Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NF-κB Activation in Hypothalamic Pro-opiomelanocortin Neurons Is Essential in Illness- and Leptin-induced Anorexia*

Anorexia and weight loss are prevalent in infectious diseases. To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying these phenomena, we established animal models of infection-associated anorexia by administrating bacterial and viral products, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and human immunodeficiency virus-1 transactivator protein (Tat). In these models, we found that the nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB), a pivotal transcription factor for inflammation-related proteins, was activated in the hypothalamus. In parallel, administration of LPS and Tat increased hypothalamic pro-inflammatory cytokine production, which was abrogated by inhibition of hypothalamic NF-κB. In vitro, NF-κB activation directly stimulated the transcriptional activity of pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC), a precursor of anorexigenic melanocortin, and mediated the stimulatory effects of LPS, Tat, and pro-inflammatory cytokines on POMC transcription, implying the involvement of NF-κB in controlling feeding behavior. Consistently, hypothalamic injection of LPS and Tat caused a significant reduction in food intake and body weight, which was prevented by blockade of NF-κB and melanocortin. Furthermore, disruption of IκB kinase-β, an upstream kinase of NF-κB, in POMC neurons attenuated LPS- and Tat-induced anorexia. These findings suggest that infection-associated anorexia and weight loss are mediated via NF-κB activation in hypothalamic POMC neurons. In addition, hypothalamic NF-κB was activated by leptin, an important anorexigenic hormone, and mediates leptin-stimulated POMC transcription, indicating that hypothalamic NF-κB also serves as a downstream signaling pathway of leptin.
Application of quantitative light-induced fluorescence for assessing early caries lesions

Quantitative light induced fluorescence (QLF) is a nondestructive diagnostic method for the longitudinal assessment of early caries lesions in time. When a tooth becomes carious the fluorescence radiance at the location of the caries lesion decreases. The fluorescence image of enamel with incipient lesions can be digitized and then the fluorescence loss in the lesion can be quantified in comparison to the fluorescence radiance level of sound enamel. Changes in fluorescence radiance and lesion area can be followed in time to measure lesion development. The amount of fluorescence radiance loss is related to the mineral loss in the lesion. The technique can be used in vitro, in situ and in vivo to monitor mineral changes in lesions. Applications of QLF are found in the testing of products designed to inhibit demineralization and promote remineralization of caries. The method has been successfully applied to smooth surfaces as well as occlusal surfaces, but application on approximal lesions is not yet possible.
Characterization of a hemocyte intracellular fatty acid‐binding protein from crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) and shrimp (Penaeus monodon)

Intracellular fatty acid‐binding proteins (FABPs) are small members of the superfamily of lipid‐binding proteins, which occur in invertebrates and vertebrates. Included in this superfamily are the cellular retinoic acid‐binding proteins and retinol‐binding proteins, which seem to be restricted to vertebrates. Here, we report the cDNA cloning and characterization of two FABPs from hemocytes of the freshwater crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus and the shrimp Penaeus monodon. In both these proteins, the binding triad residues involved in interaction with ligand carboxylate groups are present. From the sequence and homology modeling, the proteins are probably FABPs and not retinoic acid‐binding proteins. The crayfish transcript (plFABP) was detected at high level in hemocytes, hepatopancreas, intestine and ovary and at low level in hematopoietic tissue and testis. Its expression in hematopoietic cells varied depending on the state of the crayfish from which it was isolated. Expression was 10–15 times higher in cultures isolated from crayfish with red colored plasma, in which hemocyte synthesis was high, if retinoic acid was added to the culture medium. In normal colored crayfish, with normal levels of hemocytes, no increase in expression of p1FABP was detected. Two other putative plFABP ligands, stearic acid and oleic acid, did not have any effect on plFABP expression in hematopoietic cells. These results suggest that retinoic acid‐dependent signaling may be present in crustaceans.
Chloroplast Phospholipid Molecular Species Alterations during Low Temperature Acclimation in Dunaliella.

The alterations in chloroplast phospholipid acyl chain composition and phospholipid molecular species composition of Dunaliella salina (UTEX 1644) were monitored during acclimation to low temperature. Chlorophyll fluorescence yield, an indicator of chloroplast membrane stability, was used as a physical means of following the acclimation process.Minor alterations in phospholipid acyl chain composition were evident within 36 hours of shifting the cells from 30 to 12 degrees C. Between 36 and 60 hours, pronounced changes in the acyl chain composition of phosphatidylglycerol (PG) were observed. Changes in the acyl chain composition of phosphatidylcholine (PC) did not occur until sometime after 60 hours.Alterations in the phospholipid molecular species during acclimation were also examined. The pattern of change observed in PC molecular species, namely a decrease in species having one saturated chain (16:0) paired with a C(18) acyl chain and a concomitant increase in species having two unsaturated C(18) acyl chains, suggests that molecular species changes augment fatty acid compositional changes as a mean of adapting to low temperature. The molecular species of PG were found to change abruptly between 36 and 60 hours following a shift to low temperature. During this time, a dramatic alteration in the threshold temperature of thermal denaturation of the photosynthetic apparatus, as measured by chlorophyll fluorescence, also occurred. Lipid compositional changes other than those associated with PG were negligible during this time. This strongly suggests that a correlation exists between the molecular species composition of PG and the thermal stability of the photosynthetic membrane.
Association of the ACE, GSTM1, IL-6, NOS3, and CYP1A1 polymorphisms with susceptibility of mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia in Chinese children

Abstract Mycoplasma pneumoniae is a common cause of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and the clinical presentation of mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (MPP) varies widely. Genetic variability affecting the host response may also influence the susceptibility to MPP. Several studies have investigated the association between single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of some genes and the risks of CAP; however, the results were inconsistent. Here, we investigated the association of 5 functional genes and the risks of MPP, including ACE (rs4340), GSTM1 (Ins/del), IL-6 (rs1800795), NOS3 (rs1799983), and CYP1A1 (rs2606345) in a total of 715 subjects (415 cases, 300 controls) by using tetra-primer allele-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and Sanger sequencing. The gene–gene interactions were analyzed using the Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction and cumulative genetic risk score approaches. Our results showed that 3 SNPs of ACE rs4340, IL-6 rs1800795, and NOS3 rs1799983 were significantly associated with the risks of MPP, while no differences were observed in genotype frequencies of GSTM1 (Ins/del) and CYP1A1 rs2606345 between both groups. The combinations of ACE rs4340D/NOS3 rs1799983T/CYP1A1 rs2606345G and ACE rs4340D/NOS3 rs1799983T contribute to the genetic susceptibility of MPP in Chinese children.
Cost sharing and adherence to tyrosine kinase inhibitors for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia.

PURPOSE The introduction of imatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), has greatly increased survival for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Conversely, nonadherence to imatinib and other TKIs undoubtedly results in disease progression and treatment resistance. We examined trends in imatinib expenditures from 2002 to 2011 and assessed the association between copayment requirements for imatinib and TKI adherence. PATIENTS AND METHODS We used MarketScan health plan claims from 2002 to 2011 to identify adults (age 18 to 64 years) with CML who initiated imatinib therapy between January 1, 2002, and June 30, 2011, and had insurance coverage for at least 3 months before through 6 months after initiation (N = 1,541). Primary outcomes were TKI discontinuation and nonadherence. The primary independent variable was out-of-pocket cost for a 30-day supply of imatinib. By using a propensity-score weighted sample, we estimated the risk of discontinuation and nonadherence for patients with higher (top quartile) versus lower copayments. RESULTS Monthly copayments for imatinib averaged $108; median copayments were $30 (range, $0 to $4,792). Mean total monthly expenditures for imatinib nearly doubled between 2002 and 2011, from $2,798 to $4,892. Approximately 17% of patients with higher copayments and 10% with lower copayments discontinued TKIs during the first 180 days following initiation (adjusted risk ratio [aRR], 1.70; 95% CI, 1.30 to 2.22). Similarly, patients with higher copayments were 42% more likely to be nonadherent (aRR, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.19 to 1.69). CONCLUSION Patients with higher copayments are more likely to discontinue or be nonadherent to TKIs. Given the importance of these therapies for patients with CML, our data suggest a critical need to reduce patient costs for these therapies.
A coding and Modulation scheme for HDTV services in DMB-T

In this paper a channel coding and modulation scheme for providing HDTV broadcasting services is presented, which adopts BICM structure as inner code in connection with 64QAM constellation and OFDM transmission. A new mapping method is designed to maximize the minimum Euclidean distance between signal points divided by feedback bits, thus an iterative algorithm between demodulator and decoder can be performed to acquire performance improvement. Analysis, simulation and laboratory test results have proved that the proposed system has good SNR performance in both AWGN and multipath channels.
BandClust: An Unsupervised Band Reduction Method for Hyperspectral Remote Sensing

We address the problem of unsupervised band reduction in hyperspectral remote sensing imagery. We propose the use of an information theoretic criterion to automatically separate the sensor's spectral range into disjoint subbands without ground truth knowledge. Our approach, named BandClust, preserves the physical sense of the spectral data and automatically provides relevant spectral subbands, i.e., of maximal informational complementarity. Experiments using real hyperspectral images are conducted to compare BandClust with four other unsupervised approaches. The comparison of the selected dimensionality reduction methods is performed via supervised classification using support vector machines and shows the potential of the proposed approach.
A Comparison of Two Psychiatric Screening Tests

Summary A comparison is made between the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and the Symptom Checklist (SCL) as psychiatric screening tests in community-based research projects. Both are shown to correlate equally well with independent clinical assessment, and the differences between them mainly reside in the form of their response scales. The GHQ works best as a screening test, since it has fewer false positives associated with its use, but it may miss those with long-standing disorders. The SCL tends not to miss long-standing disorders and furnishes diagnostic sub-scales if these are required. Both tests function better with men than with women and with whites than with blacks, but neither is affected by social class or age of the respondent. The study revealed high correlations between the symptoms of anxiety and depression, and indicated some possible differences between the symptom clusters seen in whites and in blacks.
Identifying Protein Flexibility by NMA

Abstract Here proposed apriori method for identification of protein flexibility relies on one end-state conformation of the protein. This method has comparative advantage over many others because it requires only one end-state conformation to efficiently identify protein flexibility. The background of this method relies on normal mode analysis as well as on several approximations and enhancements proposed in this work. Some of the enhancements are the development of enhanced anisotropic network model, integration of loopback procedure into clustering algorithm etc. These enhancements and some approximations have significantly decreased program complexity thus increasing computational speed. However, due to the possible accuracy drawbacks this method has been thoroughly tested. Accuracy testing of the method was conducted by comparing calculated and experimental temperature factors. Tests had shown significant correlation between experimental and calculated data. This comparison has been most useful to prove the accuracy of the results obtained by apriori method.
A novel Asymmetric Turbo code using Cuckoo Search algorithm

Utilization of error-correction coding scheme in contemporary communication system enhances sufficient redundancy which in turn increases the immunity to deal with the channel impairments. Proper adjustment of interleaver size and iteration leads to considerable improvement in BER performance of Turbo code under AWGN channel condition. In this paper, an optimized Asymmetric Turbo code has been proposed to improve BER performance ominously both in “waterfall” and “error-floor” regions using Cuckoo Search algorithm. The Recursive Systematic Convolutional (RSC) encoder with different poly2trellis has been used to demonstrate the improvement in BER characteristics both in low as well as high SNR regions. Moreover, the variation of BER values with the block lengths of the code has also been observed. Finally, the BER performance of the proposed Cuckoo-Search (CS) optimized Asymmetric Turbo code has been compared with conventional as well as Harmony Search (HS) optimized Asymmetric Turbo Code.
Intelligent question — Answering systems: Review of research

With the development of ICT the need for automated question-answering systems is becoming increasingly important. Question-answering systems are still under development and experimentation. This paper is an overview of the research area that deals with question-answering systems; it explains the concept of question-answering systems and points out the problems that occur during their development. It also refers to a complex assessment techniques that are necessary when designing such systems. The system described is a real system and so are the test results.
Author Proof Low-altitude Terrestrial Spectroscopy from a Pushbroom

Q3 Juan-Pablo Ramirez-Paredes Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road, Richardson, Texas 75080 e-mail: pablo.ramirez@utdallas.edu David Lary Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road, Richardson, Texas 75080 e-mail: david.lary@utdallas.edu Nicholas Gans Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road, Richardson, Texas 75080
Data-Parallel Programming on MIMD Computers

The inadequacies of conventional parallel languages for programming multicomputers are identified. The C* language is briefly reviewed, and a compiler that translates C* programs into C programs suitable for compilation and execution on a hypercube multicomputer is presented. Results illustrating the efficiency of executing data-parallel programs on a hypercube multicomputer are reported. They show the speedup achieved by three hand-compiled C* programs executing on an N-Cube 3200 multicomputer. The first two programs, Mandelbrot set calculation and matrix multiplication, have a high degree of parallelism and a simple control structure. The C* compiler can generate relatively straightforward code with performance comparable to hand-written C code. Results for a C* program that performs Gaussian elimination with partial pivoting are also presented and discussed. >
A Longitudinal Study of Fathers’ and Young Children’s Depressive Symptoms

Considerable research has examined the effects of maternal depression on children, but few studies have focused on the relation between paternal and child depressive symptoms, particularly during early childhood. Even fewer studies have been longitudinal, leaving open questions about how paternal and child depression covary over time. The present study sought to address this gap by examining the relation between fathers’ and children’s depressive symptoms over a 3-year period. Participants were 153 preschool children with behavior problems and their parents. Three longitudinal analytic approaches were used to examine how father and child depression change together and predict one another over time. Additional analyses examined whether externalizing problems or maternal depression might account for the associations between fathers’ and children’s depressive symptoms. Changes in paternal depression significantly predicted changes in father-reported and mother-reported child depressive symptoms. These effects were evident both in year-to-year fluctuations and in linear trajectories across the 3-year period. Cross-lagged analyses suggested that these relations may have been driven by father-effects; paternal depression at one time point predicted child depression at the next time point, but child depression did not significantly predict later paternal depression. We found little evidence that externalizing problems or maternal depression accounted for the relations between fathers’ and children’s depressive symptoms. Results provide convergent evidence that fathers’ depression may play an important role in the development of depressive symptoms in young children and underscore the importance of including fathers in studies of depression in families.
Brain injury: Analysis of imaging modalities

Abstract Advances in imaging have had a significant impact not only on the diagnosis of but also on the management of patients with brain injury. Various modalities are available to image the brain; however, it is not always clear which imaging modality (CT, MRI, SPECT, PET, etc.) is optimal for a specific aspect of traumatized brain. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the over 20,000 imaging studies done in brain injury and to compare the results with the experience in the literature. A detailed comparison has been done relative to CT, MRI, SPECT and PET in traumatic brain injury. [Neurol 2002; 24: 7-18]
Transcutaneous Po2 of the Scalp in Male Pattern Baldness: A New Piece to the Puzzle

&NA; Our study was designed to measure the transcutaneous PO2 of the scalp to determine if there was a relative microvascular insufficiency and associated tissue hypoxia in areas of hair loss in male pattern baldness. A controlled prospective study was performed at Butterworth Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Eighteen nonsmoking male volunteers aged 18 years and older were studied. Nine men had male pattern baldness (Juri degree II or III), and nine were controls (no male pattern baldness). Scalp temperature and transcutaneous PO2 were obtained at frontal and temporal sites in each subject. Peripheral circulation was assessed from postocclusive transcutaneous PO2 recovery time by means of maximum initial slope measurements. Statistical significance was assessed at p < 0.05. There was no significant difference in scalp temperature between male pattern baldness subjects and controls. Temporal scalp blood flow was significantly higher than frontal scalp blood flow in male pattern baldness subjects; however, there was no significant difference in controls. Transcutaneous PO2 was significantly lower in bald frontal scalp (32.2 ± 2.0 mmHg) than in hair‐bearing temporal scalp (51.8 ± 4.4 mmHg) in men with male pattern baldness. In controls, there was no significant difference in transcutaneous PO2 of frontal scalp (53.9 ± 3.5 mmHg) and temporal scalp (61.4 ± 2.7 mmHg). Transcutaneous PO2 also was significantly lower in the frontal scalp of male pattern baldness subjects (32.2 ± 2.0 mmHg) than in either frontal or temporal scalp of controls (53.9 ± 3.5 mmHg and 61.4 ± 2.7 mmHg, respectively). There is a relative microvascular insufficiency to regions of the scalp that lose hair in male pattern baldness. We have identified a previously unreported tissue hypoxia in bald scalp compared with hair‐bearing scalp. (Plast. Reconstr. Surg. 97: 1109, 1996.)
Adapting off-the-shelf CNNs for word spotting & recognition

The word spotting approach is extremely useful for searching and annotating documents for which robust recognizers are unavailable. Traditionally, hand-designed features were used to represent the word images for spotting. In this paper, we learn a data-driven representation for word-images from Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Previous approaches that learn deep neural networks for a particular task/dataset are difficult to design and train for generic word spotting. Instead, by “adapting” a CNN trained for a different problem, we show tremendous speedup in the training phase. Our experiments show that features extracted from an adapted-CNN handsomely outperform hand-designed features on both spotting and recognition tasks for printed (English and Telugu) and handwritten (IAM) document collections.
Physical Activity, Waist‐to-Hip Ratio, and Other Risk Factors for Ovarian Cancer: A Follow‐up Study of Older Women

We investigated the association of epithelial ovarian cancer with physical activity, waist-to-hip ratio, reproductive factors, and family history of cancer in a prospective cohort study of 31,396 postmenopausal women. Ninety-seven women developed incident epithelial ovarian cancer over 7 years. The number of livebirths was associated with lower risk (multivariate-adjusted relative risks for 1–2, 3–4, and ≤4 livebirths compared with nulliparity were 0.64, 0.47, and 0.43, respectively). A family history of ovarian cancer in a first-degree relative was associated with a 2.5 times greater risk (95% confidence interval = 0.90–6.7). Multivariate-adjusted relative risks for the upper three quartiles of waist-to-hip ratio compared with the lowest quartile were 2.0, 1.6, and 2.3, respectively. Women with “moderate” and “high” levels of physical activity compared with those with “low” physical activity had relative risks of 1.4 and 2.1, respectively. Positive associations of physical activity and waist-to-hip ratio with ovarian cancer seem inconsistent with existing theories of ovarian cancer pathogenesis.
Oscillation-test technique for Buck voltage regulator

In this paper, a vector-less simple technique based on the oscillation-test strategy (OTS) is proposed for the test of the Buck regulator. In the test mode, the circuit under test (CUT) of the buck regulator could be easily transformed into an oscillator for generating the oscillating signal. By observing the frequency and amplitude of the oscillating signal, we could detect the CUT to see if it is faulty or fault-free. Simulation results show that the fault coverage for hard faults could reach up to 99%. Based on the facts of the simple structure and high fault coverage, OTS is considered as a useful technique in the testing of the Buck regulator.