Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
N-acetylcysteine in trichotillomania as an alternative treatment option

Abstract We aimed to examine trichotillomania (TTM), a rarely seen disorder, and N-acetylcysteine (NAC), an agent used as a treatment option, in the light of literature in the present study. Trichotillomania is the compulsive urge to pull out one’s own hair persistently and leading to noticeable hair loss. Contrary to what is expected, it is a more frequently detected disorder characterized by compulsive hair pull-outs and of great importance not only due to physical appearance but also due to its associated psychosocial problems. Metabolic functions of N-acetylcysteine are effective either as antioxidant (forming up glutathione which is an endogenous antioxidant) or as glutamatergic agent. Due to these effects, N-acetylcysteine was administrated in as oxidative stress related schizophrenia and bipolar disorders as well as trichotillomania characterized by compulsive symptoms and in eating nail. Administration of N-acetylcysteine in cases with psychiatric disorders was reported in clinical researches such as case report and open label studies. In the literature, the efficiency of N-acetylcysteine in the treatment of trichotillomania was demonstrated in 3 studies as case report, double blind and placebo controlled researches. N-acetylcysteine may be a promising and ideal treatment option in the mono or combined treatment of diseases such as trichotillomania due to its efficiency, and cost affectivity, but it also does not lead to adverse effects. Keywords: Trichotillomania, N-acetylcysteine, glutamate, antioxidants
Electron Beam Irradiation Induced Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes Fusion inside SEM

This paper reported a method of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) fusion inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM). A CNT was picked up by nanorobotics manipulator system which was constructed in SEM with 21 DOFs and 1 nm resolution. The CNT was picked up and placed on two manipulators. The tensile force was 140 nN when the CNT was pulled into two parts. Then, two parts of the CNT were connected to each other by two manipulators. The adhered force between two parts was measured to be about 20 nN. When the two parts of CNT were connected again, the contact area was fused by focused electron beam irradiation for 3 minutes. The tensile force of the junction was measured to be about 100 nN. However, after fusion, the tensile force was five times larger than the tensile force connected only by van der Waals force. This force was 70 percent of the tensile force before pulling out of CNTs. The results revealed that the electron beam irradiation was a promising method for CNT fusion. We hope this technology will be applied to nanoelectronics in the near future.
Innovative analysis and use of high‐resolution DTMs for quantitative interrogation of Earth‐surface processes

This is the era of digital landscapes; the widespread availability of powerful sensing technologies has revolutionized the way it is possible to interrogate landscapes in order to understand the processes sculpting them. Vastly greater areas have now been acquired at ‘high resolution’: currently tens of metres globally to millimetric precision and accuracy locally. This permits geomorphic features to be visualized and analysed across the scales at which Earth‐surface processes operate. Especially exciting is the capturing of process dynamics in repeated surveying, which will only become more important with low‐cost accessible data generation through techniques such as Structure from Motion (SfM). But the key challenge remains; to interpret high resolution Digital Terrain Models (DTMs), particularly by extracting geomorphic features in robust and objective ways and then linking the observed features to the underlying physical processes. In response to the new data and challenges, recent years have seen improved processing of raw data into DTMs, development of data fusion techniques, novel quantitative analysis of topographic data, and innovative geomorphological mapping. The twelve papers collected in this volume sample this progress in interrogating Earth‐surface processes through the analysis of DTMs. They cover a wide range of disciplines and spatio‐temporal scales, from landslide prone landscapes, to agriculturally modified regions, to mountainous landscapes, and coastal zones. They all, however, showcase the quantitative exploitation of information contained in high‐resolution topographic data that we believe will underpin the improvement of our understanding of many elements of Earth‐surface processes. Most of the papers introduced here were first presented in a conference session at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in 2011. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Age-, Sex-, and Education-Specific Norms for an Extended CERAD Neuropsychological Assessment Battery—Results From the Population-Based LIFE-Adult-Study

Objective: To provide new age-, sex-, and education-specific reference values for an extended version of the well-established Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (CERAD-NAB) that additionally includes the Trail Making Test and the Verbal Fluency Test—S-Words. Method: Norms were calculated based on the cognitive performances of n = 1,888 dementia-free participants (60–79 years) from the population-based German LIFE-Adult-Study. Multiple regressions were used to examine the association of the CERAD-NAB scores with age, sex, and education. In order to calculate the norms, quantile and censored quantile regression analyses were performed estimating marginal means of the test scores at 2.28, 6.68, 10, 15.87, 25, 50, 75, and 90 percentiles for age-, sex-, and education-specific subgroups. Results: Multiple regression analyses revealed that younger age was significantly associated with better cognitive performance in 15 CERAD-NAB measures and higher education with better cognitive performance in all 17 measures. Women performed significantly better than men in 12 measures and men than women in four measures. The determined norms indicate ceiling effects for the cognitive performances in the Boston Naming, Word List Recognition, Constructional Praxis Copying, and Constructional Praxis Recall tests. Conclusions: The new norms for the extended CERAD-NAB will be useful for evaluating dementia-free German-speaking adults in a broad variety of relevant cognitive domains. The extended CERAD-NAB follows more closely the criteria for the new DSM–5 Mild and Major Neurocognitive Disorder. Additionally, it could be further developed to include a test for social cognition.
Is smoking heaviness causally associated with alcohol use? A Mendelian randomization study in four European cohorts

Abstract Background Observational studies have shown that tobacco and alcohol use co-occur, but it is not clear whether this relationship is causal. Methods Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and UK Biobank, we used observational methods to test the hypothesis that smoking heaviness increases alcohol consumption. Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses were then used to test the causal relationship between smoking heaviness and alcohol consumption using 55 967 smokers from four European studies [ALSPAC, The Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT), the Copenhagen General Population Study (CGPS) and UK Biobank]. MR analyses used rs1051730/rs16969968 as a genetic proxy for smoking heaviness. Results Observational results provided evidence of an association between cigarettes per day and weekly alcohol consumption (increase in units of alcohol per additional cigarette smoked per day = 0.10, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.05 to 0.15, P ≤ 0.001 in ALSPAC; and 0.48, 95% CI 0.45 to 0.52, P ≤ 0.001 in UK Biobank). However, there was little evidence for an association between rs1051730/rs16969968 and units of alcohol consumed per week across ALSPAC, HUNT, CGPS and UK Biobank (standard deviation increase in units of alcohol per additional copy of the risk allele = –0.004, 95% CI –0.023 to 0.016, P=0.708, I2 = 51.9%). We had 99% and 88% power to detect a change of 0.03 and 0.02 standard deviation units of alcohol per additional copy of the risk allele, respectively. Conclusions Previously reported associations between smoking and alcohol are unlikely to be causal, and may be the result of confounding and/or reverse causation. This has implications for public health research and intervention research.
The other face of miR-17-92a cluster, exhibiting tumor suppressor effects in prostate cancer

miR-17-92a cluster miRNAs are transcribed from a polycistronic transcription unit C13orf25 that generates six mature miRNAs, miR-17, miR-18a, miR-19a, miR-19b, miR-20a and miR-92a that are overexpressed in lung and colon cancers. Here we show that the expression of miR-17-92a miRNAs are reduced in cancerous prostate tissues compared to uninvolved areas and also in aggressive prostate cancer cells. Restoration of expression of all members of miR-17-92a cluster showed, decreased expression of cell cycle regulatory proteins cyclin D1 and SSH1; and LIMK1 and FGD4 of RhoGTPase signaling pathway. Expression of miR-17-92a miRNAs caused decreased cell proliferation, reduced activation of AKT and MAP kinases, delayed tumorigenicity and reduced tumor growth in animals. Expression of miR-17-92a miRNAs inhibited EMT via reduced cell migration and expression of mesenchymal markers while elevating expression and surface localization of the epithelial marker E-Cadherin. Expression of miR-17-92a miRNAs improved sensitivity of androgen dependent LNCaP 104-S prostate cancer cells to anti-androgen drug Casodex, AKT inhibitor MK-2206 2HCl, and docetaxel. The androgen refractory PC-3 cells also showed increased sensitivity to docetaxel, MK-2206 2HCl and Aurora kinase inhibitor VX680 upon ectopic expression of miR-17-92a cluster miRNAs. Our data demonstrate a tumor suppressor effect of miR-17-92a cluster miRNAs in prostate cancer cells and restoration of expression of these miRNAs has a therapeutic benefit for both androgen-dependent and -independent prostate cancer cells.
Entropy of Schur-Weyl Measures

Relative dimensions of isotypic components of N-th order tensor representations of the symmetric group on n letters give a Plancherel-type measure on the space of Young diagrams with n cells and at most N rows. It was conjectured by G. Olshanski that dimensions of isotypic components of tensor representations of finite symmetric groups, after appropriate normalization, converge to a constant with respect to this family of Plancherel-type measures in the limit when N/sqrt{n} converges to a constant. The main result of the paper is the proof of this conjecture.
Major Tom to Ground Control: How Lipoproteins Communicate Extracytoplasmic Stress to the Decision Center of the Cell

ABSTRACT The envelope of bacteria is a complex multilayered shield that ensures multiple essential functions, including protecting the cell from external assaults. Hence, bacterial cells have evolved intricate mechanisms called envelope stress response systems (ESRS) to monitor all kinds of perturbations affecting the integrity of their envelope and to mount an appropriate response to contain or repair the damage. In the model bacterium Escherichia coli, several ESRS are built around a two-component system, in which envelope stress triggers a phosphotransfer between a sensor protein in the inner membrane of the envelope and a response regulator in the cytoplasm. In this review, we focus on two major ESRS in E. coli, the Rcs and Cpx pathways, in which additional proteins not directly involved in the phosphotransfer modulate signal transduction. Both the Rcs and Cpx systems can be turned on by a lipoprotein anchored in the outer membrane, RcsF and NlpE, respectively, providing a molecular connection between the most exterior layer of the envelope and the ground control center in the cytoplasm. Here, we review how these two lipoproteins, which share a striking set of features while being distinct in several aspects, act as sentinels at the front line of the bacterium by sensing and transducing stress to the downstream components of the Rcs and Cpx systems.
Estimates of present and future flood risk in the conterminous United States

Past attempts to estimate rainfall-driven flood risk across the US either have incomplete coverage, coarse resolution or use overly simplified models of the flooding process. In this paper, we use a new 30 m resolution model of the entire conterminous US with a 2D representation of flood physics to produce estimates of flood hazard, which match to within 90% accuracy the skill of local models built with detailed data. These flood depths are combined with exposure datasets of commensurate resolution to calculate current and future flood risk. Our data show that the total US population exposed to serious flooding is 2.6–3.1 times higher than previous estimates, and that nearly 41 million Americans live within the 1% annual exceedance probability floodplain (compared to only 13 million when calculated using FEMA flood maps). We find that population and GDP growth alone are expected to lead to significant future increases in exposure, and this change may be exacerbated in the future by climate change.
A full-rank regularization technique for MMSE detection in multiuser CDMA systems

In multiuser code-division multiple-access (CDMA) environments, the ill-conditioning of the covariance matrix of the received signal may degrade the performance of minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) detectors, especially when few samples are available for the covariance matrix estimation. In order to mitigate this performance degradation, we propose a full-rank regularized MMSE detector based on the covariance matrix tapering (CMT) technique. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed technique at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
Effects of complexity and seasonality on backward bifurcation in vector–host models

We study implications of complexity and seasonality in vector–host epidemiological models exhibiting backward bifurcation. Vector–host diseases represent complex infection systems that can vary in the transmission processes and population stages involved in disease progression. Seasonal fluctuations in external forcing factors can also interact in a complex way with internal host factors to govern the transmission dynamics. In backward bifurcation, the insufficiency of R0 < 1 for predicting the stability of the disease-free equilibrium (DFE) state arises due to existence of bistability (coexisting DFE and endemic equilibria) for a range of R0 values below one. Here we report that this region of bistability decreases with increasing complexity of vector-borne disease transmission as well as with increasing seasonality strength. The decreases in the bistability region are accompanied by a reduced force of infection acting on primary hosts. As a consequence, we show counterintuitively that a more complex vector-borne disease may be easier to control in settings of high seasonality.
Inactivation Effects of High Power Pulsed Field on the Microorganisms

The inactivation effects of HPEF (High Power Square-wave Pulsed Electric Field) on the common corruptive B subtilis and P glacus Link in liquid food are investigated, and the inactivation effects of some sorts of microorganisms are compared in this paper. Simultaneously, the inactivation mechanism of S. cerevisiae is primarily researched. The results indicate that the inactivation rates of microorganisms remarkably increased with electric field strength and pulse width and pulse numbers, and the inactivation rates of microorganisms from high to low are yeasts, E. coli, B. subtilis and p. glacus Link at the same conditions of inactivation. Concaves and hole can be found in a part of cell surface of yeasts.
'Truth' is Stranger than Prediction, More Questionable than Causal Inference

Robert Luskin's article in this issue provides a useful service by appropriately qualifying several points I made in my 1986 American Journal of Political Science article. Whereas I focused on how to avoid common mistakes in quantitative political sciences, Luskin clarifies ways to extract some useful information from usually problematic statistics: correlation coefficients, standardized coefficients, and especially R2. Since these three statistics are very closely related (and indeed deterministic functions of one another in some cases), I focus in this discussion primarily on R2, the most widely used and abused. Luskin also widens the discussion to various kinds of specification tests, a general issue I also address. In fact, as Beck (1991) reports, a large number of formal specification tests are just functions of R2, with differences among them primarily due to how much each statistic penalizes one for including extra parameters and fewer observations. Quantitative political scientists often worry about model selection and specification, asking questions about parameter identification, autocorrelated or heteroscedastic disturbances, parameter constancy, variable choice, measurement error, endogeneity, functional forms, stochastic assumptions, and selection bias, among numerous others. These model specification questions are all important, but we may have forgotten why we pose them. Political scientists commonly give three reasons: (1) finding the true model, or the full explanation; (2) prediction; and (3) estimating specific causal effects. I argue here that (1) is used the most but useful the least; (2) is very useful but not usually in political science where forecasting is not often a central concern; and (3) correctly represents the goals of political scientists and should form the basis of most of our quantitative empirical work.
2-Cl-MGV-1 Ameliorates Apoptosis in the Thalamus and Hippocampus and Cognitive Deficits After Cortical Infarct in Rats

Background and Purpose— Focal cortical infarction causes neuronal apoptosis in the ipsilateral nonischemic thalamus and hippocampus, which is potentially associated with poststroke cognitive deficits. TSPO (translocator protein) is critical in regulating mitochondrial apoptosis pathways. We examined the effects of the novel TSPO ligand 2-(2-chlorophenyl) quinazolin-4-yl dimethylcarbamate (2-Cl-MGV-1) on poststroke cognitive deficits, neuronal mitochondrial apoptosis, and secondary damage in the ipsilateral thalamus and hippocampus after cortical infarction. Methods— One hundred fourteen hypertensive rats underwent successful distal middle cerebral artery occlusion (n=76) or sham procedures (n=38). 2-Cl-MGV-1 or dimethyl sulfoxide as vehicle was administrated 2 hours after distal middle cerebral artery occlusion and then for 6 or 13 days (n=19 per group). Spatial learning and memory were tested using the Morris water maze. Secondary degeneration and mitochondrial apoptosis in the thalamus and hippocampus were assessed using Nissl staining, immunohistochemistry, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling, JC-1 staining, and immunoblotting 7 and 14 days after surgery. Results— Infarct volumes did not significantly differ between the vehicle and 2-Cl-MGV-1 groups. There were more neurons and fewer glia in the ipsilateral thalamus and hippocampus in the vehicle groups than in the sham-operated group 7 and 14 days post–distal middle cerebral artery occlusion. 2-Cl-MGV-1 significantly ameliorated spatial cognitive impairment and decreased neuronal death and glial activation when compared with vehicle treatment (P<0.05). The collapse of mitochondrial transmembrane potential and cytoplasmic release of apoptosis-inducing factors and cytochrome c was prevented within the thalamus. Caspase cleavage and the numbers of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling+ or Nissl atrophic cells were reduced within the thalamus and hippocampus. This was accompanied by upregulation of B-cell lymphoma 2 and downregulation of Bax (P<0.05). Conclusions— 2-Cl-MGV-1 reduces neuronal apoptosis via mitochondrial-dependent pathways and attenuates secondary damage in the nonischemic thalamus and hippocampus, potentially contributing to ameliorated cognitive deficits after cortical infarction.
Low-Calcium fly ash-based geopolymer concrete: Long-term properties

From 2001, we have conducted some important research on the development, manufacture, behaviour, and applications of Low-Calcium Fly Ash-Based Geopolymer Concrete. This concrete uses no Portland cement; instead, we use the low-calcium fly ash from a local coal burning power station as a source material to make the binder necessary to manufacture concrete.
Opioids Resistance in Chronic Pain Management

Abstract: Chronic pain management represents a serious healthcare problem worldwide. Chronic pain affects approximately 20% of the adult European population and is more frequent in women and older people. Unfortunately, its management in the community remains generally unsatisfactory and rarely under the control of currently available analgesics. Opioids have been used as analgesics for a long history and are among the most used drugs; however, while there is no debate over their short term use for pain management, limited evidence supports their efficacy of long-term treatment for chronic non-cancer pain. Therapy with opioids is hampered by inter-individual variability and serious side effects and some opioids often result ineffective in the treatment of chronic pain and their use is controversial. Accordingly, for a better control of chronic pain a deeper knowledge of the molecular mechanisms underlying resistance to opiates is mandatory.
Bortezomib protects against dextran sulfate sodium-induced ulcerative colitis in mice

Bortezomib, a first-in-class proteasome inhibitor, is a standard method of treatment in multiple myeloma. In the present study, the therapeutic effect of bortezomib was evaluated in an ulcerative colitis model induced by dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) in mice, and the mechanism of action was also investigated. Mice were administered with 3% DSS drinking water for 7 consecutive days and then they were intraperitoneally treated with bortezomib (0.2, 0.6 or 1 mg/kg) for 1, 3 or 7 days. Mice in the control group and the DSS group were provided the same volume of PBS, respectively. Body weight, stool characteristics and hematochezia were observed. Serum levels of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), C-reactive protein (CRP), albumin (ALB) and colonic activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) were evaluated using specific kits. The expression of the transcription factor nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) p65 gene and the DNA-binding activity of NF-κB protein were also evaluated. Administration of bortezomib attenuates colonic inflammation in mice. After 3 or 7 days of treatment, Disease Activity Index (DAI) as well as histological scores and NF-κB p65 protein expression were significantly reduced in mice treated with bortezomib at a dose of 0.6 or 1 mg/kg/day. Furthermore, it was also revealed that bortezomib was able to reduce serum levels of CRP and TNF-α caused by DSS and increase the level of ALB in serum and the activity of SOD in colonic tissues. These results demonstrated that bortezomib exerts a protective effect on DSS-induced colitis, and its underlying mechanisms are associated with the NF-κB gene inhibition that mitigates colon inflammatory responses in intestinal epithelial cells.