Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A specific inhibitor of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 suppresses rat autoimmune myocarditis

Objective: Myocarditis is a serious disease, however no effective treatment exists. Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) is critical in cell recruitment and inflammation. Although inflammation is an essential pathological feature of acute myocarditis, the effects of PAI-1 inhibition on the development of acute myocarditis have not been well studied. Methods: To clarify the role of PAI-1, we used a rat experimental autoimmune myocarditis (EAM) model. Lewis rats were immunized on day 0 with porcine cardiac myosin to establish EAM. The rats with induced EAM were treated with the PAI-1 inhibitor (IMD-1622) (n = 8) or not treated (n = 6); hearts were harvested on day 21. Echocardiograms, heart weight to body weight ratios (H:B), histological examinations and in vitro studies were performed. Results: Echocardiograms indicated that the PAI-1 inhibitor improved left ventricular fractional shortening (50 ± 3%) compared with controls (36 ± 4%, p < 0.05). The inhibitor significantly reduced H:B ratios compared with controls. Pathologically, areas of myocardial cell infiltration and fibrosis in the inhibitor-treated group were significantly smaller than those in the control group. Immunohistochemistry revealed enhanced expression of adhesion molecules and inflammatory factors in non-treated EAM hearts, the inhibitor suppressed this expression. Conclusions: The PAI-1 inhibitor suppressed EAM development; thus this inhibitor is promising for treating clinical myocarditis.
Multi-objective design optimization of a surface permanent-magnet slotless alternator for small power wind generation

Over the last few decades, due to the need for clean energy production from renewable sources, wind generation has been gaining increasing importance. Efforts are being put, in particular, on the attempt to optimize the electric generation system between wind turbines and the grid. This paper reports on the development of a prototype slotless surface-permanent-magnet generator conceived for a 20 kW power station. The reasons which led to choose a slotless permanent-magnet generator topology are discussed along with the machine electromagnetic design optimization, carried out with stochastic algorithms. Finally, some preliminary test result on the prototype are reported.
Arousal From Sleep and Sympathetic Excitation During Wakefulness

Obstructive apnea during sleep elevates the set point for efferent sympathetic outflow during wakefulness. Such resetting is attributed to hypoxia-induced upregulation of peripheral chemoreceptor and brain stem sympathetic function. Whether recurrent arousal from sleep also influences daytime muscle sympathetic nerve activity is unknown. We therefore tested, in a cohort of 48 primarily nonsleepy, middle-aged, male (30) and female (18) volunteers (age: 59±1 years, mean±SE), the hypothesis that the frequency of arousals from sleep (arousal index) would relate to daytime muscle sympathetic burst incidence, independently of the frequency of apnea or its severity. Polysomnography identified 24 as having either no or mild obstructive sleep apnea (apnea–hypopnea index <15 events/h) and 24 with moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea (apnea–hypopnea index >15 events/h). Burst incidence correlated significantly with arousal index (r=0.53; P<0.001), minimum oxygen saturation (r=−0.43; P=0.002), apnea–hypopnea index (r=0.41; P=0.004), age (r=0.36; P=0.013), and body mass index (r=0.33; P=0.022) but not with oxygen desaturation index (r=0.28; P=0.056). Arousal index was the single strongest predictor of muscle sympathetic nerve activity burst incidence, present in all best subsets regression models. The model with the highest adjusted R2 (0.456) incorporated arousal index, minimum oxygen saturation, age, body mass index, and oxygen desaturation index but not apnea–hypopnea index. An apnea- and hypoxia-independent effect of sleep fragmentation on sympathetic discharge during wakefulness could contribute to intersubject variability, age-related increases in muscle sympathetic nerve activity, associations between sleep deprivation and insulin resistance or insomnia and future cardiovascular events, and residual adrenergic risk with persistence of hypertension should therapy eliminate obstructive apneas but not arousals.
Interfacing peripheral nerve with macro-sieve electrodes following spinal cord injury

Macro-sieve electrodes were implanted in the sciatic nerve of five adult male Lewis rats following spinal cord injury to assess the ability of the macro-sieve electrode to interface regenerated peripheral nerve fibers post-spinal cord injury. Each spinal cord injury was performed via right lateral hemisection of the cord at the T9–10 site. Five months post-implantation, the ability of the macro-sieve electrode to interface the regenerated nerve was assessed by stimulating through the macro-sieve electrode and recording both electromyography signals and evoked muscle force from distal musculature. Electromyography measurements were recorded from the tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius muscles, while evoked muscle force measurements were recorded from the tibialis anterior, extensor digitorum longus, and gastrocnemius muscles. The macro-sieve electrode and regenerated sciatic nerve were then explanted for histological evaluation. Successful sciatic nerve regeneration across the macro-sieve electrode interface following spinal cord injury was seen in all five animals. Recorded electromyography signals and muscle force recordings obtained through macro-sieve electrode stimulation confirm the ability of the macro-sieve electrode to successfully recruit distal musculature in this injury model. Taken together, these results demonstrate the macro-sieve electrode as a viable interface for peripheral nerve stimulation in the context of spinal cord injury.
Multilocus sequence typing of Candida albicans isolates from a burn intensive care unit in Iran.

Burn intensive care unit (BICU) patients are specifically exposed to deep-seated nosocomial infections due to Candida albicans. Superficial carriage of C. albicans is a potential source of infection and dissemination, and typing methods could be useful to trace the different isolates. Multilocus sequence typing is a powerful genotyping method for pathogenic micro-organisms, including Candida albicans. Thirty clinical isolates of C. albicans obtained from 22 patients that were admitted to the BICU from a burn hospital at Sari, Mazandaran state, Iran, were studied epidemiologically by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Seventy-five variable nucleotide sites were found. Sixty-two alleles were identified among the seven loci of the C. albicans isolates and one new allele was obtained. Eighteen diploid sequence types (DSTs) were identified, and among those 10 were new. These isolates belonged to nine clonal clusters (CCs) while two isolates occurred as singletons. Eleven (36.7 %) isolates belonged to CC 124 after eBURST analysis and 13 isolates (43.3 %) were assigned to clade 4. Approximately 17 % of the 30 isolates belonged to clade 1 (CC 69 and CC 766). Isolates from several patients with burns were found to be related genetically. Some patients yielded multiple isolates with identical DSTs, suggesting colonization or infection caused by cross-contamination between patients. Isolates that show identical or similar allelic profiles are presumed to be identical or closely related and may be used to evaluate the genetic relationships between isolates from a specific environment such as the BICU.
Variables associated with communicative participation in people with multiple sclerosis: a regression analysis.

PURPOSE To explore variables associated with self-reported communicative participation in a sample (n = 498) of community-dwelling adults with multiple sclerosis (MS). METHOD A battery of questionnaires was administered online or on paper per participant preference. Data were analyzed using multiple linear backward stepwise regression. The dependent variable was an item response theory score of communicative participation measured by a subset of items from the Communicative Participation Item Bank asking respondents to rate how much their health condition interfered with participation in real-life speech communication situations. Thirteen independent variables were included in the model as self-reported symptoms: problems thinking, slurred speech, vision loss, pain, mobility, depression, fatigue, perceived social support, age, education level, employment status, gender, and MS duration. RESULTS Fatigue, slurred speech, depression, problems thinking, employment status, and social support were significantly associated with communicative participation, accounting for 48.7% of the variance. CONCLUSIONS Communicative participation is significantly associated with multiple variables, only some of which reflect communication disorders. If the goal of intervention is to improve communicative participation, intervention may need to extend beyond traditional speech-language pathology boundaries to include other health symptoms as well as personal, social, and physical environments.
Politics Practice Pedagogy Art

Abstract Higher education in the UK has been subjected to many changes since the 1960s. The merging of institutions has resulted in art schools becoming absorbed into universities while expansion, the abolishment of grants and imposition of fees have challenged received ideas of what art schools are for. More recent changes have been essentially financial, structural and qualitative. Although these have impacted upon course content and pedagogy, there has been little formal consideration of fine art course content since the1960s. The largely defensive positions taken during periods of cuts and so-called reforms were not supplanted by progressive reviews during periods of reinvestment and expansion. Art and the art world have developed considerably over this period, with interdisciplinarity and socially engaged practices becoming commonplace, but such developments have hardly been reflected in the art schools. So, in uncertain times, what could an art school offer and what pedagogies should operate? In order to attempt to answer this question it is necessary to consider the history and politics around didactic and heuristic pedagogies and to explore how sustained periods of self-directed practical enquiry can be reconciled with the need to learn theories, methodologies, professional development and modes of practice.
Short-term debt and long-term debt determinants in small and medium-sized hospitality firms

In this article, based on a sample of 177 hotel small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for the period 2004–2012, our objective is to test the applicability of trade-off theory and pecking order theory (POT) to the capital structure decisions of hotel SMEs, focusing on analysis of short-term and long-term debt. The multiple empirical evidence obtained here allows us to conclude that the applicability of trade-off theory to hotel SMEs’ capital structure decisions is much greater in relation to long-term debt than short-term debt and, on the contrary, the applicability of POT is much greater in relation to short-term debt than long-term debt. The empirical evidence obtained allows us to make suggestions for the owners/managers of hotel SMEs.
Mapping the Terrain of Business Education

Business education is one of the most sought-after and widely appreciated branches of higher education. It ropes in discipline and dedication in equal measure while imparting teaching and learning. It stimulates economic rollout and business culture with a view to enhancing the interest of all the stakeholders. In the nineties, business education was more focused on imparting state of art education which greatly enhanced overall performance and perception of business as an academic discipline. Today it has widened its horizon to withstand the challenges posed by globalization, open innovation, corporate renewal and venturing. The scenario has changed drastically; emphasis on functional business is now replaced with working with cross multi discipline teams, and here technology plays major role not only in business education but also in higher education. Business education focuses on identifying opportunities in technology entrepreneurship, and commercial employability skills these are traits required by the industries. This research paper will identify and clearly spell out a futuristic approach of business education approximately a decade from now, by visualizing and analyzing the shift of business education direction through analyzing the past and present scenario in business schools.
Pathogenicity of Different Rabies Virus Variants Inversely Correlates with Apoptosis and Rabies Virus Glycoprotein Expression in Infected Primary Neuron Cultures

ABSTRACT The mouse-adapted rabies virus strain CVS-24 has stable variants, CVS-B2c and CVS-N2c, which differ greatly in their pathogenicity for normal adult mice and in their ability to infect nonneuronal cells. The glycoprotein (G protein), which has previously been implicated in rabies virus pathogenicity, shows substantial structural differences between these variants. Although prior studies have identified antigenic site III of the G protein as the major pathogenicity determinant, CVS-B2c and CVS-N2c do not vary at this site. The possibility that pathogenicity is inversely related to G protein expression levels is suggested by the finding that CVS-B2c, the less pathogenic variant, expresses at least fourfold-higher levels of G protein than CVS-N2c in infected neurons. Although there is some difference between CVS-B2c- and CVS-N2c-infected neurons in G protein mRNA expression levels, the differential expression of G protein appears to be largely determined by posttranslational mechanisms that affect G protein stability. Pulse-chase experiments indicated that the G protein of CVS-B2c is degraded more slowly than that of CVS-N2c. The accumulation of G protein correlated with the induction of programmed cell death in CVS-B2c-infected neurons. The extent of apoptosis was considerably lower in CVS-N2c-infected neurons, where G protein expression was minimal. While nucleoprotein (N protein) expression levels were similar in neurons infected with either variant, the transport of N protein into neuronal processes was strongly inhibited in CVS-B2c-infected cells. Thus, downregulation of G protein expression in neuronal cells evidently contributes to rabies virus pathogenesis by preventing apoptosis and the apparently associated failure of the axonal transport of N protein.
Effect of Specific Growth Rate on Fermentative Capacity of Baker’s Yeast

ABSTRACT The specific growth rate is a key control parameter in the industrial production of baker’s yeast. Nevertheless, quantitative data describing its effect on fermentative capacity are not available from the literature. In this study, the effect of the specific growth rate on the physiology and fermentative capacity of an industrialSaccharomyces cerevisiae strain in aerobic, glucose-limited chemostat cultures was investigated. At specific growth rates (dilution rates, D) below 0.28 h−1, glucose metabolism was fully respiratory. Above this dilution rate, respirofermentative metabolism set in, with ethanol production rates of up to 14 mmol of ethanol · g of biomass−1 · h−1at D = 0.40 h−1. A substantial fermentative capacity (assayed offline as ethanol production rate under anaerobic conditions) was found in cultures in which no ethanol was detectable (D < 0.28 h−1). This fermentative capacity increased with increasing dilution rates, from 10.0 mmol of ethanol · g of dry yeast biomass−1 · h−1 at D= 0.025 h−1 to 20.5 mmol of ethanol · g of dry yeast biomass−1 · h−1 atD = 0.28 h−1. At even higher dilution rates, the fermentative capacity showed only a small further increase, up to 22.0 mmol of ethanol · g of dry yeast biomass−1 · h−1 at D= 0.40 h−1. The activities of all glycolytic enzymes, pyruvate decarboxylase, and alcohol dehydrogenase were determined in cell extracts. Only the in vitro activities of pyruvate decarboxylase and phosphofructokinase showed a clear positive correlation with fermentative capacity. These enzymes are interesting targets for overexpression in attempts to improve the fermentative capacity of aerobic cultures grown at low specific growth rates.
Android based warning system for the early detection of allergic reactions

This work proposes an Android-based platform to warn the medical staff of the onset of allergy reactions during a provocation test in a hospital. The portable system carries out the analysis of the heart rate variability for the early detection of allergic reactions in patients undergoing allergy provocation tests at hospitals. The proposal is composed of an ECG (electrocardiogram) acquisition system and an Android device (Smartphone, Tablet) that monitors and evaluates the results in real time, increasing the safety of allergic tests. At present, food and drug allergic tests are a major problem for patients because of their long duration and intrusion. However, the authors have designed an algorithm for detecting allergy reactions that have focused on reducing the time of the tests and the number of doses. This algorithm runs on an Android platform, and it is able to provide alarms for the medical staff if there is an allergy reaction. The proposed monitoring system is very suitable for the health monitoring during the provocation tests.
Modified CMA method and implementation for time-varying OFDM channel estimation

In a typical wireless LAN application exploiting the OFDM technology, the preamble is usually used to acquire the channel state information in front of data payload. However, if the length of the frame is short, the bandwidth efficiency is restricted by the overhead due to the frame. For such an application that the length of the frame is long, we have to take into account the time-varying effect. In this paper, we study a semi-blind channel estimation method for improving bandwidth efficiency. Although the decision feedback method can be used for channel tracking, the well-known error propagation problem can seriously degrade the system performance. In our work, the semi-blind channel tracking method applies a decision error criterion to adaptively change the use of the error control signal between the constant modulus algorithm and the decision feedback in order to avoid the error propagation problem. Simulation results show that the proposed semi-blind channel tracking scheme has better BER performance than the decision feedback method.
Differentiation of Stem Cells From Human Exfoliated Deciduous Teeth Toward a Phenotype of Corneal Epithelium In Vitro

Purpose: The aim of this study was to characterize stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth (SHED) and to investigate the potential of SHED to differentiate toward corneal epithelium-like cells in vitro. Methods: Mesenchymal and embryonic stem cell markers were analyzed by flow cytometry. The SHED was cocultured in either a transwell noncontact system or in a mixed culture system with immortalized human corneal epithelial (HCE-T) cells to induce the epithelial transdifferentiation. Expression of the mature corneal epithelium–specific marker cytokeratin 3 (CK3) and corneal epithelial progenitor marker cytokeratin 19 (CK19) were detected by immunofluorescence and the reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction, respectively. Results: SHED strongly expressed a set of mesenchymal stromal cell markers and pluripotency markers including NANOG and OCT-4. Seven days after the transwells were cocultured with HCE-T cells, SHED successfully upregulated epithelial lineage markers CK3 (16.6 ± 7.9%) and CK19 (10.0 ± 4.3%) demonstrating the potential for epithelial transdifferentiation, whereas CK3 and CK19 were barely expressed in SHED when cultured alone. Expression of transcript levels of CK3 and CK19 were significantly upregulated when SHED were transwell cocultured or mixed cultured with HCE-T cells by 7, 14, and 21 days. Conclusions: We have demonstrated that SHED retain the potential for transdifferentiation to corneal epithelium-like cells by in vitro coculture with immortal corneal epithelium cells. Thus, exfoliated teeth may be an alternative tissue resource for providing stem cells for potential clinical applications in ocular surface regeneration.
Two improved continuous bag-of-word models

Data representation is a fundamental task in machine learning, which affects the performance of the whole machine learning system. In the past few years, with the rapid development of deep learning, the models for word embedding based on neural networks have brought new inspiration to the research of natural language processing. In this paper, two kinds of schemes for improving the Continuous Bag-of-Words (CBOW) model are proposed. On one hand, the relative positions of adjacent words are taken as weights for the input layer of the model; on the other hand, the context is considered, and which can take part in the training course when the prediction of next target word is to be made. Experimental results show that our proposed models outperform the classical CBOW model.
Development of a Fluorescence Polarization Bead-Based Coupled Assay to Target Different Activity/Conformation States of a Protein Kinase

Most of the protein kinase inhibitors being developed are directed toward the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) binding site that is highly conserved in many kinases. A major issue with these inhibitors is the specificity for a given kinase. Structure determination of several kinases has shown that protein kinases adopt distinct conformations in their inactive state, in contrast to their strikingly similar conformations in their active states. Hence, alternative assay formats that can identify compounds targeting the inactive form of a protein kinase are desirable. The authors describe the development and optimization of an Immobilized Metal Assay for Phosphochemicals (IMAP™)-based couple™d assay using PDK1 and inactive Akt-2 enzymes. PDK1 phosphorylates Akt-2 at Thr 309 in the catalytic domain, leading to enzymatic activation. Activation of Akt by PDK1 is measured by quantitating the phosphorylation of Akt-specific substrate peptide using the IMAP assay format. This IMAP-coupled assay has been formatted in a 384-well microplate format with a Z′ of 0.73 suitable for high-throughput screening. This assay was evaluated by screening the biologically active sample set LOPAC™ and validated with the protein kinase C inhibitor staurosporine. The IC50 value generated was comparable to the value obtained by the radioactive 33P-γ-ATP flashplate transfer assay. This coupled assay has the potential to identify compounds that target the inactive form of Akt and prevent its activation by PDK1, in addition to finding inhibitors of PDK1 and activated Akt enzymes.
Reconciling Pedagogical Beliefs and Teaching Practices: Chinese Teachers and the Pressures of a U.S. High School Foreign Language Context

The number of Chinese foreign language (CFL) programs is increasingly rapidly in U.S. high schools. Working in newer programs places special pressures on CFL teachers, who often did not themselves study in U.S. schools, may have different expectations and experiences about teaching and learning, and often have had less professional preparation in foreign language education. The authors use the concepts of teacher efficacy and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) within a multiple case study approach to explore the beliefs and practices of two CFL teachers working in large high schools in Texas. They identify four main factors that influenced the teachers’ efficacy: (1) school contexts, (2) educational policy, (3) foreign language program types, and (4) professional development opportunities. Aspects of these four areas were both beneficial and adversely impacted the teachers’ beliefs about how effectively they could manage their students’ learning, including students’ socioeconomic levels, advanced placement (AP) exams, constructions of student “achievement,” and the effects of in-service training.