Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Insulin restores neuronal nitric oxide synthase expression and function that is lost in diabetic gastropathy

Diabetes mellitus is a common disorder worldwide and may affect seven million people in the United States, indicating a prevalence of 2–3% (1, 2). Diabetes is a chronic disorder resulting in significant complications including vascular diseases, peripheral and autonomic neuropathies, retinopathy, and gastrointestinal dysfunction (2). Gastrointestinal dysfunction may occur in as many as 75% of diabetic patients (3–6) and include diabetic gastropathy (7), a syndrome of delayed gastric emptying, leading to nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and early satiety (5, 6, 8). Although the mechanism through which diabetics develop gastropathy is unclear, it may involve perturbation in the normal relaxation of the pyloric sphincter, as this step is required in the coordinated activity of the proximal stomach, antrum, pylorus, and duodenum that results in gastric emptying (9, 10). Evidence suggests that impaired pyloric inhibition may contribute to gastropathy in diabetics (11). Nitric oxide (NO) has been found to have an important function as a neurotransmitter in the intestine including the stomach and pylorus (12–14). A critical role for NO in gastropyloric function was established by the findings of pyloric hypertrophy and gastric dilation in mice harboring a targeted genomic deletion of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS–/–) (15). Loss of pyloric nNOS is associated with gastric outflow obstruction as occurs in infantile hypertrophic pyloric stenosis (16, 17). Exogenous NO reduces both the number and amplitude of isolated pyloric pressure waves in normal humans (18). NO donors also alter the distribution of liquid glucose within the stomach and may slow gastric emptying, perhaps by reducing tone in the proximal stomach (19). Endogenous NO may inhibit gastric emptying in humans (20, 21), although in animal models, nNOS inhibition delays gastric emptying (22–24). Studies suggest that nNOS dysregulation may contribute to gastropyloric dysfunction in animal models of diabetes. Streptozotocin-induced (STZ-induced) diabetes results in a modest diminution of NO-dependent relaxation of gastric muscle strips in rats (25) and a modest decrease in nNOS protein expression in the antrum of the stomach (26). The stomachs of spontaneously diabetic rats have decreased NO-mediated relaxation of gastric muscle strips and attenuated expression of nNOS protein and mRNA (27). These studies suggest that nNOS expression may be disrupted in diabetes. However, because blood glucose levels were not corrected in these studies, the mechanism and the functional consequences of the loss of nNOS expression remain obscure. In the present study, we evaluate the role of nNOS in gastropyloric function by monitoring gastric emptying and pyloric neurophysiology in ex vivo organ bath preparations using mice with targeted genomic deletion of nNOS. We report delayed gastric emptying and
Quantitative characterizations of ultrashort echo (UTE) images for supporting air–bone separation in the head

Accurate separation of air and bone is critical for creating synthetic CT from MRI to support Radiation Oncology workflow. This study compares two different ultrashort echo-time sequences in the separation of air from bone, and evaluates post-processing methods that correct intensity nonuniformity of images and account for intensity gradients at tissue boundaries to improve this discriminatory power. CT and MRI scans were acquired on 12 patients under an institution review board-approved prospective protocol. The two MRI sequences tested were ultra-short TE imaging using 3D radial acquisition (UTE), and using pointwise encoding time reduction with radial acquisition (PETRA). Gradient nonlinearity correction was applied to both MR image volumes after acquisition. MRI intensity nonuniformity was corrected by vendor-provided normalization methods, and then further corrected using the N4itk algorithm. To overcome the intensity-gradient at air–tissue boundaries, spatial dilations, from 0 to 4 mm, were applied to threshold-defined air regions from MR images. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses, by comparing predicted (defined by MR images) versus ‘true’ regions of air and bone (defined by CT images), were performed with and without residual bias field correction and local spatial expansion. The post-processing corrections increased the areas under the ROC curves (AUC) from 0.944 ± 0.012 to 0.976 ± 0.003 for UTE images, and from 0.850 ± 0.022 to 0.887 ± 0.012 for PETRA images, compared to without corrections. When expanding the threshold-defined air volumes, as expected, sensitivity of air identification decreased with an increase in specificity of bone discrimination, but in a non-linear fashion. A 1 mm air mask expansion yielded AUC increases of 1 and 4% for UTE and PETRA images, respectively. UTE images had significantly greater discriminatory power in separating air from bone than PETRA images. Post-processing strategies improved the discriminatory power of air from bone for both UTE and PETRA images, and reduced the difference between the two imaging sequences. Both post-processed UTE and PETRA images demonstrated sufficient power to discriminate air from bone to support synthetic CT generation from MRI data.
Dwarfism and Impaired Gut Development in Insulin-Like Growth Factor II mRNA-Binding Protein 1-Deficient Mice

ABSTRACT Insulin-like growth factor II mRNA-binding protein 1 (IMP1) belongs to a family of RNA-binding proteins implicated in mRNA localization, turnover, and translational control. Mouse IMP1 is expressed during early development, and an increase in expression occurs around embryonic day 12.5 (E12.5). To characterize the physiological role of IMP1, we generated IMP1-deficient mice carrying a gene trap insertion in the Imp1 gene. Imp1−/− mice were on average 40% smaller than wild-type and heterozygous sex-matched littermates. Growth retardation was apparent from E17.5 and remained permanent into adult life. Moreover, Imp1−/− mice exhibited high perinatal mortality, and only 50% were alive 3 days after birth. In contrast to most other organs, intestinal epithelial cells continue to express IMP1 postnatally, and Imp1−/− mice exhibited impaired development of the intestine, with small and misshapen villi and twisted colon crypts. Analysis of target mRNAs and global expression profiling at E12.5 indicated that Igf2 translation was downregulated, whereas the postnatal intestine showed reduced expression of transcripts encoding extracellular matrix components, such as galectin- 1, lumican, tenascin-C, procollagen transcripts, and the Hsp47 procollagen chaperone. Taken together, the results demonstrate that IMP1 is essential for normal growth and development. Moreover, IMP1 may facilitate intestinal morphogenesis via regulation of extracellular matrix formation.
Interferons as potential adjuvants in prophylactic vaccines

Importance of the field: Vaccines are still one of the best approaches to manage infectious diseases. Despite the advances in drug therapies, prophylactic medicine is still more cost efficient and minimizes the burden in the heath system. Despite all the research in vaccine development, many infectious diseases are still without an effective vaccine. The use of adjuvants in vaccines has been one successful strategy to increase efficacy. IFNs are widely expressed cytokines that have potent antiviral effects. These cytokines are the first line of defense against viral infections and have important roles in immuno surveillance for malignant cells. One of the most promising uses of IFNs is as adjuvants that are co-applied with antigen in vaccines. Areas covered in this review: In this review, a cumulative analysis of many of the studies that have used IFN-α, -β, -γ and -λ as adjuvants between 1987 and the present suggests that many do possess the capacity to serve as potent immunoadjuvants for vaccination. What the reader will gain: This review provides a very large collection of studies involving all types of IFNs used as adjuvants in vaccines using different vaccination strategies and various animal models. Take home message: It is clear that the use of IFNs not only improved the efficacy and safety of most vaccines, but also had important immunomodulatory effect directing TH1 immune responses.
Cardioid graph based ECG biometric recognition incorporating physiological variability

This paper investigates ECG signal in different physiological conditions to identify different individuals. Data was acquired from 30 subjects, where each subject performed six types of physical activities namely walking, going upstairs, going downstairs, natural gait, lying with position changed and resting while watching TV. Then from the signals of these physiological conditions, specific features exclusive to each subject was extracted employing the Cardioid graph method. In this model, features were extracted solely from the graph derived using QRS complexes. Subjects were recognized with Multilayer Perceptron. Results were obtained through two approaches. In the former procedure, classification was performed on the whole dataset consisting of both training and testing set, which produced 95.3% of correctly classified instances. In the later approach the training and testing set was predefined where correctly classified instances were 93.9%. These results confirm that subject identification at different physiological conditions with Cardioid graph based technique produces better classification rates than previous study using only QRS complex.
Identification of Obsidian Sources on Milos, Greece

Obsidian, a natural volcanic glass, was used extensively in ancient times because of its quality as a raw material for sharp blades. As such, obsidian is of high interest for provenancing studies, since reliable provenancing can provide information about trade routes, extension of territory, long-distance contacts and the mobility of prehistoric peoples. In general, well-established databases of the characteristic elemental composition, the chemical fingerprint, are needed for reliable provenancing. On Milos Island, two sources of raw obsidian, namely Agia Nychia (Cape Bombarda) and Demenegakion are known. Recent literature claims a third source close to Agios Ioannis. In a sampling expedition with the goal to complete the Atominstitut’s database on the chemical fingerprints of obsidian, samples at Agios Ioannis were collected to include this new source. At the location, 16 scattered samples were taken for analysis, even though no direct outcrop could be identified. On the nearby island Kimolos, several more samples were found. Using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), the chemical fingerprint of the samples was measured and compared to the values in the database. All samples from Agios Ioannis were identified as either from Demenegakion or Agia Nychia, indicating that no further source of obsidian exists at the location.
Imprecise excision of the Caenorhabditis elegans transposon Tc1 creates functional 5' splice sites

Imprecise excision of the Caenorhabditis elegans transposon Tc1 from a specific site of insertion within the unc-54 myosin heavy chain gene generates either wild-type or partial phenotypic revertants. Wild-type revertants and one class of partial revertants contain insertions of four nucleotides in the unc-54 third exon (Tc1 "footprints"). Such revertants express large amounts of functional unc-54 myosin despite having what would appear to be frameshifting insertions in the unc-54 third exon. We demonstrate that these Tc1 footprints act as efficient 5' splice sites for removal of the unc-54 third intron. Splicing of these new 5' splice sites to the normal third intron splice acceptor removes the Tc1 footprint from the mature mRNA and restores the normal translational reading frame. Partial revertant unc-54(r661), which contains a single nucleotide substitution relative to the wild-type gene, is spliced similarly, except that the use of its new 5' splice site creates a frameshift in the mature mRNA rather than removing one. In all of these revertants, two alternative 5' splice sites are available to remove intron 3. We determined the relative efficiency with which each alternative 5' splice site is used by stabilizing frameshifted mRNAs with smg(-) genetic backgrounds. In all cases, the upstream member of the two alternative sites is used preferentially (> 75% utilization). This may reflect an inherent preference of the splicing machinery for the upstream member of two closely spaced 5' splice sites. Creation of new 5' splice sites may be a general characteristic of Tc1 insertion and excision events.
Internal Migration and Vulnerability to Poverty in Tanzania

This paper investigates internal migration and vulnerability to poverty in Tanzania. It examines whether migration reduced household vulnerability to poverty for a panel of households from the Kagera region over the period 2004-2010. The dataset allows the analysis of two samples of households: those with the same head in the periods considered and an enlarged network of split-off households. The potential endogeneity of migration is controlled by both matching methods and an exogenous variation. A severe drought in 2008-09 affected the areas of the country with a bimodal rain season, but not those with a unimodal rain season. It is thus possible to study the heterogeneity of migrants with respect to an unanticipated shock in the region of destination. The evidence shows that migration reduced vulnerability to basic needs and to food consumption poverty for families which experienced migration to unimodal regions. The results are consistent with migration as a risk management strategy by households.
Phosphodiesterases Catalyze Hydrolysis of cAMP-bound to Regulatory Subunit of Protein Kinase A and Mediate Signal Termination*

Although extensive structural and biochemical studies have provided molecular insights into the mechanism of cAMP-dependent activation of protein kinase A (PKA), little is known about signal termination and the role of phosphodiesterases (PDEs) in regulatory feedback. In this study we describe a novel mode of protein kinase A-anchoring protein (AKAP)-independent feedback regulation between a specific PDE, RegA and the PKA regulatory (RIα) subunit, where RIα functions as an activator of PDE catalysis. Our results indicate that RegA, in addition to its well-known role as a PDE for bulk cAMP in solution, is also capable of hydrolyzing cAMP-bound to RIα. Furthermore our results indicate that binding of RIα activates PDE catalysis several fold demonstrating a dual function of RIα, both as an inhibitor of the PKA catalytic (C) subunit and as an activator for PDEs. Deletion mutagenesis has localized the sites of interaction to one of the cAMP-binding domains of RIα and the catalytic PDE domain of RegA whereas amide hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry has revealed that the cAMP-binding site (phosphate binding cassette) along with proximal regions important for relaying allosteric changes mediated by cAMP, are important for interactions with the PDE catalytic domain of RegA. These sites of interactions together with measurements of cAMP dissociation rates demonstrate that binding of RegA facilitates dissociation of cAMP followed by hydrolysis of the released cAMP to 5′AMP. cAMP-free RIα generated as an end product remains bound to RegA. The PKA C-subunit then displaces RegA and reassociates with cAMP-free RIα to regenerate the inactive PKA holoenzyme thereby completing the termination step of cAMP signaling. These results reveal a novel mode of regulatory feedback between PDEs and RIα that has important consequences for PKA regulation and cAMP signal termination.
Exploring Consistent Preferences: Discrete Hashing with Pair-Exemplar for Scalable Landmark Search

Content-based visual landmark search (CBVLS) enjoys great importance in many practical applications. In this paper, we propose a novel discrete hashing with pair-exemplar (DHPE) to support scalable and efficient large-scale CBVLS. Our approach mainly solves two essential problems in scalable landmark hashing: 1) Intra-landmark visual diversity, and 2) Discrete optimization of hashing codes. Motivated by the characteristic of landmark, we explore the consistent preferences of tourists on landmark as pair-exemplars for scalable discrete hashing learning. In this paper, a pair-exemplar is comprised of a canonical view and the corresponding representative tags. Canonical view captures the key visual component of landmarks, and representative tags potentially involve landmark-specific semantics that can cope with the visual variations of intra-landmark. Based on pair-exemplars, a unified hashing learning framework is formulated to combine visual preserving with exemplar graph and the semantic guidance from representative tags. Further, to guarantee direct semantic transfer for hashing codes and remove information redundancy, we design a novel optimization method based on augmented Lagrange multiplier to explicitly deal with the discrete constraint, the bit-uncorrelated constraint and balance constraint. The whole learning process has linear computation complexity and enjoys desirable scalability. Experiments demonstrate the superior performance of DHPE compared with state-of-the-art methods.
Maximum-Flow Neural Network: A Novel Neural Network for the Maximum Flow Problem

In advance of network communication society by the internet, the way how to send data fast with a little loss becomes an important transportation problem. A generalized maximum flow algorithm gives the best solution for the transportation problem that which route is appropriated to exchange data. Therefore, the importance of the maximum flow algorithm is growing more and more. In this paper, we propose a Maximum-Flow Neural Network (MF-NN) in which branch nonlinearity has a saturation characteristic and by which the maximum flow problem can be solved with analog high-speed parallel processing. That is, the proposed neural network for the maximum flow problem can be realized by a nonlinear resistive circuit where each connection weight between nodal neurons has a sigmodal or piece-wise linear function. The parallel hardware of the MF-NN will be easily implemented.
An efficient approach for the maintenance of path traversal patterns

Mining frequent traversal patterns is to discover the consecutive reference paths traversed by a sufficient number of users from Web logs. The previous approaches for mining frequent traversal patterns need to repeatedly scan the traversal paths and take a large amount of computation time to find frequent traversal patterns. However, the discovered frequent traversal patterns may become invalid or inappropriate when the databases are updated. We propose an incremental updating technique to maintain the discovered frequent traversal patterns when the user sequences are inserted into or the database. Our approach partitions the database into some segments and scans the database segment by segment. For each segment scan, the candidate traversal sequences that cannot be frequent traversal sequences can be pruned and the frequent traversal sequences can be found out earlier. Besides, the number of database scans can be significantly reduced because some information can be computed by our approach. The experimental results show that our algorithms are more efficient than other algorithms for the maintenance of mining frequent traversal patterns.
Correlates of heroin and methamphetamine use among homeless male ex-jail and prison offenders

Homeless men exiting California State jails and prisons are a heterogeneous community with varied childhood, incarceration and drug use histories. This cross-sectional study assessed whether homeless men who were discharged from either jail or prison into a residential substance abuse treatment program, differed in terms of methamphetamine and heroin use. This study utilized baseline data collected on 540 recently paroled men randomized to one of three programs that assessed the impact of a peer coaching intervention on subsequent drug use and reincarceration. We found that younger ex-offenders exiting prisons and jails were more likely to have used methamphetamine alone, whereas African–American ex-offenders were less likely to have used methamphetamine alone when compared to other ethnic groups. Further, ex-offenders exiting jails and self-reporting use of heroin only at baseline were significantly more likely than their counterparts to have been removed from home before age 18 years. For men exiting jails, there was an association between lower self-esteem and having used methamphetamine but not heroin. However, having used both heroin and methamphetamine was associated with both violent crime and cognitive problems in both jail and prison samples. Our findings showcase the need to understand unique correlates of both heroin and methamphetamine as they relate to jail and prison populations.
WARWICK-EDINBURGH MENTAL İYİ OLUŞ ÖLÇEĞİ KISA FORMU’NUN TÜRKÇE’YE UYARLANMASI: GEÇERLİK VE GÜVENİRLİK ÇALIŞMASI

Bireylerin ve toplumlarin gelismesine etki eden faktorlerin kesfedilmesi icin insan islevselligini en ust duzeye cikaran pozitif psikolojinin temel amaci iyi olusu anlamak ve arttirmaktir. Pozitif psikolojinin temel kavramlarindan birisi olan iyi olus, bireylerin yasam kalitesi uzerinde onemli bir etkiye sahip oldugu icin arastirmacilarin buyuk ilgisini cekmistir. Bu calismanin amaci Tennant ve arkadaslari (2007) tarafindan gelistirilen Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Iyi Olus Olcegi Kisa Formu’nun (WEMIOO-KF) Turk universite ogrencileri uzerinde psikometrik ozelliklerini incelemektir. Olcegin gecerlik ve guvenirlik calismasi farkli iki calisma grubu uzerinde gerceklestirilmistir. Arastirma, birinci calisma grubunda 138 ogrenci (x= 20.68, Ss = 1.97), ikinci calisma grubunda 256 ogrenci (x =24.088, Ss = 5.94) olmak uzere toplam 394 universite ogrencisi uzerinde yurutulmustur. Olcegin psikometrik ozellikleri; dogrulayici faktor analizi, olcut bagintili gecerlik ve ictutarlik yontemleriyle incelenmistir. Olcegin yapi gecerligi icin uygulanan dogrulayici faktor analizi sonuclari, tum t degerlerinin anlamli oldugunu ve modelin iyi uyum degerlerine sahip oldugunu gostermistir. Olcut bagintili gecerlik icin Oxford Mutluluk Olcegi Kisa Formu (OMO-K), Surekli Umut Olcegi (SUO) ve Algilanan Stres Olcegi (ASO) kullanilmistir. Olcegin, OMO-K ve SUO ile yuksek duzeyde olumlu yonde anlamli iliskilere, ASO ile ise negatif yonde orta duzeyde anlamli iliskiye sahip oldugu ortaya cikmistir. Cronbach alfa ic tutarlilik guvenirlik katsayilari birinci calisma grubu icin . 84 ikinci calisma grubu icin . 86 olarak hesaplanmistir. Sonuc olarak arastirma bulgulari, WEMIOO-KF’nin Turk universite ogrencilerinin mental iyi olus duzeylerini olcmede kullanilabilecek gecerli ve guvenilir bir olcme araci oldugunu gostermektedir.
EM design of an isolated coplanar RE cross for MEMS switch matrix applications

The EM design of a coplanar RF cross with well isolated signal paths in a frequency range from DC up to 40 GHz is described. The cross is designed for a MEMS switch matrix where the different signal paths have to be isolated against each other. This allows one to have several 'on-state' signal paths at the same time in the matrix. One signal path is routed via an underpath metallisation while the other signal path is routed with an air bridge. A metal sheet connecting both coplanar ground metallisations is used as a shield to achieve good isolation. The optimisation of all elements from the cross is done with a full wave FDTD simulator. The achieved isolation between the two signal paths of the coplanar RF cross is above 40 dB up to 40 GHz. For both signal paths is in measurement and simulation for frequencies up to 20 GHz the return loss better than 18 dB and the insertion loss is below 0.7 dB.