Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dietary Restriction Induced Longevity Is Mediated by Nuclear Receptor NHR-62 in Caenorhabditis elegans

Dietary restriction (DR) extends lifespan in a wide variety of species, yet the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Here we show that the Caenorhabditis elegans HNF4α-related nuclear hormone receptor NHR-62 is required for metabolic and physiologic responses associated with DR-induced longevity. nhr-62 mediates the longevity of eat-2 mutants, a genetic mimetic of dietary restriction, and blunts the longevity response of DR induced by bacterial food dilution at low nutrient levels. Metabolic changes associated with DR, including decreased Oil Red O staining, decreased triglyceride levels, and increased autophagy are partly reversed by mutation of nhr-62. Additionally, the DR fatty acid profile is altered in nhr-62 mutants. Expression profiles reveal that several hundred genes induced by DR depend on the activity of NHR-62, including a putative lipase required for the DR response. This study provides critical evidence of nuclear hormone receptor regulation of the DR longevity response, suggesting hormonal and metabolic control of life span.
Embracing teen sexuality: Teenagers’ assessment of sexuality education in Uganda

abstract Scholars in the related literature show that sexuality education contributes to positive sexual outcomes among teenagers, including reduction in risky sexual behaviour, construction of positive images of responsible behaviour, and reduced rates of sexual abuse and unplanned teenage pregnancies. Other benefits include increased contraceptive use and greater confidence in negotiating sexual encounters and self-esteem. In Uganda there is evidence that teenagers are increasingly engaging in risky sexual behaviours, as shown by high rates of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS among this age group and high rate of unplanned teenage pregnancies, an indicator of limited sexual knowledge about their developing sexuality. Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with teenagers, teachers and parents, the article examines the extent to which sexuality knowledge drawn from home and school address teenagers’ lived sexual experiences. It is evident that the education offered is inadequate, largely prescriptive and feminised, generally divorced from teenagers’ personal experiences, and sometimes even contradictory. The article illuminates the need for a rigorous re-examination of the current sexuality learning resources and advocates an empowerment approach that integrates considerations of gender dynamics throughout the teaching of sexuality matters to address both boys’ and girls’ sexual needs.
Contact Lens–Induced Circumlimbal Staining in Silicone Hydrogel Contact Lenses Worn on a Daily Wear Basis

Objectives: The principal objective of the study was to measure the conjunctival staining produced in the circumlimbal region by silicone hydrogel contact lenses with different edge designs. The secondary objective was to investigate the association between circumlimbal staining and comfort. Methods: Four silicone hydrogel contact lenses: ACUVUE OASYS (knife edge design), AIR OPTIX, Biofinity (chisel edge rounded edge combination), and PureVision (rounded edge design), and 1 hydrogel contact lens, ACUVUE 2 (knife edge design), were tested. The study was conducted on a cohort population of 27 established soft contact lens wearers, who wore each contact lens type, in a random order, for a period of 10 (±2) days. Circumlimbal staining was measured in a double-masked fashion through image analysis of digital photographs of lissamine green taken under controlled experimental conditions. Results: The results obtained showed that contact lens edge design was the primary factor controlling circumlimbal staining for silicone hydrogel lenses: a rounded edge away from the ocular surface produced the lowest staining (average, 0.19%) and a knife edge in close apposition to the ocular surface produced the highest staining (average, 1.34%). Contact lens material rigidity was also identified to affect circumlimbal staining and an inverse association between circumlimbal staining and contact lens comfort was demonstrated: the rounded edge design produced the lowest comfort (72 of 100) and the knife edge design produced the highest (87 out of 100). Conclusion: Soft contact lens wear induces circumlimbal staining, the level of staining being influenced by the contact lens edge design. However, high level of circumlimbal staining is not associated with decreased comfort.
Aminoglycoside-inactivating enzymes in clinical isolates of Streptococcus faecalis. An explanation for resistance to antibiotic synergism.

Clinical isolates of enterococci (Streptococcus faecalis) with high-level resistance to both streptomycin and kanamycin (minimal inhibitory concentration >2,000 mug/ml), and resistant to synergism with penicillin and streptomycin or kanamycin were examined for aminoglycoside-inactivating enzymes. All of the 10 strains studied had streptomycin adenylyltransferase and neomycin phosphotransferase activities; the latter enzyme phosphorylated amikacin as well as its normal substrates, such as kanamycin. Substrate profiles of the neomycin phosphotransferase activity suggested that phosphorylation occurred at the 3'-hydroxyl position, i.e., aminoglycoside 3'-phosphotransferase. A transconjugant strain, which acquired high-level aminoglycoside resistance and resistance to antibiotic synergism after mating with a resistant clinical isolate, also acquired both enzyme activities. Quantitative phosphorylation of amikacin in vitro by a sonicate of the transconjugant strain inactivated the antibiotic, as measured by bioassay, and the phosphorylated drug failed to produce synergism when combined with penicillin against a strain sensitive to penicillin-amikacin synergism.No differences were found in the sensitivity of ribosomes from a sensitive and resistant strain when examined in vitro using polyuridylic acid directed [(14)C]-phenylalanine incorporation in the presence of streptomycin, kanamycin, or amikacin. Therefore, we conclude that aminoglycoside-inactivating enzymes are responsible for the aminoglycoside resistance, and resistance to antibiotic synergism observed in these strains.
LPV modelling and control of a 2-DOF robotic manipulator using PCA-based parameter set mapping

This paper presents the construction of a realistic linear parameter-varying (LPV) model of a robotic manipulator using parameter set mapping, for the purpose of synthesizing an LPV gain-scheduled controller. A nonlinear dynamic model of the manipulator is obtained and a quasi-LPV model is derived. Since the quasi-LPV model has a large number of affine scheduling parameters and a large overbounding, parameter set mapping is used to reduce conservatism and complexity in controller design by finding tighter parameter regions with fewer scheduling parameters. Then, a polytopic LPV gain-scheduled controller is synthesized and implemented experimentally on an industrial robot for a trajectory tracking task. Comparison of results with a decentralized PD controller illustrates that the designed LPV controller improves the tracking error significantly. Moreover, it achieves a slightly better accuracy than a model-based inverse dynamics controller while being of lower complexity.
Steady-State vs . Generational Genetic Algorithms : A Comparison of Time Complexity and Convergence Properties

SFI WORKING PAPER: 1992-07-032 SFI Working Papers contain accounts of scientific work of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Santa Fe Institute. We accept papers intended for publication in peer-reviewed journals or proceedings volumes, but not papers that have already appeared in print. Except for papers by our external faculty, papers must be based on work done at SFI, inspired by an invited visit to or collaboration at SFI, or funded by an SFI grant. ©NOTICE: This working paper is included by permission of the contributing author(s) as a means to ensure timely distribution of the scholarly and technical work on a non-commercial basis. Copyright and all rights therein are maintained by the author(s). It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may be reposted only with the explicit permission of the copyright holder. www.santafe. edu
Glucose control with incomplete information

This paper addresses the problem of glucose control in the presence of sampled measurements. This topic is important in the study and development of the Artificial Pancreas (AP), which is a general expression to describe a set of techniques for the control of the glucose behaviour by means of exogenous insulin administration in diabetic individuals. Differently from most of the approaches available in the literature, we not only assume the lack of insulin measurements, but also the availability of the glucose measurements just at sampling times. An observer is designed for the model-based reconstruction of glucose and insulin trajectories from the glucose samples. On top of that, a feedback algorithm (based on the estimated state) is designed to continuously deliver exogenous intra-venous insulin to the patient. Simulations have been performed in-silico on models of virtual patients identified from real data and in the presence of quantization errors. The preliminary results highlight the potential of the proposed approach.
Caveolae structure and function

• Introduction • Lipid rafts and caveolae • Caveolin gene family • Polymerase I and transcript release factor (PTRF) • Cholesterol • Signal transduction • G‐protein coupled receptors • ENOS • Caveolae and disease • Prion diseases • Tumourigenesis • Animal models • Future direction
HOW MUCH HOPE IS ENOUGH? LEVELS OF HOPE AND STUDENTS’ PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SCHOOL FUNCTIONING

This study investigated the characteristics of students who report extremely high levels of hope. A sample of 682 students (ages 11–17) completed measures of hope, school engagement, life satisfaction, self-worth, and mental health. Academic achievement was obtained from students’ school records. Based on their hope scores, students were divided into three groups: “extremely low” (bottom 10% of the distribution), “average” (middle 25%), and “extremely high” (upper 10%). Results indicate that students in the extremely high hope (EHH) group differed from students with average (AH) and extremely low hope (ELH) on all measures. Further, EHH and AH are associated with mental health benefits that are not found among students reporting comparatively ELH levels. Taken together, the findings support the notion that EHH in students is associated with adaptive psychological and school-related functioning. Overall, given the superior adjustment profile, perhaps ‘‘enough hope’’ should be defined as “EHH. ”
Effect of intraoperative brain protection with propofol on postoperative cognition in patients undergoing temporary clipping during intracranial aneurysm surgery.

BACKGROUND Cognitive dysfunction after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) has been attributable to presence of subarachnoid blood, hydrocephalus (HCP), cerebral edema, vasospasm, and temporary clipping of intracranial aneurysm. Provision of neuroprotection during temporary clipping may improve postoperative cognition in such patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS Good-grade aneurysmal SAH patients undergoing temporary clipping during surgery were allocated either to group C (control) or group P (propofol). Patients in group P received propofol in titrated doses to attain a burst suppression ratio of 75 ± 5% on bispectral index (BIS) monitor. The cognitive function as assessed by Hindi-language modification of mini-mental state examination (HMSE) score was evaluated preoperatively, 24 h after surgery, and at discharge from hospital. A score of ≤23 was indicative of cognitive dysfunction. Perioperative complications, duration of intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital stay, and outcome at discharge were noted. RESULTS A total of 66 patients (32 and 34 in group C and P respectively) were included in the study. 97% of the patients had anterior circulation aneurysms. At 24 h after surgery, eight and 12 patients in group C and P respectively; and at discharge, five patients in each group had cognitive dysfunction. In both groups, the trend showed a decline in cognition at 24 h followed by improvement at discharge. Glasgow outcome score in both the groups was comparable (P > 0.05). Intraoperative brain bulge, postoperative vasospasm, and cerebral infarction were found to be independent risk factors for cognitive dysfunction. CONCLUSIONS Pharmacologic neuroprotection with propofol at the time of temporary clipping during surgery for aneurysmal SAH did not offer any advantage as far as preservation of cognition is concerned.
Ultrastructural Study of Selenife-lnduced Nuclear Cataracts

The formation of the selenite-induced cataract was investigated by examining the ultrastructure of the cataract with transmission electron microscopy (TEM). A lacy, or honeycomb, appearance of the nuclear cataract seen by light microscopy was resolved by TEM to be due to the aggregation or precipitation of cytoplasmic material. Despite severe intracellular changes the fibers retained their close apposition to one another. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that a major lesion in selenite-induced nuclear cataracts is the formation of insoluble cytoplasmic aggregates. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 25:751-757, 1984
A novel irregular voice model for HMM-based speech synthesis

State-of-the-art text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis is often based on statistical parametric methods. Particular attention is paid to hidden Markov model (HMM) based text-to-speech synthesis. HMM-TTS is optimized for ideal voices and may not produce high quality synthesized speech with voices having frequent non-ideal phonation. Such a voice quality is irregular phonation (also called as glottalization), which occurs frequently among healthy speakers. There are existing methods for transforming regular (also called as modal) to irregular voice, but only initial experiments have been conducted for statistical parametric speech synthesis with a glottalization model. In this paper we extend our previous residual codebook based excitation model with irregular voice modeling. The proposed model applies three heuristics, which were proven to be useful: 1) pitch halving, 2) pitchsynchronous residual modulation with periods multiplied by random scaling factors and 3) spectral distortion. In a perception test the extended HMM-TTS produced speech that is more similar to the original speaker than the baseline system. An acoustic experiment found the output of the model to be similar to original irregular speech in terms of several parameters. Applications of the model may include expressive statistical parametric speech synthesis and the creation of personalized voices.
Confidence Evolution in Multimedia Systems

Multimedia systems utilize multiple media streams, each of which have different confidence levels in accomplishing various detection tasks. For example, in a multimedia surveillance system, one would usually have higher confidence in an audio stream compared to a video stream for detecting human shouting events. The pre-computation of these confidence levels is cumbersome especially when new media streams are dynamically added to the system. This paper proposes a novel method, which dynamically computes the confidence levels of new streams based on the past history of their agreement/disagreement with the already trusted streams. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed method, we provide the experimental results for detecting events in a multimedia surveillance scenario.
Combined spatial point pattern analysis and remote sensing for assessing landmine affected areas

This work extends our previous work on risk estimation of a mine contaminated area using mine action information such as minefield records and mine incidence, and feature indicators extracted from satellite images. Changes in temporal NDVI's and access to main transport routes and protective landscape such as forest edge are used to indicate potentially risk areas. All features are harmonized in an GIS environment. Kernel density function is performed on landmine and Earth Observation indicators. Safe areas are identified by land-in-use. A final risk map is produced by merging safe areas and risk estimation layer.
Whole Genome Pathway Analysis Identifies an Association of Cadmium Response Gene Loss with Copy Number Variation in Mutant p53 Bearing Uterine Endometrial Carcinomas

Background Massive chromosomal aberrations are a signature of advanced cancer, although the factors promoting the pervasive incidence of these copy number alterations (CNAs) are poorly understood. Gatekeeper mutations, such as p53, contribute to aneuploidy, yet p53 mutant tumors do not always display CNAs. Uterine Corpus Endometrial Carcinoma (UCEC) offers a unique system to begin to evaluate why some cancers acquire high CNAs while others evolve another route to oncogenesis, since about half of p53 mutant UCEC tumors have a relatively flat CNA landscape and half have 20–90% of their genome altered in copy number. Methods We extracted copy number information from 68 UCEC genomes mutant in p53 by the GISTIC2 algorithm. GO term pathway analysis, via GOrilla, was used to identify suppressed pathways. Genes within these pathways were mapped for focal or wide distribution. Deletion hotspots were evaluated for temporal incidence. Results Multiple pathways contributed to the development of pervasive CNAs, including developmental, metabolic, immunological, cell adhesion and cadmium response pathways. Surprisingly, cadmium response pathway genes are predicted as the earliest loss events within these tumors: in particular, the metallothionein genes involved in heavy metal sequestration. Loss of cadmium response genes were associated with copy number changes and poorer prognosis, contrasting with 'copy number flat' tumors which instead exhibited substantive mutation. Conclusion Metallothioneins are lost early in the development of high CNA endometrial cancer, providing a potential mechanism and biological rationale for increased incidence of endometrial cancer with cadmium exposure. Developmental and metabolic pathways are altered later in tumor progression.
A 2.4 Gb/s/pin simultaneous bidirectional parallel link with per-pin skew compensation

This paper describes voltage and timing margins and design trade-offs in low-cost parallel links. Results from a transceiver prototype demonstrate that per-pin skew compensation improves timing margins in these parallel links and can be implemented with reasonable cost overhead. Single-ended and simultaneous bidirectional links are viable alternatives to the traditional differential and unidirectional systems-these links require fewer pins and wires for the same bandwidth, and the additional noise sources, while significant, can be managed by careful circuit and package design.
Reconstruction of the Evolutionary Dynamics of A(H3N2) Influenza Viruses Circulating in Italy from 2004 to 2012

Background Influenza A viruses are characterised by their rapid evolution, and the appearance of point mutations in the viral hemagglutinin (HA) domain causes seasonal epidemics. The A(H3N2) virus has higher mutation rate than the A(H1N1) virus. The aim of this study was to reconstruct the evolutionary dynamics of the A(H3N2) viruses circulating in Italy between 2004 and 2012 in the light of the forces driving viral evolution. Methods Phylodinamic analyses were made using a Bayesian method, and codon-specific positive selection acting on the HA coding sequence was evaluated. Results Global and local phylogenetic analyses showed that the Italian strains collected between 2004 and 2012 grouped into five significant Italian clades that included viral sequences circulating in different epidemic seasons. The time of the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) of the tree root was between May and December 2003. The tMRCA estimates of the major clades suggest that the origin of a new viral strain precedes the effective circulation of the strain in the Italian population by 6–31 months, thus supporting a central role of global migration in seeding the epidemics in Italy. The study of selection pressure showed that four codons were under positive selection, three of which were located in antigenic sites. Analysis of population dynamics showed the alternation of periods of exponential growth followed by a decrease in the effective number of infections corresponding to epidemic and inter-epidemic seasons. Conclusions Our analyses suggest that a complex interaction between the immune status of the population, migrations, and a few selective sweeps drive the influenza A(H3N2) virus evolution. Our findings suggest the possibility of the year-round survival of local strains even in temperate zones, a hypothesis that warrants further investigation.
Combination and Selection of Traffic Safety Expert Judgments for the Prevention of Driving Risks

In this paper, we describe a new framework to combine experts' judgments for the prevention of driving risks in a cabin truck. In addition, the methodology shows how to choose among the experts the one whose predictions fit best the environmental conditions. The methodology is applied over data sets obtained from a high immersive cabin truck simulator in natural driving conditions. A nonparametric model, based in Nearest Neighbors combined with Restricted Least Squared methods is developed. Three experts were asked to evaluate the driving risk using a Visual Analog Scale (VAS), in order to measure the driving risk in a truck simulator where the vehicle dynamics factors were stored. Numerical results show that the methodology is suitable for embedding in real time systems.
Synthesis of AZT analogues: 7-(3-azido-2hydroxypropyl)-, 7-(3-amino-2-hydroxypropyl)-, 7-(3-triazolyl-2-hydroxypropyl)theophyllines

Nucleophilic displacement of the tosyloxy group in 7-(2-hydroxy-3-p-toluenesulfonyloxypropyl)theophylline (1) with azide anion afforded 7-(3-azido-2-hydroxypropyl)theophylline (2). Reduction of the 3-azido group in 2 with Ph3P/Py/NH4OH afforded the 3-amino derivative 4, alternatively obtained by regioselective amination of 7-(2,3-epoxypropyl)theophylline (3). Selective acetylation of 4 gave the N-acetyl derivative 5. 1,3-Dipolar cycloaddition of the azide group in 2 with N1-propargyl thymine (6) afforded the regioisomeric triazole 7.