Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DNA Methylation as a Biomarker for Cardiovascular Disease Risk

Background Elevated serum homocysteine is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). This may reflect a reduced systemic remethylation capacity, which would be expected to cause decreased genomic DNA methylation in peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL). Methodology/Principal Findings We examined the association between prevalence of CVD (myocardial infarction, stroke) and its predisposing conditions (hypertension, diabetes) and PBL global genomic DNA methylation as represented by ALU and Satellite 2 (AS) repetitive element DNA methylation in 286 participants of the Singapore Chinese Health Study, a population-based prospective investigation of 63,257 men and women aged 45–74 years recruited during 1993–1998. Men exhibited significantly higher global DNA methylation [geometric mean (95% confidence interval (CI)): 159 (143, 178)] than women [133 (121, 147)] (P = 0·01). Global DNA methylation was significantly elevated in men with a history of CVD or its predisposing conditions at baseline (P = 0·03) but not in women (P = 0·53). Fifty-two subjects (22 men, 30 women) who were negative for these CVD/predisposing conditions at baseline acquired one or more of these conditions by the time of their follow-up I interviews, which took place on average about 5·8 years post-enrollment. Global DNA methylation levels of the 22 incident cases in men were intermediate (AS, 177) relative to the 56 male subjects who remained free of CVD/predisposing conditions at follow-up (lowest AS, 132) and the 51 male subjects with a diagnosis of CVD or predisposing conditions reported at baseline (highest AS 184) (P for trend = 0.0008) No such association was observed in women (P = 0.91). Baseline body mass index was positively associated with AS in both men and women (P = 0·007). Conclusions/Significance Our findings indicate that elevated, not decreased, PBL DNA methylation is positively associated with prevalence of CVD/predisposing conditions and obesity in Singapore Chinese.
A Study of Territoriality: The Role of Critical Mass in Adaptive Task Division

This work demonstrates the application of the behavior-based approach to generating ethologically-inspired adaptive foraging using a division of labor into exclusive spatial territories. First, we use fixed group sizes to evaluate and compare the performance of the two types of adaptive solutions. Second, using a collection of experimental robot data, we empirically derive and demonstrate the critical mass for most effective foraging in our domain, and show the decline of performance of the space division strategy with increased group size.
Limulus Vision in the Marine Environment

Horseshoe crabs use vision to find mates. They can reliably detect objects resembling potential mates under a variety of lighting conditions. To understand how they achieve this remarkable performance, we constructed a cell-based realistic model of the lateral eye to compute the ensembles of optic nerve activity (“neural images”) it transmits to the brain. The neural images reveal a robust encoding of mate-like objects that move underwater during the day. The neural images are much less clear at night, even though the eyes undergo large circadian increases of sensitivity that nearly compensate for the millionfold decrease in underwater lighting after sundown. At night the neural images are noisy, dominated by bursts of nerve impulses from random photon events that occur at low nighttime levels of illumination. Deciphering the eye’s input to the brain begins at the first synaptic level with lowpass temporal and spatial filtering. Both neural filtering mechanisms improve the signal-to-noise properties of the eye’s input, yielding clearer neural images of potential mates, especially at night. Insights about visual processing by the relatively simple visual system of Limulus may aid in the design of robotic sensors for the marine environment.
Extracellular Vesicles – Biomarkers and Effectors of the Cellular Interactome in Cancer

In multicellular organisms both health and disease are defined by patterns of communication between the constituent cells. In addition to networks of soluble mediators, cells are also programed to exchange complex messages pre-assembled as multimolecular cargo of membraneous structures known extracellular vesicles (EV). Several biogenetic pathways produce EVs with different properties, and known as exosomes, ectosomes, and apoptotic bodies. In cancer, EVs carry molecular signatures and effectors of the disease, such as mutant oncoproteins, oncogenic transcripts, microRNA, and DNA sequences. Intercellular trafficking of such EVs (oncosomes) may contribute to horizontal cellular transformation, phenotypic reprograming, and functional re-education of recipient cells, both locally and systemically. The EV-mediated, reciprocal molecular exchange also includes tumor suppressors, phosphoproteins, proteases, growth factors, and bioactive lipids, all of which participate in the functional integration of multiple cells and their collective involvement in tumor angiogenesis, inflammation, immunity, coagulopathy, mobilization of bone marrow-derived effectors, metastasis, drug resistance, or cellular stemness. In cases where the EV role is rate limiting their production and uptake may represent and unexplored anticancer therapy target. Moreover, oncosomes circulating in biofluids of cancer patients offer an unprecedented, remote, and non-invasive access to crucial molecular information about cancer cells, including their driver mutations, classifiers, molecular subtypes, therapeutic targets, and biomarkers of drug resistance. New nanotechnologies are being developed to exploit this unique biomarker platform. Indeed, embracing the notion that human cancers are defined not only by processes occurring within cancer cells, but also between them, and amidst the altered tumor and systemic microenvironment may open new diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities.
Reduced subjective awareness of bronchoconstriction provoked by methacholine in elderly asthmatic and normal subjects as measured on a simple awareness scale.

BACKGROUND: Asthma death rates are rising, with the greatest rise and highest death rates in old age. A reduced cardiovascular response in the elderly may lead to the underestimation by physicians of the severity of acute asthma attacks. This would be compounded if elderly patients had reduced awareness of bronchoconstriction. METHODS: Methacholine provoked bronchoconstriction was compared in 34 elderly (17 asthmatic, 17 normal; age 60-83, mean 68 years) and 33 young subjects (16 asthmatic, 17 normal; 20-46, mean 30 years). None were smokers. All underwent inhaled methacholine challenge by the Newcastle dosimeter method, monitored by maximal expiratory flow-volume loops (MEFVL). The endpoints were a 35% fall in forced expiratory flow at 50% vital capacity or cumulative inhalation of 6.4 mg methacholine. The one second forced expiratory volume (FEV1) was derived from MEFVL. After challenge and before bronchodilatation subjects graded awareness of respiratory discomfort from 1 (no symptoms) to 4 (pronounced symptoms needing immediate treatment). RESULTS: Despite a greater fall in FEV1 in elderly asthmatic patients (mean (SE) 27.4% (2.2%)) than in young asthmatic patients (21.5% (1.7%)) elderly patients were less aware of bronchoconstriction (awareness score 2.00 (SE 0.15) than young patients (3.06 (0.11)). Similar differences in awareness score were seen between elderly normal subjects (1.53 (0.17)) and young normal subjects (2.76 (0.22)), despite no difference in degree of bronchoconstriction. CONCLUSIONS: Reduced awareness of moderate acute bronchoconstriction in old age may delay self referral in acute asthma and contribute to higher asthma mortality in the elderly.
Age of information with packet management

We consider a system in which random status updates arrive at a source node, and should be transmitted through a wireless network to the intended destination node. The status updates are samples of a random process, transmitted as packets, containing the time stamp to identify the moment the sample was generated. The time it takes to successfully transmit a packet to the destination is modeled as an exponentially distributed service time. The status update age at the receiver is the time elapsed since the last received update was generated. In this paper, we analyze the age in the case that the source node has the capability to manage the arriving samples and decide which packets will be transmitted to the destination. In addition to the average age, we investigate the average of a new metric, called peak age, which provides information about the maximum value of the Age, achieved immediately before receiving an update.
Extending Jini with decentralized trust management

Decentralized Trust Management, originally introduced by the PolicyMaker and SDSI prototypes, and currently promoted at least by the KeyNote2, SPKI, and TeSSA development efforts, provides a means of distributed authorization that seems to be especially suitable for distributed object systems and agent based systems. In this paper we introduce the SIESTA project, which studies how to integrate the ideas of decentralized trust management to the Jini environment. The focus of the functionality is on the use of SPKI certificates to secure Jini services. Controlling untrusted code is also an important issue because to use a Jini service one has to rely on proxy code loaded from the network. The resulting system allows decentralized authorization and trust management of Jini-based services and applications.
Engaging communities as scholarship

The contemporary university in Australia publicly states a commitment to engaging communities, yet engagement is not often seen as a core activity of academics. This paper suggests that engagement should be regarded as a form of scholarship that should be added to the four types of scholarship identified by Ernest Boyer. The paper also suggests some measurements for quality audit purposes.
FEATURE GENERATION BASED ON MA PROBABILITY FOR IMPROVED SP

Feature representation is a very important factor that has great effect on the performance of speech recognition systems. In this paper we focus on a feature generation process that is based on linear transformation of the original log-spectral representation. We first discuss several three popular linear transformation methods, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). We then propose a new method of linear transformation that maximizes the normalized acoustic likelihood of the most likely state sequences of training data, a measure that directly related to our ultimate objective of reducing Bayesian classification error rate in speech recognition. Experimental results show that the proposed method decreases the relative word error rate by more than 8.8% compared to the best implementation of LDA, and by more than 25.9% compared to MFCC features.
Multi-Functional Characteristics of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa Type III Needle-Tip Protein, PcrV; Comparison to Orthologs in other Gram-negative Bacteria

Pseudomonas aeruginosa possesses a type III secretion system (T3SS) to intoxicate host cells and evade innate immunity. This virulence-related machinery consists of a molecular syringe and needle assembled on the bacterial surface, which allows delivery of T3 effector proteins into infected cells. To accomplish a one-step effector translocation, a tip protein is required at the top end of the T3 needle structure. Strains lacking expression of the functional tip protein fail to intoxicate host cells. P. aeruginosa encodes a T3S that is highly homologous to the proteins encoded by Yersinia spp. The needle-tip proteins of Yersinia, LcrV, and P. aeruginosa, PcrV, share 37% identity and 65% similarity. Other known tip proteins are AcrV (Aeromonas), IpaD (Shigella), SipD (Salmonella), BipD (Burkholderia), EspA (EPEC, EHEC), Bsp22 (Bordetella), with additional proteins identified from various Gram-negative species, such as Vibrio and Bordetella. The tip proteins can serve as a protective antigen or may be critical for sensing host cells and evading innate immune responses. Recognition of the host microenvironment transcriptionally activates synthesis of T3SS components. The machinery appears to be mechanically controlled by the assemblage of specific junctions within the apparatus. These junctions include the tip and base of the T3 apparatus, the needle proteins and components within the bacterial cytoplasm. The tip proteins likely have chaperone functions for translocon proteins, allowing the proper assembly of translocation channels in the host membrane and completing vectorial delivery of effector proteins into the host cytoplasm. Multi-functional features of the needle-tip proteins appear to be intricately controlled. In this review, we highlight the functional aspects and complex controls of T3 needle-tip proteins with particular emphasis on PcrV and LcrV.
Incorporating Occupational Attainment in Studies of Male-Female Earnings Differentials

Differences in the occupational distributions of men and women represent an important source of male-female differentials. Yet most studies of wage differences concentrate only on either occupational segregation or the problem of unequal pay for equal work. This study refines and merges these two approaches, allowing for variation both in occupational distribution and in wages resulting from differences in job qualifications and productivity indicators. Our approach uses multinomial logit analysis to predict occupational attainment for men from a set of personal characteristics and then simulates an occupational distribution for women. Wages are estimated as a function of productivity measures for both men and women within each occupation. Our model finds that only 14 to 17 percent of the total wage differential is attributable to differences in endowments and that more of the unexplained difference results from within-rather than across-broad occupational categories.
Identifying Grey Sheep Users in Collaborative Filtering: A Distribution-Based Technique

The collaborative filtering (CF) approach in recommender systems assumes that users' preferences are consistent among users. Although accurate, this approach fails on some users. We presume that some of these users belong to a small community of users who have unusual preferences, such users are not compliant with the CF underlying assumption. They are grey sheep users. This paper aims at accurately identifying grey sheep users. We introduce a new distribution-based grey sheep users identification technique, that borrows from outlier detection and from information retrieval, while taking into account the specificities of preference data on which CF relies: extreme sparsity, imprecision and users' bias. The experimental evaluation conducted on a state-of-the-art dataset shows that this new distribution-based technique outperforms state-of-the-art grey sheep users identification techniques.
Does migration affect asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema prevalence? Global findings from the international study of asthma and allergies in childhood.

BACKGROUND Immigrants to Westernized countries adopt the prevalence of allergic diseases of native populations, yet no data are available on immigrants to low-income or low-disease prevalence countries. We investigated these questions using data from the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood. METHODS Standardized questionnaires were completed by 13-14-year-old adolescents and by the parent/guardians of 6-7-year-old children. Questions on the symptom prevalence of asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema, and a wide range of factors postulated to be associated with these conditions, including birth in or not in the country and age at immigration, were asked. Odds ratios for risk of the three diseases according to immigration status were calculated using generalized linear mixed models. These were adjusted for: world region; language and gross national income; and individual risk factors including gender, maternal education, antibiotic and paracetamol use, maternal smoking, and diet. Effect modification by gross national income and by prevalence was examined. RESULTS There were 326 691 adolescents from 48 countries and 208 523 children from 31 countries. Immigration was associated with a lower prevalence of asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema in both age groups than among those born in the country studied, and this association was mainly confined to high-prevalence/affluent countries. This reduced risk was greater in those who had lived fewer years in the host country. CONCLUSIONS Recent migration to high prevalence/affluent countries is associated with a lower prevalence of allergic diseases. The protective pre-migration environment quickly decreases with increasing time in the host country.
The Actions of Proctolin, Octopamine and Serotonin on Crustacean Proprioceptors Show Species and Neurone Specificity

A comparative survey is presented of the responsiveness of crustacean mechanoreceptors to the neurohormones proctolin, octopamine and serotonin. Seven identifiable primary afferents were examined in the crayfish Cherax destructor and the lobster Homarus americanus : three from the oval organ (OO) of the second maxilla, two from the non-spiking stretch receptor (NSSR) of the swimmeret and two from the muscle receptor organ (MRO) of the abdomen. Proctolin modulation was observed in 10 of the 14 fibres tested and was invariably potentiating, resulting in enhanced receptor potential amplitudes and increased firing. Octopamine and serotonin each modulated 8 of the 14 fibres and their effects were excitatory or depressive depending upon the target fibre. In the latter case the receptor potentials became attenuated, often to subthreshold levels, with loss of spiking. A comparison of results from Cherax with those of Homarus shows that there is species specificity in the responses of homologous neurones. Neurohormones that are excitatory in one species may be ineffective or depressive in the other. The broad distribution of modulatory effects observed here suggests that sensitivity to biogenic amines and peptides is a general property of proprioceptors.
Identification Through Heteroskedasticity: Measuring "Contagion: Betweenargentinean and Mexican Sovereign Bonds

In this paper, I develop a new identification method to solve the problem of simultaneous equations, based on heteroskedasticity of the structural shocks. I show that if the heteroskedasticity can be described as a two-regime process, then the system is just identified under relatively weak conditions. Identification is also discussed under more than two regimes, when the residuals exhibit ARCH behavior, and when there are aggregate shocks. This methodology is applied to measure contagion across sovereign bonds between Argentina and Mexico. The estimates of the simultaneous parameters are relatively to different definitions of the regimes.
Non-Linear Pre-Coding for Multiple-Antenna Multi-User Downlink Transmissions with Different QoS Requirements

An efficient non-linear pre-filtering technique based on Tomlinson-Harashima pre-coding (THP) has recently been proposed by Liu and Krzymien in the context of multiple-antenna multi-user systems. The algorithm is based on the zero-forcing (ZF) criterion and is derived under the assumption that the number of users is equal to the number of transmit antennas. In contrast to other existing methods, it ensures the same signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) at each mobile terminal so as to guarantee a fair treatment of all active users. In multimedia applications, however, several types of information with different quality-of-service (QoS) requirements must be sent simultaneously on different subchannels. Motivated by the above problem, in the present work we design a THP-based pre-filtering algorithm for multiple-antenna multi-user systems in which the base station allocates the transmit power according to the QoS requirement of each active user. Compared to existing alternatives, the proposed scheme is simpler to implement and suited for practical situations where the number of active users may be less than the number of transmit antennas
Dongeun Huh Lung-ona-Chip Microdevice Induced Pulmonary Edema in a − A Human Disease Model of Drug Toxicity

could affect patient health. with the goal of one day being able to rapidly screen many drugs and conditions that −− heart, liver, pancreas, etc. −− (this issue). The next step is to hook this lung up to other chip-based organs et al. animals in a study by Thorneloe edema. The beneficial effects of GSK2193874 still need to be confirmed in humans, but were preliminary validated in in response to IL-2 and mechanical strain but also successfully predicts the activity of a new drug for pulmonary have recreated the human lung on a microfluidic chip and shown that it not only mimics lung function et al. Huh patients with pulmonary edema who are being mechanically ventilated. activated by mechanical strain. This drug inhibited leakage, suggesting that it would be a viable treatment option for pulmonary disease model against a new pharmacological agent, GSK2193874, which blocks certain ion channels induced vascular leakage. Lastly, the authors tested their − stabilized the endothelial junctions and inhibited IL-2 pulmonary barrier even further and led to a threefold increase in leakage. As expected, the addition of angiopoietin-1 pulmonary leakage, also known as ''edema. '' Cyclic mechanical strain introduced with IL-2 compromised the fluid started to leak into the air compartment. This process reproduces what is seen in the clinic, where IL-2 induces breathing motion of the lung. When Huh and colleagues added interleukin-2 (IL-2) to the microvascular channel, the ''microvascular'' channel was filled with liquid. Vacuum was cyclically applied to the sides of the channels to mimic the membrane. Much like the human lung, the upper ''alveolar'' channel was filled with air, whereas the lower The authors cultured two types of human lung cells in parallel microchannels, which were separated by a thin human lung function in both normal and disease states. effects in humans. Toward a more reliable output, Huh and colleagues developed a ''lung-on-a-chip'' that models Drug testing in animal models is time-consuming, costly, and often does not accurately predict the adverse Pulmonary Edema-on-a-Chip
Vaginal formulations of carrageenan protect mice from herpes simplex virus infection

The observations from the present study indicate that vaginal formulations of the sulfated polysaccharide carrageenan are highly effective in protecting mice from herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infection. Test formulations were placed in the vaginas of progestin-treated mice prior to inoculation with HSV-2. Infection was determined by the presence of inflammation in the genital region and death. At a dose of virus that infected half of the control animals, 1% solutions of either lambda, kappa, or iota carrageenan prevented infection of almost all of the animals. Concentrations as low as 0.05% protected a large majority of the mice. At a dose of virus that infected all of the control mice, 1% solutions of carrageenans protected 85% of the inoculated mice. Other sulfated polysaccharides were less effective or showed no efficacy in preventing HSV-2 infection. These findings suggest that a vaginal formulation of carrageenan may be effective in blocking sexual transmission of HSV-2 in women.