Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social Cognition Impairments in Mice Overexpressing Alpha-Synuclein Under the Thy1 Promoter, a Model of Pre-manifest Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract Background: Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) may exhibit deficits in “Theory of Mind”, the ability to read others’ mental states and react appropriately, a prerequisite for successful social interaction. Alpha-synuclein overexpression is widely distributed in the brain of patients with sporadic PD, suggesting that it may contribute to the non-motor deficits observed in PD patients. Mice over-expressing human wild-type alpha-synuclein under the Thy1 promoter (Thy1-aSyn mice) have synaptic deficits in the frontostriatal pathway, low cortical acetylcholine, and high level of expression of mGluR5 receptors, which have all been implicated in social recognition deficits. Objective: To determine whether Thy1-aSyn mice present alterations in their response to social stimuli. Methods: We have submitted Thy1-aSyn mice to tests adapted from autism models. Results: At 7–8 month of age Thy1-aSyn mice explored their conspecifics significantly less than did wild-type littermates, without differences in exploration of inanimate objects, and pairs of Thy1-aSyn mice were involved in reciprocal interactions for a shorter duration than wild-type mice at this age. These deficits persisted when the test animal was enclosed in a beaker and were not present at 3–4 months of age despite the presence of olfactory deficits at that age, indicating that they were not solely caused by impairment in olfaction. Conclusion: Thy1-aSyn mice present progressive deficits in social recognition, supporting an association between alpha-synuclein overexpression and Theory of Mind deficits in PD and providing a useful model for identifying mechanisms and testing novel treatments for these deficits which impact patients and caretakers quality of life.
Nucleic Acids Research Direction of transcription

The genes encoding the & and 8' subunits of RNA polymerase in E.coli lie downstream of at least two ribosomal protein genes in a single unit of transcription. Treatment of E.coli with rifampicin, under conditions producing partial inhibition of general RNA synthesis, can strongly stimulate transcription of the polymerase genes, while activating the neighbouring ribosomal genes only slightly. We have investigated the mechanism of this effect by fusing strong promoters, a weak internal promoter, and an attenuator of the polymerase operon to the lacZ gene, in derivatives of plasmid pMC81. Studies of these fusions confirm our conclusion, based on similar fusions to galK, that rifampicin can foster readthrough of transcriptional terminators. They also suggest the existence of extra terminators and anti-termination elements in the above transcription unit. INTRODUCTION The structure of the rpoBC operon of E.coli, shown in Fig. 1, is such that the rpo genes which encode the 6 and 6' subunits of RNA polymerase lie downstream of, and are obligatorily co-transcribed with several ribosomal protein (rpl) genes: see reviews by Yura and Ishihama (3) and Matzura (4), briefly updated in (5). However, certain growth constraints can partially uncouple the transcription of the rpo and rpl genes (reviewed in 3, 4, 6, 7). In particular, when general RNA synthesis in E.coli is partially blocked by the inhibitor of initiation, rifampicin, rpoBC-transcription is paradoxically stimulated, while transcription of the rpl genes is only weakly affected (8, and other papers cited in 5). We have attempted to define the transcriptional signal(s) mediating stimulation of rpoBC expression by rifampicin, by fusing the strong shared promoters of the rplKAJL and rpo genes (PL11 and/or P. _) to lacZ in plasmids derived from pMC81 (9). We have similarly fused to lacZ the weak promoter (Pft) and the partial terminator or "attenuator" (tl) which lie between the rpl and rpo genes in the rpoBC operon. We have then examined the effects of low concentrations of rifampicin on expression of lacZ by strains harbouring the fusion plasmids. Our results support the O IRL Press Limited, Oxford, Enslartd. 7425 0306-1048/82/1022-742582.00/0 Nucleic Acids Research Direction of transcription.
Description logic for coalitions

Coalition Logic (CL) is one of the most important formalisms for specification and verification of game-like multi-agent systems. Several extensions of the logic have been studied in the literature. These extensions are usually fusions (independent joins) of CL with other modal logics (e.g., temporal, epistemic, dynamic, etc.), and they are generally propositional. In this paper, we propose a game description logic called CLALC which is based on a product of Coalition Logic with the description logic ALC. The new logic allows one to reason about agents' ability to influence first-order structures. We show that the satisfiability problem for CLALC is decidable; we prove this by giving a goal-directed decision procedure for the problem.
Headlining Dubrovnik's Tourism Image: Transitioning Representations/Narratives of War and Heritage Preservation 1991–2010

Abstract Dubrovnik became a premier resort destination while part of the former-Republic of Yugoslavia. On the 1st of October 1991, the Balkans War began in Dubrovnik casting a negative image and abruptly halted the tourism industry. This study presents a longitudinal analysis of the interplay between media presentations and war. The purpose of this paper is to identify transitions in newspaper headlines and associated textual content representing contextual narratives of Dubrovnik's destination image. This work identifies periods of transition by locating changing representations of war and local preservation efforts in narratives and associated productions of Dubrovnik's tourism image over a 20 year period, 1991ndash;2010. Headlines and content during the period of war display the unmaking of Dubrovnik's tourism image. After the siege of Dubrovnik, locals were quick to respond; however tourism did not recover immediately because of the continuation of war in the immediate region. The Dayton Peace Accord ended the war in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina and thus commenced the remaking of Dubrovnik's tourism image. Focuses on Dubrovnik by the mid-1990s began to show transitions, as newspaper content clearly divided then (the period of war) and now (post-war). In the final section, wars image has faded, but locals are concerned that overdevelopment, similar to war, will erode semblances of Dubrovnik's heritage.
Hybrid T cell receptor genes formed by interlocus recombination in normal and ataxia-telangiectasis lymphocytes

In this paper, using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), we demonstrated the occurrence of hybrid genes formed by interlocus recombination between T cell receptor gamma (TCR-gamma) variable (V) regions and TCR- beta joining (J) regions in the peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from normal individuals and patients with ataxia-telangiectasia (AT). Sequence analysis of the PCR-derived hybrid genes confirmed that site- specific V gamma-J beta recombination had occurred and showed that 10 of 23 genomic hybrid genes maintained a correct open reading frame. By dilution analysis, the frequency of these hybrid genes was 8 +/- 1/10(5) cells in normal PBL and 587 +/- 195/10(5) cells in AT PBL. These frequencies and the approximately 70-fold difference between the normal and AT samples are consistent with previous cytogenetic data examining the occurrence of an inversion of chromosome 7 in normal and AT PBL. We also demonstrated expression of these hybrid genes by PCR analysis of first-strand cDNA prepared from both normal and AT PBL. Sequence analysis of the PCR-amplified transcripts showed that, in contrast to the genomic hybrid genes, 19 of 22 expressed genes maintained a correct open reading frame at the V-J junction and correctly spliced the hybrid V-J exon to a TCR-beta constant region, thus allowing translation into a potentially functional hybrid TCR protein. Another type of hybrid TCR transcript was found in a which a rearranged TCR-gamma V-J exon was correctly spliced to a TCR-beta constant region. This form of hybrid gene may be formed by trans- splicing. These hybrid TCR genes may serve to increase the repertoire of the immune response. In addition, studies of their mechanism of formation and its misregulation in AT may provide insight into the nature of the chromosomal instability syndrome associated with AT. The mechanism underlying hybrid gene formation may be analogous to the mechanism underlying rearrangements between putative growth-affecting genes and the antigen receptor loci, which are associated with AT lymphocyte clones and lymphoid malignancies.
Estimating divergence times in large molecular phylogenies

Molecular dating of species divergences has become an important means to add a temporal dimension to the Tree of Life. Increasingly larger datasets encompassing greater taxonomic diversity are becoming available to generate molecular timetrees by using sophisticated methods that model rate variation among lineages. However, the practical application of these methods is challenging because of the exorbitant calculation times required by current methods for contemporary data sizes, the difficulty in correctly modeling the rate heterogeneity in highly diverse taxonomic groups, and the lack of reliable clock calibrations and their uncertainty distributions for most groups of species. Here, we present a method that estimates relative times of divergences for all branching points (nodes) in very large phylogenetic trees without assuming a specific model for lineage rate variation or specifying any clock calibrations. The method (RelTime) performed better than existing methods when applied to very large computer simulated datasets where evolutionary rates were varied extensively among lineages by following autocorrelated and uncorrelated models. On average, RelTime completed calculations 1,000 times faster than the fastest Bayesian method, with even greater speed difference for larger number of sequences. This speed and accuracy will enable molecular dating analysis of very large datasets. Relative time estimates will be useful for determining the relative ordering and spacing of speciation events, identifying lineages with significantly slower or faster evolutionary rates, diagnosing the effect of selected calibrations on absolute divergence times, and estimating absolute times of divergence when highly reliable calibration points are available.
Early Hepatic Insulin Resistance Precedes the Onset of Diabetes in Obese C57BLKS-db/db Mice

OBJECTIVE To identify metabolic derangements contributing to diabetes susceptibility in the leptin receptor–deficient obese C57BLKS/J-db/db (BKS-db) mouse strain. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Young BKS-db mice were used to identify metabolic pathways contributing to the development of diabetes. Using the diabetes-resistant B6-db strain as a comparison, in vivo and in vitro approaches were applied to identify metabolic and molecular differences between the two strains. RESULTS Despite higher plasma insulin levels, BKS-db mice exhibit lower lipogenic gene expression, rate of lipogenesis, hepatic triglyceride and glycogen content, and impaired insulin suppression of gluconeogenic genes. Hepatic insulin receptor substrate (IRS)-1 and IRS-2 expression and insulin-stimulated Akt-phosphorylation are decreased in BKS-db primary hepatocytes. Hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp studies indicate that in contrast to hepatic insulin resistance, skeletal muscle is more insulin sensitive in BKS-db than in B6-db mice. We also demonstrate that elevated plasma triglyceride levels in BKS-db mice are associated with reduced triglyceride clearance due to lower lipase activities. CONCLUSIONS Our study demonstrates the presence of metabolic derangements in BKS-db before the onset of β-cell failure and identifies early hepatic insulin resistance as a component of the BKS-db phenotype. We propose that defects in hepatic insulin signaling contribute to the development of diabetes in the BKS-db mouse strain.
Carbon trading thickness and market efficiency: A non-parametric test

This note tests for the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) in the market for CO2 emission allowances in Phase I and Phase II of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). As usually is the case in emerging and non-competitive markets such as the EU ETS, trading often not occurs on a frequent basis. This has adverse implications for both the gains from permit trade as well as biases the EMH tests. Variance ratio tests are employed to adjust for the thin trading effect. The results indicate that Phase I - the trial and learning period - was inefficient, whereas the first period under Phase II shows signs of restoring market effic iency.
A signal combining technique based on channel shortening for cooperative sensor networks

The cooperative relaying process needs proper coordination among the communicating and the relaying nodes. This coordination and the required capabilities may not be available in some wireless systems, e.g. wireless sensor networks where the nodes are equipped with very basic communication hardware. In this paper, we consider a scenario where the source node transmits its signal to the destination through multiple relays in an uncoordinated fashion. The destination can capture the multiple copies of the transmitted signal through a Rake receiver. We analyze a situation where the number of Rake fingers N is less than that of the relaying nodes L. In this case, the receiver can combine N strongest signals out of L. The remaining signals will be lost and act as interference to the desired signal components. To tackle this problem, we develop a novel signal combining technique based on channel shortening. This technique proposes a processing block before the Rake reception which compresses the energy of L signal components over N branches while keeping the noise level at its minimum. The proposed scheme saves the system resources and makes the received signal compatible to the available hardware. Simulation results show that it outperforms the selection combining scheme.
Separation of singing and piano sounds

In a garment hanger, a hanger hook is supported on a hanger body for movement between extended and retracted positions. The hanger body includes gripping members for receiving a garment and has shank and tip receiving slots formed in it. The hanger hook includes a shank that is slidably supported in the shank receiving slot and a member at one end of the shank for selective engagement with the shank receiving slot to secure the hanger hook in the extended position. A support extends laterally from the other end of the shank, and a tip extends from the support for selective engagement with the tip receiving aperture to secure the hanger hook in the retracted position.
Decomposition and reconstruction for non-stationary vibration signal of small engine

According to vibration signal of a small engine is non-stationary It extract the intrinsic mode function(IMF) of the signal through empirical mode decomposition(EMD). In order to overcome the mode mixing that happens in EMD, an improved EMD- ensemble empirical mode decomposition EEMD has been introduced. This dissertation analyses the reason of mixing and some solution at present, detailed introduces the basic principle, characteristics and related algorithm of EMD and EEMD. EEMD de-noising method was applied to analyze the vibration signals. With the simulation results of vibration signal, it points out that EEMD can solve the mode mixing, and at the same time reserve the adaptability of the EMD, it has no limits to the types of signals.
Role of Mitochondrial Network Stabilisation by a Human Small Heat Shock Protein in Tumour Malignancy

Previously, we found that the unconventional small human heat-shock protein HSPB11 inhibits cell death by HSP90 mediated cholesterol-rich membrane microdomain dependent activation of phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase/protein kinase B pathway and by stabilising the mitochondrial membrane systems. Also, progressive cytoplasmic expression of HSPB11 correlated with brain tumor malignancy. In the present study we investigated how cytoplasmic abundance of HSPB11 augments tumor malignancy. We up- and downregulated the cytoplasmic level of HSPB11 before paclitaxel exposure in NIH3T3 and HeLa cells, which normally express low and high levels, respectively, of the HSPB11 protein. We examined the paclitaxel-mediated induction of cell death, mitochondrial fission, HSPB11 mitochondrial translocation and inhibitory phosphorylation of dynamin-like protein-1 (DLP1). We found that increasing cytoplasmic abundance of HSPB11 in NIH3T3 cells protected against paclitaxel-induced apoptosis, while suppressing HSPB11 in HeLa cells sensitised the cells toward paclitaxel. Also, paclitaxel enhanced mitochondrial translocation of HSPB11 in wild type HeLa but not in NIH3T3 cells. More importantly, increased cytoplasmic level of HSPB11 in NIH3T3 cells enhanced the inhibitory phosphorylation of DLP1 and attenuated paclitaxel-induced mitochondrial fission. All these results suggest that increased cytoplasmic abundance of HSPB11 augments inhibitory phosphorylation of DLP1 thereby reduces mitochondrial fission that eventually leads to decreased apoptosis. This novel mechanism may explain the resistance to apoptosis and increased malignancy of HSPB11-overexpressing tumours. The clinical significance of this mechanism has already been highlighted by the finding that the kinase inhibitor tyrphostin A9 induces cancer cell death by DLP1-mediated mitochondrial fragmentation.
How to evaluate necessary cooperative systems of terminology building?

Terminology building cannot be considered as a full automated process but rather as a cooperative task between terminological tools and terminologists. Identifying terms in a technical domain is a matter of word usage and expert agreement. We point out the problem of the evaluation of such tools: their quality and their contribution to the terminology building is difficult to estimate and cannot be fully evaluated with usual precision and recall measures. We aim at evaluating more globally their technical aspects and their usability. We give a non-exhaustive list of the features of such evaluation. Then, we apply them on four terminological systems.
Probabilistic Dominance in Multiobjective Reliability-Based Optimization: Theory and Implementation

This paper is concerned with multiobjective evolutionary optimization under uncertainty modeled through probability distributions, with a focus on reliability-based approaches. The contribution is twofold. First, an in-depth study of the notion of probability of dominance is performed, including state-of-the-art multiobjective reliability-based formulations and their numerical calculation. In particular, the notion of dominance limit state function is defined and its properties are thoroughly investigated. Second, the assessment of the probability of dominance is proposed based on a first-order reliability method tailored for Pareto dominance and incorporated into a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm through a repairing mechanism. The analysis of the numerical results on five biobjective benchmark test cases (from two up to five design variables) by means of two adapted metrics (averaged Hausdorff distance and maximum Pareto front error) demonstrates the potential of the proposed approach to reach reliable nondominated fronts within a limited number of generations.
Search space difficulty of evolutionary Neuro-controlled legged robots

The application of evolutionary computation for designing and generating artificial creatures such as robots and virtual organisms have become an important endeavor in artificial life and robotics research. However, the underlying fitness landscape for evolving artificial creatures remains largely unexplored. Furthermore, current landscape analysis methods fail to discriminate between the search space difficulties associated with different artificial evolutionary systems. In this paper, we provide a simple characterization of the search space associated with four basic types of ANN used for the control of legged robots. We show using random sampling and hill-climbing that a significantly large proportion of sampled genotypes yielded extremely low quality solutions. This is an indication that the objective space for evolving artificial creatures is highly skewed.
Efficient Reinforcement Learning with Multiple Reward Functions for Randomized Controlled Trial Analysis

We introduce new, efficient algorithms for value iteration with multiple reward functions and continuous state. We also give an algorithm for finding the set of all non-dominated actions in the continuous state setting. This novel extension is appropriate for environments with continuous or finely discretized states where generalization is required, as is the case for data analysis of randomized controlled trials.
Public Health for the Internet (PHI)

Business incentives have brought us within a small factor of achieving the database community’s Grand Challenge set out in the Asilomar Report of 1998. This paper makes the case for a new, focused Grand Challenge: Public Health for the Internet. The goal of PHI (or ϕ ) is to enable collectives of hosts on the Internet to jointly monitor and promote network health by sharing information on network conditions in a peer-to-peer fashion. We argue that this will be a positive eﬀort for the research community for a variety of reasons, both in terms of its technical reach and its societal impact. This version of the ϕ vision is targeted at readers in the database research community, but the eﬀort is clearly multidisciplinary. A more generalist version of this paper will be maintained at http://openphi.net .
Intermittent oro‐esophageal tube feeding in acute stroke patients – a pilot study

Objective – Acute stroke patients with dysphagia are usually fed by nasogastric tube. However, this method sometimes causes pneumonia or diarrhea. We investigated the use of a new feeding procedure called intermittent oro‐esophageal (IOE) tube feeding in acute stroke patients with severe dysphagia.
A Cache-Assisted Scratchpad Memory for Multiple-Bit-Error Correction

Scratchpad memory (SPM) is widely used in modern embedded processors to overcome the limitations of cache memory. The high vulnerability of SPM to soft errors, however, limits its usage in safety-critical applications. This paper proposes an efficient fault-tolerant scheme, called cache-assisted duplicated SPM (CADS), to protect SPM against soft errors. The main aim of CADS is to utilize cache memory to provide a replica for SPM lines. Using cache memory, CADS is able to guarantee a full duplication of all SPM lines. We also further enhance the proposed scheme by presenting buffered CADS (BCADS) that significantly improves the CADS energy efficiency. BCADS is compared with two well-known duplication schemes as well as single-error correction scheme. The comparison results reveal that: 1) BCADS imposes a 13.6% less energy-delay product (EDP) overhead than the duplication schemes and it does not require to modify the SPM manager and target application and 2) in comparison with the conventional single-error correction double-error detection (SEC-DED) scheme, BCADS provides a significantly higher error correction capability by correcting up to 4-b burst errors using a low-cost 4-b interleaved parity code. Moreover, the area overhead for error correction and the performance overhead of BCADS are negligible (less than 1%), whereas the area and performance overheads are 21.9% and 6.1% for SEC-DED, respectively. Furthermore, BCADS imposes about a 10.7% lower EDP overhead compared with the SEC-DED scheme.