Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Loading and Skeletal Development and Maintenance

Mechanical loading is a major regulator of bone mass and geometry. The osteocytes network is considered the main sensor of loads, through the shear stress generated by strain induced fluid flow in the lacuno-canalicular system. Intracellular transduction implies several kinases and phosphorylation of the estrogen receptor. Several extra-cellular mediators, among which NO and prostaglandins are transducing the signal to the effector cells. Disuse results in osteocytes apoptosis and rapid imbalanced bone resorption, leading to severe osteoporosis. Exercising during growth increases peak bone mass, and could be beneficial with regards to osteoporosis later in life, but the gain could be lost if training is abandoned. Exercise programs in adults and seniors have barely significant effects on bone mass and geometry at least at short term. There are few data on a possible additive effect of exercise and drugs in osteoporosis treatment, but disuse could decrease drugs action. Exercise programs proposed for bone health are tedious and compliance is usually low. The most practical advice for patients is to walk a minimum of 30 to 60 minutes per day. Other exercises like swimming or cycling have less effect on bone, but could reduce fracture risk indirectly by maintaining muscle mass and force.
A Furosemide-Sensitive K+–Cl−Cotransporter Counteracts Intracellular Cl− Accumulation and Depletion in Cultured Rat Midbrain Neurons

Efficacy of postsynaptic inhibition through GABAAreceptors in the mammalian brain depends on the maintenance of a Cl− gradient for hyperpolarizing Cl− currents. We have taken advantage of the reduced complexity under which Cl− regulation can be investigated in cultured neurons as opposed to neurons in otherin vitro preparations of the mammalian brain. Tightseal whole-cell recording of spontaneous GABAAreceptor-mediated postsynaptic currents suggested that an outward Cl− transport reduced dendritic [Cl−]i if the somata of cells were loaded with Cl− via the patch pipette. We determined dendritic and somatic reversal potentials of Cl− currents induced by focally applied GABA to calculate [Cl−]i during variation of [K+]o and [Cl−] in the patch pipette. [Cl−]i and [K+]o were tightly coupled by a furosemide-sensitive K+–Cl−cotransport. Thermodynamic considerations excluded the significant contribution of a Na+–K+–Cl−cotransporter to the net Cl− transport. We conclude that under conditions of normal [K+]othe K+–Cl− cotransporter helps to maintain [Cl−]i at low levels, whereas under pathological conditions, under which [K+]o remains elevated because of neuronal hyperactivity, the cotransporter accumulates Cl− in neurons, thereby further enhancing neuronal excitability.
Electrostatically Induced Recruitment of Membrane Peptides into Clusters Requires Ligand Binding at Both Interfaces

Protein recruitment to specific membrane locations may be governed or facilitated by electrostatic attraction, which originates from a multivalent ligand. Here we explored the energetics of a model system in which this simple electrostatic recruitment mechanism failed. That is, basic poly-L-lysine binding to one leaflet of a planar lipid bilayer did not recruit the triply-charged peptide (O-Pyromellitylgramicidin). Clustering was only observed in cases where PLL was bound to both channel ends. Clustering was indicated (i) by the decreased diffusional PLL mobility DPLL and (ii) by an increased lifetime τPLL of the clustered channels. In contrast, if PLL was bound to only one leaflet, neither DPLL nor τP changed. Simple calculations suggest that electrostatic repulsion of the unbound ends prevented neighboring OPg dimers from approaching each other. We believe that a similar mechanism may also operate in cell signaling and that it may e.g. contribute to the controversial results obtained for the ligand driven dimerization of G protein-coupled receptors.
A New Histogram Based Image Watermarking Scheme Resisting Geometric Attacks

A histogram based image watermarking algorithm is proposed based on the invariant property of the statistic characteristic of an image for resisting geometric attacks. During embedding, a particular range of pixel values is first selected and divided into intervals according to a predefined step. Then the pixels within each interval are quantized to have the same value according to the watermark bit. During watermark extraction, the pixel values are divided into intervals using the same method as watermark embedding. A watermark bit can be extracted from each interval. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme is robust to rotation, scaling and cropping attacks, as well as some signal processing attacks.
New techniques for motion-artifact-free in vivo cardiac microscopy

Intravital imaging microscopy (i.e., imaging in live animals at microscopic resolution) has become an indispensable tool for studying the cellular micro-dynamics in cancer, immunology and neurobiology. High spatial and temporal resolution, combined with large penetration depth and multi-reporter visualization capability make fluorescence intravital microscopy compelling for heart imaging. However, tissue motion caused by cardiac contraction and respiration critically limits its use. As a result, in vitro cell preparations or non-contracting explanted heart models are more commonly employed. Unfortunately, these approaches fall short of understanding the more complex host physiology that may be dynamic and occur over longer periods of time. In this review, we report on novel technologies, which have been recently developed by our group and others, aimed at overcoming motion-induced artifacts and capable of providing in vivo subcellular resolution imaging in the beating mouse heart. The methods are based on mechanical stabilization, image processing algorithms, gated/triggered acquisition schemes or a combination of both. We expect that in the immediate future all these methodologies will have considerable applications in expanding our understanding of the cardiac biology, elucidating cardiomyocyte function and interactions within the organism in vivo, and ultimately improving the treatment of cardiac diseases.
Scaffolds of polylactic acid/hydroxyapatite coated by plasma with polypyrrole-iodine for the generation of neo-tissue–bone in vivo: Study in rabbit

ABSTRACT This paper presents the study scaffolds of polylactic acid (PLA) and hydroxyapatite (HA) processed by electrospinning and covered with polypyrrole with iodine (PPy-I) synthetized by plasma polymerization. Two kinds of samples were prepared: PLA/HA and PLA/HA/PPy-I, each with two different HA concentrations (18.1 and 35.7%). 7-day in vitro test with osteoblasts of autologous mesenchymal stem cells was performed. In vivo test was done in the back of a rabbit for 30 days. After extraction, cell viability, immunohistochemistry, histological, and tension tests were performed. Scaffolds PLA/HA (35.7%)/PPy-I showed higher cell viability. Tension test showed better integration in high HA samples. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Educating professionals to support self-management in people with asthma or diabetes: protocol for a systematic review and scoping exercise

Introduction Supported self-management for asthma helps people adjust their treatment in response to symptom changes. This improves day-to-day control and reduces the risk of asthma attacks and the need for emergency healthcare. However, implementation remains poor in routine clinical practice. This systematic review is part of a programme of work developing an intervention to help primary care practice teams embed self-management support into routine asthma care. The aim of the review is to synthesise the evidence regarding the effectiveness of educational interventions for professionals supporting self-management in people with asthma or diabetes (type 1 and type 2). These two conditions have the most robust evidence base for the effectiveness of implementing supported self-management. Methods and analysis Electronic searches will be conducted in CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, ISI Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO, AMED, Global Health, WHO Global Health Library, ERIC, BNI, RDRB/CME and Google Scholar. Eligible studies are randomised controlled trials or controlled clinical trials published between 1990 and 2016 which evaluated professional education interventions facilitating asthma or diabetes supported self-management. Further relevant work will be identified from trial registries, citation searching and through contact with authors of included studies. This will be supplemented by scoping potentially relevant educational packages described in English language policy literature or health service websites. Screening, data extraction and risk of bias assessment (using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool) will be completed by two independent reviewers, with a third reviewer arbitrating where necessary. We plan a theoretically informed narrative synthesis of the aggregated data as heterogeneity is likely to preclude meta-analysis. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval is not required for this systematic review. The results will be described in a paper submitted for peer-reviewed publication and will inform the development of an implementation intervention. Study registration number PROSPERO CRD42016032922.
Depression in pregnancy, infant birth weight and DNA methylation of imprint regulatory elements

Depressed mood in pregnancy has been linked to low birth weight (LBW, < 2,500 g), a risk factor for adult-onset chronic diseases in offspring. We examined maternal depressed mood in relation to birth weight and evaluated the role of DNA methylation at regulatory sequences of imprinted genes in this association. We measured depressed mood among 922 pregnant women using the CES-D scale and obtained birth weight data from hospital records. Using bisulfite pyrosequencing of cord blood DNA from 508 infants, we measured methylation at differentially methylated regions (DMRs) regulating imprinted genes IGF2/H19, DLK1/MEG3, MEST, PEG3, PEG10/SGCE, NNAT and PLAGL1. Multiple regression models were used to examine the relationship between depressed mood, birth weight and DMR methylation levels. Depressed mood was associated with a more that 3-fold higher risk of LBW, after adjusting for delivery mode, parity, education, cigarette smoking, folic acid use and preterm birth. The association may be more pronounced in offspring of black women and female infants. Compared with infants of women without depressed mood, infants born to women with severe depressed mood had a 2.4% higher methylation at the MEG3 DMR. Whereas LBW infants had 1.6% lower methylation at the IGF2 DMR, high birth weight (> 4,500 g) infants had 5.9% higher methylation at the PLAGL1 DMR compared with normal birth weight infants. Our findings confirm that severe maternal depressed mood in pregnancy is associated with LBW, and that MEG3 and IGF2 plasticity may play important roles.
Cesarean scar pregnancy and early placenta accreta share common histology

To determine, by evaluation of histological slides, images and descriptions of early (second‐trimester) placenta accreta (EPA) and placental implantation in cases of Cesarean scar pregnancy (CSP), whether these are pathologically indistinguishable and whether they both represent different stages in the disease continuum leading to morbidly adherent placenta in the third trimester.
Accurate and Rapid Estimation of Phosphene Thresholds (REPT)

To calibrate the intensity of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) at the occipital pole, the phosphene threshold is used as a measure of cortical excitability. The phosphene threshold (PT) refers to the intensity of magnetic stimulation that induces illusory flashes of light (phosphenes) on a proportion of trials. The existing PT estimation procedures lack the accuracy and mathematical rigour of modern threshold estimation methods. We present an improved and automatic procedure for estimating the PT which is based on the well-established Ψ Bayesian adaptive staircase approach. To validate the new procedure, we compared it with another commonly used procedure for estimating the PT. We found that our procedure is more accurate, reliable, and rapid when compared with an existing PT measurement procedure. The new procedure is implemented in Matlab and works automatically with the Magstim Rapid2 stimulator using a convenient graphical user interface. The Matlab program is freely available for download.
Universities, business and knowledge exchange

Our aim is to foster close working and understanding between business and higher education so that world-class learning and research can improve the international competitiveness of both sectors and the capabilities of graduates and those already in the workforce. The Council leads in developing an agreed agenda on the higher level learning issues that affect our global competitiveness, social cohesion and individual development. The CBR is an independent research institution within the University of Cambridge. The study of enterprise and innovation is a key area of research alongside work on corporate governance. The Centre draws on expertise in several University of Cambridge Departments including Economics, Law, Geography, Land Economy, Engineering and the Judge Business School, and the research has a substantial policy and practitioner focus (The views expressed in this report are those solely of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the case study companies, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation or the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council.
Codes for Write-Once Memories

A write-once memory (WOM) is a storage device that consists of cells that can take on <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$q$</tex> </formula> values, with the added constraint that rewrites can only increase a cell's value. A length-<formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$n$</tex></formula>, <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$t$</tex> </formula>-write WOM-code is a coding scheme that allows <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$t$</tex> </formula> messages to be stored in <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$n$</tex></formula> cells. If on the <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$i$</tex></formula>th write we write one of <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$M_{i}$</tex> </formula> messages, then the rate of this write is the ratio of the number of written bits to the total number of cells, i.e., <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$\log_{2}M_{i}/n$</tex></formula>. The sum-rate of the WOM-code is the sum of all individual rates on all writes. A WOM-code is called a fixed-rate WOM-code if the rates on all writes are the same, and otherwise, it is called a variable-rate WOM-code. We address two different problems when analyzing the sum-rate of WOM-codes. In the first one, called the fixed-rate WOM-code problem, the sum-rate is analyzed over all fixed-rate WOM-codes, and in the second problem, called the unrestricted-rate WOM-code problem, the sum-rate is analyzed over all fixed-rate and variable-rate WOM-codes. In this paper, we first present a family of two-write WOM-codes. The construction is inspired by the coset coding scheme, which was used to construct multiple-write WOM-codes by Cohen <etal/> and recently by Wu, in order to construct from each linear code a two-write WOM-code. This construction improves the best known sum-rates for the fixed- and unrestricted-rate WOM-code problems. We also show how to take advantage of two-write WOM-codes in order to construct codes for the Blackwell channel. The two-write construction is generalized for two-write WOM-codes with <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$q$</tex></formula> levels per cell, which is used with ternary cells to construct three- and four-write binary WOM-codes. This construction is used recursively in order to generate a family of <formula formulatype="inline"> <tex Notation="TeX">$t$</tex></formula>-write WOM-codes for all <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$t$</tex> </formula>. A further generalization of these <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$t$</tex></formula>-write WOM-codes yields additional families of efficient WOM-codes. Finally, we show a recursive method that uses the previously constructed WOM-codes in order to construct fixed-rate WOM-codes. We conclude and show that the WOM-codes constructed here outperform all previously known WOM-codes for <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$2\leqslant t\leqslant 10$</tex> </formula> for both the fixed- and unrestricted-rate WOM-code problems.
Microfluidic channel for characterizing normal and breast cancer cells

A microfluidic channel was designed and fabricated for the investigation of behaviors of normal and cancer cells in a narrow channel. A specific question addressed in this study was whether it is possible to distinguish normal versus cancer cells by detecting their stationary and passing behaviors through a narrow channel. We hypothesized that due to higher deformability, softer cancer cells will pass through the channel further and quicker than normal cells. Two cell lines, employed herein, were non-tumor breast epithelial cells (MCF-10A; 11.2 ± 2.4 µm in diameter) and triple negative breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231; 12.4 ± 2.1 µm in diameter). The microfluidic channel was 300 µm long and linearly tapered with a width of 30 µm at an inlet to 5 µm at an outlet. The result revealed that MDA-MB-231 cells entered and stuck further toward the outlet than MCF-10A cells in response to a slow flow (2 µl min−1). Further, in response to a fast flow (5 µl min−1), the passage time (mean ± s.d.) was 26.6 ± 43.9 s for normal cells (N = 158), and 1.9 ± 1.4 s for cancer cells (N = 128). The measurement of stiffness by atomic force microscopy as well as model-based predictions pointed out that MDA-MB-231 cells are significantly softer than MCF-10A cells. Collectively, the result in this study suggests that analysis of an individual cell’s behavior through a narrow channel can characterize deformable cancer cells from normal ones, supporting the possibility of enriching circulating tumor cells using novel microfluidics-based analysis.
Injecting Uncertainty in Graphs for Identity Obfuscation

Data collected nowadays by social-networking applications create fascinating opportunities for building novel services, as well as expanding our understanding about social structures and their dynamics. Unfortunately, publishing social-network graphs is considered an ill-advised practice due to privacy concerns. To alleviate this problem, several anonymization methods have been proposed, aiming at reducing the risk of a privacy breach on the published data, while still allowing to analyze them and draw relevant conclusions. In this paper we introduce a new anonymization approach that is based on injecting uncertainty in social graphs and publishing the resulting uncertain graphs. While existing approaches obfuscate graph data by adding or removing edges entirely, we propose using a finer-grained perturbation that adds or removes edges partially: this way we can achieve the same desired level of obfuscation with smaller changes in the data, thus maintaining higher utility. Our experiments on real-world networks confirm that at the same level of identity obfuscation our method provides higher usefulness than existing randomized methods that publish standard graphs.
Direct recruitment of H+-ATPase from lysosomes for phagosomal acidification

The nascent phagosome progressively establishes an acidic milieu by acquiring a proton pump, the vacuolar-type ATPase (V-ATPase). However, the origin of phagosomal V-ATPase remains poorly understood. We found that phagosomes were enriched with the V-ATPase a3 subunit, which also accumulated in late endosomes and lysosomes. We modified the mouse Tcirg1 locus encoding subunit a3, to express an a3-GFP fusion protein. Live-cell imaging and immunofluorescence microscopy revealed that nascent phagosomes received the a3-GFP from tubular structures extending from lysosomes located in the perinuclear region. Macrophages from a3-deficient mice exhibited impaired acidification of phagosomes and delayed digestion of bacteria. These results show that lysosomal V-ATPase is recruited directly to the phagosomes via tubular lysosomes to establish the acidic environment hostile to pathogens.
Visually Lossless JPEG 2000 for Remote Image Browsing

Image sizes have increased exponentially in recent years. The resulting high-resolution images are often viewed via remote image browsing. Zooming and panning are desirable features in this context, which result in disparate spatial regions of an image being displayed at a variety of (spatial) resolutions. When an image is displayed at a reduced resolution, the quantization step sizes needed for visually lossless quality generally increase. This paper investigates the quantization step sizes needed for visually lossless display as a function of resolution, and proposes a method that effectively incorporates the resulting (multiple) quantization step sizes into a single JPEG2000 codestream. This codestream is JPEG2000 Part 1 compliant and allows for visually lossless decoding at all resolutions natively supported by the wavelet transform as well as arbitrary intermediate resolutions, using only a fraction of the full-resolution codestream. When images are browsed remotely using the JPEG2000 Interactive Protocol (JPIP), the required bandwidth is significantly reduced, as demonstrated by extensive experimental results.
Flocking for nonholonomic robots with obstacle avoidance

This paper proposes the algorithm for flocking of group of nonholonomic mobile robots. Three protocols of smooth potential function are implemented, i.e. flocking, obstacle avoidance, and attracting to goal, as variables of velocity. The main scheme of control of the mobile robots is the use of trajectory tracking which is generated in order to obtain flocking behavior, collision and obstacle avoidance, and reaching the goal in cohesion by flocking. The convergence for flocking algorithm for single integrator dynamic systems is shown by using Lyapunov stability theorem to converge to the local minimum of flock and to the goal point. Simulation results perform that mobile robots can split, rejoin and then reach the goal. Moreover, the group of mobile robots can accomplish flocking through narrow space without collision with obstacles and among mobile robots.