Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Open-Loop Audiovisual Stimulation Induces Delta EEG Activity in Older Adults With Osteoarthritis Pain and Insomnia

Objective: People with chronic insomnia tend to have cortical hyperarousal marked by excessive beta-/gamma-frequency brain activity during both wake and sleep. Currently, treatment options for managing hyperarousal are limited. Open-loop audiovisual stimulation (AVS) may be such a treatment. The purpose of this study was to provide a mechanistic foundation for future AVS research in sleep promotion by examining quantitative electroencephalogram (QEEG) responses to an AVS sleep-induction program. Method: Sixteen older adults with both chronic insomnia and osteoarthritis pain were randomly assigned to either active- or placebo-control AVS. Electroencephalogram (EEG) was collected during baseline (5 min, eyes closed/resting) and throughout 30 min of AVS. Results: Findings showed significantly elevated mean baseline gamma (35–45 Hz) power in both groups compared to an age- and gender-matched, noninsomnia normative database, supporting cortical hyperarousal. After 30 min of exposure to AVS, the active group showed significantly increased delta power compared to the placebo-control group, providing the first controlled evidence that active AVS induction increases delta QEEG activity in insomnia patients and that these changes are immediate. In the active group, brain locations that showed the most delta induction (Cz, Fp, O1, and O2) were associated with the sensory–thalamic pathway, consistent with the sensory stimulation provided by the active AVS program. Conclusions: Findings demonstrate that delta induction, which can promote sleep, is achievable using a 30-min open-loop AVS program. The potential for AVS treatment of insomnia in the general population remains to be demonstrated in well-designed clinical trials.
Canine Corneal Stromal Cells have multipotent mesenchymal stromal cell properties in vitro.

The objective of this study was to determine whether corneal stromal cells (CSC) from the limbal and central corneal stroma in dogs have multipotent mesenchymal stromalem cell (MSC) properties, and whether this cell population can be differentiated into keratocyte-like cells (KDC). Normal, donated, mesocephalic dog corneas were used to isolate CSC in vitro. Immunhistochemistry (IHC) demonstrated a distinct population of CD90 expressing cells in the anterior stroma throughout the limbal and central cornea. CSC could be cultured from both the limbal and central cornea and the culture kinetics showed a progenitor cell profile. The CSC expressed stem cell markers CD90, CD73, CD105, N-cadherin and Pax6 whereas CD34 was negative. Limbal and central CSC differentiated into osteoblasts, chondrocytes and adipocytes confirming their multipotency. Co-culturing allogeneic peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCss) with limbal CSCs did not affect baseline PBMC proliferation indicating a degree of innate immune privilege. Limbal CSC could be differentiated into keratocyte-like cells (KDCs) that expressed Kkeratocan, Llumican and ALDH1A3, and downregulated Pax6 and N-cadherin. In conclusion canine corneal stromal cells have multipotent mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) properties similarly described in humans and could serve as a source of cells for cell therapy and studying corneal diseases.
Usefulness of apolipoprotein B-depleted serum in cholesterol efflux capacity assays using immobilized liposome-bound gel beads

Cholesterol efflux capacity (CEC) in atherosclerotic lesions is the main anti-atherosclerotic function of high-density lipoprotein (HDL). In recent studies, apolipoprotein (apo) B-depleted serum (BDS) obtained with the polyethylene glycol (PEG) precipitation method is used as a cholesterol acceptor (CA) substitution for HDL isolated by ultracentrifugation. However, the suitability of BDS as a CA is controversial. In the present study, CEC obtained from BDS (BDS-CEC) was evaluated based on a parameter, defined as whole-CEC, which was calculated by multiplying CEC obtained using fixed amounts of HDL by cholesterol concentration to HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) levels in the serum. Significant correlation (r = 0.633) was observed between both CECs. To eliminate systematic errors from possible contamination with serum proteins and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or very-LDL (VLDL) in BDS-CEC, the deviation of each CEC-BDS from the regression equation was compared with serum protein, LDL, and triglyceride (TG) levels. No correlation was observed between the deviation and the levels of each of these serum components, indicating that the deviations do not derive from systematic error. Further, to evaluate the effects of serum protein on the results, we measured BDS-CEC of reconstituted serum samples prepared using combinations of five levels of serum proteins with five levels of HDL-C. No significant change in BDS-CEC was observed in any combination. These results indicate that BDS-CEC reflects not only the function of HDL but also its concentration in serum.
Use of Augmented Reality with a Motion-Controlled Game Utilizing Alphabet Letters and Numbers to Improve Performance and Reaction Time Skills for People with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Augmented reality (AR) uses the real-world setting but enables a person to interact with virtual objects. In this study, we aimed to explore the use of alphabet letter and number in an AR task and its influence in reaction time in a population with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compared with the performance of typical developing (TD) controls. We evaluated reaction time before and after AR tasks that consisted of identifying correct numbers and alphabet letters in 48 people with ASD and 48 with TD controls. Results indicate that total points for TD group were higher (M = 86.4 and M = 79.0) when compared with the ASD group (M = 54.5 and M = 51.5) for alphabet letters and numbers, respectively. Moreover, in analysis of reaction time results, only the ASD group showed an improvement in performance after the practice of an AR task. The control group was faster before (M = 553.7) and after (M = 560.5) when compared with the ASD group (M = 2616.0 and M = 2374.6, respectively). Despite the need for further studies, our results support that there is potential for clinical use of an AR task-based intervention for people with ASD.
Phase-aware Harmonic/percussive Source Separation via Convex Optimization

Decomposition of an audio mixture into harmonic and percussive components, namely harmonic/percussive source separation (HPSS), is a useful pre-processing tool for many audio applications. Popular approaches to HPSS exploit the distinctive source-specific structures of power spectrograms. However, such approaches consider only power spectrograms, and the phase remains intact for resynthesizing the separated signals. In this paper, we propose a phase-aware HPSS method based on the structure of the phase of harmonic components. It is formulated as a convex optimization problem in the time domain, which enables the simultaneous treatment of both amplitude and phase. The numerical experiment validates the effectiveness of the proposed method.
NO1, a New Sigma 2 Receptor/TMEM97 Fluorescent Ligand, Downregulates SOCE and Promotes Apoptosis in the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Cell Lines

(1) Background: The structure of the Sigma 2 receptor/TMEM97 (σ2RTMEM97) has recently been reported. (2, 3) Methods and results: We used genetic and biochemical approaches to identify the molecular mechanism downstream of σ2R/TMEM97. The novel σ2R/TMEM97 fluorescent ligand, NO1, reduced the proliferation and survival of the triple negative breast cancer cell lines (TNBC: MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-468 cell lines), due to NO1-induced apoptosis. Greater bioaccumulation and faster uptake of NO1 in MDA-MB-231 cells compared to MCF10A or MCF7 cell lines were also shown. Accordingly, elevated σ2R/TMEM97 expression was confirmed by Western blotting. In contrast to NO1, other σ2R/TMEM97 ligands, such as SM21 and PB28, enhanced MDA-MB-231 cell proliferation and migration. Store-operated calcium entry (SOCE) is crucial for different cancer hallmarks. Here, we show that NO1, but not other σ2R/TMEM97 ligands, reduced SOCE in MDA-MB-231 cells. Similarly, TMEM97 silencing in MDA-MB-231 cells also impaired SOCE. NO1 administration downregulated STIM1-Orai1 interaction, probably by impairing the positive regulatory effect of σ2R/TMEM97 on STIM1, as we were unable to detect interaction with Orai1. (4) Conclusion: σ2R/TMEM97 is a key protein for the survival of triple negative breast cancer cells by promoting SOCE; therefore, NO1 may become a good pharmacological tool to avoid their proliferation.
A Bimolecular Multicellular Complementation System for the Detection of Syncytium Formation: A New Methodology for the Identification of Nipah Virus Entry Inhibitors

Fusion of viral and cellular membranes is a key step during the viral life cycle. Enveloped viruses trigger this process by means of specialized viral proteins expressed on their surface, the so-called viral fusion proteins. There are multiple assays to analyze the viral entry including those that focus on the cell-cell fusion induced by some viral proteins. These methods often rely on the identification of multinucleated cells (syncytium) as a result of cell membrane fusions. In this manuscript, we describe a novel methodology for the study of cell-cell fusion. Our approach, named Bimolecular Multicellular Complementation (BiMuC), provides an adjustable platform to qualitatively and quantitatively investigate the formation of a syncytium. Furthermore, we demonstrated that our procedure meets the requirements of a drug discovery approach and performed a proof of concept small molecule high-throughput screening to identify compounds that could block the entry of the emerging Nipah virus.
An Efficient System for Ds Transposon Tagging in Brachypodium distachyon1

Ds transposon tagging is an efficient system in Brachypodium distachyon for large-scale insertional mutagenesis. Transposon tagging is a powerful tool that has been widely applied in several species for insertional mutagenesis in plants. Several efforts have aimed to create transfer-DNA (T-DNA) insertional mutant populations in Brachypodium distachyon, a monocot plant used as a model system to study temperate cereals, but there has been a lack of research aimed at using transposon strategies. Here, we describe the application of a maize (Zea mays) Dissociation (Ds) transposon tagging system in B. distachyon. The 35S::AcTPase cassette and Ds element were constructed within the same T-DNA and transformed into B. distachyon plants. The Ds element was readily transposed to other chromosomes or to the same chromosome under the function of Activator (Ac) transposase. Through homologous chromosome synapsis, recombination, and segregation, the Ds element separated from the Ac element. We selected stable Ds-only plants using G418 and GFP assays and analyzed 241 T0 lines, some of which were highly efficient at producing Ds-only progeny. Through thermal asymmetric interlaced PCR, we isolated 710 independent Ds flanking sequences from Ds-only plants. Furthermore, we identified a large collection of mutants with visible developmental phenotypes via this transposon tagging system. The system is relatively simple and rapid in comparison to traditional T-DNA insertion strategies, because once efficiency lines are obtained they can be reused to generate more lines from nontransposed plants without the use of time-consuming tissue culture steps.
The role of vascular function on exercise capacity in health and disease

Three sentinel parameters of aerobic performance are the maximal oxygen uptake ( V̇O2max ), critical power (CP) and speed of the V̇O2 kinetics following exercise onset. Of these, the latter is, perhaps, the cardinal test of integrated function along the O2 transport pathway from lungs to skeletal muscle mitochondria. Fast V̇O2 kinetics demands that the cardiovascular system distributes exercise‐induced blood flow elevations among and within those vascular beds subserving the contracting muscle(s). Ideally, this process must occur at least as rapidly as mitochondrial metabolism elevates V̇O2 . Chronic disease and ageing create an O2 delivery (i.e. blood flow × arterial [O2], Q̇O2 ) dependency that slows V̇O2 kinetics, decreasing CP and V̇O2max , increasing the O2 deficit and sowing the seeds of exercise intolerance. Exercise training, in contrast, does the opposite. Within the context of these three parameters (see Graphical Abstract), this brief review examines the training‐induced plasticity of key elements in the O2 transport pathway. It asks how structural and functional vascular adaptations accelerate and redistribute muscle Q̇O2 and thus defend microvascular O2 partial pressures and capillary blood–myocyte O2 diffusion across a ∼100‐fold range of muscle V̇O2 values. Recent discoveries, especially in the muscle microcirculation and Q̇O2 ‐to‐ V̇O2 heterogeneity, are integrated with the O2 transport pathway to appreciate how local and systemic vascular control helps defend V̇O2 kinetics and determine CP and V̇O2max in health and how vascular dysfunction in disease predicates exercise intolerance. Finally, the latest evidence that nitrate supplementation improves vascular and therefore aerobic function in health and disease is presented.
Rethinking the association between overweight/obesity and ADHD in children: a longitudinal and psychosocial perspective

Objective: This study examines the association between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and overweight/obesity in a large-scale longitudinal study of children, while controlling for a range of psychosocial factors. Method: Data were obtained from Growing Up in Ireland, a nationally representative and longitudinal study of approximately 6500 children who were assessed at 9 and 13 years of age. Body mass index (BMI) was determined using measured height and weight, ADHD status was determined by parent reports of professional diagnoses and ADHD symptoms were measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Results: The associations between ADHD status, ADHD symptoms (SDQ) and BMI category at age 9 and 13 years were evaluated using logistic regression. Adjustments were made for child factors (sex, developmental coordination disorder, emotional symptoms, conduct problems, birth weight and exercise) and parental factors (socio-economic status, parental BMI, parental depression, and maternal smoking and alcohol use during pregnancy). Logistic regression indicated that ADHD status was not associated with BMI category at 9 or at 13 years of age, but children with ADHD at 9 years were significantly more likely to be overweight/obese at 13 years than those without ADHD. However, when other child and parental factors were adjusted for, ADHD status was no longer significantly associated with weight status. Female sex, low levels of exercise, overweight/obese parents and prenatal smoking during pregnancy consistently increased the odds of childhood overweight/obesity. Conclusions: While ADHD and overweight/obesity co-occur in general populations, this relationship is largely explained by a variety of psychosocial factors.
Food restriction reconfigures naïve and learned choice behavior in Drosophila larvae

Abstract In many animals, the establishment and expression of food-related memory is limited by the presence of food and promoted by its absence, implying that this behavior is driven by motivation. In the past, this has already been demonstrated in various insects including honeybees and adult Drosophila. For Drosophila larvae, which are characterized by an immense growth and the resulting need for constant food intake, however, knowledge is rather limited. Accordingly, we have analyzed whether starvation modulates larval memory formation or expression after appetitive classical olfactory conditioning, in which an odor is associated with a sugar reward. We show that odor-sugar memory of starved larvae lasts longer than in fed larvae, although the initial performance is comparable. 80 minutes after odor fructose conditioning, only starved but not fed larvae show a reliable odor-fructose memory. This is likely due to a specific increase in the stability of anesthesia-resistant memory (ARM). Furthermore, we observe that starved larvae, in contrast to fed ones, prefer sugars that offer a nutritional benefit in addition to their sweetness. Taken together our work shows that Drosophila larvae adjust the expression of learned and naïve choice behaviors in the absence of food. These effects are only short-lasting probably due to their lifestyle and their higher internal motivation to feed. In the future, the extensive use of established genetic tools will allow us to identify development-specific differences arising at the neuronal and molecular level.
Activity-Based Analysis of Open Source Software Contributors: Roles and Dynamics

Contributors to open source software (OSS) communities assume diverse roles to take different responsibilities. One major limitation of the current OSS tools and platforms is that they provide a uniform user interface regardless of the activities performed by the various types of contributors. This paper serves as a non-trivial first step towards resolving this challenge by demonstrating a methodology and establishing knowledge to understand how the contributors' roles and their dynamics, reflected in the activities contributors perform, are exhibited in OSS communities. Based on an analysis of user action data from 29 GitHub projects, we extracted six activities that distinguished four Active roles and five Supporting roles of OSS contributors, as well as patterns in role changes. Through the lens of the Activity Theory, these findings provided rich design guidelines for OSS tools to support diverse contributor roles.
Molecular Mechanisms at the Basis of Pharmaceutical Grade Triticum vulgare Extract Efficacy in Prompting Keratinocytes Healing

Background: It has been shown that many plant- or microbial-derived oligos and polysaccharides may prompt tissue repair. Among the different extracts that have been studied, the aqueous one of Triticum vulgare (TVE) that was obtained from a whole germinated plant has been proven to have different biological properties that are useful in the process of wound healing. Nevertheless, with the long tradition of its use in pharmaceutical cream and ointments, especially in Italy, a new protocol was recently proposed (and patented) to improve the extraction process. Methods: In a simplified in vitro model, human keratinocyte monolayers were scratched and used to run time lapse experiments by using time lapse video microscopy (TLVM) to quantify reparation rate while considering a dose–response effect. Contemporarily, the molecular mechanisms that are involved in tissue repair were studied. In fact, key biomarkers that are involved in remodeling, such as MMP-2 and MMP-9, and in matrix structure assembly, such as collagen I, elastin, integrin αV and aquaporin 3, were evaluated with gene expression analyses (RT-PCR) and protein quantification in western blotting. Results: All TVE doses tested on the HaCat-supported cell proliferation. TVE also prompted cell migration in respect to the control, correctly modulating the timing of metalloproteases expression toward a consistent and well-assessed matrix remodeling. Furthermore, TVE treatments upregulated and positively modulated the expression of the analyzed biomarkers, thus resulting in a better remodeling of dermal tissue during healing. Conclusions: The in vitro results on the beneficial effects of TVE on tissue elasticity and regeneration may support a better understanding of the action mechanism of TVE as active principles in pharmaceutical preparation in wound treatment.
Investigation into the use of histone deacetylase inhibitor MS-275 as a topical agent for the prevention and treatment of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma in an SKH-1 hairless mouse model

Cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas are a common form of highly mutated keratinocyte skin cancers that are of particular concern in immunocompromised patients. Here we report on the efficacy of topically applied MS-275, a clinically used histone deacetylase inhibitor, for the treatment and management of this disease. At 2 mg/kg, MS-275 significantly decreased tumor burden in an SKH-1 hairless mouse model of UVB radiation-induced skin carcinogenesis. MS-275 was cell permeable as a topical formulation and induced histone acetylation changes in mouse tumor tissue. MS-275 was also effective at inhibiting the proliferation of patient derived cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma lines and was particularly potent toward cells isolated from a regional metastasis on an immunocompromised individual. Our findings support the use of alternative routes of administration for histone deacetylase inhibitors in the treatment of high-risk squamous cell carcinoma which may ultimately lead to more precise delivery and reduced systemic toxicity.
Remote Communication in Wilderness Search and Rescue

Wilderness search and rescue (WSAR) requires careful communication between workers in different locations. To understand the contexts from which WSAR workers communicate and the challenges they face, we interviewed WSAR workers and observed a mock-WSAR scenario. Our findings illustrate that WSAR workers face challenges in maintaining a shared mental model. This is primarily done through distributed communication using two-way radios and cell phones for text and photo messaging; yet both implicit and explicit communication suffer. WSAR workers send messages for various reasons and share different types of information with varying levels of urgency. This warrants the use of multiple communication modalities and information streams. However, bringing in more modalities introduces the risk of information overload, and thus WSAR workers today still primarily communicate remotely via the radio. Our work demonstrates opportunities for technology to provide implicit communication and awareness remotely, and to help teams maintain a shared mental model even when synchronous realtime communication is sparse. Furthermore, technology should be designed to bring together multiple streams of information and communication while making sure that they are presented in ways that aid WSAR workers rather than overwhelming them.
MRAEA: An Efficient and Robust Entity Alignment Approach for Cross-lingual Knowledge Graph

Entity alignment to find equivalent entities in cross-lingual Knowledge Graphs (KGs) plays a vital role in automatically integrating multiple KGs. Existing translation-based entity alignment methods jointly model the cross-lingual knowledge and monolingual knowledge into one unified optimization problem. On the other hand, the Graph Neural Network (GNN) based methods either ignore the node differentiations, or represent relation through entity or triple instances. They all fail to model the meta semantics embedded in relation nor complex relations such as n-to-n and multi-graphs. To tackle these challenges, we propose a novel Meta Relation Aware Entity Alignment (MRAEA) to directly model cross-lingual entity embeddings by attending over the node's incoming and outgoing neighbors and its connected relations' meta semantics. In addition, we also propose a simple and effective bi-directional iterative strategy to add new aligned seeds during training. Our experiments on all three benchmark entity alignment datasets show that our approach consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art methods, exceeding by 15%-58% on Hit@1. Through an extensive ablation study, we validate that the proposed meta relation aware representations, relation aware self-attention and bi-directional iterative strategy of new seed selection all make contributions to significant performance improvement. The code is available at https://github.com/MaoXinn/MRAEA.