Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Membrane nanotubes induced by aqueous phase separation and stabilized by spontaneous curvature

Tubular membrane structures are widespread in eukaryotic cells, but the mechanisms underlying their formation and stability are not well understood. Previous work has focused on tube extrusion from cells and model membranes under the application of external forces. Here, we present novel membrane/polymer systems, where stable tubes form in the absence of externally applied forces. Solutions of two water-soluble polymers, polyethylene glycol and dextran, were encapsulated in giant lipid vesicles, cell-size model systems. Hypertonic deflation induced phase separation of the enclosed solution. The excess membrane area created during the deflation process was stored in a large number of membrane nanotubes inside the vesicle. The tubes had a diameter below optical resolution and became visible only when fluorescently labeled. The tubes were rather stable: In the absence of external forces, they existed for several days. A theoretical analysis of the shapes of the deflated vesicles reveals that these shapes would be unstable if the membranes had no spontaneous curvature. Using the large separation of length scales between the tube diameter and the overall size of the vesicles, the spontaneous curvature can be calculated and is found to be about -1/(240 nm) for a certain range of polymer concentrations. The nanotubes could also be retracted back into the mother vesicle by increasing the membrane tension via micropipette aspiration of the vesicle. Membrane tubes, which can form and be retracted easily, should be relevant for lipid storage in cells.
Cortical organization: A plea for better understanding, clearer definition, and more correct use of the term “column”

of the original article: Posterior parietal cortex has traditionally been considered to be a sensory association area in which higher-order processing and intcrmodal integration of incoming sensory information occurs. In this paper, evidence from clinical reports and from lesion and bchavioral-electrophysiological experiments using monkeys is reviewed and discussed in relation to the overall functional organization of posterior parietal association cortex, and particularly with respect to a proposed posterior parietal mechanism concerned with the initiation and control of certain classes of eye and limb movements. Preliminary data from studies of the effects of posterior parietal lesions on oculomotor control in monkeys are reported. The behavioral effects of lesions of posterior parietal cortex in monkeys have been found to be similar to those which follow analogous damage of the minor hemisphere in humans, while behavioral-electrophysiological experiments have disclosed classes of neurons in this area which have functional properties closely related to the behavioral acts that are disrupted by lesions of the area. On the basis of current data from these areas of study, it is proposed that the sensory association model of posterior parietal function is inadequate to account for the complexities of the present evidence. Instead, it now appears that many diverse neural mechanisms are located in part in parietal cortex, that some of these mechanisms are involved in sensory processing and perceptual functions, but that others participate in motor control, and that still others are involved in attentional, motivational, or emotional processes. It is further proposed that the elementary units of these various neural mechanisms are distributed within posterior parietal cortex according to the columnar hypothesis of Mountcastle. Cortical organization: A plea for better understanding, clearer definition, and more correct use of the term "column"
Quantum Gravity

Quantum gravity is perhaps the most important open problem in fundamental physics. It is the problem of merging quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two great conceptual revolutions in the physics of the twentieth century. This book discusses the many aspects of the problem, and presents technical and conceptual advances towards a background-independent quantum theory of gravity, obtained in the last two decades. The first part of the book is an exploration on how to re-think basic physics from scratch in the light of the general-relativistic conceptual revolution. The second part is a detailed introduction to loop quantum gravity and the spinfoam formalism. It provides an overview of the current state of the field, including results on area and volume spectra, dynamics, extension of the theory to matter, applications to early cosmology and black-hole physics, and the perspectives for computing scattering amplitudes. The book is completed by a historical appendix which overviews the evolution of the research in quantum gravity, from the 1930s to the present day.
Sex Differences in the Expression of Moral Judgment.

Etude differentielle selon le sexe, chez 66 garcons et 111 filles âges de 11 a 21 ans, du niveau de jugement moral, de la prise de role empathique et des appels a la conscience reveles par la Mesure de Reflexion Socio-morale fondee sur la theorie de Kohlberg sur le developpement moral
Prevalence and Risk Factors of Idiopathic Epiretinal Membranes in Beixinjing Blocks, Shanghai, China

Background To determine the prevalence and risk factors associated with idiopathic epiretinal membranes (iERM) in a Chinese population aged 60 years or older in Beixinjing Blocks, Shanghai. Methods This population-based study consisted of 3727 participants (89.7% of the eligible). It was performed to describe the prevalence of iERM and possible demographic, systemic, and ocular factors associated with iERM. Each participant underwent a standardized interview and comprehensive ophthalmic examination. iERM was identified and graded from retinal photographs. Then, a case-control study comparing the participants with vs. without iERM was performed to further study the associations between iERM and blood biochemical test results (including fasting plasma glucose, serum creatinine, total cholesterol, and triglyceride), ocular biological parameters (including the axial length, corneal curvature, refractive diopter, intraocular press, and anterior chamber depth), and the data of optical coherence tomography. Results The prevalence of iERM was 1.02%. iERM was significantly associated with diabetes (OR: 2.457; 95% CI: 1.137, 5.309) and a higher level of education (OR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.123, 1.952). Blood biochemical test results and ocular biological parameters showed no significant differences between the iERM and control groups, whereas the incidence of posterior vitreous detachment in the iERM group was much higher than in the control group (26.5% vs. 8.8%), but this difference was not statistically significant. Moreover, the eyes with iERM had poorer visual acuity than the eyes without iERM (P<0.05). Conclusions In Beixinjing Blocks, Shanghai, iERM was relatively rare, was associated with diabetes and a higher level of education, and caused a substantial decrease in visual acuity.
Book Review: The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics

‘The Logic of Connective Action’ by W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg investigates patterns of participation and modes of action in contemporary protest politics that are characterized by increasingly individualized publics in which participants join protests more as individuals than as members of organizations. Bennett and Segerberg claim that in such a context, digital media do much more than simply support the organization of protest. Rather, they become to some extent actors in themselves, since they have a crucial role in shaping the organizational structures that underlie social movements and their mobilizations. Starting from these assumptions, Bennett and Segerberg explore three crucial themes that are outlined in the Introduction to the volume. The first one refers to the personalization and individualization of politics and their consequences at the level of political participation, especially at the grassroots level of social movements and advocacy coalitions. The second theme regards the intertwining of (digital) communication with processes and mechanisms of political participation from below, with the former increasingly embedded in the latter to the extent that communication becomes organization. The third theme concerns the different logics that characterize the organization of mobilizations and the related models of action, from the well-known collective action processes to the emerging forms of connective action, which can be enabled by established social movement organizations and coalitions or by the very actions of individual protesters that form the crowds taking part in mobilizations. This last theme is discussed, from a theoretical viewpoint, in Chapter 1 that contrasts the logic of connective action with the logic of collective action. In particular, the latter rests on two main features that are absent in the logic of collective action: personal action frames, meaning frames that are easily personalized by individual protesters who join the mobilization, and the presence of personal communication technologies that allow the quick and easy sharing of media contents across multiple media platforms. The logic of connective action, however, can be found in at least two different configurations. On the one side of the spectrum, we find organizationally enabled connective actions, in which social movement organizations decide to release some of their control of the mobilization process to allow individualized publics the appropriation of the protest campaign in point. On the other side of the spectrum, we find crowd-enabled connective action in which social movement organizations seem to be absent. Instead, mobilization takes 594581 MCS0010.1177/0163443715594581Media, Culture & SocietyBook Reviews research-article2015
Definitions of Recurrence of an Episode of Low Back Pain: A Systematic Review

Study Design. Systematic review. Objective. To identify the definitions of recurrence (and related recovery definitions) currently used in the literature. Summary of Background Data. Recurrence of low back pain (LBP) is a common and costly problem and the goal of many treatments is to prevent future recurrences. However, it is unclear whether standardized recurrence definitions are being used in the research literature evaluating the risk of recurrence and the effectiveness of treatments to prevent recurrence. Methods. A literature search was performed of MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, and PEDro, and from chosen systematic reviews investigating treatments that could plausibly affect recurrence of LBP. Studies were considered eligible if they investigated recurrence of LBP in a cohort of patients with LBP. Inclusion was assessed by 2 reviewers and definitions of recurrence (and related recovery) were extracted. Results. Fifty-three studies were identified by the review. Only 32% of studies gave explicit definitions of recurrence and only 10% gave a definition for both recurrence and recovery. Less than 10% of studies shared a common definition of recurrence. Conclusion. Because of a lack of an agreed terminology it is very difficult to compare results between studies reporting recurrence rates or evaluating strategies to prevent recurrence. Steps to achieve consensus on recurrence and recovery definitions are required. In the interim, it is recommended that a minimum pain duration of 24 hours with a minimum pain intensity equivalent to the appropriate minimal important change for the chosen scale, be used for defining a recurrence. If disability measures are used, it is also recommended that the appropriate minimal important change be used. For recovery, a minimum duration of 1 month pain-free should be used.
2-Benzazolyl-4-Piperazin-1-Ylsulfonylbenzenecarbohydroxamic Acids as Novel Selective Histone Deacetylase-6 Inhibitors with Antiproliferative Activity

We have screened our compound collection in an established cell based assay that measures the derepression of an epigenetically silenced transgene, the locus derepression assay. The screen led to the identification of 4-[4-(1-methylbenzimidazol-2-yl)piperazin-1-yl]sulfonylbenzenecarbohydroxamic acid (9b) as an active which was found to inhibit HDAC1. In initial structure activity relationships study, the 1-methylbenzimidazole ring was replaced by the isosteric heterocycles benzimidazole, benzoxazole, and benzothiazole and the position of the hydroxamic acid substituent on the phenyl ring was varied. Whereas compounds bearing a para substituted hydroxamic acid (9a-d) were active HDAC inhibitors, the meta substituted analogues (8a-d) were appreciably inactive. Compounds 9a-d selectively inhibited HDAC6 (IC50 = 0.1–1.0μM) over HDAC1 (IC50 = 0.9–6μM) and moreover, also selectively inhibited the growth of lung cancer cells vs. patient matched normal cells. The compounds induce a cell cycle arrest in the S-phase while induction of apoptosis is neglible as compared to controls. Molecular modeling studies uncovered that the MM-GBSA energy for interaction of 9a-d with HDAC6 was higher than for HDAC1 providing structural rationale for the HDAC6 selectivity.
TARCO: Two-Stage Auction for D2D Relay Aided Computation Resource Allocation in HetNet

In heterogeneous cellular network, task scheduling for computation offloading is one of the biggest challenges. Most works focus on alleviating heavy burden of macro base stations by moving the computation tasks on macro cell user equipment (MUE) to remote cloud or small cell base stations. But the selfishness of network users is seldom considered. Motivated by the multiple access mobile edge computing, this paper provides incentive for task transfer from macro cell users to small cell base stations. The proposed incentive scheme utilizes small cell user equipments to provide relay services. The problem of computation offloading is modeled as a two-stage auction, in which the remote MUEs with common social character can form a group and then buy the computation resource of small cell base stations with the relaying of small cell user equipment. A two-stage auction scheme named TARCO is contributed to maximize utilities for both sellers and buyers in the network. The truthfulness, individual rational and budget balance properties of TARCO are also proved in this paper. In addition, two algorithms are proposed to further refine TARCO on the social welfare of the network. One can achieve higher utility of MUEs and the other can obtain higher total social welfare. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that, TARCO is better than random algorithm by 104.90 percent in terms of average utility of MUEs, while the performance of TARCO is further improved up to 28.75 percent and 17.06 percent by the proposed two algorithms, respectively.
Incorporating subliminal perception in synthetic environments

Advanced interactive visualization such as in virtual environments and ubiquitous interaction paradigms pose new challenges and opportunities in considering real-time responses to subliminal cues. In this paper, we propose a synthetic reality platform that, combined with psychophysiological recordings, enables us to study in realtime the effects of various subliminal cues. We endeavor to integrate various aspects known to be relevant to implicit perception. The context is of consumer experience and choice of an artifact where the generation of subliminal perception through an intelligent 3D interface controls the spatio-temporal aspects of the information displayed and of the emergent narrative. One novel contribution of this work is the programmable nature of the interface that exploits known perceptive phenomena (e.g. masking, crowding and change blindness) to generate subliminal perception.
Discovery of CTCF-Sensitive Cis-Spliced Fusion RNAs between Adjacent Genes in Human Prostate Cells

Genes or their encoded products are not expected to mingle with each other unless in some disease situations. In cancer, a frequent mechanism that can produce gene fusions is chromosomal rearrangement. However, recent discoveries of RNA trans-splicing and cis-splicing between adjacent genes (cis-SAGe) support for other mechanisms in generating fusion RNAs. In our transcriptome analyses of 28 prostate normal and cancer samples, 30% fusion RNAs on average are the transcripts that contain exons belonging to same-strand neighboring genes. These fusion RNAs may be the products of cis-SAGe, which was previously thought to be rare. To validate this finding and to better understand the phenomenon, we used LNCaP, a prostate cell line as a model, and identified 16 additional cis-SAGe events by silencing transcription factor CTCF and paired-end RNA sequencing. About half of the fusions are expressed at a significant level compared to their parental genes. Silencing one of the in-frame fusions resulted in reduced cell motility. Most out-of-frame fusions are likely to function as non-coding RNAs. The majority of the 16 fusions are also detected in other prostate cell lines, as well as in the 14 clinical prostate normal and cancer pairs. By studying the features associated with these fusions, we developed a set of rules: 1) the parental genes are same-strand-neighboring genes; 2) the distance between the genes is within 30kb; 3) the 5′ genes are actively transcribing; and 4) the chimeras tend to have the second-to-last exon in the 5′ genes joined to the second exon in the 3′ genes. We then randomly selected 20 neighboring genes in the genome, and detected four fusion events using these rules in prostate cancer and non-cancerous cells. These results suggest that splicing between neighboring gene transcripts is a rather frequent phenomenon, and it is not a feature unique to cancer cells.
Adolescent personality disorders associated with violence and criminal behavior during adolescence and early adulthood.

OBJECTIVE A community-based, longitudinal prospective study was conducted to investigate whether personality disorders during adolescence are associated with elevated risk for violent behavior during adolescence and early adulthood. METHOD A community-based sample of 717 youths from upstate New York and their mothers were interviewed in 1983, 1985-1986, and 1991-1993. Axis I and II disorders were assessed in 1983 and 1985-1986. Antisocial personality disorder was not assessed because most participants were less than 18 years of age in 1983 and 1985-1986. Violent behavior was assessed in 1985-1986 and 1991-1993. RESULTS Adolescents with a greater number of DSM-IV cluster A or cluster B personality disorder symptoms were more likely than other adolescents in the community to commit violent acts during adolescence and early adulthood, including arson, assault, breaking and entering, initiating physical fights, robbery, and threats to injure others. These associations remained significant after controlling for the youths' age and sex, for parental psychopathology and socioeconomic status, and for co-occurring psychiatric disorders during adolescence. Paranoid, narcissistic, and passive-aggressive personality disorder symptoms during adolescence were independently associated with risk for violent acts and criminal behavior during adolescence and early adulthood after the covariates were controlled. CONCLUSIONS Cluster A and cluster B personality disorders and paranoid, narcissistic, and passive-aggressive personality disorder symptoms during adolescence may increase risk for violent behavior that persists into early adulthood.
La misurazione di costrutti impliciti attraverso l'Implicit Association Test

Uno degli orientamenti piu rilevanti nella psicologia sociale dell’ultimo decennio e costituito indubbiamente dal crescente sviluppo ed utilizzo di strumenti impliciti di misura. Questo fenomeno nasce dall’esigenza fondamentale, che caratterizza una parte significativa della ricerca sociale, di far fronte a due problemi che spesso si presentano nell’uso delle tradizionali tecniche d’indagine, basate prevalentemente sulle interviste e sui questionari. In primo luogo, studiando tematiche «sensibili», si pone la questione della desiderabilita delle risposte e delle conseguenti distorsioni in cio che le persone affermano esplicitamente; in secondo luogo, esistono limiti nella capacita introspettiva del rispondente, i quali fanno si che anche il rispondente ben intenzionato a collaborare con il ricercatore spesso non riesca a fornire un resoconto dettagliato e veritiero dei contenuti cognitivi d’interesse. Per quanto concerne la prima questione, attraverso le risposte ai tradizionali strumenti cartacei, le persone possono gestire in modo strategico il tipo di immagine di se che vogliono proporre (Crosby, Bromley e Saxe, 1980; Maass, Castelli e Arcuri, 2000). Questo lavoro rappresenta una revisione critica dell’Implicit Association Test (IAT), a sette anni dalla prima presentazione di questo strumento (Greenwald, McGhee e Schwartz, 1998). Nel corso della trattazione, lo IAT viene proposto nell’ambito degli strumenti di misurazione di associazioni implicite e ne vengono delineati i piu importanti vantaggi e le caratteristiche psicometriche. Vengono descritte le principali spiegazioni formulate in letteratura relativamente ai meccanismi di funzionamento di questo strumento e alla natura delle associazioni cognitive che esso permette di indagare. Uno spazio speciale viene dedicato alle indicazioni di variabilita contestuale negli indici IAT e viene discusso il significato assunto da tale variabilita. Particolare attenzione viene dedicata, infine, alle possibilita e ai limiti di utilizzo dello IAT nella psicologia sociale applicata.
Maxi-K Potassium Channels: Form, Function, and Modulation of a Class of Endogenous Regulators of Intracellular Calcium

Large-conductance calcium-activated (maxi-K, BK) potassium channels are widely distributed in the brain. Maxi-K channels function as neuronal calcium sensors and contribute to the control of cellular excitability and the regulation of neurotransmitter release. Little is currently known of any significant role of maxi-K channels in the genesis of neurological disease. Recent advances in the molecular biology and pharmacology of these channels have revealed sources of phenotypic variability and demonstrated that they can be successfully modulated by pharmacological agents. A potential role is suggested in the treatment of conditions such as ischemic stroke and cognitive disorders.
RISK PERCEPTION AND ACCEPTANCE OF THE AMERICAN CROCODILE ( CROCODYLUS ACUTUS ) IN SOUTH FLORIDA

This study used a self-administered questionnaire (n 5 249) to examine factors that affect risk perceptions and acceptance of the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) in south Florida. Respondents who expressed negative attitudes toward American crocodiles had the greatest probability of considering the species a high risk to humans. Respondents who believed American crocodiles presented a low risk to humans, and expressed positive attitudes toward the species, had the greatest probability of preferring a stable or increased future crocodile population. Knowledge of American crocodiles was not related to risk perceptions, but may indirectly affect risk perceptions through attitudes toward crocodiles. Demographic variables did not relate to risk perceptions or acceptance of American crocodiles. Results indicate that south Florida residents and visitors who have the potential to encounter an American crocodile generally have low risk perceptions of, favorable attitudes toward, and high acceptance capacity for the species.