Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LD-Aminopterin in the Canine Homologue of Human Atopic Dermatitis: A Randomized, Controlled Trial Reveals Dosing Factors Affecting Optimal Therapy

Background Options are limited for patients with atopic dermatitis (AD) who do not respond to topical treatments. Antifolate therapy with systemic methotrexate improves the disease, but is associated with adverse effects. The investigational antifolate LD-aminopterin may offer improved safety. It is not known how antifolate dose and dosing frequency affect efficacy in AD, but a primary mechanism is thought to involve the antifolate-mediated accumulation of 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleotide (AICAR). However, recent in vitro studies indicate that AICAR increases then decreases as a function of antifolate concentration. To address this issue and understand how dosing affects antifolate efficacy in AD, we examined the efficacy and safety of different oral doses and schedules of LD-aminopterin in the canine model of AD. Methods and Findings This was a multi-center, double-blind trial involving 75 subjects with canine AD randomized to receive up to 12 weeks of placebo, once-weekly (0.007, 0.014, 0.021 mg/kg) or twice-weekly (0.007 mg/kg) LD-aminopterin. The primary efficacy outcome was the Global Score (GS), a composite of validated measures of disease severity and itch. GS improved in all once-weekly cohorts, with 0.014 mg/kg being optimal and significant (43%, P<0.01). The majority of improvement was seen by 8 weeks. In contrast, GS in the twice-weekly cohort was similar to placebo and worse than all once-weekly cohorts. Adverse events were similar across all treated cohorts and placebo. Conclusions Once-weekly LD-aminopterin was safe and efficacious in canine AD. Twice-weekly dosing negated efficacy despite having the same daily and weekly dose as effective once-weekly regimens. Optimal dosing in this homologue of human AD correlated with the concentration-selective accumulation of AICAR in vitro, consistent with AICAR mediating LD-aminopterin efficacy in AD.
Acoustic analysis of the voiced-voiceless distinction in Dutch tracheoesophageal speech.

PURPOSE Confusions between voiced and voiceless plosives and voiced and voiceless fricatives are common in Dutch tracheoesophageal (TE) speech. This study investigates (a) which acoustic measures are found to convey a correct voicing contrast in TE speech and (b) whether different measures are found in TE speech than in normal laryngeal (NL) speech. The main focus was on plosives. METHOD Nine TE and 5 NL speakers were included in this study. Fourteen acoustic measures were selected and analyzed. Comparisons were made between voiced and voiceless for the groups separately and between TE and NL speakers. Conditional inference trees were used to establish the most important distinguishing cue. RESULTS TE speakers do not differ significantly from NL speakers, except for pitch-related measures. For plosives, all measures distinguished between voiced and voiceless for both speaker groups. The main distinguishing measure for the plosives was relative phonation time in the closure. CONCLUSIONS TE and NL speakers differ less in the way the voiced-voiceless distinction is conveyed than expected. Further research is needed to show whether the main acoustic cue is also perceptually most relevant.
Measurement of hydrodynamic force generation by swimming dolphins using bubble DPIV

Attempts to measure the propulsive forces produced by swimming dolphins have been limited. Previous uses of computational hydrodynamic models and gliding experiments have provided estimates of thrust production by dolphins, but these were indirect tests that relied on various assumptions. The thrust produced by two actively swimming bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) was directly measured using digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV). For dolphins swimming in a large outdoor pool, the DPIV method used illuminated microbubbles that were generated in a narrow sheet from a finely porous hose and a compressed air source. The movement of the bubbles was tracked with a high-speed video camera. Dolphins swam at speeds of 0.7 to 3.4 m s−1 within the bubble sheet oriented along the midsagittal plane of the animal. The wake of the dolphin was visualized as the microbubbles were displaced because of the action of the propulsive flukes and jet flow. The oscillations of the dolphin flukes were shown to generate strong vortices in the wake. Thrust production was measured from the vortex strength through the Kutta–Joukowski theorem of aerodynamics. The dolphins generated up to 700 N during small amplitude swimming and up to 1468 N during large amplitude starts. The results of this study demonstrated that bubble DPIV can be used effectively to measure the thrust produced by large-bodied dolphins.
Personality Traits and the Relationship with (Non-) Disclosure Behavior on Facebook

Applications increasingly use personality traits to provide a personalized service to the user. To acquire personality, social media trails showed to be a reliable source. However, until now, analysis of social media trails have been focusing on \textit{what} has been disclosed: content of disclosed items. These methods fail to acquire personality when there is a lack of content (non-disclosure). In this study we do not look at the disclosed content, but whether disclosure occurred or not. We extracted 40 items of different Facebook profile sections that users can disclose or not disclose. We asked participants to indicate to which extent they disclose the items in an online survey, and additionally asked them to fill in a personality questionnaire. Among 100 participants we found that users' personality can be predicted by solely looking at whether they disclose particular sections of their profiles. This allows for personality acquisition when content is missing.
RNAi Targeting of West Nile Virus in Mosquito Midguts Promotes Virus Diversification

West Nile virus (WNV) exists in nature as a genetically diverse population of competing genomes. This high genetic diversity and concomitant adaptive plasticity has facilitated the rapid adaptation of WNV to North American transmission cycles and contributed to its explosive spread throughout the New World. WNV is maintained in nature in a transmission cycle between mosquitoes and birds, with intrahost genetic diversity highest in mosquitoes. The mechanistic basis for this increase in genetic diversity in mosquitoes is poorly understood. To determine whether the high mutational diversity of WNV in mosquitoes is driven by RNA interference (RNAi), we characterized the RNAi response to WNV in the midguts of orally exposed Culex pipiens quinquefasciatus using high-throughput, massively parallel sequencing and estimated viral genetic diversity. Our data demonstrate that WNV infection in orally exposed vector mosquitoes induces the RNAi pathway and that regions of the WNV genome that are more intensely targeted by RNAi are more likely to contain point mutations compared to weakly targeted regions. These results suggest that, under natural conditions, positive selection of WNV within mosquitoes is stronger in regions highly targeted by the host RNAi response. Further, they provide a mechanistic basis for the relative importance of mosquitoes in driving WNV diversification.
Ranking in Principle

It is often suggested that information retrieval systems should rank documents rather than simply retrieving a set. Two separate reasons are adduced for this: that relevance itself is a multi‐valued or continuous variable; and that retrieval is an essentially approximate process. These two reasons lead to different ranking principles, one according to degree of relevance, the other according to probability of relevance. This paper explores the possibility of combining the two principles, but concludes that while neither is adequate alone, nor can any single all‐embracing ranking principle be constructed to replace the two. The only general solution to the problem would be to find an optimal ranking by exploring the effect on the user of every possible ranking. However, some more practical approximate solutions appear possible.
RISK FACTORS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF SYMPTOMATOLOGY OF EATING DISORDERS: PROSPECTIVE STUDY FACTORES DE RIESGO PARA EL DESARROLLO DE SINTOMATOLOGÍA DE TRASTORNOS ALIMENTARIOS: ESTUDIO PROSPECTIVO

Doscientos ochenta y un hombres y mujeres (12-14 anos de edad) participaron en la linea base de un estudio prospectivo disenado para examinar un grupo de factores de riesgo potenciales para el desarrollo de trastornos alimentarios. De los 281 participantes, 246 (87.5%) completaron el Test Infantil de Actitudes Alimentarias en el seguimiento (12 meses despues). Los 20 que rebasaron el punto de corte en este instrumento fueron clasificados como un grupo sintomatico. Empleando pruebas t para muestras independientes, los grupos sintomatico y asintomatico fueron comparados en las siguientes medidas: Inventario de Autoestima, Inventario de Trastornos Alimentarios, Cuestionario de Influencia de los Modelos Esteticos Corporales, Cuestionario de Imagen Corporal e indice de masa corporal. Los participantes con sintomatologia informaron menor autoestima y mayor insatisfaccion corporal. Adicionalmente, informaron mayor influencia de los modelos esteticos corporales y un deterioro en las caracteristicas psicologicas y conductuales asociadas con los trastornos alimentarios. El estatus de esas variables puede indicar una vulnerabilidad potencial a los trastornos alimentarios y sugiere el uso de estrategias de intervencion.
Iron Metabolism and Absorption Studies in the X‐linked Anaemia of Mice

Summary. The X‐linked anaemia of mice (gene symbol, sla) is hypochromic and microcytic, and the stainable iron stores are reduced. Chemical estimates of total body iron content and serum iron concentration show low values and the total serum iron binding capacity is elevated in anaemic mice. Rapid plasma iron clearance and increased iron utilization provide further confirmation of iron deficiency in anaemic animals. Alterations in activity of haem‐containing enzymes have been sought in the heart, liver and kidney of anaemic mice, and slightly decreased activity found only in kidney cytochrome oxidase.
Multi-Graph-View Learning for Complicated Object Classification

In this paper, we propose to represent and classify complicated objects. In order to represent the objects, we propose a multi-graph-view model which uses graphs constructed from multiple graph-views to represent an object. In addition, a bag based multi-graph model is further used to relax labeling by only requiring one label for a bag of graphs, which represent one object. In order to learn classification models, we propose a multi-graph-view bag learning algorithm (MGVBL), which aims to explore subgraph features from multiple graphviews for learning. By enabling a joint regularization across multiple graph-views, and enforcing labeling constraints at the bag and graph levels, MGVBL is able to discover most effective subgraph features across all graph-views for learning. Experiments on real-world learning tasks demonstrate the performance of MGVBL for complicated object classification.
Metabolic syndrome in postmenopausal women: higher prevalence in the Northeastern Region of Brazil than in other Latin American countries and the influence of obesity and socioeconomic factors

SILVEIRA, Inavan Lopes da; MARANHAO, T. M. O. ; AZEVEDO, George Dantas. Metabolic syndrome in postmenopausal women: higher prevalence in the Northeastern Region of Brazil than in other Latin American countries and the influence of obesity and socioeconomic factors. Climacteric (Carnforth), v.10, p.438-439, 2007.
Investigating load-dependent conduction through platinum nanocontacts using in situ electromechanical testing inside a transmission electron microscope

Fundamental understanding of the mechanics of contact for metallic nanocontacts is crucial for scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques that enable precise measurements of electrical properties of surfaces. The conventional approach for quantitative analysis of electrical SPM measurements relies on combining continuum mechanics models of contact with classical or ballistic electronic transport theories to understand the current flow through the nanocontact. To investigate the robustness of this conventional analysis approach, in situ electrical testing was conducted on a platinum/platinum nanocontact inside of a transmission electron microscope (TEM). The results demonstrate that the conventional approach accurately describes trends of conductance with force; however, the measured resistivity at the contact was an order of magnitude larger than the commonly-assumed bulk value. Using the Sharvin theory of ballistic transport, with the DMT and JKR theories of mechanical contact, the measured resistivity is 81 cm and 210 cm, respectively. This is significantly larger than the bulk value for platinum (10 cm). This high value of resistivity does not appear to be caused by surface contamination or oxides, both because the electrical contact was ohmic, and because chemical analysis did not demonstrate a significant presence of carbon or oxygen at the surface. Therefore, the high surface resistivity is assumed to be caused by defects at or near the interface.
A low power reconfigurable heterogeneous architecture for a mobile SDR system

The main challenge in designing a mobile wireless software defined radio (SDR) system is to provide a solution that has high flexibility, hardware-like throughput, low power consumption, in addition to ease of programmability. In this paper, the authors propose a new architecture for SDR that is based on a reconfigurable instruction cell array (RICA). The architecture targets the IEEE 802.11g standard that includes Viterbi decoding, which is a key performance bottleneck. One of the salient novel features in this architecture, compared to existing solutions, is adopting a multi processor frame segmentation scheme when implement the 802.11 physical layer of the above standard. The paper describes the architecture, the associated software design flow, and performance efficiency. We demonstrate that the architecture can achieve a raw data throughput of 30.6 Mbps for an 802.11g receiver at a core power of 8.1 mW.
Rapid Internalization and Recycling of the Human Neuropeptide Y Y1 Receptor*

Desensitization of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) involves receptor phosphorylation and reduction in the number of receptors at the cell surface. The neuropeptide Y (NPY) Y1 receptor undergoes fast desensitization. We examined agonist-induced signaling and internalization using NPY Y1 receptors fused to green fluorescent protein (EGFP). When expressed in HEK293 cells, EGFP-hNPY Y1 receptors were localized at the plasma membrane, desensitized rapidly as assessed using calcium responses, and had similar properties compared to hNPY Y1 receptors. Upon agonist challenge, the EGFP signal decreased rapidly (t 1 2 = 107 ± 3 s) followed by a slow recovery. This decrease was blocked by BIBP3226, a Y1 receptor antagonist, or by pertussis toxin, in agreement with Y1 receptor activation. Internalization of EGFP-hNPY Y1 receptors to acidic endosomal compartments likely accounts for the decrease in the EGFP signal, being absent after pretreatment with monensin. Concanavalin A and hypertonic sucrose, which inhibit clathrin-mediated endocytosis, blocked the decrease in fluorescence. After agonist, intracellular EGFP signals were punctate and co-localized with transferrin-Texas Red, a marker of clathrin-associated internalization and recycling, but not with LysoTracker Red, a lysosomal pathway marker, supporting receptor trafficking to recycling endosomes rather than the late endosomal/lysosomal pathway. Pulse-chase experiments revealed no receptor degradation after internalization. The slow recovery of fluorescence was unaffected by cycloheximide or actinomycin D, indicating that de novo synthesis of receptors was not limiting. Use of a multicompartment model to fit our fluorescence data allows simultaneous determination of internalization and recycling rate constants. We propose that rapid internalization of receptors via the clathrin-coated pits recycling pathway may largely account for the rapid desensitization of NPY Y1 receptors.
Plasma Urotensin in Human Systolic Heart Failure

Background—Human urotensin II (UTN) has potent vasoactive and cardiostimulatory effects, acting on the G protein–linked receptor GPR14. Myocardial UTN expression is upregulated in heart failure, and UTN stimulates myocardial expression of the natriuretic peptides. We investigated plasma UTN levels in heart failure (HF; left ventricular systolic dysfunction) in comparison with plasma N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (N-BNP) levels. Methods and Results—N-BNP and UTN were measured in plasma from 126 patients with HF and 220 age- and sex-matched controls. Both peptides were elevated in plasma of HF patients and were correlated (rs=0.35, P <0.001). In contrast to N-BNP, there was no relationship of plasma UTN with New York Heart Association (NYHA) class. Although plasma N-BNP showed a positive relationship with age and female sex, there was no such age-dependent change in plasma UTN, and control women had lower levels compared with control men. Receiver operating characteristic curves for the diagnosis of HF had areas of 0.90 and 0.86 for N-BNP and UTN, respectively (P <0.001 for both). Receiver operating characteristic curve area for diagnosis of NYHA class I HF with UTN was better than that with N-BNP. Conclusions—Plasma UTN is elevated in HF, which suggests a pathophysiological role for this peptide. Plasma UTN may be a useful alternative to N-BNP in the diagnosis of HF, inasmuch as its levels are elevated irrespective of age, sex, or NYHA class.
In vitro and in vivo activities of Sch 39304, fluconazole, and amphotericin B against Histoplasma capsulatum

The antifungal activities of amphotericin B and two triazoles, Sch 39304 and fluconazole, were tested against Histoplasma capsulatum. In this study Sch 39304 compared favorably with amphotericin B in treating histoplasmosis in normal and leukopenic mice, whereas fluconazole was much less active. The differences in the efficacies of the triazoles appeared to be due to differences in their pharmacokinetics and the dosage schedule that was used. For amphotericin B there was a good correlation between in vitro and in vivo efficacy, but this was not true of the triazole derivatives. These results further demonstrate that, with the methods used in this study, in vitro susceptibility testing of triazoles may not be predictive of in vivo activity against isolates of H. capsulatum.
Mutations in a Peptidylprolyl-cis/trans-isomerase Gene Lead to a Defect in 3′-End Formation of a Pre-mRNA inSaccharomyces cerevisiae *

In a genetic screen aimed at the identification of trans-acting factors involved in mRNA 3′-end processing of budding yeast, we have previously isolated two temperature-sensitive mutants with an apparent defect in the 3′-end formation of a plasmid-derived pre-mRNA. Surprisingly, both mutants were rescued by the essential gene ESS1/PTF1 that encoded a putative peptidylprolyl-cis/trans-isomerase (PPIase) (Hani, J., Stumpf, G., and Domdey, H. (1995) FEBS Lett. 365, 198–202). Such enzymes, which catalyze thecis/trans-interconversion of peptide bonds N-terminal of prolines, are suggested to play a role in protein folding or trafficking. Here we report that Ptf1p shows PPIase activity in vitro, displaying an unusual substrate specificity for peptides with phosphorylated serine and threonine residues preceding proline. Both mutations were found to result in amino acid substitutions of highly conserved residues within the PPIase domain, causing a marked decrease in PPIase activity of the mutant enzymes. Our results are suggestive of a so far unknown involvement of a PPIase in mRNA 3′-end formation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Formation of Preferences and Strategic Analysis : Can they be Decoupled ?

State-of-the-art computers and network technologies have already enabled the use of intelligent software agents for making decisions in real time. Software agents interact both with humans and with other such software agents. Many types of online interaction seem to be amenable to game-theoretic analysis, since they involve both competition and cooperation. For example, agents bargain with humans and with other agents about prices, participate in auctions, coordinate actions and utilization of resources, and also establish and manage trust. The question often arises whether game theory, as we know it, can be successfully applied in such situations. Theoretically, there are numerous ways in which game theory might be applicable. In this paper, we are interested only in the type of application, where players are programmed to behave in specific situations, based on game-theoretic analysis of preferences and choice of actions. The amounts of resources consumed by a computer program before it makes a decision must be limited by the operational requirements of the system. Therefore, the analysis must be relatively simple. Also, there has be a way to map such analysis to a computational procedure, which is essentially sequential. So, the high-level question we are interested in is whether there is a way to endow computer programs with game-theoretic rationality.
Bayesian multitarget tracker for multistatic sonobuoy systems

The paper presents the latest stage in the development of a robust multitarget tracker to be deployed in a large multistatic sonobuoy system. The major technical challenges are: the association of multiple measurements from different receivers for every ping; target detection dependence on the source-target-receiver geometry, ping properties, target properties and acoustic propagation conditions; and the combination of different measurement modalities (with and without the Doppler). The tracker is formulated as the multi-sensor linear-multitarget Bernoulli filter and, due to the highly nonlinear measurements, implemented using the sequential Monte Carlo method. The amplitude of detections is exploited for improved track initiation and false track discrimination. Numerical simulations demonstrate its robust performance.