Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Involvement of the guanine nucleotide exchange factor Vav3 in central nervous system development and plasticity

Abstract Small GTP-hydrolyzing enzymes (GTPases) of the RhoA family play manifold roles in cell biology and are regulated by upstream guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs). Herein, we focus on the GEFs of the Vav subfamily. Vav1 was originally described as a proto-oncogene of the hematopoietic lineage. The GEFs Vav2 and Vav3 are more broadly expressed in various tissues. In particular, the GEF Vav3 may play important roles in the developing nervous system during the differentiation of neural stem cells into the major lineages, namely neurons, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. We discuss its putative regulatory roles for progenitor differentiation in the developing retina, polarization of neurons and formation of synapses, migration of oligodendrocyte progenitors and establishment of myelin sheaths. We propose that Vav3 mediates the response of various neural cell types to environmental cues.
On analysis and design of discrete-time constrained switched systems*

ABSTRACT This paper presents novel design techniques for discrete-time constrained switched systems. Two problems are considered: the first one is centred at determining a set of switching rules for which the system is unconditionally stable; the second one focuses on the design of a stabilising state-dependent switching function that is subject to structural constraints. Convex optimisation is the kernel of the devised procedures and, thus, these techniques are computationally viable.
The significant effects of puberty on the genetic diathesis of binge eating in girls

OBJECTIVE Recent data show significant phenotypic and genetic associations between ovarian hormones and binge eating in adulthood. Theories of hormonal risk focus on puberty and the possibility that hormone activation induces changes in genetic effects that then lead to differential risk for binge eating in postpuberty and adulthood. Although this theory is difficult to test in humans, an indirect test is to examine whether genetic influences on binge eating increase during the pubertal period in girls. Prior work has shown pubertal increases in genetic influences on overall disordered eating symptoms, but no study to date has examined binge eating. The present study was the first to examine these increases for binge eating. METHODS Participants included 1,568 female twins (aged 8-25 years) from the Michigan State University Twin Registry. Binge eating and pubertal development were assessed with self-report questionnaires. RESULTS Twin moderation models showed significant linear increases in genetic effects from prepuberty (5%) to postpuberty (42%), even after controlling for the effects of age and body mass index. DISCUSSION Results provide critical support for increased genetic influences on binge eating during puberty. Additional studies are needed to identify hormonal mechanisms and fully test contemporary models of ovarian hormone risk.
Efficacy of Cellular Therapy for Diabetic Foot Ulcer

Diabetes mellitus is a widely spread chronic disease with growing incidence worldwide, and diabetic foot ulcer is one of the most serious complications of diabetes. Cellular therapy has shown promise in the management of diabetic foot ulcer in many preclinical experiments and clinical researches. Here, we performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy and safety of cellular therapy in the management of diabetic foot ulcer. We systematically searched PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library databases from inception to May 2017 for randomized controlled trials assessing the efficacy of cellular therapy in diabetic foot ulcer, and a meta-analysis was conducted. A total of 6 randomized controlled clinical trials involving 241 individuals were included in this meta-analysis. The results suggested that cellular therapy could help accelerating the healing of diabetic foot ulcer, presented as higher ankle-brachial index (mean difference = 0.17, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.11 to 0.23), higher transcutaneous oxygen pressure (standardized mean difference [SMD] = 1.43; 95% CI, 1.09– to 1.78), higher ulcer healing rate (relative risk [RR] = 1.78; 95% CI, 1.41 to 2.25), higher amputation-free survival (RR = 1.25; 95% CI, 1.11 to 1.40), and lower scale of pain (SMD = −1.69; 95% CI, −2.05 to −1.33). Furthermore, cellular therapy seemed to be safe, with no serious complications and low risk of short-term slight complications. Cellular therapy could accelerate the rate of diabetic foot ulcer healing and may be more efficient than standard therapy for diabetic foot treatment.
The inhibition of PLCγ1 protects chondrocytes against osteoarthritis, implicating its binding to Akt

Previous studies have addressed the involvement of phosphoinositide-specifc phospholipase γ1 (PLCγ1) and protein kinase B (PKB/Akt) in osteoarthritis (OA) pathogenesis, but it is not ascertained the possibility of them to be potential targets for OA therapy. Here, through local intra-articular injection of PLCγ or Akt inhibitor in a rat OA model induced by anterior cruciate ligament transaction plus medial meniscus resection, the architecture of chondrocyte and matrix organization of articular cartilage were observed using histopathological assays and Aggrecan, Col2, PLCγ1, and Akt levels were detected using immunohistochemistry assays. By treatment of Akt or PLCγ inhibitor and transfection of different PLCγ1- or Akt-expressing vectors in rat OA model chondrocytes, Aggrecan, Col2, PLCγ1, p-PLCγ1, Akt, and p-Akt levels were detected using western blotting analysis. The binding between PLCγ1 and Akt was assessed with co-immunoprecipitation assays in human OA chondrocytes. These results showed that PLCγ inhibition protected chondrocytes against OA, but Akt inhibition did not dramatically aggravate OA progression. There were mutual antagonism and binding between PLCγ1 and Akt that could be regulated by their phosphorylation levels. Consequently, the data reveal that the inhibition of PLCγ1 may provide an attractive therapeutic target for OA therapy, implicating its binding to Akt.
Centrate Pretreatment Process (CPT) Sidestream Deammonification Startup‐‐Operational Challenge

In May 2015, Alexandria Renew Enterprises (AlexRenew), a 204,412 m3/d advanced resource recovery facility, started up a centrate pretreatment (CPT) system. This system utilizes the sidestream deammonification process (DEMON®) to remove nitrogen in the centrate produced from dewatering anaerobically‐digested sludge. During the startup period, the ammonia and total nitrogen removal rates averaged 89 percent and 78 percent, respectively. The CPT system startup encountered a number of operational issues including centrate quality, nitrite control, excess polymer and micronutrient deficiency etc. These challenges were identified and addressed primarily through operational and process control measures. The CPT process reached 100% plant centrate production (0.5 kg N/m3/d) after 18 months of startup period. This paper summarized major challenges during the startup phase of the CPT system from an operational standpoint, documented our approaches and learnings to tackle each problem and shed some light on future improvement.
Joint Subcarrier Assignment and Power Allocation in Downlink SCMA Systems

Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) represents a paradigm shift from conventional multiple access concept and is considered as a promising candidate multiple access technique for the fifth generation (5G) wireless communication systems. In this paper, we investigates the downlink resource allocation problem in SCMA systems. Taking user fairness into account, we formulate a problem to maximize the sum of logarithmic user data rate by jointly optimizing the subcarrier assignment and power allocation. The formulated problem is combinatorial and non-convex. To tackle this problem, we first convert the power allocation problem into a standard convex problem by assuming the subcarrier assignment is fixed. Based on this, then the algorithm ``remove and reallocate'' for joint power allocation and subcarrier assignment is proposed with low complexity. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposal is near-optimal and can achieve good performance over both traditional OFDM systems and random subcarrier assignment in SCMA systems.
Assignment1 of the BMPR1A and BMPR1B genes to human chromosome 10q22.3 and 4q23→q24 byin situ hybridization and radiation hybrid map ping

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are members of the transforming growth factor b superfamily (Wozney, 1992). Three BMP receptor (BMPR) molecules are known. One type II receptor (Nohno et al., 1995) and one of the two type I receptors (BMPR-IA and -IB) (ten Dijke et al., 1993; ten Dijke et al., 1994) heteromerize to form a functional BMPR. We have reported cloning of the human BMPR1B cDNA and analyzed the expression of BMPRs in human tissues (Ide et al., 1997). BMPs and their receptors are widely distributed in the body, apparently involved in various biological processes (Yamashita et al., 1996). Mapping of the BMP and BMPR genes may provide important insights in many diseases such as skeletal abnormalities and cancers.
Ketone Bodies and Brain Glutamate and GABA Metabolism

The effects of ketone bodies on brain metabolism of glutamate and GABA were studied in three different systems: synaptosomes, cultured astrocytes and the whole animal. In synaptosomes the addition of either acetoacetate or 3-OH-butyrate was associated with diminished consumption of glutamate via transamination to aspartate and increased formation of labelled GABA from either L-[2H5-2,3,3,4,4]glutamine or L-[15N]glutamine. There was no effect of ketone bodies on synaptosomal GABA transamination. An increase of total forebrain GABA and a diminution of aspartate was noted when mice were injected intraperitoneally with 3-OH-butyrate. In cultured astrocytes the addition of acetoacetate to the medium was associated with a significantly enhanced rate of citrate production and with a diminution in the rate of conversion of [15N]glutamate to [15N]aspartate. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that the metabolism of ketone bodies to acetyl-CoA results in a diminution of the pool of brain oxaloacetate, which is consumed in the citrate synthetase reaction (oxaloacetate + acetyl-CoA → citrate). As less oxaloacetate is available to the aspartate aminotransferase reaction, thereby lowering the rate of glutamate transamination, more glutamate becomes accessible to the glutamate decarboxylase pathway, thereby favoring the synthesis of GABA.
Mental health and associated factors among young offenders in Chile: a cross‐sectional study

BACKGROUND Few studies in Latin America have explored mental disorder among young offenders, or variables associated with it. AIMS Our aim was to test for associations between childhood adversity or substance misuse and psychiatric disorders among young offenders. METHODS Sentenced adolescent offenders were recruited from young offenders' institutions or community centres provided by the Chilean National Service for Minors. Psychiatric disorders were assessed using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview, conducted by trained psychologists. A trained sociologist used an ad hoc interview to collect information about childhood experiences, including parenting, trauma, education and substance misuse. Multivariable logistic regressions were used to analyse data. RESULTS The most prevalent psychiatric disorders among the 935 participants were marijuana dependence disorder, major depressive disorder, and anxiety disorders. Substance use disorders were less frequent among young offenders who were serving their sentence in young offenders' institutions than among those serving in community centres and more frequent among those who started to use marijuana at an earlier age. Among other variables, childhood maltreatment was related to major depressive disorder, and maternal death to anxiety disorders. Higher educational status was related to a lower frequency of depressive and anxiety disorders. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that greater efforts must be made to identify vulnerable young people much earlier. Few of these young offenders with mental health problems had been well adjusted in health, education or socially before this period of detention. © 2017 The Authors. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
The influence of lysostaphin on phagocytosis, intracellular bactericidal activity, and chemotaxis of human polymorphonuclear cells.

Lysostaphin, a microbicidal enzyme that lyses Staphylococcus aureus, was introduced to study phagocytosis and ICBA (Tan et al.3) on the presumption that it does not penetrate into the phagocytic cells. It was recently suggested, however, that LS enters the cells and kills ingested bacteria. By using two methods to study phagocytosis and bactericidal activity, the old one based on disruption of PMNs and plating technique and a new one that does not require disruption, we found that LS did not influence phagocytosis or phagocytic index but altered intracellular kill of Staphylococcus. LS eliminated almost completely extracellular bacteria, but centrifugation and washing of PMN at the end of phagocytic assay were almost equally efficient. Since the method of disruption of PMN and plating of bacteria cannot distinguish penetration of LS to the cells from its adherence to the outer wall of PMN, we employed a new, recently described acridine orange/crystal violet method, which can measure simultaneously phagocytosis and ICBA and eliminates completely extracellular microorganisms. This method has shown that in the presence of LS, a significantly higher proportion of staphylococci were killed intracellularly--91% +/- 2.7 vs. 74% +/- 2.9 (p less than 0.001), i.e., that LS either penetrated to the cells or enhanced ICBA. It was also found that trypsin, which was used as an inhibitor of LS, was unable to abolish bactericidal activity of LS. It is suggested that LS should not be used for assessment of ICBA but may be employed for studies of phagocytosis over short incubation periods. A new method based on acridine orange/crystal violet staining was found to be useful for investigation of phagocytosis and ICBA of human PMNs.
Meta‐analysis of aggregate data on medical events

Meta‐analyses of clinical trials often treat the number of patients experiencing a medical event as binomially distributed when individual patient data for fitting standard time‐to‐event models are unavailable. Assuming identical drop‐out time distributions across arms, random censorship, and low proportions of patients with an event, a binomial approach results in a valid test of the null hypothesis of no treatment effect with minimal loss in efficiency compared with time‐to‐event methods. To deal with differences in follow‐up—at the cost of assuming specific distributions for event and drop‐out times—we propose a hierarchical multivariate meta‐analysis model using the aggregate data likelihood based on the number of cases, fatal cases, and discontinuations in each group, as well as the planned trial duration and groups sizes. Such a model also enables exchangeability assumptions about parameters of survival distributions, for which they are more appropriate than for the expected proportion of patients with an event across trials of substantially different length. Borrowing information from other trials within a meta‐analysis or from historical data is particularly useful for rare events data. Prior information or exchangeability assumptions also avoid the parameter identifiability problems that arise when using more flexible event and drop‐out time distributions than the exponential one. We discuss the derivation of robust historical priors and illustrate the discussed methods using an example. We also compare the proposed approach against other aggregate data meta‐analysis methods in a simulation study. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Face recognition under variations in illumination using the phase of fractional Fourier transform

In face recognition, one of the major challenges arises due to the illumination variations. Since the fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) is robust to illumination variations, a novel method is proposed for the face recognition using the phase of the FRFT. The problem of phase wrapping is dealt by the use of the sine and cosine functions for the phase spectrum instead of the phase directly. Experimental results on Yale-B database shows that the proposed method is effective than the existing methods.
A sea spray aerosol flux parameterization encapsulating wave state

Abstract. A new sea spray source function (SSSF), termed Oceanflux Sea Spray Aerosol or OSSA, was derived based on in-situ sea spray aerosol measurements along with meteorological/physical parameters. Submicron sea spray aerosol fluxes derived from particle number concentration measurements at the Mace Head coastal station, on the west coast of Ireland, were used together with open-ocean eddy correlation flux measurements from the Eastern Atlantic Sea Spray, Gas Flux, and Whitecap (SEASAW) project cruise. In the overlapping size range, the data for Mace Head and SEASAW were found to be in a good agreement, which allowed deriving the new SSSF from the combined dataset spanning the dry diameter range from 15 nm to 6 μm. The OSSA source function has been parameterized in terms of five lognormal modes and the Reynolds number instead of the more commonly used wind speed, thereby encapsulating important influences of wave height, wind history, friction velocity, and viscosity. This formulation accounts for the different flux relationships associated with rising and waning wind speeds since these are included in the Reynolds number. Furthermore, the Reynolds number incorporates the kinematic viscosity of water, thus the SSSF inherently includes dependences on sea surface temperature and salinity. The temperature dependence of the resulting SSSF is similar to that of other in-situ derived source functions and results in lower production fluxes for cold waters and enhanced fluxes from warm waters as compared with SSSF formulations that do not include temperature effects.
The complete mitochondrial genome of the white-browed laughingthrush Garrulax sannio (Passeriformes: Leiothrichidae)

Abstract The complete mitochondrial genome of the white-browed laughingthrush Garrulax sannio was assembled using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. The double-stranded circular genome is 17 848 bp in length, including 22 transfer RNAs (tRNAs), 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs), and 2 putative control region. All PCGs are initiated with the ATG codon except for COX1 with GTG as its start codon. Five distinct types of stop codons are present, i.e., AGA (ND5), AGG (COX1 and ND1), TAA (ATP6, ATP8, COX2, CYTB, and ND4L), TAG (ND6), and the incomplete codon T/TA (COX3, ND2, ND3, and ND4). The nucleotide composition is moderately asymmetric (28.94% A, 32.82% C, 15.00% G, and 23.24% T) with an overall GC content of 47.82% (“light strand”). Phylogenetic analysis indicated a close genetic relationship between this species and its congeners G. perspicillatus, G. cineraceus, and G. canorus.
Drift-Induced Selection Between Male and Female Heterogamety

Evolutionary transitions between male and female heterogamety are common in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Theoretical studies of these transitions have found that, when all genotypes are equally fit, continuous paths of intermediate equilibria link the two sex chromosome systems. This observation has led to a belief that neutral evolution along these paths can drive transitions, and that arbitrarily small fitness differences among sex chromosome genotypes can determine the system to which evolution leads. Here, we study stochastic evolutionary dynamics along these equilibrium paths. We find non-neutrality, both in transitions retaining the ancestral pair of sex chromosomes, and in those creating a new pair. In fact, substitution rates are biased in favor of dominant sex determining chromosomes, which fix with higher probabilities than mutations of no effect. Using diffusion approximations, we show that this non-neutrality is a result of “drift-induced selection” operating at every point along the equilibrium paths: stochastic jumps off the paths return with, on average, a directional bias in favor of the dominant segregating sex chromosome. Our results offer a novel explanation for the observed preponderance of dominant sex determining genes, and hint that drift-induced selection may be a common force in standard population genetic systems.
The margins of labour cost adjustment

The Working Paper Series of the Czech National Bank (CNB) is intended to disseminate the results of the CNB’s research projects as well as the other research activities of both the staff of the CNB and collaborating outside contributor, including invited speakers. The Series aims to present original research contributions relevant to central banks. It is refereed internationally. The referee process is managed by the CNB Research Department. The working papers are circulated to stimulate discussion. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the CNB. Abstract Firms have multiple options at the time of adjusting their wage bills. However, previous literature has mainly focused on base wages. We broaden the analysis beyond downward rigidity in base wages by investigating the use of other margins of labour cost adjustment at the firm level. Using data from a unique survey, we find that European firms make frequent use of other, more flexible, components of compensation to adjust the cost of labour. Changes in bonuses and non-pay benefits are some of the potential margins firms use to reduce costs. We also show how the margins of adjustment chosen are affected by firm and worker characteristics. labour cost adjustment beyond and relative importance of each different sets of laws and their we examine the characteristics of firms and the environments in which they operate that determine the relative importance of each type of labour cost adjustment mechanism. we show how the use of these adjustment practices can be related to firms’ experience regarding nominal wage rigidity, as well as to the extent of wage indexation operating in the firm.
Numerical modeling and simulation of quantum key distribution systems under non-ideal conditions

Quantum key distribution is a very promising technology that can complement the classical cryptographic protocols. However, since the exploitation of the laws of quantum mechanics for any useful purpose is limited by the non-idealities of modern-day devices, researches are required on how these imperfections can be overcome. In this paper, we propose a QKD system and talk about implementation tradeoffs in real world design. We also propose a method for simulating this QKD system including its non-ideal factors. The results obtained by the simulation of the model try to justify a QKD system implementation instead of classical cryptography. The results also show that a real QKD system can be accurately simulated in a classical computer before it is physically set up.