Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accumulation and autofluorescence of phagocytized rod outer segment material in macrophages and microglial cells

Purpose To explore the ability of macrophages and microglial cells to phagocytize rod outer segments (ROSs) in a cell culture and characterize the resulting lipofuscin-like autofluorescence (LLAF). Methods Either regular or modified ROSs or ROS components (11-cis-retinal, all-trans-retinal, lipids) were fed to macrophages and microglial cells for 4 days. Afterwards, autofluorescence was detected by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) at two different wavelengths (533 nm and 585 nm), and the cells were imaged by confocal and electron microscopy. Fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled ROSs were added to macrophage and microglial cell cultures for 1–24 h to determine the kinetics of phagocytosis in these cell lines. Results Feeding with different ROSs or ROS components led to a significant increase in LLAF in both microglia and macrophages. The 4-hydroxynonenal (HNE)-modified ROSs gave rise to the highest increase in LLAF at both 533 nm and 585 nm. Application of 11-cis-retinal or all-trans-retinal resulted in higher LLAF at 585 nm, compared to application of 9-cis-retinal or liposomes. Fluorescein isothiocyanate-labeled ROSs co-localized well with lysosomes in both types of cells. HNE-modified ROSs were phagocytized more rapidly by both types of cells, compared to unmodified ROSs. Electron microscopy demonstrated inclusion bodies containing whorls of membranes in all types of cells fed with ROSs. Conclusions Both macrophages and microglia have the ability to phagocytize ROSs, and this results in increased autofluorescence. Oxidation of ROSs results in faster phagocytosis, higher levels of LLAF, and the appearance of more inclusion bodies inside the cells. Results from the present study suggest that both types of cells accumulate lipofuscin-like material under physiologically relevant conditions. Such accumulation could interfere with their ability to clear cellular debris and could be part of the pathogenetic mechanism for age-related macular degeneration and other lipofuscinopathies.
Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.

It is now well established that among patients with the clinical syndrome of heart failure (HF), approximately half have preserved systolic function, known most commonly as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Although originally considered to be predominantly a syndrome that pathophysiologically involves abnormalities in diastolic function (relaxation and/or stiffness), ongoing investigation suggests that, although diastolic abnormalities may be present in many patients, other aspects of pathophysiology likely also contribute to symptoms. Many recent articles have continued to explore aspects of this fascinating clinical syndrome. This review will summarize advances in understanding of the HFpEF syndrome, focusing on epidemiology, pathophysiology, and therapeutics. Lewis and colleagues1 examined data on >8000 patients enrolled in the Prevention of Events With Angiotensin Converting Enzyme Inhibition (PEACE) trial, a randomized trial of the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor trandolapril for prevention of adverse events in patients with stable coronary artery disease and normal systolic function, to assess predictors of incident HF over a median of 4.8 years of follow-up after randomization. Several factors were associated with an increased risk of incident HF hospitalization or HF death, including older age, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus, whereas randomization to trandolapril reduced risk. A risk score was developed that showed good discrimination for incident HF with a C statistic of 0.80. Although this study did not report a reevaluation of left ventricular (LV) function at the time of the incident HF event, the data suggest that among patients with stable coronary artery disease and preserved ejection fraction (EF), clinical factors can risk-stratify patients in regard to the possibility of future HF for potential preventive strategies. Of great interest are possible differences in risk factors and underlying disease states in patients with HFpEF compared with those with HF and reduced EF. The Framingham Study investigators examined clinical characteristics and risk …
Redo Recovery after System Crashes

This paper defines a framework for explaining redo recovery after a system crash. In this framework, an installation graph explains the order in which operations must be installed into the stable database if it is to remain recoverable. This installation graph is a significantly weaker ordering on operations than the conflict graph from concurrency control. We use the installation graph to devise (i) a cache management algorithm for writing data from the volatile cache to the stable database, (ii) the specification of a REDO test used to choose the operations on the log to replay during recovery, and (iii) an idempotent recovery algorithm based on this test; and we prove that these cache management and recovery algorithms are correct. Most pragmatic recovery methods depend on constraining the kinds of operations that can appear in the log, but our framework allows arbitrary logged operations. We use our framework to explain pragmatic methods that constrain the logged operations to reading and writing single pages, and then using this new understanding to relax these constraints. The result is a new class of logged operations having a recovery method with practical advantages over current methods.
Does the London Metal Exchange Follow a Random Walk? Evidence from the Predictability of Futures Prices

This paper analyses the validity of the weak-form market efficiency, using the random-walk hypothesis for the six industrial base metals - copper, aluminium, zinc, nickel, tin and lead - traded at the London Metal Exchange. I analyse the behaviour of daily and weekly prices of the daily rolling three-month futures contracts, as these contracts exhibit the highest level of trading activity. In contrast to other efficient-market studies, the efficiency of futures prices is not tested as an unbiased predictor of the spot prices but from the predictability of futures prices themselves. I focus on the post-Tin Crisis period of 1989 to 2007. My test methodology includes the Box & Pierce Q-statistics, variance ratio tests by Lo and MacKinlay with homoscedastic and heteroscedastic test estimates, nonparametric ranks- and signs-based variance ratio tests by Wright and wild bootstrapping variance ratio tests by Kim. My sample basis fails to reject the random-walk hypothesis for all base metal futures except for lead.
A Web-based Infrastructure for Awareness based on Events

The ability to be aware of other people’s work in a collaborative environment is essential to improving the coordination of the members of a group. In this context, events originating from many sources have to be filtered and combined in order to provide the right information to the right person at the right time. As the Web becomes a popular and ubiquitous way to integrate different information sources, an infrastructure that allows the filtering, combination, abstraction and routing of awareness information is required. In this paper, we describe DEAL (Distributed Event Awareness Language), an event-based infrastructure and language that supports the development of awareness applications in the context of distributed collaborative environments. The requirements of the infrastructure are discussed as well as the language syntax. Our motivation was to design a language and a set of usable and useful strategies and web services that provide usable and useful awareness capabilities for the development of awareness applications.
Experimental implant communication of high data rate video using an ultra wideband radio link

Ultra wideband (UWB) is one of the radio technologies adopted by the IEEE 802.15. 6™-2012 standard for on-body communication in body area networks (BANs). However, a number of simulation-based studies suggest the feasibility of using UWB for high data rate implant communication too. This paper presents an experimental verification of said predictions. We carried out radio transmissions of H.264/1280×720 pixels video at 80 Mbps through a UWB multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) interface in a porcine chirurgical model. The results demonstrated successful transmission up to a maximum depth of 30 mm in the abdomen and 33 mm in the thorax within the 4.2-4.8 GHz frequency band.
Neural Substrates of Human Facial Expression of Pleasant Emotion Induced by Comic Films: A PET Study

Laughter or smile is one of the emotional expressions of pleasantness with characteristic contraction of the facial muscles, of which the neural substrate remains to be explored. This currently described study is the first to investigate the generation of human facial expression of pleasant emotion using positron emission tomography and H(2)(15)O. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during laughter/smile induced by visual comics and the magnitude of laughter/smile indicated significant correlation in the bilateral supplementary motor area (SMA) and left putamen (P < 0.05, corrected), but no correlation in the primary motor area (M1). In the voluntary facial movement, significant correlation between rCBF and the magnitude of EMG was found in the face area of bilateral M1 and the SMA (P < 0.001, uncorrected). Laughter/smile, as opposed to voluntary movement, activated the visual association areas, left anterior temporal cortex, left uncus, and orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal cortices (P < 0.05, corrected), whereas voluntary facial movement generated by mimicking a laughing/smiling face activated the face area of the left M1 and bilateral SMA, compared with laughter/smile (P < 0.05, corrected). We demonstrated distinct neural substrates of emotional and volitional facial expression and defined cognitive and experiential processes of a pleasant emotion, laughter/smile.
Analysis of non-coherent joint-transmission cooperation in heterogeneous cellular networks

Base station (BS) cooperation is set to play a key role in managing interference in dense heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs). Non-coherent joint transmission (JT) is particularly appealing due to its low complexity, smaller overhead, and ability for load balancing. However, a general analysis of this technique is difficult mostly due to the lack of tractable models. This paper addresses this gap and presents a tractable model for analyzing non-coherent JT in HCNs, while incorporating key system parameters such as user-centric BS clustering and channel-dependent cooperation activation. Assuming all BSs of each tier follow a stationary Poisson point process, the coverage probability for non-coherent JT is derived. Using the developed model, it is shown that for small cooperative clusters of small-cell BSs, non-coherent JT by small cells provides spectral efficiency gains without significantly increasing cell load. Further, when cooperation is aggressively triggered intra-cluster frequency reuse within small cells is favorable over intra-cluster coordinated scheduling.
Calcium Ion Permeation through the Calcium Release Channel (Ryanodine Receptor) of Cardiac Muscle

Single-channel current−voltage (IV) relations were measured from the calcium release channel of cardiac sarcoplasmic reticulum (RyR2) in 21 mixed solutions of 250 mM alkali metal ions (Na+, K+, and Cs+) with sarcoplasmic reticulum lumenal Ca++ ranging from 5 to 50 mM and Mg++ from 1 to 50 mM. The measured IV relations were analyzed by the extended Poisson−Nernst−Planck (PNP) formulation (Chen, D. P.; Xu, L.; Tripathy, A.; Meissner, G.; Eisenberg, B. Biophys. J. 1999, 76, 1346) to give the permeation properties of Ca++ and Mg++. The results indicate that applying PNP theory, two adjustable parameters (diffusion coefficient (D) and “excess” chemical potentials (μ)) suffice to predict the flow of Ca++ from the sarcoplasmic reticulum in cardiac muscle. The fitting parameters for Ca++ and Mg++ are D(Ca) = 8.4 ± 0.7 × 10-8 cm2/s, μ(Ca) = −91 ± 6 mV and D(Mg) = 5.4 ± 0.7 × 10-8 cm2/s and μ(Mg) = −53 ± 6 mV. The data are used to predict the calcium ion activity profiles in the RyR2 pore, the calcium ion fluxes.
Automatic discourse analysis

PART I: Introductions. Chapter 1: Tony HAK and Niels HELSLOOT: Pecheux's contribution to discourse analysis. Chapter 2: Paul HENRY : Theoretical issues in Michel Pecheux's automatic discourse analysis. Chapter 3: Francoise GADET, Jacqueline LEON, Denise MALDIDIER and Michel PLON: Pecheux's theory of ideology and the subject. Chapter 4: Francoise GADET, Jacqueline LEON, Denise MALDIDIER and Michel PLON: Pecheux's linguistic references. Francoise GADET, Jacqueline LEON, Denise MALDIDIER and Michel PLON: Appendix: Pecheux's approach to formalization. PART II: Automatic discourse analysis. Chapter 5: Michel PECHEUX: Automatic discourse analysis. Chapter 6: Michel PECHEUX: Automatic discourse analysis: Overview and prospects. PART III: Applying automatic discourse analysis: Experiences and perspectives. Chapter 7: Michel PECHEUX, Jacqueline LEON, Simone BONNEFOUS and Jean-Marie MARANDIN: ADA69: Theory, procedures, findings and perspectives. Chapter 8: Alain LECOMTE, Jacqueline LEON and Jean-Marie MARANDIN: Discourse analysis: Strategies for textual description. Part IV: Notes, Bibliography and Indexes.
Association of TCF7L2 SNPs with age at onset of type 2 diabetes and proinsulin/insulin ratio but not with glucagon‐like peptide 1

Variants in TCF7L2 have been associated with the age at onset of type 2 diabetes in Mexican Americans. However, there is a lack of data on this relationship in Caucasians. Furthermore, risk alleles in TCF7L2 have been suggested to account for decreased conversion of proinsulin to insulin and decreased expression of GLP‐1. We investigated the effect of the allelic variants rs1225537 and rs7903146 in TCF7L2 on the age at onset of type 2 diabetes, the plasma concentrations of proinsulin and GLP‐1, and the ratio of proinsulin to insulin in a German cohort.
Parsing and Generation with Tabulation and Compilation

The standard tabulation techniques for logic programming presuppose fixed order of computation. Some data-driven control should be introduced in order to deal with diverse contexts. The present paper describes a data-driven method of constraint transformation with a sort of compilation which subsumes accessibility check and last-call optimization, which characterize standard natural-language parsing techniques, semantic-head-driven generation, etc.
Retinoid-induced mu opioid receptor expression by phytohemagglutinin-stimulated U937 cells

Opioid use may be associated with an increased risk of neurological disease in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection through effects on immune cell function. Studies were performed to examine the effects of specific retinoid receptor activation on mu opioid receptor (MOR) production by phytohemagglutinin (PHA)-stimulated U937 cells, a mononuclear cell line. PHA stimulation increased activation of the MOR promoter as well as levels of MOR mRNA, total receptor protein in cell lysates, and surface and cytoplasmic receptor expression. Retinoid X receptor (RXR) agonist and retinoic acid receptor (RAR) antagonist further increased MOR expression by the PHA-stimulated cells. In contrast, MOR expression was suppressed by RAR agonist and by RXR antagonist. Finally, opioid receptor binding was also increased by RXR agonist and RXR antagonist; no increase in binding occurred in the presence of RAR agonists and RXR antagonist. All together, these studies suggest that MOR expression in U937 cells can be differentially regulated by specific retinoid receptor activation. Such effects may have important clinical relevance for opioid users with HIV infection, including individuals with neurological disease.
Human Experimental Psychology

Now available in paperback, this textbook introduces the student to human experimental psychology in the laboratory setting. It covers both experimental methodology and content. The methodology chapters give the how and why of psychological experimentation; separate chapters on reaction time and mental chronometry treat these important methods more fully than most texts, while chapters on descriptive and inferential statistics and the writing of research reports will help the student turn experimental findings into a lucid report. Content chapters focus on crucial models and theories, discussing them in terms of landmark experiments. The book therefore teaches both content and methodology of principle areas of experimental psychology - these include processes relating to the broad function of cognition, as well as social, industrial, and clinical psychology. The text is designed to give the reader a practical sense of how questions are framed in terms of psychological concepts, and addressed in the laboratory experiment. Psychology students.
How membranes shape plant symbioses: signaling and transport in nodulation and arbuscular mycorrhiza

As sessile organisms that cannot evade adverse environmental conditions, plants have evolved various adaptive strategies to cope with environmental stresses. One of the most successful adaptations is the formation of symbiotic associations with beneficial microbes. In these mutualistic interactions the partners exchange essential nutrients and improve their resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. In arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) and in root nodule symbiosis (RNS), AM fungi and rhizobia, respectively, penetrate roots and accommodate within the cells of the plant host. In these endosymbiotic associations, both partners keep their plasma membranes intact and use them to control the bidirectional exchange of signaling molecules and nutrients. Intracellular accommodation requires the exchange of symbiotic signals and the reprogramming of both interacting partners. This involves fundamental changes at the level of gene expression and of the cytoskeleton, as well as of organelles such as plastids, endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and the central vacuole. Symbiotic cells are highly compartmentalized and have a complex membrane system specialized for the diverse functions in molecular communication and nutrient exchange. Here, we discuss the roles of the different cellular membrane systems and their symbiosis-related proteins in AM and RNS, and we review recent progress in the analysis of membrane proteins involved in endosymbiosis.
The Switch from Fermentation to Respiration in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Is Regulated by the Ert1 Transcriptional Activator/Repressor

In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, fermentation is the major pathway for energy production, even under aerobic conditions. However, when glucose becomes scarce, ethanol produced during fermentation is used as a carbon source, requiring a shift to respiration. This adaptation results in massive reprogramming of gene expression. Increased expression of genes for gluconeogenesis and the glyoxylate cycle is observed upon a shift to ethanol and, conversely, expression of some fermentation genes is reduced. The zinc cluster proteins Cat8, Sip4, and Rds2, as well as Adr1, have been shown to mediate this reprogramming of gene expression. In this study, we have characterized the gene YBR239C encoding a putative zinc cluster protein and it was named ERT1 (ethanol regulated transcription factor 1). ChIP-chip analysis showed that Ert1 binds to a limited number of targets in the presence of glucose. The strongest enrichment was observed at the promoter of PCK1 encoding an important gluconeogenic enzyme. With ethanol as the carbon source, enrichment was observed with many additional genes involved in gluconeogenesis and mitochondrial function. Use of lacZ reporters and quantitative RT-PCR analyses demonstrated that Ert1 regulates expression of its target genes in a manner that is highly redundant with other regulators of gluconeogenesis. Interestingly, in the presence of ethanol, Ert1 is a repressor of PDC1 encoding an important enzyme for fermentation. We also show that Ert1 binds directly to the PCK1 and PDC1 promoters. In summary, Ert1 is a novel factor involved in the regulation of gluconeogenesis as well as a key fermentation gene.
An Open Source Toolkit for Quantitative Historical Linguistics

Given the increasing interest and development of computational and quantitative methods in historical linguistics, it is important that scholars have a basis for documenting, testing, evaluating, and sharing complex workflows. We present a novel open-source toolkit for quantitative tasks in historical linguistics that offers these features. This toolkit also serves as an interface between existing software packages and frequently used data formats, and it provides implementations of new and existing algorithms within a homogeneous framework. We illustrate the toolkit’s functionality with an exemplary workflow that starts with raw language data and ends with automatically calculated phonetic alignments, cognates and borrowings. We then illustrate evaluation metrics on gold standard datasets that are provided with the toolkit.
Use of computational fluid dynamics to study forces exerted on prey by aquatic suction feeders

Suction feeding is the most commonly used mechanism of prey capture among aquatic vertebrates. Most previous models of the fluid flow caused by suction feeders involve making several untested assumptions. In this paper, a Chimera overset grids approach is used to solve the governing equations of fluid dynamics in order to investigate the assumptions that prey do not interact with the flow and that the flow can be modelled as a one-dimensional flow. Results show that, for small prey, both neglecting the prey and considering prey interaction give similar calculated forces exerted on the prey. However, as the prey item increases in size toward the size of the gape, its effect on the flow becomes more pronounced. This in turn affects both the magnitude of the hydrodynamic forces imparted to the prey and the time when maximum force is delivered. Maximum force is delivered most quickly to intermediate sized prey, about one-third of mouth diameter, and most slowly to prey less than 7 per cent or greater than 67 per cent of mouth diameter. This suggests that the effect of prey size on the timing of suction forces may have substantial consequences for the feeding ecology of suction feeders that are known to prefer prey between 25 and 50 per cent of mouth diameter. Moreover, for a 15 cm fish with a 15 mm gape, assuming a radial one-dimensional flow field can result in underestimating the maximum force exerted on a 5 mm diameter spherical prey 1 gape distance from the mouth by up to 28.7 per cent.
Multivariate dynamic analysis of cerebral blood flow regulation in humans

The contributions of beat-to-beat changes in mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) and breath-by-breath fluctuations in end-tidal CO/sub 2/ (EtCO/sub 2/) as determinants of the spontaneous variability of cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) were studied in 16 normal subjects at rest. The two input variables (MABP and EtCO/sub 2/) had significant cross-correlations with CBFV but not between them. Transfer functions were estimated as the multivariate least mean square finite impulse response causal filters. MABP showed a very significant effect in explaining CBFV variability (p<10/sup -11/, Fisher's aggregated-p test) and the model mean square error was significantly reduced (p<0.001) by also including the contribution EtCO/sub 2/. The estimated mean CBFV step response to MABP displayed the characteristic return to baseline caused by the cerebral autoregulatory response. The corresponding response to EtCO/sub 2/ showed a gradual rise taking approximately 10 s to reach a plateau of 2.5%/mmHg. This study demonstrated that spontaneous fluctuations in EtCO/sub 2/ can help to explain the CBFV variability at rest if appropriate signal processing techniques are employed to address the limited power and bandwidth of the breath-by-breath EtCO/sub 2/ signal.