Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microbial Products Alter the Expression of Membrane-Associated Mucin and Antimicrobial Peptides in a Three-Dimensional Human Endocervical Epithelial Cell Model1

ABSTRACT Our understanding of the mechanisms that regulate tissue-specific mucosal defense can be limited by the lack of appropriate human in vitro models. The endocervix lies between the microbe-rich vaginal cavity and the relatively sterile endometrium and is a major portal of entry for Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Mycoplasma genitalium, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection in women. The endocervix is lined with a simple epithelium, and these cells produce mucus, which plays a key role in immune defense and reproduction. Here we describe the development of a human three-dimensional endocervical epithelial cell model generated by rotating wall vessel bioreactor technology. The model is composed of cellular aggregates that recapitulate major structural and barrier properties essential for the function and protection of the endocervix, including junctional complexes, microvilli, innate immune receptors, antimicrobial peptides, and mucins, the major structural component of mucus. Using this model, we also report, for the first time, that the membrane-associated mucin genes MUC1, MUC4, and MUC16 are differentially regulated in these aggregates by different bacterial and viral products. Differential induction of antimicrobial peptides was also observed with these products. Together these data define unique and flexible innate endocervical immune signatures that follow exposure to microbial products and that likely play a critical role in the outcome of pathogen challenge at this site.
Functional dissection of Escherichia coli promoters: information in the transcribed region is involved in late steps of the overall process.

After binding to a promoter Escherichia coli RNA polymerase is in contact with a region of about 70 bp. Around 20 bp of this sequence are transcribed. Information encoded within this transcribed region is involved in late steps of the functional program of a promoter. By changing such ‘down‐stream’ sequences promoter strength in vivo can be varied more than 10‐fold. By contrast, information for early steps of the promoter program such as recognition by the enzyme and formation of a stable complex resides in a central core region of about 35 bp. Our data show that the strength of a promoter can be limited at different levels of the overall process. Consequently promoters of identical strength can exhibit different structures due to an alternate optimization of their program.
Detection of discrete androgen receptor epitopes in prostate cancer by immunostaining: measurement by color video image analysis.

To determine whether multiple features of immunohistochemical staining of the androgen receptor (AR) in prostate cancer could reliably predict androgen dependence, tumor biopsy specimens from 30 patients (stages A-D2) were stained using anti-peptide antibodies to the amino- and carboxyl-terminal of the AR. Measurements were made of the mean area and total amount (i.e., integrated optical density) of AR staining in at least 20 fields per section using a color video image analysis system, and the mean intensity of AR staining per cell and the percentage of AR positive tumor cells were derived. Video image analysis measurement identified quantitative differences in AR staining between the two antibodies, suggesting that this approach may provide a means of identifying receptor variants in prostate tumors. The AR staining measurements were analyzed by discriminant function analysis to assign individual cases to good and poor clinical outcome groups. AR staining features measured with a single antibody (e.g., amino-terminal) were sufficient to predict outcome following hormonal therapy in stage D2 patients (predictive value, 1.0), whereas all features of AR staining measured with both antibodies were required for the entire patient group (predictive value, 0.97). The principal discriminant in both patient groups contributing to the correct assignment of outcome was the mean intensity of AR staining per cell. These findings suggest that AR staining features measured by video image analysis have the potential to predict outcome in prostate cancer.
Objective Auscultation of TCM Based on Wavelet Packet Fractal Dimension and Support Vector Machine

This study was conducted to illustrate that auscultation features based on the fractal dimension combined with wavelet packet transform (WPT) were conducive to the identification the pattern of syndromes of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The WPT and the fractal dimension were employed to extract features of auscultation signals of 137 patients with lung Qi-deficient pattern, 49 patients with lung Yin-deficient pattern, and 43 healthy subjects. With these features, the classification model was constructed based on multiclass support vector machine (SVM). When all auscultation signals were trained by SVM to decide the patterns of TCM syndromes, the overall recognition rate of model was 79.49%; when male and female auscultation signals were trained, respectively, to decide the patterns, the overall recognition rate of model reached 86.05%. The results showed that the methods proposed in this paper were effective to analyze auscultation signals, and the performance of model can be greatly improved when the distinction of gender was considered.
Mixed signal aspects of behavioral modeling and simulation

System level designs incorporate digital analog and considerable mixed signal components. With systems growing in size and complexity, AMS HDLs become increasingly important for modeling and simulation of entire mixed signal, mixed technology systems. The size of those systems often becomes prohibitively large for analog simulation. Moreover, strong nonlinear behavior shown in most complex systems makes their accurate modeling and efficient simulation a skillful art. In this paper we analyze some important aspects of mixed signal simulation and present possible resolutions for issues raised. The focus is on the effect of HDL definitions on simulation behavior.
Does RAID Improve Lifetime of SSD Arrays?

Parity protection at the system level is typically employed to compose reliable storage systems. However, careful consideration is required when SSD-based systems employ parity protection. First, additional writes are required for parity updates. Second, parity consumes space on the device, which results in write amplification from less efficient garbage collection at higher space utilization. This article analyzes the effectiveness of SSD-based RAID and discusses the potential benefits and drawbacks in terms of reliability. A Markov model is presented to estimate the lifetime of SSD-based RAID systems in different environments. In a small array, our results show that parity protection provides benefit only with considerably low space utilizations and low data access rates. However, in a large system, RAID improves data lifetime even when we take write amplification into account.
Paradigmatic Cascades: A Linguistically Sound Model of Pronunciation by Analogy

We present and experimentally evaluate a new model of prounciation by analogy: the paradigmatic cascades model. Given a pronunciation lexicon, this algorithm first extracts the most productive paradigmatic mappings in the graphemic domain, and pairs them statistically with their correlate(s) in the phonemic domain. These mappings are used to search and retrieve in the lexical database the most promising analog of unseen words. We finally apply to the analogs pronunciation the correlated series of mappings in the phonemic domain to get the desired pronunciation.
Fetus in Fetu: Report of Two Cases

Fetus-in-fetu (FIF) is a rare and interesting entity characterized byincorporation of a malformed, monozygotic, diamnionic parasitic twin into the body of other normal twin partner. FIF is differentiated from teratoma by its embryological origin, its unusual location in the retroperitoneal space and the presence of vertebral column (axis) often with appropriate arrangement of other organs or limbs around this axis. We report two cases of FIF. Our first case presented at 18 months, while second at 9 year of age. FIF derived their blood supply directly from aorta in both the cases.Our FIF had distinct fetoid features, well developed axial skeleton with a complete spinal column, trunk, intestinal loops, four limbs, well developed fingers and toes, male external genitalia and abundant scalp hairs. Their weightwas 600 grams and 800 grams, respectively. Postoperative period was smooth and on long-term follow up no evidence of recurrence was seen in both the patients.
ENVIRONMENT AND AGING

It is being said that ours is a young nation. This is true historically and still, to some degree, sociologically; however, only to some degree. Few among us, except sociologists and the statisticians of the U. S. Department of Labor, realize that we are fast becoming a nation of aging people. Since 1935, when Congress passed the Social Security Act, we have come to associate the aged (not the aging) with those over 65 years of age-the minimum age limit which by law entitles an individual to eligibility for financial benefits. At that time, namely 1935, the age of 65 was set arbitrarily, although the lawmakers were aware that aging differs from individual to individual. This is evident physically, emotionally, and socially. Among the disciplines which deal in services to individuals it is particularly the practitioner of the social sciences who has been trained to see the human being he is serving as an entity, i.e., to consider a medical disorder in the light of emotional and social factors surrounding the disorder, or to consider an emotional illness in the light of accompanying physiologic and social changes. However, for the purpose of this paper, the discussion will be confined strictly to what can properly be called the "social" or environmental aspects of aging. Formerly people used the phrase "growing old gracefully" when they spoke of senescence. Today they speak of senescence as a "problem" (as everything today seems to be). And a problem it is, as a few statistics may show. During the height of the Roman Empire the average life span was 23 years. It was still only 47 years in this country in 1900, but already 63 years by 1940, and it has been estimated that by 1960 the average life expectancy may reach 75 years. Accordingly, the number of people over 65 has multiplied tremendously. Whereas in 1940 there were approximately 9 million people over 65, there were more than 12 million in 1950. The estimates range from 25 to 36 million people over 65 years of age by 1980. While the over-all United States population increased 7.2 per cent during the decade 1930 to 1940, the age group of 65 or over had an increase of five times that figure. The reasons for our young nation growing rapidly "older" are generally known-better medical services, higher standards of living, improved public health service, a declining birth rate, and even such an apparently insignificant factor as the curbing of immigration. To cite a figure in the State of California: In one of the many district offices of the Bureau of Public Assistance of the County of Los Angeles which administers the Old Age Security Program of the State-the District of Burbank, serving a population of a little over 100,000-there were 8,106 active Old Age grants in November 1956, as compared with less than 3,000 a decade earlier. In the same period (November, 1956) the total number of grants in the State of California was 265,527, as compared with 110,000 less than half a decade earlier.
Health Communication and Social Marketing Campaigns for Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention and Control: What Is the Evidence of their Effectiveness?

Background Despite the ubiquity of sex in the media, a culture of silence surrounds sexual health in the United States, serving as a barrier to sexually transmitted disease (STD) prevention, testing, and treatment. Campaigns can increase STD-related knowledge, communication, and protective behaviors. This review assesses the effectiveness of STD prevention and testing campaigns in the United States to inform the field on their use as a strategy for affecting behavior change. Methods A comprehensive literature search was conducted to identify original research articles, published between 2000 and 2014, which report on US media campaigns promoting community- or population-level STD testing or prevention behaviors and are evaluated for impact on one or more behavioral outcomes. Titles and abstracts were independently reviewed by 2 researchers. Results The review yielded 26 articles representing 16 unique STD testing and/or prevention campaigns. Most campaigns were developed using formative research and social marketing or behavioral theory. Most campaigns (68.75%) used posttest-only or pretest-posttest designs without comparison groups for evaluation; only 5 campaigns used control groups, and these proved challenging (i.e., achieving necessary exposure and avoiding contamination). Nearly all campaigns found differences between exposed and unexposed individuals on one or more key behavioral outcomes. Several campaigns found dose-response relationships. Among evaluations with uncontaminated control groups whose campaigns achieved sufficient exposure, sustained campaign effects were observed among targeted populations. Conclusions Current findings suggest that campaigns can impact targeted STD-related behaviors and add to the evidence that greater exposure is associated with greater behavior change.
CellFarm : An Overlay for Supporting Replication and Load Distribution in Large-Scale Systems

In this paper we propose a novel overlay network, named CellFarm, which features an unique topology composed of cliques of nodes, highly connected among themselves. Each clique supports the abstraction of a fault-tolerant process group. Dependable applications can then be implemented using the resulting overlay of process groups. CellFarm has a completely decentralized operation, is scalable, and highly flexible, allowing the developer to define the size of each process group. Due to its unique topology, CellFarm offers a natural subtract for supporting efficient replication and to perform load distribution. As a case study, we show how CellFarm can be used to implement a distributed large-scale resource location system where the cliques generated and maintained by CellFarm are used to perform one-hop replication of resource indexes. We show that the structure of CellFarm allows resource location algorithms to perform more efficiently and achieve better load distribution, when compared with a current state-of-art solution.
A feedback-based hybrid OBS/OCS architecture with fast-over-slow capability

Dynamic bandwidth allocation in response to the bandwidth requirements of new emerging applications is an essential demand for future optical networks. Hybrid switching architectures combining the benefits of different switching technologies in a single node are key elements to support wavelength and sub-wavelength granularities. This paper proposes a novel feedback-based hybrid OBS/OCS node architecture that integrates slow (ms regime) and fast (ns regime) switching elements, aiming at flexible bandwidth allocation while reducing the related costs. Such a node utilizes the pre-transmission idle periods of slow elements in order to send those contending fast bursts, thus improving the overall network performance. The obtained simulation results illustrate significant improvement in terms of Burst Loss Rate (BLR), and lower related network costs when compared to previously proposed hybrid OBS/OCS node architectures.
Neuronal Correlates of Amblyopia in the Visual Cortex of Macaque Monkeys with Experimental Strabismus and Anisometropia

Amblyopia is a developmental disorder of pattern vision. After surgical creation of esotropic strabismus in the first weeks of life or after wearing −10 diopter contact lenses in one eye to simulate anisometropia during the first months of life, macaques often develop amblyopia. We studied the response properties of visual cortex neurons in six amblyopic macaques; three monkeys were anisometropic, and three were strabismic. In all monkeys, cortical binocularity was reduced. In anisometropes, the amblyopic eye influenced a relatively small proportion of cortical neurons; in strabismics, the influence of the two eyes was more nearly equal. The severity of amblyopia was related to the relative strength of the input of the amblyopic eye to the cortex only for the more seriously affected amblyopes. Measurements of the spatial frequency tuning and contrast sensitivity of cortical neurons showed few differences between the eyes for the three less severe amblyopes (two strabismic and one anisometropic). In the three more severely affected animals (one strabismic and two anisometropic), the optimal spatial frequency and spatial resolution of cortical neurons driven by the amblyopic eye were substantially and significantly lower than for neurons driven by the nonamblyopic eye. There were no reliable differences in neuronal contrast sensitivity between the eyes. A sample of neurons recorded from cortex representing the peripheral visual field showed no interocular differences, suggesting that the effects of amblyopia were more pronounced in portions of the cortex subserving foveal vision. Qualitatively, abnormalities in both the eye dominance and spatial properties of visual cortex neurons were related on a case-by-case basis to the depth of amblyopia. Quantitative analysis suggests, however, that these abnormalities alone do not explain the full range of visual deficits in amblyopia. Studies of extrastriate cortical areas may uncover further abnormalities that explain these deficits.
NADPH Oxidase-4 Maintains Neuropathic Pain after Peripheral Nerve Injury

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) contribute to sensitization of pain pathways during neuropathic pain, but little is known about the primary sources of ROS production and how ROS mediate pain sensitization. Here, we show that the NADPH oxidase isoform Nox4, a major ROS source in somatic cells, is expressed in a subset of nonpeptidergic nociceptors and myelinated dorsal root ganglia neurons. Mice lacking Nox4 demonstrated a substantially reduced late-phase neuropathic pain behavior after peripheral nerve injury. The loss of Nox4 markedly attenuated injury-induced ROS production and dysmyelination processes of peripheral nerves. Moreover, persisting neuropathic pain behavior was inhibited after tamoxifen-induced deletion of Nox4 in adult transgenic mice. Our results suggest that Nox4 essentially contributes to nociceptive processing in neuropathic pain states. Accordingly, inhibition of Nox4 may provide a novel therapeutic modality for the treatment of neuropathic pain.
The Influence of Organizational Life Cycle on Environmental Proactivity and Competitive Advantage

In today’s dynamic environment, it is extremely important to study the circumstances in which environmental management contributes to a firm’s competitiveness. Relying on the dynamic capabilities view, this study empirically examines the relationships between environmental proactivity, organizational life cycle stages, competitive advantage, and industry on a sample of 155 Australian firms. The results of a regression analysis show that the construct of the organizational life cycle is significantly related to environmental proactivity. The results also confirm the well-established positive impact of environmental proactivity on competitive advantage. Surprisingly, we found environmental proactivity was positively related to competitive advantage not only in the innovative stages but also in the conservative ones. Our findings reveal the complex nature of environmental proactivity and help better understand the relationship between environmental proactivity and competitive advantage.
The interaction of heart rate and blood pressure variations for av dissociation illustrated by a closed-loop heart rate control model

The atrial rate variability measured under an atrialventricular (AV) disassociation condition, e.g. fixed-rate ventricular pacing, has shown a pattern in which the main frequency components vaned with the ventricular rates that very different wirh the AV synchronization condition. Some evidences showed that bear-to-beat blood pressure variation might play a role for this phenomenon. To demonstrate the possible mechanism for the interaction between atrial rate variability and blood pressure variability in AV dissociation condition, a closeloop heart rate control model considering the baroreflex was created in this study. In this model, an integrating pulse frequency modulation model was used to generare the heartbeat and its input was transformed from the blood pressure waveform. One simulation is to automatically generate heart rate variability and blood pressure variabiliq. In this case the blood pressure waveform fur each beat was shaped using a curve with a variable maximum representing systolic blood pressure that was determined by each AV delay. The other simulation is to generate atrial rate variability using the real blood pressure waveform data recorded from AVblock patient, The results demonstrated that the frequency domain features for the real atrial rate variation could be approximated with real blood pressure waveform data by this model when the mean heart rate was tuned.
Community Structure and Multi-Modal Oscillations in Complex Networks

In many types of network, the relationship between structure and function is of great significance. We are particularly interested in community structures, which arise in a wide variety of domains. We apply a simple oscillator model to networks with community structures and show that waves of regular oscillation are caused by synchronised clusters of nodes. Moreover, we show that such global oscillations may arise as a direct result of network topology. We also observe that additional modes of oscillation (as detected through frequency analysis) occur in networks with additional levels of topological hierarchy and that such modes may be directly related to network structure. We apply the method in two specific domains (metabolic networks and metropolitan transport) demonstrating the robustness of our results when applied to real world systems. We conclude that (where the distribution of oscillator frequencies and the interactions between them are known to be unimodal) our observations may be applicable to the detection of underlying community structure in networks, shedding further light on the general relationship between structure and function in complex systems.