Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Raman and infrared spectra of cytochrome c peroxidase-carbon monoxide adducts in alternative conformational states.

Resonance Raman (RR) spectra are reported for CO-bound cytochrome c peroxidase (CCP). At low pH, two forms are observed: form II, with nu Fe-C = 530 cm-1 and delta FeCO = 585 cm-1, and form I, with nu Fe-C = 495 cm-1 and no detectable delta FeCO. They appear to have coincident nu CO infrared bands, at 1922 cm-1. These low-pH forms, similar to those observed for horseradish peroxidase (HRP), are attributed to tilted, H-bonded CO and perpendicular CO, respectively. The frequencies differ between the two proteins, a weaker H bond to CO being indicated for CCP. As with HRP, the equilibrium between forms I and II is shifted toward the latter at increasing CO concentrations, suggesting that secondary binding of CO perturbs the distal residues. At high pH [8.4, tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane buffer] the form II fraction converts to another form, II', with nu FeC = 503 cm-1, delta FeCO = 575 cm-1, and nu CO = 1948 cm-1; a tilted, non-H-bonded geometry is suggested. If phosphate buffer is used, however, form II (H bonded) persists at pH 8.4. This result establishes a role for phosphate in stabilizing the H-bonded form of the enzyme; it is suggested that phosphate binds near the distal imidazole and substantially increases its pKa. The conformational state is also influenced by aging. Fresh protein contains purely high spin FeIII heme, as monitored by the high-frequency RR spectrum, and yields form II almost exclusively at elevated CO concentrations. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
diagnostic criteria for temporomandibular disorders ( RDC / TMD ) : development of image analysis criteria and examiner reliability for image analysis

Objective. As part of the Multisite Research Diagnostic Criteria For Temporomandibular Disorders (RDC/TMD) Validation Project, comprehensive temporomandibular joint diagnostic criteria were developed for image analysis using panoramic radiography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and computerized tomography (CT). Study design. Interexaminer reliability was estimated using the kappa ( ) statistic, and agreement between rater pairs was characterized by overall, positive, and negative percent agreement. Computerized tomography was the reference standard for assessing validity of other imaging modalities for detecting osteoarthritis (OA). Results. For the radiologic diagnosis of OA, reliability of the 3 examiners was poor for panoramic radiography ( 0.16), fair for MRI ( 0.46), and close to the threshold for excellent for CT ( 0.71). Using MRI, reliability was excellent for diagnosing disc displacements (DD) with reduction ( 0.78) and for DD without reduction ( 0.94) and good for effusion ( 0.64). Overall percent agreement for pairwise ratings was 82% for all conditions. Positive percent agreement for diagnosing OA was 19% for panoramic radiography, 59% for MRI, and 84% for CT. Using MRI, positive percent agreement for diagnoses of any DD was 95% and of effusion was 81%. Negative percent agreement was 88% for all conditions. Compared with CT, panoramic radiography and MRI had poor and marginal sensitivity, respectively, but excellent specificity in detecting OA. Conclusion. Comprehensive image analysis criteria for the RDC/TMD Validation Project were developed, which can reliably be used for assessing OA using CT and for disc position and effusion using MRI. (Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod 2009;107:844-860)
Initial Performance Evaluation on TD-SCDMA Long Term Evolution System

As the evolution of 3G, long term evolution (LTE) standardization activity is issued in 3GPP and 3GPP2. In previous paper OFDMA is proposed for downlink of LTE. As the channel reciprocity can be obtained in TD-SCDMA LTE system, the channel status information (CSI) can be exploited at the transmitter to obtain the spatial-frequency multiuser diversity by joint spatial-frequency subcarrier and antenna assignment of MIMO OFDMA for the independent fading of different user in spatial and frequency domain. To guarantee the user fairness, a joint spatial-frequency proportional fairness (PF) scheduling is proposed in this paper. Further, no inter-cell interference mitigation capability can be observed from the current MIMO OFDMA schemes in downlink, the soft frequency reuse is adopted in this paper to avoid the inter-cell interference. Finally the downlink performance of the TD-SCDMA LTE with no-real time service is evaluated with spatial frequency PF scheduling and soft frequency reuse in multi-cell scenario
Novel PSK enumeration for efficient VLSI implementation of MIMO detection

The paper discusses a Novel PSK enumeration technique for VLSI implementation of K-Best MIMO detection. The detection is modeled as a closet point search problem in N times N lattice and further simplified to a breadth first tree search problem of depth N for a N times N MIMO channel. The breadth first search has been carried out using spiral searches and a predictor-extender algorithm to decode the k best points in order of their path metric. The proposed enumeration technique is tested for a 4 times 4 MIMO channel with 64-QAM modulation. VLSI implementation of the PSK enumeration cell was implemented using Synopsys synthesis tool with a 0.13 mum CMOS technology and optimized to achieve an area of 764 mum2 and power of 52.58 muW.
Phenotype suppression: A postulated molecular mechanism for mediating the relationship of proliferation and differentiation by Fos/Jun interactions at AP‐1 sites in steroid responsive promoter elements of tissue‐specific genes

There is a generalized reciprocal relationship between cell growth and expression of genes that occurs following completion of proliferation, which supports the progressive development of cell and tissue phenotypes. Molecular mechanisms which couple the shutdown of proliferation with initiation of tissue‐specific gene transcription have been addressed experimentally in cultures of primary diploid osteoblasts that undergo a growth and differentiation developmental sequence. Evidence is presented for a model which postulates that genes transcribed post‐proliferatively are suppressed during cell growth by binding of the Fos/Jun protein complex to AP‐1 Promoter sites associated with vitamin D responsive elements of several genes encoding osteoblast phenotype markers (Type I collagen, alkaline phosphatase, osteocalcin).
Tone production in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants: a preliminary study

Objective More than a quarter of the world's population speak tone languages, such as Mandarin Chinese. In those languages, the pitch or tone pattern of a monosyllabic word conveys lexical meaning. The purpose of this study was to investigate tone production in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs). Material and Methods Speech samples were recorded from seven normal-hearing and four CI children aged 4–9 years. All subjects were native Mandarin speakers. The speech samples were used for acoustic analysis of the tone patterns, i.e. the fundamental frequency contours. In addition, a tone intelligibility test was carried out in which four normal-hearing native Mandarin-speaking adults listened to the speech materials and judged the intelligibility of the children's tone production. Results The tone production for the seven normal-hearing children was considered to be perfect in the intelligibility test. Acoustic analysis of the speech materials of the normal-hearing children produced the four typical tone patterns of Mandarin Chinese: (i) high and flat; (ii) rising; (iii) low and dipping; and (iv) falling. The tone patterns produced by the children with CIs tended to be flat, with some other patterns being irregular. The results of the tone intelligibility tests also showed degraded intelligibility of tone patterns. Conclusion A potential speech development deficit was documented in prelingually deafened children with CIs whose native language is a tone language. The imperfect tone production of the implant children, which can be attributed to the paucity of pitch information delivered via the current CI stimulation, may have significant implications for communication using tone languages. Further research is warranted to determine factors that may affect tone development in children with CIs.
Assessment of Swallowing Sounds' Stages with Hidden Markov Model

Swallowing sounds analysis has received much attention recently due to its diagnostic potentials. The process of swallowing is one of the most complicated mechanisms of the body, in which a few different events are occurred in a few milliseconds. The timing and coordination of these events within a breath cycle is crucial for a safe swallow to occur. In order to improve our ability to treat swallowing disorder and to create non-invasive acoustical diagnostic methods, we must develop a detailed understanding of how the swallowing sounds are produced and what the contribution of each swallowing event is to the sounds that are heard and recorded as swallowing sounds. This paper presents a hidden Markov model (HMM) of the swallowing sounds, in which it is shown for the first time that the swallowing sounds have three stages. The number of stages was found to be very consistent between the subjects and the bolus textures implying the robustness and fitness of the model
Recent studies of aldose reductase enzyme inhibition for diabetic complications.

Aldose reductase [ALR2; EC 1.1. 1.21], a key enzyme of polyol pathway, catalyzes NADPH-dependent reduction of glucose to sorbitol (Sorbitol pathway), and an excessive accumulation of intracellular sorbitol found in various tissues of diabetic animals and in cells cultured under high glucose conditions has been proposed to be an important factor for the pathogenesis of diabetic complications. The only strategy shown to be consistently beneficial in the treatment of diabetic complications is meticulous control of blood glucose. However, aldose reductase (AR) enzyme inhibition is becoming one of the therapeutic strategies that have been proposed to prevent or ameliorate long-term diabetic complications. Therefore, AR inhibitors (ARIs) hold promise for reducing metabolic nerve injury, but further study is needed. On the other hand, there is strong evidence to show that diabetes is associated with increased oxidative stress. However, the source of this oxidative stress remains unclear. This relationship between diabetic complications and free radical production was also under investigation. The studies suggest that hydroxyl radical is indirectly inhibited by ARIs resulting from decreasing polyol levels and hydroxyl radical formation is related to the early stages of diabetic complications, possibly via the Fenton reaction involving H(2)O(2) produced from the activated polyol pathway. Therefore, it is proposed that hydroxyl radical may accelerate damage to the cell membranes resulting from polyol accumulation. The search for specific inhibitors of AR enzyme has still become a major pharmaceutic challenge, though a number of AR inhibitors have so far been assessed for diabetic complications.
Discriminative Re-ranking of Diverse Segmentations

This paper introduces a hybrid, two-stage approach to semantic image segmentation. In the first stage a probabilistic model generates a set of diverse plausible segmentations. In the second stage, a discriminatively trained re-ranking model selects the best segmentation from this set. The re-ranking stage can use much more complex features than what could be tractably used in the probabilistic model, allowing a better exploration of the solution space than possible by simply producing the most probable solution from the probabilistic model. While our proposed approach already achieves state-of-the-art results (48%) on the challenging VOC 2012 dataset, our machine and human analyses suggest that even larger gains are possible with such an approach.
Revisiting the putative TCR Cα dimerization model through structural analysis

Despite major advances in T cell receptor (TCR) biology and structure, how peptide–MHC complex (pMHC) ligands trigger αβ TCR activation remains unresolved. Two views exist. One model postulates that monomeric TCR–pMHC ligation events are sufficient while a second proposes that TCR–TCR dimerization in cis via Cα domain interaction plus pMHC binding is critical. We scrutinized 22 known TCR/pMHC complex crystal structures, and did not find any predicted molecular Cα–Cα contacts in these crystals that would allow for physiological TCR dimerization. Moreover, the presence of conserved glycan adducts on the outer face of the Cα domain preclude the hypothesized TCR dimerization through the Cα domain. Observed functional consequences of Cα mutations are likely indirect, with TCR microclusters at the immunological synapse driven by TCR transmembrane/cytoplasmic interactions via signaling molecules, scaffold proteins, and/or cytoskeletal elements.
Squamous Cell Carcinoma in a Chronically Rejected Renal Allograft

The malignant degeneration of a chronically rejected kidney allograft has been rarely reported. Almost invariably such malignancies originated in the transitional epithelium. We herein present the first occurrence of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), originating from occult donor cells, in a chronically rejected renal allograft. Nearly 20 years after chronic rejection and loss of function of a cadaver renal graft, our patient developed increasing abdominal discomfort, decrease in appetite and weight loss. A CT‐scan of the abdomen showed an abnormally enlarged and irregularly contoured mass at the level of the rejected allograft. Given the clinical and radiologic picture suggestive of either an infectious or intraparenchymal hemorrhagic process, a transplant nephrectomy was performed. At surgery, it was immediately evident that a malignant degenerative process had affected the graft. The histological features of the specimen were diagnostic for a well‐differentiated SCC. The donor origin of the tumor was established through a DNA microchimerism assay performed on the operative specimens. The patient did well after resection of the malignancy, although he died 5 months later owing to a myocardial infarction. In summary, even several years following the transplant, the possibility of a malignancy of donor origin developing within a failed allograft should always be considered as part of the differential diagnosis in unusual post‐transplant settings.
Targeted Radionuclide Therapy of Human Tumors

Targeted radionuclide therapy is one of the most intensively developing directions of nuclear medicine. Unlike conventional external beam therapy, the targeted radionuclide therapy causes less collateral damage to normal tissues and allows targeted drug delivery to a clinically diagnosed neoplastic malformations, as well as metastasized cells and cellular clusters, thus providing systemic therapy of cancer. The methods of targeted radionuclide therapy are based on the use of molecular carriers of radionuclides with high affinity to antigens on the surface of tumor cells. The potential of targeted radionuclide therapy has markedly grown nowadays due to the expanded knowledge base in cancer biology, bioengineering, and radiochemistry. In this review, progress in the radionuclide therapy of hematological malignancies and approaches for treatment of solid tumors is addressed.
Almost all extraspecial p-groups are swan groups

Let P be an extraspecial p-group which is neither dihedral of order 8, nor of odd order p3 and exponent p. Let G be a finite group having P as a Sylow p-subgroup. Then the mod-p cohomology ring of G coincides with that of the normaliser NG (P).
Analyzing polymeric nanofibrous scaffold performances in diabetic animal models for translational chronic wound healing research

Abstract Tissue-engineered scaffolds for skin wound healing have undergone tremendous progress since the advent of autologous skin grafts or autografts. The recognition that a three-dimensional (3D) scaffold more closely mimics the biochemical-mechanical milieu of wounds and advancing knowledge of cell biology has led to the next-generation of engineered biopolymeric nanoscaffolds. These can pave the way towards personalized wound care as they can address multiple requirements of skin physiology. A unifying approach is required for translational success of scaffolds, involving clinicians, biologists, and chemists. Following in vitro testing using cell lines, pre-clinical studies on animal models is the next crucial step towards scaffold clinical translation. Often, success noted in these studies does not replicate in human patients due to the heterogeneous nature of wound conditions and causes that cannot be found in a single animal model. In this review, we give an overview of the status of pre-clinical mice models for types 1 and 2 diabetic wound healing and relate this to studies conducted with polymeric nanoscaffolds. Translational shortcomings of these models are analyzed where they fail to provide a good replica of human conditions. Categorization and use of more sophisticated models, which can closely mimic the diabetic features, are addressed for translational use of nanoscaffolds.
Pulmonary Vascular Hemodynamic Response to Exercise in Cardiopulmonary Diseases

Pulmonary hypertension (PH), regardless of the pathobiology and site of functional changes, is characterized by an asymptomatic or a latent phase followed by a gradual reduction in exercise capacity related to decreasing right ventricular (RV) contractile reserve.1,2 In addition to right heart and pulmonary vascular function, other factors including ventilation/perfusion mismatch, hypoxemia, peripheral oxygen transportation/utilization, and impaired skeletal muscle function, may significantly influence the functional status of patients with PH.3 Guidelines provide a clinical classification system that categorizes PH into 5 groups with specific pathogenesis, pathologies, and clinical characteristics.1,2 The natural history of the disease is determined by the rapidity of increase in resting mean pulmonary artery pressure (mPAP) and the ability of the RV to compensate and hypertrophy, which differs depending on the pathobiology and related diseases.1,2 The definition of PH and PH groups is based on clinical assessment and invasive hemodynamics. Precapillary PH (groups 1 and 3–5) is characterized as a resting mPAP of ≥25 mm Hg and pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP) or left ventricular (LV) end-diastolic pressure ≤15 mm Hg. Postcapillary PH (group 2) is associated with an elevated pulmonary venous pressure (>15 mm Hg) related to left heart disease, which may involve abnormalities of the LV, mitral valve, or aortic valve.2 Although the group definitions for PH are helpful, in clinical practice, it is not uncommon for patients to have >1 disease associated with PH and to have both precapillary and postcapillary components, so called multifactorial PH (eg, aortic stenosis, systemic sclerosis, chronic thromboembolic disease) or out-of-proportion PH for a given condition (eg, chronic lung disease, chronic heart failure). The concept that symptoms associated with cardiopulmonary diseases would be associated with an abnormal increase in mPAP with exercise was …
Right on target: Novel approaches for the direct visualization of CD1-specific T cell responses

T cells typically recognize peptide fragments derived from antigenic proteins when these fragments are bound to a groove in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-encoded class I and II molecules. This phenomenon is known as antigen presentation (1). CD1 proteins constitute a third family of antigen-presenting molecules with a specialized function: the presentation of (glyco)lipid antigens (2). Although several reports have described T lymphocytes that are reactive to such CD1-bound (glyco)lipids, overall there is only a limited knowledge of their biology. Two papers in this issue of PNAS now describe an elegant method that allows the efficient refolding of recombinant CD1 proteins (3, 4). Moreover, they show that this method is useful for the construction of tetramers, reagents that can be used to identify and purify CD1-reactive cells with particular specificities. Reagents of this type should enhance our understanding of the function of CD1-reactive T lymphocytes greatly.
Excess mortality in men compared with women following a hip fracture. National analysis of comedications, comorbidity and survival.

INTRODUCTION osteoporosis is a common disease, and the incidence of osteoporotic fractures is expected to rise with the growing elderly population. Immediately following, and probably several years after a hip fracture, patients, both men and women, have a higher risk of dying compared to the general population regardless of age. The aim of this study was to assess excess mortality following hip fracture and, if possible, identify reasons for the difference between mortality for the two genders. METHODS this is a nationwide register-based cohort study presenting data from the National Hospital Discharge Register on mortality, comorbidity and medication for all Danish patients (more than 41,000 persons) experiencing a hip fracture between 1 January 1999 and 31 December 2002. Follow-up period was until 31 December 2005. RESULTS we found a substantially higher mortality among male hip fracture patients than female hip fracture patients despite men being 4 years younger at the time of fracture. Both male and female hip fracture patients were found to have an excess mortality rate compared to the general population. The cumulative mortality at 12 months among hip fracture patients compared to the general population was 37.1% (9.9%) in men and 26.4% (9.3%) in women. In the first year, the risk of death significantly increased for women with increasing age (hazard ratio, HR: 1.06, 95% confidence interval, CI: 1.06-1.07), the number of comedications (HR 1.04, 95% CI 1.03-1.05) and the presence of specific Charlson index components and medications described below. For men, age (HR 1.07, 95% CI 1.07-1.08), number of comedications (HR 1.06, 95% CI 1.04-1.07) and presence of different specific Charlson index components and medications increased the risk. Long-term survival analyses revealed that excess mortality for men compared with women remained strongly significant (HR 1.70, 95% CI 1.65-1.75, P < 0.001), even when controlled for age, fracture site, the number of medications, exposure to drug classes A, C, D, G, J, M, N, P, S and for chronic comorbidities. CONCLUSION excess mortality among male patients cannot be explained by controlling for known comorbidity and medications. Besides gender, we found higher age and multimorbidity to be related to an increased risk of dying within the first year after fracture; acute complications might be one of the explanations. This study emphasises the need for particular rigorous postoperative diagnostic evaluation and treatment of comorbid conditions in the male hip fracture patient.
OECD-ILO CONFERENCE ON CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Employment and Industrial Relations: Promoting Responsible Business Conduct in a Globalising Economy

EIRIS is an internationally respected leading institute providing research and advisory services on listed companies to investors on issues of business ethics. Since 2001, it has been acting as a partner of the Investment Committee in preparing background material on companies' published policies, management systems and reporting practices in environment, supply chain, finance, corporate responsibility practices of emerging market MNEs and other areas covered by the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.