Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in pituitary secretion during the early postnatal period and anovulatory syndrome induced by neonatal oestrogen or androgen in rats.

The following experiments were performed: (i) concentrations of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH) and prolactin in plasma were measured at 2, 5, 8, 10 and 15 days in female Wistar rats treated on the first day of life with 100 micrograms oestradiol benzoate or vehicle; (ii) females injected on day 1 with 100 micrograms of oestradiol benzoate or 1 mg of testosterone propionate and from day 1 to day 10 or 15 with FSH and LH were killed on day 90; (iii) females injected from day 1 to day 10 or 15 with prolactin or vehicle were killed on day 90; (iv) females injected on day 1 with oestradiol benzoate and from day 1 to day 15 with a luteinizing-hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) agonist were killed on day 90; (v) groups of females injected on days 1, 4, 7, 10, 13 and 16 with an LHRH antagonist were killed on day 90. Onset of puberty, vaginal cycles, organ weights and hormonal plasma concentrations were measured. Females treated on the first day of life with 100 micrograms oestradiol showed inhibition of gonadotrophin secretion and stimulation of prolactin secretion during the neonatal period. Females injected on the first day of life with oestradiol benzoate or testosterone propionate showed, in adulthood, anovulation, ovarian atrophy, reduced FSH plasma concentrations, increased prolactin plasma concentrations and reduced pituitary prolactin content. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Cell Proliferation Arrest within Intrathymic Lymphocyte Progenitor Cells Causes Thymic Atrophy Mediated by the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor 1

Activation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor, in lymphocytes by the immunosuppressive environmental contaminant 2,3,7,8,-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) has been shown to cause thymic atrophy in every species studied. We set out to identify the specific hemopoietic cellular populations in which the AHR was activated to lead to thymic atrophy and to determine the effect of AHR activation in those cellular populations. Initially, we examined whether AHR activation in intrathymic dendritic cells could mediate TCDD-induced thymic atrophy. It was found that thymic atrophy occurred only when the AHR could be activated in the thymocytes but not hemopoietic-derived dendritic cells or other APCs. We next analyzed the effect of TCDD on the proliferation of thymocytes in vivo. There was a significant increase in the percentage of thymocytes in the G1 phase of the cell cycle and a significant decrease in the percentage of S plus G2/M thymocytes, especially in the CD4−CD8−CD3− triple-negative intrathymic progenitor cell population 24 h after exposure to 30 μg/kg TCDD. Furthermore, by 12 h after exposure to TCDD, we observed ∼60% reduction of 5-bromo-2′-deoxyuridine incorporation in specific intrathymic progenitor cell populations. This reduction persisted for at least 6 days. These data indicate that intrathymic progenitor cells are direct targets of TCDD in the thymus and suggest that TCDD causes thymic atrophy by reducing entrance into cell cycle in these populations.
A Statistical Modeling Approach to Computer-Aided Quantification of Dental Biofilm

Biofilm is a formation of microbial material on tooth substrata. Several methods to quantify dental biofilm coverage have recently been reported in the literature, but at best they provide a semiautomated approach to quantification with significant input from a human grader that comes with the grader's bias of what is foreground, background, biofilm, and tooth. Additionally, human assessment indices limit the resolution of the quantification scale; most commercial scales use five levels of quantification for biofilm coverage (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). On the other hand, current state-of-the-art techniques in automatic plaque quantification fail to make their way into practical applications owing to their inability to incorporate human input to handle misclassifications. This paper proposes a new interactive method for biofilm quantification in Quantitative light-induced fluorescence (QLF) images of canine teeth that is independent of the perceptual bias of the grader. The method partitions a QLF image into segments of uniform texture and intensity called superpixels; every superpixel is statistically modeled as a realization of a single 2-D Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF) whose parameters are estimated; the superpixel is then assigned to one of three classes ( background, biofilm, tooth substratum) based on the training set of data. The quantification results show a high degree of consistency and precision. At the same time, the proposed method gives pathologists full control to postprocess the automatic quantification by flipping misclassified superpixels to a different state (background, tooth, biofilm) with a single click, providing greater usability than simply marking the boundaries of biofilm and tooth as done by current state-of-the-art methods.
Aminolevulinic Acid (ALA) as a Prodrug in Photodynamic Therapy of Cancer

Aminolevulinic acid (ALA) is an endogenous metabolite normally formed in the mitochondria from succinyl-CoA and glycine. Conjugation of eight ALA molecules yields protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) and finally leads to formation of heme. Conversion of PpIX to its downstream substrates requires the activity of a rate-limiting enzyme ferrochelatase. When ALA is administered externally the abundantly produced PpIX cannot be quickly converted to its final product - heme by ferrochelatase and therefore accumulates within cells. Since PpIX is a potent photosensitizer this metabolic pathway can be exploited in photodynamic therapy (PDT). This is an already approved therapeutic strategy making ALA one of the most successful prodrugs used in cancer treatment.
An efficient implementation of floating point multiplier

In this paper we describe an efficient implementation of an IEEE 754 single precision floating point multiplier targeted for Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA. VHDL is used to implement a technology-independent pipelined design. The multiplier implementation handles the overflow and underflow cases. Rounding is not implemented to give more precision when using the multiplier in a Multiply and Accumulate (MAC) unit. With latency of three clock cycles the design achieves 301 MFLOPs. The multiplier was verified against Xilinx floating point multiplier core.
Elastolytic Cathepsin Induction/Activation System Exists in Myocardium and Is Upregulated in Hypertensive Heart Failure

Cathepsins are cysteine proteases that participate in various types of tissue remodeling. However, their expressions during myocardial remodeling have not been examined. In this study, we investigated their expressions in the left ventricular (LV) myocardium of rats and humans with hypertension-induced LV hypertrophy or heart failure (HF). Real-time PCR and immunoblot analysis revealed that the abundance of cathepsin S mRNA or protein in the LV tissues was greater in rats or humans with HF than in those with hypertrophy or in control subjects. Immunostaining showed that cathepsin S was localized predominantly to cardiac myocytes and coronary vascular smooth muscle cells, but also overlapped in part with macrophages. Elastic lamina fragmentations significantly increased in the LV intramyocardial coronary arteries of HF rats. The amount of elastolytic activity in the extract of the LV myocardium was markedly increased for HF rats compared with controls, and this activity was mostly because of cathepsin S. Although the amount of elastin mRNA was increased in the LV myocardium of HF rats, the area of interstitial elastin was not. The expression of interleukin 1β was increased in the LV myocardium of HF rats, and this cytokine was found to increase the expression and activity of cathepsin S in cultured neonatal cardiomyocytes. These results suggest that cathepsin S participates in pathological LV remodeling associated with hypertension-induced HF. This protease is, thus, a potential target for therapeutics aimed at preventing or reversing cardiac remodeling.
Purge- and intensive-purge decontamination of dental units contaminated with biofilm

Introduction: During hygienic-microbiological monitoring of the water quality in dental units, the total bacterial colony count was found to exceed the limits for drinking water quality; in addition, mold contamination was detected. The presumed cause was irregular decontamination of the units through purging and intensive decontamination. Methods: To decontaminate the units, the manufacturer’s recommended program for cleaning and intensive decontamination was intensified by shortened intervals over a 2-week period. For Sirona units, instead of once a day, the automatic purge program was run every morning and evening for 20 min each time, and instead of once a month, intensive decontamination was performed every two weeks; this schedule has been maintained since then. For KaVo units, cleaning with the hydroclean function was carried out for 2.5 min every morning and evening. The automatic intensive decontamination was run daily instead of weekly. A maintenance log book was introduced, in which decontamination/cleaning was confirmed by the operator’s signature. Results: Within 5 weeks, all previously contaminated units were decontaminated. Discussion: By shortening the cleaning and intensive decontamination intervals in a 2-week period with subsequent control that the recommended maintenance intervals were kept, it was possible to guarantee drinking-water quality in the dental units of both manufacturers.
Hybrid rockets with nozzle in ultra-high-temperature ceramic composites

In the framework of the Horizon 2020 project C 3 HARME, an experimental campaign has been carried out to characterize a new class of Ultra-High-Temperature Ceramic Matrix Composites (UHTCMC) for near-zero erosion rocket nozzles. A novel test set-up has been developed to the purpose of testing small-sized specimens, with ZrB 2 based matrix and carbon fibers, exposing them to the supersonic exhaust plume of a 200N-class hybrid rocket nozzle, employing gaseous oxygen as oxidizer and High-Density PolyEthylene as fuel. The aim of the tests was to reproduce realistic rocket nozzles operating conditions, in order to demonstrate the ability of the specimens to preserve their functional integrity in a relevant environment. After that a UHTCMC nozzle throat insert has been manufactured and experimentally tested to verify the erosion resistance and evaluate the effects on the rocket performance by comparison with those obtained in similar operating conditions employing a graphite nozzle. Computational Fluid simulations supported the experimental activities allowing for the rebuilding of the thermo-fluid-dynamic and chemical flow field and the characterization of the test conditions.
Online Discovery of Group Level Events in Time Series

Recent advances in high throughput data collection and storage technologies have led to a dramatic increase in the availability of high-resolution time series data sets in various domains. These time series reflect the dynamics of the underlying physical processes in these domains. Detecting changes in a time series over time or changes in the relationships among the time series in a data set containing multiple contemporaneous time series can be useful to detect changes in these physical processes. Contextual events detection algorithms detect changes in the relationships between multiple related time series. In this work, we introduce a new type of contextual events, called group level contextual change events. In contrast to individual contextual change events that reflect the change in behavior of one target time series against a context, group level events reflect the change in behavior of a target group of time series relative to a context group of time series. We propose an online framework to detect two types of group level contextual change events: (i) group formation (i.e., detecting when a set of multiple unrelated timeseries or groups of time series with little prior relationship in their behavior forms a new group of related time series) and (ii) group disbanding (i.e., detecting when one stable set of related time series disbands into two or more subgroups with little relationship in their behavior). We demonstrate this framework using 2 real world datasets and show that the framework detects group level contextual change events that can be explained by plausible causes.
Neutralization of Endotoxin Toxicity in Chick Embryos by Antibiotics

Rifkind, David (University of Colorado Medical Center, Denver), and John D. Palmer. Neutralization of endotoxin toxicity in chick embryos by antibiotics. J. Bacteriol. 92:815–819. 1966. —Three cationic cyclic polypeptide antibiotics, polymyxin B sulfate colistin sulfate, and tyrocidine hydrochloride, were shown to neutralize endotoxin lethality in chick embryos. The neutralizing potency of these antibiotics was approximately equivalent, 0.06 to 0.11 μmole of antibiotic per μg of endotoxin. Methane sulfonation of colistin resulted in a 13-fold decrease in endotoxin-neutralizing potency. Other cationic cyclic polypeptide antibiotics were inactive, as well all other classes of antibiotics tested, including the neutral cyclic polypeptides. Several nonantibiotic polycationic proteins and polymers tested were also inactive. It is suggested that certain cationic cyclic polypeptide antibiotics neutralize by combining directly with the toxic moiety of the endotoxin molecule. Possibly this combination involves the cationic groups of the antibiotics and the polyphosphate groups of the phospholipid component of endotoxin.
Review on Various Routing Protocols Based on VANET ' s : A Survey

The Vehicle Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is a gathering of masterminding toward oneself node without any base. The Vehicular nodes with remote radio interface are joined by remote connections where every gadget in a VANET is allowed to move freely and haphazardly with the capacity of transforming its connections to different gadgets often. Late research work in VANET attention on specific regions like steering, security and nature of administration however because of high dynamic nature of this system, planning an effective directing convention for all VANET requisitions is hard, still there are extent of reproduction or making of new outline of convention, administrations for VANET architectures. The change in existing approach or proposed a novel method for directing is turning point however a study of steering conventions focused around different parameters of VANET is an essential issue in vehicle-tovehicle (V2v) and infrastructure tovehicle (IVC) correspondence for shrewd ITS. In the advancement of VANET routing is the principle issue. There are distinctive security imperfections and assaults on steering conventions in VANET. These strike can influence the execution of diverse routing protocols.
Enabling DSL and radio on the same copper pair

To increase indoor coverage for mobile services, we propose a residential small cell infrastructure making use of the existing copper plant. The system is cabinet-based, collocated with VDSL2 and uses small pieces of spectrum next to VDSL2. Inspired by the Ericsson Radio Dot System, it challenges the femtocell paradigm offering full macro functionality in the small cells. An interesting service potential is offered albeit the added mobile traffic capacity is moderate as it is limited by the copper fronthaul.
The select of cross border electronic commerce information system modes

Management information system is the nervous system of the enterprise, and it's essential to every enterprise. Combined with the business environment of cross border e-commerce, and according to the different characteristics of cross border e-commerce which has different operation modes, this paper proposes reasonable and efficient management information system, and points out the unfavorable factors of the construction of the current cross border electronic commerce information system.
The Economic Security Index: A New Measure for Research and Policy Analysis

This paper presents the Economic Security Index (ESI), a new, more comprehensive measure of economic insecurity. By combining data from multiple surveys, we create an integrated measure of volatility in available household resources, accounting for fluctuations in income and out-of-pocket medical expenses, as well as financial wealth sufficient to buffer against these shocks. We find that insecurity has risen steadily since the mid-1980s for virtually all subgroups of Americans, albeit with cyclical ups and downs. We also find, however, that there is substantial disparity in the degree to which different groups are exposed to economic risk. As the ESI derives from a data-independent conceptual foundation, it can be measured using different data sources. We find that the degree and disparity by which insecurity has risen is robust across these sources.
Women at altitude: ventilatory acclimatization at 4,300 m.

Women living at low altitudes or acclimatized to high altitudes have greater effective ventilation in the luteal (L) compared with follicular (F) menstrual cycle phase and compared with men. We hypothesized that ventilatory acclimatization to high altitude would occur more quickly and to a greater degree in 1) women in their L compared with women in their F menstrual cycle phase, and 2) in women compared with men. Studies were conducted on 22 eumenorrheic, unacclimatized, sea-level (SL) residents. Indexes of ventilatory acclimatization [resting ventilatory parameters, hypoxic ventilatory response, hypercapnic ventilatory response (HCVR)] were measured in 14 women in the F phase and in 8 other women in the L phase of their menstrual cycle, both at SL and again during a 12-day residence at 4,300 m. At SL only, ventilatory studies were also completed in both menstrual cycle phases in 12 subjects (i.e., within-subject comparison). In these subjects, SL alveolar ventilation (expressed as end-tidal PCO(2)) was greater in the L vs. F phase. Yet the comparison between L- and F-phase groups found similar levels of resting end-tidal PCO(2), hypoxic ventilatory response parameter A, HCVR slope, and HCVR parameter B, both at SL and 4,300 m. Moreover, these indexes of ventilatory acclimatization were not significantly different from those previously measured in men. Thus female lowlanders rapidly ascending to 4,300 m in either the L or F menstrual cycle phase have similar levels of alveolar ventilation and a time course for ventilatory acclimatization that is nearly identical to that reported in male lowlanders.
DIRECTED EVOLUTION FOR THE DESIGN OF NEW CATALYSTS

Introducing new catalytic function into existing proteins provide ways of understanding the fundamental principles of enzyme catalysis and has gained recognition as a leading tool for understanding protein folding, structure, and function. De novo computational design coupled with directed evolution can yield catalysts with novel functions and improved catalytic rate enhancement of enzymes.1-2 Minimalist protein design that focuses on the bare minimum requirements to achieve activity presents several important advantages. By utilizing basic physicochemical properties and strategic placing of only few highly active residues one can feasibly sample a very large variety of possible catalysts. In more general terms minimalist approach looks for the mere possibility of catalysis, rather than trying to identify the most active catalyst possible. Even very basic designs that utilize a single residue introduced into non-enzymatic proteins or peptide bundles are surprisingly active. No complex calculations need to be set up and even a beginner can master this technique in a very short time. An enzyme nicknamed AlleyCatE is an allosterically regulated catalyst of ester hydrolysis that was generated by introducing a single histidine residue into a nonenzymatic protein calmodulin (CaM). The catalytic efficiency of the resulting enzyme is higher than that of any other rationally designed p-nitrophenylesterase and is on par with some catalytic antibodies. DIRECTED EVOLUTION FOR THE DESIGN OF NEW CATALYSTS
Electronic Word-Of-Mouth Contribution Continuance in Online Opinion Platforms: The Role of Multiple Commitments

Based on the theoretical lens of multiple commitments and prior research on electronic word-ofmouth (eWOM), this study develops a research model to investigate the antecedents of users’ continuance intention to contribute eWOM in online opinion platforms. Specially, this study investigates the mediating roles of multiple commitments namely, affective commitment, calculative commitment and normative commitment, between perceived benefits and continuance intention of eWOM contribution. The research model is tested by the data collected from 456 eWOM contributors of a famous online opinion platform in China (i.e., “dianping.com”). The results indicate that affective commitment and normative commitment are the key determinant of continuance intention to contribute eWOM in online opinion platforms. These two commitments are, in turn, influenced by extrinsic reward and self-enhancement. Surprisingly, enjoyment in helping other consumers and enjoyment in helping the company have little impact on either affective commitment or normative commitment. Implications of this study are noteworthy for both researchers and practitioners.
Role of the short isoform of myosin light chain kinase in the contraction of cultured smooth muscle cells as examined by its down-regulation

GbaSM-4 cells, smooth muscle cells derived from brain basilar artery, which express both 210-kDa long and 130-kDa short isoforms of myosin light chain kinase (MLCK), were infected with an adenovirus vector carrying a 1.4-kb catalytic portion of MLCK–cDNA in an antisense orientation. Western blot analysis showed that the expression of short MLCK was depressed without affecting long MLCK expression. The contraction of the down-regulated cells was measured by the cell-populated collagen-fiber method. The tension development after stimulation with norepinephrine or A23187 was depressed. The additional infection of the down-regulated cells with the adenovirus construct containing the same insert in a sense direction rescued not only the short MLCK expression but also contraction, confirming the physiological role of short MLCK in the contraction. To examine the role of long MLCK in the residual contraction persisting in the short MLCK-deficient cells, long MLCK was further down-regulated by increasing the multiplicity of infection of the antisense construct. The additional down-regulation of long MLCK expression, however, did not alter the residual contraction, ruling out the involvement of long MLCK in the contractile activity. Further, in the cells where short MLCK was down-regulated specifically, the extent of phosphorylation of 20-kDa myosin light chain (MLC20) after the agonist stimulation was not affected. This finding suggests that there are additional factors to MLC20 phosphorylation that contribute to regulate smooth muscle contraction.