Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cisplatin: an old drug with a newfound efficacy – from mechanisms of action to cytotoxicity

Introduction: Cisplatin is a highly effective antineoplastic drug with an extremely current mechanism of action. Cisplatin-induced side effects are dose-dependent and limit the administration of increased dosages, thus compromising its therapeutic efficacy. Areas covered: This review aims to describe the emerging knowledge about the biochemical mechanisms that mediate cisplatin cytotoxicity and side effects. A specific section is devoted to discuss the pathogenesis of cisplatin-related toxicities and the potential measures to counteract them. Expert opinion: Although cisplatin has been used for a long time, only recently its exact mechanism of action has been better defined. The cytotoxic activity of cisplatin is largely dependent on the glycolytic metabolism of tumor cells: cisplatin redirects cancer cells to oxidative phosphorylation from the ‘Warburg effect', which is considered one of the most important mechanisms of tumor cell survival. The interference of cisplatin with glucose metabolism is also a cause of its relevant toxicities. The emerging knowledge on the complex mechanisms, which mediate cisplatin cytotoxicity and side effect, may lead to a more appropriate and safe use of this drug. Further studies are warranted to define and implement its effectiveness in combination with targeted drugs able to interfere with cellular energy metabolism, such as mTOR inhibitors.
Comparison of converting enzyme inhibitor and calcium channel blocker in SHR with nephrotoxic serum nephritis.

In order to compare the protective effects of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEI) and calcium channel blockers (CCB) on the renal function in experimental nephritis, nephrotoxic serum nephritis was induced in male spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). The above drugs were then chronically administered to different groups, as follows: the ACEI-treated group (n = 7) received captopril (150 mg/kg/day), and the CCB-treated group (n = 6) was given both nifedipine (40 mg/kg/day) and nisoldipine (20 mg/kg/day). The control group (n = 8) received a placebo. Although the control group developed marked hypertension and proteinuria, the rats treated with either ACEI or CCB demonstrated a significant and equivalent decrease in mean arterial pressure and urinary protein excretion. At 15 weeks after the injection of nephrotoxic serum, all rats were anesthetized with Inactin, and the glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and renal plasma flow (RPF) were measured. In the control group, GFR and RPF were markedly attenuated. However, both were preserved at much higher levels in the ACEI-treated group, and GFR was also maintained to a similar degree in the CCB-treated group. Histological studies were carried out after the clearance studies. As a result, it was found that the ACEI treatment significantly limited the development of glomerulosclerosis, whereas CCB modestly ameliorated the glomerular structural lesions. Moreover, ACEI significantly reduced the serum cholesterol, while CCB did not exert such an effect. These results suggest that both ACEI and CCB have a therapeutic effect in experimental glomerulonephritis models which are accompanied by hypertension. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Calculus for Multiuser MIMO Performance Measures

In this paper, we review and combine recent results from multiuser MIMO MSE-based performance optimization and from concave and convex interference function calculus. First, a generalized MIMO MAC weighted MSE-based performance measure is developed using matrix-monotone functions. Next, the connection to interference functions is established. The representation of convex and concave interference functions are reviewed. Finally, the transition of a multiuser MIMO performance measure to the interference functions in terms of weighted sum optimization is shown.
Temporal interactions of stems, suffixes, and the number of syllables of the words in Hungarian spontaneous speech

This paper focuses on the internal temporal structure of polysyllabic and polymorphemic Hungarian words produced in spontaneous speech. We assumed that the increasing number of syllables in the words would result in the shortening of stem durations. However, no such changes are expected concerning suffix durations. Results confirmed these assumptions: the stem durations showed systematic linear changes while suffix durations were kept stable. The findings can be explained primarily by the marked status of the suffixes in Hungarian, and might reflect speakers’ intention to facilitate the processing of grammatical and syntactic agreement information for the listener.
Change in Iris Parameters with Physiological Mydriasis

Purpose. A pilot study to analyze the association of change in iris parameters with physiological mydriasis in angle closure eyes compared with normal control eyes among south Indian participants. Methods. Sixteen eyes diagnosed with primary angle closure and 14 age, gender-matched open-angle control eyes were selected. All participants underwent anterior segment imaging using anterior segment optical coherence tomography in dim and bright illumination. The iris area (IA), iris volume (IV), and pupillary diameter were calculated using customized image processing software. Results. The IA and IV were found to be lesser in angle closure compared with normal controls. Average IA (dim and bright) was found to be 3.4 and 3.7 mm2 in normals and 3.03 and 3.35 mm2 in angle closure, and average IV (dim and bright) was found to be 24.28 and 26.09 mm3 in normals and 21.38 and 22.6 mm3 in angle closure. The IA and IV decreased significantly with pupillary dilation in normals and in angle closures. However, decrease in the IA (slope = 0.52 and 0.42; p = 0.012) and IV (slope = 1.97 and 1.41; p = 0.014) with pupillary dilation was significantly higher in normals compared with angle closures, respectively. Conclusions. IA and IV were found to decrease as pupil dilates in normal and angle closure eyes among South Indians. Loss in the IV was found to be lower in angle closure eyes.
A Pragmatic Approach Using First-Principle Methods to Address Site of Metabolism with Implications for Reactive Metabolite Formation

A majority of xenobiotics are metabolized by cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes. The discovery of drug candidates with low propensity to form reactive metabolites and low clearance can be facilitated by understanding CYP-mediated xenobiotic metabolism. Being able to predict the sites where reactive metabolites form is beneficial in drug design to produce drug candidates free of reactive metabolite issues. Herein, we report a pragmatic protocol using first-principle density functional theory (DFT) calculations for predicting sites of epoxidation and hydroxylation of aromatic substrates mediated by CYP. The method is based on the relative stabilities of the CYP-substrate intermediates or the substrate epoxides. Consequently, it concerns mainly the electronic reactivity of the substrates. Comparing to the experimental findings, the presented protocol gave excellent first-ranked epoxidation site predictions of 83%, and when the test was extended to CYP-mediated sites of aromatic hydroxylation, satisfactory results were also obtained (73%). This indicates that our assumptions are valid and also implies that the intrinsic reactivities of the substrates are in general more important than their binding poses in proteins, although the protocol may benefit from the addition of docking information.
All That Glitters: A Review of Psychological Research on the Aesthetics of the Golden Section

Since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks, scholars have argued about whether the golden section—a number approximately equal to 0.618—holds the key to the secret of beauty. Empirical investigations of the aesthetic properties of the golden section date back to the very origins of scientific psychology itself, the first studies being conducted by Fechner in the 1860s. In this paper historical and contemporary issues are reviewed with regard to the alleged aesthetic properties of the golden section. In the introductory section the most important mathematical occurrences of the golden section are described. As well, brief reference is made to research on natural occurrences of the golden section, and to ancient and medieval knowledge and application of the golden section, primarily in art and architecture. Two major sections then discuss and critically examine empirical studies of the putative aesthetic properties of the golden section dating from the mid-19th century up to the 1950s, and the empirical work of the last three decades, respectively. It is concluded that there seems to be, in fact, real psychological effects associated with the golden section, but that they are relatively sensitive to careless methodological practices.
Observability Measures and Their Application to GPS/INS

In this paper, two observability measures are introduced for a discrete linear system. The degrees of observability of both the system and its subspaces can be examined with these measures. The measures are well conditioned to perturbation and applicable to multi-input/multi-output time-varying systems. The relations among observability, observability measures, error covariance, and the information matrix are presented. It is shown that the measures have direct connections with the singular value decomposition of the information matrix. In contrast to the error covariance, the measures are determined by the system model and independent of the initial error covariance. An example of the observability analysis of the Global Positioning System/inertial navigation system is given. The measures are confirmed to be less sensitive to the system model perturbation. It is also shown that the vertical component of the gyro bias can be considered unobservable with a tactical-grade inertial measurement unit for a horizontal constant-speed motion.
David vs Goliath (You against the Markets), A Dynamic Programming Approach to Separate the Impact and Timing of Trading Costs

A trader's conundrum is whether (and how much) to trade during a given interval or wait for the next interval when the price momentum is more favorable to his direction of trading. We develop a fundamentally different stochastic dynamic programming model of trading costs based on the Bellman principle of optimality. Built on a strong theoretical foundation, this model can provide insights to market participants by splitting the overall move of the security price during the duration of an order into the Market Impact (price move caused by their actions) and Market Timing (price move caused by everyone else) components. Plugging different distributions of prices and volumes into this framework can help traders decide when to bear higher Market Impact by trading more in the hope of offsetting the cost of trading at a higher price later. We derive formulations of this model under different laws of motion of the security prices. We start with a benchmark scenario and extend this to include multiple sources of uncertainty, liquidity constraints due to volume curve shifts and relate trading costs to the spread. We develop a numerical framework that can be used to obtain optimal executions under any law of motion of prices and demonstrate the tremendous practical applicability of our theoretical methodology including the powerful numerical techniques to implement them. This decomposition of trading costs into Market Impact and Market Timing allows us to deduce the zero sum game nature of trading costs. It holds numerous lessons for dealing with complex systems, especially in the social sciences, wherein reducing the complexity by splitting the many sources of uncertainty can lead to better insights in the decision process.
Rao's quadratic entropy as a measure of functional diversity based on multiple traits

Abstract Question: Is Rao's quadratic entropy a suitable measure of functional diversity if several traits are considered? Methods: It is checked whether Rao's quadratic entropy (FDQ) satisfies a priori criteria suggested by Mason et al. A real data set is used to show that there are often zeros in abundance distributions which maximize functional diversity. Results and Conclusion: FDQ fulfils all a priori criteria and it surpasses other proposed indices, because it includes species abundances and more than one trait. Therefore, it seems to be an improvement compared to measures of functional diversity that are currently available. An unexpected property of FDQ is that its value may decrease if species richness increases. The reason is that functional diversity is influenced by both species-abundance based diversity and differences among species. Introduction of a new species into the community increases the species-abundance based diversity, while it may decrease the average dissimilarity among species. Abbreviation: FDQ = Functional diversity measured by Rao's quadratic entropy.
Differential expression of poly(A)-adjacent sequences of mammary tumor virus RNA in murine mammary cells.

Two DNA probes representative of either the entire mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) genome or the poly(A)-adjacent sequences at the 3' end of MMTV RNA were synthesized with calf thymus DNA or oligo(dT) primers, respectively. These probes were used to study the expression of endogenous MMTV sequences in several BALB/c mammary tumor cell lines, in normal lactating BALB/c tissue, and in a cloned C3H tumor cell line. Both probes were characterized with respect to their rates of hybridization with template RNA, their size as determined by alkaline sucrose gradient centrifugation, and the thermal stability of the cDNA.MMTV RNA hybrids. In addition, the ability of the calf thymus oligodeoxy-nucleotide- or oligo(dT)-primed probes to protect (125)I-labeled MMTV RNA or (125)I-labeled poly(A)-adjacent MMTV RNA sequences from S1 nuclease digestion was determined. Hybridization analysis with these two probes indicated that (i) there were approximately 20-fold more oligo(dT)-primed sequences in BALB/c lactating tissue than there were sequences representing the entire genome; (ii) in BALB/c tumor cells, the oligo(dT):random oligonucleotide-primed cDNA sequence ratio was reduced to 4:1; and (iii) in virus-producer C3H tumor cells, there was only a 2-fold excess of oligo(dT)-primed sequences over that observed with a representative cDNA. These results are consistent with the presence of subgenomic viral mRNA species, integration of partial proviral copies, or altered mRNA processing.
Role of Iranian Traditional Medicine in the Prevention of Respiratory Infectious Diseases

Background: In order to define appropriate plans for respiratory infectious diseases, in accordance with Iranian traditional medicine, one should cover the topic of “havae vabai”. “Havae vabai” is related to the epidemics of respiratory infectious diseases. Methods: This study is a review of the role of Iranian traditional medicine in the prevention of respiratory infectious diseases . Resources of traditional medicine with the keyword “havae vabai” were reviewed in Noor digital library. Results: The perspective of traditional medicine for the prevention of disease in “havae vabai” is based on self-recuperation and air modification. Items that are mentioned are; refine the surrounding air, move to a proper space, live in a house with no source of water like fountains and limited flow of air, air-drying, use air freshener, smell fruit sticks, use in-house plants, and place a cloth soaked with vinegar in front of the nose. For self-recuperation, reducing body moisture with proper foods and drugs or with vomiting, diarrhea, phlebotomy, wet-cupping, reduction in food and drink intake, avoiding sexual intercourse, bathing, heavy exercise, inactivity, overeating, hunger, thirst, milk, sweets, fish, fatty foods, fruits especially juicy fruits are recommended. The food that tends to have a sour taste, eating meat cooked with sour taste like vinegar is suggested. Conclusion: The use of the solutions offered in traditional medicine to control air is helpful as it can reduce epidemics, such as influenza; that yearly kills many patients with a heavy financial burden.
New Advances in Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI)

In these last twenty years, intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) has efficiently permitted the treatment of male factor infertility (Van Steirteghem et al., 1993); the direct injection of spermatozoa into ooplasm has allowed the embryologist to overcome low sperm motility, poor sperm-Zona Pellucida (ZP) binding, and defective acrosome reaction. Although ICSI has been successfully applied worldwide for several years, nevertheless we have no real knowledge regarding the hypothetical long term side effects on ICSI adults. In fact, some doubts about the safety of this technique can arise (Oehninger, 2011) due to the fact that with ICSI some check points of natural fertilization are bypassed and that some steps differ considerably from the physiological process; For instance, the introduction of the sperm tail into the ooplasm may cause sperm nuclear decondensation problems (Dozortsev et al., 1995; Markoulaki et al., 2007). It should be considered that ICSI may increase the risk of injecting spermatozoa with genetic or functional anomalies (Sakkas et al., 1997; Bonduelle et al., 2002; Marchesi & Feng, 2007; Schatten & Sun, 2009; Heytens et al., 2009; Navarro-Costa et al., 2010). For these reasons and to minimize any risk related to ICSI, any new advance in this procedure which can help the operator to restore some of the basic physiological checkpoints and to simulate the natural fertilization process should be welcome (Parmegiani et al., 2010a).
Telehealth exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective Despite proven effectiveness, participation in traditional supervised exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation (exCR) remains low. Telehealth interventions that use information and communication technologies to enable remote exCR programme delivery can overcome common access barriers while preserving clinical supervision and individualised exercise prescription. This meta-analysis aimed to determine the benefits of telehealth exCR on exercise capacity and other modifiable cardiovascular risk factors compared with traditional exCR and usual care, among patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). Methods CINAHL, The Cochrane Library, Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed and PsycINFO were searched from inception through 31 May 2015 for randomised controlled trials comparing telehealth exCR with centre-based exCR or usual care among patients with CHD. Outcomes included maximal aerobic exercise capacity, modifiable cardiovascular risk factors and exercise adherence. Results 11 trials (n=1189) met eligibility criteria and were included in the review. Physical activity level was higher following telehealth exCR than after usual care. Compared with centre-based exCR, telehealth exCR was more effective for enhancing physical activity level, exercise adherence, diastolic blood pressure and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Telehealth and centre-based exCR were comparably effective for improving maximal aerobic exercise capacity and other modifiable cardiovascular risk factors. Conclusions Telehealth exCR appears to be at least as effective as centre-based exCR for improving modifiable cardiovascular risk factors and functional capacity, and could enhance exCR utilisation by providing additional options for patients who cannot attend centre-based exCR. Telehealth exCR must now capitalise on technological advances to provide more comprehensive, responsive and interactive interventions.
The gait system research of intelligent bionic leg

Intelligent bionic legs (IBL) controlled by magneto-rheological (MR) damper is an advanced prosthesis. The conception, research purpose and configuration of intelligent bionic leg were introduced. Gait description of human normal gait is detailed using analysis method of finite state machine (FMS). By information gained from six-axis force sensor, the gait perception method of typical gait events and gait states is discussed. The detection of real zero moment point (ZMP) was analyzed and on-line gait adjustment was discussed. In the last, control experiment of gait tracking was done.
The clinical profile of patients with suspected cardiogenic shock due to predominant left ventricular failure: a report from the SHOCK Trial Registry. SHould we emergently revascularize Occluded Coronaries in cardiogenic shocK?

OBJECTIVES We sought to evaluate the frequency of pulmonary congestion and associated clinical and hemodynamic findings in patients with suspected cardiogenic shock (CS). BACKGROUND The prevalence of pulmonary congestion in the setting of CS is uncertain. METHODS The 571 SHOCK Trial Registry patients with predominant left ventricular failure (LVF) were divided into four groups: Group A = no pulmonary congestion/no hypoperfusion = 14 (3%), Group B = isolated pulmonary congestion = 32 (6%), Group C = isolated hypoperfusion = 158 (28%) and Group D = congestion with hypoperfusion = 367 (64%). Statistical comparisons between Group C and D only, with regard to patient demographics, hemodynamics, treatment and outcome, were made. RESULTS A significant proportion of patients with shock had no pulmonary congestion (Group C = 28%, 95% CI, 24% to 31%). Age and gender in this group were similar to Group D. Group C patients were less likely to have a prior MI (p = 0.028), congestive heart failure (p = 0.005) and renal insufficiency (p = 0.032), and the index MI was less likely to be anterior (p = 0.044). Cardiac output, cardiac index and ejection fraction were similar for the two groups but pulmonary capillary wedge pressure was slightly lower for Group C (22 vs. 24 mm Hg, p = 0.012). Treatment with thrombolysis, angioplasty and bypass surgery was similar in the two groups. In-hospital mortality rates for Groups C and D were 70% and 60%, respectively (p = 0.036). After adjustment, this difference was no longer statistically significant (p = 0.153). CONCLUSIONS Absence of pulmonary congestion at initial clinical evaluation does not exclude a diagnosis of CS due to predominant LVF and is not associated with a better prognosis.
Analysis and Implementation of a Novel Bidirectional DC–DC Converter

A novel bidirectional dc-dc converter is presented in this paper. The circuit configuration of the proposed converter is very simple. The proposed converter employs a coupled inductor with same winding turns in the primary and secondary sides. In step-up mode, the primary and secondary windings of the coupled inductor are operated in parallel charge and series discharge to achieve high step-up voltage gain. In step-down mode, the primary and secondary windings of the coupled inductor are operated in series charge and parallel discharge to achieve high step-down voltage gain. Thus, the proposed converter has higher step-up and step-down voltage gains than the conventional bidirectional dc-dc boost/buck converter. Under same electric specifications for the proposed converter and the conventional bidirectional boost/buck converter, the average value of the switch current in the proposed converter is less than the conventional bidirectional boost/buck converter. The operating principle and steady-state analysis are discussed in detail. Finally, a 14/42-V prototype circuit is implemented to verify the performance for the automobile dual-battery system.