nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Effects of Chronic Social Stress and Maternal Intranasal Oxytocin and Vasopressin on Offspring Interferon g and Behavior
Venue: Front. Endocrinol.

Recent studies support the hypothesis that the adverse effects of early life adversity and transgenerational stress on neural plasticity and behavior are mediated by inflammation. The objective of the present study was to investigate the immune and behavioral programing effects of intranasal (IN) vasopressin (AVP) and oxytocin (OXT) treatment of chronic social stress (CSS) exposed F1 dams on F2 juvenile female offspring. It was hypothesized that maternal AVP and OXT treatment would have preventative effects on social stress induced deficits in offspring anxiety and social behavior and that these effects would be associated with changes in interferon g (IFNg) Control and CSS exposed F1 dams were administered IN saline, AVP, or OXT during lactation and the F2 juvenile female offspring were assessed for basal plasma IFNg and perseverative, anxiety, and social behavior. CSS F2 female juvenile offspring had elevated IFNg levels and exhibited increased repetitive/perseverative and anxiety behaviors and deficits in social behavior. These effects were modulated by AVP and OXT in a context and behavior dependent manner, with OXT exhibiting preventative effects on repetitive and anxiety behaviors and AVP possessing preventative effects on social behavior deficits and anxiety. Basal IFNg levels were elevated in the F2 offspring of OXT treated F1 dams, but IFNg was not correlated with the behavioral effects. These results support the hypothesis that maternal AVP and OXT treatment have context and behavior specific effects on peripheral IFNg levels and perseverative, anxiety, and social behaviors in the female offspring of early life social stress exposed dams. Both maternal AVP and OXT are effective at preventing social stress induced increases in self directed measures of anxiety, and AVP is particularly effective at preventing impairments in overall social contact. OXT is specifically effective at preventing repetitive/perseverative behaviors, yet is ineffective at preventing deficits in overall social behavior.
Hormone Dependent and Experience Dependent Auditory Plasticity for Social Communication

The auditory neural circuit is embedded in a physiological environment that can be influenced by hormones. Early work demonstrated that hormone mechanisms are highly responsive to social contexts. More recent work shows that hormones affect auditory processing across contexts, leading to adaptive responses to auditory cues, including those involved in social communication. This chapter addresses recent progress in studying these and related mechanisms among mammals in a maternal communication paradigm, wherein both reproductive hormones (e.g. estrogen, oxytocin) and social experience (infant mother interaction) shape auditory responses to infant sounds. By broadly reviewing studies ranging from hormones and behavior to sensory processing and plasticity, this chapter lays out a systematic approach to investigating how hormones may provide a mechanism for enhancing the perception and learning of auditory cues in reproductive and other social contexts. As discussed, reproductive related hormones may induce plasticity in central auditory circuitry to enable a sustained trace of infant vocalizations in the auditory cortex, allowing for better recognition and detection of infant cues and sustained maternal behavior.
A transparent bending insensitive pressure sensor.
Venue: Nature nanotechnology

Measuring small normal pressures is essential to accurately evaluate external stimuli in curvilinear and dynamic surfaces such as natural tissues. Usually, sensitive and spatially accurate pressure sensors are achieved through conformal contact with the surface; however, this also makes them sensitive to mechanical deformation (bending) Indeed, when a soft object is pressed by another soft object, the normal pressure cannot be measured independently from the mechanical stress. Here, we show a pressure sensor that measures only the normal pressure, even under extreme bending conditions. To reduce the bending sensitivity, we use composite nanofibres of carbon nanotubes and graphene. Our simulations show that these fibres change their relative alignment to accommodate bending deformation, thus reducing the strain in individual fibres. Pressure sensitivity is maintained down to a bending radius of 80 mm. To test the suitability of our sensor for soft robotics and medical applications, we fabricated an integrated sensor matrix that is only 2 mm thick. We show real time (response time of ~20 ms) large area, normal pressure monitoring under different, complex bending conditions.
The role of viral infections in exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma
Venue: Therapeutic advances in respiratory disease

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are major causes of global morbidity and mortality worldwide. The clinical course of both asthma and COPD are punctuated by the occurrence of exacerbations, acute events characterized by increased symptoms and airflow obstruction. Exacerbations contribute most of the morbidity, mortality and excess healthcare costs associated with both asthma and COPD. COPD and asthma exacerbations are frequently associated with respiratory virus infections and this has led to an intense research focus into the mechanisms of virus induced exacerbations over the past decade. Current therapies are effective in reducing chronic symptoms but are less effective in preventing exacerbations, particularly in COPD. Understanding the mechanisms of virus induced exacerbation will lead to the development of new targeted therapies that can reduce the burden of virus induced exacerbations. In this review we discuss current knowledge of virus induced exacerbations of asthma and COPD with a particular focus on mechanisms, human studies, virus bacteria interactions and therapeutic advances.
A Comprehensive Survey of Recent Advancements in Molecular Communication
Venue: IEEE Communications Surveys Tutorials

With much advancement in the field of nanotechnology, bioengineering, and synthetic biology over the past decade, microscales and nanoscales devices are becoming a reality. Yet the problem of engineering a reliable communication system between tiny devices is still an open problem. At the same time, despite the prevalence of radio communication, there are still areas where traditional electromagnetic waves find it difficult or expensive to reach. Points of interest in industry, cities, and medical applications often lie in embedded and entrenched areas, accessible only by ventricles at scales too small for conventional radio waves and microwaves, or they are located in such a way that directional high frequency systems are ineffective. Inspired by nature, one solution to these problems is molecular communication (MC) where chemical signals are used to transfer information. Although biologists have studied MC for decades, it has only been researched for roughly 10 year from a communication engineering lens. Significant number of papers have been published to date, but owing to the need for interdisciplinary work, much of the results are preliminary. In this survey, the recent advancements in the field of MC engineering are highlighted. First, the biological, chemical, and physical processes used by an MC system are discussed. This includes different components of the MC transmitter and receiver, as well as the propagation and transport mechanisms. Then, a comprehensive survey of some of the recent works on MC through a communication engineering lens is provided. The survey ends with a technology readiness analysis of MC and future research directions.
The random pseudo metric on a graph defined via the zero set of the Gaussian free field on its metric graph

We further investigate properties of the Gaussian free field (GFF) on the metric graph associated to a discrete weighted graph (where the edges of the latter are replaced by continuous line segments of appropriate length) that has been introduced by the first author. On such a metric graph, the GFF is a random continuous function that generalises one dimensional Brownian bridges so that one dimensional techniques can be used. In the present paper, we define and study the pseudo metric defined on the metric graph (and therefore also on the discrete graph itself) where the length of a path on the metric graph is defined to be the local time at level zero accumulated by the Gaussian free field along this path. We first derive a pathwise transformation that relates the GFF on the metric graph with the reflected GFF on the metric graph via the pseudo distance defined by the latter. This is a generalisation of Paul Levy's result relating the local time at zero of Brownian motion to the supremum of another Brownian motion. We also compute explicitly the distribution of certain functionals of this pseudo metric and of the GFF. In particular, we point out that when the boundary consists of just two points, the law of the pseudo distance between them depends solely on the resistance of the network between them. We then discuss questions related to the scaling limit of this pseudo metric in the two dimensional case, which should be the conformally invariant way to measure distances between CLE(4) loops introduced and studied by the second author with Wu, and by Sheffield, Watson and Wu. Our explicit laws on metric graphs also lead to new conjectures for related functionals of the continuum GFF on fairly general Riemann surfaces.
Experimental study on thermal conductivity of water based Fe3O4 nanofluid: Development of a new correlation and modeled by artificial neural network

In this paper, the thermal conductivity of Fe 3 O 4 magnetic nanofluids has been investigated experimentally. The nanofluid samples were prepared using a two step method by dispersing Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles into the water with the solid volume fractions of 0.1% 0.2% 0.4% 1% 2% and 3% Thermal conductivity measurements were performed by employing a KD2 Pro thermal properties analyser under temperatures ranging from 20 degC to 55 degC. Then, using experimental data, a new correlation was proposed to predict the thermal conductivity ratio of the magnetic nanofluid. Finally, an optimal artificial neural network was designed to predict the thermal conductivity ratio of the magnetic nanofluid. The experimental results indicated that the maximum enhancement of thermal conductivity of nanofluid was about 90% which occurred at solid volume fraction of 3.0% and temperature of 55 degC. The comparative results showed that there are deviations of 5% and 1.5% respectively, for correlation and ANN from the experimental data. It was found from comparisons that the optimal artificial neural network model is more accurate compared to empirical correlation.
Estimation of thermal conductivity of Al2O3/water (40% ethylene glycol (60% by artificial neural network and correlation using experimental data

In this work, the estimation of thermal conductivity of Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles in water (40% ethylene glycol (60% has been investigated. An empirical relationship has been proposed based on experimental data and in terms of temperature and volume fraction. Besides, a model has been presented using feedforward multi layer perceptron (MLP) artificial neural network (ANN) The presented correlation relationship estimates empirical data very well. However, artificial neural network has a higher regression coefficient and lower error compared to the presented relationship. After examining different structures of neural network with different transfer functions, a structure was selected with two hidden layers and 5 neurons in the first and second layers and tangent sigmoid transfer function for both layers. The results indicate that artificial neural networks can precisely estimate the experimental data of thermal conductivity of Al 2 O 3 /water (40% ethylene glycol (60% nanofluids.
STAT3 signaling in immunity.
Venue: Cytokine growth factor reviews

The transcriptional regulator STAT3 has key roles in vertebrate development and mature tissue function including control of inflammation and immunity. Mutations in human STAT3 associate with diseases such as immunodeficiency, autoimmunity and cancer. Strikingly, however, either hyperactivation or inactivation of STAT3 results in human disease, indicating tightly regulated STAT3 function is central to health. Here, we attempt to summarize information on the numerous and distinct biological actions of STAT3, and highlight recent discoveries, with a specific focus on STAT3 function in the immune and hematopoietic systems. Our goal is to spur investigation on mechanisms by which aberrant STAT3 function drives human disease and novel approaches that might be used to modulate disease outcome.
Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus Antagonizes JAK/STAT3 Signaling via nsp5, Which Induces STAT3 Degradation
Venue: Journal of Virology

Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) is a pleiotropic signaling mediator of many cytokines, including interleukin 6 (IL 6) and IL 10. STAT3 is known to play critical roles in cell growth, proliferation, differentiation, immunity and inflammatory responses. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) infection on the STAT3 signaling since PRRSV induces a weak protective immune response in host animals. We report here that PRRSV infection of MARC 145 cells and primary porcine pulmonary alveolar macrophages led to significant reduction of STAT3 protein level. Several strains of both PRRSV type 1 and type 2 led to a similar reduction of STAT3 protein level but had a minimal effect on its transcripts. The PRRSV mediated STAT3 reduction was in a dose dependent manner as the STAT3 level decreased, along with incremental amounts of PRRSV inocula. Further study showed that nonstructural protein 5 (nsp5) of PRRSV induced the STAT3 degradation by increasing its polyubiquitination level and shortening its half life from 24 h to ~3.5 h. The C terminal domain of nsp5 was shown to be required for the STAT3 degradation. Moreover, the STAT3 signaling in the cells transfected with nsp5 plasmid was significantly inhibited. These results indicate that PRRSV antagonizes the STAT3 signaling by accelerating STAT3 degradation via the ubiquitin proteasomal pathway. This study provides insight into the PRRSV interference with the JAK/STAT3 signaling, leading to perturbation of the host innate and adaptive immune responses.  The typical features of immune responses in PRRSV infected pigs are delayed onset and low levels of virus neutralizing antibodies, as well as weak cell mediated immunity. Lymphocyte development and differentiation rely on cytokines, many of which signal through the JAK/STAT signaling pathway to exert their biological effects. Here, we discovered that PRRSV antagonizes the JAK/STAT3 signaling by inducing degradation of STAT3, a master transcription activator involved in multiple cellular processes and the host immune responses. The nsp5 protein of PRRSV is responsible for the accelerated STAT3 degradation. The PRRSV mediated antagonizing STAT3 could lead to suppression of a broad spectrum of cytokines and growth factors to allow virus replication and spread in host animals. This may be one of the reasons for the PRRSV interference with the innate immunity and its poor elicitation of protective immunity. This finding provides insight into PRRSV pathogenesis and its interference with the host immune responses.
Identification of New Resistance Mechanisms in Escherichia coli against Apidaecin 1b Using Quantitative Gel and LC MS Based Proteomics.
Venue: Journal of proteome research

Bacteria have acquired resistance mechanisms to overcome antibiotic treatments, triggering major concerns about the return of epidemic infections. Antimicrobial peptides identified in insects, animals, and plants represent a huge pool of promising lead structures that can be further developed for medical applications. Short proline rich antimicrobial peptides (PrAMPs) have gained much attention due to their clinically interesting activity spectrum, serum protease stability, efficacy in murine infection models, and low adverse effects. Here we induced resistances by incubating Escherichia coli with increasing concentrations of apidaecin 1b, a PrAMP isolated from honeybees, and quantitatively evaluated the proteomes between wild type and resistant strains. Surprisingly, 2D differential gel electrophoresis did not reveal differences, indicating that the expression levels of dominant proteins were very similar. Reversed phase chromatography coupled online to a mass spectrometer identified 2131 proteins in the soluble fraction (cytosolic fraction) and 1296 proteins in the nonsolubilized pellet (membrane fraction) Overall 29 proteins showed a statistically significant upregulation in the resistant E. coli strain, whereas 18 proteins were downregulated. Interestingly, periplasmic chaperone FimC, fimbrial protein FimA, and mannose binding domain protein FimH, which are part of the fimbrial complex, were not detected in the resistant strain that was also unable to form biofilms. Furthermore, the expression of a few other proteins known as virulence factors was downregulated. Additionally, the expression level of isochorismatase hydrolase (YcaC) decreased in the membrane fraction of the resistant strain to 35% and the corresponding knockout mutant of E. coli BW25113 was eight times less susceptible to apidaecin 1b and the related designer peptide Api88.
Increased Paracrine Immunomodulatory Potential of Mesenchymal Stromal Cells in Three Dimensional Culture
Venue: Tissue engineering. Part B, Reviews

Mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (MSCs) have been investigated extensively through the past years, proving to have great clinical therapeutic potential. In vitro cultivation of MSCs in three dimensional (3D) culture systems, such as scaffolds, hydrogels, or spheroids, have recently gained attention for tissue engineering applications. Studies on MSC spheroids demonstrated that such cultivation increased the paracrine immunomodulatory potential of the MSCs, accompanied by phenotypic alterations. In this review, we gather results from recent experimental studies on the immunomodulatory abilities of MSCs when cultured as spheroids or in biomaterials like scaffolds or hydrogels compared to regular two dimensional (2D) culture and show that alterations occurring to MSCs in spheroids also occur in MSCs in biomaterials. We provide a brief description of known mechanisms of MSC immunomodulatory capacity and how they are altered in the two 3D culture systems, together with phenotypic cellular changes. Based on the present knowledge, we highlight vital areas in need of further investigation. The impact of 3D environments on immunomodulation has great potential for tissue engineering and cellular therapy, and this is the first review to gather this knowledge with a comparison across different 3D environments.
Psychological distress and salivary secretory immunity
Venue: Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

Stress induced impairments of mucosal immunity may increase susceptibility to infectious diseases. The present study investigated the association of perceived stress, depressive symptoms, and loneliness with salivary levels of secretory immunoglobulin A (S IgA) the subclasses S IgA1, S IgA2, and their transporter molecule Secretory Component (SC) S IgA/SC, IgA1/SC and IgA2/SC ratios were calculated to assess the differential effects of stress on immunoglobulin transport versus availability. This study involved 113 university students, in part selected on high scores on the UCLA Loneliness Scale and/or the Beck Depression Inventory. Stress levels were assessed using the Perceived Stress Scale. Unstimulated saliva was collected and analysed for total S IgA and its subclasses, as well as SC and total salivary protein. Multiple linear regression analyses, adjusted for gender, age, health behaviours, and concentration effects (total protein) revealed that higher perceived stress was associated with lower levels of IgA1 but not IgA2. Perceived stress, loneliness and depressive symptoms were all associated with lower IgA1/SC ratios. Surprisingly, higher SC levels were associated with loneliness and depressive symptoms, indicative of enhanced transport activity, which explained a lower IgA1/SC ratio (loneliness and depression) and IgA2/SC ratio (depression) This is the first study to investigate the effects of protracted psychological stress across S IgA subclasses and its transporter SC. Psychological stress was negatively associated with secretory immunity, specifically IgA1. The lower immunoglobulin/transporter ratio that was associated with higher loneliness and depression suggested a relative immunoglobulin depletion, whereby availability was not keeping up with enhanced transport demand.
Psychological Stress, Immunity, and the Effects on Indigenous Microflora.
Venue: Advances in experimental medicine and biology

Psychological stress is an intrinsic part of life that affects all organs of the body through direct nervous system innervation and the release of neuroendocrine hormones. The field of PsychoNeuroImmunology (PNI) has clearly demonstrated that the physiological response to psychological stressors can dramatically impact the functioning of the immune system, thus identifying one way in which susceptibility to or severity of diseases are exacerbated during stressful periods. This chapter describes research at the interface between the fields of PNI and Microbial Endocrinology to demonstrate that natural barrier defenses, such as those provided by the commensal microflora, can be disrupted by exposure to psychological stressors. These stress effects are evident in the development of the intestinal microflora in animals born from stressful pregnancy conditions, and in older animals with fully developed microbial populations. Moreover, data are presented demonstrating that exposure to different types of stressors results in the translocation of microflora from cutaneous and mucosal surfaces into regional lymph nodes. When considered together, a scenario emerges in which psychological stressors induce a neuroendocrine response that has the potential to directly or indirectly affect commensal microflora populations, the integrity of barrier defenses, and the internalization of microbes. Finally, a hypothesis is put forth in which stressor induced alterations of the microflora contribute to the observed stressor induced increases in inflammatory markers in the absence of overt infection.