Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Riederer In-vitro study methodologies to investigate genetic aspects and effects of drugs used in Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents, with up to 5 % affected worldwide. Twin and family studies on ADHD show its high familiality with heritability estimated around 70 %, but, to date, no specific polymorphism or gene was found to be specifically affected. Psychostimulants (amphetamine, methylphenidate) and non-psychostimulants (atomoxetine) are used successfully in ADHD therapy, but many of their mechanisms of action and their adverse effects are not yet fully understood. Therefore, both genetic findings and therapeutic interventions should be further investigated. One easy platform for such studies is in vitro analyses, which encompass neuronal cell culture studies, transfections of genetic constructs, binding and electrophysiology analyses. In this review, different methods will be referred in particular to ADHD findings, and new techniques will be mentioned for future studies of drug or genetic effects in vitro. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-012-0869-9 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-74484 Journal Article Accepted Version Originally published at: Grünblatt, Edna; Bartl, Jasmin; Marinova, Zoya; Walitza, Susanne (2013). In vitro study methodologies to investigate genetic aspects and effects of drugs used in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Neural Transmission, 120(1):131-139. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-012-0869-9 J. Neural Transm. Review JNT-D-12-00081 Grünblatt et al. 2012 1 70 th Birthday Prof. Riederer In-vitro study methodologies to investigate genetic aspects and effects of drugs used in Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Grünblatt Edna  , 1 , Bartl Jasmin 2 , Marinova Zoya 1 , Walitza Susanne 1 1 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Zurich, Neumuensterallee 9, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland 2 Clinical Neurochemistry, National Parkinson Foundation Centre of Excellence Laboratories, Clinic for Psychiatry, Psychosomatic and Psychotherapy, University of Würzburg, Germany Page No.: 26 Figures: 0 Tables: 0 Abstract word count: 142 words Total word count: 4738 words  Corresponding author: Grünblatt Edna, Ph.D. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry University of Zurich
Calibrating mathematical programming spatial models

Empirical spatial models of trade that are based on a mathematical programming specification often exhibit a large discrepancy between the equilibrium solution and the observed demand, supply and levels of trade flows among countries. This discrepancy may be due to several causes. Assuming, however, that a trade model is not misspecified - in the sense that all the countries involved in the specific commodity trade have been included in the study and that the relevant policy instruments have been taken into account - the cause of discrepancy may be traced either to imprecision of unit transaction costs or to imprecision in the measurement of the demand and supply functions' parameters, or both. Policy assessments based on this type of imprecise models may be unsatisfactory. This paper presents a methodology for calibrating trade models of increasing complexity which are capable of generating solutions that reproduce the commodity trade flows observed in a given base year among all countries. These models may serve as a springboard for assessing the impact of various policies on demand, supply, prices, trade flows, benefits and losses in the countries under study.
Biological effects of high-power microwave power transfer for electric vehicle

The biggest advantage of microwave power charging for electric vehicle (EV) is the capability of charging for a running vehicle. However, the commercial application of microwave charging EV is still difficult because of some issues including technologies and safety. This paper introduces a 100 kW high-power class microwave power transfer (MPT) for electric vehicle such as a truck or a bus with 5.8 GHz microwave. The conception of 100 kW class MPT for EV is proposed. We discuss the potential problems of this propose both in technology and safety. Especially, we examine the biological effects of human body exposed to a high density power of 5.8 GHz microwave. We conduct several experiments that human corneal epithelium cells (HCE-T) derived from human eye are exposed to 5.8 GHz microwave with the peak power density of 148 kW/m2 for 30msec/6min. The experimental results indicate that exposed to such high power density in 30msec/6min pulsed-wave would be considered to have no effect on the genotoxicity to human eye cells.
Cloning of Ovocalyxin-36, a Novel Chicken Eggshell Protein Related to Lipopolysaccharide-binding Proteins, Bactericidal Permeability-increasing Proteins, and Plunc Family Proteins*

The avian eggshell is a composite biomaterial composed of noncalcifying eggshell membranes and the overlying calcified shell matrix. The shell is deposited in a uterine fluid where the concentration of different protein species varies at different stages of its formation. The role of avian eggshell proteins during shell formation remains poorly understood, and we have sought to identify and characterize the individual components in order to gain insight into their function during elaboration of the eggshell. In this study, we have used direct sequencing, immunochemistry, expression screening, and EST data base mining to clone and characterize a 1995-bp full-length cDNA sequence corresponding to a novel chicken eggshell protein that we have named Ovocalyxin-36 (OCX-36). Ovocalyxin-36 protein was only detected in the regions of the oviduct where egg-shell formation takes place; uterine OCX-36 message was strongly up-regulated during eggshell calcification. OCX-36 localized to the calcified eggshell predominantly in the inner part of the shell, and to the shell membranes. BlastN data base searching indicates that there is no mammalian version of OCX-36; however, the protein sequence is 20–25% homologous to proteins associated with the innate immune response as follows: lipopolysaccharide-binding proteins, bactericidal permeability-increasing proteins, and Plunc family proteins. Moreover, the genomic organization of these proteins and OCX-36 appears to be highly conserved. These observations suggest that OCX-36 is a novel and specific chicken eggshell protein related to the superfamily of lipopolysaccharide-binding proteins/bactericidal permeability-increasing proteins and Plunc proteins. OCX-36 may therefore participate in natural defense mechanisms that keep the egg free of pathogens.
Partial spectrum utilization for energy detection in cognitive radio networks

This paper proposes the use of chirp-z transform (CZT) in spectrum sensing to achieve higher frequency resolution in spectrum monitoring. The CZT method can efficiently utilize the dispersed frequency spectrum of any desired band of interest. The performance of the proposed system over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh channels is analyzed and presented through ROC curves. In order to maximize the total error rate performance of the proposed system, the optimal detection threshold expressions are derived in the case of AWGN and Rayleigh faded channels. Afterwards, the optimal detection threshold expressions are validated by simulation and numerical results.
Red Light Modulates Ultraviolet-Induced Gene Expression in the Epidermis of Hairless Mice.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to investigate whether low-level light therapy (LLLT) was capable of modulating expression of ultraviolet (UV) light-responsive genes in vivo. MATERIALS AND METHODS The effects of 670 nm light-emitting diode (LED) array irradiation were investigated in a hairless SHK-1 mouse epidermis model. Mice were given a single dose of UVA/UVB light, or three doses of red light (670 nm @ 8 mW/cm(2) x 312 sec, 2.5 J/cm(2) per session) spread over 24 h along with combinations of pre- and post-UV treatment with red light. Levels of 14 UV-responsive mRNAs were quantified 24 h after UV irradiation by real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). RESULTS The transcription of mRNAs encoding for cluster of differentiation molecule 11b (CD11b) (p < 0.05) and interferon (IFN)-γ (p < 0.012) increased after irradiation with red light alone, whereas expression level of cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 (p < 0.02) was downregulated. Genes unresponsive to UV did not change their expression levels after exposure to red light either. Pretreatment with red light significantly modified response of Fos to UV exposure (p < 0.01). A synergy of UV and post-treatment with red light in reducing the transcription levels of CD11b (p < 0.05) and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) (p < 0.05) was observed. CONCLUSIONS This is an initial observation that in mouse red light LLLT more often than not causes opposite gene expression changes or reduces those caused by moderate UVA-UVB irradiation.
Transmural Distribution of Myocardial Infarction: Difference Between the Right and Left Ventricles in a Canine Model

The evolution of myocardial infarction 24 hours after ligating both the right coronary artery and the obtuse marginal branch of the left circumflex coronary artery was examined in 33 anesthetized dogs. Postmortem coronary angiography and a tracer microsphere technique were used to determine risk areas and their collateral blood flows, respectively. The mean weight of the risk areas was 11.3 ± 0.5 g (mean ± SEM) in the right ventricle and 10.5 ± 0.9 g in the left ventricle (NS). The weight of infarcted tissue was 5.7 ± 0.7 g in the right ventricle and 5.2 ± 0.9 g in the left ventricle (NS). In both ventricles, infarct weight was linearly related to risk area size, and the percent of risk area necrosis was inversely correlated with the extent of collateral flow at 24 hours of coronary ligation, defined as the mean myocardial blood flow inside the central risk area. Ratios of infarct to risk area between the subendocardial and subepicardial layers were 0.76 ± 0.06 and 0.28 ± 0.05 in the right and left ventricles, respectively (p < 0.01, between ventricles, n = 31), which coincided well with subendocardial-to-subepicardial-flow ratios at 24 hours, ie, 0.86 ± 0.04 in the right ventricle and 0.32 ± 0.06 in the left ventricle (p < 0.01). The regional distribution of myocardial infarction correlated well with flow distribution inside the risk area; the slope of these relations was similar between the subendocardium and subepicardium in the right ventricle, whereas in the left ventricle it was larger in the subendocardium than in the subepicardium. Thus, in the dog, the inherent change in the regional distribution of coronary collateral blood flow is an important modifier in the evolution of myocardial infarction, especially in the left ventricle.
Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy Examination of Cell Distribution in Macroporous Microcarriers

Macroporous microcarriers are often used to cultivate animal cells. The pores in the interior of the beads provide surface and space for cell growth. It is not clear how anchorage‐dependent and suspension cells populated these microcarriers during cultivation. Confocal laser scanning microscopy was employed to perform time lapse observation of the cells in the interior. The structure of the bead was stained with fluorescein isothiocyanate for visualization, while the cells were stained with dialkyl indocarbocyanines for tracking over time. It was observed that mouse fibroblastic cells CRE BaG2 did not move extensively after initial attachment. Some cell divisions were observed during the course of the experiments, and essentially all cells remained viable throughout. Few hybridoma cells were deposited into the pores in the interior of the microcarriers. The results suggest that the occupancy of the internal volume by cells after prolonged cultivation is largely due to the growth of cells that are deposited in the interior as opposed to the migration of cells from the external surface into the interior. This method of observing cell behavior in a three‐dimensional structure may find applications in other three‐dimensional cell culture systems. The animation of time lapse sections is available on the worldwide web at http://www.cems. umn.edu/∼wshu_grp/acre/microcarrier.html.
Aberrant Double-Strand Break Repair Resulting in Half Crossovers in Mutants Defective for Rad51 or the DNA Polymerase δ Complex

ABSTRACT Homologous recombination is an error-free mechanism for the repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). Most DSB repair events occur by gene conversion limiting loss of heterozygosity (LOH) for markers downstream of the site of repair and restricting deleterious chromosome rearrangements. DSBs with only one end available for repair undergo strand invasion into a homologous duplex DNA, followed by replication to the chromosome end (break-induced replication [BIR]), leading to LOH for all markers downstream of the site of strand invasion. Using a transformation-based assay system, we show that most of the apparent BIR events that arise in diploid Saccharomyces cerevisiae rad51Δ mutants are due to half crossovers instead of BIR. These events lead to extensive LOH because one arm of chromosome III is deleted. This outcome is also observed in pol32Δ and pol3-ct mutants, defective for components of the DNA polymerase δ (Pol δ) complex. The half crossovers formed in Pol δ complex mutants show evidence of limited homology-dependent DNA synthesis and are partially Mus81 dependent, suggesting that strand invasion occurs and the stalled intermediate is subsequently cleaved. In contrast to rad51Δ mutants, the Pol δ complex mutants are proficient for repair of a 238-bp gap by gene conversion. Thus, the BIR defect observed for rad51 mutants is due to strand invasion failure, whereas the Pol δ complex mutants are proficient for strand invasion but unable to complete extensive tracts of recombination-initiated DNA synthesis.
Muscle‐derived interleukin‐6: possible biological effects

Interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) is produced locally in working skeletal muscle and can account for the increase in plasma IL‐6 during exercise. The production of IL‐6 during exercise is related to the intensity and duration of the exercise, and low muscle glycogen content stimulates the production. Muscle‐derived IL‐6 is released into the circulation during exercise in high amounts and is likely to work in a hormone‐like fashion, exerting an effect on the liver and adipose tissue, thereby contributing to the maintenance of glucose homeostasis during exercise and mediating exercise‐induced lipolysis. Muscle‐derived IL‐6 may also work to inhibit the effects of pro‐inflammatory cytokines such as tumour necrosis factor α. The latter cytokine is produced by adipose tissue and inflammatory cells and appears to play a pathogenetic role in insulin resistance and atherogenesis.
HcpR of Porphyromonas gingivalis Is Required for Growth under Nitrosative Stress and Survival within Host Cells

ABSTRACT Although the Gram-negative, anaerobic periodontopathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis must withstand nitrosative stress, which is particularly high in the oral cavity, the mechanisms allowing for protection against such stress are not known in this organism. In this study, microarray analysis of P. gingivalis transcriptional response to nitrite and nitric oxide showed drastic upregulation of the PG0893 gene coding for hybrid cluster protein (Hcp), which is a putative hydroxylamine reductase. Although regulation of hcp has been shown to be OxyR dependent in Escherichia coli, here we show that in P. gingivalis its expression is dependent on the Fnr-like regulator designated HcpR. Growth of the isogenic mutant V2807, containing an ermF-ermAM insertion within the hcpR (PG1053) gene, was significantly reduced in the presence of nitrite (P < 0.002) and nitric oxide-generating nitrosoglutathione (GSNO) (P < 0.001), compared to that of the wild-type W83 strain. Furthermore, the upregulation of PG0893 (hcp) was abrogated in V2807 exposed to nitrosative stress. In addition, recombinant HcpR bound DNA containing the hcp promoter sequence, and the binding was hemin dependent. Finally, V2807 was not able to survive with host cells, demonstrating that HcpR plays an important role in P. gingivalis virulence. This work gives insight into the molecular mechanisms of protection against nitrosative stress in P. gingivalis and shows that the regulatory mechanisms differ from those in E. coli.
Design guidelines and tools for creating believable motion for personal robots

Robots use their movement to interact with the user. Their movement is a crucial part in designing the interfaces of personal robots. It has a major impact on how a robot is perceived by the user interacting with it. Subtle flaws in the movement can create a repelling feeling and therefore affect negatively the interaction. On the other hand, carefully designed little quirks can give the robot personality and make it more interesting. A possible relationship between appearance and motion on how a device is perceived is described by the 'Uncanny Valley' conceived by Prof. M. Mori in 1970. It is widely used as a design guideline for creating humanoid interface robots. It does not, however, describe the impact that the quality of movements has on the perception and the believability of a character. Conclusive frameworks for the animation of robots are rare and are often adapted from cartoon or computer animation. This paper presents a refined design guideline for the motion of robotic characters with respect to the design requirements naturalness, adequateness and development over time. Furthermore, we created a set of tools that eases the process of designing the movement by improving on common animation techniques such as key-framed or scripted animations. The tools preserve the freedom of the animator to define specific expressive motions while at the same time offering the full power of scripting technology.
The neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state : pension system reform in Sweden : a critical case study

This thesis draws on the 'critical case' of Sweden and focuses on the provision of pensions to assess the extent to which the post-war social democratic regime and adherent meanings and practices in daily life have been transformed in a neoliberal direction. The Swedish economy of the late 1990s, still distinctly social democratic, although retrenched and increasingly 'financialised', was not stable. The 1999 pension reform has further privatised financial risk and hence potentially advanced neoliberalism. By subjecting the ability to consume, in working-life as well as m retirement, to financial market performance, the rate of growth of inequity 1s accelerated. The systemic infrastructure and the knowledge-formation required for this pension system to function as intended as well as be accepted as legitimate seem however to be lacking. The system engineers, following neoliberal ideas, sought to fulfil the objective of institutionalising a mass investment culture in the everyday by promoting the notion of risk as potentially profitable if managed well. Yet, as argued in the thesis, due to their politico-ideological preferences, they underestimated the resilience of existing demographic and geographical cleavages formed by the traumas and desires provoked by economic restructuring and financialisation in the post-war period. By analysing subject-formation in the everyday, the thesis shows that for a finance-led accumulation regime to be stable in Sweden, these cleavages and inadequacies have to be regulated. The new pension system in Sweden thus points to the tendential microfoundational limits of the projects of neoliberalism and financialisation.
A structured approach to the simulation, analysis and characterization of smartphone applications

Full-system simulators are invaluable tools for designing new architectures due to their ability to simulate full applications as well as capture operating system behavior, virtual machine or hypervisor behavior, and interference between concurrently-running applications. However, the systems under investigation and applications under test have become increasingly complicated leading to prohibitively long simulation times for a single experiment. This problem is compounded when many permutations of system design parameters and workloads are tested to investigate system sensitivities and full-system effects with confidence. In this paper, we propose a methodology to tractably explore the processor design space and to characterize applications in a full-system simulation environment. We combine SimPoint, Principal Component Analysis and Fractional Factorial experimental designs to substantially reduce the simulation effort needed to characterize and analyze workloads. We also present a non-invasive user-interface automation tool to allow us to study all types of workloads in a simulation environment. While our methodology is generally applicable to many simulators and workloads, we demonstrate the application of our proposed flow on smartphone applications running on the Android operating system within the gem5 simulation environment.
Direct-Conversion CMOS

The 7GHz unlicensed band around 60GHz provides the possibility of gigabit-per-second wireless communications. In addition to satisfying speed-intensive applications, such high data rates can also reduce the energy dissipated per bit because the power consumption of RF transceivers has historically increased sublinearly with the data rate. Moreover, the millimeter wavelength permits the integration of multiple antennas on one chip, calling for multiple transceivers and hence high levels of integration.
Cutting medicare hospital prices leads to a spillover reduction in hospital discharges for the nonelderly.

OBJECTIVE To measure spillover effects of Medicare inpatient hospital prices on the nonelderly (under age 65). PRIMARY DATA SOURCES Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient Databases (10 states, 1995-2009) and Medicare Hospital Cost Reports. STUDY DESIGN Outcomes include nonelderly discharges, length of stay and case mix, staffed hospital bed-days, and the share of discharges and days provided to the elderly. We use metropolitan statistical areas as our markets. We use descriptive analyses comparing 1995 and 2009 and panel data fixed-effects regressions. We instrument for Medicare prices using accumulated changes in the Medicare payment formula. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Medicare price reductions are strongly associated with reductions in nonelderly discharges and hospital capacity. A 10-percent reduction in the Medicare price is estimated to reduce discharges among the nonelderly by about 5 percent. Changes in the Medicare price are not associated with changes in the share of inpatient hospital care provided to the elderly versus nonelderly. CONCLUSIONS Medicare price reductions appear to broadly constrain hospital operations, with significant reductions in utilization among the nonelderly. The slow Medicare price growth under the Affordable Care Act may result in a spillover slowdown in hospital utilization and spending among the nonelderly.