Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Involvement of tissue plasminogen activator in stress responsivity during acute cocaine withdrawal in mice

There is evidence that increased release of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) in the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) contributes to stress responsivity during cocaine withdrawal (WD). Recent studies suggest that tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) in the CeA is a downstream effector protein for CRF after acute “binge” cocaine administration. The purpose of this study was to determine if tPA modulates cocaine WD-induced stress responsivity. Wild-type (WT) and tPA-deficient (tPA − / − ) mice were subjected to chronic (14 days) “binge” cocaine (45 mg/kg per day) or its acute (1 day) WD. Extracellular tPA activity, CRF mRNA levels, and plasma corticosterone (CORT) levels were measured in tPA − / − and WT mice. Extracellular tPA activity was reduced by 50% in the CeA and medial amygdala of WT mice after chronic cocaine and returned to basal levels after acute WD. Unlike WT mice, tPA − / − mice did not display elevated amygdalar CRF mRNA levels during cocaine WD. In comparison to WT mice, tPA − / − mice showed a blunted plasma CORT response during acute WD. These results demonstrate that tPA activity in the amygdala (Amy) is altered by chronic cocaine exposure, and further suggest an involvement of tPA in modulating amygdalar CRF stress responsive system and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis in response to acute cocaine WD.
CIN85 Interacting Proteins in B Cells-Specific Role for SHIP-1

The Cbl-interacting 85-kDa protein (CIN85) plays an important role as a negative regulator of signaling pathways induced by receptor tyrosine kinases. By assembling multiprotein complexes this versatile adaptor enhances receptor tyrosine kinase-activated clathrin-mediated endocytosis and reduces phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase-induced phosphatidylinositol-3,4,5-trisphosphate production. Here we report the expression of CIN85 in primary splenic B lymphocytes and the B-lymphoma cell lines WEHI 231 and Ba/F3. Cross-linking of the B cell antigen receptor resulted in an increased association of CIN85 with the ubiquitin ligase Cbl. Through a systematic pull-down proteomics approach we identified 51 proteins that interact with CIN85 in B cells, including proteins not shown previously to be CIN85-associated. Among these proteins, the SH2-containing inositol phosphatase 1 (SHIP-1) co-precipitated with both the full-length CIN85 and each of its three SH3 domains. We also showed that this association is constitutive and depends on a region of 79 amino acids near the carboxyl terminus of SHIP-1, a region rich in potential SH3 domain binding sites. Because SHIP-1 is a major negative regulator of the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase pathway in lymphocytes, we hypothesize that the interaction between SHIP-1 and CIN85 might synergistically facilitate the down-regulation of phosphatidylinositol-3,4,5-trisphosphate levels.
The ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata): Afferent and efferent projections in relation to the control of reproductive behavior

Sex‐specific mating behaviors occur in a variety of mammals, with the medial preoptic nucleus (POM) and the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus (VMH) mediating control of male and female sexual behavior, respectively. In birds, likewise, POM is predominantly involved in the control of male reproductive behavior, but the degree to which VMH is involved in female reproductive behavior is unclear. Here, in male and female zebra finches, a combination of aromatase immunohistochemistry and conventional tract tracing facilitated the definition of two separate but adjacent nuclei in the basal hypothalamus: an oblique band of aromatase‐positive (AR+) neurons, and ventromedial to this, an ovoid, aromatase‐negative (AR–) nucleus. The AR– nucleus, but not the AR+ nucleus, was here shown to receive a projection from rostral parts of the thalamic auditory nucleus ovoidalis and from the nucleus of the tractus ovoidalis. The AR– nucleus also receives an overlapping, major projection from previously uncharted regions of the medial arcopallium and a minor projection from the caudomedial nidopallium. Both the AR– and the AR+ nuclei project to the intercollicular nucleus of the midbrain. No obvious sex differences in either the pattern of AR immunoreactivity or of the afferent projections to the AR– nucleus were observed. The significance of these results in terms of the acoustic control of avian reproductive behavior is discussed, and a comparison with the organization of VMH afferents in lizards suggests a homologous similarity of the caudal telencephalon in sauropsids.
A robotic model of the development of gaze following

For humanoid robots, the skill of gaze following is a foundational component in social interaction and imitation learning.We present a robotic system capable of learning the gaze following behavior in a real-world environment. First, the system learns to detect salient objects and to distinguish a caregiverpsilas head poses in a semi-autonomous manner. Then we present multiple scenes containing different combinations of objects and head poses to the robot head. The system learns to associate the detected head pose with correct spatial location of where potentially ldquorewardingrdquo objects would be using a biologically plausible reinforcement learning mechanism.
Interpreting foreign policy: National, comparative and regional studies

This Special Issue advances an interpretive research programme into Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and International Relations by showcasing new work on the study of foreign policy and regional cooperation. This introductory article explains the rationale and contents of the Special Issue in three parts. The opening part explains how the contributions complement the broader study of ideas in FPA and International Relations through a critique of methodological positivism in the social sciences. The second part elaborates the theoretical framework used to cohere the collection, which centres on the study of ‘situated agents’ who, when confronted with policy dilemmas, draw on inherited traditions to inform their foreign policy practices. This is accompanied by a methods case study centring on David Cameron’s European Union referendum strategy, which is used to illustrate the practical ways in which one can conduct interpretivist research into foreign policy. In conclusion, we spell out how the contributors conducted their work to advance the interpretivist research programme.
Network Reconstruction under Compressive Sensing

Many real-world systems and applications such as World Wide Web, and social interactions can be modeled as networks of interacting nodes. However, in many cases, one encounters the situation where the pattern of the node-to-node interactions (i.e., edges) or the structure of a network is unknown. We address this issue by studying the Network Reconstruction Problem: Given a network with missing edges, how is it possible to uncover the network structure based on certain observable quantities extracted from partial measurements? We propose a novel framework called CS-NetRec based on a newly emerged paradigm in sparse signal recovery called Compressive Sensing (CS). The results demonstrate that our framework can perform accurately even on low number of cascades (e.g. when the number of cascades is around half of the number of existing edges in the desired network). Furthermore, our framework is capable of near-perfect reconstruction of the desired network in presence of 95% sparsity. In addition, we compared the performance of our framework with NetInf, one of the state-of-the-art methods in inferring the networks of diffusion. The results suggest that the proposed method outperforms NetInf by an average of 10% improvement based on the F-measure.
Pharmacokinetics of amphotericin B in children

Amphotericin B is the most effective agent for the majority of systemic fungal infections but often causes toxicity, and specific dosage guidelines for amphotericin B in pediatric patients are lacking. The purpose of this study was to characterize the pharmacokinetics of amphotericin B in children. Twelve patients (mean age, 6.6 years; range, 4 months to 14 years) receiving amphotericin B, 0.68 +/- 0.34 mg/kg per day (mean plus or minus standard deviation), were studied. Four to eight blood samples were collected during a 24-h period and analyzed by high-pressure liquid chromatography. The peak concentration of amphotericin B in serum was 2.9 +/- 2.8 micrograms/ml. The mean total clearance, apparent volume of distribution, and elimination half-life were 0.46 +/- 0.20 ml/min per kg, 0.76 +/- 0.52 liters/kg, and 18.1 +/- 6.6 h, respectively. Total clearance decreased with age (p less than 0.01). In children aged 8 months to 9 years, the mean total clearance was 0.57 +/- 0.15 ml/min per kg, and in children older than 9 years, it was 0.24 +/- 0.02 ml/min per kg. Interpatient variation in the clearance and volume of distribution of amphotericin B was greater than threefold and greater than eightfold, respectively. However, pharmacokinetic parameters did not change in two stable patients who were studied again. Because clearance decreased substantially with age, older children may require lower doses of amphotericin B per kilogram to decrease the potential for toxicity.
Teaching and Learning in High School Reading Classes: Perspectives of Teachers and Students

This qualitative study investigated high school reading programs and participants focusing on the insider perspectives of teachers and their students. The study occurred in two sites, one in a Southern state and the other in an Eastern state. The participants, five high school reading teachers and two to three students in each of their reading classes, were interviewed individually by the researchers. Interview questions focused on reader identity, reading habits, reader strategies, content area reading, and the reading program. Findings indicate a disparity between teachers' and students' understanding about reading, variability in instruction, and need for engaged learning.
Bilinear Modeling of EMG Signals to Extract User-Independent Features for Multiuser Myoelectric Interface

In this study, we propose a multiuser myoelectric interface that can easily adapt to novel users. When a user performs different motions (e.g., grasping and pinching), different electromyography (EMG) signals are measured. When different users perform the same motion (e.g., grasping), different EMG signals are also measured. Therefore, designing a myoelectric interface that can be used by multiple users to perform multiple motions is difficult. To cope with this problem, we propose for EMG signals a bilinear model that is composed of two linear factors:1) user dependent and 2) motion dependent. By decomposing the EMG signals into these two factors, the extracted motion-dependent factors can be used as user-independent features. We can construct a motion classifier on the extracted feature space to develop the multiuser interface. For novel users, the proposed adaptation method estimates the user-dependent factor through only a few interactions. The bilinear EMG model with the estimated user-dependent factor can extract the user-independent features from the novel user data. We applied our proposed method to a recognition task of five hand gestures for robotic hand control using four-channel EMG signals measured from subject forearms. Our method resulted in 73% accuracy, which was statistically significantly different from the accuracy of standard non-multiuser interfaces, as the result of a two-sample t-test at a significance level of 1%.
Unravelling the structure of species extinction risk for predictive conservation science

Extinction risk varies across species and space owing to the combined and interactive effects of ecology/life history and geography. For predictive conservation science to be effective, large datasets and integrative models that quantify the relative importance of potential factors and separate rapidly changing from relatively static threat drivers are urgently required. Here, we integrate and map in space the relative and joint effects of key correlates of The International Union for Conservation of Nature-assessed extinction risk for 8700 living birds. Extinction risk varies significantly with species' broad-scale environmental niche, geographical range size, and life-history and ecological traits such as body size, developmental mode, primary diet and foraging height. Even at this broad scale, simple quantifications of past human encroachment across species' ranges emerge as key in predicting extinction risk, supporting the use of land-cover change projections for estimating future threat in an integrative setting. A final joint model explains much of the interspecific variation in extinction risk and provides a remarkably strong prediction of its observed global geography. Our approach unravels the species-level structure underlying geographical gradients in extinction risk and offers a means of disentangling static from changing components of current and future threat. This reconciliation of intrinsic and extrinsic, and of past and future extinction risk factors may offer a critical step towards a more continuous, forward-looking assessment of species' threat status based on geographically explicit environmental change projections, potentially advancing global predictive conservation science.
SIR Model

The diseases we are discussing have been classified as microparasitic. Examples of microparasitic diseases are chicken pox, measles, HIV/AIDS, influenza and tuberculosis. Diseases due to worms, for example, are called macroparasitic. Other than the size of the infecting agent, the main distinction is that the microparasites reproduce within their hosts and are transmitted directly from one host to another. Most macroparasites, on the other hand, have a somewhat more complicated life cycle, often with a secondary host or carrier. Schistosomiasis is an example of a macroparasitic disease. Schistosomiasis is passed only through contact with water in which live snails that can incubate the disease causing helminths. In reality, the distinction between microand macro-parasitic diseases is not always clear and there is a range of infecting agents and transmission paths. In the case of malaria, the disease is not passed from human to human but through the anopheline mosquitoes, but some of the parasite’s life cycle occurs in the mosquito and some in humans. When a mosquito bites an infected individual, it sucks the gametocytes, the sexual forms of the parasite, along with blood. These gametocytes continue the sexual phase of the cycle within the mosquito gut and the sporozoites that develop then fill the salivary glands of the infested mosquito. When this female mosquito bites another human for a blood meal, the sporozoites are inoculated into the blood stream of the fresh victim, thus spreading the infection. Microparasitic diseases (viral or bacterial) can pass through a population like a flame through fuel, and useful analogies have been made between epidemics and chemical reactions. A theory of these epidemics was derived by W.O. Kermack, a chemist, and A. G. McKendrick, a physician, working at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh between 1900 and 1930. The simple model we considered this morning, is based on their work. One important result of theirs is that an infection determines a threshold size for the susceptible population, above which an epidemic will propagate. Their theoretical epidemic threshold is observed in practice,
Addressing Safe Opioid Monitoring Practices Using an Interprofessional Approach

OBJECTIVE The aims of the project are to increase knowledge related to opioids and improve adherence to evidence-based interventions for sedation monitoring and assessment in adult inpatients receiving opioids for pain through delivery of an interprofessional online program. BACKGROUND Preventable opioid-induced respiratory depression is a patient safety risk in hospitals. Sedation and respiratory assessment and monitoring guidelines and tools are available to improve practice. METHODS An interprofessional team identified organization-specific drivers of opioid-induced sedation and respiratory depression using process improvement methodology, developed interventions, and evaluated clinician opioid knowledge and documentation practice. RESULTS Opioid knowledge survey responses improved after the interventions. Audits showing improved appropriate documentation by RNs of the correct sedation scale were performed over 2 separate 3-month periods. CONCLUSIONS Clinicians demonstrated increased knowledge about newly adopted sedation and monitoring practices targeted to prevent opioid-induced respiratory depression.
Insight from the horsemeat scandal: Exploring the consumers' opinion of tweets toward Tesco

– Social media has become an important part of daily interpersonal communication in contemporary society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the attitudes of UK consumers by identifying the hidden information in tweets, and provide a framework which can assist industry practitioners in managing social media data. , – Using a large-scale dataset of tweets relating to the Horsemeat scandal of 2013, a comprehensive data analysis framework, which comprises multidimensional scaling and sentiment analysis, alongside other methods, was applied to explore customers’ opinions. , – Making jokes in social media was a main trend in the tweets relating to Tesco during the Horsemeat scandal. Consumer sentiments were overall negative and burgers were the most mentioned product in the week-long period after the story broke. The posting of tweets was correlated with the timing of news coverage, which indicates that the traditional media is still crucial to public opinion formation. , – This paper presents a progressive tweet-mining framework that can serve as a tool for academia and practitioners in crisis management. The proposed framework indicates the significant importance of timely categorising the topics, identifying the sentiment of tweets and understanding the changes of consumer opinions over time in a crisis. , – The research presented in this paper is one of the limited social media research to focus on a UK food fraud issue and adds to the limited body of literature investigating consumer social media use from the side of industry practitioners.
A group B streptococcal pilus protein promotes phagocyte resistance and systemic virulence

Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is a major cause of invasive bacterial infections in newborns and certain adult populations. Surface filamentous appendages known as pili have been recently identified in GBS. However, little is known about the role of these structures in disease pathogenesis. In this study we sought to probe potential functional role(s) of PilB, the major GBS pilus protein subunit, by coupling analysis of an isogenic GBS pilB knockout strain with heterologous expression of the pilB gene in the nonpathogenic bacterium Lactococcus lactis. We found the knockout GBS strain that lacked PilB was more susceptible than wild‐type (WT) GBS to killing by isolated macrophages and neutrophils. Survival was linked to the ability of PilB to mediate GBS resistance to cathelicidin antimicrobial peptides. Furthermore, the PilB‐deficient GBS mutant was more readily cleared from the mouse bloodstream and less‐virulent in vivo compared to the WT parent strain. Strikingly, overexpression of the pilB gene alone in L. lactis enhanced resistance to phagocyte killing, increased bloodstream survival, and conferred virulence in a mouse challenge model. Together these data demonstrate that the pilus backbone subunit, PilB, plays an integral role in GBS virulence and suggests a novel role for gram‐positive pili in thwarting the innate defenses of phagocyte killing. — Maisey H.C. , Quach, A. , Hensler, M. E. , Liu, G. Y. , Gallo, R. L. , Nizet, V. , Doran K. S. A group B streptococcal pilus protein promotes phagocyte resistance and systemic virulence. FASEB J. 22, 1715–1724 (2008)
Organellar Proteomics

The zymogen granule (ZG) is the specialized organelle in pancreatic acinar cells for digestive enzyme storage and regulated secretion and has been a model for studying secretory granule functions. In an initial effort to comprehensively understand the functions of this organelle, we conducted a proteomic study to identify proteins from highly purified ZG membranes. By combining two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and two-dimensional LC with tandem mass spectrometry, 101 proteins were identified from purified ZG membranes including 28 known ZG proteins and 73 previously unknown proteins, including SNAP29, Rab27B, Rab11A, Rab6, Rap1, and myosin Vc. Moreover several hypothetical proteins were identified that represent potential novel proteins. The ZG localization of nine of these proteins was further confirmed by immunocytochemistry. To distinguish intrinsic membrane proteins from soluble and peripheral membrane proteins, a quantitative proteomic strategy was used to measure the enrichment of intrinsic membrane proteins through the purification process. The iTRAQ™ ratios correlated well with known or Transmembrane Hidden Markov Model-predicted soluble or membrane proteins. By combining subcellular fractionation with high resolution separation and comprehensive identification of proteins, we have begun to elucidate zymogen granule functions through proteomic and subsequent functional analysis of its membrane components.
The Philosophy for Children Hawai'i Approach to Deliberative Pedagogy: A Promising Practice for Preparing Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers in the College of Education

Introduction: With the introduction of the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards (2013), the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) has given new direction to K-12 social studies education in the United States. Among the notable changes is the expectation that primary and secondary teachers will use a deliberative pedagogy (Longo, 2013; Carcasson, 2013; Manosevitch, 2013; Molnar-Main & Kingseed, 2013) to teach elementary and high school social studies. While this is excellent news for advocates of democratic education (Dewey 1916; Freire 1970; Apple & Beane, 1995; Gutman 1987; Vinson 2006; Parker, 2010; The Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, 2011; Hess & McAvoy, 2015) it presents new challenges to colleges of education, which will take on much of the responsibility for introducing deliberative pedagogy to pre-service teacher candidates who did not have the opportunity to experience a deliberative pedagogy as part of their own K-12 schooling.