Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of growth hormone on muscle and liver protein synthesis in septic rats receiving glutamine-enriched parenteral nutrition

ObjectiveAdministration of recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) to critically ill adults in an attempt to attenuate catabolism was associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Possible explanations included inhibition of glutamine release from skeletal muscle and consequent restriction of splanchnic glutamine supply. In this study, we examined the effects of rhGH on plasma glutamine levels and on muscle and liver glutamine concentrations and protein synthesis rates in sepsis. We investigated the possibility that administration of supplemental glutamine might ameliorate any adverse effects of rhGH. DesignProspective study in rats rendered septic by cecal ligation and puncture. SettingUniversity hospital laboratory. SubjectsA total of 78 male Wistar rats in six groups. InterventionsAnimals received 6-hr tail vein infusions, commencing 18 hrs after cecal ligation and puncture, of either (a) 0.9% sodium chloride, (b) a standard parenteral nutrition (PN) solution without glutamine, or (c) an isocaloric, isonitrogenous PN solution with glutamine. PN groups received 400 &mgr;g rhGH or equivolume 0.9% sodium chloride vehicle in a divided subcutaneous and intravenous dose at PN commencement. Sacrifice was at the end of the infusion period. A further group was unoperated and uninfused and killed at 24 hrs as baseline controls. Measurements and Main ResultsGlutamine concentrations were measured by fluorometry. Protein synthesis in muscle and liver was measured by a “flooding-dose” technique employing l-[4-H]phenylalanine. Plasma glutamine was increased after cecal ligation and puncture except in the saline and glutamine with rhGH animals. Muscle glutamine was reduced after cecal ligation and puncture and was significantly lower in animals receiving standard PN with rhGH vs. saline alone. Liver glutamine was increased in animals receiving saline and those receiving standard PN with rhGH. PN, with or without glutamine, increased muscle protein synthesis, and the administration of rhGH tended to further increase this effect. Neither PN, glutamine, nor rhGH had an effect on the increased liver protein synthesis characteristic of sepsis. ConclusionsIn sepsis, increased muscle protein synthesis with PN and rhGH administration is not associated with increased muscle glutamine levels. Administration of rhGH does not result in reduced liver glutamine levels or rates of hepatic protein synthesis. PN containing glutamine was no more efficacious than standard PN at increasing muscle protein synthesis.
Novel application of pH-sensitive firefly luciferases as dual reporter genes for simultaneous ratiometric analysis of intracellular pH and gene expression/location

Firefly luciferases are widely used as bioluminescent reporter genes for bioimaging and biosensors. Aiming at simultaneous analyses of different gene expression and cellular events, luciferases and GFPs that exhibit distinct bioluminescence and fluorescence colors have been coupled with each promoter, making dual and multicolor reporter systems. Despite their wide use, firefly luciferase bioluminescence spectra are pH-sensitive, resulting in a typical large red shift at acidic pH, a side-effect that may affect some bioanalytical purposes. Although some intracellular pH-indicators employ dual color and fluorescent dyes, none has been considered to benefit from the characteristic spectral pH-sensitivity of firefly luciferases to monitor intracellular pH-associated stress, an important indicator of cell homeostasis. Here we demonstrate a linear relationship between the ratio of intensities in the green and red regions of the bioluminescence spectra and pH using firefly luciferases cloned in our laboratory ( Macrolampis sp2 and Cratomorphus distinctus ), allowing estimation of E. coli intracellular pH, thus providing a new analytical method for ratiometric intracellular pH-sensing. This is the first dual reporter system that employs a single luciferase gene to simultaneously monitor intracellular pH using spectral changes, and gene expression and/or ATP concentration using the bioluminescence intensity, showing great potential for real time bioanalysis of intracellular processes associated with metabolic changes such as apoptosis, cell death, inflammation and tissue acidification, among the other physiological changes.
A new configuration for multilevel converters with diode clamped topology

Due to the increased use of renewable energy and power electronic applications, more multilevel converters (MLC) are developed. A Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) inverter is one of the most used multilevel topologies for wind turbine (WT) and photovoltaic (PV) applications. One of the most crucial points in this type of converter is dc-voltage control. In this paper, a novel multi output dc-dc converter connected to a diode clamped topology is presented. This converter, for a given duty cycles, is able to regulate the capacitor voltage to provide an appropriate input voltage for NPC regardless of load changes which can avoid neutral point balancing problem in such converters. In addition, the presented topology is suitable for renewable energy systems to boost the low rectified output-voltage. In order to verify the proposed topology, steady state analysis, modelling and simulations are carried out.
Content extraction issues in online web education

Internet and search engines are increasing its prominence in modern day life. Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo are perhaps the largest source of information that anyone can access at anytime in the present day life. People have different interests while using the Internet. Advanced users could be interested in automatically extracting information from pages for later processing and web mining, natural language processing are gaining its importance in modern research. With the rapid increase of multilingual websites in India, it is becoming difficult to extract content and features from such websites. The present paper gives an initial approach for such content extraction studies. Neural network tools are used for the present study. Preliminary results were found satisfactory.
Blood coagulation and fibrinolysis before and after exhaustive exercise in patients with IDDM

Summary Diabetes mellitus involves changes in haemostasis which leads to the opinion that diabetes mellitus is a hypercoagulable state. However, little is known about the relationship of exercise and haemostasis in diabetics. Therefore, first of all the aim was to investigate if differences in blood coagulation and fibrinolysis can be demonstrated in subjects with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) compared to controls and secondly, if differences concerning exercise induced changes can be seen in diabetics. 16 moderately fit subjects with IDDM and 16 matched controls underwent a maximal step test. Blood samples were taken after a 30 min rest, immediately and 1h after exercise and in addition after 30 min rest 7 days later at the same time of day. The rest values (mean of the two rest samples) in extrinsic total thrombin potential (TTPex, P=0.049), tPA-activity (P=0.007) were significantly higher and in PAI-1-antigen (P=0.002) -activity (P=0.049) lower in the diabetic group. APTT, PT, TAT (only control), TTPin, tPA-activity and -antigen and PAP were increased immediately and D-dimer (only control) 1 h after exercise, whereas PAI-1-activity and -antigen (only control) decreased immediately or 1 h after exercise (all minimal P<0.05). The increase of tPA-antigen and decrease in PAI-1-antigen after exercise were both lower in the diabetics (P<0.05). IDDM led to higher extrinsic total thrombin and fibrinolytic potential at rest, and reducing the exercise provoked distribution of tPA-antigen and decrease of PAI-1-antigen. Nevertheless a higher thrombotic risk after maximal exercise has not been investigated in young IDDM patients without complications and in good metabolic control.
Enhanced Sucrose Loading Improves Rice Yield by Increasing Grain Size1[OPEN]

Phloem-specific expression of a sucrose transporter enhances sucrose loading and improves rice yield. Yield in cereals is a function of grain number and size. Sucrose (Suc), the main carbohydrate product of photosynthesis in higher plants, is transported long distances from source leaves to sink organs such as seeds and roots. Here, we report that transgenic rice plants (Oryza sativa) expressing the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) phloem-specific Suc transporter (AtSUC2), which loads Suc into the phloem under control of the phloem protein2 promoter (pPP2), showed an increase in grain yield of up to 16% relative to wild-type plants in field trials. Compared with wild-type plants, pPP2::AtSUC2 plants had larger spikelet hulls and larger and heavier grains. Grain filling was accelerated in the transgenic plants, and more photoassimilate was transported from the leaves to the grain. In addition, microarray analyses revealed that carbohydrate, amino acid, and lipid metabolism was enhanced in the leaves and grain of pPP2::AtSUC2 plants. Thus, enhancing Suc loading represents a promising strategy to improve rice yield to feed the global population.
Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase hog1 in the Entomopathogenic Fungus Beauveria bassiana Regulates Environmental Stress Responses and Virulence to Insects

ABSTRACT Beauveria bassiana is an economically important insect-pathogenic fungus which is widely used as a biocontrol agent to control a variety of insect pests. However, its insecticide efficacy in the field is often influenced by adverse environmental factors. Thus, understanding the genetic regulatory processes involved in the response to environmental stress would facilitate engineering and production of a more efficient biocontrol agent. Here, a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)-encoding gene, Bbhog1, was isolated from B. bassiana and shown to encode a functional homolog of yeast HIGH-OSMOLARITY GLYCEROL 1 (HOG1). A Bbhog1 null mutation was generated in B. bassiana by targeted gene replacement, and the resulting mutants were more sensitive to hyperosmotic stress, high temperature, and oxidative stress than the wild-type controls. These results demonstrate the conserved function of HOG1 MAPKs in the regulation of abiotic stress responses. Interestingly, ΔBbhog1 mutants exhibited greatly reduced pathogenicity, most likely due to a decrease in spore viability, a reduced ability to attach to insect cuticle, and a reduction in appressorium formation. The transcript levels of two hydrophobin-encoding genes, hyd1 and hyd2, were dramatically decreased in a ΔBbhog1 mutant, suggesting that Bbhog1 may regulate the expression of the gene associated with hydrophobicity or adherence.
Universal Primer Set for Amplification and Sequencing of HA0 Cleavage Sites of All Influenza A Viruses

ABSTRACT Sequence analysis of the endoproteolytic cleavage site within the hemagglutinin (HA) precursor protein HA0 is fundamental for studies of the molecular biology of influenza A viruses, in particular, for molecular pathotyping of subtype H5 and H7 isolates. A current problem for routine diagnostics is the emergence of new strains of the H5 or H7 subtype or even other subtypes which escape detection by commonly used reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) protocols. Here, the first pan-HA (PanHA) RT-PCR assay targeting the HA0 cleavage site of influenza A viruses of all 16 HA subtypes is reported. The assay was assessed in comparison to H5 and H7 subtype-specific RT-PCRs for the HA0 cleavage site and a real-time RT-PCR detecting the M gene. A panel of 92 influenza A viruses was used for validation. Sequence data for influenza A viruses from 32 allantoic fluid samples and 11 diagnostic swab samples of all 16 HA subtypes were generated by direct sequencing of the PanHA RT-PCR products. The results demonstrate that the new PanHA RT-PCR assay—followed by cycle sequencing—can complement existing methods and strengthen the reliability of influenza A virus diagnostics, allowing both molecular pathotyping (H5 and H7) and subtyping (non-H5 or -H7) within a single approach.
Involvement of TRPV2 Activation in Intestinal Movement through Nitric Oxide Production in Mice

Transient receptor potential channel vanilloid 2 (TRPV2) can detect various stimuli such as temperature (>52°C), stretch, and chemicals, including 2-aminoethoxydiphenyl borate, probenecid, and lysophospholipids. Although expressed in many tissues, including sensory and motor neurons, TRPV2 expression and function in the gastrointestinal tract is poorly understood. Here, we show TRPV2 expression in the murine intestine and its involvement in intestinal function. Almost all mouse intestinal intrinsic sensory and inhibitory motor neurons, both cell bodies and nerve fibers, showed TRPV2 immunoreactivity. Several known TRPV2 activators increased cytosolic Ca2+ concentrations and evoked TRPV2-like current responses in dissociated myenteric neurons. Interestingly, mechanical stimuli activated inward currents in a strength-dependent manner, which were inhibited by a TRPV2 inhibitor tranilast. TRPV2 activation in isolated intestine inhibited spontaneous circular muscle contraction, which did not occur in the presence of the TRPV2 antagonist, tetrodotoxin or nitro oxide (NO) synthase pathway inhibitors. Also, increased intestinal NO production was observed in response to a TRPV2 agonist, and gastrointestinal transit in vivo was accelerated by TRPV2 agonists or an NO donor. In conclusion, TRPV2 may contribute to intestinal motility through NO production, and TRPV2 is a promising target for controlling intestinal movement.
Towards Efficient Team Formation for Crowdsourcing in Non-Cooperative Social Networks

Crowdsourcing has become a popular service computing paradigm for requesters to integrate the ubiquitous humanintelligence services for tasks that are difficult for computers but trivial for humans. This paper focuses on crowdsourcing complex tasks by team formation in social networks (SNs) where a requester connects to a large number of workers. A good indicator of efficient team collaboration is the social connection among workers. Most previous social team formation approaches, however, either assume that the requester can maintain information of all workers and can directly communicate with them to build teams, or assume that the workers are cooperative and be willing to join the specific team built by the requester, both of which are impractical in many real situations. To this end, this paper first models each worker as a selfish entity, where the requester prefers to hire inexpensive workers that require less payment and workers prefer to join the profitable teams where they can gain high revenue. Within the non-cooperative SNs, a distributed negotiation-based team formation mechanism is designed for the requester to decide which worker to hire and for the worker to decide which team to join and how much should be paid for his skill service provision. The proposed social team formation approach can always build collaborative teams by allowing team members to form a connected graph such that they can work together efficiently. Finally, we conduct a set of experiments on real dataset of workers to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach. The experimental results show that our approach can 1) preserving considerable social welfare by comparing the benchmark centralized approaches and 2) form the profitable teams within less negotiation time by comparing the traditional distributed approaches, making our approach a more economic option for real-world applications.
Realistic Interactive Pedestrian Simulation and Visualization for Virtual 3D Environments

We present a visual computing effort to realistically and interactively simulate and visualize aspects of human motion behavior in virtual 3D environments. It allows virtually changing the infrastructure of a layout and assessing the consequences in terms of motion paths and visibility (where will people look at? ). We first create a virtual 3D model of an infrastructure with photogrammetric reconstruction of images and obtain highresolution video footage of real-world scenarios of the infrastructure. We calibrate video information with the 3D model in order to optimize an automatic human detection and tracking algorithm and to obtain real-world trajectories of people in world coordinates of major ground plane. These real world trajectories provide input to strategic and tactial movement aspects of pedestrian simulations and help validating the human motion simulations. The simulated pedestrian trajectories are the base for path visualizations and visibility analyses in the virtual environment. Our case study comprises an entry hall of a train station, but the approach is applicable to other environments such as museums.
Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor LAQ824 Augments Inflammatory Responses in Macrophages through Transcriptional Regulation of IL-10

APCs are important in the initiation of productive Ag-specific T cell responses and the induction of T cell anergy. The inflammatory status of the APC at the time of encounter with Ag-specific T cells plays a central role in determining such divergent T cell outcomes. A better understanding of the regulation of proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory genes in its natural setting, the chromatin substrate, might provide novel insights to overcome anergic mechanisms mediated by APCs. In this study, we show for the first time, to our knowledge, that treatment of BALB/c murine macrophages with the histone deacetylase inhibitor LAQ824 induces chromatin changes at the level of the IL-10 gene promoter that lead to enhanced recruitment of the transcriptional repressors HDAC11 and PU.1. Such an effect is associated with diminished IL-10 production and induction of inflammatory cells able of priming naive Ag-specific T cells, but more importantly, capable of restoring the responsiveness of anergized Ag-specific CD4+ T cells.
Identification and Characterization of Novel and Unknown Mouse Epididymis-Specific Genes by Complementary DNA Microarray Technology1

Abstract To examine epididymal function, we attempted to identify highly expressed genes in mouse epididymis using a cDNA microarray containing PCR products amplified from a mouse epididymal cDNA library. We isolated one novel and four known genes—lymphocyte cytosolic protein 1 (Lcp1), complement subcomponents C1r/C1s, Uegf protein, and bone morphogenetic protein and zona pellucida-like domains 1 (Cuzd1), transmembrane epididymal protein 1 (Teddm1), and whey acidic protein 4-disulfide core domain 16 (Wfdc16)—with unknown functions in the epididymis. The novel gene, designatedSerpina1f(serine peptidase inhibitor [SERPIN], clade A, member 1f), harbors an open reading frame of 1 233 bp encoding a putative protein of 411 amino acids, including a SERPIN domain. These five genes were predominantly expressed in the epididymis as compared to other organs. In situ hybridization analysis revealed their epididymal region-specific expression patterns. Real-time RT-PCR analysis revealed a significant increase in mRNA expression of these genes around puberty. Castration decreased their expression, except forLcp1. Testosterone (T) restored these reduced expressions, except forTeddm1; however, this restoration was not observed with 17 beta-estradiol (E2). Administration of T and E2 combination recovered theSerpina1fmRNA concentration; this recovery was also observed with T alone. However, the recovery ofCuzd1andWfdc16mRNA concentrations was inadequate. Neonatal diethylstilbestrol treatment suppressed theCuzd1,Wfdc16, andSerpina1fmRNA expression in the epididymis of 8-week-old mice; this was not observed with E2. These results suggest that our microarray system can provide a novel insight into the epididymal function on a molecular basis, and the five genes might play important roles in the epididymis.
Scanning electron microscoscopy of the second‐instar larva of Gasterophilus nasalis

The second‐instar larva of the bot fly Gasterophilus nasalis (L.) (Diptera: Gasterophilidae) is described for the first time, based on scanning electron microscope (SEM) studies. On the pseudocephalum the larva bears an anteno‐maxillary sensory complex formed by the antenna (coeloconic sensilla) and the maxillary palp with a set of six coeloconic sensilla and four basiconica sensilla. The oral opening is latero‐posteriorly limited by small spines, and exhibits strongly ornamented maxillae and mandibles. The thoracic and abdominal segments are circled by two bands, each with two rows (except the last segment that has one row) of backwardly pointed spines, and have cuticular depressions. Trichoid and campaniform sensilla surround the larval segments. The anterior spiracular opening is a small aperture. The terminal end of the eighth abdominal segment shows a spiracular cavity, lateral tubercles, eight basiconic and two trichoid sensilla. Each spiracular plate has two slightly curved slits, each with a serrated rima. There is a probable ecdysial scar. The findings of this ultrastructural study are compared with those other of larval flies.
Applying an Integrated Refuge to Manage Western Corn Rootworm (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae): Effects on Survival, Fitness, and Selection Pressure

ABSTRACT The refuge strategy can delay resistance of insect pests to transgenic maize producing toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). This is important for the western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), because of its history of adaptation to several management practices. A 2-yr study across four locations was conducted to measure the effects of integrated refuge (i.e., blended refuge) on western corn rootworm survival to adulthood, fitness characteristics, and susceptibility to Bt maize in the subsequent generation. The treatments tested in this study were as follows: a pure stand of Bt maize (event DAS-59122-7, which produces Bt toxins Cry34Ab1/Cry35Ab1), a pure stand of refuge (non-Bt maize), and two variations on an integrated refuge consisting of 94.4% Bt maize and 5.6% non-Bt maize. Within the two integrated refuge treatments, refuge seeds received a neonicotinoid insecticidal seed treatment of either 1.25 mg clothianidin per kernel or 0.25 mg thiamethoxam per kernel. Insects in the pure stand refuge treatment had greater survival to adulthood and earlier emergence than in all other treatments. Although fecundity, longevity, and head capsule width were reduced in treatments containing Bt maize for some site by year combinations, Bt maize did not have a significant effect on these factors when testing data across all sites and years. We found no differences in susceptibility of larval progeny to Bt maize in bioassays using progeny of adults collected from the four treatments.
Reconfigurable antenna design approach for mobile applications and a technique for harmonics suppression

A design procedure for reconfigurable mobile antenna module is presented. A tuneable antenna, including a varactor diode placed at specific position over the radiating slot, was fabricated and tested over several targeted frequency bands (centred at 1.7, 1.8, 1.9 and 2.04 GHz) and their harmonics. A limitation of the tuneable antenna is its non-linear behaviour at the transmitter. A method to measure the radiated power from an active antenna (AA) at fundamental and harmonic frequencies is introduced to suppress the harmonic radiations of the active antenna. The experimental results on the received power show a very good capability for harmonic suppression.