Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Current developments in green synthesis of metallic nanoparticles using plant extracts: a review

Abstract Metal nanoparticles (MNPs) produced by green approaches have received global attention because of their physicochemical characteristics and their applications in the field of biotechnology. In recent years, the development of synthesizing NPs by plant extracts has become a major focus of researchers because of these NPs have low hazardous effect in the environment and low toxicity for the human body. Synthesized NPs from plants are not only more stable in terms of size and shape, also the yield of this method is higher than the other methods. Moreover, some of these MNPs have shown antimicrobial activity which is consistently confirmed in past few years. Plant extracts have been used as reducing agent and stabilizer of NPs in which we can reduce the toxicity in the environment as well as the human body only by not using chemical agents. Furthermore, the presence of some specific materials in plant extracts could be extremely helpful and effective for the human body; for instance, polyphenol, which may have antioxidant effects has the capability for capturing free radicals before they can react with other biomolecules and cause serious damages. In this article, we focused on of the most common plants which are regularly used to synthesize MNPs along with various methods for synthesizing MNPs from plant extracts.
Design and Optimization of a Novel Three-Dimensional Force Sensor with Parallel Structure

To measure large external forces exerted on a loading platform, a novel three-dimensional force sensor is developed in this paper. The proposed sensor was designed with a parallel mechanism with three degrees of freedom. Kinematic analysis of this sensor was performed. Due to its structural characteristics, the working principle of the sensor was analyzed using a Jacobian matrix. The sensitivity diversity index and measuring capability were both calculated. The analysis showed that the proposed sensor is more suitable for measuring large forces than existing strain sensors. In addition, compared with existing strain sensors, this sensor is more suitable for measuring forces along the x and y axes. By changing the stiffness coefficients of the springs, the proposed sensor has reconfigurability. This sensor can change its measuring capability to meet different requirements. Next, the mode shapes and natural frequencies of the proposed sensor were performed. Finally, based on these performance indices, the design variables were optimized using a Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm.
Polysaccharide-Based Aerogel Bead Production via Jet Cutting Method

The aim of this work is to develop a method to produce spherical biopolymer-based aerogel particles, which is capable for scale-up in the future. Therefore, the jet cutting method is suggested. Amidated pectin, sodium alginate, and chitosan are used as a precursor (a 1–3 wt. % solution) for particle production via jet cutting. Gelation is realized via two methods: the internal setting method (using calcium carbonate particles as cross-linkers and citric and acidic acid for pH adjustment) and the diffusion method (in calcium chloride solutions). Gel particles are subjected to solvent exchange to ethanol and consequent supercritical drying with CO2. Spherical aerogel particles with narrow particle size distributions in the range of 400 to 1500 µm and a specific surface area of around 500 m2/g are produced. Overall, it can be concluded that the jet cutting method is suitable for aerogel particle production, although the shape of the particles is not perfectly spherical in all cases. However, parameter adjustment might lead to even better shaped particles in further work. Moreover, the biopolymer-based aerogel particles synthesized in this study are tested as humidity absorbers in drying units for home appliances, particularly for dishwashers. It has been shown that for several cycles of absorption and desorption of humidity, aerogel particles are stable with an absorption capacity of around 20 wt. %.
Modeling individual health care expenditures in China: Evidence to assist payment reform in public insurance

Reforming the payment system of public health insurance from fee-for-service to more efficient alternative schemes has become an urgent policy issue in developing countries. Using a large sample of administrative data drawn from China, we examine a variety of econometric models for predicting the medical expenditures of individuals. We show that the standard ordinary least squares model performs relatively well compared with other models. We then propose two alternative payment schemes on risk-adjusted capitation. The first is a prospective capitation model and the second incorporates both prospective and retrospective features. We simulate the corresponding payments based on model predictions and evaluate the payment/cost ratios for health care providers. The results show that the prospective capitation method generates smaller financial fluctuation, suggesting that policymakers may prefer this method to achieve a smooth transition.
Evidence for lineage continuity between early serous proliferations (ESPs) in the Fallopian tube and disseminated high‐grade serous carcinomas

The distal Fallopian tube is a site of origin for many ‘ovarian’ high‐grade serous carcinomas (HGSCs) with intraepithelial carcinomas (STICs) that share identical TP53 mutations with metastatic tumors. TP53 mutation‐positive early serous proliferations (ESPs) comprise a spectrum including p53 signatures and serous tubal intraepithelial lesions (STILs) and are not considered malignant; however, ESPs are often the only abnormality found in Fallopian tubes of women with metastatic HGSC. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between isolated ESPs and concurrent metastatic HGSCs in the absence of STIC. Fallopian tubes from 32 HGSCs without a co‐existing STIC/HGSC in the endosalpinx were exhaustively sectioned. The presence of either STIC/HGSC or ESP in the endosalpinx was documented and DNA from tissues containing ESPs, concurrent HGSC, and control epithelia were interrogated for TP53 mutations by targeted amplicon‐based sequencing with average coverage reads >4000 across DNA replicate samples. Serial sectioning revealed a previously unrecognized STIC/HGSC in 3 of 32 (9.3%) and ESPs in 13 (40.6%). Twelve contained TP53 mutations. Nine (75%) shared identical TP53 mutations with concurrent HGSCs, four at high (≥ 5%) and five at low (< 5%) allele frequency. All control epithelia were TP53 mutation‐negative. This study, for the first time, indicates lineage identity between ESPs in the distal tube and some metastatic HGSCs via a shared site‐specific TP53 mutation. It supports a novel serous carcinogenic sequence in which an ESP could eventually culminate in a metastatic serous cancer via ‘precursor escape’ and would explain the apparent sudden onset of cancers without co‐existing STICs. This paradigm for serous cancer development underscores the likelihood that multiple precursor types in the Fallopian tube contribute to serous cancer development with implications for the evolution, pathologic classification, and prevention of this lethal malignancy. Copyright © 2018 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Evaluation of association of DRD2 TaqIA and -141C InsDel polymorphisms with food intake and anthropometric data in children at the first stages of development

Abstract The reward sensation after food intake may be different between individuals and variants in genes related to the dopaminergic system may indicate a different response in people exposed to the same environmental factors. This study investigated the association of TaqIA (rs1800497) and -141C InsDel (rs1799732) variants in DRD2/ANKK1 gene with food intake and adiposity parameters in a cohort of children. The sample consisted of 270 children followed until 7 to 8 years old. DNA was extracted from blood and polymorphisms were detected by PCR-RFLP analysis. Food intake and nutritional status were compared among individuals with different SNP genotypes. Children carrying the A1 allele (TaqIA) had higher energy of lipid dense foods (LDF) when compared with A2/A2 homozygous children at 7 to 8 years old (GLM p=0.004; Mann Whitney p=0.005). No association was detected with -141C Ins/Del polymorphism. To our knowledge, this is the first association study of the DRD2 TaqIA and -141C Ins/Del polymorphism with food intake and anthropometric parameters in children. DRD2 TaqIA polymorphism has been associated with a reduction in D2 dopamine receptor availability. Therefore, the differences observed in LDF intake in our sample may occur as an effort to compensate the hypodopaminergic functioning.
Dynamic DNA Methylation in Plant Growth and Development

DNA methylation is an epigenetic modification required for transposable element (TE) silencing, genome stability, and genomic imprinting. Although DNA methylation has been intensively studied, the dynamic nature of methylation among different species has just begun to be understood. Here we summarize the recent progress in research on the wide variation of DNA methylation in different plants, organs, tissues, and cells; dynamic changes of methylation are also reported during plant growth and development as well as changes in response to environmental stresses. Overall DNA methylation is quite diverse among species, and it occurs in CG, CHG, and CHH (H = A, C, or T) contexts of genes and TEs in angiosperms. Moderately expressed genes are most likely methylated in gene bodies. Methylation levels decrease significantly just upstream of the transcription start site and around transcription termination sites; its levels in the promoter are inversely correlated with the expression of some genes in plants. Methylation can be altered by different environmental stimuli such as pathogens and abiotic stresses. It is likely that methylation existed in the common eukaryotic ancestor before fungi, plants and animals diverged during evolution. In summary, DNA methylation patterns in angiosperms are complex, dynamic, and an integral part of genome diversity after millions of years of evolution.
Functional paclitaxel plus honokiol micelles destroying tumour metastasis in treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer

Abstract Treatment effect of chemotherapy for aggressive non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is usually unsatisfactory for non-selective distributions of anticancer drugs, generation of vasculogenic mimicry (VM) channels, high metastasis and recurrence rate. Therefore, we developed a kind of dequalinium (DQA) modified paclitaxel plus honokiol micelles in this study to destroy VM channels and inhibit tumour metastasis. In vitro assays indicated that the targeting paclitaxel micelles with ideal physicochemical characteristics could exhibit not only the powerful cytotoxicity on Lewis lung tumour (LLT) cells but also the effective suppression on VM channels and tumour metastasis. Action mechanism studies manifested that DQA modified paclitaxel plus honokiol micelles could activate apoptotic enzymes caspase-3 and caspase-9 as well as down-regulate FAK, PI3K, MMP-2 and MMP-9. In vivo assays indicated that polymeric micelles could increase selective accumulation of chemotherapeutic drugs at tumour sites and showed a conspicuous antitumour efficacy. Hence, the DQA modified paclitaxel plus honokiol micelles prepared in this study provided a potential treatment strategy for NSCLC.
Improved Cold Tolerance of Mango Fruit with Enhanced Anthocyanin and Flavonoid Contents

Red fruits were suggested to be tolerant to cold. To understand cold-storage tolerance of red mango fruit that were subjected to sunlight at the orchard, mango cv. Shelly from inside (green fruit) or outside (red fruit) the tree canopy was stored for 3 weeks at 5, 8 or 12 °C and examined for flavonoids, antioxidant, volatiles and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress. Red fruit from the outer canopy showed significant increases in total anthocyanin and flavonoids, and antioxidant activity. Ripening parameters for red and green mango fruit were similar at harvest and during storage. However, red fruit with high anthocyanin and flavonoid contents were more tolerant to biotic and abiotic stresses. After 3 weeks of suboptimal cold storage, green fruit showed significantly more lipid peroxidation and developed significantly more chilling-injury symptoms—black spots and pitting—than red fruit. Volatiles of red and green peels revealed significant modulations in response to cold-storage. Moreover, red fruit were more tolerant to biotic stress and had reduced general decay incidence. However, during long storage at 10 °C for 4, 5 or 6 weeks, red fruit showed a non-significant reduction in decay and chilling injuries. These results suggest new approaches to avoiding chilling injury during cold storage.
Biocompatible and Implantable Optical Fibers and Waveguides for Biomedicine

Optical fibers and waveguides in general effectively control and modulate light propagation, and these tools have been extensively used in communication, lighting and sensing. Recently, they have received increasing attention in biomedical applications. By delivering light into deep tissue via these devices, novel applications including biological sensing, stimulation and therapy can be realized. Therefore, implantable fibers and waveguides in biocompatible formats with versatile functionalities are highly desirable. In this review, we provide an overview of recent progress in the exploration of advanced optical fibers and waveguides for biomedical applications. Specifically, we highlight novel materials design and fabrication strategies to form implantable fibers and waveguides. Furthermore, their applications in various biomedical fields such as light therapy, optogenetics, fluorescence sensing and imaging are discussed. We believe that these newly developed fiber and waveguide based devices play a crucial role in advanced optical biointerfaces.
A Fused CP Factorization Method for Incomplete Tensors

Low-rank tensor completion methods have been advanced recently for modeling sparsely observed data with a multimode structure. However, low-rank priors may fail to interpret the model factors of general tensor objects. The most common method to address this drawback is to use regularizations together with the low-rank priors. However, due to the complex nature and diverse characteristics of real-world multiway data, the use of a single or a few regularizations remains far from efficient, and there are limited systematic experimental reports on the advantages of these regularizations for tensor completion. To fill these gaps, we propose a modified CP tensor factorization framework that fuses the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$l_{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> norm constraint, sparseness (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$l_{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> norm), manifold, and smooth information simultaneously. The factorization problem is addressed through a combination of Nesterov’s optimal gradient descent method and block coordinate descent. Here, we construct a smooth approximation to the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$l_{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> norm and TV norm regularizations, and then, the tensor factor is updated using the projected gradient method, where the step size is determined by the Lipschitz constant. Extensive experiments on simulation data, visual data completion, intelligent transportation systems, and GPS data of user involvement are conducted, and the efficiency of our method is confirmed by the results. Moreover, the obtained results reveal the characteristics of these commonly used regularizations for tensor completion in a certain sense and give experimental guidance concerning how to use them.
The Life Span Distribution of Autobiographical Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease

Objective: The literature on the temporal distribution of autobiographical memory in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by mixed findings concerning the presence of a temporal gradient in the loss of autobiographical memory. Some studies show a gradient, implying better access to more remote autobiographical memories, whereas others do not. These conflicting results likely reflect differences in the test methodologies, accentuating the need for replications and extensions. Method: Forty-five older adults diagnosed with AD (via Mini-Mental State Examination, M = 19.89, SD = 4.05) and a matched sample of 44 healthy older adults were assessed on two different autobiographical memory measures: the Autobiographical Memory Interview (Kopelman, Wilson, & Baddeley, 1990) and the Galton–Crovitz task (word and object cueing) to examine the temporal distribution of personal autobiographical memories across the life span. Results: The impairment of episodic and personal semantic remembering, as indexed by the Autobiographical Memory Interview, was associated with a negative temporal gradient with better preservation of memories from the remote past, relative to the recent one. The results from the word- and object-cueing task replicated the finding that AD is associated with markedly impaired recall of recent events. In addition, both groups showed a peak in the recollection of events from middle childhood and adolescence, consistent with research on the reminiscence bump. Conclusions: Older adults diagnosed with AD demonstrate increased recollection of personal semantic and episodic events from the remote past relative to the recent one. The findings are discussed in relation to prominent models of memory consolidation.
Force Field Benchmark of Amino Acids. 2. Partition Coefficients between Water and Organic Solvents

The partitioning of amino acids between water and apolar environments is of vital importance in protein function and drug delivery. Here we present an extensive benchmark for octanol/water (log Poct), chloroform/water (log Pclf), and cyclohexane/water (log Pchx) partition coefficients of neutral amino acid side chain analogues (SCAs) with Amber families of ff99SB-ILDN, ff03, ff14SB, fb15, and ff15ipq, CHARMM 27, GROMOS 53A6, and OPLS-AA/L force fields. A root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.4-1.3 log units from experiment is observed for the tested FFs, of which Amber ff94 lineages of ff99SB-ILDN, ff14SB, and fb15 perform best with an RMSE and mean signed error (MSE) of about 0.5 and 0.2 log units, respectively, a performance comparable with quantum mechanical SMD calculations. This finding retains the possibility of modeling proteins in varied environments with one set of classical molecular mechanical force fields. All the FFs tend to overestimate log P, except for GROMOS 53A6 underestimating log Pclf and log Pchx. These discrepancies are mainly due to the larger overestimated solvation free energies in water (Δ Gwat) relative to that in organic solvents (Δ Goct, Δ Gclf, and Δ Gchx); for GROMOS 53A6, it is due to the underestimated Δ Gwat and Δ Goct. The latest water models of "FB" and "OPC" families paired with the recent Amber fb15 do not show an obvious improvement for Δ Gwat and log P calculations. The van der Waals interaction between amino acids and cyclohexane is found to be too strong (overestimated) systematically. Scaling protein-water interactions lead to more favorable Δ Gwat, thereby lowering log P and resulting in a better performance for Amber ff03ws, while such scaling seems a bit too much for Amber ff99SBws. This, along with our previous work ( Zhang et al. J. Chem. Inf. MODEL 2018 , 58 , 1037 - 1052 ), may aid in the development and systematic improvements of classical force fields to model proteins in aqueous and nonaqueous phases accurately.
An approach to revolutionize cataract treatment by enhancing drug probing through intraocular cell line

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to prepare and characterize solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) of N-Acetyl Carnosine (NAC) to treat cataract since surgery necessitates equipments and professional help. Cataract is believed to be formed by the biochemical approach where the crystalline eye proteins lose solubility and forms high molecular weight masses. Added advantages of SLN of NAC (henceforth referred as SLN-NAC) in the study are reduced size, sustained release and better corneal penetration of drug. The method of preparation of SLN-NAC by Mill’s method is unique in itself. The size of the SLN-NAC was 75 ± 10 nm in the range of ideal for penetration. The in-vitro release study and the SLN-NAC formulations prepared with Mill’s method demonstrated sustained release up to 24 h following an initial burst after 1 h. The zeta potential of the prepared formulation was −22.1 ± 1 mV. Corneal permeation studies using goat corneas indicate that SLN-NAC penetration rate was higher than those from NAC eye drops. Corneal hydration studies indicated that the formulation caused no harm to the corneal cells. Therefore it may be concluded that SLN-NAC may revolutionize cataract treatment and reversal by improving drug permeation, reducing toxicity and no damage to corneal tissue.
Shortest path queries, graph partitioning and covering problems in worst and beyond worst case settings

In this thesis, we design algorithms for several NP-hard problems in both worst and beyond worst case settings. In the first part of the thesis, we apply the traditional worst case methodology and design approximation algorithms for the Hub Labeling problem; Hub Labeling is a preprocessing technique introduced to speed up shortest path queries. Before this work, Hub Labeling had been extensively studied mainly in the beyond worst case analysis setting, and in particular on graphs with low highway dimension. In this work, we significantly improve our theoretical understanding of the problem and design (worst-case) algorithms for various classes of graphs, such as general graphs, graphs with unique shortest paths and trees, as well as provide matching inapproximability lower bounds for the problem in its most general settings. Finally, we demonstrate a connection between computing a Hub Labeling on a tree and searching for a node in a tree. In the second part of the thesis, we turn to beyond worst case analysis and extensively study the stability model introduced by Bilu and Linial in an attempt to describe real-life instances of graph partitioning and clustering problems. Informally, an instance of a combinatorial optimization problem is stable if it has a unique optimal solution that remains the unique optimum under small multiplicative perturbations of the parameters of the input. Utilizing the power of convex relaxations for stable instances, we obtain several results for problems such as Edge/Node Multiway Cut, Independent Set (and its equivalent, in terms of exact solvability, Vertex Cover), clustering problems such as $k$-center and $k$-median and the symmetric Traveling Salesman problem. We also provide strong lower bounds for certain families of algorithms for covering problems, thus exhibiting potential barriers towards the design of improved algorithms in this framework.