Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Imbalance of growth factor signalling in diabetic kidney disease: is connective tissue growth factor (CTGF, CCN2) the perfect intervention point?

The prevalence of diabetes mellitus and its clinical complications are increasing rapidly worldwide. Diabetic nephropathy has already become the leading cause of end-stage renal disease in developed countries and is thus forming an increasing clinical problem [1]. Mesangial matrix accumulation and glomerular basement membrane (GBM) thickening are primary structural alterations characteristic for diabetic nephropathy [2]. These structural changes are accompanied by increased permeability of the GBM for proteins, resulting in increased urinary albumin excretion (UAE). Growth factors and cytokines such as transforming growth factor-b (TGF-b), growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor (IGF) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) play important roles in the development of diabetic nephropathy [2,3]. In addition to these ‘pro-fibrotic’ growth factors, the ‘anti-fibrotic’ growth factor bone morphogenetic protein-7 (BMP-7) has been reported to be downregulated in diabetic nephropathy, and addition of BMP-7 in experimental diabetes is capable of antagonizing renal fibrosis [4]. TGF-b is generally accepted to be the main pro-fibrotic factor in diabetic nephropathy. Several studies have reported that TGF-b is upregulated in diabetes and induces matrix accumulation in vitro and in vivo. Inhibition of TGF-b by administration of neutralizing antibodies or antisense oligonucleotides, or by blocking its downstream signalling pathway all result in prevention of the fibrotic process in diabetic nephropathy [1]. However, since TGF-b also has important anti-proliferative and anti-inflammatory effects, inhibition of TGF-b may be a double-edged sword. Therefore, alternative targets for therapeutic intervention are needed to treat this complication of diabetes mellitus. A few years ago, connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) was proposed as a potential target for anti-fibrotic strategies. The question was asked whether CTGF is just another factor in renal fibrosis, or a particularly interesting key player in tissue response to injury [5]. As will become apparent from this review, recent evidence does indeed support a prominent role for CTGF in the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy, both as a downstream effector of profibrotic TGF-b action and as an extracellular mediator of cross-talk between various growth factor signalling pathways implicated in diabetic kidney disease.
Glomerular Tubular Reflux‐A Morphologic Renal Lesion Associated with the Hepatorenal Syndrome

The hepatorenal syndrome, a primary cause of death from acute and chronic liver disease, consists of a functional renal failure whereby examination of the kidney has previously shown no distinct or specific morphologic change. We describe an unusual renal lesion consisting of the reflux of proximal convoluted tubular epithelium into Bowman's space. An autopsy series shows this glomerular change to be present in 71.4% of cases with the hepatorenal syndrome, while only present in 0 to 27.3% in other autopsy categories (p < 0.001). Since this lesion has been previously described with experimental renal ischemic change and terminal hypotension, it is possible that it is caused in part by the decreased or altered renal blood flow known to be associated with the hepatorenal syndrome.
Thermo-mechanical effects caused by martensite formation in powder metallurgy FeMnSiCrNi shape memory alloys

The paper reports solution treatment (ST) and mechanical alloying (MA) effects on the structure and static/dynamic mechanical behaviour of PM-MA'ed FeMnSiCrNi shape memory alloys associated with the formation of thermally and stress-induced martensite. The specimens were subjected to tensile pre-straining, in order to stress induce martensite and their gauges were cut and prepared for X-ray diffraction (XRD) as well as for optical and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). XRD patterns allowed determining the presence of large amounts of α′-body centred cubic (bcc) besides ε-hexagonal close packed (hcp) martensite and γ-face centred cubic (fcc) austenite. The decrease in the amount of α′-bcc at specimens ST'ed at 1273 and 1373 K, with increasing pre-straining degree, was confirmed by XRD patterns and SEM micrographs. Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) was performed by strain sweeps (SS). The SS-DMA graphs displayed storage modulus plateaux which were associated with the formation of ε-hcp martensite.
Behavioural Intention to Use Mobile Entertainment Services among Bangladeshi Students

This study aims to understand why the usage of mobile entertainment services MES among young Bangladeshis is negligible. The authors propose a modification of combined technology acceptance model TAM and the theory of planned behaviour TPB model with additional factors. Questionnaire surveys were conducted in Bangladesh among young adult mobile users. The authors analysed the data of 251 valid responses via four TAM-TPB models. The study model, based on a modified TAM-TPB framework, fits generally well for mobile entertainment services in Bangladesh. The three factors of perceived behaviour control, perceived value, and attitude are important determinants for intention to use mobile entertainment services, and perceived behavioural control has the strongest direct effect on attitude and indirect effect on behavioural intention. The results suggest that mobile companies need to strengthen their organizational and technical support systems and improve service quality and affordability to encourage young consumers to use MES.
Mitochondrial Mutagenesis and Oxidative Stress in Human Prostate Cancer

Abstract Prostate cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in men in the United States, but the primary cause and the molecular events leading to prostate carcinogenesis are poorly understood. Using the approach of laser capture microdissection, we revealed extensive somatic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations in prostatic neoplastic lesions. Inspection of the lesion associated mutations not only provided new insights into the genetics of prostate cancer, but also revealed new patterns of mtDNA mutation in prostate carcinogenesis. Further analysis on a high frequency of multiple mutational events observed in the same neoplastic lesion revealed an unusually rapid process in mitochondrial mutagenesis, suggesting a new process of mitochondrial hyper-mutagenesis in cancer cells, likely mediated by cellular oxidative stress. Thus, active mitochondrial mutagenesis in prostate cancer suggests a prominent role of increased cellular oxidative stress in neoplastic transformation and the increased susceptibility of neoplastic cells to oxidative damage.
Cerebral Autoregulation in Stroke: A Review of Transcranial Doppler Studies

Background and Purpose— Cerebral autoregulation may become impaired after stroke. To provide a review of the nature and extent of any autoregulation impairment after stroke and its course over time, a technique allowing repeated bedside measurements with good temporal resolution is required. Transcranial Doppler (TCD) in combination with continuous blood pressure measurements allows noninvasive continuous bedside investigation with high temporal resolution of the dynamic and the steady-state components of cerebral autoregulation. Therefore, this review focuses on all TCD studies on cerebral autoregulation in the setting of documented ischemic stroke. Methods— PubMed and EMBASE were searched for studies of stroke, autoregulation, and TCD. Studies were either acute phase (<96 hours after index stroke) or chronic phase (>96 hours after index stroke) autoregulation studies. Quality of studies was studied in a standardized fashion. Results— Twenty-three studies met the inclusion criteria. General agreement existed on cerebral autoregulation being impaired, even after minor stroke. Bilateral impairment of autoregulation was documented, particularly after lacunar stroke. Studies showed progressive deterioration of cerebral autoregulation in the first 5 days after stroke and recovery over the next 3 months. Impaired cerebral autoregulation as assessed by TCD was related to neurological deterioration, the necessity for decompressive surgery, and poor outcome. Synthesis of the data of various studies was, however, limited by studies not meeting key methodological criteria for observational studies. Conclusions— TCD in combination with continuous blood pressure measurement offers a method with a high temporal resolution feasible for bedside evaluation of cerebral autoregulation in the stroke unit. TCD studies have shown impairment of cerebral autoregulation in various subtypes of ischemic stroke. To improve the synthesis of data from various research groups, there is urgent need for standardization of methodology of TCD studies in cerebral autoregulation.
Forecasting by Extrapolation: Conclusions from 25 Years of Research

Have advances in extrapolation methods helped to make short-range forecasts better now than in 1960? I am defining extrapolation as methods that rely solely on historical data from the series to be forecast. No other information is used. This class of methods is widely used in forecasting, especially for inventory control, process control, and in situations where other relevant data are not available.
The use of accent-specific pronunciation dictionaries in acoustic model training

Speech recognition systems are increasingly being built to cover an ever wider range of speaker accents. However, electronically available pronunciation dictionaries (PDs) specific to these accents often do not exist and would be time consuming and expensive to build by hand. This paper explores the use of pronunciation modelling for the synthesis of accent-specific PDs directly from acoustic data, and their use in acoustic model training. It is shown that this is particularly effective when the amount of acoustic data from the new accent region is insufficient to build a new recogniser, and it is necessary to retrain an existing system: a further 15% reduction in word error rate can be achieved over and above the 20% reduction resulting from acoustic model retraining alone. This paper also presents an empirical evaluation of an American English PD which has been synthesised from a British English PD.
A frequency planning and generation scheme for multi-standard wireless transceivers

This work presents a novel frequency planning scheme associated with a reference frequency generation scheme that has the potential of providing low phase noise contribution for several wireless standards including DCS1800, WCDMA II and III, DECT, WLAN a/b/g and Bluetooth. The scheme is particularly useful when implemented in future technologies and can be extended to cover newer wireless standards in newer bands of interest. It uses a single multi-band voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with switching inductors and high speed dividers directly generating the quadrature outputs. The VCO itself covers the frequency ranges from 4.8 GHz to 6 GHz and from 6.8 GHz to 8 GHz. Its phase noise is -136 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from a center frequency of 1.85 GHz. The design is sent for fabrication using 0.18 mum CMOS.
Passage of molecules through yeast cell walls: A brief essay‐review

For molxules to enter yeasts, they must pass through the cell wall first and then the plasmalemma. a limiting membrane between the cell wall and the cytosol and a permeability barrier to many solutes. A simple view of the cell wall is that of a sieve with fairly large holes, through which compounds can diffuse readily, if they are not too big. However, most observations on the passage oflarger molecules are not consistent with this interpretation; furthermore, porin-like proteins have not been found in yeast cell walls. ’
Interference Alignment in Dual-Hop MIMO Interference Channel

With interference alignment in the spatial domain, the achievable degrees of freedom (DoF) of a single-hop multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel (IC) are limited by the number of antennas at the sources and destinations. The use of relays introduces additional freedoms to manage the interference and can enhance the DoF performance. However, the characterization of the DoF regions with relays is much more complicated and is not available in the literature. In this paper, we shall investigate the DoF of the dual-hop MIMO IC via interference alignment. Based on the solvability of the alignment conditions, the upper bound for the maximum achievable DoF tuple is obtained. To evaluate the tightness of the derived bound, we further propose an iterative algorithm to determine the processing matrices at the sources, relays, and destinations for a given feasible DoF tuple. It is shown that the proposed algorithm can achieve the upper bound for the sum DoF in the low and high DoF regions, where the achievability indicates that the upper bound indeed gives the maximum sum DoF. It is also found that despite the DoF loss caused by the half-duplexity assumption, the dual-hop IC with sufficient number of relays can still outperform the conventional single-hop IC under most circumstances.
Proliferation of stimulated human peripheral blood lymphocytes: preferential incorporation of concanavalin A by stimulated cells and mitogenic activity.

Binding of concanavalin A (conA) to human peripheral blood lymphocytes or to lymphoblasts is inhibited by α-D-mannopyranosides or α-D-glucopyranosides. After 1 hr incubation of cells with con A over 80% of the bound con A can be washed off with methyl-α-D-mannoside; after 24 hr only about 25% of the cell associated con A can be removed by competitor. This sequestration is temperature dependent. Cells which have been treated with con A for 20 hr still have as many combining sites for freshly added con A as do non-pretreated cells, even though about 75% of the previously added con A remains associated with the cells. Con A stimulated cells can be separated from non-stimulated cells on Ficoll gradients. Irreversibly bound con A is preferentially accumulated in the stimulated cells. However, this irreversibly bound con A does not stimulate. We suggest that irreversibly bound con A is inside the cell and that internalization is a result of the early activation of energy generating reactions by the mitogenic stimulus. The stimulatory effect depends on reactions at the cell surface.
Advances in Data Combination, Analysis and Collection for System Reliability Assessment.

The systems that statisticians are asked to assess, such as nuclear weapons, infrastructure networks, supercomputer codes and munitions, have become increasingly complex. It is often costly to conduct full system tests. As such, we present a review of methodology that has been proposed for addressing system reliability with limited full system testing. The first approaches presented in this paper are concerned with the combination of multiple sources of information to assess the reliability of a single component. The second general set of methodology addresses the combination of multiple levels of data to determine system reliability. We then present developments for complex systems beyond traditional series/parallel representations through the use of Bayesian networks and flowgraph models. We also include methodological contributions to resource allocation considerations for system relability assessment. We illustrate each method with applications primarily encountered at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Summary on Adsorption and Photocatalysis for Pollutant Remediation: Mini Review

Adsorption and photo catalysis are the most popular methods applied for the reduction of amount of pollutants that enter water bodies. The main challenge in the process of adsorption is the demonstration of the experimental data obtained from sorption processes. For many decades most of the researchers used adsorption and kinetic of adsorption as a repetitive work to describe the adsorption data by using common models such as, Langmuir and Freundlich for adsorption isotherms; PFO and PSO models for kinetics. This has been done without careful evaluation of the characteristics of adsorption process. It has been well understood that adsorption does not degrade the pollutant to eco-friendly products and photo catalysis will not degrade without adsorption of the pollutant on the catalyst. Therefore, understanding the detailed mechanism of adsorption, as well as, photo catalysis has been presented in this paper. During photo catalysis: modification towards suppression of electron-hole recombination, improving visible light response, preventing agglomeration, controlling the shape, size, morphology, etc. are the most important steps. This mini review also widely discusses the key points behind adsorption and photo catalysis.
Kidney dendritic cells in acute and chronic renal disease

Dendritic cells are not only the master regulators of adaptive immunity, but also participate profoundly in innate immune responses. Much has been learned about their basic immunological functions and their roles in various diseases. Comparatively little is still known about their role in renal disease, despite their obvious potential to affect immune responses in the kidney, and immune responses that are directed against renal components. Kidney dendritic cells form an abundant network in the renal tubulointerstitium and constantly survey the environment for signs of injury or infection, in order to alert the immune system to the need to initiate defensive action. Recent studies have identified a role for dendritic cells in several murine models of acute renal injury and chronic nephritis. Here we summarize the current knowledge on the role of kidney dendritic cells that has been obtained from the study of murine models of renal disease.
Clutching with High Force , High Bandwidth , Low Mass , and Low Energy Consumption using Electrostatics

Electrostatic clutching offers lightweight, energy-efficient, and fast controllable force transmission for exoskeletons and walking robots. Clutching is achieved by charging two electrically-conductive clutch plates with micrometerscale thickness separated by a thin dielectric insulating layer. Because the clutch acts like a capacitor, power is only required while changing states, not to maintain an engaged or disengaged state. The clutch can employ flexible conductive elements (Fig. 1), such as aluminum-coated polymers, enabling use in applications that require conformability, such as soft exosuits.
Essential and Instructive Roles of GATA Factors in Eosinophil Development

GATA transcription factors are major regulators of hematopoietic and immune system. Among GATA factors, GATA-1, GATA-2, and GATA-3 play crucial roles in the development of erythroid cells, hematopoietic stem, and progenitor cells, and T helper type 2 (Th2) cells, respectively. A high level of GATA-1 and GATA-2 expression has been observed in eosinophils, but their roles in eosinophil development remain uncertain both in vitro and in vivo. Here we show that enforced expression of GATA-1 in human primary myeloid progenitor cells completely switches myeloid cell fate into eosinophils. Expression of GATA-1 exclusively promotes development and terminal maturation of eosinophils. Functional domain analyses revealed that the COOH-terminal finger is essential for this capacity while the other domains are dispensable. Importantly, GATA-1–deficient mice failed to develop eosinophil progenitors in the fetal liver. On the other hand, GATA-2 also showed instructive capacity comparable to GATA-1 in vitro and efficiently compensated for GATA-1 deficiency in terms of eosinophil development in vivo, indicating that proper accumulation of GATA factors is critical for eosinophil development. Taken together, our findings establish essential and instructive roles of GATA factors in eosinophil development. GATA-1 and GATA-2 could be novel molecular targets for therapeutic approaches to allergic inflammation.
Role of the Ada adaptor complex in gene activation by the glucocorticoid receptor

We have shown that the Ada adaptor complex is important for the gene activation capacity of the glucocorticoid receptor in yeast. The recently isolated human Ada2 protein also increases the potency of the receptor protein in mammalian cells. The Ada pathway is of key significance for the tau1 core transactivation domain (tau1c) of the receptor, which requires Ada for activity in vivo and in vitro. Ada2 can be precipitated from nuclear extracts by a glutathione S-transferase-tau1 fusion protein coupled to agarose beads, and a direct interaction between Ada2 and tau1c can be shown by using purified proteins. This interaction is strongly reduced by a mutation in tau1c that reduces transactivation activity. Mutations affecting the Ada complex do not reverse transcriptional squelching by the tau1 domain, as they do for the VP16 transactivation domain, and thus these powerful acidic activators differ in at least some important aspects of gene activation. Mutations that reduce the activity of the tau1c domain in wild-type yeast strains cause similar reductions in ada mutants that contain little or no Ada activity. Thus, gene activation mechanisms, in addition to the Ada pathway, are involved in the activity of the tau1c domain.
Computing Homological Information Based on Directed Graphs within Discrete Objects

N-dimensional discrete objects can be interpreted as cubical complexes which are suitable for the study of their homology groups in order to understand the original discrete object. The classic approach consists in computing the Normal Smith Form of some matrices associated to the cubical complex. Further approaches deal mainly with a pre-processing of the matrices in order to reduce their size. In this paper we propose a new approach, initially based on Discrete Morse Theory, which computes some homological information (Betti numbers and representative cycles) without calculating the Normal Smith Form. It works on any dimension, and it can also be applied to any kind of regular cell complex.
Genetic Dissection of Primary and Secondary Responses to a Widespread Natural Pathogen of the Gut,Eimeria vermiformis

ABSTRACT Because most pathogens initially challenge the body at epithelial surfaces, it is important to dissect the mechanisms that underlie T-cell responses to infected epithelial cells in vivo. The coccidian parasites of the genus Eimeria are protozoan gut pathogens that elicit a potent, protective immune response in a wide range of host species. CD4+ αβ T cells and gamma interferon (IFN-γ) are centrally implicated in the primary immunoprotective response. To define any additional requirements for the primary response and to develop a comparison between the primary and the secondary response, we have studied Eimeria infections of a broad range of genetically altered mice. We find that a full-strength primary response depends on β2-microglobulin (class I major histocompatibility complex [MHC] and class II MHC and on IFN-γ and interleukin-6 (IL-6) but not on TAP1, perforin, IL-4, Fas ligand, or inducible nitric oxide synthetase. Indeed, MHC class II-deficient and IFN-γ-deficient mice are as susceptible to primary infection as mice deficient in all αβ T cells. Strikingly, the requirements for a highly effective αβ-T-cell-driven memory response are less stringent, requiring neither IFN-γ nor IL-6 nor class I MHC. The class II MHC dependence was also reduced, with adoptively transferable immunity developing in MHC class II−/− mice. Besides the improved depiction of an immune response to a natural gut pathogen, the finding that effective memory can be elicited in the absence of primary effector responses appears to create latitude in the design of vaccine strategies.