Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Control of Spiking Activity by Persistent Sodium and Hyperpolarization-activated Currents

The properties of spiking activity such as the spike shape are crucial for normal and homeostatic functioning of a neuron. For example, the spike width determines the calcium influx and correspondingly the intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca]i), which plays key roles in variety of cellular processes from basic neurotransmitter release to gene transcription. Dantrolene, a specific inhibitor of ryanodine channel-mediated calcium release from intracellular calcium stores, inhibits two main ionic currents in B5 neurons of mollusk Helisoma trivolvis, persistent sodium current and hyperpolarization-activated current (h-current). We developed a model of the neuronal activity of B5 neuron and investigated how the parameters of persistent sodium current (INaP) and h-current (IH) affect the spike shape. In the model of B5 neuron, either removal of IH by shifting its voltage of half-activation to more hyperpolarized values or removal of INaP by reducing its maximal conductance decreases the spike width and shifts the minimum after-hyperpolarization potential (mAHP) towards more negative values. We showed in the model that the spike width linearly correlated with calcium influx into the cell. In this model, the spike width is controlled by the inactivation variables of fast sodium, persistent sodium, and calcium currents at the spike threshold. The activation of the h-current governs membrane potential during the inter-spike interval (ISI) and determines the values of these inactivation variables. At mAHP of spike, the activation of the h-current was the only variable that substantially affected the spike width and mAHP. In conclusion, removal of the h-current or the persistent sodium current reproduced the dantrolene effects on spike shape and reduced the calcium influx through membrane calcium channels. The inactivation variables of inward currents, modulated by activation of the h-current, describe the mechanism governing the spike width. INDEX WORDS: action potential, spike width, minimum after-hyperpolarization potential (mAHP), inactivation variable, hyperpolarization-activated current, persistent sodium current, intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca]i). CONTROL OF SPIKING ACTIVITY BY PERSISTENT SODIUM AND HYPERPOLARIZATION-ACTIVATED CURRENTS
Pharmacokinetics and Safety of Bortezomib in Patients with Advanced Malignancies and Varying Degrees of Liver Dysfunction: Phase I NCI Organ Dysfunction Working Group Study NCI-6432

Purpose: The proteasome inhibitor bortezomib undergoes oxidative hepatic metabolism. This study (NCI-6432; NCT00091117) was conducted to evaluate bortezomib pharmacokinetics and safety in patients with varying degrees of hepatic impairment, to inform dosing recommendations in these special populations. Experimental Design: Patients received bortezomib on days 1, 4, 8, and 11 of 21-day cycles. Patients were assigned to four hepatic function groups based on the National Cancer Institute Organ Dysfunction Working Group classification. Those with normal function received bortezomib at the 1.3 mg/m2 standard dose. Patients with severe, moderate, and mild impairment received escalating doses from 0.5, 0.7, and 1.0 mg/m2, respectively, up to a 1.3 mg/m2 maximum. Serial blood samples were collected for 24 hours postdose on days 1 and 8, cycle 1, for bortezomib plasma concentration measurements. Results: Sixty-one patients were treated, including 14 with normal hepatic function and 17, 12, and 18 with mild, moderate, and severe impairment, respectively. Mild hepatic impairment did not alter dose-normalized bortezomib exposure (AUC0-tlast) or Cmax compared with patients with normal function. Mean dose-normalized AUC0-tlast was increased by approximately 60% on day 8 in patients with moderate or severe impairment. Conclusions: Patients with mild hepatic impairment do not require a starting dose adjustment of bortezomib. Patients with moderate or severe hepatic impairment should be started at a reduced dose of 0.7 mg/m2. Clin Cancer Res; 18(10); 2954–63. ©2012 AACR.
Symmetry and Autobisimulation

For event structures as a major branch of concurrent models, no one notices their symmetries. It is very likely that someone thinks that symmetry reduction over an event structure can be replaced by the (largest) autobisimulation reduction. We show that, given an event structure, there are some differences between the symmetric quotient model induced by symmetry reduction and the bisimilar quotient model induced by the (largest) autobisimulation. The former is ( interleaving ) bisimulation equivalent and pomset trace equivalent to the original event structure. However, though the latter is bisimulation equivalent to the original, it and its original event structure are not likely pomset trace equivalent.
Transformation of Paramecium tetraurelia by Electroporation or Particle Bombardment

ABSTRACT Methods for mass transformation of Paramecium tetraurelia were established using plasmids bearing neomycin‐resistance or calmodulin gene fragments. Phenotypic and molecular analyses showed that, although variable, up to 5% transformation can be achieved by electroporation. Concentrations of divalent cations Ca2‐ and Mg2+ in the electroporation medium were crucial for efficient transformation. Strong neomycin‐resistance transformation using bioballistic particle bombardment with gold particles was observed. For both methods, hybridization to transformant DNA revealed plasmid signals consistent with macronuclear transformation and correlated with transformed phenotypes. Complementation of a known calmodulin gene mutation was also achieved by mass transformation. Possible sources of variation and the general utility of these methods are discussed.
Developing Infrastructure for the Evaluation of Single and Multi-document Summarization Systems in a Cross-lingual Environment

We describe our work on the development of Language and Evaluation Resources for the evaluation of summaries in English and Chinese. The language resources include a parallel corpus of English and Chinese texts which are translations of each other, a set of queries in both languages, clusters of documents relevants to each query, sentence relevance measures for each sentence in the document clusters, and manual multi-document summaries at different compression rates. The evaluation resources consist of metrics for measuring the content of automatic summaries against reference summaries. The framework can be used in the evaluation of extractive, non-extractive, single and multi-document summarization. We focus on the resources developed that are made available for the research community.
Semantic Role Labelling With Chunk Sequences

We describe a statistical approach to semantic role labelling that employs only shallow information. We use a Maximum Entropy learner, augmented by EM-based clustering to model the fit between a verb and its argument candidate. The instances to be classified are sequences of chunks that occur frequently as arguments in the training corpus. Our best model obtains an F score of 51.70 on the test set.
Corporate disclosure of environmental capital expenditures: A test of alternative theories

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine three potential explanations for the corporate choice to disclose environmental capital spending amounts. Design/methodology/approach - Using archival data from a sample of Findings - First, the authors find that, for the overwhelming majority of observations, the disclosed amounts are not quantitatively material. This suggests that non-disclosure is likely due to immateriality. Next, their findings show that disclosing firms do not exhibit improved subsequent environmental performance relative to non-disclosing companies. Further, controlling for firm size and industry class, they find the choice to disclose is associated with worse environmental performance. Research limitations/implications - The sample includes only relatively larger firms from certain industries and this limits the generalizability of the findings. Smaller firms and those from excluded industries may have other reasons to choose to disclose environmental information. Further, the authors rely on TRI data to assess pollution performance, but TRI is self-reported and its reliability is only as good as the inputs. Finally, although environmental capital spending is potentially relevant information, this investigation does not examine other types of environmental information disclosure. Practical implications - This paper provides corroborating evidence that companies use the disclosure of environmental capital spending as a strategic tool to address their exposures to political and regulatory concerns. Hence, interpreting disclosed environmental information would appear to require careful understanding of the underlying motivations. Originality/value - This paper extends the environmental accounting and reporting literature by contributing to the unresolved question of what drives differences in the corporate disclosure of environmental information. The authors add to this body of research by investigating the disclosure of one specific piece of environmental information, the amount of capital expenditures incurred for pollution abatement and control.
Rule Discovery with a Parallel Genetic Algorithm

An important issue in data mining is scalability with respect to the size of the dataset being mined. In the paper we address this issue by presenting a parallel GA for rule discovery. This algorithm exploits both data parallelism, by distributing the data being mined across all available processors, and control parallelism, by distributing the population of individuals across all available processors.
Engineering electronic and plasmonic materials for novel photonic devices

In the last decade well known materials such as metals and silicon have emerged as new materials for photonic applications leading to the growth of two important fields: plasmonics and silicon photonics. This thesis is divided in two parts with part I focusing on plasmonics, and silicon photonics are the target of part II. Novel substrates exploiting plasmonic effects are currently the subject of extensive research in areas such as biological sensing, medicine, optical microscopy and nanophotonics. Here a new class of silver impregnated polycarbonate substrates will be presented. The fabrication process using a supercritical impregnation technique will be described and the substrates morphologically characterised before being tested for Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy and Metal Enhanced Fluorescence. These substrates exhibit an excellent plasmonic response and benefit from being flexible, robust, inexpensive and biocompatible. The demonstrated ability of post processing the nanocomposites provides an additional degree of design control for a wide range of applications. In part II semiconductor modified microstructured optical fibres (MOFs) will be presented. The combination of semiconductor materials within microstructured optical fibres can lead to highly engineerable devices with wide control over both photonic and electronic properties for both linear and non-linear photonic applications. The presented fabrication process consists of a high pressure chemical vapour deposition method which allows for conformal inclusion of materials such as silicon and germanium within the extremely high aspect ratio pores of MOFs. The deposited material is structurally characterised using SEM, TEM and Raman spectroscopy demonstrating good quality amorphous and polycrystalline growth. The project then focuses on investigating the use of these fibres for silicon photonics applications. Loss measurements performed on a range of samples reveal transmission losses potentially compatible with a wide range of non-linear photonic devices
RF plasma sputtering deposition of hydroxyapatite bioceramics : synthesis, performance, and biocompatibility

Hydroxyapatite (HA) coatings have numerous applications in orthopedics and dentistry, owing to their excellent ability to promote stronger implant fixation and faster bone tissue ingrowth and remodeling. Thermal plasma spray and other plasma-assisted techniques have recently been used to synthesize various calcium phosphate-based bioceramics. Despite notable recent achievements in the desired stoichiometry, phase composition, mechanical, structural, and bio-compatible properties, it is rather difficult to combine all of the above features in a single coating. For example, many existing plasma-sprayed HA coatings fall short in meeting the requirements of grain size and crystallinity, and as such are subject to enhanced resorption in body fluid. On the other hand, relatively poor interfacial bonding and stability is an obstacle to the application of the HA coatings in high load bearing Ti6Al4V knee joint implants. Here, we report on an alternative: a plasma-assisted, concurrent, sputtering deposition technique for high performance biocompatible HA coatings on Ti6Al4V implant alloy. The plasma-assisted RF magnetron co-sputtering deposition method allows one to simultaneously achieve most of the desired attributes of the biomimetic material and overcome the aforementioned problems. This article details the film synthesis process specifications, extensive analytical characterization of the material's properties, mechanical testing, simulated body fluid assessments, biocompatibility and cytocompatibility of the HA-coated Ti6Al4V orthopedic alloy. The means of optimization of the plasma and deposition process parameters to achieve the desired attributes and performance of the HA coating, as well as future challenges in clinical applications are also discussed.
Failure of superplastic alloys

AbstractAlthough the subject of superplasticity has been extensively reviewed in recent years, one aspect – that of failure in tension – has received less attention than it deserves. In this assessment the factors influencing strain to failure in superplasticity are described, the current literature is reviewed, and directions for future research are suggested. Emphasis is placed on the dominating influence of cavitation damage in many superplastic materials – a feature which is attracting increasing interest because of its influence on the service behaviour of fabricated components.
Identification of a Human Enterocyte Lipoxin A4 Receptor That Is Regulated by Interleukin (IL)-13 and Interferon γ and Inhibits Tumor Necrosis Factor α–induced IL-8 Release

Epithelial cells of the alimentary tract play a central role in mucosal immunophysiology. Pathogens and/or agonists that interact with mucosal surfaces often elicit epithelial responses that upregulate inflammation. Therefore, it was of interest to explore potential epithelial targeted antiinflammatory signals. Here we identified and sequenced a human enterocyte lipoxin (LX) A4 [5(S),6(R),15(S)-trihydroxy-7,9,13-trans-11-cis eicosatetraenoic acid] receptor, and demonstrate that transcription of this receptor was controlled by cytokines, of which lymphocyte-derived interleukin (IL)-13 and interferon γ were the most potent. When lipoxins and LXA4 stable analogs were evaluated for enterocyte functional as well as immune responses, lipoxins sharply inhibited TNF-α–induced IL-8 release but did not alter either barrier function or agonist-stimulated chloride secretion. 15R/S-methyl-LXA4 and 16-phenoxy-LXA4 each attenuated (IC50 ∼10 nM) IL-8 release. Cyclooxygenase (COX) II is emerging as an important component in wound healing and proliferation in intestinal epithelia and when acetylated by acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) initiates the biosynthesis of a LXA4 receptor ligand. We therefore determined whether colonic cell lines (HT-29 Cl.19A, Caco-2, or T84) express the COX II isozyme. Results for RT-PCR and Western blot analysis showed that COX I as well as an IL-1β– and TNF-α–inducible COX II are expressed in HT-29 Cl.19A. In addition, aspirin-treated enterocytes generated 15R-HETE, a precursor of 15-epi-LXA4 biosynthesis, whose potent bioactions were mimicked by the stable analog 15R/S-methyl-LXA4. Taken together, these results identify an endogenous pathway for downregulating mucosal inflammatory events and suggest a potential therapeutic benefit for LXA4 stable analogs.
Characterization of attenuated coxsackievirus B3 strains and prospects of their application as live-attenuated vaccines

Coxsackievirus strain CVB3 is widespread in the human population and causes myocarditis or pancreatitis. However, despite its clinical impact, there is no commercially available and clinically applicable prophylactic vaccine. This study examines the characteristics of attenuated CVB3 strains developed so far and their application as live-attenuated CVB3 vaccines, and discusses problems to be overcome in the development of live-attenuated vaccines.
S-RNase disrupts tip-localized reactive oxygen species and induces nuclear DNA degradation in incompatible pollen tubes of Pyrus pyrifolia

Pear (Pyrus pyrifolia L.) has an S-RNase-based gametophytic self-incompatibility (SI) mechanism, and S-RNase has also been implicated in the rejection of self-pollen and genetically identical pollen. However, RNA degradation might be only the beginning of the SI response, not the end. Recent in vitro studies suggest that S-RNase triggers mitochondrial alteration and DNA degradation in the incompatible pollen tube of Pyrus pyrifolia, and it seems that a relationship exists between self S-RNase, actin depolymerization and DNA degradation. To further uncover the SI response in pear, the relationship between self S-RNase and tip-localized reactive oxygen species (ROS) was evaluated. Our results show that S-RNase specifically disrupted tip-localized ROS of incompatible pollen tubes via arrest of ROS formation in mitochondria and cell walls. The mitochondrial ROS disruption was related to mitochondrial alteration, whereas cell wall ROS disruption was related to a decrease in NADPH. Tip-localized ROS disruption not only decreased the Ca2+ current and depolymerized the actin cytoskeleton, but it also induced nuclear DNA degradation. These results indicate that tip-localized ROS disruption occurs in Pyrus pyrifolia SI. Importantly, we demonstrated nuclear DNA degradation in the incompatible pollen tube after pollination in vivo. This result validates our in vitro system in vivo.
Analytical modeling of current in graphene nanoribbon field effect transistors

In this paper, double gate graphene nanoribbon (GNR) field effect transistor (FET) is presented. To get a better understanding of such transistors, an analytical modeling for channel current is achieved. To obtain such analytical modeling, an exponential equation for potential distribution within the GNR is presented through the use of a good approximation. Then an analytical formula for transmission probability is achieved which is a function of physical and electrical parameters. By applying Landauer formula along with ballistic transport, the drain current as a function of device parameters is revealed. The presented analytical investigation can be applied to design and optimize the GNR FETs for nanoelectronic applications.
Nutritional content of school meals in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire: a comparison of two schools.

BACKGROUND In April 2004 Hull City Council introduced free healthy school meals for primary and special schools pupils (approximately 20,500 children) in an attempt to reduce health inequalities. The meals aimed to meet the Caroline Walker Trust (CWT) nutritional guidelines for primary schools. The study assesses the nutritional content of the meals, including children's actual intake. The Hull school is compared with a neighbouring school with no such initiative. METHODS 64 children aged 9-10 years participated from 2 primary schools. Fieldwork was undertaken over 5 days in each school. 320 meals were weighted and photographed before and after consumption to assess actual intake. RESULTS Hull children consumed (p < 0.001) less total fat, sugar and sodium than neighbouring children. Both schools exceeded the CWT recommendations for these nutrients. Statistically significant (p < 0.001) differences were observed between nutrient intakes of energy, iron, zinc, folate and magnesium (p < 0.001) with Hull children consuming less than neighbouring children. Children's intake at both schools did not meet recommended guidelines for 11 of the 17 nutrients assessed. CONCLUSION Although Hull's school meals aimed to provide children with adequate nutritional intake, findings demonstrate that, on average, children are served and consume inadequate levels of many nutrients.
Dialogue System Characterisation by Back-channelling Patterns Extracted from Dialogue Corpus

In this study, we describe the use of back-channelling patterns extracted from a dialogue corpus as a mean to characterising text-based dialogue systems. Our goal was to provide system users with the feeling that they are interacting with distinct individuals rather than artificially created characters. An analysis of the corpus revealed that substantial difference exists among speakers regarding the usage patterns of back-channelling. The patterns consist of back-channelling frequency, types, and expressions. They were used for system characterisation. Implemented system characters were tested by asking users of the dialogue system to identify the source speakers in the corpus. Experimental results suggest that possibility of using back-channelling patterns alone to characterize the dialogue system in some cases even among the same age and gender groups.
Predictors of Bone Status by Quantitative Ultrasound Measurements in a Mountain Village in Japan

Background: It seems to be important to recognize predictors of bone health condition in Japanese super-aged society. The purpose of this study was to investigate predictors of the speed of sound (SOS) of calcaneus by quantitative ultrasound measurements of mountain village residents. Materials and Methods: Medical examinations were conducted on 214 participants (69 men, 145 women; average age of 63.6 years). Each had completed a self-administered questionnaire including items such as gender, dominant hand, occupation, and history of smoking and drinking alcohol, experience of falls, and the EuroQol-5-dimensions-3-level Japanese version and a 25-question geriatric locomotive function scale proposed by the Japanese Orthopaedic Association. Bilateral grip and key pinch strength were measured. The SOS of calcaneus was assessed using ultrasound bone densitometry. Body composition was measured using a multi-frequency segmental body composition analyzer. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was calculated to elucidate the relation between SOS and evaluation items. Stepwise logistic regression was used to identify predictors of SOS using the investigated factors as explanatory variables. P values of < . 05 were regarded as statistically significant. Results: Significant positive correlation was found between the SOS and dominant and non-dominant grip and key pinch strength and Euro index and QOL VAS in all participants. In stepwise logistic regression, non-dominant key pinch (β coefficient= 0.27, p= .022) and Euro QOL VAS (β coefficient= 0.24, p= .0001) were predictors of calcaneal SOS for all participants. Conclusion: Key pinch strength and Euro QOL VAS assessment might be useful to predict calcaneal SOS in the general population.