Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of body mass index on cerebellar tonsil position in healthy subjects and patients with Chiari malformation.

OBJECT It is unclear if there is a relationship between Chiari malformation Type I (CM-I) and body mass index (BMI). The aim of this study was to identify the relationship between BMI and cerebellar tonsil position in a random sample of people. METHODS Cerebellar tonsil position in 2400 subjects from a cohort of patients undergoing MRI was measured. Three hundred patients were randomly selected from each of 8 age groups (from 0 to 80 years). A subject was then excluded if he or she had a posterior fossa mass or previous posterior fossa decompression or if height and weight information within 1 year of MRI was not recorded in the electronic medical record. RESULTS There were 1310 subjects (54.6%) with BMI records from within 1 year of the measured scan. Of these subjects, 534 (40.8%) were male and 776 (59.2%) were female. The average BMI of the group was 26.4 kg/m(2), and the average tonsil position was 0.87 mm above the level of the foramen magnum. There were 46 subjects (3.5%) with a tonsil position ≥ 5 mm below the level of the foramen magnum. In the group as a whole, there was no correlation (R(2) = 0.004) between BMI and cerebellar tonsil position. CONCLUSIONS In this examination of 1310 subjects undergoing MRI for any reason, there was no relationship between BMI and the level of the cerebellar tonsils or the diagnosis of CM-I on imaging.
Spindle Checkpoint Protein Xmad1 Recruits Xmad2 to Unattached Kinetochores

The spindle checkpoint prevents the metaphase to anaphase transition in cells containing defects in the mitotic spindle or in chromosome attachment to the spindle. When the checkpoint protein Xmad2 is depleted from Xenopus egg extracts, adding Xmad2 to its endogenous concentration fails to restore the checkpoint, suggesting that other checkpoint component(s) were depleted from the extract through their association with Xmad2. Mass spectrometry provided peptide sequences from an 85-kD protein that coimmunoprecipitates with Xmad2 from egg extracts. This information was used to clone XMAD1, which encodes a homologue of the budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) checkpoint protein Mad1. Xmad1 is essential for establishing and maintaining the spindle checkpoint in egg extracts. Like Xmad2, Xmad1 localizes to the nuclear envelope and the nucleus during interphase, and to those kinetochores that are not bound to spindle microtubules during mitosis. Adding an anti-Xmad1 antibody to egg extracts inactivates the checkpoint and prevents Xmad2 from localizing to unbound kinetochores. In the presence of excess Xmad2, neither chromosomes nor Xmad1 are required to activate the spindle checkpoint, suggesting that the physiological role of Xmad1 is to recruit Xmad2 to kinetochores that have not bound microtubules.
Survival of acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction with total occlusion of the left main coronary artery

This image demonstrates the survival of a patient with total acute occlusion of the left main stem, which was treated by primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Before the patient was referred to the emergency room, she had already suffered from chest pain for about 11 h. Remarkably, the patient survived the acute myocardial infarction despite extreme myocardial necrosis of >60% of the left ventricle as demonstrated by delayed enhancement MRI. The attached images show angiography before and after PCI, the impressive initial ECG and delayed enhanced MRI with mainly transmural contrast enhancement.
Efferent neurons and suspected interneurons in binocular visual cortex of the awake rabbit: receptive fields and binocular properties.

1. In fully awake rabbits the stability of the two eyes was monitored and was sufficient to enable receptive-field analysis of antidromically identified efferent neurons and suspected interneurons in the binocular segment of visual area 1. Efferent neurons analyzed included callosal efferent neurons (CC neurons, n = 52), neurons projecting to visual area 2 (CV2 neurons, n = 35), corticotectal neurons (CT neurons, n = 43), and corticogeniculate neurons (CG neurons, n = 51). Six additional neurons projected a branching axon to both the corpus callosum and visual area 2. 2. Most CC and CV2 neurons were found in layer 2-3 and had receptive fields of the simple type. Only two corticocortical neurons with complex receptive fields were found. Orientation tuning ranges of CC and CV2 simple cells were similar and end stopping was prevalent in both CC (62%) and CV2 (45%) neurons. Axonal conduction velocities of CC and CV2 neurons were low (mean = 3.5 and 1.4 m/s, respectively) and visually nonresponsive CC neurons (19%) had conduction velocities that were significantly lower than visually responsive neurons. Spontaneous firing rates of corticocortical neurons were low (mean less than 1 spike/s) and these neurons responded to a lower range of stimulus velocities than did corticofugal neurons. 3. Most CG neurons had simple receptive fields and none had a complex field. Orientation tuning ranges of these neurons were comparable to those of CC and CV2 neurons, but a significantly smaller proportion (12%) were end stopped. Both spontaneous firing rates (mean = less than 1 spike/s) and axonal conduction velocities (mean = 2.4 m/s) of CG neurons were low and, as was found for CC neurons, visually nonresponsive CG neurons (25%) had significantly lower conduction velocities than did visually responsive neurons. 4. CT neurons had receptive fields that were predominantly complex (37%), motion/uniform (28%), or simple (26%). Conduction velocities (mean = 10.9 m/s) and spontaneous firing rates (mean = 7 spikes/s) of CT neurons of all receptive-field types were much higher than those of CC, CV2, and CG neurons. 5. An additional class of neurons was studied that responded synaptically at a short latency to electrical stimulation of the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGNd) with a burst of three or more spikes at frequencies of 600-900 Hz. These neurons showed a high degree of synaptic convergence, also responding synaptically with a high-frequency burst of spikes to stimulation of both visual area 2 and the corpus callosum. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Phylogenetic history underlies elevational biodiversity patterns in tropical salamanders

Elevational variation in species richness is ubiquitous and important for conservation, but remains poorly explained. Numerous studies have documented higher species richness at mid-elevations, but none have addressed the underlying evolutionary and biogeographic processes that ultimately explain this pattern (i.e. speciation, extinction and dispersal). Here, we address the evolutionary causes of the mid-elevational diversity hump in the most species-rich clade of salamanders, the tropical bolitoglossine plethodontids. We present a new phylogeny for the group based on DNA sequences from all 13 genera and 137 species. Using this phylogeny, we find no relationship between rates of diversification of clades and their elevational distribution, and no evidence for a rapid ‘species pump’ in tropical montane regions. Instead, we find a strong relationship between the number of species in each elevational zone and the estimated time when each elevational band was first colonized. Mid-elevation habitats were colonized early in the phylogenetic history of bolitoglossines, and given similar rates of diversification across elevations, more species have accumulated in the elevational zones that were inhabited the longest. This pattern may be widespread and suggests that mid-elevation habitats may not only harbour more species, but may also contain more phylogenetic diversity than other habitats within a region.
Evaluation of horse urine sample preparation methods for metabolomics using LC coupled to HRMS.

BACKGROUND Horse urine is the medium of choice for the implementation of metabolomic approaches aimed at improving horse doping control. However, drug analysis in this biofluid is a challenging task due to the presence of large amounts of interfering compounds. METHODOLOGY & RESULTS: A comparative study of sample preparation has been conducted to evaluate five sample-preparation methods, namely acetonitrile precipitation, proteinase K hydrolysis, membrane filtration and sample dilution with water by factors of five and 20, for metabolome analysis using liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry. Assessment was performed at both global and targeted levels, by using a few thousand features obtained from peak detection software, and internal standards and 100 annotated or identified metabolites. CONCLUSION By considering the number of detected signals, their intensity and their detection repeatability, acetonitrile precipitation was selected as the most efficient sample-preparation method for the analysis of horse urine metabolome in liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry conditions.
Principles of Extractive Metallurgy

Extractive metallurgy as a discipline deals with the ext-raction of metals from naturally occurring and man made resources. Separation is the essence of metal extraction. Development of efficient separation schemes calls for a through understanding of extractive metallurgy principles in terms of physical chemistry (thermodynamics & kine-tics); materials and energy flow/balance, transport phenomena, reactor and reactor engineering, instrumen-tation and process control, and environment and waste management.
Leveraging Task-Speciﬁc Pre-Training to Reason across Images and Videos

We explore the task of Reasoning Across Images and Video (RAIV), which requires models to reason on a pair of visual inputs comprising various combinations of images and/or videos. Previous work in this area has been limited to image pairs focusing primarily on the existence and/or cardinality of objects. To address this, we leverage existing datasets with rich annotations to generate semantically meaningful queries about actions, objects, and their relationships. We introduce new datasets that encompass visually similar inputs, reasoning over images, across images and videos, or across videos. Recognizing the distinct nature of RAIV compared to existing pre-training objectives which work on single image-text pairs, we explore task-speciﬁc pre-training, wherein a pre-trained model is trained on an objective similar to downstream tasks without utilizing ﬁne-tuning datasets. Experiments with several state-of-the-art pre-trained image-language models reveal that task-speciﬁc pre-training signiﬁcantly enhances performance on downstream datasets, even in the absence of additional pre-training data. We provide further ablative studies to guide future work.
Propranolol reduces reference-dependence in intertemporal choice

Abstract In intertemporal choices between immediate and delayed rewards, people tend to prefer immediate rewards, often even when the delayed reward is larger. This is known as temporal discounting. It has been proposed that this tendency emerges because immediate rewards are more emotionally arousing than delayed rewards. However, in our previous research, we found no evidence for this but instead found that arousal responses (indexed with pupil dilation) in intertemporal choice are context-dependent. Specifically, arousal tracks the subjective value of the more variable reward option in the paradigm, whether it is immediate or delayed. Nevertheless, people tend to choose the less variable option in the choice task. In other words, their choices are reference-dependent and depend on variance in their recent history of offers. This suggests that there may be a causal relationship between reference-dependent choice and arousal, which we investigate here by reducing arousal pharmacologically using propranolol. Here, we show that propranolol reduces reference-dependence, leading to choices that are less influenced by recent history and more internally consistent.
Finding news curators in twitter

Users interact with online news in many ways, one of them being sharing content through online social networking sites such as Twitter. There is a small but important group of users that devote a substantial amount of effort and care to this activity. These users monitor a large variety of sources on a topic or around a story, carefully select interesting material on this topic, and disseminate it to an interested audience ranging from thousands to millions. These users are news curators, and are the main subject of study of this paper. We adopt the perspective of a journalist or news editor who wants to discover news curators among the audience engaged with a news site. We look at the users who shared a news story on Twitter and attempt to identify news curators who may provide more information related to that story. In this paper we describe how to find this specific class of curators, which we refer to as news story curators. Hence, we proceed to compute a set of features for each user, and demonstrate that they can be used to automatically find relevant curators among the audience of two large news organizations.
Overexpression of the Candida albicans ALA1 Gene in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Results in Aggregation following Attachment of Yeast Cells to Extracellular Matrix Proteins, Adherence Properties Similar to Those of Candida albicans

ABSTRACT Candida albicans maintains a commensal relationship with human hosts, probably by adhering to mucosal tissue in a variety of physiological conditions. We show that adherence due to the C. albicans gene ALA1 when transformed intoSaccharomyces cerevisiae, is comprised of two sequential steps. Initially, C. albicans rapidly attaches to extracellular matrix (ECM) protein-coated magnetic beads in small numbers (the attachment phase). This is followed by a relatively slower step in which cell-to-cell interactions predominate (the aggregation phase). Neither of these phases is observed in S. cerevisiae. However, expression of the C. albicans ALA1 gene from a low-copy vector causes S. cerevisiaetransformants to attach to ECM-coated magnetic beads without appreciable aggregation. Expression of ALA1 from a high-copy vector results in both attachment and aggregation. Moreover, transcriptional fusion of ALA1 with the galactose-inducible promoters GALS, GALL, and GAL1, allowing for low, moderate, and high levels of inducible transcription, respectively, causes attachment and aggregation that correlates with the strength of the GAL promoter. The adherence of C. albicans and S. cerevisiaeoverexpressing ALA1 to a number of protein ligands occurs over a broad pH range, is resistant to shear forces generated by vortexing, and is unaffected by the presence of sugars, high salt levels, free ligands, or detergents. Adherence is, however, inhibited by agents that disrupt hydrogen bonds. The similarities in the adherence and aggregation properties of C. albicans andS. cerevisiae overexpressing ALA1 suggest a role in adherence and aggregation for ALA1 andALA1-like genes in C. albicans.
Ecological drivers and habitat associations of estuarine bivalves

Community composition of the infaunal bivalve fauna of the St. Lucie Estuary and southern Indian River Lagoon, eastern Florida was sampled quarterly for 10 years as part of a long-term benthic monitoring program. A total of 38,514 bivalves of 137 taxa were collected and identified. We utilized this data, along with sediment samples and environmental measurements gathered concurrently, to assess the community composition, distribution, and ecological drivers of the infaunal bivalves of this estuary system. Salinity had the strongest influence on bivalve assemblage across the 15 sites, superseding the influences of sediment type, water turbidity, temperature and other environmental parameters. The greatest diversity was found in higher salinity euhaline sites, while the greatest abundance of individual bivalves was found in medium salinity mixohaline sites, the lowest diversity and abundances were found in the low salinity oligohaline sites, demonstrating a strong positive association between salinity and diversity/abundance. Water management decisions for the estuary should incorporate understanding of the role of salinity on bivalve diversity, abundance, and ecosystem function.
Is Depth of Inheritance Tree a Good Cost Prediction for Branch Coverage Testing?

Abstract—Depth of Inheritance Tree (DIT) is supposed to be a factor influencing the cost of testing: test would be more expensive if DIT is large. A question is thus to know whether DIT can be used as a predictive metric to estimate the cost of testing. In this paper, we consider the cost of testing as the number of test cases required to achieve the branch coverage, which is a classical criterion for structural testing, and which is given by McCabe’s Cyclomatic Complexity metric. We analyzed 25 applications to identify if the DIT is good test cost indicator. This paper shows that DITA is too abstract to be really relevant to predict the cost of testing.
Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Coronary Heart Disease Risk Factors: The LDS Hospital Fitness Institute Cohort

BackgroundCardiorespiratory fitness is favorably associated with most modifiable coronary heart disease (CHD) risk factors. Findings are limited, however, by few data for women, persons with existing CHD, and low-risk populations. In the present study, we described cross-sectional associations between cardiorespiratory fitness and CHD risk factors in a large cohort of middle-aged men and women, of whom the majority were LDS Church members (Mormons), with and without existing CHD. Methods and ResultsComprehensive health examinations were performed on 3232 men (age 45.9±10.8 years) and 1128 women (age 43.8±12.8 years) between 1975 and 1997. Maximal treadmill exercise testing was used to categorize those with (12% of the men and 10% of the women) and those without CHD into age- and sex-specific cardiorespiratory fitness quintiles. After adjustments for age, body fat, smoking status, and family history of CHD, favorable associations were observed between fitness and most CHD risk factors among men and women, regardless of CHD status. ConclusionsThese data indicate that enhanced levels of cardiorespiratory fitness may confer resistance to elevations in CHD risk factors even in a low-risk sample of middle-aged men and women. Furthermore, these findings reinforce current public health recommendations that advocate increased national levels of physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness for primary and secondary CHD prevention.
Snake Robot with Motion Based on Shape Memory Alloy Spring-Shaped Actuators

This study presents the design and evaluation of a prototype snake-like robot that possesses an actuation system based on shape memory alloys (SMAs). The device is constructed based on a modular structure of links connected by two degrees of freedom links utilizing Cardan joints, where each degree of freedom is actuated by an agonist–antagonist mechanism using the SMA spring-shaped actuators to generate motion, which can be easily replaced once they reach a degradation point. The methodology for programming the spring shape into the SMA material is described in this work, as well as the instrumentation required for the monitoring and control of the actuators. A simplified design is presented to describe the way in which the motion is performed and the technical difficulties faced in manufacturing. Based on this information, the way in which the design is adapted to generate a feasible robotic system is described, and a mathematical model for the robot is developed to implement an independent joint controller. The feasibility of the implementation of the SMA actuators regarding the motion of the links is verified for the case of a joint, and the change in the shape of the snake robot is verified through the implementation of a set of tracking references based on a central pattern generator. The generated tracking results confirm the feasibility of the proposed mechanism in terms of performing snake gaits, as well as highlighting some of the drawbacks that should be considered in further studies.
Selenophosphate synthetase 2 is essential for selenoprotein biosynthesis

Selenophosphate synthetase (SelD) generates the selenium donor for selenocysteine tRNA biosynthesis in E. coli. One homolog of SelD in eukaryotes is selenophosphate synthetase 1 (SPS1). A second selenophosphate synthetase (SPS2) was also previously identified and it is a selenoprotein in mammals. Knockdown of SPS2 in NIH3T3 cells using RNAi technology showed that selenoprotein biosynthesis was severely impaired, while knockdown of SPS1 had no effect. In vitro, ATP hydrolysis to AMP in the presence of selenium was much more efficient with SPS2 than E. coli SelD, while such activity of mouse SPS1 was not dependent on selenium. These studies indicated that SPS2 provides the active selenium donor for selenocysteine biosynthesis in mammals and SPS1 has a separate function in Sec biosynthesis.
Active Tectonics of the North Chilean Marine Forearc and Adjacent Oceanic Nazca Plate

New multibeam bathymetry allows an unprecedented view of the tectonic regime and its along‐strike heterogeneity of the North Chilean marine forearc and the oceanic Nazca Plate between 19 and 22.75°S. Combining bathymetric and backscatter information from the multibeam data with subbottom profiler and published and previously unpublished legacy seismic reflection lines, we derive a tectonic map. The new map reveals a middle and upper slope configuration dominated by pervasive extensional faulting, with some faults outlining a >500‐km‐long ridge that may represent the remnants of a Jurassic or pre‐Jurassic magmatic arc. Lower slope deformation is more variable and includes slope‐failures, normal faulting, re‐entrant embayments, and NW‐SE trending anticlines and synclines. This complex pattern likely results from the combination of subducting lower‐plate topography, gravitational forearc collapse, and the accumulation of permanent deformation over multiple earthquake cycles. We find little evidence for widespread fluid seepage despite a highly faulted upper‐plate. An explanation could be a lack of fluid sources due to the sediment starved nature of the trench and most of the upper‐plate in vicinity of the hyperarid Atacama Desert. Changes in forearc architecture partly correlate to structural variations of the oceanic Nazca Plate, which is dominated by the spreading‐related abyssal hill fabric and is regionally overprinted by the Iquique Ridge. The ridge collides with the forearc around 20–21°S. South of the ridge‐forearc intersection, bending‐related horst‐and‐grabens result in vertical seafloor offsets of hundreds of meters. To the north, plate‐bending is accommodated by reactivation of the paleo‐spreading fabric and new horst‐and‐grabens do not develop.