Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The E3 Ligase Mind Bomb-1 (Mib1) Modulates Delta-Notch Signaling to Control Neurogenesis and Gliogenesis in the Developing Spinal Cord*

Background: Mib1 is a ubiquitin ligase that modifies Delta, a ligand for the Notch signaling pathway. Results: Absence of Mib1 results in a reduced number of neural progenitors, spinal interneurons, and astrocytes. Conclusion: Mib1 controls neurogenesis and gliogenesis in the spinal cord. Significance: Novel insights about the role of Mind bomb1 in the regulation of early spinal cord development via Delta signaling are presented. The Notch signaling pathway is essential for neuronal and glial specification during CNS development. Mind bomb-1 (Mib1) is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that ubiquitinates and promotes the endocytosis of Notch ligands. Although Mib1 is essential for transmitting the Notch signal, it is still unclear whether it is a primary regulator of Notch ligand activity in the developing spinal cord. In Mib1 conditional knock-out mice, we observed depletion of spinal progenitors, premature differentiation of neurons, and unbalanced specification of V2 interneurons, all of which mimic the conventional Notch phenotype. In agreement with this, the reduction of progenitors in the absence of Mib1 led to a loss of both astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. Late removal of Mib1 using a drug-inducible system suppressed glial differentiation, suggesting that Mib1 continues to play a role in the formation of late progenitors mainly designated for gliogenesis. Finally, misexpression of Mib1 or Mib1 deletion mutants revealed that the ring domain of Mib1 is required for the specification of V2 interneurons in the chick neural tube. Together, these findings suggest that Mib1 is a major component of the signal-sending cells required to provide Notch ligand activity for specifying neurons and glia in the spinal cord.
Comparison of Conventional and Ultrasound-assisted Extraction Techniques on Mass Fraction of Phenolic Compounds from Sage (Salvia officinalis L.)

Sage (Salvia officinalis L.) is a popular herb which is native to the Mediterranean region and cultivated worldwide. Sage is an important source of antioxidants used as preservatives and has wider implications for the dietary intake of natural antioxidants.1,2 This antioxidant effect has been attributed to the main phenolic components, caffeic acid dimer – rosmarinic acid1 and flavonoids, being mostly present as flavones and their glycosides. Flavone glycosides are apparently common in sage, and most of them are flavones 7-glycosides represented by apigenin and luteolin 7-glucoside and their corresponding 3and 7-glucuronides.2 In the last few decades, research regarding the extraction of phenolic compounds found in plants have attracted special interest regarding their application in the food industry. Extraction is a very important step in the isolation, identification, and use of polyphenols.3 The conventional extraction methods, which have been employed for decades, require prolonged extraction times and relatively larger quantities of solvent.4,5 Therefore, various novel extraction techniques have been developed for the extraction of bioactive compounds from herbs, including ultrasound-assisted extraction,6–8 microwave-assisted extraction,9 supercritical fluid extraction.10 Ultrasound-assisted extraction is an upcoming extraction technique that can offer high reproducibility in shorter time, higher yields of bioactive compounds, simplified manipulation, decreased temperature during processing, reduced solvent consumption, and lower energy input.11–13 In our previous paper,5 the influence of solvent polarity and composition, time and temperature of conventional extraction on mass fraction of polyphenols from sage were researched. The mixtures of ethanol and water are possibly the most suitable solvents for the extraction of sage due to different polarities of the active constituents, and acceptability of this solvent system for human consumption.4,5 Albu et al.3 and Sališova et al.14 have investigated the difference in the application of conventional extraction and ultrasonic-assisted extraction on the concentration of biologically active compounds in sage. They concluded that the content of biologically active compounds is approximately 60 % higher under the influence of ultrasound. Rosmarinic acid is the more active of these antioxidants, but it is relatively easily degraded in solvent and the rate of degradation is solvent-dependant.6 The ultrasonic-assisted extraction has been widely used for obtaining polyphenols from plants using ethanol, mixture of ethanol/waComparison of Conventional and Ultrasound-assisted Extraction Techniques on Mass Fraction of Phenolic Compounds from Sage (Salvia officinalis L.)
Short-term phonological memory and long-term learning: A single case study

Abstract The study concerns S.R. , a graduate student with a specific deficit in short-term phonological memory, whose performance on a range of memory and learning tasks is compared to a group of six fellow students. S.R. performed at a consistently lower level than the controls on a range of tasks involving short-term verbal memory, including digit span, nonword repetition, memory for dissimilar and similar consonants and words, and memory for words differing in length. He nevertheless showed normal effects of phonological similarity and word length, suggesting that his phonological loop was qualitatively normal. Short-term memory for visual patterns was normal. Long-term memory was tested using the Doors and People Test. This showed excellent visual recognition and pattern learning memory, coupled with poor performance on recognition or recall of names. By analogy with a patient with an acquired deficit in short-term phonological memory, it was predicted that S.R. would show normal verbal learning of pa.
Fluorescence microscope study of the binding of added C protein to skeletal muscle myofibrils

The binding of extra C protein to rabbit skeletal muscle myofibrils has been investigated by fluorescence microscopy with fluorescein-labeled C protein or unmodified C protein plus fluorescein-labeled anti-C protein. Added C protein binds strongly to the I bands, which is consistent with its binding to F actin in solution (Moos, C., C. M. Mason, J. M. Besterman, I. M. Feng, and J. H. Dubin. 1978. J. Mol. Biol. 124:571-586). Of particular interest, the binding to the I band is calcium regulated: it requires a free calcium ion concentration comparable to that which activates the myofibrillar ATPase. This increases the likelihood that C protein-actin interaction might be physiologically significant. When I band binding is suppressed, binding in the A band becomes evident. It appears to occur particularly near the M line, and possibly at the edges of the A band as well, suggesting that those parts of the thick filaments that lack C protein in vivo may nevertheless be capable of binding added C protein.
Gratitude

The human mind tends to excessively discount the value of delayed rewards relative to immediate ones, and it is thought that “hot” affective processes drive desires for short-term gratification. Supporting this view, recent findings demonstrate that sadness exacerbates financial impatience even when the sadness is unrelated to the economic decision at hand. Such findings might reinforce the view that emotions must always be suppressed to combat impatience. But if emotions serve adaptive functions, then certain emotions might be capable of reducing excessive impatience for delayed rewards. We found evidence supporting this alternative view. Specifically, we found that (a) the emotion gratitude reduces impatience even when real money is at stake, and (b) the effects of gratitude are differentiable from those of the more general positive state of happiness. These findings challenge the view that individuals must tamp down affective responses through effortful self-regulation to reach more patient and adaptive economic decisions.
Multimodal biometric recognition using human ear and palmprint

Combining multiple human trait features is a proven and effective strategy for biometric-based personal identification. In this study, the authors investigate the fusion of two biometric modalities, i.e. ear and palmprint, at feature-level. Ear and palmprint patterns are characterised by a rich and stable structure, which provides a large amount of information to discriminate individuals. Local texture descriptors, namely local binary patterns, weber local descriptor, and binarised statistical image features, were used to extract the discriminant features for robust human identification. The authors’ extensive experimental analysis based on the benchmark IIT Delhi-2 ear and IIT Delhi palmprint databases confirmed that the proposed multimodal biometric system is able to increase recognition rates compared with that produced by single-modal biometrics, attaining a recognition rate of 100%.
Significance Testing for Outcome Changes via Latent Growth Model

In addition to assessing the rate of change in outcome measures, it may be useful to test the significance of outcome changes during specific time periods within an entire observation period under study. While discussing the delta method and bootstrapping, this study demonstrates how to use these 2 methods to estimate the standard errors of the predicted mean changes in the outcome of interest. Different latent growth models were run, and the results of the delta method and bootstrapping were compared. The findings of the study suggest that the 2 methods, bootstrapping in particular, may be very useful to those who are interested in scrutiny of outcome changes in longitudinal studies.
Unique Word DMT Schemes for Optical Systems With Intensity Modulation and Direct Detection

Discrete multitone transmission (DMT) schemes, such as asymmetrically clipped DMT and DC-biased DMT, are popular multicarrier transmission schemes for dispersive optical channels employing intensity modulation and direct detection. These transmission schemes utilize a cyclic prefix (CP) to have a simple frequency domain equalization at the receiver. In this paper, we propose two novel DMT signaling schemes for such optical systems, where the guard interval is built of a unique word (UW), i.e., a deterministic data-independent sequence. This approach becomes possible since redundancy is added in the frequency domain and the UW is a part of the discrete Fourier transform interval. The results show that the proposed UW-DMT schemes outperform the conventional CP-DMT schemes in dispersive optical channels. Furthermore, the UW can be additionally used for other purposes, such as synchronization and channel estimation.
A direct method for estimating a causal ordering in a linear non-Gaussian acyclic model

Structural equation models and Bayesian networks have been widely used to analyze causal relations between continuous variables. In such frameworks, linear acyclic models are typically used to model the data-generating process of variables. Recently, it was shown that use of non-Gaussianity identifies a causal ordering of variables in a linear acyclic model without using any prior knowledge on the network structure, which is not the case with conventional methods. However, existing estimation methods are based on iterative search algorithms and may not converge to a correct solution in a finite number of steps. In this paper, we propose a new direct method to estimate a causal ordering based on non-Gaussianity. In contrast to the previous methods, our algorithm requires no algorithmic parameters and is guaranteed to converge to the right solution within a small fixed number of steps if the data strictly follows the model.
Teacher–Practitioner Multiple-Role Issues in Sport Psychology

The potential for the occurrence of multiple-role relationships is increased when professors also consult with athletic teams on their campuses. Such multiple-role relationships have potential ethical implications that are unclear and largely unexplored, and consultants may find multiple-role relationships both difficult to deal with and unavoidable. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the nature of teacher–practitioner multiple-role relationships. Participants (N = 35) were recruited from Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology (AAASP) certified consultants (CCs) who were also affiliated with a university (N = 68). All participants completed a 28-item survey exploring the incidence and relevant issues pertaining to multiple-role relationships. Chi-square analyses revealed that licensed mental health practitioners (i.e., psychologists and counselors) were more likely than nonlicensed AAASP CCs to believe that multiple-role relationships were never appropriate in sport psychology, χ2(1, N = 30) = 12.80, p < . 001, and to have never taken part in a multiple-role relationship, χ2(1, N = 33) = 12.44, p < . 001. Independent samples t tests revealed that mental health practitioners also reported that they would have higher levels of concern for both the practitioner, t(30) = –2.77, p = . 009, and the client, t(30) = –2.50, p = . 018, in such a relationship.
Rank-sparsity constrained atlas construction and phenotyping

Atlas construction is of great interest in the medical imaging community as a tool to visually and quantitatively characterize anatomic variability within a population. Because such atlases generally exhibit superior data fidelity relative to the individual data sets from which they are constructed, they have also proven invaluable in numerous informatics applications such as automated segmentation and classification, regularization of individual-specific reconstructions from undersampled data, and for characterizing physiologically relevant functional metrics. Perhaps the most valuable role of an anatomic atlas is not to define what is “normal,” but, in fact, to recognize what is “abnormal. ” Here, we propose and demonstrate a novel anatomic atlas construction strategy that simultaneously recovers the average anatomy and the deviation from average in a visually meaningful way. The proposed approach treats the problem of atlas construction within the context of robust principal component analysis (RPCA) in which the redundant portion of the data (i.e. the low rank atlas) is separated from the spatially and gradient sparse portion of the data unique to each individual (i.e. the sparse variation). In this paper, we demonstrate the application of RPCA to the Shepp-Logan phantom, including several forms of variability encountered with in vivo data: population variability, class variability, contrast variability, and individual variability. We then present preliminary results produced by applying the proposed approach to in vivo, murine cardiac micro-CT data acquired in a model of right ventricle hypertrophy induced by pulmonary arteriole hypertension.
Electrostatics of mesophilic and psychrophilic trypsin isoenzymes: Qualitative evaluation of electrostatic differences at the substrate binding site

A qualitative evaluation of electrostatic features of the substrate binding region of seven isoenzymes of trypsin has been performed by using the continuum electrostatic model for the solution of the Poisson‐Boltzmann equation. The sources of the electrostatic differences among the trypsins have been sought by comparative calculations on selective charges: all charges, conserved charges, partial charges, unique cold trypsin charges, and a number of charge mutations. As expected, most of the negative potential at the S1 region of all trypsins is generated from Asp189, but the potential varies significantly among the seven trypsin isoenzymes. The three cold active enzymes included in this study possess a notably lower potential at and around the S1‐pocket compared with the warm active counterparts; this finding may be the main contribution to the increased binding affinity. The source of the differences are nonconserved charged residues outside the specificity pocket, producing electric fields at the S1‐pocket that are different in both sign and magnitude. The surface charges of the mesophilic trypsins generally induce the S1 pocket positively, whereas surface charges of the cold trypsins produce a negative electric field of this region. Calculations on mutants, where charged amino acids were substituted between the trypsins, showed that mutations in Loop2 (residues 221B and 224) and residue 175, in particular, were responsible for the low potential of the cold enzymes. Proteins 2000;40:207–217. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A 25-GHz Compact Low-Power Phased-Array Receiver With Continuous Beam Steering in CMOS Technology

A compact low-power phased array receiver with continuous beam steering is presented based on the subsector beam steering technique. The entire beam steering range is divided into five subsectors from four characteristic beams of the Butler matrix. In each subsector the receive beam is steered by weighted combination of the received signals from array antennas. The theory of beam steering is detailed and the relationship of the steered angle with the beam steering factors is derived. The proposed architecture has lower circuit complexity and less power consumption because no challenging CMOS 360° variable phase shifters and multi-phase voltage-controlled oscillators are required. The phased array MMIC implemented in 0.13 μm CMOS technology has 17-21 dB receiving gain and 8.9-10.7 dB noise figure in 25-26 GHz. It consumes lower than 30 mW and takes a small chip area of 1.43 mm2. The continuous beam steering is demonstrated over the spatial range from -90° to +90°.
Estimation of Body Postures on Bed Using Unconstrained ECG Measurements

We developed and tested a system for estimating body postures on a bed using unconstrained measurements of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals using 12 capacitively coupled electrodes and a conductive textile sheet. Thirteen healthy subjects participated in the experiment. After detecting the channels in contact with the body among the 12 electrodes, the features were extracted on the basis of the morphology of the QRS (Q wave, R wave, and S wave of ECG) complex using three main steps. The features were applied to linear discriminant analysis, support vector machines with linear and radial basis function (RBF) kernels, and artificial neural networks (one and two layers), respectively. SVM with RBF kernel had the highest performance with an accuracy of 98.4% for estimation of four body postures on the bed: supine, right lateral, prone, and left lateral. Overall, although ECG data were obtained from few sensors in an unconstrained manner, the performance was better than the results that have been reported to date. The developed system and algorithm can be applied to the obstructive apnea detection and analyses of sleep quality or sleep stages, as well as body posture detection for the management of bedsores.
CRISPR/Cas9-Targeted Mutagenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans

The generation of genetic mutants in Caenorhabditis elegans has long relied on the selection of mutations in large-scale screens. Directed mutagenesis of specific loci in the genome would greatly speed up analysis of gene function. Here, we adapt the CRISPR/Cas9 system to generate mutations at specific sites in the C. elegans genome.
Bullying in Students With and Without Hearing Loss

Abstract While bullying is a common phenomenon at schools in general, very few studies have addressed bullying in students with hearing impairment. This study assessed being bullied and bullying others in 181 adolescents from German schools for students who are deaf and hard of hearing, and in 259 hearing peers from regular schools. Students who are deaf reported higher levels of victimization than their hearing peers, but differences between these two groups tended to be small. In contrast, hard of hearing students did not report elevated levels of being bullied. The three groups of students did not differ in the reported frequency of bullying others. While support from peers was associated with lower levels of being bullied in students with and without hearing loss, parental support, and better academic performance were only associated with lower victimization in hearing students. In contrast, perceived support from teachers was not related to bullying in any group. Irrespective of hearing status, higher levels of victimization were related to increased emotional and behavioural problems. It is concluded that interventions are needed which are aimed at preventing and reducing bullying of students with and without hearing loss and of deaf students in particular. These interventions should consider general as well as specific risk factors.
Pathological Sit-To-Stand Predictive Models for Control of a Rehabilitation Robotic Device

The aim of the work presented in this paper is to realize the model for the control of a robotic interface for equilibrium assistance during sit-to-stand transfer. Interactive robotic devices designed as human-centered robotics, can give more comfortable and more efficient solutions than traditional technical devices. One supposes the need of a virtual model of the pathology. This model, called observer, aims at being used in the smoothing control part of this assisting device. A useful property of this observer should be a postural prediction ability. This article presents a study of different neural solutions : a Neural Predictive Observer (NPO) and a Reduced Neural Predictive Observer (RNPO). Records used for the learning have been done from healthy people that stand up normally and quickly. Some tests will also be done in patients with cerebellar syndrome disease. The presented experimental results show the good accuracy of these approaches whatever the speed of the movement.
Robust scheduling of residential distributed energy resources using a novel energy service decision-support tool

This paper describes a methodology for making robust day-ahead operational schedules for controllable residential distributed energy resources (DER) using a novel energy service decision support tool. The tool is based on the consumers deriving benefit from energy services and not on electric energy. It maximizes consumer net benefit by scheduling the operation of DER. The robust schedule is derived using a stochastic programming approach formulated for the DER scheduler: the objective function describing the consumer net benefit is maximized over a set of scenarios that model the range of uncertainty. The optimal scenario set is derived using heuristic scenario reduction techniques. Robust operational schedules are formulated for a ‘smart’ home case study with four controllable DER under stochastic energy service demand, availability of storage DER, and status of dynamic peak pricing. The robust schedule results in a lower expected cost but at the expense of long computation times. The computation period however is not much of a disadvantage because schedules are computed off-line. The consumer can prepare several DER schedules and simply choose the one to implement according to their perception of the coming day. The robust schedules are formulated using an improved version of co-evolutionary particle swarm optimization.
Key exchange protocols for secure Device-to-Device (D2D) communication in 5G

In this paper, we consider network assisted device-to-device (D2D) communication between two user equipments (UEs) in a cellular network. For the scenario, when both the UEs are in network coverage, we propose novel key exchange protocols for D2D communication. The proposed protocols are based on the standard Diffie-Hellman (DH) based key exchange and other cryptographic functions. We present detailed threat analysis for the proposed protocols and show their resilience against man-in-the-middle attack. Further, through numerical results, we show that the proposed protocols have low computational time and low communication overhead in comparison with existing key exchange protocols for D2D communication. The proposed protocols are practically implementable and highly suitable for D2D communications in 5G cellular networks.