Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non-myeloablative Bone Marrow Stem Cell Transplantation for mdx Mice Myodystrophy Therapy

Background: Mdx mice are experimental model of cureless human monogenic disease Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Hope for Ð° cure is associated with the use of stem cells therapy particular but not exclusively. Analysis of multiple experimental results shows what intramuscularly transplantation of different types of cells of different origins with stem cells properties can’t convert mutant striated muscles fibers (SMF) into wild type SMF. It was concluded that only replacement of mutant bone marrow (BM) by wild type BM cells can convert mutant SMF into SMF of wild type. Unfortunately X-ray irradiation of mdx mice at a lethal dose of 11, 7 or 5 Gy followed by transplantation of wild C57BL/6 mice BM cells did not increase SMF dystrophin synthesis. The aim of this study was to analyse a dystrophin synthesis by mdx mice striated muscles after x-ray irradiation with the dose of 3 Gy followed by C57BL/6 bone marrow cells transplantation. Also we investigate the reparation of structure of diaphragm muscle fibers NMJs. To confirm the functional significance of observed structural changes of NMJs an investigation of resting membrane potential of diaphragm muscle fiber NMJs was also conducted. Methods: 1-1.5 months old mdx mice were irradiated by x-ray at a dose of 3 Gy. Next day freshly prepared BM cells were injected intravenously in the amount of (15-20) x 106 cells per mouse. Animals were studied through 2, 4, and 6 months after transplantation. Each experimental group of mice included 3-8 animals. Mus. quadriceps femoris and diaphragm muscle fibers with their nerve-muscle junctions (NMJs) were under investigation. For chimerism registration a special study was conducted using transplantation of GFP-positive C57BL/6 BM cells to mdx mice after 3 Gy irradiation. Through 6 months BM cells were separated from long bones and smears were prepared. After carbinol fixation smears were stained by propidium iodide and studied on confocal microscope LSM 5 Pascal (Carl Zeiss, Germany) to count the part of GFP-positive cells in relation to whole quantity of nuclear cells. Results: We observed a stable growth of dystrophin synthesis after nonlethal X-ray irradiation at a dose of 3 Gy. The part of dystrophin positive SMF of M. quadriceps femoris increased from 1% up to 4% (2 months), 12% (4 months) and 27% (6 months) after transplantation. Growth of dystrophin synthesis was accompanied by the decrease of SMF death level, by increase of part of SMF without central nuclear up to 22%, by accumulation of MNJ branches and by reparation of resting membrane potentials. The part of GFP-positive cells between all cells with nuclear on the BM smears of chimeric GFP transplanted mdx mice at 6 months after transplantation was 3.3 ± 0.8 % that show for chimeric nature of mice. Conclusion: Non myeloablative bone marrow cell transplantation of mdx mice after X-ray irradiation 3 Gy is accompanied by formation of chimerism, stable growth of dystrophin synthesis and reparation of structure and function of NMJs.
Phosphorylated DegU Manipulates Cell Fate Differentiation in the Bacillus subtilis Biofilm

ABSTRACT Cell differentiation is ubiquitous and facilitates division of labor and development. Bacteria are capable of multicellular behaviors that benefit the bacterial community as a whole. A striking example of bacterial differentiation occurs throughout the formation of a biofilm. During Bacillus subtilis biofilm formation, a subpopulation of cells differentiates into a specialized population that synthesizes the exopolysaccharide and the TasA amyloid components of the extracellular matrix. The differentiation process is indirectly controlled by the transcription factor Spo0A that facilitates transcription of the eps and tapA (tasA) operons. DegU is a transcription factor involved in regulating biofilm formation. Here, using a combination of genetics and live single-cell cytological techniques, we define the mechanism of biofilm inhibition at high levels of phosphorylated DegU (DegU∼P) by showing that transcription from the eps and tapA promoter regions is inhibited. Data demonstrating that this is not a direct regulatory event are presented. We demonstrate that DegU∼P controls the frequency with which cells activate transcription from the operons needed for matrix biosynthesis in favor of an off state. Subsequent experimental analysis led us to conclude that DegU∼P functions to increase the level of Spo0A∼P, driving cell fate differentiation toward the terminal developmental process of sporulation.
Online Health Information Seeking Behaviors of Hispanics in New York City: A Community-Based Cross-Sectional Study

Background The emergence of the Internet has increased access to health information and can facilitate active individual engagement in health care decision making. Hispanics are the fastest-growing minority group in the United States and are also the most underserved in terms of access to online health information. A growing body of literature has examined correlates of online health information seeking behaviors (HISBs), but few studies have included Hispanics. Objective The specific aim of this descriptive, correlational study was to examine factors associated with HISBs of Hispanics. Methods The study sample (N=4070) was recruited from five postal zip codes in northern Manhattan for the Washington Heights Inwood Informatics Infrastructure for Comparative Effectiveness Research project. Survey data were collected via interview by bilingual community health workers in a community center, households, and other community settings. Data were analyzed using bivariate analyses and logistic regression. Results Among individual respondents, online HISBs were significantly associated with higher education (OR 3.03, 95% CI 2.15-4.29, P<.001), worse health status (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.31-0.57, P<.001), and having no hypertension (OR 0.60, 95% CI 0.43-0.84, P=.003). Online HISBs of other household members were significantly associated with respondent factors: female gender (OR 1.60, 95% CI 1.22-2.10, P=.001), being younger (OR 0.75, 95% CI 0.62-0.90, P=.002), being married (OR 1.36, 95% CI 1.09-1.71, P=.007), having higher education (OR 1.80, 95% CI 1.404-2.316, P<.001), being in worse health (OR 0.59, 95% CI 0.46-0.77, P<.001), and having serious health problems increased the odds of their household members’ online HISBs (OR 1.83, 95% CI 1.29-2.60, P=.001). Conclusions This large-scale community survey identified factors associated with online HISBs among Hispanics that merit closer examination. To enhance online HISBs among Hispanics, health care providers and policy makers need to understand the cultural context of the Hispanic population. Results of this study can provide a foundation for the development of informatics-based interventions to improve the health of Hispanics in the United States.
Scanning the Internet for Liveness

Internet-wide scanning depends on a notion of liveness: does a target IP address respond to a probe packet? However, the interpretation of such responses, or lack of them, is nuanced and depends on multiple factors, including: how we probed, how different protocols in the network stack interact, the presence of filtering policies near the target, and temporal churn in IP responsiveness. Although often neglected, these factors can significantly affect the results of active measurement studies. We develop a taxonomy of liveness which we employ to develop a method to perform concurrent IPv4 scans using ICMP, five TCP-based, and two UDP-based protocols, comprehensively capturing all responses to our probes, including negative and cross-layer responses. Leveraging our methodology, we present a systematic analysis of liveness and how it manifests in active scanning campaigns, yielding practical insights and methodological improvements for the design and the execution of active Internet measurement studies.
Detection of pollen bearing honey bees in hive entrance images

Automatic detection of pollen bearing honey bees can provide information important both for pollination monitoring and for assessing health and strength of a beehive. In this paper we analyze some of the methods for detection of pollen bearing honey bees in images obtained at hive entrance. The proposed approach is divided into two parts. In the first part we segment honey bees from images. To this end we analyze two segmentation methods based on color descriptors. Then in the second part we use these segmented regions to classify the bees into two classes with or without pollen. Classification is conducted using SVMs trained on few variations of VLAD-encoded SIFT descriptors. On a dataset of images acquired at the hive entrance, we obtain 0.7971 IoU score for segmentation, and 0.9150 AUC score for classification.
New Control Method Including State Observer of Voltage Unbalance for Grid Voltage-Source Converters

New observer-based disturbance-estimation and control algorithms are introduced in this paper that compensate source voltage unbalances. The algorithms are also designed to compensate the detrimental impact of delay effects caused by the digital-signal processing. Consequently, these techniques are appropriate for higher power systems with reduced pulsewidth modulation switching frequency and limited current-controller bandwidth. Analytical, simulation, and experimental results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the new observer-based control techniques.
An Empirical Approach for Optimization of Acoustic Models in Hindi Speech Recognition Systems

A well established paradigm to develop an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system is the feature extraction at front end and liklihood evaluation of feature vectors using hidden Markov models (HMMs) with Gaussian mixtures at back end. To reduce the overall computational overhead and for proper handling of HMM parameters the appropriate selection of Gaussian mixtures and tied states is very important. This paper reviews the statistical framework and presents an empirical approach to select the optimum number of Gaussian mixtures and appropriate degree of state tying in context of small amount of training data usually available for Indian languages, specifically Hindi. At front end we have used perceptual linear prediction (PLP) combined with relative spectral (RASTA) processing for our proposed Hindi speech recognition system.
On the equivalence of double maxima and KL-means for information bottleneck-based source coding

In the context of noisy source coding, contrary to the conventional Rate-Distortion theory, the so-called Information Bottleneck method formulates the existent fundamental complexity-precision trade-off in a symmetric and purely information-theoretic fashion. Since the pertinent optimization task to design the quantizer is quite demanding, a number of heuristics have been developed to provide practically feasible procedures at the expense of yielding suboptimal solutions. In this paper, we consider two pertinent routines originally appeared in totally different applications and set out to precisely prove their algorithmic equivalence by conducting a thorough analysis over the corresponding algorithmic steps. We further corroborate our theoretical investigation employing computer-based simulations.
SjHSP60 induces CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ Tregs via TLR4‐Mal‐drived production of TGF‐β in macrophages

CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) play a pivotal role in limiting immunopathological damage to host organs after schistosome infection. Transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) is an essential factor for the periphery conversion of CD4+CD25− T cells into CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ Tregs by inducing the key transcription factor Foxp3. Antigen presenting cells (APCs), which highly express TGF‐β, are involved in parasite antigen‐induced Treg conversion in peripheral. However, the mechanisms underlying high TGF‐β induction in APCs by parasite antigens remain to be clarified during schistosome infection. Here, we demonstrated that Schistosoma japonicum stress protein, heat shock protein 60 (SjHSP60), promoted TGF‐β production in macrophages (Mφ). Furthermore, we showed that activation of TLR4‐Mal (MyD88 adaptor‐like protein) signaling by SjHSP60 is necessary for induction of TGF‐β expression in Mφ, which subsequently promoted Treg induction. Our results not only demonstrate a novel mechanism of TGF‐β production in Mφ for inducing Tregs in mice with schistosomiasis, but also allude to the possibility of targeting parasite stress protein for potential therapeutics.
Development of the Virtue Adjectives Rating Scale and Research on Its Reliability and Validity

Objective: To develop the virtue adjectives rating scale and to test the reliability and validity of the scale.Methods: Adjectives describing virtues were selected through the psycholexical approach.Psychological structure of the virtues and the virtue adjectives rating scale was established by means of exploratory factor analysis;reliability analysis and correlation analysis were used to test the internal consistency reliability,split reliability,test-retest reliability,construct validity and criterion-related validity;and confirmatory factor analysis was used to compare fitness of the models.Results: 109 adjectives describing virtues were selected through the psycholexical approach.By exploratory factor analysis,19 items were deleted;the 90 adjectives items left could be explained by 5 big scales and 14 subscales with a 46.37 percent contribution to the variance.All the scales' internal consistency reliability,split reliability,test-retest reliability and the correlation coefficient were 0.75-0.95,0.74-0.90,0.44-0.75,-0.13-0.42 respectively.The result showed that the scale was high in validity as convergent validity,discriminant validity and criterion-related validity;and confirmatory factor analysis validated the three class model.Conclusion: The virtue adjectives rating scale had good reliability and validity;its effectiveness need to be tested through other approaches.
Learning the Nature of Dark Energy from Weak Gravitational Lensing with Computer Vision and Machine Learning

The most pressing problem in cosmology is the nature of the dark energy, a “force” responsible for mysteriously accelerating the expansion of the universe. The most promising method to study dark energy is the measurement of the subtle distortions in the shapes of distant background galaxies. These distortions are caused by gravitational lensing, and their properties depend on the nature of dark energy. Vast lensing maps will be generated in the next decade from several large astronomical surveys. The power spectrum of these maps is currently considered the most powerful future probe of dark energy, though we have found that higher-order statistics extract at least a comparable amount of complementary information from non-Gaussian features. However, the total cosmological information content of lensing maps is not yet understood. Here we propose to use a large suite of cosmological simulations to create a library of lensing distortion maps, and find superior non-linear statistics to measure dark energy. To achieve this, we will implement machine vision and machine learning methods. Our goal is to increase the utility of future lensing datasets, which would have a major impact on the field of cosmology.
AllegatorTrack: Combining and reporting results of truth discovery from multi-source data

In the Web, a massive amount of user-generated contents is available through various channels, e.g., texts, tweets, Web tables, databases, multimedia-sharing platforms, etc. Conflicting information, rumors, erroneous and fake contents can be easily spread across multiple sources, making it hard to distinguish between what is true and what is not. How do you figure out that a lie has been told often enough that it is now considered to be true? How many lying sources are required to introduce confusion in what you knew before to be the truth? To answer these questions, we present AllegatorTrack, a system that discovers true claims among conflicting data from multiple sources.
Spatial, temporal and ontogenetic variation in the association of fishes (family Labridae) with rocky-reef habitats

Habitat variability is an important factor structuring fish assemblages of rocky reefs in temperate Australia. Accepting the generality of this model requires that habitat-related variation is consistent through time, across multiple spatial scales, and applies to all life-history stages. We used repeated underwater visual surveys at multiple spatial scales over a 22-month period to test whether three distinct rocky-reef habitats had different wrasse assemblages and whether these assemblages were subject to spatial, temporal and ontogenetic variability. Overall, the strongest and most consistent habitat association was with sponge gardens, which had the most distinct assemblage, and the greatest species richness and density of individuals. Habitat associations in fringe and barrens were less consistent. A substantial increase in the abundance of small individuals, coinciding with warmer sea temperatures, contributed to temporal fluctuations in the density of wrasses. Overall, habitats were not strongly partitioned among larger individuals of the most abundant species, suggesting that adults are largely habitat generalists whereas small, recruiting individuals showed greater habitat specialisation. The present study emphasises the importance of incorporating spatial, temporal and ontogenetic variability into surveys of fish assemblages to understand more fully the dynamics of temperate rocky-reef systems.
TCMMDB: a distributed multidatabase query system and its key technique implemention

With the amount of information exploding, the number of databases and information stored in the database increases very quickly. Those databases are more likely to be heterogeneous. There are many distributed databases systems to resolve this problem, but the main drawback is that they don't do well in database cooperation. We provide a general architecture of a distributed multidatabase query system: TCMMDB (traditional Chinese medicine multidatabase). We discuss key techniques such as distributed query plan generation, distributed query synchronization and distributed error handling in TCMMDB in relation to distributed databases.
Equilibrium Properties of the Ising Frustrated Lattice Gas

We study the equilibrium properties of an Ising frustrated lattice gas with a mean field replica approach. This model bridges usual Spin Glasses and a version of Frustrated Percolation model, and has proven relevant to describe the glass transition. It shows a rich phase diagram which in a definite limit reduces to the known Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin glass model.
Robot Learning from Demonstration in Robotic Assembly: A Survey

Learning from demonstration (LfD) has been used to help robots to implement manipulation tasks autonomously, in particular, to learn manipulation behaviors from observing the motion executed by human demonstrators. This paper reviews recent research and development in the field of LfD. The main focus is placed on how to demonstrate the example behaviors to the robot in assembly operations, and how to extract the manipulation features for robot learning and generating imitative behaviors. Diverse metrics are analyzed to evaluate the performance of robot imitation learning. Specifically, the application of LfD in robotic assembly is a focal point in this paper.
Association of CYP2A6 Gene Deletion with Cigarette Smoking Status in Japanese Adults

BACKGROUND: Genetic variation of CYP2A6 is shown to alter nicotine metabolism. This study was developed to investigate the genetic influence of the whole deletion-allele of CYP2A6 on active and passive smoking behavior. METHODS: Two hundred and forty Japanese adults, who visited Aichi Cancer Center as outpatients, were genotyped for the wild-type (CYP2A6* 1A, CYP2A6* 1B) and the whole deletion-type (CYP2A6* 4C) polymorphism of CYP2A6. Information about active and passive smoking status was obtained by a self-administered questionnaire. Genetic influence of CYP2A6 polymorphism on smoking behavior was evaluated using the Mantel extension test. RESULTS: The frequency of the deletion allele was 18%. All 8 subjects carrying two deletion alleles had no smoking habit, and the homozygous deletion genotype showed a tendency to correlate with active smoking status after adjustment for sex and age (p=0.054). However, the proportion of never smokers among heterozygous subjects was almost the same as among subjects carrying no deletion allele (54% and 58%, respectively). Furthermore, CYP2A6 genotypes were correlated neither with the number of cigarettes smoked per day nor with the age at starting smoking (p=0.364 and 0.880, respectively). Among never smokers, CYP2A6 genotypes were not correlated with exposure to passive smoking at home or in the workplace (p=0.623 and 0.484, respectively). CONCLUSION: Despite the possible protection against active smoking behavior in subjects homozygous for the deletion allele, the CYP2A6 polymorphism has only a limited impact on public health because no protective effect was found in heterozygous subjects.
Physically active leisure and the transition to retirement: the value of context

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to explore the everyday experiences of physically active leisure during the transition to retirement. Twenty-five adults aged 47–66 who were recently retired or nearing retirement blogged during three different two-week sessions over one year and participated in follow up focus groups. Data were analysed using initial, focused, and selective coding. Findings provided insights into participants’ experiences of physically active leisure in the context of their everyday lives. First, increased freedom in daily schedules led to both appreciation for spontaneity and a desire for structure. Second, participants experienced new constraints related to the loss of social networks and work-related physical activity. Finally, participants described physically active leisure as being connected to meaningful outcomes such as enjoying the outdoors, stress-relief, or socializing with family and friends. Physically active leisure was described as one health priority among many and one of several healthy leisure alternatives.
Ambulatory blood pressure measurement in the evaluation of blood pressure lowering drugs.

Since the indirect m e h r e m e n t o f hlood pressure based o n the principle of arterial occlusion using a forearm cuff was introduced by Scipione Kiva-Rocci in 1896 111 and subsequently nlodifiecl t o incorporate auscultation by Nicolai Korotkolf in 1905 (21, this technique h:a been the universal method used in the assessment of blood pressure in medial practice. Most of the evidence showing that the antihypertensive drugs in everyday use lower blood pressure derives from studies of clinic blood pressure measured by this technique 13-51. However, it is well known that casual blood pressure measured in the clinic may be influenced by a number of factors and as long ago as 1904, Theodore Janeway, writing before Korotkoff had reported the now accepted auscultatory method of measuring blood pressure, showed that stress could raise blood pressure 161.
Female Offenders With And Without Major Mental Health Problems: A Comparative Investigation

byKelley Blanchette Laurence L. MotiukResearch DivisionCorrectional Service CanadaThis report is also available in French. Ce rapport est egalement disponible enfrancais. Veuillez vous adresser au Secteur de recherche et developpement,Service Correctionnel du Canada, 340 avenue Laurier ouest, Ottawa (Ontario),K1A 0P9. Should additional copies be required they can be obtained fromCorrectional Research and Development, Correctional Service of Canada, 340Laurier Ave., West, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0P9.May, 1996 R-N°46