Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regulation of C. elegans L4 cuticle collagen genes by the heterochronic protein LIN‐29

The cuticle, the outer covering of the nematode C. elegans, is synthesized five times during the worm's life by the underlying hypodermis. Cuticle collagens, the major cuticle component, are encoded by a large family of col genes and, interestingly, many of these genes express predominantly at a single developmental stage. This temporal preference motivated us to investigate the mechanisms underlying col gene expression and here we focus on a subset of col genes expressed in the L4 stage. We identified minimal promoter regions of <300 bp for col‐38, col‐49, and col‐63. In these regions, we predicted cis‐regulatory sequences and evaluated their function in vivo via mutagenesis of a col‐38p::yfp reporter. We used RNAi to study the requirement for candidate transcription regulators ELT‐1 and ELT‐3, LIN‐29, and the LIN‐29 co‐factor MAB‐10, and found LIN‐29 to be necessary for the expression of four L4‐specific genes (col‐38, col‐49, col‐63, and col‐138). Temporal misexpression of LIN‐29 was also sufficient to activate these genes at a different developmental stage. The LIN‐29 DNA‐binding domain bound the col‐38, col‐49, and col‐63 minimal promoters in vitro. For col‐38 we showed that the LIN‐29 sites necessary for reporter expression in vivo are also bound in vitro: this is the first identification of specific binding sites for LIN‐29 necessary for in vivo target gene expression.
2022-05456 - Doctorant F/H Modélisation et contrôle des systèmes à grande échelle par le processus de continuation A propos du centre ou de la direction fonctionnelle

Présent dans les domaines du calcul et grands systèmes distribués, logiciels sûrs et systèmes embarqués, la modélisation de l’environnement à différentes échelles et la science des données et intelligence artificielle, Inria Grenoble Rhône-Alpes participe au meilleur niveau à la vie scientifique internationale par les résultats obtenus et les collaborations tant en Europe que dans le reste du monde.
Texture and Grain Growth during the Annealing of Ice

Changes in microstructure and texture are described in polycrystalline ice compressed at temperatures of –10 and –1℃ and annealed for various times at –1℃ without a load. The microstructures, obtained under these conditions, were studied by means of polarized light microscopy, both mean and maximum grain sizes were determined. In the colder finer grained samples (–10℃) the grain size increase during annealing was not as rapid as the coarser hot worked (–1°) samples. Little textural change was observed in the annealed hot worked samples, however the strong preferred orientation of the colder samples was destroyed with annealing. The change in texture corresponded to a decrease in the grain growth rate and the formation of a stable grain structure. Increasing strain and decreasing the deformation temperature both reduce annealing time and the annealed grain size.
Revisiting the Role of the Fusiform Face Area in Expertise

The fusiform face area (FFA) is considered to be a highly specialized brain module because of its central importance for face perception. However, many researchers claim that the FFA is a general visual expertise module that distinguishes between individual examples within a single category. Here, I circumvent the shortcomings of some previous studies on the FFA controversy by using chess stimuli, which do not visually resemble faces, together with more sensitive methods of analysis such as multivariate pattern analysis. I also extend the previous research by presenting chess positions, complex scenes with multiple objects, and their interrelations to chess experts and novices as well as isolated chess objects. The first experiment demonstrates that chess expertise modulated the FFA activation when chess positions were presented. In contrast, single chess objects did not produce different activation patterns among experts and novices even when the multivariate pattern analysis was used. The second experiment focused on the single chess objects and featured an explicit task of identifying the chess objects but failed to demonstrate expertise effects in the FFA. The experiments provide support for the general expertise view of the FFA function but also extend the scope of our understanding about the function of the FFA. The FFA does not merely distinguish between different exemplars within the same category of stimuli. More likely, it parses complex multiobject stimuli that contain numerous functional and spatial relations.
The Consequences of Health Care Privatization: Evidence from Medicare Advantage Exits

There is considerable controversy over the use of private insurers to deliver public health insurance benefits. We investigate the consequences of patients enrolling in Medicare Advantage (MA), privately managed care organizations that compete with the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program. We use exogenous shocks to MA enrollment arising from plan exits from New York counties in the early 2000s and utilize unique data that links hospital inpatient utilization to Medicare enrollment records. We find that individuals who were forced out of MA plans due to plan exit saw very large increases in hospital utilization. These increases appear to arise through plans both limiting access to nearby hospitals and reducing elective admissions, yet they are not associated with any measurable reduction in hospital quality or patient mortality.
Low antioxidant vitamin intakes are associated with increases in adverse effects of chemotherapy in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

BACKGROUND Chemotherapy leads to an increase in reactive oxygen species, which stresses the antioxidant defense system. Children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia rarely are overtly malnourished, which makes this population ideal for an investigation of the relations between dietary antioxidant consumption, plasma antioxidant concentrations, and chemotherapy-induced toxicity. OBJECTIVE This study was conducted to investigate the effect of therapy on antioxidant intakes in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the relation between dietary antioxidant intakes and plasma antioxidant concentrations, and the relation between the incidence of side effects due to treatment and antioxidant intake. DESIGN We conducted a 6-mo observational study of 103 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Plasma micronutrient concentrations, dietary intakes, and incidence of side effects of chemotherapy were ascertained at diagnosis and after 3 and 6 mo of therapy. RESULTS Throughout the 6-mo study period, subjects ingested vitamin E, total carotenoid, beta-carotene, and vitamin A in amounts that were 66%, 30%, 59%, and 29%, respectively, of the US recommended dietary allowance or of the amounts specified in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Greater vitamin C intakes at 6 mo were associated with fewer therapy delays, less toxicity, and fewer days spent in the hospital. Greater vitamin E intakes at 3 mo were associated with a lower incidence of infection. Greater beta-carotene intakes at 6 mo were associated with a decreased risk of toxicity. CONCLUSION A large percentage of children undergoing treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia have inadequate intakes of antioxidants and vitamin A. Lower intakes of antioxidants are associated with increases in the adverse side effects of chemotherapy.
Effect of Micro Silica on The Strength of Concrete with Ordinary Portland Cement

Concrete is the most important engineering material and the addition of some other materials may change the properties of concrete. With increase in trend towards the wider use of concrete for prestressed concrete and high rise buildings there is a growing demand of concrete with higher compressive strength. Mineral additions which are also known as mineral admixtures have been used with cements for many years. There are two tpes of materials crystalline and non crystalline. Micro silica or silica fume is very fine non crystalline material. Silica fume is produced in electric arc furnace as a by product of the production of elemental silicons or alloys containing silicon. IT is usually a gray coloured powder somewhat similar to portland or some fly ashes silica fume is generally categorized as a supplymentry cementitious material. Silica fume or micro silica was initially vied as cement rplacement material and in some area it is usually used as replaced by much smaller quantity of silica fume micro silica may be used as pozzolanic admixtures. Admixture is defined as a material other than cement water and aggregate that is used as ingredient of concrete and is added to the batch immediately before or during mixing. Pozzolanic admixtures are siliceous or aluminous material which is themselves posses little or no cementitious value but will in finely divided form and in the presence of water chemically react with calcium hydroxide liberated on hydration at ordinary temperature to form compounds possessing cementitious properties. In our experiment we are using micro silica as a artificial pozzolans. We are adding 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% by wt of cement in concrete.
MESH RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS FOR THE NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF FLOW THROUGH STENTED ANEURYSMS

INTRODUCTION The treatment of aneurysms frequently entails the implantation of stents that are designed to prevent ruptures by promoting thrombosis. A stent is constructed as a braided tubular assembly of thin metallic wires and lodged against the lumen of the parent vessel to serve as a porous barrier disrupting blood flow into the aneurysm. Previous studies (e.g., [1,2]) have attempted to quantify this effect, utilizing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to analyze blood flow in and around stented aneurysms. However, because of the scale disparity between the stent wire cross-section and the dimensions of the aneurysm and its parent vessel, it is difficult in practice to incorporate both geometries simultaneously into the solution domain of the discrete Navier-Stokes equations. CFD analyses have hence relied upon various non-rigorous approximations that neglect the exact stent geometry. Setting aside the very small wire cross-section, wire spacing and other dimensions of the stent are of the same order as the dimensions of the unstented flow domain. Any heuristic model of the effects of stenting is hence suspect from a fluid dynamical standpoint, and it is important to analyze how much spatial resolution is required for accurate Navier-Stokes simulations of flow through the appropriate domain. We address this question for a simple case, considering the RMS velocity magnitude within an aneurysm as a measure of its internal flow intensity, the reduction of which is the object of stenting. It is shown how simulations with relatively modest finite element mesh resolutions accurately predict the decrease of internal RMS fluid speed in an idealized aneurysm as an increasing number of discrete stent struts is placed across its throat.
A natural language processing and geospatial clustering framework for harvesting local place names from geotagged housing advertisements

ABSTRACT Local place names are frequently used by residents living in a geographic region. Such place names may not be recorded in existing gazetteers, due to their vernacular nature, relative insignificance to a gazetteer covering a large area (e.g. the entire world), recent establishment (e.g. the name of a newly-opened shopping center) or other reasons. While not always recorded, local place names play important roles in many applications, from supporting public participation in urban planning to locating victims in disaster response. In this paper, we propose a computational framework for harvesting local place names from geotagged housing advertisements. We make use of those advertisements posted on local-oriented websites, such as Craigslist, where local place names are often mentioned. The proposed framework consists of two stages: natural language processing (NLP) and geospatial clustering. The NLP stage examines the textual content of housing advertisements and extracts place name candidates. The geospatial stage focuses on the coordinates associated with the extracted place name candidates and performs multiscale geospatial clustering to filter out the non-place names. We evaluate our framework by comparing its performance with those of six baselines. We also compare our result with four existing gazetteers to demonstrate the not-yet-recorded local place names discovered by our framework.
Modifications to the Healthy Eating Index and its ability to predict obesity: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis.

BACKGROUND The Healthy Eating Index (HEI) is a measure of diet quality developed based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). OBJECTIVE The objective was to assess the diet quality of a multi-ethnic population using and comparing the 2 HEIs, the updated HEI (HEI-05) based on the 2005 DGA and the original 1990 HEI (HEI-90), with the objective of predicting obesity outcomes. DESIGN A longitudinal analysis of survey and clinical data from 6236 middle-aged and elderly white, African American, Hispanic, and Chinese participants of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) was conducted. Baseline diet quality was assessed with the use of HEI-90 and HEI-05. Baseline and 18-mo follow-up body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) data were predicted by using z score multiple regression models, and categorical obesity status was predicted by using multinomial logistic regression. RESULTS Overall, the HEI-05 had larger z score beta coefficients than did the HEI-90 (eg, in whites, -0.53 compared with -0.48 in baseline BMI, -0.54 compared with -0.47 in follow-up BMI, -1.67 compared with -1.56 in baseline WC, and -1.57 compared with -1.44 in follow-up WC). Among whites only, both HEIs were significant predictors of BMI and WC (all P < 0.001). The odds of being obese rather than normal weight were inversely related to HEI z scores primarily in whites (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS The changes to the 2005 DGA, as reflected by HEI-05, appear to better predict obesity outcomes in this multi-ethnic population, primarily in whites. Additional research on ethnic-specific DGA adherence and its relation to health outcomes is needed.
POTENTIAL IMPACT OF WOLVES Canis lupus ON PREY POPULATIONS IN EASTERN P O L A

A 7000 km 2 study area in eastern Poland supported c.50 wolves Canis lupus in 1989 and 40 in 1992, and high numbers of game constituting the staple food of these predators. This paper assesses the energetic requirements of the wolf population as well as potential resources of its preferred prey. On the basis of basal metabolism rate (BMR) and daily food consumption (DFC), we calculate that an average wolf (35 kg) needs 13 421 kJ daily, which corresponds to 1.74 kg of prey biomass. Calculations based on fieM metabolism rate (FMR2-for non-herbivorous mammals) yielded a 60% higher value, i.e. 2.77 kg of meat per day. The yearly requirements of the study population, using these two methods, ranged from 242 GJ (40 individuals, BMR and DFC) to 389 GJ (50 individuals, FMR2), i.e. 31.5-51.0 tonnes of meat and edible tissues. Wolves preyed chiefly on red deer Cervus elaphus and roe deer Capreolus capreolus (70-85% of the total biomass consumed), wild boar Sus scrofa, hare Lepus europaeus, moose Alces alces and small rodents. The total biomass of wolf prey, censused from snow tracking and year-long observations, and corrected from drive censuses, was assessed at 879-943 tonnes. These data suggest that wolves remove no more than 10% (6.3-9.0%) of the total available biomass of ungulates which may not seriously affect resources of local game owners. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Effect of isobutyl methacrylate and methacrylic acid eluted from chairside denture hard reliners on enzymatic cellular antioxidants: An in vitro study in human primary buccal mucosal fibroblasts

Aim: This study was conducted with the objective to evaluate the cytotoxicity of monomers isobutyl methacrylate (IBMA) and methacrylic acid (MA) in human buccal mucosal fibroblast primary cell culture and to study their effect on cellular enzymatic antioxidants-glutathione peroxidase (GPx), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and catalase (CAT). Materials and Methods: The tissue for fibroblast cell culture was harvested from oral buccal mucosa of a healthy donor. Fibroblast cells were plated at a density of 1 × 104 cells per well in 96-well tissue culture plates. Cells were exposed to various concentrations of IBMA and MA. The cell viability and various enzyme activities were evaluated 24 h after exposure to the above treatments. All tests were done in triplicate. Cell viability was assessed by trypan blue dye exclusion assay and all enzyme activities were done using assay kits from Cayman Chemicals, Ann Arbor, USA. Results: At all concentrations tested a statistically significant decrease in viability was observed in IBMA- and MA-treated cells. Around 42% cells were viable at the highest test concentration of IBMA (80 μmol/L) and only 20% cells were viable at the highest dose (144 μmol/L) of MA exposure (P < 0.05). Dose-dependent decrease in the GPx and SOD activities was observed in cells treated with IBMA and MA (P < 0.05). CAT activity was not detectable in the controls. However, a fall in CAT activity was detected in cells exposed to IBMA and MA at all concentrations tested (P < 0.05). Conclusion: IBMA and MA leaching out from the chairside denture hard reliners are cytotoxic on human buccal fibroblast primary cell cultures. This could be due to the oxidative stress caused by the generation of reactive oxygen species which is evidenced by the fall in activities of antioxidant enzymes (GPx, SOD, and CAT) and cytotoxicity.
Enumeration for FO Queries over Nowhere Dense Graphs

We consider the evaluation of first-order queries over classes of databases that are nowhere dense. The notion of nowhere dense classes was introduced by Nešetřil and Ossona de Mendez as a formalization of classes of “sparse” graphs and generalizes many well-known classes of graphs, such as classes of bounded degree, bounded tree-width, or bounded expansion. It has recently been shown by Grohe, Kreutzer, and Siebertz that over nowhere dense classes of databases, first-order sentences can be evaluated in pseudo-linear time (pseudo-linear time means that for all \( \epsilon \) there exists an algorithm working in time \( O(n^{1+\epsilon }) \) , where \( n \) is the size of the database). For first-order queries of higher arities, we show that over any nowhere dense class of databases, the set of their solutions can be enumerated with constant delay after a pseudo-linear time preprocessing. In the same context, we also show that after a pseudo-linear time preprocessing we can, on input of a tuple, test in constant time whether it is a solution to the query.
The lightspace change constraint equation (LCCE) with practical application to estimation of the projectivity+gain transformation between multiple pictures of the same subject matter

For many years, the brightness constancy constraint equation (BCCE) has been used for optical flow and related computer vision computations. However, almost all cameras have some kind of automatic exposure feature such as automatic gain control (AGC), so that the overall exposure level of the image varies as the camera is aimed at brighter or darker portions of a scene. Moreover, because most cameras have some kind of unknown nonlinear response function, the change due to AGC cannot be captured by merely applying a multiplicative constant to the pixels of each image. We propose, therefore, a lightspace change constraint equation (LCCE) that accounts for exposure change (AGC) together with the nonlinear response function of the camera. The response function can be automatically "learned" by an intelligent image processing system presented with differently exposed captures of the same subject matter in overlapping regions of registered images. Most importantly, a logarithmic lightspace change constraint equation (LLCCE) is shown to have a very simple mathematical formulation. The LCCE (and log LCCE) is applied to the estimation of the projective coordinate transformation between pairs of images in a sequence, and is compared with examples where the BCCE fails.
Effects of cis-9,trans-11 conjugated linoleic acid supplementation on insulin sensitivity, lipid peroxidation, and proinflammatory markers in obese men.

BACKGROUND We recently showed that trans-10,cis-12 (t10,c12) conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) causes insulin resistance in obese men. However, metabolic effects of the c9,t11 CLA isomer are still unknown in obese men. Because c9,t11 CLA is the predominant CLA isomer in foods and is included in dietary weight-loss products, it is important to conduct randomized controlled studies that use c9,t11 CLA preparations. OBJECTIVE We investigated the effects of c9,t11 CLA supplementation on insulin sensitivity, body composition, and lipid peroxidation in a group at high risk for cardiovascular disease. DESIGN In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 25 abdominally obese men received 3 g c9,t11 CLA/d or placebo (olive oil). Before and after 3 mo of supplementation, we assessed insulin sensitivity (hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamp), lipid metabolism, body composition, and urinary 8-iso-prostaglandin F(2alpha) (a major F(2)-isoprostane) and 15-keto-dihydro-prostaglandin F(2alpha), markers of in vivo oxidative stress and inflammation, respectively. RESULTS All subjects completed the study. Compared with placebo, c9,t11 CLA decreased insulin sensitivity by 15% (P < 0.05) and increased 8-iso-prostaglandin F(2alpha) and 15-keto-dihydro-prostaglandin F(2alpha) excretion by 50% (P < 0.01) and 15% (P < 0.05), respectively. The decreased insulin sensitivity was independent of changes in serum lipids, glycemia, body mass index, and body fat but was abolished after adjustment for changes in 8-iso-prostaglandin F(2alpha) concentrations. There were no differences between groups in body composition. CONCLUSIONS A CLA preparation containing the purified c9,t11 CLA isomer increased insulin resistance and lipid peroxidation compared with placebo in obese men. Because c9,t11 CLA occurs in commercial supplements as well as in the diet, the present results should be confirmed in larger studies that also include women.
The blood-brain barrier and folate deficiency.

Twenty-three patients (average age: 63.2 +/- 14.9 (x +/- SEM) ranging from 28 to 83 yr) with low or borderline cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) folate and low serum underwent two lumbar punctures, i.e., before and after 3 wk of folate therapy. The rise in CSF folate content in the whole group after the replacement therapy was significant by both the Lactobacillus casei and radioisotope methods of folate determination. In patients with folate-responsive neurological disorders, the rise of CSF values after replacement therapy was definitely higher than in the group of patients in whom folate deficiency was not related to the actual clinical picture. Contrary to previous statements, the present study revealed that there is not an absolute blood-brain barrier for folate because the lower the CSF folate level was, the more rapid and spectacular the increase in CSF folate after replacement therapy was found.