Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in women with illegal social behavior in Isfahan, Iran

Background: Little is known about sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among females who engage in illegal sexual behavior in Iran . So, this study was conducted to obtain knowledge about the prevalence and associated risk factors in this population. Materials and Methods: In a cross-sectional study, a total of 100 women who had exchange of sex for money in previous 3 months according to self report were recruited during 2009-2010 by simple non probable sampling method in Isfahan, Iran. HIV-Ab, Chlamydia trachomatis -IgG and syphilis infection were measured. A questionnaire on demographics and prostitution-associated risk data was collected as well. Chi-square and multivariate logistic regression models were used for data analysis. Results: Of 100 participants, the samples of 91 ones could be tested for STI markers (nine samples were hemolysis or insufficient). The overall prevalence of C. trachomatis was 19.8%. There was no case with syphilis or HIV infection. Multiple logistic regression analysis demonstrated that participants who reported temporarily marriage were less likely to be infected with C. trachomatis (AOR=0.003, 95%CI=0.001-0.58). The other risk factors for the tested STIs were not statistically significant in multiple logistic regressions. Conclusion: The results of our study indicated that seroprevalence and associated risk factors of HIV and other STIs among female with illegal social behaviors is not considerable in Isfahan, Iran.
Influence of Apical Preparation Size and Working Length on Debris Extrusion.

The aim of this study was to quantitatively evaluate the amount of apically extruded debris by single-file reciprocating instruments with different working lengths and apical preparation sizes. Eighty human single-rooted mandibular incisors were used and conventional access cavities were prepared. Then, the specimens were divided into four groups (n=20), according to root canal instrumentation: Reciproc size 25, . 08 taper and Reciproc size 40, . 06 taper instruments were used at the foramen; Reciproc size 25, . 08 taper and Reciproc size 40, . 06 taper instruments were used 1 mm short of the foramen. Distilled water was used as an irrigant and the apically extruded debris were collected in pre-weighted glass vials and dried afterwards. The mean weight of debris was weighed with a microbalance and statistically analyzed using one-way analysis of variance and the post hoc Tukey multiple comparison test (p<0.05). The results showed that all experimental groups were associated with debris extrusion. No significant difference was found in the amount of apically extruded debris among all experimental groups (p>0.05). The present study demonstrated that the working length and the apical preparation size did not have a significant effect on debris extrusion when performing single-file reciprocating instrumentation.
Localization of the Lipopolysaccharide-binding Protein in Phospholipid Membranes by Atomic Force Microscopy*

Lipopolysaccharides (LPS; endotoxin) activate immunocompetent cells of the host via a transmembrane signaling process. In this study, we investigated the function of the LPS-binding protein (LBP) in this process. The cytoplasmic membrane of the cells was mimicked by lipid liposomes adsorbed on mica, and the lateral organization of LBP in these membranes and its interaction with LPS aggregates were characterized by atomic force microscopy. Using cantilever tips functionalized with anti-LBP antibodies, single LBP molecules were localized in the membrane at low concentrations. At higher concentrations, LBP formed clusters of several molecules and caused cross-linking of lipid bilayers. The addition of LPS to LBP-containing liposomes led to the formation of LPS domains in the membranes, which could be inhibited by anti-LBP antibodies. Thus, LBP mediates the fusion of lipid membranes and LPS aggregates.
Identification of an Interleukin 17F/17A Heterodimer in Activated Human CD4+ T Cells*

IL-17F and IL-17A are members of the IL-17 pro-inflammatory cytokine family. IL-17A has been implicated in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. IL-17F is a disulfide-linked dimer that contains a cysteine-knot motif. We hypothesized that IL-17F and IL-17A could form a heterodimer due to their sequence homology and overlapping pattern of expression. We evaluated the structure of recombinant IL-17F and IL-17A proteins, as well as that of natural IL-17F and IL-17A derived from activated human CD4+ T cells, by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, immunoprecipitation followed by Western blotting, and mass spectrometry. We find that both IL-17F and IL-17A can form both homodimeric and heterodimeric proteins when expressed in a recombinant system, and that all forms of the recombinant proteins have in vitro functional activity. Furthermore, we find that in addition to the homodimers of IL-17F and IL-17A, activated human CD4+ T cells also produce the IL-17F/IL-17A heterodimer. These data suggest that the IL-17F/IL-17A heterodimer may contribute to the T cell-mediated immune responses.
A Silicon interposer BGA package with Cu-filled TSV and multi-layer Cu-plating interconnect

A novel silicon interposer (SilP) BGA package (PKG) - SilP PKG - has been developed and qualified through test chip. It features three key process technologies; Cu-filled through Si via (TSV), fine pitch multi-layer wiring with Cu- plating, and micro-bump interconnect. The cost-conscious fabrication process flow has been developed based on the build-up print boards' Cu-plating technology and Si wafer batch process. The SilP PKG reliability as an LSI package has been confirmed.
Granular formulation of Fusarium oxysporum for biological control of faba bean and tomato Orobanche.

BACKGROUND Orobanche spp. represent a serious threat to a wide range of crops. They are difficult targets for herbicides, and biological control could provide a possible solution. This work therefore aimed to formulate mycoherbicides of Fusarium with adequate shelf life and virulence against Orobanche but safe to faba bean and tomato. RESULTS Only two isolates of Fusarium oxysporum Schlecht. (Foxy I and Foxy II) obtained from diseased Orobanche shoots were found to be pathogenic to Orobanche crenata Forsk. and Orobanche ramosa L. Conidial suspension of both isolates significantly decreased germination, attachments and tubercles of Orobanche. Microconidia and chlamydospores of both isolates were formulated as mycoherbicides encapsulated in a wheat flour-kaolin matrix (four different formulations). All formulations greatly diminished Orobanche emerged shoots, total shoot number, shoot height, attachment of emerged shoots, the germinated seeds that succeeded in emerging above the soil surface and dry weight. Meanwhile, disease incidence and disease severity of emerged shoots were enhanced. The shelf life was adequate, particularly for coarse, freshly prepared, low-temperature-stored, microconidia-rich formulations. The induced growth reduction of Orobanche-infected host plants seemed to be nullified by formulations, particularly at the highest dose. CONCLUSION These formulations seemed to destroy Orobanche but appeared harmless to host plants. Hence, they could be efficiently used as mycoherbicides for biological control of Orobanche in faba bean and tomato.
Efficient Common Prefix Search on Encrypted Data as an Additional Service on the Top of the Storage Providers

Company data are very often outsourced to cloud service providers in order to lower costs of maintaining hardware. If the outsourced data are to be kept secure from a third party, the connection between the cloud service provider and the company could be secured by a protocol similar to SSL. This, however, requires that the data is stored at the cloud service provider in plaintext form, meaning the company has to trust the cloud service provider and its administrators in order to perform search on the outsourced data. Alternatively, the data themselves could be encrypted, however, the outputs of typical cryptographic algorithms are not amenable to search. For example, if a client wishes to retrieve only documents containing certain words, it was not previously known how to let the data storage server perform the search and answer the query without loss of data confidentiality. By the advantage of our cryptography scheme a query generated at the client-side, is transformed into a representation so that it can be evaluated directly on encrypted data at the could storage server. The results might be processed by the client after decryption to determine the final answers. Additionally, we introduce an efficient common prefix keyword search which makes the scheme more tolerant of minor typos and format inconsistencies when exact keyword matching fails.
A Self-Excited MEMS Electro-Quasi-Static Induction Turbine Generator

This paper presents a microfabricated electro-quasi-static (EQS) induction turbine generator that has generated net electric power. A maximum power output of 192 muW was achieved under driven excitation. We believe that this is the first report of net-electric-power generation by an EQS induction machine of any scale found in the open literature. This paper also presents self-excited operation in which the generator resonates with an inductor and generates power without the use of external active-drive electronics. The generator comprises five silicon layers, fusion-bonded together at 700degC. The stator is a platinum-electrode structure formed on a thick (approximately 20 mum) recessed oxide island. The rotor is a thin film of lightly doped polysilicon also residing on a 10-mum-thick oxide island. Carrier depletion in the rotor conductor film limited the performance of the generator. This paper also presents a generalized state-space model for an EQS induction machine that takes into account the machine and its external electronics and parasitics. This model correlates well with measured performance and was used to find the optimal drive conditions for all driven experiments.
Antiproliferative Effect of Dihydroxyacetone on Trypanosoma brucei Bloodstream Forms: Cell Cycle Progression, Subcellular Alterations, and Cell Death

ABSTRACT We evaluated the effects of dihydroxyacetone (DHA) on Trypanosoma brucei bloodstream forms. DHA is considered an energy source for many different cell types. T. brucei takes up DHA readily due to the presence of aquaglyceroporins. However, the parasite is unable to use it as a carbon source because of the absence of DHA kinase (DHAK). We could not find a homolog of the relevant gene in the genomic database of T. brucei and have been unable to detect DHAK activity in cell lysates of the parasite, and the parasite died quickly if DHA was the sole energy source in the medium. In addition, during trypanosome cultivation, DHA induced growth inhibition with a 50% inhibitory concentration of about 1 mM, a concentration that is completely innocuous to mammals. DHA caused cell cycle arrest in the G2/M phase of up to 70% at a concentration of 2 mM. Also, DHA-treated parasites showed profound ultrastructural alterations, including an increase of vesicular structures within the cytosol and the presence of multivesicular bodies, myelin-like structures, and autophagy-like vacuoles, as well as a marked disorder of the characteristic mitochondrion structure. Based on the toxicity of DHA for trypanosomes compared with mammals, we consider DHA a starting point for a rational design of new trypanocidal drugs.
Role of Reduced Lipoic Acid in the Redox Regulation of Mitochondrial Aldehyde Dehydrogenase (ALDH-2) Activity

Chronic therapy with nitroglycerin results in a rapid development of nitrate tolerance, which is associated with an increased production of reactive oxygen species. We have recently shown that mitochondria are an important source of nitroglycerin-induced oxidants and that the nitroglycerin-bioactivating mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase is oxidatively inactivated in the setting of tolerance. Here we investigated the effect of various oxidants on aldehyde dehydrogenase activity and its restoration by dihydrolipoic acid. In vivo tolerance in Wistar rats was induced by infusion of nitroglycerin (6.6 μg/kg/min, 4 days). Vascular reactivity was measured by isometric tension studies of isolated aortic rings in response to nitroglycerin. Chronic nitroglycerin infusion lead to impaired vascular responses to nitroglycerin and decreased dehydrogenase activity, which was corrected by dihydrolipoic acid co-incubation. Superoxide, peroxynitrite, and nitroglycerin itself were highly efficient in inhibiting mitochondrial and yeast aldehyde dehydrogenase activity, which was restored by dithiol compounds such as dihydrolipoic acid and dithiothreitol. Hydrogen peroxide and nitric oxide were rather insensitive inhibitors. Our observations indicate that mitochondrial oxidative stress (especially superoxide and peroxynitrite) in response to organic nitrate treatment may inactivate aldehyde dehydrogenase thereby leading to nitrate tolerance. Glutathionylation obviously amplifies oxidative inactivation of the enzyme providing another regulatory pathway. Furthermore, the present data demonstrate that the mitochondrial dithiol compound dihydrolipoic acid restores mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase activity via reduction of a disulfide at the active site and thereby improves nitrate tolerance.
Denoising Arterial Spin Labeling Cerebral Blood Flow Images Using Deep Learning

Arterial spin labeling perfusion MRI is a noninvasive technique for measuring quantitative cerebral blood flow (CBF), but the measurement is subject to a low signal-to-noise-ratio(SNR). Various post-processing methods have been proposed to denoise ASL MRI but only provide moderate improvement. Deep learning (DL) is an emerging technique that can learn the most representative signal from data without prior modeling which can be highly complex and analytically indescribable. The purpose of this study was to assess whether the record breaking performance of DL can be translated into ASL MRI denoising. We used convolutional neural network (CNN) to build the DL ASL denosing model (DL-ASL) to inherently consider the inter-voxel correlations. To better guide DL-ASL training, we incorporated prior knowledge about ASL MRI: the structural similarity between ASL CBF map and grey matter probability map. A relatively large sample data were used to train the model which was subsequently applied to a new set of data for testing. Experimental results showed that DL-ASL achieved state-of-the-art denoising performance for ASL MRI as compared to current routine methods in terms of higher SNR, keeping CBF quantification quality while shorten the acquisition time by 75%, and automatic partial volume correction.
HOW DO STUDENTS LEARN WRITING EASILY

This CAR intends to improve students’ writing ability. The data were collected through questionnaire, observation, and documents . Assembling the data, coding the data, comparing the data, building meanings and interpretations, and reporting the outcomes were the steps to analyze the data . The result showed that there was improvement on stdents’ writing ability, that was in cycle 1 , the mean score was 63.2 8 , and 70.9 7 in cycle 2. The questionnaire data was also showed that 47% students strongly agree d and 33% of them agree d that Collaborative Writing Technique could encourage them to write and help them to improve their writing ability.
The fabrication of zinc oxide nanorods and nanowires by solgel immersion methods

The zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods (NRs) (4 hours) and nanowires (NWs) (12 and 24 hours) were synthesized on the magnesium ZnO (MgZnO) seed layer by using sol-gel immersion method. The ZnO NRs and NWs were characterized by FESEM, XRD, UV-Vis and four-point probe measurement. The FESEM images showed uniform, dense and vertically aligned structure. The smallest diameter observed in ZnO NWs (24 hours) in the range ∼ 47.6-99.2 nm. The XRD spectra also presented the c-axis growth of ZnO NRs and NWs. The ZnO NWs (24 hours) demonstrated higher transmittance and electrical conductivity of ∼77.8% and 2.6 × 10−1 S cm−1 as compared to ZnO NRs of 66.7% and 1.1 ×10−2 S cm−1, respectively. Therefore, the ZnO NWs (24 hours) showed a good structure to be applied in solar cells and UV sensor applications.
Gyrotropic, shielding and sensing low-gigahertz properties of graphene sheet biased with magnetic and electric static fields

Closed-form expressions describing the tensorial conductivity of an electrically or magnetically biased monolayer graphene are provided in order to highlight the low-gigahertz gyrotropic, shielding and sensing properties. The longitudinal and transverse (Hall) conductivities are given as explicit functions of the fundamental electromagnetic quantities, i.e. the magnetic and electric field bias, B0 and E0, and the carrier charge mobility μ The developed simple expressions of the components of the electric field transmission coefficient are utilized to compute the polarization rotation angle θ and the shielding effectiveness (SE), in case of normally incident plane wave. The dependence of θ on B0 is investigated, and the magnetic field value providing the maximum θ is found. The simulation model is applied to compute gyrotropic, SE and sensing performances of the biased graphene sheet at low-gigahertz regime. Moreover, exploiting the sensing properties of the biased graphene sheet, the measured value of θ is used to evaluate B0, E0 and μ.
Perceived interprofessional barriers between community pharmacists and general practitioners: a qualitative assessment.

BACKGROUND There have been calls for greater collaboration between general practitioners (GPs) and community pharmacists in primary care. AIM To explore barriers between the two professions in relation to closer interprofessional working and the extension of prescribing rights to pharmacists. DESIGN OF STUDY Qualitative study. SETTING Three locality areas of a health and social services board in Northern Ireland. METHOD GPs and community pharmacists participated in uniprofessional focus groups; data were analysed using interpretative phenomenology. RESULTS Twenty-two GPs (distributed over five focus groups) and 31 pharmacists (distributed over six focus groups) participated in the study. The 'shopkeeper' image of community pharmacy emerged as the superordinate theme, with subthemes of access, hierarchy and awareness. The shopkeeper image and conflict between business and health care permeated the GPs' discussions and accounted for their concerns regarding the extension of prescribing rights to community pharmacists and involvement inextended services. Community pharmacists felt such views influenced their position in the hierarchy of healthcare professionals. Although GPs had little problem in accessing pharmacists, they considered that patients experienced difficulties owing to the limited opening hours of pharmacies. Conversely, pharmacists reported great difficulty in accessing GPs, largely owing to the gatekeeper role of receptionists. GPs reported being unaware of the training and activities of community pharmacists and participating pharmacists also felt that GPs had no appreciation of their role in health care. CONCLUSION A number of important barriers between GPs and community pharmacists have been identified, which must be overcome if interprofessional liaison between the two professions is to be fully realised.
The Zuker Collection: A Resource for the Analysis of Autosomal Gene Function in Drosophila melanogaster

The majority of genes of multicellular organisms encode proteins with functions that are not required for viability but contribute to important physiological functions such as behavior and reproduction. It is estimated that 75% of the genes of Drosophila melanogaster are nonessential. Here we report on a strategy used to establish a large collection of stocks that is suitable for the recovery of mutations in such genes. From ∼72,000 F3 cultures segregating for autosomes heavily treated with ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS), ∼12,000 lines in which the treated second or third chromosome survived in homozygous condition were selected. The dose of EMS induced an estimated rate of 1.2–1.5 × 10–3 mutations/gene and predicts five to six nonessential gene mutations per chromosome and seven to nine alleles per locus in the samples of 6000 second chromosomes and 6000 third chromosomes. Due to mosaic mutations induced in the initial exposure to the mutagen, many of the lines are segregating or are now fixed for lethal mutations on the mutagenized chromosome. The features of this collection, known as the Zuker collection, make it a valuable resource for forward and reverse genetic screens for mutations affecting a wide array of biological functions.
The Role of Signals in Online Auction Purchase Decisions

Abstract There is a growing interest in behavioural economics contradicting the empirical prediction of rational choice theory once applied to online auctions. The issue is of particular relevance due to the large use of online auctions and the anticipated growth in the future. Online auctions combine the conventional auction model with information technology. However, information asymmetry within such auctions causes risks and uncertainties that influence consumer purchase intentions. The research investigates online consumers’ behaviour. The Authors suggest that due to the high perceived risk of the online buying process consumers are prompted to use cues of seller’ reputation. In a series of six experiments conducted via the auction site Allegro.pl in Poland a number of signals from auction web pages has been manipulated to influence purchase intention. The results suggest that several signals can be used to stimulate online customers’ behaviour. The results of these experiments indicate that buyers are more susceptible to the influence of “visual” signals than signals that require greater involvement of the buyer (to read information). The conducted experiments contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of online auction users’ behaviour. And finally it provides some managerial implications to increase online auction effectiveness from the seller’s perspective.
Unwrapping Hartmann-Shack Images from Highly Aberrated Eyes Using an Iterative B-spline Based Extrapolation Method

Purpose. When the wavefront aberrations of the eye are measured with a Hartmann-Shack (HS) sensor, the resulting spot pattern must be unwrapped, that is, for each lenslet the corresponding spot must be identified. This puts a limitation on the measurable amount of aberrations. To extend the range of an HS sensor, a powerful unwrapping algorithm has been developed. Methods. The unwrapping algorithm starts by connecting the central HS spots to the central lenslets. It then fits a B-spline function through a least squares estimate to the deviations of the central HS spots. This function is then extrapolated to find the expected locations of HS spots for the unconnected lenslets. The extrapolation is performed gradually in an iterative manner; the closest unconnected lenslets are extrapolated and connected, and then the B-spline function is least squares fitted to all connected HS spots and extrapolated again. Results. Wavefront aberrations from eyes with high aberrations can be successfully unwrapped with the developed algorithm. The dynamic range of a typical HS sensor increases 3.5 to 13 times compared with a simple unwrapping algorithm. Conclusions. The implemented algorithm is an efficient unwrapping tool and allows the use of lenslets with a low numerical aperture and thus gives a relatively higher accuracy of measurements of the ocular aberrations.