Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reversible Testicular Toxicity of Piperine on Male Albino Rats

Background: Piperine was widely used in traditional medicine for inducing sterility and abortion. Objective: To evaluate the effect of the piperine on testis of male albino rats. Materials and Methods: Adult male rats were divided into four groups (n = 12). Group I (control): Rats were given vehicle p.o. i.e. 0.5% carboxymethyl cellulose in normal saline daily for 60 days, Group II (ED): Rats received piperine at a dose of 10 mg/kg body weight (b.w.) daily, Group III (E4D): Rats received piperine at a dose of 10 mg/kg b.w. on every 4th day, Group IV (E7D): Rats received piperine at a dose of 10 mg/kg b.w. on every 7th day. Half of the animals from each group were sacrificed after the treatment period (60 days), and the remaining were kept for drug-free withdrawal period (60 days) and then sacrificed. Results: Piperine significantly decreased the reproductive organ weights in groups ED and E4D. Piperine induced hormonal imbalance by altering the serum levels of follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, sex hormone binding globulin, serum, and testicular testosterone in groups ED and E4D. Furthermore, piperine decreased the activity of germ cell markers and Leydig cellular steroidogenic enzymes in the groups ED and E4D after 60 days. All the above-altered values returned to normal levels after withdrawal period. Histopathological findings also supported the above findings. Conclusion: From the above data, it can be concluded that piperine could be a good lead molecule for the development of reversible oral male contraceptive.
Fluoro-edenite and carbon nanotubes: The health impact of ‘asbestos-like’ fibres

Several decades have passed since Wagner et al demonstrated a causal link between asbestos fibre inhalation and the development of pleural mesothelioma in 1960. It was later suggested that pleural plaques are a benign consequence of exposure to these fibres. Most recently, a significant association between exposure to asbestos and cancer diagnosed at various sites, such as the peritoneum, stomach, pharynx, colon and ovaries has been demonstrated. The great concerns about public health that arose from the scientific evidence presented above have led to the banning of asbestos in several countries. Over the years, the suspicion that particles with a high aspect ratio may have asbestos-like pathogenicity has been supported by increasing evidence. Natural occurring minerals, as well as man-made fibres, have proven capable of inducing either chronic inflammation of serous membranes, or, in some cases, the development of peritoneal and pleural mesothelioma. The pathogenic role of both fluoro-edenite and carbon nanotubes, two ‘asbestos-like’ fibres is summarized and discussed in this review. The data presented herein support the notion that occupational exposure to these two types of fibre contributes to the development of different types of cancer.
At Work in the Informal Economy of India: A Perspective from the Bottom Up

Informal labour translates as labour or employment that is not regular. Labour in the informal sector is casual, insecure, and unprotected. This book brings to light the plight of the landless and land-poor peasants in the informal economy in India. While discussing the labour being pushed out of agricultural production, Jan Breman contextualizes why, when, and how this transition occurred. The book is a result of anthropological fieldwork conducted in Gujarat-the state with the highest rate of economic growth-spanning over four decades. Although centred on one Indian state, thereby lacking a comparative frame, the author argues that India is the epicentre of the informal economy. Thus, the informal sector here has a wider relevance and greater validity. The book is divided into two parts. The first part covers the historical developments under capitalism, and contextualizes the deplorable condition of the unorganized workforce and the commodification of labour with the decline of agrarian bondage. The second part consists of author's ten previously published papers elaborating on themes and issues introduced in the first part of the book. This part also familiarizes the reader with the concept of informality and its ramifications.
All split helicity tree-level gluon amplitudes

Recently a new recursion relation for tree-level gluon amplitudes in gauge theory has been discovered. We solve this recursion to obtain explicit formulas for the closed set of amplitudes with arbitrarily many positive and negative helicity gluons in a split helicity configuration. The solution admits a simple diagrammatic expansion in terms of ``zigzag'' diagrams. We comment on generalizations of this result.
Temporal Accumulation and Decision Processes in the Duration Bisection Task Revealed by Contingent Negative Variation

The duration bisection paradigm is a classic task used to examine how humans and other animals perceive time. Typically, participants first learn short and long anchor durations and are subsequently asked to classify probe durations as closer to the short or long anchor duration. However, the specific representations of time and the decision rules applied in this task remain the subject of debate. For example, researchers have questioned whether participants actually use representations of the short and long anchor durations in the decision process rather than merely a response threshold that is derived from those anchor durations. Electroencephalographic (EEG) measures, like the contingent negative variation (CNV), can provide information about the perceptual and cognitive processes that occur between the onset of the timing stimulus and the motor response. The CNV has been implicated as an electrophysiological marker of interval timing processes such as temporal accumulation, representation of the target duration, and the decision that the target duration has been attained. We used the CNV to investigate which durations are involved in the bisection categorization decision. The CNV increased in amplitude up to the value of the short anchor, remained at a constant level until about the geometric mean (GM) of the short and long anchors, and then began to resolve. These results suggest that the short anchor and the GM of the short and long anchors are critical target durations used in the bisection categorization decision process. In addition, larger mean N1P2 amplitude differences were associated with larger amplitude CNVs, which may reflect the participant’s precision in initiating timing on each trial across a test session. Overall, the results demonstrate the value of using scalp-recorded EEG to address basic questions about interval timing.
A Privacy-Preserving, Mutual PUF-Based Authentication Protocol

This paper describes an authentication protocol using a Hardware-Embedded Delay PUF called HELP. HELP derives randomness from within-die path delay variations that occur along the paths within a hardware implementation of a cryptographic primitive, such as AES or SHA-3. The digitized timing values which represent the path delays are stored in a database on a secure server (verifier) as an alternative to storing PUF response bitstrings. This enables the development of an efficient authentication protocol that provides both privacy and mutual authentication. The security properties of the protocol are analyzed using data collected from a set of Xilinx Zynq FPGAs.
Blood oxidative stress and lipoprotein oxidizability in haemodialysis patients: effect of the use of a vitamin E-coated dialysis membrane.

BACKGROUND Oxidative stress has been shown in haemodialysis patients in relation with an increased production of free radicals due to membrane-induced complement and leukocyte activation. In order to minimize membrane bioincompatibility and thereby oxidative stress, more compatible filters have been perfected. Among them, a high-flux vitamin E-coated membrane (CL-EE) has been proposed recently. In vivo, little data is available on the consequences of the use of vitamin E-coated membranes. In the present study, the effects of a 3-month use of CL-EE dialysis membranes compared to conventional membranes have been evaluated in 12 haemodialysis patients on the blood oxidative stress status before and after the dialysis session. METHODS We determined the lipid peroxidation status (plasma thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances) and antioxidant defence (erythrocyte Cu,Zn-superoxide dismutase and plasma and erythrocyte glutathione peroxidase activities, plasma vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin A and total antioxidant status). Also, we simultaneously determined the antioxidant content and the copper oxidizability of isolated low density- and high density-lipoproteins (LDLs and HDLs). RESULTS The main consequence observed under these conditions was a marked enrichment of plasma with vitamin E, which was also significantly and selectively noted in HDLs (no changes in LDL vitamin E content), perhaps related to a specific storage capacity for vitamin E in HDLs of haemodialysis patients. The beta-carotene content of plasma, LDLs and HDLs was also higher after use of vitamin E-coated membranes than after use of high-flux biocompatible membranes. HDL copper oxidizability was reduced (as shown by an increased lag time) before dialysis after use of CL-EE membranes compared to conventional membranes, whereas LDL oxidizability remained unchanged. CONCLUSION A 3-month use of vitamin E-coated membranes resulted in a significant increase in plasma and HDL vitamin E content, associated with a lower oxidizability of HDLs, which could be beneficial for haemodialysis patients.
Correlations in Low-Frequency BOLD Fluctuations Reflect Cortico-Cortical Connections

Cross-correlation of low-frequency temporal fluctuations (<0.08 Hz) was used to correlate widely separated anatomic regions during continuous performance of a spatial working memory task. The regions of highest correlation to right-hemisphere dorsolateral prefrontal cortex correspond to the regions of largest baseline signal change in a conventional block-style functional MRI paradigm. Additionally, it is shown that the correlations between elements of the functional network increase during performance of a task that activates the network when compared to a task that does not directly stimulate the functionally connected network.
Nurse–Physician Collaboration: the Attitudes of Baccalaureate Nursing Students at Tehran University of Medical Sciences

Background: Establishing professional communication between physicians and nurses regarding their supplemental roles in health care for patients is unavoidable. Existing studies have reported on related problems concerning ineffective professional collaboration among health care providers. Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine Iranian bachelor of nursing students’ attitudes regarding collaboration between physicians and nurses at Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Patients and Methods: This study was an inferential cross sectional study. The study population consisted of all first and fourth academic-year Iranian bachelor of nursing students at Tehran University of Medical Sciences (277 individuals), who were selected by convenience sampling. The participation rate was 97.47% (270 individuals). A questionnaire including demographic information and professional experience was used to gather information (included 12 questions). Additionally, the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration (JSAPNC) was also used (included 15 questions). Data were analyzed using the SPSS software. The applied statistical tests included: χ2, t student and ANOVA test. Results: The obtained mean attitude score for the first academic year (51.28 ± 4.98) was higher than the mean attitude score of the fourth academic year nursing students (50.56 ± 4.05). However, the results of the independent statistical t-test showed no significant difference between the two groups of students (P = 0.322). In the four dimensions of JSAPNC, concerning only the dimension of physician authority, there were significant differences between the two groups of students (P < 0.05). The obtained means for the first and fourth academic year of bachelor nursing students reflected their positive attitudes about collaboration between physicians and nurses. Conclusions: The positive attitude of most nursing students found in this study showed the need for appropriate and effective collaboration between medical staff; this collaboration will give patients and prospective patients the best possible care.
Speed of Adjustment and Market Structure: A Study of the Gasoline Market in Germany

1991 The contents of this paper are the author's sole responsibility. They do not necessarily represent the views of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies or any of its Members. This publication is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between changes in costs and prices in the gasoline market in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) for the period 1980-90. We shall use an econometric model, and distinguish two stages in the transmission of cost changes to prices. The first is the adjustment of gasoline prices ex-refinery to changes in the price of crude oil, and the second is the adjustment of gasoline price (net of taxes) at the pump to ex-refinery prices. A vast economic literature has accepted the view that a relationship exists between market forms and the speed of transmission of cost changes to final price. The study of price adjustments to cost changes involves the analysis of two interrelated but different phenomena. The first is the speed of adjustment, defined here as the mean of the length of the time periods required for the transmission of the full effect of an exogenous shock from the independent to the dependent variable of the econometric model used in the analysis. The second relates to possible asymmetries in the response of prices to increases and decreases in costs. Both phenomena are closely related to the structure of the market. The common assumption in economic writing, is that the first-the length of the adjustment period-is negatively correlated to the degree of competition (i.e. the speed of adjustment is positively correlated to the competitiveness of the market), and that the second-the asymmetry of price responses-is an indication of the prevailing market structure. The main findings of this paper are as follows: a) at the refinery level there is only weak evidence of asymmetrical reaction; the average lag in case of crude price increases or decreases is about three months.
Revisiting the Black Hole Masses of Soft X-Ray-Selected Active Galactic Nuclei

In our previous work, using luminosity and the Hβ FWHM as surrogates for black hole mass (MBH), we compared the black hole masses of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s) and broad-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (BLS1s) in a sample of soft X-ray-selected active galactic nuclei. We found that the distributions of black hole masses in the two populations are statistically different. Recent work shows that the second moment of the Hβ emission line (the line dispersion) is a better estimator of black hole mass than FWHM. To test whether changing the width measure affects our results, we calculate line dispersion-based black hole masses for our soft X-ray-selected sample. We find that using the line dispersion rather than the FWHM as a measure of the gas velocity shifts NLS1 and BLS1 virial product distributions closer together, but they remain distinct. On the MBH-σ* plane, we find that using the line dispersion leaves NLS1s below the MBH-σ* relation, but to a less significant degree than when FWHM is used to calculate black hole masses (the [O III] λ5007 FWHM is used as a surrogate for the bulge stellar velocity dispersion). The level of significance of our findings is such that we cannot draw firm conclusions on the location of the two samples on the MBH-σ* plane. We are still left with two alternative scenarios: either (1) NLS1s lie below the MBH-σ* relation, indicating that their black hole masses are growing, or (2) NLS1s lie on the MBH-σ* relation, so they preferentially reside in smaller mass, less luminous galaxies; the present data do not allow us to choose one over the other. More trustworthy stellar velocity dispersions and accurate black hole mass measurements with reverberation mapping are required for a firmer statement about the locus of NLS1s on the MBH-σ* plane.
ISOLATION OF HIGH QUALITY DNA FOR AFLP AMPLIFICATION IN CASUARINA EQUISETIFOLIA L.

Summary. High quality DNA was isolated from Casuarina equisetifolia which is widely planted in tropics and subtropics for its multiple utilities. Two commonly used methods, CTAB based and the commercially supplied DNeasy TM Plant Mini Kit (QIAGEN GmbH, Germany) were tested for their efficiency in isolating high quantity and quality DNA to be utilized for AFLP analysis. The CTAB based protocol was modified by introducing additional steps and manufacturer’s protocol was followed for the commercial kit. DNA yield and purity were monitored by gel electrophoresis and by determining absorbance under UV (A260/A280 and A260/A230). Both ratios were between 1.9 and 2.1, indicating the absence of contaminating metabolites. The average DNA yield obtained from 100 mg needle tissue using the CTAB based protocol and the commercial kit was 17 mg and 6 mg, respectively. Further, the purity of DNA was assessed by enzymatic digestion with EcoRI and HindIII and the DNA was also tested for suitability by AFLP-PCR analysis. A unique AFLP pattern was achieved for the five ortets tested showing the utility of DNA for fingerprint studies. Based on the quantity of isolated DNA, the CTAB based method is recommended for C. equisetifolia DNA extraction and it can be utilized for other Casuarina species with high content of fiber and phenolic compounds.
The presence of stomatin in detergent‐insoluble domains of neutrophil granule membranes

Neutrophil azurophil granules, traditionally regarded as the neutrophil counterpart to lysosomes, lack the lysosomal marker lysosome‐associated membrane glycoprotein and have recently been suggested to be nonlysosomal secretory organelles. The membrane of the azurophil granules is poorly characterized—CD63 and CD68 are the only membrane proteins identified so far. Here, azurophil granule membranes were isolated by Percoll gradient subcellular fractionation. Using matrix‐assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry of tryptic peptides from an isolated protein, stomatin was identified in these membranes. Using immunoelectron microscopy and immunoblot analysis of isolated organelles, stomatin was found to be subcellularly localized, not only to the azurophil granules but also by a major part to the specific granules and by a minor part to the secretory vesicles/plasma membrane. We also show the presence of detergent‐insoluble, low‐density membrane domains in the plasma membrane and the granule membranes and found stomatin to be localized to these domains.
Multidisciplinary and Evidence-based Method for Prioritizing Diseases of Food-producing Animals and Zoonoses

To prioritize 100 animal diseases and zoonoses in Europe, we used a multicriteria decision-making procedure based on opinions of experts and evidence-based data. Forty international experts performed intracategory and intercategory weighting of 57 prioritization criteria. Two methods (deterministic with mean of each weight and probabilistic with distribution functions of weights by using Monte Carlo simulation) were used to calculate a score for each disease. Consecutive ranking was established. Few differences were observed between each method. Compared with previous prioritization methods, our procedure is evidence based, includes a range of fields and criteria while considering uncertainty, and will be useful for analyzing diseases that affect public health.
Sex- and Gender-Differences in Emotion: A Preliminary Examination.

This paper offers a preliminary examination of literature reviewing sex and gender differences in the five prototypic emotions of fear, anger, sadness, joy, and love. The paper notes that within the literature on sex and gender differences, the terms "sex" and "gender" are often erroneously referred to interchangeably ("sex" is a biological term while "gender" encompasses both biological sex and "cultural associates with being male and female"). Drawing on physiological and psychological research--much of which was conducted at universities using college students as subjects--the paper discusses similarities and differences between men and women in their emotional experiences. The paper discusses an interactive model of gender related behavior. Moreover, the paper addresses conceptual and measurement concerns involved in examining sex and gender. Though hardly exhaustive, the paper does indicate how women and men express themselves and how emotional experiences are affected by both physiological factors as well as associations with sex and gender roles. Contains 59 references. (RS) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Sexand Gender-Differences in Emotion: A Preliminary Examination
Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Shoulder in Asymptomatic Professional Baseball Pitchers

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the magnetic resonance imaging findings in both shoulders of asymptomatic professional baseball pitchers. Fourteen pitchers who were without significant prior injury underwent a blinded clinical assessment and magnetic resonance imaging of both shoulders. All images were interpreted by two experienced musculoskeletal radiologists. The appearance of the rotator cuff tendons was graded, with additional evaluation of the biceps, labrum, and osseous structures. Ten athletes were found to have stable shoulders and painless full range of motion. Clinically, four athletes had at least a 40° loss in internal rotation as compared with the nonthrowing arm. There were no significant differences in magnetic resonance imaging findings of the supraspinatus and infraspinatus tendons between the throwing and nonthrowing shoulders. The labrum was abnormal in 79% of the 28 shoulders. Enthesopathic changes of the posterior glenoid labrum were identified in the four pitchers who had loss of internal rotation. We conclude that unenhanced magnetic resonance imaging of the shoulder in asymptomatic high performance throwing athletes reveals abnormalities that may encompass a spectrum of “nonclinical” findings. These data can be useful in separating symptomatic pathologic findings from these variants. Enthesopathic changes of the posterior glenoid labrum in the throwing arm may represent an early Bennett-type lesion. The cause may be excessive traction on the posterior capsule during the pitching motion, with subclinical injury to this area.