Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The assessment of brain injury with measurement of calcium fluorescent intensity of a vital brain slice.

Retrograde cerebral perfusion (RCP) is one of cerebral protection methods during deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA). However, the mechanism is unclear. In this study with laser confocal scanning microscope (LCSM), calcium fluorescent intensity of vital brain slice was compared between RCP and DHCA group. Sixteen swine, weighing from 19 to approximately 20 kg and supplied by Beijing College of Agriculture, were used for the experiment. After 90 min of DHCA or RCP through the superior vena cava, the animals were rewarmed for 120 min. Through tentorium of the cerebellum and enucleation of the eyeball, vital brain slices (cerebellula and retina) were obtained and fluorescein labeled in artificial cerebrospinal fluid containing 5 micromol/L Fluo-3/AM (fluoresence probe). The calcium fluorescent intensity was examined by LCSM. The results indicated that calcium fluorescent intensity of vital brain slice was lower in the RCP group (cerebellula, 9.16 +/- 3.98; retina, 21.48 +/- 14.27) than that in the DHCA group (cerebellula, 31.97 +/- 20.59; retina, 44.07 +/- 21.01) (p < .05). More moderate and severe eosinophilic degeneration was found in the DHCA group than in the RCP group (p < .05) through morphological examination. The statistical analysis also indicated the calcium fluorescent intensity of the vital brain slice was correlated with the level of moderate and severe eosinophilic degeneration of thee neuron (r = 0.86, p < .05). So "calcium overload" contributes to the injury of neuron after DHCA. RCP is able to attenuate "calcium overload," which has the effect of cerebral protection.
Expression of ciliary neurotrophic factor activated by retinal Müller cells in eyes with NMDA- and kainic acid-induced neuronal death.

PURPOSE To elucidate the role of retinal Muller cells in N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)- or kainic acid (KA)induced retinal damage. METHODS In experimental eyes, NMDA or KA was injected into the vitreous of rat eyes. Immunohistochemistry and western blot analysis were conducted to elucidate expression and localization of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF). In addition, the neuroprotective effects of CNTF were calculated by counting cells in the ganglion cell layer (GCL) and by measuring the thickness of the various retinal layers. RESULTS Morphometric analysis of retinal damage in NMDA- and KA-injected eyes showed significant cell loss in the GCL and thinning of the inner plexiform layer (IPL) of the retina, but not of other retinal layers. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated disappearance and/or decrease in immunoreactivities of calbindin- and calretinin- positive cells and their neurites and upregulated expression of both GFAP and CNTF in experimental eyes. Western blot analysis showed an increase in protein expression for CNTF in retinas of experimental eyes. Confocal images and sequential localization demonstrated colocalization of CNTF and GFAP in the inner retinal layer and possibly in Muller cells. In addition, pretreatment with CNTF (1 microg) before the intravitreal injection of NMDA (or KA) demonstrated that CNTF has neuroprotective effects against NMDA- or KA-induced neuronal death in the retina. CONCLUSIONS These studies revealed the upregulated expression of CNTF and GFAP in Muller cells in response to NMDA- and KA-induced neuronal death, suggesting that production of CNTF in Muller cells may be a part of the endogenous neuroprotective system in the retina.
Prehistoric Extinctions of Pacific Island Birds: Biodiversity Meets Zooarchaeology

On tropical Pacific islands, a human-caused "biodiversity crisis" began thousands of years ago and has nearly run its course. Bones identified from archaeological sites show that most species of land birds and populations of seabirds on those islands were exterminated by prehistoric human activities. The loss of birdlife in the tropical Pacific may exceed 2000 species (a majority of which were species of flightless rails) and thus represents a 20 percent worldwide reduction in the number of species of birds. The current global extinction crisis therefore has historic precedent.
An Interactive Tool for the Computational Exploration of Integrodifference Population Models

Mathematical modeling of population dynamics can provide novel insight to the growth and dispersal patterns for a variety of species populations, and has become vital to the preservation of biodiversity on a global-scale. These growth and dispersal stages can be modeled using integrodifference equations that are discrete in time and continuous in space. Previous studies have identified metrics that can determine whether a given species will persist or go extinct under certain model parameters. However, a need for computational tools to compute these metrics has limited the scope and analysis withinmany of these studies. We aim to create computational tools that facilitate numerical explorations for a number of associated integrodifference equations, allowing modelers to explore results using a selection of models under a robust parameter set.
Profiling a warehouse-scale computer

With the increasing prevalence of warehouse-scale (WSC) and cloud computing, understanding the interactions of server applications with the underlying microarchitecture becomes ever more important in order to extract maximum performance out of server hardware. To aid such understanding, this paper presents a detailed microarchitectural analysis of live datacenter jobs, measured on more than 20,000 Google machines over a three year period, and comprising thousands of different applications. We first find that WSC workloads are extremely diverse, breeding the need for architectures that can tolerate application variability without performance loss. However, some patterns emerge, offering opportunities for co-optimization of hardware and software. For example, we identify common building blocks in the lower levels of the software stack. This “datacenter tax” can comprise nearly 30% of cycles across jobs running in the fleet, which makes its constituents prime candidates for hardware specialization in future server systems-on-chips. We also uncover opportunities for classic microarchitectural optimizations for server processors, especially in the cache hierarchy. Typical workloads place significant stress on instruction caches and prefer memory latency over bandwidth. They also stall cores often, but compute heavily in bursts. These observations motivate several interesting directions for future warehouse-scale computers.
A Synchronization Structure of SSTC and Its Applications in Machine Translation

In this paper, a flexible annotation schema called (SSTC) is introduced. In order to describe the correspondence between different languages, we propose a variant of SSTC called synchronous SSTC (S-SSTC). We will also describe how S-SSTC provides the flexibility to treat some of the non-standard cases, which are problematic to other synchronous formalisms. The proposed S-SSTC schema is well suited to describe the correspondence between different languages, in particular, relating a language with its translation in another language (i.e. in Machine Translation). Also it can be used as annotation for translation systems that automatically extract transfer mappings (rules or examples) from bilingual corpora. The S-SSTC is very well suited for the construction of a Bilingual Knowledge Bank (BKB), where the examples are kept in form of S-SSTCs.
Simplifying biochemical models with intermediate species

Mathematical models are increasingly being used to understand complex biochemical systems, to analyse experimental data and make predictions about unobserved quantities. However, we rarely know how robust our conclusions are with respect to the choice and uncertainties of the model. Using algebraic techniques, we study systematically the effects of intermediate, or transient, species in biochemical systems and provide a simple, yet rigorous mathematical classification of all models obtained from a core model by including intermediates. Main examples include enzymatic and post-translational modification systems, where intermediates often are considered insignificant and neglected in a model, or they are not included because we are unaware of their existence. All possible models obtained from the core model are classified into a finite number of classes. Each class is defined by a mathematically simple canonical model that characterizes crucial dynamical properties, such as mono- and multistationarity and stability of steady states, of all models in the class. We show that if the core model does not have conservation laws, then the introduction of intermediates does not change the steady-state concentrations of the species in the core model, after suitable matching of parameters. Importantly, our results provide guidelines to the modeller in choosing between models and in distinguishing their properties. Further, our work provides a formal way of comparing models that share a common skeleton.
Two-axis Sawyer motor for motion systems

For a number of years, two-axis Sawyer motors have been used as motive devices for flatbed plotters and wafer probers. These two applications are quite different in their requirements for motor dynamics, but both depend on the motor's high speed and good open-loop positioning capability, as well as on its almost unlimited life expectancy. The motors are now being applied to a variety of other motion system requirements, and motor and control drive electronics tailored to these more general applications are being produced. This paper presents some general properties of the motors and describes the control strategies utilized to maximize their performance.
Endorsed by the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery

Brain arteriovenous malformations (bAVMs) are uncommon vascular lesions that present with spontaneous intracranial hemorrhage (ICH), seizures, or headache and typically in young adults. A large proportion of patients are diagnosed with incidental asymptomatic bAVMs after brain imaging is obtained for other reasons. Current treatment options include conservative management, surgical resection, stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), endovascular embolization, or combinations of these treatments (multimodal therapy). The primary goal of these interventions is to prevent hemorrhagic stroke. The risks of Purpose—The aim of this statement is to review the current data and to make suggestions for the diagnosis and management of both ruptured and unruptured brain arteriovenous malformations. Methods—The writing group met in person and by teleconference to establish search terms and to discuss narrative text and suggestions. Authors performed their own literature searches of PubMed, Medline, or Embase, specific to their allocated section, through the end of January 2015. Prerelease review of the draft statement was performed by expert peer reviewers and by the members of the Stroke Council Scientific Oversight Committee and Stroke Council Leadership Committee. Results—The focus of the scientific statement was subdivided into epidemiology; diagnosis; natural history; treatment, including the roles of surgery, stereotactic radiosurgery, and embolization; and management of ruptured and unruptured brain arteriovenous malformations. Areas requiring more evidence were identified. Conclusions—Brain arteriovenous malformations are a relatively uncommon but important cause of hemorrhagic stroke, especially in young adults. This statement describes the current knowledge of the natural history and treatment of patients with ruptured and unruptured brain arteriovenous malformations, suggestions for management, and implications for future research. (Stroke. 2017;48:e00-e00. DOI: 10.1161/STR.0000000000000134.)
Fusion of Saliency Maps for Visual Attention Selection in Dynamic Scenes

Human vision system can optionally process the visual information and adjust the contradiction between the limited resources and the huge visual information. Building attention models similar to human visual attention system should be very beneficial to computer vision and machine intelligence; meanwhile, it has been a challenging task due to the complexity of human brain and limited understanding of the mechanisms underlying the human attention system. Previous studies emphasized on static attention, however the motion features, which are playing key roles in human attention system intuitively, have not been well integrated into the previous models. Motion features such as motion direction are assumed to be processed within the dorsal visual and the dorsal auditory pathways and there is no systematic approach to extract the motion cues well so far. In this paper, we proposed a generic Global Attention Model (GAM) system based on visual attention analysis. The computational saliency map is superimposed by a set of saliency maps via different predefined approaches. We added three saliencies maps up together to reflect dominant motion features into the attention model, i.e., the fused saliency map at each frame is adjusted by the top-down, static and motion saliency maps. By doing this, the proposed attention model accommodating motion feature into the system so that it can responds to real visual events in a manner similar to the human visual attention system in a realistic circumstance. The visual challenges used in our experiments are selected from the benchmark video sequences. We tested the GAM on several dynamic scenes, such as traffic artery, parachuter landing and surfing, with high speed and cluttered background. The experiment results showed the GAM system demonstrated high robustness and real-time ability under complex dynamic scenes. Extensive evaluations based on comparisons with other approaches of the attention model results have verified the effectiveness of the proposed system.
Buying and Selling Emotions: A Theoretical Analysis

This paper seeks to understand the relationship between the buying and selling of emotions in the retail and customer service industries of a capitalist economy. Symbolic interactionist theories were used to analyze the commodification and selling of emotions from the perspective of the producer and the employee. Psychoanalytic theories are employed to analyze consumer’s unconscious desires for buying the newly commodified emotions. The unconscious cognitive processes and accompanying physiological manifestations occurring during the interaction between buyer and seller for the commodified emotion were subsequently looked at in detail. In the end, a conceptual theoretical framework was created which provides a means for interpreting internal, unconscious desire for type and level of a particular emotion based upon observable interactions.
Gene expression profiling in brain following acute systemic hypertonicity: novel genes possibly involved in osmoadaptation

In brain osmoprotective genes known to be involved in cellular osmoadaptation to hypertonicity, as well as the related transcription factor tonicity‐responsive enhancer binding protein (TonEBP) are only expressed in some cell subsets. In the search for other genes possibly involved in osmoadaptation of brain cells we have analyzed, through microarray, the transcriptional profile of forebrain from rats subjected to 45 min, 90 min, and 6 h systemic hypertonicity. Microarray data were validated by quantitative real‐time PCR. Around 23 000 genes gave a reliable hybridization signal. The number of genes showing a higher expression increased from around 15 (45 min) up to nearly 200 (6 h). Among about 30 immediate early genes (IEGs) encoding transcription factors, only Atf3, Verge, and Klf4 showed a rapid increased expression. TonEBP‐mRNA tissue level and TonEBP‐mRNA labeling in neurons remained unchanged whereas TonEBP labeling was rapidly increased in neurons. Sodium‐dependent neutral amino acid transporter‐2 (SNAT2) encoded by gene Slc38a2 showed a delayed increased expression. The rapid tonicity‐induced activation of Atf3, Verge, and Klf4 may regulate genes involved in osmoadaptation. Nfat5 encoding TonEBP is not an IEG and the early tonicity‐induced expression of TonEBP in neurons may result from translational activation. Increased expression of sodium‐dependent neutral amino‐acid transporter 2 may lead to the cellular accumulation of amino acids for adaptation to hypertonicity.
Analysis of the gate-voltage-dependent series resistance of MOSFET's

The intrinsic parasitic series resistance that occurs near the channel end of a MOSFET is analyzed. This new model includes the effects due to the unavoidable doping gradient near the metallurgical junction. It is assumed that current first conducts through the accumulation layer before spreading into the bulk region, and thus the spreading (injection) resistance and the accumulation layer resistance have to be considered in series and both are gate-voltage dependent. More importantly, they are shown to be a strong function of the steepness of the doping profile. The model quantitatively predicts these resistance components for a given process, and it emphasizes the necessity for a steep junction profile in order to minimize the series resistance of MOSFET's.
Effectiveness of befriending interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective Befriending is an emotional supportive relationship in which one-to-one companionship is provided on a regular basis by a volunteer. It is commonly and increasingly offered by the voluntary sector for individuals with distressing physical and mental conditions. However, the effectiveness of this intervention on health outcomes is largely unknown. We aim to conduct a systematic review of the benefits of befriending. Design Systematic review. Methods A systematic search of electronic databases was conducted to identify randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental trials of befriending for a range of physical and mental health indications including depression, anxiety, mental illness, cancer, physical illness and dementia. Main outcomes included patient-relevant and disease-specific outcomes, such as depression, loneliness, quality of life, self-esteem, social support and well-being. Results A total of 14 trials (2411 participants) were included; 7 were judged at low risk of bias. Most trials showed improvement in symptoms associated with befriending but these associations did not reach statistical significance in all trials. Befriending was significantly associated with better patient-reported outcomes across primary measures (standardised mean difference 0.18 (95% CI, −0.002 to 0.36, I2=26%, seven trials)). However, there was no significant benefit on single outcomes, including depression, quality of life, loneliness ratings, self-esteem measures, social support structures and well-being. Conclusions There was moderate quality evidence to support the use of befriending for the treatment of individuals with different physical and mental health conditions. This evidence refers to an overall improvement benefit in patient-reported primary outcomes, although with a rather small effect size. The current evidence base does not allow for firm conclusions on more specific outcomes. Future trials should hypothesise a model for the precise effects of befriending and use specified inclusion and outcome criteria.
XE7: A novel splicing factor that interacts with ASF/SF2 and ZNF265

Pre-mRNA splicing is performed by the spliceosome. SR proteins in this macromolecular complex are essential for both constitutive and alternative splicing. By using the SR-related protein ZNF265 as bait in a yeast two-hybrid screen, we pulled out the uncharacterized human protein XE7, which is encoded by a pseudoautosomal gene. XE7 had been identified in a large-scale proteomic analysis of the human spliceosome. It consists of two different isoforms produced by alternative splicing. The arginine/serine (RS)-rich region in the larger of these suggests a role in mRNA processing. Herein we show for the first time that XE7 is an alternative splicing regulator. XE7 interacts with ZNF265, as well as with the essential SR protein ASF/SF2. The RS-rich region of XE7 dictates both interactions. We show that XE7 localizes in the nucleus of human cells, where it colocalizes with both ZNF265 and ASF/SF2, as well as with other SR proteins, in speckles. We also demonstrate that XE7 influences alternative splice site selection of pre-mRNAs from CD44, Tra2-β1 and SRp20 minigenes. We have thus shown that the spliceosomal component XE7 resembles an SR-related splicing protein, and can influence alternative splicing.
Selective chronic stress‐induced in vivo ERK1/2 hyperphosphorylation in medial prefrontocortical dendrites: implications for stress‐related cortical pathology?

Stress has been shown to affect brain structural plasticity, promote long‐term changes in multiple neurotransmitter systems and cause neuronal atrophy. However, the mechanisms involved in these stress‐related neural alterations are still poorly understood. Mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades play a crucial role in the transduction of neurotrophic signal from the cell surface to the nucleus and are implicated in the modulation of synaptic plasticity and neuronal survival. An intriguing possibility is that stress might influence brain plasticity through its effects on selective members of such intracellular signalling cascades responsible for the transduction of neurotrophin signals. Here, we have investigated the effects of stress on the expression of three members of the MAPK/extracellular‐regulated kinase (ERK) pathway such as phospho‐ERK1, phospho‐ERK2 and phospho‐cAMP/calcium‐responsive element‐binding protein (CREB) in the adult rat brain. Male rats were subjected to mild footshocks and the patterns of protein expression were analysed after 21 consecutive days of stress. We found that chronic stress induced a pronounced and persistent ERK1/2 hyperphosphorylation in dendrites of the higher prefrontocortical layers (II and III) and a reduction of phospho‐CREB expression in several cortical and subcortical regions. We hypothesized that defects in ERK signalling regulation combined with a reduced phospho‐CREB activity may be a crucial mechanism by which sustained stress may induce atrophy of selective subpopulations of vulnerable cortical neurons and/or distal dendrites. Thus, ERK‐mediated cortical abnormalities may represent a specific path by which chronic stress affects the functioning of cortical structures and causes selective neural network defects.
Unsupervised music segmentation via multi-scale processing of compressive features' representation

We present an automated method for unsupervised detection of structural boundaries in musical recordings. The proposed method utilizes a compressed representation of features capturing timbre and chroma, in an 1-D time series derived via PCA. Time delay embedding and multi-scale comparison using the Wald-Wolfowitz statistical test are incorporated in order to calculate a Self Dissimilarity Matrix. A novelty curve is estimated by convolving an appropriate kernel along the main diagonal of the matrix, while the structural boundaries are located on the local maxima of the derived curve. We evaluate the proposed method on a popular dataset, using two different ground truth annotations. We demonstrate that the 1-D compressed representation of features contains enough information in order to detect boundaries with high precision, outperforming several methods from the literature.