Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CaMKIIδ-dependent Inhibition of cAMP-response Element-binding Protein Activity in Vascular Smooth Muscle*

Background: CaMKII is implicated in both positive and negative regulation of cAMP-response element-binding protein (CREB) activity. Results: CaMKIIδ increases CREB-Ser142 phosphorylation and inhibits binding of CREB to Sik1 and Rgs2 promoters in vascular smooth muscle (VSM). Conclusion: In VSM CaMKIIδ negatively regulates CREB activity and target gene transcription by phosphorylating CREB-Ser142. Significance: Negative regulation of CREB by CaMKIIδ is a mechanism mediating Ca2+ signal-dependent regulation of gene transcription in VSM. One transcription factor mediator of Ca2+-signals is cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB). CREB expression and/or activity negatively correlates with vascular smooth muscle (VSM) cell proliferation and migration. Multifunctional Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinases, including CaMKII, have been demonstrated to regulate CREB activity through both positive and negative phosphorylation events in vitro, but the function of CaMKII as a proximal regulator of CREB in intact cell systems, including VSM, is not clear. In this study, we used gain- and loss-of-function approaches to determine the function of CaMKIIδ in regulating CREB phosphorylation, localization, and activity in VSM. Overexpression of constitutively active CaMKIIδ specifically increased CREB phosphorylation on Ser142 and silencing CaMKIIδ expression by siRNA or blocking endogenous CaMKII activity with KN93 abolished thrombin- or ionomycin-induced CREB phosphorylation on Ser142 without affecting Ser133 phosphorylation. CREB-Ser142 phosphorylation correlated with transient nucleocytoplasmic translocation of CREB. Thrombin-induced CREB promoter activity, CREB binding to Sik1 and Rgs2 promoters, and Sik1/Rgs2 transcription were enhanced by a kinase-negative CaMKIIδ2 (K43A) mutant and inhibited by a constitutively active (T287D) mutant. Taken together, these studies establish negative regulation of CREB activity by endogenous CaMKIIδ-dependent CREB-Ser142 phosphorylation and suggest a potential mechanism for CaMKIIδ/CREB signaling in modulating proliferation and migration in VSM cells.
Wave Breaking in a Class of Nonlocal Dispersive Wave Equations

Abstract The Korteweg de Vries (KdV) equation is well known as an approximation model for small amplitude and long waves in di! erent physical contexts, but wave breaking phenomena related to short wavelengths are not captured in. In this work we consider a class of nonlocal dispersive wave equations which also incorporate physics of short wavelength scales. The model is identified by a renormalization of an infinite dispersive di! erential operator, followed by further specifications in terms of conservation laws associated with the underlying equation. Several well-known models are thus rediscovered. Wave breaking criteria are obtained for several models including the Burgers-Poisson system, the Camassa-Holm type equation and an Euler-Poisson system. The wave breaking criteria for these models are shown to depend only on the negativity of the initial velocity slope relative to other global quantities.
Sodium, blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease

Purpose of review Persistent recommendations for universal restriction of dietary sodium intake are based on associations of sodium intake with blood pressure. No clinical trial data support an association of sodium intake with mortality and morbidity outcomes, however, while results of observational studies appear heterogeneous. Can these contradictory data be reconciled to inform health policy regarding sodium intake recommendations? Recent findings We reported (2006) a statistically significant (P = 0.03) association of sodium intake less than 2.3 g/day with increased cardiovascular disease mortality (hazard ratio 1.37) in a representative sample of the US adult population with an observed baseline mean sodium intake of 2.7 g/day. Others reported (2004) a significant (P < 0.01) higher stroke death among males and borderline significant (P = 0.07) for females, for highest compared with lowest sodium tertile in a community in Japan with mean intake of 5.4 g/day. Summary These results are consistent with earlier studies suggesting that the association of sodium with morbidity and mortality in industrial societies follows a ‘J shape’ with a direct association at high levels of average intake (over 4 g), an inverse association at lower levels (less than 2 g) and no measurable effect for the widely prevalent intakes in between.
Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1-1-2006 Background modeling for intelligent video surveillance system

Despite the dram atic growth of digital image and video in recent years, many chal­ lenges remain in enabling computers to interpret visual content. This thesis addresses the initial stages of building an intelligent video surveillance system. The central con­ tribution of this work is developing a framework which models the scene background and segmenting the moving foreground objects in video image data. This work is divided into two sections. In the first section, a background model is being designed dynamically with no prior knowledge of the scene. A simple histogram based m ethod is used to accomplish this task. The second step involves segmenting the moving foreground objects using a clustering mechanism. We have used a simple K-means clustering, where the value of K is two. We have implemented our methods in HSV color space. The results obtained were quite satisfactory in different real environments.
Treatment with TNF blockers and mortality risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Objective: To assess mortality in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treated with tumour necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors, compared with a standard RA population. Methods: Patients were recruited from a regional register, which includes over 90% of patients with RA treated with TNF blockers in the area in 1999 or later, and a local community-based cohort of patients with RA, established in 1997. Of a total of 1430 patients in the combined cohort <80 years old, 921 received treatment with TNF inhibitors during the study period. The total cohort was linked with the national register for cause of death. Overall mortality in those treated versus those not treated with TNF blockers was estimated using standardised mortality ratios and time-dependent Cox proportional hazards. Results: There were 188 deaths per 7077 person-years at risk in the total cohort. Controlling for age, sex, disability and baseline comorbidity, the adjusted HR for death was 0.65 (95% CI 0.46 to 0.93) in those treated with anti-TNF versus those not treated. The effect was significant in women (HR = 0.52, 95% CI 0.33 to 0.82) but not in men (HR = 0.95, 95% CI 0.52 to 1.71). Conclusion: After adjusting for disease severity, treatment with TNF inhibitors was found to be associated with a reduced mortality in women but not men with RA. These findings are compatible with a critical role for inflammation in RA-associated premature mortality.
Supervised approach for detecting average over popular items attack in collaborative recommender systems

Recent research has shown the significant vulnerabilities of collaborative recommender systems in the face of profile injection attacks, in which malicious users insert fake profiles into the rating database in order to bias the system's output. To reduce this risk, a number of approaches have been proposed to detect such attacks. Although the existing detection approaches can detect the standard type of these attacks effectively, they perform badly when detecting the recently proposed obfuscated type of these attacks, for example, average over popular items (AoP) attack. With this problem in mind, in this study the author propose a supervised approach to detect such attack. First, he uses the theory of term frequency inverse document frequency (TFIDF) to extract the features of AoP attack. Second, he uses the training set to train support vector machine (SVM) to generate a SVM-based classifier. Finally, he uses the generated classifier to detect the AoP attack. The experimental results on MovieLens dataset show that the proposed approach can detect AoP attack with high recall and precision.
Perceptual learning in speech: Stability over time (L)

Perceptual representations of phonemes are flexible and adapt rapidly to accommodate idiosyncratic articulation in the speech of a particular talker. This letter addresses whether such adjustments remain stable over time and under exposure to other talkers. During exposure to a story, listeners learned to interpret an ambiguous sound as [f] or [s]. Perceptual adjustments measured after 12 h were as robust as those measured immediately after learning. Equivalent effects were found when listeners heard speech from other talkers in the 12 h interval, and when they had the opportunity to consolidate learning during sleep.
Emotion recognition from Assamese speeches using MFCC features and GMM classifier

This paper presents a method based on Gaussian mixture model (GMM) classifier and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) as features for emotion recognition from Assamese speeches. For training and testing of the method, data collection is carried out in Jorhat (Assam, India), which consisted of acted speeches of one short emotionally biased sentence repeated 5 times with different styles by 27 speakers (14 Male and 13 female) for training and one long emotional speech by each speaker for testing. The experiments are performed for the cases of (i) text-independent but speaker-dependent and (ii) text-independent and speaker-independent.
Functional Organization of Rat Olfactory Bulb Glomeruli Revealed by Optical Imaging

The functional organization and synaptic physiology of olfactory bulb glomeruli were studied in rat in vitro slice preparations stained with the voltage-sensitive dye RH-155. Optical signals were recorded with a 100-element photodiode array at high temporal resolution. Pharmacological and ionic manipulations were used to investigate synaptic responses to stimulation of the olfactory nerve layer (ONL). ONL stimulation evoked a sodium-mediated compound action potential that propagated across the ONL and invaded individual glomeruli. This presynaptic volley evoked calcium-dependent synaptic responses the amplitudes of which were largest within the glomerular layer (GL); smaller amplitude responses were recorded in deeper layers of the olfactory bulb. Synaptic responses in the GL were attenuated by the non-NMDA ionotropic glutamate receptor antagonist CNQX; the residual component was suppressed by the NMDA glutamate receptor antagonist AP-5. The GABAA receptor antagonist bicuculline methiodide had little effect, whereas the GABAB receptor agonist baclofen dramatically attenuated ONL-evoked synaptic responses. The effects of baclofen were reversed by the GABAB receptor antagonist CGP35348. Paired-pulse depression of ONL-evoked synaptic responses in the GL was partially reversed by CGP35348. These findings suggest that olfactory nerve axons release glutamate to activate both NMDA and non-NMDA receptors on GL neurons, that GABAAreceptor-mediated inhibition has little effect on these responses, and that GABAB receptor-mediated inhibition may act presynaptically on olfactory nerve axons to modulate their inputs to olfactory bulb neurons.
Limitations of the scapegoat theory of prejudice.

The traditional "well-earned reputation" theory explains prejudice entirely from stimulus characteristics of the groups, but is wrong in assuming that reputations are always accurate or well-deserved. The new scapegoat theory of prejudice pays attention only to motivation of the majority group. Frustration generates hostility, which is displaced to a defenseless minority group and rationalized by blaming the minority for misfortunes, by projecting bad traits on them, and by stereotyping all members of the minority. The theory fails to explain why certain minorities are chosen for prejudice while others are admired, and why minorities are also prejudiced. There is need for accurate study of characteristics of each group which antagonize others. In addition to scapegoating it is likely that conscious values and philosophies contribute to prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)
The Surrogate Functions of Lines in Visual Perception: Evidence from Antipodal Rock and Cave Artwork Sources

Lines in outline pictures may function as surrogates for features of the visible environment, without explicit tutoring in a convention (unlike representation in words). This interpretation of line representation is supported by the finding that drawings from ancient sources—in antipodal regions of the world—contain outline depiction of the same features as are found in modern outline sketches.
Prediction of Words in Statistical Machine Translation using a Multilayer Perceptron

We propose to estimate the probability that a target word appears in the translation of a given source sentence using a multilayer per-ceptron. At the expense of ignoring word order and repetition, our model does not assume word alignments and consider all source words jointly when evaluating the probability of a target word. We compared our model against IBM 1 which does not consider word order either. Our model was comparable with IBM 1 when predicting the target words that should appear in the translation of a source sentence. When our model was extended to include alignment information, it surpassed IBM 1 on all the metrics we used.
Optical fiber humidity sensor based on a tapered fiber asymmetrically coated with indium tin oxide

In this work a new humidity sensor based on lossy mode resonances (LMR) generated on a biconically tapered single mode optical fiber is presented. The tapered fiber was coated only on one side using indium tin oxide (ITO) by means of sputtering in order to generate the LMR. This asymmetrical structure (180 degrees of coating) makes the device sensitive to the polarization of the light so that the LMR can be separated in its TE and TM modes. The polarization dependence produces the effect of a smaller bandwidth in the LMR resonance with respect to the symmetrical coating, allowing a better resolution in the peak detection procedure. The sputtering process was carefully monitored in order to have the LMR placed in the range of measurement. Then the sensor was characterized using a climatic chamber with humidity in the range 20-80%RH. A sensitivity of 200 pm/%RH was obtained using a tapered fiber of 35 μm of waist diameter.
Genetic map of diploid wheat, Triticum monococcum L., and its comparison with maps of Hordeum vulgare L.

A genetic map of diploid wheat, Triticum monococcum L. , involving 335 markers, including RFLP DNA markers, isozymes, seed storage proteins, rRNA, and morphological loci, is reported. T. monococcum and barley linkage groups are remarkably conserved. They differ by a reciprocal translocation involving the long arms of chromosomes 4 and 5, and paracentric inversions in the long arm of chromosomes 1 and 4; the latter is in a segment of chromosome arm 4L translocated to 5L in T. monococcum. The order of the markers in the inverted segments in the T. monococcum genome is the same as in the B and D genomes of T. aestivum L. The T. monococcum map differs from the barley maps in the distribution of recombination within chromosomes. The major 5S rRNA loci were mapped on the short arms of T. monococcum chromosomes 1 and 5 and the long arms of barley chromosomes 2 and 3. Since these chromosome arms are colinear, the major 5S rRNA loci must be subjected to positional changes in the evolving Triticeae genome that do not perturb chromosome colinearity. The positional changes of the major 5S rRNA loci in Triticeae genomes are analogous to those of the 18S-5.8S-26S rRNA loci.
Incarcerated Drug-Abusing Mothers: Their Characteristics and Vulnerability

Although the number of mothers with histories of drug addiction who are incarcerated has grown substantially in recent years, there is little information on their unique characteristics and vulnerability. Undertaken to address this issue, this study examined data on 167 incarcerated drug-abusing mothers from Baltimore City who had volunteered for a parenting program offered at a Maryland correctional facility. Prior to entering this program, mothers who consented to participate completed a battery of assessment measures, which included an extensive interview covering their early developmental and current experiences, along with standardized instruments measuring psychological adjustment and parenting satisfaction. Analyses of these data focused on the link between risk/protective factor information drawn from the early development experiences of the mothers and their current adjustment status. Results revealed significant relationships between higher risk levels and less favorable current adjustment. Implications of the findings of the study for both prevention and clinical intervention efforts targeting both mothers and their children are discussed.
Control of central and peripheral tolerance by Aire

Summary: The negative selection of self‐reactive thymocytes depends on the expression of tissue‐specific antigens by medullary thymic epithelial cells. The autoimmune regulator (Aire) protein plays an important role in turning on these antigens, and the absence of even one Aire‐induced tissue‐specific antigen in the thymus can lead to autoimmunity in the antigen‐expressing target organ. Recently, Aire protein has been detected in peripheral lymphoid organs, suggesting that peripheral Aire plays a complementary role here. In these peripheral sites, Aire was found to regulate the expression of a group of tissue‐specific antigens that is distinct from those expressed in the thymus. Furthermore, transgenic antigen expression in extrathymic Aire‐expressing cells (eTACs) can mediate deletional tolerance, but the immunological relevance of Aire‐dependent, endogenous tissue‐specific antigens remains to be determined.
Bibliography for LES for Gravity Currents

1 Description This is a list with references that I consider important for the LES of gravity currents. I am trying to write as much as possible for each reference, while keeping it short. So far, it seems that the most popular LES models are those of Moeng, Sullivan, and McWiliams [8, 7] and Deardorff [2]. What puzzles me is that the “algorithm” seems to be: We apply this LES model and we get these results. Let’s interpret these results now. I haven’t seen any LES model validation so far. Maybe (hopefully) this is done in the original papers, which I don’t have.
Application of atmospheric transport models at the new atmospheric Ebre Delta station (ClimaDat Network) in Eastern Spain

The Ebre Delta atmospheric station (DEC3) was installed in Eastern Spain, within the framework of the ClimaDat project of the Institut Catala de Ciencies del Clima (IC3). This station offers continuous measurements of greenhouse gases and tracers concentrations (CO2, CH4, CO, N2O and SF6), along with atmospheric concentrations of the natural radioactive gas 222Rn. Meteorological parameters, such as humidity, temperature, wind speed and wind direction are also measured at DEC3 site. This qualitative analysis aims to use the FLEXPART and the HYSPLIT models, with meteorological input of ECMWF and with spatial resolution of 0.2 degrees, to perform back trajectories at DEC3 station and qualitatively analyze how different air masses coming from the Northern Western Europe or from the Mediterranean Sea influence observed gases concentrations.
Ion channels activated by L-glutamate and GABA in cultured cerebellar neurons of the rat

Glutamate and GABA-receptor channels were investigated in explants of rat cerebellum grown in cell culture. The patch-clamp technique was used to examine neurons under whole cell clamp and the properties of channels were derived by analysis of glutamate and GABA-evoked current noise. In addition, single channel currents activated by glutamate were recorded from isolated outside-out patches of membrane. We found evidence for at least two types of glutamate receptor-channels in cerebellar cells. Some neurons exhibited a channel of 50 pS conductance with a Lorentzian noise spectrum of 5.9 ms time constant. Single channels were readily resolved both in whole cell clamp and excised patches. Other neurons possessed low conductance channels which produced two component spectra. Estimates of the single channel conductance gave a value of about 140 fS. GABA channel noise obtained from these cells was also fitted by two component spectra which gave single channel conductance of 16 pS.
A dual polarized UWB slot antenna with kite shaped slot for high isolation

In this paper, the design of a two port antenna for ultra wideband applications is presented. The radiating element in the antenna is an L-shaped slot which is excited using two microstrip feed lines for generating the orthogonal polarizations. The slot and the feed lines have stepped profiles for achieving wideband impedance matching. The decoupling between the ports is provided by means of three different structures. First, a slant metallic strip is attached at a corner inside the L-shape slot, next, a trident shaped slot is etched below the L-shape slot near its corner and finally, a kite shaped slot is placed in the center. The impedance bandwidth achieved with the antenna is from 3 GHz to 11.6 GHz while the isolation is better than 20 dB from 3.8 GHz onwards. The dual polarized nature of the antenna is shown from the aperture electric field distribution and the radiation patterns. The peak gain of the antenna varies from 4 to 6 dBi over the band. The antenna is expected to be useful for dual polarization applications in radar, imaging and high speed wireless communication.
The 2016 BBN Georgian telephone speech keyword spotting system

In this paper we describe the 2016 BBN conversational telephone speech keyword spotting system; the culmination of four years of research and development under the IARPA Babel program. The system was constructed in response to the NIST Open Keyword Search (OpenKWS) evaluation of 2016. We present our technological breakthroughs in building top-performing keyword spotting processing systems for new languages, in the face of limited transcribed speech, noisy conditions, and limited system build time of one week.
Visual working memory for shape and 3D‐orientation: a PET study

IN order to determine the neural substrate of working memory for shape and 3D-orientation, regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) changes were estimated using positron emission tomography (PET). Subjects were scanned during the performance of two delayed-matching-to-sample tasks using flat polydedrical objects of different shapes and 3D-orientations presented in a virtual environment. The shape matching task was associated with activation in the occipito-temporal junction, occipito-parietal cortex and mesial frontal pole of the right hemisphere. During the orientation matching task, rCBF increased in the mesial occipito-temporal cortex, superior temporal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus of the left hemisphere. The right supramarginal gyrus was also activated. These results suggest that both visual pathways are engaged in the processing of objects presented in different orientations. The dorsal stream is involved mainly in working memory of 3D-orientation, while the ventral stream is involved especially in shape working memory.
To secure XML documents with the extension function of XSLT

XSLT is a very popular and flexible language for transforming XML documents which provides a powerful implementation of a tree‐oriented transformation language for transmuting instances of XML using a single vocabulary into a desired output. In this paper, we propose a processing model that enables the XSLT processor to encrypt and decrypt XML documents. The details of the implementation are presented. Our model supports a more general encryption scope than previous models. The implementation and experimental results demonstrate the practicality of the proposed model. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.