Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of quercetin on the expression of MCP-1, MMP-9 and VEGF in rats with diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy, a severe complication of diabetes, is the leading cause of blindness in the developed world. This study investigated the effects of quercetin on levels of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in serum of rats with diabetic retinopathy, and explored the functional mechanisms of quercetin in the treatment of diabetic retinopathy. Twenty rats with induced diabetes were divided into a model group and a quercetin group, with 10 rats in each group. Ten healthy rats were also included to serve as a control group. Rats in the quercetin group were treated with an intragastric injection of quercetin (150 mg/kg), while the same amount of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMCNa) was used for rats in the model group and the control group. The treatment was performed once per day and blood glucose was measured in each group at 0, 10 and 20 weeks after the first treatment. Blood glucose tests showed that quercetin did not reduce blood glucose in rats with diabetes. However, pathological examination showed that quercetin could relieve pathological changes caused by diabetes, such as retinal edema and vacuoles. ELISA results showed that, compared with the control group, levels of MCP-1, MMP-9 and VEGF in the model group were significantly increased (P<0.01). No significant difference in serum MCP-1 content was found between the model group and the quercetin group, but levels of MMP-9 and VEGF were significantly decreased in the quercetin group (P<0.01). Results of RT-PCR and western blot analysis showed that, compared with the control group, levels of MCP-1, MMP-9 and VEGF mRNA and protein in the retinal tissue of rats in the model group were significantly increased (P<0.01). No significant differences in expression levels of MCP-1 mRNA and protein were found between the model group and the quercetin group, but levels of MMP-9 and VEGF mRNA and protein were significantly decreased in the quercetin group (P<0.01). Quercetin has a certain therapeutic effect on rats with diabetic retinopathy and its effect may be achieved by reducing the expression of MMP-9 and VEGF, but not the inflammatory mediator, MCP-1.
Oncoplastic round block technique has comparable operative parameters as standard wide local excision: a matched case-control study.

BACKGROUND Although oncoplastic breast surgery is used to resect larger tumors with lower re-excision rates compared to standard wide local excision (sWLE), criticisms of oncoplastic surgery include a longer-albeit, well concealed-scar, longer operating time and hospital stay, and increased risk of complications. Round block technique has been reported to be very suitable for patients with relatively smaller breasts and minimal ptosis. We aim to determine if round block technique will result in operative parameters comparable with sWLE. METHODS Breast cancer patients who underwent a round block procedure from 1st May 2014 to 31st January 2016 were included in the study. These patients were then matched for the type of axillary procedure, on a one to one basis, with breast cancer patients who had undergone sWLE from 1st August 2011 to 31st January 2016. The operative parameters between the 2 groups were compared. RESULTS 22 patients were included in the study. Patient demographics and histologic parameters were similar in the 2 groups. No complications were reported in either group. The mean operating time was 122 and 114 minutes in the round block and sWLE groups, respectively (P=0.64). Length of stay was similar in the 2 groups (P=0.11). Round block patients had better cosmesis and lower re-excision rates. A higher rate of recurrence was observed in the sWLE group. CONCLUSION The round block technique has comparable operative parameters to sWLE with no evidence of increased complications. Lower re-excision rate and better cosmesis were observed in the round block patients suggesting that the round block technique is not only comparable in general, but may have advantages to sWLE in selected cases.
The DNA of a minute virus of mice.

Summary The base composition of DNA from a minute virus of mice was determined by hydrolysis of 32P-labelled DNA to give 3′ and 5′ nucleotides. The analyses were consistent only with a single-stranded structure for the virus DNA. This was confirmed by the results of nearest neighbour base sequence analyses. Comparison of minute virus of mice with phage φX 174 and adeno-associated virus type 1 showed a close similarity of minute virus of mice and φX 174 and suggested that all three small DNA virus particles contain not more than 1.7 × 106 daltons of DNA.
Recent Advances in Substrate Identification of Protein Kinases in Plants and Their Role in Stress Management

Protein phosphorylation-dephosphorylation is a well-known regulatory mechanism in biological systems and has become one of the significant means of protein function regulation, modulating most of the biological processes. Protein kinases play vital role in numerous cellular processes. Kinases transduce external signal into responses such as growth, immunity and stress tolerance through phosphorylation of their target proteins. In order to understand these cellular processes at the molecular level, one needs to be aware of the different substrates targeted by protein kinases. Advancement in tools and techniques has bestowed practice of multiple approaches that enable target identification of kinases. However, so far none of the methodologies has been proved to be as good as a panacea for the substrate identification. In this review, the recent advances that have been made in the identifications of putative substrates and the implications of these kinases and their substrates in stress management are discussed.
Long Short Term Memory Networks for Anomaly Detection in Time Series

Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) networks have been demonstrated to be particularly useful for learning sequences containing longer term patterns of unknown length, due to their ability to maintain long term memory. Stacking recurrent hidden layers in such networks also enables the learning of higher level temporal features, for faster learning with sparser representations. In this paper, we use stacked LSTM networks for anomaly/fault detection in time series. A network is trained on non-anomalous data and used as a predictor over a number of time steps. The resulting prediction errors are modeled as a multivariate Gaussian distribution, which is used to assess the likelihood of anomalous behavior. The eﬃcacy of this approach is demonstrated on four datasets: ECG, space shuttle, power demand, and multi-sensor engine dataset.
Design of the netgeneration: Streaming the flow of design and science in the educational practice of the creative industry

Purpose – This paper sets out to provide insight into the current debate on art, science and the new net generation of young professionals with the usage of the conceptual framework of cybernetics that will look into the dynamics of this netgeneration.Design/methodology/approach – Literature review will set the stage of the current debate on design education in the creative industries, which aims to provide a reflection. The theory and approaches are then applied to a case study in which the conceptual framework of cybernetics will be unfolded. These concepts are then evaluated in order to provide a proposal for continuing research.Findings – The paper provides insight into the mechanisms of knowledge management systems in particular for the context of design‐making processes by the netgeneration. The findings are reviewed and concluded by proposing a method for continuation of research. The case study will benefit from the findings and as such design education itself.Research limitations/implications – I.
Genetic diversity in Artemisia monosperma and Artemisia judaica populations in Egypt based on morphological, karyological and molecular variations

The analysis of morphological variation and molecular polymorphism as revealed by random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) of ten populations of Artemisia monosperma and Artemisia judaica confirmed the differentiation of A. monosperma and A. judaica as two distinct species and showed wider variations among A. judaica populations compared to those of A. monosperma populations. Karyotype analysis revealed that all A. monosperma populations are tetraploid with 2n=36 and a basic number of x=9, while all samples of A. judaica are diploid with 2n=16 and x=8. Like most other species of Artemisia both species have symmetric karyotype but the chromosomes of A. monosperma are generally shorter and three populations of this species have a B chromosome. The populations of A. judaica growing in the mountains of Sinai were clearly distinguished from other populations growing at lower elevations in other parts of Egypt based on morphological differences. However, these two populations differ in chromosome length being 4.85±0.42 μm for those growing in wadi beds and 3.81±0.28 μm for the population growing on the terraces. The latter population is clearly distinguished by RAPD profiling from the other four populations supporting the recognition of some populations of A. judaica in South Sinai as a separate variety.
Genetic analysis of resistance to rice bacterial blight in Uganda

Rice bacterial blight (Xanthomonas oryzae pv.oryzae) is a major constraint to rice (Oryza sativa L.) production in Uganda and as part of strategies to develop resistant cultivars, it is important to evaluate resistance of commonly used cultivars. A full-diallel mating design involving three resistant and three susceptible rice cultivars was used to produce F 1 and F 2 progenies in a screen-house at the National Crop Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI), Namulonge in Uganda. The parents and F 2 populations were challenged with the Xanthomonas oryzae pv.oryzae isolate (UX00) and lesion lengths were scored 21 days after inoculation (DAI). Griffing’s combining ability analysis showed significant specific combining ability (SCA) and non-significant general combining ability (GCA) effects, indicating the preponderance of non-additive gene effects in controlling the resistance to bacterial leaf blight (BLB) in rice. Rice genotypes, NERICA14, NERICA10 and NERICA4 had desirable GCA estimates, and were, therefore, the best general combiners. Crosses CO39 x NERICA10 and NERICA14 x IRAT104 had favorable SCA values. These hybrids are thus, promising in developing the BLB resistant progenies. Significant reciprocal effects indicate the importance of maternal contribution in controlling the BLB virulence. For this, resistant lines can be used as female parents for fear of affecting transfer of resistance to the progenies, and the hybrids and their reciprocals would be handled separately. Low estimates of narrow sense coefficient of genetic determination (NSCGD) (0.9%) and medium broad sense coefficient of genetic determination (BSCGD) estimates (16.4%) highlight the influence of non-additive gene action in controlling the resistance to BLB, confirming an effective selection of superior genotypes at advanced generations when the maximum homozygosity is fixed.
Molecular Cloning of a New Interferon-induced PML Nuclear Body-associated Protein*

Transcriptional induction of genes is an essential part of the cellular response to interferons. We have established a cDNA library from human lymphoblastoid Daudi cells treated for 16 h with human α/β-interferon (IFN) and made use of differential screening to search for as yet unidentified IFN-regulated genes. In the course of this study, we have isolated a human cDNA that codes for a 20-kDa protein sharing striking homology with the product of the Xenopus laevis XPMC2 gene. This new gene is induced by both type I and II IFNs in various cell lines and will be referred to as ISG20 for interferon-stimulated gene product of 20 kDa. Confocal immunofluorescence analysis of the subcellular localization of ISG20 protein reveals that it is closely associated with PML and SP100 gene products within the large nuclear matrix-associated multiprotein complexes termed the PML nuclear bodies.
Synthesis and antimicrobial evaluation of new pyridine, thienopyridine and pyridothienopyrazole derivatives

The reaction of thiocyanoacetamide (1) with α,β-unsaturated ketones2a,b resulted in the formation of the corresponding newly synthesized 1(H)-pyridinethione derivatives3a,b. Compounds3a,b were used as synthons for the preparation of 2-S-alkyl-, 2-S-aryl, 2-S-acetamidopyridine, thieno[2,3-b]pyridine and pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridine derivatives via a wide range of reactions with different reagents. The antimicrobial activity of some of the newly synthesized compounds was tested. Compounds3a, 11a, 15a, and19a,b were found to be the most active ones.
Real-time progressive event summarization and sentiment analysis on evolutionary tweet stream

In the recent years, the popularity of Social Networking Sites (SNS) has increased immensely. So the numbers of tweets are generated at a huge rate immediately after the occurrence of the event. The users of the SNS always willing to get a compact understanding of opinions of people about a specific event without reading all tweets. This paper mainly focuses on mining of trending topics on twitter, analyzing the sentiments and obtaining a summary on the topic. The system attempts to create groups of tweets on a particular topic based on content similarity and then provides concise opinion summary for each group. We also determine sentiments of people related to the event. Sentiments are classified into three classes positive, negative and neutral using “Sentiwordnet dictionary”. As the different user can request the summary at any instant, the traditional event summarization and clustering techniques cannot fulfill the real-time necessity of this application. So, the summarization issue for the twitter's data is designed as progressive clustering and sentiment analysis task. Finally, the visualization interface gives a brief overview of various opinions about the event.
Direct evidence of NO production in rat hippocampus and cortex using a new fluorescent indicator: DAF‐2 DA

THE biological functions of nitric oxide in the neuronal system remain controversial. Using a novel fluorescence indicator, DAF-2 DA, for direct detection of NO, we examined both acute rat brain slices and organotypic culture of brain slices to ascertain NO production sites. The fluorescence intensity in the CA1 region of the hippocampus was augmented, especially after stimulation with NMDA, in acute brain slices. This NO production in the CA1 region was also confirmed in cultured hippocampus. This is the first direct evidence of NO production in the CA1 region. There were also fluorescent cells in the cerebral cortex after stimulation with NMDA. Imaging techniques using DAF-2 DA should be very useful for the clarification of neuronal NO functions.
Methodology for Gender Identification, Classification and Recognition of Human Age

The human voice is comprised of sound made by a human being using the vocal cord for talking,singing, laughing, crying and shouting. It is particularly a piece of human sound creation inwhich the vocal cord is the essential sound source, which play an important role in the conversation.The applications of speech or voice processing technology play a crucial role in humancomputer interaction. The system improves gender identification, age group classification, ageand emotion recognition performance. The research work uses new and efficient methods forfeature extraction of speech or voice and classification of standard method on the various audiodatasets. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients feature extraction and selection is performed tofind a more suitable feature set for building speaker models. The proposed system uses GaussianMixture Model is a supervector for system feature selection and feature modelling. SupportVector Machine classification and feature matching technique is used to classify the featurefor different age groups like child, teenage, young, adult and senior to increase the resultantperformance and accuracy. The database is created using the audio files for each age group ofspeaker and for each emotion as an input, performs feature extraction and identifies the gender,classify age group, recognize age and emotion.
Shifter : Fast and consistent HPC workflows using containers

In this work we describe the experiences of building and deploying containers using Docker and Shifter, respectively. We present basic benchmarking tests that show the performance portability of certain workflows as well as performance results from the deployment of widely used nontrivial scientific applications. Furthermore, we discuss the resulting workflows through use cases that cover the container creation on a laptop and their deployment at scale, taking advantage of specialized hardware: Cray Aries interconnect and NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU accelerators. Keywords-HPC systems, GPU, GPGPU, containers, Docker, Shifter.
Renal sympathetic-nerve ablation for uncontrolled hypertension.

To the Editor: The renal sympathetic nerves have been identified as a major contributor to the complex pathophysiology of hypertension in both experimental models and in humans.1 Patients with essential hypertension generally have increased efferent sympathetic drive to the kidneys, as evidenced by elevated rates of renal norepinephrine spillover, defined as the amount of transmitter that escapes neuronal uptake and local metabolism and thus “spills over” into the circulation. Hypertension is also characterized by an increased rate of sympathetic-nerve firing, possibly modulated by afferent signaling from renal sensory nerves.2–4 A 59-year-old male patient with long-standing essential hypertension that was .
Impact of the C1431T Polymorphism of the Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptor-Gamma (PPAR-γ) Gene on Fasted Serum Lipid Levels in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

Background/Aims: The C1431T polymorphism of peroxisome proliferator activated receptor-γ (PPAR-γ) gene is related to diabetes and metabolic-syndrome. However, studies have been inconclusive about its association with coronary artery disease (CAD) and there have been no studies analyzing the association of this polymorphism with fasted-serum-lipid levels in Iranian-individuals with CAD. We investigated the association of PPAR-γ C1431T-polymorphism with CAD and dyslipidaemia in 787 individuals. Methods: Anthropometric-parameters and biochemical-measurements were evaluated, followed by genotyping. The association of the genetic-polymorphisms with CAD and lipid-profile was determined by univariate/multivariate-analyses. Results: Patients with CT or CT+TT genotype were at an increased-risk of CAD relative to CC-carriers (adjusted odds ratio: 2.03; 95% conﬁdence interval, 1.01-4.09; p = 0.046). However, in the larger population, CT genotype was present at a higher frequency in the group with a positive angiogram. Furthermore, CT+TT genotypes were associated with an altered fasted-lipid-profile in the initial population sample of patients with a positive angiogram, compared to the group with a negative-angiogram. The angiogram-positive patients carrying the T allele had a significantly higher triglyceride, serum C-reactive protein and fasting-blood-glucose. Conclusion: We have found the PPAR-γ C1431T polymorphism was significantly associated with fasted serum lipid profile in individuals with angiographically defined CAD. Since accumulating data support the role of PPAR-γ polymorphisms in CAD, further studies are required to investigate the association of this polymorphism with coronary artery disease.
Decreased Alveolar Macrophage Apoptosis Is Associated with Increased Pulmonary Inflammation in a Murine Model of Pneumococcal Pneumonia1

Regulation of the inflammatory infiltrate is critical to the successful outcome of pneumonia. Alveolar macrophage apoptosis is a feature of pneumococcal infection and aids disease resolution. The host benefits of macrophage apoptosis during the innate response to bacterial infection are incompletely defined. Because NO is required for optimal macrophage apoptosis during pneumococcal infection, we have explored the role of macrophage apoptosis in regulating inflammatory responses during pneumococcal pneumonia, using inducible NO synthase (iNOS)-deficient mice. iNOS−/− mice demonstrated decreased numbers of apoptotic macrophages as compared with wild-type C57BL/6 mice following pneumococcal challenge, greater recruitment of neutrophils to the lung and enhanced expression of TNF-α. Pharmacologic inhibition of iNOS produced similar results. Greater pulmonary inflammation was associated with greater levels of early bacteremia, IL-6 production, lung inflammation, and mortality within the first 48 h in iNOS−/− mice. Labeled apoptotic alveolar macrophages were phagocytosed by resident macrophages in the lung and intratracheal instillation of exogenous apoptotic macrophages decreased neutrophil recruitment in iNOS−/− mice and decreased TNF-α mRNA in lungs and protein in bronchial alveolar lavage, as well as chemokines and cytokines including IL-6. These changes were associated with a lower probability of mice becoming bacteremic. This demonstrates the potential of apoptotic macrophages to down-regulate the inflammatory response and for the first time in vivo demonstrates that clearance of apoptotic macrophages decreases neutrophil recruitment and invasive bacterial disease during pneumonia.
Online Reputation Fraud Campaign Detection in User Ratings

Reputation fraud campaigns (RFCs) distort the reputations of rated items, by generating fake ratings through multiple spammers. One effective way of detecting RFCs is to characterize their collective behaviors based on rating histories. However, these campaigns are constantly evolving and changing tactics to evade detection. For example, they can launch early attacks on the items to quickly dominate the reputations. They can also whitewash themselves through creating new accounts for subsequent attacks. It is thus challenging for existing approaches working on historical data to promptly react to such emerging fraud activities. In this paper, we conduct RFC detection in online fashion, so as to spot campaign activities as early as possible. This leads to a unified and scalable optimization framework, FRAUDSCAN, that can adapt to emerging fraud patterns over time. Empirical analysis on two real-world datasets validates the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework.