Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Age-dependent control of lens growth by hypoxia.

PURPOSE The lens grows continuously throughout life, but the factors that influence the size of the adult lens are not known. Lens thickness is a significant risk factor for age-related cataract. It has been postulated that the hypoxic environment in the eye protects the lens from nuclear cataracts. The authors sought to determine whether the Po(2) in the eye regulates lens growth. METHODS Lens cell proliferation was determined by counting BrdU-labeled and total nuclei in the germinative zone in flatmounts of lens epithelia. Oxygen levels in the eye were altered by having rats breathe 11%, 21% (room air), or 60% oxygen. Oxygen levels in the vitreous were measured with a fiberoptic oxygen sensor. RESULTS The BrdU-labeling index in the germinative zone declined from approximately 3.5% at 1 month to less than 0.7% at 8 months. Raising oxygen levels in the eyes of 1-month-old animals did not alter the rate of lens cell proliferation. Elevating intraocular oxygen in animals older than 1 month increased proliferation to the more rapid rate seen at 1 month. Decreasing oxygen levels below their normally low level did not affect the BrdU-labeling index at any age. Chronic exposure to increased oxygen led to the production of more lens fiber cells and larger lenses. CONCLUSIONS Normal age-related decline in lens growth requires the low oxygen level normally present in the eye. Increases in lens cell number and mass may account for some of the increase in cataract risk caused by chronic exposure of the lens to elevated oxygen levels.
Default Correlation, Cluster Dynamics and Single Names: The GPCL Dynamical Loss Model

We extend the common Poisson shock framework reviewed for example in Lindskog and McNeil (2003) to a formulation avoiding repeated defaults, thus obtaining a model that can account consistently for single name default dynamics, cluster default dynamics and default counting process. This approach allows one to introduce significant dynamics, improving on the standard "bottom-up" approaches, and to achieve true consistency with single names, improving on most "top-down" loss models. Furthermore, the resulting GPCL model has important links with the previous GPL dynamical loss model in Brigo, Pallavicini and Torresetti (2006a,b), which we point out. Model extensions allowing for more articulated spread and recovery dynamics are hinted at. Calibration to both DJi-TRAXX and CDX index and tranche data across attachments and maturities shows that the GPCL model has the same calibration power as the GPL model while allowing for consistency with single names
Evidence-based Guidelines From ESPGHAN and NASPGHAN for Helicobacter pylori Infection in Children

Objective: As the clinical implications of Helicobacter pylori infection in children and adolescents continue to evolve, ESPGHAN and NASPGHAN jointly renewed clinical guidelines using a standardized evidence-based approach to develop updated recommendations for children and adolescents in North America and Europe. Methods: An international panel of 11 pediatric gastroenterologists, 2 epidemiologists, 1 microbiologist, and 1 pathologist was selected by societies that developed evidence-based guidelines based on the Delphi process with anonymous voting in a final face-to-face meeting. A systematic literature search was performed on 8 databases of relevance including publications from January 2000 to December 2009. After excluding nonrelevant publications, tables of evidence were constructed for different focus areas according to the Oxford classification. Statements and recommendations were formulated in the following areas: whom to test, how to test, whom to treat, and how to treat. Grades of evidence were assigned to each recommendation based on the GRADE system. Results: A total of 2290 publications were identified, from which 738 were finally reviewed. A total of 21 recommendations were generated, and an algorithm was proposed by the joint committee providing evidence-based guidelines on the diagnostic workup and treatment of children with H pylori infection. Conclusions: These clinical practice guidelines represent updated, best-available evidence and are meant for children and adolescents living in Europe and North America, but they may not apply to those living on other continents, particularly in developing countries with a high H pylori infection rate and limited health care resources.
Soft decoding of VLC encoded data for robust transmission of packetized video

The soft decoding of variable-length encoded texture data generated, e.g., by video coders such as H.263+ and sent over a packetized network (Internet or mixed Internet radio-mobile) is considered here. Existing soft decoding techniques usually make use of either the number of bits in a block or the number of symbols in a block. Thus, this side information has to be transmitted. This paper describes an algorithm making use only of information available in the packetized bitstream, and is thus compatible with existing standards. Simulations illustrating the efficiency of the proposed decoding procedure are provided.
The effect of dietary omega-3 fatty acids on coronary atherosclerosis. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND Epidemiologic studies, studies of mechanisms of action, and many animal studies indicate that dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids has antiatherosclerotic potential. Few trials in humans have examined this potential. OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids on the course of coronary artery atherosclerosis in humans. DESIGN Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinically controlled trial. SETTING University preventive cardiology unit. PATIENTS 223 patients with angiographically proven coronary artery disease. INTERVENTION Fish oil concentrate (55% eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids) or a placebo with a fatty acid composition resembling that of the average European diet, 6 g/d for 3 months and then 3 g/d for 21 months. MEASUREMENTS The results of standardized coronary angiography, done before and after 2 years of treatment, were evaluated by an expert panel (primary end point) and by quantitative coronary angiography. Patients were followed for clinical and laboratory status. RESULTS Pairs of angiograms (one taken at baseline and one taken at 2 years) were evaluated for 80 of 112 placebo recipients and 82 of 111 fish oil recipients. At the end of treatment, 48 coronary segments in the placebo group showed changes (36 showed mild progression, 5 showed moderate progression, and 7 showed mild regression) and 55 coronary segments in the fish oil group showed changes (35 showed mild progression, 4 showed moderate progression, 14 showed mild regression, and 2 showed moderate regression) (P = 0.041). Loss in minimal luminal diameter, as assessed by quantitative coronary angiography, was somewhat less in the fish oil group (P > 0.1). Fish oil recipients had fewer cardiovascular events (P = 0.10); other clinical variables did not differ between the study groups. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels tended to be greater in the fish oil group. CONCLUSION Dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids modestly mitigates the course of coronary atherosclerosis in humans.
The Poisson inverse Gaussian (PIG) generalized linear regression model for analyzing motor vehicle crash data

ABSTRACT This article documents the application of the Poisson inverse Gaussian (PIG) regression model for modeling motor vehicle crash data. The PIG distribution, which mixes the Poisson distribution and inverse Gaussian distribution, has the potential for modeling highly dispersed count data due to the flexibility of inverse Gaussian distribution. The objectives of this article were to evaluate the application of PIG regression model for analyzing motor vehicle crash data and compare the results with negative binomial (NB) model, especially when varying dispersion parameter is introduced. To accomplish these objectives, NB and PIG models were developed with fixed and varying dispersion parameters and compared using two data sets. The results of this study show that PIG models perform better than the NB models in terms of goodness-of-fit statistics. Moreover, the PIG model can perform as well as the NB model in capturing the variance of crash data. Lastly, PIG models demonstrate almost the same prediction performance compared to NB models. Considering the simple form of PIG model and its easiness of applications, PIG model could be used as a potential alternative to the NB model for analyzing crash data.
Energy/reliability trade-offs in fault-tolerant event-triggered distributed embedded systems

This paper presents an approach to the synthesis of low-power fault-tolerant hard real-time applications mapped on distributed heterogeneous embedded systems. Our synthesis approach decides the mapping of tasks to processing elements, as well as the voltage and frequency levels for executing each task, such that transient faults are tolerated, the timing constraints of the application are satisfied, and the energy consumed is minimized. Tasks are scheduled using fixed-priority preemptive scheduling, while replication is used for recovery from multiple transient faults. Addressing energy and reliability simultaneously is especially challenging, since lowering the voltage to reduce the energy consumption has been shown to increase the transient fault rate. We presented a Tabu Search-based approach which uses an energy/reliability trade-off model to find reliable and schedulable implementations with limited energy and hardware resources. We evaluated the algorithm proposed using several synthetic and reallife benchmarks.
Clinical impact of patient population differences and genomic variation in efavirenz therapy

Guidelines for use of antiretroviral agents presently recommend first-line treatments with nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based regimens. Efavirenz is the standard-of-care comparator for nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based antiretroviral therapy. As with many antiretroviral medications, efavirenz is subject to interindividual variation in metabolism, effectiveness, and tolerability. Demographic factors such as age, sex, and ethnicity have been demonstrated to influence this variability, but other underlying factors such as genetics, disease state, and concomitant drug use can also play a role. The clinical impactions of these factors are only beginning to be understood. Although significant advances have led to a greater understanding of interactions between genetic and host factors that influence the efficacy and toxicity of efavirenz, providers should not withhold treatment of HIV infection with an efavirenz-based regimen on the basis of racial or ethic categorizations.
Patterns of expression of lineage-specific markers during the in vitro-induced differentiation of HT29 colon carcinoma cells.

The four different cell types present in the mature colon, absorptive enterocytes, mucus-secreting goblet cells, Paneth cells, and enteroendocrine cells, are believed to derive from a common precursor, the stem cell, anchored near the base of the crypt. Stem cell descendants undergo several rounds of cell division, creating a pool of transit cells that are committed to differentiation. The mechanisms by which committed cells are allocated to the different cell lineages of the intestine are poorly understood. We have used the colon carcinoma cell line HT29 and Cl.16E cells, a clonal derivative of HT29 cells, to investigate the regulation and pattern of expression of several markers (MUC2, MUC3, carcinoembryonic antigen, and alkaline phosphatase) that are associated with a more differentiated phenotype and that, in the mature cells, are lineage restricted. HT29 cells can express, upon exposure to the appropriate inducers, distinct intestinal specific markers; they are, therefore, considered multipotent, similar to the stem cells of the crypt. Conversely, Cl.16E cells are lineage restricted and respond to cell contact inhibition by expressing a fully differentiated goblet cell phenotype. We show that, in HT29 cells, different inducers (12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, forskolin, and sodium butyrate) modulate specific sets of markers. Forskolin induces the expression of both MUC2 and MUC3, whereas 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate is capable of inducing only MUC2, and sodium butyrate, only MUC3 gene expression. Carcinoembryonic antigen, a marker common to enterocytes and goblet cells; can be induced by all the agents, whereas the alkaline phosphatase gene, the expression of which is characteristic of enterocytes, is responsive solely to sodium butyrate treatment. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
N-{4-[(5-Methylisoxazol-3-yl)sulfamoyl]phenyl}benzamide

In the title compound, C17H15N3O4S, the five-membered isoxazole ring makes dihedral angles of 80.5 (2) and 81.3 (2)° with the two benzene rings, which form a dihedral angle of 39.81 (18)° with each other. A short intramolecular C—H⋯O contact occurs. The crystal structure is stabilized by intermolecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, which generate [001] chains, and further consolidated by weak C—H⋯O interactions.
Prenatal Stress or High-Fat Diet Increases Susceptibility to Diet-Induced Obesity in Rat Offspring

OBJECTIVE Perturbations to the prenatal environment have been associated with the development of adult chronic disease, findings that gave rise to the “Barker Hypothesis” or the “developmental origins of adult disease” concept. In this study, we used an animal model to determine the metabolic consequences of maternal prenatal stress and high-fat feeding on the developing offspring. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Pregnant female Sprague-Dawley rats were maintained on standard chow or 60% high-fat diet throughout gestation and lactation. Half of each group were exposed to a novel variable stress paradigm during the 3rd week of gestation, whereas control dams were left undisturbed. Body weight, body composition, glucose tolerance, and endocrine parameters were measured in offspring through early adulthood. RESULTS Male and female pups from dams that experienced prenatal stress and/or were on a high-fat diet weighed more beginning on postnatal day 7 compared with standard chow–control pups. Access to high-fat diet at weaning increased the body weight effect through early adulthood and was attributable to greater adiposity. Pups weaned onto standard chow diet showed no significant difference in glucose clearance or insulin secretion. However, pups weaned onto high-fat diet had impaired glucose tolerance if their dams were on a high-fat diet, experienced prenatal stress, or both. CONCLUSIONS Our data demonstrate that prenatal stress and/or high-fat diet during the intrauterine or postnatal environment affects offspring in a manner that increases their susceptibility to diet-induced obesity and leads to secondary adverse metabolic consequences.
Testing from UML Design using Activity Diagram: A Comparison of Techniques

diagrams present the graphical representation of the system. Model-driven testing not only helps in early identification of faults but also results in reducing the testing effort at the later stages of SDLC. This paper intends to identify and make a critical review of different techniques for test case generation using UML activity diagrams (UAD). System activity diagram is used to depict the different dynamic aspects of the system. UAD not only presents the sequential or concurrent activities but also presents the conditional and parallel activities. For this literature survey different aspects like test case generation, test automation, and test case prioritization & minimization using UAD has been explored. The analysis of the literature portrays that extensive literature exists regarding automation of the testing using various aspects of activity diagrams. Similarly, test cases prioritization has also been explored using the activity diagrams incorporating manual, automated and semi- automated techniques.
Towards trust inference from bipartite social networks

The emergence of trust as a key link between users in social networks has provided an effective means of enhancing the personalization of on-line user content. However, the availability of such trust information remains a challenge to the algorithms that use it, as the majority of social networks do not provide a means of explicit trust feedback. This paper presents an investigation into the inference of trust relations between actor pairs of a social network, based solely on the structural information of the bipartite graph typical of most on-line social networks. Using intuition inspired from real life observations, we argue that the popularity of an item in a social graph is inversely related to the level of trust between actor pairs who have rated it. From an existing bipartite social graph, this method computes a new social graph, linking actors together by means of symmetric weighted trust relations. Through a set of experiments performed on a real social network dataset, our method produces statistically significant results, showing strong trust prediction accuracy.
Synaptic and extrasynaptic GABA transporters as targets for anti‐epileptic drugs

Inhibition of the GABA transporter subtype GAT1 by the clinically available anti‐epileptic drug tiagabine has proven to be an effective strategy for the treatment of some patients with partial seizures. In 2005, the investigational drug EF1502 was described as possessing activity at both GAT1 and BGT‐1. When combined with the GAT1 selective inhibitor tiagabine, EF1502 was found to possess a synergistic anti‐convulsant action in the Frings audiogenic seizure‐susceptible mouse model of reflex epilepsy. This effect was subsequently attributed to inhibition of BGT‐1. In this study, the anti‐convulsant effect of the GAT2/3 inhibitor SNAP‐5114 was assessed in the Frings audiogenic seizure‐susceptible mouse alone, and in combination with tiagabine and EF1502. The results showed that SNAP‐5114 produced a synergistic anti‐convulsant effect in combination with EF1502 but not when used in combination with tiagabine. These findings support anatomical evidence that GAT2/3 are most likely located at the synapse in close proximity to GAT1; whereas BGT‐1 is located some distance away from the synapse and GAT1 and GAT2/3. Lastly, EF1502 and tiagabine were evaluated alone, and in combination, in the corneal kindled mouse model of partial epilepsy. The results of this evaluation provide further evidence in support of a role for BGT‐1 in the control of seizure activity. In addition, they suggest that the combined inhibition of GAT1 and BGT‐1 may afford some advantage over inhibiting either transporter alone.
CD4+ T-Cell Subsets That Mediate Immunological Memory to Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection in Mice

ABSTRACT We have studied CD4+ T cells that mediate immunological memory to an intravenous infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The studies were conducted with a mouse model of memory immunity in which mice are rendered immune by a primary infection followed by antibiotic treatment and rest. Shortly after reinfection, tuberculosis-specific memory cells were recruited from the recirculating pool, leading to rapidly increasing precursor frequencies in the liver and a simultaneous decrease in the blood. A small subset of the infiltrating T cells was rapidly activated (<20 h) and expressed high levels of intracellular gamma interferon and the T-cell activation markers CD69 and CD25. These memory effector T cells expressed intermediate levels of CD45RB and were heterogeneous with regard to the L-selectin and CD44 markers. By adoptive transfer into nude mice, the highest level of resistance to a challenge with M. tuberculosis was mediated by CD45RBhigh,l-selectinhigh, CD44low cells. Taken together, these two lines of evidence support an important role for memory cells which have reverted to a naive phenotype in the long-term protection against M. tuberculosis.
The promise of the anti-idiotype concept

A basic tenet of antibody-based immunity is their specificity to antigenic determinates from foreign pathogen products to abnormal cellular components such as in cancer. However, an antibody has the potential to bind to more than one determinate, be it an antigen or another antibody. These observations led to the idiotype network theory (INT) to explain immune regulation, which has wax and waned in enthusiasm over the years. A truer measure of the impact of the INT is in terms of the ideas that now form the mainstay of immunological research and whose roots are spawned from the promise of the anti-idiotype concept. Among the applications of the INT is understanding the structural implications of the antibody-mediated network that has the potential for innovation in terms of rational design of reagents with biological, chemical, and pharmaceutical applications that underlies concepts of reverse immunology which is highlighted herein.
Inhibition of ischemia-induced glutamate release in rat striatum by dihydrokinate and an anion channel blocker.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Increased activation of excitatory amino acid (EAA) receptors is considered a major cause of neuronal damage. Possible sources and mechanisms of ischemia-induced EAA release were investigated pharmacologically with microdialysis probes placed bilaterally in rat striatum. METHODS Forebrain ischemia was induced by bilateral carotid artery occlusion and controlled hypotension in halothane-anesthetized rats. During 30 minutes of ischemia, microdialysate concentrations of glutamate and aspartate were measured in the presence of a nontransportable blocker of the astrocytic glutamate transporter GLT-1, dihydrokinate (DHK), or an anion channel blocker, 4,4'-dinitrostilben-2,2'-disulfonic acid (DNDS), administered separately or together through the dialysis probe. RESULTS In control striata during ischemia, glutamate and aspartate concentrations increased 44+/-13 (mean+/-SEM) times and 19+/-5 times baseline, respectively, and returned to baseline values on reperfusion. DHK (1 mmol/L in perfusate; n=8) significantly attenuated EAA increases compared with control (glutamate peak, 9. 6+/-1.7 versus control, 15.4+/-2.6 pmol/ microL). EAA levels were similarly decreased by 10 mmol/L DHK. DNDS (1 mmol/L; n=5) also suppressed EAA peak increases (glutamate peak, 5.8+/-1.1 versus control, 10.1+/-0.7 pmol/ microL). At a higher concentration, DNDS (10 mmol/L; n=7) further reduced glutamate and aspartate release and also inhibited ischemia-induced taurine release. Together, 1 mmol/L DHK and 10 mmol/L DNDS (n=5) inhibited 83% of EAA release (glutamate peak, 2.7+/-0.7 versus control, 10.9+/-1.2 pmol/ microL). CONCLUSIONS These findings support the hypothesis that both cell swelling-induced release of EAAs and reversal of the astrocytic glutamate transporter are contributors to the ischemia-induced increases of extracellular EAAs in the striatum as measured by microdialysis.