Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A review of herbal medicines for psychiatric disorders.

OBJECTIVE This review examines herbs commonly used for psychiatric symptoms-St. John's wort, kava, ginkgo biloba, and valerian. METHODS MEDLINE was searched for articles related to the use of herbs in psychiatry published after 1990. A secondary search examined sources cited in articles obtained from the MEDLINE search. RESULTS Of nine controlled and standardized trials of St. John's wort, five showed the herb's superiority to placebo, and four found no differences in effectiveness when compared with antidepressant drugs. The pharmacologically active components are not known. Several double-blind, placebo-controlled trials have demonstrated the anxiolytic efficacy of kava, but these studies had ill-defined patient populations, small sample sizes, and short treatment duration. All but one of 40 controlled trials of ginkgo extracts in the treatment of dementia found clinically significant improvement in memory loss, concentration, fatigue, anxiety, and depressed mood. Most studies of gingko had poorly defined patient populations and small sample sizes and used nonstandard measures. A recent well-designed multicenter study showed significantly less decline in cognitive function among patients with dementia receiving gingko. Valerian has been shown to decrease sleep latency and nocturnal awakenings and improve subjective sleep quality, but placebo effects were marked in some studies, and in some cases the beneficial effects were not seen until two to four weeks of therapy. CONCLUSIONS Although evidence of the efficacy of herbal preparations in treating psychiatric conditions is growing, translating the results of efficacy studies into effective treatments for patients is hampered by the chemical complexity of the products, the lack of standardization of commonly available preparations, and the paucity of well-controlled studies.
Changing Interpretations of the Scientific Observation: Observations without Seeing.

In this article, we studied the paradigm of observation which has been restructured since the beginning of modern sciences. In order to interpret this observation paradigm, an expression, “observation without seeing” was formulated. It was noticed that our interpretation of the observation depends on our knowledge and experiences. Finally, it was emphasized that the coincidence between our intellectual structure and the structure of the scientific knowledge and scientific thinking accompanied are essential to better interpret the world. This compatibility makes our scientific and daily activities more understandable and easy.
[Epitope screening of influenza A (H3N2) by using phage display library].

OBJECTIVE To screen the influenza A (H3N2) mimotopes by using phage display library. METHODS Using influenza A (H3N2) monoclonal antibody as selective molecule, a 7 mer phage peptide library was biopanned and positive clones were selected by ELISA, competition assay and DNA sequencing. RESULTS 21 positive clones were chosen for DNA sequencing. From the experiment and sequencing comparison results, one epitope was comfirmed as mimotope of influenza A (H3N2). CONCLUSION Influenza A (H3N2) mimotope was obtained by phage peptide library screening. The result provide a new approach for new Influenza virals vaccine development.
Mammalian APH-1 Interacts with Presenilin and Nicastrin and Is Required for Intramembrane Proteolysis of Amyloid-β Precursor Protein and Notch*

Presenilin and nicastrin are essential components of the γ-secretase complex that is required for the intramembrane proteolysis of an increasing number of membrane proteins including the amyloid-β precursor protein (APP) and Notch. By using co-immunoprecipitation and nickel affinity pull-down approaches, we now show that mammalian APH-1 (mAPH-1), a conserved multipass membrane protein, physically associates with nicastrin and the heterodimers of the presenilin amino- and carboxyl-terminal fragments in human cell lines and in rat brain. Similar to the loss of presenilinor nicastrin, the inactivation of endogenousmAPH-1 using small interfering RNAs results in the decrease of presenilin levels, accumulation of γ-secretase substrates (APP carboxyl-terminal fragments), and reduction of γ-secretase products (amyloid-β peptides and the intracellular domains of APP and Notch). These data indicate that mAPH-1 is probably a functional component of the γ-secretase complex required for the intramembrane proteolysis of APP and Notch.
Towards automating underwater measurement of fish length: a comparison of semi-automatic and manual stereo–video measurements

Underwater stereo-video systems are widely used for counting and measuring fish in aquaculture, fisheries, and conservation management. Length measurements are generated from stereo-video recordings by a software operator using a mouse to locate the head and tail of a fish in synchronized pairs of images. This data can be used to compare spatial and temporal changes in the mean length and biomass or frequency distributions of populations of fishes. Since the early 1990s stereo-video has also been used for measuring the lengths of fish in aquaculture for quota and farm management. However, the costs of the equipment, software, the time, and salary costs involved in post processing imagery manually and the subsequent delays in the availability of length information inhibit the adoption of this technology. We present a semi-automatic method for capturing stereo-video measurements to estimate the lengths of fish. We compare the time taken to make measurements of the same fish measured manually from stereo-video imagery to that measured semi-automatically. Using imagery recorded during transfers of Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT) from tow cages to grow out cages, we demonstrate that the semi-automatic algorithm developed can obtain fork length measurements with an error of less than 1% of the true length and with at least a sixfold reduction in operator time in comparison to manual measurements. Of the 22 138 SBT recorded we were able to measure 52.6% (11 647) manually and 11.8% (2614) semi-automatically. For seven of the eight cage transfers recorded there were no statistical differences in the mean length, weight, or length frequency between manual and semi-automatic measurements. When the data were pooled across the eight cage transfers, there was no statistical difference in mean length or weight between the stereo-video-based manual and semi-automated measurements. Hence, the presented semi-automatic system can be deployed to significantly reduce the cost involved in ad
Cluster Challenge 2008: Optimizing Cluster Configuration and Applications to Maximize Power Efficiency

The goal of the Cluster Challenge is to design, build and operate a compute cluster. Although it is an artificial environment for cluster computing, many of its key constraints on operation of cluster systems are important to real world scenarios: high energy efficiency, reliability and scalability. In this paper, we describe our approach to ac- complish these goals. We present our original system design and illustrate changes to that system as well as to applications and system settings in order to achieve maximum performance within the given power and time limits. Finally we suggest how our conclusions can be used to improve current and future clusters.
PmrAB, a Two-Component Regulatory System of Pseudomonas aeruginosa That Modulates Resistance to Cationic Antimicrobial Peptides and Addition of Aminoarabinose to Lipid A

ABSTRACT Spontaneous polymyxin-resistant mutants of Pseudomonas aeruginosa were isolated. The mutations responsible for this phenotype were mapped to a two-component signal transduction system similar to PmrAB of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. Lipid A of these mutants contained aminoarabinose, an inducible modification that is associated with polymyxin resistance. Thus, P. aeruginosa possesses a mechanism that induces resistance to cationic antimicrobial peptides in response to environmental conditions.
Planning grasps for robotic hands using a novel object representation based on the medial axis transform

Many supporting activities that future service robots might perform in people's homes depend on the capability to grasp and manipulate arbitrary objects. Easily accomplished by humans, but very difficult to achieve for robots, grasping involves dealing with a high-dimensional space of parameters which include hand kinematics, object geometry, material properties and forces. We believe that the way a robot grasps an object should be motivated by the object's geometry and that the search space for stable grasps can be dramatically reduced if the underlying object representation reflects symmetry properties of the object that contain valuable information for grasp planning. In this paper, we introduce the grid of medial spheres, a volumetric object representation based on the medial axis transform. The grid of medial spheres represents arbitrarily shaped objects with arbitrary levels of detail and contains symmetry information that can be easily exploited by a grasp planning algorithm. We present the data structure as well as a grasp planning algorithm that exploits it and provide experimental results on various object models using two robot hands in simulation.
Purification and properties of porcine platelet‐derived growth factor.

The purification to homogeneity of a potent growth factor from porcine platelets is described. This cationic mitogen is named porcine platelet‐derived growth factor (PDGF) on the basis of close structural, functional and immunological similarities to human PDGF. Porcine PDGF, like its human homologue, is a hydrophobic, disulphide cross‐linked protein, which is stable to heat, acid, sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), and guanidine. The purified protein has an apparent mol. wt. on SDS‐polyacrylamide gels of 38 000, similar to those reported for human PDGF (27 500‐35 000). Amino terminal sequence analysis of native porcine PDGF gave a single 15 amino acid residue sequence, of which 11 residues were identical to the amino terminal sequence of the B chain of human PDGF. Gel permeation h.p.l.c. in guanidine solutions of the reduced protein revealed a single species of mol. wt. 17 000 suggesting that native porcine PDGF may be a homodimer of a 17 000 mol. wt. chain. Since porcine PDGF can be purified at low cost from large quantities of fresh platelets, it provides an alternative source of PDGF for structural and functional studies, and could be of use in preparing defined media for cell culture.
Optimal signaling and detector design for power-constrained binary communications systems over non-gaussian channels

In this letter, joint optimization of signal structures and detectors is studied for binary communications systems under average power constraints in the presence of additive non-Gaussian noise. First, it is observed that the optimal signal for each symbol can be characterized by a discrete random variable with at most two mass points. Then, optimization over all possible two mass point signals and corresponding maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) decision rules are considered. It is shown that the optimization problem can be simplified into an optimization over a number of signal parameters instead of functions, which can be solved via global optimization techniques, such as particle swarm optimization. Finally, the improvements that can be obtained via the joint design of the signaling and the detector are illustrated via an example.
Linear tail-biting trellises, the square-root bound, and applications for Reed-Muller codes

Linear tail-biting trellises for block codes are considered. By introducing the notions of subtrellis, merging interval, and sub-tail-biting trellis, some structural properties of linear tail-biting trellises are proved. It is shown that a linear tail-biting trellis always has a certain simple structure, the parallel-merged-cosets structure. A necessary condition required from a linear code in order to have a linear tail-biting trellis representation that achieves the square root bound is presented. Finally, the above condition is used to show that for r/spl ges/2 and m/spl ges/4r-1 or r/spl ges/4 and r+3/spl les/m/spl les/[(4r+5)/3] the Reed-Muller code RM(r, m) under any bit order cannot be represented by a linear tail-biting trellis whose state complexity is half of that of the minimal (conventional) trellis for the code under the standard bit order.
Double-Ended Quality Assessment System for Super-Wideband Speech

This paper describes a double-ended quality assessment system for speech with a bandwidth of up to 14 kHz (so-called super-wideband speech). The quality assessment system is based on a combination of local and global features, where the local features are dependent on a time alignment procedure and the global features are not. The system is evaluated over a large set of subjectively scored narrowband, wideband and super-wideband speech databases. The system performs similarly to PESQ for narrowband speech and significantly better for wideband speech.
Confusion of Group-Interest and Self-Interest in Parochial Cooperation on Behalf of a Group

People often sacrifice their self-interest for a group to which they belong, even when outsiders are harmed so that the sacrifice has no net benefit. Two experiments (conducted on the World Wide Web) suggest that people do this, in part, because they think that cooperation on behalf of the group is in their narrow self-interest; they show an enhanced self-interest illusion. One experiment found that the self-interest illusion is related to the enhanced tendency to cooperate on behalf of a group when the insiders' gain is the outsiders' loss. A second experiment found that the illusion (and the resulting parochial cooperation) was reduced when subjects were required to calculate all gains and losses.
Local feature descriptor invariant to monotonic illumination changes

Abstract. This paper presents a monotonic invariant intensity descriptor (MIID) via spectral embedding and nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT). To make the proposed descriptor discriminative, NSCT is used for the construction of multiple support regions. Specifically, the directed graph and the spectral feature vectors of the signless Laplacian matrix are exploited to construct the MIID. We theoretically demonstrate that the proposed descriptor is able to tackle monotonic illumination changes and many other geometric and photometric transformations. We conduct extensive experiments on the standard Oxford dataset and the complex illumination dataset to demonstrate the superiority of proposed descriptor over the existing state-of-the-art descriptors in dealing with image blur, viewpoint changes, illumination changes, and JPEG compression.
A Robust and Light-Weight Routing Mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents a light-weight, dependable routing mechanism for communication between sensor nodes and a base station in a wireless sensor network. This mechanism tolerates failures of random individual nodes in the network or a small part of the network. The mechanism is light weight in the sense that every node does only local routing maintenance, needs to record only its neighbor nodes’ information, and incurs no extra routing overhead during failure-free periods. It dynamically discovers new routes when an intermediate node or a small part of the network in the path from a sensor node to a base station fails.
Differential Clinical Impact of Ascites in Cirrhosis and Idiopathic Portal Hypertension

AbstractCirrhosis and idiopathic portal hypertension (IPH) are 2 major diseases showing portal hypertension. However, characteristics and outcomes of IPH with ascites have not yet been determined. The aim of the study was to examine the influence of ascites on the long-term clinical course of IPH.This observational study compared the long-term clinical findings including portal hemodynamics demonstrated by Doppler ultrasonography between 166 cirrhosis (87 males and 79 females; mean age ± standard deviation, 62.5 ± 11.8 years; age range, 20–89 years) and 14 IPH patients (3 males and 11 females; mean age ± standard deviation, 64.2 ± 6.6 years; age range, 51–78 years). Both groups comprised of consecutive patients from November 2007 through February 2013 and were studied retrospectively. The median observation period was 33.4 months for ascites and 34.5 months for survival.Ascites was detected in 60/166 (36.1%) and 116/166 (69.9%) cirrhosis patients and in 7/14 (50%) and 9/14 (64.3%) IPH patients, at baseline and at the end of the observation period, respectively. The cumulative incidence of ascites was 12.3% at 1 year, 35.9% at 3 years, and 59.9% at 5 years in cirrhosis, and 25% at 3 years, and 50% at 5 years in IPH (P = 0.36). Deterioration of ascites in patients showing mild ascites at baseline was found in 32.4% of cirrhosis patients and 42.9% of IPH patients (P = 0.41). Serum creatinine (mg/dl) at baseline was significantly higher in IPH patients who developed ascites (n = 2, 0.74 ± 0.14) than in those who did not (n = 5, 0.526 ± 0.06, P = 0.029). The overall survival rate appeared to favor IPH (100% at 1 year, 92.9% at 3 and 5 years; P = 0.2) more than cirrhosis (87.7% at 1 year, 75.2% at 3 years, and 63.6% at 5 years), but did not reach statistical significance. However, in patients with ascites at baseline, the survival rate was significantly better in IPH (100% at 1, 3, and 5 years, P = 0.04) than in cirrhosis (69.1% at 1 year, 43% at 3 years, 34.4% at 5 years). The presence of ascites at baseline correlated with worse survival rates in patients with cirrhosis as compared to those with IPH as the underlying etiology.
Evolutionary route planner for unmanned air vehicles

Based on evolutionary computation, a novel real-time route planner for unmanned air vehicles is presented. In the evolutionary route planner, the individual candidates are evaluated with respect to the workspace so that the computation of the configuration space is not required. The planner incorporates domain-specific knowledge, can handle unforeseeable changes of the environment, and take into account different kinds of mission constraints such as minimum route leg length and flying altitude, maximum turning angle, and fixed approach vector to goal position. Furthermore, the novel planner can be used to plan routes both for a single vehicle and for multiple ones. With Digital Terrain Elevation Data, the resultant routes can increase the surviving probability of the vehicles using the terrain masking effect.
P-, E-, and L-Selectin Mediate Migration of Activated CD8+ T Lymphocytes into Inflamed Skin1

P- and E-selectin mediate CD4+ Th1 cell migration into the inflamed skin in a murine contact hypersensitivity model. In this model, not only CD4+ T cells but also CD8+ T cells infiltrate the inflamed skin, and the role of CD8+ type 1 cytotoxic T (Tc1) cells as effector cells has been demonstrated. Here we show that in mice deficient in both P- and E-selectin, the infiltration of CD8+ T cells in the inflamed skin is reduced, suggesting the role of these selectins in CD8+ T cell migration. We directly studied the role of selectins using in vitro-generated Tc1 cells. These cells are able to migrate into the inflamed skin of wild-type mice. This migration is partially mediated by P- and E-selectin, as shown by the reduced Tc1 cell migration into the inflamed skin of mice deficient in both P- and E-selectin or wild-type mice treated with the combination of anti-P-selectin and anti-E-selectin Abs. During P- and E-selectin-mediated migration of Tc1 cells, P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 appears to be the sole ligand for P-selectin and one of the ligands for E-selectin. P- and E-selectin-independent migration of Tc1 cells into the inflamed skin was predominantly mediated by L-selectin. These observations indicate that all three selectins can mediate Tc1 cell migration into the inflamed skin.
Relocalization of Late Blight Resistance Protein R3a to Endosomal Compartments Is Associated with Effector Recognition and Required for the Immune Response[W]

This work examines effector recognition and signaling by NB-LRR resistance protein R3a, finding that recognition of AVR3A involves R3a relocalization to vesicular compartments in the endocytic pathway and attenuation of this relocalization suppressed the resultant hypersensitive cell death response. An important objective of plant–pathogen interactions research is to determine where resistance proteins detect pathogen effectors to mount an immune response. Many nucleotide binding–Leucine-rich repeat (NB-LRR) resistance proteins accumulate in the plant nucleus following effector recognition, where they initiate the hypersensitive response (HR). Here, we show that potato (Solanum tuberosum) resistance protein R3a relocates from the cytoplasm to endosomal compartments only when coexpressed with recognized Phytophthora infestans effector form AVR3aKI and not unrecognized form AVR3aEM. Moreover, AVR3aKI, but not AVR3aEM, is also relocalized to endosomes in the presence of R3a. Both R3a and AVR3aKI colocalized in close physical proximity at endosomes in planta. Treatment with brefeldin A (BFA) or wortmannin, inhibitors of the endocytic cycle, attenuated both the relocalization of R3a to endosomes and the R3a-mediated HR. No such effect of these inhibitors was observed on HRs triggered by the gene-for-gene pairs Rx1/PVX-CP and Sto1/IpiO1. An R3a(D501V) autoactive MHD mutant, which triggered HR in the absence of AVR3aKI, failed to localize to endosomes. Moreover, BFA and wortmannin did not alter cell death triggered by this mutant. We conclude that effector recognition and consequent HR signaling by NB-LRR resistance protein R3a require its relocalization to vesicles in the endocytic pathway.
On the Geometrical Optics (Hagfors' Law) and Physical Optics Approximations for Scattering From Exponentially Correlated Surfaces

High-frequency approximations to the physical optics (PO) theory of scattering from exponentially correlated rough surfaces are examined and used to interpret the expected accuracy of the PO theory. As an introduction, a review of the PO theory for Gaussian-correlated surfaces is provided, and in this process an analytical summation of the PO series for specular scattering from Gaussian-correlated surfaces is obtained. A similar form is then derived for specular scattering from exponentially correlated surfaces and contrasted to the Gaussian case. These series allow the accuracy of the leading order term (i.e., the geometrical optics limit) in the high-frequency approximation of PO scattering for Gaussian or exponentially correlated surfaces to be investigated analytically. The leading order term in the high-frequency expansion for general PO scattering from exponentially correlated surfaces (Hagfors' Law) is then reviewed and interpreted in terms of a recently published theory of PO for surfaces with infinite rms slopes. The approximate ldquocutoffrdquo wavenumber from Hagfors' Law at which the high-frequency portion of the spectrum of an exponentially correlated surface can be truncated without producing large errors in PO predicted scattering is also discussed. Using this cutoff wavenumber, an approximate region of validity of the complete PO theory for exponentially correlated surfaces is obtained. The validity condition indicates that, for fixed surface statistics, the PO method produces accurate predictions of true surface scattering only up to a specific frequency, and that PO is inaccurate in the high-frequency limit. Comparisons of PO predictions with those of a Monte Carlo numerical simulation are used to show that the validity condition derived appears to provide a reasonable indication of PO accuracy. These results have important implications for current investigations of scattering from exponentially correlated surfaces and for the use of Hagfors' Law, as it is traditional to accept PO as the appropriate high-frequency limit in most existing approximate models of surface scattering.