Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The voltage‐dependent block of ATP‐sensitive potassium channels of frog skeletal muscle by caesium and barium ions.

1. Patch clamp techniques were used to study the action of external Cs+ and Ba2+ on adenosine 5'‐triphosphate (ATP)‐dependent K+ channels in sarcolemmal vesicles from frog skeletal muscle. Both ions block channels in a voltage‐dependent fashion, block increasing with hyperpolarization. 2. The Cs+ block is flickery, mean unitary current being reduced and open‐level noise increased. The concentration dependence is consistent with 1:1 binding, with a dissociation constant (Kd) of 4.1 mM at ‐62 mV. The Kd increases e‐fold for a 20 mV depolarization. 3. The kinetics of Cs+ block were analysed by amplitude distribution analysis, and by measurement of the excess open‐level variance. Both methods gave similar rate constants for blocking and unblocking; about 20 mM‐1 ms‐1 and 75 ms‐1 at ‐62 mV. 4. All the voltage dependence of the Cs+ block appears to lie in the blocking reaction; unblocking is independent of voltage. 5. Ba2+ blocks with slower kinetics, so that blocking events can be resolved in single‐channel records. Ba2+ reduces mean open time and causes long closings. 6. The blocking rate constant for Ba2+ was measured from the open times. It was about 1.7 mM‐1 ms‐1 at ‐62 mV and increased e‐fold for a 40 mV hyperpolarization. The unblocking rate, measured from closed times, yielded a Kd of about 0.1 mM at ‐62 mV, in agreement with that measured from the reduction in open‐state probability. 7. Our results suggest that Cs+ and Ba2+ block at sites within the channel, and provide evidence that the channel is a multi‐ion pore.
Urbanism, culture and the post-industrial city: Challenging the 'Barcelona model'

Book synopsis: This unique book, written by local experts in the city, deals with the transformation of Barcelona during the last twenty years. Barcelona has been held up as a model of urban planning and economic regeneration amongst built environment professionals. The redesign of square parks and streets throughout the city in the 1980s first attracted attention and praise and then the 1992 Olympics hosted in the city raised international awareness. The city received many awards and accolades including a Gold Medal from the RIBA. The selection of writings is well illustrated throughout with maps, drawings and photographs and will be of interest to architects, planners and urban designers as well as those interested in the social and economic impacts of regeneration.
Use of a pharmacokinetic model to assess chlorpyrifos exposure and dose in children, based on urinary biomarker measurements.

Chlorpyrifos is a common agricultural insecticide and has been used residentially in the United States until the year 2000 when this use was restricted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA). A chlorpyrifos metabolite, 3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinol (TCPy) has been found in urine samples collected during exposure field studies. In this work, we use urinary biomarker data and the inverse solution of a simple pharmacokinetic (PK) model for chlorpyrifos to estimate the magnitude and timing of doses. Three urine samples were collected on separate days from each of 15 children (ages 3-12) who were participants in the Minnesota Children's Pesticide Exposure Study (MNCPES). The total volume of urine was noted and samples analyzed for TCPY: The urinary data was used along with constraints imposed on dose timing, based on responses of the individuals to pesticide-use surveys. We predicted the time and magnitude of multiple "event" exposures characterized by short-term, relatively high doses superimposed over a continuous background exposure. The average dose of chlorpyrifos predicted by the model was 1.61 microg/kg per reported event. Average background dose rate for these children that reported exposure events was 0.0062 microg/kg/h, or 0.15 microg/kg/day. In addition to predicting the total dose of chlorpyrifos received by an individual from urinary biomarker measurements, the model can then be run in a forward manner once the exposure regime is determined. This will allow the prediction of the total amount of TCPy eliminated in the urine over any time period of interest.
Implicit Self-Theories in the Academic Domain: Implications for Goal Orientation, Attributions, Affect, and Self-Esteem Change

This study supported hypotheses derived from Dweck's model about the implications of two implicit self-theories: Entity theorists believe their intelligence is fixed, whereas Incremental theorists believe their intelligence can be increased. Findings showed no normative change in implicit self-theories from high school through college and relatively stable individual differences during college. Entity theorists tended to adopt performance goals, whereas Incremental theorists tended to adopt learning goals. In terms of attributions, affect, and behavioral response to challenge, Entity theorists displayed a helpless response pattern and Incremental theorists displayed a mastery-oriented response pattern. Finally, Entity theorists declined in self-esteem during college whereas Incremental theorists increased self-esteem, and path analyses showed that this effect was mediated by goal orientation and the helpless versus mastery response patterns.
Incorporation of Nucleoside Probes Opposite O6‐Methylguanine by Sulfolobus solfataricus DNA Polymerase Dpo4: Importance of Hydrogen Bonding

O6‐Methylguanine (O6‐MeG) is a mutagenic DNA lesion, arising from the action of methylating agents on guanine (G) in DNA. Dpo4, an archaeal low‐fidelity Y‐family DNA polymerase involved in translesion DNA synthesis (TLS), is a model for studying how human Y‐family polymerases bypass DNA adducts. Previous work showed that Dpo4‐mediated dTTP incorporation is favored opposite O6‐MeG rather than opposite G. However, factors influencing the preference of Dpo4 to incorporate dTTP opposite O6‐MeG are not fully defined. In this study, we investigated the influence of structural features of incoming dNTPs on their enzymatic incorporation opposite O6‐MeG in a DNA template. To this end, we utilized a new fluorescence‐based primer extension assay to evaluate the incorporation efficiency of a panel of synthetic dNTPs opposite G or O6‐MeG by Dpo4. In single‐dNTP primer extension studies, the synthetic dNTPs were preferentially incorporated opposite G, relative to O6‐MeG. Moreover, pyrimidine‐based dNTPs were generally better incorporated than purine‐based syn‐conformation dNTPs. The results suggest that hydrophobicity of the incoming dNTP appears to have little influence on the process of nucleotide selection by Dpo4, with hydrogen bonding capacity being a major influence. Additionally, modifications at the C2‐position of dCTP increase the selectivity for incorporation opposite O6‐MeG without a significant loss of efficiency.
Two short-term, cognitive interventions for the reduction of test anxiety

Abstract Relative efficacy of Attentional Skills Training and Systematic Rational Restructuring as short-term (50 minutes each), cognitive interventions was determined on a sample of ninth-grade girls from India. Only Attentional Skills Training and not Systematic Rational Restructuring has been found to be effective for high test-anxious girls (regardless of intelligence), not only in the reduction of state test anxiety and its worry state component, but also in the reduction of anxiety interference and in the improvement of the estimated percent time spent on task. However, neither of the interventions improved the performance on the two difficult experimental tasks when compared to controls.
Power-Aware System-on-Chip Test Optimization through Frequency and Voltage Scaling

A System-on-Chip (SoC) is a complete system that has been integrated onto a single chip. An SoC is often designed by embedding reusable blocks called cores. With shrinking device sizes, SoC cores are growing in number and complexity, which has led to high volumes of test data and resulted in long test times. Therefore, reducing test cost by minimizing the overall test time is one of the main goals of System-on-Chip (SoC) testing. Power dissipation during test mode is often much higher than that of functional mode and hence, test power management is also a major concern in SoC testing. To efficiently manage test resources and power dissipation, tests for the SoC cores are arranged into test schedules. Within these test schedules, the core tests may (as in the case of session-based test schedule) or may not (as in the case of sessionless test schedule) be grouped into test sessions. Traditional SoC test methods assume a constant test frequency and supply voltage (VDD) for the entire test schedule. However, test time and test power can be regulated by VDD and test clock frequency to optimize SoC test schedules for a given power budget. The research presented in this dissertation focuses on power-aware optimization of SoC test schedules to minimize test time by scaling the supply voltage and test clock rate. This scaling can be session wise (in the case of a session-based test schedule) or dynamic (in case of sessionless test schedule). SoC testing can be sped up by increasing the test clock rate. However, test clock is constrained by the rated power limit (power constraint) and the critical path delay (structure constraint) of the SoC cores. These constraints can be manipulated using VDD. Therefore, by scaling VDD and clock rate, an optimal test time and schedule can be obtained for an SoC. For the session-based test scheduling, the optimization problem is mathematically formulated and solved through Integer Linear Program (ILP) based methods to provide optimal
Prevalence and correlates of left atrial enlargement in essential hypertension: role of ventricular geometry and the metabolic syndrome: The Evaluation of Target Organ Damage in Hypertension study

Background The cardiac effects of hypertension include a variety of structural changes such as increases in left ventricular mass (LVM) and left atrium (LA) size. Although data on hypertension-induced left ventricular changes are extensive, relatively little information is available on LA size from large-scale studies. Objective We sought to assess the prevalence of LA enlargement in a large selected hypertensive population and to determine the relations of LA size to several biologic variables including left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and metabolic disturbances. Methods A total of 2500 untreated and treated uncomplicated essential hypertensives consecutively attending, for the first time, our hospital out-patient hypertension clinic and included in the Evaluation of Target Organ Damage in Hypertension, an observational ongoing registry of hypertension-related target organ damage (TOD), were considered for this analysis. All patients underwent extensive clinical, laboratory and ultrasonographic investigations searching for cardiac (and extracardiac) TOD. The LA was considered enlarged when its anteroposterior diameter exceeded 3.7 cm in women and 4.1 cm in men. LVH was defined according to two different criteria: ≥ 125 g/m2 in men and ≥ 110 g/m2 in women; or ≥ 51 g/m2.7 in men and ≥47 g/m2.7 in women. Results Enlarged LA diameter was present in 24.5% of women and in 21.5% of men. Compared with 1925 patients with normal LA size, the 575 patients with enlarged LA were older, more frequently overweight, had higher systolic blood pressure and included a greater proportion of subjects under antihypertensive treatment, with diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Both LA size and prevalence of LA enlargement differed significantly in relation to left ventricular geometry and LVM, being greater in patients with concentric or eccentric LVH than in those with left ventricular concentric remodeling or normal geometry. The prevalence of LA enlargement was similar in patients with concentric and eccentric LVH. According to a logistic regression analysis, overweight, LVH, fasting blood glucose > 7.0 mmol/l and metabolic syndrome were the main independent predictors of LA enlargement in the overall population as well as in both untreated and treated hypertensive subgroups. Conclusions Our study suggests that: LA enlargement is a common echocardiographic finding in selected essential hypertensive patients with different left ventricular geometric patterns; LA size and LA enlargement is related to LVM rather than the type of LVH; and, in addition to LVH, overweight, high fasting glucose and metabolic syndrome are associated with LA dimensions.
Showing robots how to follow people using a broomstick interface

Robots are poised to enter our everyday environments such as our homes and offices, contexts that present unique questions such as the style of the robot's actions. Style-oriented characteristics are difficult to define programmatically, a problem that is particularly prominent for a robot's interactive behaviors, those that must react accordingly to dynamic actions of people. In this paper, we present a technique for programming the style of how a robot should follow a person by demonstration, such that non-technical designers and users can directly create the style of following using their existing skill sets. We envision that simple physical interfaces like ours can be used by nontechnical people to design the style of a wide range of robotic behaviors.
Applying the Opacified Computation Model to Enforce Information Flow Policies in IoT Applications

Enforcing flow-control is an important, albeit difficult to achieve security goal in practical applications. In this paper, we consider the problem of flow-control in IoT applications and present an approach to enforce information flow policies on them. We describe a model called Opacified Computation and its implementation, FlowFence, and show how to port an existing IoT application (without flow policy enforcement) to one that uses FlowFence to guarantee protection against data leakage. Finally, we report on performance overhead and discuss directions for future work.
Cardiac muscarinic receptors decrease with age. In vitro and in vivo studies.

The M1 muscarinic receptor antagonist pirenzepine in low doses decreases resting heart rate; this effect declines with age (Poller, U., G. Nedelka, J. Radke, K. Pönicke, and O.-E. Brodde. 1997. J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. 29:187-193). To study possible mechanisms underlying this effect, we assessed (a) in six young (26 yr old) and six older volunteers (61 yr old), pirenzepine effects (0.32 and 0.64 mg intravenous [i.v.] bolus) on isoprenaline-induced heart rate increases; (b) in five heart transplant recipients, pirenzepine effects (0.05-10 mg i.v. bolus) on resting heart rate in the recipient's native and transplanted sinus nodes; and (c) in right atria from 39 patients of different ages (5 d-76 yr) undergoing open heart surgery, M2 muscarinic receptor density (by [3H]N-methyl-scopolamine binding) and adenylyl cyclase activity. (a) Pirenzepine at both doses decreased heart rate in young volunteers significantly more than in older volunteers; (b) pirenzepine (< 1 mg) decreased resting heart rate in the recipient's native but not transplanted sinus node; and (c) M2 receptor density and carbachol-induced inhibition of forskolin-stimulated adenylyl cyclase activity decreased significantly with the age of the patients. We conclude that pirenzepine decreases heart rate via inhibition of presynaptic M1 autoreceptors, thereby releasing endogenous acetylcholine, and that the heart rate-decreasing effect of acetylcholine declines with age because right atrial M2 receptor density and function decrease.
Taxon sampling and the accuracy of phylogenetic analyses

Appropriate and extensive taxon sampling is one of the most important determinants of accurate phylogenetic estimation. In addition, accuracy of inferences about evolutionary processes obtained from phyloge- netic analyses is improved significantly by thorough taxon sampling efforts. Many recent efforts to improve phylogenetic estimates have focused instead on increasing sequence length or the number of overall characters in the analysis, and this often does have a beneficial effect on the accuracy of phylogenetic analyses. However, phylogenetic analyses of few taxa (but each represented by many characters) can be subject to strong systematic biases, which in turn produce high measures of repeatability (such as bootstrap proportions) in support of incor- rect or misleading phylogenetic results. Thus, it is important for phylogeneticists to consider both the sampling of taxa, as well as the sampling of characters, in designing phylogenetic studies. Taxon sampling also improves estimates of evolutionary parameters derived from phylogenetic trees, and is thus important for improved applica- tions of phylogenetic analyses. Analysis of sensitivity to taxon inclusion, the possible effects of long-branch attraction, and sensitivity of parameter estimation for model-based methods should be a part of any careful and thorough phylogenetic analysis. Furthermore, recent improvements in phylogenetic algorithms and in computa- tional power have removed many constraints on analyzing large, thoroughly sampled data sets. Thorough taxon sampling is thus one of the most practical ways to improve the accuracy of phylogenetic estimates, as well as the accuracy of biological inferences that are based on these phylogenetic trees.
Three Avenues for Future Research on Creativity, Innovation, and Initiative

La creativite, l’innovation et l’initiative sont des processus psychologiques qui facilitent la transformation des roles professionnels individuels, des equipes et des organisations en ce qui est souhaitable. Cet article est donc axe sur des orientations de recherche virtuelles de ce secteur de plus en plus important. Plus precisement, nous indiquons trois graves lacunes, a savoir la necessite d’une plus grande differenciation des processus, d’une integration des concepts et d’une analyse transculturelle. Tout d’abord, les differents antecedents potentiels de la creativite specifique ou des phases de l’innovation ont beneficie d’une attention insuffisante. Ensuite, la recherche sur la creativite et l’innovation peut etre enrichie par une integration des concepts de proactivite recemment developpes telles que l’initiative personelle et la parole. Enfin, les differences transculturelles dans les valeurs, les orientations motivationnelles et les preferences relatives au leadership peuvent rendre compte de la facon dont la creativite et l’innovation sont mises en œuvre et cultivees a travers le monde. Eu egard a chacun de ces futurs defis, nous faisons des suggestions pour des avancees theoriques et empiriques et discutons des developpements virtuels pratiques et methodologiques. Creativity, innovation, and initiative are psychological processes that facilitate the transformation of individual work roles, teams, and organisations into desired future states. Therefore, the present paper focuses on potential research trends in this increasingly important area. Specifically, we identify three substantive gaps reflecting the needs for greater process differentiation, concept integration, and cross-cultural analysis. First, potential differential antecedents of specific creativity or innovation phases have received insufficient attention. Second, the creativity and innovation research domain may benefit from an integration of recently developed proactivity concepts such as personal initiative and voice behavior. Third, cross-cultural differences in values, motivational orientations, and leadership preferences may determine how creativity and innovation are enacted and cultivated across the globe. With respect to each of these future challenges, we provide suggestions for theoretical and empirical advancements and discuss potential practical and methodological developments.
Storage and Release of Spermatozoa from the Pre-Uterine Tube Reservoir

In mammals, after coitus a small number of spermatozoa enter the uterine tube and following attachment to uterine tube epithelium are arrested in a non-capacitated state until peri-ovulatory signalling induces their detachment. Whilst awaiting release low numbers of spermatozoa continually detach from the epithelium and the uterine tube reservoir risks depletion. There is evidence of attachment of spermatozoa to uterine epithelium in several species which might form a potential pre-uterine tube reservoir. In this study we demonstrate that: (1) dog spermatozoa attach to uterine epithelium and maintain flagellar activity, (2) in non-capacitating conditions spermatozoa progressively detach with a variety of motility characteristics, (3) attachment is not influenced by epithelial changes occurring around ovulation, (4) attachment to uterine epithelium slows capacitation, (5) capacitated spermatozoa have reduced ability to attach to uterine epithelium, (6) under capacitating conditions increased numbers of spermatozoa detach and exhibit transitional and hyperactive motility which differ to those seen in non-capacitating conditions, (7) detachment of spermatozoa and motility changes can be induced by post-ovulation but not pre-ovulation uterine tube flush fluid and by components of follicular fluid and solubilised zona pellucida, (8) prolonged culture does not change the nature of the progressive detachment seen in non-capacitating conditions nor the potential for increased detachment in capacitating conditions. We postulate that in some species binding of spermatozoa to uterine epithelium is an important component of the transport of spermatozoa. Before ovulation low numbers of spermatozoa continually detach, including those which are non-capacitated with fast forward progressive motility allowing the re-population of the uterine tube, whilst around the time of ovulation, signalling from as-yet unknown factors associated with follicular fluid, oocytes and uterine tube secretion promotes the detachment of large numbers of capacitated spermatozoa with hyperactive motility that may contribute to the fertilising pool.
2007 Presidential Address of the CHA : Public History and its Discontents or History in the Age of Wikipedia

In keeping with the Congress theme of “Bridging Communities: Making Public Knowledge, Making Knowledge Public,” this paper reflects on issues relating to public history and the impact of the Internet — that most public of media — on the ways in which academic historians create and disseminate knowledge. It explores the rise of public history as a profession and field of study over the past three decades, the efforts of the Canadian Historical Association (CHA) since its founding in 1922 to reach a broader public, and the impact of the Internet on the work of professional historians. By raising questions about the role of academic historians in general and of the CHA in particular in bridging what on the surface seems to be the divergent interests of academic and public history, it contributes to a larger discussion that will almost certainly preoccupy CHA presidents for the foreseeable future: where academic history and the arts disciplines generally fit into the postmodern university and into the rapidly expanding world of knowledge fuelled by the Internet and its related technologies.