Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VSL#3 Probiotic Stimulates T-cell Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase–mediated Recovery of IFN-&ggr;–induced Intestinal Epithelial Barrier Defects

Background:VSL#3 is a probiotic compound that has been used in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. T-cell protein tyrosine phosphatase (TCPTP) is the protein product of the inflammatory bowel disease candidate gene, PTPN2, and we have previously shown that it protects epithelial barrier function. The aim of this study was to investigate whether VSL#3 improves intestinal epithelial barrier function against the effects of the inflammatory bowel disease–associated proinflammatory cytokine, interferon-gamma (IFN-&ggr;) through activation of TCPTP. Methods:Polarized monolayers of T84 intestinal epithelial cells were treated with increasing concentrations of VSL#3 to determine effects on TCPTP expression and enzymatic activity. Therapeutic effects of VSL#3 against barrier disruption by IFN-&ggr; were measured by transepithelial electrical resistance and fluorescein isothiocyanate–dextran permeability. A novel TCPTP-deficient HT-29 intestinal epithelial cell line was generated to study the role of TCPTP in mediating the effects of VSL#3. Tight junction protein distribution was assessed with confocal microscopy. Results:VSL#3 increased TCPTP protein levels and enzymatic activity, correlating with a VSL#3-induced decrease in IFN-&ggr; signaling. VSL#3 corrected the decrease in transepithelial electrical resistance and the increase in epithelial permeability induced by IFN-&ggr;. Moreover, the restorative effect of VSL#3 against IFN-&ggr; signaling, epithelial permeability defects, altered expression and localization of the tight junction proteins claudin-2, occludin, and zonula occludens-1, were not realized in stable TCPTP/(PTPN2)-deficient HT-29 intestinal epithelial cells. Conclusions:VSL#3 reduces IFN-&ggr; signaling and IFN-&ggr;-induced epithelial barrier defects in a TCPTP-dependent manner. These data point to a key role for TCPTP as a therapeutic target for restoration of barrier function using probiotics.
How Large Should Whales Be?

The evolution and distribution of species body sizes for terrestrial mammals is well-explained by a macroevolutionary tradeoff between short-term selective advantages and long-term extinction risks from increased species body size, unfolding above the 2 g minimum size induced by thermoregulation in air. Here, we consider whether this same tradeoff, formalized as a constrained convection-reaction-diffusion system, can also explain the sizes of fully aquatic mammals, which have not previously been considered. By replacing the terrestrial minimum with a pelagic one, at roughly 7000 g, the terrestrial mammal tradeoff model accurately predicts, with no tunable parameters, the observed body masses of all extant cetacean species, including the 175,000,000 g Blue Whale. This strong agreement between theory and data suggests that a universal macroevolutionary tradeoff governs body size evolution for all mammals, regardless of their habitat. The dramatic sizes of cetaceans can thus be attributed mainly to the increased convective heat loss is water, which shifts the species size distribution upward and pushes its right tail into ranges inaccessible to terrestrial mammals. Under this macroevolutionary tradeoff, the largest expected species occurs where the rate at which smaller-bodied species move up into large-bodied niches approximately equals the rate at which extinction removes them.
Detection of human bocavirus in Saudi healthy blood donors

Human bocavirus is associated with respiratory disease worldwide, mainly in children. There are conflicting results, however, regarding the existence of the HBoV in blood donors. Three hundred whole blood samples from non-immunodeficient healthy blood donors were screened for the presence of HBoV by polymerase chain reaction. The HBoV genotype of positive samples was determined using direct gene sequencing. Twenty-one out of the three hundred blood samples were found to be positive for HBoV. Sequence analysis of the positive samples revealed that all the strains were related to the HBoV-1 type with a low rate of variation among the detected sequences. It was concluded that there is a considerable risk of contracting HBoV from a blood transfusion from normal healthy individuals.
The Effects of Baicalin on Myoglobinuric Acute Renal Failure in Rats

Background: Myoglobinuric acute kidney injury is a uremic syndrome that develops due to damage of skeletal muscle. Free radicals and nitric oxide play an important role in the pathogenesis of myoglobinuric acute kidney injury. Baicalin has multiple bioactivities, including antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and is a potent free radical scavenger. Aims: To investigate the nephroprotective mechanism of baicalin on myoglobinuric acute kidney injury. Study Design: Animal experimentation. Methods: In our study, male Sprague Dawley rats were divided into 4 groups. Control (n=8), Baicalin (n=8), myoglobinuric acute kidney injury (n=10) and myoglobinuric acute kidney injury + baicalin (n=10). The rats were deprived of water for 24 hours before receiving intramuscular injection. The control and baicalin groups were injected intramuscularly with saline (8 ml/kg), and the myoglobinuric acute kidney injury and myoglobinuric acute kidney injury + baicalin groups were given 50% glycerol 8 ml/kg. One hour later, the control and myoglobinuric acute kidney injury groups received saline intraperitoneally, and the baicalin and myoglobinuric acute kidney injury + baicalin groups were given 200 mg/kg baicalin. Twenty-four hours after the glycerol injection, urine and blood samples were taken, and the kidneys of the rats were harvested under intraperitoneally injections of anaesthesia. Results: We found that the levels of creatinine, urea, nitric oxide, alanine transaminase, aspartate aminotransferase, creatine kinase in serum samples, malondialdehyde, nitric oxide, inducible nitric oxide synthase, and endothelial nitric oxide synthase concentrations in renal tissue were increased in the myoglobinuric acute kidney injury group compared with the control group (p<0.05). The nitric oxide and glutathione levels in the kidney were significantly decreased in the myoglobinuric acute kidney injury + baicalin group compared with the myoglobinuric acute kidney injury group (p<0.05). There were no significant differences between any other parameters. Conclusion: Our results did not show any protective effect of baicalin on myoglobinuric acute kidney injury, possibly because the different effective factors in the pathogenesis of experimental myoglobinuric acute kidney injury used in this experiment deviate from other experimental models. Moreover, detailed studies are needed to clarify the effects of baicalin in different doses and treatment durations in glycerol-induced acute kidney injury model.
Generative Adversarial Networks for Noise Reduction in Low-Dose CT

Noise is inherent to low-dose CT acquisition. We propose to train a convolutional neural network (CNN) jointly with an adversarial CNN to estimate routine-dose CT images from low-dose CT images and hence reduce noise. A generator CNN was trained to transform low-dose CT images into routine-dose CT images using voxelwise loss minimization. An adversarial discriminator CNN was simultaneously trained to distinguish the output of the generator from routine-dose CT images. The performance of this discriminator was used as an adversarial loss for the generator. Experiments were performed using CT images of an anthropomorphic phantom containing calcium inserts, as well as patient non-contrast-enhanced cardiac CT images. The phantom and patients were scanned at 20% and 100% routine clinical dose. Three training strategies were compared: the first used only voxelwise loss, the second combined voxelwise loss and adversarial loss, and the third used only adversarial loss. The results showed that training with only voxelwise loss resulted in the highest peak signal-to-noise ratio with respect to reference routine-dose images. However, CNNs trained with adversarial loss captured image statistics of routine-dose images better. Noise reduction improved quantification of low-density calcified inserts in phantom CT images and allowed coronary calcium scoring in low-dose patient CT images with high noise levels. Testing took less than 10 s per CT volume. CNN-based low-dose CT noise reduction in the image domain is feasible. Training with an adversarial network improves the CNNs ability to generate images with an appearance similar to that of reference routine-dose CT images.
Choice of Incision for Primary Repair of Unilateral Complete Cleft Lip: A Comparative Study of Outcomes in 796 Patients

Background: No one technique of cleft lip repair consistently produces ideal aesthetic and functional results. This study was carried out in a developing, high-volume center. It compares outcomes attained using two different designs of skin incision used for primary closure of unilateral complete cleft lip and sought to identify the most appropriate technique for clefts of varying morphology. Methods: Seven hundred ninety-six patients were entered into the study. In each group of slightly less than 400 patients, either a modified Millard or Pfeifer wavy line incision was used, both in conjunction with functional repair of the underlying tissues as described by Delaire. Soft-tissue measurements of the lip and nose were recorded preoperatively. Analysis was based on postoperative assessment of the white roll, vermilion border, scar, Cupid’s bow, lip length, and nostril symmetry and appearance of the alar dome and base. Results: Comparison of the two cohorts using Pearson chi-square testing for association and linear trend found a Millard incision gave significantly better results for vermilion match, whereas the Pfeifer method led to a better postoperative lip length. Preconceptions that one particular technique was better suited to certain preoperative cleft anatomical forms were not proven statistically. Conclusions: Certain preoperative anatomical features may lead the surgeon to choose one particular incision pattern in preference to another, but in this study, it was found that one technique was essentially as good as the other. This suggests that the technique for closure of the underlying tissues is probably of more importance.
Meta-Path Guided Embedding for Similarity Search in Large-Scale Heterogeneous Information Networks

Most real-world data can be modeled as heterogeneous information networks (HINs) consisting of vertices of multiple types and their relationships. Search for similar vertices of the same type in large HINs, such as bibliographic networks and business-review networks, is a fundamental problem with broad applications. Although similarity search in HINs has been studied previously, most existing approaches neither explore rich semantic information embedded in the network structures nor take user's preference as a guidance. In this paper, we re-examine similarity search in HINs and propose a novel embedding-based framework. It models vertices as low-dimensional vectors to explore network structure-embedded similarity. To accommodate user preferences at defining similarity semantics, our proposed framework, ESim, accepts user-defined meta-paths as guidance to learn vertex vectors in a user-preferred embedding space. Moreover, an efficient and parallel sampling-based optimization algorithm has been developed to learn embeddings in large-scale HINs. Extensive experiments on real-world large-scale HINs demonstrate a significant improvement on the effectiveness of ESim over several state-of-the-art algorithms as well as its scalability.
A role for hilar cells in pattern separation in the dentate gyrus: A computational approach

We present a simple computational model of the dentate gyrus to evaluate the hypothesis that pattern separation, defined as the ability to transform a set of similar input patterns into a less‐similar set of output patterns, is dynamically regulated by hilar neurons. Prior models of the dentate gyrus have generally fallen into two categories: simplified models that have focused on a single granule cell layer and its ability to perform pattern separation, and large‐scale and biophysically realistic models of dentate gyrus, which include hilar cells, but which have not specifically addressed pattern separation. The present model begins to bridge this gap. The model includes two of the major subtypes of hilar cells: excitatory hilar mossy cells and inhibitory hilar interneurons that receive input from and project to the perforant path terminal zone (HIPP cells). In the model, mossy cells and HIPP cells provide a mechanism for dynamic regulation of pattern separation, allowing the system to upregulate and downregulate pattern separation in response to environmental and task demands. Specifically, pattern separation in the model can be strongly decreased by decreasing mossy cell function and/or by increasing HIPP cell function; pattern separation can be increased by the opposite manipulations. We propose that hilar cells may similarly mediate dynamic regulation of pattern separation in the dentate gyrus in vivo, not only because of their connectivity within the dentate gyrus, but also because of their modulation by brainstem inputs and by the axons that “backproject” from area CA3 pyramidal cells. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Experience of Nurses in Hemodialysis Care: A Phenomenological Study

This study aimed to describe the experiences of nurses in hemodialysis care. In this phenomenological study, purposive sampling began and continued until data saturation. The research environment was the Hemodialysis unit. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Finally, two main classes and four sub-classes were identified, including factors effective on care (inhibitors and facilitators) and care outcomes (the negative effects of care on the nurse and the positive effects of care on the patient), and “challenging care” as the main theme. As the results show, nurses suffer from several physical and mental harm, and this harm even extends to their family environment, and their families are indirectly affected by the negative effects of this care. Therefore, strengthening management approaches to eliminate the inhibitor factors is essential in order to prevent nurses’ burnout or quitting while improving the quality of care provided by them.
Convex Optimization Methods for Powertrain Sizing of Electrified Vehicles by Using Different Levels of Modeling Details

This study investigates the impact of different levels of modeling details on the problem of optimizing the total cost of ownership of a fuel-cell hybrid electric vehicle. In this optimization, the objective function is a weighted sum of operational and component costs over a driving cycle. The former includes the consumed hydrogen and electrical energy, and the latter includes the sum of the battery, fuel-cell, and electric-motor costs. Three methods with different levels of modelling details are investigated; in the first method, the power split between the two power sources together with component sizes are optimized, while assuming nonlinear loss functions for the components. In the second method, the efficiencies of the components are approximated by constant values. In the third method, the problem is simplified further by considering the energy split between the battery and the fuel-cell. As shown in the results, a more detailed model gives more accurate results at the price of increased computation time. However, the simplified models can give similar results as the detailed model in most cases. In some problems though, the model simplifications lead to results that differ notably from those obtained by using the detailed model.
Measuring spatiotemporal variation in snow optical grain size under a subalpine forest canopy using contact spectroscopy

The distribution of forest cover exerts strong controls on the spatiotemporal distribution of snow accumulation and snowmelt. The physical processes that govern these controls are poorly understood given a lack of detailed measurements of snow states. In this study, we address one of many measurement gaps by using contact spectroscopy to measure snow optical grain size at high spatial resolution in trenches dug between tree boles in a subalpine forest. Trenches were collocated with continuous measurements of snow depth and vertical profiles of snow temperature and supplemented with manual measurements of snow temperature, geometric grain size, grain type, and density from trench walls. There was a distinct difference in snow optical grain size between winter and spring periods. In winter and early spring, when facetted snow crystal types were dominant, snow optical grain size was 6% larger in canopy gaps versus under canopy positions; a difference that was smaller than the measurement uncertainty. By midspring, the magnitude of snow optical grain size differences increased dramatically and patterns of snow optical grain size became highly directional with 34% larger snow grains in areas south versus north of trees. In winter, snow temperature gradients were up to 5–15°C m−1 greater under the canopy due to shallower snow accumulation. However, in canopy gaps, snow depths were greater in fall and early winter and therefore more significant kinetic growth metamorphism occurred relative to under canopy positions, resulting in larger snow grains in canopy gaps. Our findings illustrate the novelty of our method of measuring snow optical grain size, allowing for future studies to advance the understanding of how forest and meteorological conditions interact to impact snowpack evolution.
Curcumin, the main active constituent of turmeric (Curcuma longa L.), induces apoptosis in hepatic stellate cells by modulating the abundance of apoptosis-related growth factors

Abstract In order to elucidate the mechanism of action of curcumin against hepatic fibrosis, cultured rat hepatic stellate cells (HSC) (HSC-T6) were incubated with curcumin for 24 h, after which apoptosis was measured by flow-cytometry. The protein levels of the pro-apoptotic factors Fas and p53b as well as of the anti-apoptotic factor Bcl-2 were monitored by immunocytochemical ABC staining after incubation with curcumin for 24 h. In the case of 20 μM curcumin, not only was the respective apoptosis index increased, but also the abundance of the pro-apoptotic factors Fas and p53 were amplified, whereas that of the anti-apoptotic factor Bcl-2 decreased. All these effects were highly reproducible (P<0.05). Consequently, curcumin has an up-regulating effect on pro-apoptotic factors like Fas and p53 as well as a down-regulating effect of the anti-apoptotic factor Bcl-2, thus inducing apoptosis in HSC.
Morphology and Classification of Right Ventricular Bands in the Domestic Dog (Canis familiaris)

Ventricular bands, also designated as ‘false tendons’, are described as single or multiple strands that cross the ventricles and have no connection to valvular cusps. Previous work indicates these strands are present in the ventricles of humans and some animal hearts and not always associated with cardiac pathologies. Despite these previous studies, the published literature is limited in documenting the morphology of these strands and incidence in animals. In this study, examination of 89 hearts showed six types of ventricular bands in the right ventricle of the domestic dog. These bands were classified according to their prevalence and points of attachment. Type I extended from the interventricular septum to the ventricular free wall, type II connected a musculus papillaris parvus to the ventricular free wall and type III connected trabeculae carneae on the interventricular septum. Type IV connected the trabeculae carneae on the ventricular free wall, type V interconnected papillary muscles and type VI connected the interventricular septum to a papillary muscle. While the study of these ventricular bands provided additional information on the cardiac anatomy of the domestic dog, it also showed their clinical importance. Several studies have proposed that their position in the ventricle may interfere with cardiac catheterization and pacemaker lead placement or be misinterpreted during echocardiography.
The Significance of Socioeconomic Status in Explaining the Racial Gap in Chronic Health Conditions

Black Americans live fewer years than whites and live more years with chronic health problems. The origins of this racial gap are ambiguous. This study examines the pervasiveness of this gap across chronic medical and disabling conditions among middle-aged persons. Alternative hypotheses about how fundamental social conditions of disease differentiate the health of blacks and whites are also examined. Results show that the racial gap in health is spread across all domains of health, and that socioeconomic conditions, not health risk behaviors, are the primary origins of the racial stratification of health. No evidence was found in support of the idea that blacks and whites differ in their ability to transform socioeconomic resources into good health. The results point to the importance of continued research on how health and achievement processes are linked across childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Such studies are needed to enrich work on the inequality of health and life cycle achievement.
Congrats: a Configurable Granular Trust Scheme for Effective Seller Selection in an E-marketplace

Problem. The e-marketplace of today, with millions of buyers and sellers who never get to meet face to face, is susceptible to the presence of dishonest and fraudulent participants, prowling on unsuspecting trading partners to cheat in transactions, thereby increasing their profit to the detriment of their victims. There is also the multiplicity of goods and services with varying prices and quality, offered by a mix of honest and dishonest vendors. In order to participate in trade without incurring substantial loss, participants rely on intelligent agents using a trust evaluation scheme for partner selection. Making good deals thus depends on the ability of the intelligent agents to evaluate trading partners and picking only trustworthy ones. However, the existing trust evaluation schemes do not adequately protect buyers in the e-marketplace; hence, this study focused on designing a new trust evaluation scheme for buyer agents to use to effectively select sellers. -- Method. To increase the overall performance of intelligent agents and to limit loss for buyers in an e-marketplace, I propose CONGRATS—a configurable granular trust estimation scheme for effective seller selection. The proposed model used historical feedback ratings from multiple sources to estimate trust along multiple dimensions. I simulated a mini e-marketplace to generate the data needed for performance evaluation of the proposed model alongside two existing trust estimation schemes—FIRE and MDT. -- Results. At the peak of performance of CONGRATS, T1 sellers with the highest trust level accounted for about 45% of the total sales as against less than 10% recorded by the least trustworthy (T5) sellers. Compared to FIRE and MDT, CONGRATS had a performance gain of 15% and 30%, respectively, as well as an average earning of 0.89 (out of 1.0) per transaction in contrast to 0.70 and 0.62 per transaction respectively. Cumulative utility gain among buyer groups stood at 612.35 as contrasted to 518.96 and 421.28 for the FIRE and MDT models respectively. -- Conclusions. Modeling trust along multiple dimensions and gathering trust information from many different sources can significantly enhance the trust estimation scheme used by intelligent agents in an e-marketplace. This means that more transactions will occur between buyers and sellers that are more trustworthy. Inarguably, this will reduce loss to an infinitesimal level and consequently boost buyer confidence