Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Specific Uptake and Genotoxicity Induced by Polystyrene Nanobeads with Distinct Surface Chemistry on Human Lung Epithelial Cells and Macrophages

Nanoparticle surface chemistry is known to play a crucial role in interactions with cells and their related cytotoxic effects. As inhalation is a major route of exposure to nanoparticles, we studied specific uptake and damages of well-characterized fluorescent 50 nm polystyrene (PS) nanobeads harboring different functionalized surfaces (non-functionalized, carboxylated and aminated) on pulmonary epithelial cells and macrophages (Calu-3 and THP-1 cell lines respectively). Cytotoxicity of in mass dye-labeled functionalized PS nanobeads was assessed by xCELLigence system and alamarBlue viability assay. Nanobeads-cells interactions were studied by video-microscopy, flow cytometry and also confocal microscopy. Finally ROS generation was assessed by glutathione depletion dosages and genotoxicity was assessed by γ-H2Ax foci detection, which is considered as the most sensitive technique for studying DNA double strand breaks. The uptake kinetic was different for each cell line. All nanobeads were partly adsorbed and internalized, then released by Calu-3 cells, while THP-1 macrophages quickly incorporated all nanobeads which were located in the cytoplasm rather than in the nuclei. In parallel, the genotoxicity study reported that only aminated nanobeads significantly increased DNA damages in association with a strong depletion of reduced glutathione in both cell lines. We showed that for similar nanoparticle concentrations and sizes, aminated polystyrene nanobeads were more cytotoxic and genotoxic than unmodified and carboxylated ones on both cell lines. Interestingly, aminated polystyrene nanobeads induced similar cytotoxic and genotoxic effects on Calu-3 epithelial cells and THP-1 macrophages, for all levels of intracellular nanoparticles tested. Our results strongly support the primordial role of nanoparticles surface chemistry on cellular uptake and related biological effects. Moreover our data clearly show that nanoparticle internalization and observed adverse effects are not necessarily associated.
COLOUR CHANGES IN TWO KINDS OF SEMI-HARD CHEESE DURING RIPENING

The aim of the paper was to compare the colour changes of semi-hard cheeses, depending on days of ripening. The surface of cheese samples were treated of two techniques i.e. oiling and waxing. CIELAB Colour parameters (L* a* b* and ΔE*ab) were measured for cheese samples (oiled and waxed) and measuring points were located either near edge or in middle of cheese samples sliced in half. Samples were subjected to measurement after manufacture and then every 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, 85, and 115 days of ripening, respectively, there were observed statistically significant differences in all colour parameters during ripening and between waxy and oiled cheese samples. Lightness (L*) declined and yellow tone (b*) was more appreciable for oiled cheese during ripening. Wax protective layer prevented moisture loss and that caused that value of L* and a* parameters were not so variable. Total colour difference was (ΔE*ab) clearly perceptible for all cheese samples.
Beam-contamination-induced compositional alteration and its neutron-atypical consequences in ion simulation of neutron-induced void swelling

ABSTRACT Although accelerator-based ion irradiation has been widely accepted to simulate neutron damage, neutron-atypical features need to be carefully investigated. In this study, we have shown that Coulomb force drag by ion beams can introduce significant amounts of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen into target materials even under ultra-high vacuum conditions. The resulting compositional and microstructural changes dramatically suppress void swelling. By applying a beam-filtering technique, introduction of vacuum contaminants is greatly minimized and the true swelling resistance of the alloys is revealed and matches neutron behavior closely. These findings are a significant step toward developing standardized procedures for emulating neutron damage. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT IMPACT STATEMENT An innovative ‘beam shaking’ technique is proposed to reduce beam-induced impurity contamination in accelerator-based ion irradiation. Without this technique, void swelling of ion-irradiated alloys can be greatly underestimated.
It’s the end of ideology as we know it

Scholars have long focused on socio-psychological attachment, elite discourse, and rational action to explain the nature and structure of ideologies. Recently genetic and neurobiological influences have also emerged as predictors of ideological preferences. So far however, there has been little synthesis of these findings into the larger discourse on the structures and manifestations of ideology. The few studies which do include genetic sources of information imply that culture is merely a passenger on a genetic foundation. Here, we test this assumption and in doing so offer a foundation for merging social, psychological, rational, and biological theories of attitude formation and structure. Utilizing a genetically informative sample, we find striking differences between the genetic and environmental factor structures of inter-related attitudes that form ideologies. The structure imposed by social influences corresponds to recognized definitions of liberalism and conservatism on a left–right continuum; however, the genetic factor structure combines liberal attitudes toward sex and reproduction with conservative attitudes toward punishment, defense and immigration. That is, the structure imposed on social and political attitudes by the social environment is a cultural veneer laid on a potentially divergent underlying structure of genetic differences. Our findings should encourage a new understanding of ideology that encompasses genetic, individual, and cultural mechanisms that operates in both conflict and concert depending on local and temporal contexts.
Strength of Coupling within a Mnemonic Control Network Differentiates Those Who Can and Cannot Suppress Memory Retrieval

The ability to direct our thought processes influences not only what we do, but also what we remember later. Here we sought to identify the brain network that supports the ability to control memory retrieval and to understand the neural basis of age-related changes and individual differences in the capacity for mnemonic control. To this end, we collected functional MRI data from 43 children and young adults while they attempted to retrieve or suppress retrieval of previously learned associations. Seed-based functional connectivity analyses revealed a largely right-lateralized dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-cingulate-parietal-hippocampal network that exhibited strongly correlated activity during retrieval suppression. Regardless of age, individuals who were able to suppress memory retrieval exhibited tighter coupling between key nodes in this dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-cingulate-parietal-hippocampal network than individuals who did not. Further, only those capable of mnemonic control exhibited tighter coupling during successful retrieval suppression (intentional forgetting) than during unsuccessful retrieval (unintentional forgetting). Across both children and adults, individual differences in retrieval suppression were best explained by the strength of these network interactions.
Rendering from compressed textures

We present a simple method for rendering directly from compressed textures in hardware and software rendering systems. Textures are compressed using a vector quantization (VQ) method. The advantage of VQ over other compression techniques is that textures can be decompressed quickly during rendering. The drawback of using lossy compression schemes such as VQ for textures is that such methods introduce errors into the textures. We discuss techniques for controlling these losses. We also describe an extension to the basic VQ technique for compressing mipmaps. We have observed compression rates of up to 35 : 1, with minimal loss in visual quality and a small impact on rendering time. The simplicity of our technique lends itself to an efficient hardware implementation. CR categories: I.3. 7 [Computer Graphics]: 3D Graphics and Realism Texture; I.4. 2 [Image Processing]: Compression Coding
Efficient co-regularised least squares regression

In many applications, unlabelled examples are inexpensive and easy to obtain. Semi-supervised approaches try to utilise such examples to reduce the predictive error. In this paper, we investigate a semi-supervised least squares regression algorithm based on the co-learning approach. Similar to other semi-supervised algorithms, our base algorithm has cubic runtime complexity in the number of unlabelled examples. To be able to handle larger sets of unlabelled examples, we devise a semi-parametric variant that scales linearly in the number of unlabelled examples. Experiments show a significant error reduction by co-regularisation and a large runtime improvement for the semi-parametric approximation. Last but not least, we propose a distributed procedure that can be applied without collecting all data at a single site.
Humor drawings evoked temporal and spectral EEG processes

Abstract The study aimed to explore the humor processing elicited through the manipulation of artistic drawings. Using the Comprehension–Elaboration Theory of humor as the main research background, the experiment manipulated the head portraits of celebrities based on the independent variables of facial deformation (large/small) and addition of affective features (positive/negative). A 64-channel electroencephalography was recorded in 30 participants while viewing the incongruous drawings of celebrities. The electroencephalography temporal and spectral responses were measured during the three stages of humor which included incongruity detection, incongruity comprehension and elaboration of humor. Analysis of event-related potentials indicated that for humorous vs non-humorous drawings, facial deformation and the addition of affective features significantly affected the degree of humor elicited, specifically: large > small deformation; negative > positive affective features. The N170, N270, N400, N600-800 and N900-1200 components showed significant differences, particularly in the right prefrontal and frontal regions. Analysis of event-related spectral perturbation showed significant differences in the theta band evoked in the anterior cingulate cortex, parietal region and posterior cingulate cortex; and in the alpha and beta bands in the motor areas. These regions are involved in emotional processing, memory retrieval, and laughter and feelings of amusement induced by elaboration of the situation.
Automatic speech segmentation using average level crossing rate information

We explore new methods of determining automatically derived units for classification of speech into segments. For detecting signal changes, temporal features are more reliable than the standard feature vector domain methods, since both magnitude and phase information are retained. Motivated by auditory models, we have presented a method based on average level crossing rate (ALCR) of the signal, to detect significant temporal changes in the signal. An adaptive level allocation scheme has been used in this technique that allocates levels, depending on the signal pdf and SNR. We compare the segmentation performance to manual phonemic segmentation and also that provided by maximum likelihood (ML) segmentation for 100 TIMIT sentences. The ALCR method matches the best segmentation performance without a priori knowledge of number of segments, as in ML segmentation.
Complement as a regulator of interactions between immune complexes and cell membranes.

Soluble immune complexes prepared with limited amounts of complement and injected into mice bind to circulating cells, and are then rapidly released into the plasma. The complex release is complement-dependent. Complexes prepared with excess complement do not bind to the circulating cells or to mouse lymphocytes in vitro; thus the target of the complement activity is the complex, not the cell membrane. Since complement can act to either increase or decrease the affinity of immune complexes for cell membranes, depending upon various factors, we propose that complement serves as a sensitive regulator of interactions between immune complexes and cell membranes.
A Real Time Chemotaxis Assay Unveils Unique Migratory Profiles amongst Different Primary Murine Macrophages

Chemotaxis assays are an invaluable tool for studying the biological activity of inflammatory mediators such as CC chemokines, which have been implicated in a wide range of chronic inflammatory diseases. Conventional chemotaxis systems such as the modified Boyden chamber are limited in terms of the data captured given that the assays are analysed at a single time-point. We report the optimisation and validation of a label-free, real-time cell migration assay based on electrical cell impedance to measure chemotaxis of different primary murine macrophage populations in response to a range of CC chemokines and other chemoattractant signalling molecules. We clearly demonstrate key differences in the migratory behavior of different murine macrophage populations and show that this dynamic system measures true macrophage chemotaxis rather than chemokinesis or fugetaxis. We highlight an absolute requirement for Gαi signaling and actin cytoskeletal rearrangement as demonstrated by Pertussis toxin and cytochalasin D inhibition. We also studied the chemotaxis of CD14+ human monocytes and demonstrate distinct chemotactic profiles amongst different monocyte donors to CCL2. This real-time chemotaxis assay will allow a detailed analysis of factors that regulate macrophage responses to chemoattractant cytokines and inflammatory mediators.
B cell stimulatory factor 1 (interleukin 4) is sufficient for the proliferation and differentiation of lectin-stimulated cytolytic T lymphocyte precursors

In this report, we demonstrate that IL-4 is sufficient to stimulate both the proliferation and differentiation of Lyt-2+, Ia- splenic CTL precursors stimulated with the mitogenic lectin Con A. The response to IL-4 and Con A was not dependent on a putative endogenous production of IL-2 within the cultures, as demonstrated by an absence of an inhibitory effect by an anti-IL-2-R blocking mAb. Our results indicate that IL-2 and IL-4 can support an equivalent proliferative response by lectin-stimulated Lyt-2+ T lymphocytes, while IL-4 is more efficacious in stimulating their differentiation into mature cytolytically active cells.
Issues Related to the Classification of Epilepsies in Early Childhood *

The current classification of the epilepsies and epileptic syndromes is practical and useful in a majority of cases. However, the choice of its subdivisions was mainly derived from adult data, and its applicability is frequently problematic in early childhood. This article reviews some issues related to the classification of epilepsies in childhood and summarizes recent proposals that might improve the current scheme.
One Orthogonal Phase Microscopy Technique for Orthogonal Phase Imaging of a Cell

For human beings, the morphological features of cells are closely related to human health thus research into the technique of cell imaging is very important. The optical phase imaging technique is one of the most useful methods because the cell is a phase object. More than one phase images should be needed when rebuilding the 3D sub-structure of a cell. In this paper, in order to obtain the complete 3D information of a cell under the maximum entropy tomography method, two orthogonal phase images is acquired simultaneously, so one orthogonal interference imaging system based on dual orthogonal optical path is constructed by using a lateral displacement beam splitter is proposed. It can obtain two interference images at the same time on the orthogonal direction, so that the biological cellular 3D morphology and its sub-structure can be obtained by using some phase recovery method. Compared with the traditional off-axis interferometry, the full information of the cell is omitted in this method. The simulation and experiment results show the validity and stability of the proposed method. This technique could be widely applied to phase microscopy, especially for transparent samples, such as phase imaging for biological cells and phase measurement, etc. Introduction With the development of the theoretical research in human life science, the requirement of the method and the technique, which can be used to detect the cell, becomes more and more significant. In connection with this, optics is one of the oldest and most promising subjects, which provision of a new research perspective and means for the scientific research of life science. Especially the development of all kinds of microscopy that provides people with a new perspective to study the phenomena of life activities. At the same time, the new rules and findings has been explored by life science researchers in the microscopic field of the biological molecules, cells, tissues and organs. It becomes necessary for researchers to pay more attention to the more powerful technique which they need. Thus optical microscopy should consider the requirements in developing new detection methods, which have the advantages of real-time, high sensitivity, high resolution and no damage. Because cells have the characteristic of transparency, and the traditional optical microscope cannot observe their structure information clearly, phase microscopy technique, which makes full use of intrinsic refractive index of the cell to increase the 325 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Copyright © 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. 2nd International Conference on Biomedical and Biological Engineering 2017 (BBE 2017) Advances in Biological Sciences Research (ABSR), volume 4
Rheology of vibrated granular suspensions

In this work we investigate in details the flow behaviour of dense vibrated gravitational suspensions. We study the rheology in the stationary state by using a stress imposed rheometer (spectroscopy mechanics) coupled with a vibration cell, we show that applying well-controlled mechanical vibrations allows the control of the suspension viscosity by suppressing the apparent yield stress which is largely the cause of flow jamming. We show that the rheology in the stationary state is controlled by the competition between the reorganization time induced by the flow and the internal reorganization time induced by vibrations. We discuss the influence of particles size, suspending fluid viscosity and vibration parameters and demonstrate that the grains dynamics is controlled by the ratio between the lubrication stress and the granular pressure. This work evidences the major role played by the vibration induced lubrication stress on the liquefaction of vibrated granular suspensions.
Modeling between‐subject and within‐subject variances in ecological momentary assessment data using mixed‐effects location scale models

Ecological momentary assessment and/or experience sampling methods are increasingly used in health studies to study subjective experiences within changing environmental contexts. In these studies, up to 30 or 40 observations are often obtained for each subject. Because there are so many measurements per subject, one can characterize a subject's mean and variance and can specify models for both. In this article, we focus on an adolescent smoking study using ecological momentary assessment where interest is on characterizing changes in mood variation. We describe how covariates can influence the mood variances and also extend the statistical model by adding a subject‐level random effect to the within‐subject variance specification. This permits subjects to have influence on the mean, or location, and variability, or (square of the) scale, of their mood responses. These mixed‐effects location scale models have useful applications in many research areas where interest centers on the joint modeling of the mean and variance structure. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Is Donepezil Effective for Multiple Sclerosis-related Cognitive Dysfunction?: A Critically Appraised Topic

Background:Cognitive dysfunction affects approximately half of the patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Cholinesterase inhibitor drugs are approved to treat cognitive dysfunction associated with degenerative dementia. Objective:To critically assess current evidence regarding the efficacy of the cholinesterase inhibitor, donepezil in the treatment of MS-associated cognitive impairment. Methods:The objective was addressed through the development of a structured critically appraised topic. This included a clinical scenario, structured question, literature search strategy, critical appraisal, results, evidence summary, commentary, and bottom line conclusions. Participants included consultant and resident neurologists, a medical librarian, clinical epidemiologists, and content experts in the fields of behavioral neurology and MS. Results:A randomized control trial was selected for critical appraisal. This trial randomized MS patients to receive donepezil 10 mg daily or placebo for treatment of MS-related cognitive dysfunction. There was no significant treatment effect found between the 2 groups on either the primary outcome of memory or any of the secondary cognitive measures. Post hoc analyses suggested a trend favoring donepezil in subjects with greater baseline cognitive dysfunction. Conclusions:Donepezil 10 mg daily for 24 weeks is not superior to placebo in improving MS-related cognitive dysfunction.
An Agent Programming Framework Based on the C# Language and the CLI

The aim of this paper is that of describing the software architecture designed for the implementation of an agent programming framework. Contrary to the widely adopted use of the Java platform in most agent-based solutions and related research activity, the present work has been entirely carried on in the novel . NET framework (Microsoft Corp.) which offers technological solutions able to cope with common problems which often arise when working in other enterprise platforms (both J2EE and Microsoft DNA). In particular this work is based on the C# language and the Common Language Infrastructure. One solution is described to make management of agents easier from a programmer’s point of view. As result an agent programming framework is presented, fully exploiting the above concepts.