Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synthesis and characterization of pH-sensitive magnetic nanoparticles as drug carriers for sustained and controlled release of MTX

Nowadays, effective cancer treatment is still one of the most challenging missions in the scientific community. A primary limitation to most conventional anticancer drugs is their adverse uptake by normal tissues, fast metabolism and lack of tumour cell targeting property. One way to overcome these disadvantages is the application of nanoparticles as the carriers of widely known therapeutic substances. In this work, we devoted our efforts to prepare pH-sensitive magnetic nanoparticles as drug carriers for sustained and controlled release of methotrexate (MTX) via self-assembly of MgAl-LDH and Fe3O4 nanoparticles, which is an economic and environmentally friendly process, and also investigated the physical and chemical properties as well as the drug release performance. We further found that the carriers had a suitable size, good stability and magnetic responsibility; the MTX successfully loaded onto the carriers at a drug loading efficiency of 89.16%. In addition, the in vitro drug release studies showed that the MTX-carriers had excellent pH-sensitivity, 86.21% of MTX was released within 48 h at pH 3.5. Moreover, the MTT assays in cancer cells (HepG2) demonstrated that MTX-carriers exhibited high anticancer activity while the carriers were practically non-toxic.
Effects of Broadening the Gold Standard on the Performance of a Chemiluminometric Immunoassay to Detect Chlamydia trachomatis Antigens in Centrifuged First Void Urine and Urethral Swab Samples from Men

Traditionally, evaluations of nonculture assays for Chlamydia trachomatis are based on a comparison with urethral culture in men and cervical culture in women as the standard for positivity of infection, but it is known that culture may be less than 100% sensitive. A chemiluminometric immunoassay, Magic Lite (Ciba Corning, Medfield, MA) that detects C. trachomatis antigens was performed on centrifuged first void urine samples and urethral swabs collected from men attending a sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic. Immunoassay performance was compared to urethral culture and also to a broader gold standard: an infected patient with positive culture results or a confirmed positive Chlamydiazyme enzyme immunoassay (Abbott, Chicago) result. Two studies were performed on a retrospective group of stored first void urine samples from 200 men and a prospective group of urethral swabs and first void urine samples from 199 men. Expanding the gold standard showed that a urethral swab assayed by culture had a sensitivity between 70.3% and 87.5%, with the following effects on immunoassay performance in the prospective study: the sensitivity of urethral swabbing was reduced from 96.2% to 78.4% (specificity increased from 96.0% to 98.1%) and first void urine sensitivity increased from 92.3% to 94.6% (specificity went from 87.9% to 93.8%). In the retrospective study, sensitivity of first void urine testing went from 91.4% to 92.5%, with a corresponding increase in specificity from 93.9% to 96.9%. This maneuver had relatively little impact on the negative predictive values, but dramatically increased the positive predictive values, for both samples. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Changing Immigrant Characteristics and Entry Earnings

During the 1990s and 2000s, changes in immigration selection policies significantly altered the characteristics of new immigrants to Canada across a number of dimensions, including educational attainment at landing, immigration class, source region, pre-landing Canadian work experience and geographic distribution. These changes were designed primarily to improve immigrant economic outcomes at landing. This paper examines whether immigrant entry earnings improved as a result of these changes in immigration selection and, if so, which characteristics contributed most to the improvement.
Fruits and vegetables and lung cancer: Findings from the European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition

Intake of fruits and vegetables is thought to protect against the development of lung cancer. However, some recent cohort and case‐control studies have shown no protective effect. We have assessed the relation between fruit and vegetable intake and lung cancer incidence in the large prospective investigation on diet and cancer, the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). We studied data from 478,021 individuals that took part in the EPIC study, who were recruited from 10 European countries and who completed a dietary questionnaire during 1992–1998. Follow‐up was to December 1998 or 1999, but for some centres with active follow‐up to June 2002. During follow‐up, 1,074 participants were reported to have developed lung cancer, of whom 860 were eligible for our analysis. We used the Cox proportional hazard model to determine the effect of fruit and vegetable intake on the incidence of lung cancer. We paid particular attention to adjustment for smoking. Relative risk estimates were obtained using fruit and vegetable intake categorised by sex‐specific, cohort‐wide quintiles. After adjustment for age, smoking, height, weight and gender, there was a significant inverse association between fruit consumption and lung cancer risk: the hazard ratio for the highest quintile of consumption relative to the lowest being 0.60 (95% Confidence Interval 0.46–0.78), p for trend 0.0099. The association was strongest in the Northern Europe centres, and among current smokers at baseline, and was strengthened when the 293 lung cancers diagnosed in the first 2 years of follow‐up were excluded from the analysis. There was no association between vegetable consumption or vegetable subtypes and lung cancer risk. The findings from this analysis can be regarded as re‐enforcing recommendations with regard to enhanced fruit consumption for populations. However, the effect is likely to be small compared to smoking cessation. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Can Doppler sonography grade the severity of hepatitis C-related liver disease?

OBJECTIVE Many authors have claimed that Doppler sonography indexes are of value in grading and assessing diffuse liver disease. However, there is much controversy regarding the reliability and reproducibility of these techniques. We performed a prospective study to evaluate whether these methods can grade disease in a well-stratified cohort of patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related liver disease. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Sixty-five patients with biopsy-proven HCV-related liver disease were recruited, and Doppler sonography was performed by one operator. The patients were classified into one of the following three groups on the basis of the Ishak-modified histologic activity index (HAI) fibrosis (F) and necroinflammatory (NI) scores: mild hepatitis (F < or = 2 and NI < or = 3), moderate or severe hepatitis (3 < or = F < 6 or NI > or = 4), or cirrhosis (F = 6/6). We measured the following Doppler indexes: main hepatic artery peak velocity (Vmax) and resistive index, main portal vein peak velocity (Vmax), and maximal portal vein diameter and circumference that allowed calculation of the portal vein congestive index (portal vein area and portal vein velocity). The ratio of the hepatic artery velocity (Vmax) to the portal vein velocity (Vmax) was also calculated, and the phasicity (triphasic, biphasic, or monophasic) of the hepatic veins of each patient was recorded. We also measured the maximal spleen length longitudinally. RESULTS A total of 65 patients with liver disease (mild hepatitis, n = 20; moderate or severe hepatitis, n = 25; cirrhosis, n = 20) with biopsy-proven HCV-related liver disease were studied. Optimal hepatic arterial traces were obtained in only 30 patients and portal vein circumference in 18 patients. No significant differences were observed in the Doppler indexes with increasing severity of liver disease. Five (29%) of 17 patients with mild hepatitis had an abnormal hepatic vein trace (i.e., biphasic or monophasic) compared with 11 (55%) of 20 patients with moderate or severe hepatitis and 12 (60%) of 20 patients with cirrhosis. The only index to show a significant intergroup difference was splenic length (analysis of variance, p < 0.001), but there was still overlap between the groups. CONCLUSION Doppler-derived indexes, which have previously been recommended for the assessment of severity in chronic liver disease, are difficult to reproduce reliably and therefore have a limited clinical role in the noninvasive assessment of hepatic fibrosis or inflammation.
Optimal Bankruptcy with a Continuous Debt Repayment

We investigate the optimal consumption and investment problem when a working debtor has an option to file for bankruptcy. By applying the duality approach, the closed-form solutions are obtained for the case of CRRA utility function. The optimal bankruptcy time is determined by the first hitting time when the financial wealth hits the wealth threshold derived from the optimal stopping time problem. Moreover, the numerical results show that the investment increases as the wealth approaches the threshold and the value gain from the bankruptcy option is vanished as wealth increases.
Structure and molecular regulation of bone matrix proteins

The organic matrix of bone contains several protein families, including collagens, proteoglycans, and glycoproteins, all of which may be extensively modified by posttranslational events, such as phosphorylation and sulfation. Many of the glycoproteins contain Arg‐Gly‐Asp (RGD), the integrin‐binding sequence, within their structure, whereas other constituent proteins contain gamma‐carboxyglutamic acid. The deposition of bone matrix by cells in the osteoblastic lineage is regulated by extrinsic factors, such as systemic and local growth factors and physical forces, and factors that are intrinsic to the cell, such as position in the cell cycle, maturational stage, and developmental age of the donor. Recent studies of several bone matrix gene promoters have identified cis‐ and trans‐acting elements that are responsible for gene activity, although the precise sequence of regulatory events is not known. Development of in vitro assays, coupled with studies of the appearance of these proteins during development in vivo, provides insight into the functions of these proteins during the various stages of bone metabolism. Potential roles for these proteins include proliferation and maturation of stem cells, formation of matrix scaffolding elaborated by bone‐forming cells, modeling, and remodeling. Changes in the functional properties of the extracellular matrix may be involved in a variety of disease processes, including osteoporosis and oral bone loss.
Health Care Utilization and Cost in Children with Asthma and Selected Comorbidities

Children with asthma use significantly more health services than other children, yet the majority of their health care costs are for nonasthma services. The objective of this study was to measure the impact of asthma and specific upper respiratory comorbidities on the use and cost of health care by children. A population-based historical cohort study from January 1, 1992 to December 31, 1992 was conducted. Multiple visits for otitis media, sinusitis, and allergic rhinitis were considered comorbidities. The outcome measures were nonurgent outpatient care, pharmacy fills, urgent care visits, and hospital care along with the associated total costs. Children between ages 1 and 17 years were studied (n = 71,818). Children with asthma were more likely than children without asthma to have a comorbidity (26% vs. 9%). Children with multiple visits for otitis media, sinusitis, and allergic rhinitis were 1.8, 4, and 12 times more likely, respectively, to have a diagnosis of asthma in the same year. Children with asthma had a 47% probability of being in the highest total cost quintile compared to a 29% likelihood once adjusted for comorbidities. Visits for otitis media, sinusitis, and particularly allergic rhinitis appear to be overrepresented in children with asthma and contribute to their high utilization rate. Once a high-risk cohort is identified, the needs of those children can be addressed through targeted, organized systems of care that may include guidelines or other disease management strategies.
Population Pharmacokinetics of Piperacillin Using Scavenged Samples From Preterm Infants

Objectives: Piperacillin is often used in preterm infants for intra-abdominal infections; however, dosing has been derived from small single-center studies excluding extremely preterm infants at a highest risk for these infections. We evaluated the population pharmacokinetics (PK) of piperacillin using targeted sparse sampling and scavenged samples obtained from preterm infants ⩽32 weeks of gestational age at birth and <120 postnatal days. Materials and Methods: A 5-center study was performed. A population PK model using nonlinear mixed effect modeling was developed. Covariate effects were evaluated based on the estimated precision and clinical significance. Results: Fifty-six preterm infants were evaluated and had a median (range) gestational age at birth of 25 (22–32) weeks, a postnatal age of 17 (1–77) days, a postmenstrual age of 29 (23–40) weeks, and a weight of 867 (400–2580) g. The final PK data set contained 211 samples; 202/211 (96%) were scavenged from the discarded clinical specimens. Piperacillin population PK was best described by a 1-compartment model. The population mean clearance (CL) was derived by the equation CL (L/h) = 0.479 × (weight)0.75 × 0.5/serum creatinine and using a volume of distribution (V) (L) of 2.91 × (weight). The relative standard errors around parameter estimates ranged from 13.7% to 32.2%. A trend toward increased CL was observed with increasing gestational age at birth; infants with serum creatinine ≥1.2 mg/dL had a 60% reduction in piperacillin CL. The majority (>70%) of infants did not meet predefined pharmacodynamic efficacy targets. Conclusions: Scavenged PK sampling is a minimal-risk approach that can provide meaningful information related to the development of PK models but not dosing recommendations for piperacillin. The utility of scavenged sampling in providing definitive dosing recommendations may be drug dependent and needs to be further explored.
ENTRAINMENT OF HUMAN ORCADIAN RHYTHMS BY LIGHT‐DARK CYCLES: A REASSESSMENT

Abstract— Man is the only eukaryotic organism in which it has been reported that the circadian system cannot be entrained to a 24‐h period by a simple light‐dark (LD) cycle. In this paper, we reexamine the evidence for that claim and demonstrate that there were some fundamental flaws in the experimental design of the previous studies on which this conclusion was based. We report new studies in which we tested the efficacy of LD cycles in entraining the circadian rhythms of human subjects living in isolation from environmental time cues. We found that the cyclic alternation of light and dark, when applied to human subjects in a comparable way to experiments in other species, was an effective entraining agent. Our results and a critical review of the literature indicate that a LD cycle alone can be an effective environmental synchronizer of the human circadian timing system. Other factors, such as the knowledge of time of day, social contacts, the feeding schedule, and the imposed rest‐activity schedule may contribute to stable entrainment, although their relative strengths as synchronizers have yet to be determined.
Type of Fatty Acids, Lipoprotein Secretion from Liver and Fatty Liver Syndrome in Laying Hens

Unlike other vertebrates, liver is the main site of lipid biosynthesis and is particularly very active in egg laying adult females. Yolk lipids and proteins are secreted as lipoproteins under the influence of estrogen in the liver. When hepatic lipogenesis exceeds the capacity of fat transport as lipoproteins, triacylglycerols commence to accumulate in the liver, leading to fatty liver syndrome. Fatty liver syndrome is an important metabolic disorder in laying flocks after they reach peak in egg production. The liver is generally enlarged, pale and shows extreme infiltration of fat and hemorrhages. It is a problem associated with the transport of triacylglycerols from liver to the developing oocyte. The effect of type and level of certain fatty acids may play an important role in the occurrence of the disorder. There is a correlation between delta-9 desaturase enzyme activity and secretion of very low-density lipoproteins from the liver. Certain fatty acids (i.e. sterculic acid, conjugated linoleic acids) inhibit the activity of this enzyme in the liver and cause lower levels of oleic acid which has a significant role in the secretion of triacylglycerols from chicken hepatocytes compared to other fatty acids such as linoleic or palmitic acids.
Regional Distribution of Sonic Hedgehog, Patched, and Smoothened mRNA in the Adult Rat Brain

Abstract: In vertebrates, Sonic Hedgehog (Shh), Desert Hedgehog (Dhh), and Indian Hedgehog (Ihh) genes encode a family of morphogen proteins that are implicated in a wide range of signaling activities, particularly during embryonic development. These secreted proteins are proposed to mediate their effects on target cells by interacting with their putative receptor, Patched (Ptc), and with a seven‐pass transmembrane protein, Smoothened (Smo). However, the roles that these signaling molecules may play in adult tissues, particularly in brain, are not yet clearly defined. Therefore, we investigated the expression of these genes in adult rat tissues. Northern blot analysis revealed expression of Shh, Dhh, and Ihh genes in peripheral tissues, whereas Shh transcript was also identified in brain. It is interesting that northern blot analysis with probes derived from the mouse Ptc and Smo genes revealed the expression of a 7.9‐kb and a 3.7‐kb transcript, respectively, in all brain tissues examined. In situ hybridization experiments using specific digoxigenin‐labeled riboprobes showed expression of Ptc and Smo transcripts in discrete brain areas. Shh‐positive cells were observed in restricted regions of the brain. Within the cerebellum, Shh, Ptc, and Smo transcripts were colocalized in the Purkinje cell layer. These data suggest that, besides its roles in determining cell fate and patterning during embryogenesis, the hedgehog signaling pathway may have also important roles in the adult brain.
Managing emerging diseases borne by fruit bats (flying foxes), with particular reference to henipaviruses and Australian bat lyssavirus

Since 1994, a number of novel viruses have been described from bats in Australia and Malaysia, particularly from fruit bats belonging to the genus Pteropus (flying foxes), and it is probable that related viruses will be found in other countries across the geographical range of other members of the genus. These viruses include Hendra and Nipah viruses, members of a new genus, Henipaviruses, within the family Paramyxoviridae; Menangle and Tioman viruses, new members of the Rubulavirus genus within the Paramyxoviridae; and Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV), a member of the Lyssavirus genus in the family Rhabdoviridae. All but Tioman virus are known to be associated with human and/or livestock diseases. The isolation, disease associations and biological properties of the viruses are described, and are used as the basis for developing management strategies for disease prevention or control. These strategies are directed largely at disease minimization through good farm management practices, reducing the potential for exposure to flying foxes, and better disease recognition and diagnosis, and for ABLV specifically, the use of rabies vaccine for pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis. Finally, an intriguing and long-term strategy is that of wildlife immunization through plant-derived vaccination.
DIRECTIONAL SENSITIVITY OF INDIVIDUAL VERTEBRATE HAIR CELLS TO CONTROLLED DEFLECTION OF THEIR HAIR BUNDLES *

Among the most striking and consistent morphological features of vertebrate hair cells is the geometrical arrangement of their mechanosensitive organelles, the hair bundles. These structures each consist of 30-200 microvilluslike stereocilia and a single, eccentrically placed, axonemal kinocilium. Three geometrical features of hair bundles are widespread, if not universal. First, the stereocilia and kinocilium are inserted into the cellular apex in a regular, hexagonal array. Second, the lengths of stereocilia increase monotonically from one edge of the hair bundle to the other, but are approximately equal within a row of stereocilia across the hair bundle. Finally, the kinocilium is located at the edge of the hair bundle at which the longest stereocilia occur. Distortions of these features may occur; for example, the spacing of stereocilia is not absolutely uniform in some hair cells, but varies from one edge of the hair bundle to the other. Hair bundles become progressively distorted and asymmetrical as the apex of the mammalian cochlea is approached. The kinocilium, although present in ontogeny, is lost from some hair cells in mammalian cochleas. Even in these exceptional cases, however, the general pattern of arrangement of the hair bundle is evident.
Quantitative Examination of Upper and Lower Extremity Muscle Activation During Common Shoulder Rehabilitation Exercises Using the Bodyblade

Abstract Oliver, GD, Sola, M, Dougherty, C, and Huddleston, S. Quantitative examination of upper and lower extremity muscle activation during common shoulder rehabilitation exercises using the bodyblade. J Strength Cond Res 27(9): 2509–2517, 2013—The kinetic chain approach to shoulder rehabilitation has become a standard of care within sports medicine. Attempting to incorporate the kinetic chain method of proximal stability for distal mobility requires a stable base of not only the lower extremity but also the upper extremity. Therefore, it was the purpose of this study to quantify muscle activation of the upper and lower extremity during common shoulder rehabilitation exercises using the Bodyblade. An observational descriptive study design was used. Thirty healthy collegiate graduate students (age: 23.5 ± 1.34 years; height: 174.4 ± 11.0 cm; weight: 76.6 ± 16.9 kg), regardless of gender, consented to participate. The independent variables were the 2 observational categories of exercise and muscle. The dependent variable was considered muscle activation as presented as percent maximum voluntary isometric contraction. Results revealed moderate to moderately strong activation of both the musculature of the upper and lower extremity while performing the shoulder rehabilitation exercises. The findings of this study demonstrate that any of these exercises may be incorporated into a shoulder rehabilitation program. The muscle activations described in this study are beneficial in choosing appropriate exercises to perform during shoulder rehabilitation. Information from this study can be applied to the kinetic chain approach to shoulder rehabilitation where focus is on the movement pattern. The Bodyblade is a unique rehabilitation tool because a variety of kinetic chain movement pattern exercises allow for scapular control via muscle activation about the hip and shoulder.