Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cell fusion by Semliki Forest, influenza, and vesicular stomatitis viruses

Representatives of three families of enveloped viruses were shown to fuse tissue culture cells together. These were: Semliki Forest virus (SFV, a togavirus), vesicular stomatitis virus (a rhabdovirus), and two myxoviruses, fowl plaque virus and Japan influenza virus (Japan)/A/305/57). Unlike paramyxoviruses, whose fusion activity is known to occur over a broad pH range, fusion by these viruses was restricted to mildly acidic pH. The pH thresholds for the four viruses were 6.0, 6.1, 5.5, and 5.1, respectively. The precursor form of Japan influenza, which is not infectious and which contains the uncleaved hemagglutinin, had no fusion activity. This result suggested a role for the influenza hemagglutinin in the low-pH-dependent membrane fusion activity. Taken together, our results show that low-pH-induced fusion is a widespread property of enveloped animal viruses and that it may play a role in the infective process. The fusion reactions with all four viruses were fast, efficient, and easy to induce. With UV- inactivated SFV, the fusion was shown to be nonlytic and the polykaryons were viable for at least 12 h. 30 ng of SFV/1 x 10(6) BHK- 21 cells were required for 50% fusion, and 250 ng sufficed to fuse the entire culture into a single polykaryon.
Assessment of Linear and Nonlinear Synchronization Measures for Analyzing EEG in a Mild Epileptic Paradigm

Epilepsy is one of the most common brain disorders and may result in brain dysfunction and cognitive disturbances. Epileptic seizures usually begin in childhood without being accommodated by brain damage and are tolerated by drugs that produce no brain dysfunction. In this study, cognitive function is evaluated in children with mild epileptic seizures controlled with common antiepileptic drugs. Under this prism, we propose a concise technical framework of combining and validating both linear and nonlinear methods to efficiently evaluate (in terms of synchronization) neurophysiological activity during a visual cognitive task consisting of fractal pattern observation. We investigate six measures of quantifying synchronous oscillatory activity based on different underlying assumptions. These measures include the coherence computed with the traditional formula and an alternative evaluation of it that relies on autoregressive models, an information theoretic measure known as minimum description length, a robust phase coupling measure known as phase-locking value, a reliable way of assessing generalized synchronization in state-space and an unbiased alternative called synchronization likelihood. Assessment is performed in three stages; initially, the nonlinear methods are validated on coupled nonlinear oscillators under increasing noise interference; second, surrogate data testing is performed to assess the possible nonlinear channel interdependencies of the acquired EEGs by comparing the synchronization indexes under the null hypothesis of stationary, linear dynamics; and finally, synchronization on the actual data is measured. The results on the actual data suggest that there is a significant difference between normal controls and epileptics, mostly apparent in occipital-parietal lobes during fractal observation tests.
Search for More Declarativity - Backward Reasoning for Rule Languages Reconsidered

Good tree search algorithms are a key requirement for inference engines of rule languages. As Prolog exemplifies, inference engines based on traditional uninformed search methods with their well-known deficiencies are prone to compromise declarativity, the primary concern of rule languages. The paper presents a new family of uninformed search algorithms that combine the advantages of the traditional ones while avoiding their shortcomings. Moreover, the paper introduces a formal framework based on partial orderings, which allows precise and elegant analysis of such algorithms.
Azimuth ambiguities removal for ship detection using full polarimetric X-band SAR data

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an active sensor that provides high-resolution images of the Earth surface day and night with almost no interferences of the weather conditions. Thanks to these characteristics, during the past decade, its use in the field of maritime security and safety has increased. Nowadays one of the SAR-based applications to increase the maritime security is ship detection. Automatic SAR ship detection is not a trivial task due to the speckle and processes that may cause false alarms. Azimuth ambiguities caused by the aliasing of the Doppler phase history are often visible in low radar backscatter background causing false positive. In this work we propose a method to resolve azimuth ambiguities for ship detection purposes that takes the complete benefit of full Polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data combined with the high resolution capability of X-band sensors.
Layered H.264/AVC video transport over multiresolution OFDM for DVB-H channel

Multiresolution has emerged as a strong concept and when combined with H264/AVC layered UEP it leads to outstanding results especially for mobile TV applications. Our approach is a double multiresolution OFDM scheme with multiresolution constellation modulations on its baseband channels followed by time/frequency multiresolution passband modulation channels . The NAL units carrying the most valuable information (NAL unit HP) are carried by the coarse constellations into coarse sub- channels, and the NAL units that contain residual data (NAL unit LP) are carried by fined constellations and transposed into the fined OFDM sub-channels.
Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Leptin Release Is Not Mediated by Nitric Oxide, but Is Blocked by Dexamethasone

The adipocyte hormone, leptin, has homology with tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and the leptin receptor (OB-Rb) has homology with the interleukin(IL)-6 receptor. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from gram-negative bacteria stimulates the release of many pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as TNF-α, IL-1 and IL-6, among others. To test the hypothesis that LPS would also stimulate the release of leptin, LPS (0.6 mg/kg) was injected intravenously into conscious male rats bearing external jugular venous catheters. Vehicle (0.9% NaCl) was injected into control animals. Blood samples (0.3 ml) were drawn immediately before injection and every 10 min afterwards for 120 min. Plasma leptin concentrations increased gradually in the LPS-treated rats, reaching a peak at 120 min of nearly twice the starting level. To determine if this release was mediated by nitric oxide (NO), nitroarginine methyl ester (NAME), an inhibitor of NO synthase, was injected at doses of 11 or 23 mg/kg (i.v.). The lower dose decreased plasma leptin slightly, whereas the higher dose of NAME increased plasma leptin at 110 min but had no effect on LPS-induced leptin release. On the other hand, dexamethasone (DEX) (0.85 mg/kg), a synthetic glucocorticoid, injected 15 min before LPS, decreased LPS-induced leptin release by 80% (p < 0.001). The results indicate that LPS is a stimulant of leptin release, that NO has little control over basal or LPS-induced leptin release, but that glucocorticoids, epitomized by DEX, largely block LPS-induced leptin release. Increased release of leptin during infection may contribute to the decreased feeding, altered hormonal release and metabolic changes that occur during infection.
Sexuality, Intimacy, and Marital Satisfaction in Iranian First-Time Parents

This study aims at investigating the sexual relationship and intimate of postpartum spouses and the effect of those relationships on their marital satisfaction. A sample of 128 postpartum couples having given birth to their first child (6–36 weeks postpartum) participated in this study during 2009. A nonexperimental, cross-sectional survey design was conducted using Sexual Interest and Desire Inventory, Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationship Scale and Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Using univariate and multivariate regression analysis, results suggested that there were higher levels of sexual desire reported by husbands and there was a significant positive relationship between sexuality and marital satisfaction, for both genders. Moreover, high intimacy diminished the negative effects of marital satisfaction due to reported low sexual satisfaction. Regarding negative effects of marital dissatisfaction in first-time families, it is important to assess main related issues such as postpartum sexuality and intimacy, to obtain knowledge for health care providers to provide support to the postpartum families.
Synchronized Phasors Monitoring During the Islanding Maneuver of an Active Distribution Network

The paper describes the performances of a phasor measurement unit (PMU) prototype based on a synchrophasor estimation algorithm conceived for the monitoring of active distribution networks, as well as its experimental application during some intentional islanding and reconnection tests of an urban medium voltage power network. With respect to typical applications in transmission networks, the use of PMUs in distribution networks requires very low values of total vector error (TVE), which involves particular low values of phase errors of the synchrophasor estimates. These requirements are met by a specifically developed PMU, the characteristics and experimental characterization of which are illustrated in the paper. Three of these PMUs have been then used to monitor experimental tests carried out to assess the capability of a urban distribution network to operate autonomously when fed by a local 80 MW combined-cycle power plant. The information provided by the installed PMUs significantly facilitate the operator maneuvers and appear to be useful for the development of an improved control and management system of the active distribution network.
Treatment of Hypertension in patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus.

Introduction: Recently, the results of the Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation (HOPE) Study and the MIcroalbuminuria, Cardiovascular, and Renal Outcomes (MICRO) HOPE substudy (1) showed that treatment with the angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitor ramipril compared with placebo significantly lowered the risk of cardiovascular (CV) events (by 25%) and overt nephropathy in people with type-2 diabetes with a previous CV event or at least one other CV risk factor. Although 56% of the HOPE diabetics (n=3577) had a history of hypertension (1), uncontrolled diabetic hypertensives (BP >160/90 mmHg) were not randomized. HOPE was not a hypertension trial, and the HOPE results were not mainly attributable to the BP change (1); thus the discussion of the best treatment of hypertension in patients with type-2 diabetes is ongoing.
A new neural network for cluster-detection-and-labeling

We propose in this paper a new unsupervised neural network which is capable of clustering a set of experimental data according to a given generic interpoint similarity measure, and then assign to each new input its appropriate cluster label. The network is able to do this for clusters of any shape, and without knowing in advance the number of clusters to be created. We call this new two-layer network a cluster-detection-and-labeling (CDL) network. In the CDL network the concept of similarity and closeness with regard to distance are combined. Specifically, clusters are represented by a set of prototypes, and the similarities between an input vector and these prototypes are calculated as the inner products of these vectors compared to some thresholds. These thresholds, which depend on the distance between the input vector and the prototype, are calculated in a separate threshold calculating unit. During clustering, the data are cycled through the network several times. At the end of each cycle the clusters are evaluated, and only those with more than a specified number of samples are retained. The others are fed back to be reclustered by an updated network. This process terminates according to a suitable criterion, such as when a prespecified portion of the data are classified. The performance of the CDL network has been compared with that of the winner-take-all (WTA) network for several different cluster structures, since the latter is widely used in cluster analysis applications. These studies demonstrate that the new network performs well for all the tested cluster shapes, also for those cases where the WTA network completely fails.
Molecular Mechanism of the Inhibitory Effect of Aldosterone on Endothelial NO Synthase Activity

Although the proinflammatory and profibrotic actions of aldosterone (Aldo) on the vasculature have been reported, the effects and molecular mechanisms of Aldo on endothelial function are yet to be determined. We investigated how Aldo regulates endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) function in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). HUVECs were incubated for 16 hours with Aldo 10−7 mol/L. The concentration of reactive oxygen species was estimated by measuring 2′,7′-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate chemiluminescence. Signal transduction was estimated by Western immunoblots. Real-time RT-PCR was performed to measure expression of transcripts of endogenous GTP cyclohydrolase-1 and components of reduced nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase. To eliminate the possible effect of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and to emphasize the role of mineralocorticoid receptor, we used GR small interfering RNA and knocked down GR expression in several experiments. NO output was estimated by intracellular cGMP concentration. Reactive oxygen species production increased significantly in Aldo-treated HUVECs but was abolished by pretreatment with eplerenone. Transcripts of p47phox were increased by Aldo treatment. Vascular endothelial growth factor–induced eNOS Ser 1177 but not Akt Ser 473 phosphorylation levels were reduced significantly by pretreatment with Aldo. Pretreatment with either eplerenone or okadaic acid restored phosphorylation levels of eNOS Ser 1177 in Aldo-treated cells, suggesting that protein phosphatase 2A was upregulated by Aldo via mineralocorticoid receptor. The decrease in NO output caused by Aldo pretreatment was reversed significantly by 5,6,7,8-tetrahydrobiopterin, GTP cyclohydrolase-1 overexpression, or p47phox knockdown. These results suggest that Aldo inhibits eNOS function through bimodal mechanisms of 5,6,7,8-tetrahydrobiopterin deficiency and protein phosphatase 2A activation.
Cerebral Metabolism of Lactate in Vivo: Evidence for Neuronal Pyruvate Carboxylation

The cerebral metabolism of lactate was investigated. Awake mice received [3-13C]lactate or [1-13C]glucose intravenously, and brain and blood extracts were analyzed by 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The cerebral up-take and metabolism of [3-13C]lactate was 50% that of [1-13C]glucose. [3-13C]Lactate was almost exclusively metabolized by neurons and hardly at all by glia, as revealed by the 13C labeling of glutamate, γ-aminobutyric acid and glutamine. Injection of [3-13C]lactate led to extensive formation of [2-13C]lactate, which was not seen with [1-13C]glucose, nor has it been seen in previous studies with [2-13C]acetate. This formation probably reflected reversible carboxylation of [3-13C]pyruvate to malate and equilibration with fumarate, because inhibition of succinate dehydrogenase with nitropropionic acid did not block it. Of the [3-13C]lactate that reached the brain, 20% underwent this reaction, which probably involved neuronal mitochondrial malic enzyme. The activities of mitochondrial malic enzyme, fumarase, and lactate dehydrogenase were high enough to account for the formation of [2-13C]lactate in neurons. Neuronal pyruvate carboxylation was confirmed by the higher specific activity of glutamate than of glutamine after intrastriatal injection of [1-14C]pyruvate into anesthetized mice. This procedure also demonstrated equilibration of malate, formed through pyruvate carboxylation, with fumarate. The demonstration of neuronal pyruvate carboxylation demands reconsideration of the metabolic interrelationship between neurons and glia.
Highly active antiretroviral therapy does not completely suppress HIV in semen of sexually active HIV-infected men who have sex with men

Objective:Although HAART can suppress genital shedding and sexual transmission of HIV, men who have sex with men (MSM) have experienced a resurgent HIV epidemic in the HAART era. Many HIV-infected MSM continue to engage in unsafe sex, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) or other factors may promote genital HIV shedding and transmission in this population despite HAART. In this study, we determined the prevalence of seminal HIV shedding in HIV-infected MSM on stable HAART, and its relationship with a number of clinical, behavioral and biological variables. Design:Sexually active HIV-infected men using HAART were recruited from an MSM health clinic to provide semen and blood samples. Methods:HIV levels were assessed in paired semen and blood samples by PCR. Clinical and behavioral data were obtained from medical records and questionnaires. Herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2) serostatus, seminal HSV-2 DNA, and markers of genital inflammation were measured using standard laboratory methods. Results:Overall, HIV-1 was detected in 18 of 101 (18%) blood and 30 of 101 (30%) semen samples. Of 83 men with undetectable HIV in blood plasma, 25% had HIV in semen with copy numbers ranging from 80 to 2560. Multivariate analysis identified STI/urethritis (P = 0.003), tumor necrosis factor &agr; (P = 0.0003), and unprotected insertive anal sex with an HIV-infected partner (P = 0.007) as independent predictors of seminal HIV detection. Conclusion:STIs and genital inflammation can partially override the suppressive effect of HAART on seminal HIV shedding in sexually active HIV-infected MSM. Low seminal HIV titers could potentially pose a transmission risk in MSM, who are highly susceptible to HIV infection.
An integrated development environment for prototyping safety critical systems

The development of software for safety critical, embedded computer systems has been widely addressed in literature. Nevertheless, there does not currently exist any single environment which provides adequate support for all of the following: static analysis, system simulation, animation and visualization, specification reuse, and refinement (from high-level requirements to implementation). In this paper we present an overview of such an environment that is currently under development at the University of Minnesota concentrating on the prototyping capabilities and refinement model.
Modeling and Management of Firewall Policies

Firewalls are core elements in network security. However, managing firewall rules, especially for enterprise networks, has become complex and error-prone. Firewall filtering rules have to be carefully written and organized in order to correctly implement the security policy. In addition, inserting or modifying a filtering rule requires thorough analysis of the relationship between this rule and other rules in order to determine the proper order of this rule and commit the updates. In this paper we present a set of techniques and algorithms that provide automatic discovery of firewall policy anomalies to reveal rule conflicts and potential problems in legacy firewalls, and anomaly-free policy editing for rule insertion, removal, and modification. This is implemented in a user-friendly tool called ¿Firewall Policy Advisor. ¿ The Firewall Policy Advisor significantly simplifies the management of any generic firewall policy written as filtering rules, while minimizing network vulnerability due to firewall rule misconfiguration.
Checking object invariants

When writing computer programs, programmers make assumptions about the relations among variables. In object-oriented programs, these assumptions include relations among the instance variables of a single object, relations often referred to as object invariants. It is a good idea to explicitly annotate a program with these assumptions. Then, a static program-analysis tool can inspect the annotated program to check that routines preserve object invariants. This paper considers two issues that affect what object invariants a program analysis tool can check: object construction and modular checking. The paper suggests some programming idioms and program annotations that widen the range of object invariants that a static program checker can check. The paper also suggests a simple extension to the Java programming language that makes the language more amenable to object-
The Neuronal Splicing Factor Nova Co-Localizes with Target RNAs in the Dendrite

Nova proteins are neuron-specific RNA binding proteins targeted by autoantibodies in a disorder manifest by failure of motor inhibition, and they regulate splicing and alternative 3′ processing. Nova regulates splicing of RNAs encoding synaptic proteins, including the inhibitory glycine receptor α2 subunit (GlyRα2), and binds to others, including the GIRK2 channel. We found that Nova harbors functional NES and NLS elements, shuttles between the nucleus and cytoplasm, and that 50% of the protein localizes to the soma-dendritic compartment. Immunofluoresence and EM analysis of spinal cord motor neurons demonstrated that Nova co-localizes beneath synaptic contacts in dendrites with the same RNA, GlyRα2, whose splicing it regulates in the nucleus. HITS-CLIP identified intronic and 3′ UTR sites where Nova binds to GlyRα2 and GIRK2 transcripts in the brain. This led directly to the identification of a 3′ UTR localization element that mediates Nova-dependent localization of GIRK2 in primary neurons. These data demonstrate that HITS-CLIP can identify functional RNA localization elements, and they suggest new links between the regulation of nuclear RNA processing and mRNA localization.