Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of BDNF and its receptors in depression and antidepressant drug action: Reactivation of developmental plasticity

Recent evidence suggests that neuronal plasticity plays an important role in the recovery from depression. Antidepressant drugs and electroconvulsive shock treatment increase the expression of several molecules, which are associated with neuronal plasticity, in particular the neurotrophin BDNF and its receptor TrkB. Furthermore, these treatments increase neurogenesis and synaptic numbers in several brain areas. Conversely, depression, at least in its severe form, is associated with reduced volumes of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex and in at least some cases these neurodegenerative signs can be attenuated by successful treatment. Such observations suggest a central role for neuronal plasticity in depression and the antidepressant effect, and also implicate BDNF signaling as a mediator of this plasticity. The antidepressant fluoxetine can reactivate developmental‐like neuronal plasticity in the adult visual cortex, which, under appropriate environmental guidance, leads to the rewiring of a developmentally dysfunctional neural network. These observations suggest that the simple form of the neurotrophic hypothesis of depression, namely, that deficient levels of neurotrophic support underlies mood disorders and increases in these neurotrophic factors to normal levels brings about mood recovery, may not sufficiently explain the complex process of recovery from depression. This review discusses recent data on the role of BDNF and its receptors in depression and the antidepressant response and suggests a model whereby the effects of antidepressant treatments could be explained by a reactivation of activity‐dependent and BDNF‐mediated cortical plasticity, which in turn leads to the adjustment of neuronal networks to better adapt to environmental challenges. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 2010
An Investigation of Enterococcus Species Isolated from the African Buffalo (Syncerus caffer) in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

We isolated Enterococcus species that colonized in the African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) in order to investigate their genetic relatedness and antimicrobial susceptibility. A total of 219 isolates were obtained and a 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed they were classified into Enterococcus avium, E. casseliflavus, E. faecalis, E. faecium, E. hirae, or E. mundtii. Multilocus sequence typing of E. faecalis and E. faecium isolates indicated that some of the isolates showed an evolutionary distance that was far from the primary founders. The antimicrobial susceptibility of the enterococcal isolates suggested that the significant transmission of antimicrobial resistance via human intervention had not yet occurred.
Ganciclovir-loaded polymer microspheres in rabbit eyes inoculated with human cytomegalovirus.

PURPOSE To test the antiviral effect of ganciclovir released from biodegradable polymer microspheres in rabbit eyes inoculated with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV). METHODS Human cytomegalovirus (5 x 10(3) plaque forming unit in 0.1 ml Hank's balanced salt solution) was inoculated 4 days after gas compression vitrectomy. Injected after 2 days was 10 mg of 300- to 500-micron ganciclovir-loaded microspheres (89.77 micrograms ganciclovir/mg) suspended in 0.1 ml of 2% hydroxypropylmethylcellulose. Blank microspheres were injected as control specimens. Vitritis, retinitis, and optic neuritis were graded from 0(+)-4+ for 14 days to separate the early HCMV-induced disease events from later nonspecific host inflammatory responses. Ganciclovir-loaded microspheres also were injected and observed for biodegradation and tissue reaction for 8 weeks. RESULTS In eyes injected with ganciclovir-loaded microspheres, vitritis decreased from days 3 to 14, and retinitis and optic neuritis decreased from days 3 to 9. In eyes injected with blank microspheres, vitritis increased from days 3 to 7, retinitis increased from days 3 to 9, and optic neuritis increased from days 3 to 14. Immunofluorescence of HCMV antigens in retinal tissues was shown only in eyes injected with blank microspheres. Histopathologic analysis showed minimal focal disruption of the retinal architecture in eyes injected with ganciclovir-loaded microspheres. Disorganization of the normal retinal architecture was observed in eyes injected with blank microspheres. No adverse tissue reaction was observed clinically and histopathologically in eyes injected with ganciclovir-loaded microspheres after 8 weeks. CONCLUSIONS Ten milligrams of 300 to 500 microns ganciclovir-loaded poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) microspheres control the progression of fundus disease in HCMV-inoculated rabbit eyes.
Upper and lower bounds for the average-case complexity of path-search

A channel graph is the union of all paths between a given input and a given output in an interconnection network. At any moment in time, each vertex in such a graph is either idle or busy. The search problem that we consider is to find a path (from the given input to the given output) consisting entirely of idle vertices or to find a cut (separating the given input from the given output) consisting entirely of busy vertices. We shall also allow the search to fail to find either a path or a cut with some probability bounded by a parameter called the failure probability. This is to be accomplished by sequentially probing the idle-or-busy status of vertices, where the vertex chosen for each probe may depend on the outcome of previous probes. Thus, a search algorithm may be modeled as a decision tree. For average-case analysis, we assume that each vertex is independently idle with some fixed probability, called the vacancy probability (and therefore busy with the complementary probability). For one commonly studied channel graph type, the parallel graph, we show that the expected number of probes is at most proportional to the length of a path, irrespective of the vacancy probability, and even if the allowed failure probability is zero. Another type of channel graph that we study is the spider-web graph, which is superior to the parallel graph as regards linking probability (the probability that an idle path, rather than a busy cut, exists). For this graph, we give upper and lower bounds that grow exponentially with the length of a path, when the vacancy probability and failure probability are fixed appropriately.
Hearing and vestibular complaints during pregnancy.

UNLABELLED Hormonal dysfunctions in women during pregnancy can cause vestibular and/or cochlear disorders. AIM to study hearing and vestibular complaints in pregnant women. MATERIAL AND METHOD this is a prospective study. 82 pregnant women participated on this study. For hearing and vestibular complaints, a questionnaire proposed by Castagno (1994) was employed. RESULTS we could observe that tinnitus was the main auditory complaint (33%), although with no differences between the groups. Tinnitus was present among 52.44% of the pregnant women, mainly in the Group 2. According to symptoms related to dizziness, vertigo was the main auditory complaint in first trimester, whereas instability and gait unbalance were more frequent in the second trimester, and instability and tendency to fall in the third trimester. Nausea was the main symptom associated with dizziness in pregnant women, being more frequent in the first trimester of gestation. CONCLUSIONS women during gestation have auditory and vestibular complaints, mainly dizziness and tinnitus.
JLO regulates embryo patterning and organ initiation by controlling auxin transport

In Arabidopsis, lateral organ initiation correlates with the formation of an auxin maximum in a group of cells at the periphery of the shoot apical meristem (SAM). This signal establishes founder cells that build the lateral organ. Primordia initiation is closely associated with the creation of a functional boundary that separates the newly formed primordium from the remainder of the meristem. In the June issue of Plant Cell, we have characterised the JLO (for Jagged Lateral Organ) gene of Arabidopsis, a member of the Lateral Organ boundary Domain gene family. JLO is expressed in boundaries and regulates both auxin transport, via a negative regulation of PIN auxin export carriers, and meristem fate by promoting the expression of the KNOX genes SHOOTMERISTEMLESS (STM) and BP/KNAT1. In this Addendum, we discuss the regulation of PIN genes by JLO, and propose a model for JLO function during embryonic and post-embryonic development.
Calibrated Boosting-Forest

Excellent ranking power along with well calibrated probability estimates are needed in many classification tasks. In this paper, we introduce a technique, Calibrated Boosting-Forest that captures both. This novel technique is an ensemble of gradient boosting machines that can support both continuous and binary labels. While offering superior ranking power over any individual regression or classification model, Calibrated Boosting-Forest is able to preserve well calibrated posterior probabilities. Along with these benefits, we provide an alternative to the tedious step of tuning gradient boosting machines. We demonstrate that tuning Calibrated Boosting-Forest can be reduced to a simple hyper-parameter selection. We further establish that increasing this hyper-parameter improves the ranking performance under a diminishing return. We examine the effectiveness of Calibrated Boosting-Forest on ligand-based virtual screening where both continuous and binary labels are available and compare the performance of Calibrated Boosting-Forest with logistic regression, gradient boosting machine and deep learning. Calibrated Boosting-Forest achieved an approximately 48% improvement compared to a state-of-art deep learning model. Moreover, it achieved around 95% improvement on probability quality measurement compared to the best individual gradient boosting machine. Calibrated Boosting-Forest offers a benchmark demonstration that in the field of ligand-based virtual screening, deep learning is not the universally dominant machine learning model and good calibrated probabilities can better facilitate virtual screening process.
Complete Genome Sequence of Caulobacter crescentus Siphophage Sansa

ABSTRACT Caulobacter crescentus is a Gram-negative dimorphic model organism used to study cell differentiation. Siphophage Sansa is a newly isolated siphophage with an icosahedral capsid that infects C. crescentus. Sansa shares no sequence similarity to other phages deposited in GenBank. Here, we describe its genome sequence and general features.
Incompatibility of chemical protein synthesis inhibitors with accurate measurement of extended protein degradation rates

Protein synthesis inhibitors are commonly used for measuring protein degradation rates, but may cause cytotoxicity via direct or indirect mechanisms. This study aimed to identify concentrations providing optimal inhibition in the absence of overt cytotoxicity. Actinomycin D, cycloheximide, emetine, and puromycin were assessed individually, and in two‐, three‐, and four‐drug combinations for protein synthesis inhibition (IC50) and cytotoxicity (CC50) over 72 h. Experiments were conducted in HepG2 cells and primary rat hepatocytes (PRH). IC50 for actinomycin D, cycloheximide, emetine, and puromycin were 39 ± 7.4, 6600 ± 2500, 2200 ± 1400, and 1600 ± 1200 nmol/L; with corresponding CC50 values of 6.2 ± 7.3, 570 ± 510, 81 ± 9, and 1300 ± 64 nmol/L, respectively, in HepG2 cells. The IC50 were 1.7 ± 1.8, 290 ± 90, 620 ± 920, and 2000 ± 2000 nmol/L, with corresponding CC50 values of 0.98 ± 1.8, 680 ± 1300, 180 ± 700, and 1600 ± 1000 (SD) nmol/L, respectively, in PRH. CC50 were also lower than the IC50 for all drug combinations in HepG2 cells. These data indicate that using pharmacological interference is inappropriate for measuring protein degradation over a protracted period, because inhibitory effects cannot be extricated from cytotoxicity.
Infant Vocalizations and Their Relationship to Mature Intelligence

Correlations between infant development tests and later intelligence have been found previously to be very low. Through cluster analysis, six clusters of items were extracted from Bayley's California First Year Mental Scale. One item cluster composed principally of vocalizations did significantly correlate with girls' later intelligence, increasingly so with age, and more highly with verbal than performance scores.
Hardware Removal Due to Infection after Open Reduction and Internal Fixation: Trends and Predictors.

BACKGROUND Little is known about trends and predictors of hardware related infection following open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) of extremity fractures, one of the major causes of failure following ORIF. The present study was designed and conducted to determine trends and predictors of infection-related hardware removal following ORIF of extremities using a nationally representative database. METHODS We used Nationwide Inpatient Sample data from 2002 to 2011 to identify cases of ORIF following upper and lower extremity fractures, as well as cases that underwent infection-related hardware removal following ORIF. Multivariate analysis was performed to identify independent predictors of infection-related hardware removal, controlling for patient demographics and comorbidities, hospital characteristics, site of fracture, and year. RESULTS For all ORIF procedures, the highest rate of hardware removal related to infection was observed in tarsal fractures (5.56%), followed by tibial (3.65%) and carpal (3.37%) fractures. Hardware removal rates due to infection increased in all fractures except radial/ulnar fractures. Tarsal fractures(odds ratio (OR)=1.06, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.04-1.09, P<0.001), tibial fractures (OR=1.04, 95% CI: 1.03-1.06, P<0.001) and those patients with diabetes mellitus (OR=2.64, 95% CI: 2.46-2.84, P<0.001), liver disease (OR=2.04, 95% CI: 1.84- 2.26, P<0.001), and rheumatoid arthritis (OR=2.06, 95% CI: 1.88-2.25 P<0.001) were the main predictors of infection-related removals; females were less likely to undergo removal due to infection (OR= 0.61, 95% CI: 0.59-0.63 P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS Hardware removal rates due to infection increased in all fractures except radial/ulnar fractures. Diabetes, liver disease, and rheumatoid arthritis were important predictors of infection-related hardware removal. The study identified some risk factors for hardwarerelated infection following ORIF, such as diabetes, liver disease, and rheumatoid arthritis, that should be studied further in an attempt to implement strategies to reduce rate of infection following ORIF.
RGB-D camera-based hand shape recognition for human-robot interaction

Hand is the most popularly used tool for human-robot interaction. Therefore, this paper proposes a Kinect-based hand shape recognition method for human-robot interaction. Kinect can capture color and depth images simultaneously and its SDK provides functions to track the human skeleton. Therefore, the proposed method can detect hands robustly by using the skeleton and depth information. In results, it can recognize various hand shapes based on contour analysis with a high recognition rate (95% on average) and works in real-time (over 30 frames/sec).
Agglutination of Histoplasma capsulatum by IgG Monoclonal Antibodies against Hsp60 Impacts Macrophage Effector Functions

ABSTRACT Histoplasma capsulatum can efficiently survive within macrophages, facilitating H. capsulatum translocation from the lung into the lymphatics and bloodstream. We have recently generated monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to an H. capsulatum surface-expressed heat shock protein of 60 kDa (Hsp60) that modify disease in a murine histoplasmosis model. Interestingly, the MAbs induced different degrees of yeast cell agglutination in vitro. In the present study, we characterized the agglutination effects of the antibodies to Hsp60 on H. capsulatum yeast cells by light microscopy, flow cytometry, dynamic light scattering, measuring zeta potential, and using optical tweezers. We found that immunoglobulin Gs (IgGs) to Hsp60 cause H. capsulatum aggregation dependent on the (i) concentration of MAbs, (ii) MAb binding constant, and (iii) IgG subclass. Furthermore, infection of macrophages using agglutinates of various sizes after incubation with different Hsp60-binding MAbs induced association to macrophages through distinct cellular receptors and differentially affected macrophage antifungal functions. Hence, the capacity of IgG MAbs to agglutinate H. capsulatum significantly impacted pathogenic mechanisms of H. capsulatum during macrophage infection, and the effect was dependent on the antibody subclass and antigen epitope.
Isopiestic Technique for Measuring Leaf Water Potentials with a Thermocouple Psychrometer

Banach spaces have been given by Edelstein but under hypotheses on the existence of strong limit points for the sequence I Unx I which are difficult to verify. Cf. Edelstein, M. , "On fixed and periodic points under contractive mappings," J. London Math. Soc. , 37, 74-79 (1962), "On nonexpansive mappings of Banach spaces," Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. , 60, 439-447 (1964). 9 Added in proof: After the present note was transmitted for publication, the writer received copies of the manuscripts of two unpublished papers, by W. A. Kirk, and by W. A. Kirk and R. Belluce, respectively, obtaining similar results. In Kirk's paper, it is remarked that the general line of argument is due to Brodskii and Milman (Dokl. (1948)], who proved Theorem 1 for isometries. It should also be remarked that in another recent note by the writer [Browder, F. E. , "Mapping theorems for noncompact nonlinear operators in Banach spaces," these PROCEEDINGS, 54, 337-342 (1965)], results are obtained which in the case of Hilbert spaces imply that the conclusion of Theorem 1 is also valid for semicontractive mappings, i.e., mappings U of C into C where Ux = S(x,x) and S is a mapping of C X C into C which is nonexpansive in its first variable and completely continuous in the second variable. As we show elsewhere, this extension remains valid for Banach spaces having weakly continuous duality mappings. It is not clear at the time of writing whether this extension is also valid for the general class of uniformly convex spaces.
Monitoring Viral‐Mediated Membrane Fusion Using Fluorescent Reporter Methods

A simple and real‐time cell‐based assay of membrane fusion employing a pair of engineered novel reporter proteins is described. The reporter proteins are chimeras of split Renilla luciferase (RL) and split green fluorescent protein (GFP). This reporter allows us to perform both quantitative (RL mode) and visible (GFP mode) membrane fusion assays in live cells. The kinetic assay enabled by this method helps understand the mechanism of membrane fusion mediated by a viral envelope protein. This assay system is also suitable for the screening of potential inhibitors. The timing of inhibition by a particular inhibitor can be analyzed by time‐dependent addition of the inhibitor. Although this unit demonstrates the application of the method for the analysis of HIV‐1 envelope protein, the reporter can be applied to analyses of various other viral envelope proteins. Curr. Protoc. Cell Biol. 50:26.9. 1‐26.9. 9. © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Selective attention effects on the reflex blink.

Past work has shown that facilitation of reflex blinking accompanies cardiac deceleration when the attention of subjects is directed to a reflex-eliciting stimulus. The present studies showed that when warning stimuli directed attention instead to weak (tactile) stimuli presented simultaneously with reflex-eliciting (acoustic) stimuli, cardiac deceleration was still present but reflex magnitude was unchanged or inhibited. However, latency to reflex onset remained facilitated, i.e., latency and magnitude changes were discordant. The findings were interpreted as evidence for two independent processes: a process capable of selectively enhancing or attenuating sensory input and a non-selective process presumably facilitating motor pathways.
Iterative data adaptive anisotropic image filtering

This paper presents a novel data-adaptive anisotropic filtering technique built on top of an iterative scheme. This new technique can preserve the original significant structures while suppressing noises to the largest extent. To achieve this goal, dominant orientation information of all gradients is used to control the local kernel adaptively. This results in elongated and elliptical contours spread along the directions of the local edge structure. With these locally adapted kernels, the smoothing is mostly effective along the edges, rather than across them. Therefore details in the original input can be preserved. The performance of the proposed data-adaptive anisotropic filter together with its iterative scheme are compared with the conventional Gaussian filter, anisotropic diffusion filter, the structure-adaptive anisotropic filter, and the iterative kernel regression scheme. The experimental results on both simulated Gaussian and Poission noisy images indicate that the proposed method performs the best, and the iterative scheme can significantly improve the performance of the noise suppressing while delivering high computation efficiency.
New types of MMIC circulators

Circulators can be used to separate transmit/receive (T/R) signals and for two-port tuners. Conventional ferrite devices are not applicable for MMICs. Two new types of electronic circulators are presented in this paper covering the frequency range from 1.8 GHz up to 80 GHz. <<ETX>>
On the Importance of Subtext in Recommender Systems

Abstract Conversational recommender systems have been shown capable of allowing users to navigate even complex and unknown application domains effectively. However, optimizing preference elicitation remains a largely unsolved problem. In this paper we introduce SPEECHREC, a speech-enabled, knowledge-based recommender system, that engages the user in a natural-language dialog, identifying not only purely factual constraints from the users’ input, but also integrating nuanced lexical qualifiers and paralinguistic information into the recommendation strategy. In order to assess the viability of this concept, we present the results of an empirical study where we compare SPEECHREC to a traditional knowledge-based recommender system and show how incorporating more granular user preferences in the recommendation strategy can increase recommendation quality, while reducing median session length by 46 %.