Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defects in tracheoesophageal and lung morphogenesis in Nkx2.1(-/-) mouse embryos.

NKX2.1 is a homeodomain transcriptional factor expressed in thyroid, lung, and parts of the brain. We demonstrate that septation of the anterior foregut along the dorsoventral axis, into distinct tracheal and esophageal structures, is blocked in mouse embryos carrying a homozygous targeted disruption of the Nkx2.1 locus. This is consistent with the loss of Nkx2.1 expression, which defines the dorsoventral boundary within the anterior foregut in wild-type E9 embryos. Failure in septation between the trachea and the esophagus in Nkx2.1(-/-) mice leads to the formation of a common lumen that connects the pharynx to the stomach, serving both as trachea and as esophagus, similar in phenotype to a human pathologic condition termed tracheoesophageal fistula. The main-stem bronchi bifurcate from this common structure and connect to profoundly hypoplastic lungs. The mutant lungs fail to undergo normal branching embryogenesis, consist of highly dilated sacs that are not capable of sustaining normal gas exchange functions, and lead to immediate postnatal death. In situ hybridization suggests reduced Bmp-4 expression in the mutant lung epithelium, providing a possible mechanistic clue for impaired branching. Functional deletion of Nkx2. 1 blocks pulmonary-specific epithelial cell differentiation marked by the absence of pulmonary surfactant protein gene expression. Altered expression of temporally regulated genes such as Vegf demonstrates that the lung in Nkx2.1(-/-) mutant embryos is arrested at early pseudoglandular (E11-E15) stage. These results demonstrate a critical role for Nkx2.1 in morphogenesis of the anterior foregut and the lung as well as in differentiation of pulmonary epithelial cells.
Electrical responses of smooth muscle cells of the rabbit ear artery to adenosine triphosphate.

Ionophoretic application of ATP to smooth muscle cells of the rabbit ear artery produced rapid depolarization of the membrane and, in the case of large doses of ATP, spike potentials or slow oscillatory potentials. The ATP response desensitized rapidly, and required over 70 s for recovery. When the intervals between repetitive application of ATP were shorter than 70 s, the amplitudes of the ATP responses successively decreased. Ejection of ATP with increasing intensities of current (10‐15% of the first) was required to produce successively increasing amplitudes of ATP responses. Repetitive stimulation of perivascular nerves (at intervals of less than 10 s) evoked increasing amplitude of excitatory junction potentials (e.j.p.s). Quinidine (over 5 X 10(‐5) M) inhibited and theophylline (over 5 X 10(‐4) M) enhanced the ATP response, with associated depolarization or hyperpolarization of the membrane, respectively. Cocaine (over 10(‐6) M) depolarized the membrane and enhanced the ATP response. Phentolamine reduced the amplitude of the ATP response with no change in the membrane potential, only when the concentration was extremely high (over 10(‐4) M). These all therefore appear to represent non‐specific interactions with the effects of ATP. Bath application of ATP depolarized the membrane dose dependently and, at concentrations over 5 X 10(‐7) M, produced spike potentials. The amplitude of electrotonic potentials decreased during the ATP‐induced depolarization, thereby suggesting an increase in ionic conductance of the membrane. ADP depolarized the membrane, the effect being weaker than that of ATP. Both AMP and adenosine hyperpolarized the membrane. The results provide evidence that in the rabbit ear artery, the e.j.p. could be mimicked by ATP. ATP can however only account for the fast e.j.p. if it is released in increasing amounts with successive nerve discharges. Reported blocking agents for ATP receptors did not block the response to ATP in this tissue.
Update on Herbivory Effects on Primary Metabolism Alteration of Plant Primary Metabolism in Response to Insect Herbivory 1

Plants in nature, which are continuously challenged by diverse insect herbivores, produce constitutive and inducible defenses to reduce insect damage and preserve their own fitness. In addition to inducing pathways that are directly responsible for the production of toxic and deterrent compounds, insect herbivory causes numerous changes in plant primary metabolism. Whereas the functions of defensive metabolites such as alkaloids, terpenes, and glucosinolates have been studied extensively, the fitness benefits of changes in photosynthesis, carbon transport, and nitrogen allocation remain less well understood. Adding to the complexity of the observed responses, the feeding habits of different insect herbivores can significantly influence the induced changes in plant primary metabolism. In this review, we summarize experimental data addressing the significance of insect feeding habits, as related to herbivore-induced changes in plant primary metabolism. Where possible, we link these physiological changes with current understanding of their underlying molecular mechanisms. Finally, we discuss the potential fitness benefits that host plants receive from altering their primary metabolism in response to insect herbivory.
Output Ground Truth DSD Feature Input convolution + batchnorm + ReLU max pooling deep supervision cost side output fusionVGG 16

Structural edge detection is the task of finding edges between significant surfaces in a scene. This can underpin many computer vision tasks such as sketch recognition and 3D scene understanding, and is important for conveying scene structure for navigation with assistive vision. Identifying structural edges from a depth image can be challenging because surface structure that differentiates edges is not well represented in this format. We derive a depth input encoding, the Depth Surface Descriptor (DSD), that captures the first order properties of surfaces, allowing for improved classification of surface geometry that corresponds to structural edges. We apply the DSD feature to salient edge detection on RGB-D images using a fully convolutional neural network with deep supervision. We evaluate our method on both a new RGB-D dataset containing prosthetic vision scenarios, and the SUNRGBD dataset, and show that our approach produces improved performance compared to existing methods by 4%.
Semantic services

A hot topic at this year's World Wide Web conference was the convergence of Web services and the Semantic Web. What kind of formats can we reasonably expect? We want two things from our descriptive logic: fast computability and rich expressiveness. Unfortunately, these are incompatible goals; richer logics are the royal road to exponential complexity and noncomputability. Ultimately, semantic descriptions of Web services will arise through human processes, either because committees get together and create standards for particular subdomains or because a particular style used by some influential service providers comes to be commonly adapted.
Measurement of left ventricular dyssynchrony in patients with ischaemic cardiomyopathy: a comparison of real-time three-dimensional and tissue Doppler echocardiography

Background: Real-time three-dimensional echocardiography (RT3DE) is an alternative modality to tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) for assessment of intraventricular dyssynchrony but its role is yet to be defined. Objectives: To (1) compare RT3DE and TDI for assessment of intraventricular dyssynchrony; (2) determine whether the two techniques agreed regarding the magnitude of dyssynchrony and identification of the site of maximal mechanical delay; and (3) investigate the reason for disagreement. Patients: 100 patients with ischaemic cardiomyopathy. Setting: Tertiary referral cardiac unit. Main outcome measures: Dispersion in time interval from QRS onset to peak sustained systolic tissue velocity by TDI (SD-TTV) and to minimal systolic volume by RT3DE (SD-T3D) between 12 ventricular segments. Results: RT3DE image quality was adequate for measurement of SD-T3D in 77 (77%) patients. In the whole population, SD-TTV was 40 (20) ms and SD-T3D was 8.3% (3.4%). RT3DE identified a smaller proportion of patients as having significant dyssynchrony than TDI (49 (64%) patients vs 32 (42%) patients; p<0.01). The correlation between SD-TTV and SD-T3D was poor (r = 0.11, p = NS). There was concordance between TDI and RT3DE in identifying the site of maximal mechanical delay in 12 (16%) patients. Validating the two techniques with anatomical M-mode (AMM) as a parameter of radial timing revealed better agreement with RT3DE than with TDI (χ2 = 11.8, p = 0.001). Conclusion: In patients with ischaemic cardiomyopathy, TDI and RT3DE show poor agreement for evaluating the magnitude of intraventricular dyssynchrony and the site of maximal mechanical delay. This may partly relate to their respective assessment of longitudinal versus radial timing.
Intrathecal Drug Administration for the Treatment of Cancer and Non-Cancer Chronic Pain

Pain is nowadays one of the major reasons for medical consultation worldwide. Pain is always a subjective experience, which is often verbally non-communicable. Sometimes it starts as acute pain arising from a disease (such as cancer), an injury (such as a road accident), or a post-surgical intervention; then it persists and becomes a disease itself (1-3). The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) definition of pain is accordingly the following: “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” (1). Many people, however, report pain also in absence of tissue damage or any likely pathophysiological cause; usually this is due to psychological factors. For this reason pain has two components: a perceptive component, nociception, sensorial reception of the potential harmful stimulus to the central nervous system, and experiential component, individual, which is the psychological perception of an unpleasant sensation.
Influence of experience and trip characteristics on satisfaction

Feelings of satisfaction have been shown to be an important concept when understanding the experience of the tourist as a gauge of the quality of the experience as well as a measure of potential for future behavior. Further research is needed to better understand what influences feelings of satisfaction. This paper examines the impact of levels of experience/ability and trip characteristics. Results indicate that players with higher levels of ability were more likely to be satisfied with the experience.
NUTRITIONAL REGULATION OF MORPHOGENESIS IN MYXOCOCCUS XANTHUS

Dworkin, Martin (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis). Nutritional regulation of morphogenesis in Myxococcus xanthus. J. Bacteriol. 86:67–72. 1963. —Fruiting-body formation by Myxococcus xanthus can be induced by omitting phenylalanine and tryptophan from the chemically defined growth medium. This effect was specific for these two amino acids and was not attributable to a nonspecific lowering of the growth rate. A complex pool of amino acids is present in vegetative cells of M. xanthus. Nutritional environments leading to morphogenesis also result in a decrease in the level of this pool. These changes have been described.
Adjuvant Therapy with Bioavailability‐Boosted Curcuminoids Suppresses Systemic Inflammation and Improves Quality of Life in Patients with Solid Tumors: A Randomized Double‐Blind Placebo‐Controlled Trial

Curcuminoids are bioactive polyphenolics with potent antiinflammatory properties. Although several lines of in vitro and preclinical evidence suggest potent anticancer effects of curcuminoids, clinical findings have not been conclusive. The present randomized double‐blind placebo‐controlled trial aimed to evaluate the efficacy of curcuminoids as adjuvant therapy in cancer patients. Eighty subjects with solid tumors who were under standard chemotherapy regimens were randomly assigned to a bioavailability‐boosted curcuminoids preparation (180 mg/day; n = 40) or matched placebo (n = 40) for a period of 8 weeks. Efficacy measures were changes in the health‐related quality of life (QoL) score (evaluated using the University of Washington index) and serum levels of a panel of mediators implicated in systemic inflammation including interleukins 6 (IL‐6) and 8 (IL‐8), TNF‐α, transforming growth factor‐β (TGFβ), high‐sensitivity C‐reactive protein (hs‐CRP), calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP), substance P and monocyte chemotactic protein‐1 (MCP‐1). Curcuminoid supplementation was associated with a significantly greater improvement in QoL compared with placebo (p < 0.001). Consistently, the magnitude of reductions in TNF‐α (p < 0.001), TGFβ (p < 0.001), IL‐6 (p = 0.061), substance P (p = 0.005), hs‐CRP (p < 0.001), CGRP (p < 0.001) and MCP‐1 (p < 0.001) were all significantly greater in the curcuminoids versus placebo group. In contrast, the extent of reduction in serum IL‐8 was significantly greater with placebo versus curcuminoids (p = 0.012). Quality of life variations were associated with changes in serum TGFβ levels in both correlation and regression analyses. Adjuvant therapy with a bioavailable curcuminoid preparation can significantly improve QoL and suppress systemic inflammation in patients with solid tumors who are under treatment with standard chemotherapy protocols. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Optimal Dynamic Product Development and Launch for a Network of Customers

We consider a firm that dynamically chooses its effort to develop a product for a network of customers represented by a connected graph. The product’s technological development is governed by a stochastic process dependent on the firm’s efforts. In addition to dynamically choosing its development effort, the firm chooses when to launch or abandon the product. If the firm launches the product, the firm also chooses a selling price, a promotional price and a target customer to offer promotion. Once the target customer adopts the product, the product diffuses over the customer network based on the topology of the graph and the selling price. The product provides local network benefits to its adopters. The expected local network benefit of adoption is proportional to the number of neighbor customers that have already adopted the product. In a continuous-time setting, we explicitly solve the firm’s jointly-optimal development, launch and post-launch strategies for any connected network. We prove that among all connected networks, a complete (respectively, linear) customer network maximizes (respectively, minimizes) the firm’s expected discounted profit and minimizes (respectively, maximizes) the technology at the product launch. We extend our analysis to consider demand heterogeneity in the customer network and multiple target customers.
The Inhibition of the N-Methyl-d-Aspartate Receptor Channel by Local Anesthetics in Mouse CA1 Pyramidal Neurons

Although the effects of local anesthetics on sodium channels and various other channels and receptors have been intensively investigated, there is little information available about their effects on N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors. We examined the effects of four local anesthetics (procaine, tetracaine, bupivacaine, and lidocaine) on NMDA-induced currents by using a whole-cell patch-clamp technique in dissociated mouse hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Procaine and tetracaine produced a reversible and concentration-dependent inhibition of NMDA-induced currents, but lidocaine showed little inhibition at 1 mM or less. The half-maximal inhibition values (mM; mean ± sem) for procaine, tetracaine, bupivacaine, and lidocaine at −60 mV were 0.296 ± 0.031, 0.637 ± 0.044, 2.781 ± 0.940 (extrapolated data), and 7.766 ± 14.093 (extrapolated data), respectively. Procaine 0.2 mM reduced the maximal NMDA-induced currents without affecting the 50% effective concentration values for NMDA. The inhibition by procaine exhibited voltage dependence and was more effective at negative potentials. These results indicate a noncompetitive antagonism of procaine on NMDA receptors and suggest that the inhibition is the result of a channel-blocking mechanism.
A Dual-Polarized Cross-Slot Antenna Array on a Parallel-Plate Waveguide With Compact Structure and High Efficiency

A dual-polarized cross-slot antenna array based on the parallel-plate waveguide (PPW) is presented in this letter. A new compact 2 × 2-element subarray consisting of four radiating cross-slots, four out cavities, one coupling cross-slot, and one metallic-block-loaded resonant cavity is first proposed to achieve dual polarization and high efficiency. Two orthogonally arranged H-plane waveguide feed networks combined with the low-loss PPW are used to generate a pair of orthogonal plane waves to feed the subarray. To demonstrate the merits of the antenna, an 8 × 8 array prototype is designed and fabricated. The measured result shows that the aperture efficiency exceeding 60% is obtained throughout the band of 12–12.6 GHz. The isolation between two polarizations is higher than 25 dB over the bandwidth. Therefore, this antenna array can be a good alternative for satellite communications systems in airborne applications.
Activation of NF‐κB by extracellular S100A4: Analysis of signal transduction mechanisms and identification of target genes

The metastasis‐promoting protein S100A4 stimulates metastatic progression through both intracellular and extracellular functions. Extracellular activities of S100A4 include stimulation of angiogenesis, regulation of cell death and increased cell motility and invasion, but the exact molecular mechanisms by which extracellular S100A4 exerts these effects are incompletely elucidated. The aim of the present study was to characterize S100A4‐induced signal transduction mechanisms and to identify S100A4 target genes. We demonstrate that extracellular S100A4 activates the transcription factor NF‐κB in a subset of human cancer cell lines through induction of phosphorylation and subsequent degradation of the NF‐κB inhibitor IκBα. Concomitantly, S100A4 induced a sustained activation of the MAP kinase JNK, whereas no increased activity of the MAP kinases p38 or ERK was observed. Microarray analyses identified 136 genes as being significantly regulated by S100A4 treatment, and potentially interesting S100A4‐induced gene products include IκBα, p53, ephrin‐A1 and optineurin. Increased expression of ephrin‐A1 and optineurin was validated using RT‐PCR, Western blotting and functional assays. Furthermore, S100A4‐stimulated transcription of these target genes was dependent on activation of the NF‐κB pathway. In conclusion, these findings contribute to the understanding of the complex molecular mechanisms responsible for the diverse biological functions of extracellular S100A4, and provide further evidence of how S100A4 may stimulate metastatic progression. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Global patterns of marine mammal, seabird, and sea turtle bycatch reveal taxa-specific and cumulative megafauna hotspots

Significance Loss of megafauna, termed trophic downgrading, has been found to affect biotic interactions, disturbance regimes, species invasions, and nutrient cycling. One recognized cause in air-breathing marine megafauna is incidental capture or bycatch by fisheries. Characterizing megafauna bycatch patterns across large ocean regions is limited by data availability but essential to direct conservation and management resources. We use empirical data to identify the global distribution and magnitude of seabird, marine mammal, and sea turtle bycatch in three widely used fishing gears. We identify taxa-specific hotspots and find evidence of cumulative impacts. This analysis provides an unprecedented global assessment of the distribution and magnitude of air-breathing megafauna bycatch, highlighting its cumulative nature and the urgent need to build on existing mitigation successes. Recent research on ocean health has found large predator abundance to be a key element of ocean condition. Fisheries can impact large predator abundance directly through targeted capture and indirectly through incidental capture of nontarget species or bycatch. However, measures of the global nature of bycatch are lacking for air-breathing megafauna. We fill this knowledge gap and present a synoptic global assessment of the distribution and intensity of bycatch of seabirds, marine mammals, and sea turtles based on empirical data from the three most commonly used types of fishing gears worldwide. We identify taxa-specific hotspots of bycatch intensity and find evidence of cumulative impacts across fishing fleets and gears. This global map of bycatch illustrates where data are particularly scarce—in coastal and small-scale fisheries and ocean regions that support developed industrial fisheries and millions of small-scale fishers—and identifies fishing areas where, given the evidence of cumulative hotspots across gear and taxa, traditional species or gear-specific bycatch management and mitigation efforts may be necessary but not sufficient. Given the global distribution of bycatch and the mitigation success achieved by some fleets, the reduction of air-breathing megafauna bycatch is both an urgent and achievable conservation priority.
The Related Adhesion Focal Tyrosine Kinase Is Tyrosine-phosphorylated after β1-Integrin Stimulation in B Cells and Binds to p130cas*

Integrin ligation initiates intracellular signaling events, among which are the activation of protein tyrosine kinases. The related adhesion focal tyrosine kinase (RAFTK), also known as PYK2 and CAKβ, is a tyrosine kinase that is homologous to the focal adhesion kinase (FAK) p125FAK. The structure of RAFTK is similar to p125FAK in that it lacks a transmembrane region, does not contain Src homology 2 or 3 domains, and has a proline-rich region in its C terminus. Here we report that RAFTK is a target for β1-integrin-mediated tyrosine phosphorylation in both transformed and normal human B cells. Ligation of the B cell antigen receptor also induced tyrosine phosphorylation of RAFTK. Phosphorylation of RAFTK following integrin- or B cell antigen receptor-mediated stimulation was decreased by prior treatment of cells with cytochalasin B, indicating that this process was at least partially cytoskeleton-dependent. One of the tyrosine-phosphorylated substrates after integrin stimulation in fibroblasts is p130cas, which can associate with p125FAK. RAFTK also interacted constitutively with p130cas in B cells, since p130cas was detected in RAFTK immunoprecipitates. Although the function of RAFTK remains unknown, these data suggest that RAFTK may have a significant function in integrin-mediated signaling pathways in B cells.
Amino acid sequence of a major apoprotein from hen plasma very low density lipoproteins.

The complete amino acid sequence of a major apoprotein from white Leghorn hen plasma very low density lipoproteins has been determined. The apoprotein, designated apoVLDL-II, contains two identical polypeptide chains of 82 amino acid residues each which are linked by a single disulfide bond at residue 76. In nonlaying hens or in cockerels, the administration of estrogen dramatically increases the level of plasma triglycer- ides (1, 2). Luskey et al. (3) have shown that one effect of estrogen was to increase the rate of synthesis of the very low density lipoproteins (VLDIJ’ proteins. The mechanism for this induction is presumably through an increase in mRNA for the yolk proteins (4-6). In a recent report (71, a small molecular weight apoprotein from hen VLDL was isolated and its synthe- sis studied in an
Using the Blocks Database to Recognize Functional Domains

Blocks are ungapped multiple alignments of related protein sequence segments that correspond to the most conserved regions of the proteins. The Blocks Database is a collection of blocks representing known protein families that can be used to compare a protein or DNA sequence with documented families of proteins. Protocols in this unit describe the analysis of proteins and families using Blocks‐based tools, including searching, exploring relationships with trees, making new blocks, and designing PCR primers from blocks for isolating homologous sequences.