Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detection of Rhinovirus and Some DNA / RNA Viruses using Multiplex-Real-time PCR and both of Complement ( C 3 ) Level and Rhinovirus-Ag in Patients with Acute Respiratory Tract Infection : Molecular and Immunological Study

Acute upper respiratory infections, generally known as common colds are the most frequent acute illnesses world-wide. Depending on multiplex Real-Time PCR technique, our study has been undertaken for determining the diagnostic importancy of Human Rhino virus (HRV) and other associated DNA/RNA viruses including, human Respiratory Syncytial virus (hRSv); Human Metapneumovirus (hMpv); Human parainfluenza virus 1-4 (hPiv); human coronavirus (hCov); Human B, C and E Adenovirus (hAdv) and Human Bocavirus (hBov) in common cold disease. Further, to detect the role of some immunological parameters in serum of patients like level of complement 3 and rhinovirus Ag in rhinovirus infection. The samples of 84 individuals infected with common cold were collected and studied during the period from December, 2012 to April 2013. The frequencies of infections are remarkably varied from 1 up to 23 which was constituted more than half the infections. The most common type causative agent was hRv which accounted for 56.1% followed by hRv+hRSV-hMpv, 12.19% and hRv+hAdv-hBov, 9.75% respectively. Also, the most rarely infection was hRSVhMpv which found only in one case. On the other hand, complement 3 was used as a potent immuno-parameter to detect it's level in a sample of 80 tested individuals infected with human rhinovirus at which it was found that there is a simple linear correlation coefficient matrix of the variables complement 3 (C3) and Rhinovirus antigen (RhV-Ag). In conclusion, multiplex RTPCR is a rapid, cost effective, specific and highly sensitive method for detection of respiratory viruses including rhinovirus. Further, this study was focused a highlight on the critical roles of the complement system (C3) in the pathogenesis of rhinovirus infection. Furthermore, RhV-Ag was found to be significantly correlated with the complement C3 at p<0.05 and RhV-Ag cannot be predicted by means of complement C3.
Reasons for Collaboration Among European and African American Greek Councils

REASONS FOR COLLABORATION AMONG EUROPEAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN GREEK COUNCILS AUGUST 2002 JAMES DAVID LOUK B.A. AUSTIN PEAY STATE UNIVERSITY M. ED. GEORGIA SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY Directed by: Professor Dale Grant The study examines the barriers that inhibit collaboration between traditionally European-American fraternities and sororities and historically African-American fraternities and sororities. In the study, 176 members of the fraternity/sorority community responded to the survey. The survey was developed by the researcher to address issues of collaboration between similar governing council's member organizations, reasons for collaboration with organizations in the different governing council, as well as to explore reasons collaboration had not occurred. Membership in a governing council was used as the defining variable to different responses. The results indicated that lack of knowledge of the cross racial council's member organizations and members of the organizations and racial prejudice were inhibitors to coUaboration. Philanthropy and community service, as well as, events for the entire Greek system were reasons for collaboration.
Thermodynamics and Density of Binding of a Panel of Antibodies to High-Molecular-Weight Capsular Polysaccharides

ABSTRACT The interaction between antipolysaccharide (anti-PS) antibodies and their antigens was investigated by the use of isothermal titration calorimetry to determine the thermodynamic binding constant (K), the change in the enthalpy of binding (ΔH), and the binding density (N) to high-molecular-weight PSs. From these values, the change in the entropy of binding (ΔS) was calculated. The thermodynamic parameters of binding to high-molecular-weight capsular PSs are reported for two monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) with different specificities for meningococcal serogroup C PS, five MAbs specific for different pneumococcal serotypes, and the Fab fragments of two antipneumococcal MAbs. The K values were in the range of 106 to 107 M−1, and these values were 1 to 2 orders of magnitude greater than the previously reported K values derived from antibody-oligosaccharide interactions. The ΔH associated with binding was favorable for each MAb and Fab fragment. The ΔS associated with binding was also generally favorable for both the MAbs and the Fab fragments, with the exception of the anti-serotype 14 MAb and its Fab fragment. N provides information regarding how densely MAbs or Fabs can bind along PS chains and, as expressed in terms of monosaccharides, was very similar for the seven MAbs, with an average of 12 monosaccharides per bound MAb. The value of N for each Fab was smaller, with five or seven monosaccharides per bound Fab. These results suggest that steric interactions between antibody molecules are a major influence on the values of N of high-affinity MAbs to capsular PSs.
Pricing the American Option Using Itô’s Formula and Optimal Stopping Theory

In this thesis the goal is to arrive at results concerning the value of American options and a formula for the perpetual American put option. For the stochastic dynamics of the underlying asset I look at two cases. The first is the standard Black-Scholes model and the second allows for the asset to jump to zero i.e default. To achieve the goals stated above the first couple of sections introduces some basic concepts in probability such as processes and information. Before introducing Itô’s formula this paper contains a not too rigorous introduction of stochastic differential equations and stochastic integration. Then the Black-Scholes model is introduced followed by a section about optimal stopping theory in order to arrive at the American option. Acknowledgements. I would like to thank my supervisor Erik Ekström for his support. His input has been essential for the progress and structure of this thesis.
Molecular Analyses Reveal Inflammatory Mediators in the Solid Component and Cyst Fluid of Human Adamantinomatous Craniopharyngioma

Pediatric adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma (ACP) is a highly solid and cystic tumor, often causing substantial damage to critical neuroendocrine structures such as the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and optic apparatus. Paracrine signaling mechanisms driving tumor behavior have been hypothesized, with IL-6R overexpression identified as a potential therapeutic target. To identify potential novel therapies, we characterized inflammatory and immunomodulatory factors in ACP cyst fluid and solid tumor components. Cytometric bead analysis revealed a highly pro-inflammatory cytokine pattern in fluid from ACP compared to fluids from another cystic pediatric brain tumor, pilocytic astrocytoma. Cytokines and chemokines with particularly elevated concentrations in ACPs were IL-6, CXCL1 (GRO), CXCL8 (IL-8) and the immunosuppressive cytokine IL-10. These data were concordant with solid tumor compartment transcriptomic data from a larger cohort of ACPs, other pediatric brain tumors and normal brain. The majority of receptors for these cytokines and chemokines were also over-expressed in ACPs. In addition to IL-10, the established immunosuppressive factor IDO-1 was overexpressed by ACPs at the mRNA and protein levels. These data indicate that ACP cyst fluids and solid tumor components are characterized by an inflammatory cytokine and chemokine expression pattern. Further study regarding selective cytokine blockade may inform novel therapeutic interventions.
Automobile Fuel Economy: What is it Worth?

The marginal value of increased automobile fuel economy is estimated using a hedonic model of 2001 model year automobiles sold in the United States. This value is then compared to the average expected lifetime fuel savings attributable to increased fuel economy. Results indicate that automobile buyers fully internalize fuel cost savings attributable to improved fuel economy at low discount rates, and may partially internalize other perceived benefits of improved fuel economy such as reduction in global warming or fossil fuel dependence.
SAMP8 mice as a neuropathological model of accelerated brain aging and dementia: Toshio Takeda's legacy and future directions

Senescence accelerated mice P8 (SAMP8) show significant age‐related deteriorations in memory and learning ability in accordance with early onset and rapid advancement of senescence. Brains of SAMP8 mice reveal an age‐associated increase of PAS‐positive granular structures in the hippocampal formation and astrogliosis in the brain stem and hippocampus. A spongy degeneration in the brain stem appears at 1 month of age and reaches a maximum at 4‐8 months. In addition, clusters of activated microglia also appear around the vacuoles in the brain stem. β/A4(Aβ) protein‐like immunoreactive granular structures are observed in various regions and increase in number markedly with age. Other age‐associated histological changes include cortical atrophy, neuronal cell loss in locus coeruleus and lateral tegmental nuclei, intraneuronal accumulation of lipopigments in Purkinje cells and eosinophilic inclusion bodies in thalamic neurons. A blood–brain barrier dysfunction and astrogliosis are also prominent with advancing age in the hippocampus. These changes are generally similar to the pathomorphology of aging human brains and characterized by their association with some specific glioneuronal reactions. As for the hallmarks of Alzheimer brains, tau morphology has not yet been confirmed regardless of the age‐related increase in phosphorylated tau in SAMP8 mice brains, but early age‐related Aβ deposition in the hippocampus has recently been published. SAMP8 mice are, therefore, not only a senescence‐accelerated model but also a promising model for Alzheimer's disease and other cognitive disorders.
Looking Back, Looking Forward at Halogen Bonding in Drug Discovery

Halogen bonding has emerged at the forefront of advances in improving ligand: receptor interactions. In particular the newfound ability of this extant non-covalent-bonding phenomena has revolutionized computational approaches to drug discovery while simultaneously reenergizing synthetic approaches to the field. Here we survey, via examples of classical applications involving halogen atoms in pharmaceutical compounds and their biological hosts, the unique advantages that halogen atoms offer as both Lewis acids and Lewis bases.
Update on Floral Organogenesis Floral Organogenesis : When Knowing Your ABCs Is Not Enough 1 [ OPEN ]

Flower development is one of the particularly wellestablished model systems for investigating the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying organogenesis in plants. Over the past 30 years, this work has led to detailed insights into many of the cellular and developmental processes that occur during the formation of flowers. This progress was made possible especially by the identification and characterization of the floral organ identity factors, which specify the different floral organ types in a combinatorial manner. However, in recent years, the genes that act downstream of these master regulators have taken center stage because it has become increasingly clear that they execute many of the functions originally attributed to the floral organ identity factors. In this Update, we will summarize and discuss our current view of floral organogenesis with particular emphasis on recent progress in the field (see “Advances” box). We will briefly describe the latest models for floral organ identity factor function and outline open questions that need to be addressed to better understand how they act at the mechanistic level. Furthermore, we will discuss studies that have begun to reveal how a complex interplay of transcription factors, hormones, regulatory RNAs, and epigenetic modifiers controls different developmental processes during the formation of flowers. Last, we will outline recent efforts to better understand the evolution offlowers and venture a look ahead at likely future developments in the field of flowering research.
Outcomes in Adult Sinonasal Rhabdomyosarcoma

Objective To describe patient demographics, histology, treatment modalities, and survival associated with adult sinonasal rhabdomyosarcoma. Study Design Retrospective review of a national database. Setting Tertiary medical center. Subjects and Methods Patient demographics, tumor histology, treatment modalities, and survival trends were examined for patients aged ≥18 years who were diagnosed with sinonasal rhabdomyosarcoma between 2004 and 2013 with the National Cancer Database. Kaplan-Meier analysis and the log-rank tests were performed to determine the unadjusted association between overall survival and various patient and disease characteristics. Results A total of 186 patients were identified; 5-year overall survival was 28.4%. Over half of patients were between 18 and 35 years old at diagnosis (53.8%), which was associated with improved 5-year overall survival over patients >35 years old (31.9% vs 24.4%, P = .014). Alveolar sinonasal rhabdomyosarcoma was most common (66.7%). There was no statistical difference in 5-year overall survival between alveolar and embryonal subtypes (30.5% vs 41.6%, P > .05). Metastatic disease was present in 27.7% of patients and was associated with worse 5-year overall survival (14.7% vs 33.9%, P < .0001). The majority of patients were treated with chemotherapy with adjuvant radiation (49.5%). A quarter of patients were treated with surgery plus chemoradiation (25.8%). Conclusion We present the largest analysis of adult sinonasal rhabdomyosarcoma using a standardized national based database. Adult sinonasal rhabdomyosarcoma has a very poor prognosis independent of histologic subtype. The small number of surgical cases limits the ability of the analysis to accurately compare treatment with chemoradiation with and without surgery.
Concept for Frequency-Reconfigurable Antenna Based on Distributed Transceivers

This letter presents a new concept for frequency-reconfigurable antennas. The concept involves a multiport antenna, whose elements are mutually coupled. By properly weighting the excitation signals in each port, the total reflected power can be minimized, and radiation efficiency maximized. Different frequency components of the transmitter can be weighted differently to obtain broad instantaneous band. The concept is studied by simulations.
Scaling the vertical tunnel FET with tunnel bandgap modulation and gate workfunction engineering

In this paper, we look into the scaling issues of a vertical tunnel field-effect transistor (FET). The device, a gated p-i-n diode based on silicon, showed gate-controlled band-to-band tunneling from the heavily doped source to the intrinsic channel. An exponentially increasing input characteristics, perfect saturation in the output characteristics, and off-currents of the order of 1 fA//spl mu/m for sub-100-nm channel lengths were observed. Further, with a /spl delta/p/sup +/ SiGe layer at the p-source end, improvements in the device performance in terms of on-current, threshold voltage and subthreshold swing were shown, albeit trading off the off-currents which increase with Ge content x. We show here that the tunnel FET performance is nearly independent of channel length scaling L and with /spl delta/p/sup +/ SiGe layer, scaling t/sub ox/ is not critical to tunnel FET scaling. Further, with gate workfunction engineering, the tunnel FET can be tuned to achieve a high on-current as well as very low off-currents. Due to the perfect saturation in the output characteristics, the device looks good for sub-100-nm low-power analog devices.
Attention-based recurrent neural network for location recommendation

Due to the rapid development of Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs), the Point of Interest (POI) recom­mendation has been attracted a lot of research attention. Based on the LBSNs, users are able to share their relevant visiting experience via check-in records. The sequential check-in data not only explicitly show users' moving trajectories, but also implicitly describe personal preferences and corresponding life patterns based on different contexts (e.g., time and geographical locations). The traditional POI recommender systems only consider common contexts (e.g., visit frequency, distance, and social relationship), but ignore the significance of life patterns for individuals during different time periods. In addition, current recommender systems hardly provide interpretable and explainable recommendations based on these limited contexts. In this paper, we propose an Attention-based Recurrent Neural Network (ARNN) to provide an explainable recommendation based on the sequential check-in data of the correspond­ing user. Our proposed approach makes use of the sequential check-in data to capture users' life pattern and utilizes a deep neural network to provide transparent recommendations. The major contribution of this paper are: (1) the proposed model is capable of providing explainable recommendations based on life patterns which implicitly describes the preference of the corresponding user; (2) the proposed approach is able to design a visiting plan (i.e., a series of recommendations) based on users' past visiting patterns instead of simply showing top-N recommendations; (3) we evaluate our proposed approach against a real world dataset and compare it to other start-of-the-art approaches.
Life‐Sparing Effect of Human Cord Blood‐Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Experimental Acute Kidney Injury

In search for new sources of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for renal repair in acute kidney injury (AKI), we investigated the potential of human cord blood (CB)‐MSCs to cure mice with AKI. Infusion of CB‐MSCs in immunodeficient mice with cisplatin‐induced AKI ameliorated both renal function and tubular cell injury, and prolonged survival. Transplanted CB‐MSCs localized in peritubular areas, limited capillary alterations and neutrophil infiltration. Apoptosis reduced and tubular cell proliferation increased by virtue of stem cell capacity to produce growth factors. The reno‐protective effect of CB‐MSCs was further confirmed by their ability to inhibit oxidative damage and to induce the prosurvival factor Akt in tubular cells. The evidence that CB‐MSCs in vitro increased the production of growth factors and inhibited IL‐1β and TNFα synthesis when cocultured with damaged proximal tubular cells indicates a regenerative and anti‐inflammatory action of stem cell treatment. Altogether these results highlight the potential of human CB‐MSCs as future cell therapy for testing in human AKI. STEM CELLS 2010;28:513–522
High concentration of miR-133 is a useful marker for the diagnosis of lymphoma- associated hemophagocytic syndrome.

BACKGROUND Lymphoma associated hemophagocytic syndrome (LAHS) is one of the major adult secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH). Early diagnosis and treatment contribute to improved outcome. No enlarge lymph nodes can often delay the diagnosis of underlying lymphoma. OBJECTIVE To find out criteria distinguishing LAHS from HLH induced by benign diseases. METHODS clinical characteristic and laboratory feature of 31 patients with HLH (10 benign disease-associated HLH and 21 LAHS) were analyzed retrospectively. RESULTS No significantly differences were observed in the levels of LDH, IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α; however, the level of CRP (C reactive protein) and the mean level of sIL-R (soluble interleukin-2 receptor) were higher in patients with LAHS than those with benign disease associated disease associated HLH while ferritin levels were higher in benign disease associated HLH than in LAHS. Consequently, the serum sIL-2R/ferritin ratio of patients with LAHS was markedly higher than that of patients with benign disease associated HLH (0.33 ± 0.23 vs 5.82 ± 3.26, P= 0.0001). In addition, we found out that the mean level of miR-133 (microRNA-133) was significant higher in LAHS than in benign disease associated HLH (18.83 ± 10.44 vs 5.82 ± 3.26, P⩽ 0.0001). CONCLUSION Serum miR-133 is a new very useful marker for diagnosing of LAHS, but it need further confirmation by further clinical studies.
Evaluation of cardiac status in iron‐loaded thalassaemia patients following bone marrow transplantation: improvement in cardiac function during reduction in body iron burden

Iron‐induced cardiac disease is the primary cause of death in transfused patients with thalassaemia major. The beneficial effects of deferoxamine mesylate on clinical cardiac disease have been well described but the impact of therapy on subclinical cardiac dysfunction is unknown. To assess the reversibility of subclinical cardiac dysfunction we studied the cardiac status during iron depletion treatment (phlebotomy) in iron overloaded patients, cured of thalassaemia by marrow transplantation, without clinical manifestation of heart failure but with alteration in both left ventricular diastolic function and in contractility property. 32 patients were studied and demonstrated a slight but significant impairment in the morphology and function if compared with matched normal controls. 17 of these patients were submitted to sequential echocardiographic evaluations during the phlebotomy programme. Following completion of the programme, normalization of the indices of contractility and normalization of diastolic function were observed. This study indicates that transplanted thalassaemia patients with subclinical left ventricular diastolic dysfunction and impaired left ventricular contractility may reverse these processes with an effective regimen of iron reduction such as phlebotomy.
Seeing red to being red: conserved genetic mechanism for red cone oil droplets and co-option for red coloration in birds and turtles

Avian ketocarotenoid pigments occur in both the red retinal oil droplets that contribute to colour vision and bright red coloration used in signalling. Turtles are the only other tetrapods with red retinal oil droplets, and some also display red carotenoid-based coloration. Recently, the CYP2J19 gene was strongly implicated in ketocarotenoid synthesis in birds. Here, we investigate CYP2J19 evolution in relation to colour vision and red coloration in reptiles using genomic and expression data. We show that turtles, but not crocodiles or lepidosaurs, possess a CYP2J19 orthologue, which arose via gene duplication before turtles and archosaurs split, and which is strongly and specifically expressed in the ketocarotenoid-containing retina and red integument. We infer that CYP2J19 initially functioned in colour vision in archelosaurs and conclude that red ketocarotenoid-based coloration evolved independently in birds and turtles via gene regulatory changes of CYP2J19. Our results suggest that red oil droplets contributed to colour vision in dinosaurs and pterosaurs.