Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of nitric oxide synthase in articular inflammatory pain and cellular influx of zymosan-induced arthritis in rats

Objetivo: Investigar o papel do óxido nítrico (NO) no influxo celular (IC) e a incapacitação articular (IA) na artrite por zymosan (AZy). Métodos: Ratos Wistar receberam injeção de Zy (1mg) no joelho direito. Grupos-controles receberam salina. A IA foi avaliada pelo Teste de incapacitação articular para ratos. Após sacrifício, o IC e a liberação de PGE2 foram avaliados no lavado articular. Avaliou-se o edema pela diferença peso úmido/peso seco do tecido articular. Grupos foram tratados i.p. com L-NAME – inibidor de sintases de NO (NOS) (LN=30300mg/kg) ou aminoguanidina (AG= 30-300mg/kg) – inibidor seletivo de iNOS 30 min antes ou 2 h após o Zy. Resultados: O pré-tratamento com L-NAME ou AG inibiu de forma dose-dependente a IA e o IC, mas não o edema ou a liberação de PGE2, sendo máximo para LN ou AG (100mg/kg). L-arginina (1g/kg) co-injetada com LN (100mg/kg) reverteu a inibição da IA e do IC. D-NAME (100mg/kg) não teve efeito. Co-injeção de naloxona (antagonista opióide) reverteu o efeito de LN e AG sobre a IA. A pressão arterial média elevou-se (p<0,01) após LN (100mg/kg), mas não com AG (100mg/kg). LN e AG (100mg/kg) dados 2 h após Zy não tiveram efeito. Azul de metileno (inibidor de GMPc), e não hemoglobina (scavenger de NO), reduziu IA e IC (p<0,01). Nitroprussiato de sódio (doador de NO) dado 2 h após Zy, reduziu a IA, mas não o IC (p<0,01). Conclusões: A antinocicepção na AZy por inibição da iNOS só ocorre como pré-tratamento, por efeito antiinflamatório via GMPc, independentemente de NO exógeno ou de PGE2, associada à liberação de opióides endógenos. Um doador de NO ABSTRACT
Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma

OBJECTIVE To describe some rare cytologic findings in medullary thyroid carcinoma. STUDY DESIGN Review of the fine needle aspiration smears from 15 cases of medullary thyroid carcinoma that were confirmed on histologic sections. The ages ranged between 31 and 67 years; 10 were female and 5 male. Thirteen were sporadic forms, and two were familial forms. RESULTS Eight cases were classified as pleomorphic cell type and seven as monomorphic cell type. The smears revealed round, oval, triangular, polygonal and spindle-shaped cells, intracytoplasmic red granules, occasional intranuclear inclusions, amyloid, binucleated and multinucleated cells, and thick, granular chromatin. CONCLUSION The rare cytologic findings in this study were grape cells, cytoplasmic nippling, elongated cytoplasmic processes, carrot-shaped nuclei, nuclear buddings, mast cell-like cells and a Burkitt's lymphoma-like appearance. These findings were rarely reported before.
[Preliminary study of intervention in effect of Bushen Huoxue recipe on calcification of lumbar vertebra cartilage endplate of the aging gerbils].

OBJECTIVE To study the effect of Bushen Huoxue decoction on calcification of cartilage endplate in lumbar vertebrae. METHODS Six healthy male gerbils with 2-month-old were selected as normal control group, and 24 7-month-old healthy male gerbils were fed to 12-month-old to establish the aged gerbil model. Thirty gerbils were randomly divided into five groups as follow: the normal control group (n=6), model group (n=6, normal saline 4 ml/kg, intragastric 30 d), Bushen Huoxue low dose group(n=6, 1.9× 10⁻ ³ ml/g given Bushen Huoxue recipe orally, 30 d), Bushen Huoxue middle dose group(n=6, 3.8× 10⁻ ³ ml/g given Bushen Huoxue recipe orally, 30 d), Bushen Huoxue high dose group(n=6, 7.6× 10⁻ ³ ml/g given Bushen Huoxue recipe orally, 30 d), the intervention group administered for 1.36 g from 7-month-old age, 30 d. The animals were sacrificed at the age of 2 months in the normal control group and 12 months of age in the other groups. The morphology of the lumbar vertebral cartilage endplate, the area of vascular bud, the ratio of non-calcified/calcified layer were analysis by HE chromosome visual method. The expression of type X collagen and BMPs in cartilage endplates were detected by rabbit monoclonal immunohistochemical staining. RESULTS The relative area of the vascular buds cartilage endplate measurements showed that compared with the model group, middle dose group and normal control group increased (P<0.05), high and low dose groups all had different degrees of increase, but no statistical significance(P>0.05). The ratio of cartilage endplate thickness of non-calcified/calcified showed that compared with the model group, Bushen Huoxue middle dose, normal control group increased, with statistical significance(P<0.05), and high and low dose groups all had different degrees of increase, but there were no statistical significance(P>0.05). Compared with the model group, the expression of type X collagen in the cartilage endplate of the normal group, the Bushen Huoxue low, middle and high dose groups decreased, and had statistical significance(P<0.01); compared with the model group, the expression of BMPs in the normal group, Bushen Huoxue middle dose group increased, with statistically significant(P<0.01), while the high and low dose groups increased in different degrees, but there was no statistical significance(P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS Bushen Huoxue prescription can delay the calcification of cartilage endplate in the process of aging, suggesting that it can be used as a preventive medicine for early disc degeneration.
Super-Resolution Community Detection for Layer-Aggregated Multilayer Networks

Applied network science often involves preprocessing network data before applying a network-analysis method, and there is typically a theoretical disconnect between these steps. For example, it is common to aggregate time-varying network data into windows prior to analysis, and the trade-offs of this preprocessing are not well understood. Focusing on the problem of detecting small communities in multilayer networks, we study the effects of layer aggregation by developing random-matrix theory for modularity matrices associated with layer-aggregated networks with N nodes and L layers, which are drawn from an ensemble of Erdős–Rényi networks with communities planted in subsets of layers. We study phase transitions in which eigenvectors localize onto communities (allowing their detection) and which occur for a given community provided its size surpasses a detectability limit K*. When layers are aggregated via a summation, we obtain K∗∝O(NL/T), where T is the number of layers across which the community persists. Interestingly, if T is allowed to vary with L, then summation-based layer aggregation enhances small-community detection even if the community persists across a vanishing fraction of layers, provided that T/L decays more slowly than 𝒪(L−1/2). Moreover, we find that thresholding the summation can, in some cases, cause K* to decay exponentially, decreasing by orders of magnitude in a phenomenon we call super-resolution community detection. In other words, layer aggregation with thresholding is a nonlinear data filter enabling detection of communities that are otherwise too small to detect. Importantly, different thresholds generally enhance the detectability of communities having different properties, illustrating that community detection can be obscured if one analyzes network data using a single threshold.
Relationship between admission serum sodium concentration and clinical outcomes in patients hospitalized for heart failure: an analysis from the OPTIMIZE-HF registry.

AIMS Hyponatraemia has been shown to be an independent predictor of mortality in selected patients with heart failure enrolled in clinical trials. The predictive value of hyponatraemia has not been evaluated in unselected patients hospitalized with heart failure. METHODS AND RESULTS OPTIMIZE-HF is a registry and performance-improvement programme for patients hospitalized with heart failure and includes a subgroup with 60-90 day follow-up data. The relationship between admission serum sodium concentration and clinical outcomes was analysed in 48,612 patients from 259 hospitals. Admission serum sodium levels were analysed both as a continuous variable and by grouping patients with admission Na < 135 and Na > or = 135 mmol/L. Patients with hyponatraemia (Na <135 mmol/L) at the time of hospital admission had modest differences in baseline clinical characteristics and management during hospitalization compared with patients who had serum sodium > or =135 mmol/L. Patients with hyponatraemia were more likely to be Caucasian, have lower admission systolic blood pressure, and receive intravenous inotropes during hospitalization. Patients with hyponatraemia had significantly higher rates of in-hospital and follow-up mortality and longer hospital stays, although no difference in re-admission rates was observed. After adjusting for differences with multivariable analysis, the risk of in-hospital death increased by 19.5%, the risk of follow-up mortality by 10%, and the risk of death or rehospitalization by 8% for each 3 mmol/L decrease in admission serum sodium below 140 mmol/L. CONCLUSION Hyponatraemia in hospitalized patients with heart failure is relatively common and is associated with longer hospital stays and higher in-hospital and early post-discharge mortality. Re-admission rates were equally high in patients with or without hyponatraemia.
Comparison of NCL-hTERT Antibody Reactivity and Telomere Repeat Amplification Protocol in Situ in Effusions

OBJECTIVE To compare the performances of 2 methods, telomerase repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) in situ and antibodies to the hTERT protein, in assessing telomerase activity. STUDY DESIGN TRAP in situ and immunohistochemistry with a commercial antibody (NCL-hTERT) was performed on 54 body cavity effusions. The results were compared and correlated to diagnosis. RESULTS Thirty-four effusions from patients with verified malignant disease contained cytologically malignant cells. Both methods were positive in 33 of the cases, whereas only hTERT was positive in 1 case. Twenty effusions, all containing mesothelial cells, came from patients with benign conditions. In 2 fluids atypical, hyperplastic mesothelial cells were both TRAP in situ and hTERT positive. All remaining 18 fluids were TRAP in situ negative, whereas 12 of 18 were hTERT positive. Thus the results of TRAP in situ and hTERT immunohistochemistry disagreed in 1 of 34 (3%) malignant and 12 of 20 (60%) benign cases. CONCLUSION The sensitivities for malignancy were similar for TRAP in situ and hTERT immunohistochemistry. The specificity of the applied hTERT antibody was significantly lower, due to hTERT reactivity in mesothelial cells.
AutoPA: automatically generating active driver from original passive driver code

Original device drivers are often passive in common operating systems, and they should correctly handle synchronization when concurrently invoked by multiple external threads. However, many concurrency bugs have occurred in drivers due to incautious synchronization. To solve concurrency problems, active driver is proposed to replace original passive driver. An active driver has its own thread and does not need to handle synchronization, thus the occurrence probability of many concurrency bugs can be effectively reduced. But previous approaches of active driver have some limitations. The biggest limitation is that original passive driver code needs to be manually rewritten. In this paper, we propose a practical approach, AutoPA, to automatically generate efficient active driver from original passive driver code. AutoPA uses function analysis and code instrumentation to perform automated driver generation, and it uses an improved active driver architecture to reduce performance degradation. We have evaluated AutoPA on 20 Linux drivers. The results show that AutoPA can automatically and successfully generate usable active drivers from original driver code. And generated active drivers can work normally with or without the synchronization primitives in original driver code. To check the effect of AutoPA on driver reliability, we perform fault injection testing on the generated active drivers, and find that all injected concurrency faults are well tolerated and the drivers can work normally. And the performance of generated active drivers is not obviously degraded compared to original passive drivers.
Association of FTO rs 9939609 SNP with Obesity and Obesity-Associated Phenotypes in a North Indian Population

*Corresponding author: neenasrivastavakgmc@gmail.com Obesity is a complex disorder with strong genetic components and has an impact on morbidity and mortality. Studies have suggested a genetic cause to variation in body mass index (BMI). 1 Various health risks are related with increasing BMI. An individual’s predisposition to obesity is determined by interactions between genetic and environmental factors.2 Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) identified obesity susceptibility loci at the population level in recent years. Through GWAS at least 52 loci associated with obesity have been identified.3 The fat mass and obesity-associated gene (FTO) was the first obesity-associated locus in cohorts of Europeans, European Americans, and Hispanic Americans.4,5 Almost all GWAS identified FTO as a gene that influences obesity and contributes the maximum to the variance in BMI in Europeans and Asians.3,6,7 The FTO rs9939609 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variant is of particular interest because it has a known effect on BMI.4 Subsequent replication studies, confirmed a strong association of the FTO rs9939609 SNP, located in intron 1 of the FTO gene, with obesity in various ethnic populations in both children and adults.8-10 Previous studies in Indian populations have reported an association of the FTO gene variants with obesity (defined by BMI). 11-14 However, the relationships between rs9939609 and obesity is inconsistent.15,16 Since genetic architecture varies across populations and ethnicities; the results could also be different between populations. Thus, the study of different ethnicities may produce new understandings about the genetic factors affecting predisposition of obesity, and could increase our understanding of the results of various populations. FTO is highly expressed in the hypothalamus region of the brain, which is involved in regulation of food intake and energy expenditure.17 The association original article Oman Medical Journal [2016], Vol. 31, No. 2: 99-106
A measurement-based study of MultiPath TCP performance over wireless networks

With the popularity of mobile devices and the pervasive use of cellular technology, there is widespread interest in hybrid networks and on how to achieve robustness and good performance from them. As most smart phones and mobile devices are equipped with dual interfaces (WiFi and 3G/4G), a promising approach is through the use of multi-path TCP, which leverages path diversity to improve performance and provide robust data transfers. In this paper we explore the performance of multi-path TCP in the wild, focusing on simple 2-path multi-path TCP scenarios. We seek to answer the following questions: How much can a user benefit from using multi-path TCP over cellular and WiFi relative to using the either interface alone? What is the impact of flow size on average latency? What is the effect of the rate/route control algorithm on performance? We are especially interested in understanding how application level performance is affected when path characteristics (e.g., round trip times and loss rates) are diverse. We address these questions by conducting measurements using one commercial Internet service provider and three major cellular carriers in the US.
Impact of Chestnut and Quebracho Tannins on Rumen Microbiota of Bovines

The use of phytogenic dietary additives is being evaluated as a means to improve animal productivity. The effect of tannins seems to be the influence not only directly on the digestive process through binding of dietary proteins but also indirectly over their effects on gastrointestinal microbiota. High-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene was used to analyze the impact of dietary supplementation with a blend of chestnut and quebracho tannins on the rumen microbiota of Holstein steers. Bacterial richness was lower in tannins treated animals, while the overall population structure of rumen microbiota was not significantly disturbed by tannins. The ratio of the phyla Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, a parameter associated with energy harvesting function, was increased in tannins supplemented animals, essentially due to the selective growth of Ruminococcaceae over members of genus Prevotella. Fibrolytic, amylolytic, and ureolytic bacterial communities in the rumen were altered by tannins, while methanogenic archaea were reduced. Furthermore, ruminal pH was significantly higher in animals supplemented with tannins than in the control group, while urease activity exhibited the opposite pattern. Further work is necessary to assess the relation between tannins impact on rumen microbiota and alteration of rumen fermentation parameters associated with bovine performance.
Blind Channel Estimation Using Wavelet Denoising of Independent Component Analysis for LTE

A new proposal of blind channel estimation method for long term evoluation (LTE) based on combining advantages of denoising property of wavelet transform (WT) with blind estimation capability of independent component analysis (ICA) called wavelet denoising of ICA (WD-ICA) was presented. This new method increased the spectral efficiency compared to training based methods, and provided considerable performance enhancement over conventional ICA methods. The conventional blind channel estimation methods based on ICA were performed individually for each orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarrier. To reduce complexity of implementation of WD-ICA method, channel interpolation was used. This method was presented for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) downlink LTE system. WD-ICA method was compared to conventional ICA methods and the Performance was evaluated by calculating normalized mean square error (NMSE) and bit error rate (BER). WD-ICA method as compared to the other known ICA channel estimation methods has lower complexity, lower value of NMSE, and lower value of BER, which indicates the superiority of the proposed method.
Frequency-domain detection of OQPSK signals with quasi-constant envelope and high spectral efficiency

In this paper, we consider SC-FDE schemes (Single Carrier with Frequency-Domain Equalization) employing OQPSK (Offset Quaternary Phase Shift Keying) signals with quasi-constant envelope. To allow high spectral efficiency, different frequency channels are separated by the symbol rate, regardless of their bandwidth (which is much higher than the symbol rate for quasi-constant envelope OQPSK signals), and we consider a multi-channel frequency-domain receiver with ACI (Adjacent Channel Interference) suppression. Our performance results show that it is possible to have high spectral efficiency with quasi-constant envelope OQPSK signals. This technique is especially interesting for the uplink of future broadband wireless systems since we can employ low-cost, grossly nonlinear power amplifiers at the mobile terminals and almost all signal processing is shifted to the base station.
Visual-Only Recognition of Normal, Whispered and Silent Speech

Silent speech interfaces have been recently proposed as a way to enable communication when the acoustic signal is not available. This introduces the need to build visual speech recognition systems for silent and whispered speech. However, almost all the recently proposed systems have been trained on vocalised data only. This is in contrast with evidence in the literature which suggests that lip movements change depending on the speech mode. In this work, we introduce a new audiovisual database which is publicly available and contains normal, whispered and silent speech. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study which investigates the differences between the three speech modes using the visual modality only. We show that an absolute decrease in classification rate of up to 3.7% is observed when training and testing on normal and whispered, respectively, and vice versa. An even higher decrease of up to 8.5% is reported when the models are tested on silent speech. This reveals that there are indeed visual differences between the 3 speech modes and the common assumption that vocalized training data can be used directly to train a silent speech recognition system may not be true.
Safety of percutaneous coronary intervention during uninterrupted oral anticoagulant treatment.

AIMS Uninterrupted anticoagulation (UAC) is assumed to increase bleeding and access-site complications. A common consensus is to postpone percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) to reach international normalized ratio (INR) levels < 1.5-1.8. METHODS AND RESULTS To assess the safety and feasibility of UAC, we analysed retrospectively all consecutive patients (n = 523) on warfarin therapy referred for PCI in four centres with a policy to interrupt anticoagulation (IAC) before PCI and in three centres with a long experience on UAC during PCI. Major bleeding, access-site complications, and major adverse cardiac events (death, myocardial infarction, target vessel revascularization, and stent thrombosis) were recorded during hospitalization. In the IAC group, warfarin was withdrawn for a mean of 3 days prior to PCI (mean INR 1.7). In the UAC group, mean INR value was 2.2. Glycoprotein IIb/IIIa (GP) inhibitors (P < 0.001) and low-molecular-weight heparins (P < 0.001) were more often used in the IAC group. Major bleeding and access-site complications were more common in the IAC group (5.0% vs. 1.2%, P = 0.02 and 11.3% vs. 5.0%, P = 0.01, respectively) than in the UAC group. After adjusting for propensity score, the group difference in access-site complications remained significant [OR (odds ratio) 2.8, 95% CI (confidence interval) 1.3-6.1, P = 0.008], but did not remain significant in major bleeding (OR 3.9, 95% CI 1.0-15.3, P = 0.05). In multivariable analysis, femoral access (OR 9.9, 95% CI 1.3-75.2), use of access-site closure devices (OR 2.1, 95% CI 1.1-4.0), low-molecular-weight heparin (OR 2.7, 95% CI 1.1-6.7) and old age predicted access-site complications, and the use of GP inhibitors (OR 3.0, 95% CI 1.0-9.1) remained as a predictor of major bleeding. CONCLUSION Our study shows that PCI is a safe procedure during UAC with no excess bleeding complications.
A Family of Proteins with γ-Adaptin and Vhs Domains That Facilitate Trafficking between the Trans-Golgi Network and the Vacuole/Lysosome

We have cloned and characterized members of a novel family of proteins, the GGAs. These proteins contain an NH2-terminal VHS domain, one or two coiled-coil domains, and a COOH-terminal domain homologous to the COOH-terminal “ear” domain of γ-adaptin. However, unlike γ-adaptin, the GGAs are not associated with clathrin-coated vesicles or with any of the components of the AP-1 complex. GGA1 and GGA2 are also not associated with each other, although they colocalize on perinuclear membranes. Immunogold EM shows that these membranes correspond to trans elements of the Golgi stack and the TGN. GST pulldown experiments indicate that the GGA COOH-terminal domains bind to a subset of the proteins that bind to the γ-adaptin COOH-terminal domain. In yeast there are two GGA genes. Deleting both of these genes results in missorting of the vacuolar enzyme carboxypeptidase Y, and the cells also have a defective vacuolar morphology phenotype. These results indicate that the function of the GGAs is to facilitate the trafficking of proteins between the TGN and the vacuole, or its mammalian equivalent, the lysosome.