Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fibroblast Growth Factor 2 Is Necessary for the Growth of Glutamate Projection Neurons in the Anterior Neocortex

Basic fibroblast growth factor (Fgf2) is required for the generation of founder cells within the dorsal pseudostratified ventricular epithelium, which will generate the cerebral cortex, but the ganglionic eminences are not affected. We report here that the Fgf2 null mutant mice show an ∼40% decrease in cortical glutamatergic pyramidal neurons. In contrast, no change in pyramidal or granule cell number is detected in the hippocampus of Fgf2 −/− mice. In addition, the soma of the pyramidal cells in the frontal and parietal cortices are smaller in Fgf2 knock-out mice. The decrease in the number and size of glutamatergic neuronal population affects all cortical layers but is restricted to the frontal and parietal cortices without any change in the occipital cortex, indicating that Fgf2 is necessary to regulate cell number and size in the anterior cerebral cortex. In contrast to pyramidal neurons, cortical GABA interneurons are unaffected by the lack of Fgf2. The resulting imbalance between the excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission in the cerebral cortex is reflected by an increased duration of sleep when the animals receive a GABA receptor agonist. Thus, Fgf2 signaling may contribute to the regional specification of the cerebral cortex and may play a role in increasing the size of anterior cortical regions during vertebrate evolution.
Hairpins under tension: RNA versus DNA

We use optical tweezers to control the folding and unfolding of individual DNA and RNA hairpins by force. Four hairpin molecules are studied in comparison: two DNA and two RNA ones. We observe that the conformational dynamics is slower for the RNA hairpins than for their DNA counterparts. Our results indicate that structures made of RNA are dynamically more stable. This difference might contribute to the fact that DNA and RNA play fundamentally different biological roles in spite of chemical similarity.
Factional competition and political development in the New World: Factional competition and political development in the New World: an introduction

This volume calls attention to the importance of factional competition as a force of social transformation. It argues that factional competition is implicated in developments as diverse as the spread of ceramic technology and maize agriculture, the origins of permanently instituted leadership offices, the expansion and collapse of states, and the European domination of indigenous New World peoples. Although this volume focuses upon the New World, its perspective is relevant to the social histories of other areas of the world as well, because all non-egalitarian societies, both ancient and modern, are shaped by the dynamics of factional competition. Bringing an agent-centered perspective to the study of political development, this volume also contributes to a general understanding of social stability and change. An agent-centered perspective maximizes the amount of data drawn into the analysis and thus permits the most detailed and complete account of specific cases of political continuity and transformation. Our studies of factional competition both complement and critique the two prevailing approaches to prehistoric social change: cultural ecology and Marxism. Cultural ecology focuses upon the dynamic interactions of human populations and their local environments. As a complement to this, the studies in this volume examine the internal dynamics of local populations, dynamics that help to shape the strategy of resource exploitation. Marxist theory focuses upon the dynamics of class struggle: a model postulating solidarity within classes and struggle between them. As a complement to class struggle, the essays in this volume emphasize the importance of conflicts within classes and alliances between them.
Antibiotic effects of WP-0405, a thermo-setting ofloxacin gel, on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus keratitis in rabbits.

PURPOSE The chemotherapeutic effects and pharmacokinetics properties of WP-0405 (a thermo-setting in situ 0.3% ofloxacin-containing ophthalmic gel) and ofloxacin (a conventional 0.3% ofloxacin solution) on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) keratitis were compared in a rabbit model. METHOD The single-instillation pharmacokinetics of WP-0405 and ofloxacin in the cornea, aqueous humor, conjunctiva, and iris-ciliary body were determined in normal rabbit eyes. To compare the duration of antimicrobial action, WP-0405 or ofloxacin was instilled oncedaily in an early-treatment model of keratitis, and corneas were either removed immediately or 4 or 8 h postinstillation. In another experiment, WP-0405 was instilled two or three times daily to compare its antibiotic efficacy with three-times daily instillation of ofloxacin in the same early-treatment model of keratitis; corneas were then removed after determining the extent of the abscess area. In another experiment, WP-0405 was instilled four or eight times daily to compare its effects with eight-times daily instillation of ofloxacin in a late-treatment model of keratitis, and corneas were removed. The number of viable bacteria in the corneas was determined in all experiments. RESULTS Cmax and AUC0- in tissues treated with WP-0405 were 1.5-3.4-fold and 1.8-2.9-fold greater than those treated with ofloxacin, respectively. WP-0405 significantly reduced the number of viable bacteria for up to 8 h after a single instillation. WP-0405 not only significantly reduced the number of viable bacteria, but also the size of the abscess area at the same frequency of instillation. When compared to ofloxacin, WP-0405 exhibited an approximately equivalent antibiotic effect, with fewer administrations. CONCLUSIONS As a result of its pharmacokinetics, WP-0405 had a more potent, longer-acting antibiotic effect than did ofloxacin. Furthermore, because of its lower required instillation frequency, which would improve patient compliance, WP-0405 has great potential therapeutic benefits.
Dynamic Texture Classification Based on Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform

Dynamic texture is a spatially repetitive, time-varying visual pattern that forms an image sequence with some spatio-temporal stationary properties. This paper proposes a dynamic texture classification algorithm based on the magnitude information and the phase information in dual-tree complex wavelet transform domain. The variance and entropy of the complex wavelet coefficients are used to form the dynamic texture feature vector. Experimental results show that the algorithm has a good effect and performance on dynamic texture classification.
Expression of TIP-1 Confers Radioresistance of Malignant Glioma Cells

Background Malignant gliomas represent one group of tumors that poorly respond to ionizing radiation (IR) alone or combined with chemotherapeutic agents because of the intrinsic or acquired resistance. In this study, TIP-1 was identified as one novel protein that confers resistance of glioma cells to IR. Methodology/Principal Findings Meta-analysis indicated that high TIP-1 expression levels correlate with the poor prognosis of human malignant gliomas after radiotherapy. Studies with established human glioma cell lines demonstrated that TIP-1 depletion with specific shRNAs sensitized the cells to IR, whereas an ectopic expression of TIP-1 protected the glioma cells from the IR-induced DNA damage and cell death. Biochemical studies indicated that TIP-1 protein promoted p53 ubiquitination and resulted in a reduced p53 protein level. Furthermore, p53 and its ubiquitination are required for the TIP-1 regulated cellular response to IR. A yeast two-hybrid screening identified that TIP-1, through its single PDZ domain, binds to the carboxyl terminus of LZAP that has been studied as one tumor suppressor functioning through ARF binding and p53 activation. It was revealed that the presence of TIP-1 enhances the protein association between LZAP and ARF and modulates the functionality of ARF/HDM2 toward multi-ubiquitination of p53, while depleting TIP-1 rescued p53 from polyubiquitination and degradation in the irradiated glioma cells. Studies with a mouse xenograft model indicated that depleting TIP-1 within D54 cells improved the tumor growth control with IR. Conclusions/Significance This study provided the first evidence showing that TIP-1 modulates p53 protein stability and is involved in the radioresistance of malignant gliomas, suggesting that antagonizing TIP-1 might be one novel approach to sensitize malignant gliomas to radiotherapy.
UNDO: a Bioconductor R package for unsupervised deconvolution of mixed gene expressions in tumor samples

SUMMARY We develop a novel unsupervised deconvolution method, within a well-grounded mathematical framework, to dissect mixed gene expressions in heterogeneous tumor samples. We implement an R package, UNsupervised DecOnvolution (UNDO), that can be used to automatically detect cell-specific marker genes (MGs) located on the scatter radii of mixed gene expressions, estimate cellular proportions in each sample and deconvolute mixed expressions into cell-specific expression profiles. We demonstrate the performance of UNDO over a wide range of tumor-stroma mixing proportions, validate UNDO on various biologically mixed benchmark gene expression datasets and further estimate tumor purity in TCGA/CPTAC datasets. The highly accurate deconvolution results obtained suggest not only the existence of cell-specific MGs but also UNDO's ability to detect them blindly and correctly. Although the principal application here involves microarray gene expressions, our methodology can be readily applied to other types of quantitative molecular profiling data. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION UNDO is available at http://bioconductor.org/packages.
Effect of Nd:YAG (1064-nm) and Diode Laser (980-nm) EDTA Agitation on Root Dentin Ultrastructure Properties.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of agitation of 17% ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) with 1064 nm Nd:YAG and 980 nm diode laser on root dentin microhardness and superficial roughness (with confocal laser scanning microscopy [CLSM]). BACKGROUND DATA Root canal irrigants are used in an attempt to minimize the negative effects of smear layer. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty-five bovine roots were sectioned longitudinally and divided into five groups (n=10 each): (1) deionized water, (2) 17% EDTA, (3) 17% EDTA with 60 sec manual agitation, (4) 17% EDTA with 50 sec diode laser (2 W) agitation, and (5) 17% EDTA with 50 sec Nd:YAG (1.5 W) laser agitation. Microhardness and superficial roughness values were calculated before and after the procedures at the cervical, middle, and apical root thirds. Microhardness was statistically analyzed using two way ANOVA, paired t test, and Tukey's tests (α=0.05). Roughness was statistically analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis, paired t test, and Student-Newman-Keuls tests (α=0.05%). RESULTS Statistically significant differences in microhardness and roughness were observed between the deionized water group and others. EDTA with 1064 nm Nd:YAG or 980 nm diode laser presented the lowest microhardness and the highest roughness values and was significantly different from EDTA with manual agitation and EDTA only (p<0.05). However, there were no differences in microhardness or dentin roughness between the root thirds (p>0.05). CLSM analysis showed that the control samples exhibited smoother surfaces than that of the EDTA groups. CONCLUSIONS Nd:YAG 1064 nm and 980-nm diode laser EDTA agitation caused greater reduction in microhardness and increased roughness of root dentin than EDTA only or EDTA with manual agitation.
drr‐2 encodes an eIF4H that acts downstream of TOR in diet‐restriction‐induced longevity of C. elegans

Dietary restriction (DR) results in a robust increase in lifespan while maintaining the physiology of much younger animals in a wide range of species. Here, we examine the role of drr‐2, a DR‐responsive gene recently identified, in determining the longevity of Caenorhabditis elegans. Inhibition of drr‐2 has been shown to increase longevity. However, the molecular mechanisms by which drr‐2 influences longevity remain unknown. We report here that drr‐2 encodes an ortholog of human eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4H (eIF4H), whose function is to mediate the initiation step of mRNA translation. The molecular function of DRR‐2 is validated by the association of DRR‐2 with polysomes and by the decreased rate of protein synthesis observed in drr‐2 knockdown animals. Previous studies have also suggested that DR might trigger a regulated reduction in drr‐2 expression to initiate its longevity response. By examining the effect of increasing drr‐2 expression on DR animals, we find that drr‐2 is essential for a large portion of the longevity response to DR. The nutrient‐sensing target of rapamycin (TOR) pathway has been shown to mediate the longevity effects of DR in C. elegans. Results from our genetic analyses suggest that eIF4H/DRR‐2 functions downstream of TOR, but in parallel to the S6K/PHA‐4 pathway to mediate the lifespan effects of DR. Together, our findings reveal an important role for eIF4H/drr‐2 in the TOR‐mediated longevity responses to DR.
Preconceptions and Theoretical Frameworks.

John WallaceScience and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin University of Technology,GPO Box U1987, Perth WA 6001, AustraliaWilliam LoudenSchool of Education Studies, Edith Cowan University, Churchlands WA 6018, AustraliaOur response to Caliendo and Kyle’s (1996) editorial, entitled “Establishing the Theoreti-cal Frame,” has a decade-long gestation period. As we were considering how we might frameour response, we each recalled one Sunday afternoon in the winter of 1986 when we were bothworking back at the ofﬁce in our jobs as curriculum writers in a large Australian school board.In our spare time we were writing Master’s dissertations. John was conducting an investigationof the impact of a curriculum intervention on high school students’ science process skills usinga pretest/posttest experimental design involving over 800 students. Bill was undertaking a close-up account of the work of a teacher-friend, looking at the problem of how teachers know whatthey know.Taking some time out from our work that afternoon and over a cup of coffee we soon foundourselves talking about our respective dissertations and what counts as rigor in educational re-search. John—with a background in the sciences and well-schooled in the scientiﬁc research tra-dition—was concerned about how Bill might be able to justify his ﬁndings in terms of the normsof validity and reliability. What could an N of 1 study possibly say about the larger populationand how could Bill study the work of a friend and still maintain a credible arm’s length rela-tionship? Bill—with a background in literary theory—argued that his study of the practicalknowledge of one person was concerned to understand the particular, not to generalize beyondthe case. He said that questions about reliability and validity made sense in the research tradi-tion of John’s study, but he also said that he was not very interested in the kinds of questionsthat may be answered by an experimental study of 800 students. John argued that large samplesand experimental designs are needed in order to be more certain about what to do to improveteaching. Bill countered by saying that teaching was by nature uncertain and that what was need-ed was a better understanding of these uncertainties and a different kind of research tradition.Following that Sunday afternoon, we have had many such conversations about education-al research. Two years later, we found ourselves together again as doctoral students in a class
First report of Cladosporium musae on banana in South Africa

An unknown speckle disease was recently observed on Cavendish banana leaves in Levubu, the most northern of the five banana-growing regions of South Africa. Morphological examination of infected material and single conidial isolates of the causal organism revealed that it was Cladosporium musae. Isolates of the fungus were subjected to pathogenicity testing and sequencing of the ITS region (ITS-1 and ITS-2) and the 5.8S gene of the rDNA operon, and compared with an authentic strain of C. musae. These results verified the identity of the fungus as C. musae and constitute the first confirmed report of Cladosporium speckle on banana leaves in South Africa.
Research topic: neuromorphic engineering systems and applications. A snapshot of neuromorphic systems engineering

The 14 papers in this research topic were solicited primarily from attendees to the two most important hands-on workshops in neuromorphic engineering: the Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop (www.ine-web.org) and the Capo Caccia Cognitive Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop (capocaccia.ethz.ch). The papers show the results of feasibility studies of new concepts, as well as neuromorphic systems that have been constructed from more established neuromorphic technologies. Five papers exploit neuromorphic dynamic vision sensor (DVS) events that mimic the asynchronous and sparse spikes on biology's optic nerve fiber (Delbruck and Lang, 2013; O'Connor et al., 2013; Rea et al., 2013; Brandli et al., 2014; Camunas-Mesa et al., 2014; Clady et al., 2014). Two papers are on the hot topic (based on largest number of views) of event-driven computation in deep belief networks (DBNs) (O'Connor et al., 2013; Neftci et al., 2014). Two papers use floating gate technology for neuromorphic analog circuits (Gupta and Markan, 2014; Marr and Hasler, 2014). The collection is rounded out by papers on central pattern generators (Ambroise et al., 2013), neural fields for cognitive architectures (Sandamirskaya, 2014), sound perception (Coath et al., 2014), polychronous spiking networks (Wang et al., 2014), and automatic parameter tuning for large network simulations (Carlson et al., 2014).
Evidence for the Role of Shape in Mental Representations of Similes

People mentally represent the shapes of objects. For instance, the mental representation of an eagle is different when one thinks about a flying or resting eagle. This study examined the role of shape in mental representations of similes (i.e., metaphoric comparisons). We tested the prediction that when people process a simile they will mentally represent the entities of the comparison as having a similar shape. We conducted two experiments in which participants read sentences that either did (experimental sentences) or did not (control sentences) invite comparing two entities. For the experimental sentences, the ground of the comparison was explicit in Experiment 1 ("X has the ability to Z, just like Y") and implicit in Experiment 2 ("X is like Y"). After having read the sentence, participants were presented with line drawings of the two objects, which were either similarly or dissimilarly shaped. They judged whether both objects were mentioned in the preceding sentence. For the experimental sentences, recognition latencies were shorter for similarly shaped objects than for dissimilarly shaped objects. For the control sentences, we did not find such an effect of similarity in shape. These findings suggest that a perceptual symbol of shape is activated when processing similes.
ROBUST SPATIAL ESTIMATION OF THE SIGNAL-TO-INTERFERENCE RATIO (SIR) FOR NON-STATIONARY MIXTURES

The proposed paper deals with the robust estimation of frequency-dependent signal-to-interference ratios (SIRs) and spatial coherence functions in the DFT domain for non-stationary wideband signals. It can be used to realize, e.g., optimum adaptive beamformers or can be used as a confldence measure in combination with automatic speech recognition in noisy environments.
MACROCYTOSIS RESULTING FROM EARLY DENUCLEATION OF ERYTHROID PRECURSORS.

In an attempt to elucidate the mechanism of production of macrocytosis in acute anemia, we studied changes in red cell volume and hemoglobin content, the RNA level of normoblasts and reticulocytes and RNA synthesis in reticulocytes of rabbits made anemic by blood loss or phenylhydrazine administration. The results were as follows: (1) In severe phenylhydrazine anemia, red cell volume and hemoglobin content per cell increased to twice the normal values. (2) The RNA level of normoblasts decreases with the maturation of the cells and reaches a minimum at the orthochromatic stage. The decrease is similar in the normal and anemic rabbits. (3) The RNA level of reticulocytes in the bone marrow is higher in anemic than in normal rabbits. In general, the RNA level of reticulocytes of anemic rabbits is comparable to that of the polychromatic normoblasts, while in normal rabbits this value is comparable to that of orthochromatic normoblasts. (4) Autoradiographs of reticulocytes incubated with H 3 -uridine indicate that the increased level of reticulocyte RNA of anemic rabbits is not due to newly synthesized RNA. From these results, we conclude that in an "emergency" situation of erythropoietic stimulation denucleation of normoblasts occurs at the polychromatic stage of red cell maturation, with skipping of the terminal cell division to orthochromatic cells and formation of macrocytic reticulocytes and red cells.
Effect of Ramadan Observance on Maximal Muscular Performance of Trained Men

Objective:To assess the influence of Ramadan fasting on maximal performance of moderately trained young men using various tests of muscle performance. Design:Comparison of Ramadan fasting (n = 10) versus control group (n = 10) over 3 test sessions, before Ramadan (B), at the end of the first week of Ramadan (R-1), and during the fourth week of Ramadan (R-4). Setting:At each 2-day test session, 4 tests were performed in the same order: measurement of vertical jump height (VJH) and a force–velocity test using the arms on day 1, and measurement of handgrip force (HGF), and a force-velocity test using the legs on day 2. Participants:Twenty trained men. Main Outcome Measures:Maximal power of the arms and of the legs (force–velocity testing), vertical jump performance, HGF, anthropometric data, dietary intake, hemoglobin, and hematocrit. Results:Two-way analyses of variance (group × time) showed Ramadan fasters with decreased maximal anaerobic power of the arms (Wmax-A) and legs (Wmax-L) at R-1, with a partial return of arm data to initial values at R-4. Vertical jump height and HGF remained unchanged throughout. Other changes in Ramadan observers were a decreased energy intake and a decrease of plasma volume at R-1. Conclusions:These results suggest that Ramadan observance initially had detrimental effects on Wmax-A, and Wmax-L, with a tendency to recovery by week 4 of Ramadan. Reductions of total energy intake and intramuscular glycogen may contribute to the reduced Wmax-A and Wmax-L during Ramadan fasting.
Proposed adaptive indexing for Hive

The value of Big Data largely relies on its analytical outcomes; and MapReduce has so far been the most efficient tool for performing analysis on the data. However, the low level nature of MapReduce programming necessitates the development of High-level abstractions, i.e., High Level Query Languages (HLQL), such as Hive, Pig, JAQL and others. These languages can be categorized as either dataflow based or OLAP-based. For OLAP-based HLQL, in particular Hive, at the moment, the speed of retrieval of big data for the analysis is still requiring improvement. Hence, indexing is one of the techniques used for this purpose. Yet, the indexing approach still has its loopholes since it is performed manually and externally using the approach of index inclusion and two-way data scanning. It requires huge computational time and space and hence not scalable for future potential scale of big data. Thus, an adaptive indexing framework is proposed for improving both the computational time and memory usage of the indexing process. The technique shall check the user queries to determine the necessity for indexing and use internal indexing with one-way data scanning approach for the indexing strategy. In this paper, the initial framework of the technique is presented and discussed.