Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Possible Protective Role of Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 on Endothelium During the Meal and Evidence for an “Endothelial Resistance” to Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 in Diabetes

OBJECTIVE Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) stimulates insulin secretion. However, GLP-1 also improves endothelial function in diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Sixteen type 2 diabetic patients and 12 control subjects received a meal, an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), and two hyperglycemic clamps, with or without GLP-1. The clamps were repeated in diabetic patients after 2 months of strict glycemic control. RESULTS During the meal, glycemia, nitrotyrosine, and plasma 8-iso prostaglandin F2α (8-iso-PGF2a) remained unchanged in the control subjects, whereas they increased in diabetic patients. Flow-mediated vasodilation (FMD) decreased in diabetes, whereas GLP-1 increased in both groups. During the OGTT, an increase in glycemia, nitrotyrosine, and 8-iso-PGF2a and a decrease in FMD were observed at 1 h in the control subjects and at 1 and 2 h in the diabetic patients. In the same way, GLP-1 increased in both groups at the same levels of the meal. During the clamps, in both the control subjects and the diabetic patients, a significant increase in nitrotyrosine and 8-iso-PGF2a and a decrease in FMD were observed, effects that were significantly reduced by GLP-1. After improved glycemic control, hyperglycemia during the clamps was less effective in producing oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction and the GLP-1 administration was most effective in reducing these effects. CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest that during the meal GLP-1 can simultaneously exert an incretin effect on insulin secretion and a protective effect on endothelial function, reasonably controlling oxidative stress generation. The ability of GLP-1 in protecting endothelial function seems to depend on the level of glycemia, a phenomenon already described for insulin secretion.
The Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Genetic Risk Factors Indicate both Acquired and Innate Immune Cell Subsets Contribute to MS Pathogenesis and Identify Novel Therapeutic Opportunities

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is known to be a partially heritable autoimmune disease. The risk of developing MS increases from typically 1 in 1,000 in the normal population to 1 in 4 or so for identical twins where one twin is affected. Much of this heritability is now explained and is due almost entirely to genes affecting the immune response. The largest and first identified genetic risk factor is an allele from the MHC class II HLA-DRB1 gene, HLA-DRB1*15:01, which increases risk about threefold. The HLA-DRB1 gene is expressed in antigen-presenting cells, and its protein functions in presenting particular types of antigen to CD4 T cells. This discovery supported the development of the first successful immunomodulatory therapies: glatiramer acetate, which mimics the antigen presentation process, and interferon beta, which targets CD4 T cell activation. Over 200 genetic risk variants, all single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), have now been described. The SNPs are located within, or close to, genes expressed predominantly in acquired and innate immune cell subsets, indicating that both contribute to MS pathogenesis. The risk alleles indicate variation in the regulation of gene expression, rather than protein variation, underpins genetic susceptibility. In this review, we discuss how the expression and function of the risk genes, as well as the effect on these of the risk SNPs, indicate specific acquired immune cell processes that are the target of current successful therapies, and also point to novel therapeutic approaches.
The architect's gaze: The maintenance of collective professional vision in the work of the architect

Knowledge is something which is essentially embodied and present in the collective practices of seeing, in the professional vision of specific communities of knowledge workers. Architects represent a form of professional and knowledge-intensive work that includes both abstract categories such as style and design (‘form’) and material categories (‘matter’). Thus, professional vision is midway between, but also capable of integrating and co-aligning, abstract/intangible and concrete/material knowledge. Exploring how architects draw on vision and know-how in their day-to-day work, as well as in their engagement with a variety of media at a major Swedish firm of architects, the study suggests that the professional vision of the practicing architect is never fully integrated or coherent but must be subject to constant modifications and joint adjustments.
The effect of hypnotherapy on exam anxiety and exam performance: a pilot randomised controlled trial

Background: Hypnotherapy is used to treat a range of anxiety disorders. A systematic review in 2009 by Baker, Ainsworth, Torgerson and Torgerson showed that hypnotherapy is effective in reducing exam anxiety; however it was only able to locate five small randomised controlled trials. A full‐scale randomised trial is therefore needed to assess whether hypnosis is effective in both reducing exam anxiety and in increasing exam performance. The purpose of this pilot trial was, therefore, to investigate the acceptability of such a trial to both participants and examination providers, and the feasibility of conducting a full‐scale trial. Methods: A pragmatic two‐armed individually randomised controlled pilot trial was conducted. Participants, all first year nursing students, were randomised to receive hypnotherapy sessions preceding a numeracy test or to a control group which did not receive hypnotherapy. Outcomes included the recruitment rate and the number of participants completing the trial, as well as the .
A Bayesian Approach for Text Classification

The continuous increase of digital information requires technologies and techniques that can easily and quickly manage them. One of the most important and hot topic in this field is the introduction of techniques for text classification. The aim of this paper is the design and the implementation of a method for text classification. In particular we used an approach based on the use of Bayesian networks. In order to test our approach we use it on the standard Reuters database. The obtained results are very promising
Measuring executive functions in childhood: Problems and solutions?

In this review we outline some of the current issues surrounding the measurement of executive function (EF) in children. Beginning with the theoretical background to the concept of EF we then review the difficulties in measuring EF in adult populations, and argue that these difficulties may, at least in part, be overcome when working with children, so that developmental studies of EF may provide special insights into the organisation of EF. Next, we review three research areas that have attracted considerable interest in childhood EF: (i) developmental disorders; (ii) new methodologies for investigating the normative development of EF (including three task batteries - CANTAB, TEA-Ch and MARS); and (iii) the relationship between Theory of Mind (ToM) and EF. Finally, we consider what progress has been made so far in the fractionation of EF into component processes, and what remains to be done to achieve this important goal.
Spike and Tyke, the Quantized Neuron Model

Modeling spike firing assumes that spiking statistics are Poisson, but real data violates this assumption. To capture non-Poissonian features, in order to fix the inevitable inherent irregularity, researchers rescale the time axis with tedious computational overhead instead of searching for another distribution. Spikes or action potentials are precisely-timed changes in the ionic transport through synapses adjusting the synaptic weight, successfully modeled and developed as a memristor. Memristance value is multiples of initial resistance. This reminds us with the foundations of quantum mechanics. We try to quantize potential and resistance, as done with energy. After reviewing Planck curve for blackbody radiation, we propose the quantization equations. We introduce and prove a theorem that quantizes the resistance. Then we define the tyke showing its basic characteristics. Finally we give the basic transformations to model spiking and link an energy quantum to a tyke. Investigation shows how this perfectly models the neuron spiking, with over 97% match.
Psychological status in female carriers of premutation FMR1 allele showing a complex relationship with the size of CGG expansion

We utilized a sample of 299 adult females aged between 19 and 86 years, carrying fragile X mental retardation (FMR1) alleles with small CCG expansions ranging from 50 to 141 repeats to analyse the relationships between psychological symptoms as assessed by the Symptom Checklist‐90‐Revised (SCL‐90‐R) and the size of the CGG repeat in the FMR1 gene. There were highly significant (negative) correlations between the size of the CGG repeat and a great majority of SCL‐90‐R subscale scores and all the global indices, suggesting that carriers of premutations in the mid‐size CGG repeat range may be at greatest risk for the development of psychiatric disorder.
Noisy Business Cycles

This paper investigates a real-business-cycle economy that features dispersed information about the underlying aggregate productivity shocks, taste shocks, and, potentially, shocks to monopoly power. We show how the dispersion of information can (i) contribute to significant inertia in the response of macroeconomic outcomes to such shocks; (ii) induce a negative short-run response of employment to productivity shocks; (iii) imply that productivity shocks explain only a small fraction of high-frequency fluctuations; (iv) contribute to significant noise in the business cycle; (v) formalize a certain type of demand shocks within an RBC economy; and (vi) generate cyclical variation in observed Solow residuals and labor wedges. Importantly, none of these properties requires significant uncertainty about the underlying fundamentals: they rest on the heterogeneity of information and the strength of trade linkages in the economy, not the level of uncertainty. Finally, none of these properties are symptoms of inefficiency: apart from undoing monopoly distortions or providing the agents with more information, no policy intervention can improve upon the equilibrium allocations.
Annotation and analysis of disfluencies in a spontaneous speech corpus in Spanish

A new database consisting of 227 dialogues in Spanish was annotated with disfluencies. Then a detailed analysis of the annotations was carried out. The database had been recorded according to the well knownWizard of Oz paradigm. Seventy-five speakers were given each one three different scenarios to make queries about timetables, prices and other conditions of train travels between two spanish cities. The notion of disfluency was relaxed to include any acoustic, lexical or syntactic feature that distinguises spontaneous from read speech. A specific XML annotation scheme was developed. A simple text editor was used to insert marks, and a specific parser was implemented to find errors in annotations. The analysis of annotations revealed that disfluencies were not uniformly distributed among either user turns or speakers. Most disfluencies were grouped into certain user turns, especially the first one. On the other hand, some speakers were remarkably more prone to hesitate, repeat or correct fragments of speech than others.
Professional practice environment and burnout among nurses

Objetivo: avaliar o ambiente da pratica profissional do enfermeiro, sua relacao com a sindrome de burnout e diferencas entre tres instituicoes. Metodo: estudo transversal, desenvolvido em hospitais (dois terciarios e um de nivel secundario), com 278 enfermeiros que responderam os instrumentos Nursing Work Index Revised – Versao Brasileira e o Inventario de Burnout de Maslach. Resultados: das instituicoes, a maioria dos enfermeiros demonstraram satisfacao com o trabalho, boa qualidade da assistencia e a minoria tinha intencao de deixar o emprego. Na comparacao entre as instituicoes, a de nivel secundario, apresentou uma pratica de enfermagem com mais autonomia, maior controle sobre o ambiente e boas relacoes com a equipe medica e menores niveis de exaustao emocional. Conclusao: os achados contribuem na implementacao de mudancas que favorecam a pratica profissional do enfermeiro, possibilitando alcancar a satisfacao dos envolvidos no processo, como pacientes, profissionais e instituicao.
Altered S-nitrosylation of p53 is responsible for impaired antioxidant response in skeletal muscle during aging

p53 transcriptional activity has been proposed to regulate both homeostasis and sarcopenia of skeletal muscle during aging. However, the exact molecular function of p53 remains to be clearly defined. We demonstrated a requirement of nuclear p53 S-nitrosylation in inducing a nitric oxide/PGC-1α-mediated antioxidant pathway in skeletal muscle. Importantly, mutant form of p53-DNA binding domain (C124S) did not undergo nuclear S-nitrosylation and failed in inducing the expression of antioxidant genes (i.e. SOD2 and GCLC). Moreover, we found that during aging the nuclear S-nitrosylation of p53 significantly declines in gastrocnemius/soleus leading to an impairment of redox homeostasis of skeletal muscle. We suggested that decreased level of nuclear neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS)/Syntrophin complex, which we observed during aging, could be responsible for impaired nuclear S-nitrosylation. Taken together, our data indicate that altered S-nitrosylation of p53 during aging could be a contributing factor of sarcopenia condition and of other skeletal muscle pathologies associated with oxidative/nitrosative stress.
A VLSI architecture for interpolation in soft-decision list decoding of Reed-Solomon codes

The Koetter-Vardy algorithm is an algebraic soft-decision decoder for Reed-Solomon codes which is based on the Guruswami-Sudan list decoder. There are three main steps: 1) multiplicity calculation, 2) interpolation and 3) root finding. The Koetter-Vardy algorithm is challenging to implement due to the high cost of interpolation. We propose a VLSI architecture for interpolation that uses a transformation of the received word to reduce the number of iterations of the interpolation algorithm. We also show how the memory requirements can be reduced and an important operation, the Hasse derivative, can be efficiently implemented in VLSI.
Age Detection Through Keystroke Dynamics from User Authentication Failures

In this paper an incident response approach is proposed for handling detections of authentication failures in systems that employ dynamic biometric authentication and more specifically keystroke user recognition. The main component of the approach is a multi layer perceptron focusing on the age classification of a user. Empirical findings show that the classifier can detect the age of the subject with a probability that is far from the uniform random distribution, making the proposed method suitable for providing supporting yet circumstantial evidence during e-discovery.
Ultraviolet through Infrared Spectral Energy Distributions from 1000 SDSS Galaxies: Dust Attenuation

The meaningful comparison of models of galaxy evolution to observations is critically dependent on the accurate treatment of dust attenuation. To investigate dust absorption and emission in galaxies we have assembled a sample of ~1000 galaxies with UV through IR photometry from GALEX, SDSS, and Spitzer, and optical spectroscopy from SDSS. The ratio of IR to UV emission (IRX) is used to constrain the dust attenuation in galaxies. We use the 4000 Å break as a robust and useful, although coarse, indicator of star formation history (SFH). We examine the relationship between IRX and the UV spectral slope (a common attenuation indicator at high redshift) and find little dependence of the scatter on Dn(4000) . We construct average UV through far-IR spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for different ranges of IRX, Dn(4000) , and stellar mass (M*) to show the variation of the entire SED with these parameters. When binned simultaneously by IRX, Dn(4000) , and M* these SEDs allow us to determine a low-resolution average attenuation curve for different ranges of M*. The attenuation curves thus derived are consistent with a λ−0.7 attenuation law, and we find no significant variations with M*. Finally, we show the relationship between IRX and the global stellar mass surface density and gas-phase metallicity. Among star-forming galaxies we find a strong correlation between IRX and stellar mass surface density, even at constant metallicity, a result that is closely linked to the well-known correlation between IRX and star formation rate.
On the use of the millimeter wave and low terahertz bands for Internet of Things

Two major wireless communication evolutions, the fifth generation (5G) mobile systems and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication boom, are imminent. A major 5G challenge is supplying the higher than ever data rate and traffic demands using the already crunched conventional spectrum, where the expected addition of billions of new M2M connections will worsen the situation. Millimetre wave (mm-wave) band offers one substantial solution, through the utilization of parts of its vast frequency range. Following a general overview and the theoretical background, this paper provides the first realistic channel capacity and bit rate analyses in the literature for the 60 gigahertz (GHz) and low-terahertz bands, and compares those with the sub 6 GHz band links from the perspective of Internet of Things (IoT) application deployments. It is found that, considering the network densification intrinsic to the M2M communications, the use of the mm-wave band is a viable method to form stable and high performance links which are capable of supporting advanced IoT services.
Benefit of "one-stage full-mouth disinfection" is explained by disinfection and root planing within 24 hours: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES The beneficial effects of the one-stage, full-mouth disinfection remain controversial in the scientific literature. This might be due to the fact that an entire mouth disinfection with the use of antiseptics has been confused with a full-mouth scaling and root planing. This parallel, single blind RCT study aimed to compare several full-mouth treatment strategies with each other. MATERIAL AND METHODS Seventy-one patients with moderate periodontitis were randomly allocated to one of the following treatment strategies: scaling and root planing, quadrant by quadrant, at two-week intervals (negative control, NC), full-mouth scaling and root planing within 2 consecutive days (FRP), or three one-stage, full-mouth disinfection (FM) protocols within 2 consecutive days applying antiseptics to all intra-oral niches for periopathogens using as antiseptics: chlorhexidine (FMCHX) for 2 months, amine fluoride/stannous fluoride for 2 months (FMF), or chlorhexidine for 2 months followed by amine fluoride/stannous fluoride for another 6 months (FMCHX+F). At baseline and after 2, 4, and 8 a series of periodontal parameters were recorded. RESULTS All treatment strategies resulted in significant (p<0.05) improvements of all clinical parameters over the entire duration of the study. Inter-treatment differences were often encountered. The NC group nearly always showed significant smaller improvements than the two CHX groups. The differences between the FRP or FM groups, and the two CHX groups only sporadically reached a statistical significance. CONCLUSION These observations indicate that the benefits of the "OSFMD" protocol are partially due to the use of the antiseptics and partially to the completion of the therapy in a short time.
Assessing Knowledge Structures: Relations With Experience and Posttraining Performance

This research focuses on the construct validity of two methodologies for assessing cognitive organization or knowledge structures. Validity evidence is evaluated by considering the complex interrelations among experience, knowledge structures, and training outcomes. These relations are explored in the context of a laboratory-based, computer-related training initiative. In this article, results are presented that suggest that certain types of prior experience and some indicators of knowledge structures have significant relations with posttraining performance. However, the validity evi- dence gathered in this study does not support the notion that the two knowledge struc- ture assessment methods used are capturing equivalent aspects of knowledge. Moreover, context effects are indicated such that the relations among knowledge structures, experience, and training outcomes vary as a function of the set of concepts used in structural assessment. General implications for research on training, knowl- edge acquisi.
Transaction based business process modeling

A term of transaction which has its origin in database processing, representing a set of operations that must be performed all or none of them. The notion of transaction is also used in some business process modeling approaches such as the DEMO (Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations) and the REA (resource-event-agent) value modeling approach. The DEMO's transaction forms a basic building block from which a business process is composed. The REA value modeling approach utilizes transactions in an REA model representing a business process. In general, both methodologies utilize the notion of transaction, which has, however, a different meaning in these approaches. The aim of the paper is to describe the basic models of both approaches and to show, with the `rent-a-car' example, the principal differences between the notions of transaction between them. The paper also reflects on possible mutual collaboration between both approaches.
Decentralized connectivity maintenance in mobile networks with bounded inputs

A distributed control law that guarantees connectivity maintenance in a network of multiple mobile agents is presented. The control law respects the limited sensing capabilities of the agents by allowing each agent to take into account only agents within its sensing radius in the controller implementation. In contrast to previous approaches to the problem, the proposed control law does not attain infinite values whenever an edge tends to be lost, and is therefore a bounded distributed control law. This is achieved via the use of decentralized navigation functions which are potential fields with guaranteed boundedness and are redefined in this paper in order to take into account the connectivity maintenance objective. We first treat the case of connectivity maintenance in a static initial position based communication graph and extend the results to the case of dynamic edge addition. The results are then applied to a formation control problem.