Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Müller (glial) cells but not astrocytes in the retina of the goldfish possess orthogonal arrays of particles

Müller cells as the main glial component of the retina were investigated in the goldfish by means of ultrathin sections and freeze‐fracture replicas. In the optic nerve head, they were directly compared with astrocytes. Whereas astrocytic endfeet bordering the vitreous body can easily be identified by their dense bundles of intermediate filaments, scarce membranous organelles, paravitreous caveolae, and lateral desmosomes, Müller cell endfeet reveal a looser arrangement of intermediate filaments, a characteristic pattern of triangularly shaped endoplasmic reticulum, large and pale mitochondria, and, if at all, very few desmosome‐like junctions. The paravitreous membranes at the cytoplasmic face are covered by a fuzzy coat, which is less marked in astrocytic endfeet. Caveolae are lacking. Considering the freeze‐fracture architecture of the membranes of both glial cell types, the Müller cells reveal orthogonal arrays of particles (OAP), which were predominantly located opposite to the inner limiting membrane; their density (109 ± 33 OAP/μm2) decreases abruptly with the loss of the contact between membrane and vitreous body. In contrast, astrocytes of the optic nerve head in the retina do not show any OAP in their membranes at all and are interconnected by tight junctions and desmosomes. The hypothesis suggesting that OAP might be correlated with K+ channels involved in the spatial buffering of the extracellular space is reconsidered with comparative reference to recent electrophysiological data. Further, the heterogeneity of Müller cell and astrocyte membrane equipment with OAP in the goldfish is briefly discussed.
Polymorphism of IFN-gamma gene and Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease.

PURPOSE Interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) is a key cytokine in inflammatory disorders. Elevated aqueous and serum levels of IFN-gamma levels have been reported to be elevated in patients with Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH) disease. The aim of this study was to determine the IFN-gamma gene polymorphisms in VKH disease. METHODS The study involved 136 VKH patients and 176 healthy controls, who were genotyped for functional single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP; rs2430561; A/T) and functional microsatellite (CA) repeats (rs3138557) in the first intron of the IFN-gamma gene. Moreover, clinical manifestations of the patients were also analyzed. RESULTS Diffuse choroiditis/staining of fluorescein angiography was seen in all VKH patients in this study. Sunset glow fundus and nummular chorioretinal depigmented scars were observed in 83.9%, and 36.1% of the patients, respectively. Neurological and auditory disorders were observed in 90.1% of the patients: meningismus (79.8%), tinnitus (53.0%), and cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis (70.0%). Dermatologic manifestations were observed in 22.9% of the patients, manifesting as alopecia (6.9%), poliosis (17.6%), and vitiligo (13.0%). In addition, 22.1% of the patients were classified as having complete VKH disease, while 65.4% as having incomplete VKH disease, and 12.5% as having probable VKH disease. There were no significant differences in the allele and genotype frequencies between VKH patients and healthy controls. In addition, we found no association between each clinical manifestation and SNP (re2430561) in the healthy control subject. A strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) was found in the functional SNP T allele and functional microsatellite 12 (CA) repeats (D'=0.96-0.99). CONCLUSIONS The functional SNP T allele and microsatellite 12 (CA) repeats were found to have a strong LD, although a genetic susceptibility for the IFN-gamma gene could not be demonstrated among the Japanese VKH patients.
Environmental illness: evaluation of salivary flow, symptoms, diseases, medications, and psychological factors

Patients with symptoms allegedly caused by abnormal sensitivity to dental fillings and/or to electromagnetic fields and other environmental factors frequently report oral complaints. Forty-four consecutive patients with these symptoms were studied. The aim was to investigate whether unstimulated salivary flow rate was associated with Candida, symptoms, disease, medication, age, sex, anxiety, depression, and stress. Furthermore, the aim was to compare the level of anxiety, depression, and stress in these patients with an age- and sex-matched control group. Fifty percent had no or low flow rate from the minor salivary glands. Candida pseudohyphae were found in 50% of the patients. Hypothyroidism and/or intake of thyroid hormones, headache, fatigue, and age were negatively associated with unstimulated salivary flow rate, and dizziness was positively associated. Unstimulated salivary flow rate was positively associated with stimulated salivary flow rate and flow rate from the minor salivary glands. Burning mouth and subjective oral dryness were reported by 48%, and 46%, respectively. The patients were more anxious, stressed, and especially more depressed than the control group. Unstimulated salivary flow rate was negatively associated with state anxiety. Measurement of salivary flow rate is important in patients with environmental illness and can be used in combination with other measurements as a diagnostic tool.
Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy caused by HIV infection in a patient with asymptomatic CMT 1A

Abstract It is well known that patients with Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth (CMT) disease are liable to present with episodes of cortisone‐responsive demyelination, and a superimposed inflammatory component has been suggested. We report a patient who presented with a chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy due to a recent HIV infection, which revealed a previously asymptomatic CMT 1A disease documented by identification of the characteristic duplication on the p11.2 region of chromosome 17. The inflammatory process was characterized by pathologic findings on a superficial peroneal nerve biopsy, and the patient improved significantly after corticotherapy. This report gives support to the hypothesis of a genetic susceptibility to inflammatory demyelinating processes in certain CMT kindreds.
Educational Intervention Along With Standardization of Diabetes Care Increased Inpatient HbA(1c) Testing: A Pilot Program.

OBJECTIVE To continuously improve safe coordination of diabetes care throughout the hospital by ongoing implementation of standardized, hospital-wide staff education, and glucose management policies/protocols. METHODS In December 2013, a hospital-wide multidisciplinary task force was formed to standardize the care for all patients being admitted to Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center with the diagnosis of diabetes. The purpose of this team was to help develop policies and procedures on glucose management and educate staff on the current clinical practice guidelines. Prior to creating system-wide changes, the team decided to pilot the project on two units. RESULTS A total of 144 patients with a primary or secondary diagnosis of diabetes were admitted to these two units between June 1 and July 31, 2014. The study group was found to have anincreaseinthe percentage of HbA(1c) tests (P < .01) being done when compared with 1173 patients in the rest of hospital. As a result of staff education, there was a decrease in hypoglycemia events (P = .05), and hyperglycemia events (P < .01) in the study group immediately following education; however during the follow-up period, the rate of hypoglycemic events was unchanged in both groups. CONCLUSION Standardization of inpatient diabetes management with staff and patient education increased the testing of HbA(1c) in hospitalized patients and has potential to improve quality of care and patient safety.
Odorant receptors of a primitive hymenopteran pest, the wheat stem sawfly

The wheat stem sawfly, Cephus cinctus, is an herbivorous hymenopteran that feeds exclusively on members of the Graminae family. Synanthropically, it has become one of the most important insect pests of wheat grown in the northern Great Plains region of the USA and Canada. Insecticides are generally ineffective because of the wheat stem sawfly's extended adult flight period and its inaccessible larval stage, during which it feeds within the wheat stems, making it virtually intractable to most pest management strategies. While research towards integrated pest management strategies based on insect olfaction has proved promising, nothing is known about the molecular basis of olfaction in this important pest species. In this study we identified 28 unique odorant receptor (Or) transcripts from an antennal transcriptome. A phylogenetic analysis with the predicted Ors from the honey bee and jewel wasp genomes revealed at least four clades conserved amongst all three Hymenoptera species. Antennal expression levels were analysed using quantitative real‐time PCR, and one male‐biased and five female‐biased Ors were identified. This study provides the basis for future functional analyses to identify behaviourally active odours that can be used to help develop olfactory‐mediated pest management tools.
Localization of gephyrin and glycine receptor subunit immunoreactivity in the rabbit retina

Being utilized by over 40% of the amacrine cells, glycine is considered to be a major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the retinas of all vertebrate species examined. Localization of gephyrin, which is a 93-kD peripheral membrane glycine receptor-associated anchoring protein, has been used in several studies to identify the sites of glycinergic interactions in the retina and other regions of the central nervous system. Recent studies have shown that gephyrin colocalizes with GABAA receptors which, like those for glycine, are also inhibitory amino acid receptors usually associated with a chloride channel. In the present study, we have used two antibodies which recognize either gephyrin (mAb7a), or the α and β subunits of the glycine receptor (mAb4a) in order to determine to what extent gephyrin is associated with glycine receptors in the mammalian retina. Single-label studies showed extensive punctate staining throughout most of the inner plexiform layer with each antibody. Double labeling showed that nearly 90% of the glycine receptor sites were also immunoreactive for gephyrin. However, nearly 60% of the total punctae immunoreactive for gephyrin were not stained for glycine receptors. This distinction was most pronounced in the most proximal inner plexiform layer where only 24% of the gephyrin-immunoreactive sites were glycine receptor positive. This study suggests that although most glycine receptors in the rabbit retina colocalize with the anchoring protein gephyrin, a significant proportion of the gephyrin-labeled sites are not associated with glycine receptors. In light of studies showing gephyrin association with GABAA receptor subunits, the localization of gephyrin may be indicative of chloride-mediated inhibitory amino acid transmission in general and not solely that of glycinergic. Given several studies which show that bipolar cells express glycine receptors and respond to glycine but do not express gephyrin, the 10% of glycine receptors not colocalized with gephyrin shown in the present study may represent a subtype of glycine receptors found on bipolar cells which do not require gephyrin for the functional clustering of receptor subunits.
Housing Price Prediction Model Selection Based on Lorenz and Concentration Curves: Empirical Evidence from Tehran Housing Market

This study contributes a house price prediction model selection in Tehran City based on the area between Lorenz curve (LC) and concentration curve (CC) of the predicted price by using 206,556 observed transaction data over the period from March 21, 2018, to February 19, 2021. Several different methods such as generalized linear models (GLM) and recursive partitioning and regression trees (RPART), random forests (RF) regression models, and neural network (NN) models were examined house price prediction. We used 90% of all data samples which were chosen randomly to estimate the parameters of pricing models and 10% of remaining datasets to test the accuracy of prediction. Results showed that the area between the LC and CC curves (which are known as ABC criterion) of real and predicted prices in the test data sample of the random forest regression model was less than by other models under study. The comparison of the calculated ABC criteria leads us to conclude that the nonlinear regression models such as RF regression models give an accurate prediction of house prices in Tehran City.
Y-90 Microshperes in the Treatment of Unresectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma

A small percentage of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are candidates for curative treatment in form of resection or transplantation. There are different treatment options for unresectable HCC-like local ablative therapies and recently systemic therapy with Sorafenib. All of these have variable response rate and had been proven to improve survival. In the last few years, there is a growing interest in TheraSphere radioembolization. It consists of yttrium90 (Y-90) embedded into nonbiodegradable glass microspheres. It is selectively administered by intraarterial hepatic injection giving high doses of radiation to the tumor and sparing the liver parenchyma. It has been shown to improve survival and used as a bridge to transplantation and to downstage tumors for resection. Therasphere seems to have favorable safety profile and has been used in patients with portal vein thrombosis with successful outcome.
Anti-MOG antibodies plead against MS diagnosis in an Acquired Demyelinating Syndromes cohort

Background: Acquired demyelinating syndromes (ADS) in children are a group of distinct first immune-mediated demyelinating events of the central nervous system (CNS). Predictive biomarkers for future diagnosis are lacking. A putative target antigen is myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG). We analyzed the presence of MOG antibodies in a cohort of ADS patients in The Netherlands. Methods: Using a cell-based assay, we analyzed 117 children with ADS from a nationwide cohort, whom were divided into five groups: optic neuritis (ON; n = 20), transverse myelitis (TM; n = 7), other monofocal ADS (n = 22), polyfocal ADS without encephalopathy (n = 44) and polyfocal ADS with encephalopathy (n = 24). Additionally, we tested children with other neurological diseases (OND; n = 13), healthy children (n = 31) and adult polyfocal ADS plus encephalopathy (ADEM) patients (n = 29). Results: We found that 21 of the 117 children with ADS tested anti-MOG seropositive (18%). The group of patients with ADEM had the highest prevalence of anti-MOG seropositivity (42% versus 18% in the non-encephalopathic polyfocal ADS patients). Although 47 ADS children had a final diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS), in only one of them were MOG antibodies detected (2%), with only borderline positivity. Only 1 out of the 29 adult ADEM patients tested anti-MOG seropositive. Conclusions: MOG antibodies are strongly skewed towards ADS children that present with an ADEM-like disease onset. The presence of such antibodies pleads against a future diagnosis of MS.
Delay efficient software defined networking based architecture for vehicular networks

Vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) has emerged as a viable solution for network related problems in intelligent transportation system (ITS). However, with its current architecture, VANET has not been able to fulfill some of the necessities of vehicular networks and most importantly still lacking flexibility and programmability. Recently Software Defined Networking (SDN) has been introduced into the vehicular domain in order to overcome the shortcomings in VANET. Though the introduced Software Defined Vehicular Network (SDVN) architectures provide flexibility and programmability into the networks with higher packet delivery ratios (PDRs), they have violated the stringent delay requirement in VANET, provoking questions on its usability. So in this paper, we propose a novel SDVN architecture which gives priority to delay requirements in VANET. We have also compared the delay profiles of VANET and other SDVN architectures with our proposed architecture, both theoretically and experimentally.
Activation of primary lymphocytes requires prolonged lectin stimulation

T lymphocytes are activated by a complex series of events, but the mechanisms remain unclear. One uncertainty is the time of receptor‐ligand interaction necessary for commitment to DNA synthesis and proliferation. Although this issue has broad implications for the interpretation of T cell activation data, it remains unresolved. Therefore, we examined the temporal activation requirements of rat splenocytes stimulated with con‐ canavalin A (Con A) by measuring proliferation, as well as interleukin‐2 (IL‐2) production and IL‐2 receptor (IL‐2R) expression. Splenocytes stimulated with various Con A concentrations for 3 h did not incorporate significantly more [3H] thymidine than unstimulated splenocytes. Some increase occurred after 6 h of lectin exposure but maximum proliferation occurred only after the 52‐h stimulation. Furthermore, Con A incubations of 6 h or more were required for significant increases in IL‐2 or IL‐2R. Maximum lymphokine production and receptor expression were observed after the 52‐h stimulation. Thus, activation of some primary lymphocytes required only 6 h of stimulation, but much longer mitogen contact was necessary for maximum recruitment.
Risk and optimal policies in bandit experiments

We provide a decision theoretic analysis of bandit experiments under local asymptotics. Working within the framework of diffusion processes, we define suitable notions of asymptotic Bayes and minimax risk for these experiments. For normally distributed rewards, the minimal Bayes risk can be characterized as the solution to a second-order partial differential equation (PDE). Using a limit of experiments approach, we show that this PDE characterization also holds asymptotically under both parametric and non-parametric distributions of the rewards. The approach further describes the state variables it is asymptotically sufficient to restrict attention to, and thereby suggests a practical strategy for dimension reduction. The PDEs characterizing minimal Bayes risk can be solved efficiently using sparse matrix routines or Monte-Carlo methods. We derive the optimal Bayes and minimax policies from their numerical solutions. These optimal policies substantially dominate existing methods such as Thompson sampling; the risk of the latter is often twice as high.
Metabolic profile elucidation of Zhi–Zi–Da–Huang decoction in rat intestinal bacteria using high-resolution mass spectrometry combined with multiple analytical perspectives

Abstract 1. Zhi–Zi–Da–Huang decoction (ZZDHD) has been widely used for the treatment of alcoholic jaundice, alcoholic liver disease, and acute hepatitis in China for thousands of years. Conventionally decoctions are administered orally, after which the metabolism caused by the enzymes in intestinal bacteria may influence significantly on the curative effects or toxicity. 2. In this work, the comprehensive metabolic process of ZZDHD in intestinal bacteria was investigated reliably using high-resolution HPLC-DAD-ESI-TOF/MS. Besides, a novel strategy for major-to-trace metabolites identification which integrated information derived from diagnostic fragment ions, mass spectral similarity filter strategy, dynamic metabolic change of target compounds and relevant behavior in LC-MS was adopted. 3. As a result, 45 compounds, including 26 bio-converted prototypes and 19 newly generated metabolites were detected and tentatively identified. The metabolic profile of ZZDHD in gastro-intestinal was subsequently elucidated. Deglycosylation, oxidation, reduction, acetylation, and ring cleavage were all observed in the biotransformation of the decoction. Among the rest, deglycosylation was found to be the predominant metabolic pathway. 4. The results obtained herein provided a practical strategy for metabolic profile elucidation of traditional herbal medicines. Moreover, it would be helpful to unravel how the oral decoctions play the therapeutic role in vivo.
Association Between Inflammatory Biomarkers in Plasma, Radiological Severity, and Duration of Exposure in Patients With Silicosis

Objective: To evaluate the plasma levels of CCL2, CCL3, CCL11, CCL24, tumor necrosis factor alpha, sTNFR1, and sTNFR2 in subjects exposed to silica (SES) with and without silicosis compared with unexposed reference control group, and their associations with the radiological severity and duration of exposure to silica. Methods: Fifty-seven SES; 36 with silicosis and 22 subjects in control group, were included in the study. Results: CCL3, CCL24, sTNFR1, and sTNFR2 were increased in SES and in SES with silicosis than in controls. There were no differences in the levels of CCL2, CCL11, or tumor necrosis factor alpha. The sTNFR2 level was greater in SES with silicosis than in SES without silicosis. There was a positive correlation between sTNFR1 and sTNFR2 and the radiological severity and time of exposure to silica. sTNFR2 was associated with all categories of radiological severity. Conclusion: sTNFR2 is associated with silicosis severity and early exposure to silica.
Pituitary Function and the Somatotrophic System in Patients with Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease Under Chronic Dopaminergic Therapy

Idiopathic Parkinson’s disease and dopaminergic medication may influence pituitary hormone secretion. The present study aimed to reveal any abnormalities of the somatotrophic system induced by the disease itself and/or the dopaminergic therapy. Investigations of other pituitary hormones under basal and stimulated conditions, as well as an analysis of body composition, were also performed. This was a controlled diagnostic study in which luteinising hormone‐releasing hormone, thyroid‐releasing hormone, corticotrophin‐releasing hormone and arginine hydrochloride were administered to ten patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease under dopaminergic medication. Basal and stimulated hormone concentrations and bioelectrical impedance analyses were compared with those of healthy, age‐matched controls. Basal growth hormone (GH) at −30 and 0 min was higher in Parkinsonian patients (2.74 ± 3.79 ng/ml versus 0.53 ± 0.10 ng/ml and 2.12 ± 2.44 ng/ml versus 0.51 ± 0.03 ng/ml; P < 0.05). The area under the GH curve after stimulation was greater in Parkinsonian patients (502.4 ± 202.6 ng × min/ml versus 312.0 ± 98.5 ng × min/ml; P < 0.05), depending on higher basal GH levels, rather than a greater arginine response. No differences in insulin growth factor (IGF)‐1 or IGF‐BP3 concentrations were detected. There were no differences between the groups in basal and stimulated gonadotrophic, corticotrophic and thyrotrophic function, or body composition. Prolactin was below the detection limit in the patients during the course of the study. Parkinsonian patients experience marked hypoprolactinaemia and repeated stimulation of GH secretion during chronic dopaminergic therapy. Our findings suggest a peripheral GH resistance in these chronically‐treated patients.