Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intranasal dexmedetomidine following failed chloral hydrate sedation in children

Chloral hydrate is the most commonly used sedative for paediatric diagnostic procedures in China with a success rate of around 80%. Intranasal dexmedetomidine is used for rescue sedation in our centre. This prospective investigation evaluated 213 children aged one month to 10 years who were not adequately sedated following administration of chloral hydrate. Children were randomly assigned to receive rescue intranasal dexmedetomidine at 1 μg. kg−1 (group 1), 1.5 μg. kg−1 (group 2) or 2 μg. kg−1 (group 3). The sedation level was assessed every 10 min using a modified observer's assessment of alertness/sedation scale. Successful rescue sedation in groups 1, 2 and 3 were 56 (83.6%), 66 (89.2%) and 51 (96.2%), respectively. Increasing the rescue dose was associated with an increased success rate with an odds ratio of 4.12 (95% CI 1.13–14.98), p = 0.032. We conclude that intranasal dexmedetomidine is effective for sedation in children who do not respond to chloral hydrate.
Trends in Nanomaterial-Based Non-Invasive Diabetes Sensing Technologies

Blood glucose monitoring is considered the gold standard for diabetes diagnostics and self-monitoring. However, the underlying process is invasive and highly uncomfortable for patients. Furthermore, the process must be completed several times a day to successfully manage the disease, which greatly contributes to the massive need for non-invasive monitoring options. Human serums, such as saliva, sweat, breath, urine and tears, contain traces of glucose and are easily accessible. Therefore, they allow minimal to non-invasive glucose monitoring, making them attractive alternatives to blood measurements. Numerous developments regarding noninvasive glucose detection techniques have taken place over the years, but recently, they have gained recognition as viable alternatives, due to the advent of nanotechnology-based sensors. Such sensors are optimal for testing the amount of glucose in serums other than blood thanks to their enhanced sensitivity and selectivity ranges, in addition to their size and compatibility with electronic circuitry. These nanotechnology approaches are rapidly evolving, and new techniques are constantly emerging. Hence, this manuscript aims to review current and future nanomaterial-based technologies utilizing saliva, sweat, breath and tears as a diagnostic medium for diabetes monitoring.
Efficient Synchronization: Let Them Eat QOLB /sup1/

Efficient synchronization primitives are essential for achieving high performance in fine-grain, shared-memory parallel programs. One function of synchronization primitives is to enable exclusive access to shared data and critical sections of code. This paper makes three contributions. (1) We enumerate the five sources of overhead that locking synchronization primitives can incur. (2) We describe four mechanisms (local spinning, queue-based locking, collocation, and synchronized prefetch) that reduce these synchronization overheads. (3) With detailed simulations, we show the extent to which these four mechanisms can improve the performance of shared-memory programs. We evaluate the space of these mechanisms using seventeen synchronization constructs, which are formed from six base typed of locks (TEST&amp;SET, TEST&amp;TEST&amp;SET, MCS, LH, M, and QOLB). We show that large performance gains (speedups of more than 1.5 for three of five benchmarks) can be achieved if at least three optimizing mechanisms are used simultaneously. We find that QOLB, which incorporates all four mechanisms, outperforms all other primitives (including reactive synchronization) in all cases. Finally, we demonstrate the superior performance of a low-cost implementation of QOLB, which runs on an unmodified cluster of commodity workstations.
Electrochemical micromachining of micro square pattern using reusable masked tool

ABSTRACT Micro square pattern is the basic microfeature that can be applied to various products in different fields. The product duration and performance of textured surfaces are directly influenced by shape, size and surface quality. Maskless electrochemical micromachining (EMM) is a prominent method for producing numerous high-quality micro square patterns compared to photolithography and through-mask EMM, which are expensive and time consuming in mass production. In this paper, SU-8 2150 negative photoresist is used as a patterned tool in maskless EMM. Compared with other processes, this mask can be reused for generating many uniform micro square patterns. The maskless EMM setup consisting of EMM cell, electrode fixtures, electrical connections and vertical cross flow electrolyte system has been designed and developed indigenously for carrying out the experiments. Effects of major EMM parameters like interelectrode gap, flow rate and machining time on textured characteristics, i.e., current efficiency, length overcut, machining depth and surface roughness (Ra) are investigated during generation of micro square patterns. Arrays of 8000 micro square impressions have been fabricated during experiments. An attempt has also been made to analyze the textured characteristics on the basis of micrograph of micro square pattern for getting the best parametric combination.
Perfect Metamaterial absorber based energy harvesting application in ISM Band

- An electromagnetic (EM) energy harvesting application based on metamaterial absorber (MA) is introduced and discussed in this paper. This application is operating at ISM band (2.40 GHz) which is especially chosen due to its wide usage area. Square ring resonator (SRR) which has two gaps and resistors across the gaps on it is used. Chips resistors are used to deliver power to any active component. Transmission and reflection characteristics of metamaterial absorber (MA) for energy harvesting application are investigated. 83.6% efficient for energy harvesting application is realized in this study.
The FlexISH assay brings flexibility to cytogenetic HER2 testing

Fluorescence in‐situ hybridization (FISH) is the method of choice for quantitative human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) (also known as ERBB2) gene testing in invasive breast cancer. HER2 testing has great clinical impact, and is often claimed to expeditiously complete the entire diagnostic procedure for an individual patient. Against this background, the aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness and performance of a novel dual‐colour HER2/cen17 FISH assay designed to facilitate flexible (overnight) and rapid (<2 h of hybridization) FISH.
Trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 4 impairs methylation of histone H3 lysine 9

Chromatin is broadly compartmentalized in two defined states: euchromatin and heterochromatin. Generally, euchromatin is trimethylated on histone H3 lysine 4 (H3K4me3) while heterochromatin contains the H3K9me3 marks. The H3K9me3 modification is added by lysine methyltransferases (KMTs) such as SETDB1. Herein, we show that SETDB1 interacts with its substrate H3, but only in the absence of the euchromatic mark H3K4me3. In addition, we show that SETDB1 fails to methylate substrates containing the H3K4me3 mark. Likewise, the functionally related H3K9 KMTs G9A, GLP, and SUV39H1 also fail to bind and to methylate H3K4me3 substrates. Accordingly, we provide in vivo evidence that H3K9me2-enriched histones are devoid of H3K4me2/3 and that histones depleted of H3K4me2/3 have elevated H3K9me2/3. The correlation between the loss of interaction of these KMTs with H3K4me3 and concomitant methylation impairment leads to the postulate that, at least these four KMTs, require stable interaction with their respective substrates for optimal activity. Thus, novel substrates could be discovered via the identification of KMT interacting proteins. Indeed, we find that SETDB1 binds to and methylates a novel substrate, the inhibitor of growth protein ING2, while SUV39H1 binds to and methylates the heterochromatin protein HP1α. Thus, our observations suggest a mechanism of post-translational regulation of lysine methylation and propose a potential mechanism for the segregation of the biologically opposing marks, H3K4me3 and H3K9me3. Furthermore, the correlation between H3-KMTs interaction and substrate methylation highlights that the identification of novel KMT substrates may be facilitated by the identification of interaction partners.
Lack of association between blood-based detection of Trypanosoma cruzi DNA and cardiac involvement in a non-endemic area

Abstract Cases of chronic Chagas disease have been increasing in non-endemic areas due to the growth in immigration. This study examined the association between positive Trypanosoma cruzi-DNA detection in blood by PCR and presence of chagasic cardiac involvement in a cohort of immigrants in a European city. No association was found in this study between the positive T. cruzi blood PCR and cardiac involvement.
The gingival biotype in a cohort of Chinese subjects with and without history of periodontal disease

OBJECTIVE The present study aimed to determine the gingival biotype in Chinese subjects with and without a history of periodontal disease. MATERIAL AND METHODS Thirty periodontally healthy subjects and 20 subjects with treated chronic periodontitis were recruited. The mid-buccal gingival thickness of upper central and lateral incisors was measured by a customized caliper in all subjects. The crown length and crown width of these teeth were recorded in the healthy group, while gingival recession was measured in the periodontitis group. These outcome measures were compared among the groups and sub-groups, and the correlation of gingival biotypes with clinical parameters was analyzed. RESULTS The mean thickness of gingiva in the 30 periodontally healthy subjects was 1.05±0.31 mm (0.47-1.57 mm). The males exhibited a greater crown length than the females (P<.05). No significant correlation was found between gingival thickness and the crown width to crown length ratio. The mean gingival thickness at the 80 sites measured in the 20 periodontitis subjects was 0.89±0.29 mm (0.33-1.56 mm). Overall, gingival biotype as measured by gingival thickness was significantly correlated with gingival recession (r=-.240, P=.032), while a stronger correlation was found among the 42 sites with bleeding on probing prior to periodontal treatment (r=-.382, P=.013). CONCLUSION This study shows that gingival biotype measured by gingival thickness in subjects with treated periodontitis is significantly correlated with gingival recession. Further study could clarify the clinical implications of gingival biotype in the management of periodontal patients.
Fracture & Fatigue Analyses: SGBEM-FEM or XFEM?Part 2: 3D Solids

The SGBEM-FEM alternating method is compared with the recently popularized XFEM, for analyzing mixed-mode fracture and fatigue growth of 3D nonplanar cracks in complex solid and structural geometries. A large set of 3D examples with different degrees of complexity is analyzed by the SGBEM-FEM alternating method, and the numerical results are compared with those obtained by XFEM available in the open literature. It is clearly shown that: (a) SGBEM-FEM alternating method gives extremely high accuracy for the stress intensity factors; but the XFEM gives rather poor computational results, even for the most simple 3D cracks; (b) while SGBEM-FEM alternating method requires very coarse meshes, which are independent of each other, for both the uncracked solid as well as the non-planar crack-surface, XFEM requires, on the other hand, an extremely fine mesh for 3D solids, which can sometimes be un-usable on a normal PC; (c) the SGBEM-FEM alternating method requires very minimal computational as well as human-labor costs for modeling the non-planar fatigue growth of 3D cracks; on the other hand, fatigue analysis by XFEM requires intensive computational as well as human-labor costs even for the most simple problems; (d) because of the very poor accuracy for the stress intensity factors as computed by XFEM, the number fatigue cycles for crack-growth and failure as predicted by XFEM are meaningless for the most part, even for the most simple 3D problems computed even with extremely fine meshes; (e) with very low computational as well as human-labor costs, the SGBEM-FEM alternating method can very accurately model complex 3D cracked-solids easily, even for those cases which are too complex to be solved by XFEM . It is thus concluded that the SGBEM-FEM alternating method, among the many alternating methods developed in the past 20-30 years by Atluri and his many collaborators, are far more efficient, far more accurate, and far more reliable than XFEM for analyzing fracture and 3D non-planar fatigue crack propagation in complex structures. The implementation of the SGBEM-related method as presented in this study, as well as those presented in its companion Part 1 [Dong and 1 Center for Aerospace Research & Education, University of California, Irvine 380 Copyright © 2013 Tech Science Press CMES, vol.90, no.5, pp.379-413, 2013 Atluri (2013b)], in general-purpose off-the-shelf commercial software, is greatly valuable and is thus being pursued by the authors.
A recommender system to share knowledge in software organizations

Nowadays knowledge management is a highly important issue for organizations since it helps to improve their competitive advantage. A means to encourage employees to manage knowledge is that of communities of practice in which employees can exchange knowledge and experience. However, members of these communities are often geographically distributed. This fact decreases the feeling of trust between their members and there is consequently less knowledge sharing. In order to avoid both this problem and others which occur in software organizations this paper describes a recommender system designed to support this kind of organizations.
Size-dependent dielectrophoretic crossover frequency of spherical particles.

Dielectrophoresis (DEP) has been extensively used in lab-on-a-chip systems for trapping, separating, and manipulating of micro particles suspended in a liquid medium. The most widely used analytic model, the dipole model, provides an accurate prediction on the crossover frequency of submicron particles, but cannot explain the significant drop in crossover frequency of larger particles. Here, we present numerical simulations using the Maxwell stress tensor (MST) and finite element method to study the size effect of the DEP crossover frequency of spherical polystyrene particles suspended in de-ionized water. Our results show that the surface conductance due to the electrical double layer plays a key role, and the size dependency of crossover frequency obtained by the MST method agrees reasonably well with published experimental data. The exponents of the power law are approximately -1.0 and -4.3 for smaller (diameter < 4.6 μm) and larger particles (diameter > 4.6 μm), respectively. The free surface charge distribution reveals that the charge begins accumulating on the particle equator for particle diameters larger than a critical diameter of 4.6 μm, a result not captured by the dipolar approximation. This method may be extended to analyze bioparticles with complex shapes and composition, and provides new insights into the interpretation of dielectrophoresis applications using lab-on-a-chip systems.
Subunit disassembly and inhibition of TNFα by a semi-synthetic bicyclic peptide

Macrocyclic peptides are potentially a source of powerful drugs, but their de novo discovery remains challenging. Here we describe the discovery of a high-affinity (Kd = 10 nM) peptide macrocycle (M21) against human tumor necrosis factor-alpha (hTNFα), a key drug target in the treatment of inflammatory disorders, directly from diverse semi-synthetic phage peptide repertoires. The bicyclic peptide M21 (ACPPCLWQVLC) comprises two loops covalently anchored to a 2,4,6-trimethyl-mesitylene core and upon binding induces disassembly of the trimeric TNFα cytokine into dimers and monomers. A 2.9 Å crystal structure of the M21/hTNFα complex reveals the peptide bound to a hTNFα dimer at a normally buried epitope in the trimer interface overlapping the binding site of a previously discovered small molecule ligand (SPD304), which also induces TNF trimer dissociation and synergizes with M21 in the inhibition of TNFα cytotoxicity. The discovery of M21 underlines the potential of semi-synthetic bicyclic peptides as ligands for the discovery of cryptic epitopes, some of which are poorly accessible to antibodies.
Nanostructured silicon platform for detection of specific gene sequences

The use of glass supports in microarray technology is favored by their chemical stability, low level of autofluorescence and excellent functionalization capabilities. However, the flat surfaces generate steric hindrance during the hybridization reaction, hence reducing the signal detection in genotyping applications. Herein, a new microarray platform based on nanostructured Si was designated to be used for detection of specific gene fragments corresponding to HPV strains. We investigated the contribution on detection of the functional groups deriving from the chemical surface modification, combined with the effects of nanostructured Si. Uniform spot shapes were associated to surface wetting behaviour and the immobilization and hybridization data were evaluated by fluorescence analyses.
Osteogenic Potential of Human Oral‐Periosteal Cells (PCs) Isolated From Different Oral Origin: An In Vitro Study

The periosteum is a specialized connective tissue containing multipotent stem cells capable of bone formation. In this study, we aimed at demonstrating that human oral periosteal cells derived from three different oral sites (upper vestibule, lower vestibule, and hard palate) represent an innovative cell source for maxillo‐facial tissue engineering applications in terms of accessibility and self‐commitment towards osteogenic lineage. Periosteal cells (PCs) were isolated from patients with different ages (20–30 yy, 40–50 yy, 50–60 yy); we then analyzed the in vitro proliferation capacity and the bone self‐commitment of cell clones culturing them without any osteogenic supplement to support their differentiation. We found that oral PCs, independently of their origin and age of patients, are mesenchymal stem cells with stem cell characteristics (clonogenical and proliferative activity) and that, even in absence of any osteogenic induction, they undertake the osteoblast lineage after 45 days of culture. These results suggest that oral periosteal cells could replace mesenchymal cells from bone marrow in oral tissue‐engineering applications. J. Cell. Physiol. 231: 607–612, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A survey of distance/similarity measures for categorical data

Similarity or distance between two objects plays a fundamental role in many data mining tasks like classification and clustering. Categorical data, unlike numeric data, conceptually is deficient of default ordering relations on the attribute values. This makes the task of devising similarity or distance metrics and data mining tasks such as classification and clustering of categorical data more challenging. In this paper we formulate a taxonomy of various distance or similarity measures used in conjunction with data whose attributes are categorical. We categorize the existing measures into two broad classes, namely, Context-free and Context-sensitive measures for categorical data. In addition, we suggest a taxonomy of the clustering approaches for categorical data. We also propose a hybrid approach for measuring similarity between objects. We make a relative comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of some of the similarity measures and point out future research directions.
New antivirals for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B

ABSTRACT Introduction: Current treatment with oral nucleos(t)ides entecavir or tenofovir provide sustained suppression of HBV replication and clinical benefit in most chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infected persons. However, HBV rebound generally occurs upon drug discontinuation due to persistence of genomic HBV reservoirs as episomic cccDNA and chromosomic integrated HBV-DNA. There is renewed enthusiasm on HBV drug discovery following recent successes with antivirals for hepatitis C and immunotherapies for some cancers. Areas covered: New drugs that target distinct steps of the HBV life cycle are been developed, including inhibitors of viral entry, new polymerase inhibitors, capsid and assembly inhibitors, virus release blockers, and disruptors of cccDNA formation and transcription. Alongside these antivirals, agents that enhance anti-HBV specific immune responses are being tested, including TLR agonists, checkpoint inhibitors and therapeutic vaccines. Expert opinion: The achievement of a ‘functional cure’ for chronic HBV infection, with sustained HBsAg clearance and undetectable viremia once medications are stopped, represents the next step in the pace towards HBV elimination. Hopefully, the combination of new drugs that eliminate or functionally inactivate the genomic HBV reservoirs (cccDNA and integrated HBV-DNA) along with agents that enhance or activate immune responses against HBV will lead to a ‘definitive cure’ for chronic HBV infection.
Room-temperature hydrogen sensing with heteronanostructures based on reduced graphene oxide and tin oxide.

There's something in the air … A nanocomposite consisting of well-dispersed SnO(2) and Pt nanoparticles on reduced graphene oxide (see the high-resolution TEM image) exhibited very high responses to hydrogen at concentrations between 0.5 and 3% in air, with response times of 3-7 s and recovery times of 2-6 s. The sensor was prepared by a straightforward microwave-assisted non-aqueous sol-gel approach.
Lysophosphatidic Acid 2 Receptor-mediated Supramolecular Complex Formation Regulates Its Antiapoptotic Effect*

The G protein-coupled lysophosphatidic acid 2 (LPA2) receptor elicits prosurvival responses to prevent and rescue cells from apoptosis. However, G protein-coupled signals are not sufficient for the full protective effect of LPA2. LPA2 differs from other LPA receptor subtypes in the C-terminal tail, where it contains a zinc finger-binding motif for the interactions with LIM domain-containing TRIP6 and proapoptotic Siva-1, and a PDZ-binding motif through which it complexes with the NHERF2 scaffold protein. In this report, we identify a unique CXXC motif of LPA2 responsible for the binding to TRIP6 and Siva-1, and demonstrate that disruption of these macromolecular complexes or knockdown of TRIP6 or NHERF2 expression attenuates LPA2-mediated protection from chemotherapeutic agent-induced apoptosis. In contrast, knockdown of Siva-1 expression enhances this effect. Furthermore, a PDZ-mediated direct interaction between TRIP6 and NHERF2 facilitates their interaction with LPA2. Together, these results suggest that in addition to G protein-activated signals, the cooperation embedded in the LPA2-TRIP6-NHERF2 ternary complex provides a novel ligand-dependent signal amplification mechanism that is required for LPA2-mediated full activation of antiapoptotic signaling.