Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unexpected expression of α- and β-globin in mesencephalic dopaminergic neurons and glial cells

The mesencephalic dopaminergic (mDA) cell system is composed of two major groups of projecting cells in the substantia nigra (SN) (A9 neurons) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA) (A10 cells). A9 neurons form the nigrostriatal pathway and are involved in regulating voluntary movements and postural reflexes. Their selective degeneration leads to Parkinson's disease. Here, we report that gene expression analysis of A9 dopaminergic neurons (DA) identifies transcripts for α- and β-chains of hemoglobin (Hb). Globin immunoreactivity decorates the majority of A9 DA, a subpopulation of cortical and hippocampal astrocytes and mature oligodendrocytes. This pattern of expression was confirmed in different mouse strains and in rat and human. We show that Hb is expressed in the SN of human postmortem brain. By microarray analysis of dopaminergic cell lines overexpressing α- and β-globin chains, changes in genes involved in O2 homeostasis and oxidative phopshorylation were observed, linking Hb expression to mitochondrial function. Our data suggest that the most famed oxygen-carrying globin is not exclusively restricted to the blood, but it may play a role in the normal physiology of the brain and neurodegenerative diseases.
Neuropilins and Their Ligands Are Important in the Migration of Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Neurons

Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons in the hypothalamus play an important role in reproductive function. These cells originate in the nasal compartment and migrate into the basal forebrain in association with olfactory/vomeronasal nerves in embryonic life in rodents. Here, we studied the role of neuropilins and their ligands, semaphorins, in the development of the olfactory-GnRH system. We focused on Neuropilin-2 knock-out (Npn-2−/−) mice, because they are known to display defasciculation of olfactory nerves and reduced fertility. We found a significant decrease in the number of GnRH neurons in the hypothalamus and a marked reduction in their gonadal size. We then observed an abnormal increase of GnRH neurons in the noses of Npn-2−/− mice, indicating that these cells failed to migrate into the forebrain. However, because neuropilins and semaphorins are involved in events of neuronal migration in the brain, we asked whether the observed reduction in GnRH neurons was directly attributable to the action of these molecules. Using fluorescence-activated cell sorting and reverse transcription-PCR on mRNA derived from embryonic green fluorescent protein (GFP)–GnRH transgenic mice, we found expression of class 3 semaphorins and their receptors (neuropilin-1/2 and plexin-A1) in GnRH neurons. Furthermore, double-immunofluorescence experiments showed that migrating GnRH neurons, as well as associated olfactory fibers, express Npn-2 in the nasal region. We then used a line of immortalized GnRH neurons (GN11 cells) that display the same expression patterns for semaphorins and their receptors as GFP–GnRH cells and found that class 3 semaphorins and vascular endothelial growth factors modulate their migratory activity. These studies provide support for the direct involvement of neuropilins and their ligands in the establishment of the GnRH neuroendocrine system.
Fraternal foreign policy transfer? Evaluating the case of Australian Labor and British Labour

ABSTRACT The literature on policy transfer and policy diffusion is vast, but analysis of how this operates in the domain of foreign policy is limited. Is there evidence that policy-related knowledge and ideas in the foreign policy realm are transferred between jurisdictions? This article addresses this question in the context of the relationship between two fraternal social democratic parties – the British Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party. It focuses on the period between 2006 and 2010, which covers Kevin Rudd’s assumption of the Labor leadership and his first term as Prime Minister and the transition from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown in June 2007. Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership was terminated in a party room coup in June 2010 while Gordon Brown led the British Labour Party to electoral defeat one month earlier. The article investigates three prominent areas of foreign policy – regional engagement, climate change, and aid and international development – to evaluate the extent of policy transfer and diffusion between the Rudd and Brown Governments. Using the ‘degrees of transfer’ framework outlined by Dolowitz and Marsh, it finds that emulation, policy combinations, and inspiration all featured but that there was scant evidence of complete transfer.
Semiparametric Multivariate GARCH Models

Estimation of multivariate GARCH models is usually car ri ed out by quasi maximum likehood (QMLE),for which recently consistency and asymp totic normality have been proven under quite general conditions.However,there ar e to date no results on the efficiency loss of QMLE if the true innovation distr ibution is not multinormal.We investigate this issue by suggesting a nonparametr ic estimation of the multivariate innovation distribution,based on consistent pa rameter estimates obtained by QMLE.We give conditions under which the semiparame tric efficiency bound can be attained.
Facile Synthesis of Monodisperse Superparamagnetic Fe3O4 Core@hybrid@Au Shell Nanocomposite for Bimodal Imaging and Photothermal Therapy

A simple seed-mediated growth route is developed to fabricate monodisperse, uniform superparamagnetic Fe(3)O(4) core/gold shell structured nanocomposites with tunable sizes and optical properties, in which gold seed formation and attachment onto the core surface via S-Au covalent bonding proceeds almost simultaneously in the one-pot synthesis. The as-prepared nanocomposite is demonstrated to have a great potential for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided, focused photothermal tumor therapy under near-IR laser radiation.
Human Fatty Acid Transport Protein 2a/Very Long Chain Acyl-CoA Synthetase 1 (FATP2a/Acsvl1) Has a Preference in Mediating the Channeling of Exogenous n-3 Fatty Acids into Phosphatidylinositol*

The trafficking of fatty acids across the membrane and into downstream metabolic pathways requires their activation to CoA thioesters. Members of the fatty acid transport protein/very long chain acyl-CoA synthetase (FATP/Acsvl) family are emerging as key players in the trafficking of exogenous fatty acids into the cell and in intracellular fatty acid homeostasis. We have expressed two naturally occurring splice variants of human FATP2 (Acsvl1) in yeast and 293T-REx cells and addressed their roles in fatty acid transport, activation, and intracellular trafficking. Although both forms (FATP2a (Mr 70,000) and FATP2b (Mr 65,000 and lacking exon3, which encodes part of the ATP binding site)) were functional in fatty acid import, only FATP2a had acyl-CoA synthetase activity, with an apparent preference toward very long chain fatty acids. To further address the roles of FATP2a or FATP2b in fatty acid uptake and activation, LC-MS/MS was used to separate and quantify different acyl-CoA species (C14–C24) and to monitor the trafficking of different classes of exogenous fatty acids into intracellular acyl-CoA pools in 293T-REx cells expressing either isoform. The use of stable isotopically labeled fatty acids demonstrated FATP2a is involved in the uptake and activation of exogenous fatty acids, with a preference toward n-3 fatty acids (C18:3 and C22:6). Using the same cells expressing FATP2a or FATP2b, electrospray ionization/MS was used to follow the trafficking of stable isotopically labeled n-3 fatty acids into phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylinositol. The expression of FATP2a resulted in the trafficking of C18:3-CoA and C22:6-CoA into both phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylinositol but with a distinct preference for phosphatidylinositol. Collectively these data demonstrate FATP2a functions in fatty acid transport and activation and provides specificity toward n-3 fatty acids in which the corresponding n-3 acyl-CoAs are preferentially trafficked into acyl-CoA pools destined for phosphatidylinositol incorporation.
Centers of Gravity: Regional Powers, Democracy, and Trade

ABSTRACT Classic studies on hegemonic stability and power transition suggest that concentration of capabilities favoring a single state can promote economic cooperation and discourage militarized conflict. However, tests of these arguments have been primarily limited to examining temporal variation in global capability distributions and corresponding levels of system-wide cooperation; few have examined the impact of capability concentration at the region level. In this article, we contend that concentration of regional military capabilities corresponds to lower trade costs for states throughout a region and to an incentive for weaker states to de-prioritize expenditure on the military, freeing resources that can be used to promote trade. As a result, this condition promotes higher levels of trade, particularly within the region. We also argue that democratic regional powers are better able to foster confidence in the sustainability of cooperation; thus, the trade-enhancing impact of concentrated regional capabilities is stronger when the predominant state is more democratic. We find evidence in support of our expectations in statistical models examining state trade between 1960 and 2007.
UAlbany's ILQUA at TREC 2007

TREC2007 QA track introduced a combined collection of 175GB BLOG data and 2.5GB newswire data. This introduced an additional challenge for an automatic QA system to processes data in different formats without sacrificing the accuracy. In ILQUA we added a data preprocessing component to filter out noisy blog data. ILQUA has been built as an IE-driven QA system; it extracts answers from documents annotated with named entity tags. Answer extraction methods applied are surface text pattern matching, n-gram proximity search and syntactic dependency matching. The answer patterns used in ILQUA are automatically summarized by a supervised learning system and represented in form of regular expressions which contain multiple question terms. In addition to surface text pattern matching, we also adopt N-gram proximity search and syntactic dependency matching. N-grams of question terms are matched around every named entity in the candidate passages and a list of named entities are extracted as answer candidate. These named entities then go through a multi-level syntactic dependency matching component until a final answer is chosen. This year, we modified the component that tackles “Other” questions and applied different method in the two runs we submitted. One method utilized representative words and syntactic patterns, while the other method utilized representative words from TREC data and web data. Figure 1 gives an illustration of components, data flow and control flow of ILQUA. The following sections give detailed discussion of each component of the system, evaluation results, conclusion and future work.
Management and Outcome of Dens Fracture Nonunions in Geriatric Patients.

BACKGROUND Dens fractures are known to have high rates of pseudarthrosis. The aim of this study was to define clinical and radiographic long-term outcomes, specifically in relation to osseous union, cervical spine movement, neurological sequelae, and quality of life, in a geriatric cohort (sixty-five years of age or older) treated operatively or nonoperatively for a dens fracture nonunion. METHODS Forty-four patients (twenty-eight women and sixteen men; average age, seventy-two years) met the inclusion criteria and were enrolled in this study. Sixteen patients (36%) underwent operative stabilization with posterior cervical arthrodesis, and twenty-eight (64%) were treated nonoperatively with a predefined protocol. All patients had a post-treatment follow-up period of at least five years. RESULTS Radiographic evaluation showed osseous union at the site of the C1-C2 arthrodesis in all sixteen patients who had undergone surgical treatment. Clinical follow-up revealed that fourteen had satisfactory results following postoperative rehabilitation. In contrast, radiographic evaluation of the twenty-eight nonoperatively treated patients showed persistence of the pseudarthrosis of the dens in twenty-six and osseous union of the dens in two. All twenty-eight patients (100%) had a satisfactory clinical outcome. CONCLUSIONS C1-C2 arthrodesis was a reliable treatment option for dens fracture nonunions that were unstable, those associated with neurological symptoms, and those causing persistent pain. Clinical and radiographic monitoring was an acceptable nonoperative treatment option but was associated with a very low rate of osseous union of the dens.
A tale of two hemispheres: contrasting socioemotional dysfunction in right- versus left-lateralised semantic dementia

OBJECTIVE Semantic dementia, a subtype of frontotemporal lobar degeneration, is characterised by cross-modal loss of conceptual knowledge attributable to progressive degeneration of the left anterior temporal lobe. Much less is known regarding the clinical presentation of SD patients with predominantly right-lateralised atrophy. Recent reports emphasise marked socioemotional and behavioural disturbances in such cases. Given the importance of the right anterior temporal lobes in social cognition, we hypothesised that socioemotional functioning would be disproportionately affected in right versus left-lateralised SD cases. METHODS We assessed well-characterised cases of predominantly right (n=10) and left (n=12) SD and 20 matched healthy controls on tests of emotion processing and interpersonal functioning. RESULTS Right SD cases showed disproportionate difficulties in the recognition of positive and negative facial emotions, specifically happiness and anger, compared with left SD cases. Deficits in anger recognition persisted in right SD despite covarying for facial and semantic processing. On a contextually rich task of emotion recognition using multimodal videos, no subgroup differences were evident. Finally, empathic concern was rated as significantly lower by caregivers of right versus left SD cases. Overall, the extent of socioemotional disturbance was associated with the degree of behavioural changes in SD. CONCLUSION Our results reveal considerable overlap in the extent to which socioemotional processes are disrupted in left and right-lateralised cases of SD. Notably, however, right SD cases show disproportionate deficits for recognition of facial emotions and the capacity for empathic concern, supporting a specialised role for the right anterior temporal lobes in mediating these cognitive functions.
An Investigation of the Structural Characteristics of the Indian IT Sector and the Capital Goods Sector – An Application of the R Programming in Time Series Decomposition and Forecasting

Time series analysis and forecasting of stock market prices has been a very active area of research over the last two decades. Availability of extremely fast and parallel architecture of computing and sophisticated algorithms has made it possible to extract, store, process and analyze high volume stock market time series data very efficiently. In this paper, we have used time series data of the two sectors of the Indian economy – Information Technology (IT) and Capital Goods (CG) for the period January 2009 – April 2016 and have studied the relationships of these two time series with the time series of DJIA indices, NIFTY indices and the US Dollar to Indian Rupees exchange rate. We established by graphical and statistical tests that while the IT sector of India has a strong association with DJIA indices and the Dollar to Rupee exchange rate, the Indian CG sector exhibits a strong association with the NIFTY indices. We contend that these observations corroborate our hypotheses that the Indian IT sector is strongly coupled with the world economy whereas the CG sector of India is the reflection of India’s internal economic growth. We also present several models of regression between the time series which exhibit strong association among them. The effectiveness of these models have been demonstrated by very low values of their forecasting errors.
Loss rates of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from sediment and deposit‐feeder fecal pellets

Deposit feeders modify sediment by aggregating individual particles into fecal pellets. Loss of contaminants may be either more (enhanced bacterial degradation) or less (hindered diffusion and desorption) rapid for sediment incorporated into pellets. We studied the loss of 10 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from historically contaminated estuarine sediment and the same sediment after it had been pelletized by Capitella sp. I, a polychaete worm typically found in disturbed environments. Fecal pellets initially had higher concentrations of organic carbon and PAHs (enrichment factors 1.03–1.21) due to selective feeding. Over 60 d, desorption of PAHs was minimal, with an average loss of 4 to 5%. Biodegradation accounted for an additional 28% loss. A two‐component model fit the data well and indicated that the slowly desorbing fraction was close to one for all PAHs. For low molecular weight PAHs, biodegradation rate constants were greater than desorption rate constants; for high molecular weight PAHs, the opposite was found. Desorption rate constants were similar for fecal pellets (0.0002–0.037/d) and sediment (0.0002–0.031/d). Biodegradation rate constants were also similar for fecal pellets (0.0006–0.022/d) and sediment (0.0002–0.018/d). Thus, incorporation of sediment into robust fecal pellets (half‐life on the order of decades) did not affect the loss rates of PAHs.
Integrative Solution for In-situ Ultrasonic Inspection of Aero-engine Blades Using Endoscopic Cheap Optical Transducers ( CHOTs )

In-service non-destructive testing of aero-engine components is challenging for conventional ultrasonic techniques due to their contact nature, the complex geometry of engines and restricted access. Cheap optical transducers (CHOTs) employ principles of laser ultrasonics to remotely generate and detect ultrasound, providing a simple non-contact, couplant-free alternative to the traditional piezoelectric transducers. They are practically weightless nanometre-height patterns attached or printed on the component, and activated by lasers. Cheap, with minimal surface impact CHOTs could be permanently left on the component, used in large numbers or as disposable transducers. Combined with an endoscopic light delivery system to provide access via existing service ports in the engine, they are designed to perform remote ultrasonic inspection in an aero-engine environment. In particular, CHOTs would enable in-situ testing of aero-engine blades, reducing servicing time and costs. This paper presents the developed endoscopic CHOTs instrumentation and experimental results of the remote ultrasonic inspection with surface acoustic waves.
Linear and nonlinear measures of blood pressure variability: Increased chaos of blood pressure time series in patients with panic disorder

Arterial blood pressure (BP) variability increases progressively with the development of hypertension and an increase in BP variability is associated with end organ damage and cardiovascular morbidity. On the other hand, a decrease in heart rate (HR) variability is associated with significant cardiovascular mortality. There is a strong association between cardiovascular mortality and anxiety. Several previous studies have shown decreased HR variability in patients with anxiety. In this study, we investigated beat‐to‐beat variability of systolic and diastolic BP (SBP and DBP) in normal controls and patients with panic disorder during normal breathing and controlled breathing at 12, and 20 breaths per minute using linear as well as nonlinear techniques. Finger BP signal was obtained noninvasively using Finapres. Standing SBPvi and DBP BPvi (log value of BP variance corrected for mean BP divided by HR variance corrected for mean HR) were significantly higher in patients compared to controls. Largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE) of SBP and DBP, a measure of chaos, was significantly higher in patients in supine as well as standing postures. The ratios of LLE (SBP/HR) and LLE (DBP/HR) were also significantly higher (P < .001) in patients compared to controls. These findings further suggest dissociation between HR and BP variability and a possible relative increase in sympathetic function in anxiety. This increase in BP variability may partly explain the increase in cardiovascular mortality in this group of patients. Depression and Anxiety 19:85‐95, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Feedback‐seeking and depression in survivors of domestic violence

Background: Not surprisingly, women in violent relationships often experience symptoms of depression. Although most people desire praise and positive feedback, individuals who are depressed often seek either negative or “even‐handed” self‐relevant information. The relative lack of positive feedback‐seeking exhibited by depressed individuals may have implications for understanding the difficulty that survivors of domestic violence have leaving and remaining apart from abusive partners. Methods: This study was designed to assess the relative preference for self‐relevant information in two groups of women: women who experienced domestic violence (DV group) and women who did not have these experiences (no‐DV group). Results and Conclusions: The DV group (n=30), relative to the no‐DV group (n=28), desired less positive (or relatively more negative) feedback. Further, depression mediated the relationship between DV and seeking less positive feedback. Motivational and cognitive explanations for this pattern of results are discussed. Depression and Anxiety, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Swarm intelligence based system identification and controller tuning

This paper presents an application of particle swarm optimisation (PSO) for system identification and tuning of the proportional integral (PI) controller in pH process. Two independent swarms are used sequentially for system identification and PI controller tuning. The proposed PSO utilises self tuning regulator to search for the changes in system parameters and to calculate the corresponding controller parameters. The self tuning regulator has a parameter identification function and requires neither prior knowledge nor training data for learning. Once the process parameters are identified, another PSO is applied to find the optimal controller setting. The performance of the proposed PSO approach is compared with the traditional Ziegler Nichols tuning and internal model control for various set point and trajectory response of the pH process. The simulation results show that the cascaded PSOs are very effective to adapt the controller to dynamic plant characteristic changes in pH process.
Sensitive and Scalable Online Evaluation with Theoretical Guarantees

Multileaved comparison methods generalize interleaved comparison methods to provide a scalable approach for comparing ranking systems based on regular user interactions. Such methods enable the increasingly rapid research and development of search engines. However, existing multileaved comparison methods that provide reliable outcomes do so by degrading the user experience during evaluation. Conversely, current multileaved comparison methods that maintain the user experience cannot guarantee correctness. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we propose a theoretical framework for systematically comparing multileaved comparison methods using the notions of considerateness, which concerns maintaining the user experience, and fidelity, which concerns reliable correct outcomes. Second, we introduce a novel multileaved comparison method, Pairwise Preference Multileaving (PPM), that performs comparisons based on document-pair preferences, and prove that it is considerate and has fidelity. We show empirically that, compared to previous multileaved comparison methods, PPM is more sensitive to user preferences and scalable with the number of rankers being compared.