Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phytotherapeutic approach: a new hope for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons induced cellular disorders, autophagic and apoptotic cell death

Abstract Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) comprise the major class of cancer-causing chemicals and are ranked ninth among the chemical compounds threatening to humans. Moreover, interest in PAHs has been mainly due to their genotoxic, teratogenic, mutagenic and carcinogenic property. Polymorphism in cytochrome P450 (CYP450) and aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) has the capacity to convert procarcinogens into carcinogens, which is an imperative factor contributing to individual susceptibility to cancer development. The carcinogenicity potential of PAHs is related to their ability to bind to DNA, thereby enhances DNA cross-linking, causing a series of disruptive effects which can result in tumor initiation. They induce cellular toxicity by regulating the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which arbitrate apoptosis. Additionally, cellular toxicity-mediated apoptotic and autophagic cell death and immune suppression by industrial pollutants PAH, provide fertile ground for the proliferation of mutated cells, which results in cancer growth and progression. PAHs play a foremost role in angiogenesis necessary for tumor metastasization by promoting the upregulation of metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) in human cancer cells. This review sheds light on the molecular mechanisms of PAHs induced cancer development as well as autophagic and apoptotic cell death. Besides that authors have unraveled how phytotherapeutics is an alternate potential therapeutics acting as a savior from the toxic effects of PAHs for safer and cost effective perspectives.
Population genetic structure, gene flow and sex‐biased dispersal in frillneck lizards (Chlamydosaurus kingii)

By using both mitochondrial and nuclear multiloci markers, we explored population genetic structure, gene flow and sex‐specific dispersal of frillneck lizards (Chlamydosaurus kingii) sampled at three locations, separated by 10 to 50 km, in a homogenous savannah woodland in tropical Australia. Apart from a recombinant lizard, the mitochondrial analyses revealed two nonoverlapping haplotypes/populations, while the nuclear markers showed that the frillneck lizards represented three separate clusters/populations. Due to the small population size of the mtDNA, fixation may occur via founder effects and/or drift. We therefore suggest that either of these two processes, or a combination of the two, are the most likely causes of the discordant results obtained from the mitochondrial and the nuclear markers. In contrast to the nonoverlapping mitochondrial haplotypes, in 12 out of 74 lizards, mixed nuclear genotypes were observed, hence revealing a limited nuclear gene flow. Although gene flow should ultimately result in a blending of the populations, we propose that the distinct nuclear population structure is maintained by frequent fires resulting in local bottlenecks, and concomitant spatial separation of the frillneck lizard populations. Limited mark–recapture data and the difference in distribution of the mitochondrial and nuclear markers suggest that the mixed nuclear genotypes were caused by juvenile male‐biased dispersal.
The renoprotective effects of pentoxifylline: beyond its role in diabetic nephropathy

To the Editor, I read with great interest the article by Sun et al. [1]. Pentoxifylline may exert a number of renoprotective effects, besides its role in attenuating diabetic nephropathy. Pentoxifylline attenuates kidney damage secondary to hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury. It mediates this action by decreasing malondialdehyde levels [2]. Simultaneously, it restores intracellular glutathione. As a result, oxidative injury to the kidneys is mitigated. Obviously, conditions such as hepato-renal syndrome can be avoided with pentoxifylline pretreatment. The coming years may very well see increased use of pentoxifylline as a prophylactic agent to prevent hepatorenal syndrome in patients with concurrent cirrhosis and ascites. Pentoxifylline is also beneficial in chronic renal disease. It benefits the kidneys by stabilizing renal function and the glomerular filtration rate. Concurrent decreases in inflammatory markers such as tissue necrosis factor-α and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein reflect the attenuation of inflammatory damage in the kidneys. The interleukin-6 level also decreases at the same time [3]. In addition, pentoxifylline helps reduce proteinuria in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. Renke et al. [3] recently reported a 26% decline in proteinuria following pentoxifylline therapy in comparison with placebo therapy. Pentoxifylline also decreases proteinuria in CKD patients following renal transplantation. Moreover, pentoxifylline modulates hepcidin function and augments iron release, thereby improving hemoglobin levels in CKD patients. By virtue of its antioxidant properties, pentoxifylline also mitigates and reduces renal damage secondary to exposure to cigarette smoke. Similarly, pentoxifylline is of benefit in cardiac surgery because it prevents and attenuates acute renal injury [4]. When used in conjunction with albumin, pentoxifylline protects the kidneys from injury following endotoxemic shock, by decreasing inducible nitric oxide synthase expression in the kidneys [5]. Similarly, the postlaparoscopy administration of pentoxifylline attenuates renal ischemia associated with laparoscopy. These examples clearly illustrate the renoprotective effects of pentoxifylline.
Treatment of dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson's disease dementia

Cognitive decline and dementia affect approximately 30% to 40% of patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease during the course of their illness. PD‐dementia (PDD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) are second to Alzheimer's disease in causing degenerative dementia in the elderly. The nosological distinction of the conditions has remained controversial because of broad clinical and pathological overlap. Treatment issues in both clinical settings are virtually identical. Treatment of Parkinsonism is often complicated by drug‐induced psychosis and reduced levodopa responsiveness. Cognition, alertness, attention, as well as apathy or aggressive behavior have been shown to respond to treatment with cholinesterase inhibitors in randomized controlled trials both in DLB and PDD. Such treatment may also improve hallucinosis, but many patients will require add‐on treatment with atypical neuroleptics to control drug‐induced psychotic reactions. Clozapine and quetiapine are the drugs most commonly used and, contrary to classic neuroleptics, risperidone or olanzapine do not seem to cause severe side effects according to published data. © 2005 Movement Disorder Society
Influenza A(H3N2) virus variants and patient characteristics during a summer influenza epidemic in Taiwan, 2017

We report a summer influenza epidemic caused by co-circulation of multiple influenza A(H3N2) variants in clade 3C.2a. Compared with other clades, a putative clade 3C.2a. 3a was more commonly isolated from severely ill patients; 3C.2a. 4 was more commonly isolated in outbreak cases. Time from vaccination to illness onset was significantly shorter in severely ill patients infected with clade 3C.2a. 3; characteristics and outcomes of patients infected with different clades were similar. No resistance to antiviral medications was found.
Robust, Vaccine-Induced CD8+ T Lymphocyte Response against an Out-of-Frame Epitope

Rational vaccines designed to engender T cell responses require intimate knowledge of how epitopes are generated and presented. Recently, we vaccinated 8 Mamu-A*02+ rhesus macaques with every SIV protein except Envelope (Env). Surprisingly, one of the strongest T cell responses engendered was against the Env protein, the Mamu-A*02–restricted epitope, Env788–795RY8. In this paper, we show that translation from an alternate reading frame of both the Rev-encoding DNA plasmid and the rAd5 vector engendered Env788–795RY8-specific CD8+ T cells of greater magnitude than “normal” SIV infection. Our data demonstrate both that the pathway from vaccination to immune response is not well understood and that products of alternate reading frames may be rich and untapped sources of T cell epitopes.
Reducing Adapter Synthesis to Controller Synthesis

Service-oriented computing aims to create complex systems by composing less-complex systems, called services. Since services can be developed independently, the integration of services requires an adaptation mechanism for bridging any incompatibilities. Behavioral adapters aim to adjust the communication between some services to be composed in order to establish proper interaction between them. We present a novel approach for specifying such adapters, based on domain-specific transformation rules that reflect the elementary operations that adapters can perform. We also present a novel way to synthesize complex adapters that adhere to these rules, viz., by consistently separating data and control, and by using existing controller-synthesis algorithms. Our approach has been implemented, and we discuss some example applications, including real business processes in WS-BPEL.
Effects of optical back reflection on long wavelength VCSELs

Understanding of the noise characteristics of a long wavelength (LW) vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) under optical back reflection is crucial for its applications in optical fiber data communication. VCSELs at near 1. 31μm are tested and the relative intensity noise (RIN) is measured in the presence of different levels of optical reflection intensity. Innovative LW VCSEL packaging solutions are demonstrated to achieve robust low cost error-free data communication systems.
A new technique for subtotal (cranial wedge) ostectomy in the treatment of impinging/overriding spinous processes: description of technique and outcome of 25 cases.

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY Surgical management for overriding spinous processes of the thoracolumbar vertebrae (SPs) is often favoured when conservative therapies have failed, pathology is severe, or in competition horses constrained by drug withdrawal periods. OBJECTIVES To evaluate whether subtotal (cranial wedge) ostectomy represents an effective treatment for overriding SPs, with short surgery time and low complication rates, maintains the contour of the spine and produces a functionally and cosmetically better outcome than previously reported surgical techniques for management of overriding/impinging SPs. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective study. METHODS A new technique is described and records were retrieved for 25 cases that had undergone the procedure at Newmarket Equine Hospital between 2009 and 2011. Case records were evaluated for anamnesis, clinical findings and details of surgical and post operative management. Outcome of surgery was assessed by telephone questionnaire with owners, relating to both functional and cosmetic results. RESULTS Of cases treated using the described technique, 78.9% had resolution of clinical signs and returned to full work and a further 18.2% were improved. Outcome was unrelated to number of SPs resected or mean radiographic grade of impingement. Cosmetic outcome was described as excellent in 81.8% and good in the remainder. Surgery time ranged from 20 to 70 (median 30) min and there were no intra- or post operative complications. CONCLUSIONS In contrast to previously described amputation techniques, subtotal (cranial wedge) ostectomy removes only impinging portions of SPs. General anaesthesia and lateral recumbency facilitate access and enable a short surgery time. The procedure maintains the contour of the back and has fewer complications, but produces functional outcomes similar to more invasive procedures.
Storage and secretion processes in the spore of Gigaspora margarita Becker &Hall as revealed by high-pressure freezing and freeze substitution.

Spores of Gigaspora margarita Becker &Hall, an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus, were cryofixed using high-pressure freezing and prepared for Transmission electron microscopy by freeze substitution. The cryotechniques improved the ultrastructural preservation of the Spore cytoplasm and revealed storage and secretion processes in the germinating sports of G. margarita. The storage structures in the hydrated and /or germinating spores have been identified as belonging to three different classes: (i) lipid droplets limited by 3 membrane, (ii) protein-like bodies inside specialized vacuoles. , and (ii) glycogen particles. During germ-tube differentiation, an abundant membranous system was observed. It consists of rough KR. tubules and balloon-like Golgi equivalents, which produce vesicles associated with electron-dense granules. The granules seem to be incorporated into the wall. The results suggest that secretion and Storage occur in the fungal spore during events comparable to those in yeasts or plant cells.
A new method for range estimation using simple infrared sensors

We describe a new method for position estimation of planar surfaces using simple, low-cost infrared (IR) sensors. The intensity data acquired with IR sensors depends highly on the surface properties and the configuration of the sensors with respect to the surface. Therefore, in many related studies, either the properties of the surface are determined first or certain assumptions about the surface are made to estimate the distance and the orientation of the surface relative to the sensors. We propose a novel method for position estimation of surfaces with IR sensors without the need to determine the surface properties first. The method is considered to be independent of the type of surface encountered since it is based on searching the position of the maximum value of the intensity data rather than using absolute intensity values. The method is verified experimentally with planar surfaces of different surface properties. An intelligent feature of our system is that its operating range is made adaptive based on the maximum intensity of the detected signal. The absolute mean range error for the method resulting in the lowest errors is 0.15 cm over the range from 10 to 50 cm. The cases where the azimuth and elevation angles are nonzero are considered as well. The results obtained demonstrate that IR sensors can be used for localization to an unexpectedly high accuracy without prior knowledge of the surface characteristics.
Tween 80 Modified Graphene with Improved Processability for the Fabrication of Supercapacitors

To improve processability, graphene was modified with Tween 80. The amount of binder required for making graphene electrodes was reduced to 4 wt% when modified with Tween 80 thus enhancing the processability for the fabrication of supercapacitors. The Tween 80 modification has considerably improved the surface area of graphene. Specific capacitance of 194.2 F/g for aqueous electrolyte and 92.06 F/g for organic electrolyte was obtained for these supercapacitors. Cyclic voltammetry of the supercapacitors with aqueous electrolyte exhibited excellent reversibility, close to ideal behavior, whereas organic electrolyte systems showed deviation at higher scan rates due to more internal resistance. The frequency response of the supercapacitors was studied using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and found to have excellent electrochemical stability.
Biped robot “ROTTO”: Stiff and compliant

The paper deals with designing and developing a biped robot for research purposes. Robot's mechanical structure and drives system are described hereunder in details. Moreover the new modified actuator is discussed. An industrial Ethernet-based real-time communication protocol is introduced and the communication ability between the robot-side hardware and PC-side control system is investigated.
BiModal latent dirichlet allocation for text and image

A BiModal Latent Dirichlet Allocation Model(BM-LDA) is proposed to learn a unified representation of data that comes from both the textual and visual modalities together. The model is able to form a unified representation that mixs both the textual and visual modalities. Based on the assumption, that the images and its surrounding text share a same topic, the model learns a posterior probability density in the space of latent variable of topics that bridging over the observed multi modality inputs. It maps the high dimensional space consist of the observed variables from both modalities to a low dimensional space of topcis. Experimental result on ImageCLEF data set, which consists of bi-modality data of images and surrounding text, shows our new BM-LDA model can get a fine representation for the multi-modality data, which is useful for tasks such as retrieval and classification.
Automatic system recognition of Lebanese license plates

License Plate Recognition is an image-processing technology that is used to identify vehicles by their Lebanese license plates. A license plate reader works by extracting the characters from an image. This technology is used for many applications such as toll booths, parking decks, border control, and law enforcement. As a solution to the problem of monitoring the tremendous number of vehicles for law enforcement and security, we use two methods of classifying the Lebanese plate in several areas: Labeling and K-Mean. Then, we have to extract from the plate the two classifications, which are the French line and the Arabic line. We separate each character from each line using the vertical profile method. Then we would recognize the characters by the algorithm of the K-PPV with a rate of recognition of the characters: The Arabic writing is of 82% and the Western writing is of 91 %. Finally we use a vote method between the two writings to increase the rate of recognition up to 93%.
Downregulation of Cinnamyl-Alcohol Dehydrogenase in Switchgrass by RNA Silencing Results in Enhanced Glucose Release after Cellulase Treatment

Cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase (CAD) catalyzes the last step in monolignol biosynthesis and genetic evidence indicates CAD deficiency in grasses both decreases overall lignin, alters lignin structure and increases enzymatic recovery of sugars. To ascertain the effect of CAD downregulation in switchgrass, RNA mediated silencing of CAD was induced through Agrobacterium mediated transformation of cv. “Alamo” with an inverted repeat construct containing a fragment derived from the coding sequence of PviCAD2. The resulting primary transformants accumulated less CAD RNA transcript and protein than control transformants and were demonstrated to be stably transformed with between 1 and 5 copies of the T-DNA. CAD activity against coniferaldehyde, and sinapaldehyde in stems of silenced lines was significantly reduced as was overall lignin and cutin. Glucose release from ground samples pretreated with ammonium hydroxide and digested with cellulases was greater than in control transformants. When stained with the lignin and cutin specific stain phloroglucinol-HCl the staining intensity of one line indicated greater incorporation of hydroxycinnamyl aldehydes in the lignin.
PROBIOTIC ASSISTED COLON TARGETED DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM : RESEARCH SCOPE

Manipulation of the gut micro flora is considered a potential instrument to modulate colon disoders. In this view, probiotics, defined as “live microbial food ingredients that are beneficial to health” are considered to have the potential to reduce the colon disorders by stimulating the immune system, decreasing the incidence of infections, regulating gut inflammation, and binding toxic evidence exists showing that the administration of probiotics, alone or in combination with fermentable carbohydrates as prebiotic, is able to modify colonic microflora and positively affects the processes leading to modification of the intestinal environment and favouring the development of preneoplastic or neoplastic lesions. Targeted drug delivery to the colon would therefore ensure direct treatment at the disease site, lower dosing and fewer systemic side effects. In addition to local therapy, the colon can also be utilized as a portal for the entry of drugs into the systemic circulation.
A influência das estratégias persuasivas no comportamento dos usuários no Facebook

The large number of users in social networks and the expansion of this kind of tool in the last years has modified how people communicate and personal relationships. An important question for the understanding of this expansion is the use of persuasion strategies in the application's user interface. By using a computational tool as a conversation mediator, interaction will occur supported by the functions made available by the tool. Therefore, if the interactions take place in distinct ways due to the tool's architecture, it must be known whether the persuasion strategies embedded in social networking tools can influence attitudes, behavior or values experienced by users. The goal of this research was to understand the use of persuasion strategies, their effects and how Facebook users behave when faced with such strategies. The results enabled the characterization of user profiles within the research samples collected form the Facebook social network, as well as the identification of strategies implemented in this tool and their influence on user behavior.
Compact E-Band (71-86 GHz) bias-tee module for external biasing of millimeter wave photodiodes

This paper focuses on the development and characterization of a novel E-band planar bias-tee (BT) circuit featuring a high-speed millimeter wave photodiode (mm-wave PD) module to be integrated in next generation access and mobile networks (5G). The designed bias-tee circuit together with the integrated mm-wave PD chip, i.e., triple transit region photodiode (TTR-PD) allows the development of high-power Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) E-band (70/80 GHz) photonic transmitters (PTs) to be used in wireless extension and mobile backhaul links. The introduced BT circuit provides the protection to the hybrid integrated RF amplifier from being damaged by the PD bias voltage and prevents the leakage of the RF signal through the DC path. The vector network analyzer (VNA) measurements of the BT circuit show that in the frequency range from 70 to 75 GHz, the return loss (RL) is higher than 11 dB, the RF signal suppression level (IS) in the DC path is higher than 30 dB, while the insertion loss (IL) is lower than 2 dB. For optical RF signal generation, two laser sources are used to generate an optical heterodyne signal. Lower dark current levels and a 3-dB bandwidth in the frequency range from 71 to 86 GHz have been demonstrated at the BT output.
Adequate resuscitation of burn patients may not be measured by urine output and vital signs

Objective.To compare vital sign and urine output monitoring of seriously burned patients with invasive monitoring during early resuscitation. Design.Retrospective review. Setting.A university hospital burn unit. Patients.Fourteen seriously burned patients who had pulmonary arterial monitoring. Monitoring data were compared at baseline and after fluid challenges. Results.There was no correlation between invasively derived physiologic variables and vital signs and urine output. Vital signs and urine output changed little after fluid challenge, while variables from invasive monitoring demonstrated significant change. In half of the patients, oxygen consumption increased after fluid challenge; vital signs and urine output did not distinguish these patients. Conclusions.The use of urinary output and vital signs to guide initial burn resuscitation may lead to suboptimal resuscitation. Invasive cardiorespiratory monitoring may be necessary to optimize resuscitation of seriously burned patients. (Crit Care Med 1991; 19:327)