Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fibroblast apoptosis precedes cardiomyocyte mass reduction during left ventricular remodeling in hypertensive rats treated with amlodipine

Background A transient induction of apoptosis accompanies the normalization of left ventricular mass index in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) treated with dihydropyridine calcium-channel blockers. However, the cell type undergoing apoptosis in this model and the temporal correlation with onset cardiac remodeling remain undefined. Methods and results SHR were treated either with vehicle or amlodipine (20 mg/kg per day) for 4, 7, 10, 14 or 28 days. Amlodipine stably reduced systolic blood pressure by day 2 (−26 ± 2%) and stably reduced the left ventricular concentration of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) mRNA by ∼50% as early as day 4, suggesting the early reduction of cardiomyocyte stress. Left ventricular mass index was significantly reduced by day 7 (−4.6 ± 1.5%), in coordination with reduced DNA content (−23 ± 2%) and non-cardiomyocyte number (−17 ± 4%). However, the cardiomyocyte cross-sectional area was reduced only starting from day 14. Caspase-3 cleavage was significantly increased at day 7 only. Ultimately, amlodipine for 28 days induced a slight increase in capillary density without affecting total cardiomyocyte number, while reducing the total number of non-cardiomyocytes down to levels seen in untreated normotensive Wistar–Kyoto rats. Bax to Bcl-2 protein ratios were increased from day 7 to day 28. In situ double labeling by the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase biotin-dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) method (apoptosis) combined with rhodamine-labeled lectin binding (endothelial cell marker) revealed a significant increase (> 3-fold) in TUNEL-positive, lectin-negative non-cardiomyocytes in the interstitium between days 7 and 14. Conclusions Left ventricular remodeling induced by amlodipine in SHR involves selective deletion of excess fibroblasts via apoptosis prior to cardiomyocyte mass reduction, but after attenuation of ANP gene expression.
Linkage Disequilibrium and Its Expectation in Human Populations

Abstract Linkage disequilibrium (LD), the association in populations between genes at linked loci, has achieved a high degree of prominence in recent years, primarily because of its use in identifying and cloning genes of medical importance. The field has recently been reviewed by Slatkin (2008). The present article is largely devoted to a review of the theory of LD in populations, including historical aspects.
The Degradation of Human Endothelial Cell-derived Perlecan and Release of Bound Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor by Stromelysin, Collagenase, Plasmin, and Heparanases (*)

Perlecan is a modular heparan sulfate proteoglycan that is localized to cell surfaces and within basement membranes. Its ability to interact with basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) suggests a central role in angiogenesis during development, wound healing, and tumor invasion. In the present study we investigated, using domain specific anti-perlecan monoclonal antibodies, the binding site of bFGF on human endothelial perlecan and its cleavage by proteolytic and glycolytic enzymes. The heparan sulfate was removed from perlecan by heparitinase treatment, and the 450-kDa protein core was digested with various proteases. Plasmin digestion resulted in a large fragment of 300 kDa, whereas stromelysin and rat collagenase cleaved the protein core into smaller fragments. All three proteases removed immunoreactivity toward the anti-domain I antibody. We showed also that perlecan bound bFGF specifically by the heparan sulfate chains located on the amino-terminal domain I. Once bound, the growth factor was released very efficiently by stromelysin, rat collagenase, plasmin, heparitinase I, platelet extract, and heparin. Interestingly, heparinase I, an enzyme with a substrate specificity for regions of heparan sulfate similar to those that bind bFGF, released only small amounts of bFGF. Our findings provide direct evidence that bFGF binds to heparan sulfate sequences attached to domain I and support the hypothesis that perlecan represents a major storage site for this growth factor in the blood vessel wall. Moreover, the concerted action of proteases that degrade the protein core and heparanases that remove the heparan sulfate may modulate the bioavailability of the growth factor.
What is Event-Led Regeneration? Are We Confusing Terminology or Will London 2012 be the First Games to Truly benefit the Local Existing Population?

The term regeneration means keeping the locality available for the same social classes and improving the infrastructure for their benefit, however examination of previous games including Barcelona 1992 and Sydney 2000 has shown evidence of renaissance, referring to ‘upgrading’ the social structure of the area. The property prices in both cities rose as a result of the hosting of the games for both home owners and renters thus changing the social structure of the areas in questions. This term, renaissance, was used by Mace et al, (2007) in their paper about the urban changes to east Manchester. A further term called social rejuvenation is more appropriate because it implies an intervention in the continuing decline of as area without specifying for whom the improvements are intended thus allowing the market forces to determine the social makeup, and therefore avoiding accusations of letting the locals down through unfulfilled promises. This paper examines in detail both Sydney 2000 and Barcelona 1996 Olympic Games organisers’ strategies in developing their cities in order to host their respective games and in doing so the effects these plans had on the demographic structure of the local populations. Lessons learned are then made into recommendations for London 2012 where already communities are being displaced and the social structure is in danger of changing, with the promised ‘regeneration’ of East London (ODA, 2005) therefore never materialising.
Automated image analysis for array hybridization experiments

MOTIVATION Image analysis is a major part of data evaluation for array hybridization experiments in molecular biology. The program presented here is designed to analyze automatically images from hybridization experiments with various arrangements: different kinds of probes (oligonucleotides or complex probes), different supports (nylon filters or glass slides), different labeling of probes (radioactively or fluorescently). The program is currently applied to oligonucleotide fingerprinting projects and complex hybridizations. The only precondition for the use of the program is that the targets are arrayed in a grid, which can be approximately transformed to an orthogonal equidistant grid by a projective mapping. RESULTS We demonstrate that our program can cope with the following problems: global distortion of the grid, missing of grid nodes, local deviation of the spot from its specified grid position. This is checked by different quality measures. The image analysis of oligonucleotide fingerprint experiments on an entire genetic library is used, in clustering procedures, to group related clones together. The results show that the program yields automatically generated high quality input data for follow up analysis such as clustering procedures. AVAILABILITY The executable files will be available upon request for academics.
Multi-Initiator Connected Dominating Set Construction for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The connected dominating set (CDS) has been extensively used for routing and broadcast in mobile ad hoc networks. While existing CDS protocols are successful in constructing CDS of competitive size with localized information, they either lack the mechanism to properly handle nodal mobility or require lengthy period of time to recover when CDS becomes corrupted. In this paper, a novel protocol, namely Multi-Initiator Connected Dominating Set protocol (MI-CDS), is proposed that constructs and maintains CDS of competitive size efficiently without introducing much communication overhead. The simulation results demonstrate that MI-CDS permits CDS to be available for the highest percentage of time in the mobile network scenario compared with the other CDS protocols.
Energy and Density Aware Clustering (EDAC) to Improve Lifetime and Connectivity in Multi Level Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Network

Network lifetime and connectivity are the key parameters to guarantee quality of service (QoS). As a result it becomes our top most priority to preserve the energy of sensor nodes which have limited initial energy at the time of deployment and it is impossible to recharge the battery due to out of reach deployment. Heterogeneous wireless sensor network consists of more than one type of sensor nodes which differs from one another in terms of initial energy, computing power, performance, etc. In order to reduce unwanted energy dissipation and congestion during long distance data transmission, fixed number of relay nodes are selected and placed as a router to maintain connectivity. Relay nodes receive aggregated data from cluster head and send it back to base station . In this paper, we have proposed an (EDAC) Energy and Density Aware clustering scheme to optimize the selection and placement of cluster heads (CH) and relay Nodes (RN) to enhance the connectivity and network lifetime of network. The proposed centralized protocol enables the base station to select the cluster head and relay node on the basis of residual energy, distance from base station and relay node, node density , overlapping ratio of nodes, etc. The results of simulation using Matlab proves that our proposed algorithm, EDAC increases the overall connectivity , 100% coverage ratio by 80.21% and network lifetime by 131.61%.
Simpler Alternatives to Information Theoretic Similarity Metrics for Multimodal Image Alignment

Mutual information (MI) based methods for image registration enjoy great experimental success and are becoming widely used. However, they impose a large computational burden that limits their use; many applications would benefit from a reduction of the computational load. Although the theoretical justification for these methods draws upon the stochastic concept of mutual information, in practice, such methods actually seek the best alignment by maximizing a number that is (deterministically) computed from the two images. These methods thus optimize a fixed function, the "similarity metric," over different candidate alignments of the two images. Accordingly, we study the important features of the computationally complex MI similarity metric with the goal of distilling them into simpler surrogate functions that are easier to compute. More precisely, we show that maximizing the MI similarity metric is equivalent to minimizing a certain distance metric between equivalence classes of images, where images f and g are said to be equivalent if there exists a bijection φ such that f(x)=φ(g(x)) for all x. We then show how to design new similarity metrics for image alignment with this property. Although we preserve only this aspect of MI, our new metrics show equal alignment accuracy and similar robustness to noise, while significantly decreasing computation time. We conclude that even the few properties of MI preserved by our method suffice for accurate registration and may in fact be responsible for MI's success.
MyD88 Adapter-like (Mal) Is Phosphorylated by Bruton's Tyrosine Kinase during TLR2 and TLR4 Signal Transduction*

Members of the Toll-like receptor (TLR) family are essential players in activating the host innate immune response against infectious microorganisms. All TLRs signal through Toll/interleukin 1 receptor domain-containing adapter proteins. MyD88 adapter-like (Mal) is one such adapter that specifically is involved in TLR2 and TLR4 signaling. When overexpressed we have found that Mal undergoes tyrosine phosphorylation. Three possible phospho-accepting tyrosines were identified at positions 86, 106, and 187, and two mutant forms of Mal in which tyrosines 86 and 187 were mutated to phenylalanine acted as dominant negative inhibitors of NF-κB activation by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Activation of THP-1 monocytic cells with the TLR4 agonist LPS and the TLR2 agonist macrophage-activating lipopeptide-2 induced phosphorylation of Mal on tyrosine residues. We found that the Bruton's tyrosine kinase (Btk) inhibitor LFM-A13 could block the endogenous phosphorylation of Mal on tyrosine in cells treated with macrophage-activating lipopeptide-2 or LPS. Furthermore, Btk immunoprecipitated from THP-1 cells activated by LPS could phosphorylate Mal. Our study therefore provides the first demonstration of the key role of Mal phosphorylation on tyrosine during signaling by TLR2 and TLR4 and identifies a novel function for Btk as the kinase involved.
Bridging disjoint trusted domains into a trustworthy system

With the rapid growth of digital computing and networking technologies, trust becomes an important aspect in the establishment of a secure digital system. Based on different reasons of trust, different trusted domains, possibly disjoint, are formed in a digital system, preventing the complete system from working improperly. What lacks therein are bridges that can link domains, across trust gaps to establish a complete trusted system. In this paper, we apply a methodology for establishing a trustworthy system through bridging disjoint domains of trust together. We illustrate how to analyze and design a trustworthy system by applying the methodology into a concrete example with regard to establishing a trustworthy middleware platform for component software.
Learning and retention in 3- and 6-month-old infants: A comparison of different experimental paradigms

Learning and retention effects in 3- and 6-month-old infants were analysed for the habituation, the novelty preference, and the visual expectation paradigm that are assumed to indicate processing speed. A total of 119 infants participated in the study. The tasks related to the different paradigms were presented on three different days within a week and were repeated two weeks later to analyse retention effects. The results showed clear learning effects in all paradigms. The learning effects shown for different tasks were interrelated for 6-month-old infants, thus supporting the assumption of a shared latent dimension like processing speed. Moreover, retention effects over an interval of two weeks could be shown for visual expectation (in both 3- and 6-month-old infants) and for novelty preference (only for 6-month-old infants). The comparably high retention rates especially in the visual expectation paradigm are discussed.
Emotional Maturity and Self-Actualization in Graduate and Post-Graduate Students

The aim purpose of this research was to find out a emotional maturity and self-actualization among graduate and post-graduate students. The 40 graduate students and 40 post-graduate students were taken as sample. The research tool for emotional maturity was measured by Sing & Bhargav Emotional Maturity scale was used. While the tool of self-actualization Dr. K. N. Sharma self-actualization inventory was used. Here’t’ test was applied to check the significance of emotional maturity and self-actualization in graduate and post-graduate students and check the correlation method is used. Result revealed that there is significant difference in emotional maturity among graduate and post-graduate students. There is significant difference in self-actualization among graduate and post-graduate students. While the correlation between emotional maturity and self-actualization reveals 0.85 positive correlations.
Multispectral Image Restoration by Generalized Opponent Transformation Total Variation

Multispectral images (MSI) contain light information in different wavelengths of objects, which convey spectral-spatial information and help improve the performance of various image processing tasks. Numerous techniques have been created to extend the application of total variation regularization in restoring multispectral images, for example, based on channel coupling and adaptive total variation regularization. The primary contribution of this paper is to propose and develop a new multispectral total variation regularization in a generalized opponent transformation domain instead of the original multispectral image domain. Here opponent transformations for multispectral images are generalized from a well-known opponent transformation for color images. We will explore the properties of generalized opponent transformation total variation (GOTTV) regularization and the corresponding optimization formula for multispectral image restoration. To evaluate the effectiveness of the new GOTTV method, we provide numerical examples that showcase its superior performance compared to existing multispectral image total variation methods, using criteria such as MPSNR and MSSIM.
Gastric secretion--from Pavlov's nervism to Popielski's histamine as direct secretagogue of oxyntic glands.

Gastric acid and pepsin secretions result from the interplay of neurohormonal factors with stimulatory and inhibitory actions on oxyntic glands. At the turn of XIX century, the notion of nervism or entire neural control of digestive functions, developed by Pavlov prevailed. However, in the second part of XX century, hormonal control has been thought to play a major role in the mechanism of gastric secretion, especially gastrin, which was isolated and synthesized in 1964 by Gregory. Polish traces in gastroenterological history started with the discovery of histamine, a non-nervous and non-gastrin compound in oxyntic mucosa by L. Popielski in 1916, who found that this amine is the most potent and direct stimulant of gastric acid secretion. This histamine concept was supported by leading American gastroenterologists such as A.C. Ivy, championed later by C.F. Code, and clinically applied for testing gastric secretion by K. Kowalewski. Recently, it received a strong support from pharmacological research when J. Black designed H(2)-receptors antagonists, which were first discovered by M.I. Grossman and S.J. Konturek to inhibit not only histamine-, but also meal- and vagally-induced gastric acid secretion, thus reinforcing the notion of the crucial significance of histamine in the control of gastric secretion as the final common chemostimulator. In conclusion, Polish traces appear to be substantial in gastric history due: 1) to discovery by Popielski that histamine is a major, direct stimulus of gastric secretion; 2) to clinical application of this agent by Kowalewski in testing maximal gastric secretory activity; and 3) to clinical use of histamine H(2)-antagonists in control of gastric acid secretion and treatment of peptic ulcers.
Consumers’ attitudes, trust and willingness to pay for food information

Market failure can be corrected using different regulatory approaches ranging from high to low intervention. Recently, classic regulations have been criticized as costly and economically irrational, and thus, policy makers are giving more consideration to soft regulatory techniques such as information remedies. However, despite the plethora of food information conveyed by different media there appears to be a lack of studies exploring how consumers evaluate this information and how trust towards publishers influence their choices for food information. In order to fill such a gap, this study investigates questions related to topics that are more relevant to consumers, who should disseminate trustful food information, and how communication should be conveyed and segmented. Primary data were collected both through qualitative (in-depth interviews and focus groups) and quantitative research (web and mail surveys). Attitudes, willingness to pay (WTP) for food information and trust towards public and private sources conveying information through a new food magazine were assessed using both multivariate statistical methods and econometric analysis. The study shows that consumer attitudes towards food information topics can be summarized along three cognitive-affective dimensions: the agro-food system, enjoyment and wellness. Information related to health risks caused by nutritional disorders and food safety issues caused by bacteria and chemical substances is the most important for about 90% of respondents. Food information related to regulations and traditions is also considered important for more than two-thirds of respondents, whereas information about food production and processing techniques, lifestyle and food fads are considered less important by the majority of respondents. Trust towards food information disseminated by public bodies is higher than that observed for private bodies. This behaviour directly affects WTP for food information provided by public and private publishers when markets are shocked by a food safety incident. WTP for consumer association (€1.80) and the European Food Safety Authority (€1.30) are higher than WTP for the independent and food industry publishers that cluster around zero euro. Furthermore, trust towards the type of publisher also plays a key role in food information market segmentation together with socio-demographic and economic variables such as gender, age, presence of children and income. These findings invite policy makers to reflect on the possibility of using information remedies conveyed using trusted sources of information to specific segments of consumers as an interesting soft alternative to the classic way of regulating modern food markets. JEL codes: D12, D18, D89, Q18.
A Placebo-Controlled Study of Nefazodone for the Treatment of Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Preliminary Study

Nefazodone is a unique serotonergic antidepressant that acts as both a presynaptic serotonin reuptake inhibitor and a postsynaptic 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A receptor antagonist. Based on the positive results of open-label trials of nefazodone, including one from our group, we tested nefazodone's efficacy in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) under placebo-controlled conditions. Forty-one patients with chronic PTSD, predominantly male combat veterans, were enrolled in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled 12-week trial of nefazodone. The primary outcome measure was the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale. Fifteen patients were randomized to placebo and 26 were randomized to nefazodone. In a repeated-measures analysis of variance with last observation carried forward, patients on nefazodone showed a significant improvement in the percentage change of Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale Total score from baseline compared with those on placebo (P = 0.04; effect size = 0.6). Sample size was not powered to test group differences in the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale criterion B, C, or D subscale. However, the criterion D subscale showed significant improvement in patients treated with nefazodone compared with those treated with placebo (P = 0.007). In addition, the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression showed significant improvement compared with placebo (P = 0.008). The nefazodone group also reported an improvement on the PTSD Checklist (self-report scale; P = 0.08) and the Clinician-Administered Dissociative States Scale (P = 0.06). This pilot study supports the efficacy of nefazodone for the treatment of PTSD. However, larger placebo-controlled studies in more diverse patient population are warranted.
Accessibility Assessment Via Workspace Estimation

The process of evaluating a built environment for accessibility is known as “accessibility assessment. ” Determining accessibility is closely related to the problem of determining possible motions of a specific kinematic structure ‐ given an environment and a mobile device, how much of the environment is accessible? Given these similarities, here the accessibility assessment process is reformulated as a motion planning problem. Rather than treating each of the degrees of freedom ‘equally’ while planning, we explore a hierarchical characteristic of all of the degrees of freedom when constructing the roadmap. The approach is demonstrated on simulated environments as well as on a student residence at York University.