Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Transcription Factor C-Myc Suppresses MiR-23b and MiR-27b Transcription during Fetal Distress and Increases the Sensitivity of Neurons to Hypoxia-Induced Apoptosis

Previous studies reported that the expression of miR-23b-27b cluster was downregulated in embryonic brain cortices during hypoxia-induced neuronal apoptosis. However, the mechanism underlying this downregulation is not completely understood. Here, we report that the transcription factor c-Myc plays an important role in regulating the expression of miR-23b-27b cluster during hypoxia. First, the c-Myc protein level was significantly elevated in embryonic brain cortices in a mouse model of fetal distress. Second, forced overexpression or knockdown of c-Myc could suppress or increase the expression of miR-23b-27b cluster polynucleotides. Third, we identified 2 conserved c-Myc binding sites (E-boxes) in the enhancer and promoter regions of miR-23b-27b cluster in the mouse genome. Finally, we showed that elevated c-Myc expression led to an increase in the Apaf-1 level by suppressing miR-23b-27b cluster expression and that this enhanced neuronal sensitivity to apoptosis. In summary, our study demonstrates that c-Myc may suppress the expression of the miR-23b-27b cluster, resulting in additional neuronal apoptosis during hypoxia.
Distal Radioulnar Instability is an Independent Worsening Factor in Distal Radial Fractures

Distal radial fractures in patients who are younger than the age when osteoporosis usually develops are different from fractures in the elderly. Arthroscopy has revealed these fractures often have a complex pattern of fracture related chondral and ligament injuries in the wrist. In Lund, Sweden, of the 92 distal radial fractures that occurred during 1 year in patients younger than the age when osteoporosis usually develops, 76 patients were assessed after more than 1 year (range, 14-38 months). The examination included questions, a visual analogue scale for pain, a physical examination, bilateral radiographic assessment, and wrist score determination according to Gartland and Werley. Instability at clinical examination of the distal radioulnar joint was associated with a worse wrist score and doubled the visual analogue measures for pain at rest and pain at load. This instability was not correlated to any radiographic variable at the time of fracture or at followup. The distal radioulnar joint was painful in 17 of the 27 patients with instability. Radiographic scapholunate dissociation did not af fect the outcome. However, radiographic osteoarthrosis Grade 1 was associated with a worse wrist score. The outcome was dependent on the stability of the distal radioulnar joint, which in turn was not correlated to any radiographic parameter. Thus, destabilizing ligamentous injuries are thought to be an important cause of residual problems.
Fastest mixing Markov chain on symmetric K-partite sensor networks

In this paper analytical solution of fastest mixing Markov chain problem over a sensor network with K-partite topology is provided. The solution procedure consists of Stratification of sensor network's connectivity graph and semidefinite programming. The studied topologies are evaluated in terms of asymptotic and per step convergence rates. The obtained optimal transition probabilities have been compared with those obtained from Metropolis-Hasting method by comparing mixing time improvements numerically.
Adrenergic Nervous System in Heart Failure: Pathophysiology and Therapy

Heart failure (HF), the leading cause of death in the western world, develops when a cardiac injury or insult impairs the ability of the heart to pump blood and maintain tissue perfusion. It is characterized by a complex interplay of several neurohormonal mechanisms that become activated in the syndrome to try and sustain cardiac output in the face of decompensating function. Perhaps the most prominent among these neurohormonal mechanisms is the adrenergic (or sympathetic) nervous system (ANS), whose activity and outflow are enormously elevated in HF. Acutely, and if the heart works properly, this activation of the ANS will promptly restore cardiac function. However, if the cardiac insult persists over time, chances are the ANS will not be able to maintain cardiac function, the heart will progress into a state of chronic decompensated HF, and the hyperactive ANS will continue to push the heart to work at a level much higher than the cardiac muscle can handle. From that point on, ANS hyperactivity becomes a major problem in HF, conferring significant toxicity to the failing heart and markedly increasing its morbidity and mortality. The present review discusses the role of the ANS in cardiac physiology and in HF pathophysiology, the mechanisms of regulation of ANS activity and how they go awry in chronic HF, methods of measuring ANS activity in HF, the molecular alterations in heart physiology that occur in HF, along with their pharmacological and therapeutic implications, and, finally, drugs and other therapeutic modalities used in HF treatment that target or affect the ANS and its effects on the failing heart.
Interleukin‐6 and Transforming Growth Factor‐β1 mRNAs are Induced in Rat Facial Nucleus Following Motoneuron Axotomy

Transection of the rat facial nerve leads to a rapid activation of both astrocytes and microglia around axotomized motoneurons. The factors involved in glial activation in vivo are poorly defined but cytokines have been implicated as major regulators of glial activity in vitro. In the present study we have investigated the expression of cytokine mRNAs in the axotomized facial nucleus that might be involved in glial activation. Eight hours after axotomy unilateral transection of the facial nerve had already induced a rapid accumulation of interleukin (IL)‐6‐mRNA, with a peak at 24 hours. No IL‐6 mRNA was detected on the unoperated control side. Transforming growth factor (TGF)‐β1 mRNA was detected at low levels in the normal facial nucleus, increasing to three times the normal level 2 days after axotomy. After day 7 TGF‐β1 mRNA levels gradually declined, with a second minor peak 21 days after axotomy. In situ hybridization experiments, 4 and 21 days after axotomy, localized TGF‐β1 mRNA to activated microglial cells around regenerating motoneurons, as well as probably some astrocytes. Motoneurons did not express TGF‐β1 mRNA. TGF‐β3 was found to be normally expressed in the facial nucleus but was not regulated by axotomy. No mRNA for IL‐1, tumour necrosis factor‐α or interferon‐γ was found in the regenerating facial nucleus at any point in time. Our data indicate that IL‐6 might act as an early activating signal for glial cells in response to motoneuron axotomy, and that TGF‐β1 expressed by activated glial cells might provide a long‐lasting negative feedback signal to control glial activation.
Effects of intramuscular administration of acepromazine on palmar digital blood flow, palmar digital arterial pressure, transverse facial arterial pressure, and packed cell volume in clinically healthy, conscious horses.

OBJECTIVE To determine the magnitude and duration of effects of acepromazine administered intramuscularly (IM) on digital and systemic hemodynamic variables in clinically healthy horses. STUDY DESIGN Experimental study. ANIMALS Healthy adult horses (n=12). Methods- An ultrasonic Doppler flow probe was surgically implanted around the medial palmar digital artery before the study. Catheters were inserted in the transverse facial artery, lateral palmar digital artery, and jugular vein. A treatment group (n=6) was administered 0.04 mg/kg body weight of acepromazine IM; control horses (n=6) were administered an equivalent volume of saline IM. Palmar digital blood flow, and digital and facial arterial pressures were measured at baseline and for 6 hours after administration. Venous blood was collected for measurement of packed cell volume (PCV). RESULTS Horses administered acepromazine had significantly lower facial arterial pressure compared with control horses administered saline. Palmar digital arterial blood flow in acepromazine-treated horses was not significantly different from that in control horses but increased significantly post-administration, compared with the respective baseline values for acepromazine-treated horses. PCV significantly decreased in horses administered acepromazine compared with their respective baseline value. CONCLUSION IM acepromazine causes hypotension and increases palmar digital blood flow over time but the magnitude of the effect on digital blood flow was not sufficient to yield differences compared with saline-treated horses. CLINICAL RELEVANCE IM acepromazine has a modest effect on palmar digital blood flow, facial arterial pressures and PCV in healthy horses with minimal sedation.
Role of the Amorphous Morphology in Physical Properties of Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene

The role of amorphous layer in the physical properties of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) was investigated. It revealed that the thicker amorphous layer would promote the toughness of polyethylene, but make a negative effect on the rigidity of the polymer. Furthermore, it would be easier for semicrystalline polymers with less entangled chains to bring out the interlamellar slippage that would absorb more energy during the deformation. Finally, promotion of the physical properties of UHMWPE was also achieved with the assistant of nano-modification and an excellent relativity between the physical properties and the amorphous thickness (la) was obtained.
Relevance of residual disease after liver resection for incidental gallbladder cancer.

OBJECTIVES In patients diagnosed with incidental gallbladder cancer (GC), the benefit and optimal extent of further surgery remain unclear. The aims of this study were to analyse outcomes in patients who underwent liver resection following a diagnosis of incidental GC and to determine factors associated with longterm survival. METHODS A retrospective analysis of patients diagnosed with incidental GC between June 1999 and June 2010 was performed. Data covering demographics, clinical and surgical characteristics and local pathological stage were analysed. RESULTS A total of 24 patients were identified. All patients underwent a resection of segments IVb and V and lymphadenectomy. Histological examination revealed residual disease in 10 patients, all of whom presented with recurrent disease at 3-12 months. Overall 5-year survival was 53%. Increasing T-stage (P < 0.001), tumour-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (P= 0.003), and the presence of residual tumour in the resected liver (P < 0.001) were all associated with worse survival. CONCLUSIONS Aggressive re-resection of incidental GC offers the only chance for cure, but its efficacy depends on the extent of disease found at the time of repeat surgery. The presence of residual disease correlated strongly with T-stage and was the most relevant prognostic factor for survival in patients treated with curative resection.
The Relation between Multilocus Population Genetics and Social Evolution Theory

Evolution at multiple gene positions is complicated. Direct selection on one gene disturbs the evolutionary dynamics of associated genes. Recent years have seen the development of a multilocus methodology for modeling evolution at arbitrary numbers of gene positions with arbitrary dominance and epistatic relations, mode of inheritance, genetic linkage, and recombination. We show that the approach is conceptually analogous to social evolutionary methodology, which focuses on selection acting on associated individuals. In doing so, we (1) make explicit the links between the multilocus methodology and the foundations of social evolution theory, namely, Price’s theorem and Hamilton’s rule; (2) relate the multilocus approach to levels‐of‐selection and neighbor‐modulated‐fitness approaches in social evolution; (3) highlight the equivalence between genetical hitchhiking and kin selection; (4) demonstrate that the multilocus methodology allows for social evolutionary analyses involving coevolution of multiple traits and genetical associations between nonrelatives, including individuals of different species; (5) show that this methodology helps solve problems of dynamic sufficiency in social evolution theory; (6) form links between invasion criteria in multilocus systems and Hamilton’s rule of kin selection; (7) illustrate the generality and exactness of Hamilton’s rule, which has previously been described as an approximate, heuristic result.
Clinical Phenotyping of Youth With New-Onset Musculoskeletal Pain: A Controlled Cohort Study

Objectives: The course of pediatric musculoskeletal pain from acute to chronic has not been well described and there is limited understanding of how to identify individuals with new-onset pain who may be predisposed to developing persisting symptoms. Thus, the purpose of this study was to describe the clinical phonotype of treatment-seeking youth with new-onset musculoskeletal pain compared with youth with and without chronic pain. Further, we tested predictors of pain-related disability and pain sensitivity in the new-onset pain sample. Methods: Participants were 191 youth, ages 10 to 17 years, representing 3 cohorts (new-onset musculoskeletal pain, chronic musculoskeletal pain, and a comparison group without chronic pain). Participants completed questionnaire measures of pain characteristics, psychological functioning, sleep, and pain-related disability. They also attended a laboratory visit to complete an experimental pain assessment using heat and cold stimuli to assess pain sensitivity and conditioned pain modulation. Results: Findings revealed youth with new-onset musculoskeletal pain had a distinct clinical phenotype where symptoms of pain and disability were in the mid-range between those of youth with diagnosed chronic musculoskeletal pain and youth in the community without chronic pain. Linear regressions within the new-onset pain sample demonstrated poorer sleep quality and higher pain fear predicted greater pain-related disability, and pain catastrophizing predicted cold pressor sensitivity. Discussion: Clinical phenotyping of youth with new-onset musculoskeletal pain highlights factors relevant to the pain experience. Future research can examine the roles of these variables in predicting longitudinal risk for chronic pain and disability.
Assessment of Aerobic and Respiratory Growth in the Lactobacillus casei Group

One hundred eighty four strains belonging to the species Lactobacillus casei, L. paracasei and L. rhamnosus were screened for their ability to grow under aerobic conditions, in media containing heme and menaquinone and/or compounds generating reactive oxygen species (ROS), in order to identify respiratory and oxygen-tolerant phenotypes. Most strains were able to cope with aerobic conditions and for many strains aerobic growth and heme or heme/menaquinone supplementation increased biomass production compared to anaerobic cultivation. Only four L. casei strains showed a catalase-like activity under anaerobic, aerobic and respiratory conditions and were able to survive in presence of H2O2 (1 mM). Almost all L. casei and L. paracasei strains tolerated menadione (0.2 mM) and most tolerated pyrogallol (50 mM), while L. rhamnosus was usually resistant only to the latter compound. This is the first study in which an extensive screening of oxygen and oxidative stress tolerance of members of the L. casei group has been carried out. Results allowed the selection of strains showing the typical traits of aerobic and respiratory metabolism (increased pH and biomass under aerobic or respiratory conditions) and unique oxidative stress response properties. Aerobic growth and respiration may confer technological and physiological advantages in the L. casei group and oxygen-tolerant phenotypes could be exploited in several food industry applications.
Comparison of Immunoblotting, Calculation of the Goldmann-Witmer Coefficient, and Real-Time PCR Using Aqueous Humor Samples for Diagnosis of Ocular Toxoplasmosis

ABSTRACT We compared three biological methods for the diagnosis of ocular toxoplasmosis (OT). Paired aqueous humor and serum samples from 34 patients with OT and from 76 patients with other ocular disorders were analyzed by three methods: immunoblotting or Western blotting (WB), the calculation of the Goldmann-Witmer coefficient (GWC), and PCR. WB and GWC each revealed the intraocular production of specific anti-Toxoplasma immunoglobulin G in 81% of samples (30 of 37). PCR detected toxoplasmic DNA in 38% of samples (13 of 34). Nine of the 13 PCR-positive patients were immunocompetent. Combining the techniques significantly improved the diagnostic sensitivity, to 92% for the GWC-WB combination, 90% for the WB-PCR combination, and 93% for the GWC-PCR combination. The combination of all three techniques improved the sensitivity to 97%.
Ieee Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 1 Effective Clipart Image Vectorization through Direct Optimization of Bezigons

—Bezigons, i.e., closed paths composed of B ´ ezier curves, have been widely employed to describe shapes in image vectorization results. However, most existing vectorization techniques infer the bezigons by simply approximating an intermediate vector representation (such as polygons). Consequently, the resultant bezigons are sometimes imperfect due to accumulated errors, fitting ambiguities, and a lack of curve priors, especially for low-resolution images. In this paper, we describe a novel method for vectorizing clipart images. In contrast to previous methods, we directly optimize the bezigons rather than using other intermediate representations; therefore, the resultant bezigons are not only of higher fidelity compared with the original raster image but also more reasonable because they were traced by a proficient expert. To enable such optimization, we have overcome several challenges and have devised a differentiable data energy as well as several curve-based prior terms. To improve the efficiency of the optimization, we also take advantage of the local control property of bezigons and adopt an overlapped piecewise optimization strategy. The experimental results show that our method outperforms both the current state-of-the-art method and commonly used commercial software in terms of bezigon quality.
Lifelong localization in changing environments

Robot localization systems typically assume that the environment is static, ignoring the dynamics inherent in most real-world settings. Corresponding scenarios include households, offices, warehouses and parking lots, where the location of certain objects such as goods, furniture or cars can change over time. These changes typically lead to inconsistent observations with respect to previously learned maps and thus decrease the localization accuracy or even prevent the robot from globally localizing itself. In this paper we present a sound probabilistic approach to lifelong localization in changing environments using a combination of a Rao-Blackwellized particle filter with a hidden Markov model. By exploiting several properties of this model, we obtain a highly efficient map management approach for dynamic environments, which makes it feasible to run our algorithm online. Extensive experiments with a real robot in a dynamically changing environment demonstrate that our algorithm reliably adapts to changes in the environment and also outperforms the popular Monte-Carlo localization approach.
Virtual InfiniBand clusters for HPC clouds

High Performance Computing (HPC) employs fast interconnect technologies to provide low communication and synchronization latencies for tightly coupled parallel compute jobs. Contemporary HPC clusters have a fixed capacity and static runtime environments; they cannot elastically adapt to dynamic workloads, and provide a limited selection of applications, libraries, and system software. In contrast, a cloud model for HPC clusters promises more flexibility, as it provides elastic virtual clusters to be available on-demand. This is not possible with physically owned clusters. In this paper, we present an approach that makes it possible to use InfiniBand clusters for HPC cloud computing. We propose a performance-driven design of an HPC IaaS layer for InfiniBand, which provides throughput and latency-aware virtualization of nodes, networks, and network topologies, as well as an approach to an HPC-aware, multi-tenant cloud management system for elastic virtualized HPC compute clusters.
Effect of cyclooxygenase and NO synthase inhibitors on antinociceptive action of acetaminophen.

The influence of cyclooxygenase (COX) and NO synthase inhibitors on antinociceptive action of acetaminophen (ACETA) was studied in rats. ACETA increased the nociceptive threshold for both mechanical (Randall-Selitto test) and chemical stimuli (writhing test). In both models the existence of ceiling dose of ACETA was observed. Indomethacin (IND), an inhibitor preferentially acting on COX-1, as well as nimesulide (NIM) and celecoxib (CECOX), i.e. respectively preferential and selective inhibitors of COX-2, markedly decreased the antinociceptive activity of ACETA in Randall-Selitto test. In contrast, IND increased, whereas both NIM and CECOX did not have any effect on ACETA action in writhing test. Pretreatment with LG-nitro-L-arginine (L-NO-ARG), an unspecific inhibitor of NO synthase, 7-nitroindazole (7-NI), relatively specific inhibitor of neuronal NO synthase, and L-N6(1-iminoethyl)lysine (L-NIL), relatively selective inhibitor of inducible NO synthase, significantly increased the action of the lower doses of ACETA (50 and 100 mg/kg) in writhing test, whereas it did not modify the effects of the higher doses. Similar effect of L-NO-ARG and 7-NI was observed in Randall-Selitto test, whereas L-NIL did not influence the action of ACETA. The possible involvement of COX and NO synthase systems in antinociceptive activity of ACETA is discussed.
Early-age Thermal Crack Control in Concrete

Early-age thermal cracking occurs when the restrained thermal contraction strain exceeds the tensile strain capacity of concrete. The restraint to thermal movement is the product of the coefficient of thermal expansion of the concrete, the temperature fall from a peak level during cement hydration, and a restraint factor. This report discusses each of these factors in turn, and shows how early-age thermal strains can be reduced by taking appropriate measures during the design and construction of reinforced concrete elements. The concrete temperature rise is shown to depend on a number of factors: cement content, type of aggregate, possible use of cement replacement materials, as well as ambient temperature, formwork used and section thickness. Restraint is a function of the construction sequence and the constraint of neighbouring elements. If early-age thermal cracking cannot be prevented, crack width can be controlled with reinforcement. Equations for the control of crack widths are developed, and while they are based on present requirements, they differ in two important respects. First, the concept of a restraint factor is introduced, then it is suggested that the crack widths are only controlled within an effective zone around the reinforcement and not necessarily throughout the section thickness. (TRRL) (TRRL)