Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alterations of Arterial Physiology in Osteopontin-Null Mice

Objective—In this study, we characterized the effects of an osteopontin (OPN)-null mutation in normal arterial function and remodeling in a murine model. Methods and Results—OPN-null mutant mice were compared with wild-type mice before and after carotid artery ligation. Before ligation, OPN-null mice had increased heart rate, lower blood pressure, and increased circulating lymphocytes compared with wild-type mice. OPN-null vessels also demonstrated greater compliance accompanied by a loosely organized collagen network. After carotid artery ligation, significant differences were also found in the remodeling response of OPN-null animals. At 4 days after ligation, leukocyte adhesion/invasion was diminished by 10-fold in OPN-null mice compared with wild-type mice. At 14 days after ligation, the ligated arteries of OPN-null mice had smaller neointimal lesions but greater constrictive remodeling compared with wild-type mice, resulting in similar lumen areas. Continued remodeling resulted in a similar morphological phenotype in both groups at 28 days. Conclusions—These data show that endogenous OPN regulates normal vascular physiology and contributes to the vascular remodeling response by regulating vascular compliance and the inflammatory response.
Computer modeling of endovascular patch welding using temperature feedback

A new computer program, LATIS, being developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is used to study the effect of pulsed laser irradiation with temperature feedback on endovascular patch welding. Various physical and biophysical effects are included in these simulations: laser light scattering and absorption, tissue heating and heat conduction, vascular cooling, and tissue thermal damage. The geometry of a patch being held against the inner vessel wall (500 micrometer inner diameter) by a balloon is considered. The system is exposed to light pulsed from an optical fiber inside the balloon. The laser power is adjusted during the course of a pulse. This is done automatically in the simulation by temperature feedback. A minimum in the depth of damage into the vessel wall is found. The minimum damage zone is about the thickness of the patch material that is heated by the laser. The more ordered the tissue the thinner the minimum zone of damage. The pulse length which minimizes the zone of damage is found to be the time for energy to diffuse across the layer. The delay time between the pulses is determined by the time for the heated layer to cool down. An optimal pulse length exists which minimizes the total time needed to weld the patch to the wall while keeping the thickness of the damaged tissue to less than 100 micrometers. For the case that is considered, a patch dyed with light absorbing ICG on the side next to the vessel (thickness of the dyed layer is 60 micrometer), the best protocol is found to be 33 - 600 ms pulses applied over 1.6 min.
Variation in the oxytocin receptor gene is associated with behavioral and neural correlates of empathic accuracy

The neuromodulators oxytocin and serotonin have been implicated in regulating affective processes underlying empathy. Understanding this dependency, however, has been limited by a lack of objective metrics for measuring empathic performance. Here we employ a novel psychophysical method for measuring empathic performance that quantitatively measures the ability of subjects to decode the experience of another person's pain. In 50 female subjects, we acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data as they were exposed to a target subject experiencing variable degrees of pain, whilst performing an irrelevant attention-demanding task. We investigated the effect of variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) on the psychophysical and neurometric variability associated with empathic performance. The OXTR rs2268498 and rs53576 polymorphisms, but not the SLC6A4 5-HTTLPR, were associated with significant differences in empathic accuracy, with CC- and AA-carriers, respectively, displaying higher empathic accuracy. For OXTR rs2268498 there was also a genotype difference in the correlation between empathic accuracy and activity in the superior temporal sulcus (STS). In OXTR rs2268498 CC-carriers, high empathic accuracy was associated with stronger responsiveness of the right STS to the observed pain. Together, the results show that genetic variation in the OXTR has significant influence on empathic accuracy and that this may be linked to variable responsivity of the STS.
Scalable template-based query containment checking for Web semantic caches

Semantic caches, originally proposed for client-server database systems, are being recently deployed to accelerate the serving of dynamic Web content by transparently caching data on edge servers. Such caches require fast query containment tests to determine if a new query is contained in the results of cached queries. Query containment checking algorithms have been studied in the context of query optimization and materialized view selection, but their scalability remains a serious limitation. We argue that application queries are usually instantiations of a smaller number of base templates and show how this can be exploited to scale up containment checking. Our contributions include (i) algorithms to detect similarity between query predicates; (ii) efficient algorithms for proving containment among similar query predicates; (iii) a technique to dynamically aggregate similar queries in the cache to support efficient search; and (iv) integration of these schemes into a two-level containment checker. We describe our approach, report on its implementation in a dynamic Web data cache, and show that it can reduce query containment cost by an order of magnitude for Web workloads.
Optimal preservation of the shark retina for ultrastructural analysis: An assessment of chemical, microwave, and high‐pressure freezing fixation techniques

Recent advances in microwave chemical fixation (MCF) and/or high pressure freezing (HPF) combined with transmission electron microscopy have resulted in superior ultrastructural detail in a variety of tissue types. To date, selachian tissue has been fixed and processed using only standard chemical fixation (CF) methods, and the resulting ultrastructure has been less than ideal. In this study, we compared the ultrastructure of the fragile retinal tissue from the brown banded bamboo shark, Chiloscyllium punctatum, obtained using CF, MCF, and HPF methods. For all fixation protocols, ultrastructural preservation was improved by keeping the tissue in oxygenated Ringer solution until the time of fixation. Both MCF and HPF produced superior retinal ultrastructure compared to conventional CF. Although HPF occasionally resulted in very high quality ultrastructure, microwave fixation was almost comparable, quicker and far more consistent. Microsc. Res. Tech. 75:1218–1228, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Augmented Reality Assistance in Forest Fire Fighting

Forest ﬁre ﬁghting is unfortunately a very important activity for many ﬁre departments. A forest ﬁre is always a very complex situation to manage, in which lots of ground teams and aircraft have to cooperate in order to control such an incident. Aircraft ﬂeet has an important role: the identiﬁcation, selection and notiﬁcation of elements of interest. The current problem is the lack of a precise and effective technology to assist this task. In this work, we describe the deﬁnition and application of a low-cost augmented reality solution that allows an accurate selection of all the items an aircraft is able to visualize from its privileged position, and the integration of this information in a 3D terrain visualization system in real-time.
Maximizing Range Sum in External Memory

This article studies the MaxRS problem in spatial databases. Given a set O of weighted points and a rectangle r of a given size, the goal of the MaxRS problem is to find a location of r such that the sum of the weights of all the points covered by r is maximized. This problem is useful in many location-based services such as finding the best place for a new franchise store with a limited delivery range and finding the hotspot with the largest number of nearby attractions for a tourist with a limited reachable range. However, the problem has been studied mainly in the theoretical perspective, particularly in computational geometry. The existing algorithms from the computational geometry community are in-memory algorithms that do not guarantee the scalability. In this article, we propose a scalable external-memory algorithm (ExactMaxRS) for the MaxRS problem that is optimal in terms of the I/O complexity. In addition, we propose an approximation algorithm (ApproxMaxCRS) for the MaxCRS problem that is a circle version of the MaxRS problem. We prove the correctness and optimality of the ExactMaxRS algorithm along with the approximation bound of the ApproxMaxCRS algorithm. Furthermore, motivated by the fact that all the existing solutions simply assume that there is no tied area for the best location, we extend the MaxRS problem to a more fundamental problem, namely AllMaxRS, so that all the locations with the same best score can be retrieved. We first prove that the AllMaxRS problem cannot be trivially solved by applying the techniques for the MaxRS problem. Then we propose an output-sensitive external-memory algorithm (TwoPhaseMaxRS) that gives the exact solution for the AllMaxRS problem through two phases. Also, we prove both the soundness and completeness of the result returned from TwoPhaseMaxRS. From extensive experimental results, we show that ExactMaxRS and ApproxMaxCRS are several orders of magnitude faster than methods adapted from existing algorithms, the approximation bound in practice is much better than the theoretical bound of ApproxMaxCRS, and TwoPhaseMaxRS is not only much faster but also more robust than the straightforward extension of ExactMaxRS.
Kinetic finishing applying a low pressure abrasive slurry jet system

In this paper, a new finishing process, Fluid Jet Polishing (FJP), is presented that is capable of locally shaping and polishing complicated optical surfaces in brittle materials (e.g. glass). Within FJP, a fluid jet system is used to guide a premixed slurry at pressures below 6 bar to the surface. An experiment is described in which a slurry comprising water and 10% #800 SiC abrasives (21.8pm) is used to reduce the surface roughness of a BK7 sample from 350 nm rms to 25 nm rms and to vary the shape of a polished BK7 sample maintaining its surface roughness of 1.6 nm rms.
Diagnostic Test Results and Pathology Associated with the 2007 Canadian H7N3 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Outbreak

Abstract In September 2007, an H7N3 highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak (HPAI) occurred on a multiple-age broiler breeder operation near Regina Beach, Saskatchewan, Canada. Mortality was initially observed in a barn that housed 24-wk-old roosters, with later involvement of 32-wk-old breeders. All birds on the affected premises were destroyed, and surveillance of surrounding farms demonstrated no further spread. The use of water from a dugout pond during periods of high demand, and the proximity of the farm to Last Mountain Lake, the northern end of which is a bird sanctuary, implicated wild aquatic birds as a possible source of the virus. Of particular note, the H7-specific real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction assay that was in use at the time did not detect the virus associated with this outbreak. A Canadian national influenza A virus survey of wild aquatic birds detected no H7 subtype viruses in 2005 and 2006; however, H7 subtype viruses were detected in the fall of 2007. Phylogenetic analysis of a number of these H7 isolates demonstrated an evolutionary relationship with each other, as well as with the H7N3 HPAI virus that was isolated from the Saskatchewan broiler breeder farm.
Cognitive-behavioral family treatment of childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder: a controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the relative efficacy of (1) individual cognitive-behavioral family-based therapy (CBFT); (2) group CBFT; and (3) a waitlist control group in the treatment of childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). METHOD This study, conducted at a university clinic in Brisbane, Australia, involved 77 children and adolescents with OCD who were randomized to individual CBFT, group CBFT, or a 4- to 6-week waitlist control condition. Children were assessed before and after treatment and at 3 months and 6 months following the completion of treatment using diagnostic interviews, symptom severity interviews, and self-report measures. Parental distress, family functioning, sibling distress, and levels of accommodation to OCD demands were also assessed. Active treatment involved a manualized 14-week cognitive-behavioral protocol, with parental and sibling components. RESULTS By an evaluable patient analysis, statistically and clinically significant pretreatment-to-posttreatment change occurred in OCD diagnostic status and severity across both individual and group CBFT, with no significant differences in improvement ratings between these conditions. There were no significant changes across measures for the waitlist condition. Treatment gains were maintained up to 6 months of follow-up. CONCLUSIONS Contrary to previous findings and expectations, group CBFT is as effective in reducing OCD symptoms for children and adolescents as individual treatment. Findings support the efficacy and durability of CBFT in treating childhood OCD.
Geogames - Intention Recognition and Data Quality in Location-based Gaming

Mobility is often regarded as a necessity we cannot avoid due to professional and private activities in our daily lives. Waiting for the train, being trapped in a traffic jam, and the like, are generally perceived as time-consuming and enervating. Mobile computing has opened a bunch of new possibilities for entertainment which can help us to make the best of our journey. Mobile phone games and mobile TV (e.g. [9]) are typical examples. Most of these systems try to port a stationary entertainment experience to a mobile device. The spatio-temporal movement is seen as an unavoidable precondition for which we must find a technical solution, but not as an entertaining element itself. Exactly this issue is addressed by location-based games (LBG), which take use of positioning technology (e.g. GPS) and integrate the player’s position into the logics of a game [11]. This approach of not only creating entertainment for mobility, but also creating entertainment from mobility seems quite promising. Projects in the pervasive gaming community have proposed a number of LBGs [3], and addressed various research questions. However, the AI aspects connected with LBGs have largely been ignored. The Geogames project aims at exploring how methods from AI can be used in all phases of a LBG: before, during, and after the game. The research directions addressed in the project follow these three phases. We are especially interested in the implications of space and time on AI in LBGs. The following questions guide our research: 1. Game design and setup: how can we create a game that addresses both, the player’s intellectual and sportive skills? How does the choice of geographic footprints influence the spatio-temporal flow of a game? And, closely related: how can we help the game designer to port a game to a new geographic area? (section 2) 2. During the game: how can we infer the player’s intentions to act from her spatio-temporal behavior (mobile intention recognition)? How can we model complex connections between intentions, space, and time? How can we use the spatial context to make the inference process more efficient? (section 3) 3. After the game: how can the spatial data collected during the game help us to improve geographic data quality? Can we use LBGs for the community-based collection of geographic data? (section 4) In this project report we will only shortly review the main findings of the first research direction and then concentrate on the current project phase which is concerned with the second and third. These two directions are closely related to ongoing PhD research projects. We present the central findings of previous and current work, and conclude our report in section 5. Figure 1: Board game Tic Tac Toe (left) and the spatialized version GeoTicTacToe (right)
Pathophysiology of Ischemic Acute Renal Failure : Cytoskeletal Aspects

Ischemia remains the major cause of acute renal failure (ARF) in the adult population [1]. Clinically a reduction in glomerular filtration rate (GFR) secondary to reduced renal blood flow can reflect prerenal azotemia or acute tubular necrosis (ATN). More appropriate terms for ATN are acute tubular dysfunction or acute tubular injury, as necrosis only rarely is seen in renal biopsies, and renal tubular cell injury is the hallmark of this process. Furthermore, the reduction in GFR during acute tubular dysfunction can now, in large part, be related to tubular cell injury. Ischemic ARF resulting in acute tubular dysfunction secondary to cell injury is divided into initiation, maintenance, and recovery phases. Recent studies now allow a direct connection to be drawn between these clinical phases and the cellular phases of ischemic ARF (Fig. 13-1). Thus, renal function can be directly related to the cycle of cell injury and recovery. Renal proximal tubule cells are the cells most injured during renal ischemia (Fig. 13-2) [2,3]. Proximal tubule cells normally reabsorb 70% to 80% of filtered sodium ions and water and also serve to selectively reabsorb other ions and macromolecules. This vectorial transport across the cell from lumen to blood is accomplished by having a surface membrane polarized into apical (brush border membrane) and basolateral membrane domains separated by junctional complexes (Fig. 13-3) [4]. Apical and basolateral membrane domains are biochemically and functionally different with respect to many parameters, including enzymes, ion channels, hormone receptors, electrical resistance, membrane transporters, membrane lipids, membrane fluidity, and cytoskeletal associations. This epithelial cell polarity is essential for normal cell function, as demonstrated by the vectorial transport of sodium from the lumen to the blood (see Fig. 13-3). The establishment Bruce A. Molitoris Robert Bacallao
Assessment of dental maturity of Brazilian children aged 6 to 14 years using Demirjian's method.

UNLABELLED Dental maturity, often expressed as dental age, is an indicator of the biological maturity of growing children. A method for the assessment of dental maturity was first described by Demirjian, and is widely used and accepted, mainly because of its ability to compare different ethnic groups. This is possible, as the maturity scoring system proposed by the method is universal in application, although the conversion to dental age depends on the population considered. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to apply Demirjian's method to Brazilian children aged 6-14 years in order to obtain dental maturity curves for each sex, to compare this data with that obtained by Demirjian, and to determine whether there is a significant correlation between dental maturity and body mass index. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed the orthopantomograms, height and weight measurements of 689 healthy children. Curves of dental maturity of males and females were constructed. RESULTS When compared to the French-Canadian sample of Demirjian, Brazilian males and females were 0.681 years and 0.616 years, respectively, more advanced in dental maturity. There was no significant correlation between dental maturity and body mass index.
Forms, Crosstalks, and the Role of Phospholipid Biosynthesis in Autophagy

Autophagy is a highly conserved cellular process occurring during periods of stress to ensure a cell's survival by recycling cytosolic constituents and making products that can be used in energy generation and other essential processes. Three major forms of autophagy exist according to the specific mechanism through which cytoplasmic material is transported to a lysosome. Chaperone-mediated autophagy is a highly selective form of autophagy that delivers specific proteins for lysosomal degradation. Microautophagy is a less selective form of autophagy that occurs through lysosomal membrane invaginations, forming tubes and directly engulfing cytoplasm. Finally, macroautophagy involves formation of new membrane bilayers (autophagosomes) that engulf cytosolic material and deliver it to lysosomes. This review provides new insights on the crosstalks between different forms of autophagy and the significance of bilayer-forming phospholipid synthesis in autophagosomal membrane formation.
Is primordial 4He truly from the Big Bang

Population III stars are now believed to contribute to the observed near infrared background (NIRB) and heavy element pollution of the intergalactic medium. Here we show that a Pop III contribution to the primordial 4 He abundance consistent with NIRB constraints, might mask a lower value for the Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) 4 He abundance.
THE THERMOSENSITIVITY OF THE HYPOTHALAMUS AND THERMOREGULATION IN MAMMALS

333 xx. XXI. 335 XXII. Electrical manifestations of activity in the anterior hypothalamus related to local temperature changes . Control theory and physical models for mammalian temperature regulation . Hypothalamic monoamine concentrations and body temperature Behavioural thermoregulation . Fever . A possible secondary level of thermoregulation . Hypothalamic thermosensitivity in cold-blooded species . The capacity of some lizards to regulate their temperatures . Speculations on the evolutionary and physiological significance of ‘broad-band’ control . Summary . References . Addendum. 335
Sensores eletroquímicos para detecção de íons e medida de pH baseados em filmes de silício poroso.

This work was done focused on contributing to the technologic development of electrochemical sensors employed in ions detection, specifically, hydrogen ions (H). At the first part of the work, the H electrochemical sensors review is showed and discussed; mainly of the ion sensitive devices know as ISFET device (Ion Sensitive Field Effect Transistor). The work was focused in the purpose of fabrication and functional characterization of a modified electrode with methylene blue molecules based on porous silicon technology. The results obtained with this work showed that macroporous silicon films modified with methylene blue act as work electrodes with high electron transference rate, allowing their application in electrochemical sensor devices using cyclic voltammetry technique. The cyclic voltammetry experimental results of this electrode showed high sensibility to pH changes of the solution, parameter related to the H ion concentration. The sensor response was monitored by the intensity of peak current and peak potential position of the redox reaction of methylene blue molecules on modified porous silicon electrode. The modified electrodes with methylene blue on microporous silicon films showed a high electric resistance, making impossible their application as sensors employing the cyclic voltammetry technique. However, due to their high specific surface (600 m/cm), these electrodes were applied to ion detection through the electrochemical impedance technique. The results achieved with the porous silicon electrodes modified with methylene blue open great perspectives of application in biosensors and DNA Chips.