Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cloning of Cockroach Allergen, Bla g 4, Identifies Ligand Binding Proteins (or Calycins) as a Cause of IgE Antibody Responses (*)

An allergen cloned from a Blattella germanica (German cockroach) cDNA library, encoded a 182-amino acid protein of 20,904 Da. This protein, designated B. germanica allergen 4 (Bla g 4), was expressed as a glutathione S-transferase fusion protein in Escherichia coli and purified by affinity chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography. The prevalence of serum IgE antibody to recombinant Bla g 4 in 73 cockroach allergic patients with asthma ranged from 40% (antigen binding radioimmunoassay) to 60% (plaque immunoassay). Cockroach allergic patients gave positive intradermal skin tests to recombinant Bla g 4 at concentrations of 10-10 μg/ml, whereas non-allergic controls, or cockroach allergic patients with no detectable serum IgE antibody to Bla g 4, gave negative skin tests to 1 μg/ml. Polymerase chain reaction and Southern analysis identified a 523-base pair DNA encoding Bla g 4 in both B. germanica and Periplaneta americana (American cockroach). However, Northern analysis showed that mRNA encoding Bla g 4 was transcribed in B. germanica but not in P. americana, suggesting that allergen expression was species specific. Sequence similarity searches showed that Bla g 4 was a ligand binding protein or calycin and unexpectedly revealed that this family contained several important allergens: β-lactoglobulin, from cow milk, and rat and mouse urinary proteins. Although the overall sequence homology between these proteins was low (20%), macromolecular modeling techniques were used to generate two models of the tertiary structure of Bla g 4, based on comparisons with the x-ray crystal coordinates of bilin binding protein and rodent urinary proteins. The results show that members of the calycin protein family can cause IgE antibody responses by inhalation or ingestion and are associated with asthma and food hypersensitivity.
Meta-Analysis of Outcomes of Endovascular Treatment of Infrapopliteal Occlusive Disease With Drug-Eluting Stents

Purpose To review emerging evidence regarding the use of bare metal (BMS) vs. drug-eluting stents (DES) in the treatment of infrapopliteal occlusive disease. Methods A systematic review of the literature was undertaken to identify all studies comparing stent treatments of infragenicular vessels in patients with chronic lower limb ischemia. Validated methods to assess the methodological quality of the included studies were applied. Outcome data were pooled, and combined overall effect sizes were calculated using fixed or random effects models. The search identified 4 randomized clinical trials and 2 observational studies reporting on 544 patients (287 treated with DES and 257 treated with BMS). Data are presented as the odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) and the number-needed-to-treat (NNT). Results Primary patency, freedom from target lesion revascularization, and clinical improvement at 1 year were significantly higher in the DES recipients compared to patients treated with BMS (OR 4.511, 95% CI 2.897 to 7.024, p<0.001, NNT 3.5; OR 3.238, 95% CI 2.019 to 5.192, p<0.001, NNT 6.0; and OR 1.792, 95% CI 1.039 to 3.090, p=0.036, NNT 7.3, respectively). No significant differences in limb salvage and overall survival at 1 year were identified between the groups (OR 2.008, 95% CI 0.722 to 5.585, p=0.181; OR 1.262, 95% CI 0.605 to 2.634, p=0.535, respectively). Sensitivity analyses investigating the potential effects of study design and type of DES on the combined outcome estimates validated the results. Conclusion Our analysis has demonstrated superior short-term results with DES compared with BMS, expressed by increased patency and freedom from target lesion revascularization. The influence of this finding on clinical surrogate endpoints, such as limb salvage, remains unknown.
Spectral analysis of 1H coupled 13C spectra of the amino acids: adaptive spectral library of amino acid 13C isotopomers and positional fractional 13C enrichments

The natural abundance 1H‐coupled 13C NMR spectra of all proteogenic amino acids were measured in D2O at pH* 1. The accurate 1H,13C spin‐spin coupling constants were analyzed using total‐line‐shape fitting. The obtained spectral parameters can be used to establish a spectral library of amino acid 13C isotopomers. The adaptive spectral library principle is introduced and discussed in this article. The simulated spectra can be applied to quantification of 13C isotopomer mixtures of amino acids and, thus, for exploring metabolic pathways. Also a protocol for amino acid 13C isotopomer metabolomic profiling in 13C labeled glucose feeding experiments is outlined. The approach is suggested to give invaluable information about positional fractional 13C enrichments, which are not easily available by any other method. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Blockade of TGF-beta action ameliorates renal dysfunction and histologic progression in anti-GBM nephritis.

BACKGROUND We tested whether the entire soluble extracellular domain of the human transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) type II receptor, fused to the Fc portion of human immunoglobulin G (IgG1) (Tbeta-ExR) and expressed in skeletal muscles by adenovirus-mediated gene transfer (AdTbeta-ExR), can ameliorate renal dysfunction and histologic progression in a rat experimental anti-glomerular basement membrane (GBM) nephritis. METHODS Anti-GBM nephritis was induced in Wistar Kyoto rats by an intravenous injection of anti-rat glomerular basement membrane (GBM) sera. At day 1 (24 hours after induction), AdTbeta-ExR (1 x 109 pfu/mL) was injected into the femoral muscle in the treatment group, and an adenovirus vector-expressing bacterial beta-galactosidase (AdLacZ) was injected into the control group. Then, clinical and histologic changes were examined for 3 weeks after the induction of anti-GBM nephritis. RESULTS Tbeta-ExR was detected in the serum at day 7, but the serum concentration of Tbeta-ExR had decreased below the detectable level by day 14. Although blood pressure and the degree of proteinuria were similar in both groups, the deterioration of renal function was significantly blunted in the treatment group. Crescent formation and interstitial fibrosis were also ameliorated in the treatment group. These histologic improvements were accompanied by the decreased interstitial infiltration of macrophages and the decreased alpha-smooth muscle actin (alpha-SMA)-positive cells in the glomeruli and the interstitium. CONCLUSION This study demonstrated for the first time that the blockade of TGF-beta action by AdTbeta-ExR in the early stage of anti-GBM nephritis ameliorates the clinical and histologic progression. In addition, this study shed light on the development of a specific gene therapy for human crescentic glomerulonephritis.
Energy Harvesting for In-Ear Devices Using Ear Canal Dynamic Motion

In this paper, we study the possibility of using energy harvesting from ear canal dynamic motion as a source of power to replace the use of batteries for in-ear devices. Two hand-made micropower generators capable of scavenging energy from ear canal deformation are presented in this paper: 1) a hydroelectromagnetic energy harvester and 2) a flexible piezoelectric generator. The experimental results show that 3.3 mJ of energy per mouth opening and closing cycle is available from ear canal dynamic motion. If we consider that possibly thousands of such cycles occur daily, ear canal dynamic motion could prove to be a likely source of energy for in-ear applications.
Antibiotic resistance and multidrug‐resistant efflux pumps expression in lactic acid bacteria isolated from pozol, a nonalcoholic Mayan maize fermented beverage

Abstract Pozol is a handcrafted nonalcoholic Mayan beverage produced by the spontaneous fermentation of maize dough by lactic acid bacteria. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are carriers of chromosomal encoded multidrug‐resistant efflux pumps genes that can be transferred to pathogens and/or confer resistance to compounds released during the fermentation process causing food spoiling. The aim of this study was to evaluate the antibiotic sensibility and the transcriptional expression of ABC‐type efflux pumps in LAB isolated from pozol that contributes to multidrug resistance. Analysis of LAB and Staphylococcus (S.) aureus ATCC 29213 and ATCC 6538 control strains to antibiotic susceptibility, minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC), and minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC) to ethidium bromide were based in “standard methods” whereas the ethidium bromide efflux assay was done by fluorometric assay. Transcriptional expression of efflux pumps was analyzed by RT‐PCR. LAB showed antibiotic multiresistance profiles, moreover, Lactococcus (L.) lactis and Lactobacillus (L.) plantarum displayed higher ethidium bromide efflux phenotype than S. aureus control strains. Ethidium bromide resistance and ethidium bromide efflux phenotypes were unrelated with the overexpression of lmrD in L. lactics, or the underexpression of lmrA in L. plantarum and norA in S. aureus. These findings suggest that, moreover, the analyzed efflux pumps genes, other unknown redundant mechanisms may underlie the antibiotic resistance and the ethidium bromide efflux phenotype in L. lactis and L. plantarum. Phenotypic and molecular drug multiresistance assessment in LAB may improve a better selection of the fermentation starter cultures used in pozol, and to control the antibiotic resistance widespread and food spoiling for health safety.
B-1 The Integration-Oriented Product Development Management in Japan : An Application of Product-Customer Matrix to KAO

In this study, Product-Customer Matrix is introduced after thorough literature review on the advanced concept of the value, in order to investigate how Japanese manufacturers have built the development management while emphasizing the program integrative management. For the analysis, KAO Corporation, a Japanese leading company in a household goodsindustry is chosen as an example. A series of analyses has been conducted such as a situation analysis, a situation comparison between 50 years ago and current, a comparison every ten years, and a comparison with other companies after having KAO’s products input in the Product-Customer Matrix. As a result, KAO’s business model boosting the synergy effect between B-to-B Processed Products market and B-to-C Completed Products market has been clarified. Moreover, it is also understood that KAO’s products group for B-to-C Completed Products market has wide characteristics, therefore, KAO has established the development management in accordance with it.
Modeling the Demand For and Value of OHV Recreation in Tennessee

This analysis is an extension of research undertaken for the Study Committee on OffHighway Vehicles to assess the importance of off-highway vehicle recreation to the state of Tennessee. This research aims to address a need for economic modeling focused on off-highway vehicle (OHV) recreation. With the rise in popularity of this sport and the shortage of places to participate, advanced research techniques are needed to ensure the efficient and effective management of OHV recreation in Tennessee. Travel cost techniques are used to model the demand for and value of OHV recreation. A conventional welfare measure, maximum willingness to pay, is estimated from travel cost information.
The Practicality of Employee Empowerment: Supporting a Psychologically Safe Culture

In times of workforce shortages and increasing pressures to compete, health care organizations need to advance and ameliorate their resources to ensure organizational success. Other industries have maximized empowerment initiatives as a strategy to retain and develop employees as primary stakeholders of its mission. While the notion of employee empowerment is by itself noble, for it to succeed, health care organizations must promote a culture of psychological safety to ensure a genuine commitment exists to its mission and strategies.
INCREMENTAL PARSING WITH LD/TLP‐TAGS

A main purpose of natural language systems (NL‐systems) is the simulation of human speech behavior, which divides into generation and analysis, in all kinds of situations. Humans process natural language in an incremental style, which means that sentences are generated or analyzed in a piecemeal fashion. Observations show that there are bidirectional dependencies between these processes. During parsing, hypotheses for the continuation of an utterance may be generated. During generation, the output may be parsed in order to detect ambiguities. This paper presents a two‐level incremental parsing algorithm for LD/TLP‐TAGs on the basis of Earley's context‐free parser. LD/TLP‐TAG is a new extension for TAG that increases the descriptive power of the formalism without changing its generative power. Elementary rules are split into local dominance description (LD) and linear precedence rules (TLP) allowing for generalizations of ordering constraints. The presented algorithm is used within an anticipation feedback loop for the incremental syntactic generator TAG‐GEN.
Occupational Competency as a Predictor of Labor Market Performance

Excerpt] The paper examines the suitability of occupational competency measurement as a device for enhancing the accountability of vocational education programs. In order for occupational competency tests to be used as program performance measures, they must be demonstrated to be valid predictors of labor market outcomes like earnings and wage rates and of job performance in appropriate occupations. The paper undertakes this task.
Environmental Impact of Trade Sector Growth: Evidence from Tanzania

This paper attempted to investigate whether there is Granger-causality running from trade to environment as evidenced in the changing climatic condition and land degradation. Using Tanzania as the reference, VAR-Granger-causality test was employed to rationalize the conundrum of causal-effect relationship between trade and environment. The changing climatic condition, as the proxy of both nitrous oxide emissions (in thousand metric tons of CO2 equivalent) and land degradation measured by the size of arable land were tested against trade using both exports and imports variables. The result indicated that neither of the trade variables Granger-cause the variability on gas emissions and arable land size. This suggests the possibility that all trade concerns in relation to environment to have been internalized in domestic policies to offset any likely negative consequence. Keywords—Trade, growth, impact, environment.
DAWDLE, a Forkhead-Associated Domain Gene, Regulates Multiple Aspects of Plant Development1[W]

Phosphoprotein-binding domains are found in many different proteins and specify protein-protein interactions critical for signal transduction pathways. Forkhead-associated (FHA) domains bind phosphothreonine and control many aspects of cell proliferation in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and animal cells. The Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) protein kinase-associated protein phosphatase includes a FHA domain that mediates interactions with receptor-like kinases, which in turn regulate a variety of signaling pathways involved in plant growth and pathogen responses. Screens for insertional mutations in other Arabidopsis FHA domain-containing genes identified a mutant with pleiotropic defects. dawdle (ddl) plants are developmentally delayed, produce defective roots, shoots, and flowers, and have reduced seed set. DDL is expressed in the root and shoot meristems and the reduced size of the root apical meristem in ddl plants suggests a role early in organ development.
Comparison of curvelet and contourlet transforms for retinal analysis

There has been much research about using curvelet transform for retinal analysis. Other multiscale geometrical tools, such as contourlet and wavelet, have also been used for retinal analysis, thus it is interesting to know which method performs best, especially under illumination and contrast changes. In this paper, we make a systematic comparison of curvelet and contourlet for retinal image analysis , and find the best subband irrelevant to contrast and illumination changes.
A fast MoM code for finite arrays

This paper presents the novel implementation of a general purpose Method of Moments (MoM), specialized in the treatment of finite planar arrays. The proposed implementation is fast and accurate, and exploits open source libraries and tools. It is capable of analyzing isolated structures, infinite arrays via periodic boundary conditions and finite arrays. In a subsequent phase the solution of the finite array problem is going to be accelerated via the exploitation of Characteristics/Macro Basis Functions deriving from the Array Scanning Method.
Ultrasonic Image Registration for Multi-Frequency Analysis

This paper describes ultrasonic image registration for multi-frequency analysis. The goal of our research is the portable and real time brain diagnosis under the thick-skull. The choice of ultrasonic frequency is a trade-off between spatial image resolution and imaging depth. This study shows the usability of data synthesis by employing two different frequency ultrasounds. In the first part of this study, using Fast Fourier Transform, we conclude that the synthesized image was produced from two ultrasonic images of individual objects. The purpose of the second approach of the data synthesis is to investigate three methods of ultrasonic imaging. This approach is particular interest for the design of further study intending to visualize any defects by ultrasonic methods. As the results, the synthesized image with Wavelet transform has higher efficiency than the other synthesized ones for the bone and the sulcus. In summary, this study indicates that the ultrasonic synthesized image is useful to visualize the imitated brain area. This observation is encouraging for further studies of evaluating brain for patients.
Ligand preorganization in metal ion complexation: molecular mechanics/dynamics, kinetics, and laser-excited luminescence studies of trivalent lanthanide complex formation with macrocyclic ligands TETA and DOTA.

The molecular mechanics and dynamics calculations, kinetics, and laser-excited luminescence studies were carried out for trivalent lanthanide (Ln(3+)) complexes of macrocyclic polyaminopolycarboxylate ligands TETA and DOTA (where TETA is 1,4,8,11-tetraazacyclotetradecane-1,4,8,11-tetraacetic acid and DOTA is 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid) to further understand the observed thermodynamic, kinetic, and structural properties and to examine how ligand preorganization affects metal ion complexation. Excitation spectroscopy (emission monitored at 614.0 nm) of the (7)F(0) --> (5)D(0) transition of Eu(3+) was used to study the aqueous properties of the Eu(3+)-TETA system. A stopped-flow spectrophotometric method was used to study the formation kinetics of the aqueous Ce(3+)-TETA/DOTA systems in the pH range 6.1-6.7. Molecular mechanics calculation results are consistent with the proposed mechanism of Ln(DOTA)(-) formation, i.e., formation of a carboxylate O-bonded precursor, followed by metal ion moving into the preformed macrocyclic cavity. For Ln(TETA)(-) formation, at least two carboxylate O-bonded intermediates have been predicted and Ln(3+) ion assisted reorganization of the TETA ligand is present. The calculated bond distances and overall structures of Ln(DOTA)(-) and Ln(TETA)(-) were in agreement with the single-crystal and solution NMR structural data. The origin of the difference in thermodynamic stability of Ln(DOTA)(-) and Ln(TETA)(-) complexes and the corresponding formation intermediates is mainly due to the differences in water-occupancy energy (i.e., whether there is an apical coordinated water molecule), the ligand strain energy, and the cation-ligand interaction energy. Kinetic studies revealed that the formation rates of the Ce(TETA)(-) complex are smaller at lower pH and temperature but become greater at higher pH and temperature, as compared to those of the Ce(DOTA)(-) complex. This is attributed to the lanthanide ion and both mono- and di-hydroxide ion assisted TETA conformational reorganization and higher kinetic activation parameters. The presence of a di-hydroxide ion assisted intermediate rearrangement pathway could make the Ce(TETA)(-) complex formation rate faster at higher pH, and the higher activation barrier makes Ce(TETA)(-) complex formation rate slower at lower pH, as compared to those of the Ce(DOTA)(-) complex.
Energy and Angular Distribution of Electrons Ejected from Hydrogen and Helium Gas by Protons

Differential cross sections for ejection of secondary electrons of various energies at various angles were measured for hydrogen gas bombarded by 100-kev protons and for helium gas bombarded by 50, 100, and 150-kev protons. The range of angles investtgated was 10 to 160 deg and the range of electron energies was 1 to 500 ev. A unique fixed-port, double-walled scattering chamber was used. Electrons were counted by an electron multiplier after passing through a 127 deg electrostatic analyzer. The efficiency of the detector was determined by replacing the analyzer and multiplier by a Faraday cup and making absolute measurements of cross sections differential only in angle. Comparison with the integral of the differential cross sections over all electron energies gave a value of about 78% for the efficiency. As a function of electron energy the cross sections decrease monotonically above about 2.5 ev and are uncertain below this value. All cross sections decrease monotonically with an increase in angle but are relatively constant above about 110 deg . The differential cross sections were integrated in various ways to obtain distributions over electron energy and angle, total cross sections for ionization, average energies of the ejected electrons, and the stopping crossmore » sections due to ionization. Comparisons are made with other experimental results and with theoretical treatments by the Born approximation and the Gryzinski classical theory. (auth)« less