Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
No difference between slow oscillation up‐ and down‐state cueing for memory consolidation during sleep

The beneficial effects of sleep for memory consolidation are assumed to rely on the reactivation of memories in conjunction with the coordinated interplay of sleep rhythms like slow oscillations and spindles. Specifically, slow oscillations are assumed to provide the temporal frame for spindles to occur in the slow oscillations up‐states, enabling a redistribution of reactivated information within hippocampal–neocortical networks for long‐term storage. Memory reactivation can also be triggered externally by presenting learning‐associated cues (like odours or sounds) during sleep, but it is presently unclear whether there is an optimal time‐window for the presentation of such cues in relation to the phase of the slow oscillations. In the present within‐subject comparison, participants (n = 16) learnt word‐pairs visually presented with auditory cues of the first syllable. These syllables were subsequently used for real‐time cueing either in the up‐ or down‐state of endogenous slow oscillations. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found differences in memory performance neither between up‐ and down‐state cueing, nor between word‐pairs that were cued versus uncued. In the up‐state cueing condition, higher amounts of rapid eye movement sleep were associated with better memory for cued contents, whereas higher amounts of slow‐wave sleep were associated with better memory for uncued contents. Evoked response analyses revealed signs of cue processing in both conditions. Interestingly, both up‐ and down‐state cueing evoked a similar spindle response with the induced slow oscillations up‐state at ~1000 ms post‐cue. We speculate that our cueing procedure triggered generalised reactivation processes that facilitated the consolidation of both cued and uncued memories irrespective of the slow oscillation phase.
Disrupted topological organization of resting‐state functional brain networks in cerebral small vessel disease

We aimed to investigate alterations in functional brain networks and assess the relationship between functional impairment and topological network changes in cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) patients with and without cerebral microbleeds (CMBs). We constructed individual whole‐brain, region of interest (ROI) level functional connectivity (FC) networks for 24 CSVD patients with CMBs (CSVD‐c), 42 CSVD patients without CMBs (CSVD‐n), and 36 healthy controls (HCs). Then, we used graph theory analysis to investigate the global and nodal topological disruptions between groups and relate network topological alterations to clinical parameters. We found that both the CSVD and control groups showed efficient small‐world organization in FC networks. However, compared to CSVD‐n patients and controls, CSVD‐c patients exhibited a significantly decreased clustering coefficient, global efficiency, and local efficiency and an increased shortest path length, indicating a disrupted balance between local specialization and global integration in FC networks. Although both the CSVD and control groups showed highly similar hub distributions, the CSVD‐c group exhibited significantly altered nodal betweenness centrality (BC), mainly distributed in the default mode network (DMN), attention, and visual functional areas. There were almost no global or regional alterations between CSVD‐n patients and controls. Furthermore, the altered nodal BC of the right anterior/posterior cingulate gyrus and left cuneus were significantly correlated with cognitive parameters in CSVD patients. These results suggest that CSVD patients with and without CMBs had segregated disruptions in the topological organization of the intrinsic functional brain network. This study advances our current understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying CSVD.
Reliability of task‐evoked neural activation during face‐emotion paradigms: Effects of scanner and psychological processes

Assessing and improving test–retest reliability is critical to efforts to address concerns about replicability of task‐based functional magnetic resonance imaging. The current study uses two statistical approaches to examine how scanner and task‐related factors influence reliability of neural response to face‐emotion viewing. Forty healthy adult participants completed two face‐emotion paradigms at up to three scanning sessions across two scanners of the same build over approximately 2 months. We examined reliability across the main task contrasts using Bayesian linear mixed‐effects models performed voxel‐wise across the brain. We also used a novel Bayesian hierarchical model across a predefined whole‐brain parcellation scheme and subcortical anatomical regions. Scanner differences accounted for minimal variance in temporal signal‐to‐noise ratio and task contrast maps. Regions activated during task at the group level showed higher reliability relative to regions not activated significantly at the group level. Greater reliability was found for contrasts involving conditions with clearly distinct visual stimuli and associated cognitive demands (e.g., face vs. nonface discrimination) compared to conditions with more similar demands (e.g., angry vs. happy face discrimination). Voxel‐wise reliability estimates tended to be higher than those based on predefined anatomical regions. This work informs attempts to improve reliability in the context of task activation patterns and specific task contrasts. Our study provides a new method to estimate reliability across a large number of regions of interest and can inform researchers' selection of task conditions and analytic contrasts.
Frequency tunable liquid metal planar inverted-F antenna

A frequency tunable liquid metal antenna that can compensate for hand effects is presented for use in mobile phones. The antenna structure is based on a planar inverted-F antenna, which is frequently considered as an internal antenna. The upper arm of the antenna was formed using liquid metal filled in a Teflon tube. The liquid metal used was Galinstan. The length of the filled portion determined the resonant frequency of the antenna. The tuning capability of the antenna was demonstrated through an automatic tuning experiment, in which the resonant frequency of the antenna was automatically recovered from disturbances caused by a human hand being placed in the proximity of the antenna.
Airflow Synergistic Needleless Electrospinning of Instant Noodle-like Curly Nanofibrous Membranes for High-Efficiency Air Filtration.

Particulate matter (PM) pollution has become a serious environmental concern. Nanofibrous filters are widely reported to remove PM from polluted air. Herein, efficient and lightweight PM air filters are presented using airflow synergistic needleless electrospinning composed of auxiliary fields such as an airflow field and a secondary inductive electric field. Compared to needleless electrospinning with other spinnerets, it significantly improves productivity, fiber diameter, and porosity of fibrous air filters. The instant noodle-like nanofiber structure can also be controlled by adjusting the airflow velocity. These air filters exhibit high (2.5 μm particulate matter) PM2.5 removal efficiency (99.9%) and high (0.3 μm particulate matter) PM0.3 removal efficiency (99.1%), low pressure drop (56 Pa for PM2.5 and 78 Pa for PM0.3 ), and large dust holding capacitance (the maximum value is 168 g m-2 for PM2.5 , while 102 g m-2 for PM0.3 ). Meanwhile, the proposed PM filters are also tested suitable and stable to other polluted air filtrations such as cigarette smoke and sawdust. The large-scale synthesis of such an attractive nanofiber structure presents the great potential of high-performance filtration/separation materials.
Beetles in Conservation

Beetles, the most diverse group of insects, are often abundant in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Many species are under threat from human changes to natural environments, and some are valuable tools in conservation, because they respond rapidly to changes that occur. Knowledge of these responses, of both abundance and composition of assemblages, enable use of some beetles to monitor environmental changes. Beetles impinge on humanity on many ways: as cultural objects, desirable collectables, major pests and competitors for resources need by people, as beneficial consumers of other pests, and by ensuring the continuity of vital ecological processes.
Loss of miR‐34 in Drosophila dysregulates protein translation and protein turnover in the aging brain

Aging is a risk factor for neurodegenerative disease, but precise mechanisms that influence this relationship are still under investigation. Work in Drosophila melanogaster identified the microRNA miR‐34 as a modifier of aging and neurodegeneration in the brain. MiR‐34 mutants present aspects of early aging, including reduced lifespan, neurodegeneration, and a buildup of the repressive histone mark H3K27me3. To better understand how miR‐34 regulated pathways contribute to age‐associated phenotypes in the brain, here we transcriptionally profiled the miR‐34 mutant brain. This identified that genes associated with translation are dysregulated in the miR‐34 mutant. The brains of these animals show increased translation activity, accumulation of protein aggregation markers, and altered autophagy activity. To determine if altered H3K27me3 was responsible for this proteostasis dysregulation, we studied the effects of increased H3K27me3 by mutating the histone demethylase Utx. Reduced Utx activity enhanced neurodegeneration and mimicked the protein accumulation seen in miR‐34 mutant brains. However, unlike the miR‐34 mutant, Utx mutant brains did not show similar altered autophagy or translation activity, suggesting that additional miR‐34‐targeted pathways are involved. Transcriptional analysis of predicted miR‐34 targets identified Lst8, a subunit of Tor Complex 1 (TORC1), as a potential target. We confirmed that miR‐34 regulates the 3’ UTR of Lst8 and identified several additional predicted miR‐34 targets that may be critical for maintaining proteostasis and brain health. Together, these results present novel understanding of the brain and the role of the conserved miRNA miR‐34 in impacting proteostasis in the brain with age.
How Conversational Goals Predict Sexual Self-Disclosure Decisions

ABSTRACT Communicating verbally about sexual topics is one aspect of sexual communication, and romantic partners have to choose whether to disclose sexual information. The present study used conversational goals – what one hopes to accomplish in the conversation – to examine how people decide whether or not to engage in sexual self-disclosure. In an online survey, romantically involved participants (n = 428) provided data on four conversational goals (instrumental, impression management, identity, and relational), disclosure efficacy, disclosure anxiety, and likelihood to sexually self-disclose. Mediation model results indicated that the instrumental goal was directly associated with greater likelihood to disclose while the impression management goal was directly associated with less likelihood to disclose. The instrumental, impression management, and relational goals were indirectly connected with the likelihood to sexually self-disclose as mediated by disclosure efficacy and anxiety. The results highlight the importance of considering conversational goals perspectives when studying communication about taboo topics. Implications for future research are discussed.
LncRNA OSER1-AS1 regulates the inflammation and apoptosis of rheumatoid arthritis fibroblast like synoviocytes via regulating miR-1298-5p/E2F1 axis

ABSTRACT It has been reported that long noncoding RNAs (LncRNAs) take part in the progression and occurrence of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The current work aimed to dig the effect of lncRNA OSER1-AS1 on RA and the associated mechanism. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was made to decide that OSER1-AS1 was significantly lowly expressed in synovial tissue and serum of RA patients, which was consistent in RA-FLSs cell lines. The result of ROC curve indicated that OSER1-AS1 could be a diagnostic biomarker for RA patients. Cell Counting Kit-8 assay (CCK-8), EdU staining and flow cytometry were performed to explore the effect of OSER1-AS1 on RA-FLSs in vitro. Relative levels of interleukin-1 (IL-1), interleukin-6 (IL-6), matrix metalloproteinases-3 (MMP-3) were detected by ELISA and the result displayed that overexpression of OSER1-AS1 inhibited RA-induced inflammatory production of IL-1, IL-6 and MMP3. Bioinformatics analysis, luciferase reporter, RNA immunoprecipitation assays (RIP) and RNA pull-down assay were conducted to confirm the binding between microRNA-1298-5p (miR-1298-5p) and OSER1-AS1 or E2F transcription factor 1 (E2F1). Mechanistically, OSER1-AS1 serves as a competing endogenous (ceRNA) in RA-FLSs through the sponge of miR-1298-5p and increase in the expression of E2F1. Further restoration experiments revealed that miR-1298-5p mimics and E2F1 silencing could partially reverse the inhibiting effect of OSER1-AS1 overexpression on propagation and apoptosis in RA-FLSs. The results illustrated the biological mechanism of OSER1-AS1/miR-1298-59/E2F1 axis in RA progression. The outcomes indicated that OSER1-AS1 might be adopted as a hopeful diagnostic and therapeutic objective for RA. Graphical abstract
Observer-Based Decentralized Control for Non-Strict-Feedback Fractional-Order Nonlinear Large-Scale Systems With Unknown Dead Zones

This article addresses the output-feedback decentralized control issue for the fractional-order nonlinear large-scale nonstrict-feedback systems with states immeasurable and unknown dead zones. The unknown nonlinear functions are identified by neural networks (NNs), and immeasurable states are estimated by establishing an NNs’ decentralized state observer. The algebraic loop issue is solved by using the property of NN basis functions and designing the fractional-order adaptation laws. In addition, the fractional-order dynamic surface control (FODSC) design technique is introduced in the adaptive backstepping control algorithm to avoid the issue of “explosion of complexity. ” Then, by treating the nonsymmetric dead zones as the time-varying uncertain systems, an adaptive NNs’ output-feedback decentralized control scheme is developed via the fractional-order Lyapunov stability criterion. It is proven that the controlled fractional-order systems are stable, and the tracking and observer errors can converge to a small neighborhood of zero. Two simulation examples are given to confirm the validity of the put forward control scheme.
Detection Reliability Analysis of Passive DAS RFID System

Recently, it has been shown that improved wireless communication coverage can be achieved by employing distributed antenna system (DAS). The DAS RFID system is based on a novel technique whereby two or more spatially separated transmit and receive antennas are used to enable greatly enhanced tag detection performance over longer distances using antenna diversity combined with frequency and phase hopping. In this paper, we present a detection reliability evaluation of the DAS RFID in a typical lab environment. We conduct an extensive experimental analysis of passive RFID tag detection with difierent locations and orientations. The tag received signal strengths corresponding to various tag locations on one of the six difierent sides of a cube, and for difierent reader transmit power are collected and analyzed in this study. 1. INTRODUCTION Radio Frequency Identiflcation (RFID) is a rapidly developing technology which uses wireless com- munication for automatic identiflcation of objects. RFID technology has been widely adopted as an attractive and cost efiective technology for applications such as asset management, access control, and industrial automation (1). The RFID tag detection and reader reliable reading range remain the most critical issues for successful deployment of passive ultra high frequency (UHF) RFID sys- tems. The main factors in∞uencing the tag response reliability include tag location and orientation, impedance mismatch between tag antenna and chip (2), and multipath fading and communication blind spot (3). Furthermore, tag placement on highly dielectric materials (i.e., liquids) or conduc- tors (i.e., metals) can drastically change the properties of a tag antenna and therefore, it reduces reading e-ciency and shortens reading distance. Usually, these factors are beyond the control of the system user, hence for a maximum detection rate, proper conditions should be analyzed and deflned before any implementation of the RFID system.
Tumor Drug Concentration and Phosphoproteomic Profiles After Two Weeks of Treatment With Sunitinib in Patients with Newly Diagnosed Glioblastoma

Abstract Purpose: Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) have poor efficacy in patients with glioblastoma (GBM). Here, we studied whether this is predominantly due to restricted blood–brain barrier penetration or more to biological characteristics of GBM. Patients and Methods: Tumor drug concentrations of the TKI sunitinib after 2 weeks of preoperative treatment was determined in 5 patients with GBM and compared with its in vitro inhibitory concentration (IC50) in GBM cell lines. In addition, phosphotyrosine (pTyr)-directed mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics was performed to evaluate sunitinib-treated versus control GBM tumors. Results: The median tumor sunitinib concentration of 1.9 μmol/L (range 1.0–3.4) was 10-fold higher than in concurrent plasma, but three times lower than sunitinib IC50s in GBM cell lines (median 5.4 μmol/L, 3.0–8.5; P = 0.01). pTyr-phosphoproteomic profiles of tumor samples from 4 sunitinib-treated versus 7 control patients revealed 108 significantly up- and 23 downregulated (P < 0.05) phosphopeptides for sunitinib treatment, resulting in an EGFR-centered signaling network. Outlier analysis of kinase activities as a potential strategy to identify drug targets in individual tumors identified nine kinases, including MAPK10 and INSR/IGF1R. Conclusions: Achieved tumor sunitinib concentrations in patients with GBM are higher than in plasma, but lower than reported for other tumor types and insufficient to significantly inhibit tumor cell growth in vitro. Therefore, alternative TKI dosing to increase intratumoral sunitinib concentrations might improve clinical benefit for patients with GBM. In parallel, a complex profile of kinase activity in GBM was found, supporting the potential of (phospho)proteomic analysis for the identification of targets for (combination) treatment.
Management of crown gall disease of roses using agrobacterium radiobacter, corn oil and copper hydroxide and oxychloride in Kenya

The cut-flower industry is one of the fastest growing sub-sectors of the horticultural industry contributing significantly to the continued growth of Kenyan economy. Roses are the most popular cut-flowers world-wide. Rose flower production in Kenya faces significant challenges particularly with regard to pests and diseases. Crown gall disease caused by A. tumefaciens is one of the limiting factors in the production of roses. The disease is widespread in rose flower farms and nurseries in Kenya causing a substantial loss of yield and therefore there is an urgent need to manage it. The study aimed at evaluating the antagonistic activity of naturally occurring A. radiobacter isolates from different flower farms in four ecological regions notably Nanyuki, Naivasha, Murang‟a and Timau against A. tumefaciens. In addition, Elianto oil, copper hydroxide (kocide 2000) and copper oxychloride were evaluated as chemical control agents Field survey was conducted over the period between August, 2012 and October, 2012. Gall and soil samples were collected during the period between November, 2012 and December, 2012. Laboratory work was conducted at Kenyatta University, Microbiology Department Laboratory while greenhouse experiments were carried out at Branan farm (Muranga County). The gall and soil samples were isolated on Yeast Extract Mannitol Agar supplemented with Congo red and Yeast Extract Peptone media. Colony morphology and standard biochemical tests including: Gram staining, catalase test, urease test, salt tolerance test, 3-ketolactose test, motility test and H2S production were performed for identification and confirmation of the isolates based on their Gram staining and cultural characteristics. Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion technique was used to determine antimicrobial sensitivity patterns of bacteria to antibiotics. Carrot disc assay test was conducted on A. tumefaciens for pathogenicity test while in vitro antagonistic test was done on A. radiobacter. In the greenhouse experiments, pathogenecity test was carried out using A. radiobacter and A. tumefaciens isolates on four varieties of rose plants. Minimum incidence (6%) of crown gall was observed on Topsun, Fuschiana and H3O rose varieties when A. radiobacter isolates were applied compared to 54% in the control. In Furiosa variety, there was minimal incidence of crown gall disease on treated plants and in control. There was no significant differences (P>0.05) in the interaction between rose flower variety and treatments on the number of plants with galls. In chemical control, there was no significant difference (P>0.05) in the interaction between treatment and variety with regard to number of plants with galls. The study confirmed that A. radiobacter had the potential in the management of crown gall disease on rose flower plants. Therefore, the study recommends the use of A. radiobacter (biological control agent) and chemical control methods to minimize spread of the disease.