Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of cationized antibodies in performed immune complexes on deposition and persistence in renal glomeruli

To study the interaction of positively charged antibodies in immune complexes with the fixed negative charge on the glomerular capillary wall, chemical cationization of antibody was accomplished with the maintenance of antigen-binding activity. These cationized antibodies bound rapidly to glomeruli but did not persist. Large-latticed immune complexes formed with these cationic antibodies showed rapid deposition and persistence in renal glomeruli, even when administered in small doses. Electron-dense deposits were present at the anionic sites in the glomerular basement membrane at 1 min and 1 h, with extensive subendothelial deposits present from 12 to 72 h. By 14 d, the deposits were seen in the subepithelial region and the glomerular mesangium. The administration of small-latticed immune complexes prepared with cationized antibody revealed initial deposition without persistence in glomeruli in a manner similar to cationized antibodies alone. Thus, the positive charges on antibodies in immune complexes contribute to the deposition and persistence of the complexes in glomeruli, particularly in the subendothelial area.
Effect of Nematic Liquid Crystals on Optical Properties of Solvent Induced Phase Separated PDLC Composite Films

In the present article the effect of two different types of nematic liquid crystals on electro-optical and thermo-optical properties of polymer dispersed liquid crystal films are discussed. Composite films composed of polymer poly(methyl methacrylate) and two different nematic liquid crystals E7 and E8 were prepared by solvent induced phase separation technique. Scanning electron microscopy and polarizing optical microscopic results showed that liquid crystal phase is continuously embedded in a sponge-like polymer matrix. The domains of E7 were found slightly larger and more elongated than E8 under the same conditions of preparation. Variation of optical transmission properties of the composite films under the conditions of an externally applied alternating electric field (0-300 Vp-p, 50-1000 Hz) over a wide temperature range was studied using He-Ne laser (wavelength 632.8 nm) as a light source. The experimental results showed that the E7-polymer film has better electro-optical as well as thermo-optical properties as compared to the E8-polymer system. The performances of both the composites improved significantly with increasing temperature. It was found that the physical properties such as viscosity, refractive index and transition temperature of liquid crystals play a major role on the properties and behavior of the polymer dispersed liquid crystal composite films.
Histological Chorioamnionitis Is Increased at Extremes of Gestation in Stillbirth: A Population-Based Study

Objective. To determine the incidence of histological chorioamnionitis and a fetal response in stillbirths in New South Wales (NSW), and to examine any relationship of fetal response to spontaneous onset of labour and to unexplained antepartum death. Study Design. Population-based cohort study. Setting. New South Wales Australia. Population. All births between 2002 and 2004 with stillbirths reviewed and classified by the state perinatal mortality review committee. Methods. Record linkage of the Midwives Data Collection and the Perinatal Death Database including placental histopathology and standardised cause of death classification. Results. 952 stillbirths were included. The incidence of histopathological chorioamnionitis was 22.6%, with a bimodal distribution. A fetal inflammatory response was present in 10.1% and significantly correlated with spontaneous onset of labour. The absence of a fetal inflammatory response was strongly associated with unexplained antepartum death. Conclusions. The increased incidence of histological chorioamnionitis at extremes of gestation is confirmed in the largest dataset to date using population data. This has important implications for late gestation stillbirth as the percentage of unexplained stillbirths increases near term.
The reproducibility of methods of assessment for cervical dentine hypersensitivity.

BACKGROUND Many agents and toothpaste formulations have been proposed for treatment of dentine hypersensitivity. However, studies have reported equivocal or contradictory results, potentially related to a lack of clinical efficacy for agents being tested, poor study design or the use of assessment techniques which are unable to distinguish longitudinal changes in dentine hypersensitivity. AIM To investigate the reproducibility of commonly used measurement protocols for dentine hypersensitivity on single or multiple teeth. In addition, newly-developed controlled air and cold fluid stimuli were investigated. METHODS AND MATERIALS Standardised pain stimulation techniques were used in 2 investigations with 63 and 42 subjects, respectively. The reproducibility of perceived hypersensitivity before and following stimulation was recorded over time periods of 14 and 2 days, respectively, using visual analogue scales and threshold techniques. RESULTS Subject demographics resembled those reported in other hypersensitivity investigations. Analysis using several measures of reproducibility indicated that subject-based reproducibility was limited, even when the stimuli were standardised. However, the data are consistent with the findings of investigations on pain assessment in other fields. CONCLUSIONS The reproducibility of subjects in clinical trials of dentine hypersensitivity may therefore contribute to difficulties in establishing treatment efficacy of agents in clinical trials.
Trends of Esophageal Cancer Mortality in Rural China from 1989 to 2013: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis

Background: Esophageal cancer is one of the most common cancers in rural China. The aim of this study was to describe the time trends of esophageal cancer mortality in rural China and to better elucidate the causes of these trends. Methods: The mortality data were obtained from the World Health Organization Mortality Database and the China Health Statistical Yearbook Database. The mortality data were analyzed with age-period-cohort (APC) analysis. Results: Our study indicates that the Age-Standardized Mortality Rates (ASMRs) in rural China generally decreased from 1989 to 2003, and thereafter increased until the year 2008 in both sexes. After 2008, the ASMRs decreased again. The results of APC analysis suggest that the general decrease in esophageal cancer mortality in rural China from 1989 to 2003 might be caused by the downtrend of the cohort effects and period effects, while the general increase in mortality from 2004 to 2008 might be caused by the uptrend of the period effects. The decrease in mortality after 2008 may be relevant to the Four Trillion RMB Investment Plan launched by the Chinese Government. Conclusions: The declining cohort effects were probably related to the improvement of socioeconomic status in childhood and the decreasing consumptions of alcohol drinking and smoking, while the trends of the period effects were relevant to the changes in the dietary pattern. Our findings may help predict future changes in esophageal cancer mortality.
GLP-1 receptor agonists vs. DPP-4 inhibitors for type 2 diabetes: is one approach more successful or preferable than the other?

In patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D), incretin‐based therapies improve glycaemic control with low incidence of hypoglycaemia and without weight gain, both advantages over traditional add‐ons to metformin. Dipeptidyl peptidase‐4 (DPP‐4) inhibitors are administered orally and provide a physiological increase in glucagon‐like peptide‐1 (GLP‐1) levels, while GLP‐1 receptor agonists (GLP‐1RAs) are injectable and deliver pharmacological levels of GLP‐1RA. This review aims to distinguish between GLP‐1RAs and DPP‐4 inhibitors, and discuss when each may be favoured in clinical practice.
Clinical pattern of systemic lupus erythematosus in Western Saudi Arabia.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to demonstrate the clinical laboratory, treatment and course of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). METHODS A total of 65 patients with positive double strand antibodies were collected at the Immunology Laboratory of King Abdul-Aziz University Hospital, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over a 2 year period between January 2000 and December 2001. The data included personal data, clinical manifestations, laboratory, results, and different modalities of treatment and outcome of treatment. Group results were presented as median +/- standard deviation or as a percentage. RESULTS Sixty-five patients with SLE were included in the study. The female to male ratio was 5.5:1. Median age of 23+/-11.33 years. Seventy percent had a multiple system involvement, 60% presented with arthralgia or arthritis and 55.4% had lupus nephrites, proved by kidney biopsy in 22 patients. Most were treated by intermittent cycolphoamide and steroids with an excellent outcome. Laboratory results and modalities of treatment were similar to previous results. Male SLE is more common in our study group with serious organ damage. Our mortality rate was 3% only. CONCLUSION Systemic lupus erythematosus presentation is similar to pervious studies and it is more common in male. Lupus nephritis is a common prevention with excellent outcome.
Relative weight and income at different levels of socioeconomic status.

OBJECTIVES We examined the association of relative weight with individual income at different levels of socioeconomic status among gainfully employed Finnish women and men. METHODS We used a population-based survey including 2068 women and 2314 men with linked income data from a taxation register. Regression analysis was used to calculate mean income levels within educational and occupational groups. RESULTS Compared with their normal-weight counterparts, obese women with higher education or in upper white-collar positions had significantly lower income; a smaller income disadvantage was seen in overweight women with secondary education and in manual workers. Excess body weight was not associated with income disadvantages in men. CONCLUSIONS Obesity is associated with a clear income disadvantage, particularly among women with higher socioeconomic status.
The disparate effects of Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease on semantic memory.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Huntington's disease (HD) impair performance on semantic memory tasks, but researchers disagree on whether AD and HD cause these impairments in the same manner. According to one view, AD disrupts the storage of semantic memories, whereas HD disrupts the retrieval of semantic memories. Dissenters argue that AD, like HD, disrupts retrieval. In this study, participants generated category exemplars (e.g., kinds of fruits) for 1 min, and response latencies were examined. Relative to healthy controls, the 12 AD patients produced a larger proportion of responses earlier in the recall period, consistent with the view that AD patients quickly exhaust their limited supply of items in storage. By contrast, the 12 HD patients produced a larger proportion of their responses late in the recall period, consistent with the view that HD slows retrieval.
An Information Retrieval Approach to Sense Ranking

In word sense disambiguation, choosing the most frequent sense for an ambiguous word is a powerful heuristic. However, its usefulness is restricted by the availability of sense-annotated data. In this paper, we propose an information retrieval-based method for sense ranking that does not require annotated data. The method queries an information retrieval engine to estimate the degree of association between a word and its sense descriptions. Experiments on the Senseval test materials yield state-ofthe-art performance. We also show that the estimated sense frequencies correlate reliably with native speakers’ intuitions.
Simple method to obtain asphalt binders low temperature properties from asphalt mixtures properties

The purpose of this research was to investigate the possibility of developing a simple method that could be used to obtain the low temperature properties of the asphalt binders contained in an asphalt mixture without using the extraction and recovery process. This information is critical in developing blending charts for mixtures that use Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP). Limited tests performed with the Bending Beam Rheometer (BBR) on thin beams of mixtures showed good promise in obtaining reasonable values for the mixture stiffness. The recently proposed Hirsch model was used to backcalculate the binder stiffness from the BBR mixture stiffness and the results were compared to the extracted binder stiffness. The results were used to recalibrate one of the parameters in the Hirsch model to closely match the predicted and the experimental binder stiffness at 60 seconds.
Protein transport to the dendritic plasma membrane of cultured neurons is regulated by rab8p

In the companion paper (Huber, L. A., S. W. Pimplikar, R. G. Parton, H. Virta, M. Zerial, and K. Simons. J. Cell Biol. 123:35-45) we reported that the small GTPase rab8p is involved in transport from the TGN to the basolateral plasma membrane in epithelia. In the present work we investigated the localization and function of rab8p in polarized hippocampal neurons. By immunofluorescence microscopy we found that rab8p localized preferentially in the somatodendritic domain, and was excluded from the axon. Double-labeling immunofluorescence showed that some of the rab8p co-localized in the dendrites with the Semliki Forest Virus glycoprotein E2 (SFV-E2). An antisense oligonucleotide approach was used to investigate the role of rab8p in dendritic transport of newly synthesized viral glycoproteins. Antisense oligonucleotides corresponding to the initiation region of the rab8 coding sequence were added to the cultured neurons for four days. This treatment resulted in a significant decrease in cellular levels of rab8p and transport of SFV- E2 from the cell body to the dendrites was significantly reduced. However, no effect was observed on axonal transport of influenza HA. From these results we conclude that rab8p is involved in transport of proteins to the dendritic surface in neurons.
Seroprevalence of HCV markers among HIV infected patients from Curitiba and metropolitan region.

OBJECTIVE to determine the prevalence and epidemiological factors associated with hepatitis (HCV) coinfection in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) patients from Curitiba and the metropolitan region. METHODS a study with 303 HIV+ patients, mean age 41.2 years (18-73); 50.5% men, followed at the Hospital de Clínicas, Universidade Federal do Paraná, between April 2008 and March 2009. Clinical and epidemiological data were obtained through questionnaires and retrospective analysis of medical records. Anti-HCV antibodies were detected by chemiluminescence immunoassay. RESULTS a total of 12.9% of HIV+ patients were positive for anti-HCV antibodies, 64.1% were men and 35.9% women, with mean age of 44.5 years (24-66). The frequency of HCV among men was 16.7% and among women 9.1% (p=0.06). HCV prevalence was associated to HIV infection when compared to the general population (p<10-6, OR=100.4; 95CI=13.7-734.9). The parenteral route of transmission was the most frequent among coinfected patients (46.1%), and the sexual transmission among HIV+/HCV- (71.8%) (p=0.02, OR=0.2; 95CI=0.1-0.7). The frequency of intravenous drug users was higher among the coinfected patients (61.5%) compared to the non coinfected (12.6%) (p<10-6, OR=11.1; 95CI=4.5-27.7). CONCLUSION the prevalence of coinfection with HCV in HIV+ patients is 12.9%, 88 times higher than in the general population in Curitiba. The most frequent route of transmission in the coinfected patients is parenteral, but the sexual route is also representative (34.6%).
Importance Sampled Learning Ensembles

Learning a function of many arguments is viewed from the perspective of high– dimensional numerical quadrature. It is shown that many of the popular ensemble learning procedures can be cast in this framework. In particular randomized methods, including bagging and random forests, are seen to correspond to random Monte Carlo integration methods each based on particular importance sampling strategies. Non random boosting methods are seen to correspond to deterministic quasi Monte Carlo integration techniques. This view helps explain some of their properties and suggests modifications to them that can substantially improve their accuracy while dramatically improving computational performance.
Clinical impact of blood cultures taken in the emergency department.

OBJECTIVES: (1) To establish the proportion of blood cultures that yield a positive microbiological culture. (2) To determine what proportion of blood cultures taken in the emergency department impact on patient management. (3) To develop guidelines for the appropriate ordering of blood cultures from patients in the emergency department (ED). METHODS: Retrospective review of all blood cultures taken in the ED of a metropolitan teaching hospital between 26 September 1995 and 30 June 1996. RESULTS: One thousand and sixty two blood cultures were taken from patients in the ED during the study period. Ninety two (9%) returned a positive microbiological culture. Of these, 52 (5%) were "true" positives and 18 (1.6%) resulted in changes in management. CONCLUSIONS: Blood cultures taken in the ED rarely yield positive cultures. Only 1.6% of blood cultures taken in the ED impact on management of patients. Simple strategies could reduce the number of blood cultures ordered with little prospect of patient compromise.
Industry perspective on ultrafine grained steels

Abstract Steels with ultrafine grain sizes have been the subject of major international research efforts. The step change sought from the 'ultrafine' 1 μm grain projects has now largely been back-tracked to focus on 'very fine' 2–3 μm grains. Particularly, this research has concentrated on dual phase and multiphase steels, thus merging with the ongoing developments that continued the advance of established products, though giving such developments a dramatic boost. In single phase material, refinement to 1 μm grains inherently reduces the ductility, but some applications are being designed around such properties. Moreover, poor ductility from a tensile test need not mean inadequate formability for high strength automotive sheet. For various applications, established steels remain more cost-effective, but 'very fine' grained steels have now become a standard item already selling in large tonnages. The production technology developed under these 'ultrafine grain' projects is also now used to produce plain carbon/carbon–manganese steels with grain sizes that were previously the preserve of microalloyed steels.
Nanoparticles, human health hazard and regulation

New developments in technology usually entail some hazard as well as advantage to a society. Hazard of a material translates into risk by exposure of humans and/or their environment to the agent in question, and risk is reduced by control of exposure, usually guided by regulation based on understanding of the mechanisms of harm. We illustrate risks relating to the causation of diseases associated with exposure to aerosols of combustion particles and asbestos, leading to paradigms of particle toxicity, and discuss analogies with potential exposure to manufactured nanoparticles (NPs). We review the current understanding of the hazard of NPs derived from the new science of nanotoxicology and the limited research to date into human exposure to these particles. We identify gaps in knowledge relating to the properties of NPs that might determine toxicity and in understanding the most appropriate ways both to measure this in the laboratory and to assess it in the workplace. Nevertheless, we point out that physical principles governing the behaviour of such particles allow determination of practical methods of protecting those potentially exposed. Finally, we discuss the early steps towards regulation and the difficulties facing regulators in controlling potentially harmful exposures in the absence of sufficient scientific evidence.
Activity modulation elicited by electrical stimulation in networks of dissociated cortical neurons

Recent results indicate that cultures of cortical neurons exhibit large amounts of spontaneous modulation. It has even been suggested that results obtained earlier could be explained by spontaneous development, rather than to be due to the external manipulation. This stresses the importance of having detailed knowledge of how a culture responds to stimulation, in order to discern activity modulation from structural plasticity. In this paper we apply several promising techniques of electrical stimulation to describe global network modulation occurring in these preparations. The results allow to anticipate on integration of this work in goal-directed stimulus-induced plasticity.
Incorporating long-range consistency in CNN-based texture generation

Gatys et al. (2015) showed that pair-wise products of features in a convolutional network are a very effective representation of image textures. We propose a simple modification to that representation which makes it possible to incorporate long-range structure into image generation, and to render images that satisfy various symmetry constraints. We show how this can greatly improve rendering of regular textures and of images that contain other kinds of symmetric structure. We also present applications to inpainting and season transfer.
Pulmonary Inflammation Is Regulated by the Levels of the Vesicular Acetylcholine Transporter

Acetylcholine (ACh) plays a crucial role in physiological responses of both the central and the peripheral nervous system. Moreover, ACh was described as an anti-inflammatory mediator involved in the suppression of exacerbated innate response and cytokine release in various organs. However, the specific contributions of endogenous release ACh for inflammatory responses in the lung are not well understood. To address this question we have used mice with reduced levels of the vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT), a protein required for ACh storage in secretory vesicles. VAChT deficiency induced airway inflammation with enhanced TNF-α and IL-4 content, but not IL-6, IL-13 and IL-10 quantified by ELISA. Mice with decreased levels of VAChT presented increased collagen and elastic fibers deposition in airway walls which was consistent with an increase in inflammatory cells positive to MMP-9 and TIMP-1 in the lung. In vivo lung function evaluation showed airway hyperresponsiveness to methacholine in mutant mice. The expression of nuclear factor-kappa B (p65-NF-kB) in lung of VAChT-deficient mice were higher than in wild-type mice, whereas a decreased expression of janus-kinase 2 (JAK2) was observed in the lung of mutant animals. Our findings show the first evidence that cholinergic deficiency impaired lung function and produce local inflammation. Our data supports the notion that cholinergic system modulates airway inflammation by modulation of JAK2 and NF-kB pathway. We proposed that intact cholinergic pathway is necessary to maintain the lung homeostasis.