Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discovery of novel anti-inflammatory proteins inspired by bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell secretions

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) may soon become the first FDA-approved stem cell therapy for autoimmune and inflammatory disease. Our lab originally hypothesized that much of the therapeutic activity of MSCs may be attributed to molecules secreted by these cells. This thesis will test this hypothesis, with an emphasis on translational steps towards clinical product development, including the identification of novel proteins secreted by MSCs. The first part of the thesis consists of studies we performed to test whether MSC conditioned medium (MSC-CM) can treat rats undergoing cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury (AKI). When AKI rats were treated with MSC-CM, we observed a survival benefit and significant protection of renal function compared to controls. The second part of the thesis will describe the development of a device designed for sustained delivery of MSC secreted factors to dialysis-dependent AKI subjects. We tested these devices for cell function, stability and viability when subjected to conditions that model future clinical operation. Finally, inspired by the therapeutic capacity of MSC secreted factors, this thesis will conclude with the introduction of a new method that we developed to uncover novel anti-inflammatory proteins from MSCs. This method revealed four previously unidentified cytokine modulators, two of which we found significantly promote IL-1 0 and suppress TNF-a in mice challenged with endotoxin. When leveraged as novel therapeutics for lethal endotoxemic shock, these two most potent modulators protected mice and provided for a significant survival benefit compared to vehicle controls. Together, these results demonstrate the power of MSC secreted factors in the context of inflammatory disease, and propose new tactics for elucidating potent secreted products from cells.
Post-conditioning with Cyclosporine A after a 24-hour cold ischemia in ex vivo reperfused pig lungs

ABSTRACT Objective: To evaluate the effects of 1 and 5 μM of Cyclosporine A (CsA), administered 24 hours after a cold ischemic period, in an ex vivo reperfused pig lung model. Methods: The experiments were performed in 15 pigs. Each pair of lungs was surgically separated. Extracorporeal perfusion and mechanical ventilation were started after a cold ischemia of 2 hours for one lung and 24 hours for the contralateral. We constituted three groups (n = 5 each): two groups for which the lung underwent a 24-hour ischemia received either 1 or 5 μM of CsA at the time of reperfusion, and a control group without CsA. For each group, lungs undergoing a 2-hour ischemia did not receive CsA. Results: Reperfusion with either CsA increased the PO2 levels in a dose dependent manner, and reduced concentrations of the receptor for advanced glycation endproducts, compared to the control. The pulmonary arterial pressure, the capillary pressure, and the pulmonary vascular resistances were not increased, even with 5 μM of CsA. No significant change was shown on cytokines levels. Discussion: Postconditioning with CsA improves lung function, after a 24-hour cold ischemic period. Either 1 or 5 μM seemed to be safe regarding the pulmonary vascular pressures and resistances.
“Invisible” doctors: making a case for involving medical residents in hospital quality improvement programs

The author maintains that residents should be as actively engaged in the evaluation and improvement of the inpatient and ambulatory care they deliver as staff physicians are, and that to exclude them from their departments' formal quality assessment and assurance program wastes valuable opportunities to train them and to improve patient care. For example, residents can benefit from process-of-care reviews, which help teach them the standards of adequate medical care and motivate them to improve the care they give. Residents can also benefit from participating in the quality assessment process itself; this will help develop their clinical and analytic skills, hone their skills in searching and critiquing the medical literature, and help them understand the links between the processes and outcomes of care. In addition, systematic, criteria-based reviews of residents' clinical competence in the diagnosis and treatment of common medical conditions can help attending physicians and residency directors evaluate the residents' abilities. And finally, hospitals benefit from the involvement of housestaff in the quality improvement program, since housestaff often have more insight than staff physicians or administrators into aspects of the physical plant or organizational structure that impair clinicians' ability to provide good care. The author gives examples for each of the preceding statements, and concludes by saying that when residents are treated as if they are “invisible” in quality assessment programs, the program staff is in some measure abdicating its responsibility for the residents' education and for the well-being of the program's current and the residents' future patients.
Resource sharing optimization for device-to-device wireless system with femtocells

To offload the traffic from macrocell systems and improve the spectrum efficiency, device-to-device(D2D) communications and femtocell systems are introduced in the 4G LTE-A as an underlay to the cellular systems by reusing the cellular resources. This paper aims to optimize the transmit power and resource allocation for D2D transmitter, femtocell users and cellular users to better utilize uplink resources in a cellular system. We first consider a scenario where there is only one D2D pair which can reuse frequency resources of multiple cellular users and derive an optimal power assignment strategy to achieve the highest throughput of D2D pair. Furthermore we propose a joint power and resource allocation strategy in a multi-femtocell system to maximize the throughput of D2D pairs with the smallest possible total power consumption. Through simulations, we show that the proposed intelligent allocation strategy can both increase D2D throughput by exploring spatial reuse gain and reduce total power consumption.
Urease-Based Mucosal Immunization againstHelicobacter heilmannii Infection Induces Corpus Atrophy in Mice

ABSTRACT Mucosal immunization with Helicobacter heilmanniiurease B or Helicobacter pylori urease, given nasally with cholera toxin, protects BALB/c mice against H. heilmanniiinfection and significantly reduces a preexisting infection. However, immunization aggravates gastric corpus atrophy. Our results underline the necessity of defining immunization regimens that do not enhance mucosal damage.
Breeding together, feeding apart: sympatrically breeding seabirds forage in individually distinct locations

Individuals can specialise such that mutually exclusive home ranges arise and the acquisition of site familiarity early in life can favour individual site fidelity in mature animals. Non-territorial individual foraging site fidelity (IFSF) has been reported frequently, and among seabirds, foraging theory predicts that IFSF is more likely in short-ranging, benthic-foraging species, because their prey occur predictably at small scales. We tracked 17 adult and 2 immature black guillemots Cepphus grylle (mean mass 406 g, median of individual maximum foraging range 4.3 km). Individuals consistently returned to the same feeding areas, such that IFSF was significantly greater than the null expectation at spatial scales of 0.1 to 5 km and did not decay significantly over 10 d. Immature birds ranged more widely than adult birds. Our study demonstrates that space use varies between individuals and that processes or threats occurring within the foraging range of a given colony may act disproportionately on some individuals rather than be equally distributed across a population. This finding contributes to a growing body of research on IFSF, which may have important implications for species management.
SAR Reduction in Parallel Transmission by k-Space Dependent RF Pulse Selection

Parallel transmission has gained considerable interest during the last few years [1,2]. The use of multiple individual RF transmit coils have been introduced to overcome B1 homogeneity limitations and to improve multi-dimensional RF pulses by shortening their duration. Of special concern in all these transmit applications is the specific absorption rate (SAR), which has to be kept below certain limits to avoid excessive patient heating. Different approaches have been discussed to reduce SAR in parallel transmission. Thus, the degree of freedom in RF pulse design allows selecting solutions with minimal SAR [2] e.g. via regularization techniques that help to enforce low SAR [1,3]. Furthermore, the interplay between k-space trajectory and RF waveform can be used (VERSE [4]) for SAR reduction. The optimal RF pulse thus obtained is then used for the corresponding MR experiment. In that respect the parallel transmission RF pulse is optimized almost independently from the MR signal sampling process.
Oral famciclovir for suppression of recurrent genital herpes simplex virus infection in women. A multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Collaborative Famciclovir Genital Herpes Research Group.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy and safety of oral famciclovir in the suppression of genital herpes. METHODS In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that was performed at 11 university and 9 private ambulatory care referral centers, 375 women who were 18 years of age or older and had a history of 6 or more episodes of genital herpes during 12 of the last 24 months in the absence of suppressive therapy were treated for 4 months with oral famciclovir, 125 mg once daily or twice daily, 250 mg once daily or twice daily, 500 mg once daily, or placebo. The primary outcome measures included the time to first clinically and virologically confirmed recurrences, and safety as measured by clinical laboratory tests and adverse experiences. RESULTS The median time to first recurrence was 82 days in the placebo group, 114 days in those receiving famciclovir, 125 mg once daily, and more than 120 days in the other treatment groups. When compared with placebo recipients, the time to the first clinical recurrence was significantly prolonged in subjects who received famciclovir, 125 mg twice daily (hazard ratio, 1.8; 95% confidence interval, 1.0-3.0; P = .03), and in those who received famciclovir, 250 mg twice daily (hazard ratio, 3.6; 95% confidence interval, 1.9-6.9; P < .001). Treatment was well tolerated, and there was no evidence of emergence of resistance during or after suppressive famciclovir therapy. CONCLUSIONS Oral famciclovir, 250 mg, given twice daily for 4 months is an effective, well-tolerated treatment for the suppression of genital herpes in women with frequent recurrences, but single daily doses produced less complete suppression of genital herpes.
Relationship between Serum Gamma-glutamyl Transferase Levels with Ascending Aortic Dilatation.

OBJECTIVE Increased serum gamma-glutamyl transferase levels (GGT) have been shown to directly promote oxidative stress. Previous studies have shown the relationship between the dilatation of the ascending aorta and oxidative stress. This study was designed to examine the relationship between serum GGT concentrations with dilatation of the ascending aorta. MATERIALS AND METHODS Ninety patients with ascending aortic dilatation and 90 age-sex-matched patients without aortic dilatation were included in the study. The patients were evaluated by a complete transthoracic echocardiographic examination including measurement of the aortic dimensions, where a diameter of 3.7 cm and above was accepted as ascending aortic dilatation. Serum GGT concentration was measured in all patients. RESULTS In the group with aortic dilatation, HT frequency, serum uric acid, hs-CRP and GGT levels, the LV mass index, and the left atrial volume index were found to be higher than the control group. The logistic regression analysis showed that only HT frequency (OR:1.23, 95% CI 1.11-1.35, p value: 0.02), the LA volume index (OR: 1.34, 95% CI 1.21±1.4, p:0.005) and serum GGT levels (OR: 1.12, 95% CI 1.01±1.20, p:0.03) were found to be independent predictors. There was a significant correlation between serum GGT levels and ascending aortic diameter (r: 0.268, p<0.001). In the ROC curve analysis, AUC was 0.659 (0.580±0.738) for a 23.5 serum GGT cut-off value (64% sensitivity and 53% specificity). CONCLUSION We found that serum GGT concentration was significantly associated with ascending aortic dilatation. Large epidemiological studies are required to correlate the findings from this study with clinical outcome.
Processing of speech signals for physical and sensory disabilities

Assistive technology involving voice communication is used primarily by people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or who have speech and/or language disabilities. It is also used to a lesser extent by people with visual or motor disabilities. A very wide range of devices has been developed for people with hearing loss. These devices can be categorized not only by the modality of stimulation [i.e., auditory, visual, tactile, or direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve (auditory-neural)] but also in terms of the degree of speech processing that is used. At least four such categories can be distinguished: assistive devices (a) that are not designed specifically for speech, (b) that take the average characteristics of speech into account, (c) that process articulatory or phonetic characteristics of speech, and (d) that embody some degree of automatic speech recognition. Assistive devices for people with speech and/or language disabilities typically involve some form of speech synthesis or symbol generation for severe forms of language disability. Speech synthesis is also used in text-to-speech systems for sightless persons. Other applications of assistive technology involving voice communication include voice control ofwheelchairs and other devices for people with mobility disabilities. Assistive technology is concerned with "devices or other solutions that assist people with deficits in physical, mental or emotional function" (1). This technology can be as simple as a walking stick or as sophisticated as a cochlear implant with advanced microelectronics embedded surgically in the ear. Recent advances in computers and biomedical engineering have greatly increased thie capabilities of assistive technology for a wide range of disabilities. This paper is concerned with those forms of assistive technology that involve voice communication. Fig. 1 shows the extent to which different forms of assistive technology are being used in the United States, as measured by the 1990 Health Interview Su'rvey on Assistive Devices (1). Of particular interest are those forms of assistive technology that involve voice communication. Assistive devices for hearing loss are the second most widely used form of assistive technology (4.0 million Americans as compared to the 6.4 million Americans using assistive mobility technology). It is interesting to note that in each of these two widely used forms of assistive technology one specific device dominates in terms of its relative use-the cane or walking stick in the case of assistive mobility technology (4.4 million users) and the hearing aid in the case of assistive hearing technology (3.8 million users). It should also be noted that only a small number of people with hearing loss who could benefit from acoustic amplification actually use hearing aids. Estimates of the number of people in the United States who should wear hearing I-N
Determination of Camera Location from 2-D to 3-D Line and Point Correspondences

A method for the determination of camera location from two-dimensional (2-D) to three-dimensional (3-D) straight line or point correspondences is presented. With this method, the computations of the rotation matrix and the translation vector of the camera are separable. First, the rotation matrix is found by a linear algorithm using eight or more line correspondences, or by a nonlinear algorithm using three or more line correspondences, where the line correspondences are either given or derived from point correspondences. Then, the translation vector is obtained by solving a set of linear equations based on three or more line correspondences, or two or more point correspondences. Eight 2-D to 3-D line correspondences or six 2-D to 3-D point correspondences are needed for the linear approach; three 2-D to 3-D line or point correspondences for the nonlinear approach. Good results can be obtained in the presence of noise if more than the minimum required number of correspondences are used. >
A VCO linearization system for ADC applications

Time-domain ADCs are increasing in popularity due in part to compatibility with deep sub-micron (DSM) CMOS technology. The performance of time-domain ADCs that use VCOs in open loop is to a large extent limited by the linearity of the output frequency of the VCO as a function of its control voltage. In this paper, we present an analysis of a system for VCO linearization, suppressing distortion and phase noise introduced by the VCO. We connect the noise from each component of the system to the performance of the ADC. Further, we demonstrate the feasibility of the system with transistor level simulations. We designed the simulated system for 12 bit linearity and simulated the transistor level model using a commercially available 90 nm CMOS process design kit (PDK).
Random Coding Bound of Rate-Reliability-Distortion Function for Generalized Channel With Side Information

In this paper we study generalized model of discrete memoryless channel (DMC) with finite input and output alphabets and random state sequence (side information) partially known to the encoder, channel and decoder. The study includes family of Gel’fand-Pinsker and information hiding coding problems as special cases. Information is to be reliably transmitted through the noisy channel selected by adversary. Reasoning from applications the actions of encoder and adversary are limited by distortion constraints. The encoder and decoder depend on a random variable (RV) which can be treated as cryptographic key. Two cases are considered, when the joint distribution of this RV and side information is given or this RV is independent from side information and it’s distribution can be chosen for the best code generation. We investigate the rate-reliability-distortion function for the mentioned model and derive the lower bound for it.
A Full Diversity Cooperative Spectrum Sharing Scheme for Cognitive Radio Networks

This paper presents an enhanced cooperative spectrum sharing scheme in a cognitive radio network, which consists of two pairs: a primary transmitter-primary receiver pair and a secondary base station-secondary receiver pair. The developed scheme is based on a three time slots cooperative spectrum sharing, which exploits the maximum diversity gain for both the primary user (PU) and secondary user (SU). The performance of the developed scheme is assessed through the derivation of new closed-form expressions for both the bit error rate and achievable rate for arbitrary signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In addition, we carry out an asymptotic analysis in the high SNR regime, which proves that the proposed scheme achieves a full diversity order for the PU and SU. Results of analytical expressions and numerical simulations both verify that the proposed scheme achieves significant gains for error and rate performance, for both the PU and SU, in comparison to other baseline schemes.
Impact of Random Process Variations on Different 65nm SRAM Cell Topologies

In this paper, the influence of random process variations on different low leakage SRAM topologies has been analyzed. This analysis was performed through extensive Monte Carlo simulations and exploiting a commercial 65 nm technology. Simulation results demonstrate that the Low Vdd SRAM cell presents the best trade-off between performances and robustness against random process variations.
AVP 2 , a Sequence-Divergent , K 1-Insensitive H 1-Translocating Inorganic Pyrophosphatase from Arabidopsis 1

Plant vacuolar H-translocating inorganic pyrophosphatases (V-PPases; EC 3.6.1.1) have been considered to constitute a family of functionally and structurally monotonous intrinsic membrane proteins. Typified by AVP1 (V. Sarafian, Y. Kim, R.J. Poole, P.A. Rea [1992] Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 89: 1775–1779) from Arabidopsis, all characterized plant V-PPases share greater than 84% sequence identity and catalyze K-stimulated H translocation. Here we describe the molecular and biochemical characterization of AVP2 (accession no. AF182813), a sequence-divergent (36% identical) K-insensitive, Ca-hypersensitive V-PPase active in both inorganic pyrophosphate hydrolysis and H translocation. The differences between AVP2 and AVP1 provide the first indication that plant V-PPases from the same organism fall into two distinct categories. Phylogenetic analyses of these and other V-PPase sequences extend this principle by showing that AVP2, rather than being an isoform of AVP1, is but one representative of a novel category of AVP2-like (type II) V-PPases that coexist with AVP1-like (type I) V-PPases not only in plants, but also in apicomplexan protists such as the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum.
Prevention of Transthyretin Amyloid Disease by Changing Protein Misfolding Energetics

Genetic evidence suggests that inhibition of amyloid fibril formation by small molecules should be effective against amyloid diseases. Known amyloid inhibitors appear to function by shifting the aggregation equilibrium away from the amyloid state. Here, we describe a series of transthyretin amyloidosis inhibitors that functioned by increasing the kinetic barrier associated with misfolding, preventing amyloidogenesis by stabilizing the native state. The trans-suppressor mutation, threonine 119 → methionine 119, which is known to ameliorate familial amyloid disease, also functioned through kinetic stabilization, implying that this small-molecule strategy should be effective in treating amyloid diseases.
Applications and challenges of elemental sulfur, nanosulfur, polymeric sulfur, sulfur composites, and plasmonic nanostructures

Abstract As an abundant and biologically active element, sulfur has been applied in various fields. Through the nanotechnology method, nanosulfur is synthesized with the merits of size effects. Differentiated properties, structures, and functions of sulfur could lead to different applications. In particular, various sulfur composites are synthesized and showed satisfied performance in environmental fields. In addition, plasmonic nanomaterials possess unusual properties and potential applications in mesoscopic physics and the fabrication of nanoscale devices, which may create a new applying direction for sulfur. Undoubtedly, with the wide application, it might pose potential ecological risk and health effects, and the effective strategies for their safe applications are required. Herein, the applications and challenges of sulfur were reviewed in a line of application – risk control – safe application. Till now, although some reviews have discussed sulfur studies in some aspects, but a specific review on sulfur integrating its different sizes and forms is rarely reported. We prepared this review aiming to provide a comprehensive knowledge about sulfur. The current knowledge indicated that there lack sufficient specialized studies on sulfur, and their researching fields, environmental behaviors and fates, characterization, and plasmonic applications.