Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attenuation of Spontaneous Hypertension in Rats by a Vasopressin Antagonist

Although abnormalities in the vasopressin system have been reported in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR), neither short-term nor long-term administration of the vasopressin antagonist d(CH2)5-Tyr(Me)arginine vasopressin (AVP), which selectively blocks the action of vasopressin on vascular (V1) receptors, altered the course of hypertension in SHR. In the current study, long-term administration of a different vasopressin antagonist, d(CH2)5-D-Tyr(Me)VAVP, to SHR and Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) from 4 to 12 weeks of age significantly attenuated the development of systolic hypertension in SHR (p < 0.05) without altering Mood pressure in normotensive WKY. The antagonist was delivered subcutaneously by osmopump at 0.1 μ Systolic blood pressure was monitored twice weekly by tail plethysmography beginning at 5 weeks of age. In a second group of SHR, the drug infusion was continued until 18 weeks of age. In this group, the attenuation of systolic hypertension by the drug was extended and became more prominent (p < 0.007). Resting mean arterial pressure measured by Indwelling catheters in the conscious state at 18 weeks of age was significantly reduced in the antagonist-treated SHR (144 ± 4 vs 157 ± 4 mm Hg;p < 0.05). Heart rate also was significantly reduced by the drug (351 ± 6 vs 392 ± 7 beats/min; p < 0.001). Following measurement of mean arterial pressure in the rats at 18 weeks of age, the osmopumps were removed and systolic blood pressure, mean arterial pressure, and heart rate were observed until 22 weeks of age. All of these parameters returned to the levels observed in untreated SHR within 2 weeks after drug withdrawal. Although this antagonist has both V, and V2 (antidiuretlc) antagonist properties, the infusion protocol used in this study resulted in antagonism of the pressor action of vasopressin but incomplete antagonism of the antldluretk action of vasopressin. Thus, the mechanism responsible for the antihypertensive action of this antagonist is not clear, but the results suggest that long-term blockade of the actions of endogenous vasopressin does alter the course of hypertension in SHR.
1-2011 Image Matching with Distinctive Visual Vocabulary

In this paper we propose an image indexing and matching algorithm that relies on selecting distinctive high dimensional features. In contrast with conventional techniques that treated all features equally, we claim that one can benefit significantly from focusing on distinctive features. We propose a bag-of-words algorithm that combines the feature distinctiveness in visual vocabulary generation. Our approach compares favorably with the state of the art in image matching tasks on the University of Kentucky Recognition Benchmark dataset and on an indoor localization dataset. We also show that our approach scales up more gracefully on a large scale Flickr dataset.
Forest Certification: Toward Common Standards?

The forestry industry provides a good illustration of the active roles that industry associations, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), national governments, and international organizations can play in developing and promoting codes of conduct that are formally sanctioned and certified. It also reflects some of the challenges of disseminating codes of conduct in developing countries and ensuring market benefits from certification. We describe the emergence of forest certification standards, outline current certification schemes, and discuss the role of major corporations in creating demand for certified products. We also discuss the limited success of certification and some of the obstacles to its adoption in developing countries. The current diversity of forest certification programs and ecolabeling schemes has created a costly, less-than-transparent system that has been largely ineffective in terms of the initial goals of reducing tropical deforestation and illegal logging. Some steps have been taken toward harmonization of different certification criteria as well as endorsement and mutual recognition among existing forest certification programs. However, it is unlikely that standardization alone can overcome other, more serious barriers to certification in developing countries.
Impaired cognitive function in idiopathic generalized epilepsy and unaffected family members: An epilepsy endophenotype

Idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) has a strong genetic component, and patients with IGE show deficits in a range of frontal lobe functions. Previous studies provide hints that unaffected siblings of people with IGE may share some of these cognitive deficits, suggesting that these deficits may be genetically determined endophenotypes. Establishment of a neurocognitive endophenotype of IGE would contribute to genetic studies and increase our understanding of the pathophysiology of IGE. To identify potential neurocognitive endophenotypes of IGE, this study aimed to measure neuropsychological performance in patients with IGE, their unaffected relatives, and healthy controls.
Advances in real-time indexing models and techniques for the web of things

Real-time indexing is a core component in retrieval systems and search services of any type in complex domains ranging from analytics to the Web of Things. As greatest challenges, the efficiency, scalability, and performance are central factors to consider at any level when designing or building an index. The multidimensional characteristics of data exposed by smart things interacting with the World concerning volume, velocity, variety, and volatility (4V) leverage advances and research in models and techniques for the indexing process. We present a state-of-the-art regarding them focusing on the Web of Things and related research areas such as Big data. Furthermore, we propose a methodology for comparing them and some guidelines for designing real-time indexes for the Web of Things. Our novel approach brings together the recent advances in traditional domains and adjusts models and techniques for the emerging Web of Things.
Eye Movements Reveal Effects of Visual Content on Eye Guidance and Lexical Access during Reading

Background Normal reading requires eye guidance and activation of lexical representations so that words in text can be identified accurately. However, little is known about how the visual content of text supports eye guidance and lexical activation, and thereby enables normal reading to take place. Methods and Findings To investigate this issue, we investigated eye movement performance when reading sentences displayed as normal and when the spatial frequency content of text was filtered to contain just one of 5 types of visual content: very coarse, coarse, medium, fine, and very fine. The effect of each type of visual content specifically on lexical activation was assessed using a target word of either high or low lexical frequency embedded in each sentence Results No type of visual content produced normal eye movement performance but eye movement performance was closest to normal for medium and fine visual content. However, effects of lexical frequency emerged early in the eye movement record for coarse, medium, fine, and very fine visual content, and were observed in total reading times for target words for all types of visual content. Conclusion These findings suggest that while the orchestration of multiple scales of visual content is required for normal eye-guidance during reading, a broad range of visual content can activate processes of word identification independently. Implications for understanding the role of visual content in reading are discussed.
Does citation reflect social structure?: Longitudinal evidence from the Globenet interdisciplinary research group

Many authors have posited a social component in citation, the consensus being that the citers and citees often have interpersonal as well as intellectual ties. Evidence for this belief has been rather meager, however, in part because social networks researchers have lacked bibliometric data (e.g., pairwise citation counts from online databases), and citation analysts have lacked sociometric data (e.g., pairwise measures of acquaintanceship). In 1997 Nazer extensively measured personal relationships and communication behaviors in what we call "Globenet," an international group of 16 researchers from seven disciplines that was established in 1993 to study human development. Since Globenet's membership is known, it was possible during 2002 to obtain citation records for all members in databases of the Institute for Scientific Information. This permitted examination of how members cited each other (intercited) in journal articles over the past three decades and in a 1999 book to which they all contributed. It was also possible to explore links between the intercitation data and the social and communication data. Using network-analytic techniques, we look at the growth of intercitation over time, the extent to which it follows disciplinary or inter-disciplinary lines, whether it covaries with degrees of acquaintanceship, whether it reflects Globenet's organizational structure, whether it is associated with particular in-group communication patterns, and whether it is related to the cocitation of Globenet members. Results show cocitation to be a powerful predictor of intercitation in the journal articles, while being an editor or co-author is an important predictor in the book. Intellectualties based on shared content did better as predictors than content-neutral socialties like friendship. However, interciters in Globenet communicated more than did noninterciters.
Accumulation of short telomeres in human fibroblasts prior to replicative senescence.

The loss of telomere repeats has been causally linked to in vitro replicative senescence of human diploid fibroblasts (HDFs). In order to study the mechanism(s) by which telomere shortening signals cell senescence, we analyzed the telomere length at specific chromosome ends at cumulative population doublings in polyclonal and clonal HDFs by quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization. The rate of telomere shortening at individual telomeres varied between 50 and 150 bp per population doubling and short telomeres with an estimated 1-2 kb of telomere repeats accumulated prior to senescence. The average telomere length in specific chromosome ends was remarkably similar between clones. However, some exceptions with individual telomeres measuring 0.5-1 kb were observed. In the fibroblast clones, the onset of replicative senescence was significantly correlated with the mean telomere fluorescence but, strikingly, not with chromosomes with the shortest telomere length. The accumulation of short telomeres in late passages of cultured HDFs is compatible with selection of cells on the basis of telomere length and limited recombination between telomeres prior to senescence.
Asthma and allergic disease prevalence in a diverse sample of Toronto school children: results from the Toronto Child Health Evaluation Questionnaire (T-CHEQ) Study.

BACKGROUND Asthma is the most common chronic disease in children. OBJECTIVES To describe the prevalence of asthma and allergic disease in a multiethnic, population-based sample of Toronto (Ontario) school children attending grades 1 and 2. METHODS In 2006, the Toronto Child Health Evaluation Questionnaire (T-CHEQ) used the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood survey methodology to administer questionnaires to 23,379 Toronto school children attending grades 1 and 2. Modifications were made to the methodology to conform with current privacy legislation and capture the ethnic diversity of the population. Lifetime asthma, wheeze, hay fever and eczema prevalence were defined by parental report. Asthma was considered to be current if the child also reported wheeze or asthma medication use in the previous 12 months. RESULTS A total of 5619 children from 283 randomly sampled public schools participated. Children were five to nine years of age, with a mean age of 6.7 years. The overall prevalence of lifetime asthma was 16.1%, while only 11.3% had current asthma. The reported prevalence of lifetime wheeze was 29.2%, while 14.2% reported wheeze in the past 12 months. Sociodemographic and major health determinant characteristics of the T-CHEQ population were similar to 2001 census data, suggesting a diverse sample that was representative of the urban childhood population. CONCLUSIONS Asthma continues to be a highly prevalent chronic disease in Canadian children. A large proportion of children with reported lifetime asthma, who were five to nine years of age, did not report current asthma symptomatology or medication use.
Let's talk! Socially intelligent agents for language conversation training

This paper promotes socially intelligent animated agents for the pedagogical task of English conversation training for native speakers of Japanese. As a novel feature, social role awareness is introduced to animated conversational agents, that are by non-strong affective reasoners, but otherwise often lack the social competence observed in humans. In particular, humans may easily adjust their behavior depending on their respective role in a social setting, whereas their synthetic pendants tend to be driven mostly by emotions and personality. Our main contribution is the incorporation of a "social filter program" to mental models of animated agents. This program may qualify an agent's expression of its emotional state by the social contest, thereby enhancing the agent's believability as a conversational partner. Our implemented system is web-based and demonstrates socially aware animated agents in a virtual coffee shop environment. An experiment with our conversation system shows that users consider socially aware agents as more natural than agents that violate conventional practices.
Mechanisms of perceptual organization provide auto-zoom and auto-localization for attention to objects

Visual attention is often understood as a modulatory field acting at early stages of processing, but the mechanisms that direct and fit the field to the attended object are not known. We show that a purely spatial attention field propagating downward in the neuronal network responsible for perceptual organization will be reshaped, repositioned, and sharpened to match the object's shape and scale. Key features of the model are grouping neurons integrating local features into coherent tentative objects, excitatory feedback to the same local feature neurons that caused grouping neuron activation, and inhibition between incompatible interpretations both at the local feature level and at the object representation level.
Information Technology, Production Process Outsourcing, and Manufacturing Plant Performance

What is the role of information technology (IT) in enabling the outsourcing of manufacturing plant production processes? Do plant strategies influence production outsourcing? Does production process outsourcing influence plant performance? This research addresses these questions by investigating the role of IT and plant strategies as antecedents of production outsourcing, and evaluating the impact of production outsourcing and IT investments on plant cost and quality. We develop a theoretical framework for the antecedents and performance outcomes of production outsourcing at the plant level. We validate this theoretical framework using cross-sectional survey data from U.S. manufacturing plants. Our analysis suggests that plants with greater IT investments are more likely to outsource their production processes, and that IT investments and production outsourcing are associated with lower plant cost of goods sold and higher product quality improvement. Our research provides an integrated model for studying the effects of IT and production outsourcing on plant performance.
The involvement of adherens junction components in myofibrillogenesis in cultured cardiac myocytes.

The distribution of adherens junction (AJ) components was investigated in cultured heart myocytes. These cells, derived from either newborn rats or chick embryos, develop elaborate arrays of myofibrils which become extensive and laterally aligned following several days in culture. The Z-disks in these cells, visualized by immunolabeling with antibodies to muscle-specific alpha-actinin, exhibit a characteristic periodicity of about 2 microns and are in register with those of neighboring myofibrils throughout the sarcoplasm. Vinculin, in these cells, associates with intercellular AJ and cell-matrix adhesions. In addition, this protein is detected in periodic bands located along the lateral cell membranes corresponding to "costamers" previously described by Pardo, J.V. , Siliciano, J.D. and Craig, S.W. (Proc. Natn. Acad. Sci. USA, 80, 1008). Similarly, N-cadherin, which is predominantly associated with intercellular junctions, is also detected in periodic striations located mainly on the dorsal and lateral cell surfaces. Using computer-aided three-dimensional microscopy confirmed that these vinculin- and N-cadherin-containing structures are located in extrajunctional sites, apparently associated with Z-disks of peripheral myofibrils. Based on these findings an alternative pathway is proposed for the assembly of vinculin and N-cadherin, which is not triggered by adhesive interactions with extracellular surfaces but rather by interactions at the membrane-cytoplasm interphase with the periphery of the pre-assembled myofibrils. Moreover, we present evidence that antibodies to N-cadherin, which are capable of blocking AJ formation in culture, have an inhibitory effect also on the development and alignment of myofibrils. We discuss the functional significance of the "costameric" organization of vinculin and N-cadherin and consider its involvement both in the lateral alignment of neighboring muscle cells and in the stabilization of developing myofibrils.
ON THE ASYMPTOTIC SIZE DISTORTION OF TESTS WHEN INSTRUMENTS LOCALLY VIOLATE THE EXOGENEITY ASSUMPTION

In the linear instrumental variables model with possibly weak instruments we derive the asymptotic size of testing procedures when instruments locally violate the exogeneity assumption. We study the tests by Anderson and Rubin (1949, The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 20, 46–63), Moreira (2003, Econometrica 71, 1027–1048), and Kleibergen (2005, Econometrica 73, 1103–1123) and their generalized empirical likelihood versions. These tests have asymptotic size equal to nominal size when the instruments are exogenous but are size distorted otherwise. While in just-identified models all the tests that we consider are equally size-distorted asymptotically, the Anderson-Rubin type tests are less size-distorted than the tests of Moreira (2003) and Kleibergen in over-identified situations. On the other hand, we also show that there are parameter sequences under which the former test asymptotically overrejects more frequently. Given that strict exogeneity of instruments is often a questionable assumption, our findings should be important to applied researchers who are concerned about the degree of size distortion of their inference procedure. We suggest robustness of asymptotic size under local model violations as a new alternative measure to choose among competing testing procedures. We also investigate the subsampling and hybrid tests introduced in Andrews and Guggenberger (2010a, Journal of Econometrics 158, 285–305) and show that they do not offer any improvement in terms of size-distortion reduction over the Anderson-Rubin type tests.
A novel class of sensors for system integrative concepts in biotechnological applications.

Miniaturisation of analytical and technical devices for biotechnological, medical and chemical applications shows high potential for accelerating the discovery of new biological relevant substances and drugs. Especially nanotechnological approaches promise a new quality with respect to time, sensitivity, and specificity in the field of biology driven sensor technology. New sensor concepts on the nanoscale demand for new system integrative concepts including the manipulation of picoand nanofluid volumes on chemical or structural modified surfaces and defining suitable interfaces to the macroworld.
Suitable Body Parts for Vibration Feedback in Walking Navigation Systems

Walking navigation systems are improving in accuracy, and user reliance on such systems is increasing. However, most of these systems rely on visual and audio information which may not always be convenient and sufficient in mobile conditions. At the same time, vibration feedback is gaining attention as desirable feedback for mobile situations because it can provide non-visual information to users and is less affected by outside environmental factors and thus not so susceptible to interference from extraneous environmental noise. This study investigates appropriate body parts for wearable vibration feedback for walking navigation systems. Based on the study results, suitable body parts and implications for designing wearable vibration systems are presented.
A Recommendation Approach Dealing with Multiple Market Segments

A new community and communication type of social networks - online dating - are gaining momentum. With many people joining in the dating network, users become overwhelmed by choices for an ideal partner. A solution to this problem is providing users with partners recommendation based on their interests and activities. Traditional recommendation methods ignore the users' needs and provide recommendations equally to all users. In this paper, we propose a recommendation approach that employs different recommendation strategies to different groups of members. A segmentation method using the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is proposed to customize users' needs. Then a targeted recommendation strategy is applied to each identified segment. Empirical results show that the proposed approach outperforms several existing recommendation methods.
CYTOCHEMICAL LOCALIZATION OF TWO GLYCOLYTIC DEHYDROGENASES IN WHITE SKELETAL MUSCLE

The cytochemical localization, by conventional methods, of lactate and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenases is limited, firstly, by the solubility of these enzymes in aqueous media and, secondly, by the dependence of the final electron flow from reduced nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide (NADH) to the tetrazolium on tissue diaphorase activity: localization is therefore that of the diaphorase, which in rabbit adductor magnus is mitochondrial. NADH has been found to have great affinity to bind in the sarcoplasmic reticulum, and, therefore, if it is generated freely in the incubation media containing 2,2',5,5'-tetra-p-nitrophenyl-3,3'-(3,3'-dimethoxy-4,4'-phenylene)-ditetrazolium chloride (TNBT) and N-methyl phenazonium methyl sulfate (PMS), it can bind there and cause a false staining. Since such a production of NADH can readily occur in the incubation media for glycolytic dehydrogenases due to diffusion of these soluble enzymes from tissue sections, the prevention of enzyme solubilization is extremely important. Fixation in formaldehyde prevented such enzyme diffusion, while at the same time sufficient activity persisted to allow for adequate staining. The incubation media contained PMS, so that the staining system was largely independent of tissue diaphorase activity. Application of these methods to adductor magnus of rabbit revealed by light microscopy, for both enzymes, a fine network which was shown by electron microscopy to represent staining of the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Mitochondria also reacted. These findings add further support for the notion that the sarcoplasmic reticulum is probably involved in glycolytic activity.