Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Evaluation of Endogenous Pancreatic Enzyme Levels after Human Islet Isolation

Introduction Recent evidence has suggested that inconsistencies in human islet yield and viability after collagenase digestion is attributed to the activation of endogenous enzymes of the cadaveric donor pancreas. A study of the enzyme kinetics of serine proteases throughout human islet isolations showed a significant increase in activity levels throughout the digestion period. Following the digestion, it is important to further inhibit these enzymes by the addition of an inhibitor to the dilution media. Aim To report the levels of endogenous pancreatic enzymes remaining after human islet isolation and the effects of three potential enzyme inhibitors on the proteases. Methodology Human albumin, fetal calf serum, and the protease inhibitor aprotinin were incubated with the trypsin, chymotrypsin, elastase, and collagenase and were assayed for activity. Results Results at the final stage indicated that chymotrypsin retained 21.0 ± 7.5% (mean ± SE; n = 20) of the activity observed at the conclusion of the enzymatic digestion phase of the isolation process, whereas trypsin, elastase, and collagenase retained 3.0 ± 1.5%, 2.1 ± 0.6%, and 3.9 ± 0.9%, respectively. Fetal calf serum and aprotinin showed strong inhibitory effects against bovine pancreatic trypsin; however, they showed a weak inhibitory effect against elastase. Supplementation with aprotinin failed to inhibit human chymotrypsin and elastase. Human albumin showed minimal inhibition and was shown to serve only as a competitive inhibitor. No inhibition to collagenase was observed with human albumin, fetal calf serum, or aprotinin. Conclusions This study clearly demonstrates that low amounts of endogenous pancreatic enzymes remain active throughout the human islet isolation process and that the added inhibitors at the end of the isolation process are not fully effective at inhibiting the enzymes.
Pathology of renal xenograft rejection in pig to non‐human primate transplantation

Abstract: Xenotransplantation has the potential to alleviate the critical shortage of organs for transplantation in humans. Miniature swine are a promising donor species for xenotransplantation. However, when swine organs are transplanted into primates, hyperacute rejection (HAR), acute humoral xenograft rejection (AHXR), acute cellular xenograft rejection (ACXR), and chronic xenograft rejection prevent successful engraftment. Developing a suitable regimen for preventing xenograft rejection requires the ability to accurately diagnosis the severity and type of rejection in the graft. For this purpose, histopathology remains the most definitive and reliable tool. We discuss here the characteristic features of xenograft rejection in a preclinical pig‐to‐non‐human primate transplantation model. In miniature swine to baboon xenotransplantation, marked interstitial hemorrhage develops in HAR, and renal microvascular injury develops with multiple platelet‐fibrin microthrombi in both HAR and AHXR. T‐cell‐mediated cellular immunity plays an important role in ACXR. Chronic humoral and cellular rejection may induce chronic xenograft rejection, and will be a major cause of graft loss in discordant xenotransplantation.
Oogenesis specific genes (Nobox, Oct4, Bmp15, Gdf9, Oogenesin1 and Oogenesin2) are differentially expressed during natural and gonadotropin‐induced mouse follicular development

Using a semi‐quantitative, single‐cell sensitive RT‐PCR method, we studied the expression of oogenesis specific genes (Nobox, Oct4, Bmp15, Gdf9, Oogenesin1 and Oogenesin2) in single oocytes collected from primordial, primary, secondary, preantral and antral follicles during natural and gonadotropin‐induced mouse follicular development. We compared the number of transcripts of these genes, showing that they are differentially expressed, both in natural conditions and under gonadotropin‐induction throughout the assessed developmental stages. Our data show a clear increase in the number of transcripts between the primordial until the preantral stages, with the exception of the Oogenesin1 transcripts under gonadotropin‐induction. The number of transcripts starts decreasing at the antral stage and proceeds until the metaphase II stage, with values very similar to those obtained for the primordial oocytes in both analyzed conditions. Under exogenous gonadotropin‐induction, oocyte recruitment to ovulation at the preantral stage is marked by an increase in Nobox and Oogenesin2 gene expression that is concomitant with a decrease in Oogenesin1 gene expression. Oocytes that are able to proceed into whole embryo development show a tight regulation of Nobox and Oct4 expression at the antral stage. A parallel immunocytochemical study at the protein level corroborates these findings. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 76: 994–1003, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Clinical significance of low serum magnesium in pregnant women attending the University of Benin Teaching Hospital.

OBJECTIVE Magnesium level is known to decline during pregnancy. A suggested role for magnesium deficiency in conditions like pre-eclampsia and pre-term birth has prompted studies with conflicting evidence. The primary objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of hypomagnesemia in pregnancy, while the secondary objectives attempted to define maternal and fetal outcome due to hypomagnesemia. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A pilot study was performed to determine the mean serum magnesium level for the population of female patients attending the University of Benin Teaching Hospital. The result of the pregnant population in the pilot study was used as a reference for hypomagnesemia in this study. Thereafter, a prospective cohort study of antenatal women recruited in the second trimester and followed-up till delivery and 1 week post-partum was done. Serum magnesium estimates were done with samples collected at recruitment and delivery. The magnesium levels determined at recruitment were used to divide the subjects into two groups of hypomagnesemic and normomagnesemic patients. Their sociodemographic and clinical characteristics were used to generate a database for analysis. RESULTS The prevalence of magnesium deficiency was 16.25%. Hypomagnesemia was significantly correlated with the occurrence of pre-eclampsia ( P = 0.011), leg cramps ( P = 0.000) and pre-term birth ( P = 0.030). A logistic regression analysis showed that hypomagnesemia had an Odds ratio of 22 for pre-eclampsia. There was no maternal mortality or early neonatal death. CONCLUSION Pre-eclampsia and pre-term birth are associated with hypomagnesemia in pregnancy; hence, magnesium supplementation or magnesium-rich diet consisting of green leafy vegetables, soy milk and legumes may improve outcome.
AdaBoost and Least Square Based Failure Prediction of Railway Turnouts

Turnout systems are one of the most critical components of railway infrastructure, and they are also an extremely vulnerable part of railway signaling systems. Failure prediction of signaling systems is an attractive area of research in the field of railway operation maintenance. In this work, we focus on the prediction of weather-related failure of turnouts since weather has significant impacts on their normal operation. Weather phenomena and temperatures are extracted as predictive factors. An AdaBoost method for regression is modeled using least square technique for failure prediction. Its performance has been validated by using a railway maintenance data set collected by a railway corporation. It outperforms traditional approaches.
Adapting Chinese Word Segmentation for Machine Translation Based on Short Units

In Chinese texts, words composed of single or multiple characters are not separated by spaces, unlike most western languages. Therefore Chinese word segmentation is considered an important first step in machine translation (MT) and its performance impacts MT results. Many factors affect Chinese word segmentations, including the segmentation standards and segmentation strategies. The performance of a corpus-based word segmentation model depends heavily on the quality and the segmentation standard of the training corpora. However, we observed that existing manually annotated Chinese corpora tend to have low segmentation granularity and provide poor morphological information due to the present segmentation standards. In this paper, we introduce a short-unit standard of Chinese word segmentation, which is particularly suitable for machine translation, and propose a semi-automatic method of transforming the existing corpora into the ones that can satisfy our standards. We evaluate the usefulness of our approach on the basis of translation tasks from the technology newswire domain and the scientific paper domain, and demonstrate that it significantly improves the performance of Chinese-Japanese machine translation (over 1.0 BLEU increase).
Mobile and immobile calcium buffers in bovine adrenal chromaffin cells.

1. The calcium binding capacity (kappa S) of bovine chromaffin cells preloaded with fura‐2 was measured during nystatin‐perforated‐patch recordings. 2. Subsequently, the perforated patch was ruptured to obtain a whole‐cell recording situation, and the time course of kappa S was monitored during periods of up to one hour. 3. No rapid change (within 10‐20 s) of kappa S was observed upon transition to whole‐cell recording, as would be expected, if highly mobile organic anions contributed significantly to calcium buffering. However, approximately half of the cells investigated displayed a drop in kappa S within 2‐5 min, indicative of the loss of soluble Ca2+ binding proteins in the range of 7‐20 kDa. 4. The average Ca2+ binding capacity (differential ratio of bound calcium over free calcium) was 9 +/‐ 7 (mean +/‐ S.E.M.) for the poorly mobile component and 31 +/‐ 10 for the fixed component. It was concluded that a contribution of 7 from highly mobile buffer would have been detected, if present. Thus, this value can be considered as an upper bound to highly mobile Ca2+ buffer. 5. Both mobile and fixed calcium binding capacity appeared to have relatively low Ca2+ affinity, since kappa S did not change in the range of Ca2+ concentrations between 0.1 and 3 microM. 6. It was found that cellular autofluorescence and contributions to fluorescence of non‐hydrolysed or compartmentalized dye contribute a serious error in estimation of kappa S. ‘Balanced loading’, a degree of fura‐2 loading such that the calcium binding capacity of fura‐2 equals cellular calcium binding capacity, minimizes these errors. Also, changes in kappa S at the transition from perforated‐patch to whole‐cell recording can be most faithfully recorded for similar degrees of loading in both situations. 7. Nystatin was found unable to make pores from inside of the plasma membrane of chromaffin cells. With careful preparation and storage the diluted nystatin solution maintained its high activity of membrane perforation for more than one week. 8. An equation for the effective diffusion constant for total cytoplasmic calcium, D'Ca, was derived, which takes into account fixed buffer and poorly mobile buffer as determined, as well as calcium bound to fura‐2 and some highly mobile buffers. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Physical fitness and shapes of subcortical brain structures in children

Abstract A few studies have recently reported that higher cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with higher volumes of subcortical brain structures in children. It is, however, unknown how different fitness measures relate to shapes of subcortical brain nuclei. We aimed to examine the association of the main health-related physical fitness components with shapes of subcortical brain structures in a sample of forty-four Spanish children aged 9·7 (sd 0·2) years from the NUtraceuticals for a HEALthier life project. Cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength and speed agility were assessed using valid and reliable tests (ALPHA-fitness test battery). Shape of the subcortical brain structures was assessed by MRI, and its relationship with fitness was examined after controlling for a set of potential confounders using a partial correlation permutation approach. Our results showed that all physical fitness components studied were significantly related to the shapes of subcortical brain nuclei. These associations were both positive and negative, indicating that a higher level of fitness in childhood is related to both expansions and contractions in certain regions of the accumbens, amygdala, caudate, hippocampus, pallidum, putamen and thalamus. Cardiorespiratory fitness was mainly associated with expansions, whereas handgrip was mostly associated with contractions in the structures studied. Future randomised-controlled trials will confirm or contrast our findings, demonstrating whether changes in fitness modify the shapes of brain structures and the extent to which those changes influence cognitive function.
Locus of Control and Racial Prejudice

Persons of internal as opposed to external locus of control orientation have been reported to be less threatened by and more tolerant of persons who are different from them ( 6 ) . On this basis Strickland ( 6 ) suggested that internal scorers should be less prejudiced than external ones. Since this hypothesis has not yet received systematic empirical attention, the relationship between externality and anti-black prejudice was examined among white South Africans. To obtain a short-form locus of control scale, the five forced-choice items with the highest item-to-total correlations in Rotter's original analysis ( 5 ) were used as a 10-item, Likert-format scale. This scale, together with a 10-item measure of anti-black prejudice, shown to be valid and reliable in South Africa ( 2 ) , and a short socialdesirability scale ( 1 ) were administered in a nation wide survey supported by the Human Sciences Research Council to a reasonably representative sample of 782 adult white South Africans (76% response rate). Missing values reduced this N to 735 for the analyses. The partial correlation controlling for social desirabilicy, sex, age, education, income, occupation, language group and size of town between prejudice and externalicy was . 07 ( d f = 726, nonsignificant). However, when partial correlations were computed separately for English and Afrikaans-speakers the former was small but significant ( r ~ s = .18, p < .005) but not the latter (rm = -.0003). It has been argued that the relationship between predisposing personality-related variables and manifest prejudice should be attenuated the more the prejudiced beliefs are sanctioned by prevailing socio-cultural norms (4 ) . The existence of such norms among white South Africans i n general ( 4 ) and their particular strength among Afrikaans as opposed to English-speakers ( 3 ) could then account for externality predicting anti-black prejudice significantly though weakly for English but not at all for Afrikaansspeakers.
The moderating effect of self-esteem on consumer responses to global positioning in advertising

The study investigates consumers' responses to global positioning in advertising from the perspective of self. It is suggested that consumers' attitudes toward the brand advertised through global positioning are influenced by their ideal selves and cosmopolitan orientations and these influences are moderated by one's self-esteem level. Study 1 shows that attitudes toward the globally positioned brand are more positive for those with ideal selves that are more congruent with personal traits associated with globally positioned brands, but only for those with high self-esteem. Interview results from study 2 suggest that low self-esteem informants make use of the global brands associated with ‘Western’ as a means of signaling their social selves in order to obtain social approval and that high self-esteem informants attend to ad content, whether the ad employs global or local positioning.
Who’s Not Coming to Dinner? Evaluating Trends in Online Restaurant Reservations for Outbreak Surveillance

Objective The objective of this study is to evaluate whether trends in online restaurant table reservations can be used as an early indicator for a disease outbreak. Introduction Epidemiologists, public health agencies and scientists increasingly augment traditional surveillance systems with alternative data sources such as, digital surveillance systems utilizing news reports and social media, over-the-counter medication sales, and school absenteeism. Similar to school absenteeism, an increase in reservation cancellations could serve as an early indicator of social disruption including a major public health event. In this study, we evaluated whether a rise in restaurant table availabilities could be associated with an increase in disease incidence. Methods We monitored table availability using OpenTable; an online restaurant table reservation site for cities in the USA and Mexico. Our analysis can be summarized as follows. First, using the OpenTable site, we searched for the number of restaurants with available tables for two persons at lunch and dinner. Since different regions and individuals have different eating habits, we defined the lunch period between 12–3:30pm and dinner between 6–10:30pm. We searched for available tables every hour and half past the hour for every day of the week. Next, we investigated any occurrences of social unrest and natural disasters, which might have affected the trend in the time series. Lastly, using moving averages, cross-correlations and regression models, we elucidated and compared the time-trend in the data of table availabilities to data collected for various disease outbreaks. In the USA, we examined table availability for restaurants in Boston, Atlanta, Baltimore and Miami. For Mexico, we studied table availabilities in Cancun, Mexico City, Puebla, Monterrey, and Guadalajara. Results Preliminary results indicated differences in mean table availabilities observed during weekdays and weekends. However, these differences were statistically significant only for Boston and Miami (p < 0.01). Statistical significant differences were also observed for mean table availabilities at lunch and dinner for all the cities (p < 0.001). Conclusions The unavailability of reasons for cancellations introduces limitations to this data source. However, monitoring increases in cancellation of restaurant table reservations may be moderately useful for detecting epidemics especially in developing countries with limited public health infrastructures and resources. We therefore present a framework for future surveillance efforts.
A geometric approach to D‐branes in group manifolds

This is a brief review of some recent results on the geometric approach to symmetric D-branes in group manifolds, both twisted and untwisted. We describe the geometry of the gluing conditions and the quantisation condition in the boundaryWZWmodel, and we illustrate this by determining the consistent twisted and untwisted D-branes in the Lie group SU3.
Mass spectrometry in environmental sciences.

A. Organic Analyses 218 1. General Organic Analyses 218 2. Pesticides 219 3. PAHs and PCBs 221 4. Dioxin 222 5. VOCs 223 6. Textile Dyes 223 7. Surfactants 223 8. Disinfection Byproducts 224 9. Taste and Odor Compounds 226 10. Algal and Bacterial Toxins 226 11. Other Organic Pollutants 227 B. Inorganic Analyses 229 1. Disinfection Byproducts 229 2. Perchlorate and Dissolved Gases 230 3. Multiple Elements 230 4. Arsenic and Selenium 231 5. Lithium, Boron, Nitrogen, Sulfur, and Halogens 232
Detecting Phytophthora

Species of the genus Phytophthora are arguably the most destructive plant pathogens causing widespread damage to many horticultural and ornamental species, and to native ecosystems throughout the world. Globalization has increased the volume of plants being transported over long distances and has increased the spread of Phytophthora species. As traditional detection methods such as baiting or direct isolation are incapable of handling the large volume of material to be tested, researchers have developed more rapid and specific antibody and DNA based tests. This review compares the performance of the different types of tests used for detection of Phytophthora.
Nanoscaled ferromagnetic single-electron transistors

We report on a summary of fabricating and characterizing nanoscaled ferromagnetic single-electron transistors (F-SETs). One type of device is assembled with an atomic force microscope. A single 30 nm Au disc, forming the central island of the transistor, is manipulated with Angstrom precision into the gap between plasma oxidized Ni source and drain electrodes which are designed with different geometries to facilitate magnetic moment reversal at different magnetic fields. The tunnel resistances can be tuned in real-time during the device fabrication by re-positioning the Au disc. A second type of device with Co electrodes and a central Au island is fabricated using a high-precision alignment procedure invoked during e-beam writing. Both devices exhibit single-electron transistor characteristics at 4.2 K. From magnetotransport measurements carried out at 1.7 K, we found that it is more efficient to realize spin injection and detection in Co/Au/Co devices fabricated with the second technique. A maximum TMR of about 4% was observed in these devices.
Methods for evaluation of central hemodynamics and detection of indicators of risk of sudden cardiac death for network based clinical decision support system

Two methods for evaluation of crucial factors describing status of cardiologic patients based on advanced signal processing methods were incorporated into prototype network based clinical decision support system: a) novel method for chest impedance signal analysis enabling reliable evaluation of central hemodynamics in non-invasive way; b) method for automatic detection and evaluation of ECG T-wave alternans - predictor of sudden cardiac death. Both methods supplement each other and improve the quality of monitoring of patient status in intensive care unit.
Rotating line cameras: Image quality control and camera design

Rotating line cameras allow to modify camera parameters for adjusting numbers of potential spatial samples within a defined region of interest. The report studies relations between camera parameters and scene parameters, and derives a general approach for designing stereo panoramic cameras. The report also provides a list of problems for further research Acknowledgment. The authors acknowledge comments, collaboration or support by various students and colleagues at CITR Auckland and DLR Berlin-Adlershof. report3_HWK. tex; 30/03/2006; 16:03; p.1
Secrecy, Trust, and Dangerous Leisure: Generating Group Cohesion in Voluntary Organizations

The development and effects of group cohesion have been a long-standing concern in the small-group literature. Through an ethnographic examination of a leisure activity involving risk-mushroom collecting-we analyze how voluntary leisure groups maintain members' allegiance and affiliation, and thus create cohesion. Trust (communal concern) and secrecy (individual self-interest), based originally on information and subsequently on relationships, are critical to group stability. Groups provide arenas in which new members can place their trust in experts, thus receiving protective information and developing rewarding relationships to keep them from danger. Yet the openness of information has limits. Competitive relationships, which also tie members to the group, depend on privately held knowledge. As a result, even in cohesive groups committed to mutual support, information is a valued resource. Each member is expected to develop secrets and to shelter them from others in most circumstances. Trust and secrecy are compatible in those voluntary organizations in which all members can gain access to private knowledge while placing their trust in colleagues to share protective information.