Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
First light of the VLT planet finder SPHERE: I. Detection and characterization of the substellar companion GJ 758 B

GJ 758 B is a brown dwarf companion to a nearby (15.76%) solar-type, metal-rich (M/H = +0.2 dex) main-sequence star (G9V) that was discovered with Subaru/HiCIAO in 2009. From previous studies, it has drawn attention as being the coldest (similar to 600 K) companion ever directly imaged around a neighboring star. We present new high-contrast data obtained during the commissioning of the SPHERE instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT). The data was obtained in Y-, J-, H-, and K-s-bands with the dual-band imaging (DBI) mode of IRDIS, thus providing a broad coverage of the full near-infrared (near-IR) range at higher contrast and better spectral sampling than previously reported. In this new set of high-quality data, we report the re-detection of the companion, as well as the first detection of a new candidate closer-in to the star. We use the new eight photometric points for an extended comparison of GJ 758 B with empirical objects and four families of atmospheric models. From comparison to empirical object, we estimate a T8 spectral type, but none of the comparison objects can accurately represent the observed near-IR fluxes of GJ 758 B. From comparison to atmospheric models, we attribute a T-eff = 600 +/- 100 K, but we find that no atmospheric model can adequately fit all the fluxes of GJ 758 B. The lack of exploration of metal enrichment in model grids appears as a major limitation that prevents an accurate estimation of the companion physical parameters. The photometry of the new candidate companion is broadly consistent with L-type objects, but a second epoch with improved photometry is necessary to clarify its status. The new astrometry of GJ 758 B shows a significant proper motion since the last epoch. We use this result to improve the determination of the orbital characteristics using two fitting approaches: Least-Squares Monte Carlo and Markov chain Monte Carlo. We confirm the high-eccentricity of the orbit (peak at 0.5), and find a most likely semi-major axis of 46.05 AU. We also use our imaging data, as well as archival radial velocity data, to reject the possibility that this is a false positive effect created by an unseen, closer-in, companion. Finally, we analyze the sensitivity of our data to additional closer-in companions and reject the possibility of other massive brown dwarf companions down to 4-5 AU.
The effects of lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and related areas on emotional responses to cigarette smoking

Cigarette smoking is an addictive behavior. There are two learned emotional responses to smoking that may be particularly important for promoting addiction to smoking: the pleasure obtained from the airway sensory effects of smoking (airway sensory pleasure) and the urge to smoke that is elicited by environmental smoking cues (cue-induced urge). The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) has been implicated in a variety of learned emotional and motivational responses to drug-associated sensory cues. This project set out to address the role of the VMPFC and related areas in airway sensory pleasure and cue-induced urge, as well as the role of this region in promoting smoking behavior in real life, by examining the effects of focal lesions within the VMPFC and related areas in human cigarette smokers. It was found that lesions of the VMPFC itself were associated with a marked impairment of cue-induced urge in the laboratory, which was paralleled by a reported reduction in the difficulty of abstaining from smoking in real life. At the same time, VMPFC lesions led to a relative sparing of airway sensory pleasure in the laboratory, which was paralleled by no change in the enjoyment from smoking in real life. In addition, it was found that VMPFC lesions were not associated with changes in real-life measures of smoking dependence. It was found that lesions of the insula, a region that is functionally related to the VMPFC, were associated with an ability to quit smoking easily, immediately, without relapses and without a lasting urge to smoke. However, among patients with insula lesions who continued to smoke after lesion onset, there were no appreciable impairments of airway sensory pleasure or cue-induced urge. 1
Secure mobile crowdsensing game

By recruiting sensor-equipped smartphone users to report sensing data, mobile crowdsensing (MCS) provides location-based services such as environmental monitoring. However, due to the distributed and potentially selfish nature of smartphone users, mobile crowdsensing applications are vulnerable to faked sensing attacks by users who bid a low price in an MCS auction and provide faked sensing reports to save sensing costs and avoid privacy leakage. In this paper, the interactions among an MCS server and smartphone users are formulated as a mobile crowdsensing game, in which each smartphone user chooses its sensing strategy such as its sensing time and energy to maximize its expected utility while the MCS server classifies the received sensing reports and determines the payment strategy accordingly to stimulate users to provide accurate sensing reports. Nash equilibrium (NE) of a static MCS game is evaluated and a closed-form expression for the NE in a special case is presented. Moreover, a dynamic mobile crowdsensing game is investigated, in which the sensing parameters of a smartphone are unknown by the server and the other users. A Q-learning discriminated pricing strategy is developed for the server to determine the payment to each user. Simulation results show that the proposed pricing mechanism stimulates users to provide high-quality sensing services and suppress faked sensing attacks.
Development of a Population PK Model of Tacrolimus for Adaptive Dosage Control in Stable Kidney Transplant Patients

Background: Tacrolimus pharmacokinetics (PK) presents a high variability that hampers its therapeutic use. The aims of this study are to: (1) develop a population pharmacokinetic (PPK) model for tacrolimus and to identify the factors that contribute to the variability of tacrolimus PK in renal transplant patients; and (2) to establish a new Bayesian estimator that can easily and routinely be applied in the hospital. A new PPK model may allow efficacy to be optimized, improve dose regimens, minimize side effects, and decrease the cost of extensive area under the curve (AUC) monitoring. Methods: PPK analysis of the full PK profiles of 16 patients on 5 occasions was performed with NONMEM 7.2. Biochemical variables (hematocrit, hemoglobin, aspartate aminotransferase, and others) were analyzed. Results: A 2-open-compartment model with interoccasion variability best described the PK of tacrolimus. Three transit compartments provided the best description of the absorption process. The hematocrit, aspartate aminotransferase, and alanine aminotransferase were not significant in the covariate analysis. External validation with 91 patients proved the good predictability of the model with a bias and precision of 0.37 mcg/L (CI 95%, –0.11 to 1.20 mcg/L) and 0.38 mcg/L (CI 95%, 0.02 to 1.21 mcg/L), respectively. A limited sampling strategy using 1 sampling point at predose (trough concentrations) showed a good performance in AUC0–12h estimation with a correlation between AUCfull and AUCLSS, bias and imprecision of r2 = 0.75, 6.78% (range, −16.26% to 30.06%) and 1.42% (IC 95%, 0.14%–3.61%), respectively. Conclusions: The PPK model developed provides reliable prior information for Bayesian adaptive control of dosage regimens of tacrolimus to achieve the desired AUC goals in stable renal transplant patients.
Neuromodulation of Whisking Related Neural Activity in Superior Colliculus

The superior colliculus is part of a broader neural network that can decode whisker movements in air and on objects, which is a strategy used by behaving rats to sense the environment. The intermediate layers of the superior colliculus receive whisker-related excitatory afferents from the trigeminal complex and barrel cortex, inhibitory afferents from extrinsic and intrinsic sources, and neuromodulatory afferents from cholinergic and monoaminergic nuclei. However, it is not well known how these inputs regulate whisker-related activity in the superior colliculus. We found that barrel cortex afferents drive the superior colliculus during the middle portion of the rising phase of the whisker movement protraction elicited by artificial (fictive) whisking in anesthetized rats. In addition, both spontaneous and whisker-related neural activities in the superior colliculus are under strong inhibitory and neuromodulator control. Cholinergic stimulation activates the superior colliculus by increasing spontaneous firing and, in some cells, whisker-evoked responses. Monoaminergic stimulation has the opposite effects. The actions of neuromodulator and inhibitory afferents may be the basis of the different firing rates and sensory responsiveness observed in the superior colliculus of behaving animals during distinct behavioral states.
Automatic Enhancement and Detection of Layering in Radar Sounder Data Based on a Local Scale Hidden Markov Model and the Viterbi Algorithm

Radar sounders are unique instruments for subsurface investigation in both terrestrial and space applications. They are widely employed for monitoring changes to the polar ice sheets and for the study of planetary bodies (e.g., Mars). The analysis of the very large amount of data produced by such systems requires the development of automatic techniques for an objective, accurate, and fast extraction of relevant information from radargrams. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for the automatic detection of layer boundaries based on a local scale hidden Markov model (HMM), which models the radar response in the presence of a layer boundary, and the Viterbi algorithm (VA, which performs the inference step). The proposed technique is based on a divide and conquer strategy that executes the VA using the observation data and the HMM to infer the most likely layer boundary location within a small radargram portion. Finally, a detection strategy is defined to chain together the inferred local layer locations. Furthermore, a novel radargram enhancement and denoising technique tailored to support the detection step is presented. The effectiveness of the proposed technique has been confirmed by testing it on different radargrams acquired by shallow radar over the north pole of Mars. The results obtained point out the superiority of the proposed method in retrieving the position of each layer boundary (and thus of the related intensity and geometric properties) with respect to the state-of-the-art techniques.
CT-Guided Core Needle Biopsy of Pleural Lesions: Evaluating Diagnostic Yield and Associated Complications

Objective The purpose of this study was to retrospectively evaluate the diagnostic accuracy and complications of CT-guided core needle biopsy (CT-guided CNB) of pleural lesion and the possible effects of influencing factors. Materials and Methods From September 2007 to June 2013, 88 consecutive patients (60 men and 28 women; mean [± standard deviation] age, 51.1 ± 14.4 years; range, 19-78 years) underwent CT-guided CNB, which was performed by two experienced chest radiologists in our medical center. Out of 88 cases, 56 (63%) were diagnosed as malignant, 28 (31%) as benign and 4 (5%) as indeterminate for CNB of pleural lesions. The final diagnosis was confirmed by either histopathological diagnosis or clinical follow-up. The diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and complication rates were statistically evaluated. Influencing factors (patient age, sex, lesion size, pleural-puncture angle, patient position, pleural effusion, and number of pleural punctures) were assessed for their effect on accuracy of CT-guided CNB using univariate and subsequent multivariate analysis. Results Diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV were 89.2%, 86.1%, 100%, 100%, and 67.8%, respectively. The influencing factors had no significant effect in altering diagnostic accuracy. As far as complications were concerned, occurrence of pneumothorax was observed in 14 (16%) out of 88 patients. Multivariate analysis revealed lesion size/pleural thickening as a significant risk factor (odds ratio [OR]: 8.744, p = 0.005) for occurrence of pneumothorax. Moreover, presence of pleural effusion was noted as a significant protective factor (OR: 0.171, p = 0.037) for pneumothorax. Conclusion CT-guided CNB of pleural lesion is a safe procedure with high diagnostic yield and low risk of significant complications.
Cognitive adaptation: a comparison of cancer patients and healthy references.

OBJECTIVES Taylor's theory of cognitive adaptation proposes that adjustment depends on the ability to sustain and modify illusions (i.e. unrealistic optimism, exaggerated perceptions of control, and self-aggrandizement) that buffer against threats but also against possible future setbacks. Because the question of whether cancer patients show these illusions has received little attention, the present study compared patients' perceptions of optimism, control, and self-esteem at different stages of the cancer process with that of healthy references. The effects of these perceptions on psychological distress were also assessed. DESIGN The present study has a longitudinal design. Including a group of healthy references enabled us to draw more firm conclusions about the effect of cancer upon cognitive perceptions. METHODS The participants were 67 cancer patients and 50 healthy references. Patients filled out questionnaires prior to their first radiotherapy (T1), at 2 weeks (T2), and at 3 months (T3) after completing radiotherapy. Healthy references were assessed at similar intervals. RESULTS T tests revealed that patients experienced significantly higher levels of optimism and self-esteem than the healthy reference group. Concerning control, no group differences were found. Importantly, regression analyses showed that lower levels of optimism and control at T1 were predictive of feelings of anxiety at T3. Lower perceived control also predicted depressive symptoms. CONCLUSION Results support the theory of cognitive adaptation in that patients are indeed able to respond to cancer with high levels of optimism and self-esteem and that lower levels of optimism and control are predictive of psychological distress.
A Network Configuration Algorithm Based on Optimization of Kirchhoff Index

Traditionally, a parallel application is partitioned, mapped and then routed on a network of compute nodes where the topology of the interconnection network is fixed and known beforehand. Such a topology often comes with redundant links to accommodate the communication patterns of a wide range of applications. With recent advances in technology for optical circuit switches, it is now possible to construct a network with much fewer links, and to make the link endpoints configurable to suit the communication pattern of a given application. While this is economical (saving both links and the power to run them), it raises the difficult problem of how to configure the network and how to reconfigure it quickly when the application's communication pattern changes. In this paper, we propose the Kirchhoff index (KI) of a certain weighted graph related to the interconnection network as a proxy for its communication throughput. Our usage of this metric is based on a theoretical analogy between resistances in an electrical network and communication loads in the interconnection network. We show how mathematical techniques for reducing KI can be used to configure a network in a dramatically shorter time as compared to the current state-of-the-art scheme.
Increased expression of Met protein is associated with up‐regulation of hypoxia inducible factor‐1 (HIF‐1) in tumour cells in papillary carcinoma of the thyroid

Met protein, the high affinity receptor for hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), was highly expressed by the tumour cells of 64 well‐differentiated papillary carcinomas of the thyroid. The p145 mature form and the p170 precursor form of the protein were both isolated from the tumours. Enhanced expression of Met protein was associated with a 9.5 ± 5‐fold increase in MET RNA transcript levels, suggesting increased transcription of the gene. In the same tumours, the levels of RNA transcripts for hypoxia inducible factor‐1 (HIF‐1), a potent stimulator of met gene transcription, were 4.5 ± 3‐fold higher than those present in the surrounding normal thyroid tissues. HIF‐1 is generally induced by hypoxia. Histological features suggestive of a hypoxia were observed in 37 of 50 tumours and included coagulative necrosis, psammoma bodies, cystic changes, intratumoural haemorrhage, and hyalinization of the fibrous stroma. Immunostaining for Met protein was particularly intense in some cells located at the tumour periphery which were characterized by an invasive phenotype. Microdissection of tumour cell nests from the invading front revealed that the levels of RNA transcripts for MET/HIF were higher than in the centre of the tumour in four of nine cases. Taken together, the findings of this study suggest that HIF‐1, perhaps driven by hypoxia, may be one of the factors leading to the increased transcription of met gene in papillary carcinoma and that this event is often more pronounced at the tumour periphery. Copyright © 2004 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bacterial infection causes stress-induced memory dysfunction in mice

Background The brain–gut axis is a key regulator of normal intestinal physiology; for example, psychological stress is linked to altered gut barrier function, development of food allergies and changes in behaviour. Whether intestinal events, such as enteric bacterial infections and bacterial colonisation, exert a reciprocal effect on stress-associated behaviour is not well established. Objective To determine the effects of either acute enteric infection or absence of gut microbiota on behaviour, including anxiety and non-spatial memory formation. Methods Behaviour was assessed following infection with the non-invasive enteric pathogen, Citrobacter rodentium in both C57BL/6 mice and germ-free Swiss-Webster mice, in the presence or absence of acute water avoidance stress. Whether daily treatment with probiotics normalised behaviour was assessed, and potential mechanisms of action evaluated. Results No behavioural abnormalities were observed, either at the height of infection (10 days) or following bacterial clearance (30 days), in C rodentium-infected C57BL/6 mice. When infected mice were exposed to acute stress, however, memory dysfunction was apparent after infection (10 days and 30 days). Memory dysfunction was prevented by daily treatment of infected mice with probiotics. Memory was impaired in germ-free mice, with or without exposure to stress, in contrast to conventionally reared, control Swiss-Webster mice with an intact intestinal microbiota. Conclusions The intestinal microbiota influences the ability to form memory. Memory dysfunction occurs in infected mice exposed to acute stress, while in the germ-free setting memory is altered at baseline.
Biologically inspired LED lens from cuticular nanostructures of firefly lantern

Cuticular nanostructures found in insects effectively manage light for light polarization, structural color, or optical index matching within an ultrathin natural scale. These nanostructures are mainly dedicated to manage incoming light and recently inspired many imaging and display applications. A bioluminescent organ, such as a firefly lantern, helps to out-couple light from the body in a highly efficient fashion for delivering strong optical signals in sexual communication. However, the cuticular nanostructures, except the light-producing reactions, have not been well investigated for physical principles and engineering biomimetics. Here we report a unique observation of high-transmission nanostructures on a firefly lantern and its biological inspiration for highly efficient LED illumination. Both numerical and experimental results clearly reveal high transmission through the nanostructures inspired from the lantern cuticle. The nanostructures on an LED lens surface were fabricated by using a large-area nanotemplating and reconfigurable nanomolding with heat-induced shear thinning. The biologically inspired LED lens, distinct from a smooth surface lens, substantially increases light transmission over visible ranges, comparable to conventional antireflection coating. This biological inspiration can offer new opportunities for increasing the light extraction efficiency of high-power LED packages.
Comparison of the Bayesian approach and a limited sampling model for the estimation of AUC and Cmax: a computer simulation analysis.

OBJECTIVES To compare two limited sampling methods (Bayesian and the limited sampling model) for the estimation of AUC and Cmax following a single oral dose of a hypothetical drug. METHODS The plasma concentration vs time data sets for 50 subjects using a linear one- or two-compartment pharmacokinetic model were generated by simulation. The limited sampling model (LSM) was developed using samples from 10 subjects using one or two time points. The simulated plasma concentrations were also used for Bayesian evaluation. Bayesian analysis was performed on Non-Mem and mean pharmacokinetic parameters used for simulation were assumed as population pharmacokinetic parameters. In addition a test drug was also used to compare the predicted AUC and Cmax for the two approaches. RESULTS Both methods were validated in 40 subjects for the hypothetical drug and in 12 subjects for the test drug. Both methods provided good estimates of AUC and Cmax. CONCLUSION The results indicate that the LSM is similar to the Bayesian method and may be used in lieu of the Bayesian approach in estimating AUC and Cmax using one or two samples in clinical settings without detailed pharmacokinetic studies.
Stochastic dynamics of gene expression in developing fly embryos

Segmentation of the developing insect body is preceded by cell-specific gene expression. In fruit flies (Drosophila), pair-rule genes are expressed in spatial stripes specifying segment fates. Transcription of the even-skipped (eve) pair-rule gene was recently shown to proceed in noisy bursts. Here, we develop a stochastic model of eve transcription from DNA to mRNA. This indicates that eve transcription proceeds at two rates, with a slow rate providing basal production and a fast rate allowing for high mRNA output. This two-rate transcription may afford more reliability in mRNA output, and therefore the protein levels which specify cell type, than a simple on-off (one-rate) mechanism.
Microphthalmia Transcription Factor Isoforms in Mast Cells and the Heart

ABSTRACT The microphthalmia transcription factor (Mitf) is critical for the survival and differentiation of a variety of cell types. While on the transcript level it has been noted that melanocytes and cardiomyocytes express specific Mitf isoforms, mast cells express several isoforms, mainly Mitf-H and Mitf-MC, whose function has not been thoroughly investigated. We found that in mast cells the expression of the specific Mitf isoforms is dependent on physiological stimuli that cause a major shifting of promoter usage and internal splicing. For example, activation of the c-kit signaling pathway almost totally abolished one of the main splice isoforms. Since cardiomyocytes express only the Mitf-H isoform, they were an ideal system to determine this isoform's physiological role. We identified that the expression of myosin light-chain 1a (MLC-1a) is regulated by Mitf-H. Interestingly, the transactivation of MLC-1a by Mitf-H in cardiomyocytes is decreased by overexpression of the splice form with exon 6a. In conclusion, we found that there is physiological switching of Mitf isoforms and that the promoter context and the cell context have a combined influence on gene expression programs.