Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of histamine H2 receptor antagonism on levodopa–induced dyskinesia in the MPTP‐macaque model of Parkinson's disease

Levodopa‐induced motor complications, including dyskinesia and wearing off, are troublesome side effects of treatment and impair quality of life in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. The use of nondopaminergic agents as adjuncts to levodopa are potential options for managing these problems. Here, we asses the ability of the clinically available, selective histamine H2 antagonist, famotidine (1, 3, and 30 mg/kg) to treat levodopa‐induced dyskinesia and wearing off in the 1‐methyl‐4‐phenyl‐1,2,3,6‐tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)‐macaque model of PD. Famotidine (3 mg/kg) increased peak activity, enhanced peak anti‐parkinsonian action (1 and 3 mg/kg), and extended duration of action (3 mg/kg, by 38%) of a low dose of levodopa (compared to low dose levodopa alone). Enhancement of anti‐parkinsonian actions of low dose levodopa by famotidine (3 mg/kg) was associated with only mild, nondisabling dystonia. Famotidine had no effect on the anti‐parkinsonian actions of high dose levodopa (compared to high dose levodopa alone). However, famotidine (1, 3, and 30 mg/kg) had a significant effect on chorea, but not dystonia, induced by high dose levodopa (compared to high dose levodopa alone). Famotidine increased high dose levodopa–induced “good quality” on time, i.e., on time not associated with disabling dyskinesia, by up to 28% (compared to high dose levodopa alone). In conclusion, famotidine, a drug currently available for use in the clinic, can enhance the peak‐dose anti‐parkinsonian actions and extend total duration of action of a low dose of levodopa, without producing disabling dyskinesia. Furthermore, in combination with a higher dose of levodopa, famotidine can reduce peak‐dose levodopa‐induced chorea and improve the quality of on‐time. © 2010 Movement Disorder Society
Production of nanocellulose from native cellulose – Various options utilizing ultrasound

In this study three different ways of applying ultrasound for the production of nanocellulose from native cellulose were explored. In the first option bleached hardwood kraft pulp was oxidized with the ultrasound (US) assisted TEMPO/NaBr/NaOCl-system (US-TEMPO-system) followed by mechanical separation of nanocellulose. The pulp oxidized by the US-TEMPO-system had higher carboxyls content and ca. 10% increase in nanocellulose yield when compared to the TEMPO-system without sono catalysis. In the second option ultrasound pretreated pulp was oxidized using the TEMPO-system. Although there was no gain in carboxyls content in this process versus the oxidation with TEMPO-system without ultrasound treatment, a higher degree of fibrillation was obtained after ultrasound treatment. In the third case the TEMPO oxidized pulp was subjected to mechanical and ultrasound treatments for nanocellulose production. Under similar treatment time the subsequent ultrasound treatment achieved higher nanocellulose yield than the subsequent mechanical treatment. However, in comparison, the ultrasound treated nanocellulose had lower Rheometer Stresstech viscosity. Furthermore, it was observed that cellulose nanofibrils produced by ultrasound treatment were slightly thinner compared to those produced using the mechanical method.
Ironworking in Denmark : From the late Bronze Age to the early Roman Iron Age

La metallurgie du fer est apparue au Danemark en meme temps que dans le reste de l'Europe du Nord Ouest, aux environs de 1100 BC. L'origine de cette metallurgie est encore tres contreversee puisque les etudes se sont focalisees jusqu'ici sur les objets et non sur les scories, qui elles, attestent d'un travail du fer a une epoque donnee. L'Age du Fer au Danemark est divise en deux epoques : la phase d'introduction (500-300 BC) et la phase de consolidation (300 BC - 200 AD). Un certain nombre de sites sont passes en revue pour les deux phases, avec description des scories et des fours. La premiere phase est percue comme une periode de crise ou le metal semble manquer (mais il existe tout de meme une certaine production). La seconde montre un plein developpement de la metallurgie du fer.
Childhood sexual and physical abuse in Spanish female undergraduates: does it affect eating disturbances?

OBJECTIVE To assess the relationship between childhood sexual and physical abuse, and key attitudinal and behavioural aspects of eating disorders (ED). METHOD Participants included 708 female undergraduates in a Spanish public university, aged from 18 to 30. Abuse was measured by the Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire, and ED by the Eating Disorders Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q). RESULTS 14.3% of the sample had suffered childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and 3.8% childhood physical abuse (CPA). With respect to ED attitudinal features, we observed an increased Weight Concern score among CSA survivors. No association was found between this kind of abuse and disordered eating behaviours, after adjusting for depression, anxiety, self-esteem, body mass index, age and socioeconomic status. An inverse relationship was found between CPA and ED attitudes measured by EDE-Q (Restraint, Weight Concern, Shape Concern and the Overall Score), whereas no association was found with the behavioural aspects of eating disturbances. DISCUSSION After controlling for different risk factors, CSA appears to be related to an increased Weight Concern, whilst other ED attitudinal features and behaviours do not seem to be related to childhood abuse. The inverse relationship found is discussed.
Far-Field ASR Without Parallel Data

In far-ﬁeld speech recognition systems, training acoustic models with alignments generated from parallel close-talk microphone data provides signiﬁcant improvements. However it is not practical to assume the availability of large corpora of parallel close-talk microphone data, for training. In this paper we explore methods to reduce the performance gap between far-ﬁeld ASR systems trained with alignments from distant microphone data and those trained with alignments from parallel close-talk microphone data. These methods include the use of a lattice-free sequence objective function which tolerates minor mis-alignment errors; and the use of data selection techniques to discard badly aligned data. We present results on single distant microphone and multiple distant microphone scenarios of the AMI LVCSR task. We identify prominent causes of alignment errors in AMI data.
ACAP4 Protein Cooperates with Grb2 Protein to Orchestrate Epidermal Growth Factor-stimulated Integrin β1 Recycling in Cell Migration*

Background: ARF6 GTPase orchestrates membrane trafficking and actin-based cytoskeleton dynamics in migrating cells. Results: ACAP4 regulates integrin β1 dynamics in EGF-stimulated cell migration by interaction with Grb2 via Tyr-733 phosphorylation. Conclusion: These results revealed the function of the ACAP4-Grb2-integrin β1 axis in EGF-elicited cell migration. Significance: This study sheds light on a better understanding of aberrant tyrosine phosphorylation in tumor metastasis. ARF6 GTPase is an important regulator of membrane trafficking and actin-based cytoskeleton dynamics active at the leading edge of migrating cells. The integrin family heterodimeric transmembrane proteins serve as major receptors for extracellular matrix proteins, which play essential roles in cell adhesion and migration. Our recent proteomic analyses of ARF6 effectors have identified a novel ARF6 GTPase-activating protein, ACAP4, essential for EGF-induced cell migration. However, molecular mechanisms underlying ACAP4-mediated cell migration have remained elusive. Here, we show that ACAP4 regulates integrin β1 dynamics during EGF-stimulated cell migration by interaction with Grb2. Our biochemical study shows that EGF stimulation induces phosphorylation of tyrosine 733, which enables ACAP4 to bind Grb2. This interaction of ACAP4 with Grb2 regulates integrin β1 recycling to the plasma membrane. Importantly, knockdown of ACAP4 by siRNA or overexpression of ACAP4 decreased recycling of integrin β1 to the plasma membrane and reduced integrin-mediated cell migration. Taken together, these results suggest a novel function for ACAP4 in the regulation of cell migration through controlling integrin β1 dynamics.
Development and Validation of a Fertility Intention Scale in Breast Cancer Survivors

Background: Evidence indicates that breast cancer survivors with reproductive concerns have a poorer quality of life than survivors without fertility concerns. There is a lack of reliable and valid assessments of fertility intention among breast cancer survivors. Purpose: The aim of this study was to develop and validate the Fertility Intention Scale (FIS) that is sensitive to the fertility intention of women with breast cancer. Methods: A literature review and a qualitative study were conducted to generate the items in the scale. Content validity was evaluated by 15 experts, and face validity was assessed by 10 patients with cancer. Factor analysis was used to assess construct validity, and criterion validity was evaluated using two percentile items of fertility willingness. We developed and examined the validity and reliability of the FIS using a sample of 178 patients with breast cancer who had completed chemotherapy. Results: The Cronbach’s alpha calculated for the FIS (15 items) was . 88. The factor analysis performed for the construct validity of the scale identified four factors that accounted for approximately 68.72% of the total variance. These four factors were pregnancy risk, disease control, social support, and happiness. There was a significant correlation between the total FIS and the level of desiring fertility preservation or pregnancy. Conclusions/Implications for Practice: The FIS has acceptable reliability, content validity, and construct validity. This scale is appropriate for use in research and clinical practice settings to evaluate the risk–benefit perceptions of pregnancy in patients with breast cancer.
The Effect of Fiduciary Standards and Institutions' Preference for Dividend-Paying Stocks

Many researchers perceive that the “Prudent Man” standard for fiduciary responsibility causes institutional investors to prefer dividend-paying stocks. However, most states revised their fiduciary standards during the 1990s, replacing Prudent Man constraints with the less-stringent Prudent Investor rules for many institutional investors. We find that the introduction of the Prudent Investor standard is followed by an economically and statistically significant reduction in institutional holdings of dividendpaying stocks. If institutional investors should no longer be assumed to have an exogenous preference for dividend-paying stocks, some conclusions about security returns and corporate behavior from the 1990s may need to be re-considered.
Using Temporal Modulation Sensitivity to Select Stimulation Sites for Processor MAPs in Cochlear Implant Listeners

Previous studies in our laboratory showed that temporal acuity as assessed by modulation detection thresholds (MDTs) varied across activation sites and that this site-to-site variability was subject specific. Using two 10-channel MAPs, the previous experiments showed that processor MAPs that had better across-site mean (ASM) MDTs yielded better speech recognition than MAPs with poorer ASM MDTs tested in the same subject. The current study extends our earlier work on developing more optimal-fitting strategies to test the feasibility of using a site-selection approach in the clinical domain. This study examined the hypothesis that revising the clinical speech processor MAP for cochlear implant (CI) recipients by turning off selected sites that have poorer temporal acuity and reallocating frequencies to the remaining electrodes would lead to improved speech recognition. Twelve CI recipients participated in the experiments. We found that site selection procedure based on MDTs in the presence of a masker resulted in improved performance on consonant recognition and recognition of sentences in noise. In contrast, vowel recognition was poorer with the experimental MAP than with the clinical MAP, possibly due to reduced spectral resolution when sites were removed from the experimental MAP. Overall, these results suggest a promising path for improving recipient outcomes using personalized processor-fitting strategies based on a psychophysical measure of temporal acuity.
‘Nothing is permanent but change’ † – antigenic variation in persistent bacterial pathogens

Pathogens persist in immunocompetent mammalian hosts using various strategies, including evasion of immune effectors by antigenic variation. Among highly antigenically variant bacteria, gene conversion is used to generate novel expressed variants from otherwise silent donor sequences. Recombination using oligonucleotide segments from multiple donors is a combinatorial mechanism that tremendously expands the variant repertoire, allowing thousands of variants to be generated from a relatively small donor pool. Three bacterial pathogens, each encoded by a small genome (< 1.2 Mb), illustrate this variant generating capacity and its role in persistent infection. Borrelia burgdorferi VlsE diversity is encoded and expressed on a linear plasmid required for persistence and recent experiments have demonstrated that VlsE recombination is necessary for persistence in the immunocompetent host. In contrast, both Treponema pallidum TprK and Anaplasma marginale Msp2 expression sites and donors are chromosomally encoded. Both T. pallidum and A. marginale generate antigenic variants in vivo in individual hosts and studies at the population level reveal marked strain diversity in the variant repertoire that may underlie pathogen strain structure and the capacity for re‐infection and heterologous strain superinfection. Here, we review gene conversion in bacterial antigenic variation and discuss the short‐ and long‐term selective pressures that shape the variant repertoire.
Species-specific nested PCR as a diagnostic tool for Brucella ovis infection in rams

The aim of the present study was to evaluate a species-specific nested PCR based on a previously described species-specific PCR for detection of B. ovis in semen and urine samples of experimentally infected rams. The performance of the species-specific nested PCR was compared with the results of a genus-specific PCR. Fourteen rams were experimentally infected with the Brucella ovis REO 198 strain and samples of semen and urine were collected every week up to 180 days post infection. Out of 83 semen samples collected, 42 (50.6%) were positive for the species-specific nested PCR, and 23 (27.7%) were positive for the genus-specific PCR. Out of 75 urine samples, 49 (65.3%) were positive for the species-specific nested PCR, whereas 11 (14.6%) were genus-specific PCR positive. Species-specific nested PCR was significantly more sensitive (P<0.001) than the genus-specific PCR in semen and urine from experimentally infected rams. In conclusion, the species-specific nested PCR developed in this study may be used as a diagnostic tool for the detection of B. ovis in semen and urine samples from suspected rams.
A Laboratory-Based Course in Display Technology

A laboratory-based class in flat-panel display technology is presented. The course introduces fundamental concepts of display systems and reinforces these concepts through the fabrication of three display devices-an inorganic electroluminescent seven-segment display, a dot-matrix organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display, and a dot-matrix liquid crystal display (LCD). Instead of fabricating a device over multiple laboratory sessions, students fabricate a functional device in a single session. This approach to teaching fabrication provides students immediate results, can accommodate students with disparate backgrounds, and can be easily adapted and expanded. This paper discusses the laboratory design, its impact on student experiences, and possible improvements and extensions.
Information searches as a mediator between Income and risky decision-making behavior and influence of education on risky decision-making behavior: a study from Pakistan

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating role of information searches between income and risky decision-making and to investigate the influence of education on risky decision-making behavior of investor. Hypotheses were developed from the literature and these hypotheses statement were tested through the use of questionnaire. The items of questionnaires were adapted from previous relevant studies and then distributed to the individual investors of busiest Stock Exchange markets of Pakistan including Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. 303 questionnaires were finally analyzed as the response rate was 76.71%. Income was found to have a significant and positive relationship with advice-seeking and digital information search. However, there was no significant relationship between income and heuristics. Advice-seeking information search, digital information search, heuristics and education were found to have positive and significant effect on risky decision-making behavior. This study contributes in the field in order to increase the confidence of individual investors to prefer risky investments by providing them guidance that how to control the constraint factors to achieve higher returns and by discussing, the worth of information searches and education level will increase their preferences for risky investments. This study did not investigate the effect of education level on information searches. Further research might include education as a variable to analyze its influence on information search behavior.
A harmonic retrieval framework for discontinuous motion estimation

Motion discontinuities arise when there are occlusions or multiple moving objects in the scene that is imaged. We show that discontinuous (or multiple) motion estimation can be viewed as a multicomponent harmonic retrieval problem. Compared with existing techniques, the resulting algorithm is not iterative, which not only implies computational efficiency but also obviates concerns regarding convergence or local minima. It also adds flexibility to spatio-temporal techniques which have suffered from lack of explicit modeling of discontinuous motion.
Pharmacokinetics of Methadone

Methadone is a synthetic opioid that is effective for the relief of moderate-to-severe pain and for the treatment of opioid dependence. The pharmacokinetics of methadone differ from those of morphine in that methadone has a higher bioavailability, a much longer half-life, and is hepatically metabolized by cytochrome P450 enzymes. The pharmacokinetics of methadone are variable and an understanding of the factors that impact the onset, magnitude, and duration of analgesia is required to optimize therapy. Drug interactions are common and patients receiving methadone should be monitored closely for toxicity or therapeutic failure. Special populations in whom a change from the usual dosage regimen may be necessary include pediatric patients, patients with renal failure, the elderly, and pregnant women. To achieve an optimal dosage regimen, the clinician must have an understanding of the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of methadone in addition to the relationship between these variables and their patient' demographic and pathophysiologic characteristics. A MEDLINE search was performed to identify literature published between 1966 and May 2005 relevant to the pharmacokinetics of methadone. These publications were reviewed and the literature summarized regarding unique and clinically important elements of methadone disposition including its absorption profile, distribution, and metabolism/excretion. General dosing guidelines, dosage conversions from other opioids and pharmacokinetic issues in Special populations are discussed.
Sex-Specific Effects of Social Support on Cortisol and Subjective Responses to Acute Psychological Stress

The effects of short-term social support on cortisol levels and subjective responses to acute psychological stress were investigated in healthy adults (total N = 66). In anticipation of a public-speaking task in front of an audience, subjects received either no social support ("no support") or social support from an opposite-sex stranger ("stranger") or from their boyfriend or girlfriend ("partner"). Support providers were instructed to enact both instrumental and emotional support during the 10-minute anticipation period. The results obtained suggest sex-specific effects of social support. Although men in the partner support condition showed significant attenuation of cortisol responses compared with unsupported and stranger-supported men, women showed no response decrement under stranger support. In contrast to men, women showed a tendency toward increased cortisol responses when supported by their boyfriends. The endocrine response differences between male and female subjects were unrelated to questionnaire-derived psychological variables. No sex and group differences in perceived stress, mood changes, or social desirability were observed. Although the overall level of subjective well-being throughout the experiment was elevated in the partner support condition, no sex or group differences were observed in perceived stress, well-being changes, and social desirability. Opposite to their cortisol responses, women rated both stranger and partner support attempts more favorably than did men. No significant correlations were observed between the perceived stressfulness of the situation, mood changes, and cortisol responses. These results provide preliminary evidence for sex-specific patterns of social support efficacy to acute psychological stress with respect to adrenocortical responses.
Rapid generation of recombinant herpes simplex virus vectors expressing the bacterial lacZ gene under the control of neuronal promoters

A method of producing sustained-release microcapsules which comprises dispersing a physiologically active polypeptide into a solution of a biodegradable polymer and zinc oxide in an organic solvent, followed by removing the organic solvent; which provides a sustained-release preparation showing a high entrapment ratio of the physiologically active polypeptide and its constant high blood concentration levels over a long period of time.
An examination of the Market Impact Costs of Active Australian Equity Managers

A negative relationship between short-term interest rates and equity returns is well documented. Prior research suggests that the predictive ability of the lagged short rate is economically significant. In this paper, we investigate the performance of a trading strategy under which funds are allocated to equities or fixed income according to the forecasts from predictive model that utilises the information content of the lagged interest rate. Unlike prior findings in US markets, we find no conclusive evidence that lagged interest rates have economically significant predictive ability. INTRODUCTION