Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prenatal cocaine exposure abolished ischemic preconditioning-induced protection in adult male rat hearts: role of PKCepsilon.

Prenatal cocaine exposure in rats resulted in decreased PKCepsilon protein expression in the heart of adult male but not female offspring. The present study determined its functional consequence of inhibiting cardioprotection mediated by ischemic preconditioning. Pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats were administered intraperitoneally saline or cocaine (30 mg.kg(-1). day(-1)) from day 15 to day 21 of gestational age. Hearts were isolated from 3-mo-old offspring and were subjected to ischemia and reperfusion injury in a Langendorff preparation, with or without prior ischemic preconditioning. Preischemic values of left ventricular function were the same between the saline control and cocaine-treated animals. Ischemic preconditioning of two episodes of 5-min ischemia significantly decreased infarct size and enhanced postischemic functional recovery of the left ventricle in the saline control animals. This ischemic preconditioning was associated with increased phospho-PKCepsilon, but not phospho-PKCdelta, levels and was blocked by a PKCepsilon translocation inhibitor peptide. Prenatal cocaine treatment abolished the ischemic preconditioning-mediated increase in phospho-PKCepsilon and cardioprotection in the heart of male offspring. In contrast, the cardioprotective effect was fully maintained in female offspring that were exposed to cocaine before birth. The results suggest that prenatal cocaine exposure causes a sex-specific loss of cardioprotection by ischemic preconditioning in adult offspring, which is most likely due to fetal programming of PKCepsilon gene repression, resulting in a downregulation of PKCepsilon function in the heart of adult male offspring.
Recommendation in social networks

1. TUTORIAL DESCRIPTION With the emergence of online social networks, academia and industry have explored ways to exploit the information in social networks to improve the quality of recommendations and to support new recommendation tasks. The underlying motivation is to capture the effects that govern the evolution of social networks, i.e. social influence, selection, correlational influence and transitivity, to enhance the typically very sparse rating matrix. Recommender systems exploiting a social network promise to outperform traditional recommenders in particular for cold-start (new) users who have not yet provided enough information about their preferences. After introducing the motivation and some of the practical applications, we discuss social networks and the main factors affecting their evolution. We then review state-ofthe-art methods for item recommendation in social networks, both memory-based approaches and model-based approaches, in particular matrix factorization. We discuss friend recommendation, an important recommendation task that is unique to the context of social networks. We conclude the tutorial with a discussion of future research directions such as privacypreserving recommendations and social recommendation in distributed/peer-to-peer networks.
Magnet Defect and Rotor Eccentricity Modeling in Axial-Flux Permanent-Magnet Machines via 3-D Field Reconstruction Method

The structure of an axial-flux permanent-magnet (AFPM) machine necessitates the use of three-dimensional (3-D) simulation models. In particular, when possible faults occur, 2-D models cannot show the resulting unbalanced fields and forces. In this paper, some faults, such as magnet defect, static, and dynamic eccentricity in an AFPM machine, are modeled using a 3-D field reconstruction method. The proposed method reduces the high computational burden of finite-element analysis (FEA). Experimental test beds and FEA simulations are provided to validate the precision of the method.
No acetyl group deficit is evident at the onset of exercise at 90% of maximal oxygen uptake in humans

Abstract The existence of an acetyl group deficit at or above 90% of maximal oxygen uptake ([Vdot]O2max) has proved controversial, with contradictory results likely relating to limitations in previous research. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the “acetyl group deficit” occurs at the start of exercise at 90%[Vdot]O2max in a well-controlled study. Eight male participants (age: 33.6 ± 2.0 years; [Vdot]O2max: 3.60 ± 0.21 litres · min−1) completed two exercise bouts at 90%[Vdot]O2max for 3 min following either 30 min of saline (control) or dichloroacetate (50 mg · kg−1 body mass) infusion, ending 15 min before exercise. Muscle biopsies were obtained immediately before and after exercise while continuous non-invasive measures of pulmonary oxygen uptake and muscle deoxygenation were made. Muscle pyruvate dehydrogenase activity was significantly higher before exercise following dichloroacetate infusion (control: 2.67 ± 0.98 vs. dichloroacetate: 17.9 ± 1.1 mmol acetyl-CoA · min−1 · mg−1 protein, P = 0.01) and resulted in higher pre- and post-exercise muscle acetylcarnitine (pre-exercise control: 3.3 ± 0.95 vs. pre-exercise dichloroacetate: 8.0 ± 0.88 vs. post-exercise control: 11.9 ± 1.1 vs. post-exercise dichloroacetate: 17.2 ± 1.1 mmol · kg−1 dry muscle, P < 0.05). However, substrate-level phosphorylation (control: 125 ± 20 vs. dichloroacetate: 113 ± 13 mmol adenosine triphosphate · kg−1 dry muscle) and [Vdot]O2 kinetics (control: 19.2 ± 2.2 vs. dichloroacetate: 22.8 ± 2.5 s), were unaltered. Furthermore, dichloroacetate infusion blunted the slow component of [Vdot]O2 and muscle deoxygenation and slowed muscle deoxygenation kinetics, possibly by enhancing oxygen delivery during exercise. These data support the hypothesis that the “acetyl group deficit” does not occur at or above 90%[Vdot]O2max.
A model system for human cytomegalovirus-mediated modulation of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 long terminal repeat activity in brain cells

Previously, our laboratory showed that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) activates human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) in brain-derived cells with limited HIV-1 gene expression but inhibits HIV-1 in cells fully permissive for replication of both viruses (F. M. Jault, S. A. Spector, and D. H. Spector, J. Virol. 68:959-973, 1994). To investigate these effects further, we developed a model system that uncouples HIV-1 gene expression from long terminal repeat (LTR) activity. Two monoclonal U373-MG astrocytoma/glioblastoma cell lines (LTRIG and LIGHIVDC) were generated, each containing an integrated copy of an LTR-chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) construct and the Escherichia coli lacI gene. LIGHIVDC also has an inducible HIV-1 genome controlled by a Rous sarcoma virus promoter with lac operator sequences. Basal LTR-mediated CAT activity is 65-fold higher in LIGHIVDC than in LTRIG, and this activity is further increased (20-fold) following incubation of LIGHIVDC with isopropyl-beta-D-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG). Tat protein can be detected by immunostaining in LIGHIVDC. However, Rev-mediated transport and subsequent translation of the singly spliced and unspliced HIV-1 mRNAs is inefficient. In the absence of Tat, HCMV stimulated CAT activity approximately 20-fold, and this activation required HCMV gene expression but not viral DNA replication. LTR-directed transcription was unaffected by HCMV infection in LIGHIVDC but was inhibited in these cells when they contained increased Tat levels following IPTG induction. These results support the hypothesis that HCMV can induce the HIV-1 LTR when HIV-1 gene expression is minimal and that a threshold level of HIV-1 gene products is necessary for HCMV to inhibit this promoter.
Resonant Switched-Capacitor Converters for Sub-module Distributed Photovoltaic Power Management

This paper discusses the theory and implementation of a class of distributed power converters for photovoltaic (PV) energy optimization. Resonant switched-capacitor converters are configured in parallel with strings of PV cells at the sub-module level to improve energy capture in the event of shading or mismatch. The converters operate in a parallel-ladder architecture, enforcing voltage ratios among strings of cells at terminals normally connected to bypass diodes. The balancing function extends from the sub-module level to the entire series string through a dual-core cable and connector. The parallel configuration allows converters to handle only mismatch power and turn off if there is no mismatch in the array. Measurement results demonstrate insertion loss below 0.1% and effective conversion efficiency above 99% for short-circuit current mismatch gradients up to 40%. The circuit implementation eliminates large power magnetic components, achieving a vertical footprint less than 6 mm. The merits of a resonant topology are compared to a switched-capacitor topology.
Characterization of cyclic codes over {ℬ[X;(1/m)Z0]}m > 1 and efficient encoding decoding algorithm for cyclic codes

ABSTRACT The aim of the paper is twofold. Firstly, cyclic codes of arbitrary length n over the family of semigroup rings are completely characterized in terms of ideals of the rings , where is finite unitary commutative ring. Then, generator matrix for cyclic codes over is derived from their ideal representation. Secondly, an efficient encoding decoding algorithm is presented for polynomial cyclic code of length n based on cyclic code over . Rigorous analyses are performed to examine the efficiency of proposed scheme. Analyses reveal that the proposed algorithm can simultaneously encode and decode m messages of . Furthermore, the proposed technique is capable of detecting and correcting all burst errors up to length md−m and from transmitted codewords of . The newly developed algorithm is also compared with some of the existing coding techniques. It is evident from comparison that the proposed scheme is better than existing coding techniques in Babu and Zimmermann [Decoding of linear codes over galois rings, IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 47 (2001)], Nagpaul and Jain [Topics in Applied Abstract Algebra, The Brooks/Cole Series in Advanced Mathematics, 2005], Shah et al. [A method for improving the code rate and error correction capability of a cyclic code, Comput. Appl. Math. 32 (2013), pp. 261–274, doi:10.1007/s40314-013-0010-1] and Shah et al. [A decoding method of an n length binary BCH code through (n+1)n length binary cyclic code, An. Acad. Brasil. Ciênc. 85 (2013), pp. 863–872].
Delayed Graft Function in Laparoscopic Kidney Transplantation: The Importance of Prolonged Cold and Warm Ischemia

Keywords: basic (laboratory) research / science; clinical research / practice; immunosuppression / immune modulation; kidney transplantation / nephrology; organ transplantation in general; Immunosuppressant; polyclonal preparations: rabbit antithymocyte globulin; delayed graft function (DGF); donors and donation: deceased; kidney (allograft) function / dysfunction
Disambiguation points sampling heuristic for the stochastic obstacle scene problem

The stochastic obstacle scene problem (SOSP) is a challenging probabilistic path planning problem wherein an agent needs to traverse a spatial arrangement of possible obstacles and the agent can disambiguate the actual status of the obstacles (as true or false) en route at a cost. The goal is to find a policy that decides what and where to disambiguate so as to minimize the expected length of the traversal. Traditionally, optimization algorithms for SOSP first perform a lattice discretization of the obstacle field and then consider all (discrete) disambiguation points associated with the possible obstacles. In this work, using an AO*-based exact algorithm for SOSP, we illustrate that a random sampling of a small subset of all the available disambiguation points results in significant computational savings (more than 300-fold in some cases) at the expense of only minor deviations from the optimal expected path length. Our methodology is illustrated via computational experiments involving synthetic data as well as an actual naval minefield data set.
Relation Between Migratory Activity and Energetic Condition Among Thrushes (Turdinae) Following Passage Across the Gulf-of-Mexico

Whereas endogenous time programs are thought to control different aspects of bird migration, regulation of migratory behavior is sensitive to acute ecological factors. The relation between migratory activity and energetic status was studied by monitoring day (presumptive feeding) and night (migratory) locomotor activity of captive North American thrushes (Hylocichla mustelina, Catharus fuscescens, C. ustulatus, and C. minimus) immediately after spring passage across the Gulf of Mexico. (1) Lean migrants, regardless of species, displayed less night activity than migrants with undepleted fat stores. (2) Lean birds were more active during the day (presumptive feeding behavior) than fat birds, regardless of species. (3) Nocturnal restlessness resumed as lean individuals replenished fat stores, whereas day activity decreased as lean birds regained mass. (4) Catharus thrushes, which travel longer distances than Wood Thrushes before reaching breeding grounds, displayed more activity on a per-night basis. Our results support the idea that a migrant's energetic status modifies the programmed course of migration.
Negative cross‐talk between presynaptic adenosine and acetylcholine receptors

Functional interactions between presynaptic adenosine and acetylcholine (ACh) autoreceptors were studied at the frog neuromuscular junction by recording miniature end‐plate potentials (MEPPs) during bath or local application of agonists. The frequency of MEPPs was reduced by adenosine acting on presynaptic adenosine A1 receptors (EC50 = 1.1 µm) or by carbachol acting on muscarinic M2 receptors (EC50 = 1.8 µm). However, carbachol did not produce the depressant effect when it was applied after the action of adenosine had reached its maximum. This phenomenon implied that the negative cross‐talk (occlusion) had occurred between A1 and M2 receptors. Moreover, the occlusion was receptor‐specific as ATP applied in the presence of adenosine continued to depress MEPP frequency. Muscarinic antagonists [atropine or 1‐[[2‐[(diethylamino)methyl)‐1‐piperidinyl]acetyl]‐5,11‐dihydro‐6H‐pyrido [2,3‐b][1,4]benzodiazepine‐6‐one) (AFDX‐116)] had no effect on the inhibitory action of adenosine and adenosine antagonists [8‐(p‐sulfophenyl)theophylline (8‐SPT) or 1,3‐dipropyl‐8‐cyclopentylxanthine (DPCPX)] had no effect on the action of carbachol. These data suggested that membrane–delimited interactions did not occur between A1 and M2 receptors. Both carbachol and adenosine similarly inhibited quantal release triggered by high potassium, ionomycin or sucrose. These results indicated a convergence of intracellular pathways activated by M2 and A1 receptors to a common presynaptic effector located downstream of Ca2+ influx. We propose that the negative cross‐talk between two major autoreceptors could take place during intense synaptic activity and thereby attenuate the presynaptic inhibitory effects of ACh and adenosine.
Bile Acids Function Synergistically To Repress Invasion Gene Expression in Salmonella by Destabilizing the Invasion Regulator HilD

ABSTRACT Salmonella spp. are carried by and can acutely infect agricultural animals and humans. After ingestion, salmonellae traverse the upper digestive tract and initiate tissue invasion of the distal ileum, a virulence process carried out by the type III secretion system encoded within Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 (SPI-1). Salmonellae coordinate SPI-1 expression with anatomical location via environmental cues, one of which is bile, a complex digestive fluid that causes potent repression of SPI-1 genes. The individual components of bile responsible for SPI-1 repression have not been previously characterized, nor have the bacterial signaling processes that modulate their effects been determined. Here, we characterize the mechanism by which bile represses SPI-1 expression. Individual bile acids exhibit repressive activity on SPI-1-regulated genes that requires neither passive diffusion nor OmpF-mediated entry. By using genetic methods, the effects of bile and bile acids were shown to require the invasion gene transcriptional activator hilD and to function independently of known upstream signaling pathways. Protein analysis techniques showed that SPI-1 repression by bile acids is mediated by posttranslational destabilization of HilD. Finally, we found that bile acids function synergistically to achieve the overall repressive activity of bile. These studies demonstrate a common mechanism by which diverse environmental cues (e.g., certain short-chain fatty acids and bile acids) inhibit SPI-1 expression. These data provide information relevant to Salmonella pathogenesis during acute infection in the intestine and during chronic infection of the gallbladder and inform the basis for development of therapeutics to inhibit invasion as a means of repressing Salmonella pathogenicity.
Effects of anion size and concentration on electrolyte invasion into molecular-sized nanopores

When an electrolyte solution is pressurized into a molecular-sized nanopore, oppositely charged ions are strongly inclined to aggregate, which effectively reduces the ion solubility to zero. Inside the restrictive confinement, a unique quasi-periodic structure is formed where the paired ion couples are periodically separated by a number of water molecules. As the anion size or ion concentration varies, the geometrical characteristics of the confined ion structure would change considerably, leading to a significant variation in the transport pressure. Both experimental and simulation results indicate that, contradictory to the prediction of conventional theory, infiltration pressure decreases as the anions become larger.
Numerical analysis of metal targets in the terahertz and infrared

The Drude model is used to describe the equivalent relative permittivity of metal, which varies the frequency and determines the value of the surface impedance. The surface integral equation method is applied to solve electromagnetic scattering by arbitrarily shaped three dimensional metallic objects modeled with the impedance boundary condition (IBC). Several metal spheres are analyzed which are composed by three different metals. The computed results are all compared with the perfect electric conductor (PEC) case, which show that there are big differences of the electromagnetic properties for different metals.
Invited Commentary Invited Commentary: Does the Childhood Environment Influence the Association Between Every X and Every Y in Adulthood?

The conditions under which children are raised have a long-term impact on health throughout the life course. Because childhood conditions can have such a strong influence on adult risk factors for disease, failure to account for their influences could distort observed associations between adult risk factors and subsequent health outcomes. In other words, childhood conditions could confound the association between every X and Y when X is measured in adulthood. Comparisons of health outcomes between exposed and unexposed siblings have the potential to eliminate confounding effects due to vulnerability factors shared between siblings (i.e., 50% of their genes and aspects of the childhood environment that affect siblings equally). In a large, populationbased study of siblings in Denmark, Søndergaard et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2012;176(8):675–683) found that individuals with higher educational qualifications lived longer than did their siblings with lower educational qualifications. Their results provide evidence for the returns to health resulting from investment in expanded educational opportunities. However, even sibling designs are not conclusive regarding causality; they remain subject to the unmeasured confounding influences of factors that vary within families. Nonetheless, sibling-based approaches should be used more often in studies of adult risk factors to address the long-term influences of the childhood environment on health.
Nerve regeneration through a healthy peripheral nerve trunk as a nerve conduit: A preliminary study of a new concept in peripheral nerve surgery

The popularity of nerve conduits has increased recently due to the need for alternative nerve reconstruction techniques, obviating the harvest of nerve grafts. Based on ideas suggesting nerve tissue itself, which was the most physiologic environment for nerve regeneration, a study using 40 sciatic nerves of 20 rats was performed. The proximal stumps of transected peroneal nerves were sutured to the lateral wall of healthy tibial nerve trunks after removal of the epineurium. Twelve weeks later, tissue samples were taken from the anastomosis sites and from the levels above and below these sites. Configurations of fascicles were evaluated, and numbers of fibers were estimated. It was observed that the fibers of peroneal nerves regenerated into and through the tibial nerve trunk distally. This suggested that active regenerating fibers of a proximal stump of a nerve could regenerate and progress as a fascicular unit in optimum condition at the trunk of another healthy nerve. This preliminary study should stimulate further studies based on this new concept: that a nerve trunk can serve as the host for the regenerating fibers of another nerve. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. MICROSURGERY 22:138–143 2002
Does Food Insecurity Affect Parental Characteristics and Child Behavior? Testing Mediation Effects

Using two waves of data from the Child Development Supplement in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study investigates whether parental characteristics (parenting stress, parental warmth, psychological distress, and parent’s self-esteem) mediate household food insecurity’s relations with child behavior problems. Fixed-effects analyses examine data from a low-income sample of 416 children from 249 households. This study finds that parenting stress mediates the effects of food insecurity on child behavior problems. However, two robustness tests produce different results from those of the fixed-effects models. This inconsistency suggests that household food insecurity’s relations to the two types of child behavior problems need to be investigated further with a different methodology and other measures.
Sentiment Analysis of News Headlines using Naïve Bayes Classifier

-The amount of user generated content is increasing day by day and it involves detection of opinions about particular topic or an object. Sentiment analysis is used to extract sentiments of people about products, moviews, political events etc. It identifies the viewpoint of opinion holder and polarity of the content i.e. positive negative or neutral. Given the large amount of news being generated these days through various websites, it is possible to mine the general sentiment of particular news. Nowadays many people read news online. People's perspective tends to undergo a change as per the news content they read. The majority of the content that we read today is on the negative aspects of various things e.g. rapes, thefts, corruption etc. Reading such negative news is spreading negativity amongst the people. The positivity surrounding the good news has been drastically reduced by the number of bad news. The objective of this work is to provide a platform for serving good news and create a positive environment.