Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Single-channel properties of glycine receptors of juvenile rat spinal motoneurones in vitro

An essential step in understanding fast synaptic transmission is to establish the activation mechanism of synaptic receptors. The purpose of this work was to extend our detailed single‐channel kinetic characterization of α1β glycine channels from rat recombinant receptors to native channels from juvenile (postnatal day 12–16) rat spinal cord slices. In cell‐attached patches from ventral horn neurones, 1 mm glycine elicited clusters of channel openings to a single conductance level (41 ± 1 pS, n= 12). This is similar to that of recombinant heteromers. However, fewer than 1 in 100 cell‐attached patches from spinal neurones contained glycine channels. Outside‐out patches gave a much higher success rate, but glycine channels recorded in this configuration appeared different, in that clusters opened to three conductance levels (28 ± 2, 38 ± 1 and 46 ± 1 pS, n= 7, one level per cluster, all levels being detected in each patch). Furthermore, open period properties were different for the different conductances. As a consequence of this, the only recordings suitable for kinetic analysis were the cell‐attached ones. Low channel density precluded recording at glycine concentrations other than 1 mm, but the 1 mm data allowed us to estimate the fully bound gating constants by global model fitting of the ‘flip’ mechanism of Burzomato and co‐workers. Our results suggest that glycine receptors on ventral horn neurones in the juvenile rat are heteromers and have fast gating, similar to that of recombinant α1β receptors.
Mutation in ATG5 reduces autophagy and leads to ataxia with developmental delay

Autophagy is required for the homeostasis of cellular material and is proposed to be involved in many aspects of health. Defects in the autophagy pathway have been observed in neurodegenerative disorders; however, no genetically-inherited pathogenic mutations in any of the core autophagy-related (ATG) genes have been reported in human patients to date. We identified a homozygous missense mutation, changing a conserved amino acid, in ATG5 in two siblings with congenital ataxia, mental retardation, and developmental delay. The subjects' cells display a decrease in autophagy flux and defects in conjugation of ATG12 to ATG5. The homologous mutation in yeast demonstrates a 30-50% reduction of induced autophagy. Flies in which Atg5 is substituted with the mutant human ATG5 exhibit severe movement disorder, in contrast to flies expressing the wild-type human protein. Our results demonstrate the critical role of autophagy in preventing neurological diseases and maintaining neuronal health. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.12245. 001
Low Levels of Dehydroepiandrosterone Sulfate in Younger Burnout Patients

Objective Dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate (DHEA-s) is an anabolic protective hormone of importance for maintenance of health. DHEA-s levels peak in young adults and decline thereafter with age. DHEA-s has previously been shown to be lower in individuals reporting prolonged stress. This study investigates DHEA-s levels in patients with clinical burnout, a disorder caused by long-term psychosocial stress. Methods 122 patients (51% men) and 47 controls (51% men) in the age 25–54 years were included in the study. DHEA-s levels were compared between patients and controls in the whole sample and within each of the three 10-year-interval age groups. Results In the youngest age group (25–34 years), DHEA-s levels were on average 25% lower in the patients (p = 0.006). The differences in DHEA-s levels between patients and controls were more pronounced among female than male participants (on average 32% and 13% lower, respectively). There were no differences in DHEA-s levels between patients and controls in the age group 35–44 years (p = 0.927) or 45–54 years (p = 0.897) or when analyzing all age groups together (p = 0.187). Conclusion The study indicates that levels of the health promoting “youth” hormone DHEA-s are low in younger burnout patients. The fact that younger adults have much higher DHEA-s levels and more pronounced inter-subject variability in DHEA-s levels than older individuals might explain why burnout status differentiates patients from controls only among the youngest patients included in this study.
Signal processing and statistical methods in analysis of text and DNA

A number of signal processing and statistical methods can be used in analyzing either pieces of text or DNA sequences. These techniques can be used in a number of ways, such as determining authorship of documents, finding genes in DNA, and determining phylogenetic and linguistic trees. Signal processing methods such as spectrograms provide useful new tools in the area of genomic information science. In particular, fractal analysis of DNA "signals" has provided a new way of classifying organisms.
Sprayable Thermoresponsive Hydrogels for Minimally Invasive Treatment of Bowel Diseases

Inflammatory bowel diseases, most notably Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, currently affect millions of patients worldwide and lead to prolonged inflammation of the digestive tract. Current treatment plans focus on systemic delivery of drugs; however these drugs frequently fail or are inadequate to prevent or reverse the damage. The purpose of this study is to develop a new class of colonoscope-based treatment options that specifically target the diseased area and locally deliver drugs and stem cells through sprayable application of a regenerative hydrogel during diagnostic procedures. Thermoresponsive hydrogel solutions can facilitate on-demand delivery of drugs and viable cell populations through instant solidification on intestinal tissue. Ultimately, the regeneration of diseased or damaged sections of the intestinal tract could maintain deep remission, increase intestinal function, reduce symptoms, and provide a higher quality of life for patients. Towards this end, poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (NiPAAm)-based thermogelling and crosslinking polyamidoamine (PAMAM) macromers were synthesized and combined to create a sprayable, in situ forming dual gelling hydrogel system for delivery of cellular hydrogel coatings onto warm tissues. Airbrush spraying was utilized as an operating tool to investigate the effects of solution formulation, pressure, and viscosity on the viability of fibroblast cells encapsulated in hydrogels. Smooth, fast, and conformal hydrogel coatings were obtained when thermogelling macromers were sprayed with high PAMAM concentration at low pressure. Cell viability was maximized when delivered by a dualstream spraying method due to decreases in viscosity, pressure, and the effects of micronetwork formation in a turbulent stream. These results demonstrated that sprayable
SeDAR - Semantic Detection and Ranging: Humans can Localise without LiDAR, can Robots?

How does a person work out their location using a floorplan? It is probably safe to say that we do not explicitly measure depths to every visible surface and try to match them against different pose estimates in the floorplan. And yet, this is exactly how most robotic scan-matching algorithms operate. Similarly, we do not extrude the 2D geometry present in the floorplan into 3D and try to align it to the real-world. And yet, this is how most vision-based approaches localise. Humans do the exact opposite. Instead of depth, we use high level semantic cues. Instead of extruding the floorplan up into the third dimension, we collapse the 3D world into a 2D representation. Evidence of this is that many of the floorplans we use in everyday life are not accurate, opting instead for high levels of discriminative landmarks. In this work, we use this insight to present a global localisation approach that relies solely on the semantic labels present in the floorplan and extracted from RGB images. While our approach is able to use range measurements if available, we demonstrate that they are unnecessary as we can achieve results comparable to state-of-the-art without them.
An Alternative Approach for Header Compression Over Wireless Mesh Networks

Header compression techniques theoretically can improve the speech quality of multimedia applications. However it introduces a new impairment directly related to the loss of packets, that can impact negatively on the quality. Its deployment over wireless mesh networks needs special treatment due to the usually high loss rates of such a network. This work shows an evaluation of an alternative approach for header compression over wireless mesh networks. Experiments by means of stochastic simulation showed that under some network characteristics the proposed approach shows significant improvements in the packet loss.
Optimum Biasing for Cell Load Balancing Under QoS and Interference Management in HetNets

In this paper, we consider a network in which lower power nodes (LPNs) are deployed jointly within macrocells. However, there are significant differences between the transmit power levels, coverage areas, and deployment densities of these two types of base stations. Such disparities lead to an unfair load distribution, as well as a lower throughput for picocells'users equipments (UEs). A good solution to such issues is the exploitation of the cell range expansion (CRE) technique. Although CRE has widely proven its effectiveness, it may degrade the network capacity if the cell bias is not chosen properly. In fact, it may generate severe intercell interference at extended region cell (ERC) UEs, which leads to a deterioration of their throughput. We thus propose a downlink coordinated cell range expansion for mobility management (CCREMM) strategy that analytically computes the joint optimal bias at picocells and macrocells. CCREMM mitigates the interference at ERC-UEs by accounting for their maximum tolerable interference. Moreover, CCREMM reaches the load balancing and the UE QoS satisfaction by accounting for additional parameters. It will be proven that our strategy which is associated with the maximum throughput scheduling technique, results in a cell load-balancing improvement, fairness, and a 50-90% UE throughput enhancement. These performance figures are shown to surpass those achieved by alternative approaches proposed in the existing literature.
Variants of the serotonin transporter gene, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and bone mineral density in risperidone-treated boys: a reanalysis of data from a cross-sectional study with emphasis on pharmacogenetics.

OBJECTIVE Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may reduce bone mineral density (BMD). Here, we investigate whether variants of the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) of the serotonin transporter gene moderate this association in boys. METHOD Between November 2005 and August 2009, medically healthy boys, aged 7 to 17 years, were enrolled in a cross-sectional study exploring the effect of risperidone-induced hyperprolactinemia on BMD. Volumetric BMD of the ultradistal radius was measured using peripheral quantitative computed tomography, and areal BMD of the lumbar spine was estimated using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry. Multiple linear regression analysis tested whether the 5-HTTLPR genotypes interacted with SSRI treatment status to affect BMD, adjusting for relevant confounders. Participant enrollment was conducted at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. RESULTS Of 108 boys (mean ± SD age = 11.7 ± 2.8 years), with DSM-IV clinical diagnoses based on chart review, 52% (n = 56) had been taking an SSRI for a median duration of 2.8 years. After adjusting for pubertal development, anthropometric measures, physical activity, calcium intake, and prolactin concentration, there was a significant 5-HTTLPR genotype × SSRI treatment interaction effect on total lumbar spine BMD z score (P < .05) in non-Hispanic whites. The interaction effect on BMD at the ultradistal radius failed to reach statistical significance. Among LS genotype carriers, those treated with SSRIs had lower lumbar BMD z score and trabecular BMD at the radius compared to those not treated (P < .02 and P < .008, respectively). CONCLUSIONS These findings add to the growing evidence implicating the serotonin system in bone metabolism. They suggest the potential use of 5-HTTLPR genotypes to guide the safer long-term prescribing of SSRIs in youths. However, prospective confirmation in a controlled matched population is warranted.
Modeling/predicting the evolution trend of osn-based applications

While various models have been proposed for generating social/friendship network graphs, the dynamics of user interactions through online social network (OSN) based applications remain largely unexplored. We previously developed a growth model to capture static weekly snapshots of user activity graphs (UAGs) using data from popular Facebook gifting applications. This paper presents a new continuous graph evolution model aimed to capture microscopic user-level behaviors that govern the growth of the UAG and collectively define the overall graph structure. We demonstrate the utility of our model by applying it to forecast the number of active users over time as the application transitions from initial growth to peak/mature and decline/fatique phase. Using empirical evaluations, we show that our model can accurately reproduce the evolution trend of active user population for gifting applications, or other OSN applications that employ similar growth mechanisms. We also demonstrate that the predictions from our model can guide the generation of synthetic graphs that accurately represent empirical UAG snapshots sampled at different evolution stages.
A Novel Radio Frequency Coil Design for Breast Cancer Screening in a Magnetic Resonance Imaging System.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a widely used soft tissue imaging technique that has gained considerable success because of its sensitivity to several tissue parameters. However, commercially available whole-body imaging systems with large encircling radio frequency (RF) and gradient coils are less efficient when the goal is to obtain detailed, high-resolution images with high specificity and sensitivity from localized regions of the body such as the female breast. This research addresses these problems by proposing a new design in RF coil development for breast cancer screening in a conventional 1.5T MRI system. The new design provides two resonant receiving modes that operate in a quadrature configuration, and a region of interest (ROI) that closely conforms to the shape of the female breast. We adopted an optimum design strategy that combined the analytic Biot-Savart intergral equation with the Method of Moment formulation in the development of electromagnetic models and simulation tools. These models were used to analyze the magnetic field distribution and the spatial field coverage, as well as the magnetic field uniformity in the ROI. Results from our analysis were employed in the construction of a highly scalable prototype. The validation of our design strategy is confirmed by comparisons with the commercial Ansoft HFSS v8.5 finite element package.
Compact dual-band bandstop filter based on coupled open-ended Hilbert resonators

ABSTRACT In this paper, the design procedure of a compact dual-band bandstop filter (DBBSF) based on coupled open-ended Hilbert lines is proposed. The proposed filter topology consists of two pairs of coupled open-ended lines bended in the shape of the Hilbert fractal curves and a stepped-impedance line section (SIS). In that manner, tree transmission paths are crated allowing the independent control of filter characteristic in both bands. To obtain appropriate coupling between resonators, and the independent control of the center frequencies and in-band characteristics of the filter, the SIS is introduced as matching section. Design rules are derived using lossless transmission line model and even/odd analysis. To validate the design concept, two compact DBBSFs have been designed, fabricated, and measured. The proposed filters exhibit excellent in-band characteristics, high selectivity, and small dimensions.
Football to tackle overweight in children

The present study aimed at analyzing the efficacy of a 6‐month football training program compared with a standard exercise program on health and fitness parameters in overweight children. The study design was a 6‐month, two‐arm, parallel‐group randomized trial. Twenty‐two overweight children were randomly assigned to two groups (age=10.8±1.2 years, height=1.56±0.08 m, weight= 65.1±11.4 kg). One group conducted a football training program, and the other group an established standard sports program. Both interventions took place three times per week from mid‐May to mid‐November. Before, after 3 months and after the training period, comprehensive testing was conducted: anthropometric characteristics, cycling ergometry, psychometric monitoring as well as several motor ability tests. Maximal performance capacity increased and submaximal heart rate during cycling ergometry decreased significantly. Several motor skills as well as self‐esteem also improved considerably. Body composition and other psychometric variables remained nearly unchanged. No relevant differences were observed between both exercise programs. It can be concluded that a 6‐month football training is as efficacious in improving the physical capacity, health‐related fitness parameters and self‐esteem of overweight children as a standard exercise program. These results provide further evidence that playing football has significant health effects.
Compact and Powerful: A Vacuum Powered Soft Textile-Based Clutch

In this paper, we present the design, manufacturing and characterization of a soft textile-based clutch (TBC) that switches between locking and unlocking of its linear displacement by exploiting vacuum stimulation. The applied vacuum locks the relative sliding motion between two elaborated textile webbings covered by an elastic silicone rubber bag. Based on different fabrication techniques, such as silicone casting on textile, melt embossing for direct fabrication of miniature patterns on textile and sewing, we developed three groups of TBC samples based on friction and interlocking principles and we compared their performance in blocking configuration. The clutch with interlocking mechanism presented the highest withstanding force (150 N) respect to the one (54 N) recorded for the friction-based clutch. The simple and compact structure of the proposed clutch, together with the intrinsic adaptability of fabric with other clothing and soft materials, make it a proper solution for applications in soft wearable robotics and generally as locking and variable stiffness solution for soft robotic applications.
Obese men with type IIB hyperlipidemia are insulin resistant.

By using the euglycemic clamp technique and indirect calorimetry, we determined the degree of insulin resistance in 12 obese (body mass index > 27.0 kg/m2), normotensive patients with type IIB hyperlipidemia (HLIIB) (total cholesterol > or = 6.5 mmol/L and total triglycerides > or = 2.0 mmol/L) and 17 control subjects (total cholesterol < or = 6.1 mmol/L and total triglycerides < 1.8 mmol/L) who were carefully matched for sex, age, and obesity. Fasting plasma insulin was higher in HLIIB patients than in control subjects (18.4 +/- 4.6 versus 8.9 +/- 1.2 mU/L, respectively; P = .010). The rates of whole-body glucose uptake were significantly lower in HLIIB patients than in control subjects during the last hour of the clamp (42.2 +/- 3.9 versus 54.6 +/- 2.8 mumol/kg per minute, respectively; P = .013). Glucose oxidation during the last 30 minutes of the euglycemic clamp was lower in HLIIB patients than in control subjects (14.6 +/- 0.9 versus 19.0 +/- 1.3 mumol/kg per minute, respectively; P = .017). Nonoxidative glucose disposal during the last 30 minutes of the euglycemic clamp was also lower in HLIIB patients than in control subjects, but the difference was not statistically significant (27.6 +/- 3.3 versus 35.8 +/- 2.8 mumol/kg per minute, respectively; P = .069). Lipid oxidation during the clamp was completely suppressed in control subjects (-0.24 +/- 0.44 mumol/kg per minute) but was significantly less suppressed in the HLIIB patients (0.94 +/- 0.29 mumol/kg per minute, P = .024). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Hybridized bat algorithm for multi-objective radio frequency identification (RFID) network planning

This paper introduces implementation of hybridized bat algorithm for multi-objective radio frequency identification network planning problem. Multi-objective RFID problem is a well known hard optimization problem that can be solved by using swarm intelligence algorithms. Bat algorithm is a recent mataheuristic, proved to be very successful for tackling such tasks. In our implementation, we hybridized bat algorithm with the artificial bee colony algorithm and adapted it for solving radio frequency identification network planning problem. In the experimental section, we have first shown, by using standard bound-constrained benchmark functions, that our hybridization is justified and that it improves results compared to standard bat algorithm, as well as to other state-of-the-art algorithms. After that, we examined performance of our proposed approach on illustrative RFID network planning problem and compared it with other results from the literature where our proposed algorithm proved to be more successful.
Design of Complex Event-Processing IDS in Internet of Things

With the development of Internet of Things (IoT), there have been more and more services and applications deployed in physical spaces and information systems. Massive number of situation-aware sensors and devices are embedded in IoT environments, which produce huge amounts of data continuously for the IoT systems and platforms. Processing these data stream generated by the IoT networks with different patterns has raised new challenges for the real-time performance of intrusion detection system (IDS) in IoT environments, which has to react quickly to the hacking attacks and malicious activities to IoT. In recent years, Complex Event Processing (CEP) technology provides new solutions in the field of complex pattern identifications and real-time data processing, which can be used to improve the performance of traditional IDS in IoT environments. IDS integrated with CEP can be used to deal with patterns among events and process large volumes of messages with low latency. In this paper we proposed an event-processing IDS architecture in IoT environments on the basis of security requirements analysis for IDS. Then the implementation details for real-time event processing are also proposed, which is developed by Esper, a CEP engine for complex event processing and event series analysis.