Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mineral Trioxide Aggregate Inhibits Osteoclastic Bone Resorption

Mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA), a commonly used endodontic repair material, is useful for both basic and clinical research, and the effect of MTA on osteoblast differentiation has been well-defined. However, the effects of MTA on osteoclastic bone resorption are not fully understood. Hence, the aim of this study is to examine the effect of MTA solution in the regulation of osteoclast bone-resorbing activity using osteoclasts formed in co-cultures of primary osteoblasts and bone marrow cells. MTA solution dose-dependently reduced the total area of pits formed by osteoclasts. The reduction of resorption induced by 20% MTA treatment was due to inhibition of osteoclastic bone-resorbing activity and had no effect on osteoclast number. A 20% MTA solution disrupted actin ring formation, a marker of osteoclastic bone resorption, by reducing phosphorylation and kinase activity of c-Src, and mRNA expressions of cathepsin K and mmp-9. A high concentration of MTA solution (50%) induced apoptosis of osteoclasts by increasing the expression of Bim, a member of the BH3-only (Bcl-2 homology) family of pro-apoptotic proteins. Taken together, our results suggest that MTA is a useful retrofilling material for several clinical situations because it both stimulates osteoblast differentiation and inhibits bone resorption.
Vision-tactile-force integration and robot physical interaction

This paper presents an approach for integrating vision, tactile and force sensors in a robotic manipulation framework. Having an initial estimation of the object pose in the environment, a position-based visual servoing loop controls the hand for task execution, based on the input received from a model-based articular pose estimator following the Virtual Visual Servoing approach. The visual control is combined with another control signal obtained from tactile feedback, through a set of selection matrices that can be modified at runtime in order to select the best modality for a given cartesian degree of freedom. The result of the preliminary integration is modified by an impedance force controller, in charge of performing the task motion along the task direction, at the same time that forces are regulated on the rest of directions. The design of the controller allows to perform the task even if a sensor is not available or provides inaccurate data. Several experiments are performed, first by considering only force feedback, and then adding vision and, finally, tactile information. Errors in the estimation of the object initial position are manually introduced in the experiments, and results show how the vision-tactile-force combination is able to deal with them, performing much better than the vision-force and force-alone approaches.
Smoothness constraint for cortical dipolar sources estimation

In the last decade, a wide range of approaches have been proposed to estimate the activity of physiological sources from multi-channel electroencephalographic (EEG) data. Two utterly different directions can be distinguished: brain source imaging (BSI) and blind source separation (BSS). While the first approach is based on the inversion of a given forward model, the latter blindly decomposes the EEG mixing by optimization of a contrast function excluding any physiological priors on the problem. All these methods have proven their ability in reconstructing efficiently the source activities in some well adapted situations. Nevertheless, the synthesis of a reliable lead field model for BSI is computationally demanding, and the criterion to be optimized in BSS are often inadequate with regards to the physiology of the problem. In this paper, a compromise between these two methodological trends is introduced. A BSS method is described taking account of physiological knowledge on the projection of the sources on the scalp map in conjunction with strong priors on the localization of the recorded sources. This estimation method is demonstrated to lead to a generalization of the classical Hjorth's laplacian montage, and provides satisfactory simulation results when the appropriate configurations on the sources are met.
Comparison of non-viral methods to genetically modify and enrich populations of primary human corneal endothelial cells

Purpose To compare different techniques of transfection of primary human corneal endothelial cells (HCECs) by non-viral methods and to enrich genetically modified cells to a highly pure population. Methods HCECs were cultured following previously published methods. Dissection of the Descemet membrane (DM) was performed by tearing off strips from corneal buttons with forceps or by hydrodissection. Confirmation of HCECs identity was performed by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT–PCR) for α2 collagen VIII. For transfection, non-viral methods such as lipid-/liposome-mediated reagents and electroporation techniques were compared. Genetically modified cells were enriched by use of selection antibiotics and flow cytometry. Results Viability of primary HCECs was lower in hydrodissected corneas. The rate of transfection varied from approximately 5%–30%. Highest rates of transfection were obtained with the Amaxa electroporation method. The next highest rate was yielded by the lipid-mediated reagent GenCarrier2, followed by electroporation with the BTX apparatus. Toxicity was moderate and manageable by adjusting the concentration of reagents, incubation times, and electrical parameters. Selection by flow cytometry was superior to antibiotic selection and produced nearly 100% genetically modified cells. Conclusions Electroporation of HCECs yields higher transfection efficiency than chemically mediated methods. It is possible to select genetically modified HCECs to high levels of homogeneity. Techniques to genetically modify and select HCECs as shown in this study could lead to improved success of future endothelial transplant procedures.
RecD Function Is Required for High-Pressure Growth of a Deep-Sea Bacterium

ABSTRACT A genomic library derived from the deep-sea bacteriumPhotobacterium profundum SS9 was conjugally delivered into a previously isolated pressure-sensitive SS9 mutant, designated EC1002 (E. Chi and D. H. Bartlett, J. Bacteriol. 175:7533–7540, 1993), and exconjugants were screened for the ability to grow at 280-atm hydrostatic pressure. Several clones were identified that had restored high-pressure growth. The complementing DNA was localized and in all cases found to possess strong homology torecD, a DNA recombination and repair gene. EC1002 was found to be deficient in plasmid stability, a phenotype also seen inEscherichia coli recD mutants. The defect in EC1002 was localized to a point mutation that created a stop codon within the recD gene. Two additional recDmutants were constructed by gene disruption and were both found to possess a pressure-sensitive growth phenotype, although the magnitude of the defect depended on the extent of 3′ truncation of the recD coding sequence. Surprisingly, the introduction of the SS9 recD gene into an E. coli recD mutant had two dramatic effects. At high pressure, SS9recD enabled growth in the E. coli mutant strain under conditions of plasmid antibiotic resistance selection and prevented cell filamentation. Both of these effects were recessive to wild-type E. coli recD. These results suggest that the SS9recD gene plays an essential role in SS9 growth at high pressure and that it may be possible to identify additional aspects of RecD function through the characterization of this activity.
Characterization of the Reflection and Dispersion Properties of 'Mushroom'-related Structures and their Applications to Antennas

Characterization of the Reflection And Dispersion Properties of ‘Mushroom’-Related Structures and Their Application to Antennas Shahzad Raza Master of Applied Science Graduate Department of Electrical And Computer Engineering University of Toronto 2012 The conventional mushroom-like Sievenpiper structure is re-visited in this thesis and a relationship is established between the dispersion and reflection phase characteristics of the structure. It is shown that the reflection phase frequency at which the structure behaves as a Perfect Magnetic Conductor (PMC) can be predicted for varying angles of incidence from the modal distribution in the dispersion diagrams and corresponds to the supported leaky modes within the light cone. A methodology to independently tune the location of the PMC frequency point with respect to the surface wave band-gap location is then presented. The influence of having said PMC frequency point located inside or outside the surface wave band-gap on a dipole radiation pattern is then studied numerically. It is demonstrated that the antenna exhibits a higher gain when the PMC frequency and band-gap coincide versus when they are separated. Two design cases are then presented for when the aforementioned properties coincide and are separated and a gain improvement of 1.2 dB is measured for the former case.
Synergistic effect of hypoxia and TNF-alpha on production of PAI-1 in human proximal renal tubular cells.

BACKGROUND Chronic hypoxia has been newly proposed as a common mechanism of tubulointerstitial fibrosis in the progression of various chronic inflammatory renal diseases, where plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) plays an important role in the accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) through inhibition of plasmin-dependent ECM degradation. In the present study, we investigated the presence of PAI-1 in renal tubular cells by immunostaining renal biopsy samples. We also closely examined the effects of hypoxia and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) on PAI-1 expression in cultured human proximal renal tubular cells (HPTECs). METHODS Confluent cells growth-arrested in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) for 24 hours were exposed to hypoxia (1% O(2)) and/or TNF-alpha at 10 ng/mL for up to 48 hours. Amounts of PAI-1 protein and mRNA after stimulation were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and TaqMan quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or cDNA array analysis, respectively, and compared to those in cells incubated under control conditions (18% O(2) without TNF-alpha). Hypoxia-inducible factor-1alpha (HIF-1alpha) was demonstrated by immunoblot and immunofluorescence analyses. Human PAI-1 promoter activity was estimated by luciferase reporter gene assay. RESULTS In crescentic glomerulonephritis, clusters of proximal tubules were specifically stained for PAI-1. cDNA array analysis identified PAI-1 as a major gene highly induced by hypoxia in HPTECs. Treatment of 24 hours with hypoxia, TNF-alpha, and their combination induced a 2.8-fold, a 1.8-fold, and a 4.6-fold increase in PAI-1 protein secretion, and produced a 3.6-fold, a 3.3-fold, and a 12.1-fold increase at the PAI-1 mRNA level, respectively. Immunoblot analysis and immunocytochemistry revealed that hypoxia-inducible factor-1alpha (HIF-1alpha) was markedly accumulated in the cell lysates and exclusively translocated to nuclei after 16 hours' exposure of HPTECs to hypoxia but not to TNF-alpha. Luciferase reporter gene assay showed that hypoxia, TNF-alpha, and their combination increased PAI-1 transcription activity by 1.8-fold, 1.4-fold, and 2.2-fold, respectively. A dominant-negative form of HIF-1alpha significantly suppressed PAI-1 transcription activity induced by hypoxia. Inhibition of nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-kappaB) caused a moderate decrease in PAI-1 production under hypoxia. CONCLUSION Hypoxia induces PAI-1 expression via remarkable nuclear accumulation of HIF-1alpha and partially via NF-kappaB activation in HPTECs. TNF-alpha can synergistically enhance this hypoxia-induced PAI-1 expression.
Particle swarm with self-organized criticality

This paper introduces a strategy for controlling the parameters of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based on a Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) system known as the Bak-Sneppen model of co-evolution. An experimental setup compares the new algorithm with a state-of-the-art PSO with dynamic variation of the inertia weight value and perturbation of the particles' positions.
An Improved Filter Elution and Cell Culture Assay Procedure for Evaluating Public Groundwater Systems for Culturable Enteroviruses

Large‐scale virus studies of groundwater systems require practical and sensitive procedures for both sample processing and viral assay. Filter adsorption–elution procedures have traditionally been used to process large‐volume water samples for viruses. In this study, five filter elution procedures using cartridge filters were evaluated for their effectiveness in processing samples. Of the five procedures tested, the third method, which incorporated two separate beef extract elutions (one being an overnight filter immersion in beef extract), recovered 95% of seeded poliovirus compared with recoveries of 36 to 70% for the other methods. For viral enumeration, an expanded roller bottle quantal assay was evaluated using seeded poliovirus. This cytopathic‐based method was considerably more sensitive than the standard plaque assay method. The roller bottle system was more economical than the plaque assay for the evaluation of comparable samples. Using roller bottles required less time and manipulation than the plaque procedure and greatly facilitated the examination of large numbers of samples. The combination of the improved filter elution procedure and the roller bottle assay for viral analysis makes large‐scale virus studies of groundwater systems practical. This procedure was subsequently ﬁeld tested during a groundwater study in which large‐volume samples (exceeding 800 L) were processed through the filters.
Effect of Age on Variability in the Production of Text-Based Global Inferences

As we age, our differences in cognitive skills become more visible, an effect especially true for memory and problem solving skills (i.e., fluid intelligence). However, by contrast with fluid intelligence, few studies have examined variability in measures that rely on one’s world knowledge (i.e., crystallized intelligence). The current study investigated whether age increased the variability in text based global inference generation–a measure of crystallized intelligence. Global inference generation requires the integration of textual information and world knowledge and can be expressed as a gist or lesson. Variability in generating two global inferences for a single text was examined in young-old (62 to 69 years), middle-old (70 to 76 years) and old-old (77 to 94 years) adults. The older two groups showed greater variability, with the middle elderly group being most variable. These findings suggest that variability may be a characteristic of both fluid and crystallized intelligence in aging.
Evaluation of a Phone-Based Anomaly Detection Approach for Dysarthric Speech

Perceptual evaluation is still the most common method in clinical practice for the diagnosing and the following of the condition progression of people with speech disorders. Many automatic approaches were proposed to provide objective tools to deal with speech disorders and help professionals in the severity evaluation of speech impairments. This paper investigates an automatic phone-based anomaly detection approach implying an automatic text-constrained phone alignment. Here, anomalies are related to speech segments, for which an unexpected acoustic pattern is observed, compared with a normal speech production. This objective tool is applied to French dysarthric speech recordings produced by patients suffering from four different pathologies. The behavior of the anomaly detection approach is studied according to the precision of the automatic phone alignment. Faced with the difﬁculties of having a gold standard reference, especially for the phone-based anomaly annotation, this behavior is observed on both annotated and non-annotated corpora. As expected, alignment errors (large shifts compared with a manual segmentation) lead to a large amount of anomalies automatically detected. However, about 50% of correctly detected anomalies are not related to alignment errors. This behavior shows that the automatic approach is able to catch irregular acoustic patterns of phones.
Surface Hardening Vs. Surface Embrittlement in Carburizing of Porous Steels

Abstract Carburizing increases the contact fatigue resistance of sintered steels, but the surface hardening may result the formation of surface brittle cracks due to the combined effect of high hardness and porosity. The effect of carburizing on the embrittlement of the case of a 7.3 g/cm3 1.5%Mo - 0.25%C sintered steel was studied. The phenomenon was analyzed theoretically and verified by experiments. The resistance of the carburized steel to surface brittle cracking increases with the load bearing surface and the decrease of the maximum pore size, of the surface microhardness and the friction coefficient. The theoretical analysis was implemented in a design procedure for parts subject to contact stresses.
Dynamic Resource Allocation in Computing Clouds Using Distributed Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis

In computing clouds, it is desirable to avoid wasting resources as a result of under-utilization and to avoid lengthy response times as a result of over-utilization. In this paper, we propose a new approach for dynamic autonomous resource management in computing clouds. The main contribution of this work is two-fold. First, we adopt a distributed architecture where resource management is decomposed into independent tasks, each of which is performed by Autonomous Node Agents that are tightly coupled with the physical machines in a data center. Second, the Autonomous Node Agents carry out configurations in parallel through Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis using the PROMETHEE method. Simulation results show that the proposed approach is promising in terms of scalability, feasibility and flexibility.
A rapid, small scale method for characterization of plasmid insertions in the Dictyostelium genome

A rapid, simple method for characterization of plasmid insertions in the Dictyostelium discoideum genome was developed. It is based on the capability of linear plasmid multimers in the insertions to recircularize efficiently in Escherichia coli cells. This recombinational recircularization of plasmid multimers provides a highly sensitive and reliable tool for determining whether individual Dictyostelium transformants resulted from restriction enzyme-mediated integration (REMI) or from recombinational integration of plasmid (RIP). The method also reveals any rearrangements in RIP insertions and provides an estimate of the vector copy number in any particular transformant.
Favorable effect of balloon mitral valvuloplasty on the incidence of atrial fibrillation in patients with severe mitral stenosis

Background: The long‐term effect of balloon mitral valvuloplasty (BMV) on the incidence of atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients with severe mitral stenosis (MS) remains undetermined. Aims: To assess the effect of successful BMV on the incidence of chronic AF in patients with severe MS, compare the results with historical controls, and identify factors associated with AF in such patients. Methods: Retrospective analysis of 382 consecutive patients with severe MS and in sinus rhythm (SR) who underwent successful BMV (post procedure mitral valve area (MVA) ≥1.5 cm2, mitral regurgitation (MR) ≤2/4) at our hospital and followed‐up for 1–15.6 (mean 5.6 ± 3.9) years with clinical and echocardiographic examination. Results: Thirty‐four (8.9%) patients developed AF at follow‐up (group A) and 348 patients (group B) remained in SR. At baseline, and in comparison with group B, patients who developed AF (group A) were older, had higher mitral echo score but equal MVA and left atrial (LA) size. The postprocedure MVA was smaller in group A (1.7 ± 0.3 cm2) than in group B (2.0 ± 0.2 cm2; P = 0.002). At follow‐up, and in comparison to group B, group A had smaller MVA (1.5 ± 0.4 cm2 vs 1.8 ± 0.4 cm2 P <0.0001), larger LA dimension (49.4 ± 6.5 vs 42 ± 6.5 mm; P <0.0001) and higher restenosis rate (35% vs 14%; P = 0.001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified age at follow‐up (P < 0.0001), LA size at follow‐up (P = 0.004), and MVA at follow‐up (P = 0.006) as predictors of AF. Conclusions: This study demonstrated favorable effect of BMV on the incidence of AF (8.9%) in patients with severe MS in comparison with reported series (29%) of patients with severe MS with similar baseline characteristics who were not submitted to any intervention. The predictors of AF were age, larger LA, and smaller MVA, at follow‐up. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Near-Optimal Linear Precoding with Low Complexity for Massive MIMO

Linear precoding techniques can achieve near- optimal capacity due to the special channel property in down- link massive MIMO systems, but involve high complexity since complicated matrix inversion of large size is required. In this paper, we propose a low-complexity linear precoding scheme based on the Gauss-Seidel (GS) method. The proposed scheme can achieve the capacity-approaching performance of the classical linear precoding schemes in an iterative way without complicated matrix inversion, which can reduce the overall complexity by one order of magnitude. The performance guarantee of the proposed GS-based precoding is analyzed from the following three aspects. At first, we prove that GS-based precoding satisfies the transmit power constraint. Then, we prove that GS-based precoding enjoys a faster convergence rate than the recently proposed Neumann-based precoding. At last, the convergence rate achieved by GS-based precoding is quantified, which reveals that GS-based precoding converges faster with the increasing number of BS antennas. To further accelerate the convergence rate and reduce the complexity, we propose a zone-based initial solution to GS-based precoding, which is much closer to the final solution than the traditional initial solution. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms Neumann- based precoding, and achieves the exact capacity-approaching performance of the classical linear precoding schemes with only a small number of iterations both in Rayleigh fading channels and spatially correlated channels.
Trypanosoma cruzi trans-sialidase and neuraminidase activities can be mediated by the same enzymes

Trans-sialidase and neuraminidase activities have been detected on the surface membrane of trypomastigotes of Trypanosoma cruzi, and both have been implicated in the parasite's invasion of host cells. We show here that these enzymes are structurally related. They are recognized by two independently derived monoclonal antibodies, are anchored to the membrane by glycosylphosphatidylinositol, copurify by ion exchange, molecular sieving, and hydrophobic chromatography, have maximal activities between pH 6.5 and 7.5, and are inactivated by heating at 56 degrees C. Furthermore, the neuraminidase and trans-sialidase reactions are coupled. An increase of the concentration of acceptors of the transfer reaction decreases the amount of free sialic acid released through the neuraminidase reaction. We conclude that a single enzyme can catalyze the transfer or the hydrolysis of macromolecular-bound sialic acid. The predominant direction of the reaction will depend on the availability of appropriate oligosaccharide acceptors of sialic acid.