Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuregulin-1 Signals from the Periphery Regulate AMPA Receptor Sensitivity and Expression in GABAergic Interneurons in Developing Neocortex

Neuregulin-1 (NRG1) signaling is thought to contribute to both neuronal development and schizophrenia neuropathology. Here, we describe the developmental effects of excessive peripheral NRG1 signals on synaptic activity and AMPA receptor expression of GABAergic interneurons in postnatal rodent neocortex. A core peptide common to all NRG1 variants (eNRG1) was subcutaneously administered to mouse pups. Injected eNRG1 penetrated the blood–brain barrier and activated ErbB4 NRG1 receptors in the neocortex, in which ErbB4 mRNA is predominantly expressed by parvalbumin-positive GABAergic interneurons. We prepared neocortical slices from juvenile mice that were receiving eNRG1 subchronically and recorded inhibitory synaptic activity from layer V pyramidal neurons. Postnatal eNRG1 treatment significantly enhanced polysynaptic IPSCs, although monosynaptic IPSCs were not affected. Examination of excitatory inputs to parvalbumin-containing GABAergic interneurons revealed that eNRG1 treatment significantly increased AMPA-triggered inward currents and the amplitudes and frequencies of miniature EPSCs (mEPSCs). Similar effects on mEPSCs were observed in mice treated with a soluble, full-length form of NRG1 type I. Consistent with the electrophysiologic data, expression of the AMPA receptor GluA1 (i.e., GluR1, GluRA) was upregulated in the postsynaptic density/cytoskeletal fraction prepared from eNRG1-treated mouse neocortices. Cortical GABAergic neurons cultured with eNRG1 exhibited a significant increase in surface GluA1 immunoreactivity at putative synaptic sites on their dendrites. These results indicate that NRG1 circulating in the periphery influences postnatal development of synaptic AMPA receptor expression in cortical GABAergic interneurons and may play a role in conditions characterized by GABA-associated neuropathologic processes.
Neurodynamics and the mind

Is science of human experience, aimed at explaining phenomenology of mental events accessible through introspection, possible? What do we really known about ourselves and how do we know it? Psychology and neural sciences have turned away from such questions and experimentally oriented philosophers discovered formidable obstacles in attempts to answer even simple questions about the nature of conscious experience. To talk in a meaningful way about subjective mental processes a new level of description is needed, resulting from neurodynamics but connected to inner experience. Visualization of neurodynamics may lead to geometrical, continuous models of mental events. It should allow to view brains and artificial cognitive systems form mental perspective.
HIV-1 Myristoylated Nef Treatment of Murine Microglial Cells Activates Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase, NO2 Production and Neurotoxic Activity

Background The potential role of the human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) accessory protein Nef in the pathogenesis of neuroAIDS is still poorly understood. Nef is a molecular adapter that influences several cellular signal transduction events and membrane trafficking. In human macrophages, Nef expression induces the production of extracellular factors (e.g. pro-inflammatory chemokines and cytokines) and the recruitment of T cells, thus favoring their infection and its own transfer to uninfected cells via exosomes, cellular protrusions or cell-to-cell contacts. Murine cells are normally not permissive for HIV-1 but, in transgenic mice, Nef is a major disease determinant. Both in human and murine macrophages, myristoylated Nef (myr+Nef) treatment has been shown to activate NF-κB, MAP kinases and interferon responsive factor 3 (IRF-3), thereby inducing tyrosine phosphorylation of signal transducers and activator of transcription (STAT)-1, STAT-2 and STAT-3 through the production of proinflammatory factors. Methodology/Principal Findings We report that treatment of BV-2 murine microglial cells with myr+Nef leads to STAT-1, -2 and -3 tyrosine phosphorylation and upregulates the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) with production of nitric oxide. We provide evidence that extracellular Nef regulates iNOS expression through NF-κB activation and, at least in part, interferon-β (IFNβ) release that acts in concert with Nef. All of these effects require both myristoylation and a highly conserved acidic cluster in the viral protein. Finally, we report that Nef induces the release of neurotoxic factors in the supernatants of microglial cells. Conclusions These results suggest a potential role of extracellular Nef in promoting neuronal injury in the murine model. They also indicate a possible interplay between Nef and host factors in the pathogenesis of neuroAIDS through the production of reactive nitrogen species in microglial cells.
Intermediate-Element Abundances in Galaxy Clusters

We present the average abundances of the intermediate elements obtained by performing a stacked analysis of all the galaxy clusters in the archive of the X-ray telescope ASCA. We determine the abundances of Fe, Si, S, and Ni as a function of cluster temperature (mass) from 1-10 keV and place strong upper limits on the abundances of Ca and Ar. In general, Si and Ni are overabundant with respect to Fe, while Ar and Ca are very underabundant. The discrepancy between the abundances of Si, S, Ar, and Ca indicate that the α-elements do not behave homogeneously as a single group. We show that the abundances of the most well-determined elements Fe, Si, and S in conjunction with recent theoretical supernova yields do not give a consistent solution for the fraction of material produced by Type Ia and Type II supernovae at any temperature or mass. The general trend is for higher temperature clusters to have more of their metals produced in Type II supernovae than in Type Ia supernovae. The inconsistency of our results with abundances in the Milky Way indicate that spiral galaxies are not the dominant metal contributors to the intracluster medium (ICM). The pattern of elemental abundances requires an additional source of metals beyond standard Type Ia and Type II supernova enrichment. The properties of this new source are well matched to those of Type II supernovae with very massive, metal-poor progenitor stars. These results are consistent with a significant fraction of the ICM metals produced by an early generation of Population III stars.
Comparison between blur transfer and blur re-generation in depth image based rendering

An issue of object boundary reconstruction is important in depth image based rendering. For natural rendering, pixel values in an object boundary should be gradually changed from the background color to the foreground color. There are two approaches for this problem; one is blur regeneration by using alpha matting, and the other is blur transfer by using foreground biased dilation. The former requires three additional steps, i.e. foreground, background texture synthesis, and alpha channel estimation. The latter requires only one step, which is dilation for a depth map. To validate the effectiveness of these methods, we compare the matting method with the dilation method. In addition, we modify the dilation method to improve the quality of the synthesis view. Experimental results show that the improved method reaches the state-of-the-arts of the matting method, and its additional computational cost within 4 ms.
The Problem With “Proficiency”: Limitations of Statistics and Policy Under No Child Left Behind

The Percentage of Proficient Students (PPS) has become a ubiquitous statistic under the No Child Left Behind Act. This focus on proficiency has statistical and substantive costs. The author demonstrates that the PPS metric offers only limited and unrepresentative depictions of large-scale test score trends, gaps, and gap trends. The limitations are unpredictable, dramatic, and difficult to correct in the absence of other data. Interpretation of these depictions generally leads to incorrect or incomplete inferences about distributional change. The author shows how the statistical shortcomings of these depictions extend to shortcomings of policy, from exclusively encouraging score gains near the proficiency cut score to shortsighted comparisons of state and national testing results. The author proposes alternatives for large-scale score reporting and argues that a distribution-wide perspective on results is required for any serious analysis of test score data, including “growth”-related results under the recent Growth Model Pilot Program.
Star cluster ecology-IV. Dissection of an open star cluster: photometry

The evolution of star clusters is studied using N-body simulations in which the evolution of single stars and binaries is taken self-consistently into account. Initial conditions are chosen to represent relatively young Galactic open clusters, such as the Pleiades, Praesepe and the Hyades. The calculations include a realistic mass function, primordial binaries and the external potential of the parent Galaxy. Our model clusters are generally significantly flattened by the Galactic tidal field, and dissolve before deep core collapse occurs. The binary fraction decreases initially because of the destruction of soft binaries, but increases later because lower mass single stars escape more easily than the more massive binaries. At late times, the cluster core is quite rich in giants and white dwarfs. There is no evidence for preferential evaporation of old white dwarfs. On the contrary, the white dwarfs formed are likely to remain in the cluster. Stars tend to escape from the cluster through the first and second Lagrange points, in the direction of and away from the Galactic Centre. Mass segregation manifests itself in our models well within an initial relaxation time. As expected, giants and white dwarfs are much more strongly affected by mass segregation than main-sequence stars. Open clusters are dynamically rather inactive. However, the combined effects of stellar mass-loss and evaporation of stars from the cluster potential drive the dissolution of a cluster on a much shorter time-scale than if these effects are neglected. The often-used argument that a star cluster is barely older than its relaxation time and therefore cannot be dynamically evolved is clearly in error for the majority of star clusters. An observation of a blue straggler in an eccentric orbit around an unevolved star or a blue straggler of more than twice the turn-off mass might indicate past dynamical activity. We find two distinct populations of blue stragglers: those formed above the main-sequence turn-off, and those which appear as blue stragglers as the cluster's turn-off drops below the mass of the rejuvenated star.
Applying the Pyramid Method in the 2006 Document Understanding Conference

The pyramid evaluation effort for the 2006 Document Understanding Conference involved twenty-two sites on twenty document sets. Each pyramid content model (one per document set) was constructed from four human summaries. Peer systems were scored using the modified pyramid score introduced in DUC 2005. ANOVAs with score as the independent variable and nine factors yielded three significant factors: document set, peer, and content responsiveness. There were many more significant differences among peer systems in 2006 than for DUC 2005. We speculate this is due to a combination of improved systems and improvements in our evaluation procedures.
Markov chain hyper-heuristic (MCHH): an online selective hyper-heuristic for multi-objective continuous problems

In this paper we present the Markov chain Hyper-heuristic (MCHH), a novel online selective hyper-heuristic which employs reinforcement learning and Markov chains to provide an adaptive heuristic selection method. Experiments are conducted to demonstrate the efficacy of the method and comparisons are made with standard heuristics, a random hyper-heuristic and a multi-objective hyper-heuristic from the literature. The approaches are compared on a small number of evaluations of the multi-objective DTLZ test problems to reflect the computational limitations of expensive optimisation problems. The results demonstrate the MCHH robust and reliable performance on these problems.
Interactive tool for mechatronic systems: Two industrial robot cases

In this paper, an industrial robot interface is presented. This is suitable for different subjects related to robotics including robot kinematics control systems and actuators. Hardware and software stages are depicted. Besides, as a manner to teach students to select and calculate electrical components for a robot, it is presented a retrofit of a commercial six-degree of freedom robot arm from Nachi. Also, it is shown the design of a PC-based interface that poses enhanced features as: generation of profiles, handling and tuning joints and measurement of the main parameters such as electrical torque. An attractive feature for industry applications that poses is the flexibility to be coupled to similar servo systems. The HMI developed increases the quality of a final application that makes it friendly when analyzing and setting in operation. In addition, it is demonstrated that a simple PID controller programed in a TMS320F28335, is sufficient to perform high accuracy tasks. Certain practices are proposed in order to support educative skills for industry mechatronic systems.
Phenotypic and Functional Characterization of Human Memory T Cell Responses to Burkholderia pseudomallei

Background Infection with the Gram-negative bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei is an important cause of community-acquired lethal sepsis in endemic regions in southeast Asia and northern Australia and is increasingly reported in other tropical areas. In animal models, production of interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) is critical for resistance, but in humans the characteristics of IFN-γ production and the bacterial antigens that are recognized by the cell-mediated immune response have not been defined. Methods Peripheral blood from 133 healthy individuals who lived in the endemic area and had no history of melioidosis, 60 patients who had recovered from melioidosis, and 31 other patient control subjects were stimulated by whole bacteria or purified bacterial proteins in vitro, and IFN-γ responses were analyzed by ELISPOT and flow cytometry. Findings B. pseudomallei was a potent activator of human peripheral blood NK cells for innate production of IFN-γ. In addition, healthy individuals with serological evidence of exposure to B. pseudomallei and patients recovered from active melioidosis developed CD4+ (and CD8+) T cells that recognized whole bacteria and purified proteins LolC, OppA, and PotF, members of the B. pseudomallei ABC transporter family. This response was primarily mediated by terminally differentiated T cells of the effector–memory (TEMRA) phenotype and correlated with the titer of anti-B. pseudomallei antibodies in the serum. Conclusions Individuals living in a melioidosis-endemic region show clear evidence of T cell priming for the ability to make IFN-γ that correlates with their serological status. The ability to detect T cell responses to defined B. pseudomallei proteins in large numbers of individuals now provides the opportunity to screen candidate antigens for inclusion in protein or polysaccharide–conjugate subunit vaccines against this important but neglected disease.
FORMATION OF PROTOSTELLAR JETS AS TWO-COMPONENT OUTFLOWS FROM STAR–DISK MAGNETOSPHERES

Axisymmetric magnetohydrodynamic simulations have been applied to investigate (1) the interrelation between a central stellar magnetosphere and stellar wind with a surrounding magnetized disk outflow, and (2) how the overall formation of a large scale jet is affected by that. The initial magnetic field distribution applied is a superposition of two components—the stellar dipole and the surrounding disk magnetic field—in either parallel or antiparallel alignment. Correspondingly, the mass outflow is launched as stellar wind plus disk wind. Our simulations evolve from an initial state in hydrostatic equilibrium with an initially force-free magnetic field configuration. Due to differential rotation between star and disk, a strong toroidal magnetic field component is induced. The stellar dipole inflates and opens up on large scale. Stellar wind and disk wind may evolve in a pair of collimated outflows. However, the existence of a reasonably strong disk wind component is essential for collimation. The classical disk jet, as known from previous numerical studies, becomes less collimated due to the pressure of the central stellar wind. In some simulations we observe the generation of strong flares triggering a sudden change in the outflow mass loss rate (or velocity) by a factor of two, accompanied by a redistribution in the radial profile of momentum flux and jet velocity across the jet. We discuss the hypothesis that these flares may trigger internal shocks in the asymptotic jets which are observed as knots.
Orthogonality regularizer for question answering

Learning embeddings of words and knowledge base elements is a promising approach for open domain question answering. Based on the remark that relations and entities are distinct object types lying in the same embedding space, we analyze the benefit of adding a regularizer favoring the embeddings of entities to be orthogonal to those of relations. The main motivation comes from the observation that modifying the embeddings using prior knowledge often helps performance. The experiments show that incorporating the regularizer yields better results on a challenging question answering benchmark.
. Exposure Data 2. Cancer in Humans

See Section 1 of the Monograph on X-radiation and γ-radiation in this volume. Studies of human exposures to neutron radiation are extremely limited. The major group is the atomic bomb (A-bomb) survivors who were exposed to fission neutrons. Based upon the latest A-bomb dose reconstruction for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neutron radiation accounted for about at most 1% of the total absorbed radiation dose (Preston et al., 2004). The neutron component was even less for those in Nagasaki, in which the bomb was plutonium-based in contrast to the uranium weapon used in Hiroshima. Using experimental data, it is assumed that the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of the A-bomb neutrons is 10 times that of the γ-radiation (Preston et al., 2004). It has been suggested that this value is too low, and thus the neutron component could account for a greater fraction of the total effective dose in the Hiroshima Walsh, 2008). This in turn would reduce the estimated cancer risk of γ-radiation exposures. For example, Kellerer & Walsh (2001) and Kellerer et al. (2002) used values of the RBE in the range of 20–50 for the evaluation of risks for solid cancer from γ-radiation exposure. Although there are city differences, the neutron component of dose is too small to make conclusions about neutron effects and RBE estimates (Kellerer & Walsh, 2001; Preston et al., 2004). Nuclear workers are occasionally exposed to neutrons, but their numbers are small, and they typically will also be exposed to higher doses of γ-radiation. Several studies have been carried out on airline crews because of their exposure to neutrons from cosmic rays during high-altitude flights. It is estimated that more than 50% of the effective dose is from high linear-energy-transfer (LET) radiation, most of which is neutron (Goldhagen, 2000), and the estimated total radiation exposure is in the range of 0.2–9.1 mSv per year, well below occupational limits of 20 mSv per year (Wilson, 2000). Increases in breast cancer and melanoma have been observed, but not leukaemia. Also, confounding factors include circadian rhythm disruption, which may increase the risk of endocrine tumours, as well as UV exposures and the risk for melanoma. Sigurdson & Ron (2004) summarize well the NEUTRON RADIATION Neutrons were considered by a previous IARC Working Group in 1999 (IARC, 2000). Since that time, new data have become available, these have been incorporated into the Monograph, and taken into consideration in the present …
Kv11.1 channel subunit composition includes minK and varies developmentally in mouse cardiac muscle

The Kv11.1 (also ERG1) K+ channel underlies cardiac IKr, a current that contributes to repolarization in mammalian heart. In mice, IKr current density decreases with development and studies suggest that changes in the structure and/or properties of the heteromultimeric IKr/Kv11.1 channel are responsible. Here, using immunohistochemistry, we report that total Kv11.1 α subunit protein is more abundant in neonatal heart and is distributed throughout both adult and neonatal ventricles with greater abundance in epicardia. Immunoblots reveal that the α subunit alternative splice variant, Kv11.1a, is more abundant in adult heart while the Kv11.1b variant is more abundant in neonatal heart. Additionally, MinK channel subunit protein is shown to co‐assemble with Kv11.1 protein and is more abundant in neonatal heart. In summary, Kv11.1/IKr channel composition varies developmentally and the higher IKr current density in neonatal heart is likely attributable to higher abundance of Kv11.1/IKr channels, more specifically, the Kv11.1b splice variant. Developmental Dynamics 237:2430–2437, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Sense-making in distributed leadership

This article describes and discusses cases of distributed leadership at several levels in schools in the light of changing political discourses and changing relations between the state and its institutions. It focuses on relations, leadership influences and communication in the whole school and in the classroom and by extension also discuss relations, influences and modes of instruction in the classroom. The empirical basis for the discussion is school leadership in the Danish context. It explores how contemporary government and management manifests itself in schools, how agents in schools react to it and how room for manoeuvre is being formed in order to give students conditions and frameworks so they can develop a ‘Democratic Bildung’.
Language Minority Students in School Reform: The Role of Collaboration. ERIC Digest.

Language Minority Students in School Reform: The Role of Collaboration. ERIC Digest. 1 LEADERSHIP IN CHANGING SCHOOLS. 2 TEACHER INQUIRY. 3 COLLABORATING BEYOND THE SCHOOL. 4 TIME TO RENEW.4 REFERENCES. 5
G-Protein Modulators Alter the Swimming Behavior and Calcium Influx of Paramecium tetraurelia

Abstract To assess the potential role of G-proteins in chemokinesis, Paramecium tetraurelia was pre-incubated with the G-protein modulator pertussis toxin. Pertussis toxin pretreatment significantly reduced Paramecium chemoattraction to sodium acetate and ammonium chloride in T-maze behavioral assays and depressed the frequency of avoidance reactions, indicating that heterotrimeric G-proteins may be involved with the motility response. To determine whether G-proteins exert their effect via the ciliary voltage-sensitive calcium channel, we examined responses of P. tetraurelia to the potent voltage-sensitive calcium channel agonist, deltamethrin. Pertussis toxin preincubation significantly reduced the toxic effects of deltamethrin exposure as determined by survival under depolarizing conditions and reduced the duration of backward swimming episodes in behavioral bioassays. Furthermore, non-hydrolyzable analogs of guanine nucleotides altered deltamethrin-stimulated calcium influx via calcium channels in isolated ciliary vesicles. Heterotrimeric G-protein subunits were subsequently detected in ciliary vesicles of P. tetraurelia by antibodies produced against Gα and Gβ subunits, and by 32P-ADP-ribosylation, indicating that proteins of the appropriate molecular weight are the target of pertussis toxin in these vesicles. These findings provide additional evidence that heterotrimeric G-proteins are associated with ciliary vesicles and that they play a role in the modulation of swimming behavior and the toxic action of deltamethrin in Paramecium.