Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Endothelin (ET)-1-Induced Inhibition of ATP Release from PC-12 Cells Is Mediated by the ETB Receptor: Differential Response to ET-1 on ATP, Neuropeptide Y, and Dopamine Levels

During sympathetic neurotransmitter release, there is evidence for differential modulation of cotransmitter release by endothelin (ET)-1. Using nerve growth factor (NGF)-differentiated PC12 cells, the effects of ET-1 on K+-stimulated release of ATP, dopamine (DA), and neuropeptide Y (NPY) were quantified using high-pressure liquid chromatography or radioimmunoassay. ET-1, in a concentration-dependent manner, inhibited the release of ATP, but not DA and NPY. Preincubation with the ETA/B antagonist, PD 142893 (N-acetyl-β-phenyl-d-Phe-Leu-Asp-Ile-Ile-Trp), reversed the inhibitory effect of ET-1 on ATP release, which remained unaffected in the presence of the ETA-specific antagonist BQ123 [cyclo(d-Asp-Pro-d-Val-Leu-d-Trp)]. The ETB agonists, sarafotoxin 6c (Cys-Thr-Cys-Asn-Asp-Met-Thr-Asp-Glu-Glu-Cys-Leu-Asn-Phe-Cys-His-Gln-Asp-Val-Ile-Trp), BQ 3020 (N-acetyl-[Ala11,15]-endothelin 1 fragment 6-21Ac-Leu-Met-Asp-Lys-Glu-Ala-Val-Tyr-Phe-Ala-His-Leu-Asp-IIe-IIe-Trp), and IRL 1620 (N-succinyl-[Glu9, Ala11,15]-endothelin 1 fragment 8-21Suc-Asp-Glu-Glu-Ala-Val-Tyr-Phe-Ala-His-Leu-Asp-Ile-Ile-Trp), decreased K+-stimulated release of ATP in a dose-dependent manner, and this effect was reversed by the ETB antagonists RES 701-1 [cyclic (Gly1-Asp9) (Gly-Asn-Trp-His-Gly-Thr-Ala-Pro-Asp-Trp-Phe-Phe-Asn-Tyr-Tyr-Trp)] and BQ 788 (N-[N-[N-[(2,6-dimethyl-1-piperidinyl)carbonyl]-4-methyl-l-leucyl]-1-(methoxycarbonyl)-d-tryptophyl]-d-norleucine sodium salt). Preincubation of PC12 cells with pertussis toxin reversed the ET-1-induced inhibition of the K+-evoked ATP release. Real-time intracellular calcium level recordings were performed on PC-12 cell suspensions, and ET-1 induced a dose-dependent decrease in the K+-evoked calcium levels. Nifedipine, the L-type voltage-dependent Ca2+ channel antagonist, caused inhibition of the K+-stimulated ATP release, but the N-type Ca2+ channel antagonist, ω-conotoxin GVIA, did not reverse the effect on ATP release. These data suggest that ET-1 modulates the release of ATP via the ETB receptor and its associated Gi/o G-protein through attenuation of the influx of extracellular Ca2+ through L-type channels.
How native-like can you possibly get: fMRI evidence for processing accent

Introduction: If ever attained, adopting native-like accent is achieved late in the learning process. Resemblance between L2 and mother tongue can facilitate L2 learning. In particular, cognates (phonologically and semantically similar words across languages), offer the opportunity to examine the issue of foreign accent in quite a unique manner. Methods: Twelve Spanish speaking (L1) adults learnt French (L2) cognates and practiced their native-like pronunciation by means of a computerized method. After consolidation, they were tested on L1 and L2 oral picture- naming during fMRI scanning. Results and Discussion: The results of the present study show that there is a specific impact of accent on brain activation, even if L2 words are cognates, and belong to a pair of closely related languages. Results point that the insula is a key component of accent processing, which is in line with reports from patients with foreign accent syndrome following damage to the insula (e.g., Katz et al., 2012; Moreno-Torres et al., 2013; Tomasino et al., 2013), and healthy L2 learners (Chee et al., 2004). Thus, the left insula has been consistently related to the integration of attentional and working memory abilities, together with fine-tuning of motor programming to achieve optimal articulation.
Diversity aspects of power delay profile based location fingerprinting

Although most of the conventional localization algorithms rely on Line of Sight (LOS) conditions, fingerprinting allows positioning in multipath and even in Non-LOS (NLOS) environments. In contrast to the traditional Received Signal Strength (RSS), the Power Delay Profile (PDP) fingerprint may allow positioning on the basis of a single link if the multipath is rich enough. Fingerprinting is a pattern matching technique for which a performance analysis may be difficult in general. In this paper we focus on a global performance indicator, in the form of Pairwise Error Probability (PEP). Similarly to PEP analysis in communication over fading channels, we find that the PEP for PDP fingerprinting exhibits a certain diversity order, linked to the number of paths. We investigate and show the results for Gaussian Maximum Likelihood (GML) based approaches for the Rayleigh fading path amplitude case.
Acute resetting in two functionally different types of carotid baroreceptors.

The presence of two types of carotid sinus baroreceptors, as characterized by two different stimulus-response curves in an earlier study, suggests that each type may play a different role in the regulation of blood pressure. The discontinuous hyperbolic curve of the type I baroreceptors, marked by higher firing rates and greater sensitivity than the sigmoidal curve of type II baroreceptors, suggests that these baroreceptors would contribute more to the buffering of arterial pressure changes than the "tonically" active type II baroreceptors, which fired over greater pressure ranges and generally had spontaneous subthreshold discharge. The firing characteristics of type II baroreceptors suggest that these receptors would contribute more to regulation of tonic, baseline levels of arterial pressure. If this functional differentiation exists, the acute resetting characteristics of the two types of baroreceptors could be different. Resetting is defined as a shift in the response curve of a baroreceptor, marked by shifts in pressure threshold, in the same direction as the change in pressure to which it is exposed. Type I baroreceptors would be more likely to reset in response to a sustained acute change in pressure, since their primary role would be to prevent the initial change in pressure. However, type II baroreceptors would not reset to the acute change in pressure, since their primary role would be to maintain consistent information on the level of existing pressure. Therefore, this study was performed to examine the acute resetting ability of both types of baroreceptors by using a vascularly isolated carotid sinus preparation in the dog. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming

In this paper we propose an emotion assimilation function of sleep and dreaming. We offer explanations both for the mechanisms by which waking-life memories are initially selected for processing during sleep, and for the mechanisms by which those memories are subsequently transformed during sleep. We propose that emotions act as a marker for information to be selectively processed during sleep, including consolidation into long term memory structures and integration into pre-existing memory networks; that dreaming reflects these emotion assimilation processes; and that the associations between memory fragments activated during sleep give rise to measureable elements of dream metaphor and hyperassociativity. The latter are a direct reflection, and the phenomenological experience, of emotional memory assimilation processes occurring during sleep. While many theories previously have posited a role for emotion processing and/or emotional memory consolidation during sleep and dreaming, sleep theories often do not take enough account of important dream science data, yet dream research, when conducted systematically and under ideal conditions, can greatly enhance theorizing around the functions of sleep. Similarly, dream theories often fail to consider the implications of sleep-dependent memory research, which can augment our understanding of dream functioning. Here, we offer a synthesized view, taking detailed account of both sleep and dream data and theories. We draw on extensive literature from sleep and dream experiments and theories, including often-overlooked data from dream science which we believe reflects sleep phenomenology, to bring together important ideas and findings from both domains.
Application of a Hadoop-based Distributed System for Offline Processing of Power Quality Disturbances

Electric power quality is a critical issue for electric utilities and their customers and identification of the power quality disturbances is an important task in power system monitoring and protection. Offline processing of power quality disturbances provides an economic alternative for electric distribution companies, not capable of buying enough number of power quality analyzers for monitoring the disturbances online. Due to the wide frequency range of the disturbances which may happen in a power system, a high sampling rate is necessary for digital processing of the disturbances. Therefore, a large volume of data must be processed for this purpose for each node of an electric distribution network and such a processing has not yet been practical. However, thanks to the rapid developments of digital processors and computer networks, processing big databases is not so hard today. Apache Hadoop is an open-source software framework that allows for the distributed processing of large datasets using simple programming models. In this paper, application of Hadoop distributed computing software for offline processing of power quality disturbances is proposed and it is shown that this application makes such a processing possible and leads to a very cheaper system with widespread usage, compared to the power quality analyzers.
Noise tolerance for real-time evolutionary learning of cooperative predator-prey strategies

Learning team-based strategies in real-time is a difficult task, much more so in the presence of noise. In our previous work in the Prey and Predators domain we introduced an algorithm capable of evolving cooperative team strategies in real-time using fitness evaluations against a perfect opponent model. This paper continues our work within the same domain, training a team of predators to capture a prey. We investigate the effect of varying degrees of opponent model noise in our learning system. In the presence of and in the effort to mitigate the effects of such noise we present modifications to our baseline system in the forms of Rescaled Mutation, Conservative Replacement and a combination of the two techniques. The results of the modifications are extremely promising. The combined approach in particular demonstrates a vast improvement and decreased variance in the performance of our team of predators in the presence of opponent model noise. Additionally, the noise-mitigating strategies employed do not adversely affect the performance of the real-time team learning system in the absence of noise.
Robust Group Linkage

We study the problem of group linkage: linking records that refer to multiple entities in the same group. Applications for group linkage include finding businesses in the same chain, finding social network users from the same organization, and so on. Group linkage faces new challenges compared to traditional entity resolution. First, although different members in the same group can share some similar global values of an attribute, they represent different entities so can also have distinct local values for the same or different attributes, requiring a high tolerance for value diversity. Second, we need to be able to distinguish local values from erroneous values. We present a robust two-stage algorithm: the first stage identifies pivots--maximal sets of records that are very likely to belong to the same group, while being robust to possible erroneous values; the second stage collects strong evidence from the pivots and leverages it for merging more records into the same group, while being tolerant to differences in local values of an attribute. Experimental results show the high effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithm on various real-world data sets.
Output zeroing of MIMO plants in the presence of actuator and sensor uncertain hysteresis nonlinearities

This paper tackles the output zeroing problem of a square MIMO plant containing uncertain non-smooth nonlinearities (dead-zone, backlash, hysteresis) in actuator and sensor devices simultaneously. To this purpose a robust sliding mode controller, based on the output of a reduced order observer, has been designed using it, such control law ensuring both the asymptotical zeroing of the sensing nonlinearities output and the boundedness of the unavailable states. Theoretical results have been validated by simulation
[Post-tonsillectomy hemorrhage: incidence and risk factors].

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to quantify the incidence and evaluate the risk factors of post-tonsillectomy hemorrhage (PTH). MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective study was performed of all patients with PTH at the three hospital departments in Aarhus County, Denmark (650,000 inhabitants), and a random sample of one-third of all tonsillectomised patients at Aarhus University Hospital (AS) in the period 1 December 2002 to 30 November 2003, during which period 918 patients were tonsillectomised. RESULTS Post-operative haemorrhage occured in a total of 48 patients (5.2%). Twenty-six patients (2.8%) needed re-operation: 12 (3.4%) at AS, 7 (3.7%) at Randers Centralsygehus (RCS) and 7 (1.8%) at Silkeborg Centralsygehus (SCS). The following factors correlated significantly with PTH: high age (p = 0.0093), greater perioperative blood loss (p = 0.026) and high perioperative blood pressure (p = 0.0007). In addition, we found a three times higher but insignificant (p = 0.26) risk during abscess tonsillectomy as compared to cold tonsillectomy. CONCLUSION The three ENT departments of Aarhus County fulfil international standards, but the operation has a high complication rate, which emphasizes the importance of solid indications for operation. In light of the increased risk of PTH with higher age, the instructions at AS have been altered so that all patients over 20 years of age with peritonsillar abscess who can cooperate are treated with aspiration and incision.
Trajectory Based Activity Discovery

This paper proposes a framework to discover activities inan unsupervised manner, and add semantics with minimalsupervision. The framework uses basic trajectory informationas input and goes up to video interpretation. The workreduces the gap between low-level information and semanticinterpretation, building an intermediate layer composedof Primitive Events. The proposed representation for primitiveevents aims at capturing small meaningful motions overthe scene with the advantage of being learnt in an unsupervisedmanner. We propose the discovery of an activity usingthese Primitive Events as the main descriptors. The activitydiscovery is done using only real tracking data. Semanticsare added to the discovered activities and the recognition ofactivities (e.g., “Cooking”, “Eating”) can be automaticallydone with new datasets. Finally we validate the descriptorsby discovering and recognizing activities in a home careapplication dataset.
Thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke in patients with dementia

Objective: To compare access to intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) for acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and its outcomes in patients with and without dementia. Methods: This was a longitudinal cohort study of the Swedish dementia and stroke registries. Patients with preexisting dementia who had AIS from 2010 to 2014 (n = 1,356) were compared with matched patients without dementia (n = 6,755). We examined access to thrombolysis and its outcomes at 3 months (death, residency, and modified Rankin Scale [mRS] score). Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated with logistic and ordinal logistic regression. Results: The median age at stroke onset was 83 years in both groups. IVT was administered to 94 (7.0%) patients with dementia and 639 (9.5%) patients without dementia. The OR of receiving IVT was 0.68 (95% CI 0.54–0.86) for patients with dementia. When the analysis was repeated exclusively among patients independent in everyday activities, dementia status was no longer significant (OR 0.79, 95% CI 0.60–1.06). However, differences persisted in patients ≤80 years of age (OR 0.58, 95% CI 0.36–0.94). In patients who received thrombolysis, the incidence of symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (sICH; 7.4% vs 7.3%) and death at 3 months (22.0% vs 18.8%) did not differ significantly between the 2 groups. However, mRS score and accommodation status were worse among patients with dementia after 3 months in adjusted analyses (both p < 0.001). Unfavorable outcomes with an mRS score of 5 to 6 were doubled in patients with dementia (56.1% vs 28.1%). Conclusions: Younger patients with dementia and AIS are less likely to receive IVT. Among patients receiving thrombolysis, there are no differences in sICH or death, although patients with dementia have worse accommodation and functional outcomes at 3 months.
S ep 2 00 0 Possible evidence of quark matter in neutron star X-ray binaries

We study the spin evolution of X-ray neutron stars in binary systems, which are being spun up by mass transfer from accretion disks. Our investigation reveals that a quark phase transition resulting from the changing central density induced by the changing spin, can lead to a pronounced peak in the frequency distribution of X-ray neutron stars. This finding provides one of several possible explanations available in the literature, or at least a contributor to part of the observed anomalous frequency distribution of neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs), which lie in a narrow band centered at about 300 Hz, as found by the Rossi Explorer (RXTE).
Virtual speed sensor for DC motor using back-propagation artificial neural networks

The use of artificial neural networks has enabled applications that would be impossible to achieve with conventional electronics, through to versatility that them have, they can be configured as needed and use as required such as classifiers, adaptive filters, controllers and predictors. This paper describes a experimental implementation of virtual speed sensor for DC motor using back-propagation artificial neural networks through voltage and current acquisition. In implementation process a comparative between both logsig and tansig activation function in hidden layer is made. The training of the neural network is performed by acquiring signals of voltage, current and speed sensor, later the response efficiency of the network is analyzed by comparing the result produced by physical sensor and virtual sensor implemented using neural networks. In this experiment training pattern values has a large range, a several process training with both small and large section range is made. Results show a good performance and a minimum error with both logsig and tansig activation function in hidden layer when pattern signal is full training.
Étude préliminaire à la recherche de photographies muséales en mobilité

Cet article etudie la problematique de l'indexation et de la recherche d'image dans le cadre de visites de musee. Nous nous interessons en particulier au cas d'utilisation d'outils mobiles "hors ligne" (c'est-a-dire sans connexion a un serveur distant), du point de vue qualite intrinseque et du point de vue application mobile. Nous decrivons trois approches de reference, et nous etudions leur comportement qualitatif sur une collection de photographies de peintures, prises par des outils mobiles dans le Musee de Grenoble.
A Tool for Visualizing Topic Evolution in Large Text Collections

Topic evolution in text data has become a flourishing frontier in the text mining community. Yet with the increasing number of texts, it is important and challenging to understand how topics evolve. In this paper, we introduce a tool to analyze various evolution patterns that emerge from multiple texts based on combination of topic modeling and visualization techniques. By mining topic hierarchical relationship and evolutionary trend, the tool provides three visualization views along with interactive functionality that enables users to understand the topic evolution in a flexible and easily way. Experiment on real dataset has shown that the developed tool is effective to visualizing meaningful topic evolution in large text collections.
Evolution of Plastic Transmission Strategies in Avian Malaria

Malaria parasites have been shown to adjust their life history traits to changing environmental conditions. Parasite relapses and recrudescences—marked increases in blood parasite numbers following a period when the parasite was either absent or present at very low levels in the blood, respectively—are expected to be part of such adaptive plastic strategies. Here, we first present a theoretical model that analyses the evolution of transmission strategies in fluctuating seasonal environments and we show that relapses may be adaptive if they are concomitant with the presence of mosquitoes in the vicinity of the host. We then experimentally test the hypothesis that Plasmodium parasites can respond to the presence of vectors. For this purpose, we repeatedly exposed birds infected by the avian malaria parasite Plasmodium relictum to the bites of uninfected females of its natural vector, the mosquito Culex pipiens, at three different stages of the infection: acute (∼34 days post infection), early chronic (∼122 dpi) and late chronic (∼291 dpi). We show that: (i) mosquito-exposed birds have significantly higher blood parasitaemia than control unexposed birds during the chronic stages of the infection and that (ii) this translates into significantly higher infection prevalence in the mosquito. Our results demonstrate the ability of Plasmodium relictum to maximize their transmission by adopting plastic life history strategies in response to the availability of insect vectors.
Ribosomal proteins as unrevealed caretakers for cellular stress and genomic instability

Ribosomal proteins (RPs) have gained much attention for their extraribosomal functions particularly with respect to p53 regulation. To date, about fourteen RPs have shown to bind to MDM2 and regulate p53. Upon binding to MDM2, the RPs suppress MDM2 E3 ubiquitin ligase activity resulting in the stabilization and activation of p53. Of the RPs that bind to MDM2, RPL5 and RPL11 are the most studied and RPL11 appears to have the most significant role in p53 regulation. Considering that more than 17% of RP species have been shown to interact with MDM2, one of the questions remains unresolved is why so many RPs bind MDM2 and modulate p53. Genes encoding RPs are widely dispersed on different chromosomes in both mice and humans. As components of ribosome, RP expression is tightly regulated to meet the appropriate stoichiometric ratio between RPs and rRNAs. Once genomic instability (e.g. aneuploidy) occurs, transcriptional and translational changes due to change of DNA copy number can result in an imbalance in the expression of RPs including those that bind to MDM2. Such an imbalance in RP expression could lead to failure to assemble functional ribosomes resulting in ribosomal stress. We propose that RPs have evolved ability to regulate MDM2 in response to genomic instability as an additional layer of p53 regulation. Full understanding of the biological roles of RPs could potentially establish RPs as a novel class of therapeutic targets in human diseases such as cancer.