Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CNS white matter can be altered to support neuronal outgrowth

Previous work has demonstrated that white matter in the adult mammalian CNS inhibits cell adhesion and neurite outgrowth. This phenomenon has been investigated most recently by culturing neurons on cryostat sections of the adult CNS. Employing this same technique, we have found, in accord with others, that neurons seldom adhere to or grow on central nervous system white matter but will attach and grow on gray matter. In the experiments presented here, embryonic rat hippocampal neurons were grown on cryostat sections from the adult rat CNS, in the presence of brain derived glial cocultures. It was found that the white matter in cryostat sections can be modified by interaction with medium conditioned by brain‐derived glial cells. Neurons plated on sections pretreated by such media show significant increases in both attachment and neurite outgrowth. The activity contained in glial conditioned medium is likely complex in nature. While the majority of the activity can be eliminated by heat treatment and trypsinization, neural adhesion but not neurite initiation is affected by protease treatment. Therefore, cell attachment and neurite outgrowth may be regulated by different factors in the conditioned media. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The effectiveness of Tai Chi for short-term cognitive function improvement in the early stages of dementia in the elderly: a systematic literature review

Purpose: This systematic review examines intervention studies using Tai Chi in the early stages of dementia to determine the effectiveness of Tai Chi for the short-term improvement of cognitive functions for elderly persons with the disease. Methods: A keyword search was done in PubMed/MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), and Cochrane Library databases using keywords such as Tai Chi, Dementia*, and cognition. A secondary search strategy consisting of a manual search in the reference lists of selected articles was also used. Results: A total of nine studies were reviewed including six randomized controlled trials, two non-randomized controlled trials, and one non-randomized prospective study. The studies suggest Tai Chi has impacts on global cognitive functions, visuospatial skills, semantic memory, verbal learning/memory, and self-perception of memory. The effects of Tai Chi on overall cognition for people with mild cognitive impairment are comparable to those in control groups which engaged in exercise. Conclusion: The studies reviewed affirm the potential of Tai Chi to improve short-term cognitive function in the elderly at the onset of dementia.
The treatment of recurrent unresectable and malignant meningiomas with interferon alpha-2B.

OBJECTIVE Recurrent malignant meningiomas and unresectable meningiomas represent a great therapeutic challenge after the failure of radiation therapy. No effective chemotherapy has been found. We report the preliminary results of the treatment of patients with recurrent unresectable or malignant meningiomas with recombinant interferon alpha-2B (IFN-alpha-2B). METHOD Each of six patients with either a recurrent malignant meningioma or an unresectable meningioma was treated with IFN-alpha, administered subcutaneously at a dosage of 4 mU/m2 per day, 5 days per week. Two of the six meningiomas were regular, one was atypical, and three were malignant. RESULTS Five of six patients exhibited positive response to treatment; with stabilization of the size of the tumor in four patients and slight regression in one. The responses observed lasted from 6 to 14 months. The toxicity associated with prolonged use of IFN-alpha was mild and well tolerated. CONCLUSION These results suggest that IFN-alpha is effective in the treatment of recurrent malignant meningiomas.
Enterprise architecture availability analysis using fault trees and stakeholder interviews

The availability of enterprise information systems is a key concern for many organisations. This article describes a method for availability analysis based on Fault Tree Analysis and constructs from the ArchiMate enterprise architecture (EA) language. To test the quality of the method, several case-studies within the banking and electrical utility industries were performed. Input data were collected through stakeholder interviews. The results from the case studies were compared with availability of log data to determine the accuracy of the method's predictions. In the five cases where accurate log data were available, the yearly downtime estimates were within eight hours from the actual downtimes. The cost of performing the analysis was low; no case study required more than 20 man-hours of work, making the method ideal for practitioners with an interest in obtaining rapid availability estimates of their enterprise information systems.
Potential Impact of Global Climate Change on Species Richness of Long‐Distance Migrants

Abstract: Little evidence exists demonstrating that global climate change leads to systematic changes in the structure of ecological communities. For avian communities, one would expect warmer winters to lead to declines in numbers of long‐distance migrants if resident birds benefit from warmer winters and impose increasing competitive pressure on migrants. To study the potential influence of global climate change on long‐distance migrants, we correlated the number of all species of land birds and the number and proportion of long‐distance migrants, short‐distance migrants, and residents in 595 grid cells across Europe. We used mean temperature of the coldest month, mean spring temperature, and spring precipitation as measures of climatic conditions in winter and during the breeding period. The number and proportion of long‐distance migrants decreased with increasing winter temperature, decreasing spring temperature, and increasing spring precipitation. We used this spatial relationship between bird community structure and climate in Europe to make predictions about changes in bird communities of the Lake Constance region, Central Europe, between two census periods ( 1980–1981 and 1990–1992 ). Winter temperature in this region increased significantly between the two censuses, whereas spring temperature and precipitation did not change. As predicted from the models, the proportion of long‐distance migrants decreased and the number and proportion of short‐distance migrants and residents increased between the two censuses. The significant declines of the long‐distance migrants in the Lake Constance region are of a magnitude that can be explained by the observed climate change. Our results suggest that increasingly warmer winters may pose a more severe threat to long‐distance migrants than to the other bird groups.
Genetic programming for solving common and domain-independent generic recursive problems

In human written computer programs, loops and recursion are very important structures. Many real-world applications require recursion and loops. Loops and recursion can also be achieved by using genetic programming (GP). There has been a lot of work on GP for loops but not much on recursion. Our recent initial work on GP for recursion has shown that GP can be used to solve recursion problems, based on which this work develops two new GP methods that can solve a wider range of problems without decreasing the performance. The two new methods are tested on symbolic regression problems, binary classification problems, and Artificial Ant problems. They are compared to methods using loops, traditional GP, and the methods developed in our previous work. The results show that the new methods have improved the accuracy and increased the range of symbolic regression problems that the methods can perfectly solve, and improved the performance on two of the Artificial Ant problems. The new methods can also solve classification problems, and have better performance than loops on many of these tasks. This is the first work using recursion for classification problems, and is the first design of a generic recursive method for GP.
Conserved microRNA program as key to mammalian cardiac regeneration: insights from zebrafish.

The capacity of the adult mammalian heart to repair itself after injury is limited. In contrast, lower vertebrates such as Zebrafish can completely regenerate the organ after damage. A recent article from Aguirre et al1 in Cell Stem Cell shows that this difference is because of a microRNA program that is active in Zebrafish but silent in mammals. Crucially, reactivation of this dormant microRNA program in the murine heart induces regeneration of the myocardium. The adult mammalian heart possesses a limited capacity to regenerate lost or damaged cardiomyocytes after cardiac insult.2 This is, in part, because of the low proliferative capacity of adult cardiomyocytes. Myocardial injury increases cardiomyocyte proliferation3; however, it is clearly insufficient to completely regenerate the myocardium, and many strategies to enhance the weak regenerative response of the mammalian heart to injury are currently under investigation. The neonatal mammalian heart potentially possesses a higher regenerative capacity compared with the adult organ. In one study, cardiac regeneration was observed in 1-day-old neonatal mice after partial surgical resection.4 Using genetic fate mapping techniques, the researchers showed that the regenerated myocardium originated from preexisting cardiomyocytes proliferating in response to injury.4 This regenerative capacity was lost by day 7.4 Other studies have also pointed to an enhanced natural regenerative capacity in neonatal mice.5,6 In contrast to mammals, lower vertebrates such as Zebrafish retain the ability to regenerate their hearts throughout life. In the case of the Zebrafish, this natural ability is particularly robust as complete cardiac regeneration has been observed even when ≈20% of the ventricular myocardium was removed.7 The proliferation of partially dedifferentiated cardiomyocytes underlies this process.8 Specifically, cardiomyocytes that are adjacent to the site of injury break down their sarcomeres, express the embryonic cardiogenesis gene Gata4, and enter …
Antiulcer activity of the chloroform extract of Bauhinia purpurea leaf

Context: Bauhinia purpurea L. (Fabaceae) is a native plant species of many Asian countries, including Malaysia and India. In India, the root, stem, bark, and leaf of B. purpurea are used to treat various ailments, including ulcers and stomach cancer. Objective: In an attempt to establish its pharmacological potential, we studied the antiulcer activity of lipid-soluble extract of B. purpurea obtained via extraction of air-dried leaves using chloroform. Materials and methods: The rats were administered the chloroform extract (dose range of 100–1000 mg/kg) orally after 24 h fasting. They were subjected to the absolute ethanol- and indomethacin-induced gastric ulcer, and pyloric ligation assays after 30 min. The acute toxicity study was conducted using a single oral dose of 5000 mg/kg extract and the rats were observed for the period of 14 days. omeprazole (30 mg/kg) was used as the standard control. Results: At 5000 mg/kg, the extract produced no sign of toxicity in rats. The extract exhibited significant (p < 0.05) dose-dependent antiulcer activity for the ethanol-induced model. The extract also significantly (p < 0.05) increased the gastric wall mucus production and pH of gastric content, while significantly (p < 0.05) reducing the total volume and total acidity of the gastric content in the pylorus ligation assay. Discussion and conclusion: The extract possesses antiulcer, antisecretory and cytoprotective activities, which could be attributed to its flavonoid and tannin content. These findings provide new information regarding the potential of lipid-soluble compounds of B. purpurea for the prevention and treatment of gastric ulcers.
Rota virus Diarrhea in Hospitalized Children.

OBJECTIVE To determine the frequency and clinical features of Rota virus diarrhea in children presenting in a tertiary care hospital. STUDY DESIGN A cross-sectional, observational study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY National Institute of Child Health, Karachi, from January to June 2007. METHODOLOGY A total of three hundred children of either gender aged 1 month to 5 years, who presented with diarrhea of < 7 days as a primary illness were enrolled. Children with bloody diarrhea or nosocomial gastroenteritis acquired during hospitalization for other disease were not included. Detection of Rota virus in stool was done by enzyme linked immunoassay. RESULTS Out of 300 children, 188 (63%) tested positive and 112 (37%) tested negative for Rota virus. Positive Rota virus cases in 7 - 12 months of age was (n = 34, 18.08%). Overall, 151 (80.3%) children with Rota virus were less than 3 years old. 182 (60.7%) had fever, 118 (39.3%) had vomiting and 156 (82.9%) children had both fever and vomiting. CONCLUSION This study shows that Rota virus is a common organism causing diarrhea in children less than 3 years of age. There is a need to incorporate Rota virus vaccine in the national EPI program to decrease the disease burden as highlighted in this study.
Deriving Biot-Gassmann relationship by inclusion-based method

ABSTRACT The quasi-static theory of poroelasticity presented by Biot and Gassmann provides a relationship between the drained and undrained elastic constants of an isotropic fluid-saturated porous material in terms of the porosity of the material, bulk modulus of the solid grains, and bulk modulus of the pore fluid. We have developed an alternative approach to derive the Biot-Gassmann (BG) relationship while including the effects of the pore microstructure. First, the Eshelby transformation is used to express the local inclusion/pore strain tensor in terms of the applied strain tensor and reference material elastic properties by the superposition of a void strain and a perturbation term due to induced inclusion stress. Second, the inclusion strain expression and Hill’s average principles are combined with the Mori-Tanaka/Kuster-Toksoz scheme to obtain inclusion-stress-dependent effective elastic moduli of porous materials. For an isolated pore system, the effective modulus tensor corresponds to the origin.
Clinico-Hematological and Biochemical Changes in Camels Infected with Gastro-Intestinal Parasites -

The present study was carried out on one Hundred and fifty adult one humped camels of both sexes. They were classified into two groups, the suspected group (130 camels) and healthy control group (20 camels). Suspected group were clinically positive for gastrointestinal parasites and may be positive by laboratory diagnosed, where the positive camels by laboratory examination designated as' infected group ',while the healthy control group were negative for gastrointestinal parasites by clinical and laboratory diagnosis and designated as 'control group'. They were examined for helminth parasites according to the standard procedures of fecal examination and blood smear examination. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence and the effect of gastrointestinal parasites on clinical diagnosed camels by hematological and biochemical parameters. Examination of fecal samples from camels showed 63out of 130 (48.46 %), having different helminthes parasites as, 36.15%, 3.07% and 9.23% for nematodes, cestodes and protozoal parasites were found respectively. Also carpological examination indicated that, Trichostrongylus spp ,Nematodirus spp,Osterotagia spp and Oesphogestomum spp and Trichuris spp as a nematodes(36.15%) ,protozoon parasites (Eimeria spp) were found to be 9.23% and cestodes parasites (Moniezia spp egg) were found to be 3.07% . Hematological analysis revealed that, Packed cell volume (PCV), hemoglobin concentration (HB), Total WBC count and red blood cell count were significantly (P < 0.01) in the infected camels compared with the control healthy camels. Parasite infection of camels leads to macrocytic anemia. Biochemical analysis revealed, significant elevation in serum activities of AST and ALT as well as serum total protein and BUN level in the infected camels compared to the control healthy camel. According to the above results, we can concluded that, camels in the present study were harboring many of gastrointestinal parasites which exhibited different clinical signs (emaciation, loss of appetite and rough coat), a significant changed were noticed in hematological and biochemical values between the infected and control camels.
[Social anxiety level in acne vulgaris patients and its relationship to clinical variables].

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine the level of social anxiety in acne vulgaris patients and to examine its relationship to the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of acne, as well as to depression, self-esteem, and negative automatic thoughts. METHOD The study included 83 acne vulgaris patients from the dermatology outpatient unit of a university hospital and 58 healthy controls. Sociodemographic and clinical questionnaires, and the Global Acne Grading System (GAGS), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and Automatic Thoughts Scale (ATS) were administered to both groups. RESULTS The degree of social anxiety, social avoidance/withdrawal, general anxiety, depression, and negative automatic thoughts were significantly higher, and self-esteem was significantly lower in the acne patients. Among the 83 patients, scoring above the scales' cut-off points was as follows: 25.6% on the LSAS, 32.9% on the LSAS-Anxiety Subscale, 27.7% on the LSAS-Avoidance Subscale, 36.1% on HADS, 30.1% on the HADS-Depression Subscale, and 50.6% on the HADS-Anxiety Subscale. Psychological symptoms were negatively correlated with age and level of education in the patient group; however no relationship was observed between the psychological symptoms, and gender, the severity of acne, or acne localization. The patients rated their symptoms more severely than did the clinicians; however, the subjective ratings of the patients were not correlated to their psychological symptoms. CONCLUSION Acne vulgaris must be considered as an illness with the potential to negatively affect the psychological and emotional functioning of patients; therefore, routine psychiatric evaluation and psychological support should be part of the routine acne treatment plan.
Inflation Inertia in Egypt and its Policy Implications

This paper investigates the degree of inflation inertia in Egypt and its determinants using the cross country data consisting of over 100 countries. Medium-unbiased estimator of inflation inertia in Egypt is high compared to other countries, as indicated by its location around the upper quartile among the sample. The cross country analysis indicates that counter-cyclical macroeconomic policy and fiscal consolidation are a key to reduce inflation inertia and the costs of disinflation.
Impairment of Endotoxin-Induced Macrophage Inflammatory Protein 2 Gene Expression in Alveolar Macrophages in Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetes in Mice

ABSTRACT To elucidate the mechanism of the high incidence of lower respiratory tract infections in patients with diabetes mellitus, we investigated the kinetics of production of macrophage inflammatory protein 2 (MIP-2), an important mediator of lung neutrophil recruitment, using mice with streptozotocin-induced diabetes. Intratracheal challenge with 1 mg of lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an endotoxin, per kg of body weight resulted in a time-dependent increase in the levels of MIP-2 protein in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid, with the peak concentration (49.4 ± 13 ng/ml) occurring at 3 h and significant neutrophil accumulation becoming apparent by 3 h in normal mice. In diabetic mice, the peak level of MIP-2 protein in BAL fluid did not occur until 6 h and was reduced to 21.9 ± 10 ng/ml. Immunohistochemical studies using anti-MIP-2 antibody confirmed that the main cellular source of MIP-2 in the lung after LPS challenge was alveolar macrophages (AMs) in normal mice. The lungs in diabetic mice, however, showed no AMs staining for MIP-2 within 3 h after LPS challenge. PCR analysis using whole-lung RNA showed a time-dependent increase in MIP-2 mRNA levels after LPS instillation. The level of MIP-2 mRNA in diabetic mice was markedly decreased compared to that in normal mice. Our results indicate that impairment of MIP-2 mRNA expression in the AMs in diabetic mice resulted in delayed neutrophil recruitment in the lungs, and this may explain the development and progression of pulmonary infection in diabetes mellitus.
Biliary strictures in hepatic transplants: prevalence and types in patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis vs those with other liver diseases.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence and types of biliary strictures seen in liver allografts transplanted for primary sclerosing cholangitis and other end-stage liver diseases and to determine if such strictures occur more often in the allografts transplanted for primary sclerosing cholangitis than in the others. MATERIALS AND METHODS During a 10-year period, 643 liver transplantation patients (687 allografts) with choledochojejunostomy biliary anastomoses underwent 1728 cholangiographic studies. Three hundred six cholangiograms were obtained in 100 transplant recipients who had primary sclerosing cholangitis (112 allografts) and 1422 cholangiograms were obtained in 543 recipients who had other liver diseases (575 allografts). We retrospectively reviewed all cholangiograms of transplant recipients who had primary sclerosing cholangitis and 909 cholangiograms of the recipients who had other liver diseases and a diagnosis of biliary strictures, possible biliary strictures, or duct irregularity based on radiologic reports. The presence, number, and locations of strictures were recorded. The remaining 513 cholangiograms of recipients with other liver diseases without strictures were not reviewed. Biliary strictures were classified as intrahepatic (including bifurcation), anastomotic, and nonanastomotic extrahepatic. RESULTS Cholangiograms showed intrahepatic biliary strictures in 105 allografts (15%), anastomotic strictures in 105 allografts (15%), and nonanastomotic extrahepatic biliary strictures in 17 allografts (2%). Intrahepatic biliary strictures were diagnosed in 27% (30/112) of the allografts transplanted for primary sclerosing cholangitis and in 13% (75/575) of the allografts transplanted for other end-stage liver diseases (p = .0005). Anastomotic strictures developed in 18% (20/112) of the allografts transplanted for primary sclerosing cholangitis and in 15% (85/575) of the others (p = .381). Nonanastomotic extrahepatic strictures were seen in 6% (7/112) of the allografts transplanted for primary sclerosing cholangitis and in 2% (10/575) of the others (p = .008). CONCLUSION Intrahepatic and nonanastomotic extrahepatic biliary strictures are significantly more common in patients who have liver transplantation for primary sclerosing cholangitis than in patients who receive allografts for other end-stage liver diseases. However, strictures at the choledochojejunostomy anastomosis occur with equal frequency in both groups of patients.