Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mature Peripheral RPE Cells Have an Intrinsic Capacity to Proliferate; A Potential Regulatory Mechanism for Age-Related Cell Loss

Background Mammalian peripheral retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) cells proliferate throughout life, while central cells are senescent. It is thought that some peripheral cells migrate centrally to correct age-related central RPE loss. Methodology/Principal Findings We ask whether this proliferative capacity is intrinsic to such cells and whether cells located centrally produce diffusible signals imposing senescence upon the former once migrated. We also ask whether there are regional differences in expression patterns of key genes involved in these features between the centre and the periphery in vivo and in vitro. Low density RPE cultures obtained from adult mice revealed significantly greater levels of proliferation when derived from peripheral compared to central tissue, but this significance declined with increasing culture density. Further, exposure to centrally conditioned media had no influence on proliferation in peripheral RPE cell cultures at the concentrations examined. Central cells expressed significantly higher levels of E-Cadherin revealing a tighter cell adhesion than in the peripheral regions. Fluorescence-labelled staining for E-Cadherin, F-actin and ZO-1 in vivo revealed different patterns with significantly increased expression on central RPE cells than those in the periphery or differences in junctional morphology. A range of other genes were investigated both in vivo and in vitro associated with RPE proliferation in order to identify gene expression differences between the centre and the periphery. Specifically, the cell cycle inhibitor p27Kip1 was significantly elevated in central senescent regions in vivo and mTOR, associated with RPE cell senescence, was significantly elevated in the centre in comparison to the periphery. Conclusions These data show that the proliferative capacity of peripheral RPE cells is intrinsic and cell-autonomous in adult mice. These differences between centre and periphery are reflected in distinct patterns in junctional markers. The regional proliferation differences may be inversely dependent to cell-cell contact.
Efficient Modulation of γ-Aminobutyric Acid Type A Receptors by Piperine Derivatives

Piperine activates TRPV1 (transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 receptor) receptors and modulates γ-aminobutyric acid type A receptors (GABAAR). We have synthesized a library of 76 piperine analogues and analyzed their effects on GABAAR by means of a two-microelectrode voltage-clamp technique. GABAAR were expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes. Structure–activity relationships (SARs) were established to identify structural elements essential for efficiency and potency. Efficiency of piperine derivatives was significantly increased by exchanging the piperidine moiety with either N,N-dipropyl, N,N-diisopropyl, N,N-dibutyl, p-methylpiperidine, or N,N-bis(trifluoroethyl) groups. Potency was enhanced by replacing the piperidine moiety by N,N-dibutyl, N,N-diisobutyl, or N,N-bistrifluoroethyl groups. Linker modifications did not substantially enhance the effect on GABAAR. Compound 23 [(2E,4E)-5-(1,3-benzodioxol-5-yl)-N,N-dipropyl-2,4-pentadienamide] induced the strongest modulation of GABAA (maximal GABA-induced chloride current modulation (IGABA-max = 1673% ± 146%, EC50 = 51.7 ± 9.5 μM), while 25 [(2E,4E)-5-(1,3-benzodioxol-5-yl)-N,N-dibutyl-2,4-pentadienamide] displayed the highest potency (EC50 = 13.8 ± 1.8 μM, IGABA-max = 760% ± 47%). Compound 23 induced significantly stronger anxiolysis in mice than piperine and thus may serve as a starting point for developing novel GABAAR modulators.
Pricing Strategies in Dual-Channel Supply Chain with Retailer Direct Marketing

A two-level dual-channel supply chain model was established in which retailer had his own direct channel. Game model was constructed based on two cases of decentralized and centralized decision-making. Pricing strategies of manufacturer and retailer were studied. Impacts of different channel and different sale entities on manufacturer and retailer were examined. Results show that when channel substitution increases and market share of retailer direct channel is small, retailer should choose to give up direct channel and focus on retail channel sales and take direct channel as means of propaganda and brand promotion. When the difference of sale entities reduces, consumers can get more surplus.
Three-way Doherty power amplifier with uneven power drive

The basic operation principle of the three-way Doherty power amplifier is described. For the experimental verification, a 2.14 GHz three-way Doherty power amplifier using LDMOS devices with a power ratio of 1:2:2 is implemented and tested using WCDMA signal. In the design, we assign more input power to the peaking2 and peaking1 power amplifiers, so the three-way Doherty power amplifier has an uneven power drive. The test data prove that, the three-way Doherty power amplifier with uneven power drive has higher efficiency than the classical two-way Doherty power amplifier when the input signal has a high peak-to-average power ratio.
Temporal and Spatial Patterns of Ambient Endotoxin Concentrations in Fresno, California

Background Endotoxins are found in indoor dust generated by human activity and pets, in soil, and adsorbed onto the surfaces of ambient combustion particles. Endotoxin concentrations have been associated with respiratory symptoms and the risk of atopy and asthma in children. Objective We characterized the temporal and spatial variability of ambient endotoxin in Fresno/Clovis, California, located in California’s Central Valley, to identify correlates and potential predictors of ambient endotoxin concentrations in a cohort of children with asthma [Fresno Asthmatic Children’s Environment Study (FACES)]. Methods Between May 2001 and October 2004, daily ambient endotoxin and air pollutants were collected at the central ambient monitoring site of the California Air Resources Board in Fresno and, for shorter time periods, at 10 schools and indoors and outdoors at 84 residences in the community. Analyses were restricted to May–October, the dry months during which endotoxin concentrations are highest. Results Daily endotoxin concentration patterns were determined mainly by meteorologic factors, particularly the degree of air stagnation. Overall concentrations were lowest in areas distant from agricultural activities. Highest concentrations were found in areas immediately downwind from agricultural/pasture land. Among three other measured air pollutants [fine particulate matter, elemental carbon (a marker of traffic in Fresno), and coarse particulate matter (PMc)], PMc was the only pollutant correlated with endotoxin. Endotoxin, however, was the most spatially variable. Conclusions Our data support the need to evaluate the spatial/temporal variability of endotoxin concentrations, rather than relying on a few measurements made at one location, in studies of exposure and and respiratory health effects, particularly in children with asthma and other chronic respiratory diseases.
Effects of a lossy inhomogeneous substrate on microstrip lines

We combine a mode-matching technique and Galerkin's method to study the propagation properties of microstrip lines on a lossy inhomogeneous substrate, which has important applications but can not be solved by conventional spectral domain methods. Poisson's equation with a complex permittivity is derived on which the eigenmodes in each inhomogeneous layer are solved numerically. The Green's function is derived based on the reflection matrices. Galerkin's method is then applied to calculate the capacitance and conductance matrices of microstrip lines embedded in such a medium.
Robust Data Exchange for Unreliable P2P Networks

The aim of this work is to provide a robust way for peers with heterogeneous data sources to exchange information in an unreliable network. We address this problem in two ways. Firstly, we define a set of application-layer data exchange protocols to facilitate the discovery of and the communication between peers. Secondly, we provide a query processing component with a cache-driven query processor that allows peers on the network to cache queries and their results on demand. The data caches are used to give partial or complete answers to a query if the original data sources are unavailable.
Risk factors for primary lung cancer among non-smoking women in Taiwan.

BACKGROUND Although cigarette smoking is considered to be the most important cause of lung cancer, smoking behaviour cannot fully explain the epidemiological characteristics of lung cancer in Taiwanese women, who rarely smoke but contract lung cancer relatively often. There are other causes of lung cancer that have produced variability in lung cancer incidence. METHODS A case-control study involving interviews with 117 female patients (including 106 non-smoking) suffering from lung cancer and the same number of individually matched hospital controls was conducted in Kaohsiung, Taiwan between 1992 and 1993. The questionnaire administered to cases and controls collected information on cigarette smoking and suspected risk factors for lung cancer. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was applied to assess smoking for all women and suspected risk factors for non-smoking women. RESULTS The relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was statistically significant although only a small proportion (9.4%) of female patients had smoked. However, the risk of contracting cancer for non-smoking women appears to be associated with certain cooking practices, especially preparing meals in kitchens not equipped with a fume extractor at cooking age of 20-40 years (odds ratio [OR] = 8.3; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 3.1-22.7. These factors and a history of pulmonary tuberculosis plus low consumption of fresh vegetables explained 78% of the summary attributable risks for non-smoking women in a multivariate logistic regression model. CONCLUSIONS Exposure to fumes from cooking oils, when not reduced by an extractor, may be an important factor in causing lung cancer in non-smoking Taiwanese women.
Improved gene tree error correction in the presence of horizontal gene transfer

Motivation: The accurate inference of gene trees is a necessary step in many evolutionary studies. Although the problem of accurate gene tree inference has received considerable attention, most existing methods are only applicable to gene families unaffected by horizontal gene transfer. As a result, the accurate inference of gene trees affected by horizontal gene transfer remains a largely unaddressed problem. Results: In this study, we introduce a new and highly effective method for gene tree error correction in the presence of horizontal gene transfer. Our method efficiently models horizontal gene transfers, gene duplications and losses, and uses a statistical hypothesis testing framework [Shimodaira–Hasegawa (SH) test] to balance sequence likelihood with topological information from a known species tree. Using a thorough simulation study, we show that existing phylogenetic methods yield inaccurate gene trees when applied to horizontally transferred gene families and that our method dramatically improves gene tree accuracy. We apply our method to a dataset of 11 cyanobacterial species and demonstrate the large impact of gene tree accuracy on downstream evolutionary analyses. Availability and implementation: An implementation of our method is available at http://compbio.mit.edu/treefix-dtl/ Contact: mukul@engr.uconn. edu or manoli@mit.edu Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Control of uncertain nonlinear systems against actuator faults using adaptive fuzzy approximation

This paper studies the problem of fault-tolerant control (FTC) for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems which cannot be feedback linearized. These systems are unknown in their nonlinearities and subject to both lock-in-place and loss of effectiveness actuator faults. A novel fault-tolerant control approach is proposed by embedding adaptive fuzzy approximators into the backstepping design procedure. The designed controller can guarantee that all signals of the closed-loop system are uniformly ultimately bounded and the output tracking error converges to a small neighborhood of zero though there are uncertainties and actuator faults in the considered system. Simulation experiment is conducted and the simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.
Assessment of the Best Compatible Dialysis System: Feasible Application for Bioelectrical Impedance

Since the introduction of hemodialysis procedure several attempts have been made to elucidate the material tissue interaction in order to evaluate the behaviour of immunosystem cellular and humoral responses to the material of patients on renal replacement therapy. Biochemical and sierological parameters have been considered as method for assessment of the best compatible dialysis. Nevertheless blood tests don't probably reflect the most important symptoms of clinical relevance. Thus we have applied bioelectrical impedance to assess the whole procedure/patient system. Resistance (R) changes during hemodialysis resulted strictly inversely correlated to the body weight variations during HD session (R < 0.96). Reactance (Xc) has also shown a progressive increase associated with an increment of phase angle, while Xc during clinical events such as hypotension, vomiting or cramps showed some transient falls. Also nutritional status and clinical well-being manifested a close relationship with bioelectrical parameters. It is therefore our feeling that BIA monitoring will provide a feasible tool to assess dialysis adequacy, of which biocompatibility represent a crucial aspect.
Hip Replacement Surgery in 14-Year-Old Girl with Factor V Deficiency: Haemostatic Treatment and Thromboprophylaxis

Factor V (FV) is a pivotal coagulation factor present in plasma and platelets. It plays an essential role in secondary haemostasis acting as a cofactor in the prothrombinase complex, catalysing the conversion of prothrombin to thrombin. There is little evidence on the management of mayor orthopaedic surgery in paediatric or adolescents subjects with this coagulopathy and almost no information about thromboprophylaxis in these situations. We report a case of a hip replacement in a 14-year-old girl with moderate FV deficiency (0.07 IU mL−1). As haemostatic replacement, inactivated fresh frozen plasma (FFP) was transfused at doses of 600 mL (15 mL kg−1, 45 kg weight) 2 hours before surgery and then sequential FFP infusions of 250 mL (7 mL kg−1) every 12 hours for 7 days. Plasma factor VIII, von Willebrand factor antigen, and von Willebrand ristocetin cofactor were monitored to avoid supranormal levels. Since the patient was sexually mature (Marshall and Tanner stage 5) with the hormone replacement therapy, she was immobilized and the surgery was considered as a high thrombotic risk. Thus, low molecular weight heparin was administered at doses of intermediate risk (Enoxaparin 20 mg daily, by weight) after finishing the daily infusion of plasma: 24 hours and during the 7 days after intervention. No tranexamic acid was used. No haemorrhagic or thrombotic adverse event was described.
Segmentation and Recognition of Meeting Events using a Two-Layered HMM and a Combined MLP-HMM Approach

Automatic segmentation and classification of recorded meetings provides a basis that enables effective browsing and querying in a meeting archive. Yet, robustness of today approaches is often not reliable enough. We therefore strive to improve on this task by introduction of a hybrid approach combining the discriminative abilities of artificial neural nets and warping capabilities of hidden Markov models. Dividing the task into two layers and defining a proper set of individual actions helps to cope with the problem of lack of data and overcomes conventional single-layered approaches. Extensive test runs on the public M4 Scripted Meeting Corpus prove the great performance gain applying our suggested novel approach compared to other similar methods
Cardiovascular side e V ects of inhaled salbutamol in hypoxic asthmatic patients

Background —Beta-2 adrenoceptor agonists have been associated with sudden death in asthma patients but the cause and underlying mechanism are unclear. Animal experiments indicate that the combination of hypoxia and (cid:226) 2 agonists may result in detrimental cardiovascular effects. A study was undertaken to investigate the e V ect of hypoxia on the systemic vascular e V ects of salbutamol in patients with asthma who are hypoxic by assessing forearm blood ﬂow (FBF) as a measure of peripheral vasodilatation. Methods —Eight men with mild asthma underwentthefollowingtreatments:norm-oxia+placebo(NP),normoxia+sal-butamol(NS),hypoxia+placebo(HP), andhypoxia+salbutamol(HS). The periodofmaskbreathingstartedatt=0 minutes,lastedfor60minutes,andat30 minutes800µgsalbutamolwasinhaled. Theexperimentwascompleted30min-utesaftertheinhalation(t=60minutes). ForthehypoxiatreatmenttheSp O 2 level was 82%. Di V erences between treatments were sought using factorial ANOVA on percentage change from the pretreatment value.
Sensor network for structural health monitoring

Structural health monitoring (SHM) uses an array of sensors to continuously monitor a structure to provide an early indication of problems such as damage to the structure from fatigue, corrosion or impact. The use of such a system enables maintenance costs to be reduced, and new structures can be designed to be lighter and more efficient. CSIRO has developed an SHM system for detecting high-velocity impacts in the skin of a structure, such as may occur to space vehicles. The system is a large sensor network containing about two-hundred nodes, each of which contains multiple sensors. The system has been built as a flexible testbed for undertaking research in the use of sensor networks in a wide range of SHM applications. This paper outlines the testbed that has been developed and the research that has been conducted using this testbed.
Pattern Generation by Two Coupled Time-Discrete Neural Networks with Synaptic Depression

Numerous animal behaviors, such as locomotion in vertebrates, are produced by rhythmic contractions that alternate between two muscle groups. The neuronal networks generating such alternate rhythmic activity are generally thought to rely on pacemaker cells or well-designed circuits consisting of inhibitory and excitatory neurons. However, experiments in organotypic cultures of embryonic rat spinal cord have shown that neuronal networks with purely excitatory and random connections may oscillate due to their synaptic depression, even without pacemaker cells. In this theoretical study, we investigate what happens if two such networks are symmetrically coupled by a small number of excitatory connections. We discuss a time-discrete mean-field model describing the average activity and the average synaptic depression of the two networks. Depending on the parameter values of the depression, the oscillations will be in phase, antiphase, quasiperiodic, or phase trapped. We put forward the hypothesis that pattern generators may rely on activity-dependent tuning of synaptic depression.
On the Clustering of Radio Channel Impulse Responses Using Sparsity-Based Methods

Radio channel modeling has been an important research topic, as the analysis and evaluation of any wireless communication system requires a reliable model of the channel impulse response (CIR). The classical work by Saleh and Valenzuela and many recent measurements show that multipath component (MPC) arrivals in CIRs appear at the receiver in clusters. To parameterize the CIR model, the first step is to identify clusters in CIRs, and a clustering algorithm is thus needed. However, the main weakness of the existing clustering algorithms is that the specific model for the cluster shape is not fully taken into account in the clustering algorithm, which leads to erroneous clustering and reduced performance. In this paper, we propose a novel CIR clustering algorithm using a sparsity-based method, which exploits the feature of the Saleh-Valenzuela (SV) model that the power of the MPCs is exponentially decreasing with increasing delay. We first use a sparsity-based optimization to recover CIRs, which can be well solved using reweighted ℓ1 minimization. Then, a heuristic approach is provided to identify clusters in the recovered CIRs, which leads to improved clustering accuracy in comparison to identifying clusters directly in the raw CIRs. Finally, a clustering enhancement approach, which employs the goodness-of-fit (GoS) test to evaluate clustering accuracy, is used to further improve the performance. The proposed algorithm incorporates the anticipated behaviors of clusters into the clustering framework and enables applications with no prior knowledge of the clusters, such as number and initial locations of clusters. Measurements validate the proposed algorithm, and comparisons with other algorithms show that the proposed algorithm has the best performance and a fairly low computational complexity.
Characterization of electrode/electrolyte interface for bioimpedance study

The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) methodology has been extensively used to study the different aspects of electrochemical and biomedical practices. This paper presents the numerical simulation of impedance for electrode/electrolyte interface. The COMSOLR Multiphysics is used to study the interface impedance. The technology for Micro Electro Mechanical system (MEMS) helps to fabricate miniature devices for the electrochemical study. In this work a MEMS based three electrode device along with Phosphate Buffered Solution (PBS) is simulated using COMSOL Multiphysics to find out the impedance of interface. PBS is used as physiological medium for most biological studies and also used to stabilize the microelectrodes under testing. The impedance obtained from COMSOL Multiphysics is processed with an equivalent circuit simulator named as ZsimpWin to find the viability of impedance of electrode/electrolyte interface.
Interactive generation of overview information using speech

In non-visual interfaces, using non-speech audio can be a more effective and efficient way of obtaining overview information than using speech. However, users who are blind regularly use speech-based tools to access information in computers, and often prefer this technology over others that pose steeper learning curves. This paper proposes a technique to explore numerical data tables interactively in order to extract overview information by optimising the use of speech.