Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study of electron-dense thylakoids in chloroplasts of Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni in relation to the biosynthesis of diterpenoids

Using transmission electronic microscopy and mass spectrometry electron-dense thylakoids of chloroplasts of Stevia rebaudiana leaves during active vegetable growth of this plant were studied in relation to the biosynthesis of diterpenoid glycosides (DGs). It was found that these compounds are absent in these thylakoids, but they contain a water-insoluble weakly polar ent-kauren, a known biosynthetic precursor of DGs as well as gibberellins. This finding provides a base for the suggestion that similar, electron-dense, thylakoids were observed earlier by other authors in other plant species. These data allowed us to conclude that an intensive biosynthesis of ent-kauren is likely related to adaptation of the short-day plants including Stevia rebaudiana to vegetable growth under the long day conditions.
Increased Generation of Neuronal Progenitors after Ischemic Injury in the Aged Adult Human Forebrain

The adult human brain retains the capacity to generate new neurons in the hippocampal formation (Eriksson et al., 1998) and neuronal progenitor cells (NPCs) in the forebrain (Bernier et al., 2000), but to what extent it is capable of reacting to injuries, such as ischemia, is not known. We analyzed postmortem tissue from normal and pathological human brain tissue (n = 54) to study the cellular response to ischemic injury in the forebrain. We observed that cells expressing the NPC marker polysialylated neural adhesion cell molecule (PSA-NCAM) are continuously generated in the adult human subventricular zone (SVZ) and migrate along the olfactory tracts. These cells were not organized in migrating chains as in the adult rodent rostral migratory stream, and their number was lower in the olfactory tracts of brains from old (56–81 years of age) compared with young (29 + 36 years of age) individuals. Moreover, we show that in brains of patients of advanced age (60–87 years of age), ischemia led to an elevated number of Ki-67-positive cells in the ipsilateral SVZ without concomitant apoptotic cell death. Additionally, ischemia led to an increased number of PSA-NCAM-positive NPCs close to the lateral ventricular walls, compared with brains of comparable age without obvious neuropathologic changes. These results suggest that the adult human brain retains a capacity to respond to ischemic injuries and that this capacity is maintained even in old age.
A separate-SMDP approximation technique for RRM in heterogeneous wireless networks

This paper proposes the separate-SMDP approximation technique to solve the dimensionality problem of the semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) model for radio resource management (RRM). The proposed separate-SMDP model approximates the original complex SMDP linear programming (LP) problem by building a series of simple SMDP LP problems. The estimated policy results are obtained by solving these LP problems in a distributed manner. Related algorithms are proposed to support the model in actual HWN RRM process. This technique not only greatly decreases the computational complexity of SMDP and solves its dimensionality problem, but also adapts well to actual RRM and provides a new horizon for utilizing SMDP.
Image retrieval using BDIP and BVLC moments

We propose two new texture features, block difference of inverse probabilities (BDIP) and block variation of local correlation coefficients (BVLC), for content-based image retrieval (CBIR) and then present an image retrieval method based on the combination of BDIP and BVLC moments. BDIP uses local probabilities in image blocks to measure an image's local brightness variations well. BVLC uses variations of local correlation coefficients in image blocks to measure local texture smoothness of an image well. Experimental results show that the presented retrieval method yields about 12% better performance in precision versus recall and about 0.13 in average normalized modified retrieval rank (ANMRR) than the method using wavelet moments.
Explorer The South Asian Genome

The genetic sequence variation of people from the Indian subcontinent who comprise one-quarter of the world’s population, is not well described. We carried out whole genome sequencing of 168 South Asians, along with whole-exome sequencing of 147 South Asians to provide deeper characterisation of coding regions. We identify 12,962,155 autosomal sequence variants, including 2,946,861 new SNPs and 312,738 novel indels. This catalogue of SNPs and indels amongst South Asians provides the first comprehensive map of genetic variation in this major human population, and reveals evidence for selective pressures on genes involved in skin biology, metabolism, infection and immunity. Our results will accelerate the search for the genetic variants underlying susceptibility to disorders such as type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease which are highly prevalent amongst South Asians. Citation: Chambers JC, Abbott J, Zhang W, Turro E, Scott WR, et al. (2014) The South Asian Genome. PLoS ONE 9(8): e102645. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0102645 Editor: Degui Zhi, University of Alabama at Birmingham, United States of America Received October 9, 2013; Accepted June 21, 2014; Published August 12, 2014 Copyright: 2014 Chambers et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: Whole genome sequencing to discover genetic variants underlying type-2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and related phenotypes amongst Indian Asians. Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust cBRC 2011-13 (JS Kooner [PI], JC Chambers). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * Email: john.chambers@ic.ac. uk (JCC); p.elliott@imperial.ac. uk (PE); j.kooner@imperial.ac. uk (JK) . These authors contributed equally to this work.
An Augmented Reality U-Academy Module: From Basic Principles to Connected Subjects

A module for learning about virtual and augmented reality is being developed under the U-Academy project. The module is composed of three parts. The first part is an introduction to the basic concepts of virtual and augmented reality with the help of illustrative examples. The second part presents some of the current uses of augmented reality and its prospective use in several areas that range from industry to medicine. The final part aims at those students interested in the insights of this technology by presenting the underlying concepts such as: camera models, computer graphics, pattern detection and pose estimation from inertial sensors or camera images.
Making the nearest neighbor meaningful for time series classification

The effectiveness of nearest neighbor search heavily relies on the definition of distance function. Unfortunately, the meaningfulness of the frequently used distance, such as Euclidean distance, fractional distance and so on, will degrade with the increasing dimensionality. This problem, which is called distance concentration or instability, makes NN method perform poorly in a proximity query. The most popular distance function for time series, dynamic time warping(DTW), also concentrates when it is used in high-dimensional space. We learn the exponent p of the norm based on nearest neighbor large margin criterion for time series classification. The distance concentration is countered by maximum discrimination instead of maximum variance of distance distribution. The empirical results we presented demonstrate that the proposed approach shows a uniformly behavior, with results comparable to classic 1NN-Euclidean and 1NN-DTW.
Binding of F-spondin to amyloid-β precursor protein: A candidate amyloid-β precursor protein ligand that modulates amyloid-β precursor protein cleavage

Abstract Amyloid-β precursor protein (APP), a type I membrane protein, is physiologically processed by α- or β-secretases that cleave APP N-terminal to the transmembrane region. Extracellular α-/β-cleavage of APP generates a large secreted N-terminal fragment, and a smaller cellular C-terminal fragment. Subsequent γ-secretase cleavage in the transmembrane region of the C-terminal fragment induces secretion of small extracellular peptides, including Aβ40 and Aβ42, which are instrumental in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, and intracellular release of a cytoplasmic tail fragment. Although APP resembles a cell-surface receptor, no functionally active extracellular ligand for APP that might regulate its proteolytic processing has been described. We now show that F-spondin, a secreted signaling molecule implicated in neuronal development and repair, binds to the conserved central extracellular domain of APP and inhibits β-secretase cleavage of APP. Our data indicate that F-spondin may be an endogenous regulator of APP cleavage, and suggest that the extracellular domains of APP are potential drug targets for interfering with β-secretase cleavage. Alzheimer's disease α-secretase β-secretase γ-secretase
Automatic Gigapixel Mosaicing in Large Scale Unstructured Underground Environments

We are currently developing a vision-based system aiming at automatically generating in situ ultra-high resolution mosaics in previously unknown, complex and unstructured underground environments. Nowadays, image stitching algorithms present several limitations when dealing with unstructured environments. The most important to our concern is the ability to deal with feature-less areas. In this paper we describe an automatic on line Gigapixel mosaicing system capable to deal with the absence of reliably detectable and trackable features. The input of our algorithm is a poseannotated sequence of high-resolution images acquired from a common optical center by a calibrated pan-tilt motorized digital camera unit. The proposed mosaicing system is powered by a global-to-local pairwise image alignment which recovers the rotations relating the overlapping images in a coarse-to-fine approach. The local motion procedure outputs a list of locally matched anonymous features which are later injected in a bundle adjustment engine for multi-view fine alignment. The proposed algorithm combines the state of the art mosaicing techniques in a complementary and efficient fashion providing an environment-independent solution for the image mosaicing task. The final output of the algorithm is a Gigapixel spherical mosaic rendering. Tests on real data acquired in a prehistorical cave (Tautavel Cave, France) illustrate mosaicing examples obtained from several hundreds of high-resolution images.
Translating Glutamate: From Pathophysiology to Treatment

On 21 to 22 June 2010, the Institute of Medicine Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders, Board on Health Sciences Policy, discussed the role of glutamate in neuropsychiatric disease at the meeting “Glutamate-Related Biomarkers in Drug Development for Disorders of the Nervous System. ” On 21 to 22 June 2010, the Institute of Medicine Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders, Board on Health Sciences Policy, discussed the role of glutamate in neuropsychiatric disease at the meeting “Glutamate-Related Biomarkers in Drug Development for Disorders of the Nervous System”; this meeting report contains a summary of the meeting. The neurotransmitter glutamate is the primary excitatory neurotransmitter in mammalian brain and is responsible for most corticocortical and corticofugal neurotransmission. Disturbances in glutamatergic function have been implicated in the pathophysiology of several neuropsychiatric disorders—including schizophrenia, drug abuse and addiction, autism, and depression—that were until recently poorly understood. Nevertheless, improvements in basic information regarding these disorders have yet to translate into Food and Drug Administration–approved treatments. Barriers to translation include the need not only for improved compounds but also for improved biomarkers sensitive to both structural and functional target engagement and for improved translational models. Overcoming these barriers will require unique collaborative arrangements between pharma, government, and academia. Here, we review a recent Institute of Medicine–sponsored meeting, highlighting advances in glutamatergic theories of neuropsychiatric illness as well as remaining barriers to treatment development.
A dynamic pattern recognition approach based on neural network for stock time-series

Pattern theorem in financial time-series is one of the most important technical analysis methods in financial prediction. Recent researches have achieved big progresses in identifying and recognizing time-series patterns. And most of the recent works on time-series deal with this task by using static approaches and mainly focus on the recognition accuracy, but considering that recognition of patterns in financial time-series, especially for stock time-series, are always time-consuming rather than pattern recognition in other fields, a dynamic recognition approach is more preferable so that investment on stock pattern become executable. In this paper we propose a dynamic approach for extracting and recognizing the patterns in stock-series. In our approach a slide window with flexible length is defined for extracting feature vertexes in stock-series, and in addition, a dynamic perceptual important point (PIP) locating method is proposed based on the PIP locating method for avoiding the computation expense problem and an artificial neural network (ANN) approach is involved for pattern recognition and window length identification.
Direct medical costs of care for Chinese patients with colorectal neoplasia: a health care service provider perspective.

OBJECTIVES To estimate the direct medical cost of colorectal neoplasia (CRN) from newly diagnosed to the completion of the tumour-specific treatment in the initial year of disease across stages and tumour primary sites. METHODS Only direct medical costs from the perspective of the health care service provider were incorporated in the cost analysis (in 2009 USD) using a bottom-up approach. Tumour-specific treatments of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy data in the initial year of disease were identified from the 401 CRN adult patients by a review of their medical records. Service utilization for diagnosis, staging, pre-operative assessment and post-operative follow-up consultations was estimated from the recommendations of established surveillance and clinical practice guidelines. RESULTS Direct medical cost for the care of a newly diagnosed CRN was ranging from $1941 for low-risk polyp to $45 115 for stage IV colorectal cancer in the initial year of care. Costs of care showed a gradient increase from $1748 for low-risk colonic polyps to $42 899 for stage IV colon cancer, and from $2232 for low-risk rectal polyps to $48 453 for stage IV rectal cancers. Diagnostic/pre-operative assessment and treatment accounted for most of total costs of colorectal polyp (58.9-76.7%) and cancer (60.8-85.2%) care. CONCLUSION The results provided stage and site-specific estimations of the direct medical costs of CRN in a Chinese population that can assist policy decision making and facilitate health care service planning and cost-effectiveness evaluations.
Cross View Gait Recognition Using Correlation Strength

Among various factors that can affect the performance of gait recognition, changes in viewpoint pose the biggest problem. In this work, we develop a novel approach to cross-view gait recognition with the view angle of a probe gait sequence unknown. We formulate a Gaussian Process (GP) classification framework to estimate the view angle of each probe gait sequence. To measure the similarity of gait sequences captured at different view angles, we model the correlation of gait sequences from different views using Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) and use the correlation strength as similarity measure. This differs significantly from existing approaches, which reconstruct gait features in different views either through 2D view transformation or 3D calibration. Without explicit reconstruction, our approach can cope with feature mis-match across view and is more robust against feature noise. Our experiments validate that the proposed method significantly outperforms the existing state-of-the-art methods.
defects and compromised intraflagellar transport BBS-7 and BBS-8 protein function results in cilia

Access the most recent version at doi: 2004 18: 1630-1642 Genes & Dev. Michel R. Leroux Audeh, Ronald H.A. Plasterk, David L. Baillie, Nicholas Katsanis, Lynne M. Quarmby, Stephen R. Wicks and Ansley, Jose L. Badano, Allan K. Mah, Philip L. Beales, William S. Davidson, Robert C. Johnsen, Mark Oliver E. Blacque, Michael J. Reardon, Chunmei Li, Jonathan McCarthy, Moe R. Mahjoub, Stephen J. defects and compromised intraflagellar transport BBS-7 and BBS-8 protein function results in cilia C. elegans Loss of
Disentangling who is who during rhizosphere acidification in root interactions: combining fluorescence with optode techniques

Plant–soil interactions can strongly influence root growth in plants. There is now increasing evidence that root–root interactions can also influence root growth, affecting architecture and root traits such as lateral root formation. Both when species grow alone or in interaction with others, root systems are in turn affected by as well as affect rhizosphere pH. Changes in soil pH have knock-on effects on nutrient availability. A limitation until recently has been the inability to assign species identity to different roots in soil. Combining the planar optode technique with fluorescent plants enables us to distinguish between plant species grown in natural soil and in parallel study pH dynamics in a non-invasive way at the same region of interest (ROI). We measured pH in the rhizosphere of maize and bean in rhizotrons in a climate chamber, with ROIs on roots in proximity to the roots of the other species as well as not-close to the other species. We found clear dynamic changes of pH over time and differences between the two species in rhizosphere acidification. Interestingly, when roots of the two species were interacting, the degree of acidification or alkalization compared to bulk soil was less strong then when roots were not growing in the vicinity of the other species. This cutting-edge approach can help provide a better understanding of plant–plant and plant–soil interactions.
Vegetarian diet and cholesterol and triglycerides levels.

OBJECTIVE Compare levels of triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), low density lipoprotein (LDL) and high density lipoprotein (HDL) among vegetarians and omnivores. METHODS Blood samples were collected from 76 individuals--both males and females--separated in four different diet groups: omnivores, lacto-ovo vegetarians, lacto vegetarians, and restricted vegetarians (or vegans). Dosing was done for: TC, LDL, HDL and TG. RESULTS Significant difference was reported for TC, LDL and TG levels among the samples. Higher levels were reported by omnivores, with decreased levels for vegetarians as animal products were restricted, with lowest levels having been reported by vegans. Mean and standard deviation for TC were 208.09 +/- 49.09 mg/dl in the group of omnivores, and 141.06 +/- 30.56 mg/dl in the group of vegans (p < 0.001). LDL values for omnivores and vegans were respectively: 123.43 +/- 42.67 mg/dl and 69.28 +/- 29.53 mg/dl (p < 0.001). As for TG, those values were 155.68 +/- 119.84 mg/dl and 81.67 +/- 81.90 mg/dl (p < 0.01). As for HDL level no difference was reported between the samples, but HDL/TC ratio was significantly higher in vegans (p = 0.01). CONCLUSION Vegetarian diet was associated to lower levels of TG, TC and LDL as compared to the diet of omnivores.
Role of the CS-US Interval in the US Preexposure Effect

Theory and research suggest that long delay taste-aversion conditioning should be less affected by proximal US preexposure than short-delay conditioning The present research tested this hypothesis by administering illness-inducing LiCl shortly before a saccharin-LiCl pairing in which the postsaccharin LiCl was administered either immediately or 20 min. after access to saccharin. The results suggest that US preexposure has a more deleterious effect on conditioning when the illness-inducing US is delayed in conditioning than when it is immediate. These results are to be expected on the basis of classical conditioning principles and question theory and research that suggest more deleterious effects of US preexposure with shorter intervals between the preexposed and conditioning US.
Mumps Epidemiology and Immunity: The Anatomy of a Modern Epidemic

The success of the measles, mumps, and rubella 2-dose vaccination program led public health officials in 1998 to set a goal to eliminate endemic transmission of mumps virus by 2010 in the United States. The large outbreak of mumps in the spring of 2006 has led public health officials to re-evaluate this goal and to recognize that the transmission and epidemiology of mumps in highly vaccinated populations may be different than anticipated. During 2006, a total of 6584 confirmed and probable cases of mumps were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and most of these, 5865, occurred between January 1 and July 31. The peak of the outbreak was in April and seemed to be focused on college campuses in 9 midwestern states with Iowa having the highest attack rate. College campuses with mumps outbreaks included ones with 77% to 97% of students having had 2 doses of a mumps vaccine. Diagnosing mumps proved to be problematic in vaccinated persons (ie, laboratory tests seemed to be insensitive and some apparent mumps cases had mild nonclassic illness). The outbreak demonstrated that mumps can sometimes transmit efficiently in highly vaccinated populations and the clinical and laboratory diagnosis of mumps in vaccinated persons is more difficult than in naive persons. The reason for this mumps outbreak is not clear but probably results from multiple factors contributing to an overall increase in susceptibility and/or transmission.
Collaborative Virtual Environment Technology for People With Autism

Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) hold great potential for people With autism. An exploratory empirical study Was conducted to determine if children and youth With autism could understand basic emotions as represented by a humanoid avatar. Thirty-four participants (ages 7.8—16 years) reported to have autism interacted With a softWare program designed to evaluate their ability to identify and make inferences from facial expressions. Over 90% of the participants accurately recognized emotions displayed by avatar representations. These findings support the optimism that CVEs can be used effectively as an assistive technology, as an educational technology, and as a means of helping address potential theory-of-mind impairments.
Robust Forwarding in Structured Peer-to-Peer Overlay Networks

Structured peer-to-peer overlay networks are widely exploited to build large-scale decentralized applications. Robustness to malicious nodes is an important and fundamental objective of designing an overlay network. The presence of even a small percentage of malicious nodes can present a serious threat to the stability of an overlay network. Existing approaches mainly utilize multiple paths to increase the probability of delivery. In this paper, we propose Fence that allows a source to diagnose possible forwarding faults injected by malicious nodes. Based on the feedback information, the source is able to identify malicious nodes and to achieve very robust message forwarding.