Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hypericum perforatum Extracts and Hypericin Treatment of a Mouse Mammary Cancer Cell Line Induces Growth Inhibition in a Dose Dependent

Hypericum perforatum, commonly known as St. John’s Wort, has been found to exhibit many medicinal, especially anti-depressant, properties. Hypericin is thought to be the main chemical constituent responsible for H. perforatum’s medicinal properties. We report here the ability of H. perforatum and hypericin to inhibit the growth of mouse mammary cancer CRL2539 cells. H. perforatum, at concentrations of 0.4% and 0.8%, significantly (P<0.05) inhibited cell growth in a concentration dependent manner. Hypericin (purity 80-90%) at a concentration of 0.001% also significantly inhibited cell growth but not to the extent which the H. perforatum extracts did. In addition, H. perforatum at a concentration of 0.8% inhibited cell growth significantly more than H. perforatum at a concentration of 0.4%. Our study shows a promising therapeutic strategy in using the whole H. perforatum extract as its own form of treatment to effectively slow the growth rate of cancer cells, and potentially overcome the negative side effects associated with current forms of cancer treatment.
Comparative evaluation of pan‐fungal real‐time PCR, galactomannan and (1‐3)‐β‐D‐glucan assay for invasive fungal infection in paediatric cancer patients

Limited specific data and investigations are available for the diagnosis of Invasive Fungal Infection (IFI) in paediatrics cancer patients. Three non‐invasive tests; Platelia Aspergillus EIA for galactomannan (GM), β‐D‐glucan (BDG) assay and pan‐fungal real‐time PCR for fungal DNA in blood were evaluated. One hundred twenty‐five paediatrics cancer patients at the high risk of IFI were enrolled. Single blood and serum samples were evaluated by all the three methods. Patients were classified into 10 proven, 52 probable and 63 no IFI cases in accordance with EORTC MSG 2008 revised guidelines. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV of all the three tests in proven, probable and no IFIs cases were analysed singly and in combination. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV of GM, BDG and pan‐fungal real‐time PCR were: 87%, 61%, 81%, 69.5% for GM, 88%, 59.5%, 81%, 71.4% for BDG and 89%, 69.2%, 85%, 67.5% for PCR (95% CI). Among different combinations, best combination was found to be GM and PCR with sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV of 98.2%, 89.3%, 97.1% and 90% respectively. Single samples must be evaluated by combination of tests.
Smoke Screen: An Ethnographic Study of a Cigar Shop's Collective Rationalization

It is the purpose of this ethnographic study to explain why efforts from the medical establishment, the press, and friends and family are unsuccessful in persuading a group of men at a local cigar shop to stop smoking. I also seek to determine how these men create a linguistic defense shield that, ironically, protects them from the anxiety that such messages are designed to produce. I argue that the regulars at the shop collectively craft and share 6 prosmoking arguments that (a) rebuke the findings of the medical establishment, (b) anesthetize the regulars from the impact of antismoking messages, and (c) relieve cognitive dissonance and anxiety created by the act of smoking. I establish a theoretical foundation for the study, describe how the regulars craft and converge their collective narratives, and detail the 6 collectively created prosmoking narratives most frequently used by the regulars in countering antismoking messages.
Use of triazolam and alprazolam as premedication for general anesthesia

Background Triazolam has similar pharmacological properties as other benzodiazepines and is generally used as a sedative to treat insomnia. Alprazolam represents a possible alternative to midazolam for the premedication of surgical patients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the anxiolytic, sedative, and amnestic properties of triazolam and alprazolam as pre-anesthetic medications. Methods Sixty adult patients were randomly allocated to receive oral triazolam 0.25 mg or alprazolam 0.5 mg one hour prior to surgery. A structured assessment interview was performed in the operating room (OR), the recovery room, and the ward. The levels of anxiety and sedation were assessed on a 7-point scale (0 = relaxation to 6 = very severe anxiety) and a 5-point scale (0 = alert to 4 = lack of responsiveness), respectively. The psychomotor performance was estimated using a digit symbol substitution test. As a memory test, we asked the patients the day after the surgery if they remembered being moved from the ward to the OR, and what object we had shown them in the OR. Results There were no significant differences between the groups with respect to anxiety and sedation. The postoperative interviews showed that 22.2% of the triazolam-treated patients experienced a loss of memory in the OR, against a 0% memory loss in the alprazolam-treated patients. In comparison with alprazolam 0.5 mg, triazolam 0.25 mg produced a higher incidence of amnesia without causing respiratory depression. Conclusions Oral triazolam 0.25 mg can be an effective preanesthetic medication for psychomotor performance.
Effects of Insemination Quantity on Honey Bee Queen Physiology

Mating has profound effects on the physiology and behavior of female insects, and in honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens, these changes are permanent. Queens mate with multiple males during a brief period in their early adult lives, and shortly thereafter they initiate egg-laying. Furthermore, the pheromone profiles of mated queens differ from those of virgins, and these pheromones regulate many different aspects of worker behavior and colony organization. While it is clear that mating causes dramatic changes in queens, it is unclear if mating number has more subtle effects on queen physiology or queen-worker interactions; indeed, the effect of multiple matings on female insect physiology has not been broadly addressed. Because it is not possible to control the natural mating behavior of queens, we used instrumental insemination and compared queens inseminated with semen from either a single drone (single-drone inseminated, or SDI) or 10 drones (multi-drone inseminated, or MDI). We used observation hives to monitor attraction of workers to SDI or MDI queens in colonies, and cage studies to monitor the attraction of workers to virgin, SDI, and MDI queen mandibular gland extracts (the main source of queen pheromone). The chemical profiles of the mandibular glands of virgin, SDI, and MDI queens were characterized using GC-MS. Finally, we measured brain expression levels in SDI and MDI queens of a gene associated with phototaxis in worker honey bees (Amfor). Here, we demonstrate for the first time that insemination quantity significantly affects mandibular gland chemical profiles, queen-worker interactions, and brain gene expression. Further research will be necessary to elucidate the mechanistic bases for these effects: insemination volume, sperm and seminal protein quantity, and genetic diversity of the sperm may all be important factors contributing to this profound change in honey bee queen physiology, queen behavior, and social interactions in the colony.
Levels of Circulating Progenitor Cells, Cardiovascular Outcomes and Death: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Observational Studies.

RATIONALE Circulating progenitor cells (CPCs), including endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) are biologically related to many aspects of cardiovascular disease, as they promote angiogenesis and vascular repair. OBJECTIVE We herein aimed to meta-analyze studies reporting the prognostic role of the CPC/EPC measure on cardiovascular outcomes and death. METHODS AND RESULTS We screened the English-language literature for longitudinal studies reporting the association between baseline CPC/EPC levels, future cardiovascular events, and death. We retrieved 28 studies, 21 of which contained poolable data and entered the meta-analysis, for a total of 4155 patients, mostly with a high baseline cardiovascular risk. Sixty percent of the studies met at least 11 of 16 items of quality assessment. Overall, reduced CPC/EPC levels were associated with a ≈2-fold increased risk of future cardiovascular events and cardiovascular death. The most predictive phenotype was CD34(+)CD133(+): low versus high levels predicted cardiovascular events, restenosis after endovascular intervention, cardiovascular death, and all-cause mortality. Heterogeneity among studies and according to the CPC/EPC phenotype was generally high. Excluding studies for which the risk estimate had to be extrapolated or limiting the analyses to higher quality studies still indicated a significant risk for future cardiovascular events and death in patients with low versus high progenitor cell counts. CONCLUSIONS This meta-analysis shows that a reduction in the levels of circulating cells putatively provided with vasculoregenerative properties represents a risk factor for adverse cardiovascular outcomes and death.
The 'grass ceiling': limitations in the literature hinder our understanding of cannabis use and its consequences.

AIM To illustrate how limitations in the cannabis literature undermine our ability to understand cannabis-related harms and problems experienced by users and identify users at increased risk of experiencing adverse outcomes of use. METHOD AND RESULTS Limitations have been organized into three overarching themes. The first relates to the classification systems employed by researchers to categorize cannabis users, their cannabis use and the assumptions on which these systems are based. The second theme encompasses methodological and reporting issues, including differences between studies, inadequate statistical control of potential confounders, the under-reporting of effect sizes and the lack of consideration of clinical significance. The final theme covers differing approaches to studying cannabis use, including recruitment methods. Limitations related to the nature of the data collected by researchers are discussed throughout, with a focus on how they affect our understanding of cannabis use and users. CONCLUSIONS These limitations must be addressed to facilitate the development of effective and appropriately targeted evidence-based public health campaigns, treatment programmes and preventative, early intervention and harm minimization strategies, and to inform cannabis-related policy and legislation.
Finding Characteristic Features in Stylometric Analysis

The usual focus in authorship studies is on authorship attribution, i.e. determin- ing which author (of a given set) wrote a piece of unknown provenance. The usual setting involves a small number of candidate authors, which means that the focus quickly revolves around a search for features that discriminate among the candidates. Whether the features that serve to discriminate among the authors are characteristic is then not of primary importance. We respectfully suggest an alternative in this article, namely a focus on seeking features that are character- istic for an author with respect to others. To determine an author's characteristic features, we first seek elements that he or she uses consistently, which we there- fore regard as 'representative', but we likewise seek elements which the author uses 'distinctively' in comparison to an opposing author. We test the idea on a task recently proposed that compares Charles Dickens to both Wilkie Collins and a larger reference set comprising several authors' works from the 18th and 19th century. We then compare the use of representative and distinctive features to Burrows' 'Delta' and Hoovers' 'CoV Tuning'; we find that our method bears little similarity with either method in terms of characteristic feature selection. We show that our method achieves reliable and consistent results in the two- author comparison and fair results in the multi-author one, measured by separ- ation ability in clustering.
Comparison of Dixon Sequences for Estimation of Percent Breast Fibroglandular Tissue

Objectives To evaluate sources of error in the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) measurement of percent fibroglandular tissue (%FGT) using two-point Dixon sequences for fat-water separation. Methods Ten female volunteers (median age: 31 yrs, range: 23–50 yrs) gave informed consent following Research Ethics Committee approval. Each volunteer was scanned twice following repositioning to enable an estimation of measurement repeatability from high-resolution gradient-echo (GRE) proton-density (PD)-weighted Dixon sequences. Differences in measures of %FGT attributable to resolution, T1 weighting and sequence type were assessed by comparison of this Dixon sequence with low-resolution GRE PD-weighted Dixon data, and against gradient-echo (GRE) or spin-echo (SE) based T1-weighted Dixon datasets, respectively. Results %FGT measurement from high-resolution PD-weighted Dixon sequences had a coefficient of repeatability of ±4.3%. There was no significant difference in %FGT between high-resolution and low-resolution PD-weighted data. Values of %FGT from GRE and SE T1-weighted data were strongly correlated with that derived from PD-weighted data (r = 0.995 and 0.96, respectively). However, both sequences exhibited higher mean %FGT by 2.9% (p < 0.0001) and 12.6% (p < 0.0001), respectively, in comparison with PD-weighted data; the increase in %FGT from the SE T1-weighted sequence was significantly larger at lower breast densities. Conclusion Although measurement of %FGT at low resolution is feasible, T1 weighting and sequence type impact on the accuracy of Dixon-based %FGT measurements; Dixon MRI protocols for %FGT measurement should be carefully considered, particularly for longitudinal or multi-centre studies.
Antioxidant Properties of Mushroom Mycelia Obtained by Batch Cultivation and Tocopherol Content Affected by Extraction Procedures

The determination of the antioxidant potential of lyophilized mushroom mycelia from 5 strains of the species Pleurotus ostreatus and Coprinus comatus (obtained by submerged cultivation in batch system) was analyzed as ethanolic extracts by evaluating ABTS and the hydroxyl scavenging activity, FRAP method, the chelating capacity, the inhibition of human erythrocyte hemolysis, and the inhibition of xanthine oxidase activity. The main compounds present in all extracts were determined by HPLC chromatography. Overall, results demonstrated that the biologically active substances content is modulated by the extraction method used. The most beneficial extract, characterized by determining the EC50 value, was that of C. comatus M8102, followed by P. ostreatus PQMZ91109. Significant amount of α-tocopherol (179.51 ± 1.51 mg/100 g extract) was determined as well as flavones such as rutin and apigenin. In the P. ostreatus PQMZ91109 extract, 4.8 ± 0.05 mg/100 g extract of tocopherol acetate known to play a significant role as an antioxidant in skin protection against oxidative stress generated by UV rays was determined. The various correlations (r 2 = 0.7665–0.9426 for tocopherol content) assessed and the composition of extracts in fluidized bed from the mycelia of the tested species depicted a significant pharmacological potential as well as the possibility of usage in the development of new functional products.
Calcium Metabolism in Acromegaly

A total of 78 acromegalic patients were studied before and after treatment by yttrium-90 needle implantation. Among the untreated patients 16% had a borderline or raised serum calcium. In half of these patients the serum calcium fell to normal after remission of their acromegaly. In the others the hypercalcaemia was due to associated proved or probable hyperparathyroidism. A downward trend of the serum calcium was noted even in the normocalcaemic patients with remission of their disease. Only 20% of untreated patients had a raised serum phosphate, and follow-up showed this measurement to be a poor index of disease activity. Net calcium absorption and calcium balances in five patients in this series and 12 others from the literature were essentially normal for their given level of calcium intake. No patient showed definite radiological evidence of osteoporosis and vertebral fractures. Bone uptake rate of calcium-47 and stable strontium was raised in the untreated state in all nine patients studied. The 24-hour strontium space was raised in 73% of untreated patients and fell to normal after treatment in all the retested patients in whom it was high initially.
Profiling resource usage for mobile applications: a cross-layer approach

Despite the popularity of mobile applications, their performance and energy bottlenecks remain hidden due to a lack of visibility into the resource-constrained mobile execution environment with potentially complex interaction with the application behavior. We design and implement ARO, the mobile Application Resource Optimizer, the first tool that efficiently and accurately exposes the cross-layer interaction among various layers including radio resource channel state, transport layer, application layer, and the user interaction layer to enable the discovery of inefficient resource usage for smartphone applications. To realize this, ARO provides three key novel analyses: (i) accurate inference of lower-layer radio resource control states, (ii) quantification of the resource impact of application traffic patterns, and (iii) detection of energy and radio resource bottlenecks by jointly analyzing cross-layer information. We have implemented ARO and demonstrated its benefit on several essential categories of popular Android applications to detect radio resource and energy inefficiencies, such as unacceptably high (46%) energy overhead of periodic audience measurements and inefficient content prefetching behavior.
Temporary Inactivation of the Retrosplenial Cortex Causes a Transient Reorganization of Spatial Coding in the Hippocampus

The ability to navigate accurately is dependent on the integration of visual and movement-related cues. Navigation based on metrics derived from movement is referred to as path integration. Recent theories of navigation have suggested that posterior cortical areas, the retrosplenial and posterior parietal cortex, are involved in path integration during navigation. In support of this hypothesis, we have found previously that temporary inactivation of retrosplenial cortex results in dark-selective impairments on the radial maze (Cooper and Mizumori, 1999). To understand further the role of the retrosplenial cortex in navigation, we combined temporary inactivation of retrosplenial cortex with recording of complex spike cells in the hippocampus. Thus, behavioral performance during spatial memory testing could be compared with place-field responses before, and during, inactivation of retrosplenial cortex. In the first experiment, behavioral results confirmed that inactivation of retrosplenial cortex only impairs radial maze performance in darkness when animals are at asymptote levels of performance. A second experiment revealed that retrosplenial cortex inactivation impaired spatial learning during initial light training. In both experiments, the normal location of hippocampal “place fields” was changed by temporary inactivation of retrosplenial cortex, whereas other electrophysiological properties of the cells were not affected. The changes in place coding occurred in the presence, and absence, of behavioral impairments. We suggest that the retrosplenial cortex provides mnemonic spatial information for updating location codes in the hippocampus, thereby facilitating accurate path integration. In this way, the retrosplenial cortex and hippocampus may be part of an interactive neural system that mediates navigation.
International diversification, growth, and welfare with non-traded income risk and incomplete markets

The study asks how the potential benefits from cross-border asset trade are affected by the presence of non-traded income risk in incomplete markets. It is shown that the mean consumption growth may be lower with full integration than in financial autarky. This can occur because: the hedging demand for risky high-return projects may fall as the investment opportunity set increases, and precautionary savings may fall as the unhedgeable non-traded income variance decreases upon financial integration. It is also shown that international asset trade increases welfare if it increases the risk-adjusted growth rate. This is always the case in the model, but the effect may be close to negligible. The welfare gain is smaller the higher the correlation between the domestic non-traded income process and foreign asset returns.
Existence and Representation Theorems for a Semilinear Sobolev Equation in Banach Space

An existence theory is developed for a semilinear evolution equation in Banach space which is modeled on boundary value problems for partial differential equations of Sobolev type. The operators are assumed to be measurable and to satisfy coercive estimates which are not necessarily uniform in their time dependence, and to satisfy Lipschitz conditions on the nonlinear term. Applications are briefly indicated. 1. Introduction. We shall consider the abstract Cauchy problem for the nonlinear evolution equation ////(t)u'(t) + (t)u(t) f(t, u(t)) in a separable and reflexive Banach space. The linear operators /(t) are assumed to be weakly measurable in and to satisfy nonuniform coercive estimates over the Banach space which permit them to degenerate for certain values of t. The family of linear operators &(t) are assumed to be weakly measurable in t. The nonlinear term f(t, u) is measurable in and Lipschitz in u. Three types ofsolution are considered weak, mild, and strong.A mild solution is (essentially) a weak solution which permits a certain integral representation, and we shall prove that these two notions differ by a measurability assumption. A strong solution is a weak solution for which each term in the equation belongs to a specified Hilbert space for almost every t. The plan of the paper is as follows. Section 2 contains some technical results and notation we shall use. These include measurability of vector- and operator- valued functions, Gronwall's inequality, and an elementary fixed-point theorem for Banach space-valued functions. The weak solution is defined in 3, where we obtain results on uniqueness, local existence and global existence under various hypotheses. These results are used in 4 to construct the linear propagator (which resolves the linear equation withf 0) and thereby to introduce the notion of a mild solution. We prove that mild solutions (local and global) exist with the same hypotheses as used for existence of weak solutions. Strong solutions are introduced in 5. We give sufficient conditions for a mild solution to be strong; these conditions are essentially that the operators ///(t) dominate the operators &(t). Finally we obtain independently a sufficient condition for the existence (and uniqueness) of a strong solution; this condition requires that the function f be dominated by the operators /(t).
A hybrid optimization algorithm for the job-shop scheduling problem

The job-shop scheduling problem is a NP-hard combinational optimization and one of the best-known machine scheduling problems. Genetic algorithm is an effective search algorithm to solve this problem; however the quality of the best solution obtained by the algorithm has to improve due to its limitation. The paper proposes a novel hybrid optimization algorithm for the job-shop scheduling problem, which applies chaos theory on the basis of combining genetic programming and genetic algorithm. It improves the quality of the initial population by using chaos optimization method; it maintains the population diversity by chaotic disturbance and anti-equilibration in crossover of genetic programming. Three traversals are adopted to reduce the chance of reaching local optimal solution. Moreover, a scheme of changing weight is proposed during the process of evolution to increase the global exploration capability. The experimental results show that the effectiveness and good quality of the hybrid algorithm is obvious from some benchmarks.