Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coexistence of glutamate and substance P in dorsal root ganglion neurons of the rat and monkey

Antisera to a glutamate (Glu) conjugate, to glutaminase (GLN), and to substance P (SP) have been used to investigate the issue of putative glutamergic neurons in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) and the possible coexistence in these neurons of Glu and SP. The Glu antiserum, characterized by immunoadsorption and immunoblot tests, is highly selective for Glu out of a number of other amino acids including aspartate. Quantitative data were gathered from consecutive 4‐μm‐thick paraffin sections from cervical ganglia of rats with or without spinal injections of colchicine and from one monkey not treated with colchicine. Neurons containing more than one antigen could be identified on adjacent sections tested with the three different antisera.
Demonstration of renin mRNA, angiotensinogen mRNA, and angiotensin converting enzyme mRNA expression in the human eye: evidence for an intraocular renin-angiotensin system.

AIMS/BACKGROUND: All components necessary for the formation of angiotensin II, the biologically active product of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS), have been demonstrated in ocular tissue or vitreous and subretinal fluid. The tissue concentrations of renin were too high to be explained by admixture of blood. This raises the possibility of an intraocular RAS, independent of the RAS in the circulation. METHODS: In the present study, gene expression of RAS components in different parts of enucleated human eyes was investigated as evidence for tissue specific production. RESULTS: By using pooled tissue samples renin mRNA could be detected with the RNAse protection assay in retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) choroid, but not in neural retina or sclera. With reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), renin mRNA was detected in individual samples of RPE choroid and neural retina, and not anterior uveal tract or sclera. Angiotensinogen and angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) gene expression could be demonstrated by RT-PCR in individual RPE choroid and neural retina samples and marginally in sclera samples. CONCLUSIONS: These results support the concept of intraocular synthesis of angiotensin II, independent of renin, angiotensin, and ACE in the circulation. Since gene expression was highest in ocular parts, which are highly vascularised, local angiotensin II may be involved in blood supply and/or pathological vascular processes such as neovascularisation in diabetic retinopathy.
Lacan, Transference, and Writing Instruction

Why is it that students seem to improve their texts so often, and desire to improve them more, when they're given "nondirective" feedback? Why do "teacherless" writing groups (where the writer gets conflicting responses from readers instead of teacherly direction) lead to more writing? How can Donald Murray (Writer 173) claim to get effective revision from writers in conferences lasting only five minutes? Stereotype of a Donald Murray conference:
Early Childhood Neurodevelopmental Outcomes in Infants Exposed to Infectious Syphilis In Utero

Background: There are minimal neurodevelopmental follow-up data for infants exposed to syphilis in utero. Methods: This is an inception cohort study of infants exposed to syphilis in utero. We reviewed women with reactive syphilis serology in pregnancy or at delivery in Edmonton (Canada), 2002 through 2010 and describe the neurodevelopmental outcomes of children with and without congenital syphilis. Results: There were 39 births to women with reactive syphilis serology, 9 of whom had late latent syphilis (n = 4), stillbirths (n = 2) or early neonatal deaths (n = 3), leaving 30 survivors of which 11 with and 7 without congenital syphilis had neurodevelopmental assessment. Those with congenital syphilis were all born to women with inadequate syphilis treatment before delivery. Neurodevelopmental impairment was documented in 3 of 11 (27%) infants with congenital syphilis and one of 7 (14%) without congenital syphilis with speech language delays in 4 of 11 (36%) with congenital syphilis and 3 of 7 (42%) without congenital syphilis. Conclusions: Infants born to mothers with reactive syphilis serology during pregnancy are at high risk for neurodevelopmental impairment, whether or not they have congenital syphilis, so should all be offered neurodevelopmental assessments and early referral for services as required.
Tyrphostin AG1296, a platelet-derived growth factor receptor inhibitor, induces apoptosis, and reduces viability and migration of PLX4032-resistant melanoma cells

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and BRAFV600E is a driver mutation that promotes melanoma growth and survival. PLX4032 is the first effective compound in clinical use for the treatment of patients with mutant BRAFV600. However, resistance to PLX4032 develops quickly within months. Activation of a series of receptor tyrosine kinases, including the platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR), has been identified to be the underlying mechanism for development of resistance to PLX4032. In this work, we investigated the anticancer activity of tyrphostin AG1296, a PDGFR inhibitor, in melanoma, especially PLX4032-resistant melanoma. We found that tyrphostin AG1296 could effectively reduce the viability of both PLX4032-sensitive and PLX4032-resistant melanoma cells. There is an additive effect between tyrphostin AG1296 and PLX4032 in reducing cell viability. Tyrphostin AG1296 induced dramatic apoptosis in PLX4032-resistant cells, and also dramatically inhibited migration of PLX4032-resistant cells. Importantly, tyrphostin AG1296 significantly suppressed A375R tumor growth in vivo. This is the first report on the anticancer activity of tyrphostin AG1296 in melanoma. Tyrphostin AG1296 is a promising compound in the treatment of melanoma, especially for those who have developed resistance towards BRAF inhibitors, and might shed new light on melanoma therapy.
Scheduling queries across replicas

For increased efficiency, an information retrieval system can split its index into multiple shards, and then replicate these shards across many query servers. For each new query, an appropriate replica for each shard must be selected, such that the query is answered as quickly as possible. Typically, the replica with the lowest number of queued queries is selected. However, not every query takes the same time to execute, particularly if a dynamic pruning strategy is applied by each query server. Hence, the replica's queue length is an inaccurate indicator of the workload of a replica, and can result in inefficient usage of the replicas. In this work, we propose that improved replica selection can be obtained by using query efficiency prediction to measure the expected workload of a replica. Experiments are conducted using 2.2k queries, over various numbers of shards and replicas for the large GOV2 collection. Our results show that query waiting and completion times can be markedly reduced, showing that accurate response time predictions can improve scheduling accuracy and attesting the benefit of the proposed scheduling algorithm.
Entropy-Inspired Competitive Clustering Algorithms

In this paper, the well-known competitive clustering algorithm (CA) is revisited and reformulated from a point of view of entropy minimization. That is, the second term of the objective function in CA can be seen as quadratic or second-order entropy. Along this novel explanation, two generalized competitive clustering algorithms inspired by Renyi entropy and Shannon entropy, i.e. RECA and SECA, are respectively proposed in this paper. Simulation results show that CA requires a large number of initial clusters to obtain the right number of clusters, while RECA and SECA require small and moderate number of initial clusters respectively. Also the iteration steps in RECA and SECA are less than that of CA. Further CA and RECA are generalized to CA-p and RECA-p by using the p-order entropy and Renyi's p-order entropy in CA and RECA respectively. Simulation results show that the value of phas a great impact on the performance of CA-p, whereas it has little inuence on that of RECA-p.
Identification of Candida Species Associated with Vulvovaginal Candidiasis by Multiplex PCR

Background. Vulvovaginal candidiasis is a common infection. The aim of this study was to identify the species of vaginal Candida isolates by using multiplex PCR technique. Methods. 191 isolates from patients admitted to Mahdieh hospital were identified. The vaginal swab specimens were cultured on Sabouraud Dextrose Agar. The ITS1 region between the 18S and 5.8S rRNA genes and a specific DNA fragment within the ITS2 region were amplified. The multiplex PCR products were separated by electrophoresis in 2% agarose gel, visualized by staining with ethidium bromide, and photographed. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, and Spearman correlation were used to summarize the findings. Results. C. albicans and C. glabrata were the most common species isolated from the specimens. A mix of C. glabrata and C. albicans was the most common mixed infection isolated from the samples. The analysis revealed a significant positive association between older age and infection with C. glabrata isolates (Spearman's rho = 0.89, P = 0.015). Conclusion. Multiplex PCR is a fast, yet reliable method to identify Candida species. C. albicans and then C. glabrata are the two most common causes of vulvovaginal candidiasis. The number of mixed fungal infections is higher among Iranian population compared to international reports.
Spoken Language Recognition with Relevance Feedback

This paper applies relevance feedback technique in spoken language recognition task, in which we consider a test utterance as a test query. Assuming that we have a labeled multilingual corpus, we exploit the retrieved utterances from such a reference corpus to automatically augment the test query. Note that successful spoken language recognition relies on sufficient query data. The proposed method is especially effective for short query by expanding the query at a low cost. Experiments show that unsupervised relevance feedback reduces the relative equal-error-rate by 16.2%, 4.9% and 10.2% on NIST LRE 1996, 2003 and 2005 databases respectively for 3-second trials.
Therapeutically Targeting Neuroinflammation and Microglia after Acute Ischemic Stroke

Inflammation has a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of ischemic stroke, and recent studies posit that inflammation acts as a double-edged sword, not only detrimentally augmenting secondary injury, but also potentially promoting recovery. An initial event of inflammation in ischemic stroke is the activation of microglia, leading to production of both pro- and anti-inflammatory mediators acting through multiple receptor signaling pathways. In this review, we discuss the role of microglial mediators in acute ischemic stroke and elaborate on preclinical and clinical studies focused on microglia in stroke models. Understanding how microglia can lead to both pro- and anti-inflammatory responses may be essential to implement therapeutic strategies using immunomodulatory interventions in ischemic stroke.
Jointly Learning Data-Dependent Label and Locality-Preserving Projections

This paper describes a novel framework to jointly learn data-dependent label and locality-preserving projections. Given a set of data instances from multiple classes, the proposed approach can automatically learn which classes are more similar to each other, and construct discriminative features using both labeled and unlabeled data to map similar classes to similar locations in a lower dimensional space. In contrast to linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and its variants, which can only return c-1 features for a problem with c classes, the proposed approach can generate d features, where d is bounded only by the number of the input features. We describe and evaluate the new approach both theoretically and experimentally, and compare its performance with other state of the art methods.
Proteome-wide discovery of mislocated proteins in cancer

Several studies have sought systematically to identify protein subcellular locations, but an even larger task is to map which of these proteins conditionally relocates in disease (the mislocalizome). Here, we report an integrative computational framework for mapping conditional location and mislocation of proteins on a proteome-wide scale, called a conditional location predictor (CoLP). Using CoLP, we mapped the locations of over 10,000 proteins in normal human brain and in glioma. The prediction showed 0.9 accuracy using 100 location tests of 20 randomly selected proteins. Of the 10,000 proteins, over 150 have a strong likelihood of mislocation under glioma, which is striking considering that few mislocation events have been identified in this disease previously. Using immunofluorescence and Western blotting in both primary cells and tissues, we successfully experimentally confirmed 15 mislocations. The most common type of mislocation occurs between the endoplasmic reticulum and the nucleus; for example, for RNF138, TLX3, and NFRKB. In particular, we found that the gene for the mislocating protein GFRA4 had a nonsynonymous point mutation in exon 2. Moreover, redirection of GFRA4 to its normal location, the plasma membrane, led to marked reductions in phospho-STAT3 and proliferation of glioma cells. This framework has the potential to track changes in protein location in many human diseases.
Freeze view touch and finger gesture based interaction methods for handheld augmented reality interfaces

Interaction techniques for handheld mobile Augmented Reality (AR) often focus on device-centric methods based around touch input. However, users may not be able to easily interact with virtual objects in mobile AR scenes if they are holding the handheld device with one hand and touching the screen with the other, while at the same time trying to maintain visual tracking of an AR marker. In this paper we explore novel interaction methods for handheld mobile AR that overcomes this problem. We investigate two different approaches; (1) freeze view touch and (2) finger gesture based interaction. We describe how each method is implemented and present findings from a user experiment comparing virtual object manipulation with these techniques to more traditional touch methods.
Identification of linc-NeD125, a novel long non coding RNA that hosts miR-125b-1 and negatively controls proliferation of human neuroblastoma cells

The human genome contains some thousands of long non coding RNAs (lncRNAs). Many of these transcripts are presently considered crucial regulators of gene expression and functionally implicated in developmental processes in Eukaryotes. Notably, despite a huge number of lncRNAs are expressed in the Central Nervous System (CNS), only a few of them have been characterized in terms of molecular structure, gene expression regulation and function. In the present study, we identify linc-NeD125 as a novel cytoplasmic, neuronal-induced long intergenic non coding RNA (lincRNA). Linc-NeD125 represents the host gene for miR-125b-1, a microRNA with an established role as negative regulator of human neuroblastoma cell proliferation. Here, we demonstrate that these two overlapping non coding RNAs are coordinately induced during in vitro neuronal differentiation, and that their expression is regulated by different mechanisms. While the production of miR-125b-1 relies on transcriptional regulation, linc-NeD125 is controlled at the post-transcriptional level, through modulation of its stability. We also demonstrate that linc-NeD125 functions independently of the hosted microRNA, by reducing cell proliferation and activating the antiapoptotic factor BCL-2.
Cardiac-resynchronization therapy in heart failure with a narrow QRS complex.

To the Editor: Ruschitzka et al. (Oct. 10 issue)1 report that in the Echocardiography Guided Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (EchoCRT) study involving patients with systolic heart failure and a QRS duration of less than 130 msec, cardiacresynchronization therapy (CRT) failed to reduce the rate of death from any cause or hospitalization for heart failure. The authors, however, fail to present data elaborating whether CRT improved the measured variables of mechanical dyssynchrony at follow-up. This is especially relevant, because mechanical dyssynchrony represents the culmination of multiple disease processes, including electrical dyssynchrony, myocardial stress, and myocardial fibrosis.2 CRT primarily improves electrical dyssynchrony but does not uniformly decrease morbidity and mortality, even in patients with a wide QRS complex.3 Without the above data, it is unclear whether the failure of CRT was secondary to persistent mechanical dyssynchrony or other causes.
Myeloid-derived suppressor cell and macrophage exert distinct angiogenic and immunosuppressive effects in breast cancer

The immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment is a key obstacle to hinder a cancer immunotherapy. Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) have been considered as a major player in immunosuppression. In this study, we find that tumor-infiltrating MDSCs (tiMDSCs) are less immunosuppressive than tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in multiple murine orthotopic breast tumor models. Compared to TAMs, tiMDSCs produce higher levels of pro-inflammatory factors and lower levels of anti-inflammatory factors. Furthermore, tiMDSCs are preferentially located in hypoxic areas and are more pro-angiogenic than TAMs. Consistent with these functional disparities, a shift from tiMDSCs to TAMs is observed during the progression of breast cancer. Moreover, infiltration of tiMDSCs is also noted in distal colonization of breast cancer cells in the lung. Taken together, our findings indicate that tiMDSCs are more pro-angiogenic and promote tumor initiation, while TAMs are more immunosuppressive and facilitate tumor immune evasion. This study suggests that selectively targeting on TAMs could alleviate the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment and potentiate cancer immunotherapy.
A Bipolar Framework for Combining Beliefs about Vague Propositions

A bipolar framework is introduced for combining agents' beliefs so as to enable them to reach a common shared position or viewpoint. Our approach exploits the truth-gaps inherent to propositions involving vague concepts, by allowing agents to soften directly conflicting opinions. To this end we adopt a bipolar truth-model for propositional logic characterised by lower and upper valuations on the sentences of the language. According to this model sentences may be absolutely true, absolutely false or borderline (i.e. neither absolutely true nor absolutely false). The added flexibility of a possible truth-gap between absolutely true and absolutely false allows agents with inconsistent viewpoints, in which a proposition p is absolutely true according to one view and absolutely false according to the other, to reach a compromise position in which p is borderline. Within this framework four combination operators are proposed for combining different viewpoints as represented by different valuation pairs. Intuitively, these correspond to compromise positions with different levels of semantic precision (or vagueness). Kleene belief pairs are then introduced as lower and upper measures quantifying epistemic uncertainty about the sentences of the language when valuation pairs provide the underlying truth model. The combination operators on valuation pairs are then extended to belief pairs using a general schema incorporating a probabilistic model of the interaction between agents. The properties of the four operators are then investigated within this extended framework.
Design and Control Strategies of an Induction-Machine-Based Flywheel Energy Storage System Associated to a Variable-Speed Wind Generator

Flywheel energy storage systems (FESSs) improve the quality of the electric power delivered by wind generators, and help these generators contributing to the ancillary services. Presently, FESSs containing a flux-oriented controlled induction machine (IM) are mainly considered for this kind of application. The paper proposes the direct torque control (DTC) for an IM-based FESS associated to a variable-speed wind generator, and proves through simulation and experimental results that it could be a better alternative. This DTC application entails two specific aspects: 1) the IM must operate in the flux-weakening region, and 2) it must shift quickly and repeatedly between motoring and generating operation modes. DTC improvement for increasing the FESS efficiency, when it operates at small power values, is discussed. Some aspects concerning the flywheel design and the choice of the filter used in the FESS supervisor are also addressed.
CENP-A Reduction Induces a p53-Dependent Cellular Senescence Response To Protect Cells from Executing Defective Mitoses

ABSTRACT Cellular senescence is an irreversible growth arrest and is presumed to be a natural barrier to tumor development. Like telomere shortening, certain defects in chromosome integrity can trigger senescence; however, the roles of centromere proteins in regulating commitment to the senescent state remains to be established. We examined chromatin structure in senescent human primary fibroblasts and found that CENP-A protein levels are diminished in senescent cells. Senescence-associated reduction of CENP-A is caused by transcriptional and posttranslational control. Surprisingly, forced reduction of CENP-A by short-hairpin RNA was found to cause premature senescence in human primary fibroblasts. This premature senescence is dependent on a tumor suppressor, p53, but not on p16INK4a-Rb; the depletion of CENP-A in p53-deficient cells results in aberrant mitosis with chromosome missegregation. We propose that p53-dependent senescence that arises from CENP-A reduction acts as a “self-defense mechanism” to prevent centromere-defective cells from undergoing mitotic proliferation that potentially leads to massive generation of aneuploid cells.
Group Behavior Recognition for Gesture Analysis

This paper analyzes the movements of the human body limbs (hands, feet and head) and center of gravity in order to detect and analyze simple actions such as walking and running. We propose a novel vision of the human body, by considering the limbs as cooperative agents that form a hierarchy of cooperative teams: the whole body. The movements are analyzed at individual level and at team level using a modular hierarchical structure. Knowledge of the high-level team actions (such as ldquowalkingrdquo) improves the pertinence of our predictions on the low-level individual actions (foot is moving back and forth) and allows us to compensate for missing or noisy data produced by the feature extraction system. In terms of group behavior recognition, we propose a novel framework for online probabilistic plan recognition in cooperative multiagent systems: the Multiagent Hidden Markov mEmory Model (M-AHMEM), which is a dynamic Bayesian network. Experiments on an existing video database using different models of the human body show the feasibility of the approach.
From Natural Language Requirements to Executable Models of Software Components

This material is based upon work supported by, or in part by, the U. S. Army Research Laboratory and the U. S. Army Research Office under contract/grant number DAAD19-00-1-0350, and by the U. S. Office of Naval Research under award number N00014-01-1-0746.
Typical random 3-SAT formulae and the satisfiability threshold

We present a new structural (or syntatic) approach for estimating the satisfiability threshold of random 3-SAT formulae. We show its efficiency in obtaining a jump from the previous upper bounds, lowering them to 4.506. The method combines well with other techniques, and also applies to other problems, such as the 3-colourability of random graphs.