Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential Effects of Dietary Supplementation with Fish Oil or Soy Lecithin on Human Platelet Adhesion

Summary To investigate the possible regulating role of ω-6 and of ω-3 fatty acids on platelet adhesiveness, we randomised 60 volunteers into three groups to take 20 ml (equivalent to 0.3 g ω-6, 3.6 g ω-3; ω-6/ω-3 ratio 0.1) per day of a fish oil supplement, or to take 25 g (equivalent to 1.5 g ω-6, 0.5 g ω-3; ω-6/ω-3 ratio 3) per day of a soy lecithin supplement, or to continue on their usual diet without any supplement (control group) for a period of 15 days. Platelet adhesion on fibrinogen-coated 96-well microtitre plates was evaluated in the resting condition and after stimulation with 2 ωM ADP or 0.02 U/ml thrombin. Compared to the values before the experimental period, the fish oil group showed a significant reduction in stimulated adhesion (with ADP: from 18.8% to 15.6%, p <0.01; with thrombin: from 24.4% to 20.8%, p <0.005), whereas no difference was noted in the resting condition (from 3.6% to 3.5%, NS). In the soy lecithin group, platelet adhesion was increased in all test conditions (with ADP: from 18.7% to 23.2%, p <0.001; with thrombin: from 24.0% to 29.9%, p <0.001; resting: from 3.5% to 6.6%, p <0.001). No significant changes were observed in the control group. A good correlation was found between platelet adhesion data and the changes in the platelet fatty acid ω-6/ω-3 ratio caused by the different supplementations. Our results indicate an inhibitory effect of fish oil rich in ω-3 fatty acids on stimulated human platelet adhesiveness and a stimulatory effect of soy lecithin rich in ω-6 fatty acids on resting and stimulated adhesion. They suggest moreover that the ω-6/ω-3 ratio is a determinant of platelet adhesion.
Associations between HLA frequencies and pathogenic features of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infection in seroconverters from the Amsterdam cohort of homosexual men.

HLA-disease associations may be important for understanding the pathogenesis of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection. Therefore, 106 homosexual men from the Amsterdam Cohort Study on AIDS with a known date of HIV-1 seroconversion were serologically typed for HLA. Several significant associations between HLA type and pathogenic features of HIV-1 infection were observed: Subjects with fever and skin rash during primary HIV-1 infection showed an increased frequency of HLA-B62 (relative risk [RR], 5.8; P = .005). The frequency of HLA-B35 was increased in subjects with a rapid decline in CD4+ T lymphocytes (RR, 3.2; P = .021). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed a significant association between HLA-B35 and a decrease in CD4+ cells to < 200/microL (P = .01). The strongest association was found between HLA-DR1 and AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma (RR, 22.5; P < .001), also confirmed in survival analysis (P = .001). In AIDS patients with only opportunistic infections, increased frequencies of HLA-DR3 (P = .011) and -DQ2 (P = .007) were observed. Finally, the occurrence of syncytium-inducing HIV-1 variants was significantly associated with HLA-DQ2 (P = .01).
HsfB2b-mediated repression of PRR7 directs abiotic stress responses of the circadian clock

Significance The daily environmental changes in light and dark set the pace of the circadian clock, which at the molecular level is composed of transcription-based feedback loops. It is well known that temperature fluctuations affect the circadian clock, but the molecules involved remain largely undefined. We found that the heat shock transcription factor HsfB2b works in the repression of the morning clock gene PRR7. We tested the properties of the circadian clock, and growth behavior, in the hsfB2b mutant and in transgenics with altered HsfB2b expression. Our results reveal that HsfB2b expression is important for accurate circadian rhythms following elevated temperature and/or salt treatment. Our work provides evidence of a molecular entry point for temperature signaling to the plant circadian clock. The circadian clock perceives environmental signals to reset to local time, but the underlying molecular mechanisms are not well understood. Here we present data revealing that a member of the heat shock factor (Hsf) family is involved in the input pathway to the plant circadian clock. Using the yeast one-hybrid approach, we isolated several Hsfs, including HEAT SHOCK FACTOR B2b (HsfB2b), a transcriptional repressor that binds the promoter of PSEUDO RESPONSE REGULATOR 7 (PRR7) at a conserved binding site. The constitutive expression of HsfB2b leads to severely reduced levels of the PRR7 transcript and late flowering and elongated hypocotyls. HsfB2b function is important during heat and salt stress because HsfB2b overexpression sustains circadian rhythms, and the hsfB2b mutant has a short circadian period under these conditions. HsfB2b is also involved in the regulation of hypocotyl growth under warm, short days. Our findings highlight the role of the circadian clock as an integrator of ambient abiotic stress signals important for the growth and fitness of plants.
Cerebrovascular reactivity assessed by transcranial Doppler ultrasound in sport-related concussion: a systematic review

Background Traumatic brain injury influences regulation of cerebral blood flow in animal models and in human studies. We reviewed the use of transcranial Doppler ultrasound (US) to monitor cerebrovascular reactivity following sport-related concussion. Review method A narrative and systematic review of articles published in the English language, from December 1982 to October 2013. Data sources Articles were retrieved via numerous databases using relevant key terms. Observational, cohort, correlational, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies were included. Results Three publications met the criteria for inclusion; these provided data from 42 athletes and 33 controls. All three studies reported reductions in cerebrovascular reactivity via transcranial Doppler US. Conclusions These initial results support the use of cerebrovascular reactivity as a research tool for identifying altered neurophysiology and monitoring recovery in adult athletes. Larger cross-sectional, prospective and longitudinal studies are required to understand the sensitivity and prognostic value of cerebrovascular reactivity in sport-related concussion.
Retinal vessel segmentation by improved matched filtering: evaluation on a new high-resolution fundus image database

Automatic assessment of retinal vessels plays an important role in the diagnosis of various eye, as well as systemic diseases. A public screening is highly desirable for prompt and effective treatment, since such diseases need to be diagnosed at an early stage. Automated and accurate segmentation of the retinal blood vessel tree is one of the challenging tasks in the computer-aided analysis of fundus images today. We improve the concept of matched filtering, and propose a novel and accurate method for segmenting retinal vessels. Our goal is to be able to segment blood vessels with varying vessel diameters in high-resolution colour fundus images. All recent authors compare their vessel segmentation results to each other using only low-resolution retinal image databases. Consequently, we provide a new publicly available high-resolution fundus image database of healthy and pathological retinas. Our performance evaluation shows that the proposed blood vessel segmentation approach is at least comparable with recent state-of-the-art methods. It outperforms most of them with an accuracy of 95% evaluated on the new database.
The ubiquitin‐like protein Smt3p is activated for conjugation to other proteins by an Aos1p/Uba2p heterodimer

SMT3 is an essential Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene encoding a 11.5 kDa protein similar to the mammalian ubiquitin‐like protein SUMO‐1. We have found that Smt3p, like SUMO‐1 and ubiquitin, can be attached to other proteins post‐translationally and have characterized the processes leading to the activation of the Smt3p C‐terminus for conjugation. First, the SMT3 translation product is cleaved endoproteolytically to expose Gly98, the mature C‐terminus. The presence of Gly98 is critical for Smt3p's abilities to be conjugated to protein substrates and to complement the lethality of a smt3Δ strain. Smt3p undergoes ATP‐dependent activation by a novel heterodimeric enzyme consisting of Uba2p, a previously identified 71 kDa protein similar to the C‐terminus of ubiquitin‐activating enzymes (E1s), and Aos1p (activation of Smt3p), a 40 kDa protein similar to the N‐terminus of E1s. Experiments with conditional uba2 mutants showed that Uba2p is required for Smt3p conjugation in vivo. Furthermore, UBA2 and AOS1 are both essential genes, providing additional evidence that they act in a distinct pathway whose role in cell viability is to conjugate Smt3p to other proteins.
Kidney podocytes as specific targets for cyclo(RGDfC)-modified nanoparticles.

Renal nanoparticle passage opens the door for targeting new cells like podocytes, which constitute the exterior part of the renal filter. When cyclo(RGDfC)-modified Qdots are tested on isolated primary podocytes for selective binding to the αvβ3 integrin receptor a highly cell- and receptor-specific binding can be observed. In displacement experiments with free cyclo(RGDfC) IC(50) values of 150 nM for αvβ3 integrin over-expressing U87-MG cells and 60 nM for podocytes are measured. Confocal microscopy shows a cellular Qdot uptake into vesicle-like structures. Our ex vivo study gives clear evidence that, after renal filtration, nanoparticles can be targeted to podocyte integrin receptors in the future. This could be a highly promising approach for future therapy and diagnostics of podocyte-associated diseases.
The role of intrauterine bacteria in brain injury

Organisms appear to be present in human fetal membranes without any apparent impact on pregnancy maintenance or the fetal brain. A clear link between chorioamnionitis and fetal brain damage suggests that tissue responses at the feto‐maternal interface may be the key determinant of whether preterm labour and brain damage occur.
Design and Development of Games and Interactive Installations for Environmental Awareness

Digital games and playful interactive installations are considered a promising means to raising awareness about the environment and persuading people to adopt an environmental friendly behavior. However, the selection and use of appropriate methods and paradigms for designing and evaluating such systems and successfully blending the ‘fun’ element with the messages to be communicated is still an active research issue. The aim of this paper is to investigate the benefits and drawbacks of using games and playful interactive technologies for changing people’s attitude towards the environment through a series of projects developed and publicly presented during a campaign for reducing the use of plastic bags. The development included the identification of the projects’ goals, an analysis of people, activities, target behavior and context of use, and finally the design and prototyping of the interactive installations. In total, eight projects have been developed, six interactive installations and two digital games that have been publicly presented, used and evaluated during the campaign. An additional user evaluation of the two games has been performed in the laboratory, to gain more insight on their usability and impact. The paper presents an overview of the design process and methodology, the main design elements of each project, and a number of observations and preliminary evaluation results.
A Fuzzy Bayesian Learning Model in Agent-based Electric Power Bilateral Negotiation

In Agent-based electric power bilateral negotiation,it is important to enhance the Agent's ability to adjust according to the environment so as to improve the negotiation efficiency.By introducing Bayesian learning to Agent-based electric power bilateral negotiation,the Agent was empowered the ability to learn according to a dynamic environment and adjust itself,so that the efficiency of the negotiation was improved.At the same time,taking into account the fuzzy uncertainties of the negotiating environment,the fuzzy set and fuzzy probability theories were used to construct an Agent Fuzzy Bayesian learning model,and then its point bidding strategy and interval bidding strategy were designed.Finally,an example was given to prove that the negotiation where both the negotiators adopt fuzzy Bayesian learning is more efficient than the negotiation where neither or only one negotiator adopt fuzzy Bayesian learning.And the interval bidding strategy can save more time for negotiators,so it is more suitable for time-limited negotiation.
Are Global Labor Markets Truly “ Flat ” ?

Visionaries conjecture that the world is becoming a level (“flat”) playing field due to the Internet that connects professional workers with employers anywhere around the world. To examine this “flat world” conjecture for global online labor markets for software development services, we analytically model and empirically examine the key factors that affect the dual aspects pricing of professional service providers and their selection by clients (employers): (1) global frictions, (2) labor arbitrage and (3) reputation signals. We first model and derive the equilibrium pricing strategy of service providers via backward induction of a two-stage game (which includes the client’s selection of a service provider given the provider’s bid price), and we propose a set of hypotheses about the key factors that affect both the providers’ pricing and also their selection by clients. We empirically test our hypotheses with an integrated dataset formed by a random sample (473,970 price bids for 27,450 service projects) from the transaction data from an global online labor marketplace for software development services matched with multiple archival sources (e.g., purchasing power parity (PPP) across countries, language, time-zone, and cultural differences). The results from our econometric analyses show that when submitting their price bids, service providers take into account global frictions (particularly language differences), try to exploit labor arbitrage opportunities with labor low PPP countries, and take advantage of their own reputation signals. In turn, clients avoid global frictions (language, time zone, and cultural differences) and favor providers with strong reputation signals from high PPP countries. Interestingly, online labor markets are not truly level (“flat”) playing fields due to the proposed global frictions that are detrimental to both the service providers’ and clients’ surplus. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications for designing “flatter” global online labor markets.
PERCEPTUAL COLOR IMAGE SIMILARITY USING FUZZY METRICS

s of MMA2015, May 26–29, 2015, Sigulda, Latvia c © 2015 PERCEPTUAL COLOR IMAGE SIMILARITY USING FUZZY METRICS SVETLANA GREČOVA, SAMUEL MORILLAS, ALEXANDER ŠOSTAK 1 Department of Mathematics, University of Latvia Zellu street 8, Riga LV1002, Latvia E-mail: grecova.svetlana@gmail.com Instituto Universitario de Matemática Pura y Aplicada, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia Camino de Vera s/n 46022 Valencia, Spain E-mail: smorillas@mat.upv. es 3 Institute of Mathematics and CS, University of Latvia Riga LV-1459, Latvia E-mail: sostaks@latnet.lv,aleksandrs.sostaks@lumii.lv In many applications of the computer vision field measuring the similarity between (color) images is of paramount importance. However, the commonly used pixelwise similarity measures such as Mean Absolute Error, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, Mean Squared Error or Normalized Color Difference do not match well with perceptual similarity. Recently, a method for gray-scale image similarity (so called Structural Similarity Index) was proposed [3]. This method correlates quite well with the perceptual similarity and it has been extended also to color images. The method we discuss in this talk follows a procedure inspired in this recent work as follows: the images are processed with sliding patches so that a number of small image portions are compared and the similarity between two images is obtained by averaging the similarities of all portions. In each pair of patches three different factors are compared separately and then combined: contrast, structure and luminance. The particular expressions for these three factors cannot be directly generalized from gray-scale images to color images, and therefore we propose our own expressions to measure them. Our method for comparison of color images is based on fuzzy metrics [1] taking into account their advantages. Experimental results employing perceptual similarity observations show that our proposal performs accurately and it shows some advantages in performance for images with low correlation among some image channels [2]. Acknowlegement The third named author kindly announces the support of the ESF project 2013/0024/1DP/1.1. 1.2. 0/13/APIA/VIAA/045
HeLa cell-adherent enteropathogenic Escherichia coli in children under 1 year of age in Thailand

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) was isolated from 11% of 148 Hmong children under 1 year old with diarrhea at a refugee camp in northern Thailand. Of 16 children with EPEC-associated diarrhea, 11 were infected with EPEC that adhered to HeLa cells in a diffuse pattern, 3 were infected with EPEC that adhered to HeLa cells in a localized adherence (LA) pattern, and 2 were infected with EPEC that were nonadherent. In Bangkok, EPEC was isolated from 6% of 64 children under 1 year old with diarrhea and 7% of 56 children of the same age without diarrhea. Of four children with diarrhea, two were infected with EPEC with an LA pattern, and two were infected with nonadherent EPEC. Of four children without diarrhea, one was infected with EPEC with an LA pattern, one was infected with EPEC that adhered in a diffuse pattern, and two were infected with nonadherent EPEC. The 21 EPEC isolates with an LA pattern hybridized with the EPEC adherence factor DNA probe. EPEC was the only enteric pathogen identified in 16 (80%) of 20 children with EPEC-associated diarrhea. EPEC was as frequently isolated from children under 1 year old as were other bacterial enteric pathogens. The problem of identifying EPEC with pools of polyvalent antisera are described, and the need to identify additional enteropathogenic determinants of EPEC is discussed.
Developing CRISPR/Cas9 Technologies for Research and Medicine

CRISPR/Cas, comprised of Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and associated proteins (Cas), provides adaptive immunity against foreign DNA in bacteria and archaea. Type II CRISPR/Cas9 has attracted considerable interest as a tool to probe and manipulate biological systems. It has been engineered to introduce genome editing in a simple, flexible, and efficient manner. Various approaches have been explored to reduce the off-target effects, which limit its applications in certain circumstances. Moreover, a catalytically inactive Cas9 was used to guide various effectors and a labeling agent to specific DNA targets through protein fusion, thus enabling genetic/epigenetic regulation and visualizing specific genomic loci in living cells. Further, CRISPR/Cas9 could have a significant impact on medicine by facilitating the generation of cell lines and animal models for therapeutic screening and evaluation, and by providing a new promising avenue for gene therapy. CRISPR/Cas9 technologies are being rapidly developed in multiple directions, enabling new approaches for biological research. In addition, they may transform how drugs are developed and how human patients are treated in the future. Here we review CRISPR/Cas9 technologies originated, their applications utilizing the natural function, expansion of applications by repurposing to other functions, efforts for precision improvement, and finally how CRISPR/Cas9 may impact medicine.
The development of a theoretically driven generic measure of quality of life for children aged 6-12 years: a preliminary report.

OBJECTIVE To report the development and psychometric properties of a generic computer-delivered measure of quality of life (QoL) suitable for children aged 6-12 years: the Exqol. The theoretical model adopted is based on an assumption that poorer QoL is the result of discrepancies between an individual's actual ('like me') and ideal self ('how I would like to be'). METHOD The Exqol consists of 12 pictures, each of which is rated twice; first in terms of 'like me' and second as 'I would like to be'. The Exqol is delivered using a Macintosh Powerbook and takes approximately 20 min to complete. Data are reported for 58 children with asthma (Mage = 8.95 years) and 69 healthy children (Mage = 749 years). In order to determine validity of the Exqol, children with asthma also completed the Childhood Asthma Questionnaire (CAQ) and their mothers completed a measure of child vulnerability and caregiver QoL. RESULTS Higher discrepancies were found for children with asthma compared with healthy children (P < 0.05). For children with asthma, significant correlations were found between discrepancy scores and two of the four subscales of the CAQ. Children who rated their asthma to be more severe also had higher discrepancy scores (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS The Exqol has acceptable internal reliability and validity and distinguishes between children with asthma and healthy children. These data provide preliminary support for the theoretical assumption that QoL reflects perceived discrepancies between an individual's actual and ideal self. Methodological refinements to the Exqol are suggested.
Ground-level ozone concentration over Spain: an application of Kalman Filter post-processing to reduce model uncertainties

Abstract. The CALIOPE air quality modelling system, namely WRF-ARW/HERMES-EMEP/CMAQ/BSC-DREAM8b, has been used to perform the simulation of ground level O3 concentration for the year 2004, over the Iberian Peninsula. We use this system to study the daily ground-level O3 maximum. We investigate the use of a post-processing such as the Kalman Filter bias-adjustment technique to improve the simulated O3 maximum. The Kalman Filter bias-adjustment technique is a recursive algorithm to optimally estimate bias-adjustment terms from previous measurements and model results. The bias-adjustment technique is found to improve the simulated O3 maximum for the entire year and the whole domain. The corrected simulation presents improvements in statistical indicators such as correlation, root mean square error, mean bias, standard deviation, and gross error. After the post-processing the exceedances of O3 concentration limits, as established by the European Directive 2008/50/CE, are better reproduced and the uncertainty of the modelling system is reduced from 20% to 7.5%. Such uncertainty in the model results is under the established EU limit of the 50%. Significant improvements in the O3 average daily cycle and in its amplitude are also observed after the post-processing. The systematic improvements in the O3 maximum simulations suggest that the Kalman Filter post-processing method is a suitable technique to reproduce accurate estimate of ground-level O3 concentration.