Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hsp20, a novel α‐crystallin, prevents Aβ fibril formation and toxicity

β‐Amyloid (Aβ) is a major protein component of senile plaques in Alzheimer's disease, and is neurotoxic when aggregated. The size of aggregated Aβ responsible for the observed neurotoxicity and the mechanism of aggregation are still under investigation; however, prevention of Aβ aggregation still holds promise as a means to reduce Aβ neurotoxicity. In research presented here, we show that Hsp20, a novel α‐crystallin isolated from the bovine erythrocyte parasite Babesia bovis, was able to prevent aggregation of denatured alcohol dehydrogenase when the two proteins are present at near equimolar levels. We then examined the ability of Hsp20 produced as two different fusion proteins to prevent Aβ amyloid formation as indicated by Congo Red binding; we found that not only was Hsp20 able to dramatically reduce Congo Red binding, but it was able to do so at molar ratios of Hsp20 to Aβ of 1 to 1000. Electron microscopy confirmed that Hsp20 does prevent Aβ fibril formation. Hsp20 was also able to significantly reduce Aβ toxicity to both SH‐SY5Y and PC12 neuronal cells at similar molar ratios. At high concentrations of Hsp20, the protein no longer displays its aggregation inhibition and toxicity attenuation properties. Size exclusion chromatography indicated that Hsp20 was active at low concentrations in which dimer was present. Loss of activity at high concentrations was associated with the presence of higher oligomers of Hsp20. This work could contribute to the development of a novel aggregation inhibitor for prevention of Aβ toxicity.
Bacteriological studies on some virulence factors in Staphylococcus aureus isolated from chicken and Nile tilapia

Bacteriological examination of 300 samples from chicken and O. niloticus fish (150 from each) revealed isolation of 93 isolates of Staph. aureus, 30 isolates from chicken and 63 isolates from O. niloticus fish with an incidence of ( 20% and 42% ) respectively. All the isolates were subjected to different tests to detect some phenotypic characteristics related to virulence: coagulase, DNase, TNase, slime and hemolysin production. In the present study all examined isolates were coagulase positive and the production of DNase, TNase, slime and beta hemolysin was shown by (90 and 96.83), (83.33% -90.48%), (73.33%65.8%) and (80% 92.06%) of chicken and fish isolates respectively. Coagulase gene was detected by PCR and the amplified products of the examined Staph. aureus strains isolated from chicken were analyzed at the band (570 bp), while in case of fish strains the amplified products were analyzed at the band (570 bp and 630 bp ). All Staph. aureus isolated from chicken were (100%) sensitive to vancomycin followed by gentamicin (80%) , (36.67% and 40%) were sensitive to doxycycline and rifampicin respectively, while (36.67%) of the isolates were intermediately sensitive to doxycycline and rifampicin. Staph. aureus isolated from chicken were resistant to penicillin, spectinomycin, cefoxitin and ciprofloxacin at rates of (83.33%, 73.33%, 53.33% and 50%) respectively. Staph. aureus isolated from fresh water O. niloticus samples were (100%) sensitive to vancomycin and gentamycin. The majority of the isolates were (73% and 57.1%) sensitive to doxycycline and ciprofloxacin respectively. While (100%, 76.2% and 58.7%) of Staph. aureus isolates resistant to penicillin, spectinomycin and cefoxitin respectively.
Chemical signaling under abiotic stress environment in plants

Many chemicals are critical for plant growth and development and play an important role in integrating various stress signals and controlling downstream stress responses by modulating gene expression machinery and regulating various transporters/pumps and biochemical reactions. These chemicals include calcium (Ca2+), cyclic nucleotides, polyphosphoinositides, nitric oxide (NO), sugars, abscisic acid (ABA), jasmonates (JA), salicylic acid (SA) and polyamines. Ca2+ is one of the very important ubiquitous second messengers in signal transduction pathways and usually its concentration increases in response to the stimuli including stress signals. Many Ca2+ sensors detect the Ca2+ signals and direct them to downstream signaling pathways by binding and activating diverse targets. cAMP or cGMP protects the cell with ion toxicity. Phosphoinositides are known to be involved both in transmission of signal across the plasma membrane and in intracellular signaling. NO activates various defense genes and acts as a developmental regulator in plants. Sugars affect the expression of many genes involved in photosynthesis, glycolysis, nitrogen metabolism, sucrose and starch metabolism, defense mechanisms and cell cycle regulation. ABA, JA, SA and polyamines are also involved in many stress responses. Cross-talk between these chemical signaling pathways is very common in plant responses to abiotic and bitotic factors. In this article we have described the role of these chemicals in initiating signaling under stress conditions mainly the abiotic stress.
Effects of sexual victimization on suicidal ideation and behavior in U.S. college women.

This study examines the relationship between suicidal ideation and behavior and five types of sexual victimization in a sample of 393 female undergraduate students. Participants completed self-report measures of sexual victimization, hopelessness, suicidal ideation, and suicidal behavior. Adult sexual victimization, but not childhood sexual abuse, predicted current hopelessness and suicidal ideation. Both childhood sexual abuse and adult sexual victimization predicted suicidal behavior. One in four rape victims, in contrast to approximately 1 in 20 nonvictimized women, had engaged in a suicidal act. Vaginal penetration following the threat or use of physical force was a stronger predictor of suicidal behavior than penetration without the use of force and/or force without penetration. The findings point to the importance of inquiring about experiences of sexual victimization when conducting research or treatment with suicidal women as well as the need for suicide risk assessment in programs for victims of sexual violence.
Mitochondrial genomes of two African geckos of genus Hemitheconyx (Squamata: Eublepharidae)

Mitochondrial genomes of two eyelid geckos (Hemitheconyx caudicinctus and Hemitheconyx taylori) were sequenced. Although these genomes conserve a typical vertebrate gene organization, tRNAGln gene of the former appears to have been pseudogenized. A very extensive RNA editing may restore its function in the RNA level or a functional tRNAGln encoded in the nuclear chromosome may be imported into mitochondria.
Role of protein kinase C in proximal bicarbonate absorption and angiotensin signaling.

Using in vivo microperfusion in the proximal convoluted tubule (PCT) of the Munich-Wistar rat, we investigated the impact of varying protein kinase C (PKC) activity on the rate of bicarbonate reabsorption and on its regulation by angiotensin II. Activation of PKC with luminal perfusion of phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA, 5 x 10(-7) M) caused bicarbonate absorption in the S1 PCT to increase by 25%, from 346 +/- 7 to 432 +/- 4 peq.mm-1.min-1 (P less than 0.001), without affecting intracellular cAMP level. Another PKC stimulator, dioctanoylglycerol, had the same effect. Inhibition of PKC activity with luminal perfusion of 5 x 10(-6) M sphingosine had the opposite effect, decreasing bicarbonate absorption by 45% to 190 +/- 2 peq.mm-1.min-1 (P less than 0.001). Pretreatment with PMA or with sphingosine each attenuated by approximately one-third the bicarbonate absorptive response usually observed following angiotensin II administration. Similar results for the action of PKC, but of smaller magnitude, were found in the S2 PCT. In conclusion, activation of PKC increases bicarbonate and water absorption in the S1 and S2 PCT in vivo, and PKC may participate in as much as one-third of the transport stimulation induced by angiotensin II.
Effect of step skewed rotor type IPMSM on noise and vibration

Radial force and tangential force, which deform stator core, are the main causes of vibration and noise. There are many methods to minimize such exciting forces by designing of rotor shape. However, modification of rotor shape increase development cost of the motor. Therefore, step skewed rotor is applied to the design in order to reduce exciting force so that both reduction of vibration and noise and cost-effectiveness of development can be achieved. In order to consider step skewed rotor in interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM), 3-dimensional finite element analysis (FEA) is used to consider leakage flux in axial direction and overhang effect. Furthermore, deformation of stator core caused by exciting force is analyzed. Comparison between prototype and step skewed model is made in terms of analysis result of exciting force, deformation of stator and experimental result of vibration to verify the design method.
Correction of the slope–intercept method for the measurement of glomerular filtration rate

ObjectiveGlomerular filtration rate (GFR) is frequently assessed using the slope–intercept method by fitting a single exponential to plasma samples obtained 2–5 h after injection. The body surface area (BSA)-corrected one-pool clearance (CO,BSA) overestimates true GFR (CT,BSA) because it fails to sample the full plasma curve, and values of CT,BSA are usually estimated from CO,BSA using the Brøchner-Mortensen (BM) equation. An improved equation, CT,BSA=CO,BSA/(1+fBSA×CO,BSA), with fBSA a fixed constant, was proposed by Fleming, but subsequently Jødal and Brøchner-Mortensen (JBM) reported that fBSA varies with BSA. We report data for a large group of individuals who underwent GFR investigations with sampling of the full plasma curve. The aims were to validate the JBM equation with independent data and assess whether replacing the BM equation with a BSA-dependent correction based on Fleming’s equation can increase the accuracy of the slope–intercept method. MethodsPlasma data were analysed for 142 children and adults aged 0.6–56 years who underwent technetium-99m-diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid GFR investigations with blood samples taken between 5 min and 8 h after injection. Values of CO,BSA were calculated using the 2, 3 and 4 h data. Values of CT,BSA were calculated by integrating the plasma curve between 5 min and 4 h and extrapolating the terminal exponential. Individual values of fBSA were calculated using the relationship fBSA=1/CT,BSA−1/CO,BSA. Nonlinear regression was used to fit the function fBSA=f1×BSAn and find the best-fit values for f1 and n. Scatter and Bland–Altman plots were drawn comparing the various formulae for correcting slope–intercept GFR. ResultsThe trend for fBSA to decrease with increasing BSA was highly significant (Spearman’s test: RS=−0.31; P=0.0002). When the data were fitted by nonlinear regression, the best-fit values (95% confidence interval) of the model parameters were n=−0.13 (from −0.21 to −0.04) and f1=0.00191 (from 0.00183 to 0.00200). ConclusionThe results confirm that fBSA varies with BSA and provide independent values of the parameters f1 and n. Differences from GFRs calculated using the original JBM equation were small and not clinically significant. The BM equation also performed well for CT,BSA less than 125 ml/min/1.73 m2. However, there was a small number of children with CT,BSA greater than 150 ml/min/1.73 m2 for whom the JBM formula provided more accurate estimates of true GFR than did the BM equation.
Relations Between Daily Activities and Adolescent Mood: The Role of Autonomy

This study explored the combined influences of daily activities and autonomy in activity engagement on adolescent daily positive and negative moods. Ecological momentary assessments (EMA) were used to obtain information about 8th- and 10th-grade students' (N = 517) mood, activities, and situation throughout the day. Participants responded to random prompts on the EMA device and, when prompted, rated mood adjectives and reported on their current activity and perceived autonomy in activity engagement. Mixed-effects regression models examined changes in mood across specific activity categories. Positive mood significantly improved when engaging in numerous activities; negative mood improved during social activities as well as “party” and “hanging out” events but was fairly consistent across other activities. Stronger mood–activity relations were found after controlling for autonomy in activity engagement.
Split Bregman’s algorithm for three-dimensional mesh segmentation

Abstract. Variational methods have attracted a lot of attention in the literature, especially for image and mesh segmentation. The methods aim at minimizing the energy to optimize both edge and region detections. We propose a spectral mesh decomposition algorithm to obtain disjoint but meaningful regions of an input mesh. The related optimization problem is nonconvex, and it is very difficult to find a good approximation or global optimum, which represents a challenge in computer vision. We propose an alternating split Bregman algorithm for mesh segmentation, where we extended the image-dedicated model to a three-dimensional (3-D) mesh one. By applying our scheme to 3-D mesh segmentation, we obtain fast solvers that can outperform various conventional ones, such as graph-cut and primal dual methods. A consistent evaluation of the proposed method on various public domain 3-D databases for different metrics is elaborated, and a comparison with the state-of-the-art is performed.
Feature Selection based on Hybrid Binary Cuckoo Search and Rough Set Theory in Classification for Nominal Datasets

Feature Selection (FS) is an important process to find the minimal subset of features from the original data by removing the redundant and irrelevant features. It aims to improve the efficiency of classification algorithms. Rough set theory (RST) is one of the effective approaches to feature selection, but it uses complete search to search for all subsets of features and dependency to evaluate these subsets. However, the complete search is expensive and may not be feasible for large data due to its high cost. Therefore, meta-heuristics algorithms, especially Nature Inspired Algorithms, have been widely used to replace the reduction part in RST. This paper develops a new algorithm for Feature Selection based on hybrid Binary Cuckoo Search and rough set theory for classification on nominal datasets. The developed algorithm is evaluated on five nominal datasets from the UCI repository, against a number of similar NIAs algorithms. The results show that our algorithm achieves better FS compared to two known NIAs in a lesser number of iterations, without significantly reducing the classification accuracy.
Racial/ethnic differences in the association of triglycerides with other metabolic syndrome components: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to examine whether there are ethnic differences in the association of triglycerides (TG) with waist circumference (WC), blood pressure, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), fasting glucose, and insulin resistance and to examine the disparities in the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome components between African Americans and non-Hispanic whites who do not have hypertriglyceridemia. METHODS This study used the baseline data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) study. The analysis included non-Hispanic whites (N = 2,427) and African Americans (N = 1,519) aged 45-84 years free of clinically evident cardiovascular disease and diabetes at baseline. The revised National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) criteria were used to define the metabolic syndrome and its components. RESULTS African Americans had lower prevalence of elevated TG as compared with non-Hispanic whites. The association of TG with other components of the metabolic syndrome appeared to be similar between African Americans and non-Hispanic whites except for one. There was significant association of TG with WC among white women but not among African American women after adjusting for demographic and other variables (P for interaction of TG with ethnicity <0.001). In participants with TG < 150 mg/dL, African American women had higher prevalence rates than white women of abdominal obesity, elevated blood pressure, low HDL-C, elevated fasting glucose and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR). In men, the prevalence rates of high blood pressure, elevated fasting glucose, and HOMA-IR were significantly higher in African Americans than in whites. CONCLUSIONS The study findings suggest that further evaluation is warranted regarding the cutoffs for elevated TG and its clustering effect with other cardiometabolic risk factors on predicting risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in African Americans.
Thromboembolism after total hip reconstruction. Failure of low doses of heparin in prevention.

Twenty-five patients undergoing total hip replacement received low doses of heparin sodium. Phlebography was used for the diagnosis of deep venous thrombosis. Five thousand international units (IU) of heparin were given subcutaneously two hours preoperatively, 5,000 IU postoperatively the night of surgery, and every 12 hours for the next seven to ten days. Venous thrombosis developed in seven of 25 patients. Pulmonary embolism occurred in six patients. Until further studies are forthcoming, the utmost caution is urged in the use of low doses of heparin as a prophylactic agent after total hip reconstruction.
Localization of Multiple Speech Sources Based on Sub-band Steered Response Power

The steered response power with phase transform weighted (SRP-PHAT) is a robust sound source localization method based on microphone array. Multiple source localization has been implemented using SRP-PHAT with agglomerative clustering (AC). In this paper, a novel method of multiple speech source localization based on sub-band SRP is proposed. In this method, speech signal is divided into several sub-bands, where sub-band SRP is computed, initial estimations are generated by searching the maximum in every sub-band SRP, and the final source locations are determined from the initial estimations using AC. The proposed method is tested with the real-world recordings under the condition that the number of active speakers is unknown. The results show that our method provides higher localization performance than that of the conventional SRP-PHAT with AC in the cases with up to 3 concurrent speakers.
Channel discovery algorithms for interference avoidance in smart grid communication networks: a survey

Smart grid technology has attracted a lot of attention in the communication and power engineering communities because of its high efficiency and environmental friendly power production and delivery. Smart grid communication networks act as not only a bridge between the end power users and the utility but also a backbone of the entire smart grid system. It is a challenging task to deploy smart grid communication networks because of interference-intensive environment. The goal of this paper is to explore various issues on deployment of smart grid communication networks. The first half of this paper provides a survey on smart grid communication networks. The background of smart grid communication networks is introduced, and the IEEE 802.15. 4g standard for smart utility networks is reviewed. In addition, the issues on network topology and routing protocols of smart utility networks are addressed, followed by the discussions on optimizing gateway deployment. Various methods for addressing coexistence issues in smart grid communication networks are presented. The second half of this paper is to propose a channel discovery algorithm exploiting the inherent CSMA/CA mechanism in the protocols. Because of the use of CSMA/CA mechanism and up-to-date channel status table, the proposed algorithm can quickly find an available channel for transmission when interferences occur. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Targeted gene delivery to differentiated skeletal muscle: A tool to study dedifferentiation

Cellular dedifferentiation is required for functional regeneration in salamanders. Dedifferentiating multinucleate skeletal muscle gives rise to mononucleate cells during limb regeneration. Efficient methods and tools must be developed in order to understand the molecular cues underlying dedifferentiation. Here we describe a non‐viral method to express extra‐chromosomal DNA exclusively in terminally differentiated muscle without the need for cell purification steps. After cytoplasmic injection of various expression vectors into myotubes or myofibres, we detect long‐lasting mRNA and protein expression in up to 70% of the injected cells. The combination of the transfection protocol with live imaging allows a time‐ and cost‐effective screen of candidate genes in terminally differentiated muscle cells of both amphibian and mammalian origin. Developmental Dynamics 236:481–488, 2007. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Validity of physical activity measures in ambulatory individuals with multiple sclerosis

Purpose. The literature suggests that individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) engage in less physical activity than non-diseased individuals. That conclusion, however, depends upon the validity of scores from measures of physical activity among the MS population. This study evaluated the validity of scores from two self-report surveys, a pedometer, and an accelerometer and during seven days of free-living conditions among individuals with MS. Method. Participants were 30 individuals (28 females, two males) with an established definite diagnosis of MS. The participants wore a pedometer and a single-axis accelerometer during the waking hours of a 7-day period. After the 7-day period, participants returned to the lab and completed a self-administered physical activity questionnaire and then underwent a 7-day physical activity recall. Results. There were strong correlations (a) between scores from the two self-report measures of physical activity and (b) between scores from the two objective measures of physical activity, and (c) weaker, but moderate-to-strong correlations between scores from the self-report and objective measures of physical activity. Conclusion. Our results support the quantification of physical activity among those with MS using validated self-report and objective measures.
On Inexact Preconditioners for Nonsymmetric Matrices

Inexact versions of the block-triangular preconditioners for nonsymmetric matrices of block two-by-two structures in [M. F. Murphy, G. H. Golub, and A. J. Wathen, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. , 21 (2000), pp. 1969--1972] and [I. C. F. Ipsen, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. , 23 (2001), pp. 1050--1051] are presented, and the two preconditioners for symmetric block two-by-two matrices in [C. Durazzi and V. Ruggiero, Numer. Linear Algebra Appl. , 10 (2003), pp. 673--688] are extended to general nonsymmetric matrices. Moreover, we precisely describe the spectral properties of the preconditioned matrices and the finite-step termination properties of the preconditioned Krylov subspace iteration methods with an optimal or Galerkin property, with respect to these preconditioners. Several numerical examples are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed preconditioners.