Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ca2+ Influx via the Na+/Ca2+ Exchanger Is Enhanced in Malignant Hyperthermia Skeletal Muscle*

Background: Dysregulation of Ca2+ homeostasis have been described in malignant hyperthermia (MH). Results: Na+/Ca2+ exchanger (NCX3) reverse mode activity is enhanced in MH muscles and it contributes to resting intracellular calcium concentration and Ca2+ transients induced by high [K+]e and by halothane. Conclusion: NCX3 reverse mode activity is increased in MH muscle. Significance: Understanding mechanisms influencing Ca2+ dynamics in MH muscle. Malignant hyperthermia (MH) is potentially fatal pharmacogenetic disorder of skeletal muscle caused by intracellular Ca2+ dysregulation. NCX is a bidirectional transporter that effluxes (forward mode) or influxes (reverse mode) Ca2+ depending on cellular activity. Resting intracellular calcium ([Ca2+]r) and sodium ([Na+]r) concentrations are elevated in MH susceptible (MHS) swine and murine muscles compared with their normal (MHN) counterparts, although the contribution of NCX is unclear. Lowering [Na+]e elevates [Ca2+]r in both MHN and MHS swine muscle fibers and it is prevented by removal of extracellular Ca2+ or reduced by t-tubule disruption, in both genotypes. KB-R7943, a nonselective NCX3 blocker, reduced [Ca2+]r in both swine and murine MHN and MHS muscle fibers at rest and decreased the magnitude of the elevation of [Ca2+]r observed in MHS fibers after exposure to halothane. YM-244769, a high affinity reverse mode NCX3 blocker, reduces [Ca2+]r in MHS muscle fibers and decreases the amplitude of [Ca2+]r rise triggered by halothane, but had no effect on [Ca2+]r in MHN muscle. In addition, YM-244769 reduced the peak and area under the curve of the Ca2+ transient elicited by high [K+]e and increased its rate of decay in MHS muscle fibers. siRNA knockdown of NCX3 in MHS myotubes reduced [Ca2+]r and the Ca2+ transient area induced by high [K+]e. These results demonstrate a functional NCX3 in skeletal muscle whose activity is enhanced in MHS. Moreover reverse mode NCX3 contributes to the Ca2+ transients associated with K+-induced depolarization and the halothane-triggered MH episode in MHS muscle fibers.
Stratégies matrimoniales et choix d'objet incestueux [Dot, diplôme, liberté sexuelle, prénom]

Heiratsstrategien und Wahl inzestioser Objekte. ; Die Analyse der Heiratsstrategien auf Karpathos lenkt das Interesse auf die okonomie des okonomischen, symbolischen und affektiven Tauschverhaltens zwischen Verwandten und insbesondere zwischen Geschwistern. Aufgrund ihrer dominierenden Position auf einem gestorten Heiratsmarkt sind die Manner im Hiriblick auf die Mitgift von Jahr zu Jahr anspruchsvoller geworden, so das die Bruder gezwungen sind, zur Bildung der Mitgift ihrer Schwestern beizutragen. Wie sich an den von Familienmitgliedern verfasten und in der Dorfzeitung veroffentlichten Gedichten zu Ehren der neuen Schulabganger zeigen last, treten Bildungspradikate tendenziell an die Stelle der herkommlichen Bestimmungsfaktoren gesellschaftlichen Werts. Durch Schulbesuch der Madchen lassen sich mithin die Auswirkungen der Inflation der Mitgifte unterlaufen. In einem allgemeinen Kontext sexueller Repression, wo alles, auch die raumliche Aufteilung der Schlafer, der Macht der Familienbande Vorschub leistet, gewinnt die Wahl des Ehepartners zuweilen den Charakter der Wahl eines inzestiosen Objekts. Der Verschiebung des inzestiosen Objekts liegt der Fetischismus des Vornamens zugrunde. Es scheint, das die Haufigkeitsverteilung von Heiraten mit Partnern gleichen Vornamens wie Mitglieder der eigenen Hausgruppe in bestimmten Fallen ein gutes Analyseinstrument fur den Verwandtschaftshistoriker abgeben konnte.
The algebra of fatherhood

: Whereas women are sure of their biological maternity, men can never be fully certain of paternity and instead need to rely on indirect cues to assess whether they are likely to be father of their putative children. According to the psychological literature, men commonly use the information on the resemblance of offspring to self as an indicator of genetic relatedness. It seems, however, that in the absence of such a resemblance, similarity between a mother and a child might be important, because a man has additional reason to doubt his own biological paternity when the child is dissimilar to his partner. This assumption has been verified in two empirical studies.
QoS-aware mode selection and resource allocation scheme for Device-to-Device (D2D) communication in cellular networks

In the cellular network, Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is considered to be a promising resource reuse strategy, which can enable local service opportunities and reduce system load for short-range communication. In order to suppress the interference from D2D users, the scheduler should allocate resources and select communication mode appropriately. In this paper, we analyze the constraints and system equations of D2D links in scenarios with multiclass services, and propose a joint mode selection and resource allocation (JMSRA) scheme, in which interference suppression and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements are considered. The proposed scheme optimizes communication mode for each device and allocates resource according to service demands and current state of the network. Numerical results show that the proposed JMSRA scheme achieves higher system capacity than both Pure Cellular and Force D2D schemes, especially when the maximum distance between D2D pairs or system load increases. Simulation also proves that our scheme can obtain higher service satisfaction degree in the hybrid network.
Performance evaluation of IEEE 802.11p infrastructure-to-vehicle tunnel measurements

In this contribution, we discuss and analyze results from real-world performance measurements for IEEE 802.11p during September 2010 along the highway S1 near Vienna, Austria. More specifically, we evaluate the frame success ratio and goodput of the IEEE 802.11p physical (PHY) layer for a infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) scenario in a tunnel. We report and discuss the observed frame success ratios and goodputs for various PHY parameter settings and investigate the impact of the propagation environment and the traffic situation inside the tunnel.
Nanotechnology health and safety--what can occupational health professionals do?

The nanotechnology industry is growing in size and economic importance worldwide. Yet, despite recent progress in research, the potential adverse health effects from exposure to engineered nanomaterials are still inadequately understood. Regulation of the nanotech-nology industry is also still in its infancy. We outline here the present situation, how occupational health professionals could contribute, and follow with an example of what is being done in the National University of Singapore. Since it was first envisioned by Feynman in his 1959 speech 1) , nanotechnology has grown into a vast, diverse industry in many developed nations as well as newly industrializing countries. Annually, over US$18 billion is invested in nanotechnology research and development by public and private sectors around the world 2). By 2014, over a tenth of the global manufacturing sector workforce could be employed in nanotechnology-related work processes. Experts have predicted that as many as 10 million people could be working in processes involving nanotechnology by the year 2014 3). In 2005, there were just over 50 consumer products on the market known to contain nanomaterials. By early 2011 there were over 1,300 such consumer products being sold, many of which are for personal care. For instance, there are at present over 30 types of nanomaterial-containing sunscreens being marketed for consumer use 4). High-tech industries are now no longer the sole territory of developed countries — they are increasingly to be found in newly industrializing countries, with nanotechnology being no exception. For example, in China there were over 1,000 enterprises involved in nanotechnology-related business and an estimated 3,000 people employed in nanotechnology industries in Shanghai alone as of June 2010 5). In recent years, the nanotechnology industry in Thailand has also grown tremendously 6) and the government is actively putting in measures to grow the industry further. What impact could all this have on human health and the environment? It now well-recognised that some nanomaterials have the potential to adversely affect health. Nanomaterials can enter the body via inhalation of airborne particles, through dermal absorption or by ingestion 7, 8) , and numerous in-vitro and animal-model studies in recent years have documented adverse biological effects such as oxidative stress, inflammatory response following exposure to various nanomaterials. Some of these studies report that nanomaterials display greater toxic effects compared to the bulk form of the same material. For example, Shvedova and colleagues demonstrated in 2005 that carbon nanotubes introduced via …
An Architecture Including Network QoS in Scientific Workflows

The quality of the network services has so far rarely been considered in composing and executing scientific workflows. Currently, scientific applications tune the execution quality of workflows neglecting network resources, and by selecting only optimal software services and computing resources. One reason is that IP-based networks provide few possibilities for workflow systems to manage the service quality, and limit or prevent bandwidth reservation or network paths selection. We see nonetheless a strong need from scientific applications, and network operators, to include the network quality management in the workflow systems. In this position paper, we discuss our vision on this issue and propose an agent based solution to include network resources in the loop of workflow composition, scheduling and execution when advanced network services are available. Our approach is conducted in the context of the CineGrid project.
Online interactive perception of articulated objects with multi-level recursive estimation based on task-specific priors

To successfully manipulate in unknown environments, a robot must be able to perceive degrees of freedom of objects in its environment. Based on the resulting kinematic model and joint configurations, the robot is able to select and adapt actions, recognize their successful completion and detect failure. We present an RGB-D-based online algorithm for the interactive perception of articulated objects. The algorithm decomposes the perception problem into three interconnected levels of recursive estimation. The estimation problems at each level are much simpler than the original problem and their robustness is improved by level-specific priors that help reject noise in the measurements. These three estimators mutually inform each other to further improve the convergence properties of the three estimation solutions. We demonstrate that the resulting algorithm is robust, accurate, and versatile in real-world experiments. We also show how the perceptual skill can be used online to control the robot's behavior in real-world manipulation tasks.
Molecular Correlates of Host Specialization in Staphylococcus aureus

Background The majority of Staphylococcus aureus isolates that are recovered from either serious infections in humans or from mastitis in cattle represent genetically distinct sets of clonal groups. Moreover, population genetic analyses have provided strong evidence of host specialization among S. aureus clonal groups associated with human and ruminant infection. However, the molecular basis of host specialization in S. aureus is not understood. Methodology/Principal Findings We sequenced the genome of strain ET3-1, a representative isolate of a common bovine mastitis-causing S. aureus clone. Strain ET3-1 encodes several genomic elements that have not been previously identified in S. aureus, including homologs of virulence factors from other Gram-positive pathogens. Relative to the other sequenced S. aureus associated with human infection, allelic variation in ET3-1 was high among virulence and surface-associated genes involved in host colonization, toxin production, iron metabolism, antibiotic resistance, and gene regulation. Interestingly, a number of well-characterized S. aureus virulence factors, including protein A and clumping factor A, exist as pseudogenes in ET3-1. Whole-genome DNA microarray hybridization revealed considerable similarity in the gene content of highly successful S. aureus clones associated with bovine mastitis, but not among those clones that are only infrequently recovered from bovine hosts. Conclusions/Significance Whole genome sequencing and comparative genomic analyses revealed a set of molecular genetic features that distinguish clones of highly successful bovine-associated S. aureus optimized for mastitis pathogenesis in cattle from those that infect human hosts or are only infrequently recovered from bovine sources. Further, the results suggest that modern bovine specialist clones diverged from a common ancestor resembling human-associated S. aureus clones through a combination of foreign DNA acquisition and gene decay.
Cryptococcal polysaccharides bind to CD18 on human neutrophils

CD18, the beta chain of the beta 2 integrin family of adhesion molecules, is associated with three different alpha chains (CD11a, -b, and -c) and is expressed on the surface of all types of leukocytes. CD18-containing molecules are up-regulated on the surface of neutrophils (polymorphonuclear cells [PMN]) in response to chemotactic agents and are implicated in mediating adhesion to an inflamed endothelium, which is a prerequisite to migration of PMN into infected tissues. In a previous study, we found that a cryptococcal culture filtrate (CneF), when injected into the bloodstream of mice to simulate the antigenemia in cryptococcosis, inhibits PMN accumulation at the site of an inflammatory stimulus. In the present study, we assessed the ability of CneF and its individual components, i.e., glucuronoxylomannan (GXM), galactoxylomannan (GalXM), and mannoprotein (MP), to interact with CD18 on human PMN. CneF labeled with 14C was shown to bind to human PMN in a dose-dependent manner. Pretreatment of PMN with anti-CD18, but not an isotype-matched control monoclonal antibody (MAb) or anti-CD11a MAb, blocked the binding of 14C-labeled CneF to PMN. In addition, CneF, GXM, and GalXM but not MP significantly blocked the binding of the anti-CD18 MAb to CD18 on the surface of unactivated and formyl methionyl leucyl phenylalanine-activated PMN as determined by indirect immunofluorescence staining and flow cytometric analysis. In the same experiments, the cryptococcal polysaccharides did not affect the binding of an anti-CD11a or anti-L-selectin MAb to the surface of PMN at 4 degrees C. The results suggest that CneF and its components GXM and GalXM bind to CD18 on human PMN. Based on our findings, we propose that CD18 is a possible molecular target of cryptococcal polysaccharides and that binding of the polysaccharides to CD18 has the potential to inhibit leukocyte infiltration into inflammatory sites.
An extensible framework for practical secure component composition in a ubiquitous computing environment

Establishing the security properties of executable code provides an important challenge for advocates of ubiquitous computing. We provide a framework that utilises component composition techniques in order to establish such properties for a composed application in a ubiquitous environment. The framework accounts for the need to establish the properties of individual components, and draws on composition results in order to establish overall properties for composed applications. The framework utilises XML composition templates to provide extensibility, so that new composition results will further enhance its effectiveness.
The relationship between photogrammetry and computer vision

The relationship between photogrammetry and computer vision is examined. This paper reviews the central issues for both computer vision and photogrammetry and the shared goals as well as distinct approaches are identified. Interaction in the past has been limited by both differences in terminology and in the basic philosophy concerning the manipulation of projection equations. The application goals and mathematical techniques of both fields have considerable overlap and so improved dialog is essential.
A comparative thematic review of vocational leadership literature from the USA, Great Britain and Australia

Vocational education and its leadership is an important sphere of economic activity worldwide and is being impacted by several trends including: the increasing significance and centrality of skills development in today’s economies; economic trends associated with globalisation (internationalisation of education and emergence of global labour markets); and demographic trends resulting in ageing populations and workforces. Leadership in vocational education contexts is crucial to the economic success of this sector. The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative thematic review of the research and literature on leadership in vocational education between the USA, Great Britain and Australia posed by the research question, ‘What are the key leadership issues facing vocational education and training sectors in the USA, Great Britain and Australia? ’ This study contributes to the research and literature by identifying key impact factors for vocational education leadership in these nations over the last 13 years. Results from the comparative review established the following three key issues: a concern over equity and diversity; the importance of change management; and leadership skills and their development. Although leadership competencies are the subject of some debate there appears to be a broad consensus that leaders are developed not only by formal courses, but more importantly by on-the-job experiential learning. The future development of leaders within vocational education is discussed in relation to the implications for policy and practice, and suggestions for future research are provided.
Finger search trees with constant insertion time

We consider the problem of implementing finger search trees on the pointer machine, i.e., how to maintain a sorted list such that searching for an element 2, starting the search at any arbitrary element f in the list, only requires logarithmic time in the distance between 2 and f in the list. We present the first pointer-based implementation of finger search trees allowing new elements to be inserted at any arbitrary position in the list in worst case constant time. Previously, the best known insertion time on the pointer machine was O(log* n), where n is the total length of the list. On a unit-cost RAM, a constant insertion time has been achieved by Dietz and Raman by using standard techniques of packing small problem sizes into a constant number of machine words. Deletion of a list element is supported in O(log* n) time, which matches the previous best bounds. Our data structure requires linear space.
Implant stability in different techniques of surgical sites preparation: an in vitro study.

OBJECTIVE In the last few decades the implantology has achieved excellent results in the prosthetic rehabilitation of the partially or totally edentulous patients. The clinicians, given the pressing demand by patients, must deal with the situations in which the lack of the availability and sometimes the low quality of the bone can lead to the treatment failure. Although the manufacturers recommend to follow codified surgical protocols, alternative techniques of preparation, apt to ensure a better primary implant stability, have been developed. The aim of this study was to determine in vitro, by using the resonance frequency (Osstell mentor), which technique of implant site preparation (piezo surgery, conventional, under-preparation, bone compaction, osteodistraction) is able to improve implant stability of type IV cancellous bone. METHODS 10 pig ribs were prepared, and a surgical pre-drilled and calibrated guide for proper implant placement was used. On each rib, 5 implant sites were prepared, one for each technique. RESULTS One-way ANOVA did not show statistically significant differences among the "implant stability quotient" (ISQ) values of the 5 techniques utilized. CONCLUSIONS Thus, in light of these results, in the clinical practice of the type IV bone one technique is replaceable with the others, as none of them improves implant stability. The choice should instead be directed to the technique that accelerates the healing process and the osseointegration.
A Bacterial Artificial Chromosome Reporter System for Expression of the Human FOXP3 Gene in Mouse Regulatory T-Cells

The transcription factor FOXP3 plays key roles in the development and function of regulatory T cells (Treg) capable of preventing and correcting immunopathology. There has been much interest in exploiting Treg as adoptive cell therapy in man, but issues of lack of nominal antigen-specificity and stability of FoxP3 expression in the face of pro-inflammatory cytokines have been a concern. In order to enable fundamental studies of human FOXP3 (hFOXP3) gene regulation and to provide preclinical tools to guide the selection of drugs that might modulate hFOXP3 expression for therapeutic purposes, we generated hFOXP3/AmCyan bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) transgenic mice and transfectants, wherein hFOXP3 expression was read out as AmCyan expression. Using the transgenic mice, one can now investigate hFOXP3 gene expression under defined experimental conditions used for mouse Foxp3 (mFoxp3) studies. Here, we demonstrate that hFOXP3 gene expression in BAC transgenic mice is solely restricted to CD4+ T-cells, as for mFoxp3 gene expression, showing that hFOXP3 expression in Treg cells depends on fundamentally similar processes to mFoxp3 expression in these cells. Similarly, hFOXP3 expression could be observed in mouse T-cells through TCR stimulation in the presence of TGF-β. These data suggest that, at least in part, cell type-specific human and mouse foxp3 gene expression is regulated by common regulatory regions which for the human, are located within the 110-kb human FOXP3 BAC DNA. To investigate hFOXP3 gene expression further and to screen potential therapeutics in modulating hFOXP3 gene expression in vitro, we also generated hFOXP3/AmCyan expression reporter cell lines. Using the reporter cells and transcription factor inhibitors, we showed that, just as for mFoxp3 expression, inhibitors of NF-κB, AP1, STAT5, Smad3, and NFAT also block hFOXP3 expression. hFOXP3 induction in the reporter cells was also TGF-β dependent, and substantially enhanced by an mTOR inhibitor, Torin1. In both the reporter transgenic mice and cell lines, histone H4 molecules in the hFOXP3 promoter and enhancers located in human CNS1 and CNS2 regions were highly acetylated in natural Treg and TCR/TGF-β-induced Treg, indicating hFOXP3 gene expression is regulated by mechanisms similar to those previously identified for the mFoxp3 gene.