Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel ghrelin assays provide evidence for independent regulation of ghrelin acylation and secretion in healthy young men.

CONTEXT Ghrelin, an acylated peptide hormone secreted from the gut, regulates appetite and metabolism. Elucidating its pattern of secretion in the fed and fasted states is important in the face of the obesity epidemic. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to examine changes in circulating ghrelin and des-acyl ghrelin in response to meals and fasting using newly developed two-site sandwich assays and sample preservation protocols to allow specific detection of full-length forms. DESIGN Ten-minute sampling was done for 26.5 h during a fed admission with standardized meals and on a separate admission during the final 24 h of a 61.5-h fast and continuing for 2.5 h after terminating the fast. SETTING The study was conducted at the University Hospital General Clinical Research Center. PARTICIPANTS Eight male volunteers participated, mean +/- sd age 24.5 +/- 3.7 yr and body mass index 24 +/- 2.1 kg/m(2). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Ten-minute sampling profiles were assessed for ghrelin and des-acyl ghrelin, fed and fasting. RESULTS In the fed state, ghrelin and des-acyl ghrelin showed similar dynamics; both were sharply inhibited by meals and increased at night. During fasting, ghrelin decreased to nadir levels seen postprandially, and des-acyl ghrelin remained near peak levels seen preprandially. Total full-length ghrelin (acyl plus des-acyl) levels remained unchanged. CONCLUSIONS Meals inhibited secretion of both ghrelin and des-acyl ghrelin, yet long-term fasting inhibited acylation but not total secretion. Acylation may be regulated independently of secretion by nutrient availability in the gut or by esterases that cleave the acyl group. These studies highlight the importance of stringent conditions for sample collection and evaluation of full-length ghrelin and des-acyl ghrelin using specific two-site assays.
Geminate Structures of African Cassava Mosaic Virus

ABSTRACT Two types of geminate structures were purified from African cassava mosaic geminivirus (ACMV)-infected Nicotiana benthamiana plants and analyzed by electron cryomicroscopy and image reconstruction. After cesium sulfate density gradient centrifugation, they were separated into lighter top (T) and heavier bottom (B) components. T particles comigrated with host proteins, whereas B particles were concentrated in a cesium density typical for complete virions. Both particles were composed of two incomplete icosahedra of 11 capsomers each, but T particles were slightly larger (diameter, 22.5 nm) and less dense in the interior than B particles (diameter, 21.5 nm). T particles were frequently associated with small globules of ∼14 nm diameter of unknown origin. The overall structure of ACMV, a begomovirus transmitted by whiteflies, was similar to that of Maize streak virus (MSV), a mastrevirus transmitted by leafhoppers, although the vertices of the icosahedra were less pronounced. Models of ACMV coat proteins based on Satellite tobacco necrosis virus support the exposure of parts of the molecule essential for transmission specificity by whiteflies and provide possible structural explanations for the smaller protrusion of the ACMV capsid relative to MSV. The differences of ACMV and MSV virion shapes are discussed with reference to their different animal vectors.
‘Not of this world’: The subjective experience of late-onset psychosis

Objectives: Psychosis with first onset after the age of 60 arising in the absence of dementia or primary affective disorder is thought to affect 2–4% of older people. Up to half will not respond fully to medication.The subjective experience of living with late-onset psychosis (LOP) has not yet been considered and this study represents a preliminary attempt to explore the subjective experience and psychological features of older people living with LOP. Method: The study was conducted in Ireland. Seven participants between the ages of 67 and 87 years who met diagnostic criteria for very late-onset schizophrenia-like psychosis were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. Participants spoke about previous life experiences as well as the experience of developing and living with LOP. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify common themes within their accounts. Results: Four themes emerged which reflected participants’ subjective experiences of earlier life stages as well as their current experiences of LOP. Three interrelated themes described participants’ experiences of social isolation, a solitary coping style and the experience of the self as ‘different’. A final theme reflected participants’ attempts to explain and find meaning in their psychotic experiences. Conclusions: Results support the view that the experience of LOP emerges in the context of psychosocial vulnerabilities combined with adversities associated with the experience of ageing.
Research on rehabilitation training bed with action prediction based on NARX neural network

Rehabilitation training can effectively help the elderly recover their self‐care state and enhance physical fitness. As surface electromyography analysis is effective to recognize motion intention, researchers use it to develop prosthetic limb operations. In this article, the rehabilitation training bed is designed by combining the rehabilitation training with the motion prediction based on the surface myoelectric signal, which can recognize the tilt of the upper body in different directions and provide corresponding assistance to the elderly. After collecting EMG signal, the effective signal was dimensional reduction, mapped by linear discriminant analysis. To train and recognize the EMG‐motion mapping relationship, we used a recurrent neural network called nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous input model and used a 360° tilt prediction experiment on the upper body. Results showed that the root mean squared error and the error autocorrelation coefficient were relatively low, and the tilt degree of the experimenter was highly matched.
Suramin inhibits cullin-RING E3 ubiquitin ligases

Significance Interactions between E2 and E3 enzymes are key for ubiquitination, but whether such a dynamic association is susceptible to perturbation by small-molecule modulators remains elusive. By demonstrating that suramin can inhibit cullin-RING E3 ubiquitin ligase by disrupting its ability to recruit E2 Cdc34, this work suggests that the E2–E3 interface may be druggable. In addition, suramin is an antitrypansomal drug that also possesses antitumor activity. Our findings have linked the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway to suramin and suggest additional biochemical mode of action for this century-old drug. Cullin-RING E3 ubiquitin ligases (CRL) control a myriad of biological processes by directing numerous protein substrates for proteasomal degradation. Key to CRL activity is the recruitment of the E2 ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme Cdc34 through electrostatic interactions between E3′s cullin conserved basic canyon and the acidic C terminus of the E2 enzyme. This report demonstrates that a small-molecule compound, suramin, can inhibit CRL activity by disrupting its ability to recruit Cdc34. Suramin, an antitrypansomal drug that also possesses antitumor activity, was identified here through a fluorescence-based high-throughput screen as an inhibitor of ubiquitination. Suramin was shown to target cullin 1’s conserved basic canyon and to block its binding to Cdc34. Suramin inhibits the activity of a variety of CRL complexes containing cullin 2, 3, and 4A. When introduced into cells, suramin induced accumulation of CRL substrates. These observations help develop a strategy of regulating ubiquitination by targeting an E2–E3 interface through small-molecule modulators.
ECG compression using long-term prediction

A new algorithm for ECG signal compression is introduced. The compression system is based on the subautoregression (SAR) model, known also as the long-term prediction (LTP) model. The periodicity of the ECG signal is employed in order to further reduce redundancy, thus yielding high compression ratios. The suggested algorithm was evaluated using an in-house database. Very low bit rates on the order of 70 b/s are achieved with a relatively low reconstruction error (percent RMS difference-PRD) of less than 10%. The algorithm was compared, using the same database, with the conventional linear prediction (short-term prediction-STP) method, and was found superior at any bit rate. The suggested algorithm can be considered a generalization of the recently published average beat subtraction method. <<ETX>>
A new variational approach to deblurring low-resolution images

This paper proposes a new variational model for deblurring low-resolution images, a.k. a. single image nonparametric blind super-resolution. In specific, a type of new adaptive heavy-tailed image priors are presented incorporating both the model discriminativeness and effectiveness of salient edge pursuit for accurate and reliable blur kernel estimation. With the assistance of appropriate non-blind super-resolution approaches, nonparametric blind super-resolution can be cast as a regularized functional minimization problem. An efficient numerical algorithm is derived by harnessing the alternating direction method of multipliers as well as the conjugate gradient method, with which alternatingly iterative estimations for kernel and image are finally implemented in a multi-scale manner. Numerous experiments are conducted along with comparisons made among the proposed approach and two recent state-of-the-art ones, demonstrating that the proposed approach is able to better deal with low-resolution images which are blurred by various possible kernels, e.g., Gaussianshaped kernels of varying sizes, ellipse-shaped kernels of varying orientations, curvilinear kernels of varying trajectories.
Control Strategy of Three-Phase Battery Energy Storage Systems for Frequency Support in Microgrids and with Uninterrupted Supply of Local Loads

Frequency control in autonomous microgrids (MG) with high penetration of renewable energy sources represents a great concern to ensure the system stability. In this regard, this paper presents an enhanced control method for battery energy storage systems (BESS) to support the frequency of MG and with the ability of disconnecting from the MG to supplying in the island mode a local consumer. A frequency controller, combining a conventional droop control with an inertia emulation function, governs the BESS active power transfer during the primary frequency control level. The BESS may also provide voltage support in the point of common coupling with the MG. Moreover, the proposed BESS may compensate, partially or totally, the power absorbed by the local loads in order to improve the MG frequency response. When the MG power quality worsens below a certain level, in terms of voltage and frequency, the BESS detaches from the MG and continues to operate islanded. The reconnection is accomplished following a smoothly resynchronization of the local voltage with the MG, without disturbing the local loads supply. Additionally, this paper also discusses about the aspects related to the BESS management and its integration within the proposed system. The simulation and experimental results assess the feasibility of the proposed control solutions.
Grid-Index Algorithm for Reverse Rank Queries

In Rank-aware query processing, reverse rank queries have already attracted significant interests. Reverse rank queries can find matching customers for a given product based on individual customers’ preference. The results are used in numerous real-life applications, such as market analysis and product placement. Efficient processing of reverse rank queries is challenging because it needs to consider the combination on the given data set of user preferences and the data set of products. Currently, there are two typical reverse rank queries: Reverse top-k and reverse k-ranks. Both prefer top-ranking products and the most efficient algorithms for them have a common methodology that indexes and prunes the data set using R-trees. This kind of tree-based algorithms suffers the problem that their performance in high-dimensional data declines sharply while high-dimensional data are significant for real-life applications. In this paper, we propose an efficient scan algorithm, named Grid-index algorithm (GIR), for processing reverse rank queries efficiently. GIR algorithm uses an approximate values index to save computations in scanning and only requires a little memory cost. Our theoretical analysis guarantees the efficiency and the experimental results confirm that GIR has superior performance compared to tree-based methods in high-dimensional applications. CCS Concepts •Theory of computation → Database query processing and optimization (theory); c ©2017, Copyright is with the authors. Published in Proc. 20th International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT), March 21-24, 2017 Venice, Italy: ISBN 978-3-89318-073-8, on OpenProceedings.org. Distribution of this paper is permitted under the terms of the Creative Commons license CC-by-nc-nd 4.0 Figure 1: Example for RTK and RKR queries. (a): the top2 cell phones appreciated by users. (b): the RT-2 of each phone. (c): the rank list and the R1-R of each phone.
A unified concept of HIV latency

The introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) combining potent drugs that can inhibit reverse transcriptase, integrase and protease activities has changed the natural history of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 disease. Unfortunately, poor penetrability into different anatomic compartments, toxicity and drug resistance are some of the problems related to their prolonged use. The ability of HIV to mutate and become resistant, along with the ongoing viral replication during HAART, can lead to the emergence of independently evolving viral strains in different anatomic compartments (i.e., brain, testes, lymph nodes, etc.). In addition, HAART predominantly effects the viral replication in the activated or differentiating CD+ T lymphocytes, but appears to have a very limited effect on HIV-1 preintegration complexes in the latently infected cells. Existing drug therapies do not eliminate these viral reservoirs, nor do they prevent their formation. New strategies are needed for eliminating protected areas of HIV-1 in vivo. Therefore, the persistence of latent HIV-1 reservoirs is the principal barrier in the complete eradication of HIV-1 infection in patients by antiretroviral therapy at present. African non-human primates (NHPs) naturally infected with various simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) appear not to develop immunodeficiency or AIDS, whereas Asian NHPs, which are unnatural hosts, infected with SIVs, as well humans infected with HIV-1, will nearly always develop progressive loss of CD+ T lymphocytes and a gradual destruction of immune functions. Understanding the difference in the host responses between natural and unnatural hosts, and deciphering which host factors are responsible for the non-pathogenic course of natural SIV infections, would be valuable in developing more-effective treatment or prevention strategies for HIV/AIDS. A number of factors encoded by host cells have been identified that appear to play critical roles in the SIV infection process. Two of these factors, TRIM5α (a member of a large family of proteins known as the TRIM proteins) and cellular apolipoprotein B mRNA-editing enzyme-catalytic polypeptide-like-3G (APOBEC3G) have been recently identified. APOBEC3G genes belong to a family of primate genes that produce enzymes (in this case, APOBEC3G) that ‘edit’ RNA by replacing cytosine with guanine into viral particles as the virus undergoes reverse transcription in the cytoplasm of the host cell. HIV-1, in turn, counters with a protein called viral infectivity factor (Vif), which binds to the APOBEC3G enzyme that degrades it. Several other blocking factors have been described, including lentiviral blocking factor (Lv)1 and 2. These factors appear to block the infection at a postentry step; after reverse transcription has occurred, but before proviral integration. Thus, it is crucial to understand the molecular mechanisms involved in the establishment, maintenance and reactivation of lentiviral latency. This review presents various models of HIV-1 latency and forward a new unified model of lentiviral latency.
Flora Graeca Digitalis: Old Library Stock meets Linked Open Data, Digital Strolling and Mobile Devices

Libraries have been digitizing old stock for several years now – mostly for a specific and restricted scientific user group. But what about the social obligation to preserve, and therefore call to mind digital cultural heritage in a contemporary manner? Flora Graeca is a large format masterpiece of printing, engraving, color and design of almost thousand plants of the Mediterranean area in the late 18th century comprising ten volumes. It was discovered in Darmstadt’s University and State Library three years ago. Encouraged by the overall good condition and the finely crafted, hand-colored illustrations, the library conducted a high-quality digitization of the whole work in order to make it digitally available to the public. The key question of the work presented here was how to reach a circle beyond scientific users, i.e. botanists and historians, and draw the general public’s interest to this wonderful masterpiece. The offer should address in particular young student library patrons, who use the library in hundreds as a place of work and communication. Why not making them curious in the libraries treasures while coming here every day? So, the idea was to enrich the illustrations by further information about the botanic illustrations by linked open data from the semantic web, such that entities could be linked semantically, and the digital copies could be connected to additional information. In combination with a presentation platform developed in a former project particularly for mobile usage, a virtual edition of Flora Graeca was formed, implemented as an edutainment application with responsive design and exploratory search for an intuitive and ludic handling. It breaks fresh ground by leaving the classic search and find paradigm towards digital strolling: just like a physical visit to a library or a museum, it allows strolling through a collection, discovering and comparing objects, and getting inspired.
Molecular and biochemical characterization of two meta-cleavage dioxygenases involved in biphenyl and m-xylene degradation by Beijerinckia sp. strain B1

Beijerinckia sp. strain B1 is able to grow on either biphenyl or m-xylene as the sole source of carbon and is capable of cooxidizing many polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The catabolic pathways for biphenyl and m-xylene degradation are coinduced and share common downstream enzymatic reactions. The catabolic pathway for biphenyl degradation involves two meta-cleavage steps, one for 2,3-dihydroxybiphenyl and a second for catechol. The catabolic pathway for m-xylene involves one m-cleavage step for 3-methylcatechol. The genes for two meta-cleavage dioxygenases were cloned from Beijerinckia sp. strain B1 on a single fragment of genomic DNA. The two genes are located approximately 5.5 kb away from one another. Expression of each gene separately in Escherichia coli and analysis of the meta-cleavage dioxygenase produced showed that one enzyme was more specific for 2,3-dihydroxybiphenyl while the second was more specific for catechol. The genes for the two meta-cleavage enzymes were thus labeled bphC and xylE for 2,3-dihydroxybiphenyl 1,2-dioxygenase and catechol 2,3-dioxygenase, respectively. Nondenaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis followed by enzyme activity staining showed that the two meta-cleavage dioxygenases could be easily separated from each other. Similar analyses of Beijerinckia sp. strain B1 grown on succinate, biphenyl, or m-xylene indicate that both meta-cleavage enzymes are induced when cells are grown on either biphenyl or m-xylene. The nucleotide sequence was determined for both bphC and xylE. The two genes are transcribed in opposite directions, demonstrating that at least two operons must be involved in biphenyl degradation by Beijerinckia sp. strain B1. Analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence indicates that 2,3-dihydroxybiphenyl 1,2-dioxygenase (BphC) falls into the class of meta-cleavage dioxygenases acting on dihydroxylated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and is somewhat distinct from the main group of meta-cleavage dioxygenases acting on 2,3-dihydroxybiphenyl. Catechol 2,3-dioxygenase (XyIE) falls into the class of meta-cleavage enzymes acting on dihydroxylated monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons but shows little similarity to the canonical TOL plasmid-encoded catechol 2,3-dioxygenase.
Efficient computation of erfc(x) for large arguments

A new, infinite series representation for the error function is developed. It is especially suitable for computing erfc(x) for large x. For instance, for any x/spl ges/4, the error function can be evaluated with a relative error less than 10/sup -10/ by using only eight terms. Similarly, the error function can be evaluated with a relative error less than 8/spl times/10/sup -7/ for any x/spl ges/2 using just six terms. An analytical bound is derived to show that the total error due to series truncation and undersampling rapidly decreases as x increases. Comparisons with two other series are provided.
Single domain and multidomain piezoelastic relationships in piezoelectric single crystals

This paper presents a new method to compute the piezoelastic properties of multidomain single crystals from their single domain state. Based on a quasistatic assumption, a PMN- xPT multidomain is defined as a periodic medium with a lattice composed of layers of two domains in a twin structure. This latter is assumed to have charged domain walls that imply adapted lattice media and boundary conditions. A numerical computation has been performed for a PMN-33PT single crystal. The effective elastic, piezoelectric and dielectric constants of the macroscopic structure are quantified, calculations of the degree of anisotropy and of the wave velocities in different domain pattern configurations are reported. I. INTRODUCTION Relaxor based ferroelectric single crystals, such as (1- x)Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-xPbTiO3 and (1-x)Pb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3- xPbTiO3, can reach excellent piezoelectric properties due to the formation of engineered domain configurations (1), (2). In such materials, the functional properties of macroscopic systems with multidomain structures will not only depend on the single domain properties but also on extrinsic contributions of domain walls. These two effects have thus to be taken into account to predict the effective properties of multidomain single crystals. In the present paper, a quasistatic homogenization model is proposed to calculate the effective tensor properties of twin single domains. Defining a lattice medium and appropriate electrical boundary conditions at the interface between two domains, the method allows to distinguish the intrinsic contri- butions due to domain orientation and volume averaging from the extrinsic effect of domain walls. This model has been used to calculate the multidomain properties of a PMN-xPT single crystal from its single domain properties in the rombohedral phase. Numerical results are given for a PMN-33PT single crystal in term of piezoelastic tensor and degree of anisotropy in different configurations of domain pattern.