Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification, Localization, and Functional Implications of the Microdomain-Forming Stomatin Family in the Ciliated Protozoan Paramecium tetraurelia

ABSTRACT The SPFH protein superfamily is assumed to occur universally in eukaryotes, but information from protozoa is scarce. In the Paramecium genome, we found only Stomatins, 20 paralogs grouped in 8 families, STO1 to STO8. According to cDNA analysis, all are expressed, and molecular modeling shows the typical SPFH domain structure for all subgroups. For further analysis we used family-specific sequences for fluorescence and immunogold labeling, gene silencing, and functional tests. With all family members tested, we found a patchy localization at/near the cell surface and on vesicles. The Sto1p and Sto4p families are also associated with the contractile vacuole complex. Sto4p also makes puncta on some food vacuoles and is abundant on vesicles recycling from the release site of spent food vacuoles to the site of nascent food vacuole formation. Silencing of the STO1 family reduces mechanosensitivity (ciliary reversal upon touching an obstacle), thus suggesting relevance for positioning of mechanosensitive channels in the plasmalemma. Silencing of STO4 members increases pulsation frequency of the contractile vacuole complex and reduces phagocytotic activity of Paramecium cells. In summary, Sto1p and Sto4p members seem to be involved in positioning specific superficial and intracellular microdomain-based membrane components whose functions may depend on mechanosensation (extracellular stimuli and internal osmotic pressure).
An Assessment of Concurrent Cannabidiol and &Dgr;9-Tetrahydrocannabinol Administration in Place Aversion and Taste Avoidance Conditioning

Rising interest in medical marijuana has prompted research into its phytocannabinoid constituents, particularly &Dgr;9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). Coadministration of CBD with THC has been shown to modulate a number of THC’s effects, including its negative stimulus properties (e.g., anxiety, paranoia, psychosis) in a clinical setting. The present series of experiments extended these analyses by examining the ability of CBD to impact the aversive effects of THC as assessed in a combined taste and place conditioning procedure. In Experiment 1, male and female Wistar rats were given access to a novel saccharin solution, injected with a vehicle solution CBD (0.075, 0.75 mg/kg), THC (0.75 mg/kg) or several combinations of CBD and THC (1:10 or 1:1 dose ratio), and then placed in a distinct chamber of a place conditioning apparatus. When THC was administered alone, it induced significant place aversions and taste avoidance. At both dose ratios, CBD failed to modulate either effect. There were no sex differences in either assay or at any ratio. A follow-up experiment (Experiment 2) employed identical dose ratios, but a higher dose of THC (7.5 mg/kg) and corresponding CBD doses (0.75, 7.5 mg/kg). Similar to the initial assessment, CBD had no effect on THC-induced place or taste conditioning at either dose ratio. These results may reflect the specific phytocannabinoid dose ratios examined or species differences in cannabinoid action. The current findings further suggest that altering CBD content in medicinal cannabis will likely have minimal effects in terms of tolerability.
Online Unsupervised Multi-view Feature Selection

In this paper, we propose an Online unsupervised Multi-View Feature Selection method, OMVFS, which deals with large-scale/streaming multi-view data in an online fashion. OMVFS embeds unsupervised feature selection into a clustering algorithm via nonnegative matrix factorization with sparse learning. It further incorporates the graph regularization to preserve the local structure information and help select discriminative features. Instead of storing all the historical data, OMVFS processes the multi-view data chunk by chunk and aggregates all the necessary information into several small matrices. By using the buffering technique, the proposed OMVFS can reduce the computational and storage cost while taking advantage of the structure information. Furthermore, OMVFS can capture the concept drifts in the data streams. Extensive experiments on four real-world datasets show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed OMVFS method. More importantly, OMVFS is about 100 times faster than the off-line methods.
Effects of methylphenidate treatment on the cerebellum in adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a magnetic resonance spectroscopy study.

OBJECTIVE This study investigated the relationship between the use of methylphenidate (MPH) and changes in creatine, choline, and N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), striatum, cerebellum, and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). PATIENTS AND METHODS The study enrolled 60 patients 18-60 years of age who met the criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) for ADHD. The amounts of NAA, creatine, and choline in the ACC, cerebellum, striatum, and DLPFC were measured using magnetic resonance spectroscopy. After the first measurement, the patients were given 10 mg oral MPH, and the same metabolite levels were measured 30 minutes later. RESULTS No significant differences were observed in the NAA and choline levels in the DLPFC, ACC, cerebellum, and striatum after MPH. Although there were no significant differences in the creatine levels in the DLPFC, ACC, and striatum after MPH, the creatine level in the cerebellum increased significantly. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that MPH affects the cerebellum in adult ADHD. Therefore, we suggest that, due to its effects on the cerebellum, MPH can be used in adult ADHD not only for attention deficit symptoms but also for hyperactivity symptoms.
Inherited arrhythmia syndromes

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INVERSE DYNAMIC MODELLING OF SWIMMERS IMPULSE DURING A GRAB START

Under race conditions, the start directly influences an athlete’s performance. Taking into account the difficulties coming from the specific parameters relative to the start, comparing the swimmer’s movement with the kinematic data stays the best approach to understand the motion. The model of the present work was developed through this approach allowing us to predict the swimmer’s performance (trajectory, velocity) and the joint moment of each articulation during the impulse phase of the grab start. This model defines kinematical and dynamical data with the following mean dispersions: 9 % for horizontal and total speed at the instant of take off, 1 % for the swim-mer’s internal joint power. By means of this model, it becomes possible to analyze and understand the joint moment of each articulation and the segmental coordination for each swimmer performing a grab start.
Construction of the third-generation Zea mays haplotype map

Background Characterization of genetic variations in maize has been challenging, mainly due to deterioration of collinearity between individual genomes in the species. An international consortium of maize research groups combined resources to develop the maize haplotype version 3 (HapMap 3), built from whole genome sequencing data from 1,218 maize lines, covering pre-domestication and domesticated Zea mays varieties across the world. Results A new computational pipeline was set up to process over 12 trillion bp of sequencing data, and a set of population genetics filters were applied to identify over 83 million variant sites. Conclusions We identified polymorphisms in regions where collinearity is largely preserved in the maize species. However, the fact that the B73 genome used as the reference only represents a fraction of all haplotypes is still an important limiting factor.
Geometry model and experimental verification of 2.5-D woven composites

In order to validate the relationship between structure and mechanical properties of 2.5-D woven fabric composites,the unit cell geometry model of 2.5-D woven composites was built by adopting the assumption of raceway fibers on the basis of the micrograph observation and analysis of the fabric section.The geometry model formular is used to deduce the length of yarns,the oridentation angle of the nodulated yarns and the fiber volume content on some typical 2.5-D woven composites,such as shallow curve-linking structures,shallow straight-linking ones, and depp angle-linking ones,and tensile strength and compress strength of the composites are forecated.Experimental samples of meeting the need of 2.5-D woven composites are made and experiments are performed.Theoretical predictions agree well with the experimental results,thus the proposed model is verified.
Scleritis and Takayasu's disease - rare combined presentation.

INTRODUCTION Takayasu's disease (TD) (pulseless disease, aortic arch syndrome) is a rare but potentially life-threatening chronic giant cell vasculitis. The major complications attributed to the disease include Takayasu's retinopathy, secondary hypertension, aortic regurgitation, and arterial aneurysm. The aim of this study is to describe a patient with Takayasu's disease and scleritis and to show its association. CASE REPORT We describe a 44-year-old female patient with Takayasu's disease who presented with bilateral anterior scleritis in the form of painful red eye. Patient did not have any associated autoimmune diseases. Patient was diagnosed to have TD and was treated with immunosuppressant. CONCLUSION Scleritis though rare can be a vasculitic feature of TD. This is a first report of Takayasu's disease with scleritis, which has been documented in Nepal.
Target-Specific PET Probes for Neurodegenerative Disorders Related to Dementia

Dementia is a highly prevalent problem causing considerable disability and mortality and exacting great costs to individuals, their families, and society. The 4 most common neurodegenerative disorders that cause dementia—Alzheimer disease, frontotemporal dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, and dementia in Parkinson disease—have different underlying etiologies and pathogenetic mechanisms. There is a great need for early diagnostic markers; functional brain imaging may therefore assist in the detection and differential diagnosis of dementia due to neurodegenerative diseases. Functional imaging such as PET allows in vivo imaging of functional brain activity indicating cerebral blood flow and cerebral glucose metabolism, and PET allows imaging of neurotransmitter activity, including that of the cholinergic, dopaminergic, and serotonergic systems. New PET neuroimaging tracers are being developed for detecting pathologic parameters such as amyloid plaque and microglial activity. The development of molecular imaging is important for early diagnosis of dementia, selection of patients for therapies, and evaluation of therapies.
Quantification of Retinal Microvascular Density in Optical Coherence Tomographic Angiography Images in Diabetic Retinopathy

Importance Quantitative measurements based on optical coherence tomographic angiography (OCTA) may have value in managing diabetic retinopathy (DR), but there is limited information on the ability of OCTA to distinguish eyes with DR. Objective To evaluate the ability of measurements of retinal microvasculature using OCTA to distinguish healthy eyes from eyes with DR. Design, Setting, and Participants In this prospective cross-sectional study, OCTA was used to examine the eyes of participants with type 2 diabetes with or without DR and the eyes of participants without diabetes from September 17, 2015, to April 6, 2016. Density maps based on superficial retinal layer (SRL) and deeper retinal layer (DRL) images were generated after a method to remove decorrelation tails was applied to the DRL images. Exposures Both eyes of each participant were examined by means of a 3-mm OCTA scan and 7-field fundus photography using the Diabetic Retinopathy Severity Scale. Main Outcomes and Measures Two measures were examined: perfusion density, based on the area of vessels, and vessel density, based on a map with vessels of 1-pixel width. The size of the foveal avascular zone was also calculated automatically, and so was the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Results A total of 50 eyes from 26 participants with diabetes (10 women and 16 men; mean [SD] age, 64.9 [7.5] years) and 50 healthy eyes from 25 participants without diabetes (14 women and 11 men; mean [SD] age, 64.0 [7.1] years) were imaged. All participants were white. Vessel density measured in the SRL had the highest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (0.893 [95% CI, 0.827-0.959]), compared with perfusion density in the SRL (0.794 [95% CI, 0.707-0.881]), foveal avascular zone area (0.472 [95% CI, 0.356-0.588]), and vessel density in the DRL (0.703 [95% CI, 0.601-0.805]). Vessel density in the SRL negatively correlated with best-corrected visual acuity (r = –0.28; P = .05) and severity of DR (r = –0.46; P = .001). Density metrics correlated with age. No correlation was detected between vascular density or foveal avascular zone metrics and hemoglobin A1C or duration of diabetes. Conclusions and Relevance Vessel density measured by OCTA provides a quantitative metric of capillary closure that correlates with severity of DR and may allow staging, diagnosis, and monitoring that do not require subjective evaluation of fundus images.
Stability of HIV Frameshift Site RNA Correlates with Frameshift Efficiency and Decreased Virus Infectivity

ABSTRACT Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) replication is strongly dependent upon a programmed ribosomal frameshift. Here we investigate the relationships between the thermodynamic stability of the HIV type 1 (HIV-1) RNA frameshift site stem-loop, frameshift efficiency, and infectivity, using pseudotyped HIV-1 and HEK293T cells. The data reveal a strong correlation between frameshift efficiency and local, but not overall, RNA thermodynamic stability. Mutations that modestly increase the local stability of the frameshift site RNA stem-loop structure increase frameshift efficiency 2-fold to 3-fold in cells. Thus, frameshift efficiency is determined by the strength of the thermodynamic barrier encountered by the ribosome. These data agree with previous in vitro measurements, suggesting that there are no virus- or host-specific factors that modulate frameshifting. The data also indicate that there are no sequence-specific requirements for the frameshift site stem-loop. A linear correlation between Gag-polymerase (Gag-Pol) levels in cells and levels in virions supports the idea of a stochastic virion assembly mechanism. We further demonstrate that the surrounding genomic RNA secondary structure influences frameshift efficiency and that a mutation that commonly arises in response to protease inhibitor therapy creates a functional but inefficient secondary slippery site. Finally, HIV-1 mutants with enhanced frameshift efficiencies are significantly less infectious, suggesting that compounds that increase frameshift efficiency by as little as 2-fold may be effective at suppressing HIV-1 replication. IMPORTANCE HIV, like many retroviruses, utilizes a −1 programmed ribosomal frameshift to generate viral enzymes in the form of a Gag-Pol polyprotein precursor. Thus, frameshifting is essential for viral replication. Here, we utilized a panel of mutant HIV strains to demonstrate that in cells, frameshifting efficiency is correlated with the stability of the local thermodynamic barrier to ribosomal translocation. Increasing the stability of the frameshift site RNA increases the frameshift efficiency 2-fold to 3-fold. Mutant viruses with increased frameshift efficiencies have significantly reduced infectivity. These data suggest that this effect might be exploited in the development of novel antiviral strategies.
Climate Extremes and Their Impacts on Interannual Vegetation Variabilities: A Case Study in Hubei Province of Central China

As the frequency and intensity of climate extremes are likely to be substantially modified in upcoming decades due to climate warming, an evaluation of the response of interannual vegetation variabilities to climate extremes is imperative. This study comprehensively analyzed the spatio-temporal variabilities of 21 temperature and precipitation indices across Hubei Province in Central China based on daily meteorological records for the period 1961–2015. To quantify the sensitivity of the vegetation to climate indices in the study area, we correlated climate indices with three vegetation indicators: leaf area index, normalized difference vegetation index, and gross primary productivity. The results indicated that warm-related indices exerted considerable increasing trends, especially for summer days at a rate of 0.35 days year−1 (p < 0.01). In addition, the trends of 18 indices during 1982–2015 were larger than those during 1961–2015, indicating accelerated climate changes in Hubei Province. Spatially, extreme precipitation showed increases in the eastern regions of the study area and decreases in the western regions. Correlation analyses revealed that warm anomalies of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation resulted in extreme warm conditions and extreme precipitation in the study area. Stepwise linear regression analyses identified three temperature indices and three precipitation indices, which were mostly correlated with the three ecosystem variables at the site scale. Further multiple regressions demonstrated the main negative impacts caused by frost days, warm spell duration, extremely heavy precipitation, and consecutive dry days on the terrestrial ecosystem in Hubei Province. Our study provides an improved understanding of the effects of climate extremes on terrestrial ecosystems and can also offer a basis for the management of mitigating damage from climate extremes.
Fate and effect of allochthonous organic material in aquatic microbial ecosystems An analysis based on chemostat theory

Two mathematical descriptions of a microbial ecosystem with external input of organic material were formulated. Included in these descriptions are only those parts of the ecosystem which are thought to be of key importance in the linkage between flows of organic material and mineral nutrients. The slmplest model, based upon Monod-hnetics of growth and constant cell composition, is amenable to graphical analysis. It was used to explore 2 complementary aspects: How does organic load alter the equilibirum state of the ecosystem, and how do the mechanisms of mineral cycling between bacteria, algae and protozoans influence degradation of the organic material? The other model is based on an extension of Droop's model for algal growth which allows for variations in cell composition. By simulation techniques, the effects of this refinement were explored.
An efficient CNN for spectral reconstruction from RGB images

Recently, the example-based single image spectral reconstruction from RGB images task, aka, spectral super-resolution was approached by means of deep learning by Galliani et al. The proposed very deep convolutional neural network (CNN) achieved superior performance on recent large benchmarks. However, Aeschbacher et al showed that comparable performance can be achieved by shallow learning method based on A+, a method introduced for image super-resolution by Timofte et al. In this paper, we propose a moderately deep CNN model and substantially improve the reported performance on three spectral reconstruction standard benchmarks: ICVL, CAVE, and NUS.
Production of Flocculants, Adsorbents, and Dispersants from Lignin

Currently, lignin is mainly produced in pulping processes, but it is considered as an under-utilized chemical since it is being mainly used as a fuel source. Lignin contains many hydroxyl groups that can participate in chemical reactions to produce value-added products. Flocculants, adsorbents, and dispersants have a wide range of applications in industry, but they are mainly oil-based chemicals and expensive. This paper reviews the pathways to produce water soluble lignin-based flocculants, adsorbents, and dispersants. It provides information on the recent progress in the possible use of these lignin-based flocculants, adsorbents, and dispersants. It also critically discusses the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to produce such products. The challenges present in the production of lignin-based flocculants, adsorbents, and dispersants and possible scenarios to overcome these challenges for commercial use of these products in industry are discussed.
A review of the electrical properties of semiconductor nanowires: insights gained from terahertz conductivity spectroscopy

Accurately measuring and controlling the electrical properties of semiconductor nanowires is of paramount importance in the development of novel nanowire-based devices. In light of this, terahertz (THz) conductivity spectroscopy has emerged as an ideal non-contact technique for probing nanowire electrical conductivity and is showing tremendous value in the targeted development of nanowire devices. THz spectroscopic measurements of nanowires enable charge carrier lifetimes, mobilities, dopant concentrations and surface recombination velocities to be measured with high accuracy and high throughput in a contact-free fashion. This review spans seminal and recent studies of the electronic properties of nanowires using THz spectroscopy. A didactic description of THz time-domain spectroscopy, optical pump–THz probe spectroscopy, and their application to nanowires is included. We review a variety of technologically important nanowire materials, including GaAs, InAs, InP, GaN and InN nanowires, Si and Ge nanowires, ZnO nanowires, nanowire heterostructures, doped nanowires and modulation-doped nanowires. Finally, we discuss how THz measurements are guiding the development of nanowire-based devices, with the example of single-nanowire photoconductive THz receivers.
Representing Consumption and Saving without a Representative Consumer

The Great Recession confirmed a bedrock principle of modern consumption theory: It is impossible to explain aggregate spending behavior without knowledge of the underlying microeconomic distribution of circumstances and choices across households. National accounting frameworks therefore need to be augmented by "bottom up" measures that both (a) capture the microeconomic heterogeneity (in expenditures, income, assets, debt, and beliefs) in the population and (b) sum up to statistics that have a recognizable relationship to the aggregate totals that are already reasonably well measured.