Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Agonist stimulation at human μ opioid receptors in a [35S]GTPγS incorporation assay: observation of “bell-shaped” concentration–response relationships under conditions of strong receptor G protein coupling

Abstract Context: The appearance of “bell”- (or “inverted U”-) shaped agonist concentration–response curves (CRCs) in in vitro pharmacological experiments is a frequently observed but poorly communicated phenomenon. In the context of G protein coupled receptor research, it is commonly attributed to the recruitment of secondary targets or to desensitization or feedback processes, but the concrete background of these observations often remains intriguing. Objective: Here, we addressed the subject of bell-shaped agonist CRCs at the µ opioid receptor (µOR) by testing the impact of experimental conditions favoring G protein coupling. Methods: G protein activation by recombinant human µORs heterologously expressed in CHO cells was assessed in [35S]GTPγS binding assays using the opioid ligands DAMGO, morphine, fentanyl and naloxone. Experimental conditions were varied by changing the NaCl (10–300 mM) and the GDP concentration (0.3–30 µM). Results: Both the sodium and the GDP concentration were inversely related to G protein coupling, as evident by an increase in basal [35S]GTPγS incorporation at low sodium and low GDP levels and by the concomitant appearance of the partial agonist activity of the µOR antagonist, naloxone. Bell-shaped CRCs were observed for the efficacious agonists DAMGO, fentanyl and morphine, and this phenomenon was promoted by low sodium as well as by low GDP concentrations. Conclusion: µOR agonist CRCs show a non-monotonic behavior with a decline of maximal stimulation under conditions of strong receptor-G protein coupling, and this behavior is visible at the level of G protein activation itself.
Investigating the Relationships Among Resilience, Social Anxiety, and Procrastination in a Sample of College Students

This study investigated the relationships among resilience, social anxiety, and procrastination in a sample of college students. Specifically, structural equation modeling analyses were applied to examine the effect of resilience on procrastination and to test the mediating effect of social anxiety. The results of this study suggested that social anxiety partially mediated the relationship between resilience and procrastination. Students with higher levels of resilience reported a lower frequency of procrastination behavior, and resilience had an indirect effect on procrastination through social anxiety. The results of this study clarify the current knowledge of the mixed results on resilience and procrastination behaviors and offer practical learning strategies and psychological interventions.
Anterolateral Approach to the V1 Segment of the Vertebral Artery

OBJECTIVE: We describe the normal anatomy, variations, and the surgical technique to expose and control the V1 segment of the vertebral artery (VA). METHODS: The VA V1 segment extends classically from the subclavian artery to the C6 transverse foramen. It courses obliquely upwards and posteriorly in the cervical fat tissue, at a distance of 5 to 10 mm from the C7 vertebral body. Along its course, the VA V1 segment is crossed by the inferior thyroid artery, the thoracic duct, and the sympathetic chain. For neurosurgeons, the safest approach is to expose the distal part of the V1 segment at the C6 transverse foramen level through an antero-lateral approach. Otherwise, direct exposure of the subclavian artery requires vascular surgery expertise. RESULTS: Surgical exposure of the VA V1 segment can be indicated on approaching the C6-C7 intervertebral disc space for degenerative disease or on treating tumoral processes in its vicinity. With developments of endovascular techniques, revascularization procedures are more rarely indicated nowadays. CONCLUSION: Perfect knowledge of the anatomy and of the surgical technique permits a safe exposure and control of the VA V1 segment.
Identification Strategies in Survey Response Using Vignettes

In this paper we explore solutions to a particular type of heterogeneity in survey data which is manifest in the presence of individual-specific response scales. We consider this problem in the context of existing evidence on cross-country differences in subjective life satisfaction, and in particular the extent of cross-country comparability. In this instance observed responses are not directly comparable, and inference is compromised. We utilise two broad identification strategies to account for scale heterogeneity. Keeping the data fixed, we consider a number of estimators based on alternative generalisations of the ordered response model. We also examine a number of alternative approaches based on the use of additional information in the form of responses on one or more additional questions with the same response categories as the self-assessment question. These additional questions, referred to as anchoring vignettes, can under certain conditions, be used to correct for the resultant biases in model parameters.
Filter bank canonical correlation analysis for implementing a high-speed SSVEP-based brain–computer interface

Objective. Recently, canonical correlation analysis (CCA) has been widely used in steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) due to its high efficiency, robustness, and simple implementation. However, a method with which to make use of harmonic SSVEP components to enhance the CCA-based frequency detection has not been well established. Approach. This study proposed a filter bank canonical correlation analysis (FBCCA) method to incorporate fundamental and harmonic frequency components to improve the detection of SSVEPs. A 40-target BCI speller based on frequency coding (frequency range: 8–15.8 Hz, frequency interval: 0.2 Hz) was used for performance evaluation. To optimize the filter bank design, three methods (M1: sub-bands with equally spaced bandwidths; M2: sub-bands corresponding to individual harmonic frequency bands; M3: sub-bands covering multiple harmonic frequency bands) were proposed for comparison. Classification accuracy and information transfer rate (ITR) of the three FBCCA methods and the standard CCA method were estimated using an offline dataset from 12 subjects. Furthermore, an online BCI speller adopting the optimal FBCCA method was tested with a group of 10 subjects. Main results. The FBCCA methods significantly outperformed the standard CCA method. The method M3 achieved the highest classification performance. At a spelling rate of ∼33.3 characters/min, the online BCI speller obtained an average ITR of 151.18 ± 20.34 bits min−1. Significance. By incorporating the fundamental and harmonic SSVEP components in target identification, the proposed FBCCA method significantly improves the performance of the SSVEP-based BCI, and thereby facilitates its practical applications such as high-speed spelling.
A pilot based EM channel estimator for OFDM systems

A pilot based EM channel estimator is proposed. The channels are estimated using the EM (expectation-maximization) algorithm, while making use of pilot tones to obtain the initial estimate for iterative steps. Simulation results show that the bit error rate (BER) can be significantly reduced compared with conventional algorithm and iterative times are less than the common EM algorithm. VLSI architecture for the algorithm is proposed
Providing Location-Aware Location Privacy Protection for Mobile Location-Based Services

Location privacy has been a serious concern for mobile users who use location-based services provided by third-party providers via mobile networks. Recently, there have been tremendous efforts on developing new anonymity or obfuscation techniques to protect location privacy of mobile users. Though effective in certain scenarios, these existing techniques usually assume that a user has a constant privacy requirement along spatial and/or temporal dimensions, which may be not true in real-life scenarios. In this paper, we introduce a new location privacy problem: Location-aware Location Privacy Protection (L2P2) problem, where users can define dynamic and diverse privacy requirements for different locations. The goal of the L2P2 problem is to find the smallest cloaking area for each location request so that diverse privacy requirements over spatial and/or temporal dimensions are satisfied for each user. In this paper, we formalize two versions of the L2P2 problem, and propose several efficient heuristics to provide such location-aware location privacy protection for mobile users. Through extensive simulations over large synthetic and real-life datasets, we confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed L2P2 algorithms.
Differentiating Posttraumatic Stress Between Elderly and Younger Residents

Abstract This study aimed to differentiate between the posttraumatic stress responses of elderly and younger community residents who had been exposed to two technological disasters (a train collision and an aircraft crash). One hundred and forty-eight community residents were assessed using the Impact of Event Scale (IES) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). The results showed that age differences were not affected by impact of disaster (IES), suggesting that elderly and younger community residents responded to the disasters similarly. Instead, the community residents exposed to the aircraft crash experienced significantly more intrusion and avoidance than those exposed to the train collision. Also, the community residents who had experienced high exposure to the disasters had significantly more intrusive thoughts and exhibited significantly more avoidance behavior than the low/medium exposure group. The results also showed no main effects in general health between the elderly and younger community residents, suggesting that their health status was similar. Instead, the community residents exposed to the aircraft crash had significantly more general health problems than the train disaster residents and the control group. Also, the community residents in either the low/medium or the high exposure group experienced more general health problems than the control group. Correlation coefficients showed that intrusion, avoidance, and the total impact of the disasters were significantly correlated with all general health subscales for both elderly and younger groups.
The influence of the user hand on mobile phone antenna performance in data mode

With the continuous trend to smaller mobile devices, the possible insufficient over-the-air (OTA) performance becomes a growing concern for service providers and phone manufacturers. In addition to reduced radiation efficiency, the hand may further impair the radiation performance. The influence due to the hand occurs not only in the talk mode (when the user is talking on the phone), but is also significant in the data mode (when the user is browsing or typing text with the phone). The aims of this paper are to investigate the influence on the antenna performance criteria of the position and grip of the hand on the phone in data mode to support the standardization process of the hand phantom, and to propose a method to analyze the influence due to the hand.
Intracoronary Optical Diagnostics

Optical coherence tomography (OCT), is a novel intravascular imaging modality analogous to intravascular ultrasound but uses light instead of sound. This review details the background, development, and status of current investigation using OCT, and discusses advantages, limitations, and likely future developments. It provides indications for possible future clinical use, and places OCT in the context of current intravascular imaging in what is a rapidly changing ﬁeld of investigation. (J Am Coll Cardiol Intv 2011;4:1257–70) © 2011 by the American College of Cardiology Foundation
Employment Insecurity of European Individuals During the Financial Crisis: A Multi-Level Approach

The concept of Flexicurity has been receiving much attention as the European social model. One of the most important concepts within the flexicurity approach is employment security, the security of having secure and continuous employment career, which may entail changing employers and jobs. How do European individuals subjectively perceive their employment security? In addition, which individual characteristics can explain for feeling employment insecurity? Are there differences found across countries, and why is this the case? In this paper, we examine the various individual as well as national level characteristics that can explain individuals' perception of their employment security. To do this we use a multi-level model, where contextual effects are taken into account and individuals are considered to be embedded in countries. The data used for analysis is the 4th wave of the European Social Survey for 22 countries for the year 2008/2009. We find that various individual level characteristics such as demographic, human and social capital, as well as attitude variables explain why an individual feels employment insecure. At the country level, it seems that labour market and economic situations are more important than institutions in explaining the cross-national variance of employment insecurity perceptions.
Nucleosome loss leads to global transcriptional up-regulation and genomic instability during yeast aging

All eukaryotic cells divide a finite number of times, yet the mechanistic basis of replicative aging remains unclear. Here, Tyler and colleagues investigate the effects of aging on chromatin structure and DNA instability in budding yeast. The use of spike-in controls reveals a global reduction in nucleosome occupancy during aging. Histone loss during aging leads to transcriptional induction of all yeast genes. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate elevated levels of DNA damage, retrotransposition, large-scale chromosome rearrangement, and translocation during aging.
Assessment of Alterations in Gene Expression in Recurrent Malignant Glioma after Radiotherapy Using Complementary Deoxyribonucleic Acid Microarrays

OBJECTIVE We used complementary deoxyribonucleic acid expression microarrays to assess the effects of radiotherapy on gene expression in glioblastoma multiforme. We hypothesized that postradiation recurrent tumors may demonstrate alterations in gene expression from the primary tumor specimen. METHODS Patients were diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme at resection of the initial tumor, and they received 60 Gy of fractionated radiotherapy before recurrence. Ribonucleic acid samples from both the primary and the postradiation recurrent tumor in each patient were screened and compared using complementary deoxyribonucleic acid expression arrays and Northern blot analysis. RESULTS Messenger ribonucleic acid levels of growth factors participating in paracrine loops, such as vascular endothelial growth factor and platelet-derived growth factor receptor &bgr;, were decreased in postradiation recurrent tumors as compared with primary tumors in three of four patients. However, messenger ribonucleic acid levels of growth factors involved in autocrine loops, such as epidermal growth factor receptor, platelet-derived growth factor &agr;, platelet-derived growth factor A, and basic fibroblast growth factor, were decreased in two of four, two of four, three of four, and three of four patients’ recurrent tumors, respectively. Microvessel counts demonstrated that blood vessel growth was decreased significantly in postradiation recurrent tumor specimens. CONCLUSION After radiotherapy of glioblastoma multiforme, levels of paracrine-acting growth factors are diminished in correspondence with the reduction in vascular density. In contrast, growth factors that participate in autocrine loops demonstrate elevated levels of gene expression. These results suggest that maintenance of autocrine loops may be important in tumor regrowth after radiotherapy.
ION PRODUCTION WITH A HIGH-POWER SHORT-PULSE LASER FOR APPLICATION TO CANCER THERAPY

Ion production process with a high-power (~50TW) short-pulse (20fs) laser is to be utilized as a compact injector of the synchrotron for cancer therapy. In the scheme, an RF voltage with the frequency of 160 MHz is applied to the laser produced ion-beam within the energy space to reduce the momentum spread to ±1%, which is further cooled down to ±0.1 % by an electron beam cooling to realize needed characteristics of the beam to be safely accelerated by a pulse synchrotron.
A Matrix Method for Chromatic Polynomials

The chromatic polynomials of certain families of graphs can be expressed in terms of the eigenspaces of a linear operator. The operator is represented by a matrix, which is referred to here as the compatibility matrix. In this paper complete sets of eigenfunctions are obtained for several related families, and the results are used to provide information about the location of the zeros of the associated chromatic polynomials. A number of uniform features are observed, and these are explained in terms of general properties of the underlying construction.
Is Perceptual Priming Affected by Culture? A Study With German Middle-Class and Cameroonian Nso Farmer Children

ABSTRACT The authors explored priming in children from different cultural environments with the aim to provide further evidence for the robustness of the priming effect. Perceptual priming was assessed by a picture fragment completion task in 3-year-old German middle-class and Cameroonian Nso farmer children. As expected, 3-year-olds from both highly diverging cultural contexts under study showed a priming effect, and, moreover, the effect was of comparable size in both cultural contexts. Hence, the children profited similarly from priming, which was supported by the nonsignificant interaction between cultural background and identification performance as well as the analysis of absolute difference scores. However, a culture-specific difference regarding the level of picture identification was found in that German middle-class children identified target as well as control pictures with less perceptual information than children in the Nso sample. Explanations for the cross-cultural demonstration of the priming effect as well as for the culturally diverging levels on which priming occurs are discussed.
Lipid Raft-Based Membrane Compartmentation of a Plant Transport Protein Expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

ABSTRACT The hexose-proton symporter HUP1 shows a spotty distribution in the plasma membrane of the green alga Chlorella kessleri. Chlorella cannot be transformed so far. To study the membrane localization of the HUP1 protein in detail, the symporter was fused to green fluorescent protein (GFP) and heterologously expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. In these organisms, the HUP1 protein has previously been shown to be fully active. The GFP fusion protein was exclusively targeted to the plasma membranes of both types of fungal cells. In S. cerevisiae, it was distributed nonhomogenously and concentrated in spots resembling the patchy appearance observed previously for endogenous H+ symporters. It is documented that the Chlorella protein colocalizes with yeast proteins that are concentrated in 300-nm raft-based membrane compartments. On the other hand, it is completely excluded from the raft compartment housing the yeast H+/ATPase. As judged by their solubilities in Triton X-100, the HUP1 protein extracted from Chlorella and the GFP fusion protein extracted from S. cerevisiae are detergent-resistant raft proteins. S. cerevisiae mutants lacking the typical raft lipids ergosterol and sphingolipids showed a homogenous distribution of HUP1-GFP within the plasma membrane. In an ergosterol synthesis (erg6) mutant, the rate of glucose uptake was reduced to less than one-third that of corresponding wild-type cells. In S. pombe, the sterol-rich plasma membrane domains can be stained in vivo with filipin. Chlorella HUP1-GFP accumulated exactly in these domains. Altogether, it is demonstrated here that a plant membrane protein has the property of being concentrated in specific raft-based membrane compartments and that the information for its raft association is retained between even distantly related organisms.
Empirical foundations for Responsive Teaching How do parents influence children ’ s development ?

Responsive Teaching is an early intervention curriculum designed to address the cognitive, language, and social emotional needs of young children with developmental problems. This innovative intervention model was derived from research conducted primarily with children with Down syndrome and their mothers. Results from these studies indicated that during the early childhood years, parents promote their children’s development by engaging in highly responsive interactions throughout their daily routines. The effects of responsiveness are mediated by the impact it has on children’s use of several pivotal developmental behaviours, such as social play, attention, initiation and persistence. Responsive Teaching helps parents learn to use Responsive Teaching strategies to promote the pivotal developmental behaviours that are relevant to their children’s developmental needs. Research with 50 children with developmental problems and their parents indicated that Responsive Teaching was highly effective at addressing children’s developmental and social emotional needs. The effects of this intervention were mediated by the impact that RT strategies had on children’s pivotal developmental behaviours.
Performance Analysis of MIMO Cellular Network with Channel Estimation Errors

This paper aims to analyze the throughput of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiple-access (MA) wireless network. Some recent research studies showed that, in the concerned scenario, the joint processing of all the received signals by access point (AP) cooperation can dramatically enhance the system throughput because of the macrodiversity. However, in practice, the channel estimation quality for the paths from the macrodiversity providers is usually poor. Unfortunately, existing literature on the performance of the joint processing in the MIMO cellular networks is deficient in channel estimation errors. To fill this literature gap, this paper provides an analytical framework for calculating the large-system throughput of a MIMO cellular network with channel estimation errors. Unlike most large-system results, analytical results of this study can be applied in the scenarios with any given input distributions (not necessarily Gaussian) from transmitters. In addition, several issues including 1) how much of the coherence interval should be spent on training and 2) the impact of AP cooperation are highlighted by the analytical results.
PCBs LD Lead , Methylmercury , Bisphenol A MR Methylmercury ? , Unknown ASDs Pesticides

Since the 1950s-70s, increasing number of regulations have rapidly expanded for the global usage of industrial, agricultural and other environmental chemical substances (ECSs). It is believed that children are at high risk of exposure to ECSs, which are produced in quantities greater than one million tons per year and widely dispersed in air, water, food crops, communities, waste sites and homes (Landrigan et al. 2006). Prevalence rates of many common diseases in children, including certain childhood cancers (Devesa et al. 1995; Robison et al. 1995; Schechter 1999; Supriyadi et al. 2011), birth defects (Ananth et al. 2005; Gilboa et al. 2010) and neurodevelopmental disorders (Malik et al. 2011), have been increased or maintained at high levels in industrialized countries. Although primary etiologic factors contributing to these diseases are unknown yet, accumulating evidences indicate that exposure to ECSs are partially responsible for the developmental disabilities, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and other developmental delays (Boyle et al. 2011; Larson et al. 2001) (Figure 1). In this chapter, we conducted a systematic literature review for neurotoxic agents in environment to elucidate the relationship between exposure to ECSs and neurodevelopment disorders in children.