Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hypoxia promotes danger-mediated inflammation via receptor for advanced glycation end products in cystic fibrosis.

RATIONALE Hypoxia regulates the inflammatory-antiinflammatory balance by the receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE), a versatile sensor of damage-associated molecular patterns. The multiligand nature of RAGE places this receptor in the midst of chronic inflammatory diseases. OBJECTIVES To characterize the impact of the hypoxia-RAGE pathway on pathogenic airway inflammation preventing effective pathogen clearance in cystic fibrosis (CF) and elucidate the potential role of this danger signal in pathogenesis and therapy of lung inflammation. METHODS We used in vivo and in vitro models to study the impact of hypoxia on RAGE expression and activity in human and murine CF, the nature of the RAGE ligand, and the impact of RAGE on lung inflammation and antimicrobial resistance in fungal and bacterial pneumonia. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Sustained expression of RAGE and its ligand S100B was observed in murine lung and human epithelial cells and exerted a proximal role in promoting inflammation in murine and human CF, as revealed by functional studies and analysis of the genetic variability of AGER in patients with CF. Both hypoxia and infections contributed to the sustained activation of the S100B-RAGE pathway, being RAGE up-regulated by hypoxia and S100B by infection by Toll-like receptors. Inhibiting the RAGE pathway in vivo with soluble (s) RAGE reduced pathogen load and inflammation in experimental CF, whereas sRAGE production was defective in patients with CF. CONCLUSIONS A causal link between hyperactivation of RAGE and inflammation in CF has been observed, such that targeting pathogenic inflammation alleviated inflammation in CF and measurement of sRAGE levels could be a useful biomarker for RAGE-dependent inflammation in patients with CF.
Are project managers informally following capability maturity model integration practices for project management?

Project planning is crucial for fruitful completion of a software development project. In case of a certified software development organisation, one can guess whether the software development projects are planned properly or not. But, what to do for a non-certified organisation? The objective of this study is to address this problem. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey has been conducted by involving experienced practitioners. The results show that several software development organisations follow Capability Maturity Model Integration) Project Planning-Process Area practices unofficially. Such organisations are potential candidate organisations for software process improvement initiatives, and would be cheap and safe for successful completion of a project. Keywords: CMMI, software project management, software process improvement, specific goals, specific practices, subpractices.
Identification of Two-Component Regulatory Systems in Bifidobacterium infantis by Functional Complementation and Degenerate PCR Approaches

ABSTRACT Two-component signal transduction systems (2CSs) are widely used by bacteria to sense and adapt to changing environmental conditions. With two separate approaches, three different 2CSs were identified on the chromosome of the probiotic bacterium Bifidobacterium infantis UCC 35624. One locus was identified by means of functional complementation of an Escherichia coli mutant. Another two were identified by PCR with degenerate primers corresponding to conserved regions of one protein component of the 2CS. The complete coding regions for each gene cluster were obtained, which showed that each 2CS-encoding locus specified a histidine protein kinase and an assumed cognate response regulator. Transcriptional analysis of the 2CSs by Northern blotting and primer extension identified a number of putative promoter sequences for this organism while revealing that the expression of each 2CS was growth phase dependent. Analysis of the genetic elements involved revealed significant homology with several distinct regulatory families from other high-G+C-content bacteria. The conservation of the genetic organization of these three 2CSs in other bacteria, including a number of recently published Bifidobacterium genomes, was investigated.
Is there Association between Self-reported Dental visits, ToothBrushing, Fluoride use and Perceived Oral Health Status?

Objectives: Many studies have demonstrated the importance of oral health perceptions in predicting oral health behaviour. Despite the theoretical importance of this concept, the association between self-perceived oral health status and oral health practices has been given relatively little attention in Zimbabwe. The objective of this study was to examine the association between self-reported dental visit, tooth brushing, fluoride use and self-perceived oral health status. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted and the information was collected using self-administered anonymous structured questionnaire. The sample included high school students from a boarding school in Zimbabwe. The questionnaire includes items on socio-demographic variables, knowledge of oral health, oral health behaviour and self-perceived oral health status. Self-reported dental visit, tooth brushing and fluoride use were the outcome variables. Perceived health status and selected demographic and oral health variables were taken as explanatory variables. Perceived oral health status was reported as poor, good and excellent. Result: Multivariable logistic regression revealed that dental visit was associated with selfperceived status of the teeth [OR for excellent teeth=3.8 (95% CI, 1.3, 11.0, p=0.015)] and toothache [OR=2.6 (95% CI, 1.3, 5.2, p=0.005)]. Tooth brushing was positively associated with Age [OR=1.7 (95% CI, 1.1, 2.6, p=0.011)] and self-perceived status of the teeth [OR for excellent teeth=20.6 (95% CI, 2.3, 182.3, p=0.006)]. A significant positive association was observed between fluoride use and self-perceived status of the teeth [OR for excellent teeth = 14.3 (95% CI, 2.3, 89.2, p=0.004)] after controlling for age and fluoride knowledge. Conclusion: Students with good perceived status of teeth are more likely to have regular dental visit, tooth brushing and use fluorine.
Techniques for Molecular Imaging Probe Design

Molecular imaging allows clinicians to visualize disease-specific molecules, thereby providing relevant information in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. With advances in genomics and proteomics and underlying mechanisms of disease pathology, the number of targets identified has significantly outpaced the number of developed molecular imaging probes. There has been a concerted effort to bridge this gap with multidisciplinary efforts in chemistry, proteomics, physics, material science, and biology—all essential to progress in molecular imaging probe development. In this review, we discuss target selection, screening techniques, and probe optimization with the aim of developing clinically relevant molecularly targeted imaging agents.
Apparent Motion Is Computed in Perceptual Coordinates

When a Gabor moves in one direction in the visual periphery while its internal texture moves in the orthogonal direction, its perceived direction can deviate from its physical direction by as much as 45° or more. Lisi et al. showed that immediate saccades go to the physical location of double-drift targets, whereas delayed saccades primarily go to their perceived locations. Here, we investigated whether the apparent motion seen from the offset of a double-drift stimulus to the onset of a later target probe originates from the perceived or physical location of the double-drift stimulus. We find that apparent motion proceeds away from the perceived position of the double-drift stimulus at all temporal delays. This suggests that apparent motion is computed in perceptual rather than retinotopic coordinates.
Polymorphisms in the DUSP10 gene are associated with sex-specific colorectal cancer risk in a Han population.

AIMS AND BACKGROUND Colorectal cancer (CRC) is common, especially in developed countries. CRC is a multifactorial disease influenced by both environmental and genetic factors. In this study, we investigated the role of genetic polymorphisms in the dual specificity protein phosphatase 10 (DUSP10) gene especially in sex-specific. METHODS We selected nine DUSP10 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (tSNPs) previously reported to be associated with colorectal cancer risk of in a case-control study from Xi'an city of China. RESULTS In females, three SNPs were associated with decreased CRC risk: rs11118838, rs12724393, and rs908858. However, in males, only one SNP, rs908858, was associated with decreased CRC risk. Using a log-additive model, the rs11118838 "C" allele and the rs12724393 "G" allele were associated with decreased CRC risk in females, while the rs908858 "G" allele was associated with decreased CRC risk in both females and males. In addition, haplotype analysis also found "CG" and "CCT" were associated with the decreased CRC risk in females. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that DUSP10 polymorphisms influence the risk of developing CRC in Han Chinese and emphasize that sex should be considered in the design and analysis of health studies and biomedical research.
Optimal power flow for a hybrid AC/DC microgrid

This paper presents an optimal power flow management for a hybrid ac/dc microgrid. The research, through this work, aims to design, model and control of a smart hybrid ac/dc microgrid in the grid-tied mode and islanding mode able to exchange data through the smart grid bus communication to receive grid power references, manage locally the power flow between the various sources and facilitate the connection of various ac and dc renewable sources and loads. In this context, a Hybrid Control Sytem (HCS) was developed in such a way to maintain the power balancing in real-time operation of the proposed system.
The mediating role of innovativeness in the relationship between market orientation and performance: an application to Senegalese agri-food VSEs

Abstract In a managerial discourse, market orientation and innovativeness are considered imperative to firms’ competitiveness. Research on them has particularly focussed on medium and large companies in Europe and the United States, while others have focussed on market orientation’s impact on the performance of very small enterprises (VSEs) in developed countries. However, the role of innovativeness in the relationship between market orientation and performance, in micro-enterprises based especially in Africa, is less studied. This research proposes a conceptual model to assess market orientation’s impact on VSE performance and establishes the mediating role of innovativeness in this relationship. Focusing on small food processing units and vegetable producers, a sample of VSEs for collecting primary data was compiled from a survey of 150 VSE leaders. A structural equation model was used, based on the LISREL approach. Results confirm a direct link between market orientation and performance, and demonstrate the mediating role of innovativeness.
Support Vector Data Description for Spoken Digit Recognition

A classifier based on Support Vector Data Description (SVDD) is proposed for spoken digit recognition. We use the Mel Frequency Discrete Wavelet Coefficients (MFDWC) and the Mel Frequency cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) as the feature vectors. The proposed classifier is compared to the HMM and results are promising and we show the HMM and SVDD classifiers have equal accuracy rates. The performance of the proposed features and SVDD classifier with several kernel functions are evaluated and compared in clean and noisy speech. Because of multi resolution and localization of the Wavelet Transform (WT) and using SVDD, experiments on the spoken digit recognition systems based on MFDWC features and SVDD with weighted polynomial kernel function give better results than the other methods.
A Computational Framework for Multi-Modal Social Action Identification

We create a computational framework for understanding social action and demonstrate how this framework can be used to build an open-source event detection tool with scalable statistical machine learning algorithms and a subsampled database of over 600 million geo-tagged Tweets from around the world. These Tweets were collected between April 1st, 2014 and April 30th, 2015, most notably when the Black Lives Matter movement began. We demonstrate how these methods can be used diagnostically-by researchers, government officials and the public-to understand peaceful and violent collective action at very fine-grained levels of time and geography.
Trace Elements and Plasmapheresis

The relationship between serum aluminum (Al), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), and iron (Fe) and plasmapheresis (PP) treatment was examined. Three patients with rheumatoid arthritis, six with myasthenia gravis, and 6 with multiple sclerosis were studied. Serum Al, Zn, Cu, and Fe were measured before and after PP. Plasma was separated by first filtration; a second filtration separated the plasma components. Three liters of plasma were treated in each PP session. With each PP treatment, total protein (TP) removed was 20 ± 5% and serum albumin removed was ± 6%. Serum Al rose significantly (p < 0.01 from 1.1 ± 0.2 μgl dl pre-PP to 2.8 ± 0.4 μg/dl post-PP. Serum Zn, Cu, and Fe decreased significantly (p < 0.01) from 86.2 ± 7.4 μg/dl, 126 ± 18 μg/dl, and 108 ± 14 μg/dl pre-PP to 58.4 ± 10.2 μg/dl, 104 ± 6 μg/dl, and 82 ± 16 μg/dI post-PP, respectively. Two days after the end of the six-month PP treatment, serum Al levels rose significantly (p < 0.01), from 1.1 ± 0.2 μg/dl to 3.6 ± 0.8 μg/dl. However, serum TP, serum albumin, and serum Zn, Cu, and Fe did not change significantly. It thus appears essential in PP treated patients, to remove Al from the blood to protect against aluminum intoxication
Genealogical Classification of Saddharmapundarika Manuscripts Based on Many-Variable Analysis

Many manuscripts of the Saddharmapundarika, which are among the most important manuscripts for the study of Buddhism, have been discovered in very different localities and are classified according to their place of discovery into the following three groups: Nepalese, Kashmirian, and Central Asian manuscripts. For the genealogical classification of these manuscripts, principal component analysis and cluster analysis, which describe the similarities between the verses of the different manuscripts, were applied to the data. As a result, we could successfully classify these manuscripts into two large groups and several smaller groups: one large group consists of ten paper manuscripts from Nepal and the other comprises nine palm-leaf plus two paper manuscripts. The Kashmir and Central Asian manuscripts and a few of the Nepal manuscripts belong to the small groups.
Modeling of long‐range electrostatic interactions in DNA

We used a Monte Carlo approach to compute the statistical properties of closed DNA chains with different descriptions of the electrostatic interactions. We compared these computed results with experimentally measured knotting probabilities, which are very sensitive to intersegment interactions. The calculated results based on the Debye‐Hückel approximation of the solution of the Poisson‐Boltzmann equation agreed very well with the published experimental data, while potential based on counterion condensation theory was clearly less satisfactory. We then compared the simpler hard‐core approximation of electrostatic interactions to the Debye‐Hückel potential. The hard‐core approximation, specified in terms of a DNA effective diameter, gives the same conformational properties of random coils as the Debye‐Hückel approximation. We found clear but relatively small differences between the two potentials for the conformational properties of supercoiled DNA. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Comparison of several prognostic tools in traumatic brain injury including S100B

Abstract Primary objective: To identify which tool (a model, a biomarker or a combination of these) has better prognostic strength in traumatic brain injury (TBI). Design and methods: Data of 100 patients were analysed. TBI prognostic model B, constructed in Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN), was run on the dataset and then S100B was added to this model. Another model was developed containing only S100B and, subsequently, other important predictors were added to assess the enhancement of the predictive power. The outcome measures were survival and favourable outcome. Results: No difference between performance of the prognostic model or S100B in isolation is observed. Addition of S100B to the prognostic model improves the performance (e.g. AUC, R2 Nagelkerke and classification accuracy of TARN model B to predict survival increase respectively from 0.66, 0.11 and 70% to 0.77, 0.25 and 75%). Similarly, the predictive power of S100B increases by adding other predictors (e.g. AUC (0.69 vs. 0.79), R2 Nagelkerke (0.15 vs. 0.30) and classification accuracy (73% vs. 77%) for survival prediction). Conclusion: A better prognostic tool than those currently available may be a combination of clinical predictors with a biomarker.
HDAC4 Represses Matrix Metalloproteinase-13 Transcription in Osteoblastic Cells, and Parathyroid Hormone Controls This Repression*

Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is a hormone regulating bone remodeling through its actions on both bone formation and bone resorption. Previously we reported that PTH induces matrix metalloproteinase-13 (MMP-13) transcription in osteoblastic cells. Here, we show that histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4) interacts with Runx2, binds the MMP-13 promoter, and suppresses MMP-13 gene transcription in the rat osteoblastic cell line, UMR 106-01. PTH induces the rapid cAMP-dependent protein kinase-dependent release of HDAC4 from the MMP-13 promoter and subsequent transcription of MMP-13. Knock-out of HDAC4 either by siRNA in vitro or by gene deletion in vivo leads to an increase in MMP-13 expression, and overexpression of HDAC4 decreases the PTH induction of MMP-13. All of these observations indicate that HDAC4 represses MMP-13 gene transcription in bone. Moreover, PTH stimulates HDAC4 gene expression and enzymatic activity at times corresponding to the reassociation of HDAC4 with the MMP-13 promoter and a decline in its transcription. Thus, HDAC4 is a basal repressor of MMP-13 transcription, and PTH regulates HDAC4 to control MMP-13 promoter activity. These data identify a novel and discrete mechanism of regulating HDAC4 levels and, subsequently, gene expression.
Spatial economics of the Louisiana wetland mitigation banking industry

Wetland mitigation banking has become prevalent in many states across the US, with the number of banks increasing 780% from 1992 to 2005. Louisiana led the nation in the total number of banks in 2006 with 96. Despite rapid growth associated with this industry, economic data in regards to the market for wetland mitigation bank transactions has been lacking. Mitigation bank transactions were collected (n=165) for the period 1997 through 2006 from the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and the US Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District. Data were evaluated for economic, spatial, temporal, and other descriptive characteristics. Average credit price for the period was $6,382, three to seven times lower than prices of wetland mitigation credits in states adjacent to Louisiana. Evidence of bimodal price trends prompted analysis of market segregation. Wetland credit prices ranged from $4,000-$20,000 for coastal mitigation credits and from $3,000-$10,000 for non-coastal mitigation credits. A modified hedonic regression model was developed using spatial econometric and statistical software. Twenty-three variables were evaluated for their influence as price determinants, with 11 factors chosen in the final model (Adj. R = .69). Parallel sub-models were developed for coastal and inland markets with marginal effects estimated for significant and continuous variables. Major drivers of credit price included sales volume, proximity to population centers, time, and rural land values. Competition within a particular market (watershed) had a positive influence on price, an indication that demand is exceeding supply in this infant market. Findings and recommendations from this study could prove beneficial to policy advisors, bank sponsors, as well as prospective investors in the industry.
InP-based radial heterostructures grown on [100] nanowires

InP-InxGa(1-x)As-InP quantum well tube (QWT) structures are grown on InP nanowires that are [100] oriented. The In mole fraction, x is varied between 0 and 1. The QWTs grown on the facets of the [100] nanowires that have {100} and {011} side facets forming an octagonal cross-section, are found to be highly non-uniform. Bright emission is observed at room temperature from these QWTs. Band-gap tunability in the near to mid-infrared region is achieved by controlling the thickness and composition of the quantum well.
Referencing strategies and techniques in stable isotope ratio analysis.

Stable isotope ratios are reported in the literature in terms of a deviation from an international standard (delta-values). The referencing procedures, however, differ from instrument to instrument and are not consistent between measurement facilities. This paper reviews an attempt to unify the strategy for referencing isotopic measurements. In particular, emphasis is given to the importance of identical treatment of sample and reference material ('IT principle'), which should guide all isotope ratio determinations and evaluations. The implementation of the principle in our laboratory, the monitoring of our measurement quality, the status of the international scales and reference materials and necessary correction procedures are discussed.
Comparative Appraisal of Ghee and Palm Oil Adulterated Ghee on the basis of Chromogenic Test

Ghee the clarified milk fat and one of the most important product widely consumed in the Indian subcontinent, apart from food applications it is also been used in many religious customs. According to FSSAI (2011) “Ghee” means the pure clarified fat derived solely from milk or curd or from desi (cooking) butter or from cream to which no colouring matter or preservative has been added. Hazra et al., (2017) reported that Ghee performs a major and essential function as carrier of four fat-soluble vitamins viz., A, D, E, K and essential fatty-acids such as linolenic acid and arachidonic acid. From ancient time Ghee is been used for many health benefit including increasing mental power, curative of ulcers and eye-diseases (Rangappa and Achaya, 1974). Ghee is the second largest consumed dairy product after liquid milk and it is one of the costliest edible fat. India produces 900,000 tonnes of marketed ghee, valued at Rs 85,000 million (Gandhi et al., 2018). Recently, the producers or the middlemen involved in the ghee trade, to their greed to have more money, tend to adulterate ghee with cheaper oils and fats like vegetable oils International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 7 Number 12 (2018) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com