Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study of cytoskeletal proteins in fibroblasts cultured from familial Alzheimer's disease

ABSTRACT Cytoskeletal proteins of the cultured fibroblasts obtained from Alzheimer's disease patients were studied. Western blotting studies of tubulin, actin, and vimentin showed no difference between Alzheimer and the control fibroblasts. Western blotting studies of vimentin revealed five partial degradation products in 50 K‐57 K Da. molecular size region, but no difference in the degradation pattern was noticed between Alzheimer and the control fibroblasts. The size of fodrin molecule, however, was quite different between Alzheimer and the control fibroblasts. Comparing the molecular size of fodrin purified from the bovine brain, it is concluded that fodrin in Alzheimer fibroblasts is not degraded, while significant amount of fodrin in the control fibroblasts is partially degraded resulting in the smaller size of the 160 K and 200 K Da. molecular weight products.
Thermodynamics of surface segregation profiles at Cu3Au(001) resolved by x-ray scattering.

We demonstrate that crystal truncation rod scattering can ideally be applied to extract detailed information on surface segregation profiles in multicomponent systems. We present an x-ray study of the surface segregation at Cu3Au(001) at various temperatures above the order-disorder transition temperature. It exhibits a pronounced exponentially decaying, oscillatory behavior versus depth. The associated decay length A is found to obey A — t ", with v = 0. 49 ~ 0. 04 and t = (T — Tzp)/T, and, thus, is related to the bulk order parameter fluctuations and the bulk spinodal temperature Tsp.
Wave functions in the presence of a time-dependent field: Exact solutions and their application to tunneling.

Solutions to the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation for a particle in a spatially uniform time-dependent field and some potentials of arbitrary form are proved to be like the time-independent eigenfunctions for an identical static potential. The field phase modulates the wave function and translates its envelope. This work applies directly to constant, linear, and parabolic static potentials and is self-consistent. Results for the modulation by a time-dependent field of the current through a rectangular barrier are relevant to the traversal time for tunneling and associated device limitations.
Condition specific transcription factor binding site characterization in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

MOTIVATION We demonstrate a computational process by which transcription factor binding sites can be elucidated using genome-wide expression and binding profiles. The profiles direct us to the intergenic locations likely to contain the promoter regions for a given factor. These sequences are multiply and locally aligned to give an anchor motif from which further characterization can take place. RESULTS We present bases for and assumptions about the variability within these motifs which give rise to potentially more accurate motifs, capture complex binding sites built upon the basis motif, and eliminate the constraints of the currently employed promoter searching protocols. We also present a measure of motif quality based on the occurrence of the putative motifs in regions observed to contain the binding sites. The assumptions, motif generation, quality assessment and comparison allow the user as much control as their a priori knowledge allows. AVAILABILITY IGRDB and the datasets mentioned herein are available at http://chipdb.wi. mit.edu/
Predicting User Ratings with Matrix Factorization

With e-commerce becoming more popular, users are often faced with a tremendous number of choices, and recommender systems have become necessary to help them navigate through the sea of products. Collaborative filtering is a popular method used to aggregate user preferences and predict product ratings. I will explore different variations of Alternating Least Squares, a matrix factorization algorithm that decomposes the ratings matrix into latent factor matrices. ALS allows latent factors to be solved in parallel, which makes it easily scalable to large datasets. When implemented on GraphLab and scaled up to the full dataset of 100 million ratings, I was able to get a best RMSE of 0.9288, which represents a 2% improvement over Netflix’s Cinematch algorithm.
An Adaptive Anti-Collision Protocol for Large-Scale RFID Tag Identification

Tag collision presents a significant impact on RFID systems. In this letter, we propose an efficient tag anti-collision protocol termed the adaptive assigned tree slotted Aloha anti-collision (AdATSA) protocol. In this protocol, the binary grouping and adaptive recognition phases are employed to effectively estimate the tag number and promptly identify tags. Additionally, we further improve the system efficiency of AdATSA by investigating the influence factor between the frame length and the tag number. Through numerical results, we are able to obtain several values of the influence factor, which helps to achieve the optimal system efficiency for AdATSA. Both analytical and simulation results are presented to show that the highest system efficiency of AdATSA is 61.7%, outperforming the previous protocols.
External Ecological Niche for Candida albicans within Reducing, Oxygen-Limited Zones of Wetlands

ABSTRACT Candida albicans within the human host is well studied; however, identifying environmental reservoirs of pathogens is epidemiologically valuable for disease management. Oxygen-limited, carbohydrate-rich zones of wetlands, to which sewage-borne C. albicans is often exposed, are characteristically similar to the gastrointestinal reservoir. Consequently, using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), we demonstrated that oxygen-limited zones in polluted wetlands may act as potential reservoirs of C. albicans.
A case-control study to examine the influence of maternal perinatal behaviors on the incidence of Crohn's disease.

This case-control study, which examines maternal perinatal characteristics and behaviors during pregnancy, was an initial step to determine whether an association exists between breast feeding, oral contraceptive use, smoking habits during pregnancy, and the incidence of Crohn's disease. The population studied was mothers whose children were diagnosed with Crohn's disease before the age of 22. Population controls were selected by each case mother, who solicited two friends or neighbors with a child of similar age. Case mothers differed significantly on the variables of allergies (p = .05) and family history of inflammatory bowel disease (p = .001). No significant differences were found regarding feeding, oral contraceptives, or smoking. Using a forward step-wise logistic regression method, only family history remained in the equation.
A test management and software visualization framework for heterogeneous distributed applications

Large scale distributed applications are widely used by internet service providers for customers and by companies for their own use. There is a need to provide test management facilities for such systems to validate, evaluate performance and ensure conformance to service level agreements. These facilities are also needed for the certification process required as part of maintaining such systems. This paper describes an extensible framework called RiOT that can be used to manage testing, and allow dynamic visualization of heterogeneous distributed component-based applications.
BASED DATA AUGMENTATION FOR CANTONESE KEYWORD SPOTTING

This paper presents a method to improve a language model for a limited-resourced language using statistical machine translation from a related language to generate data for the target language. In this work, the machine translation model is trained on a corpus of parallel Mandarin-Cantonese subtitles and used to translate a large set of Mandarin conversational telephone transcripts to Cantonese, which has limited resources. The translated transcripts are used to train a more robust language model for speech recognition and for keyword search in Cantonese conversational telephone speech. This method enables the keyword search system to detect 1.5 times more out-of-vocabulary words, and achieve 1.7% absolute improvement on actual term-weighted value.
Protective effects of five compounds from Livistona chinensis R. Brown leaves against hypoxia/reoxygenation, H2O2, or adriamycin-induced injury in H9c2 cells

Purpose: Discovering new antimyocardial ischemia drug candidates that are highly efficient, have low toxicity, and originate from natural products is a popular trend for new cardiovascular drug development at present. The ethanol extract of Livistona chinensis leaves showed a favorable antioxidant activity in our preliminary screening test. This study aims to screen out antioxidants from the herb leaves further and evaluate their efficacy in acute myocardial ischemia treatment at the cellular level. Materials and methods: Guided with online 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH)–high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) screening, antioxidants were first separated and isolated from the ethanol extract of L. chinensis leaves by preparative-HPLC. Subsequently, offline DPPH approach was used to validate the free radical scavenging activity of the components. Ultimately, the resulting antioxidants were evaluated against the hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R)-, H2O2-, or adriamycin (ADM)-induced injury in H9c2 cells to verify their cardioprotective effects in vitro. Results: Five antioxidant ingredients, namely, orientin, isoorientin, vitexin, isovitexin, and tricin, were quickly distinguished and isolated from L. chinensis leaves. The IC50 values of these ingredients were further examined by offline DPPH assay, as follows: 15.51±0.22, 6.64±0.38, 11.86±0.24, 8.89±0.66, and 31.86±0.24 μg/mL, respectively. Out of these ingredients, isoorientin showed the strongest antioxidation, which was equivalent to that of the positive control drug (vitamin C, IC50: 6.99±0.62 μg/mL). Using H/R-, H2O2-, and ADM-induced H9c2 cell injury models, the five ingredients had different extents of cardioprotective effects in vitro. In particular, isoorientin showed the strongest protection. All the five ingredients also showed insignificant cytotoxic effect to normal H9c2 cells. Conclusion: The ethanol extract of L. chinensis leaves contained five antioxidants with low cardiac cytotoxicity. Isoorientin possessed the strongest antioxidation, which can predominantly account for the myocardial protection effects within the extract.
A new approach using high volume blood patch for prevention of post-dural puncture headache following intrathecal catheter pump exchange

Background: In an observational study, complications of intrathecal catheter pumps necessitating surgical exchange were analyzed. Also the use of a high-volume prophylactic epidural blood patch (EBP) during surgery for preventing post-dural puncture headache (PDPH) with a follow-up for 1 year is described. Materials and Methods: In 22 patients with refractory chronic pain of cancer/noncancer origin or severe spasticity, who were receiving intrathecal morphine including adjuvants or baclofen for symptom relief, catheter exchange with or without pump was performed. In patients with documented symptoms of PDPH following initial intrathecal catheter implantation, a prophylactic EBP with a high blood volume was used for PDPH prevention during surgery. Catheters were replaced using 40 mL EBP before entering dural space at a speed of 5mL/min into the epidural space. Patients were asked to quantify pain experience and functional ability. Results: From a sample of 72 patients admitted for catheter exchange with or without pump, 22 patients (33%) (12 male, 10 female) had a history of PDPH following initial implantation. Diagnostic and therapeutic measures occurring with malfunction of intrathecal catheter pump systems were described. Twenty-one patients were successfully treated with prophylactic EBP, while one patient could not be properly evaluated because of intracranial bleeding as the underlying disease. Conclusions: A new approach using a high-volume prophylactic EBP for preventing PDPH following catheter exchange is presented. The efficacy and safety of this technique for 1 year follow-up have been evaluated and was found to be safe and potentially effective.
Romantic Relationship Dynamics of Urban African American Adolescents

Relationship dynamics develop early in life and are influenced by social environments. STI/HIV prevention programs need to consider romantic relationship dynamics that contribute to sexual health. The aim of this study was to examine monogamous patterns, commitment, and trust in African American adolescent romantic relationships. The authors also focused on the differences in these dynamics between and within gender. The way that such dynamics interplay in romantic relationships has the potential to influence STI/HIV acquisition risk. In-depth interviews were conducted with 28 African American adolescents aged 14 to 21 living in San Francisco. Our results discuss data related to monogamous behaviors, expectations, and values; trust and respect in romantic relationships; commitment to romantic relationships; and outcomes of mismatched relationship expectations. Incorporating gender-specific romantic relationships dynamics can enhance the effectiveness of prevention programs.
Fast HEVC intra mode decision algorithm based on new evaluation order in the Coding Tree Block

This paper presents a fast mode decision algorithm for the HEVC intra prediction. A new evaluation order in the Coding Tree Block (CTB) allows the use of modes from low level PUs to be used as reference to the current PU decision. In this paper we use this idea to develop a fast intra mode decision algorithm that can be configured to run in two different complexity modes, relaxed and aggressive. Experimental results have shown that our algorithm achieved encoding time savings of almost 60% with negligible loss in the compression efficiency when compared to the full RDO based decision. Besides, our mode decision algorithm presented the best result in terms of time saving per compression efficiency when compared with all related works.
Acute Intracranial In-Stent Thrombosis After Angioplasty of Middle Cerebral Artery Symptomatic Stenosis: A Case Report

Introduction:Intracranial atherosclerotic disease is one of the major risk factors of ischemic stroke. Percutaneous transluminal angioplasty with stent deployment may be effective for the treatment of symptomatic intracranial stenosis, however its value is yet to be determined. High possibility of serious periprocedural complications, such as acute in-stent thrombosis or stroke, narrows the current recommendations for this treatment to patients with high-grade stenosis (>70%), and to experienced neurointerventional centers. Case Report:We present a 44-year-old male with symptomatic high-grade stenosis of the M1 segment of left middle cerebral artery, treated with percutaneous transluminal angioplasty with stenting. The procedure was complicated with acute in-stent thrombosis treated with intra-arterial thrombolysis, which resulted in a nondisabling stroke. Conclusions:The procedure-related stroke in this patient was probably caused by middle cerebral artery perforator ostium occlusion with balloon predilatation and transient in-stent thrombosis related to insufficient antiplatelet pretreatment. Exhausted cerebrovascular reserve due to long-lasting high-grade intracranial stenosis should also be considered as a factor contributing to ischemic complications.
A study of instrument-wise onset detection in Beijing Opera percussion ensembles

Note onset detection and instrument recognition are two of the most investigated tasks in Music Information Retrieval (MIR). Various detection methods have been proposed in previous research for western music, with less focus on other music cultures of the world. In this paper, we focus on onset detection for percussion instruments in Beijing Opera, a major genre of Chinese traditional music. A dataset of individual audio samples of four primary percussion instruments is used to obtain the spectral bases for each instrument. With these bases, we separate the input percussion ensemble recordings into its spectral sources and their activations using a Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) based algorithm. A simple onset detection conducted on each NMF activation presents satisfactory overall detection rates, and provides us valuable implications and suggestions for future development of drum transcription and percussion pattern analysis in Beijing Opera.
Engineering Thermoplastics for Additive Manufacturing: A Critical Perspective with Experimental Evidence to Support Functional Applications

Background Among additive manufacturing techniques, the filament-based technique involves what is referred to as fused deposition modeling (FDM). FDM materials are currently limited to a selected number of polymers. The present study focused on investigating the potential of using high-end engineering polymers in FDM. In addition, a critical review of the materials available on the market compared with those studied here was completed. Methods Different engineering thermoplastics, ranging from industrial grade polycarbonates to novel polyetheretherketones (PEEKs), were processed by FDM. Prior to this, for innovative filaments based on PEEK, extrusion processing was carried out. Mechanical properties (i.e., tensile and flexural) were investigated for each extruded material. An industrial-type FDM machine (Stratasys Fortus® 400 mc) was used to fully characterize the effect of printing parameters on the mechanical properties of polycarbonate. The obtained properties were compared with samples obtained by injection molding. Finally, FDM samples made of PEEK were also characterized and compared with those obtained by injection molding. Results The effect of raster to raster air gap and raster angle on tensile and flexural properties of printed PC was evidenced; the potential of PEEK filaments, as novel FDM material, was highlighted in comparison to state of the art materials. Conclusions Comparison with injection molded parts allowed to better understand FDM potential for functional applications. The study discussed pros and cons of the different materials. Finally, the development of novel PEEK filaments achieved important results offering a novel solution to the market when high mechanical and thermal properties are required.
Molecular genetic analysis of haematological malignancies II: mature lymphoid neoplasms

Molecular genetic techniques have become an integral part of the diagnostic assessment for many lymphomas and other chronic lymphoid neoplasms. The demonstration of a clonal immunoglobulin or T cell receptor gene rearrangement offers a useful diagnostic tool in cases where the diagnosis is equivocal. Molecular genetic detection of other genomic rearrangements may not only assist with the diagnosis but can also provide important prognostic information. Many of these rearrangements can act as molecular markers for the detection of low levels of residual disease. In this review, we discuss the applications of molecular genetic analysis to the chronic lymphoid malignancies. The review concentrates on those disorders for which molecular genetic analysis can offer diagnostic and/or prognostic information.
Hepatoprotective effect of Ecballium Elaterium fruit juice against paracetamol induced hepatotoxicity in male albino rats

This study was designed to investigate the antioxidant and hepatoprotective activity of Ecballium elaterium "Fruit juice" extract against paracetamol induced hepatotoxicity in male albino rats. The hepatotoxicity was induced by acetaminophen (PCM) at dose of 400 mg/kg in male albino rats. It was administered orally once a day , every 48 h at the same time for twenty two days. The biochemical liver functional tests ALT, AST, ALP, total bilirubin, total protein, antioxidant enzymes (GR, GPx, CAT, SOD), and histopathological changes were examined. Our results showed that Levels of liver enzymes ALT, AST, ALP, G-GT and total bilirubin and MDA level were significantly enhanced by administration of acetaminophen and level of total protein while antioxidant enzymes "GR, GPx, CAT, SOD" were decreased. However, the pretreatment with The E. elaterium "fruit juice" at 1 ml/kg orally revealed attenuation of serum ALT, AST, ALP. The histopathological studies also supported the protective properties of E. elaterium "fruit juice". The area of necrosis and degeneration of hepatocytes were observed in the toxic group. The prophylactic and curative groups showed a marked protective effect with decreased necrotic zones and hepatocellular degeneration. The present results clearly demonstrate the marked antihepatotoxic effects of E. elaterium "fruit juice" extract through its antioxidant activity on acetaminophen induced hepatotoxicity in rats. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.3329/icpj.v3i5. 18535 International Current Pharmaceutical Journal, April 2014, 3(5): 270-274
Monounsaturated fatty acids generated via stearoyl CoA desaturase-1 are endogenous inhibitors of fatty acid amide hydrolase

Significance High-fat diet–induced obesity (DIO) increases the activity of endocannabinoids, the body’s own marijuana-like substances. Endocannabinoids activate CB1 receptors in the liver to cause insulin resistance and promote the synthesis of lipids by inducing stearoyl-CoA desaturase-1 (SCD1), the enzyme responsible for generating monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs). Here we show that endogenous, but not diet-derived, MUFAs act as potent inhibitors of fatty acid amide hydrolase, the enzyme that degrades the endocannabinoid anandamide, and are thus responsible for the increased hepatic levels of anandamide in mice with DIO. These findings reveal a positive feedback loop between the hepatic endocannabinoid/CB1 receptor system and SCD1 that contributes to increased lipogenesis and insulin resistance in DIO. High-fat diet (HFD)–induced obesity and insulin resistance are associated with increased activity of the endocannabinoid/CB1 receptor (CB1R) system that promotes the hepatic expression of lipogenic genes, including stearoyl-CoA desaturase-1 (SCD1). Mice deficient in CB1R or SCD1 remain lean and insulin-sensitive on an HFD, suggesting a functional link between the two systems. The HFD-induced increase in the hepatic levels of the endocannabinoid anandamide [i.e., arachidonoylethanolamide (AEA)] has been attributed to reduced activity of the AEA-degrading enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH). Here we show that HFD-induced increased hepatic AEA levels and decreased FAAH activity are absent in SCD1−/− mice, and the monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) products of SCD1, palmitoleic and oleic acid, inhibit FAAH activity in vitro at low micromolar concentrations. HFD markedly increases hepatic SCD1 activity in WT mice as well as in CB1R−/− mice with transgenic reexpression of CB1R in hepatocytes, but not in global CB1R−/− mice. Treatment of HFD-fed mice with the SCD1 inhibitor A939572 prevents the diet-induced reduction of hepatic FAAH activity, normalizes hepatic AEA levels, and improves insulin sensitivity. SCD1−/− mice on an HFD remain insulin-sensitive, but develop glucose intolerance and insulin resistance in response to chronic treatment with the FAAH inhibitor URB597. An HFD rich in MUFA or feeding mice pure oleic acid fail to inhibit hepatic FAAH activity. We conclude that MUFAs generated via SCD1 activity, but not diet-derived MUFAs, function as endogenous FAAH inhibitors mediating the HFD-induced increase in hepatic AEA, which then activates hepatic CB1R to induce insulin resistance.