Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Retinal bipolar cell input mechanisms in giant danio. I. Electroretinographic analysis.

UNLABELLED Electroretinograms (ERGs) were recorded from the giant danio (Danio aequipinnatus) to study glutamatergic input mechanisms onto bipolar cells. Glutamate analogs were applied to determine which receptor types mediate synaptic transmission from rods and cones to on and off bipolar cells. Picrotoxin, strychnine, and tetrodotoxin were used to isolate the effects of the glutamate analogs to the photoreceptor-bipolar cell synapse. Under photopic conditions, the group III metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) antagonist (RS)-alpha-cyclopropyl-4-phosphonophenylglycine (CPPG) only slightly reduced the b-wave, whereas the excitatory amino acid transporter (EAAT) blocker dl-threo-beta-benzyl-oxyaspartate (TBOA) removed most of it. Complete elimination of the b-wave required both antagonists. The alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionate (AMPA)/kainate receptor antagonist 2,3-dioxo-6-nitro-1,2,3,4-tetrahydrobenzo[f]quinoxaline-7-sulfonamide (NBQX) blocked the d-wave. Under scotopic conditions, rod and cone inputs onto on bipolar cells were studied by comparing the sensitivities of the b-wave to photopically matched green and red stimuli. The b-wave was >1 log unit more sensitive to the green than to the red stimulus under control conditions. In CPPG or l-AP4 (l-(+)-2-amino-4-phosphonobutyric acid, a group III mGluR agonist), the sensitivity of the b-wave to the green stimulus was dramatically reduced and the b-waves elicited by the 2 stimuli became nearly matched. The d-wave elicited by dim green stimuli, which presumably could be detected only by the rods, was eliminated by NBQX. IN CONCLUSION 1) cone signals onto on bipolar cells involve mainly EAATs but also mGluRs (presumably mGluR6) to a lesser extent; 2) rods signal onto on bipolars by mainly mGluR6; 3) off bipolar cells receive signals from both photoreceptor types by AMPA/kainate receptors.
Frequent harvesting from perfused bone marrow cultures results in increased overall cell and progenitor expansion

The establishment of prolific long‐term human bone marrow cultures has led to the development of hematopoietic bioreactor systems. A single batch expansion of bone marrow mononuclear cell populations leads to a 10‐ to 30‐fold increase in total cell number and in the number of colony forming units‐granulocyte/macrophage (CFU‐GMs), and a four‐ to tenfold increase in the number of long‐term culture initiating cells (LTC‐ICs). In principle, unlimited expansion of cells should be attainable from a pool of stem cells if all the necessary requirements leading to stem cell maintenance and division are met. In this article, we take the first step toward the identification of factors that limit single batch expansion of ex vivo bone marrow cells in perfusion‐based bioreactor systems. One possible constraint is the size of the growth surface area required. This constraint can be overcome by harvesting half the cell population periodically. We found that harvesting cells every 3 to 4 days, beginning on day 11 of culture, led to an extended growth period. Overall calculated cell expansion exceeded 100‐fold and the CFU‐GM expansion exceeded 30‐fold over a 27‐day period. These calculated values are based on growth that could be obtained from the harvested cell population. Growth of the adherent cell layer was stable, whereas the nonadherent cell population diminished with increasing number of passages. These results show that the bioreactor protocols published to date are suboptimal for long‐term cultivation, and that further definition and refinement is likely to lead to even greater expansion of hematopoietic cell populations obtained from bone marrow. More importantly, these results show that the LTC‐IC measured during the single pass expansion do have further expansion potential that can be realized by frequent harvesting. Finally, the present culture conditions provide a basis for an assay system for the identifications provide a basis for an assay system for the identification of the factors that determine the long‐term maintenance and replication of human stem cells ex vivo. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Divide, recombine and conquer: Syntactic patterns-reassembly algorithm applied to password guessing process

This work proposes a novel password guessing approach based on the identification, extraction and recombination of meaningful syntactic patterns present in human-chosen passwords. The proposed method exploits the existence of these patterns across user-selected passwords in order to effectively reduce the search space to be explored during the password guessing process. The password guessing scheme follows a two stage strategy. In the first step, a novel algorithm based on machine learning principles, identifies and extracts the syntactic meaningful patterns from a dataset of passwords. Then, in a second stage, these parts-of-passwords previously segmented are recombined in order to generate new statistically relevant password candidates that are used against a blind evaluation set. The experimental results show that this novel approach is able to guess complex passwords usually robust to traditional password guessing techniques.
The Regulatory Networks That Control Clostridium difficile Toxin Synthesis

The pathogenic clostridia cause many human and animal diseases, which typically arise as a consequence of the production of potent exotoxins. Among the enterotoxic clostridia, Clostridium difficile is the main causative agent of nosocomial intestinal infections in adults with a compromised gut microbiota caused by antibiotic treatment. The symptoms of C. difficile infection are essentially caused by the production of two exotoxins: TcdA and TcdB. Moreover, for severe forms of disease, the spectrum of diseases caused by C. difficile has also been correlated to the levels of toxins that are produced during host infection. This observation strengthened the idea that the regulation of toxin synthesis is an important part of C. difficile pathogenesis. This review summarizes our current knowledge about the regulators and sigma factors that have been reported to control toxin gene expression in response to several environmental signals and stresses, including the availability of certain carbon sources and amino acids, or to signaling molecules, such as the autoinducing peptides of quorum sensing systems. The overlapping regulation of key metabolic pathways and toxin synthesis strongly suggests that toxin production is a complex response that is triggered by bacteria in response to particular states of nutrient availability during infection.
Noninvasive MR cisternography with fluid-attenuated inversion recovery and 100% supplemental O(2) in the evaluation of neurocysticercosis.

SUMMARY We describe an MR protocol for the noninvasive imaging of the subarachnoid space, which we use in patients with suspected neurocysticercosis in this space. It consists of a fluid-attenuated inversion recovery sequence performed 5 minutes after the continuous inhalation of 100% O(2) with a resultant increase in the signal intensity of the CSF that leads to a greater conspicuity of cyst walls in relation to the cortex and the extraventricular CSF.
Force and position control using pneumatic cylinders

[Abstract]: The supporting legs of legged robots form part of multiple closed kinematic chains in which antagonistic forces can pose a problem. In this paper, methods of compliance and force control are explored to resolve this. A ‘nested loop’ topology of non-linear control for pneumatic cylinders is outlined and its performance in actual implementation is reported.
Central Administration of a Cytochrome P450-7B Product 7α-Hydroxypregnenolone Improves Spatial Memory Retention in Cognitively Impaired Aged Rats

Pregnenolone (PREG) and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) have been reported to improve memory in aged rodents. In brain, these neurosteroids are transformed predominantly into 7α-hydroxylated metabolites by the cytochrome P450-7B1 (CYP7B). The biological role of steroid B-ring hydroxylation is unclear. It has been proposed to generate bioactive derivatives that enhance cognition, immune, and other physiological processes. In support, 7α-hydroxylated DHEA increases the immune response in mice with greater potency than the parent steroid. Whether the memory-enhancing effects of PREG in rats is mediated via its 7α-hydroxylated metabolite 7α-hydroxyPREG is not known. We investigated this by treating memory-impaired aged rats (identified by their spatial memory performances in the Morris water maze task compared with young controls) with 7α-hydroxyPREG or PREG administered intracerebroventricularly using osmotic minipumps and then tested the rats during week 2 of steroid treatment in the eight-arm radial-arm version of the water maze (RAWM) that allows repeated assessment of learning. CYP7B bioactivity in hippocampal tissue (percentage conversion of [14C]DHEA to [14C]7α-hydroxyDHEA) was decreased selectively in memory-impaired aged rats compared with both young and memory-intact aged rats. 7α-hydroxyPREG (100 ng/h) but not PREG (100 ng/h) administration to memory-impaired aged rats for 11 d enhanced spatial memory retention (after a 30 min delay between an exposure trial 1 and test trial 2) in the RAWM. These data provide evidence for a biologically active enzyme product 7α-hydroxyPREG and suggests that reduced CYP7B function in the hippocampus of memory-impaired aged rats may, in part, be overcome by administration of 7α-hydroxyPREG.
The effects of microdrip and conventional drip irrigation on water distribution and uptake

Drip irrigation at a rate close to plant water uptake necessitates low application rates (microdrip), which affect soil water regime and plant response. This study compare the effect of three emitter discharges, 0.25, 2.0, and 8.0 L h -1 , on different aspects of the water regime in daily drip irrigated corn (Zea Mays L.), relying on field observations and numerical simulations. Field observations show that microdrip irrigation (i) tends to increase yield although this was not statistically significant under the experimental conditions; (ii) induces higher relative water content values in the 0- to 0.30-m depth layer, and lower ones in the 0.60- to 0.90-m layer. Numerical simulations, carried out using HYDRUS-2D, show that microdrip irrigation led to the smallest wetted volume with the least extreme water content gradients both in the horizontal and the vertical axes. A saturated zone below the emitter was obtained only for the 8.0 L h -1 discharge. Comparing water content distributions with depth at the end of the application of the same amount of water close to the emitter, the driest profile is obtained for the lowest application rate. However, when compared at solar noon representing the time of the highest plant water demand, the upper 0.20-m layer of the soil irrigated at the lowest rate was the wettest. Microdrip irrigation has reduced the dynamic changes in the water content during the day in the most active part of the root zone. It also caused the smallest reduction in the simulated water uptake relative to the potential value.
Expression site attenuation mechanistically links antigenic variation and development in Trypanosoma brucei

We have discovered a new mechanism of monoallelic gene expression that links antigenic variation, cell cycle, and development in the model parasite Trypanosoma brucei. African trypanosomes possess hundreds of variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) genes, but only one is expressed from a telomeric expression site (ES) at any given time. We found that the expression of a second VSG alone is sufficient to silence the active VSG gene and directionally attenuate the ES by disruptor of telomeric silencing-1B (DOT1B)-mediated histone methylation. Three conserved expression-site-associated genes (ESAGs) appear to serve as signal for ES attenuation. Their depletion causes G1-phase dormancy and reversible initiation of the slender-to-stumpy differentiation pathway. ES-attenuated slender bloodstream trypanosomes gain full developmental competence for transformation to the tsetse fly stage. This surprising connection between antigenic variation and developmental progression provides an unexpected point of attack against the deadly sleeping sickness. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.02324. 001
Parsing, Word Associations and Typical Predicate-Argument Relations

There are a number of collocational constraints in natural languages that ought to play a more important role in natural language parsers. Thus, for example, it is hard for most parsers to take advantage of the fact that wine is typically drunk, produced, and sold, but (probably) not pruned. So too, it is hard for a parser to know which verbs go with which prepositions (e.g., set up) and which nouns fit together to form compound noun phrases (e.g., computer programmer). This paper will attempt to show that many of these types of concerns can be addressed with syntactic methods (symbol pushing), and need not require explicit semantic interpretation. We have found that it is possible to identify many of these interesting co-occurrence relations by computing simple summary statistics over millions of words of text. This paper will summarize a number of experiments carried out by various subsets of the authors over the last few years. The term collocation will be used quite broadly to include constraints on SVO (subject verb object) triples, phrasal verbs, compound noun phrases, and psychoiinguistic notions of word association (e.g., doctor/nurse).
Recovering Surface Details under General Unknown Illumination Using Shading and Coarse Multi-view Stereo

Summary form only given. Reconstructing the shape of a 3D object from multi-view images under unknown, general illumination is a fundamental problem in computer vision and high quality reconstruction is usually challenging especially when high detail is needed. This paper presents a total variation (TV) based approach for recovering surface details using shading and multi-view stereo (MVS). Behind the approach are our two important observations: (1) the illumination over the surface of an object tends to be piecewise smooth and (2) the recovery of surface orientation is not sufficient for reconstructing geometry, which were previously overlooked. Thus we introduce TV to regularize the lighting and use visual hull to constrain partial vertices. The reconstruction is formulated as a constrained TV minimization problem that treats the shape and lighting as unknowns simultaneously. An augmented Lagrangian method is proposed to quickly solve the TV-minimization problem. As a result, our approach is robust, stable and is able to efficiently recover high quality of surface details even starting with a coarse MVS. These advantages are demonstrated by the experiments with synthetic and real world examples.
Performance evaluation of android IPC for continuous sensing applications

Sensor-rich smartphones are enabling a new class of applications and systems with significant potential to improve users’ daily lives. These applications, referred to as continuous sensing applications, continuously collect sensor data from on-board and external sensors and apply machine learning techniques to extract meaningful information about users’ behaviour and environment[1, 2, 6]. To collect the required sensor data, a continuous sensing application needs to communicate with different software entities on the phone including a) system services that interface with on-board sensors; b) drivers of off-board sensors, which are often proprietary applications developed by sensor manufacturers; and c) other sensing applications to obtain relevant user and context information. For enhanced security and privacy on modern smartphone platforms, each application runs within its own process. Therefore, Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanisms are crucial to continuous sensing applications. Current sensing sampling rates range from 32 bytes/sec for accelerometer and location data [5]; 63 bytes/sec for user and system context information, such as CPU, memory, and phone call, SMS records[3]; 88 KB/sec for acoustic data; and 232 KB/sec for image documentation [4]. Different sensing applications require IPC that can support a transfer of few bytes to hundreds of kilobytes, and frequencies of 0.1Hz to 1Hz. Ideal inter-process communication for continuous sensing applications must therefore meet the following performance requirements: 1) Low latency since the IPC transactions are on the critical path of the data collecting process; 2) Resource efficiency to minimize interference with device interactivity, performance, and availability; 3) Variable Bandwidth to accommodate a wide range of application demands from a few bytes to several hundreds of kilobytes per second as described earlier. We study the performance of three Android IPC mechanisms: 1) Binder, a remote-procedure-call (RPC) mechanism that enables a process to remotely invoke functions running on another process; Binder adopts a direct-message-copy scheme to transfer the IPC payload with only single data copy. 2) Intent, a flexible message passing system, implemented using two Binder RPC calls, allowing applications to send messages to each other; and 3) Content Provider, a data storehouse mechanism that implements various SQL-like IPC interfaces, in which the query operation uniquely incorporates a shared memory region to facilitate the transmission of possibly large query results.
"Grab-that-there": Live Direction for Motion-based Games for Health

Many people suffer from a decline in their motor abilities and their sense of balance. Such complications are often related to a sedentary life style or specific illnesses. Physiotherapy can help with improving the situation, however, a lack of motivation to perform repetitive exercises, as well as achieving an adequate quality of execution and level of exertion are considerable challenges. Motion-based games for health (MGH) can motivate patients and support them in performing such exercises. But the important interaction between therapists and patients is often not sufficiently considered in MGH design and therapists' means for intervention and adjustment of such games are limited. We integrate local live direction into MGH, enabling simultaneous adjustments by the therapist while the patient is playing. We evaluated our prototype with 9 therapists, collecting feedback on usability, user experience, and practical applicability. Our results show that the concept was received well, as evidenced by excellent quantitative usability ratings and very positive qualitative feedback.
Consumers’ Attitude towards E-Banking Services in Islamic Banks: The Case of Sudan

Purpose This study aims to provide an analysis of the attitude toward three banking services technologies in Sudan, namely, automated teller machines (ATMs), mobile banking and internet (online) banking. The study started by conducting an exploratory factor analysis, on the valid responses received from a random sample of bank customers in Sudan toward the three technologies. Design/methodology/approach The study used the “technology acceptance model” as a conceptual framework to investigate the factors that influence customers’ acceptance and intention to use bank technologies. Findings The study found that the customers’ attitude toward various bank technologies is not the same and is influenced by different factors. The results revealed that bank customers who are users of ATMs are influenced by its convenience, ease of use and service quality, whereas credibility was not seen as a significant driver. Mobile users were found to be influenced more by the benefits and ease of use and service quality, whereas internet customers were influenced by the benefits and ease of use and credibility of the systems. Under the three models, attitude emerged as a fully mediating factor for customers’ behavioral intentions. Practical implications The implications of this study are obvious for both regulators and bankers in Sudan for careful designing and implementation of their technology-based banking systems and focusing on the features of concern and desirable most by bank customers and necessary for secure and safe adoption of technology-based banking. Originality/value There are no studies to date that provide evidence of customer acceptance and the use of these services, the volume of bank business or profits derived from these services. This is especially important because security concerns are always associated and attached with technology-based services. The identification of technology acceptance factors is very important for bank regulators, bank marketers and banks’ customer base.
Exchange of actin subunits at the leading edge of living fibroblasts: possible role of treadmilling

Previous observations indicated that the lamellipodium ("leading edge") of fibroblasts contains a dense meshwork, as well as numerous bundles (microspikes) of actin filaments. Most, if not all, of the filaments have a uniform polarity, with the "barbed" end associated with the membrane. I investigated whether and how actin subunits exchange in this region by microinjecting living gerbil fibroma cells (IMR-33) with actin that had been labeled with iodoacetamidotetramethylrhodamine. After incorporation of the labeled actin into the lamellipodium, I used a laser microbeam to photobleach a 3-4-micron region at and surrounding a microspike, without disrupting the integrity of the structure. I then recorded the pattern of fluorescence recovery and analyzed it using a combination of TV image intensification and digital image processing techniques. Fluorescence recovery was first detected near the edge of the cell and then moved toward the cell's center at a constant rate of 0.79 +/- 0.31 micron/min. When only part of the lamellipodium near the edge of the cell was photobleached, the bleached spot also moved toward the cell's center and through an area unbleached by the laser beam. These results indicated that steady state incorporation of actin subunits occurred predominantly at the membrane-associated end of actin filaments, and that actin subunits in the lamellipodium underwent a constant movement toward the center of the cell. I suggest that treadmilling, possibly in combination with other molecular interactions, may provide an effective mechanism for the movement of actin subunits and the protrusion of cytoplasm in the lamellipodium of fibroblasts.
Long noncoding RNA and its contribution to autism spectrum disorders

Recent studies have indicated that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in multiple processes, such as epigenetic regulation, gene expression regulation, development, nutrition‐related and other diseases, toxic response, and response to drugs. Although the functional roles and mechanisms of several lncRNAs have been discovered, a better understanding of the vast majority of lncRNAs remains elusive. To understand the functional roles and mechanisms of lncRNAs is critical because these transcripts represent the majority of the transcriptional output of the mammalian genome. Recent studies have also suggested that lncRNAs are more abundant in the human brain and are involved in neurodevelopment and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In this study, we review several known functions of lncRNAs and the potential contribution of lncRNAs to ASDs and to other genetic syndromes that have a similar clinical presentation to ASDs, such as fragile X syndrome and Rett syndrome.