Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does a Newly Characterized Cell From the Bone Marrow Repair the Heart After Acute Myocardial Infarction?

A new report in Circulation Research entitled “S1P–S1PR2 Axis Mediates Homing of Muse Cells Into Damaged Heart for Long-Lasting Tissue Repair and Functional Recovery After Acute Myocardial Infarction” suggests that injection of isolated multilineage-differentiating stress enduring (MUSE) cells into the venous circulation 24 hours after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) reduces scar size and adverse ventricular remodeling and improves cardiac pump function. The authors suggest that bone marrow–derived MUSE cells might be suitable for the treatment of patients who have suffered an AMI.1 Article, see p 1069 AMI leads to the death of the tissue within the infarct core and a surrounding peri-infarct region where myocytes are at risk of subsequent death. Subsequent wound healing is associated with death of myocytes in the peri-infarct zone, causing infarct expansion, the formation of scar tissue, and revascularization of this new tissue. With time the left ventricle dilates and there is progressive depression of cardiac pump function that can lead to heart failure. There is a need for novel therapies that can improve post-AMI remodeling by reducing scar formation, protecting damaged myocytes, and preventing the development of ventricular dilation and depressed pump function. Therapies that regenerate the tissue killed by the ischemic insult are still the holy grail of this field. Cell therapies for cardiac repair with cells from the bone marrow have been tested in AMI, and although some initially showed great promise in preclinical animal studies,2 beneficial effects in AMI patients have been small3 or absent.4 In the new study in Circulation Research ,1 the authors suggest that a subpopulation of bone marrow cells, MUSE cells, repair the rabbit heart after AMI. In this editorial, I will give my view of the aspects of this work that either have or have not convinced me that MUSE cells …
Safety of protease inhibitors in HIV-infected pregnant women

The dire conditions of the human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome epidemic and the immense benefits of antiretroviral prophylaxis in prevention of mother-to-child transmission far outweigh the potential for adverse effects and undeniably justify the rapid and widespread use of this therapy, despite incomplete safety data. Highly active antiretroviral therapy has now become standard care, and more than half the validated regimens include protease inhibitors. This paper reviews current knowledge of the safety of these drugs during pregnancy, in terms of maternal and fetal outcomes. Transfer of protease inhibitors across the placenta is known to be minimal, and current data about birth defects and fetal malignancies are reassuring. Maternal liver function and glucose metabolism should be monitored in women treated with protease inhibitor-based regimens, but concerns about the development of maternal resistance, should treatment be discontinued, have been shown to be groundless. Neonates should be screened for hematologic abnormalities, although these are rarely severe or permanent and are not usually related to the protease inhibitor component of the antiretroviral combination. Current findings concerning pre-eclampsia and growth restriction are discordant, and further research is needed to address the question of placental vascular complications. The increased risk of preterm birth attributed to protease inhibitors should be interpreted with caution considering the discrepant results and the multitude of confounding factors often overlooked. Although data are thus far reassuring, further research is needed to shed light on unresolved controversies about the safety of protease inhibitors during pregnancy.
Cardiovascular Safety of the β3‐Adrenoceptor Agonist Mirabegron and the Antimuscarinic Agent Solifenacin in the SYNERGY Trial

There have been concerns that treatment of overactive bladder with β3‐adrenoceptor agonists may potentially have detrimental cardiovascular (CV) side effects. We evaluated the CV safety of mirabegron, a β3‐adrenoceptor agonist, alone and in combination therapy with the antimuscarinic agent solifenacin. The SYNERGY trial was a multinational, multicenter, randomized, double‐blind, parallel‐group, placebo and active‐controlled phase 3 trial. Patients were randomized to receive solifenacin 5 mg + mirabegron 50 mg (combination 5 + 50 mg), solifenacin 5 mg + mirabegron 25 mg (combination 5 + 25 mg), solifenacin 5 mg monotherapy, mirabegron 25 mg monotherapy, mirabegron 50 mg monotherapy, or placebo for a 12‐week double‐blind treatment period. A total of 3398 patients were included in the study. Mean changes from baseline to the end of therapy in ECG parameters were similar across treatment groups, although there was an increase in heart rate of 1 beat/minute in the mirabegron treatment groups. There were no clinically meaningful differences in change from baseline in QTcF between monotherapies and placebo and between monotherapies and combination therapy. There were very few major CV events: 1 of 853 (0.1%) with a nonfatal myocardial infarction in the combination 5 + 25 mg group, 2 of 848 (0.2%) with a nonfatal stroke in the combination 5 + 50 mg group, and no events in the other groups. This CV safety analysis of the combination of mirabegron and solifenacin showed rates of CV events comparable with those for monotherapy treatments based on assessments of vital signs, electrocardiograms, and adjudicated CV events.
Five wavelength DFB fiber lase source

grating. ’ A simple physical picture of such behavior is possible because the cavity round trip time is much greater than the transit time ofthe light in the gain medium. This picture will be outlined, and used to explore the range of behavior possible when the laser is directly modulated. Recent theoretical and experimental studies focusing on applications for wave-length-division multiplexing will be discussed. 64, We show that using dispersion-shifted dispersion-decreasing (DD) fiber can enhance the supercontinuum (SC) generation process in compari- son to constant dispersion or dispersion-increasing (DI) fiber. For ex-ample, we show that at 24.3 W peak input power, flatter spectra and twice the spectral broadening are obtained with DD fiber. SC sources are important for applications in multiwavelength systems and testing, as exemplified by the recent use of SC sources in 400-Gb’s telecommunica-tion application^. '-^ The use of DD fiber is advantageous because
Inhibition of breast cancer cell growth by the combination of clofarabine and sulforaphane involves epigenetically mediated CDKN2A upregulation

ABSTRACT Many antineoplastic nucleoside analogue-based combinatorial strategies focused on remodelling aberrant DNA methylation patterns have been developed. The number of studies demonstrate high efficacy of bioactive phytochemicals in support of conventional chemotherapy. Our recent discoveries of the epigenetic effects of clofarabine (2′-deoxyadenosine analogue, antileukaemic drug) and clofarabine-based combinations with dietary bioactive compounds in breast cancer cells led us to look for more DNA methylation targets of these cancer-preventive agents. In the present study, using methylation-sensitive restriction analysis (MSRA) and qPCR, we showed that clofarabine in combination with sulforaphane, a phytochemical from cruciferous vegetables, significantly reactivates DNA methylation-silenced CDKN2A tumour suppressor and inhibits cancer cell growth at a non-invasive breast cancer stage.
NANOMETROLOGY REGIME IN LENGTH MEASUREMENTS OF MATERIAL ARTEFACTS WITH NOMINAL LENGTHS UP TO 100 mm.

New calibrated double-sided method of interferometric length measurements with quartz reference plate is reported. The method is free from wringing errors, and can be used for the improvement of measurements of material artefacts. Limitations of the interferometric measurements are discussed. Some systematic errors are measured with a sub-nanometer resolution.
Five‐year relative survival for human papillomavirus‐associated cancer sites

Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines can potentially prevent greater than 90% of cervical and anal cancers as well as a substantial proportion of vulvar, vaginal, penile, and oropharyngeal cancers caused by certain HPV types. Because more than 38,000 HPV‐associated cancers are diagnosed annually in the United States, current studies are needed to understand how relative survival varies for each of these cancers by certain demographic characteristics, such as race and age.
A Chinese herbal medicine, fu-ling, regulates interleukin-10 production by murine spleen cells.

Fu-ling is one of the most widely used Chinese herbal medicines. In this study, we investigated the regulatory effect of fu-ling on interleukin-10 (IL-10) production in vivo. Mice were i.p. administered 0.1 mg to 1.0 mg fu-ling per gram body weight daily for three days. The spleen cells were isolated and assayed for both IL-10 and immunoglobulin (Ig) production. Results indicated that the mice treated with fu-ling had significantly increased spleen cell ability to secrete IL-10. Spleen cells isolated from the mice injected with either 0.1 mg or 1.0 mg fu-ling per gram body weight also showed an increase in IL-10 mRNA expression. As IL-10 is a potent differentiation factor of B-lymphocytes, the possible effect of fu-ling on Ig production was also studied. Results indicated that fu-ling significantly induced an increase in IgG and IgA secretion by spleen cells but showed no effect on IgM secretion. Thus, fu-ling may affect the function of B-lymphocytes via stimulating IL-10 production.
Automatic Building Segmentation of Aerial Imagery Using Multi-Constraint Fully Convolutional Networks

Automatic building segmentation from aerial imagery is an important and challenging task because of the variety of backgrounds, building textures and imaging conditions. Currently, research using variant types of fully convolutional networks (FCNs) has largely improved the performance of this task. However, pursuing more accurate segmentation results is still critical for further applications such as automatic mapping. In this study, a multi-constraint fully convolutional network (MC–FCN) model is proposed to perform end-to-end building segmentation. Our MC–FCN model consists of a bottom-up/top-down fully convolutional architecture and multi-constraints that are computed between the binary cross entropy of prediction and the corresponding ground truth. Since more constraints are applied to optimize the parameters of the intermediate layers, the multi-scale feature representation of the model is further enhanced, and hence higher performance can be achieved. The experiments on a very-high-resolution aerial image dataset covering 18 km 2 and more than 17,000 buildings indicate that our method performs well in the building segmentation task. The proposed MC–FCN method significantly outperforms the classic FCN method and the adaptive boosting method using features extracted by the histogram of oriented gradients. Compared with the state-of-the-art U–Net model, MC–FCN gains 3.2% (0.833 vs. 0.807) and 2.2% (0.893 vs. 0.874) relative improvements of Jaccard index and kappa coefficient with the cost of only 1.8% increment of the model-training time. In addition, the sensitivity analysis demonstrates that constraints at different positions have inconsistent impact on the performance of the MC–FCN.
Renovascular disease and the risk of adverse coronary events in the elderly: a prospective, population-based study.

BACKGROUND Renovascular disease is a cause of secondary hypertension and renal insufficiency and is suspected to contribute to morbidity and mortality of coronary heart disease. This investigation prospectively examined associations between renovascular disease and adverse coronary events among a population-based sample of elderly Americans. METHODS The Cardiovascular Health Study is a prospective, multicenter cohort study of cardiovascular disease risk factors, morbidity, and mortality among Americans older than 65 years. Renal duplex sonography was performed on 870 individuals between January 1995 and February 1997. Renovascular disease was defined as any focal peak systolic velocity of 1.8 m/s or greater (renal artery stenosis) or the absence of a Doppler-shifted signal from an imaged artery (renal artery occlusion). Adverse coronary events were defined as hospitalized angina, fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction, and coronary revascularization. RESULTS During a mean follow-up of 14 months, 68 participants experienced incident or recurrent adverse coronary events. The presence of renovascular disease demonstrated a significant relationship with adverse coronary events (hazard ratio, 1.96; 95% confidence interval, 1.00-3.83; P = .05) that remained after controlling for the effects of coexisting atherosclerotic risk factors and prevalent cardiovascular disease. The relationship between renovascular disease and adverse coronary events was not dependent on the effects of increased blood pressure. CONCLUSIONS The presence of renovascular disease was associated with an increase in the risk of adverse coronary events in this sample. The increment in risk was not dependent on the effects of associated atherosclerotic risk factors, other prevalent cardiovascular disease, or increased blood pressure.
Preoperative Factors Predictive of Continence Recovery after Radical Retropubic Prostatectomy

Purpose We assessed the factors predictive of continence recovery after radical retropubic prostatectomy performed by use a single operative technique by a single surgeon. Materials and Methods Preoperative factors, including age, body mass index (BMI), prostate volume, prostate-specific antigen level, and anatomical information from preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), such as membranous urethral length, thickness of the levator ani muscle, and urogenital diaphragm, were evaluated in 94 consecutive patients who underwent radical retropubic prostatectomy between April 2005 and October 2010. Patients were also categorized into four different groups according to the overlying pattern of the prostatic apex and the membranous urethra. Continence status was evaluated by direct patient questioning at 12 months after the operation. Results The overall continence rate at 12 months after the operation was 79.8%. In the age- and BMI-adjusted logistic regression analysis, the membranous urethral length and the overlying pattern of the prostatic apex were significant predictive factors of the continence rate at 12 months after the operation (p=0.006 and p=0.007, respectively). Other predictive factors were not contributory. Patients with no overlapping observed between the prostatic apex and membranous urethra had longer membranous urethral lengths (14.24±2.73 mm) and higher rates of recovery of continence compared with other groups. Conclusions Membranous urethral length and shape of the prostatic apex as assessed by preoperative MRI are significantly associated with recovery of urinary continence after radical retropubic prostatectomy.
Natural Leishmania (Viannia) infections of phlebotomines (Diptera: Psychodidae) indicate classical and alternative transmission cycles of American cutaneous leishmaniasis in the Guiana Shield, Brazil

From 1996 to 1999 multi-trapping methods (Center of Diseases Control, CDC) light traps, light-baited Shannon traps, and aspiration on tree bases) were used to study the phlebotomine fauna of the “Serra do Navio” region of the Brazilian State of Amapá, which is part of the Guiana Shield. Fifty-three species were identified among 8,685 captured individuals. The following species, associated with the transmission of American cutaneous leishmaniasis in Amazonian Brazil, were captured: Nyssomyia umbratilis (3,388), Psychodopygus squamiventris maripaensis (995), Ny. anduzei (550), Trichophoromyia ubiquitalis (400), Ny. whitmani (291), Ps. paraensis (116), and Bichromomyia flaviscutellata (50). Flagellate infections were detected in 45 flies. Of the 19 parasites isolated in vitro, 15 were Leishmania (Viannia) guyanensis (13 in Ny. umbratilis, 1 in Ny. whitmani, 1 in Ny. anduzei) and three were L. (V.) naiffi (2 in Ps. s. maripaensis, 1 in Ny. anduzei). The results indicate the participation of three phlebotomine species in the transmission of L. (V.) guyanensis and two species in that of L. (V.) naiffi, and show that the same phlebotomine species is involved in the transmission of different Leishmania (Viannia) species in the Guianan/Amazon region. A review of the literature together with the results of the present study, and other published and unpublished results, indicate that eight phlebotomine species potentially participate in the transmission of Leishmania (Viannia) naiffi in Amazonia.
Costly Punishment Across Human Societies

Recent behavioral experiments aimed at understanding the evolutionary foundations of human cooperation have suggested that a willingness to engage in costly punishment, even in one-shot situations, may be part of human psychology and a key element in understanding our sociality. However, because most experiments have been confined to students in industrialized societies, generalizations of these insights to the species have necessarily been tentative. Here, experimental results from 15 diverse populations show that (i) all populations demonstrate some willingness to administer costly punishment as unequal behavior increases, (ii) the magnitude of this punishment varies substantially across populations, and (iii) costly punishment positively covaries with altruistic behavior across populations. These findings are consistent with models of the gene-culture coevolution of human altruism and further sharpen what any theory of human cooperation needs to explain.
Testing for anthropogenic influence on fire regime for a 600-year period in the Jaksha area, Komi Republic, East European Russia

In an attempt to quantitatively evaluate the natural versus anthropogenic signal in site fire histories, the statistical relationship between dendrochronologically dated fire events and tree-ring chronologies (deemed to be an independent proxy for climate variation) was analyzed for 14 sites in a 2600-km(2) area of pine-dominated forests in the Komi Republic (East European Russia) over the period from 1424 to 1954. We developed a cumulative measure of statistical fit between two types of fire events (early- and late-season fires) and ring-width chronologies of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) (total ring- and latewood-width chronologies). For a given site, the statistical fit between fires and tree-ring data tended to decrease with an increasing proportion of unique fire years. Distance from a site to the nearest village (deemed to be a proxy of human impact) explained 50% of the variation in statistical fit between fires and tree-ring data. The fit decreased in the majority of the sites from the earlier (1424-1700) to the later (1700-1960) periods. We interpret this to be a result of increased human impact on the fire regime since 1700 due to intensified colonization of the area.
Anti-HER2 antibody and ScFvEGFR-conjugated antifouling magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles for targeting and magnetic resonance imaging of breast cancer

Antifouling magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) coated with block copolymer poly(ethylene oxide)-block-poly(γ-methacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane) (PEO-b-PγMPS) were investigated for improving cell targeting by reducing nonspecific uptake. Conjugation of a HER2 antibody, Herceptin®, or a single chain fragment (ScFv) of antibody against epidermal growth factor receptor (ScFvEGFR) to PEO-b-PγMPS-coated IONPs resulted in HER2-targeted or EGFR-targeted IONPs (anti-HER2-IONPs or ScFvEGFR-IONPs). The anti-HER2-IONPs bound specifically to SK-BR-3, a HER2-overexpressing breast cancer cell line, but not to MDA-MB-231, a HER2-underexpressing cell line. On the other hand, the ScFvEGFR-IONPs showed strong reactivity with MDA-MB-231, an EGFR-positive human breast cancer cell line, but not with MDA-MB-453, an EGFR-negative human breast cancer cell line. Transmission electron microscopy revealed internalization of the receptor-targeted nanoparticles by the targeted cancer cells. In addition, both antibody-conjugated and non-antibody-conjugated IONPs showed reduced nonspecific uptake by RAW264.7 mouse macrophages in vitro. The developed IONPs showed a long blood circulation time (serum half-life 11.6 hours) in mice and low accumulation in both the liver and spleen. At 24 hours after systemic administration of ScFvEGFR-IONPs into mice bearing EGFR-positive breast cancer 4T1 mouse mammary tumors, magnetic resonance imaging revealed signal reduction in the tumor as a result of the accumulation of the targeted IONPs.
The glucagon‐like peptide‐1 receptor agonist Exendin‐4, ameliorates contrast‐induced nephropathy through suppression of oxidative stress, vascular dysfunction and apoptosis independent of glycaemia

Contrast‐induced nephropathy (CIN) is a leading cause of hospital‐acquired acute kidney injury, particularly in diabetic patients. Previous studies have shown renoprotective effects of glucagon‐like peptide‐1 (GLP‐1) signalling; however, its role in CIN remains unexplored. This study investigates the prophylactic effect of exendin‐4, a GLP‐1R agonist, against CIN in a rat model mimicking both healthy and diabetic conditions. Animals were randomly divided into 7 groups: a control sham group (n = 8), and 2 identical sets of 3 disease groups, one received exendin‐4 before exposure to contrast medium (CM), while the other served as untreated control. The 3 disease groups represented diabetes (n = 8), CIN (n = 8), or diabetes and CIN combined (n = 8). Untreated groups showed deteriorating renal function as indicated by significantly higher levels of serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen, malondialdehyde, and endothelin‐1 and caspase‐3 expression compared to the sham control group. This was accompanied by a significant decrease in tissue reserves of reduced glutathione, superoxide dismutase, nitrate and endothelin nitric oxide synthase as well as deteriorating renal histology. The CM‐induced changes in diabetic rats indicate impaired renal function, oxidative stress, vascular dysfunction, and apoptosis, and were significance higher in intensity compared to non‐diabetic rats. Pretreatment with exendin‐4 ameliorated all the aforementioned CM‐induced nephropathic effects independent of the glycemic state. To our knowledge, this is the first study describing the prophylactic renoprotective effects of exendin‐4 against CIN. With the current pharmaceutical use of exendin‐4 as a hypoglycaemic agent, the GLP‐1R agonist becomes an interesting candidate for human clinical trials on CIN prevention.