Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intestinal Alkaline Phosphatase Inhibits the Translocation of Bacteria of Gut-Origin in Mice with Peritonitis: Mechanism of Action

Exogenous intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP), an enzyme produced endogenously at the brush edge of the intestinal mucosa, may mitigate the increase in aberrant intestinal permeability increased during sepsis. The aim of this study was to test the efficacy of the inhibitory effect of IAP on acute intestinal inflammation and to study the molecular mechanisms underlying IAP in ameliorating intestinal permeability. We used an in vivo imaging method to evaluate disease status and the curative effect of IAP. Two Escherichia coli (E.coli) B21 strains, carrying EGFP labeled enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) and RFP labeled red fluorescent protein (RFP), were constructed as tracer bacteria and were administered orally to C57/B6N mice to generate an injection peritonitis (IP) model. The IP model was established by injecting inflammatory lavage fluid. C57/B6N mice bearing the tracer bacteria were subsequently treated with (IP+IAP group), or without IAP (IP group). IAP was administered to the mice via tail vein injections. The amount of tracer bacteria in the blood, liver, and lungs at 24 h post-injection was analyzed via flow cytometry (FCM), in vivo imaging, and Western blotting. Intestinal barrier function was measured using a flux assay with the macro-molecule fluorescein isothiocyanate dextran, molecular weight 40kD, (FD40). To elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying the effects of IAP, we examined the levels of ERK phosphorylation, and the expression levels of proteins in the ERK-SP1-VEGF and ERK-Cdx-2-Claudin-2 pathways. We observed that IAP inhibited the expression of Claudin-2, a type of cation channel-forming protein, and VEGF, a cytokine that may increase intestinal permeability by reducing the levels of dephosphorylated ERK. In conclusion, exogenous IAP shows a therapeutic effect in an injection peritonitis model. This including inhibition of bacterial translocation. Moreover, we have established an imaging methodology for live-animals can effectively evaluate intestinal permeability and aberrant bacterial translocation in IP models.
Fiber strain sensors from carbon nanotubes self-assembled on aramid fibers

A self-assembly method is developed for creating a thin shell of multiwall carbon nanotubes on aramid fibers. The fibers show resistive behavior and exhibit a gauge factor of approximately 1.6, which is competitive with existing foil strain gauges. The robust sensing package could be used in the development of embedded strain sensors in multifunctional composites.
Demystified … Tissue microarray technology

Several “high throughput methods” have been introduced into research and routine laboratories during the past decade. Providing a new approach to the analysis of genomic alterations and RNA or protein expression patterns, these new techniques generate a plethora of new data in a relatively short time, and promise to deliver clues to the diagnosis and treatment of human cancer. Along with these revolutionary developments, new tools for the interpretation of these large sets of data became necessary and are now widely available. Tissue microarray (TMA) technology is one of these new tools. It is based on the idea of applying miniaturisation and a high throughput approach to the analysis of intact tissues. The potential and the scientific value of TMAs in modern research have been demonstrated in a logarithmically increasing number of studies. The spectrum for additional applications is widening rapidly, and comprises quality control in histotechnology, longterm tissue banking, and the continuing education of pathologists. This review covers the basic technical aspects of TMA production and discusses the current and potential future applications of TMA technology.
Assessment of Three Tropospheric Delay Models (IGGtrop, EGNOS and UNB3m) Based on Precise Point Positioning in the Chinese Region

Tropospheric delays are one of the main sources of errors in the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). They are usually corrected by using tropospheric delay models, which makes the accuracy of the models rather critical for accurate positioning. To provide references for suitable models to be chosen for GNSS users in China, we conduct herein a comprehensive study of the performances of the IGGtrop, EGNOS and UNB3m models in China. Firstly, we assess the models using 5 years’ Global Positioning System (GPS) derived Zenith Tropospheric Delay (ZTD) series from 25 stations of the Crustal Movement Observation Network of China (CMONOC). Then we study the effects of the models on satellite positioning by using various Precise Point Positioning (PPP) cases with different tropospheric delay resolutions, the observation data processed in PPP is from 21 base stations of CMONOC for a whole year of 2012. The results show that: (1) the Root Mean Square (RMS) of the IGGtrop model is about 4.4 cm, which improves the accuracy of ZTD estimations by about 24% for EGNOS and 19% for UNB3m; (2) The positioning error in the vertical component of the PPP solution obtained by using the IGGtrop model is about 15.0 cm, which is about 30% and 21% smaller than those of the EGNOS and UNB3m models, respectively. In summary, the IGGtrop model achieves the best performance among the three models in the Chinese region.
Examination of Alternative Fabric Joining Techniques Compared Examination of Alternative Fabric Joining Techniques Compared to Traditional Sewing to Traditional Sewing

Ultrasonic seaming could soon replace the needle and thread technique with a safer, more efficient technology. In this designed experiment, the Chase FS-90 Ultrasonic Sewing Machine will be compared to the traditional sewing machine. The goal is to examine the sewing quality of textile fabric using ultrasonic meth-ods by finding ideal parameters. The parameters are amplitude, speed, and pressure by using materials, including one thermoplastic fabric, one natural fabric, and low-melting polymer tape. The ultrasonic seam with the best properties will then be compared to the traditional needle and thread seam. The final product will be a designed dress using all ultrasonic seams. The material found to have the best seam properties will be used for the design.
Influence of Pimecrolimus Cream 1% on Different Morphological Signs of Eczema in Infants with Atopic Dermatitis

Background: In the published studies on the efficacy of the topical immunomodulator pimecrolimus, different eczema scores were used, and the impact on morphological key signs of eczema was not analysed. Objective: To compare the influence of pimecrolimus cream 1% on different standard eczema scores in infants with atopic dermatitis and to analyse the impact of treatment on the individual morphological key signs of eczema. Methods: Pimecrolimus cream 1% (n = 129) or double-blind vehicle control (n = 66) was administered for 4 weeks. The Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI), Investigators’ Global Assessment (IGA) and Scoring Atopic Dermatitis Index (SCORAD) were determined and were correlated with each other. Results: Following treatment with pimecrolimus, the EASI, IGA and SCORAD were significantly reduced on day 29 as compared with the vehicle group (p < 0.001, p < 0.001, p = 0.002, respectively). There was a close correlation between EASI, IGA and SCORAD. The single parameters of the EASI were already significantly decreased by day 4 in the pimecrolimus group as compared to vehicle (each p < 0.001). Conclusion: Treatment with pimecrolimus 1% cream leads to a rapid improvement of all morphological signs of eczema. The close correlation of different scores was shown for the first time.
Factors affecting crack formation in rice varieties during wetting and field stresses.

The critical moisture contents for the appearance of cracks in each of 4 rice var. were 14.2% for (i) Halubbulu, 16.4% for (ii) Kaddi Bhatha, 16.9% for (iii) IR 20 and 18.3% for (iv) Madhu. 100% cracked grains were obtained at 9.9% moisture in (i) and at 10.7% in (ii)-(iv). Paddy samples with different moisture levels were soaked for 3 h in water, which showed that cracking depends on the initial moisture content of paddy used for soaking; the lower the moisture content, the greater the cracking. Grains from var. (i) and (ii) were soaked in water at temp. of 5 degree , 30 degree , 45 degree , 55 degree , 70 degree , 78 degree or 85 degree C; increase in the temp. of soak water induced quicker cracking and greater proportion of cracked grains, but at higher temp. gelatinization and healing effect on cracks was noted. Paddy was the most highly susceptible to cracking, followed by brown rice and milled rice. Cracking was more pronounced in yellow grains than in greenish (immature) grains when soaked in water. Exposure of paddy crop to sun and dew during late maturity stages induced cracks in the grain, thereby lowering the milling quality.
Rehabilitation in the home versus the hospital: the importance of context.

PURPOSE Stroke rehabilitation has received increased attention in the past decade. Recent trials with new alternatives such as home-based rehabilitation services are being conducted. The purpose of the study was to explore differences between a therapy session with a stroke patient in two different contexts, i.e. in the patient's home and in the hospital. METHODS The research design was a qualitative case study. Three data collection methods were used; participant observations of therapy sessions in two different contexts, semi-structured interviews and documents. RESULTS The data were examined and coded for common categories. Analysis of the data looking for similarities and differences in behaviour of two therapists and their patients during therapy sessions in the hospital and in the home was performed. The observations revealed that there was clearly a difference in behaviour; a different role-set used by the two therapists when working in the patient's home versus in the hospital. The major difference in patient behaviour was that the patient, observed in his home, took the initiative and expressed his goals, which was not the case with the patients observed in the hospital. The findings were confirmed in the interviews and the documents. CONCLUSION It is suggested that the context is a key component to be considered in the rehabilitation process of stroke patients.
Outcomes of Developmentally Supportive Nursing Care for Very Low Birth Weight Infants

Numerous aspects of the intensive care environment are stressful for low birth weight infants and may play a role in adverse developmental and behavioral outcome. The purpose of this study was to determine whether staff education in care protocols designed to make the environment less stressful and thereby support the infant's development would improve short-term outcomes. Twenty-one infants (< 1,501 gms) were studied during the preeducation period and 24 infants were studied following staff education. The educational program successfully altered nursing care. Experimental infants had more optimal respiratory and feeding status, lower levels of morbidity, shorter hospitalization, and improved behavioral organization.
Clinical Grading in Chronic Graft-Versus-Host Disease: Is it Time for Change?

Many hematologic disorders, leukemias and lymphomas in particular, can be cured with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT). However, chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) appears to remain as a major determinant of long term outcome and quality of life following allo-SCT. The gradual increase in the incidence of cGVHD over the past decade has recently gained another momentum along with the use of blood as a source of stem cells. Donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI) is also associated with a progressive form of cGVHD, mostly refractory to treatment. Prediction of the outcome of patients with newly diagnosed chronic GVHD may be important in identifying those who are likely to benefit from reduced treatment and patients who are unlikely to have a sustained response to standard treatment. In addition, a reliable predictive model could allow us to design better clinical trials and facilitate the communication among the centers. Although it is highly reproducible, the current system of grading in cGVHD is of limited utility since it does not stratify patients for outcome. It divides patients into those needing treatment (extensive cGVHD) and those who do not (limited cGVHD). Therefore, a new clinical grading system is needed to classify all patients based on their prognosis so like patients with similar features can be grouped for study and clinical management purposes. Using multivariate analysis, we recently identified three independent risk factors affecting the survival without recurrent malignancy. These factors are extensive skin involvement (>50% BSA), thrombocytopenia, and progressive-type onset of cGVHD. We are in the process of validating this prognostic model in three other cohorts from different institutions. We expect that the new grading system, based on this model, may allow us to identify the diversity of outcome within "extensive stage" cGVHD.
IFNα Inducible Models of Murine SLE

The role of type I interferons (IFNs) in SLE pathogenesis has been a subject of intense investigation in the last decade. The strong link between type I IFNs and SLE was initially provided by ex vivo studies showing that exposure of peripheral blood mononuclear cells to immune complexes from SLE patients elicits a signature of IFN inducible genes and was then further highlighted by human genetic studies. The mechanisms by which type I IFNs, especially IFN alpha (IFNα), modulate the immune system and exacerbate SLE have been largely elucidated through studies in mouse lupus models. In this review, we discuss the characteristics of several such models in which disease is accelerated by ectopically expressed IFNα. We also summarize several studies which tested therapeutic interventions in these models and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using IFNα accelerated models to study experimental treatments for lupus.
Binary-based similarity measures for categorical data and their application in Self- Organizing Maps

In exploratory data analysis of high dimensional data one Eof the main tasks is the formation of a simplified overview of data sets. Clustering and projection are among the examples of useful methods to achieve this task. However there are several types of data where the use of this measure is not adequate, such as the categorical data. In this paper we will review some of the most common binary-based similarity measures that can be applied to this type of data. These measures are evaluated empirically using the Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) algorithm. The SOM algorithm performs a non-linear mapping from a high-dimensional data space to a low-dimensional space, typically twodimensional, aiming to preserve the topological relations of the data. A well known data set of Animals from (Ritter and Kohonen 1989) is used. We tested two different approaches to compute the best matching unit (BMU). Working with binary data in the SOM algorithm poses issues concerning the update method for the neurons and the internal modeling of the data, which we have to be aware. The nonmetric properties of some measures must also have our attention. Some similarity measures produced maps that were very like to each other. Exploring these maps, we may find that the clustering obtained using the SOM provides different perspectives over the data.
Numerical Continuation of resonances and bound states in coupled channel Schr

Resonant solutions of the quantum Schr\"odinger equation occur at complex energies where the S-matrix becomes singular. Knowledge of such resonances is important in the study of the underlying physical system. Often the Schr\"odinger equation is dependent on some parameter and one is interested in following the path of the resonances in the complex energy plane as the parameter changes. This is particularly true in coupled channel systems where the resonant behavior is highly dependent on the strength of the channel coupling, the energy separation of the channels and other factors. In previous work it was shown that numerical continuation, a technique familiar in the study of dynamical systems, can be brought to bear on the problem of following the resonance path in one dimensional problems and multi-channel problems without energy separation between the channels. A regularization can be defined that eliminates coalescing poles and zeros that appear in the S-matrix at the origin due to symmetries. Following the zeros of this regularized function then traces the resonance path. In this work we show that this approach can be extended to channels with energy separation, albeit limited to two channels. The issue here is that the energy separation introduces branch cuts in the complex energy domain that need to be eliminated with a so-called uniformization. We demonstrate that the resulting approach is suitable for investigating resonances in two-channel systems and provide an extensive example.
Social Jetlag Among Night Workers is Negatively Associated with the Frequency of Moderate or Vigorous Physical Activity and with Energy Expenditure Related to Physical Activity

This cross-sectional study analyzed the association between physical activity (PA) and social jetlag (SJL) among shift workers. We evaluated 423 employees, aged between 18 and 60 years, who worked in a poultry-processing company in Brazil. Physical activity levels (PAL) were determined by the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ-SF). SJL was calculated as the absolute difference between the time of mid-sleep on work and free days. The percentage of workers insufficiently active was high on all shifts, with no significant differences between the 3 shifts. The amount of time spent in sedentary behavior on workdays did not differ between shifts. Among night-shift workers, negative associations were observed between SJL and 1) the duration and weekly energy expenditure while walking; 2) the frequency of moderate and vigorous PA; and 3) the total energy expenditure related to PA. Even though PAL did not differ among workers on different shifts, we found a high prevalence of subjects who were insufficiently active or too sedentary among all groups. Also, SJL was negatively associated with PA in night-shift workers. These results suggest that PA should be encouraged among shift workers and that SJL may be an important factor in reducing PA in this cohort.
Pioneer transcription factors in cell reprogramming

Biochemical and genomic studies have shown that transcription factors with the highest reprogramming activity often have the special ability to engage their target sites on nucleosomal DNA, thus behaving as “pioneer factors” to initiate events in closed chromatin. This review by Iwafuchi-Doi and Zaret focuses on the most recent studies of pioneer factors in cell programming and reprogramming, how pioneer factors have special chromatin-binding properties, and facilitators and impediments to chromatin binding.
Prognostic value of circulating tumor cells in nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer: a CellSearch analysis.

BACKGROUND Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) provide prognostic information in patients with metastatic tumors. Recent studies have shown that CTCs are released in circulation in an early phase of cancer disease so that their presence is under investigation in the adjuvant setting. Few studies investigated the prognostic significance of CTCs enumeration in patients with metastatic and advanced bladder cancer. The current study has analyzed the presence of CTC in patients with nonmuscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). PATIENTS AND METHODS Forty-four NMIBC patients were enrolled and included in a 24-month follow-up program. Blood drawings were carried out in all patients at the first diagnosis. CellSearch system (Veridex; LLC, Raritan, NJ) was used for CTCs enumeration. RESULTS CTC were detectable in 8/44 patients (18%). Presence of CTC was found significantly associated to shorter time to first recurrence (6.5 versus 21.7 months, P < 0.001). Median time to progression was not reached, due to the short follow-up period. CTC presence was found associated to concomitant carcinoma in situ and higher T category. CONCLUSION The detection of CTC in this setting of disease may allow to distinguish patients with high risk of recurrence from those with high risk of progression, as well as to early identify patients candidate for adjuvant treatment.
Assessing and Improving Large Scale Parallel Volume Rendering on the IBM Blue Gene

Computational science’s march toward the petascale demands innovations in analysis and visualization of the resulting datasets. As scientists generate terabyte and petabyte data, it is insufficient to measure the performance of visual analysis algorithms by rendering speed only, because performance is dominated by data movement. We take a systemwide view in analyzing the performance of software volume rendering on the IBM Blue Gene/P at over 10,000 cores by examining the relative costs of the I/O, rendering, and compositing portions of the volume rendering algorithm. This examination uncovers room for improvement in data input, load balancing, memory usage, image compositing, and image output. We present four improvements to the basic algorithm to address these bottlenecks. We show the benefit of an alternative rendering distribution scheme that improves load balance, and how to scale memory usage so that large data and image sizes do not overload system memory. To improve compositing, we experiment with a hybrid MPI multithread programming model, and to mitigate the high cost of I/O, we implement multiple parallel pipelines to partially hide the I/O cost when rendering many time steps. Measuring the benefits of these techniques at scale reinforces the conclusion that BG/P is an effective platform for volume rendering of large datasets and that our volume rendering algorithm, enhanced by the techniques presented here, scales to large problem and system sizes.
SCNN: An accelerator for compressed-sparse convolutional neural networks

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have emerged as a fundamental technology for machine learning. High performance and extreme energy efficiency are critical for deployments of CNNs, especially in mobile platforms such as autonomous vehicles, cameras, and electronic personal assistants. This paper introduces the Sparse CNN (SCNN) accelerator architecture, which improves performance and energy efficiency by exploiting the zero-valued weights that stem from network pruning during training and zero-valued activations that arise from the common ReLU operator. Specifically, SCNN employs a novel dataflow that enables maintaining the sparse weights and activations in a compressed encoding, which eliminates unnecessary data transfers and reduces storage requirements. Furthermore, the SCNN dataflow facilitates efficient delivery of those weights and activations to a multiplier array, where they are extensively reused; product accumulation is performed in a novel accumulator array. On contemporary neural networks, SCNN can improve both performance and energy by a factor of 2.7× and 2.3×, respectively, over a comparably provisioned dense CNN accelerator.