Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surface lysine residues modulate the collisional transfer of fatty acid from adipocyte fatty acid binding protein to membranes.

The transfer of unesterified fatty acids (FA) from adipocyte fatty acid binding protein (A-FABP) to phospholipid membranes is proposed to occur via a collisional mechanism involving transient ionic and hydrophobic interactions [Wootan & Storch (1994) J. Biol. Chem. 269, 10517-10523]. In particular, it was suggested that membrane acidic phospholipids might specifically interact with basic residues on the surface of A-FABP. Here we addressed whether lysine residues on the surface of the protein are involved in this collisional transfer mechanism. Recombinant A-FABP was acetylated to neutralize all positively charged surface lysine residues. Protein fluorescence, CD spectra, and chemical denaturant data indicate that acetylation did not substantially alter the conformational integrity of the protein, and nearly identical affinities were obtained for binding of the fluorescently labeled FA [12-(9-anthroyloxy)oleate] to native and acetylated protein. Transfer of 2-(9-anthroyloxy)palmitate (2AP) from acetylated A-FABP to small unilamellar vesicles (SUV) was 35-fold slower than from native protein. In addition, whereas the 2AP transfer rate from native A-FABP was directly dependent on SUV concentration, 2AP transfer from acetylated protein was independent on the concentration of acceptor membranes. Factors which alter aqueous-phase solubility of FA, such as ionic strength and acyl chain length and saturation, affected the AOFA transfer rate from acetylated but not native A-FABP. Finally, an increase in the negative charge density of the acceptor SUV resulted in a marked increase in the rate of transfer from native A-FABP but did not increase the rate from acetylated A-FABP. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Computational biology for ageing

High-throughput genomic and proteomic technologies have generated a wealth of publicly available data on ageing. Easy access to these data, and their computational analysis, is of great importance in order to pinpoint the causes and effects of ageing. Here, we provide a description of the existing databases and computational tools on ageing that are available for researchers. We also describe the computational approaches to data interpretation in the field of ageing including gene expression, comparative and pathway analyses, and highlight the challenges for future developments. We review recent biological insights gained from applying bioinformatics methods to analyse and interpret ageing data in different organisms, tissues and conditions.
Where do people draw lines?

This paper presents the results of a study in which artists made line drawings intended to convey specific 3D shapes. The study was designed so that drawings could be registered with rendered images of 3D models, supporting an analysis of how well the locations of the artists' lines correlate with other artists', with current computer graphics line definitions, and with the underlying differential properties of the 3D surface. Lines drawn by artists in this study largely overlapped one another (75% are within 1mm of another line), particularly along the occluding contours of the object. Most lines that do not overlap contours overlap large gradients of the image intensity, and correlate strongly with predictions made by recent line drawing algorithms in computer graphics. 14% were not well described by any of the local properties considered in this study. The result of our work is a publicly available data set of aligned drawings, an analysis of where lines appear in that data set based on local properties of 3D models, and algorithms to predict where artists will draw lines for new scenes.
Low-dose bexarotene and low-dose interferon alfa-2b for adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma associated with human T-lymphotropic virus 1.

Stephen Richardson, MD; Jeanne B. Budgin, DVM; Jacqueline M. Junkins-Hopkins, MD; Carmela C. Vittorio, MD; Jason Lee, MD; Wallace T. Miller, Jr, MD; Alain H. Rook, MD; Ellen J. Kim, MD; Departments of Dermatology (Drs Richardson, Junkins-Hopkins, Vittorio, Rook, and Kim) and Radiology (Dr Miller), University of Pennsylvania Health System; Department of Dermatology, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine (Dr Budgin); Department of Dermatology, Thomas Jefferson Medical College (Dr Lee), Philadelphia
Epigenetics—Beyond the Genome in Alcoholism

Genetic and environmental factors play a role in the development of alcoholism. Whole-genome expression profiling has highlighted the importance of several genes that may contribute to alcohol abuse disorders. In addition, more recent findings have added yet another layer of complexity to the overall molecular mechanisms involved in a predisposition to alcoholism and addiction by demonstrating that processes related to genetic factors that do not manifest as DNA sequence changes (i.e., epigenetic processes) play a role. Both acute and chronic ethanol exposure can alter gene expression levels in specific neuronal circuits that govern the behavioral consequences related to tolerance and dependence. The unremitting cycle of alcohol consumption often includes satiation and self-medication with alcohol, followed by excruciating withdrawal symptoms and the resultant relapse, which reflects both the positive and negative affective states of alcohol addiction. Recent studies have indicated that behavioral changes induced by acute and chronic ethanol exposure may involve chromatin remodeling resulting from covalent histone modifications and DNA methylation in the neuronal circuits involving a brain region called the amygdala. These findings have helped identify enzymes involved in epigenetic mechanisms, such as the histone deacetylase, histone acetyltransferase, and DNA methyltransferase enzymes, as novel therapeutic targets for the development of future pharmacotherapies for the treatment of alcoholism.
Application of neural network to source PSD estimation for wiener filter based array sound source enhancement

The Wiener filter has been used as a post-filter applied to the output of beamforming, which boosts the overall performance of sound source enhancement. Since the power spectral density (PSD) of each sound source needs to be estimated to derive the Wiener filter, a previous study attempted to estimate source PSDs from the output signals of multiple beamformings using linear approximation realized by the least squares method. In this study, we propose an alternative approach to this estimation process that uses a neural network to implement the approximation by using a non-linear function. Experimental results reveal that the proposed method estimated the Wiener filter more accurately, resulting in higher source enhancement performance while reducing the distortion in the desired sound signal.
Combined Phosphatase and Tensin Homolog (PTEN) Loss and Fatty Acid Synthase (FAS) Overexpression Worsens the Prognosis of Chinese Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma

We aimed to investigate the expression pattern of phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), to evaluate the relationship between PTEN expression and clinicopathological characteristics, including fatty acid synthase (FAS) expression, and to determine the correlations of PTEN and FAS expression with survival in Chinese patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The expression patterns of PTEN and FAS were determined using tissue microarrays and immunohistochemistry. The expression of PTEN was compared with the clinicopathological characteristics of HCC, including FAS expression. Receiver operator characteristic curves were used to calculate the clinical sensitivity and specificity of PTEN expression. Kaplan-Meier survival curves were constructed to evaluate the correlations of PTEN loss and FAS overexpression with overall survival. We found that the loss of PTEN expression occurred predominantly in the cytoplasm, while FAS was mainly localized to the cytoplasm. Cytoplasmic and total PTEN expression levels were significantly decreased in HCC compared with adjacent non-neoplastic tissue (both, p < 0.0001). Decreased cytoplasmic and total PTEN expression showed significant clinical sensitivity and specificity for HCC (both, p < 0.0001). Downregulation of PTEN in HCC relative to non-neoplastic tissue was significantly correlated with histological grade (p = 0.043 for histological grades I–II versus grade III). Loss of total PTEN was significantly correlated with FAS overexpression (p = 0.014). Loss of PTEN was also associated with poor prognosis of patients with poorly differentiated HCC (p = 0.049). Moreover, loss of PTEN combined with FAS overexpression was associated with significantly worse prognosis compared with other HCC cases (p = 0.011). Our data indicate that PTEN may serve as a potential diagnostic and prognostic marker of HCC. Upregulating PTEN expression and inhibiting FAS expression may offer a novel therapeutic approach for HCC.
Silhouette Analysis-Based Action Recognition Via Exploiting Human Poses

In this paper, we propose a novel scheme for human action recognition that combines the advantages of both local and global representations. We explore human silhouettes for human action representation by taking into account the correlation between sequential poses in an action. A modified bag-of-words model, named bag of correlated poses, is introduced to encode temporally local features of actions. To utilize the property of visual word ambiguity, we adopt the soft assignment strategy to reduce the dimensionality of our model and circumvent the penalty of computational complexity and quantization error. To compensate for the loss of structural information, we propose an extended motion template, i.e., extensions of the motion history image, to capture the holistic structural features. The proposed scheme takes advantages of local and global features and, therefore, provides a discriminative representation for human actions. Experimental results prove the viability of the complimentary properties of two descriptors and the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on the IXMAS action recognition dataset.
Cocoa flavanols: effects on vascular nitric oxide and blood pressure

Diets rich in fruits and vegetables have been associated with benefits for human health. Those effects have been partially ascribed to their content in flavonoids, compounds that are present in many edible plants and its derived foods. In humans, a significant number of studies has been developed analyzing the effect of foods and beverages rich in flavonoids on the presence and progression of risk factors associated to cardiovascular diseases, including hypertension. Cocoa derived products, rich in flavanols, have been thoroughly studied and demonstrated to be efficient improving endothelial function and decreasing blood pressure in humans and animals. However, the final chemical species and the mechanism/s responsible for these effects have not been completely defined. In this paper we present data supporting the hypothesis that flavanols could define superoxide anion production and then, establish optimal nitric oxide levels and blood pressure.
Skeletal and dentoalveolar changes in the maxillary bone morphology using two-arm maxillary expander.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the dental and skeletal changes in the maxillary bone morphology, produced by two-arm rapid palatal expansion appliances. PATIENTS AND METHODS The study included 22 girls with an average age of 11.9 years treated with RPE appliances at the Department of Pedodontics and Orthodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, Timisoara, Romania. We evaluated the changes on study casts, using an optical 3D scanner--Activity 101 (SmartOptics) and also on radiographs. The level of statistical significance was set by comparing the changes between pre and post treatment values. We also used the Pearson's correlation coefficient (r) to measure the strength of the association between the recorded measurements. The correlations were significant at p<0.05. RESULTS Significant changes were found in intermolar width change, interpremolar width change, molar tipping and alveolar tipping. Less significant changes were found in molar rotation and palatal depth change. After rapid maxillary expansion, five of the 21 correlations were found to be statistically significant. Positive medium correlations were found between intermolar width change and alveolar tipping and between interpremolar width change and alveolar tipping. A negative medium correlation was found between palatal depth change and alveolar tipping. Weak, but statistically significant correlations were found between intermolar width change and interpremolar width change and between intermolar width change and palatal depth change. No statistically significant correlation was found between the other variables. CONCLUSIONS This type of maxillary expander is capable of expanding the maxillary dentition and alveolar process, opening the midpalatal suture and changing the maxillary bone morphology. The most remarkable changes occurred in the transverse plane. Future research is required to evaluate a larger group of patients.
Threshold based Authorization model for Authentication of a node in Wireless Mesh Networks

---------------------------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As various wireless networks evolve into the next generation to provide better services, a key technology, wireless mesh networks (WMNs), has emerged recently. There are number of issues in the deployment of WMNs. Amongst others security is quite a serious issue. Authenticating the users and devices in the network is a key point of network security. IEEE 802.11s mesh networks do not have any well defined or specified security architecture which can cater to large number of diversified applications. As the major characteristic of WMNs is multihop therefore using the 802.11i as the security standard is inadequate to provide security in Wireless Mesh Networks primarily because 802.11i was designed with the central security mechanism. In this paper a new approach using threshold authorization model with Clustered Certificate Authority is proposed which caters to the best of both the centralized and distributed architecture.
Quantitative measurements and modeling of cargo–motor interactions during fast transport in the living axon

The kinesins have long been known to drive microtubule-based transport of sub-cellular components, yet the mechanisms of their attachment to cargo remain a mystery. Several different cargo-receptors have been proposed based on their in vitro binding affinities to kinesin-1. Only two of these—phosphatidyl inositol, a negatively charged lipid, and the carboxyl terminus of the amyloid precursor protein (APP-C), a trans-membrane protein—have been reported to mediate motility in living systems. A major question is how these many different cargo, receptors and motors interact to produce the complex choreography of vesicular transport within living cells. Here we describe an experimental assay that identifies cargo–motor receptors by their ability to recruit active motors and drive transport of exogenous cargo towards the synapse in living axons. Cargo is engineered by derivatizing the surface of polystyrene fluorescent nanospheres (100 nm diameter) with charged residues or with synthetic peptides derived from candidate motor receptor proteins, all designed to display a terminal COOH group. After injection into the squid giant axon, particle movements are imaged by laser-scanning confocal time-lapse microscopy. In this report we compare the motility of negatively charged beads with APP-C beads in the presence of glycine-conjugated non-motile beads using new strategies to measure bead movements. The ensuing quantitative analysis of time-lapse digital sequences reveals detailed information about bead movements: instantaneous and maximum velocities, run lengths, pause frequencies and pause durations. These measurements provide parameters for a mathematical model that predicts the spatiotemporal evolution of distribution of the two different types of bead cargo in the axon. The results reveal that negatively charged beads differ from APP-C beads in velocity and dispersion, and predict that at long time points APP-C will achieve greater progress towards the presynaptic terminal. The significance of this data and accompanying model pertains to the role transport plays in neuronal function, connectivity, and survival, and has implications in the pathogenesis of neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington and Parkinson's diseases.
An Integrative Approach to Understanding and Predicting the Consequences of Fatigue on Cognitive Performance

Abstract : The deleterious consequences of fatigue have motivated decades of research to understand the impact of inadequate sleep on cognitive performance. A key objective is to use insights from that research to develop predictive models that can serve as valid tools for managing work-rest schedules and making Go, No-Go mission decisions. Ultimately, this is about maximizing human performance and minimizing risk. In this paper, we describe a methodology that is moving us in the direction of achieving this goal, involving the integration of mathematical and computational process modeling approaches to understand how fatigue affects human cognitive processes. Mathematical models that capture the dynamics of the human arousal system are integrated with a cognitive architecture that instantiates a unified theory of the mechanisms of human cognition. The integration of these approaches leads to an enhanced ability to quantify the impact of fatigue on performance in particular tasks. We illustrate this by making principled, a priori predictions regarding how human performance in instrument flight with a Predator UAV synthetic task environment may change across 4 days without sleep.
Cardiovascular risk factors and probability for cardiovascular events in HIV-infected patients - part III: age differences.

OBJECTIVE In recent years, concerns have been growing about an elevated rate of cardiovascular diseases in HIV-infected patients due to side effects of antiretroviral therapy. The present study analyses the cardiovascular risk profile and the probability of cardiovascular events with regard to the age of HIV-infected patients. METHODS Cardiovascular risk factors of 309 HIV-infected adults were analysed. Patients were divided into four groups: 18-30 years (group 1), 31-40 years (group 2), 41-50 years (group 3), > 50 years (group 4). Overall 10-years probability for cardiovascular events was evaluated by the Framingham algorithm. RESULTS Differences between the groups were detected in cardiovascular risk factors including changes in lipid- and glucose metabolism. Lipid values increased with elevated age, such as total cholesterol concentration (Mean +/- SEM in group 1 vs. group 4: 4.71 +/- 0.20 to 6.36 +/- 0.21 mmol/L, p < 0.05), LDL-cholesterol concentration (2.86 +/- 0.17 vs. 4.17 +/- 0.21 mmol/L, p < 0.05) and triglyceride concentration (1.56 +/- 0.14 vs. 3.48 +/- 0.40 mmol/L, p < 0.05). HDL-cholesterol concentration did not show a significant difference (1.15 +/- 0.03 mmol/L). Glucose concentration increased with elevated age in HIV-infected patients (5.28 +/- 0.19 vs. 6.46 +/- 0.24 mmHg, p < 0.05), but there was no significant difference in HbA1c - concentration, blood pressure and smoking rate between the groups. The overall 10-years probability for cardiovascular events was higher in group 1 (median: 1.9%) than in group 4 (20.5%; p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS The risk of cardiovascular events is related to the age in HIV-infected patients. Therefore, an increased duration of life due to a more effective antiretroviral therapy will have a significant impact on the rate of cardiovascular events in this patient population. In the future, further increase of cardiovascular events in HIV-infected patients may be expected.
Historical Review of Algorithm Development for Computerized Business Simulations

This article presents a 25-year historical review of algorithm development for computerized business simulations. The articles selected were drawn extensively from the annual proceedings of the Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning (ABSEL) conferences. The authors have categorized the historical review into two broad areas: functional business topics and special topics of interest. Both narrative and summary tables address marketing, accounting, finance, human resource, and production/ operations areas. The special topics of interest reviewed include the algorithms for quality and the time-based modeling concerns. The authors conclude the review with issues future modelers of business games should consider.
Action of serotonin on the hyperpolarization‐activated cation current (Ih) in rat CA1 hippocampal neurons

We studied the effects of serotonin (5‐HT) on hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons. In current‐clamp mode, 5‐HT induced a hyperpolarization and reduction of excitability due to the opening of inward rectifier K+ channels, followed by a late depolarization and partial restoration of excitability. These two components could be dissociated, as in the presence of BaCl2 to block K+ channels, 5‐HT induced a depolarization accompanied by a reduction of membrane resistance, whereas in the presence of ZD 7288 [4‐(N‐ethyl‐N‐phenylamino)‐1,2‐dimethyl‐6‐(methylamino) pyrimidinium chloride], a selective blocker of the hyperpolarization‐activated cation current (Ih), 5‐HT only hyperpolarized neurons. We then studied the action of 5‐HT on Ih in voltage‐clamp conditions. 5‐HT increased Ih at −90 mV by 29.1 ± 2.9% and decreased the time constant of activation by 20.1 ± 1.7% (n = 16), suggesting a shift in the voltage dependence of the current towards more positive potentials; however, the fully activated current measured at −140 mV also increased (by 14.1 ± 1.7%, n = 14); this increase was blocked by ZD 7288, implying an effect of 5‐HT on the maximal conductance of Ih. Both the shift of activation curve and the increase in maximal conductance were confirmed by data obtained with ramp protocols. Perfusion with the membrane‐permeable analogue of cAMP, 8‐bromoadenosine 3′5′‐cyclic monophosphate (8‐Br‐cAMP), increased Ih both at −90 and −140 mV, although the changes induced were smaller than those due to 5‐HT. Our data indicate that 5‐HT modulates Ih by shifting its activation curve to more positive voltages and by increasing its maximal conductance, and that this action is likely to contribute to the 5‐HT modulation of excitability of CA1 cells.
Vectorising Bitmaps into Semi‐Transparent Gradient Layers

We present an interactive approach for decompositing bitmap drawings and studio photographs into opaque and semi‐transparent vector layers. Semi‐transparent layers are especially challenging to extract, since they require the inversion of the non‐linear compositing equation. We make this problem tractable by exploiting the parametric nature of vector gradients, jointly separating and vectorising semi‐transparent regions. Specifically, we constrain the foreground colours to vary according to linear or radial parametric gradients, restricting the number of unknowns and allowing our system to efficiently solve for an editable semi‐transparent foreground. We propose a progressive workflow, where the user successively selects a semi‐transparent or opaque region in the bitmap, which our algorithm separates as a foreground vector gradient and a background bitmap layer. The user can choose to decompose the background further or vectorise it as an opaque layer. The resulting layered vector representation allows a variety of edits, such as modifying the shape of highlights, adding texture to an object or changing its diffuse colour.