Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of fasting, feeding, and bisphosphonate administration on serum calcitriol levels in phosphate-deprived rats.

BACKGROUND In a recent study, we showed in phosphate-deprived rats that morning feeding decreased serum phosphate and increased serum calcium values as compared with similar rats fasted overnight, and high doses of bisphosphonates did not reduce the magnitude of hypercalcemia. In the present study, we evaluated in phosphate-deprived rats whether serum calcitriol values were: (1) affected by the differences in serum phosphate induced by morning feeding and overnight fasting, (2) correlated with changes in serum phosphate levels, and (3) influenced by bisphosphonate administration. METHODS Four groups of rats were studied: (1) low-phosphate diet (LPD; P < 0.05%), (2) LPD + the bisphosphonate pamidronate (APD), (3) normal diet (ND; P 0.6%), and (4) ND + APD. Both diets contained 0.6% calcium. In rats receiving APD, high doses (0.8 mg/kg) were given subcutaneously four times during the study. On day 11, rats were sacrificed after an overnight fast or two to four hours after morning feeding. RESULTS In the fed phosphate-deprived rats (LPD and LPD + APD), serum phosphate levels were less (P < 0.05) and serum calcium levels were greater (P < 0.05) than in similar rats fasted overnight. In rats on the ND (ND and ND + APD), no differences were observed between fed and fasted rats. In phosphate-deprived rats, serum calcitriol levels were greater (LPD, P < 0.05) or tended to be greater (LPD + APD, P = 0.10) in the fed than in the fasted groups. In APD-treated rats, serum calcitriol values were greater than in rats not given APD whether rats were (1) fed or fasted, or (2) on an LPD or ND. An inverse correlation was present between serum phosphate and serum calcitriol (r = -0.58, P = 0.001). In a stepwise regression model in which serum calcitriol was the dependent variable and independent variables were APD administration and serum calcium, phosphate, and PTH, serum phosphate (P = 0.003) had an inverse and APD (P < 0.001) administration a direct effect on serum calcitriol (r2 = 0.59). CONCLUSION Calcitriol synthesis is rapidly inducible in rats during chronic phosphate deprivation, and the increase in serum calcitriol values is best attributed to feeding-induced decreases in serum phosphate. APD administration independently increases serum calcitriol levels in rats on normal and phosphate-deprived diets. Finally, whether our results in the rat are applicable to the clinical setting should be evaluated because in previous human studies of dietary phosphate restriction, serum calcitriol measurements were performed the morning after an overnight fast.
Modifications of the IST-WINNER channel model for Beamspace processing and parasitic arrays

The IST-WINNER (WIM) channel model provides a complete measurement-based wideband description of the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) channel and it has become the most popular modelling tool for wireless system analysis. Some disadvantages that can be detected in the WIM software realization is that on the one hand the definition and incorporation of sophisticated arrays is quite complicated and on the other hand it is not structurally simple to assume and evaluate an antenna array with parasitic elements. Many studies propose the use of parasitic elements to improve beamforming capabilities. Moreover Beamspace MIMO (BS-MIMO) with the use of Electronically Steerable Passive Array Radiators (ESPAR) has been recently proposed to implement MIMO transmission schemes with a single Radio Frequency (RF) chain and compact sized arrays. This paper proposes certain modifications that allow the use of WIM for the evaluation of such systems. These modifications provide also a simpler and general way to define arrays of arbitrary geometry and finally achieve faster execution time of the model in MATLAB.
Efficacy and safety of once or twice daily inhalation of extrafine HFA beclomethasone dipropionate in patients with mild to moderate asthma.

The relatively new chlorofluorocarbon-free solution preparation of beclomethasone dipropionate in hydrofluoroalkane (HFA-BDP) (Qvar, 3M Pharmaceuticals) generates an extra fine aerosol with a smaller particle size (mean mass aerodynamic diameter of 1.1 microm), drug deposition in the lung is more uniformly distributed, thus improving efficacy even at a low dose. This might be also important for the use of a new fixed combination containing HFA-BDP plus formoterol in one inhaler for basic therapy and for an as-need application. Further, inhalation once a day might considerably enhance patients' adherence to maintenance therapy. The aim of this study was to test clinical efficacy and safety of twice daily inhalation (b.i.d.) vs. once daily inhalation (o.d.). In a double-blind, randomised, multicenter, parallel-group study, the efficacy and safety of 200 microg HFA-BDP o.d. (evenings) was compared with 100 microg HFA-BDP b.i. d. , and with placebo. The trial included 201 patients with mild to moderately severe asthma. FEV1 was the primary endpoint and treatment duration was eight weeks. The improvement of FEV1 (20.4% o.d. vs. 12.9% b.i.d. vs. 7.9% placebo) was comparable in the two BDP groups. Both were more effective than placebo (P=0.014). The efficacy of o.d. dose was also equivalent to b.i. d. dose in secondary endpoints (peak flow, beta2-sympathomimetic drug use, asthma symptom score, and nocturnal awakenings). The treatment was well tolerated. A single evening dose (200 microg HFA-BDP) is as equivalently effective as the twice daily inhalation (2x100 microg HFA-BDP) in mild to moderate asthma.
Invisible migrant enclaves in Chinese cities: Underground living in Beijing, China

China is experiencing an urban revolution, powered in part by hundreds of millions of migrant workers. Faced with institutionalised discrimination in the housing system and the lack of housing affordability, migrants have turned to virtually uninhabitable spaces such as basements and civil air defence shelters for housing. With hundreds of thousands of people living in crowded and dark basements, an invisible migrant enclave exists underneath the modern city of Beijing. We argue that in Chinese cities, housing has been adopted as an institution to exclude and marginalise migrants, through: (a) defining migrants as an inferior social class through the Hukou system and denying their rights to entitlements including housing; (b) abnormalising migrants through various derogatory naming and categorisations to legitimise exclusion; and (c) purifying and controlling migrant spaces to achieve exclusion and marginalisation. The forced popularity of basement renting reflects the reality that housing has become an institution of exclusion and marginalisation. It embodies vertical spatial marginalisation, with exacerbated contrasts between basement tenants and urban residents, heightened fear of the ‘other’, even more derogatory naming, and the government’s more aggressive clean-up of their spaces. We call for reforms and policy changes to ensure decent and affordable housing for basement tenants and migrants in general.
Observation and Analysis on Spam Sending Behavior

Due to Internet, people prefer using emails instead of traditional post mails, because of its simple and easy to use. Meanwhile unsolicited emails (spam) become a serious problem, as sending bulk emails are almost cost free in terms of time and money. Spam not only reduces system performance of mail servers but also annoys mail receivers. Nowadays attacks from Internet usually have strong links with embedding malicious codes/links in spam mails. In this research study, we collected a large number of spam to observe and analyze spam sending behavior. For each spam, we gathered source IPs, the URLs in the spam, and web pages of the URL. Basing on the collected spam, we studied the spam sending behavior.
Exploiting social reciprocity for auction-based spectrum allocation in femtocell networks

With the explosive demand for wireless communications, users are always experiencing poor quality-of-services. Spectrum auction is a promising approach to allocate spectrum resources in wireless networks. Most of the previous works ignored social characteristics of users in wireless networks which influence the allocation of spectrum resources. In this article, we study the spectrum auction problem in a femtocell network and jointly exploit the social reciprocity of users for optimizing the allocation of spectrum resources. We propose an auction incentive framework combined with social reciprocity in the femtocell network. Such a matter is formulated as an integer programming optimization problem, and a modified quantum genetic algorithm is developed to solve the optimization problem. Besides we propose a payment rule satisfying truthfulness and individual rationality properties. Simulation results show that our algorithm can achieve the optimal solution to the optimization problem.
Non-stop decay--a new mRNA surveillance pathway.

Gene expression is an inherently complex process and errors often occur during the transcription and processing of mRNAs. Several surveillance mechanisms have evolved to check the fidelity at each step of mRNA manufacture. Two recent reports describe the identification of a novel pathway in eukaryotes that recognizes and degrades mRNAs that lack a stop codon. The non-stop decay mechanism releases ribosomes stalled at the 3' end of a mRNA and stimulates the exosome to rapidly degrade the transcript.
Endocrine Factors in Dental Development

of dental development comes from congenital cretins and individuals with acquired juvenile hypothyroidism. The role of the growth hormone (GSH) is separately evident in hypopituitarism and, less clearly, in the panhypopituitary state. Children with the adrenogenital syndrome and precocious puberty, if of prolonged duration, tend to be advanced in dental development, though hormonal specificity is less clear in such conditions. In theory, the XO might be expected to resemble the normal XV in the timing of dental development, but in practice the XO with multiple defects of dental development, juvenile osteoporosis, and immunological peculiarities can no longer be considered as a simple example of ovarian agenesis. -S. M. G.
Changing the concepts of immune‐mediated glomerular diseases through proteomics

Standard classification of glomerular diseases is based on histopathologic abnormalities. The recent application of proteomic technologies has resulted in paradigm changes in the understanding and classification of idiopathic membranous nephropathy and membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis. Those examples provide evidence that proteomics will lead to advances in understanding of the molecular basis of other glomerular diseases, such as lupus nephritis. Proof of principle experiments show that proteomics can be applied to patient renal biopsy specimens. This viewpoint summarizes the advances in immune‐mediated glomerular diseases that have relied on proteomics, and potential future applications are discussed.
Enoate Reductases of Clostridia

The enr genes specifying enoate reductases of Clostridium tyrobutyricum andClostridium thermoaceticum were cloned and sequenced. Sequence comparison shows that enoate reductases are similar to a family of flavoproteins comprising 2,4-dienoyl-coenzyme A reductase from Escherichia coli and old yellow enzyme from yeast. TheC. thermoaceticum enr gene product was expressed in recombinant Escherichia coli cells growing under anaerobic conditions. The recombinant enzyme was purified and characterized.
Bioactive (+)-Manzamine A and (+)-8-Hydroxymanzamine A Tertiary Bases and Salts from Acanthostrongylophora Ingens and Their Preparations

The genus Acanthostrongylophora is famous for producing a wide array of manzamine alkaloids as natural hydrochloride salts. An examination of A. ingens has now yielded two tertiary bases, (+)-8-hydroxymanzamine A (1) and (+)-manzamine A (2), by chromatography over alumina using CHCl3-MeOH-NH3·H2O as solvent. In addition, (+)-8-hydroxymanzamine A hydrochloride (3) and (+)-manzamine A hydrochloride (4) were isolated under the same conditions from the same source by silica gel chromatography. The structures of 1-4 were determined from 1D- and 2D-NMR spectra and by circular dichroism experiments, and the spectral features of the bases 1 and 2 were found to be different from those of the salts 3 and 4. Compounds 3 and 4 were deprotonated by both Al2O3 and strong base to afford 1 and 2, which were converted again to their respective salts 3 and 4. Both the compounds 1 and 3 showed equally potent in vitro antimalarial activity against chloroquine-sensitive (D6) and –resistant (W2) strains of P. falciparum (IC50= 19.5 and 22.0 ng/mL vs. 27.0 and 36.5 ng/mL, respectively), while 2 was >3-fold less potent than 4 (IC50= 20.8 and 25.8 ng/mL vs. 6.1 and 7.3 ng/mL, respectively). Compounds 1, 3 and 4 showed good antimicrobial activities against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Mycobacterium intracellulare and antileishmanial activity against Leishmania donovani promastigotes. In contrast, manzamine A base (2) showed relatively weaker antimicrobial, antileishmanial and cytotoxic activities [towards cancer (HepG2: Human hepatocellular carcinoma or hepatoma), and non-cancer cells (VERO: Monkey kidney fibroblast; LLC-PK11: Pig kidney epithelial)], compared with salt 4.
Anticipative Shared Control for Robotic Wheelchairs Used by People with Disabilities

Patients with neurological disorders are often required to cope with off-putting and longer rehabilitation process and some of them become wheelchair users with severe restriction on the arms and hands skill. Many studies have proposed solutions for autonomous or semi-autonomous powered wheelchairs focusing on navigation problems. In this project, we are interested in bringing up a planning shared control model for wheelchair to be used by people with disabilities or inexpert users to move from a room to another into an indoor place. The main objective is to reduce the effort of the users on controlling the wheelchair on these dedicated paths. This leads us to improve an algorithm of shared control to use other data sources such as agendas, travelled path, pose of the wheelchair, and time of day to infer patterns of conduction, in order to anticipate the conductor's intentions, for example, his/her intended path or final destination and to communicate with the user providing smart suggestions during the process. This anticipative shared control is of prime importance when tiring human-machine interfaces such as BCI, eye-tracking or EMG are being employed.
Mild cognitive impairment as a clinical entity and treatment target.

M ILD COGNITIVE i m p a i r m e n t (MCI) has been actively investigated for the past decade. , 2 The term was coined in the late 1980s by the New York University group to identify individuals who were not cognitively normal for age and yet did not have overt dementia, and their outcomes were described in an article examining predictors of dementia by Flicker et al in the early 1990s. Flicker et al characterized MCI as equivalent to a Global Deterioration Scale rating of 3 and found that a diagnostic approach combining a careful, structured interview and the appropriate neuropsychological tests can discriminate those individuals with MCI likely to experience cognitive deterioration from those with a benign prognosis. Recently MCI has been given more specific criteria involving the features outlined in Figure 1 of the comments by Gauthier and Touchon abstracted from Petersen et al. In conjunction with increased attention to the early stages of development of Alzheimer disease (AD), these criteria served to catalyze intense interest in MCI as a possible prodromal stage of AD. Several studies on longitudinal populations were conducted, some retrofitting criteria to longitudinal studies of aging, and several others are either underway or completed and have demonstrated a progression from MCI to AD at an elevated rate over the base rate in the population. Most of these studies examined the amnestic subtype of MCI, in which memory impairment is a key feature. However, other studies, often encompassing a broader definition of MCI, have demonstrated a reversion to normal in some subjects, implying a lack of stability for the construct over time. This has led to a closer inspection of the underlying premises of MCI and a refinement of criteria to recognize that MCI is a heterogeneous condition. Several factors have emerged as contributing to the variability in the outcomes of several of these studies. Among these are the following factors: (1) criteria for MCI, (2) implementation of the criteria, (3) source of subjects, and (4) reference standards for normal performance. Each of these points deserves discussion as it pertains to the comments raised by Gauthier and Touchon.
The Involvement of Hypothalamic Sleep Pathways in General Anesthesia: Testing the Hypothesis Using the GABAA Receptor β3N265M Knock-In Mouse

The GABAA receptor has been identified as the single most important target for the intravenous anesthetic propofol. How effects at this receptor are then translated into a loss of consciousness, however, remains a mystery. One possibility is that anesthetics act on natural sleep pathways. Here, we test this hypothesis by exploring the anesthetic sensitivities of GABAergic synaptic currents in three specific brain nuclei that are known to be involved in sleep. Using whole-cell electrophysiology, we have recorded GABAergic IPSCs from the tuberomammillary nucleus (TMN), the perifornical area (Pef), and the locus ceruleus (LC) in brain slices from both wild-type mice and mice that carry a specific mutation in the GABAA receptor β3 subunit (N265M), which greatly reduces their sensitivity to propofol, but not to the neurosteroid alphaxalone. We find that this in vivo pattern of anesthetic sensitivity is mirrored in the hypothalamic TMN and Pef nuclei, consistent with their role as direct anesthetic targets. In contrast, anesthetic sensitivity in the LC was unaffected by the β3N265M mutation, ruling out this nucleus as a major target for propofol. In support of the hypothesis that orexinergic neurons in the Pef are involved in propofol anesthesia, we further show that these neurons are selectively inhibited by GABAergic drugs in vivo during anesthesia, and that a modulation in the activity of Pef neurons alone can affect loss of righting reflex. Overall, our results support the idea that GABAergic anesthetics such as propofol exert their effects, at least in part, by modulating hypothalamic sleep pathways.
A 2.4-GHz-Low-Power CMOS RF Transmitter for IEEE 802.15.4 Standard

This paper presents the experimental results of a low-power RF transmitter for 2.4-GHz-band IEEE 802.15. 4 standard in 0.18-μm CMOS technology. In order to make an adaptive RF transmitter, several factors must be considered. The most important factors are performances, power consumption, output power, noise factor, and cost. The RF transmitter comprises a quadrature passive mixer, and a power amplifier. The proposed RF transmitter consumes only 10.8-mW under a supply voltage of 1.8-V.
A synchronized dating of three Greenland ice cores throughout the Holocene

As part of the effort to create the new Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05) a synchronized stratigraphical timescale for the Holocene parts of the DYE- 3, GRIP and NGRIP ice cores is made by using volcanic reference horizons in electri- cal conductivity measurements to match the cores. The main annual layer counting is carried out on the most suited records only, exploit- ing that the three ice cores have been drilled at locations with different climatic con- ditions and differences in ice flow. However, supplemental counting on data from all cores has been performed between each set of reference horizons in order to verify the valid- ity of the match. After the verification, the main dating is transferred to all records us- ing the volcanic reference horizons as tie points. An assessment of the mean annual layer thickness in each core section confirms that the new synchronized dating is consistent for all three cores. The data used for the main annual layer counting of the past 7900 years are the DYE- 3, GRIP and NGRIP stable isotope records. As the high accumulation rate at the DYE- 3 drill site makes the seasonal cycle in the DYE-3 stable isotopes very resistant to firn diffusion, an effort has been made to extend the DYE-3 Holocene record. The new syn- chronized dating relies heavily on this record of �75,000 stable isotope samples. The dat- ing of the early Holocene consists of an already established part of GICC05 for GRIP and NGRIP which has now been transferred to the DYE-3 core. GICC05 dates the Younger Dryas termination, as defined from deuterium excess, to 11,703 b2k; 130 years earlier than the previous GRIP dating.
Draft genome of the medaka fish: A comprehensive resource for medaka developmental genetics and vertebrate evolutionary biology

The medaka Oryzias latipes is a small egg‐laying freshwater teleost, and has become an excellent model system for developmental genetics and evolutionary biology. The medaka genome is relatively small in size, ∼800 Mb, and the genome sequencing project was recently completed by Japanese research groups, providing a high‐quality draft genome sequence of the inbred Hd‐rR strain of medaka. In this review, I present an overview of the medaka genome project including genome resources, followed by specific findings obtained with the medaka draft genome. In particular, I focus on the analysis that was done by taking advantage of the medaka system, such as the sex chromosome differentiation and the regional history of medaka species using single nucleotide polymorphisms as genomic markers.
Finite-Time Consensus Tracking of Perturbed High-Order Agents With Relative Information by Integral Sliding Mode

Finite-time consensus tracking of high-order multiagent systems (MASs) with disturbances is investigated with relative information only. First, the MASs are converted to the dynamics of local consensus errors with relative states only, and the high-order finite-time exact differentiators are employed to estimate the unknown consensus errors when only the relative outputs of the MAS are available. Second, based on the estimated values, the discontinuous integral sliding mode (ISM) and continuous supertwisting ISM protocols are respectively constructed by exploiting the homogeneous finite-time control and the neighboring agents' control inputs, and finite-time consensus tracking is achieved in spite of the disturbances. Finally, simulation results validate the scheme.
Updated standards for validating elliptic curves

We give a concise statement of a test for security of elliptic curves that should be inserted into the standards for elliptic curve cryptography. In particular, current validation for parameters related to the MOV condition that appears in the latest draft of the IEEE P1363 standard [3, Section A.12. 1, Section A.16. 8] should be replaced with our subfield-adjusted MOV condition. Similarly, the Standards for Efficient Cryptography Group’s document SEC 1 [4] should make adjustments accordingly.