Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Resveratrol Improves Vascular Function in Patients With Hypertension and Dyslipidemia by Modulating NO Metabolism

Epidemiological studies have demonstrated that the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in resveratrol, is associated with a significantly reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. However, the molecular mechanisms that underlie the beneficial effects of resveratrol on cardiovascular function remain incompletely understood. Therefore, we set out to identify the molecular target(s) mediating the protective action of resveratrol on vascular function. To this end, we performed vascular reactivity studies to evaluate the effects of resveratrol on superior thyroid artery obtained from 59 patients with hypertension and dyslipidemia. We found that resveratrol evoked vasorelaxation and reduced endothelial dysfunction through the modulation of NO metabolism via (1) an 5′ adenosine monophosphate–activated protein kinase–mediated increase in endothelial NO synthase activity; (2) a rise in tetrahydrobiopterin levels, which also increases endothelial NO synthase activity; and (3) attenuation of vascular oxidative stress, brought about by overexpression of manganese superoxide dismutase via an nuclear factor erythroid–derived 2-like 2–dependent mechanism. The effects of resveratrol on acetylcholine vasorelaxation were also tested in vessels from patients with nonhypertensive nondyslipidemia undergoing thyroid surgery. In this setting, resveratrol failed to exert any effect. Thus, our finding that resveratrol reduces endothelial dysfunction, an early pathophysiological feature and independent predictor of poor prognosis in most forms of cardiovascular disease, supports the concept that the risk of vascular events could be further reduced by adherence to a set of dietary and behavioral guidelines.
Model-based 3D face capture with shape-from-silhouettes

We present a method for 3D face acquisition using a set or sequence of 2D binary silhouettes. Since silhouette images depend only on the shape and pose of an object, they are immune to lighting and/or texture variations (unlike feature or texture-based shape-from-correspondence). Our prior 3D face model is a linear combination of "eigenheads" obtained by applying PCA to a training set of laser-scanned 3D faces. These shape coefficients are the parameters for a near-automatic system for capturing the 3D shape as well as the 2D texture-map of a novel input face. Specifically, we use back-projection and a boundary-weighted XOR-based cost function for binary silhouette matching, coupled with a probabilistic "downhill-simplex" optimization for shape estimation and refinement. Experiments with a multicamera rig as well as monocular video sequences demonstrate the advantages of our 3D modeling framework and ultimately, its utility for robust face recognition with built-in invariance to pose and illumination.
Molecular shape and self‐association of vinculin and metavinculin

Vinculin, a 130,000‐dalton protein localized to adhesion plaques, and metavinculin, a 150,‐000 dalton protein closely related to vinculin, have been studied using rotary shadowing and electron microscopy. Both proteins have globular head regions attached to rod‐shaped tail domains. Vinculin and metavinculin also both form complexes consisting of four to six individual molecules. These multimers are formed by head‐to‐head as well as tail‐to‐tail interactions.
The transfer of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) across the human placenta and into maternal milk.

Cord serum and maternal milk levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) were examined in relation to maternal serum levels. Maternal serum levels were significantly higher than cord serum levels for both types of compounds. Placental passage was indicated by significant maternal to cord serum correlations for both PCBs (r = .42) and PBBs (r = .81). Correlations between maternal serum and milk levels were similar. Higher PBB correlations were probably due to greater reliability in the measurement of PBB levels in serum and milk.
Mapping Sparse Matrix-Vector Multiplication on FPGAs

Higher peak performance on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) than on microprocessors was shown for sparse matrix vector multiplication (SpMxV) accelerator designs. However due to the frequent memory movement in SpMxV, system performance is heavily affected by memory bandwidth and overheads in real applications. In this paper, we introduce an innovative SpMxV Solver, designed for FPGAs, SSF. Besides high computational throughput, system performance is optimized by minimizing and overlapping I/O operations, reducing initialization time and overhead, and increasing scalability. The potential of using mixed (64-bit, 32-bit) data formats to increase system performance is also explored. SSF accepts any matrix size and easily adapts to different data formats. SSF minimizes resource costs and uses concise control logic by taking advantage of the data flow via innovative floating point accumulation logic. To analyze the performance, a performance model is defined for SpMxV on FPGAs. Compared to microprocessors, SSF has speedups up to 20x and depends less on the sparsity structure.
Security and Privacy Analysis of NSF Future Internet Architectures

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the lifeblood of the modern Internet. Its simplicity and universality have fueled the unprecedented and lasting global success of the current Internet. Nonetheless, some limitations of IP have been emerging in recent years. Its original design envisaged supporting perhaps tens of thousands of static hosts operating in a friendly academic-like setting, mainly in order to facilitate email communication and remote access to scarce computing resources. At present IP interconnects billions of static and mobile devices (ranging from supercomputers to IoT gadgets) with a large and dynamic set of popular applications. Starting in mid-1990s, the advent of mobility, wirelessness and the web substantially shifted Internet usage and communication paradigms. This accentuated long-term concerns about the current Internet architecture and prompted interest in alternative designs. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has been one of the key supporters of efforts to design a set of candidate next-generation Internet architectures. As a prominent design requirement, NSF emphasized "security and privacy by design" in order to avoid the long and unhappy history of incremental patching and retrofitting that characterizes the current Internet architecture. To this end, as a result of a competitive process, four prominent research projects were funded by the NSF in 2010: Nebula, Named-Data Networking (NDN), MobilityFirst (MF), and Expressive Internet Architecture (XIA). This paper provides a comprehensive and neutral analysis of salient security and privacy features (and issues) in these NSF-funded Future Internet Architectures. It also compares the four candidate designs with the current IP-based architecture and discusses similarities, differences, and possible improvements.
The diversity puzzle: Explaining clustering and polarization of opinions

In this chapter, we will discuss the first approach to the polarization problem. We will develop a formal model that includes the assumption of negative influence and demonstrate that this model can indeed explain opinion polarization. Recently, several models that assume negative influence have been developed. We will contribute to this literature and show how demographic attributes might interfere with opinion dynamics generated by negative influence. In particular, we will discuss Lau and Murnighan’s work on the effects of demographic faultlines. Lau and Murnighan proposed that polarization is the more likely the stronger demographic differences between group members correlate across various dimensions. Computational experiments will demonstrate that the central claims of Lau and Murnighan’s theory are consistent with the model. Furthermore, we will show that the model highlights a new structural condition that may give managers a handle to temper the negative effects of strong demographic faultlines. We will call this condition the timing of contacts. Computational analyses will reveal that negative effects of strong faultlines critically depend on who is when brought in contact with whom in the process of social interactions in the team. More specifically, we will demonstrate that faultlines have hardly negative effects when teams are initially split into demographically homogeneous subteams that are merged only when a local consensus has developed.
Resident Memory T Cells as Surrogate Markers of the Efficacy of Cancer Vaccines

Cancer vaccine boost via the cervicovaginal rather than the intramuscular route of immunization appears to be crucial to induce genital CD8+ T cells and tumor regression. This clinical activity is correlated with the ability of the mucosal boost to elicit resident memory T cells in the genital tract. Clin Cancer Res; 22(3); 530–2. ©2015 AACR. See related article by Sun et al., p. 657
Participation in cancer clinical trials: race-, sex-, and age-based disparities.

CONTEXT Despite the importance of diversity of cancer trial participants with regard to race, ethnicity, age, and sex, there is little recent information about the representation of these groups in clinical trials. OBJECTIVE To characterize the representation of racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and women in cancer trials sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS Cross-sectional population-based analysis of all participants in therapeutic nonsurgical National Cancer Institute Clinical Trial Cooperative Group breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer clinical trials in 2000 through 2002. In a separate analysis, the ethnic distribution of patients enrolled in 2000 through 2002 was compared with those enrolled in 1996 through 1998, using logistic regression models to estimate the relative risk ratio of enrollment for racial and ethnic minorities to that of white patients during these time periods. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Enrollment fraction, defined as the number of trial enrollees divided by the estimated US cancer cases in each race and age subgroup. RESULTS Cancer research participation varied significantly across racial/ethnic and age groups. Compared with a 1.8% enrollment fraction among white patients, lower enrollment fractions were noted in Hispanic (1.3%; odds ratio [OR] vs whites, 0.72; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.68-0.77; P<.001) and black (1.3%; OR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.68-0.74; P<.001) patients. There was a strong relationship between age and enrollment fraction, with trial participants 30 to 64 years of age representing 3.0% of incident cancer patients in that age group, in comparison to 1.3% of 65- to 74-year-old patients and 0.5% of patients 75 years of age and older. This inverse relationship between age and trial enrollment fraction was consistent across racial and ethnic groups. Although the total number of trial participants increased during our study period, the representation of racial and ethnic minorities decreased. In comparison to whites, after adjusting for age, cancer type, and sex, patients enrolled in 2000 through 2002 were 24% less likely to be black (adjusted relative risk ratio, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.65-0.89; P<.001). Men were more likely than women to enroll in colorectal cancer trials (enrollment fractions: 2.1% vs 1.6%, respectively; OR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.24-1.35; P<.001) and lung cancer trials (enrollment fractions: 0.9% vs 0.7%, respectively; OR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.16-1.31; P<.001). CONCLUSIONS Enrollment in cancer trials is low for all patient groups. Racial and ethnic minorities, women, and the elderly were less likely to enroll in cooperative group cancer trials than were whites, men, and younger patients, respectively. The proportion of trial participants who are black has declined in recent years.
Computer simulation of Purkinje fibres from a rabbit model of congestive heart failure

This study used computer simulation to investigate the influence of heart failure (HF) on the Purkinje fibre. The study was based on a rabbit model of HF caused by volume and pressure overload. In the left ventricular free running Purkinje fibres, the expression level of the key cardiac ion channels was measured at the mRNA (messenger RNA) level using qPCR (quantitative polymerase chain reaction). Major changes were observed. To simulate the effect of these changes, we began with a model of the healthy rabbit Purkinje fibre action potential. In the absence of ionic current measurements from failing rabbit Purkinje fibres, we assumed that changes in ionic currents mirrored changes in ion channel expression: ionic conductances were adjusted based on changes in expression of the relevant ion channels. In the simulations, if all changes observed were incorporated, the Purkinje fibre is predicted to become inexcitable. Such an outcome would result in left bundle branch block (as observed in HF patients). The simulations predict that HF-dependent changes in INaL, Ito, IKr and IK1 and will have the most influence on the Purkinje fibre action potential. The predicted changes in the Purkinje fibre action potential were compared to actual changes measured using sharp microelectrodes.
Systemic and Pulmonary Hypertension eta-Blockade Mitigates Exercise lood Pressure in Hypertensive Male Patients

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to determine the antihypertensive agent(s) more likely to mitigate an exaggerated rise in exercise blood pressure (BP) in hypertensive patients. BACKGROUND An exaggerated rise in exercise BP is associated with increased cardiovascular risk. There are no recommendations for treating such response. METHODS Participants were hypertensive men (n 2,318; age 60 10 years), undergoing a routine exercise test at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Washington, DC. Antihypertensive therapy included angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (n 437), calcium-channel blockers (n 223), diuretics (n 226), and combinations (n 1,442), beta-blockers alone (n 201) or in combination with other antihypertensive agents (n 467), and none (n 208). Exercise BP, heart rate (HR) and rate-pressure product (RPP) at maximal and submaximal workloads were assessed. RESULTS After adjusting for covariates, patients treated with beta-blockers or beta-blocker–based therapy had significantly lower BP, HR, and RPP at 5 and 7 metabolic equivalents (METs) and peak exercise than those treated with any other antihypertensive agent or combination (p 0.05). The likelihood of achieving an exercise systolic BP of 210 mm Hg was 68% lower (odds ratio 0.32, 96% confidence interval 0.2 to 0.53) in the beta-blocker–based therapy versus other medications. African Americans exhibited higher BP and HR than Caucasians at all exercise workloads regardless of antihypertensive therapy and had over a 90% higher likelihood for an abnormal exercise BP response. This risk was attenuated by 35% with a beta-blocker–based therapy. CONCLUSIONS Significantly lower exercise BP, HR, and RPP levels are achieved with beta-blocker–based therapy than with other antihypertensive agents regardless of race. However, BP was better controlled in Caucasians than in African Americans regardless of antihypertensive therapy. (J Am Coll Cardiol 2006;47:794–8) © 2006 by the American College of ublished by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.jacc. 2005.09. 057
αTubulin 67C and Ncd Are Essential for Establishing a Cortical Microtubular Network and Formation of the Bicoid mRNA Gradient in Drosophila

The Bicoid (Bcd) protein gradient in Drosophila serves as a paradigm for gradient formation in textbooks. To explain the generation of the gradient, the ARTS model, which is based on the observation of a bcd mRNA gradient, proposes that the bcd mRNA, localized at the anterior pole at fertilization, migrates along microtubules (MTs) at the cortex to the posterior to form a bcd mRNA gradient which is translated to form a protein gradient. To fulfil the criteria of the ARTS model, an early cortical MT network is thus a prerequisite. We report hitherto undiscovered MT activities in the early embryo important for bcd mRNA transport: (i) an early and omnidirectional MT network exclusively at the anterior cortex of early nuclear cycle embryos showing activity during metaphase and anaphase only, (ii) long MTs up to 50 µm extending into the yolk at blastoderm stage to enable basal-apical transport. The cortical MT network is not anchored to the actin cytoskeleton. The posterior transport of the mRNA via the cortical MT network critically depends on maternally-expressed αTubulin67C and the minus-end motor Ncd. In either mutant, cortical transport of the bcd mRNA does not take place and the mRNA migrates along another yet undisclosed interior MT network, instead. Our data strongly corroborate the ARTS model and explain the occurrence of the bcd mRNA gradient.
Non-stationary Hidden Semi Markov Models in Activity Recognition

Activity recognition is a process by which the ongoing observed behavior of an agent is tracked and mapped to a given model, explaining the behavior and accounting for hidden or unobservable state (e.g., goals or beliefs of the observed agents). Various methods for activity recognition exist. A popular family of such methods rely on Hidden Markov Models HMMs and variants for recognition. These models, however, do not account for changes in transition probabilities based on the duration an agent has spent in a given state. This paper investigates Markov models that go beyond existing models, to explicitly model the dependency of transition probabilities on state duration. In particular, we propose the use of Non-stationary Hidden Semi Markov Models (NHSMMs) in activity recognition. We present the NHSMM model, and compare its performance in recognizing normal and abnormal behavior, using synthetic data from an industry simulator. We show that for relatively simple activity recognition tasks, both HSMMs and NHSMMs easily and significantly outperform HMMs. In more complex tasks, the NHSMMs also outperform the HSMMs, and allow significantly more accurately recognition.
A Statistical Test for Clades in Phylogenies

We investigated testing the likelihood of a phylogenetic tree by comparison to its subtree pruning and regrafting (SPR) neighbors, with or without re-optimizing branch lengths. This is inspired by aspects of Bayesian significance tests, and the use of SPRs for heuristically finding maximum likelihood trees. Through a number of simulations with the Jukes-Cantor model on various topologies, it is observed that the SPR tests are informative, and reasonably fast compared to searching for the maximum likelihood tree. This suggests that the SPR tests would be a useful addition to the suite of existing statistical tests, for identifying potential inaccuracies of inferred topologies.
Risk Factors for Buruli Ulcer in Ghana—A Case Control Study in the Suhum-Kraboa-Coaltar and Akuapem South Districts of the Eastern Region

Background Buruli ulcer (BU) is a skin disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans. Its exact mode of transmission is not known. Previous studies have identified demographic, socio-economic, health and hygiene as well as environment related risk factors. We investigated whether the same factors pertain in Suhum-Kraboa-Coaltar (SKC) and Akuapem South (AS) Districts in Ghana which previously were not endemic for BU. Methods We conducted a case control study. A case of BU was defined as any person aged 2 years or more who resided in study area (SKC or AS District) diagnosed according to the WHO clinical case definition for BU and matched with age- (+/−5 years), gender-, and community controls. A structured questionnaire on host, demographic, environmental, and behavioural factors was administered to participants. Results A total of 113 cases and 113 community controls were interviewed. Multivariate conditional logistic regression analysis identified presence of wetland in the neighborhood (OR = 3.9, 95% CI = 1.9–8.2), insect bites in water/mud (OR = 5.7, 95% CI = 2.5–13.1), use of adhesive when injured (OR = 2.7, 95% CI = 1.1–6.8), and washing in the Densu river (OR = 2.3, 95% CI = 1.1–4.96) as risk factors associated with BU. Rubbing an injured area with alcohol (OR = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.008–0.57) and wearing long sleeves for farming (OR = 0.29, 95% CI = 0.14–0.62) showed protection against BU. Conclusion This study identified the presence of wetland, insect bites in water, use of adhesive when injured, and washing in the river as risk factors for BU; and covering limbs during farming as well as use of alcohol after insect bites as protective factors against BU in Ghana. Until paths of transmission are unraveled, control strategies in BU endemic areas should focus on these known risk factors.
Dynamic occupancy models for analyzing species' range dynamics across large geographic scales

Large-scale biodiversity data are needed to predict species' responses to global change and to address basic questions in macroecology. While such data are increasingly becoming available, their analysis is challenging because of the typically large heterogeneity in spatial sampling intensity and the need to account for observation processes. Two further challenges are accounting for spatial effects that are not explained by covariates, and drawing inference on dynamics at these large spatial scales. We developed dynamic occupancy models to analyze large-scale atlas data. In addition to occupancy, these models estimate local colonization and persistence probabilities. We accounted for spatial autocorrelation using conditional autoregressive models and autologistic models. We fitted the models to detection/nondetection data collected on a quarter-degree grid across southern Africa during two atlas projects, using the hadeda ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) as an example. The model accurately reproduced the range expansion between the first (SABAP1: 1987–1992) and second (SABAP2: 2007–2012) Southern African Bird Atlas Project into the drier parts of interior South Africa. Grid cells occupied during SABAP1 generally remained occupied, but colonization of unoccupied grid cells was strongly dependent on the number of occupied grid cells in the neighborhood. The detection probability strongly varied across space due to variation in effort, observer identity, seasonality, and unexplained spatial effects. We present a flexible hierarchical approach for analyzing grid-based atlas data using dynamical occupancy models. Our model is similar to a species' distribution model obtained using generalized additive models but has a number of advantages. Our model accounts for the heterogeneous sampling process, spatial correlation, and perhaps most importantly, allows us to examine dynamic aspects of species ranges.