Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Permeation of both cations and anions through a single class of ATP- activated ion channels in developing chick skeletal muscle

Micromolar concentrations of extracellular adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) elicit a rapid excitatory response in developing chick skeletal muscle. Excitation is the result of a simultaneous increase in membrane permeability to sodium, potassium, and chloride ions. In the present study we quantify the selectivity of the ATP response, and provide evidence that a single class of ATP-activated ion channels conducts both cations and anions. Experiments were performed on myoballs using the whole-cell patch-clamp technique. We estimated permeability ratios by measuring the shift in reversal potential when one ion was substituted for another. We found that monovalent cations, divalent cations, and monovalent anions all permeate the membrane during the ATP response, and that there was only moderate selectivity between many of these ions. Calcium was the most permeant ion tested. To determine if ATP activates a single class of channels that conducts both cations and anions, or if ATP activates separate classes of cation and anion channels, we analyzed the fluctuations about the mean current induced by ATP. Ionic conditions were arranged so that the reversal potential for cations was +50 mV and the reversal potential for anions was -50 mV. Under these conditions, if ATP activates a single class of channels, ATP should not evoke an increase in noise at the reversal potential of the ATP current. However, if ATP activates separate classes of cation and anion channels, ATP should evoke a significant increase in noise at the reversal potential of the ATP current. At both +40 and -50 mV ATP elicited a clear increase in noise, but at the reversal potential of the ATP current (-5 mV), no increase in noise above background was seen. These results indicate that there is only a single class of excitatory ATP-activated channels, which do not select by charge. Based on analysis of the noise spectrum, the conductance of individual channels is estimated to be 0.2-0.4 pS.
Bayesian Cue Integration as a Developmental Outcome of Reward Mediated Learning

Average human behavior in cue combination tasks is well predicted by Bayesian inference models. As this capability is acquired over developmental timescales, the question arises, how it is learned. Here we investigated whether reward dependent learning, that is well established at the computational, behavioral, and neuronal levels, could contribute to this development. It is shown that a model free reinforcement learning algorithm can indeed learn to do cue integration, i.e. weight uncertain cues according to their respective reliabilities and even do so if reliabilities are changing. We also consider the case of causal inference where multimodal signals can originate from one or multiple separate objects and should not always be integrated. In this case, the learner is shown to develop a behavior that is closest to Bayesian model averaging. We conclude that reward mediated learning could be a driving force for the development of cue integration and causal inference.
Dung beetle database: comparison with other invertebrate transcriptomes

The dung beetle E. intermedius, a member of the highly diverse order, Coleoptera has immense economic benefits. It was estimated that insect ecological services in the United States amounted to some $60 billion in 2006 with dung beetles being major contributors. E. intermedius may be endowed with a robust immune system given its microbe-rich habitat. Dung beetles live on juice and microbes from the dung and are therefore, potential models for the study of infectious agents and ecological damage. The E. intermedius database is a web-based system for the genome and transcriptome of the dung beetle. The database will be expanded to include differentially expressed genes in response o various stresses especially infectious agents such as fungi, bacteria and viruses. Availability The dung beetle transcriptome database is freely available at http://flylab.wits. ac.za/
Information Retrieval: Searching in the 21st Century; Human Information Retrieval

The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991 in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co. affirmed originality as a constitutional requirement for copyright. Originality has a specific sense and is constituted by a minimal degree of creativity and independent creation. The not original is the more developed concept within the decision. It includes the absence of a minimal degree of creativity as a major constituent. Different levels of absence of creativity also are distinguished, from the extreme absence of creativity to insufficient creativity. There is a gestalt effect of analogy between the delineation of the not original and the concept of computability. More specific correlations can be found within the extreme absence of creativity. “[S]o mechanical” in the decision can be correlated with an automatic mechanical procedure and clauses with a historical resonance with understandings of computability as what would naturally be regarded as computable. The routine within the extreme absence of creativity can be regarded as the product of a computational process. The concern of this article is with rigorously establishing an understanding of the extreme absence of creativity, primarily through the correlations with aspects of computability. The understanding established is consistent with the other elements of the not original. It also revealed as testable under real-world conditions. The possibilities for understanding insufficient creativity, a minimal degree of creativity, and originality, from the understanding developed of the extreme absence of creativity, are indicated. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Background and Foreground Knowledge in Dynamic Ontology Construction: Viewing Text as Knowledge Maintenance

Ontologies have become a key component in the Semantic Web and Knowledge management. One accepted goal is to construct ontologies from a domain specific set of texts. An ontology reflects the background knowledge used in writing and reading a text. However, a text is an act of knowledge maintenance, in that it re-enforces the background assumptions, alters links and associations in the ontology, and adds new concepts. This means that background knowledge is rarely expressed in a machine interpretable manner. When it is, it is usually in the conceptual boundaries of the domain, e.g. in textbooks or when ideas are borrowed into other domains. We argue that a partial solution to this lies in searching external resources such as specialized glossaries and the internet. We show that a random selection of concept pairs from the Gene Ontology do not occur in a relevant corpus of texts from the journal Nature. In contrast, a significant proportion can be found on the internet. Thus, we conclude that sources external to the domain corpus are necessary for the automatic construction of ontologies.
Attitudes and Beliefs Among Mexican Americans About Type 2 Diabetes

Hispanics in the United States have a disproportionately high risk for non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (type 2 diabetes) compared with non-Hispanic whites. Little is known of the attitudes and beliefs about diabetes in this group. Using data from six focus groups of 42 Mexican Americans (14 men and 28 women), we characterized perceptions about the causes of and treatments for type 2 diabetes. Many participants believed diabetes is caused by having a family history of the disease, eating a diet high in fat or sugar, and engaging in minimal exercise. Experiencing strong emotions such as fright (susto), intense anger (coraje), or sadness and depression (tristeza) was also thought to precipitate diabetes. Nearly all participants expressed the belief that it is important to follow doctors' recommendations for diet and exercise, oral medication or insulin; many also cited herbal therapies, such as prickly pear cactus (nopal) and aloe vera (savila) as effective treatments. These findings may be useful in designing interventions to reduce the burden of diabetes in Hispanic populations.
Competence Centered Specialization in Web Engineering Topics in a Software Engineering Masters Degree Programme

Web applications and Web-based systems are becoming increasingly complex as a result of either customer requests or technology evolution which has eased other aspects of software engineering. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for highly skilled software engineers able to build and also advance the systems on the one hand as well as professionals who are able to evaluate their effectiveness on the other hand. With this idea in mind, the computer science department at Aalborg University is continuously working on improvements in its specialization in web engineering topics as well as on general competence based web engineering profiles offered also for those who specialize in other areas of software engineering. We describe the current state of the art and our experience with a web engineering curriculum within the software engineering masters degree programme. We also discuss an evolution of topics and problems students are working on while learning web engi-
Uterine metastases in ovarian carcinoma: frequency and survival in women who underwent hysterectomy.

OBJECTIVE Possible reasons for hysterectomy in the initial surgical management of advanced invasive epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) might be a high frequency of uterine involvement and its impact on survival. The aim of the present study was to describe the frequency of uterine involvement and its association with survival in an unselected population of EOC patients who underwent hysterectomy. METHODS All incident cases of EOC diagnosed in Israeli Jewish women between March 1994 to June 1999, were identified within the framework of a nationwide case-control epidemiological study. The target population of the present report includes all stage II-IV EOC patients who had a uterus at the time of diagnosis. Of the 822 such patients, 695 fulfilled the inclusion criterion. Excluded were 141 patients for various reasons. The present analysis is based on the remaining 554 patients. RESULTS Uterine involvement was present in 291 (52.5%) of the patients and it was macroscopic in only 78 (14.1%). The serosa was the most common site of isolated metastases. Multivariate analysis showed that advanced stage significantly increased the risk for uterine involvement. The overall median survival with any uterine involvement was significantly lower compared to those with no involvement (38.9 months vs. 58.0 months; p<0.001). CONCLUSION There is an association between uterine involvement, whether macro- or microscopic, and lower survival even after hysterectomy although residual tumor could not be included in the analysis. Further studies are required to establish whether uterine involvement itself is an unfavorable risk factor or merely a marker of other unfavorable prognostic factors.
Forty Years of Antipsychotic Drug Research – from Haloperidol to Paliperidone – with Dr. Paul Janssen

Abstract The authors describe 40 years of antipsychotic drug research with Dr. Paul Janssen, which they have witnessed for a large part from first hand experience. The article describes the start of the Janssen Research and its early successes with antispasmodics and analgesics. The discovery of haloperidol followed from a serendipitous transition from analgesics to antip-sychotics and culminated with the historical International Symposium on Halo-peridol that was held in Beerse (Belgium) in 1959. The concept of the central role of dopamine receptor binding in schizophrenia has played a decisive part in focusing the Janssen Research on antipsy-chotics. Paul Janssen did not rest with haloperidol (CAS 52-68-8), but expanded it into the family of butyrophenone an-tipsychotics, using Haase‧s handwriting test to clinically characterize the analogues. The emerging significance of serotonin antagonism in schizophrenia is discussed in the light of the discovery of pi-pamperone (CAS 1893-33-0), a forerunner of the modern so-called atypical neu-roleptics. Continued research produced a novel chemical family of neuroleptics, exemplified by pimozide (CAS 2062-78-4) and fluspirilene (CAS 1841-19-6), and yielded selective serotonin 5HT2-antago-nists. This research ultimately led to the discovery of risperidone (CAS 106266-06-2) and paliperidone (CAS 144598-75-4), compounds with inbuilt dopamine and serotonin antagonism. The authors discuss the lack of inhibition as a common trait of stereotyped behaviour in schizophrenia and the means of determining it by means of a computerized version of Bente’s button press test. Finally the appropriate use of antipsychotics for optimal therapeutic result with minimal side effects is advocated.
Type Iγ phosphatidylinositol phosphate kinase modulates adherens junction and E-cadherin trafficking via a direct interaction with μ1B adaptin

Assembly of E-cadherin–based adherens junctions (AJ) is obligatory for establishment of polarized epithelia and plays a key role in repressing the invasiveness of many carcinomas. Here we show that type Iγ phosphatidylinositol phosphate kinase (PIPKIγ) directly binds to E-cadherin and modulates E-cadherin trafficking. PIPKIγ also interacts with the μ subunits of clathrin adaptor protein (AP) complexes and acts as a signalling scaffold that links AP complexes to E-cadherin. Depletion of PIPKIγ or disruption of PIPKIγ binding to either E-cadherin or AP complexes results in defects in E-cadherin transport and blocks AJ assembly. An E-cadherin germline mutation that loses PIPKIγ binding and shows disrupted basolateral membrane targeting no longer forms AJs and leads to hereditary gastric cancers. These combined results reveal a novel mechanism where PIPKIγ serves as both a scaffold, which links E-cadherin to AP complexes and the trafficking machinery, and a regulator of trafficking events via the spatial generation of phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate.
Organization of the SUC gene family in Saccharomyces

The SUC gene family of yeast (Saccharomyces) includes six structural genes for invertase (SUC1 through SUC5 and SUC7) found at unlinked chromosomal loci. A given yeast strain does not usually carry SUC+ alleles at all six loci; the natural negative alleles are called suc0 alleles. Cloned SUC2 DNA probes were used to investigate the physical structure of the SUC gene family in laboratory strains, commercial wine strains, and different Saccharomyces species. The active SUC+ genes are homologous. The suc0 allele at the SUC2 locus (suc2(0) in some strains is a silent gene or pseudogene. Other SUC loci carrying suc0 alleles appear to lack SUC DNA sequences. These findings imply that SUC genes have transposed to different chromosomal locations in closely related Saccharomyces strains.
Lecture Notes on Monte Carlo Methods

Variance reduction is the search for alternative and more accurate estimators of a given quantity. The possibility of variance reduction is what separates Monte Carlo from direct simulation. Simple variance reduction methods often are remarkably effective and easy to implement. It is good to think about them as you wait for a long Monte Carlo computation to finish. In some applications, such as rare event simulation and quantum chemistry, they make practicle what would be impossible otherwise. Most advanced Monte Carlo is some kind of variance reduction. Among the many variance reduction techniques, which may be used in combination, are control variates, partial integration, systematic sampling, reweighting, and importance sampling. The method of control variates is useful when a crude version of the problem can be solved explicitly. This is often the case in simple problems (possibly the definition of “simple”) such pricing problems in quantitative finance where the crude solvable version could be Black Scholes. Partial integration, also called Rao Blackwellization lowers variance by replacing integrals over come variables or over parts of space by their averages. Systematic sampling methods range from the simplest, antithetic variates, to the slightly more sophisticated stratified sampling, to quasi Monte Carlo integration. Re-weighting means giving different weight to different samples. They serve many functions in Monte Carlo, one being to choose weights so that certain known functions give the exact answer. Importance sampling has appeared already as sampling with a weight function. It also is the basis of reweighting and score function strategies for sensitivity analysis. Methods for rare event sampling mostly use importance functions, often suggested by the mathematical theory of large deviations.
Participation in a mentored quality-improvement program for insulin pen safety: Opportunity to augment internal evaluation and share with peers.

PURPOSE UF Health's participation in a mentored quality-improvement impact program for health professionals as part of an ASHP initiative-"Strategies for Ensuring the Safe Use of Insulin Pens in the Hospital"-is described. SUMMARY ASHP invited hospitals to participate in its initiative at a time when UF Health was evaluating the risks and benefits of insulin pen use due to external reports of safety concerns and making a commitment to continue insulin pen use and optimize safeguards. Improvement opportunities in insulin pen best practices and staff education on insulin pen preparation and injection technique were identified and implemented. The storage of insulin pens for patients with contact isolation precautions was identified as a problem in certain patient care areas, and a practical solution was devised. Other process improvements included implementation of barcode medication administration, with scanning of insulin pens designated for specific patients to avoid inadvertent and intentional sharing of pens among multiple patients. Mentored calls with teams at other hospitals conducted as part of the program provided the opportunity to share experiences and solutions to improve insulin pen use. CONCLUSION Participating with a knowledgeable mentor and other hospital teams struggling with the same issues and concerns related to safe insulin pen use facilitated problem solving. Discussing challenges and sharing ideas for solutions to safety concerns with other hospitals identified new process enhancements, which have the potential to improve the safety of insulin pen use at UF Health.
Evaluation of flow cytometric panel reactive antibody in renal transplant recipients – examination of 238 cases of renal transplantation

In Japan, the complement‐dependent cytotoxicity (CDC‐crossmatch) test and the anti‐donor antibody flow cytometric assay (FCXM) are used to evaluate presensitization among transplantation candidates. We introduced the flow cytometric panel reactive antibody method (FlowPRA) at our institution, and in this paper, we compared the results of FCXM and FlowPRA. Sera of a total of 238 patients receiving the first graft were analyzed by FlowPRA retrospectively. Specimens from 125 of these patients were also analyzed by FCXM, and the results obtained using the two methods were compared. In addition, postoperative pathological findings by graft biopsy were examined in patients with PRA class 1(+) or PRA class 2(+). (i) Class 1 antibodies were detected in 36 of the 238 patients (15%), class 2 antibodies in six patients (3%), and both class 1 and class 2 antibodies in five patients (2%). (ii) Totally 125 patients analyzed by both FCXM and FlowPRA, 28 patients (22%) who tested negative by FCXM were, however, found to be positive by FlowPRA, and 16 of these 28 patients (57%) had shown evidence of humoral rejection suspected of antibody‐mediated in the early postoperative stage. A large proportion of patients who tested negative by FCXM but positive by FlowPRA experienced rejection. Thus, for detecting ‘high responders’ in patients receiving the first graft, use of FlowPRA to detect antibodies may be superior to that of FCXM.
Multicore processors bring innovation to medical imaging

At a time when the cost of health care has received unprecedented scrutiny, advances in processor technology for medical imaging equipment have become a bright spot on a darkening horizon of escalating costs. Specifically, the need for more portable, lower power and cost-efficient medical imaging systems that don’t compromise imaging quality plays into the strengths of systems with multiple processing engines, each dedicated to tasks that best suit its abilities.
Avoiding risky sex partners: perception of partners’ risks v partners’ self reported risks

Background: Key strategies advocated for lowering personal risk of sexual exposure to STD/HIV include having fewer partners and avoiding risky partners. However, few studies have systematically examined how well people can actually discern their sex partners’ risk behaviours. Methods: We conducted face to face interviews with 151 heterosexual patients with gonorrhoea or chlamydial infection and 189 of their sex partners. Interviews examined the patients’ perceptions of their sex partners’ sociodemographic characteristics and risk behaviours. Patients’ perceptions of partners were then sociometrically compared for agreement with partner self reports, using the kappa statistic for discrete variables and concordance correlation for continuous variables. Results: Agreement was highest for perceived partner age, race/ethnicity, and duration of sexual partnership; and lowest for knowledge of partner’s work in commercial sex, number of other sex partners, and for perceived quality of communication within the partnership. Index patients commonly underestimated or overestimated partners’ risk characteristics. Reported condom use was infrequent and inconsistent within partnerships. Conclusion: Among people with gonorrhoea or chlamydial infection, patients’ perceptions of partners’ risk behaviours often disagreed with the partners’ self reports. Formative research should guide development and evaluation of interventions to enhance sexual health communication within partnerships and within social networks, as a potential harm reduction strategy to foster healthier partnerships.
Channel-based spoofing detection in frequency-selective rayleigh channels

The radio channel response decorrelates rapidly as the transmitter changes location in an environment with rich scatterers and reflectors. Based on this fact, a channel-based authentication scheme was previously proposed to discriminate between transmitters at different locations, and thus to detect spoofing attacks in wireless networks. In this paper, we study its application in frequency-selective Rayleigh channels, considering channel time variations due to environmental changes and terminal mobility, as well as the channel estimation errors due to the interference from other radios. We propose a generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) that is optimal but computationally cumbersome, and a simplified version that requires no a priori knowledge of channel parameters and is therefore more practical. We verify the efficacy of the channel-based spoofing detectors via numerical analysis, showing how performance is improved by using multiple antennas, higher transmit power, and wider system bandwidth. We show that, under a wide variety of practical conditions, spoofing can be detected with better than 90% probability while keeping the probability of falsely rejecting valid transmissions below 10%.