Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sensory Regulation of Neuroligins and Neurexin I in the Honeybee Brain

Background Neurexins and neuroligins, which have recently been associated with neurological disorders such as autism in humans, are highly conserved adhesive proteins found on synaptic membranes of neurons. These binding partners produce a trans-synaptic bridge that facilitates maturation and specification of synapses. It is believed that there exists an optimal spatio-temporal code of neurexin and neuroligin interactions that guide synapse formation in the postnatal developing brain. Therefore, we investigated whether neuroligins and neurexin are differentially regulated by sensory input using a behavioural model system with an advanced capacity for sensory processing, learning and memory, the honeybee. Methodology/Principal Findings Whole brain expression levels of neuroligin 1–5 (NLG1–5) and neurexin I (NrxI) were estimated by qRT-PCR analysis in three different behavioural paradigms: sensory deprivation, associative scent learning, and lateralised sensory input. Sensory deprived bees had a lower level of NLG1 expression, but a generally increased level of NLG2–5 and NrxI expression compared to hive bees. Bees that had undergone associative scent training had significantly increased levels of NrxI, NLG1 and NLG3 expression compared to untrained control bees. Bees that had lateralised sensory input after antennal amputation showed a specific increase in NLG1 expression compared to control bees, which only happened over time. Conclusions/Significance Our results suggest that (1) there is a lack of synaptic pruning during sensory deprivation; (2) NLG1 expression increases with sensory stimulation; (3) concomitant changes in gene expression suggests NrxI interacts with all neuroligins; (4) there is evidence for synaptic compensation after lateralised injury.
Heat Shock Response Associated with Hepatocarcinogenesis in a Murine Model of Hereditary Tyrosinemia Type I

Hereditary Tyrosinemia type 1 (HT1) is a metabolic liver disease caused by genetic defects of fumarylacetoacetate hydrolase (FAH), an enzyme necessary to complete the breakdown of tyrosine. The severe hepatic dysfunction caused by the lack of this enzyme is prevented by the therapeutic use of NTBC (2-[2-nitro-4-(trifluoromethyl)benzoyl]cyclohexane-1,3-dione). However despite the treatment, chronic hepatopathy and development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are still observed in some HT1 patients. Growing evidence show the important role of heat shock proteins (HSPs) in many cellular processes and their involvement in pathological diseases including cancer. Their survival-promoting effect by modulation of the apoptotic machinery is often correlated with poor prognosis and resistance to therapy in a number of cancers. Here, we sought to gain insight into the pathophysiological mechanisms associated with liver dysfunction and tumor development in a murine model of HT1. Differential gene expression patterns in livers of mice under HT1 stress, induced by drug retrieval, have shown deregulation of stress and cell death resistance genes. Among them, genes coding for HSPB and HSPA members, and for anti-apoptotic BCL-2 related mitochondrial proteins were associated with the hepatocarcinogenetic process. Our data highlight the variation of stress pathways related to HT1 hepatocarcinogenesis suggesting the role of HSPs in rendering tyrosinemia-affected liver susceptible to the development of HCC.
Effect of phytic acid, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, and chitosan solutions on microhardness of the human radicular dentin

Aim: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of phytic acid, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), and chitosan solutions on the microhardness of human radicular dentin. Materials and Methods: Thirty dentin specimens were randomly divided into three groups of 10 specimens each according to the irrigant used: G1 - 1% phytic acid, G2 - 17% EDTA, and G3 - 0.2% chitosan. A standardized volume of each chelating solution was used for 3 min. Dentin microhardness was measured before and after application at the cervical, middle, and apical levels with a Vickers indenter under a 200-g load and a 10-s dwell time. The results were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Student′s t test. Results: Microhardness of the radicular dentin varied at the cervical, middle, and apical levels. EDTA had the greatest overall effect, causing a sharp percentage reduction in dentin microhardness with a significant difference from phytic acid and chitosan (P = 0.002). However, phytic acid and chitosan differed insignificantly from each other (P = 0.887). Conclusion: All tested chelating solutions reduced microhardness of the radicular dentin layer at all the levels. However, reduction was least at the apical level. EDTA caused more reduction in dentin microhardness than chitosan while phytic acid reduced the least.
Modelling the effect of function and disease activity on costs and quality of life in rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE When treatments with the potential to change the natural history of a disease are introduced, their longer-term effect on costs and quality of life (utility) has to be estimated using economic models. However, to remain useful tools, models must be updated when new information becomes available. Our earlier models in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have been based on functional status, but it has recently been shown that disease activity might have an independent effect on utility. The objective of this study was to improve the model by incorporating the effect of a subjective measure of disease severity and activity (global VAS). METHODS A Markov model was constructed with five states according to functional status (HAQ), and each state was subdivided according to the VAS (<40 and >40). Disease development (transition probabilities between the states) was taken from a longitudinal cohort study of patients with early RA in Sweden. A recent population-based survey of 616 patients with RA provided data on costs and utilities. The model incorporates the full distribution of costs and utilities from the survey, and long-term projections are made using Monte Carlo simulation. RESULTS The global VAS had a highly significant effect on utilities independently of HAQ. For resource consumption, only HAQ was a significant predictor, with the exception of sick leave, which was correlated with the VAS but not with HAQ. Using the cohort distribution from the longitudinal study, expected mean costs per patient over 10 yr were 106 034 euros (s.d. 5091 euros) (1 euro = SEK 9.20) and the expected number of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) was 5.08 (s.d. 0.09). Patients starting at HAQ <0.6 but with consistently high VAS scores would have expected costs of 102 830 euros and 4.96 QALYs, while patients with low VAS scores would have costs of 81 603 euros and 6.01 QALYs. CONCLUSION Our new model incorporates for the first time the effect of a subjective measure of disease severity and activity on both costs and utility, making it a sensitive tool to estimate the cost-effectiveness of disease-modifying treatments. New data on resource consumption indicate a shift to higher direct costs, particularly in early disease, and lower indirect costs in more advanced disease. The large size of the data sets used in this model reduces the uncertainty and makes estimates very stable.
L1-fusion: Robust linear-time image recovery from few severely corrupted copies

We address the problem of recovering an unknown image of interest, when only few, severely corrupted copies are available. We employ, for the first time in the literature, corruption-resistant L1-Principal-Components (L1-PCs) of the image data-set at hand. Specifically, the calculated L1-PCs are used for reliability-based patch-by-patch fusion of the corrupted image copies into a single high-quality representation of the original image (L1-fusion). Our experimental studies illustrate that the proposed method offers remarkable recovery results for several common corruption types, even under high corruption rate, small number of copies, and varying corruption type among copies. An additional theoretical contribution of this work is that the L1-PC of a data matrix of non-negative entries (e.g., image data) is for the first time shown to be optimally calculable with complexity linear to the matrix dimensions - as of now, the fastest-known optimal algorithm is of polynomial complexity. In the light of this result, L1-fusion is carried out with linear cost comparable to that of the simple copy-averaging alternative. The linear-low cost of L1-fusion allows for the recovered image to be, optionally, further refined by means of sophisticated single-image restoration techniques.
Effect of online journal club on evidence-based practice knowledge, intent, and utilization in school nurses.

BACKGROUND In the United States, an estimated 73,697 school nurses provide leadership in the provision of health care in the school setting. School nurses face challenges, such as providing quality health care in an educational setting and working in isolation. Journal clubs are one strategy to help incorporate evidence into practice. AIM An online school nurse journal club for school nurses was conducted as a pilot project to determine feasibility for replication and potential expansion. OBJECTIVES To determine if an online journal club changed knowledge of, and intent to use evidence. To determine if school nurses used the evidence in practice and felt more connected to colleagues. METHODS Three synchronous online journal club sessions were conducted for school nurses across three states. Thirty-five registered nurses enrolled and participation varied by session. Self-report surveys were used. RESULTS Participants increased their knowledge of evidence-based practice and shared evidence with stakeholders. Participants intended to and did use evidence in practice, including prioritizing based on evidence. Collegial connections increased. One of the most successful features was connecting authors of the articles directly to participants. CONCLUSIONS A school nurse online journal club is one strategy to bring evidence to practitioners. Technology exists for nurses experiencing practice isolation to connect through online avenues. Nursing researchers, educators, and administrators seeking to disseminate research to school nurses or other clinical specialties could replicate or expand this project. Expanding online journal clubs would allow busy clinicians to connect with colleagues and researchers to integrate evidence into practice.
Diel microdistribution of physical and chemical parameters within the dense Chara bed and their impact on zooplankton

Research on the diurnal distribution of physical and chemical parameters within a single macrophyte bed was carried out on the shallow Wielkowiejskie Lake (Poland). A non-parametric statistical analysis was used to compare the water quality features in different parts of a Chara hispida habitat including the middle, both edge (vertical and horizontal) parts of a macrophyte plant, and the open water next to-and above the stonewort stand.The obtained results showed a differentiation in the physical-chemical parameters of the environmental conditions within the Chara hispida stand. The greatest variability was found for dissolved oxygen. Its lowest concentrations were noted in the central part of the macrophyte stand, irrespective of the sampling time.The zooplankton communities within the examined Chara bed were strongly influenced by the concentration of dissolved oxygen. It was also found that two main components of zooplankton communities (rotifers and cladocerans) had a similar trend in their spatial and diurnal distribution within the stonewort stand.
Lanthanum Acetate Inhibits Vascular Calcification Induced by Vitamin D3 Plus Nicotine in Rats

Lanthanum, a rare earth element, has been used to decrease serum phosphorus level in patients with chronic renal disease and hyperphosphatemia. We aimed to observe the effect and mechanism of two doses of lanthanum acetate (375 and 750 mg/kg/day) on vascular calcification induced by vitamin D3 plus nicotine treatment in rats for 4 weeks. As compared with control rats, rats with calcification showed widespread calcified nodules and irregular elastic fibers in calcified aorta on von Kossa calcium staining and increased aortic calcium and phosphorus contents, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and bone-related protein expressions for osteopontin (OPN) and type III sodium dependent phosphate cotransporter Pit-1 (Pit-1). After treatment with either dose of lanthanum acetate, the calcified nodules and degree of irregular elastic fibers decreased in aortas. Lanthanum acetate at 750 mg/kg/day was more effective than 375 mg/kg/day in lessening vascular calcification by significantly reducing plasma phosphorus level, calcium × phosphorus product and ALP activity, by 30.3%, 28.6%, and 68.6%, respectively; reducing aortic phosphorus and calcium contents and ALP activity, by 48%, 53.1%, and 63.5% (all P < 0.01), respectively; reducing aortic mRNA level of OPN and Pit-1, by 55.8% (P < 0.01) and 38.8% (P < 0.05) and protein level of OPN and Pit-1, by 37.2% and 27.2% (both P < 0.01), respectively; and increasing carboxylated matrix Gla-protein (MGP) protein expression by 33.7% (P < 0.05), as compared with rats treated with vitamin D3 and nicotine alone. Lanthanum acetate could effectively inhibit the pathogenesis of vascular calcification.
An Activated Protein Kinase C α Gives a Differentiation Signal for Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells and Mimicks Macrophage Colony-stimulating Factor–stimulated Signaling Events

Highly enriched, bipotent, hematopoietic granulocyte macrophage colony-forming cells (GM-CFC) require cytokines for their survival, proliferation, and development. GM-CFC will form neutrophils in the presence of the cytokines stem cell factor and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, whereas macrophage colony-stimulating factor leads to macrophage formation. Previously, we have shown that the commitment to the macrophage lineage is associated with lipid hydrolysis and translocation of protein kinase C α (PKCα) to the nucleus. Here we have transfected freshly prepared GM-CFC with a constitutively activated form of PKCα, namely PKAC, in which the regulatory domain has been truncated. Greater than 95% of the transfected cells showed over a twofold increase in PKCα expression with the protein being located primarily within the nucleus. The expression of PKAC caused macrophage development even in the presence of stimuli that normally promote only neutrophilic development. Thus, M-CSF–stimulated translocation of PKCα to the nucleus is a signal associated with macrophage development in primary mammalian hematopoietic progenitor cells, and this signal can be mimicked by ectopic PKAC, which is also expressed in the nucleus.
Behavioural measurement and drug response characteristics of unipolar and bipolar depression

Synopsis This research is part of the NIMH-CRB Collaborative Study on the psychobiology of depression. The main objective of the research programme is to test hypotheses concerning the interaction of neurobiological mechanisms and behaviour in the depressive disorders. Part I of the report describes the rationale and the overall approach to measuring behavioural state and outcome in the research programme. Part II reports on the results of applying the behavioural methods to a comparison of the clinical phenomenology of unipolar and bipolar depression. The behavioural patterns expressed during the episode by the two groups are different. Further, the two types are shown to react differently to treatment with tricyclic drugs, reinforcing the thesis that they are qualitatively distinct forms of the depressive disorders.
An Investigation of Twenty/20 Vision in Reading

One functional anatomical model of reading, drawing on human neuropsychological and neuroimaging data, proposes that a region in left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT) becomes, through experience, specialized for written word perception. We tested this hypothesis by presenting numbers in orthographical and digital form with two task demands, phonological and numerical. We observed a main effect of task on left vOT activity but not stimulus type, with increased activity during the phonological task that was also associated with increased activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus, a region implicated in speech production. Region-of-interest analysis confirmed that there was equal activity for orthographical and digital written forms in the left vOT during the phonological task, despite greater visual complexity of the orthographical forms. This evidence is incompatible with a predominantly feedforward model of written word recognition that proposes that the left vOT is a specialized cortical module for word recognition in literate subjects. Rather, the physiological data presented here fits better with interactive computational models of reading that propose that written word recognition emerges from bidirectional interactions between three processes: visual, phonological, and semantic. Further, the present study is in accord with others that indicate that the left vOT is a route through which nonlinguistic stimuli, perhaps high contrast two-dimensional objects in particular, gain access to a predominantly left-lateralized language and semantic system.
IN- VITRO DIGESTIBLE ORGANIC MATTER AND ENERGY CONTENTS IN WILD GROWING FORAGES OF ARMENIA

Livestock production system in Armenia is based on forage plants derived from natural and modifi ed pastures and hayfi elds. At present, because of the lack of a suitable laboratory base, local forages have not been investigated in terms of in-vitro digestible organic matter (IVD), gross energy (GE) and digestible ener gy (DE) values. This study was carried out in the UK Reading University using 110 herbage samples including 37 grasses, 60 legumes and 13 forbs. Samples were col lec ted from the dry steppe (DS), meadow steppe (MS) and al pine (AL) zones of the Geghama Ridge and Mt. Aragats in Armenia. Mean organic matter (OM) content in different species varied within 880-936, IVD – 524-618, crude protein (CP) – 72-200 g/kg dry matter (DM), GE – 17.0-19.0 and DE – 9.5-11.2 MJ/kg DM. A substantial difference in OM, CP and GE contents was revealed between pure species and different botanical groups. Vertical zones also affected forage qua li ty: the CP content increased in all forages and OM content fell in grass and legume forages with increasing elevations. In all zones studied legumes showed higher values of CP and DE than grasses and forbs.
Adult age-dependent differences in resting-state connectivity within and between visual-attention and sensorimotor networks

Healthy aging is accompanied by structural and functional changes in the brain, among which a loss of neural specificity (i.e., dedifferentiation) is one of the most consistent findings. Little is known, however, about changes in interregional integration underlying a dedifferentiation across different functional systems. In a large sample (n = 399) of healthy adults aged from 18 to 85 years, we analyzed age-dependent differences in resting-state (RS) (task-independent) functional connectivity (FC) of a set of brain regions derived from a previous fMRI study. In that study, these regions had shown an age-related loss of activation specificity in visual-attention (superior parietal area 7A and dorsal premotor cortex) or sensorimotor (area OP4 of the parietal operculum) tasks. In addition to these dedifferentiated regions, the FC analysis of the present study included “task-general” regions associated with both attention and sensorimotor systems (rostral supplementary motor area and bilateral anterior insula) as defined via meta-analytical co-activation mapping. Within this network, we observed both selective increases and decreases in RS-FC with age. In line with regional activation changes reported previously, we found diminished anti-correlated FC for inter-system connections (i.e., between sensorimotor-related and visual attention-related regions). Our analysis also revealed reduced FC between system-specific and task-general regions, which might reflect age-related deficits in top-down control possibly leading to dedifferentiation of task-specific brain activity. Together, our results underpin the notion that RS-FC changes concur with regional activity changes in the healthy aging brain, presumably contributing jointly to age-related behavioral changes.
Decentralized Dynamic State Estimation in Power Systems Using Unscented Transformation

This paper proposes a decentralized algorithm for real-time estimation of the dynamic states of a power system. The scheme employs phasor measurement units (PMUs) for the measurement of local signals at each generation unit, and subsequent state estimation using unscented Kalman filtering (UKF). The novelty of the scheme is that the state estimation at one generation unit is independent from the estimation at other units, and therefore the transmission of remote signals to a central estimator is not required. This in turn reduces the complexity of each distributed estimator, and makes the estimation process highly efficient, accurate and easily implementable. The applicability of the proposed algorithm has been thoroughly demonstrated on a representative model.
International Journal of Biological & Medical Research Clinical Perspective of Lipoprotein – X

Lipoprotein – X(abnormal lipoprotein) is rich in phospholipids and unesterified cholesterol. The main protein component is albumin within the core and apolipoprotein C upon the surface. It is cleared by the reticuloendothelial system and the kidneys. Earlier studies reported presence of lipoprotein X (LP-X) in patients with cholestasis. Bile lipoprotein is a precursor of LP-X and in cholestasis this refluxes into the plasma pool , binds to albumin to form LP-X. Cholestasis of pregnancy and Primary biliary cirrhosis patients also reported high LP-X levels. LP-X may not be atherogenic and it may have antioxidant LDL activity. LP-X is found in LCAT deficiency which is characterised by low High Density Lipoprotein(HDL), anaemia , corneal opacity and chronic kidney diseases. The presence of serum LP-X can be associated with severe hyperlipidaemia , pseudohyponatremia and it also interfere with some serum LDLc assays and complexes with Alkaline phosphatase.
Total Phenolic Contents and Antioxidant Activity of Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) Peel Extracts

The phenolic compounds of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) peel extracted by two methods (solvent and ultrasound-assisted) with five solvents (acetone, methanol, ethanol, water and ethyl acetate) were compared with supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). The total phenolic compounds were determined according to the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent using tannic acid as standard. The overall results showed that acetone with sonication produced the maximum amount of phenolic compounds from pomegranate peel extracts (PPE). Furthermore, the effect of the acetone extract of pomegranate peel (0.010-0.050 %) on the stability of soybean oil during heating at 60 o C (oven test method) was determined by measuring peroxide and thiobarbitoric acid values. At a 0.050 % level of pomegranate peel extract, its antioxidant activity was greater than 0.02 % of the two synthetic antioxidants butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). The pomegranate peel extract possessed a relatively high antioxidant activity and might be considered as a rich source of natural antioxidant.