Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IGF-II receptors and IGF-II-stimulated glucose transport in human fat cells.

Insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II) receptors have been described in rat but not in human adipocytes. In both species, IGF-II has been reported to stimulate glucose transport by interacting with the insulin receptor. In this study, we have unequivocally demonstrated the presence of IGF-II receptors in human adipocytes. 125I-labeled IGF-II specifically binds to intact adipocytes, membranes, and lectin-purified detergent solubilized extracts. Through the use of 0.5 mM disuccinimidyl suberate, 125I-IGF-II is cross-linked to a 260-kDa protein that is identified as the IGF-II receptor by displacement experiments with unlabeled IGF-II, IGF-I, and insulin and either by immunoprecipitation or by Western blot analysis with mannose 6-phosphate receptor antibodies. The concentrations of IGF-II required for half-maximal and maximal stimulation of glucose transport in human adipocytes are 35 and 100 times more than that of insulin. The possibility of IGF-II stimulating glucose transport by interacting predominantly with the insulin receptor is suggested by the following: 1) the concentration of IGF-II that inhibits half of insulin binding is only 20 times more than that of insulin; 2) the lack of an additive effect of IGF-II and insulin for maximal stimulation of glucose transport; 3) the ability of monoclonal insulin receptor antibodies to decrease glucose transport stimulated by submaximal concentrations of both IGF-II and insulin; and 4) the ability of IGF-II to stimulate insulin receptor autophosphorylation albeit at a reduced potency when compared with insulin. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Regrowth of axons into the distal spinal cord through a Schwann‐cell‐seeded mini‐channel implanted into hemisected adult rat spinal cord

Schwann cells (SCs) have been shown to be a key element in promoting axonal regeneration after being grafted into the central nervous system (CNS). In the present study, SC‐supported axonal regrowth was tested in an adult rat spinal cord implantation model. This model is characterized by a right spinal cord hemisection at the eighth thoracic segment, implantation of a SC‐containing mini‐channel and restoration of cerebrospinal fluid circulation by suturing the dura. We demonstrate that a tissue cable containing grafted SCs formed an effective bridge between the two stumps of the hemicord 1 month after transplantation. Approximately 10 000 myelinated and unmyelinated axons (1 : 9) per cable were found at its midpoint. In addition to propriospinal axons and axons of peripheral nervous system (PNS) origin, axons from as many as 19 brainstem regions also grew into the graft without additional treatments. Most significantly, some regenerating axons in the SC grafts were able to penetrate through the distal graft–host interface to re‐enter the host environment, as demonstrated by anterograde axonal labelling. These axons coursed toward, and then entered the grey matter where terminal bouton‐like structures were observed. In channels containing no SCs, limited axonal growth was seen within the graft and no axons penetrated the distal interface. These findings further support the notion that SCs are strong promotors of axonal regeneration and that the mini‐channel model may be appropriate for further investigation of axonal re‐entry, synaptic reconnection and functional recovery following spinal cord injury.
Comparisons between Hologic, Lunar and Norland dual-energy X-ray absorptiometers and other techniques used for whole-body soft tissue measurements.

OBJECTIVES Assessment of the precision and accuracy of dual-energy X-ray absorptiometers (DXA) from three manufacturers, used for measuring soft-tissue composition, and comparability with each other and other techniques. DESIGN Measurements of an anthropomorphic model of variable composition and thickness. 11 volunteers measured with each instrument and by underwater weighing (UWW) and three brands of bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA) apparatus. RESULTS New software, introduced by each manufacturer during the course of the investigation, led to changes in measured fat proportion. The precision of determination of fat proportion by DXA in the (small) model was 3-4% (coefficient of variation), with little difference between brands. In vivo precision was 2-3%. In the model, measurements of % fat differed from the nominal values, but variation with thickness was small. There were significant mean differences of total fat proportion in the volunteers between pairs of DXA instruments of 2.6-6.3% fat. The SDs of the differences were 1.8-2.9% fat. Regional differences were greater, with trunk % fat being particularly underestimated by Hologic relative to Lunar and Norland. Compared with UWW, mean % fat was the same for Hologic, but higher for Lunar and Norland. SDs of 4% demonstrated inadequate agreement. The differences varied with proportion of bone in lean tissue, questioning the assumption of constant density of lean tissue in UWW. There were no mean differences of % fat between the BIA instruments and DXA and UWW, but SDs of 3-6% suggest that BIA using these instruments does not offer an acceptable accuracy in estimating fat proportion. CONCLUSIONS UWW has limitations as a reference method. DXA is a useful technique, but its limitations, particularly regarding assumptions about fat distribution, must be borne in mind. The differences of fat proportion recorded by the three DXA instruments are such as to preclude interchangeability in measurements of individual subjects or in clinical trials.
Application of bacteriophages to reduce Salmonella attachment and biofilms on hard surfaces

&NA; This study evaluated the effectiveness of bacteriophage treatment for reducing Salmonella attachment and biofilms on hard surfaces. Bacteriophages (n = 6) were selected for bacteriophage treatment based on host ranges against Salmonella isolates (n = 10) obtained from rendering plants. The effectiveness of bacteriophage treatment (104‐108 PFU/mL) was initially evaluated against strong Salmonella biofilm formers in 96‐well microplate. Then, the bacteriophage treatment (109 PFU/mL) was applied for 7 d to reduce Salmonella attached to the stainless steel surfaces under laboratory and greenhouse conditions. The inhibition of biofilm formation and reduction of pre‐formed biofilm in 96‐well microplate with bacteriophage treatment reached up to 90 and 66%, respectively. Under laboratory conditions, bacteriophage treatment reduced up to 2.9 and 3.0 log CFU/cm2 of attachment and slightly formed biofilm of selected top 10 Salmonella strains and an avirulent Salmonella Typhimurium strain 8243, respectively, as compared with reductions of 3.4, 1.4, and 3.0 log CFU/cm2 of S. Typhimurium strain 8243 in summer, fall/winter, and spring seasons under greenhouse conditions, respectively. Clearly, bacteriophages were effective on reducing Salmonella attachment and biofilms formed on hard surfaces under both laboratory and greenhouse conditions. The use of bacteriophages on hard surfaces may have merits in reducing the likelihood of finished rendered products being recontaminated with Salmonella in rendering plants.
Evolving robust and specialized car racing skills

Neural network-based controllers arc evolved for racing simulated R/C cars around several tracks of varying difficulty. The transferability of driving skills acquired when evolving for a single track is evaluated, and different ways of evolving controllers able to perform well on many different tracks are investigated, ft is further shown that such generally proficient controllers can reliably be developed into specialized controllers for individual tracks. Evolution of sensor parameters together with network weights is shown to lead to higher final fitness, but only if turned on after a general controller is developed, otherwise it hinders evolution, ft is argued that simulated car racing is a scalable and relevant testbed for evolutionary robotics research, and that the results of this research can be useful for commercial computer games.
Ranking hospitals on surgical mortality: the importance of reliability adjustment.

OBJECTIVE We examined the implications of reliability adjustment on hospital mortality with surgery. DATA SOURCE We used national Medicare data (2003-2006) for three surgical procedures: coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repair, and pancreatic resection. STUDY DESIGN We conducted an observational study to evaluate the impact of reliability adjustment on hospital mortality rankings. Using hierarchical modeling, we adjusted hospital mortality for reliability using empirical Bayes techniques. We assessed the implication of this adjustment on the apparent variation across hospitals and the ability of historical hospital mortality rates (2003-2004) to forecast future mortality (2005-2006). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS The net effect of reliability adjustment was to greatly diminish apparent variation for all three operations. Reliability adjustment was also particularly important for identifying hospitals with the lowest future mortality. Without reliability adjustment, hospitals in the "best" quintile (2003-2004) with pancreatic resection had a mortality of 7.6 percent in 2005-2006; with reliability adjustment, the "best" hospital quintile had a mortality of 2.7 percent in 2005-2006. For AAA repair, reliability adjustment also improved the ability to identify hospitals with lower future mortality. For CABG, the benefits of reliability adjustment were limited to the lowest volume hospitals. CONCLUSION Reliability adjustment results in more stable estimates of mortality that better forecast future performance. This statistical technique is crucial for helping patients select the best hospitals for specific procedures, particularly uncommon ones, and should be used for public reporting of hospital mortality.
Evaluation of real-time polymerase chain reaction for detection of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the diagnosis of cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis in a country with a high tuberculosis incidence.

BACKGROUND Tuberculous lymphadenitis (TBL) is the most common form of extrapulmonary tuberculosis. Currently, the standard diagnostic test for TBL is culture, which takes more than several weeks to yield results. We studied a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for rapid detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in cervical lymph node specimens obtained from patients in a country where the tuberculosis incidence is high. METHODS Patients with cervical lymphadenopathy were prospectively enrolled between April 2009 and March 2010. Clinical specimens obtained through fine-needle aspiration (FNA) and excisional biopsy were tested for M. tuberculosis by the COBAS TaqMan MTB Test, a real-time PCR assay for detecting the 16S ribosomal RNA gene of M. tuberculosis. Mycobacterial culture and histopathological findings from tissue biopsy specimens were used as a reference standard for sensitivity and specificity calculations. RESULTS Of 73 patients, 41 received a diagnosis of TBL. For biopsy specimens, the sensitivity of real-time PCR was 63.4%, and the specificity was 96.9%. For FNA specimens, the sensitivity was 17.1%, and the specificity was 100%. The sensitivity of real-time PCR of biopsy specimens was comparable to that of tissue culture but significant lower than that of histopathological examination (P < .01). CONCLUSIONS Real-time PCR did not increase the yield for rapid diagnosis of TBL.
On Low-Velocity Compensation of Brushless DC Servo in the Absence of Friction Model

Friction compensation is usually realized based on a friction model; however, the induced undercompensation or overcompensation, which can lead to steady-error or limit-cycle phenomenon, respectively, is inevitable. A novel straightforward reference compensation scheme for the brushless dc servo system independent of the friction model is presented to reject the aftereffect caused by the friction instead of its original mechanics. Neither the accurate friction model nor any estimation of some specific characteristic parameters is needed in this design. Moreover, the inexact velocity estimation information is not as crucial as it is in the traditional compensation methods. A linear control law is proposed based on a reduced-order observer, which could be readily implemented in low-cost embedded fixed-point chips. Two guidelines for the selection of control parameters are presented in terms of delay sensitivity and limit-cycle avoidance. The approach can be applied to the cases with multiple disturbance torque sources except the friction one, where the friction-model-based strategy is difficult to take effect. Finally, comparative mathematical simulation and practical experiment results are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Substantial low-velocity performance improvements are achieved in the hardware experiments.
Detecting emerging concepts in textual data mining

Recent advances in computer technology are fueling radical changes in the na ture of information management Increasing computational capacities coupled with the ubiquity of networking have resulted in widespread digitization of information thereby creating fundamentally new possibilities for managing information One such opportunity lies in the budding area of textual data mining With roots in the elds of statistics machine learning and information theory data mining is emerg ing as a eld of study in its own right The marriage of data mining techniques to applications in textual information management has created unprecedented oppor tunity for the development of automatic approaches to tasks heretofore considered intractable This article summarizes our research to date in the automatic identi cation of emerging trends in textual data Applications are numerous the detection of trends in warranty repair claims for example is of genuine interest to NCSA industrial partners Caterpillar and Boeing Technology forecasting is another example with numerous applications of both academic and practical interest In general trending analysis of textual data can be performed in any domain that involves written records of human endeavors whether scienti c or artistic in nature Trending of this nature is primarily based on human expert analysis of sources e g patent trade and technical literature combined with bibliometric techniques
Liver allograft pathology: approach to interpretation of needle biopsies with clinicopathological correlation

The spectrum of diseases encountered in post-transplant liver pathology biopsies is broad. In this review, these have been divided as belonging to one of three categories: (1) new-onset/de novo post-transplant abnormalities (early and late), (2) rejection, and (3) recurrence of original disease. The clinical and pathological features of the entities making up each category, with the relevant differential diagnosis and overlaps between and within these groups, are discussed and illustrated. Recurrent or de novo neoplasms make up a fourth category not included in this review. Early new-onset conditions are mostly related to surgical complications, donor factors and ischaemia to the graft. These include reperfusion/preservation injury, lipopeliosis, small-for-size-syndrome, biliary sludge syndrome and hepatic artery thrombosis. The various forms of rejection (cellular, chronic, antibody-mediated, and late atypical rejection) are detailed. Most chronic liver diseases can and do recur in the graft. They may display features that overlap with de novo conditions (eg, primary sclerosing cholangitis versus chronic rejection). As with most cases of allograft biopsy interpretation, accurate diagnosis rests with careful correlation of histological features with clinical, imaging and laboratory findings, and often comparison with previous sequential and follow-up biopsies. Late-onset new diseases include biliary strictures, idiopathic chronic hepatitis and de novo autoimmune hepatitis, among others. This review provides a practical approach to the interpretation of these challenging biopsies. Selected difficult scenarios or conundrums are identified and discussed in the relevant sections.
Evaluation of antiarthritic activity on Luffa echinata Roxb. fruits on rats

Luffa Echinata Roxb. fruits popularly known, as ‘Bindal’ in Hindi is a slender herb belonging to the Cucurbitaceae which grows widely in India. In traditional system of medicine, Luffa echinata Roxb. fruits were used for various ailments including inflammation, diabetes etc. To investigate the folkloric use of the fruits the present study was carried out on Freund’s adjuvant induced arthritic rats. The present study states the effect of the aqueous extract (LEFAE) and the alcoholic extract (LEFEE) of Luffa echinata Roxb. fruits on the Freund’s complete adjuvant (FCA) induced arthritic rat paw edema, body weight changes and alterations in haematological and biochemical parameters in both developing and developed phases of arthritis. Histopathology of proximal interphalangeal joints and radiology of hind legs were studied. In FCA induced arthritic rats, there was significant increase in rat paw volume and decrease in body weight increment, whereas LEFEE and LEFAE treated groups, showed significant reduction in paw volume and normal gain in body weight. The altered haematological parameters (Hb, RBC, WBC and ESR) in the arthritic rats were significantly brought back to near normal by the LEFEE and LEFAE treatment at the dose of 250 mg/kg/p.o in both developing and developed phases of arthritis. Further the histopathological and radiological studies revealed the antiarthritic activity of LEFEE and LEFAE by indicating fewer abnormalities in these groups when compared to the arthritic control group. The results of the current investigation concluded, ethanol extract of Luffa echinata Roxb. Fruits, extract possess a significant anti-arthritic activity against adjuvant induced arthritis and justifying its therapeutic role in arthritic condition. The observed antiarthritic activity may be due to the presence of phytoconstituents such as irridiod glycosides, alkaloids, phenolic compounds and flavonoids.
The effect of titanium implant abutment surface irregularities on plaque accumulation in vivo.

The purpose of this study was 2-fold to: 1) evaluate in vitro the surface texture of titanium implant abutments after exposure to plastic scalers, an air-powder abrasive system, rubber cup polishing with flour of pumice, and untreated control abutments; and 2) compare plaque accumulation in humans on abutments treated with the above methods. In part I, 5.5 mm abutments were instrumented for 30 seconds per 90 degrees segment with the respective methods. The surface character was compared to untreated controls using SEM at 260X magnification. The control abutments revealed prominent milling marks and small pits; plastic scalers slightly smoothed the milling marks and created microscratches; the air-powder abrasive largely obliterated the milling marks and caused some surface pitting; the rubber cup with flour of pumice removed the milling marks and created a smooth swirl pattern. None of the instrumentation appeared to roughen the surface. In the clinical experiment (part II), four abutments, one of each type, were placed in 12 patients for a period of 7 days, during which the patients performed no oral hygiene. At the end of 7 days, the abutments were retrieved and processed for SEM. A digitizer and software program were used to determine the percent of total abutment surface area covered by plaque. The demarcation of supragingival and subgingival plaque was well delineated. The total mean percent surface area of plaque ranged from 52.06% for the air-powder abrasive to 55.29% for the plastic scalers. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Post‐transcriptional activation of a diguanylate cyclase by quorum sensing small RNAs promotes biofilm formation in Vibrio cholerae

Biofilms promote attachment of Vibrio cholerae in aquatic ecosystems and aid in transmission. Intracellular c‐di‐GMP levels that control biofilm development positively correlate with expression of Qrr sRNAs, which are transcribed when quorum sensing (QS) autoinducer levels are low. The Qrr sRNAs base‐pair with and repress translation of hapR encoding the QS ‘master regulator’, hence increased c‐di‐GMP and biofilm development at low density were believed to be solely a consequence of Qrr/hapR pairing. We show that Qrr sRNAs also base‐pair with and activate translation of the mRNA of a diguanylate cyclase (DGC), Vca0939; relieving an inhibitory structure in vca0939 that occludes the ribosome binding site. A nucleotide substitution in vca0939 disrupted sRNA/mRNA base‐pairing and prevented vca0939 translation, while a compensating Qrr sRNA substitution restored pairing and Vca0939 levels. Qrr‐dependent DGC activation led to c‐di‐GMP accumulation and biofilm development in V. cholerae. This represents the first description of (1) a DGC post‐transcriptionally activated by direct pairing with an Hfq‐dependent sRNA, and (2) control of a V. cholerae QS phenotype, independent of HapR. Thus, direct interactions of the same sRNAs with two mRNAs promote c‐di‐GMP‐dependent biofilm formation by complementary mechanisms in V. cholerae; by negatively regulating HapR, and positively regulating the DGC Vca0939.
Development of Biomedical Polymer-Silicate Nanocomposites: A Materials Science Perspective

Biomedical polymer-silicate nanocomposites have potential to become critically important to the development of biomedical applications, ranging from diagnostic and therapeutic devices, tissue regeneration and drug delivery matrixes to various bio-technologies that are inspired by biology but have only indirect biomedical relation. The fundamental understanding of polymer-nanoparticle interactions is absolutely necessary to control structure-property relationships of materials that need to work within the chemical, physical and biological constraints required by an application. This review summarizes the most recent published strategies to design and develop polymer-silicate nanocomposites (including clay based silicate nanoparticles and bioactive glass nanoparticles) for a variety of biomedical applications. Emerging trends in bio-technological and biomedical nanocomposites are highlighted and potential new fields of applications are examined.
Overlapped parallel computations of scalar multiplication with resistance against Side Channel Attacks

This paper presents an efficient scheme for computing elliptic curve scalar multiplication that uses side-channel atomicity to resist against SPA attacks. The inherent parallelism within point operations is exploited to perform parallel computations of atomic blocks within the same point operation. The computations of atomic blocks of subsequent point operations are then overlapped to increase the performance. Randomising the scalar multiplier and the projective coordinates are applied together to immunise the scheme against DPA attacks. The results show that the proposed scheme is highly efficient in comparison with the pipelined scheme of Mishra (2006), which outperformed previous schemes.