Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An in vitro evaluation of various Rosa damascena flower extracts as a natural antisolar agent.

The aim of this work was to evaluate ultraviolet (UV) absorption ability of various extracts of Rosa damascena flowers as an antisolar agent. Extracts were prepared using the following solvent mixtures: water:ethanol (50 : 50), ethyl acetate:ethanol (80 : 20) and ether. The hydroalcoholic and ethyl acetate:ethanol extracts were prepared by maceration, and ether extract was prepared by soxhletion. Preliminary studies on the extracts prepared confirmed the presence of flavonoids as the major components of all extracts. Next, the UV absorption spectra (in the range of 200-400 nm) of all extracts were obtained. Results show that all three extracts can effectively absorb UV radiation in the range of 200-400 nm. However, the range giving maximum absorption for the hydroalcoholic, ethyl acetate:ethanol and ether extracts were 200-320, 250-360 and 230-370 nm, respectively. In the next stage, extracts prepared were incorporated into an oil in water cream base (prepared based on preliminary studies), at two concentrations of 5 and 8%. The sun protection factor (SPF) of these creams were determined. Based on the findings, the hydroalcoholic extract seems to give the highest SPF among the three extracts evaluated, when incorporated to the cream base. On the other hand, by performing a few physicochemical tests on the prepared creams, cream containing 5% ether extract showed the most desirable appearance and stability among the creams investigated. The UV absorption ability of these extracts is suggested to be because of the presence of flavonoid compounds within the extracts. However, it should be noted that in order to obtain an effective suncare product with high SPF values, these extracts could be used along with other synthetic antisolar agents.
Simple Method of Creating Hydrophobic Surfaces Based on Modified MW-CNTs

The creation of hydrophobic, antifreeze and self-cleaning coatings is currently being pursued by many industrial sectors. The potential applications include the production of liquid and gas separators and filters, new materials, optical and microelectronic devices, and textiles and clothing. These coatings will also have wide application in the construction and automobile industries, shipping, and energy and agricultural sectors. The article proposes a simple approach to the creation of superhydrophobic and antifreeze coatings, by applying powder from multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MW-CNTs) to the sample surface. This method enables combination of the necessary factors: low surface energy, micro–nano-roughness and hierarchical multi-scale. The authors investigated the dependence of the wetting angle of such a surface on the time, type and degree of functionalization. The electrophysical properties of modified MW-CNTs were studied over wide frequency and temperature ranges. This method of obtaining hydrophobic coatings differs from currently available methods in that it is simpler to prepare, is of lower cost and has less environmental impact. The proposed approach can be used to create superhydrophobic coatings that have the additional function of removing static charge and therefore reducing surface heating, and which can be used in the field of energetics for protection against the freezing of wind turbine blades and aircraft surfaces.
Race-ethnic differences in the extent, prevalence, and progression of coronary calcium.

OBJECTIVE To compare across four race-ethnic groups the baseline prevalence and extent of coronary calcium and the 7-year rate of progression in the extent of coronary calcium. DESIGN The South Bay Heart Watch is a prospective cohort study designed to appraise the value of coronary calcium for predicting cardiovascular outcomes in asymptomatic adults with cardiac risk factors. Statistical analyses were conducted to evaluate ethnic differences in the prevalence, extent, and progression of coronary calcium among Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian participants. SETTING Population-based study. PATIENTS OR PARTICIPANTS Between December 1990 and December 1992, 1289 participants without coronary heart disease underwent baseline risk factor screening and computed tomography for coronary calcification (Cohort 1). Seven years later, 828 (64%) participants returned for follow-up evaluation and re-scanning (Cohort 2). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Prevalence, extent, and progression of coronary artery calcium. RESULTS In Cohort 2, compared to Whites, African Americans had a lower prevalence of coronary calcium at baseline (P=.012) and follow-up (P=.005), smaller calcium scores at baseline (P=.005) and follow-up (P=.0004), and less progression (P=.001); Hispanics had a lower prevalence of coronary calcium at follow-up (P=.04) with smaller calcium scores (P=.011), and less progression (P=.009). In contrast, no differences were seen between Whites and Asian/Pacific Islanders. Race-ethnic differences in progression persisted after adjusting for risk factors and participation bias (P<.05). CONCLUSIONS The present results lend further credence to the notion that race-ethnic differences exist in the prevalence and rate of progression of coronary calcification. The relationship between calcification and the incidence of coronary heart disease in these race-ethnic groups needs further exploration.
An Essential Developmental Checkpoint for Production of the T Cell Lineage

One Two T T cells develop in the thymus, where they proceed through several developmental stages, losing alternative lineage potential as they progress. The molecular regulation of this developmental process, however, is not fully understood (see the Perspective by Di Santo). P. Li et al. (p. 85, published online 10 June), L. Li et al. (p. 89), and Ikawa et al. (p. 93) now identify expression of the zinc finger transcription factor Bcl11b as the earliest checkpoint in T cell development in mice. Genetic deletion of Bcl11b in developing T cells inhibited commitment to the T cell lineage. Under conditions that should have stimulated T lineage differentiation, Bcl11b-deficient T cell progenitors failed to up-regulate genes associated with lineage-committed T cells and maintained stem cell– and progenitor cell–associated gene expression. In both developing and committed T cells, loss of Bcl11b resulted in the generation of cells that resembled natural killer (NK) cells in both phenotype and function. These NK-like cells could be expanded easily in vitro and possessed antitumor cytotoxicity, but they did not exhibit cytotoxicity against normal cells and were not tumorigenic. Because T cells are much easier to obtain from human patients than NK cells, deletion of Bcl11b in T cells may thus provide a source of easy-to-grow NK cells for cell-based antitumor therapies. A transcription factor is essential for maintenance of T cell identity. In early T cell development, progenitors retaining the potential to generate myeloid and natural killer lineages are eventually determined to a specific T cell lineage. The molecular mechanisms that drive this determination step remain unclarified. We show that, when murine hematopoietic progenitors were cultured on immobilized Notch ligand DLL4 protein in the presence of a cocktail of cytokines including interleukin-7, progenitors developing toward T cells were arrested and the arrested cells entered a self-renewal cycle, maintaining non-T lineage potentials. Reduced concentrations of interleukin-7 promoted T cell lineage determination. A similar arrest and self-renewal of progenitors were observed in thymocytes of mice deficient in the transcription factor Bcl11b. Our study thus identifies the earliest checkpoint during T cell development and shows that it is Bcl11b-dependent.
Internet-delivered physical activity intervention for college students with mental health disorders: A randomized pilot trial

The prevalence of mental health disorders among college students is rising and the increasing rates of anxiety and depression have important societal implications. Physical activity has been proposed as an adjuvant to traditional treatment approaches (i.e. psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy), and the internet is a potentially useful means of delivering physical activity information to the college-aged population. This randomized pilot trial examined the effects of an internet-based physical activity intervention on physical activity, self-efficacy, depression, and anxiety in college students (n = 47) receiving mental health counseling. Physical activity, depression, anxiety, exercise self-efficacy, and barriers self-efficacy were assessed at baseline and post-intervention. There was a significant time effect for physical activity, with both groups increasing their physical activity levels across the 10-week intervention but with a larger increase in the intervention condition (d = 0.68) than the control condition (d = 0.05). Exercise and barriers self-efficacy declined across the intervention, but more so in the control than intervention condition. Effects on depression and anxiety were nonsignificant. Finally, correlation analyses showed increases in physical activity were associated with increases in exercise self-efficacy (r = 0.62) and barriers self-efficacy (r = 0.63) and decreases in depression (r = −0.44) in the intervention condition, but not in the control condition. These results suggest that an internet-delivered physical activity intervention may be a promising approach to promoting physical activity among college students undergoing mental health counseling.
A THERMODYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF MITOTIC SPINDLE EQUILIBRIUM AT ACTIVE METAPHASE

The mitotic apparatus of first-division metaphase eggs of the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus drobachiensis was observed by means of polarization microscopy under controlled temperature conditions. Eggs were fertilized and grown at two temperature extremes in order to produce two different sizes of available spindle pool. Slow division time allowed successive samples of such cells to be observed at the same point in metaphase but at different equilibrium temperatures, yielding curves of metaphase equilibrium birefringence vs. observational temperature. Using the plateau value of birefringence at higher temperatures as a measure of total available spindle pool and the observed birefringence at lower temperatures as a measure of polymerized material at equilibrium, the spindle protein association was evaluated according to the method of Inoué. Both pool conditions produced linear van't Hoff functions. Analysis of these functions yielded enthalpy and entropy changes of +55–65 kcal/mol and +197–233 entropy units (eu), respectively. These values for active mitotic metaphase are quite comparable to those obtained by Inoué and co-workers for arrested meiotic metaphase cells. When other equilibrium treatments were considered, the best fit to the experimental data was still that of Inoué, a treatment which theoretically involves first-order polymerization and dissociation kinetics. Treatment of metaphase cells with D2O by direct immersion drove the equilibrium to completion regardless of temperature, attaining or exceeding a birefringence value equal to the cell's characteristic pool size; perfusion with D2O appeared to erase the original temperature-determined pool size differences for the two growth conditions, attaining a maximum value characteristic of the larger pool condition. These data confirm Inoué's earlier contention that D2O treatment can modify the available spindle pool.
Early prediction of response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer using diffusion-weighted imaging and gray-scale ultrasonography

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) is a widely accepted therapeutic option for patients with breast cancer. Although NACT produces good results for breast cancer patients, it has the potential to delay effective treatment in patients with chemotherapy-resistant breast cancer. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the utility of the pretreatment apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), which is calculated from diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), the change in ADC after first administration of NACT, and the change in tumor greatest diameter on ultrasonography in the early prediction of the tumor response to NACT. The response rate of breast tumors to NACT was calculated by the greatest diameter measured by contrast-enhanced MRI obtained before and after NACT. Only the change in ADC was significantly correlated with the response rate. The area under the curve of the change in ADC was sufficiently high (0.90, 95% confidence interval, 0.760–1.040) to discriminate between responders and non-responders. Calculation of the ADC from DWI-MRI was found to be useful for predicting breast tumor response to NACT. Further studies are required to investigate the benefit of changing systemic therapy for breast cancer based on the prediction of the response to NACT by DWI-MRI.
Open Source's Lessons for Historians

Of all the developments in the recent history of computing, none has attracted such widespread attention as the emergence of the open-source software movement. In part, this is due to the remarkable successes of such open-source projects as Linux, Sendmail, and Apache. Versions of the GNU/Linux operating system are used by 40 percent of large American corporations, 65 percent of the world’s Web servers run Apache, and Sendmail manages 80 percent of the world’s email. Even traditional commercial vendors such as IBM, Apple, and Novell have jumped on the opensource bandwagon; the Macintosh OS X operating system is based on a BSD derivative, and IBM recently announced a $1 billion commitment to open-source development.1 Despite these apparent successes, however, the lessons of the open-source movement are not necessarily those that its proponents might hope or imagine. They suggest more about new methods and questions for historians to grapple with than obvious conclusions about a new “one best way” to manage software development.
A coding RNA segment that enhances the ribosomal recruitment of chicken ccn1 mRNA

CCN1, a member of the CCN family of proteins, plays important physiological or pathological roles in a variety of tissues. In the present study, we initially found a highly guanine–cytosine (GC)‐rich region of approximately 200 bp near the 5′‐end of the open reading frame, which was always truncated by amplification of the corresponding cDNA region through the conventional polymerase chain reaction. An RNA in vitro folding assay and selective ribonuclease digestion of the corresponding segment of the ccn1 mRNA confirmed the involvement of a stable secondary structure. Subsequent RNA electromobility‐shift assays demonstrated the specific binding of some cytoplasmic factor(s) in chicken embryo fibroblasts to the RNA segment. Moreover, the corresponding cDNA fragment strongly enhanced the expression of the reporter gene in cis at the 5′‐end, but did not do so at the 3′‐end. According to the results of a ribosomal assembly test, the effect of the mRNA segment can predominantly be ascribed to the enhancement of transport and/or entry of the mRNA into the ribosome. Finally, the minimal GC‐rich mRNA segment that was predicted and demonstrated to form a secondary structure was confirmed to be a functional regulatory element. Thus, we here uncover a novel dual‐functionality of the mRNA segment in the ccn1 open reading frame, which segment acts as a cis‐element that mediates posttranscriptional gene regulation, while retaining the information for the amino acid sequence of the resultant protein. J. Cell. Biochem. 111: 1607–1618, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Evaluation of a Smartphone-based audio-biofeedback system for improving balance in older adults - A pilot study

This study was designed to assess the effectiveness of a Smartphone-based audio-biofeedback (ABF) system for improving balance in older adults. This so-called “iBalance-ABF” system that we recently developed is “all-inclusive” in the sense that its three main components of a balance prosthesis, (i) the sensory input unit, (ii) the processing unit, and (iii) the sensory output unit, are entirely embedded into the Smartphone. The underlying principle of this system is to supply the user with supplementary information about the medial-lateral (ML) trunk tilt relative to a predetermined adjustable “dead zone” through sound generation in earphones. Six healthy older adults voluntarily participated in this pilot study. Eyes closed, they were asked to stand upright and to sway as little as possible in two (parallel and tandem) stance conditions executed without and with the use of the iBalance-ABF system. Results showed that, without any visual information, the use of the Smartphone-based ABF allowed the older healthy adults to significantly decrease their ML trunk sway in the tandem stance posture and to mitigate the destabilizing effect induced by this particular stance. Although an extended study including a larger number of participants is needed to confirm these data, the present results are encouraging. They do suggest that Smartphone-based ABF system could be used for balance training and rehabilitation therapy in older adults.
Role of free radicals in the pathogenesis of cystic fibrosis.

but the cause of the severe lung damage and pulmonary bacterial adhesion and impaire fibrosis, which are responsible for most of the deaths, mucociliary clearance remains unclear. The precise link between the cystic fibrosis gene, its biochemical consequences, and the increased susceptibility to pulmonary infection, particularly with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, has not been elucidated. It has proved to be extremely difficult to determine Bacterial colonisation
Surgical approach to medullary thyroid carcinoma associated with multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2

We briefly review the surgical approaches to medullary thyroid carcinoma associated with multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 (medullary thyroid carcinoma/multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2). The recommended surgical approaches are usually based on the age of the affected carrier/patient, tumor staging and the specific rearranged during transfection codon mutation. We have focused mainly on young children with no apparent disease who are carrying a germline rearranged during transfection mutation. Successful management of medullary thyroid carcinoma in these cases depends on early diagnosis and treatment. Total thyroidectomy should be performed before 6 months of age in infants carrying the rearranged during transfection 918 codon mutation, by the age of 3 years in rearranged during transfection 634 mutation carriers, at 5 years of age in carriers with level 3 risk rearranged during transfection mutations, and by the age of 10 years in level 4 risk rearranged during transfection mutations. Patients with thyroid tumor >5 mm detected by ultrasound, and basal calcitonin levels >40 pg/ml, frequently have cervical and upper mediastinal lymph node metastasis. In the latter patients, total thyroidectomy should be complemented by extensive lymph node dissection. Also, we briefly review our data from a large familial medullary thyroid carcinoma genealogy harboring a germline rearranged during transfection Cys620Arg mutation. All 14 screened carriers of the rearranged during transfection Cys620Arg mutation who underwent total thyroidectomy before the age of 12 years presented persistently undetectable serum levels of calcitonin (<2 pg/ml) during the follow-up period of 2–6 years. Although it is recommended that preventive total thyroidectomy in rearranged during transfection codon 620 mutation carriers is performed before the age of 5 years, in this particular family the surgical intervention performed before the age of 12 years led to an apparent biochemical cure.
Development and investigations of kapok fiber based needle punched nonwoven as eco-friendly oil sorbent

ABSTRACT In this work an attempt has been made to produce kapok/polypropylene (80/20) needle punched nonwoven for oil spill clean-up process. The difficulties involved in structuring kapok fiber through needle punching process and hence to develop a nonwoven are discussed. As an outcome, hydrophobic-oleophilic kapok fiber nonwoven has been produced and characterized for its oil sorption and retention. The maximum oil sorption was found to be 40.80 g/g and 29.0 g/g for high density oil (HD) and diesel oil respectively which is higher than the commercial polypropylene based oil sorbent pad. An interesting observation found was its retention value ranging from 0.88 to 1.00 which makes it an alternative for synthetic sorbents. The burning test of the oil sorbed samples ended up with only less amount of ash residue confirming its suitability and eco-friendly nature.
Interactive Visualization of Implicit Surfaces with Singularities

This paper presents work on two methods for interactive visualization of implicit surfaces: physically‐based sampling using particle systems and polygonization followed by physically‐based mesh improvement which explicitly makes use of the surface‐defining equation. While most previous work applied to bounded manifolds without singularities and without boundary (topological spheres) we broaden the scope of the methods to include surfaces with such features, in particular cusp points and surface self‐intersections. These aspects are not (yet) essential for computer graphics modelling with implicit surfaces but they naturally occur in simulations of interest in mathematical visualization. In this paper we use the Kummer family of algebraic surfaces as an example.
Putative role of 5-HT2B receptors in migraine pathophysiology

Objective In this review we attempt to characterize the acute and chronic role of 5-HT2B receptors with regard to meningeal nociception in animal experiments and clinical data targeting migraine therapy. Background Migraine is a common disabling neurovascular primary headache disease, the pathomechanism of which is still unclear. Serotonin (5-HT) and its receptors might play an important role in some aspects of migraine pathogenesis. The ability of the unselective 5-HT2B receptor agonist m-chlorophenylpiperazine to induce migraine attacks in migraine sufferers, the high affinity of prophylactic antimigraine drugs to this receptor and its expression in migraine-relevant structures like the dura mater argue for a role of 5-HT2B receptors in the pathogenesis of migraine attacks. Methods For this review, the relevant databases such as PubMed, MEDLINE®, Cochrane Library and EMBASE, respectively, were searched to December 2015 using the keywords “migraine, 5-HT2, trigeminal, neurogenic inflammation, nitric oxide, nitroxyl, vasodilatation, plasma protein extravasation” and combinations thereof. Conclusion Our literature review suggests an important role of 5-HT2B receptor activation in meningeal nociception and the generation of migraine pain.
Real‐time smart surveillance using motion analysis

Abstract: In the last years, smart surveillance has been one of the most active research topics in computer vision because of the wide spectrum of promising applications. Its main point is about the use of automatic video analysis technologies for surveillance purposes. In general, a processing framework for smart surveillance consists of a preliminary motion detection step in combination with high‐level reasoning that allows automatic understanding of evolutions of observed scenes. In this paper, we propose a surveillance framework based on a set of reliable visual algorithms that perform different tasks: a motion analysis approach that segments foreground regions is followed by three procedures, which perform object tracking, homographic transformations and edge matching, in order to achieve the real‐time monitoring of forbidden areas and the detection of abandoned or removed objects. Several experiments have been performed on different real image sequences acquired from a Messapic museum (indoor context) and the nearby archaeological site (outdoor context) to demonstrate the effectiveness and the flexibility of the proposed approach.