Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The plastic fetal pituitary.

A chronically adverse intrauterine environment can foster a fetal hypercortisolemia that persists after stressful conditions are removed and well after a transient, stress-associated elevation in adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) has passed (1, 2). This observation, among others, strongly suggests that chronic intrauterine stress can reprogram the fetal hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. As Butler and colleagues show in this issue of the JCI (3), the development of a phenotypically novel cellular subpopulation within the pituitary may explain, at least in part, this profound and long-lasting change in the endocrine environment. Butler et al. demonstrate here that the fetal ovine pituitary possesses a developmental malleability that allows a remodeling of its corticotroph population. The particular alterations seen depend upon the stage of fetal life during which stressful stimuli are experienced, but some persist late into gestation and may well be permanent.
Advances and Challenges in Computational Prediction of Effectors from Plant Pathogenic Fungi

1 CSIRO Agriculture Flagship, Centre for Environment and Life Sciences, Perth, Western Australia, Australia, 2 CSIRO Agriculture Flagship, Black Mountain Laboratories, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia, 3 CSIRO Agriculture Flagship, Queensland Bioscience Precinct, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 4 University of Western Australia Institute of Agriculture, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia
Quantitative EEG Spectrum-weighted Frequency (Brain Rate) Distribution in Adults with ADHD

Abstract Objective The aim of this study is to explore the applicability of brain rate (fb) for the diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), analyzing the spatial distribution of fb through analysis of its values in sagittal and lateral electrodes' positions, recorded in four conditions (eyes closed, eyes opened, visual continuous performance task and emotional continuous performance task). Methods Sixty-seven adults diagnosed with ADHD according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria and 50 age-matched control subjects participated in the study. The brain activity of the subjects was recorded by 19 channel quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) system and fb was calculated with the fb software. Results Maximum values of fb for sagittal topography are obtained in central region and the minimum in frontal region, while lateral topography maximum values are found in the left and right sides and the minimum in midline region. A positive correlation between the fb values and the QEEG spectra subtypes was obtained, with lower values for normals, first and second subtype, and higher values for the third and fourth subtype. On the other hand, there was no correlation between behavioral symptoms and fb values. Conclusion The applicability of an fb indicator in the diagnosis of ADHD is especially pronounced for the higher subtypes (ADHD III and IV), corresponding to heterogeneous and multifactorial character of this disorder.
Risk factors of atopic dermatitis in Korean schoolchildren: 2010 international study of asthma and allergies in childhood.

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE We aimed to analyse the risk factors of atopic dermatitis (AD) in Korean schoolchildren in 2010. METHODS A nationwide, cross-sectional study was conducted in children aged 6-7 years and adolescents aged 12-13 years who were randomly selected. Information was obtained through a Korean version of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood questionnaire (ISAAC), and skin prick tests were performed. AD-diagnosed children were selected for risk factor analysis by using logistic regression. RESULTS We enrolled 4,003 children (M/F = 2,021/ 1,982) in aged 6-7 years and 4,112 children (M/F = 2,029/2,083) in 12-13 years. In children aged 6-7 years, the lifetime prevalence of AD diagnosis was 35.6% (N = 1,424). On the other hand, in the 12 to 13 year age group, the lifetime prevalence of AD diagnosis was 24.2% (N = 981). In the univariate logistic regression analysis in 6-7 year-old children, possible risk factors were atopy, a parental history of allergic disease, the use of antibiotics during infancy, a history of having moved into a newly built house during infancy, the presence of visible mould in the house, and remodelling of house within 12 months. The statistical significance persisted after adjustment. However, antibiotic use during infancy and remodelling within 12 months showed no statistical significance as a risk factor for AD. In contrast, multivariate logistic regression analysis in adolescents demonstrated that female sex, atopy, a parental history of allergic diseases, the presence of visible mould in the house, and a history of having moved into a newly built house during infancy was associated with AD. There was no significant association between AD and other risk factors. CONCLUSION In Korean schoolchildren, risk factors such as atopy, the presence of parental allergic diseases, moving into a newly built house during infancy and visible mould in the house were associated with AD.
Semiclassical soliton ensembles for the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation

This book represents the first asymptotic analysis, via completely integrable techniques, of the initial value problem for the focusing nonlinear Schrodinger equation in the semiclassical asymptotic regime. This problem is a key model in nonlinear optical physics and has increasingly important applications in the telecommunications industry. The authors exploit complete integrability to establish pointwise asymptotics for this problem's solution in the semiclassical regime and explicit integration for the underlying nonlinear, elliptic, partial differential equations suspected of governing the semiclassical behavior. In doing so they also aim to explain the observed gradient catastrophe for the underlying nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations, and to set forth a detailed, pointwise asymptotic description of the violent oscillations that emerge following the gradient catastrophe. To achieve this, the authors have extended the reach of two powerful analytical techniques that have arisen through the asymptotic analysis of integrable systems: the Lax-Levermore-Venakides variational approach to singular limits in integrable systems, and Deift and Zhou's nonlinear Steepest-Descent/Stationary Phase method for the analysis of Riemann-Hilbert problems. In particular, they introduce a systematic procedure for handling certain Riemann-Hilbert problems with poles accumulating on curves in the plane. This book, which includes an appendix on the use of the Fredholm theory for Riemann-Hilbert problems in the Holder class, is intended for researchers and graduate students of applied mathematics and analysis, especially those with an interest in integrable systems, nonlinear waves, or complex analysis.
The Effects of Biological Lubricating Molecules on Flexor Tendon Reconstruction in a Canine Allograft Model In Vivo

Background: Using allograft is an attractive alternative for flexor tendon reconstruction because of the lack of donor-site morbidity, and better matching to the intrasynovial environment. The purpose of this study was to use biological lubricant molecules to modify the graft surface to decrease adhesions and improve digit function. Methods: Twenty-eight flexor digitorum profundus tendons from the second and fifth digits of 14 dogs were lacerated and repaired to create a model with repair failure and scar digit for tendon reconstruction. Six weeks after the initial operation, the tendons were reconstructed with flexor digitorum profundus allograft tendons obtained from canine cadavers. One graft tendon in each dog was treated with saline as a control and the other was treated with carbodiimide-derivatized hyaluronic acid and gelatin plus lubricin. Six weeks postoperatively, digit function, graft mechanics, and biology were analyzed. Results: Allograft tendons treated with carbodiimide-derivatized hyaluronic acid-lubricin had decreased adhesions at the proximal tendon/graft repair and within the flexor sheath, improved digit function, and increased graft gliding ability. The treatment also reduced the strength at the distal tendon–to-bone repair, but the distal attachment rupture rate was similar for both graft types. Histologic evaluation showed that viable cells migrated to the allograft, but these were limited to the tendon surface. Conclusions: Carbodiimide-derivatized hyaluronic acid-lubricin treatment of tendon allograft improves digit functional outcomes after flexor tendon reconstruction. However, delayed bone-to-tendon healing should be a caution. Furthermore, the cell infiltration into the allograft tendon substance should be a target for future studies, to shorten the allograft self-regeneration period.
Ex vivo MR microimaging of neuronal damage after kainate‐induced status epilepticus in rat: Correlation with quantitative histology

The present study was designed to investigate whether T2‐weighted signal changes obtained by microimaging of paraformaldehyde‐fixed brain correlate with the histologically quantified damage in a model of status epilepticus (SE) induced by kainic acid in the rat. Animals were killed at several time points up to 8 weeks after a single intraperitoneal kainate (KA) injection (9 mg/kg). Perfusion‐fixed brains were embedded in gelatin for MR microimaging at 9.4T. After the MRI analysis, the gelatin was removed and the brains were cryoprotected and processed for quantitative histology. Severity of neuronal damage and gliosis were assessed from thionin‐stained serial sections. Correlative analysis of microimaging and histology data was done in the hippocampus, amygdala, parietal rhinal cortex (PaRH), piriform cortex (Pir), and entorhinal cortex. The relative signal intensities in T2‐weighted images correlate with the severity of neuronal damage in the matched histological sections (correlation coefficients of 0.752–0.826). Our data show that MR microimaging ex vivo detects the degree of neuronal damage and its anatomical distribution after KA‐induced SE, thus providing a useful tool for detecting the dynamics of progressive neuronal damage after prolonged seizures. Magn Reson Med 46:946–954, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Prevalence, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Impaired Fasting Glucose and Impaired Glucose Tolerance in Nondiabetic U.S. Adults

OBJECTIVE To estimate the rates of prevalence, diagnosis, and treatment of impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A representative sample of the U.S. population (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey [NHANES]) from 2005–2006 including 1,547 nondiabetic adults (>18 years of age) without a history of myocardial infarction was assessed to determine the proportion of adults who met the criteria for IFG/IGT, and the proportion of IFG/IGT subjects who: 1) reported receiving a diagnosis from their physicians; 2) were prescribed lifestyle modification or an antihyperglycemic agent; and 3) were currently on therapy. We used multivariable regression analysis to identify predictors of diagnosis and treatment. RESULTS Of the 1,547 subjects, 34.6% (CI 30.3–38.9%) had pre-diabetes; 19.4% had IFG only; 5.4% had IGT only, and 9.8% had both IFG and IGT. Only 4.8% of those with pre-diabetes reported having received a formal diagnosis from their physicians. No subjects with pre-diabetes received oral antihyperglycemics, and the rates of recommendation for exercise or diet were 31.7% and 33.5%, respectively. Among the 47.7% pre-diabetic subjects who exercised, 49.4% reported exercising for at least 30 min daily. CONCLUSIONS Three years after a major clinical trial demonstrated that interventions could greatly reduce progression from IFG/IGT to type 2 diabetes, the majority of the U.S. population with IFG/IGT was undiagnosed and untreated with interventions. Whether this is due to physicians being unaware of the evidence, unconvinced by the evidence, or clinical inertia is unclear.
Interactive Animation of Virtual Characters: Application to Virtual Kung-Fu Fighting

This paper aims at proposing a framework for animating virtual humans that can efficiently interact with real users in virtual reality (VR). If the user's order can be modeled as targets and commands, the system searches a database for the most convenient behavior. In order to avoid using a huge database that can deal with any kind of situation, we propose to associate this searching process to an adaptation module. Hence, even if the selected motion is not perfectly suited with the situation, it can be adapted in order to reach accurately the target specified by the user. This framework is illustrated with a kung-fu fighter example. Two people are involved in this example: the user and the supervisor. The user is displacing in the real environment while the position of his head is tracked in real-time thanks to reflective markers. The virtual opponent follows the displacement of the user to stay close to him. At any time, the supervisor can ask the virtual character to kick or punch the user. Our system automatically searches for the convenient motion in an average-size database (75 motions compared to hundreds of motions required for motion graphs) and adapts it to the current situation.
Practice of Epidemiology Using Cases and Parents to StudyMultiplicative Gene-by-Environment Interaction

With case-parent triads, one can estimate genotype relative risks by measuring the apparent overtransmission of susceptibility genotypes from parents to affected offspring. Results obtained using such designs, properly analyzed, resist both bias due to population structure and bias due to self-selection. Most diseases are not purely genetic, and environmental cofactors can also be important. In this paper, the authors describe how a polytomous logistic regression method previously developed for studying genetic effects on a quantitative trait can be used with case-parent data to study multiplicative gene-by-environment interaction. The idea is that if the joint effect of exposure and genotype on risk is submultiplicative or supermultiplicative, then, conditional on the parental genotypes, inheritance of a susceptibility genotype by affected offspring will appear to have been influenced by the offspring’s exposure level. The authors’ approach tolerates exposure-complicated genetic population structure, and simulations suggest power and Type I error rates comparable to those of competitors. With this approach, one can estimate the usual interaction parameters under a much less stringent assumption than gene-environment independence in the source population. Incompletely genotyped triads can contribute through an expectationmaximization algorithm. To illustrate, the authors consider polymorphisms in detoxification pathway genes and maternal smoking in relation to the birth defect oral cleft.
Caspase cleavage of Atg4D stimulates GABARAP-L1 processing and triggers mitochondrial targeting and apoptosis

Autophagy is an important catabolic process with roles in cell survival and cell death. It sequesters cytosol and organelles within double-membrane autophagosomes that deliver their contents to lysosomes for degradation. Autophagosome biogenesis is coordinated by the autophagy-related protein 4 (Atg4) family of C54 endopeptidases (Atg4A-Atg4D). These enzymes prime and then later delipidate the autophagosome marker, Atg8. Here, we show that one family member, Atg4D, is cleaved by caspase-3 in vitro and in apoptotic cells. Atg4D is a poor priming and delipidation enzyme in vitro, but truncated ΔN63 Atg4D displays increased activity against the Atg8 paralogue, γ-aminobutyric acid receptor-associated protein-like 1 (GABARAP-L1). In living cells, ΔN63 Atg4D stimulates the delipidation of GABARAP-L1, whereas siRNA silencing of the gene expressing Atg4D abrogates GABARAP-L1 autophagosome formation and sensitises cells to starvation and staurosporine-induced cell death. Interestingly, Atg4D overexpression induces apoptosis, which is preceded by the caspase-independent recruitment of Atg4D to mitochondria and is facilitated by a putative C-terminal Bcl-2 homology 3 (BH3) domain. Atg4D also acquires affinity for damaged mitochondria in cells treated with hydrogen peroxide. These data suggest that Atg4D is an autophagy regulator that links mitochondrial dysfunction with apoptosis.
Adaptive Control for Passive Kinesiotherapy ELLTIO

Exoskeletons are mechatronic devices used to increase human muscle strength and resistance. In the last decade these devices have become a very useful tool to assist active kinesiotherapy. This paper presents the design of exoskeleton focused on the rehabilitation of ankle and knee for the right leg. The construction of prototype like Exoskeleton for Lower Limb Training with Instrumented Orthoses (ELLTIO) using Series Elastic Actuator (SEA) to reduce the effort in the human joints, and a control law to perform a rehabilitation routine using an adaptive control scheme were first implemented in simulation to verify the control strategy and make a real rehabilitation test. The adaptive control law is proposed with the intention that the exoskeleton can adapt to user parameters at the time when performing the exercise. The results show the parameters estimation and tracking trajectory for the exoskeleton were proposed, and this trajectory could be a routine rehabilitation proposed by the therapist.
Gene expression in response to abscisic acid and osmotic stress.

Abscisic acid (ABA) was discovered in the 1950s to be a phytohormone affecting leaf abscision and bud dormancy. It was soon characterized as a sesquiterpene derived from mevalonate although certain steps of its biosynthesis in plants are still unknown (Li and Walton, 1987; Zeevaart and Creelman, 1988). Continuing work on ABA has shown that it mediates various developmental and physiological processes that affect the agronomic performance of crop plants (Austin et al., 1982; Ramagopal, 1987). These proc? esses include embryo maturation and germination as well as the response of vegetative tissues to osmotic stress (Singh et al., 1987; Zeevaart and Creelman, 1988). ABA levels increase in tissues subjected to osmotic stress by desiccation, salt, or cold (Henson, 1984; Mohapatra et al., 1988). Under these conditions, specific genes are ex? pressed that can also be induced in unstressed tissues by the application of exogenous ABA (Singh et al., 1987; Gomez et al., 1988; Mundy and Chua, 1988). Some of these genes are also expressed during the normal embryogenic program when seeds desiccate and embryos be? come dormant (Dure et al., 1981). Although different sets of ABA-responsive genes exhibit different patterns of de? velopmental and tissue-specific expression, some of them appear to be part of a general reaction to osmotic stress. This system is a normal part of the embryogenic program but is inducible in vegetative tissues at other times in the plant life cycle. Several ABA-responsive genes have now been isolated (Baker et al., 1988; Gomez et al., 1988; Marcotte et al., 1988; Mundy and Chua, 1988; Vilardell et al., 1990; Yamaguchi-Shinozaki et al., 1990). A major goal of the research discussed below is to understand the role these genes play in osmotic stress and desiccation tolerance.
Greedy learning of graphical models with small girth

This paper develops two new greedy algorithms for learning the Markov graph of discrete probability distributions, from samples thereof. For finding the neighborhood of a node (i.e. variable), the simple, naive greedy algorithm iteratively adds the new node that gives the biggest improvement in prediction performance over the existing set. While fast to implement, this can yield incorrect graphs when there are many short cycles, as now the single node that gives the best prediction can be outside the neighborhood. Our new algorithms get around this in two different ways. The forward-backward greedy algorithm includes a deletion step, which goes back and prunes incorrect nodes that may have initially been added. The recursive greedy algorithm uses forward steps in a two-level process, running greedy iterations in an inner loop, but only including the final node. We show, both analytically and empirically, that these algorithms can learn graphs with small girth which other algorithms - both greedy, and those based on convex optimization - cannot.
The structural basis of actin filament branching by the Arp2/3 complex

The actin-related protein 2/3 (Arp2/3) complex mediates the formation of branched actin filaments at the leading edge of motile cells and in the comet tails moving certain intracellular pathogens. Crystal structures of the Arp2/3 complex are available, but the architecture of the junction formed by the Arp2/3 complex at the base of the branch was not known. In this study, we use electron tomography to reconstruct the branch junction with sufficient resolution to show how the Arp2/3 complex interacts with the mother filament. Our analysis reveals conformational changes in both the mother filament and Arp2/3 complex upon branch formation. The Arp2 and Arp3 subunits reorganize into a dimer, providing a short-pitch template for elongation of the daughter filament. Two subunits of the mother filament undergo conformational changes that increase stability of the branch. These data provide a rationale for why branch formation requires cooperative interactions among the Arp2/3 complex, nucleation-promoting factors, an actin monomer, and the mother filament.
The applications of unsupervised learning to Japanese grapheme-phoneme alignment

In this paper, we adapt the TF-IDF model to the Japanese grapheme-phoneme alignment task, by way of a simple statistical model and an incremental learning method. In the incremental learning method, grapheme-phoneme alignment paradigms are disambiguated one at a t ime according to the relative plausibility of the highest scoring alignment schema, and the statistical model is re-trained accordingly. On limited evaluation, the learning method achieved an accuracy of 93.28%, representing a slight improvement over a baseline rule-based method.
Human Version 2.0 Between the “Banality” and “Ressentiment” of Neuroengineers

Neuroengineers such as Hugo de Garis propose to build artificial brains called “artilects” that go beyond the cybernetic model seeking to build “cyborgs. ” Empirical research in this field raises moral questions to which both moral psychology and moral philosophy can contribute, especially to analysis of the motivations of a neuroengineering project such as that of de Garis. The problem is that while empirical results of recent moral psychology provide us with explanations and interpretations having empirical probability, they remain descriptive without resolving moral implications in the sense of having prescriptions on the central question whether the neuroengineering project should be pursued. Assuming neuroengineers can deliver on their projects by the mid- to late- 21st century, both the neuroscience community and philosophers have at least an epistemic (if not a moral) responsibility to engage the moral dimension of this scientific and technological quest.