Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reduced Mural Cell Coverage and Impaired Vessel Integrity After Angiogenic Stimulation in the Alk1-deficient Brain

Objective—Vessels in brain arteriovenous malformations are prone to rupture. The underlying pathogenesis is not clear. Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia type 2 patients with activin receptor-like kinase 1 (Alk1) mutation have a higher incidence of brain arteriovenous malformation than the general population. We tested the hypothesis that vascular endothelial growth factor impairs vascular integrity in the Alk1-deficient brain through reduction of mural cell coverage. Methods and Results—Adult Alk11f/2f mice (loxP sites flanking exons 4–6) and wild-type mice were injected with 2×107 PFU adenovious-cre recombinase and 2×109 genome copies of adeno-associated virus-vascular endothelial growth factor to induce focal homozygous Alk1 deletion (in Alk11f/2f mice) and angiogenesis. Brain vessels were analyzed 8 weeks later. Compared with wild-type mice, the Alk1-deficient brain had more fibrin (99±30×103 pixels/mm2 versus 40±13×103; P=0.001), iron deposition (508±506 pixels/mm2 versus 6±49; P=0.04), and Iba1+ microglia/macrophage infiltration (888±420 Iba1+ cells/mm2 versus 240±104 Iba1+; P=0.001) after vascular endothelial growth factor stimulation. In the angiogenic foci, the Alk1-deficient brain had more &agr;-smooth muscle actin negative vessels (52±9% versus 12±7%, P<0.001), fewer vascular-associated pericytes (503±179/mm2 versus 931±115, P<0.001), and reduced platelet-derived growth factor receptor-&bgr; expression. Conclusion—Reduction of mural cell coverage in response to vascular endothelial growth factor stimulation is a potential mechanism for the impairment of vessel wall integrity in hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia type 2-associated brain arteriovenous malformation.
THE COUPLED REDOX POTENTIAL OF THE LACTATE-ENZYME-PYRUVATE SYSTEM

1. The term "coupled redox potential" is defined. 2. The system lactic ion See PDF for Equation pyruvic ion + 2H+ + 2e is shown to be reversible (when the enzyme is lactic acid dehydrogenase) and its coupled redox potential between pH 5.2 and 7.2 at 32°C. is: See PDF for Equation 3. The free energy of the reaction: lactic ion (1m) → pyruvic ion (1m) = -ΔF = –14,572. 4. The standard free energy of formation (ΔF 298) of pyruvic acid (l) is estimated at –108,127. This is merely an approximation as some necessary data are lacking. 5. The importance of coupled redox potentials as a factor in the regulation of the equilibrium of metabolites is indicated.
Redistribution of choline acetyltransferase and acetylcholinesterase in an isolated nerve segment of the rabbit vagus nerve

THE AXONAL transport of the enzymes acetyl-CoA: choline 0-acetyltransferase (ChAT; EC 2.3.1.6) and particularly acetylcholinesterase (AChE; EC 3.1.1.7) have been studied in various peripheral nerves (LUBINSKA & NIEMIERKO, 1971; RANISH & OCHS, 1972; FONNUM et al., 1973; SAUNDERS et al., 1973; KASA et al., 1973; WOOTEN & COYLE, 1973) with both single and double ligature techniques. The accumulation of these enzymes proximal to a ligature can be used to calculate their rate of transport, provided that the magnitude of the mobile pool of the enzymes is known. Assuming that this pool is loo%, slow transport rates have been calculated for both enzymes (FONNUM et a! ., 1973; SAUNDERS et d., 1973; WOOTEN & COYLE, 1973). Double ligature experiments on the sciatic nerve, however, have suggested that only a minor part of AChE is mobile, with a rapid or intermediate rate of transport, the bulk of the enzyme being stationary or slowly migrating (LUBINSKA & NIEMIERKO, 1971 ; RANISH & OCHS, 1972). Several studies have shown that the fast axonal transport of enzymes or labelled proteins continues up to 2 0 h in isolated axons separated from their cell bodies (oC.1iS & RANISH. 1969; FINK et (11. 1973; DAHLSTR~M. 1965) whereas recent results (FRIZELL et al., 1975) have indicated that slow axonal flow in the rabbit vagus nerve is blocked by interruption of contact between cell body and axon. Double ligature experiments on the vagus and hypoglossus nerves also suggested that the accumulation of both ChAT and AChE activities proximal and distal to a crush could largely be accounted for by a small part of the enzymes moving rapidly (FONNUM et d., 1973). The latter experiments may be criticized for three reasons: Firstly, the crush caused by the ligature could introduce some distortion of the tissue, which could be taken as accumulation of enzyme activities. Secondly, most of the redistribution of enzyme activities might have occurred within a shorter time than that used in these experiments (22 h) (FONNUM et al., 1973). Thirdly, it could be argued that retrograde accumulation is an artifact due to the contamination of the small distal accumulation of ChAT by the large proximal accumulation. We have therefore studied the redistribution of ChAT and AChE within a segment of the vagus nerve for 0,3,5 and 22 h, in comparison with the accumulation in the nerve stump proximal to the segment. The vagus was selected because it provides a long unbranched nerve. Double ligatures, 30-37.5 mm apart, were applied to the right cervical vagus nerve of adult rabbits as previously described (FONNUM et al., 1973). The ChAT and AChE activities were found to be constant for several cm in this
Multiclass Feature Selection With Kernel Gram-Matrix-Based Criteria

Feature selection has been an important issue in recent decades to determine the most relevant features according to a given classification problem. Numerous methods have emerged that take into account support vector machines (SVMs) in the selection process. Such approaches are powerful but often complex and costly. In this paper, we propose new feature selection methods based on two criteria designed for the optimization of SVM: kernel target alignment and kernel class separability. We demonstrate how these two measures, when fully expressed, can build efficient and simple methods, easily applicable to multiclass problems and iteratively computable with minimal memory requirements. An extensive experimental study is conducted both on artificial and real-world datasets to compare the proposed methods to state-of-the-art feature selection algorithms. The results demonstrate the relevance of the proposed methods both in terms of performance and computational cost.
A Study on English Reduced Vowels Produced by Korean Learners and Native Speakers of English

Flemming and Johnson (2007) claim that there is a fundamental distinction between the mid central vowel [ə] and the high central vowel [? ] in that [ə] occurs in an unstressed word-final position while [? ] appears elsewhere. Compared to English counterparts, Korean [ə] and [? ] are full vowels and they have phonemic contrast. The purpose of this paper is to explore the acoustic quality of two English reduced vowels produced by Korean learners and native speakers of English in terms of their two formant frequencies. Sixteen Korean learners of English and six native speakers of English produced four types of English words and two types of Korean words with different phonological and morphological patterns. The results show that Korean learners of English produced the two reduced vowels of English and their Korean counterparts differently in Korean and English words.
Capitalizing on Place: An Investigation of the Relationships among Social Capital, Neighborhood Conditions, Maternal Depression, and Child Outcomes

In this dissertation I employ an ecological framework to understand the co-occurring influence of the individual, family, and community on child and maternal well-being. Specifically, I investigate the relationship of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and social capital as it applies to child behavior problems, child academic skills, and maternal depression, while also accounting for individual and family characteristics. In all three studies, I analyze data from the Los Angles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A. FANS) using multilevel linear regression. In the first study, I investigate the association of neighborhood and maternal characteristics with child and adolescent behavior problems. The results showed that children and adolescents of depressed mothers, and children living in high poverty neighborhoods, had more internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Finally, although neighborhood social capital was not directly associated with behavior, social capital did attenuate the relationship between maternal depression and higher levels of adolescent behavior problems.In the second study, I demonstrate that children of depressed mothers performed worse on measures of reading ability and math computation skills. Also, children living in neighborhoods higher in social capital performed better on the measure of math computation compared to children living in lower social capital neighborhoods. However, social capital was not associated with either of the measures of reading achievement. In addition, neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage was not significantly associated with any of the academic outcomes. I also did not find that social capital moderated the relationship between maternal depression and child academic skills.In the third study, I focus on the importance of neighborhood characteristics as predictors of depression among Latina mothers. I also investigated how neighborhood structural characteristics - socioeconomic disadvantage, residential stability and the percent of Latinos in the community, are associated with social capital. As expected, residential stability was positively, while socioeconomic disadvantage was negatively, associated with social capital. Contrary to my hypothesis about the protective effects of living in a neighborhood with a higher percent of co-ethnics, an ethnic enclave, the percent of Latinos in the community was negatively associated with social capital. However, as predicted, neighborhood social capital was negatively associated with depression for Latinas.
Capacity of Dental Pulp Differentiation in Mouse Molars as Demonstrated by Allogenic Tooth Transplantation

Dental pulp elaborates both bone and dentin under pathological conditions such as tooth replantation/transplantation. This study aims to clarify the capability of dental pulp to elaborate bone tissue in addition to dentin by allogenic tooth transplantation using immunohistochemistry and histochemistry. After extraction of the molars of 3-week-old mice, the roots and pulp floor were resected and immediately allografted into the sublingual region in a littermate. In addition, we studied the contribution of donor and host cells to the regenerated pulp tissue using a combination of allogenic tooth transplantation and lacZ transgenic ROSA26 mice. On Days 5-7, tubular dentin formation started next to the preexisting dentin at the pulp horn where nestin-positive odontoblast-like cells were arranged. Until Day 14, bone-like tissue formation occurred in the pulp chamber, where intense tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase-positive cells appeared. Furthermore, allogenic transplantation using ROSA26 mice clearly showed that both donor and host cells differentiated into osteoblast-like cells with the assistance of osteoclast-lineage cells, whereas newly differentiated odontoblasts were exclusively derived from donor cells. These results suggest that the odontoblast and osteoblast lineage cells reside in the dental pulp and that both donor and host cells contribute to bone-like tissue formation in the regenerated pulp tissue.
Major depressive disorder and borderline personality disorder revisited: longitudinal interactions.

BACKGROUND This report investigates the longitudinal association of changes in major depressive disorder (MDD) and borderline personality disorder. METHOD A DSM-IV-diagnosed sample of 161 patients with borderline personality disorder who have been followed with repeated measures at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months are investigated to see whether those with co-occurring MDD differ at baseline and in their course. Proportional hazard regression and cross-lagged panel analyses are used to demonstrate whether changes in the course of either disorder have predictable effects on the course of the other. RESULTS The rate of remissions of borderline personality disorder was not affected by whether patients had co-occurring MDD. The rate of MDD remissions was significantly reduced by co-occurring borderline personality disorder. Both regression analyses and panel analyses indicated that improvements in borderline personality disorder were often followed by improvements in MDD but that improvements in MDD were not followed by improvements in borderline personality disorder. Five of the 9 borderline criteria, including those that most relate to affects, were particularly apt to remit prior to MDD remissions. CONCLUSIONS When borderline personality disorder and MDD co-occur, they can sometimes have independent courses, but more often improvements in MDD are predicted by prior improvements in borderline personality disorder. Clinicians should not ignore borderline personality disorder in hopes that treatment of MDD will be followed by improvement of borderline personality disorder.
Optimal dispatch in pool market with FACTS devices

In this paper steady-state models of versatile FACTS devices are formulated based on the PIM and incorporated into the OPF. By incorporating the control capabilities provided by FACTS devices into the OPF, the control of transmission system becomes more flexible and it largely increases the degree of freedom for OPF solution space. The proposed OPF problem was solved with sequential quadratic programming (SQP) in the MATLAB environment. Numerical results demonstrate the good performance of the OPF approach in handling the power flow control problem, and congestion relief with various FACTS devices.
The Stockholm CREAtinine Measurements (SCREAM) project: protocol overview and regional representativeness

Background We here describe the construction of the Stockholm CREAtinine Measurement (SCREAM) cohort and assess its coverage/representativeness of the Stockholm county in Sweden. SCREAM has the principal aims to estimate the burden and consequences of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and to identify inappropriate drug use (prescription of nephrotoxic, contraindicated or ill-dosed drugs). Methods SCREAM is a repository of laboratory data of individuals, residing or accessing healthcare in the region of Stockholm, who underwent creatinine assessments between 2006–11. Laboratory tests were linked to administrative databases with complete information on socioeconomic status, demographic data, healthcare utilization, diagnoses, vital status and dispensed prescription medicines. Results SCREAM identified 1 118 507 adult Stockholm citizens with available creatinine tests between 2006–11. This corresponded to 66% of the complete population in the region. Geographical coverage was uniform, ranging between 62 and 72% throughout its 26 municipalities. Population coverage was higher across older age strata (50% coverage for age range 18–44 years, >75% for 45–64 years and >90% coverage for ≥65 years). Of note, 97 and 98% of all individuals with a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus or cardiovascular disease, respectively, were captured by SCREAM. Further, 89% of all deaths registered in the period occurred in individuals with a creatinine test undertaken. Conclusion SCREAM represents the largest cohort to estimate the burden and healthcare implications of CKD in Sweden. The coverage and representativeness of the region of Stockholm was high and in accordance to both the commonness of creatinine assessment, and the medical indications for creatinine testing. The inclusion of individuals who sought medical care and had a creatinine test undertaken resulted in a slight over-representation of elderly and comorbid patients.
Studies of human antiviral CD8+ lymphocytes using class I peptide tetramers

Understanding the interactions between a host and a pathogen relies crucially on quantitative measurements of immune reponses. Until recently, measurements of the levels of cellular immune responses, i.e. those mediated by CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes have depended largely on culture in vitro and subsequent measurement of specific functions (such as cytolysis). More recently, new technologies based around tetrameric class I peptide complexes (tetramers) have allowed immunologists to measure CD8+ T lymphocyte levels directly ex vivo and independently of function. Since CD8+ lymphocytes play a key role in a number of important human viral infections, these tools have yielded useful insights into the dynamics, phenotype and function of human antiviral lymphocyte populations. In this review we describe some of the basic aspects of the biology of virus‐specific CD8+ lymphocytes, and the current methods available to detect them. The use of tetramers has, in just four years, transformed our understanding of the immune responses against HIV, HTLV‐1, HBV, HCV, CMV and EBV, and holds promise in a number of areas where quantative analysis of the antiviral reponse in terms of both number and function is critical. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In-vitro Thermal Maps to Characterize Human Dental Enamel and Dentin

The crown of a human tooth has an outer layer of highly-mineralized tissue called enamel, beneath which is dentin, a less-mineralized tissue which forms the bulk of the tooth-crown and root. The composition and structure of enamel and dentin are different, resulting in different thermal properties. This gives an opportunity to characterize enamel and dentin from their thermal properties and to visually present the findings as a thermal map. The thermal properties of demineralized enamel and dentin may also be sufficiently different from sound tissue to be seen on a thermal map, underpinning future thermal assessment of caries. The primary aim of this novel study was to produce a thermal map of a sound, human tooth-slice to visually characterize enamel and dentin. The secondary aim was to map a human tooth-slice with demineralized enamel and dentin to consider future diagnostic potential of thermal maps for caries-detection. Two human slices of teeth, one sound and one demineralized from a natural carious lesion, were cooled on ice, then transferred to a hotplate at 30°C where the rewarming-sequence was captured by an infra-red thermal camera. Calculation of thermal diffusivity and thermal conductivity was undertaken, and two methods of data-processing used customized software to produce thermal maps from the thermal characteristic-time-to-relaxation and heat-exchange. The two types of thermal maps characterized enamel and dentin. In addition, sound and demineralized enamel and dentin were distinguishable within both maps. This supports thermal assessment of caries and requires further investigation on a whole tooth.
Solving the Integrated Airline Recovery Problem Using Column-and-Row Generation

Airline recovery presents very large and difficult problems requiring high-quality solutions within short time limits. To improve computational performance, various solution approaches have been employed, including decomposition methods and approximation techniques. There has been increasing interest in the development of efficient and accurate solution techniques to solve an integrated airline recovery problem. In this paper, an integrated airline recovery problem is developed, integrating the schedule, crew, and aircraft recovery stages, and it is solved using column-and-row generation. A general framework for column-and-row generation is presented as an extension of current generic methods. This extension considers multiple secondary variables and linking constraints and is proposed as an alternative solution approach to Benders' decomposition. The application of column-and-row generation to the integrated recovery problem demonstrates the improvement in the solution run times and quality compared to a standard column generation approach. Column-and-row generation improves solution run times by reducing the problem size and thereby achieving faster execution of each linear programming solve. As a result of this evaluation, a number of general enhancement techniques are identified to further reduce the run times of column-and-row generation. This paper also details the integration of the row generation procedure with branch and price, which is used to identify integer optimal solutions.
Influence of dietary lipids on lipoprotein composition and LDL Cu2+‐induced oxidation in rabbits with experimental atherosclerosis

The aim of this study was to investigate the composition of plasma lipoproteins and their susceptibility to oxidation in rabbits with experimental atherosclerosis provoked by the intake of a diet rich in cholesterol and saturated fat as well as the influence of the intake of four diets differing in their lipid profiles (fish (F), refined olive (R), virgin olive (V) and sunflower (S) oils) on plasma lipoprotein composition and suceptibility to oxidation of these atherosclerotic rabbits. Plasma and lipoproteins concentrations of cholesterol, phospholipids and triglycerides were markedly higher in atherosclerotic rabbits but decreased with the experimental diets. LDL oxidation damage increased in atherosclerotic rabbits; the F diet led to a higher LDL oxidation susceptibility, whereas groups fed either S, R, or V showed LDL oxidation values close to those of the control group. Diets rich in monounsaturated and n‐3 polyunsaturated oils showed the same efficacy in restoring the normal lipid profiles in atherosclerotic rabbits provided the fish oil is adequately stabilized with antioxidants.
System rodzinny a nowotwór - wybrane zagadnienia

The family is the fundamental unit of society, a system made up of components that together form a whole. The appearance of cancer in the family completely changes the life not only of the patient but also the whole system. There are changes in thoughts, feelings and actions, also changes to the hierarchy of the pursued objectives and values, changes in mood and activity of individual family members. These changes, however, depend on the phase of the disease and its treatment. The aim of this paper is to present some selected issues of psycho-oncology of a family, i.e. a family situation, according to the stage of cancer, the family system in the context of cancer, impact of the disease on the family life cycle, as well as to discuss the situation in the face of a child cancer parent, based on a review of research. Knowledge. Phase cancer affects the family system. The diagnosis phase is usually accompanied by anxiety and fear. In the treatment phase there is often a close emotional support by partners. In the period of remission, the family system returns to the former social roles. There is also the so-called Damocles syndrome. During relapse, there occurs anxiety, a sense of failure and sadness. Characteristics of families with cancer are increases in the demand for proximity, the blurring of boundaries between family members, maintaining homeostasis, and limited communication. Also, the phase of marriage affects the family system in the face of illness. In couples married for a short time, cancer can cause intense crisis. Children whose parents who are ill with cancer, experience a particular crisis. Adolescents tend to show a higher level of emotional problems than children of school age. Cancer disrupts the functioning of the family. At every stage of the disease, the psychological support of patients and their families is important. An integrated model of care for patients with cancer and their families is recommended.