Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ROS-Mediated Decline in Maximum Ca2+-Activated Force in Rat Skeletal Muscle Fibers following In Vitro and In Vivo Stimulation

We hypothesised that normal skeletal muscle stimulated intensely either in vitro or in situ would exhibit reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated contractile apparatus changes common to many pathophysiological conditions. Isolated soleus (SOL) and extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles of the rat were bubbled with 95% O2 and stimulated in vitro at 31°C to give isometric tetani (50 Hz for 0.5 s every 2 s) until maximum force declined to ≤30%. Skinned superficial slow-twitch fibers from the SOL muscles displayed a large reduction (∼41%) in maximum Ca2+-activated specific force (Fmax), with Ca2+-sensitivity unchanged. Fibers from EDL muscles were less affected. The decrease in Fmax in SOL fibers was evidently due to oxidation effects on cysteine residues because it was reversed if the reducing agent DTT was applied prior to activating the fiber. The GSH∶GSSG ratio was ∼3-fold lower in the cytoplasm of superficial fibers from stimulated muscle compared to control, confirming increased oxidant levels. The presence of Tempol and L-NAME during in vitro stimulation prevented reduction in Fmax. Skinned fibers from SOL muscles stimulated in vivo at 37°C with intact blood supply also displayed reduction in Fmax, though to a much smaller extent (∼12%). Thus, fibers from muscles stimulated even with putatively adequate O2 supply display a reversible oxidation-induced decrease in Fmax without change in Ca2+-sensitivity, consistent with action of peroxynitrite (or possibly superoxide) on cysteine residues of the contractile apparatus. Significantly, the changes closely resemble the contractile deficits observed in a range of pathophysiological conditions. These findings highlight how readily muscle experiences ROS-related deficits, and also point to potential difficulties when defining muscle performance and fatigue.
Innate Immunity to Leishmania Infection: Within Phagocytes

Infection by Leishmania takes place in the context of inflammation and tissue repair. Besides tissue resident macrophages, inflammatory macrophages and neutrophils are recruited to the infection site and serve both as host cells and as effectors against infection. Recent studies suggest additional important roles for monocytes and dendritic cells. This paper addresses recent experimental findings regarding the regulation of Leishmania major infection by these major phagocyte populations. In addition, the role of IL-4 on dendritic cells and monocytes is discussed.
An Unusual Cause of Cardiac Tamponade during Cardiac Catheterization Study

Introduction. Catheter-based diagnostic and therapeutic procedures are rapidly advancing. However, catheter related complications sometimes become life threatening. Cardiac tamponade is a rare but serious complication of this procedure. We have summarized one cardiac tamponade pejoration due to secondary coronary vessels laceration by the implanted pericardial drainage. Case report. A 4-year-old baby having Tetralogy of Fallot was posted for diagnostic catheterization study. Patient was induced with sevoflurane and spontaneous respiration was maintained. After catheter insertion to RV, dye was injected through the catheter which rapidly spread into the pericardial cavity indicating right ventricle perforation. Immediately, blood was aspirated under transthoracic echocardiographic guidance and hemodynamics started improving. For the provision of quick access to aspirate further collection, an intrapericardial sheath was inserted after multiple attempts. Patient's condition started deteriorating again. TTE revealed again some collection and it was increasing gradually. On exploration, it was found that there was continuous bleeding from a lacerated epicardial vessel which contributed to the pericardial collection leading to further tamponade effect. This second iatrogenic injury complicated the management of the first iatrogenic cardiac perforation and, thereby, created a life-threatening situation which needed immediate surgical exploration. Discussion. Usual cause of tamponade after right ventricular perforation is bleeding from the RV, but in our case the second tamponade was not due to bleeding from the RV, but was rather from new laceration injury of epicardial vessels which was remained undiagnosed till exploration.
Enhancing SMTEs' Business Performance through the Internet and E-Learning Platforms

Investigates small and medium‐sized tourist enterprises (SMTEs) in the European hotel sector and their utilisation of the Internet and their perception of online learning systems. Aims to demonstrate to SMTEs that training is imperative and that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can enable them to improve their inventory management, strengthen their marketing and communications strategies and develop their internal business processes. The survey demonstrates that SMTEs are not utilising information technology in their businesses to its full potential. They primarily see the Internet as a mechanism for promoting their hotel rather than for training, inter‐, intra‐organisational and e‐commerce purposes. Respondents have recognised that integrating technology with training will become a management challenge in the future, but at present it is not considered a priority. However, respondents did identify their highest preference for content to be incorporated into the online course modules to be ICT trends and issues. Concludes that SMTEs are willing to engage in online learning and that the ability of SMTEs in embracing e‐learning can become crucial determinants of their success.
Comorbidities and quality of life in patients with interferon-refractory chronic hepatitis C

OBJECTIVES:Patients with chronic hepatitis C (HCV) consistently report a reduction in multiple domains of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) that does not correlate with liver disease severity. This may in part be due to the use of insensitive HRQOL instruments or extrahepatic factors that independently influence HRQOL. We hypothesized that a past history of substance abuse or active medical and psychiatric comorbidities would correlate with HRQOL scores.METHODS:In 107 patients who had failed previous interferon therapy, HRQOL was measured by using the modified SF-36, a disease-specific instrument, and the Health Utilities Index (HUI) Mark III, a generic instrument.RESULTS:Multiple SF-36 subscale and summary scores as well as the HUI Mark III attributes of emotion and pain were significantly reduced in the study population compared with healthy controls (p < 0.001). Serum alanine aminotransferase and HCV RNA levels, HCV genotype, liver histology, and HCV risk factors as well as demographic variables did not correlate with modified SF-36 and HUI scores. In addition, a history of alcohol abuse or dependency and intravenous drug use or dependency, identified in 52 and 51% of participants, respectively, did not correlate with HRQOL scores. However, the presence of one or more active medical comorbidities, defined as a chronic medical condition requiring treatment and monitoring, was significantly associated with both the modified SF-36 scores and HUI attribute deficits (p < 0.001). In particular, painful medical comorbidities or depressed mood requiring treatment were significantly associated with modified SF-36 scores and with HUI attribute deficits and utility scores (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS:Active medical and psychiatric comorbidities may account for some of the reduction and variability in HRQOL scores in patients with chronic HCV who have failed previous interferon therapy. Future studies that control for the presence of active comorbidities in large groups of treatment naïve patients with varying severity of chronic HCV are needed to confirm these findings.
Bulk-boundary correspondence across the Weyl semimetal-metal quantum phase transition: Evolution of topological Fermi arcs

Weyl semimetals (WSMs) have recently attracted a great deal of attention as they provide condensed matter realization of chiral anomaly, feature topologically protected Fermi arc surface states and sustain sharp chiral Weyl quasiparticles up to a critical disorder at which the system undergoes a quantum phase transition (QPT) into a metallic phase. However, the fate of the Fermi arc states has remained unexplored at the transition. We here numerically demonstrate the evolution of Fermi arcs against gradual onset of randomness and establish a bulk-boundary correspondence across this QPT. We show that with increasing strength of disorder the Fermi arc systematically looses its sharpness, and close to the WSM-metal QPT it completely dissolves into the metallic bath of the bulk of the system. Predicted topological nature of this transition can directly be observed in ARPES and STM measurements by following continuous deformation of the Fermi arcs with increasing disorder.
Local averaging based feature extraction on hyperspectral image data

This paper focuses on the land cover/usage area classification problem by using local averaging for feature extraction method. In hyperspectral image classification tasks, spatial information is also useful as much as spectral information. A pipeline of methods is utilized using Fisher's discriminant analysis for dimension reduction, z-score value for central limiting and support vector machines and extreme learning machines for classification. The classification accuracies on transformed data set are outperforming previous works by achieving %99.51 success ratio on for support vector machines and %99.73 for extreme learning machines on 10-fold cross validation. the proposed method increases classification accuracy significantly while reducing the dimension of the original data by %95.
Human Cystatin C

Cystatin C, a low molecular weight inhibitor of cysteine proteases, is involved in various biological and pathological processes. Recently, serum cystatin C has been proposed to be a valuable alternative marker of glomerular filtration rate, particularly in situations in which creatinine fails to provide an accurate estimate of renal impairment. However, the use of cystatin C is interfered by nonrenal factors such as glucocorticoid therapy, malignancy or thyroid disorders, which influence serum cystatin C concentrations. The clinical utility of cystatin C as a renal marker is under evaluation. The standardisation of methods for cystatin C is necessary.
Using Continuations to Build a User-Level Threads Library

We have designed and built a user-level threads library that uses continuations for transfers of control. The use of continuations reduces the amount of state that needs to be saved and restored at context switch time thereby reducing the instruction count in the critical sections. Our multiprocessor contention benchmarks indicate that this reduction and the use of Busy Spinning, Busy Waiting and Spin Polling increases throughput by as much as 75% on a multiprocessor. In addition, flattening the locking hierarchy reduces context switch latency by 5% to 49% on both uniprocessors and multiprocessors. This paper describes the library's design and compares its overall performance characteristics to the existing implementation.
The Nottingham Adjustment Scale: An Estimation of Response Bias

This study found that items in the subsections on acceptance of sight loss and attitudes toward blindness of the Nottingham Adjustment Scale are free of response bias. Respondents who were given only negative items disagreed significantly more with them than did those who were given both negative and positive statements. In addition, respondents with poor emotional adjustment were more strongly influenced by the presence of positive statements than were those with good emotional adjustment.
Pinocembrin: A Novel Natural Compound with Versatile Pharmacological and Biological Activities

Pinocembrin (5,7-dihydroxyflavanone) is one of the primary flavonoids isolated from the variety of plants, mainly from Pinus heartwood, Eucalyptus, Populus, Euphorbia, and Sparattosperma leucanthum, in the diverse flora and purified by various chromatographic techniques. Pinocembrin is a major flavonoid molecule incorporated as multifunctional in the pharmaceutical industry. Its vast range of pharmacological activities has been well researched including antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anticancer activities. In addition, pinocembrin can be used as neuroprotective against cerebral ischemic injury with a wide therapeutic time window, which may be attributed to its antiexcitotoxic effects. Pinocembrin exhibits pharmacological effects on almost all systems, and our aim is to review the pharmacological and therapeutic applications of pinocembrin with specific emphasis on mechanisms of actions. The design of new drugs based on the pharmacological effects of pinocembrin could be beneficial. This review suggests that pinocembrin is a potentially promising pharmacological candidate, but additional studies and clinical trials are required to determine its specific intracellular sites of action and derivative targets in order to fully understand the mechanism of its anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and apoptotic effects to further validate its medical applications.
The Gun Violence Database: A new task and data set for NLP

We argue that NLP researchers are especially well-positioned to contribute to the national discussion about gun violence. Reasoning about the causes and outcomes of gun violence is typically dominated by politics and emotion, and data-driven research on the topic is stymied by a shortage of data and a lack of federal funding. However, data abounds in the form of unstructured text from news articles across the country. This is an ideal application of NLP technologies, such as relation extraction, coreference resolution, and event detection. We introduce a new and growing dataset, the Gun Violence Database, in order to facilitate the adaptation of current NLP technologies to the domain of gun violence, thus enabling better social science research on this important and under-resourced problem.
Analysis of the Conception, Molding and Implementation Process of Creative Enterprise Incubators in the State of Rio De Janeiro / Brazil: a Contribution to the Debate of the Triple Helix

This article discusses the process of design, modeling and implementation of Rio Criativo Enterprise Incubators of the Creative Economy of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – as a partnership initiative between government, entrepreneurial university and new enterprises in the Creative Economy. The motivation for the article was to evaluate the documentation, analysis and understanding of these processes can be worth as a contribution to debate the role of Triple Helix in the generation of public policies. Copyright of the paper resides with the author(s). Submission of a paper grants permission to the 8th Triple Helix International Scientific and Organizing Committees to include it in the conference material and to place it on relevant websites. The Scientific Committee may invite papers accepted for the conference to be considered for publication in Special Issues of selected journals.
What can we learn from No Free Lunch? a first attempt to characterize the concept of a searchable function

The No Free Lunch theorem has had considerable impact in the field of optimization research. A terse definition of this theorem is that no algorithm can outperform any other algorithm when performance is amortized over all functions. Once that theorem has been proven, the next logical step is to characterize how effective optimization can be under reasonable restrictions. We operationally define a technique for approaching the question of what makes a function searchable in practice. This technique involves defining a scalar field over the space of all functions that enables one to make decisive claims concerning the performance of an associated algorithm. We then demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique by giving such a field and a corresponding algorithm; the algorithm performs better than random search for small values of this field. We then show that this algorithm will be effective over many, perhaps most functions of interest to optimization researchers. We conclude with a discussion about how such regularities are exploited in many popular optimization algorithms.
Evolution of massive binary black holes

Since many or most galaxies have central massive black holes (BHs), mergers of galaxies can form massive binary black holes (BBHs). The evolution of BBHs depends on BH mass ratio and host galaxy type. BBHs with very low mass ratios (say, 0.001) are hardly ever formed by mergers of galaxies because the dynamical friction timescale is too long for the smaller BH to sink into the galactic centre within a Hubble time. BBHs with moderate mass ratios are most likely to form and survive in spherical or nearly spherical galaxies and in high-luminosity or high-dispersion galaxies; they are most likely to have merged in low-dispersion galaxies (line-of-sight velocity dispersion 90 km s−1) or in highly flattened or triaxial galaxies. The semimajor axes of surviving BBHs are generally in the range 10−3–10 pc. The upper limit of this range is close to the HST resolution for the typical nearby galaxies (i.e., galaxies of the Virgo cluster). The absence of double nuclei in the centres of nearby galaxies does not necessarily mean that they have no BBHs. If all galaxies are highly triaxial, there will be no surviving BBHs. Possible observational characteristics of surviving BBHs are also discussed.
A REVIEW OF USING MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHMS FOR IMAGE RETRIEVAL WORDS

The domain mismatch between queries (synthetic) and database images (handwritten) leads to poor accuracy than printed documents. One of the solutions is to represent the queries with robust features and use a model that explicitly accounts for the domain mismatch with an unsupervised method by different font selection. Information retrieval techniques such as ranking relevance, detecting stop words and controlling word forms can be extended to work with search and retrieval in the ink domain. Describe an improvement to the existing keyword retrieval (word spotting) methods by modeling imperfect word segmentation as probabilities and integrating these probabilities into the word spotting algorithm. Unconstrained handwritten document retrieval focus on information retrieval from noisy text derived from imperfect handwriting recognizers. Some method uses a novel bootstrapping mechanism to refine the OCR’ed text and uses the cleaned text for retrieval. The second method uses the uncorrected or raw OCR’ed text but modifies the standard vector space model for handling noisy text issues. The third method employs robust image features to index the documents instead of using noisy OCR’ed text. Handwritten character recognition uses the dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm to align handwritten strokes with stored stroke templates and determine their similarity.
Grand Challenge: In-Memory Indexation of Event Streams

Evaluating continuous queries in real-time while receiving events notiﬁcations requires a balanced exploitation of available resources. In this paper, we present our solution for aggregating events from social streams in memory. With the help of a compact representation of the data and relying on an eﬃ-cient tree data structure, we were able to minimize the costs of the updates required when an event enters or leaves the current window which led to low and stable latencies and high throughput.
The prevalence of epilepsy and other seizure disorders in an Arab population: a community-based study

PURPOSE To determine the prevalence of epilepsy and other convulsive disorders and the causes of symptomatic epilepsies in a Saudi Arabian population. METHODS Door to door survey of a restricted area inhabited by 23 700 Saudi nationals. The World Health Organization (WHO) protocol designed to detect neurological disorders was used as screening instrument. All patients with probable seizures were examined by a neurologist and 92% of positive cases were investigated by brain computed tomography (CT) and electroencephalogram (EEG). RESULTS Prevalence rate (PR) for active epilepsy was 6.54 /1000 population (95% confidence interval 5.48-7.60). Twenty-eight percent of the patients had partial seizures, 21% generalized seizures and in 51%, it was not possible to determine if the generalized seizures had focal onset or not. The epilepsy was symptomatic in 32% of the cases: pre or perinatal encephalopathy 23%, head injury 4%, childhood neurological infection 4% and stroke 1%. Febrile convulsions PR was 3.55 /1000 children under the age of 6 years and isolated seizures were documented in only 0.18 /1000 population. CONCLUSIONS The PR of epilepsy in Saudi Arabs is within the range of the values reported in most communities. The causes of symptomatic epilepsies revealed a predominance of perinatal and inherited factors. Isolated and non-convulsive seizures were probably under-recognized due to various social and cultural factors as well as to lack of sensitivity of the questionnaire for non-convulsive seizures.
Behaviors of cavefish offer insight into developmental evolution

Many developmental processes have evolved through natural selection, yet in only a few cases do we understand if and how a change of developmental process produces a benefit. For example, many studies in evolutionary biology have investigated the developmental mechanisms that lead to novel structures in an animal, but only a few have addressed if these structures actually benefit the animal at the behavioral level of prey hunting and mating. As such, this review discusses an animal's behavior as the integrated functional output of its evolved morphological and physiological traits. Specifically, we focus on recent findings about the blind Mexican cavefish, Astyanax mexicanus, for which clear relationships exist between its physical traits and ecosystem. This species includes two morphotypes: an eyed surface dweller versus many conspecific types of blind cave dwellers, some of which evolved independently; all of the blind subtypes derived from eyed surface dwellers. The blind cavefish evolved under clear selection pressures: food is sparse and darkness is perpetual. Simulating the major aspects of a cave ecosystem in the laboratory is relatively easy, so we can use this species to begin resolving the relationships between evolved traits and selection pressures—relationships which are more complex for other animals models. This review discusses the recent advances in cavefish research that have helped us establish some key relationships between morphological evolution and environmental shifts. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 82: 268–280, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
FluidMedia: an offline peer-to-peer media transaction system

The FluidMedia system provides a convenient means to legally transfer copyrighted digital media. Its ability to support off-line sales transactions and authentication of media access rights allows system users great flexibility in the way they access and distribute media, yet still provides strong control over piracy for content distributors. Furthermore, the FluidMedia system supports transaction policies that provide economic incentives to system users to distribute media.