Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Type I collagen is thermally unstable at body temperature

Measured by ultra-slow scanning calorimetry and isothermal circular dichroism, human lung collagen monomers denature at 37°C within a couple of days. Their unfolding rate decreases exponentially at lower temperature, but complete unfolding is observed even below 36°C. Refolding of full-length, native collagen triple helices does occur, but only below 30°C. Thus, contrary to the widely held belief, the energetically preferred conformation of the main protein of bone and skin in physiological solution is a random coil rather than a triple helix. These observations suggest that once secreted from cells collagen helices would begin to unfold. We argue that initial microunfolding of their least stable domains would trigger self-assembly of fibers where the helices are protected from complete unfolding. Our data support an earlier hypothesis that in fibers collagen helices may melt and refold locally when needed, giving fibers their strength and elasticity. Apparently, Nature adjusts collagen hydroxyproline content to ensure that the melting temperature of triple helical monomers is several degrees below rather than above body temperature.
Clinical cardiovascular risk during young adulthood in offspring of hypertensive pregnancies: insights from a 20-year prospective follow-up birth cohort

Objectives Offspring of hypertensive pregnancies have increased cardiovascular risk factors during childhood. We hypothesised that offspring of hypertensive pregnancies would demonstrate increased clinical levels of hypertension by young adult life, which would be proportional to the severity of the pregnancy complication. Design Prospective birth cohort study Setting Tertiary obstetric hospital. Participants 2868 young adult offspring of women enrolled during pregnancy into the Western Australia Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study. Main outcome measures Cardiovascular risk, including incidence of hypertension and metabolic disease, in those born to hypertensive compared to normotensive pregnancies. Results Young adult offspring of hypertensive pregnancies were 2.5 times (95% CI 1.32 to 4.56, p=0.004) more likely to have global lifetime risk (QRISK) scores above the 75th centile. Thirty per cent of 20 year olds with hypertensive blood pressures were born following a hypertensive pregnancy. Pre-eclampsia or hypertension resulting in preterm birth associated with a threefold (95% CI 1.3 to 7.0, p=0.01) greater risk of being hypertensive by age 20 years, with no differences in body mass index. Whereas pregnancy-induced hypertension associated with a smaller 3±1 mm Hg blood pressure rise (p=0.001) and a twofold (95% CI 1.5 to 2.8, p=0.001) greater risk of being obese or overweight. Risk factor associations were consistent throughout early life and independent of other birth-factors. Conclusions Incidence of offspring hypertension was significantly increased in those whose mothers had a more complicated pregnancy history, including preterm birth and pre-eclampsia.
Supply Chain Structure Design for a Short Lifecycle Product: A Loop Dominance Based Analysis

Designing a supply chain structure for a volatile market can be tricky. This is more so for products with a short lifecycle. A capacity constrained supply chain in such a setting impedes the product's market acceptance by limiting product availability and thereby frustrating customers. This paper presents an experimental method, which can be used by channel designers for this purpose. We use a two-echelon supply chain system to elucidate the method. The supply chain structure is represented using system dynamics formalism. Experiment on the model leads to an indication of the cost that the system would incur. Using this cost and through loop dominance analysis we identify feedback loops that primarily determine system behavior. We show that by strengthening the dominant feedback loop, significant improvement in performance can be achieved. The method we claim can easily be deployed in supply chains of other products and can also be used to justify information technology investment decisions.
Nitric oxide synthase and nitric oxide production in in vivo‐derived mast cells

Nitric oxide (NO) is a potent mediator synthesized by a variety of cells involved in inflammatory reactions. We investigated the expression of NO synthase (NOS) in rat peritoneal mast cells (PMC). Small amounts of eNOS mRNA were detected basally, whereas neither mRNA for iNOS nor nNOS was detected in unstimulated PMC. Following stimulation by antigen, interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ), or anti‐CD8 antibody, PMC up‐regulated iNOS mRNA expression. In situ RT‐PCR confirmed that iNOS mRNA originated from PMC. Production of iNOS protein was confirmed in stimulated PMC by immunohistochemistry. Upon stimulation with antigen, IFN‐γ, or anti‐CD8, nitrite production was increased significantly (8.4±0.6, 7.6±0.9, and 6.6±0.9 μM/2×105 cells/48 h NO2−, respectively; P<0.01), whereas unstimulated PMC released 2.1 ± 0.3 μM/2 × 105 cells/48 h NO2−. These findings demonstrate that in vivo‐derived PMC transcribe and translate mRNA for NOS and produce NO.
Indel Reliability in Indel-Based Phylogenetic Inference

It is often assumed that it is unlikely that the same insertion or deletion (indel) event occurred at the same position in two independent evolutionary lineages, and thus, indel-based inference of phylogeny should be less subject to homoplasy compared with standard inference which is based on substitution events. Indeed, indels were successfully used to solve debated evolutionary relationships among various taxonomical groups. However, indels are never directly observed but rather inferred from the alignment and thus indel-based inference may be sensitive to alignment errors. It is hypothesized that phylogenetic reconstruction would be more accurate if it relied only on a subset of reliable indels instead of the entire indel data. Here, we developed a method to quantify the reliability of indel characters by measuring how often they appear in a set of alternative multiple sequence alignments. Our approach is based on the assumption that indels that are consistently present in most alternative alignments are more reliable compared with indels that appear only in a small subset of these alignments. Using simulated and empirical data, we studied the impact of filtering and weighting indels by their reliability scores on the accuracy of indel-based phylogenetic reconstruction. The new method is available as a web-server at http://guidance.tau. ac.il/RELINDEL/.
3-D Discrete Analytical Ridgelet Transform

In this paper, we propose an implementation of the 3-D Ridgelet transform: the 3-D discrete analytical Ridgelet transform (3-D DART). This transform uses the Fourier strategy for the computation of the associated 3-D discrete Radon transform. The innovative step is the definition of a discrete 3-D transform with the discrete analytical geometry theory by the construction of 3-D discrete analytical lines in the Fourier domain. We propose two types of 3-D discrete lines: 3-D discrete radial lines going through the origin defined from their orthogonal projections and 3-D planes covered with 2-D discrete line segments. These discrete analytical lines have a parameter called arithmetical thickness, allowing us to define a 3-D DART adapted to a specific application. Indeed, the 3-D DART representation is not orthogonal, It is associated with a flexible redundancy factor. The 3-D DART has a very simple forward/inverse algorithm that provides an exact reconstruction without any iterative method. In order to illustrate the potentiality of this new discrete transform, we apply the 3-D DART and its extension to the Local-DART (with smooth windowing) to the denoising of 3-D image and color video. These experimental results show that the simple thresholding of the 3-D DART coefficients is efficient
Call Admission and Resource Reservation for Guaranteed QoS services in Internet

Many audio and video \play-back" applications require that all of their packets arrive within their play-back time. Furthermore, the applications with the hard real-time requirements also require guaranteed service from the network. These applications are covered under the \Guaranteed Quality of Service" speciications by the IETF. It guarantees that the packets will arrive within the guaranteed delivery time and the packets will not be discarded due to queue overrows, provided the ow traac stays within its speciied traac parameters. This paper gives an eecient and distributed algorithm based on the cost function to divide the end-to-end guaranteed QoS requirements into local QoS requirements which are then mapped into local resource requirements. The algorithm operates in three phases. In the rst phase, the nodes in the selected route give the information about their utilization level and the parameters associated with the scheduling algorithm used by them. The receiving node, based upon the information provided by the nodes in the route and its end-to-end delay requirements, takes the call admission decision. Once the decision to admit the call is taken, the nodes in the route do the resource allocation to meet the delay bound. The sender node now calculates the slack produced if any. The slack is then distributed to the nodes in the third phase. The results obtained are then shown to be applicable to the resource allocation for multicast connection establishment.
No Gender Differences in Pacemaker Selection in Patients Undergoing Their First Implantation

Recent studies have indicated that women were less likely to receive sophisticated pacemaker devices than men. These differences could not be fully explained by demographic and clinical variables. The purpose of the present study was to assess whether a gender related difference might exist in pacemaker mode selection in patients undergoing their first implantation in The Netherlands. Records of first implants (n = 39,217) collected from 1988 through 1997 covering 95% of all implantations in The Netherlands. From this population 33,564 (85.6%) patients were included for final analysis. We observed no significant sex differences in pacemaker selection in patients with atrioventricular conduction disorders and bundle branch block. In patients with sick sinus syndrome, only very old women (≤ 85 years) had more atrial systems implanted than men of similar age (6.5% vs 3.5%), whereas men received more double chamber pacemakers (12.3% vs 10.3%) (P = 0.002). However, the relative distribution of physiological versus nonphysiological pacemakers in this subgroup was similar for men and women. In patients with chronic atrial fibrillation/flutter associated with bradycardia, sex differences were only apparent in the age group of 75–85 years; women received more dual chamber pacemakers (8,8% vs 5.3%) whereas men received more single chamber ventricular pacemakers (94.2% vs 89.8%) (P = 0.0011). With increasing age, sex differences in pacemaker selection were absent, but there was a considerable drop in implantation rate of dual chamber systems. Our study showed no major sex differences in the selection of pacemaker devices. Physicians select pacemaker devices by age rather than gender, which might be a rational choice.
Invasive Home Mechanical Ventilation: Living Conditions and Health-Related Quality of Life

Background: The number of patients with invasive home mechanical ventilation (HMV) following unsuccessful weaning is steadily increasing, but little is known about the living conditions and health-related quality of life (HRQL) in these patients. Objectives: To establish detailed information on living conditions and HRQL in patients with invasive HMV. Methods: The Severe Respiratory Insufficiency Questionnaire (SRI) was used to measure specific HRQL aspects in addition to patient interviews on individual living conditions during home visits. Results: Thirty-two patients with lung disease, most prominently COPD (n = 18), and neuromuscular disorders (n = 14) were included. The overall mean SRI summary scale score (range 0-100) was 53 ± 16, with a broad range amongst individuals (23-86). Neuromuscular patients were younger than those with lung diseases (49 ± 18 vs. 67 ± 11 years; p < 0.005), and although they had a higher nursing dependency and fewer comorbidities, they tended to have higher (better) SRI summary scale scores (58 ± 16 vs. 48 ± 15; p = 0.092). Living in a private home compared to living in nursing facilities did not influence the SRI scores. Conclusions: Patients undergoing invasive HMV primarily following unsuccessful weaning reported an individual HRQL which, when taken together, was highly heterogeneous and ranged from very good to extremely bad. Older patients with COPD and more comorbidities are likely to have a worse HRQL than neuromuscular patients, while the living situation does not influence the HRQL.
Extracellular inhibitors, repellents, and semaphorin/plexin/MICAL‐mediated actin filament disassembly

Multiple extracellular signals have been identified that regulate actin dynamics within motile cells, but how these instructive cues present on the cell surface exert their precise effects on the internal actin cytoskeleton is still poorly understood. One particularly interesting class of these cues is a group of extracellular proteins that negatively alter the movement of cells and their processes. Over the years, these types of events have been described using a variety of terms and herein we provide an overview of inhibitory/repulsive cellular phenomena and highlight the largest known protein family of repulsive extracellular cues, the Semaphorins. Specifically, the Semaphorins (Semas) utilize Plexin cell‐surface receptors to dramatically collapse the actin cytoskeleton and we summarize what is known of the direct molecular and biochemical mechanisms of Sema‐triggered actin filament (F‐actin) disassembly. We also discuss new observations from our lab that reveal that the multidomain oxidoreductase (Redox) enzyme Molecule Interacting with CasL (MICAL), an important mediator of Sema/Plexin repulsion, is a novel F‐actin disassembly factor. Our results indicate that MICAL triggers Sema/Plexin‐mediated reorganization of the F‐actin cytoskeleton and suggest a role for specific Redox signaling events in regulating actin dynamics. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Digital hardware implementation of bus-based, field-ordered Hopfield network using VHDL

This paper presents some new approach in designing hardware discrete Hopfield network. For the network architecture, the bus-based approach is used to largely reduce the number of connection count. Field-ordered updating algorithm is used in place of the typical random-ordered updating due to its added advantage in finding global minimum. As for the implementation, VLSI language has been used due to its ease in describing and documenting complex digital design. Besides, modern CAD tools enables the synthesis of VHDL codes into layout plans on customized FPGA chips and making corresponding timing simulation.
The Human UGT1A3 Enzyme Conjugates Norursodeoxycholic Acid into a C23-ester Glucuronide in the Liver*

Norursodeoxycholic acid (norUDCA) exhibits efficient anti-cholestatic properties in an animal model of sclerosing cholangitis. norUDCA is eliminated as a C23-ester glucuronide (norUDCA-23G) in humans. The present study aimed at identifying the human UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) enzyme(s) involved in hepatic norUDCA glucuronidation and at evaluating the consequences of single nucleotide polymorphisms in the coding region of UGT genes on norUDCA-23G formation. The effects of norUDCA on the formation of the cholestatic lithocholic acid-glucuronide derivative and of rifampicin on hepatic norUDCA glucuronidation were also explored. In vitro glucuronidation assays were performed with microsomes from human tissues (liver and intestine) and HEK293 cells expressing human UGT enzymes and variant allozymes. UGT1A3 was identified as the major hepatic UGT enzyme catalyzing the formation of norUDCA-23G. Correlation studies using samples from a human liver bank (n = 16) indicated that the level of UGT1A3 protein is a strong determinant of in vitro norUDCA glucuronidation. Analyses of the norUDCA-conjugating activity by 11 UGT1A3 variant allozymes identified three phenotypes with high, low, and intermediate capacity. norUDCA is also identified as a competitive inhibitor for the hepatic formation of the pro-cholestatic lithocholic acid-glucuronide derivative, whereas norUDCA glucuronidation is weakly stimulated by rifampicin. This study identifies human UGT1A3 as the major enzyme for the hepatic norUDCA glucuronidation and supports that some coding polymorphisms affecting the conjugating activity of UGT1A3 in vitro may alter the pharmacokinetic properties of norUDCA in cholestasis treatment.
Sodium and Other Inorganic Growth Requirements of Bacteroides amylophilus

Bacteroides amylophilus has growth requirements for Na+, PO43−, K+, and small quantities of Mg2+. No requirement could be shown for Ca2+ in media previously found growth-yield-limiting for Bacteroides succinogenes. Deletion of Co2+, Mn2+, Cl−, or SO42− did not affect growth. Quantitative studies indicate that Na+, K+, and PO43− have differing effects on the growth of B. amylophilus. A concentration of sodium and potassium ions affects both growth rate and growth yield, whereas a phosphate concentration markedly affects growth yield, but affects growth rate only slightly, if at all. The sodium requirement of B. amylophilus is absolute. It cannot be replaced by K+, Li+, Rb+, or Cs+. The latter three monovalent cations are toxic to B. amylophilus if supplied to the organism at Na+-replacing concentrations. K+ is inactive at similar concentrations. The K+ requirement of B. amylophilus may be satisfied by Rb+. The concentration of Na+ required by B. amylophilus for abundant growth suggests that B. amylophilus should be considered a slightly halophilic organism. The results suggest that Na+ may be a more frequent requirement among terrestial bacteria obtained from relatively low-salt environments than has been previously believed.
Franz Volhard Lecture. Evolution of the medullipin concept of blood pressure control: a tribute to Eric Muirhead.

THE HYPOTHESIS The medullipin system discovered by the late Eric E. Muirhead is a feedback blood-pressure control system operating from the renal medulla. In contrast to the renin-angiotensin system, which upregulates pressure, the medullipin system downregulates blood pressure. THE MECHANISM: A rise in arterial pressure has two important consequences. First, medullary blood flow increases, renal interstitial fluid pressure rises and there is a reduction in the medullary urea osmotic gradient. Second, secretion of medullipin I is increased, which circulates to the liver, where it is converted to the active hormone, medullipin II, by a P-450 cytochrome oxidase pathway. Both of these mechanisms work in parallel to reduce arterial pressure with an increase in the urinary excretion of sodium and water coupled with systemic arterial vasodilation by medullipin II.
Test slice difference technique for low power encoding

In this paper, we present a low power strategy for test data compression that is called ldquobreak-independent-table (BIT) encodingrdquo. In addition, we present a new decompression scheme for test vectors that is called ldquotest slice difference techniquerdquo to solve huge test data volume that must be stored in the tester memory. About how reducing power dissipation problem, we present an extremely efficient algorithm for scan chain reordering. Experimental results for several large ISCASpsila89 benchmark circuits show that the proposed scheme achieved higher compression ratio than previous approach, and the power consumption is also significantly reduction simultaneously.
Changes in Bone Mineral Density in Indian Women : A Cross-Sectional Study

Thirty million women in India suffer from osteoporosis, of which 50% are post-menopausal. WHO has predicted Asians to be largely affected by osteoporosis by the year 2050. An Observational study was carried out in 100 women enrolled between age 40-65 years attending Gynecology OPD at VPIMS, over a period of one year, after obtaining informed consent. It was observed that osteoporosis and osteopenia were significantly more common in older age. Of 100 women studied, low BMD was observed in age group 40-50 years in 65.7%, in 51-60 years it was 22.9%; all (11.4%) above age of 60 years. Osteopenia and osteoporosis were more common in lower (<18kg/m 2 ) Body Mass Index (BMI) categories as compared to higher BMI groups. A statistically significant positive association between parity and osteoporosis was observed. Low BMD increases with age and in postmenopausal period, suggesting lack of estrogenic activity might be responsible for this increasing trend. Obesity can produce higher bone mass due to the association of fat mass with secretion of bone active hormones and due to the weight bearing effect of excess soft tissue and fat on skeleton.
A VoIP Traffic Monitoring System based on NetFlow v9

With the development of VoIP (Voice over IP) service, new security threats are expected to be appeared. However, existing IP network security solutions can not detect new VoIP specified network threats because they can not reflect characteristics of VoIP. In this paper, we propose a novel system that can monitor VoIP service and detect VoIP network threats practically. The proposed system collects attributes of VoIP traffic based on NetFlow, and executes monitoring and detecting based on statistic and behavior.
New perspectives on lipid and surfactant based drug delivery systems for oral delivery of poorly soluble drugs

Objectives The aim of this review is to highlight relevant considerations when implementing a rational strategy for the development of lipid and surfactant based drug delivery system and to discuss shortcomings and challenges to the current classification of these delivery systems. We also aim to offer suggestions for an improved classification system that will accommodate lipid based formulations that are not currently accommodated in the lipid formulation classification system.
The acquisition of spanish codas: a frequency / sonority approach

The coda has attracted the attention of many acquisition researchers. They maintain that its development responds to considerable variability. Recent studies show that Spanish-speaking children acquire medial codas in stressed syllables before producing final ones. They also develop sonorants before obstruents and acquire the plural /-s/ before /s/. The present study shows that prosody alone does not determine the codas that occur in Spanish. Instead, it claims that sonorant and fricative distributions in a syllable are tied to their frequency of production and relative prominence in the universal sonority hierarchy. Medial and final codas tend to develop at about the same time. It appears that there is no distinction between the acquisition of /-s/ and final /s/. The fi-equent occurrences of medial nasal in codas are explained as being licensed by a follovving onset.
LOGICON: A System for Extracting Semantic Structure using Partial Parsing

Partial parsing is an established NLP technique used to perform syntactic analysis without generating a full constituent parse tree. This paper presents LOGICON, an endto-end system using partial parsing, which assigns novel semantic structures to natural language text. Evaluating against a test set of 500 previously unseen sentences, the system has an accuracy of 62.4% as measured by exact matching against the expected semantic output. Since partial parsing is used, the system is robust and will assign partial semantic structure to sentences it may not fully understand. As stochastic methods are not used, the system is deterministic and fast. A syntactic tagging scheme is proposed which is closely aligned to the corresponding semantics. The system was developed as part of a PhD research project, and was written to evaluate partial parsing as the first step to creating a full natural language question-answering system.