Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Melatonin for the prevention and treatment of cancer

The epidemiological studies have indicated a possible oncostatic property of melatonin on different types of tumors. Besides, experimental studies have documented that melatonin could exert growth inhibition on some human tumor cells in vitro and in animal models. The underlying mechanisms include antioxidant activity, modulation of melatonin receptors MT1 and MT2, stimulation of apoptosis, regulation of pro-survival signaling and tumor metabolism, inhibition on angiogenesis, metastasis, and induction of epigenetic alteration. Melatonin could also be utilized as adjuvant of cancer therapies, through reinforcing the therapeutic effects and reducing the side effects of chemotherapies or radiation. Melatonin could be an excellent candidate for the prevention and treatment of several cancers, such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, gastric cancer and colorectal cancer. This review summarized the anticancer efficacy of melatonin, based on the results of epidemiological,experimental and clinical studies, and special attention was paid to the mechanisms of action.
STUDIES ON ANTIBODY-PRODUCING CELLS

Antibody-bearing cells of spleen and lymph node of the mouse and rabbit detected by rosette formation with the antigenic red blood cells were collected by micropipet and studied by electron microscopy. More than 300 such cells were examined. In the lymph nodes, rosette-forming cells were all in the lymphocytic and plasmacytic categories. In cells of the mouse spleen, macrophages were also found among the RFC, especially in the later days after immunization. The great majority of the RFC, 70–100%, were of the lymphocytic category. These included small, medium, and large lymphocytes with fine gradations of differentiation, and blast forms with little heterochromatin. The endoplasmic reticulum of these cells occurred in short, very narrow pieces, usually in contact with a mitochondrion. The cells of the plasmacytic category also showed fine gradations from plasmablasts to typical mature plasma cells. Plaque-forming cells of mouse and rabbit were also collected by micropipet. Of 162 such cells, fine gradations were also found throughout the lymphocytic and plasmacytic categories, but in this case the great majority were in the plasmacytic group, and more plasma cells showed amorphous nuclear chromatin. Among antibody-forming cells detected by both reactions, some of the more highly differentiated large lymphocytes contained ER which differed from that in the other large lymphocytes in that the channels were slightly and variably distended, with deposition of some precipitate, and with some tendency to a more nearly parallel orientation of the few channels seen. These were considered transitional cells. Of 10 RFC found in mitosis, all were in the lymphocytic category, in various stages of differentiation, the most advanced of which (in 2 of the 10 cells) was that of the transitional lymphocyte described here. Cells producing plaques facilitated by antisera vs. IgG of the mouse or rabbit (7S) showed the same distribution between cell categories and the same fine gradations as the direct (19S) PFC. Cells producing rosettes which were resistant to lysis in the presence of complement, and were thus presumably producing 7S antibody, showed a distribution similar to that found generally with rosette-forming cells, approximately 80–90% in the lymphocytic category.
Modèle micromécanique d'endommagement basé sur des approches cohésives : bornes et relations micro-macro

On propose dans cette communication de developper un modele micromecanique d'endommagement base sur une approche cohesive. Le modele est obtenu par homogeneisation du comportement d'un milieu elastique isotrope contenant des inclusions cohesives circulaires distribuees et orientees aleatoirement. Le comportement non lineaire de la phase cohesive est linearise a l'aide de la methode variationnelle de Ponte Castaneda (1991) et de l'estimation de Hashin-Shtrikman (1963). Ce modele lie endommagement global et parametres cohesifs et permet notamment de calibrer ces derniers en fonction du maillage.
Maternal and fetal outcomes among women with depression.

OBJECTIVE To compare maternal and fetal outcomes among women with and without diagnosed depression at the time of delivery. METHODS Hospital discharge data from the 1998-2005 Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) were used to examine delivery-related hospitalizations for select maternal and fetal outcomes by depression diagnosis. RESULTS The rate of depression per 1000 deliveries increased significantly from 2.73 in 1998 to 14.1 in 2005 (p < 0.001). Women diagnosed with depression were significantly more likely to have cesarean delivery, preterm labor, anemia, diabetes, and preeclampsia or hypertension compared with women without depression. Fetal outcomes significantly associated with maternal depression were fetal growth restriction, fetal abnormalities, fetal distress, and fetal death. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that depression is associated with adverse maternal and fetal outcomes. Our results provide additional impetus to screen for depression among women of reproductive age, especially those who plan to become pregnant.
MEMS-based power delivery control for bursty applications

The current trends for greater heterogeneity in future Systems-on-Chip (SoC) do not only concern their functionality but also their timing and power aspects. The increasing diversity of timing and power supply conditions, and associated concurrently operating modes, within an SoC calls for more efficient power delivery networks (PDN) for battery operated devices. This is especially important for systems with mixed duty cycling, where some parts are required to work regularly with low-throughput while other parts are activated spontaneously, i.e. in bursts. To improve their reaction time vs energy efficiency, this paper proposes to incorporate a power-switching network based on MEM relays to switch the SoC power-performance state (PPS) into an active mode while eliminating the leakage current when it is idle. Results show that even with todays large and high pull-in voltages, a MEM-relay-based power switching network (PSN) can achieve a 1000x saving in energy compared to its CMOS counterpart for low duty cycle. Finally, the paper presents, by means of multiphysics simulation results, design guidelines for idle time and energy-saving estimates as a function of MEM relay scaling parameters.
Measuring Energy Expenditure in Sub-Adult and Hatchling Sea Turtles via Accelerometry

Measuring the metabolic of sea turtles is fundamental to understanding their ecology yet the presently available methods are limited. Accelerometry is a relatively new technique for estimating metabolic rate that has shown promise with a number of species but its utility with air-breathing divers is not yet established. The present study undertakes laboratory experiments to investigate whether rate of oxygen uptake ( o 2) at the surface in active sub-adult green turtles Chelonia mydas and hatchling loggerhead turtles Caretta caretta correlates with overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA), a derivative of acceleration used as a proxy for metabolic rate. Six green turtles (25–44 kg) and two loggerhead turtles (20 g) were instrumented with tri-axial acceleration logging devices and placed singly into a respirometry chamber. The green turtles were able to submerge freely within a 1.5 m deep tank and the loggerhead turtles were tethered in water 16 cm deep so that they swam at the surface. A significant prediction equation for mean o 2 over an hour in a green turtle from measures of ODBA and mean flipper length (R2 = 0.56) returned a mean estimate error across turtles of 8.0%. The range of temperatures used in the green turtle experiments (22–30°C) had only a small effect on o 2. A o 2-ODBA equation for the loggerhead hatchling data was also significant (R2 = 0.67). Together these data indicate the potential of the accelerometry technique for estimating energy expenditure in sea turtles, which may have important applications in sea turtle diving ecology, and also in conservation such as assessing turtle survival times when trapped underwater in fishing nets.
Young Infants ' Reasoning about the Physical and Spatial Properties of a Hidden Object

The present experiments examined 7-month-old infants' ability to represent and reason about the physical and spatial properties of an occluded object. In Experiment 1, two groups of infants were tested. One group saw a screen that rotated 90 ° upwards and then, remaining vertical, slid backwards. The results showed that the infants expected the screen to stop sliding sooner when an object stood 10, as opposed to 25, cm behind it, suggesting that they (a) represented the location of the object behind the screen and (b) used this information to estimate at what point the screen should reach the object and stop. The other group of infants saw a screen that rotated upwards and then backwards, in the manner of a drawbridge. The results showed that the infants expected the screen to stop rotating sooner when an object 20, as opposed to 4, cm-high stood behind it, suggesting that they (a) represented the height of the object behind the screen and (b) used this information to judge at what point the screen should reach the object and stop. The infants in Experiment 2 also saw a screen that rotated upwards and then backwards. The results indicated that the infants expected the screen to stop sooner when an incompressible, as opposed to a compressible, object stood behind it (the two objects were of the same height). This finding suggested that the infants (a) represented the height and the compressibility of the object behind the screen and (b) used this information to determine at what point the screen should reach the object and whether it could continue rotating past this point (by compressing the object). The results of a control experiment supported this interpretation. Together, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that, contrary to Piaget's (1954) claims, 7-month-old infants can represent and reason about the physical and spatial properties of an occluded object. These results have implications for three areas of infancy research: object permanence, physical reasoning, and representation.
Serious leisure

Many social scientists believe the future will offer significantly fewer opportunities for most adults to gain and maintain a job in the way they are used to doing today. A smaller number of jobs and a substantially reduced number of work hours are in store for many employees in the postindustrial society. Whether or not their jobs ever provided such things, they will increasingly be searching the world of leisure for ways to express their abilities, fulfill their potential, and identify themselves as unique human beings. Serious leisure is a main route open to people with these goals. Its three types—amateurism, hobbyist pursuits, and career volunteering—are defined, described, and interrelated. They are contrasted throughout with unserious or casual leisure, on the one hand, and work, on the other. The intermediate position of serious leisure between these two extremes relegates its current participants to the status of marginal men and women of leisure.
HOMOLOGY MODELING OF FRIZZLED GPCR THROUGH GPCR- MOD SIM

of all medicines available today act on GPCRs which are the most important biological signal proce ssing molecules. Despite their importance in all physiolo gical processes very less 3D structures of GPCRs ar e available in various data bases. Only 1% of the structures depos ited in PDB are of GPCRs. Due to ease, less time consumption and high reprodu cibility of results most of the laboratories in the world are turning towards in-silico modeling of these molecul es. Many of dedicated web servers and softwares have been developed for this purpose. In this paper we are tr ying to model 3 dimensional structure of Frizzled G PCRs through one such server GPCR MOD-Sim. The results obtained were of high quality and showed more than 90% residues in most favorable region. This model generated can pro vide reference point for scientist to probe deeper into the structure and function of these important class of GPCRs and also aid pharmaceutical industries in des igning new drugs and inhibitors for them.
A METHOD FOR SNOW-COVER MAPPING OF FORESTS BY OPTICAL REMOTE SENSING

A snow-covered forest mapping method for optical remote sensing is proposed. The method is based on linear sub-pixel reflectance modelling of the surface components snow, individual tree species and bare ground. Experiments are performed using a 100% snow-covered Landsat TM scene and aerial photos covering spruce, pine and birch forest in the Jotunheimen mountain area of South Norway. The reflectance modelling shows best results for pine forest and mixed pine and birch forest, while the modelled reflectance for birch forest and spruce forest is underestimated. The results are improved when tree shadows on the snow surface and reduced diffuse illumination due to tree crowns masking parts of the sky hemisphere are included in the reflectance model.
Apical trafficking in epithelial cells: signals, clusters and motors

In the early days of epithelial cell biology, researchers working with kidney and/or intestinal epithelial cell lines and with hepatocytes described the biosynthetic and recycling routes followed by apical and basolateral plasma membrane (PM) proteins. They identified the trans-Golgi network and recycling endosomes as the compartments that carried out apical-basolateral sorting. They described complex apical sorting signals that promoted association with lipid rafts, and simpler basolateral sorting signals resembling clathrin-coated-pit endocytic motifs. They also noticed that different epithelial cell types routed their apical PM proteins very differently, using either a vectorial (direct) route or a transcytotic (indirect) route. Although these original observations have generally held up, recent studies have revealed interesting complexities in the routes taken by apically destined proteins and have extended our understanding of the machinery required to sustain these elaborate sorting pathways. Here, we critically review the current status of apical trafficking mechanisms and discuss a model in which clustering is required to recruit apical trafficking machineries. Uncovering the mechanisms responsible for polarized trafficking and their epithelial-specific variations will help understand how epithelial functional diversity is generated and the pathogenesis of many human diseases.
Modifications of human and viral deoxyribonucleic acid by formaldehyde fixation.

BACKGROUND Formaldehyde reacts with human and viral DNA through interaction with hydrogen bonds, fixation of DNA-protein, and hydroxymethylation of the nucleic acids. Even though most archival tumor tissues are fixed with formaldehyde, little has been done to analyze the consequences of the reaction of formaldehyde with DNA. Misleading results can be obtained from fixed tissue using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) typing or restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We have studied variations in fixation time in various tissues obtained at autopsy and in prostatic carcinoma biopsies to analyze the effects of the formaldehyde fixation. Different PCR-products were studied after different fixation times. RESULTS DNA from fixed tissues appears to be no more fragmented than the native DNA. Changes in the DNA structure is more important than DNA quantity for performing PCR on fixed tissues. PCR products longer than 2 to 300 bp was difficult to amplify from some tissues. Only 8 hours of fixation can be enough to inhibit amplification of more than 421 bp. Tissue fixed for longer than 215 hours cannot be amplified for more than 200 basepair products unless excessive numbers (50-80) of PCR-cycles are used. CONCLUSIONS The loss of PCR product is related to fixation time and PCR-product-length, probably because of the rate of denaturation followed by modification of DNA. Contrary to what has previously been assumed, formaldehyde neither fragments nor reduces the quantity of DNA, but rather changes the structure of DNA. Different tissues may also react differently with formaldehyde, in part because of different tissue fixation gradients. When the PCR product is shorter than 200 bp, DNA isolated from paraffin-embedded tissues fixed with 4% formaldehyde can be useful to any kind of PCR product analysis.
Symptomatic ectopic bone formation after off-label use of recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-2 in transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion.

OBJECT Recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-2 (rhBMP-2) has been approved for use in the lumbar spine in conjunction with the lumbar tapered cage. However, off-label use of this osteoinductive agent is observed with anterior fusion applications as well as with both posterior lumbar interbody fusion and transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF). Complications using rhBMP-2 in the cervical spine have been reported. Although radiographic evidence of ectopic bone in the lumbar spine has been described following rhBMP-2 use, this finding was not previously believed to be of clinical relevance. METHODS This study was a retrospective review of 4 patients who underwent minimally invasive spinal TLIF (MIS-TLIF) in which bone fusion was augmented with rhBMP-2 applied to an absorbable collagen sponge. Case presentations, operative findings, imaging data, and follow-up findings were reviewed. RESULTS Four cases with delayed symptomatic neural compression following the off-label use of rhBMP-2 with MIS-TLIF were identified. CONCLUSIONS Although previously believed to be only a radiographic finding, the development of ectopic bone following rhBMP-2 use in lumbar fusion can be clinically significant. This paper describes 4 cases of delayed neural compression following MIS-TLIF. The reader should be aware of this potential complication following the off-label use of rhBMP-2 in the lumbar spine.
Fast Methods for Denoising Matrix Completion Formulations, with Applications to Robust Seismic Data Interpolation

Recent SVD-free matrix factorization formulations have enabled rank minimization for systems with millions of rows and columns, paving the way for matrix completion in extremely large-scale applications, such as seismic data interpolation. In this paper, we consider matrix completion formulations designed to hit a target data-fitting error level provided by the user, and propose an algorithm called LR-BPDN that is able to exploit factorized formulations to solve the corresponding optimization problem. Since practitioners typically have strong prior knowledge about target error level, this innovation makes it easy to apply the algorithm in practice, leaving only the factor rank to be determined. Within the established framework, we propose two extensions that are highly relevant to solving practical challenges of data interpolation. First, we propose a weighted extension that allows known subspace information to improve the results of matrix completion formulations. We show how this weighting can be used in the context of frequency continuation, an essential aspect to seismic data interpolation. Second, we propose matrix completion formulations that are robust to large measurement errors in the available data. We illustrate the advantages of LR-BPDN on the collaborative filtering problem using the MovieLens 1M, 10M, and Netflix 100M datasets. Then, we use the new method, along with its robust and subspace re-weighted extensions, to obtain high-quality reconstructions for large scale seismic interpolation problems with real data, even in the presence of data contamination.
HLA-A31- and HLA-Aw68-restricted cytotoxic T cell responses to a single hepatitis B virus nucleocapsid epitope during acute viral hepatitis

We have recently developed the technology to identify and characterize the human histocompatibility leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I- restricted, CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) response to hepatitis B virus (HBV)-encoded antigens in patients with acute viral hepatitis. CTL are expanded in vitro by stimulation with HBV-derived synthetic peptides and selected by restimulation with a panel of HLA-matched stable transfectants that express the corresponding HBV protein. We have recently reported the existence of an HLA-A2-restricted, CD8+ CTL response to an epitope located between residues 18 and 27 of the HBV nucleocapsid core antigen (HBcAg). We now report the discovery of a CTL epitope located between HBcAg residues 141 and 151 that completely overlaps a critical domain in the viral nucleocapsid protein that is essential for its nuclear localization and genome packaging functions as well as processing of the precore protein. The CTL response to this epitope is dually restricted by the HLA-A31 and HLA-Aw68 alleles, which, unexpectedly, appear to use a common binding motif based on the results of alanine substitution and competition analysis, and the binding properties of these two alleles predicted from their known primary sequence, and from the three-dimensional structure of HLA-Aw68. We have also demonstrated that the HBV-specific CTL response to this epitope is polyclonal during acute viral hepatitis, since these two restriction elements can present the HBcAg 141-151 epitope to independent CTL clones derived from a single patient; and that the CTL response is multispecific, since HLA-A2-restricted and HLA-Aw68- restricted CTL responses to HBcAg 18-27 and HBcAg 141-151, respectively, have been identified to coexist in another patient. The foregoing argue against the emergence of CTL escape mutants as a significant problem during HBV infection, especially at this locus, where mutations might be incompatible with viral replication. Finally, our data suggest an association between the HBV-specific CTL response and viral clearance, and they have implications for the design of immunotherapeutic strategies to terminate HBV infection in chronically infected patients.
Advancing the application of omics‐based biomarkers in environmental epidemiology

The use of omics represents a shift in approach for environmental epidemiology and exposure science. In this article, the aspects of the use of omics that will require further development in the near future are discussed, including (a) the underlying causal interpretation and models; (b) the “meet‐in‐the‐middle” concept, with examples; (c) the role of “calibration” of measurements; and (d) the role of life‐course epidemiology and the related development of adequate biostatistical models. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 54:461‐467, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.