Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antifungal and antibacterial activities of polyherbal toothpaste against oral pathogens, in vitro

Background and Purpose: Herbal toothpastes are more secure and efficacious and less poisonous due to containing natural chemicals as compared with the synthetic toothpastes. The present study aimed to formulate a polyherbal toothpaste using accessible medicinal plants in Iran and evaluate its efficiency in the protection of oral hygiene and prevention of dental caries. Materials and Methods: The developed toothpaste was made of the leaf extracts of Artemisia dracunculus, Satureja khuzestanica (Jamzad), and Myrtus communis (Linn), combined at four different dilutions, namely 1:4 (25%), 1:1 (50%), 3:4 (75%), and (100%), with sterile distilled water. The product was tested against five microorganisms, including Streptococcus mutans, Lactobaccilus caseie, S. sanguis, S. salivarius, and Candida albicans, using agar well diffusion method. Results: After 24 h of incubation, the maximum mean diameters of inhibition zone against L. caseie and C. albicans were obtained as 17-30 and 10-25 mm, respectively. Furthermore, the minimum mean diameter of inhibition zone against S. salivarious was estimated as 15-20 mm. Conclusion: The formulated toothpaste showed potent inhibitory activities against Gram-positive bacteria and C. albicans. Therefore, more studies are required to accurately investigate the efficacy of the formulated toothpaste.
Effectiveness of sofosbuvir/pegylated-interferon plus ribavirin in treatment of hepatitis C virus genotype 4 patients

Introduction New regimens involving direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs) have recently been approved for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 4 (GT4). The current study aims to assess the efficacy and safety of sofosbuvir (SOF) with pegylated interferon (PegINF)/ribavirin (RBV) for chronic HCV GT4 patients at the beginning of the interferon-free era. Material and methods Between March 2015 and November 2015, 99 patients (59 naïve and 40 experienced) infected with HCV GT4 were enrolled in the study. Eligible patients received daily oral 400 mg SOF, RBV (body weight: < 75 kg, 1000 mg; < 75 kg, 1200 mg), the dose modified according to patient tolerability, plus 180 μg PegINFα-2 once weekly for 12 weeks. Results Among the patient cohort, sustained virological response 12 weeks after the end of treatment (SVR12) was achieved by 88% (87/99) of all patients, by 93% (55/59) of naïve patients and by 80% (32/40) of experienced patients. Regarding treatment failure, the data recorded 12% (12/99) of patients (4 null responses and 8 relapsers). Otherwise, the most common adverse events observed during the study included headache, nausea, fatigue, dyspnea, influenza-like illness, anemia, and leukopenia. Conclusions SOF combination-based therapies were considered promising choice regimens for chronic HCV infection. The present findings suggest that the combination of the SOF/PegINF/RBV regimen was effective for Egyptian patients with HCV GT4. The recorded adverse events and viral outcome revealed the high need for further efforts to minimize the side effects of the current regimen and/or replace PegINF with additional potent DAA(s) to increase SVR12 to achieve 100%.
Not wallowing in misery – retractions of negative misinformation are effective in depressive rumination

ABSTRACT People often continue to rely on misinformation in their reasoning after they have acknowledged a retraction; this phenomenon is known as the continued-influence effect. Retractions can be particularly ineffective when the retracted misinformation is consistent with a pre-existing worldview. We investigated this effect in the context of depressive rumination. Given the prevalence of depressotypic worldviews in depressive rumination, we hypothesised that depressive rumination may affect the processing of retractions of valenced misinformation; specifically, we predicted that the retraction of negative misinformation might be less effective in depressive ruminators. In two experiments, we found evidence against this hypothesis: in depressive ruminators, retractions of negative misinformation were at least as effective as they were in control participants, and more effective than retractions of positive misinformation. Findings are interpreted in terms of an attentional bias that may enhance the salience of negative misinformation and may thus facilitate its updating in depressive rumination.
Oleuropein inhibits migration ability through suppression of epithelial‐mesenchymal transition and synergistically enhances doxorubicin‐mediated apoptosis in MCF‐7 cells

Distinct metastasis is one of the main causes of breast cancer (BC)‐related mortality and epithelial‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a primary step in metastasis dissemination. On the other hand, doxorubicin (DOX) is an effective chemotherapeutic agent against BC; unfortunately, its clinical use is limited by dose‐dependent side effects. Therefore, extensive efforts have been dedicated to suppressing metastasis of BC and also to overcome DOX side effects together with keeping its antitumor efficacy. Studies supported the role of oleuropein (OLEU) in reducing DOX‐induced side effects besides its antitumor actions. In this study, the antimigratory effect of OLEU was assessed and real‐time PCR (RT‐PCR) was used to detect OLEU effect on the expression level of EMT markers, in MCF‐7 cells. The cytotoxic effect of OLEU and DOX was assessed by MTT assay, whereas the ratio of apoptosis was investigated by flow cytometry. The results showed that migration ability of MCF‐7 cells remarkably decreased in OLEU treated group and RT‐PCR results showed that OLEU may exert its antimigratory action by suppressing EMT through downregulation of sirtuin1 (SIRT1). Also, the results indicated that both OLEU and DOX were cytotoxic to MCF‐7 cells, whereas DOX‐OLEU cotreatment led to additive cytotoxicity and apoptosis rate. This study provides evidence regarding the suppressive role of OLEU on MCF‐7 cells migration ability through suppression of EMT, and for the first time, it was proposed that SIRT1 downregulation can be involved in the OLEU antimigratory effect. Also, the findings demonstrated that OLEU can reduce DOX‐induced side effects by reducing its effective dose.
Therapeutic Approaches to Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: Exercise Intervention and Related Mechanisms

Exercise training ameliorates nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) as well as obesity and metabolic syndrome. Although it is difficult to eliminate the effects of body weight reduction and increased energy expenditure—some pleiotropic effects of exercise training—a number of studies involving either aerobic exercise training or resistance training programs showed ameliorations in NAFLD that are independent of the improvements in obesity and insulin resistance. In vivo studies have identified effects of exercise training on the liver, which may help to explain the “direct” or “independent” effect of exercise training on NAFLD. Exercise training increases peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (PGC1α) expression, improves mitochondrial function and leads to reduced hepatic steatosis, inflammation, fibrosis, and tumor genesis. Crosstalk between the liver and adipose tissue, skeletal muscle and the microbiome is also a possible mechanism for the effect of exercise training on NAFLD. Although numerous studies have reported benefits of exercise training on NAFLD, the optimal duration and intensity of exercise for the prevention or treatment of NAFLD have not been established. Maintaining adherence of patients with NAFLD to exercise training regimes is another issue to be resolved. The use of comprehensive analytical approaches to identify biomarkers such as hepatokines that specifically reflect the effect of exercise training on liver functions might help to monitor the effect of exercise on NAFLD, and thereby improve adherence of these patients to exercise training. Exercise training is a robust approach for alleviating the pathogenesis of NAFLD, although further clinical and experimental studies are required.
Small‐molecule–based generation of functional cardiomyocytes from human umbilical cord–derived induced pluripotent stem cells

The purpose of this study was to investigate the cardiac‐differentiation potential of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) generated from human umbilical cord–derived mesenchymal cells. Spontaneous beating colonies were observed at day 7 after the sequential addition of CHIR99021 and IWP‐4. The combined use of CHIR99021 and IWP‐4 downregulated the expression of pluripotency markers while upregulating cardiac transcription factors and cardiomyocyte‐specific markers. The derived cardiomyocytes demonstrated typical sarcomeric structures and action‐potential features; most importantly, the derived cells exhibited responsiveness to β‐adrenergic and muscarinic stimulations. The analyses of molecular, structural, and functional properties revealed that the derived cardiomyocytes were similar to cardiomyocytes derived from BJ foreskin fibroblast cells. In summary, our results demonstrate that functional cardiomyocytes can be generated from human umbilical cord–derived cells. The methodology described here has potential as a means for the production of functional cardiomyocytes from discarded human umbilical cord tissue.
A Bounding Box Overlay for Competitive Routing in Hybrid Communication Networks

We present a new approach for competitive geometric routing in wireless ad hoc networks. We design a routing strategy that finds c-competitive paths for a positive constant c: i.e., paths which have a length at most c times the length of a shortest path. It is well-known that this cannot be achieved by online routing strategies which only consider the local neighborhood of a node for their routing decisions [17]. The main difficulty is uncovered regions within the wireless ad hoc network, which we denote as radio holes. Complex shapes of radio holes, for example zig-zag-shapes, make local geometric routing difficult: i.e., forwarded messages in direction to the destination might get stuck in a dead end or could be routed along very long detours. To be able to find c-competitive paths, additional knowledge about the position and shape of radio holes is needed. In order to gather the knowledge efficiently, we make use of a hybrid network approach. This approach assumes that we can not just make use of the ad hoc network but also of some cellular infrastructure, which is used to gather knowledge about the underlying ad hoc network. Communication via the cellular infrastructure incurs costs as cell phone providers are involved. Therefore, we use the cellular infrastructure only to compute routing paths in the ad hoc network. The actual data transmission takes place in the ad hoc network. To find good routing paths we aim at computing an abstraction of the ad hoc network in which radio holes are abstracted by bounding boxes. The advantage of bounding boxes as hole abstraction is that we only have to consider a constant number of nodes per hole. We prove that bounding boxes are a suitable hole abstraction that allows us to find c-competitive paths in the ad hoc network in the case of non-intersecting bounding boxes. In the case of intersecting bounding boxes, we show via simulations that our routing strategy significantly outperforms the so far best online routing strategies for wireless ad hoc networks. Finally, we also present a routing strategy that is c-competitive in the case of pairwise intersecting bounding boxes.
Unexplained Progressive Visual Field Loss in the Presence of Normal Retinotopic Maps

Lesions of primary visual cortex or its primary inputs typically result in retinotopically localized scotomas. Here we present an individual with unexplained visual field loss and deficits in visual perception in the absence of structural damage to the early visual pathway or lesions in visual cortex. The subject, monocular from an early age, underwent repeated perimetry tests over 8 years demonstrating severe anopia of the lower hemifield, and a clockwise progression of the loss through her upper left visual field. Her visual impairment was evident in a number of standardized tests and psychophysics, especially in tasks assessing spatial integration using illusory contours. However, her intellectual ability was intact and her performance in some other tasks assessing color vision or object detection in scenes was normal. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroretinography and visually evoked potentials. Surprisingly, in contrast to the participant’s severe anopia, we found no evidence of abnormal function of her early visual pathways. Specifically, we performed retinotopic mapping using population receptive field (pRF) analysis to map the functional organization of visual cortex in the anopic participant and three control participants on two occasions three and a half years apart. Despite the behavioral visual field loss, her retinotopic maps and pRF parameters in visual areas V1–V3 were qualitatively normal. Further behavioral experiments confirmed that this discrepancy was not trivially explained by the difference between stimuli used for retinotopic mapping and perimetry. Structural T1 scans were normal at both time points, and volumetric analysis of white and gray matter tissue on the segmented T1 volumes did not reveal any abnormalities or deterioration over time. Our findings suggest that normal functional organization of early visual cortex without evident structural damage to the early visual pathway as disclosed by the techniques employed in this study does not necessarily guarantee conscious perception across the visual field.
Preoperative albumin‐to‐globulin ratio predicts survival in patients with non‐small‐cell lung cancer after surgery

The prognostic value of the preoperative albumin‐to‐globulin ratio (AGR) has not been investigated in non‐small‐cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Therefore, we aimed to assess the clinical applicability of the preoperative AGR to predict the prognosis in patients with NSCLC. We retrospectively enrolled 545 patients with stage I/II/III NSCLC who underwent surgery at our institution. The cutoff value for preoperative AGR was calculated by using a receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. A low AGR was associated with several clinicopathological variables related to tumor progression. In the multivariate analyses, the preoperative AGR was identified as an independent prognostic factor for disease‐free survival (DFS; P = 0.003) and overall survival (OS; P = 0.005). For patients with stage II and III with a preoperative AGR ≤ 1.43, the surgery plus chemotherapy group had a significantly longer DFS and OS than the surgery alone group (P = 0.002 and P = 0.001, respectively); however, a significant difference in DFS and OS between these two groups was not observed in patients with stage II and III with an AGR > 1.43 (P = 0.808 and P = 0.842, respectively). The preoperative AGR is an independent, significant predictor of DFS and OS in patients with NSCLC. Our results also demonstrate that the preoperative AGR might be a predictive marker of the therapeutic effect of postoperative chemotherapy in patients with stage II and III NSCLC.
MALDI-TOF MS Affords Discrimination of Deinococcus aquaticus Isolates Obtained From Diverse Biofilm Habitats

Matrix-assisted Laser Desorption Ionization-Time of Flight Mass Spectroscopy (MALDI-TOF MS) has been used routinely over the past decade in clinical microbiology laboratories to rapidly characterize diverse microorganisms of medical importance both at the genus and species levels. Currently, there is keen interest in applying MALDI-TOF MS at taxonomic levels beyond species and to characterize environmental isolates. We constructed a model system consisting of 19 isolates of Deinococcus aquaticus obtained from biofilm communities indigenous to diverse substrates (concrete, leaf tissue, metal, and wood) in the Fox River – Lake Winnebago system of Wisconsin to: (1) develop rapid sample preparation methods that produce high quality, reproducible MALDI-TOF spectra and (2) compare the performance of MALDI-TOF MS-based profiling to common DNA-based approaches including 16S rRNA sequencing and genomic diversity by BOX-A1R fingerprinting. Our results suggest that MALDI-TOF MS can be used to rapidly and reproducibly characterize environmental isolates of D. aquaticus at the subpopulation level. MALDI-TOF MS provided higher taxonomic resolution than either 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis or BOX-A1R fingerprinting. Spectra contained features that appeared to permit characterization of isolates into two co-occurring subpopulations. However, reliable strain-level performance required rigorous and systematic standardization of culture conditions and sample preparation. Our work suggests that MALDI-TOF MS offers promise as a rapid, reproducible, and high-resolution approach to characterize environmental isolates of members of the genus Deinococcus. Future work will focus upon application of methods described here to additional members of this ecologically diverse and ubiquitous genus.
FingerArc and FingerChord: Supporting Novice to Expert Transitions with Guided Finger-Aware Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts can be more efficient than graphical input, but they are underused by most users. To alleviate this, we present "Guided Finger-Aware Shortcuts" to reduce the gulf between graphical input and shortcut activation. The interaction technique works by recognising when a special hand posture is used to press a key, then allowing secondary finger movements to select among related shortcuts if desired. Novice users can learn the mappings through dynamic visual guidance revealed by holding a key down, but experts can trigger shortcuts directly without pausing. Two variations are described: FingerArc uses the angle of the thumb, and FingerChord uses a second key press. The techniques are motivated by an interview study identifying factors hindering the learning, use, and exploration of keyboard shortcuts. A controlled comparison with conventional keyboard shortcuts shows the techniques encourage overall shortcut usage, make interaction faster, less error-prone, and provide advantages over simply adding visual guidance to standard shortcuts.
Relationship between high‐sensitivity C‐reactive protein and subclinical carotid atherosclerosis stratified by glucose metabolic status in Chinese adults

Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease. Many studies demonstrated that hyperglycemia is not only increased inflammatory response, but also is a cause of atherosclerosis, implying that glucose metabolic status may be an important stratification factor when analyzing the relationship between inflammatory levels and subclinical carotid atherosclerosis. The aim of the present study is to assess the relationship between inflammatory levels and subclinical carotid atherosclerosis, stratified by different glucose metabolic status in a general population.
Dexpanthenol reduces diabetic nephropathy and renal oxidative stress in rats

ABSTRACT Hyperglycemia increases reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the resulting oxidative stress contributes to the development of diabetic complications. Dexpanthenol (Dxp) is the biological active form of pantothenic acid. We investigated whether Dxp administration could decrease oxidative stress as a way to treat renal complications of diabetes mellitus (DM). Thirty-two male Wistar albino rats were divided into four groups: control, Dxp, DM and DM + Dxp. Experimental diabetes was induced by a single dose of streptozotocin (STZ). After administration of STZ, the DM + Dxp group was administered 500 mg/kg Dxp intraperitoneally every day for 6 weeks. At the end of the study, blood glucose levels were measured and rats were sacrificed. Kidneys were embedded in paraffin, sectioned and stained with hematoxylin and eosin, and periodic acid-Schiff. The mean malondialdehyde levels, glutathione peroxidase, superoxide dismutase and catalase activities, and total antioxidant and total oxidant status also were measured. The control group was normal in histological appearance. We observed congestion, inflammation, glomerulosclerosis, tubular desquamation, loss of villi and hydropic degeneration in tubule cells in the DM group. Indicators of oxidative stress were elevated and antioxidant activity was reduced in the DM group compared to controls. In the DM + Dxp group, oxidative stress was decreased, antioxidant activity was increased and histopathological changes were reduced compared to the DM group. We found that Dxp exhibited ameliorative effects on STZ induced diabetic nephropathy by increasing antioxidant activity.
Optimal Architecture for Deep Neural Networks with Heterogeneous Sensitivity

This work presents a neural network that consists of nodes with heterogeneous sensitivity. Each node in a network is assigned a variable that determines the sensitivity with which it learns to perform a given task. The network is trained by a constrained optimization that minimizes the sparsity of the sensitivity variables while ensuring the network's performance. As a result, the network learns to perform a given task using only a small number of sensitive nodes. The L-curve is used to find a regularization parameter for the constrained optimization. To validate our approach, we design networks with optimal architectures for autoregression, object recognition, facial expression recognition, and object detection. In our experiments, the optimal networks designed by the proposed method provide the same or higher performance but with far less computational complexity.
The Prevalence of Urinary Tract Infection Following Flexible Ureterenoscopy and The Associated Risk Factors.

PURPOSE To evaluate the risk factors for urinary tract infection (UTI) after retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS). MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective evaluation of the records of patients who underwent RIRS from January 2013 to September 2016 was performed. All interventions were done by same surgeon and same technique. Pre and postoperative risk factors were noted in IBM SPSS statistics (21.0) data recording system; to determine the risk factors, chi-square tests, binary (multiple) logistic regression analysis were performed, odds ratio and 95% confidence interval were calculated. RESULT 111 patients were included in the study with a mean age 47.5 (14-84). Postoperative infection rate was 12.6% (14 patients). SWL, preoperative double J stent insertion, localization, gender, operation side had no impact on origination of infectious complications (P> 0.005 for all). Preoperative infection history (P =.002, OR=7.96, CI%95: 2.0- 30.5), comorbidity score (P =.008, OR=7.79, CI%95: 1.7- 35.5), and residual fragments were found the significant risk parameters on postoperative infectious complications (P =.045, OR=5.12, CI%95: 1.03 - 25.36). CONCLUSION To reduce UTI complications, it is necessary to pay attention on patients with comorbidities, appropriate antibiotic prophylaxis who had urinary tract infection history and achieve stone free status.