Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Annexin A1 N-Terminal Derived Peptide Ac2-26 Stimulates Fibroblast Migration in High Glucose Conditions

Deficient wound healing in diabetic patients is very frequent, but the cellular and molecular causes are poorly defined. In this study, we have evaluated whether Annexin A1 derived peptide Ac2-26 stimulates fibroblast migration in high glucose conditions. Using normal human skin fibroblasts WS1 in low glucose (LG) or high glucose (HG) we observed the enrichment of Annexin A1 protein at cell movement structures like lamellipodial extrusions and interestingly, a significant decrease in levels of the protein in HG conditions. The analysis of the translocation of Annexin A1 to cell membrane showed lower levels of Annexin A1 in both membrane pool and supernatants of WS1 cells treated with HG. Wound-healing assays using cell line transfected with Annexin A1 siRNAs indicated a slowing down in migration speed of cells suggesting that Annexin A1 has a role in the migration of WS1 cells. In order to analyze the role of extracellular Annexin A1 in cell migration, we have performed wound-healing assays using Ac2-26 showing that peptide was able to increase fibroblast cell migration in HG conditions. Experiments on the mobilization of intracellular calcium and analysis of p-ERK expression confirmed the activity of the FPR1 following stimulation with the peptide Ac2-26. A wound-healing assay on WS1 cells in the presence of the FPR agonist fMLP, of the FPR antagonist CsH and in the presence of Ac2-26 indicated that Annexin A1 influences fibroblast cell migration under HG conditions acting through FPR receptors whose expression was slightly increased in HG. In conclusion, these data demonstrate that (i) Annexin A1 is involved in migration of WS1 cells, through interaction with FPRs; (ii) N- terminal peptide of Annexin A1 Ac2-26 is able to stimulate direct migration of WS1 cells in high glucose treatment possibly due to the increased receptor expression observed in hyperglycemia conditions.
Dental and periodontal health in Finnish adults in 2000 and 2011

Abstract Objective: We assessed dental and periodontal health in adults aged ≥30 years living in southern and northern Finland as part of the Health 2000/2011 Surveys (BRIF8901). Material and methods: Clinical findings in 2000 (n = 2967) and 2011 (n = 1496) included the presence of teeth and number of teeth with caries, fillings, fractures or periodontal pockets. Results: Edentulousness decreased in all age groups. The prevalence of those with no caries increased from 67% to 69% in men and from 80% to 85% in women, and of those with no periodontal pocketing from 26% to 30% in men and from 39% to 42% in women. In 2011, the mean number of decayed teeth was 0.8 in men and 0.3 in women, and the corresponding mean numbers of teeth with deepened periodontal pockets 5.6 and 3.7. The gender difference had levelled concerning edentulousness, number of teeth and DMF teeth, but still existed in the occurrence of caries and periodontal pocketing. Conclusion: The findings were in line with other population-based reports in the 2000s. However, periodontal health in Finland seems not to be as good as in many European countries and in the USA.
Soundness of Timed-Arc Workflow Nets in Discrete and Continuous-Time Semantics

Analysis of workflow processes with quantitative aspectslike timing is of interest in numerous time-critical applications. We suggest a workflow model based on timed-arc Petri nets and studythe foundational problems of soundness and strong (time-bounded) soundness.We first consider the discrete-time semantics (integer delays)and explore the decidability of the soundness problemsand show, among others, that soundness is decidable for monotonic workflow nets while reachability is undecidable.For general timed-arc workflow nets soundness andstrong soundness become undecidable, though we can design efficientverification algorithms for the subclass of bounded nets. We also discuss the soundness problem in the continuous-timesemantics (real-number delays) and show that for nets withnonstrict guards (where the reachability question coincides for bothsemantics) the soundness checking problem does not in generalfollow the approach for the discrete semantics and different zone-basedtechniques are needed for introducing its decidability in the bounded case.Finally, we demonstrate the usability of our theory onthe case studies of a Brake System Control Unit used in aircraft certification, the MPEG2 encoding algorithm, and a blood transfusion workflow.The implementation of the algorithms is freely available as a part of the model checker TAPAAL (www.tapaal.net).
A Transgenic Transcription Factor (TaDREB3) in Barley Affects the Expression of MicroRNAs and Other Small Non-Coding RNAs

Transcription factors (TFs), microRNAs (miRNAs), small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and other functional non-coding small RNAs (sRNAs) are important gene regulators. Comparison of sRNA expression profiles between transgenic barley over-expressing a drought tolerant TF (TaDREB3) and non-transgenic control barley revealed many group-specific sRNAs. In addition, 42% of the shared sRNAs were differentially expressed between the two groups (|log2| >1). Furthermore, TaDREB3-derived sRNAs were only detected in transgenic barley despite the existence of homologous genes in non-transgenic barley. These results demonstrate that the TF strongly affects the expression of sRNAs and siRNAs could in turn affect the TF stability. The TF also affects size distribution and abundance of sRNAs including miRNAs. About half of the sRNAs in each group were derived from chloroplast. A sRNA derived from tRNA-His(GUG) encoded by the chloroplast genome is the most abundant sRNA, accounting for 42.2% of the total sRNAs in transgenic barley and 28.9% in non-transgenic barley. This sRNA, which targets a gene (TC245676) involved in biological processes, was only present in barley leaves but not roots. 124 and 136 miRNAs were detected in transgenic and non-transgenic barley, respectively. miR156 was the most abundant miRNA and up-regulated in transgenic barley, while miR168 was the most abundant miRNA and up-regulated in non-transgenic barley. Eight out of 20 predicted novel miRNAs were differentially expressed between the two groups. All the predicted novel miRNA targets were validated using a degradome library. Our data provide an insight into the effect of TF on the expression of sRNAs in barley.
Visual Attention Simulation in RGB and HSV Color Spaces

In computer vision several methods are directly inspired by the human visual system. Visual attention is one of the main abilities a human eye uses to discover a new scene. This ability is based on the focus of attention principle, which enables to look at a particular point. The works presented in this paper describe how to simulate such an ability in computer vision. Color images are resampled according to this principle, in order to considerably decrease the amount of data to be processed. This resampling is done by using a concentric distribution of hexagonal cells instead of the rectangular cell grid generally provided by uniform sensors such as CCD cameras. Such a distribution is derived from the cone distribution on the retina and the result is encoded by using polar coordinates. In this way the information is more and more blurred in an isotropic way, when getting far and far from the focusing point. This resampling method then allows decreasing data number while it globally keeps all the information included in the image. In this way a new scene can be explored by focusing successively at a sequence of focusing points. This allows reproducing the human eye behavior that explores a new scene by saccades. Furthermore the resampled images can be used in order to set up image preprocessing. For example this resampling can be achieved before a preliminary step of segmentation. The resampled image is segmented in order to coarsely determine regions. Afterwards the segmentation step can be refined by combining the segmented resampled image and the original image. A comparison between results obtained in RGB and HSV spaces is also given on a set of images.
Patients with Parkinson disease are prone to functional neurological disorders

Until recently the management of Parkinson disease focused almost entirely on the triad of bradykinesia, rigidity and tremor. It then became apparent that there are many non-motor features as well, and management of these is often as important as the motor symptoms. The work of Onofrj et al first reported that functional symptoms are also frequent in Parkinson disease.1 In a large study of 488 patients with Parkinson disease, 7.5% had some ‘somatoform disorders’, both motor and non-motor in type. They also noted that these symptoms could precede the motor and non-motor symptoms. The JNNP paper by Wissel et al 2 describes …
Strategies for retrieving plagiarized documents

For the identification of plagiarized passages in large document collections we present retrieval strategies which rely on stochastic sampling and chunk indexes. Using the entire Wikipedia corpus we compile n-gram indexes and compare them to a new kind of fingerprint index in a plagiarism analysis use case. Our index provides an analysis speed-up by factor 1.5 and is an order of magnitude smaller, while being equivalent in terms of precision and recall.
Silver Nanowires: A Promising Transparent Conducting Electrode Material for Optoelectronic and Electronic Applications

Silver nanowires (Ag NWs) are promising next-generation conducting materials with the potential to replace traditional electrode materials, such as indium tin oxide, in electrical and optical devices. This material combines several advantages, including tunable optical, plasmonic and excellent electrical properties. Recent research has focused on the application of Ag NWs as an electrode material in liquid crystal displays, light-emitting diodes, solar cells and electrochemical devices. Ag NWs can be synthesized using abundant methods. This feature article reviews the synthesis, structural and morphological properties as well as the optical, electrical properties of Ag NWs. The important applications of Ag NWs as transparent electrodes in optoelectrical and electrochemical devices are presented. This review provides an overview of Ag NW films as well as the prospects of developing high-performance transparent conducting materials for future optoelectronic devices.
Increased Interleukin-1β Concentration in Gingival Crevicular Fluid as a Characteristic of Periodontitis.

BACKGROUND The levels of interleukin-1β (IL-1β) have been reported to be higher in sites with periodontitis than in healthy controls. This may be the result of a more severe inflammation and/or constitutional differences in IL-1β production. Our aim was to test the hypothesis that the level of IL-1β in gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) is a characteristic trait of periodontitis, regardless of the degree of tissue destruction. As a secondary aim, we investigated the correlation between IL-1β and neutrophil elastase. An untreated population was used. METHODS GCF samples from inflamed sites in 13 patients with gingivitis (GG), and from inflamed sites with shallow (GP) and deep (PP) pockets in 18 patients with periodontitis were collected. Interleukin-1β, elastase-α-1-antitrypsin complex (E-A1AT), α-1-antitrypsin (A1AT), and α-2-macroglobulin (A2MG) were measured with ELISA. Elastase activity was measured with a specific substrate. RESULTS The concentration of IL-1β was significantly higher in PP than in GG, but no significant differences were detected between PP and GP. A weak positive correlation between the elastase activity and IL-1β was also observed. The elastase activity had a tendency to be higher in PP, although no significant difference was found among the 3 groups. The concentrations of E-A1AT, A1AT, and A2MG were similar in the 3 types of sites. CONCLUSIONS The levels of IL-1β in GCF were increased in samples from periodontitis patients, regardless of the severity of disease at the sampled site, suggesting that the levels of IL-1β are typical of a given patient. J Periodontol 1999;70:1457-1463.
Automatic induction of n-gram language models from a natural language grammar

This paper details our work in developing a technique which can automatically generate class n-gram language models from natural language (NL) grammars in dialogue systems. The procedure eliminates the need for double maintenance of the recognizer language model and NL grammar. The resulting language model adopts the standard class n-gram framework for computational efficiency. Moreover, both the n-gram classes and training sentences are enhanced with semantic/syntactic tags defined in the NL grammar, such that the trained language model preserves the distinctive statistics associated with different word senses. We have applied this approach in several different domains and languages, and have evaluated it on our most mature dialogue systems to assess its competitiveness with preexisting n-gram language models. The speech recognition performances with the new language model are in fact the best we have achieved in both the JUPITER weather domain and the MERCURYflight reservation domain.
Driving data distribution of human drivers in urban driving condition

In this paper, driving data distribution of human drivers in urban driving condition are presented by using China-FOT data. Longitudinal acceleration, lateral acceleration and longitudinal velocity are the three vehicle dynamic parameters which are concerned in the study of human driver behaviors. The data distributions of these three parameters are studied. It is found that the lateral acceleration versus longitudinal acceleration diagram shows the dual triangle distribution, and the speed based diagrams present piecewise linear distribution. Next, whether the database is sufficiently large to get steady distribution and boundary is discussed. And the data distribution boundaries of these three parameters are achieved. In the last, acceleration distribution at different speed region is presented.
Sum-rate based hybrid half/full-duplex relay selection in a dual-hop two-way wireless relaying networks

This paper investigates sum-rate based hybrid half/full-duplex relay selection strategy. The investigation considers a dual-hop half/full-duplex bi-directional wireless relaying networks in the system model. The sum-rate based hybrid relay selection strategy dynamically switches between half/fullduplex modes and selects the minimum capacity expression and maximize it. According to Monte-Carlo simulation results, the sum-rate based hybrid relay selection strategy outperforms the end-to-end based hybrid relay selection strategy. Results also show that both selection strategy achieves cooperative diversity order in high SNR regimes. The differences arise in both selection strategy because of the coding gain differences. Results also show that, if the loop-interference variances increase relatively high, it does affect the system achievable diversity order and degrades it from N to 0 and also causes system coding gain losses.
Sex Comparison of Knee Extensor Size, Strength and Fatigue Adaptation to Sprint Interval Training.

BACKGROUND Regular sprint interval training (SIT) improves whole-body aerobic capacity and muscle oxidative potential, but very little is known about knee extensor anabolic or fatigue resistance adaptations, or whether effects are similar for males and females. The purpose of this study was to compare sex-related differences in knee extensor size, torque-velocity relationship and fatigability adaptations to 12 weeks SIT. METHODS Sixteen males and fifteen females (mean (SEM) age: 41 (±2.5) yrs) completed measurements of total body composition assessed by DXA, quadriceps muscle cross-sectional area (CSAQ) assessed by MRI, the knee extensor torque-velocity relationship (covering 0 - 240°·sec) and fatigue resistance, which was measured as the decline in torque from the first to the last of 60 repeated concentric knee extensions performed at 180°·sec. SIT consisted of 4 x 20 second sprints on a cycle ergometer set at an initial power output of 175% of power at VO2max, three times per week for 12 weeks. RESULTS CSAQ increased by 5% (p=0.023) and fatigue resistance improved 4.8% (p=0.048), with no sex differences in these adaptations (sex comparisons: p=0.140 and p=0.282, respectively). Knee extensor isometric and concentric torque was unaffected by SIT in both males and females (p>0.05 for all velocities). CONCLUSIONS 12 weeks SIT, totalling 4 minutes very intense cycling per week, significantly increased fatigue resistance and CSAQ similarly in males and females, but did not significantly increase torque in males or females. These results suggest that SIT is a time-effective training modality for males and females to increase leg muscle size and fatigue resistance.
Communicating a diagnosis of dementia: A systematic mixed studies review of attitudes and practices of health practitioners

The aim of this study is to systematically review practitioners’ practices and attitudes in regards to communicating a diagnosis of dementia. A systematic search was conducted of Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed for English language original empirical papers. A sequential explanatory mixed studies analysis approach was used. Twenty-five quantitative descriptive, two intervention, six mixed methods descriptive and 21 qualitative studies were included. Pooled analysis showed that 34% of GPs and 48% of specialists usually/routinely tell the person with dementia their diagnosis, and 89% of GPs and 97% specialists usually/routinely tell the family the diagnosis. Euphemistic terms such as ‘memory problems’ are more often used to describe dementia than medical terms. Practitioners’ decision to diagnose and communicate the diagnosis of dementia are influenced by (a) their own beliefs regarding dementia and treatment efficacy and their confidence in diagnosis and communication; (b) patient circumstances including level of awareness, level of severity and family support; (c) the health and social care system including access to specialist and diagnostic services, reimbursement for diagnosis/management and availability of services and (d) cultural norms in relation to dementia including stigma, labels, and common clinical practice. The diagnosis and communication of diagnosis of dementia are intertwined processes and should be concurrently addressed in interventions. Multicomponent approaches to address these practices could include guideline development, practitioner education, anti-stigma public health campaigns, offering post-diagnosis treatments and support and sufficient reimbursement for practitioners for time spent managing dementia.
Development and Validation of a Gene Signature for Patients with Head and Neck Carcinomas Treated by Postoperative Radio(chemo)therapy

Purpose: The aim of this study was to identify and independently validate a novel gene signature predicting locoregional tumor control (LRC) for treatment individualization of patients with locally advanced HPV-negative head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC) who are treated with postoperative radio(chemo)therapy (PORT-C). Experimental Design: Gene expression analyses were performed using NanoString technology on a multicenter training cohort of 130 patients and an independent validation cohort of 121 patients. The analyzed gene set was composed of genes with a previously reported association with radio(chemo)sensitivity or resistance to radio(chemo)therapy. Gene selection and model building were performed comparing several machine-learning algorithms. Results: We identified a 7-gene signature consisting of the three individual genes HILPDA, CD24, TCF3, and one metagene combining the highly correlated genes SERPINE1, INHBA, P4HA2, and ACTN1. The 7-gene signature was used, in combination with clinical parameters, to fit a multivariable Cox model to the training data (concordance index, ci = 0.82), which was successfully validated (ci = 0.71). The signature showed improved performance compared with clinical parameters alone (ci = 0.66) and with a previously published model including hypoxia-associated genes and cancer stem cell markers (ci = 0.65). It was used to stratify patients into groups with low and high risk of recurrence, leading to significant differences in LRC in training and validation (P < 0.001). Conclusions: We have identified and validated the first hypothesis-based gene signature for HPV-negative HNSCC treated by PORT-C including genes related to several radiobiological aspects. A prospective validation is planned in an ongoing prospective clinical trial before potential application in clinical trials for patient stratification. Clin Cancer Res; 24(6); 1364–74. ©2018 AACR.
Foaming behavior of bio‐based blends based on thermoplastic gelatin and poly(butylene succinate)

Biodegradable thermoplastic gelatin/poly(butylene succinate) (TPG/PBS) foams were prepared by melt mixing and subsequent batch foaming with supercritical CO2. Shear viscosity and calorimetric properties of the various blends were investigated using a rotational rheometer and a differential scanning calorimeter, respectively. TPG/PBS blends show poor miscibility at all blend ratios. The addition of PBS reduced the melt viscosity and increased both the CO2 diffusivity and the thermal stability of TPG. Results from foaming experiments show that the blend foams exhibit smaller cell size and higher cell density compared to the neat TPG foam due to the lower melt viscosity and to their lower gas barrier. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 42704.
Analysis of Magnetosome Chains in Magnetotactic Bacteria by Magnetic Measurements and Automated Image Analysis of Electron Micrographs

ABSTRACT Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) align along the Earth's magnetic field by the activity of intracellular magnetosomes, which are membrane-enveloped magnetite or greigite particles that are assembled into well-ordered chains. Formation of magnetosome chains was found to be controlled by a set of specific proteins in Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense and other MTB. However, the contribution of abiotic factors on magnetosome chain assembly has not been fully explored. Here, we first analyzed the effect of growth conditions on magnetosome chain formation in M. gryphiswaldense by electron microscopy. Whereas higher temperatures (30 to 35°C) and high oxygen concentrations caused increasingly disordered chains and smaller magnetite crystals, growth at 20°C and anoxic conditions resulted in long chains with mature cuboctahedron-shaped crystals. In order to analyze the magnetosome chain in electron microscopy data sets in a more quantitative and unbiased manner, we developed a computerized image analysis algorithm. The collected data comprised the cell dimensions and particle size and number as well as the intracellular position and extension of the magnetosome chain. The chain analysis program (CHAP) was used to evaluate the effects of the genetic and growth conditions on magnetosome chain formation. This was compared and correlated to data obtained from bulk magnetic measurements of wild-type (WT) and mutant cells displaying different chain configurations. These techniques were used to differentiate mutants due to magnetosome chain defects on a bulk scale.