Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Circus Movement in Rabbit Atrial Muscle as a Mechanism of Tachycardia

The isolated left atrium of the rabbit, which showed no spontaneous activity, was electrically driven for 20 beats with a cycle length of 500 msec. Tachycardia could be repeatedly initiated by the application of a single adequately timed stimulus shortly after the refractory period of the last basic beat. After the termination of the tachycardia, either spontaneously or artificially by a properly timed stimulus, this procedure was repeated. The number of beats of these tachycardias varied from just one (coupled extrasystole) to many hundreds. Surface electrograms were recorded at about 300 different sites. From the moments of activation of these sites, the spread of activation during regular driving and during the premature beat and the subsequent tachycardia could be determined. In contrast to the radial spread of the activation during basic rhythm, the impulse of the premature beat was propagated in a circular pathway. This circus movement was maintained during tachycardia. These results show that even in a small area of atrial muscle containing no anatomical obstacle the impulse can be entrapped in a circus movement. This circus movement was the underlying mechanism of the arrhythmia.
Maternal depression and comorbidity: predicting early parenting, attachment security, and toddler social-emotional problems and competencies.

OBJECTIVE To examine relations between maternal depression (in pure and comorbid forms) and mother-infant interactions, infant attachment, and toddler social-emotional problems and competencies. A second objective was to explore sex differences. METHOD Sixty-nine mother-infant dyads were followed from pregnancy to 30 months postpartum. Depression was measured at multiple times with self-report and interview assessments. Play was assessed at 4 months and attachment status at 14 months postpartum. At 30 months, mothers completed the Child Behavior Checklist and Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment. RESULTS Lifetime maternal depression predicted less optimal mother-infant interactions and insecure infant attachment. However, this "depression effect" was accounted for by mothers with comorbid diagnoses, who had less optimal interactions, and infants with higher rates of insecurity than either mothers with depression only or mothers with no psychopathology. Prenatal and postpartum depressive symptoms were associated with problem behaviors and lower competencies for boys. In contrast, quality of early interactions predicted problem behaviors in girls. CONCLUSIONS It is important to examine the context of maternal depression with respect to additional psychopathology and environmental risks. Maternal depression in the presence of other psychopathology confers risk to the mother-child dyad. Consistent with previous work, risk pathways appear to differ for boys and girls. Early identification and prevention efforts are warranted.
A versatile method to produce antibodies to human T cell receptor Vβ segments: frequency determination of human Vβ2+ T cells that react with toxic‐shock syndrome toxin‐1

Human Vβ (hVβ) regions have been expressed in the context of mouse T cell receptor (TcR)‐CD3 complexes, and subsequently used to raise hVβ‐specific monoclonal antibodies (mAb). The method of expression of hVβ outlined in this report contrasts in its versatility with the one reported by Choi et al. (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 1991. 88: 8357). For instance, we have applied it successfully to the construction of mouse T cell transfectants expressing hVβ1, hVβ2, hVβ3, hVβ8, hVβ9, hVβ13. 5, hVβ19, hVβ21, and hVβ22 gene segments. mAb against the hVβ2 and hVβ19 regions have been raised by using these transfectants as immunogens in mice. Here, we illustrate the application of the anti‐hVβ mAb to the measurement of human T cells that react with the staphylococcal toxic‐shock syndrome toxin‐1.
Impact of a Family Empowerment Intervention on Youth Recidivism

Abstract We report the results of an expanded analysis of the impact of a Family Empowerment Intervention on twelve months recidivism among youths processed at the Hillsborough County Juvenile Assessment Center. Continuing, promising results were obtained. In particular, youths receiving Family Empowerment Intervention services had a reduced rate of subsequent arrests for property felonies and a new arrest in one or more of seven specific offense categories.
Ieee Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Reactive Control of Zoom While Fixating Using Perspective and Affine Cameras

— This paper describes reactive visual methods of controlling the zoom setting of the lens of an active camera while fixating upon an object. The first method assumes a perspective projection and adjusts zoom to preserve the ratio of focal length to scene depth. The active camera is constrained to rotate, permitting self-calibration from the image motion of points on the static background. A planar structure from motion algorithm is used to recover the depth of the foreground. The foreground-background segmentation exploits the properties of the two different inter-image homographies which are observed. The fixation point is updated by transfer via the observed planar structure. The planar method is shown to work on real imagery, but results from simulated data suggest that its extension to general 3D structure is problematical under realistic viewing and noise regimes. The second method assumes an affine projection. It requires no self-calibration and the zooming camera may move generally. Fixation is again updated using transfer, but now via the affine structure recovered by factorization. Analysis of the projection matrices allows the relative scale of the affine bases in different views to be found in a number of ways and hence controlled to unity. The various ways are compared, and the best used on real imagery captured from an active camera fitted with controllable zoom lens in both look-move and continuous operation.
Activity of α‐Secretase as the Common Final Effector of Protein Kinase C‐Dependent and ‐Independent Modulation of Amyloid Precursor Protein Metabolism

Abstract: The metabolic fate of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) is one of the key factors in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). A complex cellular mechanism regulates the rate at which the precursor is cleaved by α‐secretase and released as soluble protein in the extracellular space. We show here that α‐secretase constitutes the common final effector of several independent means of stimulation of soluble APP (sAPP) release. The release of sAPP by α‐secretase resembles that of several other membrane‐bound proteins with soluble counter‐parts, a process that is sensitive to matrix metalloprotease inhibitors. The hydroxamic acid‐based compound KD‐IX‐73‐4 inhibits phorbol ester‐mediated sAPP release from COS cells with an IC50 of 8 μM, consistent with previous data for the same compound against leukocyte L‐selectin shedding. Beyond direct protein kinase C (PKC) activation we show that KD‐IX‐73‐4 inhibits also receptor‐mediated sAPP release induced by carbachol in SH‐SY5Y cells and by bradykinin in human skin fibroblasts, with the latter being a PKC‐independent mechanism. Altogether these data suggest that all pharmacological means of stimulating sAPP release converge to a hydroxamic acid‐based inhibitor‐sensitive proteolytic enzyme. Moreover, because KD‐IX‐73‐4 was effective in the inhibition of stimulated but not constitutive sAPP release, these data suggest the existence of different enzymes regulating the two metabolic pathways leading to sAPP secretion.
Construction and Transposon Mutagenesis inEscherichia coli of a Full-Length Infectious Clone of Pseudorabies Virus, an Alphaherpesvirus

ABSTRACT A full-length clone of the 142-kb pseudorabies virus (PRV) genome was constructed as a stable F plasmid in Escherichia coli. The clone, pBecker1, was colinear with PRV-Becker genomic DNA, lacking detectable rearrangements, deletions, or inversions. The transfection of pBecker1 into susceptible eukaryotic cells resulted in productive viral infection. Virus isolated following transfection was indistinguishable from wild-type virus in a rodent model of infection and spread to retinorecipient regions of the brain following inoculation in the vitreous body of the eye. Mutagenesis of pBecker1 inE. coli with a mini-Tn5-derived transposon enabled the rapid isolation of insertion mutants, identification of essential viral genes, and simplified construction of viral revertants. The serial passage of a viral insertion mutant demonstrated the transposon insertion to be stable. However, the F-plasmid insertion present in the viral gG locus was found to undergo a spontaneous deletion following transfection into eukaryotic cells. The implications of F-plasmid insertion into the viral genome with regard to phenotype and genomic stability are discussed.
Optical feedback stabilization of the intensity oscillations in ultrahigh-frequency passively modelocked monolithic quantum-well lasers

The effect of optical feedback on the stability of the modelocking frequency of monolithic, passively modelocked semiconductor lasers at approximately 50 GHz is investigated. Optical feedback leads to linewidth narrowing, frequency pulling, and multiple modes of the intensity modulations in modelocked lasers, reminiscent of similar effects on the optical frequency in conventional continuous wave (CW) lasers. The narrowest observed line has a full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) of 56 kHz, which represents close to two orders of magnitude reduction of the linewidth compared to the situation without feedback. The effects of the optical feedback vary periodically as the length of the feedback delay is varied, with a periodicity that roughly matches the mode-locking wavelength. This wavelength is on the order of millimeters, which makes the mechanical stability of the optical feedback loop relatively uncritical. <<ETX>>
Systems Approaches Evaluating the Perturbation of Xenobiotic Metabolism in Response to Cigarette Smoke Exposure in Nasal and Bronchial Tissues

Capturing the effects of exposure in a specific target organ is a major challenge in risk assessment. Exposure to cigarette smoke (CS) implicates the field of tissue injury in the lung as well as nasal and airway epithelia. Xenobiotic metabolism in particular becomes an attractive tool for chemical risk assessment because of its responsiveness against toxic compounds, including those present in CS. This study describes an efficient integration from transcriptomic data to quantitative measures, which reflect the responses against xenobiotics that are captured in a biological network model. We show here that our novel systems approach can quantify the perturbation in the network model of xenobiotic metabolism. We further show that this approach efficiently compares the perturbation upon CS exposure in bronchial and nasal epithelial cells in vivo samples obtained from smokers. Our observation suggests the xenobiotic responses in the bronchial and nasal epithelial cells of smokers were similar to those observed in their respective organotypic models exposed to CS. Furthermore, the results suggest that nasal tissue is a reliable surrogate to measure xenobiotic responses in bronchial tissue.
Practical coinduction

Induction is a well-established proof principle that is taught in most undergraduate programs in mathematics and computer science. In computer science, it is used primarily to reason about inductively defined datatypes such as finite lists, finite trees and the natural numbers. Coinduction is the dual principle that can be used to reason about coinductive datatypes such as infinite streams or trees, but it is not as widespread or as well understood. In this paper, we illustrate through several examples the use of coinduction in informal mathematical arguments. Our aim is to promote the principle as a useful tool for the working mathematician and to bring it to a level of familiarity on par with induction. We show that coinduction is not only about bisimilarity and equality of behaviors, but also applicable to a variety of functions and relations defined on coinductive datatypes.
Hop-Count Filtering : A Defense Against Spoofed IP Traffic

IP spoofing has often been exploited by Distributed Denial o f Service (DDoS) attacks to (1) conceal flooding sources and di lute localities in flooding traffic, and (2) coax legitimate hosts into becomingreflectors, redirecting and amplifying flooding traffic. Thus, the ability to filter spoofed IP packets near victim servers is essential to their own prot ection and prevention of becoming involuntary DoS reflectors. Although anattacker can forge any field in the IP header, he cannot falsify the number of hops an IP packet takes to reach its destination. More importantly, since the hopcount values are diverse, an attacker cannot randomlyspoof IP addresses while maintaining consistent hop-counts. On the other hand , an Internet server can easily infer the hop-count information from the Time-to-Live (TTL) field of the IP header. Using a mapping between IP addreses and their hop-counts, the server can distinguish spoofed IP pac kets from legitimate ones. Based on this observation, we present a novel filt ering technique, called Hop-Count Filtering(HCF)—which builds an accurate IP-tohop-count (IP2HC) mapping table—to detect and discard spoo fed IP packets. HCF is easy to deploy, as it does not require any support f rom the underlying network. Through analysis using network measur ement data, we show that HCF can identify close to 90% of spoofed IP packet s, and then discard them with little collateral damage. We implement and evaluate HCF in the Linux kernel, demonstrating its effectiveness wi th experimental measurements.
Group Psychotherapy of Dysfunctional Fear of Progression in Patients with Chronic Arthritis or Cancer

Background: This study investigated the effectiveness of brief psychotherapeutic group interventions in reducing dysfunctional fear of disease progression (FoP). The interventions comprised either cognitive-behavioral group therapy or supportive-experiential group therapy. We tested whether these generic interventions would prove effective in different illness types. Methods: Chronic arthritis in- patients (n = 174) and cancer in-patients (n = 174), respectively, were randomized to receive one of the two interventions. The patients provided data before intervention, at discharge, and at 3 and 12 months of follow-up. FoP was the primary outcome, secondary outcomes were anxiety, depression and quality of life. A treatment-as-usual control group provided data on the primary outcome. Results: Patients with chronic arthritis indicated higher levels of FoP than cancer patients. The results revealed that, compared with no specialized intervention, both group therapies were effective in reducing dysfunctional FoP, but only among cancer patients. The effect sizes were 0.54 (cognitive-behavioral therapy) and 0.50 (supportive experiential therapy). The interventions were not differently effective in reducing the secondary outcomes. Conclusions: Dysfunctional FoP can be effectively targeted with brief group interventions. Psychotherapeutic interventions for reducing FoP should focus on specific illness characteristics.
Toward an African Moral Theory

IN the literature on African ethics, one finds relatively little that consists of normative theorization with regard to right action, that is, the articulation and justification of a comprehensive, basic norm that is intended to account for what all permissible acts have in common as distinct from impermissible ones. By “African ethics” I mean values associated with the largely black and Bantu-speaking peoples residing in the sub-Saharan part of the continent, thereby excluding Islamic Arabs in North Africa and white Afrikaners in South Africa, among others. The field lacks a well-defended general principle grounding particular duties that is informed by such values and that could be compared to dominant Western theories such as Hobbesian egoism or Kantian respect for persons. In this article, I aim to help develop such a principle. Some have approximated this project on occasion, but no one has made it a primary aim that has been pursued in a systematic, analytic way. Furthermore,
Carboxyethylgermanium sesquioxide (Ge-132) treatment during in vitro culture protects fertilized porcine embryos against oxidative stress induced apoptosis

Compared with the in vivo environment, porcine in vitro embryo-culture systems are suboptimal, as they induce oxidative stress via the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). High ROS levels during early embryonic development cause negative effects, such as apoptosis. In this study, we examined the effects of the antioxidant carboxyethylgermanium sesquioxide (Ge-132) during in vitro culture (IVC) on embryonic development in porcine in vitro fertilization (IVF) embryos. Zygotes were treated with different concentrations of Ge-132 (0, 100, 200 and 400 μg/ml). All of the Ge-132 treatment groups displayed greater total cell numbers after IVC (98.1, 98.5 and 103.4, respectively) compared with the control group (73.9). The 200 μg/ml Ge-132 treatment group exhibited significantly increased intracellular GSH levels compared with the control group, whereas the ROS generation levels decreased in Ge-132 dose-dependent manner (P < 0.05). The mRNA expression levels of the KEAP1 gene and proapoptotic genes BAX and CASPASE3 were lower in the Ge-132 treated blastocysts compared with the control group (P < 0.05). The percentages of apoptotic and necrotic cells in the Ge-132 treated embryos on day 2 (48 h) were significantly lower than the untreated embryos (9.1 vs. 17.1% and 0 vs. 2.7%, respectively). In the day 7 blastocysts, the percentages of apoptotic cells in 200 µg/ml Ge-132 treated group were lower compared to controls (1.6 vs. 2.5%). More KEAP1 protein was found to be localized in cytoplasm of the 200 μg/ml Ge-132 treated blastocysts, whereas KEAP1 protein was predominantly nuclei in the control blastocysts. These results indicate that the developmental competence of embryos cultured under Ge-132 treatment may be associated with KEAP1 signaling cascades involved in oxidative stress and apoptosis during porcine preimplantation embryo development.
Optimal sizing and placement of distributed storage in low voltage networks

This paper proposes a novel algorithm to optimally size and place storage in low voltage (LV) networks based on a linearized multiperiod optimal power flow method which we call forward backward sweep optimal power flow (FBS-OPF). We show that this method has good convergence properties, its solution deviates slightly from the optimum and makes the storage sizing and placement problem tractable for longer investment horizons. We demonstrate the usefulness of our method by assessing the economic viability of distributed and centralized storage in LV grids with a high photovoltaic (PV) penetration. As a main result, we quantify that for the CIGRE LV test grid distributed storage configurations achieve profitability for higher storage costs, since they allow for less PV curtailment due to grid constraints.
Atheists with Disabilities: A Neglected Minority in Religion and Rehabilitation Research

ABSTRACT Despite the recent focus on religion and spirituality in health and rehabilitation, the experiences of committed atheists have largely been neglected. Existing studies documenting the association between spirituality and health outcomes often fail to include a nonreligious comparison group in their study methodologies. In this brief commentary, the author cites the need for more research involving committed nonbelievers, while acknowledging that sampling difficulties may make such research extremely difficult to conduct.
Clinical and neuropsychological comparison of psychotic depression with nonpsychotic depression and schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE This study compared the clinical and neuropsychological characteristics of patients with psychotic depression to those of patients with nonpsychotic depression and patients with schizophrenia. METHOD Two hundred eighteen patients over the age of 45, including 30 who met the DSM-III-R criteria for unipolar major depression with psychotic features, 28 with nonpsychotic unipolar major depression, and 160 with schizophrenia, were examined. Subjects were evaluated on several clinical measures as well as on neuropsychological tests of attention, learning, memory (retention), psychomotor speed, and motor skills. RESULTS The three groups were comparable in age and education. The severity of depressive symptoms in the depressed patients with and without psychosis was similar. The patients with psychotic depression were comparable to those with schizophrenia on the neuropsychological measures; they were more impaired than the patients with nonpsychotic depression on the measures of psychomotor speed, motor skills, attention, and learning. The cognitive deficits seemed to be trait-related. CONCLUSIONS The findings provide additional support for the validity of psychotic depression as a diagnostic category distinct from nonpsychotic depression.
Propionimicrobium gen. nov., a new genus to accommodate Propionibacterium lymphophilum (Torrey 1916) Johnson and Cummins 1972, 1057AL as Propionimicrobium lymphophilum comb. nov.

Based upon significant differences in chemotaxonomic properties, i.e., amino acid composition of peptidoglycan, fatty acids and base composition of DNA, and supported by the phylogenetic position of the 165 rDNA sequence the species Propionibacterium lymphophilum was reclassified as Propionimicrobium lymphophilum comb. nov.
Reducing the Idle Time of ParallelTransportation Applications Technical ReportCSE-96-004

Transportation engineers use traac equilibrium analysis to study traac and road systems; it is also used for planning purposes. This class of applications are generally computationally-intense and requires signiicant storage because of the large networks. Parallel processing provides the memory and computational power needed to solve these problems in a reasonable amount of time. The most computationally-intense component of the equilibrium analysis is the solution of a shortest path problem during each iteration. This paper focuses on reducing the parallel execution time of shortest path problems. In particular, we concentrate on reducing the processor idle time, which was found to be a signiicant component of the parallel execution time for shortest path algorithms used with traac networks. We provide four diierent methods for reducing this time, highlighting and quantifying the advantages and disadvantages of each. The results indicate that for a 9,701 node network solving for 32 sources the adaptive scheme reduces the execution time of the parallel shortest path by as much as 71% as compared to the other non-adaptive implementations. When using these schemes with the traac equilibrium application, a 63% reduction in execution time occurs by using the adaptive implementation.