Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit modulates protective responses to stress: A receptor basis for sleep-disordered breathing after nicotine exposure

Nicotine exposure diminishes the protective breathing and arousal responses to stress (hypoxia). By exacerbating sleep-disordered breathing, this disturbance could underpin the well established association between smoking and the increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome. We show here that the protective responses to stress during sleep are partially regulated by particular nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). We compared responses of sleeping wild-type and mutant mice lacking the β2 subunit of the nAChR to episodic hypoxia. Arousal from sleep was diminished, and breathing drives accentuated in mutant mice indicating that these protective responses are partially regulated by β2-containing nAChRs. Brief exposure to nicotine significantly reduced breathing drives in sleeping wild-type mice, but had no effect in mutants. We propose that nicotine impairs breathing (and possibly arousal) responses to stress by disrupting functions normally regulated by β2-containing, high-affinity nAChRs.
Assessment of Left and Right Ventricular Systolic and Diastolic Synchronicity in Normal Subjects by Tissue Doppler Echocardiography and the Effects of Age and Heart Rate

Objectives: This study examined inter‐ and intraventricular synchronicity in systole and diastole by tissue Doppler imaging (TDI), and investigated if these parameters and the regional velocities were affected by age and heart rate. Methods: TDI was performed in 106 normal subjects (64.3 ± 9.5 years, 60% male) using three apical views and a six‐basal, six mid‐segmental model. The regional parameters measured off line in both ventricles included peak isovolumic contraction velocity (IVCM), peak sustained systolic velocity (SM), peak early diastolic velocity (EM), peak late diastolic velocity (AM), and the E/AM ratio, as well as their time to these peak velocities: TIVC, TS, TE, and TA. Results: The systole and diastole within the left ventricle (LV) was highly synchronized without difference in TIVC, TS, TE, and TA. However, the right ventricle (RV) was about 20 msec later than the LV for TIVC and TS. For regional velocities, IVCM, SM, EM, and AM were significantly higher in basal than mid‐segments (all P < 0.001 ). In the base of the LV, SM, and EM were the highest at the lateral segment and the lowest at the anterolateral segment. Age and heart rate did not affect systolic velocities or the timing of events. In diastole, age correlated negatively with EM (r =−0.36 to −0.48, P ≤ 0.001) and E/AM ratio (r =−0.37 to −0.51, P ≤ 0.01) , while increasing heart rate affected AM ( r = 0.17 to 0.43) positively and TE (r =−0.49 to −0.66, P < 0.001) and TA (r =−0.85 to −0.93, P < 0.001) negatively. Conclusion: (1) Systolic and diastolic functions of the normal hearts are highly synchronized, though LV contraction slightly preceded that of RV. (2) Age and heart rate predominantly affect the diastolic, but not systolic, parameters that need to be taken into account. (ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY, Volume 20, January 2003)
PapB paralogues and their effect on the phase variation of type 1 fimbriae in Escherichia coli

Recent work has demonstrated that expression of type 1 fimbriae is repressed by PapB, a regulator of pyelonephritis‐associated pili (P‐pili). PapB belongs to family of related adhesin regulators, for which consensus residues required for DNA binding and oligomerization have been identified. Of the regulators tested in this study, PapB, SfaB (S‐fimbriae) and PefB (Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium –plasmid‐encoded fimbriae) repressed FimB‐promoted off‐to‐on inversion of the fim switch, although complete repression was only demonstrated by PapB. DaaA, FaeB, FanA, FanB and ClpB had no effect on fim switching. In addition, only PapB stimulated FimE‐promoted on‐to‐off inversion. Deletion analysis demonstrated that this specificity resides in the carboxy terminal of the protein, and not the amino terminal, with the central region being homologous among the family members. Exchange of Leu82 and Ile83 of PapB for the equivalent residues from the DaaA protein (Phe and Gln) within the carboxy terminal virtually abolished cross‐talk activity. Whereas PapB can bind to a region around the left inverted repeat of the fim switch, DaaA and the PapB double mutant were effectively unable to bind this region. A previously characterized PapB DNA binding mutant also failed to bind to this region and failed to inhibit FimB activity at the fim switch. Thus, repression of fim expression appears unique to PapB and SfaB within E. coli and requires DNA binding involving amino acid residues located both within the homologous core and in the heterogeneous carboxy terminus. The variation in the carboxy terminus between the PapB family members explains their differential effects on fim. This mechanism of cross‐talk seems restricted to the P and S family adhesins with type 1 fimbriae and may ensure variable and sequential expression of adhesins during urinary tract infections.
Facial muscle adaptation for expression customization

There are two major approaches to creating 3DCG facial expressions: The first is based on facial muscle simulation and the second is the blend-shape approach. The blend shape approach is more familiar to creators than the facial muscle approach when they synthesize the facial expressions of 3DCG characters. However, the facial muscle model has the advantage of being physics-based. It can, therefore, produce realistic facial expressions and create facial expressions using fewer parameters than the blend shape approach, thereby reducing processing time and computational requirements. We introduce a method which can be used to synthesize individual facial expressions based on the facial muscle model [Waters 1987].
Dynamic Model-based Clustering for Time-course Gene Expression Data

Microarray technology has produced a huge body of time-course gene expression data. Such gene expression data has proved useful in genomic disease diagnosis and genomic drug design. The challenge is how to uncover useful information in such data. Cluster analysis has played an important role in analyzing gene expression data. Many distance/correlation- and static model-based clustering techniques have been applied to time-course expression data. However, these techniques are unable to account for the dynamics of such data. It is the dynamics that characterize the data and that should be considered in cluster analysis so as to obtain high quality clustering. This paper proposes a dynamic model-based clustering method for time-course gene expression data. The proposed method regards a time-course gene expression dataset as a set of time series, generated by a number of stochastic processes. Each stochastic process defines a cluster and is described by an autoregressive model. A relocation-iteration algorithm is proposed to identity the model parameters and posterior probabilities are employed to assign each gene to an appropriate cluster. A bootstrapping method and an average adjusted Rand index (AARI) are employed to measure the quality of clustering. Computational experiments are performed on a synthetic and three real time-course gene expression datasets to investigate the proposed method. The results show that our method allows the better quality clustering than other clustering methods (e.g. k-means) for time-course gene expression data, and thus it is a useful and powerful tool for analyzing time-course gene expression data.
Large-scale plasmonic problems solved with the multilevel fast multipole algorithm

We present a surface integral equation (SIE) approach to model the electromagnetic behavior of metallic objects at optical frequencies. The solution of electrically large problems (involving large number of unknowns) is accelerated using the Multilevel Fast Multipole Algorithm (MLFMA). To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time that the MLFMA is applied in plasmonics.
Regional Climate Variability Under Model Simulations of Solar Geoengineering

Solar geoengineering has been shown in modeling studies to successfully mitigate global mean surface temperature changes from greenhouse warming. Changes in land surface hydrology are complicated by the direct effect of carbon dioxide (CO2) on vegetation, which alters the flux of water from the land surface to the atmosphere. Here we investigate changes in boreal summer climate variability under solar geoengineering using multiple ensembles of model simulations. We find that spatially uniform solar geoengineering creates a strong meridional gradient in the Northern Hemisphere temperature response, with less consistent patterns in precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture. Using regional summertime temperature and precipitation results across 31‐member ensembles, we show a decrease in the frequency of heat waves and consecutive dry days under solar geoengineering relative to a high‐CO2 world. However in some regions solar geoengineering of this amount does not completely reduce summer heat extremes relative to present day climate. In western Russia and Siberia, an increase in heat waves is connected to a decrease in surface soil moisture that favors persistent high temperatures. Heat waves decrease in the central United States and the Sahel, while the hydrologic response increases terrestrial water storage. Regional changes in soil moisture exhibit trends over time as the model adjusts to solar geoengineering, particularly in Siberia and the Sahel, leading to robust shifts in climate variance. These results suggest potential benefits and complications of large‐scale uniform climate intervention schemes.
Diminished Coronary Reserve in Patients with Biopsy-Proven Inflammatory Infiltrates

Objective: We tested the hypothesis that patients with biopsy-proven inflammatory infiltrates have an impaired vasodilator capacity of the coronary microvasculation. Methods: In 80 patients with clinically suspected inflammatory heart disease, coronary regulation was assessed with the argon method (1) at rest and maximal coronary flow (Vcor/Vmax) and (2) at rest and minimal coronary resistance (Rcor/Rmin) both before and after dipyridamole (0.5 mg/kg body weight) treatment. Results: Compared to patients without evidence of myocardial inflammation in endomyocardial biopsy (n = 51) but similar demographic characteristics, patients with biopsy-proven inflammatory infiltrates (n = 29) showed significantly reduced maximal coronary flow (286 ± 122 vs. 189 ± 78 ml/min × 100 g; p = 0.001) and minimal coronary resistance was increased (0.40 ± 0.17 vs. 0.60 ± 0.27 mm Hg × min × 100 g/ml–1, p = 0.001). The coronary reserve in patients with inflammatory infiltrates was markedly reduced (3.5 ± 1.1 to 2.4 ± 0.81, p = 0.001). Conclusion: Patients with biopsy-proven inflammatory infiltrates have a diminished coronary reserve due to reduced coronary vasodilator capacity. This may be due to the involvement of the intramural coronary vasculature in inflammatory heart disease.
Exploiting Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access in Cooperative Relay Sharing

We propose and investigate a dual-hop cooperative relaying scheme using non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) (termed NOMA-RS), where two sources communicate with their corresponding destinations in parallel over the same frequency band via a common relay. In this scheme, after receiving symbols transmitted in parallel by both sources with different allocated powers, the relay forwards a super-position coded composite signal using NOMA to the destinations. One of the main benefits of NOMA-RS is that multiple (two) sources can share the same relay, unlike the previous works. Through the simulations and mathematical analysis, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocol in terms of ergodic sum capacity by considering perfect and imperfect successive interference cancellation.
Mental health of octogenarians in Iceland. An epidemiological study.

The purpose of this work was to study the prevalence and incidence of mental disorders in octogenarians in Iceland and the relation of these variables to several sociodemographic variables. Beside this a comparison between two different methods of collecting clinical data on mental health were done. In chapter 2 recent research on the epidemiology of mental disorders in the very old population is reviewed. A comparison between different studies is very difficult but most studies agree on the prevalence of severe dementia. In chapter 3 the material and methods of the study is described. The sample consists of all Icelanders borne in the years of 1895-1897. Two methods of data collection are described, the indirect method where information from general practitioners, hospital files and other sources are used to make a mental diagnosis, and the Geriatric Mental States Schedule, which is a semi-structured interview. In chapter 4 demography of the cohort is described and in chapter 5 the reliability of the Icelandic translation of the Geriatric Mental States Schedule is discussed and the reliability of the Icelandic translation of G.M.S. is within acceptable limits. In chapter 6 two methods of making mental diagnosis in the elderly are compared. In chapter 7 the prevalence of dementia at the age of 81.5 and 87 years is discussed. There is a considerable increase in prevalence of severe dementia, or from 7.8% at the age of 81.5 years to 15.1% at the age of 87 years. The incidence of dementia in the age period 74-85 years is discussed in chapter 8. At the age of 84 years the incidence is about one case per 100 per year, but at the age of 85 the incidence is about 4 cases per 100 per year. In chapter 9 the mortality of dementia in the age period from 74-85 years is discussed. The standard mortality ratio is 2.46 for males and 2.29 for females in this age period. In chapter 10 and 11 the prevalence, incidence and mortality of affective disorders are discussed. The prevalence of affective disorders does not change significantly with age from 81.5-87 years, being 8-9%, while the mortality of affective disorders in the age period of 74-85 years is similar to that in the general population. The incidence does not change significantly from 74-85 years being about 0.6 case per 100 per year for males and about 1.1 cases per 100 per year for females. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
DIVERGENCE WITH GENE FLOW IN THE ROCK‐DWELLING CICHLIDS OF LAKE MALAWI

Abstract Within the past two million years, more than 450 species of haplochromine cichlids have diverged from a single common ancestor in Lake Malawi. Several factors have been implicated in the diversification of this monophyletic clade, including changes in lake level and low levels of gene flow across limited geographic scales. The objectives of this study were to determine the effect of recent lake‐level fluctuations on patterns of allelic diversity in the genus Metriaclima, to describe the patterns of population structure within this genus, and to identify barriers to migration. This was accomplished through an analysis of allele frequencies at four microsatellite loci. Twelve populations spanning four species within Metriaclima were surveyed. The effect of lake‐level fluctuations can be seen in the reduced genetic diversity of the most recently colonized sites; however, genetic diversity is not depressed at the species level. Low levels of population structure exist among populations, yet some gene flow persists across long stretches of inhospitable habitat. No general barrier to migration was identified. The results of this study are interpreted with respect to several speciation models. Divergence via population bottlenecks is unlikely due to the large allelic diversity observed within each species. Genetic drift and microallopatric divergence are also rejected because some gene flow does occur between adjacent populations. However, the reduced levels of gene flow between populations does suggest that minor changes in the selective environment could cause the divergence of populations.
Cell crowding induces interferon regulatory factor 9, which confers resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs

The mechanism of multicellular drug resistance, defined as the reduced efficacy of chemotherapeutic drugs in solid tumors is incompletely understood. Here we report that colon carcinoma cells cultured as 3D microtissues (spheroids) display dramatic increases in the expression of a subset of type I interferon‐(IFN)‐stimulated genes (ISGs). A similar gene signature was associated previously with resistance to radiation and chemotherapy, prompting us to examine the underlying biological mechanisms. Analysis of spheroids formed by different tumor cell lines and studies using knock‐down of gene expression showed that cell crowding leads to the induction of IFN regulatory factor‐9 (IRF9) which together with STAT2 and independently of IFNs, is necessary for ISG upregulation. Increased expression of IRF9 alone was sufficient to induce the ISG subset in monolayer cells and to confer increased resistance to clinically used cytotoxic drugs. Our data reveal a novel mechanism of regulation of a subset of ISGs, leading to drug resistance in solid tumors.
Evaluation of the DiversiLab System for Detection of Hospital Outbreaks of Infections by Different Bacterial Species

ABSTRACT Many bacterial typing methods are specific for one species only, time-consuming, or poorly reproducible. DiversiLab (DL; bioMérieux) potentially overcomes these limitations. In this study, we evaluated the DL system for the identification of hospital outbreaks of a number bacterial species. Appropriately typed clinical isolates were tested with DL. DL typing agreed with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) for Acinetobacter (n = 26) and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (n = 13) isolates. With two exceptions, DL typing of Klebsiella isolates (n = 23) also correlated with PFGE, and in addition, PFGE-nontypeable (PFGE-NT) isolates could be typed. Enterobacter (n = 28) results also correlated with PFGE results; also, PFGE-NT isolates could be clustered. In a larger study (n = 270), a cluster of 30 isolates was observed that could be subdivided by PFGE. The results for Escherichia coli (n = 38) correlated less well with an experimental multilocus variable number of tandem repeats analysis (MLVA) scheme. Pseudomonas aeruginosa (n = 52) showed only a limited number of amplification products for most isolates. When multiple Pseudomonas isolates were assigned to a single type in DL, all except one showed multiple multilocus sequence types. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus generally also showed a limited number of amplification products. Isolates that belonged to different outbreaks by other typing methods, including PFGE, spa typing, and MLVA, were grouped together in a number of cases. For Enterococcus faecium, the limited variability of the amplification products obtained made interpretation difficult and correlation with MLVA and esp gene typing was poor. All of the results are reflected in Simpson's index of diversity and adjusted Rand's and Wallace's coefficients. DL is a useful tool to help identify hospital outbreaks of Acinetobacter spp. , S. maltophilia, the Enterobacter cloacae complex, Klebsiella spp. , and, to a somewhat lesser extent, E. coli. In our study, DL was inadequate for P. aeruginosa, E. faecium, and MRSA. However, it should be noted that for the identification of outbreaks, epidemiological data should be combined with typing results.
Immunoglobulin A response in murine schistosomiasis: stimulatory role of egg antigens

The immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgA antibody responses to different Schistosoma mansoni antigens have been determined in chronically infected mice as well as in unisexually infected animals. With a panel of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), soluble antigens from furcocercariae, adult worms, and eggs were probed with sera collected at 3-week intervals. Bisexually infected animals developed significant IgG and IgA antibody responses to the antigens tested, which increased after egg deposition. In unisexual infections no significant differences were recorded in the IgG antibody profile for furocercaria and adult worm antigens, whereas the IgA antibody response was impaired. Both the IgA and IgG antibody responses toward egg antigens were reduced compared with those in a bisexual infection. Furthermore, a specific mucosal IgA antibody response was observed only in the bisexually infected animals. Histological analysis performed on bisexually infected mice led to the observation of eggs and granulomatous lesions within the Peyer's patch follicles, which are essential sites for the induction of mucosal immunity in the intestine. These data suggest a relationship between egg deposition and the induction of the IgA antibody response toward schistosomes.
ASYMMETRIC FLOW OF A NANOFLUID BETWEEN EXPANDING OR CONTRACTING PERMEABLE WALLS WITH THERMAL RADIATION

In the present study, the flow and heat transfer characteristics of a nanofluid in an expanding or contracting porous channel with different permeabilities in presence of thermal radiation are investigated. Analytical solutions for the flow variables are obtained by employing homotopy analysis method (HAM). Maxwell-Garnetts and Brinkman models are considered to calculate the thermal conductivity and the viscosity of nanofluid. In this investigation, we considered water and ethylene glycol as base fluids and silver ( Ag ), copper ( Cu ), titanium dioxide ( 2 TiO ) and alumina ( 2 3 Al O ) as nanoparticles. The effects of various emerging parameters on axial velocity, temperature, shear stress and Nusselt number distributions have been discussed. The results of present study are compared with the numerical solutions obtained by shooting technique along with Runge-Kutta fourth order scheme. We found that there is a good agreement between the analytical and the numerical solutions.
Discourse, agency and teacher attrition: exploring stories to leave by amongst former early career English language teachers in Hong Kong

Abstract This article reports the results of a qualitative study investigating the experiences of five former English language teachers in Hong Kong during their initial years of full-time teaching and the reasons for their permanent departure from the profession. Guided by a theory of teacher identity construction, the study employed a discourse analytic approach to understand the participants’ perceptions of their professional identity construction in discourse and practice. The results of in-depth interviews provide detailed descriptions of the ways in which the former teachers perceived the constraints and enablements to their professional identity construction within the context of their ultimate decision to leave the teaching profession. The findings problematise rigid divisions between different types of teachers and suggest the need to establish new spaces for identity construction that allow for the meshing of different teacher identities.
The scope of high voltage with CMD of the smart grid in Korea

Recent environmental changes have shown the world the importance of sustainable development, and these changes demand concrete solutions. The smart grid solution is recognized as a key technology to cope with these challenges, not just concerning the environmental impact of greenhouse gases, but also regarding increasing demand for electricity. Korea has outlined its vision in a policy to build a low-carbon, green-growth economy through a smart grid by 2030. Recent R&D has made progress on condition monitoring and diagnosis (CMD) for power equipment, such as main transformers, power cable, and gas insulated switchgear (GIS) in Korea. This paper introduces some practices, and an overview and road map of smart grid technology, and research trends of CMD for power facilities in Korea.