Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Iron studies and red cell transfusion in cardiothoracic and orthopaedic surgical patients: a retrospective audit at a tertiary hospital

Background and Objectives Preoperative diagnosis and treatment of anaemia are important to minimize adverse postoperative outcomes. This audit reviewed red cell transfusion practice, degree of anaemia, iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) and chronic disease or anaemia of inflammation (AI) in cardiothoracic and orthopaedic surgical patients who had available iron studies.
Modulatory mechanisms of object-recognition memory in the perirhinal cortex

The present thesis examined whether acetylcholine (ACh) and 17-β estradiol (E2) modulate object-recognition memory (ORM) and perirhinal cortex (PRh) function. ORM was assessed using the Novel-Object Preference (NOP) test or the delayed non-match-to-sample (DNMS) task. The first goal was to investigate whether acetylcholine (ACh) acts via muscarinic receptors (mAChR) in the PRh to modulate novelty preference and novelty-related neuronal activation. Male rats received intra-PRh infusions of a mAChR antagonist or vehicle in the PRh before or after the familiarization phase of the NOP test, then tested 4- or 24-hr later. These infusions were also given before novel- or familiar-object exploration. The antagonist prevented novelty preference regardless of retention delay and timing of infusion. While novel-object exploration resulted in increased PRh activation, this increase was prevented by mAChR antagonism. These results are consistent with the idea that ACh (via mAChR in the PRh) modulates novelty preference and neuronal activation following novel-object exploration. A second goal was to determine whether intra-PRh modulates ORM and PRh-mediated synaptic plasticity in ovariectomized rats. Intra-PRh infusions of E2 or vehicle were given immediately before, immediately after, or two hours following the familiarization phase of the NOP test. Intra-PRh infusions of E2 or vehicle were also given before the DNMS task. Enhanced novelty preference was observed on a 72-hr retention test when E2 was administered immediately before or after familiarization. Intra-PRh E2 reduced accuracy scores on the DNMS task following a 3-min retention delay. A subsequent study examined whether E2 modulates ORM via estrogen receptor beta (ERβ). Intra-PRh infusions of a selective ERβ agonist enhanced novelty preference following a 4- and 72-hr retention delay, but had no effect on accuracy on the DNMS task. The final study compared synaptic density of PRh neurons following proestrous and estrous, and following high E2 replacement or no replacement in ovariectomized rats. High levels of E2 were associated with reduced synaptic density. These results support the idea that while E2 (via ERβ) enhances novelty preference, it impairs ORM (independent of ERβ). The modulatory effect of E2 on synaptic density in the PRh is a potential mechanism through which E2 influences ORM.
Super resolution reconstruction based on motion estimation error and edge adaptive constraints

In order to improve the quality of image with super-resolution reconstruction, a method based on motion estimation error and edge constraint was proposed. Under the condition of data consistency and amplitude restriction, the motion estimation error was analyzed, with its variance being calculated; meanwhile, in order to suppress the ringing artifacts, edge constraint was adopted and a method based clustering for judging the edge's direction was proposed. The experimental results show that the performance of the this algorithm is better than the traditional linear interpolation and method without considering motion estimation error both in vision effect and peak signal to noise ratio.
Genetic control of ATGL-mediated lipolysis modulates adipose triglyceride stores in leptin-deficient mice[S]

Dissecting the genetics of complex traits such as obesity allows the identification of causal genes for disease. Here, we show that the BALB/c mouse strain carries genetic variants that confer resistance to obesity induced by leptin-deficiency or a high-fat diet (HFD). We set out to identify the physiological and genetic bases underlying this phenotype. When compared with C57BL6/J ob/ob mice (B6), BALB/c ob/ob mice exhibited decreased food intake, increased thermogenic capacity, and improved fat catabolism, each of which can potentially modify obesity. Interestingly, analysis of F1 ob/ob (progeny of B6 ob/+ × BALB/c ob+) mice revealed that obesity resistance in BALB/c ob/ob mice principally relied upon improved fat mobilization. This was mechanistically explained by increased adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) content in adipocytes, along with increased lipolysis and fatty acid oxidation. We conducted a genome-wide scan and defined a quantitative trait locus (QTL) on chromosome 2. BALB/c alleles on chromosome 2 not only associated with the obesity resistance phenotype but also supported increased ATGL content in adipose tissue. In summary, our study provides evidence that leptin-independent control of adipocyte lipolysis rates directly modifies the balance of macronutrient handling and is sufficient to regulate fat mass in the absence of alterations in food intake and energy expenditure. —Marcelin, G. , S-M. Liu, X. Li, G. J. Schwartz, and S. Chua.
GESTALT THERAPY: PAST, PRESENT, THEORY, AND RESEARCH

Orthodox gestalt therapy suffered a rather unfortunate fate; gestalt theory has been poorly articulated, and gestalt techniques have received minimal empirical validation. These weaknesses are, in part, a consequence of F. Perls’s biographical history, which led to an integration of disparate theoretical models that were exacerbated by F. Perls’s haphazard, idiosyncratic personal style. However, recent empirical research suggests that the 2-chair technique is superior to other therapeutic interventions for conflict splits, decisional conflict, marital conflict, and unfinished business and that the 2-chair technique is as effective as Rogerian and cognitive–behavioral therapies. Although F. Perls’s techniques may have been generated largely from his idiosyncratic personality characteristics, these techniques have some validity for very specific psychological dilemmas. Classical Gestalt Theory and Perls’s Eccentricities
Dynamic Decision and Data-Driven Strategies for the Optimal Management of Subsurface Geo-Systems

Effective geo-system management involves understanding of the interplay between surface entities (e.g., locations of injection and production wells in an oil reservoir) and appropriately effecting subsurface characteristics. This in turn requires efficient integration of complex numerical models of the environment, optimization procedures, and decision making processes. The dynamic, data-driven application systems (DDDAS) paradigm offers a promising framework to address this requirement. To achieve this goal, we have developed advanced multi-physics, multi-scale, and multi-block numerical models and autonomic systems software for dynamic, data-driven applications systems. This work has enabled a new generation of data-driven, interactive and dynamically adaptive strategies for subsurface characterization and management. These strategies have been applied to different aspects of subsurface management in strategically important application areas, including simulation-based optimization for the optimal oil well placement and the data-driven management of the Ruby Gulch Waste Repository. This paper summarizes the key outcomes and achievements of our work, as well as reports ongoing and future activities focused on uncertainty estimation and characterization.
"Boom" or "Ruin"--Does It Make a Difference? Using Text Mining and Sentiment Analysis to Support Intraday Investment Decisions

Investors have to deal with an increasing amount of information in order to make beneficial investment decisions. Thus, text mining is often applied to support the decision-making process by predicting the stock price impact of financial news. Recent research has shown that there exists a relation between news article sentiment and stock prices. However, this is not considered by previous text mining studies. In this paper, we develop a novel two-stage approach that connects text mining with sentiment analysis to predict the stock price impact of company-specific news. We find that the combination of text mining and sentiment analysis improves forecasting results. Additionally, a higher accuracy can be achieved by using finance-related word lists for sentiment analysis instead of a generic dictionary.
Drinking Motives and Self-Other Differences of College Norms of Alcohol-Related Consequences and Protective Behavioral Strategies

Heavy alcohol use and related consequences among college students have prompted an increase in research on determinants of excessive drinking, including perceived drinking norms. A distinction can be made between descriptive norms (what others do) and injunctive norms (what others approve of). Research reveals consistent self-other differences (SOD) for both descriptive and injunctive norms (Borsari & Carey, 2003), such that students tend to endorse more conservative behaviors and attitudes for themselves than they ascribe to their peers. The purpose of this study is to extend understanding of injunctive norms by evaluating SOD on (a) global comfort with drinking of students on campus, (b) acceptability of drinking-related consequences, and (c) acceptability of protective behavioral strategies (PBS). Exploratory analyses examined drinking motives and first-year status as factors in self-other ratings. Participants were 324 undergraduates (61% female, 70% freshmen, 67% White), who completed an anonymous, online survey. Questions included demographics and alcohol use histories, and ratings of overall comfort with student drinking habits for “self,” “friends,” and “average student” on 11point scales (0=not at all to 10=very) adapted from Schroeder and Prentice (1998). Participants then also rated two sets of items on acceptability to self and to others: (a) negative consequences, items adapted from the Brief Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire (Kahler et al., 2005) and (b) items adapted from the Protective Behavioral Strategies Scale (Martens et al., 2005). Self and other acceptability ratings used 6-point scales (1=least acceptable; 6=most acceptable). Ttests were used to compare self and other acceptability ratings. Comfort with drinking habits at the university was higher for friends (M=8.22, SD=2.11) than for self (M=7.35, SD=2.60), t(323)=-7.31, p<0.001. However, the comfort levels of self and average student did not differ (M=7.38, SD=1.91), t(323)=1.91, ns. With regard to drinking consequences, participants rated others as more accepting (M=2.42, SD=.04) than they were themselves (M=1.90, SD=.033), t(323)=11.50, p<0.001. Conversely, participants rated others as less accepting (M=4.09, SD=.067) of PBS than they were (M=4.60, SD=.059), t(323)=-8.75, p<0.01. Motives significantly correlated with both self-approval ratings of negative consequences and PBS. When compared on the perceived approval of others, first-year students and upperclassmen differed significantly on negative consequences (t=2.1, p<0.05) and PBS (t=3.3, p<0.01). Unexpectedly, more experience in college was associated with greater acceptability of negative consequences and less acceptability of PBS. Participants expressed less approval of consequences and more approval of PBS than they expected of other students at their university. Thus, the injunctive norms held by college students reflect a perceived social
Identification of a Short (C15) ChainZ-Isoprenyl Diphosphate Synthase and a Homologous Long (C50) Chain Isoprenyl Diphosphate Synthase inMycobacterium tuberculosis *

We report the cloning, overexpression, and partial characterization of two unique Z-isoprenyl diphosphate synthase homologs from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The first enzyme, Rv1086, adds one isoprene unit to ω,E-geranyl diphosphate. The product, ω,E,Z-farnesyl diphosphate, is the putative substrate of the second enzyme, Rv2361c. This enzyme adds seven more isoprene units to ω,E,Z-farnesyl diphosphate and releases decaprenyl diphosphate. Both open reading frames were cloned from the M. tuberculosis H37Rv genome and overexpressed in M. smegmatis. Membrane and cytosol fractions from wild type and the two recombinant strains were assayed for [14C]isopentenyl diphosphate incorporation into isoprenyl diphosphates in the presence of various allylic isoprenyl diphosphate acceptors. Membrane fractions of recombinant cells overexpressing Rv2361c incubated with farnesyl diphosphate showed a 10-fold increase of [14C]isopentenyl diphosphate incorporation into decaprenyl diphosphate. Membrane fractions of recombinant cells overexpressing Rv1086 incubated with geranyl diphosphate showed a 5-fold increase of [14C]isopentenyl diphosphate incorporation into farnesyl diphosphate. Analysis of the stereochemistry revealed that all of the overexpressed farnesyl diphosphate was in the ω,E,Z-configuration. This is the first description of a short chain isoprenyl diphosphate synthase that generates products with Z-stereochemistry. Previously, all known short chain isoprenyl diphosphate synthases catalyze the synthesis of products withE-stereochemistry.
Truck, Barter and Exchange Versus the Endowment Effect: Virtual Field Experiments in an Online Game Environment

We examine the feasibility of using a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) to test economic theories. As a test vehicle we use the well-known endowment effect. Even though our goods are entirely virtual, our results confirm earlier results that individuals with more trading experience are less likely to exhibit status quo behaviour in trade. However, we also find evidence that highly experienced individuals are more likely to swap the item rather than keep it – i.e. there appears to be a propensity to ‘truck, barter and exchange’. A further experiment suggests that this feature is robust and is unlikely to be due to subject misperception or experimenter demand effects. However we are unable to eliminate selection effects as the source of our correlation between experience and propensity to trade. We conclude that virtual economies may be useful venues for field experiments.
A multi-platform controller allowing for maximum Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration throughput

Dynamic and partial reconfiguration (DPR) is a special feature offered by Xilinx Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), giving the designer the ability to reconfigure a certain portion of the FPGA during run-time without influencing the other parts. This feature allows the hardware to be adaptable to any potential situation. For some applications, such as video-based driver assistance, the time needed to exchange a certain portion of the device might be critical. This paper addresses problems, limitations and results of on-chip reconfiguration that enable the user to decide whether DPR is suitable for a certain design prior to its implementation. A method is therefore introduced to calculate the expected reconfiguration throughput and latency. In addition, an IP core is presented that enables fast on-chip DPR close to the maximum achievable speed. Compared to an alternative state-of-the art realization, an increase in speed by a factor of 58 can be obtained.
Intestinal anti-inflammatory activity of Sasa quelpaertensis leaf extract by suppressing lipopolysaccharide-stimulated inflammatory mediators in intestinal epithelial Caco-2 cells co-cultured with RAW 264.7 macrophage cells

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, involves chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Previously, Sasa quelpaertensis leaves have been shown to mediate anti-inflammation and anti-cancer effects, although it remains unclear whether Sasa leaves are able to attenuate inflammation-related intestinal diseases. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the anti-inflammatory effects of Sasa quelpaertensis leaf extract (SQE) using an in vitro co-culture model of the intestinal epithelial environment. MATERIALS/METHODS An in vitro co-culture system was established that consisted of intestinal epithelial Caco-2 cells and RAW 264.7 macrophages. Treatment with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was used to induce inflammation. RESULTS Treatment with SQE significantly suppressed the secretion of LPS-induced nitric oxide (NO), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), IL-6, and IL-1β in co-cultured RAW 264.7 macrophages. In addition, expressions of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), cyclooxygenase (COX)-2, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α were down-regulated in response to inhibition of IκBα phosphorylation by SQE. Compared with two bioactive compounds that have previously been identified in SQE, tricin and P-coumaric acid, SQE exhibited the most effective anti-inflammatory properties. CONCLUSIONS SQE exhibited intestinal anti-inflammatory activity by inhibiting various inflammatory mediators mediated through nuclear transcription factor kappa-B (NF-kB) activation. Thus, SQE has the potential to ameliorate inflammation-related diseases, including IBD, by limiting excessive production of pro-inflammatory mediators.
OSIRIS - Un outil d'annotation et de recherche sémantique de ressources multimédia fondé sur les Graphes Conceptuels

ABSTRACT . OSIRIS is a technological platform dedicated to the development of Ontology-based System for Semantic Information Retrieval and Indexation of multimedia resources which are shared within communautary and open web Spaces. Based on the use of both heavyweight ontologies and thesaurii, OSIRIS allows the end-user (1) to describe the semantic content of its resources by using an intuitive model of annotation which is founded on the triple (Subject, Verb, Object), and (2) to formally represent these annotations by using Conceptual Graphs. Moreover, each resource can be described by adopting multiple points of view. These different points of view can also be defined by using multiple ontologies which can be related to connected (or not-connected) domains. Developed from the integration of Semantic Web technologies and Web 2.0 technologies, OSIRIS aims at facilitating the deployment of semantic, communautary and open web spaces. MOTS-CLES : ontologie, thesaurus, annotation, recherche d’information, graphes conceptuels, webs semantiques communautaires, multimedia.
JustRunIt: Experiment-Based Management of Virtualized Data Centers

Managing data centers is a challenging endeavor. State-of-the-art management systems often rely on analytical modeling to assess the performance, availability, and/or energy implications of potential management decisions or system configurations. In this paper, we argue that actual experiments are cheaper, simpler, and more accurate than models for many management tasks. To support this claim, we built an infrastructure for experimentbased management of virtualized data centers, called JustRunIt. The infrastructure creates a sandboxed environment in which experiments can be run--on a very small number of machines--using real workloads and real system state, but without affecting the on-line system. Automated management systems or the system administrator herself can leverage our infrastructure to perform management tasks on the on-line system. To evaluate the infrastructure, we apply it to two common tasks: server consolidation/expansion and evaluating hardware upgrades. Our evaluation demonstrates that JustRunIt can produce results realistically and transparently, and be nicely combined with automated management systems.
A DISTRIBUTION OF SPIKE TRANSMISSION DELAYS AFFECTS THE STABILITY OF INTERACTING SPIKING NEURONS

We summarize the approach leading to the dynamical mean-field equation for the spike emission rate ν(t) of an interacting population of Integrate-and-Fire (IF) neurons derived in [9]. Building on the results concerning the stability conditions and finite-size effects, we investigate how such properties are affected by a non-trivial distribution of spike transmission delays. The main findings are: i) the stability of the collective asynchronous states is improved by widening the distribution of delays; ii) high-frequency components of the power spectrum of the collective activity are damped; iii) Details of the stability and spectral properties are strongly affected by the shape of the delay distribution. We present quantitative predictions from the theory and we demonstrate a very good agreement with simulations. Introduction In [9] we introduced a method to derive (via a population density approach, [6, 10]) the equations which govern the time evolution of the population activity of an interacting ensemble of IF neurons in the extended mean field approximation (i.e., taking into account the instantaneous fluctuation of the afferent current). The general approach is also amenable to an approximate treatment, by which we could characterize the stability properties and the transient response of the activity ν(t) of the neural population in a specific context, elucidating a close and interesting relationship between the time course of ν(t) and the “transfer function” characterizing the static mean field properties of the system. A proper treatment of finite-size effects allowed us to study the power spectrum of ν(t). The synaptic transmission delays turn out to play a major role in the above analysis. In the present work we remove a somewhat unnatural constraint assumed in [9], that the synaptic delays are the same for all neurons, and we show how a distribution of synaptic delays can be easily embedded in the analysis. Extending preliminary results presented in [8] we discuss how the delay distribution affects the stability conditions and the spectral properties of the system. Dynamic equations for the population activity In the diffusion approximation, the sub-threshold dynamics of the membrane depolarization V of a general class of IF neurons is given by [13] V = f(V ) + μ(V, t) + σ(V, t)Γ(t), where the afferent current is described as a Gaussian white noise with mean μ(V, t) and variance σ(V, t) and f(V ) is a leakage term. In the extended mean field approach [3, 2] all neurons in a homogeneous population are driven by stochastic currents with the same mean and variance, both depending on the recurrent and external (ν and νext respectively) emission rates, equal for all neurons: μ = μ(V, ν, νext) and σ = σ(V, ν, νext). In this approximation, the set of evolving V s is ∗E-mail adress: mattia@iss.infn.it †E-mail adress: paolo.delgiudice@iss.infn.it ‡WWW: http://neural.iss.infn.it
Explicit laws of large numbers for random nearest-neighbour-type graphs

Under the unifying umbrella of a general result of Penrose and Yukich (Annals of Applied Probability 13 (2003), 277-303) we give laws of large numbers (in the L p sense) for the total power-weighted length of several nearest-neighbour-type graphs on random point sets in ℝ d , d ∈ ℕ. Some of these results are known; some are new. We give limiting constants explicitly, where previously they have been evaluated in less generality or not at all. The graphs we consider include the k-nearest-neighbours graph, the Gabriel graph, the minimal directed spanning forest, and the on-line nearest-neighbour graph.