Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Necrosis-induced TLR3 Activation Promotes TLR2 Expression in Gingival Cells

Damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), endogenous molecules released from injured or dying cells, evoke sterile inflammation that is not induced by microbial pathogens. Periodontal diseases are infectious diseases caused by oral microorganisms; however, in some circumstances, DAMPs might initiate inflammatory responses before host cells recognize pathogen-associated molecular patterns. Here, we showed that the necrotic cell supernatant (NCS) functioned as an endogenous danger signal when released from necrotic epithelial cells exposed to repeat freeze thawing. The NCS contained RNA and stimulated the production of inflammatory cytokines interleukin 6 (IL-6) and IL-8 from gingival epithelial cells and gingival fibroblasts. Targeted knockdown of Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) in these cells significantly suppressed the ability of the NCS to induce IL-6 and IL-8 production. Epithelial cells and fibroblasts recognized the NCS from heterologous cells. Interestingly, the activation of TLR3, rather than other TLRs, induced TLR2 mRNA expression and proteins in gingival epithelial cells, and pretreatment with the NCS or polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid (Poly(I:C)), a strong TLR3 activator, enhanced inflammatory cytokine production induced by subsequent stimulation with Porphyromonas gingivalis (P. gingivalis) lipopolysaccharide, a TLR2 agonist. Moreover, the NCS reduced the expression of epithelial tight junction molecules zona occludens 1 and occludin and increased the permeability of epithelial tight junctions. These findings suggest that endogenous danger signal molecules such as self-RNA released from necrotic cells are recognized by TLR3 and that a subsequent increase of TLR2 expression in periodontal compartments such as gingival epithelial cells and gingival fibroblasts may enhance the inflammatory response to periodontopathic microbes recognized by TLR2 such as P. gingivalis, which also disrupts epithelial barrier functions. Thus, DAMPs may be involved in the development and prolongation of periodontal disease.
Experimental Headache in Humans

The need for valid human experimental models of headache is obvious. Several compounds have been proposed as headache-inducing agents, but only the nitroglycerin (NTG) model has been validated. In healthy subjects, intravenous infusions of the nitric oxide (NO) donor NTG induce a dose-dependent headache and dilatation of the temporal, radial and middle cerebral artery. NTG-induced headache, although less intense, resembles migraine in pain characteristics, but the accompanying symptoms are rarely present. Cephalic large arteries are dilated during migraine headache as well as during NTG headache. N-acetylcysteine enhances the formation of NO and potentiates NTG-induced headache, whereas mepyramine, a H1-antagonist capable of blocking histamine-induced headache, has no effect. Thus, the headache is dependent on NO or other steps in the NO cascade. The model is useful for pharmacological interventions and sumatriptan reduced the NTG-induced headache. The NTG model may be a valuable tool in the development of future migraine drugs.
THE BOHR EFFECT RELATED TO BLOOD AND ERYTHROCYTE PH.

The Bohr effect of the blood and the red cell hemolysates of adult and newborn humans, goats and kids, and sheep and lambs were determined and the physiological significance is discussed. Similar determinations were made on blood from an African elephant, yak, camel, Dybowski deer, and llama. The strong displacement to the right of the oxygen dissociation curve which occurs in kids and lambs during the first 5 days of life can be largely explained by a change in the pH value within the erythrocytes. When the oxygen affinity is expressed by the oxygen pressure necessary for half saturation (T50) at a constant cell pH, considerable differences exist between species.
Effect of plasma lipoproteins on natural killer cell activity in the elderly population.

BACKGROUND Natural killer (NK) cells possess spontaneous cytotoxicity against tumors and virus-infected cells to play a major role in immunosurveillance and defense against the development of cancer, as well as bacterial and viral infections. The role of plasma lipoproteins in atherogenesis is well recognized, but the physiological relevance of their immunoregulatory properties is still questioned. In particular, it is unknown whether hypercholesterolemia should be considered a risk factor for diminished immunity in old age. METHODS To evaluate effects of plasma lipoprotein levels on immune function, we assessed the relation between plasma lipoprotein profiles and NK cell activity. NK cell activity was assayed by release of (51)Cr from K562 target cells, and concurrent plasma lipoprotein levels were measured in 47 samples of elderly males (mean age +/- SD, 66.6 +/- 1.7 years). RESULTS Univariate regression analyses revealed direct relations between NK cell activity and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (r=.46, p<.001), apolipoprotein (Apo) A-1 (r=.48, p<.001), and Apo A-2 (r=.46, p<.005). In addition, multiple regression analyses showed a direct independent relation between NK cell activity and Apo A-1 (b=0.32+/-0.09 mg/dl, beta=0.48, and p <.001). CONCLUSION NK cell activity is related directly to plasma Apo A-1 levels in elderly subjects. The mechanisms of this interaction are unknown, but Apo A-1 contributes to the composition of the antiatherogenic fraction of high-density lipoprotein and could also defend against infectious and malignant disease through a potential for NK cell activity.
Incidence of lingual nerve paraesthesia following mandibular third molar surgery

Context: The surgical removal of impacted mandibular third molar is associated with minor but expected complications like pain, swelling, bruising and trismus. The lingual nerve damage sometimes occurs after the removal of mandibular third molar producing impaired sensation or permanent sensory loss. This complication is usually unexpected and unacceptable for the patients particularly if no prior warning has been given. Aims: The aim of the present clinical prospective study was to determine the clinical incidence of lingual nerve injury following mandibular third molar removal and to analyze possible factors for the lingual nerve injury. Settings and Design: Clinical prospective study in the Department of Oral Surgery, Punjab Government Dental College and Hospital, Amritsar. Materials and Methods: Ninety patients were selected randomly, amongst the patients, who reported to our department from January 2009 to December 2009 for the surgical removal of impacted mandibular third molar. To minimize the risk of lingual nerve injury, the standard terence wards incision was made in all cases and only buccal flap was raised. Statistical Analysis: The small number of paraesthesia precluded statistical analysis. Results: Out of 90 patients, six patients were diagnosed with lingual nerve paraesthesia. The overall incidence rate of lingual nerve injury was 6.6%. Conclusions: It can be concluded that lingual nerve paraesthesia can occur with or without reflection of lingual flap in spite of all the measures taken to protect it. It may be contributed to the fact of anatomical variations of lingual nerve.
Self-terminating electrochemical etching of stainless steel for the fabrication of micro-mirrors

A novel, self-terminating electrochemical etch process is proposed for the fabrication of scanning steel micro-mirrors. The process uses single mask photolithography, and the etching step is terminated automatically, which at the same time enables the depth profile shaping of the fabricated structure. The proposed process is characterized and then used to fabricate two versions of one-dimensional (1D) steel micro-scanners: one with selective thinning of the predefined parts and one without thinning. The fabricated devices are characterized and compared with respect to their resonance frequencies and mechanical quality factors. The thickness of the starting substrate is selectively thinned down by approximately 150 µm in order to decrease the mass of the mirror and eventually to increase the resonance frequency of the fundamental mode. The resonance frequency of the structure is increased from 4210 Hz to 6060 Hz resulting in a normalized frequency shift of 15%.
Occurrence of thioredoxin reductase in Deinococcus species, the UV resistant bacteria.

The occurrence of thioredoxin reductase (NAD(P)H: oxidized-thioredoxin reductase, EC 1.6. 4.5, TrxR) in five mesophilic species of Deinococcus was investigated by PAGE. Each species possessed a unique TrxR pattern, for example, a single TrxR characterized D. radiopugnans while multiple forms of TrxR occurred in other Deinococcal spp. Most of TrxRs occurring in Deinococcus showed dual cofactor specificity, active with either NADH or NADPH, although the NADPH specific-TrxR was observed in D. radiophilus and D.proteolyticus.
Characterization of the binding surface of the translocated intimin receptor, an essential protein for EPEC and EHEC cell adhesion

The translocated intimin receptor (TIR) of enteropathogenic and enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EPEC and EHEC) is required for EPEC and EHEC infections, which cause widespread illness across the globe. TIR is translocated via a type‐III secretion system into the intestinal epithelial cell membrane, where it serves as an anchor for E. coli attachment via its binding partner intimin. While many aspects of EPEC and EHEC infection are now well understood, the importance of the intermolecular contacts made between intimin and TIR have not been thoroughly investigated. Herein we report site‐directed mutagenesis studies on the intimin‐binding domain of EPEC TIR, and how these mutations affect TIR‐intimin association, as analyzed by isothermal titration calorimetry and circular dichroism. These results show how two factors govern TIR's binding to intimin: A three‐residue TIR hot spot is identified that largely mediates the interaction, and mutants that alter the β‐hairpin structure of TIR severely diminish binding affinity. In addition, peptides incorporating key TIR residues identified by mutagenesis are incapable of binding intimin. These results indicate that hot spot residues and structural orientation/preorganization are required for EPEC, and likely EHEC, TIR‐intimin binding.
Estimation of attributable risk for case‐control studies with multiple matching

Kuritz and Landis considered case‐control studies with multiple matching and proposed an asymptotic interval estimator of the attributable risk based on Wald's statistic. Using Monte Carlo simulation, Kuritz and Landis demonstrated that their interval estimator could perform well when the number of matched sets was large (⩾100). However, the number of matched sets may often be moderate or small in practice. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of Kuritz and Landis' interval estimator in small or moderate number of matched sets and compare it with four other interval estimators. We note that the coverage probability of Kuritz and Landis' interval estimator tends to be less than the desired confidence level when the probability of exposure among cases is large. In these cases, the interval estimator using the logarithmic transformation and the two interval estimators derived from the quadratic equations developed here can generally improve the coverage probability of Kuritz and Landis' interval estimator, especially for the case of a small number of matched sets. Furthermore, we find that an interval estimator derived from a quadratic equation is consistently more efficient than Kuritz and Landis' interval estimator. The interval estimator using the logit transformation, although which performs poorly when the underlying odds ratio (OR) is close to 1, can be useful when both the probability of exposure among cases and the underlying OR are moderate or large. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Management of post‐transplant lymphoproliferative disorder in adult solid organ transplant recipients – BCSH and BTS Guidelines

A joint working group established by the Haemato‐oncology subgroup of the British Committee for Standards in Haematology (BCSH) and the British Transplantation Society (BTS) has reviewed the available literature and made recommendations for the diagnosis and management of post‐transplant lymphoproliferative disorder in adult recipients of solid organ transplants. This review details the therapeutic options recommended including reduction in immunosuppression (RIS), transplant organ resection, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Effective therapy should be instituted before progressive disease results in declining performance status and multi‐organ dysfunction. The goal of treatment should be a durable complete remission with retention of transplanted organ function with minimal toxicity.
State Exploration Choices in a Small-Step Abstract Interpreter

When generating the abstract transition graph while computing k-CFA, the order in which we generate successor states is not important. However, if we are using store widening, the order in which we generate successor states matters because some states will help us jump to the minimum fixed point faster than others. The order in which states are explored is controlled by the work list. The states can be explored in depth-first or breadth-first fashion. However, these are not the only options available. We can also use a priority queue to intelligently explore states which will help us reach a fixed point faster than either of these two approaches. In this paper, we evaluate the different options that exist for a work list.
Recent advances and future prospects on GaN-based power devices

Recent advances of GaN Gate Injection Transistors (GITs) and their applications to power switching systems are reviewed. The GITs are fabricated on cost effective Si substrates in a large diameter up tp 6inch, which exhibit normally-off operations by the use of p-AlGaN over an AlGaN/GaN hetero-junction. The GIT is free from the current collapse up to 600V enabling reliable operation of the power switching systems. The inverter for motor drive using GITs enables high efficiency of 99.3% at 1.5kW which is higher than that by conventional Si-IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor). The GITs are also applied various circuits in a power supply taking advantages of the high frequency operations. A GaN-based LLC resonant converter used in isolated DC-DC converter enables 1MHz operation with high efficiency of 96.4%, while conventional Si devices cannot be operated at such high frequencies. The above results demonstrate very promising potentials of high-voltage normally-off GaN GITs.
Multilateral Motion Control with Transmission Ratio based on Haptic Database

For realization of haptic skill education systems, it is necessary to transmit haptic information to several people. Thus, multilateral control based on bilateral control is suitable for skill education systems. However, it is important for application of multilateral control to skill education based on haptic information that the influences from the operators are variable according to the trainee's skill acquisition level. Thus, this paper proposes multilateral control with haptic transmission ratio. Then, five types of multilateral control are realized by designing the transmission ratio. Additionally, in this paper, multilateral control with transmission ratio based on haptic database is proposed as well. Finally, the experimental results show the viability of the proposed methods.
Betrayal Trauma in Youth and Negative Communication During a Stressful Task

Attachment-based theories and related research illustrate that emotion regulation develops in the context of a secure relationship between a child and caregiver. When a secure bond is broken, such as in the context of betrayal trauma, children fail to develop necessary emotion regulation skills which can lead to an array of relational problems. The current study examined the relations between betrayal trauma history, type of communication during a stressful interpersonal laboratory task, and emotion regulation difficulties in a sample of trauma-exposed adolescents. Results showed that adolescents with a betrayal trauma history reported more emotion regulation difficulties and exhibited more aggressive and fewer positive communication behaviors when engaged in a stressful interpersonal task with their mothers than did adolescents exposed only to nonbetrayal trauma. Emotion regulation difficulties mediated the relation between betrayal trauma history and negative communication. The clinical and developmental implications from these findings are discussed.
A Reliable Routing Technique for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are composed of tiny and miniaturized electronic devices which are known as sensors. Sensors can sense, compute, store, transmit and receive data of interests from the environment in which they are deployed. Due to small size of sensors, a big size battery source cannot be embedded into them therefore sensors need efficient mechanism for energy utilization. Many of the existing hierarchical routing protocols do not guarantee the optimum choice of cluster heads because of the lack of comprehensive consideration of the remaining energy of the nodes, the distribution within a cluster and the distribution among the clusters in the process of choosing the cluster heads. In addition, the single-hop communication among clusters head to a serious imbalance in the energy of the cluster heads. This paper combines the improved particle swarm clustering algorithm and the interclustering algorithm to form an Adaptive Energy Efficient Clustering routing Protocol (AECRP). Simulations results show that this protocol not only balances the energy consumption of the overall network, delays death time of the nodes, but also provides more reliable data delivery.
Validation of array accesses: integration of flow analysis and program verification techniques

A program that accesses an out‐of‐bound array element can cause unexpected behaviour that is unacceptable to safety‐critical or security‐critical systems. Two traditional compile‐time approaches to array bound checking are flow analysis and program verification. This paper presents a new approach, IFV, that integrates flow analysis and program verification techniques. IFV is generally about as effective as program verification yet runs in about the same time as flow analysis. Its typical runtime is proportional to the product of the program size and the number of declared variables. IFV matches loops to templates, which represent commonly occurring loop patterns, to discover loop invariants automatically, which it then uses to strengthen flow analysis. With only seven templates, it handles many common array‐access patterns. Patterns not verified by flow analysis are processed with verification techniques entirely automatically. This paper also describes a prototype IFV system that performs compile‐time array bound checking for programs in a subset of C. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Agile practices adapted to mass‐market application development

Mobile app markets have experienced a significant growth during the last year. The increasing number of apps available on markets and the profits that developers and companies obtain are relevant enough to seriously consider the way apps are developed. The always‐changing environment in which apps are produced makes agile a convenient methodology to follow. Although agile allows the development team to quickly adjust the requisites to the new customer's needs, there is a lack of research on how agile methodologies can be explicitly adapted to develop mass‐market applications. Many references explain how to design and code a mobile app, but there is not much knowledge about other stages in the development process. Adapting an agile methodology to the development of mass‐market applications would provide project teams with a clear guide to successfully produce an app without missing any step in the process. This paper describes a case study in which an agile mass‐market application development process is followed. The proposed process also considers marketing issues as they are necessary to publicize a mass‐market application. This process has been followed and refined for several years in the development of the institutional apps at Carlos III University of Madrid. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Renal Impairment Associated with Losartan

TO THE EDITOR: Losartan, the first angiotensin II receptor antagonist, is used to treat hypertension. We report a case of renal impairment associated with this drug. A 77-year-old woman began receiving losartan, 50 mg/d, for hypertension. Concomitant medications included long-term use of allopurinol for gout. The patient's serum creatinine level at that time was 132.6 mol/L (1.5 mg/dL). Six weeks later, the patient was hospitalized with a 1- to 2-week history of diarrhea and anorexia. On admission, her serum creatinine level was 327.1 mol/L (3.7 mg/dL), and her blood urea nitrogen level was 36.1 mmol/L (101 mg/dL). The patient was oliguric for the following 3 days, and serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen levels increased to 424.3 mol/L (4.8 mg/dL) and 43.6 mmol/L (122 mg/dL), respectively. Results of renal ultrasonography showed no significant changes compared with results from 2 years earlier. After the patient began receiving diuretics and after losartan and allopurinol therapies were discontinued, renal function returned to levels near baseline. Pharmacologic blockade of angiotensin II can lead to deterioration of renal function in patients at risk (those with preexisting renal impairment, concomitant use of diuretics, or congestive heart failure). Our patient had a history of type II diabetes and known diffuse vascular disease and thus was at risk for this event. A small right kidney suggested renal vascular disease. In one study [1], renal function deteriorated with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors. Because losartan has a similar pharmacologic resultblockade of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone systemit may be expected to produce a similar renal effect. A search of the MEDLINE database for reports published from 1980 to 1995 showed no case reports of renal impairment associated with losartan. When prescribing losartan for patients at risk for renal failure, clinicians should be aware of the possibility of renal impairment.
Missing categorical data imputation approach based on similarity

Imputation for missing data is an important task of data mining, which may influence the data mining result. In this paper, Missing Categorical Data Imputation Based on Similarity (MIBOS) is proposed to solve this problem. The algorithm defines a similarity model between objects with incomplete data, constructing the similarity matrix of objects and further gets the nearest undifferentiated object sets of each object to impute the missing data iteratively. In the imputing process, the imputed value will be directly applied to the same iteration and the following iterations. Experiments with three UCI benchmark data sets show the improvement of the proposed algorithm from perspectives of complete rate, accuracy and time efficiency.