Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antioxidant Activity, α-glucosidase Inhibitory Activity and Chemoprotective Properties of Rhododendron brachycarpum Leaves Extracts.

BACKGROUND Rhododendron brachycarpum (RB) is a genus of flowering plants generally used for traditional medicine in Korea to treat hypertension, neuralgia, and sterility. Previous studies have shown that RB extract alleviate inflammation and antimicrobial activity. OBJECTIVE In this study, the effects of RB and its different fractions (n-hexane, ethyl-acetate and n-butanol) on antioxidant activity, DNA damage prevention and the activity of α-glucosidase were studied. RESULTS The antioxidant ability of RB was investigated in vitro, including that of DPPH-radical and reducing power. As expected, scavenging effect against DPPH-radical of ethyl acetate fraction (IC50 = 17.7 ± 0.5 µg/ml) of RB had the highest DPPH radical scavenging activity, and it was superior to the positive control, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) (IC50 = 80.8 ± 1.5 µg/ml). And the reducing power of RB was 3.18 at 1.0 mg/ml. Meanwhile, the α-glucosidase inhibitory activity and prevention of oxidation stress-induced DNA damage were also highest in the ethyl acetate fraction. Pretreatment of pancreatic β-cells from Syrian golden hamster (HIT-TI5) with the ethyl acetate fraction at concentrations of 300 µg/ml significantly protected the cells from high glucose-induced cell death. CONCLUSION Our results indicate that ethyl acetate fraction of RB leaves extract has strong antioxidant, α-glucosidase, and prevention of DNA damage activities, and furthermore, ethyl acetate fraction significantly protected the cells from high glucose-induced cell death.
A positive feedback loop between Dumbfounded and Rolling pebbles leads to myotube enlargement in Drosophila

In Drosophila, myoblasts are subdivided into founders and fusion-competent myoblasts (fcm) with myotubes forming through fusion of one founder and several fcm. Duf and rolling pebbles 7 (Rols7; also known as antisocial) are expressed in founders, whereas sticks and stones (SNS) is present in fcm. Duf attracts fcm toward founders and also causes translocation of Rols7 from the cytoplasm to the fusion site. We show that Duf is a type 1 transmembrane protein that induces Rols7 translocation specifically when present intact and engaged in homophilic or Duf–SNS adhesion. Although its membrane-anchored extracellular domain functions as an attractant and is sufficient for the initial round of fusion, subsequent fusions require replenishment of Duf through cotranslocation with Rols7 tetratricopeptide repeat/coiled-coil domain-containing vesicles to the founder/myotube surface, causing both Duf and Rols7 to be at fusion sites between founders/myotubes and fcm. This implicates the Duf–Rols7 positive feedback loop to the occurrence of fusion at specific sites along the membrane and provides a mechanism by which the rate of fusion is controlled.
Standard Test Methods for Textile Composites

Standard testing methods for composite laminates reinforced with continuous networks of braided, woven, or stitched fibers have been evaluated. The microstructure of these "textile" composite materials differs significantly from that of tape laminates. Consequently, specimen dimensions and loading methods developed for tape type composites may not be applicable to textile composites. To this end, a series of evaluations were made comparing testing practices currently used in the composite industry. Information was gathered from a variety of sources and analyzed to establish a series of recommended test methods for textile composites. The current practices established for laminated composite materials by ASTM and the in-plane and out-of-plane properties. Specifically, test methods are suggested for unnotched tension and compression, open and filled hole tension, open hole compression, bolt bearing, and interlaminar tension. A detailed description of the material architectures evaluated is also provided, as is a recommended instrumentation practice.
Feasibility of an Alzheimer's disease knowledge intervention in the Latino community

ABSTRACT Background: Latinos experience disparities in Alzheimer's disease (AD) knowledge. The aim of this study was to explore the feasibility of a 45-minute culturally-tailored AD knowledge presentation for professionals serving the Latino community and Latinos served by Latino community organizations. Methods: One-session AD knowledge lunch-and-learn events were conducted with 40 professionals and 37 served Latinos. Participants received a pre-post survey including questions on satisfaction, a subjective AD knowledge question and a 14 item objective AD knowledge questionnaire. Results: Professionals (54.3%) and served Latinos (94.6%) reported the session as being very enjoyable and increased in objective AD knowledge (2.1 and 2.5 units, p < .001) and subjective knowledge (1.1 and 1.7 units; p < .001). Discussion: A brief in-person culturally-tailored session of AD education increases short-term AD knowledge and is perceived as interesting and useful among professionals serving the Latino community and Latinos served by Latino community organizations.
Clinical Significance of a Cytologic Diagnosis of Atypical Glandular Cells, Favor Endometrial Origin, in Pap Smears

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the significance of a diagnosis of atypical glandular cells, favor endometrial origin (AGC-EM), using cytohistologic correlation. STUDY DESIGN A retrospective search identified 90 cervicovaginal smears (vaginal pool) with a diagnosis of AGC-EM, in 2 tertiary care medical centers between January 1998 and December 2002. RESULTS Forty-six (51%) were conventional preparations and 44 (49%) were liquid-based monolayers (SurePath, TriPath Imaging Inc., Burlington, North Carolina, U.S.A.). Follow-up biopsies were available in 55 of 90 (61%) cases, 15 of 90 (17%) cases had cytology follow-up, and 20 of 90 (22%) were lost to follow-up. The patients ranged in age from 30 to 86 years (mean, 56); 56 of 90 (62%) were > 50 years. Among the patients who underwent biopsy, 22 (40%) had a clinically significant lesion, including 10 (18%) endometrial adenocarcinomas, 8 (15%) endometrial hyperplasias and 4 (7%) high grade squamous intraepithelial lesion/squamous cell carcinoma, nonkeratinizing type. The remaining 33 patients had benign histology, including benign endometrium, endometrial polyp, tubal metaplasia, cystic endometrial atrophy and cervical microglandular hyperplasia. Of the patients with cytologic follow-up, 2 had Pap smears showing atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance, while the remainder had negative results. CONCLUSION In our study population, 40% (22 of 55) of women who underwent biopsy following a diagnosis of AGC-EM had significant uterine lesions, with the majority of the lesions endometrial in origin. Patients with a diagnosis of AGC-EM, especially those > 50, should be followed closely, and endometrial sampling should be included in their initial workup.
Topical bevacizumab in the treatment of corneal neovascularization: results of a prospective, open-label, noncomparative study.

OBJECTIVE To study the safety and efficacy of topical bevacizumab in the treatment of corneal neovascularization (NV). DESIGN In a prospective, open-label, noncomparative study, 10 eyes from 10 patients with stable corneal NV were treated with topical bevacizumab, 1.0%, for 3 weeks and followed up for up to 24 weeks. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The primary safety variables were the occurrence of ocular and systemic adverse events throughout the course of the study. The primary efficacy variables were neovascular area, the area of the corneal vessels themselves; vessel caliber, the mean diameter of the corneal vessels; and invasion area, the fraction of the total corneal area covered by the vessels. RESULTS From baseline visit to the last follow-up visit, mean reductions were 47.1% (standard deviation [SD], 36.7%) for neovascular area, 54.1% (SD, 28.1%) for vessel caliber, and 12.2% (SD, 42.0%) for invasion area. The decreases in neovascular area and vessel caliber were statistically significant (P= .001 and P< .001, respectively). However, changes in invasion area did not achieve statistical significance (P= .19). Visual acuity and central corneal thickness showed no significant changes. Topical bevacizumab was well tolerated with no adverse events. CONCLUSIONS Short-term topical bevacizumab therapy reduces the severity of corneal NV without local or systemic adverse effects. APPLICATION TO CLINICAL PRACTICE Topical bevacizumab provides an alternative therapy in the treatment of stable corneal NV. TRIAL REGISTRATION clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00559936.
Alternating least squares for personalized ranking

Two flavors of the recommendation problem are the explicit and the implicit feedback settings. In the explicit feedback case, users rate items and the user-item preference relationship can be modelled on the basis of the ratings. In the harder but more common implicit feedback case, the system has to infer user preferences from indirect information: presence or absence of events, such as a user viewed an item. One approach for handling implicit feedback is to minimize a ranking objective function instead of the conventional prediction mean squared error. The naive minimization of a ranking objective function is typically expensive. This difficulty is usually overcome by a trade-off: sacrificing the accuracy to some extent for computational efficiency by sampling the objective function. In this paper, we present a computationally effective approach for the direct minimization of a ranking objective function, without sampling. We demonstrate by experiments on the Y! Music and Netflix data sets that the proposed method outperforms other implicit feedback recommenders in many cases in terms of the ErrorRate, ARP and Recall evaluation metrics.
Carbon Allotrope Dependence on Temperature and Pressure During Thermal Decomposition of Silicon Carbide

Abstract : Bulk CNT and graphene films form on SiC using a metal-catalyst-free thermal decomposition approach. In this work, the background vacuum pressure and temperature used in the decomposition process are varied to investigate their impact on the type and quality of carbon allotrope formed on the SiC substrate. The carbon nanostructure growth is performed using two approaches, both of which involve intense heating (1400-1700 deg C) of SiC under moderate vacuum conditions (0.01 - 0.00001 Torr). The first growth method uses a conventional graphite resistance furnace capable of annealing waferscale samples over 1700 deg C under vacuum. Using this approach, post-growth characterization is performed using both SEM and Raman spectroscopy. The second growth approach heats an illuminated area of the SiC substrate under vacuum conditions, resulting in a micro-meter scale growth process. Unique to this micro-scale approach is that in-situ Raman spectroscopy is performed yielding instantaneous characterization of the resultant carbon nanostructure. This work focuses on using the laser-induced growth technique to refine ideal growth parameters of bulk nanostructure films. This work reports results and findings for various parameter sets implemented during growth, providing insight into the physical mechanism of the growth process.
Examining the Effectiveness of a Culturally Adapted Social-Emotional Intervention for African American Males in an Urban Setting

The purpose of the present study was to assess the efficacy of a culturally adapted version of the Strong Start intervention program on the social-emotional outcomes of African American male students. Externalizing behavior problems of children, specifically African American males, are of great concern for schools. Punitive discipline polices such as expulsion and suspension have proved to be ineffective and harmful. Consequently, school-based social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions have been proposed to teach children coping skills that can help them increase positive social behaviors and emotional regulation. Sixty-one African American male students enrolled in an urban elementary school participated in this intervention. This study employed a randomized delayed treatment control design. Results indicated positive effects in the areas of self-regulation and self-competence. However the intervention did not have an impact on student’s empathy, responsibility, or externalizing behavior. Implications are discussed in terms of developing culturally relevant school-based interventions for African American males.
Plastid Genome Comparative and Phylogenetic Analyses of the Key Genera in Fagaceae: Highlighting the Effect of Codon Composition Bias in Phylogenetic Inference

Fagaceae is one of the largest and economically important taxa within Fagales. Considering the incongruence among inferences from plastid and nuclear genes in the previous Fagaceae phylogeny studies, we assess the performance of plastid phylogenomics in this complex family. We sequenced and assembled four complete plastid genomes (Fagus engleriana, Quercus spinosa, Quercus aquifolioides, and Quercus glauca) using reference-guided assembly approach. All of the other 12 published plastid genomes in Fagaceae were retrieved for genomic analyses (including repeats, sequence divergence and codon usage) and phylogenetic inference. The genomic analyses reveal that plastid genomes in Fagaceae are conserved. Comparing the phylogenetic relationships of the key genera in Fagaceae inferred from different codon positions and gene function datasets, we found that the first two codon sites dataset recovered nearly all relationships and received high support. Thus, the result suggested that codon composition bias had great influence on Fagaceae phylogenetic inference. Our study not only provides basic understanding of Fagaceae plastid genomes, but also illuminates the effectiveness of plastid phylogenomics in resolving relationships of this intractable family.
Does endothelial tetrahydrobiopterin control the endothelial NO synthase coupling state in arterial resistance arteries?

This article is a Commentary on Chuaiphichai S, Crabtree MJ, McNeill E, Hale AB, Trelfa L, Channon KM et al. (2017). A key role for tetrahydrobiopterin‐dependent endothelial NOS regulation in resistance arteries: studies in endothelial cell tetrahydrobiopterin‐deficient mice. Br J Pharmacol 174: 657–671. https://doi.org/10.1111/bph.13728
Parental Expression Variation of Small RNAs Is Negatively Correlated with Grain Yield Heterosis in a Maize Breeding Population

Heterosis refers to a quantitative phenomenon in which F1 hybrid trait values exceed the mean of the parental values in a positive direction. Generally, it is dependent on a high degree of heterozygosity, which is maintained in hybrid breeding by developing parental lines in separate, genetically distinct heterotic groups. The mobility of small RNAs (sRNAs) that mediate epigenetic regulation of gene expression renders them promising candidates for modulating the action of combined diverse genomes in trans–and evidence already indicates their contribution to transgressive phenotypes. By sequencing small RNA libraries of a panel of 21 maize parental inbred lines we found a low overlap of 35% between the sRNA populations from both distinct heterotic groups. Surprisingly, in contrast to genetic or gene expression variation, parental sRNA expression variation is negatively correlated with grain yield (GY) heterosis. Among 0.595 million expressed sRNAs, we identified 9,767, predominantly 22- and 24-nt long sRNAs, which showed an association of their differential expression between parental lines and GY heterosis of the respective hybrids. Of these sRNAs, 3,485 or 6,282 showed an association with high or low GY heterosis, respectively, thus the low heterosis associated group prevailing at 64%. The heterosis associated sRNAs map more frequently to genes that show differential expression between parental lines than reference sets. Together these findings suggest that trans-chromosomal actions of sRNAs in hybrids might add up to a negative contribution in heterosis formation, mediated by unfavorable gene expression regulation. We further revealed an exclusive accumulation of 22-nt sRNAs that are associated with low GY heterosis in pericentromeric genomic regions. That recombinational suppression led to this enrichment is indicated by its close correlation with low recombination rates. The existence of this enrichment, which we hypothesize resulted from the separated breeding of inbred lines within heterotic groups, may have implications for hybrid breeding strategies addressing the recombinational constraints characteristic of complex crop genomes.
Shipping and the environment : Smokestack emissions, scrubbers and unregulated oceanic consequences

While shipping has long been recognised as a very carbon-efficient transport medium, there is an increasing focus on its broader environmental consequences. The International Maritime Organisation is responsible for the regulation of ship emissions arising from fuel combustion. Their current regulations are, however, much less strict than those applying to land-based transport within the European Union. Five different groups of pollutant emission from ship smokestacks are addressed in this paper: sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, organic matter and metals. The reduction of sulphur oxide emissions into the atmosphere using scrubber technology adds another dimension to the discussion, as this approach results in focused discharge of some pollutants to the surface water. A scoping calculation shows that an openloop scrubber on a medium-sized ship could discharge more copper and zinc daily to the surface water than the ship’s antifouling paint. The use of antifouling paint in the European Union is subject to a prior risk assessment, but scrubber discharges are not subject to any such risk assessment. This situation presents a problem from the perspective of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, as environmental monitoring programmes in some coastal areas of the Baltic Sea have shown that levels of both copper and zinc exceed environmental quality standards. To fulfil the Marine Strategy Framework Directive requirements and achieve Good Environmental Status, having knowledge of the magnitude of different anthropogenic pressures is important. Metal inputs from open-loop scrubbers have been largely neglected until now: some metals have the potential to serve as tracers for monitoring scrubber discharges.
Aortic valve stenosis and aortic diameters determine the extent of increased wall shear stress in bicuspid aortic valve disease

Use of 4‐dimensional flow magnetic resonance imaging (4D‐flow MRI) derived wall shear stress (WSS) heat maps enables identification of regions in the ascending aorta with increased WSS. These regions are subject to dysregulation of the extracellular matrix and elastic fiber degeneration, which is associated with aortic dilatation and dissection.
Plasma-derived exosomes in acute myeloid leukemia for detection of minimal residual disease: are we ready?

ABSTRACT The recent emergence of plasma-derived exosomes as biomarkers of leukemic relapse has introduced the potential for more sensitive non-invasive monitoring of leukemia patients based on the molecular and genetic analysis of the exosome cargo. In principle, the protein, lipid, miRNA, mRNA or DNA profiles of exosomes in patients’ plasma that associate with leukemic relapse can be identified. The diagnostic/prognostic value of these profiles could then be validated in prospective clinical studies. Here, we consider the potential of exosomes to fulfill the role of future biomarkers of minimal residual disease in AML. The rationale for developing exosome-based methodology for minimal residual disease detection is based on promising early observations. However, standards need to be established for evaluating exosome identity, isolation from body fluids, and assessment methods. The rapidly expanding knowledge of the exosome biology suggests that the exosome status as potential biomarkers may become clarified in the near future.
Risk Stratification, Triage, and Implementation of an Expedited Hip Fracture Treatment Protocol Is it Safe and Effective?

INTRODUCTION The population of patients in the USA over the age of 65 is expected to significantly increase over the next 40 years. These patients are at increased risk for hip fractures and will pose a burden to providers in the near future. In order to provide high value care, providers will need to maintain positive outcomes, mitigate complications, and reduce overall cost burdens. This study was designed to investigate the safety and efficacy of a patient transfer protocol between a large academic medical center and a single specialty orthopaedic institution. The protocol was, in turn, designed to provide high value care to the patients by safely redirecting a large volume of patients to the single specialty institution. MATERIALS AND METHODS Over one calendar year, data was prospectively gathered on all patients admitted to our academic center's ER with hip fractures. Patients were then triaged to high or low risk for transfer according to an established set of medical criteria. Patients deemed low risk for transfer were sent to our single specialty orthopaedic institution for management. Data capture and analysis were completed using MS Excel and SPSS, respectively. RESULTS Patients treated at the single specialty orthopaedic institution experienced shorter overall hospital stays and were more likely to be discharged to home than a rehabilitation facility (6.35 versus 8.79 days, p < 0.0001; 22% versus 4%, p = 0.49). There was no significant delay in time to surgery for patients that were transferred (65 versus 79 hours, p = 0.18). CONCLUSION The transfer protocol was both safe and effective for patients with hip fractures. Transferring patients for treatment at single specialty institutions has the potential to significantly reduce hospital stays and is more likely to result in discharge to home than a rehabilitation facility, thus successfully providing high value care to patients.
Fatigue tolerant design of steel components based on the size of large inclusions

Fatigue failures in high strength steel components often originate from large, brittle inclusions. The durability of the components is strongly dependent on the size of the inclusions and the magnitude of the local stresses caused by the applied loads. A successful design must consider both the size and the number of large inclusions as well as the stress distribution arising from the geometry and loading of the component. This paper presents a new approach to the safe fatigue design of steel components based on the size distribution of large inclusions in a component with a given stress distribution. The procedure is illustrated using the example of the stress distribution around a hole in a plate, with the size of large inclusions in a large volume of steel estimated by the Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD) method. It is found that the single largest inclusion is unlikely to lie in a highly stressed volume, but that the more frequently occurring slightly smaller inclusions contribute more to the probability of a fatigue failure. Knowledge of the shape of the size distribution over a range of large sizes, not solely that of the largest size, is therefore essential. The new approach offers a quantitative measure of the improvement in durability to be expected from reduction of the design stress range of a component and from improvements in steel cleanness.