Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fecal Microbiota Transplantation Improves the Quality of Life in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Introduction. To determine the effect of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) on quality of life (QoL) in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Methods. Fourteen IBD patients, including 11 Ulcerative colitis (UC) and 3 Crohn's disease (CD), were treated with FMT via colonoscopy or nasojejunal tube infusion. QoL was measured by IBD Questionnaire (IBDQ). Disease activity and IBDQ were evaluated at enrollment and four weeks after treatment. Patients' attitude concerning the treatment was also investigated. Results. One patient was excluded due to intolerance. All the other patients finished the study well. Mean Mayo score in UC patients decreased significantly (5.80 ± 1.87 versus 1.50 ± 1.35, P < 0.01). Mean IBDQ scores of both UC and CD patients increased (135.50 ± 27.18 versus 177.30 ± 20.88, P = 0.00063, and 107.33 ± 9.45 versus 149.00 ± 20.07, P = 0.024) four weeks after fecal microbiota transplantation. There was no correlation between the IBDQ score and Mayo score before and after FMT. Patients refused to take FMT as treatment repeatedly in a short time. Conlusions. Fecal microbiota transplantation improves quality of life significantly in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.
Leadership Strategies in Improving the Effectiveness of Educational Programs in Nurul Jadid Student Dormitory

Educational institutions play a crucial role in the preparation of quality human resources. The success of education is measured through the achievement of its goals and effectiveness. Successful education achieves goals with results as planned. Effective leadership in educational institutions can increase the effectiveness of educational programs. This study aims to analyze the leadership strategy of the dormitory head in improving the effectiveness of educational programs at the Nurul Jadid Student Dormitory. This research uses a qualitative approach with primary data from interviews and observations and secondary data from reports and documentation. The main informants are the head of the dormitory and the dormitory administrator. The analysis focused on the leadership strategy of the head of the dormitory to support the effectiveness of the education program. The results showed that the head of the dormitory implemented strategies to improve the effectiveness of the education program. One of them is involving experts in various fields in religious activities, such as Koran guidance, book recitation, and seminars. The presence of experts aims to improve the quality of education and provide deep insight. In addition, the head of the dormitory established a partnership with the head of the boarding school to strengthen the religious aspects of students.
ABGD, Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery for primary species delimitation

Within uncharacterized groups, DNA barcodes, short DNA sequences that are present in a wide range of species, can be used to assign organisms into species. We propose an automatic procedure that sorts the sequences into hypothetical species based on the barcode gap, which can be observed whenever the divergence among organisms belonging to the same species is smaller than divergence among organisms from different species. We use a range of prior intraspecific divergence to infer from the data a model‐based one‐sided confidence limit for intraspecific divergence. The method, called Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD), then detects the barcode gap as the first significant gap beyond this limit and uses it to partition the data. Inference of the limit and gap detection are then recursively applied to previously obtained groups to get finer partitions until there is no further partitioning. Using six published data sets of metazoans, we show that ABGD is computationally efficient and performs well for standard prior maximum intraspecific divergences (a few per cent of divergence for the five data sets), except for one data set where less than three sequences per species were sampled. We further explore the theoretical limitations of ABGD through simulation of explicit speciation and population genetics scenarios. Our results emphasize in particular the sensitivity of the method to the presence of recent speciation events, via (unrealistically) high rates of speciation or large numbers of species. In conclusion, ABGD is fast, simple method to split a sequence alignment data set into candidate species that should be complemented with other evidence in an integrative taxonomic approach.
Molecular Mechanisms of Green Tea Polyphenols

Tea, next to water, is the most popular beverage in the world. It has been suggested that tea consumption has the cancer-preventive effects. Epidemiological studies have indicated decreased cancer occurrence in people who regularly drink green tea. Research has also discovered numerous mechanisms of action to explain the biological effects of tea. The most abundant and popular compound studied in tea research is (−)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate or (−)-EGCG, which is a powerful antioxidant and can inhibit a number of tumor cell proliferation and survival pathways. Tea polyphenols are known to inhibit metaloproteonases, various protein kinases, and proteins that regulate DNA replication and transformation. We also reported that ester bond-containing tea polyphenols, for example, (−)-EGCG, potently and specifically inhibited the tumor proteasomal activity. We further demonstrated that methylation on green tea polyphenols under physiological conditions decreased their proteasome-inhibitory activity, contributing to decreased cancer-preventive effects of tea consumption. Since (−)-EGCG is unstable under physiological conditions, we also developed the peracetate-protected or prodrug form of (−)-EGCG, Pro-EGCG (1), and showed that Pro-EGCG (1) increases the bioavailability, stability, and proteasome-inhibitory and anticancer activities of (−)-EGCG in human breast cancer cells and tumors, demonstrating its potential use for cancer prevention and treatment.
Game-Theoretic Approaches for Energy Cooperation in Energy Harvesting Small Cell Networks

Deploying small cells in cellular networks, as a technique for capacity and coverage enhancement, is an indispensable characteristic of future cellular networks. In this paper, two novel online approaches for enabling energy trading in multitier cellular networks with noncooperative energy-harvesting base stations (BSs) are proposed. The goal is to minimize the nonrenewable energy consumption in a multitier cellular network with an arbitrary number of tiers. In the first approach, a decentralized energy trading framework is established in which BSs are stimulated to compensate their energy shortage with the extra harvested energy from other BSs rather than using the nonrenewable energy. Matching theory is used to assign BSs with energy deficit to the BSs with extra harvested energy. In the second approach, which is centralized, BSs with extra harvested energy and BSs with energy deficit enter a double auction for energy trading. The centralized approach also motivates the BSs with deficient energy to use other BSs extra harvested energy and satisfies a number of properties including truthfulness, individual rationalities, and budget balance. Both approaches achieve Nash equilibrium and motivate noncooperative BSs to share their extra harvested energy. The extra harvested energy is exchanged by the smart grid. We show that the amount of information exchanged in the network to enable BSs to trade energy is reduced in the centralized algorithm compared to the decentralized algorithm at the expense of using a control center. Simulation results verify that the proposed approaches reduce the nonrenewable energy consumption conspicuously. Furthermore, by applying the proposed approaches, BSs gain more profit, and consequently, their utility functions enhance.
First Results of a Linguistic Fieldwork on Baṅgāṇī

Baṅgāṇī is an Indo-Aryan language of the group of Western Pahāṛī languages spoken in the so-called Baṅgāṇ area located in the Uttarkāśī district of Uttarākhaṇḍ, in particular in the area between the Pabar and Tons rivers. Esteemed as a critically endangered language by the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, in the last few decades Baṅgāṇī has been a topic of controversy as regards mainly the question of whether this language contains Indo-European but non-Indo-Aryan vocabulary or not (for a summary see Zoller 1999, but also the personal website of Peter Edwin Hook at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pehook/bangani.html). Even if the majority of scholars related to this controversy concluded their studies claiming that much work on documentation but especially on the linguistic description/analysis of Baṅgāṇī has to be done, not so many of such works, if not at all, appeared till now (two exceptions are Van Driem & Sharmā 1997 and Zoller 2007).
Enhanced Antitumor Efficacy and Reduced Systemic Toxicity of Sulfatide-Containing Nanoliposomal Doxorubicin in a Xenograft Model of Colorectal Cancer

Sulfatide is a glycosphingolipid known to interact with several extracellular matrix proteins, such as tenascin-C which is overexpressed in many types of cancer including that of the colon. In view of the limited success of chemotherapy in colorectal cancer and high toxicity of doxorubicin (DOX), a sulfatide-containing liposome (SCL) encapsulation approach was taken to overcome these barriers. This study assessed the in vitro cytotoxicity, biodistribution, therapeutic efficacy and systemic toxicity in vivo of sulfatide-containing liposomal doxorubicin (SCL-DOX) using human colonic adenocarcinoma HT-29 xenograft as the experimental model. In vitro, SCL-DOX was shown to be delivered into the nuclei and displayed prolonged retention compared with the free DOX. The use of this nanodrug delivery system to deliver DOX for treatment of tumor-bearing mice produced a much improved therapeutic efficacy in terms of tumor growth suppression and extended survival in contrast to the free drug. Furthermore, treatment of tumor-bearing mice with SCL-DOX resulted in a lower DOX uptake in the principal sites of toxicity of the free drug, namely the heart and skin, as well as reduced myelosuppression and diminished cardiotoxicity. Such natural lipid-guided nanodrug delivery systems may represent a new strategy for the development of effective anticancer chemotherapeutics targeting the tumor microenvironment for both primary tumor and micrometastases.
Growth efficiency and temperature in scallops: a comparative analysis of species adapted to different temperatures

Summary 1Data were collected on metabolic activity and growth in pectinid bivalves from published studies. The resulting database comprised three types of data sets: (i) synoptic data (13 populations, 7 species), where both individual growth performance and metabolism are known, (ii) ‘metabolism only’ data (82 populations, 13 species), and (iii) ‘growth only’ data (198 populations, 26 species). 2In pectinid bivalves belonging to different species and living under different environmental conditions metabolic activity (standard metabolic rate, SMRAvg, Q10 = 2·97) is more closely related to temperature than individual growth (overall growth performance, OGP index P, Q10 = 1·12). 3The synthesis of the two corresponding Arrhenius equations shows that the relationship between the SMRAvg-to-OGP ratio and temperature follows the Arrhenius model, too, with Q10 = 2·26. 4SMRAvg-to-OGP is an inverse proxy for growth efficiency, hence growth efficiency decreases with rising temperature across a wide range of pectinid populations and species. Thus, there is strong empirical evidence that elevated temperature constrains growth efficiency in scallops and that adaptation does not fully compensate for this effect.
Online Set Selection with Fairness and Diversity Constraints

Selection algorithms usually score individual items in isolation, and then select the top scoring items. However, often there is an additional diversity objective. Since diversity is a group property, it does not easily jibe with individual item scoring. In this paper, we study set selection queries subject to diversity and group fairness constraints. We develop algorithms for several problem settings with streaming data, where an online decision must be made on each item as it is presented. We show through experiments with real and synthetic data that fairness and diversity can be achieved, usually with modest costs in terms of quality. Our experimental evaluation leads to several important insights in online set selection. We demonstrate that theoretical guarantees on solution quality are conservative in real datasets, and that tuning the length of the score estimation phase leads to an interesting accuracy-efficiency trade-off. Further, we show that if a difference in scores is expected between groups, then these groups must be treated separately during processing. Otherwise, a solution may be derived that meets diversity constraints, but that selects lower-scoring members of disadvantaged groups.
Biological properties of the native and synthetic lipid A of Porphyromonas gingivalis lipopolysaccharide.

INTRODUCTION AND METHODS A pentaacyl and diphosphoryl lipid A molecule found in the lipid A isolated from Porphyromonas gingivalis lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was chemically synthesized, and its characteristics were evaluated to reconfirm its interesting bioactivities including low endotoxicity and activity against LPS-unresponsive C3H/HeJ mouse cells. RESULTS The synthesized P. gingivalis lipid A (synthetic Pg-LA) exhibited strong activities almost equivalent to those of Escherichia coli-type synthetic lipid A (compound 506) in all assays on LPS-responsive mice, and cells. LPS and native lipid A of P. gingivalis displayed overall endotoxic activities, but its potency was reduced in comparison to the synthetic analogs. In the assays using C3H/HeJ mouse cells, the LPS and native lipid A significantly stimulated splenocytes to cause mitosis, and peritoneal macrophages to induce tumor necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin-6 production. However, synthetic Pg-LA and compound 506 showed no activity on the LPS-unresponsive cells. Inhibition assays using some inhibitors including anti-human Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) and TLR4/MD-2 complex monoclonal antibodies showed that the biological activity of synthetic Pg-LA was mediated only through the TLR4 signaling pathway, which might act as a receptor for LPS, whereas TLR2, possibly together with CD14, was associated with the signaling cascade for LPS and native lipid A of P. gingivalis, in addition to the TLR4 pathway. CONCLUSION These results suggested that the moderated and reduced biological activity of P. gingivalis LPS and native lipid A, including their activity on C3H/HeJ mouse cells via the TLR2-mediated pathway, may be mediated by bioactive contaminants or low acylated molecules present in the native preparations having multiple lipid A moieties.
Music and Movement Education as a Form of Motivation in Teaching Greek Traditional Dances

Research has shown that motivation for participating in physical education, particularly in traditional dances, has decreased dramatically. The aim of this research was to examine whether a music and movement program would increase pleasure and intrinsic motivation of students in elementary education while teaching them Greek traditional dances. 232 students were divided into two groups, a trained group of 135 participants (72 boys, 63 girls) and a control group of 97 (53 boys, 44 girls). The trained group was taught using the music and movement teaching model of traditional dances. The control group was taught using the instructional or guided teaching method of traditional Greek dances. To measure effectiveness of the two methods was accomplished by the completion of McAuley's Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. Analysis of scores showed use of music and movement education had a positive effect on intrinsic motivation for dancing and active participation of students, especially of the trained boys' group.
Effect of pressure and solar cooking on phytic acid and polyphenol content of cowpeas

Both pressure cooking and solar cooking significantly reduced the phytic acid and polyphenol content of cowpea cultivars. A significantly greater reduction in the content of both these antinutrients was noticed during pressure and solar cooking of soaked cowpeas compared to unsoaked seeds. The percentage reduction increased when the soaked cowpeas were dehulled and then cooked by both pressure and solar cooking. The results of the study reveal that solar cooking was more effective than pressure cooking in reducing the concentrations of phytic acid and polyphenols in cowpeas. The cumulative effect of soaking and dehulling, followed by solar cooking, was the removal of most of the polyphenols (88‐94 per cent). Such practices should be encouraged at the home level for the preparation of cowpea seeds.
Soft-output sphere decoding: algorithms and VLSI implementation

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detection algorithms providing soft information for a subsequent channel decoder pose significant implementation challenges due to their high computational complexity. In this paper, we show how sphere decoding can be used as an efficient tool to implement soft-output MIMO detection with flexible trade-offs between computational complexity and (error rate) performance. In particular, we provide VLSI implementation results which demonstrate that single tree-search, sorted QR-decomposition, channel matrix regularization, log-likelihood ratio clipping, and imposing runtime constraints are the key ingredients for realizing soft-output MIMO detectors with near max-log performance at a chip area that is only 58% higher than that of the best-known hard-output sphere decoder VLSI implementation.
Millimeter Wave Communications: From Point-to-Point Links to Agile Network Connections

Millimeter wave (mmWave) technologies promise to revolutionize wireless networks by enabling multi-gigabit data rates. However, they suffer from high attenuation, and hence have to use highly directional antennas to focus their power on the receiver. Existing radios have to scan the space to find the best alignment between the transmitter’s and receiver’s beams, a process that takes up to a few seconds. This delay is problematic in a network setting where the base station needs to quickly switch between users and accommodate mobile clients. We present Agile-Link, the first mmWave beam steering system that is demonstrated to find the correct beam alignment without scanning the space. Instead of scanning, Agile- Link hashes the beam directions using a few carefully chosen hash functions. It then identifies the correct alignment by tracking how the energy changes across different hash functions. Our results show that Agile-Link reduces beam steering delay by orders of magnitude.
Seeing ‘Where’ through the Ears: Effects of Learning-by-Doing and Long-Term Sensory Deprivation on Localization Based on Image-to-Sound Substitution

Background Sensory substitution devices for the blind translate inaccessible visual information into a format that intact sensory pathways can process. We here tested image-to-sound conversion-based localization of visual stimuli (LEDs and objects) in 13 blindfolded participants. Methods and Findings Subjects were assigned to different roles as a function of two variables: visual deprivation (blindfolded continuously (Bc) for 24 hours per day for 21 days; blindfolded for the tests only (Bt)) and system use (system not used (Sn); system used for tests only (St); system used continuously for 21 days (Sc)). The effect of learning-by-doing was assessed by comparing the performance of eight subjects (BtSt) who only used the mobile substitution device for the tests, to that of three subjects who, in addition, practiced with it for four hours daily in their normal life (BtSc and BcSc); two subjects who did not use the device at all (BtSn and BcSn) allowed assessment of its use in the tasks we employed. The impact of long-term sensory deprivation was investigated by blindfolding three of those participants throughout the three week-long experiment (BcSn, BcSn/c, and BcSc); the other ten subjects were only blindfolded during the tests (BtSn, BtSc, and the eight BtSt subjects). Expectedly, the two subjects who never used the substitution device, while fast in finding the targets, had chance accuracy, whereas subjects who used the device were markedly slower, but showed much better accuracy which improved significantly across our four testing sessions. The three subjects who freely used the device daily as well as during tests were faster and more accurate than those who used it during tests only; however, long-term blindfolding did not notably influence performance. Conclusions Together, the results demonstrate that the device allowed blindfolded subjects to increasingly know where something was by listening, and indicate that practice in naturalistic conditions effectively improved “visual” localization performance.
Dimerization of the Papillomavirus E 2 Protein Is Required for Efficient Mitotic Chromosome Association and Brd 4 Binding

The E2 proteins of several papillomaviruses link the viral genome to mitotic chromosomes to ensure retention and the efficient partitioning of genomes into daughter cells following cell division. Bovine papillomavirus type 1 E2 binds to chromosomes in a complex with Brd4, a cellular bromodomain protein. Interaction with Brd4 is also important for E2-mediated transcriptional regulation. The transactivation domain of E2 is crucial for interaction with the Brd4 protein; proteins lacking or mutated in this domain do not interact with Brd4. However, we found that the C-terminal DNA binding/dimerization domain of E2 is also required for efficient binding to Brd4. Mutations that eliminated the DNA binding function of E2 had no effect on the ability of E2 to interact with Brd4, but an E2 protein with a mutation that disrupted C-terminal dimerization bound Brd4 with greatly reduced efficiency. Furthermore, E2 proteins in which the C-terminal domains were replaced with the dimeric DNA binding domain of EBNA-1 or Gal4 bound efficiently to the Brd4 protein, but the replacement of the E2 C-terminal domain with a monomeric red fluorescent protein did not rescue efficient Brd4 binding. Thus, E2 bound to Brd4 most efficiently as a dimer. To prove this finding further, the E2 DNA binding domain was replaced with an FKBP12-derived domain in which dimerization was regulated by a bivalent ligand. This fusion protein bound Brd4 efficiently only in the presence of the ligand, confirming that a dimer of E2 was required. Correspondingly, E2 proteins that could dimerize were able to bind to mitotic chromosomes much more efficiently than monomeric E2 polypeptides.