Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Muscle Activity and Muscle Agrin Regulate the Organization of Cytoskeletal Proteins and Attached Acetylcholine Receptor (Achr) Aggregates in Skeletal Muscle Fibers

In innervated skeletal muscle fibers, dystrophin and β-dystroglycan form rib-like structures (costameres) that appear as predominantly transverse stripes over Z and M lines. Here, we show that the orientation of these stripes becomes longitudinal in denervated muscles and transverse again in denervated electrically stimulated muscles. Skeletal muscle fibers express nonneural (muscle) agrin whose function is not well understood. In this work, a single application of ≥10 nM purified recombinant muscle agrin into denervated muscles preserved the transverse orientation of costameric proteins that is typical for innervated muscles, as did a single application of ≥1 μM neural agrin. At lower concentration, neural agrin induced acetylcholine receptor aggregates, which colocalized with longitudinally oriented β-dystroglycan, dystrophin, utrophin, syntrophin, rapsyn, and β2-laminin in denervated unstimulated fibers and with the same but transversely oriented proteins in innervated or denervated stimulated fibers. The results indicate that costameres are plastic structures whose organization depends on electrical muscle activity and/or muscle agrin.
In Vitro and In Vivo Toxicity Profiling of Ammonium-Based Deep Eutectic Solvents

The cytotoxic potential of ammonium-based deep eutectic solvents (DESs) with four hydrogen bond donors, namely glycerine (Gl), ethylene glycol (EG), triethylene glycol (TEG) and urea (U) were investigated. The toxicity of DESs was examined using In Vitro cell lines and In Vivo animal model. IC50 and selectivity index were determined for the DESs, their individual components and their combinations as aqueous solutions for comparison purposes. The cytotoxicity effect of DESs varied depending on cell lines. The IC50 for the GlDES, EGDES, UDES and TEGDES followed the sequence of TEGDES< GlDES< EGDES< UDES for OKF6, MCF-7, A375, HT29 and H413, respectively. GlDES was selective against MCF-7 and A375, EGDES was selective against MCF-7, PC3, HepG2 and HT29, UDES was selective against MCF-7, PC3, HepG2 and HT29, and TEGDES was selective against MCF-7 and A375. However, acute toxicity studies using ICR mice showed that these DESs were relatively toxic in comparison to their individual components. DES did not cause DNA damage, but it could enhance ROS production and induce apoptosis in treated cancer cells as evidenced by marked LDH release. Furthermore, the examined DESs showed less cytotoxicity compared with ionic liquids. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that combined In Vitro and In Vivo toxicity profiles of DESs were being demonstrated, raising the toxicity issue of these neoteric mixtures and their potential applicability to be used for therapeutic purposes.
ASSOCIATIONS OF INFLAMMATORY CYTOKINES WITH CHOROIDAL NEOVASCULARIZATION IN HIGHLY MYOPIC EYES

Purpose: To determine the relationships between the levels of intraocular inflammatory cytokines and the clinical characteristics of myopic choroidal neovascularization (mCNV) in eyes with myopic maculopathy. Methods: One hundred eyes of 100 cases, including 51 mCNV eyes, 14 highly myopic eyes without choroidal neovascularization, and 35 normal subjects, were studied. The intraocular levels of choroidal neovascularization-related cytokines, like vascular endothelial growth factor, MCP-1, IL-8, IL-10, and IL-23, were determined. Results: The levels of vascular endothelial growth factor and IL-8 were significantly higher in eyes with mCNV than in high myopia eyes without mCNV with significant odds ratio of 2.00 and 2.25 per quartile, respectively (P < 0.05). When myopic lesions of patients with mCNV were classified into 3 categories based on the severity, IL-8 and MCP-1 were significantly elevated depending on the presence of maculopathy (P < 0.05). Vascular endothelial growth factor was significantly elevated in eyes of Category 2. An advancement of the maculopathy category was significantly associated with the need for multiple treatment of intravitreal bevacizumab (P < 0.05). In 12 eyes that required multiple intravitreal bevacizumab, the MCP-1 level was significantly elevated. Conclusion: The significant associations of mCNV in highly myopic eyes with elevated levels of vascular endothelial growth factor or inflammatory cytokines and maculopathy lesions strongly suggest an involvement of inflammation in the etiology of mCNVs.
Erythropoietin therapy: need for rationality and active surveillance.

Recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEpo or epoetin) is a general term used to define erythropoietin molecules that are produced through molecular genetic technology. Epoetin alfa, epoetin beta and darbepoetin alfa are currently employed as therapeutic agents. Epoetin beta (NeoRecormon®) and darbepoetin alfa (Aranesp®) are available in just one formulation each although different brands are present in different countries. Epoetin alfa is available in different formulations and in different brands. Epogen® and Procrit® are identical formulations of epoetin alfa distributed only within the United States, while Eprex® is a different formulation of epoetin alfa distributed only outside the United States. There are tremendous financial interests in this field, as the total annual sales of rHu-Epo in the world might be in excess of six billion US dollars. As a clinical investigator who has contributed to the development of erythropoietin therapy, I feel that the time has come to reconsider erythropoietin therapy in order to maximize its benefits for anemic patients, to minimize its adverse effects, and to avoid its misuse or abuse.
The influence of low-, normal-, and high-carbohydrate meals on blood pressure in elderly patients with postprandial hypotension.

BACKGROUND Postprandial hypotension (PPH) is a common and serious disorder of blood pressure (BP) regulation in elderly people. It has been suggested that primarily the carbohydrate (CH) content of a meal induces the BP decrease. Therefore, we examined the relationship between the CH content of meals and postprandial BP responses in elderly patients diagnosed with PPH. METHODS Twelve geriatric patients (aged 75 to 91 years; 6 men) who were previously diagnosed with PPH received standardized liquid meals with low- (25 g), normal- (65 g), and high- (125 g) CH content in random order on three separate days. Systolic BP (SBP), diastolic BP, and heart rate were measured every 5 minutes from 20 minutes before until 75 minutes after each meal. Postprandial symptoms were recorded every 15 minutes. RESULTS The maximum decrease in SBP was significantly smaller after the low-CH meal (-28 +/- 5 mm Hg) than after the normal- (-39 +/- 7 mm Hg) and high-CH meals (-40 +/- 5 mm Hg) (p <.050 between groups). In addition, the duration of PPH was significantly shorter (p <.010), and postprandial symptoms were less frequent and less severe after the low-CH meal. CONCLUSIONS Reducing the CH amount in meals induces significantly smaller decreases in SBP, shorter duration of PPH, and reduction of PPH-related symptoms. Therefore, limiting the CH content of an elderly patient's meal can be a clinically effective nonpharmacological treatment for PPH in elderly patients and can reduce the risk of developing symptomatic PPH.
The Relationship between Omega-3 Fatty Acid Intake and Muscle Soreness in Collegiate Rowers

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OMEGA-3 FATTY ACID INTAKE AND MUSCLE SORENESS IN COLLEGIATE ROWERS Background: Intense exercise may result in delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which is worsened with unaccustomed eccentric exercise, and is considered a major contributing factor to poor athletic performance. DOMS-related muscular inflammation appears to be especially prevalent in college-aged athletes. There is beginning evidence suggesting that omega-3 fatty acid (O3FA) intake may aid in alleviating muscle soreness, possibly because O3FA contribute to the production of anti-inflammatory eicosanoids. Objective: The primary objective of this study was to determine if the intake of omega-3 fatty acids was associated with a reduction in muscle soreness in collegiate rowers. Methods: Several groups of collegiate rowers were identified as potential subjects and, using an IRB-approved protocol, 61 volunteers from this subject pool agreed to participate in the study. At the end of the first week of fall practice, subjects were asked to provide information on age, weight, height, ethnicity, rowing level, sun exposure, exercise regimen, preand peak-soreness and exertion levels, hydration status, and food/supplement intake. A Talag scale was used to determine the severity of muscle soreness, and a modified Borg scale was used to determine the exertion intensity level. A food frequency questionnaire using a 10-point Likert scale was used to assess food and supplement intake, with a focus on omega-3 fatty acids. Results: Subjects with a higher intake of EPA/DHA rich bottled supplemental fish oil, taken by spoon, had significantly higher soreness levels than those with lower intakes (p = 0.028). Higher soreness was also significantly associated with higher intake of EPA/DHA rich fish oil capsules (p < 0.026). Lower soreness was significantly associated with higher fruit intake (p = 0.030). Conclusions: These findings suggest that high intakes of omega-3 fatty acids from fish oils, regardless of liquid or capsule form, may be contraindicated for collegiate rowers wishing to reduce muscle soreness. Recommending fruit intake may be warranted in rowers wishing to reduce muscle soreness. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OMEGA-3 FATTY ACID INTAKE AND MUSCLE SORENESS IN COLLEGIATE ROWERS By Danica Rose Carswell
A comparison of word graph and n-best list based confidence measures

In this paper we present and compare several confidence measures for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition. We show that posterior word probabilities computed on word graphs and N-best lists clearly outperform non-probabilistic confidence measures, e.g. the acoustic stability and the hypothesis density. In addition, we prove that the estimation of posterior word probabilities on word graphs yields better results than their estimation on N-best lists and discuss both methods in detail. We present experimental results on three different corpora, the English NAB ’94 20k development corpus, the German VERBMOBIL ’96 evaluation corpus and a Dutch corpus, which has been recorded with a train timetable information system in the ARISE project.
A Two-Level Learning Hierarchy of Concept Based Keyword Extraction for Tag Recommendations

Textual contents associated to resources are considered as sources of candidate tags to improve the performance of tag recommenders in social tagging systems. In this paper, we propose a two-level learning hierarchy of a concept based keyword extraction method to filter the candidate tags and rank them based on their occurrences in concepts existing in the given resources. Incorporating user-created tags to extract the hidden concept-document relationships distinguishes the two-level from the one-level learning version, which extracts concepts directly using terms existing in textual contents. Our experiment shows that a multi-concept approach, which considers more than one concept for each resource, improves the performance of a single-concept approach, which takes into account just the most relevant concept. Moreover, the experiments also prove that the proposed two-level learning hierarchy gives better performances than one of the one-level version.
Set-Based Analysis for Full Scheme and Its Use in Soft-Typing

Set Based Analysis is an e cient and accurate program analysis for higher order lan guages It exploits an intuitive notion of approximation that treats program variables as sets of values We present a new derivation of set based analysis based on a reduc tion semantics that substantially simpli es previous formulations Most importantly the derivation easily extends from a functional core language to include imperative features such as assignments and rst class continuations and supports the rst cor rectness proof of set based analysis for these imperative features The paper includes an implementation of the derived analysis for a Scheme like language and describes a soft typing algorithm that eliminates type checks based on the information produced by the analysis Supported in part by NSF grant CCR and a sabbatical at Carnegie Mellon University
Are drivers aware of their behavior changes when using In-Vehicle systems

The growing use of In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVISs) has become a safety concern due to the higher workload caused to drivers, which in turn affects their driving performance and visual behavior. This paper studied both drivers' self-perception of their behavior and the associated direct measurements while performing a set of In-Vehicle tasks in addition to driving. An experiment was conducted to compare these self-perceptions with their actual performance and visual behavior in real traffic conditions to improve the understanding of the associations and any gaps. The results suggest drivers are largely aware of the negative impacts of performing additional mental tasks whilst driving, although these tend to be over-estimated. More importantly, they under-estimate the effects of performing In-Vehicle tasks on their visual searching range, which reduced significantly. This has important safety implications, as driving requires intensive visual information processing, although the effects of different In-Vehicles tasks on various driver characteristics groups can be investigated using this objective and subjective comparison method.
Pancreatic Involvement in Von Hippel-Lindau Disease: Report of Two Cases and Review of the Literature

BACKGROUND:Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease is an autosomal dominant multicancer syndrome caused by the germline mutation of a tumor suppressor gene. Affected individuals develop benign and malignant tumors of the central nervous system, kidneys, adrenal glands, pancreas, and reproductive system. Although VHL disease is mainly diagnosed after the detection of central nervous system tumors, they may not always be the first presentation.CASE REPORT: We report the case of a patient presenting with pancreatic cysts for whom the final genetic diagnosis of VHL disease was formulated. During management, the use of endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) proved to be valid in the characterization of the pancreatic lesions. Family screening also revealed the genetic mutation in the patient's son and imaging investigations showed the presence of multiple tumors. The diagnosis allowed us to plan appropriate follow-up for both, thus improving their life expectancy.CONCLUSIONS:Gastroenterologists should be aware of the frequent pancreatic involvement in VHL disease and EUS can be useful in this setting.
Management of HCV Infection in the Elderly

During the past decade, the knowledge of clinical course and management of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has increased enormously, but there are few data on the course of the disease and its treatment in the elderly population (age > 60 years). According to its epidemiology, we are now facing HCV infection from the 20th century. We must take into account that in contrast to a younger population, old people who will develop Chronic C Hepatitis will be mainly women with genotype 1 and more severe fibrosis as clinical presentation pattern.
Joint demosaicking and zooming using moderate spectral correlation and consistent edge map

Abstract. The recently published joint demosaicking and zooming algorithms for single-sensor digital cameras all overfit the popular Kodak test images, which have been found to have higher spectral correlation than typical color images. Their performance perhaps significantly degrades on other datasets, such as the McMaster test images, which have weak spectral correlation. A new joint demosaicking and zooming algorithm is proposed for the Bayer color filter array (CFA) pattern, in which the edge direction information (edge map) extracted from the raw CFA data is consistently used in demosaicking and zooming. It also moderately utilizes the spectral correlation between color planes. The experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm produces an excellent performance on both the Kodak and McMaster datasets in terms of both subjective and objective measures. Our algorithm also has high computational efficiency. It provides a better tradeoff among adaptability, performance, and computational cost compared to the existing algorithms.
Stiffening of Cellulose Fibres - a Comparison Between Crosslinking the Fibre Wall and Lumen Loading

Stiffer fibres with improved resilience could lead to improvements for example in the fluff pulp area. Fluff pulp in absorbent products often collapse in a wet state at repeated insults. The products are also compressed for ease of handling and lowering the shipping costs. An increase in stiffness as well as spring back could solve the collapse problem and make the fibres spring back better after the compression, leading to better products. Two methods were used to improve these properties, crosslinking of the fibre wall using Butanetetracarboxylicacid (BTCA) and loading the lumen with TiO 2 . Wet stiffness was improved for unbeaten fibres, both from laboratory made sheets and machine made sheets, when BTCA was added. For the beaten pulp, the shape of the fibres may explain why these fibres did not exhibit improvements in wet stiffness. No improvements in spring back could be seen for any of the tested fibres. The lumen loaded fibres gained a higher density due to the TiO 2 treatment and since the samples were tested on a weight basis, a good comparison could not be done.
Pareto‐Optimal Estimates of California Precipitation Change

In seeking constraints on global climate model projections under global warming, one commonly finds that different subsets of models perform well under different objective functions, and these trade‐offs are difficult to weigh. Here a multiobjective approach is applied to a large set of subensembles generated from the Climate Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 ensemble. We use observations and reanalyses to constrain tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures, upper level zonal winds in the midlatitude Pacific, and California precipitation. An evolutionary algorithm identifies the set of Pareto‐optimal subensembles across these three measures, and these subensembles are used to constrain end‐of‐century California wet season precipitation change. This methodology narrows the range of projections throughout California, increasing confidence in estimates of positive mean precipitation change. Finally, we show how this technique complements and generalizes emergent constraint approaches for restricting uncertainty in end‐of‐century projections within multimodel ensembles using multiple criteria for observational constraints.
Chest pain in patients with arterial hypertension, angiographically normal coronary arteries and stiff aorta: the aortic pain syndrome.

INTRODUCTION Arterial hypertension is often associated with a stiff aorta as a result of collagen accumulation in the aortic wall and may produce chest pain. In the present study, possible interrelationships between aortic function, collagen turnover and exercise-induced chest pain in patients with arterial hypertension and angiographically normal coronary arteries were investigated. METHODS Ninety-seven patients with arterial hypertension, angiographically normal coronary arteries and no evidence of myocardial ischemia on nuclear cardiac imaging during exercise test were studied. Of these, 43 developed chest pain during exercise (chest pain group) while 54 did not (no chest pain group). Carotid femoral pulse-wave velocity (PWVc-f) was used to assess the elastic properties of the aorta. Amino-terminal pro-peptides of pro-collagen type I, (PINP, reflecting collagen synthesis), serum telopeptides of collagen type I (CITP, reflecting collagen degradation), pro-metalloproteinase 1 (ProMMP-1), and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 1 (TIMP-1, related to collagen turnover) were measured in plasma by immunoassay. RESULTS The chest pain group had higher PWVc-f, higher and /CITP ratio, and lower proMMP-1/ TIMP-1 ratio compared to the no chest pain group. PWVc-f (t=2.53, p=0.02) and PINP (t=2.42, p=0.02) were independently associated with the presence of chest pain in multiple regression analysis. CONCLUSIONS Patients with arterial hypertension, exercise-induced chest pain and angiographically normal coronary arteries, without evidence of exercise-induced myocardial ischemia, had a stiffer aorta compared to those without chest pain. Alterations in collagen type I turnover that favor collagen accumulation in the aortic wall may contribute to aortic stiffening and chest pain in these patients.
Empirical Evaluation of DASH Streaming over Multipath TCP in a Mixed Traffic Environment

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is a transport layer protocol that enables multi-homed devices to simultaneously use more than one interface. As a result, MPTCP provides a higher bandwidth to the applications and also increases resilience to potential connection failures. These aspects are crucial for real time traffic, especially streaming applications. One of the open source streaming protocols which has gained popularity in recent years is Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH). Studies evaluating the performance of DASH streaming over MPTCP have consistently shown significant performance improvements in application QoE (Quality of Experience) under various scenarios such as packet loss, shared bottleneck, and variable path latencies. However, when MPTCP is deployed for streaming over the Internet, it has to compete with several other types of traffic. So far, no study has been conducted to evaluate the performance of DASH over MPTCP under varying traffic loads. Besides, all the existing studies have used the out-of-tree Linux implementation of MPTCP. In this work, we present a detailed evaluation of streaming DASH traffic over MPTCP and also compare its performance against streaming over TCP under mixed traffic environment. We leverage Linux network namespaces for creating the testbed and stream DASH traffic. Moreover, we analyze the impact of competing traffic on the throughput of MPTCP. Our work is also the first to use the state-of-the-art upstream implementation of MPTCP in Linux. We observed that while MPTCP offers certain benefits for streaming, its performance may not be significantly better than traditional TCP under varying traffic loads. Our research indicates that the effectiveness of MPTCP for DASH streaming largely depends on segment length. MPTCP tends to perform better within a specific range of segment lengths that are neither too small nor too large.