Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Activin A Protects Midbrain Neurons in the 6-Hydroxydopamine Mouse Model of Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease characterized by a significant loss of dopaminergic neurons within the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) and a subsequent loss of dopamine (DA) within the striatum. Despite advances in the development of pharmacological therapies that are effective at alleviating the symptoms of PD, the search for therapeutic treatments that halt or slow the underlying nigral degeneration remains a particular challenge. Activin A, a member of the transforming growth factor β superfamily, has been shown to play a role in the neuroprotection of midbrain neurons against 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) in vitro, suggesting that activin A may offer similar neuroprotective effects in in vivo models of PD. Using robust stereological methods, we found that intrastriatal injections of 6-OHDA results in a significant loss of both TH positive and NeuN positive populations in the SNpc at 1, 2, and 3 weeks post-lesioning in drug naïve mice. Exogenous application of activin A for 7 days, beginning the day prior to 6-OHDA administration, resulted in a significant survival of both dopaminergic and total neuron numbers in the SNpc against 6-OHDA-induced toxicity. However, we found no corresponding protection of striatal DA or dopamine transporter (DAT) expression levels in animals receiving activin A compared to vehicle controls. These results provide the first evidence that activin A exerts potent neuroprotection in a mouse model of PD, however this neuroprotection may be localized to the midbrain.
Immunohistochemical localization of steroidogenic enzymes in human follicle following xenotransplantation of the human ovarian cortex into NOD‐SCID mice

There have been reports of successful follicular growth following xenogenic transplantation of the human ovarian cortex into immunodeficient mice. In this study, we examined the immunohistochemical expression and localization of steroidogenic enzymes in the graft of nonpathological human ovary following xenogenic transplantation into nonobese diabetic severe combined immune deficient (NOD‐SCID) mice. We studied human follicles following xenotransplantation into NOD‐SCID mice using immunohistochemistry antibodies against the cell proliferation marker (Ki 67), steroidogenic enzymes P450 cholesterol side chain cleavage (P450 scc), 3β‐hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (3β‐HSD), cytochrome P450 17α hydroxylase (P450 c17), cytochrome P450 aromatase (P450 arom), androgen receptor (AR), estrogen receptor (ER), and Ad4‐binding protein (Ad4BP), a transcription factor for all steroidogenic P450 genes. In the pre‐antral follicles of these grafts, Ki 67 and Ad4BP were detected in both the theca and granulosa cell layer. P450 scc, P450 c17, 3β‐HSD, and AR were present in only the theca cell layer, observations of which were consistent with the findings of nonpathological human ovarian cortex. P450 arom and ER were not detected in these grafts, however, and these follicles did not possess any specific feature of a dominant follicle. These findings suggest that the expression of steroidogenic enzymes in human follicles following xenogenic transplantation into NOD‐SCID mice is similar to that of nonpathological human ovaries. However, these follicles do not possess any features of dominant follicles, which are known to develop into the corpus luteum. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 65: 67–72, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Antileishmanial Activities of Stearylamine-Bearing Liposomes

ABSTRACT Here we report the activity of liposomes comprising egg phosphatidylcholine (PC) and stearylamine (SA) against Leishmania donovani parasites. Both promastigotes and intracellular amastigotes in vitro and in vivo were susceptible to SA-PC liposomes. A single dose of 55 mg of SA-PC liposomes/animal could significantly reduce the hepatic parasite burden by 85 and 68% against recent and established experimental visceral leishmaniasis, respectively, suggesting their strong therapeutic potential.
Geometric Grouping of Repeated Elements within Images

The objective of this work is the automatic detection and grouping of imaged elements which repeat on a plane in a scene (for example tiled floorings). It is shown that structures that repeat on a scene plane are related by particular parametrized transformations in perspective images. These image transformations provide powerful grouping constraints, and can be used at the heart of hypothesize and verify grouping algorithms. The parametrized transformations are global across the image plane and may be computed without knowledge of the pose of the plane or camera calibration. Parametrized transformations are given for severalcl asses of repeating operation in the world as well as groupers based on these. These groupers are demonstrated on a number of real images, where both the elements and the grouping are determined automatically. It is shown that the repeating element can be learnt from the image, and hence provides an image descriptor. Also, information on the plane pose, such as its vanishing line, can be recovered from the grouping.
Cultured Murine Cerebral Microvascular Endothelial Cells Contain von Willebrand Factor‐Positive Weibel‐Palade Bodies and Support Rapid Cytokine‐Induced Neutrophil Adhesion

Objective: To obtain cultures of rodent brain microvascular endothelium (BMEC) that retain endothelial cell‐specific markers and functions for two purposes: investigating whether these cultures contain endothelial cell‐specific storage granules or Weibel‐Palade bodies and have the ability to rapidly bind neutrophils upon cytokine induction; and setting the groundwork for future studies examining endothelium derived from mice strains with targeted deficiencies in endothelial adhesion molecules.
Leukocyte subpopulations elicited by a nontumorigenic variant of B16 melanoma: their role in direct rejection of the melanoma and in prevention of tumorigenesis in Winn assays

The mechanisms by which various leukocyte subpopulations elicited by an immunogenic, nontumorigenic subclone (C3471) of B16 melanoma caused rejection of the tumorigenic parental melanoma (B559), were investigated. Leukocytes from C3471-immune mice were co-injected with B559 tumor cells in Winn assays into normal syngeneic recipients. Tumor formation by B559 cells was prevented when C3471-immune (a) unfractionated peritoneal leukocytes, or (b) glass-adherent peritoneal cells (90% macrophages), or (c) nylon wool purified nonadherent cells (95% Thy-1.2+) were used in the Winn assays. If the C3471-immunized mice were treated with antithymocyte serum before harvest of their peritoneal cells, none of these leukocyte populations were effective in the Winn assay. However, macrophages from these immunologically compromised donors regained their tumoricidal activity after incubation in vitro with T lymphocytes from untreated C3471-immune donors; similarly, C3471-immune lymphocytes rendered normal resident peritoneal macrophages tumoricidal in Winn assays. When C3471-immunized mice were irradiated or treated with antithymocyte serum before direct challenge with B559 cells, melanomas developed, thus providing additional evidence for the need for intact T cell function to establish immunity against the melanoma. Furthermore, when Winn assay recipients were treated with antithymocyte serum, neither C3471-immune macrophages nor T cells were able to prevent tumor formation. These findings indicate that antithymocyte serum-sensitive (Thy-1.2+) lymphocytes are necessary both for the generation of tumoricidal leukocytes in C3471-immunized mice, and for the rejection of B559 melanoma by demonstrably tumoricidal macrophages in Winn assay recipients. In addition, long- lasting immunity developed in 50% of the normal mice that had received both C3471-immune peritoneal cells and B559 tumor cells, as manifested by their capacity to reject a second challenge with B559 cells 40-60 d later.
The antinociceptive role of central arginine vasopressin is involved in the endogenous opiate peptide, serotonin and acetylcholine systems

Our previous work has demonstrated that arginine vasopressin (AVP) plays a role in pain modulation. The present study investigated which kinds of neuropeptides and neurotransmitters in central nervous system might be involved in AVP antinociceptive role in the rat. The results showed that (1) intraventricular injection (icv) of V1 receptor antagonist [d(CH2)5Tyr(Me)AVP] and V2 receptor antagonist [d(CH2)5[D-Ile2, Ile4, Ala9-NH2]AVP] blocked the antinociceptive effect induced by AVP (icv), (2) the opiate recaptor antagonist (naloxone) reversed the antinociceptive effect induced by AVP (icv), and (3) both the serotonin receptor antagonist (cypoheptadine) and M receptor antagonist (atropine) could attenuate the antinociceptive effect induced by AVP (icv); but (4) oxytocin, dopamine, N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA), γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), N, α or β receptor antagonist did not influence the antinociceptive effect induced by AVP (icv). The data suggested that AVP antinociceptive role was involved in the endogenous opiate peptide, serotonin and acetylcholine systems in central nervous system.
Towards a Scalable Enterprise Content Analytics Platform

With the tremendous growth in the volume of semi-structured and unstructured content within enterprises (e.g., email archives, customer support databases, etc.), there is increasing interest in harnessing this content to power search and business intelligence applications. Traditional enterprise infrastruture or analytics is geared towards analytics on structured data (in support of OLAP-driven reporting and analysis) and is not designed to meet the demands of large-scale compute-intensive analytics over semi-structured content. At the IBM Almaden Research Center, we are developing an “enterprise content analytics platform” that leverages the Hadoop map-reduce framework to support this emerging class of analytic workloads. Two core components of this platform are SystemT, a high-performance rule-based information extraction engine, and Jaql, a declarative language for expressing transformations over semi-structured data. In this paper, we present our overall vision of the platform, describe how SystemT and Jaql ﬁt into this vision, and brieﬂy describe some of the other components that are under active development.
On the Feasibility of Wireless Shadowing Correlation Models

There is emerging interest in more detailed models for wireless shadowing, which may include nonconstant shadowing variance, non-lognormal shadowing, and, most importantly, correlation between paths; we focus on this last aspect. This paper offers a structured synthesis of the existing literature on autocorrelation and cross-correlation in wireless shadowing and attempts to fill existing gaps in the analysis of correlation models. We make a survey of these models and argue, as has previously been observed, that certain models are not mathematically feasible, which may lead to problems in simulations or analysis. We then state some theorems that test whether the models are positive semidefinite, which is the central necessary condition for feasibility, and evaluate the existing models accordingly. Additionally, we evaluate the models according to their physical plausibility, which leads us to choose one model among many as arguably the best one in existence so far. This paper should be useful as a guide on how to implement shadowing correlation in one's work, how to choose an appropriate correlation model, and how to modify existing models or create new models so that they fulfill mathematical feasibility.
Supporting Distributed Feed-Following Apps over Edge Devices

In feed-following applications such as Twitter and Facebook, users (consumers) follow a large number of other users (producers) to get personalized feeds, generated by blending producers- feeds. With the proliferation of Cloud-connected smart edge devices such as smartphones, producers and consumers of many feed-following applications reside on edge devices and the Cloud. An important design goal of such applications is to minimize communication (and energy) overhead of edge devices. In this paper, we abstract distributed feed-following applications as a view maintenance problem, with the goal of optimally placing the views on edge devices and in the Cloud to minimize communication overhead between edge devices and the Cloud. The view placement problem for general network topology is NP Hard; however, we show that for the special case of Cloud-edge topology, locally optimal solutions yield a globally optimal view placement solution. Based on this powerful result, we propose view placement algorithms that are highly efficient, yet provably minimize global network cost. Compared to existing works on feed-following applications, our algorithms are more general--they support views with selection, projection, correlation (join) and arbitrary black-box operators, and can even refer to other views. We have implemented our algorithms within a distributed feed-following architecture over real smartphones and the Cloud. Experiments over real datasets indicate that our algorithms are highly scalable and orders-of-magnitude more efficient than existing strategies for optimal placement. Further, our results show that optimal placements generated by our algorithms are often several factors better than simpler schemes.
Effects of Cultivars and Storage Temperatures on Shelf-life of Leaf Lettuces

Shelf-life and quality changes of four leaf lettuce cultivars packaged and stored at four different temperatures (0, 8, 16 and ) were evaluated. Leaf lettuces were packaged in non-perforated polypropylene film (thickness 0.05 mm) bags. Weight loss, respiration rate, freshness degree, pigment content, and surface color were determined. At the storage temperature of , the weight loss, degree of freshness, pigment content, and change of surface color on packaged leaf lettuces showed no significant difference when compared with all other leaf lettuces. Meanwhile, an increase in storage temperature was observed with the quality changes of each flesh leaf lettuce. The leaf lettuces under storage conditions at showed a difference in weight loss of the different types of leaf lettuces during a short storage period. However, there was no clear tendency in weight loss in different types of leaf lettuces as compared with each storage temperature. The rate of respiration and the contents of pigments in the four types of leaf lettuces also showed significant difference as the storage temperature increased.
Rapid optical fabrication with CCOS

In the next decades, we foresee the need for the fabrication of many large asphenc mirrors for space and astronomy applications. Itek Optical Systems has developed computer controlled optical surfacing for rapidly fabricating such optics. Recently, these operations have been improved with the development of a sheaf of new processes based on a greatly increased understanding of the physics of glass surfacing. These improvements have already produced a reduction of large optics surfacing time and the technology points towards further reduction.
Wear Resistant Polydopamine/PTFE Nanoparticle Composite Coating for Dry Lubrication Applications

This dissertation presents an investigation into the effect of nanoparticle fillers and a polydopamine adhesive primer on the tribological performance of thin PTFE films. The principal objective of this investigation was to reduce wear in PTFE films, an issue which precludes the use of PTFE films in tribological applications requiring high durability. The friction and wear of the composite films were evaluated using a ball-on-flat configuration in linear reciprocating motion. It was found that the use of a polydopamine adhesive primer reduces the wear of PTFE films more than 600 times. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results show that a tenacious layer of PTFE remains adhered to the polydopamine primer, which enables the durability of the polydopamine/PTFE film. Furthermore, the combination of a polydopamine primer, Cu nanoparticle fillers in the PTFE film, and optimal fabrication processes provided a collective effect that increased the wear life of PTFE films by more than 940 times. Because of the relatively low thickness of the film, it shows great potential for use in applications where durable, thin films are desirable. Acknowledgements Philippians 4:13 states, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. It is only through Him that I have achieved this accomplishment and I am forever thankful. I would like to thank my mother, Fidelia Beckford, for her love and support; her encouragement has given me the motivation I needed to see this through to the end. Also, a special thanks to Dr. Min Zou, my graduate advisor, for her mentorship and patience the last five years. It has been a long road, but the lessons learned are invaluable to me. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with you and my fellow lab mates, Corey Thompson, Drew Fleming, and Justin Carter. To my lab mates, I can’t say that I will miss our weekly meetings, but without a doubt those discussions were very instrumental in my research. A special thanks to each of you for your collaboration and feedback when I needed it. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Electron Optics Facility (EOF) of the University of Arkansas for granting us access to their facility and equipment. Surface characterization using SEM and XPS was carried out in this facility. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grants CMS0645040 and EPS-1003970, and in part by the Arkansas Biosciences Institute. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or Arkansas Biosciences Institute. Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Fidelia Beckford.
A Time-Fractional Fourier Joint Representation-Based Parameter Estimation Method for Chirp/Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum Signal

This study proposes a parameter estimation technique based on the short-time fractional Fourier transform (STFRFT) for Chirp /Frequency Hopping (Chirp/FH) spread spectrum signal. It is able to detect and estimate parameters for Chirp/FH signal at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). At the end, a comparison between the new method and short-time Fourier transform-based method is provided to illustrate the advantages.
Implementation of the programmable low power DC-DC voltage converter by FPGA

This paper proposes a programmable dynamic voltage scaled DC-DC buck converter for integrated circuits (ICs). The proposed voltage converter does not need the band-gap voltage reference to generate a desired voltage for circuit loads. Therefore, the output voltage of the converter could be assigned by any voltage level for ICs without considering the effects of the CMOS stack limit and IC processing drift. The control unit of the proposed converter is realized by a floating-point digital compensator on a FPGA. Lab experiments show that the proposed converter can supply stable voltage levels at 1.8 V, 2.7 V and 3.3 V with variant input voltage ranging from 5 V-8 V. The load current could be supplied up to 2.5 A.
Initial Mechanical Stability of Cementless Highly-Porous Titanium Tibial Components

Cementless fixation in total knee replacement has seen limited use since reports of early failure surfaced in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, the emergence of improved biomaterials, particularly porous titanium and tantalum, has led to a renewed interest in developing a cementless tibial component to enhance long-term survivorship of the implants. Cement is commonly used to mechanically fix orthopaedic implants, but represents a weak interface between the implant and the bone. The elimination of cement and application of these new biomaterials, which theoretically provide improved stability and ultimate osseointegration, would likely result in greater knee replacement success. Additionally, the removal of the cement from this procedure would eliminate the time needed for curing, thereby minimizing surgical durations and decreasing the risk of infection. The purpose of this biomechanical study was twofold. The first goal was to assess whether vibration analysis techniques can be used to evaluate and characterize initial mechanical stability of cementless implants more accurately than the traditional method of micromotion determination, which employs linear variable differential transducers (LVDTs). The second goal was to perform an evaluative study to determine the comparative mechanical stability of five designs of cementless tibial components under mechanical loading designed to simulate in vivo forces. The test groups included a cemented Triathlon Keeled baseplate control group, three different 2-peg cementless baseplates with smooth-, mid-, and high- roughness, and a 4-peg cementless baseplate with mid-roughness.
Effect of Surface Asperity on Diffusion Bonding

The effect of surface asperity (mainly ridge height H, ridge wavelength W and aspect ratio H=W) on the diffusion bonding process was investigated. Ridge wavelength W as well as ridge height H have a significant effect on the properties of the diffusion bonded joint. The percent of bonded area increased with decreases in W and H. When the ridge height H was constant, an increase in aspect ratio H=W accelerated atomic diffusion at void surfaces and bonding interfaces, facilitated void shrinking and increased the bonded area. This can improve the strength of diffusion bonded joints. The percent of bonded area can be predicted by numerical analysis for surfaces prepared by lathe machining. In order to analyze the bonded area quantitatively, several numerical models were developed. 7-12) For pure metals with known specific diffusion and creep data, such as copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), silver (Ag), and titanium (Ti), the diffusion- bonded area can be calculated or estimated in advance. For copper specimens with nanometer-scale surface roughness, we have reported that the actual bonded area was consistent with that calculated using a numerical model, and the joints with 100% bonded area were achieved at low bonding temperatures. 13) Surface asperity can be described using three parameters: ridge height H, ridge wavelength W, and surface waviness. Previous investigations of the effect of surface asperity focused mainly on surface roughness (maximum height roughness RZ or arithmetical mean roughness Ra), in other words only the ridge height H of surface asperity was considered. The effect of ridge wavelength W has not yet been investigated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of ridge wavelength W as well as ridge height H and aspect ratio H=W on the properties of diffusion bonded joints. The applicability of numerical analysis to surfaces with different surface asperities (surface roughness RZ, ridge height H, ridge wavelength W, and aspect ratio H=W) prepared by lathe machining was analyzed. The optimum surface asperity for improved bonding is discussed.