Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
10-16-2009 The Leishmania donovani Lipophosphoglycan Excludes the Vesicular Proton-ATPase from Phagosomes by Impairing the Recruitment of Synaptotagmin

We recently showed that the exocytosis regulator Synaptotagmin (Syt) V is recruited to the nascent phagosome and remains associated throughout the maturation process. In this study, we investigated the possibility that Syt V plays a role in regulating interactions between the phagosome and the endocytic organelles. Silencing of Syt V by RNA interference revealed that Syt V contributes to phagolysosome biogenesis by regulating the acquisition of cathepsin D and the vesicular proton-ATPase. In contrast, recruitment of cathepsin B, the early endosomal marker EEA1 and the lysosomal marker LAMP1 to phagosomes was normal in the absence of Syt V. As Leishmania donovani promastigotes inhibit phagosome maturation, we investigated their potential impact on the phagosomal association of Syt V. This inhibition of phagolysosome biogenesis is mediated by the virulence glycolipid lipophosphoglycan, a polymer of the repeating Galb1,4Mana1-PO4 units attached to the promastigote surface via an unusual glycosylphosphatidylinositol anchor. Our results showed that insertion of lipophosphoglycan into ganglioside GM1-containing microdomains excluded or caused dissociation of Syt V from phagosome membranes. As a consequence, L. donovani promatigotes established infection in a phagosome from which the vesicular proton-ATPase was excluded and which failed to acidify. Collectively, these results reveal a novel function for Syt V in phagolysosome biogenesis and provide novel insight into the mechanism of vesicular proton-ATPase recruitment to maturing phagosomes. We also provide novel findings into the mechanism of Leishmania pathogenesis, whereby targeting of Syt V is part of the strategy used by L. donovani promastigotes to prevent phagosome acidification. Citation: Vinet AF, Fukuda M, Turco SJ, Descoteaux A (2009) The Leishmania donovani Lipophosphoglycan Excludes the Vesicular Proton-ATPase from Phagosomes by Impairing the Recruitment of Synaptotagmin V. PLoS Pathog 5(10): e1000628. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat. 1000628 Editor: Marilyn Parsons, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, United States of America Received May 5, 2009; Accepted September 23, 2009; Published October 16, 2009 Copyright: 2009 Vinet et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was funded by grant MOP-12933 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and by an infrastructure grant from the FQRNT Regroupements Strategiques program. AD is the holder of a Canada Research Chair. AFV was partly supported by a studentship from the Fondation ArmandFrappier. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: albert.descoteaux@iaf.inrs. ca
Meningeal myofibroblastoma in the frontal lobe: A case report

Myofibroblastoma is a benign tumor composed of spindle cells in clusters and fascicles. To date, only three cases of intracranial myofibroblastoma have been reported. The present study reports the case of a 47-year-old female with meningeal myofibroblastoma. The patient had a history of ovarian cyst resection and presented with paroxysmal mild headaches that had been apparent for 4 years. Magnetic resonance imaging disclosed a well-circumscribed mass in the left frontal lobe. A resection of the mass was performed. Abundant fascicular clusters of spindle- and oval-shaped cells were found by conventional histopathology. Immunohistochemical staining demonstrated that these cells were strongly positive for smooth muscle actin, weakly positive for epithelial membrane antigen and negative for cluster of differentiation (CD)117, CD34, S-100 or desmin, with a Ki-67 index of >10%. These results supported the diagnosis of myofibroblastoma. No recurrence of the mass was found during the 24-month follow-up period. Overall, the patient exhibited a rare type of meningeal neoplasm. Resection of the tumor proved to be successful and no recurrence were found. Histopathological and immunohistochemical staining is crucial to form a diagnosis. To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first to show the presence of myofibroblastoma in the left frontal lobe.
Identification and characterization of probiotic lactic acid bacteria isolated from traditional persian pickled vegetables

Background: The pickle, a traditional fermented product, is popular among Iranians. Much research has been conducted worldwide on this food group. Due to a lack of related data in Iran, this study was conducted to isolate and identify dominant lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in pickles and salted pickles. Materials and methods: Seventy samples were collected from different regions of Iran. The isolated bacteria were identified as LAB by Gram staining and catalase by using MRS agar. Then, those strains were identified at the species level by physiological tests (e.g., gas production from glucose, arginine hydrolysis, CO2 production from glucose in MRS broth, carbohydrate fermentation) and growth at temperatures of 15°C, 30°C, and 45°C in MRS broth for 3 days. The probiotic characteristics of these bacteria were studied using acid and bile tolerance. The corresponding results were verified using PCR analyses of the 16S rDNA region. Results: 114 presumptive lactic acid bacteria (LAB) with Gram-positive and catalase-negative properties were obtained from the samples. The results revealed that all isolated bacteria were identfied as Lactobacillus (L.) plantarum, L. brevis, L. pentosus, L. casei, L. paracasei and Leuconostoc mesenteroides. The predominant LAB in these pickles was L. plantarum, which was isolated from most of the samples. Among the 114 LAB, 7 isolated species have probiotic potential. Six out of seven were recognized as L. plantarum and one remained unidentifiable by biochemical testing. PCR analysis and sequencing of the 16S rDNA region using 27f and 1522r primers showed that all of the probiotic strains were L. plantarum. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the dominant LAB in traditional Persian pickled vegetables are L. plantarum, L. brevis, L. pentosus, L. casei, L. paracasei, and Leuconostoc mesenteroides. Moreover, L. plantarum was recognized as a probiotic species in pickled vegetables. The raw data obtained from this study can be used in the pickling industry to improve the nutritional value of products.
Definition of parametric methods for fault analysis applied to an electromechanical servomechanism affected by multiple failures

In order to detect incipient failures due to a progressive wear of a primary flight command electromechanical actuator, prognostics could employ several approaches; the choice of the best ones is driven by the efficacy shown in failure detection, since not all the algorithms might be useful for the proposed purpose. In other words, some of them could be suitable only for certain applications while they could not give useful results for others. Developing a fault detection algorithm able to identify the precursors of the above mentioned electromechanical actuator (EMA) failure and its degradation pattern is thus beneficial for anticipating the incoming failure and alerting the maintenance crew such to properly schedule the servomechanism replacement. The research presented in the paper was focused to develop a prognostic technique, able to identify symptoms alerting that an EMA component is degrading and will eventually exhibit an anomalous behavior; in particular four kinds of failure are considered: friction, backlash, coil short circuit, rotor static eccentricity. To this purpose, an innovative model based fault detection technique has been developed merging together several information achieved by means of FFT analysis and proper "failure precursors" (calculated by comparing the actual EMA responses with the expected ones). To assess the robustness of the proposed technique, an appropriate simulation test environment was developed. The results showed an adequate robustness and confidence was gained in the ability to early identify an eventual EMA malfunctioning with low risk of false alarms or missed failures
Impact of child sexual abuse on mental health

Background The lack of prospective studies and data on male victims leaves major questions regarding associations between child sexual abuse and subsequent psychopathology. Aims To examine the association between child sexual abuse in both boys and girls and subsequent treatment for mental disorder using a prospective cohort design. Method Children (n=16L2; 1327 female) ascertained as sexually abused at the time had their histories of mental health treatment established by data linkage and compared with the general population of the same age over a specified period. Results Both male and female victims of abuse had significantly higher rates of psychiatric treatment during the study period than general population controls (12.4% v. 3.6%). Rates were higher for childhood mental disorders, personality disorders, anxiety disorders and major affective disorders, but not for schizophrenia. Male victims were significantly more likely to have had treatment than females (22.8% v. 10.2%). Conclusions This prospective study demonstrates an association between child sexual abuse validated at the time and a subsequent increase in rates of childhood and adult mental disorders.
Calcific uremic arteriolopathy

Calcific uremic arteriolopathy (CUA)/calciphylaxis is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic kidney disease requiring renal replacement. Once thought to be rare, it is being increasingly recognized and reported on a global scale. The uremic milieu predisposes to multiple metabolic toxicities including increased levels of reactive oxygen species and inflammation. Increased oxidative stress and inflammation promote this arteriolopathy by adversely affecting endothelial function resulting in a prothrombotic milieu and significant remodeling effects on vascular smooth muscle cells. These arteriolar pathological effects include intimal hyperplasia, inflammation, endovascular fibrosis and vascular smooth muscle cell apoptosis and differentiation into bone forming osteoblast-like cells resulting in medial calcification. Systemic factors promoting this vascular condition include elevated calcium, parathyroid hormone and hyperphosphatemia with consequent increases in the calcium × phosphate product. The uremic milieu contributes to a marked increased in upstream reactive oxygen species—oxidative stress and subsequent downstream increased inflammation, in part, via activation of the nuclear transcription factor NFκB and associated downstream cytokine pathways. Consitutive anti-calcification proteins such as Fetuin-A and matrix GLA proteins and their signaling pathways may be decreased, which further contributes to medial vascular calcification. The resulting clinical entity is painful, debilitating and contributes to the excess morbidity and mortality associated with chronic kidney disease and end stage renal disease. These same histopathologic conditions also occur in patients without uremia and therefore, the term calcific obliterative arteriolopathy could be utilized in these conditions.
Neuropathology of Dementia Disorders

Dementia, being not a specific disease but a syndrome characterized by deficits in several cognitive domains, is a major public health and socio-economic problem of our century. It is caused by dysfunction/loss of synapses and neurons inducing default neuronal networks. Despite updated concensus criteria for the clinical diagnosis of the major neurodegenerative disorders and new biomarkers, the diagnostic accuracy ranges from 65 to 96% (for Alzheimer’s disease /AD), with a sensitivity versus other dementias of around 85.4% and a specificity of up to 77.7%. Pathologic assessment, using genetic and molecular biological methods, based on homogenous definitions, harmonized interlaboratory and assessment standards, can achieve a classification in up to 95%, without, however, clarifying the etiology of most of these disorders. The new National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer Association guidelines (“ABC” score) for the neuropathologic diagnosis of AD combine β-amyloid plaque phases and Braak neurofibrillary scores, also considering other concomitant pathologies, but do not consider distinct clinico-pathologic subtypes of AD. Revised research criteria are available for dementia with Lewy bodies, Parkinson disease-dementia, frontotemporal lobe degeneration, vascular cognitive impairment, prion diseases, and other degenerative dementias. However, due to overlap between proteinopathies, frequent confounding lesions and co-occurence of multiple pathologies in aged brains, human postmortem studies entail biases that affect both their general applicability and validity. Although most degenerative dementias are incurable at present, prospective studies using validated protocols and data fusion may overcome the limitations of the current diagnostic framework as a basis for future personalized therapy options.
Aqueous solubilities of fi ve N-( diethylaminothiocarbonyl ) benzimido derivatives at T 1⁄4 298 . 15

N-(diethylaminothiocarbonyl)benzimido derivatives are polar multifunctional substances. A set of these compounds was synthesised by successive substitution on the enamine side, resulting in similar substances with different polarities, providing a set of model compounds with respect to the study of substituent effects on physico-chemical properties. Experimental aqueous solubility data, at T 1⁄4 298.15 K, of N-(diethylaminothiocarbonyl)benzamidine, PhCNH2NCSNEt2 (1),N-(diethylaminothiocarbonyl)-N0phenylbenzamidine, PhCNHPhNCSNEt2 (2), N-(diethylaminothiocarbonyl)-N0-monoethylbenzamidine, PhCNHEtNCSNEt2 (3), N-(diethylaminothiocarbonyl)-N0 ,N0-diethylbenzamidine, PhCNEt2NCSNEt2 (4), and N-(diethylaminothiocarbonyl)benzimido ethylester, PhCOEtNCSNEt2 (5) were measured at T 1⁄4 298.15 K. The obtained data are supplemented by COSMO-RS aqueous solubility predictions as well as other environmentally important partition coefficients. This information is shown in a twodimensional chemical space diagram, providing indications about the compartment into which the bulk of the compounds is likely to concentrate. The expected quality of COSMO-RS predictions for this type of screening exercise is illustrated on a set of pesticides with established thermophysical property
Development of a Composite Leaf Spring for a Light Commercial Vehicle (Tata Magic)

Present time the main issue of automobile industry are weight reduction. The automobile industry has looking for any implementation or modification to reduce the weight of the vehicle. The suspension leaf spring is one of the potential items for weight reduction in automobile as it accounts for 10% to 20% of the unsprung weight. The introduction of composite leaf spring made of glass fiber rein forced plastic (GFRP) has made it to possible to reduce the weight of spring without any reduction on load carrying capacity and stiffness. The achievement of weight reduction with adequate improvement of mechanical properties has made composite a very good replacement material for conventional steel spring. This work deals with the replacement of multi- leaf steel spring with mono composite leaf spring for the LCV. Suspension system in an automobile determines the riding comfort of passengers and the amount of damage to the vehicle. The main function of leaf spring assembly as suspension element is not only to support vertical load, but also to isolate road-induced vibrations. the behavior of leaf spring is complicated due to its clamping effects and inter-leaf contact etc. the objective of this paper is to replace the multi-leaf steel spring by mono composite leaf spring for the same load carrying capacity and stiffness. Since the composite materials have more elastic strain energy storage capacity and high strength-to-weight ratio as compared to those of steel. It is possible to reduce the weight of the leaf spring without any reduction on load carrying capacity and stiffness. The design constraints were limiting stresses and displacement. Modeling and analysis of both the steel and composite leaf springs have been done using ANSYS software.
Climate Change, Atmospheric Rivers, and Floods in California – A Multimodel Analysis of Storm Frequency and Magnitude Changes 1

Dettinger, Michael, 2011. Climate Change, Atmospheric Rivers, and Floods in California – A Multimodel Analysis of Storm Frequency and Magnitude Changes. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 47(3):514‐523. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2011. 00546.x
Finding Beans in Burgers: Deep Semantic-Visual Embedding with Localization

Several works have proposed to learn a two-path neural network that maps images and texts, respectively, to a same shared Euclidean space where geometry captures useful semantic relationships. Such a multi-modal embedding can be trained and used for various tasks, notably image captioning. In the present work, we introduce a new architecture of this type, with a visual path that leverages recent spaceaware pooling mechanisms. Combined with a textual path which is jointly trained from scratch, our semantic-visual embedding offers a versatile model. Once trained under the supervision of captioned images, it yields new state-of-the-art performance on cross-modal retrieval. It also allows the localization of new concepts from the embedding space into any input image, delivering state-of-the-art result on the visual grounding of phrases.
Nutrigenetics of carotenoid metabolism in the chicken: a polymorphism at the β,β-carotene 15,15'-mono-oxygenase 1 (BCMO1) locus affects the response to dietary β-carotene

The enzyme β,β-carotene-15,15′-mono-oxygenase 1 (BCMO1) is responsible for the symmetrical cleavage of β-carotene into retinal. We identified a polymorphism in the promoter of the BCMO1 gene, inducing differences in BCMO1 mRNA levels (high in adenines (AA) and low in guanines (GG)) and colour in chicken breast muscle. The present study was designed to test whether this polymorphism could affect the response to dietary β-carotene. Dietary β-carotene supplementation did not change the effects of the genotypes on breast muscle properties: BCMO1 mRNA levels were lower and xanthophyll contents higher in GG than in AA chickens. Lower vitamin E levels in the plasma and duodenum, plasma cholesterol levels and body weight were also observed in GG than in AA chickens. In both genotypes, dietary β-carotene increased vitamin A storage in the liver; however, it reduced numerous parameters such as SCARB1 (scavenger receptor class B type I) in the duodenum, BCMO1 in the liver, vitamin E levels in the plasma and tissues, xanthophyll contents in the pectoralis major muscle and carcass adiposity. However, several diet × genotype interactions were observed. In the GG genotype, dietary β-carotene increased ISX (intestine-specific homeobox) and decreased BCMO1 mRNA levels in the duodenum, decreased xanthophyll concentrations in the duodenum, liver and plasma, and decreased colour index and HDL-cholesterol concentration in the plasma. Retinol accumulation following dietary β-carotene supplementation was observed in the duodenum of AA chickens only. Therefore, the negative feedback control on β-carotene conversion through ISX appears as functional in the duodenum of GG but not of AA chickens. This could result in a higher availability of β-carotene in the duodenum of GG chickens, reducing the uptake of xanthophylls, liposoluble vitamins and cholesterol.
Photon Counting OTDR: Advantages and Limitations

In this paper, we provide a detailed insight into photon-counting optical time-domain reflectometer (¿-OTDR) operation, ranging from Geiger-mode operation of avalanche photodiodes (APD), analysis of different APD bias schemes, to the discussion of OTDR perspectives. Our results demonstrate that an InGaAs/InP APD-based ¿-OTDR has the potential of outperforming the dynamic range of a conventional state-of-the-art OTDR by 10 dB, as well as the two-point resolution by a factor of 20. Considering the trace acquisition speed of ¿-OTDRs, we find that a combination of rapid gating for high photon flux and free running mode for low photon flux is the most efficient solution. Concerning dead zones, our results are less promising. Without additional measures, e.g., an optical shutter, the photon counting approach is not competitive.
Serum adipocyte fatty acid – binding protein , retinol-binding protein 4 , and adiponectin concentrations in relation to the development of the metabolic syndrome in Korean boys : a 3-y prospective cohort study 1 – 5

Background: Adipocyte fatty acid–binding protein (A-FABP), retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4), and adiponectin have been associated with insulin resistance and the metabolic syndrome in adults. Objective: We evaluated the association of A-FABP, RBP4, and adiponectin with the metabolic syndrome in Korean boys. Design: In this prospective cohort study, 159 boys participated in a school-based health examination and were followed up after 3 y. The metabolic syndrome in children was defined by using the pediatric adaptation of the National Cholesterol Education Program criteria. Results: Compared with normal-weight participants, overweight children had significantly higher A-FABP (23.6 6 8.2 compared with 12.86 5.1 lg/L, P, 0.001) and RBP4 (69.36 17.1 compared with 59.7 6 15.3 lg/mL, P = 0.001) concentrations and significantly lower adiponectin concentrations (11.5 6 5.4 compared with 18.1 6 8.4 lg/mL, P , 0.001). Baseline A-FABP concentrations were significantly higher in children who developed the metabolic syndrome than in those who did not, whereas adiponectin concentrations were significantly lower. Baseline RBP4 concentrations were not significantly different between the 2 groups. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that only A-FABP was an independent predictor of the development of the metabolic syndrome after adjustment for Tanner stage, insulin resistance, body mass index, sleep duration, and physical activity (odds ratio: 17.3; 95% CI: 1.25, 239.76; highest compared with lowest tertile), whereas the significant association between adiponectin and the metabolic syndrome observed by using bivariate analysis reflects, in part, an underlying association with obesity. Conclusion: A-FABP predicts the development of the metabolic syndrome independently of pubertal status, adiposity, and insulin resistance in Korean boys. Am J Clin Nutr 2011;93:19–26.