Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discrepancies in Composition and Biological Effects of Different Formulations of Chondroitin Sulfate

Osteoarthritis is a common, progressive joint disease, and treatments generally aim for symptomatic improvement. However, SYmptomatic Slow-Acting Drugs in Osteoarthritis (SYSADOAs) not only reduce joint pain, but slow structural disease progression. One such agent is chondroitin sulfate—a complex, heterogeneous polysaccharide. It is extracted from various animal cartilages, thus has a wide range of molecular weights and different amounts and patterns of sulfation. Chondroitin sulfate has an excellent safety profile, and although various meta-analyses have concluded that it has a beneficial effect on symptoms and structure, others have concluded little or no benefit. This may be due, at least partly, to variations in the quality of the chondroitin sulfate used for a particular study. Chondroitin sulfate is available as pharmaceutical- and nutraceutical-grade products, and the latter have great variations in preparation, composition, purity and effects. Moreover, some products contain a negligible amount of chondroitin sulfate and among samples with reasonable amounts, in vitro testing showed widely varying effects. Of importance, although some showed anti-inflammatory effects, others demonstrated weak effects, and some instances were even pro-inflammatory. This could be related to contaminants, which depend on the origin, production and purification process. It is therefore vitally important that only pharmaceutical-grade chondroitin sulfate be used for treating osteoarthritis patients.
Laminar Shear Stress Inhibits Endothelial Cell Metabolism via KLF2-Mediated Repression of PFKFB3

Objective—Cellular metabolism was recently shown to regulate endothelial cell phenotype profoundly. Whether the atheroprotective biomechanical stimulus elicited by laminar shear stress modulates endothelial cell metabolism is not known. Approach and Results—Here, we show that laminar flow exposure reduced glucose uptake and mitochondrial content in endothelium. Shear stress–mediated reduction of endothelial metabolism was reversed by silencing the flow-sensitive transcription factor Krüppel-like factor 2 (KLF2). Endothelial-specific deletion of KLF2 in mice induced glucose uptake in endothelial cells of perfused hearts. KLF2 overexpression recapitulates the inhibitory effects on endothelial glycolysis elicited by laminar flow, as measured by Seahorse flux analysis and glucose uptake measurements. RNA sequencing showed that shear stress reduced the expression of key glycolytic enzymes, such as 6-phosphofructo-2-kinase/fructose-2,6-biphosphatase-3 (PFKFB3), phosphofructokinase-1, and hexokinase 2 in a KLF2-dependent manner. Moreover, KLF2 represses PFKFB3 promoter activity. PFKFB3 knockdown reduced glycolysis, and overexpression increased glycolysis and partially reversed the KLF2-mediated reduction in glycolysis. Furthermore, PFKFB3 overexpression reversed KLF2-mediated reduction in angiogenic sprouting and network formation. Conclusions—Our data demonstrate that shear stress–mediated repression of endothelial cell metabolism via KLF2 and PFKFB3 controls endothelial cell phenotype.
Increased Risk of Stroke after Septicaemia: A Population-Based Longitudinal Study in Taiwan

Inflammation and infection have been noted to increase stroke risk. However, the association between septicaemia and increased risk of stroke remains unclear. This population-based cohort study, using a National Health Insurance database, aimed to investigate whether patients with septicaemia are predisposed to increased stroke risk. The study included all patients hospitalised for septicaemia for the first time between 2000 and 2003 without prior stroke. Patients were followed until the end of 2010 to evaluate incidence of stroke. An age-, gender- and co-morbidities-matched cohort without prior stroke served as the control. Cox’s proportional hazards regressions were used to assess differences in stroke risk between groups. Based on hazard ratios (HRs), patients with septicaemia had greater stroke risk, especially in the younger age groups (age <45: HR = 4.16, 95% CI: 2.39–7.24, p<0.001; age 45–64: HR = 1.76, 95% CI: 1.41–2.19, p<0.001; age ≥65: HR = 1.05, 95% CI: 0.91–1.22, p>0.05). Haemorrhagic stroke was the dominant type (ischaemic stroke: HR = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.06–1.37, p<0.01; haemorrhagic stroke: HR = 1.82, 95% CI: 1.35–2.46, p<0.001) and patients without co-morbidities were at slightly higher risk (without co-morbidities: HR = 1.49, 95% CI: 1.02–2.17, p<0.05; with co-morbidities: HR = 1.24, 95% CI: 1.10–1.41, p<0.001). The impact of septicaemia on stroke risk was highest within 6 months of the event and gradually declined over time. Our results suggest that septicaemia is associated with an increase in stroke risk, which is greatest in haemorrhagic stroke. Closer attention to patients with history of septicaemia may be warranted for stroke preventive measures, especially for younger patients without co-morbidities.
Pengukuran Perbedaan Rasa Malu dan Self-Esteem Serta Kaitannya dengan Prestasi Akademis (Studi pada Remaja Korban Perceraian di Jakarta)

Parental divorce psychological impact for children and adolescents. This study examines the differences are shame and self-esteem to the learning achievement of students who are teenagers, whose parents divorced. The shame is the emotional aspects that influence individual assessment of himself when dealing with others. The shame is an emotion that is typical of the growing of early interpersonal experiences when indvidu related by family or peers. The study involved participants aged teens because adolescence is a phase turbulent emotions, so that the basic emotions experienced by adolescents is an aspect that can be developed through the development of models of measuring instruments associated with the emotions of shame and self-esteem and the use of a secondary form of data measuring learning achievement teens. The study involved 184 adolescents with divorced parents have negative correlation between shame and self-esteem. The higher the shame teenager because her parents divorce, the more negative the adolescent self-evaluation. However, the two variables are not correlated with academic achievement grades obtained from past research participants. Keywords: shame, self-esteem, academic achievement, adolescent
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPORT ACTIVITIES, ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERSONALITY DYNAMICS OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN SINDH

This paper examines the relationship between education performance of person and his grooming in the society with sports activities especially at early education levels of schooling. Some valid inferences have been drawn to indicate that sports activities in early schooling age has significant impact on big five personality traits in the later part i.e. professional life of a person.
Adaptive STBC Coded MIMO System With Near Full Multiplexing Gain Using CSI

When compared to single-input singleoutput system (SISO), the multiple-input multipleoutput system have a better and larger channel capacity. With this, it is succeeded of having a better multiplexing gain. To approach the channel capacity the Adaptive Modulation technique is a better technique which is utilized by channel state information at transmitter. In this paper, following an analysis of the multiplexing gain of a generic AMC MIMO system, we propose an adaptive coded MIMO system that achieves a near-full multiplexing gain as well as a robust BER performance in an outdated CSI environment with Space Time Block Codes
Contact tracing in pulmonary and non-pulmonary tuberculosis.

AIM The aim of our study was to determine the effectiveness of contact tracing for both pulmonary and non-pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). METHODS The authors studied contact tracing in South East of Scotland, Edinburgh TB Clinic, UK, for 3 years. New index cases of both pulmonary and non-pulmonary TB were identified from reviewing TB nurses records. Pulmonary involvement was excluded from all non-pulmonary cases. Active TB was diagnosed as per the national TB guidelines. Latent TB was diagnosed based on history, tuberculin skin test and interferon γ release assay. TB contacts were identified from reviewing TB nurses notes on index TB patients. A positive screening episode was defined as identification of either active or latent TB in a contact following relevant investigations. RESULTS Total number of positive screening episodes for pulmonary TB was 43.1% and non-pulmonary TB was 26.1%. Of these, 78.8% were household contacts and 21.2% were casual contacts. CONCLUSION Contact tracing in low-prevalence TB countries, for both pulmonary and non-pulmonary TB, is an essential intervention to identify and reduce the number of infected patients that will progress to active disease. This is the key for effective TB control.
Overview of Green Supply Chain Management: Operation and Environmental Impact at Different Stages of the Supply Chain

This paper emphasizes upon the application of Supply Chain Management and adding the `Green ` component to it so as to stress upon the need of environment friendly systems. The growing importance of GSCM is driven mainly by the escalating deterioration of environment. The waste and emissions caused by the supply chain have become one of the main sources of serious environmental problems including global warming and acid rain. One of the key aspects to green supply chains is to improve both economic and environmental performance simultaneously throughout the chains by establishing long-term buyer–supplier relationships. Efforts have been made by the authors to study the supply chain of the systems with the focus on its optimization and implementation.
Seller Reputation, Information Signals, and Prices for Heterogeneous Coins on eBay

In online commerce, a buyer cannot directly examine the product and has to trust the seller for the product description and delivery. The reputation of the seller (and other information signals on the quality of the product) can therefore affect the buyer's willingness to pay. However, while the impact of reputation on willingness to pay for homogeneous goods has been examined, its impact on heterogeneous goods (where there is more uncertainty about product quality) is largely unknown. This paper examines the effects of reputation in online auctions, using U.S. silver Morgan dollar coins in “Almost Uncirculated” condition that are sold on eBay. Empirical results indicate that a seller's overall reputation has a positive impact on a buyer's willingness to pay, that negative comments about a seller often have a negative impact, and that these reputational effects increase in importance when there is more uncertainty about the quality of the coin.
Bacterial endotoxin stimulates macrophages to release HMGB1 partly through CD14‐ and TNF‐dependent mechanisms

Bacterial endotoxin [lipopolysaccharide (LPS)] stimulates macrophages to sequentially release early [tumor necrosis factor (TNF)] and late [high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1)] proinflammatory cytokines. The requirement of CD14 and mitogen‐activated protein kinases [MAPK; e.g., p38 and extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (ERK)1/2] for endotoxin‐induced TNF production has been demonstrated previously, but little is known about their involvement in endotoxin‐mediated HMGB1 release. Here, we demonstrated that genetic disruption of CD14 expression abrogated LPS‐induced TNF production but only partially attenuated LPS‐induced HMGB1 release in cultures of primary murine peritoneal macrophages. Pharmacological suppression of p38 or ERK1/2 MAPK with specific inhibitors (SB203580, SB202190, U0126, or PD98059) significantly attenuated LPS‐induced TNF production but failed to inhibit LPS‐induced HMGB1 release. Consistently, an endogenous, immunosuppressive molecule, spermine, failed to inhibit LPS‐induced activation of p38 MAPK and yet, still significantly attenuated LPS‐mediated HMGB1 release. Direct suppression of TNF activity with neutralizing antibodies or genetic disruption of TNF expression partially attenuated HMGB1 release from macrophages induced by LPS at lower concentrations (e.g., 10 ng/ml). Taken together, these data suggest that LPS stimulates macrophages to release HMGB1 partly through CD14‐ and TNF‐dependent mechanisms.
Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphate Pesticides and Neurobehavioral Development of Neonates: A Birth Cohort Study in Shenyang, China

Background A large amount of organophosphate pesticides (OPs) are used in agriculture in China every year, contributing to exposure of OPs through dietary consumption among the general population. However, the level of exposure to OPs in China is still uncertain. Objective To investigate the effect of the exposure to OPs on the neonatal neurodevelopment during pregnancy in Shenyang, China. Methods 249 pregnant women enrolled in the Central Hospital Affiliated to Shenyang Medical College from February 2011 to August 2012. A cohort of the mothers and their neonates participated in the study and information on each subject was obtained by questionnaire. Dialkyl phosphate (DAP) metabolites were detected in the urine of mothers during pregnancy to evaluate the exposure level to OPs. Neonate neurobehavioral developmental levels were assessed according to the standards of the Neonatal Behavioral Neurological Assessment (NBNA). Multiple linear regressions were utilized to analyze the association between pregnancy exposure to OPs and neonatal neurobehavioral development. Results The geometric means (GM) of urinary metabolites for dimethyl phosphate (DMP), dimethyl thiophosphate (DMTP), diethyl phosphate (DEP), and diethyl thiophosphate (DETP) in pregnant women were 18.03, 8.53, 7.14, and 5.64 µg/L, respectively. Results from multiple linear regressions showed that prenatal OP exposure was one of the most important factors affecting NBNA scores. Prenatal total DAP concentrations were inversely associated with scores on the NBNA scales. Additionally, a 10-fold increase in DAP concentrations was associated with a decrease of 1.78 regarding the Summary NBNA (95% CI, −2.12 to −1.45). And there was an estimated 2.11-point difference in summary NBNA scores between neonates in the highest quintile of prenatal OP exposure and the lowest quintile group. Conclusion The high exposure of pregnant women to OPs in Shenyang, China was the predominant risk factor for neonatal neurobehavioral development.
Genetic influences on exercise‐induced adult hippocampal neurogenesis across 12 divergent mouse strains

New neurons are continuously born in the hippocampus of several mammalian species throughout adulthood. Adult neurogenesis represents a natural model for understanding how to grow and incorporate new nerve cells into preexisting circuits in the brain. Finding molecules or biological pathways that increase neurogenesis has broad potential for regenerative medicine. One strategy is to identify mouse strains that display large vs. small increases in neurogenesis in response to wheel running so that the strains can be contrasted to find common genes or biological pathways associated with enhanced neuron formation. Therefore, mice from 12 different isogenic strains were housed with or without running wheels for 43 days to measure the genetic regulation of exercise‐induced neurogenesis. During the first 10 days mice received daily injections of 5‐bromo‐2′‐deoxyuridine (BrdU) to label dividing cells. Neurogenesis was measured as the total number of BrdU cells co‐expressing NeuN mature neuronal marker in the hippocampal granule cell layer by immunohistochemistry. Exercise increased neurogenesis in all strains, but the magnitude significantly depended on genotype. Strain means for distance run on wheels, but not distance traveled in cages without wheels, were significantly correlated with strain mean level of neurogenesis. Furthermore, certain strains displayed greater neurogenesis than others for a fixed level of running. Strain means for neurogenesis under sedentary conditions were not correlated with neurogenesis under runner conditions suggesting that different genes influence baseline vs. exercise‐induced neurogenesis. Genetic contributions to exercise‐induced hippocampal neurogenesis suggest that it may be possible to identify genes and pathways associated with enhanced neuroplastic responses to exercise.
ANALYSIS OF EEG FOR MOTOR IMAGERY BASED CLASSIFICATION OF HAND ACTIVITIES

EEG based Brain Computer Interface (BCI) establishes a new channel between human brain and the surrounding environment in order to disseminate instructions to the outside world. It is based on the recording of temporary EEG changes during different types of motor imagery such as imagination of different hand movements. The spatial pattern of activated cortical areas during motor imagery is similar to that of real time executed movement. Time domain features and frequency domain features are extracted with emphasis on recognizing discriminative features representing EEG trials recorded during imagination of different hand movements. Then, classification into different hand movements is carried out.
Access Ordering and Effective Memory Bandwidth

High-performance scalar processors are characterized by multiple pipelined functional units that can be initiated simultaneously to exploit instruction level parallelism. For scientific codes, the performance of these processors depends heavily on memory bandwidth. To achieve peak processor rate, data must be supplied to the arithmetic units at the peak aggregate rate of consumption. Access ordering, a loop optimization that reorders non-caching accesses to better utilize memory system resources, is a compiler technology developed in this thesis that addresses the memory bandwidth problem for scalar processors executing scientific codes. For a given computation, memory architecture, and memory device type, an access ordering algorithm determines a well-defined interleaving of vector references that maximizes effective bandwidth. Consequently, analytic models of performance can also be derived. Access ordering is fundamentally different from, though complementary to, both caching and access scheduling techniques that attempt to overlap computation with memory latency. Simulation results demonstrate that for a given computation, access ordering can significantly increase effective memory bandwidth over that achieved by the natural reference sequence.
Aberrant regulation of planar cell polarity in polycystic kidney disease.

Mutations in PKD1, which encodes polycystin-1 (PC1), contribute to >85% of cases of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). The planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway is necessary for the oriented cell division and convergent extension that establishes and maintains the structure of kidney tubules, but the role of this pathway in the pathophysiology of ADPKD is incompletely understood. Here, we show that inactivation of Pkd1 in postnatal developing mouse kidneys leads to a defect in oriented cell division in precystic kidney tubules. We also observed this defect in precystic Pkd1-inactivated mature kidneys subjected to ischemia-reperfusion injury as a "third hit. " Cystic kidneys exhibited striking upregulation and activation of Frizzled 3 (Fz3), a regulator of PCP, and its downstream effector, CDC42. Precystic kidneys demonstrated upregulation of CDC42, but the localization of the polarity proteins Par3 and Par6 was similar to control. Fz3 was expressed on the cilia of cystic kidneys but barely detected on the cilia of normal kidneys. In vitro, PC1 and Fz3 antagonized each other to control CDC42 expression and the rate of cell migration in HEK293T cells. Taken together, our data suggest that PC1 controls oriented cell division and that aberrant PCP signaling contributes to cystogenesis.
Star Formation in the Hosts of High-z QSOs: Evidence from Spitzer PAH Detections

We present Spitzer rest frame mid-infrared spectroscopy of 12 z ∼ 2 millimeter-bright type 1 QSOs, selected from unlensed and lensed QSO samples and covering a range of AGN optical luminosities L5100 = 1045–1047 erg s−1. On top of the AGN continuum, we detect PAH emission from luminous star formation in nine objects individually, as well as in the composite spectrum for the full sample. PAH luminosity and rest frame far-infrared luminosity correlate and extend a similar correlation for lower luminosity local QSOs. This provides strong evidence for intense star formation in the hosts of these millimeter-bright QSOs, sometimes exceeding 1000 M☉ yr−1 and dominating their rest frame far-infrared emission. The PAH-based limit on star formation rates is lower for luminous z ∼ 2 QSOs that are not preselected for their millimeter emission. Partly dependent on systematic changes of the AGN dust covering factor and the dust spectral energy distribution of the AGN proper, the spectral energy distributions of millimeter-faint high-z QSOs may be AGN dominated out to rest frame far-infrared wavelengths. Toward the most luminous high-z QSOs, there is a flattening of the relation between star formation and AGN luminosity that is observed for lower redshift QSOs. No QSO in our sample has a PAH-measured star formation rate in excess of 3000 M☉ yr−1.
NEWS, NON-INVERTIBILITY, AND STRUCTURAL VARS $

A state space representation of a linearized DSGE model implies a VAR in terms of observable variables. The model is said be non-invertible if there exists no linear rotation of the VAR innovations which can recover the economic shocks. Non-invertibility arises when the observed variables fail to perfectly reveal the state variables of the model. The imperfect observation of the state drives a wedge between the VAR innovations and the deep shocks, potentially invalidating conclusions drawn from structural impulse response analysis in the VAR. The principal contribution of this paper is to show that non-invertibility should not be thought of as an ``either/or'' proposition even when a model has a non-invertibility, the wedge between VAR innovations and economic shocks may be small, and structural VARs may nonetheless perform reliably. As an increasingly popular example, so-called ``news shocks'' generate foresight about changes in future fundamentals such as productivity, taxes, or government spending and lead to an unassailable missing state variable problem and hence non-invertible VAR representatations. Simulation evidence from a medium scale DSGE model augmented with news shocks about future productivity reveals that structural VAR methods often perform well in practice, in spite of a known non-invertibility. Impulse responses obtained from VARs closely correspond to the theoretical responses from the model, and the estimated VAR responses are successful in discriminating between alternative, nested specifications of the underlying DSGE model. Since the non-invertibility problem is, at its core, one of missing information, conditioning on more information, for example through factor augmented VARs, is shown to either ameliorate oreliminate invertibility problems altogether.