Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Successive Action of Meprin A and Neprilysin Catabolizes B-Type Natriuretic Peptide

Natriuretic peptides such as B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) are important cardioprotective hormones with essential functions in sodium excretion, water balance and blood pressure regulation. Consequently, the catabolism of these peptides is in the focus of clinical research. In previous studies, we demonstrated that BNP, in contrast to the structurally related atrial and C-type natriuretic peptide, was not hydrolyzed by neprilysin (NEP). Because membrane preparations of several organs of NEP-knockout mice rapidly degrade BNP, the aim of this study was to identify BNP-catabolizing peptidases responsible for this fast clearance. Using kidney membranes of wild-type and NEP-knockout mice, as well as several peptidase inhibitors, we monitored the catabolism of BNP and analyzed its degradation products. We identified meprin A, a multimeric metalloprotease expressed in the brush borders of kidney proximal tubules, to initially truncate mouse BNP in the N terminus to mBNP7-32, a BNP metabolite with conserved biological activity. Consequently, in vivo experiments with the meprin inhibitor actinonin successfully elevated plasma BNP concentration in rats. We further demonstrated that the generation of mBNP7-32 is the prerequisite to catabolize BNP and identified NEP as the peptidase degrading the truncated BNP. Thus, the cooperative, successive action of the 2 transmembranal peptidases meprin A and NEP is crucial for rapid renal BNP inactivation. Therefore, the inhibition of meprin A could be a potent tool for increasing circulating BNP levels.
A New Scheme Combining Space-time Bit Interleave Coded Modulation with Phase Sweeping

A phase-sweeping space-time bit interleaved coded modulation (PS-ST-BICM) is presented. By expanding the dimensions of sweeping matrix we achieve the correlation between the adjacent code matrices, and further time diversity is realized, and by further time diversity higher diversity gain is realized which effectively avoid possible burst errors in block fading channels. The optimum criterion of the rotation matrix to maximize both diversity and coding gain is presented. And we also describe the construction of an interleaver that optimizes the total diversity order for a given error-correcting code. Then the singleton bound, channel capacity and BER performances are theoretically analyzed. The simulation results prove that the performance of the new scheme is improved greatly in the Rayleigh block fading channels
Learning When to Use Lazy Learning in Constraint Solving

Learning in the context of constraint solving is a technique by which previously unknown constraints are uncovered during search and used to speed up subsequent search. Recently, lazy learning, similar to a successful idea from satisfiability modulo theories solvers, has been shown to be an effective means of incorporating constraint learning into a solver. Although a powerful technique to reduce search in some circumstances, lazy learning introduces a substantial overhead, which can outweigh its benefits. Hence, it is desirable to know beforehand whether or not it is expected to be useful. We approach this problem using machine learning (ML). We show that, in the context of a large benchmark set, standard ML approaches can be used to learn a simple, cheap classifier which performs well in identifying instances on which lazy learning should or should not be used. Furthermore, we demonstrate significant performance improvements of a system using our classifier and the lazy learning and standard constraint solvers over a standard solver. Through rigorous cross-validation across the different problem classes in our benchmark set, we show the general applicability of our learned classifier.
Management of myelofibrosis: a survey of current practice in the United Kingdom

Aims To investigate the experience of clinicians in the management of patients with myelofibrosis, current treatment options and their utility. Methods We used an internet-based survey Results Of 105 respondents (mostly consultants), 79% identified bothersome symptoms as the most common issue to be addressed, while for 19%, lack of efficacy of treatment fell into this category. The survey found that a wide variety of treatments are employed but with poor perceived efficacy. Conclusions This is the first UK based assessment of management of myelofibrosis. Perspectives may evolve with the inception of novel therapeutics in this field , but clinical guidelines for effective management currently recommend a wide variety of agents and suggest a limited likely success rate.
Potential rapid evolution of foot morphology in Italian plethodontid salamanders (Hydromantes strinatii) following the colonization of an artificial cave

How organisms respond to environmental change is a long‐standing question in evolutionary biology. Species invading novel habitats provide an opportunity to examine contemporary evolution in action and decipher the pace of evolutionary change over short timescales. Here, we characterized phenotypic evolution in the Italian plethodontid salamander, Hydromantes strinatii, following the recent colonization of an artificial cave by a forest floor population. When compared with a nearby and genetically related population in the natural forest floor and a nearby cave population, the artificial cave population displayed significant differences in overall foot shape, with more interdigital webbing relative to the other populations. Further, this population evolved significantly larger feet, which corresponded more closely to those found in other cave populations than to forest floor populations to which the cave population is closely related. Finally, we quantified the rate of evolution for both foot shape and foot area, and found that both traits displayed large and significant evolutionary rates, at levels corresponding to other classic cases of rapid evolution in vertebrates. Together, these findings reveal that the response to novel environmental pressures can be large and rapid and that the anatomical shifts observed in the artificial cave population of H. strinatii may represent a case of rapid evolution in response to novel environmental pressures.
Interferon Impedes an Early Step of Hepatitis Delta Virus Infection

Hepatitis delta virus (HDV) infects hepatocytes, the major cell type of the liver. Infection of the liver may be either transient or chronic. The prognosis for patients with chronic HDV infection is poor, with a high risk of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The best antiviral therapy is weekly administration for at least one year of high doses of interferon alpha. This efficacy of interferon therapy has been puzzling in that HDV replication in transfected cell lines is reported as insensitive to administration of interferon alpha or gamma. Similarly, this study shows that even when an interferon response was induced by transfection of poly(IC) into a cell line, HDV RNA accumulation was only modestly inhibited. However, when the HDV replication was initiated by infection of primary human hepatocytes, simultaneous addition of interferons alpha or gamma at 600 units/ml, a concentration comparable to that achieved in treated patients, the subsequent HDV RNA accumulation was inhibited by at least 80%. These interferon treatments were shown to produce significant time-dependent increases of host response proteins such as for Stat-1, phosphoStat-1, Mx1/2/3 and PKR, and yet interferon pretreatment of hepatocytes did not confer an increased inhibition of HDV replication over interferon treatment at the time of (or after) infection. These and other data support the interpretation that interferon action against HDV replication can occur and is largely mediated at the level of entry into primary human hepatocytes. Thus in vivo, the success of long-term interferon therapy for chronic HDV, may likewise involve blocking HDV spread by interfering with the initiation of productive infection of naïve hepatocytes.
Ohr Protects Corynebacterium glutamicum against Organic Hydroperoxide Induced Oxidative Stress

Ohr, a bacterial protein encoded by the Organic Hydroperoxide Resistance (ohr) gene, plays a critical role in resistance to organic hydroperoxides. In the present study, we show that the Cys-based thiol-dependent Ohr of Corynebacterium glutamicum decomposes organic hydroperoxides more efficiently than hydrogen peroxide. Replacement of either of the two Cys residues of Ohr by a Ser residue resulted in drastic loss of activity. The electron donors supporting regeneration of the peroxidase activity of the oxidized Ohr of C. glutamicum were principally lipoylated proteins (LpdA and Lpd/SucB). A Δohr mutant exhibited significantly decreased resistance to organic hydroperoxides and marked accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in vivo; protein carbonylation was also enhanced notably. The resistance to hydrogen peroxide also decreased, but protein carbonylation did not rise to any great extent. Together, the results unequivocally show that Ohr is essential for mediation of organic hydroperoxide resistance by C. glutamicum.
Indexing the Environmental Vulnerability of Mountain Streams in Azerbaijan

Abstract A simple environmental vulnerability assessment scheme is developed and illustrated using several streams in Azerbaijan as examples. Vulnerability of a river ecosystem is defined in terms of a combined impact of pressure factors such as water withdrawals, pollution, climate change impact on flow variability, and land use. These factors are used to measure the sensitivity of various elements/components of the system to impacts. The choice of these indicators may vary from area to area and depends on the nature of man-made and natural conditions. Each factor is characterized and quantified using a specific indicator and score. The total vulnerability score is estimated as a sum of the scores of all indicators. Most of the streams studied in Azerbaijan were found to be very vulnerable or extremely vulnerable, according to the developed scheme. The overall approach is straightforward and transparent. Conclusions are made about the vulnerability and/or resiliency of streams, to be taken into consideration when planning for water-sources development for the future.
A myosin family tree.

This unrooted phylogenetic tree of the myosin superfamily (see insert) is derived from an alignment of 139 members of the myosin superfamily. The alignment compared the core motor domains (equivalent to residues 88–780 of chicken skeletal myosin II) of each myosin, using distance matrix analysis
cophesim: a comprehensive phenotype simulator for testing novel association methods

Simulation is important in evaluating novel methods when input data is not easily obtainable or specific assumptions are needed. We present cophesim, a software to add the phenotype to generated genotype data prepared with a genetic simulator. The output of cophesim can be used as a direct input for different genome wide association study tools. cophesim is available from https://bitbucket.org/izhbannikov/cophesim.
The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey - VI. An artificial neural network and timing of 75 pulsars

We present 75 pulsars discovered in the mid-latitude portion of the High Time Resolution Universe survey, 54 of which have full timing solutions. All the pulsars have spin periods greater than 100 ms, and none of those with timing solutions are in binaries. Two display particularly interesting behaviour; PSR J1054{5944 is found to be an intermittent pulsar, and PSR J1809{0119 has glitched twice since its discovery. In the second half of the paper we discuss the development and application of an articial neural network in the data-processing pipeline for the survey. We discuss the tests that were used to generate scores and nd that our neural network was able to reject over 99% of the candidates produced in the data processing, and able to blindly detect 85% of pulsars. We suggest that improvements to the accuracy should be possible if further care is taken when training an articial
Unravelling the petroleum system by enhancing fluid migration paths in seismic data using a neural network based pattern recognition technique

Understanding the hydrocarbon migration system in the sub-surface is a key aspect of oil and gas exploration. It is well known that conventional 3D seismic data contains information about hydrocarbon accumulations. Less known is the fact that 3D seismic data also contains information about hydrocarbon migration paths in the form of vertical noise trails. A method has been developed to highlight vertical noise trails in seismic data semi-automatically, using assemblies of directive multi-trace seismic attributes and neural network technology. The results of this detection method yield valuable information about the origin of hydrocarbons, about migration paths from source to prospect and about leakage or spillage from these prospects to shallow gas pockets or to the sea bed. Besides, the results reveal the sealing quality of faults, provide information on overpressure and whether prospects are charged or not. All these aspects are useful information for basin modelling studies and for an increased understanding of the petroleum system.
Gold Catalysts on Y-Doped Ceria Supports for Complete Benzene Oxidation

Gold (3 wt. %) catalysts on Y-doped (1, 2.5, 5 and 7.5 wt. % Y2O3) ceria supports prepared by coprecipitation (CP) or impregnation (IM) were studied in complete benzene oxidation (CBO). A low-extent Y modification was chosen to avoid ordering of oxygen vacancies. The samples were characterized by XRD, TGA, XPS and TPR techniques. A positive role of air pretreatment at 350 °C as compared to 200 °C was established for all Y-containing catalysts and it was explained by cleaning the active sites from carbonates. The oxygen supply cannot be considered as a limiting step for benzene oxidation except for the high 7.5%-doped samples, as suggested by TGA and TPR data. On the basis of XPS results of fresh and used in CBO catalysts, the presence of cationic gold species does not seem important for high CBO activity. The gold catalyst on an IM support with 1% Y-doping exhibited the best performance. A 100% benzene conversion was achieved only over this catalyst and Au/ceria, while it was not reached even at 300 °C over all other studied catalysts. Gold and ceria particle agglomeration or coke formation should be excluded as a possible reason, and the most probable explanation could be associated with the importance of the benzene activation stage.
Compressive Strength, Chloride Permeability, and Freeze-Thaw Resistance of MWNT Concretes under Different Chemical Treatments

This study investigated compressive strength, chloride penetration, and freeze-thaw resistance of multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWNT) concrete. More than 100 cylindrical specimens were used to assess test variables during sensitivity observations, including water-cement ratios (0.75, 0.5, and 0.4) and exposure to chemical agents (including gum arabic, propanol, ethanol, sodium polyacrylate, methylcellulose, sodium dodecyl sulfate, and silane). To determine the adequate sonication time for MWNT dispersal in water, the compressive strengths of MWNT concrete cylinders were measured after sonication times ranging from 2 to 24 minutes. The results demonstrated that the addition of MWNT can increase the compressive strength of concrete by up to 108%. However, without chemical treatment, MWNT concretes tend to have poor freeze-thaw resistance. Among the different chemical treatments, MWNT concrete treated with sodium polyacrylate has the best compressive strength, chloride resistance, and freeze-thaw durability.
Adaptive IEEE 802.11i Security for Energy-Security Optimization

As computing devices and wireless connectivity become ubiquitous, the need for efficient secure wireless networks becomes a critical concern. Low power consumption is currently one of the major issues for all wireless application. Emerging wireless and mobile appliances are severely constrained in the resources they possess, namely, processor, battery, and memory. Energy consumed by computation and communication intensive wireless security protocols used to provide data privacy, integrity and authenticity is a function of the size of the data transferred and the security level of the session. In this paper we propose an adaptive security scheme for wireless networks to optimize battery energy consumption. We base our model on well-established simulation results and methodologies that leads to rigorous modularization for energy-conscious and energy-conserving wireless security design.
Real-time video scene analysis with heterogeneous processors

Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) allow acceleration and real-time processing of computationally intensive computer vision algorithms. The decision to use either architecture in any application is determined by task-specific priorities such as processing latency, power consumption and algorithm accuracy. This choice is normally made at design time on a heuristic or fixed algorithmic basis; here we propose an alternative method for automatic runtime selection. In this thesis, we describe our PC-based system architecture containing both platforms; this provides greater flexibility and allows dynamic selection of processing platforms to suit changing scene priorities. Using the Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG) algorithm for pedestrian detection, we comprehensively explore algorithm implementation on FPGA, GPU and a combination of both, and show that the effect of data transfer time on overall processing performance is significant. We also characterise performance of each implementation and quantify tradeoffs between power, time and accuracy when moving processing between architectures, then specify the optimal architecture to use when prioritising each of these. We apply this new knowledge to a real-time surveillance application representative of anomaly detection problems: detecting parked vehicles in videos. Using motion detection and car and pedestrian HOG detectors implemented across multiple architectures to generate detections, we use trajectory clustering and a Bayesian contextual motion algorithm to generate an overall scene anomaly level. This is in turn used to select the architectures to run the compute-intensive detectors for the next frame on, with higher anomalies selecting faster, higher-power implementations. Comparing dynamic context-driven prioritisation of system performance against a fixed mapping of algorithms to architectures shows that our dynamic mapping method is 10% more accurate at detecting events than the power-optimised version, at the cost of 12W higher power consumption.
Profile-based dynamic voltage and frequency scaling for a multiple clock domain microprocessor

A Multiple Clock Domain (MCD) processor addresses the challenges of clock distribution and power dissipation by dividing a chip into several (coarse-grained) clock domains, allowing frequency and voltage to be reduced in domains that are not currently on the application's critical path. Given a reconfiguration mechanism capable of choosing appropriate times and values for voltage/frequency scaling, an MCD processor has the potential to achieve significant energy savings with low performance degradation. Early work on MCD processors evaluated the potential for energy savings by manually inserting reconfiguration instructions into applications, or by employing an oracle driven by offline analysis of (identical) prior program runs. Subsequent work developed a hardware-based online mechanism that averages 75-85% of the energy-delay improvement achieved via offline analysis. We consider the automatic insertion of reconfiguration instructions into applications, using profile-driven binary rewriting. Profile-based reconfiguration introduces the need for "training runs" prior to production use of a given application, but avoids the hardware complexity of online reconfiguration. It also has the potential to yield significantly greater energy savings. Experimental results (training on small data sets and then running on larger, alternative data sets) indicate that the profile-driven approach is more stable than hardware-based reconfiguration, and yields virtually all of the energy-delay improvement achieved via offline analysis.
Correlation between cardiac 123I‐MIBG and odor identification in patients with Parkinson's disease and multiple system atrophy

We investigated an association between olfaction and cardiac 123I‐metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) uptake in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and multiple system atrophy (MSA). There was a significant positive correlation between cardiac MIBG uptake and the Cross‐Cultural Smell Identification (CCSI) score in patients with PD (r = 0.56; P = 0.003) independent of the disease duration or clinical rating of motor status. However, patients with MSA did not show a significant correlation between cardiac MIBG uptake and the CCSI score. Our findings suggest that the functional losses of the olfactory and cardiac sympathetic systems are closely coupled in PD. © 2006 Movement Disorder Society
SPATIAL DATA INTEGRATION FROM DISTRIBUTED AND HETEROGENEOUS SOURCES INTEGRACIÓN DE DATOS ESPACIALES A PARTIR DE FUENTES HETEROGÉNEAS Y DISTRIBUIDAS

This paper discusses challenges associated to the integration of spatial data and presents the approach adopted in the project SPIDHERS 3 (SPatial data Integration from Distributed and HEteRogeneous Sources) based on mediation techniques, efficient retrieval, analysis, and data mining. Finally, the paper shows the way technology produced in SPIDHERS can be used for integrating, analyzing, and making decisions using data of the Popocatepetl, volcano located in the region of Puebla and Mexico City.
The role of food- and object-sharing in the development of social bonds in juvenile jackdaws (Corvus monedula).

Food sharing in birds occurs largely in the context of parental care and courtship. Previous studies found that juvenile jackdaws demonstrate high levels of active giving outside these contexts in the 3 months following nest dispersal. The function of this behaviour is not understood, although it seemed compatible with hypotheses of mutualism (both participants benefit), reciprocity and harassment avoidance. We propose a new functional explanation for active giving in this species, namely facilitating the formation of social bonds. Captive juvenile jackdaws actively gave 2.5% of temporarily available food items and objects to peers, irrespective of sex and kinship. Active giving accounted for 43.7% of all food transfers. Donors advertised food and objects through a distinctive display and initiated active giving more than recipients. The direction of giving was initially unfocused, but became selective until each donor predominantly gave to one recipient and affiliative relationships were formed. We conclude that food-sharing may be an integral part of jackdaw ontogeny which allows juveniles to explore their social environment and facilitates the formation of affiliative relationships when family bonds dissolve. We also suggest that the ritualised food offer display may signal the 'collaborative intent' of the donor and serve to attract potential partners/mates.