Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of single-cell cultures by immunoaffinity capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence detection.

Neuropeptide regulation of immunological activity is becoming an important issue in both basic and clinical sciences, necessitating the need for analysis to be performed at the single-cell level. A microsampling procedure has been developed for studying secretion of biologically important peptides from neuropeptide-stimulated lymphocytes, based on microdialysis sampling coupled to immunoaffinity capillary electrophoresis (ICE), with laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detection using a fibre-optic spectrometer and diode laser excitation. The system demonstrated a limit of detection in the high attomole (10(-18) mol/L) range with pure standards and was capable of monitoring secretion from a single cell over time. Using this system it was possible to differentiate the effects of four neuropeptides on both T and B cell release of regulatory cytokines. CD4(+) lymphocytes demonstrated a 7.5-fold increase in cytokine secretion over baseline following stimulation with substance P (SP) and calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP). B cells responded to CGRP and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) stimulation (5.5-fold increase), but not to SP. These changes took place 12--20 h post-stimulation and, once the peak secretion had been reached, remained at that level for the duration of the experiment. This system demonstrates the ability to perform high sensitivity measurements on microsamples of biological fluids.
May Heading in Soccer Result in Traumatic Brain Injury? A Review of Literature

Background: Globally, soccer is the most popular team sport, unifying many fans all around the world. The epidemiological studies so far have confirmed that head playing and hitting the ball with head may cause minor head injuries, which exert their effects in a cumulative way. Methods: Literature search for this review was conducted and data about traumatic brain injury collected from various sources. Results: The consequences of head injury are evident as chronic changes in cognition, including disturbances in concentration and slowing of mental and physical agility. Conclusion: Various recommendations have been issued for the prevention of chronic negative cumulative effects of soccer ball head playing. In addition, the professional soccer players are also exposed to more intense craniocerebral trauma, such as concussions and contusions. These patients require treatment of skilled sports physicians, neurologists and neurosurgeons and some may need long to return to the sport scene again.
Variability of spatial temporal gait parameters and center of pressure displacements during gait in elderly fallers and nonfallers: A 6-month prospective study

Considering that most of the falls in elderly population arise during walking, tests derived from walking performance would be desirable for comprehensive fall risk assessment. The analysis of spatial temporal parameters and the center of pressure displacement, which represents the interaction between the human body and the ground, would be beneficial. The aim of this study was to compare spatial temporal gait parameters and their variability and the variability of the center of pressure displacement between elderly fallers and nonfallers during gait at self-selected, defined and fast speeds. A prospective study design was used. At the baseline, measurements of ground reaction force during gait at self-selected, defined and fast walking speeds by two force plates were performed. In addition, the Tinetti balance assessment tool, the Falls Efficacy Scale-International and the Activities-Specific Balance Confidence Scale were used. Mean and coefficient of variation of spatial temporal gait parameters and standard deviations of center of pressure displacement during loading response, midstance, terminal stance and preswing phases were calculated. Comparison of the fallers and nonfallers exhibited no significant difference in clinical tool, scales or spatial temporal parameters. Compared to nonfallers’ increased variability of walking speed at self-selected and defined speed, step width at fast walking speed and center of pressure displacement during preswing phase in medial-lateral directions at defined walking speed was found in fallers. However, application of the Holm-Bonferroni procedure for multiple comparisons exhibited no significant effect of group in any of the gait parameters. In general, our study did not observe an effect of group (fallers vs. nonfallers) on variability of spatial temporal parameters and center of pressure movement during gait. However, walking speed, step width as well as standard deviation of COP displacement in the medial-lateral direction during preswing exhibited a certain potential for distinguishing between elderly fallers and nonfallers.
Nutritional supplementation with polymeric diet enriched with transforming growth factor-beta 2 for children with Crohn's disease.

BACKGROUND A polymeric diet rich in transforming growth factor-beta 2 used as a single nutrient has been shown to induce remission in 79% of children with Crohn's disease. OBJECTIVES To summarize the experience of several pediatric gastroenterology units in Israel using a TGFbeta2-enriched polymeric diet (Modulen IBD) supplementation in children and adolescents with Crohn's disease. METHODS In a retrospective study we reviewed the charts of 28 children with Crohn's disease (10 girls, 18 boys) who received, in addition to conventional treatment, Modulen IBD as a supplement to their regular nutrition. These children were compared with 18 children supplemented with standard polymeric formula (Ensure Plus) and 18 children without formula supplementation. We recorded clinical manifestations, growth, and the Pediatric Crohn's Disease Activity Index before and after initiation of the polymeric diet. RESULTS The Modulen-treated children showed a significant decrease in PCDAI from 34.3 to 15.7 (P< 0.0001). A significant decrease in PCDAI was recorded also in the Ensure Plus group, from 35 to 22 (P= 0.02) but not in the non-supplemented group. Significant improvements in body mass index (P = 0.01) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (P= 0.03) were recorded at follow-up (median 3.4 months) only in the Modulen IBD group. CONCLUSIONS In this cohort of children with Crohn's disease, supplementation of the diet with Modulen IBD as well as supplementation with Ensure Plus was associated with a decrease in PCDAI. The children supplemented with Modulen IBD also showed improvement in BMI, suggesting an additional advantage of nutritional therapy in children with this disease.
MASS MATRICES AND EIGENSTATES FOR SCALARS/PSEUDOSCALARS: INDIRECT CP VIOLATION, MASS HIERARCHIES AND SYMMETRY BREAKING

I study indirect CP violation for neutral kaons, and extend it to large values of the CP-violating parameter (taken to be real). I show how and at which condition there can exist a continuous set of basis in which the kinetic and mass terms in the Lagrangian can be diagonalized simultaneously. An ambiguity results for the mass spectrum, which then depends on the basis. In particular, for fixed (positive) (mass)2 of the CP eigenstates , and for certain ranges of values of the CP-violating parameter, a negative (mass)2 can arise in the CP-violating basis. Under certain conditions, even a small perturbation, lifting the ambiguity, can drastically affect the pattern of masses. These investigations extend in a natural way to indirect CP violation among a set of Higgs-like doublets. The C-odd commutator , or its equivalent for Higgs multiplets, plays an important role. The condition for its vanishing and its consequences are among the main concerns of this work.
Building Dicer1 regulation network of mouse liver hepatocytes

RNA induced gene silencing complex (RISC) has a role in many cellular processes which includes regulation of gene expression, immune response, cell differentiation and embryonic development. Dicer protein is a key regulator of these processes. Dicer1 specifically has central role in maturation of RISC substrate RNA and RISC assembly in mouse. Here the results of a microarray study that investigates the molecular level changes in Dicer1 knockout mouse liver hepatocytes is re-analysed and the differentially regulated genes are hierarchically clustered based on molecular function and co-expression to construct the suggested regulation network of Dicer1 in mouse hepatocytes.
Planar cell polarity controls directional Notch signaling in the Drosophila leg

The generation of functional structures during development requires tight spatial regulation of signaling pathways. Thus, in Drosophila legs, in which Notch pathway activity is required to specify joints, only cells distal to ligand-producing cells are capable of responding. Here, we show that the asymmetric distribution of planar cell polarity (PCP) proteins correlates with this spatial restriction of Notch activation. Frizzled and Dishevelled are enriched at distal sides of each cell and hence localize at the interface with ligand-expressing cells in the non-responding cells. Elimination of PCP gene function in cells proximal to ligand-expressing cells is sufficient to alleviate the repression, resulting in ectopic Notch activity and ectopic joint formation. Mutations that compromise a direct interaction between Dishevelled and Notch reduce the efficacy of repression. Likewise, increased Rab5 levels or dominant-negative Deltex can suppress the ectopic joints. Together, these results suggest that PCP coordinates the spatial activity of the Notch pathway by regulating endocytic trafficking of the receptor.
Comparison of imatinib 400 mg and 800 mg daily in the front-line treatment of high-risk, Philadelphia-positive chronic myeloid leukemia: a European LeukemiaNet Study.

Imatinib mesylate (IM), 400 mg daily, is the standard treatment of Philadelphia-positive (Ph(+)) chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Preclinical data and results of single-arm studies raised the suggestion that better results could be achieved with a higher dose. To investigate whether the systematic use of a higher dose of IM could lead to better results, 216 patients with Ph(+) CML at high risk (HR) according to the Sokal index were randomly assigned to receive IM 800 mg or 400 mg daily, as front-line therapy, for at least 1 year. The CCgR rate at 1 year was 64% and 58% for the high-dose arm and for the standard-dose arm, respectively (P = .435). No differences were detectable in the CgR at 3 and 6 months, in the molecular response rate at any time, as well as in the rate of other events. Twenty-four (94%) of 25 patients who could tolerate the full 800-mg dose achieved a CCgR, and only 4 (23%) of 17 patients who could tolerate less than 350 mg achieved a CCgR. This study does not support the extensive use of high-dose IM (800 mg daily) front-line in all CML HR patients. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials. gov as #NCT00514488.
An Empirical Investigation of Professional Development Effects on Literacy Instruction Using Daily Logs

The author examined the effects of professional development (PD) on literacy instruction using 75,689 lessons from 1,945 classrooms in 112 schools participating in the Study of Instructional Improvement. Stratifying over 94 pretreatment covariates, including prior instruction, the results revealed the importance of PD as a lever for changing teacher practice. Teachers receiving intense PD in comprehension offered 10% more comprehension instruction than teachers not receiving intense PD. Similarly, teachers receiving intense PD in writing offered 13% more writing instruction and had students write 12% more text than other teachers. Furthermore, these estimates may be lower bounds, because they were estimated over a single year and because there was demonstrated potential for additional influences of the school context.
A Scalable Middleware for Presence Virtualization and Federation

Presence is a key enabling technology for developing rich context-aware applications. However, there is no general purpose presence infrastructure available today which is both flexible and highly scalable to cater to a wide range of end users (consumers) and applications. We have introduced earlier [12], the concept of virtual presentities (logical presentities created in response to applications or user queries to presence systems) and a middleware for the life-cycle management of the virtual presentities, that leverages the presence infrastructure in a programmatically flexible and scalable fashion. Given the exponential rise in the number of presence sources and the rapid emergence of sophisticated context-aware applications, the scalability of the middleware is critical to its efficiency and general acceptability. In this paper, we present the design to improve scalability further. A scalability measure, inherent to the system design, is the representation of the presence logic in applications and those used by end users as persistent queries on presence data, or the virtual presentities, for potential re-use among multiple applications and end users with identical requirements. This reduces the effective load on the base presence servers and thereby enabling it to support more queries. Another scalability measure is to enhance the life cycle management of the virtual presentities with the introduction of hierarchical data re-utilization strategy. Besides enhancing the scalability of the virtualization middleware, we have expanded its range of operation by federating multiple presence domains and thereby enabling applications and users making use of presence data from different heterogeneous, but independent presence domains. In this paper, we present the detailed design, implementation and performance evaluation of the enhanced middleware, highlighting the different measures adopted for scalability and present experimental results to corroborate them.
Influences of mother's work, childhood place of residence, and exposure to media on breast‐feeding patterns: Experience of Nigeria and Uganda

Abstract This study uses data from the Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey collected in 1990 and the Ugandan Demographic and Health Survey collected in 1995 to examine the implications of mother's work, childhood place of residence, and exposure to the media for breastfeeding patterns (exclusivity and intensity) in Nigeria and Uganda. Nigeria and Uganda present an interesting contrast because Nigeria is more modernized and economically developed than Uganda, thus providing a good indication of the influence of modernization on breast‐feeding patterns. Mother's work status is defined by considering whether mothers earned cash from work and took their children to work, hence emphasizing the compatibility of work with child care. Work least compatible with child care had a negative effect on breast‐feeding intensity in Nigeria. The negative effect of mother's work on exclusive breast‐feeding (that is, if the mothers used formula or milk instead) observed for some working mothers in Nigeria and Uganda was partly confounded by urban residence, exposure to media, and other socioeconomic factors. Mother's work did not have a negative effect on breast‐feeding intensity in Uganda. The relationship between mother's work, urban residence, media exposure, and breast‐feeding practice seems to be stronger in Nigeria than Uganda.
Duplex sonography in patients with hemispheric symptoms.

Many patients with hemispheric neurologic symptoms do not have operative stenoses of the extracranial carotid arteries. In order to assess the frequency of such atherosclerotic lesions, 154 patients with documented hemispheric events underwent duplex Doppler examinations of the extracranial carotid bifurcation to assess if operative stenosis (70% to 80% stenosis) was present. Seventy‐two patients with transient ischemic attacks (TIA), 62 patients with cerebrovascular accidents (CVA), and 20 patients with amaurosis fugax (AF) were studied. Sixty‐nine percent of patients with TIAs demonstrated a less than 50% stenosis, 52% of patients with CVAs demonstrated a less than 50% stenosis, and 65% of patients with AF demonstrated a less than 50% stenosis on duplex Doppler examination. Intra‐arterial digital subtraction angiography (IADSA) was performed in 35 of 154 patients. In all of these 35 cases, ultrasound and angiographic studies agreed with respect to whether or not a greater than 50% stenosis was present. Our findings support the use of duplex Doppler sonography as a triage procedure in patients with hemispheric events in order to determine those patients who have significant carotid stenoses and who may be potential operative candidates.
Initiation of Spore Germination in Glycolytic Mutants of Bacillus subtilis

Enzyme activities of glycolysis and glyconeogenesis are present in spores of Bacillus subtilis, the rate-limiting step of glucose (GLC) metabolism being its phosphorylation. GLC allows initiation of germination in the presence of fructose (FRU) and asparagine (ASN), not because it is used via the Embden-Meyerhof path, but because it is oxidized in the nonphosphorylated form via the spore-specific GLC dehydrogenase. Spores of mutants lacking GLC-phosphoenolpyruvate transferase, FRU-6-P-kinase, or phosphoglucoisomerase activity can still be initiated by the above substrate combination. Furthermore, GLC can be replaced by 2-deoxy-GLC, which is also oxidized by GLC-dehydrogenase, but not by α- or β-methylglucoside, which are not substrates of this enzyme. GLC probably acts by reducing nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate), which is used for some metabolic reaction other than the cytochrome-linked electron transport system, since inhibitors of this system do not inhibit initiation. Spores of a mutant lacking FRU-1-P-kinase activity can no longer be initiated by GLC+FRU+ASN, but they do respond to the combination of GLC+mannose+ASN. Since spores of a FRU-6-P-kinase (or phosphoglucoisomerase) mutant can still respond to either FRU or mannose, FRU-6-P (or some derivative) apparently is needed for initiation (in addition to reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide and an amino donor). Alanine can initiate germination in spores of all of the above mutants, indicating that it can form all required compounds. However, in a mutant lacking P-glycerate kinase activity, alanine initiates only after a long lag and at a slow rate, indicating that some compound in the upper metabolic subdivision is required for initiation, in agreement with the above findings. All initiating agents of B. subtilis probably produce the same required compound(s) by different metabolic routes.
Prenatal exposure to antidepressants and depressed maternal mood alter trajectory of infant speech perception

Language acquisition reflects a complex interplay between biology and early experience. Psychotropic medication exposure has been shown to alter neural plasticity and shift sensitive periods in perceptual development. Notably, serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) are antidepressant agents increasingly prescribed to manage antenatal mood disorders, and depressed maternal mood per se during pregnancy impacts infant behavior, also raising concerns about long-term consequences following such developmental exposure. We studied whether infants’ language development is altered by prenatal exposure to SRIs and whether such effects differ from exposure to maternal mood disturbances. Infants from non–SRI-treated mothers with little or no depression (control), depressed but non–SRI-treated (depressed-only), and depressed and treated with an SRI (SRI-exposed) were studied at 36 wk gestation (while still in utero) on a consonant and vowel discrimination task and at 6 and 10 mo of age on a nonnative speech and visual language discrimination task. Whereas the control infants responded as expected (success at 6 mo and failure at 10 mo) the SRI-exposed infants failed to discriminate the language differences at either age and the depressed-only infants succeeded at 10 mo instead of 6 mo. Fetuses at 36 wk gestation in the control condition performed as expected, with a response on vowel but not consonant discrimination, whereas the SRI-exposed fetuses showed accelerated perceptual development by discriminating both vowels and consonants. Thus, prenatal depressed maternal mood and SRI exposure were found to shift developmental milestones bidirectionally on infant speech perception tasks.
The ameboid phenotype of NG2 (+) cells in the region of apoptotic dentate granule neurons in trimethyltin intoxicated mice shares antigen properties with microglia/macrophages

NG2+, stellate cells present in the adult central nervous system (CNS) have been recently recognized as a distinct glial class, identified as multipotent progenitor cells. Antigenically, they are indistinguishable from oligodendroglia progenitor cells. In response to a variety of CNS insults, these cells become rapidly activated and undergo morphological changes accompanied by increased cellular proliferation. The role they play with respect to injured neurons is not clear. In our studies, we performed immunocytochemical investigations and identified a response of NG2‐expressing cells in the model of selective neurodegeneration of murine dentate gyrus granule cells induced by systemic administration of trimethyltin. Dying neurons exhibited features of apoptotic cells. Around the region of neurodegeneration, we observed activation of NG2+ stellate cells and microglia. During the peak of apoptosis, we detected the appearance of NG2+ cells of the ameboid phenotype, intermingled with granule neurons. These cells also expressed markers of microglia/macrophages, OX42‐ and ED1‐recognized antigens, an antigen recognized by O4 antibody—a marker of more differentiated cells of the oligodendroglia lineage and, in some cases, also a protein of mature oligodendroglia adenomatus polyposis coli. They also expressed nestin. Our results suggest that the injury induces a parallel transformation of both the activated glial classes: NG2+ stellate cells and resident microglia, into ameboid cells, sharing properties of both oligodendrocyte and monocyte lineages. These cells may play a role in the phagocytosis. If this assumption is verified by electron microscopy, it would indicate a novel function of NG2 transformed cells under CNS injury conditions. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.