Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibiting Albumin Glycation Ameliorates Diabetic Nephropathy in the db/db Mouse

Albumin modified by Amadori glucose adducts stimulates the expression of extracellular matrix proteins by glomerular mesangial and endothelial cells, and has been mechanistically linked to the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy. To test the hypothesis that inhibiting the formation of glycated albumin might beneficially influence the development of kidney disease in diabetes, we treated diabetic db/db mice for 12 weeks with a low-molecular-weight compound (EXO-226) that impedes the condensation of free glucose with lysine ε-amino groups in albumin. Administration of EXO-226 (3 mg/kg) twice daily by gavage normalized the plasma concentration of glycated albumin within days after initiation of treatment and maintained glycated albumin within the normal range throughout the study, despite persistent and severe hyperglycemia. Urine albumin excretion, which was markedly increased at the start of the study (age 12 weeks), was significantly reduced in treated diabetic animals compared with their untreated diabetic littermates. The fall in creatinine clearance that was observed in untreated diabetic animals was prevented in diabetic littermates that received treatment. Compared with the nondiabetic controls, the amount of glomerular mesangial matrix was threefold greater in untreated diabetic mice; in contrast, the mesangial matrix fraction was only 1.5 times that of nondiabetic controls in the treated diabetic animals, representing a reduction in mesangial matrix accumulation of more than 50%. EXO-226 also reduced the overexpression of mRNA encoding for α1 (IV) collagen in renal cortex of db/db mice. We conclude that normalization of plasma glycated albumin concentrations with the glycation inhibitor EXO-226 ameliorates the glomerular structural and functional abnormalities associated with diabetic nephropathy in the db/db mouse.
ACL 2 in DrScheme

Teaching undergraduates to develop software in a formal framework such as ACL2 poses two immediate challenges. First, students typically do not know applicative programming and are often unfamiliar with ACL2’s syntax. Second, for motivational reasons, students prefer to work on projects that involve designing interactive, graphical applications. In this paper, we present DRACULA, a pedagogic programming environment that partially solves these problems. The environment adds a subset of Applicative Common Lisp to DRSCHEME, an integrated programming environment for Scheme. DRACULA thus inherits DRSCHEME’s pedagogic capabilities, especially its treatment of syntax and run-time errors. Further, DRACULA also comes with a library for programming interactive, graphical games. The library interface forces students to think of a graphical user interface in terms of state-transition functions, enabling them later to prove theorems about their games in ACL2. DRACULA provides a graphical front-end to the ACL2 theorem prover for this purpose. In short, DRACULA allows the formulation of student projects that represent an important intermediate point between data structure exercises in theorem proving and industrial applications.
Effects of Office Interior Color on Workers' Mood and Productivity

The experiment was designed to examine the effects of a red versus a blue office environment on a typing task and mood. Empirical evidence in this area is sparse, but the prevailing view is that “warm” colors ate more arousing than “cool” colors. The 36 paid subjects were given the task of typing business forms for 20 min. in either a monochromatic red or blue office space and then asked to fill out the Eight State Questionnaire. In the second half of the experiment, subjects either returned to the same-colored office or moved to the different-colored office where the same procedure was followed but with alternate business forms and an alternate form of the questionnaire. Significant main effects found were for the number of errors made on the typing task; the subjects who moved to the different-colored office made more errors than those subjects who remained in the same-colored office. On the questionnaire, group differences were not statistically significant, but the mean anxiety and stress scores were higher for the subjects who remained in the red office, the mean depression score was higher for the subjects who remained in the blue office, and the mean arousal score was higher for those subjects who switched to the different-colored office.
Transaction Generators: Root Kits for Web

Current phishing attacks focus primarily on stealing user credentials such as passwords. In response, web sites are deploying stronger authentication and back-end analytics systems that make it harder for phishers to extract value from stolen passwords. As defenses against traditional phishing improve, we expect to see huge growth in the use of a different type of malware called a Transaction Generator (TG). Instead of relying on stolen credentials, a TG simply waits for the user to log in to his account and then issues transactions on behalf of the user. Since strong authentication is ineffective against TGs, mitigation must focus on transaction integrity. We discuss rootkit-like methods that allow TGs to hide their tracks, and explore a number of mitigation techniques, including transaction confirmation. These results suggest that recent identity systems such as CardSpace and OpenID must also address transaction integrity.
Prednisolone in Bell's Palsy Related to Treatment Start and Age

Objective: To evaluate if treatment start and age are related to the outcome in Bell's palsy patients treated with prednisolone. Study Design: Prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial. Setting: Sixteen otorhinolaryngologic centers in Sweden and 1 in Finland. Patients Data were collected from the Scandinavian Bell's palsy study. A total of 829 patients were treated within 72 hours of onset of palsy. Follow-up was 12 months. Intervention: Patients were randomly assigned to treatment with placebo plus placebo (n = 206), prednisolone plus placebo (n = 210), valacyclovir plus placebo (n = 207), or prednisolone plus valacyclovir (n = 206). Main Outcome Measures: Facial function was assessed with the Sunnybrook grading system, and complete recovery was defined as Sunnybrook = 100. Time from onset of palsy to treatment start was registered. Results: Patients treated with prednisolone within 24 hours and 25 to 48 hours had significantly higher complete recovery rates, 66% (103/156) and 76% (128/168), than patients given no prednisolone, 51% (77/152) and 58% (102/177) (p = 0.008 and p = 0.0003, respectively). For patients treated within 49 to 72 hours of palsy onset, there were no significant differences. Patients aged 40 years or older had significantly higher complete recovery rates if treated with prednisolone, whereas patients aged younger than 40 years did not differ with respect to prednisolone treatment. However, synkinesis was significantly less in patients younger than 40 years given prednisolone (p = 0.002). Conclusion: Treatment with prednisolone within 48 hours of onset of palsy resulted in significantly higher complete recovery rates and less synkinesis compared with no prednisolone.
Development of a non-grounded haptic interface using the gyro effect

In this paper, we propose a technique capable of generating haptic sensation in a human-scale virtual reality environment or in an augmented reality environment. To realize such a large working volume and the ability to move easily within it, we have developed a non-grounded haptic interface using the gyro effect. The interface consists of a flywheel equipped with motor controlled gimbals that tilt the flywheel. We also propose three haptic rendering methods that can provide information regarding territories, target direction and trajectory. The effectiveness of our haptic interface was tested by conducting a series of experiments.
Bias in Selection of Letters to Editor

w Since the first letter to the editor published in an American newspaper appeared in the New York TimesonSept. 18, 1851. the letters column has become a standard feature in most American newspapers. John B. Oakes, editorial page editor of the Times in the 1960s. characterized the column as "one place where the reading public can make itself heard. We consider it a major responsibility to give space to representative letters, especially those taking a point of view in conflict with our own. "t But the public does not read all the letters newspapers receive. Gatekeeping, which has been studied in relation to news handling, operates in the letters-to-the-editor columns as well. Several researchers have used the letters column to investigate community attitudes or to determine what sort of people write letters.2 Most studies use only the published letters. Many researchers have indicated a need to study the unpublished letters in order to draw any conclusions about letters or letter writers. Grey and Brown, in a study of the measurement of political attitudes, concluded that the letters columns are not representative of public opinion and mentioned the lingering
Preditores do desenvolvimento social na infância: Potencial e limitações de um modelo conceitual

O modelo conceitual proposto por G. R. Patterson e colegas destaca o impacto das praticas educativas parentais no desenvolvimento social infantil, e enfatiza a importância da investigacao do temperamento infantil e da responsividade materna, para a compreensao das origens desse processo. No presente estudo, o potencial e as limitacoes desse modelo sao discutidos, a luz das evidencias retratadas pela literatura. A analise desse material indica o potencial do modelo conceitual, bem como a necessidade de refinamento, particularmente nos seguintes aspectos: a) estabelecimento das dimensoes do temperamento e da responsividade relevantes para a compreensao do desenvolvimento social; b) determinacao do impacto do uso combinado de praticas coercitivas e nao-coercitivas e da contingencia destas praticas; c) analise do papel do contexto da relacao pais-crianca em que as praticas se inserem. Para tanto se sugere a ampliacao dos estudos atuais com a utilizacao de diversos tipos de delineamento que contribuirao para esclarecer qual a dinâmica de interacao desses fatores, evitando-se a assuncao simplista de relacoes lineares e diretas. Palavras-chave: temperamento; responsividade; praticas educativas parentais.
Watchmen: Scalable Cheat-Resistant Support for Distributed Multi-player Online Games

Multi-player online games are inherently distributed applications, and a wide range of distributed architectures have been proposed. However, only few successful commercial systems follow such approaches, even given their benefits, due to one main hurdle: the easiness with which cheaters can disrupt the game state computation and dissemination, perform illegal actions, or unduly gain access to sensitive information. The challenge is that any measures used to address cheating must meet the heavy scalability and tight latency requirements of fast paced games. We propose Watchmen, the first distributed scalable protocol designed with cheat detection and prevention in mind that supports fast paced games. It is based on a randomized dynamic proxy scheme for both the dissemination and verification of actions. Furthermore, Watchmen reduces the information exposed to players close to the minimum required to render the game. We build our proof-of-concept prototype on top of Quake III. We show that Watchmen, while scaling to hundreds of players and meeting the tight latency requirements of first person shooter games, is able to significantly reduce opportunities to cheat, even in the presence of collusion.
Study of surface brightness from backscattered laser intensity: calibration of laser data

Systematic laboratory measurements of laser backscatter intensity are presented for brightness calibration targets, and a calibration scheme for airborne laser scanner intensity data is proposed. Thus far, the use of these data has been partly hampered by the variability of the intensity with time, and no test fields have been available for airborne reflectance calibration. Portable brightness targets (tarps), with nominal reflectances from 5% to 70%, were manufactured, and, based on these measurements, found suitable for lidar reflectance standards. Furthermore, the variability of the recorded intensity from the tarps as a function of incidence angle was low. The measurements also provide new information on the surface albedo dependence of backscattering effects: as the surface brightness increases from 5% to 70%, the hotspot brightness peak amplitudes increase by 20% to 30%, and their apparent widths reduce to a half, which implies that hotspots could be used as an albedo discriminator.
Self-Monitoring and Leadership Emergence

The research described here was directed toward furthering our understanding of the antecedents of leadership emergence in groups. Kenny and Zaccaro (1983) have recently speculated that individuals who emerge as leaders may be able to perceive the needs of their group and pattern their own behavior accordingly. Past research strongly supports the notion that individuals who are high self-monitors possess skills corresponding to both these characteristics. Thus the present research examined the relationship between self-monitoring and leadership emergence in a long-term field study of natural groups. The expectation that high self-monitoring would be associated with leadership emergence received strong support. The implications of these results for furthering our understanding of the nature of self-monitoring and leadership are discussed.
Parameter-driven freeform deformations

Abstract: High-level parameters offer user an easy and intuitive tool to modify an existing model. In this paper, an approach of deforming freeform shapes using intrinsic parameters is proposed, where those parameters were not part of the model. Instead the parameters are introduced by user at the time he/she needs them. To achieve this, different from existing freeform deformation methods, a deformable template defined by intrinsic parameters is used as the bridge to link the original freeform shape and the user actions. Those templates can be defined by the user or simply derived from freeform feature concepts. With shape simi-larity analysis, a user-defined region of interest in the freeform shape is matched, or fitted, to a deform-able shape template. By several different kinds of  3 to 3 functions, the region of interest is mapped to the fitted deformable shape template. Thus template parameters can be transferred to the original free-form shape. Through those quantitative intrinsic parameters, the user can easily modify the freeform shape. Several simple implementations were conducted in order to verify the proposed method. It is also described how the proposed technique can be applied in practical shape modelling applications.
Depressivität bei Bewohnerinnen und Bewohnern von Altenwohnheimen

Zusammenfassung. Theoretischer Hintergrund: Die Entwicklung von Depression lasst sich am besten durch multifaktorielle Modelle beschreiben, in denen volitionale Prozesse (Steuerungsprozesse zur Umsetzung von handlungsrelevanten Kognitionen in Handlungen) eine zentrale Rolle spielen. Bislang gibt es jedoch kaum Ansatze, diese Modelle bei Bewohnern von stationaren Einrichtungen der Altenhilfe zu untersuchen. Fragestellung: Verschiedene mit Depressivitat in Zusammenhang gebrachte Variablen wurden in zwei Pradiktorgruppen zur Vorhersage von Depressivitat aufgeteilt, (1) Pradispositionsbedingungen, (2) Variablen der Phase der gesteigerten Selbstaufmerksamkeit. Methode: 100 BewohnerInnen von Altenwohnheimen wurden mit einem strukturierten Interview befragt, das verschiedene Fragebogen enthielt. Die ProbandInnen fuhrten eine einwochige Selbstbeobachtung (Aktivitaten-Tagebuch) durch. Ergebnisse: Erlebte Freiheit erwies sich als unabhangig von Selbstwirksamkeitsuberzeugungen und volitionaler Selbststeuerung. Gerin.
Active Vertical Tail Buffeting Alleviation on a Twin-Tail Fighter Configuration in a Wind Tunnel

A 1/6-scale F-18 wind-tunnel model was tested in the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel at the NASA Langley Research Center as part of the Actively Controlled Response of Buffet-Affected Tails (ACROBAT) program to assess the use of active controls in reducing vertical tail buffeting. The starboard vertical tail was equipped with an active rudder and other aerodynamic devices, and the port vertical tail was equipped with piezoelectric actuators. The tunnel conditions were atmospheric air at a dynamic pressure of 14 psf. By using single-input-single-output control laws at gains well below the physical limits of the control effectors, the power spectral density of the root strains at the frequency reduced by as much as 60 percent up to angles of attack of 37 degrees. Root mean square (RMS) values of root strain were reduced by as much as 19 percent. Stability margins indicate that a constant gain setting in the control law may be used throughout the range of angle of attack tested.
Compensatory anti-inflammatory response syndrome

Summary The concept of ‘Compensatory anti-inflammatory response syndrome’ (CARS) was proposed in 1997 by Roger Bone (1941–1997) to qualify the consequences of the counter-regulatory mechanisms initiated to limit the overzealous inflammatory process in patients with infectious (sepsis) or non-infectious systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS). One major consequence of CARS is the modification of the immune status that could favour the enhanced susceptibility of intensive care patients to nosocomial infections. Indeed, most animal ‘two-hit’ models illustrate an enhanced sensitivity to infection after a first insult. However, this observation is highly dependent on the experimental procedure. Numerous functions of circulating leukocytes are altered in sepsis and SIRS patients, as well as in animal models of sepsis or SIRS. However, this is rather a reprogramming of circulating leukocytes, since there is not a global defect of the immune cells functions. Furthermore, within tissues, leukocytes are rather primed or activated than immunosuppressed. Thus, CARS may be considered as an adapted compartmentalized response with the aim to silence some acute proinflammatory genes, and to maintain the possible expression of certain genes involved in the anti-infectious process.
Distal, not proximal, colonic acetate infusions promote fat oxidation and improve metabolic markers in overweight/obese men.

Gut microbial-derived short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) are believed to affect host metabolism and cardiometabolic risk factors. The present study aim was to investigate the effects of proximal and distal colonic infusions with the SCFA acetate on fat oxidation and other metabolic parameters in men. In this randomized, double-blind crossover trial, six overweight/obese men [body mass index (BMI) 25-35 kg/m2] underwent two experimental periods: one with distal and one with proximal colonic sodium acetate infusions. A feeding catheter was endoscopically positioned at the beginning of each period and remained in the colon for three consecutive test days, enabling colonic acetate (100 or 180 mmol/l) or placebo infusion during fasting conditions and after an oral glucose load (postprandial). Fat oxidation and energy expenditure were measured using an open-circuit ventilated hood system and blood samples were repeatedly collected for 2 h during fasting and postprandial conditions. Distal colonic 180 mmol/l acetate infusions increased fasting fat oxidation (1.78±0.28 compared with -0.78±0.89 g fat 2 h-1, P=0.015), fasting peptide YY (PYY, P=0.01) and postprandial glucose and insulin concentrations (P<0.05), and tended to increase fasting plasma acetate (P=0.069) compared with placebo. Distal 100 mmol/l acetate administration tended to decrease fasting tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α; P=0.067) compared with placebo. In contrast, proximal colonic acetate infusions showed no effects on substrate metabolism, circulating hormones or inflammatory markers. In conclusion distal colonic acetate infusions affected whole-body substrate metabolism, with a pronounced increase in fasting fat oxidation and plasma PYY. Modulating colonic acetate may be a nutritional target to treat or prevent metabolic disorders.
The Effect of 8 Mos of Twice-Weekly Low- or Higher Intensity Whole Body Vibration on Risk Factors for Postmenopausal Hip Fracture

Beck BR, Norling TL: The effect of 8 mos of twice-weekly low- or higher intensity whole body vibration on risk factors for postmenopausal hip fracture. Objective:Whole body vibration is a potential therapy for age-related loss of musculoskeletal competence. Vibration has improved bone in animal models, but evidence in humans is limited. Relative efficacy of low- vs. high-intensity whole body vibration is also unknown. Our goal was to observe the effect of brief low- and higher intensity whole body vibration on risk factors for hip fracture in postmenopausal women. Design:We used an 8-mo randomized controlled trial design to examine the influence of twice-weekly low-intensity whole body vibration (15 mins, 30 Hz, 0.3 g) or higher intensity whole body vibration (2 × 3 mins, 12.5 Hz, 1 g) on anthropometrics, bone (whole body, hip, spine, forearm, and heel), muscle (wall squat and chair rise), and balance (tandem walk and single leg stance). Physical activity, daily calcium, and compliance were recorded. Effects were examined by repeated-measures analysis of covariance, controlling for age, height, weight, calcium, physical activity, compliance, and baseline values. Results:Forty-seven women (71.5 ± 9.0 yrs) completed the trial. There were no between-group differences in any measure at 8 mos, but within-group effects were evident. Controls lost bone at the trochanter (−6%, P = 0.03) and lumbar spine (−6.6%, P = 0.02), whereas whole body vibration groups did not. Whole body vibration subjects improved wall squat (up to 120%, P = 0.004) and chair rise performance (up to 10.5%, P = 0.05). Conclusions:Eight mos of twice-weekly whole body vibration may reduce bone loss at the hip and spine and improve lower limb muscle function. These changes may translate to a decreased risk of falls and hip fracture.
High‐Performance Perovskite Solar Cells with Enhanced Environmental Stability Based on Amphiphile‐Modified CH3NH3PbI3

A new aliphatic fluorinated amphiphilic additive is added to CH3 NH3 PbI3 perovskite to tune the morphology and enhance the environmental stability without sacrificing the performance of the devices. Judicious screening of the perovskite precursor solution realizes a power conversion efficiency of 18.0% for mesoporous perovskite solar cells as a result of improved surface coverage. A slower degradation in ambient air is observed with this modified perovskite.
Hassles, coping, and depressive symptoms in an elderly community sample: The role of mood regulation expectancies.

To extend research on the role of expectancy in coping, 96 individuals aged 65 years or older (M = 74.46, SD = 6.28) from non-nursing home residential communities and organizations completed measures of daily hassles, situational coping responses, depressive symptoms, and generalized expectancies for negative mood regulation, defined as beliefs about one's ability to alleviate a negative mood. Scores from the Negative Mood Regulation Scale (S.J. Catanzaro & J. Mearns, 1990) were negatively associated with avoidant coping and depressive symptoms, independent of hassles and coping responses. As in college student samples, active coping was positively related to depressive symptoms, but only when negative mood regulation expectancies were controlled. The relations of hassles and expectancies with coping responses were weaker than those found previously in younger samples.