Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Static Meditation Practice on Blood Lipid Levels: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

This review aims to delineate the potential impact of static meditation practice on cholesterol and triglyceride levels. PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar were systematically screened up until December 2023 to identify pertinent studies. After searching the scientific literature, 16 clinical studies (11 trials and 5 observational experiments) met the criteria for inclusion, involving a total of 1147 participants. In general, Ayurvedic-based meditation techniques were predominantly associated with lower total cholesterol levels, mindfulness-based techniques demonstrated benefits in both total cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and Eastern meditation techniques with spiritual origins were primarily linked to improved serum concentrations of HDL cholesterol. Study participants mostly engaged in meditation on a daily basis, often practicing it once or even twice a day, spanning a duration ranging from a few weeks to several months. The meta-analysis shows an association between meditation practice in healthy or sub-healthy adults and reduced cholesterol levels, with an average decrease of approximately −14 mg/dL (MD = −13.91 [−23.35; −4.47] mg/dL; p = 0.02), alongside favorable and even more pronounced impacts on triglyceride levels (MD = −32.56 [−48.44; −16.68] mg/dL; p < 0.01). In summary, regular engagement in static meditation practices can be associated with lower triglyceride and, to a lesser extent, cholesterol levels. Further studies on the topic are recommended to better investigate the relationship between meditation practice and physiological parameters.
Ontologies and Information Extraction

This report argues that, even in the simplest cases, IE is an ontology-driven process. It is not a mere text filtering method based on simple pattern matching and keywords, because the extracted pieces of texts are interpreted with respect to a predefined partial domain model. This report shows that depending on the nature and the depth of the interpretation to be done for extracting the information, more or less knowledge must be involved. This report is mainly illustrated in biology, a domain in which there are critical needs for content-based exploration of the scientific literature and which becomes a major application domain for IE.
Broadband ultrasound attenuation predicts fractures strongly and independently of densitometry in older women. A prospective study. Study of Osteoporotic Fractures Research Group.

BACKGROUND Quantitative ultrasound of bone is a new radiation-free technique that measures bone mass and may assess bone quality. Retrospective studies have suggested that low-bone ultrasound of the calcaneus is associated with an increased risk for hip and other fractures in older women. OBJECTIVES To establish the utility of calcaneal quantitative ultrasound of bone for the prediction of fractures and to compare quantitative ultrasound of bone with bone mineral densitometry by performing a prospective cohort study within the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures. SUBJECTS AND METHODS We studied 6189 postmenopausal women older than 65 years of 4 US clinical centers. Broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA), a measurement of the differential attenuation of sound waves transmitted through the calcaneus, and bone mineral density of the calcaneus and hip were measured. Subsequent hip and other nonspine fractures were documented during a mean follow-up of 2.0 years. RESULTS In age- and clinic-adjusted analyses, each SD reduction in calcaneal BUA was associated with a doubling of the risk for hip fractures (relative risk [RR], 2.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.5-2.7); a similar relationship was observed with bone mineral density of the calcaneus (RR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.9-3.0) and femoral neck (RR, 2.6; 95% CI, 1.9-3.8). After adjustment for bone mineral density of the femoral neck, BUA was still associated with an increased risk for hip fracture (RR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.0-2.1). Intertrochanteric fractures in particular were strongly associated with a low BUA measurement (RR, 3.3; 95% CI, 2.0-5.5). CONCLUSIONS Broadband ultrasound attenuation predicts the occurrence of fractures in older women and is a useful diagnostic test for osteoporosis. The strength of the association between BUA and fracture is similar to that observed with bone mineral density.
Exploring the Free Energy Landscape: From Dynamics to Networks and Back

Knowledge of the Free Energy Landscape topology is the essential key to understanding many biochemical processes. The determination of the conformers of a protein and their basins of attraction takes a central role for studying molecular isomerization reactions. In this work, we present a novel framework to unveil the features of a Free Energy Landscape answering questions such as how many meta-stable conformers there are, what the hierarchical relationship among them is, or what the structure and kinetics of the transition paths are. Exploring the landscape by molecular dynamics simulations, the microscopic data of the trajectory are encoded into a Conformational Markov Network. The structure of this graph reveals the regions of the conformational space corresponding to the basins of attraction. In addition, handling the Conformational Markov Network, relevant kinetic magnitudes as dwell times and rate constants, or hierarchical relationships among basins, completes the global picture of the landscape. We show the power of the analysis studying a toy model of a funnel-like potential and computing efficiently the conformers of a short peptide, dialanine, paving the way to a systematic study of the Free Energy Landscape in large peptides.
Hydrodynamic Damage to Animal Cells

ABSTRACT: Animal cells are affected by hydrodynamic forces that occur in culture vessel, transfer piping, and recovery operations such as microfiltration. Depending on the type, intensity, and duration of the force, and the specifics of the cell, the force may induce various kinds of responses in the subject cells. Both biochemical and physiological responses are observed, including apoptosis and purely mechanical destruction of the cell. This review examines the kinds of hydrodynamic forces encountered in bioprocessing equipment and the impact of those forces on cells. Methods are given for quantifying the magnitude of the specific forces, and the response thresholds are noted for the common types of cells cultured in free suspension, supported on microcarriers, and anchored to stationary surfaces.
Induction Motor Eccentricity Fault Detection and Quantification Using Topological Data Analysis

In this paper, we propose a topological data analysis (TDA) method for the processing of induction motor stator current data, and apply it to the detection and quantification of eccentricity faults. Traditionally, physics-based models and involved signal processing techniques are required to identify and extract the subtle frequency components in current data related to a particular fault. We show that TDA offers an alternative way to extract fault related features, and effectively distinguish data from different fault conditions. We will introduce TDA method and the procedure of extracting topological features from time-domain data, and apply it to induction motor current data measured under different eccentricity fault conditions. We show that while the raw time-domain data are very challenging to distinguish, the extracted topological features from these data are distinct and highly associated with eccentricity fault level. With TDA processed data, we can effectively train machine learning models to predict fault levels with good accuracy, even for new data from eccentricity levels that are not seen in the training data. The proposed method is model-free, and only requires a small segment of time-domain data to make prediction. These advantages make it attractive for a wide range of data-driven fault detection applications.
Pain hypersensitivity mechanisms at a glance

There are two basic categories of pain: physiological pain, which serves an important protective function, and pathological pain, which can have a major negative impact on quality of life in the context of human disease. Major progress has been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms that drive sensory transduction, amplification and conduction in peripheral pain-sensing neurons, communication of sensory inputs to spinal second-order neurons, and the eventual modulation of sensory signals by spinal and descending circuits. This poster article endeavors to provide an overview of how molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying nociception in a physiological context undergo plasticity in pathophysiological states, leading to pain hypersensitivity and chronic pain.
Some physicochemical properties of cathepsin H from human meningioma.

AIM To compare some physicochemical properties of cathepsin H from human brain tumors and normal brain tissues. METHODS The enzyme was isolated from normal human brain tissue and fibrous meningioma and purified by methods of homogenization, saturation by (NH(4))(2)SO(4) (30-80% saturation), followed by Concanavalin A and Azocazein-Sepharose chromatographies and gel filtration on Sephadex G-100 (75). RESULTS Cathepsin H was purified by 1795-fold from normal human brain tissue and by 2457-fold--from meningioma tissue. V(max) for cathepsin H from meningioma was found to be 3.5 times higher than that of normal brain tissue, whilst K(m) of the enzyme from tumor tissue is 1.3 times lower than that from normal human brain. The molecular weights of cathepsin H from normal human brain tissue and meningioma were 28 kDa and 25 kDa respectively. CONCLUSION Cathepsin H isolated from human fibrous meningioma with microconcentric structures possesses higher activity levels and V(max) value and lower molecular weight than the enzyme from normal human neocortex tissue, without alteration in its pH optimum and K(m) value.
HarmonyMixer: Mixing the Character of Chords among Polyphonic Audio

This paper describes HarmonyMixer, a method that enables a user without musical expertise to personalize the mood of existing polyphonic musical recordings by modifying their chord sequences. Our method lets the user choose a reference song with a character that the user wants reflected in chords of a target song. It is, however, difficult to modify chords in existing complex sound mixtures since technologies of sound source separation and multipitch analysis are not yet accurate enough for those mixtures. To overcome this difficulty, HarmonyMixer does not rely on those technologies and instead modifies chords by leveraging chromagrams. It first analyzes a chromagram feature matrix by using Bayesian non-parametric Non-negative Matrix Factorization, and then interpolates basis matrices obtained from reference and target songs to convert the chromagram of the target song. It finally modifies the spectrogram of the target song by reflecting the difference between the original and converted chromagrams while considering relations between frequency bins and chroma bins. Listening to the output from our method confirmed that modification of chords had been derived.
Mineral accretion during prenatal growth of cattle.

Angus, Hereford and Red Poll crossbred yearling heifers (n = 81) were mated to Brown Swiss bulls. Pregnant heifers were assigned on the bases of weight and breed cross to one of three diets and fed to achieve maternal weight gains of 0, . 5 or 1.0 kg/d. Heifers from each treatment group were slaughtered at about 120, 150, 180, 210, 240, or 255 d postmating. Reproductive tracts were recovered at slaughter. Weights of the gravid uterus, fetus, fetal membranes, fetal fluids, uterus, cotyledons and placenta were obtained and have been reported previously. Fetuses were frozen and later ground, mixed and sampled. Dry matter was determined. Samples of each fetus were ashed, and concentrations of Ca, P, Na, K, Mg, Fe and Zn were determined. Relationships between total fetal content of each mineral and day postmating were obtained, and daily fetal accretion rates of each mineral were estimated for several stages of gestation. Daily requirements and allowances of each mineral for pregnancy in beef cows were estimated. Estimated allowances for Ca, P, Na, K, Fe and Zn were small during early gestation but increased rapidly and reached maxima of 8.4 g, 5.2 g, . 76 g, . 63 g, 65 mg and 21 mg, respectively, at about 250 d postmating.
Cracking the Code of Oscillatory Activity

Neural oscillations are ubiquitous measurements of cognitive processes and dynamic routing and gating of information. The fundamental and so far unresolved problem for neuroscience remains to understand how oscillatory activity in the brain codes information for human cognition. In a biologically relevant cognitive task, we instructed six human observers to categorize facial expressions of emotion while we measured the observers' EEG. We combined state-of-the-art stimulus control with statistical information theory analysis to quantify how the three parameters of oscillations (i.e., power, phase, and frequency) code the visual information relevant for behavior in a cognitive task. We make three points: First, we demonstrate that phase codes considerably more information (2.4 times) relating to the cognitive task than power. Second, we show that the conjunction of power and phase coding reflects detailed visual features relevant for behavioral response—that is, features of facial expressions predicted by behavior. Third, we demonstrate, in analogy to communication technology, that oscillatory frequencies in the brain multiplex the coding of visual features, increasing coding capacity. Together, our findings about the fundamental coding properties of neural oscillations will redirect the research agenda in neuroscience by establishing the differential role of frequency, phase, and amplitude in coding behaviorally relevant information in the brain.
Extraversion differentiates between model-based and model-free strategies in a reinforcement learning task

Prominent computational models describe a neural mechanism for learning from reward prediction errors, and it has been suggested that variations in this mechanism are reflected in personality factors such as trait extraversion. However, although trait extraversion has been linked to improved reward learning, it is not yet known whether this relationship is selective for the particular computational strategy associated with error-driven learning, known as model-free reinforcement learning, vs. another strategy, model-based learning, which the brain is also known to employ. In the present study we test this relationship by examining whether humans' scores on an extraversion scale predict individual differences in the balance between model-based and model-free learning strategies in a sequentially structured decision task designed to distinguish between them. In previous studies with this task, participants have shown a combination of both types of learning, but with substantial individual variation in the balance between them. In the current study, extraversion predicted worse behavior across both sorts of learning. However, the hypothesis that extraverts would be selectively better at model-free reinforcement learning held up among a subset of the more engaged participants, and overall, higher task engagement was associated with a more selective pattern by which extraversion predicted better model-free learning. The findings indicate a relationship between a broad personality orientation and detailed computational learning mechanisms. Results like those in the present study suggest an intriguing and rich relationship between core neuro-computational mechanisms and broader life orientations and outcomes.
High Precision Positioning and Rotation Angle Estimation of a Flatbed Truck Based on BDS and Vision

Centimeter-level localization and precise rotation angle estimation for flatbed trucks pose significant challenges in unmanned forklift automated loading scenarios. To address this issue, the study proposed a method for high-precision positioning and rotation angle estimation of flatbed trucks using the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) and vision technology. First, an unmanned forklift equipped with a Time-of-Flight (ToF) camera and a dual-antenna mobile receiver for BDS positioning collected depth images and localization data near the front and rear endpoints of the flatbed. The Deep Dual-Resolution Network-23-slim (DDRNet-23-slim) model was used to segment the flatbed from the depth image and extract the straight lines at the edges of the flatbed using the Hough transform. The algorithm then computed the set of intersection points of the lines. A neighborhood feature vector was designed to identify the endpoint of a flatbed from a set of intersection points using feature screening. Finally, the relative coordinates of the endpoints were converted to a customized forklift navigation coordinate system by BDS positioning. A rotation angle estimation was then performed using the endpoints at the front and rear. Experiments showed that the endpoint positioning error was less than 3 cm, and the rotation angle estimation error was less than 0.3°, which verified the validity and reliability of the method.
Effect of age on the thioltransferase (glutaredoxin) and thioredoxin systems in the human lens.

PURPOSE To investigate the effect of age on the key oxidation repair enzymes of the thioltransferase (TTase) and thioredoxin (TRx) systems in the human lens. METHODS Twenty-three normal human lenses (donor ages, 19-77 years) were grouped into second, third, fifth, sixth, and seventh decades and analyzed for TTase, TRx, glutathione reductase (GR), thioredoxin reductase (TR), and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (G3PD) activities, as well as the glutathione (GSH) pool. Additionally, 19 contralateral lenses of the donor eyes were each divided into cortex and nucleus for enzyme distribution studies. RESULTS All the enzymes showed similar activity in the cortex and nucleus, regardless of age, but were inactivated to various extents in the older lenses. In the TTase system, both TTase and GR showed activity loss over the five decades, with 70% remaining in the seventh decade, whereas the GSH pool was depleted extensively, with only 35% left in the older lenses. In the TRx system, TRx activity was not affected as much as TR for which only 70% of the activity was found in the seventh decade compared with the second to third decades. Overall, G3PD was more sensitive to age because only 50% activity remained after the sixth decade. CONCLUSIONS With increasing age there is a gradual activity loss in both the TTase and the TRx systems and a lowered GSH pool. These alterations, compounded with the age-related loss in G3PD activity, may lead to redox and energy imbalance, likely contributing to a higher risk to cataract formation in the aging population.
Evidence for two-stage binding by the 175-kD erythrocyte binding antigen of Plasmodium falciparum

Plasmodium falciparum malaria merozoites invade human erythrocytes bearing sialic acid in a multistage process involving the sialic acid- dependent binding of a malaria molecule, the 175-kD erythrocyte binding antigen (EBA-175). We show here that after the initial interaction of EBA-175 with its sialic acid-containing erythrocyte determinant, endogenous proteases can cleave EBA-175 to 65-kD fragment(s), whose binding to erythrocytes is sialic acid independent. A 65-kD fragment was immunoprecipitated by antibodies against peptides between residues 354 and 1061 but not beyond residue 1062. Binding experiments utilizing combinations of native protein, expression-PCR-synthesized EBA-175 polypeptides, peptide synthesis, and antibodies, demonstrated that sialic acid-independent binding could be further mapped to a small (about 40-amino acid) homologous part of the dimorphic allelic region of EBA-175, residues 898-938 (Camp strain numbering). These data support a two-step binding hypothesis and are discussed in relation to the formation of a junction between the merozoite and the erythrocyte, and the finding that after the interaction of some viruses with specific cellular receptors, they undergo conformational changes or cleavage permitting membrane fusion with the host cell.
Equicardinality on linear orders

Linear orders are of inherent interest infinite model theory, especially in descriptive complexity theory. Here, the class of ordered structures is approached from a novel point of view, using generalized quantifiers as a means of analysis. The main technical result is a characterization of the cardinality quantifiers which can express equicardinality on ordered structures. This result can be viewed as a dichotomy: the cardinality quantifier either shows a lot of periodicity, or is quite non-periodic, the equicardinality quantifier being definable only in the latter case. The main result shows, once more, that there is a drastic difference between definability among ordered structures and definability on unordered structures. Connections of the result to the descriptive complexity of low-level complexity classes are discussed.
eNOS Gene Variants and the Risk of Premature Myocardial Infarction

BACKGROUND: Endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) as well as nitric oxide play an important role in the regulation of cardiovascular function. There are limited and controversial data regarding the impact of polymorphisms of eNOS gene that is implicated in the vasoconstrictive properties of the endothelium in the pathogenesis of premature myocardial infarction (MI). OBJECTIVE: We examined whether two common polymorphisms of eNOS gene (G894T and T786C) are associated with the development of premature MI. METHODS: We recruited 107 patients with premature MI and compared them to 103 age- and sex- matched controls. All patients underwent coronary angiogram and were classified into the subgroup of patients with ‘normal’ or ‘near normal’ coronary arteries and the subgroup of patients with significant coronary artery disease (≥ 50% stenosis in lumen diameter of coronary arteries). The genetic polymorphisms of eNOS gene were assayed with polymerase chain reaction and reverse hybridization. RESULTS: Nineteen patients (17.8%) had ‘normal’ or ‘near normal’ coronary arteries. A significantly higher frequency of homozygosity for the 786C (32%) and the 894T (21%) alleles of the eNOS gene in patients who develop early MI in the setting of angiographically 'normal' or 'near normal' coronary arteries were found. CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that the T786C and the G894T genetic polymorphisms are associated with the development of MI in very young individuals, whose coronary arteries are characterized by very small atheromatic burden.
Temporal and spatial variation of bacterioplankton abundance in a tropical, warm-monomictic, saline lake: Alchichica, Puebla, Mexico

An important part of the carbon and energy flow in aquatic ecosystems is channeled through the microbialloop in planktonic food webs (AzAM et al. 1983, PoRTER et al. 1985), where bacterioplankton play a fundamental role in the transfer of dissolved organic matter, mainly produced by phytoplankton, to higher levels in the food chain. Several studies show that bacteria are important components of both marine and freshwater environments. Additionally, the metabolic activity of heterotrophic bacteria in the water column may have an important influence on such fundamental limnological variables as oxygen concentration, pH and nutrient concentrations as well as the rate at which nutrients are regenerated (ÜCHS et al. 1995). The purpose of this study was to examine patterns and causes of spatial and temporal dynamics of bacterial densities in a deep saline tropicallake.