Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A glucocorticoid- and diet-responsive pathway toggles adipocyte precursor cell activity in vivo

Fat tissue produces the secreted protease ADAMTS1, which activates a pathway that inhibits diet- or glucocorticoid-stimulated expansion of adipose tissue. Keeping fat tissue from expanding Excess body fat, particularly in the visceral white adipose depot, poses serious health risks. A cellular mechanism that contributes to the expansion of adipose tissue is the increased differentiation of adipocyte precursor cells into mature adipocytes. Wong et al. found that glucocorticoid exposure or a high-fat diet altered the abundance of an extracellular protein called ADAMTS1 in adipocytes in an adipose depot–specific manner in mice. Increased ADAMTS1 abundance was associated with decreased adipogenesis, whereas decreased ADAMTS1 abundance was associated with increased adipogenesis. Human volunteers who increased their caloric intake showed increased expression of ADAMTS1 in adipose tissue. Exposing adipocyte precursor cells to ADAMTS1 protein increased their proliferation and prevented their differentiation, and mice that overexpressed Adamts1 in adipose tissue had smaller adipose depots. These results suggest that ADAMTS1 could be administered to prevent obesity in response to diet or glucocorticoid administration. Obesity is driven by excess caloric intake, which leads to the expansion of adipose tissue by hypertrophy and hyperplasia. Adipose tissue hyperplasia results from the differentiation of adipocyte precursor cells (APCs) that reside in adipose depots. Investigation into this process has elucidated a network of mostly transcription factors that drive APCs through the differentiation process. Using in vitro and in vivo approaches, our study revealed a signaling pathway that inhibited the initiation of the adipocyte differentiation program. Mouse adipocytes secreted the extracellular protease ADAMTS1, which triggered the production of the cytokine pleiotrophin (PTN) through the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, and promoted proliferation rather than differentiation of APCs. Glucocorticoid exposure in vitro or in vivo reduced ADAMTS1 abundance in adipocytes. In addition, mice fed a high-fat diet showed decreased Adamts1 expression in the visceral perigonadal adipose depot, which expanded by adipogenesis in response to the diet, and increased Adamts1 expression in the subcutaneous inguinal adipose depot, which did not induce adipogenesis. Similar to what occurred in mouse subcutaneous adipose tissue, diet-induced weight gain increased the expression of ADAMTS1, PTN, and certain Wnt target genes in the subcutaneous adipose depot of human volunteers, suggesting the relevance of this pathway to physiological adipose tissue homeostasis and the pathogenesis of obesity. Thus, this pathway functions as a toggle on APCs, regulating a decision between differentiation and proliferation and coordinating the response of adipose tissue to systemic cues.
Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI versus 18F-FDG PET/CT: Which is better in differentiation between malignant and benign solitary pulmonary nodules?

Objective To prospectively compare the discriminative capacity of dynamic contrast enhanced-magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) with that of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) in the differentiation of malignant and benign solitary pulmonary nodules (SPNs). Methods Forty-nine patients with SPNs were included in this prospective study. Thirty-two of the patients had malignant SPNs, while the other 17 had benign SPNs. All these patients underwent DCE-MRI and 18F-FDG PET/CT examinations. The quantitative MRI pharmacokinetic parameters, including the trans-endothelial transfer constant (Ktrans), redistribution rate constant (Kep), and fractional volume (Ve), were calculated using the Extended-Tofts Linear two-compartment model. The 18F-FDG PET/CT parameter, maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), was also measured. Spearman's correlations were calculated between the MRI pharmacokinetic parameters and the SUVmax of each SPN. These parameters were statistically compared between the malignant and benign nodules. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses were used to compare the diagnostic capability between the DCE-MRI and 18F-FDG PET/CT indexes. Results Positive correlations were found between Ktrans and SUVmax, and between Kep and SUVmax (P<0.05). There were significant differences between the malignant and benign nodules in terms of the Ktrans, Kep and SUVmax values (P<0.05). The areas under the ROC curve (AUC) of Ktrans, Kep and SUVmax between the malignant and benign nodules were 0.909, 0.838 and 0.759, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity in differentiating malignant from benign SPNs were 90.6% and 82.4% for Ktrans; 87.5% and 76.5% for Kep; and 75.0% and 70.6% for SUVmax, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of Ktrans and Kep were higher than those of SUVmax, but there was no significant difference between them (P>0.05). Conclusions DCE-MRI can be used to differentiate between benign and malignant SPNs and has the advantage of being radiation free.
The epidemiology of polypharmacy in older adults: register-based prospective cohort study

Objective Polypharmacy is the concomitant use of several drugs by a single person, and it increases the risk of adverse drug-related events in older adults. Little is known about the epidemiology of polypharmacy at the population level. We aimed to measure the prevalence and incidence of polypharmacy and to investigate the associated factors. Methods A prospective cohort study was conducted using register data with national coverage in Sweden. A total of 1,742,336 individuals aged ≥65 years at baseline (November 1, 2010) were included and followed until death or the end of the study (December 20, 2013). Results On average, individuals were exposed to 4.6 (SD =4.0) drugs at baseline. The prevalence of polypharmacy (5+ drugs) was 44.0%, and the prevalence of excessive polypharmacy (10+ drugs) was 11.7%. The incidence rate of polypharmacy among individuals without polypharmacy at baseline was 19.9 per 100 person-years, ranging from 16.8% in individuals aged 65–74 years to 33.2% in those aged ≥95 years (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] =1.49, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.42–1.56). The incidence rate of excessive polypharmacy was 8.0 per 100 person-years. Older adults using multi-dose dispensing were at significantly higher risk of developing incident polypharmacy compared with those receiving ordinary prescriptions (HR =1.51, 95% CI 1.47–1.55). When adjusting for confounders, living in nursing home was found to be associated with lower risks of incident polypharmacy and incident excessive polypharmacy (HR =0.79 and HR =0.86, p<0.001, respectively). Conclusion The prevalence and incidence of polypharmacy are high among older adults in Sweden. Interventions aimed at reducing the prevalence of polypharmacy should also target potential incident polypharmacy users as they are the ones who fuel future polypharmacy.
Spontaneous Lamellar Alignment in Thickness‐Modulated Block Copolymer Films

Here, spontaneous lamellar alignment in a thickness‐modulated block copolymer film is presented as a facile, scalable, and general approach for creating a highly aligned lamellar morphology. Thickness‐modulated block copolymer films are prepared on neutral surfaces by various methods, such as solution dropping, dewetting‐induced self‐organized patterning, and thermal imprinting. Regardless of the film preparation method, the self‐assembled lamellar domains become spontaneously aligned along the thickness gradient after sufficient thermal annealing. Real‐time AFM imaging reveals that spontaneous alignment occurs through the directional growth of well‐ordered domains along the thickness gradient, which is accompanied by defect dynamics, with vertical linear defects moving from thicker parts of the film towards the thinner ones, reducing their length and thus the associated energy. The mechanism underlying this interesting self‐aligning behavior is provided by a ‘geometric anchoring’ phenomenon, originally envisioned to account for the liquid crystal alignment under a non‐flat geometry of confinement. This novel self‐aligning principle offers a valuable opportunity to control nanoscale alignment in block copolymer films by manipulating the, much larger, microscale morphology.
Performance and stability of porous ceramic candle filters during PFBC operation

Westinghouse's involvement at the American Electric Power (AEP) pressurized fluidized-bed combustion (PFBC) Tidd demonstration plant has recently identified critical issues pertaining to the life of monolithic and fiber reinforced porous ceramic filter elements, as well as process control parameters that impact commercialization of the hot gas filtration technology. Although the nonoxide filter materials primarily undergo oxidation and/or creep, and the oxide-based matrices experience thermal fatigue, both materials exhibit an initial loss of bulk strength, but achieve a conditioned or stabilized strength during operation in the PFBC environment. Continued operation will, however, be required to demonstrate extended viability of the conditioned porous ceramic filter materials in process controlled, advanced coal-fired applications.
Microstructural Effects of Sulphate Attack in Sustainable Grouts for Micropiles

Nowadays, the use of micropiles has undergone a great development. In general, they are made with cement grout, reinforced with steel tubing. In Spain, these grouts are prepared using OPC, although the standards do not forbid the use of other cements, like sustainable ones. Micropiles are in contact with soils and groundwater, in which the presence of sulphates is common. Their deleterious effects firstly affect to the microstructure. Then, the aim of this research is to study the effects of sulphate attack in the microstructure of micropiles grouts, prepared with OPC, fly ash and slag commercial cements, compared to their behaviour when they are exposed to an optimum hardening condition. The microstructure evolution has been studied with the non-destructive impedance spectroscopy technique, which has never been used for detecting the effects of sulphate attack when slag and fly ash cements are used. Its results have been contrasted with mercury intrusion porosimetry and “Wenner” resistivity ones. The 28-day compressive strength of grouts has been also determined. The results of microstructure characterization techniques are in agreement, although impedance spectroscopy is the most sensitive for following the changes in the porous network of grouts. The results showed that micropiles made using fly ash and slag cements could have a good performance in contact with aggressive sodium sulphate media, even better than OPC ones.
Prediction of motor outcome using remaining corticospinal tract in patients with pontine infarct: Diffusion tensor imaging study

Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the remaining corticospinal tract (CST) as determined by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and 6-month motor outcome in patients with pontine infarct. Ratios of fractional anisotropy (FA), fiber number (FN), and CST area were calculated, and the FN ratio and CST area ratio showed significant correlation with all 6-month motor outcome. Thus, the remaining CST in the pons measured using DTI at early stage of stroke could predict motor outcome in patients with pontine infarct.
Evaluation of bovine-derived lacteal complex supplementation on gene expression in BALB/c mice

Correspondence: Larry E Miller Sprim USA, 235 Pine Street, Suite 1175, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA Tel +1 928 607 9657 Fax +1 928 268 3563 Email larry.miller@sprim.com Abstract: We conducted an evaluation of gene expression associated with innate and adaptive immunity in a double-blind ex vivo mouse study using a bovine-derived dietary ingredient (Ai/E, Health Technology Resources, Inc., Scottsdale, AZ, USA). BALB/c female mice (5–6 weeks of age) were fed chewy granola bars supplemented with (Test) or without (Control) Ai/E for 10 days. After the feeding period, the animals were sacrificed and spleen cells were isolated and incubated with lipopolysaccharide and phorbol myristate acetate-ionomycin. RNA was extracted and mRNA expression of 84 genes involved in innate and acquired immunity was determined with real-time PCR arrays. Numerous genes associated with innate and adaptive immunity were upregulated in the Test group when stimulated with mitogens. Significant upregulation was observed in 30% (25 of 84) of genes upon lipopolysaccharide stimulation and in 14% (12 of 84) of genes upon phorbol myristate acetate + ionomycin stimulation in the Test group relative to Controls. This study illustrates that Ai/E supplementation results in significant and specific upregulation of genes associated with innate and adaptive immunity in mice. Notably, this effect was observed only in stimulated cultures.
iGraph: a graph-based technique for visual analytics of image and text collections

In our daily lives, images and texts are among the most commonly found data which we need to handle. We present iGraph, a graph-based approach for visual analytics of large image and text collections. Given such a collection, we compute the similarity between images, the distance between texts, and the connection between image and text to construct iGraph, a compound graph representation which encodes the underlying relationships among these images and texts. To enable effective visual navigation and comprehension of iGraph with tens of thousands of nodes and hundreds of millions of edges, we present a progressive solution that offers collection overview, node comparison, and visual recommendation. Our solution not only allows users to explore the entire collection with representative images and keywords, but also supports detailed comparison for understanding and intuitive guidance for navigation. For performance speedup, multiple GPUs and CPUs are utilized for processing and visualization in parallel. We experiment with two image and text collections and leverage a cluster driving a display wall of nearly 50 million pixels. We show the effectiveness of our approach by demonstrating experimental results and conducting a user study.
A 1.1-Gb/s 115-pJ/bit Configurable MIMO Detector Using 0.13-  $\mu\hbox{m}$ CMOS Technology

This brief presents an efficient and configurable multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) signal detector design solution and its high-speed IC implementation. This detector can support 2 × 2/3 × 3/4 × 4 MIMO and quadratic phase-shift keying/16-state quadratic amplitude modulation (QAM)/64-state QAM modulation configurations. The detection algorithm employs an early-pruned technique that can reduce up to 46% node extensions in the K-Best sphere decoder while maintaining an almost maximum-likelihood performance. A parallel multistage folded very large scale integration architecture is accordingly developed that can achieve high detection throughput and configurability. To further improve the IC implementation efficiency, this detector also uses a candidate-sharing structure for partial Euclidean distance calculation and a two-stage sorter for survivor node selection. A test chip has been fabricated using 0.13- m single-poly- and eight-metal (1P8M) CMOS technology with a core area of 3.9 mm2. Operating at 1.2-V supply with 137.5-MHz clock, the chip achieves 1.1-Gb/s throughput and consumes 115 pJ per bit, representing 40% more energy efficient than state of the art in the open literature.
Drying Kinetics of Building Materials: Brief Theory and Experimental Evaluation

The effect of moisture in buildings is normally related with damage, which may occur due to the presence of moisture itself or due to its evaporation. The drying process plays an important role in the available moisture, both inside the material or at its surface. This paper presents the results of an experimental evaluation of the drying kinetics, considering both surface and bulk moisture transfer. Two different specimens were used: External Thermal Insulation Composite Systems (ETICS) to study surface moisture transfer and Autoclaved Cellular Concrete (ACC) to analyse the bulk moisture transfer. For both samples the drying kinetics was assessed considering different environment conditions (air temperature and humidity). Five different first-order kinetics models, available in the literature, were adjusted to describe the drying process and estimate the equilibrium moisture content of ETICS and ACC.The results point that Logarithmic and Midilli models allow the best fit and that the drying time constant is strongly affected by the moisture transfer phenomenon (at surface or bulk) and by the drying air conditions. It was also estimated the apparent molecular diffusion coefficient for ACC and its variation with temperature.
Substitution for Fraenkel-Mostowski foundations

A fundamental and unanalysed logical concept is substitution. This seemingly innocuous operation— substituting a variable for a term or valuating a variable to an element of a domain — is hard to characterise other than by concrete constructions. It is widely viewed as a technicality to be dispensed with on the way to studying other things. Discussions of computer science foundations, and of the philosophy of logic, have largely ignored it. We show that Fraenkel-Mostowski set theory gives a model of variables and substitution as constructions on sets. Thus models of variables and substitution are exhibited as constructions in a foundational universe, just like models of arithmetic (the ordinals) and other mathematical entities. The door is open for classes of denotations in which variables, substitution, and evaluations are constructed directly in sets and studied independently of syntax, in ways which would previously have not been possible.
Elevated temperature drives kelp microbiome dysbiosis, while elevated carbon dioxide induces water microbiome disruption

Global climate change includes rising temperatures and increased pCO2 concentrations in the ocean, with potential deleterious impacts on marine organisms. In this case study we conducted a four-week climate change incubation experiment, and tested the independent and combined effects of increased temperature and partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2), on the microbiomes of a foundation species, the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera, and the surrounding water column. The water and kelp microbiome responded differently to each of the climate stressors. In the water microbiome, each condition caused an increase in a distinct microbial order, whereas the kelp microbiome exhibited a reduction in the dominant kelp-associated order, Alteromondales. The water column microbiomes were most disrupted by elevated pCO2, with a 7.3 fold increase in Rhizobiales. The kelp microbiome was most influenced by elevated temperature and elevated temperature in combination with elevated pCO2. Kelp growth was negatively associated with elevated temperature, and the kelp microbiome showed a 5.3 fold increase Flavobacteriales and a 2.2 fold increase alginate degrading enzymes and sulfated polysaccharides. In contrast, kelp growth was positively associated with the combination of high temperature and high pCO2 ‘future conditions’, with a 12.5 fold increase in Planctomycetales and 4.8 fold increase in Rhodobacteriales. Therefore, the water and kelp microbiomes acted as distinct communities, where the kelp was stabilizing the microbiome under changing pCO2 conditions, but lost control at high temperature. Under future conditions, a new equilibrium between the kelp and the microbiome was potentially reached, where the kelp grew rapidly and the commensal microbes responded to an increase in mucus production.
The Role of Psychosocial Factors in Wellbeing and Self-Care in Young Adults with Type 1 Diabetes

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between glycaemic control, locus of control beliefs, diabetes knowledge and wellbeing in young adults with type 1 diabetes. A cross-sectional study of forty-two young adults (16-25 years) with type 1 diabetes recruited from two diabetes clinics in London. Participants completed postal question- naires designed for this specific population. Wellbeing was assessed by the W-B12, locus of control by the ADDLoC and diabetes knowledge by the ADKnowl. HbA1c was employed as a measure of glycaemic control. Results indicated that ex- ternal (health professionals) and internal locus of control beliefs and diabetes knowledge were significantly associated with psychological wellbeing. Patients place high expectations on their practitioners and accordingly, practitioners need to address patients' diabetes knowledge to help them to manage their diabetes effectively and independently. The relationship between internal and external locus of control beliefs, diabetes knowledge and wellbeing indicates the importance of addressing empowerment and self-efficacy in psychoeducation interventions for this client group.
Diagnosis and treatment of chronic rhinosinusitis: focus on intranasal Amphotericin B

Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is a chronic disease that affects 14.2% of the US adult population. Despite being widespread, little is known about the etiology of CRS. Treatment has been symptomatic and focused on relieving symptoms. Recent investigations into causes of CRS have revealed that most CRS patients have an eosinophilic infiltration of their nasal tissue (mucosa), regardless of atopy and elevated immunoglobulin E levels. Although fungi are ubiquitous and in the nasal mucus of both healthy people and patients, it is only in the patients that the eosinophils (part of the inflammatory response) are found. Fungi in the nasal mucus are harmless, yet in CRS patients these same fungi stimulate an inflammatory response, inducing the eosinophils to leave the blood vessels and enter the nasal and sinus tissue and ultimately enter the nasal airway mucus. In the nasal mucus these eosinophils attack the fungi and destroy the fungi by the release of a toxic substance called major basic protein (MBP) from the granules in the eosinophils. This degranulation and release of the toxic MBP not only destroys fungi, but also produces collateral damage injuring the nasal and sinus mucosal lining tissue. The injury to the mucosal lining makes the nasal and sinus mucosa susceptible to penetration and potential infection by bacteria. When this tissue inflammation and damage is persistent and prolonged we call it CRS. The diagnosis of CRS is based largely on symptomatic criteria, with anterior rhinoscopy or endoscopy, and, if there is any doubt about the diagnosis, computed tomography imaging is employed to confirm the presence of diseased sinus mucosa. Treatment of CRS, whether medical (intranasal corticosteroids, saline irrigations) or surgical, is aimed at decreasing inflammation and obstruction in the sinonasal passages. Antibiotics, although commonly used in CRS, should not be administered unless there is suspicion of an acute bacterial infection. The theory behind the fungal and eosinophilic etiology of CRS has led to use of an antifungal compound, intranasal Amphotericin B. In clinical studies, topical irrigation with Amphotericin B has been shown to be both a safe and effective treatment for CRS.