Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kinetic analysis of voltage‐ and ion‐dependent conductances in saccular hair cells of the bull‐frog, Rana catesbeiana.

1. By the use of whole‐cell and excised‐patch tight‐seal recording techniques, we studied ionic conductances in voltage‐clamped solitary hair cells isolated from the bull‐frog's sacculus. As a basis for assessing their contributions to hair cell electrical resonance, we developed kinetic models describing voltage‐dependent Ca2+ and Ca2+‐dependent K+ conductances. 2. A transient K+ current (IA) was activated by steps to potentials positive to ‐50 mV from holding potentials more negative than ‐70 mV. In the steady state, the current was fully inactivated at the normal resting potential. Possibly due to the dissipation of a Donnan potential between the pipette's interior and the cell, the voltage dependence of IA inactivation slowly shifted in the negative direction during whole‐cell recording. 3. The voltage‐gated Ca2+ current (ICa) was isolated by blocking IA with 4‐aminopyridine (4‐AP) and Ca2+‐activated K+ current with tetraethylammonium (TEA). The ICa was activated at potentials more positive than ‐60 to ‐50 mV and was maximal at about ‐10 mV. Its magnitude was highly variable among cells, with an average value of ‐240 pA at ‐30 mV. Its activation could be fitted well by a third‐order (m3) gating scheme. 4. A Ca2+‐activated K+ current (IK(Ca)) was isolated as the component of membrane current blocked by TEA. This current was activated at potentials more positive than ‐60 to ‐50 mV and had an average value of 1.5 nA at ‐30 mV. The Ca2+‐activated K+ conductance (gK(Ca)) showed a high apparent voltage dependence, increasing e‐fold every 3 mV at potentials between ‐50 and ‐40 mV. 5. The Ca2+‐activated K+ current displayed rapid activation and deactivation kinetics. The current reached half‐maximal activation in 2‐4 ms at voltages between ‐50 and ‐30 mV, and the tail current decayed exponentially with a time constant of 1.0 ms at ‐70 mV. The activation rate and magnitude of IK(Ca) were reduced by lowering the extracellular Ca2+ concentration. 6. The open probability of Ca2+‐activated K+ channels was estimated by ensemble‐fluctuation analysis of whole‐cell currents evoked by voltage steps to ‐30 mV. The average open probability was estimated to be 0.8 at this potential. 7. K+‐selective channels with a high conductance (140‐200 pS) were examined in excised, inside‐out membrane patches. The activity of these channels depended on intracellular Ca2+ and membrane potential. These properties suggest that the channels underlie the whole‐cell Ca2+‐activated K+ current. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Optical monitoring of rheumatoid arthritis: Monte Carlo generated reconstruction kernels

Optical imaging in biomedicine is governed by the light absorption and scattering interaction on microscopic and macroscopic constituents in the medium. Therefore, light scattering characteristics of human tissue correlate with the stage of some diseases. In the near infrared range the scattering event with the coefficient approximately two orders of magnitude greater than absorption plays a dominant role. When measuring the optical parameters variations were discovered that correlate with the rheumatoid arthritis of a small joint. The potential of an experimental setup for transillumination the finger joint with a laser diode and the pattern of the stray light detection are demonstrated. The scattering caused by skin contains no useful information and it can be removed by a deconvolution technique to enhance the diagnostic value of this non-invasive optical method. Monte Carlo simulations ensure both the construction of the corresponding point spread function and both the theoretical verification of the stray light picture in rather complex geometry.
Salivary MMP-8, TIMP-1, and ICTP as markers of advanced periodontitis.

AIM Salivary matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-8 and -14, tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase (TIMP)-1, and pyridinoline cross-linked carboxyterminal telopeptide of type I collagen (ICTP) were analysed aiming to detect potential markers of advanced periodontitis in saliva. In addition, we compared two MMP-8 detection methods, a time-resolved immunofluorometric assay (IFMA) and an enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA), to differentiate periodontitis subjects from controls. MATERIAL AND METHODS Concentrations of MMP-8, MMP-14, TIMP-1, and ICTP were analysed from salivary specimens of 165 subjects, including 84 subjects having at least 14 teeth with periodontal pocket (pocket depth > or =4 mm) and 81 subjects without pocket depth as their controls. RESULTS Salivary MMP-8 detection by IFMA differentiated periodontitis subjects from controls more strongly than by ELISA. Salivary MMP-8, TIMP-1, and ICTP concentrations were higher in periodontitis subjects than those in controls. When only smokers were included in the analysis these differences were lost. The MMP-8/TIMP-1 ratio and the combination of MMP-8 and ICTP differentiated periodontitis and control groups even in smoker subjects. CONCLUSION Salivary MMP-8, TIMP-1, ICTP, and especially their ratios and combinations are potential candidates in the detection of advanced periodontitis. Differentiating periodontitis and control subjects with salivary MMP-8 detection is dependent on the selected techniques.
Patients' Experiences of Pain in the 48 Hours Following Total Knee Arthroplasty

BACKGROUND: Previous research indicates that both pain severity and interference caused by pain should be addressed in the recovery period following total knee arthroplasty. PURPOSE: This research describes the range of pain severity of patients in the first 48 hours postoperation, ways in which pain interferes with activities, and the observed differences in pain experience by patients' age, level of education, race, and gender, using the Brief Pain Inventory. ANALYSIS: Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis were used to assess the data. FINDINGS: Of the participants, 12% reported severe pain and 35% reported severe interference with general activities. Pain interfered most with walking, activities, and physical therapy. There were no differences by race, gender, or education. Older participants reported less pain and less interference. Participants reporting nonsurgical pain reported more interference with mood, walking, relationships with other people, and sleep. RECOMMENDATIONS: Pain evaluation should include an assessment of pain unrelated to the surgical procedure. Additional research exploring the impact of nonpostoperative surgical pain during the postoperative period is needed.
Pandoraea pnomenusa Isolated from an Australian Patient with Cystic Fibrosis

Pandoraea species are considered as emerging pathogens in people with cystic fibrosis (CF). The contribution of these organisms to disease progression in CF patients is not fully understood owing in large measure to the scant reports in clinical and research literature describing their colonization of CF patients and their associated virulence determinants. In an effort to increase awareness and evidence for Pandoraea spp. infection in people with CF, and to stimulate research aimed at unraveling the pathogenic properties of Pandoraea, we report a case of a 26-year-old Australian (Tasmanian) man with CF who was chronically infected with Pandoraea pnomenusa for at least one year prior to his death from respiratory failure. In addition, we describe for the first time evidence suggesting that this bacterium is a facultative anaerobe and report on the availability of a whole genome sequence for this organism. To the best of our knowledge, this report represents only the second clinical case study of P. pnomenusa infection in the world, and the first in an Australian CF patient.
Deformation mechanisms of nanoclay-reinforced maleic anhydride-modified polypropylene

Fracture properties and deformation mechanisms of nanoclay-reinforced maleic anhydride-modified polypropylene (MAPP) were investigated. Elastic-plastic fracture mechanics was employed to characterize the toughness in light of substantial postyield deformation for the reinforced MAPP. Upon introduction of 2.5 wt % clay loading in maleated MAPP, it was observed that tensile strength, modulus, and frac- ture initiation toughness concomitantly increased substantially. Continued increase in clay loading thereafter only led to stiffening and strengthening effects to the detriment of fracture toughness. A plot of the J-integral initiation fracture toughness versus the plastic zone size demonstrated that toughening arose from plastic deformation in the reinforced matrix. Careful examination of deformed tensile specimens using small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) showed 2.5 wt % clay gave rise to the highest equatorial scattering, which indicates the presence of microvoids in the matrix. The SAXS results were consistent with that shown in subcritically loaded crack-tip deformation zone using transmission electron microscopy. Thus, both macroscale three-point bend frac- ture data and SAXS results led us to consistent findings and conclusions. Further increase in clay loading above 2.5 wt % reduced the scattering the matrix plasticity and thus the fracture toughness. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 42: 2759 -2768, 2004
H1N1 vaccination and adults with underlying health conditions in the US

65% of fatalities from pH1N1 infections in a large US case series occur in adults with underlying health conditions other than pregnancy, but it appears that only relatively few high-risk adults will get vaccinated during the fall wave of pH1N1 transmission. There are several reasons for this problem; the most important is vaccine shortage. High risk adults (other than pregnant women) were not part of the initial, narrow priority cohort which included pregnant women and children ages 0.5-4; this is despite the fact that some of those high risk groups, such as adults with immunosuppressive conditions and possibly individuals with neurological disorders, have a relative risk for fatality (per capita) higher than pregnant women, and over 28-fold higher than healthy children under the age of 4. With more vaccine becoming available than needed in the initial priority cohort, a broader group which includes high risk adults and individuals under 24 becomes eligible for vaccine in many locations. Nonetheless, due to continuing high demand, high-risk adults face competition for vaccine from healthy individuals under 24; additionally, some locations specifically prioritize school students over high-risk adults. Finally, there is an issue of awareness and a shortage of specific channels that target high risk adults other than pregnant women and facilitate vaccine distribution among them in the US.
Generalized resource allocation for the cloud

Resource allocation is an integral, evolving part of many data center management problems such as virtual machine placement in data centers, network virtualization, and multi-path network routing. Since the problems are inherently NP-Hard, most existing systems use custom-designed heuristics to find a suitable solution. However, such heuristics are often rigid, making it difficult to extend them as requirements change. In this paper, we present a novel approach to resource allocation that permits the problem specification to evolve with ease. We have built Wrasse, a generic and extensible tool that cloud environments can use to solve their specific allocation problem. Wrasse provides a simple yet expressive specification language that captures a wide range of resource allocation problems. At the back-end, it leverages the power of GPUs to provide solutions to the allocation problems in a fast and timely manner. We show the extensibility of Wrasse by expressing several allocation problems in its specification language. Our experiments show that Wrasse's solution quality is as good as with heuristics, and sometimes even better, while maintaining good performance. In one case, Wrasse packed 71% more instances than a custom heuristic.
The Role of Protein Modifications of T-Bet in Cytokine Production and Differentiation of T Helper Cells

T-Bet (T-box protein expressed in T cells, also called as TBX21) was originally cloned as a key transcription factor involved in the commitment of T helper (Th) cells to the Th1 lineage. T-Bet directly activates IFN-γ gene transcription and enhances development of Th1 cells. T-Bet simultaneously modulates IL-2 and Th2 cytokines in an IFN-γ-independent manner, resulting in an attenuation of Th2 cell development. Numerous studies have demonstrated that T-bet plays multiple roles in many subtypes of immune cells, including B cell, dendritic cells, natural killer (NK) cells, NK T cells, and innate lymphoid cells. Therefore, T-bet is crucial for the development and coordination of both innate and adaptive immune responses. To fulfill these multiple roles, T-bet undergoes several posttranslational protein modifications, such as phosphorylation at tyrosine, serine, and threonine residues, and ubiquitination at lysine residues, which affect lineage commitment during Th cell differentiation. This review presents a current overview of the progress made in understanding the roles of various types of T-bet protein modifications in the regulation of cytokine production during Th cell differentiation.
Reviewing 741 patients records in two hours with FASTVISU

The secondary use of electronic health records opens up new perspectives. They provide researchers with structured data and unstructured data, including free text reports. Many applications been developed to leverage knowledge from free-text reports, but manual review of documents is still a complex process. We developed FASTVISU a web-based application to assist clinicians in reviewing documents. We used FASTVISU to review a set of 6340 documents from 741 patients suffering from the celiac disease. A first automated selection pruned the original set to 847 documents from 276 patients' records. The records were reviewed by two trained physicians to identify the presence of 15 auto-immune diseases. It took respectively two hours and two hours and a half to evaluate the entire corpus. Inter-annotator agreement was high (Cohen's kappa at 0.89). FASTVISU is a user-friendly modular solution to validate entities extracted by NLP methods from free-text documents stored in clinical data warehouses.
Sex differences in the circadian profiles of melatonin and cortisol in plasma and urine matrices under constant routine conditions

ABSTRACT Conflicting evidence exists as to whether there are differences between males and females in circadian timing. The aim of the current study was to assess whether sex differences are present in the circadian regulation of melatonin and cortisol in plasma and urine matrices during a constant routine protocol. Thirty-two healthy individuals (16 females taking the oral contraceptive pill (OCP)), aged 23.8 ± 3.7 (mean ± SD) years, participated. Blood (hourly) and urine (4-hourly) samples were collected for measurement of plasma melatonin and cortisol, and urinary 6-sulfatoxymelatonin (aMT6s) and cortisol, respectively. Data from 28 individuals (14 females) showed no significant differences in the timing of plasma and urinary circadian phase markers between sexes. Females, however, exhibited significantly greater levels of plasma melatonin and cortisol than males (AUC melatonin: 937 ± 104 (mean ± SEM) vs. 642 ± 47 pg/ml.h; AUC cortisol: 13581 ± 1313 vs. 7340 ± 368 mmol/L.h). Females also exhibited a significantly higher amplitude rhythm in both hormones (melatonin: 43.8 ± 5.8 vs. 29.9 ± 2.3 pg/ml; cortisol: 241.7 ± 23.1 vs. 161.8 ± 15.9 mmol/L). Males excreted significantly more urinary cortisol than females during the CR (519.5 ± 63.8 vs. 349.2 ± 39.3 mol) but aMT6s levels did not differ between sexes. It was not possible to distinguish whether the elevated plasma melatonin and cortisol levels observed in females resulted from innate sex differences or the OCP affecting the synthetic and metabolic pathways of these hormones. The fact that the sex differences observed in total plasma concentrations for melatonin and cortisol were not reproduced in the urinary markers challenges their use as a proxy for plasma levels in circadian research, especially in OCP users.
Toward open sharing of task-based fMRI data: the OpenfMRI project

The large-scale sharing of task-based functional neuroimaging data has the potential to allow novel insights into the organization of mental function in the brain, but the field of neuroimaging has lagged behind other areas of bioscience in the development of data sharing resources. This paper describes the OpenFMRI project (accessible online at http://www.openfmri.org), which aims to provide the neuroimaging community with a resource to support open sharing of task-based fMRI studies. We describe the motivation behind the project, focusing particularly on how this project addresses some of the well-known challenges to sharing of task-based fMRI data. Results from a preliminary analysis of the current database are presented, which demonstrate the ability to classify between task contrasts with high generalization accuracy across subjects, and the ability to identify individual subjects from their activation maps with moderately high accuracy. Clustering analyses show that the similarity relations between statistical maps have a somewhat orderly relation to the mental functions engaged by the relevant tasks. These results highlight the potential of the project to support large-scale multivariate analyses of the relation between mental processes and brain function.
Home Area Networks: A Primer

A typical household today has a variety of devices (such as personal computers, smartphone, printers, and game consoles, TV, refrigerator, and air-conditioner) which are connected among themselves and to the Internet via a home area network (HAN). The HAN is an important local part of the smart grid. This paper provides a brief introduction to HAN. Keywords— home area networks, smart homes, smart grid
Whey protein isolate edible films with essential oils incorporated to improve the microbial quality of poultry.

BACKGROUND Whey protein isolate edible films with oregano or clove essential oils (EOs) incorporated as natural antimicrobials have been developed, with the aim of enhancing the microbial quality of poultry. The effectiveness of the films was determined against both the whole and selected microbiota developed during different periods of cold storage on the surface of skinless chicken breast. Tests were conducted by using both turbidimetric and agar disc diffusion methods. RESULTS The antimicrobial edible films developed showed high effectiveness against the main spoilers developed on the surface of skinless chicken breasts cold-stored for 8 days. The films based on oregano EO showed greater effectiveness than those based on clove EO. Still, clove EO could be part of an effective antimicrobial edible film. Enterobacteriaceae was the most susceptible to the effect of the films when lower concentrations of EO were incorporated. The largest inhibition surfaces obtained were provoked by films with the highest concentration of oregano EO incorporated against lactic acid bacteria. CONCLUSION The antimicrobial edible films developed in this study inhibited the growth of the microbial populations that developed through storage of the chicken breast and caused its spoilage. The results of this research have direct application in the food industry to enhance the control of the development of spoilers such as Pseudomonas spp. or lactic acid bacteria.
Role of Corticotropin-releasing Factor Signaling in Stress-related Alterations of Colonic Motility and Hyperalgesia

The corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) signaling systems encompass CRF and the structurally related peptide urocortin (Ucn) 1, 2, and 3 along with 2 G-protein coupled receptors, CRF1 and CRF2. CRF binds with high and moderate affinity to CRF1 and CRF2 receptors, respectively while Ucn1 is a high-affinity agonist at both receptors, and Ucn2 and Ucn3 are selective CRF2 agonists. The CRF systems are expressed in both the brain and the colon at the gene and protein levels. Experimental studies established that the activation of CRF1 pathway in the brain or the colon recaptures cardinal features of diarrhea predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) (stimulation of colonic motility, activation of mast cells and serotonin, defecation/watery diarrhea, and visceral hyperalgesia). Conversely, selective CRF1 antagonists or CRF1/CRF2 antagonists, abolished or reduced exogenous CRF and stress-induced stimulation of colonic motility, defecation, diarrhea and colonic mast cell activation and visceral hyperalgesia to colorectal distention. By contrast, the CRF2 signaling in the colon dampened the CRF1 mediated stimulation of colonic motor function and visceral hyperalgesia. These data provide a conceptual framework that sustained activation of the CRF1 system at central and/or peripheral sites may be one of the underlying basis of IBS-diarrhea symptoms. While targeting these mechanisms by CRF1 antagonists provided a relevant novel therapeutic venue, so far these promising preclinical data have not translated into therapeutic use of CRF1 antagonists. Whether the existing or newly developed CRF1 antagonists will progress to therapeutic benefits for stress-sensitive diseases including IBS for a subset of patients is still a work in progress.
Distance to bipolar information from morphological dilation

In this paper we propose definitions of distances to bipolar information. This notion is important to find a solution that matches bipolar queries, to exhibit recommendations satisfying preferences of an agent while respecting her constraints, to find an agreement between several agents. All these situations require to be able to compare candidate solutions, via their distance to some bipolar information, and several evaluation measures are proposed as well. We base distances and their comparison on mathematical morphology operators, in particular dilations and skeleton by influence zones.