Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of metformin on alveolar bone in ligature-induced periodontitis in rats: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND The use of metformin, an antidiabetic agent, is associated with a reduced risk of fractures in patients with diabetes, suggesting that metformin exerts a beneficial effect on bone tissues. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of metformin on alveolar bone loss in ligature-induced periodontitis and osteoblast, osteoclast, and adipocyte differentiation. METHODS Periodontitis was induced by a ligature around the mandibular first molar of each rat. The rats were divided into two groups: 1) rats with ligature receiving a vehicle (n = 5), and 2) rats with ligature receiving metformin (n = 5). On day 10, after the induction of periodontitis, the alveolar bone volume between the first and second molar was determined via microcomputed tomography. The effect of metformin on osteoblast, osteoclast, and adipocyte differentiation was assessed using MC3T3-E1, cocultures of mouse bone marrow cells and calvaria-derived osteoblasts, and 3T3-L1/C3H10T1/2 cells, respectively. Osteoblast, osteoclast, and adipocyte differentiation was estimated by the degree of mineralization, the formation of tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase-positive multinucleated cells, and the accumulation of triglycerides, respectively. RESULTS In ligature-induced periodontitis, the metformin treatment of rats induced a significant reduction in alveolar bone loss compared to vehicle-treated rats. With regard to osteoblast differentiation, metformin augmented the mineralization of MC3T3-E1 cells approximately two-fold over the non-treated cells. However, metformin was shown to exert no effects on osteoclast formation induced by 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3), lipopolysaccharide, and prostaglandin E(2). Moreover, metformin exerted no effect on adipocyte differentiation. CONCLUSION Our findings suggest that metformin may exert a beneficial effect on alveolar bone in periodontitis by increasing osteoblast differentiation.
Carinal and tubular airway particle concentrations in the large airways of non-smokers in the general population: evidence for high particle concentration at airway carinas.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the extent to which human airway carinas accumulate ambient atmospheric particles, a newly developed technique was used to micro-dissect and analyse particle concentration in tubular segments and carinas of the large airways of 10 necropsy lungs from non-smokers from the general population of Vancouver. METHODS: Ratios of the particle concentrations on the carinas to the tubular segment immediately preceding it were measured with analytical electron microscopy for the mainstem bronchus, upper and lower lobe bronchi, and four different segmental or subsegmental bronchi--that is, Weibel generations 1 to about 5. A total of 119 carinal-tubular pairs was evaluated. RESULTS: Over all cases, both carinal and tubular particle concentrations increased with increasing airway generation; the median ratio of carinal to tubular particle concentration was 9:1 and did not show any trend with airway generation. The ratio was > 5 in 71% of carinal-tubular pairs, > 10 in 42% of pairs, > 20 in 31% of pairs, and > 100 in 9% of pairs. Some subjects showed a notable tendency to high ratios, with many ratios > 100, and other subjects had a tendency toward low ratios. The predominant mineral species in both carinas and tubular airway segments was crystalline silica and the relative proportion was similar in both sites; however, mean particle diameter was consistently less in the carinal tissues. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the ratio of carinal to tubular retained particles in the large airways in non-smokers is higher than might be supposed from data generated in airway casts, and that there is considerable variation in this ratio between subjects. This finding is of potential interest in models of carcinogen, toxin, and dose of fibrogenic agent to the large airways as it suggests high and sometimes extreme concentrations of toxic particles at carinas, and thus reinforces the notion that carinas may be sites of initiation of disease.
Cyclic AMP‐Dependent Activation of the Proenkephalin Gene Requires Phosphorylation of CREB at Serine‐133 and a Src‐Related Kinase

Abstract: The transcription factor CREB [cyclic AMP response element (CRE)‐binding protein] is activated by several kinase pathways on phosphorylation of serine‐133. Phosphorylation of CREB at serine‐133 is required for the induction of target gene expression. The proenkephalin gene is a target of cyclic AMP‐dependent agonists like forskolin, and its expression is driven by the enhancer element CRE‐2. It has been shown that CREB binds CRE‐2 in extracts from striatum and hypothalamus. However, these studies did not show a functional requirement for CREB serine‐133 phosphorylation in CRE‐2 function. We demonstrate that CREB binds CRE‐2 in primary astrocyte cultures and that transcriptional activation of CRE‐2 requires CREB phosphorylation at serine‐133. In addition, it has recently been shown that, at least in some contexts, CREB phosphorylation is not sufficient to activate target gene expression and that another intracellular signal seems to be required. Therefore, we also sought to determine if another signaling event, in addition to CREB phosphorylation, might be involved in cyclic AMP‐mediated induction of the proenkephalin gene. We have found that the inhibition of src‐related nonreceptor tyrosine kinases blocks forskolin‐induced proenkephalin gene expression without having any effect on serine‐133‐phosphorylated CREB levels and that constitutively activated src kinase can activate the proenkephalin promoter.
Feeding, fins and braking maneuvers: locomotion during prey capture in centrarchid fishes

SUMMARY Locomotion is an integral aspect of the prey capture strategy of almost every predatory animal. For fishes that employ suction to draw prey into their mouths, locomotor movements are vital for the correct positioning of the mouth relative to the prey item. Despite this, little is known regarding the relationships between locomotor movements and prey capture. To gain insights into how fishes move during prey capture and the mechanisms underlying deceleration during prey capture, I measured the fin and body movements of largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides, and bluegill sunfish, Lepomis macrochirus. Using a high-speed video camera (500 frames s-1), I captured locomotor and feeding movements in lateral and ventral (via a mirror) view. Largemouth bass swam considerably faster than bluegill during the approach to the prey item, and both species decelerated substantially following prey capture. The mean magnitude of deceleration was significantly higher in largemouth bass (-1089 cm s-2) than bluegill (-235 cm s-2), and the timing of maximum deceleration was much later for largemouth bass (30.3 ms after maximum gape) than bluegill (6.7 ms after maximum gape). Both species employed their pectoral, anal and caudal fins in order to decelerate during prey capture. However, largemouth bass protracted their pectoral fins more and faster, likely contributing to the greater magnitude of deceleration in the species. The primary mechanism for increased deceleration was an increase in approach speed. The drag forces experienced by the fins and body are proportional to the velocity of the flow squared. Thus, the braking forces exerted by fins, without any change in kinematics, will increase exponentially with small increases in swimming speed, perhaps allowing these fishes to achieve higher braking forces at higher swimming speeds without altering body or fin kinematics. This result can likely be extended to other maneuvers such as turning.
Probiotic potentials of cereal-based beverages

ABSTRACT Probiotics offer remarkable potential for the prevention and management of various infective and noninfective disorders. They are reported to play key roles in the suppression of gastrointestinal infections, antimicrobial activity, improvement in lactose metabolism, reduction in serum cholesterol, immune system stimulation, antimutagenic properties, anticarcinogenic properties, anti-diarrheal properties, and improvement in inflammatory bowel disease. Although probiotic foods are classically confined to beverages and cheese, containing live organisms of the lactic acid bacteria family, such health-promoting foods are traditionally dairy-based, comprising milk and its fermented products. However, recent research focuses on the probiotic potentials of fermented cereal-based beverages which are especially consumed in developing countries characterized by low nutritional security and high incidence of gut pathogen infections. Moreover, lactose intolerance and cholesterol content associated with dairy products, coupled with the vegetarian tendencies of diverse populations in the third world, tend to enforce the recent recourse to nondairy beverages. Probiotic microorganisms are mostly of human or animal origin; however, strains recognized as probiotics are also found in nondairy fermented substrates. This review examines the potentials of some traditional cereal-based beverages to serve as probiotic foods, their microbial and functional properties, as well as their process optimization and storage for enhanced utilization.
Optimized Honest-Majority MPC for Malicious Adversaries — Breaking the 1 Billion-Gate Per Second Barrier

Secure multiparty computation enables a set of parties to securely carry out a joint computation of their private inputs without revealing anything but the output. In the past few years, the efficiency of secure computation protocols has increased in leaps and bounds. However, when considering the case of security in the presence of malicious adversaries (who may arbitrarily deviate from the protocol specification), we are still very far from achieving high efficiency. In this paper, we consider the specific case of three parties and an honest majority. We provide general techniques for improving efficiency of cut-and-choose protocols on multiplication triples and utilize them to significantly improve the recently published protocol of Furukawa et al. (ePrint 2016/944). We reduce the bandwidth of their protocol down from 10 bits per AND gate to 7 bits per AND gate, and show how to improve some computationally expensive parts of their protocol. Most notably, we design cache-efficient shuffling techniques for implementing cut-and-choose without randomly permuting large arrays (which is very slow due to continual cache misses). We provide a combinatorial analysis of our techniques, bounding the cheating probability of the adversary. Our implementation achieves a rate of approximately 1.15 billion AND gates per second on a cluster of three 20-core machines with a 10Gbps network. Thus, we can securely compute 212,000 AES encryptions per second (which is hundreds of times faster than previous work for this setting). Our results demonstrate that high-throughput secure computation for malicious adversaries is possible.
The NTA–His6 bond is strong enough for AFM single‐molecular recognition studies

There is a need in current atomic force microscopy (AFM) molecular recognition studies for generic methods for the stable, functional attachment of proteins on tips and solid supports. In the last few years, the site‐directed nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA)–polyhistidine (Hisn) system has been increasingly used towards this goal. Yet, a crucial question in this context is whether the NTA–Hisn bond is sufficiently strong for ensuring stable protein immobilization during force spectroscopy measurements. Here, we measured the forces between AFM tips modified with NTA‐terminated alkanethiols and solid supports functionalized with His6‐Gly‐Cys peptides in the presence of Ni2+. The force histogram obtained at a loading rate of 6600 pN s−1 showed three maxima at rupture forces of 153 ± 57 pN, 316 ± 50 pN and 468 ± 44 pN, that we attribute primarily to monovalent and multivalent interactions between a single His6 moiety and one, two and three NTA groups, respectively. The measured forces are well above the 50–100 pN unbinding forces typically observed by AFM for receptor–ligand pairs. The plot of adhesion force versus log (loading rate) revealed a linear regime, from which we deduced a kinetic off‐rate constant of dissociation, koff ∼0.07 s−1. This value is in the range of that estimated for the multivalent interaction involving two NTA, using fluorescence measurements, and may account for an increased binding stability of the NTA–His6 bond. We conclude that the NTA–His6 system is a powerful, well‐suited platform for the stable, oriented immobilization of proteins in AFM single‐molecule studies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Yrb2p, a Nup2p-related yeast protein, has a functional overlap with Rna1p, a yeast Ran-GTPase-activating protein

The Ran-GTPase cycle is important for nucleus-cytosol exchange of macromolecules and other nuclear processes. We employed the two-hybrid method to identify proteins interacting with Ran and the Ran GTP/GDP exchange factor. Using PRP20, encoding the Ran GTP/GDP exchange factor, we identified YRB1, previously identified as a protein able to interact with human Ran GTP/GDP exchange factor RCC1 in the two-hybrid system. Using GSP1, encoding the yeast Ran, as bait, we isolated YRB2. YRB2 encodes a protein containing a Ran-binding motif similar to that found in Yrb1p and Nup2p. Yrb1p is located in the cytosol whereas Nup2p is nuclear. Similar to Yrb1p, Yrb2p bound to GTP-Gsp1p but not to GDP-Gsp1p and enhanced the GTPase-activating activity of Rna1p. However, unlike Yrb1p, Yrb2p did not inhibit the nucleotide-releasing activity of Prp20p. While overproduction of Yrb1p inhibited the growth of a mutant possessing a PRP20 mutation (srm1-1) and suppressed the rna1-1 mutation, overproduction of Yrb2p showed no effect on the growth of these mutants. Disruption of YRB2 made yeast cold sensitive and was synthetically lethal with rna1-1 but not with nup2delta. Nuclear protein import and the mRNA export were normal in strains possessing mutations of YRB2. We propose that Yrb2p is involved in the nuclear processes of the Ran-GTPase cycle which are not related to nucleus-cytosol exchange of macromolecules.
Remote management and control system for LED based plant factory using ZigBee and Internet

Recently, intelligent systems for agricultural production are being developed for safe and low cost food production. Plant factory provide high yield by growing multiple crops and making efficient use of land and resources. Plant growth is facilitated by maintaining humidity, temperature, CO2 concentration and light intensity and these factors need to be monitored and maintained for an automated system. In this paper, we have proposed a control system for a LED based plant factory consisting of ZigBee wireless mesh network, and remote monitoring via Internet. Field sensors are installed for monitoring environmental conditions and power metering and ZigBee mesh network has been deployed for data acquisition from these sensors. ZigBee nodes transfer the field data to the coordinator node which also serves as a gateway node providing interoperability between TCP/IP network and ZigBee Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). A major novelty of the system is the use of LED lighting instead of fluorescent lighting due to its low power consumption, long life and useful narrow band. LED lighting system provides an efficient and economical lighting system that facilitates plant growth by varying light intensity and frequency according to light conditions and growing requirements and also helps in reducing production costs and speeding growth. Prototype of the proposed system has been installed in a small part of greenhouse. Data acquisition and remote management of the system has shown very satisfactory performance.
External costs from vessel emissions at port: a review of the methodological and empirical state of the art†

ABSTRACT The accurate calculation of external costs from vessel emissions and shipping (as it happens with transport) strongly depends on parameters such as location, the time of the day and vessel operative. Thus, the use of a full bottom-up approach and granular traffic details is suggested. The latter may represent a substantial improvement in the resolution of shipping activity, energy demand, emissions and cost data being the latter essential for better regulations. The revised work identifies the Impact Pathway Approach (IPA) as the best-practice bottom-up methodology for calculating site-specific external costs derived from shipping air emissions. It has been widely adopted, among others, over major European studies (CAFE, BeTa, NEEDS and HEATCO). Also, it shows that due to costly and complex requirements of creating a shipping and harbour-specific bottom-up approach, external cost calculation based on tonne per euro factors obtained from European Studies (top-down approach) has been widely accepted. Moreover, methodological improvements and the possible achievement of refined estimations (IPA) dedicated to ports and shipping are strongly suggested, as these may improve information quality used for environmental policy and measures that contribute to the internalisation of externality costs.
A randomized study of the effects of single-dose gabapentin versus placebo on postoperative pain and morphine consumption after mastectomy.

BACKGROUND The anticonvulsant gabapentin has proven effective for neuropathic pain in three large placebo-controlled clinical trials. Experimental and clinical studies have demonstrated antihyperalgesic effects in models involving central neuronal sensitization. It has been suggested that central neuronal sensitization may play an important role in postoperative pain. The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of gabapentin on morphine consumption and postoperative pain in patients undergoing radical mastectomy. METHODS In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 70 patients received a single dose of oral gabapentin (1,200 mg) or placebo 1 h before surgery. Patients received patient-controlled analgesia with morphine at doses of 2.5 mg with a lock-out time of 10 min for 4 h postoperatively. Pain was assessed on a visual analog scale at rest and during movement, and side effects were assessed on a four-point verbal scale 2 and 4 h postoperatively. RESULTS Thirty-one patients in the gabapentin group and 34 patients in the placebo group completed the study. Gabapentin reduced total morphine consumption from a median of 29 (interquartile range, 21-33) to 15 (10-19) mg (P< 0.0001). Pain during movement was reduced from 41 (31-59) to 22 (10-38) mm at 2 h postoperatively (P < 0.0001) and from 31 (12-40) to 9 (3-34) mm at 4 h postoperatively (P = 0.018). No significant differences between groups were observed with regard to pain at rest or side effects. CONCLUSION A single dose of 1,200 mg oral gabapentin resulted in a substantial reduction in postoperative morphine consumption and movement-related pain after radical mastectomy, without significant side effects. These promising results should be validated in other acute pain models involving central neuronal sensitization.
Motivated or empowering antecedents to drive service innovation?

ABSTRACT Which type of antecedents, motivated or empowering, can stimulate service innovation? We choose the empowering (team and worker empowerment) and motivated variables (creative self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation) as the four antecedents to investigate how they influence service innovation. Positive psychological capital (PPC) was chosen as a key mediator to examine whether the four antecedents have impacts on service innovation through PPC. Hierarchical linear modeling was adopted for analyses. This study provided the following findings: (a) the empowering factors have no positive effects on service innovation. (b) The motivated factors have significantly positive effects on service innovation. (c) PPC completely mediated the relationship between the empowering factors and service innovation and partially mediated the relationship between the motivated factors and service innovation. Our findings suggest that motivated factors have significantly positive influences on service innovation compared with empowering factors. We also confirm PPC as the mediating mechanism to stimulate service innovation.
Angiogenesis and scar formation in healing wounds

Purpose of reviewOne well described feature of wound healing is the ingrowth of new capillaries or angiogenesis. At its peak, the capillary content in healing wounds may reach three or more times that of normal uninjured tissue. This new vasculature is required to restore oxygenation and allow the growth of new tissue to fill the wound space. This review examines the assumption that a capillary content in excess of normal density is essential for adequate healing. Recent findingsThe regulation of wound angiogenesis has been demonstrated to involve both proangiogenic and antiangiogenic stimuli, with the level of capillary growth reliant upon both sets of factors. Several studies now show that normal skin wounds heal adequately even when the angiogenic response is artificially reduced. In normal skin, a reduction of capillary growth to a level consistent with normal tissue does not affect wound closure and may even lead to highly favorable long term healing outcomes. SummaryThe angiogenic response in normal wounds may exceed what is needed for optimal repair.
Effects of aqueous extracts of Halimeda incrassata (Ellis) Lamouroux and Bryothamnion triquetrum (S.G.Gmelim) Howe on hydrogen peroxide and methyl mercury-induced oxidative stress in GT1-7 mouse hypothalamic immortalized cells.

The current investigation focuses attention on the neuroprotective and antioxidant properties of aqueous extracts from Halimeda incrassata (Hi) and Bryothamniom triquetrum (Bt) in the mouse immortalized hypothalamic GT1-7 cell line. Under basal oxidative conditions, Hi extract reduces intracellular reactive oxygen species production, as assessed by 2',7'-dichlorofluorescein fluorescence, while Bt extract does not contribute to basal ROS generation. Both extracts, at concentrations higher than 0.20 mg/ml, exert protection against hydrogen peroxide-mediated cell death, although only Hi extract can additionally prevent hydrogen peroxide-induced ROS production. The two seaweed aqueous extracts, at concentrations higher than 0.05 mg/ml, also display protection against neuronal death induced by methyl mercury chloride, as well as against methyl mercury chloride-mediated ROS generation. None of the extracts increase GSH intracellular pools, in basal conditions, after depleting its levels with either hydrogen peroxide or methyl mercury chloride. Some comments on the probable targets of the neuroprotection exerted by these two extracts are included in this paper.