Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Abundance and Significance of Neuroligin-1 and Neurexin II in the Enteric Nervous System of Embryonic Rats

Aim. To investigate the abundance of neuroligin-1 and neurexin II in the enteric nervous system (ENS) of rats on different embryonic days and to explore their potential significance. Methods. The full-thickness colon specimens proximal to the ileocecal junction of rats on embryonic days 16, 18, and 20 and of newborns within 24 hours (E16, E18, E20, and Ep0) were studied, respectively. qRT-PCR was applied for detecting the expressions of neuroligin-1 and neurexin II on mRNA, and western blotting was employed for detecting their further expressions on the whole tissue. Finally, the histological appearance of neuroligin-1 and neurexin IIα was elucidated using immunohistochemical staining. Results. qRT-PCR showed that the neuroligin-1 and neurexin II mRNA expressions of groups E16, E18, E20, and Ep0 increased gradually with the growth of embryonic rats (P < 0.05). Western blotting confirmed the increasing tendency. In immunohistochemical staining, proteins neuroligin-1 and neurexin IIα positive cells concentrated mostly in the myenteric nerve plexus of the colon and their expressions depend on the embryonic time. Conclusion. Neuroligin-1 and neurexin II were both expressed in the ENS and have temporal correlation with the development of ENS, during which neuronal intestinal malformations (NIM) may occur due to their disruptions and consequent abnormal ENS development.
Progress in Controlled Gastroretentive Delivery Systems

Controlled release (CR) dosage forms have been extensively used to improve therapy with several important drugs. However, the development processes are faced with several physiological difficulties such as the inability to restrain and localize the system within the desired region of the gastrointestinal tract and the highly variable nature of the gastric emptying process. This variability may lead to unpredictable bioavailability and times to achieve peak plasma levels. On the other hand, incorporation of the drug in a controlled release gastroretentive dosage forms (CR-GRDF) which can remain in the gastric region for several hours would significantly prolong the gastric residence time of drugs and improve bioavailability, reduce drug waste, and enhance the solubility of drugs that are less soluble in high pH environment. Gastroretention would also facilitate local drug delivery to the stomach and proximal small intestine. Thus, gastroretention could help to provide greater availability of new products and consequently improved therapeutic activity and substantial benefits to patients. Controlled gastric retention of solid dosage form may be achieved by the mechanisms of floatation, mucoadhesion, sedimentation, expansion or by a modified shaped system. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent literature and current technology used in the development of gastroretentive dosage forms.
Is Chlamydia pneumoniae the causative agent of microscopic polyangiitis?

Sir, Regarding the letter, we thank Dr. Gambaro et al. for the interest in our recent paper published in Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation. We agree with the observation that the majority of patients with medullary sponge kidney (MSK) do not present the typical distal renal tubular acidosis (dRTA) clinical phenotype (e.g. growth failure from infancy). However, dRTA is characterized by a wide clinical heterogeneity, and only in the last few years, has this metabolic disease been studied in all its various clinical and molecular aspects. Some cases of dRTA can show low clinical expression, so the diagnosis may be delayed until the appearance of classical complications. We recently studied two sisters affected by dRTA, one with the typical clinical manifestations of the disease and the other (30years old) with a metabolic history that remained essentially silent. Both have the same mutation in one of the causative dRTA genes. Furthermore, as reported in our article, Kasap and colleagues described a 5-year-old girl with MSK associated with dRTA [1]. Despite the fact that a molecular analysis was not performed, the clinical features described by the authors are really convincing that this patient could have both conditions. Because the urographic pictures were taken several years ago, it is difficult to answer point by point the comments of Gambaro et al. However, usually, provocative manoeuvres are applied when it is necessary to increase the sensitivity of the procedure, but the Rx images of the reported patients show the typical features of MSK, as our current consultant radiologists, who reviewed the X-ray films, confirmed. We cannot conclude that MSK is ever a consequence of dRTA, but since MSK is a heterogeneous condition, as also stressed by Gambaro et al., for the first time, our study has highlighted the association of two rare renal diseases coupled with the genes responsible of dRTA, and it revealed a possible correlation between MSK and dRTA. Further studies are certainly needed to clarify not only the relationship between these two clinical conditions but also the phenotypic expression of dRTA, which is still not well known.
Novel Model-Based Estimators for the Purposes of Fault Detection and Diagnosis

The interacting multiple model (IMM) strategy is particularly useful for systems that behave according to a number of different operating modes. In this strategy, each operating mode is described by a model and has its own filter. The filters are run in parallel, and an overall operating mode probability is calculated that provides an indication of the current operating regime of the system. The smooth variable structure filter (SVSF) is a relatively new estimation method based on the sliding mode concept, formulated in a predictor-corrector form. For systems with modeling uncertainties, the SVSF has shown to be more accurate and robust when compared with other methods such as the extended Kalman filter (EKF). A newer form of the SVSF makes use of a time-varying smoothing boundary layer (SVSF-VBL). This paper introduces new model-based estimators; based on the IMM strategy combined with the SVSF and SVSF-VBL, referred to as the IMM-SVSF and IMM-SVSF-VBL, respectively. The new strategies are applied to a type of aerospace actuator referred to as an electrohydrostatic actuator, which provides a comprehensive system for fault detection and diagnosis. The results are compared with the popular IMM-EKF strategy.
The Fungicide Phosphonate Disrupts the Phosphate-Starvation Response in Brassica nigra Seedlings

The development of Brassica nigra seedlings over 20 d of growth was disrupted by the fungicide phosphonate (Phi) in a manner inversely correlated with nutritional inorganic phosphate (Pi) levels. The growth of Pi-sufficient (1.25 mM Pi) seedlings was suppressed when 10, but not 5, mM Phi was added to the nutrient medium. In contrast, the fresh weights and root:shoot ratios of Pi-limited (0.15 mM) seedlings were significantly reduced at 1.5 mM Phi, and they progressively declined to about 40% of control values as medium Phi concentration was increased to 10 mM. Intracellular Pi levels generally decreased in Phi-treated seedlings, and Phi accumulated in leaves and roots to levels up to 6- and 16-fold that of Pi in Pi-sufficient and Pi-limited plants, respectively. Extractable activities of the Pi-starvation-inducible enzymes phosphoenolpyruvate phosphatase and inorganic pyrophosphate-dependent phosphofructokinase were unaltered in Pi-sufficient seedlings grown on 5 or 10 mM Phi. However, when Pi-limited seedlings were grown on 1.5 to 10 mM Phi (a) the induction of phosphoenolpyruvate phosphatase and inorganic pyrophosphate-dependent phosphofructokinase activities by Pi limitation was reduced by 40 to 90%, whereas (b) soluble protein concentrations and the activities of the ATP-dependent phosphofructokinase and pyruvate kinase were unaffacted. It is concluded that Phi specifically interrupts processes involved in regulation of the Pi-starvation response in B. nigra.
R-tfidf, a Variety of tf-idf Term Weighting Strategy in Document Categorization

Term weighting strategy plays an essential role in the areas related to text processing such as text categorization and information retrieval. In such systems, term frequency, inverse document frequency, and document length normalization are important factors to be considered when a term weighting strategy is developed. Term length normalization is proposed to give equal opportunities to retrieve both lengthy documents and shorter ones. However, terms in very short documents that may be useless for users, especially in the scenario of Web information retrieval, could be assigned very high weights, resulting in a situation where shorter documents are ranked higher than lengthy documents that are more relevant to users information needs. In this research, a new R-tfidf term weighting strategy is proposed to alleviate the side effects of document length normalization. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed approach can to some extent improve the performance of text categorization.
Repeat instability at human minisatellites arising from meiotic recombination

Little is known about the role of meiotic recombination processes such as unequal crossover in driving instability at tandem repeat DNA. Methods have therefore been developed to detect meiotic crossovers within two different GC‐rich minisatellite repeat arrays in humans, both in families and in sperm DNA. Both loci normally mutate in the germline by complex conversion‐like transfer of repeats between alleles. Analysis shows that inter‐allelic unequal crossovers also occur at both loci, although at low frequency, to yield simple recombinant repeat arrays with exchange of flanking markers. Equal crossovers between aligned alleles, resulting in recombinant alleles but without change in repeat copy number, also occur in sperm at a similar frequency to unequal crossovers. Both crossover and conversion show polarity in the repeat array and are co‐suppressed in an allele showing unusual germline stability. This provides evidence that minisatellite conversion and crossover arise by a common mechanism, perhaps by alternative processing of a meiotic recombination initiation complex, and implies that minisatellite instability is a by‐product of meiotic recombination in repeat DNA. While minisatellite recombination is infrequent, crossover rates indicate that the unstable end of a human minisatellite can act as a recombination warm‐spot, even between sequence‐heterologous alleles.
Constrained GA Optimization

We present a general method of handling constraints in genetic optimization, based on the Behavioural Memory paradigm. Instead of requiring the problem-dependent design of either repair operators (projection on the feasible region) or penalty function (weighted sum of the constraints violations and the objective function), we sample the feasible region by evolving from an initially random population, successively applying a series of diierent t-ness functions which embody constraint satisfaction. The nal step is the optimization of the objective function restricted to the feasible region. The success of the whole process is highly dependent on the genetic diversity maintained during the rst steps, ensuring a uniform sampling of the feasible region. This method succeeded on some truss structure optimization problems, where the other genetic techniques for handling the constraints failed to give good results. Moreover in some domains, as in automatic generation of software test data, no other technique can be easily applied, as some constraints are not even computable until others are satissed.
Evaluating the Performance of "Derandomized-LShade" Algorithm on CEC 2014 Benchmark Functions

In this paper, a hybrid global optimization algorithm is proposed. The new algorithm Derandomized-LShade (DL-Shade), exploits derandomization characteristics of the Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolutionary Strategy (CMA-ES) to enhance the performance of L-SHADE algorithm. The performance of DL-SHADE has been evaluated on the benchmark functions of CEC2014 Competition. Also, DL-Shade efficiency has been compared with L-SHADE and CMA-ES. Comparison results show that the proposed algorithm takes the good features from both algorithm and it was able to outperform both of them.
Improving the capacity of future IEEE 802.11 high efficiency WLANs

In future's high density Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), to improve the overall throughput, we envision the optimization of the MAC protocols and mechanisms. Traditionally, it's clear in the literature that Transmit Power Control (TPC) is chosen as one of the most powerful tools for optimizing MAC protocols. However, the TPC is not always possible to implement due to hardware and licensing limitations on one hand, and on the other, its unbalanced use results in starvation situations. In the same context, the Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) threshold adaptation is proving its effectiveness. This adaptation is preferable to TPC that behaves aggressively towards transmitters having lower transmit power. In this paper we show that CCA adaptation mechanism may be used effectively to optimize the spatial reuse in dense WLAN deployments. For a dense IEEE 802.11n network topology, our simulations show a global gain of 190% in aggregate throughput compared to the current bound assumed by the present MAC protocol.
La importancia de las agrupaciones compensadas de alumnos para la formación

El trabajo en grupo es uno de los pilares del modelo de ensenanza-aprendizaje en el Espacio Europeo de Educacion Superior (EEES). El grado de desarrollo personal, su autoimagen y su autoestima, su capacidad de asumir riesgos y esfuerzos, de dar y recibir ayuda, sus conocimientos previo son algunos de los factores que configuran el punto de partida de cada alumno y que pueden incidir en su aprendizaje. La radiografia inicial de los alumnos se considera un aspecto fundamental a la hora de organizar la asignatura. Mas concretamente, en asignaturas que se basan en el trabajo en grupo, seria necesario analizar estos factores a la hora de la configuracion de los mismos, de forma que los alumnos integrantes del grupo tengan caracteristicas complementarias y compensadas, a fin de mejorar la calidad de trabajo, el ambiente grupal y como consecuencia el rendimiento medio de la clase. En este articulo se presenta una experiencia realizada en la asignatura Fundamentos de Ordenadores y Sistemas Operativos impartida en el Grado de Sistemas de Telecomunicacion de la Universidad de Valladolid en la que se comprueba la eficacia del uso de agrupaciones en funcion de las caracteristicas personales, psico-sociales y competenciales de los alumnos.
The Elongin B Ubiquitin Homology Domain

Mammalian Elongin B is a 118-amino acid protein composed of an 84-amino acid amino-terminal ubiquitin-like domain and a 34-amino acid carboxyl-terminal tail. Elongin B is found in cells as a subunit of the heterodimeric Elongin BC complex, which was originally identified as a positive regulator of RNA polymerase II elongation factor Elongin A and subsequently as a component of the multiprotein von Hippel-Lindau tumor suppressor and suppressor of cytokine signaling complexes. As part of our effort to understand how the Elongin BC complex regulates the activity of Elongin A, we are characterizing Elongin B functional domains. In this report, we show that the Elongin B ubiquitin-like domain is necessary and sufficient for interaction with Elongin C and for positive regulation of Elongin A transcriptional activity. In addition, by site-directed mutagenesis of the Elongin B ubiquitin-like domain, we identify a short Elongin B region that is important for its interaction with Elongin C. Finally, we observe that both the ubiquitin-like domain and carboxyl-terminal tail are conserved in Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans Elongin B homologs that efficiently substitute for mammalian Elongin B in reconstitution of the transcriptionally active Elongin ABC complex, suggesting that the carboxyl-terminal tail performs an additional function not detected in our assays.
A compact ultra-wideband double balun feeding network on a single layer PCB

An ultra-wideband (UWB) passive double balun for the frequency range from 3.2 GHz to 9.8 GHz realized on a single layer printed circuit board is presented. Each of the two baluns consists of a Wilkinson power divider and a 180° phase shifter. The intended combination of the baluns with a center-fed multi-arm antenna calls for the integration of an impedance transform from 50Ω to 75Ω and for a crossing between two microstrip lines by a copper bridge. Finally, the maximal dimensions of the layout are restricted to solely 50.8mm by 50.8mm by the application. To guarantee an adequate matching of the input ports, an analytical estimation of the worst case return loss is first performed, determining the maximum admissible reflection coefficients of the individually designed subcomponents. A prototype of the balun is fabricated on a Rogers RO4003 substrate using a laser-based PCB prototyping process. Key results include a return loss at the unbalanced port better than 10dB and a phase difference between the balanced ports between 165° and 205° in the operating frequency band.
Geospatial Agents, Agents Everywhere . . .

The use of the related terms “agent‐based”, “multi‐agent”, “software agent” and “intelligent agent” have witnessed significant growth in the Geographic Information Science (GIScience) literature in the past decade. These terms usually refer to both artificial life agents that simulate human and animal behavior and software agents that support human‐computer interactions. In this article we first comprehensively review both types of agents. Then we argue that both these categories of agents borrow from Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, requiring them to share the characteristics of and be similar to AI agents. We also argue that geospatial agents form a distinct category of AI agents because they are explicit about geography and geographic data models. Our overall goal is to first capture the diversity of, and then define and categorize GIScience agent research into geospatial agents, thereby capturing the diversity of agent‐oriented architectures and applications that have been developed in the recent past to present a holistic review of geospatial agents.
Work in progress: Simple software solution for accessing remote lab on mobile devices

In this paper we describe some of the work taking place in a system to create an affordable setup for a remote laboratory. The system utilizes HTML5 and JavaScript to make the user interface accessible on various platforms, including mobile devises and computers, without any additional software installation. The system comprises a remote laboratory for configuring and analyzing a simple power supply for electrical engineering students. Practical testing on the separate components shows the feasibility of the proposed solution. Previous versions of the remote laboratory has proven to be a valuable addition to the exercise program the students need to complete in order to fulfill the learning objectives in various modules run as part of an electrical engineering education.
New tricks for an old drug.

In this issue, Willoughby and colleagues report the effects of perhexiline on the sensitivity of platelets to the antiaggregatory effects of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide potently inhibits the aggregation of platelets via a cyclic GMP dependent mechanism. This group of workers has previously shown that platelets from patients with both stable angina and unstable coronary syndromes exhibit impaired ex vivo sensitivity to the antiaggregatory effects of the nitric oxide donor sodium nitroprusside, this abnormality being particularly marked in patients with unstable coronary syndromes. Platelet nitric oxide resistance may play an important role in platelet thrombus formation in unstable coronary syndromes. Previous work by the group has suggested that this resistance to the antiaggregatory effects of nitric oxide on platelets might occur from one or both of two mechanisms. First, by increased nitric oxide clearance as a result of increased superoxide production. Second, via a reversible inhibition of platelet guanylate cyclase. Platelet NO resistance has also been documented in association with insulin resistance in obesity. In certain situations, including heart failure and coronary artery disease there may also be ‘resistance’ to the vascular smooth muscle effects of nitric oxide. Because this resistance results in a parallel shift of the dose-response relation it is only identified by examining the vascular response to submaximal doses of NO donors. Nitric oxide resistance may contribute to the endothelial dysfunction seen in these conditions. It is not known whether the mechanisms responsible for vascular smooth muscle and platelet nitric oxide resistance are the same, and whether the two phenomena parallel each other. The present study was prompted by the group’s previous observation that in a multivariate analysis, perhexiline treatment predicted greater platelet nitric oxide sensitivity in patients with angina. Perhexiline is an antianginal now little used in Europe because of reports of hepatotoxicity and neurotoxicity in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, several reports have shown it to be a potent anti-anginal, both as monotherapy and as an adjunct to conventional antianginal therapy. It is metabolized by a P450 enzyme system for which there is polymorphic variation, and toxicity can be avoided by measuring plasma levels and maintaining them within the range
TWO WIDE PLANETARY-MASS COMPANIONS TO SOLAR-TYPE STARS IN UPPER SCORPIUS

At wide separations, planetary-mass and brown dwarf companions to solar-type stars occupy a curious region of parameter space not obviously linked to binary star formation or solar system scale planet formation. These companions provide insight into the extreme case of companion formation (either binary or planetary), and due to their relative ease of observation when compared to close companions, they offer a useful template for our expectations of more typical planets. We present the results from an adaptive optics imaging survey for wide (∼50–500 AU) companions to solar-type stars in Upper Scorpius. We report one new discovery of a ∼14 MJ companion around GSC 06214−00210and confirm that the candidate planetary-mass companion 1RXS J160929.1−210524 detected by Lafrenière et al. is in fact comoving with its primary star. In our survey, these two detections correspond to ∼4% of solar-type stars having companions in the 6–20 MJ mass and ∼200–500 AU separation range. This figure is higher than would be expected if brown dwarfs and planetary-mass companions were drawn from an extrapolation of the binary mass function. Finally, we discuss implications for the formation of these objects.