Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thinking inside the box: Motion prediction in contained spaces uses simulation

Theories of the mental processes people use to perform physical reasoning often differ on whether they are based on simulation or on logical reasoning. Here we test how these different processes might combine in a motion-prediction task that can be solved either by simulation or by reasoning about the topology of the scene. Participants were asked to predict which of two goals a computerized ball would reach first, but in some of these scenes the ball was ‘contained’ in the same space as one goal but was topologically separated from the other. Even in these contained scenes, participants responded faster when they received motion information that would speed up simulation but not affect topological parsing. This suggests that simulation contributes to predicting short-range motion, even when alternate strategies are available.
The case for better throughput estimation

A Web proxy must accurately predict network performance between itself and its servers and clients in order to make good distillation decisions. In this paper we show that the current approaches to make such predictions-either assuming the proxy is well-connected to all servers or using past observations-are insufficient. We propose a new prediction method, estimation with uncertainty, that will play a crucial role in Web proxies. This method can also be useful in domains such as distributed prefetching, distributed query planning, and cache replacement algorithms that take into account the cost of refetching evicted objects.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Consider a model with two types of jobs. The proﬁtability of hiring a worker to a fast-track job depends not only on his or her observable talent, but also on incontractible effort. We investigate whether self-fulﬁlling expectations may lead to higher hiring or promotion standards for women. If employers expect women to do more household work than men, thereby exerting less effort in their paid job, then women must be more talented to make it proﬁtable to hire them. Specialization in the family will then result in women doing most of the household work. Such self-fulﬁlling prophecies can be defeated by afﬁrmative action or family policy. However, it is unlikely that temporary policy can move the economy to a symmetric equilibrium: policy must be made permanent. Anti-discrimination policy need not enhance efﬁciency, and from a distribution viewpoint this is a policy with both winners and losers.
Attainment and maintenance of platelet inhibition through standard dosing of abciximab in diabetic and nondiabetic patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention.

BACKGROUND Although the effectiveness of abciximab (c7E3 Fab; ReoPro) in large populations of patients undergoing a percutaneous coronary intervention has been consistently proved in clinical trials, it is unknown whether all patients achieve and maintain target inhibition during treatment. Diabetic patients in particular are a subgroup of patients with known underlying platelet abnormalities whose long-term response to abciximab has been shown to vary from that of nondiabetic patients. METHODS AND RESULTS Forty-nine diabetic and 51 nondiabetic patients who received adjunctive abciximab therapy during percutaneous coronary interventions were evaluated prospectively. The degree of platelet function inhibition was determined immediately after the abciximab bolus, 8 hours after the bolus (during the 12-hour abciximab infusion), and the next morning (13 to 26 hours after the bolus) with the use of a rapid platelet function assay (Accumetrics). After the abciximab bolus, platelet function was inhibited by 95+/-4% (mean+/-SD). By 8 hours, the average percent inhibition had decreased to 88+/-9%, with 13% of patients with <80% inhibition. The next morning (mean 19 hours after the bolus), mean inhibition was 71+/-14%. A difference was not found between diabetics and nondiabetics, nor was any physiological parameter found to be predictive of the response to abciximab. CONCLUSIONS Although the majority of patients achieve and maintain >/= 80% platelet inhibition during the 12-hour infusion with standard-dose abciximab, there is substantial variability among patients. Diabetic status does not appear to influence this variability.
Neurogenesis and Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease, characterized in the brain by amyloid plaque deposits and neurofibrillary tangles. It is the most common form of dementia among older people. There is at present no cure for AD, and current treatments consist mainly in drug therapy. Potential therapies for AD involve gene and cellular therapy. The recent confirmation that neurogenesis occurs in the adult brain and neural stem cells (NSCs) reside in the adult central nervous system (CNS) provide new opportunities for cellular therapy in the CNS, particularly for AD, and to better understand brain physiopathology. Hence, researchers have aimed at characterizing neurogenesis in patients with AD. Studies show that neurogenesis is increased in these patients, and in animal models of AD. The effect of drugs used to treat AD on neurogenesis is currently being investigated, to identify whether neurogenesis contributes to their therapeutic activities.
Interleukin-6 Is a Potential Biomarker for Severe Pandemic H1N1 Influenza A Infection

Pandemic H1N1 influenza A (H1N1pdm) is currently a dominant circulating influenza strain worldwide. Severe cases of H1N1pdm infection are characterized by prolonged activation of the immune response, yet the specific role of inflammatory mediators in disease is poorly understood. The inflammatory cytokine IL-6 has been implicated in both seasonal and severe pandemic H1N1 influenza A (H1N1pdm) infection. Here, we investigated the role of IL-6 in severe H1N1pdm infection. We found IL-6 to be an important feature of the host response in both humans and mice infected with H1N1pdm. Elevated levels of IL-6 were associated with severe disease in patients hospitalized with H1N1pdm infection. Notably, serum IL-6 levels associated strongly with the requirement of critical care admission and were predictive of fatal outcome. In C57BL/6J, BALB/cJ, and B6129SF2/J mice, infection with A/Mexico/4108/2009 (H1N1pdm) consistently triggered severe disease and increased IL-6 levels in both lung and serum. Furthermore, in our lethal C57BL/6J mouse model of H1N1pdm infection, global gene expression analysis indicated a pronounced IL-6 associated inflammatory response. Subsequently, we examined disease and outcome in IL-6 deficient mice infected with H1N1pdm. No significant differences in survival, weight loss, viral load, or pathology were observed between IL-6 deficient and wild-type mice following infection. Taken together, our findings suggest IL-6 may be a potential disease severity biomarker, but may not be a suitable therapeutic target in cases of severe H1N1pdm infection due to our mouse data.
Pathophysiological Impact of Cigarette Smoke Exposure on the Cerebrovascular System with a Focus on the Blood-brain Barrier: Expanding the Awareness of Smoking Toxicity in an Underappreciated Area

Recent evidence has indicated that active and passive cigarette smoking are associated, in a dose-dependent manner, with dysfunction of normal endothelial physiology. Tobacco smoke (TS) may predispose individuals to atherogenic and thrombotic problems, significantly increasing the risk for ischemic manifestations such as acute coronary syndrome and stroke. Despite the strong evidence for an association between smoking and vascular impairment, the impact of TS exposure on the blood-brain barrier (BBB) has only been marginally addressed. This is a major problem given that the BBB is crucial in the maintenance of brain homeostasis. Recent data have also shown that chronic smokers have a higher incidence of small vessel ischemic disease (SVID), a pathological condition characterized by leaky brain microvessels and loss of BBB integrity. In the brain TS increases the risk of silent cerebral infarction (SCI) and stroke owing to the pro-coagulant and atherogenic effects of smoking. In this article we provide a detailed review and analysis of current knowledge of the pathophysiology of tobacco smoke toxicity at the cerebrovascular levels. We also discuss the potential toxicity of recently marketed “potential-reduced exposure products”.
On the impossibility of efficient self-stabilization in virtual overlays with churn

Virtual overlays generate topologies for greedy routing, like rings or hypercubes, on connectivity restricted networks. They have been proposed to achieve efficient content discovery in the Darknet mode of Freenet, for instance, which provides a private and secure communication platform for dissidents and whistle-blowers. Virtual overlays create tunnels between nodes with neighboring addresses in the topology. The routing performance hence is directly related to the length of the tunnels, which have to be set up and maintained at the cost of communication overhead in the absence of an underlying routing protocol. In this paper, we show the impossibility to efficiently maintain sufficiently short tunnels. Specifically, we prove that in a dynamic network either the maintenance or the routing eventually exceeds polylog cost in the number of participants. Our simulations additionally show that the length of the tunnels increases fast if standard maintenance protocols are applied. Thus, we show that virtual overlays can only offer efficient routing at the price of high maintenance costs.
Destination positioning opportunities elicited through the repertory test with laddering analysis

While in many travel situations consumers have an almost limitless range of destinations to choose from, their actual decision set will usually only comprise between two and six destinations. One of the greatest challenges facing destination marketers is positioning their destination, against the myriad of competing places that offer similar features, into consumer decision sets. Since positioning requires a narrow focus, marketing communications must present a succinct and meaningful proposition, the selection of which is often problematic for destination marketing organisations (DMO), which deal with a diverse and often eclectic range of attributes in addition to numerous self-interested and demanding stakeholders. This paper reports the application of two qualitative techniques used to explore the range of cognitive attributes, consequences and personal values that represent potential positioning opportunities in the context of short break holidays. The Repertory Test is an effective technique for understanding the salient attributes used by a traveller to differentiate destinations, while Laddering Analysis enables the researcher to explore the smaller set of personal values guiding such decision making. A key finding of the research was that while individuals might vary in their repertoire of salient attributes, there was a commonality of shared consequences and values.
FTY720 postconditions isolated perfused heart by a mechanism independent of sphingosine kinase 2 and different from S1P or ischemic postconditioning

Background We investigated the hypothesis that postconditioning by FTY720 (FTY) in isolated perfused mouse hearts is independent of the sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) pathway. Material/Methods Ex vivo hearts were exposed to postconditioning (POST) by either ischemia or FTY720. Protection against ischemia/reperfusion (IR) injury was measured by recovery of left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP) and infarct size. Results FTY effectively postconditioned (POST) ex vivo hearts against ischemia/reperfusion (IR) injury as measured by recovery of LVDP and a low infarct size. FTY protection, unlike S1P but like sphingosine (Sph), was insensitive to inhibition of S1P G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) or inhibition of PI3 kinase. Protection by FTY and Sph was however blocked by inhibitors of PKA and PKG. Thus, FTY follows the same cardioprotective pathway as Sph. This was further supported by studies of FTY POST in knockout (KO) mice lacking the SphK2 form of Sph kinase that is needed for phosphorylation of FTY to an S1P analog. In the absence of SphK2, FTY (and Sph) POST was still cardioprotective. This differed from the effect of SphK2 KO on protection by ischemic POST (IPOST). IPOST was not effective in KO hearts. To see if the GPCR signaling pathway to protection is normal in KO hearts, we looked at POST by GPCR agonists S1P and adenosine. Both provided effective protection even in KO hearts suggesting that the problem with IPOST in KO hearts is a low level of S1P available for release during IPOST. Thus, pharmacologic POST with FTY or Sph, like adenosine and S1P, is unaffected in the KO. Conclusions FTY720 administered in vivo might behave in a dual manner showing both S1P-like effects and sphingosine-like effects. It appears that the latter may have been overlooked and may be the more important in aging hearts.
Brief Definitive Report Identification and Characterization of Il-10/ifn-–producing Effector-like T Cells with Regulatory Function in Human Blood

T reg cells are important for the control of auto-immune diseases and for limiting immune responses (1). " Natural " T reg cells can be identified by CD25 surface expression in both mice and humans, and express high levels of CTLA-4 (2). They mature in the thymus (1) or in the periphery after tolerogenic priming (3), and are anergic in vitro because they lack an IL-2– producing capacity. Nevertheless, T reg cells proliferate in vivo (4, 5) and are highly susceptible to apoptosis (6). They inhibit T cell priming in vitro by a not fully understood cell contact–dependent mechanism (2). It is believed that these cells represent an independent T cell lineage that is determined by the transcription factor Foxp3 (1). The TCR repertoire of natural T reg cells is biased toward autoreactivity (7), and they have been shown to prevent auto-immune diseases in several different models (1). On the other hand, " adaptive " type 1 regulatory (Tr1) cells have also been shown to be important for control of autoimmune diseases (8). These cells do not belong to the natural T reg cell lineage (9, 10) and are characterized by their capacity to produce IL-10 and to inhibit immune responses in an IL-10–depen-dent manner (8, 10, 11). Tr1-like populations can be generated in vitro in various ways, including repetitive priming with immature DCs, IL-10 plus IFN-, or immune-suppres-sive drugs (8, 12–14). Interestingly, IL-10– producing Th1 cells have been recently shown to prevent immunopathology in chronic parasite infections in vivo (15, 16), but their relationship to Tr1 cells is currently unclear because not all described Tr1 populations also produce IFN-. Although various Tr1-like populations can be generated, their identity and phenotype in human blood is currently unknown. Recently, it was shown that human CD25 + T reg cells express low levels of CD127 (17, 18), the IL-7R chain that is important for survival and homeostatic maintenance of CD4 + memory T cells (19). Based on this observation, it was speculated that adaptive T reg cells might be present among CD25  IL-7R lo cells (20). Consistently , adaptive mouse T reg cells that down-regulate inflammatory responses to malaria parasites had a CD127  CD25  phenotype (21). In this report, we show that human blood Two subsets of natural and adaptive regulatory T (T reg) cells have been described, but the identity of adaptive type 1 regulatory (Tr1)–like cells in …
The Northern Sky Optical Cluster Survey. I. Detection of Galaxy Clusters in DPOSS

The Northern Sky Optical Cluster Survey is a project to create an objective catalog of galaxy clusters over the entire high–Galactic-latitude northern sky with well-understood selection criteria. We use the object catalogs generated from the Digitized Second Palomar Sky Survey as the basis for this survey. We apply a color criterion to select against field galaxies and use a simple adaptive kernel technique to create galaxy density maps, combined with the bootstrap technique, to make significance maps from which density peaks are selected. This survey attempts to eliminate some of the subjective criteria and assumptions of past surveys, including detection by eye and assumed luminosity functions and cluster profiles as in the Palomar Distant Cluster Survey. We also use more information (especially colors) than the most similar recent survey, the APM. This paper presents the details of our cluster-detection technique, as well as some initial results for two small areas totaling ∼60 deg2. We find a mean surface density of ∼1.5 clusters deg-2, consistent with the detection of richness class 0 and higher clusters to z ∼ 0.3. In addition, we demonstrate an effective photometric redshift estimator for our clusters.
Metaplastic Conditions in The Bladder in Patient With Epidermolysis Bullosa

ABSTRACT Epidermolysis bullosa is a rare inherited muco-cutaneous disorder that sometimes presents with genitourinary involvement. Herein we report the case of an 11-year-old girl with a history of junctional epidermolysis bullosa who was admitted with urological symptoms. On cystoscopy, suspected bullous bladder lesions were observed. Mesonephroid, intestinal and squamous metaplasia is reported here for the first time.
Inhibition of Ku autoantigen binding activity to the E2F motif after ultraviolet B irradiation of melanocytic cells

In human melanocytes and a human melanoma cell line (MM96L), the level of Ku sequence-specific binding to a 37-meroligonucleotide containing a single E2F-1 binding site of the c-myc promoter (E2cM) significantly decreased 12 24 h after cytostatic exposure to 300 J/m2 ultraviolet B radiation (UVB). No UVB-induced loss was found in fibroblasts, while HeLa cells showed an earlier (4 h) but less significant decrease than melanocytic cells. Equitoxic doses of gamma radiation, cisplatin or UVC had little effect on E2cM-specific binding. The loss of Ku binding in MM96L cells was not the result of translocation of Ku or a decrease in Ku protein or DNA-dependent protein kinase activity. The level of E2cM-specific binding in MM96L cells was increased by tunicamycin (2 μg/ml), an inhibitor of N-linked glycosylation, and decreased by the glucosidase inhibitor castanospermine (50 μg/ml). These results, which parallel the reported loss in melanocytes of the cell cycle regulator pRB after UVB, suggest that the DNA binding activity of Ku is affected by post-translational modification and may play a role in regulating the cell cycle response to UVB. 1998 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
A Transformation Which Preserves the Clique Number

We introduce a graph transformation which preserves the clique number. When applied to graphs containing no odd hole and no cricket (a particular graph on 5 vertices) the transformation also preserves the chromatic number. Using this transformation we derive a polynomial algorithm for the computation of the clique number of all graphs in a class which strictly contains diamond-free graphs. Furthermore, the transformation leads to a proof that the Strong Perfect Graph Conjecture is true for two new classes of graphs and yields a polynomial time algorithm for the computation of the clique number and the chromatic number for both classes. One of these two classes strictly contains claw-free graphs.
Ca2+-permeable AMPA receptors in homeostatic synaptic plasticity

Neurons possess diverse mechanisms of homeostatic adaptation to overall changes in neural and synaptic activity, which are critical for proper brain functions. Homeostatic regulation of excitatory synapses has been studied in the context of synaptic scaling, which allows neurons to adjust their excitatory synaptic gain to maintain their activity within a dynamic range. Recent evidence suggests that one of the main mechanisms underlying synaptic scaling is by altering the function of postsynaptic α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptors (AMPARs), including synaptic expression of Ca2+-permeable (CP-) AMPARs. CP-AMPARs endow synapses with unique properties, which may benefit adaptation of neurons to periods of inactivity as would occur when a major input is lost. This review will summarize how synaptic expression of CP-AMPARs is regulated during homeostatic synaptic plasticity in the context of synaptic scaling, and will address the potential functional consequences of altering synaptic CP-AMPAR content.
MSE: A Methodology for Software Evolution

SUMMARY Every program must continuously evolve, or it will become obsolete. This paper explores a methodology for software evolution within the setting of object-orientated programming. The methodology is based on the top‐down propagation of change, and it is remotely related to stepwise refinement. To present the methodology, this paper uses one small example (Gregorian calendar) and one medium-sized example (calendar maintainer). This paper also explores an algorithm for scheduling object classes for update, and introduces a tool, ‘Ripples’, which helps programmers work with the process of software evolution. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Software Maintenance 9: 103‐124, 1997.
Antidepressive, anxiolytic, and antiaddictive effects of ayahuasca, psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD): a systematic review of clinical trials published in the last 25 years

To date, pharmacological treatments for mood and anxiety disorders and for drug dependence show limited efficacy, leaving a large number of patients suffering severe and persistent symptoms. Preliminary studies in animals and humans suggest that ayahuasca, psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) may have antidepressive, anxiolytic, and antiaddictive properties. Thus, we conducted a systematic review of clinical trials published from 1990 until 2015, assessing these therapeutic properties. Electronic searches were performed using the PubMed, LILACS, and SciELO databases. Only clinical trials published in peer-reviewed journals were included. Of these, 151 studies were identified, of which six met the established criteria. Reviewed studies suggest beneficial effects for treatment-resistant depression, anxiety and depression associated with life-threatening diseases, and tobacco and alcohol dependence. All drugs were well tolerated. In conclusion, ayahuasca, psilocybin and LSD may be useful pharmacological tools for the treatment of drug dependence, and anxiety and mood disorders, especially in treatment-resistant patients. These drugs may also be useful pharmacological tools to understand psychiatric disorders and to develop new therapeutic agents. However, all studies reviewed had small sample sizes, and half of them were open-label, proof-of-concept studies. Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies with more patients are needed to replicate these preliminary findings.