Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human pluripotent stem cells as a model of trophoblast differentiation in both normal development and disease

Significance Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) continue to be underappreciated as a model for studying trophoblast differentiation. In this study, we provide a reproducible, two-step protocol by which hPSCs can be differentiated into bipotential cytotrophoblast (CTB) stem-like cells and subsequently into functional, terminally differentiated trophoblasts. In addition, we provide evidence that the response of hPSC-derived CTBs to low oxygen is similar to that of primary CTBs. Finally, using trisomy 21-affected hPSCs, we show, for the first time to our knowledge, that hPSCs can model a trophoblast differentiation defect. We propose that hPSCs are superior to other currently available models for studying human trophoblast differentiation. Trophoblast is the primary epithelial cell type in the placenta, a transient organ required for proper fetal growth and development. Different trophoblast subtypes are responsible for gas/nutrient exchange (syncytiotrophoblasts, STBs) and invasion and maternal vascular remodeling (extravillous trophoblasts, EVTs). Studies of early human placental development are severely hampered by the lack of a representative trophoblast stem cell (TSC) model with the capacity for self-renewal and the ability to differentiate into both STBs and EVTs. Primary cytotrophoblasts (CTBs) isolated from early-gestation (6–8 wk) human placentas are bipotential, a phenotype that is lost with increasing gestational age. We have identified a CDX2+/p63+ CTB subpopulation in the early postimplantation human placenta that is significantly reduced later in gestation. We describe a reproducible protocol, using defined medium containing bone morphogenetic protein 4 by which human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) can be differentiated into CDX2+/p63+ CTB stem-like cells. These cells can be replated and further differentiated into STB- and EVT-like cells, based on marker expression, hormone secretion, and invasive ability. As in primary CTBs, differentiation of hPSC-derived CTBs in low oxygen leads to reduced human chorionic gonadotropin secretion and STB-associated gene expression, instead promoting differentiation into HLA-G+ EVTs in an hypoxia-inducible, factor-dependent manner. To validate further the utility of hPSC-derived CTBs, we demonstrated that differentiation of trisomy 21 (T21) hPSCs recapitulates the delayed CTB maturation and blunted STB differentiation seen in T21 placentae. Collectively, our data suggest that hPSCs are a valuable model of human placental development, enabling us to recapitulate processes that result in both normal and diseased pregnancies.
Obesity-induced Hypertension: Role of Sympathetic Nervous System, Leptin, and Melanocortins*

Excess weight gain contributes to increased blood pressure in most patients with essential hypertension. Although the mechanisms of obesity hypertension are not fully understood, increased renal sodium reabsorption and impaired pressure natriuresis play key roles. Several mechanisms contribute to altered kidney function and hypertension in obesity, including activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which appears to be mediated in part by increased levels of the adipocyte-derived hormone leptin, stimulation of pro-opiomelanocortin neurons, and subsequent activation of central nervous system melanocortin 4 receptors.
The effect of hand strength on pointing performance of users for different input devices

We have investigated how hand strength affects pointing performance of people with and without mobility impair-ment in graphical user interfaces for four different input modalities. We have found that grip strength and active range of motion of wrist are most indicative of the point-ing performance. We have used the study to develop a set of linear equations to predict pointing time for different devices.
Much ado about something: The weight of evidence for PCB effects on neuropsychological function

D.V. Cicchetti, A.S. Kaufman, and S.S. Sparrow (this issue) use six criteria to evaluate the published findings from seven different studies of PCB exposure and neuropsychological function. They point out a number of weaknesses or flaws in each study and conclude that these weaknesses make the overall conclusion that PCB exposure negatively impacts neuropsychological function untenable. While we agree that all of the studies have weaknesses, we take issue with some of the specific criticisms Cicchetti and colleagues make including their comments on exposure assessment, statistical control of multiple comparisons, validity of test instruments and clinical relevance of the findings. We argue that—despite the weaknesses of each individual study—the consistency of effects across studies is remarkable, and we conclude that the weight of evidence for a negative association between PCB exposure and intellectual function in childhood is very strong. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 669–679, 2004.
Acute pesticide poisoning among agricultural workers in the United States, 1998-2005.

BACKGROUND Approximately 75% of pesticide usage in the United States occurs in agriculture. As such, agricultural workers are at greater risk of pesticide exposure than non-agricultural workers. However, the magnitude, characteristics and trend of acute pesticide poisoning among agricultural workers are unknown. METHODS We identified acute pesticide poisoning cases in agricultural workers between the ages of 15 and 64 years that occurred from 1998 to 2005. The California Department of Pesticide Regulation and the SENSOR-Pesticides program provided the cases. Acute occupational pesticide poisoning incidence rates (IR) for those employed in agriculture were calculated, as were incidence rate ratios (IRR) among agricultural workers relative to non-agricultural workers. RESULTS Of the 3,271 cases included in the analysis, 2,334 (71%) were employed as farmworkers. The remaining cases were employed as processing/packing plant workers (12%), farmers (3%), and other miscellaneous agricultural workers (19%). The majority of cases had low severity illness (N = 2,848, 87%), while 402 (12%) were of medium severity and 20 (0.6%) were of high severity. One case was fatal. Rates of illness among various agricultural worker categories were highly variable but all, except farmers, showed risk for agricultural workers greater than risk for non-agricultural workers by an order of magnitude or more. Also, the rate among female agricultural workers was almost twofold higher compared to males. CONCLUSION The findings from this study suggest that acute pesticide poisoning in the agricultural industry continues to be an important problem. These findings reinforce the need for heightened efforts to better protect farmworkers from pesticide exposure.
Preventable trauma deaths: evaluation by peer review and a guide for quality improvement. Emergency Medical Study Group for Quality.

BACKGROUND The trauma-injury severity-score (TRISS) methodology was developed in the United States to calculate the probability of survival for trauma patients presenting for emergency care. OBJECTIVE We assessed the utility of using the TRISS methodology to identify preventable trauma deaths and compared the results to peer review using explicit standards. METHODS Explicit peer review standards were developed by a focus group. The validity of these standards was evaluated by comparing the results of peer review performed by two independent expert panels. All trauma cases admitted to 10 centers in Japan between April 1, 1994, and March 31, 1996, were evaluated using the TRISS methodology. Cases with an expected probability of survival of more than 0.5 were considered preventable. These cases were subjected to peer review. Patients who were dead on arrival were excluded from analysis. RESULTS Of 3,125 patients who were not dead on arrival, the TRISS methodology identified 2,525 as having a probability of survival greater than 0.5. In this group, 189 patients died; thus, 25.3% of all deaths were considered preventable by the TRISS method. Peer review found that only 11.2% of the deaths were preventable; thus, only 46.6% of preventable deaths identified by TRISS were confirmed by peer review. Agreement between the two expert peer review panels was very good (kappa = 0.62). CONCLUSION TRISS can be used as a screening tool to identify potentially preventable trauma deaths. Peer review is appropriate to confirm preventability and to identify potential medical errors.
Infant Swimming Behaviors: Cognitive Control and the Influence of Experience

Previous research on infant swimming has reported contradictory findings. Cross-sectional observations revealed a disorganized phase between about 3 and 12 months, which was attributed to "cortical inhibition" and implied slow learning (McGraw, 1939). However, training with a single infant during this period revealed rapid acquisition (McGraw, 1935). This study reconciles these findings and examines evidence for a subsequent deliberate phase. Five swimming behaviors were measured during 5 initial trials cross-sectionally at 4, 8, 12, and 16 months; effects of 4 months of training were observed at 12, 16, and 20 months. Results for initial trials were comparable for kicks, arm flexions, a righting response, swimming, and a combinatorial task—turning 180° and reaching for the pool wall. Disorganized behavior organized quickly with training during initial and subsequent trials. The more rapid acquisition of the combinatorial task for 16- and 20-month-olds under reduced gravitational demands is consistent with a cognitive-maturational transition at about 12 months.
Multiple molecular forms of human lactoferrin. Identification of a class of lactoferrins that possess ribonuclease activity and lack iron- binding capacity

Lactoferrin (Lf), the major iron-binding component of milk, also a major constituent of the specific granules of neutrophils involved in antimicrobial activity and a glycoprotein thought to play a role in regulatory functions in the hematopoietic system as well as other physiologic activities, is shown to occur in three isoforms. One, Lf- alpha, binds iron; the other two, Lf-beta and Lf-gamma, express potent RNase activity, but do not bind iron. The three isoforms are very similar or identical in Mr, pI, partial proteolytic peptide patterns, NH2-terminal amino acid sequence, and reactivity with mAbs and polyclonal antisera against the RNase and Lf, respectively. The finding of structurally similar but enzymatically distinct forms of Lf may be related to the diverse functions of the molecule.
Why Did I Prefer to Vote for My Political Party

The case study revolves around discussions by a group of students of a popular university in a cafeteria. State elections in Uttar Pradesh had just finished and students were wondering as to how the election results were against their pre-conceived notions. They were discussing about the reasons as to why they voted for their preferred political party as first-time voters. Overall, this case study purports to assess the impact of political parties’ branding on voters’ decision-making. The case study seeks to raise three concerns: how does political parties’ branding influence voters’ decision-making? ; what are the key factors which influence a voter in decision-making process? , and why is psephology so different in a multi-party system in developing economies’ contexts? A consumer-oriented approach is developed for assessing the impact of political parties’ branding on voters’ decision-making. It is concluded that voters’ decision-making is influenced by the political parties’ branding initiatives.
Deep Cortical Layers Are Activated Directly by Thalamus

A Direct Line in the Brain For decades, neuroscientists have assumed that there is a “canonical microcircuit” in the neo cortex, in which information is transformed as excitation spreads serially along connections from thalamus, to cortical layer 4, then to layers 2/3, to layers 5/6, and finally to other brain regions. Each cortical layer is thought to transform sensory signals to extract behaviorally relevant information. Now, Constantinople and Bruno (p. 1591) challenge this dogma. In vivo whole-cell recordings revealed that sensory stimuli activate neurons in deep cortical layers simultaneously to those in layer 4 and that a large number of thalamic neurons converge onto deep pyramidal neurons, possibly allowing sensory information to completely bypass upper layers. Temporary blockade of layer 4 revealed that synaptic input to deep cortical layers derived entirely from the thalamus and not at all from upper cortical layers. This thalamically derived synaptic input reliably drove pyramidal neurons in layer 5 to discharge action potentials in the living animal. These deep layer neurons project to numerous higher-order brain regions and could directly mediate behavior. A direct pathway is used to evoke sensory responses in neurons in multiple layers of the rat barrel cortex. The thalamocortical (TC) projection to layer 4 (L4) is thought to be the main route by which sensory organs communicate with cortex. Sensory information is believed to then propagate through the cortical column along the L4→L2/3→L5/6 pathway. Here, we show that sensory-evoked responses of L5/6 neurons in rats derive instead from direct TC synapses. Many L5/6 neurons exhibited sensory-evoked postsynaptic potentials with the same latencies as L4. Paired in vivo recordings from L5/6 neurons and thalamic neurons revealed substantial convergence of direct TC synapses onto diverse types of infragranular neurons, particularly in L5B. Pharmacological inactivation of L4 had no effect on sensory-evoked synaptic input to L5/6 neurons. L4 is thus not an obligatory distribution hub for cortical activity, and thalamus activates two separate, independent “strata” of cortex in parallel.
The Caenorhabditis elegans unc-63 Gene Encodes a Levamisole-sensitive Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor α Subunit*

The anthelmintic drug levamisole causes hypercontraction of body wall muscles and lethality in nematode worms. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a genetic screen for levamisole resistance has identified 12 genes, three of which (unc-38, unc-29, and lev-1) encode nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) subunits. Here we describe the molecular and functional characterization of another levamisole-resistant gene, unc-63, encoding a nAChR α subunit with a predicted amino acid sequence most similar to that of UNC-38. Like UNC-38 and UNC-29, UNC-63 is expressed in body wall muscles. In addition, UNC-63 is expressed in vulval muscles and neurons. We also show that LEV-1 is expressed in body wall muscle, thus overlapping the cellular localization of UNC-63, UNC-38, and UNC-29 and suggesting possible association in vivo. This is supported by electrophysiological studies on body wall muscle, which demonstrate that a levamisole-sensitive nAChR present at the C. elegans neuromuscular junction requires both UNC-63 and LEV-1 subunits. Thus, at least four subunits, two α types (UNC-38 and UNC-63) and two non-α types (UNC-29 and LEV-1), can contribute to levamisole-sensitive muscle nAChRs in nematodes.
Misogyny posing as measurement: disrupting the feminisation crisis discourse

Feminisation discourses appear to represent nostalgia for patriarchal patterns of participation and exclusion in higher education. It is curious why this particular melancholic formulation has gained currency in the context of higher education today, raising questions about the misogynistic impulse seeking to set a ceiling on women's current success by assuming it must have come about by disadvantaging men. This paper will raise questions about the norms, values and assumptions that underpin the binaried conceptualisation, or ‘mystic boundaries’ between women and men. This essentialised division situates women's achievements in relation to men's putative underperformance. I wish to suggest that feminisation discourses are unsatisfactory as they work with monodimensional, stable concepts of identity, ignore intersectionality, and are parochial in so far as they fail to examine gender globally, reduce gender inequalities to quantification, and treat gender as a noun, rather than as a verb or adjective. Higher education is gendered in terms of its values, norms, processes and employment regimes, even when women are in the majority as undergraduate students.
Large Lexicon Project: American Sign Language Video Corpus and Sign Language Indexing/Retrieval Algorithms

Looking up the meaning of an unknown sign is not nearly so straightforward as looking up a word from a written language in a dictionary. This paper describes progress in an ongoing project to build a system that helps users look up the meaning of ASL signs. An important part of the project is building a video database with examples of a large number of signs. So far we have recorded video examples for almost all of the 3,000 signs contained in the Gallaudet dictionary (and some others not listed there). Locations of hands and the face have been manually annotated for a large number of videos. Using this data, we have built an application that lets the user submit a video of a sign as a query, and presents to the user the most similar signs from the system database. System performance has been evaluated in user-independent experiments with a system vocabulary of 921 signs. For 67% of the test signs, the correct sign is included in the 20 most similar signs retrieved by the system.
Terrorism and its Transition to Cyberspace

This poster discuss the results of research carried out from various angles on the links and relationships existing between cyberspace and contemporary terrorism. In order to understand why terrorism is spreading increasingly into the virtual world, the poster is structured around two questions: whether cyberspace is terrorism's new battleground, and whether it is possible to differentiate cyberterrorism from terrorism online.
Quantifying the Danger of Mobile Banking Applications on the Android Platform

The percentage of consumers that utilize mobile banking has increased in the past year and continues to grow. Mobile users are concerned about, but often do not understand the security risks that might be involved when conducting financial transactions through a mobile application. This research investigates application permissions and whether they are categorized as dangerous or normal as per the Android developer guidelines. In the absence of an existing risk index, we created ADI (Application Danger Index) based on these two types of permissions to help quantify the possible danger of each mobile banking application. Additionally a comparison was made between the percentage frequency of common permissions that occur in benign, malicious and banking applications to further inspect the potential danger in banking applications. Results showed that while banking applications did have an increased potential for danger, they more closely resembled benign applications than malicious applications. Keywords—Mobile Banking; Android; Risk
Discovery of Taeniid Eggs from A 17th Century Tomb in Korea

Even though Taenia spp. eggs are occasionally discovered from archeological remains around the world, these eggs have never been discovered in ancient samples from Korea. When we attempted to re-examine the archeological samples maintained in our collection, the eggs of Taenia spp. , 5 in total number, were recovered from a tomb of Gongju-si. The eggs had radially striated embryophore, and 37.5-40.0 µm×37.5 µm in size. This is the first report on taeniid eggs from ancient samples of Korea, and it is suggested that intensive examination of voluminous archeological samples should be needed for identification of Taenia spp.
Robust LogitBoost and Adaptive Base Class (ABC) LogitBoost

Logitboost is an influential boosting algorithm for classification. In this paper, we develop robust logitboost to provide an explicit formulation of tree-split criterion for building weak learners (regression trees) for logitboost. This formulation leads to a numerically stable implementation of logitboost. We then propose abc-logitboost for multi-class classification, by combining robust logitboost with the prior work of abc-boost. Previously, abc-boost was implemented as abc-mart using the mart algorithm. Our extensive experiments on multi-class classification compare four algorithms: mart, abcmart, (robust) logitboost, and abc-logitboost, and demonstrate the superiority of abc-logitboost. Comparisons with other learning methods including SVM and deep learning are also available through prior publications.
Efficient Calculation of Structural Similarity Threshold for the SCAN Network Clustering Algorithm

Community detection algorithms play an important role in discovering knowledge in networks. The Structural Clustering Algorithm for Network (SCAN) is a community detection algorithm which is capable of detecting hubs and outliers, in addition to cluster members. The term hub means node with the ability of collecting and delivering information among clusters while outlier is considered as a noise in the data. Currently, researchers use exhaustive search to determine the structural similarity threshold value (e) in the SCAN. This paper reports a new approach of using interval e value to narrow the searching domain for proper e value for the SCAN. The approach first adopts computational results produced by the Fast Modularity and the Walk trap algorithms to bind the number of clusters of a network and then determine the interval for e value. For each of our test datasets, the interval prediction reliably finds the true number of clusters. More importantly, the proposed prediction method helps users to eliminate an average of 67.7% of inappropriate e values used to generate clusters.
Three-dimensional assessment of upper lip positional changes according to simulated maxillary anterior tooth movements by white light scanning

Objective Esthetic improvements during orthodontic treatment are achieved by changes in positions of the lips and surrounding soft tissues. Facial soft-tissue movement has already been two-dimensionally evaluated by cephalometry. In this study, we aimed to three-dimensionally assess positional changes of the adult upper lip according to simulated maxillary anterior tooth movements by white light scanning. Methods We measured changes in three-dimensional coordinates of labial landmarks in relation to maxillary incisor movements of normal adults simulated with films of varying thickness by using a white light scanner. Results With increasing protraction, the upper lip moved forward and significantly upward. Labial movement was limited by the surrounding soft tissues. The extent of movement above the vermilion border was slightly less than half that of the teeth, showing strong correlation. Most changes were concentrated in the depression above the upper vermilion border. Labial movement toward the nose was reduced significantly. Conclusions After adequately controlling several variables and using white light scanning with high reproducibility and accuracy, the coefficient of determination showed moderate values (0.40-0.77) and significant changes could be determined. This method would be useful to predict soft-tissue positional changes according to tooth movements.