Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Importance of considering interoceptive abilities in alexithymia assessment

Background Recent studies have shown that people with high alexithymia scores have decreased interoceptive abilities, which can be associated with psychological and physical disorders. Early assessments of the alexithymia trait included the evaluation of these abilities through the dimension measuring the difficulty in identifying and distinguishing between feelings and bodily sensations (the 26-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale; TAS-26). The revised version of the TAS, the TAS-20, contains a three-factor solution that does not involve a dimension assessing interoceptive abilities. However, the three items allowing the evaluation of these abilities are still present in the TAS-20. In this context, we hypothesized that the 3 items which assess interoceptive abilities in the TAS-20 should constitute an independent factor. In addition to exploring the internal structure of the TAS-20, we examined its external validity by assessing the relationships between the new factors and self-reported measures of personality trait and psychological and physical health. Method Two online studies (N = 253 and N = 287) were performed. The participants completed the TAS-20 and a set of psychological questionnaires (e.g., anxiety, depression) and health questions (e.g., “Do you suffer from a somatic disorder? ”). The structure of the TAS-20 was examined using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), followed by an investigation of the relationships between the resulting new factors and other psychological and health data using regressions. In both studies, EFA revealed a new structure of the questionnaire consisting of four dimensions: (1) difficulty in the awareness of feelings, (2) externally oriented thinking, (3) difficulty in interoceptive abilities, and (4) poor affective sharing. The first factor was positively associated with all self-reported psychological and personality trait measures while the third factor was associated more with somatic disorders and medication intake. Results Our results suggest the presence of a new latent factor in the assessment of alexithymia that reflects interoceptive abilities specifically related to health and personality trait outcomes. In accordance with the results and the literature, it seems important to include an assessment of interoceptive abilities when considering the evaluation of alexithymia. The next step would be to develop a valid measure of these abilities.
Deep Learning Neural Encoders for Motor Cortex

Intracortical brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) transform neural activity into control signals to drive a prosthesis or communication device, such as a robotic arm or computer cursor. To be clinically viable, BMI decoders must achieve high accuracy and robustness. Optimizing these decoders is expensive, traditionally requiring animal or human experiments spanning months to years. This is because BMIs are closed-loop systems, where the user updates his or her motor commands in response to an imperfectly decoded output. Decoder optimization using previously collected “offline” data will therefore not capture this closed-loop response. An alternative approach to significantly accelerate decoder optimization is to use a closed-loop experimental simulator. A key component of this simulator is the neural encoder, which synthetically generates neural population activity from kinematics. Prior neural encoders do not model important features of neural population activity. To overcome these limitations, we use deep learning neural encoders. We find these models significantly outperform prior neural encoders in reproducing peri-stimulus time histograms (PSTHs) and neural population dynamics. We also find that deep learning neural encoders better match neural decoding results in offline data and closed-loop experimental data. We anticipate these deep-learning neural encoders will substantially improve simulators for BMIs, enabling faster evaluation, optimization, and characterization of BMI decoder algorithms.
Combining chronicle mining and semantics for predictive maintenance in manufacturing processes

Within manufacturing processes, faults and failures may cause severe economic loss. With the vision of Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence techniques such as data mining play a crucial role in automatic fault and failure prediction. However, due to the heterogeneous nature of industrial data, data mining results normally lack both machine and human-understandable representation and interpretation of knowledge. This may cause the semantic gap issue, which stands for the incoherence between the knowledge extracted from industrial data and the interpretation of the knowledge from a user. To address this issue, ontology-based approaches have been used to bridge the semantic gap between data mining results and users. However, only a few existing ontology-based approaches provide satisfactory knowledge modeling and representation for all the essential concepts in predictive maintenance. Moreover, most of the existing research works merely focus on the classification of operating conditions of machines, while lacking the extraction of specific temporal information of failure occurrence. This brings obstacles for users to perform maintenance actions with the consideration of temporal constraints. To tackle these challenges, in this paper we introduce a novel hybrid approach to facilitate predictive maintenance tasks in manufacturing processes. The proposed approach is a combination of data mining and semantics, within which chronicle mining is used to predict the future failures of the monitored industrial machinery, and a Manufacturing Predictive Maintenance Ontology (MPMO) with its rule-based extension is used to predict temporal constraints of failures and to represent the predictive results formally. As a result, Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) rules are constructed for predicting the occurrence time of machinery failures in the future. The proposed rules provide explicit knowledge representation and semantic enrichment of failure prediction results, thus easing the understanding of the inferred knowledge. A case study on a semi-conductor manufacturing process is used to demonstrate our approach in detail. The evaluation of results shows that the MPMO ontology is free of bad practices in the structural, functional, and usability-profiling dimensions. The constructed SWRL rules posses more than 80% of True Positive Rate, Precision, and F-measure, which shows promising performance in failure prediction.
Tolerogenic Dendritic Cells Generated by BAFF Silencing Ameliorate Collagen-Induced Arthritis by Modulating the Th17/Regulatory T Cell Balance

Key Points BAFF-silenced DCs exhibited an immature and tolerogenic phenotype. BAFF-silenced DCs alleviated mouse CIA by modulating the Th17/Treg balance. BAFF might be a promising genetic target to generate tolDCs for RA treatment. Tolerogenic dendritic cells (tolDCs) have received much attention because of their capacity to restore immune homeostasis. RNA interference techniques have been used in several studies to generate tolDCs by inactivating certain molecules that regulate DC maturation and immunologic function. BAFF is a key B cell survival factor that is not only essential for B cell function but also T cell costimulation, and DCs are the major source of BAFF. In this study, we determined whether BAFF gene silencing in mature DCs could lead to a tolerogenic phenotype as well as the potential therapeutic effect of BAFF-silenced DCs on collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) in mice. Meanwhile, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated BAFF−/− DC2.4 cells were generated to verify the role of BAFF in DC maturation and functionality. BAFF-silenced DCs and BAFF−/− DC2.4 cells exhibited an immature phenotype and functional state. Further, the transplantation of BAFF-silenced DCs significantly alleviated CIA severity in mice, which correlated with a reduction in Th17 populations and increased regulatory T cells. In vitro, BAFF-silenced DCs promoted Foxp3 mRNA and IL-10 expression but inhibited ROR-γt mRNA and IL-17A expression in CD4+ T cells. Together, BAFF-silenced DCs can alleviate CIA, partly by inducing Foxp3+ regulatory T cells and suppressing Th17 subsets. Collectively, BAFF plays an important role in interactions between DCs and T cells, which might be a promising genetic target to generate tolDCs for autoimmune arthritis treatment.
Biology of Lichens

siphonostelic ferns in which the medullary rays are narrow or lacking. These feature forms are interpreted as an evolutionary series in which the outstanding is the development of a stelar pith by means of a reduction of the central tracheids and their replacement finally by parenchyma. It would be difficult to prove or disprove this view. That a stelar pith might originate in this way or by an expansion of the stele, as in the roots of many of the higher plants, is unquestioned. But that these fossils represented evolutionary stages which culminated in the conversion of a part of a stelar pith into phloem and endodermis, as in Osmundites skidegatensis or Osmunda cinnamomea, is unsupported by evidence of any kind. GWYNNE-VAUGHAN and BOWER accept JEFFREY'S hypothesis as to the extrastelar character of the pith in every other family of ferns, but in dealing with the Osmundaceae they cloud the issue by apparently confusing two problems. From a limited series of imperfect fossils they have tried to discover when and how cortical tissues might have been enclosed by the stele. Failing in this, they conclude that they probably could not have been included at all. But neither are we sure when and how that happened in the other families, and a search through the known fossil representatives would probably end as unsatisfactorily as in the case of the Osmundacea~e. Research so far has been successful mainly in verifying the theory that the filicinean pith is extrastelar, and with such forms as Onoclea, in which the pith consists partly of epidermal tissues and the atmosphere, there is scarcely any escape from accepting it, just as these botanists have done. It is true that the evidence in Osmunda is not as striking as in Onoclea, but it is quite as striking as in many other forms with extrastelar piths. There are representatives of the Osmundaceae in which the central pith, peripheral pith, internal endodermis, and internal phloem are texturally like those of the outer cortex, inner cortex, external endodermis, and external phloem, and these respectively are continuous at times through leaf or branch gaps. Moreover, there are abundant instances of what in other groups would readily be conceded vestiges of portions of amphiphloic siphonosteles. Applying the same standards of interpretation of anatomical phenomena to all the Filicales, it seems reasonable to maintain that the kind of evidence that has carried conviction in every case but one must hold in all. The question as to when and how the extrastelar pith originated is quite another matter, and I venture to affirm that observations on such features as the relative position of a tracheid and a parenchyma cell in the xylem of a sporeling, or the shape of medullary rays in an adult, will help little in its solution. -J. H. FAULL.
Phagocytosis, Production of Nitric Oxide and Pro‐inflammatory Cytokines by Macrophages in the Presence of Dematiaceus Fungi that Causes Chromoblastomycosis

Chromoblastomycosis is characterized by the slow development of polymorphic skin lesions (nodules, verrucas, tumores, plaques and scar tissue). Inside the host, infectious propagules adhere to epithelial cells and differentiate into sclerotic forms, which effectively resist destruction by host effector cells and allow onset of chronic disease. A cellular immune response against fungi is essential to control infection. Amongst the cells of the immune system, macrophages play the most important role in controlling fungal growth. In this study, we show that the fungicidal characteristic of macrophages is dependent on the fungal species that causes chromoblastomycosis. We began by observing that the phagocytic index was higher for Fonsecaea pedrosoi and Rhinocladiella aquaspersa compared with that of other fungi. Complement‐mediated phagocytosis was more important for Phialophora verrucosa and R. aquaspersa and was inhibited by mannan when F. pedrosoi and R. aquaspersa conidia were phagocytosed by macrophages. We showed that macrophages killed significantly only R. aquaspersa. We also found that the phagocytosis of fungi has functional consequences for macrophages as phagocytosis resulted in down‐modulation of MHC‐II and CD80 expression as well as in the inhibition of the basal liberation of NO. However, the inhibition of the basal liberation of NO nor the down‐modulation of MHC and co‐stimulatory molecules were observed in the presence of R. aquaspersa.
“As Good As It Gets” or “Enough Is Enough”? Speaking about Feminist Knowledge Production

The call for a “position paper” represented an opportunity to think and speak about the conditions for feminist knowledge production over the past two decades. What I speak here is the story of an “I” belonging to multiple “wes”. Wes and Is floating in and out of shared and imagined places—pasts, presents, and futures. Spoken from experience—what may appear at first glance to be only a personal point of view. The positions constructed here are co-constructed with volatile memories, interpretations, and affective traces of a feminist activist past coupled with longings for a different socialworld. I hope the textwill be read gently. To lookback and forth in my/our story is to enter the dynamic relationship between feminism and feminist research. Audre Lorde is a companion. Her words about speaking inspire not only courage but also direction. “I have come to believe over and over again”, she says, “that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood” (Lorde 1984: 40). My speaking falls under the headings: “Past”, “present”, and “future”. An old construct, I admit. Recognizable and traditional. Each section will be followed by a poem, written as a reflexive gaze back on my own narrative. All three poems relate to speaking and community. The writing of the poems is meant to be yet another position—open to bodily interpretation, as is all poetry. I hope the reading will generate dialogue. Or listening. Who will then join that process of speaking? And who will remain silent?
Early Placebo Responders in Hospitalized Depressed Patients 1

Tricyclic antidepressant drugs have become established as an effective and widely used treatment of depressions (Hollister,1978). But the limits of their t rue pharmacological antidepressant effect are not well delineated. Despite extensive use there is no good defense oftheir use in neurotic depressives in preference to a placebo. Raskin et al., (1970) found that placebo was a s effecttve a s irnipramine or chlorpromazine for the hospitalized neurotic depressives in a large scale multihospital collaborative study. The problem of placebo response is particularly more with short duration depressions seen in out-patient settings. Downing and Rickels (1973) found that while only 25 per cent of the patients with depressions longer than 6 months were placebo responders, 45 per cent of the acure group were responders. Controlled trials of single versus multiple dosage schedules of antidepressants as well as drug-drug, drug-placebo comparisons reporting no difference are vitiated by the placebo response problem. In the study by Shah et a] . , (1979) 63 percent of the patients who showed moderate to ,complete improvement did so by the first week itself. The percentage of patients who improved in the control and experimental groups were even higher in the study by Janakiramaiah et at. (1980). Welner e t a]. , (1980) found in their review that in the majority of comparisons, patients did not improve more with tricyclic antidepressants than with other drugs o r placebo, though a minority of patients with depression may benefit
Pitch Syntax as an Evolutionary Prelingual Innovation

Pitch syntax is an important part of musical syntax. It is a complex hierarchical system that involves generative production and perception based on pitch. Because hierarchical systems are also present in language grammar, the processing of a pitch hierarchy is predominantly explained by the activity of cognitive mechanisms that are not solely specific to music. However, in contrast to the processing of language grammar, which is mainly cognitive in nature, the processing of pitch syntax includes subtle emotional sensations that are often described in terms of tension and resolution or instability and stability. This difference suggests that the very nature of pitch syntax may be evolutionarily older than grammar in language, and has served another adaptive function. The aim of this paper is to indicate that the recognition of pitch structure may be a separate ability, rather than merely being part of general syntactic processing. It is also proposed that pitch syntax has evolved as a specific tool for social bonding in which subtle emotions of tension and resolution are indications of mutual trust. From this perspective, it is considered that musical pitch started to act as a medium of communication by the means of spectral synchronization between the brains of hominins. Pitch syntax facilitated spectral synchronization between performers of a well-established, enduring, communal ritual and in this way increased social cohesion. This process led to the evolution of new cortico-subcortical pathways that enabled the implicit learning of pitch hierarchy and the intuitive use of pitch structure in music before language, as we know it now, began.
A new method to estimate habitat potential for Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar): predicting the influence of dam removal on the Sélune River (France) as a case study

Maintaining connectivity in aquatic ecosystems is important to ensure adequate ecological functioning. A large dam removal project in the Sélune River (Normandy, France) would reconnect 827 km2 of catchment area to the sea. Only the downstream section of the Selune is currently available to diadromous fish, which migrate between freshwater and the marine environment. In particular, managers focus on the future potential abundance of Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar, for conservation and fishery purposes. As in stream channel habitat drives carrying capacity of juvenile salmon, salmon abundance is usually inferred from intensive and linear habitat surveys. However, this approach is neither cost-effective for large-scale surveys nor feasible for riverbed sections with low accessibility for measurement with traditional methods, e.g. dam lakes. We used well-defined relationships between gradient, hydrology and channel habitat structure to construct a simple model to estimate potential suitable habitat for juvenile salmon. Using fine-scale habitat data from nearby rivers, we parameterized a linear mixed model to estimate the area of suitable habitat based on simple physical descriptors of river characteristics. We compared our predictions to fine-scale habitat surveys on the upper Sélune. Using only slope and width, our model was able to explain 80% of the variance in suitable habitat. Estimates indicated that dam removal on the Sélune River would generate a threefold increase in suitable habitat for juveniles. This could increase the mean number of adult salmon returning to the river by 1420.9 (s.e. = 1015.5). More generally, this model provides an alternative and cost-effective tool to help better manage salmon populations in rivers impacted by dams.
The Roles of Cullin RING Ligases and the Anaphase Promoting Complex/Cyclosome in the Regulation of DNA Double Strand Break Repair

Historically, genome maintenance has been viewed as the largely independent activities of (1) ubiquitin ligases driving unidirectional cell cycle progression and, (2) the activity of cellular checkpoints that monitor DNA integrity and DNA replication. It is well established that the DNA damage response (DDR) checkpoint machinery promotes the activation of repair mechanisms in addition to opening a window for repair. Emerging evidence demonstrates an integrated network of the central cell cycle driving E3 ubiquitin ligases and the checkpoint machinery, as well as deubiquitinating enzymes, which intermittently cooperate and antagonize one another to define windows of checkpoint and repair activities to optimize genome stability and cellular health. A growing number of components of the ubiquitin machinery are involved in the DDR. Herein, we focus on the regulation of cell cycle checkpoints and the DNA repair mechanisms for double strand breaks (DSBs) by the coordinated activities of Cullin RING ligases (CRLs) and the anaphase promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C). Cdh1 activity upon replication stress and during recovery from APC/C Cdh1 activation during the G2 DDR. In G2 APC/C Cdh1 targets Plk1 for degradation, while USP28 prevents it from targeting Claspin. USP28 also stabilizes 53BP1 after DNA damage as well, possibly from APC/C Cdh1 (represented by, “ ? ” ). Chk1 activation requires Claspin function, which is protected from SCF β TrCP -mediated degradation by USP29 and USP7. USP20 stabilizes both Claspin and Rad17 to promote Chk1 activity, possibly from APC/C Cdh1 ( “ ? ” ) as they are both substrates of the ligases. ATR and Chk1 prevent checkpoint recovery by inhibiting the Plk1 activators Aurora and Bora. Irreversible checkpoint activation is prevented by the degradation of active Chk1 by SCF Fbx6 . USP7 prevents the complete destabilization of Chk1. The inset shows a potential feedback loop between ATR-Chk1 and the Fanconi pathway. FANCM promotes Chk1 activation (indirectly via ATR). Chk1 promotes FANCM-promoted FANCD2 monoubiquitination. In turn, FANCD2-Ub promotes the CRL4 Cdt2 -mediated degradation of Chk1. USP1 deubiquitinates FANCD2, stabilizing Chk1. The negative feedback loop favors silencing of Chk1 due to the inactivation of USP1 upon DNA damage.