Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accelerated graft rejection in the offspring of immunized mothers.

Infant rats born of mothers sensitized prior to and during pregnancy displayed a) a state of delayed hypersensitivity as manifested by skin reactions to tuberculin in 26% of animals born of mothers immunized with tubercle bacilli and b) a state of homograft immunity manifested by accelerated rejection of donor homografts in infants born of homografted mothers. Participation of maternal cells in the rejection of homografts in infants was excluded in an experiment in which highly tolerant mothers were used. Accelerated rejection was observed in infants of these mothers after the latter had been injected with trypsinized skin cells. The most likely basis for the accelerated graft rejection appeared to be a process of active immunization resulting from passage of antigen across the placenta.
Multisensory virtual environment for supporting blind persons ’ acquisition of spatial cognitive mapping , orientation , and mobility skills

Mental mapping of spaces, and of the possible paths for navigating these spaces, is essential for the development of efficient orientation and mobility skills. Most of the information required for this mental mapping is gathered through the visual channel. Blind people lack this crucial information and in consequence face great difficulties (a) in generating efficient mental maps of spaces, and therefore (b) in navigating efficiently within these spaces. The work reported in this paper follows the assumption that the supply of appropriate spatial information through compensatory sensorial channels, as an alternative to the (impaired) visual channel, may contribute to the mental mapping of spaces and consequently, to blind people’s spatial performance. The main goals of the study reported in this paper were: (a) The development of a multi-sensory virtual environment enabling blind people to learn about real life spaces which they are required to navigate (e.g., school, work place, public buildings); (b) A systematic study of blind people’s acquisition of spatial navigation skills by means of the virtual environment; (c) A systematic study of the contribution of this mapping to blind people’s spatial skills and performance in the real environment. In the paper a brief description of the virtual learning environment is presented, as well as preliminary results of two case studies of blind persons’ learning process with the environment.
What site-directed labeling studies tell us about the mechanism of rhodopsin activation and G-protein binding

Rhodopsin is the photoreceptor protein responsible for dim-light vision in mammals. Due to extensive biophysical, structural and computational analysis of this membrane protein, it is presently the best understood G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR). Here I briefly review one approach that has been extensively used to identify dynamic and structural changes in rhodopsin — the use of site-directed labeling methods (SDL) coupled with electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and fluorescence spectroscopy. These SDL studies involve introducing individual cysteine residues into the receptor, then labeling them with cysteine-reactive probes for subsequent analysis by the appropriate spectroscopy. I will give a brief overview of how SDL methods are carried out and how the data is analyzed. Then, I will discuss how SDL studies were carried out on rhodopsin, and how they were used to identify a key structural change that occurs in rhodopsin upon activation — movement of transmembrane helix 6 (TM6). I will also briefly discuss how the SDL studies of rhodopsin compare with SDL studies of other GPCRs, and compare the SDL data with early and recent crystal structures of rhodopsin. Finally, I will discuss why the TM6 movement is required for rhodopsin to couple with the G-protein transducin, and speculate how this mechanism might be a universal method used by all GPCRs to bind G-proteins and perhaps other proteins involved in visual signal transduction, such as arrestin and rhodopsin kinase.
High throughput LDPC code and decoder design for HINOC 2.0 systems

This paper presents a high-throughput structured low density parity check (LDPC) code and an optimal parallel decoder architecture with advanced Ping-Pong RAMs for the HINOC 2.0 systems. An additional iteration scheme is proposed to further improve decoding performance by taking full use of time intervals of the discontinuous streams, an important feature in HINOC 2.0 systems. The proposed LDPC code proves to be of better performance than the codes adopted in the current standards (802.16e). The proposed decoder is implemented and synthesized on FPGA Stratix V, with the maximum working frequency of 145MHz. The total resource cost is reduced by 23%, which is the cost of one decoder core, with slightly increased complexity in control logics, compared with the traditional Ping-Pong RAM based parallel architecture. The resulting performance is 2Gbps which is enough to support HINOC 2.0 systems.
Prediction of Low Birth Weight Delivery by Maternal Status and Its Validation: Decision Curve Analysis

Background: In this study, we evaluated assessed elements connected with low birth weight (LBW) and used decision curve analysis (DCA) to define a scale to anticipate the probability of having a LBW newborn child. Methods: This hospital-based case–control study was led in Arak Hospital in Iran. The study included 470 mothers with LBW neonate and 470 mothers with natural neonates. Information were gathered by meeting moms utilizing preplanned organized questionnaire and from hospital records. The estimated probabilities of detecting LBW were calculated using the logistic regression and DCA to quantify the clinical consequences and its validation. Results: Factors significantly associated with LBW were premature membrane rupture (odds ratio [OR] = 3.18 [1.882–5.384]), former LBW infants (OR = 2.99 [1.510–5.932]), premature pain (OR = 2.70 [1.659–4.415]), hypertension in pregnancy (OR = 2.39 [1.429–4.019]), last trimester of pregnancy bleeding (OR = 2.58 [1.018–6.583]), mother age >30 (OR = 2.17 [1.350–3.498]). However, with DCA, the prediction model made on these 15 variables has a net benefit (NB) of 0.3110 is best predictive with the highest NB. NB has simple clinical interpretation and utilizing the model is what might as well be called a procedure that distinguished what might as well be called 31.1 LBW per 100 cases with no superfluous recognize. Conclusions: It is conceivable to foresee LBW utilizing a prediction model show in light of noteworthy hazard components connected with LBW. The majority of the hazard elements for LBW are preventable, and moms can be alluded amid early pregnancy to a middle which is furnished with facilities for administration of high hazard pregnancy and LBW infant.
AIST Annotation for the RWC Music Database

In this paper, we introduce our activities regarding the manual annotation of the musical pieces of the RWC Music Database. Although the RWC Music Database is widely used, its annotated descriptions are not widely available. We therefore annotated a set of music-scene descriptions consisting of the beat structure, melody line, and chorus sections. We call this AIST Annotation. We also manually synchronized standard MIDI files with the corresponding audio signals at the beat level. We hope that the AIST Annotation will contribute to further advances in the field of music information processing.
Inverse Reinforcement Learning based on Critical State

Inverse reinforcement learning is tried to search a reward function based on Markov Decision Process. In the IRL topics, experts produce some good traces to make agents learn and adjust the reward function. But the function is difficult to set in some complicate problems. In this paper, Inverse Reinforcement Learning based on Critical State (IRLCS) is proposed to search a succinct and meaningful reward function. IRLCS select a set of reward indexes from whole state space through comparing the difference between the good and bad demonstrations. According to the simulation results, IRLCS can search a good strategy that is similar to experts.
Schwinger-Keldysh propagators from AdS/CFT correspondence

We demonstrate how to compute real-time Green's functions for a class of finite temperature field theories from their AdS gravity duals. In particular, we reproduce the 2 ? 2 Schwinger-Keldysh matrix propagator from a gravity calculation. Our methods should work also for computing higher point lorentzian signature correlators. We elucidate the boundary condition subtleties which hampered previous efforts to build a lorentzian-signature AdS/CFT correspondence. For two-point correlators, our construction is automatically equivalent to the previously formulated prescription for the retarded propagator.
Inhibition of Synchronized Cellular Deoxyribonucleic Acid Synthesis During Newcastle Disease Virus, Mengovirus, or Reovirus Infection

Cultures of L cells were synchronized with respect to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) synthesis with thymidine and 5-fluoro-2′-deoxyuridine (FUdR) and infected with Newcastle disease virus (NDV), mengovirus, or reovirus 3. Inhibition of incorporation of 3H-cytidine into the DNA of synchronized cells is partially inhibited 2 hr after infection with NDV or mengovirus and nearly completely suppressed 4 hr after infection. With NDV and mengovirus, no evidence was obtained of differences in sensitivity of cells during early S phase as compared to later stages in DNA synthesis. When cells were infected with reovirus at the time of release from FUdR block, inhibition of cellular DNA synthesis was evident at 2 to 3 hr, and it was complete at 4 to 5 hr after infection. However, when cells were infected several hours prerelease, synthesis of DNA occurred in early S phase in spite of the fact that the cells had been infected for up to 6 hr. The results indicate that DNA synthesis in early S phase is relatively insensitive to the inhibitory function of reovirus. Colorimetric determinations (diphenylamine reaction) of the amounts of DNA produced in synchronized cells have substantiated the inhibition of DNA synthesis observed by isotope incorporation techniques.
Role of liver endothelial and Kupffer cells in clearing low density lipoprotein from blood in hypercholesterolemic rabbits.

The role of liver endothelial and Kupffer cells in the hepatic uptake of cholesterol-rich low density lipoprotein (LDL) was studied in rabbits fed a diet containing 2% (w/w) cholesterol for 3 weeks. 125I-labeled tyramine cellobiose-labeled cholesterol-rich LDL was injected intravenously into rabbits, and parenchymal and nonparenchymal liver cells were isolated 24 h after injection. The hepatic uptake was 9 +/- 3% of injected dose in cholesterol-fed rabbits 24 h after injection, as compared to 36 +/- 9% in control-fed rabbits (n = 6 in each group; significant difference, P less than 0.005). Endothelial and Kupffer cells took up 2.7 +/- 0.5% and 1.2 +/- 0.8% of injected dose in the hypercholesterolemic rabbits, as compared to 1.9 +/- 0.8% and 0.8 +/- 0.3% in control animals. The amount accounted for by the parenchymal cells was markedly reduced in the cholesterol-fed rabbits to 7.3 +/- 2.7% of injected dose, as compared to 32.8 +/- 7.6% in controls (P less than 0.02). On a per cell basis, the nonparenchymal cells of cholesterol-fed rabbits took up as much LDL as the parenchymal cells (0.6 +/- 0.2, 0.7 +/- 0.1, and 0.6 +/- 0.4% of injected dose per 10(9) parenchymal, endothelial, and Kupffer cells, respectively). This is in marked contrast to the control animals, in which parenchymal cells took up about 6 times more LDL per cell than endothelial and Kupffer cells (3.2 +/- 0.9, 0.7 +/- 0.3, and 0.5 +/- 0.1% of injected dose per 10(9) cells). Thus, 30% of the hepatic uptake of LDL in the cholesterol-fed rabbits took place in nonparenchymal cells, as compared to 6% in controls. Consistent with these data, the concentrations of cholesteryl ester in endothelial and Kupffer cells in rabbits fed the high cholesterol diet were about twofold higher than in parenchymal cells (428 +/- 74 and 508 +/- 125 micrograms/mg protein, respectively, vs. 221 +/- 24 micrograms/mg protein in parenchymal cells). In contrast to cells from normal rabbits, Kupffer and endothelial cells from cholesterol-fed rabbits accumulated significant amounts of Oil Red O-positive material (neutral lipids). Electron microscopic examination of these cells in situ as well as in culture revealed numerous intracellular lipid droplets. Slot blot hybridization of RNA from liver parenchymal, endothelial, and Kupffer cells showed that cholesterol feeding reduced the level of mRNA specific for the apoB,E receptor to a small and insignificant extent in all three cell types (to 70-80% of that observed in control animals). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Nontrophic Interactions, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Functioning: An Interaction Web Model

Research into the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has mainly focused on the effects of species diversity on ecosystem properties in plant communities and, more recently, in food webs. Although there is growing recognition of the significance of nontrophic interactions in ecology, these interactions are still poorly studied theoretically, and their impact on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is largely unknown. Existing models of mutualism usually consider only one type of species interaction and do not satisfy mass balance constraints. Here, we present a model of an interaction web that includes both trophic and nontrophic interactions and that respects the principle of mass conservation. Nontrophic interactions are represented in the form of interaction modifications. We use this model to study the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem properties that emerges from the assembly of entire interaction webs. We show that ecosystem properties such as biomass and production depend not only on species diversity but also on species interactions, in particular on the connectance and magnitude of nontrophic interactions, and that the nature, prevalence, and strength of species interactions in turn depend on species diversity. Nontrophic interactions alter the shape of the relationship between biodiversity and biomass and can profoundly influence ecosystem processes.
Content-based Image Retrieval Using Constrained Independent Component Analysis: Facial Image Retrieval Based on Compound Queries

Visual information plays a crucial role in various domains, from medical diagnosis, journalism, crime-prevention to surveillance. Whereas domain specific images carry specific semantics, the problem of interpreting visual information becomes more complex when we talk of natural images. The maxim, 'A picture is worth a thousand words' explains this inherent problem very concisely. Indexing large databases of images for efficient retrieval is crucial for various domains such as journalism, biomedicine, forensics etc. Manual indexing of images in such large databases can be highly subjective and time consuming. In contrast, content-based image retrieval (CBIR) focuses on the development of efficient retrieval mechanisms based on image features or meta-data used for image annotation. Conventional approaches to CBIR represent images in the form of image-based features. These features vary from global image descriptors such as color or intensity histogram to local ones such as shape and texture. These features along with their combinations have been used previously for CBIR. For example, in (Deng et al., 2001), a region-based colordescriptor, modelling the color values along with their percentages in the region, is proposed. Similarly in (Hadjidemetriou et al., 2004), multi-resolution histograms have been employed for the retrieval of textured images. In (Jeong et al., 2004), the extraction of color histograms through Gaussian mixture vector quantization has been proposed. In (Belongie et al., 2002) and (Petrakis et al., 2002) respectively, shape descriptors and shape matching algorithms have been proposed for image retrieval. The use of low-level image features such as color histograms, shape, and texture attributes introduces a semantic gap (Chen et al., 2004). This semantic gap arises due to the inability of such low-level features to describe the objects and their inter-relations within the image. The use of such low-level features places the responsibility of achieving semantically coherent results on the user-interface. Various techniques of relevance feedback (Rui et al., 1998) have
Appraisal of Suicidal Risk Among Adolescents and Young Adults Through the Rorschach Test

The aims of this study are to investigate suicidal behaviors among adolescents and young adults and to test an index composed using Rorschach test responses related to an increased risk of suicide. Using a cross-sectional design, 4 groups were studied (according to criteria of the Columbia Classification Algorithm of Suicide Assessment [Posner, Oquendo, Gould, Stanley, & Davies, 2007]): A group with suicidal ideation (n = 30), a group with parasuicidal behavior (n = 30), a group with near-lethal suicide attempts (n = 26), and a control group (n = 30). Responses to the Rorschach test yielded 6 potential indicators of suicidal behavior (scored according to Exner's Comprehensive System and the Suicidal Index for Adolescents; Silberg & Armstrong, 1992). Rorschach scores including at least 4 of these 6 indicators selected 69% of the people who had committed serious suicide attempts. The Rorschach Suicidal Index reached an acceptable reliability and was related to other criteria of suicide risk, such as the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Ward, Mendelsohn, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961) and Linehan Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL–I; Linehan, Goodstein, Nielsen, & Chiles, 1983). Moreover, the Rorschach Suicidal Index showed incremental validity over the BDI and the RFL–I to predict suicidal behavior. A path analysis additionally showed that low social support was an important mediator between the Rorschach Suicidal Index and the number of suicide attempts committed by participants.
Use of a quasi-Newton method in a feedforward neural network construction algorithm

This paper describes an algorithm for constructing a single hidden layer feedforward neural network. A distinguishing feature of this algorithm is that it uses the quasi-Newton method to minimize the sequence of error functions associated with the growing network. Experimental results indicate that the algorithm is very efficient and robust. The algorithm was tested on two test problems. The first was the n-bit parity problem and the second was the breast cancer diagnosis problem from the University of Wisconsin Hospitals. For the n-bit parity problem, the algorithm was able to construct neural network having less than n hidden units that solved the problem for n=4,. ,7. For the cancer diagnosis problem, the neural networks constructed by the algorithm had small number of hidden units and high accuracy rates on both the training data and the testing data.
Basic fibroblast growth factor enhances osteogenic and chondrogenic differentiation of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells in coral scaffold constructs

Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders are commonly occurring degenerative joint diseases that require surgical replacement of the mandibular condyle in severe cases. Transplantation of tissue‐engineered mandibular condyle constructs may solve some of the current surgical limitations to TMJ repair. We evaluated the feasibility of mandibular condyle constructs engineered from human bone marrow‐derived mesenchymal cells (BMSCs). Specifically, human BMSCs were transfected with basic FGF (bFGF) gene‐encoding plasmids and induced to differentiate into osteoblasts and chondroblasts. The cells were seeded onto mandibular condyle‐shaped porous coral scaffolds and evaluated for osteogenic/chondrogenic differentiation, cell proliferation, collagen deposition and tissue vascularization. Transfected human BMSCs expressed bFGF and were highly proliferative. Osteogenesis was irregular, showing neovascularization around new bone tissue. There was no evidence of bilayered osteochondral tissue present in normal articulating surfaces. Collagen deposition, characteristic of bone and cartilage, was observed. Subcutaneous transplantation of seeded coral/hydrogel hyaluran constructs into nude mice resulted in bone formation and collagen type I and type II deposition. Neovascularization was observed around newly formed bone tissue; bFGF expression was detected in implanted constructs seeded with bFGF expressing hBMSCs. This report demonstrates that engineered porous coral constructs using bFGF gene‐transfected human BMSCs may be a feasible option for surgical transplantation in TMJ repair. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
CHARACTERIZING THE EFFECT OF ANTI-VASCULAR ENDOTHELIAL GROWTH FACTOR THERAPY ON TREATMENT-NAIVE CHOROIDAL NEOVASCULARIZATION USING OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY ANGIOGRAPHY

Purpose: To use optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) to characterize the effects of anti-VEGF injections on treatment-naive choroidal neovascularization (CNV). Methods: From August 2014 to May 2015, treatment-naive eyes with CNV were scanned using a prototype OCTA system on a commercially available SD-OCT device (Optovue Inc, Fremont, CA). Optical coherence tomography angiography scans were obtained before anti-VEGF injection and at follow-up visits. The CNV area and greatest linear dimension (GLD) were measured along with the maximum retinal pigment epithelial detachment (RPED) height. Changes in subretinal and/or intraretinal fluid were also assessed. Results: Six eyes of six patients with treatment-naive CNV were included. Diagnoses included neovascular age-related macular degeneration, idiopathic polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy, CNV secondary to central serous chorioretinopathy and multifocal choroiditis, and macular telangiectasia Type 2 with subretinal neovascularization. After treatment, all patients with fluid on OCT initially showed a decrease in the amount of fluid. Five of six patients demonstrated decreases in CNV GLD and area with an average reduction of 23.6% and 29.8% respectively. Conclusion: Both CNV greatest linear dimension and area measured using OCTA decreased after anti-VEGF treatment in most patients. Optical coherence tomography angiography may be a useful tool for monitoring and quantifying the response of CNV to treatment.
Graphene Coupled Schiff‐base Porous Polymers: Towards Nitrogen‐enriched Porous Carbon Nanosheets with Ultrahigh Electrochemical Capacity

Schiff-base type porous polymer sheets with ultrahigh nitrogen content have been successfully synthesized by utilizing aminated graphene oxide as a 2D structure-directing template via dynamic covalent chemistry. Nitrogen-enriched porous carbon nanosheets were thus prepared by thermal pyrolysis of the 2D porous polymers, showing exceptionally high capacitance up to 424 F g(-1) at 0.1 A g(-1) in 6 m KOH, superior to that of porous carbons without graphene involved.