Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells suppress of acute rejection in small bowel transplantation

Background/Aims: Adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADSCs) possess immunosuppressive activity and hold promise in autologous cell-based therapies. The aim of this study was to determine whether autologous ADSCs can improve outcomes in the rat small bowel transplantation (SBT) model. Materials and Methods: Allogeneic SBT followed by implantation of autologous ADSCs through the penile vein was conducted in Brown-Norway (BN) donor rats with Lewis (LEW) recipient rats infused with phosphate buffered solution as the control. Allograft and recipient peripheral blood were obtained. We assessed histopathology, apoptosis, cytokines, and regulatory T cells (Tregs). One-way analysis of variance was applied to assess the significance of the data. Results: It was found that ADSCs significantly reduced acute rejection and improved the allograft's survival rate. In addition, there were significantly fewer apoptotic cells in allograft mucosae in the ADSC group in comparison with the control group. Furthermore, levels of interleukin (IL)-10 and transforming growth factor-β1 were significantly elevated, whereas those of IL-2 and IL-17 levels were significantly reduced in the ADSC group when compared to the control group. Moreover, flow cytometry analysis revealed that there were significantly more peripheral Tregs after the infusion of ADSCs. Conclusions: These results demonstrate that implanted autologous ADSCs improve allogeneic small bowel allograft outcomes by attenuating the acute rejection and reducing inflammatory responses.
New NICE guidelines for UTI management: what will change?

Recently there have been concerns raised over the significant reduction in radiological investigations and follow-up in children who present with urinary tract infection (UTI) if managed in accordance to the new NICE guidelines published in August 2007. With this in mind we performed a retrospective audit to compare the existing guidelines with the new NICE guidelines. Case notes of all children with confirmed culture-positive UTI during a 1-year period from January to December …
Insulin-like growth factor binding protein-1-6 expression in activated microglia

In the CNS insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) enhances survival of neurons, promotes myelin synthesis and acts as a mitogen for microglia. The effects of IGF-1 are regulated by a family of 6 IGF binding proteins (IGFBPs). We investigated mRNA expression patterns of IGFBPs in primary rat microglia under basal conditions and after activation with lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Under basal conditions, microglia expressed IGFBP-2 to -6, whereas, IGFBP-1 could not be detected. Following 2 h treatment with LPS mRNA levels for IGFBP-4 and -6 displayed a down regulation, and IGFBP-5 became undetectable. Levels of IGFBP-2 and -3 remained unaltered. Expression patterns of IGFBPs might play an important role in regulating the autocrine/paracrine IGF-1 actions on microglia under inflammatory conditions.
The Bleeding on Brushing Index: a novel index in preventive dentistry.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to evaluate the suitability of a dichotomous index, based on a special interdental brushing tool, to detect initial pathological processes in interproximal areas. Furthermore, different techniques of interdental hygiene were compared. METHODS Participants (n = 108) were instructed to clean their teeth using the Bass technique and were randomly assigned to three groups according to the type of interdental cleaning used: group A, use of interdental brushes; group B, no interdental hygiene (the control group); and group C, use of dental floss. Approximal Plaque Index (API), Plaque Index (PI), modified Sulcus Bleeding Index (mSBI) and the Bleeding on Brushing Index (BOB) were measured at baseline, and after 2 (t1) and 4 (t2) weeks. Statistical analysis was performed using the Wilcoxon test and the Mann-Whitney U-test. RESULTS One-hundred and six participants completed the study. The BOB decreased significantly in all groups (P < 0.001) with the most pronounced reduction being recorded for group A (baseline: 49.3 ± 23.0%; 4 weeks: 5.1 ± 6.9%). Also, the mSBI (P < 0.001) decreased significantly in all groups during the study. The API appeared to be less affected by the oral hygiene than other indices. The highest correlation was observed between BOB and mSBI (r = 0.785, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION The BOB is a valuable complement for the existing array of indices in preventive dentistry, and is able to detect potential pathological processes in interproximal spaces. Additionally, this study suggests that interdental hygiene with individually selected brushes is superior to flossing. CLINICAL RELEVANCE With the BOB, gingival inflammation can be demonstrated to patients, which could increase compliance.
Minimizing the risk for rumen acidosis.

Ruminal acidosis is a common disease in high yielding dairy cows, during which the rumen pH is depressed for several hours per day. There is no general agreement of the definition of the disease, and its diagnosis based on rumen pH measurement is invasive and inaccurate. As a result, the disease often goes unnoticed, and its impact is not well recognized. Surveys suggest a prevalence of between 19 and 26% in early and mid-lactation dairy cows in North America. Many symptoms have been attributed to subacute rumen acidosis (SARA), including feed intake depression, milk fat depression, reduced fiber digestion, inflammation of the rumen, systemic inflammation, dehydration, diarrhea, laminitis, liver abscesses, and increases in the concentrations of bacterial toxins in digesta throughout the digestive tract. These symptoms are not always obvious. The mechanisms of how, and even if, the rumen pH depression causes these symptoms are not always well understood. Cows may very in their susceptibility to ruminal acidosis. Preventing ruminal acidosis requires formulating diets that contain enough coarse (physically effective) fiber and do not contain excessive amounts of rapidly-fermenting nonfiber carbohydrates. In addition, these diets must be ingested by the cows in the way they were formulated, which involves preventing mixing errors, excessive mixing, and sorting by cows. The inclusion of buffers, e.g. sodium bicarbonate, and yeast in the diet can prevent rumen acidosis, as does adaptation to high grain diets during the last part of the dry period. Feeding strategies, such as frequent feeding, continuous availability of feed, and sufficient bunk space, spread out meals throughout the day, and reduces the risk of ruminal acidosis.
Cigarette smoking and cognitive decline in midlife: evidence from a prospective birth cohort study.

OBJECTIVES The authors investigated the effects of cigarette smoking on midlife cognitive performance. METHODS Multiple regression was used to test the association between cigarette smoking and changes in cognitive test scores among male and female members of the British 1946 birth cohort aged between 43 and 53 years. RESULTS Smoking was associated with faster declines in verbal memory and with slower visual search speeds. These effects were largely accounted for by individuals who smoked more than 20 cigarettes per day and were independent of sex, socioeconomic status, previous (adolescent) cognitive ability, and a range of health indicators. CONCLUSIONS The present results show that heavy smoking is associated with cognitive impairment and decline in midlife. Smokers who survive into later life may be at risk of clinically significant cognitive declines.
Evidence that myosin does not contribute to force production in chromosome movement

Antibody against cytoplasmic myosin, when microinjected into actively dividing cells, provides a physiological test for the role of actin and myosin in chromosome movement. Anti-Asterias egg myosin, characterized by Mabuchi and Okuno (1977, J. Cell Biol., 74:251), completely and specifically inhibits the actin activated Mg++ -ATPase of myosin in vitro and, when microinjected, inhibits cytokinesis in vivo. Here, we demonstrate that microinjected antibody has no observable effect on the rate or extent of anaphase chromosome movements. Neither central spindle elongation nor chromosomal fiber shortening is affected by doses up to eightfold higher than those require to uniformly inhibit cytokinesis in all injected cells. We calculate that such doses are sufficient to completely inhibit myosin ATPase activity in these cells. Cells injected with buffer alone, with myosin-absorbed antibody, or with nonimmune gamma-globulin, proceed normally through both mitosis and cytokinesis. Control gamma-globulin, labeled with fluorescein, diffuses to homogeneity throughout the cytoplasm in 2-4 min and remains uniformly distributed. Antibody is not excluded from the spindle region. Prometaphase chromosome movements, fertilization, pronuclear migration, and pronuclear fusion are also unaffected by microinjected antimyosin. These experiments demonstrate that antimyosin blocks the actomyosin interaction thought to be responsible for force production in cytokinesis but has no effect on mitotic or meiotic chromosome motion. They provide direct physiological evidence that myosin is not involved in force production for chromosome movement.
College Men’s Meanings of Masculinities and Contextual Influences: Toward a Conceptual Model

Based on a grounded theory study involving 68 male undergraduates, a conceptual model of the meanings college men ascribe to masculinities is proposed in this article. The participants equated masculinities with “being respected,” “being confident and self-assured,” “assuming responsibility,” and “embodying physical prowess. ” Contextual factors that influenced these meanings are also reflected in the model. Using the model as a guiding framework, recommendations for supporting the gender identity development of college men and implications for future studies of masculinities in college contexts are offered.
Explanatory value of the Ability Index as assessed by cardiologists and patients with congenital heart disease.

INTRODUCTION The Ability Index was developed to classify patients with congenital heart disease into four functional classes. Functional class is typically determined by the cardiologist, based on data from a clinical interview. The validity of the Ability Index as assessed by the patient has never been scrutinized. OBJECTIVE We tested the agreement between cardiologists and patients in assessing functional status using the Ability Index and compared the accuracy of the two assessments in explaining patient-reported outcomes (PRO). METHODS The Ability Index Scale was completed for 57 patients, independently by cardiologists and patients. Cohen's Kappa coefficient with quadratic weighting (K(w)) was calculated. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) (=C-index) was used to test the accuracy of the Ability Index in explaining PRO, as assessed by the cardiologist or the patient. RESULTS Agreement was observed in 61.4% of the patients. The K(w) was 0.55, showing a moderate agreement; and the R(2) was 0.29, displaying a limited shared variance. The AUC for cardiologists' assessments of the Ability Index in explaining PRO was consistently lower than the AUC for patients' assessments. The appraisal of the patients was more accurate. DISCUSSION When cardiologists and patients are assessing functional status using the Ability Index, two different constructs are measured. These assessments cannot be interchanged, but should be used complementarily. Because the assessment of the patients regarding the Ability Index is more precise in terms of explaining PRO, it could be valuable as a simple crude marker to identify patients at risk for poor functional and psychosocial outcomes.
Computational mechanism design for multi-sensor information fusion

Conventional information fusion architectures are challenged by developments in sensor networks that allow individually-owned (and thereby selfish) sensors to interact and share data. Given this, we advocate the use of tools and techniques from computational mechanism design, a field at the intersection of computer science, game theory and economics, to address the challenges posed by these networks. These techniques allow us to engineer networks with desirable system-wide properties, in which sensors are represented as selfish rational agents, each attempting to fulfill their own individuals goals. In this paper, we present the work of the Argus II DARP project (http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~argus/) and we demonstrate the application of mechanism design within a real world information fusion sensor network scenario.
Physiological noise reduction using volumetric functional magnetic resonance inverse imaging

Physiological noise arising from a variety of sources can significantly degrade the detection of task‐related activity in BOLD‐contrast fMRI experiments. If whole head spatial coverage is desired, effective suppression of oscillatory physiological noise from cardiac and respiratory fluctuations is quite difficult without external monitoring, since traditional EPI acquisition methods cannot sample the signal rapidly enough to satisfy the Nyquist sampling theorem, leading to temporal aliasing of noise. Using a combination of high speed magnetic resonance inverse imaging (InI) and digital filtering, we demonstrate that it is possible to suppress cardiac and respiratory noise without auxiliary monitoring, while achieving whole head spatial coverage and reasonable spatial resolution. Our systematic study of the effects of different moving average (MA) digital filters demonstrates that a MA filter with a 2 s window can effectively reduce the variance in the hemodynamic baseline signal, thereby achieving 57%–58% improvements in peak z‐statistic values compared to unfiltered InI or spatially smoothed EPI data (FWHM = 8.6 mm). In conclusion, the high temporal sampling rates achievable with InI permit significant reductions in physiological noise using standard temporal filtering techniques that result in significant improvements in hemodynamic response estimation. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Optimal inventory management of a bike-sharing station

Bike-sharing systems allow people to rent a bicycle at one of many automatic rental stations scattered around a city, use them for a short journey, and return them at any other station in that city. A crucial factor in the success of such a system is its ability to meet the fluctuating demand for both bicycles and vacant lockers at each station. In order to meet the demand, the inventory of each station must be reviewed regularly. This article introduces an inventory model suited for the management of bike rental stations and a numerical solution method used to solve it. Moreover, a structural result about the convexity of the model is proved. The method may be applicable for other closed-loop inventory systems. An extensive numerical study based on real-life data is presented to demonstrate its effectiveness and efficiency.
Effet du parrainage sur les réponses cognitives et affectives du consommateur envers la marque : le rôle de la congruence

Le parrainage est un mode de communication en plein essor d'ou un nombre grandissant de recherches. La question de son efficacite pour le parrain en termes cognitif et affectif demeure centrale. Une variable recemment introduite semble jouer un role crucial : la congruence entre parrain et entite parrainee. L'objectif de notre recherche est de mieux definir cette notion, en retenant une structure basee sur deux dimensions : les caracteres pertinent et attendu du couple parrain-entite parrainee. Nous en proposons une echelle de mesure. Par ailleurs, nous montrons en quoi cette structure permet de mieux comprendre l'impact de la congruence sur l'image du parrain a la lumiere des theories sur le traitement de l'information. Nous faisons l'hypothese d'une relation curvilineaire entre la congruence et l'image de marque : l'effet est plus fort pour une congruence moyenne (couple pertinent non attendu) que pour une congruence forte (pertinent attendu) ou faible (non pertinent et non attendu).
Multidimensional XPath

In Web applications it is often required to manipulate information of semistructured nature, which may present variations according to different circumstances. Multidimensional XML (MXML) is an extension of XML suitable for representing data that assume different facets, having different value and structure, under different contexts. In this paper, we consider the problem of navigating and querying MXML. Navigating and querying must take into account the additional features of MXML compared to XML. Those features stem from the incorporation of context into MXML. We introduce an extension of XPath called Multidimensional XPath (MXPath), which is suitable for navigating in MXML documents, and allows for context-aware querying. We present the syntax of MXPath, we provide examples demonstrating its use and investigate its semantics.
Prevalence of Helminthiasis in Slaughterhouse Medan

Factors affecting the success of the livestock business are feed and disease control. The aim of this study to determine the prevalence of helminthiasis in Slaughterhouse Mabar Medan City. The type of this research is survey research with portrait and analysis of a condition of cattle condition that will be slaughterhoused in Slaughterhouse Mabar Medan City in a certain time. The design of this study is observation or direct observation to the field to see the existing events without intervening from the researcher. The sampling technique is determined by purposive sampling (purposive determination of respondents). Methods of data retrieval is done by observation method that is data retrieval method done by systematically record the result of observation to the events investigated during the research. The result of research in Slaughterhouse Mabar Medan city shows that the prevalence of helminthiasis is 0%. From this result shows the cows that were slaughtered by Slaughterhouse Mabar Medan City is free from the parasitic worm disease.
Perturbation Growth and Structure in Uncertain Flows

Perturbation growth in uncertain systems is examined and related to previous work in which linear stability concepts were generalized from a perspective based on the nonnormality of the underlying linear operator. In this previous work the linear operator, subject to an initial perturbation or a stochastic forcing distributed in time, was either fixed or time varying, but in either case the operator was certain. However, in forecast and climate studies, complete knowledge of the dynamical system being perturbed is generally lacking; nevertheless, it is often the case that statistical properties characterizing the variability of the dynamical system are known. In the present work generalized stability theory is extended to such uncertain systems. The limits in which fluctuations about the mean of the operator are correlated over time intervals, short and long, compared to the timescale of the mean operator are examined and compared with the physically important transitional case of operator fluctuation on timescales comparable to the timescales of the mean operator. Exact and asymptotically valid equations for transient ensemble mean and moment growth in uncertain systems are derived and solved. In addition, exact and asymptotically valid equations for the ensemble mean response of a stable uncertain system to deterministic forcing are derived and solved. The ensemble mean response of the forced stable uncertain system obtained from this analysis is interpreted under the ergodic assumption as equal to the time mean of the state of the uncertain system as recorded by an averaging instrument. Optimal perturbations are obtained for the ensemble mean of an uncertain system in the case of harmonic forcing. Finally, it is shown that the remarkable systematic increase in asymptotic growth rate with moment in uncertain systems occurs only in the context of the ensemble.
Intoxication Detection Using Phonetic, Phonotactic and Prosodic Cues

In this paper, we investigate multiple approaches for automatically detecting intoxicated speakers given samples of their speech. Intoxicated speech in a given language can be viewed simply as a different accent of this language; therefore we adopt our recent approach to dialect and accent recognition to detect intoxication. The system models phonetic structural differences across sober and intoxicated speakers. This approach employs SVM with a kernel function that computes similarities between adapted phone GMMs which summarize speakers’ phonetic characteristics in their utterances. We also investigate additional cues, such as prosodic events, phonotactics and phonetic durations under intoxicated and sober conditions. We find that our phonetic-based system when combined with phonotactic features provides us with our best result on the official development set, an accuracy of 73% and an equal error rate of 26.3%, significantly higher than the official baseline.
Quadruplex structures in nucleic acids

DNA oligonucleotides that have repetitive tracts of guanine bases can form G‐quadruplex structures that display an amazing polymorphism. Structures of several new G‐quadruplexes have been solved recently that greatly expand the known structural motifs observed in nucleic acid quadruplexes. Base triads, base hexads, and quartets that contain cytosine have recently been identified stacked over the familiar G‐quartets. The current status of the diverse array of structural features in quadruplexes is described and used to provide insight into the polymorphism and folding pathways. This review also summarizes recent progress in the techniques used to probe the structures of G‐quadruplexes and discusses the role of ion binding in quadruplex formation. Several of the quadruplex structures featured in this review can be accessed in the online version of this review as CHIME representations. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Biopolymers (Nucleic Acid sci) 56: 123–146, 2001
Arterial pressure: agreement between a brachial cuff-based device and radial tonometry

Objectives: Aortic (central) blood pressure (BP) differs from brachial BP and may be a superior predictor of cardiovascular events. However, its measurement is currently restricted to research settings, owing to a moderate level of operator dependency. We tested a new noninvasive device in a large UK cohort. The device estimates central BP using measurements obtained with an upper arm cuff inflated to suprasystolic pressure. We compared these estimates with those obtained using radial tonometry as well as with invasively acquired measurements of aortic BP in a limited number of individuals. Methods: Consecutive cuff-based and tonometry-based estimates of the pressure waveform and the central BP were obtained from 1107 individuals (70 ± 6 years). Short-term and long-term reproducibility studies were performed on 28 individuals. Simultaneous cuff-based and invasively measured pressure traces were acquired and compared in an additional six individuals (65 ± 20 years). Results: Central systolic BP, as estimated by the cuff-based device, was found to be highly reproducible (coefficient of variation 4 and 8% for short and long-term reproducibility, respectively) and was comparable to that estimated by tonometry (average difference 3 ± 6 mmHg, intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.91). The cuff-based pressure waveforms were similar to those acquired invasively (cross-correlation coefficient 0.93), and the difference in the estimated central systolic BP was −5 ± 8 mmHg (P = 0.2). Conclusion: Cuff-based devices show promise to simplify the measurement of central BP, whilst maintaining a similar fidelity to tonometry. This could lead to improved adoption of estimates of central BP in clinical practice.