Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of platelet lysate on the functional and molecular characteristics of mesenchymal stem cells isolated from adipose tissue.

BACKGROUND Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are non-hematopoietic, adult, fibroblast-like, multipotent cells that are plastic adherent in standard culture conditions. They can be isolated from several tissues, but it is always necessary to expand them for clinical practice. AIM We investigated the effect of human platelet lysate (hPL) on the expansion of human MSCs isolated from adipose tissue (AT), comparing it with fetal bovine serum (FBS) and human platelet-poor plasma (hPPP). MATERIALS AND METHODS Human AT-MSCs, hPL and hPPP were obtained from 7 healthy subjects. AT-MSCs were seeded at 1500 cells/cm(2) and cultured in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium supplemented with 10% FBS, 10% hPPP or 10% hPL. Cells were harvested, counted and analyzed by flow cytometry every 7 days for 5 passages (P). The differentiation assays, RNA isolation and co-culture with allogeneic lymphocytes were performed at the end of P2. RESULTS AT-MSCs achieved a better proliferation rate when cultured with hPL than with hPPP or FBS (20 ±2 versus 8 ±3 and 6 ±3, respectively, at the end of P5 [p<0.01]). hPL preserved the differentiation capacity and typical expression of surface antigens, avoiding the risks associated with the use of animal derivatives. AT-MSCs demonstrated a stronger inhibitory effect on lymphocyte proliferation with hPL than with other culture conditions, even at a AT-MSCs:T cells ratio of 1:10. The transcriptional level of matrix metalloproteinase 2, used to evaluate stemness, was very high in all conditions tested. CONCLUSIONS hPL represents an effective and safe supplement for MSC expansion to be used in the clinical setting.
Advances in reproductive biotechnologies

In recent times, reproductive biotechnologies have emerged and started to replace the conventional techniques. It is noteworthy that for sustained livestock productivity, it is imperative to start using these techniques for facing the increasing challenges for productivity, reproduction and health with impending environment conditions. These recent biotechniques, both in male and female, have revolutionized and opened avenues for studying and manipulating the reproductive process both in vitro and in vivo in various livestock species for improving tis efficiency. This review attempts to highlight pros and cons, on the recent developments in reproductive biotechnologies, both in male and female in livestock species.
Attitudes about Addiction: A National Study of Addiction Educators

The following study, funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), utilized the Addiction Belief Inventory (ABI; Luke, Ribisl, Walton, & Davidson, 2002) to examine addiction attitudes in a national sample of U.S. college/university faculty teaching addiction-specific courses (n = 215). Results suggest that addiction educators view substance abuse as a coping mechanism rather than a moral failure, and are ambivalent about calling substance abuse or addiction a disease. Most do not support individual efficacy toward recovery, the ability to control use, or social use after treatment. Modifiers of addiction educator attitudes include level of college education; teaching experience; licensure/certification, and whether the educator is an addiction researcher. Study implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.
Female Labor Force Participation in Asia: Key Trends, Constraints, and Opportunities

Key Messages • In Asia, female labor force participation ranges from 16% in Afghanistan to 83% in Nepal, while male labor force participation ranges from 52% in Timor-Leste to 89% in Nepal. Women’s participation in the labor force has remained low despite significant economic growth, declining fertility rates, and improved female education. • Patterns in the data suggest several prominent constraints to increasing female labor force participation. Social norms emphasize women’s domestic responsibilities, limit mobility, restrict the subset of jobs considered appropriate for women, and impede their access to information. • Evidence suggests that job quotas, expanding access to information, creating higher returns to labor, and putting free trade policies in place can improve female labor force participation. Further research on vocational training, better matching of jobs to skills, the granting of parental leave or flexible working hours, and facilitating mobility will shed light on these promising interventions for increasing labor force participation of women. • More rigorous evaluation of existing and proposed policies is needed, and further research, access to better data, and pilot testing of new policies will help to ensure identification of clear and effective channels en’s participation in the labor force.
Skeletal Muscle Satellite Cells Are Committed to Myogenesis and Do Not Spontaneously Adopt Nonmyogenic Fates

The developmental potential of skeletal muscle stem cells (satellite cells) remains controversial. The authors investigated satellite cell developmental potential in single fiber and clonal cultures derived from MyoD iCre/+;R26R EYFP/+ muscle, in which essentially all satellite cells are permanently labeled. Approximately 60% of the clones derived from cells that co-purified with muscle fibers spontaneously underwent adipogenic differentiation. These adipocytes stained with Oil-Red-O and expressed the terminal differentiation markers, adipsin and fatty acid binding protein 4, but did not express EYFP and were therefore not of satellite cell origin. Satellite cells mutant for either MyoD or Myf-5 also maintained myogenic programming in culture and did not adopt an adipogenic fate. Incorporation of additional wash steps prior to muscle fiber plating virtually eliminated the non-myogenic cells but did not reduce the number of adherent Pax7+ satellite cells. More than half of the adipocytes observed in cultures from Tie2-Cre mice were recombined, further demonstrating a non-satellite cell origin. Under adipogenesis-inducing conditions, satellite cells accumulated cytoplasmic lipid but maintained myogenic protein expression and did not fully execute the adipogenic differentiation program, distinguishing them from adipocytes observed in muscle fiber cultures. The authors conclude that skeletal muscle satellite cells are committed to myogenesis and do not spontaneously adopt an adipogenic fate.
Conjugated Estrogens and Tibolone Modify the Gonadotrophin Glycosylation Pattern in Postmenopausal Women

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the changes in the percentage of glycosylation of FSH and LH when using conjugated estrogens and tibolone as hormonal therapy (HT) in postmenopausal compared with regular menstrual cycles. Design: The study had three groups, with 10 participants in each group. The control group consisted of 10 women with normal menstrual cycles, a second group with 10 postmenopausal patients who received conjugated estrogens (Premarin 0.625 mg), and a third group had 10 patients who received tibolone (Livial 2.5 mg). All patients had hormonal determinations before and 6 months after the use of HT. Concavalin-A was used to separate the different glycosylated species of gonadotrophins, defined as unbound (UB: triantennary and bisecting oligosaccharides), weakly bound (WB: biantennary and truncated oligosaccharides), and firmly bound isoforms (FB: hybrid- and high-mannose-type oligosaccharides) in patients serum. Elusions containing the fractions with the isoforms were concentrated using Centriprep membranes (Amicon, Beverly, Mass., USA) and the different gonadotrophins isoforms were quantified by chemiluminescence using an automated system Immulite. Results: The pattern of distribution of gonadotrophins glycosylation in patients treated with conjugated estrogens and tibolone was similar to that observed in the control group with normal menstrual cycles, although with different glycosylation percentage. When the glycosylation percentages were compared for FSH, in the fraction UB the glycosylation did not have significant differences, but the fraction WB that has isoforms with high amounts of oligosaccharides showed a different percentage of glycosylation, where the recovery percentage was bigger with tibolone use (p < 0.05). The FB fraction had similar hormonal glycosylation with estrogens and tibolone use. When compared, LH glycosylation showed significant differences (p < 0.05) in the fraction UB with a bigger glycosylation degree, and in the fraction FB with a smaller glycosylation percentage, both in the tibolone group compared with conjugated estrogens use. Conclusions: Our results show that there are different percentages of glycosylation of gonadotrophins depending on type of HT (conjugated estrogens vs tibolone), and this could be of utility in young women with ovarian problem since to know the isoform that more favors to cellular activity could help a better therapeutic.
Vers un système de traduction automatique : français/langue des signes française (TLF) [Towards a French/French Sign Language Machine-Translation System (TLF)]

We present a work in the framewok of machine translation from French to French Sign Language (FSL) with synthesis of gestures through a virtual agent. We first give some descriptive and theoretical elements about the FSL. Then we propose a formalization of the standard part of the FSL lexicon as well as propositions concerning some morpho-syntactic phenomena. Then we present the machine translation system based on interlingua representation system "TiLT" developed at France Telecom R&D and the adaptation of its generation module to FSL. We end with the avatar technology also developed at France Telecom R & D and its FSL treatment.
Planar Array Waveguide Auto-Alignment Based on Adaptive Evolution Optimization Method

The new active alignment technique was developed for planar lightwave circuit platform. The technique was successfully applied to the small spot-size laser diode align to 9 mum-diameter core size of the planar waveguide. This new auto-alignment procedure is designed which be based on an evolutionary optimization method. While the self-adaptive adjustment is created, it give the efficient alignment which can be obtained with the advantages of active alignment (low excess loss, good loss uniformity and high yield) and the time consuming is extremely reduced. The rough mesh-scanning (x-y axis) was initialized to the adaptive evolutionary search, and then the virtual cubic was created in searching space. The vertices and centre of cubic were searched. Then the virtual cubic will be moved until the center of virtual cubic has minimum excess loss. In case of the consecutive center of cubic is the same point, the size of cubic will be scaled in each dimension independently. The scaling factor will be self-selected and based on the prior information of alignment process to reach the global optimum point. This yields is fast and high repeatability alignment that suit for a large-volume manufacturing
Paeoniflorin inhibited the tumor invasion and metastasis in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells.

OBJECTIVE Evidence suggests that paeoniflorin may be involved in anticancer activities. Here, we have investigated the effects of paeoniflorin and correlative mechanisms on anti-invasion and anti-metastasis in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell lines. MATERIALS AND METHODS In the current study, we have applied 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay to determine the proliferative effect of HepG2 and Bel-7402, two human hepatoma cell lines, and we have established a boyden chamber assay, a wound healing assay and cell adhesion assay to detect and quantify the invasion, metastasis and adhesion of both HepG2 and Bel-7402. In addition, we have analyzed the protein expression of matrix metalloproteinas (MMP)-9, E-cadherin (E-cad) and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) in both cell lines through western blot analysis. RESULTS Paeoniflorin (6. 25-200 µM) had inhibitory effect on the growth of HepG2 and Bel-7402 cell lines, and reduced significantly invasion, metastasis and adhesion of HCC cell lines. In addition, paeoniflorin decreased the expression of MMP-9 and ERK in HepG2 and Bel-7402 cells, and increased expression of E-cad in both cell lines. CONCLUSIONS Paeoniflorin is effective anti-metastatic and anti-invasive agent for suppressing HCC invasion and metastasis (Fig. 5, Ref. 30).
Broad spectrum antimicrobial activity of a new multi-purpose disinfecting solution.

PURPOSE There has been increasing awareness of the need for more powerful contact lens disinfectants, ideally having low toxicity and allergenicity to ocular tissue. Opti-Free Express with ALDOX Multi-Purpose Disinfecting Solution (MPDS) was recently marketed as a new multi-purpose disinfecting solution for soft contact lenses. MPDS contains two antimicrobial agents, polyquaternium-1 and myristamidopropyl dimethylamine, to broaden the range of antimicrobial activity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of MPDS against microorganisms that have been reported as contact lens and lens case contaminants and causative agents of microbial keratitis. METHODS MPDS was challenged with high numbers of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, yeast, mold, and Acanthamoeba. Several lots of product were challenged with at least three separate inocula of each isolate. After exposure to the disinfecting solution, a sample was removed from the product and plated for survivors by suitable recovery methods. The plates were incubated and the number of survivors was enumerated. RESULTS The results showed that MPDS was bactericidal, fungicidal and amoebicidal against an extensive variety of environmental contaminants of lens care accessories and ocular pathogens. MPDS was capable of killing a broad spectrum of microorganisms. The log reduction exceeded the primary criteria for disinfecting products and produced a notable reduction of other clinical and environmental isolates as well. CONCLUSIONS Opti-Free Express MPDS contains antimicrobial agents that can kill an extensive spectrum of many different types of microorganisms that may contaminate contact lenses and solutions.
Lung macrophages from bacille Calmette–Guérin‐vaccinated guinea pigs suppress T cell proliferation but restrict intracellular growth of M. tuberculosis after recombinant guinea pig interferon‐γ activation

The guinea pig model of low‐dose pulmonary tuberculosis has been used to study the pathogenesis of infection as well as the mechanisms of bacille Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine‐induced resistance. We investigated the function of lung cells from naive and BCG‐vaccinated guinea pigs after enzymatic digestion of lung tissue with collagenase and DNase I. The total lung digest cells proliferated poorly to purified protein derivative (PPD) but comparatively better to ConA as assessed by [3H]‐thymidine uptake. However, the non‐adherent population obtained after plastic adherence of lung digests showed an enhanced response to concanavalin A (ConA) and PPD. Therefore, proliferation to ConA and PPD of nylon wool‐purified T cells co‐cultured with peritoneal (PMøs), alveolar (AMøs) or lung macrophages (LMøs) was assessed. Co‐cultures of lung T cells and PMøs showed maximum proliferation to PPD, whereas proliferation was suppressed significantly by the addition of AMøs or LMøs. The response of T cells to ConA was unaffected in co‐cultures. Incubation of co‐cultures with recombinant guinea pig interferon‐γ (rgpIFN‐γ) did not reverse the suppression. In contrast, rgpIFN‐γ‐treated plastic adherent LMøs that were non‐specific esterase‐positive were capable of reducing the intracellular growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Similarly, total, non‐adherent and adherent lung digest cells from BCG‐vaccinated guinea pigs showed IFN‐γ and tumour necrosis factor (TNF)‐α mRNA expression in response to ConA, lipopolysaccharide or PPD by reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction followed by release of TNF protein but not IFN. These studies indicate that rgp‐IFN‐γ‐treated lung tissue macrophages from BCG‐vaccinated guinea pigs are defective for inducing antigen‐specific proliferation in T cells, but control the intracellular accumulation of virulent M. tuberculosis.
SSFN: Self Size-estimating Feed-forward Network and Low Complexity Design

We design a self size-estimating feed-forward network (SSFN) using a joint optimization approach for estimation of number of layers, number of nodes and learning of weight matrices at a low computational complexity. In the proposed approach, SSFN grows from a small-size network to a large-size network. The increase in size from small-size to large-size guarantees a monotonically decreasing cost with addition of nodes and layers. The optimization approach uses a sequence of layer-wise target-seeking non-convex optimization problems. Using `lossless flow property' of some activation functions, such as rectified linear unit (ReLU), we analytically find regularization parameters in the layer-wise non-convex optimization problems. Closed-form analytic expressions of regularization parameters allow to avoid tedious cross-validations. The layer-wise non-convex optimization problems are further relaxed to convex optimization problems for ease of implementation and analytical tractability. The convex relaxation helps to design a low-complexity algorithm for construction of the SSFN. We experiment with eight popular benchmark datasets for sound and image classification tasks. Using extensive experiments we show that the SSFN can self-estimate its size using the low-complexity algorithm. The size of SSFN varies significantly across the eight datasets.
Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Channel Allocation for Wireless LANs with Graph Convolutional Networks

To enhance the network throughput of densely deployed wireless local area networks (WLANs), coordinated control methods of access points (APs) have recently been discussed, especially within the IEEE 802.11 Extremely High Throughput Study Group. This paper presents a deep reinforcement learning-based channel allocation scheme using graph convolutional networks (GCNs), as a coordinated control method of APs. In densely deployed WLANs, the number of observable topologies of APs is extremely high, and thus, we extract the features of the topological structures based on GCNs. We apply GCNs to a contention graph where APs within their carrier sensing ranges are connected to extract the features of carrier sensing relationships. Additionally, to improve the learning speed, especially in an early stage of learning, we employ a game theory-based method to collect training data, independent of the neural network model. The simulation results indicate that the proposed method can allocate channels with higher throughput when compared to existing methods.
Stay or Switch: Competitive Online Algorithms for Energy Plan Selection in Energy Markets with Retail Choice

Energy markets with retail choice enable customers to switch energy plans among competitive retail suppliers. Despite the promising benefits of more affordable prices and better savings to customers, there appears subsided participation in energy retail markets from residential customers. One major reason is the complex online decision-making process for selecting the best energy plan from a multitude of options that hinders average consumers. In this paper, we shed light on the online energy plan selection problem by providing effective competitive online algorithms. We first formulate the online energy plan selection problem as a metrical task system problem with temporally dependent switching costs. For the case of constant cancellation fee, we present a 3-competitive deterministic online algorithm and a 2-competitive randomized online algorithm for solving the energy plan selection problem. We show that the two competitive ratios are the best possible among deterministic and randomized online algorithms, respectively. We further extend our online algorithms to the case where the cancellation fee is linearly proportional to the residual contract duration. Through empirical evaluations using real-world household and energy plan data, we show that our deterministic online algorithm can produce on average 14.6% cost saving, as compared to 16.2% by the offline optimal algorithm, while our randomized online algorithm can further improve cost saving by up to 0.5%.
[Vestibular pathology associated with noise-induced inner ear impairment].

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the pathological status of the vestibular system associated with noise-induced inner ear impairment. METHODS Totally 68 patients with noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) who presented with vestibular symptoms including vertigo, dizziness, and chronic disequilibrium were screened. All patients underwent a series of conventional vestibular function tests and vestibular autorotation test and the results were retrospectively reviewed and evaluated. RESULTS Sixty-eight (14.5%) patients with NIHL were identified among 469 patients with vertigo, dizziness, or imbalance. A pure tone hearing threshold of patients with vertigo and NIHL at 4000 Hz were between 30 dB HL and 80 dB HL with an average threshold of (46.7 +/- 17.6) dB HL in left ear and (37.3 +/- 16.7) dB HL in right ear. Patients with symmetrical hearing loss at 4000 Hz accounted for 41.7% and those with asymmetrical loss accounted for 58.3%. Vestibular pathologies included benign positional paroxysmal vertigo (45.7%), unilateral decreased caloric responses (20.0%), bilateral decreased caloric responses (26.7%), abnormal vestibulo-spinal reflex function (28.6%), vestibular function response hyperactivity (3.0%), and abnormal vestibulo-ocular reflex presentation at high frequencies (97.0%). CONCLUSIONS Loud acoustic stimulation not only damages the cochlea but also causes clear functional impairment to the vestibular end organs. Although the vestibular pathology is not correlated with the severity of the hearing loss, it correlates with the subjective symptoms of the vestibular system.
Learning from Context: Exploiting and Interpreting File Path Information for Better Malware Detection

Machine learning (ML) used for static portable executable (PE) malware detection typically employs per-file numerical feature vector representations as input with one or more target labels during training. However, there is much orthogonal information that can be gleaned from the \textit{context} in which the file was seen. In this paper, we propose utilizing a static source of contextual information -- the path of the PE file -- as an auxiliary input to the classifier. While file paths are not malicious or benign in and of themselves, they do provide valuable context for a malicious/benign determination. Unlike dynamic contextual information, file paths are available with little overhead and can seamlessly be integrated into a multi-view static ML detector, yielding higher detection rates at very high throughput with minimal infrastructural changes. Here we propose a multi-view neural network, which takes feature vectors from PE file content as well as corresponding file paths as inputs and outputs a detection score. To ensure realistic evaluation, we use a dataset of approximately 10 million samples -- files and file paths from user endpoints of an actual security vendor network. We then conduct an interpretability analysis via LIME modeling to ensure that our classifier has learned a sensible representation and see which parts of the file path most contributed to change in the classifier's score. We find that our model learns useful aspects of the file path for classification, while also learning artifacts from customers testing the vendor's product, e.g., by downloading a directory of malware samples each named as their hash. We prune these artifacts from our test dataset and demonstrate reductions in false negative rate of 32.3% at a $10^{-3}$ false positive rate (FPR) and 33.1% at $10^{-4}$ FPR, over a similar topology single input PE file content only model.