Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Steroidogenic acute regulatory protein in the rat brain: cellular distribution, developmental regulation and overexpression after injury

The central nervous system synthesizes steroids which regulate the development and function of neurons and glia and have neuroprotective properties. The first step in this process involves the delivery of free cholesterol to the inner mitochondrial membrane where it can be converted into pregnenolone. This delivery is mediated by steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR). Here, we present a detailed analysis of the distribution of StAR expression in neurons and glia, in the developing, adult and aged male rat brain. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that StAR is widely distributed throughout the brain, although in each brain area it is restricted to very specific neuronal and astroglial populations. In most regions expressing StAR, immunoreactivity appeared at P10 and the levels of expression then either increased or remained constant until adulthood. In 2‐year‐old rat brains, StAR immunoreactivity was increased compared to young adults. StAR was expressed in the subventricular zone of the adult brain, in proliferating cells which incorporate BrdU as well as in germinal layers in the developing brain. These findings indicate that StAR expression is developmentally regulated and that StAR may play some function in regulating cell proliferation in the brain. Furthermore, StAR mRNA and protein levels were acutely and transiently increased in the hippocampus following excitotoxic brain injury induced by the administration of kainic acid. This raises the possibility that the up‐regulation of StAR expression and the subsequent modifications in steroidogenesis may be part of the mechanisms used by the brain to cope with neurodegeneration.
More mobile & not so well-connected yet: Users' mobility inference model and 6 month field study

Smartphones assist their users throughout daily life activities. There is much emphasis on the user's mobility support in the research at large. However, we have a weak understanding about users mobility (are they really moving? ) and how well connected are they across their typical day. First, to infer mobility state of users, we derived and evaluated the accuracy of a machine learning-based model, i.e., MobilitySensor, which is based solely on smartphone built-in sensors. It is a tree-based model, defined for each network operator and its average accuracy reaches 91%. Next, we leverage our algorithm to explore the mobility of 34 users served by 3 different Swiss operators (OP) during a period of six months, correlating it with their connectivity. The user study results showed that users are statistically significantly more mobile than we observed in the past (21±7% of the time, i.e., up to 4.3h vs. 13±12%, i.e., 2.7h in 2011) and when they are mobile, 4G network is available to them 38±12% of the time. Furthermore, when mobile, depending on their operator, they may be provided with up to around 10% of the time with 2.5G connectivity (for OP1 and OP2 vs. only 4% OP3), or provided mainly with 3G (49% for OP1 vs. 34% for OP3). Based on the results we provide a set of design implications for application providers, users and operators alike, all striving to improve the mobile users' quality of experience (QoE).
Security Vulnerabilities of the NDEF Signature Record Type

The NFC Forum has released a first candidate for their Signature Record Type Definition. This specification adds digital signatures to the NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF), which is a standardized format for storing formatted data on NFC (Near Field Communication) tags and for transporting data across a peer-to-peer links between NFC devices. With an increasing number of applications of the NFC and NDEF technology, more and more security threats became apparent. The signature record type is supposed to increase security for NDEF application by providing authenticity and integrity to the NDEF data. This paper takes a close look on the recently published Signature Record Type Definition and discusses its various security aspects. First, we introduce the signature record type and its usage. After that, we analyze the security aspects of the current signature method. Finally, we disclose multiple security vulnerabilities of the current Signature Record Type Definition and propose measures to avoid them.
Towards observer-based fault detection and isolation for branched water distribution networks without cycles

This paper addresses the observer-based, diagonal, fault detection and isolation (FDI) problem for branched water distribution networks without cycles. Specifically, it provides a linear, time-invariant, state-space model for water contamination in such networks based on one-dimensional mass balance and a necessary and sufficient solvability condition for the aforementioned FDI problem. The latter is based on a graph-theoretic characterization of the rank of the model's transfer matrix, which allows one to check for solvability just by analyzing the fault-output paths in the directed graph associated to the model.
Knowledge, attitude, and practice toward MERS-CoV among primary health-care workers in Makkah Al-Mukarramah: an intervention study -

Background: Saudi Arabia (KSA) showed a higher number of Middle East respiratory syndrome—coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection in Eastern Mediterranean Region. Satisfactory knowledge, positive attitude, and healthful practice of health-care workers (HCWs) regarding MERS-CoV are a cornerstone in prevention of virus spread and disease outbreak. Objective: To assess and improve knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of HCWs toward MERS-CoV. Materials and Methods: An interventional prospective study was conducted during the year 2015 on a randomly selected 398 HCWs in primary health-care centers of Makkah Al-Mukarramah, KSA. The participants were invited after their consent to fill a predesigned closed-ended Arabic-based questionnaire before and 3 months after exposure to a structured health education program. Result: The level of satisfactory knowledge, positive attitude, and good practice of studied HCWs significantly improved after exposure to the program, as it increased from 43.3%, 45%, and 57.4% before intervention to 67.9%, 63.8%, and 64.8% after intervention, respectively (P < 0.001). Older age, previous training, and experience were positively correlated with higher scores of knowledge. Conclusion: The study reflected the importance of health education as a cornerstone element in improving KAP toward MERS-CoV infection in preventing the virus spread and disease outbreak.
Protection of the renal collecting system during radiofrequency ablation with antegrade cold dextrose infusion.

PURPOSE To evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of antegrade renal cooling during radiofrequency (RF) ablation to protect the renal collecting system in pigs. MATERIALS AND METHODS With the approval of the institutional animal care and use committee, RF ablation was planned bilaterally after nephrostomy in 20 kidneys from 10 domestic pigs. A coaxial assembly consisting of a 7-F pigtail catheter and a 12-F arterial sheath was placed at the renal pelvis. Cooled 5% dextrose in water solution was perfused in only one of the kidneys in each pig. A 17-gauge internally cooled tip RF electrode with a 3-cm tip was placed near the renal pelvis with ultrasonographic guidance. On postprocedural days 1 and 7, computed tomography (CT) was performed to evaluate the RF ablation effect, the presence of a fluid collection, and the leakage of contrast material. Ex vivo retrograde pyelography was performed to assess the integrity of the urinary tract after kidney harvest. Histologic findings related to the urothelial damage were scored semiquantitatively. RESULTS The mean maximal diameter of the RF ablation area measured at CT and in specimens was not significantly different between cooled and noncooled kidneys. A fluid collection around the RF ablation area was seen in eight of the 10 noncooled kidneys on day 7 CT scans compared with two of the 10 cooled kidneys; the difference was statistically significant (P = .035). Ex vivo retrograde pyelography depicted leakage of contrast material in only the noncooled group. The mean histologic damage score was lower in the cooled group than in the noncooled group. CONCLUSION RF ablation after placement of an antegrade cooling system in pig kidneys was feasible. Antegrade cold dextrose infusion of the urinary tract during RF ablation is effective in protecting the renal collecting system without compromising the RF ablation effect.
Phenotypic Characterization of Multidrug-resistant Escherichia Coli with Special Reference to Extended-spectrum-beta-lactamases and Metallo-beta-lactamases in a Tertiary Care Center.

INTRODUCTION The increasing reports on extended-spectrum-beta-lactamase and metallo-beta-lactamase producing Escherichia coli have addressed a potential threat to global health since it is found to be highly resistance to most of the currently available antibiotics including carbapenems. The present study was aimed to determine the antibiogram of extended-spectrum-beta-lactamase and metallo-beta-lactamase producing MDR E. coli isolates from various clinical samples. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study conducted over a period of seven months from December 2013 to July 2014 at bacteriology laboratory of Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital. A total of 250 clinical specimens (urine, pus, sputum, blood, body fluid, bile, tissue and central venous pressure line tip) were processed from inpatients, with multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli infections. Standard microbiological techniques were used for isolation and identification of the isolates. The presence of extended-spectrum-beta-lactamase was detected by phenotypic confirmatory test recommended by Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute and imipenem (IMP) /EDTA combined disc method was performed to detect metallo-beta-lactamase mediated resistance mechanism. RESULTS We found high level of beta lactamase mediated resistance mechanism as part of multidrug resistance. Among 250 MDR isolates, 60% isolates were extended-spectrum-beta-lactamase producers and 17.2% isolates were metallo-beta-lactamase producers. Co-existence of extended-spectrum-beta-lactamase and metallo-beta-lactamase identified in 6.8% isolates. CONCLUSIONS Beta-lactamase mediated resistance mechanisms are accounting very high in the multidrug resistant isolates of E. coli. Therefore, early detection of beta lactamase mediated resistant strains and their current antibiotic susceptibility pattern is necessary to avoid treatment failure and prevent the spread of MDR.
The Top Management Team: Key to Strategic Success

The top executive who seeks strategic success will work first and foremost at assembling a managerial team well suited to formulating and implementing strategies in the particular competitive environment faced by the firm. This article presents an analytical framework for assessing and designing top management teams. The value of the framework, illustrated in the case of an actual general manager grappling with an appraisal of his top team, lies in specifying the elements of this important process and identifying the range of issues the manager must consider.
Skin cleanser composition

A skin cleanser excelling in foam quality at cleansing and improved in the sensations of being moist and being plump after cleansing. There is provided a skin cleanser composition characterized by containing an amphoteric terpolymer composed of 5 to 15 mass% of anionic monomer (for example, acrylic acid), 15 to 40 mass% of cationic monomer (for example, dimethyldiallylammonium chloride) and 45 to 80 mass% of nonionic monomer (for example, acrylamide).
Efflux‐mediated antiseptic resistance gene qacA from Staphylococcus aureus: common ancestry with tetracycline‐ and sugar‐transport proteins

Resistance to intercalating dyes (ethidium, acriflavine) and other organic cations, such as quaternary ammonium‐type antiseptic compounds, mediated by the Staphylococcus aureus ptasmid pSK1 is specified by an energy‐dependent export mechanism encoded by the qacA gene. From nucleotide sequence analysis, qacA is predicted to encode a protein of Mr 55017 containing 514 amino acids. The gene is likely to initiate with a CUG codon, and a 36bp palindrome immediately preceding qacA, along with an upstream reading frame with homology to the TetR repressors, may be components of a regulatory circuit. The putative polypeptide specified by qacA has properties typical of a cytoplasmic membrane protein, and is indicated to be a member of a transport protein family that includes proteins reponsible for export‐mediated resistance to tetracycline and methylenomycin, and uptake of sugars and quinate. The analysis suggests that N‐ and C‐terminal regions of these proteins are involved in energy coupling (proton translocation) and substrate transport, respectively. The last common ancestor of the qacA and related tet (tetracycline resistance) lineages is inferred to have been repressor controlled, as occurs for modern tet determinants from Gram‐negative, but not those from Gram‐positive, bacteria.
Actual Metal Coverage at the Neck Is Critical for Flow-Diverting Stents in Treating Intracranial Aneurysms

We read the interesting article by Schneiders et al,[1][1] entitled “A Flow-Diverting Stent Is Not a Pressure-Diverting Stent. ” The authors measured intra-aneurysmal pressure before, during, and after placement of a flow-diverting (FD) stent and found that the pressure inside the aneurysm
Profound changes in breast cancer incidence may reflect changes into a Westernized lifestyle: A comparative population‐based study in Singapore and Sweden

Breast cancer incidence in Sweden has always been approximately twice as high as in Singapore. In recent years, this difference is limited to postmenopausal women. The aim of this study was to explore the reasons behind these differences through the use of age‐period‐cohort modeling. This population‐based study included all breast cancer cases reported to the Swedish and the Singapore cancer registries from 1968 to 1997, with a total of 135,581 Swedish and 10,716 Singaporean women. Poisson regression using age‐period and age‐cohort models was used to determine the effects of age at diagnosis, calendar period and birth cohort. Incidence rate ratios were used to summarize these effects. An age‐cohort model provided the best fit to the data in both countries, indicating that changes over lifetime, rather than recent differences in medical surveillance, might account for the observed differences in these 2 populations. The changes over birth cohort were much greater among Singaporean women. The relative effect of age was very similar in the 2 countries. Analyses show that age and cohort effects may explain the differences in trends of female breast cancer incidence between Sweden and Singapore. The larger cohort effect seen in Singaporean women may be attributed to more rapid changes in reproduction and lifestyle patterns than that of Swedish women during the period studied. The incidence of breast cancer in postmenopausal women in Singapore will probably continue to rise in the coming decades to match the current Swedish rates.
Primate-specific miR-515 family members inhibit key genes in human trophoblast differentiation and are upregulated in preeclampsia

Significance Preeclampsia, a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy and leading cause of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality, is associated with defective placental implantation and vascularization. Herein, we characterized regulation and function of miR-515-5p, which belongs to the primate- and placenta-specific chromosome 19 miRNA cluster, one of the largest miRNA clusters in humans. We observed that miR-515-5p was markedly downregulated during human syncytiotrophoblast differentiation and upregulated in placentas from preeclamptic women. miR-515-5p overexpression inhibited syncytiotrophoblast differentiation. Important miR-515-5p targets were identified, including hCYP19A1/aromatase, transcription factor glial cells missing 1 and WNT receptor, frizzled 5, which share critical roles in trophoblast differentiation. Thus, miR-515-5p may serve a key role in human trophoblast differentiation and provide a marker and therapeutic target for preeclampsia. Dysregulation of human trophoblast invasion and differentiation can result in preeclampsia (PE), a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy with significant morbidity and mortality for mother and offspring. miRNA microarray analysis of RNA from human cytotrophoblasts (CytT), before and after differentiation to syncytiotrophoblast (SynT) in primary culture, revealed that members of miR-515 family—including miR-515-5p, miR-519e-5p, miR-519c-3p, and miR-518f, belonging to the primate- and placenta-specific chromosome 19 miRNA cluster (C19MC)—were significantly down-regulated upon human SynT differentiation. The proto-oncogene, c-MYC, which declines during SynT differentiation, interacted with E-boxes upstream of pri-miR-515-1 and pri-miR-515-2, encoding these mRNAs, to enhance their expression. Predicted targets of miR-515-5p, known to be critical for human SynT differentiation, including hCYP19A1/aromatase P450, glial cells missing 1 (GCM1), frizzled 5 (FZD5), WNT2, Sp1, and estrogen receptor-α (ERα) mRNA, were markedly up-regulated during SynT differentiation. Notably, overexpression of miR-515-5p in cultured primary human trophoblasts impaired SynT differentiation and specifically decreased expression of hCYP19A1, GCM1, and Fzd5, which were validated as its direct targets. Interestingly, miR-515-5p levels were significantly increased in PE placentas, whereas mRNA and protein levels of targets, hCYP19A1, GCM1, and FZD5, were significantly decreased, compared with placentas of normotensive women. Thus, miR-515-5p may serve a key role in human trophoblast differentiation; its aberrant up-regulation may contribute to the pathogenesis of PE.
Minimum energy compact structures of random sequences of heteropolymers.

We enumerate the number of minimum energy compact structures (MECS) for a two dimensional heteropolymer model consisting of hydrophobic (H) and hydrophilic beads averaged over all possible sequences as a function of the total number of beads N and the number of H beads ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathit{H}}$. The analysis of the average number of compact structures, which grows exponentially with N, gives no indication of logarithmic corrections to the free energy. For intermediate values of the ratio ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathit{H}}$/N, we estimate that the average number of MECS\char22{}which has a minimum at ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathit{H}}^{\mathrm{min}}$/N=0.6\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.1\char22{}does not grow with N. Our results suggest that the late stages of protein folding should be restricted to the sampling of MECS only.
Expression of thymidylate synthase and glutathione-s-transferase pi in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

AIM To investigate the expression of thymidylate synthase (TS) and glutathione-s-transferase pi (GST-pi) in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and their association with the clinicopathologic characteristics. METHODS Immunohistochemical methods were used to detect the expression of TS and GST-pi in surgically resected formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) tissue sections from 102 patients (median age, 58 years) and in 28 normal esophageal mucosa (NEM) samples. The relationship between TS and GST-pi expression and clinicopathologic factors was examined. RESULTS The expression of TS and GST-pi was not statistically significantly associated with age of the patients, tumor size, lymph node metastasis, depth of invasion or tumor stage. TS staining was positive in 17.86% of normal esophageal mucosa and in 42.16% of ESCC samples (P < 0.05). The expression level of TS was not only significantly lower in well-differentiated (21.88%) than in poorly-differentiated carcinomas (51.43%, P < 0.05), but was also significantly higher in samples from male patients (46.51%) than from female patients (18.75%, P < 0.05). GST-pi was positively stained in 78.57% of normal esophageal mucosa and in 53.92% of ESCC samples (P < 0.05). The expression level of GST-pi was also significantly higher in well-differentiated carcinomas (65.63%) than in poorly-differentiated carcinomas (35.00%, P < 0.05). CONCLUSION The expression of TS and of GST-pi may be used as molecular markers for the characterization of ESCC. Poorly-differentiated cells showed increased expression of TS and reduced expression of GST-pi.
Multilevel Dual Closed-Loop Controlling Class-D Power Amplifier with FPGA

The article introduces a new switch-mode power amplifier based on a cascade multilevel topology. By adopting an advanced technology to achieve class D power amplifier multipulse PWM generator by FPGA, the amplifier enjoys a switching frequency which is 2N times of that of a single unit. The PWM trigger gathers A/D transform modulated wave by data acquiring unit, produces multi-channels phase-shifted triangle carrier waves and their reversed carrier waves by multi-channels phase-shifted triangle carrier waves control unit. The PWM trigger generates PWM trigger signals by compare control unit and deal with dead area protecting control by dead area control unit. The amplifier improves the output signal quality through dual current and voltage closed-loop control. The article lays emphasis on designing dual closed-loop control and the experiment results show that the proposed amplifier has a wide bandwidth, good instant response and high output quality.
Virulence of Escherichia coli in relation to host factors in women with symptomatic urinary tract infection

The relationship between bacterial characteristics and the severity of urinary tract infection in adults has not been clarified. In this study, Escherichia coli strains (n = 178) were prospectively collected from women with community-acquired urinary tract infection. The isolates were identified by O:K:H serotype and characterized for adherence, hemolysin production, and serum bactericidal resistance. The patients had acute pyelonephritis with or without complicating factors and acute cystitis. Nine serotypes (O1:K1:H7, O1:K1:H-, O2:K1:H-, O4:K12:H1, O7:K1:H-, O9:K34:H-, O16:K1:H6, O16:K1:H-, and O75:K5:H-) comprised 65% of the strains in uncomplicated pyelonephritis, but were significantly less often encountered in complicated pyelonephritis or cystitis. Adherence was the single property most characteristic of the pyelonephritogenic clones. Adhesins specifically recognizing Gal alpha 1----4Gal beta-containing receptors occurred in 80% of strains in uncomplicated pyelonephritis, in 50% of strains in complicated infections, and in 37% of cystitis strains. Hemolysin production and serum resistance did not correlate with any disease pattern. Advanced age did not seem to reduce the selection of virulent E. coli to cause pyelonephritis. These results demonstrate in women a relationship between E. coli virulence and the severity of urinary tract infection analogous to that previously observed in pediatric populations and also illustrate the balance between host resistance and bacterial virulence in the urinary tract.