Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In-vitro Callus Propagation and Secondary Metabolite Quantification in Sericostoma pauciflorum

Sericostoma pauciflorum Stocks ex Wight (Family Boraginaceae) used against cancer, diabetes and known to be health promoter. Callus cultures have been established from the stem explants on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 1.5 mg/L concentration of different growth hormone viz. kinetin (Kn), indole 3-acetic acid (IAA) and indole 3-butyric acid (IBA). At 6 weeks of age, these calli were harvested, dried and extracted successively in pet, ether, methanol and water. Extracts were dried, weighed (%) and analyzed for their bioefficacies. Antimicrobial activities were determined using agar well diffusion and antioxidant potentials by DPPH and FRAP methods. Among all the test extracts, the extract of stem callus raised on IBA found to be more effective whereas it’s pet. ether extract showed appreciable activity against both the test bacteria and fungi (S. aureus- IZ 14.00 ± 0.57 mm and T. rubrum- 16.33 ± 0.32 mm), followed by methanol extract (S. aureus- IZ 13.00 ± 0.57 mm, A. niger and P. chrysogenum- IZ 16.66 mm in both). In antioxidant potentials, all aqueous extracts were more active where IBA and Kn extracts demonstrated 0.06 mg/mL IC50 value (% inhibition 93.30 and 92.70 respectively at 0.8 mg/mL concentration) with 366 ± 6.69 and 343 ± 3.34 ascorbic acid equivalent antioxidant potentials at 1 mg/mL concentration. Furthermore, the chemical profile of test extracts was carried out. The bioactive secondary metabolites, β-sitosterol and caffeic acid was isolated from culture tissue of 6 weeks-old callus, and their identification and confirmation was carried out by color reaction, TLC behavior and IR spectrum techniques.
Attributions of blame and coping in the "real world": severe accident victims react to their lot.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between victims' attributions of causality for their accidents and their ability to cope with severe misfortune. A total of 29 individuals who had been paralyzed in serious accidents were intensively interviewed. Both quantitative and open-ended questions were used to elicit attributions of blame and causality by respondents; coping scores were obtained from a social worker and a nurse familiar with each respondent's case. Findings suggested that blaming another and feeling that one could have avoided the accident were successful predictors of poor coping; self-blame was a successful predictor of good coping. The question, "Why me? " was posed by all respondents, and 28 of the 29 related specific hypotheses that they entertained to explain why the accident had happened to them. Their responses seemed to illustrate the respondents' need for meaning in explaining the selective incidence of the accident.
Pharmacologic treatment of bronchiolitis in infants and children: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND Bronchiolitis is the most common lower respiratory tract infection in infants. Up to 3% of all children in their first year of life are hospitalized with bronchiolitis. Bronchodilators and corticosteroids are commonly used treatments, but little consensus exists about optimal management strategies. OBJECTIVE To conduct a systematic review of the effectiveness of commonly used treatments for bronchiolitis in infants and children. DATA SOURCES We searched MEDLINE and the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register for references to randomized controlled trials of bronchiolitis treatment published since 1980. STUDY SELECTION Randomized controlled trials of interventions for bronchiolitis in infants and children were included if they were published in English between 1980 and November 2002 and had a minimum sample size of 10. DATA EXTRACTION We abstracted data on characteristics of the study population, interventions used, and results of studies meeting entry criteria into evidence tables and analyzed them by drug category. DATA SYNTHESIS Interventions were grouped by drug category and qualitatively synthesized. RESULTS Of 797 abstracts identified in the literature search, we included 54 randomized controlled trials. This review includes 44 studies of the most common interventions: epinephrine (n = 8), beta2-agonist bronchodilators (n = 13), corticosteroids (n = 13), and ribavirin (n = 10). Studies were, in general, underpowered to detect statistically significant outcome differences between study groups. Few studies collected data on outcomes that are of great importance to parents and clinicians, such as the need for and duration of hospitalization. CONCLUSIONS Overall, little evidence supports a routine role for any of these drugs in treating patients with bronchiolitis. A sufficiently large, well-designed pragmatic trial of the commonly used interventions for bronchiolitis is needed to determine the most effective treatment strategies for managing this condition.
Acropetal: a genetic locus required for conidiophore architecture and pathogenicity in the rice blast fungus.

Fungal spores are a primary means of dissemination and are the major sources of inoculum in pathogenic species. Sporulation in the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea involves the production of three-celled conidia, borne sympodially on an aerial conidiophore. A disease cycle initiates when spores are dispersed and attach to the rice plant surface. Using insertional mutagenesis we have identified a major regulator of conidiophore morphogenesis in M. grisea. A null mutation in the acropetal (ACR1) locus causes a hypermorphic conidiation phenotype where indeterminate growth of the conidial tip cell results in the production of head-to-tail (acropetal) arrays of spores. acropetal mutants are nonpathogenic and fail to undergo infection-related morphogenesis. The ACR1 locus encodes a spore-specific transcript and acr1(-) mutants fail to turn off the expression of the hydrophobin encoding gene MPG1 in dormant spores. We propose that ACR1 is a stage-specific negative regulator of conidiation that is required to establish a sympodial pattern of spore formation. Interestingly a failure to establish the correct pattern of sporulation in M. grisea results in the production of spores that cannot progress through the disease cycle. Studies of Acropetal suggest that the diverse patterns of spore ontogeny in conidial fungi arose through alterations in major genes controlling spore-specific gene expression.
Waveform Design for Wireless Power Transfer

Far-field Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) has attracted significant attention in recent years. Despite the rapid progress, the emphasis of the research community in the last decade has remained largely concentrated on improving the design of energy harvester (so-called rectenna) and has left aside the effect of transmitter design. In this paper, we study the design of transmit waveform so as to enhance the dc power at the output of the rectenna. We derive a tractable model of the nonlinearity of the rectenna and compare with a linear model conventionally used in the literature. We then use those models to design novel multisine waveforms that are adaptive to the channel state information (CSI). Interestingly, while the linear model favours narrowband transmission with all the power allocated to a single frequency, the nonlinear model favours a power allocation over multiple frequencies. Through realistic simulations, waveforms designed based on the nonlinear model are shown to provide significant gains (in terms of harvested dc power) over those designed based on the linear model and over nonadaptive waveforms. We also compute analytically the theoretical scaling laws of the harvested energy for various waveforms as a function of the number of sinewaves and transmit antennas. Those scaling laws highlight the benefits of CSI knowledge at the transmitter in WPT and of a WPT design based on a nonlinear rectenna model over a linear model. Results also motivate the study of a promising architecture relying on large-scale multisine multiantenna waveforms for WPT. As a final note, results stress the importance of modeling and accounting for the nonlinearity of the rectenna in any system design involving wireless power.
Risk Factors for Fatality among Confirmed Adult Dengue Inpatients in Singapore: A Matched Case-Control Study

Objectives To identify demographic, clinical and laboratory risk factors for death due to dengue fever in adult patients in Singapore. Methods Multi-center retrospective study of hospitalized adult patients with confirmed dengue fever in Singapore between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2008. Non-fatal controls were selected by matching age and year of infection with fatal cases. World Health Organization 1997, 2009 criteria were applied to define dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), warning signs and severe dengue. Statistical significance was assessed by conditional logistic regression modeling. Results Significantly more fatal cases than matched controls had pre-existing co-morbid conditions, and presented with abdominal pain/tenderness. Median pulse rates were significantly higher while myalgia was significantly less frequent in cases. Fatal cases also had higher leucocyte counts, platelet counts, serum sodium, potassium, urea, creatine and bilirubin levels on admission compared to controls. There was no statistical significant difference between the prevalence of DHF and hematocrit level among cases and controls. Multivariate analysis showed myalgia and leucocyte count at presentation were independent predictors of fatality (adjusted odds ratios 0.09 and 2.94 respectively). None of the controls was admitted to intensive care unit (ICU) or given blood transfusion, while 71.4% and 28.6% of fatal cases received ICU admission and blood transfusion. Conclusions Absence of myalgia and leucocytosis on admission were independently associated with fatality in our matched case-control study. Fatalities were also commonly associated with co-morbidities and clinicians should be alarmed if dengue patients fulfilled severe dengue case definition on admission.
Ocular pulse amplitude in patients with open angle glaucoma, normal tension glaucoma, and ocular hypertension

Background/aim: Intraocular pressure (IOP) is not a fixed constant value but rather has pulsatile components associated with cardiac action. The SmartLens dynamic observing tonometer (odc, Ophthalmic Development Company AG, Zurich, Switzerland) can measure and record simultaneously IOP and ocular pulse amplitude (OPA). It was the aim of this study to evaluate OPA in patients with primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) and high IOP, normal tension glaucoma (NTG), and ocular hypertension (OHT). Furthermore, the authors examined whether there were any correlations with blood pressure. Methods: 80 subjects were divided into four groups (n=20): 20 patients each with POAG, NTG, and OHT and 20 volunteers without any ocular pathology except for cataract served as a control group. Results: The OPA of the POAG group was not statistically significant different from the control group and from the OHT group. However, OPA was statistically significant lower (p<0.01) in the NTG group compared with all other groups. The OPA of the OHT group was slightly higher compared to the healthy volunteers (p=0.09) and to the POAG patients (p=0.09). No statistically significant correlations with blood pressure could be detected. A logistic regression model was established which identified OPA as an independent risk factor for NTG. Conclusions: The study demonstrated a decrease in OPA of patients suffering from NTG. Thus, measuring of OPA by the SmartLens dynamic observing tonometer could be helpful in the detection of NTG patients.
Pulse electrodeposited RuO2 electrodes for high-performance supercapacitor applications

The present work addresses high-performance Ruthenium Oxide (RuO2) electrodes prepared by using a simple pulse electrodeposition method. For the comparison purpose, two different precursors, namely, ruthenium (III) nitrosyl sulphate (RuNS) and ruthenium trichloride (RuCl3), were used in this study. The coatings were subjected to material characterisation such as Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy and Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and Transmission electron microscopy as well as electrochemical characterisation such as Cyclic Voltammetry, Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and charge/discharge. The RuNS–RuO2 coating exhibited excellent specific capacitance (1724 F/g at 5 A/g) with a remarkable rate capability. This value is significantly higher (52%) than the value obtained for RuCl3–RuO2 electrode material at 5 A/g. The findings provide valuable information on the potential use of RuNS as a precursor for synthesising RuO2 and pulse electrodeposition process to produce electrodes for supercapacitors.
Human motion synthesis from 3D video

Multiple view 3D video reconstruction of actor performance captures a level-of-detail for body and clothing movement which is time-consuming to produce using existing animation tools. In this paper we present a framework for concatenative synthesis from multiple 3D video sequences according to user constraints on movement, position and timing. Multiple 3D video sequences of an actor performing different movements are automatically constructed into a surface motion graph which represents the possible transitions with similar shape and motion between sequences without unnatural movement artifacts. Shape similarity over an adaptive temporal window is used to identify transitions between 3D video sequences. Novel 3D video sequences are synthesized by finding the optimal path in the surface motion graph between user specified key-frames for control of movement, location and timing. The optimal path which satisfies the user constraints whilst minimizing the total transition cost between 3D video sequences is found using integer linear programming. Results demonstrate that this framework allows flexible production of novel 3D video sequences which preserve the detailed dynamics of the captured movement for an actress with loose clothing and long hair without visible artifacts.
Influence of Filler Precoating and Printing Parameter on Mechanical Properties of 3D Printed Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene/Zinc Oxide Composite

ABSTRACT Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)/zinc oxide(ZnO) composites have been fabricated via fused deposition modelling technique. The effect of filler precoating and printing parameters on mechanical properties of the composites are investigated. The incorporation of precoated fillers and increase of infill density improve the tensile strength, Young’s modulus and hardness of the composites. Printing pattern determines mainly the tensile properties of the composites but has no significant effect on the hardness. Based on experimental results, it is suggested that line pattern printed with precoated fillers at medium dispenser speed and 100% infill density has resulted improved mechanical properties. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Cocaine Self-Administration Produces a Progressive Involvement of Limbic, Association, and Sensorimotor Striatal Domains

The primate striatum is composed of limbic, cognitive, and sensorimotor functional domains. Although the effects of cocaine have generally been associated with the ventral striatum, or limbic domain, recent evidence in rodents suggests the involvement of the dorsal striatum (cognitive and sensorimotor domains) in cocaine self-administration. The goals of the present studies were to map the topography of the functional response to cocaine throughout the entire extent of the striatum of monkeys self-administering cocaine and determine whether this response is modified by chronic exposure to cocaine. Rhesus monkeys were trained to self-administer 0.3 mg/kg per injection cocaine for 5 d (initial stages; n = 4) or 100 d (chronic stages; n = 4) and compared with monkeys trained to respond under an identical schedule of food reinforcement (n = 6). Monkeys received 30 reinforcers per session, and metabolic mapping was conducted at the end of the 5th or 100th self-administration session. In the initial phases of cocaine exposure, self-administration significantly decreased functional activity in the ventral striatum, but only in very restricted portions of the dorsal striatum. With chronic cocaine self-administration, however, the effects of cocaine intensified and spread dorsally to include most aspects of both caudate and putamen. Early experiences with cocaine, then, involve mainly the limbic domain, an area that mediates motivational and affective functions. In contrast, as exposure to cocaine continues, the impact of cocaine impinges progressively on the processing of sensorimotor and cognitive information, as well as the affective and motivational information processed in the ventral striatum.
Pathophysiological and Clinical Relevance of Circulating Levels of Cardiac Natriuretic Hormones: Are They Merely Markers of Cardiac Disease?

Abstract Several specific and sensitive markers for myocardial injury as well as diagnostic tests for the assessment and stratification of cardiovascular risk have been recently introduced in clinical laboratories. However, until a few years ago, there were no laboratory tests for diagnosis, stratification and follow-up of patients with heart failure. The assay for cardiac natriuretic hormones (CNH) fills this gap. Heart failure is not only the most frequent “final common pathway” in cardiovascular disease, but is also the most common primary hospital discharge diagnosis, as well as the most common cause of death in patients over 50 years of age in Western countries; therefore, CNH assay may be destined to assume a growing relevance in clinical cardiology. However, to consider CNH assay only as a general and functional indicator of cardiac structural disease, without recalling that atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) and brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) are powerful hormones, may lead to underestimation of the physiological role they play in healthy subjects as well as in patients with heart failure. Indeed, the circulating levels of CNH should be always interpreted taking into account not only hemodynamic factors and myocardial performance, but also their relationship with the counter-regulatory neuroendocrine system (including renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, sympathetic system, endothelins, cytokines and vasopressin), as well as other hormones (such as sex steroid hormones, thyroid hormones and glucocorticoids).
Safety and Efficacy of Once Daily Intranasal Zanamivir in Preventing Experimental Human Influenza a Infection

Zanamivir, a potent inhibitor of influenza A and B virus neuraminidases, is protective against experimental human influenza when given intranasally twice daily. We conducted two studies to assess the pharmacokinetics and protective efficacy of a reduced frequency dosing regimen of topical zanamivir. In the first study, 36 uninfected volunteers received a single dose of zanamivir by intranasal spray (6.4 mg), intranasal drops (16 mg) or dry powder oral inhalation (10 mg). At 4 h, median nasal wash concentrations were 50-fold higher after intranasal dosing than after inhalation. Substantial levels (spray group, median 4596 ng/ml; drop group, 1239 ng/ml) were detected in nasal wash 48 h after intranasal dosing. In the double-blinded efficacy study, 47 sero-susceptible volunteers were randomized to receive either placebo or zanamivir intranasal spray (6.4 mg). Among the 43 subjects evaluated, decreases in viral shedding occurred in the group receiving one dose of zanamivir 4 h prior to inoculation, whereas no significant benefit was observed in those receiving a single dose 48 h prior to challenge. In the group given three daily doses, reductions were seen in viral shedding and infection. In the two regimens providing zanamivir 4 h prior to inoculation, significant reductions in nasal mucus weight were observed. Decreases in total symptom scores and the incidence of upper respiratory illness also occurred, but they did not reach statistical significance. The efficacy of a single dose of zanamivir given 4 h prior to inoculation supports the hypothesis that influenza virus neuraminidase is essential for initial virus spread through respiratory secretions. These findings indicate that once daily dosing of zanamivir is protective against experimental influenza A infection.
CD44 correlates with clinicopathological characteristics and is upregulated by EGFR in breast cancer

Cluster of differentiation 44 (CD44), a well-known transmembrane glycoprotein, serves as a promoting factor in the carcinogenesis and progression of a variety of neoplasms. Previous studies have demonstrated that aberrant expression of CD44 was associated with the initiation, invasion, metastasis, and therapy-resistance of breast cancer, but whether there was any association between CD44 and pathological characteristics of breast cancer or epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) has not been clearly elucidated. In this study, we utilized public microarray data analysis and tissue microarray technologies to display that CD44 level was enhanced in breast cancer and was significantly correlated with histological grade and the status of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) and EGFR. Furthermore, mRNA expression of CD44 in breast tumors was positively correlated with basal cytokeratin markers KRT5 and KRT17, but inversely associated with luminal marker FOXA1. Besides, Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that high CD44 mRNA level had adverse impact on the progression-free survival of patients with HER2-expressing or basal-like breast cancer. Functionally, inhibition of EGFR activity by erlotinib impaired the invasion and migration ability of breast cancer cell lines. Western blot assays demonstrated that erlotinib treatment decreased the expression of CD44, accompanied with the reduced protein levels of mesenchymal and cancer stem cell markers. Collectively, this study suggested that the expression of CD44 was upregulated by EGFR pathway and CD44 had a robust impact on the development of breast cancer.
Opinion Summarization in Bengali: A Theme Network Model

Theme network is a semantic network of document specific themes. So far Natural Language Processing (NLP) research patronized much of topic based summarizer system, unable to capture thematic semantic affinity of any text i.e. a news article containing the concepts, "gun," "convenience store," "demand money" and "make getaway" might suggest the topics "robbery" and "crime". In this paper the development of an opinion summarization system that works on Bengali News corpus has been described. The system identifies the sentiment information in each document, aggregates them and represents the summary information in text. The present system follows a topic-sentiment model for sentiment identification and aggregation. Topic-sentiment model is designed as discourse level theme identification and the topic-sentiment aggregation is achieved by theme clustering (k-means) and Document level Theme Relational Graph representation. The Document Level Theme Relational Graph is finally used for candidate summary sentence selection by standard page rank algorithms used in Information Retrieval (IR). As Bengali is a resource constraint language, the building of annotated gold standard corpus and acquisition of linguistics tools for lexico-syntactic, syntactic and discourse level features extraction are described in this paper. The reported accuracy of the Theme detection technique is 83.60% (precision), 76.44% (recall) and 79.85% (F-measure). The summarization system has been evaluated with Precision of 72.15%, Recall of 67.32% and F-measure of 69.65%.