Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kv2 channels regulate firing rate in pyramidal neurons from rat sensorimotor cortex

• Neurons express many types of potassium channels that are activated by voltage but relatively little is known concerning the division of labour between different channel types in a given cell. • Our understanding of the functional roles of Kv2 channels has been hindered by the lack of selective pharmacological agents for these channels. • We manipulated Kv2 channel expression by transfecting pyramidal neurons with wild‐type and pore mutant channels. • We found that reduction in functional Kv2 channels led to slower firing rates, reduced gain of firing and increased spike frequency adaptation. • We hypothesize that Kv2 channels regulate firing by controlling membrane potential during the inter‐spike interval, which in turn regulates availability of voltage‐gated sodium channels.
Software engineering documentation: an ontology-based approach

The number of artifacts used and generated by the software development process can be meaningful. However, as specifications evolve towards source code, the connection between them is often lost transforming software maintenance into a difficult and time-consuming task, further hindered by the lack of good documentation. To help organize generated artifacts and maintain a historical overview of the process, a tool is being specified that uses ontologies to combine real world domain information and software engineering knowledge, to produce up-to-date documentation that evolves along time.
SpeX SPECTROSCOPY OF UNRESOLVED VERY LOW MASS BINARIES. II. IDENTIFICATION OF 14 CANDIDATE BINARIES WITH LATE-M/EARLY-L AND T DWARF COMPONENTS

Multiplicity is a key statistic for understanding the formation of very low mass (VLM) stars and brown dwarfs. Currently, the separation distribution of VLM binaries remains poorly constrained at small separations (⩽1 AU), leading to uncertainty in the overall binary fraction. We approach this problem by searching for late-M/early-L plus T dwarf spectral binaries whose combined light spectra exhibit distinct peculiarities, allowing for separation-independent identification. We define a set of spectral indices designed to identify these systems, and we use a spectral template fitting method to confirm and characterize spectral binary candidates from a library of 815 spectra from the SpeX Prism Spectral Libraries. We present 11 new binary candidates, confirm 3 previously reported candidates, and rule out 2 previously identified candidates, all with primary and secondary spectral types in the range M7–L7 and T1–T8, respectively. We find that subdwarfs and blue L dwarfs are the primary contaminants in our sample and propose a method for segregating these sources. If confirmed by follow-up observations, these systems may add to the growing list of tight separation binaries, whose orbital properties may yield further insight into brown dwarf formation scenarios.
SN-38 active loading in poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles and assessment of their anticancer properties on COLO-205 human colon adenocarcinoma cells

Abstract SN-38 is a highly effective drug against many cancers. The development of an optimal delivery system for SN-38 is extremely challenging due to its low solubility and labile lactone ring. Herein, SN-38 encapsulated in poly(d,l-lactide-co-glycolide) nanoparticles (NPs) is introduced to enhance its solubility, stability and cellular uptake. SN-38-loaded NPs prepared by spontaneous emulsification solvent diffusion (SESD) method had an average diameter of 310 nm, a zeta potential of −9.69 mV and a loading efficiency of 71%. They were able to protect the active lactone ring of SN-38 against inactivation under physiological condition. A colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line (COLO-205) was used to assess the NPs effects on cytotoxicity and cellular uptake. Result showed a significant decreased cell proliferation and cell apoptosis. These results suggest that these SN-38-loaded NPs can be an effective delivery system for the treatment of colon cancer and potentially for other types of cancers.
A study of environment and early man in the Southern Norwegian highlands

Thirty‐seven Early Mesolithic settlement sites in the southern Norwegian highlands have been radiocarbon‐dated. The results indicate that the earliest habitation of the northern parts of the area dates to the middle of the 9th millenium B.P., while the oldest sites of the southern plains are almost 1000 years younger. At ca. 7500 B.P. there was a sudden increase in the number of southern sites. Palynological investigations indicate that the southern plains were partly forested from ca. 8500 to 8000 B.P. In the northern areas the higher relief left large areas unforested. The southern plain forest disappeared during the first half of the 8th millenium B.P. During the forest period, the northern areas were the most favourable for reindeer. It is probable that the deforestation caused a rapid expansion of the reindeer population into the southern plains soon after 8000 B.P. Reindeer was the most important resource for the early highland hunters. Fluctuations of the reindeer population, caused by vegetational.
Two-Phase Online Virtual Machine Placement in Heterogeneous Cloud Data Center

With the rapid development and popularity of cloud computing technology, more and more Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) systems are migrated to cloud computing environment to improve the effectiveness of resource usage. Virtual Machine (VM) placement in cloud data center is a key issue of providing high-efficient cloud platform for CVE system. However, most existing VM placement algorithms ignore the following characteristics of actual cloud environment: (1) VMs deployment requests arrive and leave dynamically, (2) Cloud data center usually consists of many heterogeneous Physical Machines (PMs). Ignoring these two characteristics result in an inefficient and unbalanced use of multiple resources of PMs. Thus using these algorithms directly will lead to a poor resource utilization. In this article, we propose a two-phase online VM placement algorithm, which helps the cloud data center to minimize different resource usages and aims at a more efficient use of multiple resources. Our algorithm selects the most suitable PM type for VM based on Cosine Similarity, and adaptively maps VMs to PMs by using an approximation algorithm. The proposed algorithm is evaluated by simulations. Experimental results show our proposed algorithm ensures a more efficient use of multiple resources over the existing approaches.
A quantitative analysis of the net benefits of grid integrated wind

Throughout the world significant development is being encouraged in wind energy for electricity generation. A complete cost and benefit analysis has been conducted in this paper on grid connected wind generation. It takes into account system costs such as reserve requirements, start-up and ramping implications for conventional plants as well as wear and tear costs. The benefits of wind generation analysed include the emissions benefits, the saving on the fuel bill, the electricity generated and the capacity value. These costs and benefits are then used to generate net benefit curves for wind generation and the sensitivities of the curves are tested with changes in the underlying assumptions. A complete unit commitment model with wind generation is used to determine the dispatches upon which the costs and benefits are calculated
Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing (CMSW)

This poster describes the online Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing (1700-1945), being created at the University of Glasgow. The corpus fills the chronological gap between the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (1375-1700) and the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (1945-present). The period covered by CMSW is an important time in the history of Scotland and Scots. It begins with the last stages of the standardisation of written English and the onset of the ‘Vernacular Revival’ in literary Scots. Out of the interaction between Broad Scots and written Standard English, the hybrid prestige variety of today’s Scottish English is said to emerge: CMSW will allow researchers to substantiate this claim, among many others. Once complete, CMSW will contain at least 4 million words of text, with accompanying metadata, covering a range of genres, including personal writing, administrative prose, verse and drama, and the writings of language commentators.
COMPARING THE AIR QUALITY INSIDE ENCLOSED CABS OF UNDERGROUND MINING EQUIPMENT WITH MERV 16 AND HEPA FILTERS

In recent years, significant strides have been made to optimize the design of filtration and pressurization systems used on enclosed cabs of mobile mining equipment to reduce respirable dust and other contaminants and provide the best air quality to the equipment operators. This synergetic effort has involved original equipment manufacturers building mining equipment, manufacturers of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems for mobile equipment, filtration and pressurization system manufacturing companies, as well as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and other government organizations. Considering all the advances made in this area over the last decade, one aspect that NIOSH still needs to assess is the longevity of optimal cab performance with respect to the quality (filtering efficiency) of the filters used in filtration and pressurization systems. In today’s culture, most health and safety professionals automatically believe that HEPA quality filters need to be used to provide the greatest level of protection to workers. Researchers at the Office of Mine Safety and Health Research for NIOSH hypothesized that HEPA quality filters may not be optimal for the mining industry and speculated that MERV 16 rated filters would be more appropriate in most cases. In order to test this hypothesis, NIOSH performed a twoyear study comparing both HEPA and MERV 16 quality filters on two pieces of underground limestone mining equipment, being a roof-bolter and face drill machine. Testing showed at the 95 pct. confidence level that there was no statistical difference between the two efficiency filters on both pieces of mining equipment. Since the MERV 16 rated filters were less restrictive and provided greater cab pressure, and since they did not have to be replaced as often as the HEPA quality filters, researchers concluded the MERV 16 filters were the optimal choice for both pieces of mining equipment in this case study comparative analysis.
Evaluating Axiomatic Retrieval Models in the Core Track

Axiomatic analysis of the existing retrieval models have shown great power on understanding the retrieval models, which further shows a great opportunities on improve the retrieval performances of existing models. In this work, we tested the axiomatic retrieval models with query expansion on the newly provided data collection. The results show that the proposed method could outperform the baseline methods.
DETERMINISTIC METHODS USED IN FINANCIAL ANALYSIS

The deterministic methods are those quantitative methods that have as a goal to appreciate through numerical quantification the creation and expression mechanisms of factorial and causal, influence and propagation relations of effects, where the phenomenon can be expressed through a direct functional relation of cause-effect. The functional and deterministic relations are the causal relations where at a certain value of the characteristics corresponds a well defined value of the resulting phenomenon. They can express directly the correlation between the phenomenon and the influence factors, under the form of a function-type mathematical formula.
A new method for measuring progression in patients with ocular cicatricial pemphigoid.

OBJECTIVES To describe a method to measure the progression of ocular cicatricial pemphigoid and to compare its facility with traditional methods used to measure the progression of the disease. METHODS The proposed method consists of measuring (in millimeters) the total relative inferior conjunctival surface available in 3 gaze positions. This method was used to monitor 7 eyes of 4 patients with ocular cicatricial pemphigoid over 2 years. The changes in the conjunctival measurements from baseline were compared with the changes documented by traditional methods. RESULTS During the study, 2 eyes remained stable (changes, <3 mm), 2 had a decrease of 10 mm or more, and 3 had a change in measurements between 4 and 9 mm. With the proposed method, we demonstrated the detection of more subtle changes in the conjunctiva of all patients. Patients who had changes between 4 and 9 mm easily underwent staging by the traditional systems when the new technique was used as a reference. CONCLUSION The proposed method offers an objective variable that can be used in consecutive visits to detect subtle progression or disease control in patients with ocular cicatricial pemphigoid.
A Transforming Growth Factor β-Induced Smad3/Smad4 Complex Directly Activates Protein Kinase A

ABSTRACT Transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) interacts with cell surface receptors to initiate a signaling cascade critical in regulating growth, differentiation, and development of many cell types. TGFβ signaling involves activation of Smad proteins which directly regulate target gene expression. Here we show that Smad proteins also regulate gene expression by using a previously unrecognized pathway involving direct interaction with protein kinase A (PKA). PKA has numerous effects on growth, differentiation, and apoptosis, and activation of PKA is generally initiated by increased cellular cyclic AMP (cAMP). However, we found that TGFβ activates PKA independent of increased cAMP, and our observations support the conclusion that there is formation of a complex between Smad proteins and the regulatory subunit of PKA, with release of the catalytic subunit from the PKA holoenzyme. We also found that the activation of PKA was required for TGFβ activation of CREB, induction of p21Cip1, and inhibition of cell growth. Taken together, these data indicate an important and previously unrecognized interaction between the TGFβ and PKA signaling pathways.
Easy-to-implement Bayesian methods for dose-escalation studies in healthy volunteers.

In phase I clinical trials, experimental drugs are administered to healthy volunteers in order to establish their safety and to explore the relationship between the dose taken and the concentration found in plasma. Each volunteer receives a series of increasing single doses. In this paper a Bayesian decision procedure is developed for choosing the doses to give in the next round of the study, taking into account both prior information and the responses observed so far. The procedure seeks the optimal doses for learning about the dose-concentration relationship, subject to a constraint which reduces the risk of administering dangerously high doses. Individual volunteers receive more than one dose, and the pharmacokinetic responses observed are, after logarithmic transformation, treated as approximately normally distributed. Thus data analysis can be achieved by fitting linear mixed models. By expressing prior information as 'pseudo-data', and by maximizing over posterior distributions rather than taking expectations, a procedure which can be implemented using standard mixed model software is derived. Comparisons are made with existing approaches to the conduct of these studies, and the new method is illustrated using real and simulated data.To whom correspondence should be addressed.
[Assessment of calf circumference as an indicator of the risk for hyponutrition in the elderly].

BACKGROUND Undernutrition is a very common situation among elderly, that is associated with increased morbidity and mortality rates. On the other hand, calf circumference (CC) is a direct anthropometric measurement, related to fat free mass. An early detection of an elderly undernutrition situation, based on CC assessment, could contribute to prevent its development and consequences. OBJECTIVE To analyse the relationship between CC and a possible undernutrition situation, based on the application of the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) test, among Spanish subjects of 65 or more years old, including the gender and age influences. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A cross-sectional study was carried out to assess the nutritional situation of an ambulatory population, from every area of Spanish geography (n = 22007), using the questionnaire MNA. Every subject surveyed was 65 or more years old when the test was done. RESULTS There were statistically significant differences between subjects with a CC < 31 cm and those with CC >or= 31 cm, both men and women, in weight, height, body mass index (BMI), MNA total score and undernutrition classification. On the other hand, it was found that those elders with lower CC showed a higher undernutrition risk, both men and women, in every age range studied. CONCLUSIONS It does exit an association between CC of Spanish subjects of 65 or more years old and the risk of developing undernutrition. That association is similar among men and women, and in all age ranges.
Effects of Aging on the Encoding of Dynamic and Static Components of Speech

Objectives: The authors investigated aging effects on the envelope of the frequency following response to dynamic and static components of speech. Older adults frequently experience problems understanding speech, despite having clinically normal hearing. Improving audibility with hearing aids provides variable benefit, as amplification cannot restore the temporal precision degraded by aging. Previous studies have demonstrated age-related delays in subcortical timing specific to the dynamic, transition region of the stimulus. However, it is unknown whether this delay is mainly due to a failure to encode rapid changes in the formant transition because of central temporal processing deficits or as a result of cochlear damage that reduces audibility for the high-frequency components of the speech syllable. To investigate the nature of this delay, the authors compared subcortical responses in younger and older adults with normal hearing to the speech syllables /da/ and /a/, hypothesizing that the delays in peak timing observed in older adults are mainly caused by temporal processing deficits in the central auditory system. Design: The frequency following response was recorded to the speech syllables /da/ and /a/ from 15 younger and 15 older adults with normal hearing, normal IQ, and no history of neurological disorders. Both speech syllables were presented binaurally with alternating polarities at 80 dB SPL at a rate of 4.3 Hz through electromagnetically shielded insert earphones. A vertical montage of four Ag–AgCl electrodes (Cz, active, forehead ground, and earlobe references) was used. Results: The responses of older adults were significantly delayed with respect to younger adults for the transition and onset regions of the /da/ syllable and for the onset of the /a/ syllable. However, in contrast with the younger adults who had earlier latencies for /da/ than for /a/ (as was expected given the high-frequency energy in the /da/ stop consonant burst), latencies in older adults were not significantly different between the responses to /da/ and /a/. An unexpected finding was noted in the amplitude and phase dissimilarities between the two groups in the later part of the steady-state region, rather than in the transition region. This amplitude reduction may indicate prolonged neural recovery or response decay associated with a loss of auditory nerve fibers. Conclusions: These results suggest that older adults’ peak timing delays may arise from decreased synchronization to the onset of the stimulus due to reduced audibility, though the possible role of impaired central auditory processing cannot be ruled out. Conversely, a deterioration in temporal processing mechanisms in the auditory nerve, brainstem, or midbrain may be a factor in the sudden loss of synchronization in the later part of the steady-state response in older adults.
Choline and mica dust induced pulmonary lesions in rats.

The effects of mica dust injected intratracheally and parenteral admini-stration of choline were studied in the lungs of albino rats. The intraperitoneal administration of choline (25 mg, 5 days/week) for 10 weeks caused dilation of lymphatic vessels along with adenomatoid changes in the lungs at 330 days. Mica alone (25 mg, intratracheal) provoked pulmonary fibrotic lesions with dilation of lymphatic vessels at 330 days. However, the combined action of mica dust and choline produced adenocarcinoma of bronchiolar epithelium at the termination of the experiment (339 days). Choline as an integral part of, cell membrane, its possible role in enhancing the reaction in the lungs exposed to mica dust is discussed.
Differential Regulation of Human and Mouse Myometrial Contractile Activity by FSH as a Function of FSH Receptor Density

ABSTRACT Previous studies from our laboratory revealed that the follicle-stimulating hormone receptor (FSHR) is expressed at low levels in nonpregnant human myometrium and that it is up-regulated in pregnant term nonlaboring myometrium; however, the physiological relevance of these findings was unknown. Herein, we examined signaling pathways stimulated by FSH in immortalized uterine myocytes expressing recombinant FSHR at different densities and showed that cAMP accumulation is stimulated in all cases but that inositol phosphate accumulation is stimulated only at high FSHR densities. Because an increase in cAMP quiets myometrial contractile activity but an increase in 1,4,5-triphosphoinositol stimulates contractile activity, we hypothesized that FSHR density dictates whether FSH quiets or stimulates myometrial contractility. Indeed, in human and mouse nonpregnant myometrium, which express low levels of FSHR, application of FSH resulted in a quieting of contractile activity. In contrast, in pregnant term nonlaboring myometrium, which expresses higher levels of FSHR, application of FSH resulted in increased contractile activity. Examination of pregnant mouse myometrium from different stages of gestation revealed that FSHR levels remained low throughout most of pregnancy. Accordingly, through mid-gestation, the application of FSH resulted in a quieting of contractile activity. At Pregnancy Day (PD) 16.5, FSHR was up-regulated, although not yet sufficiently to mediate stimulation of contractility in response to FSH. This outcome was not observed until PD 19.5, when FSHR was further up-regulated. Our studies describe a novel FSHR signaling pathway that regulates myometrial contractility, and suggest that myometrial FSHR levels dictate the quieting vs. stimulation of uterine contractility in response to FSH.
Eliciting Goals and Softgoals - How to Perceive the Intentionality at the Beginning of the Journey

Software requirements activity, in the organizational context, is about addressing the business information problem; discover the needs for improving the situation and consequently specify the software requirements. Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE), aims to better understand the information problem by looking at organizational actors’ intentionality (goals and softgoals) first. Eliciting goals and softgoals within an organizational context is a difficult task: since, among other things, it demands skills and time. This paper describes one strategy for eliciting goals and softgoals that still relies on software engineers’ skills and time, but it simplifies the process. We propose the use of a software tool to support a systematic process to mitigate the chances for goals to be missed regardless of the experience and skills of the software engineers involved in the project.