Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Glucosamine anchored cancer targeted nano-vesicular drug delivery system of doxorubicin

Abstract Background: Efficacy of an anticancer drug is challenged by severe adverse effects persuaded by the drug itself; hence designing a tumour targeted delivery system is chosen as an objective of this research work. Purpose: We propose, glucose transporter targeting ligand, i.e. synthesised N-lauryl glucosamine (NLG) anchored doxorubicin (DOX) in niosomal formulation. Methods: Synthesised NLG was incorporated into niosomal formulation of DOX using Span 60 as surfactant, cholesterol as membrane stabilizer and dicetyl phosphate (DCP) as stabilizer. Results: The formulation was stable with particle size of 110 ± 5 nm, zeta potential −30 ± 5 mV and entrapment efficiency approximately 95%. DSC and XRD pattern of freeze-dried formulation demonstrated encapsulation of DOX in niosomal formulation. Cytotoxicity of targeted niosomal formulation (IC50 = 0.830 ppm) was higher than non-targeted niosomal formulation (IC50 = 1.369 ppm) against B6F10 melanoma cell lines. In vitro cellular internalization revealed that targeted niosomal formulation was internalised more efficiently with higher cellular retention by cancer cells compared to the non-targeted niosomal formulation and free DOX. In vitro receptor binding and docking study of targeted niosomal formulation had shown the comparative association potential with glucose receptor. Conclusion: NLG anchored niosomal formulation of DOX with enhanced cytotoxicity, internalization and receptor binding potential has implication in targeted cancer therapy.
Ketamine modulates subgenual cingulate connectivity with the memory-related neural circuit—a mechanism of relevance to resistant depression?

Background. Ketamine has been reported to have efficacy as an antidepressant in several studies of treatment-resistant depression. In this study, we investigate whether an acute administration of ketamine leads to reductions in the functional connectivity of subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) with other brain regions. Methods. Thirteen right-handed healthy male subjects underwent a 15 min resting state fMRI with an infusion of intravenous ketamine (target blood level = 150 ng/ml) starting at 5 min. We used a seed region centred on the sgACC and assessed functional connectivity before and during ketamine administration. Results. Before ketamine administration, positive coupling with the sgACC seed region was observed in a large cluster encompassing the anterior cingulate and negative coupling was observed with the anterior cerebellum. Following ketamine administration, sgACC activity became negatively correlated with the brainstem, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, retrosplenial cortex, and thalamus. Discussion. Ketamine reduced functional connectivity of the sgACC with brain regions implicated in emotion, memory and mind wandering. It is possible the therapeutic effects of ketamine may be mediated via this mechanism, although further work is required to test this hypothesis.
Expression of an Mg2+-Dependent HIV-1 RNase H Construct for Drug Screening

ABSTRACT A single polypeptide of the HIV-1 reverse transcriptase that reconstituted Mg2+-dependent RNase H activity has been made. Using molecular modeling, the construct was designed to encode the p51 subunit joined by a linker to the thumb (T), connection (C), and RNase H (R) domains of p66. This p51-G-TCR construct was purified from the soluble fraction of an Escherichia coli strain, MIC2067(DE3), lacking endogenous RNase HI and HII. The p51-G-TCR RNase H construct displayed Mg2+-dependent activity using a fluorescent nonspecific assay and showed the same cleavage pattern as HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) on substrates that mimic the tRNA removal required for second-strand transfer reactions. The mutant E706Q (E478Q in RT) was purified under similar conditions and was not active. The RNase H of the p51-G-TCR RNase H construct and wild type HIV-1 RT had similar Kms for an RNA-DNA hybrid substrate and showed similar inhibition kinetics to two known inhibitors of the HIV-1 RT RNase H.
Towards a semantic-driven and scalable publish/subscribe framework

Heterogeneous networks, including personal, home and collaborative enterprise networks are aimed at interconnecting diverse communities of users. In the case of large communities of mobile, distributed and collaborating users sharing their multimedia content, scalable and semantic approaches are needed to facilitate the efficient publication and discovery of data. In this work, we propose an approach aimed at efficiently providing the required functionalities for dynamically managing the resources and the multimedia content of interconnected home networks, as well as providing the required community sharing capabilities. Our solution consists in combining the benefits of both ontologies and peer-to-peer approaches, by taking advantage of the semantic capabilities of ontologies at local domain level and the scalable P2P solutions at inter-domains level. Our proposed framework is founded on a new architecture based on peer-to-peer event-based communication system and using mainly a home box entity based on a global multimedia ontology. This domain ontology allows publishers and subscribers to use a common semantic space to characterise production and consumption of resources and services. Our approach can also be applied for similar large interconnected systems scenarios such as topic discovery with JNDI and service exchange with UDDI.
Diacylglycerol kinase β accumulates on the perisynaptic site of medium spiny neurons in the striatum

Following activation of Gq protein‐coupled receptors, phospholipase C yields a pair of second messengers, i.e. diacylglycerol (DAG) and inositol 1,4,5‐trisphosphate. The former activates protein kinase C and the latter mobilizes Ca2+ from intracellular store. DAG kinase (DGK) then phosphorylates DAG to produce another second messenger (phosphatidic acid). Of 10 mammalian DGK isozymes, DGKβ is expressed in dopaminergic projection fields with the highest level in the striatum and its particular splice variant is differentially expressed in patients with bipolar disorder. To gain molecular anatomical evidence for its signaling role, we investigated the cellular expression and subcellular localization of DGKβ in the striatum of rat brain. DGKβ was expressed in medium spiny neurons constituting the striatonigral and striatopallidal pathways, whereas striatal interneurons were below the detection threshold. DGKβ was distributed in somatodendritic elements of medium spiny neurons and localized in association with the smooth endoplasmic reticulum and plasma membrane or in the narrow cytoplasmic space between them. In particular, DGKβ exhibited dense accumulation at perisynaptic sites on dendritic spines forming asymmetrical synapses. The characteristic anatomical localization was consistent with exclusive enrichment of DGKβ in the microsomal and postsynaptic density fractions. Intriguingly, DGKβ was very similar in immunohistochemical and immunochemical distribution to Gq‐coupled receptors, such as metabotropic glutamate receptors 1 and 5, and also to other downstream molecules involving DAG metabolism, such as phospholipase C β and DAG lipase. These findings suggest that abundant DGKβ is provided to perisynaptic sites of medium spiny neurons so that it can effectively produce phosphatidic acid upon activation of Gq‐coupled receptors and modulate the cellular state of striatal output neurons.
ForecastICU: A Prognostic Decision Support System for Timely Prediction of Intensive Care Unit Admission

We develop ForecastICU: a prognostic decision support system that monitors hospitalized patients and prompts alarms for intensive care unit (ICU) admissions. ForecastICU is first trained in an offline stage by constructing a Bayesian belief system that corresponds to its belief about how trajectories of physiological data streams of the patient map to a clinical status. After that, ForecastICU monitors a new patient in real-time by observing her physiological data stream, updating its belief about her status over time, and prompting an alarm whenever its belief process hits a predefined threshold (confidence). Using a real-world dataset obtained from UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, we show that ForecastICU can predict ICU admissions 9 hours before a physician's decision (for a sensitivity of 40% and a precision of 50%). Also, ForecastICU performs consistently better than other state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms in terms of sensitivity, precision, and timeliness: it can predict ICU admissions 3 hours earlier, and offers a 7.8% gain in sensitivity and a 5.1% gain in precision compared to the best state-of-the-art algorithm. Moreover, ForecastICU offers an area under curve (AUC) gain of 22.3% compared to the Rothman index, which is the currently deployed technology in most hospital wards.
The theory of bandpass sampling

The sampling of bandpass signals is discussed with respect to band position, noise considerations, and parameter sensitivity. For first-order sampling, the acceptable and unacceptable sample rates are presented, with specific discussion of the practical rates which are nonminimum. It is shown that the minimum sampling rate is pathological in that any imperfection in the implementation will cause aliasing. In applying bandpass sampling to relocate signals to a base-band position, the signal-to-noise ratio is not preserved owing to the out-of-band noise being aliased. The degradation in signal-to-noise ratio is quantified in terms of the position of the bandpass signal. For the construction of a bandpass signal from second-order samples, the cost of implementing the interpolant (dynamic range and length) depends on Kohlenberg's sampling factor (1953) k, the relative delay between the uniform sampling streams. An elaboration on the disallowed discrete values of k shows that some allowed values are better than others for implementation. >
Customization of a CISC processor core for low-power applications

This paper describes a core-customization process of a CISC processor core for a given application program. It aims at the power reduction in the CISC processor core by fully utilizing the microcode-based control scheme, that is one of the most characterizing features of a CISC processor The optimization process includes two key techniques, generation of application-specific complex instructions (ASCI) and low-power-oriented microcode-ROM compilation, which independently operate at the two different levels of optimization. As a means of architectural level of optimization, application-specific complex instructions are generated so as to reduce the activities of fetch and decode units, and in the point of physical level of optimization, the microcode-ROM is compiled to reduce the bit-line toggling for each microcode-ROM access. Our experimental results based on transistor-level simulation show the proposed techniques can jointly reduce the total power consumption of the CISC processor core by up to 41%.
On the Practicality of Global Flow Analysis of Logic Programs

This paper addresses the issue of the practicality of global flow analysis in logic program compilation, in terms of both speed and precision of analysis. It discusses design and implementation aspects of two practical abstract interpretation-based flow analysis systems: MA3, the MOO Andparallel Analyzer and Annotator; and Ms, an experimental mode inference system developed for SB-Prolog. The paper also provides performance data obtained from these implementations. Based on these results, it is concluded that the overhead of global flow analysis is not prohibitive, while the results of analysis can be quite precise and useful.
Estimating group delay and phase delay via discrete-time "analytic" cross-correlation

Starting with two finite N-point real-valued discrete time signals, frequency domain algorithm procedures are provided for estimating the group delay and phase delay between the signals. These delays are extracted from the complex-valued discrete-time "analytic" cross-correlation sequence computed using the two signals. Special adjustments of the cross-correlation transform end points are shown to be necessary in order to generate a proper "analytic" cross-correlation sequence. Two cases are considered for delay estimation (1) to sample-interval resolution and (2) to subsample-interval resolution by interpolation.
Kinetic study of static recrystallization in an Fe–Al–O ultra-fine-grained nanocomposite

Abstract A nearly abrupt coarsening of grains is observed in a newly developed Fe–Al–O ultra-fine-grained nanocomposite with a significant volume fraction (4%) of alumina nano-precipitates. The microstructure of the alloy was analysed in different states (as-received and annealed) by means of scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and hardness. The initial grain size 150–200 nm increases up to 50 μm during annealing 1000 °C/8 h and thereafter demonstrates saturation. A linear correlation between volume fraction of coarse grains and hardness was found. It was identified by TEM that alumina nano-precipitates stabilize the dislocation microstructure against recovery very effectively and the grain coarsening is due to fast growth of very few dislocation free grains. Thus, the observed grain coarsening has the attributes of static recrystallization.
Tetraaquabis(3,5-di-4-pyridyl-1H-1,2,4-triazolido)cadmium(II) dihydrate

In the title compound, [Cd(C12H8N5)2(H2O)4]·2H2O, the CdII atom is located on an inversion center and is coordinated by the two N atoms [Cd—N = 2.278 (2) Å] and four O atoms [Cd—O = 2.304 (2)–2.322 (2) Å] in a distorted octahedral geometry. Intermolecular O—H⋯O and O—H⋯N hydrogen bonds link the complex into a three-dimensional supramolecular framework.
Stochastic Low-Rank Kernel Learning for Regression

We present a novel approach to learn a kernel-based regression function. It is based on the use of conical combinations of data-based parameterized kernels and on a new stochastic convex optimization procedure of which we establish convergence guarantees. The overall learning procedure has the nice properties that a) the learned conical combination is automatically designed to perform the regression task at hand and b) the updates implicated by the optimization procedure are quite inexpensive. In order to shed light on the appositeness of our learning strategy, we present empirical results from experiments conducted on various benchmark datasets.
Robust T cell responses to aspergillosis in chronic granulomatous disease: implications for immunotherapy

Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) patients are highly susceptible to invasive aspergillosis and might benefit from aspergillus‐specific T cell immunotherapy, which has shown promise in treating those with known T cell defects such as haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients. But whether such T cell defects contribute to increased risks for aspergillus infection in CGD is unclear. Hence, we set out to characterize the aspergillus‐specific T cell response in CGD. In murine CGD models and in patients with CGD we showed that the CD4+ T cell responses to aspergillus were unimpaired: aspergillus‐specific T cell frequencies were even elevated in CGD mice (P < 0·01) and humans (P = 0·02), compared to their healthy counterparts. CD4‐depleted murine models suggested that the role of T cells might be redundant because resistance to aspergillus infection was conserved in CD4+ T cell‐depleted mice, similar to wild‐type animals. In contrast, mice depleted of neutrophils alone or neutrophils and CD4+ T cells developed clinical and pathological evidence of pulmonary aspergillosis and increased mortality (P < 0·05 compared to non‐depleted animals). Our findings that T cells in CGD have a robust aspergillus CD4+ T cell response suggest that CD4+ T cell‐based immunotherapy for this disease is unlikely to be beneficial.
Polyvinylidene Difluoride Piezoelectric Electrospun Nanofibers: Review in Synthesis, Fabrication, Characterizations, and Applications

This review article highlights the methods and principles used for PVDF nanofiber creation and the use of these nanofibers in different fields by utilizing its piezoelectric performance, etc. The studies include different techniques to improve the alignment and piezoelectric behavior of nanofibers. The pressure versus sensitivity behavior of PVDF substrate is thoroughly analyzed. The optimum conditions (of experimental parameters) of the electrospinning technique are carefully studied to improve the structure, alignment, and performance of the generated nanofiber mats. In addition to experimental methods, the preparation of nanocomposites with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) also can improve the structure, alignment, and piezoelectric performance. The characterization tools used for the analyses of fabricated nanofibers are also discussed, in addition, to analyze the piezoelectric results of the targeted nanocomposite.
Performance of mobile networks with wireless channel unreliability and resource insufficiency

New closed-form formulas for the call complete probability and the probability density function (pdf) of the completed call holding time (CCHT) are developed under the concurrent impacts of the resource insufficiency as well as the wireless link unreliability in the wireless mobile networks performance evaluation. The results are obtained with the general scenario, i.e. general call holding time, general cell residence time and the generalized wireless channel model. The analysis result is validated by the simulation model under typical call holding time and cell residence time distributions, Gilbert-Elliott or Fritchman wireless channel model. The comparison indicates that the wireless networks performance will be greatly overestimated without taking into account the unreliable wireless link effect.
Comparing the Effects of Auditory Deprivation and Sign Language within the Auditory and Visual Cortex

To investigate neural plasticity resulting from early auditory deprivation and use of American Sign Language, we measured responses to visual stimuli in deaf signers, hearing signers, and hearing nonsigners using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We examined compensatory hypertrophy (changes in the responsivity/size of visual cortical areas) and cross-modal plasticity (changes in auditory cortex responses to visual stimuli). We measured the volume of early visual areas (V1, V2, V3, V4, and MT+). We also measured the amplitude of responses within these areas, and within the auditory cortex, to a peripheral visual motion stimulus that was attended or ignored. We found no major differences between deaf and hearing subjects in the size or responsivity of early visual areas. In contrast, within the auditory cortex, motion stimuli evoked significant responses in deaf subjects, but not in hearing subjects, in a region of the right auditory cortex corresponding to Brodmann's areas 41, 42, and 22. This hemispheric selectivity may be due to a predisposition for the right auditory cortex to process motion; earlier studies report a right hemisphere bias for auditory motion in hearing subjects. Visual responses within the auditory cortex of deaf subjects were stronger for attended than ignored stimuli, suggesting top-down processes. Hearing signers did not show visual responses in the auditory cortex, indicating that cross-modal plasticity can be attributed to auditory deprivation rather than sign language experience. The largest effects of auditory deprivation occurred within the auditory cortex rather than the visual cortex, suggesting that the absence of normal input is necessary for large-scale cortical reorganization to occur.
The antioxidant tempol ameliorates arterial medial calcification in uremic rats: Important role of oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of vascular calcification in chronic kidney disease

Vascular calcification is closely related to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Accumulating data indicate that oxidative stress is associated with dysfunction of various organs, including cardiovascular diseases in chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, it remains undetermined if oxidative stress induced by uremia promotes arterial medial calcification. The present study investigated the role of oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of arterial medial calcification in uremic rats. Rats with uremia induced by adenine‐rich diet progressively developed arterial medial calcification, which was accompanied by time‐dependent increases in both aortic and systemic oxidative stress. Immunohistochemical and biochemical analyses showed that the arterial medial calcification progressed in a time‐dependent manner that is parallel to the osteogenic transdifferentiation of vascular smooth muscle cells. Accumulation of oxidative stress was also identified in the calcified regions. Time‐course studies indicated that both oxidative stress and hyperphosphatemia correlated with arterial medial calcification. Tempol, an antioxidant, ameliorated osteogenic transdifferentiation of vascular smooth muscle cells and arterial medial calcification in uremic rats, together with reduction in aortic and systemic oxidative stress levels, without affecting serum biochemical parameters. Our data suggest that oxidative stress induced by uremia can play a role in the pathogenesis of vascular calcification in CKD, and that antioxidants such as tempol are potentially useful in preventing the progression of vascular calcification in CKD. © 2012 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research
Ensuring fair downlink allocation in modern access networks: The XG-PON framework

The fairness aspect on handling user data flows in modern broadband telecommunication networks is of paramount importance since it strongly affects the quality of the provided services. In this work, the fairness provisioning is investigated in a competitive telecommunication field such as the passive optical networks (PONs). Intending to resolve unequal resource allocation in the downstream data delivery, a fair bandwidth assignment scheme is devised and evaluated. The Max-Min fairness concept is applied in order to determine the best effort (BE) bandwidth allocation of each optical network unit (ONU) in the optical line terminal (OLT) side. Simulation results indicate the benefits of utilizing the proposed resource allocation technique in terms of fair bandwidth distribution.
Introduction to Property Testing

Property testing is concerned with the design of superfast algorithms for the structural analysis of large quantities of data. The aim is to unveil global features of the data, such as determining whether the data have a particular property or estimating global parameters. Remarkably, it is possible to achieve this aim by accessing only a small portion of the data. Property testing focuses on properties and parameters that go beyond simple statistics. This book provides an extensive and authoritative introduction to property testing. It provides a wide range of algorithmic techniques for the design and analysis of tests for algebraic properties, properties of Boolean functions, graph properties, and properties of distributions.