Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro and in situ studies to investigate the erosion of human dental tissues

Dental erosion is defined as irreversible loss of dental hard tissue by a chemical process that does not involve bacteria (pindborg, 1970). The methods to study erosion and tooth surface loss are still not well developed. Also, the effect of various preventive agents is controversial. Part-I: We wished to develop a standard methodology to create erosive lesions and to investigate them in vitro. Four methods (Knoop microhardness, surface profilometry, scanning electronmicroscopy, and confocal laser microscopy) were initially tested for their sensitivities to evaluate erosive lesions using a cycling regime of seven days. The enamel and dentine slabs were immersed under static conditions for 2 minutes, five times daily in fresh 200 ml aliquots 0.3% citric acid (PH 3.6). The slabs were incubated overnight and between erosive challenges in artificial saliva at 37°C. At the end of the cycling period, the slabs were analysed with the scanning profilometer (Scantron Proscan 2000) to measure the amount of surface loss. All of the methods showed an acceptable sensitivity, but surface profilometry was chosen as the preferred method mainly as it was reproducible and a user-friendly methodology. Three different erosive products were investigated: orange juice, Sprite, and citric acid solution using a similar cycling regime and citric acid was then chosen to create erosive lesions for the remainder of this project. The same cycling regime was repeated using three toothpastes containing different fluoride concentrations (0 ppm F, 1100 ppm F, 1385 ppm F). Each group was dipped with one of the toothpastes twice daily morning and evening, for two minutes each time. Fluoride toothpaste showed superiority over placebo for both enamel and dentine. Part-2: In this part we concentrated on developing our in vitro cycling regime for the longitudinal study of erosion as well as investigating the effect of preventative agents on the reduction of tooth surface loss. A 21 day pH cycling regime was considered acceptable. In a study which compared different concentrations of fluoride toothpaste (0 ppm, 250 ppm, 500 ppm, 1150 ppm, 1450 ppm) it was observed that the amount oftooth surface loss decreased with the increase of fluoride ion concentration in toothpastes. This was
Development of the mammalian urethra is controlled by Fgfr2-IIIb

Development of external genitalia in mammalian embryos requires tight coordination of a complex series of morphogenetic events involving outgrowth, proximodistal and dorsoventral patterning, and epithelial tubulogenesis. Hypospadias is a congenital defect of the external genitalia that results from failure of urethral tube closure. Although this is the second most common birth defect in humans, affecting one in every 250 children, the molecular mechanisms that regulate morphogenesis of the mammalian urethra are poorly understood. We report that mice lacking the IIIb isoform of fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (Fgfr2) exhibit severe hypospadias. Urethral signaling regions, as indicated by Shh and Fgf8 expression, are established in Fgfr2-IIIb null mice; however, cell proliferation arrests prematurely and maturation of the urethral epithelium is disrupted. Fgfr2-IIIb-/- mutants fail to maintain the progenitor cell population required for uroepithelial renewal during tubular morphogenesis. In addition, we show that antagonism of the androgen receptor (AR) leads to loss of Fgfr2-IIIb and Fgf10 expression in the urethra, and an associated hypospadias phenotype, suggesting that these genes are downstream targets of AR during external genital development. Genitourinary defects resulting from disruption of AR activity, by either genetic or environmental factors, may therefore involve negative regulation of the Fgfr2 pathway. This represents the first example of how the developing genitourinary system integrates cues from systemically circulating steroid hormones with a locally expressed growth factor pathway.
A new insight into cystatin C contained in milk basic protein to bone metabolism: Effects on osteoclasts and osteoblastic MC3T3-E1 cells in vitro.

A milk protein fraction possessing alkaline isoelectric points (milk basic protein [MBP]) improves bone metabolism in vivo, and it inhibits bone resorption by osteoclasts and promotes mouse osteoblastic MC3T3-E1 cells proliferation in vitro. Cystatin C (CysC) is a component of MBP and shows bone resorption inhibitory activity. Therefore, it is likely that MBP with higher CysC content improves bone metabolism more effectively. In this study, we prepared MBP with low and high contents of CysC and compared its effects on bone metabolism with standard MBP in vitro. Our results showed that the CysC content in MBP was positively related to not only bone resorption inhibitory activity but also MC3T3-E1 cells proliferative activity. Furthermore, purified CysC stimulated MC3T3-E1 cells proliferation. These results indicate that CysC contributes to promotion of MC3T3-E1 cells proliferation, and MBP with higher CysC content shows enhanced bone resorption inhibitory activity and MC3T3-E1 cells proliferative activity. CysC is considered an important factor in the effect on bone metabolism of MBP.
How to diagnose food allergy

Purpose of review To assess the recent studies that focus on specific immunoglobulin E (sIgE) testing and basophil activation test (BAT) for diagnosing IgE-mediated food allergies. Recent findings The sIgE to allergen extract or component can predict reactivity to food. The cutoff value based on the positive predictive value (PPV) of sIgE can be considered whenever deciding whether oral food challenge (OFC) is required to diagnose hen's egg, cow's milk, wheat, peanut, and cashew nut allergy. However, PPV varies depending on the patients’ background, OFC methodology, challenge foods, and assay methodology. Component-resolved diagnostics (CRD) has been used for food allergy diagnosis. Ovomucoid and omega-5 gliadin are good diagnostic markers for heated egg and wheat allergy. More recently, CRD of peanut, tree nuts, and seed have been investigated. Ara h 2 showed the best diagnostic accuracy for peanut allergy; other storage proteins, such as Jug r 1 for walnut, Ana o 3 for cashew nut, Ses i 1 for sesame, and Fag e 3 for buckwheat, are also better markers than allergen extracts. Some studies suggested that BAT has superior specificity than skin prick test and sIgE testing. Summary The sIgE testing and BAT can improve diagnostic accuracy. CRD provides additional information that can help determine whether OFCs should be performed to diagnose food allergy.
Comparison of Microbial Communities Associated with Halophyte (Salsola stocksii) and Non-Halophyte (Triticum aestivum) Using Culture-Independent Approaches

Abstract Halophyte microbiome contributes significantly to plant performance and can provide information regarding complex ecological processes involved in osmoregulation of these plants. The objective of this study is to investigate the microbiomes associated with belowground (rhizosphere), internal (endosphere) and aboveground (phyllosphere) tissues of halophyte (Salsola stocksii) through metagenomics approach. Plant samples were collected from Khewra Salt Mines. The metagenomic DNA from soil, root and shoot samples was isolated with the help of FastDNA spin kit. Through PCR, the 16S rRNA gene from four different Salsola plants and wheat plants was amplified and cloned in InsTAclone PCR cloning kit. Metagenomic analyses from rhizosphere, endosphere and phyllosphere of Salsola showed that approximately 29% bacteria were uncultured and unclassified. Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were the most abundant phyla in Salsola and wheat. However, Firmicutes, Acidobacteria, Bacteriodetes, Planctomycetes, Cyanobacteria, Thermotogae, Verrucomicrobia, Choroflexi and Euryarchaeota were predominant groups from halophyte whereas Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Cyanobacteria, Acidobacteria, Bacteriodetes, Planctomycetes and Verrucomicrobia were predominant phyla of wheat samples. Diversity and differences of microbial flora of Salsola and wheat suggested that functional interactions between plants and microorganisms contribute to salt stress tolerance.
Content of redox-active compounds (ie, antioxidants) in foods consumed in the United States.

BACKGROUND Supplements containing ascorbic acid, alpha-tocopherol, or beta-carotene do not protect against oxidative stress-related diseases in most randomized intervention trials. We suggest that other redox-active phytochemicals may be more effective and that a combination of different redox-active compounds (ie, antioxidants or reductants) may be needed for proper protection against oxidative damage. OBJECTIVE We aimed to generate a ranked food table with values for total content of redox-active compounds to test this alternative antioxidant hypothesis. DESIGN An assay that measures the total concentration of redox-active compounds above a certain cutoff reduction potential was used to analyze 1113 food samples obtained from the US Department of Agriculture National Food and Nutrient Analysis Program. RESULTS Large variations in the content of antioxidants were observed in different foods and food categories. The food groups spices and herbs, nuts and seeds, berries, and fruit and vegetables all contained foods with very high antioxidant contents. Most food categories also contained products almost devoid of antioxidants. Of the 50 food products highest in antioxidant concentrations, 13 were spices, 8 were in the fruit and vegetables category, 5 were berries, 5 were chocolate-based, 5 were breakfast cereals, and 4 were nuts or seeds. On the basis of typical serving sizes, blackberries, walnuts, strawberries, artichokes, cranberries, brewed coffee, raspberries, pecans, blueberries, ground cloves, grape juice, and unsweetened baking chocolate were at the top of the ranked list. CONCLUSION This ranked antioxidant food table provides a useful tool for investigations into the possible health benefit of dietary antioxidants.
Tamoxifen for women at high risk of breast cancer

Tamoxifen has been used as a treatment for women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer for roughly four decades and has been approved as chemoprevention for over ten years. Although tamoxifen has been proven to be beneficial in preventing breast cancer in high-risk women, its use has not been widely embraced. To some extent, this is due to several of its side effects, including an increased risk of endometrial cancer and pulmonary embolism, but these serious side effects are rare. The risks and benefits of tamoxifen chemoprevention should be considered for each patient.
Validating Geospatial Regression Models With Bootstrapping

Spatial statistical models have been used extensively in many geospatial and environmental studies over several decades. While being very important, the issues of testing and validation in spatial statistical models are rarely investigated carefully in spatial environmental studies. Often strict theoretical asymptotic assumptions used in those models are left unexplored or unanswered in many studies. This study is to explore if bootstrapping is capable of providing more realistic statistical inference for spatial regression models while dealing with several common issues with spatial data, such as spatial dependence and unknown heteroscedasticity. With experiments on both simulated and real-world datasets, the study showed that bootstrapping can reveal the differences between empirical (bootstrap) distributions and those based on theoretical asymptotic assumptions in a forthright and sound fashion, allowing a spatial regression model to be validated effectively. Such validation arguably is very important to geospatial and environmental studies, especially those with small sample sizes. Hence, bootstrapping should be used widely as a second line of evidence for statistical inference in spatial environmental studies.
Cross-sectional study on the association between frailty and violence against community-dwelling elderly people in Brazil

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: The physical, emotional and cognitive limitations that may be present in the aging process, coupled with family unpreparedness, may lead to greater dependence among the elderly. This favors development of frailty syndrome and greater levels of violence against the elderly. The objective here was to analyze the association between violence against the elderly and frailty; and the geographic distribution of violence against the elderly according to the presence of frailty syndrome. DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-sectional study on 705 community-dwelling elderly people in Uberaba (MG), Brazil. METHODS: The Fried frailty phenotype and conflict tactics scale were used. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the chi-square test and a logistic regression model. The intensity of the events and the relationship between clusters of violence and frailty status were assessed by means of kernel estimation. RESULTS: The adjusted analysis indicated that pre-frailty and frailty were associated with physical and verbal aggression (odds ratio, OR = 1.51; 95% confidence interval, CI: 1.04-2.19; OR = 2.12; 95% CI: 1.29-3.47), frailty was associated with physical aggression (OR = 2.48; 95% CI: 1.25-4.94) and pre-frailty and frailty were associated with verbal aggression (OR = 1.48; 95% CI: 1.03-2.15; OR = 2.15; 95% CI: 1.31-3.52), respectively. Regardless of frailty status and its relationship with violence, clusters of occurrences were larger in similar regions in the southeastern part of the municipality; but superimposition of overlays relating to aggression showed that for frail individuals the clusters were smaller than for non-frail and pre-frail individuals. CONCLUSIONS: The condition of frailty was associated with greater chances of violence against the elderly.
Use of multiple dimensions in learned discriminations

Many naturally occurring categories vary across multiple stimulus dimensions (e.g. size, color, texture). When humans categorize multidimensional stimuli on the basis of a single dimension this has been taken to indicate use of a rule that could be verbalized. Sorting on the basis of all the stimulus dimensions (‘overall similarity’ or ‘family resemblance’) has been taken to indicate a more basic, implicit, automatic, perhaps associative process. However, a review of the literature on animal discrimination learning shows that animals often discriminate on the basis of one dominant dimension. In recent experiments, situations conducive to more complex cognitive processes have increased family resemblance sorting in humans. In an effort to resolve this apparent paradox, experiments were conducted in which humans and pigeons were exposed to multidimensional category discrimination tasks under closely similar conditions. Preliminary results show no evidence that even a non-verbal rule can be said to be involved in pigeons’ choices in these conditions, despite the fact that under some conditions a single dimension may dominate their behavior.
Importance of including refractive error tests in school children's vision screening.

BACKGROUND This study determined the importance of including tests for refractive errors in vision screening. METHODS In this cross-sectional study, we performed a random cluster sampling of schoolchildren in the city of Dezful, Iran. After sampling and obtaining informed written consents from their parents, children underwent examinations at the school sites. Students underwent tests of visual acuity, cover tests and cycloplegic refractions. Elementary and middle school students who had a visual acuity of 20/20 or better in both eyes were included in the study. RESULTS From 3673 elementary and middle school students, 2957 (80.5%) had 20/20 vision or better. Of these, 16.1% [95% confidence interval (CI): 14.8 - 17.4] were ametropic, 0.4% had myopia and 10.1% had hyperopia. Mean sphere in those with hyperopia was +2.6±0.7 (range: +2.0 to +7.28) diopter (D). Astigmatism was detected in 6.6% and the mean cylinder was -0.9 (range: -0.75 to -3.25) D. The rate of anisometropia was 1.5% (95% CI: 0.8 - 2.0). CONCLUSION Screening results of 20/20 vision for schoolchildren does not necessarily indicate normal eye status because hyperopia and astigmatism may still be sources of visual discomfort. To identify these cases and increase the sensitivity of screening tests, measurement of refractive errors by cycloplegic refraction tests might be included in vision screening.
History‐dependence of muscle slack length following contraction and stretch in the human vastus lateralis

In reduced muscle preparations, the slack length and passive stiffness of muscle fibres have been shown to be influenced by previous muscle contraction or stretch. In human muscles, such behaviours have been inferred from measures of muscle force, joint stiffness and reflex magnitudes and latencies. Using ultrasound imaging, we directly observed that isometric contraction of the vastus lateralis muscle at short lengths reduces the slack lengths of the muscle–tendon unit and muscle fascicles. The effect is apparent 60 s after the contraction. These observations imply that muscle contraction at short lengths causes the formation of bonds which reduce the effective length of structures that generate passive tension in muscles.
Temporomandibular disorders: Old ideas and new concepts

Background Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) is an umbrella term for pain and dysfunction involving the masticatory muscles and the temporomandibular joints (TMJs). TMD is the most common orofacial pain condition. Its prominent features include regional pain in the face and preauricular area, limitations in jaw movement, and noise from the TMJs during jaw movements. TMD affects up to 15% of adults and 7% of adolescents. Chronic pain is the overwhelming reason that patients with TMD seek treatment. TMD can associate with impaired general health, depression, and other psychological disabilities, and may affect the quality of life of the patient. Assessment Evaluations indicate that the recently published Diagnostic Criteria for TMD (DC/TMD) are reliable and valid. These criteria cover the most common types of TMD, which include pain-related disorders (e.g., myalgia, headache attributable to TMD, and arthralgia) as well as disorders associated with the TMJ (primarily disc displacements and degenerative disease). As peripheral mechanisms most likely play a role in the onset of TMD, a detailed muscle examination is recommended. The persistence of pain involves more central factors, such as sensitization of the supraspinal neurons and second-order neurons at the level of the spinal dorsal horn/trigeminal nucleus, imbalanced antinociceptive activity, and strong genetic predisposition, which also is included in DC/TMD. Conclusion The etiology is complex and still not clearly understood, but several biological and psychosocial risk factors for TMD have been identified. Several studies indicate that patients with TMD improve with a combination of noninvasive therapies, including behavior therapy, pharmacotherapy, physical therapy, and occlusal appliances. More stringently designed studies, however, are needed to assess treatment efficacy and how to tailor treatment to the individual patient.
Measuring the Queue Sizes of IEEE 802.11 Wireless Access Points

The increasing power, lower cost and improved convenience of wireless networks is fueling the spread of IEEE 802.11 wireless access points (APs) in the residential and commercial environments. While there has been considerable study of wireless performance, little is publicly known about the queue sizes of wireless APs. This paper presents the QFind methodology for measuring wireless AP queue sizes. QFind determines the wireless saturation point, measures the baseline delay, induces the saturation rate and measures the delay with queuing, and computes the queue size. The accuracy of QFind is validated in a wireless testbed with a Host AP, where the controlled queue size is compared to the QFind measured queue size. QFind is then used to measure the queue sizes of seven wireless APs, three commercial class APs and four residential class APs targeted for residences. The results show that wireless AP queue sizes are packet-based and vary considerably across vendor and AP classes, with queue sizes ranging 50 packets to over 350 packets. This suggests additional engineering and science to determine the best mechanisms for providing AP queue sizes for a variety of traffic types.
A high‐quality pedigree and genetic markers both reveal inbreeding depression for quality but not survival in a cooperative mammal

Inbreeding depression, the reduced fitness of offspring of closely related parents, is commonplace in both captive and wild populations and has important consequences for conservation and mating system evolution. However, because of the difficulty of collecting pedigree and life‐history data from wild populations, relatively few studies have been able to compare inbreeding depression for traits at different points in the life cycle. Moreover, pedigrees give the expected proportion of the genome that is identical by descent (IBDg) whereas in theory with enough molecular markers realized IBDg can be quantified directly. We therefore investigated inbreeding depression for multiple life‐history traits in a wild population of banded mongooses using pedigree‐based inbreeding coefficients (fped) and standardized multilocus heterozygosity (sMLH) measured at 35–43 microsatellites. Within an information theoretic framework, we evaluated support for either fped or sMLH as inbreeding terms and used sequential regression to determine whether the residuals of sMLH on fped explain fitness variation above and beyond fped. We found no evidence of inbreeding depression for survival, either before or after nutritional independence. By contrast, inbreeding was negatively associated with two quality‐related traits, yearling body mass and annual male reproductive success. Yearling body mass was associated with fped but not sMLH, while male annual reproductive success was best explained by both fped and residual sMLH. Thus, our study not only uncovers variation in the extent to which different traits show inbreeding depression, but also reveals trait‐specific differences in the ability of pedigrees and molecular markers to explain fitness variation and suggests that for certain traits, genetic markers may capture variation in realized IBDg above and beyond the pedigree expectation.