Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of rabbit coronary arterial relaxation induced by acetylcholine and lemakalim: activation of ATP sensitive potassium channels.

STUDY OBJECTIVE The purpose was to assess the role of ATP sensitive potassium channels (KATP) in endothelium dependent vasodilatation induced by acetylcholine, or endothelium independent vasodilatation induced by lemakalim in rabbit coronary arteries. DESIGN The effect of glibenclamide, a specific inhibitor of KATP, on coronary artery relaxation induced by acetylcholine or lemakalim was investigated. The relaxing effectiveness of acetylcholine and lemakalim on coronary arteries precontracted with KCl (K+) or prostaglandin F2 alpha (PGF2 alpha) was compared. EXPERIMENTAL MATERIALS Left epicardial coronary arteries from male New Zealand white rabbits (2.5-3.0 kg), killed by an overdose of pentobarbitone, were dissected free of connective tissue. Rings suspended in organ baths for the measurement of isometric tension. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS K+ (30 mmol.litre-1) and PGF2 alpha (3 mumols.litre-1) caused comparable contraction (p greater than 0.05) in endothelium intact or endothelium denuded coronary arterial rings. Acetylcholine induced relaxation was greater in endothelium intact rings precontracted with PGF2 alpha than with K+ and was abolished by the removal of endothelium. Relaxations induced by acetylcholine (0.1 and 0.3 mumol.litre-1) were reduced from 82(SEM 2.7)% and 93(2.8)% to 71(2.4)% and 82(2.7)% (p less than 0.05), and to 63(3.2)% and 79(4.5)% (p less than 0.05 or less than 0.01) by glibenclamide (3 and 10 mumols.litre-1) respectively in PGF2 alpha precontracted rings; and also attenuated (p less than 0.05 or less than 0.01) in K+ precontracted rings. Lemakalim induced relaxation was greater in endothelium denuded rings precontracted with PGF2 alpha than with K+, and was markedly reduced by glibenclamide (p less than 0.01). CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that activation of KATP may partially be involved in endothelium dependent relaxation induced by acetylcholine in rabbit coronary arteries. Lemakalim-induced endothelium independent relaxation results mainly from activation of KATP.
Behavioral Senescence and Aging-Related Changes in Motor Neurons and Brain Neuromodulator Levels Are Ameliorated by Lifespan-Extending Reproductive Dormancy in Drosophila

The lifespan of Drosophila melanogaster can be extended substantially by inducing reproductive dormancy (also known as diapause) by lowered temperature and short days. This increase of longevity is accompanied by lowered metabolism and increased stress tolerance. We ask here whether behavioral senescence is ameliorated during adult dormancy. To study this we kept flies for seven or more weeks in normal rearing conditions or in diapause conditions and compared to 1-week-old flies in different behavioral assays of sleep, negative geotaxis and exploratory walking. We found that the senescence of geotaxis and locomotor behavior seen under normal rearing conditions was negligible in flies kept in dormancy. The normal senescence of rhythmic activity and sleep patterns during the daytime was also reduced by adult dormancy. Investigating the morphology of specific neuromuscular junctions (NMJs), we found that changes normally seen with aging do not take place in dormant flies. To monitor age-associated changes in neuronal circuits regulating activity rhythms, sleep and walking behavior we applied antisera to tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), serotonin and several neuropeptides to examine changes in expression levels and neuron morphology. In most neuron types the levels of stored neuromodulators decreased during normal aging, but not in diapause treated flies. No signs of neurodegeneration were seen in either condition. Our data suggest that age-related changes in motor neurons could be the cause of part of the behavioral senescence and that this is ameliorated by reproductive diapause. Earlier studies established a link between age-associated decreases in neuromodulator levels and behavioral decline that could be rescued by overexpression of neuromodulator. Thus, it is likely that the retained levels of neuromodulators in dormant flies alleviate behavioral senescence.
Transcutaneous cervical esophagus ultrasound in adults: relation with ambulatory 24-h pH-monitoring and esophageal manometry.

AIM To determine the gastroesophageal refluxate in the cervical esophagus (CE) and measure transcutaneous cervical esophageal ultrasound (TCEUS) findings [anterior wall thickness (WT) of CE, esophageal luminal diameter (ELD), esophageal diameter (ED)]; to compare TCEUS findings in the patient subgroups divided according to 24-h esophageal pH monitoring and manometry; and to investigate possible cut-off values according to the TCEUS findings as a predictor of gastroesophageal reflux (GER). METHODS In 45/500 patients, refluxate was visualized in TCEUS. 38/45 patients underwent esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD), 24-h pH monitoring and manometry. RESULTS The 38 patients were grouped according to 24-h pH monitoring as follows: Group A: GER-positive (n = 20) [Includes Group B: isolated proximal reflux (PR) (n = 6), Group C: isolated distal reflux (DR) (n = 6), and Group D: both PR/DR (n = 8)]; Group E: no reflux (n = 13); and Group F: hypersensitive esophagus (HSE) (n = 5). Groups B + D indicated total PR patients (n = 14), Groups E + F reflux-negatives with HSE (n = 18), and Groups A + F reflux-positives with HSE (n = 25). When the 38 patients were grouped according to manometry findings, 24 had normal esophageal manometry; 7 had hypotensive and 2 had hypertensive lower esophageal sphincter (LES); and 5 had ineffective esophageal motility disorder (IEM). The ELD measurement was greater in group A + F than group E (P = 0.023, 5.0 +/- 1.3 vs 3.9 +/- 1.4 mm). In 27/38 patients, there was at least one pathologic acid reflux and/or pathologic manometry finding. The cut-off value for ELD of 4.83 mm had 79% sensitivity and 61% specificity in predicting the PR between Groups B + D and E (AUC = 0.775, P = 0.015). CONCLUSION Visualizing refluxate in TCEUS was useful as a pre-diagnostic tool for estimating GER or manometric pathology in 71.1% of adults in our study, but it was not diagnostic for CE WT.
Global-software development lifecycle: an exploratory study

This study was conducted to explore the efficacy of the global-software development lifecycle (global-SDLC), which comprises design, implementation and usability evaluation phase. A spreadsheet was adapted using the global-SDLC process to accommodate a number of cultures. The design and implementation phases were efficacious. However, in the usability evaluation phase, the usability evaluation techniques were only efficacious when participants, who were experienced computer users and participants who were familiar with the experimenter, were employed. Explanations, from cultural literature such as Hofstede, are presented and implications of these findings on the usability evaluation phase and the global-SDLC are also described.
Reward-to-Reduce: An Incentive Mechanism for Economic Demand Response of Colocation Datacenters

Even though demand response of data centers has attracted many studies, there are very limited attempts on an important segment: colocation datacenters. Unlike large-scale (Google-type) datacenters, the colocation operator lacks control over its tenant servers, which entails a special interest in a design of incentive mechanisms, such that the operator can coordinate tenants to reduce the power usage for demand response. However, most previous studies ignore the role of the demand response provider (DRP), who uses pricing signals as a guide for customer response and as a compensation for their cutting electricity usage. To address this oversight, we propose an incentive mechanism Reward-to-Reduce for colocation's economic demand response, which shows an interaction between the DRP compensation to the colocation operator, and the colocation operator reward to tenants. Observing that this interaction contains strategic behaviors, we first formulate a two-stage Stackelberg game, where we show a unique competitive equilibrium of the operator strategy in the second stage, and a nonconvex problem of finding the optimal DRP compensation price in the first stage. We next analyze the second-stage equilibrium using an exact analysis and design an algorithm that can efficiently search the first-stage optimal DRP price with a reduced search space. Since the exact analysis can be impractical due to required tenants' private information, we also propose an approximate approach with limited tenant information. Extensive case studies show that the approximate approach can have the same performance as the exact analysis in a wide array of case studies and the optimal DRP price can be determined effectively, with which the corresponding DRP individual cost is compared with the social cost.
On evaluating the signal reliability of self-checking arithmetic circuits

Fault-tolerant design approaches have been studied as a possible solution for the expected reduction in the reliability of nanoscale integrated circuits. The increase in functional reliability, obtained with fault-tolerant design techniques, comes at a price, i.e., hardware or temporal redundancy. The resulting overhead can be justified in mission critical applications but for consumer electronics, one of the drivers of nanoscale circuits, other criteria, e.g., signal reliability and time penalty, must be considered when evaluating the use of fault-tolerant designs. To study the impact of fault-tolerant designs in the behavior of combinational circuits, some fault-tolerant adders were evaluated, based on the Probabilistic Binomial Reliability model, targeting signal reliability and time penalty. The results obtained show the compromises associated with redundant designs.
A Character-level Convolutional Neural Network for Distinguishing Similar Languages and Dialects

Discriminating between closely-related language varieties is considered a challenging and important task. This paper describes our submission to the DSL 2016 shared-task, which included two sub-tasks: one on discriminating similar languages and one on identifying Arabic dialects. We developed a character-level neural network for this task. Given a sequence of characters, our model embeds each character in vector space, runs the sequence through multiple convolutions with different filter widths, and pools the convolutional representations to obtain a hidden vector representation of the text that is used for predicting the language or dialect. We primarily focused on the Arabic dialect identification task and obtained an F1 score of 0.4834, ranking 6th out of 18 participants. We also analyze errors made by our system on the Arabic data in some detail, and point to challenges such an approach is faced with.
Generating spontaneous elliptical utterance

To generate spontaneous utterances, it is important to omit some items from them appropriately. Previously, generation of elliptical utterances was discussed only from a view of whether an item in question is known or unknown in the context of dialogue. We point out that some items that are already known should not be omitted in some situation. For example, omitting too many items from utterances makes a hearer to feel that the speaker is impolite. In this paper, we propose some strategies to generate appropriate elliptical English utterances, given a politeness level. Our system can translate utterances with no ellipses into appropriate elliptical utterances using the strategies. The strategies are obtained by analysis of some dialogues, but we show that they are applicable to other dialogues.
Graded Bioassay for Demonstration of Brain Rescue From Experimental Acute Ischemia in Rats

This study explored the correlation between duration of focal ischemia and infarct volume in spontaneously hypertensive rats as a measure of outcome after neuroprotective intervention. Methods We used 2,3,5-riphenyltetrazolium chloride staining to discriminate infarcted tissue and calculate infarct volume 24 hours after temporary tandem common carotid/middle cerebral artery occlusion lasting 5 to 150 minutes. We used a graded bioassay described by logistic function and executed by computer program (ALLFIT) to evaluate changes in infarct volume after increasing durations of ischemia. The method allowed us to calculate the maximal infarct volume (Volmax) and the duration of ischemia before reperfusion producing half-maximal infarct size (T50). Hypothermia and the N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist CNS-1102 begun after the onset of ischemia were tested for their ability to reduce Volmax and prolong T50 as analyzed by ALLFTT. Results Volmax was 180.6±22.4 mm3 and T50 was 45.9±5.8 minutes in control rats. Hypothermia (30°C) applied during ischemia reduced Volmax by 66 mm3 and extended T50 by 50% (P<.05 for each comparison). CNS-1102, like hypothermia, extended T50 by 44% but did not have an effect on Volmax. Conclusions Analysis of the changes of infarct size after increasing durations of ischemia indicates that although both were protective, the two treatments tested may exhibit different profiles of efficacy. This method of analyzing ischemiainduced damage may be very sensitive for studying the efficacy and possible clinical use of neuronal protective therapies for hyperacute stroke.
Aim44p regulates phosphorylation of Hof1p to promote contractile ring closure during cytokinesis in budding yeast

Aim44p undergoes septin-dependent localization to the actomyosin ring and regulates contractile ring closure and the abundance, phosphorylation, and dynamics of Hof1p, a regulator of actomyosin ring closure. It also interacts directly with Hof1p. Thus Aim44p is a novel regulator of contractile ring closure in budding yeast.
Using Minimum Bounding Cube to Discover Valuable Salinity/Temperature Patterns from Ocean Science Data

A novel data mining techniques for finding interesting spatial-temporal patterns in ocean data is presented. The data consist of time series measurements of upper ocean science variables (e.g., salinity and temperature). Extracting interesting patterns from ocean variables is of important for understanding the relationship between ocean salinity/ temperature structures and climate variability. Association rules mining is applied in the search for these spatial-temporal patterns. Most traditional data mining models focus on mining association rules among attributes within one transaction. For example, if salinity rose, then temperature rises. However, people may be interested in discovering additional relations among transactions and take context such as time or location into consideration. An example of such a rule might be "if the salinity in area A rose from 5% to 7%, then the temperature in area B will rise from 0% to 2.5% in the next month. " In this case, the associated salinity/temperature variations among different locations and days are revealed. To overcome these issues, a multi-dimensional inter-transaction association rules mining framework was developed. Unlike other mining algorithms that suffer from a large number of inter-transaction items, the proposed Apriori-like method treats each event from the ocean science data as a transaction and applies the MBC (minimum bounding cube) to form inter-transactions within the maxspan. Since there is no need to slide the maxspan window, the proposed method is easy to implement and it is computationally efficient.
Hybridization increases invasive knotweed success

Hybridization is one of the fundamental mechanisms by which rapid evolution can occur in exotic species. If hybrids show increased vigour, this could significantly contribute to invasion success. Here, we compared the success of the two invasive knotweeds, Fallopia japonica and F. sachalinensis, and their hybrid, F. × bohemica, in competing against experimental communities of native plants. Using plant material from multiple clones of each taxon collected across a latitudinal gradient in Central Europe, we found that knotweed hybrids performed significantly better in competition with a native community and that they more strongly reduced the growth of the native plants. One of the parental species, F. sachalinensis, regenerated significantly less well from rhizomes, and this difference disappeared if activated carbon was added to the substrate, which suggests allelopathic inhibition of F. sachalinensis regeneration by native plants. We found substantial within‐taxon variation in competitive success in all knotweed taxa, but variation was generally greatest in the hybrid. Interestingly, there was also significant variation within the genetically uniform F. japonica, possibly reflecting epigenetic differences. Our study shows that invasive knotweed hybrids are indeed more competitive than their parents and that hybridization increased the invasiveness of the exotic knotweed complex.
Intonatiewaarneming van het Nederlands van Nederlandse studenten Japans en Mandarijn-Chinees

This study focuses on the question whether learning a language that has a (very) different type of intonation from someone’s native language has any influence on the way the intonation in this language is perceived. The participants in this intonation perception experiment were Dutch students of Chinese or Japanese. The results of the experiments were compared to the results of a similar study done by M. van Egmond [1] in which the participants were Dutch people who did not study Chinese or Japanese. It can be inferred that studying Chinese or Japanese has had a positive influence on the perception of intonation in one’s mother tongue.
A Novel Function of Apolipoprotein E: Upregulation of ATP-Binding Cassette Transporter A1 Expression

Despite the well known importance of apolipoprotein (Apo) E in cholesterol efflux, the effect of ApoE on the expression of ATP-binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1) has never been investigated. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of ApoE on ApoB-carrying lipoprotein-induced expression of ABCA1, a protein that mediates cholesterol efflux. Our data demonstrate that ApoB-carrying lipoproteins obtained from both wild-type and ApoE knockout mice induced ApoAI-mediated cholesterol efflux in mouse macrophages, which was associated with an enhanced ABCA1 promoter activity, and an increased ABCA1 mRNA and protein expression. In addition, these lipoproteins increased the level of phosphorylated specificity protein 1 (Sp1) and the amount of Sp1 bound to the ABCA1 promoter. However, all these inductions were significantly diminished in cells treated with ApoE-free lipoproteins, when compared to those treated with wild-type lipoproteins. Enrichment with human ApoE3 reversed the reduced inducibility of ApoE-free lipoproteins. Moreover, we observed that inhibition of Sp1 DNA-binding by mithramycin A diminished ABCA1 expression and ApoAI-mediated cholesterol efflux induced by ApoB-carrying lipoproteins, and that mutation of the Sp1-binding motif in the ABCA1 promoter region diminished ApoB-carrying lipoprotein-induced ABCA1 promoter activity. Collectively, these data suggest that ApoE associated with ApoB-carrying lipoproteins has an upregulatory role on ABCA1 expression, and that induction of Sp1 phosphorylation is a mechanism by which ApoE upregulates ABCA1 expression.
Remus: High Availability via Asynchronous Virtual Machine Replication. (Best Paper)

Allowing applications to survive hardware failure is an expensive undertaking, which generally involves reengineering software to include complicated recovery logic as well as deploying special-purpose hardware; this represents a severe barrier to improving the dependability of large or legacy applications. We describe the construction of a general and transparent high availability service that allows existing, unmodified software to be protected from the failure of the physical machine on which it runs. Remus provides an extremely high degree of fault tolerance, to the point that a running system can transparently continue execution on an alternate physical host in the face of failure with only seconds of downtime, while completely preserving host state such as active network connections. Our approach encapsulates protected software in a virtual machine, asynchronously propagates changed state to a backup host at frequencies as high as forty times a second, and uses speculative execution to concurrently run the active VM slightly ahead of the replicated system state.
Large Scale Decision Making in Participatory Environmental Design

Decision-making involves choosing between one ore more alternatives, to achieve one ore more goals. This process is composed of a series of steps, ranging from the identification of the problem itself, going trough the definition of criteria that characterize possible solutions to the problem, to the decision-making itself, in which a possible solution to the exposed problem is finally adopted. These steps can be performed by a single person or by a group of people. In group decisions, the solution choice at the end of the process must be effectively made by the group. To support this process, there are decision support systems that employ different approaches, supporting groups or not. This paper defines the decision-making process, presenting benefits of group decision and describes a system to support decisions in large scale groups. Participatory design in the BamPetro environment preservation project seeks to bring a large number of end users into the design process to take into account different perspectives, and help the group cope with multi-objective decisions. These decisions demand synergy among users of the environment preservation project, even though they represent different areas, competencies, political agendas and social interests.
Metastatic lung cancer, an interesting stroke mimic

An elderly man presented to the emergency department with symptoms of a left-sided weakness. A CT of the brain scan showed an abnormality, and he was diagnosed with a stroke and admitted to the stroke unit. The stroke consultant reviewed him the next morning; a detailed history was acquired and imaging reviewed. As a result of the history of neurological symptoms, a diagnosis of malignancy was suspected and an MRI of the brain was ordered. This did not show a stroke but suggested a mass lesion. A CT of the chest, abdomen and pelvis was ordered to rule out a primary cause. Unfortunately, this showed widespread metastatic carcinoma with a left upper lobe primary (T4 N3 M1b). This was confirmed on histology. The patient died soon after the diagnosis.
Sample-Optimal Fourier Sampling in Any Constant Dimension

We give an algorithm for ℓ<sub>2</sub>/ℓ<sub>2</sub> sparse recovery from Fourier measurements using O(k log N) samples, matching the lower bound of Do Ba-Indyk-Price-Woodruff'10 for non-adaptive algorithms up to constant factors for any k ≤ N<sup>1-δ</sup>. The algorithm runs in Õ(N) time. Our algorithm extends to higher dimensions, leading to sample complexity of Õ<sub>d</sub>(k log N), which is optimal up to constant factors for any d = O(1). These are the first sample optimal algorithms for these problems. A preliminary experimental evaluation indicates that our algorithm has empirical sampling complexity comparable to that of other recovery methods known in the literature, while providing strong provable guarantees on the recovery quality.