Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Lime Stabilization on Properties of Black Cotton Soil

Black cotton soil is one of the major soil deposits of India. They exhibit high swelling and shrinking when exposed to changes in moisture content and hence have been found to be most troublesome from engineering considerations. Stabilization occurs when lime is added to black cotton soil and a pozzolanic reaction takes place. The hydrated lime reacts with the clay particles and permanently transforms them into a strong cementitious matrix. Black cotton soil showing low to medium swelling potential from Latur, Maharashtra was used for determining the basic properties of the soil. Changes in various soil properties such as Liquid limit, Plastic Limit, Maximum Dry Density, Optimum Moisture Content, Differential Free Swell, Swelling Pressure and California Bearing Ratio were studied.
Development of a test method for protective gloves against nanoparticles in conditions simulating occupational use

Nanoparticle manufacture and use are in full expansion. The associated risks of occupational exposure raise large concerns due to their potential toxicity. Even if they stand as a last resort in the traditional occupational Health & Safety (H&S) risk management strategy, personal protective equipment (PPE) against nanoparticles are an absolute need in the context of precautionary principle advocated by H&S organizations worldwide. However no standard test method is currently available for evaluating the efficiency of PPE against nanoparticles, in particular in the case of gloves. A project is thus underway to develop a test method for measuring nanoparticle penetration through protective gloves in conditions simulating glove-nanoparticle occupational interaction. The test setup includes an exposure and a sampling chamber separated by a circular glove sample. A system of cylinders is used to deform the sample while it is exposed to nanoparticles. The whole system is enclosed in a glove box to ensure the operator safety during assembly, dismounting and clean-up operations as well as during the tests. Appropriate nanoparticle detection techniques were also identified. Results are reported here for commercial 15nm TiO2 nanoparticles - powder and colloidal solutions in 1,2-propanediol, ethylene glycol and water - and four types of protective gloves: disposable nitrile and latex as well as unsupported neoprene and butyl rubber gloves. They show that mechanical deformations and contact with colloidal solution liquid carriers may affect glove materials. Preliminary results obtained with TiO2 powder indicate a possible penetration of nanoparticles through gloves following mechanical deformations.
Human proto‐oncogene c‐kit: a new cell surface receptor tyrosine kinase for an unidentified ligand.

Structural features of v‐kit, the oncogene of HZ4 feline sarcoma virus, suggested that this gene arose by transduction and truncation of cellular sequences. Complementary DNA cloning of the human proto‐oncogene coding for a receptor tyrosine kinase confirmed this possibility: c‐kit encodes a transmembrane glycoprotein that is structurally related to the receptor for macrophage growth factor (CSF‐1) and the receptor for platelet‐derived growth factor. The c‐kit gene is widely expressed as a single, 5‐kb transcript, and it is localized to human chromosome 4 and to mouse chromosome 5. A c‐kit peptide antibody permitted the identification of a 145,000 dalton c‐kit gene product that is inserted in the cellular plasma membrane and is capable of self‐phosphorylation on tyrosine residues in both human glioblastoma cells and transfected mouse fibroblasts. Our results suggest that p145c‐kit functions as a cell surface receptor for an as yet unidentified ligand. Furthermore, carboxy‐ and amino‐terminal truncations that occurred during the viral transduction process are likely to have generated the transformation potential of v‐kit.
Age-Related and Function-Dependent Regional Alterations of Free L- and D-Aspartate in Postembryonic Chick Brain

D-aspartate (D-Asp) modulates adult neural plasticity and embryonic brain development by promoting cell proliferation, survival and differentiation. Here, developmental changes of the excitatory amino acids (EAAs) L-Glu, L-Asp and D-Asp were determined during the frst postembryonic days, a time window for early learning, in selected brain regions of domestic chickens after chiral separation and capillary electrophoresis. Extracellular concentration (ECC) of EAAs was measured in microdialysis samples from freely moving chicks. ECC of D-Asp (but not L-EAAs) decreased during the frst week of age, with no considerable regional or learning-related variation. ECC of L-Asp and L-Glu (but not of D-Asp) were elevated in the mSt/Ac in response to a rewarding stimulus, suggesting importance of Asp-Glu co-release in synaptic plasticity of basal ganglia. Potassium-evoked release of D-Asp, with a protracted transient, was also demonstrated. D-Asp constitutes greater percentage of total aspartate in the extracellular space than in whole tissue extracts, thus the bulk of D-Asp detected in tissue appears in the extracellular space. Conversely, only a fraction of tissue L-EAAs can be detected in extracellular space. The lack of changes in tissue D-Asp following avoidance learning indicates a tonic, rather than phasic, mechanism in the neuromodulatory action of this amino acid.
Vitamin D and Hypertension

Vitamin D has the pleiotropic effects in multiple organ systems, and vitamin D deficiency was suggested to be associated with high blood pressure according to previous reports. Several interventional studies have examined the effect of vitamin D supplementation on high blood pressure patients, but the results have been inconsistent. In this article, we examined the literature that have proposed a mechanism involving vitamin D in the regulation of blood pressure and review previous observational and interventional studies that have shown the relationship between vitamin D and hypertension among various populations.
Bilateral Cannulation of Internal Jugular Veins May Worsen Intracranial Hypertension

CORONARY artery spasm (CAS) can induce angina in patients with or without a history of coronary artery disease. CAS is presumably the underlying cause of unstable or Prinzmetal angina, which if left untreated, can result in myocardial infarction and death. Perioperative CAS with characteristic changes on electrocardiogram has been reported in patients with or without a history of coronary artery disease undergoing general or regional anesthesia. We describe a patient who experienced angina and electrocardiographic changes during initiation of epidural anesthesia. This case is unique in that the events occurred before surgical stimulation in a patient without coronary artery disease. These findings strongly support the idea that epidural anesthesia can contribute to CAS in the absence of preexisting coronary artery disease.
Modulation of desmin intermediate filament assembly by a monoclonal antibody

We have used a monoclonal antibody against desmin to examine the assembly of intermediate filaments (IF) from their building blocks, the tetrameric protofilaments. The antibody, designated D76, does not cross react with any other IF proteins (Danto, S.I., and D.A. Fischman. 1984. J. Cell Biol. 98:2179-2191). It binds to a region amino-terminal to cys- 324 of avian desmin that is resistant to chymotrypsin and trypsin digestion, and in the electron microscope appears to bind to the ends of tetrameric protofilaments. In combination, these findings suggest that the epitope of the antibody resides at the amino-terminal end of the alpha-helical rod domain. Preincubation of desmin protofilaments with an excess of D76 antibodies blocks their subsequent assembly into IF. In the presence of sub-stoichiometric amounts of antibodies, IF are assembled from protofilaments but they are morphologically aberrant in that (a) they are capped by IgG molecules at one or both ends; (b) they are unraveled to varying degree, revealing a characteristic right- handed helical arrangement of sub-filamentous strands of different diameters. The antibody binds only to the ends but not along the length of desmin IF. The most straightforward explanation for this is that the epitope resides in a part of the desmin molecule that becomes buried within the core of the filament upon polymerization and is therefore inaccessible to the antibody.
Contribution of chloride shifts to the fade of gamma‐aminobutyric acid‐gated currents in frog dorsal root ganglion cells.

1. The contribution of Cl‐ redistribution to the decay phase of the GABA (gamma‐aminobutyric acid) response was investigated in isolated frog sensory neurones, using a suction‐pipette technique which allows for internal perfusion under conditions of voltage clamp. 2. In neurones perfused with 120 mM [Cl‐]i and [Cl‐]o at driving forces (delta VH) of less than 15 mV, no shift of GABA equilibrium potential (EGABA) occurred during a continuous application of GABA, at various concentrations. However, increases of delta VH towards negative or positive potentials over 15 mV induced EGABA shifts. 3. The degree of EGABA shift was governed by the total amount of Cl‐ flux across the soma membrane, an event which depends upon delta VH, GABA concentration and drug application time. 4. The time‐dependent EGABA shift due to Cl‐ redistribution during GABA application induced a current run‐down resulting from a decreased Cl‐ gradient and a diminished Cl‐ conductance (gCl), the latter brought about by a drop in the intracellular ionic density of Cl‐. 5. The EGABA shift during a continuous GABA application was also affected by [Cl‐]i; e.g. the shift more readily occurred at lower [Cl‐]i. 6. In neurones perfused with internal and external solutions containing 120 mM‐Cl‐ at a delta VH of less than 10 mV, the change of gCl occurred with no shift of EGABA during the continuous application of GABA at concentrations over 6 x 10(‐5) M, thereby indicating a 'real' GABA receptor desensitization. The desensitization depended solely upon the agonist concentrations but not upon the amount of ICl. Under these conditions, the time course of recovery from GABA desensitization was estimated. The decrease of gCl at the desensitization phase was a single exponential. 7. At a delta VH greater than 15 mV, therefore, the decay of ICl induced by GABA concentrations over 6 x 10(‐6) M consists of the sum of both the 'real' GABA receptor desensitization and the current run‐down brought about by Cl‐ shifts. The gCl at the current decay phase consisted of a double exponential. In the present experiments we chose experimental conditions with which Cl‐ shift become negligible. 8. The 'pure' GABA receptor desensitization during a continuous application of GABA developed rapidly at GABA concentrations over 10(‐5) M. The speed of desensitization was facilitated by increasing the magnitude of desensitization.
Removing Noisy Mentions for Distant Supervision

Relation Extraction methods based on Distant Supervision rely on true tuples to retrieve noisy mentions, which are then used to train traditional supervised relation extraction methods. In this paper we analyze the sources of noise in the mentions, and explore simple methods to filter out noisy mentions. The results show that a combination of mention frequency cut-o, Pointwise Mutual Information and removal of mentions which are far from the feature centroids of relation labels is able to signicantly improve the results of two relation extraction models.
Pilot-scale cross-flow filtration test for a radioactive waste simulant with high solids loading and sodium molarity †

BNFL Inc. was contracted by the Department of Energy to design a facility to stabilize liquid radioactive wastes that are stored at the Hanford Site in the state of Washington. Because of its experience with radioactive waste stabilization the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) of the Westinghouse Savannah River Company worked with BNFL to help design and test certain parts of the waste treatment facility. One part is the separation of the highly radioactive solids from the liquid wastes by cross-flow filtration. This paper discusses the results of a cross-flow filter in a pilot-scale experimental facility that was designed, built, and run by the Experimental Thermal Fluids Laboratory of SRTC. To test this filter a waste simulant was developed to prototypically represent the chemical and physical characteristics of one radioactive waste stream. The insoluble solids loading of the simulant was varied from 0.5 wt% to 8 wt%, the aqueous solution was high in sodium and free hydroxide with total solids loadings up to 36 wt%, and the particle sizes ranged from 0.5 to 5 microns in diameter. The simulant matched the waste with a pH > 14, and molarities of sodium, nitrates, and nitrites, of approximately 5.5 M, 1.4 M, and 1.2 M respectively. The cross-flow filter unit was made of seven 316L stainless steel sintered-metal tubes in parallel. Each tube was identical, with a porous length of 1.01 meter, 9.5 mm inside diameter, 12.7 mm outside diameter, and a total filter area of 0.211 m 2 . The manufactured pore-size rating was 0.1 micron.
Hydroxyl radicals in the tropical troposphere over the Suriname rainforest: airborne measurements

Abstract. Direct measurements of OH and HO2 over a tropical rainforest were made for the first time during the GABRIEL campaign in October 2005, deploying the custom-built HORUS instrument (HydrOxyl Radical measurement Unit based on fluorescence Spectroscopy), adapted to fly in a Learjet wingpod. Biogenic hydrocarbon emissions were expected to strongly reduce the OH and HO2 mixing ratios as the air is transported from the ocean over the forest. However, surprisingly high mixing ratios of both OH and HO2 were encountered in the boundary layer over the rainforest. The HORUS instrumentation and calibration methods are described in detail and the measurement results obtained are discussed. The extensive dataset collected during GABRIEL, including measurements of many other trace gases and photolysis frequencies, has been used to quantify the main sources and sinks of OH. Comparison of these measurement-derived formation and loss rates of OH indicates strong previously overlooked recycling of OH in the boundary layer over the tropical rainforest, occurring in chorus with isoprene emission.
Inverted indexing for cross-lingual NLP

We present a novel, count-based approach to obtaining inter-lingual word representations based on inverted indexing of Wikipedia. We present experiments applying these representations to 17 datasets in document classification, POS tagging, dependency parsing, and word alignment. Our approach has the advantage that it is simple, computationally efficient and almost parameter-free, and, more importantly, it enables multi-source crosslingual learning. In 14/17 cases, we improve over using state-of-the-art bilingual embeddings.
Diagnostic role of Wnt pathway gene promoter methylation in non small cell lung cancer

Wnt signal pathway genes are known to be involved with cancer development. Here we tested the hypothesis whether DNA methylation of genes part of the Wnt signaling pathway could help the diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The methylation levels of SFRP1, SFRP2, WIF1 and PRKCB in 111 NSCLC patients were evaluated by quantitative methylation-specific PCR (qMSP). Promoter methylation levels of four candidate genes were significantly higher in tumor tissues compared with the adjacent tissues. SFRP1, SFRP2 and PRKCB genes were all shown to be good predictors of NSCLC risk (SFRP1: AUC = 0.711; SFRP2: AUC = 0.631; PRKCB: AUC = 0.650). The combined analysis showed that the methylation status of the four genes had a sensitivity of 70.3% and a specificity of 73.9% in the prediction of NSCLC risk for study cohort. A higher diagnostic value with an AUC of 0.945 (95% CI: 0.923–0.967, sensitivity: 90.6%, specificity: 93.0%) was found in TCGA cohort. In addition, SFRP1 and SFRP2 hypermethylation events were specific to male patients. Further TCGA data mining analysis suggested that SFRP1_cg15839448, SFRP2_cg05774801, and WIF1_cg21383810 were inversely associated with the host gene expression. Moreover, GEO database analysis showed that 5′-Aza-deoxycytidine was able to upregulate gene expression in several lung cancer cell lines. Subsequent dual-luciferase reporter assay showed a crucial regulatory function of PRKCB promoter. In summary, our study showed that a panel of Wnt signal pathway genes (SFRP1, SFRP2, WIF1 and PRKCB) had the potential as methylation biomarkers in the diagnosis of NSCLC.
Effects of silver nanoparticles on the freshwater snail Physa acuta: The role of test media and snails’ life cycle stage

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are widely used worldwide, most likely leading to their release into the environment and a subsequent increase of environmental concentrations. Studies of their deleterious effects on organisms is crucial to understand their environmental impacts. The freshwater snail Physa acuta was chosen to evaluate the potential deleterious effects of AgNPs and their counterpart AgNO3, through water‐only exposures. The toxicity of AgNPs is greatly influenced by medium composition. Thus, 2 media were tested: artificial pond water (APW) and modified APW (adapted by removing calcium chloride). Acute tests (96 h) were performed with juvenile and adult snails in both media to assess lethality, and egg mass chronic tests were conducted with APW medium only to assess embryo viability and mortality, carried out until 90% hatching success was reached in the control. Acute toxicity increased with decreasing shell length for both silver forms (ion and nanoparticle); that is, juveniles were more sensitive than adults. Different test media led to dissimilar median lethal concentrations, with chloride playing an important role in toxicity, most likely by complexation with silver ions, which would reduce the bioavailability, uptake, and toxicity of silver. Chronic tests showed that hatching success was more sensitive to silver in the ionic form than in the particulate form. Different forms of silver, exposure media, and life cycle stages led to different patterns of toxicity, highlighting an impairment in the snails’ life cycle. Environ Toxicol Chem 2017;36:243–253. © 2016 SETAC
Comparison of Concomitant Mesalamine and Immunomodulator Therapy and Immunomodulator Monotherapy for Crohn's Disease

Background Although immunomodulators are increasingly used in Crohn's disease (CD), a significant number of gastroenterologists still use 5-aminosalicylate (5-ASA) in combination with azathioprine (AZA) or 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP); there is limited evidence regarding the benefit of concomitant 5-ASA with AZA/6-MP compared with AZA/6-MP monotherapy for the treatment of CD. Study Design A total of 106 patients who received AZA/6-MP for more than 3 months between January 1991 and May 2014 were identified retrospectively. Each patient was matched with 3 randomly selected controls who were treated with concomitant therapy during the same period. Results The cumulative probabilities of steroid use at 5 and 10 years were 24.9% and 75.8% in the 5-ASA + AZA/6-MP group and 31.2% and 87.8% in the AZA/6-MP group, respectively (P = 0.187). The cumulative probabilities of anti-TNF use, resectional surgery, and disease-related hospitalization were comparable between the groups. The younger age and the use of lower doses of immunomodulators were associated with higher requirement of rescue therapy. Conclusions This study did not demonstrate that the concomitant use of 5-ASA with AZA/6-MP showed the proof or effect in terms of steroid requirements, anti-TNF use, resectional surgery, or disease-related hospitalization compared with that of AZA/6-MP alone.
Fruit flesh volatile and carotenoid profile analysis within the Cucumis melo L. species reveals unexploited variability for future genetic breeding.

BACKGROUND Aroma profile and carotenoids content of melon flesh are two important aspects influencing the quality of this fruit that have been characterized using only selected genotypes. However, the extant variability of the whole species remains unknown. RESULTS A complete view of the volatile/carotenoid profiles of melon flesh was obtained analyzing 71 accessions, representing the whole diversity of the species. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and high-performance liquid chromatography were used to analyze 200 volatile compounds and five carotenoids. Genotypes were classified into two main clusters (high/low aroma), but with a large diversity of differential profiles within each cluster, consistent with the ripening behavior, flesh color and proposed evolutionary and breeding history of the different horticultural groups. CONCLUSION Our results highlight the huge amount of untapped aroma diversity of melon germplasm, especially of non-commercial types. Also, landraces with high nutritional value with regard to carotenoids have been identified. All this knowledge will encourage melon breeding, facilitating the selection of the genetic resources more appropriate to develop cultivars with new aromatic profiles or to minimize the impact of breeding on melon quality. The newly characterized sources provide the basis for further investigations into specific genes/alleles contributing to melon flesh quality. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry.
Evaluating periodontal disease misclassification mechanisms under partial‐mouth recording protocols

AIM To evaluate the assumptions underlying the use of partial-mouth recording (PMR) protocols and the associated mechanisms of potential misclassification of periodontal disease. METHODS Using data from 640 participants in the VA Dental Longitudinal Study, we compared tooth-specific and site-specific clinical measures and calculated sensitivity and specificity of different PMR protocols by applying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with the American Academy of Periodontology definitions for periodontitis as the full-mouth reference standard. Additionally, we evaluated alternative case definitions for PMR protocols that accounted for the reduction in numbers of teeth under observation. RESULTS In this cohort, periodontitis presented as a generalized condition in that measures of clinical severity did not differ meaningfully according to site measured, oral quadrant or jaw. Sensitivity of disease classification under PMR protocols was a function of the number of teeth and sites under observation and the case definition applied. Sensitivity increased when case definitions were modified to account for the smaller number of teeth under observation with PMR protocols. However, specificity was reduced. CONCLUSIONS Misclassification of periodontal disease by PMR protocols is not random, even if sites under observation are randomly selected. PMR protocols can be selected/modified to maximize sensitivity, but they do so at the expense of bias in mean measures of severity.