Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Co-increase of Nerve Fibers and HLA-DRand/or Factor-XIIIa-expressing Dendritic Cells in Dentinal Caries-affected Regions of the Human Dental Pulp: An Immunohistochemical Study

Neuro-immune interaction has been suggested to play some modulatory role in the immunodefense of the dentin/pulp complex. In this study, we performed a simultaneous immunohistochemical observation of neural elements and pulpal dendritic cells (PDCs) on human carious teeth, to obtain morphological evidence for neuro-immune interaction in response to dentinal tubule-derived carious stimuli. Human third molars bearing a pulp-exposure-free caries lesion were studied. Immunoperoxidase staining was performed with anti-HLA-DR, anti-coagulation factor XIIIa, and anti-CD14 as PDC markers, and anti-low-affinity nerve growth factor receptor (NGFR), anti-protein gene products 9.5, and anti-calcitonin gene-related peptide as nerve markers. The carious teeth usually exhibited localized accumulation of both PDCs and nerve fibers immunoreactive to each marker, in the para-odontoblastic region corresponding to the pulpal end of carious dentinal tubules. Semi-quantitative digital densitometry revealed that pixel numbers corresponding to factor-XIIIa- and NGFRimmunoreactivity were significantly higher in the carious regions than those in the non-carious regions of the same teeth as well as those in the corresponding regions of intact teeth. Classification of specimens with respect to caries depth showed that the co-increase was most apparent in teeth with superficial caries. The increase of PDCs was less pronounced in carious teeth with reparative dentin. These findings suggest that both pulpal nerves and PDCs respond promptly and actively to dentinal tubule-derived carious stimuli. The synchronized accumulation of the two structures suggests an increased opportunity for neuro-immune interaction that may be of significance in the modulation of pathological processes in the dental pulp.
Closed-Loop Supply Chain Network Design with Recovery of Glass Containers

Reverse logistics (RL) and closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) have recently received enormous attention due to growing environmental concerns and legislations coupled with the lucrative business potential. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a closed-loop supply chain network design model capable of recovering glass containers. A multi-period multi-product mixed-integer linear programming model is proposed to maximize profit. The strategic design of the supply chain is dealt simultaneously with the tactical planning of its operation, which covers procurement, production, storage, distribution, take-back, reprocessing, reuse, and recycling. To illustrate the efficiency and practicability of the model, it is applied to a real-world case of beverage supply chain where the glass containers are either re-used or recycled into their original form, as raw materials. Finally, sensitivity analyses, from a financial perspective, have been conducted to reveal the determinants of profitable product recovery and grasp their managerial implications. The analyses showed that return rate and return acquisition cost have determinant impact on the economic viability of product recovery practice.
An efficient design of FPGA-based sample rate converting filter in Software Defined Radio

In order to be compatible with different sample rate requirements in communication systems, Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform must support flexible sample rate conversion. In this paper, a flexible and efficient design of FPGA-based fractional sample rate converting (SRC) filter is proposed. A folded systolic FIR structure with time-varying coefficients is introduced to lower hardware resource consumption and to relieve the timing requirement of critical path. A parameterized design methodology for high order fractional SRC filter is presented to improve the adaptability of design. A high order LTE SRC filter is implemented on a FPGA-based SDR platform for verification, and the efficiencies and the correctness are reported in the test results.
Analysis of Focuses of Attention Distribution for a Novel Face Recognition System

In this paper we propose an automated approach to recognize human faces based on the analysis of the distribution of the focuses of attention (FOAs) that reproduces the ability of the humans in the interpretation of visual scenes. The analysis of the FOAs (distribution and position), carried out by an efficient and source light independent visual attention module, allows us to integrate the face features (e.g., eyes, nose, mouth shape) and the holistic features (the relations between the various parts of the face). Moreover, a remarkable approach has been developed for skin recognition based on the shifting of the Hue plane in the HSL color
Changes in Mitochondrial Rna Production in Cells Treated with Nucleoside Analogues

Background To investigate mitochondrial (mt) toxicity of antiretroviral drugs further, we developed a novel realtime PCR-based assay for the quantification of mtRNA. We analysed the effects of stavudine (d4T), didanosine (ddI) and zidovudine (AZT) on the production of mtRNAs in different human cell lines and compared the production with the amount of mtDNA present in the same cells. Materials and methods: HUT78, CEM and U937 cells were exposed to different nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) for 7 days. Thereafter, nucleic acids were isolated and Taqman-based real-time PCR was used to quantify mtDNA and three different mtRNAs (ND1, CYTB and ND6 gene products). Results Different amounts of mtRNAs exist in different cell lines. When mtRNA was measured in cells exposed to an NRTI, a marked decrease was observed in cells treated with d4T, but not with ddI or AZT. Changes in mtRNA production did not always correspond to modifications in mtDNA content: 1 μM d4T significantly changed mtRNA but not mtDNA content. Conclusions d4T, but not ddI or AZT, significantly alters mtRNA quantity and quality. The method we have developed can reveal changes that are not observed by measuring mtDNA content only, and can be used for ex vivo studies on drug toxicity.
Benefits-Led IT: Building The Organisational Capability - A Longitudinal Perspective

Although the enterprise-wide benefits realization capability has been touted as the most robust way in which organisations can counter the still too common incidence of information systems failing to deliver their promised value, there has been no research to explore the validity of this claim. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to present the results of a three year, action research study, which explicitly sought to establish just such a capability, within an Institute of Higher Education. The project commenced, in 2010, with a series of workshops, through which staff were introduced to the core components of this capability, namely a range of benefits-oriented competences and practices. This paper provides a longitudinal perspective, critically reviewing the adoption and impact of these competences and practices, over the past three years. The study has demonstrated that certain practices are enthusiastically embraced, as they are perceived to make a positive contribution to the realisation of benefits. However, it would be difficult to claim that a benefits realisation capability has been successfully created, as it is clear that there is still some reluctance to apply benefits practices in a consistent and extensive manner, across all areas of organisational activity. This paper concludes by exploring the lessons learned for organisations wishing to establish their own benefits realisation capabilities.
Analysis of Transcriptional Signatures in Response to Listeria monocytogenes Infection Reveals Temporal Changes That Result from Type I Interferon Signaling

Analysis of the mouse transcriptional response to Listeria monocytogenes infection reveals that a large set of genes are perturbed in both blood and tissue and that these transcriptional responses are enriched for pathways of the immune response. Further we identified enrichment for both type I and type II interferon (IFN) signaling molecules in the blood and tissues upon infection. Since type I IFN signaling has been reported widely to impair bacterial clearance we examined gene expression from blood and tissues of wild type (WT) and type I IFNαβ receptor-deficient (Ifnar1-/-) mice at the basal level and upon infection with L. monocytogenes. Measurement of the fold change response upon infection in the absence of type I IFN signaling demonstrated an upregulation of specific genes at day 1 post infection. A less marked reduction of the global gene expression signature in blood or tissues from infected Ifnar1-/- as compared to WT mice was observed at days 2 and 3 after infection, with marked reduction in key genes such as Oasg1 and Stat2. Moreover, on in depth analysis, changes in gene expression in uninfected mice of key IFN regulatory genes including Irf9, Irf7, Stat1 and others were identified, and although induced by an equivalent degree upon infection this resulted in significantly lower final gene expression levels upon infection of Ifnar1-/- mice. These data highlight how dysregulation of this network in the steady state and temporally upon infection may determine the outcome of this bacterial infection and how basal levels of type I IFN-inducible genes may perturb an optimal host immune response to control intracellular bacterial infections such as L. monocytogenes.
Utility of Semirigid Thoracoscopy in the Diagnosis of Pleural Effusions: A Systematic Review

Background and ObjectivePleural effusion of undetermined etiology (PEUE), where blind pleural aspirate/biopsy fails to yield an answer, often needs histologic study for a definitive diagnosis. Several studies have shown the potential utility of medical thoracoscopy (MT) in PEUE; results, however, are not uniform and a majority are available for rigid thoracoscopy. We sought to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the relatively new technique of semirigid thoracoscopy in PEUE through this systematic review. MethodsThe electronic search was carried out in PubMed without language restriction. References of relevant records and abstracts were hand searched. Articles were selected based on the following criteria: (1) prospective study, (2) based on original research, (3) enrolled consecutive patients with PEUE, (4) full paper available in English, (5) MT carried out under local anesthesia (LA) using semirigid (flex-rigid) instrument, and (6) reported sufficient data to construct a 2∞2 contingency table. We assessed the study quality and extracted data independently and in duplicate using a standardized data extraction form. ResultsFive studies met the inclusion criteria, encompassing 154 patients. Pooled sensitivity (95% CI) was 0.97 (0.92-0.99), specificity (95% CI) was 1.00 (0.69-1.00), positive likelihood ratio (95% CI) was 5.47 (1.11-16.86) and negative likelihood ratio (95%CI) was 0.08 (0.04-0.18). No major complications or mortality was noted. ConclusionSemirigid thoracoscopy seems to be a safe, simple, and accurate tool for undiagnosed pleural effusions. It is well tolerated and is devoid of major complications. Further studies with sound methodology will further help to define the future role of this procedure.
Supercentralizing Superderivations on Prime Superalgebras

ABSTRACT Let A = A 0 ⊕ A 1 be an associative superalgebra over a commutative associative ring F, and let Z s (A) be its supercenter. An F-mapping f of A into itself is called supercentralizing on a subset S of A if [x, f(x)] s ∈ Z s (A) for all x ∈ S. In this article, we prove a version of Posner's theorem for supercentralizing superderivations on prime superalgebras.
Design of spectral channels for hyperspectral image classification

Purpose of this paper is to propose a procedure to extract, from a hyperspectral image, spectral channels of variable bandwidths and spectral positions in such a way as to optimize the accuracy for a specific classification problem. In particular, each spectral channel ("s-band") is obtained by averaging a group of contiguous channels of the hyperspectral image ("h-bands"). If one wants to define n s-bands, the problem can be therefore formulated as the optimization of n starting and n ending h-bands. To this end, we propose to adopt as optimization criterion an interclass distance computed on a training set and to generate a sequence of possible solutions with one of three possible search strategies. As the proposed formalization of the problem makes it analogous to a feature selection problem, the three proposed strategies have been derived by modifying three feature selection strategies: the Sequential Forward Selection (SFS), the Steepest Ascent and the Fast Constrained Search. Experimental results with a well-known hyperspectral data set confirm the effectiveness of the approach, which allows better results than those provided by the SFS method for feature selection. A preliminary comparison suggests that the accuracy is very similar to that obtained by the DBFE feature transformation method. The interest of this kind of procedure can be for a case-based design of the spectral bands of a programmable sensor or for the reduction of the number of bands derived from a hyperspectral image. It represents a special case of feature transformation that is expected to be more powerful than feature selection. The kind of transformation used allows the interpretability of the new features (i.e. the spectral bands) to be saved.
Andrology: Prevention of osmotic injury to human spermatozoa during addition and removal of glycerol

Use of a cryoprotective agent is indispensable to prevent injury to human spermatozoa during the cryopreservation process. However, addition of cryoprotective agents to spermatozoa before cooling and their removal after warming may create severe osmotic stress for the cells, resulting in injury. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that the degree (or magnitude) of human sperm volume excursion can be used as an independent indicator to evaluate and predict possible osmotic injury to spermatozoa during the addition and removal of cryoprotective agents. Glycerol was used as a model cryoprotective agent in the present study. To test this hypothesis, first the tolerance limits of spermatozoa to swelling in hypo-osmotic solutions (iso-osmotic medium diluted with water) and to shrinkage in hyperosmotic solutions (iso-osmotic medium with sucrose) were determined. Sperm plasma membrane integrity was measured by fluorescent staining, and sperm motility was assessed by computer-assisted semen analysis before, during and after the anisosmotic exposure. The results indicate firstly that motility was much more sensitive to anisosmotic conditions than membrane integrity, and secondly that motility was substantially more sensitive to hypotonic than to hypertonic conditions. Based on the experimental data, osmotic injury as a function of sperm volume excursion (swelling or shrinking) was determined. The second step, using these sperm volume excursion limits and previously measured glycerol and water nermeability coefficients of human spermatozoa. was to predict, by computer simulation, the cell osmotic injury caused by different procedures for the addition and removal of glycerol. The predicted sperm injury was confirmed by experiment. Based on this study, an analytical methodology has been developed for predicting optimal protocols to reduce osmotic injury associated with the addition and removal of hypertonic concentrations of glycerol in human spermatozoa.
Depression, cognition, apolipoprotein e genotype: latent class approach to identifying subtype.

OBJECTIVES Possessing the epsilon4 allele of apolipoprotein E (APOE-epsilon4) genotype is associated with cognitive impairment in nondemented older adults. The authors hypothesized that they might find a subtype of depression related to impaired cognitive performance associated with the APOE-epsilon4 allele. DESIGN A survey conducted between 2001 and 2003 with APOE genotyping. SETTING Primary care offices in the Baltimore area. PARTICIPANTS The study sample consisted of 305 adults aged 65 or older with complete information on APOE genotyping and covariates. MEASUREMENTS The authors used the latent class model to classify respondents according to symptom criteria of American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as assessed in the Composite International Diagnostic Interview and the following four measures of cognitive function: the Mini-Mental State Exam, Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, Controlled Oral Word Association Test, and the Brief Test of Attention. The authors examined the relationship between class membership and APOE genotype. RESULTS The latent class model yielded three classes: a nondepressed class, a class with depressive symptoms and average cognitive functioning, and a class with depressive symptoms (particularly thoughts of death and suicide) and impaired cognitive functioning. Possessing at least one APOE-epsilon4 allele was not predictive of class membership. CONCLUSION A subgroup of elderly patients with depressive symptoms, cognitive impairment, and a high likelihood of experiencing thoughts of death or suicide may exist that may not be related to APOE-epsilon4. Subgroups of older patients with depressive symptoms may be important to identify because of the association with thoughts of death or suicide and cognitive impairment.
Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Lossy Data Compression

In lossless data compression, given a sequence of observations (Xn)n≥1 and a family of probability distributions {Qθ}θ∈Θ, the estimators (θn)n≥1 obtained by minimizing the ideal Shannon code-lengths over the family {Qθ}θ∈Θ, θn := arg min θ∈Θ [ − logQθ(X 1 ) ] , whereXn 1 := (X1, X2, . . . , Xn), coincide with the classical maximum-likelihood estimators (MLEs). In the corresponding lossy compression setting, the ideal Shannon code-lengths are approximately − logQθ(B(X 1 , D)) bits, where B(Xn 1 , D) is the distortion-ball of radius D around the source sequence Xn 1 . In this work we consider the analogous estimators obtained by minimizing these lossy code-lengths, θn := arg min θ∈Θ [ − logQθ(B(X 1 , D)) ] . The θn are a lossy version of the MLEs, which we call “lossy MLEs”. We investigate the strong consistency of lossy MLEs when the Qθ are i.i. d. and the sequence (Xn)n≥1 is stationary and ergodic.
Molecular instability of the mitochondrial haplogroup T sequences at nucleotide positions 16292 and 16296

The mitochondrial haplogroup T, characterized by the nucleotide motif 16126C–16294T in the hypervariable segment I (HVS I), is one of the most frequent among Europeans. It has been shown that this haplogroup includes the only well‐resolved subgroup, T1, but that other HVS I sequences cannot be differentiated into subgroups due to possible homoplasies at nucleotide positions 16292, 16296 and 16304, leading to the reticulations in the topology of phylogenetic networks. To study the problem of molecular instability at these positions, we have performed an analysis of 159 previously published West Eurasian HVS I sequences belonging to haplogroup T, together with 12 new HVS I sequences of Eastern Slavs. These 12 sequences represent 16.9% of a total of 71 samples analysed and identified as haplogroup T mtDNAs by RFLP analysis in this study. A search for rare point mutations associated with different combinations of nucleotides 16292T, 16296T and 16304C within the haplogroup T sequences, and specific to certain populations or a group of closely related‐by‐descent populations, was performed. This analysis revealed 11 marker mutations, each of which was characteristic for a certain group of linguistically or geographically close individuals – the Adygei, Germans, Kazakhs and linguistic isolates of the Eastern Italian Alps. The occurrence of these rare population‐specific polymorphisms in association with various combinations of mutations at positions 16292 and 16296 on the haplogroup T background provides evidence of molecular instability at these nucleotide positions. Molecular instability in the haplogroup T HVS I sequences is also suggested by multiple independent losses of the haplogroup T diagnostic nucleotide variants in different populations. The results of the present study suggest that identical haplogroup T HVS I sequence types might have arisen independently in different human populations.
Rapid determination of bacteria in pools.

If a method for rapid determination of bacterial levels in swimming pools and whirlpools were available, bacterial health risks could be avoided before exposure occurred. Such a method would enable public-health authorities to make timely decisions about closing or reopening pools and to adjust disinfectant doses. The purpose of this study was to determine if a rapid adenosine triphosphate (ATP) bioluminescence method would serve this purpose. Bacteriological analyses were completed on samples from swimming pools and whirlpools in Washtenaw County, Michigan. The results from the ATP assay were compared with those from the conventional plate count method and were found to be highly correlated (r = .92). To assess whether a prefiltration step was necessary to delete nonbacterial ATP--which might originate from bathers' skin cells or other debris--two procedures were tested: one with prefiltration and one without prefiltration. The results for prefiltered samples were not statistically different from the results for non-prefiltered samples (p > .05), for both the heterotrophic plate counts and the ATP bioluminescence method. This study indicates that the ATP assay can estimate bacterial levels in pools within minutes and without prefiltration.
Revelations from Three Consecutive Studies on Extensive Reading

■ This paper presents three consecutive studies on the effect of extensive reading on the development of reading and vocabulary for Taiwanese university nonEnglish majors. Each study used a different approach, with subsequent studies adjusting the methodology in response to the results of the previous year. These results confirm other findings, using different subjects in other countries, that (1) extensive reading can be integrated into an EFL curriculum, termed in-class sustained silent reading, at the university level; (2) extensive reading is at least as effective and efficient as traditional instruction in acquiring English as a foreign language and is more effective than traditional instruction when the treatment duration is longer; (3) book access and self-selection of reading are two keys to the success of a sustained silent reading program.