Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Loss of TMEM16A Causes a Defect in Epithelial Ca2+-dependent Chloride Transport*

Molecular identification of the Ca2+-dependent chloride channel TMEM16A (ANO1) provided a fundamental step in understanding Ca2+-dependent Cl− secretion in epithelia. TMEM16A is an intrinsic constituent of Ca2+-dependent Cl− channels in cultured epithelia and may control salivary output, but its physiological role in native epithelial tissues remains largely obscure. Here, we demonstrate that Cl− secretion in native epithelia activated by Ca2+-dependent agonists is missing in mice lacking expression of TMEM16A. Ca2+-dependent Cl− transport was missing or largely reduced in isolated tracheal and colonic epithelia, as well as hepatocytes and acinar cells from pancreatic and submandibular glands of TMEM16A−/− animals. Measurement of particle transport on the surface of tracheas ex vivo indicated largely reduced mucociliary clearance in TMEM16A−/− mice. These results clearly demonstrate the broad physiological role of TMEM16A−/− for Ca2+-dependent Cl− secretion and provide the basis for novel treatments in cystic fibrosis, infectious diarrhea, and Sjöegren syndrome.
Bimetallic gold/silver alloy nanoparticles prepared in the presence of tryptophan

The stable colloidal solutions of monometallic and bimetallic gold and silver nanoparticles (NPs) have been obtained in the presence of amino acid tryptophan. For the synthesis of bimetallic composition the metals were used in a molar ratio of Ag:Au = 3:1, 1:1 and 1:3. The only one plasmon resonance band in absorption spectra was located between the bands inherent to the individual metals and it was characteristic for “alloy” type bimetallic AgAu NPs. The position of its maximum strongly depends on the Ag:Au molar ratio. The surface of all synthesized nanoparticles carries a negative charge due to the stabilizing shell consisted of amino acid. In the paper we usedUV/visible spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering method to analyze the effect of experimental procedure on the properties of obtained NPs.
Intermediate filaments in nervous tissues

Intermediate filaments have been isolated from rabbit intradural spinal nerve roots by the axonal flotation method. This method was modified to avoid exposure of axons to low ionic strength medium. The purified filaments are morphologically 75-80 percent pure. The gel electrophoretogram shows four major bands migrating at 200,000, 145,000, 68,000, and 60,000 daltons, respectively. A similar preparation from rabbit brain shows four major polypeptides with mol wt of 200,000 145,000, 68,000, and 51,000 daltons. These results indicate that the neurofilament is composed of a triplet of polypepetides with mol wt of 200,000, 145,000, and 68,000 daltons. The 51,000-dalton band that appears in brain filament preparations as the major polypeptide seems to be of glial origin. The significance of the 60,000- dalton band in the nerve root filament preparation is unclear at this time. Antibodies raised against two of the triplet proteins isolated from calf brain localize by immunofluorescence to neurons in central and peripheral nerve. On the other hand, an antibody to the 51,000-dalton polypeptide gives only glial staining in the brain, and very weak peripheral nerve staining. Prolonged exposure of axons to low ionic strength medium solubilizes almost all of the triplet polypeptides, leaving behind only the 51,000- dalton component. This would indicate that the neurofilament is soluble at low ionic strength, whereas the glial filament is not. These results indicate that neurofilaments and glial filaments are composed of different polypeptides and have different solubility characteristics.
Wireless charging monitoring system based on Bluetooth

In this paper, Bluetooth is used as the data transmission mode to achieve the connection between the power transmitter and the mobile phone in the wireless charging system. A Bluetooth module is added to the power transmitter to send the relevant data to the mobile phone in the process of wireless power transfer. Both the power transmitter and the power receiver are designed based on the Qi standard to transmit electrical energy through electromagnetic induction. During this process, the voltage, the current and the temperature of the power transmitter can be received by the phone and be showed on the phone APP by the Bluetooth communication. The proposed method not only can solve the communication problem of the wireless charging for mobile phone with extended power transmitter in wireless charging system, but also can monitor the wireless charging process. The test shows that the Bluetooth communication of wireless charging is effectively and convenient to monitor the wireless charging process. The monitoring data is also very useful for wireless charging control in future.
Long-term Outcome of Internal Tibial Derotation Osteotomies in Children With Cerebral Palsy

Background: External tibial torsion (ETT) is a common bony deformity in children with cerebral palsy (CP). The current recommended treatment is tibial derotation osteotomy (TDO) to improve gait biomechanics. Satisfactory short-term results after TDO have been reported but long-term results have not been studied. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the long-term outcome following TDO to correct ETT in ambulatory children with CP. Methods: Following IRB approval, gait kinematics and passive range of motion measurements were retrospectively evaluated in children with spastic CP who underwent TDO due to ETT comparing preoperative (E0), short-term postoperative (E1; 1 to 3 y post), and long-term postoperative (E2; >5 y post) results. Limbs were categorized as corrected, undercorrected, or overcorrected at both E1 and E2, by comparing mean tibial rotation (MTR) in gait to a group of typically developing children. Age at surgery, E0 MTR, E0 gait velocity, gross motor function classification system (GMFCS) score, and foot deformity were evaluated to determine their influence on long-term results. Results: The study sample consisted of 43 legs (with E0 and E2) and 22 legs (with E0, E1, and E2). The mean age at surgery was 10.3±3.4 years (range, 6 to 19.2 y). In the group MTR trended toward improvement moving from −26±17 degrees (E0, external negative) to −16±16 degrees (E1) and relapsed to −23±17 degrees at the long term (P=0.071, E0/E1; P=0.589, E0/E2). Improvement was also seen in the transmalleolar axis (P=0.074), mean ankle rotation, and mean foot orientation (P<0.05, E0/E2). At the long-term evaluation, 16 legs (37%) were found to be in the kinematic corrected group, 25 legs (58%) in the kinematic undercorrected group, and 2 legs (5%) in the kinematic overcorrected group. There were no significant differences between the corrected and undercorrected groups of children with respect to age at surgery, GMFCS, E0 MTR, gait velocity, or foot deformity. Conclusions: Although internal TDO improves ETT in the short term, recurrence is frequent with an apparent developmental trend toward external rotation of the tibia. Levels of Evidence: Level IV—therapeutic study.
A Method For Reconstructing Transcriptional Regulatory Networks

In order to understand processes in life, in particular processes in biology, it is essential to uncover the dependencies between the elements of the process. Meaning, to understand which elements ’control’ other elements and/or interact with them. Often, this knowledge is not known and we can gain information about the process from data, i.e. from measurements of the values of the elements. One of the popular ways of representing these dependencies (and independencies) between elements is using Bayesian Networks. A Bayesian Network is a statistical model that represents dependencies and independencies between a group of random variables. In recent years this model has been used in many fields to learn processes from data. In particular, this model was extensively used to learn biological processes. In the first part of my work I show that it is possible to learn the structure of a Bayesian Network from data, with high probability, provided the data is large enough. Moreover, I derived upper bounds on this sample complexity. These bounds are represented as a function of the Bayesian Network parameters and as a function of the probability with which we want to learn the correct structure. The upper bounds I received suggest that in order to learn with high probability the correct network structure from data, one needs a very large number of realizations (examples, measurements), which rarely exist in biological data. Thus, it is very problematic to learn the exact structure of a Bayesian Network that represents a biological process. Due to the limitations of learning the exact structure of Bayesian Networks from data, I looked for a different method to learn networks from data. This method is described in the second part of my thesis: I developed a heuristic algorithm for reconstructing transcriptional networks from both gene expression data and sequence data. In the center of this algorithm is a classifier that uses gene expression data in order to predict whether a certain transcription factor regulates a certain gene. Then, if the classifier confirmed that the transcription factor regulates the gene, the algorithm continues by verifying that the transcription factor binding motif appears in the promoter of the gene. I applied this algorithm on a transcriptional network related to Smooth Muscle Cells differentiation and discovered both previously well known transcriptional connections, as well as new ones.
Affective Self-Regulation Trajectories during Secondary School Predict Substance Use Among Urban Minority Young Adults

This study explored the relationship between trajectories of affective self-regulation skills during secondary school and young adult substance use in a large multiethnic, urban sample (N = 995). During secondary school, participants completed a measure of cognitive and behavioral skills used to control negative, unpleasant emotions or perceived stress. As young adults, participants reported on the frequency and quantity of their alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use in a telephone interview. Controlling for demographic variables, self-regulation did not significantly change over adolescence, although there was significant variation in participants’ rates of growth and decline. Lower seventh-grade self-regulation and less steep increases in self-regulation were predictive of higher young adult substance use. Male participants had significantly lower initial self-regulation and higher young adult substance use. The results suggest that interventions that build affective self-regulation skills in adolescence may decrease the risk of young adult substance use.
Hierarchical Grid-based Pairwise Key Pre-distribution in Wireless Sensor Networks

The security of wireless sensor networks is an active topic of research where both symmetric and asymmetric key cryptography issues have been studied. Due to their computational feasibility on typical sensor nodes, symmetric key algorithms that use the same key to encrypt and decrypt messages have been intensively studied and perfectly deployed in such environment. Because of the wireless sensor’s limited infrastructure, the bottleneck challenge for deploying these algorithms is the key distribution. For the same reason of resources restriction, key distribution mechanisms which are used in traditional wireless networks are not e‐cient for sensor networks.
The main triglyceride-lipase from the insect fat body is an active phospholipase A1: identification and characterization Published, JLR Papers in Press, September 27, 2006.

The main triglyceride-lipase (TG-lipase) from the fat body of Manduca sexta has been identified as the homolog of Drosophila melanogaster CG8552. This protein is conserved among insects and also shares significant sequence similarity with vertebrate phospholipases (PLs) from the phosphatidic acid preferring-phospholipase A1 (PA-PLA1) family. It is shown here that the TG-lipase is also a PL. TG-lipase and PL activities copurify and are inhibited by, or resistant to, the same lipase inhibitors, indicating that both activities are catalyzed by the same enzyme and active site. The PL activity of TG-lipase corresponded to PL type A1. The concentration dependence of lipase activity with TG and PL micellar substrates showed saturation kinetics, with apparent Km values of 152 ± 11 and 7.8 ± 1.1 μM, respectively. TG-lipase was able to hydrolyze the major phospholipid components of the lipid droplets, phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine. The enzyme hydrolyzes 77 molecules of TG for every molecule of PL contained in the lipid droplets. It was observed that the activation of lipolysis in vivo is accompanied by activation of the hydrolysis of phospholipids of the lipid droplets. These results suggest that the PL activity of the insect TG-lipase could be required to allow access of the lipase to TG molecules contained in the core of the lipid droplets.
Object Centered Stereo: Displacement Map Estimation Using Texture and Shading

We consider the problem of recovering 3D surface displacements using both shading and multi-view stereo cues. In contrast to traditional disparity or depth map representations, the object centered displacement map representation enables the recovery of complete 3D objects while also ensuring the reconstruction is not biased towards a particular image. Although displacement mapping requires a base surface, this base mesh is easily obtained using traditional computer vision techniques (e.g., shape-from-silhouette or structure-from-motion). Our method exploits shading variation due to object rotation relative to the light source, allowing the recovery of displacements in both textured and textureless regions in a common framework. In particular, shading cues are integrated into a multi-view stereo photo-consistency function through the surface normals that are implied by the displacement map. The analytic gradient of this photo-consistency function is used to drive a multi-resolution conjugate gradient optimization. We demonstrate the geometric quality of the reconstructed displacements on several example objects including a human face.
Key features of the two-intron Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene SUS1 contribute to its alternative splicing

Alternative pre-mRNA splicing allows dramatic expansion of the eukaryotic proteome and facilitates cellular response to changes in environmental conditions. The Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene SUS1, which encodes a protein involved in mRNA export and histone H2B deubiquitination, contains two introns; non-canonical sequences in the first intron contribute to its retention, a common form of alternative splicing in plants and fungi. Here we show that the pattern of SUS1 splicing changes in response to environmental change such as temperature elevation, and the retained intron product is subject to nonsense-mediated decay. The activities of different splicing factors determine the pattern of SUS1 splicing, including intron retention and exon skipping. Unexpectedly, removal of the 3′ intron is affected by splicing of the upstream intron, suggesting that cross-exon interactions influence intron removal. Production of different SUS1 isoforms is important for cellular function, as we find that the temperature sensitivity and histone H2B deubiquitination defects observed in sus1Δ cells are only partially suppressed by SUS1 cDNA, but SUS1 that is able to undergo splicing complements these phenotypes. These data illustrate a role for S. cerevisiae alternative splicing in histone modification and cellular function and reveal important mechanisms for splicing of yeast genes containing multiple introns.
Distributed constraint satisfaction algorithm for complex local problems

A distributed constraint satisfaction problem can formalize various application problems in MAS, and several algorithms for solving this problem have been developed. One limitation of these algorithms is that they assume each agent has only one local variable. Although simple modifications enable these algorithms to handle multiple local variables, obtained algorithms are neither efficient nor scalable to larger problems. We develop a new algorithm that can handle multiple local variables efficiently, which is based on the asynchronous weak-commitment search algorithm. In this algorithm, a bad local solution can be modified without forcing other agents to exhaustively search local problems. Also, the number of interactions among agents can be decreased since agents communicate only when they find local solutions that satisfy all of the local constraints. Experimental evaluations show that this algorithm is far more efficient than an algorithm that uses the prioritization among agents.
LINKING DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING IN ICT COMPANIES

The information and communication technology (ICT) industry has expanded rapidly during the past decades and has changed in terms of frequent technology development, increase in product complexity, constant time-to-market pressures, heavy price erosion and the decrease in physical dimensions. Successful product development thus requires effective requirements engineering and acknowledging the different needs of internal and external stakeholders. A vital challenge for ICT companies is requirements for products typically changing during product development. In addition, requirements are not interpreted the same way in different parts of organisations. Today’s products being more complicated than ever, and customer segments more fragmented, requirements engineering and testing is currently a bottleneck for product development and production. In this dissertation, requirements engineering in ICT companies is studied from four complementary viewpoints – current challenges, manufacturing requirements, external requirements, and optimal acceptance limits in manufacturing. The dissertation is qualitative and inductive in nature and is based on interviewing experienced industrial managers. The study included also an element that can be seen as constructive. The researcher has analysed the obtained material and made conclusions. The main result of this dissertation can be summarised as requirements engineering having a coordinating role in complex ICT product development. In addition, this study highlights the potential of the design for excellence (DfX) concept for addressing a vast amount of requirements from numerous internal and external stakeholders. ICT companies should consider full integration of tools and databases related to requirements. Also, delaying decision-making in product development projects to a stage, where adequate amount of information is available, could help coping with changing requirements. Addressing the challenges of a large and complex organisation requires creating and documenting processes for a vast amount of issues. It may be sensible to consider the benefits of establishing a separate DfX management organisation for coordinating internal and external requirements. In addition, the managers in ICT companies should notice that in contrast to the conventional thinking, widening the manufacturing acceptance limits makes business sense in some cases.
Application of surgical skill simulation training and assessment in orthopaedic trauma.

Importance of simulation The surgical restoration of a severely fractured extremity is a complex procedure requiring skills that a surgeon trainee must acquire during their education. Traditional surgical education has consisted of a mixture of didactic lessons with periodic clinical and surgical apprenticeship-based experience. These experiences, although beneficial, are not uniform and do little to assure technical competence. The apprenticeship model is challenged not only by a lack of opportunities to expose trainees to the necessary variety of procedures,1 and the expense of such training,2,3 but also by the need to ensure patient safety while exposing trainees to new experiences.4 There is strong evidence that the current training approach may not be optimally safe. In a review of surgical errors, 63.5% of cases involved technical error and 29% included an error in judgment.5 Both of these types of errors can be ascribed to a lack of experience. These and similar findings have led to the call for greater transparency in the training and assessment of surgical residents. The American Board of Surgery has mandated that, rather than just documenting the surgeries a resident participated in, proficiency in basic laparoscopic skills must be documented prior to allowing graduates to be tested for certification.6 Surgical simulation can help address shortcomings in the traditional apprenticeship training model by providing residents with opportunities to (1) practice important procedures that they may not otherwise encounter and (2) practice procedures efficiently until competency is achieved, (3) without exposing live patients to undue risk. Simulation can provide immediate and detailed feed-back that can improve learning efficiency. With newly imposed restrictions on resident work hours, financial pressures, and increased public scrutiny, simulationbased technical training and assessment tools are receiving renewed attention. Before a surgical simulator construct can be used to assess competency, however, the scientific validity of the simulator and of the performance assessment must be established.7 A well-designed and rigorously validated simulator can provide quantitative, repeatable assessment of specific surgical skills and can predict performance in the operating room. The benefits of training using surgical simulation are already being realized in general surgery, particularly for laparoscopic surgery. Medical students and residents trained on simulators demonstrate improved performance in actual surgeries. For example, in one study, training on a laparoscopic simulator was shown to lead to reliably fewer errors during actual surgery on an anesthetized animal.8 In another study, residents were trained to a certified level in the laparoscopic simulator and then performed their first actual surgery with fewer errors and caused fewer injuries than did a control group of non-simulation-trained residents.9