Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BDNF regulates GLAST and glutamine synthetase in mouse retinal Müller cells

This study investigated whether brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) regulates the L‐glutamate/L‐aspartate transporter (GLAST) and glutamine synthetase (GS) in mouse retinal Müller cells (RMCs) under normal and hypoxic conditions. Mouse RMCs were treated with recombinant human BDNF (50, 75, 100, 125, or 150 ng/ml) for 24 h or underwent hypoxia induced by CoCl2 (125 µM; 6, 12, 24, 48, or 72 h). An additional group underwent combined treatment with BDNF (100 ng/ml; 24, 48, 72, or 96 h) and CoCl2 (125 µM/ml; 72 h). GLAST and GS mRNA and protein expression, L‐[3,4‐3H]‐glutamic acid uptake, and apoptosis were assessed. BDNF dose‐dependently up‐regulated GLAST and GS mRNA and protein and increased glutamate uptake. Similarly, in early‐stage CoCl2‐induced hypoxia, GLAST and GS were up‐regulated and glutamate uptake increased, but these decreased over time. BDNF also up‐regulated GLAST and GS and increased glutamate uptake when RMCs under CoCl2 induced hypoxic condition. However, BDNF treatment 24 h before CoCl2 had no effect on GLAST or GS expression. CoCl2 alone or combined with BDNF did not induce apoptosis. Hypoxia rapidly increased GLAST and GS expressions. This effect was transient, perhaps due to compensatory mechanisms that reduce GLAST and GS by 72 h. BDNF can up‐regulate GLAST and GS and increase glutamate uptake during hypoxia, and these functions may underlie its neuroprotective effects. J. Cell. Physiol. 227: 596–603, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A Protein Complex Containing the Conserved Swi2/Snf2-Related ATPase Swr1p Deposits Histone Variant H2A.Z into Euchromatin

The conserved histone variant H2A.Z functions in euchromatin to antagonize the spread of heterochromatin. The mechanism by which histone H2A is replaced by H2A.Z in the nucleosome is unknown. We identified a complex containing 13 different polypeptides associated with a soluble pool of H2A.Z in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This complex was designated SWR1-Com in reference to the Swr1p subunit, a Swi2/Snf2-paralog. Swr1p and six other subunits were found only in SWR1-Com, whereas six other subunits were also found in the NuA4 histone acetyltransferase and/or the Ino80 chromatin remodeling complex. H2A.Z and SWR1 were essential for viability of cells lacking the EAF1 component of NuA4, pointing to a close functional connection between these two complexes. Strikingly, chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis of cells lacking Swr1p, the presumed ATPase of the complex, revealed a profound defect in the deposition of H2A.Z at euchromatic regions that flank the silent mating type cassette HMR and at 12 other chromosomal sites tested. Consistent with a specialized role for Swr1p in H2A.Z deposition, the majority of the genome-wide transcriptional defects seen in swr1Δ cells were also found in htz1Δ cells. These studies revealed a novel role for a member of the ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling enzyme family in determining the region-specific histone subunit composition of chromatin in vivo and controlling the epigenetic state of chromatin. Metazoan orthologs of Swr1p (Drosophila Domino; human SRCAP and p400) may have analogous functions.
Optical Identification of the X-Ray Burster X1746−370 in the Globular Cluster NGC 6441

We find convincing observational evidence to confirm the optical identification of the X-ray burster X1746-370, located in the globular cluster NGC 6441. Chandra HRC-I imaging yields a much improved X-ray position for the source, which we show to be fully consistent with our rederived position of a UV-excess star, U1, in the same astrometric reference frame. In addition, the smaller Chandra X-ray error circle excludes the only other blue stars previously identified in the old Einstein circle. We have also obtained Hubble Space Telescope STIS time-resolved optical spectra of star U1. Although there are no strong line features, the flux distribution demonstrates U1 to be unusually bright in the blue and faint in the red, consistent with earlier WFPC2 photometry. More notably, the flux level of the continuum is seen to vary significantly compared with stars of similar brightness. Indeed, the light curve can plausibly be fitted by a sinusoid with period 5.73 hr, which is the period of the recurring X-ray dips seen in this source. The presence of modulations in both wavelengths strengthens the case for an orbital origin and, therefore, deepens the puzzle of the unusual energy-independent X-ray dips. Lastly, we note that X1746-370 remains the longest-period confirmed X-ray burster in a globular cluster, and the only one with a period typical of the Galactic population as a whole.
Nuzzer: A Large-Scale Device-Free Passive Localization System for Wireless Environments

The widespread usage of WLANs and mobile devices has fostered the interest in localization systems for wireless environments. The majority of research in the context of wireless-based localization systems has focused on device-based active localization, in which devices are attached to tracked entities. Recently, device-free passive localization (DfP) has been proposed where the tracked entity is neither required to carry devices nor to participate actively in the localization process. Previous studies have focused on small areas and/or controlled environments. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and analysis of Nuzzer, a large-scale DfP localization system, which tracks entities in real environments, rich in multipath. We first present probabilistic techniques for DfP localization of a single entity and evaluate their performance both analytically and in typical office buildings. Our results show that Nuzzer gives location estimates with less than 2-meters median distance error. We then give an algorithm for estimating the number of entities in an area of interest and localizing them into coarse-grained zones to enhance the scalability of the system. This indicates the suitability of Nuzzer to a large number of application domains.
Statistical Analysis of Mandarin Acoustic Units and Automatic Extraction of Phonetically Rich Sentences Based Upon a Very Large Chinese Text Corpus

Automatic speech recognition by computers can provide humans with the most convenient method to communicate with computers. Because the Chinese language is not alphabetic and input of Chinese characters into computers is very difficult, Mandarin speech recognition is very highly desired. Recently, high performance speech recognition systems have begun to emerge from research institutes. However, it is believed that an adequate speech database for training acoustic models and evaluating performance is certainly critical for successful deployment of such systems in realistic operating environments. Thus, designing a set of phonetically rich sentences to be used in efficiently training and evaluating a speech recognition system has become very important. This paper first presents statistical analysis of various Mandarin acoustic units based upon a very large Chinese text corpus collected from daily newspapers and then presents an algorithm to automatically extract phonetically rich sentences from the text corpus to be used in training and evaluating a Mandarin speech recognition system.
The effectiveness of dried cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) in men with lower urinary tract symptoms

Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) are a common condition in older men. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) powder in men at risk of prostate disease with LUTS, elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA), negative prostate biopsy and clinically confirmed chronic non-bacterial prostatitis. Forty-two participants received either 1500 mg of the dried powdered cranberries per d for 6 months (cranberry group; n 21) or no cranberry treatment (control group; n 21). Physical examination, International Prostate Symptom Score, quality of life (QoL), five-item version of the International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF-5), basic clinical chemistry parameters, haematology, Se, testosterone, PSA (free and total), C-reactive protein (CRP), antioxidant status, transrectal ultrasound prostate volume, urinary flow rate, ultrasound-estimated post-void residual urine volume at baseline, and at 3 and 6 months, and urine ex vivo anti-adherence activity were determined in all subjects. In contrast to the control group, patients in the cranberry group had statistically significant improvement in International Prostate Symptom Score, QoL, urination parameters including voiding parameters (rate of urine flow, average flow, total volume and post-void residual urine volume), and lower total PSA level on day 180 of the study. There was no influence on blood testosterone or serum CRP levels. There was no statistically significant improvement in the control group. The results of the present trial are the first firm evidence that cranberries may ameliorate LUTS, independent of benign prostatic hyperplasia or C-reactive protein level.
AASLD guidelines for treatment of chronic hepatitis B

Guiding Principles This document presents official recommendations of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) on the treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) virus (HBV) infection in adults and children. Unlike previous AASLD practice guidelines, this guideline was developed in compliance with the Institute of Medicine standards for trustworthy practice guidelines and uses the Grading of Recommendation Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. Multiple systematic reviews of the literature were conducted to support the recommendations in this practice guideline. An enhanced understanding of this guideline will be obtained by reading the applicable portions of the systematic reviews. This guideline focuses on using antiviral therapy in chronic HBV infection and does not address other related and important issues, such as screening, prevention, and surveillance. For broader issues related to diagnosis, surveillance, and prevention as well as treatment in special populations (e.g., liver transplant recipients) that are not addressed by this guideline, the previous AASLD guideline and recent World Health Organization (WHO) guideline are excellent additional resources. Objectives Guideline developers from the AASLD formulated a list of discrete questions that physicians are faced with in daily practice. These questions were: 1. Should adults with immune active CHB be treated with antiviral therapy to decrease liverrelated complications? 2. Should adults with immune-tolerant infection be treated with antiviral therapy to decrease liverrelated complications? 3. Should antiviral therapy be discontinued in hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-positive persons who have developed HBeAg seroconversion on therapy? 4. Should antiviral therapy be discontinued in persons with HBeAg-negative infection with sustained HBV DNA suppression on therapy? 5. In HBV-monoinfected persons, does entecavir therapy, when compared to tenofovir therapy, have a different impact on renal and bone health? 6. Is there a benefit to adding a second antiviral agent in persons with persistent low levels of viremia while being treated with either tenofovir or entecavir? 7. Should persons with compensated cirrhosis and low levels of viremia be treated with antiviral agents? 8. Should pregnant women who are hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) positive with high viral load receive antiviral treatment in the third trimester to prevent perinatal transmission of HBV? 9. Should children with HBeAg-positive CHB be treated with antiviral therapy to decrease liverrelated complications?
Influence of flanges on the shear-carrying capacity of reinforced concrete beams without web reinforcement

T-beams are acknowledged as economic and efficient structural members widely used for floor slab construction systems. In many cases, according to practice in some countries, the beams do not present transverse reinforcement, and their shear strength is governing for dimensioning the width of the web. Although experimental investigations have shown that the presence of the compression flange enhances the shear capacity with respect to equivalent rectangular cross sections, most current design codes neglect this phenomenon, which leads to the overdesign of these members. In this paper, the role of the compression flange of slender T-beams with concentrated loads is investigated with reference to its influence on the shape of the critical shear crack and to the associated shear transfer actions (STA) of the beam. The flanges are considered elements that allow the smearing of applied loads over a certain length of the web. This consideration, in combination with the mechanical model of the Critical Shear Crack Theory (CSCT), allows a consistent treatment of the phenomenon and leads to simple design expressions accounting for the role of flanges. The results of the proposed model are compared together with design codes (Model Code 2010, Eurocode 2, and ACI 318-11) and other shear design approaches to a database of 239 beams on T-shaped members. The comparison shows that the role of flanges is finely accounted with the proposal based on the CSCT, leading to consistent agreement and to strength predictions that are more suitable for design purposes than the other investigated design models.
Increased systemic inflammation after laparotomy vs laparoscopy in an animal model of peritonitis.

OBJECTIVE To study the influence of laparotomy and laparoscopy on local and systemic inflammation in a rat model of peritonitis. DESIGN Bacteremia, peripheral leukocyte subpopulations, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) plasma levels, and ex vivo secretion of peripheral blood mononuclear cells were investigated after laparotomy and laparoscopy in a prospective randomized experimental study. SETTING Surgical department of a university hospital. ANIMALS 60 male inbred Wistar rats. INTERVENTIONS Standardized fecal inoculum was injected intraperitoneally and rats underwent laparotomy (n=20), laparoscopy (n=20), or no further manipulation (control group, n=20). Blood samples were obtained during the perioperative course to determine bacteremia, leukocytic subpopulations, TNF-alpha plasma levels, and ex vivo secretion. The number of intraperitoneal abscesses was determined in each animal after 1 week. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE The hypothesis of the experiment was that laparoscopy with carbon dioxide leads to an increase of local and systemic inflammation in comparison with the laparotomy and control groups. RESULTS One hour after intervention, bacteremia was significantly higher in the laparotomy and laparoscopy groups compared with the control group (P=.01). Fecal inoculum caused significant monocytopenia and lymphocytopenia in all groups within 1 hour after intervention (P<.05), with complete recovery on day 2 only in the laparoscopy and control groups. Laparotomy caused a significant increase in TNF-alpha plasma levels and decrease of ex vivo production of TNF-alpha compared with the other 2 groups (P<.05). CONCLUSIONS Laparotomy and laparoscopy increased the incidence of bacteremia and systemic inflammation in this peritonitis model. The inflammatory response was significantly higher in the laparotomy group compared with the laparoscopy group.
Word Lattices for Multi-Source Translation

Multi-source statistical machine translation is the process of generating a single translation from multiple inputs. Previous work has focused primarily on selecting from potential outputs of separate translation systems, and solely on multi-parallel corpora and test sets. We demonstrate how multi-source translation can be adapted for multiple monolingual inputs. We also examine different approaches to dealing with multiple sources, including consensus decoding, and we present a novel method of input combination to generate lattices for multi-source translation within a single translation model.
Global analysis of protein folding using massively parallel design, synthesis, and testing

Exploring structure space to understand stability Understanding the determinants of protein stability is challenging because native proteins have conformations that are optimized for function. Proteins designed without functional bias could give insight into how structure determines stability, but this requires a large sample size. Rocklin et al. report a high-throughput protein design and characterization method that allows them to measure thousands of miniproteins (see the Perspective by Woolfson et al.). Iterative rounds of design and characterization increased the design success rate from 6 to 47%, which provides insight into the balance of forces that determine protein stability. Science, this issue p. 168; see also p. 133 Thousands of computationally designed proteins quantify the global determinants of miniprotein stability. Proteins fold into unique native structures stabilized by thousands of weak interactions that collectively overcome the entropic cost of folding. Although these forces are “encoded” in the thousands of known protein structures, “decoding” them is challenging because of the complexity of natural proteins that have evolved for function, not stability. We combined computational protein design, next-generation gene synthesis, and a high-throughput protease susceptibility assay to measure folding and stability for more than 15,000 de novo designed miniproteins, 1000 natural proteins, 10,000 point mutants, and 30,000 negative control sequences. This analysis identified more than 2500 stable designed proteins in four basic folds—a number sufficient to enable us to systematically examine how sequence determines folding and stability in uncharted protein space. Iteration between design and experiment increased the design success rate from 6% to 47%, produced stable proteins unlike those found in nature for topologies where design was initially unsuccessful, and revealed subtle contributions to stability as designs became increasingly optimized. Our approach achieves the long-standing goal of a tight feedback cycle between computation and experiment and has the potential to transform computational protein design into a data-driven science.
Generalized projection for yamato-e and ukiyo-e with projection reference plane

Yamato-e and Ukiyo-e style are Japanese traditional painting styles that have two characteristics, linearity and verticality. We propose a novel generalized projection method to produce such images using 3D computer graphics. The method enables orthographic, perspective, reverse perspective, oblique projections, and a projection with a different field of view vertically and horizontally. The key idea is to control the tilt angles of four-sided planes of a view volume indirectly and independently with the projection reference plane. It can be applied easily to user interactive CG creating tools, and it can produce pseudo multi-perspective projected images. We can see them from our implementation and the resultant images.
Cone bipolar cells in the retina of the microbat Carollia perspicillata

We studied the retinal cone bipolar cells of Carollia perspicillata, a microchiropteran bat of the phyllostomid family. Microchiroptera are strongly nocturnal, with small eyes and rod‐dominated retinae. However, they also possess a significant cone population (2–4%) comprising two spectral types, which are hence the basis for daylight and color vision. We used antibodies against the calcium‐binding protein recoverin and the carbohydrate epitope 15 (CD15) as reliable markers for certain cone bipolar cells. Dye injections of recoverin‐ or CD15‐prelabeled cone bipolar cells in vertical slices revealed the morphology of the axon terminal system of individual bipolar cells. Seven distinct cone bipolar cell types were identified. They differed in the morphology and stratification level of their axon terminal system in the inner plexiform layer and in immunoreactivity for recoverin and/or CD15. Additional immunocytochemical markers were used to assess the functional ON/OFF subdivision of the inner plexiform layer. In line with the extended thickness of the ON sublayer of the inner plexiform layer in the microbat retina, more ON than OFF cone bipolar cell types were found, namely, four versus three. Most likely, in the bats' predominantly dark environment, ON signals have greater importance for contrast perception. We conclude that the microbat retina conforms to the general mammalian blueprint, in which light signals of intensities above rod sensitivity are detected by cones and transmitted to various types of ON and OFF cone bipolar cells. J. Comp. Neurol. 523:963–981, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The effects of the total saponin of Dipsacus asperoides on the damage of cultured neurons induced by β-amyloid protein 25–35

According to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), β-amyloid protein (Aβ) was directly toxic to neurons, leading to neurodegeneration. Total saponin of Dipsacus asperoides (tSDA) is one of the main ingredients of Dipsacus asperoide, a traditional Chinese medicine. To explore the effects of tSDA on neuronal damage induced by Aβ in vitro, biochemical analysis combining primary cultured neurons were adopted. Neurons were treated with 35 mmol/L Aβ for 24 h, and tSDA at concentrations of 1–300 mg/L were added to Aβ-treated cultures 24 h in advance, Aβ for 24 h, the survival rate of neurons decreased closely by 50%. Lactate dehydrogenase release and the Malondialdehyde (MDA) level increased substantially. However, if neurons were pretreated with tSDA, the survival rate of neurons was higher than Aβ-treated alone. Lactate dehydrogenase release and the MDA level decreased distinctly. Results demonstrated that tSDA possessed a neuroprotective action and that tSDA protected neurons against the toxicity of Aβ, most likely by relieving oxidative stress or inhibiting the process of Aβ, inducing free radical generation.
Probabilistic Document Modeling for Syntax Removal in Text Summarization

Statistical approaches to automatic text summarization based on term frequency continue to perform on par with more complex summarization methods. To compute useful frequency statistics, however, the semantically important words must be separated from the low-content function words. The standard approach of using an a priori stopword list tends to result in both undercoverage, where syntactical words are seen as semantically relevant, and overcoverage, where words related to content are ignored. We present a generative probabilistic modeling approach to building content distributions for use with statistical multi-document summarization where the syntax words are learned directly from the data with a Hidden Markov Model and are thereby deemphasized in the term frequency statistics. This approach is compared to both a stopword-list and POS-tagging approach and our method demonstrates improved coverage on the DUC 2006 and TAC 2010 datasets using the ROUGE metric.
Eccentric knee strength of elderly females.

This study compared the strength of the knee extension and flexion muscles in groups of young and elderly women under two conditions: eccentric exercise in which the muscles were lengthened while subjects tried to resist an external force, versus concentric contractions in which the muscles shortened. Twenty-six females, aged 20 to 29 (Mean 25 +/- 3 SD), and 26 elderly women, aged 66 to 89 (Mean 73 +/- 6 SD), were tested at two angular velocities of movement, 45 degrees and 90 degrees/s, on a KinCom isokinetic dynamometer. Elderly women had significantly lower peak and average torque values in all comparisons with the young female group (25 to 54% lower, p less than .01). However, differences between the age groups were consistently smaller for the eccentric type of muscle action than the concentric, in both knee extensors and flexors.