Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Solid lipid nanoparticles and nanostructured lipid carrier-based nanotherapeutics in treatment of psoriasis: a comparative study

ABSTRACT Background: The present work focuses on the development of ultra-small solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) and nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) encapsulating cyclosporine and calcipotriol, further incorporated into gel, increasing their penetration through the skin. Research design and methods: Developed SLN and NLC were characterized regarding particle size, zeta potential, %entrapment efficiency and dispersed into carbopol 934P-NF gel. Gel was further characterized for rheological behavior and spreadability. Ex vivo dermatokinetic by tape stripping method, in vitro efficacy on HaCaT cell lines and in vivo efficacy on imiquimod induced psoriatic model in mice were evaluated. Results: Ultra-small (size<100 nm) particles were formed with high entrapment efficiency and spherical morphology. Ex vivo dermatokinetic studies revealed deeper and confined drug penetration of lipid formulation gel in epidermal layers as compared to free drug. In vitro study on HaCaT cell lines depicted higher uptake and high efficacy owing to decrease in cell viability for NLC. The anti-psoriatic efficacy in BALB/c mice (evaluated on basis of cytokine levels and skin morphology) highlighted potential of drug-loaded NLC significantly higher as compared to drug loaded SLN and marketed formulation Betagel. Conclusions: The study demonstrated that NLC gel had higher efficacy in psoriatic management and hold promise for further exploration.
Matched Subspace Detection With Hypothesis Dependent Noise Power

We consider the problem of detecting a subspace signal in white Gaussian noise when the noise power may be different under the null hypothesis - where it is assumed to be known - and the alternative hypothesis. This situation occurs when the presence of the signal of interest (SOI) triggers an increase in the noise power. Accordingly, it may be relevant in the case of a mismatch between the actual SOI subspace and its presumed value, resulting in a modelling error. We derive the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) for the problem at hand and contrast it with the GLRT which assumes known and equal noise power under the two hypotheses. A performance analysis is carried out and the distributions of the two test statistics are derived. From this analysis, we discuss the differences between the two detectors and provide explanations for the improved performance of the new detector. Numerical simulations attest to the validity of the analysis.
Spinal monoaminergic receptors mediate the antinociception produced by glutamate in the medullary lateral reticular nucleus

Focal electrical stimulation and microinjection of the excitatory amino acid glutamate in the lateral reticular nucleus (LRN) both inhibit the heat-evoked tail flick (TF) reflex in rats. The stimulation-produced inhibition from the LRN has previously been demonstrated to be mediated by spinal monoaminergic receptors. In the present study, inhibition of responses to noxious thermal stimuli by glutamate microinjected into the LRN was examined and characterized; this study is the first to examine the spinal receptors mediating inhibition produced by selective activation of cell bodies in the LRN. Microinjection of glutamate (100 mM) into the LRN in rats lightly anesthetized with pentobarbital produced a transient (less than 5 min) inhibition of the heat-evoked TF reflex, the magnitude of which increased with the volume of glutamate injected (100, 200, or 400 nl). This glutamate-produced inhibition of the TF reflex was antagonized by the intrathecal administration of phentolamine (30 micrograms), yohimbine (15 and 30 micrograms), or methysergide (15 and 30 micrograms) to the level of the lumbar spinal cord, but was not antagonized by prazosin (30 micrograms) or naloxone (20 micrograms). Yohimbine (15 and 30 micrograms) administered to the level of the cervical spinal enlargement did not significantly alter inhibition of the TF reflex produced by glutamate microinjected into the LRN. Microinjection of glutamate (100 mM, 400 nl) into the LRN elevated TF latencies and hindpaw lick latencies in the hot plate test performed on conscious rats. This inhibition of responses to noxious thermal stimuli in conscious rats was short-lasting (less than 5 min), and was also attenuated by intrathecal administration of yohimbine (30 micrograms) or methysergide (30 micrograms), but not by prazosin (30 micrograms) or naloxone (20 micrograms). While it has previously been established that cell bodies in the LRN mediate descending inhibition of spinal nociceptive reflexes, the present results establish that spinal alpha 2-adrenoceptors and serotonin receptors mediate LRN- produced antinociception and extend our understanding of LRN-mediated modulation of nociceptive responses integrated spinally and supraspinally.
The Spiking Component of Oscillatory Extracellular Potentials in the Rat Hippocampus

When monitoring neural activity using intracranial electrical recordings, researchers typically consider the signals to have two primary components: fast action potentials (APs) from neurons near the electrode, and the slower local field potential (LFP), thought to be dominated by postsynaptic currents integrated over a larger volume of tissue. In general, a decrease in signal power with increasing frequency is observed for most brain rhythms. The 100–200 Hz oscillations in the rat hippocampus, including “fast gamma” or “epsilon” oscillations and sharp wave-ripples (SPW-Rs), are one exception, showing an increase in power with frequency within this band. We have used detailed biophysical modeling to investigate the composition of extracellular potentials during fast oscillations in rat CA1. We find that postsynaptic currents exhibit a decreasing ability to generate large-amplitude oscillatory signals at high frequencies, whereas phase-modulated spiking shows the opposite trend. Our estimates indicate that APs and postsynaptic currents contribute similar proportions of the power contained in 140–200 Hz ripples, and the two combined generate a signal that closely resembles in vivo SPW-Rs. Much of the AP-generated signal originates from neurons further than 100 μm from the recording site, consistent with ripples appearing similarly strong regardless of whether or not they contain recognizable APs. Additionally, substantial power can be generated in the 90–150 Hz epsilon band by the APs of rhythmically firing pyramidal neurons. Thus, high-frequency LFPs may generally contain signatures of local cell assembly activation.
Quality of life impairment in a community sample of women with eating disorders

Objective: Studies of quality of life among individuals with eating disorders have relied almost exclusively on clinical samples. We examined impairment in quality of life in a community sample of women with eating disorders recruited as part of an epidemiological study. Methods: Measures of health-related quality of life (Medical Outcomes Study 12-item Short-Form Physical and Mental Component Summary scales) and subjective well-being (WHOQOL-BREF Psychological Functioning and Social Relationships subscales) were completed by women with eating disorders (n = 159), primarily variants of bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, and a comparison group of healthy women (n = 232). Results: When compared with healthy women, women with eating disorders reported substantial impairment in aspects of quality of life relating to mental health, although item-level analysis indicated considerable variation in the extent to which specific aspects of emotional well-being were affected. Impairment in social relationship and in physical health was less pronounced and due, at least in part, to between-group differences in age, body weight and demographic characteristics. Impairment in certain aspects of perceived physical health was, however, apparent among women with eating disorders, even after controlling for between-group differences in body weight. Conclusions: Community cases of women with eating disorders experience marked impairment in quality of life as this relates to mental health functioning and at least some impairment in physical health functioning. Personality characteristics and ego-syntonic aspects of eating-disordered behaviour may complicate the interpretation of findings relating to impairment in specific aspects of quality of life.
Development of Fisheries in the Gulf of Thailand Large Marine Ecosystem : Analysis of an unplanned experiment

The main ecological features of the Gulf of Thailand (GoT) Large Marine Ecosystem are briefly outlined, to serve as context for a sketch of the development of the fisheries therein. This development took place in the absence of large environmental changes and, except for some squabbles over the incursion of trawlers into the EEZ of Cambodia, in the absence of international conflicts over straddling stocks. This situation may be seen as representing a nearly ideal 'experimental' setting for studying the direct effect of rapidly growing fisheries on the abundance and composition of tropical multispecies resources and on the ecosystem within which these resources are embedded. This analysis consists of three mutually supporting elements: (1) a narrative, highlighting the sequence of events leading to the present, overcapitalized fisheries and their much depleted resource base; (2) a comparative study, using the multidimensional Rapfish approach, of the impact, in terms of sustainability, of the different gears operating in the GoT; and (3) a demonstration that these fisheries, by fishing down the food webs of the GoT, have fundamentally altered, and continue to alter, the functioning of that ecosystem, albeit in a manner that may still be reversible. These results indicate that a drastic reduction of fishing effort, especially by bottom trawlers, is the only way to halt further ecological degradation of this Large Marine Ecosystem. INTRODUCflON The Gulf of Thailand (GoT), with an area of about 350,000 km 2 is a typical Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) in terms of its size (Sherman and Duda 1999). However, it differs from a number of other LMEs in being, to a large extent, part
Defense against Protein Carbonylation by DnaK/DnaJ and Proteases of the Heat Shock Regulon

ABSTRACT Protein carbonylation is an irreversible oxidative modification that increases during organism aging and bacterial growth arrest. We analyzed whether the heat shock regulon has a role in defending Escherichia coli cells against this deleterious modification upon entry into stationary phase. Providing the cell with ectopically elevated levels of the heat shock transcription factor, σ32, effectively reduced stasis-induced carbonylation. Separate overproduction of the major chaperone systems, DnaK/DnaJ and GroEL/GroES, established that the former of these is more important in counteracting protein carbonylation. Deletion of the heat shock proteases Lon and HslVU enhanced carbonylation whereas a clpP deletion alone had no effect. However, ClpP appears to have a role in reducing protein carbonyls in cells lacking Lon and HslVU. Proteomic immunodetection of carbonylated proteins in the wild-type, lon, and hslVU strains demonstrated that the same spectrum of proteins displayed a higher load of carbonyl groups in the lon and hslVU mutants. These proteins included the β-subunit of RNA polymerase, elongation factors Tu and G, the E1 subunit of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex, isocitrate dehydrogenase, 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase, and serine hydroxymethyltranferase.
Patience among children * May 2006

Recent policy initiatives offer cash payments to children (and often their families) to induce better health and educational choices. These policies implicitly assume that children are especially impatient (i.e., have high discount rates); however, little is known about the nature of children's patience, how it varies across children, and whether children can even make rational intertemporal choices. This paper examines the inter-temporal choices of five to sixteen year old children in an artefactual field experiment. We examine their choices between varying levels of compensation received in two or four months in the future and in zero or two months in the future. We find that children’s choices are consistent with hyperbolic discounting, boys are less patient than girls, older children are more patient and that mathematical achievement test scores, private schooling and parent’s patience are not correlated with children’s patience. We also find that although more than 25 percent of children do not make rational inter-temporal choices within a single two-period time frame, we cannot find variables that explain this behavior other than age and standardized mathematical achievement test scores.
Thrust Tectonics and Hydrocarbon Systems

Thrust Tectonics and Hydrocarbon Systems resulted from an international conference at Royal Holloway University in London. The volume contains 33 chapters divided into four sections:Geodynamics of Thrust Systems, Analog Modeling of Thrust Systems, Fault-Related Folds in Thrust Systems,and Case Studies. These papers summarize recent advances in thrust studies and their application to hydrocarbon exploration and production.Key topics addressed include the application of the critically tapered Coulomb wedge model to thrust systems both in nature and in experiments, the interaction of surface proceses with thrust systems, basement-involved thrust systems and inversion, fault-related folds in thrust belts, and growth stratal development in thrust belts. Fold-and thrust belts described and discussed in this volume include the Alps, the Andes, the Apennines, the Appalacians, the Alice Springs Orogen in Australia, the Albanides, the Atlas in Morocco, the Canadian Cordillera and the Canadian Rocky Mountains, Kutei Basin, Kalimantan, the Himalayas, the New England Orogen, Papua New Guinea, and the Spanish Pyrenees, as well as depwater fold and thrust belts such as the Niger Delta and the Gulf of Mexico. Memoir 82 provides an in-depth look at thrust tectonics and hydrocarbon systems, and is a milestone publication as a major new examination of thrust fault systems.
How Good is the Crowd at “real” WSD?

There has been a great deal of excitement recently about using the "wisdom of the crowd" to collect data of all kinds, quickly and cheaply (Howe, 2008; von Ahn and Dabbish, 2008). Snow et al. (Snow et al., 2008) were the first to give a convincing demonstration that at least some kinds of linguistic data can be gathered from workers on the web more cheaply than and as accurately as from local experts, and there has been a steady stream of papers and workshops since then with similar results. e.g. (Callison-Burch and Dredze, 2010). Many of the tasks which have been successfully crowdsourced involve judgments which are similar to those performed in everyday life, such as recognizing unclear writing (von Ahn et al., 2008), or, for those tasks that require considerable judgment, the responses are usually binary or from a small set of responses, such as sentiment analysis (Mellebeek et al., 2010) or ratings (Heilman and Smith, 2010). Since the FrameNet process is known to be relatively expensive, we were interested in whether the FrameNet process of fine word sense discrimination and marking of dependents with semantic roles could be performed more cheaply and equally accurately using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT) or similar resources. We report on a partial success in this respect and how it was achieved.
The budget and partitioning of stratospheric chlorine during the 1997 Arctic summer

Volume mixing ratio profiles of HCl, HOCl, ClNO 3 , CH 3 Cl, CFC-12, CFC-11, CCl 4 , HCFC-22, and CFC-113 were measured simultaneously from 9 to 38 km by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory MkIV Fourier Transform Infrared solar absorption spectrometer during two balloon flights from Fairbanks, Alaska (64.8°N), on May 8 and July 8, 1997. The altitude variation of total organic chlorine (CCl y ), total inorganic chlorine (Cl y ), and the nearly constant value (3.7±0.2 ppbv) of their sum (Cl TOT ) demonstrates that the stratospheric chlorine species available to react with O 3 are supplied by the decomposition of organic chlorinated compounds whose abundances are well quantified. Measured profiles of HCl and ClNO 3 agree well with profiles found by photochemical model (differences < 10% for altitudes below 35 km) constrained by various other constituents measured by MkIV. The production of HCl by ClO + OH plays a relatively small role in the partitioning of HCl and ClNO 3 for the sampled air masses. However, better agreement with the measured profiles of HCl and ClNO 3 is obtained when this source of HCl is included in the model. Both the measured and calculated [ClNO 3 ]/[HCl] ratios exhibit the expected near linear variation with [O 3 ] 2 /[CH 4 ] over a broad range of altitudes. MkIV measurements of HCl, ClNO 3 , and CCl y agree well with ER-2 in situ observations of these quantities for directly comparable air masses. These results demonstrate good understanding of the budget of stratospheric chlorine and that the partitioning of inorganic chlorine is accurately described by photochemical models that employ JPL97 reaction rates and production of HCl from ClO + OH for the environmental conditions encountered: relatively warm temperatures, long periods of solar illumination, and relatively low aerosol surface areas.
Postnatal depression among women availing maternal health services in a rural hospital in South India

Background and Objective: Postnatal depression, with an estimated prevalence of 13-19%, causes significant impairment of mental health among women worldwide and has long term consequences. However, more than half of all cases are not detected by healthcare providers. Screening for postnatal depression has not been given importance in maternal health programs in India. Our objective was to screen for postnatal depression among women attending a rural hospital in India, immediately postpartum and at 6-8 weeks post-delivery, and to study associated factors. Methods: A cross sectional study was done on 123 postnatal women attending a rural maternity hospital in Karnataka, South India, of whom 74 women were interviewed within one week of childbirth, and 49 women at 6-8 weeks post-delivery. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale was used to screen for postnatal depression. Results: About 45.5% of the women screened positive for postnatal depression (44.6% of all subjects within one week of delivery and 46.9% at 6-8 weeks after delivery). Postnatal depression was significantly associated with mood swings during antenatal period, staying with the family of birth during pregnancy and away from their husbands, and was significantly higher among women who perceived their life as stressful and having a low self-esteem (P<0.05) Conclusions: This study found a high prevalence of postnatal depression in women in rural Karnataka. This underlines the need for incorporating screening for postnatal depression in the routine care of women during pregnancy and delivery.
Closed-form error exponent for the Neyman-Pearson fusion of two-dimensional Markov local decisions

We consider a distributed detection system formed by a large number of local detectors and a fusion center that performs a Neyman-Pearson fusion of the binary quantizations of the sensor observations. The aforementioned local decisions are taken with no kind of cooperation and transmitted to the fusion center over error free parallel access channels. Furthermore, the devices are located on a rectangular lattice so that sensors belonging to a specific row or column are equally spaced. For each hypothesis Ho and H\, the correlation structure of the local decisions is modelled with a two-dimensional causal field where the rows and columns are outcomes of the same first-order binary Markov chain. Under this scenario, we derive a closed-form error exponent for the Neyman-Pearson fusion of the local decisions. Afterwards, using the derived error exponent we study the effect of different design parameters of the network on its overall detection performance.
Ultrastructure of erythrocytic virus of the South African anuran Ptychadena anchietae

Electron microscopic study of virus infections in the erythrocytes of the frog Ptychadena anchjetae from northern Transvaal, South Africa revealed icosahedral iridovirus-like particles measuring 175 to 198 nm in diameter. containing a dense, pleomorphic nucleoid. Virions were enveloped by 2 membranes, and may be associated with extensive membranous clots. The virus assembled in the cytoplasm within spherical fibrillar virosomes. Infected cells contained a large crystalloid inclusion body in their cytoplasm and in some, the inclusion was also present in the nucleus. Infection occurred in both mature and immature erythrocytes. There was no evidence of productive infection in nonerythrocytic cells.
A Markov Model for the Spread of Viruses in an Open Population

Inspired by methods of queueing theory, we propose a Markov model for the spread of viruses in an open population with an exogenous flow of infectives. We apply it to the diffusion of AIDS and hepatitis C diseases among drug users. From a mathematical point of view, the difference between the two viruses is shown in two parameters: the probability of curing the disease (which is 0 for AIDS but positive for hepatitis C) and the infection probability, which seems to be much higher for hepatitis. This model bears some resemblance to the M/M/∞ queueing system and is thus rather different from the models based on branching processes commonly used in the epidemiological literature. We carry out an asymptotic analysis (large initial population) and show that the Markov process is close to the solution of a nonlinear autonomous differential system. We prove both a law of large numbers and a functional central limit theorem to determine the speed of convergence towards the limiting system. The deterministic system itself converges, as time tends to ∞, to an equilibrium point. We then show that the sequence of stationary probabilities of the stochastic models shrinks to a Dirac measure at this point. This means that in a large population and for long-term analysis, we may replace the individual-based microscopic stochastic model with the macroscopic deterministic system without loss of precision. Moreover, we show how to compute the sensitivity of any functional of the Markov process with respect to a slight variation of any parameter of the model. This approach is applied to the spread of diseases among drug users, but could be applied to many other case studies in epidemiology.