Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protein kinase Cepsilon mediates salutary effects on electrical coupling induced by ischemic preconditioning.

BACKGROUND Ischemic preconditioning delays the onset of electrical uncoupling and prevents loss of the primary ventricular gap junction protein connexin 43 (Cx43) from gap junctions during subsequent ischemia. OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that these effects are mediated by protein kinase C epsilon (PKCepsilon), we studied isolated Langendorff-perfused hearts from mice with homozygous germline deletion of PKCepsilon (PKCepsilon-KO). METHODS Cx43 phosphorylation and distribution were measured by quantitative immunoblotting and confocal microscopy. Changes in electrical coupling were monitored using the 4-electrode technique to measure whole-tissue resistivity. RESULTS The amount of Cx43 located in gap junctions, measured by confocal microscopy under basal conditions, was significantly greater in PKCepsilon-KO hearts compared with wild-type, but total Cx43 content measured by immunoblotting was not different. These unanticipated results indicate that PKCepsilon regulates subcellular distribution of Cx43 under normal conditions. Preconditioning prevented loss of Cx43 from gap junctions during ischemia in wild-type but not PKCepsilon-KO hearts. Specific activation of PKCepsilon, but not PKCdelta, also prevented ischemia-induced loss of Cx43 from gap junctions. Preconditioning delayed the onset of uncoupling in wild-type but hastened uncoupling in PKCepsilon-KO hearts. Cx43 phosphorylation at the PKC site Ser368 increased 5-fold after ischemia in wild-type hearts, and surprisingly, by nearly 10-fold in PKCepsilon-KO hearts. Preconditioning prevented phosphorylation of Cx43 in gap junction plaques at Ser368 in wild-type but not PKCepsilon-KO hearts. CONCLUSION Taken together, these results indicate that PKCepsilon plays a critical role in preconditioning to preserve Cx43 signal in gap junctions and delay electrical uncoupling during ischemia.
Algorithmic Theories of Everything

We make the plausible assumption that the history of our universe is formally describable, and sampled from a formally describable probability distribution on the possible universe histories. To study the dramatic consequences for observers evolving within such a universe, we generalize the concepts of decidability, halting problem, Kolmogorov''s algorithmic complexity, and Solomonoff''s algorithmic probability. We describe objects more random than Chaitin''s halting probability of a Turing machine, show that there is a universal cumulatively enumerable measure (CEM) that dominates previous measures for inductive inference, prove that any CEM must assign low probabilities to universes without short enumerating programs, that any describable measure must assign low probabilities to universes without short descriptions, and several similar "Occam''s razor theorems. " Then we discuss the most efficient way of computing all universes based on Levin''s optimal search algorithm, and make a natural resource-oriented postulate: the cumulative prior probability of all objects incomputable within time t by this optimal algorithm should be inversely proportional to t. We derive consequences for inductive inference, physics, and philosophy, predicting that whatever seems random is not, but in fact is computed by a short and fast algorithm which will probably halt before our universe is many times older than it is now.
Canine-Assisted Therapy in the Inpatient Setting

Abstract Canine-assisted therapy (CAT) is widely used in outpatient settings, yet there is little published literature regarding its use, efficacy, and safety in the inpatient setting. The primary objective of this review was to consolidate published information regarding CAT efficacy and safety in the inpatient population. The secondary objective was to review safety concerns associated with CAT. The databases PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, and Web of Knowledge were searched using the dates April 2003–April 2013 with the terms “animal assisted therapy” and “pet therapy. ” Articles were reviewed for the relevance of CAT in the inpatient setting, and those meeting our criteria were included in the study. The references of selected articles also were reviewed and included if study criteria were met. The review of the literature resulted in 429 total articles using the search terms. Of the 429 articles, 177 were duplicates and 218 pertained to the outpatient setting or involved animal therapies other than canine, leaving 34 articles that met the search criteria. The bibliography review of the 34 articles yielded an additional 10 articles. Our review of the literature showed that in the inpatient setting, CAT is an effective therapy among patients of all ages and with various medical problems and is safe, with no transmitted infections reported.
Revisiting the economics of transactional sex: evidence from Tanzania

Transactional sex has been identified as one of the key structural drivers of the HIV epidemic. Mainstream economic analyses of this practice primarily conceptualise transactional sex in the language of rational choice, with the focus on behavioural decisions that women make over whether to engage in transactional interactions (or not). However, whilst providing some important insights in relation to the role of poverty and the importance of acknowledging that women are more than passive agents, these approaches fail to address the social and economic complexities of this practice that are reflected in the broader literature. Further, due to the technical framework used, there is a failure to deal with the broader socio-economic and historical underpinnings of this practice. Using evidence from fieldwork undertaken in Tanzania, the authors revisit the economics of transactional sex, and offer an alternative economic approach to understanding this practice. They explore the notion that transactional sex is an established local sexual norm, and how this norm is creatively applied and reapplied in a range of situations by different actors, including through participation in local value chains. Their analysis has a number of implications for future prevention efforts that differ from the current focus on microfinance as a means of empowering women.
Hunting Cross-Site Scripting Attacks in the Network

Cross-site Scripting (XSS) attacks in web applications are considered a major threat. In a yearly basis, large IT security vendors export statistics that highlight the need for designing and implementing more efﬁcient countermeasures for securing modern web applications and web users. So far, all these studies are carried out by IT security vendors. The academic community lacks of the tools for performing similar studies for quantifying various properties of XSS attacks. In this paper, we present xHunter, a tool that takes as input a web trace and scans it for identifying possible XSS exploits. xHunter does not provide any defenses against attacks in web applications and browsers. The tool is designed for processing thousands of URLs and isolating XSS exploits. Using xHunter one can see how real XSS exploits look like, what is the geographical distribution of web browsers that trigger XSS exploits, and other valuable properties, which if combined can draw a better picture of the XSS landscape today. xHunter is based on two assumptions. The ﬁrst one is that a signiﬁcant fraction of XSS attacks is carried out us-ing URLs and the second one is that these URLs contain parts that produce a valid JavaScript syntax tree with high depth. Thus, the basic operation of xHunter is to process URLs and identify parts that can be parsed in JavaScript. In this paper, we analyze all design choices and challenges for implementing xHunter. We evaluate a preliminary prototype of xHunter using about 11,000 URLs collected by a real-world XSS repository, XSSed.com, and 1,000 URLs collected from a monitoring point in an educational organization with about 1,000 users. The results suggest that xHunter has less than 3.2% of false negatives and about 2% of false positives
Representações mentais e Ciência Cognitiva: dependência excessiva e problemas

Resumo Sendo as nocoes de representacao e computacao centrais no arcabouco teorico-conceitual e nas efetivas reproducoes e simulacoes em Ciencia Cognitiva, pretendemos, no presente ensaio teorico, discutir especialmente os problemas concernentes a nocao de representacao no que tange as simulacoes e/ou reproducoes do pensamento nos artificios da inteligencia artificial e das redes conexionistas. Neste sentido, enfatizaremos em nossas reflexoes o que julgamos ser o principal problema no que se refere a implementacao de propriedades "inteligentes" em artificios nao biologicos, a saber, o problema da estrutura, ou problema dos frame, que consiste no problema de como desenvolver e sustentar um modelo interno do mundo, de modo que se possa implementar tarefas triviais, tais como atravessar uma rua movimentada sem ser atropelado ou fritar um ovo eficientemente, por exemplo. © Cien. Cogn. 2010; Vol. 15 (2): 070-076. Palavras-chave: computacao; representacoes; ciencia cognitiva. Abstract Since the notions of representation and computation are in the center of the theoretical-conceptual framing and in the actual reproductions and simulations in cognitive science, we intend, in this paper, to discuss the problems concerning the notion of representation with respect to the simulations and / or reproductions of thought devices in artificial intelligence and connectionist networks. In this sense, we emphasize what we believe to be the main problem regarding the implementation of "smart" properties in non-biological devices, namely, the problem of structure, or "frame problem", which can be described as the problem of how to develop and sustain an internal model of the world, so that we can implement trivial tasks such as crossing a busy street without getting hit or frying an egg efficiently, for example. © Cien. Cogn. 2010; Vol. 15 (2): 070-076. Keywords: computation; representation; cognitive science.
Brain and Plasma Tetrahydroisoquinolines in Rats: Effects of Chronic Ethanol Intake and Diet

Abstract: Brain concentrations of salsolinol (SAL), a simple tetrahydroisoquinoline (sTIQ) condensation product of do‐pamine (DA) and acetaldehyde, are reported to increase in chow‐fed rats drinking ethanol/H2O ad libitum. However, our analyses showed that rat chow contains traces of SAL and, as previously reported, appreciable 3,4‐dihydroxyphe‐nylalanine (DOPA), a sTIQ precursor. To examine the effect of consumption of ethanol in a DOPA‐ and SAL‐free diet on endogenous sTIQs, we analyzed two brain regions and blood plasma of rats undergoing prolonged intake (3 weeks and 23 weeks) of liquid diet containing 6.6% ethanol or iso‐caloric carbohydrate. SAL and three other DA‐related sTIQs were quantitated using capillary gas chromatography/mass spectrometry in the selected ion mode with deuterated standards. In accord with studies on ethanol/chow‐fed rats. sTIQ concentrations in hypothalamus were elevated after 3 weeks of ethanol, although after 23 weeks, hypothalamic sTIQs were either unchanged or reduced (O‐methylated SAL). Furthermore, sTIQ concentrations in corpus triatum and, with one exception, plasma were not altered by ethanol ingestion for either duration. (However, 23 weeks of ethanol intake significantly reduced the striatal concentrations of DA and its acid metabolite, presumably reflecting neurotoxicity.) Reasoning that DOPA in diet might underlie the reported ethanol‐dependent increases in striatal sTIQs, we found that l‐DOPA supplementation (500 μg/rat/day) of EtOH/Iiquid diet‐fed rats for 13 weeks tended to increase striatal SAL. Overall, the data indicate that elevations in endogenous sTIQ concentrations due to prolonged ethanol intake depend on the brain region, duration of intake, and even associated dietary constituents. In that regard, the higher striatal SAL concentrations in rats drinking ethanol ad libitum could have been facilitated by DOPA and perhaps SAL consumed in lab chow.
Analyzing Subgraph Isomorphism on Graphs with Diverse Structural Properties

Isomorphic subgraphs finding is important in many real world applications. Being NP-hard problem, various approaches have been proposed by varying indexing, candidate generation, early pruning of unpromising regions, and graph traversal. While, recent research additionally emphasis on taking into account order of query or data graph vertices and compressing to make it best fit for subgraph isomorphism. However, subgraph isomorphism has not been evaluated deeply by summarized graph. Subgraph isomorphism performance can be improved by using summarized graphs with exactness. For this purpose, we evaluate subgraph isomorphism performance on a single large graph by using backtracking algorithm. We extend Ullman algorithm for original and summarized graph. We evaluate subgraph isomorphism performance on both original and summarized version of graph through experiments on publically available real world graph.
The influence of the clustering coefficient on spoken word recognition

The clustering coefficient refers to the proportion of phonological neighbors of a target word that are also neighbors of each other. The influence of the clustering coefficient on spoken word recognition was examined in the present study. In a same-different task, no significant effects of clustering coefficient were observed. In a perceptual identification task, words with a low clustering coefficient (i.e., few neighbors are interconnected) were more accurately identified than words with a high clustering coefficient (i.e., many neighbors are interconnected). In a lexical decision task, words with a low clustering coefficient were responded to more quickly than words with a high clustering coefficient. These findings suggest that the nature of relationships among the neighbors of the target word influences the lexical processing of the target word in the context of spoken word
Reading Strategy Instruction in Secondary Agricultural Science Courses: An Initial Perspective.

Students must be able to create meaning from career and technical education texts. Reading and comprehension of texts are skills that develop through practice with a variety of texts, including those in career and technical education. A quasiexperimental nonequivalent control group design was used to determine the effect of implementing content area reading strategies (CARS) on comprehension and reading behaviors of a purposively selected sample (n = 95) of secondary agricultural science students. Instruction with CARS was compared to the teacher’s normal instructional routine. Pretest score, grade level, grade point average, gender, ethnicity, and standardized reading level predicted 65% of variance in agriculture posttest scores. Students in the treatment group generally improved their reading behaviors, while students in the comparison group regressed. Students in the treatment group read significantly more hours per week for school and had increased the hours reading for pleasure significantly more than the comparison group.
NEW ANGLE ON THE STRONG CP AND CHIRAL SYMMETRY PROBLEMS FROM A ROTATING MASS MATRIX

It is shown that when the mass matrix changes in orientation (i.e. rotates) in generation space for a changing energy scale, the masses of the lower generations are not given just by its eigenvalues. In particular, these masses need not be zero even when the eigenvalues are zero. In that case, the strong CP problem can be avoided by removing the unwanted θ term by a chiral transformation not in contradiction with the nonvanishing quark masses experimentally observed. Similarly, a rotating mass matrix may shed new light on the problem of chiral symmetry breaking. That the fermion mass matrix may so rotate with the scale has been suggested before as a possible explanation for up–down fermion mixing and fermion mass hierarchy, giving results in good agreement with experiment.
Scouts, promoters, and connectors: The roles of ratings in nearest-neighbor collaborative filtering

Recommender systems aggregate individual user ratings into predictions of products or services that might interest visitors. The quality of this aggregation process crucially affects the user experience and hence the effectiveness of recommenders in e-commerce. We present a characterization of nearest-neighbor collaborative filtering that allows us to disaggregate global recommender performance measures into contributions made by each individual rating. In particular, we formulate three roles---scouts, promoters, and connectors---that capture how users receive recommendations, how items get recommended, and how ratings of these two types are themselves connected, respectively. These roles find direct uses in improving recommendations for users, in better targeting of items and, most importantly, in helping monitor the health of the system as a whole. For instance, they can be used to track the evolution of neighborhoods, to identify rating subspaces that do not contribute (or contribute negatively) to system performance, to enumerate users who are in danger of leaving, and to assess the susceptibility of the system to attacks such as shilling. We argue that the three rating roles presented here provide broad primitives to manage a recommender system and its community.
The role of C-type natriuretic peptide in cardiovascular medicine.

0195-668X/01/120997+11 $35.00/0 conventional drug therapy, in order to reduce plasma aminoterminal BNP levels, resulted in reduced total cardiovascular events when compared to therapy directed by clinical acumen. Much less is known about C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP) which was first isolated from porcine brain in 1990. It is now known that CNP has a much wider distribution and of particular note both it and its receptor are located in peripheral blood vessels. In vitro and in vivo studies have shown CNP to be a powerful vasorelaxant. This together with its location would theoretically enable CNP to play an important role in local vascular regulation. In this review we examine the current literature relating to CNP, in particular its cardiovascular role. Wherever possible we will compare and contrast CNP with both ANP and BNP.
Equality of Opportunity in Education and Career: Japan seen in an international perspective

Abstract Japanese and foreign experts tend to agree that links between educational attainment and career are closer in Japan than in other industrial societies and equality of opportunity in education is therefore seen as being more important. Available research suggests, first, that the education system is relatively open, but that women anticipate occupational disadvantage in their choice of fields and institutions in higher education. Second, the concentration of formal selction on a few points and on a short time span seems to increase the pressure on the individual to an extent generally viewed as hardly bearable. The author suggests that the scarcity of research available on the issue of ‘equality of results’ reflects a prevailing notion in Japan that immediate reward for effort is the major criterion of an open education system. Although its expectations clearly differ from those prevailing in other societies, Japan'sgakureki shakai is not totally different from the link between background, educati.
Cold-Blooded Attention: Finger Temperature Predicts Attentional Performance

Thermal stress has been shown to increase the chances of unsafe behavior during industrial and driving performances due to reductions in mental and attentional resources. Nonetheless, establishing appropriate safety standards regarding environmental temperature has been a major problem, as modulations are also be affected by the task type, complexity, workload, duration, and previous experience with the task. To bypass this attentional and thermoregulatory problem, we focused on the body rather than environmental temperature. Specifically, we measured tympanic, forehead, finger and environmental temperatures accompanied by a battery of attentional tasks. We considered a 10 min baseline period wherein subjects were instructed to sit and relax, followed by three attentional tasks: a continuous performance task (CPT), a flanker task (FT) and a counting task (CT). Using multiple linear regression models, we evaluated which variable(s) were the best predictors of performance. The results showed a decrement in finger temperature due to instruction and task engagement that was absent when the subject was instructed to relax. No changes were observed in tympanic or forehead temperatures, while the environmental temperature remained almost constant for each subject. Specifically, the magnitude of the change in finger temperature was the best predictor of performance in all three attentional tasks. The results presented here suggest that finger temperature can be used as a predictor of alertness, as it predicted performance in attentional tasks better than environmental temperature. These findings strongly support that peripheral temperature can be used as a tool to prevent unsafe behaviors and accidents.
How to Know the Best Machine Translation System in Advance before Translating a Sentence?

The aim of the paper is to identify a machine translation (MT) system from a set of multiple MT systems in advance, capable of producing most appropriate translation for a source sentence. The prediction is done based on the analysis of a source sentence before translating it using these MT systems. This selection procedure has been framed as a classification task. A machine learning based approach leveraging features extracting from analysis of a source sentence has been proposed here. The main contribution of the paper is selection of sourceside features. These features help machine learning approaches to discriminate MT systems according to their translation quality though these approaches have no idea about working principle of these MT systems. The proposed approach is language independent and has shown promising result when applied on English-Bangla MT task.
Twelve Tips for programmatic assessment

Abstract Programmatic assessment is an integral approach to the design of an assessment program with the intent to optimise its learning function, its decision-making function and its curriculum quality-assurance function. Individual methods of assessment, purposefully chosen for their alignment with the curriculum outcomes and their information value for the learner, the teacher and the organisation, are seen as individual data points. The information value of these individual data points is maximised by giving feedback to the learner. There is a decoupling of assessment moment and decision moment. Intermediate and high-stakes decisions are based on multiple data points after a meaningful aggregation of information and supported by rigorous organisational procedures to ensure their dependability. Self-regulation of learning, through analysis of the assessment information and the attainment of the ensuing learning goals, is scaffolded by a mentoring system. Programmatic assessment-for-learning can be applied to any part of the training continuum, provided that the underlying learning conception is constructivist. This paper provides concrete recommendations for implementation of programmatic assessment.
Comparative Efficacies of Two Antimony Regimens To Treat Leishmania braziliensis-Induced Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta)

ABSTRACT This study compared the efficacies of two N-methylglucomine antimoniate (MA) dose regimens for treating macaques with Leishmania braziliensis-induced chronic skin disease. Whereas all animals treated with the full dose (20 mg MA/kg/day) were cured, 50% of the monkeys receiving a low-dose regimen (5 mg MA/kg/day) relapsed. The antimony concentrations in macaque plasma and tissue samples were greater in the full-dose group than in that receiving a subtherapeutic MA regimen. Our data also suggest the presence of drug-induced hepatic pathology.