, eggs were injected with 3 synbiotics (Lactococcus lactis subsp lactis IBB SL1 with raffinose family oligosaccharides [RFOs; S1], Lactococcus lactis subsp cremoris IBB SC1 with RFOs [S2], and Lactobacillus acidophilus and Streptococcus faecium with lactose [S3]). Control eggs were injected with RFOs prebiotic or saline (0.9% NaCl) solution. Gene expression of 6 cytokines (interleukin [IL]-4, IL-6, IL-12p40, IL-18, interferon [IFN]-β, and IFN-γ) and 1 chemokine (IL-8) was analyzed in the cecal tonsils and spleen of 6-week-old chickens by means of reverse transcription quantitative PCR assays. RESULTS Gene expression for IL-4, IL-6, IFN-β, and IL-18 was significantly upregulated in the spleen of chickens in groups S2 and S3. In contrast, IL-12 expression was downregulated in group S2 and IFN-γ expression was downregulated in group S3. Expression of IL-8 did not change in chickens treated with synbiotics in ovo. Gene expression of all cytokines, except for IL-18, was downregulated in cecal tonsils. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE In ovo administration of synbiotics activated the immune system in adult chickens. The intestinal immune system (cecal tonsils) had downregulation of expression for the cytokines evaluated, which indicated an increase in oral tolerance, whereas in the peripheral part of the immune system (spleen), expression of IL-4 and IL-6 was upregulated. Evaluation of immune-related gene expression patterns may be useful when monitoring the effectiveness of synbiotic selection with respect to immunobiotic properties.
Major depressive disorder with psychosis-like symptoms among Latinos.

OBJECTIVE The lifetime prevalence of psychosis-like symptoms among Latinos living in the United States is 9.5%, and up to 27% of Latinos with major depressive disorder also experience psychosis-like symptoms. Yet clinicians remain uncertain about the nature and clinical implications of these putative psychotic symptoms, and there is no consensus about treatment strategies. The authors conducted a review of the literature to examine the epidemiology, clinical features, and significance of psychosis-like symptoms among Latinos, particularly when such symptoms present with major depressive disorder, and the strategies to treat them. METHODS A search of the National Library of Medicine was conducted for all articles published through February 2011 by using the keywords "Hispanic" and "Latino" with "depression and psychotic," with "idiom of distress," and with "psychotic. " RESULTS A total of 37 articles were reviewed. In clinical settings, the prevalence of psychosis-like symptoms among cross-sections of Latino patients ranged from 22% to 46% and was even higher among Latino veterans. Psychosis-like symptoms were associated with higher medical and psychiatric comorbidity and greater suicidality, functional impairment, and utilization of services. The authors describe the types of psychosis-like symptoms experienced by Latinos and propose criteria for the differential diagnosis of such symptoms and typical psychotic features. CONCLUSIONS Clinicians treating depressed Latinos are often confronted with the clinical dilemma of whether to augment antidepressants with an antipsychotic. The authors argue that atypical psychotic symptoms experienced by Latinos with major depressive disorder are nonpsychotic manifestations and that antipsychotic medication should be delayed unless treatment of depression fails to address the psychosis-like symptoms.
A kampo formula Juzen‐taiho‐to induces expression of metallothioneins in mice

Juzen‐taiho‐to (JTX), one of the commonly prescribed traditional Japanese herbal medicines (Kampo), is indicated for adjunctive treatment of cancers and autoimmune diseases. To understand the mechanisms underlying the clinical effects of JTX, the effects of orally administered JTX on the expression of metallothioneins (MTs) were examined in the liver, spleen, small and large intestines of mice. In addition, the expression of MTs in specific pathogen free (SPF) mice was examined to understand the participation of intestinal bacteria in the expression of MTs. JTX enhanced expression of MT‐I and ‐II significantly in the liver of SPF mice. Induction of MT‐II expression was observed also in the small intestine. Intestinal bacteria appeared to have no effect on MTs expression. Neither expression of MT‐III nor its induction was observed in any tissue. These findings strongly suggest that MTs should mediate at least some effects of JTX in mice. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Truncated edges estimation using MLP neural nets applied to regularized image restoration

This paper describes the implementation of a method for image restoration based on neural nets. The idea is to apply a well-known deterministic regularisation function in an iterative energy minimisation procedure to a multilayer perceptron (MLP). At every iteration, the neural net simulates an approach to both the degradation process, using the aperiodic model (backward), and the restoration process (forward), including the truncation (loss) of the borders and their regeneration (approach) with no a priori knowledge, assumption, or estimation concerning those lost borders. As no net training is required, no images are involved in this non-existent process. Within the strategy of global energy minimisation, the borders are regenerated while adapting the centre of the image to the optimum linear solution. The proposed tests compare the restoration results with those given by the pure aperiodic model (no border truncation) and the circulant model. The restoration error is computed for different concentric areas of the image, showing the adaptation provided by the neural net up to the borders. Moreover, pure aperiodic and circulant models can be obtained as particular implementations of the method proposed in this work.
Occurrences of Leukemia Subtypes by Socioeconomic and Occupational Groups in Sweden

Objective:The objective of this study was to examine the associations between socioeconomic/occupational factors and histologic subtypes of leukemia. Methods:The Swedish Family-Cancer Database was used to calculate standardized incidence ratios for different social classes and occupational groups. Results:The overall standardized incidence ratio was close to unity between different socioeconomic groups, except for female manual workers with a significantly decreased risk. Among male occupations, increased risks were noted for sales agents, seamen, and chemical process workers. For female occupations, increased risks were observed among mechanics, iron and metalware workers, hairdressers, and launderers and dry cleaners. Conclusions:The present study suggests that socioeconomic/occupational factors have a minor effect on the risk of leukemia. Occupational groups with possible exposure to organic solvents and other chemicals such as chemical process workers, mechanics, iron and metalware workers, and launderers and dry cleaners may entail true risk for leukemia.
Variation of Aridity Index and the Role of Climate Variables in the Southwest China

Aridity index (AI), defined as the ratio of annual potential evapotranspiration to annual precipitation, has been widely applied in dividing climate regimes and monitoring drought events. Investigating variation of AI and the role of climate variables are thus of great significant for managing agricultural water resource and maintaining regional ecosystem stability. In this study, with the well-corrected precipitation records and the optimized parameters in estimating solar radiation, we investigated the variation of AI and its climatic attribution in the Southwest China using the observed climate records from 135 meteorological stations during the period of 1993–2015. The results showed that the AI increased significantly (0.0053 year−1, p < 0.05) from 1993 to 2015 and abruptly increasing occurred around 2002. Approximately 85% of stations showed an increasing trend, while 24% of stations reached up to a significant increasing level, which demonstrated that the Southwest China was getting drier for the recent 20 years. Overall, the AI was most sensitive to maximum air temperature and precipitation with values of 1.11 and −1.00, respectively. The following factors are vapor pressure, solar radiation, minimum temperature, and wind speed. The declining precipitation and ascending maximum air temperature were the key variables in dominating the increase in aridity index during the period of 1993–2015, which contribute 38.98% and 36.26% of AI variation, respectively. Our results highlighted the influence of climate variability on aridity in the Southwest China.
Are the fabellae bisected by the femoral cortices in a true craniocaudal pelvic limb radiograph?

OBJECTIVES To assess whether the bisection of the fabellae by their respective femoral cortices is a useful criterion for assessing positioning of craniocaudal pelvic limb radiographs, and whether this is consistent in limbs affected or unaffected by medial patella luxation. METHODS Computed tomography multi-planar reconstructions were used to determine the relative positions of the fabellae with respect to the femoral cortices. RESULTS Only 36% of fabellae overall were bisected by the femoral cortex. There was no significant difference between limbs affected or unaffected by medial patella luxation. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE The accurate measurement of femoral varus angle is important in pre-surgical planning of distal femoral ostectomy. Radiography is normally used to obtain the femoral varus angle, and femoral rotational malpositioning will induce errors in the femoral varus angle measured. Bisection of the fabellae by the femoral cortices is commonly cited as a criterion by which to assess whether a radiographic projection is truly craniocaudal, yet this study has shown this not to be valid.