Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pyruvate augments calcium transients and cell shortening in rat ventricular myocytes

Martin, Bradley J., Hector H. Valdivia, Rolf Bünger, Robert D. Lasley, and Robert M. Mentzer, Jr. Pyruvate augments calcium transients and cell shortening in rat ventricular myocytes. Am. J. Physiol. 274 (Heart Circ. Physiol. 43): H8–H17, 1998. —Pyruvate has been shown to be a metabolic inotrope in the myocardium. In millimolar concentrations, it has been shown to increase both myocardial phosphorylation potential and the cytosolic [NAD1]-to[NADH] ratio. To determine if changes in these parameters can alter intracellular Ca21 concentration ([Ca]i) and hence contractile function, Ca21 transients and cell shortening (CS) were measured in isolated rat ventricular myocytes superfused with a physiological N-2-hydroxyethylpiperazine-N8-2ethanesulfonic acid buffer (11 mmol/l glucose) with and without additional pyruvate, L-lactate, acetate, or isoproterenol. The addition of 5 mmol/l pyruvate resulted in a 33% increase in CS and a 39% increase in systolic [Ca]i. These pyruvate effects were 70% of those observed with 100 nmol/l isoproterenol. The mitochondrial monocarboxylate transport inhibitor a-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamate (250 μmol/l) strongly inhibited pyruvate inotropy, suggesting a substantial obligatory coupling between pyruvate inotropism and its oxidation by the mitochondria.Apossible role of the cytosolic [NAD1]-to[NADH] ratio was assessed by comparing the effects of 20 mmol/l L-lactate to those of equimolar pyruvate. In contrast to 20 mmol/l pyruvate, excess L-lactate failed to appreciably increase CS or systolic [Ca]i. The findings imply that, at levels substantially above 5 mmol/l, a portion of pyruvate inotropism might be due to extreme cytosolic [NAD1]-to[NADH] ratios. This study is the first evidence that augmented [Ca]i transients are most likely the mechanism of cardiac pyruvate inotropism.
Versican V1 Proteolysis in Human Aorta in Vivo Occurs at the Glu441-Ala442 Bond, a Site That Is Cleaved by Recombinant ADAMTS-1 and ADAMTS-4*

Mature human aorta contains a 70-kDa versican fragment, which reacts with a neoepitope antiserum to the C-terminal peptide sequence DPEAAE. This protein therefore appears to represent the G1 domain of versican V1 (G1-DPEAAE441), which has been generated in vivo by proteolytic cleavage at the Glu441-Ala442 bond, within the sequence DPEAAE441-A442RRGQ. Because the equivalent aggrecan product (G1-NITEGE341) and brevican product (G1-EAVESE395) are generated by ADAMTS-mediated cleavage of the respective proteoglycans, we tested the capacity of recombinant ADAMTS-1 and ADAMTS-4 to cleave versican at Glu441-Ala442. Both enzymes cleaved a recombinant versican substrate and native human versican at the Glu441-Ala442 bond and the mature form of ADAMTS-4 was detected by Western analysis of extracts of aortic intima. We conclude that versican V1 proteolysis in vivocan be catalyzed by one or more members of the ADAMTS family of metalloproteinases.
Structural Studies and the Assembly of the Heptameric Post-translational Translocon Complex*

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, some of the nascent chains can be post-translationally translocated into the endoplasmic reticulum through the heptameric post-translational translocon complex (post-translocon). This membrane-protein complex is composed of the protein-conducting channel and the tetrameric Sec62/63 complex. The Sec62/63 complex plays crucial roles in targeting of the signal recognition particle-independent protein substrate to the protein-conducting channel and in assembly of the post-translocon. Although the molecular mechanism of the post-translational translocation process has been well established, the structure of the post-translocon and how the channel and the Sec62/63 complex form the heptameric complex are largely uncharacterized. Here, we report a 20-Å resolution cryo-electron microscopy structure of the post-translocon. The purified post-translocon was found to have a mass of 287 kDa, which is consistent with the unit stoichiometry of the seven subunits as determined by a cysteine labeling experiment. We demonstrated that Triton X-100 dissociated the heptameric complex into three subcomplexes identified as the trimeric translocon Sec61-Sbh1-Sss1, the Sec63-Sec71-Sec72 trimer, and the heterotetramer Sec62-Sec63-Sec71-Sec72, respectively. Additionally, a role of the sixth cytosolic loop of Sec61 in assembly of the post-translocon was demonstrated. Mutations of conserved, positively charged amino acid residues in the loop caused decreased formation of the post-translocon. These studies provide the first architectural description of the yeast post-translocon.
Screening of technological and probiotic properties of lactic acid bacteria isolated from Algerian traditional fermented milk products.

A total of 208 strains of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were isolated from Algerian traditional fermented milk (Jben, Klila, Raib and Lben), in order to evaluate their technological and probiotic properties. These strains were tested for their antimicrobial activity against Listeria monocytogenes using agar well diffusion technique. Only 11 strains were retained, they were also characterised in respect to their technological properties. The retained strains were identified by analyses of the 16S rDNA gene as; Lb. curvatus (1 strain), Ln. mesenteroides subsp mesenteroides (1 strain), Lb. plantarum (3 strains), Lb. brevis (2 strain), Lactobacillus acidophilus (2 strains), and Lactococcus lactis subsp lactis (2 strains). All the antimicrobial compounds produced by the selected lactic acid bacteria were fully or partially inactivated by the proteolytic enzymes. The compounds were heat stable up to 100°C for 20 min, and were active from pH 3.0 to 10.0. The enzymatic potential of the strains evaluated with API ZYM system show that all strains exhibited high leucine, cystine aminopeptidase and β-Galactosidase activities. Lactococcus strains were those that showed the greatest degree of proteolytic activity, however very low lipolytic and amylolytic capacity was detected for same strains. Two out of the 11 selected strains showed moderate survival rates under simulated gastric, however all tested strains showed a high stability under intestinal conditions. According to the results, the selected LAB strains could be used as potential probiotics to a possible inhibition of food-borne pathogenic bacteria and also would be of considerable interest to use as starter culture.
Rho1- and Pkc1-dependent phosphorylation of the F-BAR protein Syp1 contributes to septin ring assembly

Septins often form filaments and rings at the neck of cellular appendages. Assembly of these structures must be coordinated with membrane remodeling. In budding yeast, the Rho1 GTPase and its effector, Pkc1, play a role in septin ring stabilization during budding at least partly through phosphorylation of the bud neck–associated F-BAR protein Syp1.
A user experience model for tangible interfaces for children

Tangible user interfaces allow children to take advantage of their experience in the real world when interacting with digital information. In this paper we describe a model for tangible user interfaces specifically for children that focuses mainly on the user experience during interaction and on how to design interactions. This model is related to other user-centered models and has been used to design a multi-touch tabletop application for a museum. The results of a first evaluation of this museum application show that the interactions at the multi-touch table were engaging and fun, which was one of the goals of the museum application and one of the four themes of the model. Regarding a few other themes of the model results of the first observations are encouraging: the interactions seemed to be intuitive and seemed to facilitate exploration and collaboration. More systematic evaluation of the complete model by video analysis and an additional validation study is proposed.
DISFLUENCIES IN COMPREHENDING ARGUMENTATIVE TEXTS

In two experiments, we examine university students' ability to comprehend authentic argumentative texts and factors that influence their application of this skill. Participants read several relatively lengthy arguments and identified the main claim and reasons. Experiment 1 shows that participants are not skilled at identifying key elements from an argumentative text (only 30% accuracy). The performance of participants of all skill levels was aided by explicit markers to signal the critical elements. Claim and reason identification errors showed interesting patterns such as identifying either an uncontroversial statement of the theme or a counter-argument as the claim. Based on the results from Experiment 1, a short argument tutorial was created and tested in Experiment 2. The tutorial was helpful when readers were reading simply to comprehend but not when they were reading to rebut. The results point to the need for further instruction in argument comprehension skills and the need for additional research into the processes involved.
Video analysis of falls experienced by paediatric iceskaters and roller/inline skaters

Objectives: To evaluate differences in the way iceskaters and roller/inline skaters fall. Methods: Children’s falls related to skating were videotaped and categorised based on type of skating activity, child’s estimated age, direction of fall, whether the child attempted to break the fall, and whether the head struck the skating surface. Results: In total, 216 iceskating and 201 roller/inline skating falls were captured on videotape. In both iceskating and roller/inline skating, the majority of falls were forward in direction. The skaters attempted to break the falls with their arms or hands in over 90% of falls in both iceskating (93.1%) and roller/inline skating (94.5%). A greater proportion of falls in iceskating resulted in the head striking the skating surface (13.0%) than did those in roller/inline skating (3.0%) (odds ratio = 4.8; 95% confidence interval 1.9 to 13.3; p<0.001). Conclusions: This study found that paediatric iceskaters and roller/inline skaters fall similarly and that both types of skaters try to break their falls with their arms or hands; however, because iceskating takes place on a low friction surface, attempts to break falls with the arms or hands are often unsuccessful, leading to head and face injuries. The development of a new type of protective gear, a wrist guard with a non-slip palm, should stop iceskaters from striking the head, protect against upper extremity fractures, and unlike a bulky helmet, should not discourage children from skating.
A transformer-less cold cathode fluorescent lamp driver

A transformer-less cold cathode fluorescent lamp driver for liquid crystal display backlight is proposed in this paper. Commonly, a CCFL driver has a transformer with high turn ratio in order to step up low input voltage to high sinusoidal lamp voltage. This high voltage and high turn ratio transformer has large size and high cost. The proposed transformer-less CCFL driver which is based on parallel-loaded resonant topology features simplicity, so it reduces the complexity and the cost of overall system. And the proposed circuit with the asymmetric control has good dimming capability by duty control. In this paper, the analysis of the proposed CCFL driving circuit and experimental results for 32-inch commercial LCD television backlight are presented.
Coexisting somatic promoter hypermethylation and pathogenic MLH1 germline mutation in Lynch syndrome

Somatic epimutations in the MLH1 promoter mimic the phenotype of Lynch syndrome. To date, no somatic hypermethylation of the MLH1 promoter in the carrier of a pathogenic MLH1 germline mutation has been identified, prompting the recommendation that a germline mutation in MLH1 should only be sought in the absence of tumour tissue methylation. We aimed to determine whether methylation of the MLH1 promoter may coexist in carriers of a pathogenic germline mutation in MLH1. We examined the methylation status of the MLH1 promoter in 123 tumour tissue samples, demonstrating high microsatellite instability and loss of expression of a mismatch repair protein (60 cases with MLH1 germline mutation, 25 cases without mutation, 38 cases with MSH2 mutations), using combined bisulphite restriction analysis (COBRA) and SNaPshot analysis. Methylation of the MLH1 promoter was found in two patients with pathogenic germline mutations, one a carrier of a MLH1 mutation and the other a carrier of a MSH2 mutation. Our results demonstrate that methylation of the MLH1 promoter region does not exclude the presence of a germline mutation in a mismatch repair (MMR) gene. Hypermethylation of the MLH1 promoter may be present in most cases of sporadic colorectal cancers, but this does not exclude a diagnosis of Lynch syndrome. Copyright © 2007 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Survey on the Generation of Recommender Systems

In the era of Internet, web is a giant source of information. The constantly growing rate of information in the web makes people confused to decide which product is relevant to them. To find relevant product in today’s era is very time consuming and tedious task. Everyday a lot of information is uploaded and retrieved from the web. The web is overloaded with information and it is very essential to cop up with this overloaded and overlooked information. Recommender systems are the solution which can help a user to get relevant information from the bulk of information. Recommender systems provide customized or personalized and non personalized recommendations to interested users. Recommender systems are in its evolution stage. Recommender systems have been evolved from first generation to third generation through second generation. First generation or Web 1.0 recommender systems deal with E-commerce, Second generation or web 2.0 recommender systems use social network and social contextual information for accurate and diverse recommendations, and Third generation recommender systems use location based information or internet of things for generating recommendations. In this paper, three generation of recommender systems and are discussed. Similarity measures and evaluation metrics are used in these generations are also discussed.
Permatang Pauh by Elections: Analysis Approach Framing Content in the Prime Media Selected

The concept of media framing in conceptual approach adopted is how a selected issue and ultimately determine what facts should be taken. Formation of news framing is important because it became the starting point on the agenda of the media so that the audience will be wondered how any news is treated to give effect to them. Studies conducted on election Permatang Pauh parliamentary see framing approach to selected newspapers in display issues election. The use of framing approach in reviewing the issues important election for framing approach is able to explain how sub-sub categories news way before the formation of framing a major issue categories. Results showed that framing pattern used in the study election issues could explain how a set of key issues based on the sun-sub categories.
Cigarette smoking in relation to depression: historical trends from the Stirling County Study.

OBJECTIVE Building on findings about the prevalence and incidence of depression over a 40-year period, the authors provide data on trends in cigarette smoking and associations with depression. METHOD Data come from interviews with adult population samples (1952, 1970, and 1992) and followed cohorts (1952-1970 and 1970-1992). Logistic regression models and survival regressions were used to analyze the data. RESULTS The associations between smoking and depression were small and nonsignificant in 1952 and 1970. In 1992, however, the odds that a smoker would be depressed were three times the odds that a nonsmoker would be depressed. The interaction between smoking and study year was significant, indicating that the association was limited to the most recent sample. In the cohort analysis, smoking at baseline did not predict the onset of depression, but subjects who became depressed were more likely to start or continue smoking and less likely to quit than those who never had a depression. CONCLUSIONS In terms of population trends, the association between depression and cigarette smoking became prominent as the use of tobacco declined because of awareness of the risks involved. The findings about individuals followed over time suggest that those who became depressed were more involved with nicotine than those who never had a depression. The authors discuss hypotheses involving "self-medication," risk-taking, and changes in the social climate but conclude that the relationships between smoking and depression are probably multiple and complex.
A QoS MAC protocol for differentiated service in mobile ad hoc networks

We propose the prioritized binary countdown (PBC) scheme for effective quality of service (QoS) supports in mobile ad hoc networks. We evaluate the performance of PBC, IEEE 802.11,802.11e, and two extensions to 802.11e in terms of their differentiation capability, throughput, delay, discarding ratio, blocking rate, and collision rate. Our simulation results show that PBC has considerably higher throughput and smaller delay, dropping ratios, blocking rates, and collision rates as compared to CSMA/CA of IEEE 802.11. We also show that PBC have considerably stronger differentiation capability than IEEE 802.11e and its extensions in multihop ad hoc networking environments
Amyloid β-Induced Neuronal Hyperexcitability Triggers Progressive Epilepsy

Alzheimer's disease is associated with an increased risk of unprovoked seizures. However, the underlying mechanisms of seizure induction remain elusive. Here, we performed video-EEG recordings in mice carrying mutant human APPswe and PS1dE9 genes (APdE9 mice) and their wild-type littermates to determine the prevalence of unprovoked seizures. In two recording episodes at the onset of amyloid β (Aβ) pathogenesis (3 and 4.5 months of age), at least one unprovoked seizure was detected in 65% of APdE9 mice, of which 46% had multiple seizures and 38% had a generalized seizure. None of the wild-type mice had seizures. In a subset of APdE9 mice, seizure phenotype was associated with a loss of calbindin-D28k immunoreactivity in dentate granular cells and ectopic expression of neuropeptide Y in mossy fibers. In APdE9 mice, persistently decreased resting membrane potential in neocortical layer 2/3 pyramidal cells and dentate granule cells underpinned increased network excitability as identified by patch-clamp electrophysiology. At stimulus strengths evoking single-component EPSPs in wild-type littermates, APdE9 mice exhibited decreased action potential threshold and burst firing of pyramidal cells. Bath application (1 h) of Aβ1–42 or Aβ25–35 (proto-)fibrils but not oligomers induced significant membrane depolarization of pyramidal cells and increased the activity of excitatory cell populations as measured by extracellular field recordings in the juvenile rodent brain, confirming the pathogenic significance of bath-applied Aβ (proto-)fibrils. Overall, these data identify fibrillar Aβ as a pathogenic entity powerfully altering neuronal membrane properties such that hyperexcitability of pyramidal cells culminates in epileptiform activity.
Fetal Surveillance and Timing of Delivery for Multiples

This chapter describes the current evidence and recommendations for surveillance and delivery timing for multifetal gestations. Ultrasound surveillance should include early determination of chorionicity, anatomic survey for all twins with fetal echocardiography for monochorionic twins, and growth assessment every 4 weeks. Monochorionic twins should also undergo ultrasound surveillance for twin-twin transfusion syndrome every 2 weeks starting at 16 weeks. Weekly testing with nonstress tests or biophysical profiles is recommended at 32 weeks for monochorionic, diamniotic twins, and 34 weeks for dichorionic twins. If this surveillance is reassuring, optimal delivery timing is 36 weeks 0 days to 37 weeks 0 days for monochorionic, diamniotic twins, and 37 week 0 days to 38 weeks 0 days for dichorionic twins.
Mitigating query hotspots for wireless sensor networks

A query-based wireless sensor network may generate frequent queries to a specific node, and then a hotspot problem emerges and fast consumes the energy of the specific node. A hotspot also influences the traffic flow near its neighboring area. To solve the hotspot problem, this paper presents two agents setting algorithms, distance-based agent selection (DAS) and greedy-based agent selection (GAS) to mitigate the traffic flow near hotspot. A sensor node, called limb node, is attached an agent that is responsible for aggregating query packets to hotspot and replying the interested data to the corresponding requestors. By assigning agents, DAS and GAS both mitigate the hotspot phenomenon. This paper investigates and simulates the proposed algorithms in different environment conditions. From simulation results, both DAS and GAS can mitigate the traffic rates of hotspot up to 60%.
Hearing and seeing beats: the influence of visual beats on the production and perception of prominence

Speakers can employ a variety of means to indicate that a word is important, including auditory cues such as pitch accents and visual cues such as manual gestures, head nods and eyebrow movements (visual beats). In this paper, we look at the relation between visual and auditory cues for prominence, based on data collected with an original experimental paradigm in which speakers were instructed to realize a particular target sentence with different distributions of auditory and visual cues. The first experiment revealed that visual beats have a significant effect on the spoken realization of the target words. When a speaker produces a visual beat, the word uttered simultaneously is produced with relatively more spoken emphasis, irrespective of the position of the auditory accent. The second experiment showed that when participants see a speaker realize one of these beat gestures on a word, they perceive this word as more prominent than when they do not see the beat gesture.
Simulation of Computer Communication Systems

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Another Look at Radial Visualization for Class-preserving Multivariate Data Visualization

Multivariate data visualization is an interesting research eld with many applications in various elds of sciences. Radial visualization is one of the most common information visualization concept for visualizing multivariate data. However, radial visualization may display different information about structures of multivariate data. For example, all points which are multiplicatives of given point may map to the same point in the visual space. An optimal layout of radial visualization is usually found by dening a suitable the order of data dimensions on the unit circle. In this paper, we propose a novel method that improves the radial visualization layout for cluster preservation of multivariate data. The traditional radial visualizations have viewpoint at the origin coordinate. The idea of our proposed method is nding the most suitable viewpoint among the corners of a hypercube to look into the cluster structures of data sets. Our method provides an improvement in visualizing class structures of multivariate data sets on the radial visualization. We present our method with three kinds of quality measurements and prove the effectiveness of our method for several data sets.