Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural mechanisms of adaptive gain control in a joint control loop: muscle force and motoneuronal activity

An adaptive gain control system of a proprioceptive feedback system, the femur­tibia control loop, is investigated. It enables the joint control loop to work with a high gain but it prevents instability oscillations. In the inactive stick insect, the realisation of specific changes in gain is described for tibial torque, for extensor tibiae muscle force and for motoneuronal activity. In open-loop experiments, sinusoidal stimuli are applied to the femoral chordotonal organ (fCO). Changes in gain that depend on fCO stimulus parameters (such as amplitude, frequency and repetition rate), are investigated. Furthermore, spontaneous and touch-induced changes in gain that resemble the behavioural state of the animal are described. Changes in gain in motoneurones are always realised as changes in the amplitude of modulation of their discharge frequency. Nevertheless, depending on the stimulus situation, two different mechanisms underlie gain changes in motoneurones. (i) Changes in gain can be based on changes in the strength of the sensorimotor pathways that transmit stimulus-modulated information from the fCO to the motoneurones. (ii) Changes in gain can be based on changes in the mean activity of a motoneurone by means of its spike threshold: when, during the modulation, the discharge of a motoneurone is inhibited for part of the stimulus cycle, then a change in mean activity subsequently causes a change in modulation amplitude and gain. A new neuronal mechanism is described that helps to compensate the low-pass filter characteristics of the muscles by an increased activation, especially by a sharper distribution of spikes in the stimulus cycle at high fCO stimulus frequencies.
Target-language-driven agglomerative part-of-speech tag clustering for machine translation

This paper presents a method for reducing the set of dierent tags to be considered by a partof-speech tagger. The method is based on a clustering algorithm performed over the states of a hidden Markov model, which is initially trained by considering information not only from the source language, but also from the target language, using a new unsupervised technique which has been recently proposed to obtain taggers involved in machine translation systems. Then, a bottom-up agglomerative clustering algorithm groups the states of the hidden Markov model according to a similarity measure based on their transition probabilities; this reduces the complexity by grouping the initial finer tags into coarser ones. The experiments show that part-of-speech taggers using the coarser tags have smaller error rates than those using the initial finest tags; moreover, considering unsupervised information from the target language results in better clusters compared to those unsupervisedly built from source language information only.
The Moral Life of Children. The Political Life of Children

seems to me, something inherently artificial in such endeavor. It is a kind of imposed scholarship from the top that has surface plausibility but does not ring true. Our national (or regional) meetings ought to reflect what scholars are in fact doing rather than what particular convention organizers in any given year think they should be concerned with. This is the reason why, among the papers in this book, I find those reporting on their authors' ongoing work to be by far the most stimulating, regardless of whether I agree with their messages or whether they "extend the science of politics. "
Reframing the Conversation: Insights from the Oral Histories of Three 1990 TFA Participants

Background/Context Researchers have examined the challenges of staffing urban, underserved classrooms primarily through large-scale data sets; policymakers have responded with strategies intended to recruit more or “better” teachers into the classroom through programs such as the popular Teach for America. Yet there is little qualitative evidence regarding the experiences of such teachers, which could enhance existing understandings of such challenges and current attempts to solve them. Purpose This research examines the professional choices and trajectories of Teach for America participants over a 20-year period, attending especially to individuals’ perceptions of their urban teaching experiences, their beliefs, and their reasons for staying in or leaving the urban classroom, with the aim of better understanding the experiences of such teachers and the implications for staffing urban schools. Participants/Subjects Research subjects included thirty participants from the inaugural cohort of Teach for America (1990–1992); this article focuses on the life stories of three such individuals. Research Design This study draws on oral histories conducted with 30 individuals who participated in the first cohort (1990–1992) of Teach for America. It analyzes their stories within the context of scholarly literature on teachers and teacher policy, urban teaching, and the historical period of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Conclusions/Recommendations This study suggests the nature of the contributions that nuanced, qualitative methodologies such as oral history can make. We found that, despite their initial differences from traditional-entry teachers, TFA participants’ reasons for staying in or leaving the urban classroom looked very similar to those of observed among the population of urban teachers at large. Our data thus raises a question of focus: is attending to the conditions under which all urban teachers work perhaps just as important as attracting new or purportedly better candidates into urban teaching?
Prediction in a microblog hybrid network using bonacich potential

Microblogs such as Twitter support a rich variety of user interactions using hashtags, urls, retweets and mentions. Microblogs are an exemplar of a hybrid network; there is an explicit network of followers, as well as an implicit network of users who retweet other users, and users who mention other users. These networks are important proxies for influence. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive behavioral model of an individual user and her interactions in the hybrid network. We choose a focal user and predict those users who will be influenced by her, and will retweet and/or mention the focal user, in the near future. We define a potential function, based on a hybrid network, which reflects the likelihood of a candidate user being influenced by, and having a specific type of link to, a focal user, in the future. We show that the potential function based prediction model converges to the Bonacich centrality metric. We develop a fast unsupervised solution which approximates the future hybrid network and the future Bonacich potential. We perform an extensive evaluation over a microblog network and a stream of tweets from Twitter. Our solution outperforms several baseline methods including ones based on singular value decomposition (SVD) and a supervised Ranking SVM.
Adipose tissue as an endocrine organ: from theory to practice.

OBJECTIVE To describe the advances in research into the physiological role of white adipose tissue, with emphasis on its endocrinal role in inflammatory processes, feeding behavior, insulin sensitization and modulation of the atherogenetic process. To deal with the potential role of adipose tissue as a source of stem cells for regeneration of tissues, with special emphasis on adipogenesis and its consequences for development of obesity. SOURCES Important information was compiled from the scientific literature in order that this analysis contains an explanatory synthesis of the aspects mentioned above. SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS In addition to its classical functions as primary metabolic energy store, meeting energy requirements during periods of deprivation by means of lypolisis, adipose tissue also has the capacity to synthesize and secrete a variety of hormones - the adipokines. These are active in a range of processes, such as control of nutritional intake (leptin) and control of sensitivity to insulin and inflammatory processes (TNF-alpha, IL-6, resistin, visfatin, adiponectin). Furthermore, since adipose tissue also contains undifferentiated cells, it has the ability to generate new adipocytes, regenerating its own tissue (adipogenesis), and also the ability to give rise to other cells (myoblasts, chondroblasts, osteoblasts), which has great therapeutic potential in the not-too-distant future. CONCLUSIONS The range of functional possibilities of adipose tissue has widened. An understanding of these potentials could make this tissue a great ally in the fight against conditions that are currently assuming epidemic proportions (obesity, diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension and arteriosclerosis) and in which adipose tissue is still seen as the enemy.
Influence of dietary fatty acid composition and exercise on changes in fat oxidation from a high-fat diet.

Acute high-fat (HF) diets can lead to short-term positive fat balances until the body increases fat oxidation to match intake. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a HF diet, rich in either mono-unsaturated or saturated fatty acids (FAs) and exercise, on the rate at which the body adapts to a HF diet. (13)C-labeled oleate and (2)H-labeled palmitate were also given to determine the contribution of exogenous vs. global fat oxidation. Eight healthy men (age of 18-45 yr; body mass index of 22 ± 3 kg/m(2)) were randomized in a 2 × 2 crossover design. The four treatments were a high saturated fat diet with exercise (SE) or sedentary (SS) conditions and a high monounsaturated fat diet with exercise (UE) or sedentary (US) conditions. Subjects stayed for 5 days in a metabolic chamber. All meals were provided. On day 1, 30% of energy intake was from fat, whereas days 2-5 had 50% of energy as fat. Subjects exercised on a stationary cycle at 45% of maximal oxygen uptake for 2 h each day. Respiratory gases and urinary nitrogen were collected to calculate fat oxidation. Change from day 1 to day 5 showed both exercise treatments increased fat oxidation (SE: 76 ± 30 g, P = 0.001; UE: 118 ± 31 g, P < 0.001), whereas neither sedentary condition changed fat oxidation (SS: -10 ± 33 g, P = not significant; US: 41 ± 14 g, P = 0.07). No differences for dietary FA composition were found. Exercise led to a faster adaptation to a HF diet by increasing fat oxidation and achieving fat balance by day 5. Dietary FA composition did not differentially affect 24-h fat oxidation.
SAME but Different: Fast and High Quality Gibbs Parameter Estimation

Gibbs sampling is a workhorse for Bayesian inference but has several limitations when used for parameter estimation, and is often much slower than non-sampling inference methods. SAME (State Augmentation for Marginal Estimation) [15, 8] is an approach to MAP parameter estimation which gives improved parameter estimates over direct Gibbs sampling. SAME can be viewed as cooling the posterior parameter distribution and allows annealed search for the MAP parameters, often yielding very high quality estimates. But it does so at the expense of additional samples per iteration and generally slower performance. On the other hand, SAME dramatically increases the parallelism in the sampling schedule, and is an excellent match for modern (SIMD) hardware. In this paper we explore the application of SAME to graphical model inference on modern hardware. We show that combining SAME with factored sample representation (or approximation) gives throughput competitive with the fastest symbolic methods, but with potentially better quality. We describe experiments on Latent Dirichlet Allocation, achieving speeds similar to the fastest reported methods (online Variational Bayes) and lower cross-validated loss than other LDA implementations. The method is simple to implement and should be applicable to many other models.
Pig-Islet Xenotransplantation: Recent Progress and Current Perspectives

Islet xenotransplantation is one prospective treatment to bridge the gap between available human cells and needs of patients with diabetes. Pig represents an ideal candidate for obtaining such available cells. However, potential clinical application of pig islet still faces obstacles including inadequate yield of high-quality functional islets and xenorejection of the transplants. Adequate amounts of available islets can be obtained by selection of a suitable pathogen-free source herd and the development of isolation and purification method. Several studies demonstrated the feasibility of successful preclinical pig-islet xenotransplantation and provided insights and possible mechanisms of xenogeneic immune recognition and rejection. Particularly promising is the achievement of long-term insulin independence in diabetic models by means of distinct islet products and novel immunotherapeutic strategies. Nonetheless, further efforts are needed to obtain much more safety and efficacy data to translate these findings into clinic.
Control of Epstein-Barr virus infection in vitro by T helper cells specific for virion glycoproteins

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) establishes lifelong persistent infections in humans by latently infecting B cells, with occasional cycles of reactivation, virus production, and reinfection. Protective immunity against EBV is mediated by T cells, but the role of EBV-specific T helper (Th) cells is still poorly defined. Here, we study the Th response to the EBV lytic cycle proteins BLLF1 (gp350/220), BALF4 (gp110), and BZLF1 and show that glycoprotein-specific Th cells recognize EBV-positive cells directly; surprisingly, a much higher percentage of target cells than those expressing lytic cycle proteins were recognized. Antigen is efficiently transferred to bystander B cells by receptor-mediated uptake of released virions, resulting in recognition of target cells incubated with <1 virion/cell. T cell recognition does not require productive infection and occurs early after virus entry before latency is established. Glycoprotein-specific Th cells are cytolytic and inhibit proliferation of lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCL) and the outgrowth of LCL after infection of primary B cells with EBV. These results establish a novel role for glycoprotein-specific Th cells in the control of EBV infection and identify virion proteins as important immune targets. These findings have implications for the treatment of diseases associated with EBV and potentially other coated viruses infecting MHC class II–positive cells.
IN VITRO DISSOLUTION ENHANCEMENT OF ALBENDAZOLE BY PREPARATION OF INCLUSION COMPLEXS WITH HP- ß CYCLODEXTRIN

With the introduction of combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening, the properties of new chemical entities shifted towards higher molecular weight and increasing lipophilicity that results in decreasing aqueous solubility. It is not surprising that many drug candidates have poor water solubility since the initial selection of drug candidates are based on activity alone. Other physiochemical and biopharmaceutical properties such as permeability, biopharmaceutics and metabolism are rarely considered during the selection process. The aim of this study was to increase dissolution rate of albendazole poorly soluble drugs from BCS class II by complexation process. Complexation was prepared using cyclodextrine. Different techniques were employed for preparation of complexation with cyclodextrin like physical mixture, cogrinding, kneading technology, solvent coevaporation. The physical properties of the prepared solid mass of ABZ was characterized by in vitro dissolution studies, UV-V spectroscopy, Fourior transform infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Xray powder differaction spectroscopy. Additionaly, phase solubility studies were performed to support the in vitro dissolution study. The results of Fourior transform infrared spectroscopy shows the compatibility of drug with cyclodextrin, while differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray powder differaction spectroscopy showed the confirmation of complexation of cyclodextrin with Abz.
Shape Analysis and Recognition Based on Skeleton and Morphological Structure

This paper presents a novel and effective method of shape analysis and recognition based on skeleton and morphological structure. A series of preprocessing algorithms, smooth following and liberalization are introduced, and series of morphological structural points of image contour are extracted and merged. A series of basic shapes and a main shape of object image are described and segmented based on skeleton and morphological structure. Object shape is efficiently analyzed and recognized based on the extracted series of basic shapes and main shape. Comparing with other methods, the proposed method need not sample training set. Also, the new method can be used to analyze and recognize the shape structure of any shape, and there is no any requirement for the processed image data set. The new method can be used in image analysis, intelligent recognition, techniques, applications, systems and tools.
Metropolis Sampling

Monte Carlo (MC) sampling methods are widely applied in Bayesian inference, system simulation and optimization problems. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are a well-known class of MC methods which generate a Markov chain with the desired invariant distribution. In this document, we focus on the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) sampler, which can be considered as the atom of the MCMC techniques, introducing the basic notions and different properties. We describe in details all the elements involved in the MH algorithm and the most relevant variants. Several improvements and recent extensions proposed in the literature are also briefly discussed, providing a quick but exhaustive overview of the current Metropolis-based sampling's world.
Diabetes Prevalence in Relation to Serum Concentrations of Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) Congener Groups and Three Chlorinated Pesticides in a Native American Population

Background: Exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is known to increase risk of diabetes. Objective: To determine which POPs are most associated with prevalence of diabetes in 601 Akwesasne Native Americans. Methods: Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to assess associations between quartiles of concentrations of 101 polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) congeners, congener groups and three chlorinated pesticides [dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and mirex] with diabetes. In Model 1, the relationship between quartiles of exposure and diabetes were adjusted only for sex, age, body mass index (BMI), and total serum lipids. Model 2 included additional adjustment for either total PCBs or total pesticides. Results: Total serum PCB and pesticide concentrations were each significantly associated with prevalence of diabetes when adjusted only for covariates (Model 1), but neither showed a significant OR for highest to lowest quartiles after additional adjustment for the other (Model 2). When applying Model 2 to PCB congener groups and individual pesticides, there were significant omnibus differences between the four quartiles (all ps < 0.042) for most groups, with the exception of penta- and hexachlorobiphenyls, DDE and mirex. However, when comparing highest to lowest quartiles only non- and mono-ortho PCBs [OR = 4.55 (95% CI: 1.48, 13.95)], tri- and tetrachloro PCBs [OR = 3.66 (95% CI: 1.37, –9.78)] and HCB [OR = 2.64 (95% CI: 1.05, 6.61)] showed significant associations with diabetes. Among the non- and mono-ortho congeners, highest to lowest quartile of dioxin TEQs was not significant [OR = 1.82 (95% CI: 0.61, 5.40)] but the OR for the non-dioxin-like congeners was [OR = 5.01 (95% CI: 1.76, 14.24)]. Conclusion: The associations with diabetes after adjustment for other POPs were strongest with the more volatile, non-dioxin-like, low-chlorinated PCB congeners and HCB. Because low-chlorinated congeners are more volatile, these observations suggest that inhalation of vapor-phase PCBs is an important route of exposure. Citation: Aminov Z, Haase R, Rej R, Schymura MJ, Santiago-Rivera A, Morse G, DeCaprio A, Carpenter DO, and the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment. 2016. Diabetes prevalence in relation to serum concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congener groups and three chlorinated pesticides in a Native American population. Environ Health Perspect 124:1376–1383; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1509902
Graded Deletion and Virus-Induced Activation of Autoreactive CD4+ T Cells1

We have examined factors governing the negative selection of autoreactive CD4+ T cells in transgenic mice expressing low (HA12 mice) vs high (HA104 mice) amounts of the influenza virus hemagglutinin (HA). When mated with TS1 mice that express a transgenic TCR specific for the I-Ed-restricted determinant site 1 (S1) of HA, thymocytes expressing high levels of the clonotypic TCR were deleted in both HA-transgenic lineages. However, through allelic inclusion, thymocytes with lower levels of the clonotypic TCR evaded deletion in TS1 × HA12 and TS1 × HA104 mice to graded degrees. Moreover, in both lineages, peripheral CD4+ T cells could be activated by the S1 peptide in vitro, and by influenza virus in vivo. These findings indicate that allelic inclusion can allow autoreactive CD4+ thymocytes to evade thymic deletion to varying extents reflecting variation in the expression of the self peptide, and can provide a basis for the activation of autoreactive peripheral T cells by viruses bearing homologues of self peptides (“molecular mimicry”).
Efficient and Specific Rescue of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Budding Defects by a Nedd4-Like Ubiquitin Ligase

ABSTRACT To exit infected cells, human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) exploits the vacuolar protein-sorting pathway by engaging Tsg101 and ALIX through PTAP and LYPxnL late assembly (L) domains. In contrast, less-complex retroviruses often use PPxY L domains to recruit Nedd4 family ubiquitin ligases. Although HIV-1 Gag lacks PPxY motifs, we now show that the budding of various HIV-1 L-domain mutants is dramatically enhanced by ectopic Nedd4-2s, a native isoform with a truncated C2 domain. The effect of Nedd4-2s on HIV-1 budding required a catalytically active HECT domain and was specific, since other Nedd4 family proteins showed little activity and an unrelated retrovirus was not rescued. The residual C2 domain of Nedd4-2s was critical for the enhancement of HIV-1 budding and for the association of Nedd4-2s with Gag, as reflected by its incorporation into virus-like particles. Interestingly, the incorporation of Nedd4-2s also depended on its active site, indicating that the ability to form a thioester with ubiquitin was required. These data suggest a novel mechanism by which HIV-1 Gag can connect to cellular budding machinery.