Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in size and dendritic arborization patterns of adult cat spinal α‐Motoneurons following permanent axotomy

This study was performed to analyse quantitatively the changes in dimensions and dendritic branching patterns of adult cat spinal α‐motoneurons following permanent axotomy, i.e., in a situation in which the transected motoraxons are prevented from reinnervating their peripheral target muscle. After transection and ligation of the medial gastrocnemius nerve of adult cats, homonymous α‐motoneurons were intracellularly labelled with horseradish peroxidase and subjected to quantitative light microscopic analyses. The cell bodies and proximal dendrites were studied at 3, 6, and 12 weeks after the axotomy. An initial increase in cell body size at 3 weeks was followed by a gradual return towards normal values. The mean diameter of the stem dendrites was decreased at all time periods studied, and the combined diameter of the stem dendrites was reduced at 12 weeks after the axotomy. Entire dendritic trees were reconstructed at 12 weeks postoperatively, and the regression equations describing the correlations between dendritic stem diameter, on one hand, and the size of the entire dendrite, on the other, were used to calculate the total dendritic length, volume, and membrane area of whole axotomized motoneurons. The dendritic branching patterns were also analysed. In comparison with normal medial gastrocnemius α‐motoneurons, the dendritic membrane area and volume of the axotomized cells had decreased by 36% and 29%, respectively, at 12 weeks after the axotomy. This reduction in dendritic size was due to a loss of preterminal and terminal dendritic segments. Abnormal dendritic elongations were observed in 2 of 16 completely reconstructed dendrites.
La ambivalencia tecnológica del crowdsourcing

El presente articulo se propone indagar en la ambiguedad politica que caracteriza a las tecnologias de la informacion digital, a traves de la exposicion de un caso concreto de diseno tecnologico: el crowdsourcing. Con este fin, expondremos la plasticidad politica intrinseca que detentan las tecnologias digitales, a traves de casos concretos de plataformas de crowdsourcing activas que soportan toda clase de disenos tecnicos, modalidades de participacion y formas de apropiacion de los resultados. Expondremos diferentes modalidades que adoptan estos proyectos de produccion colaborativa online, con sus particulares efectos en la comunicacion de los participantes, el tipo de actividad realizada y la formacion de comunidades virtuales.
Subregional Patterns of Preferential Striatal Dopamine Transporter Loss Differ in Parkinson Disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, and Multiple-System Atrophy

Parkinson disease (PD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and multiple-system atrophy (MSA) are known to affect dopaminergic neurons of the brain stem and striatum with different preferential involvement. Here we investigated differences in striatal subregional dopamine transporter loss in PD, PSP, and MSA and assessed the diagnostic value of 18F-fluorinated-N-3-fluoropropyl-2-β-carboxymethoxy-3-β-(4-iodophenyl)nortropane (18F-FP-CIT) PET in differentiating PSP and MSA from PD. Methods: Forty-nine patients with PD, 19 patients with PSP, 24 patients with MSA, and 21 healthy people (healthy controls) were examined with 18F-FP-CIT PET. The PET images were spatially normalized and analyzed with 12 striatal subregional volume-of-interest (VOI) templates (bilateral ventral striatum [VS], anterior caudate [AC], posterior caudate, anterior putamen, posterior putamen [PP], and ventral putamen [VP]) and 1 occipital VOI template. The nondisplaceable binding potential (BPND) and intersubregional ratio (ISR; defined as the ratio of the BPND of one striatal subregion to that of another striatal subregion) of subregional VOIs were calculated. Results: The BPND of all VOIs in the PD, MSA, and PSP groups were significantly lower than those in the healthy controls (P < 0.05). The BPND of AC and the AC/VS ISR in the PSP group were significantly lower than those in the PD group. The BPND of VP was significantly lower, but the PP/VP ISR was significantly higher in the MSA group than in the PD group. At the cutoff value for the AC/VS ISR (<0.7), the sensitivity and specificity for differentiating PSP from PD were 94% and 92%, respectively. At the cutoff value for the PP/VP ISR (>0.65), the sensitivity and specificity for differentiating MSA from PD were 90% and 45%, respectively. The diagnostic accuracy of visual analysis was similar to that of quantitative analysis for differentiating PSP from PD but was significantly higher for differentiating MSA from PD. Conclusion: Compared with PD, PSP and MSA showed more prominent and earlier dopamine transporter loss in the AC and VP, respectively. These findings could be useful for suggesting PSP or MSA in parkinsonian cases without characteristic atypical features.
The Effect of Functional Roles on Group Efficiency

The usefulness of roles to support small group performance can often be read; however, their effect is rarely empirically assessed. This article reports the effects of functional roles on group performance, efficiency, and collaboration during computer-supported collaborative learning. A comparison of 33 questionnaire observations, distributed over 10 groups in two research conditions (role and nonrole) revealed no main effect for performance (grade). A latent variable was interpreted as perceived group efficiency (PGE). Multilevel modeling yielded a positive, marginal effect for PGE. Groups in the role condition appear to be more aware of their efficiency as compared to groups in the nonrole condition, regardless of whether they performed well or poorly. Content analysis reveals more task-content focused statements in the role condition; however, this was not as we hypothesized (i.e., the premise that roles decrease coordination). In fact, roles appear to stimulate coordination that simultaneously increases the amount of task-content focused statements.
Depression of Ventricular Contractility by Stimulation of the Vagus Nerves

In three different types of canine heart preparations, it was demonstrated that efferent vagal stimulation exerts a potent, negative inotropic influence upon the ventricular myocardium. In the paced, isovolumetric, left ventricle preparation, vagal stimulation evoked a reduction of left ventricular systolic pressure which, within limits, varied directly with the magnitude of the stimulus. Supramaximal stimulation elicited a mean reduction of 23% in the peak pressure generated by the left ventricle. No differences could be detected between the effects of the right and left vagi upon ventricular contractility. The percentage changes induced by vagal stimulation upon ventricular contractility in the paced heart were less than the percentage changes in heart rate induced in the spontaneously beating heart. In a pumping heart preparation in which a constant rate of venous return was delivered to the left atrium, vagal stimulation consistently elicited an appreciable elevation of left ventricular end diastolic pressure. Another pumping heart preparation was employed in which changes in atrial transport function and mitral valve closure were excluded by the expedient of introducing a balloon into the left ventricle through an apical incision. This balloon was connected to an artificial external circuit with fixed venous reservoir height and peripheral resistance. Vagal stimulation consistently diminished stroke volume, “arterial” pressure, and stroke work in such a circuit.
Molecular Mechanism of the Syk Activation Switch*

Many immune signaling pathways require activation of the Syk tyrosine kinase to link ligation of surface receptors to changes in gene expression. Despite the central role of Syk in these pathways, the Syk activation process remains poorly understood. In this work we quantitatively characterized the molecular mechanism of Syk activation in vitro using a real time fluorescence kinase assay, mutagenesis, and other biochemical techniques. We found that dephosphorylated full-length Syk demonstrates a low initial rate of substrate phosphorylation that increases during the kinase reaction due to autophosphorylation. The initial rate of Syk activity was strongly increased by either pre-autophosphorylation or binding of phosphorylated immune tyrosine activation motif peptides, and each of these factors independently fully activated Syk. Deletion mutagenesis was used to identify regions of Syk important for regulation, and residues 340–356 of the SH2 kinase linker region were identified to be important for suppression of activity before activation. Comparison of the activation processes of Syk and Zap-70 revealed that Syk is more readily activated by autophosphorylation than Zap-70, although both kinases are rapidly activated by Src family kinases. We also studied Syk activity in B cell lysates and found endogenous Syk is also activated by phosphorylation and immune tyrosine activation motif binding. Together these experiments show that Syk functions as an “OR-gate” type of molecular switch. This mechanism of switch-like activation helps explain how Syk is both rapidly activated after receptor binding but also sustains activity over time to facilitate longer term changes in gene expression.
Important Feature PCA for high dimensional clustering

We consider a clustering problem where we observe feature vectors Xi ∈ R, i = 1, 2, . , n, from K possible classes. The class labels are unknown and the main interest is to estimate them. We are primarily interested in the modern regime of p n, where classical clustering methods face challenges. We propose Important Features PCA (IF-PCA) as a new clustering procedure. In IFPCA, we select a small fraction of features with the largest Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) scores, where the threshold is chosen by adapting the recent notion of Higher Criticism, obtain the first (K − 1) left singular vectors of the post-selection normalized data matrix, and then estimate the labels by applying the classical k-means to these singular vectors. It can be seen that IF-PCA is a tuning free clustering method. We apply IF-PCA to 10 gene microarray data sets. The method has competitive performance in clustering. Especially, in three of the data sets, the error rates of IF-PCA are only 29% or less of the error rates by other methods. We have also rediscovered a phenomenon on empirical null by [16] on microarray data. With delicate analysis, especially post-selection eigen-analysis, we derive tight probability bounds on the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistics and show that IF-PCA yields clustering consistency in a broad context. The clustering problem is connected to the problems of sparse PCA and low-rank matrix recovery, but it is different in important ways. We reveal an interesting phase transition phenomenon associated with these problems and identify the range of interest for each.
Effects of Performance‐based Compensation and Faculty Track on the Clinical Activity, Research Portfolio, and Teaching Mission of a Large Academic Department of Medicine

Purpose Academic departments of medicine must compete effectively for extramural research support and access to patients while preserving their teaching mission. There is not much literature describing plausible mechanisms for ensuring success. The authors describe the design, implementation, and testing of a performance-based compensation plan in a department of medicine that is closely linked to the faculty appointment track. Method Over a three-year period, the changes this plan effected in research portfolio, clinical enterprise, and faculty satisfaction as well as the teaching perceptions of students and housestaff were measured. Results The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for clinical work grew 40% faster after plan implementation. Federal funding increased at a CAGR that was 170% greater than before. The department halved its award rankings at the National Institutes of Health and faculty satisfaction improved compared with the former method of compensation. Faculty who better understood the plan were more satisfied with the conversion. High measures of teaching quality were maintained by faculty with no apparent change in satisfaction among students or housestaff. Conclusions This performance-based compensation plan with its emphasis on the objectives of career orientation and faculty track assignment strengthened the opportunity to grow both clinical productivity and the funded research portfolio.
Optimal Resource Configuration of Complex Services in the Cloud

Virtualization helps to deploy the functionality of expensive and rigid hardware appliances on scalable virtual resources running on commodity servers. However, optimal resource provisioning for non-trivial services is still an open problem. While there have been efforts to answer the questions of when to provision additional resources in a running service, and how many resources are needed, the question of what should be provisioned has not been investigated, in particular, for complex applications or services, which consist of a set of connected components, where each component in turn potentially consists of multiple component instances (e.g., VMs or containers). Each instance of a component can be run in different flavors (i.e., number of cores or amount of memory), while the service constructed by the combination of these component configurations must satisfy the customer Service Level Objective (SLO). In this work, we offer to service providers an answer to the what to deploy question by introducing Rconf, a system that automatically chooses the optimal combination of component instances for non-trivial network services. In particular, we propose an analytical model based on robust queuing theory that is able to accurately model arbitrary components, and develop an algorithm that finds the combination of their instances, such that the overall utilization of the running instances is maximized while meeting SLO requirements.
Estrogen receptor β inhibits 17β-estradiol-stimulated proliferation of the breast cancer cell line T47D

Estrogen receptor (ER) β counteracts the activity of ERα in many systems. In agreement with this, we show in this study that induced expression of ERβ in the breast cancer cell line T47D reduces 17β-estradiol-stimulated proliferation when expression of ERβ mRNA equals that of ERα. Induction of ERβ reduces growth of exponentially proliferating cells with a concomitant decrease in components of the cell cycle associated with proliferation, namely cyclin E, Cdc25A (a key regulator of Cdk2), p45Skp2 (a key regulator of p27Kip1 proteolysis), and an increase in the Cdk inhibitor p27Kip1. We also observed a reduced Cdk2 activity. These findings suggest a possible role for ERβ in breast cancer and imply that ERβ-specific ligands may reduce proliferation of ER-positive breast cancer cells through actions on the G1 phase cell-cycle machinery.
Salicylic Acid Is Needed in Hypersensitive Cell Death in Soybean but Does Not Act as a Catalase Inhibitor

The function of salicylic acid (SA) in hypersensitive cell death was studied in a soybean (Glycine max)-Pseudomonas syringae pv glycinea system. The infection of cell cultures with bacteria leads to a hypersensitive reaction (HR), which is dependent on an appropriate avirulence gene and on low concentrations of SA. The requirement for SA is essential for a process shortly before the onset of the HR-caused cell death 5 to 6 h after infection with bacteria. SA given 10 to 12 h after infection or preincubation cannot rescue the completion of the cell death program. SA does not inhibit catalase or ascorbate peroxidase in soybean. In addition, the in vivo capacity of the cell culture for the rapid metabolism of H2O2 is not altered by SA. This clearly shows that SA is needed for the HR-caused cell death for a reaction downstream of the oxidative burst. Lipid peroxides accumulate during the HR, but the loss of membrane control precedes the generation of lipid peroxides. The accumulation of lipid peroxides in the HR can be prevented by lipid antioxidants. Nevertheless, cell death kinetics remain unaltered in the presence of antioxidants. It is concluded that lipid peroxides are a consequence of cell death, but not the primary cause of it.
The Secretary Problem with a Selection Committee: Do Conformist Committees Hire Better Secretaries?

This paper analyzes a variation of the secretary problem in which two selectors with different fields of interest each want to appoint one of the n candidates with as much expertise as possible in their field. Selectors simultaneously vote to accept or reject: Unanimous decisions are respected, and candidates with a split decision are hired with probability p. Each candidate arrives with expertise x and y in the two fields, uniformly and independently distributed on [0, 1] and observable to both selectors. If a candidate with expertise pair (x, y) is hired by unanimous decision, the payoffs to the selectors are simply x and y. However, to model the level of conformity in the firm, we deduct a positive “consensus cost” c from the utility of a selector who has rejected a candidate who is nevertheless hired. We show (Theorem 1) that each stage game has a unique equilibrium in which there are two thresholds, z v or x > z and y > v. We show that for suffi.
Vaccine‐preventable childhood diseases in Australia: Too much disease, not enough vaccination: what more can we do?

I n 1994, there were 17442 notifications of vaccinepreventable diseases in Australia. 1 This disgraceful situation exists despite the ready availability of free, safe and effective vaccines. Particularly damning were the 8661 cases of pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella and Haemophilus injluenzae type b notified in children up to school leaving age (19 years old) all diseases for which a national immunisation program has been in place for many years! Why do we still have so much disease despite good vaccines and good delivery systems? While there is a lack of uniform reliable data on vaccination coverage, it would seem our national childhood vaccination rates are inadequate. The Australian Bureau of Statistics' 1989-90 National Health Survey reported that, according to parental recall, 53% of children up to six years of age had been vaccinated in accord with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) vaccination schedules.s Unpublished data from State health departments include the report of a 1991 cluster survey in Victoria of 630 children aged 18 months to 3 years which found that 88% were fully vaccinated against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio and measles (john Carnie, Manager, Infectious Diseases Unit, Victorian Department of Health and Community Services, Melbourne, personal communication); a 1994 ACT report found that only 67% of 236 children at school entry (aged about five years) were fully vaccinated (Ms Ann Kempe, Immunisation Coordinator, ACT Department of Health and Community Care, Canberra, personal communication). Whatever the true vaccination coverage, continuing notifications (in the thousands) of cases of measles, with its wellknown risks of encephalitis, bronchopneumonia and subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), highlight how much still needs to be done. In the United Kingdom a recent national measles-rubella immunisation program has successfully terminated measles virus circulation in schools; in March and April 1995, there were four confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales; three cases had recently arrived in the country, and the other occurred in an unvaccinated 15-month-old child. " In Australia there were 229 measles notifications for the same period
Tyrosinase Inhibitory Activity and Thermostability of the Flavonoid Complex from Sophora japonica L (Fabaceae)

Purpose: To investigate the tyrosinase inhibitory activity and thermostability of weak acid-treated Sophora japonica L. flavonoid complex (SJ-FC) in different solutions. Methods: The flavonoid complex of S. japonica was isolated and treated with weak acid to generate SJ-FC. The anti-tyrosinase activities of SJ-FC and well-known tyrosinase inhibitors were compared by mushroom tyrosinase activity assay. The thermostabilities of SJ-FC and other inhibitors in different solution environments for long-term storage were also investigated. Results: The results indicate that SJ-FC has potent tyrosinase inhibitory activity, and at a concentration of 0.1 %, SJ-DC has a tyrosinase inhibitory activity equal to that of 1 % ascorbic acid or hydroquinone. In addition, SJ-FC in both propylene glycol (PG) and glycerol solutions exhibited obvious tyrosinase inhibitory activity. Ascorbic acid and arbutin, two other tyrosinase inhibitors, exhibit < 60 % of their initial activity in both PG and H2O solutions after 6 months of storage. However, SJ-FC stored in PG and H2O solutions retained almost 100 % of its activity over a 6-month period. Conclusion: SJ-FC is an effective and stable anti-tyrosinase agent and may be used as a function agent in medicines, foods and cosmetics.
EECache: Exploiting design choices in energy-efficient last-level caches for chip multiprocessors

Power management for large last-level caches (LLCs) is important in chip-multiprocessors (CMPs), as the leakage power of LLCs accounts for a significant fraction of the limited on-chip power budget. Since not all workloads need the entire cache, portions of a shared LLC can be disabled to save energy. In this paper, we explore different design choices, from circuit-level cache organization to micro-architectural management policies, to propose a low-overhead run-time mechanism for energy reduction in the shared LLC. Results show that our design (EECache) provides 14.1% energy saving at only 1.2% performance degradation on average, with negligible hardware overhead.
Distorted odorant perception: analysis of a series of 56 patients with parosmia.

OBJECTIVE To characterize the self-reported olfactory and gustatory symptoms, olfactory function, and causes in parosmia. DESIGN Assessment of olfactory symptoms and function in patients with a chief complaint of parosmia. SETTING A university hospital clinic and research facility. PATIENTS Fifty-six consecutive patients presented to the ORL Clinic, European Hospital Georges Pompidou, with a chief complaint of parosmia between October 2001 and November 2003. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Subjective olfactory symptom analysis and olfactory function test results. RESULTS The mean duration of parosmia was 63.0 months. Forty patients (71.4%) reported associated hyposmia and 16 (28.6%) reported anosmia. Olfactory testing revealed moderate to severe olfactory loss in all patients. Quantitative and qualitative alterations occurred simultaneously in 32 patients (57.1%); parosmia onset occurred within 3 months after quantitative dysosmia in 19 patients (33.9%) and after 3 months in 5 patients (8.9%). The sensation of parosmia was always unpleasant. The main odorant triggers eliciting parosmia are described. The mean severity of flavor dysfunction of the population, evaluated using a 10-cm visual analog scale, was 6.4. Thirty-one patients (55.4%) viewed their olfactory alteration as severely affecting their quality of life. The main clinical association of parosmia was upper respiratory tract infection, found in 42.8% of the patients. Others clinical associations are described. CONCLUSION The series of patients with parosmia presented herein, the largest in the literature, permits a clinical description of this rare olfactory abnormality.