Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two peptidase activities decrease in treated bipolar disorder not schizophrenic patients.

BACKGROUND Inhibition of prolyl oligopeptidase (PO) in primary neuronal cultures has been shown to reverse the effect of the common mood-stabilizers lithium, valproic acid and carbamazepine. In clinical studies, abnormal plasma PO activity has been associated with bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia. However, this association is complicated by the discovery in bovine plasma of a Z-Pro-prolinal-insensitive peptidase (ZIP), a novel enzyme that cleaves the same substrate as PO. METHODS We developed an assay to distinguish between ZIP and PO and measured both activities in plasma from 48 BD and 50 schizophrenic patients undergoing treatment and compared them with 50 control subjects. RESULTS ZIP activity is restricted to blood plasma, whereas PO activity is present in the cytosol of lymphocytes, but can also be detected in blood plasma. Significant decreases in their plasma activities were found between treated BD (p = 0.007 and 0.03 respectively) but not schizophrenic (p > 0.05) patients and controls. CONCLUSIONS We have found that the enzyme activity previously reported as plasma PO actually comprises two enzymes, PO and ZIP. This study shows a statistically significant decrease of both enzymes in BD patients undergoing lithium treatment. No statistically significant change in PO or ZIP activity is observed in schizophrenic patients.
Studies of Sisal Fiber-Containing Composites

ABSTRACT The composite materials are of significant importance to the current technological development. Any type of fiber, mechanical properties of which make it exploitable, should be thoroughly studied from the point of view of its potential applications. Our study has been focused on sisal plant fiber that is a local product in the countries of Mediterranean rim. The choice of the sisal plant for its possible industrial application resulted, on the one hand, from its availability in the Mediterranean Basin, and on the other hand, from its high content of fibers necessary for the development of a composite. Results of the determination of the physicomechanical properties of sisal fibers and experiments on the mechanical behavior of a composite consisting of saturated polyester matrix and polyepoxy resin reinforced by either sisal fiber or by glass fiber with different percentages are presented in the paper.
Poisson Boundaries of Groups: -entropy, Growth and Amenability

The main interest of this thesis is the study of the Poisson boundary of a group G and its applications. The concept, originally introduced by Furstenberg in 1963, is based on the idea of extending the boundary representation of harmonic functions from the classical Dirichlet problem to a general group-theoretic setting. The Poisson boundary itself is an abstractly defined probability space, on which any harmonic function on G can be represented (using the Poisson transform, appropriately defined) by a boundary function on it. The Poisson boundary is associated to a random walk on the group, and the construction is done both in a topological and a measurable setting, where in the latter case two explicit realisations are provided. We then investigate conditions ensuring triviality of the Poisson boundary and show that this can, in many cases, be characterised by means of vanishing of the Shannon entropy, a criteria due to Kaimanovich and Vershik. Further, we study applications of the Poisson boundary to analytic properties of the group, such as amenability, and discuss a related conjecture by Furstenberg. Finally, we tie in the notion of amenable actions, as defined by Zimmer. While an amenable group always acts amenably on any G-space, it is an important feature that any group acts amenably on its Poisson boundary. This is a result of Zimmer, which we discuss. As an additional treat, we mention very recent surprising applications of the Furstenberg boundary (which we also introduce) to the settling of a number of long-standing open problems regarding group C*-algebras.
Research with parthenogenetic stem cells will help decide whether a safer clinical use is possible

The derivation and use of parthenogenetic stem cells (pESCs) are envisaged as a reliable alternative to conventional embryonic stem cells. Similar to embryonic stem cells in their proliferation, expression of pluripotency markers and capacity to multilineage differentiation, pESCs are at a lower risk of immune rejection within stem cell‐based therapeutics. Moreover, pESCs represent an important model system to study the effect of paternally imprinted genes on cell differentiation. However, currently available information about the genetic and epigenetic behaviour of pESCs is limited. Thus, a detailed look at the biology of parthenogenetic (PG) embryos and PG‐derived cell lines would allow gaining insight into the full potential of pESC in biotechnology. In this commentary article we review some features related to the biology of PG embryos and pESCs. In addition, novel traits on bovine pESCs (bpESCs) are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Advanced architectures distributed systems for the implementation of neural networks

Many industries nowadays use management and decision making based on artificial neural networks. However, the major drawback of neural networks lies in their time and computational complexity. The problem with computational complexity could be eliminated using sharing of the computing needs on multiple computing nodes. This article focuses on the architectural design of a distributed system, which aims to solve large neural networks. The article describes the technology GPGPU and the next part of the article deals with an overview of methods for speeding up the calculation and distribution of artificial neural network. The main section describes the design of a model architecture description of the algorithm that allows correct data distribution on computational nodes.
Good research practices for comparative effectiveness research: analytic methods to improve causal inference from nonrandomized studies of treatment effects using secondary data sources: the ISPOR Good Research Practices for Retrospective Database Analysis Task Force Report--Part III.

OBJECTIVES Most contemporary epidemiologic studies require complex analytical methods to adjust for bias and confounding. New methods are constantly being developed, and older more established methods are yet appropriate. Careful application of statistical analysis techniques can improve causal inference of comparative treatment effects from nonrandomized studies using secondary databases. A Task Force was formed to offer a review of the more recent developments in statistical control of confounding. METHODS The Task Force was commissioned and a chair was selected by the ISPOR Board of Directors in October 2007. This Report, the third in this issue of the journal, addressed methods to improve causal inference of treatment effects for nonrandomized studies. RESULTS The Task Force Report recommends general analytic techniques and specific best practices where consensus is reached including: use of stratification analysis before multivariable modeling, multivariable regression including model performance and diagnostic testing, propensity scoring, instrumental variable, and structural modeling techniques including marginal structural models, where appropriate for secondary data. Sensitivity analyses and discussion of extent of residual confounding are discussed. CONCLUSIONS Valid findings of causal therapeutic benefits can be produced from nonrandomized studies using an array of state-of-the-art analytic techniques. Improving the quality and uniformity of these studies will improve the value to patients, physicians, and policymakers worldwide.
Sensitivity of MST neurons to optic flow stimuli. II. Mechanisms of response selectivity revealed by small-field stimuli.

1. In these experiments we examined the receptive field mechanisms that support the optic flow field selective responses of neurons in the dorsomedial region of the medial superior temporal area (MSTd). Our experiments tested the predictions of two hypotheses of optic flow field selectivity. The direction mosaic hypothesis states that these receptive fields contain a set of planar direction-selective subfields that match the local directions of motion within optic flow fields. The vector field hypothesis states that these receptive fields are uniquely sensitive to distributed properties of planar, circular, or radial optic flow fields. 2. Experiments using large-field stimuli revealed that some neurons showed changes in optic flow field selectivity depending on the position of the stimulus in the receptive field; these are position-dependent responses. However, other neurons maintained the same optic flow field selectivities in spite of changes in stimulus position; these are position-invariant responses. We have used the position dependence or invariance of optic flow field selectivity as a way of testing the direction mosaic and vector field hypotheses. Position dependence is more consistent with the direction mosaic hypothesis, whereas position invariance is more consistent with the vector field hypothesis. 3. To test for position effects, we examined the optic flow field selectivity of small subfields within the large receptive fields of 160 MSTd neurons. First, we centered small-field optic flow stimuli of various sizes over the same position in the receptive field. Most MSTd neurons showed decreasing response amplitude with decreasing stimulus size but maintained optic flow field selectivity. 4. We then placed small-field stimuli at various positions within the large receptive field of these MSTd neurons. Position-invariant response selectivity was most prominent in single-component neurons, suggesting that they were more consistent with the vector field hypothesis. Position-dependent response selectivity was most prominent in triple-component neurons, suggesting that they were more consistent with the direction mosaic hypothesis. However, the variations in planar direction preference throughout the receptive field of these triple-component neurons were not consistent with a direction mosaic explanation of the large-field circular or radial selectivity observed. 5. Small-field position studies also demonstrated the existence of zones within the receptive field in which either direction-selective inhibitory or direction-selective excitatory responses predominated. The degree of overlap between these zones increased from nonselective to triple- to double- and finally to single-component neurons. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Metformin in Cancer Therapy: A New Perspective for an Old Antidiabetic Drug?

Metformin is the most widely used antidiabetic drug in the world, and there is increasing evidence of a potential efficacy of this agent as an anticancer drug. First, epidemiological studies show a decrease in cancer incidence in metformin-treated patients. Second, metformin decreases insulin resistance and indirectly reduces insulin level, a beneficial effect because insulin promotes cancer cell growth. Third, several reports outline a direct inhibitory effect of metformin on cancer cell growth and an antitumoral action. Finally, metformin activates the AMP activated protein kinase (AMPK) pathway, a major sensor of the energetic status of the cell, which has been proposed as a promising therapeutic target in cancer. Mol Cancer Ther; 9(5); 1092–99. ©2010 AACR.
Co-evolution of proteins and solutions: protein adaptation versus cytoprotective micromolecules and their roles in marine organisms

ABSTRACT Organisms experience a wide range of environmental factors such as temperature, salinity and hydrostatic pressure, which pose challenges to biochemical processes. Studies on adaptations to such factors have largely focused on macromolecules, especially intrinsic adaptations in protein structure and function. However, micromolecular cosolutes can act as cytoprotectants in the cellular milieu to affect biochemical function and they are now recognized as important extrinsic adaptations. These solutes, both inorganic and organic, have been best characterized as osmolytes, which accumulate to reduce osmotic water loss. Singly, and in combination, many cosolutes have properties beyond simple osmotic effects, e.g. altering the stability and function of proteins in the face of numerous stressors. A key example is the marine osmolyte trimethylamine oxide (TMAO), which appears to enhance water structure and is excluded from peptide backbones, favoring protein folding and stability and counteracting destabilizers like urea and temperature. Co-evolution of intrinsic and extrinsic adaptations is illustrated with high hydrostatic pressure in deep-living organisms. Cytosolic and membrane proteins and G-protein-coupled signal transduction in fishes under pressure show inhibited function and stability, while revealing a number of intrinsic adaptations in deep species. Yet, intrinsic adaptations are often incomplete, and those fishes accumulate TMAO linearly with depth, suggesting a role for TMAO as an extrinsic ‘piezolyte’ or pressure cosolute. Indeed, TMAO is able to counteract the inhibitory effects of pressure on the stability and function of many proteins. Other cosolutes are cytoprotective in other ways, such as via antioxidation. Such observations highlight the importance of considering the cellular milieu in biochemical and cellular adaptation. Summary: Biochemical adaptation to environmental stressors involves not only evolution of changes in macromolecular structures, but also selection for protective cellular micromolecules such as osmolytes and piezolytes in the deep sea.
Data encryption with chaotic Colpitts oscillators via power supply modulation

In this work we present numerical investigations for a simple data modulating technique employing Colpitts electronic oscillator models operating in the chaotic regime. The procedure includes a low amplitude half-wave rectified sinusoidal function on top of power supply terms, which acts as a message embedded data. We show how the suggested method does not take away the transmitter's chaotic dynamics or the unidirectional complete chaotic synchronisation achieved. Advantages are in form of straightforward implementation that does not require hardware modifications as well as information recovery based on a simple subtraction. The proposed methodology can be applied to either positive or negative power supply. Traces of embedded data in the transmitted chaotic carrier cannot be spotted in time or frequency domain. In consequence the proposed method falls in the category of chaotic inclusion or embedding techniques but without requiring complex and computationally expensive left inversion protocols.
Computationally efficient Model Predictive Direct Torque Control

For medium-voltage drives Model Predictive Direct Torque Control (MPDTC) significantly reduces the switching losses and/or the harmonic distortions of the torque and stator currents, when compared to standard schemes such as direct torque control or pulse width modulation. Extending the prediction horizon in MPDTC further improves the performance. At the same time the computational burden is greatly increased due to the combinatorial explosion of the number of admissible switching sequences. Adopting techniques from mathematical programming, most notably branch and bound, the number of switching sequences explored can be significantly reduced by discarding suboptimal sequences. This reduces the computation time by an order of magnitude thus enabling MPDTC with long prediction horizons to be executed on today's available hardware.
Coming of age with the internet

Analyzing autobiographical essays written by 72 young adult college students, this study investigates how coming of age concurrently with the internet and related technologies has influenced these young people’s lives. An understanding of how the technology is influencing the various domains of their lives provides a window on what internet use may be like for future generations. Essays revealed insights into four primary domains: self, family, real communities, and virtual communities. Within each of these domains, participants’ responses tended to focus on key dualities. Additionally, these young people report a growing dependency on the internet for activities ranging from managing their daily lives to building and maintaining virtual communities.
Low grade ganglioglioma rapidly progressing to a WHO grade IV tumor showing malignant transformation in both astroglial and neuronal cell components

Gangliogliomas are rare CNS neoplasms mostly occuring in young adults and are usually assigned to WHO grade I. The few cases of WHO grade IV gangliogliomas were either primarily malignant glio‐neuronal tumors or underwent malignant progression from other WHO grades after radiotherapy. Herein, we present the case of a now 47‐year‐old female patient presenting with a benign ganglioglioma and showing a tumor recurrence 2 years later with an anaplastic ganglioglioma, assigned to WHO grade IV, with malignant transformation in both glial and neuronal components. The presented case is the first reported low‐grade ganglioglioma rapidly progressing to a WHO grade IV glio‐neuronal tumor not being associated with radiotherapy and showing malignant transformation in both astroglial and neuronal tumor cell components.
Time-Critical Social Mobilization

Results from a competition allow an analysis of incentives for assembling teams of unrelated people to accomplish tasks. The World Wide Web is commonly seen as a platform that can harness the collective abilities of large numbers of people to accomplish tasks with unprecedented speed, accuracy, and scale. To explore the Web’s ability for social mobilization, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held the DARPA Network Challenge, in which competing teams were asked to locate 10 red weather balloons placed at locations around the continental United States. Using a recursive incentive mechanism that both spread information about the task and incentivized individuals to act, our team was able to find all 10 balloons in less than 9 hours, thus winning the Challenge. We analyzed the theoretical and practical properties of this mechanism and compared it with other approaches.
A Maximum Entropy Approach to Ultra-Wideband Channel Modeling

In this paper, a unified framework for ultra-wideband channel (UWB channel) modeling based on the maximum entropy approach is provided. For a given set of constraints, a consistent model which takes into account the information at hand is obtained. Two cases are considered: channel power knowledge and knowledge of the covariance matrix. The channel power delay spectrum is also derived and the impact of the channel bandwidth is assessed through information theoretic considerations. The information variation slope with respect to the bandwidth is also studied, based on wideband measurements performed at Institut Eurecom
Details on Biasing Web Search Results for Topic Familiarity

A typical web search engine returns a mix of introductory and advanced documents (around 50%) in response to a random selection of queries. Depending on a web searcher’s familiarity with a query’s target topic, it may be more appropriate to show her introductory or advanced documents. We conceptualize the notion of introductory and advanced documents in a way that obviates additional user-interaction and changes to existing search engine architectures. We show that topic familiarity required to understand a document (familiarity level) is a notion that people can agree on, as borne out by high inter-rater agreement (70%). We also show that this familiarity level is not predicted by reading level, so new methods of identifying it are needed. We develop a method for biasing the initial mix of documents returned by a search engine to increase the number of documents of desired familiarity level up to position 5, and up to position 10. Our topic-independent and user-independent method involves building a supervised text classifier, incorporating features based on reading level, the distribution of stop-words in the text, and non-text features such as average line-length. Using this familiarity classifier, we achieve statistically significant improvements at reranking the result set to show introductory documents higher up the ranked list. Our experiments indicate that we can perform this search result biasing for arbitrary users on arbitrary queries.
Efficient computation of all perfect repeats in genomic sequences of up to half a gigabyte, with a case study on the human genome

MOTIVATION There is a significant ongoing research to identify the number and types of repetitive DNA sequences. As more genomes are sequenced, efficiency and scalability in computational tools become mandatory. Existing tools fail to find distant repeats because they cannot accommodate whole chromosomes, but segments. Also, a quantitative framework for repetitive elements inside a genome or across genomes is still missing. RESULTS We present a new efficient algorithm and its implementation as a software tool to compute all perfect repeats in inputs of up to 500 million nucleotide bases, possibly containing many genomes. Our algorithm is based on a suffix array construction and a novel procedure to extract all perfect repeats in the entire input, that can be arbitrarily distant, and with no bound on the repeat length. We tested the software on the Homo sapiens DNA genome NCBI 36.49. We computed all perfect repeats of at least 40 bases occurring in any two chromosomes with exact matching. We found that each H.sapiens chromosome shares approximately 10% of its full sequence with every other human chromosome, distributed more or less evenly among the chromosome surfaces. We give statistics including a quantification of repeats by diversity, length and number of occurrences. We compared the computed repeats against all biological repeats currently obtainable from Ensembl enlarged with the output of the dust program and all elements identified by TRF and RepeatMasker (ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/ensembl/jherrero/.repeats/all_repeats.txt.bz2). We report novel repeats as well as new occurrences of repeats matching with known biological elements. AVAILABILITY The source code, results and visualization of some statistics are accessible from http://kapow.dc. uba.ar/patterns/.