Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Apolipoprotein CIII Induces Expression of Vascular Cell Adhesion Molecule-1 in Vascular Endothelial Cells and Increases Adhesion of Monocytic Cells

Background— Activation of vascular endothelial cells (ECs) plays an important role in atherogenesis and plaque instability. Lipoproteins containing apolipoprotein CIII (apoCIII) predict coronary heart disease (CHD). We recently reported that apoCIII has a proinflammatory effect on human monocytes. In this study, we looked for a direct effect of apoCIII on EC expression of adhesion molecules, leading to monocytic cell adhesion. Methods and Results— Treatment of ECs with apoCIII or apoCIII-rich VLDL caused human monocytic THP-1 cells to adhere to them under static condition or under laminar sheer stress (1.0 dyne/cm2). ApoCIII increased EC expression of vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) protein and intercellular cell adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) protein (4.9±1.5-fold and 1.4±0.5-fold versus control, respectively). Furthermore, apoCIII remarkably increased membrane-bound protein kinase C (PKC) β in ECs, indicating activation. A selective inhibitor of PKCβ prevented the rise in VCAM-1 and THP-1 cell adhesion to ECs. Moreover, exposure of ECs to apoCIII induced nuclear factor-&kgr;B (NF-&kgr;B) activation. PKCβ inhibition abolished apoCIII-induced NF-&kgr;B activation, and NF-&kgr;B inhibition reduced expression of VCAM-1, each resulting in reduced THP-1 cell adhesion. ApoCIII-rich VLDL also activated PKCβ and NF-&kgr;B in ECs and increased expression of VCAM-1. Pretreatment of ApoCIII-rich VLDL with anti-apoCIII neutralizing antibody abolished its effect on PKCβ activation. Conclusions— Our findings provide the first evidence that apoCIII increases VCAM-1 and ICAM-1 expression in ECs by activating PKCβ and NF-&kgr;B, suggesting a novel mechanism for EC activation induced by dyslipidemia. Therefore, apoCIII-rich VLDL may contribute directly to atherogenesis by activating ECs and recruiting monocytes to them.
Prediction of Human Pharmacokinetic Parameters Using Animal Data and Principles of Allometry

Abstract Allometry scaling of preclinical pharmacokinetic parameters for bicifadine (CAS 71195-57-8), a novel non-narcotic analgesic, was performed to predict the human pharmacokinetic parameters of clearance (CLiv and CLoral) and volume of distribution (Vz). The metabolism pattern, biotransformation pathways, and the predominant urinary excretion of the formed metabolites of bicifadine were found to be similar amongst mice, rats, monkeys and humans facilitating the scaling process. The availability of gender specific data in the preclinical species rendered the prediction of bicifadine parameters in gender specific groups. The human parameters for CLiv,Vz, and CLoral were predicted by allometric equations: 1.5252W0. 742 (R2 = 0.9989), 1.3489W0. 8484 (R2 = 0.9896), 3.2516W0. 7694 (R2 = 0.9875), respectively. The absolute bioavailability for bicifadine was estimated to be approximately 67%. The predicted CLoral (95 L/h) was within 45% of the human reported value (59 L/h). Overall, based on the closeness of allometric exponents (within 15% of suggested values), simple allometry approach could be used to prospectively predict the human pharmacokinetic parameters of bicifadine with confidence.
Atomic Layer Deposition of High k Dielectric and Metal Gate Stacks for MOS Devices

High‐k gate stack fabrication via atomic layer deposition (ALD) of ultra thin HfO2 and HfxSi1−xO2 films is demonstrated utilizing metal‐amide precursors and ozone as an oxidant. High resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) shows that films near 2.0 nm are reproducible. X‐ray reflectivity (XRR) and Rutherford backscattering (RBS) indicate that this ALD chemistry proceeds similarly on multiple surface preparations including HF last without growth incubation. High field mobility of more than 85% of the universal SiO2 mobility has been achieved at EOT ∼1nm with a reduction of more than two orders of magnitude in leakage current density as compared with a SiO2/poly Si gate. Various ALD metal nitrides such as TiN, HfN, HfSiN have been deposited on HfO2 and HfSiOx dielectrics which enabled a study of the interfacial reaction between high‐k dielectrics and metal electrode materials. The thermal stability of PVD Ru deposited on ALD HfO2 has also been observed.
Alveolar Epithelial A2B Adenosine Receptors in Pulmonary Protection during Acute Lung Injury

Acute lung injury (ALI) is an acute inflammatory lung disease that causes morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients. However, there are many instances where ALI resolves spontaneously through endogenous pathways that help to control excessive lung inflammation. Previous studies have implicated the extracellular signaling molecule adenosine and signaling events through the A2B adenosine receptor in lung protection. In this context, we hypothesized that tissue-specific expression of the A2B adenosine receptor is responsible for the previously described attenuation of ALI. To address this hypothesis, we exposed mice with tissue-specific deletion of Adora2b to ALI, utilizing a two-hit model where intratracheal LPS treatment is followed by injurious mechanical ventilation. Interestingly, a head-to-head comparison of mice with deletion of Adora2b in the myeloid lineage (Adora2bloxP/loxP LysM Cre+), endothelial cells (Adora2bloxP/loxP VE-cadherin Cre+), or alveolar epithelial cells (Adora2bloxP/loxP SPC Cre+) revealed a selective increase in disease susceptibility in Adora2bloxP/loxP SPC Cre+ mice. More detailed analysis of Adora2bloxP/loxP SPC Cre+ mice confirmed elevated lung inflammation and attenuated alveolar fluid clearance. To directly deliver an A2B adenosine receptor–specific agonist to alveolar epithelial cells, we subsequently performed studies with inhaled BAY 60-6583. Indeed, aerosolized BAY 60-6583 treatment was associated with attenuated pulmonary edema, improved histologic lung injury, and dampened lung inflammation. Collectively, these findings suggest that alveolar epithelial A2B adenosine receptor signaling contributes to lung protection, and they implicate inhaled A2B adenosine receptor agonists in ALI treatment.
A Monte-Carlo method for score normalization in Automatic Speaker Verification using Kullback-Leibler distances

In this paper, we propose a new score normalization technique in Automatic Speaker Verification (ASV): the D-Norm. The main advantage of this score normalization is that it does not need any additional speech data nor external speaker population, as opposed to the state-of-the-art approaches. The D-Norm is based on the use of Kullback-Leibler (KL) distances in an ASV context. In a first step. we estimate the KL distances with a Monte-Carlo method and we experimentally show that they are correlated with the verification scores. In a second step, we use this correlation to implement a score normalization procedure, the D-Norm. We analyse its performance and we compare it to that of a conventional normalization, the Z-Norm. The results show that performance of the D-Norm is comparable to that of the Z-Norm. We then conclude about the results we obtain and we discuss the applications of this work.
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Induced by a Swine 2009 H1N1 Variant in Mice

Background Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) induced by pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza virus has been widely reported and was considered the main cause of death in critically ill patients with 2009 H1N1 infection. However, no animal model has been developed for ARDS caused by infection with 2009 H1N1 virus. Here, we present a mouse model of ARDS induced by 2009 H1N1 virus. Methodology Principal Findings Mice were inoculated with A/swine/Shandong/731/2009 (SD/09), which was a 2009 H1N1 influenza variant with a G222D mutation in the hemagglutinin. Clinical symptoms were recorded every day. Lung injury was assessed by lung water content and histopathological observation. Arterial blood gas, leukocyte count in the bronchial alveolar lavage fluid and blood, virus titers, and cytokine levels in the lung were measured at various times post-inoculation. Mice infected with SD/09 virus showed typical ARDS symptoms characterized by 60% lethality on days 8–10 post-inoculation, highly edematous lungs, inflammatory cellular infiltration, alveolar and interstitial edema, lung hemorrhage, progressive and severe hypoxemia, and elevated levels of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Conclusions/Significance These results suggested that we successfully established an ARDS mouse model induced by a virulent 2009 H1N1 variant without previous adaptation, which may be of benefit for evaluating the pathogenesis or therapy of human ARDS caused by 2009 H1N1 virus.
How Android App Developers Manage Power Consumption? - An Empirical Study by Mining Power Management Commits

As Android platform becomes more and more popular, a large amount of Android applications have been developed. When developers design and implement Android applications, power consumption management is an important factor to consider since it affects the usability of the applications. Thus, it is important to help developers adopt proper strategies to manage power consumption. Interestingly, today, there is a large number of Android application repositories made publicly available in sites such as GitHub. These repositories can be mined to help crystalize common power management activities that developers do. These in turn can be used to help other developers to perform similar tasks to improve their own Android applications.In this paper, we present an empirical study of power management commits in Android applications. Our study extends that of Moura et al. who perform an empirical studyon energy aware commits; however they do not focus on Android applications and only a few of the commits that they study come from Android applications. Android applications are often different from other applications (e.g., those running on a server) due to the issue of limited battery life and the use of specialized APIs. As subjects of our empirical study, we obtain a list of open source Android applications from F-Droid and crawl their commits from Github. We get 468 power management commits after we filter the commits using a set of keywords and by performing manual analysis. These 468 power management commits are from 154 different Android applications and belong to 15 different application categories. Furthermore, we use open card sort to categorize these power management commits and we obtain 6 groups which correspond to different power management activities. Our study also reveals that for different kinds of Android application (e.g., Games, Connectivity, Navigation, etc.), the dominant power management activities differ.For example, the percentageof power management commits belonging to Power Adaptation activity is larger for Navigation applications than those belonging to other categories.
Endothelin-1 Is Increased in the Breath Condensate of Patients with Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer

One recent line of cancer research is currently directed to the study of growth factors. Of increasing interest is endothelin-1 (ET-1), a mitogenic factor already investigated in several human cancer cell lines, which has been found to participate in the development and progression of tumours. This peptide has an important role also in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) where ET-1 expression has been found in 100% of cell lines. Objectives: The aim of this study was to measure ET-1 concentrations in the airways of patients with NSCLC using a completely non-invasive procedure – the breath condensate – and to verify the involvement of this peptide in the growth of lung tumours. Methods: We enrolled 30 patients (17 men, median age 63 years; range 53–74) with histological evidence of NSCLC and 15 healthy controls (9 men, median age 59 years; range 52–70). ET-1 was measured in the exhaled breath condensate by means of a specific enzyme immunoassay kit. Results: Higher concentrations of exhaled ET-1 were found in NSCLC patients (8.3 ± 0.7 pg/ml) compared to controls (5.2 ± 0.5 pg/ml, p < 0.0001). A statistically significant difference was observed between patients with distant metastases (stage IV) of NSCLC (8.9 ± 0.6 pg/ml) and those with locoregional disease (stage I–III) (7.9 ± 0.5 pg/ml). A significant reduction in ET-1 levels was found in 14 patients after surgical removal of the tumour either associated with or without adjuvant chemotherapy (6.3 ± 0.5 vs. 7.9 ± 0.4 pg/ml, p < 0.0001). Conclusions: These findings suggest that the measurement of ET-1 in the breath condensate of patients with NSCLC could be proposed as a marker for early detection of NSCLC as well as for monitoring reduction or progression of the neoplasm in the follow-up of treated patients.
Cardiovascular Diseases and Risk‐Factor Burden in Urban and Rural Communities in High‐, Middle‐, and Low‐Income Regions of China: A Large Community‐Based Epidemiological Study

Background Most cardiovascular diseases occur in low‐ and middle‐income regions of the world, but the socioeconomic distribution within China remains unclear. Our study aims to investigate whether the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases differs among high‐, middle‐, and low‐income regions of China and to explore the reasons for the disparities. Methods and Results We enrolled 46 285 individuals from 115 urban and rural communities in 12 provinces across China between 2005 and 2009. We recorded their medical histories of cardiovascular diseases and calculated the INTERHEART Risk Score for the assessment of cardiovascular risk‐factor burden, with higher scores indicating greater burden. The mean INTERHEART Risk Score was higher in high‐ and middle‐income regions than in low‐income regions (9.47, 9.48, and 8.58, respectively, P<0.0001). By contrast, the prevalence of total cardiovascular disease (stroke, ischemic heart disease, and other heart diseases that led to hospitalization) was lower in high‐ and middle‐income regions than in low‐income regions (7.46%, 7.42%, and 8.36%, respectively, P trend=0.0064). In high‐ and middle‐income regions, urban communities have higher INTERHEART Risk Score and higher prevalent rate than rural communities. In low‐income regions, however, the prevalence of total cardiovascular disease was similar between urban and rural areas despite the significantly higher INTERHEART Risk Score for urban settings. Conclusions We detected an inverse trend between risk‐factor burden and cardiovascular disease prevalence in urban and rural communities in high‐, middle‐, and low‐income regions of China. Such asymmetry may be attributed to the interregional differences in residents’ awareness, quality of healthcare, and availability and affordability of medical services.
Current issues in relapsing fever

Purpose of review Relapsing fever has the highest incidence of any bacterial disease in Africa and a massive epidemic potential due to current political turmoil in the Horn of Africa. This review focuses on recent advances in diagnostics, molecular biology and host–pathogen interactions. Recent findings Complete relapsing fever genomes have recently been published, and the first site-specific genetic knockout complementation has been performed. Relapsing fever has gone from being a neglected disease to garnering interest in aspects such as tissue invasion, membrane biochemistry and complement evasion. Relapsing fever symptoms are variable, and the disease is commonly misdiagnosed as, for example, malaria. Although relapsing fever is considered a transient disease, it persists as a residual infection in the brain, which can be reactivated on immunosuppression. Therefore, single-dose antibiotic treatment should be avoided. Instead, treatment should cover a longer period, similar to the recommended regime for Lyme disease. Relapsing fever is a common cause of pregnancy complications such as intrauterine growth retardation and placental damage with spirochaetes crossing the maternal–foetal barrier, resulting in congenital infection. Summary Although relapsing fever remains a big problem, recently described host–pathogen interactions, diagnostics and molecular biology advances such as completed genome sequences and the dawn of genetic tools have brought relapsing fever research into the 21st century.
Effect of Volume Fraction of Constituent Phases on the Stress-Strain Relationship of Dual Phase Steels

Ferrite-martensite and ferrite-bainite dual phase steels (DP-steels) were prepared by applying accelerated cooling (AcC) process on a linepipe steel. Their stress-strain relationships were predicted by micromechanics. In the predictions, the stress-strain relationships of the constituent phases whose chemistries were determined by microscopic examinations and some thermodynamic data were used. The effect of volume fraction of the constituent phases on the stress-strain relationships of the DP-steels was also examined. According to the applied model, a simple stress-strain curve can be divided into three stages. As a result of this investigation, work hardening takes place in stage II and at the beginning of stage III. Further, in stage II, the hardening rate is strongly dependent on the volume fraction of the harder phase. In stage III, the hardening rate for each DP-steel is smaller than that in stage II and is related to the difference in tensile strength between the harder and the softer phases. Furthermore the second investigation by means of FEM analysis was carried out in order to evaluate the influence of variation of the volume fraction of the harder phase on the stress-strain behavior of a DP-steel. Tensile tests showed that by increasing the amount of the harder phase (bainite) in the DP-steel, Luders elongation disappears. According to the results obtained by the FEM calculations, the stress-strain behavior is related to the microstructure, such as volume fraction and shape of the grains in the DP-steel.
High-Throughput Digit-Level Systolic Multiplier Over  $\mbox{GF}(2^{m})$ Based on Irreducible Trinomials

In this brief, we propose high-throughput digitlevel systolic structure for area-delay-efficient implementation of multiplier over GF(2m) based on irreducible trinomials. We have proposed a digit-level multiplication algorithm, which allows us to compute a set of d (where d is the digit size) partial products in parallel in each processing element (PE) during each cycle and accumulate them across the systolic pipeline in reduced form. To enhance the throughput rate of the proposed structure, we feed the reduced operands and accumulated partial products to the PEs by independent systolic channels that reduces the critical path to (TA + TX + TR), where TA, TX, and TR refer to the propagation delays of AND gate, XOR gate, and bit register, respectively. From synthesis results, it is found that the proposed multiplier involves significantly lower area-time complexity and higher throughput than the existing competing designs.
Avoiding distortions due to speech coding and transmission errors in GSM ASR tasks

We have extended our previous research on a new approach to automatic speech recognition (ASR) in the GSM environment. Instead of recognizing from the decoded speech signal, our system works from the digital speech representation used by the GSM encoder. We have compared the performance of a conventional system and the one we propose on a speaker independent, isolated-digit ASR task. For the half and full-rate GSM codecs, from our results, we conclude that the proposed approach is much more effective in coping with the coding distortion and transmission errors. Furthermore, in clean speech conditions, our approach does not impoverish the recognition performance, even recognizing from GSM digital speech, in comparison with a conventional system working on unencoded speech.
Internal force field in proteins seen by divergence entropy

The characteristic distribution of non-binding interactions in a protein is described. It establishes that hydrophobic interactions can be characterized by suitable 3D Gauss functions while electrostatic interactions generally follow a random distribution. The implementation of this observation suggests differentiated optimization procedure for these two types of interactions. The electrostatic interaction may follow traditional energy optimization while the criteria for convergence shall measure the accordance with 3-D Gauss function.
Genome Sequences of Three Koi Herpesvirus Isolates Representing the Expanding Distribution of an Emerging Disease Threatening Koi and Common Carp Worldwide

ABSTRACT Since the mid-1990s, lethal infections of koi herpesvirus (KHV) have been spreading, threatening the worldwide production of common carp and koi (both Cyprinus carpio). The complete genome sequences of three KHV strains from Japan, the United States, and Israel revealed a 295-kbp genome containing a 22-kbp terminal direct repeat. The finding that 15 KHV genes have clear homologs in the distantly related channel catfish virus (ictalurid herpesvirus 1) confirms the proposed place of KHV in the family Herpesviridae, specifically in the branch with fish and amphibian hosts. KHV thus has the largest genome reported to date for this family. The three strains were interpreted as having arisen from a wild-type parent encoding 156 unique protein-coding genes, 8 of which are duplicated in the terminal repeat. In each strain, four to seven genes from among a set of nine are fragmented by frameshifts likely to render the encoded proteins nonfunctional. Six of the affected genes encode predicted membrane glycoproteins. Frameshifts or other mutations close to the 3′ ends of coding sequences were identified in a further six genes. The conclusion that at least some of these mutations occurred in vivo prompts the hypothesis that loss of gene functions might be associated with emergence of the disease and provides a basis for further investigations into the molecular epidemiology of the virus.
A Model-Based Prognostics Approach Applied to Pneumatic Valves

Within the area of systems health management, the task of prognostics centers on predicting when components will fail. Model-based prognostics exploits domain knowledge of the system, its components, and how they fail by casting the underlying physical phenomena in a physics-based model that is derived from first principles. Uncertainty cannot be avoided in prediction, therefore, algorithms are employed that help in managing these uncertainties. The particle filtering algorithm has become a popular choice for model-based prognostics due to its wide applicability, ease of implementation, and support for uncertainty management. We develop a general modelbased prognostics methodology within a robust probabilistic framework using particle filters. As a case study, we consider a pneumatic valve from the Space Shuttle cryogenic refueling system. We develop a detailed physics-based model of the pneumatic valve, and perform comprehensive simulation experiments to illustrate our prognostics approach and evaluate its effectiveness and robustness. The approach is demonstrated using historical pneumatic valve data from the refueling system.
Deal or No Deal? End-to-End Learning of Negotiation Dialogues

Much of human dialogue occurs in semi-cooperative settings, where agents with different goals attempt to agree on common decisions. Negotiations require complex communication and reasoning skills, but success is easy to measure, making this an interesting task for AI. We gather a large dataset of human-human negotiations on a multi-issue bargaining task, where agents who cannot observe each other’s reward functions must reach an agreement (or a deal) via natural language dialogue. For the first time, we show it is possible to train end-to-end models for negotiation, which must learn both linguistic and reasoning skills with no annotated dialogue states. We also introduce dialogue rollouts, in which the model plans ahead by simulating possible complete continuations of the conversation, and find that this technique dramatically improves performance. Our code and dataset are publicly available.