Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defective cAMP Generation Underlies the Sensitivity of CNS Neurons to Neurofibromatosis-1 Heterozygosity

Individuals with the neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) inherited cancer syndrome exhibit neuronal dysfunction that predominantly affects the CNS. In this report, we demonstrate a unique vulnerability of CNS neurons, but not peripheral nervous system (PNS) neurons, to reduced Nf1 gene expression. Unlike dorsal root ganglion neurons, Nf1 heterozygous (Nf1+/−) hippocampal and retinal ganglion cell (RGC) neurons have decreased growth cone areas and neurite lengths, and increased apoptosis compared to their wild-type counterparts. These abnormal Nf1+/− CNS neuronal phenotypes do not reflect Ras pathway hyperactivation, but rather result from impaired neurofibromin-mediated cAMP generation. In this regard, elevating cAMP levels with forskolin or rolipram treatment, but not MEK (MAP kinase kinase) or PI3-K (phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase) inhibition, reverses these abnormalities to wild-type levels in vitro. In addition, Nf1+/− CNS, but not PNS, neurons exhibit increased apoptosis in response to excitotoxic or oxidative stress in vitro. Since children with NF1-associated optic gliomas often develop visual loss and Nf1 genetically engineered mice with optic glioma exhibit RGC neuronal apoptosis in vivo, we further demonstrate that RGC apoptosis resulting from optic glioma in Nf1 genetically engineered mice is attenuated by rolipram treatment in vivo. Similar to optic glioma-induced RGC apoptosis, the increased RGC neuronal death in Nf1+/− mice after optic nerve crush injury is also attenuated by rolipram treatment in vivo. Together, these findings establish a distinctive role for neurofibromin in CNS neurons with respect to vulnerability to injury, define a CNS-specific neurofibromin intracellular signaling pathway responsible for neuronal survival, and lay the foundation for future neuroprotective glioma treatment approaches.
Accumulation of eosinophils in intestine-draining mesenteric lymph nodes occurs after Trichuris muris infection

Eosinophils have recently been demonstrated capable of localizing to lymph nodes that drain mucosal surfaces, in particular during T helper 2 (Th2) responses. Resistance of mice to infection with the gastrointestinal nematode Trichuris muris depends critically on mounting of a Th2 response and represents a useful model system to investigate Th2 responses. Following infection of resistant BALB/c mice with T. muris, we observed accumulation of eosinophils in intestine‐draining mesenteric lymph nodes (MLNs). The accumulation of MLN eosinophils was initiated during the second week of infection and peaked during worm expulsion. In contrast, we detected a comparably late and modest increase in eosinophil numbers in the MLNs of infected susceptible AKR mice. MLN eosinophils localized preferentially to the medullary region of the lymph node, displayed an activated phenotype and contributed to the interleukin‐4 (IL‐4) response in the MLN. Despite this, mice genetically deficient in eosinophils efficiently generated IL‐4‐expressing CD4+ T cells, produced Th2 cytokines and mediated worm expulsion during primary T. muris infection. Thus, IL‐4‐expressing eosinophils accumulate in MLNs of T. muris‐infected BALB/c mice but are dispensable for worm expulsion and generation of Th2 responses, suggesting a distinct or subtle role of MLN eosinophils in the immune response to T. muris infection.
Enhancement of the cell-killing effect of ultraviolet-C radiation by short-term exposure to a pulsed magnetic field

Purpose: To investigate whether low frequency pulsed magnetic field (PMF) exposures produce alterations in the cell killing induced by ultraviolet C (UVC) radiation. Materials and methods: MCF-7 breast cancer cells of exponentially growing cultures were exposed to PMF (25 Hz, 0.75 mT) and UVC (from 6.6 J/m2 to 59.4 J/m2) in two different protocols: (a) cells were exposed to PMF for 30 min and then exposed to UVC at different doses; (b) cells were exposed to PMF for 30 min. After 15 min of the PMF exposure they were exposed simultaneously to PMF + different doses of UVC. After an additional time of 72 h of incubation, viability was measured by the neutral red stain cytotoxicity test. Results: Both exposure protocols produced a significant decrease in the post UVC survival at 13.2 J/m2 and 19.8 J/m2, as compared to controls. The simultaneous exposition of PMF and UVC produced an additional increment in cell killing at 26.4 J/m2, being the greater effects obtained for this second exposure protocol. Conclusions: Results of the present study show that PMF in combination with UVC have the ability to augment the cell killing effects of UVC radiation. In addition, the effects appear to be greater when PMF and UVC are applied at the same time.
Potential Selection of LMP1 Variants in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

ABSTRACT Seven distinct sequence variants of the Epstein-Barr virus latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1) have been identified by distinguishing amino acid changes in the carboxy-terminal domain. In this study the transmembrane domains are shown to segregate identically with the distinct carboxy-terminal amino acid sequences. Since strains of LMP1 have been shown to differ in abundance between blood and throat washes, nasopharyngeal carcinomas (NPCs) from areas of endemicity and nonendemicity with matching blood were analyzed by using a heteroduplex tracking assay to distinguish LMP1 variants. Striking differences were found between the compartments with the Ch1 strain prevalent in the NPCs from areas of endemicity and nonendemicity and the B958 strain prevalent in the blood of the endemic samples, whereas multiple strains of LMP1 were prevalent in the blood of the nonendemic samples. The possible selection against the B958 strain appearing in the tumor was highly significant (P < 0.0001). Sequence analysis of the full-length LMP1 variants revealed changes in many of the known and computer-predicted HLA-restricted epitopes with changes in key positions in multiple, potential epitopes for the specific HLA of the patients. These amino acid substitutions at key positions in the LMP1 epitopes may result in a reduced cytotoxic-T-lymphocyte response. These data indicate that strains with specific variants of LMP1 are more likely to be found in NPC. The predominance of specific LMP1 variants in NPC could reflect differences in the biologic or molecular properties of the distinct forms of LMP1 or possible immune selection.
Myths, Artifacts, and Fatal Flaws: Identifying Limitations and Opportunities in Vitamin C Research

Research progress to understand the role of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in human health has been slow in coming. This is predominantly the result of several flawed approaches to study design, often lacking a full appreciation of the redox chemistry and biology of ascorbic acid. In this review, we summarize our knowledge surrounding the limitations of common approaches used in vitamin C research. In human cell culture, the primary issues are the high oxygen environment, presence of redox-active transition metal ions in culture media, and the use of immortalized cell lines grown in the absence of supplemental ascorbic acid. Studies in animal models are also limited due to the presence of endogenous ascorbic acid synthesis. Despite the use of genetically altered rodent strains lacking synthesis capacity, there are additional concerns that these models do not adequately recapitulate the effects of vitamin C deprivation and supplementation observed in humans. Lastly, several flaws in study design endemic to randomized controlled trials and other human studies greatly limit their conclusions and impact. There also is anecdotal evidence of positive and negative health effects of vitamin C that are widely accepted but have not been substantiated. Only with careful attention to study design and experimental detail can we further our understanding of the possible roles of vitamin C in promoting human health and preventing or treating disease.
The ‘calcium sensitising’ effects of ORG30029 in saponin‐ or Triton‐skinned rat cardiac muscle

1 The effects of a range of concentrations of ORG30029 (1 μm to 1 mm) were investigated on fully (Triton‐treated) or selectively (saponin‐treated) ‘skinned’ ventricle trabeculae from rat. The Ca‐sensitivity was increased by 100 μm and amounted to a mean reduction in the Ca2+ necessary for half‐maximal activation (1/Kapp) of 0.174 ± 0.053 (mean ± s.e.mean) pCa units. ORG30029 (50 μm) gave a smaller mean shift of 0.05 ± 0.016 pCa units. A slight shallowing of the relationship between ‐log[Ca2+] (pCa) and steady‐state tension was also generally found (mean Hill exponent reduction 0.37 ± 0.28 at 100 μm). 2 The Ca‐sensitizing action altered in a dose‐dependent fashion. Judged by the ability to enhance force from an initial level of activation of 10–20% of maximum Ca‐activated force (Cmax), the first significant effects occurred near 10 μm and continued to increase at 1 mm. 3 A small (3.7 ± 1.1%) but consistent increase in Cmax was produced by ORG30029 at 100 μm. Much larger increases were produced by the drug at higher concentrations (up to 20–50% at 1 mm). 4 The consequence of these changes is that at levels of activation likely to occur in the heart, the absolute increase in force by 100 μm ORG30029 was considerable: it amounted to a 150–200% increase at a [Ca2+] producing 20% at Cmax. At this drug concentration virtually all the effect was due to Ca‐sensitizing rather than increasing CMax. 5 In the saponin‐treated preparations, at concentrations up to 1 mm, ORG30029 did not release Ca from the sarcoplasmic reticulum, as indicated by the failure to evoke contracture under conditions where caffeine induced large responses. 6 At 100 μm, ORG30029 potentiated the transient, caffeine‐induced contracture (saponin‐treated preparation) to an extent consistent with the Ca‐sensitizing effect seen under conditions of steady‐state tension development.
The Effects of Diversity Training on Recognizing Gender Differences in a Corporate Environment

The face of the American workforce is changing. As more women and minorities enter the workplace and globalization continues, workers must work with. interact with, and sell to people who are different from themselves. Workers bring their cultures, attitudes, and modes of operation with them. To address the issue of being productive in a diversified environment, corporations have implemented diversity training programs. For the purpose of this study, diversity was defined as gender differences. This research examined the effects of diversity training on increasing the awareness and understanding of gender differences in the workplace. The experimental design of the study was a pretest posttest involving two groups in a large corporation who received different forms of training to address gender differences. One group received its training in the traditional manner currently used in the corporation. The second group participated in enhanced training targeted to include multiple learning styles and focused on why this effort was important to the individuals as well as the corporation. A true-false test based on gender differences was given prior to the training to account for individual differences and to establish the means for the groups. The same test was given following the training to determine the effectiveness of the training. The statistical procedure used in this study was an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) in order to determine whether there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the two groups. A level of significance of . 05 was specified. Calculations were done using the computer program SPSS version 9.0. The data yielded a statistically significant difference between the employees who received the enhanced training and the employees who received the standard training on knowledge of gender differences in the workplace.
Genetic Association in Multivariate Phenotypic Data: Power in Five Models

This article concerns the power of various data analytic strategies to detect the effect of a single genetic variant (GV) in multivariate data. We simulated exactly fitting monozygotic and dizygotic phenotypic data according to single and two common factor models, and simplex models. We calculated the power to detect the GV in twin 1 data in an ANOVA of phenotypic sum scores, in a MANOVA, and in exploratory factor analysis (EFA), in which the common factors are regressed on the genetic variant. We also report power in the full twin model, and power of the single phenotype ANOVA. The results indicate that (1) if the GV affects all phenotypes, the sum score ANOVA and the EFA are most powerful, while the MANOVA is less powerful. Increasing phenotypic correlations further decreases the power of the MANOVA; and (2) if the GV affects only a subset of the phenotypes, the EFA or the MANOVA are most powerful, while sum score ANOVA is less powerful. In this case, an increase in phenotypic correlations may enhance the power of MANOVA and EFA. If the effect of the GV is modeled directly on the phenotypes in the EFA, the power of the EFA is approximately equal to the power of the MANOVA.
Immunological Memory and Protective Immunity: Understanding Their Relation

The immune system can remember, sometimes for a lifetime, the identity of a pathogen. Understanding how this is accomplished has fascinated immunologists and microbiologists for many years, but there is still considerable debate regarding the mechanisms by which long-term immunity is maintained. Some of the controversy stems from a failure to distinguish between effector and memory cells and to define their roles in conferring protection against disease. Here the current understanding of the cellular basis of immune memory is reviewed and the relative contributions made to protective immunity by memory and effector T and B cells are examined.
Examining self-concept during adolescence : an empirical study

This thesis ,examines the relationship between adolescents' self-concepts, hierarchical statuses, school grouping patterns and tracking. The study compares differences between measures of self-concept for adolescents of different hierarchical statuses as well as how schools' grouping patterns and track placement affects the students. The t-tests analysis indicate that there were only 2 statistically significant differenc~s among the ten measures of students' self-concepts when comparing their gender, race, language spoken, family income level and school grouping
Learning Robust Representations of Text

Deep neural networks have achieved remarkable results across many language processing tasks, however these methods are highly sensitive to noise and adversarial attacks. We present a regularization based method for limiting network sensitivity to its inputs, inspired by ideas from computer vision, thus learning models that are more robust. Empirical evaluation over a range of sentiment datasets with a convolutional neural network shows that, compared to a baseline model and the dropout method, our method achieves superior performance over noisy inputs and out-of-domain data.
Mood dysregulation across developmental psychopathology--general concepts and disorder specific expressions.

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Predicting nonlinear pseudorandom number generators

Let p be a prime and let a and b be elements of the finite field Fp of p elements. The inversive congruential generator (ICG) is a sequence (u n ) of pseudorandom numbers defined by the relation u n+1 ≡ au -1 n +b mod p. We show that if sufficiently many of the most significant bits of several consecutive values u n of the ICG are given, one can recover the initial value u 0 (even in the case where the coefficients a and b are not known). We also obtain similar results for the quadratic congruential generator (QCG), v n+1 ≡ f(v n ) mod p, where f ∈ F p [X]. This suggests that for cryptographic applications ICG and QCG should be used with great care. Our results are somewhat similar to those known for the linear congruential generator (LCG), x n+1 ≡ ax n + b mod p, but they apply only to much longer bit strings. We also estimate limits of some heuristic approaches, which still remain much weaker than those known for LCG.
Unsupervised incremental online adaptation to unknown environment and speaker

A Maximum Likelihood Spectral Transformation (MLST) technique is used for robust speech recognition under mismatched training and testing conditions. The linear spectral speech feature vectors of testing utterances are transformed such that the likelihood of the utterances is increased after the transformation. The cepstral vectors are computed from the transformed spectra. The function used for the spectral transformation is designed to handle both convolutional and additive noise. Since the function has small number of parameters to be estimated, MLST requires only a few utterances for adaptation. Furthermore, the computation for parameter estimation and spectral transformation can be done efficiently in linear time. Therefore, the MLST is suitable for rapid online adaptation. To evaluate the efficiency of the MLST technique, it has been implemented for unsupervised incremental online adaptation. The system is tested on speaker-phone telephone speech data, and MLST reduces the error rate by 29.5% when used for speaker and environment adaptation.
Experience with an Advanced Design Flow with OSEK Compliant Code Generation for Automotive ECU''s

In this paper we describe our experience with an advanced development process for Automotive ECU's running OSEK. We have used this development process to develop a demo ECU for a car tail light. Running Motorola OSEK-OS/08 on a M68HC08 target with generated application code and an early HW/SW co-verification. In this advanced development process we identified five main stages. Some stages are performed in parallel to shorten significantly development time. One of the key advantages is the verification along the V-model, at each level of abstraction, while moving from the specification down to the final integration. In the traditional, flow the verification can only be performed on the right branch of the V-model of an ECU.
A Constrained Resampling Strategy for Mesh Improvement

In many geometry processing applications, it is required to improve an initial mesh in terms of multiple quality objectives. Despite the availability of several mesh generation algorithms with provable guarantees, such generated meshes may only satisfy a subset of the objectives. The conflicting nature of such objectives makes it challenging to establish similar guarantees for each combination, e.g., angle bounds and vertex count. In this paper, we describe a versatile strategy for mesh improvement by interpreting quality objectives as spatial constraints on resampling and develop a toolbox of local operators to improve the mesh while preserving desirable properties. Our strategy judiciously combines smoothing and transformation techniques allowing increased flexibility to practically achieve multiple objectives simultaneously. We apply our strategy to both planar and surface meshes demonstrating how to simplify Delaunay meshes while preserving element quality, eliminate all obtuse angles in a complex mesh, and maximize the shortest edge length in a Voronoi tessellation far better than the state‐of‐the‐art.
Practical aspects of the measurement of the diffusion of proteins in aqueous solution.

NMR diffusion measurements have been shown to be a useful tool for investigating the conformation and oligomeric state of proteins. Four main problems associated with making diffusion measurements of proteins in aqueous solution are identified and solutions proposed. The resulting experiment is demonstrated for an aqueous solution of hen egg white lysozyme.
Image Steganalysis Based on Statistical Moments of Wavelet Subband Histograms in DFT Domain

This paper proposed an image Steganalysis scheme based on statistical moments of histogram of multi-level wavelet subbands in frequency domain. Our theoretical analysis has pointed out that the statistical moments in frequency domain of histogram is more sensitive to data embedding than the statistical moments of histogram in spatial domain. We test the performance of our proposed scheme over non-blind spread spectrum (SS) data hiding method, blind SS method, block based SS method, LSB method and QIM data hiding methods. Besides, steganographic tools such as Outguess, JSteg and F5 are tested. The experimental results have showed that the proposed method outperforms the prior arts by Farid and Harmsen
Permanent sensorineural hearing loss following spinal anesthesia

A 25‐year‐old female developed permanent, fluctuating sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), disabling vertigo, and tinnitus following an uneventful spinal anesthesia for cesarean section. At her first visit to the ear‐nose‐throat (ENT) department approximately 2 months postoperatively, pure‐tone thresholds revealed profound SNHL on the right side whereas thresholds were within normal limits on the left side. The recruitment score (SISI) was 95% at 2000 Hz on the right side. Directional preponderance towards the right and the right canal paresis were evidenced by bithermal caloric testing. At follow ups the pure tone thresholds have shown some improvement, but fluctuating SNHL, disabling vertigo attacks, and tinnitus have remained. These findings imply a cochlear pathology causing endolymphatic hydrops possibly induced by lumbar puncture for spinal anesthesia.