Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
What is the other 85 % of V 1 doing ?

This article will pose the following challenge: that despite four decades of research characterizing the response properties of V1 neurons, we still do not have a decent picture of how V1 really operates—i.e., how a population of its neurons represents natural scenes under realistic viewing conditions. We identify five problems with the current view that stem largely from biases in the design and execution of experiments, in addition to the contributions of non-linearities in the cortex that are not well understood. Our purpose is to open the window to new theories, a number of which we describe along with some proposals for testing them.
Enhanced load dependence of relaxation in heart failure. Clinical implications.

T he pump performance of the left ventricle (LV) depends on its ability to cycle between two states: 1) a compliant chamber in diastole that allows the LV to fill from a low left atrial pressure and 2) a stiff chamber in systole that ejects the stroke volume at arterial pressure. The transitions from diastole to systole (contraction) and from systole to diastole (relaxation) are essential for the LV to function effectively as
Novel function of the poly(c)-binding protein α-CP2 as a transcriptional activator that binds to single-stranded DNA sequences

α-complex protein 2 (α-CP2) is known as an RNA-binding protein that interacts in a sequence-specific manner with single-stranded polycytosine [poly(C)]. This protein is involved in various post-transcriptional regulations, such as mRNA stabilization and translational regulation. In this study, the full-length mouse α-CP2 gene was expressed in an insoluble form with an N-terminal histidine tag in Escherichia coli and purified for homogeneity using affinity column chromatography. Its identity was confirmed using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. Recombinant α-CP2 was expressed and refolded. The protein folding conditions for denatured α-CP2 were optimized. DNA and RNA electrophoretic mobility shift assays demonstrated that the recombinant α-CP2 is capable of binding to both single-stranded DNA and RNA poly(C) sequences. Furthermore, plasmids expressing α-CP2 activated the expression of a luciferase reporter when co-transfected with a single-stranded (pGL-SS) construct containing a poly(C) sequence. To our knowledge, this study demonstrates for the first time that α-CP2 functions as a transcriptional activator by binding to a single-stranded poly(C) sequence.
Biotic interactions explain seasonal dynamics of the alpine soil microbiome

Background The soil alpine microbiome is dependent on season and elevation, yet there is limited understanding of how complex communities are differentially shaped by abiotic and biotic factors. Here we investigated the spring-to-summer dynamics of soil microbiomes in alpine grasslands, focussing on soil food web interactions. To this end, we conducted a survey along altitudinal transects in three mountains in the Alps, in spring at snowmelt and in the following summer, recorded vegetation and topographic, climatic and edaphic parameters for 158 soil samples. By using metatranscriptomics, we simultaneously assessed prokaryotic and eukaryotic communities, further classified by nutrition guilds. Results Our results show: (i) that biotic interactions could explain more variation of the microbial communities than topographic and edaphic variables, more for consumers than for preys, and this effect was stronger in summer than in spring; (ii) a seasonal dynamic in biotic interactions: the consumers’ pressure on preys increases from spring to summer, resulting in a higher diversity and evenness of preys. Conclusion In alpine grasslands, consumers effectively contribute to maintain the diverse soil bacterial and fungal community essential for ecosystem functioning.
Field Trial of New Technologies for Reducing Mosquito Populations in Bulloch County, Georgia, USA

Mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus pose an important health risk to residents and travelers to southeastern Georgia. There is an increasing threat of introduction of mosquito-borne diseases, such as Zika and dengue virus, into Georgia where susceptible mosquito species are present. A field trial of the ProVector Tube Applicator with Entobac D pesticide was conducted to determine if the system was effective in reducing mosquito populations in Bulloch County, located in southeastern Georgia. Within one month, there was a significant difference in reduction of mosquitoes in the test versus the control sites, 93% versus 1%, respectively. There was a significant reduction in the test but not the control every two weeks. Providing effective, inexpensive, safe and eco-friendly tools for officials and homeowners is necessary in the event local mosquito control is poorly funded.
Is there an optimal management for localized prostate cancer?

Widespread screening with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) has led to a significant increase in the detection of early stage, clinically localized prostate cancer (CaP). Various treatment options for localized CaP are discussed in this review article including active surveillance, radical prostatectomy, radiation therapy, and cyrotherapy. The paucity of high-level evidence adds a considerable amount of controversy when choosing the “optimal” intervention, for both the treating physician and the patient. The long time course of CaP intervention outcomes, combined with continuing modifications in treatments, further complicate the matter. Lacking randomized trials that compare treatment options, this review article attempts to summarize the different treatment options and associated side-effects, including effects on health-related quality of life, from current published literature.
Automobile Replacement: A Dynamic Structural Approach

This paper specifies and estimates a structural dynamic model of consumer demand for new and used durable goods. Its primary contribution is to provide an explicit estimation procedure for transaction costs, which are crucial to capturing the dynamic nature of consumer decisions. In particular, transaction costs play a key role in determining consumer replacement behavior in both primary and secondary markets for durable goods. The unique data set used in this paper has been collected by the Italian Motor Registry and covers the period from 1994 to 2004. It includes information about sales dates for individual cars over time as well as the initial stock of cars in the sample period. Identification of transaction costs is achieved from the variation in the share of consumers choosing to hold a given car type each period, and from the share of consumers choosing to purchase the same car type that period. Specifically, I estimate a random coefficients discrete choice model that incorporates a dynamic optimal stopping problem in the spirit of Rust (1987). I apply this model to evaluate the impact of scrappage subsidies on the Italian automobile market in 1997 and 1998.
Quantification of projective distortion for fiducial markers

The aim of this study is to quantify the projective distortion of candidate quadrilaterals found in a square-framed fiducial marker detection algorithm. Based on the quantified value, candidates can be eliminated in such a way that only the quadrilaterals that may be a projective transformation of a square remain. In the first part of the study, it is shown that under a projective transform, the line at infinity of a plane corresponds to a line that is not at infinity. Two methods to find the equation of the corresponding line are proposed. The first method uses the homography matrix that represents a particular projective transformation. The correspondant of the line at infinity can be found using this homography matrix. The second method is a direct algorithm that utilizes the parallelism of the opposing edges of the square frame. At the last section, the obtained line is used to quantify the projective distortion and an elimination is performed on this basis.
Role of sustainomics and external climate forcing mechanism in biodiversity extinction : An overview

Over millions of years, physiology and anatomy of the living organisms has been changed due to internal climate forcing mechanism. This has influenced the world wide distribution of species. External climate forcing mechanism has caused rapid rise in earth’s temperature and it is expected to rise by 2-4 °C by the end of the century. It has now been recognised as the most complex problem of present scenario and being concerned in almost every field of science. Climate change is the most sensitive issue which is a challenge not only for the government and society but also for each individual. In the present communication impact of external climate forcing mechanism on biodiversity and its extinction is being analysed and role of sustainomics for the same is overviewed. Studies reveal that the rate of speciation of flora and fauna is not in the accordance with the rate of externally enforced climate change. Thus, the increased rate of climate change has caused catastrophic mass extinction threat for plants, animals and insects in the anthrapocene era. The pattern of extinction and threatened species are not yet known. Various solutions for the problem have been suggested by the multidisciplinary researches, rooted by the sustainomics. These suggestions include to diverge from fossil fuel, to use renewables, to make and apply rules for 3Rs etc. Only cooperative involvement of social, scientific and industrial bodies may resolve the problem.
Dune, Bluff and Beach Erosion due to Exhaustive Sand Mining – the Case of Santa Barbara Beach, São Miguel (Azores, Portugal).

ABSTRACT Coastal dunes are relatively rare features in the Azores islands and contribute to less then 1% to the total length of the archipelago's littoral zone, circa 844 km. Localised indications of aeolian activity, contemporaneous to the arrival of the first colonists in the 15th century have been found, but at present most of the coastal dunes are vegetated and stabilised. Dune sand has been exploited during the 20th century for industrial use, leading to severe damage or complete removal of a significant proportion of these features. In the 1950's the Santa Barbara area contained a rare and well-preserved example of an undisturbed active beach-foredune system, free of anthropogenic activities. It displayed a well-nourished beach profile margined by a coastal foredune and a climbing dune, which covered the adjacent bluff and extended landwards through an aeolian sand-sheet. Persistent sand mining between the early sixties and the late eighties, lead to volumetric depletion of the dune cover, lowering of the surface of the berm and triggering cliff erosion. In total, some 950,000 m3 of sand has been removed, the dunes making up half of this figure. Although this activity was stopped in 1995 by legal enforcement, the erosive process still currently persists indicating a surpassing of the natural resilience and maximum vulnerability of the coastal dune system. At present the bluff retreats at very high rates (0.6 m/yr), the dune features were totally obliterated and the sandy beach has been reduced in width to a single swash ramp which floods during half of the tidal cycle.
ACE serum level and I/D gene polymorphism in children with obstructive uropathies and other congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract

The aim of this study was to investigate the association of an insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism in angiotensin‐converting enzyme (ACE) gene with serum ACE level in relation to the type and severity of malformations from congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT) spectrum.
Cell non-autonomous control of autophagy and metabolism by glial cells

Glia are the protectors of the nervous system, providing neurons with support and protection from cytotoxic insults. We previously discovered that four astrocyte-like glia can regulate organismal proteostasis and longevity in C. elegans. Expression of the UPRER transcription factor, XBP-1s, in these glia increases stress resistance, longevity, and activates the UPRER in intestinal cells via neuropeptides. Autophagy, a key regulator of metabolism and aging, has been described as a cell autonomous process. Surprisingly, we find that glial XBP-1s enhances proteostasis and longevity by cell non-autonomously reprogramming organismal lipid metabolism and activating autophagy. Glial XBP-1s regulates the activation of another transcription factor, HLH-30/TFEB, in the intestine. HLH-30 activates intestinal autophagy, increases intestinal lipid catabolism, and upregulates a robust transcriptional program. Our study reveals a novel role for glia in regulating peripheral lipid metabolism, autophagy, and organellar health through peripheral activation of HLH-30 and autophagy.
Privacy-Preserving Friendship-Based Recommender Systems

Privacy-preserving recommender systems have been an active research topic for many years. However, until today, it is still a challenge to design an efficient solution without involving a fully trusted third party or multiple semi-trusted third parties. The key obstacle is the large underlying user populations (i.e., huge input size) in the systems. In this paper, we revisit the concept of friendship-based recommender systems, proposed by Jeckmans et al. and Tang and Wang. These solutions are very promising because recommendations are computed based on inputs from a very small subset of the overall user population (precisely, a user's friends and some randomly chosen strangers). We first clarify the single prediction protocol and Top-n protocol by Tang and Wang, by correcting some flaws and improving the efficiency of the single prediction protocol. We then design a decentralized single protocol by getting rid of the semi-honest service provider. In order to validate the designed protocols, we crawl Twitter and construct two datasets (FMT and 10-FMT) which are equipped with auxiliary friendship information. Based on 10-FMT and MovieLens 100k dataset with simulated friendships, we show that even if our protocols use a very small subset of the datasets, their accuracy can still be equal to or better than some baseline algorithm. Based on these datasets, we further demonstrate that the outputs of our protocols leak very small amount of information of the inputs, and the leakage decreases when the input size increases. We finally show that he single prediction protocol is quite efficient but the Top-n is not. However, we observe that the efficiency of the Top-n protocol can be dramatically improved if we slightly relax the desired security guarantee.
Producing an Encyclopedic Dictionary using Patent Documents

Although the World Wide Web has late become an important source to consult for the meaning of words, a number of technical terms related to high technology are not found on the Web. This paper describes a method to produce an encyclopedic dictionary for high-tech terms from patent information. We used a collection of unexamined patent applications published by the Japanese Patent Office as a source corpus. Given this collection, we extracted terms as headword candidates and retrieved applications including those headwords. Then, we extracted paragraph-style descriptions and categorized them into technical domains. We also extracted related terms for each headword. We have produced a dictionary including approximately 400,000 Japanese terms as headwords. We have also implemented an interface with which users can explore our dictionary by reading text descriptions and viewing a related-term graph.
Phthisis Bulbi and Buphthalmos as Presenting Signs of Retinoblastoma: A Report of Two Cases and Literature Review

Purpose To report two cases of bilateral retinoblastoma (RB) with unusual presentations. Methods The medical records of 321 patients from the Retinoblastoma Referral Center in Siena were reviewed. A total of 111 patients had bilateral RB, 2 of them presenting with phthisis bulbi and buphthalmos. Both patients underwent bilateral enucleation. Clinical features, imaging studies, and histopathology were reviewed. Results These 2 cases represent 0.62% (2/321) in our series. Histopathology did not reveal viable tumor cells in the phthisical eyes; in both buphthalmic eyes the tumor was active, infiltrating the choroid and optic nerve. Conclusions Phthisis bulbi and buphthalmos are unusual presenting signs of RB. This very rare combination of these two signs in different eyes of the same patient is probably due to a delay in diagnosis.
Increased acylated plasma ghrelin, but improved lipid profiles 24-h after consumption of carob pulp preparation rich in dietary fibre and polyphenols

We have recently shown that a polyphenol-rich insoluble dietary fibre preparation from carob pulp (Ceratonia siliqua L; carob fibre) decreased postprandial acylated ghrelin, TAG and NEFA during an acute liquid meal challenge test. However, delayed effects of carob fibre consumption are unknown. Therefore, a randomized controlled crossover study in nineteen healthy volunteers consuming foods with or without 50 g carob fibre was conducted. On the subsequent day (day 2), glucose, TAG, total and acylated ghrelin as well as insulin, NEFA and leptin were assessed at baseline and at timed intervals for 300 min after ingestion of standardized bread. Consumption of carob fibre-enriched foods did not affect fasting concentrations of glucose, TAG, total ghrelin, NEFA, insulin and leptin. Fasting acylated ghrelin was increased on the day subsequent to carob fibre consumption compared with control (P = 0·046). After consumption of the standard bread on day 2, glucose response (P = 0·029) was increased, and TAG (P = 0·033) and NEFA (P < 0·001) responses were decreased compared with control. Postprandial responses of total and acylated ghrelin, insulin and leptin on day 2 were unaffected by carob fibre consumption the previous day. In conclusion, an increase in total and acylated plasma ghrelin accompanied by enhanced lipid metabolism after carob fibre consumption suggests higher lipid utilization and suppressed lipolysis on the day subsequent to carob fibre consumption. However, elevated glucose levels after carob fibre consumption need to be addressed in future studies.
Maternal Separation and Handling Affects Cocaine Self-Administration in Both the Treated Pups as Adults and the Dams

Repeated maternal separation of pups from dams is often used as an early life stressor that causes profound neurochemical and behavioral changes in the pups that persist into adulthood. The effects of maternal separation on both the dams and the treated pups as adults on cocaine self-administration were examined using four separation conditions: 15- or 180-min separation (MS15 and MS180), brief handling without separation (MS0), and a nonhandled group (NH). The separations and handling occurred daily on postnatal days 2 to 15. The acquisition of cocaine self-administration (0.0625–1.0 mg/kg/infusion) was evaluated in the treated pups as adults. The MS180 group acquired cocaine self-administration at the lowest dose tested (0.0625 mg/kg/infusion), whereas the MS15s did not respond for cocaine at rates greater than that seen with saline administration. The NH group received the greatest number of infusions and intake at the highest doses. After self-administration, no differences were observed between groups in activity of two liver carboxylesterases involved in the inactivation of cocaine, ES10 and ES4. Maternal separation affected cocaine self-administration in the dams as well. Although there was an overall significant affect of treatment on cocaine self-administration, the length of separation (15 or 180 min) did not affect cocaine self-administration on the dams. The MS0 dams averaged a greater number of infusions per session than NH group during the 1st week of acquisition. These data suggest that in addition to the profound changes that occur in pups as result of maternal separation, the dams are also susceptible to alterations in behaviors.
A phase Ib study evaluating the recommended phase II dose, safety, tolerability, and efficacy of mivavotinib in combination with nivolumab in advanced solid tumors

Abstract Mivavotinib (TAK‐659/CB‐659), a dual SYK/FLT3 inhibitor, reduced immunosuppressive immune cell populations and suppressed tumor growth in combination with anti‐PD‐1 therapy in cancer models. This dose‐escalation/expansion study investigated the safety, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and preliminary efficacy of mivavotinib plus nivolumab in patients with advanced solid tumors. Patients received oral mivavotinib 60–100 mg once‐daily plus intravenous nivolumab 3 mg/kg on days 1 and 15 in 28‐day cycles until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. The dose‐escalation phase evaluated the recommended phase II dose (RP2D; primary endpoint). The expansion phase evaluated overall response rate (primary end point) at the RP2D in patients with triple‐negative breast cancer (TNBC). During dose‐escalation (n = 24), two dose‐limiting toxicities (grade 4 lipase increased and grade 3 pyrexia) occurred in patients who received mivavotinib 80 mg and 100 mg, respectively. The determined RP2D was once‐daily mivavotinib 80 mg plus nivolumab 3 mg/kg. The expansion phase was terminated at ~50% enrollment (n = 17) after failing to meet an ad hoc efficacy futility threshold. Among all 41 patients, common treatment‐emergent adverse events (TEAEs) included dyspnea (48.8%), aspartate aminotransferase increased, and pyrexia (46.3% each). Common grade ≥3 TEAEs were hypophosphatemia and anemia (26.8% each). Mivavotinib plasma exposure was generally dose‐proportional (60–100 mg). One patient had a partial response. Mivavotinib 80 mg plus nivolumab 3 mg/kg was well tolerated with no new safety signals beyond those of single‐agent mivavotinib or nivolumab. Low response rates highlight the challenges of treating unresponsive tumor types, such as TNBC, with this combination and immunotherapies in general. Trial registration ID NCT02834247.
Online randomized controlled trial of brief and full cognitive behaviour therapy for depression

Background. Effective internet-based programs for depression usually incorporate a component that provides telephone or email contact. Open access websites, without such contact, show high rates of attrition and poorer outcomes. The present study was designed as an exploratory investigation of the parameters that influence the effectiveness and retention of users on open access websites. We investigated whether brief cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) was as effective as an extended version, whether add-on components of behaviour therapy or stress management contributed to positive outcomes, and whether longer programs were associated with greater attrition. Method. An online randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted between 13 January 2005 and 26 May 2005 (19 weeks). A total of 2794 registrants (1846 women and 948 men; median age category 35–44 years) with elevated scores on the Goldberg Depression Scale of 5·96 (S.D.=2·09) elected online to be randomized to one of six versions of a CBT website. The versions were compiled consisting of various components of brief CBT, extended CBT, behaviour strategies, stress management and problem solving. Results. A total of 20·4% of participants completed the assigned intervention. The interaction of measurement occasion and treatment version was significant [F(13,131)=2·20, p=0·01]. A single module of brief introductory CBT was not effective in reducing depression symptoms. However, extended CBT with or without the addition of behaviour strategies resulted in the reduction of depression. Conclusions. Brief CBT-based interventions are not as effective as extended interventions. However, longer programs are associated with higher rates of dropout.