Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analgesic Effect of Recombinant GABAergic Cells in a Model of Peripheral Neuropathic Pain

Chronic neuropathic pain represents a clinically challenging state with a poor response to current treatment options. Long-term management of chronic pain is often associated with the development of tolerance, addiction, and other side effects, reducing the therapeutic value of treatment. Alternative strategies based on cell therapy and gene manipulation, balancing the inhibitory and excitatory events in the spinal cord, may provide sustained pain relief in the long term. Transplantation of GABAergic cells has been successfully used to enhance inhibition and to restore physiological spinal pain processing. However, since the underlying mechanism of chronic pain development involves changes in several pain-signaling pathways, it is essential to develop an approach that targets several components of pain signaling. Recombinant cell therapy offers the possibility to deliver additional analgesic substances to the restricted area in the nervous system. The current study explores the analgesic potential of genetically modified rat embryonic GABAergic cells releasing a peptidergic NMDA receptor antagonist, Serine1-histogranin (SHG). Overactivation of glutamate NMDA receptors contributes to the hyperexcitability of spinal neurons observed in chronic pain models. Our approach allows us to simultaneously target spinal hyperexcitability and reduced inhibitory processes. Transplantable cells were transduced by viral vectors encoding either one or six copies of SHG cDNAs. The analgesic potential of recombinant cells after their intraspinal transplantation was evaluated in a model of peripheral nerve injury. Enhanced reduction of hypersensitivity to thermal and mechanical stimuli was observed in animals treated by recombinant cells compared to the nonrecombinant group. The recombinant peptide was detected in the spinal tissue, suggesting its successful production by transplanted cells. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of using recombinant cells releasing adjunct analgesic peptides in the therapy of neuropathic pain.
Investigating the android intents and permissions for malware detection

Mobile phones are mastering our day to day scheduling, entertainment, information and almost every aspect of life. With the increasing human dependence on smart phones, threats against these devices have also increased exponentially. Almost all the mobile apps are playing with the mobile user's privacy besides the targeted actions by the malicious apps. Android applications use permissions to use different features and resources of mobile device along with the intents to launch different activities. Various aspects of permission framework have been studied but sufficient attention has not been given to the intent framework. This work is first of its kind which is investigating the combined effects of permissions and intent filters to distinguish between the malware and benign apps. This paper proposes a novel approach to identify the malicious apps by analyzing the permission and intent patterns of android apps. This approach is supplemented with the machine learning algorithms for further classification of apps. Performance of proposed approach has been validated by applying the technique to the available malicious and benign samples collected from a number of sources.
miR‐199a‐3p and miR‐214‐3p improve the overall survival prediction of muscle‐invasive bladder cancer patients after radical cystectomy

To improve the clinical decision‐making regarding further treatment management and follow‐up scheduling for patients with muscle‐invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) after radical cystectomy (RC), a better prediction accuracy of prognosis for these patients is urgently needed. The objective of this study was to evaluate the validity of differentially expressed microRNAs (miRNAs) based on a previous study as prognostic markers for overall survival (OS) after RC in models combined with clinicopathological data. The expression of six miRNAs (miR‐100‐5p, miR‐130b‐3p, miR‐141‐3p, miR‐199a‐3p, miR‐205‐5p, and miR‐214‐3p) was measured by RT‐qPCR in formalin‐fixed, paraffin‐embedded tissue samples from 156 MIBC patients who received RC in three urological centers. Samples from 2000 to 2013 were used according to their tissue availability, with follow‐up until June 2016. The patient cohort was randomly divided into a training (n = 100) and test set (n = 56). Seventy‐three samples from adjacent normal tissue were used as controls. Kaplan–Meier, univariate and multivariate Cox regression, and decision curve analyses were carried out to assess the association of clinicopathological variables and miRNAs to OS. Both increased (miR‐130b‐3p and miR‐141‐3p) and reduced (miR‐100‐5p, miR‐199a‐3p, and miR‐214‐3p) miRNA expressions were found in MIBC samples in comparison to nonmalignant tissue samples (P < 0.0001). miR‐199a‐3p and miR‐214‐3p were independent markers of OS in Cox regression models with the significant clinicopathological variables age, tumor status, and lymph node status. The prediction model with the clinicopathological variables was improved by these two miRNAs in both sets. The predictive benefit was confirmed by decision curve analysis. In conclusion, the inclusion of both miRNAs into models based on clinical data for the outcome prediction of MIBC patients after RC could be a valuable approach to improve prognostic accuracy.
Does clozapine cause tardive dyskinesia?

BACKGROUND The authors attempted to determine if chronic exposure to clozapine can cause tardive dyskinesia. METHOD Twenty-eight schizophrenic or schizoaffective patients with no prior history of definite tardive dyskinesia were treated with clozapine for at least 1 year, and their ongoing modified Simpson Dyskinesia Scale ratings were analyzed. These data were then compared with those of another group of similarly diagnosed patients who were treated with a conventional neuroleptic for at least 1 year. RESULTS Two patients in the clozapine-treated group (both of whom had ratings of questionable tardive dyskinesia at baseline) were later rated by the modified Simpson Dyskinesia Scale as having mild tardive dyskinesia on at least two consecutive ratings 3 months apart. Although there was uncertainty about whether clozapine definitely caused the tardive dyskinesia in those two patients, a survival analysis comparing the clozapine-treated group with the neuroleptic-treated group showed a lower risk of tardive dyskinesia developing in the clozapine-treated group. CONCLUSION This study was unable to definitively conclude whether clozapine causes tardive dyskinesia. However, if cases do develop, the risk of tardive dyskinesia is likely to be less with clozapine than with typical neuroleptics.
FPZL Schedulability Analysis

This paper presents the Fixed Priority until Zero Laxity (FPZL) scheduling algorithm for multiprocessor realtime systems. FPZL is similar to global fixed priority preemptive scheduling, however, whenever a task reaches a state of zero laxity it is given the highest priority. FPZL is a minimally dynamic algorithm, in that the priority of a job can change at most once during its execution, bounding the number of pre-emptions. Polynomial time and pseudopolynomial time sufficient schedulability tests are derived for FPZL. These tests are then improved by computing upper bounds on the amount of execution that each task can perform in the zero laxity state. An empirical evaluation shows that FPZL is highly effective, with a significantly larger number of task sets deemed schedulable by the tests derived in this paper, than by state-of-the-art schedulability tests for Earliest Deadline until Zero Laxity (EDZL) scheduling.
A Large-Scale Analysis of the Relationship of Synonymous SNPs Changing MicroRNA Regulation with Functionality and Disease

Historically, owing to not changing amino acid composition of protein sequences, synonymous mutations are commonly assumed to be neutral during evolution and therefore have no effect on the phenotype and disease. Here, based on observations from large-scale analysis of genomic data, we predicted the putative synonymous SNPs that could result in functional consequences and disease risk through changing the microRNA-mediated gene regulation. We found that nearly half of the synonymous SNPs could affect protein expression by changing microRNA regulation in human genome and these SNPs significantly prefer to be associated with human diseases and traits. The synonymous SNPs changing microRNA-mediated gene regulation tend to be more under recent positive selection, prefer to affect gene expression, and implicate in human disease. We conclude that the miRNA-mediated regulation changes could be a potential mechanism for the contributions of synonymous SNPs to protein functions and disease risks.
“I Didn't Know He Had It in Him to Kill Me”: Nonlethal Firearms Use and Partner Violence Against Canadian Women

This qualitative research explored with women the nature and impact of non-lethal firearm related assaults inflicted on them by their male partners. Forty women from Alberta, Canada described incident(s) in which firearms were central, with 5 contextual themes emerging: (a) threats by partners to commit suicide with firearms (4 women); (b) indirect threats (6 women); (c) explicit threats to harm with a firearm without producing the weapon (11 women); (d) one traumatic incident involving firearms (12 women); and (e) firearm threats or used throughout the relationship (7 women). Practice and policy options are presented for forensic and clinical social workers, shelter workers and police officers.
Signal Processing Structures for Solving Conservative Constraint Satisfaction Problems

This primary purpose of this paper is to succinctly state a number of verifiable and tractable sufficient conditions under which a particular class of conservative signal processing structures may be readily used to solve a companion class of constraint satisfaction problems using both synchronous and asynchronous implementation protocols. In particular, the mentioned class of structures is shown to have desirable convergence and robustness properties with respect to various uncertainties involving communication and processing delays. Essential ingredients to the arguments herein involve blending together functional composition methods, conservation principles, asynchronous signal processing implementation protocols, and methods of homotopy. Numerical experiments complement the theoretical presentation and connections to optimization theory are made.
Flexible job search behaviour among unemployed jobseekers: antecedents and outcomes

The interest in flexible job search behaviour (FJSB) among unemployed jobseekers, i.e., the extent to which jobseekers also look for jobs that deviate from their studies and earlier work experience, has grown considerably in recent years. Yet, there is large disagreement on both its consequences and drivers. Career scholars as well as policymakers believe that FJSB is important for unemployed and can improve their employment prospects. However, evidence from human resource (HR) literature raises doubts whether FJSB can enhance re-employment success. Similarly, whereas the career literature links FJSB to positive attitudes, such as career adaptability, the HR literature suggests that people searching flexibly may feel pushed into this behaviour due to more negative reasons, like few labour market perspectives. The aim of this study is examining these opposing expectations. We focus on three FJSB types: flexibility with respect to pay/hierarchical level, skill use and commuting time. Hypotheses are tested using two-wave data with 672 unemployed. Results indicate, among others, that career-adaptable people are not inclined to search more flexibly. In addition, FJSB may in certain cases hamper people’s re-employment likelihood. People searching more flexibly also more often became underemployed and as such experienced a more negative job quality.
PCR amplification and comparison of nucleotide sequences from the groESL heat shock operon of Ehrlichia species

Degenerate PCR primers derived from conserved regions of the eubacterial groESL heat shock operon were used to amplify groESL sequences of Ehrlichia equi, Ehrlichia phagocytophila, the agent of human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE), Ehrlichia canis, Bartonella henselae, and Rickettsia rickettsii. The groESL nucleotide sequences were less conserved than the previously determined 16S rRNA gene sequences of these bacteria. A phylogenetic tree derived from deduced GroEL amino acid sequences was similar to trees based on 16S rRNA gene sequences. Nucleotide sequences obtained from clinical samples containing E. equi, E. phagocytophila, or the HGE agent were very similar (99.9 to 99.0% identity), and the deduced amino acid sequences were identical. Some divergence was evident between nucleotide sequences amplified from samples originating from the United States (E. equi and the HGE agent) and sequences from the European species, E. phagocytophila. A single pair of PCR primers derived from these sequences was used to detect E. chaffeensis and HGE agent DNA in blood samples from human patients with ehrlichiosis.
Antigen Specificity of the Humoral Immune Response to Mycoplasma haemofelis Infection

ABSTRACT The aim of the present study was to characterize the antigenic specificity of the humoral immune response made by cats infected with the feline hemoplasma, Mycoplasma haemofelis. A crude M. haemofelis antigen preparation was prepared from red blood cells (RBCs) collected from a cat at the time of a high level of bacteremia. Plasma samples were collected from six cats before and after experimental infection with M. haemofelis, with regular sampling being performed from 15 to 149 or 153 days postinfection (dpi). Preinfection RBC membrane ghosts were prepared from these six cats and used to identify erythrocyte proteins that may have contaminated the M. haemofelis antigen preparation. The M. haemofelis antigen preparation comprised 11 protein bands. The immunodominant bands on Western blotting with infected cat plasma had molecular masses of 78, 68, 60, 48, and 38 kDa. Most cats (n = 5) had plasma antibody that reacted with at least one band (always including the one of 68 kDa) at 15 dpi, and all cats were seroreactive by 29 dpi. The maximum number of antibodies from an individual animal specific for an antigen was identified in plasma collected from 57 to 99 dpi. Contamination of the M. haemofelis antigen preparation with RBC membrane proteins was observed. The contaminating RBC proteins had molecular masses of from 71 to 72 kDa (consistent with band 4.2) and 261 and 238 kDa (consistent with spectrin), and these were recognized by all plasma samples. A range of M. haemofelis antigens is recognized by cats infected experimentally with the organism. These represent possible targets for immunoassays, but care must be taken to prevent false-positive results due to host protein contamination.
Rapid Stimulatory Effects of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor and Neurotrophin-3 on Somatostatin Release and Intracellular Calcium Rise in Primary Hypothalamic Cell Cultures

Although the long-lasting effects of neurotrophins have been extensively studied, less data are available on their rapid effects, especially on peptide release. In the present report, we investigated rapid effects of neurotrophins on somatostatin release and on intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i) in primary cultures of hypothalamic neurons. RT-PCR experiments revealed mRNA expression of the three high-affinity neurotrophin receptors tyrosine kinase (Trk) TrkA, TrkB and TrkC, indicating potential responses to their preferential ligands: nerve growth factor (NGF), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin 3 (NT-3), respectively. We demonstrated that BDNF, and to a lesser extent NT-3, induced significant time- and concentration-dependent somatostatin release, while NGF was devoid of any effect. BDNF or NT-3 induction of somatostatin release was inhibited by the Trk inhibitors K-252a and genistein, whereas K-252b, a less effective inhibitor, had no effect. BDNF- and NT-3-induced somatostatin release depended upon extra- and intracellular Ca2+ since it was completely abolished in the presence of the Ca2+ chelators BAPTA (bis-(α-aminophenoxy)-ethane-N,N,N′,N′-tetraacetic acid) or BAPTA-AM (bis-(α-aminophenoxy)-ethane-N,N,N′,N′-tetraacetoxymethylester), respectively. In addition, BDNF and NT-3 induced a sustained and rapid increase in [Ca2+]i which depended on the extracellular Ca2+ concentration. MK-801 (dizocilpine) and tetrodotoxin (TTX) entirely blocked neurotrophin-evoked somatostatin release and [Ca2+]i rise in response to BDNF and NT-3 application in most neurons. Neurotrophin-induced [Ca2+]i rise was completely blocked by K-252a. The present results are consistent with: (1) an indirect effect of neurotrophins on somatostatin release via endogenous glutamate release and subsequent NMDA receptor activation, (2) a major indirect effect of neurotrophins on Ca2+ rise in hypothalamic neurons which very likely occurs through NMDA receptor activation. Taken altogether, these results indicate that BDNF and NT-3 can rapidly affect the activity of hypothalamic neurons.
Network Structure of Protein Folding Pathways

The classical approach to protein folding inspired by statistical mechanics avoids the high dimensional structure of the conformation space by using effective coordinates. Here we introduce a network approach to capture the statistical properties of the structure of conformation spaces. Conformations are represented as nodes of the network, while links are transitions via elementary rotations around a chemical bond. Self-avoidance of a polypeptide chain introduces degree correlations in the conformation network, which in turn lead to energy landscape correlations. Folding can be interpreted as a biased random walk on the conformation network. We show that the folding pathways along energy gradients organize themselves into scale free networks, thus explaining previous observations made via molecular dynamics simulations. We also show that these energy landscape correlations are essential for recovering the observed connectivity exponent, which belongs to a different universality class than that of random energy models. In addition, we predict that the exponent and therefore the structure of the folding network fundamentally changes at high temperatures, as verified by our simulations on the AK peptide.
Naturally occurring human parainfluenza type 3 viruses exhibit divergence in amino acid sequence of their fusion protein neutralization epitopes and cleavage sites

Many human parainfluenza type 3 virus (PIV3) strains isolated from children with respiratory illness are resistant to neutralization by monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) which recognize epitopes in antigenic site A or B of the fusion (F) protein of the prototype 1957 PIV3 strain. The F protein genes of seven PIV3 clinical isolates were sequenced to determine whether their neutralization-resistant phenotypes were associated with specific differences in amino acids which are recognized by neutralizing MAbs. Several clinical strains which were resistant to neutralization by site A or B MAbs had amino acid differences at residues 398 or 73, respectively. These specific changes undoubtedly account for the neutralization-resistant phenotype of these isolates, since identical substitutions at residues 398 or 73 in MAb-selected escape mutants confer resistance to neutralization by site A or B MAbs. The existence of identical changes in naturally occurring and MAb-selected neutralization-resistant PIV3 strains raises the possibility that antigenically different strains may arise by immune selection during replication in partially immune children. Three of the seven clinical strains examined had differences in their F protein cleavage site sequence. Whereas the prototype PIV3 strain has the cleavage site sequence Arg-Thr-Lys-Arg, one clinical isolate had the sequence Arg-Thr-Arg-Arg and two isolates had the sequence Arg-Thr-Glu-Arg. The different cleavage site sequences of these viruses did not affect their level of replication in either continuous simian or bovine kidney cell monolayers (in the presence or absence of exogenous trypsin or plasmin) or in the upper or lower respiratory tract of rhesus monkeys. We conclude that two nonconsecutive basic residues within the F protein cleavage site are sufficient for efficient replication of human PIV3 in primates.
Analyzing the cross-generalization ability of a hybrid genetic & evolutionary application for multibiometric feature weighting and selection

Genetic & Evolutionary Biometrics (GEB) is a new field of study devoted to the use of Genetic & Evolutionary Computations to solve some of the traditional problems within the field of biometrics. In this paper, we evaluate the performances of two GEB applications, Genetic & Evolutionary Fusion (GEF) and Genetic & Evolutionary Feature Weighting/Selection-Machine Learning (GEFeWS-ML), on the FRGC and MORPH databases. We then investigate the ability of the evolved weights and feature masks (FMs) to generalize across datasets. Our results showed that the GEB applications were robust, achieving high recognition accuracies across the datasets. In addition, the FMs achieved these recognition accuracies while using less than 50% of the originally extracted features.
A Forecasting Approach on Development of Manufacturing Industry Using Support Vector Machine Combined with Grey System

In order to solve the manufacturing time series forecasting problem, a grey support vector machines (GSVM) with differential evolution algorithms is proposed. GM (1, N) model of grey system is used to add a grey layer before neural input layer and white layer after support vector machine layer. Differential evolution (DE) algorithm is used to determine free parameters of support vector machines. Evaluation method has been used for comparing the performance of forecasting techniques. The experiments show that the proposed model in this paper outperforms either GM (1, N) model or support vector machine model with DE algorithms in the field of forecast.
Current Applications and Future Perspectives of the Use of 3D Printing in Anatomical Training and Neurosurgery

3D printing is a form of rapid prototyping technology, which has led to innovative new applications in biomedicine. It facilitates the production of highly accurate three dimensional objects from substrate materials. The inherent accuracy and other properties of 3D printing have allowed it to have exciting applications in anatomy education and surgery, with the specialty of neurosurgery having benefited particularly well. This article presents the findings of a literature review of the Pubmed and Web of Science databases investigating the applications of 3D printing in anatomy and surgical education, and neurosurgery. A number of applications within these fields were found, with many significantly improving the quality of anatomy and surgical education, and the practice of neurosurgery. They also offered advantages over existing approaches and practices. It is envisaged that the number of useful applications will rise in the coming years, particularly as the costs of this technology decrease and its uptake rises.