Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antiproliferative activity of apples is not due to phenolic-induced hydrogen peroxide formation.

Anticancer compound screening of natural products using tumor cell lines has been commonly used to identify anticancer drugs. Two highly significant anticancer drugs, paclitaxel (Taxol) and camptothecin, were discovered using tumor cell lines by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) screening program of plants. It has been recently reported that the inhibition of cancer cell proliferation by fruit extracts was indirectly caused by phenolic-induced H(2)O(2) production in the cell culture media, suggesting that many previously reported effects of flavonoids and phenolic compounds on cultured cells might be from an artifact of H(2)O(2)-induced oxidative stress. The objective of the present study was to determine if apple extracts induced H(2)O(2) formation in common cell culture media and to investigate if the antiproliferative activity of apple extracts was due to phenolic-induced H(2)O(2) formation. It is reported here that apple extracts did not induce H(2)O(2) formation in WME, DMEM, or DMEM/Ham F12 media with the cell culture conditions tested. These same extracts inhibited proliferation of HepG(2) and Caco-2 cells. Therefore, antiproliferative activity of apple extracts was not due to the phenolic-induced H(2)O(2) production in cell culture media. In addition, H(2)O(2) added to the culture medium at 100 microM did not cause inhibition of cell proliferation in either HepG(2) liver cancer cells or Caco-2 colon cancer cells in vitro.
Anti-gamma interferon and anti-interleukin-6 antibodies affect staphylococcal enterotoxin B-induced weight loss, hypoglycemia, and cytokine release in D-galactosamine-sensitized and unsensitized mice

Administration of staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB) to BALB/c mice was found to induce a cytokine release syndrome hallmarked by weight loss and hypoglycemia. A neutralizing monoclonal antibody against gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) given before SEB counteracted weight loss and prevented hypoglycemia. This protective effect of anti-IFN-gamma antibody was associated with decreased IFN-gamma levels in serum; tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels remained unchanged. A monoclonal anti-IL-6 antibody, known for its ability to cause accumulation of biologically active IL-6 in the circulation, did not modify SEB-induced body weight loss or hypoglycemia. Levels of TNF, IFN-gamma, and IL-6 in serum were all more elevated in anti-IL-6-treated mice than in corresponding SEB-challenged control mice. In D-galactosamine-sensitized mice, SEB-induced weight loss but not hypoglycemia was more severe, resulting mostly in death within 24 h. Higher levels of biologically active TNF and IFN-gamma in serum were noted in these mice than in mice receiving SEB only. In D-galactosamine-sensitized mice, anti-IFN-gamma antibody did prevent hypoglycemia but failed to reduce the severity of the syndrome. Again, TNF levels in anti-IFN-gamma-treated mice remained unchanged. Pretreatment with anti-IL-6 antibody temporarily attenuated SEB-induced hypoglycemia in sensitized mice. Thus, at 6 h post-SEB injection, anti-IL-6-treated mice were less hypoglycemic than corresponding controls. However, at 24 h, hypoglycemia was significantly aggravated. Concomitantly, IL-6 levels were dramatically increased. Neither anti-IFN-gamma nor anti-IL-6 antibody treatment modulated mortality levels in D-galactosamine-sensitized mice. The data obtained with anti-IFN-gamma antibody clearly indicate that endogenous IFN-gamma is instrumental in bringing about hypoglycemia and body weight loss in mice exposed to SEB but also that hypoglycemia is not a crucial determinant of mortality in D-galactosamine-sensitized mice. The data obtained with anti-IL-6 antibody indicate that endogenous IL-6 is involved in regulating the levels of TNF and IFN-gamma in serum.
Decreasing stimulation charge by delaying the discharge phase - comparison of efficacy for various stimulation waveforms

For chronic stimulation of nerve fibers, only charge balanced waveforms should be used. However, if the charge recuperation phase comes right after the stimulation phase, it might abolish activation of the nerve fibers that are close to the threshold level. Delaying the charge recuperation phase may eliminate this abolition effect, and thus reduce the charge required to activate nerve fibers. The objective of this in vivo study, was to determine to which extent the required stimulation charge might be decreased by delaying the discharge phase, depending on the pulse duration and the way the discharge is performed. The results demonstrated that delaying the discharge phase allows to gain more charge for shorter pulses. The difference in the gain between the waveforms with passive and active discharge is less striking. The delayed discharge does not affect much stimulation selectivity.
Radiation of Extant Cetaceans Driven by Restructuring of the Oceans

Abstract The remarkable fossil record of whales and dolphins (Cetacea) has made them an exemplar of macroevolution. Although their overall adaptive transition from terrestrial to fully aquatic organisms is well known, this is not true for the radiation of modern whales. Here, we explore the diversification of extant cetaceans by constructing a robust molecular phylogeny that includes 87 of 89 extant species. The phylogeny and divergence times are derived from nuclear and mitochondrial markers, calibrated with fossils. We find that the toothed whales are monophyletic, suggesting that echolocation evolved only once early in that lineage some 36–34 Ma. The rorqual family (Balaenopteridae) is restored with the exclusion of the gray whale, suggesting that gulp feeding evolved 18–16 Ma. Delphinida, comprising all living dolphins and porpoises other than the Ganges/Indus dolphins, originated about 26 Ma; it contains the taxonomically rich delphinids, which began diversifying less than 11 Ma. We tested 2 hypothesized drivers of the extant cetacean radiation by assessing the tempo of lineage accumulation through time. We find no support for a rapid burst of speciation early in the history of extant whales, contrasting with expectations of an adaptive radiation model. However, we do find support for increased diversification rates during periods of pronounced physical restructuring of the oceans. The results imply that paleogeographic and paleoceanographic changes, such as closure of major seaways, have influenced the dynamics of radiation in extant cetaceans.
A Comparison of Independent Star Formation Diagnostics for an Ultraviolet-selected Sample of Nearby Galaxies

We present results from a decimetric radio survey undertaken with the Very Large Array as part of a longer term goal to intercompare star formation and dust extinction diagnostics on a galaxy-by-galaxy basis for a representative sample of nearby galaxies. For our survey field, Selected Area 57, star formation rates derived from 1.4 GHz luminosities are compared with earlier nebular emission-line and ultraviolet (UV) continuum diagnostics. We find broad correlations, over several decades in luminosity, between the Hα, UV continuum, and 1.4 GHz diagnostics. However, the scatter in these relations is found to be larger than observational errors, with offsets between the observed relations and those expected assuming constant star formation histories and luminosity-independent extinction models. We investigate the physical origin of the observed relations and conclude that the discrepancies between different star formation diagnostics can only be partly explained by simple models of dust extinction in galaxies. These models cannot by themselves explain all the observed differences, introducing the need for temporally varying star formation histories and/or more complex models of extinction to explain the entire data set.
Is expensive always better? Comparison of two induction agents for term rupture of membranes

Summary The aim of this study was to compare the clinical safety and efficacy of sublingual misoprostol with vaginal prostaglandin E2 (Prostin®) as an induction agent after term rupture of membranes. This was a non-blinded randomised control study involving 57 women who were >24–48 h after term rupture of membranes. In total, 29 women received sublingual misoprostol and 28 received Prostin. The mean induction of labour to delivery time was 20.71±11.59 h in the Prostin group and 13.96±9.90 h in the misoprostol group, (p = 0.021). Some 46.4 % (13/28) of the Prostin group needed a second dose compared with only 20.7 % (6/29) of the misoprostol group (p = 0.039). Oxytocin infusion was used by 57% (16/28) of the Prostin group compared with 31% (9/29) of those who had received misoprostol, (p = 0.047). In our study, sublingual misoprostol when compared with vaginal prostaglandin E2 gel (Prostin) leads to a shorter induction to labour time, and less need for second dose of induction agent or oxytocin infusion. Women were given a satisfaction questionnaire to complete after delivery. Those who were given misoprostol were satisfied with the outcome, would use it again in the future, and recommend it to friends in similar circumstances.
Bond Properties of Synthetic and Steel Single Fiber in High Strength Cement Based Composites

In this research, the bond performance of steel and synthetic fiber in high strength cement based composites including bond strength, pullout energy, etc., are presented. Pullout test were conducted to evaluate the bond performance of steel and synthetic fiber in high strength cement based composites in accordance with the JCI(Japan Concrete Institute) SF-8. Experimental test result showed that the pullout load vs slip behavior of crimped type synthetic fiber has large pullout load and slip compared to steel fiber in high strength cement based composites. For the microscopic investigation of fiber surface after pullout test, there showed a scratches on the surface increased as the increase of compressive strength.
Beliefs in social inclusion: Invariance in associations among hope, dysfunctional attitudes, and social inclusion across adolescence and young adulthood

Abstract Social disability in youth is an important precursor of long-term social and mental health problems. Social inclusion is a key policy driver and fits well within a new paradigm of health and well-being rather than illness-oriented services, yet little is known about social inclusion and its facilitators for “healthy” young people. We present a novel exploratory structural analysis of social inclusion using measures from 387 14- to 36-year-olds. Our model represents social inclusion as comprising social activity and community belonging, with both domains predicted by hopeful and dysfunctional self-beliefs but hopefulness more uniquely predicting social inclusion in adolescence. We conclude that social inclusion can be modeled for meaningful comparison across spectra of development, mental health, and functioning.
HLA‐DR expression is associated with better prognosis in sporadic Australian clinicopathological Stage C colorectal cancers

Predicting patient outcome for colorectal carcinoma (CRC) with lymph node but not distant metastases remains challenging. Various prognostic markers have been identified including microsatellite instability (MSI) and possibly expression of the MHC Class II protein, HLA‐DR. About 15% of sporadic CRC exhibits MSI associated with methylation of the DNA mismatch repair gene hMLH1 promoter. In addition, a significant proportion of unselected CRC demonstrates expression of HLA‐DR. We sought to examine the relationship between HLA‐DR expression, MSI status and prognosis in sporadic Australian Clinicopathological (ACP) Stage C CRC. Two hundred seventy consecutive patients with sporadic ACP Stage C CRC were treated at Concord Repatriation General Hospital between 1986 and 1992. None of these patients received adjuvant chemotherapy and all were followed for a minimum of 5 years or until death. DNA was extracted from paraffin sections and MSI status determined by PCR. HLA‐DR expression was determined immunohistochemically using an antibody against the HLA‐DR α chain. MSI status could be assigned in 235 cases: 176 CRCs (74.9%) were microsatellite stable, whereas 23 (9.8%) had high levels of MSI (MSI‐H) and 36 (15.3%) had low levels of MSI (MSI‐L). HLA‐DR expression by CRC cells was seen in 148 (60.1%) cases and correlated with the presence of tumor‐infiltrating lymphocytes (p = 0.0005) and peritumoral lymphocytes (p = 0.003), but not other clinicopathological features or MSI status. HLA‐DR‐positive CRCs were strongly associated with better patient outcome (p < 0.0001). © 2009 UICC
Environmental Levels of para-Nonylphenol Are Able to Affect Cytokine Secretion in Human Placenta

Background para-Nonylphenol (p-NP) is a metabolite of alkylphenols widely used in the chemical industry and manufacturing. It accumulates in the environment, where it acts with estrogen-like activity. We previously showed that p-NP acts on human placenta by inducing trophoblast differentiation and apoptosis. Objective The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of p-NP on cytokine secretion in human placenta. Methods In vitro cultures of chorionic villous explants from human placenta in the first trimester of pregnancy were treated with p-NP (10−13, 10−11, and 10−9 M) in 0.1% ethanol as vehicle. Culture medium was collected after 24 hr and assayed by specific immunoassays for the cytokines granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interferon-γ (IFN-γ), interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). Results p-NP modulated cytokine secretion by inducing the release of GM-CSF, IFN-γ, IL-1β, IL-4, and IL-10, with a maximum effect at 10−11 M. It reduced the release of TNF-α at 10−13 M, whereas levels of IL-2 and IL-5 remained below the detection limit. IL-6 and IL-8 levels were 100–1,000 times higher than those of other cytokines, and they were not affected by p-NP. We observed significant differences from controls (ethanol alone) only for GM-CSF and IL-10. Conclusion An unbalanced cytokine network at the maternal–fetal interface may result in implantation failure, pregnancy loss, or other complications. The effects of extremely low doses of p-NP on the placental release of cytokines raise considerable concerns about maternal exposure to this endocrine disruptor during pregnancy.
A note on multiple-access channels with strictly-causal state information

We propose a new inner bound on the capacity region of a memoryless multiple-access channel that is governed by a memoryless state that is known strictly causally to the encoders. The new inner bound contains the previous bounds, and we provide an example demonstrating that the inclusion can be strict. A variation on this example is then applied to the case where the channel is governed by two independent state sequences, where each transmitter knows one of the states strictly causally. The example proves that, as conjectured by Li et al., an inner bound that they derived for this scenario can indeed by strictly better than previous bounds.
Maximizing Component Quality in Bilingual Word-Aligned Segmentations

Given a pair of source and target language sentences which are translations of each other with known word alignments between them, we extract bilingual phrase-level segmentations of such a pair. This is done by identifying two appropriate measures that assess the quality of phrase segments, one on the monolingual level for both language sides, and one on the bilingual level. The monolingual measure is based on the notion of partition refinements and the bilingual measure is based on structural properties of the graph that represents phrase segments and word alignments. These two measures are incorporated in a basic adaptation of the Cross-Entropy method for the purpose of extracting an N-best list of bilingual phrase-level segmentations. A straight-forward application of such lists in Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) yields a conservative phrase pair extraction method that reduces phrase-table sizes by 90% with insignificant loss in translation quality.
Comparison of insulin monotherapy and combination therapy with insulin and metformin or insulin and troglitazone in type 2 diabetes.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the safety and efficacy of treatment with insulin alone, insulin plus metformin, or insulin plus troglitazone in individuals with type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 88 type 2 diabetic subjects using insulin monotherapy (baseline HbA(lc) 8.7%) were randomly assigned to insulin alone (n = 31), insulin plus metformin (n = 27), or insulin plus troglitazone (n = 30) for 4 months. The insulin dose was increased only in the insulin group. Metformin was titrated to a maximum dose of 2,000 mg and troglitazone to 600 mg. RESULTS HbA(lc) levels decreased in all groups, the lowest level occurring in the insulin plus troglitazone group (insulin alone to 7.0%, insulin plus metformin to 7.1%, and insulin plus troglitazone to 6.4%, P < 0.0001). The dose of insulin increased by 55 units/day in the insulin alone group (P < 0.0001) and decreased by 1.4 units/day in the insulin plus metformin group and 12.8 units/day in the insulin plus troglitazone group (insulin plus metformin versus insulin plus troglitazone, P = 0.004). Body weight increased by 0.5 kg in the insulin plus metformin group, whereas the other two groups gained 4.4 kg (P < 0.0001 vs. baseline). Triglyceride and VLDL triglyceride levels significantly improved only in the insulin plus troglitazone group. Subjects taking metformin experienced significantly more gastrointestinal side effects and less hypoglycemia. CONCLUSIONS Aggressive insulin therapy significantly improved glycemic control in type 2 diabetic subjects to levels comparable with those achieved by adding metformin to insulin therapy. Troglitazone was the most effective in lowering HbA(lc), total daily insulin dose, and triglyceride levels. However, treatment with insulin plus metformin was advantageous in avoiding weight gain and hypoglycemia.
Birth and Evolution of Isolated Radio Pulsars

We investigate the birth and evolution of Galactic isolated radio pulsars. We begin by estimating their birth space velocity distribution from proper-motion measurements of Brisken and coworkers. We find no evidence for multimodality of the distribution and favor one in which the absolute one-dimensional velocity components are exponentially distributed and with a three-dimensional mean velocity of 380 km s-1. We then proceed with a Monte Carlo-based population synthesis, modeling the birth properties of the pulsars, their time evolution, and their detection in the Parkes and Swinburne Multibeam surveys. We present a population model that appears generally consistent with the observations. Our results suggest that pulsars are born in the spiral arms, with a galactocentric radial distribution that is well described by the functional form proposed by Yusifov & Küçük, in which the pulsar surface density peaks at radius ~3 kpc. The birth spin period distribution extends to several hundred milliseconds, with no evidence of multimodality. Models that assume the radio luminosities of pulsars to be independent of the spin periods and period derivatives are inadequate, as they lead to the detection of too many old simulated pulsars in our simulations. Dithered radio luminosities proportional to the square root of the spin-down luminosity accommodate the observations well and provide a natural mechanism for the pulsars to dim uniformly as they approach the death line, avoiding an observed pileup on the latter. There is no evidence for significant torque decay (due to magnetic field decay or otherwise) over the lifetime of the pulsars as radio sources (~100 Myr). Finally, we estimate the pulsar birthrate and total number of pulsars in the Galaxy.
NAT2 and CYP2E1 polymorphisms and susceptibility to first-line anti-tuberculosis drug-induced hepatitis.

BACKGROUND Most cases with anti-tuberculosis drug-induced hepatotoxicity (ATDH) have been attributed to isoniazid. OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether the polymorphisms of the cytochrome P450 2EI (CYP2E1) and N-acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) gene are associated with ATDH. DESIGN A total of 140 tuberculosis (TB) patients without liver diseases before treatment who received anti-tuberculosis treatment were followed prospectively. Their CYP2E1 and NAT2 genotypes were determined using the TaqMan polymerase chain reaction assay. RESULTS Forty-five (32.1%) patients were diagnosed with ATDH. No significant differences were reported in age and sex between patients with and without ATDH. Slow acetylators defined by NAT2 genotypes had a higher risk of hepatotoxicity than rapid acetylators (51.2% vs. 25.2%, P = 0.0026). Odds ratio (OR) analysis showed that slow acetylator status (OR 3.15, 95%CI 1.47-6.48) was the only independent risk factor for ATDH. Pyrazinamide co-administration induced hepatitis was also associated with NAT2 acetylator status. CYP2E1 c1/c1 homozygotes are prone to developing more severe hepatotoxicity than other c1/c2 and c2/c2 genotypes. CONCLUSION The slow acetylator status of NAT2 is a significant susceptibility risk factor for ATDH. CYP2E1 is associated with the severity of ATDH.
Who wants to know?: question-asking and answering practices among facebook users

Research has identified a link between Facebook use and bridging social capital, which speaks to the informational resources provided by a diverse network of connections. In order to explicate the mechanism through which Facebook may help individuals mobilize these embedded informational and support resources, this study explores the role of bridging social capital, question type, and relational closeness on the perceived utility and satisfaction of information obtained through questions posed to one's network of Facebook Friends through the status update feature. Employing a mixed-method approach, we utilize survey data collected from a sample of non-academic university staff (N=666), as well as actual Facebook question examples and responses collected during a follow-up lab session from a subset of this sample (N=71). Results indicate that question-askers' bridging social capital positively predicts the utility of responses received on SNS, while useful responses are more likely to be received from weaker ties.