Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of dexamethasone on the apoptosis and osteogenic differentiation of human periodontal ligament cells

Purpose The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of dexamethasone (Dex) at various concentrations on the apoptosis and mineralization of human periodontal ligament (hPDL) cells. Methods hPDL cells were obtained from the mid-third of premolars extracted for orthodontic reasons, and a primary culture of hPDL cells was prepared using an explant technique. Groups of cells were divided according to the concentration of Dex (0, 1, 10, 100, and 1,000 nM). A 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay was performed for evaluation of cellular viability, and alkaline phosphatase activity was examined for osteogenic differentiation of hPDL cells. Alizarin Red S staining was performed for observation of mineralization, and real-time polymerase chain reaction was performed for the evaluation of related genes. Results Increasing the Dex concentration was found to reduce cellular viability, with an increase in alkaline phosphatase activity and mineralization. Within the range of Dex concentrations tested in this study, 100 nM of Dex was found to promote the most vigorous differentiation and mineralization of hPDL cells. Dex-induced osteogenic differentiation and mineralization was accompanied by an increase in the level of osteogenic and apoptosis-related genes and a reduction in the level of antiapoptotic genes. The decrease in hPDL cellular viability by glucocorticoid may be explained in part by the increased prevalence of cell apoptosis, as demonstrated by BAX expression and decreased expression of the antiapoptotic gene, Bcl-2. Conclusions An increase in hPDL cell differentiation rather than cellular viability at an early stage is likely to be a key factor in glucocorticoid induced mineralization. In addition, apoptosis might play an important role in Dex-induced tissue regeneration; however, further study is needed for investigation of the precise mechanism.
Cognitive Function Is Disrupted by Both Hypo- and Hyperglycemia in School-AgedChildren With Type 1 Diabetes: A Field Study

OBJECTIVE We developed a field procedure using personal digital assistant (PDA) technology to test the hypothesis that naturally occurring episodes of hypo- and hyperglycemia are associated with deterioration in cognitive function in children with type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 61 children aged 6–11 years with type 1 diabetes received a PDA programmed with two brief cognitive tests (mental math and choice reaction time), which they completed just before home glucose readings. The computer recorded time to complete each test and number of correct responses. Children completed several trials per day over 4–6 weeks for a total of 70 trials. Performance variables were compared across glucose ranges. Individual impairment scores (IISs) were also computed for each child by calculating the SD between performance during euglycemia and that during glucose extremes. RESULTS Time to complete both mental math and reaction time was significantly longer during hypoglycemia. During hyperglycemia, time to complete math was significantly longer and reaction time was marginally significant (P = 0.053). There were no differences on task accuracy. Decline in mental math performance was equivalent at glucose levels <3.0 and >22.2 mmol/l. IISs varied greatly across children, with no age or sex differences. CONCLUSIONS A decrease in mental efficiency occurs with naturally occurring hypo- and hyperglycemic glucose fluctuations in children with type 1 diabetes, and this effect can be detected with a field procedure using PDA technology. With blood glucose levels >22.2 mmol/l, cognitive deterioration equals that associated with significant hypoglycemia.
Supervised deep segmentation network for brain extraction

Recent past has seen an inexorable shift towards the use of deep learning techniques to solve a myriad of problems in the field of medical imaging. In this paper, a novel segmentation method involving a fully-connected deep neural network called Deep Segmentation Network (DSN) is proposed to perform supervised regression for brain extraction from T1-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) images. In contrast to the existing patch-based feature learning techniques, DSN works on full 3D volumes, simplifying pre- and post-processing operations, to efficiently provide a voxel-wise binary mask delineating the brain region. The model is evaluated using three publicly available datasets and is observed to either outdo or perform comparably to the state-of-the-art methods. DSN is able to achieve a maximum and minimum Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of 97.57 and 92.82 respectively across all the datasets. Experiments conducted in this paper highlight the ability of the DSN model to automatically learn feature representations; making it a simple yet highly effective approach for brain segmentation. Preliminary experiments also suggest that the proposed model has the potential to segment sub-cortical structures accurately.
eal-time stress measurements in lithium-ion battery negative-electrodes

Real-time stress evolution in a graphite-based lithium-ion battery negative electrode during electrolyte wetting and electrochemical cycling is measured through wafer-curvature method. Upon electrolyte addition, the composite electrode develops compressive stress of 1–2 MPa due to binder swelling. During electrochemical intercalation, the compressive stress increases with the electrode’s state-of-charge, reaching a maximum value of 10–12 MPa. There appears to be an approximate correlation between the rate of stress rise and the staging behavior of the lithiated graphite. De-intercalation results in a similar decrease in electrode stress. Although higher peak stresses are seen at high C-rates, the dependence appears to be relatively weak (up to 5C). These measurements reveal, for the first time, the nature of tress evolution echanical damage ithium-ion battery HEV stress evolution in practical lithium ionbattery electrodes and provide useful data to quantify the driving force for mechanical damage that accrues in composite electrodes upon repeated cycling. While the reported results can serve as reference for calibrating theoretical and computational models to predict electrode stress and damage evolution, the methodology demonstrated can be used to measure stresses and characterize fatigue damage in any composite lithium-ion-battery electrode as well as optimize its microstructure to mitigate stress-related damage mechanisms. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Aristolochic acid nephropathy: variation in presentation and prognosis.

BACKGROUND Aristolochic acid nephropathy (AAN) is a worldwide problem and one of the common causes of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in China. METHODS Three hundred patients diagnosed as AAN from 1997 to 2006 were enrolled. Medical histories of Chinese herb ingestion, clinical-pathological features and risk factors for renal failure were recorded. Patients were followed up for 2-156 months. Factors involved in the prognosis of AAN were investigated. RESULTS The 300 patients with AAN manifested three clinical subtypes, including acute kidney injury (acute AAN) in 13 patients, abrupt tubular dysfunction with normal serum creatinine (Scr) levels in seven cases and chronic tubulointerstitial nephropathy with decreased estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) (chronic AAN) in 280 cases. The acute AAN cases had the highest aristolochic acid (AA)-I intake per day and developed progressive kidney failure during 1-7 years follow-up. The tubular dysfunction AAN patients had the lowest cumulative AA-I intake and were able to keep normal Scr levels during 2-8 years follow-up. The chronic AAN patients took the lowest AA-I dose per day but with the longest period and the highest cumulative dosage and exhibited a very large range of eGFR changing rate (from -21.6 to 5.2, median -3.5 mL/min/year). The cumulative AA-I intake (r = 0.330, P = 0.045) and the time course from the termination of AA medication to the start of follow-up (r = -0.430, P = 0.009) were found to be independent factors correlated with the decrease rate of eGFR in the chronic AAN patients. AA and the metabolites could be detected in a high frequency in patients who had stopped herbal medication for 1 year, which indicates a rather long washout time for these chemicals. CONCLUSIONS AAN has variant phenotypes with distinct prognosis, which is determined by the variable AA medications. With better understanding of toxic and environmental causes for kidney injury, there would be a better chance to uncover the causal factors of cases of 'CKD without known causes' which is crucial for improving the disease outcomes.
CATARACT SURGERY AND INTRAOCULAR LENS POWER CALCULATION IN A PATIENT WITH ANTERIOR MEGALOPHTHALMOS WITH NORMAL SIZED CRYSTALLINE LENS: CASE REPORT

Cataract surgery and intraocular lens power calculation is challenging in patients with anterior megalophthalmos and cataract, with postoperative refractive surprise frequently reported. Deep anterior chamber in these patients substantially influence effective lens position. To minimize possibility of refractive surprise, we used Haigis formula that takes into account anterior chamber depth in the lens power calculation for our patient. Cataract was managed by phakoemulsification with standard intraocular lens implanted in the capsular bag. Postoperatively, satisfying refractive result was achieved and refractive surprise was avoided.
Hardware-Efficient Realization of Prime-Length DCT Based on Distributed Arithmetic

This paper presents an efficient decomposition scheme for hardware-efficient realization of discrete cosine transform (DCT) based on distributed arithmetic. We have proposed an efficient design for the implementation of cyclic convolution based on a group distributed arithmetic (GDA) technique where the read-only memory size could be reduced over the existing GDA-based design. The proposed structure for DCT implementation, based on the new decomposition scheme and proposed design of GDA-based cyclic convolution, involves significantly less area complexity than the existing one. For example, to implement the DCT of transform length $(N = 17)$, the proposed design needs a lookup table of 128 words, while the existing design for $(N = 16)$ requires a lookup table of 256 words. From the synthesis results, it is found that proposed design involves significantly less area, gives higher throughput, and consumes less power compared to the existing designs of nearly the same or lower lengths.
Security Analysis of Quantization Schemes for Channel-based Key Extraction

The use of reciprocal and random properties of wireless channels for the generation of secret keys is a highly attractive option for many applications that operate in a mobile environment. In recent years, several practice-oriented protocols have been proposed, but unfortunately without a sufficient and consistent security analysis and without a fair comparison between each other. This can be attributed to the fact that until now neither a common evaluation basis, nor a security metric in an on-line scenario (e.g., with changing channel properties) was proposed. We attempt to close this gap by presenting test vectors based on a large measurement campaign, an extensive comparative evaluation framework (including ten protocols as well as new on-line entropy estimators), and a rigorous experimental security analysis. Further, we answer for the first time a variety of security and performance related questions about the behavior of 10 channel-based key establishment schemes from the literature.
Influence, Interactions and Heterogeneity: Taking Personalities Out of Monetary Policy Decision‐Making

type="main"> It is widely believed that setting monetary policy through a majority voting committee has major benefits. A monetary policy committee can take personalities out of monetary policy decisions. Critical to understanding these claims is an assessment of how such a committee functions. In this paper we examine interactions and influences between committee members when there is heterogeneity among members. We are able to identify significant interactions and directions of influence among Monetary Policy Committee members at the Bank of England.
Mitochondrial Disorder Aggravated by Metoprolol

Beta-adrenergic blocking agents or beta-blockers are a class of medications used to treat cardiac arrhythmias and systemic hypertension. In therapeutic dosages, they have known adverse outcomes that can include muscular fatigue and cramping, dizziness, and dyspnea. In patients with mitochondrial disease, these effects can be amplified. Previous case reports have been published in the adult population; however, their impact in pediatric patients has not been reported. We describe a pediatric patient with a mitochondrial disorder who developed respiratory distress after metoprolol was prescribed for hypertension. As the patient improved with discontinuation of medication and no alternative etiology was found for symptoms, we surmise that administration of metoprolol aggravated his mitochondrial dysfunction, thus worsening underlying chest wall weakness.
Asymptotic equivalence in Lee's moment formulas for the implied volatility and Piterbarg's conjecture

The asymptotic behavior of the implied volatility associated with a general call pricing function has been extensively studied in the last decade. The main topics discussed in this paper are Lee's moment formulas for the implied volatility, and Piterbarg's conjecture, describing how the implied volatility behaves in the case where all the moments of the stock price are finite. We find various conditions guaranteeing the existence of the limit in Lee's moment formulas. We also prove a modified version of Piterbarg's conjecture and provide a non-restrictive sufficient condition for the validity of this conjecture in its original form. The asymptotic formulas obtained in the paper are applied to the implied volatility in the CEV model and in the Heston model perturbed by a compound Poisson process with double exponential law for jump sizes.
Schwann Cell Dependence of Regenerating Rat Sensory Neurons Is Inversely Related to the Quality of Axon Growth Substratum

It is still controversial to what extent elongation of regenerating sensory axons depends on proliferating Schwann cells (SCs) in an injured peripheral nerve. We hypothesized that such regeneration was independent of SC support early after nerve injury, but later became SC-dependent. The sural nerve in rats was crushed, and freezing destroyed cells but not their basal laminae (BL) in the distal nerve segment. Sensory axon elongation was assessed by the nerve pinch test and their abundance was examined immunohistochemically. Sensory axons regenerated fairly rapidly during the first week even if SC migration was prevented. Thereafter, they ceased to elongate and withdrew until their terminals contacted the SCs migrating from the proximal nerve segment. Intrinsic neuronal capacity for growth without cell support, however, had not been lost. Rather, progressive degradation of the former SC BL and loss of laminin in the acellular segment arrested axon growth. Further elongation occurred only when SC migration was possible, corroborating our hypothesis. Sensory neurons continued to elongate and maintain their axons in spite of deteriorating growth substratum if, prior to injury the axons had been allowed to sprout into the denervated skin. Previous sprouting exposed the sensory neurons to high levels of NGF.
Gifts, Lies and Bequests

Recent empirical work on intergenerational transfers has shown that: i) parents prefer to transfer resources to their children using bequests rather than inter vivos transfers (gifts), and ii) bequests tend to be divided equally, while gifts tend to be directed towards the less well-off children. In this note, we present a theoretical model of the altruistic family with heterogeneous children which does not contradict either i) or ii). In our setting, i) follows because bequests are more e¢cient than gifts: these are negatively related to the children’s reported income (true income cannot be observed) and therefore distort the effort supply decisions as well as inducing underreporting. As for ii), we propose two arguments. First, market imperfections make bequests, which come late in life, a rather ineffective redistributive tool, so that it may be pointless to differentiate them. Second, imposing the constraint that bequest have to be equal is not necessarily costly in welfare terms and permits to avoid the the psychic costs or the loss of reputation associated with unequal giving.
Supernova Ia Constraints on a Time-variable Cosmological “Constant”

The energy density of a scalar field ϕ with potential V(ϕ) ∝ ϕ-α, α > 0, behaves like a time-variable cosmological constant that could contribute significantly to the present energy density. Predictions of this spatially flat model are compared to recent Type Ia supernova apparent magnitude versus redshift data. A large region of model parameter space is consistent with current observations. (These constraints are based on the exact scalar field model equations of motion, not on the widely used time-independent equation of state fluid approximation equations of motion.) We examine the consequences of also incorporating constraints from recent measurements of the Hubble parameter and the age of the universe in the constant and time-variable cosmological constant models. We also study the effect of using a noninformative prior for the density parameter.
COMPARISON OF dmin-BASED PRECODER WITH OSTBC AND MAXIMUM SNR-BASED PRECODER FOR MIMO SYSTEMS

In order to compare the performances of three transmission schemes of keyinterest able to reach the maximum diversity order, guarantee of robust transmission, we used a dual-polarization channel model to take into account polarization diversity and transmit/receive correlation. These schemes under study were i )two systems using full channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter side (Tx-CSI), i.e. the dmin-based precoder (maximization of minimum Euclidean distance (dmin)) and the beamforming or max-SNR precoder (maximization of the output signal-to-noise ratio) and ii ) the Alamouti scheme belonging to the orthogonal space-time block code (OSTBC) family which needs no Tx-CSI. Their performances were also compared with imperfect CSI to determine the gain in dB due to the use of Tx-CSI . This study was extended to several dual-polarized antennas.
Intercepting temporal constraints for searching images over the web

Due to the extensive use of digital devices such as camera etc, and multimedia data; images over the web are exponentially growing leading to the difficulty for image search engine for searching relevant images. Moreover these search engines do not support temporal queries effectively. The commercial temporal search prototypes focus on the crawl time and creation of web pages and thus do not give relevant results for the given query. This work identifies the temporal constraints in a keyword query and intercepts the query processing to evaluate constraints effectively.
Silicon field-effect transistor based on quantum tunneling

This letter explores regulation of current flow within a silicon field‐effect transistor by gate‐induced tunneling through a Schottky barrier located at the interface between a metallic source electrode and the Si channel. The goal here is to forestall short‐channel effects which are expected to prevent further size reductions in conventional devices when linewidths reach ∼1000 A. Control of tunneling appears to be possible at minimum channel lengths L∼250 A or less while simultaneously eliminating the need for large‐area source and drain contacts, so that scaling of Si transistors could be significantly extended if this principle proves technically feasible.
Using biomarkers to predict treatment response in major depressive disorder: evidence from past and present studies

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a heterogeneous condition with a variable response to a wide range of treatments. Despite intensive efforts, no biomarker has been identified to date that can reliably predict response or non-response to any form of treatment, nor has one been identified that can be used to identify those at high risk of developing treatment-resistant depression (ie, non-response to a sequence of treatments delivered for adequate duration and intensity). This manuscript reviews some past areas of research that have proved informative, such as studies using indexes of hypercortisolism or sleep disturbance, and more recent research findings using measures of inflammation and different indicators of regional cortical activation to predict treatment response. It is concluded that, although no method has yet been demonstrated to be sufficiently accurate to be applied in clinical practice, progress has been made. It thus seems likely that—at some point in the not-too-distant future—it will be possible to prospectively identify, at least for some MDD patients, the likelihood of response or non-response to cognitive therapy or various antidepressant medications.
Risk factors of type 2 diabetes among Korean adults: The 2001 Korean national health and nutrition examination survey

This study aimed to identify risk factors for type 2 diabetes (T2D) in Korea, a rapidly changing country. Data of 5,132 adults aged 20-85 were used from the 2001 Korean Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Multiple logistic regression was carried out to identify risk factors for T2D. Three models were specified: (i) socioeconomic and demographic factors (model 1: age, gender, education, poverty income ratio, employment), (ii) behavioral risk factors and covariates (model 2: obesity, physical activity, smoking, alcohol drinking, dietary quality, family history of T2D, co-morbidity) and (iii) socioeconomic, demographic, and behavioral factors (model 3). The prevalence of T2D was 7.4%. Less education (OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.08-1.84), age (OR 2.19, 95% CI 1.56-3.08 in 40-59 yrs, OR 4.05, 95% CI 2.76-5.95 in 60 yrs + comparing to 20-39 yrs) and abdominal obesity (OR 2.24, 95% CI 1.79-2.82) were risk factors for T2D even after controlling for other factors simultaneously. There was a significant association of T2D with ever smoking (OR 1.34, 95% CI 1.06-1.67). The relationship of age with T2D was modified by gender in model 1 and the relationship of smoking with T2D was modified by obesity in model 2. Less educated, older, obese or ever smokers were more likely to have T2D. Gender mediated the relationship of age, and obesity mediated the relationship of smoking, with T2D. Intervention programs for T2D in Korea should take the interactions among risk factors into account.