Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Copeptin, IGFBP-1, and Cardiovascular Prognosis in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes and Acute Myocardial Infarction

OBJECTIVE To determine whether C-terminal provasopressin (copeptin) explains the prognostic importance of insulin growth factor binding protein-1 (IGFBP-1) in patients with myocardial infarction and type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Copeptin and IGFBP-1 were analyzed in 393 patients participating in the Diabetes Mellitus Insulin-Glucose Infusion in Acute Myocardial Infarction (DIGAMI) 2 trial. RESULTS Copeptin was associated with IGFBP-1 (Spearman rank correlation test, r = 0.53; P < 0.001). During follow-up there were 138 cardiovascular events (cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, and stroke). In univariate Cox proportional hazard regression analyses both biomarkers were predictors of events: the hazard ratio for log copeptin was 1.59 (95% CI 1.41–1.81; P < 0.001) and for log IGFBP-1 was 1.49 (1.26–1.77; P < 0.001). In the final model, adjusting for age and renal function, copeptin was the only independent predictor (1.35 [1.16–1.57]; P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Copeptin is an independent predictor of cardiovascular events and appears to at least partly explain the prognostic impact of IGFBP-1 in patients with type 2 diabetes and myocardial infarction. Copeptin may be a pathogenic factor to address to improve outcome in these patients.
Functional Consequences of Mutations in the Human α1A Calcium Channel Subunit Linked to Familial Hemiplegic Migraine

Mutations in α1A, the pore-forming subunit of P/Q-type calcium channels, are linked to several human diseases, including familial hemiplegic migraine (FHM). We introduced the four missense mutations linked to FHM into human α1A-2subunits and investigated their functional consequences after expression in human embryonic kidney 293 cells. By combining single-channel and whole-cell patch-clamp recordings, we show that all four mutations affect both the biophysical properties and the density of functional channels. Mutation R192Q in the S4 segment of domain I increased the density of functional P/Q-type channels and their open probability. Mutation T666M in the pore loop of domain II decreased both the density of functional channels and their unitary conductance (from 20 to 11 pS). Mutations V714A and I1815L in the S6 segments of domains II and IV shifted the voltage range of activation toward more negative voltages, increased both the open probability and the rate of recovery from inactivation, and decreased the density of functional channels. Mutation V714A decreased the single-channel conductance to 16 pS. Strikingly, the reduction in single-channel conductance induced by mutations T666M and V714A was not observed in some patches or periods of activity, suggesting that the abnormal channel may switch on and off, perhaps depending on some unknown factor. Our data show that the FHM mutations can lead to both gain- and loss-of-function of human P/Q-type calcium channels.
“Biased” Systematic and Heuristic Processing of Politicians’ Messages: Effects of Source Favorability and Political Interest on Attitude Judgment

This study investigated two information-processing modes for political messages from favored politicians: “biased” systematic processing and heuristic processing. In an experiment, college students (N = 183) with different levels of political interest received messages about unfamiliar political issues from either a favored or a less favored candidate in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. For those with low levels of political interest, source favorability had a direct effect on attitudes, indicating heuristic processing. For those with high political interest, source favorability had an indirect effect on attitudes through message-relevant thoughts, indicating biased systematic processing. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
The synthesis of multi-channel adaptive variable structure system for the control of AUV

The new method of the synthesis of multi-channel adaptive variable structure system with the sliding mode for the centralized control of the spatial motion of autonomous underwater vehicles is developed in this paper. The conditions of the existences of stable sliding mode on the intersection of hyper-surfaces in the space of the system coordinates with the presence of essential dynamic reciprocal effect between all control channels are obtained and strictly proved. The new law of the adaptive tuning of the position of sliding hyper-surfaces in each control channel is proposed and mathematically substantiated. The application of these control laws allow to provide the high control quality and the maximally possible fast-action at any variations of the object parameters within the given ranges. The efficiency of synthesized control system is confirmed by numerical simulation results.
Hox Paralog Group 2 Genes Control the Migration of Mouse Pontine Neurons through Slit-Robo Signaling

The pontine neurons (PN) represent a major source of mossy fiber projections to the cerebellum. During mouse hindbrain development, PN migrate tangentially and sequentially along both the anteroposterior (AP) and dorsoventral (DV) axes. Unlike DV migration, which is controlled by the Netrin-1/Dcc attractive pathway, little is known about the molecular mechanisms guiding PN migration along the AP axis. Here, we show that Hoxa2 and Hoxb2 are required both intrinsically and extrinsically to maintain normal AP migration of subsets of PN, by preventing their premature ventral attraction towards the midline. Moreover, the migration defects observed in Hoxa2 and Hoxb2 mutant mice were phenocopied in compound Robo1;Robo2, Slit1;Slit2, and Robo2;Slit2 knockout animals, indicating that these guidance molecules act downstream of Hox genes to control PN migration. Indeed, using chromatin immunoprecipitation assays, we further demonstrated that Robo2 is a direct target of Hoxa2 in vivo and that maintenance of high Robo and Slit expression levels was impaired in Hoxa2 mutant mice. Lastly, the analysis of Phox2b-deficient mice indicated that the facial motor nucleus is a major Slit signaling source required to prevent premature ventral migration of PN. These findings provide novel insights into the molecular control of neuronal migration from transcription factor to regulation of guidance receptor and ligand expression. Specifically, they address the question of how exposure to multiple guidance cues along the AP and DV axes is regulated at the transcriptional level and in turn translated into stereotyped migratory responses during tangential migration of neurons in the developing mammalian brain.
An study on e-commence venturing stress, entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial performance

An attention to the dynamic entrepreneurial process causes the e-commerce entrepreneurial activities to move into new research thinking in the entrepreneurial domain. Based on this, the paper profits from the related research results, empirically examines the relationship among the e-commerce venturing stress, the entrepreneurial orientation and the entrepreneurial performance, and draws the corresponding conclusion: (1) the resource integration competence is being related negatively with the entrepreneurial performance; (2) the entrepreneurial orientation has the intense mediator effect to the relationship between the e-commerce venturing stress and the entrepreneurial performance;(3) the entrepreneurial orientation has the positive effects on the entrepreneurial performance, which further develops the theoretical model of the entrepreneurial orientation and the entrepreneurial performance.
Design and Simulation of an Electrochemical ANN- Based Observer for a Lithium-Ion Battery for Estimation of State of Charge

Finite Element Methods (FEM) for estimation of State Of Charge (SOC) of the Lithium-ion battery are inaccurate. A more accurate method using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) is investigated in this research. The SOC of the Lithium-ion battery was determined from an electrochemical mathematical model of the Lithium-ion battery drawn from current literature. The model turns out to be complex as it is described in terms of non-linear Partial Differential Equations (PDE). Since Luenberger observer design is not applicable to systems described by linear or non-linear PDEs, an observer was designed based on back-stepping approach to estimate SOC of the Lithium-ion battery. The ANNs are implemented and then trained using MATLAB Neural Network Toolbox. The result for undertaking this research is a more accurate estimation of SOC of a Lithium ion battery for real-time applications e.g. in a dual source Pure Electric Vehicle (PEV). The proposed ANN-based design and simulation of the PDE observer has been validated by comparing the error of the observer based on ANNs and the same observer based on FEM. Simulations of the ANN-based observer and FEM-based observer were performed in MATLAB.
Unsupervised Eye Blink Artifact Denoising of EEG Data with Modified Multiscale Sample Entropy, Kurtosis, and Wavelet-ICA

Brain activities commonly recorded using the electroencephalogram (EEG) are contaminated with ocular artifacts. These activities can be suppressed using a robust independent component analysis (ICA) tool, but its efficiency relies on manual intervention to accurately identify the independent artifactual components. In this paper, we present a new unsupervised, robust, and computationally fast statistical algorithm that uses modified multiscale sample entropy (mMSE) and Kurtosis to automatically identify the independent eye blink artifactual components, and subsequently denoise these components using biorthogonal wavelet decomposition. A 95% two-sided confidence interval of the mean is used to determine the threshold for Kurtosis and mMSE to identify the blink related components in the ICA decomposed data. The algorithm preserves the persistent neural activity in the independent components and removes only the artifactual activity. Results have shown improved performance in the reconstructed EEG signals using the proposed unsupervised algorithm in terms of mutual information, correlation coefficient, and spectral coherence in comparison with conventional zeroing-ICA and wavelet enhanced ICA artifact removal techniques. The algorithm achieves an average sensitivity of 90% and an average specificity of 98%, with average execution time for the datasets (N = 7) of 0.06 s (SD = 0.021) compared to the conventional wICA requiring 0.1078 s (SD = 0.004). The proposed algorithm neither requires manual identification for artifactual components nor additional electrooculographic channel. The algorithm was tested for 12 channels, but might be useful for dense EEG systems.
Distribution and abundance of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) and other marine mammals off the northern Washington coast

We examined the summer distribution of marine mammals off the northern Washington coast based on six ship transect surveys conducted between 1995 and 2002, primarily from the NOAA ship McArthur. Additionally, small boat surveys were conducted in the same region between 1989 and 2002 to gather photographic identification data on humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) and killer whales (Orcinus orca) to examine movements and population structure. In the six years of ship survey effort, 706 sightings of 15 marine mammal species were made. Humpback whales were the most common large cetacean species and were seen every year and a total of 232 sightings of 402 animals were recorded during ship surveys. Highest numbers were observed in 2002, when there were 79 sightings of 139 whales. Line-transect estimates for humpback whales indicated that about 100 humpback whales inhabited these waters each year between 1995 and 2000; in 2002, however, the estimate was 562 (CV= 0.21) whales. A total of 191 unique individuals were identified photographically and mark recapture estimates also indicated that the number of animals increased from under 100 to over 200 from 1995 to 2002. There was only limited interchange of humpback whales between this area and feeding areas off Oregon and California. Killer whales were also seen on every ship survey and represented all known ecotypes of the Pacific Northwest, including southern and northern residents, transients, and offshore-type killer whales. Dall’s porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli) were the most frequently sighted small cetacean; abundance was estimated at 181−291 individuals, except for 2002 when we observed dramatically higher numbers (876, CV= 0.30). Northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) and elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) were the most common pinnipeds observed. There were clear habitat differences related to distance offshore and water depth for different species.
Key Technologies for Intelligent and Safer Cars - from Motion Estimation to Predictive Motion Planning

This paper presents approaches to three of the major challenges for (semi-)autonomous driving in urban environments: self-localization and ego-motion estimation, detection of dynamic objects such as cars and pedestrians, and path planning in dynamic environments. For each of these tasks we present a summary of the techniques we employ and results on real data. All modules have been implemented and tested on our autonomous car platform SmartTer, except from the path planning part which was tested on an indoor robot and is currently being adapted to the SmartTer.
E ciently Implementing SLG Resolution : Terrance

SLG is a table-oriented resolution method that is gaining increasing attention due to its ability to combine the deductive database, non-monotonic reasoning and logic programming paradigms. SLG resembles SLD in that it admits a tuple-at-a-time resolution method, so it can make use of many of the techniques developed in implementing SLD over the past decade. Indeed, a program can contain any mixture of SLG and SLD evaluated predicates. As a result SLG forms a natural basis for extending Prolog systems. SLG can be eeciently implemented using a WAM-style abstract machine, the SLG-WAM. The SLG-WAM has been implemented for stratiied programs, and design is underway for extensions to general programs. Performance results for stratiied programs are available. They indicate rstly when executing SLD, the overhead of the SLG-WAM compared to a similar WAM implementation is minimal, and usually less than 10%. Further results indicate that SLG derivation may be expected to be surprisingly competitive with SLD derivation on numerous datalog programs, even when SLD terminates and contains no redundant subcomputations. Finally, performance comparisons indicate that the SLG-WAM is about an order of magnitude faster than current deductive database systems even for datalog queries. The results, taken as a whole call into question traditional arguments about top-down versus bottom-up evaluation eeciency, and also indicate that implementation of SLG evaluation is a eld of research worthy of general study.
Variations of Heavy Metals from Geothermal Spring to Surrounding Soil and Mangifera Indica–Siloam Village, Limpopo Province

Assessment of seasonal variation in concentration of heavy metals–As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn from the Siloam Geothermal Spring and their impacts on surface soils and Mangifera indica were undertaken during winter and summer seasons in South Africa. This was done to determine the environmental pollution status of surface soils and Mangifera indica around the geothermal spring. The geothermal spring water, surface soil (0–15 cm) and Mangifera indica (bark and leaves) samples were collected during 2014 winter and summer seasons. Soil and Mangifera indica samples were treated and digested using microwave and block digestion methods, respectively. The heavy metal concentrations were determined with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) (Agilent 7700). The result from this study showed that levels of heavy metals were higher in summer compared to winter season for geothermal spring water, surface soil, and Mangifera indica (barks and leaves). In two-tailed tests (Mann–Whitney U-test), geothermal spring water alone showed significant differences (Z = −2.1035, p 0.05) in both seasons. Some heavy metals concentrations were above the standard guidelines for drinking water and typical soil, making the soil contaminated. This is a cause for concern as it can affect the environment and the health of the inhabitants of Siloam village, who depend on the geothermal spring as their source of domestic water, irrigation, and other uses. This study also showed that Mangifera indica has a phytoremediative property, which lessens the heavy metal concentrations absorbed from the contaminated soil.
Salmon lice – impact on wild salmonids and salmon aquaculture

Salmon lice, Lepeophtheirus salmonis, are naturally occurring parasites of salmon in sea water. Intensive salmon farming provides better conditions for parasite growth and transmission compared with natural conditions, creating problems for both the salmon farming industry and, under certain conditions, wild salmonids. Salmon lice originating from farms negatively impact wild stocks of salmonids, although the extent of the impact is a matter of debate. Estimates from Ireland and Norway indicate an odds ratio of 1.1:1-1.2:1 for sea lice treated Atlantic salmon smolt to survive sea migration compared to untreated smolts. This is considered to have a moderate population regulatory effect. The development of resistance against drugs most commonly used to treat salmon lice is a serious concern for both wild and farmed fish. Several large initiatives have been taken to encourage the development of new strategies, such as vaccines and novel drugs, for the treatment or removal of salmon lice from farmed fish. The newly sequenced salmon louse genome will be an important tool in this work. The use of cleaner fish has emerged as a robust method for controlling salmon lice, and aquaculture production of wrasse is important towards this aim. Salmon lice have large economic consequences for the salmon industry, both as direct costs for the prevention and treatment, but also indirectly through negative public opinion.
Reducing Contention in Shared Last-Level Cache for Throughput Processors

Deploying the Shared Last-Level Cache (SLLC) is an effective way to alleviate the memory bottleneck in modern throughput processors, such as GPGPUs. A commonly used scheduling policy of throughput processors is to render the maximum possible thread-level parallelism. However, this greedy policy usually causes serious cache contention on the SLLC and significantly degrades the system performance. It is therefore a critical performance factor that the thread scheduling of a throughput processor performs a careful trade-off between the thread-level parallelism and cache contention. This article characterizes and analyzes the performance impact of cache contention in the SLLC of throughput processors. Based on the analyses and findings of cache contention and its performance pitfalls, this article formally formulates the aggregate working-set-size-constrained thread scheduling problem that constrains the aggregate working-set size on concurrent threads. With a proof to be NP-hard, this article has integrated a series of algorithms to minimize the cache contention and enhance the overall system performance on GPGPUs. The simulation results on NVIDIA's Fermi architecture have shown that the proposed thread scheduling scheme achieves up to 61.6% execution time enhancement over a widely used thread clustering scheme. When compared to the state-of-the-art technique that exploits the data reuse of applications, the improvement on execution time can reach 47.4%. Notably, the execution time improvement of the proposed thread scheduling scheme is only 2.6% from an exhaustive searching scheme.
Molecular Alterations in Prostate Cancer as Diagnostic, Prognostic, and Therapeutic Targets

Prostatic adenocarcinoma is extremely common in Western nations, representing the second leading cause of cancer death in American men. The recent application of increasingly sophisticated molecular approaches to the study of prostate cancer in this “postgenomic” era has resulted in a rapid increase in the identification of somatic genome alterations and germline heritable risk factors in this disease. These findings are leading to a new understanding of the pathogenesis of prostate cancer and to the generation of new targets for diagnosis, prognosis, and prediction of therapeutic response. Although we are still in the very early phase of clinical development, some of the molecular alterations identified in prostate cancer are being translated into clinical practice. The purpose of this review is to update the practicing surgical pathologist, and residents-in-training in pathology, regarding recent findings in the molecular pathobiology of prostate cancer. We will highlight some of the somatic molecular alterations associated with prostate cancer development and progression, with a focus on newer discoveries. In addition, recent studies in which new molecular diagnostic approaches have been applied in the clinic will be discussed.
Intersections of Schubert varieties and highest weight vectors in tensor products of sl_{N+1}-representations

There is a correspondence between highest weight vectors in the tensor product of finite-dimensional irreducible sl(N+1)-modules marked by distinct complex numbers, on the one hand, and elements of the intersection of the Schubert varieties taken with respect to the osculating flags of the normal rational curve at the points corresponding to these complex numbers, on the other hand. The highest weight vectors are the Bethe vectors of the sl(N+1) Gaudin model and the elements are the (N+1)-dimensional non-degenerate planes in the vector space of complex polynomials. In the present paper we exploit this correspondence in order to calculate Bethe vectors is the tensor product of two irreducible finite-dimensional sl(N+1)-representations. We find the Bethe vector in the case when one of the two representations is a symmetric power of the standard one. The idea is to look for the intersection of Schubert varieties related to a Bethe vector. We present explicitly a basis of the corresponding (N+1)-dimensional plane in the space of polynomials.