Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cerebellar MR changes in patients with olivary hypertrophic degeneration.

PURPOSE To describe MR changes in the cerebellar cortex and the dentate nucleus in patients with inferior olivary nucleus hypertrophy. METHODS MR scans of 11 patients with palatal myoclonus were reviewed. Among them, we selected 5 cases that showed lesions in the central tegmental tract and the ipsilateral inferior olivary nucleus. We evaluated MR changes of the cerebellar cortices and dentate nuclei contralateral to the affected inferior olivary nuclei. Evaluation was performed by side-to-side comparison in each case. Six cases were excluded, because comparison of the cerebellar hemispheres or dentate nuclei with those of the opposite sides was not possible. RESULTS The dentate nuclei opposite affected inferior olivary nuclei showed mild to moderate shrinkage of the normal low-signal areas and increases in signal intensity on T2-weighted images in 4 of 5 patients. The cerebellar cortices on the same sides as the involved dentate nuclei showed atrophic changes in 4 of 5 patients. CONCLUSION Our MR findings suggest that there is a degenerative process involving the dentate nucleus and the cerebellar cortex associated with the hypertrophic degeneration of the inferior olivary nucleus.
I Never Played the 'Girl Card': Experiences and Identity Intersections of Women Student Veterans in Engineering

To improve opportunities for women student veterans in engineering (WSVE), our qualitative study contributes to the body of knowledge about women SVEs and female gender identity in engineering. Our exploratory research presents information about WSVEs’ pathways into engineering and begins to unpack the factors related to WSVEs’ gender, military and engineering identities. The research was guided by three main questions: 1. Why do WSVEs pursue a Bachelor’s degree in engineering? 2. How do military experiences shape WSVEs’ educational experiences? 3. To what extent are the WSVEs’ current engineering education experiences shaped by their gender, veteran, and engineering identities? We interviewed seven WSVEs about their transition out of the military and into engineering programs at four institutions. Participants also completed an identity exercise articulating the extent to which various components of their identity were most central to their core self (e.g., woman, engineering student, socioeconomic status, veteran or military status, etc.). The analysis of the participants’ narratives reveals several themes: (1) there is often a connection between WSVEs’ military occupational specialty (MOS) and their decision to pursue an engineering degree program; (2) the participants’ military experiences served to support their academic experiences in engineering; (3) the participants do not directly indicate that gender identity is particularly salient to their military experience or in engineering; however, their narratives illuminate how they conceptualize engineering identity as central to their experiences; and (4) although participants did not indicate that gender was central to their identities and experiences, nearly all of them discussed relational elements, including the significance of relationships and caregiving to their educational experiences. That is, family roles (e.g., daughter, wife, sister) were central to their identity, even if the women did not say that gender, per se, was salient. Our initial results offer insights into the unique experiences of women who served in the military and who then chose to advance their careers and education in engineering. Policies and programs for WSVEs should account for previous military experience related to engineering, the similar male-dominated cultures both the military and engineering fields possess, and the importance of familyand relationship-oriented responsibilities to WSVEs.
Self-avoiding Walks over Two-dimensional Adaptive Unstructured Grids

In this report, we present a new approach to construct a \self-avoiding" walk through a triangular mesh. Unlike the popular approach of visiting triangles using spacelling curves which is based on a geometric embedding, our approach is combinatorial in the sense that it makes use of the mesh-connectivity only. We present an algorithm for constructing a selfavoiding walk which can be applied to any unstructured triangular mesh. The algorithm's complexity is O(n log(n)) where n is the number of triangles in the mesh. We show that for hierarchical adaptive meshes the algorithm can be easily parallelized, taking advantage of the regularity of the re nement rules. The proposed approach should be very useful in the runtime partitioning and load balancing of adaptive unstructured grids. i
A review on perception-driven obstacle-aided locomotion for snake robots

Biological snakes can gracefully traverse a wide range of different and complex environments. Snake robots that can mimic this behaviour could be fitted with sensors and also transport tools to hazardous or confined areas that other robots and humans are unable to access. To carry out such tasks, snake robots must have a high degree of awareness of their surroundings (i.e. perception-driven locomotion) and be capable of efficient obstacle exploitation (i.e. obstacle-aided locomotion) to gain propulsion. These aspects are important to realise the large variety of possible snake robot applications in real-life operations such as fire-fighting, industrial inspection, search-and-rescue and more. In this paper, an elaborate review and discussion of the state-of-the-art, challenges and possibilities of perception-driven obstacle-aided locomotion for snake robots is presented for the first time. Pertinent to snake robots, we focus on current strategies for obstacle avoidance, obstacle accommodation, and obstacle-aided locomotion. Moreover, we put obstacle-aided locomotion into the context of perception and mapping. To this end, we present an overview of relevant key technologies and methods within environment perception, mapping and representation that constitute important aspects of perception-driven obstacle-aided locomotion.
Characterization of Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli Strains Based on Acid Resistance Phenotypes

ABSTRACT Acid resistance is perceived to be an important property of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli strains, enabling the organisms to survive passage through the acidic environment of the stomach so that they may colonize the mammalian gastrointestinal tract and cause disease. Accordingly, the organism has developed at least three genetically and physiologically distinct acid resistance systems which provide different levels of protection. The glutamate-dependent acid resistance (GDAR) system utilizes extracellular glutamate to protect cells during extreme acid challenges and is believed to provide the highest protection from stomach acidity. In this study, the GDAR system of 82 pathogenic E. coli isolates from 34 countries and 23 states within the United States was examined. Twenty-nine isolates were found to be defective in inducing GDAR under aerobic growth conditions, while five other isolates were defective in GDAR under aerobic, as well as fermentative, growth conditions. We introduced rpoS on a low-copy-number plasmid into 26 isolates and were able to restore GDAR in 20 acid-sensitive isolates under aerobic growth conditions. Four isolates were found to be defective in the newly discovered LuxR-like regulator GadE (formerly YhiE). Defects in other isolates could be due to a mutation(s) in a gene(s) with an as yet undefined role in acid resistance since GadE and/or RpoS could not restore acid resistance. These results show that in addition to mutant alleles of rpoS, mutations in gadE exist in natural populations of pathogenic E. coli. Such mutations most likely alter the infectivity of individual isolates and may play a significant role in determining the infective dose of enterohemorrhagic E. coli.
Fc epsilon RI-mediated association of 6-micron beads with RBL-2H3 mast cells results in exclusion of signaling proteins from the forming phagosome and abrogation of normal downstream signaling

Cells of the mucosal mast cell line, RBL-2H3, are normally stimulated to degranulate after aggregation of high affinity receptors for IgE (Fc epsilon RI) by soluble cross-linking ligands. This cellular degranulation process requires sustained elevation of cytoplasmic Ca2+. In this study, we investigated the response of RBL-2H3 cells to 6- micron beads coated with IgE-specific ligands. These ligand-coated beads cause only small, transient Ca2+ responses, even though the same ligands added in soluble form cause larger, more sustained Ca2+ responses. The ligand-coated 6-micron beads also fail to stimulate significant degranulation of RBL-2H3 cells, whereas much larger ligand- coated Sepharose beads stimulate ample degranulation. Confocal fluorescence microscopy shows that the 6-micron beads (but not the Sepharose beads) are phagocytosed by RBL-2H3 cells and that, beginning with the initial stages of bead engulfment, there is exclusion of many plasma membrane components from the 6-micron bead/cell interface, including p53/56lyn and several other markers for detergent-resistant membrane domains, as well as an integrin and unliganded IgE-Fc epsilon RI. The fluorescent lipid probe DiIC16 is a marker for the membrane domains that is excluded from the cell/bead interface, whereas a structural analogue, fast DiI, which differs from DiIC16 by the presence of unsaturated acyl chains, is not substantially excluded from the interface. None of these components are excluded from the interface of RBL-2H3 cells and the large Sepharose beads. Additional confocal microscopy analysis indicates that microfilaments are involved in the exclusion of plasma membrane components from the cell/bead interface. These results suggest that initiation of phagocytosis diverts normal signaling pathways in a cytoskeleton-driven membrane clearance process that alters the physiological response of the cells.
Surface EMG signals determinism analysis based on recurrence plot for hand grasps

This paper proposes determinism measure (DET) based on recurrence plot, which is capable of showing the recurrence property of a deterministic dynamical system, to evaluate the dynamical characteristics of the surface electromyogram (sEMG) during three different hand movements. In addition, the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is applied to evaluate the performance of the above measures to identify these three hand grasp movements. The experimental result shows that the recognition rate, 96.7%, based on the combination of the linear and non-linear measures is much higher than that with only linear measures, and DET might be a potential tool to reveal the sEMG hidden characteristics of hand grasp movements.
Egg size-number trade-off and a decline in oviposition site choice quality: Female Pararge aegeria butterflies pay a cost of having males present at oviposition

Abstract Once mated, the optimal strategy for females of the monandrous butterfly, Pararge aegeria, is to avoid male contact and devote as much time as possible to ovipositing, as there is little advantage for females to engage in multiple matings. In other butterfly species the presence of males during egg laying has been shown to affect aspects of oviposition behavior and it has been suggested that repeated interference from males has the potential to reduce reproductive output. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of male presence during oviposition on reproductive output and behavior of a population of P. aegeria obtained from Madeira Island, Portugal, and maintained in the laboratory. Two experiments were performed where females were housed individually in small cages. Experiment 1 examined how social factors influenced the egg laying behavior of females. To do this the presence or absence of males was manipulated and egg size and number was measured over the first 14 days of oviposition. It was observed that when males were present during oviposition females made a trade-off between egg size and number. Experiment 2 examined how social factors affected oviposition site choice. Again, male presence/absence was manipulated, but in this experiment where the female laid her egg in relation to host quality was scored, and the size of the egg laid was measured. In the absence of males females selectively positioned their larger eggs on good quality host plants. However, selective oviposition was no longer observed when females were in the presence of males. We suggest that P. aegeria females from the Madeira Island population are adapted for a flexible oviposition strategy, governed by external cues, allowing a trade-off between egg size and number when the time available for egg laying is limiting.
Escaping Hierarchies and Desktops : Associative , Pervasive File Access with User Control

There has long been recognition of the limitations of hierarchical file systems, particularly when people need collections of files, email and web pages for a new task. An associative file access mechanism offers promise in addressing these limitations. Such a mechanism is particularly appealing for personal file access at pervasive interaction devices, such as tabletops, providing an excellent means for collaborating with personal files. A key challenge for providing such a mechanism is ensuring effective user control over the associative access, so that it both achieves the potential to escape the limitations of hierarchies and it ensures the user can understand and control it. We describe a user-controlled associative file access interface, Focus, and in particular the design of its Inspector interface which operates on a smartphone, making it a gateway to the user’s files. We report a qualitative study designed to assess whether participants could use the phone’s Inspector and Focus on a tabletop to readily access file collections for tasks requiring crossing the hierarchical file structure. We also studied how well participants understood the results of the associative access mechanism and how well they could control it, altering the particular search for the new demands of different tasks. All 12 participants were able to use the system effectively for all three aspects: finding the files needed; understanding why particular files were retrieved; and controlling the associative access. The key contribution of this paper is a new associative file access mechanism that users can control. A secondary contribution is Focus and its Inspector which provide a new means for pervasive file access, making tabletops and other embedded display devices useful for group file access.
A new I subregion (I-J) marked by a locus (Ia-4) controlling surface determinants on suppressor T lymphocytes

In an accompanying publication we show that a subpopulation of T lymphocytes, which includes allotype suppressor T cells, selectively expresses I-region determinants. In this report, we show that these determinants are controlled by a new locus, Ia-4. Unlike the classically defined Ia antigens, they are not found on B lymphocytes. Antibody against Ia-4 determinants cannot be detected by conventional dye exclusion cytoxicity assays, suggesting that they are present on a small subpopulation (less than 10%) of peripheral T lymphocytes. The Ia- 4 locus marks a new I subregion, provisionally designated I-J. This chromosomal segment is defined by the crossover positions in strains B10.A(5R) (K-end boundary) and B10.HTT (D-end boundary), and maps between the I-B and I-C subregions.
The Resolved Stellar Populations of a Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy in the Virgo Cluster

We report on the discovery of a faint (MV ~ -10.6 ± 0.2) dwarf spheroidal galaxy on deep F606W and F814W Hubble Space Telescope images of a Virgo intracluster field. The galaxy is easily resolved in our images, as our color magnitude diagram (CMD) extends ≳1 magnitude beyond the tip of the red giant branch (RGB). Thus, it is the deepest CMD for a small dwarf galaxy inside a cluster environment. Using the colors of the RGB stars, we derive a metal abundance for the dwarf of [M/H] = -2.3 ± 0.3 and show that the metallicity dispersion is less than 0.6 dex at 95% confidence. We also use the galaxy's lack of AGB stars and the absence of objects brighter than Mbol ~ -4.1 ± 0.2 to show that the system is old (t ≳ 10 Gyr). Finally, we derive the object's structural parameters and show that the galaxy displays no obvious evidence of tidal threshing. Since the tip of the red giant branch distance [(m - M)0 = 31.23 ± 0.17 or D = 17.6 ± 1.4 Mpc] puts the galaxy near the core of the Virgo cluster, one might expect the object to have undergone some tidal processing. Yet the chemical and morphological similarity between the dwarf and the dSph galaxies of the Local and M81 Group demonstrates that the object is indeed pristine and not the shredded remains of a much larger galaxy. We discuss the possible origins of this galaxy and suggest that it is just now falling into Virgo for the first time.
Receptive fields of motor neurons underlying local tactile reflexes in the locust

The receptive fields of motor neurons to a hind leg were mapped by recording intracellularly from their cell bodies or from the muscle fibers they innervate while stimulating mechanoreceptors on the surface of that leg. Each motor neuron is affected by a specific array of receptors that make up its receptive field. Boundaries along the anteroposterior or dorsoventral axes of the leg divide the receptive fields into excitatory and inhibitory regions. Proximodistal boundaries may correspond to the articulations between parts of the leg. Motor neurons that innervate antagonistic muscles have complementary receptive fields, so that the region that is excitatory for one is inhibitory for the other. The receptive fields of the motor neurons overlap. Tactile stimulation therefore leads to a specific local reflex that involves the coordinated movement of the segments of a leg. Five local reflexes are described, each of which moves the leg away from the site of stimulation. Afferents from the external mechanoreceptors do not synapse directly on the motor neurons, but instead on spiking local interneurons, some of which then synapse directly on motor neurons. These local interneurons have smaller receptive fields delineated by the same boundaries, so that the receptive fields of the motor neurons can be constructed from appropriate combinations of them. It is suggested that receptive fields are organized as “functional maps” that are appropriate for particular behavioral responses rather than solely to preserve or refine spatial information.
A posteriori tests of subgrid-scale models in an isothermal turbulent channel flow

This paper studies the large-eddy simulation (LES) of isothermal turbulent channel flows. We investigate zero-equation algebraic models without wall function or wall model: functional models, structural models and mixed models. In addition to models from the literature, new models are proposed and their relevance is examined. Dynamic versions of each type of model are also analysed. The performance of the subgrid-scale models is assessed using the same finite difference numerical method and physical configuration. The friction Reynolds number of the simulations is 180. Three different mesh resolutions are used. The predictions of large-eddy simulations are compared to a direct numerical simulation filtered at the resolution of the LES meshes. The results are more accurate than a simulation without model. The predictions of functional eddy-viscosity models can be improved using constant-parameter or dynamic tensorial methods.
Vasoactive intestinal peptide stimulates neuropeptide Y gene expression and causes neurite extension in PC12 cells through independent mechanisms

Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) is widely recognized as a regulator of tyrosine hydroxylase via a mechanism of trans-synaptic activation. Subsets of adrenal medullary cells and postganglionic sympathetic nerves coexpress the peptide neurotransmitter neuropeptide Y (NPY) with catecholamines. Using PC12 cells transiently expressing a fusion gene in which the bacterial enzyme chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) is under the control of 700 base pairs of the 5′ flanking region of the NPY gene, we have studied the role of VIP and the related peptide pituitary adenylate cyclase activating peptide (PACAP) in regulating NPY gene transcription. Both VIP and PACAP stimulated expression of the NPY gene through activation of cAMP-dependent protein kinase. PACAP was 1000-fold more potent in eliciting this response compared to VIP and activity resided in its N-terminal 27 amino acids. Both VIP and PACAP caused a subpopulation (approximately 50%) of PC12 cells to undergo profound morphological changes in that the cells extended long, slender neurites with prominent growth cones. This change in morphology was unaffected by preincubating cells with inhibitors of either cAMP- dependent protein kinase or calcium/phospholipid-dependent protein kinase. A trophic role for either VIP or PACAP in regulating sympathetic nerve function is proposed.
Estrogenic regulation of signaling pathways and homeobox genes during rat prostate development.

The developing prostate gland is regulated by its hormonal milieu, most notably androgens, which dictate its growth and differentiation (Price, 1936; Lasnitzki and Mizuno, 1980). In addition, the developing prostate is sensitive to estrogenic exposures (Price, 1963). During prostate morphogenesis, elevated levels of endogenous estrogens (maternal or excess local production) or exogenous estrogens (diethylstilbestrol [DES] or, potentially, environmental estrogens) have been shown to induce permanent disturbances in prostate growth and predispose to precancerous lesions, a process referred to as developmental estrogenization or estrogen imprinting (Santti et al, 1994). The rodent prostate has evolved as a useful model to study early estrogenic exposures since the gland develops postnatally and can be used to model in utero events for human prostate development. The specific model used in our laboratory to study developmental estrogenization of the prostate gland is the Sprague–Dawley rat given injections of 25 mg of estradiol on neonatal days 1, 3, and 5. It is important to mention that although this is considered ‘‘high-dose,’’ the majority of neonatally administered estradiol is bound to a-fetoprotein, which circulates at high levels in neonatal rat serum (Sheehan and Young, 1979). Consequently, neonatal estradiol is 75-fold less potent than an equivalent dose of DES (Sheehan and Branham, 1987) or, put another way, 25 mg of estradiol per pup is equivalent to 0.33 mg of DES per pup. Recent work from our laboratory has examined a dose–response relation for increasing neonatal estradiol exposures and have observed a monotonic effect on the prostate, with growth inhibition and reduced androgen receptor observed at doses of 10 mg per pup (equivalent to 0.13 mg of DES per pup) and no prostatic stimulation at lower
Adaptive interpolation-based model checking

Interpolation-based model checking (IMC) is an important technique in modern formal verification tools. In essence, it relies on an abstraction and refinement process to derive an adequate image approximation for the reachability analysis. However, previous IMC algorithms only offer fixed degrees of abstraction and thus may fail in the proofs if the abstraction is too coarse- or fine-grained. In this paper, we propose an adaptive interpolation-based model checking algorithm in which the degree of abstraction can be adjusted on demand. That is, during the proof process, we closely monitor the effectiveness of the interpolation-based over-approximated image computation and thus adjust the degree of abstraction for the best performance. The experimental results confirm that our flexible interpolation indeed leads to an adequate degree of abstraction as our IMC algorithm outperforms previous ones in various aspects.