Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structure–functional intimacies of transient receptor potential channels

Abstract Although a unifying characteristic common to all transient receptor potential (TRP) channel functions remains elusive, they could be described as tetramers formed by subunits with six transmembrane domains and containing cation-selective pores, which in several cases show high calcium permeability. TRP channels constitute a large superfamily of ion channels, and can be grouped into seven subfamilies based on their amino acid sequence homology: the canonical or classic TRPs, the vanilloid receptor TRPs, the melastatin or long TRPs, ankyrin (whose only member is the transmembrane protein 1 [TRPA1]), TRPN after the nonmechanoreceptor potential C (nonpC), and the more distant cousins, the polycystins and mucolipins. Because of their role as cellular sensors, polymodal activation and gating properties, many TRP channels are activated by a variety of different stimuli and function as signal integrators. Thus, how TRP channels function and how function relates to given structural determinants contained in the channel-forming protein has attracted the attention of biophysicists as well as molecular and cell biologists. The main purpose of this review is to summarize our present knowledge on the structure of channels of the TRP ion channel family. In the absence of crystal structure information for a complete TRP channel, we will describe important protein domains present in TRP channels, structure–function mutagenesis studies, the few crystal structures available for some TRP channel modules, and the recent determination of some TRP channel structures using electron microscopy.
Regulation vs Symbolic Policy-Making: Genetically Modified Organisms in the German States

Germany’s federal states can enforce stricter regulations on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) than does the national government. Empirically, the study analyses two outcomes at the state level: the symbolic accession to the GMO-free network, in which regional units mobilise against the EU’s regulatory approach, and hard GMO policies/regulations. Besides focussing on political parties and environmental interest groups, the article provides various additional theoretical explanations for the variation in outcomes. The research questions are the following: what conditions a state’s accession to the GMO-free network? What conditions a state’s adoption of GMO regulations? To assess these questions, the study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. One finding is that the inclusion of the Green Party in government is not a predominant condition for the adoption of regulations, but ministers affiliated with the Greens are dominant drivers of symbolic policy-making. The study reveals differing regulatory action by CDU/CSU ministers in the western and eastern states, which can be explained by the differing interests of farmers. Other findings reveal that SPD ministers regulated GMOs to much the same extent as CDU/CSU or Green ministers. Environmental interest groups were also found to have positively conditioned symbolic policy-making, having no effect, however, on the adoption of concrete regulations.
Wellness and equestrian tourism – new kind of adventure?

ABSTRACT Being outdoors, enjoying nature and getting away from the strain and stress of everyday life seem to be of an increasing importance to many people. This is part of the drive towards slow tourism and slow adventures. This research contributes to this academic field by bringing into discussion the niche of equestrian tourism. Mixed method research was conducted to find out: (1) if operators in equestrian tourism in Iceland are currently focusing their product development and marketing towards adventure or health, and (2) whether a combination of slow adventure, wellness and outdoor recreation is a realistic option for innovation within equestrian tourism. Content analysis of webpages (n = 71) and open ended interviews (n = 21) with equestrian operators indicate that the adventure concept is important in equestrian tourism but mainly with a focus on hazardous adventures. Systematic use of health tourism concepts in the development of equestrian tourism products seems to be limited. However operators are aware of many of the existing resources that could be used for innovation of equestrian tourism businesses towards slow adventures and wellness. This research concludes that opportunities for combining equestrian tourism, slow adventures, wellness and outdoor activities in focused product development do exist. However the small lifestyle entrepreneurs, who form the majority of the equestrian tourism industry, need more external financial and epistemic support to entering the highly developed and demanding market of health tourism. Therefore, making use of these opportunities requires a re-thinking of the connectivity of the wellness and adventure tourism concepts.
Making the Tea Party Republican: Media Bias and Framing in Newspapers and Cable News

Research on the Tea Party emphasizes the role of Fox News in magnifying the movement’s early successes. Fox News is credited with legitimizing the Tea Party’s grievances, allowing the movement to make rapid inroads into the Republican Party. We argue that such depictions of the Tea Party’s relationship to the Republican Party are at least partially the product of an oversimplified media narrative emphasizing the seamless integration of the two. We analyze 201,678 media documents from blog posts from Tea Party organizations, Fox News, MSNBC, and 785 newspapers. Our results show marked differences between how the Tea Party frames itself compared with other media sources frame the movement. MSNBC and Fox News discuss the Tea Party strategically, respectively, treating the movement as representing the worst and best aspects of the Republican Party. This is in stark contrast to how the activists frame the movement as conservative, but not strictly Republican, and often in conflict with the goals of the Republican Party.
Immunohistochemistry for PMS2 and MSH6 alone can replace a four antibody panel for mismatch repair deficiency screening in colorectal adenocarcinoma

Aims: Currently, testing for mismatch repair deficiency in colorectal cancers is initiated by performing immunohistochemistry with four antibodies (MLH1, PMS2, MSH2 and MSH6). If any one of these stains is negative the tumour is considered microsatellite unstable and, if clinical circumstances warrant it, the patient is offered genetic testing for Lynch's syndrome. Due to the binding properties of the mismatch repair heterodimer complexes, gene mutation and loss of MLH1 and MSH2 invariably result in the degradation of PMS2 and MSH6, respectively, but the converse is not true. We propose that staining for PMS2 and MSH6 alone will be sufficient to detect all cases of mismatch repair deficiency and should replace routine screening with all four antibodies. Methods: The electronic database of the department of Anatomical Pathology, Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia, was searched for all colorectal carcinomas on which a four panel immunohistochemical microsatellite instability screen was performed. An audit of the slides for concordant loss of MLH1‐PMS2 and MSH2‐MSH6 was then undertaken. Unusual or discordant cases were reviewed and, in some cases, re‐stained to confirm the staining pattern. Results: Of 344 cases of colorectal cancer which underwent four antibody immunohistochemistry, 104 displayed loss of at least one mismatch repair protein. Of these, 100 showed concordant mismatch repair loss (i.e., loss of MLH1 and PMS2 or loss of MSH2 and MSH6). The four discordant cases comprised two single negative cases (1 MSH6 negative/MSH2 positive case, 1 PMS2 negative/MLH1 positive) and two triple negative (both MLH1/PMS2/MSH6 negative). The microsatellite instability (MSI) group showed a relatively high median age (69.3 years) due to the departmental policy of testing all cases with possible MSI morphology regardless of age. Conclusions: The sensitivity and specificity of a two panel test comprised of PMS2 and MSH6, compared to a four panel test, is 100%. No false negatives or positives were identified. We conclude that the two panel test should replace a four panel protocol for immunohistochemical screening for mismatch repair deficiency.
A new rapid molecular point-of-care assay for Trichomonas vaginalis: preliminary performance data

Objective Trichomonas vaginalis infection is the most prevalent treatable sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the world. An accurate point-of-care (PoC) molecular test would enable patients to be tested and treated for T vaginalis in a single visit to the genitourinary medicine clinic, community STI clinic, pharmacy or doctor's office. In this report, we describe a rapid prototype assay for T vaginalis designed for use in conjunction with the Atlas io PoC platform, and initial verification of its performance using 90 clinical samples. Methods A rapid prototype T vaginalis assay was designed. The test, featuring novel electrochemical end-point detection, used a multi-copy region of the T vaginalis genome as the assay target. Ninety clinical vaginal swab samples were used to verify the performance of the prototype assay. Results The assay demonstrated a sensitivity and specificity of 95.5% (42/44) and 95.7% (44/46), respectively, when tested using clinical samples. Assay inclusivity was demonstrated for a number of geographically diverse T vaginalis isolates, and the test showed no cross-reactivity with either human DNA or a panel of DNAs isolated from common cross-reactants. Conclusions The sensitivity and specificity achieved using this prototype assay is comparable with that achieved for existing central laboratory nucleic acid amplification tests used for screening patients for T vaginalis.
Galvanic vestibular stimulation modulates the electrophysiological response during face processing

Abstract Although galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) is known to affect the speed and accuracy of visual judgments, the underlying electrophysiological response has not been explored. In the present study, we therefore investigated the effect of GVS on the N170 event-related potential, a marker commonly associated with early visual structural encoding. To elicit the waveform, participants distinguished famous from nonfamous faces that were presented in either upright or inverted orientation. Relative to a sham, stimulation increased the amplitude of the N170 and also elevated power spectra within the delta and theta frequency bands, components that have likewise been associated with face processing. This study constitutes the first attempt to model the effects of GVS on the electrophysiological response and, more specifically, indicates that unisensory visual processes linked to object construction are influenced by vestibular information. Given that reductions in the magnitude of both the N170 event-related potential and delta/theta activity accompany certain disease states, GVS may provide hitherto unreported therapeutic benefit.
A Data gathering algorithm based on compressive sensing in lossy wireless sensor networks

In the lossy wireless sensor network (WSN), packets loss can severely degrade the performance of data gathering algorithm based on compressive sensing (CS). Due to the limited retransmission cannot ensure the high reliability of the wireless link, the CS data gathering algorithm based on retransmission and temporal sequence correlation prediction (CS-RTSC) is proposed in this paper. When packets loss occur in the process of data gathering, the limited retransmissions is the primary choice to recover the packets. If the recovery is not successful, the temporal sequence correlation prediction is adopted. Simulation results show that CS-RTSC algorithm can guarantee the normal implementation of the CS data gathering under the unreliable links compared to existing CS data gathering algorithm and the relative error of the data reconstruction under 30% packet loss ratio is only 0.1% higher than that under the ideal links.
Decision Horizon and Idiosyncratic Risk

We consider the entrepreneur’s problem of having a real investment opportunity with undiversifiable risk in a finite horizon. By explicitly characterizing the consumption and investment problem, we show that the remaining time to undertake the project has a significant impact on the characteristics of a firm’s cash flow or return dynamics. Our theory predicts that a firm with an ample time horizon to invest tends to have a cash flow or the stock return with a higher idiosyncratic volatility. Furthermore, we also extend the baseline model to the cases in which the entrepreneur has several projects that can only be sequentially exercised. In this case, a project with a lower idiosyncratic volatility will be exercised first when the investment horizon is long.
Current trends and emerging future of indocyanine green usage in surgery and oncology

Ever since Kitai first performed fluorescent navigation of sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) using indocyanine green (ICG) dye with a charge‐couple device and light emitting diodes, the intraoperative use of near infrared fluorescence has served a critical role in increasing our understanding in various fields of surgical oncology. Here the authors review the emerging role of the ICG fluorophore in the development of our comprehension of the lymphatic system and its use in SLN mapping and biopsy in various cancers. In addition, they introduce the novel role of ICG‐guided video angiography as a new intraoperative method of assessing microvascular circulation. The authors attempt to discuss the promising potential in addition to assessing several challenges and limitations in the context of specific surgical procedures and ICG as a whole. PubMed and Medline literature databases were searched for ICG use in clinical surgical settings. Despite ICG's significant impact in various fields of surgical oncology, ICG is still in its nascent stages, and more in‐depth studies need to be carried out to fully evaluate its potential and limitations. Cancer 2011;. © 2011 American Cancer Society.
Beyond Implicit-Deadline Optimality: A Multiprocessor Scheduling Framework for Constrained-Deadline Tasks

In the real-time systems community, many studies have addressed how to efficiently utilize a multiprocessor platform so as to accommodate as many periodic/sporadic real-time tasks as possible without violating any timing constraints. The scheduling theory has sufficiently matured for a set of implicit-deadline tasks (the relative deadline equal to the period), yielding a class of optimal scheduling algorithms. However, the same does not hold for a set of constrained-deadline tasks (the relative deadline no larger than the period) in that those task sets have been fully covered by neither existing implicit-deadline optimal scheduling algorithms nor heuristic scheduling algorithms. , In this paper, we propose a scheduling framework that not only takes advantage of both existing implicit-deadline optimal and heuristic algorithms, but also surpasses both in finding schedulable constrained-deadline task sets. The proposed framework logically divides a given task set into the higher- and lower-priority classes and schedules the classes using an implicit-deadline optimal algorithm and a heuristic algorithm, respectively. Then, while the proposed framework guarantees schedulability of tasks in the higher-priority class by the target implicit-deadline optimal algorithm, we need to address the following technical issues for enabling tasks in the lower-priority class to efficiently reclaim remaining processor capacity while guaranteeing their schedulability: (i) division of a given task set into the two classes, (ii) selection/development of scheduling algorithms for the two classes, and (iii) development of a schedulability test for the framework with given (i) and (ii). We present a general case showing how to address (i)-(iii), and then a specific case addressing how to further improve schedulability by utilizing characteristics of the specific case. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms all existing scheduling algorithms in covering schedulable task sets; in particular, if we focus on task sets with the system density larger than the number of processors, the framework finds up to 446.3% additional schedulable task sets, compared to task sets covered by at least one of existing scheduling algorithms.
Measures of Working Memory Span and Verbal Rehearsal Speed in Deaf Children after Cochlear Implantation

Large individual differences in spoken word recognition performance have been found in deaf children after cochlear implantation. Recently, Pisoni and Geers (2000) reported that simple forward digit span measures of verbal working memory were significantly correlated with spoken word recognition scores even after potentially confounding variables were statistically controlled for. The present study replicates and extends these initial findings to the full set of 176 participants in the CID cochlear implant study. The pooled data indicate that despite statistical “partialling-out” of differences in chronological age, communication mode, duration of deafness, duration of device use, age at onset of deafness, number of active electrodes, and speech feature discrimination, significant correlations still remain between digit span and several measures of spoken word recognition. Strong correlations were also observed between speaking rate and both forward and backward digit span, a result that is similar to previously reported findings in normal-hearing adults and children. The results suggest that perhaps as much as 20% of the currently unexplained variance in spoken word recognition scores may be independently accounted for by individual differences in cognitive factors related to the speed and efficiency with which phonological and lexical representations of spoken words are maintained in and retrieved from working memory. A smaller percentage, perhaps about 7% of the currently unexplained variance in spoken word recognition scores, may be accounted for in terms of working memory capacity. We discuss how these relationships may arise and their contribution to subsequent speech and language development in prelingually deaf children who use cochlear implants.
Receptive fields, geometry and conduction block of sensory neurones in the central nervous system of the leech.

1. In segmental ganglia of the leech, the cutaneous mechanosensory neurones responding to to touch innervated the skin of their own segment and of part of the anterior and posterior adjacent segments. Each touch receptive field could be divided into three non‐overlapping areas: a central part innervated by the branches of the cell which ran in the nerve roots of the ganglion containing the cell body, and anterior and posterior parts innervated by its branches which ran in the nerve roots of the anterior and posterior adjacent ganglia. 2. Impulses originating from the anterior and posterior parts of the receptive fields were susceptible to conduction block within the central nervous system when the touch cells fired repetitively at frequencies that could readily be elicited with weak mechanical stimulation. In contrast, impulses originating from the central part of the receptive fields were less susceptible to block. 3. The morphology of touch cells revealed by intracellular injection of horseradish peroxidase suggested that conduction block occurred at specific bifurcation points where small cell processes joined the main process. Different physiological experiments supported this conclusion. 4. In some touch cells, bifurcation points with particularly low safety margins of conduction operated as low‐pass filters, limiting the frequency of impulses capable of invading certain branches. 5. The results suggest that mechanical stimuli which would likely be encountered by the animal can lead to conduction block within its central nervous system and as a result modify its integrative activities.
Validity and reliability of the Cortex MetaMax3B portable metabolic system

Abstract Portable indirect calorimetry systems offer the advantage of field-based measurements, but manufacturers rarely provide data about validity or reliability. In this study, we evaluated the validity and reliability of the Cortex MetaMax3B portable metabolic system. Validity was determined by comparing MetaMax3B results against those from a first-principles metabolic calibrator and an automated Douglas bag system. Reliability was obtained from duplicate exercise tests completed by eight athletes. Participants completed three identical incremental rowing tests on a Concept2 ergometer; two tests used the MetaMax3B and one test used the Douglas bag system. Compared with the metabolic calibrator, the MetaMax3B results were within 0.20 litres · min−1 (7.8%) and 6.15 litres · min−1 (4.0%) for [Vdot]O 2 and V E, respectively. During exercise, the MetaMax3B results were within 0.16 litres · min−1 (4.1%; [Vdot]O 2), 0.32 litres · min−1 (7.7%; [Vdot]CO 2), and 3.22 litres · min−1 (4.9%; V E) compared with the Douglas bag system. The MetaMax3B results were significantly higher for [Vdot]O 2 (P = 0.03) and [Vdot]CO 2 (P < 0.001). The typical error from duplicate exercise tests using the MetaMax3B ranged from 2.0% ([Vdot]O 2) to 3.6% (V E). Our results show that the MetaMax3B provides reliable measurements of metabolic demand with adequate validity for field-based measurements.
The Swedish validation of Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) during pregnancy

Background: Around 10–15% of women suffer from depressive illness during pregnancy or the first year postpartum. Depression during pregnancy constitutes a risk for prenatal stress and preterm birth. No validated screening instrument for detecting depression during pregnancy was available in Swedish. Aims: We aimed to validate the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) against DSM-IV criteria for depression during pregnancy, establish a reliable cut-off and estimate the correlation between the EPDS and HAD-S (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). Methods: In a population-based community sample of 1175 pregnant women, 918 women (78%) answered questionnaires with the EPDS and HAD-S. In all, 121 were interviewed using the PRIME-MD (Primary Care Evaluation of Mental disorders) for diagnosing depression. Women were interviewed in mean gestational week 13 (range 8–21). For the EPDS, a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was calculated for prediction of depression. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to investigate the association between EPDS and HAD-S scores. Results: The optimal cut-off score on the EPDS scale for detecting depression was ≥13 (standard error coefficient of 1.09 and c-statistics of 0.84) giving a sensitivity of 77% and specificity of 94%. The EPDS scores correlated strongly with the HAD-S, Pearson's correlation was 0.83 (P < 0.0001). Conclusions: This study confirms that the EPDS is a valid screening instrument for detection of depressive symptoms during pregnancy. The EPDS shows persuasive measuring outcomes with an optimal cut-off at ≥13. Clinical implications: Healthcare for pregnant women should consider screening procedures and follow-up routines for depressive symptoms.