Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hair Growth‐Promoting Effect of Carthamus tinctorius Floret Extract

The florets of Carthamus tinctorius L. have traditionally been used for hair growth promotion. This study aimed to examine the potential of hydroxysafflor yellow A‐rich C. tinctorius extract (CTE) on hair growth both in vitro and in vivo. The effect of CTE on cell proliferation and hair growth‐associated gene expression in dermal papilla cells and keratinocytes (HaCaT) was determined. In addition, hair follicles from mouse neonates were isolated and cultured in media supplemented with CTE. Moreover, CTE was applied topically on the hair‐shaved skin of female C57BL/6 mice, and the histological profile of the skin was investigated. C. tinctorius floret ethanolic extract promoted the proliferation of both dermal papilla cells and HaCaT and significantly stimulated hair growth‐promoting genes, including vascular endothelial growth factor and keratinocyte growth factor. In contrast, CTE suppressed the expression of transforming growth factor‐β1 that is the hair loss‐related gene. Furthermore, CTE treatment resulted in a significant increase in the length of cultured hair follicles and stimulated the growth of hair with local effects in mice. The results provided the preclinical data to support the potential use of CTE as a hair growth‐promoting agent. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Fast analysis of conformal aperiodic arrays on CPUs and GPUs

An approach for the fast analysis of “irregular”, i.e., of conformal, periodic or aperiodic, 2D arrays, based on the use of the p-series approach and Non-Uniform FFT (NUFFT) routines is proposed to restore the asymptotic growth of the computing time to that of few, standard FFTs. A sub-array partition strategy is also sketched and shown to further unburden the procedure and controlling the accuracy. The approach has been implemented in both, sequential and parallel codes, enabling its execution on CPUs and on cost-effective, massively parallel computing platforms as Graphic Processing Units (GPUs). Its performance in terms of computational efficiency and accuracy has been assessed also against benchmarks provided by algorithms based on fast Matrix-Vector Multiplication routines.
Current concepts in bone and reproductive health in adolescents with anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa (AN) initiates an adaptive response at the level of the hypothalamus, which results in a complex interplay involving most elements of the neuroendocrine axis. Consequences of onset of disease in adolescence include amenorrhoea, pubertal arrest with potential loss of target height, and osteoporosis with reduced capacity for future attainment of peak bone mass. With recovery, delay in restoration of menses is common. Hormonal therapies for restoration of bone mineral density (BMD) in adolescents have shown limited efficacy. This review will discuss the reproductive endocrine effects of AN in adolescence, and discuss new investigative tools for monitoring restoration of reproductive function and BMD in this population.
Tacrolimus versus anti-tumor necrosis factor agents for steroid-refractory active ulcerative colitis based on the severity of endoscopic findings: a single-center, open-label cohort study

Background and aims At Saitama Medical Center, for remission induction in active ulcerative colitis (UC) patients with endoscopic evidence of severe disease, we tend to preferentially use tacrolimus (TAC) over anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α agents. We conducted this study to evaluate the validity of our therapeutic strategies. Patients and methods This retrospective study was conducted in 52 steroid-refractory active UC patients with a Clinical Activity Index (CAI) score of ≥7 who were receiving remission induction therapy with TAC or anti-TNF-α agents. The patients were divided into a TAC treatment group (TAC group, n = 29) and an anti-TNF-α agent treatment group (anti-TNF group, n = 23). The CAI, Ulcerative Colitis Endoscopic Index of Severity (UCEIS) and incidence of events (relapse, hospitalization and surgery) were retrospectively analyzed. Results At treatment initiation, the CAI score was 12.6 in the TAC group and 11.5 in the anti-TNF group (P = 0.09), while the corresponding values of the UCEIS were 6.5 and 5.1, respectively (P = 0.0035). The clinical remission rate at 12 weeks was 55% (65% when only the subgroup that received rapid induction therapy was included in the analysis) in the TAC group and 57% in the anti-TNF group, with no significant difference. The cumulative event-free rates at 1, 6 and 12 months were 65.5%, 39.4%, and 39.4%, respectively, in the TAC group and 95.7%, 77.2% and 71.7%, respectively, in the anti-TNF group (P = 0.0037). Conclusion Rapid induction therapy with TAC tended to be selected for active UC patients with endoscopic evidence of severe disease, and the present study supported the validity of this therapeutic approach. However, transition to the remission-maintenance phase was more favorable in the anti-TNF group.
On the Dawning of Different Aspects of Life in a Pluralistic Social World

The growing concern with meaning within linguistics, sociology and psychology may be interpreted as a sign of emancipation from a rather puritan and poorly understood social scientific variant of "positivistic" philosophy. Recent reentries of the term meaning on scenes of scientific and philosophical discourse, however, tend to be accompanied by explicitly held and/or tacitly endorsed monistic assumptions about our language and the world (Rommetveit 1974). Such assumptions, I have argued, are revealed in Searle's (1969) recourse to unequivocal "literal" meanings of verbal expressions in his theory of speech acts, as well as in Smedslund's (1969) redefinition of the data of scientific psychology as the "public" meanings of a person's acts. Implications of a pluralistic outlook, on the other hand, are explored in philosophical analysis of ambiguity, social-psychological studies of social representations, and interactionist personality psychology. Thus, Wright (1978) considers ambiguity the rule rather than an exception in human communication, and to agree in order to achieve intersubjectivity is hence in part to neglect differences. A central thesis in current French psychology of social representations, moreover, is that, "la realite dans laquelle nous vivons [. ] peut avoir des significations multiples, existant c6te a c6St" (Moscovici 1979). ("the reality in which we live [.] can have multiple significations which exist side by side.") And meanings of situations are according to modern interactionism necessarily to some extent ideographic and engendered by persons interacting in those situations (Endler and Magnusson 1976). Human discourse takes place in and deals with a multifaceted, only fragmentarily known and only partially shared social world.
Recent Advances in the Regulation of Feeding Behavior by Neuropeptides in Fish

The hypothalamus and brain stem in vertebrates play an important role in feeding regulation. Many kinds of neuropeptides have been implicated in the regulation of food intake and energy homeostasis in rodents. In addition to rodents, however, the goldfish has been widely used as an animal model to investigate the effects of neuropeptides on feeding behavior. Although several neuropeptides exert similar effects on feeding behavior in goldfish and in rodents, marked differences have been reported for other neuropeptides. For instance, melanin‐concentrating hormone, which exerts orexigenic activity in rodents, acts as an anorexigenic neuropeptide via the α‐melanocyte‐stimulating hormone signaling pathway by neuronal interaction in goldfish. These observations indicate that, while the same series of neuropeptides and their receptor systems are involved in the control of feeding behavior throughout the vertebrate phylum, major differences may occur in their mode of action between fish and mammals. This paper gives a mini review of recent advances in the regulation of feeding behavior by neuropeptides in fish, with a focus on recent studies in goldfish.
Fault Diagnosis with Bayesian Networks: Application to the Tennessee Eastman Process

The purpose of this article is to present and evaluate the performance of a new procedure for industrial process diagnosis. This method is based on the use of a Bayesian network as a classifier. But, as the classification performances are not very efficient in the space described by all variables of the process, an identification of important variables is made. This feature selection is made by computing the mutual information between each process variable and the class variable. The performances of this method are evaluated on the data of a benchmark problem: the Tennessee Eastman process. Three kinds of faults are taken into account on this complex process. The objective is to obtain the minimal recognition error rate for these 3 faults. Results are given and compared with results of other authors on the same data.
A Role for the p75 Neurotrophin Receptor in Axonal Degeneration and Apoptosis Induced by Oxidative Stress*

Background: The p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) promotes neurodegeneration during development and in response to cellular injury. Results: Reactive oxygen species promoted cleavage of p75NTR, leading to axonal degeneration and apoptosis. Conclusion: Oxidative stress activates intracellular p75NTR signaling to induce neurodegeneration. Significance: These results suggest a novel mechanism through which p75NTR contributes to neurodegeneration associated with cellular injury or pathological conditions. The p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) mediates the death of specific populations of neurons during the development of the nervous system or after cellular injury. The receptor has also been implicated as a contributor to neurodegeneration caused by numerous pathological conditions. Because many of these conditions are associated with increases in reactive oxygen species, we investigated whether p75NTR has a role in neurodegeneration in response to oxidative stress. Here we demonstrate that p75NTR signaling is activated by 4-hydroxynonenal (HNE), a lipid peroxidation product generated naturally during oxidative stress. Exposure of sympathetic neurons to HNE resulted in neurite degeneration and apoptosis. However, these effects were reduced markedly in neurons from p75NTR−/− mice. The neurodegenerative effects of HNE were not associated with production of neurotrophins and were unaffected by pretreatment with a receptor-blocking antibody, suggesting that oxidative stress activates p75NTR via a ligand-independent mechanism. Previous studies have established that proteolysis of p75NTR by the metalloprotease TNFα-converting enzyme and γ-secretase is necessary for p75NTR-mediated apoptotic signaling. Exposure of sympathetic neurons to HNE resulted in metalloprotease- and γ-secretase-dependent cleavage of p75NTR. Pharmacological blockade of p75NTR proteolysis protected sympathetic neurons from HNE-induced neurite degeneration and apoptosis, suggesting that cleavage of p75NTR is necessary for oxidant-induced neurodegeneration. In vivo, p75NTR−/− mice exhibited resistance to axonal degeneration associated with oxidative injury following administration of the neurotoxin 6-hydroxydopamine. Together, these data suggest a novel mechanism linking oxidative stress to ligand-independent cleavage of p75NTR, resulting in axonal fragmentation and neuronal death.
Managing for quality aged residential care with a migrant workforce

Given the growing demand for aged residential care facilities in Western industrialised economies, the adequate staffing of these facilities is a growing concern. Increasingly migrant care workers are being employed to fill the local labour shortfall. In this paper we present findings of a qualitative study exploring how managers of aged residential care facilities work to ensure consistent delivery of quality care through their migrant care workers. The issues raised by the 16 managers cluster around three themes: communication and language barriers; racism by residents, families and managers; and underemployment of tertiary qualified migrant care workers. In addition to issues of quality care delivery, concerns around migrant employee well-being are seen to be difficult to avoid.
Disruption of phacA, an Aspergillus nidulans Gene Encoding a Novel Cytochrome P450 Monooxygenase Catalyzing Phenylacetate 2-Hydroxylation, Results in Penicillin Overproduction*

Aspergillus nidulans utilizes phenylacetate as a carbon source via homogentisate, which is degraded to fumarate and acetoacetate. Mutational evidence strongly suggested that phenylacetate is converted to homogentisate through two sequential hydroxylating reactions in positions 2 and 5 of the aromatic ring. Using cDNA substraction techniques, we have characterized a gene, denoted phacA, whose transcription is strongly induced by phenylacetate and which putatively encodes a cytochrome P450 protein. A disrupted phacA strain does not grow on phenylacetate but grows on 2-hydroxy- or 2,5-dihydroxyphenylacetate. Microsomal extracts of the disrupted strain are deficient in the NADPH-dependent conversion of phenylacetate to 2-hydroxyphenylacetate. We conclude that PhacA catalyzes theortho-hydroxylation of phenylacetate, the first step ofA. nidulans phenylacetate catabolism. The involvement of a P450 enzyme in the ortho-hydroxylation of a monoaromatic compound has no precedent. In addition, PhacA shows substantial sequence divergence with known cytochromes P450 and defines a new family of these enzymes, suggesting that saprophytic fungi may represent a source of novel cytochromes P450. Phenylacetate is a precursor for benzylpenicillin production.phacA disruption increases penicillin production 3–5-fold, indicating that catabolism competes with antibiotic biosynthesis for phenylacetate and strongly suggesting strategies for Penicillium chrysogenum strain improvement by reverse genetics.
Assessing impacts of ecosystem engineers on community organization: a general approach illustrated by effects of a high‐Andean cushion plant

Badano, E. I. , Jones, C. G. , Cavieres, L. A. and Wright, J. P. 2006. Assessing impacts of ecosystem engineers on community organization: a general approach illustrated by effects of a high-Andean cushion plant. � Oikos 115: 369 � 385. Comparative and integrative tools are of fundamental value in ecology for understanding outcomes of biological processes, and making generalizations and predictions. Although ecosystem engineering has been shown to play a fundamental role in community organization, there are no standardized methods to measure such effects. We present a framework and methodology for assessing the impact of physical ecosystem engineers on three general features of community organization: (1) species richness and composition, (2) stability of richness over time, and (3) dominance patterns of species assemblages. We then apply the framework and methodology to assess the effects of the cushion plant Azorella monantha on high-Andean plant communities on two mountaintops. Substrate temperatures, soil moisture and the availability of mineral nutrient resources were compared between A. monantha and surrounding open areas to ascertain whether cushions altered abiotic environmental conditions, while community analysis assessed changes in species richness, composition and abundances at patch and landscape levels. Cushions thermally buffered temperature extremes and increased soil moisture, but had no detectable effect on soil mineral nutrients. Cushion habitat was not more species rich than surrounding areas, but cushions added new species into the community, altering species composition and markedly enhancing landscape-level richness. Cushions also showed potential for stabilizing species richness over time, and changed patterns of species dominance. Findings were consistent across mountaintops. We evaluate the general utility of the framework and call for its application in other systems as a means to generate comparative data sets for assessing the general effects of ecosystem engineers on community organization.
Performance evaluation of Enhanced relay-enabled Distributed Coordination Function

In this paper we evaluate the performance of our earlier proposed enhanced relay-enabled distributed coordination function (ErDCF) for wireless ad hoc networks. The idea of ErDCF is to use high data rate nodes to work as relays for the low data rate nodes. ErDCF achieves higher throughput and reduced energy consumption compared to IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF). This is a result of. 1) using relay which helps to increase the throughput and lower overall blocking time of nodes due to faster dual-hop transmission, 2) using dynamic preamble (i.e. using short preamble for the relay transmission) which further increases the throughput and lower overall blocking time and also by 3) reducing unnecessary overhearing (by other nodes not involved in transmission). We evaluate the throughput and energy performance of the ErDCF with different rate combinations. ErDCF (11,11) (ie. R1=R2=11 Mbps) yields a throughput improvement of 92.9% (at the packet length of 1000 bytes) and an energy saving of 72.2% at 50 nodes.
Mobile robot path-planning implementation in software and hardware

Search algorithms represent a useful and reliable technique in solving path finding, path planning and obstacle-avoidance types of problems that appear in mobile robots applications. The paper presents different implementations, both in software and in hardware, of the Breath-First (BF) Search Algorithm. The software implementation uses the standard type Intel Pentium 4 Processor and Java software environment. We also implemented the search algorithm in a hardware-based environment, built upon Xilinx FPGA core technologies. The comparison shows that the hardware implementation is an alternative to the classical software implementation that is a larger resources and time consumer.
System-level partitioning with uncertainty

Several models and algorithms have been proposed in the past to generate HW/SW components for system-level designs. However, they were focused on a single designer who had a throughout knowledge of the design. In other words, the decision trade-offs were simplified to a stand-alone developer who did not have to consider individual skills, concurrent development for portions of the design, risk analysis for time-to-market development, nor team load and assignment. In this paper, we propose a design management approach associated with a partitioning methodology to deal with the concurrent design problems of system-level specifications. This methodology allows one to incorporate the uncertainties related to development at the very early stages of the design, and to follow up during the development of a final product.
Senescent fibroblasts promote epithelial cell growth and tumorigenesis: A link between cancer and aging

Mammalian cells can respond to damage or stress by entering a state of arrested growth and altered function termed cellular senescence. Several lines of evidence suggest that the senescence response suppresses tumorigenesis. Cellular senescence is also thought to contribute to aging, but the mechanism is not well understood. We show that senescent human fibroblasts stimulate premalignant and malignant, but not normal, epithelial cells to proliferate in culture and form tumors in mice. In culture, the growth stimulation was evident when senescent cells comprised only 10% of the fibroblast population and was equally robust whether senescence was induced by replicative exhaustion, oncogenic RAS, p14ARF, or hydrogen peroxide. Moreover, it was due at least in part to soluble and insoluble factors secreted by senescent cells. In mice, senescent, much more than presenescent, fibroblasts caused premalignant and malignant epithelial cells to form tumors. Our findings suggest that, although cellular senescence suppresses tumorigenesis early in life, it may promote cancer in aged organisms, suggesting it is an example of evolutionary antagonistic pleiotropy.
Towards graceful turn management in human-agent interaction for people with cognitive impairments

A conversational approach to spoken human-machine interaction, the primary and most stable mode of interaction for many people with cognitive impairments, can require proactive control of the interactive ﬂow from the system side. While spoken technology has primarily focused on unimodal spoken interruptions to this end, we propose a multimodal embodied approach with a virtual agent, incorporating an increasingly salient su-perposition of gestural, facial and paraverbal cues, in order to more gracefully signal turn taking. We implemented and eval-uated this in a pilot study with ﬁve people with cognitive impairments. We present initial statistical results and promising insights from qualitative analysis which indicate that the basic approach works.
Effect of pre-processing on binarization

The effects of different image pre-processing methods for document image binarization are explored. They are compared on five different binarization methods on images with bleed through and stains as well as on images with uniform background speckle. The binarization method is significant in the binarization accuracy, but the pre-processing also plays a significant role. The Total Variation method of pre-processing shows the best performance over a variety of pre-processing methods.
The mechanism of tolerance induction in thymus-derived lymphocytes; I. intracellular inactivation of hapten-reactive helper T lymphocytes by hapten-nonimmunogenic copolymer of D-amino acids

Treatment of a p-azobenzoate (PAB) derivative of a copolymer of D- glutamic acid and D-lysine (D-GL) induced a profound state of unresponsiveness to PAB-reactive helper T lymphocytes generated in PAB- mouse gamma globulin (MGG)-primed mice. This unresponsiveness in T lymphocytes was specific for PAB-reactive cells, since the bacterial alpha-amylase-, keyhole limpet hemocyanin-, or ovalbumin-primed helper T lymphocytes were not suppressed by PAB-D-GL treatment. Taking advantage of the relative ease with which PAB-D-GL can induce specific unresponsiveness to helper T lymphocytes in an animal previously primed with PAB-MGG, it was possible to approach certain questions concerning the mechanisms of tolerance-induction and the fate of tolerant helper T lymphocytes in the PAB-D-GL model by utilizing a classical adoptive cell transfer systemmelimination of the possibility of carry-over of the tolerogen with cells or of the generation of suppressor cells as the result of PAB-D-GL treatment as an explanation of the suppression of helper T-cell activity strongly inplicates the existence of a central intracellular mechanism of specific tolerance on the helper T- cell level. The possibility that suppression of the activity of PAB- reactive helper T lymphocytes by PAB-D-GL reflects simple blocking of surface receptor molecules on T lymphocytes was ruled out as it was found that the helper activity of PAB-reactive cells was minimally suppressed even when PAB-D-GL was directly exposed in vitro to helper T lymphocytesmmoreover, the most conclusive evidence on te the tolerant state induced by in vivo exposure of primed T cells to PAB-D-GL. It appears, therefore, that specific tolerance induced by PAB-D-GL' TO PAB- reactive helper T lymphocytes is an example of irreversible inhibition of T-cell reactivity to antigen, reflecting yet to be determined events at the intra- and subcellular levels.