Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alveolar sodium and liquid transport in mice.

We have developed a simple isolated lung preparation for measurement of liquid and solute fluxes across mouse alveolar epithelium. Liquid instilled into air spaces was absorbed at the rate ( J w) of 3.7 ± 0.32 ml ⋅ h-1 ⋅ g dry lung wt-1. J w was significantly depressed by ouabain ( P< 0.001) and amiloride ( P < 0.001). Omission of glucose from the instillate or addition of the Na+-glucose cotransport inhibitor phloridzin did not affect J w. However, the low epithelial lining fluid glucose concentration (one-third that of plasma), the larger-than-mannitol permeability of methyl-α-d-glucopyranoside, and the presence of Na+-glucose cotransporter SGLT1 mRNA in mouse lung tissue suggest that there is a Na+-glucose cotransporter in the mouse alveolar-airway barrier. Isoproterenol stimulated J w (6.5 ± 0.45 ml ⋅ h-1 ⋅ g dry lung wt-1; P < 0.001), and this effect was blocked by amiloride, benzamil, ouabain, and the specific β2-adrenergic antagonist ICI-118551 but not by atenolol. Similar stimulation was obtained with terbutaline (6.4 ± 0.46 ml ⋅ h-1 ⋅ g dry lung wt-1). Na+ unidirectional fluxes out of air spaces varied in agreement with J w changes. Thus alveolar liquid absorption in mice follows Na+ transport via the amiloride-sensitive pathway, with little contribution from Na+-glucose cotransport, and is stimulated by β2-adrenergic agonists.
microRNA-10b expression and its correlation with molecular subtypes of early invasive ductal carcinoma

The present study aimed to determine whether the expression of microRNA (miR)-10b was correlated with the molecular subtypes of early invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast. In situ hybridization was used to detect the expression of miR-10b in 193 patients diagnosed with early invasive ductal carcinoma. Immunohistochemistry was performed to evaluate the expression of estrogen receptor (ER)-α, progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (Her-2). The positive expression rate of miR-10b in patients with early invasive ductal carcinoma with ER-α (+) or PR (+) was decreased compared with ER-α (−) or PR (−) patients (P<0.05). Furthermore, the positive expression rate of miR-10b in patients with Her-2 (−) was significantly increased compared with patients that were Her-2 (+) (P=0.031). The positive expression rate of miR-10b in the luminal B subtype was significantly decreased compared with that in the luminal A, Her-2 and basal-like subtypes (P=0.037). In patients that were identified as miR-10b (+), the median disease-free survival time was significantly increased in patients that were ER-α (+)/PR (+)/Her-2 (−) compared with patients that were ER-α (−)/PR (−)/Her-2 (+) (P<0.05). In addition, the median disease-free survival time was significantly decreased in Her-2 overexpression and basal-like subtypes when compared with luminal A and B subtypes (P<0.05). The molecular subtype was an independent prognostic factor for early invasive ductal carcinoma (odds ratios for luminal B, Basal-like, and Her-2 overexpression were 2.900, 5.232 and 4.214, respectively; all P<0.05). Positive expression of miR-10b may also be a prognostic risk factor (odds ratio >1), though this was not statistically significant (P>0.05). The present findings indicated that miR-10b-positive expression was correlated with the expression of ER-α, Her-2 and the molecular subtypes of early invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast.
Soy isoflavone aglycones are absorbed faster and in higher amounts than their glucosides in humans.

Isoflavones are contained in soybean or soy foods in two chemical forms, i.e., aglycones and glucosides. We investigated the difference in the absorption of soy isoflavone aglycones and glucosides in humans. After a single, low dose intake (0.11 mmol), the highest isoflavone concentrations in plasma were reached 2 and 4 h after ingestion of aglycones and glucosides, respectively; subjects were four men (41 y old) and four women (45 y old). The highest plasma concentration after aglycone intake was more than two times greater than that after glucoside ingestion. In a similar manner, we then compared the plasma isoflavone concentration profiles after intake of a single, high dose of isoflavones (1.7 mmol) in eight subjects (four men, 40 y old; four women, 47 y old) and found the highest plasma concentration after aglycone intake was more than five times higher than that after glucoside intake. In both high and low dose intake tests, the plasma concentration of genistein was significantly higher than that of daidzein despite the similar levels of intake. After long-term (4 wk) intakes (0.30 mmol/d), we also measured the plasma concentration of isoflavones (eight men, 45 y old). After 2 and 4 wk, these concentrations remained >100% higher after ingestion of aglycones than of glucosides. The isoflavone aglycones were absorbed faster and in greater amounts than their glucosides in humans. Isoflavone aglycone-rich products may be more effective than glucoside-rich products in preventing chronic disease such as coronary heart disease.
Quantification of the cytoplasmic spaces of living cells with EGFP reveals arrestin-EGFP to be in disequilibrium in dark adapted rod photoreceptors

The hypothesis is tested that enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) can be used to quantify the aqueous spaces of living cells, using as a model transgenic Xenopus rods. Consistent with the hypothesis, regions of rods having structures that exclude EGFP, such as the mitochondrial-rich ellipsoid and the outer segments, have highly reduced EGFP fluorescence. Over a 300-fold range of expression the average EGFP concentration in the outer segment was approximately half that in the most intensely fluorescent regions of the inner segment, in quantitative agreement with prior X-ray diffraction estimates of outer segment cytoplasmic volume. In contrast, the fluorescence of soluble arrestin-EGFP fusion protein in the dark adapted rod outer segment was approximately threefold lower than predicted by the EGFP distribution, establishing that the fusion protein is not equilibrated with the cytoplasm. Arrestin-EGFP mass was conserved during a large-scale, light-driven redistribution in which ∼40% of the protein in the inner segment moved to the outer segment in less than 30 minutes.
The Effect of Partner Reauditorization on Undergraduates' Attitudes Toward a Peer Who Communicates With Augmentative and Alternative Communication.

Purpose This study compared college students' attitudes toward a peer who used a nonelectronic augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) system with and without a partner reauditorization strategy and also examined the effect of reauditorization on reported (a) ease of understanding the peer who used AAC, (b) willingness to engage in interactions with the peer who used AAC, and (c) preferences regarding AAC systems. Method Sixty-four participants completed surveys after viewing each of 2 counterbalanced conditions involving a video of a peer who communicated using AAC. Mean survey ratings were compared between conditions. Results Participants reported (a) more positive attitudes toward, (b) a greater ease in understanding, and (c) an increased willingness to interact with the peer who used nonelectronic AAC with partner reauditorization. Participants indicated that reauditorization contributed positively to the observed conversation. Reported preferences for nonelectronic AAC systems did not vary as a function of reauditorization, and most participants reported a preference for an electronic speech-generating device when compared with a nonelectronic system. Conclusion Partner reauditorization may play a role in improving attitudes that individuals hold about peers who use nonelectronic AAC and may contribute to ease of understanding the aided message and increased likelihood of peer interactions.
Mining the Potential of Label-Free Biosensors for In Vitro Antipsychotic Drug Screening

The pharmaceutical industry is facing enormous challenges due to high drug attribution rates. For the past decades, novel methods have been developed for safety and efficacy testing, as well as for improving early development stages. In vitro screening methods for drug-receptor binding are considered to be good alternatives for decreasing costs in the identification of drug candidates. However, these methods require lengthy and troublesome labeling steps. Biosensors hold great promise due to the fact that label-free detection schemes can be designed in an easy and low-cost manner. In this paper, for the first time in the literature, we aimed to compare the potential of label-free optical and impedimetric electrochemical biosensors for the screening of antipsychotic drugs (APDs) based on their binding properties to dopamine receptors. Particularly, we have chosen a currently-used atypical antipsychotic drug (Buspirone) for investigating its dopamine D3 receptor (D3R) binding properties using an impedimetric biosensor and a nanoplasmonic biosensor. Both biosensors have been specifically functionalized and characterized for achieving a highly-sensitive and reliable analysis of drug-D3R binding. Our biosensor strategies allow for comparing different affinities against the D3R, which facilitates the identification of strong or weak dopamine antagonists via in vitro assays. This work demonstrates the unique potential of label-free biosensors for the implementation of cost-efficient and simpler analytical tools for the screening of antipsychotic drugs.
Ginger Supplementation Enhances Working Memory of the Post-Menopause Women

Problem statement: Cognitive impairment is one important problem in post-menopausal women. Although hormone therapy can improve this condition, it also produces adverse effect. Recent findings showed that this condition could be mitigated by the herb. Ginger or Zingiber officinale Roscoe, a plant in a family of Zingiberaceae, was previously demonstrated the neuroprotection and cognitive enhancing effects. Therefore, this study was set up to determine whether ginger rhizome extract could improve attention and working memory of the post-menopausal women. Approach: Sixty healthy post-menopausal women were randomly assigned to receive either placebo or standardized plant extract at doses of 400 and 800 mg once daily for 3 months. After the assessment of biographic information, they were evaluated the working memory and cognitive function using computerized battery test and the auditory oddball paradigm of event related potential before and after 3-month of intervention. Results: The ginger treated group decreased N100 and P300 latencies but increased N100 and P300 amplitudes in accompany with the enhanced working memory including the power of attention, continuity of attention, speed and quality of memory. Conclusion: Our results suggested that ginger is the potential cognitive enhancer for post-menopausal women. However, further researches are still required.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and malnutrition in developing countries

Purpose of review Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic inflammatory lung disorder characterized by progressive, poorly reversible airflow limitation. In addition to its pulmonary manifestations, COPD is also associated with several systemic expressions including anemia, osteoporosis, coronary artery disease, and malnutrition. In COPD, malnutrition is a consequence of reduced nutritional intake and muscle loss, further compounded by systemic inflammation. In the developing world, malnutrition is a significant problem by itself, even without any systemic illness. It is likely that the occurrence and consequence of malnutrition in COPD may be even more profound in developing countries. In this review, we discuss the relationship between malnutrition and COPD and their overall impact in the developing world. Recent findings COPD is highly prevalent in developing countries with an estimated 15–43 million patients suffering from COPD. The pooled prevalence of malnutrition in COPD was found to be 47.6% [95% confidence interval (CI), 23.5–71.5%] with the prevalence being higher in acute exacerbations of COPD compared to stable COPD. Summary There is a need for generating good quality evidence from the developing world regarding the prevalence of malnutrition in COPD, the role of nutritional supplementation and its impact on exercise capacity, and overall health-related quality of life in patients with COPD.
Prolonged high intermittent positive-pressure ventilation induces airway remodeling and reactivity in young rats.

We postulated that prolonged exposure to intermittent positive-pressure ventilation (IPPV) with high pressure (HIPPV) alone without hyperoxia promotes the development of airway hyperresponsiveness and remodeling. To test this hypothesis, young rats were ventilated under halothane anesthesia with HIPPV (maximum inspiratory pressure at 32-35 cmH2O in 70% nitrous oxide and 30% O2) for 3.5-4 h daily for 6 days. Control rats were ventilated with low IPPV (maximum inspiratory pressure < 13 cmH2O) during the same time period with the same gas mixture. With the use of tracheal rings isolated from these rats and a setup in tissue baths, contractile responses to carbachol (10-6 to 10-2 mM), 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT; 10-9 to 10-5 mM) and KCl (1-100 mM) were examined isometrically. In tracheal rings from HIPPV rats compared with low-pressure IPPV rats, the concentration tension curves showed a significantly enhanced response to all agonists ( P < 0.005). Sensitivity to carbachol, 5-HT, and KCl was also significantly increased ( P < 0.05) compared with control rats as evidenced by decreases in EC50. Maximum tension (reactivity) to 5-HT and KCl in the HIPPV group increased significantly ( P < 0.05), and there was a trend ( P = 0.07) toward increased reactivity to carbachol in this group as well. Histological examinations of tracheal rings demonstrated epithelial squamous metaplasia in the HIPPV group. Morphometric studies demonstrated tracheal smooth muscle thickening ( P < 0.05) without changes in the thickness of the mucosa or the lamina propria. When contractile responses were normalized for the smooth muscle cross-sectional area (i.e., stress), reactivity to all contractile agents was reduced, whereas reactivity to 5-HT still demonstrated significant increase ( P < 0.005). Sensitivity of tracheal segments to all three agents was not affected by this normalization. These findings suggest that prolonged exposure to HIPPV without hyperoxia and the resultant overdistension of lung tissues (volutrauma) induced airway remodeling and airway hyperreactivity.
Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Ti and Ni Particles on Ti Substrate in the Cold Gas Dynamic Spray (CGDS) Process

This paper presents simulation of molecular dynamics for the deposition of Titanium (Ti) and Nickel (Ni) particles on Ti substrate during Cold Gas Dynamic Spray (CGDS) process. The influencing factors of the deposition process, such as particle incident velocity, particle size and particle temperature are taken into consideration. Ti and Ni were selected because of their potential applications in the aerospace, marine and bio-medical industries. CGDS is preferred because it is a state of the art technique by which coatings are created without significant heating of the sprayed powder. In CGDS, particles are accelerated to supersonic velocities using a high speed gas stream. However, there are inherent difficulties in relating particle deposition characteristics with influencing factors of the deposition process. Moreover, there is limited literature on molecular dynamics simulation of CGDS process. For this reason, this paper develops a simulation process for Ti and Ni particles under influence of many factors using molecular dynamics. In this process, particles are allowed to interact for a short time, giving a view of their motion. The trajectories of these particles are determined by numerically solving the Newton's equations of motion for a system of interacting particles, in which the forces between the particles are defined. The results of the simulation process show that higher incident velocities and larger particle sizes result in stronger interface between the particle and the substrate. Further, higher temperatures of the substrate and particles improve the bond strength.
Atorvastatin ameliorates early brain injury through inhibition of apoptosis and ER stress in a rat model of subarachnoid hemorrhage

Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is a severe cerebrovascular disease with very poor prognosis. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the protective effects of atorvastatin on early brain injury (EBI) after SAH using a perforation SAH model. Male Sprague–Dawley rats were randomly divided into four groups: the sham group, the SAH group (model group), SAH + 10 mg.kg−1.day−1 atorvastatin (low atorvastatin group), and SAH + 20 mg.kg−1.day−1 atorvastatin (high atorvastatin group). Atorvastatin was administered orally by gastric gavage for 15 days before operation. At 24 h after SAH, we evaluated the effects of atorvastatin on brain water content, apoptosis by TUNEL assay and scanning electron microscope (SEM), and the expression of apoptosis-related proteins by immunofluorescence and Western blotting analysis. Compared with the sham group, we observed increased brain water content, significant apoptosis, and elevated levels of apoptosis-related proteins including caspase-3, CCAAT enhancer-binding protein homologous protein (CHOP), the 78-kDa glucose-regulated protein (GRP78), and aquaporin-4 (AQP4) in the SAH group. Atorvastatin administration under all doses could significantly reduce brain water content, apoptosis, and the expression levels of caspase-3, CHOP, GRP78, and AQP4 at 24 h after SAH. Our data show that early treatment with atorvastatin effectively ameliorates EBI after SAH through anti-apoptotic effects and the effects might be associated inhibition of caspase-3 and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress related proteins CHOP and GRP78.
Whole-grain intake is favorably associated with metabolic risk factors for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the Framingham Offspring Study.

BACKGROUND The influence of whole grains on cardiovascular disease risk may be mediated through multiple pathways, eg, a reduction in blood lipids and blood pressure, an enhancement of insulin sensitivity, and an improvement in blood glucose control. OBJECTIVE The objective was to examine the association between diets rich in whole- or refined-grain foods and several metabolic markers of disease risk in the Framingham Offspring Study cohort. DESIGN Whole-grain intake and metabolic risk markers were assessed in a cross-sectional study of 2941 subjects. RESULTS After adjustment for potential confounding factors, whole-grain intake was inversely associated with body mass index (: 26.9 in the lowest and 26.4 in the highest quintile of intake; P for trend = 0.06), waist-to-hip ratio (0.92 and 0.91, respectively; P for trend = 0.005), total cholesterol (5.20 and 5.09 mmol/L, respectively; P for trend = 0.06), LDL cholesterol (3.16 and 3.04 mmol/L, respectively; P for trend = 0.02), and fasting insulin (205 and 199 pmol/L, respectively; P for trend = 0.03). There were no significant trends in metabolic risk factor concentrations across quintile categories of refined-grain intake. The inverse association between whole-grain intake and fasting insulin was most striking among overweight participants. The association between whole-grain intake and fasting insulin was attenuated after adjustment for dietary fiber and magnesium. CONCLUSION Increased intakes of whole grains may reduce disease risk by means of favorable effects on metabolic risk factors.
Extracting Timed Automata from Java Methods

The verification of the time behavior in distributed, multi-threaded programs is challenging, mainly because modern programming languages only provide means to represent time without a proper semantics. Current approaches to extract time models from source code represent time only as a sequence of events or require developers to manually provide a formal model of the time behavior. This makes it difficult for developers to verify various aspects of their systems, such as timeouts, delays and periodicity of the execution.In this paper, we introduce a definition of the time semantics of the Java programming language. Based on the semantics, we present an approach to automatically extract timed automata and their time constraints from the Java methods source code. First, we detect Java statements which involve time, from which we then extract the timed automata that are directly amenable to the verification of time properties of the methods.We evaluated the accuracy of our approach on ten open source Java projects that heavily use time in their source code. The results show a precision of 98.62% and recall of 95.37% in extracting time constraints from Java code. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach with five reported bugs of four different Apache systems that we could confirm.
Acute changes in neuromuscular excitability after exhaustive whole body vibration exercise as compared to exhaustion by squatting exercise

The effects of hard squatting exercise with (VbX+) and without (VbX−) vibration on neuromuscular function were tested in 19 healthy young volunteers. Before and after the exercise, three different tests were performed: maximum serial jumping for 30 s, electromyography during isometric knee extension at 70% of the maximum voluntary torque, and the quantitative analysis of the patellar tendon reflex. Between VbX+ and VbX− values, there was no difference found under baseline conditions. Time to exhaustion was significantly shorter in VbX+ than in VbX− (349 ± 338 s versus 515 ± 338 s), but blood lactate (5·49 ± 2·73 mmol l−1 versus 5·00 ± 2·26 mmol l−1) and subjectively perceived exertion (rate of perceived exertion values 18·1 ± 1·2 versus 18·6 ± 1·6) at the termination of exercise indicate comparable levels of fatigue. After the exercise, comparable effects were observed on jump height, ground contact time, and isometric torque. The vastus lateralis mean frequency during isometric torque, however, was higher after VbX+ than after VbX−. Likewise, the tendon reflex amplitude was significantly greater after VbX+ than after VbX− (4·34 ± 3·63 Nm versus 1·68 ± 1·32 Nm). It is followed that in exercise unto comparable degrees of exhaustion and muscular fatigue, superimposed 26 Hz vibration appears to elicit an alteration in neuromuscular recruitment patterns, which apparently enhance neuromuscular excitability. Possibly, this effect may be exploited for the design of future training regimes.