Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TRPA 1 as an Analgesic Target

Humans have cultivated chili peppers for over 5,000 years. For more than 1,000 years extracts from these plants have been used medicinally in the treatment of various forms of pain. As a result, pain researchers have had a longstanding interest in the molecular identity of the receptor for capsaicin, the chemical that produces the sensation of heat from “hot” peppers. When the Julius lab published that TRPV1 is the protein that confers capsaicin responsiveness [1], there was already significant investigation of this target in the pharmaceutical community. The future of TRPV1 as an analgesic target is currently uncertain because inhibiting TRPV1 attenuates patients' ability to sense damaging heat [2, 3] and because concerns have arisen that TRPV1 antagonists cause a transient hyperthermia. However, this interest in TRPV1 has spurred interest in a variety of other TRP channels in the pain area. As the receptor for mustard oil and other noxious compounds that cause pain, TRPA1 in particular has emerged as a promising target. Recent data suggest that TRPA1 is a broad chemosensor, activated by reactive chemicals that are encountered exogenously and by compounds such as hydrogen peroxide that are endogenously produced during inflammation or tissue damage. In this review, we explore the rationale surrounding the use of TRPA1 as an analgesic target and discuss the unique challenges that face those developing antagonists.
Radiotherapy concurrently with weekly cisplatin, followed by adjuvant chemotherapy, for N2–3 nasopharyngeal cancer: a multicenter trial of the Forum for Nuclear Cooperation in Asia

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and toxicity of radiotherapy concurrently with weekly cisplatin, followed by adjuvant chemotherapy, for the treatment of N2–3 nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) in Asian countries, especially regions of South and Southeast Asian countries where NPC is endemic. Between 2005 and 2009, 121 patients with NPC (T1–4 N2–3 M0) were registered from Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines, China and Bangladesh. Patients were treated with 2D radiotherapy concurrently with weekly cisplatin (30 mg/m 2), followed by adjuvant chemotherapy, consisting of cisplatin (80 mg/m2 on Day 1) and fluorouracil (800 mg/m2 on Days 1–5) for 3 cycles. Of the 121 patients, 56 patients (46%) required interruption of RT. The reasons for interruption of RT were acute non-hematological toxicities such as mucositis, pain and dermatitis in 35 patients, hematological toxicities in 11 patients, machine break-down in 3 patients, poor general condition in 2 patients, and others in 8 patients. Of the patients, 93% completed at least 4 cycles of weekly cisplatin during radiotherapy, and 82% completed at least 2 cycles of adjuvant chemotherapy. With a median follow-up time of 46 months for the surviving 77 patients, the 3-year locoregional control, distant metastasis-free survival and overall survival rates were 89%, 74% and 66%, respectively. No treatment-related deaths occurred. Grade 3–4 toxicities of mucositis, nausea/vomiting and leukopenia were observed in 34%, 4% and 4% of the patients, respectively. In conclusion, further improvement in survival and locoregional control is necessary, although our regimen showed acceptable toxicities.
An adaptive grid-point detector by exploiting local entropy map

This paper describes an adaptive grid-point detector for the feature detection task in a pseudo-random structured light pattern. In the algorithm, a local entropy map is firstly constructed to evaluate the distribution of the projected pattern elements in the captured image. A mask in the shape of a cross is then used for the preliminary detection of grid-point candidates. With reference to the entropy map, the size of the cross mask can be determined adaptively. With considering the local symmetry property around the grid-points, a correlation procedure is then introduced for the final grid-point localization with sub-pixel accuracy. Experiments on real human face and comparison with previous methods are used to demonstrate its high performance.
Reciprocal limbic-cortical function and negative mood: converging PET findings in depression and normal sadness.

OBJECTIVE Theories of human behavior from Plato to Freud have repeatedly emphasized links between emotion and reason, a relationship now commonly attributed to pathways connecting phylogenetically "old" and "new" brain regions. Expanding on this theory, this study examined functional interactions between specific limbic and neocortical regions accompanying normal and disease-associated shifts in negative mood state. METHOD Regions of concordant functional change accompanying provocation of transient sadness in healthy volunteers and resolution of chronic dysphoric symptoms in depressed patients were examined with two positron emission tomography techniques: [15O]water and [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose, respectively. RESULTS With sadness, increases in limbic-paralimbic blood flow (subgenual cingulate, anterior insula) and decreases in neocortical regions (right dorsolateral prefrontal, inferior parietal) were identified. With recovery from depression, the reverse pattern, involving the same regions, was seen--limbic metabolic decreases and neocortical increases. A significant inverse correlation between subgenual cingulate and right dorsolateral prefrontal activity was also demonstrated in both conditions. CONCLUSIONS Reciprocal changes involving subgenual cingulate and right prefrontal cortex occur with both transient and chronic changes in negative mood. The presence and maintenance of functional reciprocity between these regions with shifts in mood in either direction suggests that these regional interactions are obligatory and probably mediate the well-recognized relationships between mood and attention seen in both normal and pathological conditions. The bidirectional nature of this limbic-cortical reciprocity provides additional evidence of potential mechanisms mediating cognitive ("top-down"), pharmacological (mixed), and surgical ("bottom-up") treatments of mood disorders such as depression.
The Foundation of Fixed Parameter Inapproximability November 16

Given an instance I of a minimization problem with optimum opt, fixed parameter ρ(k) inapproximability is to find a k ≥ opt and prove that it is not possible to compute a solution of value ρ(k) · k. In this paper all proofs are under the eth, and we are interested only in k being the optimum value of some instance. Our question is: What properties make a good Fixed Parameter Inapproximability proof? We claim that Fixed Parameter Inapproximability should be done, whenever possible, with parameter opt. We show simple examples so that k is far from opt for which fixed parameter inapproximability in k is not possible, while fixed parameter tractability in k is trivial to prove. However, these results are meaningless. To reduce with parameter opt, we need opt to be known. The way to achieve that is make opt the value of a yes instance in gap reduction. An (r, t)-FPT-hardness in opt for two functions r, t, is showing that the problem admits no r(opt) approximation that runs in time t(opt)n (for maximization problems any solution has to be super constant). Our main claim is that the art of Fixed Parameter inapproximability is the art of reducing opt. Reducing the optimum means given some instance I of a certain problem resulting from gap reduction, finding instance I ′ of the same problem with much smaller opt, and roughly the same gap. Thus as r, t get larger and larger, clearly opt has to become smaller and smaller for proofs to work. We develop a systematic way to reduce the optimum, and apply it on three completely different problems. This technique to reduce opt, is of independent interest. Even though we claim that reducing the value of the optimum is the essense of Fixed Parameter Inapproximability, this method was not used before this paper. As an evidence that reducing opt is important consider the problem of finding a Minimum Size Independent Set, that is also maximal. In [6] it is shown mmis admits no r(k) approximation for any r. However, their k equals k = g(n) for g an increasing function in n. Thus, there exists a t so that t(k) = t(g(n)) ≥ 2 · n. Clearly, for such t, no (r, t)-hardness is possible. We significantly improves [6], by proving (r, t)-hardness for any two functions r and t. This is achieved by reducing the value of the optimum. Fellows [9] conjectured that setcover and clique are (r, t)-FPT-hard for any pair of nondecreasing functions r, t and input parameter k. By decreasing the optimum we give a host of (r, t)-hardness results for setcover and clique so that t is much larger than superexponential in opt (and thus in k). All previous inapproximability results for these two problem [3], had t strictly sub exponential in opt. For example, for clique we show that for some constant there is no 1/(1 − ) approximation for clique in time t(opt)n for an arbitrary t (however huge). This substaintially improves the main result of [8] By Feige and Killean. We show that in many cases, if subexponential time in opt is allowed, then inapproximability result translates without any changes to a Fixed parameter inapproximability result.
Salmonella enterica Requires ApbC Function for Growth on Tricarballylate: Evidence of Functional Redundancy between ApbC and IscU

ABSTRACT Mutants of Salmonella enterica lacking apbC have nutritional and biochemical properties indicative of defects in [Fe-S] cluster metabolism. Here we show that apbC is required for S. enterica to use tricarballylate as a carbon and energy source. Tricarballylate catabolism requires three gene products, TcuA, TcuB, and TcuC. Of relevance to this work is the TcuB protein, which has two [4Fe-4S] clusters required for function, making it a logical target for the apbC effect. TcuB activity was 100-fold lower in an apbC mutant than in the isogenic apbC+ strain. Genetic data show that derepression of the iscRSUA-hscAB-fdx-orf3 operon or overexpression of iscU from a plasmid compensates for the lack of ApbC during growth on tricarballylate. The studies described herein provide evidence that the scaffold protein IscU has a functional overlap with ApbC and that ApbC function is involved in the synthesis of active TcuB.
Effects of Mindful Awareness Practices on Executive Functions in Elementary School Children

A school-based program of mindful awareness practices (MAPs) was evaluated in a randomized control study of 64 second- and third-grade children ages 7–9 years. The program was delivered for 30 minutes, twice per week, for 8 weeks. Teachers and parents completed questionnaires assessing children's executive function immediately before and following the 8-week period. Multivariate analysis of covariance on teacher and parent reports of executive function (EF) indicated an interaction effect between baseline EF score and group status on posttest EF. That is, children in the MAPs group who were less well regulated showed greater improvement in EF compared with controls. Specifically, those children starting out with poor EF who went through the MAPs training showed gains in behavioral regulation, metacognition, and overall global executive control. These results indicate a stronger effect of MAPs on children with executive function difficulties. The finding that both teachers and parents reported changes suggests that improvements in children's behavioral regulation generalized across settings. Future work is warranted using neurocognitive tasks of executive functions, behavioral observation, and multiple classroom samples to replicate and extend these preliminary findings.
Membrane Active Antimicrobial Peptides: Translating Mechanistic Insights to Design

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are promising next generation antibiotics that hold great potential for combating bacterial resistance. AMPs can be both bacteriostatic and bactericidal, induce rapid killing and display a lower propensity to develop resistance than do conventional antibiotics. Despite significant progress in the past 30 years, no peptide antibiotic has reached the clinic yet. Poor understanding of the action mechanisms and lack of rational design principles have been the two major obstacles that have slowed progress. Technological developments are now enabling multidisciplinary approaches including molecular dynamics simulations combined with biophysics and microbiology toward providing valuable insights into the interactions of AMPs with membranes at atomic level. This has led to increasingly robust models of the mechanisms of action of AMPs and has begun to contribute meaningfully toward the discovery of new AMPs. This review discusses the detailed action mechanisms that have been put forward, with detailed atomistic insights into how the AMPs interact with bacterial membranes. The review further discusses how this knowledge is exploited toward developing design principles for novel AMPs. Finally, the current status, associated challenges, and future directions for the development of AMP therapeutics are discussed.
Airborne Laser Scanning Data for Tree Characteristics Detection

Airborne laser scanning (ALS) technology provides a distinctive, innovative, accurate and cost effective approach to forest inventory. ALS data is used for information extraction with respect to the detection of tree characteristics like height, diameter at breast height (dbh) and crown diameter. Also, timber volume and biomass can be estimated from this information. Forest studies and applications aim to achieve the operational fast methods and reliable results. It is possible if the data contain dense point clouds. The first step to generate high resolution canopy height model (CHM) is to normalize digital surface model (DSM) by subtracting DTM from DSM. Thus, CHM contains the same X, Y coordinates as DTM and tree height as Z value. CHM accuracy is mostly affected by the accuracy of DTM and DSM. The interpolation method in high density point does not cause considerable error while corresponding filtering methods have the most effect. Recent studies show that, moderate to dense forest, estimations tend to underestimate tree height. In this work a technique based on the searching of local maximum canopy height is used to detect individual tree with variable window size and shape. The performance of this technique for the detection of the tree height is more than 90 %.
FULLY CONSTRAINED OBLIQUE PROJECTION APPROACH TO MIXED PIXEL LINEAR UNMIXING

Mixed pixels, which are inevitable in remote sensing images, often result in a lot of limitations in their applications. A novel approach for mixed pixel’s fully constrained unmixing, Fully Constrained Oblique Subspace Projection (FCOBSP) Linear Unmixing algorithm, is proposed to handle this problem. The Oblique Subspace Projection, in which the signal space is oblique to the background space, is introduced to the settlement of the Linear Mixture Model (LMM). The abundance of constitutional spectral signature can be obtained through projecting the mixed pixel to the spectral signature subspace. One of the two well-known constraints of LMM, namely the non-negative constraint, is met by projecting mixed pixels to continually modified background space. The other constraint, namely the sum-to-one constraint, is embedded into the LMM to realize fully constrained linear unmixing. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by synthetic multispectral pixels decomposition. Compared with the popular Fully Constrained Least Square unmixing (FCLS) algorithm and Oblique Subspace Projection (OBSP), in terms of both RMSE and correlation coefficient with the real abundance, the proposed algorithm achieves significant improvement over these algorithms in spite of a little more time cost. The proposed algorithm has been used to handle the practical classification problems which dealing with the real multispectral and hyperspectral data, and the decomposition results show that the objects are well separated. * Corresponding author.
The Ordered Extension of Pseudopodia by Amoeboid Cells in the Absence of External Cues

Eukaryotic cells extend pseudopodia for movement. In the absence of external cues, cells move in random directions, but with a strong element of persistence that keeps them moving in the same direction Persistence allows cells to disperse over larger areas and is instrumental to enter new environments where spatial cues can lead the cell. Here we explore cell movement by analyzing the direction, size and timing of ∼2000 pseudopodia that are extended by Dictyostelium cells. The results show that pseudpopod are extended perpendicular to the surface curvature at the place where they emerge. The location of new pseudopods is not random but highly ordered. Two types of pseudopodia may be formed: frequent splitting of an existing pseudopod, or the occasional extension of a de novo pseudopod at regions devoid of recent pseudopod activity. Split-pseudopodia are extended at ∼60 degrees relative to the previous pseudopod, mostly as alternating Right/Left/Right steps leading to relatively straight zigzag runs. De novo pseudopodia are extended in nearly random directions thereby interrupting the zigzag runs. Persistence of cell movement is based on the ratio of split versus de novo pseudopodia. We identify PLA2 and cGMP signaling pathways that modulate this ratio of splitting and de novo pseudopodia, and thereby regulate the dispersal of cells. The observed ordered extension of pseudopodia in the absence of external cues provides a fundamental insight into the coordinated movement of cells, and might form the basis for movement that is directed by internal or external cues.
Treatment alternatives of slaughterhouse wastes, and their effect on the inactivation of different pathogens: A review

Slaughterhouse wastes are a potential reservoir of bacterial, viral, prion and parasitic pathogens, capable of infecting both animals and humans. A quick, cost effective and safe disposal method is thus essential in order to reduce the risk of disease following animal slaughter. Different methods for the disposal of such wastes exist, including composting, anaerobic digestion (AD), alkaline hydrolysis (AH), rendering, incineration and burning. Composting is a disposal method that allows a recycling of the slaughterhouse waste nutrients back into the earth. The high fat and protein content of slaughterhouse wastes mean however, that such wastes are an excellent substrate for AD processes, resulting in both the disposal of wastes, a recycling of nutrients (soil amendment with sludge), and in methane production. Concerns exist as to whether AD and composting processes can inactivate pathogens. In contrast, AH is capable of the inactivation of almost all known microorganisms. This review was conducted in order to compare three different methods of slaughterhouse waste disposal, as regards to their ability to inactivate various microbial pathogens. The intention was to investigate whether AD could be used for waste disposal (either alone, or in combination with another process) such that both energy can be obtained and potentially hazardous materials be disposed of.
Latch-Based Clocking for Portable Low-Power Audio Applications

Two DSP algorithms for hearing aids have been integrated on silicon in a 0.18 mum CMOS process. Various level-sensitive two-phase clocking schemes have been evaluated in terms of energy efficiency. Actual measurements have confirmed energy savings of 64% over a recently published clock-gated single-edge-triggered one-phase implementation. Most of these improvements can be attributed to the thinning out of the clock tree made possible by the relaxed slew and skew constraints of level-sensitive clocking schemes
Traffic Information Deriving Using GPS Probe Vehicle Data Integrated with GIS

With the rapid vehicle volume growth on roads, the performance of urban road traffic systems is a major concern to transportation planners, road users, and all members of the urban community. The evaluation of the performance measures relies on the accuracy and reliability of the collected traffic data. This paper describes a method of extracting transportation information using global positioning system (GPS) receivers integrated with geographic information system (GIS) technology. An AgGPS132 DGPS receiver was used to collect probe vehicle data along several highways of interest in Columbus, Ohio for 2002 and 2003. A digital orthophoto quarter-quadrangle (DOQQ 2000) with a ground resolution of 0.5 ft (0.15 m) is used as a backdrop to develop the highway database. The collected GPS points were mapped to the highway using a "snapping" technique in a GIS environment. Travel time, speed and congestion index values were measured along selected highway segments for evaluating the traffic condition of the highways. The results of GPS data compared favorably with the corresponding loop detector data. For all runs, the average difference values between the GPS probe vehicle speed data and the loop detector speed data were less than 4 mph (6.4 km/hr).
The Economics of Selling Crop Residue Biomass for Cellulosic Ethanol Production at the Farm Level

A partial budget decision making framework has been developed to assist crop producers in analyzing the profitability of selling cellulosic biomass from their fields for ethanol production. A multidisciplinary approach is taken in assessing the agronomic and economic factors relevant to biomass contract sales decisions – with direct application made to western Great Plains cropping systems and enterprises. Within this framework the benefits of increased revenue from cellulosic biomass contract sales and potential government assistance payments are considered against possible decreased revenue from diminished crop yields resulting from less crop residue cover and subsequent soil moisture evaporation. Increased biomass harvesting and handling are also considered, as is the cost of replacing crop nutrients removed as part of biomass harvest operations. Examples of the profitability of cellulosic biomass contract sales in center pivot irrigated corn and non-irrigated wheat enterprises are shown.
A Deterministic Dependency Parser with Dynamic Programming for Sanskrit

We describe a Deterministic Dependency Parser for Sanskrit. The parse is developed following a Depth First traversal of a graph whose nodes represent morphological analyses of the words in a sentence. During the traversal, relations at each node are checked for local compatibility, and finally for each full path, the relations on the path are checked for global compatibility. Stacking of intermediate results guarantees dynamic programming. We also describe an interface that displays multiple parses compactly and facilitates users to select the desired parse among various possible solutions with a maximum of n 1 choices for a sentence with n words.
New Models for the Correlation in Sensor Data

In this paper, we propose two new models of spatial correlations in sensor data in a data-gathering sensor network. A particular property of these models is that if a sensor node knows in \textit{how many} bits it needs to transmit its data, then it also knows \textit{which} bits of its data it needs to transmit.