Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Balanced Active Core in Heterogeneous Neuronal Networks

It is hypothesized that cortical neuronal circuits operate in a global balanced state, i.e., the majority of neurons fire irregularly by receiving balanced inputs of excitation and inhibition. Meanwhile, it has been observed in experiments that sensory information is often sparsely encoded by only a small set of firing neurons, while neurons in the rest of the network are silent. The phenomenon of sparse coding challenges the hypothesis of a global balanced state in the brain. To reconcile this, here we address the issue of whether a balanced state can exist in a small number of firing neurons by taking account of the heterogeneity of network structure such as scale-free and small-world networks. We propose necessary conditions and show that, under these conditions, for sparsely but strongly connected heterogeneous networks with various types of single-neuron dynamics, despite the fact that the whole network receives external inputs, there is a small active subnetwork (active core) inherently embedded within it. The neurons in this active core have relatively high firing rates while the neurons in the rest of the network are quiescent. Surprisingly, although the whole network is heterogeneous and unbalanced, the active core possesses a balanced state and its connectivity structure is close to a homogeneous Erdös-Rényi network. The dynamics of the active core can be well-predicted using the Fokker-Planck equation. Our results suggest that the balanced state may be maintained by a small group of spiking neurons embedded in a large heterogeneous network in the brain. The existence of the small active core reconciles the balanced state and the sparse coding, and also provides a potential dynamical scenario underlying sparse coding in neuronal networks.
Nasopharyngeal Microbiota in Children With Invasive Pneumococcal Disease: Identification of Bacteria With Potential Disease-Promoting and Protective Effects

Background and Aims: The risk of suffering from some infectious diseases can be related to specific microbiota profiles. Specifically, the nasopharyngeal microbiota could play a role as a risk or protective factor in the development of invasive disease caused by S. pneumoniae. Methodology: We analyzed the nasopharyngeal microbiota of children with invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) and that of healthy controls matched by age, sex, and seasonality from Catalonia, Spain. Epidemiological, microbiological and clinical variables were considered to compare microbiota profiles, analyzed by sequencing the V1–V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene. Results: Twenty-eight children with IPD (median age 43 months) and 28 controls (42.6 months) were included in the study. IPD children presented a significantly higher bacterial diversity and richness (p < 0.001). Principal coordinate analysis revealed three different microbiota profiles: microbiota A, dominated by the genus Dolosigranulum (44.3%); Microbiota B, mostly represented by Streptococcus (36.9%) and Staphylococcus (21.3%) and a high diversity of anaerobic genera including Veillonella, Prevotella and Porphyromonas; and Microbiota C, mainly containing Haemophilus (52.1%) and Moraxella (31.4%). The only explanatory factor for the three microbiotas was the classification of children into disease or healthy controls (p = 0.006). A significant negative correlation was found between Dolosigranulum vs. Streptococcus (p = 0.029), suggesting a potential antagonistic effect against pneumococcal pathogens. Conclusions: The higher bacterial diversity and richness in children with IPD could suggest an impaired immune response. This lack of immune competence could be aggravated by breastfeeding <6 months and by the presence of keystone pathogens such as Porphyromonas, a bacterium which has been shown to be able to manipulate the immune response, and that could favor the overgrowth of many proteolytic anaerobic organisms giving rise to a dramatic dysbiosis. From an applied viewpoint, we found suggestive microbiota profiles associated to IPD or asymptomatic colonization that could be used as disease biomarkers or to pave the way for characterizing health-associated inhabitants of the respiratory tract. The identification of beneficial bacteria could be useful to prevent pneumococcal infections by integrating those microorganisms in a probiotic formula. The present study suggests not only respiratory tract samples, but also breast milk, as a potential source of those beneficial bacteria.
Inspiration From Games and Entertainment Artifacts: A Rising Paradigm for Designing Mechanisms and Algorithms in Robotics

Games and toys have been serving as entertainment tools to humans for a long period of time. While except for entertainment, they can also trigger inspiration and enhance productivity in many other domains such as healthcare and general workplaces. The concept of the game is referred to a series of structured procedures (e.g., card games) and virtual programs. The entertainment artifacts could be a toy or even a handicraft, such as origami and kirigami, for entertainment purposes in a broader sense. Recently, the design of robots and relevant applications in robotics has been emerging in taking inspiration from Games and Entertainment Artifacts (GEA). However, there is a lack of systematic and general process for implementing a GEA-inspired design for developing robot-related applications. In this article, we put forward a design paradigm based on the inspiration of game and entertainment artifacts which is a systematic design approach. The design paradigm could follow two different processes which are driven by problems and solutions, respectively, using analogies of games and entertainment artifacts to build robotic solutions for solving real problems. The problem-driven process starts with an existing real-world problem, which follows the sequences of robotics problem search, robotics problem identification, GEA solution search, GEA solution identification, GEA principle extraction, and the principle implementation. Reversely, the solution-driven process follows the sequence of GEA solution search, GEA solution identification, GEA principle extraction, robotics problem search, robotics problem identification, and principle implementation. We demonstrate the application of the design paradigm using the case study of a new type of reconfigurable floor cleaning robot and its path planning algorithm.
Crosstalk Between Chaperone-Mediated Protein Disaggregation and Proteolytic Pathways in Aging and Disease

A functional protein quality control machinery is crucial to maintain cellular and organismal physiology. Perturbation in the protein homeostasis network can lead to the formation of misfolded and aggregated proteins that are a hallmark of protein conformational disorders and aging. Protein aggregation is counteracted by the action of chaperones that can resolubilize aggregated proteins. An alternative protein aggregation clearance strategy is the elimination by proteolysis employing the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) or autophagy. Little is known how these three protein aggregate clearance strategies are regulated and coordinated in an organism with the progression of aging or upon expression of disease-associated proteins. To unravel the crosstalk between the protein aggregate clearance options, we investigated how autophagy and the UPS respond to perturbations in protein disaggregation capacity. We found that autophagy is induced as a potential compensatory mechanism, whereas the UPS exhibits reduced capacity upon depletion of disaggregating chaperones in C. elegans and HEK293 cells. The expression of amyloid proteins Aβ3–42 and Q40 result in an impairment of autophagy as well as the UPS within the same and even across tissues. Our data indicate a tight coordination between the different nodes of the proteostasis network (PN) with the progression of aging and upon imbalances of the capacity of each clearance mechanism.
Neutrophils Which Migrate to Lymph Nodes Modulate CD4+ T Cell Response by a PD-L1 Dependent Mechanism

It is well known that neutrophils are rapidly recruited to a site of injury or infection and perform a critical role in pathogen clearance and inflammation. However, they are also able to interact with and regulate innate and adaptive immune cells and some stimuli induce the migration of neutrophils to lymph nodes (LNs). Previously, we demonstrated that the immune complex (IC) generated by injecting OVA into the footpad of OVA/CFA immunized mice induced the migration of OVA+ neutrophils to draining LNs (dLNs). Here we investigate the effects of these neutrophils which reach dLNs on CD4+ T cell response. Our findings here strongly support a dual role for neutrophils in dLNs regarding CD4+ T cell response modulation. On the one hand, the CD4+ T cell population expands after the influx of OVA+ neutrophils to dLNs. These CD4+ T cells enlarge their proliferative response, activation markers and IL-17 and IFN-γ cytokine production. On the other hand, these neutrophils also restrict CD4+ T cell expansion. The neutrophils in the dLNs upregulate PD-L1 molecules and are capable of suppressing CD4+ T cell proliferation. These results indicate that neutrophils migration to dLNs have an important role in the homeostasis of adaptive immunity. This report describes for the first time that the influx of neutrophils to dLNs dependent on IC presence improves CD4+ T cell response, at the same time controlling CD4+ T cell proliferation through a PD-L1 dependent mechanism.
Is There a Positive Side to T Cell Exhaustion?

T cell “exhaustion” describes a state of late-stage differentiation usually associated with active prevention of functionality via ligation of negative signaling receptors on the cell surface, and which can be reversed by blocking these interactions. This contrasts with T cell “senescence,” which has been defined as a state that is maintained by intrinsic internal cell signaling (caused by DNA damage or other stresses) and which can be reversed pharmacologically. Interventions to alleviate these two different categories of inhibitory pathways may be desirable in immunotherapy for cancer and possibly certain infectious diseases, but reciprocally inducing and maintaining these states, or some properties thereof, may be beneficial in organ transplantation and autoimmunity. Even under physiological non-pathological conditions, T cell exhaustion and senescence may play a role in the retention of T cell clones required for immunosurveillance, and prevent their loss via elimination at the Hayflick limit. This essay briefly reviews T cell exhaustion in contrast to replicative senescence, and circumstances under which their modulation may be beneficial.
21-Gene Recurrence Score Assay and Outcomes of Adjuvant Radiotherapy in Elderly Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer After Breast-Conserving Surgery

Introduction: To assess the role of the 21-gene recurrence score (RS) assay on decision-making of postoperative radiotherapy (RT) following breast-conserving surgery (BCS) in elderly women with early-stage breast cancer. Methods: The 21-gene RS for elderly (≥65 years) women with stage T1–2N0M0 estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer who underwent BCS from 2004 to 2015 was obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program. We estimated the association of 21-gene RS and adjuvant RT related to breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) using propensity score matching (PSM). Results: We identified 18,456 patients, of which 15,326 (83.0%) received postoperative RT. Of identified patients, 58.9, 34.0, and 7.1% of patients had a low-, intermediate-, and high-risk RS, respectively. Receipt of postoperative RT was not related to the year of diagnosis according to the 21-gene RS groups. Multivariate analysis suggested that receipt of postoperative RT was an independent predictor of better BCSS before (hazard ratio [HR] 0.587, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.426–0.809, P = 0.001) and after (HR 0.613, 95%CI 0.390–0.963, P = 0.034) PSM. However, subgroups analyses indicated that receipt of postoperative RT was related to better BCSS in women with intermediate-risk RS before (HR 0.467, 95%CI 0.283–0.772, P = 0.003) and after (HR 0.389, 95%CI 0.179–0.846, P = 0.017) PSM, but not in women with low- and high-risk RS groups before and after PSM. Conclusions: Although causation cannot be implied, adjuvant RT in elderly women was associated with a greater effect size in patients with an intermediate-risk RS.
The Path Toward PET-Guided Radiation Therapy for Glioblastoma in Laboratory Animals: A Mini Review

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive and malignant primary brain tumor in adults. Despite the current state-of-the-art treatment, which consists of maximal surgical resection followed by radiation therapy, concomitant, and adjuvant chemotherapy, progression remains rapid due to aggressive tumor characteristics. Several new therapeutic targets have been investigated using chemotherapeutics and targeted molecular drugs, however, the intrinsic resistance to induced cell death of brain cells impede the effectiveness of systemic therapies. Also, the unique immune environment of the central nervous system imposes challenges for immune-based therapeutics. Therefore, it is important to consider other approaches to treat these tumors. There is a well-known dose-response relationship for glioblastoma with increased survival with increasing doses, but this effect seems to cap around 60 Gy, due to increased toxicity to the normal brain. Currently, radiation treatment planning of glioblastoma patients relies on CT and MRI that does not visualize the heterogeneous nature of the tumor, and consequently, a homogenous dose is delivered to the entire tumor. Metabolic imaging, such as positron-emission tomography, allows to visualize the heterogeneous tumor environment. Using these metabolic imaging techniques, an approach called dose painting can be used to deliver a higher dose to the tumor regions with high malignancy and/or radiation resistance. Preclinical studies are required for evaluating the benefits of novel radiation treatment strategies, such as PET-based dose painting. The aim of this review is to give a brief overview of promising PET tracers that can be evaluated in laboratory animals to bridge the gap between PET-based dose painting in glioblastoma patients.
The natural history of treated Parkinson’s disease in an incident, community based cohort Information for patients from JNNP Walking, posture and balance may signal Parkinson's progression

Background Our understanding of the natural history of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains limited. In the era of potential disease modifying therapies, there is an urgent need for studies assessing the natural evolution of treated PD from onset so that relevant outcome measures can be identiﬁed for clinical trials. No previous studies have charted progression in unselected patients followed from the point of diagnosis. Methods A representative cohort of 132 PD patients was followed from diagnosis for up to 7.9 years (mean 5.2 years). Comprehensive clinical and neuropsychological evaluations were performed every 18 months. Disease progression was evaluated using well validated clinical measures (motor progression and development of dyskinesia on the Uniﬁed PD Rating Scale and Hoehn e Yahr scale, dementia onset according to DSM-IV criteria). Multi-level linear modelling was used to chart the nature and rate of progression in parkinsonian symptoms and signs over time. The prognostic importance of baseline demogr‘aphic, clinical and genetic variables was evaluated using survival analysis. Results Axial (gait and postural) symptoms evolve more rapidly than other motor features of PD and appear to be the best index of disease progression. Conversely, conventional outcome measures are relatively insensitive to change over time. Earlier onset of postural instability (Hoehn e Yahr stage 3) is strongly associated with increased age at disease onset and has a signiﬁcant impact on quality of life. Conclusions Dementia risk is associated with increased age, impaired baseline semantic ﬂuency and the MAPT H1/H1 genotype. The efﬁcacy of disease modifying therapies may be more meaningfully assessed in terms of their effects in delaying the major milestones of PD, such as postural instability and dementia, since it is these that have the greatest impact on patients. A new study sheds light on how Parkinson's disease progresses, showing that problems with walking, posture and balance worsen most quickly and provide the best indicators that the disease has advanced.
Risk Factors and Birth Outcomes of a High-Risk Cohort of Women Served by a Community-Based Prenatal Home Visiting Program

ABSTRACT Our study explored risk factors and birth outcomes of a community maternal and child outreach program for high poverty mothers in East and Central Harlem. We conducted a retrospective chart review of 75 mother–infant dyads, with singleton pregnancies, receiving antepartum and postpartum home visits. Inexperienced parenting was associated with increased odds of giving birth to an infant weighing <2,700 g compared to experienced parenting after adjustment for race/ethnicity and preeclampsia diagnosis (odds ratio (OR) 4.9, p = 0.04). Mothers had comparatively lower depression risk in the postpartum period compared to antepartum (p = 0.006).
Continuous Integration for XML and RDF Data

At Oxford University Press we build large amounts of XML and RDF data as it were software. However, established software development techniques like continuous integration, unit testing, and automated deployment are not always applied when converting XML and RDF since these formats are treated as data rather than software. In this paper we describe how we set up a framework based on continuous integration and automated deployment in order to perform conversions between XML formats and from XML to RDF. We discuss the benefits of this approach as well as how this framework contributes to improve both data quality and development.
Do App Descriptions Matter? Evidence from Mobile App Product Descriptions

In mobile Apps markets, the strategic presentation of information cues has the potential to reduce consumer cognitive burden and perceived risk related to purchase quality uncertainty. In the search dominated purchase process, mobile App markets enable developers to deliver an array of App-related attributes and/or marketing messages through the first few lines of product descriptions (producer cues). We evaluate whether extrinsic and intrinsic cues in App descriptions significantly impact App sales and whether they can complement or substitute the cues offered from a product page (market cues). Text-mining techniques are utilized to identify commonly used App product description patterns from 7,376 descriptions of 787 Apps in the 300 paid Games charts over 20 weeks in the Apple App Store. We empirically classify keyword groups presenting extrinsic and intrinsic cues. The classification information is utilized to assess the impact of cues on App sales performance. Our results suggest that extrinsic cues are more strongly related to App rankings than intrinsic ones regardless of the information source, and that consumers utilize market cues as more reliable quality indicators of Apps than producer cues. Extrinsic cues from the markets such as the price of $0.99 and one-point higher review scores improve the sales ranks by 72% and 13% respectively. In addition, we empirically substantiate the complementarities between extrinsic cues in product description and market formats. The extrinsic cues of price ‘promotion’ and user ‘review’ comments in a description improve the sales of low review scored, newly released, and non-hit Apps. The intrinsic cues delivering information on feature ‘update’ and ‘uniqueness’ of an App enhance the sales performance of high-priced and hit Apps. The research findings contribute to the extant literature on product cue utilization by demonstrating how extrinsic/intrinsic cues from multiple sources interact in a competitive marketplace.
Détection et résolution d’entités nommées dans des dépêches d’agence

Nous présentons NP, un système de reconnaissance d’entités nommées. Comprenant un module de résolution, il permet d’associer à chaque occurrence d’entité le référent qu’elle désigne parmi les entrées d’un référentiel dédié. NP apporte ainsi des informations pertinentes pour l’exploitation de l’extraction d’entités nommées en contexte applicatif. Ce système fait l’objet d’une évaluation grâce au développement d’un corpus annoté manuellement et adapté aux tâches de détection et de résolution.
Self-esteem as a Moderator of the Effects of Happiness, Depression, and Hostility on Suicidality Among Early Adolescents in Korea

Objectives The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of self-esteem as a moderator of the factors influencing suicidality among middle-schoolers. Methods Moderated multiple regression analysis was applied to assess the influence of happiness, depression, and hostility on suicidality and to determine the degree to which self-esteem served as a moderator of those relationships. Data were collected from 268 students at a middle school in Busan, Korea, using a self-administered structured questionnaire. Results Happiness, depression, and hostility had significant direct effects on suicidality. Self-esteem showed no direct effect, but had a significant moderating effect on the relationship between hostility and suicidal behavior. Conclusions These results suggest that various interventions, such as counseling programs, should be designed to alleviate hostility and depression and to enhance happiness and self-esteem among early adolescents.
A Prediction and Push Method of Scientific Researching Issue Based on RNN

Exploring and predicting the hot scientific researching issues have been a focus among recent sci-tech information research. In recent years, scholars and academic literature are increasing steadily in number. It is hard to artificially track and deal with developing trends of scientific researching hotspot. The most commonly used methods in the past are simple statistical ways for keywords and high term frequency. Most of these methods spend a lot of time and manpower, and ignore the relevance between different words. In the paper we use RNN method to design our prediction and push system, which could perceive the potential researching hotspot for some time to come. The hot issues are generated based on the relevance among sci-tech words. It finds the relevant technical application to hotspots and recommends them to academic researchers. The extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed approach has higher accuracy rate and lower false positive ratio. It can do better forward looking forecasts than word frequency statistics as well.