Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Orai3 – the ‘exceptional’ Orai?

Abstract The field of agonist‐activated Ca2+ entry in non‐excitable cells underwent a revolution some 5 years ago with the discovery of the Orai proteins as the essential pore‐forming components of the low‐conductance, highly Ca2+‐selective CRAC channels whose activation is dependent on depletion of intracellular stores. Mammals possess three distinct Orai proteins (Orai1, 2 and 3) of which Orai3 is unique to this class, apparently evolving from Orai1. However, the sequence of Orai3 shows marked differences from that of Orai1, particularly in those regions of the protein outside of the essential pore‐forming domains. Correspondingly, studies from several different groups have indicated that the inclusion of Orai3 is associated with the appearance of conductances that display unique features in their gating, selectivity, regulation and mode of activation. In this Topical Review, these features are discussed with the purpose of proposing that the evolutionary appearance of Orai3 in mammals, and the consequent development of conductances displaying novel properties – whether formed by Orai3 alone or in conjunction with the other Orai proteins – is associated with the specific role of this member of the Orai family in a unique range of distinct cellular activities.
Data aggregation and pipelining scheduling protocols for real-time wireless sensor networks

Critical applications in real-time wireless sensor networks require bounded service latency and energy consumption optimisation. This motivates us to design a novel scheduling approach, which integrates communications with pipelining and data aggregation. The aim of our aggregation technique is to reduce the number of messages, which consequently reduces energy consumption. However, our pipelining technique is defined to minimise communication latency. Our approach is applied on tree wireless sensor networks and in a real-time context, which requires communications without interference. Thus, we use TDMA and a multi-frequency access method based on parent relationship clustering. In this context, we made the necessary mathematical formulation to determine communication response time and to predict the impact of real-time constraints, particularly deadlines, on communication delay. Our simulations outperform the efficiency of our approach to comprise between communication delay and energy consumption constraints.
Approximate Capacity Region of the Two-User Gaussian Interference Channel With Noisy Channel-Output Feedback

In this paper, the capacity region of the linear deterministic interference channel with noisy channel-output feedback (LD-IC-NF) is fully characterized. The proof of achievability is based on random coding arguments and rate splitting, block-Markov superposition coding, and backward decoding. The proof of the converse reuses some of the existing outer bounds and includes new ones obtained using genie-aided models. Following the insight gained from the analysis of the LD-IC-NF, an achievability region and a converse region for the two-user Gaussian interference channel with noisy channel-output feedback (G-IC-NF) are presented. Finally, the achievability region and the converse region are proven to approximate the capacity region of the G-IC-NF to within 4.4 bits.
Development of quadruped walking robot TITAN-VIII

We discuss the development of the quadruped walking robot TITAN-VIII, especially about its leg mechanism and results of experiments using a one-leg model. In the design of TITAN-VIII, we have considered not only about "high performance of the movement" but also about "low cost", "simplicity of the treatment", "simplicity of the functional extension", etc. We introduce a driving system using wires, which is helpful to achieve these objectives. We first constructed a one-leg model of TITAN-VIII. By using this model, we did experiments and made remarks about the feature of response, velocity, force and energy consumption. From these results, we estimated the limitation of the walking velocity of TITAN-VIII in standard walking posture. We discuss the standard walking posture of TITAN-VIII based on the energy efficiency.
Predicting AD Conversion: Comparison between Prodromal AD Guidelines and Computer Assisted PredictAD Tool

Purpose To compare the accuracies of predicting AD conversion by using a decision support system (PredictAD tool) and current research criteria of prodromal AD as identified by combinations of episodic memory impairment of hippocampal type and visual assessment of medial temporal lobe atrophy (MTA) on MRI and CSF biomarkers. Methods Altogether 391 MCI cases (158 AD converters) were selected from the ADNI cohort. All the cases had baseline cognitive tests, MRI and/or CSF levels of Aβ1–42 and Tau. Using baseline data, the status of MCI patients (AD or MCI) three years later was predicted using current diagnostic research guidelines and the PredictAD software tool designed for supporting clinical diagnostics. The data used were 1) clinical criteria for episodic memory loss of the hippocampal type, 2) visual MTA, 3) positive CSF markers, 4) their combinations, and 5) when the PredictAD tool was applied, automatically computed MRI measures were used instead of the visual MTA results. The accuracies of diagnosis were evaluated with the diagnosis made 3 years later. Results The PredictAD tool achieved the overall accuracy of 72% (sensitivity 73%, specificity 71%) in predicting the AD diagnosis. The corresponding number for a clinician’s prediction with the assistance of the PredictAD tool was 71% (sensitivity 75%, specificity 68%). Diagnosis with the PredictAD tool was significantly better than diagnosis by biomarkers alone or the combinations of clinical diagnosis of hippocampal pattern for the memory loss and biomarkers (p≤0.037). Conclusion With the assistance of PredictAD tool, the clinician can predict AD conversion more accurately than the current diagnostic criteria.
Portrait lighting transfer using a mass transport approach

Lighting is a critical element of portrait photography. However, good lighting design typically requires complex equipment and significant time and expertise. Our work simplifies this task using a relighting technique that transfers the desired illumination of one portrait onto another. The novelty in our approach to this challenging problem is our formulation of relighting as a mass transport problem. We start from standard color histogram matching that only captures the overall tone of the illumination, and we show how to use the mass-transport formulation to make it dependent on facial geometry. We fit a three-dimensional (3D) morphable face model to the portrait, and for each pixel, we combine the color value with the corresponding 3D position and normal. We then solve a mass-transport problem in this augmented space to generate a color remapping that achieves localized, geometry-aware relighting. Our technique is robust to variations in facial appearance and small errors in face reconstruction. As we demonstrate, this allows our technique to handle a variety of portraits and illumination conditions, including scenarios that are challenging for previous methods.
Measures of adiposity in the identification of metabolic abnormalities in elderly men.

BACKGROUND Body mass index (BMI; in kg/m(2)) is considered a poor indicator of overall and abdominal obesity in the elderly. OBJECTIVES Our goal was to determine which simple anthropometric measurements [BMI, waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist circumference (WC), percentage body fat (%BF), or fat mass (FM)] are most closely associated with metabolic risk factors and insulin resistance in elderly men. DESIGN This was a cross-sectional study of 2924 men aged 60-79 y with no history of coronary heart disease, stroke, or diabetes who were drawn from general practices in 24 British towns. RESULTS BMI and WC were the measures most strongly associated with the metabolic syndrome (>/=3 of the following: hypertension, low HDL cholesterol, high triacylglycerols, or high blood glucose) and insulin resistance. For a 1-SD increase in BMI, WC, WHR, %BF, and FM, the odds ratios (95% CIs) of having the metabolic syndrome after adjustment for age, socioeconomic status, smoking status, and physical activity were as follows: BMI, 1.61 (1.44, 1.79); WC, 1.65 (1.48, 1.81); WHR, 1.49 (1.34, 1.66); %BF, 1.41 (1.25, 1.59); and FM, 1.53 (1.38, 1.70). For insulin resistance, the odds ratios (95% CIs) were as follows: 2.48 (2.22, 2.77), 2.46 (2.19, 2.65), 1.75 (1.59, 1.93), 1.79 (1.60, 2.00), and 2.10 (1.88, 2.34), respectively. In normal-weight (BMI < 25) and overweight (BMI 25-29.9) men, the presence of the metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance increased with increasing WC; this did not occur in obese men. CONCLUSIONS BMI and WC are the simple measures of adiposity most strongly associated with metabolic abnormalities in elderly men. Our findings suggest that WC can be used as a complementary measurement to identify health risks in normal-weight and overweight elderly persons.
Political Competition vs. Political Participation: Effects on Government's Size

From a theoretical standpoint, there are reasons to believe that political competition and political participation might have opposite effects on the size of government. We investigate empirically this possibility using data from a panel of 104 countries from 1960. We find that reforms enhancing political competition tend to limit the size of government, while reforms increasing political participation tend to increase the size of government. These results are robust for the global sample and across different regions. Controlling for the existence and enforcement of compulsory voting laws does not affect our main results. Our findings reinforce the empirical relevance of the distinction between political competition and participation.
Comparative analysis of the composition of intestinal bacterial communities in Dastarcus helophoroides fed different diets

Abstract The diversity of the intestinal bacterial communities in Dastarcus helophoroides (Fairmaire) (Coleoptera: Bothrideridae) larvae and adults was assayed by PCR-DGGE to determine whether different artificial diets could influence these bacterial communities. Two diets were used for feeding the larvae and four for the adults. Escherichia, Desemzia, Staphylococcus, Asticcacaulis, Cellvibrio, Aurantimonas, and Planomicrobium were isolated from the gut of the adults, with Escherichia and Staphylococcus being the main bacterial communities, and the quantities of intestinal bacterial were different in the adults fed different diets. Specifically, the amount of intestinal bacteria from the adults fed different diets had the following ranking according to the major component of the diet: ant powder > darkling beetle pupa powder > cricket powder > silkworm pupa powder. Escherichia, Bacillus, Staphylococcus, Kurthia, Planococcaceae, Ralstonia, Leptothrix, Acinetobacter, and Pseudomonas were isolated from the gut of the larvae. The quantity of intestinal bacteria from the larvae fed the darkling beetle pupae was greater than that from the larvae fed other artificial diets. This study, for the first time, investigated the effect of artificial diets on the bacterial community and the intestinal microbial diversity of D. helophoroides.
Progress in the Calculation of Solid Surface Tension Based on Contact Angle Method

The determination of solid surface tension is always a hot issue in the fields of surface science and engineering. Various approaches of calculating solid surface tension based on contact angle method are reviewed since the Young equation was derived. It is analyzed that the assumed conditions on which these approaches are formed and existing problems while the solid surface tension is calculated. The recent achievement in this field is also introduced. The characteristics of value about solid surface tension obtained by different approaches are compared. Finally, existing problems of current researches are indicated.
The associations of two SNPs in miRNA-146a and one SNP in ZBTB38-RASA2 with the disease susceptibility and the clinical features of the Chinese patients of sCJD and FFI

ABSTRACT Prion diseases are a group of fatal neurodegenerative disorders that affect humans and animals. Besides of the pathological agent, prion, there are some elements that can influence or determine susceptibility to prion infection and the clinical phenotype of the diseases, e.g., the polymorphism in PRNP gene. Another polymorphism in ZBTB38–RASA2 has been observed to be associated with the susceptibility of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (sCJD) in UK. MicroRNAs are endogenous small noncoding RNAs that control gene expression by targeting mRNAs and triggering either translation repression or RNA degradation. In this study, two polymorphic loci in miR-146a (rs2910164 and rs57095329) and one locus in ZBTB38-RASA2 (rs295301) of 561 Chinese patients of sCJD and 31 cases of fatal familial insomnia (FFI) were screened by PCR and sequencing. Our data did not figure out any association of those three SNPs with the susceptibility of sCJD. However, a significant association of the SNP of rs57095329 in miR-146a showed the association with the susceptibility of FFI. Additionally, the SNP of rs57095329 showed statistical significances with the appearances of mutism and the positive of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) protein 14-3-3 in sCJD patients, while the SNP of ZBTB38-RASA2 was significantly related with the appearance of myoclonus in sCJD patients. It indicates that the SNPs of ZBTB38-RASA2 and miR-146a are not associated with the susceptibility of the Chinese sCJD patients, but may influence the appearances of clinical manifestations somehow.
Imitation Learning with Concurrent Actions in 3D Games

In this work we describe a novel deep reinforcement learning architecture that allows multiple actions to be selected at every time-step in an efficient manner. Multi-action policies allow complex behaviours to be learnt that would otherwise be hard to achieve when using single action selection techniques. We use both imitation learning and temporal difference (TD) reinforcement learning (RL) to provide a 4x improvement in training time and 2.5x improvement in performance over single action selection TD RL. We demonstrate the capabilities of this network using a complex in-house 3D game. Mimicking the behavior of the expert teacher significantly improves world state exploration and allows the agents vision system to be trained more rapidly than TD RL alone. This initial training technique kick-starts TD learning and the agent quickly learns to surpass the capabilities of the expert.
Body Mass Index and Risk of Pancreatic Cancer in a Chinese Population

Few studies have examined the association between body mass index (BMI: kg/m2) and pancreatic cancer risk in Asian populations. We examined this relationship in 51,251 Chinese men and women aged 45–74 who enrolled between 1993 and 1998 in the population based, prospective Singapore Chinese Health Study. Data were collected through in-person interviews. By December 31, 2011, 194 cohort participants had developed pancreatic cancer. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and their 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). We hypothesized the association between BMI and pancreatic cancer risk may vary by smoking status (ever v. never) and there was evidence for this as the interaction between BMI and smoking status was significant (p = 0.018). Among ever smokers, being classified as underweight (BMI <18.5 kg/m2), was associated with a significantly elevated risk of pancreatic cancer relative to smokers with a BMI of 21.5–24.4 kg/m2 (HR = 1.99, 95% CI = 1.03–3.84). This association was strengthened after exclusion of the first three years of follow-up time. Among never smokers, there was no association between BMI and pancreatic cancer risk. However, after excluding pancreatic cancer cases and person-years in the first three years of follow-up, never smokers with a BMI ≥ 27.5 kg/m2 showed a suggestive increased risk of pancreatic cancer relative to never smokers with a BMI of 21.5–24.4 kg/m2 (HR = 1.75, 95% CI = 0.93–3.3). In conclusion, Singaporean Chinese who were underweight with a history of smoking had an increased risk of developing pancreatic cancer, whereas there was no significant association between BMI and pancreatic cancer in never smokers.
Fine specificity of monoclonal antibodies against celiac disease-inducing peptides in the gluteome.

BACKGROUND In celiac disease patients, peptides derived from dietary gluten are recognized by HLA-DQ2-restricted CD4(+) T cells, which results in inflammation. Such immune-stimulatory peptides are found in both gliadins and glutenins. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against these peptides can be used to screen food for the presence of such peptides. OBJECTIVE We aimed to determine the specificity of 5 mAbs raised against T cell stimulatory peptides found in alpha- and gamma-gliadins and in low- and high-molecular-weight glutenins and to compare it with the specificity of patient-derived T cells. DESIGN The reactivity of the mAbs with gluten peptides, enzymatic gluten digests, and intact gluten proteins was determined and compared with that of gluten-specific T cells by using a combination of immunologic and biochemical techniques. Furthermore, the reactivity of the mAbs with gluten homologues in barley, rye, and oat was determined. RESULTS The specificity of the mAbs largely overlaps with that of gluten-specific T cells. Moreover, mAbs detect several homologous peptides present in gluten proteins. All except the LMW-specific mAbs also detect storage proteins present in barley and rye, whereas the gamma-gliadin-specific mAbs also recognize oat proteins. CONCLUSION The mAbs raised against T cell stimulatory peptides in gliadins and glutenins allow a comprehensive screen for the presence of harmful gluten and gluten-like proteins and peptides in food products. They can thus be used to guarantee the safety of food for celiac disease patients.
Tree-based Space Efficient Formats for Storing the Structure of Sparse Matrices

Sparse storage formats describe a way how sparse matrices are stored in a computer memory. Extensive research has been conducted about these formats in the context of performance optimization of the sparse matrix-vector multiplication algorithms, but memory efficient formats for storing sparse matrices are still under development, since the commonly used storage formats (like COO or CSR) are not sufficient. In this paper, we propose and evaluate new storage formats for sparse matrices that minimize the space complexity of information about matrix structure. The first one is based on arithmetic coding and the second one is based on binary tree format. We compare the space complexity of common storage formats and our new formats and prove that the latter are considerably more space efficient.
RSRC1 mutation affects intellect and behaviour through aberrant splicing and transcription, downregulating IGFBP3

RSRC1, whose polymorphism is associated with altered brain function in schizophrenia, is a member of the serine and arginine rich-related protein family. Through homozygosity mapping and whole exome sequencing we show that RSRC1 mutation causes an autosomal recessive syndrome of intellectual disability, aberrant behaviour, hypotonia and mild facial dysmorphism with normal brain MRI. Further, we show that RSRC1 is ubiquitously expressed, and that the RSRC1 mutation triggers nonsense-mediated mRNA decay of the RSRC1 transcript in patients' fibroblasts. Short hairpin RNA (shRNA)-mediated lentiviral silencing and overexpression of RSRC1 in SH-SY5Y cells demonstrated that RSRC1 has a role in alternative splicing and transcription regulation. Transcriptome profiling of RSRC1-silenced cells unravelled specific differentially expressed genes previously associated with intellectual disability, hypotonia and schizophrenia, relevant to the disease phenotype. Protein-protein interaction network modelling suggested possible intermediate interactions by which RSRC1 affects gene-specific differential expression. Patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells, differentiated into neural progenitor cells, showed expression dynamics similar to the RSRC1-silenced SH-SY5Y model. Notably, patient neural progenitor cells had 9.6-fold downregulated expression of IGFBP3, whose brain expression is affected by MECP2, aberrant in Rett syndrome. Interestingly, Igfbp3-null mice have behavioural impairment, abnormal synaptic function and monoaminergic neurotransmission, likely correlating with the disease phenotype.
Adaptation of iron absorption in men consuming diets with high or low iron bioavailability.

BACKGROUND Short-term measurements of iron absorption are substantially influenced by dietary bioavailability of iron, yet bioavailability negligibly affects serum ferritin in longer, controlled trials. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to test the hypothesis that in men fed diets with high or low iron bioavailability, iron absorption adapts to homeostatically maintain body iron stores. DESIGN Heme- and nonheme-iron absorption from whole diets were measured in 31 healthy men at 0 and 10 wk while the men consumed weighed, 2-d repeating diets with either high or low iron bioavailability for 12 wk. The diets with high and low iron bioavailability contained, respectively, 14.4 and 15.3 mg nonheme Fe/d and 1.8 and 0.1 mg heme Fe/d and had different contents of meat, ascorbic acid, whole grains, legumes, and tea. RESULTS Adaptation occurred with nonheme- but not with heme-iron absorption. Total iron absorption decreased from 0.96 to 0.69 mg/d (P < 0.05) and increased from 0.12 to 0.17 mg/d (P < 0.05) after 10 wk of the high- and low-bioavailability diets, respectively. This partial adaptation reduced the difference in iron bioavailability between the diets from 8- to 4-fold. Serum ferritin was insensitive to diet but fecal ferritin was substantially lower with the low- than the high-bioavailability diet. Erythrocyte incorporation of absorbed iron was inversely associated with serum ferritin. CONCLUSIONS Iron-replete men partially adapted to dietary iron bioavailability and iron absorption from a high-bioavailability diet was reduced to approximately 0.7 mg Fe/d. Short-term measurements of absorption overestimate differences in iron bioavailability between diets.
From GENIA to BIOTOP - Towards a Top-Level Ontology for Biology

The increasing need for advanced ontology-based knowledge management in the life sciences is generally being acknowledged but, up until now, the development of biological ontologies lacks adherence to foundational principles of ontology design. This is particularly true of so-called upper-level ontologies such as the GENIA ontology which covers biological continuants and has mainly been devised for corpus annotation in a text mining context. As an alternative, we introduce BIOTOP,an upper ontology of physical continuants in the domain of biology, with a coverage similar to the GENIA ontology. We report on design specifications and modeling decisions for BIOTOP which are based upon formal ontology principles. As a major desideratum, these continuants are described in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. We accomplished this goal for 85 out of the 146 existing GENIA classes. We use OWL-DL as a formal knowledge representation language and may thus use a terminological reasoner for classification in order to check and maintain consistency during the ontology engineering phase.