Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prenatal androgen receptor activation determines adult alcohol and water drinking in a sex‐specific way

Alcohol use disorders are major psychiatric disorders. Correlational studies in humans suggested organizational hormonal effects during embryonic development as a risk factor for adult alcohol dependence. Permanent changes can be induced by the activity of sex hormones, like testosterone. Here, we demonstrate a relationship between prenatal androgen receptor (AR)‐activation and adult alcohol as well as water drinking in mice in a sex‐dependent fashion. Prenatal AR inhibition using the antagonist flutamide decreased adult male alcohol consumption. In contrast, prenatal AR activation by dihydrotestosterone (DHT) led to an increase in adult alcohol consumption in females. These effects were different in adult water drinking, flutamide increased water consumption in females and DHT increased water consumption in males. Prenatal flutamide reduced locomotion and anxiety in adult males but was ineffective in females. We found that prenatal AR activation controls adult levels of monoaminergic modulatory transmitters in the brain and blood hormone levels in a sex‐specific way. RNA‐Seq analysis confirmed a prenatal AR mediated control of adult expression of alcohol drinking‐related genes like Bdnf and Per2. These findings demonstrate that prenatal androgen activity is a risk factor for the establishment of alcohol consumption in adults by its organizational effects.
Toxicity and Immunogenicity in Murine Melanoma following Exposure to Physical Plasma-Derived Oxidants

Metastatic melanoma is an aggressive and deadly disease. Therapeutic advance has been achieved by antitumor chemo- and radiotherapy. These modalities involve the generation of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, affecting cellular viability, migration, and immunogenicity. Such species are also created by cold physical plasma, an ionized gas capable of redox modulating cells and tissues without thermal damage. Cold plasma has been suggested for anticancer therapy. Here, melanoma cell toxicity, motility, and immunogenicity of murine metastatic melanoma cells were investigated following plasma exposure in vitro. Cells were oxidized by plasma, leading to decreased metabolic activity and cell death. Moreover, plasma decelerated melanoma cell growth, viability, and cell cycling. This was accompanied by increased cellular stiffness and upregulation of zonula occludens 1 protein in the cell membrane. Importantly, expression levels of immunogenic cell surface molecules such as major histocompatibility complex I, calreticulin, and melanocortin receptor 1 were significantly increased in response to plasma. Finally, plasma treatment significantly decreased the release of vascular endothelial growth factor, a molecule with importance in angiogenesis. Altogether, these results suggest beneficial toxicity of cold plasma in murine melanomas with a concomitant immunogenicity of potential interest in oncology.
Modeling and Fundamental Design Considerations for Portable, Wearable and Implantable Electronic Biosensors

Dak, Piyush PhD, Purdue University, August 2016. Modeling and Fundamental Design Considerations for Portable, Wearable and Implantable Electronic Biosensors. Major Professor: Muhammad Ashraful Alam. Chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), etc. are leading causes of mortality all over the world. Portable, wearable and implantable biosensors can go a long way in preventing these premature deaths by frequent or continuous self-monitoring of vital health parameters. Integration of different laboratory operations, such as mixing, sorting, transport and sensing (conducted to perform biomedical testing) onto a chip will allow development of portable hand-held diagnostic devices. In addition, if these device are flexible and/or bio-compatible, then these could either be worn as part of clothing or implanted into body for continuous health monitoring. While considerable work has been done to evaluate and enhance sensing performance of classical diagnostic devices, electrical sensing properties of miniaturized portable, wearable and implantable diagnostic devices remain poorly understood. Thus, the need of the hour is to come up with a predictive theoretical framework that can provide design guidelines to improve the sensing performance of these devices. Towards this goal, we explore the physics and interpret experiments: 1) to manipulate small droplets for lab-on-chip portable sensors, 2) to improve the sensing performance of transition-metal dichalcogenides based flexible wearable sensors, 3) to determine the performance trade-offs in hydrogel based implantable biochemical sensors, and 4) to develop compact models for system level integration of biosensors. The guidelines resulting from this framework can be used to design and optimize the performance of these next-generation sensors.
Tracing How Normative Messages May Influence Physical Activity Intention.

Normative messages have been shown to increase intention to do physical activity. We traced how "positive" and "negative" normative messages influenced physical activity intention by comparing constructs of the model of goal-directed behavior with descriptive norms (MGDB + DNs) across control and treatment groups in an experiment. For this purpose, 16-24-year-old respondents (n = 1,200) in Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania were asked about their age, sex, and levels of physical activity before being exposed to positive and negative normative messages and completing a questionnaire with MGDB + DNs scales. Different MGDB + DNs constructs were influenced by the normative messages: compared with the control, the negative message group showed stronger attitudes (p = .003) and the positive message group showed higher positive anticipated emotions (p = .005). The positive message's effect is consistent with the literature on conformity to social norms. The negative message's effect lends itself to interpretations based on social identity and deviance regulation theories.
The relation between the motor evoked potential and diffusion tensor tractography for the corticospinal tract in chronic hemiparetic patients with cerebral infarct

Abstract We examined the relation between the results of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and diffusion tensor tractography (DTT) for the corticospinal tract (CST) in chronic hemiparetic patients with a middle cerebral artery (MCA) territory infarct. The amplitude of motor evoked potential (MEP) was closely related to the FN of the CST on DTT in chronic hemiparetic patients with an MCA infarct. We believe that our results would be helpful in more precise estimation of the CST.
The drug abuse screening test.

The Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) was designed to provide a brief instrument for clinical screening and treatment evaluation research. The 28 self-report items tap various consequences that are combined in a total DAST score to yield a quantitative index of problems related to drug misuse. Measurement properties of the DAST were evaluated using a clinical sample of 256 drug/alcohol abuse clients. The internal consistency reliability estimate was substantial at . 92, and a factor analysis of item intercorrelations suggested an unidimensional scale. With respect to response style biases, the DAST was only moderately correlated with social desirability and denial. Concurrent validity was examined by correlating the DAST with background variables, frequency of drug use during the past 12 months, and indices of psychopathology. Although these findings support the usefulness of the DAST for quantifying the extent of drug involvement within a help-seeking population, further validation work is needed in other populations and settings.
A Theoretical Model of Overpotential at Interfaces in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

Polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) have recently attracted considerable attention as a promising clean energy source. In the present study, we develop a theoretical model for the overpotential in PEFCs. Protons with sufficient kinetic energy to overcome the potential barrier can pass through the interfaces. They then converge to a constant current, dissipating their kinetic energy. In particular, inelastic collisions of protons at electrode–electrolyte interfaces are considered to be the dominant cause of overvoltage. This model based on the assumptions above differs from conventional continuum models. The effects of potential barriers at interfaces, proton concentrations, temperature, and mass on the voltage loss are clarified by a parameter study. To verify this model, we prepare two different membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) that have different interface conditions and measure their current–voltage characteristics. As a result, substantial voltage losses from the MEA with the poorer quality interfaces are observed. Theoretical evaluations of the overvoltage are in good agreement with the experimental results. The present results imply that it is essential to control interface conditions to achieve high proton conduction.
LiDAR information extraction by attribute filters with partial reconstruction

Recent advances in airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology allow us to rapid measure the topographical information over large areas. LiDAR remote sensed data has been widely used in many applications, e.g. forest management, urban planning, disaster predictions, etc. However, extracting useful information from LiDAR data remains challenging, especially in the urban remote sensing, where many objects have the same elevation and are connected, such as road and parking lots, trees and buildings. In this work, we present a new method to extract geometric and textural information from LiDAR data by using attribute filters with partial reconstruction. The proposed method can separate the connected objects and better model the geometric and textural information than traditional connected filters (e.g. attribute filters). Experimental results on LiDAR data from the 2013 IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Contest demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared to the methods using original LiDAR data or attribute profiles computed by traditional attribute filters, with the proposed method, overall classification accuracies were improved by 35% and 12%, respectively.
Fast Successive-Cancellation Decoding of Polar Codes: Identification and Decoding of New Nodes

The decoding latency of polar codes can be reduced by implementing fast parallel decoders in the last stages of decoding. In this letter, we present five such decoders corresponding to different frozen-bit sequences to improve the decoding speed of polar codes. Implementing them achieves significant latency reduction without tangibly altering the bit-error-rate performance of the code.
Robust Classification Method of Tumor Subtype by Using Correlation Filters

Tumor classification based on Gene Expression Profiles (GEPs), which is of great benefit to the accurate diagnosis and personalized treatment for different types of tumor, has drawn a great attention in recent years. This paper proposes a novel tumor classification method based on correlation filters to identify the overall pattern of tumor subtype hidden in differentially expressed genes. Concretely, two correlation filters, i.e., Minimum Average Correlation Energy (MACE) and Optimal Tradeoff Synthetic Discriminant Function (OTSDF), are introduced to determine whether a test sample matches the templates synthesized for each subclass. The experiments on six publicly available data sets indicate that the proposed method is robust to noise, and can more effectively avoid the effects of dimensionality curse. Compared with many model-based methods, the correlation filter-based method can achieve better performance when balanced training sets are exploited to synthesize the templates. Particularly, the proposed method can detect the similarity of overall pattern while ignoring small mismatches between test sample and the synthesized template. And it performs well even if only a few training samples are available. More importantly, the experimental results can be visually represented, which is helpful for the further analysis of results.
The miR‐15 family reinforces the transition from proliferation to differentiation in pre‐B cells

Precursor B lymphocytes expand upon expression of a pre‐B cell receptor (pre‐BCR), but then transit into a resting state in which immunoglobulin light chain gene recombination is initiated. This bi‐phasic sequence is orchestrated by the IL‐7 receptor (IL‐7R) and pre‐BCR signaling, respectively, but little is known about microRNAs fine‐tuning these events. Here, we show that pre‐B cells lacking miR‐15 family functions exhibit prolonged proliferation due to aberrant expression of the target genes cyclin E1 and D3. As a consequence, they fail to trigger the transcriptional reprogramming normally accompanying their differentiation, resulting in a developmental block at the pre‐B cell stage. Intriguingly, our data indicate that the miR‐15 family is suppressed by both IL‐7R and pre‐BCR signaling, suggesting it is actively integrated into the regulatory circuits of developing B cells. These findings identify the miR‐15 family as a novel element required to promote the switch from pre‐B cell proliferation to differentiation.
Endurance Exercise in Hypoxia, Hyperoxia and Normoxia: Mitochondrial and Global Adaptations

Abstract We hypothesized short-term endurance exercise (EN) in hypoxia (HY) to exert decreased mitochondrial adaptation, peak oxygen consumption (VO2peak) and peak power output (PPO) compared to EN in normoxia (NOR) and hyperoxia (PER). 11 male subjects performed repeated unipedal cycling EN in HY, PER, and NOR over 4 weeks in a cross-over design. VO2peak, PPO, rate of perceived exertion (RPE) and blood lactate (Bla) were determined pre- and post-intervention to assess physiological demands and adaptation. Skeletal muscle biopsies were collected to determine molecular mitochondrial signaling and adaptation. Despite reduced exercise intensity (P<0.05), increased Bla and RPE levels in HY revealed higher metabolic load compared to PER (P<0.05) and NOR (n.s.). PPO increased in all groups (P<0.05) while VO2peak and mitochondrial signaling were unchanged (P>0.05). Electron transport chain complexes tended to increase in all groups with the highest increase in HY (n.s.). EN-induced mitochondrial adaptability and exercise capacity neither decreased significantly in HY nor increased in PER compared to NOR. Despite decreased exercise intensity, short term EN under HY may not necessarily impair mitochondrial adaptation and exercise capacity while PER does not augment adaptation. HY might strengthen adaptive responses under circumstances when absolute training intensity has to be reduced.
Stress Degrades Prefrontal Cortex Neuronal Coding of Goal‐Directed Behavior

&NA; Stress, pervasive in modern society, impairs prefrontal cortex (PFC)‐dependent cognitive processes, an action implicated in multiple psychopathologies and estimated to contribute to nearly half of all work place accidents. However, the neurophysiological bases for stress‐related impairment of PFC‐dependent function remain poorly understood. The current studies examined the effects of stress on PFC neural coding during a working memory task in rats. Stress suppressed responses of medial PFC (mPFC) neurons strongly tuned to a diversity of task events, including delay and outcome (reward, error). Stress‐related impairment of task‐related neuronal activity included multidimensional coding by PFC neurons, an action that significantly predicted cognitive impairment. Importantly, the effects of stress on PFC neuronal signaling were highly conditional on tuning strength: stress increased task‐related activity in the larger population of PFC neurons weakly tuned to task events. Combined, stress elicits a profound collapse of task representations across the broader population of PFC neurons.
Recurrence Factors in Giant Cell Tumors of the Spine

Background: Giant cell tumors (GCTs) are benign, locally aggressive tumors. We examined the rate of local recurrence of spinal GCTs and sought to identify recurrence factors in patients who underwent surgery. Methods: Between 1995 and 2014, 94 mobile spine GCT patients were treated at our hospital, comprising 43 male and 51 female patients with an average age of 33.4 years. Piecemeal intralesional spondylectomy and total en bloc spondylectomy (TES) were performed. Radiotherapy was suggested for recurrent or residual GCT cases. Since denosumab was not available before 2014 in our country, only interferon and/or zoledronic acid was suggested. Results: Of the 94 patients, four underwent conservative treatment and 90 underwent operations. Seventy-five patients (79.8%) were followed up for a minimum of 24 months or until death. The median follow-up duration was 75.3 months. The overall recurrence rate was 37.3%. Ten patients (13.3%) died before the last follow-up (median: 18.5 months). Two patients (2.6%) developed osteogenic sarcoma. The local recurrence rate was 80.0% (24/30) in patients who underwent intralesional curettage, 8.8% (3/34) in patients who underwent extracapsular piecemeal spondylectomy, and 0 (0/9) in patients who underwent TES. The risk factors for local recurrence were lesions located in the cervical spine (P = 0.049), intralesional curettage (P < 0.001), repeated surgeries (P = 0.014), and malignancy (P < 0.001). Malignant transformation was a significant risk factor for death (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Cervical spinal tumors, curettage, and nonintact tumors were risk factors for local recurrence. Intralesional curettage and malignancy were the most important significant factors for local recurrence and death, respectively.
Cross-language nonword repetition by bilingual and monolingual children.

PURPOSE Identifying children with primary or specific language impairment (LI) in languages other than English continues to present a diagnostic challenge. This study examined the utility of English and Spanish nonword repetition (NWR) to identify children known to have LI. METHOD Participants were 4 groups of school-age children (N = 187). There were 2 typically developing groups: proficient Spanish-English sequential bilinguals and monolingual English speakers. There were 2 groups of children with LI, one Spanish-English and the other monolingual English speakers. Children participated in both English and Spanish NWR. RESULTS Children's NWR performance was significantly correlated across languages. In English NWR, the 2 groups with LI had lower accuracy at the longest syllable length than the 2 typically developing groups. In Spanish NWR, monolingual children with LI had lower repetition accuracy than bilingual children with LI and typical monolingual children, with all 3 groups outperformed by the typical bilingual group. Likelihood ratios indicated adequate diagnostic power only for English NWR in ruling out the typical bilingual children as showing LI. CONCLUSION The results demonstrate that NWR performance relies on the dual influences of LI and native language experience. However, it remains possible that NWR is useful in a composite marker for LI.
PD-L1 on tumor cells is sufficient for immune evasion in immunogenic tumors and inhibits CD8 T cell cytotoxicity

It is unclear whether PD-L1 on tumor cells is sufficient for tumor immune evasion or simply correlates with an inflamed tumor microenvironment. We used three mouse tumor models sensitive to PD-1 blockade to evaluate the significance of PD-L1 on tumor versus nontumor cells. PD-L1 on nontumor cells is critical for inhibiting antitumor immunity in B16 melanoma and a genetically engineered melanoma. In contrast, PD-L1 on MC38 colorectal adenocarcinoma cells is sufficient to suppress antitumor immunity, as deletion of PD-L1 on highly immunogenic MC38 tumor cells allows effective antitumor immunity. MC38-derived PD-L1 potently inhibited CD8+ T cell cytotoxicity. Wild-type MC38 cells outcompeted PD-L1–deleted MC38 cells in vivo, demonstrating tumor PD-L1 confers a selective advantage. Thus, both tumor- and host-derived PD-L1 can play critical roles in immunosuppression. Differences in tumor immunogenicity appear to underlie their relative importance. Our findings establish reduced cytotoxicity as a key mechanism by which tumor PD-L1 suppresses antitumor immunity and demonstrate that tumor PD-L1 is not just a marker of suppressed antitumor immunity.
The Structure of Psychopathology in Early Adolescence: Study of a Canadian Sample

Objective: The current study investigates the correlational structure of psychopathology in a large sample of Canadian adolescents and highlights the association between the psychopathological dimensions and gender. Method: Data came from 3826 Canadian adolescents aged 12.8 ± 0.4 y. Five alternative dimensional models were tested using confirmatory factor analysis, and the association between gender, language, and the mean level of psychopathological dimensions was examined using a multiple-indicators multiple-causes model. Results: A bifactor model with 1 general psychopathology factor and 3 specific dimensions (internalizing, externalizing, thought disorder) provided the best fit to the data. Results indicated metric invariance of the bifactor structure with respect to language. Females reported higher mean levels of internalizing, and males reported higher mean levels of externalizing. No significant sex differences emerged in liability to thought disorder or general psychopathology. The presence of a general psychopathology factor increased the association between gender and specific dimensions. Conclusions: The current study is the first to highlight the bifactor structure including a specific thought disorder factor in a Canadian sample of adolescents. The findings further highlight the importance of transdiagnostic approaches to prevention and intervention among young adolescents.
Digital filter realizations absent of self-sustained oscillations

As shown in [9], for a state-space realization (A,B,C,d) of a digital Alter there are no self-sustained oscillations (i.e., limit cycles) if there exists some diagonal matrix D > 0 such that D-AT DA ges 0. Based on this result, we show that the optimal roundoff realizations are free of limit cycles. For any given realizations, a method is proposed to check the existence of such a D. A novel class of robust state-space realizations is derived and characterized, which are free of limit cycles and yield a minimal error propagation gain. The optimal realization problem for this class of realizations is formulated and solved analytically. Two examples are presented to test the efficiency of the proposed method and to demonstrate the behavior of the obtained optimal realization.
Translating Pseudo-Boolean Constraints into SAT

In this paper, we describe and evaluate three dieren t techniques for translating pseudoboolean constraints (linear constraints over boolean variables) into clauses that can be handled by a standard SAT-solver. We show that by applying a proper mix of translation techniques, a SAT-solver can perform on a par with the best existing native pseudo-boolean solvers. This is particularly valuable in those cases where the constraint problem of interest is naturally expressed as a SAT problem, except for a handful of constraints. Translating those constraints to get a pure clausal problem will take full advantage of the latest improvements in SAT research. A particularly interesting result of this work is the eciency of sorting networks to express pseudo-boolean constraints. Although tangential to this presentation, the result gives a suggestion as to how synthesis tools may be modied to produce arithmetic circuits more suitable for SAT based reasoning.