Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimation of prostaglandin E2 levels in gingival crevicular fluid in periodontal health, disease and after treatment

Background and Objectives: Initial research has shown a positive correlation between the severity of periodontal disease (PD) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) concentrations in gingival crevicular fluid (GCF). However, there are no enough reports to correlate the PGE2 concentrations in GCF in periodontal health, disease and after treatment. Hence, the present study is aimed to estimate the levels of PGE2 in GCF in periodontal health, disease and after periodontal therapy. Materials and Methods: A periodontal examination and collection of GCF by extracrevicular method was performed in 25 subjects selected randomly and categorized into three groups on the basis of plaque index, gingival index, probing pocket depth and clinical attachment level. Group I (healthy) consists of 10 subjects, Group II (chronic periodontitis) consists of 15 patients and Group III (after treatment group) consists of 15 patients of Group II. PGE2 levels were estimated in GCF samples by using the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. Results: All clinical parameters improved significantly after therapy (P < 0.001). PGE2 was detected in all the samples. Highest mean PGE2 concentrations in GCF were obtained for Group II while the lowest concentrations were seen in Group I and Group III. Statistically significant difference was found between the levels of PGE2 at Group-II and Group-III (P < 0.05). Conclusion: There is a substantial increase in the concentrations of PGE2 as PD progresses. Since PGE2 levels in GCF are positively correlated with gingival index, plaque index, probing pocket depths and clinical attachment levels, PGE2 may be considered as a Novel Biomarker in PD progression. However, controlled, longitudinal studies are needed to confirm this possibility.
On the impact of serialization on the cache performances in Network-on-Chip based MPSoCs

Network on Chip architectures are proposed as a solution to overcome functional and physical scalability shown by shared bus based MPSoC architecture. Unfortunately to implement and efficient communication infrastructure, the designer has to set a lot of parameters. An exhaustive knowledge of how the chosen settings influence the overall behaviour of the designed system is then mandatory. Aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between the performances of a NoC and its configuration parameters in the case of traffic generated by cache operations (block replacements). We paid special attention to investigate the impact of the serialization factor, that was already not clearly assessed in literature for this important case study. A numerical analysis, referring to an actual implementation of the NoC on a state-of-the-art 65 nm technological process was performed. The obtained results were used to report an energy and execution time exploration over the complete design space of interest.
Association between Secreted Phosphoprotein-1 (SPP1) Polymorphisms and Low Bone Mineral Density in Women

Background A recent meta-analysis found that secreted phosphoprotein-1 (SPP1) can predict the risk of both osteoporosis and fracture. No study has explored the association of SPP1 haplotype-tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (htSNPs) and haplotypes with bone mineral density (BMD). Methods This is a cross-sectional study. A total of 1,313 healthy Taiwanese women aged 40 to 55 years were recruited from MJ Health Management Institute from 2009 to 2010. BMD was dichotomized into high and low BMD groups. Three common (allele frequency ≥5%) htSNPs were selected to examine the association between sequence variants of SPP1 and BMD. Results Homozygosity for the T allele of rs4754 were protective from low BMD [TT vs. CC: adjusted OR (AOR) = 0.58, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.83–0.89]. A protective effect was also found for women carrying 2 copies of Hap3 TCT (AOR = 0.57, 95% CI = 0.34–0.95). Menopausal status marginally interacted with SPP1 rs6839524 on BMD (p = 0.049). Postmenopausal women carrying variant rs6839524 (GG+GC vs. CC: AOR = 2.35, 95% CI = 1.06–5.20) or Hap1 TGC (AOR = 2.36, 95% CI = 1.06–5.24) were associated with 2.4-fold risk of low BMD. For women with low BMI (<18.5 kg/m2), variant rs6839524 (AOR = 7.64) and Hap1 (AOR = 6.42) were associated with increased risk of low BMD. These findings did not reach statistical significance after correction for multiple tests. Conclusions SPP1 htSNP protected against low BMD in middle-aged women. SPP1 genetic markers may be important for the prediction of osteoporosis at an early age.
PID-MPC Based Automatic Voltage Regulator Design in Wide-Area Interconnect Power System

The objective of this study is to deal with the problem of robust tuning of automatic voltage regulator (AVR) in multi-machine power system. This paper investigates the Model predictive control (MPC) strategy, analyses and compares the control effects with Proportional- Integral-Derivative (PID) control strategy. The proposed PID- MPC method improved the stability of the power system with multiple generators. The result shows that it can provide better damping of power system oscillations under small and large disturbances even with the inclusion of local power system stabilizers (PSSs). The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through a two areas, four machines power system. The proposed algorithm carried out using MATLAB/SIMULINK software package.
Long Pentraxin PTX3 Upregulates Tissue Factor Expression in Human Endothelial Cells: A Novel Link Between Vascular Inflammation and Clotting Activation

Inflammation is a major contributing factor to atherosclerotic plaque development and ischemic heart disease. PTX3 is a long pentraxin that was recently found to be increased in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Because tissue factor (TF), the in vivo trigger of blood coagulation, plays a dominant role in thrombus formation after plaque rupture, we tested the possibility that PTX3 could modulate TF expression. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells, incubated with endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide) or the inflammatory cytokines interleukin-1&bgr; and tumor necrosis factor-&agr;, expressed TF. The presence of PTX3 increased TF activity and antigen severalfold in a dose-dependent fashion. PTX3 exerted its effect at the transcription level, inasmuch as the increased levels of TF mRNA, mediated by the stimuli, were enhanced in its presence. The increase in mRNA determined by PTX3 originated from an enhanced nuclear binding activity of the transacting factor c-Rel/p65, which was mediated by the agonists and measured by electrophoretic mobility shift assay. The mechanism underlying the increased c-Rel/p65 activity resided in an enhanced degradation of the c-Rel/p65 inhibitory protein I&kgr;B&agr;. In the area of vascular injury, during the inflammatory response, cell-mediated fibrin deposition takes place. Our results suggest that PTX3, by increasing TF expression, potentially plays a role in thrombogenesis and ischemic vascular disease.
Dehumanization, Moral Disengagement, and Public Attitudes to Crime and Punishment

What does it mean to be human? Why do people dehumanize others (and sometimes themselves)? These questions have only recently begun to be investigated in earnest within psychology. This volume presents the latest thinking about these and related questions from research leaders in the field of humanness and dehumanization in social psychology and related disciplines. Contributions provide new insights into the history of dehumanization, its different types, and new theories are proposed for when and why dehumanization occurs. While people's views about what humanness is, and who has it, have long been known as important in understanding ethnic conflict, contributors demonstrate its relevance in other domains, including medical practice, policing, gender relations, and our relationship with the natural environment. Cultural differences and similarities in beliefs about humanness are explored, along with strategies to overcome dehumanization. In highlighting emerging ideas and theoretical perspectives, describing current theoretical issues and controversies and ways to resolve them, and in extending research to new areas, this volume will influence research on humanness and dehumanization for many years.
Monitoring and debugging distributed realtime programs

In this paper we describe the design and implementation of an integrated monitoring and debugging system for a distributed real‐time computer system. The monitor provides continuous, transparent monitoring capabilities throughout a real‐time system's lifecycle with bounded, minimal, predictable interference by using software support. The monitor is flexible enough to observe both high‐level events that are operating system‐ and application‐specific, as well as low‐level events such as shared variable references. We present a novel approach to monitoring shared variable references that provides transparent monitoring with low overhead. The monitor is designed to support tasks such as debugging realtime applications, aiding real‐time task scheduling, and measuring system performance. Since debugging distributed real‐time applications is particularly difficult, we describe how the monitor can be used to debug distributed and parallel applications by deterministic execution replay.
Pattern of Pediatric Chronic Myeloid Leukemia in Sudan and Hematological Response to Imatinib

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is infrequent in children. The best-known treatment is stem cell transplant. In a country with limited resources like Sudan, such expensive therapy is not available. Alternative approaches are needed to help these children. The tyrosine kinase inhibiter–imatinib–might be an answer to this problem. The objective of this study is to determine the pattern of children with CML, their hematological response to imatinib, and tolerance and side effects to this drug. All patients with confirmed BCR-ABL by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) were included in this study. The relevant data were collected and the patients were started on imatinib. Response to treatment was assessed clinically and hematologicaly only. Cytogentics and molecular studies are not available. The average age of the 31 patient evaluated was 8.7 years, 2 patients were less than 1 year, and 5 patients, ie, 16%, were 2 years old or less. Chloroma was observed in 6 (19%) patients. The average of the white blood cell (WBC) count was 206.6 × 109/L and the platelet count average was 523 × 109/L. Two (6.5%) of the 31 patients presented as acute myeloid leukemia (AML). All patients had hematological remission within 2 months. Twenty-three (74%) had a sustained remission over an average follow-up period of 26 months (2–67 months). Six (19%) patients died with AML or sepsis. Side effects to imatinib were infrequent, observed in 4 out of 29 (13.7%) patients, and mild. One patient only needed dose modification. No resistance was observed during this period. CML patients present at an earlier age than in other parts of the world. Imatinib is safe and effective in treating pediatric CML where stem cell transplant in not available. Further cytogentics are important to monitor response and proper management.
AT1-Receptor Antagonism Improves Endothelial Function in Coronary Artery Disease by a Bradykinin/B2-Receptor-Dependent Mechanism

Abstract—Impaired flow-dependent, endothelium-mediated vasodilation is an early finding in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Experimental and some clinical studies observed that angiotensin type-1 receptor antagonists (AT1A) enhance endothelium-dependent relaxation in CAD. The present study was designed to determine whether AT1A improves flow-dependent dilation (FDD) in patients with CAD and, if so, whether bradykinin and NO are involved. High-resolution ultrasound was used to measure radial artery diameter at rest and during reactive hyperemia, causing endothelium-mediated vasodilation. Twenty patients with CAD were randomly assigned to receive intrabrachial infusion of candesartan (800 &mgr;g/min) with and without icatibant, a bradykinin B2-receptor antagonist (90 &mgr;g/min; group A) or N-monomethyl-l-arginine (L-NMMA), an NO-synthase inhibitor (7 &mgr;mol/min; group B). The AT1A candesartan improved FDD by >40%, an effect that was inhibited by icatibant (group A: control, 7.3±0.9; candesartan, 10.3±1.1; candesartan+icatibant, 5.0±0.5%). Similarly, L-NMMA blunted the beneficial effect of candesartan (group B: control, 6.3±0.6; candesartan, 8.9±0.6; candesartan+L-NMMA: 4.7±0.5%; each P <0.01). The angiotensin type-1 receptor antagonist candesartan improves flow-dependent, endothelium-mediated vasodilation in patients with CAD. This effect is inhibited by either icatibant and or L-NMMA, suggesting that both bradykinin and NO contribute to the vascular effects of AT1-receptor antagonists in this patient population.
Different responses are elicited in cytotoxic T lymphocytes by different levels of T cell receptor occupancy

We have investigated the level of TCR occupancy required to elicit different biological responses in human CTL clones specific for an influenza matrix peptide. Specific cytotoxicity could be detected at extremely low peptide concentrations (10(-12) to 10(-15) M). However, IFN-gamma production, responsiveness to IL-2 and Ca++ fluxes were observed only at peptide concentrations > 10(-9) M, while autonomous proliferation required even higher peptide concentrations. In parallel experiments we measured TCR downregulation to estimate the number of TCRs triggered. We observed that at low peptide concentrations, where only cytotoxicity is triggered, TCR downregulation was hardly detectable. Conversely, induction of IFN-gamma production and proliferation required triggering of at least 20-50% of TCRs. Taken together these results indicate that a single CTL can graduate different biological responses as a function of antigen concentration and that killing of the specific target does not necessarily result in full activation.
Sentiment analysis of online mobile reviews

Semantic analysis is a method used to get the user's reviews or opinions regarding a specific topic. Now a day, due to increasing the technology we can get the opinions of the users with web mining. In our proposed work we present an algorithm to mining the user's positive and negative reviews. For this purpose first we collect the data from the famous online shopping websites and get the reviews of the users related to mobile handsets. In this process, we define 6 common features Camera, Battery, Screen, Sounds, Design and hardware/software performance, of three handsets and then find and collect related reviews as dataset for our proposed algorithm. We also collect the negative and positive words that are commonly used for reviews. For review mining, we use MATLAB as simulation platform. Our proposed algorithm counts the positive and negative features for getting the reviews results. Then all are compared. Our proposed algorithm is describing very effective results and has successfully comprised the features properties of the handsets.
Enhanced Extinction of Aversive Memories by High-Frequency Stimulation of the Rat Infralimbic Cortex

Electrical stimulation of the rodent medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), including the infralimbic cortex (IL), immediately prior to or during fear extinction training facilitates extinction memory. Here we examined the effects of high-frequency stimulation (HFS) of the rat IL either prior to conditioning or following retrieval of the conditioned memory, on extinction of Pavlovian fear and conditioned taste aversion (CTA). IL-HFS applied immediately after fear memory retrieval, but not three hours after retrieval or prior to conditioning, subsequently reduced freezing during fear extinction. Similarly, IL-HFS given immediately, but not three hours after, retrieval of a CTA memory reduced aversion during extinction. These data indicate that HFS of the IL may be an effective method for reducing both learned fear and learned aversion.
Experimental ‘Jet Lag’ Inhibits Adult Neurogenesis and Produces Long-Term Cognitive Deficits in Female Hamsters

Background Circadian disruptions through frequent transmeridian travel, rotating shift work, and poor sleep hygiene are associated with an array of physical and mental health maladies, including marked deficits in human cognitive function. Despite anecdotal and correlational reports suggesting a negative impact of circadian disruptions on brain function, this possibility has not been experimentally examined. Methodology/Principal Findings In the present study, we investigated whether experimental ‘jet lag’ (i.e., phase advances of the light∶dark cycle) negatively impacts learning and memory and whether any deficits observed are associated with reductions in hippocampal cell proliferation and neurogenesis. Because insults to circadian timing alter circulating glucocorticoid and sex steroid concentrations, both of which influence neurogenesis and learning/memory, we assessed the contribution of these endocrine factors to any observed alterations. Circadian disruption resulted in pronounced deficits in learning and memory paralleled by marked reductions in hippocampal cell proliferation and neurogenesis. Significantly, deficits in hippocampal-dependent learning and memory were not only seen during the period of the circadian disruption, but also persisted well after the cessation of jet lag, suggesting long-lasting negative consequences on brain function. Conclusions/Significance Together, these findings support the view that circadian disruptions suppress hippocampal neurogenesis via a glucocorticoid-independent mechanism, imposing pronounced and persistent impairments on learning and memory.
Unavoidable Ill-nestedness in Natural Language and the Adequacy of Tree Local-MCTAG Induced Dependency Structures

Within generative approaches to grammar, characterizing the complexity of natural language has traditionally been couched in terms of formal language theory. Recently, Kuhlmann (2007) and collaborators have shown how derivations of generative grammars can be alternately represented as dependency graphs. The properties of such structures provide a new perspective of grammar formalisms and different metric of complexity. The question of complexity of natu-ral language can be recast in dependency structure terms. Ill-nested structures have been assigned to some examples in the literature (Boston et al, 2009, Maier and Lichte, 2009), but the availability of well-nested alternatives prevents the use of these examples to claim that ill-nestedness is an unavoidable linguistic reality. This paper claims that two examples, one German and one Czech, are unavoidably ill-nested, indicating that ill-nestedness is indeed unavoidable in natural language. We conclude that formalisms that generate only well-nested structures, such as TAGs, are not quite powerful enough. However, the tree-local multi-component extension to TAG does generate ill-nested structures, providing just the appropriate amount of complexity in dependency structure terms for characterizing natural language.
Prognostic biomarkers in malignant lymphomas

There has recently been a rapid expansion in research aimed at identifying biomarkers that could improve the prognosis for patients with various subtypes of malignant lymphoma. Genomic and genetic studies have led to the identification of biological and clinical subgroups of diffuse large B-cell lymphomas with distinct underlying molecular features, divergent activation of oncogenetic pathways, and clinical course. Molecular studies of follicular lymphoma have suggested complex interactions between malignant cells and the surrounding immunological network that could affect disease progression. Moreover, the inflammatory cells of Hodgkin lymphoma have been shown to produce a complex network of cytokines and chemokines that provide a permissive microenvironment for tumor growth. Research into specific biomarkers and signaling pathways of malignant lymphomas might therefore result in the identification of novel targets for future therapeutic strategies. As gene expression profiling techniques are not yet feasible in the clinical laboratory, studies have aimed to translate the findings into more widely applicable techniques that might allow this research to be applied to routine clinical practice. This review focuses on recent advances in translational and clinical research on biomarkers in malignant lymphomas.
Does exercise training impact clock genes in patients with coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus?

Background Recent findings revealed negative effects of deregulated molecular circadian rhythm in coronary artery disease (CAD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Physical exercise training (ET) has been shown to promote anti-diabetic and anti-atherogenic responses in skeletal muscle of these patients, but the role of the circadian clock-machinery remains unknown. This study investigated whether mRNA expression of clock genes in skeletal muscle of CAD and T2DM patients is influenced by physical ET intervention. Methods Nineteen patients with CAD and T2DM (age 64 ± 5 years) were randomised to either six months of ET (four weeks of in-hospital ET followed by a five-month ambulatory programme) or usual care. At the beginning of the study, after four weeks and after six months parameters of metabolic and cardiovascular risk factors, and physical exercise capacity were assessed. Gene expression was measured in skeletal muscle biopsies by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Results A selection of clock genes and associated components (circadian locomoter output cycle kaput protein (CLOCK), period (PER) 1, cryptochrome (CRY) 2 and aminolevulinate-deltA-synthase-1 (ALAS1)) was reliably measured and used for further analysis. A time-dependent effect in gene expression was observed in CLOCK (p = 0.013) and a significant interaction between time and intervention was observed for ALAS1 (p = 0.032; p = 0.014) as a result of ET. Conclusion This is the first study to analyse clock gene expression in skeletal muscles of patients with CAD and T2DM participating in a long-lasting exercise intervention. ET, as one of the cornerstones in prevention and rehabilitation of CAD and T2DM, exerts no effects on CLOCK genes but meaningful effects on the clock-associated gene ALAS1.