Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contrary roles of kainate receptors in transmitter release at corticothalamic synapses onto thalamic relay and reticular neurons

Corticothalamic fibres, which originate from layer VI pyramidal neurons in the cerebral cortex, provide excitatory synaptic inputs to both thalamic relay neurons and reticular neurons; reticular neurons in turn supply inhibitory inputs to thalamic relay neurons. Pyramidal cells in layer VI in the mouse somatosensory cortex highly express mRNA encoding kainate receptors, which facilitate or depress transmitter release at several synapses in the central nervous system. We report here that contrary modulation of transmitter release from corticothalamic fibres onto thalamic relay and reticular neurons is mediated by activation of kainate receptors in mouse thalamic ventrobasal complex and thalamic reticular nucleus. Exogenous kainate presynaptically depresses the synaptic transmission at corticothalamic synapses onto thalamic relay neurons, but facilitates it at corticothalamic synapses onto reticular neurons. Meanwhile, the lemniscal synaptic transmission, which sends primary somatosensory inputs to relay neurons, is not affected by kainate. In addition, GluR5‐containing kainate receptors are involved in the depression of corticothalamic synaptic transmission onto relay neurons, but not onto reticular neurons. Furthermore, synaptically activated kainate receptors mimic these effects; high‐frequency stimulation of corticothalamic fibres depresses synaptic transmission onto relay neurons, but facilitates it onto reticular neurons. Our results suggest that the opposite sensitivity of kainate receptors at the two corticothalamic synapses is governed by cortical activity and regulates the balance of excitatory and inhibitory inputs to thalamic relay neurons and therefore their excitability.
P wave dispersion in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Background: P wave dispersion (Pd) is defined as the difference between the maximum and the minimum P wave duration. It has recently been associated with increased anxiety levels, thereby predisposing affected individuals to fatal heart disease. Despite of evidence of this autonomous nervous system (ANS) relationship, there are no electrocardiography (ECG) studies in the patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Thus, in this study, we aimed to evaluate the Pd in OCD patients. Materials and Methods: The study consisted of a total of 25 patients with OCD and same number of physically and mentally healthy age- and gender-matched controls. For psychological testing, Yale-Brown Obsession and Compulsion (Y-BOCS) was administered. Results: Pmax was found to be significantly higher in the patients compared to controls. Pmin did not differ between groups. Left atrium sizes were not different between groups. As for the main parameter investigated in the present study, it was found that Pd was significantly increased in the OCD patients than the controls. Y-BOCS scores for the patient group was positively correlated with Pd (r = 0.73, P < 0.01). Conclusions: In conclusion, our results suggest that Pd may be associated with OCD though our sample is too small to allow us to obtain a clear conclusion. Future studies with larger sample evaluating the effects of treatment are required.
Achievement of Secondary Preventive Goals After Acute Myocardial Infarction: A Comparison Between Participants and Nonparticipants in a Routine Patient Education Program in Sweden

Background:Modification of risk factors such as smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, and hypertension after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) has been shown to reduce mortality and morbidity. Therefore, most hospitals in Sweden invite patients with myocardial infarction to an educational program, the "Heart School," where they can learn about lifestyle changes. Whether this kind of education program applied in routine care increases the proportion of patients achieving secondary prevention goals is unknown. Methods:A cohort of consecutive patients treated for AMI and included in a quality registry was followed up during 1 year. The main aim was to study the effects of taking part in the Heart School on smoking habits, blood pressure and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, exercise habits, cardiac symptoms, quality of life, and readmissions to hospital. Patients included in the national quality register of secondary prevention after AMI who had participated in the educational program were compared with those who had not participated in the program. Achievements of secondary prevention goals 1 year after the myocardial infarction were evaluated. The study included 2,822 patients. Results:The result showed that patients who participated in the Heart School stopped smoking more often than those who did not participate (adjusted odds ratio, 2.01; 95% confidence interval, 1.46-2.78). The Heart School had no effects on the other variables that were examined. Conclusion:The interventions currently used in the Swedish Heart School seem to be insufficient to obtain sustainable lifestyle changes, except for smoking cessation.
Sistema de inteligencia tecnológica como sustento para el proceso de planeación estratégica en un centro de investigación y desarrollo tecnológico

El trabajo se refiere al diseno de un proceso de planeacion estrategica que se realiza en el Instituto de Ingenieria de la UNAM aplicado a un tema de investigacion tecnologica relevante: tratamiento de aguas residuales (TAR). La planeacion estrategica contempla la construccion de un Mapa de Desarrollo Tecnologico (MDT) en el tema TAR. Previamente, se esta implantando un Sistema de Inteligencia Tecnologica (SIT) que ofrecera datos fundamentales para lograr una vision prospectiva del tema y asi construir el MDT. Se discute el concepto de MDT y su utilidad para expresar la planeacion estrategica del desarrollo tecnologico. Posteriormente se comenta el concepto de Inteligencia Tecnologica y su relacion con la construccion del MDT.
Automatic Road Defect Detection by Textural Pattern Recognition Based on AdaBoost

Abstract: The state of roads is continuously degrading due to meteorological conditions, ground movements, and traffic, leading to the formation of defects, such as grabbing, holes, and cracks. In this article, a method to automatically distinguish images of road surfaces with defects from road surfaces without defects is presented. This method, based on supervised learning, is generic and may be applied to all type of defects present in those images. They typically present strong textural information with patterns that show fluctuations at small scales and some uniformity at larger scales. The textural information is described by applying a large set of linear and nonlinear filters. To select the most pertinent ones for the current application, a supervised learning based on AdaBoost is performed. The whole process is tested both on a textural recognition task based on the VisTex image database and on road images collected by a dedicated road imaging system. A comparison with a recent cracks detection algorithm from Oliveira and Correia demonstrates the proposed method's efficiency.
Plain Ceramic Tiles Surface Defect Detection Using Image Processing

In the ceramic tile industry bulk amount of ceramic tiles are manufactured, it is very difficult to monitor the quality of each and every tiles manually. Lot of human resources are required for the defect detection of the tiles. Also it is quite tedious and time consuming method. Considering this criteria, an automated defect detection and classification technique has been proposed in this report that can have ensured the better quality of tiles in manufacturing process as well as production rate. Our proposed method plays an important role in ceramic tiles industries to detect the defects and to control the quality of ceramic tiles. This automated classification method helps us to monitor the defects within a very short period of time and also to decide about the recovery process so that the defected tiles may not be mixed with the good quality tiles.
Distributed Energy Harvesting Emulation

Motivation In traditional energy harvesting applications, sensor nodes are able to store any excess energy in a storage device such as battery or supercapacitor for future use. If correctly dimensioned, such a system will guarantee the node’s operation during periods of energy unavailability. More recently, a radically different research line has emerged which focuses on batteryless, energy-driven sensor nodes. These nodes are designed to work with transient energy sources, i.e. highly volatile sources which produce small bursts of energy. As a result, the node’s operation is highly sporadic, depending entirely on the source’s energy availability, making sensing and communication decisions highly complex. In order to evaluate and compare the performance of different communication schemes, a distributed test infrastructure to emulate previously recorded harvesting traces shall be built in this project.
Efficacy and safety of bevacizumab in Chinese patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy and safety of bevacizumab in the treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). METHODS In a single-center, observational study of 91 Chinese patients with mCRC who received bevacizumab in combination with chemotherapy was conducted. OBJECTIVE response rates (ORRs), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS) and adverse events were recorded, and the relationships between various clinical factors and PFS or OS were evaluated by Cox proportional hazards models. RESULTS Treatment with bevacizumab and chemotherapy was effective and tolerable. Univariate analysis showed that PFS and OS were significantly associated with the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status (ECOG- PS) score, duration of bevacizumab exposure, and whether chemotherapy was continued after discontinuation of bevacizumab treatment. A multivariate analysis showed that the duration of bevacizumab exposure and whether chemotherapy was continued after discontinuation of bevacizumab were independent prognostic factors for PFS and OS. CONCLUSION In Chinese mCRC population, the shorter the duration of exposure to bevacizumab and chemotherapy, the worse the prognosis is.
Cell type–specific spatial and functional coupling between mammalian brain Kv2.1 K+ channels and ryanodine receptors

The Kv2.1 voltage‐gated K+ channel is widely expressed throughout mammalian brain, where it contributes to dynamic activity‐dependent regulation of intrinsic neuronal excitability. Here we show that somatic plasma membrane Kv2.1 clusters are juxtaposed to clusters of intracellular ryanodine receptor (RyR) Ca2+‐release channels in mouse brain neurons, most prominently in medium spiny neurons (MSNs) of the striatum. Electron microscopy–immunogold labeling shows that in MSNs, plasma membrane Kv2.1 clusters are adjacent to subsurface cisternae, placing Kv2.1 in close proximity to sites of RyR‐mediated Ca2+ release. Immunofluorescence labeling in transgenic mice expressing green fluorescent protein in specific MSN populations reveals the most prominent juxtaposed Kv2.1:RyR clusters in indirect pathway MSNs. Kv2.1 in both direct and indirect pathway MSNs exhibits markedly lower levels of labeling with phosphospecific antibodies directed against the S453, S563, and S603 phosphorylation site compared with levels observed in neocortical neurons, although labeling for Kv2.1 phosphorylation at S563 was significantly lower in indirect pathway MSNs compared with those in the direct pathway. Finally, acute stimulation of RyRs in heterologous cells causes a rapid hyperpolarizing shift in the voltage dependence of activation of Kv2.1, typical of Ca2+/calcineurin‐dependent Kv2.1 dephosphorylation. Together, these studies reveal that striatal MSNs are distinct in their expression of clustered Kv2.1 at plasma membrane sites juxtaposed to intracellular RyRs, as well as in Kv2.1 phosphorylation state. Differences in Kv2.1 expression and phosphorylation between MSNs in direct and indirect pathways provide a cell‐ and circuit‐specific mechanism for coupling intracellular Ca2+ release to phosphorylation‐dependent regulation of Kv2.1 to dynamically impact intrinsic excitability. J. Comp. Neurol. 522:3555–3574, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Case report: median arcuate ligament syndrome diagnosed with computed tomography and Doppler ultrasonography.

BACKGROUND Median arcuate ligament syndrome is a condition in which the median arcuate ligament crosses the aorta in a lower than normal position and compresses the celiac artery during respiration. The effects of compression are most notable during suspended expiration and when the patient is supine. Patients with median arcuate ligament syndrome present with postprandial abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, weight loss, and abdominal bruit. The compression leads to a narrowing of the artery, which could cause bowel ischemia, although this theory is controversial. Alternately, the median arcuate ligament could compress the celiac plexus, causing an inflammatory reaction from the nerves and producing a pain pattern that is similar to ischemia. DISCUSSION Computed tomography and Doppler ultrasonography have high sensitivity and specificity to detect and monitor median arcuate ligament syndrome. Neither imaging modality shows superiority to the other, and the selection of either to image median arcuate ligament syndrome should be based on the patient's needs. CONCLUSION Treatment for median arcuate ligament syndrome ranges from stenting to open celiac artery decompression with revascularization and results in only a fair degree of long-term symptom relief.
Discovering overlapping communities in social networks: A novel game-theoretic approach

Identifying communities in social networks has been receiving the increasing attentions recently. However, the overlapping concept has received little attentions in the literature, although it is observed in almost all social networks. In this study, we propose a framework based on the game theory and the structural equivalence concept to address the detection of overlapping communities in social networks. Specifically, we consider the underlying graph as a hypothetical social networking website and regard each vertex of this graph as an agent performing in this multiagent environment. Since each agent may belong to several communities simultaneously, we are able to find overlapping community structure of social networks. The rigorous proof of the existence of Nash equilibrium in this game is provided which shows that the method always reaches to the final solution. Experimental results on the benchmark and real world graphs show superiority of our approach over the other state-of-the-art methods.
West Nile Virus Activity in a Winter Roost of American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos): Is Bird-to-Bird Transmission Important in Persistence and Amplification?

ABSTRACT Since its emergence in North America, West Nile virus (WNV) has had a large impact on equines, humans, and wild bird communities, yet gaps remain in our understanding of how the virus persists at temperate latitudes when winter temperatures preclude virus replication and host-seeking activity by mosquito vectors. Bird-to-bird transmission at large communal American Crow roosts could provide one mechanism for WNV persistence. Herein, we describe seasonal patterns of crow and Culex mosquito abundance,WNVinfection rates, and the prevalence ofWNV-positive fecal samples at a winter crow roost to test the hypothesis that bird-to-bird transmission allows WNV to persist at winter crow roosts. Samples were collected from large winter crow roosts in the Sacramento Valley of California from January 2013 until August 2014, encompassing two overwintering roost periods. West Nile virus RNA was detected in local crow carcasses in both summer [13/18 (72% WNV positive)] and winter [18/44 (41% WNV positive)] 2013–2014. Winter infections were unlikely to have arisen by recent bites from infected mosquitoes because Culex host-seeking activity was very low in winter and all Culex mosquitoes collected during winter months tested negative for WNV. Opportunities existed for fecal-oral transfer at the overwintering roost: most carcasses that tested positive for WNV had detectable viral RNA in both kidney and cloacal swabs, suggesting that infected crows were shedding virus in their feces, and >50% of crows at the roost were stained with feces by mid-winter. Moreover, 2.3% of fecal samples collected in late summer, when mosquitoes were active, tested positive for WNV RNA. Nevertheless, none of the 1,119 feces collected from three roosts over two winters contained detectable WNV RNA. This study provided evidence of WNV infection in overwintering American crows without mosquito vector activity, but did not elucidate a mechanism of WNV transmission during winter.
A Distance Geometric Framework for Nonlinear Hyperspectral Unmixing

In this article, a distance geometry-based framework for hyperspectral image unmixing is presented. A manifold representation of the data set is generated by creation of a nearest-neighbor graph on which shortest paths are calculated yielding a geodesic distance matrix. Instead of unfolding the manifold in a lower-dimensional Euclidean space, it is proposed to work directly on the manifold. To do so, algorithms need to be rewritten in terms of distance geometry. Building further on earlier work, where distance-based dimensionality estimation and endmember extraction methods were presented, we will propose a distance geometric version of the actual unmixing (abundance estimation) step. In this way, a complete distance geometric unmixing framework is obtained that is efficient compared to the classical methods based on optimization. Furthermore, the distance geometry-adapted algorithms can be applied on nonlinear data manifolds by employing geodesic distances. In the experiments, we demonstrate this by comparing the obtained nonlinear framework to its linear counterpart.
The Search for Resilience Weak Spots in Automotive Mixed-Signal Circuits

This paper presents the search for and resulting effects of resilience weak spots in a commercial Local Interconnect Network (LIN) transceiver. Industrial reliability simulations based on aging of devices have been used to locate these weak spots. The objective is to improve the resilience of the circuit during its design and validation phase after determination of the weak spots. In the case of our target chip, this complete cycle was successfully completed. Finally a new simulation principle is being proposed in order to automate the search for weak spots to speed-up and strengthen this search. It enables at an early design stage to take appropriate counter measures to improve resilience.
Generación automática de resúmenes de texto para el acceso a la información

En esta memoria de tesis se proponen nuevas formas de generacion, aplicacion y evaluacion de resumenes indicativos, abordando tanto el ambito de los resumenes monoducumento como el de los multidocumento. La finalidad de estos resumenes es la de convertirse en una ayuda eficaz para los usuarios de sistemas de acceso a la informacion. El marco de aplicacion, en el que los documentos pueden ser de muy distintas caracteristicas, requiere un sistema robusto, moderadamente independiente del genero, dominio, estructura y escala de los textos. La utilizacion de tecnicas de extraccion de frases garantiza esa independencia. Para la generacion de resumenes monodocumento se han utilizado metricas estadisticas y posicionales. La personalizacion del resumen se basa en la consulta de usuario y la expansion de la misma utilizando WordNet. Los resumenes generados de esta forma han sido evaluados en un marco de recuperacion /ah. En la evaluacion se utilizaron recursos disponibles y muy difundidos en el ambito de la RI: las colecciones TREC. La ventaja que aporta esta marco experimental es que se pueden llevar a cabo evaluaciones sistematicas y comparables sobre grandes colecciones de documentos. Los resultados de esta evaluacion muestran la efectividad de los resumenes adaptados a la consulta. Respecto a los resumenes multidocumento, se propone su aplicacion a un entorno de RI con agrupamiento de los resultados de la busqueda. La informacion comun y los aspectos particulares que se observan en los grupos de documentos relacionados semanticamente se presentan por separado en dos resumenes. Los resumenes de los documentos se centran en las diferencias relevantes que caracterizan a cada uno de ellos respecto a la informacion comun proporcionada por el grupo al que pertenecen. El sistema segmenta los textos, tratando de identificar los temas tratados en cada documento y de averiguar el grado de cohesion entre los m
Intranuclear Neuronal Inclusions in Huntington's Disease and Dentatorubral and Pallidoluysian Atrophy: Correlation between the Density of Inclusions andIT15CAG Triplet Repeat Length

Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by CAG triplet repeat expansion in IT15 which leads to polyglutamine stretches in the HD protein product, huntingtin. The pathological hallmark of HD is the degeneration of subsets of neurons, primarily those in the striatum and neocortex. Specific morphological markers of affected cells have not been identified in patients with HD, although a unique itranuclear inclusion was recently reported in neurons of transgenic animals expressing a construct encoding the N-terminal part (including the glutamine repeat) of huntingtin (Davies et al., 1997). In order to understand the importance of this finding, we sought for comparable nuclear abnormalities in autopsy material from patients with HD. In all 20 HD cases examined, anti-ubiquitin and N-terminal huntingtin antibodies identified itranuclear inclusions in neurons and the frequency of these lesions correlated with the length of the CAG repeat in IT15. In addition, examination of material from the related HD-like triplet repeat disorder, dentatorubral and pallidoluysian atrophy, also revealed intranuclear neuronal inclusions. These findings suggest that intranuclear inclusions containing protein aggregates may be common feature of the pathogenesis of glutamine repeat neurodegenerative disorders.
Does Discussion With Disagreement Discourage All Types of Political Participation? Survey Evidence From Hong Kong

Past studies have found contradicting evidence regarding the influence of political discussion with disagreeing others on political participation. This study argues that the impact of discussion with disagreement is likely to depend on the type of participatory activities involved. It conceptualizes a distinction between position-taking and nonposition-taking activities. The former refers to activities designed to have potential participants taking up a set position on a specific matter, whereas the latter refers to activities not designed as such. It is argued that discussion with disagreeing others is likely to suppress participation in position-taking activities, since such activities leave lesser room for participants to express the complexities of and possible ambivalence in their views. In contrast, discussion with disagreeing others may encourage participation in nonposition-taking activities. Relevant hypotheses are tested with a survey conducted in Hong Kong examining the impact of discussion and disagreement on voting, protest participation, and calling into talk radio.