Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization and immunolocalization of a Cryptosporidium protein containing repeated amino acid motifs

The oocyst wall is one of the components that permits cryptosporidia both to survive in the environment and to retain infectivity. With the aim of identifying Cryptosporidium proteins specifically expressed at the oocyst stage, we screened lambda gt11 genomic libraries of Cryptosporidium parvum with both an oocyst antiserum and a specific genetic probe. We isolated, from distinct libraries, two overlapping clones containing an open reading frame encoding a 1,252-amino-acid polypeptide. The analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence revealed unusually high contents of cysteine, proline, and histidine. The sequence was also characterized by two distinct amino acid motifs, each repeated several times. The DNA sequences coding for the amino acid repeats showed a high frequency of synonymous mutations, a result suggesting that the repeated motifs may be functionally and/or structurally important to the parasite. Antisera and monoclonal antibodies developed against a recombinant polypeptide encompassing the first 786 amino acids revealed that the corresponding protein in C. parvum had an apparent molecular weight of 190,000. Moreover, confocal microscopy analysis with immunofluorescence indicated that the protein was localized on the oocyst wall as a uniform stain and within the oocyst itself as bright granules in close association with the residual body.
Effects of hypertonic saline hydroxyethyl starch solution and mannitol in patients with increased intracranial pressure after stroke.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to prospectively evaluate a protocol with hypertonic saline hydroxyethyl starch (HS-HES) and mannitol in stroke patients with increased intracranial pressure (ICP). METHODS We studied 30 episodes of ICP crisis in 9 patients. ICP crisis was defined as (1) a rise of ICP of more than 25 mm Hg (n = 22), or (2) pupillary abnormality (n=3), or (3) a combination of both (n=5). Baseline treatment was performed according to a standardized protocol. For initial treatment, the patients were randomly assigned to either infusion of 100 mL HS-HES or 40 g mannitol over 15 minutes. For repeated treatments the 2 substances were alternated. ICP, blood pressure, and cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP) were monitored over 4 hours. Blood gases, hematocrit, blood osmolarity, and sodium were measured before and 15 and 60 minutes after the start of infusion. Treatment was regarded as effective if ICP decreased >10% below baseline value or if the pupillary reaction had normalized. RESULTS Treatment was effective in all 16 HS-HES-treated and in 10 of 14 mannitol-treated episodes. ICP decreased from baseline values in both groups, P < 0.01. The maximum ICP decrease was 11.4 mm Hg (after 25 minutes) in the HS-HES-treated group and 6.4 mm Hg (after 45 minutes) in the mannitol-treated group. There was no constant effect on CPP in the HS-HES-treated group, whereas CPP rose significantly in the mannitol-treated group. Blood osmolarity rose by 6.2 mmol/L in the mannitol-treated group and by 10.5 mmol/L in the HS-HES-treated group; sodium fell by 3.2 mmol/L in the mannitol and rose by 4.1 mmol/L in the HS-HES-treated group. CONCLUSIONS Infusion of 40 g mannitol and 100 mL HS-HES decreases increased ICP after stroke. The maximum effect occurs after the end of infusion and is visible over 4 hours. HS-HES seems to lower ICP more effectively but does not increase CPP as much as does mannitol.
Novel Implant Coating Agent Promotes Gene Expression of Osteogenic Markers in Rats during Early Osseointegration

The aim of this study was to evaluate the early bone response around laminin-1-coated titanium implants. Forty-five rats distributed in three equally sized groups were provided with one control (turned) and one test (laminin-1-coated) implant and were sacrificed after 3, 7, and 21 days. Real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction was performed for osteoblast markers (alkaline phosphatase, runt-related transcription factor 2, osteocalcin, type I collagen, and bone morphogenic protein 2), osteoclast markers (cathepsin K and tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase), inflammation markers (tumor necrosis factor α, interleukin 1β and interleukin 10), and integrin β1. Bone implant contact (BIC) and bone area (BA) were assessed and compared to the gene expression. After 3 days, the expression of bone markers was higher for the control group. After 7 days, the expression of integrin β1 and osteogenic markers was enhanced for the test group, while cathepsin K and inflammation markers were down-regulated. No significant differences in BIC or BA were detected between test and control at any time point. As a conclusion, implant coating with laminin-1 altered gene expression in the bone-implant interface. However, traditional evaluation methods, as histomorphometry, were not adequately sensitive to detect such changes due to the short follow-up time.
The Narrow Escape Problem

The narrow escape problem in diffusion theory is to calculate the mean first passage time of a diffusion process to a small target on the reflecting boundary of a bounded domain. The problem is equivalent to solving the mixed Dirichlet--Neumann boundary value problem for the Poisson equation with small Dirichlet and large Neumann parts. The mixed boundary value problem, which goes back to Lord Rayleigh, originates in the theory of sound and is closely connected to the eigenvalue problem for the mixed problem and for the Neumann problem in domains with bottlenecks. We review here recent developments in the non-standard asymptotics of the problem, which are based on several ingredients: a better resolution of the singularity of Neumann's function, resolution of the boundary layer near the small target by conformal mappings of domains with bottlenecks, and the breakup of composite domains into simpler components. The new methodology applies to two- and higher-dimensional problems. Selected applications are r.
123I-MIBG SPECT for Evaluation of Patients with Heart Failure

Heart failure (HF) is characterized by activation of the sympathetic cardiac nerves. The condition of cardiac sympathetic nerves can be evaluated by 123I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (123I-MIBG) imaging. Most cardiac 123I-MIBG studies have relied on measurements from anterior planar images of the chest. However, it has become progressively more common to include SPECT imaging in clinical and research protocols. This review examines recent trends in 123I-MIBG SPECT imaging and evidence that provides the basis for the increased use of the procedure in the clinical management of patients with HF. 123I-MIBG SPECT has been shown to be complementary to planar imaging in patients with HF in studies of coronary artery disease after an acute myocardial infarction. Moreover, 123I-MIBG SPECT has been used in numerous studies to document regional denervation for arrhythmic event risk assessment. For better quantification of the size and severity of innervation abnormalities in 123I-MIBG SPECT, programs and protocols specifically for 123I have been developed. Also, the introduction of new solid-state cameras has created the potential for more rapid SPECT acquisitions or a reduction in radiopharmaceutical activity. Although PET imaging has superior quantitative capabilities, 123I-MIBG SPECT is, for the foreseeable future, the only widely available nuclear imaging method for assessing regional myocardial sympathetic innervation.
Adding two equivalence relations to the interval temporal logic AB

The interval temporal logic AB features two modalities that make it possible to access intervals which are adjacent to the right of the current interval (modality 〈A〉) and proper subintervals that have the same left endpoint of it (modality 〈B〉). AB is one of the most significant interval logics, as it allows one to express meaningful (metric) properties, while maintaining decidability (undecidability rules over interval logics, AB is EXPSPACE-complete [14]). In an attempt to capture ωS-regular languages with interval logics [15], it was proved that AB extended with an equivalence relation, denoted AB∼, is decidable (non-primitive recursive) on the class of finite linear orders and undecidable on N. The question whether the addition of two or more equivalence relations makes finite satisfiability for AB undecidable was left open. In this paper, we answer this question proving that AB∼1∼2 is undecidable.
The implications of therapeutic complexity on adherence to cardiovascular medications.

BACKGROUND Patients with chronic disease often take many medications multiple times per day. Such regimen complexity is associated with medication nonadherence. Other factors, including the number of pharmacy visits patients make to pick up their prescriptions, may also undermine adherence. Our objective was to estimate the extent of prescribing and filling complexity in patients prescribed a cardiovascular medication and to evaluate its association with adherence. METHODS The study population comprised individuals prescribed a statin (n = 1 827 395) or an angiotensin- converting enzyme inhibitor or renin angiotensin receptor blocker (ACEI/ARB) (n = 1 480 304) between June 1, 2006, and May 30, 2007. We estimated complexity by measuring the number of medications, prescribers, pharmacies, pharmacy visits, and refill consolidation (a measure of the number of visits per fill) during the 3 months from the first prescription. The number of daily doses was also measured in ACEI/ARB users. After this period, adherence was evaluated over the subsequent year. The relationship between complexity and adherence was assessed with multivariable linear regression. RESULTS The statin cohort had a mean age of 63 years and were 49% male. On average, during the 3-month complexity assessment period, statin users filled 11.4 prescriptions for 6.3 different medications, had prescriptions written by 2 prescribers, and made 5.0 visits to the pharmacy. Results for ACEI/ARB users were similar. Greater prescribing and filling complexity was associated with lower levels of adherence. In adjusted models, patients with the least refill consolidation had adherence rates that were 8% lower over the subsequent year than patients with the greatest refill consolidation. CONCLUSION Medication use and prescription filling for patients with cardiovascular disease is complex, and strategies to reduce this complexity may help improve medication adherence.
Goodness-ofFit Tests for Copulas of Multivariate Time Series

In this paper, we study the asymptotic behavior of the sequential empirical process and the sequential empirical copula process, both constructed from residuals of multivariate stochastic volatility models. Applications for the detection of structural changes and specification tests of the distribution of innovations are discussed. It is also shown that if the stochastic volatility matrices are diagonal, which is the case if the univariate time series are estimated separately instead of being jointly estimated, then the empirical copula process behaves as if the innovations were observed; a remarkable property. As a by-product, one also obtains the asymptotic behavior of rank-based measures of dependence applied to residuals of these time series models.
INFLUENCE OF SURGICAL TECHNIQUE ON AXILLARY SEROMA FORMATION: A RANDOMIZED STUDY

The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of surgical technique in the form of electrocautery and suction drains on seroma formation following surgery for breast cancer. A prospective randomized study was carried out. One hundred and sixty patients with breast cancer who underwent surgery were allocated to four arms using a 2 × 2 factorial design. This method enabled us to evaluate the independent effect of two different causative factors on the incidence of postoperative seroma formation using a single dataset with limited numbers. The main outcome measure was postoperative seroma formation defined as a postoperative axillary collection requiring more than one aspiration after removal of the drain. The incidence of seroma in our institution is 90%. Incidence of postoperative seroma was 88.3% if electrocautery was used, which reduced to 82.2% if surgery was carried out using scissors for dissection and ligatures for haemostasis (P = 0.358). There was no influence on the incidence of seroma formation whether suction drain (84.6%) or corrugated drains (86.1%) were used (P = 0.822). The use of electrocautery in axillary dissection does not adversely affect postoperative seroma formation after surgery for breast cancer. The use of different drainage techniques has no bearing on the postoperative seroma formation. The surgical technique has no influence on the rate of seroma formation after surgery for breast cancer.
PROLIFERATION MARKERS , — AgNORs , CORRELATION WITH GRADE OF INVASIVE DUCTAL CARCINOMA OF BREAST

Background and Objectives: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy and a leading cause of death in women. The objectives of this study were to compare the argyrophilic nucleolar organizer region (AgNOR) parameters and estrogen receptor status with grades of invasive ductal carcinoma of breast. Methods: 50 cases of invasive ductal carcinoma of breast diagnosed on trucut, core biopsy/ incision/ excision was collected from Lahore General Hospital, Lahore. Hematoxylin and eosin, AgNOR and estrogen staining was done. AgNOR parameters and ER status were compared with grades of invasive ductal carcinoma. Results: The mean age of the patients was 46.84 years ± 11.8 SD. A significantly greater proportion (p < 0.01) of grade III tumors showed a variation in AgNOR size of 3+ when compared with grade II tumors. AgNOR dispersion was predominantly of 3+ in grade II tumors, whereas all the grade III tumors had 3+ AgNOR dispersion. However, the difference was not statistically significant. All estrogen receptor positive tumors were of low grade as compared to ER -ve, and the difference was statistically significant. Conclusion: It is concluded that AgNOR size, dispersion and ER status correlate well with Bloom and Richardson grade of invasive ductal carcinoma of breast.
Psychological characteristics and GoNogo research of patients with functional constipation

AbstractThe emotional state, psychological characteristics, cognitive function, and the relevance among above factors in patients with functional constipation (FC) are complex. This study aimed to investigate whether FC symptoms might be related to implicit processing such as psychological characteristics and emotional somatization.Thirty-five FC patients and 24 normal volunteers were recruited to collect event-related potentials (ERP) behavior and electroencephalogram data when simple digital GoNogo visual tasks were performed. Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD-17), Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA), Symptom Checklist, and Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPQ) were assessed before the ERP test.There was significant difference in average score, positive index, somatization, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression and psychoticism in HAMD-17, HAMA, Symptom Checklist, and extroversion or introversion and neuroticism in EPQ between the FC patients group and the normal control group (P < 0.05). There was a significant difference in the amplitude of ERP-P300 at site F4, F7, and FZ (P < 0.05). FC patients showed anxiety and depression. The asymmetric forebrain abnormal activities in the 2 hemispheres might initiate implicit automatic processing, such as somatization and obsessive-compulsive disorder, in order to cope with painful experience caused by anxiety and depression in patients with FC. Cognitive dysfunction of implicit processing might be involved in the abnormality of visual communication and information processing.
Dichroic behavior of the absorbance signals from dyes NK2367 and WW375 in skeletal muscle fibers

Absorbance signals were recorded from voltage-clamped single muscle fibers stained with the nonpenetrating potentiometric dyes NK2367 and WW375 and illuminated with quasimonochromatic light from 560 to 800 nm, linearly polarized either parallel (0 degree) or perpendicular (90 degrees) to the fiber long axis. The signals from both dyes depend strongly on the incident polarization. At any wavelength and/or polarization condition, the total absorbance signal is a superposition of the same two signal components previously identified with unpolarized light (Heiny, J. A., and J. Vergara, 1982, J. Gen. Physiol., 80:203)--namely, a fast step signal from the voltage-clamped surface membrane and a signal reflecting the slower T-system potential changes. The 0 degree and 90 degrees spectra of both membranes have similar positive and negative absorbance peaks (720 and 670 nm, respectively, for dye NK2367; 740 and 700 nm for dye WW375); in addition, they have the same dichroic maxima (670 for NK2367; 700 for WW375). However, for the surface membrane, the 0 degrees spectra are everywhere more positive than the 90 degrees spectra, whereas the reverse is true for the T-system, which results in a dichroism of opposite sign for the two membranes. These spectral characteristics were analyzed using a general model for the potential-dependent response of an absorbing dye (Tasaki, I., and A. Warashina, 1976, Photochem. Photobiol., 24:191), which takes into account both the dye response and the membrane geometries. They are consistent with the proposal that the dye responds via a common mechanism in both membranes that consists of a dye reorientation and a change in the absorption maxima.
Identification of a second family of high‐molecular‐weight adhesion proteins expressed by non‐typable Haemophilus influenzae

We previously reported that two surface‐exposed high‐molecular‐weight proteins, HMW1 and HMW2, expressed by a prototypic strain of non‐typable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHI), mediate attachment to human epithelial cells. These proteins are members of a family of highly immunogenic proteins common to 70–75% of NTHI strains. NTHI strains that lack HMW1/ HMW2‐like proteins remain capable of efficient attachment to cultured human epithelial cells, suggesting the existence of additional adhesion molecules. We reasoned that characterization of high‐molecular‐weight immunogenic proteins from an HMW1/HMW2‐deficient strain might identify additional adhesion proteins. A genomic library was prepared in λEMBL3 with chromosomal DNA from non‐typable Haemophilus strain 11, a strain that lacks HMW1/HMW2‐like proteins. The library was screened immunologically with convalescent serum from a child naturally infected with strain 11, and phage clones expressing high‐molecular‐weight recombinant proteins were identified by Western blot analysis. One clone was identified that expressed a protein with an apparent molecular mass greater than 200 kDa. Transformation of non‐adherent Escherichia coli strain DH5α with plasmids containing the genetic locus encoding this protein gave rise to E. colitransformants that adhered avidly to Chang conjunctival cells. Subcloning and mutagenesis studies localized the DNA conferring the adherence phenotype to a 4.8 kbp fragment, and nucleotide sequence analysis further localized the gene encoding the adhesion protein to a 3.3 kbp open reading frame predicted to encode a protein of 114kDa. The gene was designated hia for Haemophilus influenzae adhesin. Southern analysis revealed an hia homologue in 13 of 15 HMW1/HMW2‐deficient non‐typable H. influenzae strains. In contrast, the hia gene was not present in any of 23 non‐typable H. influenzae strains which expressed HMW1/HMW2‐like proteins. Identification of this second family of high‐molecular‐weight adhesion proteins suggests the possibility of developing vaccines based upon a combination of HMW1/HMW2‐like proteins and Hia‐like proteins which would be protective against disease caused by most or all non‐typable H. influenzae
Optimizing Multi-Relational Factorization Models for Multiple Target Relations

Multi-matrix factorization models provide a scalable and effective approach for multi-relational learning tasks such as link prediction, Linked Open Data (LOD) mining, recommender systems and social network analysis. Such models are learned by optimizing the sum of the losses on all relations in the data. Early models address the problem where there is only one target relation for which predictions should be made. More recent models address the multi-target variant of the problem and use the same set of parameters to make predictions for all target relations. In this paper, we argue that a model optimized for each target relation individually has better predictive performance than models optimized for a compromise on the performance on all target relations. We introduce specific parameters for each target but, instead of learning them independently from each other, we couple them through a set of shared auxiliary parameters, which has a regularizing effect on the target specific ones. Experiments on large Web datasets derived from DBpedia, Wikipedia and BlogCatalog show the performance improvement obtained by using target specific parameters and that our approach outperforms competitive state-of-the-art methods while being able to scale gracefully to big data.
Can Tea Consumption be a Safe and Effective Therapy Against Diabetes Mellitus-Induced Neurodegeneration?

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a metabolic disease that is rapidly increasing and has become a major public health problem. Type 2 DM (T2DM) is the most common type, accounting for up to 90-95% of the new diagnosed DM cases. The brain is very susceptible to glucose fluctuations and hyperglycemia-induced oxidative stress (OS). It is well known that DM and the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases are associated. Tea, Camellia sinensis L. , is one of the most consumed beverages. It contains several phytochemicals, such as polyphenols, methylxanthines (mainly caffeine) and L-theanine that are often reported to be responsible for tea’s health benefits, including in brain. Tea phytochemicals have been reported to be responsible for tea’s significant antidiabetic and neuroprotective properties and antioxidant potential. Epidemiological studies have shown that regular consumption of tea has positive effects on DM-caused complications and protects the brain against oxidative damage, contributing to an improvement of the cognitive function. Among the several reported benefits of tea consumption, those related with neurodegenerative diseases are of great interest. Herein, we discuss the potential beneficial effects of tea consumption and tea phytochemicals on DM and how their action can counteract the severe brain damage induced by this disease.
On fault recovery priority in ATM networks

In this paper we propose a priority scheme for reconnection of virtual circuits (VCs) in ATM networks that have been disrupted by a failure. ATM networks offer several service categories each designed to handle applications with specific traffic characteristics. A failure typically results in a large number of disrupted connections in each category, all of which must be restored simultaneously. A critical issue in the restoration is the order in which the service categories are processed, and the order of processing the connections and routing within each category. The proposed priority scheme aims at minimizing the impact of a failure on the network.