Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of immune cells in animal models for inherited neuropathies: facts and visions *

Mice heterozygously deficient in the peripheral myelin adhesion molecule P0 (P0+/− mice) are models for some forms of Charcot–Marie–Tooth (CMT) neuropathies. In addition to the characteristic hallmarks of demyelination, elevated numbers of CD8‐positive T‐lymphocytes and F4/80‐positive macrophages are striking features in the nerves of these mice. These immune cells increase in number with age and progress of demyelination, suggesting that they might be functionally related to myelin damage. In order to investigate the pathogenetic role of lymphocytes, the myelin mutants were cross‐bred with recombination activating gene 1 (RAG‐1)‐deficient mice, which lack mature T‐ and B‐lymphocytes. The immunodeficient myelin mutants showed a less severe myelin degeneration. The beneficial effect of lymphocyte‐deficiency was reversible, since demyelination worsened in immunodeficient myelin‐mutants when reconstituted with bone marrow from wild‐type mice. Ultrastructural analysis revealed macrophages in close apposition to myelin and demyelinated axons. We therefore cross‐bred the P0+/− mice with spontaneous osteopetrotic (op) mutants deficient in the macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (M‐CSF), hence displaying impaired macrophage activation. In the corresponding double mutants the numbers of macrophages were not elevated in the peripheral nerves, and the demyelinating phenotype was less severe than in the genuine P0+/− mice, demonstrating that macrophages are also functionally involved in the pathogenesis of genetically mediated demyelination. We also examined other models for inherited neuropathies for a possible involvement of immune cells. We chose mice deficient in the gap junction component connexin 32, a model for the X‐linked form of CMT. Similar to P0‐deficient mice, T‐lymphocytes and macrophages were elevated and macrophages showed a close apposition to degenerating myelin. We conclude that the involvement of T‐lymphocytes and macrophages is a common pathogenetic feature in various forms of slowly progressive inherited neuropathies.
The Prevalence of Diagnosed Diabetes Among the Elderly of Seven Cities in Latin America and the Caribbean

Objective: To examine the relation of diagnosed diabetes mellitus (DM) to the level of education and body mass index (BMI) among the elderly of seven cities using data from SABE. Methods: The SABE survey was based on a probabilistic sample of the elderly population. Results of various logistic regression models were applied to prevalence rates to adjust for age, gender, and BMI by the covariate method given the variability of these parameters. Results: The prevalence of diagnosed diabetes among the elderly was 15.7% (95% CI 14.7-16.8), with the highest prevalence reported in Bridgetown and the lowest in Buenos Aires. Discussion: There was a high prevalence of diagnosed DM among the elderly of the seven cities. The prevalence of diagnosed DM was strongly associated with BMI and low education. The inclusion of these factors in policies and programs aiming to reduce the prevalence of diabetes among the elderly is recommended.
Interactions between zooplankton feeding, photosynthesis and skeletal growth in the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata

SUMMARY We investigated the effect of zooplankton feeding on tissue and skeletal growth of the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata. Microcolonies were divided into two groups: starved corals (SC), which were not fed during the experiment, and fed corals (FC), which were abundantly fed with Artemia salina nauplii and freshly collected zooplankton. Changes in tissue growth, photosynthesis and calcification rates were measured after 3 and 8 weeks of incubation. Calcification is the deposition of both an organic matrix and a calcium carbonate layer, so we measured the effect of feeding on both these parameters, using incorporation of 14C-aspartic acid and 45Ca, respectively. Aspartic acid is one of the major components of the organic matrix in scleractinian corals. For both sampling times, protein concentrations were twice as high in FC than in SC (0.73 vs 0.42 mg P–1 cm–2 skeleton) and chlorophyll c2 concentrations were 3–4 times higher in fed corals (2.1±0.3 μg cm–2). Cell specific density (CSD), which corresponds to the number of algal cells inside a host cell, was also significantly higher in FC (1.416±0.028) than in SC (1.316±0.015). Fed corals therefore displayed a higher rate of photosynthesis per unit area (Pgmax= 570±60 nmol O2 cm–2 h–1 and Ik=403±27 μmol photons m–2 s–1). After 8 weeks, both light and dark calcification rates were twofold greater in FC (3323±508 and 416±58 nmol Ca2+ 2 h–1 g–1 dry skeletal mass) compared to SC (1560±217 and 225±35 nmol Ca2+ 2 h–1 g–1 dry skeletal mass, respectively, under light and dark conditions). Aspartic acid incorporation rates were also significantly higher in FC (10.44±0.69 and 1.36± 0.26%RAV 2 h–1 g–1 dry skeletal mass, where RAV is total radioactivity initially present in the external medium) than in SC (6.51±0.45 and 0.44±0.02%RAV 2 h–1 g–1 dry skeletal mass under dark and light conditions, respectively). Rates of dark aspartic acid incorporation were lower than the rates measured in the light. Our results suggest that the increase in the rates of calcification in fed corals might be induced by a feeding-stimulation of organic matrix synthesis.
Gender Label and Perceived Infant Emotionality: A Partial Replication of a Classic Study

In a study often referred to as “classic,” Condry and Condry (1976) showed a videotaped infant to participants, telling half of them the infant was a boy and half it was a girl. Participants who thought they were viewing a boy rated the infant's reaction to a jack-in-the-box as anger; those who thought they were viewing a girl rated the reaction as fear. Participants in the present partial replication of the Condrys' study did not rate the infant differently based on the infant's gender label, although there was evidence that participants' own sex affects their perception of an infant's emotionality. Results were discussed in light of inconsistent results among other gender-labeling studies and relevant methodological, historical, and theoretical issues.
Loss of hepatitis B surface antigen in a real‐life clinical cohort of patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection

Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) clearance is the main indicator of viral cure in patients infected with the hepatitis B virus (HBV). We sought to identify the parameters associated with HBsAg loss in a well‐characterized real‐life clinical cohort of chronically HBV‐infected patients.
Supervised Descent Method

In this dissertation, we focus on solving Nonlinear Least Squares problems using a supervised approach. In particular, we developed a Supervised Descent Method (SDM), performed thorough theoretical analysis, and demonstrated its effectiveness on optimizing analytic functions, and four other real-world applications: Inverse Kinematics, Rigid Tracking, Face Alignment (frontal and multi-view), and 3D Object Pose Estimation. In Rigid Tracking, SDM was able to take advantage of more robust features, such as, HoG and SIFT. Those non-differentiable image features were out of consideration of previous work because they relied on gradient-based methods for optimization. In Inverse Kinematics where we minimize a non-convex function, SDM achieved significantly better convergence than gradient-based approaches. In Face Alignment, SDM achieved state-of-the-arts results. Moreover, it was extremely computationally efficient, which makes it applicable for many mobile applications. In addition, we provided a unified view of several popular methods including SDM on sequential prediction, and reformulated them as a sequence of function compositions. Finally, we suggested some future research directions on SDM and sequential prediction.
Principles of operation of short-channel gallium arsenide field-effect transistor determined by Monte Carlo method

The electrical properties of a GaAs FET having a practical doping density and having a quarter-micrometer source-drain distance and a quarter-micrometer gate length have been studied by two-dimensional Monte Carlo particle simulation. I_{ds} = 3.3mA/20µm,g_{m} = 600mS/mm, andf_{T} = 160GHz are predicted. The reasons for the high performances are discussed in terms of the electron dynamics in the device. The current saturation mechanism and the current control mechanism of the FET are made clear.
Efficient Bayesian Multivariate Surface Regression

Methods for choosing a fixed set of knot locations in additive spline models are fairly well established in the statistical literature. The curse of dimensionality makes it nontrivial to extend these methods to nonadditive surface models, especially when there are more than a couple of covariates. We propose a multivariate Gaussian surface regression model that combines both additive splines and interactive splines, and a highly efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm that updates all the knot locations jointly. We use shrinkage prior to avoid overfitting with different estimated shrinkage factors for the additive and surface part of the model, and also different shrinkage parameters for the different response variables. Simulated data and an application to firm leverage data show that the approach is computationally efficient, and that allowing for freely estimated knot locations can offer a substantial improvement in out‐of‐sample predictive performance.
Construction of a Vertebrate Embryo from Two Opposing Morphogen Gradients

Designer Embryo Numerous signaling pathways have been implicated in controlling early vertebrate embryogenesis. P.-F. Xu et al. (p. 87) identify the minimal set of factors necessary to get uncommitted cells to organize a complete embryo. Two opposing gradients of the growth factors Nodal and Bone Morphogenetic Protein were sufficient to instruct zebrafish embryonic pluripotent cells to organize a complete embryo, not only in vivo but also in vitro. These findings may provide guidance for regenerative medicine studies aimed at constructing tissues and organs in vitro from cultured pluripotent cells. Opposing gradients of bone morphogenetic protein and Nodal can induce the formation of a zebrafish embryo. Development of vertebrate embryos involves tightly regulated molecular and cellular processes that progressively instruct proliferating embryonic cells about their identity and behavior. Whereas numerous gene activities have been found to be essential during early embryogenesis, little is known about the minimal conditions and factors that would be sufficient to instruct pluripotent cells to organize the embryo. Here, we show that opposing gradients of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) and Nodal, two transforming growth factor family members that act as morphogens, are sufficient to induce molecular and cellular mechanisms required to organize, in vivo or in vitro, uncommitted cells of the zebrafish blastula animal pole into a well-developed embryo.
Discovering Deep Knowledge from Relational Data by Attribute-Value Association

Discovering Attribute-Value Association (AVA) is of fundamental importance in knowledge discovery. Market Basket Analysis is an archetypical application. However, most existing algorithms rely only on frequency counts directly obtained from data at the surface and thus cannot reveal deeper knowledge, i.e. the AVAs governed by hidden factors inherent in the data. This paper proposes a new method, called Attribute-Value Association Algorithm (AVAA), which can i) discover statistically significant associations at the Attribute-Value level from relational dataset, ii) disentangle associations to unveil different AVAs corresponding to different hidden factors. The performance of AVAA is validated via experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets. AVAA demonstrated better identification rate when comparing with Frequent Pattern Mining algorithms, particularly when noise was present. Keywords—Segmentation/Clustering/Association; Explorative and visual data mining
A compact model for fully overlapped LDD FD SOI MOSFETs

The goal of this paper is to propose a simple and efficient physics-based threshold voltage model for short-channel FD SOI MOSFETs with fully-overlapped LDD structures. The model which is based on the solution of the two-dimensional (2D) Poisson's equation in the thin SOI as well as the gate and buried oxides, has considered the voltage drop in the LDD region by introducing empirical parameters, and has merits of the bulk LDD counterpart.
El análisis de contenido y la organización de repertorios culturales: El caso de las placas de linterna mágica

El desarrollo de tecnicas de analisis sistematico de mensajes mediaticos es uno de los desafios metodologicos que el area de comunicacion debe abordar en las proximas decadas. El analisis de contenidos como metodo que permite investigar con detalle y en profundidad cualquier material de la comunicacion humana puede ser una herramienta esencial en la descripcion ordenada de repertorios comunicativos y culturales. Un metodo de arranque en la constitucion de una ecologia cultural basada en la investigacion de la comunicacion social, que en el presente trabajo se aplica al repertorio de las placas de linterna magica, un medio audiovisual basado en la proyeccion de imagenes y uso sincronico de sonidos que alcanzo entre los siglos XVII y XX una significativa trascendencia cultural.
Structure of the gene encoding phosphoribosylpyrophosphate synthetase (prsA) in Salmonella typhimurium

The Salmonella typhimurium gene prsA, which encodes phosphoribosylpyrophosphate synthetase, has been cloned, and the nucleotide sequence has been determined. The amino acid sequence derived from the S. typhimurium gene is 99% identical to the derived Escherichia coli sequence and 47% identical to two rat isozyme sequences. Strains containing plasmid-borne prsA have been used to overproduce and purify the enzyme. The promoter for the S. typhimurium prsA gene was identified by deletion analysis and by similarity to the promoter for the E. coli prsA gene. The location of the prsA promoter results in a 416-base-pair 5' untranslated leader in the prsA transcript, which was shown by deletion to be necessary for maximal synthesis of phosphoribosylpyrophosphate synthetase. The S. typhimurium leader contains a 115-base-pair insert relative to the E. coli leader. The insert appears to have no functional significance.
Long-term, open-label study of the safety and efficacy of atomoxetine in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: an interim analysis.

BACKGROUND Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is an early-onset neuropsychiatric disorder that affects 3% to 7% of school-age children and 4% of adults. Its pathophysiology is thought to involve the dopaminergic and nor-adrenergic pathways associated with attention control and impulsivity. These symptoms have largely been defined in the childhood population, but the course of the condition and expression in the adult population are not as well characterized. METHOD This is an ongoing, 3-year, open-label study consisting of adults with DSM-IV ADHD who were previously enrolled in 1 of 2 double-blind, acute-treatment studies of atomoxetine. The results of the interim analysis reported here were derived from the study of 384 patients at 31 sites who had been studied for a period of up to 97 weeks. The primary efficacy measure was the Conners' Adult ADHD Rating Scale-Investigator Rated: Screening Version (CAARS-Inv:SV) total ADHD symptom score. In addition, safety, adverse events, and vital sign measurements were assessed. RESULTS Significant improvement was noted with atomoxetine therapy, with mean CAARS-Inv:SV total ADHD symptom scores decreasing 33.2% from 29.2 (baseline of open-label therapy) to 19.5 (endpoint of open-label therapy) (p < .001). Similar and significant decreases were noted for the secondary efficacy measures. Adverse events consisted primarily of pharmacologically (noradrenergic) expected effects, such as increases in heart rate and blood pressure and a slight decrease in weight. CONCLUSION The results of this interim analysis of an ongoing, open-label study of adults with ADHD support the long-term efficacy, safety, and tolerability of atomoxetine for the treatment of adult ADHD.
Analysis of the relationship between weight parameters and stability of solutions in Hopfield networks form dynamic systems viewpoint

A study of the stability properties of the set of equilibrium points that are solutions for a given constraint satisfaction or optimization problem mapped to Hopfield network dynamics is presented. Specifically, the relation between constraint weight parameter values and the stability of solutions of optimization problems mapped to Hopfield networks is investigated. A theoretical development relating constraint weight parameter values to solution stability is presented. Employing an abstract optimization problem, the dependency of solution stability on constraint weight parameter values is shown. The empirical evidence as observed by many earlier researchers indicated that the selection of constraint weight parameters often had an effect on the stability of solution equilibrium points. This paper clearly identifies the reasons for that effect from a theoretical viewpoint.
Contributions of Feature Binding During Encoding and Functional Connectivity of the Medial Temporal Lobe Structures to Episodic Memory Deficits Across the Prodromal and First-Episode Phases of Schizophrenia

Patients with and at risk for psychosis may have difficulty using associative strategies to facilitate episodic memory encoding and recall. In parallel studies, patients with first-episode schizophrenia (n = 27) and high psychosis risk (n = 28) compared with control participants (n = 22 and n = 20, respectively) underwent functional MRI during a remember-know memory task. Psychophysiological interaction analyses, using medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures as regions of interest, were conducted to measure functional connectivity patterns supporting successful episodic memory. During encoding, patients with first-episode schizophrenia demonstrated reduced functional coupling between MTL regions and regions involved in stimulus representations, stimulus selection, and cognitive control. Relative to control participants and patients with high psychosis risk who did not convert to psychosis, patients with high psychosis risk who later converted to psychosis also demonstrated reduced connectivity between MTL regions and auditory-verbal and visual-association regions. These results suggest that episodic memory deficits in schizophrenia are related to inefficient recruitment of cortical connections involved in associative memory formation; such deficits precede the onset of psychosis among those individuals at high clinical risk.
High MS‐compatibility of silver nitrate‐stained protein spots from 2‐DE gels using ZipPlates and AnchorChips for successful protein identification

The availability of easy‐to‐handle, sensitive, and cost‐effective protein staining protocols for 2‐DE, in conjunction with a high compatibility for subsequent MS analysis, is still a prerequisite for successful proteome research. In this article we describe a quick and easy‐to‐use methodological protocol based on sensitive, homogeneous, and MS‐compatible silver nitrate protein staining, in combination with an in‐gel digestion, employing the Millipore 96‐well ZipPlate system for peptide preparation. The improved quality and MS compatibility of the generated protein digests, as compared to the otherwise weakly MS‐compatible silver nitrate staining, were evaluated on real tissue samples by analyzing 192 Coomassie‐stained protein spots against their counterparts from a silver‐stained 2‐DE gel. Furthermore, the applicability of the experimental setup was evaluated and demonstrated by the analysis of a large‐scale MALDI‐TOF MS experiment, in which we analyzed an additional ˜1000 protein spots from 2‐DE gels from mouse liver and mouse brain tissue.
An approach accounting for the losses in a three-phase induction device

Induction heating and melting is a widely used thermal treatment method. It is associated with small losses of electric power and it's also enables local heating at specific points of the item. In using three-phase inductors at industrial frequency, a problem occurs associated with the occurrence of a rotating magnetic field. The construction suggested in this publication eliminates this problem. This publication proposes a methodology for theoretical and experimental study of the currents and power capacities in all three phases of the three-phase induction device with a split phase operating in idle mode with taking into account the losses in the magnetic core and the wires.
Prioritizing Nodes in Hierarchical Visualizations with the Tree Cut Model

We report on the development of a novel technique to select relevant nodes for presentation in hierarchical visualizations. It adapts the Tree Cut Model to the problem of determining the uneven deepest relevant level in a hierarchy, using it as a criterion for filtering data items. In a case study using Docuburst, we demonstrate how this technique can help creating better overviews of data by reducing visual clutter while highlighting relevant data.
Differences in craniofacial characteristics in Southern Italian children from Naples: a retrospective study by cephalometric analysis.

AIM The present cross-sectional survey was performed to determine cephalometric standards in a large sample (n. 1071) of children from Southern Italy (Naples). MATERIALS AND METHODS 1071 lateral cephalograms of healthy children, between 8 to 12 years, with various types of occlusion, all with no history of orthodontic treatment before cephalometric analysis were examined. Seven angular and three linear length measurements (SNA, SNB, ANB, SN^GoMe, PN^Pal I^SN, i^GoMe), and three ratios were included. Descriptive statistics, including the mean, standard deviation, and maximum and minimum, values was computed for each cephalometric variable. RESULTS Changes in angular and linear parameters during the observation period occurred mostly between the ages of 10 and 12 years. The three ratios varied from age and were not characterised by a progressive rise in mean values. Se-N/Go-Pg was greater in 11-year-old boys (p <0.05) and 12-year-old boys (p <0.01); the cranio-maxillary index Se-N/PNS-A1 was greater in 9-year-old girls (p <0.05), whereas the maxilla-mandibular index PNS-A1/Go-Pg was greater in 9-year-old boys (p <0.01). CONCLUSION The findings provided useful reference cephalometric normative measures for the 8-to-12-year-old Southern Italian children population. Significant differences between boys and girls in the length of the anterior cranial base and ratio were reported.