Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Advanced Oxidation Protein Products Induce Inflammatory Response in Fibroblast-Like Synoviocytes through NADPH Oxidase -Dependent Activation of NF-κB

Background: Advanced oxidation protein products (AOPPs), a marker of oxidative stress, are prevalent in many kinds of disorders. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), mainly resulting from the dysfunction of fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLSs), is related to oxidative stress. Although the increased levels of AOPPs in RA patients were reported, the effect of AOPPs on FLSs function still remains unclear. Therefore, our study aims to investigate whether AOPPs have an effect on the inflammatory response of FLSs in vitro. Methods: FLSs obtained from both knees of rats were treated with or without AOPPs-modified rat serum albumin (AOPPs-RSA) in vitro. The mRNA and protein expression of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-a, interleukin(IL)-1ß, matrix metalloproteinases(MMP)-3, MMP-13 and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) were measured by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), respectively. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation was detected by fluorescent microscope and fluorescence microplate reader. Immunoprecipitation, Co-Immunoprecipitation and western blot were performed to examine the activity of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB). Results: Exposure of FLSs to AOPPs upregulated the mRNA and protein expression of TNF-a, IL-1ß, MMP-3, MMP-13 and VEGF in a concentration dependent manner. AOPPs treatment triggered ROS production in FLSs, which was significantly abolished by ROS scavenger N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC), superoxide dismutase (SOD), NADPH oxidase inhibitors diphenyleneiodonium (DPI) and apocynin. Challenged AOPPs induced phosphorylation of p47phox, triggered an interaction between p47phox, p22phox and gp91phox, and significantly upregulated expression of NADPH oxidase subunits p47phox, p22phox and gp91phox. IκB degradation and nuclear translocation of NF-κB p65 induced by AOPPs were significantly blocked by SOD, NAC, DPI and apocynin. Conclusions: These data indicate that AOPPs induce inflammatory response in FLSs is medicated through NADPH oxidase-dependent activation of NF-κB.
Sodium butyrate preserves aspects of the differentiated phenotype of normal adult rat hepatocytes in culture

We have determined that sodium butyrate and, to a lesser extent, dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) and 3‐aminobenzamide (3‐AB) preserve aspects of the differentiated phenotype of primary cultures of adult rat hepatocytes. The histone deacetylase inhibitor, butyrate, inhibits the increase in y‐glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT) activity and the decrease in basal tyrosine aminotransferase (TAT) activity normally observed when hepatocytes are cultured under appropriate conditions. The effects of butyrate on GGT and TAT activities are accompanied by parallel changes in GGT and TAT mRNA levels. The poly(ADP)ribose‐synthetase inhibitor, 3‐aminobenzamide, has effects similar to butyrate on GGT activity and mRNA levels, while both 3‐AB and DMSO increase basal TAT activity in cultured hepatocytes. Under appropriate conditions all three agents—butyrate, 3‐AB, and DMSO‐extend the length of time cultured hepatocytes can be maintained as confluent monolayers. However, under all the conditions studied, butyrate extended the length of time hepatocytes could be maintained as monolayers more than any other treatment used. Butyrate‐treated hepatocytes maintained ultrastructural features that were more similar to those of hepatocytes in vivo than hepatocytes treated with any other of the agents tested. Histone acetylation levels of primary cultures of adult rat hepatocytes declined concomitant with the loss of the differentiated phenotype of the cells. These results suggest that histone acetylation may play a role in the changes in gene expression observed when hepatocytes are placed in culture.
Multiplexed Cytokine Protein Expression Profiles from Spreading Depression in Hippocampal Organotypic Cultures

Cytokines are involved in ischemic tolerance, including that triggered by spreading depression (SD), yet their roles in neuroprotection remain incompletely defined. The latter may stem from the pleiotropic nature of these signaling molecules whose complexities for interaction might be better deciphered through simultaneous measurement of multiple targeted proteins. Accordingly, the authors used microsphere-based flow cytometric immunoassays and hippocampal organotypic cultures (HOTCs) to characterize the magnitude, time course, and diversity of cytokine (interleukin [IL] 1α, IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor [GM-CSF], interferon-γ [IFN-γ], and tumor necrosis factor-α [TNF-α]) response to SD. GM-CSF was not detected in HOTCs or media. However, SD triggered a significant, generalized increase in seven cytokines evident in HOTCs 6 hours later, with the remaining cytokine, IL-1β, becoming significantly different at 1 and 3 days. Additionally, these changes extended to include surrounding media for IL-6 and TNF-α by 1 and 3 days. This increase was localized to microglia via immunostaining for IL-1α, IL-1β, and interferon-γ. IL-10, although significantly more abundant in HOTCs 6 hours after SD, was significantly less abundant in surrounding media at that time and at 1 day. Finally, the generalized early increase in tissue cytokines later settled to a pattern at 3 days of recovery centering on changes in IL-1α, IL-1β, and TNF-α, cytokines capable of modulating ischemic injury.
Nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics: the ‘omics’ revolution in nutritional science

The execution of the Human Genome Project has brought forth a wealth of information about the structure of the genome, which can now be used to study how the interplay between our genes and factors from the environment such as nutrition relate to a state of health or disease. To enable such studies, novel technologies have been designed in particular to monitor the activity of multiple genes simultaneously at the level of the RNA by transcriptomics, or the level of the proteins by proteomics. In addition, genome information has boosted approaches to study the role of genetic variation to explain individual differences in responses to nutrition, underlying in part the susceptibility for nutrition‐related disorders. These new areas of science referred to as ‘nutrigenomics’ and ‘nutrigenetics’ respectively, will increase our fundamental knowledge of the interaction between life processes and our diet or specific components thereof, which may in time lead to the development of novel functional foods to improve the health status of the general population, and to the personalized diet to prevent the onset of nutrition‐related disorders in genetically predisposed individuals.
Is Drosera meristocaulis a pygmy sundew? Evidence of a long-distance dispersal between Western Australia and northern South America.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS South America and Oceania possess numerous floristic similarities, often confirmed by morphological and molecular data. The carnivorous Drosera meristocaulis (Droseraceae), endemic to the Neblina highlands of northern South America, was known to share morphological characters with the pygmy sundews of Drosera sect. Bryastrum, which are endemic to Australia and New Zealand. The inclusion of D. meristocaulis in a molecular phylogenetic analysis may clarify its systematic position and offer an opportunity to investigate character evolution in Droseraceae and phylogeographic patterns between South America and Oceania. METHODS Drosera meristocaulis was included in a molecular phylogenetic analysis of Droseraceae, using nuclear internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and plastid rbcL and rps16 sequence data. Pollen of D. meristocaulis was studied using light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy techniques, and the karyotype was inferred from root tip meristem. KEY RESULTS The phylogenetic inferences (maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian approaches) substantiate with high statistical support the inclusion of sect. Meristocaulis and its single species, D. meristocaulis, within the Australian Drosera clade, sister to a group comprising species of sect. Bryastrum. A chromosome number of 2n = approx. 32-36 supports the phylogenetic position within the Australian clade. The undivided styles, conspicuous large setuous stipules, a cryptocotylar (hypogaeous) germination pattern and pollen tetrads with aperture of intermediate type 7-8 are key morphological traits shared between D. meristocaulis and pygmy sundews of sect. Bryastrum from Australia and New Zealand. CONCLUSIONS The multidisciplinary approach adopted in this study (using morphological, palynological, cytotaxonomic and molecular phylogenetic data) enabled us to elucidate the relationships of the thus far unplaced taxon D. meristocaulis. Long-distance dispersal between southwestern Oceania and northern South America is the most likely scenario to explain the phylogeographic pattern revealed.
Maximizing transmission efficiency using the National Grid Electricity Balancing System

Security constrained scheduling has been widely implemented in various power system operations and electricity markets. The practice of securing post-contingency flows preventively to long-term ratings has resulted in transmission network under-utilization. This paper presents a security constrained scheduling process that has been implemented in the National Grid Electricity Balancing System. The process is designed to exploit short-term ratings when determining pre-contingency and post-contingency actions thereby maximizing transmission efficiency. A functional overview is provided. The security criteria adopted, the actions used to secure contingencies, and the logic used to determine corrective time are described. Computational efficiency and results of the implementation are presented.
Laser Linewidth Tolerance for 16-QAM Coherent Optical Systems Using QPSK Partitioning

The laser linewidth tolerance for 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) coherent optical systems is investigated using a quaternary phase-shift-keying (QPSK) partition scheme. The different stages needed to partition the square-16-QAM into QPSK constellations for carrier phase estimation are discussed. It is shown that at 1 dB above sensitivity at a bit-error rate of 10-3, a combined linewidths symbol duration product of 1 × 10-4 is tolerable. The performance of the algorithm with different bits resolution in the analog-to-digital converter is also presented.
Influencing the Home Food and Activity Environment of Families of Preschool Children Receiving Home-Based Treatment for Obesity

The prevalence of overweight and obesity remains notably higher for Hispanic preschool children (16.7%) compared with African Americans (11.3%), Asians (3.4%), and non-Hispanic White children (3.5%). 1 While socioeconomic status may partially explain some of the risk for obesity between racial and ethnic groups, other behavioral and environmental modifiable factors require further study.2 The home physical environment has recently been identified as a potential target for not only intervention (eg, changing the availability of home foods) but also as a setting for the delivery of clinical intervention.3,4 To date, few treatment studies have been developed and tested to directly improve the home food environment of preschoolers with obesity and its associations with weight outcome. An exception has been the LAUNCH program (Learning about Activity and Understanding Nutrition for Child Health), which was based on behavioral family-based programs for school-aged children and adapted for families of preschoolers.4–6 The LAUNCH program was delivered over 18 sessions that alternated between clinic and home visitations. Feasibility and pilot study results showed promising improvements in weight outcomes for preschoolers with obesity4,6 and comparison of clinic only visits versus clinic plus home visits showed support for the inclusion of home visitations when treating preschool obesity.5 In particular, significant changes in the home food environment were shown for the clinic plus home visit group, including fewer high-calorie foods and more fruits and vegetables at the end of treatment [5]. However, the LAUNCH studies primarily included white families from middle to upper income levels and it remains relatively unknown how families of preschoolers from diverse backgrounds may construct their home food and activity environment and modify them during the course of a home-based obesity intervention. The goal of this study was to characterize the home food and activity environments of overweight and obese preschool-aged children from low socioeconomic status Latino families. Additionally, differences in available key foods and activity devices at the beginning of treatment were compared with end of treatment changes to assess program impact on the home health environment. Characterization of the home food and activity environment for treatment seeking families was considered exploratory. Based on prior studies, participants who completed the program were hypothesized to show increased availability of fruits and vegetables at posttreatment compared with baseline.3,4 In addition, preschool participants who showed a decreased body mass index (BMI) trajectory at posttreatment compared with baseline were hypothesized to have a higher availability of fruits and vegetables and devices that promote physical activity compared with participants who showed smaller change or no change in zBMI.4–6
An evaluation of styles of IT support for marketing planning

IT support for marketing planning can aid in the use of marketing tools, facilitate group planning, and support moves towards continuous planning based on a live marketing model of the business. But, amongst other factors, achieving these benefits depends on the style of support provided by the system. After a review of relevant decision support system (DSS) literature, describes here the findings relating to support style from a qualitative evaluation of a system named EXMAR. The findings support Little’s classic rules of “decision calculus”, such as the importance of ensuring that managers understand and can control the system, rather than the objective influenced by management science of prescribing an optimal recommendation. Also emphasises the role of systems in enhancing mutual understanding in a cross‐functional planning team, and hence in building commitment to the resulting plan.
Demonstration of OpenFlow-Controlled Network Orchestration for Adaptive SVC Video Manycast

Software defined networking (SDN) makes networks programmable and application-aware by decoupling network control and management (NC&M) from data forwarding and leveraging centralized NC&M to facilitate user-customized routing and switching. Inspired by these, this paper investigates how to realize the OpenFlow-controlled (OF-controlled) network orchestration that can facilitate efficient scalable video coding (SVC) streaming to heterogeneous clients. Specifically, we consider real-time SVC streaming and address the situation in which video sources reside in geographically- distributed servers and clients can join and leave the streaming services dynamically. We formulate this as a multi-source multi-destination manycast problem and realize the networking system with an OF-controlled SDN architecture. We first design the OF controller to enable efficient network operations. Then, we focus on solving the multi-source multi-destination SVC video manycast problem and design several algorithms. Initially, an integer linear programming (ILP) model is formulated to obtain the optimal solutions for small-scale problems. Next, we try to make the manycast algorithm suitable for practical implementation, and design two time-efficient heuristics. Simulation results indicate that the heuristics can provide close-to-optimal solutions. Finally, we build an OF network testbed that consists of OF switches, SVC video servers and clients, and perform SVC streaming experiments to demonstrate our design. Experimental results verify that the proposed scheme can allocate bandwidth intelligently and ensure high-quality video streaming. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that accomplishes experimental demonstration of OF-controlled network orchestration for adaptive SVC video manycast.
Leveraging Localization for Multi-camera Association

We present McAssoc, a deep learning approach to the as-sociation of detection bounding boxes in different views ofa multi-camera system. The vast majority of the academiahas been developing single-camera computer vision algo-rithms, however, little research attention has been directedto incorporating them into a multi-camera system. In thispaper, we designed a 3-branch architecture that leveragesdirect association and additional cross localization infor-mation. A new metric, image-pair association accuracy(IPAA) is designed specifically for performance evaluationof cross-camera detection association. We show in the ex-periments that localization information is critical to suc-cessful cross-camera association, especially when similar-looking objects are present. This paper is an experimentalwork prior to MessyTable, which is a large-scale bench-mark for instance association in mutliple cameras.
3D parts decomposition from sparse range data using information criterion

A method which produces a 3-D structural description from contour data or sparse range data by using superquadrics is proposed. The method consists of primal segmentation using superquadrics and convex parts merger using Akaike's information criterion (AIC) as the criterion. The primal segmentation operation produces many convex parts by expanding superquadrics within the object. The AIC criterion enables keeping the number of parts reasonable because it determines how many parts form the object. An AIC for merging superquadrics is derived. The proposed method is tested successfully by transforming contour data and 3-D sparse range data of human beings into parts descriptions. The tests indicate that the proposed method can be used for 3-D object recognition as well as for data capture for computer graphics applications. <<ETX>>
Minimum verification error training for topic verification

We propose a new formulation of minimum verification error training and apply it to the problem of topic verification as an example. In topic verification, a decision is made as to whether a document truly belongs to a particular topic of interest. Such a decision typically depends on a comparison between a model for the desired topic and a model for background topics, using a decision threshold. We propose modeling the background topics as a cohort model consisting of a weighted combination of the M closest topics discovered from the training data. The weights and the decision threshold are optimized using the generalized probabilistic descent algorithm to explicitly minimize the verification error rate, which is defined to be a weighted sum of the Type I (false rejection) and Type II (false acceptance) errors.
Film deposition of a self-propelled droplet on a cone with slip

We study the dynamic wetting of a self-propelled viscous droplet using the time-dependent lubrication equation on a conical-shaped substrate for different cone radii, cone angles and slip lengths. The droplet velocity is found to increase with the cone angle and the slip length, but decrease with the cone radius. We show that a film is formed at the receding part of the droplet, much like the classical Landau-Levich-Derjaguin (LLD) film. The film thickness $h_f$ is found to decrease with the slip length $\lambda$. By using the approach of matching asymptotic profiles in the film region and the quasi-static droplet, we obtain the same film thickness as the results from the lubrication approach for all slip lengths. We identify two scaling laws for the asymptotic regimes: $h_fh''_o \sim Ca^{2/3}$ for $\lambda\ll h_f$ and $h_f h''^{3}_o\sim (Ca/\lambda)^2$ for $\lambda\gg h_f$, here $1/h''_o$ is a characteristic length at the receding contact line and $Ca$ is the capillary number. We compare the position and the shape of the droplet predicted from our continuum theory with molecular dynamics simulations, which are in close agreement. Our results show that manipulating the droplet size, the cone angle and the slip length provides different schemes for guiding droplet motion and coating the substrate with a film.
Current and emerging triplet combination therapies for relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma

ABSTRACT Despite significant improvement in outcomes have been observed for multiple myeloma (MM) patients over the past 10–15 years, mainly due to the introduction of novel agents targeting the tumor clone and the bone marrow microenvironment, treatment of refractory and/or relapsed (RR) disease remains a challenge, particularly for patients who have failed prior bortezomib- and lenalidomide-based therapies. More recently, new drugs with different mechanisms of action, including second generation proteasome inhibitors, third generation immunomodulatory drugs, histone deacetylase inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies, have been developed and are under investigation, further increasing treatment options for RRMM patients. Overall, novel agent-based triplet combinations demonstrated superior response rates and prolonged disease control when compared with two-drug regimens in several randomized clinical trials, without adding any relevant additional toxicity. Salvage triplet therapies are likely to play a key role in overcoming drug-resistance and hold promise to further improve long-term outcomes of RRMM patients.
Arginine regulation by myeloid derived suppressor cells and tolerance in cancer: mechanisms and therapeutic perspectives

Summary: Patients with cancer have an impaired T‐cell response that can decrease the potential therapeutic benefit of cancer vaccines and other forms of immunotherapy. l‐arginine (l‐Arg) is a conditionally essential amino acid that is fundamental for the function of T lymphocytes. Recent findings in tumor‐bearing mice and cancer patients indicate that increased metabolism of l‐Arg by myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) producing arginase I inhibits T‐lymphocyte responses. Here we discuss some of the most recent concepts how MDSC expressing arginase I may regulate T‐cell function in cancer and other chronic inflammatory diseases and suggest possible therapeutic interventions to overcome this inhibitory effect.
Interprovincial migration and local public goods.

"The objective of this paper is to test whether fiscally induced migration occurs in Canada; that is, whether interprovincial migration flows are influenced by government tax and expenditure policies. In order to do so, a multinominal logit model of migration is developed in which individuals choose to live in the province where their utility would be highest. The model is estimated using aggregate data for the period 1962-81. The results indicate that migration is influenced by provincial government spending, trough the magnitude and direction of the effect differs with the type of government spending. The implication of these results is that intergovernmental transfer payments and provincial natural resource revenues also have the potential to influence migration flows in Canada. " (SUMMARY IN FRE)