Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diet but not aerobic exercise training reduces skeletal muscle TNF-alpha in overweight humans.

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS Our aim was to test the hypothesis that TNF-alpha protein levels in skeletal muscle are important in mediating the improvements in glucose homeostasis that are associated with diet and exercise regimens intended to reduce cardiovascular risk. METHODS We recruited 20 people with a body mass index of 32.1 +/- 1.2 kg/m2 (mean +/- SEM) and one other component of the metabolic syndrome. The average age was 51.2 +/- 8.1 years (mean +/- SD). Of the 20 subjects, 6 were men and 14 were women. All subjects completed an 8-week control period, followed by randomisation to 8 weeks of moderate cycling exercise (30 min, three times per week) or to a diet with the following characteristics: low in saturated fat, high in fibre, low glycaemic index, rich in complex carbohydrates. RESULTS Diet induced a small reduction in body mass index (3.0 +/- 0.7%, p<0.05), although weight loss was not intended. Exercise training increased maximum oxygen consumption by 12 +/- 6% (p<0.05). Both interventions reduced fasting plasma insulin levels by about 20%. Diet reduced skeletal muscle TNF-alpha protein by 54 +/- 10% (p<0.05), an effect that was independent (p=0.94 in covariate analysis) of the small concurrent weight loss (-2.8 +/- 0.7 kg). Levels of GLUT4 protein were unchanged in the diet group. In contrast, exercise training did not significantly change TNF-alpha protein expression, but GLUT4 protein expression increased by 105 +/- 37% (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION These data indicate that the metabolic benefits of a diet aimed at cardiovascular risk reduction are associated with a decrease in skeletal muscle TNF-alpha protein.
Rate of replication of the murine immunoglobulin heavy-chain locus: evidence that the region is part of a single replicon

We measured the temporal order of replication of EcoRI segments from the murine immunoglobulin heavy-chain constant region (IgCH) gene cluster, including the joining (J) and diversity (D) loci and encompassing approximately 300 kilobases. The relative concentrations of EcoRI segments in bromouracil-labeled DNA that replicated during selected intervals of the S phase in Friend virus-transformed murine erythroleukemia (MEL) cells were measured. From these results, we calculated the nuclear DNA content (C value; the haploid DNA content of a cell in the G1 phase of the cell cycle) at the time each segment replicated during the S phase. We observed that IgCH genes replicate in the following order: alpha, epsilon, gamma 2a, gamma 2b, gamma 1, gamma 3, delta, and mu, followed by the J and D segments. The C value at which each segment replicates increased as a linear function of its distance from C alpha. The average rate of DNA replication in the IgCH gene cluster was determined from these data to be 1.7 to 1.9 kilobases/min, similar to the rate measured for mammalian replicons by autoradiography and electron microscopy (for a review, see H. J. Edenberg and J. A. Huberman, Annu. Rev. Genet. 9:245-284, 1975, and R. G. Martin, Adv. Cancer Res. 34:1-55, 1981). Similar results were obtained with other murine non-B cell lines, including a fibroblast cell line (L60T) and a hepatoma cell line (Hepa 1.6). In contrast, we observed that IgCh segments in a B-cell plasmacytoma (MPC11) and two Abelson murine leukemia virus-transformed pre-B cell lines (22D6 and 300-19O) replicated as early as (300-19P) or earlier than (MPC11 and 22D6) C alpha in MEL cells. Unlike MEL cells, however, all of the IgCH segments in a given B cell line replicated at very similar times during the S phase, so that a temporal directionality in the replication of the IgCH gene cluster was not apparent from these data. These results provide evidence that in murine non-B cells the IgCH, J, and D loci are part of a single replicon.
Counterfactuals, Temporal Adverbs, and Association with Focus

Suppose that Mary ' s birthday is tomorrow, but her boyfriend John thought it was yesterday and gave flowers to her yesterday. Mary was so disappointed that John was mistaken about her birthday and she was not even pleased with the flowers she received. ( la) says therefore that if we assume counterfactually that the "same thing" happens tomorrow instead of yesterday, then Mary is pleased then (Le. , tomorrow). Note here that since Mary is already disappointed, it is too late for John to do the "same thing" (Le., giving flowers to Mary) again tomorrow and please Mary. Put another way, two times are competing for the time of John ' s giving flowers to Mary, and the time at which this actually took place must be located in the past (lb) makes the same point Suppose that we were able to go out for a walk only once (within a contextually determined set of alternative dates) because of scheduling constraints and that today and tomorrow were the only two alternative possibilities. We decided to go out today, did so, and got rained on. Now the weather forecast says that tomorrow is guaranteed to be a sunny day. In this situation, ( l b) seems to be true. In both ( la) and ( l b) , the temporal adverb tomorrow is said to be "focused" in that it has intonational prominence. This is indicated by a subscripted F in (1). This type of example is not discussed explicitly in previous proposals such as Stalnaker ( 1968), Lewis ( l973) and Kratzer ( 1 98 1 , 1989). Rooth ( 1985) discusses some examples of counterfactuals with a focused constituent in the antecedent and proposes an account on the basis of Kratzer' s ( 1981) proposal, but his examples do not involve focused temporal adverbs. This paper presents a proposal that modifies the Kratzer-Rooth account to accommodate data such as ( la-b). The basic intuition about counterfactual conditionals is relatively straightforward. The antecedent of a counterfactual conditional normally posits a contrary-to-fact situation and draws some conclusion from this supposition. When we go through this reasoning, we make minimal adjustments to the actual world necessary to make the proposition given by the antecedent true, and then assert that the consequent is true in this hypothetical situation. Kratzer ( 1 98 1 ) expresses her intuitions as in (2) .
Semantics Engineering with PLT Redex

This text is the first comprehensive presentation of reduction semantics in one volume; it also introduces the first reliable and easy-to-use tool set for such forms of semantics. Software engineers have long known that automatic tool support is critical for rapid prototyping and modeling, and this book is addressed to the working semantics engineer (graduate student or professional language designer). The book comes with a prototyping tool suite to develop, explore, test, debug, and publish semantic models of programming languages. With PLT Redex, semanticists can formulate models as grammars and reduction models on their computers with the ease of paper and pencil. The text first presents a framework for the formulation of language models, focusing on equational calculi and abstract machines, then introduces PLT Redex, a suite of software tools for expressing these models as PLT Redex models. Finally, experts describe a range of models formulated in Redex. PLT Redex comes with the PLT Scheme implementation, available free at http://www.plt-scheme.org/. Readers can download the software and experiment with Redex as they work their way through the book. For more information (including the preface, a sample syllabus, and a quick introduction to Redex), see the Redex website at http://redex.plt-scheme.org/. Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, and Matthew Flatt are the authors (with Shiram Krishnamurthi) of How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing, also published by the MIT Press.
Association between renal dysfunction and mortality among inhabitants in the region around the Jinzu River basin polluted by cadmium.

A follow-up study was conducted on 5725 inhabitants (men 2858, women 2867) in and around the Jinzu River basin to determine the influence of environmental Cd exposure on mortality. In the Jinzu River basin, standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) investigated according to urinary findings (protein, glucose, and protein+glucose) were significantly low in the urinary protein-, glucose-, and protein+glucose-negative groups. SMRs calculated after dividing urinary protein- and glucose-positive status into two levels were lowest in the proteinuria- and glycosuria-negative groups and tended to be high in the higher positive groups. In the Jinzu River basin, Cox's hazard ratios were significantly higher for men and women in the urinary protein, glucose and protein+glucose-positive-groups. In the same analysis where the urinary protein- and glucose-positive subjects were divided into two levels, mortality was demonstrated to be higher in the groups with the greater degrees of proteinuria and glycosuria. In the Jinzu River water system almost all SMRs and Cox's hazard ratios showed statistical significance. This was not the case in the other water systems. Mortality of inhabitants with Cd-induced renal injury is increased in the Jinzu River basin.
Designing An Automated Assessment of Public Speaking Skills Using Multimodal Cues

Traditional assessments of public speaking skills rely on human scoring. We report an initial study on the development of an automated scoring model for public speaking performances using multimodal technologies. Task design, rubric development, and human rating were conducted according to standards in educational assessment. An initial corpus of 17 speakers with 4 speaking tasks was collected using audio, video, and 3D motion capturing devices. A scoring model based on basic features in the speech content, speech delivery, and hand, body, and head movements significantly predicts human rating, suggesting the feasibility of using multimodal technologies in the assessment of public speaking skills.
06161 Working Groups' Report: The Challlenge of Combining Simulation and Verification

abstractionthrows awayirrelevantdetailCEGARimprovesprecisionabstraction preservesproperties and reducesmodel sizeadds moredetailrefinement Figure 1: The V in modeling and analysisThe process of modeling and analysis can be visualized by the followingV-shaped diagram (not to be confused with the other V diagrams out there). V reconciles two notions of abstraction and reﬁnement used in modeling,simulation, and veriﬁcation. The two sides of the diagram represent diﬀerent tradeoﬀs in the mod-eling process, of diﬀerent signiﬁcance for simulation and veriﬁcation. Theleft side reﬂects the amount of detail in a model. Abstract models havelittle detail, keeping them small but imprecise; additional detail increasespredictive power of the model at the cost of increase in the model size andhence computational requirements of the model. In simulation, the accuracyof model predictions is of primary importance, and the associated increasein the size of the model is relatively tolerable. Thus, a typical modelingscenario starts with an abstract model and moves downward along the leftside of the diagram until suﬃcient detail has been added. The reverse di-rection plays a secondary but important role in making a suﬃciently pre-dictive model more computationally feasible. The right side of the diagram12
Sildenafil for Erectile Dysfunction in the Middle East: Observational Analysis of Patients with Diabetes and/or Hypertension Treated in the Clinical Practice Setting

The effectiveness and tolerability of 12 weeks of open-label treatment with sildenafil citrate for erectile dysfunction (ED) associated with a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus and/or hypertension were assessed in clinical practice in three Middle Eastern countries. The dose was initially 50 mg and was adjusted by the physician as needed (permissible dose range 25 – 100 mg). Total mean ± SD score on the five-item version of the International Index of Erectile Function (severe ED, score 0 – 7; no ED, score 22 – 25) was 13.6 ± 5.7 at baseline (4556 patients) and increased significantly to 21.7 ± 4.1 at week 12. Global effectiveness was rated as good or very good by 91.4% of patients, 93.9% rating their sexual activity as spontaneous and 91.4% as natural. Discontinuation of sildenafil due to adverse events was infrequent (0.5%). Tolerability was rated as good or very good by 95.7% of patients. It is concluded that sildenafil was a well-tolerated and highly effective treatment of ED in outpatients with diabetes and/or hypertension from the three Middle Eastern countries studied.
Oxidative Stress and Antioxidant Defense Mechanisms in Response to Cadmium Treatments

Effect of Cd treatments on the changes of fresh and dry weights, leaf area, root length and shoot height were studied at 10, 50 and 100 µM of Cd. It was found that fresh and dry weight of both shoot and root, shoot height, root length and leaf area were significantly reduced and the deleterious effect of Cd on sunflower plant became more severe with increasing Cd level and extended time of exposure. The results also showed that the totalchlorophyll content was reduced. This reduction was less pronounced in chlorophyll b than in chlorophyll a. Accordingly, the ratio of chlorophyll a to chlorophyll b tended to decrease with increasing Cd concentration. At the same time the total carotenoids content was increased at the concentrations of 10 µM Cd. Also a significant alteration in elements status was observed. In order to investigate whether Cd induces common plant defense pathways, the temporal sequence of different physiological and biochemical reactions including lipid peroxidation, hydrogen peroxide (H O ) production and the activities of some antioxidant 22 enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and glutathione reductase (GR), in addition to the changes in ascorbate-glutathione-related antioxidant systems were studied in both leaves and roots of sunflower plant to know the possible involvement of Cd metal in the generation of oxidative stress. It was found that, oxidative stress in sunflower plants were took place at the different concentrations of Cd ions and with increasing of exposure time as evidenced by an increase in lipid peroxidation and electrolyte leakage of elements. Antioxidant enzymes activities were also stimulated by Cd treatment and was associated with changes in ascorbate and glutathione level with a larger pool of dehydroascorbate (DHA) and reduced glutathione contents (GSH) suggesting that Cd can be added to the list of stresses such as drought, heat shock, ozone and SO . Finally, the obtained results in this study suggest that 2 growth of sunflower plants in the presence of Cd metal showed a concentration-dependent oxidative stress situation in both leaves and roots as a result of the inhibition of the antioxidant systems.
Limiting Efficiency of Erbium-Based Up-Conversion for Generalized Realistic c-Si Solar Cells

Up-conversion of sub-band-gap near-infrared light to absorbable wavelengths has been suggested as a means of greatly improving the efficiency of standard silicon solar cells. Most theoretical assessments of the potential of such designs have utilized a detailed-balance approach that invokes vastly idealized models of both the solar cell and the up-converting layers. In this study, we consider the limiting efficiency of an up-converting photovoltaic device based on more realistic models for the silicon solar cell and an up-conversion layer approximating the performance of an erbium-doped phosphor. While the generalized silicon cell has been previously shown to demonstrate good performance (a relative efficiency enhancement of 23%-26%) when coupled to an ideal up-converter, the modifications considered here result in drastically diminished device performance overall (a maximum relative enhancement of about 7%). This reduction may be compensated to some extent by the sensitization of erbium absorption by the addition of a suitable species to the up-converting layer; in this case, the relative limiting efficiency is pushed back up to 15%. Based on these results, we draw conclusions regarding device engineering that should guide future work in this area.
Physical and functional association of SU ( VAR ) 3-9 and HDAC 1 in Drosophila

Modification of histones can have a dramatic impact on chromatin structure and function. Acetylation of lysines within the N-terminal tail of the histone octamer marks transcriptionally active regions of the genome whereas deacetylation seems to play a role in transcriptional silencing. Recently, the methylation of the histone tails has also been shown to be important for transcriptional regulation and chromosome structure. Here we show by immunoaffinity purification that two activities important for chromatin-mediated gene silencing, the histone methyltransferase SU(VAR)3-9 and the histone deacetylase HDAC1, associate in vivo. The two activities cooperate to methylate pre-acetylated histones. Both enzymes are modifiers of position effect variegation and interact genetically in flies. We suggest a model in which the concerted histone deacetylation and methylation by a SU(VAR)3-9/HDAC1-containing complex leads to a permanent silencing of transcription in particular areas of the genome.
A Refined VQ-Based Image Compression Method

This paper presents a refined VQ-based image compression method which modifies the traditional VQ-based image compression method. The refined VQ-based image compression method further lossless encodes the compression data which is generated by the traditional VQ-based image compression method into a set of compression codes. The index image generated by the refined method is a contracted image of the compressed image, which can be used as the preview of the compressed image on image management. Although the PSNRs of the reconstructed images that are decoded by the refined VQ-based image compression method and the traditional VQ-based image compression method are the same, the refined VQ-based image compression method provides a better storage efficiency.
Time‐slice analysis of inhibition in cat striate cortical neurones

A prominent feature of visual cortical neurones is orientation specificity. The underlying mechanisms and the possible contributions of intracortical inhibition are continuously the subject of intense debate. We analysed orientation tuning in relation to time after stimulus onset and the effects of blockade of GABAergic inhibition with microiontophoretically applied bicuculline in single cells in area 17. The majority of the cells had sharp and temporally stable orientation specificity; however, changes of receptive field structure, widening of orientation tuning and changes in preferred orientation were observed between 30 and 150 ms after stimulus onset when inhibition was blocked. This indicates that under normal conditions in most striate cortical cells intracortical inhibition sculptures receptive field structure and keeps orientation tuning narrow and constant in time.
AIS Electronic

Driven by the accessibility and affordability of multipurpose devices like smartphones, an increasing number of individuals dual use the same device for work and private life. Our study complements existing literature that focuses on the relative advantage of consumer IT in general, by investigating additional factors that are assumed to influence the decision between dual use of a single device for both work and private life and multihoming with two separate devices. Our contribution to the field is twofold. First, we develop and validate a new multi-item scale to measure the ‘inconvenience of two devices’, which is the implicit cost of multihoming. Second, we conduct a choice-experiment and find that, in absence of any relative advantage of consumer IT, ‘inconvenience of two devices’ increases and ‘perceived privacy risk’ decreases the likelihood of any dual use scenario, whereas ‘perceived financial risk’ only decreases the likelihood of using a privately owned device.
Multisensory 3 D Saliency for Artificial Attention Systems

In this paper we present proof-of-concept for a novel solution consisting of a short-term 3D memory for artificial attention systems, loosely inspired in perceptual processes believed to be implemented in the human brain. Our solution supports the implementation of multisensory perception and stimulus-driven processes of attention. For this purpose, it provides (1) knowledge persistence with temporal coherence tackling potential salient regions outside the field of view, via a panoramic, log-spherical inference grid; (2) prediction, by using estimates of local 3D velocity to anticipate the effect of scene dynamics; (3) spatial correspondence between volumetric cells potentially occupied by proto-objects and their corresponding multisensory saliency scores. Visual and auditory signals are processed to extract features that are then filtered by a proto-object segmentation module that employs colour and depth as discriminatory traits. We consider as features, apart from the commonly used colour and intensity contrast, colour bias, the presence of faces, scene dynamics and also loud auditory sources. Combining conspicuity maps derived from these features we obtain a 2D saliency map, which is then processed using the probability of occupancy in the scene to construct the final 3D saliency map as an additional layer of the Bayesian Volumetric Map (BVM) inference grid.
Effect of aggressive risk factor modification on cardiac events and myocardial ischaemia in patients with chronic kidney disease

Objective: To examine whether aggressive risk factor modification in chronic kidney disease (CKD) can limit the development of new ischaemia or reduce cardiac events. Methods: Patients with CKD were randomly assigned to either an aggressive risk factor modification strategy (targeted treatment of hypertension, dyslipidaemia, homocysteine, haemoglobin and phosphate) or standard care. An intention to treat analysis was performed on 152 patients who had baseline dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE), including 107 who had follow-up DSE. Biochemical parameters, cardiac risk factors and investigations (ECG, two-dimensional echocardiography) were recorded at baseline. New ischaemia was classed as new or worsening stress wall motion abnormality between follow-up and baseline DSE. Patients were followed up for the development of new ischaemia or cardiac death, acute coronary syndrome and non-fatal myocardial infarction over 1.8 years. Results: The development of new ischaemia was common but not different between the standard and aggressively treated groups (15 (21%) v 18 (23%), p = 0.8). Independent predictors of new ischaemia were older age, abnormal ECG, higher systolic blood pressure and lower serum high density lipoprotein cholesterol, but not treatment arm. The standard and aggressively treated groups did not differ in cardiac event rate (10% v 13%, p = 0.6) or all-cause mortality (10% v 19%, p = 0.2). In patients with an abnormal baseline DSE (non-diagnostic, scar or ischaemia), the event rate was similar (22% v 20%, p = 0.9). Conclusion: Aggressive risk factor modification in CKD does not limit the development of new ischaemia or reduce cardiac events in patients with an abnormal DSE.