Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synthesis of Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor by Murine Mast CellsRegulation by Transforming Growth Factor Beta, Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha, and Stem Cell Factor

Background: Mast cells (MC) are involved in a wide spectrum of disorders characterized by neovascularization and fibroproliferation. We and others recently reported that human MC are a source of basic fibroblast growth factor (b FGF-2), a potent angiogenic and mitogenic polypeptide, in several disease conditions, such as chronic inflammation, hemangioma, and benign cutaneous mastocytosis. These findings suggest that FGF-2 may be an important mediator of cell proliferation and angiogenesis associated with MC. Since MC are heterogeneous across species, it is unknown whether FGF-2 expression is a feature common to all MC, or whether FGF-2 expression by MC can be regulated. We therefore examined FGF-2 expression by MC in mouse tissue and MC lines. Methods: Immunostaining, RT-PCR, ELISA, immunoblot and Northern blot analyses were employed to study four murine MC lines for FGF-2 expression and its regulation by transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), stem cell factor (SCF), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). Results: Mouse tissue MC and three of four murine MC lines (CFTL-12, CFTL-15, ABFTL-3) express FGF-2 as judged by immunostaining, ELISA, Western blot and Northern blot analyses, and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. While TNF-α appeared to downregulate FGF-2 mRNA levels, treatment with SCF or TGF-β resulted in an increase in the expression of FGF-2 at mRNA level which can be attenuated by TNF-α. However, the concurrent increase in FGF-2 protein was negligible, possibly due to immaturity of these cell lines. Conclusion: Expression of FGF-2 may be a ubiquitous feature of MC in other species in addition to humans, and can be selectively regulated by SCF, TGF-β and TNF-α.
Invited Commentary: Is Alcohol a Risk Factor for Trauma and Chronic Disease Mortality? Narrowing the Gap Between Evidence and Action

Alcohol has been linked with over 60 chronic diseases and types of trauma, and in developed countries alcohol consumption is ranked third in terms of disability-adjusted life years (of 26 risk factors considered). In this issue of the Journal, two papers from Finland and Canada provide new evidence of the negative effects of alcohol consumption on trauma and mortality. Herttua et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2008; doi: 10.1093/aje/kwn216) used data from a natural experiment involving an increase in access to alcohol and its links to mortality; they offer provocative findings on differential impacts by gender, age, and socioeconomic level. Taylor et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2008; doi: 10.1093/aje/kwn215) focused on lifetime risk of alcohol-related injury mortality, exploring the implications for high-risk drinking patterns. These authors offer agendas for future research on the differential impacts of policy changes according to demographic dimensions, and they highlight the need for a refined measurement of alcohol intake-since the amount of alcohol in a "standard drink" consumed by heavier drinkers is probably not the same as it is for other consumers. There is still a substantial gap between alcohol's position as a significant contributor to mortality and disability and the implementation of effective interventions. Language: en
Reduction of mechanical loss of flywheel energy storage system with spherical spiral groove bearing

Flywheel Energy Storage System (FESS) is known as a mechanical battery to store electricity. In a small-scale FESS, mechanical loss due to frictions of bearings must be reduced. In this study, a Spherical Spiral Groove Bearing (SSGB) is used to reduce the bearing loss. The bearing performance of SSGB is greatly affected by the groove shape, therefore the aim of this paper is to optimize the groove shape by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). CFD simulation results show that the groove width ratio Δ and groove depth h0 have dominant effects on the bearing performance; and that the bearing loss can be reduced by 36.5% with Δ = 0.70 and h0 = 0.02 mm as compared to the SSGB currently used. The prototype SSGB with the optimized shape was fabricated and the actual bearing loss was experimentally tested. As a result, it was confirmed that the bearing loss was reduced by 37.8 %.
Management Patterns and Health Care Use after Intracerebral Hemorrhage

Background: The German cost-of-illness study of stroke is a multicenter study in 6 departments of internal medicine, 9 departments of general neurology and 15 departments of neurology with an acute stroke unit. The aims of this study are to describe the management patterns, cost of treatment and overall resource utilization after intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) as well as the major differences to ischemic stroke (IS). Methods: During a 12-month period, 30 participating centers with a special interest in stroke prospectively included 586 patients with ICH which were collected in a joint data bank. About 75% of all patients could be centrally followed up via structured telephone interviews after 3 and 12 months to assess further acute hospital and rehabilitation stays, outpatient resource utilization, functional outcome and quality of life. Results: Mortality after 3 months (33.5%) was markedly higher than in patients with IS from the same hospitals. Accordingly, only 30.9% of patients had regained independent functional status after 3 months. Cumulative cost of treatment amounted to 5,301 EUR for inpatient stay in the documenting hospital and 8,920 EUR for the overall hospital stay including rehabilitation. Mean direct cost after discharge during the first year amounted to 4,598 EUR and the loss of work force was equivalent to 5,537 EUR in all surviving patients. Conclusion: This study provides a comprehensive overview of patient characteristics, treatment strategies and health care cost of ICH from a societal perspective in Germany.
Feedforward sequential memory networks based encoder-decoder model for machine translation

Recently recurrent neural networks based encoder-decoder model is a popular approach to sequence to sequence mapping problems, such as machine translation. However, it is time-consuming to train the model since symbols in a sequence can not be processed parallelly by recurrent neural networks because of the temporal dependency restriction. In this paper we present a sequence to sequence model by replacing the recurrent neural networks with feedforward sequential memory networks in both encoder and decoder, which enables the new architecture to encode the entire source sentence simultaneously. We also modify the attention module to make the decoder generate outputs simultaneously during training. We achieve comparable results in WMT'14 English-to-French translation task with 1.4 to 2 times faster during training because of temporal independency in feedforward sequential memory networks based encoder and decoder.
Analog signal path circuit for a four transistor pixel in standard 0.13μm CMOS technology

This project is aimed to develop the layout for the analog signal path of a 4 transistor pixel CMOS image sensor using EDA tools in standard 0. 13μm Silterra fabrication technology. The sub-circuit blocks that define the analog input-output path consists of the 320×240 pixel array, 320 column parallel correlated double sampling circuits, an output buffer amplifier and all associated bias circuitry. Each pixel size has a dimension of 10μm × 10μm. The pixel's frame rate is targeted to be 120 frames per second (fps) working in a QVGA picture format (320× 240 pixels). From simulation, the illumination range of 0.01 lux to 0.25 lux has been tested and shows only a 2.8% error from the ideal output linearity.
Multi-scale structured CNN with label consistency for brain MR image segmentation

In this paper, a novel method for brain MR image segmentation has been proposed, with deep learning techniques to obtain preliminary labelling and graphical models to produce the final result. A specific architecture, namely multi-scale structured convolutional neural networks (MS-CNN), is designed to capture discriminative features for each sub-cortical structure and to generate a label probability map for the target image. Due to complex background in brain images and the lack of spatial constraints among testing samples, the initial result obtained with MS-CNN is not smooth. To deal with this problem, dynamic random walker with decayed region of interest is then proposed to enforce label consistency. Comprehensive evaluations have been carried out on two publicly available data-sets and experimental results indicate that the proposed method can obtain better segmentation quality efficiently.
Expanding the Proteome of an RNA Virus by Phosphorylation of an Intrinsically Disordered Viral Protein*

Background: How can HCV require only 10 proteins for decades-long evasion of the immune system? Results: Phosphorylation of the intrinsically disordered domain (IDD) of NS5A changes its dynamics, inducing unique structure and function. Conclusion: IDD phosphorylation expands the HCV proteome. Significance: Post-translational modification of a viral IDD represents a strategy to expand a viral proteome when coding capacity is limited. The human proteome contains myriad intrinsically disordered proteins. Within intrinsically disordered proteins, polyproline-II motifs are often located near sites of phosphorylation. We have used an unconventional experimental paradigm to discover that phosphorylation by protein kinase A (PKA) occurs in the intrinsically disordered domain of hepatitis C virus non-structural protein 5A (NS5A) on Thr-2332 near one of its polyproline-II motifs. Phosphorylation shifts the conformational ensemble of the NS5A intrinsically disordered domain to a state that permits detection of the polyproline motif by using 15N-, 13C-based multidimensional NMR spectroscopy. PKA-dependent proline resonances were lost in the presence of the Src homology 3 domain of c-Src, consistent with formation of a complex. Changing Thr-2332 to alanine in hepatitis C virus genotype 1b reduced the steady-state level of RNA by 10-fold; this change was lethal for genotype 2a. The lethal phenotype could be rescued by changing Thr-2332 to glutamic acid, a phosphomimetic substitution. Immunofluorescence and transmission electron microscopy showed that the inability to produce Thr(P)-2332-NS5A caused loss of integrity of the virus-induced membranous web/replication organelle. An even more extreme phenotype was observed in the presence of small molecule inhibitors of PKA. We conclude that the PKA-phosphorylated form of NS5A exhibits unique structure and function relative to the unphosphorylated protein. We suggest that post-translational modification of viral proteins containing intrinsic disorder may be a general mechanism to expand the viral proteome without a corresponding expansion of the genome.
Multicenter Assessment of Immunohistochemical Methods for Pathological Alpha-Synuclein in Sigmoid Colon of Autopsied Parkinson's Disease and Control Subjects.

BACKGROUND Conflicting results from studies of Lewy-type α-synucleinopathy (LTS) in colonic biopsies of subjects with Parkinson's disease (PD) prompted a two-part multicenter assessment. The first assessment, now published (Acta Neuropathol Commun 4 : 35, 2016), examined archived colonic biopsies and found that none of the tested methods was adequately sensitive or specific. OBJECTIVE As the amount of nervous tissue in typical colonic biopsies may be insufficient, and the clinical diagnosis of PD not completely accurate, the objective of the current study was to use instead full-thickness sections of sigmoid colon from autopsy-proven PD and normal subjects. METHODS Seven different immunohistochemical (IHC) methods were used, employing five different primary antibodies and four different combinations of epitope exposure and signal development protocols. Specific staining was defined as being restricted to morphological features consistent with neuronal elements. Stained slides from each subject were independently categorized as being positive or negative for LTS, and their density semi-quantitatively graded, by four raters blinded to diagnosis. RESULTS Agreement and mean diagnostic performance varied markedly between raters. With the two most accurate raters, 5 methods achieved diagnostic accuracies of 70% or greater; one method had 100% accuracy and 100% inter-rater agreement. The submucosa had the highest prevalence of pathological LTS staining, followed by the muscularis and mucosa. CONCLUSIONS The major conclusion of this study is that, when sufficient submucosa and LTS is present, and when specific staining is defined as being consistent with neuronal morphology, adequately-trained raters may reliably distinguish PD colon from control using suitable IHC methods.
Platelet‐rich plasma enhances the integration of bioengineered cartilage with native tissue in an in vitro model

Current therapies for cartilage repair can be limited by an inability of the repair tissue to integrate with host tissue. Thus, there is interest in developing approaches to enhance integration. We have previously shown that platelet‐rich plasma (PRP) improves cartilage tissue formation. This raised the question as to whether PRP could promote cartilage integration. Chondrocytes were isolated from cartilage harvested from bovine joints, seeded on a porous bone substitute and grown in vitro to form an osteochondral‐like implant. After 7 days, the biphasic construct was soaked in PRP for 30 min before implantation into the core of a donut‐shaped biphasic explant of native cartilage and bone. Controls were not soaked in PRP. The implant–explant construct was cultured for 2–4 weeks. PRP‐soaked bioengineered implants integrated with host tissue in 73% of samples, whereas controls only integrated in 19% of samples. The integration strength, as determined by a push‐out test, was significantly increased in the PRP‐soaked implant group (219 ± 35.4 kPa) compared with controls (72.0 ± 28.5 kPa). This correlated with an increase in glycosaminoglycan and collagen accumulation in the region of integration in the PRP‐treated implant group, compared with untreated controls. Immunohistochemical studies revealed that the integration zone contained collagen type II and aggrecan. The cells at the zone of integration in the PRP‐soaked group had a 3.5‐fold increase in matrix metalloproteinase‐13 gene expression compared with controls. These results suggest that PRP‐soaked bioengineered cartilage implants may be a better approach for cartilage repair due to enhanced integration.
Carbohydrate Structural Units in Glycoproteins and Polysaccharides as Important Ligands for Gal and GalNAc Reactive Lectins

Glycoproteins (gps) contain many carbohydrate epitopes or crypto-glycotopes for Gal and GalNAc reactive lectins. They are present on the cell surface and function as receptors in various life processes. Many exist in soluble or gel form and serve as biological lubricants or as barriers against microbial invasion. During the past two decades, eleven mammalian structural units have been used to express the binding domain of applied lectins. They are: F, GalNAcα1→3GalNAc; A, GalNAcα1→3Gal; T, Galβ1→3GalNAc; I, Galβ1→3GlcNAc; II, Galβ1→ 4GlcNAc; B, Galα1→3Gal; E, Galα1→4Gal; L, Galβ1→ 4Glc; P, GalNAcβ1→3Gal; S, GalNAcβ1→4Gal and Tn, GalNAcα1→Ser(Thr). Except L and P, all of the units can be found in glycoproteins. Tn, which is an important marker for breast/colon cancer and vaccine development, exists only in O-glycans. Natural Tn gp, the simplest mammalian O-glycan, is exclusively expressed in the armadillo salivary gland. Antifreeze gp is composed of repeating units of T. Pneumococcus type XIV capsular polysaccharide has uniform II disaccharide as carbohydrate side chains. Asialo human α1-acid gp and asialo fetuin provide multi-antennary II structures. Human ovarian cyst gps, which belong to the complex type of glycoform, comprise most of the structural units. To facilitate the selection of lectins that could serve as structural probes, the carbohydrate binding properties of Gal/GalNAc reactive lectins have been classified according to their highest affinity for structural units and their binding profiles are expressed in decreasing order of reactivity. Hence, the binding relationship between glycoproteins and Gal/GalNAc specific lectins can be explored.
Design and simulation of fractional order PID controller for an inverted pendulum system

The paper proposed the design scheme for a FOPID-based controller and implemented its simulation according to the non-linearity, multivariate, strong coupling and instability of the inverted pendulum system. First, the paper built a mathematical model for the system and derived the transfer function of the pendulum's angle and displacement of the car. The appropriate closed-loop dominant poles were selected to satisfy the frequency domain stable performance requirements for the given system and the system can get the desired dynamic performance and stability after stabilization. And the parameters of the fractional order controller were tuned with the horizontal phase algorithm at the cutoff frequency. Comparing simulation of the IOPID-based controller with that of the FOPID-based controller shows that the FOPID-based controller can achieve better control effect with small overshoot and fast convergence.
Three novel SRY mutations in XY gonadal dysgenesis and the enigma of XY gonadal dysgenesis cases without SRY mutations

Mutations in the Y-located testis-determining gene SRY are one cause for XY sex reversal. We have previously identified four SRY mutations in a total of 45 sex-reversed females with XY gonadal dysgenesis (XY GD). In a new sample of 16 XY GD cases, three previously undescribed SRY mutations were identified. Two are point mutations that lead to amino acid substitutions in the HMG domain of SRY, M64R, and F67V. The third SRY mutation is a single base insertion 5′ to the HMG box within codon 43, converting this lysine codon to a stop codon (K43X). A total of 33 SRY mutations have so far been described that account for only 10–15% of XY GD females. A further 10–15% of these cases result from deletion of SRY due to aberrant X/Y interchange. The etiology of the remaining 70–80% of XY GD cases is still enigmatic. Possible explanations for these XY sex-reversal cases are discussed.
Desaturation due to dislodgement of inflation line from SACETT™ — Suction Above the Cuff Endotracheal Tube

1. Mahmood S, Al‐Thani H, El‐Menyar A, Alani M, Al‐Hassani A, Mathrdikkal S, et al. Tramadol in traumatic brain injury: Should we continue to use it? J Anaesthesiol Clin Pharmacol 2015;31:344‐8. 2. Cheng JT, Liu IM, Chi TC, Tzeng TF, Lu FH, Chang CJ. Plasma glucose‐lowering effect of tramadol in streptozotocin‐induced diabetic rats. Diabetes 2001;50:2815‐21. 3. Yamada J, Sugimoto Y, Kimura I, Takeuchi N, Horisaka K. Serotonin‐induced hypoglycemia and increased serum insulin levels in mice. Life Sci 1989;45:1931‐6. 4. Bourne C, Gouraud A, Daveluy A, Grandvuillemin A, Auriche P, Descotes J, et al. Tramadol and hypoglycaemia: Comparison with other step 2 analgesic drugs. Br J Clin Pharmacol 2013;75:1063‐7. 5. Fournier JP, Azoulay L, Yin H, Montastruc JL, Suissa S. Tramadol use and the risk of hospitalization for hypoglycemia in patients with noncancer pain. JAMA Intern Med 2015;175:186‐93. 6. Nelson LS, Juurlink DN. Tramadol and hypoglycemia: One more thing to worry about. JAMA Intern Med 2015;175:194‐5. 7. Kirchheiner J, Keulen JT, Bauer S, Roots I, Brockmöller J. Effects of the CYP2D6 gene duplication on the pharmacokinetics Access this article online
Vision-based 3-D object pick-and-place tasks of industrial manipulator

When dealing with complicated tasks such as object pick-and-place, it is harder for robotic arms alone to complete them. One of the possible solutions to overcoming the aforementioned difficulties is to introduce machine vision into the robotic arm system. In this paper, the eye-to-hand camera configuration is adopted in the development of the vision-based automatic pick-and-place systems for 3-D objects. The vision­based automatic pick-and-place system developed in this paper consists of three main sections — calibration of machine vision system, object recognition, and transformations of object coordinates. Experimental results indicate that the vision-based automatic pick-and-place system developed in this paper is able to perform an automatic pick-and-place task for 3-D objects.
Lactacystin Inhibits Cathepsin A Activity in Melanoma Cell Lines

We describe the inhibitory effect of the proteasome inhibitor, lactacystin, on cathepsin A activity in murine melanoma cell lines. In vitro lactacystin metabolite, β-lactone, at a concentration of 1 µM, significantly suppressed cathepsin A activity in B78 melanoma cell lysates by about 50%. Exposure of three murine melanoma cell lines with different metastatic potential to lactacystin at a concentration of 5 µM for 6 h caused a significant reduction in the carboxypeptidase activity of this enzyme, while the inhibitory activity remained unchanged for at least 12 h. Other proteasome-specific inhibitors, e.g. epoxomicin and N-benzyloxycarbonyl-Ile-Glu(O-tert-Bu)-Ala-leucinal (PSI) at a concentration of 1 µM did not affect cathepsin A activity in melanoma cell line lysates. These data support our previous proposal that lactacystin is not a specific inhibitor of the proteasome. Since cathepsin A is also a tumor-associated enzyme, further research is needed to clarify its role and the significance of its inhibition by lactacystin in tumor biology.
Diaphragmatic flutter

A 78-year-old woman presented with involuntary movements of her abdomen, which started after a right hemispheric stroke. She had irregular, variable, hyperkinetic predominantly right-sided abdominal wall movements. MR scan of brain confirmed a recent infarct in the right occipitotemporal lobe and the right cerebellum. Diaphragmatic fluoroscopy confirmed high-frequency flutter as the cause of her abdominal movements and confirmed the diagnosis of van Leeuwenhoek’s disease. Anthonie van Leeuwenhoek first described this condition in 1723 and had the condition himself. He was a Dutch businessman who is often acknowledged as the first microscopist and microbiologist. He disagreed with his physician who attributed his ailment as being of cardiac origin. Diaphragmatic flutter is a rare disorder that requires a high index of suspicion with symptoms including abnormal abdominal wall movements, dyspnoea and respiratory distress. Despite medical treatment, the patient was still highly symptomatic, so she is currently being considered for a phrenic nerve crush.
Privacy-preserving techniques of genomic data - a survey

Genomic data hold salient information about the characteristics of a living organism. Throughout the past decade, pinnacle developments have given us more accurate and inexpensive methods to retrieve genome sequences of humans. However, with the advancement of genomic research, there is a growing privacy concern regarding the collection, storage and analysis of such sensitive human data. Recent results show that given some background information, it is possible for an adversary to reidentify an individual from a specific genomic data set. This can reveal the current association or future susceptibility of some diseases for that individual (and sometimes the kinship between individuals) resulting in a privacy violation. Regardless of these risks, our genomic data hold much importance in analyzing the well-being of us and the future generation. Thus, in this article, we discuss the different privacy and security-related problems revolving around human genomic data. In addition, we will explore some of the cardinal cryptographic concepts, which can bring efficacy in secure and private genomic data computation. This article will relate the gaps between these two research areas-Cryptography and Genomics.