Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lipoprotein redox status evaluation as a marker of cardiovascular disease risk in patients with inflammatory disease

Patients with chronic inflammatory disorders (ID) have an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, and routinely determined parameters do not reveal the real metabolic status of specific subgroups, such as patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In this study, in order to evaluate state of the art markers for the assessment of cardiometabolic risk, abnormalities in lipoprotein levels in patients with a low-grade inflammatory status [diabetes mellitus (DM) subgroup] and in patients with a high systemic inflammatory burden (RA subgroup) was determined. The study group comprised patients with ID [DM (n=20) and RA (n=20)], with an aged-matched control group (n=17). Patient serum was used to determine routine biochemical parameters and to isolate low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL). The heparin-citrate method was used for LDL precipitation and the phosphotungstic acid-MgCl2 technique for the isolation of HDL. Further, Amplex Red and advanced oxidation protein product (AOPP) assays were applied to determine lipid peroxides and protein oxidation, respectively, while the levels of serum advanced glycation end products (AGEs) were also determined. Although the differences in the routinely determined lipidemic profile were notable between the DM and RA subgroups, markers of lipid peroxidation and of advanced protein oxidation/glycation did not differ significantly, indicating possible similar oxidative damage of serum lipoproteins. On the whole, as alterations in lipoprotein functionality can occur long before any changes in routinely measured biochemical parameters are observed, more sensitive markers for the assessment of cardiovascular risk are required. As AOPPs, AGEs, oxidized LDL (oxLDL) and especially oxidized HDL (oxHDL) are affected during the early stages of inflammatory disease, and due to their known link to coronary artery disease, it would be wise to include these markers in the routine cardiovascular evaluation of patients with chronic inflammatory disease, such as those with RA.
Amphotericin B- and Voriconazole-Echinocandin Combinations against Aspergillus spp.: Effect of Serum on Inhibitory and Fungicidal Interactions

ABSTRACT Antifungal combination therapy with voriconazole or amphotericin B and an echinocandin is often employed as primary or salvage therapy for management particularly of refractory aspergillosis. The pharmacodynamic interactions of amphotericin B- and voriconazole-based combinations with the three echinocandins caspofungin, micafungin, and anidulafungin in the presence of serum were tested against 15 Aspergillus fumigatus complex, A. flavus complex, and A. terreus complex isolates to assess both their growth-inhibitory and fungicidal activities. The in vitro activity of each drug alone and in combination at a 1:1 fixed concentration ratio was tested with a broth microdilution colorimetric method, and interactions were assessed by isobolographic analysis. Synergy was found for all amphotericin B- and voriconazole-based combinations, with amphotericin B-based combinations showing strong inhibitory synergistic interactions (interaction indices of 0.20 to 0.52) and with voriconazole-based combinations demonstrating strong fungicidal synergistic interactions (interaction indices of 0.10 to 0.29) (P < 0.001). Drug- and species-specific differences were found, with caspofungin and the A. fumigatus complex exhibiting the weakest synergistic interactions. In the presence of serum, the synergistic interactions were reduced in the order (from largest to smallest decrease) micafungin > anidulafungin > caspofungin, and A. flavus complex > A. fumigatus complex > A. terreus complex, resulting in additive interactions, particularly for inhibitory activities of amphotericin B-echinocandin combinations and fungicidal activities of voriconazole-echinocandin combinations. Drug- and species-specific differences were found in the presence of serum for inhibitory activities of antifungal drugs, with the lowest interaction indices being observed for amphotericin B-caspofungin (median, 0.77) and for the A. terreus complex (median, 0.56). The present in vitro data showed that serum had a major impact on synergistic interactions of amphotericin B-echinocandin and voriconazole-echinocandin combinations, resulting in additive interactions and explaining the indifferent outcomes usually observed in vivo.
Fast Algorithms for Mining Association Rules

We consider the problem of discovering association rules between items in a large database of sales transactions. We present two new algorithms for solving this problem that are fundamentally di erent from the known algorithms. Empirical evaluation shows that these algorithms outperform the known algorithms by factors ranging from three for small problems to more than an order of magnitude for large problems. We also show how the best features of the two proposed algorithms can be combined into a hybrid algorithm, called AprioriHybrid. Scale-up experiments show that AprioriHybrid scales linearly with the number of transactions. AprioriHybrid also has excellent scale-up properties with respect to the transaction size and the number of items in the database.
Genetic resistance to mouse hepatitis virus correlates with absence of virus-binding activity on target tissues

The molecular mechanism of genetic resistance of inbred mouse strains to mouse hepatitis virus, a murine coronavirus, was studied by comparing virus binding to plasma membranes of intestinal epithelium or liver from susceptible BALB/c and resistant SJL/J mice with a new solid-phase assay for virus-binding activity. Virus bound to isolated membranes from susceptible mice, but not to membranes from resistant mice. F1 progeny of SJL/J X BALB/c mice had an intermediate level of virus-binding activity on their enterocyte and hepatocyte membranes. This correlated well with previous studies showing that susceptibility to mouse hepatitis virus strain A59 is controlled by a single autosomal dominant gene (M. S. Smith, R. E. Click, and P. G. W. Plagemann, J. Immunol. 133:428-432). Because virus binding was not prevented by treating membranes with sodium dodecyl sulfate, the virus-binding molecule could be identified by a virus overlay protein blot assay. Virus bound to a single broad band of Mr 100,000 to 110,000 in membranes from hepatocytes or enterocytes of susceptible BALB/c and semisusceptible C3H mice, but no virus-binding band was detected in comparable preparations of resistant SJL/J mouse membranes. Therefore, SJL/J mice may be resistant to mouse hepatitis virus A59 infection because they lack a specific virus receptor which is present on the plasma membranes of target cells from genetically susceptible BALB/c and semisusceptible C3H mice.
GLYCOGEN SYNTHETASE ACTIVITY IN SKELETAL MUSCLE. INTERCONVERSION OF TWO FORMS AND CONTROL OF GLYCOGEN SYNTHESIS.

Glycogen synthetase (uridine diphosphate glucose-glycogen glucosyltransferase, EC 2.4.1.11) has been extensively studied in liver and in skeletal muscle (3-8). In extracts from a variety of tissues, measurements of the activity of the enzymes catalyzing the steps from n-glucose 6-phosphate to glycogen suggested that glycogen synthetase was rate-limiting and, hence, was likely to be important in the control of the rate of glycogen synthesis (3, 9). A possible mechanism for control became apparent when it was found that in skeletal muscle from several mammals glycogen synthet.ase exists in two enzymatically interconvertible forms: synthetase I, active in the absence of glucose-6-P, and synthetase D, with full activity in the presence of glucose-6-P, but greatly reduced activity in its absence (5-8). Glucose-6-P does not itself enter the reaction (3). The synthetase I + D reaction requires adenosine triphosphate and Mg+f and involves phosphorylation of the enzyme protein from the terminal phosphate of adenosine triphosphate (10). The synthetase D --+ I reaction is accompanied by release of inorganic phosphate from the protein (10). The present paper describes the interconversion of these two forms of glycogen synthetase in living muscle in response to physiological stimuli. It is shown that the two forms are regulated in such a way as to hasten glycogen synthesis when the tissue concentration of glycogen is low, and to slow glycogen synthesis when the tissue concentration is elevated. In addition, the effects of epinephrine and of insulin on this system are described.
Intralymphatic Granulomas as a Pathogenic Factor in Cheilitis Granulomatosa/Melkersson–Rosenthal Syndrome: Report of a Case With Immunohistochemical and Molecular Studies

Orofacial granulomatosis, an uncommon immunologically mediated disorder, includes cheilitis granulomatosa and Melkersson-Rosenthal syndrome. It is clinically characterized by recurrent or persistent swelling of the orofacial tissues with a spectrum of other orofacial features and sometimes with neurological symptoms. The pathological findings are varied but are often characterized by the presence of noncaseating granuloma. We present a new case of orofacial granulomatosis with unusual histopathological findings, namely, intralymphatic granulomas. These may be the cause of the tissue edema. We demonstrated, by immunohistochemical studies, the lymphatic nature of the vessels affected by the granulomatous process.
The structure and function of intrinsic brain activity

The brain is not a passive 'sensory-motor' analyzer driven by environmental stimuli, but actively maintains ongoing representations that may be involved in the coding of expected sensory stimuli, prospective motor responses, and prior experience. Spontaneous cortical activity has been proposed to play an important part in maintaining these ongoing, internal representations although its functional role is not well understood. One spontaneous signal being intensely investigated in the human brain is the inter-regional temporal correlation of the blood-oxygenlevel-dependent (BOLD) signal recorded at rest by functional magnetic resonance imaging (functional connectivity-by-MRI, fcMRI, or BOLD connectivity). This signal is intrinsic and coherent within a number of distributed networks whose topography closely resembles that of functional networks recruited during tasks. While it is apparent that fcMRI networks reflect anatomical connectivity, it is less clear whether they have any dynamic functional importance. Here we demonstrate that visual perceptual learning, an example of adult neural plasticity, modifies the resting covariance structure of spontaneous activity between networks engaged by the task. Specifically, after intense training on a shape identification task constrained to one visual quadrant, resting BOLD functional connectivity and directed mutual interaction between trained visual cortex and frontal-parietal areas involved in the control of spatial attention were significantly modified. Critically, these changes correlated with the degree of perceptual learning. We conclude that functional connectivity serves a dynamic role in brain function, supporting the consolidation of previous experience.
Academic and social-emotional effects of full-day kindergarten: the benefits of time.

This study used a mixed-methods approach to examine academic and social-emotional effects of full-day kindergarten. Quantitative data analysis indicated a significant difference in academic achievement for children in full-day versus half-day kindergarten. Personal perspectives from teachers, administrators, and parents provided insight into how an extension of the school day promoted that achievement. Those perspectives also helped paint a picture of students’ social-emotional development and other effects of the new program that supports previous research on full-day kindergarten. Results suggest that students in a small rural community benefited both academically and developmentally from the extended kindergarten experience.
Enhanced Certificate Transparency and End-to-End Encrypted Mail

The certificate authority model for authenticating public keys of websites has been attacked in recent years, and several proposals have been made to reinforce it. We develop and extend certificate transparency, a proposal in this direction, so that it efficiently handles certificate revocation. We show how this extension can be used to build a secure end-to-end email or messaging system using PKI with no requirement to trust certificate authorities, or to rely on complex peer-topeer key-signing arrangements such as PGP. This makes endto-end encrypted mail possible, with apparently few additional usability issues compared to unencrypted mail (specifically, users do not need to understand or concern themselves with keys or certificates). Underlying these ideas is a new attacker model appropriate for cloud computing, which we call “malicious-butcautious”.
GLEU: Automatic Evaluation of Sentence-Level Fluency

In evaluating the output of language technology applications—MT, natural language generation, summarisation—automatic evaluation techniques generally conflate measurement of faithfulness to source content with fluency of the resulting text. In this paper we develop an automatic evaluation metric to estimate fluency alone, by examining the use of parser outputs as metrics, and show that they correlate with human judgements of generated text fluency. We then develop a machine learner based on these, and show that this performs better than the individual parser metrics, approaching a lower bound on human performance. We finally look at different language models for generating sentences, and show that while individual parser metrics can be ‘fooled’ depending on generation method, the machine learner provides a consistent estimator of fluency.
Uncooled Fabry-Perot lasers for QPSK transmission

We investigate the use of uncooled lasers in an optical fiber transmission system employing quadrature-phase-shift keyed (QPSK) signals on subcarriers. The BER of a 2 Mb/s QPSK channel is measured in a system containing 60 subcarriers. Error-free performance (BER <10/sup -9/) is achieved over a wide range of modulation depths. This demonstrates that these inexpensive lasers can be used in multi-channel digital systems. <<ETX>>
Perception of non-native tonal contrasts : effects of native phonological and phonetic influences

This study examined the perception of Mandarin tones by two groups of Cantonese and Japanese (naive) listeners. An identification task was given and their responses were analyzed in terms of A-prime scores and tonal errors. The results indicated that the performance of the Cantonese listeners was compatible with that of the Japanese listeners in A-prime scores and tonal errors. The listeners’ tonal errors also showed that both the listener groups made considerable amount of errors for the T1-T4 and T2-T3 pairs, but the Cantonese listeners made more noticeable errors for the T1-T4 and T2-T3 pairs than did the Japanese listeners. The discrepancies in the performance between the two listener groups could be explained in the framework of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1994, 1995). The findings imply that linguistic experience of tones does not necessarily facilitate the perception of nonnative tones. However, the phonemic status and the phonetic similarities or dissimilarities between the prosodic systems of the target and native languages play a more important role in the perception of non-native tone contrasts. In addition, the results revealed some previously unnoticeable asymmetrical patterns for Mandarin tone perception by non-native listeners. Both the listener groups exhibited great confusion about the tones in the T1-T2, T1-T4, and T2-T3 pairs, but they made apparently fewer errors for the other three pairs of tones, T1-T3, T2-T4, and T3-T4. These imply that non-native tonal perception is also influenced by the phonetic characteristics of target tones.
Platelet Immunoreceptor Tyrosine-Based Activation Motif (ITAM) Signaling and Vascular Integrity

Platelets are well-known for their critical role in hemostasis, that is, the prevention of blood loss at sites of mechanical vessel injury. Inappropriate platelet activation and adhesion, however, can lead to thrombotic complications, such as myocardial infarction and stroke. To fulfill its role in hemostasis, the platelet is equipped with various G protein–coupled receptors that mediate the response to soluble agonists such as thrombin, ADP, and thromboxane A2. In addition to G protein–coupled receptors, platelets express 3 glycoproteins that belong to the family of immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif receptors: Fc receptor &ggr; chain, which is noncovalently associated with the glycoprotein VI collagen receptor, C-type lectin 2, the receptor for podoplanin, and Fc receptor &ggr;II A, a low-affinity receptor for immune complexes. Although both genetic and chemical approaches have documented a critical role for platelet G protein–coupled receptors in hemostasis, the contribution of immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif receptors to this process is less defined. Studies performed during the past decade, however, have identified new roles for platelet immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif signaling in vascular integrity in utero and at sites of inflammation. The purpose of this review is to summarize recent findings on how platelet immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif signaling controls vascular integrity, both in the presence and absence of mechanical injury.
Clustering based on enhanced α-expansion move

The exemplar-based data clustering problem can be formulated as minimizing an energy function defined on a Markov random field (MRF). However, most algorithms for optimizing the MRF energy function cannot be directly applied to the task of clustering, as the problem has a high-order energy function. In this paper, we first show that the high-order energy function for the clustering problem can be simplified as a pairwise energy function with the metric property, and consequently it can be optimized by the α-expansion move algorithm based on graph cut. Then, the original expansion move algorithm is improved in the following two aspects: 1) Instead of solving a minimal s-t graph cut problem, we show that there is an explicit and interpretable solution for minimizing the energy function in the clustering problem. Based on this interpretation, a fast α-expansion move algorithm is proposed, which is much more efficient than the graph-cut-based algorithm. 2) The fast α-expansion move algorithm is further improved by extending its move space so that a larger energy value reduction can be achieved in each iteration. Experiments on benchmark data sets show that the enhanced expansion move algorithm has a better performance, compared to other state-of-the-art exemplar-based clustering algorithms.
Genetic Diversity of Nitrogen-Fixing and Plant Growth Promoting Pseudomonas Species Isolated from Sugarcane Rhizosphere

The study was designed to isolate and characterize Pseudomonas spp. from sugarcane rhizosphere, and to evaluate their plant- growth- promoting (PGP) traits and nitrogenase activity. A biological nitrogen-fixing microbe has great potential to replace chemical fertilizers and be used as a targeted biofertilizer in a plant. A total of 100 isolates from sugarcane rhizosphere, belonging to different species, were isolated; from these, 30 isolates were selected on the basis of preliminary screening, for in vitro antagonistic activities against sugarcane pathogens and for various PGP traits, as well as nitrogenase activity. The production of IAA varied from 312.07 to 13.12 μg mL−1 in tryptophan supplemented medium, with higher production in AN15 and lower in CN20 strain. The estimation of ACC deaminase activity, strains CY4 and BA2 produced maximum and minimum activity of 77.0 and 15.13 μmoL mg−1 h−1. For nitrogenase activity among the studied strains, CoA6 fixed higher and AY1 fixed lower in amounts (108.30 and 6.16 μmoL C2H2 h−1 mL−1). All the strains were identified on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequencing, and the phylogenetic diversity of the strains was analyzed. The results identified all strains as being similar to Pseudomonas spp. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of nifH and antibiotic genes was suggestive that the amplified strains had the capability to fix nitrogen and possessed biocontrol activities. Genotypic comparisons of the strains were determined by BOX, ERIC, and REP PCR profile analysis. Out of all the screened isolates, CY4 (Pseudomonas koreensis) and CN11 (Pseudomonas entomophila) showed the most prominent PGP traits, as well as nitrogenase activity. Therefore, only these two strains were selected for further studies; Biolog profiling; colonization through green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged bacteria; and nifH gene expression using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis. The Biolog phenotypic profiling, which comprised utilization of C and N sources, and tolerance to osmolytes and pH, revealed the metabolic versatility of the selected strains. The colonization ability of the selected strains was evaluated by genetically tagging them with a constitutively expressing GFP-pPROBE-pTetr-OT plasmid. qRT-PCR results showed that both strains had the ability to express the nifH gene at 90 and 120 days, as compared to a control, in both sugarcane varieties GT11 and GXB9. Therefore, our isolated strains, P. koreensis and P. entomophila may be used as inoculums or in biofertilizer production for enhancing growth and nutrients, as well as for improving nitrogen levels, in sugarcane and other crops. The present study, to the best of our knowledge, is the first report on the diversity of Pseudomonas spp. associated with sugarcane in Guangxi, China.
On the hadronic contribution to sterile neutrino production

Sterile neutrinos with masses in the keV range are considered to be a viable candidate for warm dark matter. The rate of their production through active-sterile neutrino transitions peaks, however, at temperatures of the order of the QCD scale, which makes it difficult to estimate their relic abundance quantitatively, even if the mass of the sterile neutrino and its mixing angle were known. We derive here a relation, valid to all orders in the strong coupling constant, which expresses the production rate in terms of the spectral function associated with active neutrinos. The latter can in turn be expressed as a certain convolution of the spectral functions related to various mesonic current-current correlation functions, which are being actively studied in other physics contexts. In the naive weak coupling limit, the appropriate Boltzmann equations can be derived from our general formulae.