Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protective Effect of Bombyx mori L Cocoon (Abresham) and its Formulations against Isoproterenol-Induced Cardiac Damage

Purpose: To investigate the potential activity of Bombyx mori and its formulations against isoproterenol (ISO) induced cardiotoxicity. Methods: Wistar rats were orally pretreated with the ethanol extract of Bombyx mori cocoons in two doses (250 and 500 mg/kg) for 30 days; rats were similarly pretreated with its polyherbal formulations incorporating Khamira Abresham sada (KAS) and Khamira Abresham Hakim Arshadwala (KAHAW) (800 mg/kg), standard drug metoprolol (10 mg/kg) and normal saline for 30 days. Cardiotoxicity was induced by administration of isoproterenol (ISO, 85 mg/kg, subcutaneous) given twice on days 29 and 30 in all six pre-treated groups (n = 6) except the normal control. Cardiotoxicity was assessed by morphological and biochemical evaluation and further confirmed by histopathological studies. Results: Pretreatment with Bombyx mori (500 mg/kg), KAHAW and KAS significantly decreased (p < 0.01) the heart weight:body weight (HW:BW) ratio; significantly decreases the elevated activities of the cardiac marker enzymes, namely, asparate transaminase (AST) (p < 0.01), alanine transaminase (ALT) (p < 0.01), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) (p < 0.01) ,creatinine kinase (CK-MB) (p < 0.01) and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) (p < 0.01) similar to the standard drug metoprolol (p < 0.01) in ISO-injected rats. Pre-treatment of rats with Bombyx mori (500 mg/kg), KAS, KAHAW and metoprolol challenged with ISO also showed absence of troponin. Pretreatment with B. mori (500 mg/kg), KAHAW and KAS significantly increased the activities of Superoxide dismutase (SOD) (p < 0.01), Tissue glutathione (GSH) (p < 0.01) and catalase (p < 0.01) similar to the standard drug metoprolol (p < 0.01). Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that Bombyx mori as well as its polyherbal formulations exerts potent cardioprotection against isoproterenol-induced cardiotoxicity. This effect is comparable with that of metoprolol.
Transcription antitermination in an Escherichia coli haemolysin operon is directed progressively by cis‐acting DNA sequences upstream of the promoter region

Export of haemolysin protein (HlyA) directed by the Escherichia coli pHly152 hly determinant is dependent upon transcriptional activation, primarily strong intra‐operon transcript antitermination imposed between the haemolysin structural genes hlyC and hlyA and the contiguous downstream export genes hlyB and hlyD. Transcript elongation was dictated by a DNA sequence several kb upstream of the rho‐independent terminator but could not be assigned to a discrete locus; on the contrary, it was progressive, increasing with the addition of up to 3.5kbp of operon‐proximal sequence containing the insertion elements IS2 and IS91. Antitermination was prominent throughout logarithmic growth but absent in stationary phase, and was effective only in cis but not in trans. Primer extension indicated that transcription activation utilized the native transcriptional start sites of the unactivated hly operon.
Spiral slotted waveguide antenna array

Slotted waveguide antenna stiffened structure (SWASS) integrates the slotted waveguide antennas (SWAs) into the carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites in airplane skins. SWASS utilizes conventional half-wavelength rectangular slots as elements of the SWA array. Size of the rectangular slots is an important factor affecting the mechanical performance of the SWASS and restricting its application. Subwavelength spiral slots are recently proposed to replace the rectangular slots and consequently improve the SWASS mechanical performance. In this paper, a four element array using subwavelength spiral slots is presented which demonstrates the feasibility of using such slots for SWASS application.
Partitioning avoidance in mobile ad hoc networks using network survivability concepts

Due to unpredictable mobility patterns, nodes in an ad hoc wireless network can get separated into partitions and reconnected a number of times. Whenever a larger partition divides into two smaller ones, there is a critical link that fails and thus divides the partition into two. We propose an approach that utilizes network survivability concepts to detect the critical links in an ad hoc wireless network. Once the critical link has been detected, we propose two ways to delay or avoid their failure: change the trajectory of one or both nodes forming the critical link; and bring in another node to reinforce the link. It is assumed that the nodes know their location and periodically update their neighbors with their current locations. We have implemented these techniques in the network simulator ns-2. The simulation experiments show that the approach can significantly improve the network performance and reduce the degree of partitioning.
SLIM: Spectral localization by imaging

Nonspectroscopic magnetic resonance (MR) imaging often shows that a slice is composed of several compartments, each of which can be assumed to have a spatially homogeneous magnetic resonance spectrum, e.g., a limb composed of fat, muscle, bone marrow, and tumor. We show how to use structural information from such a nonspectroscopic image in order to increase the efficiency of subsequent localized spectroscopic measurements. Specifically, knowledge of the boundaries of N compartments makes it possible to reconstruct compartmental spectra from spectroscopic signals from an entire cross section with N or more different degrees of phase encoding. Experimental studies of a two‐compartment phantom show that this method (SLIM) can be used to derive regional hydrogen spectra of a single slice from signals with as few as 2 phase‐encoding steps, although Fourier transform chemical‐shift imaging requires 64 steps to achieve a result of comparable accuracy. SLIM required only 16 phase‐encoding steps to obtain accurate regional single slice spectra in a human limb with three compartments. Spectra of similar quality, obtained by Fourier transform chemical‐shift imaging, required 256 to 1024 Steps. © 1988 Academic Press, Inc.
Demonstration of Hospital Receptionist Robot with Extended Hybrid Code Network to Select Responses and Gestures

Task-oriented dialogue system has a vital role in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). However, it has been developed based on conventional pipeline approach which has several drawbacks; expensive, time-consuming, and so on. Based on this approach, developers manually define a robot’s behaviour such as gestures and facial expressions on the corresponding dialogue states. Recently, end-to-end learning of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) is an attractive solution for the dialogue system. In this paper, we proposed a social robot system using end-to-end dialogue system in the context of hospital receptionist. We utilized Hybrid Code Network (HCN) as an end-to-end dialogue system and extended to select both response and gesture using RNN based gesture selector. We evaluate its performance with human users and compare the results with one of the conventional methods. Empirical result shows that the proposed method has benefits in terms of dialogue efficiency, which indicates how efficient users were in performing the given tasks with the help of the robot. Moreover, we achieved the same performance regarding the robot’s gesture with the proposed method compared to manually defined gestures.
Phostine PST3.1a Targets MGAT5 and Inhibits Glioblastoma-Initiating Cell Invasiveness and Proliferation

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common primary malignant brain tumor and accounts for a significant proportion of all primary brain tumors. Median survival after treatment is around 15 months. Remodeling of N-glycans by the N-acetylglucosamine glycosyltransferase (MGAT5) regulates tumoral development. Here, perturbation of MGAT5 enzymatic activity by the small-molecule inhibitor 3-hydroxy-4,5-bis-benzyloxy-6-benzyloxymethyl-2-phenyl2-oxo-2λ5-[1,2]oxaphosphinane (PST3.1a) restrains GBM growth. In cell-based assays, it is demonstrated that PST3.1a alters the β1,6-GlcNAc N-glycans of GBM-initiating cells (GIC) by inhibiting MGAT5 enzymatic activity, resulting in the inhibition of TGFβR and FAK signaling associated with doublecortin (DCX) upregulation and increase oligodendrocyte lineage transcription factor 2 (OLIG2) expression. PST3.1a thus affects microtubule and microfilament integrity of GBM stem cells, leading to the inhibition of GIC proliferation, migration, invasiveness, and clonogenic capacities. Orthotopic graft models of GIC revealed that PST3.1a treatment leads to a drastic reduction of invasive and proliferative capacity and to an increase in overall survival relative to standard temozolomide therapy. Finally, bioinformatics analyses exposed that PST3.1a cytotoxic activity is positively correlated with the expression of genes of the epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT), while the expression of mitochondrial genes correlated negatively with cell sensitivity to the compound. These data demonstrate the relevance of targeting MGAT5, with a novel anti-invasive chemotherapy, to limit glioblastoma stem cell invasion. Mol Cancer Res; 15(10); 1376–87. ©2017 AACR.
Risk prediction in pericarditis: who to keep in hospital?

Newly diagnosed acute pericarditis requires rapid risk prediction in three major categories: 1. Short-term, immediately threatening, complications. 2. Aetiology/probable aetiology. 3. Significant long-term complications. Whom to keep in hospital involves the first and to some extent the second of these categories. Imazio and colleagues have greatly clarified risk prediction and management of acute and recurrent pericarditis through series of long overdue, carefully designed, prospective investigations.1–4 Fortunately, their evidence-based results largely confirm many solid observational studies by single and multicentre investigators—notably, Adler,5 Brucato,6 Permanyer7 and their colleagues. A variable element of myocarditis is common with most acute pericarditis (myopericarditis), often clouding the complete evaluation of the patient. In this issue of Heart , Imazio and colleagues add to their many contributions by clarifying the differential diagnosis of myopericarditis ( see article on page 498 ). 8 While admitting all patients to hospital would cover all possibilities, Imazio’s probabilistic approach avoids the inconveniences, inefficiencies and expense of universal admission.1 The immediate concern is always for the threatening short-term consequences which may be in progress at the time of diagnosis or appear shortly thereafter, including cardiac tamponade9 and disability due to pain, fever, toxicity and underlying diseases—diagnosed and undiagnosed—notably, malignancies, vasculitides and sepsis.10 Thus categories 1 and 2 above are linked. Moreover, because of frequent symptomatic, electrocardiographic and serum enzyme level similarities, diagnostic differentiation further necessitates considering mutually mimicking conditions like acute pericarditis, myocarditis …
Design, Manufacturing and Preliminary Tests of a Conduction Cooled 200 kJ Nb-Ti $\mu\hbox{SMES}$

A superconducting magnet with 200 kJ stored energy and 75 kW output/input power has been designed and manufactured. The device, which is aimed to power quality enhancement in electric grid, consists of two coaxial coils, counter-series connected in order to keep the stray field below the limit of 0.5 mT. The SC wire is a copper stabilized Nb-Ti strand. Several copper slabs are placed within the coils in order to permit heat removal deep inside the coil, thus allowing cryogen-free cooling and operation at high AC losses regime. Several tests with different ramp rate have been carried out at the liquid helium temperature. Design and manufacturing characteristics as well as test results are discussed in this paper.
Guanine uptake and metabolism in Neurospora crassa

Guanine is transported into germinated conidia of Neurospora crassa by the general purine base transport system. Guanine uptake is inhibited by adenine and hypoxanthine but not xanthine. Guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (GPRTase) activity was demonstrated in cell extracts of wild-type germinated conidia. The Km for guanine ranged from 29 to 69 micro M in GPRTase assays; the Ki for hypoxanthine was between 50 and 75 micro M. The kinetics of guanine transport differ considerably from the kinetics of GPRTase, strongly suggesting that the rate-limiting step in guanine accumulation in conidia is not that catalyzed by GPRTase. Efflux of guanine or its metabolites appears to have little importance in the regulation of pools of guanine or guanine nucleotides since very small amounts of 14C label were excreted from wild-type conidia preloaded with [8-14C]guanine. In contrast, excretion of purine bases, hypoxanthine, xanthine, and uric acid appears to be a mechanism for regulation of adenine nucleotide pools (Sabina et al., Mol. Gen. Genet. 173:31-38, 1979). No label from exogenous [8-14C]guanine was ever found in any adenine nucleotides, nucleosides, or the base, adenine, upon high-performance liquid chromatography analysis of acid extracts from germinated conidia of wild-type of xdh-l strains. The 14C label from exogenous [8-14C]guanine was found in GMP, GDP, GTP, and the GDP sugars as well as in XMP. Xanthine and uric acid were also labeled in wild-type extracts. Similar results were obtained with xdh-l extracts except that uric acid was not present. The labeled xanthine and XMP strongly suggest the presence of guanase and xanthine phosphoribosyltransferase in germinated conidia.
Cost-effectiveness of a new combined immunosuppressive and anti-infectious regimen in kidney transplantation

Objectives: The aims of this study were to assess the 1-year cost-effectiveness of a new combined immunosuppressive and anti-infectious regimen in kidney transplantation to prevent both rejection and infectious complications. Methods: Patients (pts) transplanted from January 2000 to March 2003 (Group A) and treated with a conventional protocol were compared with pts submitted to a combined regimen including universal cytomegalovirus (CMV) prophylaxis between April 2003 and July 2005 (Group B). Costs were computed from the hospital accounting system for hospital stays, and official tariffs for outpatient visits. Patients with incomplete costs data were excluded from analysis. Results: Fifty-three patients were analyzed in Group A, and 60 in Group B. Baseline characteristics including CMV serostatus were not significantly different between the two groups. Over 12 months after transplantation, acute rejections decreased from 41.5 percent in Group A to 6.7 percent in Group B (p < .001), and CMV infections from 47 percent to 15 percent (p < .001). Overall, readmissions decreased from 68 percent to 55 percent (p = .160), and average hospital days from 28 ± 19 to 20 ± 11 days (p < .007). The average number of outpatient visits decreased from 49 ± 10 to 39 ± 8 (p < .001). Average 1-year immunosuppressive and CMV prophylaxis costs (per patient) increased from CHF20,402 ± 7,273 to 27,375 ± 6,063 (p < .001), graft rejection costs decreased from CHF4,595 ± 10,182 to 650 ± 3,167 (p = .005), CMV treatment costs from CHF2,270 ± 6,161 to 101 ± 326 (p = .008), and outpatient visits costs from CHF8,466 ± 1’721 to 6,749 ± 1,159 (p < .001). Altogether, 1-year treatment costs decreased from CHF39’957 ± 16,573 to 36,204 ± 6,901 (p = .115). Conclusions: The new combined regimen administered in Group B was significantly more effective, and its additional costs were more than offset by savings associated with complications avoidance.
Patterns and Predictors of Support Group Use by Custodial Grandmothers and Grandchildren

Despite increasing popularity of support groups for custodial grandfamilies, the few published studies to date raise questions regarding actual support group usage and disregard predictors of such use. This study examined patterns of self-reported use, need, and unmet need of both grandparent and grandchild support groups. The Andersen Social Behavioral Model was used to identify predisposing, enabling, and need factors that predicted use in a national sample of 733 grandfamilies recruited by either convenience or population-based strategies. Reported use and need for support groups were lower in the population-based sample, and predictors varied by sampling strategy. The findings are discussed in terms of how they inform service providers and researchers regarding factors that influence support group use by custodial grandfamilies.
Refining Mobile Web Design for Reducing Energy Consumption of Mobile Terminals

Recent years have seen an increasing demand of web applications on mobile terminals. However, web pages, conventionally designed for PCs with stable power supply and large screen, do not lead to the same user experience when directly running on mobile terminals with limited battery and small screen. There have been some initial efforts on mobile-enabled web design, but the energy consumption of web pages on mobile terminals is seldom taken into account. In this paper, we discuss how to refine mobile web design for reducing energy consumption of web browsing on mobile terminals. First, based on experiments, we analyze energy consumption of different computing resources on each mobile terminal during web page browsing. We reveal that besides CPU, Wi-Fi and display, scrolling operations also lead to a large energy consumption, which, however, is not seriously considered in previous works. Then, based on the fact that web contents have different access popularity, we propose a content rearrangement method: listing contents in the decreasing order of their access popularity so as to reduce the average number of scrolling operations required to reach target contents. The proposed method is evaluated, by both theoretical analysis and experiments on actual web pages. e.g., in a scenario with 100 contents where the top 10 are already in order, applying the proposed method to the rest 90 less popular contents still reduces the energy consumption of web browsing by 26% according to the theoretical analysis.
DETERMINATION OF BODY DENSITY BY AIR DISPLACEMENT, HELIUM DILUTION, AND UNDERWATER WEIGHING *

Many research workers have attempted to use density as an objective means of predicting the gross composition of live animals and human beings. Behnke et al. (1942) were able to determine the body specific gravity of human beings quite accurately by underwater weighing. This method has been used as the standard of comparison in subsequent studies ( Welham and Behnke, 1942; Broiek, 1946; Osserman et al., 1950; Dupertuis et al., 1951). The underwater weighing technique has also been widely used for predicting the composition of animal carcasses and cuts ( DaCosta and Clayton, 1950; Brown et al., 1951; Kraybill et al., 1952; Whiteman et al., 1953; Pearson et al., 1956; Price et al., 1957; Kirton and Barton, 1958). However, underwater weighing has limitations, and other methods must be used to determine the density of sick and infirm individuals and living animals. Several German workers ( Pfaundler, 1916; Pfleiderer, 1929; Bohnenkamp and Schmah, 1931) used a method called “air displacement” to determine the density of human beings. Kohlrausch in 1929 used the same method for studying the effect of exercise on dogs, and Liuzzo (1958) used air displacement to determine the body density of live guinea pigs. In 1953, Wasler and Stein developed the helium dilution method and used it to determine the density of live cats. Siri (1955) greatly improved on this method and subsequently used it to determine the body density of human beings . Two studies on determination of body density are reported herein. In the first experiment the objectives were to determine the densities of human beings by air displacement and to correlate these values with the densities obtained by underwater weighing. The purposes of the second study were to determine the densities of live pigs by air displacement and helium dilution and to correlate the values with body composition as determined by chemical analysis.
The emancipatory role of information and communication technology: A case study of internet content filtering within Iran

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of internet filtering, and its impact on marginalized groups including non‐governmental organizations, female activists, ethnic, and religious minorities, the younger generation and the increase of the digital divide in Iran.Design/methodology/approach – The paper raises two main questions: to what extent do information and communications technologies (ICTs) and in particular, the internet, promote freedom of speech, and gender equality in Iran? What is the impact of state censorship and ICT filtering on these activities? To answer these research questions, the author uses narratives of the internet's usage along with a comparison study with other Middle Eastern countries to analyze the impact of ICTs on citizen's freedom of expression.Findings – The paper argues that restrictions imposed on ICT tools and services by the Government of Iran which has been claimed to protect country's national security against the corruption and immorality imp.
Accelerating Machine Learning using BLIS

Introduction: Taking advantage of low latency and hierarchical memory architecture of x86 is critical to boost the performance of computational intensive applications such as deep learning algorithms in AMD platforms. Machine Learning (ML) algorithms are primarily built on top of basic linear algebra subprograms (BLAS). Hence performance of these linear algebra routines directly impact the performance of ML algorithms. In our experiments we use Caffe [4], a deep learning framework implementation and compare its performance by linking against BLAS libraries such as BLIS [7] and OpenBLAS [9].
Transcriptional Analysis of the hmw Gene Cluster of Mycoplasma pneumoniae

ABSTRACT Mycoplasma pneumoniae adherence to host cells is a multifactorial process that requires the cytadhesin P1 and additional accessory proteins. The hmw gene cluster consists of the genes p30, hmw3, and hmw1, the products of which are known to be essential for cytadherence, therpsD gene, and six open reading frames of unknown function. Putative transcriptional terminators flank this locus, raising the possibility that these genes are expressed as a single transcriptional unit. However, S1 nuclease protection and primer extension experiments identified probable transcriptional start sites upstream of thep32, p21, p50, and rpsDgenes. Each was preceded at the appropriate spacing by the −10-like sequence TTAAAATT, but the −35 regions were not conserved. Analysis of the M. pneumoniae genome sequence indicated that this promoter-like sequence is found upstream of only a limited number of open reading frames, including the genes for P65 and P200, which are structurally related to HMW1 and HMW3. Promoter deletion studies demonstrated that the promoter-like region upstream ofp21 was necessary for the expression of p30 and an hmw3-cat fusion in M. pneumoniae, while deletion of the promoter-like region upstream of p32 had no apparent effect. Analysis by reverse transcription-PCR confirmed transcriptional linkage of all the open reading frames in thehmw gene cluster. Taken together, these findings suggest that the genes of this locus constitute an operon expressed from overlapping transcripts.