Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of serotonin-induced ion currents in identified embryonic Retzius cells from the medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis)

Retzius cells and the cutaneous baroreceptive P-cells of adult medicinal leeches (Hirudo medicinalis) respond to 5-HT by Cl- as well as by monovalent cation conductances (Drapeau et al., 1989). However, chemical synaptic connections between Retzius cells (Liu and Nicholls, 1989) as well as Retzius cells and P-cells in culture (Drapeau and Sanchez-Armass, 1988) are mediated by postsynaptic Cl- currents in response to 5-HT release from the presynaptic cell. It was the aim of the present study to find out whether the response, which has been shown to be involved in synaptic transmission or whether the cation current, which has so far only been observed upon extrasynaptic 5-HT application, dominates during embryogenesis. Currents induced by transmitter application with a fast perfusion system were measured with a single-electrode voltage clamp and patch pipettes in whole-cell configuration. Control experiments, performed on Retzius cells from adult leeches after 1 d in culture, showed Cl- currents in response to 5-HT application in all cells investigated. Ninety percent of the cells tested showed additional 5-HT-elicited Na+, K+, or both currents. However, the conductance of cation currents amounted only to 10% of the Cl- currents. Embryonic Retzius cells were identified in dissociated cultures by their violet-blue fluorescence acquired by preincubation of intact ganglia or embryos in culture medium containing the autofluorescent 5-HT analog 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine. The first responses to 5-HT were measured at embryonic day 10 (E10), after voltage-activated Ca2+ and Na+ currents had already developed. 5-HT application induced exclusively Cl- currents until E16. This suggests that the receptor-channel complex, which also mediates synaptic responses, is expressed first in measurable quantities. Hence, there is currently no indication that extrasynaptic receptors dominate in immature cells in this preparation.
School closures and influenza: systematic review of epidemiological studies

Objective To review the effects of school closures on pandemic and seasonal influenza outbreaks. Design Systematic review. Data sources MEDLINE and EMBASE, reference lists of identified articles, hand searches of key journals and additional papers from the authors' collections. Study selection Studies were included if they reported on a seasonal or pandemic influenza outbreak coinciding with a planned or unplanned school closure. Results Of 2579 papers identified through MEDLINE and EMBASE, 65 were eligible for inclusion in the review along with 14 identified from other sources. Influenza incidence frequently declined after school closure. The effect was sometimes reversed when schools reopened, supporting a causal role for school closure in reducing incidence. Any benefits associated with school closure appeared to be greatest among school-aged children. However, as schools often closed late in the outbreak or other interventions were used concurrently, it was sometimes unclear how much school closure contributed to the reductions in incidence. Conclusions School closures appear to have the potential to reduce influenza transmission, but the heterogeneity in the data available means that the optimum strategy (eg, the ideal length and timing of closure) remains unclear.
Privacy Preserving Data Integration across Autonomous Cloud Services

In this paper, we tackle privacy issues of data sharing services in a cloud environment. We propose a service- oriented privacy-preserving model for data integration across autonomous clouds. Our model allows to execute aggregations of cloud data sharing services without revealing any extra information to any of the involved services. Thus, involved services enforce locally their privacy policies by applying their own access control models and data anonymization algorithms. We illustrate lack of data protection in current data sources through examples of querying data in a healthcare system.
Glibenclamide‐induced inhibition of the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase in cultured macrophages and in the anaesthetized rat

1 We have investigated whether glibenclamide, an inhibitor of ATP‐sensitive potassium channels, influences the induction of the calcium‐independent isoform of nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in cultured J774.2 macrophages activated by bacterial endotoxin (E.coli lipopolysaccharide; LPS), as well as in the lung and aorta of rats with endotoxic shock.
Association of Serum Prealbumin with Angiographic Severity in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome

Background Serum prealbumin (PA), which is a nutritional index, has been found to be associated with severities and prognoses of various diseases. However, there are no reports about the relationship between PA and angiographic severity of coronary artery disease. Material/Methods This cross-sectional study included 867 patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) who underwent coronary angiography. Patients were divided into quartiles of PA and coronary artery stenosis was determined by angiographic Gensini score, the presence of high Gensini score (Gensini score ≥120), and triple-vessel disease. Multivariate linear and logistic regression analyses were performed to explore the relationship between PA and disease severity in a coronary angiogram. Results There was a significant and independent negative correlation between PA and Gensini score in multivariate linear regression (p=0.015). Logistic regression analysis revealed that crude odds ratios of triple-vessel disease and high Gensini score were 2.47 (95% CI: 1.66–3.67) and 1.83 (95% CI: 1.50–3.49), respectively, in the first quartile of PA compared with the fourth quartile and the results remained significant for high Gensini score after adjustment for confounding factors. In addition, estimated glomerular filtration rate, liver function, and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) had no interactive relationships in the above associations. Patients with lower levels of albumin or higher levels of hs-CRP or the ratio of hs-CRP to PA (hs-CRP/PA) also had more severe coronary atherosclerosis. Conclusions PA is negatively and independently associated with angiographic severity in patients with ACS, indicating for potential use in estimating the burden of coronary atherosclerosis.
A new ToAs' CACFAR Wiener Rake Estimator for downlink mobile positioning in UMTS-FDD system

In this paper, we address the problem of Mobile Positioning and Tracking in the context of WCDMA mode of UMTS-FDD systems using signals' Time of Arrivals in the Downlink direction. A common method for ToA's estimation is correlation procedure between the received signal and delayed versions of the pilot sequence. This classical estimator suffers from the hearability and Near-Far problems, inherent to the WCDMA systems, and several improvements have been proposed in the literature to combat their effects. In this paper, we propose another ToA's estimator, based on Wiener Channel Estimator, and we combine it with a CACFAR detector in order to increase Fingers' probability of detection. Simulation results show that this new CACFAR Wiener RAKE Receiver operates better than the classical ones especially in the situations where the hearability problem has a hard effect on ToA's estimation.
Speaker-independent dictation of Chinese speech with 32K vocabulary

While early machines adopted isolated syllables as input units and needed boring enrollment, our research focus on the speaker independent, word based dictation. A deliberately designed 120 speaker database was built for training; inter syllable context, tonal and endpoint dependent acoustic model are applied with a promising MFCC feature. Two pass acoustic matching accelerates the recognition, taking full advantage of the monosyllabic structure of Chinese speech. A complete word bigram and trigram serve as language processing module. With all efforts, the system reaches 90% character accuracy, performing in almost real time on a Pentium PC without DSP help.
Smoking habits and nicotine dependence of North Korean male defectors

Background/Aims: The smoking rates and patterns in the North Korean population are not well known. More than 20,000 North Korean defectors have settled in South Korea; thus, we can estimate the current North Korean smoking situation using this group. Methods: All North Korean defectors spend their first 3 months in a South Korean facility learning to adapt to their new home. We retrospectively analyzed the results from a questionnaire conducted among North Korean male defectors in this facility from August 2012 to February 2014. Results: Of 272 men, 84.2% were current smokers, 12.5% were ex-smokers, and 3.3% were non-smokers. The mean age of this group was 35.9 ± 11.3 years, and smoking initiation occurred at a mean age of 18.2 ± 4.7 years. Among the subjects, 78.1% had a family member who smoked. Of the 221 current smokers, 67.4% responded that they intended to quit smoking. Fagerström test and Kano test for social nicotine dependence (KTSND) results for current smokers were 3.35 ± 2.26 and 13.76 ± 4.87, respectively. Question 9 on the KTSND (doctors exaggerate the ill effects of smoking) earned a significantly higher score relative to the other questions and a significantly higher score in current smokers compared with non-smokers. Conclusions: The smoking rate in North Korean male defectors was higher than that indicated previously. However, interest in smoking cessation was high and nicotine dependence was less severe than expected. Further investigation is needed to identify an efficient method for North Korean smokers to stop smoking.
Interaction between cyclosporin A and phenobarbitone.

or modifier of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) following bone marrow transplantation (BMT). CSA is extensively metabolised by the liver before being excreted in the bile (Kahan et al., 1983). It has been suggested that the biodegradation of CSA is mainly mediated through the monooxygenase multiple forms of cytochrome P-450 in the hepatic microsomal enzyme system (Maurer, 1985). Drugs known to be inhibitors of this
Are syllables phonological units in visual word recognition?

A number of studies have shown that syllables play an important role in visual word recognition in Spanish. We report three lexical decision experiments with a masked priming technique that examined whether syllabic effects are phonological or orthographic in nature. In all cases, primes were nonwords. In Experiment 1, latencies to CV words were faster when primes and targets shared the first syllable (ju.nas-JU.NIO) than when they shared the initial letters but not the first syllable (jun.tu-JU.NIO). In Experiment 2, this syllabic overlap could be phonological+orthographical (vi.rel-VI.RUS) or just phonological (bi.rel-VI.RUS). A syllable priming effect was found for CV words in both the phonological+orthographical and the phonological condition. In Experiment 3 we compared a “phonological-syllable” condition (bi.rel-VI.RUS) with two control conditions (fi.rel-VI.RUS and vir.ga-VI.RUS). We found faster latencies for the phonological-syllabic condition than for the control conditions. These results suggest that syllabic effects are phonological in nature.
Sangivamycin-like Molecule 6 Exhibits Potent Anti-Multiple Myeloma Activity through Inhibition of Cyclin-Dependent Kinase-9

Despite significant treatment advances over the past decade, multiple myeloma (MM) remains largely incurable. In this study we found that MM cells were remarkably sensitive to the death-inducing effects of a new class of sangivamycin-like molecules (SLM). A panel of structurally related SLMs selectively induced apoptosis in MM cells but not other tumor or nonmalignant cell lines at submicromolar concentrations. SLM6 was the most active compound in vivo, where it was well tolerated and significantly inhibited growth and induced apoptosis of MM tumors. We determined that the anti-MM activity of SLM6 was mediated by direct inhibition of cyclin-dependent kinase 9 (CDK9), which resulted in transcriptional repression of oncogenes that are known to drive MM progression (MAF, CCND1, MYC, and others). Furthermore, SLM6 showed superior in vivo anti-MM activity more than the CDK inhibitor flavopiridol, which is currently in clinical trials for MM. These findings show that SLM6 is a novel CDK9 inhibitor with promising preclinical activity as an anti-MM agent. Mol Cancer Ther; 11(11); 2321–30. ©2012 AACR.
Microglia–Müller Glia Cell Interactions Control Neurotrophic Factor Production during Light-Induced Retinal Degeneration

Activation of microglia commonly occurs in response to a wide variety of pathological stimuli including trauma, axotomy, ischemia, and degeneration in the CNS. In the retina, prolonged or high-intensity exposure to visible light leads to photoreceptor cell apoptosis. In such a light-reared retina, we found that activated microglia invade the degenerating photoreceptor layer and alter expression of neurotrophic factors such as nerve growth factor (NGF), ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF), and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF). Because these neurotrophic factors modulate secondary trophic factor expression in Müller glial cells, microglia–Müller glia cell interaction may contribute to protection of photoreceptors or increase photoreceptor apoptosis. In the present study, we demonstrate the possibility that such functional glia–glia interactions constitute the key mechanism by which microglia-derived NGF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and CNTF indirectly influence photoreceptor survival, although the receptors for these neurotrophic factors are absent from photoreceptors, by modulating basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and GDNF production and release from Müller glia. These observations suggest that microglia regulate the microglia–Müller glia–photoreceptor network that serves as a trophic factor-controlling system during retinal degeneration.
Functional characterisation of cis-regulatory elements governing dynamic Eomes expression in the early mouse embryo

The T-box transcription factor (TF) Eomes is a key regulator of cell fate decisions during early mouse development. The cis-acting regulatory elements that direct expression in the anterior visceral endoderm (AVE), primitive streak (PS) and definitive endoderm (DE) have yet to be defined. Here, we identified three gene-proximal enhancer-like sequences (PSE_a, PSE_b and VPE) that faithfully activate tissue-specific expression in transgenic embryos. However, targeted deletion experiments demonstrate that PSE_a and PSE_b are dispensable, and only VPE is required for optimal Eomes expression in vivo. Embryos lacking this enhancer display variably penetrant defects in anterior-posterior axis orientation and DE formation. Chromosome conformation capture experiments reveal VPE-promoter interactions in embryonic stem cells (ESCs), prior to gene activation. The locus resides in a large (500 kb) pre-formed compartment in ESCs and activation during DE differentiation occurs in the absence of 3D structural changes. ATAC-seq analysis reveals that VPE, PSE_a and four additional putative enhancers display increased chromatin accessibility in DE that is associated with Smad2/3 binding coincident with transcriptional activation. By contrast, activation of the Eomes target genes Foxa2 and Lhx1 is associated with higher order chromatin reorganisation. Thus, diverse regulatory mechanisms govern activation of lineage specifying TFs during early development. Summary: Expression of the mouse T-box factor Eomes is controlled by a key gene-proximal enhancer-like element, with changes in chromatin accessibility influencing its activity in definitive endoderm.
Delay-Dependent Stability Analysis of Singular Linear Continuous-time System

This paper deals with the class of singular continuous systems. By decomposing the singular linear system with time-delay into slow and fast subsystems, LMI-based delay-dependent stability and stabilization conditions are established, and an LMI-based algorithm to design a memoryless state feedback control that stabilizes the system is provided. Two numerical examples are worked out to show the usefulness and validness of the theoretical results.
Spectrum of Hemoglobinopathies in the State of Orissa : A Ten Years Cohort Study

Typhoid fever remains a major public health risk with more than 13 million cases occurring annually in Asia alone. Delay in diagnosis and institution of appropriate therapy especially with emergence of multi-drug resistant strains of Salmonella typhi, can be associated with significant morbidity and mortality may significantly increase the risk of adverse outcome. Traditionally, the isolation of S. typhi remains the gold standard for diagnosis but, the Widal test continues to be the most asked for test, despite numerous problems in the standardization and interpretation.1 The dot enzyme immunoassay for detection of serum antibodies to S. typhi is rapid, simple and can be interpreted visually.2 The present study was carried out to evaluate the typhidot test in comparison with blood culture and the Widal test in patients admitted in PGIMER, Chandigarh with a clinical diagnosis of enteric fever. In 50 consecutive patients with S. typhi isolated in blood culture, Widal test and dot EIA were performed. A control group of 50 patients with unrelated complaints were included. The Widal test using in-house S. typhi antigens was considered positive in a single serum sample when the S. typhi H antibody titre was ≥ 320 and O antibody titer was ≥160. The Typhidot test (Malaysian Biodiagnostic Research SDN BDH, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) which detects IgM and IgG antibodies against S. typhi by using a specific antigen was performed according to manufacturer’s instructions. The Widal test in single serum sample was positive in 30 (60%) blood culture positive patients and was negative in all 50 cases in the control group. IgG and/or IgM was detected by the typhidot test in 48 (96%) blood culture positive patients and 7 controls. Both IgG and IgM could be detected in 15 patients whereas only IgM could be detected in 30 and only IgG in three. Neither IgG nor IgM could be detected in two patients with S. typhi isolation in blood culture. Presence of IgM was a more sensitive indicator, with 45 (90%) being positive for IgM and 18 of 50 (36%) being positive for IgG. Widal test was found to be 60% sensitive and 100% specific whereas Typhidot was 96% sensitive and 86% specific when compared to blood culture. Typhidot had a very high negative predictive value of 95.55% and positive predictive value of 87.27%. The diagnostic value of Widal in single serum samples remains a contentious issue. The sensitivity of the typhidot test is much higher than the Widal test and is sensitive even in fevers of short duration.3 The high NPV (95.55%) of the test even in a highly endemic area is an advantage and can be successfully used even in low-incidence populations. The Typhidot offers advantages of increased sensitivity, rapidity, early diagnosis and simplicity over the Widal test. Culture isolation remains essential especially for antibiotic susceptibility testing and serological tests for the diagnosis of typhoid fever can be used in conjunction with culture.
The Biology and Disease Relevance of CD300a, an Inhibitory Receptor for Phosphatidylserine and Phosphatidylethanolamine

The CD300a inhibitory receptor belongs to the CD300 family of cell surface molecules that regulate a diverse array of immune cell processes. The inhibitory signal of CD300a depends on the phosphorylation of tyrosine residues embedded in ITIMs of the cytoplasmic tail. CD300a is broadly expressed on myeloid and lymphoid cells, and its expression is differentially regulated depending on the cell type. The finding that CD300a recognizes phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylethanolamine, two aminophospholipids exposed on the outer leaflet of dead and activated cells, has shed new light on its role in the modulation of immune functions and in its participation in the host response to several diseases states, such as infectious diseases, cancer, allergy, and chronic inflammatory diseases. This review summarizes the literature on CD300a expression, regulation, signaling pathways, and ligand interaction, as well as its role in fine tuning immune cell functions and its clinical relevance.
Implicit random constraint satisfaction problem

Random CSPs (constraint satisfaction problems) provide interesting benchmarks for experimental evaluation of algorithms. From a theoretical point of view, a lot of recent works have contributed to guarantee the existence of a so-called phase transition and, consequently, of hard and large problem instances. From a practical point of view, due to exponential space complexity, a vast majority of experiments based on random CSPs concerns binary problems. In this paper, we introduce a model of implicit random CSPs, i.e., of random CSPs where constraints are not given in extension but defined by a predicate. This new model involves an easy implementation, no space requirement and the possibility to perform experiments with large arity constraints.
Investigating speaker gaze and pointing behaviour in human-computer interaction with the mint.tools collection

Can speaker gaze and speaker arm movements be used as a practical information source for naturalistic conversational human‐computer interfaces? To investigate this question, we recorded (with eye tracking and motion capture) a corpus of interactions with a (wizarded) system. In this paper, we describe the recording, analysis infrastructure that we built for such studies, and analysis we performed on these data. We find that with some initial calibration, a “minimally invasive”, stationary camera-based setting provides data of sufficient quality to support interaction.
Silodosin versus naftopidil for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia: A multicenter randomized trial

This was a multicenter randomized trial to investigate the clinical efficacy and the impact on sexual function of alpha‐1A selective silodosin and alpha‐1D selective naftopidil for treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia. A total of 97 patients with lower urinary tract symptoms/benign prostatic hyperplasia who had an International Prostate Symptom Score of 8 or more were randomly assigned to receive silodosin (8 mg/day, n = 53) or naftopidil (75 mg/day, n = 44). Before and 4, 8 and 12 weeks after treatment, International Prostate Symptom Score and its quality of life score were used to assess lower urinary tract symptoms. Also, International Index of Erectile Function‐5, and an original questionnaire were used to evaluate erectile function and ejaculation for sexually active patients, respectively. The silodosin group showed advantages in terms of voiding symptoms and quality of life of International Prostate Symptom Score when compared with the naftopidil group. Both silodosin and naftopidil showed no significant effect on International Index of Erectile Function‐5. A total of 23 sexually active patients in the silodosin group experienced more ejaculatory impairment than 21 patients in the naftopidil group, with a decrease of ejaculation volume (87% vs 40%, P = 0.003), prolonged time to ejaculation (56% vs 33%, P = 0.027) and decrease of orgasm (50% vs 39%, P = 0.027). These results suggest that alpha‐1A selective blockers are more effective for voiding symptoms, whereas alpha‐1D selective blockers offer a minor degree of ejaculatory dysfunction.