Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Afobazole Activation of s-1 Receptors Modulates Neuronal Responses to Amyloid-b25–35

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a continual decline of cognitive function. No therapy has been identified that can effectively halt or reverse its progression. One hallmark of AD is accumulation of the amyloid-b peptide (Ab), which alone induces neuronal injury via various mechanisms. Data presented here demonstrate that prolonged exposure (1–24 hours) of rat cortical neurons to Ab25–35 results in an increase in basal intracellular Ca concentration ([Ca]i), and that coincubationwith the compound afobazole inhibits these [Ca]i increases. The effect of afobazole on [Ca]i is due to activation of s-1 receptors but could not be mimicked by a second pan-selective s receptor agonist, 1,3-di-o-tolylguanidine (DTG). Afobazole was also found to lessen nitric oxide (NO) production in response to Ab25–35 application but did not affect elevations in reactive oxygen species elicited by the Ab fragment. The reductions in [Ca]i and NO perturbation produced by afobazole were associated with a decrease in neuronal cell death, whereas DTG failed to enhance cell survival. Examining the molecular mechanisms involved in the increased neuronal survival demonstrates that afobazole incubation results in lower expression of the proapoptotic protein Bax and the death protease caspase-3, while at the same time increasing expression of the antiapoptotic protein, Bcl-2. Given the importance of Ab neurotoxicity in AD etiology, the findings reported here suggest that afobazole may be an effective AD therapeutic agent. Furthermore, s-1 receptors may represent a useful target for AD treatment, although not all s ligands appear to be equally beneficial.
All about activity injection: Threats, semantics, and detection

Android supports seamless user experience by maintaining activities from different apps in the same activity stack. While such close inter-app communication is essential in the Android framework, the powerful inter-app communication contains vulnerabilities that can inject malicious activities into a victim app's activity stack to hijack user interaction flows. In this paper, we demonstrate activity injection attacks with a simple malware, and formally specify the activity activation mechanism using operational semantics. Based on the operational semantics, we develop a static analysis tool, which analyzes Android apps to detect activity injection attacks. Our tool is fast enough to analyze real-world Android apps in 6 seconds on average, and our experiments found that 1,761 apps out of 129,756 real-world Android apps inject their activities into other apps' tasks.
Evaluation of the IGFs (IGF1 and IGF2) Genes as Candidates for Growth, Body Measurement, Carcass, and Reproduction Traits in Beijing You and Silkie Chickens

Insulin-like growth factors are crucial in cellular growth, differentiation, and reproduction by mediating many of the actions of growth hormone in chickens. To determine whether insulin-like growth factors genes (IGFs) are associated with important economic traits in chicken or not, we herein analyzed the association between two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within IGF1 and IGF2 and twenty-seven growth, body measurement, carcass, and reproduction traits in two Chinese native breeds, i.e., Beijing You and Silkies. With marker-trait association analysis, we found that SNP IGF1-PstI, within the 5′ flanking region of IGF1, was significantly associated with body weight at 8 (BW8), 10 (BW10), and 13 (BW13) wk of age; and shank length (SL13) and shank circumference (SC13) at 13 wk of age in Silkie population (P < 0.05). The SNP IGF2-MspI within the exon2 of IGF2 showed a significant association with body weight (BW17) and carcass weight (CW17) at 17 wk of age in Beijing You population (P < 0.05). Our findings implied that the SNPs within IGF1 and IGF2 genes could be in linkage disequilibrium with the actual causative mutations that affect growth and carcass traits.
Psychological control by parents is associated with a higher child weight.

OBJECTIVE In this examination of the association between parenting style and child weight, the neglected concept of 'psychological control' has been added to the generally accepted parenting dimensions 'support' and 'behavioural control'. Also explored is whether the potential association between parenting and child weight is moderated by socio-demographic variables (child's age/ethnicity, and parent's education level). METHODS A cross-sectional study was performed among 1,665 parent-child dyads. The children's mean age was 8 years. Their height and weight were measured to calculate their body mass index (BMI). Parents completed a questionnaire to measure the three parenting dimensions. Based on these dimensions, five parenting styles were defined: the authoritative, permissive, authoritarian, neglecting and rejecting parenting style. Child BMI z-scores were regressed on parenting style, adjusting for parental BMI, child ethnicity, and parent's education level. RESULTS Rejecting parenting, characterized by high psychological control, low support and low behavioural control, is the only parenting style significantly related to child BMI z-scores (β = 0.074, p < 0.001). The positive association was not moderated by socio-demographic variables. CONCLUSIONS By adding the dimension of psychological control to the concept of parenting, this study has further elucidated the mechanisms whereby parenting may affect child weight. Demonstrating that 'rejecting parenting' is associated with a higher child weight, emphasizes the need for longitudinal studies in which parenting style is measured three-dimensionally. Potential mediating effects of parental feeding style and children's eating style, as well as age moderation, should be included in these studies.
Simulation of Direct-Current Surface Plasma Discharge Phenomena in High-Speed Flow Actuation

We present a self-consistent 2-D multispecies multi-temperature model of dc nonequilibrium surface plasma discharge phenomena in the presence of a low-pressure imposed high-speed convective flow. For pressures of a few torr and voltages of a few kilovolts, a nonequilibrium glow discharge is generated between the electrodes. Peak charge densities in the discharge on the order of 1014-1016 m-3, electron temperatures on the order of 1 eV, and gas temperatures on the order of 2000 K are observed. Increasing voltages are found to increase the charge density in the discharge and also cause a constriction of the discharge volume. The same trend is also observed with an increase in the discharge pressure. The discharge is highly asymmetric owing to the high-speed convective flow, with the discharge activity restricted to the flow downstream edge of the cathode surface. The convective flow also causes a quasi-neutral plasma-tail-like feature that provides a major loss mechanism for charged and neutral species in the discharge. Despite sufficient cathode surface area, the discharge operates in an abnormal glow mode, with a positive differential resistivity, owing to a flow-induced constricted cathode attachment. Relatively large cathode sheath dimensions on the order of 1 cm are observed with a net electrostatic forcing restricted to this region. The net electrostatic forcing is largely vertical toward the cathode surface, but also has a component in the direction against the flow.
Close the Tap

We read with interest the recent paper of Bezov et al regarding greater occipital nerve block in the management of postdural puncture headache (PDPH). Among various therapeutic strategies employed to relieve this debilitating headache recently, several case reports have been published whereby bilateral greater occipital nerve blocks have been proposed as an alternative technique to the epidural blood patch. It has also been advocated as a second step after conservative measures have failed. Furthermore, it has been reported to be successful in providing complete headache relief in 68.4% of cases after 1 to 2 blocks, and 31.6% after 4 attempts. We appreciate that symptom relief is very important for nursing mothers, but in doing so, are we missing something? PDPH has been a vexing problem to anesthetists since the first reports of August Bier in 1898. Headache is thought to be primarily due to loss of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) with resultant intracranial hypotension. There occurs downward traction on pain-sensitive structures of the brain along with compensatory vasodilatation of cerebral blood vessels. It is more accurate to call the clinical spectrum of symptoms that follow dural puncture, the postdural puncture syndrome, rather than PDPH, which falsely implies the headache as the only manifestation. Neglected dural leak may lead to a chronic headache, or even more seriously, it may lead to a number of neurological complications, such as cranial nerve palsy. Rarely it may lead to subdural hematoma and peripartum seizures. Focusing on headache as the primary treatment target fails to address the primary pathophysiology of unabated CSF leak. Unresolved headaches following a lumbar puncture should prompt further investigation. If the headache resolves and the pathology persists, investigations could be delayed with dire consequences. So targeting the headache along with the underlying pathology represents a rational approach. Application of an epidural blood patch may, therefore, be a safe way to not only treat typical postlumbar puncture headache but also to prevent subdural hematoma after lumbar puncture. To understand this rather complicated issue, we could use the analogy of compartmental syndrome in the lower limb where a nerve block can mask the pain, which can result in even a worse outcome. Likewise, the cases where PDPH was not relieved by hydration, simple analgesia, and other conservative therapeutic techniques are probably the cases where more serious sequelae can occur due to a persistent CSF leak, and an early blood patch probably acts as a safeguard against such serious complications.
Allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation from alternative donors with a conditioning regimen of low‐dose irradiation, fludarabine and cyclophosphamide in Fanconi anaemia

A pilot study was undertaken using a fludarabine‐based conditioning regimen to improve haematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) from alternative donors in 27 Fanconi anaemia (FA) patients. Patients were conditioned with 150–180 mg/m2 of fludarabine, 40 mg/kg of cyclophosphamide, 5–10 mg/kg of antithymocyte globulin, and 300–450 cGy of thoracoabdominal/total body irradiation. One patient who received unrelated cord blood transplantation failed to engraft, another patient died of sepsis. The 1‐year overall survival was 96·3% (95% CI, 89–100). This conditioning regimen exerted an immunosuppressive effect that enabled durable engraftment in alternative donor HCT without severe toxicity.
Spotting Words in Medieval Manuscripts

This article discusses the technology of handwritten text recognition (HTR) as a tool for the analysis of historical handwritten documents. We give a broad overview of this field of research, but the focus is on the use of a method called ‘word spotting’ for finding words directly and automatically in scanned images of manuscript pages. We illustrate and evaluate this method by applying it to a medieval manuscript. Word spotting uses digital image analysis to represent stretches of writing as sequences of numerical features. These are intended to capture the linguistically significant aspects of the visual shape of the writing. Two potential words can then be compared mathematically and their degree of similarity assigned a value. Our version of this method gives a false positive rate of about 30%, when the true positive rate is close to 100%, for an application where we search for very frequent short words in a 16th-Century Old Swedish cursiva recentior manuscript. Word spotting would be of use e.g. to researchers who want to explore the content of manuscripts when editions or other transcriptions are unavailable.
Cryptanalysis of the Fuzzy Vault for Fingerprints: Vulnerabilities and Countermeasures

The fuzzy fingerprint vault is a popular approach to protect a fingerprint's minutiae as a building block of a security application. In this thesis simulations of several attack scenarios are conducted against implementations of the fuzzy fingerprint vault from the literature. Our investigations clearly confirm that the weakest link in the fuzzy fingerprint vault is its high vulnerability to false-accept attacks. Therefore, multi-finger or even multi-biometric cryptosystems should be conceived. But there remains a risk that cannot be resolved by using more biometric information of an individual if features are protected using a traditional fuzzy vault construction: The correlation attack remains a weakness of such constructions. It is known that quantizing minutiae to a rigid system while filling the whole space with chaff makes correlation obsolete. Based on this approach, we propose an implementation. If parameters were adopted from a traditional fuzzy fingerprint vault implementation, we would experience a significant loss in authentication performance. Therefore, we perform a training to determine reasonable parameters for our implementation. Furthermore, to make authentication practical, the decoding procedure is proposed to be randomized. By running a performance evaluation on a dataset generally used, we find that achieving resistance against the correlation attack does not have to be at the cost of authentication performance. Finally, we conclude that fuzzy vault remains a possible construction for helping in solving the challenging task of implementing a cryptographically secure multi-biometric cryptosystem in future.
Cingulin Contains Globular and Coiled-Coil Domains and Interacts with Zo-1, Zo-2, Zo-3, and Myosin

We characterized the sequence and protein interactions of cingulin, an M r 140–160-kD phosphoprotein localized on the cytoplasmic surface of epithelial tight junctions (TJ). The derived amino acid sequence of a full-length Xenopus laevis cingulin cDNA shows globular head (residues 1–439) and tail (1,326–1,368) domains and a central α-helical rod domain (440–1,325). Sequence analysis, electron microscopy, and pull-down assays indicate that the cingulin rod is responsible for the formation of coiled-coil parallel dimers, which can further aggregate through intermolecular interactions. Pull-down assays from epithelial, insect cell, and reticulocyte lysates show that an NH2-terminal fragment of cingulin (1–378) interacts in vitro with ZO-1 (K d ∼5 nM), ZO-2, ZO-3, myosin, and AF-6, but not with symplekin, and a COOH-terminal fragment (377–1,368) interacts with myosin and ZO-3. ZO-1 and ZO-2 immunoprecipitates contain cingulin, suggesting in vivo interactions. Full-length cingulin, but not NH2-terminal and COOH-terminal fragments, colocalizes with endogenous cingulin in transfected MDCK cells, indicating that sequences within both head and rod domains are required for TJ localization. We propose that cingulin is a functionally important component of TJ, linking the submembrane plaque domain of TJ to the actomyosin cytoskeleton.
Fibroblast Growth Factor-8 Expression Is Regulated by Intronic Engrailed and Pbx1-binding Sites*

Fibroblast growth factor-8 (FGF8) plays a critical role in vertebrate development and is expressed normally in temporally and spatially restricted regions of the vertebrate embryo. We now report on the identification of regions of Fgf8important for its transcriptional regulation in murine ES cell-derived embryoid bodies. Stable transfection of ES cells, using a human growth hormone reporter gene, was employed to identify regions of theFgf8 gene with promoter/enhancer activity. A 2-kilobase 5′ region of Fgf8 was shown to contain promoter activity. A 0.8-kilobase fragment derived from the large intron of Fgf8was found to enhance human growth hormone expressed from theFgf8 promoter 3–4-fold in an orientation dependent manner. The intronic fragment contains DNA-binding sites for the AP2, Pbx1, and Engrailed transcription factors. Gel shift and Western blot experiments documented the presence of these transcription factors in nuclear extracts from ES cell embryoid bodies. In vitro mutagenesis of the Engrailed or Pbx1 site demonstrated that these sites modulate the activity of the intronic fragment. In addition, in vitro mutagenesis of both Engrailed and Pbx1 sites indicated that other unidentified sites are responsible for the transcriptional enhancement observed with the intronic fragment.
A Chernoff bound for random walks on expander graphs

We consider a finite random walk on a weighted graph G; we show that the sample average of visits to a set of vertices A converges to the stationary probability /spl pi/(A) with error probability exponentially small in the length of the random walk and the square of the size of the deviation from /spl pi/(A). The exponential bound is in terms of the expansion of G and improves previous results. We show that the method of taking the sample average from one trajectory is a more efficient estimate of /spl pi/(A) than the standard method of generating independent sample points from several trajectories. Using this more efficient sampling method, we improve the algorithms of Jerrum and Sinclair (1989) for approximating the number of perfect matchings in a dense graph and for approximating the partition function of an Ising system. We also give a fast estimate of the entropy of a random walk on an unweighted graph. <<ETX>>
Depth Map Super-Resolution for Cost-Effective RGB-D Camera

Recently, cost-effective RGB-D cameras measuring distance to target objects have been used in many fields. By using a depth camera equipped with the RGB-D camera, we can easily recognize depth and three-dimensional objects having difficulty in distinction only with RGB images. However, the depth cameras are low-resolution compared with the RGB cameras, and include measuring errors. Therefore, in this paper, we present a method to reduce the measurement errors of the depth camera and enhance the resolution of a depth map by using a high-resolution RGB camera image. Especially around object's contours, super-resolution depth maps are obtained by an interpolation process from the pixels that is selected by the color similarity and selection pixels stored reliable depth value. Then, we confirm that the depth maps are the same resolution as the RGB image, and are more similar to the objects shape indicates by the color image than only expanded depth map. Further, we confirm that result is improved by applying this approach to the application combined with high-resolution RGB image.
The accuracy of urinary cotinine immunoassay test strip as an add-on test to self-reported smoking before major elective surgery.

INTRODUCTION Smoking is a preventable cause of perioperative complications. An accurate and rapid classification of smoking status is essential as up to 35% of smokers deny smoking before surgery. We compared the diagnostic performance of a preoperative urinary cotinine immunoassay test strip (NicAlert®) as an add-on test to patient's self-reported smoking status. METHODS Four hundred and sixty-five patients undergoing major elective surgery self-reported their smoking history and provided a sample for measuring urinary cotinine concentration by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (reference standard) and NicAlert®. Using the "either test positive" rule, the gain in diagnostic performance for NicAlert® add-on test was assessed using relative positive and negative likelihood ratios (LRs) and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) with 95% CIs. RESULTS Of the 60 patients with a positive reference standard (adjusted cotinine ≥ 50 ng/ml), 10 (16.7%) denied current cigarette smoking. The NicAlert® add-on test had better test performance measures (sensitivity = 95.0%, specificity = 94.8%) than self-reported smoking history alone (sensitivity = 83.3%, specificity = 95.0%). The relative positive and negative LRs were 1.09 (95% CI = 0.95-1.24) and 0.30 (95% CI = 0.12-0.78), respectively. The AUROC for the NicAlert® add-on test (0.90; 95% CI = 0.84-0.96) was significantly higher than for the self-reported smoking history alone (0.78; 95% CI = 0.69-0.88) (p = .006). CONCLUSION The NicAlert® add-on test strategy had excellent diagnostic test performance for identifying current smokers who are expected to have a high risk of perioperative complications.
A Sustained Virological Response to Interferon or Interferon/Ribavirin Reduces Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Improves Survival in Chronic Hepatitis C: A Nationwide, Multicentre Study in Taiwan

Background The long-term benefit for chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients treated with interferon (IFN)/ribavirin (RBV) combination therapy remains unclear. We aimed to evaluate the long-term effects of IFN monotherapy and IFN/RBV combination therapy on reducing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and mortality in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, adjusting for risk factors. Methods A total of 1,619 patients with biopsy-proven CHC, including 1,057 receiving IFN-based therapy (760 on IFN/RBV combination therapy) and 562 untreated controls from three medical centres and one regional core hospital in Taiwan were enrolled in this retrospective-prospective cohort study. Results The incidence of HCC and survival during a follow-up period of 1.0–15.3 (mean 5.18) and 1–16 (mean 5.15) years in treated and untreated patients, respectively, was analysed using Cox proportional hazards regression. The cumulative incidence of HCC was 35.2% and 12.2% for untreated and treated groups, respectively (P=0.0013). The cumulative survival rate was 93.1% and 96.2% for untreated and treated groups, respectively (P=0.3928). Significantly lower incidences of HCC and mortality were observed in sustained virological responders (both for IFN monotherapy and IFN/RBV combination) but not in non-responders when compared with untreated patients. HCV genotype 1 patients had significantly higher incidences of HCC than genotype non-1 patients. In multivariate analysis, pre-existing cirrhosis, non-response, HCV geno-type-1 and age were associated with HCC; pre-existing cirrhosis and non-response correlated to mortality. Conclusion A sustained virological response secondary to IFN monotherapy or IFN/RBV combination therapy could reduce the risk for HCC and improve survival of CHC patients.
Accurate calibration of test mass displacement in the LIGO interferometers

We describe three fundamentally different methods we have applied to calibrate the test mass displacement actuators to search for systematic errors in the calibration of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors. The actuation frequencies tested range from 90 Hz to 1 kHz and the actuation amplitudes range from 10−6 m to 10−18 m. For each of the four test mass actuators measured, the weighted mean coefficient over all frequencies for each technique deviates from the average actuation coefficient for all three techniques by less than 4%. This result indicates that systematic errors in the calibration of the responses of the LIGO detectors to differential length variations are within the stated uncertainties.
Comparative Analysis of Different DNA‐Binding Drugs for Leishmaniasis Cure: A Pharmacoinformatics Approach

Several experiments have been performed to test DNA‐binding drugs to cure Leishmania infection. However, there are no details of pharmacoinformatics study. Herein, we have selected a good number of compounds from experimentally verified studies and performed a comparative analysis based on pharmacoinformatics techniques. In silico docking study was performed to observe the molecular level interactions of these known ligands with the DNA receptor by automated computational docking using Glide. A comparison between the calculated interaction energies and in silico ADME/T study was made. In agreement with drug likeness rules, our study suggests that seco‐hydroxy‐aza‐CBI‐TMI (compound 4b; GScore, −12.058) is a potential molecule for targeting the DNA to cure leishmaniasis.