Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
General Pharmacology of KP-102 (GHRP-2), a Potent Growth Hormone-Releasing Peptide

Summary The general pharmacological effects of the hexapeptide KP-102 (D-alanyl-3-(2-naphthyl)-D-alanyl-L-alanyl-L-tryptophyl - D -phenylalanyl - L -lysinamide dihy-drochloride, growth hormone-releasing peptide-2, GHRP-2, pralmorelin, CAS 158861-67-7), which potently promotes growth hormone (GH) release by acting at both hypothalamic and pituitary sites, were evaluated in various animal experimental models. The administration of KP-102 showed no obvious effect at a pharmacological dose on the central nervous system. KP-102 had no significant effect on the autonomic nervous system and smooth muscle except a slight and transient increase in spontaneous motility of isolated rabbit ileum and contraction of isolated guinea pig ileum at high doses. There was negligible effect on the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, digestive system, renal function and blood system after KP-102 treatment. These results suggest that KP-102 has no serious general pharmacological effects at dose levels showing GH-releasing activity in the experimental animals. Therefore, it is concluded that KP-102 will be a useful drug for the diagnosis of serious GH deficiency and for treatment of short stature.
A study of blind image restoration by fast image deconvolution utilizing hyper-laplacian prior

In this paper, we propose a novel blind deconvolution method in which PSF (Point Spread Function) estimations and regularized deconvolution are calculated alternately. Our proposed method utilizes the hyper-Laplacian prior for deconvolution processes. Experimental results show that our proposed method improves picture quality, especially dark portions, and reduces the computation time by almost 1/3rd that of the conventional method.
A Spatial Approach to Energy Economics

We develop a spatial model of energy exploitation where energy sources are differentiated by their geographic location and energy density. The spatial setting creates a scaling law that magnifies the importance of differences across energy sources. As a result, renewable sources twice as dense, provide eight times the supply; and all new non-renewable resource plays must first boom and then bust. For both renewable and non-renewable energy sources we link the size of exploitation zones and energy supplies to energy density, and provide empirical measures of key model attributes using data on solar, wind, biomass, and fossil fuel energy sources. Non-renewable sources are four or five orders of magnitude more dense than renewables, implying that the most salient feature of the last 200 years of energy history is the dramatic rise in the use of energy dense fuels.
Effect of solvents on total phenolic compounds and antibacterial activity of Ceriops tagal extracts

Ceriops tagal is a mangrove plant in RHIZOPHORACEAE family which plays an importance role in coastal ecological balance and exhibit versatile pharmacological area. In this study, leaves and barks were collected from Rajamangala beach, Rajamangala University of Technology Srivijaya, Trang province and were dried to successively extract with hexane, ethyl acetate and methanol. The total phenolic content was evaluated by Folinciocaltue method. The results showed that methanolic barks extracts exhibited the highest total phenolic content values 6.063 0.205 mg GAE/g extract. The antimicrobial activities against Bacillus cereus TISTR 687, Escherichia coli TISTR 780, Staphylococcus aureus TISTR 1466, and Samolnella typhi TISTR 292 of the leaf and bark extracts were determined using paper disk diffusion method. The methanol extracts from the bark exhibited the best activity. None of the extracts showed antibacterial activity against E.coli.
Design, Calibration and Experimentation of an Epidermal RFID Sensor for Remote Temperature Monitoring

An epidermal radiofrequency identification technology (RFID) sensor consists of a flexible antenna provided with a radiofrequency identification and sensing microchip directly stuck over the human skin by means of a sub-millimeter bio-compatible membrane. A compact-size epidermal RFID thermometer is here proposed and extensively experimented concerning its electromagnetic and thermal performance in case of battery-less and battery-assisted configurations. The antenna element embeds a mechanism for a post-manufacturing frequency retuning in order to adapt its response to the specific placement over the body. When attached over the skin, the sensor is readable from up to 0.7 m in battery-less mode and 2.3 m in battery-assisted mode. A calibration procedure improved the accuracy of the IC sensor down to 0.18 °C. The time constant evaluated by the first-order response of the IC to impulse heating (photo-flash) resulted in 4.3 s. The epidermal wireless thermometer was experimented in both supervised applications (manual reading) and in un-supervised architectures where users were continuously monitored by a fixed remote antenna or during the crossing of a surveillance gate. In all the considered cases, the reliability of the interrogation link was experimentally quantified and resulted robust for health monitoring applications in clinical and domestic settings and even for the automatic detection of anomalous temperature peaks of people walking within airports and at country border crossing.
FAST AND EFFICIENT DIMENSIONALITY REDUCTION USING STRUCTURALLY RANDOMMATRICES

Structurally Random Matrices (SRM) are first proposed in [1] as fast and highly efficient measurement operators for large scale compressed sensing applications. Motivated by the bridge between compressed sensing and the Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma [2] , this paper introduces a related application of SRMs regarding to realizing a fast and highly efficient embedding. In particular, it shows that a SRM is also a promising dimensionality reduction transform that preserves all pairwise distances of high dimensional vectors within an arbitrarily small factor , provided that the projection dimension is on the order of O( −2 log N), where N denotes the number of ddimensional vectors. In other words, SRM can be viewed as the suboptimal Johnson-Lindenstrauss embedding that, however, owns very low computational complexity O(d log d) and highly efficient implementation that uses only O(d) random bits, making it a promising candidate for practical, large scale applications where efficiency and speed of computation are highly critical.
A Stress-Related Peptide Bombesin Centrally Induces Frequent Urination through Brain Bombesin Receptor Types 1 and 2 in the Rat

Stress exacerbates symptoms of bladder dysfunction including overactive bladder and bladder pain syndrome, but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. Bombesin-like peptides and bombesin receptor types 1 and 2 (BB1 and BB2, respectively) in the brain have been implicated in the mediation/integration of stress responses. In this study, we examined effects of centrally administered bombesin on micturition, focusing on their dependence on 1) the sympathoadrenomedullary system (a representative mechanism activated by stress exposure) and 2) brain BB receptors in urethane-anesthetized (1.0–1.2 g/kg, i.p.) male rats. Intracerebroventricularly administered bombesin significantly shortened intercontraction intervals (ICI) at both doses (0.1 and 1 nmol/animal) without affecting maximal voiding pressure. Bombesin at 1 nmol induced significant increments of plasma noradrenaline and adrenaline levels, which were both abolished by acute bilateral adrenalectomy. On the other hand, adrenalectomy showed no effects on the bombesin-induced shortening of ICI. Much lower doses of bombesin (0.01 and 0.03 nmol/animal, i.c.v.) dose-dependently shortened ICI. Pretreatment with either a BB1 receptor antagonist (BIM-23127; d-Nal-cyclo[Cys-Tyr-d-Trp-Orn-Val-Cys]-Nal-NH2; 3 nmol/animal, i.c.v.) or a BB2 receptor antagonist (BEA; H-d-Phe-Gln-Trp-Ala-Val-Gly-His-Leu-NHEt; 3 nmol/animal, i.c.v.), respectively, suppressed the BB (0.03 nmol/animal, i.c.v.)–induced shortening of ICI, whereas each antagonist by itself (1 and 3 nmol/animal, i.c.v.) had no significant effects on ICI. Bombesin (0.03 nmol/animal, i.c.v.) significantly reduced voided volume per micturition and bladder capacity without affecting postvoid residual volume or voiding efficiency. These results suggest that brain bombesin and BB receptors are involved in facilitation of the rat micturition reflex to induce bladder overactivity, which is independent of the sympathoadrenomedullary outflow modulation.
cvxEDA: A Convex Optimization Approach to Electrodermal Activity Processing

Goal: This paper reports on a novel algorithm for the analysis of electrodermal activity (EDA) using methods of convex optimization. EDA can be considered as one of the most common observation channels of sympathetic nervous system activity, and manifests itself as a change in electrical properties of the skin, such as skin conductance (SC). Methods: The proposed model describes SC as the sum of three terms: the phasic component, the tonic component, and an additive white Gaussian noise term incorporating model prediction errors as well as measurement errors and artifacts. This model is physiologically inspired and fully explains EDA through a rigorous methodology based on Bayesian statistics, mathematical convex optimization, and sparsity. Results: The algorithm was evaluated in three different experimental sessions to test its robustness to noise, its ability to separate and identify stimulus inputs, and its capability of properly describing the activity of the autonomic nervous system in response to strong affective stimulation. Significance: Results are very encouraging, showing good performance of the proposed method and suggesting promising future applicability, e.g., in the field of affective computing.
Frequency of HLA-DRB1 and HLA-DQB1 Alleles and Haplotype Association in Syrian Population

ABSTRACT The study of Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) system is very important in health and diseases. As the HLA loci are the most polymorphic in the human genome, it plays a very important role in the immune responses to self and nonself antigens. In the light of the growing importance of typing the HLA alleles in transplantation, autoimmune diseases, cancer, and many other diseases, we studied 225 unrelated healthy Syrian subjects for their HLA class II genotypes in an attempt to reveal the distribution of the HLA (DRB1-DQB1) alleles in the general Syrian population. Our results revealed that the most common alleles for the DRB1 locus were DRB1*11 (26.4%), DRB1*04 (14%), and DRB1*07 (12%). However, the most frequent alleles for the DQB1 locus were DQB1*03 (40.9%) and DQB1*05 (25.1%). The frequent of two-locus haplotypes carry the most frequent alleles at these loci. The most frequently detected class II ‘‘haplotypes’’ are DRB1*11-DQB1*03 (8.9%), DRB1*01-DQB1*05 (3.6%), and DRB1*04-DQB1*03 (2.7%). Compared with other populations, our result, deduced from the analysis of genetic distances and the construction of neighbor-joining (NJ) dendrogram, and principal component analysis (PCA) indicates that Syrians are related to Middle Eastern populations. Our data about the Syrian population will aid researchers in studying the relation of HLA class II with different diseases in a Syrian population and will add to the available international literature associated with these loci.
Performance of Analog Network Coding with Asymmetric Traffic Requirements

In this letter, we evaluate the outage performance of analog network coding (ANC) protocol for a two-way half-duplex relaying system with asymmetric traffic requirements at end terminals. We derive a simple and generalized expression for overall system outage probability in a Rayleigh flat-fading environment. We also deduce the optimal relay location and power allocation in order to minimize the overall system outage. Numerical and simulation results highlight the effect of optimal relay positioning and power allocation under various traffic requirements.
The Avian Spleen: A Neglected Organ

The functions of the little-studied avian spleen are reviewed and compared with those of its better known mammalian counterpart, which is generally larger in proportion to body size than in birds. A role in immunity similar to that in mammals is evident, but the organ's contribution to oxygen supply seems less extensive; splenic storage of erythrocytes, for example, is unrecorded for birds. The spleen is a principal organ of systemic immunity, and its importance in disease resistance is presumably accentuated by the scarcity of aan lymph nodes. The striking intraspecific viariation in size partly refelcts seasonal changes in spleen morphology and activity. Several explanations, principally based on changing oxygen demand, have been proposed previously for these periodical cycles. But seasonally small spleens could sometimes simply stem from a combination of (1) a cessation of active splenomegaly as seasonally patent infections recede, and (2) a seasonal lymphoid involution, occuring even if an individual has not recently responded to, and recovered from, and infection. Possible determinants for these and other processes are discussed from evolutionary and ecological perspectives. There is a pressing need for a thorough investigation of both hematological and immunological functions, using a phylogenetically and ecologically broad range of species, as well as modern histological and experimental techniques.
Classificação De ResÍduos Madeireiros Em Serrarias

CLASSIFICACAO DE RESIDUOS MADEIREIROS EM SERRARIASAUTORES: Mariane Pires Cabreira – Graduanda de Eng. Florestal, UNIPAMPA/SG.Daniela Silva Lilge – Eng. Florestal Msc, Prof. Assistente, UNIPAMPA/SGOs residuos madeireiros em serrarias geralmente sao considerados como um problema na industrializacao da madeira, pois sua deposicao e uso adequado causam custos elevados que muitas vezes a empresa deseja evitar. Segundo Rocha (2002) “o rendimento de uma serraria pode variar de 45 a 55%”. Os fatores responsaveis pela variacao do rendimento sao: a qualidade dos povoamentos, das maquinas utilizadas, praticas de desdobro e da preparacao e conhecimento dos operarios.O objetivo do presente trabalho foi revisar a bibliografia determinando a classificacao dos residuos provenientes das serrarias, pois atraves do conhecimento da qualidade, da quantidade e de possiveis alternativas de uso pode-se dar a este material um destino viavel.A serragem e o produto da passagem da lâmina de serra de reducao na tora, formada por pequenas particulas de madeira cujo volume e significativo. E considerado como o residuo que desperta menor interesse para o aproveitamento, pois, e um residuo com elevada impureza. Sua maior utilizacao tem sido como substrato de solo, cama em criadouros de aves, cavalos e outros animais (FAGUNDES, 2003; DUTRA; NASCIMENTO, 2003; LIMA; SILVA, 2005). As costaneiras sao geradas no desdobro primario, etapa em que a madeira util e separada do material que, teoricamente, nao possui valor agregado. Este material e descartado como residuo devido a sua forma e a presenca do alburno, que o torna mais suscetivel ao ataque de xilofagos. Em geral, sao utilizadas na producao de energia, e no caso do eucalipto, sao empregadas como paredes de revestimento externo, especialmente para quiosques, galpoes e construcoes rusticas (LEITE, 2006). Define-se maravalhas como sendo os residuos gerados pelas plainas nas serrarias e beneficiadoras, atraves do reprocessamento ou resserra de pecas comdefeitos (pecas com rachaduras, empenamentos, colapso, nos, bolsas de resina e defeitos de gra) (FAGUNDES, 2003). Os cavacos sao os residuos da padronizacao do comprimento e da largura das pecas, que sao as aparas das pontas e laterais das tabuas, pranchas ou outras pecas de secoes quadradas e retangulares Podem ser usados para combustao, industria de pasta de celulose e papel, no fabrico de aglomerados e outros paineis (FAGUNDES, 2003). As cascas apresentam poucas alternativas de emprego. Sua utilizacao se baseia na geracao de energia, implicando em pouco interesse pelo mercado. Eventualmente, as cascas tem sido utilizadas para o tratamento paisagistico de parques e pracas (FAGUNDES, 2003). Assim, e possivel concluir que sao diversos os tipos de residuos gerados na etapa do desdobro madeireiro e que a reciclagem desses residuos, seja com a finalidade que for, e de essencial importância para diminuir as agressoes ao meio ambiente e para agregar um valor maior a madeira
A review of non-obstetric spontaneous pneumomediastinum and subcutaneous emphysema.

A man in his early twenties was admitted from the streets. He was hallucinating and incoherent. His vital signs were normal and there was no sign of injury. There was subcutaneous emphysema over the neck and anterior chest. The breath sounds were good and the heart sounds were audible. Chest X-ray showed extensive subcutaneous emphysema extending into the neck, but no pneumomediastinum or pneumothorax. A Hexabrix swallow demonstrated no leak. A computed tomography (CT) scan showed extensive surgical emphysema but no underlying pathology. Over the following 48 hours he was treated with a 40% oxygen mask. He remained stable and the surgical emphysema settled completely. Urine testing for cannabis and cocaine were negative. He was certified and admitted to a closed psychiatric ward. No further surgical problems occurred during the following month.
Shannon-theoretic approach to a Gaussian cellular multiple-access channel with fading

Shannon-theoretic limits on the achievable throughput for a simple infinite cellular multiple-access channel (MAC) model (Wyner 1994) in the presence of fading are presented. In this model, which is modified to account for flat fading, the received signal, at a given cell-site's antenna, is the sum of the faded signals transmitted from all users within that cell plus an attenuation factor /spl alpha//spl isin/[0,1] times the sum of the faded signals received from the adjacent cells, accompanied by Gaussian additive noise. This model serves as a tractable model providing considerable insight into complex and analytically intractable real-world cellular communications. Both linear and planar cellular arrays are considered with exactly K active users in each cell. We assume a hyper-receiver, jointly decoding all of the users, incorporating the received signals from all of the active cell-sites. The hyper-receiver is assumed to be aware of the codebooks and realizations of the fading processes of all the users in the system. In this work we consider the intracell time-division multiple-access (TDMA) and the wideband (WB) protocols. We focus on the maximum reliably transmitted equal rate. Bounds to this rate are found for the intracell TDMA protocol by incorporating information-theoretic inequalities and the Chebyshev-Markov moment theory as applied to the limiting distribution of the eigenvalues of a quadratic form of tridiagonal random matrices. We demonstrate our results for the special case where the amplitudes of the fading coefficients are drawn from a Rayleigh distribution, i.e., Rayleigh fading. For this special case, we observe the rather surprising result that fading may increase the maximum equal rate, for a certain range of /spl alpha/ as compared to the nonfaded case. In this setting, the WB strategy, which achieves the maximum reliable equal rate of the model, is proved to be superior to the TDMA scheme. An upper bound to the maximum equal rate of the WB scheme is also obtained. This bound is asymptotically tight when the number of users is large (K/spl Gt/1). The asymptotic bound shows that the maximum equal rate of the WB scheme in the presence of fading is higher than the rate which corresponds to the nonfaded case for any intercell interference factor /spl alpha//spl isin/[0,1] signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values. This result is found to be independent of the statistics of the fading coefficients.
Neuroinflammation and its relationship to changes in brain volume and white matter lesions in multiple sclerosis

Brain magnetic resonance imaging is an important tool in the diagnosis and monitoring of multiple sclerosis patients. However, magnetic resonance imaging alone provides limited information for predicting an individual patient's disability progression. In part, this is because magnetic resonance imaging lacks sensitivity and specificity for detecting chronic diffuse and multi-focal inflammation mediated by activated microglia/macrophages. The aim of this study was to test for an association between 18 kDa translocator protein brain positron emission tomography signal, which arises largely from microglial activation, and measures of subsequent disease progression in multiple sclerosis patients. Twenty-one patients with multiple sclerosis (seven with secondary progressive disease and 14 with a relapsing remitting disease course) underwent T1- and T2-weighted and magnetization transfer magnetic resonance imaging at baseline and after 1 year. Positron emission tomography scanning with the translocator protein radioligand 11C-PBR28 was performed at baseline. Brain tissue and lesion volumes were segmented from the T1- and T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and relative 11C-PBR28 uptake in the normal-appearing white matter was estimated as a distribution volume ratio with respect to a caudate pseudo-reference region. Normal-appearing white matter distribution volume ratio at baseline was correlated with enlarging T2-hyperintense lesion volumes over the subsequent year (ρ = 0.59, P = 0.01). A post hoc analysis showed that this association reflected behaviour in the subgroup of relapsing remitting patients (ρ = 0.74, P = 0.008). By contrast, in the subgroup of secondary progressive patients, microglial activation at baseline was correlated with later progression of brain atrophy (ρ = 0.86, P = 0.04). A regression model including the baseline normal-appearing white matter distribution volume ratio, T2 lesion volume and normal-appearing white matter magnetization transfer ratio for all of the patients combined explained over 90% of the variance in enlarging lesion volume over the subsequent 1 year. Glial activation in white matter assessed by translocator protein PET significantly improves predictions of white matter lesion enlargement in relapsing remitting patients and is associated with greater brain atrophy in secondary progressive disease over a period of short term follow-up.
Lower vitamin D levels are associated with depression among community-dwelling European men

Low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) and elevated parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels have been linked with depressive symptoms among adults in various clinical settings. Data in generally healthy, community-dwelling individuals remain inconclusive. We investigated whether depression was associated with 25(OH)D and/or PTH in a sample of middle-aged and older men (n = 3369; mean age 60 ± 11) participating in the European Male Ageing Study, and whether any associations were explained by lifestyle and health factors. The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) was used to screen for depression, and serum 25(OH)D and PTH levels measured by radioimmunoassay. Univariate analysis revealed that 25(OH)D levels were lower (p < 0.001) and PTH higher (p = 0.004) in people with depression. In age- and centre-adjusted linear regressions a higher BDI-II score was significantly associated with lower levels of 25(OH)D (p = 0.004). After adjustment for lifestyle and health factors this relationship was attenuated but remained significant (p = 0.01). Using multivariable logistic regression the odds for depression increased approximately 70% across decreasing 25(OH)D quartiles (ptrend = 0.04). There was no independent association between PTH and depression in any of the multivariable regressions. Our results reveal an inverse association between 25(OH)D levels and depression, largely independent of several lifestyle and health factors. Further studies are required to determine whether higher levels of vitamin D have an antidepressant effect in older adults.