Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of the mycotoxin fumonishin B1: Comparison of thermospray, fast‐atom bombardment and electrospray mass spectrometry

The utility of thermospray mass spectrometry (TSMS), fast-atom bombardment mass spectrometry (FABMS), and electrospray mass spectrometry (ESMS) for the analysis of Fumonisin B1 is investigated. In addition, the analysis of two different standards of Fumonisin B1 as well as an inoculated corn culture extract that contained Fumonisin B1 is reported. The results of these efforts show that ESMS, as well as FABMS and a combination of FAB and tandem mass spectrometry (FABMS/MS), provide useful data for the characterization of Fumonisin B1. The detection limit was 50 pg for Fumonisin B1 when analyzed by full scan FABMS, and 5 pg when analyzed by single-reaction monitoring FABMS/MS.
Electrode Characteristics of Nanostructured Mg2Ni ‐ Type Alloys Prepared by Mechanical Alloying

A mechanical alloying process is introduced to produce nanocrystalline Mg{sub 2}Ni-type metal hydride. The mechanical alloying process has recently emerged as a novel technique for producing alloy powders whose structures are nanocrystalline. Mg{sub 2}Ni alloys were prepared using planetary ball mill starting from mixtures of elemental powders. Nanocrystalline Mg{sub 2}Ni-type alloys were obtained by both the long-term ballmilling (mechanical alloying) and heat-treatment of the ballmilled powders. In comparison with the polycrystalline material, nanocrystalline Mg{sub 2}Ni showed a lower temperature for hydrogenation and a higher discharge capacity at 30 C. The partial substitution of Cu for Ni increased hydrogen absorption and desorption at 200 C and greatly improved the discharge capacity of the nanostructured Mg{sub 2}Ni electrode at 30 C. The discharge capacity of the 120 h milled Mg{sub 2}(Ni{sub 0.9}Cu{sub 0.1}) electrode was 350 mAh/g.
Preparation of PLLA/PEG Nanofibers by Electrospinning and Potential Applications

Poly(L-lactide) (PLLA)/polyethylene glycol (PEG) mixed solutions were successfully electrospun into micro-or nanofibrous polymer mats. The fiber diameter was in the range 100nm-6μm. The effect of the concentration of the spinning solutions and the ratio of PLLA/PEG on the fiber diameter and morphology was investigated. The hydrophilicity was tuned by varying the PLLA/PEG ratio. The tissue compatibility of the electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds was screened using two different cell models of human dermal fibroblasts and the osteoblast-like cell line MG-63. Both types of cells attached uniformly and approximately equally to all PLLA/PEG nanofibers. In long-term cultures osteoblast-like cells tend to spatially organize in tissue-like structure, particularly within the scaffold with the highest PEG content (PLLA/PEG at weight ratio 70/30). These results indicate that PLLA mixed with hydrophilic PEG produces a promising new biocompatible material for engineering scaffolds.
Gut flora-targeted photobiomodulation therapy improves senile dementia in an Aß-induced Alzheimer's disease animal model.

BACKGROUND Emerging evidence suggests that the gut microbiota plays an important role in the pathological progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Photobiomodulation (PBM) therapy is believed to have a positive regulatory effect on the imbalance of certain body functions, including inflammation, immunity, wound healing, nerve repair, and pain. Previous studies have found that the intestinal flora of patients with AD is in an unbalanced state. Therefore, we have proposed the use of gut flora-targeted PBM (gf-targeted PBM) as a method to improve AD in an Aß-induced AD mouse model. METHODS PBM was performed on the abdomen of the mice at the wavelengths of 630 nm, 730 nm, and 850 nm at 100 J/cm2 for 8 weeks. Morris water maze test, immunofluorescence and proteomic of hippocampus, and intestinal flora detection of fecal were used to evaluate the treatment effects of gf-targeted PBM on AD rats. RESULTS PBM at all three wavelengths (especially 630 nm and 730 nm) significantly improved learning retention as measured by the Morris water maze. In addition, we found reduced amyloidosis and tau phosphorylation in the hippocampus by immunofluorescence in AD mice. By using a quantitative proteomic analysis of the hippocampus, we found that gf-targeted PBM significantly altered the expression levels of 509 proteins (the same differentially expressed proteins in all three wavelengths of PBM), which involved the pathways of hormone synthesis, phagocytosis, and metabolism. The 16 s rRNA gene sequencing of fecal contents showed that PBM significantly altered the diversity and abundance of intestinal flora. Specifically, PBM treatment reversed the typical increase of Helicobacter and uncultured Bacteroidales and the decrease of Rikenella seen in AD mice. CONCLUSIONS Our data indicate that gf-targeted PBM regulates the diversity of intestinal flora, which may improve damage caused by AD. Gf-targeted PBM has the potential to be a noninvasive microflora regulation method for AD patients.
Is Dry Needling Applied by Physical Therapists Effective for Pain in Musculoskeletal Conditions? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

OBJECTIVE The main objective of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to determine the short-, medium-, and long-term effectiveness of dry needling (DN) applied by physical therapists to myofascial trigger points for the treatment of pain. METHODS PubMed, Scopus, SportDiscus, and Web of Science databases were searched from their inception to February 2020. Randomized controlled trials that compared DN with other treatments or placebo and measured pain with a visual analog Scale or another numerical pain rating scale were included. Two authors used a personalized form to collect the following data relevant to the objectives of the review from each article independently: study design, purpose, sample size, diagnosis, characteristics of DN intervention, characteristics of placebo intervention, outcome measures, period of assessment, body region, DN technique, and number of sessions. The initial search identified 1771 articles. After the selection, 102 articles were assessed for eligibility; 42 of these articles measuring pain were used for the meta-analysis. Four meta-analyses were performed according to the follow-up period from the last reported treatment. RESULTS This meta-analysis found a large effect to decrease pain within 72 hours (standardized mean difference [SMD] = -0.81; 95% CI = -1.21 to -0.40), a moderate effect in 1 to 3 weeks (SMD = -0.69; 95% CI = -1.02 to -0.35), a large effect in 4 to 12 weeks (SMD = -0.85; 95% CI = -1.30 to -0.40), and a large effect in 13 to 24 weeks (SMD = -0.81; 95% CI = -1.64 to -0.03). The risk of bias was generally low; however, the heterogeneity of the results downgraded the level of evidence. CONCLUSIONS Low-quality evidence that the immediate to 72-hour (large) effect, 4- to 12-week (large) effect, 13- to 24-week (large) effect, and moderate-quality 1- to 3-week (moderate) effect suggested that DN performed by physical therapists was more effective than no treatment, sham DN, and other therapies for reducing pain. IMPACT DN is commonly used by physical therapists to treat musculoskeletal pain, and it is very important for physical therapists to know the clinical conditions and time periods for which DN is effective in reducing pain in their patients.
The gender-binary cycle: the perpetual relations between a biological-essentialist view of gender, gender ideology, and gender-labelling and sorting

Gender inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time. A core factor that feeds gender inequality is people's gender ideology—a set of beliefs about the proper order of society in terms of the roles women and men should fill. We argue that gender ideology is shaped, in large parts, by the way people make sense of gender differences. Specifically, people often think of gender differences as expressions of a predetermined biology, and of men and women as different ‘kinds’. We describe work suggesting that thinking of gender differences in this biological-essentialist way perpetuates a non-egalitarian gender ideology. We then review research that refutes the hypothesis that men and women are different ‘kinds’ in terms of brain function, hormone levels and personality characteristics. Next, we describe how the organization of the environment in a gender-binary manner, together with cognitive processes of categorization drive a biological-essentialist view of gender differences. We then describe the self-perpetuating relations, which we term the gender-binary cycle, between a biological-essentialist view of gender differences, a non-egalitarian gender ideology and a binary organization of the environment along gender lines. Finally, we consider means of intervention at different points in this cycle. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.
Use of biological systems for the synthesis of chiral molecules. 5. Microbiological reduction of acyclic .beta.-diketones

Regio- and enantiospecificities of the biological reduction of various acyclic β-diketones by lower fungi were studied in order to obtain ketols of R configuration. Only 2-hydroxy compounds were obtained from 2,4-diketones as already observed for S ketols formed with bakers' yeast. Both 3-hydroxy and 5-hydroxy ketols were produced from 3,5-diones. All but 4-hydroxy-3-methylpentan-2-one had the R configuration expected
How pride works

Abstract Abstract The emotion of pride appears to be a neurocognitive guidance system to capitalize on opportunities to become more highly valued and respected by others. Whereas the inputs and the outputs of pride are relatively well understood, little is known about how the pride system matches inputs to outputs. How does pride work? Here we evaluate the hypothesis that pride magnitude matches the various outputs it controls to the present activating conditions – the precise degree to which others would value the focal individual if the individual achieved a particular achievement. Operating in this manner would allow the pride system to balance the competing demands of effectiveness and economy, to avoid the dual costs of under-deploying and over-deploying its outputs. To test this hypothesis, we measured people's responses regarding each of 25 socially valued traits. We observed the predicted magnitude matchings. The intensities of the pride feeling and of various motivations of pride (communicating the achievement, demanding better treatment, investing in the valued trait and pursuing new challenges) vary in proportion: (a) to one another; and (b) to the degree to which audiences value each achievement. These patterns of magnitude matching were observed both within and between the USA and India. These findings suggest that pride works cost-effectively, promoting the pursuit of achievements and facilitating the gains from others’ valuations that make those achievements worth pursuing.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae deficient in the early anaphase release of Cdc14 can traverse anaphase I without ribosomal DNA disjunction and successfully complete meiosis

Eukaryotic meiosis is a specialized cell cycle involving two successive nuclear divisions that lead to the formation of haploid gametes. The phosphatase Cdc14 plays an essential role in meiosis as revealed in studies of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Cdc14 is stored in the nucleolus, a sub-nuclear domain containing the ribosomal DNA, and its release is regulated by two distinct pathways, one acting in early anaphase I of meiosis and a second at the exit from meiosis II. The early anaphase release is thought to be important for disjunction of the ribosomal DNA, disassembly of the anaphase I spindle, spindle pole re-duplication and the counteraction of CDK, all of which are required for progression into meiosis II. The release of Cdc14 from its nucleolar binding partner Net1 is stimulated by phosphorylation of cyclin-dependent kinase sites in Net1, but the importance of that phospho-regulation in meiosis is not well understood. We induced net1-6cdk mutant cells to enter meiosis and examined the localization of Cdc14 and various indicators of meiotic progression. The net1-6cdk mutations inhibit, but don’t fully prevent Cdc14 release, and they almost completely prevent disjunction of the ribosomal DNA during meiosis I. Failure to disjoin the ribosomal DNA is lethal in mitosis, and we expected the same to be true in meiosis. However, the cells were able to complete meiosis II, yielding the expected four meiotic products as viable spores. Therefore, all ribosomal DNA disjunction required for meiosis can occur in meiosis II. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of meiotic chromosome segregation.
Integration of differential gene expression with weighted gene correlation network analysis identifies genes whose expression is remodeled throughout physiological aging in mouse tissues

Gene expression alterations occur in all mouse tissues during aging, but recent works highlight minor rather than major dysregulation amplitude for most genes, questioning whether differentially expressed genes on their own provide deep insight into aging biology. To clarify this issue, we have combined differential gene expression with weighted gene correlation network analysis (WGCNA) to identify expression signatures accounting for the pairwise relations between gene expression profiles and the cumulative effect of genes with small fold- changes during aging in the brain, heart, liver, skeletal muscle, and pancreas of C57BL/6 mice. Functional enrichment analysis of the overlap of genes identified in both approaches showed that immunity-related responses, mitochondrial energy metabolism, tissue regeneration and detoxification are prominently altered in the brain, heart, muscle, and liver, respectively, reflecting an age-related global loss of tissue function. While data showed little overlap among the age-dysregulated genes between tissues, aging triggered common biological processes in distinct tissues, particularly proteostasis-related pathways, which we highlight as important features of murine tissue physiological aging.
Temporal enhancement of cross-adaptation between density and size perception based on the theory of magnitude

The ability to estimate spatial extent is an important feature of the visual system. A previous study showed that perceived sizes shrank after adaptation to a dense texture and reported that this density–size aftereffect is modulated by the degree of density. In this study, we found that the aftereffect was also modulated by the temporal density of the adapting texture. The test stimuli were two circles, and the adapting stimulus had a dotted texture. The adapting texture refreshed every form 67ms to 500 ms, or not at all (static), during the adaptation. The results showed that the aftereffects from a refreshing stimulus were larger than those under the static condition. On the other hand, density adaptation lacked such enhancement. This result indicates that repetitive presentation of an adapting texture enhanced the density–size cross-aftereffect. The fact that density modulation occurs in both the spatial and temporal domains is consistent with the theory of magnitude, which assumes that the processing of the magnitude estimation of space, time, and numbers share a common cortical basis.
Functional MRI of native and non-native speech production in sequential German-English bilinguals

Bilingualism and multilingualism are highly prevalent. Non-invasive brain imaging has been used to study the neural correlates of native (L1) and non-native (L2) speech and language production, mainly on the lexical and syntactic level. Here, we acquired continuous fast event-related FMRI during visually cued overt production of exclusively German and English vowels and syllables. We analyzed data from 13 university students, native speakers of German and sequential English bilinguals. The production of non-native English sounds was associated with increased activity of the left primary sensori-motor cortex, bilateral cerebellar hemispheres (lobule VI), left inferior frontal gyrus, and left anterior insula compared to native German sounds. The contrast German > English sounds was not statistically significant. Our results emphasize that the production of non-native speech requires additional neural resources already on a basic phonological level in sequential bilinguals.
Treatment of Electronic Energy Level Transition and Ionization Following the Particle-Based Chemistry Model

A new method of treating electronic energy level transitions as well as linking ionization to electronic energy levels is proposed following the particle-based chemistry model of Bird. Although the use of electronic energy levels and ionization reactions in DSMC are not new ideas, the current method of selecting what level to transition to, how to reproduce transition rates, and the linking of the electronic energy levels to ionization are, to the author’s knowledge, novel concepts. The resulting equilibrium temperatures are shown to remain constant, and the electronic energy level distributions are shown to reproduce the Boltzmann distribution. The electronic energy level transition rates and ionization rates due to electron impacts are shown to reproduce theoretical and measured rates. The rates due to heavy particle impacts, while not as favorable as the electron impact rates, compare favorably to values from the literature. Thus, these new extensions to the particle-based chemistry model of Bird provide an accurate method for predicting electronic energy level transition and ionization rates in gases. Because these methods are not dependent upon any equilibrium rate equations or the macroscopic temperature of the gas, they are more appropriate for non-equilibrium flows.
Dynamics and nanoscale organization of the postsynaptic endocytic zone at excitatory synapses

At postsynaptic sites of neurons, a prominent clathrin-coated structure, the endocytic zone (EZ), controls the trafficking of glutamate receptors and is essential for synaptic plasticity. Despite its importance, little is known about how this clathrin structure is organized to mediate endocytosis. We used live-cell and super-resolution microscopy techniques to reveal the dynamic organization of this poorly understood clathrin structure. We found that a subset of endocytic proteins only transiently appeared at postsynaptic sites. In contrast, other proteins, including Eps15, intersectin1L, and β2-adaptin, were persistently enriched and partitioned at the edge of the EZ. We found that uncoupling the EZ from the synapse led to the loss of most of these components, while disrupting the actin cytoskeleton or AP2-membrane interactions did not alter EZ positioning. We conclude that the EZ is a stable, highly organized molecular platform where components are differentially recruited and positioned to orchestrate the endocytosis of synaptic receptors.
Automated assignment of cell identity from single-cell multiplexed imaging and proteomic data

The creation of scalable single-cell and highly-multiplexed imaging technologies that profile the protein expression and phosphorylation status of heterogeneous cellular populations has led to multiple insights into disease processes including cancer initiation and progression. A major analytical challenge in interpreting the resulting data is the assignment of cells to a priori known cell types in a robust and interpretable manner. Existing approaches typically solve this by clustering cells followed by manual annotation of individual clusters or by strategies that gate protein expression at predefined thresholds. However, these often require several subjective analysis choices such as selecting the number of clusters and do not automatically assign cell types in line with prior biological knowledge. They further lack the ability to explicitly assign cells to an unknown or uncharacterized type, which exist in most highly multiplexed imaging experiments due to the limited number of markers quantified. To address these issues we present Astir, a probabilistic model to assign cells to cell types by integrating prior knowledge of marker proteins. Astir uses deep recognition neural networks for fast Bayesian inference, allowing for cell type annotations at the million-cell scale and in the absence of previously annotated reference data across multiple experimental modalities and antibody panels. We demonstrate that Astir outperforms existing approaches in terms of accuracy and robustness by applying it to over 2.1 million single cells from several suspension and imaging mass cytometry and microscopy datasets in multiple tissue contexts. We further showcase that Astir can be used for the fast analysis of the spatial architecture of the tumour microenvironment, automatically quantifying the immune influx and spatial heterogeneity of patient samples. Astir is freely available as an open source Python package at https://www.github. com/camlab-bioml/astir.
Statistical and Machine Learning Techniques in Human Microbiome Studies: Contemporary Challenges and Solutions

The human microbiome has emerged as a central research topic in human biology and biomedicine. Current microbiome studies generate high-throughput omics data across different body sites, populations, and life stages. Many of the challenges in microbiome research are similar to other high-throughput studies, the quantitative analyses need to address the heterogeneity of data, specific statistical properties, and the remarkable variation in microbiome composition across individuals and body sites. This has led to a broad spectrum of statistical and machine learning challenges that range from study design, data processing, and standardization to analysis, modeling, cross-study comparison, prediction, data science ecosystems, and reproducible reporting. Nevertheless, although many statistics and machine learning approaches and tools have been developed, new techniques are needed to deal with emerging applications and the vast heterogeneity of microbiome data. We review and discuss emerging applications of statistical and machine learning techniques in human microbiome studies and introduce the COST Action CA18131 “ML4Microbiome” that brings together microbiome researchers and machine learning experts to address current challenges such as standardization of analysis pipelines for reproducibility of data analysis results, benchmarking, improvement, or development of existing and new tools and ontologies.
Deletion of Kcnj16 in Mice Does Not Alter Auditory Function

Endolymphatic potential (EP) is the main driving force behind the sensory transduction of hearing, and K+ is the main charge carrier. Kir5.1 is a K+ transporter that plays a significant role in maintaining EP homeostasis, but the expression pattern and role of Kir5.1 (which is encoded by the Kcnj16 gene) in the mouse auditory system has remained unclear. In this study, we found that Kir5.1 was expressed in the mouse cochlea. We checked the inner ear morphology and measured auditory function in Kcnj16–/– mice and found that loss of Kcnj16 did not appear to affect the development of hair cells. There was no significant difference in auditory function between Kcnj16–/– mice and wild-type littermates, although the expression of Kcnma1, Kcnq4, and Kcne1 were significantly decreased in the Kcnj16–/– mice. Additionally, no significant differences were found in the number or distribution of ribbon synapses between the Kcnj16–/– and wild-type mice. In summary, our results suggest that the Kcnj16 gene is not essential for auditory function in mice.